When You Thought I Was Not Looking!

Good morning and Happy Mothers Day!

Today my message is entitled “When You Thought I Was Not Looking!”

You will notice it is the same title as the poem that Molly just read. She shared it with me last Sunday and I really liked the idea for Mother’s Day message. I will be looking at the idea of the mother looking at the child.

So, what is a mother? I found a couple of dictionary definitions to get us started.
New Lexicon Webster’s Dictionary: Mother: a female parent
Webster’s New World Dictionary: A woman who has borne a child, a woman as she is related to her child.

Of course, we have God’s first mother’s role to remember.

Gen 3:20 NIV Adam named his wife Eve, because she would become the mother of all the living.

Because I spent years as a single parent, the definition of a mother became such a bigger range. Some of the thoughts on mother’s can be difficult. There are the dads that had fill a mother’s role like I did. There are the ladies that would love to have children but are unable. Those women who have lost a child, from any type of reason.

There are those who have tough memories of mother’s who didn’t do so well at being a mother. Some of you might be missing your mother who is gone now. The list goes on for others that find Mother’s Day not so happy. Let us remember those people in prayer and encouragement.

Today, we are looking at an old story of a mother who had to give the ultimate sacrifice – her son.

Exodus 2: 1-10 NIV Mother of Moses

1 Now a man of the house of Levi married a Levite woman,
2 and she became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months.
3 But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket [The Hebrew can also mean ark, as in Gen. 6:14.] for him and coated it with tar and pitch. Then she placed the child in it and put it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile.
4 His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him.
5 Then Pharaoh’s daughter went down to the Nile to bathe, and her attendants were walking along the riverbank. She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her slave girl to get it.
6 She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said.
7 Then his sister asked Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?”
8 “Yes, go,” she answered. And the girl went and got the baby’s mother.
9 Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.” So the woman took the baby and nursed him.
10 When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses, saying, “I drew him out of the water.”

Eerdmans Handbook to the Bible gives us a setting for this story.
“So now all Hebrew boy-babies are to be cast into the Nile. That is Pharaoh’s decree. But the water which drowns can also be used to float a watertight basket (the same Hebrew word as Noah’s ‘Ark’) – and Moses’ life is saved by his mother’s resourceful action.”

The NIV Study Bible notes tell us that Moses’ mothers name might have been Jochebed (pg. 88) as we find in Exodus 6:20 NIV “Amram married his father’s sister Jochebed, who bore him Aaron and Moses.”

Also, in Numbers 26: 59 NIV “The name of Amram’s wife was Jochebed, a descendant of Levi, who was born to the Levites in Egypt. To Amram she bore Aaron, Moses and their sister Miriam.”

So, I will be calling Moses’ mother Jochebed, as she is the one we are looking at for this mother’s day.

E.M. Blaiklock, in his book, “Today’s Handbook of Bible Characters,” states:
“Inventive and bold in her love for her child, Jochebed made a tiny papyrus boat, a miniature of the reed boats which the Egyptians used for fowling in the marshes, also of the Ra, Thor Heyerdahl’s Atlantic craft, and sent the child down a backwater of the Nile upon it.”

A mother’s love makes her do many things for her children. Things that others might consider foolish or mean or selfish.

There is an old South African Proverb “The hand that rocks the cradle rules the nation and its destiny.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson stated: “People are what their mothers make them” – referring to the commitment and love most mothers give their children.

Ruth Bell Graham, in her book “Prodigals and Those Who Love Them,” wrote a poem which I am sharing a portion of.
“Had I been Moses’ mother I’d have wept
To keep my little son: praying she might forget
The babe drawn from the water of the Nile.
Had I not kept him for her nursing him the while,
Was he not mine? – and she but Pharaoh’s daughter?

The pain that Jochebed felt, first giving up her son, then doing it again later, must have been incredible. But if she had not, our history would be so totally changed.

All the moves Jochebed made were from her heart. Send baby Moses down the river in a basket instead of throwing him into the Nile river. She had to give him up to save him.
This makes me feel for those women who for whatever reason have had to give up their children now – that must be so devastating!
Then God blesses her with the return of her son to be raised by her – wow!
Later, she once again must give him up to save him – what a woman of sacrifice. Only, this time he comes back to save not only his mother, but the entire people of Israel.

If Jochebed would have known what the outcome was going to be, it might have helped through the pain of the loss. God’s plans sometimes seem mean and downright stupid to us, until we see the end result. Then we see why all the tough times have occurred.

Here are two more women whom God touched and used to build all our faith.

2 Kings 4: 8-37 Shunamite woman’s son restored by Mom’s faith and persistence.

Matthew 15: 21-28 Canaanite women’s daughter restored by Mom’s faith.

This is Mother’s Day! We celebrate this day by remembering all mothers, especially our own. We should do this more often than once a year.

We need to let all women know they are respected and appreciated and loved.
Guys, take time today to show that to your mothers, wives, daughters, and grand-daughters.

Let’s pray!