Exodus chapter 1. Now these are the names of the children of Israel which came into Egypt. Every man in his household came with Jacob, Reuben, Simeon, Levi and Judah, Issachar, Zebulun and Benjamin, Dan and Naphtali, Gad and Asher. And all the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob were seventy souls, for Joseph was in Egypt already. And Joseph died and all his brethren in all that generation. And the children of Israel were fruitful and increased abundantly and multiplied and waxed exceedingly mighty, and the land was filled with them. Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph. And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we. Come on, let us deal wisely with them. lest they multiply, and it come to pass that when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land. Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens, and they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Ramses. But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. They were grieved because of the children of Israel. The Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigor. They made their lives bitter with hard bondage in mortar and in brick and in all manner of service in the field. All their service wherein they made them serve was with rigor. The king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives, of which the name of the one was Shiphrah and the name of the other, Puah, and he said, When ye do the service of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the stools, if it be a son, then ye shall kill him. But if it be a daughter, then she shall live. But the midwives feared God, and did not, as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the men children alive. And the king of Egypt called for the midwives, and said unto them, Why have ye done this thing, and have saved the men children alive? And the midwives said unto Pharaoh, Because the Hebrew women are not as the Egyptian women, for they are lively and are delivered, ere the midwives come in unto them. Therefore God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and waxed very mighty. And it came to pass, because the midwives feared God, that He made them houses. And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born he shall cast into the river. And every daughter ye shall save alive. And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to him a wife, a daughter of Levi. And the woman conceived and bare a son. And when she saw him, that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months. And when she could not hide him, longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein. And she laid it in the flags by the river's brink. And his sister stood afar off to wit what would be done to him. And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river, and her maidens walked along by the river's side. And when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it. And when she had opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the babe wept. And she had compassion on him and said, This is one of the Hebrews' children. Then said his sister to Pharaoh's daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women that she may nurse the child for thee? And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Go. And the maid went and called the child's mother. And Pharaoh's daughter said unto her, Take this child away and nurse it for me. and I will give thee thy wages.' And the woman took the child and nursed it. And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses, and she said, Because I drew him out of the water." So far we read God's holy word. The connection with this is the text found in Hebrews 11, which is a commentary on the events, especially in chapter 2. Hebrews 11, verse 23. There we read, Hebrews 11, verse 23, By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents. because they saw he was a proper child and they were not afraid of the King's commandment. Beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ, the faith that is described in Hebrews chapter 11 obviously is not the faith of Moses, but it is the faith of his parents. These two people are so obscure that their names are not recorded here in Hebrews 11 or even in the passage that we read in Exodus. Their names are not given. You have to search the Scriptures to discover the name of the father to be Amram and the name of the mother to be Jochebed. It's a bit hard to conceive even that they would be included in this list in Hebrews chapter 11. Among such people as Abel and Enoch, among such people as Abraham and Sarah and Joseph are the parents of Moses. The other people that are listed in Hebrews 11 are indeed, as we call them, heroes of faith. whose deeds stand out. And yet here we have this obscure couple, names not even given except in some genealogies, who are taken note of by the Holy Scriptures and by the Holy Spirit Himself and set up in front of us as an example. It might seem surprising also that they would be included in this chapter on faith because it might not seem really that what they did was an act of faith. Courageous perhaps, indeed. Bold. Maybe to be able to defy the order of Pharaoh. But isn't this really something that any parent would want to do? Isn't this kind of just a natural reaction that that parents have a child born to them and they want to do everything in their power to preserve the life of that baby? Why would this be an act of faith to do this? This is what the Holy Spirit says it is. It's not merely courageous, though it was. It's not merely a natural inclination. It's an act of faith for Amram and Jacobet. The testimony of the Holy Spirit, therefore, is an encouragement. It's an encouragement to all believers. It can be almost disheartening to compare ourselves to this list of people in Hebrews chapter 11, because their deeds and their lives seem to be so far above ours. And then as we're reading along, there is just this obscure couple, names not even given. who are held up as examples of faith for us to imitate. Secondly, it's an encouragement to parents in the evil days in which we live. Parents who have promised to raise their children up in the fear of the Lord. You will do that only by faith. Let's be clear about that. If it were anything else, we would not, sorry to say this, but we really wouldn't have any confidence that what you've promised to do, you'll really be able to do because we know ourselves and the weakness of our flesh. But it's by faith that you will do it, and it's the same faith that gave Amram and Jochebed the courage to do what they had to do. So this morning, let's consider this text under the theme, Moses hid by faith. Notice in the first place, the dangerous activity. Secondly, the lively faith. And finally, the divine confirmation. This is a dangerous activity, hiding a baby for three months under the circumstances because of the king's command. Israel was God's chosen people, but from an earthly point of view, their situation was far from enviable. They were bond servants under the thumb of Pharaoh, a very powerful man. This was the word that God had told Abraham years before, that He would bring Abraham's seed into Egypt, that they would there be afflicted. God said, I will bring them out again. But this is the affliction part. The seed would grow there and develop, but be oppressed. And so it happened. In the providence of God, he sent his people into Egypt, preparing the way, even through the sinful act of the ten brothers of Joseph, selling him as a slave. And there in the providence of God, Joseph being lifted up finally to be the second in all the land of Egypt, in order that he might prepare the place for Israel. Storing up the grains that would be necessary to preserve their lives in the desperate famine that was coming. and then settling them down there in the land of Egypt. But Jacob died. And then Joseph died. And then more generations passed away. And a new Pharaoh arose that didn't know anything about Joseph. Didn't know how Joseph had really saved the nation of Egypt. And he didn't care. But he was afraid of Israel because Israel grew and they were becoming a very populous people, even a nation within the nation of Egypt. And he feared that if anyone would attack Egypt from the outside, that the Israelites, seeing an opportunity to get away, would join the enemy and destroy Egypt. So, as you know, He tried to cut down their number by affliction, making them slaves, making them to serve with rigor, building him pyramids and treasure cities. And then trying to cut them down using the midwives of the Israelites, saying, when the babies are born, if it's a boy, you have to kill that child. If it's a girl, you may let it live. And that didn't work. They didn't obey his command. They feared God. And now this last, most grievous commandment to every Israelite parent, if you have a baby boy, this is the law of the land. That boy must be thrown into the Nile River as a sacrifice to the gods of Egypt. What was behind this is more than merely a political concern. What was behind it was a hatred of the wicked for the people of God. Pharaoh hated Israel. The wicked always hate God's people. They hate them because they are different. Israel demonstrated that it was different. They had a different language. They have a different culture. They ate different food. They worshipped a different God in a very different way. Not the way the Egyptians served their gods with their idols and all the immorality. They served a different god. And the lifestyle of the Israelites then would indicate the corruption of the lifestyle of the Egyptians, especially in connection with the vile fornication that was connected with idolatry. So they hated them because they exposed their own sins. condemned them. Here, of course, we have a picture, as the Bible makes it plain, even in the law that we read this morning, the introduction to the law, we have a picture in Exodus of the bondage of sin. God gives us a graphic picture of how Satan tries to enslave every person born into the world and make them to be his slaves, to do his will. and Satan's murderous hatred of God's people. How he wants to destroy God's people. God, of course, had a different purpose. Israel had become very accustomed to Egypt. It was a beautiful place to live. They had all of the pleasant foods. They could enjoy life there. They could settle down and intermarry with the Egyptians. And God was showing them affliction in order to give them incentive to leave. They had to want to leave Egypt. At this point, they didn't want to. So, God has a different purpose of afflicting His people Israel. But in particular, this murder of the babies, the baby boys of Israel, is nothing less than the Antichrist motivated by the dragon himself, Satan, to seek to cut off the Christ. You understand how diligent Satan is. When he brought sin into this world, he heard the promise of God that God would give the seed of the woman to crush the head of the serpent, and he was that serpent, and to deliver the children of the woman from the bondage of Satan. His goal throughout the Old Testament was to prevent the coming of the Christ. To cut off the men. To cut off the babies of Israel. He watched as God directed the course through Noah and then to Abraham and then to Judah. And now this is his goal, to cut off the children, the men, the boys that they might not live and perhaps he could cut off the seed of the Christ. This was his goal in raising Cain up to kill Abel. This was his goal as he persecuted the church until there were but eight souls at the time of the flood. This is his goal when Athaliah killed all her grandchildren, save one. This is his goal when Herod killed all the babies of Bethlehem. And this is his goal here, to cut off the covenant seed, and especially the seed who is Jesus Christ. These were evil days for Israel. Try to put yourself as parents into these circumstances. Father often gone, whipped and being driven by the taskmasters. Mother left behind and raising children. And now she has a child. And it's a baby boy. In the midst of those circumstances, we read, what we do in Exodus chapter 2. The narrative in Exodus seems so ordinary. Man chooses a wife from the same tribe and they have a baby. A baby boy. It's just what always happens. Boy meets a girl. They get married. They have children. In fact, of course, there's a lot of time between verse 1 and 2 in Exodus chapter 2 because they had also Aaron and Miriam before this. before the king's command came to kill all the baby boys in the Nile River. Though it may seem very ordinary, God is at work here and God is giving to Israel a deliverer in Moses, one that would eventually lead them out of the land of Egypt up to the door of Canaan. If I were Amram and Jacobet, I'm sure that I would have been hoping for nine months that we would have a girl so we wouldn't have to face this issue. What will we do? What will we do? They did not obey the king's command. They did not cast their baby boy into the Nile River. They did not turn him over to the Egyptian soldiers to do that dreadful deed. They resolved to hide their son. Obviously, their hope is to save this covenant child alive. Obviously, their desire is to be able to instruct him in the fear of the Lord, to teach him to love God. Not that those parents looked at this baby and said, oh, here's the deliverer that God has determined. They couldn't see that. There's no way that they could understand the position that Moses would have in the counsel of God. Only this they knew. This is a covenant child. The covenant that God had established with Abraham and his seed. This is one of those children. This child belongs to God. The ungodly king said, take that baby boy and sacrifice him to my gods, and they refused. They would not. That is an act of faith. It's an act of faith. Faith, according to Hebrews 11, verse 3, is The substance, rather, chapter 1, verse 1, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. They had faith. It can only be faith because from every other human point of view, this was folly. It couldn't possibly work. How could they expect to hide this baby in their home for any period of time. We mustn't think of homes the way we have them now. Homes with insulation in the walls. Homes with glass windows that can be closed. Homes with basements maybe where we can hide things. Rooms inside of rooms where we might be able to keep the sound of a baby's cry from going out. That's not the kind of home they had. Think of a wooden shed without windows on it, no glass windows. They didn't have that kind of home at all in those days. They had a hut. It was impossible for them to think we could actually keep this child until he is grown up. They could not hide it from the soldiers who circulated. They could not keep it from the Israelites themselves who were not to be trusted. Forty years from then, when Moses did try to deliver Israel, remember the reply of the Israelites? Are you going to kill us today as you killed the Egyptian? They didn't want him. And forty years after that, when Moses and Aaron came and wanted to lead them out, they said, leave us alone. We don't want you. The Israelites were not to be trusted, even in helping them hide their baby. Other factors that make it impossible. What did they expect to do after a few months if they could hide him for that long? What a risky plan. They had two other children there, Aaron and Miriam. And if the soldiers would find out that they had hidden the child in a disobedience to the king, would they not risk the possibility of losing all their children? Wouldn't it be better to give up this one child in order to preserve the other two that they had? But the Bible says it's not foolhardy. It's an act of faith. An act of faith. Faith believes the promises of God. That's what faith always latches on to. The promises of God. Trusting that God will fulfill His promises. They had faith in the promises of God's covenant. that he would establish his covenant in the line of continued generations as he had sworn to Abraham. Amram and Jacob had to believe that they and their children were in that covenant of grace. They believed that. And the promise included that God would lead Israel out of the land of Egypt One day he would lead them, and lead them into the promised land of Canaan. Those were God's promises. They knew those promises. Jacob had said before he died, do not bury me here, but bury me in the land of Canaan, because God will take you to the land of Canaan. Joseph died years later and said, remember when you go to Canaan, take my bones with you. And the bones of Joseph were still there waiting to be transported when the people of Israel went to the land of Canaan. Amram and Jacob knew those promises. If those things were not true, If God's promises of the covenant, if God's promises of deliverance finally to bring them to the promised land, if that was not true, then there was no sense in what they were doing. Then they might as well at least preserve the two children that they had and forget about the baby boy. But they had faith. And that faith is a power that absolutely gives one strength Because ultimately, the heart of every promise is the promise of the Messiah. And faith links itself to that. And as the Catechism says, faith then becomes an invisible bond. Something that the Spirit connects us with Christ and the believer. A spiritual bond. And power flows through that. And life flows through that. And it's the power of faith that gave Amram and Jochebed, as they were clinging to the promise of Christ, linked to Him by faith that gave them the power, the courage, the wisdom to do what they did. The power of faith. That's the only thing that explains this. Ultimately, God would realize all His promises in Jesus Christ. The deliverance from Egypt is only a picture. The true deliverance would have to come through the Mediator, through Jesus, who would give Himself to the death of the cross and pay for the sins of His people and deliver His people truly from the bondage of sin and bring them to the eternal Canaan, which is heaven. Amram and Jochebed couldn't see that with the same kind of understanding that you can see it. But it's the same faith holding to the promises of God. That's what faith does. And so the promise was, God will deliver you. How would that happen? They had no idea how that could happen. They couldn't know that. Pharaoh would seek to destroy Israel, but God would preserve them. And faith held on to that. They didn't have to know how God would preserve them. They didn't have to know when. Only they knew by faith. And faith seeks to be obedient. Faith is not merely that I believe something, but faith affects the way a man lives. And it says, I will obey that God who has made such beautiful promises to me. I will obey. Amram and Jacobad did exactly that. They obeyed. Not the king, but God. They resolved to hide the child. They didn't have to have every detail laid out about how this would work. If the Lord determined that this child would be taken from them and cast into the river by the soldiers, well, then that would be God's will. But they knew that they had to obey God and preserve this child. They did it by faith, not fearing the king's command. You must not think about the Amram and Jacobet, that here you have two rebels. You have two that are willing to stand up to the mighty power of the king, even though they're nobodies. That's not what Amram and Jacobet are. Or that there's some kind of freedom leaders that are going to lead Israel to freedom. If they take a stand, maybe everyone will do it behind them. They didn't do that. She was not out there looking for the microphones and saying, this isn't fair what's happening to us. And let's everybody rise up. That's not what they were doing. They put their trust in God. And they obeyed God. That's all. We can find many parallels in raising children in the covenant today. It takes faith. There are so many things about Our life and the future that are unknown. Let's start with one that's fairly known, but yet unknown. What's it going to cost? We're making it now, but in five years, there's tuition. Double tuition. How are we going to do that? How are we going to afford to pay all that tuition. There's uncertainty as the world increases in wickedness and the tide of vile corruption is rising and sweeping across our land. Will these children drown in that vile corruption so that all of the covenant instruction you give them, they're not interested in that. They want the corruption of this world. Uncertainties. Will the technology of the future so bedazzle these children that they would rather be with the world than to be with the church? They're enamored by the glitter of this world. Might it be that in this lifetime the world The government forbids these children to be instructed in godliness, in the truths of the world, that they close our schools and take our children away. A lot of uncertainty. Uncertainty when you look at the child herself or himself and you say, will the child take hold of the instruction? Even if I give my utmost to instructing her, will she love the truth? Will she love God? I can't give that faith to them. You can't give faith to them. That depends on God. He's the only one that can apply the instruction to their hearts and give them faith. Unless they have that, then everything that you do is vanity. These fears are not unknown to parents. And there are fears of the world looking at us and putting pressure on us. Persecution. And yet, standing bold in the face of that and saying, I don't care what the world says about what my children need. I know what they need. They need the Word of God. They have to be taught. We can fear pressure from fellow Christians. Some have already forsaken Christian education and say it's not worth it. It's not worth it to give your children all that money, all that education. And some think Christian education is all right, but not the education you're thinking about for your child. They want a Christian education that will take that child and say, now, you can be a friend of the world. You can go out and change the world. You can make this world a better place. But they don't want an education where you say, my child will learn to be in the world but not of the world. An antithetical education. That they do not want for your child. And they will ridicule that kind of instruction. There will be pressure brought upon us as parents. Economic pressure as the cost of raising children takes a larger and larger chunk of our income. And the world presses us not to have very many children because you know it's terribly expensive And if the church listens to that, then Satan has won a major victory. How was God bringing His church into the hundreds and thousands by many children? How can we go on with all these concerns? and be faithful to our baptism vows this morning?" The answer, the same power that moved Amram and Jacobed to hide Moses. The power of faith. The same power that moved parents and grandparents to start our schools so many years ago. moved parents and grandparents to start the Protestant Reformed churches in the 1920s, or to move from South Dakota to the Grand Rapids area to receive Protestant Reformed preaching and education. Faith. A faith that follows God's commands with regard to the raising of our covenant children. No matter what the world may say, no matter what the dangers may be, it's that kind of faith that we must have. That we will have children and trust that God will provide. He doesn't promise us riches, but He will provide. The money will be there if our priorities are right. You can talk to any number of parents here and they'll tell you that. The fact that we need to instruct them intensely. You think of what Moses knew by the time he was three or four years old when he was brought away to Pharaoh's house. He knew Jehovah God. He knew the worship of God. He understood theological ideas that were astounding for a child of three or four. When our children are three or four, they had better know about sin. They had better know about the God that created the heavens and the earth. They better know about Jesus Christ. Not only that He saved them from sin by the cross, but that He's coming again. They can know that. They have to know that. But if we fail, If we halt and stumble because we're afraid of what people are saying about us or what the future will hold, then we're not living out of faith. Let Amram and Jacob be your encouragement. Live out of faith. Just obey God. He'll take care of the rest. In a sense, they are part of that multitude that's referred to in the next chapter. A host of witnesses. A cloud of witnesses. They're there to encourage us as parents. Well, God confirmed their act of faith. He confirmed their act of faith in two specific ways. First of all, When he gave them a son, he gave them a son that had something very striking about him. The text says, they saw he was a proper child. A proper child. There are three accounts about Moses as a baby here in Exodus and Acts 7. All of them make reference to this. There was something striking about that baby. The word here, proper child, indicates something of a polished gentleman. There was something genteel, noble about the appearance of a baby. Exodus 2 says the child was good. A good child, and that can mean either morally good or that he has a lot of ability. There's something about that child. Acts 7 says he was exceeding fair. Literally, the words are, he was good before God. Before the very face of God, he stood out as a child. There was something unusual about this baby. So what did the parents see? Did he have some external beauty that reflected something of the spiritual gifts? Because obviously Moses was not your ordinary person. He was extremely gifted. Intellectually, spiritually, a gifted man. Did they see something of that? Well, we really don't know. We only know there was something about him that was striking. So we'll leave it there. But the question is, how does that fit in here? What does this have to do with them hiding Moses? And well, let's first of all put this to rest. It is not that they hid him for three months because they saw there was something special about him. As if to say, well, if he had been an ordinary baby or if he had been a homely baby, they wouldn't have hid him for three months. That, of course, is nonsense. That takes away the faith of Amram and Jochebed. It's not worthy of them at all. And if it was this, that they looked at the baby and said, well, there's something really special about him. Maybe we better hide him. That's almost like a charismatic sign that God gave them. They looked at the child and they said, oh, wow, there's something special here. That's not what happened. That's not at all the idea. The idea is rather this. God confirmed what they had already determined to do by giving them a child that was strikingly different. In order to show them what you're intending to do, it's the right thing. I approve of what you're doing. They needed that. They needed that because just like us, they had a faith that can be strong or it can be weak. And we can determine to do a certain thing, and then we begin to second-guess it and think about whether we really should do it, and then our faith becomes weak. We need to have our faith confirmed. Amram and Jacob had their faith confirmed. There's no doubt about it. They determined before the child was born what they intended to do. We will hide this child. If he is a boy, he will be hidden. And then when they saw the child, God was confirming that decision. That's what this that's what the implication is here. The same thing repeatedly happens in our struggles to raise our children aright. We instruct. We admonish. We send them to school. We bring them to catechism. And that goes on week after week and year after year. And then all of a sudden, the child will say something, do something, and you will recognize this is God's blessing on the instruction we've been given. And everything is confirmed. Everything you've been trying to do is confirmed. God approves of that kind of instruction. He confirms our faith by causing the spiritual qualities that He puts in that child to blossom and grow under the instruction of the parents. That in the first place, then, God confirmed the faith of Amram and Jacob by giving them a child that was strikingly different. Secondly, God confirmed their faith by His providential rule of protecting Noah. Isn't that obvious? For three months, somehow, in that shed That hut, they were able to keep it quiet that they had a baby boy. That they came up with a plan. That they were able to put the plan into action. And that Miriam came up with the right words. This girl came up with the right words. Providentially, the heart of Pharaoh's daughter was such that she didn't immediately drown this Hebrew baby as her father commanded, but that she was willing to give this baby up to this woman and receive him back again in a few years. All of this is astounding, of course. It's in the providence of God. This is the way God would prepare Moses. He gave him a spiritual preparation in the home of his parents. He gave him an education like unto second to none, where Moses would learn how to be a leader. The man that would later lead Israel out of Egypt into the wilderness, and the man who would write the first five books of the Bible. God was preparing Moses for that work. and obviously confirming the faith of Amram and Jacobet. So, what an encouragement we have here. We are warned, of course, Satan desires to have our children. Understand that. He wanted Moses dead. He wants your children as well. We are to be encouraged in the face of that. As believers, as a congregation, the days are evil. Worse things than this may well come upon us. But we are to be encouraged to live by faith. live out of the faith in the promises of God, the covenant promises, the promises that says, I established my covenant between me and thee and thy seed after thee. And I'm coming again to deliver you out of this life, to bring you to the heavenly caden. That's the faith we have to have as parents. May God give us that grace. Amen. Let us pray. Father in heaven, we thank Thee for Thy Word. What a glorious encouragement Thou dost give us to be faithful. The days in which we live are not as evil as they were for these Old Testament saints, and yet we still need faith. And we need the strength to go forward to perform the vows that are made when we bring our children to baptism. Grant us that strength of faith to live unto Thee and to bring our children to Thee. Lord, hear our prayer and bless our efforts for Jesus' sake. Amen.