Serving the Purposes of God

The calibre of people who surrounded Moses at his birth was exemplary in heart and mind.

First we read that the midwives feared God and refused to kill the baby boys as the king commanded, (putting their own lives at risk, but citing that the mothers were quick at giving birth), thus enabling Moses to be born safely. In so doing, they served the purposes of God in their generation, as we are all called to do.

Next we read that his mother, who also feared the Lord, after hiding him for three months, entrusted him into the hands of God when she put him in a basket on the Nile river, and waited to see what would happen to him. Thus, despite Pharaoh’s threats, the life of the child destined to be the deliverer of the nation of Israel was preserved in a time of great uncertainty and persecution.

Moreover, because of his mother’s faith in God, God arranged for her to nurse him, and get paid for it, by Pharaoh’s own daughter! Only God could arrange for a Hebrew baby to be brought up in the very household where a decree was issued for the death of Hebrew baby boys.

God had laid a table for him in the midst of his enemies. He was educated and enjoyed the privileges of royalty through to adulthood.

Ultimately, the time would come when Moses himself had to choose. Would he choose the Lord, or had his eyes been blinded by wealth, riches and power? We read that, when he came of age, he ‘refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter; choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt’, and he ‘forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king; for he endured as seeing him who is invisible’ (Hebrews 11:24-27).

Moses was a type of Christ, the ultimate deliverer, who’s life also had been miraculously preserved as a baby, and who also chose the Father’s will in His hour of temptation in the Garden of Gethsemane on His way to the cross.

Because ordinary men and women chose to wholly follow the Lord, they enabled the will of God to be done in the earth in their generation. May we too choose wisely, when occasion demands, for God is with us.