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[0:00] Good morning. I'm not certain whether you knew what yesterday was, but each year, the Saturday before Mother's Day, is worldwide International Migratory Bird Day.

[0:25] And on Thursday, Carolyn and I were up in Canada at Point Peely, which is the southernmost tip of Canada.

[0:42] And as the birds migrate over Lake Erie, that's the first place they light. Of course, on Friday, we were at McGee Marsh, which is the northern part of the United States.

[1:01] And of course, there we saw the ones that were still collecting to go across the lake. And on those two days, we saw 73 species of birds and 21 different species of warblers.

[1:18] So it was really fantastic. So, at this point, we're going to take a look at an episode that occurred in the life of Abram.

[1:39] So please turn to Genesis chapter 15. And this morning, we'll be looking at the first five verses of Genesis chapter 15.

[2:05] After these things, the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision. saying, Do not fear, Abram.

[2:20] I am a shield to you. Your reward shall be very great. Abram said, O Lord God, what will you give me?

[2:39] Since I am childless, Abram said, And the heir of my house is Elisar of Damascus. And Abram said, Since you have given no offspring to me, one born in my house is my heir.

[3:04] Then, behold, the word of the Lord came to him, saying, This man will not be your heir, but one who will come forth from your own body.

[3:21] He shall be your heir. And he took him outside and said, Now, look toward the heavens and count the stars.

[3:35] If you are able to count them. And he said to him, So shall your descendants be. Thank you, Gary.

[3:48] And if you will keep your place there in Genesis, we will return to it in just a moment. But I would like to open our thoughts for today with a few propositions that I want you to keep in mind.

[4:03] And then we will return to the Genesis text and put some meat on that. Next to believing God for our personal salvation, nothing is more important than believing him for everything else.

[4:23] We're getting some feedback. Is there some way you can correct that? Let me repeat that. Next to believing God for our personal salvation, nothing is more important than believing him for everything else.

[4:41] And as I have said before, so say I now again, nothing pleases God more than being believed. And if this is true, nothing displeases God more than not being believed.

[4:59] The very idea of assigning to him deity and the name that accompanies that, Lord, simply means he is the one above whom and beyond whom there is none other.

[5:16] That's the meaning of Lord. It has the idea of supreme potentate. The one above whom and beyond whom there is no other.

[5:27] He is the ultimate. If he is that, and scripture throughout Genesis to Revelation declares that to be the case, then he has to be of necessity the sovereign of the universe.

[5:42] That's what Lord means. Nobody is in charge of him. Nobody is beyond him. Nobody is above him. That being the case, he has the perfect right and liberty of ordering this universe and its affairs in strict accordance with his own goodwill and pleasure.

[6:04] He needs permission from no one. He needs agreement from no one. He is the sovereign Lord. He can and he does order all things after the counsel of his own will.

[6:21] The sovereignty of God is critical not only to the conducting of the affairs of the universe, but to the living of our lives in an enjoyable and confident way.

[6:34] There are a great many lives lived today. Billions of them. Precious few of them are lived in an enjoyable and confident way. This may be even more critical for those who not only want to live their lives in an enjoyable and a confident way, but who also have the awesome responsibility for the lives and futures of other human beings along the way.

[7:06] And in that connection, we are thinking of mothers. Mothers are hardwired by God to be producers of the young, protectors of them, providers for them, and in doing so, they do it better than anyone else possibly could.

[7:31] Mothers are irrational about their young. They are virtually blinded by their all-encompassing motherly instincts.

[7:45] Someone has said that every child born needs an irrational adult on their side.

[8:00] It's a quote from Dr. Uri Bronfenbrenner, who was one of the recognized world authorities on pediatrics and child psychology. And when he was asked what he meant by that, every child needs at least one irrational adult on their side, he said.

[8:20] He simply means every kid that comes into the world needs at least one adult who's crazy about them. Nobody fits that bill better than a mother.

[8:32] We all know that when it comes to her young, mothers can literally be and wallow in a kind of irrationality when it comes to caring for her young, even to the point of endangering herself or offering herself up for the benefit and welfare of her child.

[8:51] That's just who a mother is. That's what she does. That's the way God has made her to be. And we are all blessed beneficiaries of that kind of an attitude.

[9:05] In the scriptures, there are a number of women, a number of mothers, who demonstrated those capabilities as they rose to the occasion to meet whatever the challenge might be that threatened the life or the welfare of their child.

[9:21] And we began reading for some background what Gary shared with us in Genesis 15. And we're going to use that to create a little history and then move on in by a fast forward up to a mother with whom you can all to some degree identify, at least with what she was facing and the difficulty that she encountered.

[9:45] Gary read for us the first five verses of Genesis 15. And we are talking about pursuing the principles of faith. And that's exactly what we are going to be continuing in this particular session.

[9:58] So in verse 6, on the basis of what God just revealed to Abram, we are told that Abram believed in the Lord and he, the Lord, reckoned it to him as righteousness.

[10:13] Now the essence of this we pointed out earlier. And this ties in with the great subject of justification by faith. And let me rehash that just briefly. Justification means to be placed in a position whereby God fully and completely accepts you.

[10:34] Where you are pleasing in God's sight. It is on the basis of faith. To be justified means to be declared absolutely, perfectly, righteous.

[10:51] I didn't say it means to become absolutely and perfectly righteous. It doesn't mean that at all. And you aren't. It means to be declared righteous.

[11:04] Even though you are not righteous, you are declared to be righteous. righteous. The text uses the word counted. You are counted to be righteousness.

[11:16] That does not mean you are. Because we all know we have our foibles and our flaws and our failures and all the rest that goes with humanity, including the capacity to be just downright nasty.

[11:30] Even murderous sometimes. Nothing righteous about that. But when we are declared righteous by the God who demands righteousness, that changes our status dramatically.

[11:47] It changes us from being sinful and unaccepted to being declared completely righteous, just as righteous as Jesus Christ is.

[12:01] God demands righteousness. He demands perfection. He demands holiness. But we can't provide that. That's our problem.

[12:13] We can't muster that no matter how hard we try. We cannot be without our flaws and without our failings. That's what humanity is all about. So, God has devised a plan, a program, whereby He can declare us to be righteous on the basis of something He is rather than something we are.

[12:43] That is amazing. Holly just sang about that. It is amazing. It means what God is saying to Abram and to all who have come after him.

[12:56] Abram, I cannot accept your righteousness righteousness because it's not acceptable. It falls so far short of my standards and my demands.

[13:09] I can't accept that. But I will provide something for you that I can accept as a substitute.

[13:21] and what that is is your faith. You're believing me. You're trusting me. You're relying on me because you see when you are trusting God you are not trusting you.

[13:41] That's the great switch. Most of us would rather trust ourselves. Why? Because you're really in touch with yourself. You know what you can do and what you can't do.

[13:52] You know what you can handle and what you can't handle. You are more comfortable with you than you are with trusting a God that you've never seen, never talked to.

[14:05] How can you do that? That's what faith means. But it isn't faith that is built upon nothing. It isn't faith that is built upon a hunch or a suspicion or a hope so.

[14:18] It is faith that is built upon good, solid, credible evidence that has been accumulating over the past several thousand years whereby God has established a track record that shows him dependable, reliable, trustworthy.

[14:33] You can count on him. Faith is not built on nothing. It is built on good, solid evidence. And God made it quite clear in that he appeared to Abram in a face to face kind of situation.

[14:51] I really suspect it was a Christophany. It was a pre-incarnate appearance of the Christ before Bethlehem. In all likelihood, that's what we're talking about. But at any rate, he simply told Abram, if you believe in me, if you trust in me, I will accept your trust in place of righteousness which you don't have.

[15:13] faith, that is what it means to be justified by faith. Abram believed God and it, that belief, was counted to him, reckoned to him, put in his plus or asset column as righteousness.

[15:34] So think of faith as a substitute for our righteousness because that's exactly what it is. And this faith is exercised as an act of the will.

[15:45] It isn't an emotional thing. It isn't a lightning bolt from heaven hits you. It isn't that you all at once have this aura or this great revelation. It is simply that as an act of your will, you trust this God.

[16:01] And in doing so, you take confidence away from yourself. So you're no longer trusting in your goodness, in your good intentions, in your church membership, in your baptism, in your confirmation, and on and on it goes.

[16:19] You're not trusting in any of that stuff. You're trusting in Jesus Christ, who he is and what he did. He becomes the object of your faith.

[16:30] So when Abraham believed the Lord, it, that belief, was accepted by God as righteous. And it is just, that's the beginning. So, let us read on.

[16:42] Verse 7, Genesis 15, And he said unto him, I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, that was many years earlier, to give you this land to possess it.

[16:55] And he said, O Lord God, how may I know that I shall possess it? Now, it would seem on this occasion, God might just get a little tick with him.

[17:10] And say, well, didn't I just tell you? What's the matter? Don't you believe me? I thought you believed me. And by the way, as I mentioned last week, what kind of faith is it that God will accept from us?

[17:25] Is it a perfect faith? No. The reason God will not accept a perfect faith from us is because we do not possess that. We don't have a perfect faith.

[17:38] Our faith is flagging. Our faith is sometimes unpredictable. Our faith fails. Sometimes we fall into doubt and unbelief. So God simply requires this modicum of faith.

[17:53] How much faith do you have to have to be saved? Ah, therein is a wrong question because it isn't how much faith.

[18:05] It is not a quantitative thing. It is a qualitative thing. What is the quality of it? The quality of faith is resident in the object of faith.

[18:19] That's why our faith has to be placed in an unmovable object. That's why God alone is the only one worthy of our faith.

[18:33] And think of this. God has done the very most that he could do in providing the sacrifice of his own son.

[18:48] Do you realize he invaded and broke up the Trinity? to provide our redemption so that in God son Christ being made sin for us, something unspeakably horrible happened within the triune nature of God, whereby the father and son were separated one from another.

[19:14] They'd never been separated. God did the absolute most that he could do, simply so he could require from you the absolute least that you could do.

[19:31] Just believe him. For those who think that's too simple, God already did the hard part.

[19:41] it is simple, it is easy, and it's so easy, you get no credit for it, get no recognition for it, you get incredible benefits, but you don't get the glory for it, you don't get the credit for it.

[19:59] God who provided the basis does that. And this whole aspect of justification by faith is precisely why God has placed this in motion rather than a complete decisive revelation and disclosure of himself, which he will do also in good time.

[20:26] We asked and answered the question earlier, if God is so concerned that everybody believes, why doesn't he show himself in such a way that nobody would be able to not believe? He's going to do that.

[20:39] And we took you to Matthew 25, He's going to do that. But in the meanwhile, what's the basis? What's the modus operandi? It is justification by faith. We believe on the basis of the record that is given.

[20:53] When Jesus told Thomas, Thomas, because you have seen me, you believed. Blessed are those who having not seen, yet shall believe.

[21:05] that's us and those who lived after Thomas. So, in this text, we have just an incredible thing.

[21:16] God is so accommodating. I tell you, he puts up with so much nonsense and folly roll from these creatures that he has made who have become something other than what he made through the injection of the sin nature and the overturning of everything.

[21:33] and it is as if, it is as if, the scriptures do not say that God sighed here. It doesn't say that. I don't want to read into it something that is there, but would you allow me just a little bit of pastoral license or liberty?

[21:55] And he said, O Lord God, how may I know that I shall possess it? And here's God. Okay, Abram, bring me a three-year-old heifer and a three-year-old female goat and a three-year-old ram and a turtle dove and a young pigeon.

[22:22] What's the point of all of this? What's this all about? This is God's gracious accommodation objection to Abram's doubt.

[22:37] God said, I'm going to do this. Abram said, prove it. How can I know that for sure? How can I really count on that? And God condescends graciously to accommodate Abram by injecting into this situation a common everyday kind of occurrence that happened in Abram's culture, time and place, this is the way they went about drawing up a contract.

[23:09] We draw up contracts with pen and ink and we have people sign here and you sign there and you have witnesses and that locks you into the terms of the contract. Well, they didn't have that. But they had something very dramatic and God said, okay, Abram, bring me a three-year-old heifer, three-year-old female goat, three-year-old ram, turtle dove and the young pigeon.

[23:32] Let's get on with these. And he brought all these to him and he cut them in two. Lengthwise, split these animals down the middle and laid each half opposite the other, but he did not cut the birds.

[23:52] I don't know why he didn't cut the birds, maybe they were too small. And the birds of prey came down upon the carcasses, Abram drove them away. Now when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram and behold, terror and great darkness fell upon him.

[24:09] And God said to Abram, no foreshadow certain that your descendants, my descendants, you're talking about my descendants and I don't even have one child?

[24:27] Descendants, plural? Your descendants will be strangers in a land that is not theirs. Where's that?

[24:38] We know it's going to be Egypt. where they will be enslaved and oppressed for hundred years.

[24:49] But I will also judge the nation whom they will serve, that's Egypt, and afterward they will come out with many possessions. They are going to work as slaves for hundreds of years, serving Pharaoh.

[25:05] whatever they're doing, we don't know, but they're doing it without pay. So what God is going to do is make sure that they get all caught up on the pay that they've earned as slave laborers in Egypt, and they are going to despoil the Egyptians when they go out, and they're going to come out of Egypt with a great amount of gold and silver extracted from the Egyptians.

[25:32] And do you know what that is? that's nothing but back pay with interest. Verse 15, And as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace.

[25:45] You shall be buried at a good old age. And then in the fourth generation, they shall return here, where you are, Abraham, now, where you are now.

[25:56] Your descendants, your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren, they're all going to be in this strange land for 400 years, and I'm going to bring them right back here, the whole kit and caboodle of them, right here where you are now.

[26:15] And as for you, you shall go to your fathers in peace. You shall be buried at a good old age. We know you live to be 175 years old.

[26:26] And then in the fourth generation, they shall return here, for the iniquity of the Amorite is not yet complete. What's that all about? Who are these people?

[26:36] Amorites. They are descendants of a pagan group of people who lived there where Abram was at the time. They were idolaters, they were into every kind of iniquity that you could imagine.

[26:54] sin. And God likens the iniquity of the Amorites to a cup that they are in the process of filling with their sin. And God is saying, when their cup is full, which means when I am no longer able to bear them, I'm going to bring your descendants back and they are going to root them out.

[27:20] I'm going to give you this land. And if you look at the geography that is involved, it so far surpasses and exceeds what Israel calls home today that it's just remarkable.

[27:37] And it came about when the sun had set that it was very dark and behold there appeared a smoking oven and a flaming torch which passed between these pieces. And this is symbolic of the deity.

[27:48] And on that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram saying to your descendants I have given this land from the river of Egypt as far as the great river, the river Euphrates, and it includes all of these people.

[28:01] These are all Amorites or part thereof, Kenites, Kenizzites, Kabanites, and all the rest of them. Remarkable. Now these animal parts that provided this dramatic kind of contract was what was in vogue in Abraham's day and this was the way people made covenants.

[28:23] I know it is very strange and bizarre to us, but it made very good sense to them. They would take all of these animal parts, split them in half, lay half of them there, lay half of them there.

[28:34] Then the people who were making the covenant, usually two men, maybe it was some land deal or something like that, they would join arms like a couple, like a wedding couple almost.

[28:46] They would join arms and together, they would walk through those animal parts. And what that was signifying to each of them was this, if I violate the terms of this covenant, these slaughtered animals are a vivid reminder of what my portion is to be.

[29:16] Ooh. You've heard of signing something in blood. This is kind of like that. This was a very, very solemn thing.

[29:29] It was one saying to the other, you have the right to do to me what has been done to these animals if I violate this covenant.

[29:41] They didn't make these lightly. That was a binding agreement. But the interesting thing is, God didn't walk through this with Abram.

[29:55] The deity passed through it alone. Abram was asleep. What does that mean?

[30:06] It means this is a one-sided covenant. It means this is an unconditional covenant. This means it doesn't make any difference what Abram does or does not do.

[30:20] This is what God is going to do. That's the whole significance of that. Ordinarily, they would walk through together. Abram's asleep.

[30:31] He can't even participate. God is saying, this is what I am going to do, Abram. And we know it isn't because Abram was worthy, deserving, or anything else.

[30:43] It is because of the gracious nature of God that he is going to do this, and he's going to use Abram as the spearhead of the entire movement.

[30:54] It is an incredible thing. Now, what I would like you to do is fast forward, please, to Exodus chapter 1. Genesis, Exodus chapter 1.

[31:11] Here are the descendants of Abram. You're well familiar with the story of Isaac being born in the midst of the situation that existed with Ishmael, and then out of Isaac came Jacob and Esau, and out of Jacob came the twelve sons.

[31:29] Now, we fast forward to Exodus chapter 1. And here's what we have. These are the names of the sons of Israel, or the sons of Jacob, who came to Egypt with Jacob.

[31:40] They came, each one, with his household, Reuben, Simeon, Levi, Judah, Issachar, Zebulun, Benjamin, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. And all the persons who came from the loins of Jacob were seventy.

[31:53] That's how many go down into Egypt. After they discover that Joseph is there, then Joseph sends back for his dad, Jacob, and all of his brothers and their wives and their kids.

[32:05] I want you all to come down to Egypt because I'm the number two man in charge here, and I can take care of you. And I want my whole family and extended family, seventy of you, to all come down to Egypt.

[32:19] And they did. And Pharaoh was grateful because it was Joseph, through interpreting the dreams, who was responsible for the salvation of the entire nation of Egypt.

[32:30] And Pharaoh was very grateful. So when all of Jacob's family and Joseph's relatives came down, Pharaoh said, I'm going to give you some of the choice land of Egypt.

[32:43] You're given a land grant, the whole land of Goshen. It's all yours. And it was fertile and well-watered and enjoyed the overflow of the Nile. It was as good as life could be then.

[32:55] That was Pharaoh's way of rewarding Joseph. And all the persons, verse 5, came from the loins of Jacob, were seventy in number, but Joseph was already in Egypt.

[33:07] Joseph died, and all his brothers, and all that generation. But the sons of Israel were fruitful and increased greatly and multiplied. Because they've got four centuries in which to do it.

[33:19] From the time these seventy people went down there until the time God is going to call the two million plus out of Egypt. It's approximately four hundred plus years.

[33:30] So you get a lot of babies when you do away with abortion, you do away with the pill, you do away with the morning after pill. These women were pregnant nine months out of the year. How do you like that, ladies?

[33:42] Wow. Sons of Israel were fruitful, increased greatly, multiplied, became exceedingly mighty, so that the land was filled with them. Now, a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph.

[33:59] He did not feel that degree of indebtedness to Joseph. Why? Oh, that's ancient history. That's four hundred years ago.

[34:11] I mean, we're all glad for what happened back then, but after all, we're not stuck on that note anymore. We're moving on to other things. And he said to his people, this new Pharaoh, behold, the people of the sons of Israel are more and mightier than we.

[34:28] I mean, these people are just multiplying like rabbits. And we're getting concerned because, you know, the demographics of this thing is, if they keep multiplying, well, look, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply, and in the event of war, they could join themselves to those who hate us and fight against us and depart from the land.

[34:52] You know, I don't trust these people. If a foreign enemy comes against us, we could have to deal with them without, and these people could start a rear action, and we would be fighting within our country and fighting those as well.

[35:11] We would have an insurgency within. I don't like the way this looks, so we'd better do something to neutralize these people and keep them from being a threat.

[35:21] They come up with a brilliant idea, because when you're talking militarily, who always poses the threat? It's not the girls. It's the boys. Let the girls live.

[35:35] We'll make concubines of them, and they'll be wonderful servants. Kill the boys. Now, we look at a situation like that, and we say, I can't believe they would do that.

[35:48] How can you say that? How can you say that they wouldn't be able to be that vicious and that brutal 4,000 years ago when we're that vicious and that brutal now?

[36:07] Only we don't even wait for them to be boys. We take them when they're still in the womb. That's brutal.

[36:18] That's vicious. But somehow, we don't have a problem with that. I do not know if my mother was ever presented with the option of abortion or not.

[36:31] I suspect not. But I was born to an unmarried 19-year-old woman who had to live with what was then a great stigma attached to being born out of wedlock.

[36:51] In some circles today, it's considered a badge of honor, almost like a rite of passage for some, as opposed to a stigma.

[37:05] And I don't know if mom was ever presented with the option of abortion or not. I doubt it seriously. I can't imagine her taking it if she was. But it doesn't seem to bother too many today, and there's one basic reason for that.

[37:21] And it is all wrapped up in me, me, me. what I want and how I'm going to get it. And I've developed this problem.

[37:34] And they will stand in line to solve your problem for you. For $600, of course, or whatever it is.

[37:46] So they had a different way of doing it, and they were going to kind of kill two birds with one stone, no pun intended. But they would take these male babies when they are born and throw them in the Nile River as a sacrifice.

[38:03] Have you ever seen, or do you recall seeing history books or pictures of bow reliefs in Egypt history, Egyptian history, with a carving of the torso and the legs of a man and the head of an alligator?

[38:25] You remember seeing those? What was that? That was one of the Egyptian gods. They had a multitude of gods. In fact, all of the ten plagues that God brought against Egypt, each one of them was directed at a different Egyptian deity.

[38:41] The alligator, or the crocodile god, lived in the Nile River. And these newborn babies were instructed to be thrown in.

[38:59] Crock food. Offered the human sacrifice to the god of the Nile, because you don't want to get the god of the Nile ticked at you, we are dependent on the Nile overflowing its banks for the fertility of our soil.

[39:17] So you keep him happy. How do you do that? You feed him. What do you feed him? Male Jewish babies. Newborn. Sweet and tender. Brutal?

[39:29] Vicious? You bet. That was life in those days. Now, the details of the account are given there, but I want to hurry on to chapter 2.

[39:46] Now, a man from the house of Levi went and married a daughter of Levi. The woman conceived and bore a son. We aren't given her name here, but if you go back to Exodus chapter 6, you will discover that her name was Jochebed.

[40:02] What a woman. What a mother. What an example. She saw that he was beautiful.

[40:13] Well, of course he was beautiful. Did a woman ever have a baby that wasn't beautiful? I've seen some ugly babies in my day, but not to mama they're not.

[40:23] They're beautiful. You've heard the expression, the face that only a mother could love? Well, there is that connection between mother and baby, and the baby is beautiful. She hid him for three months, but when she could hide him no longer, and I'm not sure why, maybe the heat was on.

[40:43] Where was she hiding him? How was she keeping him out of sight? There no doubt were police, if you will, on patrol looking for newborn Jewish baby boys, and they knew exactly what to do with them.

[40:55] And they would take them from their mother's arms and offer them. So she hid him somehow for three months, but apparently she knew she was about to be found out.

[41:07] Now, let me tell you something. There is absolutely nobody but a mother who can come up with creativity, ingenuity, resourcefulness, courage, whatever it takes when her offspring are threatened.

[41:34] Creative juices in her get the flowing, and she can be extremely resourceful with what she does. Do you think for a moment, well, let us read the text and see what it says.

[41:45] She couldn't hide him any longer. She got a wicker basket, a wicker basket, and covered it over with tar and pitch just to keep it from sinking, give it a little waterproofing.

[42:00] And she put the child in it and set it among the reeds by the bank of the Nile. And his sister, that's Miriam, stood at a distance to find out what would happen to him.

[42:12] Do you think for a moment that this mother got this basket together, put this little baby in it, whom we know to be Moses, and went out to the bank of the Nile River with no thought of where she was going to put it, just set it down anywhere, doesn't make any difference, just put it anywhere?

[42:35] I don't believe that for a moment. I believe she performed some reconnaissance on the Nile River. I think she knew exactly where to put this basket in the Nile River because she had been there, she had scouted out the area, and Pharaoh's daughter, with all of her ladies in waiting, would come down to this same spot at the Nile River.

[43:07] No doubt the water was cleaner or fresher or nicer or whatever, and here she is with all of her giggling ladies in waiting, and the daughter of Pharaoh bathes herself there every morning.

[43:22] And Jochebed took note of that, and when she took that wicker basket with little Moses in it, she knew exactly where to put it because she knew exactly who she wanted to find it.

[43:38] And how did she know that Pharaoh's daughter wouldn't say, whoo, it's one of his despicable Hebrew babies, throw it in the river! How did she know she wouldn't do that?

[43:49] After all, Pharaoh's daughter ought to be obedient to her father, shouldn't she? Now, I don't want to read into this something that isn't there, but I'm posing this as a possibility, just a possibility.

[44:06] In a day when virtually every female was extremely fertile, so you could just look at your wife and get her pregnant, well, maybe not just look at her. Had to do a little more than that, but you know what I mean.

[44:19] We know there were cases of barrenness. We know that Sarah was barren for a long time, and we know that Rachel was barren for a long time, so it wasn't in her. Could it be, could it be that Pharaoh's daughter was barren?

[44:37] I don't know, maybe she wasn't even married. But at any rate, she had compassion for this little baby. This was a Hebrew baby, and it is identified as such.

[44:51] Now, how was she going to smuggle this human contraband into the palace without being found out? Or maybe nobody would question her. Maybe she was of such a status that she could do whatever she wanted, and that would be it.

[45:07] But at any rate, the point I want to make is simply this. Mothers can do whatever they need to do, and in this analogy, we have a mother doing everything she could for her baby.

[45:28] And what she couldn't do and fulfill as a responsibility, she left with the Lord. That principle is age old.

[45:39] You do what you can do whenever you are confronted with any situation. You do what you can do to be responsible, to do the right thing to the extent that you know it.

[45:51] And what you cannot do, but yet needs to be done, you leave that with the Lord. That's exactly what she did. And she obeyed what I think was an internal higher calling than that that her father had issued death to the Jewish babies.

[46:12] This was a woman who obviously placed value on human life that her father did not. And she had the courage to stand against him.

[46:24] She is a wonderful mother type, even though she isn't a mother. She saw this baby, and all of the maternal instinct, even if she had a closed womb, started welling up within her.

[46:43] And as a woman, she just felt this natural compassion for this helpless, priceless little bundle.

[46:55] And she took it to herself. Meanwhile, Moses' big sister, Miriam, was hiding off in the distance.

[47:07] She saw the whole thing. And she comes striding up as a young girl. Who knows? She may have been as young as 10 years of age. She comes striding up and says, well, look here.

[47:23] Isn't this interesting? Oh, what a cute baby. And she addresses Pharaoh's daughter and said, would you by any chance like for me to go to the Hebrew women and find one who can nurse this little baby?

[47:44] Obviously, Pharaoh's daughter couldn't. And she said, that would be a wonderful idea. Do you think you could possibly find someone? I just might be able to do that.

[47:55] And she goes and gets her mother. Her mother. Put the little ark there with the baby in it.

[48:10] Jacobette walks up and says, my, my, my, my. What have we here? Oh, isn't he cute? You say you need someone to nurse him? Well, I don't know. If I could do that, I'd be happy to try.

[48:23] I'd like to help any way I can. Again, this is nothing but the grace of God splashed all over this thing. And it is wonderful. God honors those who honor him.

[48:37] Nobody will develop a scheme, a plan for rescue, for survival, for betterment, for whatever, for her young like a mother.

[48:49] That's part of the job description of being a mom. That's what moms are good at. Nobody can better them when it comes to this.

[49:01] It is all-consuming, all-powerful, and thoroughly wonderful. Thank you, Mother, just for being a mother.

[49:12] Father, you have got an incredible job. And you really do it well. Hats off to you.

[49:25] Thank you, Father, for lessons that are built into this, many of which we haven't even seen and have not yet even occurred to us because your word is inexhaustible.

[49:36] And thank you especially for the precious and wonderful gift of motherhood and for the women in this congregation who wear that title so honorably.

[49:52] We are deeply indebted to them in more ways than we can imagine. Thank you for instilling the very principle of parenthood so that each produces after its own kind.

[50:07] You have set in motion an absolutely wonderful mechanism. We are blessed for life and to be able to sustain it and to pass it on.

[50:19] Most of all, we thank you for the spiritual life that is just as real and even more important because of its eternal significance. Thank you for that justification by faith.

[50:34]  Christ's wonderful name. Amen. You are dismissed.