Exodus 1-2 Explained: Historical Context and Moses' Early Life

[Music] my friends we are in exodus this morning

and we made dazzling progress last week so we are in chapter one chapter one and we'll be picking up at verse 15. i

hope you can i brought a map today candy was giving me a bad time this is feeling a little

bit like school you know the map up there to which i said this is sunday school

so this is the point we're going to try to do a little bit of history and a little

bit of geography and there will be a test and you do not want to

you don't want to flunk sunday school that's not good so you better pay attention i apologize i can't uh

come up with a map that's a little uh more well bigger you know i i realize if you're in the back row that's maybe just

an academic exercise for you there's a there is a map here you know if you see that blurry thing there that's what

you're looking at but hopefully this will give us a little bit of help as we think about the events

of the exodus i'll have this here at least occasionally as we're moving along

especially when geography may help us understand what the text is saying

what i'd like to do today just before we get started really with the text is just kind of

once again get us oriented generally speaking to the overall chronology of these uh

events of the ancient world especially biblical chronology i don't want to go into this in detail but it

may at least get us kind of oriented to some degree to places and times it's not easy of course to nail down

with certainty the the date of the birth of abraham but i think there's a there's at least a

general understanding that he was born around the year 2000

i'm putting the date of his birth at 1951 which appears to be much more precise than it probably is but

it sounds good you know so 1951 but if you follow a fairly straightforward facial chronology of the old testament

you know there's a fair amount of chronological data provided for us that's probably pretty close there are

those who put his date considerably earlier and i've seen as early as maybe 20

100 bc but usually they do that on the mistaken assumption that israel was in egypt for a four

for a full 400 years and of course last week you recall we fixed that problem didn't we so we

know that it was only something like 215 years and that makes everything come out a little bit more

neatly as far as we try as making it match with what we otherwise know so abraham is

born he's born in er of the chaldees that's this region over here mesopotamia

er you'll see right there was the third major dynasty uh in the ancient world there had been

sumer first of all then acad and then er er is the third of them earth fell in about the year 2000 bc abraham was

born shortly after that so he's born more or less into the ruins of a prior great civilization

he saw the remnants of a former great age but that wasn't necessarily his own

experience of that of that culture uh it was a time of of uh significant migration my abraham

is not the only one that migrated we know there were a lot of people migrating

out of mesopotamia that is my cell phone can you believe that somebody's calling me

in the middle of sunday school tell you you see you're supposed to turn your cell phone off

so there you are apologize for that it was the irs they wondered where i am i decided not to answer

so uh abraham along with many others migrates out of uh mesopotamia up the euphrates up to

heron then down to course to canaan now that's the first great events that we find in the

book of genesis the next date i'd like to highlight with you is 1662 so some 300 years later

this would be the date generally we would say in which jacob travels to egypt with his family

and with that larger community that was associated with jacob last week we indicated it may have

been upwards of fifteen hundred to two thousand people or so that traveled with jacob when during the famine he

migrates to egypt at the insistence of his son joseph and of course you know that story

this is right in the middle of the era in which egypt is ruled that is northern egypt or what's called lower

egypt is ruled by the hixos you'll notice it's a little counter-intuitive but northern egypt is

called lower egypt southern egypt is called upper egypt because the topography here is much

lower this is closer to sea level so it's called lower in terms of its altitude not in terms of you know north

and south so uh this is where the hixos are ruling they never ruled down in the south

but they do dominate for a couple hundred years the political life of lower egypt

or northern egypt and it's right in the middle of that time that jacob migrates into

egypt and at least to some degree that may explain why there's a fairly warm relationship between the ruling

family and the people who come with jacob they're both semitic in their background and they share at

least to some degree as modest as it might be a common cultural heritage

and so for that reason maybe for others there's this uh rather filial connection you might say

joseph dies in 1595. so the end of the book of genesis really comes right about there that's

the last major event that's found in the book of genesis exodus does not pick up much later

because what we find is that in 1570 only 25 years later a new king arises who doesn't know

joseph this is not to say he doesn't know about joseph

it's not that he's ignorant of joseph or his career or the important contribution that he

made but he doesn't know him in any kind of friendly or affectionate kind of way

because of course almost as we learned last week is the one who drove out the hixos

and reestablished native egyptian control and they hated the hixos and they hated

along with them that whole semite population and that probably accounts politically for the

change in the disposition of the ruling house toward

the israelites who were there almost ruled by the way the dates i'm giving you at this point are just

standard straight up right down the middle uh accepted dates by egyptologists i'm not

these are not my dates now i'm just accepting that them as they they've been given commonly so the first

three rulers of the 18th dynasty of egypt are first of all amos

and we mentioned him last week he's the one that drives out the hixos he's the one who doesn't know

joseph and he's the one who appears then to institute a new policy toward the people of god who are living there

in egypt a couple of little uh sort of details or trivial trivia i guess we'll say about uh almost

for one thing he is the first egyptian pharaoh to is that a drum roll i'm about to say

something really dramatic here uh he's the first egyptian ruler to give to the egyptians a standing army up

until this point egypt had always been defended by an army that was raised ad hoc

at the moment of the need kind of volunteer army you might say but because amos was

so fearful of a re-invasion by the hixos he actually hires

and maintains a standing army to guard the borders of egypt egypt is a relatively well or easily

defended nation it's got you've got this little narrow kind of uh attack way through here so that was

pretty easy to defend and to the south the threat was not quite as significant and so

uh egypt had not required a standing army but now with this most recent difficulty with

the hixos he says yeah we're going to have an army and we're going to put these people on a

payroll and that's going to be the way we do business from this point on

the other thing that is an innovation under almost is the use of chariots egypt had never

used chariots until the rule of amos why would that be of interest to us in

the study of the exodus because we hear that there were a bunch of chariots

that were flooded right and if egypt hadn't started using chariots yet we would have a bit of a problem

explaining why all those chariots were baptized in the red sea there but as it turns out

uh that is not a problem and that they were using uh chariots at that time and so uh that's a

couple of things about him he rules for about 24 years is that right yeah 24 years he's followed by a

guy named amenhotep the first don't know much about him but he seems to be the pharaoh now who is going to be

a player in the story we look at this morning so he seems to be the one who ratchets

up the hostility toward the jewish people remember almost probably somewhere along

the way maybe halfway through his career or later had begun to reduce the status of the

jewish people making them more a slave population than a free population as they had been

amon hotep seems to be the one who just kicks up the pressure a little more and implements this policy of

infanticide that we see introduced in the story this morning and and in part of chapter two

and uh he rules then he does not have a um son to succeed him this is important okay i know you're

thinking so who cares you care listen to me ahman hotep only has a daughter

and because he's concerned about succession to the throne he wants to find a suitable person to

marry his daughter to perpetuate this dynastic rule that he's part of and so he takes

a general from that standing army of his a very respected and and uh um competent guy and marries

him to his royal daughter and that man's name is tutmos the first

so tutmos comes in as a military guy and because the egyptians reckoned the dynasty through the women

rather than through the men it continues this legitimate uh notion of an eighteenth dynasty

all right topmost is married to the royal daughter of amenhotep he also

has trouble producing appropriate air but he does produce a remarkable female

daughter uh whose name is as many know by the way this is one of the most famous

na female names in egyptian history and you may know it you may have actually visited her mortuary temple there

near karnak in egypt and her name is but you know it's hard to say hatchet set

you ever heard of her hatchet okay so that's uh that's now here's the theory just to let the

cat slightly out of the bag we cannot prove this with any degree of confidence but in terms of

circumstantial evidence there is a fairly compelling case that can be made

that it is that same hachipset who was the daughter of pharaoh who found moses floating in the reeds

there along the nile river you see now again we don't have any the bible doesn't give us a name it

just says the daughter of pharaoh but this is a case that's been made by i think some fairly

competent scholars and it's one that i find at least intriguing if not compelling

so i'm going to play with that with you this morning that that is in fact who we're dealing with and it may at

least help us understand to some degree some of the events that are described fair enough

so let's uh let's take a look at the text that we're uh coming to this morning we left off last

week at exodus chapter one beginning at verse 15 is where we'll pick up we'll just

read the rest of chapter one and then make as much progress as we can into chapter two as

time permits so exodus chapter 1 verse 15 the word of god the king of egypt said

to the hebrew midwives one of whom was named

shifra and the other pua when you act as midwives to the hebrew women and see them on the birth stool if

it's a boy kill him but if it's a girl she shall live

but the midwives feared god they did not do as the king of egypt commanded them but they let the boys live

so the king of egypt summoned the midwives and said to them why have you done this

and allowed the boys to live the midwives said to pharaoh because the hebrew women are not like

the egyptian women they're vigorous and give birth before the midwife can get to them

so god dealt well with the midwives and the people multiplied and became very strong

and because the midwives feared god he gave them families then pharaoh commanded all his

people every boy that is born to the hebrews you shall throw into the nile

but you shall let every girl live so there's this somewhat unusual of course many of these paragraphs are

unusual but this one is even more so let's uh let's ask god's blessing on our time together

heavenly father we are grateful to you for this great story that comes to us out of

the pages of the old testament and we give you thanks that we can gain

insights and lessons applicable to each of our lives from these ancient texts we pray that the same

spirit that was governing these events in the providence of your wisdom would be with us this morning to help us

understand and appreciate them we give you thanks for these things in the name of christ amen

all right the king of egypt said to the hebrew midwives one of whom was named shifra and the other pua and then it

goes on so who is this king of egypt very likely it is the next king so the the first

part of this chapter was probably talking about amos without telling us we have now a shift probably

to the second of these we know that this has to be the kind of thing that's happening the text doesn't

tell us the next pharaoh but but it's implied at least by the way it's stated

and so we're guessing that i'm in hotep about whom we don't have a lot of information

nevertheless is continuing the policy of his father but noticing that this imposition of a

slave status is not having the desired effect these people are continuing to multiply

and grow and become vigorous and of course as all slave cultures have learned

the potential for an uprising among the slaves is always a risk a peril that one has to

watch out for and it's always a bit of a delicate balance you see every slave culture

that's ever existed has to walk a tightrope because on the one hand

you want the slave population to multiply i mean i know this is crass to put it

this way but the fact is they're viewed as as virtually as just intelligent beasts

and part of your wealth is to have an increasing population of them but on the other hand the more there are

of those slaves the more potential for an uprising you're dealing with so it's always this kind of

delicate problem and you see a little bit of that even here so the king of egypt is aware

of this ongoing risk apparently of some sort of rebellion and because of that he decides to try to

impede the reproduction of these people and so he talks to these

two midwives now these are not the two midwives for the whole population these are egyptian names these are

egyptian women and their task is to oversee in a sense the reproductive

activities of the slave population generally to make sure that these things are happening

very much the way you might do it in breeding cattle i mean i realize that's insulting

to our sensibilities to put it that way but that's the way it was and so these people have a somewhat

responsible position of carrying on the midwivery you see there among this uh this

population and these are egyptian women apparently at least uh that's the common view josephus takes that view and

it's been the traditional view in jewish understanding and i think it's correct in terms of

their names so here are these two women uh shifra and pua

who were told when you act as midwives to the hebrew women notice not maybe to all the slave

population but to those in particular and you see them on the birth stool that's an interesting word it's an

egyptian word the birth stool i mean that's an english word but it behind it is an egyptian

word and we actually have hieroglyphs from this era

that have a device that goes by the same egyptian name i can't pronounce the word for you

but it was a kind of furniture device that was intended for uh childbirth and so that's the term

that's used there it's true to the time in other words if it's a boy kill him if it's a girl

she shall live so at this point we're going to do that which is a little bit

counterproductive in terms of the slave population try to impede growth by taking out the

male children letting the female children live

and so that is the policy that's put in place the midwives however feared god

this is a term that would typically be used to describe a non-jewish person and their

perspective of a kind of rudimentary faith to the god of israel they were called god

fearing and so the fact that these two are described as god suggests again they were egyptian

but they realized there was more going on here than meets the eye that somehow or other god is involved in

this population and so it seems to lead them to have a they're caught in the

this very ticklish position they've got the pharaoh on the one hand but they have this fear of this deity

who seems to be among the hebrews on the other and so they do this little uh device to avoid the problem the

midwives feared god they did not do as the king of egypt commanded them they let the boys live word of this

comes back to the king the king summoned the midwives and said to them why have you done this and allowed the boys to

live this one commentator called this typical jewish

smart humor if you if you look through the old testament you find this kind of wry humor again and again

in jewish literature and this is a good example of it uh where these women apparently then

are saying to the pharaoh well you know the hebrew women are not like the egyptians they're vigorous

they give birth before we can get there and so we we're just not able to keep up you

know is the idea i don't know if that satisfied the pharaoh or not no further comment is

made on the subject but it uh you you can't help but smile a little bit at the at the explanation that's

given and so for whatever reasons the uh birth population is not

by this policy god dealt well with the midwives it says the people continue to multiply as the force of

this continue to be strong or get stronger so in spite of this more harsh

policy it doesn't seem to have its desired effect this next statement is rather difficult

because the midwives feared god he gave them families jewish commentators on this

text generally take this to mean and it's been generally accepted

that the meaning of this is because these egyptian midwives feared god he gave them family status

among the hebrews not that he gave them families in and of itself which may or may not be the case but that somehow

they became more accepted in the community of the jewish people that's tentative i'm not saying that's a

certainty but but it's a difficult phrase to translate in the first place and then

the meaning of it once you do translate it isn't really very clear but that seems to be the best

theory going so i'm going to suggest that one to you that these midwives were became included as it were in the jewish

community and may actually years later they or their descendants participated in the exodus

would be at least possibly the implication there then pharaoh commanded all his people

every boy that is thrown is born to the hebrews you shall throw into the nile

but you shall keep every girl alive so now we have a third strategy more severe than the last one

the first one slave status the second one kind of this this trying to catch these

children as they're being born expose them uh so that the boys die the third one now even more ferocious

throw them into the nile it seems that each of these three is separated by time and i'm going to suggest to you

that the third of these comes now toward the end of the reign of almond hotep down around

the year 15 24. okay so we'll hold on to that thought let's go ahead and look at the next

chapter where chapter two we'll take the first four verses now a man from the house of levi went

and married a levite woman the woman conceived and bore a son and when she saw that he was a fine baby she

hid him three months when she could hide him no longer she got a papyrus

basket literally an ark and plastered it with bitumen and pitch she put the child in it and placed it

among the reeds on the bank of the river his sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him

i read this story and as if it were yesterday i see the flannel graph again don't you how many of you remember that

i mean this is such a great bible story and you see the reed you see the little ark there and you see

miriam off looking through the bushes you know and i just it's these are wonderful stories god has

been very good to us not only to give us great deep profound theology in the scriptures but to give

us wonderful stories that appeal even to a two or three

four five six year old and those are the ways that right that initial education is

inculcated into us so i'm grateful for my sunday school teachers when i was a little child

who told me these stories because they've been with me all these years and now it's my turn

to tell them to you i just wish i had the flannel i i joked about that last week or last year and somebody brought

me some flannelgraph stuff so you know you drop enough hints and no telling what's gonna

right but anyway let's let's look at the story you've got the flannel graph in your mind now

uh what's going on well there's a man from the house of levi who went and married a levite woman

there's a subtlety here already uh the very mention of the tribe of levi is in itself interesting because so far

in the narrative that is all the way through genesis levi has been a bit of a bad guy

you may recall the unfortunate incident that took place at shechem in which two sons of jacob went and

slaughtered a bunch of the male inhabitants the young men in that community if you don't

remember that story it's back around genesis 38 or so and uh in that situation

levi and simeon are the two guys who are really given to violence and later in genesis when jacob pronounces his

kind of final benediction before his death on each of these these two guys don't get very good treatment

simeon and levi are described as violent bloodthirsty men and jacob says what sounds like a judgment on both of them

they will be scattered throughout israel you see as if they will lose their identity

simeon that is virtually what happens you never hear much about the tribe of simeon in later jewish history they were

out there they had a very small region that belonged to them but they were kind of distributed

levi was also distributed but in a very different way levi of course became the priestly tribe

and for them the distribution turned out to be a great blessing so it shows that even at the time that

something seemed to be bad news for them nevertheless there was something else that god had in mind now

this is the first signal of some kind of positive view of the tribe of levi

so exodus begins by singling out levi and of course we'll see here hear a lot more about that

as the story unfolds so we have a marriage now that takes place in this levite tribe the

implication is that this marriage and this birth of this child moses

takes place in the in the very immediate uh context of the new rule to throw these children into the nile

that this is taking place just kind of in that very moment and so it's uh that accounts in

some ways for the the sense in which the story is told here the woman conceived borah's son

and when she saw that he was a fine baby she hit him for three months now i don't know what mother

has ever given birth and not thought that's a fine baby you know i mean this is just

this is wired in isn't it so it might seem like this is remarking the obvious that the mother of moses said oh that's

a fine baby but commentators tend to think that there's more here than just

maternal appreciation of that beautiful little baby that they've just given birth to that somehow or other at least

the way it stated implies that the mother of moses knew there was more going on that somehow she

had some sense that there was significance to this child and so she was willing to

she would probably be willing to run this risk anyway what mother wouldn't but in this case even to run a more

perilous risk of protecting this child believing that somehow or other god is in this that at

least it's not stated it's only subtle but i think there's good reason to think

that's implied if you read the sermon given by stephen

in acts chapter 7 in which he's construing this story he virtually says that and so that seems

to be the construction of it that the new testament takes and i think it's legitimate to see it

that way well this fine baby that's born is of course we will learn soon enough moses

when is he born well if you know the story of moses you know that moses story is in kind of

three great chapters isn't it he dies at 120 years old

and each of those chapters is about 40 years in length these are probably round numbers it may

not be precisely 40 years in each case but that's the way the old testament presents it we have

moses first of all the first 40 years moses where in egypt in the palace part of the royal

family adopted in status prestige great education uh trained in the

arts of probably political science in egypt being groomed for some very high status

and some would suggest he was being groomed if it was indeed hatch upset who was his adoptive mother groomed for

the throne could be you see that it was that much prestige that he was enjoying in those

first 40 years then you've got a regime change things change

and the next 40 years of of moses after he murders the egyptian you know the story we'll get to it eventually

he spends in exile place called midian midian is right here so if you can see this map

i don't know maybe the next one gives it yeah if you can see the map here's egypt moses escapes across

probably the northern part of mount sinai over into a region that in the ancient world

was called midian today we call it saudi arabia and it was outside the jurisdiction of

egypt it was safe and that probably is where moses expected to spend the rest of his uh

days so for the next 40 years there's moses out on the backside of the desert and then of course we have the burning

bush we have the last 40 years of moses life in which he comes back he leads the people out

and those 40 years are spent in the wilderness the wilderness probably uh part of the northern sinai peninsula

and over in regions somewhat to the west and so this is all

i should say to the east and so this is all um uh taken together as this 120 years of

moses life divided neatly into these three slices all right if the exodus took place in

the year quiz what year was the exodus who remembers

see i'm going to keep repeating this until you just go to sleep you go to sleep with the number in your

mind 14 47 and you wake up in the morning thinking

14 40s that's all i want before you read the morning paper 1447 that number deliciously

hanging in your mind that's the date we're going to assign to the exodus

that puts it squarely in the middle of the 18th dynasty now if the exodus was in 1447

and if moses was 80 years old in round numbers at the time of the exodus then when does that put his birth it

would be quick arithmetic it'd be about 15 27

okay right at the tail end of the reign of almond hotep so we're going to just uh float that

trial balloon here we're going to say moses born 1527

and that seems to be the last gasp of this pharaoh to deal with the problem of

these jewish slaves it's right toward the tail end of his reign if indeed it took place

on that date all right so we're in verse two she hit him for three months when she could hide him no longer she got up

this is verse three now got a papyrus the hebrew word here is the word ark a.r.k

for him plastered it with by tomb and pitch and she put the child in it and placed

it among the reeds on the bank of the river whenever i think about the word arc

i always think of bill cosby you know how many people remember that hilarious bit that bill cosby did what's an arc

you know right that whole thing is and uh well anyway it's a legitimate question what is an

ark uh you ever thought about that you know we have this notion of an ark and you

see noah's ark you see ark's well an ark is just simply another word for a box

it's all it is it's just kind of a special box in the old testament that word hebrew

word arc is prominently used three times it's used occasionally elsewhere but there's

three distinct times when it really plays rather significantly

into the old testament narrative and each time it has a common sort of motif to it this is not an accident when is

the first time we hear of an ark it is noah noah's box because that's why it was not a boat it

wasn't a steamship it wasn't a cruise liner you know it was a big floating barge with about

three or four what three stories to it as i recall and that's what it was it was not navigable

but it was a safe place in the midst of chaos that is thematic to the use of the idea

of the ark a safe place in the midst of chaos or threat the second time we hear of an

ark is when moses is deposited into a tiny little ark

a safe place in the midst of peril you see the third time we hear of an ark is what the ark of the covenant

discovered by indiana jones in egypt nice box and uh and that's also although it's not

quite so clear but remember what is the most important contents of the ark

when we hear about the ark of the covenant the most important thing in it was

the ten commandments which stands for order in the midst of chaos the people of god

are going to be ordered by those rules and they in turn are going to help to order

the rest of the world and so in each of these cases the idea is that you've got a generalized situation

of threat peril danger and god has placed his truth his way

his treasure in a box and inside that box it is safe this is picked up in the new testament

and applied subtly occasionally to the church so that we in a sense are in this

place of safety in the midst of what may be a threatening world and that was definitely the way the in

the early centuries of the church the church was understood cyprian of alexandria loved to use the image

of the church as an ark a place of safety in the midst of a chaotic world but the other uh the even though you

have the three times the ark is used you have many times when you might say the ark motif shows up

uh the garden of eden is kind of like a safe place in the midst of what is otherwise a somewhat unordered

creation jonah is thrown into the sea the place of chaos but then along comes a swimming what

ark and and puts him in a safe place and it's from inside that fish that jonah can pray a

prayer of thanksgiving you know and and if you look for it you'll see that kind of thing

shows up uh throughout the old testament and the the the message for us is that you know god

has placed each of us in in his providence in a safe place but he's looking for us to build

out from where we are into the world around us that kind of order that kind of sensibility

that's why if you live in a nice house and you go out in the spring and plant a garden

you are doing redemptive work you are indeed expanding the horizons the borders of orderliness in a chaotic

world you know if you educate the mind of a child you are putting

order into a place of chaos believe me and you know you just uh and but that's that's our task it's our

redemptive challenge wherever we are not to bring destruction but

construction and it's a wonderful image that runs through the scriptures and that

wife is my practical lesson today in this sunday school lesson so does she give me a bad time i'm

telling you she just so there it is but here is moses placed in this ark and

what is going to happen he's in the midst of chaos and yet out of that tiny little ark is going to

is going to mushroom one of the greatest events of world history because this little

child drawn out of the you know drink here is going to become the one that draws the people of god out and

obviously through them the greatest blessings the world has ever known have been realized so here he is placed

in this modest little i might mention this is intriguing i don't want to go anywhere with this i'm

just going to mention it this is not the only time in ancient history you have this kind of image

sargon who was the ruler of the acadian dynasty back in well it's off my map here uh was was put

in the euphrates river in a little arc you know romulus and remus

connected with rome were saved by being placed in a little ark a little boat in the tigers uh the

tiber river uh even in japan you've got a legend of a of a ruler being saved by be put

it's almost like it's in our dna something about that image pops up and i cannot account for

that aside from just noting it in passing it's an interesting little

sort of oddity really you'd say but here we have it at least in the old testament in this connection all right she

plasters it and puts it in the reeds his sister stood at the distance to see what would happen to him this whole thing

obviously was set up you know mother and daughter concocted this plan hoping it would play out

just the way it does all right next paragraph the daughter of pharaoh came down

to bathe at the river while her attendants walked beside the river she saw the basket among the reeds and

sent her maid to bring it when she opened it she saw the child

he was crying and she took pity on him this must be one of the hebrews children she said

then his sister said to pharaoh's daughter um shall i go and get a nurse from the

hebrew women to nurse the child for you and pharaoh's daughter said to her literally it says go

so the girl went and called the child's daughter a mother pharaoh's daughter said to her take this

child and nurse it for me and i'll pay you your wages so the woman took the child

and nursed it and when the child grew up she brought him to pharaoh's daughter

and she took him as her son she named him egyptian name moses because she said i

drew him out of the water again famous incident uh and i'm going to just

work i i want to say this up front i'm not going to keep apologizing for i'm going to just kind of

try our hatchips at theory to con to by way of construing this but i don't want anyone to think i'm just

teaching as a matter of church dogma here that hatchets it was the one we don't know that

but it is very neat if she was it explains a whole lot of what happens in the career of moses as we'll see in

the next two or three weeks so let's just kind of uh you know run with that a little bit here

first of all as we were saying earlier this is the daughter of pharaoh probably before he was the pharaoh this

is the daughter of tutmos who had married the daughter of ammon hotep we know the daughter of

ammon hotep could not be the daughter because she was not she was uh older and and there wouldn't

be an appropriate daughter who would really fit the bill she's called the daughter of tutmos

probably before he was pharaoh because it's common to do that you will sometimes honor people by

designating them according to a status that they will have in the future so she's called the daughter of pharaoh

because he will someday be the pharaoh in the not far too distant future if you follow my

point there so here is hatch upset she is the daughter of tutmos he's a major military

commander he is indeed uh as it stands now the heir to the throne

he is as it were the crown prince of egypt uh in this year 1527 allowing or

at least assuming that that's the date that it happens so here she is we'll say it's hatchet for the fun of it

she came down to bathe at the river while her attendants walked beside the river this was a common practice

the nile was worshipped as a god it was the great source of life for all of egypt had there been no

nile river there would be no egypt herodotus calls egypt the gift of the nile

and egypt just kind of clutches that lifeline that goes down into ethiopia into the

mountains of africa and flows down into the delta region here and the egyptians were so dependent upon the

nile that they worshipped it and there was a peculiarly important relationship between the pharaoh

and the nile in egyptian mythology it was understood that the pharaoh actually caused

the nile to rise and overflow its banks every spring so they could plant crops they don't get any rainfall their water

came from the nile and it would be that annual flooding that would create a flood plain

that would then create the possibility of crops and the pharaoh would go out in the spring

i don't know what was in his can you imagine being this guy and going out and hoping for all your life that the fair

that the you know that the nile's gonna rise but you act like you know what you're doing

you know and you kind of do this number and you know and and lo and behold in a few

weeks the nile comes up and everybody you know congratulates you well that created a

very intimate relationship between the family of pharaoh and the nile and it was it was very

common we have hieroglyphs of this kind of thing where the the royal family would bathe in the nile

as if to increase the intimacy between the family on the one hand and the nile on the other so what she's

doing here is perfectly compatible with what might otherwise have been practiced uh

the daughter of pharaoh came out to bathe at the river her attendance walk along the shore there she saw the basket

among the reeds the ark is the word there and sent her maid to bring it

when she opened it she saw the child he was crying she took pity on him this is really one of the most heart

touching moments of course in the story certainly and and throughout the scriptures

and it it should remind us that whenever you find in the biblical testimony

references to compassion or pity that kind of human emotion god's grace is never far

away i think you know that left to ourselves we can be vicious and cruel and unspeakably and

horrifically violent and hard-hearted toward each other

and you don't have to look very far past this morning's newspaper to find that this is the common sort of theme of the

human heart until grace appears and even if it's just common grace

even if it's not redemptive grace we have no idea here that this woman had any sort of faith

in the true god but just the very presence of grace at all seems to awaken in her something

unusual namely compassion we of course as christians celebrate the most

compassionate man who ever lived in the history of the planet and one of the most powerful descriptions of

him as pastor jeremy preached so eloquently last week that's

not it's not a great word i love that i love that he used it in the sermon several times it's a great word to say

you have to kind of mop your mouth after you're done saying it but splachna that

down there says it's part of your gut because that's where you feel emotions you don't feel emotions up here

you feel emotions down here and the hebrews located the very heart of our emotional life in

the guts and the intestines and that was the word that they used and jesus was the most

powerfully compassionate man that the world has ever seen but there have been many other

expressions lesser expressions of that pity and this is one of them it says to us my

friends that when we see people in trouble we should feel pity that doesn't necessarily dictate what

you're going to do is a concrete matter of your action that can be a matter of wisdom a matter of

strategy practical you know approaches to things but that we should feel something when we see

human misery is a mark that god's grace has reached our heart on the other hand it's a great warning

to us when we see human misery and feel nothing we should be going back and saying lord what's wrong with me

because that's part of what grace does to us and it seems to be part of what grace

did to this young woman probably around 16 years old 15 16 if our

if it is hatchips that that's exactly how old she was in her just in her mid-teens

so here she is she has pity shall i go and uh then this uh miriam probably the older sister of moses steps

up and says he just happens to be there he's walking down the street

happens to notice this you know everybody knows that everybody knows what's going on

hatchets that knows what's going on this whole thing is not lost on her she's a smart woman

so she knows that this was a kind of a setup here but uh the miriam steps forward

presumably uh the sister the older sister that we know of later in the story shall i go and get a nurse

from the hebrew women to nurse the child for you pharaoh's daughter said and the the

hebrew word here is go not yes but go so she went got the mother

and uh the instruction is given this is again a wonderful example of god's rich turn on your head type

blessings that come you know moses mother would have been

thrilled just to have moses survive you know she would have been happy just to have moses

not be done in but how much more does god do it reminds me of paul's statement over

ephesians exceeding abundantly above all we could ask or think ever seen that in your life

you know here's moses mother just praying that he'll not be killed and what does she get she gets

her son back she gets to nurse him you know and she gets paid for it to boot

almost like god's humorous providence in there just to show how richly he can bless us

if we're just simply willing to trust him courageously and so uh so that's what happens and uh

moses is entrusted to back to his mother to a hebrew reader of this text that's very important

part of your solidarity with the jewish world was established not simply by being born

a jew but by being nursed in the jewish community to them that was it's a very earthy kind of culture

and that represents part of what really is that which we would say bonds a child to that community was this being

nursed and so a a jewish reader of this even though moses winds up in the

in the household of pharaoh for 40 years or maybe 38 years 37 years still he's a jew in his heart he's

israel because he was nursed in that in his early years and so that is quite

important to them as they read a text like this so when the child grew up she brought

him to pharaoh's daughter and she took him as her son so moses is legally adopted into the

royal family that is at least what it means it may mean much more than that but at

least moses is adopted into the royal family and grows up of course and receives that

very uh fine education he's probably with his mother

uh maybe for uh what three years uh to be when he grew up the sense of this is that he's uh

not he's weaned and that he's out of diapers you know he's kind of like a toddler he's

probably what three four years old something like that apparently the relationship with

this daughter of pharaoh has been maintained but now he goes into that family

and is going to be uh reared in that family and the next uh verse which we will pick

up next week skips forward about what 37 years and so what happened in the little blank

space between verse 10 and verse 11. well next week we'll talk about what happened

and how then the events that are described of moses killing this egyptian escape escaping to midian could have

taken place uh as they're described here so i'll stop right there

and this fun stuff this story is so much fun thank you let's uh let's close in prayer

and we'll be underwear heavenly father we are thankful that

this tiny event of a little infant placed in a tiny little basket and floating

there in the river was one of those little events that would turn out to change human history

and how can we but be reminded that so many times in our own lives you've taken the tiniest little things

and turned them into those matters of colossal importance so we pray that we would as

zechariah warns us never despise the day of small things and that we would always be on the

lookout for your hand of providence in our lives to accomplish that which you wish we give you thanks

for it ask your blessing on us now in the name of christ amen

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