“Them that honour Me, I will honour, and they that despise Me shall be lightly esteemed” (1 Samuel 2:30).
Scripture furnishes wonderful examples of men and women, who have honoured God, and of how God honoured them in return.
Amongst the many shining examples in Hebrews 11, the parents of Moses find an honoured place. Pharaoh had issued a harsh decree, ordering the destruction of the male Hebrew children at birth. Moses was born at that time, but his parents feared not to break the king’s commandment, and hid the child for three months.
A healthy child, however, cannot be hid for long. A babe cannot be made to understand the necessity of maintaining silence, but will cry and exercise its lungs.
Finding it impossible to hide the child any longer, the mother prepared an ark of bulrushes, and with her own hands placed the child in it, and laid it in the flags by the river’s brink.
Try to put yourself in the place of this noble woman. She dared the wrath of a cruel despot. Life was held cheap in those days, and she risked her life to save her child’s. Think of the hours of dread and alarm when the infant cried aloud, causing the parents to come to the conclusion that something desperate must be done to meet the situation. Think of the sorrow that filled her heart when, making the ark of bulrushes, she committed her darling child to the river.
Ah! it was not all anguish and sorrow of heart, it was not only the river that was in question. She committed her child to the river, and—GOD. On the human side it was, indeed, heart-breaking sorrow and anguish of spirit. She would not have been human if it had not cost her sore. But there was the divine side. There was faith. Well might she find her place in the galaxy of faith—worthies found in Hebrews 11. Well might she be bracketed with Abel and Enoch and Noah and Abraham and her own illustrious son and David and Samuel.
She honoured God. See now how He honoured her.
Who is this that steps down to the river’s side to bathe? She is evidently of high rank. She is accompanied by her maidens, who respectfully wait on her. She espies the ark among the flags, and sending her maid to fetch it, and opening its lid she sees the beautiful healthy child—“a proper child”—and behold, the child weeps.
Woman-like, for princesses have mother instincts as much as their lowly sisters, she has compassion on the child. She recognises that it is one of the Hebrews’ children, one that is lying under the sentence of death. The sister of the babe comes forward and offers to bring a nurse of the Hebrew women for the child.
The offer is accepted. The Hebrew nurse is engaged to rear the child. The terms are explicit, “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” (Ex. 2:9).
The daughter of Pharaoh, the very despot who had issued the decree to destroy the male children, is the one who is used of God to honour the faith of the parents, who “were not afraid of the king’s commandment” (Heb. 11:23). The very mother herself was the Hebrew woman who was hired as nurse to bring up the infant.
One can imagine, albeit there was sublime faith in God, the grief that consumed that devoted mother’s heart, as she committed her child to the waters of the Nile with its crocodiles and other dangers, with the bitter ukase of the occupant of the throne hanging over the life of the child and threatening it, and any who dared to befriend it.
If one can imagine the mother’s sorrow as she committed her child to the river, one can likewise imagine the tumultuous joy that filled her heart as she carried away her child to nurse it at the bidding of one high enough to guarantee its exemption from the cruel commandment of the king.
And was it ever heard in the history of the world that a mother should be paid wages for nursing her own child? The mother of Moses needed no wages to make her willing to nurse her child, but wages were given her—she, the wife of a slave of foreign race engaged in making bricks without straw, had her wages paid by princely hands.
Yet further the story must be told. In due time Moses was taken into the palace, and trained in all the learning and arts of the Egyptians, securing for him an education that fitted him on the human side for the strenuous life-work that lay before Him.
See how God honoured the faith of those humble parents, who had honoured Him. Put these two extracts from Scripture side by side, and they tell their own tale.
| “They [the parents of Moses] were not afraid of the King’s commandment” (Heb. 11:23). | “He [Moses] forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the King” (Heb. 11:27). |
The mother of Moses doubtless closed her eyes in death long before she could have realized the remarkable history her son would have. Trained in all the wisdom of the Egyptians, military and otherwise; disciplined in the backside of the desert for forty years by God; taught the presence of God and His commission to serve Him at the burning bush: behold him facing Pharaoh, bringing judgment upon judgment upon the land of Egypt, and leading the Israelites through the Red Sea on the passover night. Behold him on Sinai’s awful mount receiving the law by the disposition of angels, and with it all these wonderful types and shadows that spoke of the coming Christ and His work upon the cross. Behold him leading God’s people across the waste howling desert for forty years, and then with strength unabated and eye undimmed, viewing from Pisgah’s height at the behest of God the promised land, and dying at God’s appointment—God the sole Spectator of his demise, God burying him, perhaps by the agency of angel hands, no man knowing his sepulchre to this day.
Come to the New Testament. The Lord speaks of the writings of Moses (John 5:47). putting His divine imprimatur on the five books of the law, the Pentateuch, and giving them such a place, as speaking of Him, that belief in them would prepare men to believe in Him. Then remember the scene on the Mount of Transfiguration, when Moses and Elias appeared with their Lord in the unspeakable splendour of that wonderful hour.
Move on to Revelation 15:3, and see how the servant and his Master are coupled together. “And they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb.”
Then go back to the birth of that infant, and think of all that was wrapped up in the faith of that mother, and see how true are God’s words, “Them that honour Me, I will honour.”
God give us each our little measure and opportunity to copy the faith and steadfastness of the parents of Moses.