Well, there are certainly times in life when we ask questions, right? When we ask where is God? Or why is God allowing this to happen? Or like Bruce, we seem to think God isn’t listening, and the whole time God is actively working to direct our life and we’re just not paying attention. So when we read the story of Moses as a baby, we can, with the benefit of hindsight, reflect how. And God was a very indeed present. And although he was hidden from you and working through those who were living and acting in faith over fear. Now, if we remember from last week, we started with the Book of Exodus and we started talking about the Hebrew people, how the slaves had grown in number to a point where the Pharaoh in Egypt had become worried about them. He was worried they were gonna take over, and he set about a plan. To kill all the first burned boys. And so today we’re gonna look at the story of the baby Moses. So we’re gonna move into the second chapter of, of Exodus, and we’re gonna see how God hides the baby Moses from the Pharaoh, soldiers who were prowling the neighborhoods and the Hebrew villages looking for the male infants to destroy and, and he’s actually gonna hide Moses in the reeds in the Nile River, tucked away in a waterproof basket. And God’s gonna be active in the hiddenness of the compassionate Abra of an Egyptian princess who chose mercy over law. And we’re gonna see that the arms that seem powerless against the machinery of oppression, oppression, cradled the very future deliverer of Israel. So what we’re going to find is that God’s most profound work often happens through hidden arms of ordinary people doing extraordinary things, that offering unexpected protection. In desperate circumstances, we’re gonna find faithful people of God revealing the divine providence that operates behind the scenes when life seems very, very uncertain. I invite you to join me in Exodus. We’re gonna begin in the very last verse of chapter one and read through the first 10 verses of chapter two. And then Pharaoh commanded all his people, every son that is born to the Hebrews, you shall cast into the Nile, but you shall let the daughter live. And now a man from the house of Levi went and took as his wife, a Levite woman. The woman conceived and bore his son, and when she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months when she could hide him no longer, she took for him a basket made of bull rushes and dobbed it with bitman and pitch. She put the child in it and placed it among the reeds by the river riverbank, and his sister stood at a distance to know what would be done to him. Now the daughter of Pharaoh came down to Bath at the river. While her young women walked beside the river and she saw the basket among the reeds and sent her servant woman, and she took it, and when she opened it, she saw a child and behold the baby was crying. She took pity on him and said, this is one of the Hebrews children. Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, shall I go and call you a nurse from the Hebrew women to nurse the child for you? Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, go. So the girl went and called the child’s mother, and Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, take this child away and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages. So the woman took the child and nursed him. When the child grew older, she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter and he became her son. She named him Moses because she said, I drew him out of the water. Let us pray. Holy Father, as we open our hearts to your message this morning, we pray that you will be active in your word, active in your spirit, helping us see where you are still actively evolved in our life today. That your hiddenness is not out of sight outta mind, but active in our lives. And may your words be a breath of fresh air to us this morning as we wake up from. Terrible circumstances all throughout the world, whether it’s weather related or politically related, but we need this reminder that you’re very much active in our lives and the people of faith are still walking and trusting in you. In Jesus’ name. Amen. Well, as as way of review, I wanna share with you just, you know, last week Pharaoh had decided that he was gonna have the midwives. Come in and grab the baby boys as they were being born and have them killed at the moment of birth. Well, what Pharaoh hadn’t called onto was the fact that the midwives were faithful to God and they didn’t want to kill the babies.

So they made up a bit of a lie, and they said that the Hebrew women were too vigorous in their childbirth, right, and that the babies were born before the midwives could get there, thus, safely securing the infant. So the Pharaoh came up with a new idea. He said, well, I put everybody to work. Anytime you find a Hebrew boy, throw ’em in the Nile. Now, he wasn’t just talking to the midwives at this point in time, he’s talking to everybody. So every Egyptian under his purview, everybody that would listen to him certainly is on the family members were instructed to take any Hebrew boy and drown them. It’s an interesting concept, isn’t it? We wouldn’t think about a genocide like this being happening today, and we certainly wouldn’t think about God being at work in this, but that’s often where we find God at work most often. And you see for the Hebrews, we think back, they were not too many generations removed from having Joseph’s family finding refuge from a famine and being installed in the Pharaoh’s house as governor. And now they find themselves in a brutal slavery where their families are being killed. And if you think about this for just a moment, could you imagine having a child or, or having a grandchild for that matter, living in this environment, not knowing from one day to the next, whether or not that child was gonna be alive, whether someone was gonna storm into your doors and take your child or see your child walking down the street and, and throw them into the Nile. I mean, certainly we’ve all faced times of uncertainty in life, but this seems like a very uncertain time to be alive. If I’m a Hebrew person at that point in time, I’m wondering, would tomorrow be the day that my life changed forever? You could almost say that it was a hopeless point in their life. Yet, in times of uncertainty, we have to trust God’s faithfulness. And here’s what I wanna show to you this morning. Because in this passage we witnessed something very remarkable, and though it’s very remarkable, it doesn’t happen just this once in this passage. It happens repeatedly throughout scripture that God is faithful to his promise, and we see this happening precisely when circumstances seem the most dire. If we think about it for a moment, the very river that was meant to be the instrument of death was gonna be the thing that was going to bring salvation and deliverance to the child. Moses and the palace that housed the oppressor of the Israelites would become a nursery from the person that would liberate the Israelites several decades later. So what looked like a disaster in the making was actually God’s. First chapter of rescue. Now, I, I, I can go out a little bit of a limb here and say that you guys have all faced times of uncertainty in your life, right? Yeah. We’re human. We all have faced times of uncertainty in our life, and, and the thing about our group here this morning is that we’ve got different places in life. There are different age groups among us, so we’re at different points in our life. Some of us are considering retirement. Some of us are considering where our next meal’s gonna come from. Some of us may be considering what God has planned 10 years down the road or maybe looking for that spouse. Some of us are trying to figure out how much money we need in retirement.

It’s a conversation my wife and I had the other day because we realize that we’re getting older. Who knew? But we have our first grandchild coming in October, and it brought about the question of how much. Do we need to plan for in retirement? Because suddenly we’re now getting old and we’re thinking about these things and we’re like, well, how long do we plan to live? Well, that’s an unknown. I don’t know how long I plan to live, hopefully as long as God allows me. But how do you plan financially for that? So life is full of uncertainties of things that we’re not sure about. Some of us might find ourselves at the crossroads of those important uncertainties right now in our own lives. So we are all searching for something, some security, and that security is found solely in the new life that we have in Jesus Christ. You see, as a child of God, as a Christian, a believer who walks in faith, we have courage to step out and walk in that faith because we have received the power of the Holy Spirit. Even in times of uncertainty, God has given us something very certain to hold onto. He’s given us courage to walk in faith even when the future makes no sense, and even when the world’s circumstances seem to only favor the evil Pharaohs of the world. This security is given freely in Christ, as many of us do consider things that are coming later in life, whether it’s retirement or other things. We can’t hold onto the fact that God is in control and he is a work because these real concerns we have doesn’t mean that Jesus has left us in these concerns. God hasn’t punched the retirement time card along with some of us, and God hasn’t given up on his care and protection with us. There isn’t a time in our life when God says, you’re no longer important to me. Sorry, you’ve been used. Everything I could get out of you, you’re no longer useful. Because the same God whose arms were hidden around Moses, directing that baby as he floated down the Nile into the reeds, is the same arms of God that are holding you today as you navigate whatever season of life you’re in. Because one thing this story reveals to us is that God is actively working behind the scenes in ways that we often have no idea. Weaving together circumstances and relationships for his glory and for our good. Now, think about this for a moment. When Moses placed, or when Moses’ mother placed Moses in that basket, she had no way of knowing where that basket would wind up. She had no way of knowing that the Pharaoh’s daughter was gonna come bathe there and find that basket. She had no way of knowing that the Pharaoh’s daughter would be compassionate enough to take this child in. Because you remember Pharaoh’s father, the daughter, Pharaoh’s daughter, should have listened to her father, right? And she should have killed the baby. So Moses’ mother had no idea that her daughter would be compassionate and courageous enough in the moment to mention. To the princess. Hey, let me go get somebody to nurse that child for you. And, and the interesting thing about Moses’ sister at the time is we realized she was about 12 years old, maybe 10. Can you imagine the courage of a 10-year-old looking at the princess of the nation who was declared genocide on your people and being able to connect that to that child’s mother. You see, I don’t think a 10-year-old can put that together on their own because it is the courage of a faithful person that walks in the presence of the Holy Spirit that brings those things together, that God was actively working through the courageous faith of a someone trusting in God in that moment.

That is the power of God and ordinary faithfulness because God is faithful to keep his promises to us. And when ordinary people who do not remain frozen in fear, but step out in faith, God does miraculous things and ordinary people, we find extraordinary faith. And in God’s plan for his kingdom. Those are the only people that are at work. Moses’ mother wasn’t a theologian. She wasn’t a political leader. She had no idea what God was going to accomplish with her action. She was simply a mother who refused to accept that her child was expendable. She refused to believe that God wouldn’t make a promise to her and to his people only to stand by and watch an evil man destroy things. And she didn’t devise an elaborate plan. There wasn’t a Facebook post. There wasn’t a storming of the castle gates. She didn’t publicly decry the Pharaoh. She simply worked in the area that God had placed her. She took the material she had per pirus and tar and pitch, and she crafted this little arc of safety. And once again, Miriam Moses’ sister, she didn’t do anything substantial. She didn’t come up with some grand idea on her own. She simply walked in courageous faith and came up with the wisdom of a solution that would benefit everyone. You see, what we find revealed in this story is that core courage and wisdom. Are marks of a faithful and spirit-filled disciple who is at work in the kingdom of God. None of these women were doing anything that would make headlines. They were simply being faithful in the small little sphere of influence that was available to them. Yet there combined ordinary faithfulness became the very vehicle that God would bring about deliverance. And so there’s many times in our own life where we underestimate our own current significance in our own current circumstances. Some of us today may feel like, well, my best years are behind me. Some of us may feel like, you know, I’m busy at work and I see the same people all the time. There’s no way God’s gonna work through me. Maybe we feel like we’ve done all the work we can do for the Kingdom of God, and it’s time for us to step aside and let somebody else do it. I mean, after all, you’ve been busy with life. God’s blessed you in many ways, but I, I recommend that we consider this story because Moses’ stories suggest something completely different. It suggests that the prayers that you offer for your children or your grandchildren. It, the wisdom that you share when asked the encouragement you give to somebody going through a difficult time. These are not small things in God’s kingdom that your faithfulness to what seems like the ordinary may be the very thing that God uses for the extraordinary, the conversation you have with a neighbor, the kindness you show to a service worker or the patient example that you set when facing your own challenges. God can and will use these simple acts of faithfulness that will ripple through generations. I think back to the grandmother of this young man several years ago that I had the benefit of walking her home as she was going through the last couple years of her life. She prayed for nothing more than her grandson to come to salvation In Jesus Christ. Her faith, health faded, but her prayers never did Day in and day out, we prayed for him. She died never knowing that those prayers were actually creating cracks and hurt his hardened heart, that God would eventually break through because two years after she died, I had the benefit of baptizing this young man, or the story of the retired businessman who after much cha grin and pleasing, he finally agreed to mentor this young in entrepreneur. Not knowing that this young man would eventually start a company that would employ hundreds of families and support countless of Christian ministries, where I think about the widow who would set and write cards to missionaries all across the world, not knowing that one day those cards would arrive at the very moment when somebody needed a word of encouragement. You see, it’s not those big X. That make a big difference in the kingdom of God. It’s the small, simple, ordinary walks of faith of being willing to share your faith with somebody, and you doing that through an act of encouragement, a prayer, a willingness to say hello to somebody who’s being ignored. I always, I told this story to the other groups and I’m gonna make sure I want to share it with you, but later this year, we’re gonna do a program called Joining Jesus on his mission.

It’s called, it’s by Pastor Greg Fike. And I, and I share this with you because Pastor Greg’s got this wonderful little phrase that I love to repeat and I can’t wait to share it with you and bug you guys with it as well. I’ll, I’ll give you the phrase in a moment, but let me explain to you what he, what he’s up to here. Pastor Greg is, is teaching, and I believe scripture backs this up, that God is very active in our everyday lives. He’s very active in messing with us. Greg says. He says that Jesus is putting people in your path every day for you to encounter. And it can be something as simple as saying hello to the stranger on the street, welcoming the new neighbor in the neighborhood, offering a word of prayer to somebody who looks like they’re distraught and the supermarket. You know those times when the Holy Spirit nudges you and you kind of push it away mcg. Greg says, how is Jesus messing with you today? And I think in our life, Jesus messes with us every day, but we refuse to be open to the prodding of the spirit, and instead we look for those bigger moments when we can convert somebody to the faith. And those are great and wonderful things, but yet the kingdom of God is built on these simple little blocks of faithfulness, of walking in faith, not denying that they’re just as important. Because God isn’t finished with you. No matter where you find yourself in life, God is not done with you. This is probably the most important thing we’re gonna take from this story of Moses. It’s just the beginning. Everything we’ve read today, the dramatic rescue, the providential protection, the courage of ordinary people acting in faith. Moses hasn’t even spoken a word yet. This is just a prologue to the story. I mean, his time doesn’t come for 40 more years in the future, and yet we already see God’s providential hand at work through people willing to step out in faith. And I know sometimes we fall into that trap of thinking God can’t do anything good through me. Or maybe we see ourselves as a point in life where things are winding down and. Well, it’s time to let somebody else come along and do something, but I promise you this, if you’re still breathing, everybody, check that guy. Sleeping, snoring. Anybody over here still snoring? If you’re still breathing, God’s still got work for you to do. The fact that you’re here this morning, the fact that you’ve lived through everything that you’ve lived through up to this moment, and you still walk in faith. It means that God has a plan and a purpose for you, and he is not done with you yet. Now, it may be different than the plan he had for you 20 years ago. I know 20 years ago, somehow he was working through me, even though I was, you know, speeding away from the police officer with the flashing lights in the background around.
And his purpose is different for me now today as it is for you, and it’ll be different tomorrow, but there is still a purpose and a plan. So what does it mean to live in light of God’s hidden arms? What does it mean to live in the confidence of knowing that God is in control? Well, first it means that we live in trust of God’s providence, even when we cannot fill his hand. Moses’ mother couldn’t see the end at the beginning of Moses’ story. She had no idea that Moses would go on to lead her people out of Egypt. She had no idea that Moses would one day part the sea. All she knew was she was taking an act of faith. You don’t need to understand all of God’s plans to trust his heart. Second. It means taking your small acts of faithfulness seriously. God uses ordinary obedience to accomplish extraordinary purposes. The kindness you show to someone today, the prayer you offer tonight, the encouragement you give tomorrow, these are all much more significant than we give ’em credit for. And finally, it means living with a expectancy rather than resignation. God isn’t finished with your story. He may be preparing you for something that will amaze you, something that will bring him glory and bring you deep satisfaction in ways that you have no idea and you can never imagine.

I know that it’s easy to get caught up in the everyday parts of life. For some of us, it’s easy to realize that we’ve come to a time in life where it’s time to rest and retire. But I wanna challenge you with this one thought this morning. What if God hasn’t called you to a point in time to rest, but to rise in renewed faith? What if this season of life isn’t about winding down, but about being positioned for a new kind of impact? Maybe your prayers of today sparked the revival that we need for tomorrow. Moses began his life in the hidden arms of God. Arms that I know at the times seemed powerless, that were holding the future of a nation. You are still being held in those arms today. The same arms that protected and guided Moses down that Nile River. Are still providing a way forward for you through the waters you are navigating today. You have no idea what God’s got planned for you tomorrow, so keep listening for his voice, keep trusting his heart and keep walking forward in faith, the same God that turned a death sentence into a rescue mission. Who turned a princess’s bath time into a divine appointment who used a young girl’s courage to reunite a family? That same God is writing your story today. You’re held in hidden arms, and those arms never attire and they never weaken, and they’re never uncertain about what comes next. So if you rest in anything, rest in that truth. But rise in his confidence and trust that your best day for God is still ahead. Let us pray, Father, build that trust in us to know that what we do in the next moment is important in the kingdom. And even though the world tells us these little acts are insignificant, you tell a different story. You remind us how wonderful it is to be used in your kingdom to do some mighty extraordinary acts, and how these seemingly insignificant moments that we so easily could skip over. You’re gonna use them, father, you’re gonna use them to do mighty things, to bring about faith in people that we may never even meet. And ultimately, these things are gonna bring glory to the name of Jesus Christ. In whose name we pray? Amen.