All are Precious in His Sight

Winston Churchill said of the RAF pilots who fought in the Battle of Britain “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” It might be accurate to say, with regard to Moses, that never in all of human history was so much owed by so many to just one man. Moses was a leader among leaders. The Scripture says that he was the greatest man who ever lived before the coming of Jesus Christ.

Deuteronomy 34:10-12 Since then, no prophet has risen in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face, who did all those miraculous signs and wonders the Lord sent Him to do in Egypt - to Pharaoh and all his officials and to his whole land. For no one has ever shown the mighty power or performed the awesome deeds that Moses did in the sight of all Israel.

Perhaps the best measure of his greatness is that he is called in Scripture simply: Moses, the man of God (Deut. 33:1) and Moses, the servant of the Lord (Deut. 34:5)

But what was Moses’ secret? What made Moses such a great leader? Was it his birth, was he born into a great family? Was it his education or his intellect? Was it because of some great natural ability that he had that put him head and shoulders above everyone else?

Well, the Bible tells us that it was none of these things. The Bible tells us that the key to Moses’ greatness was in his relationship with God. Moses was a man on whom God had His hand from the very beginning of his life. To understand the life of this man, you have to understand the hand of God that was on that life. God’s fingerprints were all over Moses. His life was in the hand of God.

Now you may open your Bible and read about a man of God like Moses and say “Well he certainly was a unique person.” and what you’re really thinking is “Too bad God doesn’t put His hand on us like that today.”

But I’m here to tell you that the exciting thing about Moses is that the same God whose fingerprints were all over Moses’ life wants to put his fingerprints all over you and me today. If the key to Moses’ greatness lay in the hand of God, what can we learn about the hand of God that we can apply in our lives today?

Well, the first thing we must realize about the hand of God is that it is a sovereign hand. When God has His hand upon us, he orders the events of our lives according to His plan and purpose.

400 years before Moses was born, the family of Jacob went to Egypt. One of Jacob’s sons, Joseph, became the prime minister of the land. They settled in Egypt and increased in number and enjoyed a great deal of power and influence in the land for a time. But then we read in Exod 1:8-11…

Then a new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power in Egypt. “Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become much too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country.” So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh.

This is the first recorded incident of Anti-Semitism in all of human history. It was not to be the last. Satan would try and try again to eliminate the chosen people, the nation Israel. In Egypt, he tried to eliminate them before they even became a nation. But we read in v.12…

But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread

The sovereignty of God - in the midst of threat and persecution, God caused His people to multiply. He used these negative circumstances to strengthen and increase the people of God.

The Egyptians weren’t ready to throw in the towel yet. Read v.13-16.

The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, “When you help the Hebrew women in childbirth and observe them on the delivery stool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live.”

This was a formula for genocide. But God’s hand of sovereignty was also the hand of protection. The Hebrew midwives feared God more than they feared Pharaoh. They had reverence and respect for human life. Read v.17-21.

The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. Then the king of Egypt summoned the midwives and asked them, “Why have you done this? Why have you let the boys live?” The midwives answered Pharaoh, “Hebrew women are not like Egyptian women; they are vigorous and give birth before the midwives arrive.” So God was kind to the midwives and the people increased and became even more numerous. And because the midwives feared God, he gave them families of their own.

But Pharaoh wasn’t done yet. Read v.22.

Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: “Every boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.”

The symbolism of what Pharaoh ordered - that the babies be cast into the Nile - is that they were to be sacrificed to the River God that the Egyptians worshiped. As far as the Egyptians were concerned, the River Nile was their God. Even though they lived in a very dry and arid climate where very little rain fell, every year they could depend upon the Nile to flood their fields and bring fertility to their lands. They used its water to irrigate their crops. It was as though the river had made them independent of heaven and the rain that fell from heaven, so they began to worship the river.

But here again we see the sovereignty of God. A certain Hebrew couple had a baby. (Incidentally, Exodus 6:20 reveals the names of Moses’ parents - Amram and Jochebed.) Now how would you like to be parents bringing a baby into a world like that? They tried to hide him for the first few months, but I guess little Moses had a good pair of lungs, and pretty soon they were desperate. If they kept him in their house, and an Egyptian walked by and Moses cried out, it would mean instant death. So they thought and they thought about what to do.

Then they had an idea. If the babies were supposed to be put into the river, that’s exactly what they’d do. They’d put Moses into the river. In a little boat made of papyrus reeds. Two things you need to know about the boat.

1. They made it of papyrus reeds because for some reason, crocodiles don’t like papyrus. The Nile river happens to be full of crocodiles. Every year, to this day, several people - usually children - are eaten by crocodiles in the Nile River. In Egypt and the Sudan, the people still make boats out of papyrus reeds.

2. They covered it with tar and pitch. Early in this century, a vice president of the Standard Oil Co. was reading this passage, when it dawned on him that if there was tar and pitch in Egypt, there must be oil nearby. They sent out an exploration team and sure enough, they found oil in the Middle East, and we’re still feeling the consequences of that discovery to this very day. Blame Moses’ mother!

Now if you think that it is a terrible thing to put a three month old baby into a little boat into a crocodile-infested river, you’re right. Those were desperate times. But Moses’ parents trusted God. They knew that when they were putting him into the river, they were putting him into the hands of God. And Moses’ family hadn’t simply abandoned him. They set a watch over him. Miriam was there nearby. And I believe that they put him in a certain place in the river where they knew that he would be discovered by a very special person who often came to bathe there.

On that fateful day, when Pharaoh’s daughter came down to the river for her morning bath, God brought together two things he had made - a baby’s cry, and a woman’s heart. When you look at this unlikely chain of events…

A baby in a basket in a river

A princess going about her daily routine (what if it had been a soldier?)

A chance discovery, a baby’s cry, and a spark of compassion

A watchful sister with a helpful suggestion

A godly mother hired by the princess to raise her own child, to be paid with money from Pharaoh’s purse

… you cannot but marvel at the sovereignty of God!

Moses was given back to his own parents for them to raise him until he was older, and then he was adopted into Pharaoh’s house as the son of Pharaoh’s daughter. Here we see that the sovereign hand of God is also the merciful hand of God - He honored Moses’ family by allowing them the joy of raising their own son. But they didn’t get Moses back in their home until they first put him in the river. First they had to yield him up to the care of God in order to get him back again. This is so true of parents today. We must give our children up to God. They belong to Him. He only loans them to us for a time to raise for Him.

On the ancient monuments and inscriptions that we have found in Egypt, over and over we read that Pharaoh was sovereign in Egypt. But who was really in control?

Pharaoh’s plan was to oppress and eventually wipe out the Hebrews. Instead, his “wisdom” led to their multiplying. His harsh rules actually hardened them for the rigors of their wilderness march. Pharaoh even ended up paying room and board and tuition out of his own pocket to raise the man who was to become their leader! So who was sovereign in Egypt - Pharaoh or God?

Who is sovereign in your life today? This story teaches us that God is deeply interested and involved in our life.

Jesus loves the little children

All the children of the world.

Red and yellow black and white

They are precious in his sight

Jesus loves the little children of the world.

Each one of us is precious in God’s sight. He has a plan and a purpose for our lives. God sovereignly orders the events and circumstances of our lives so as to prepare us to realize His plan. We matter very much to Him, and His sovereign care for us is evident from our earliest days. God sometimes allows unpleasant circumstances into our lives in order to develop us and prepare us to serve Him.

He used the situation in Egypt to…

1 Prepare his people for their birth as a nation

2 Prepare Moses to be their leader.

How do you respond when you look at the events of your life - especially the negative things in your life? Do you respond with faith in the sovereignty of God? Do you yield yourself to him and pray that He would use these things to develop you so that you’ll be better fitted to serve Him?

Many of the Gospel hymns that we sing were written by a lady named Fanny Crosby. She wrote over 8,000 Gospel songs. Fanny Crosby went blind at the age of 6 weeks, and was totally blind for the rest of her life. Once a preacher sympathetically said to her “I think it is a great pity that the Lord did not give you the gift of sight when he showered so many other gifts upon you.”

To which she replied, “Sir, do you know that if at birth I had been able to make one request, it would have been that I should be born blind.”

“Why?” asked the surprised minister.

“Because there are many terrible things in this life that I have not had to look upon. And when I get to heaven, the first face my eyes will ever see will be the face of my Lord and Savior.”

There was a woman on whose life were the fingerprints of God.