[0:00] And first of all, can I congratulate you? I'm putting your clocks right. It was a bit touch and go last night when I set my alarm, because I thought, will my alarm set for the right time, or should I set it an hour earlier?
[0:14] But thankfully it was on my phone and it corrected itself. So well done, well done. It's that one time of the year. It's a little bit apprehensive. Will we get up in time, or won't we? Well, we're here again, of course, as God's people to bring our worship and praise to him.
[0:29] We have a verse there from Psalm 139, a wonderful verse that reminds us again that the God that we come to worship is the God who is our maker and our creator.
[0:41] For it says there in Psalm 139, You created my inmost being. You knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
[0:53] Your works are wonderful. I know that full well. We may not feel in our bodies that everything is functioning just as perhaps we'd like it to or should. But we are fearfully and wonderfully made by our wonderful God, our maker and creator, knit together and known to him.
[1:10] So let's come and bring our worship and praise to this great God, our saviour. 625. Oh my soul, arise and bless your maker, for he is your master and your friend.
[1:21] 625. 625. 725. 725.
[1:35] 725. 725. 725. 725. 825. This wonderful God who made us is the wonderful God who loves us and the God who sent his son, the Lord Jesus, into this world that we may be reconciled to God.
[1:47] So let us come to God in prayer together and speak with our great creator and saviour. Let us pray. Oh Lord, our heavenly Father, we bless you and thank you again for the wonder of your creation.
[2:01] We thank you for the wonder, yes, of the world we see and the beauty of a day like today. We think of the wonder of the plant life and the animal life that you have made and everything about this world which you made at the beginning which was very good.
[2:16] We thank you, Lord, for making us, not just in making Adam and Eve, not just in making humanity, but thank you for making me. As David of old, we're able to echo those words amazingly, incredibly.
[2:30] You knit us together. You knit me together in my mother's womb. Just when we were just those, that very tiny, tiny speck as it were.
[2:41] Even there, you were creating and making us and fashioning us and shaping us. Lord, that we might be people. Lord, who have the nature that we have and the looks that we have and the hair that we have.
[2:54] And Lord, everything about us, we've been fashioned and shaped by you. Lord, we thank you for that. You've taken the intimate care into our lives, not just then in the womb, but since the womb, since leaving our mothers and fathers.
[3:09] Oh, Lord, you've watched over and cared for us and protected us and helped us and brought us to this day. But Lord, we thank you not only for those practical, very physical blessings, but how we thank you again for the very real spiritual blessings that you have made us to be born again.
[3:27] Born again of your spirit, made alive, made new, new creations. And Lord, we thank you for that, that in Christ we are new creations. The old has gone, the new has come.
[3:38] We have been brought into a new life, a new life with a new direction, a new life with a new purpose, a new life with a new love, a love for Christ, a love for Jesus.
[3:49] And we thank you that what we've experienced already through faith in him is just the beginning, just the foretaste of what's to come. As we've sung, Lord, we're looking for that day when we shall see him face to face, when we shall be in your presence, when all pain will be gone, all sorrow will be gone, all tears will be gone, all death will be gone.
[4:11] And I ask, oh Lord, that even today we might know something of the foretaste, something of a foretaste of what it means to be in your presence for eternity. Come amongst us by your Holy Spirit.
[4:22] Come and bless us. Come and speak with us. Come and help us. Come and remind us again and refresh us in your love. For we ask these things in and through. The love, the Son who you loved and who gave himself for us, the Lord Jesus Christ.
[4:37] Amen. Amen. Let's turn in our Bibles together to Exodus and chapter 2.
[4:50] Exodus and chapter 2 and verse 1. That's page 58 if you've got one of the Red Church Bibles, page 58. The second book of the Bible, you've got Genesis and then you've got Exodus.
[5:05] And we're going to look at chapter 2 verses 1 to 10. Chapter 2 verses 1 to 10. Exodus 2 verse 1.
[5:24] Now a man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman. She became pregnant and gave birth to a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months.
[5:36] But when she could hide him no longer, she got a papyrus basket 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.
[5:49] His sister stood at a distance to see what would happen to him. Then Pharaoh's daughter went down to the Nile to bathe. And her attendants were walking along the riverbank.
[5:59] She saw the basket among the reeds and sent her female slave to get it. She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying and she felt sorry for him.
[6:11] This is one of the Hebrew babies, she said. Then his sister asked Pharaoh's daughter, Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?
[6:22] Yes, go, she answered. So the girl went and got the baby's mother. Pharaoh's daughter said to her, Take this baby and nurse him for me and I will pay you.
[6:32] So the woman took the baby and nursed him. When the child grew older, she took him to Pharaoh's daughter. He became her son. She named him Moses, saying, I drew him out of the water.
[6:46] Over these past few weeks, we've been thinking particularly about the sort of people that God uses to bring about his salvation in the lives of others.
[7:05] And because we're coming to a mission, this evangelistic mission week in May, we've been particularly thinking, how is it that we can reach and share the gospel with those around about us, those who are in need?
[7:20] We've seen that God has used all sorts of people in the past. We looked at the young girl in Two Kings who was a slave. We looked at those four lepers who the Lord used to save a city.
[7:33] God working through their faith, through their lives, to bring in the midst of death, life and grace. They're the unsung heroes of faith.
[7:45] They're the ones whose names don't appear in Hebrews chapter 11, which has a wonderful list of men and women of faith in the Old Testament. I want us to turn there just for a moment, Hebrews 11, because there's two people, particularly that we're going to think about this morning, in this connection of reaching and sharing the gospel with others, living the Christian life effectively, that God may work in us to the saving of others.
[8:14] And so in Hebrews in chapter 11, if you've got your church Bible, that's page 1210, page 1210, we have there verse 23.
[8:25] Verse 23. By faith, Moses' parents hid him for three months after he was born, because they saw he was no ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the king's edict.
[8:40] Now as it's Mother's Day, it's fitting, I think, that we particularly concentrate upon the mother, as well as the father, of Moses, and how they were used by God to be the instrument, not only ultimately of the salvation, or the saving of Moses, but through his life, the salvation of the nation of Israel.
[9:00] And sometimes we think that just a small thing, a small incident, is unimportant, and yet we see that it is far from it. Their names aren't mentioned here, but we know their names.
[9:13] We know that Moses' father was Amram, and that his mother was called Jochebed. We know that from, in other parts of the Old Testament. And so they were the ones who God used.
[9:26] And many of us here this morning will be parents or grandparents. And though we find it hard to share the gospel with strangers at times, or people that we know in a looser relationship, work colleagues, school colleagues, and so on, it's very hard to share it with our families.
[9:47] It's very hard to be able to share it with our relatives. And particularly, one of the great challenges we've all found as Christian parents is how do we lead our children to Christ?
[9:59] How do we be the instrument that God uses to bring our children to faith? And for those of us who are grandparents, our grandchildren to faith. How do we work?
[10:11] How do we serve the Lord? How can we be used by Him? And I want us to spend a little time thinking about that. In fact, it's wonderful when you read through Hebrews chapter 11, you see how often the writer there connects the faith of parents and grandparents and how they are used to the salvation of children and of families.
[10:34] So you go right back to Noah, who are told he saved his family by faith. Abraham and Sarah become parents, of course, by faith. Abraham tested by his faith and his offering up of Isaac.
[10:49] And of course, as well, we read about how both Isaac and Jacob bless their children and their grandchildren by faith. So parenting and faith is something very much in the Scriptures, very much in the Bible.
[11:04] And we need to recognize how as Christians, parents and grandparents, we need faith to be Christian grandparents and parents. We need the Lord's help.
[11:15] We need to look to him. We need to trust to him to raise our children that ultimately, by God's grace, they may come to know him and trust him and follow him. Now we know, of course, that the whole of the Christian life is a challenge.
[11:29] The whole of the Christian life is a walking by faith and not by sight. In every situation that we face, in every aspect of our lives, we are always living by faith and placing our faith in the Lord and not ourselves.
[11:45] We had a quotation with the children about Galatians chapter 2, verse 20. But the beginning of that verse says, the life I now live in the body, that's the life I'm living physically, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me.
[12:01] Every moment of every day is a step of faith. Every situation we find ourselves in, we are to trust and look to the Lord by faith. But I think that parenting, and I have found, I'll put it in my own way then, I have found parenting to be probably the most challenging aspect of living by faith.
[12:22] The most difficult. The one that's called for the greatest prayer. The one that's really made me have to look to the Lord more than myself.
[12:33] And of course, one of the reasons why being a parent requires so much faith is because when you become a parent, you never stop being a parent. Once that baby is born, once that child is brought into your life, then they're there for the rest of your life.
[12:49] Or the rest of their life. It's a long, ongoing commitment. And of course, if, and I haven't yet, thank the Lord, become a grandparent, that sounds wrong, but anyway.
[13:03] For those of you who have become parents, then of course, your faith needs to be even bigger because you've not just got one, two, three, or four, but no, you've got five, six, seven, or eight, or however many grandchildren it may be.
[13:14] And those of you, I'm not sure if there's any here this morning who are great-grandparents, it just multiplies. And so Moses' parents have a lot to teach us, a lot to help us with in this matter of living the Christian life, living in such a way and being witnesses and being those that the Lord will use to lead our children, grandchildren, maybe nieces and nephews perhaps, others that we have connection with into the life of Christ.
[13:47] And so they are singled out here, aren't they, in Hebrews chapter 11 because of their faith. Let's read that verse again, verse 23. By faith, Moses' parents hid him for three months after he was born because they saw he was no ordinary child and were not afraid of the king's edict.
[14:05] So let's turn back to Exodus and find out why their faith is so extraordinary. So Exodus chapter 2, we read the first 10 verses of chapter 2 there, which really gives us the account, the events of what happened which the Hebrews author tells us is an act of their faith.
[14:23] What's so special about their faith? Why do they need so much faith? And why do we? Well, firstly and foremostly because we need faith because we are living in the darkest of days.
[14:36] And if you know the situation in Exodus 1 and 2, you'll know that they were indeed very dark days for the people of God in that place. They were all in Egypt, they were all slaves, and they were in place of terrible persecution.
[14:52] Just look back to chapter 1 and verse 12. The more they were, we'll read from verse 11, shall we? The Egyptians, this is, so they put slave masters over them, that's the Israelites, to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Ramesses as store cities for Pharaoh.
[15:10] But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread. So the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and work them ruthlessly. Verse 13. Over then to verse 22.
[15:24] 22. Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people. Every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile but let every girl live. So think of the situations in which these parents, this mother and father, bring their son into the world.
[15:42] There's oppression, there's slavery. The only hope and future for this child is to be a slave, to be oppressed, beaten, and worked literally to death by a heartless and wicked ruler.
[15:57] But worse than that, there is this infanticide by government order. In other words, the killing of children by the command of the king.
[16:08] Every Hebrew boy is to be thrown into the Nile. The murder of babies. He tried it before. He tried it before by telling the midwives that when a baby was born to kill it at birth so that but then they were godly women, the midwives, as many of them have been in the past and they wouldn't do that so he gives this order.
[16:32] Every male child. Now, there were how many thousands of children? What a dark age it was that they lived in.
[16:45] What about the dark age we live in? Most of us know some of the statistics that have taken place of abortions in the last 50 years. 1967.
[16:56] Millions. Millions of children murdered in the womb and out of the womb. And we think of the world around about us and we look at the militancy of atheism.
[17:09] We see the militancy of Islam. We see a world which is, as we've already thought, so dark and awful and terrorism on the streets and so on and so forth. And some people say, this isn't a world you want to bring children into.
[17:24] But dear friends, this is the world in which we have brought children into. And so we need great faith, don't we? We need to look to the Lord. We need his help and trust in these days.
[17:36] The wonderful thing is this, is that in the midst of that very dark and oppressive and wicked age, here was this mother and father who had faith and had such faith that it could not be extinguished by the darkness around about them.
[17:52] Dear friends, as Christians, you and I are the light of the world. In fact, we are those who have come to faith in Christ in a world which scorns at faith.
[18:07] We've been born again of the Spirit of God in the midst of the darkness of days. God is the God who's given you faith. Paul writes to Ephesians, by grace you've been saved through faith.
[18:20] This not of yourselves, it is the gift of God. The very fact that you're a believer, dear friends, and a Christian father or mother or grandparent is because God has saved you just as he's the God who's given you the gift of that child.
[18:36] God has always had his people in dark ages and dark days. Before the Reformation, there were people like John Huss and John Wycliffe and others as well who knew the gospel and knew the truth and stood up for it.
[18:48] As Christian parents, we are to be to our children lights, not just to the world but to our children. Paul speaks about the believers in Philippi as being those that shine like stars in the sky.
[19:02] We are to be those, dear friends, who are, as it were, to be such an example to our children, such a light to our children and our grandchildren that like Peter writes in 1 Peter about the saved wife and the unsaved husband, that he might be won over without words.
[19:20] We don't have to keep on preaching. We just have to keep on living.
[19:33] So how is it to be done? How is it that you and I are to live in such a way in this dark age, in this difficult day, that our children may see the light of the gospel?
[19:46] Well, we see, of course, when we come back to the example of these two parents, this mother and father of Moses, we see that their faith is different.
[19:56] They dare to be different. It's a dark world, but they dare to be different. Verses 1, sorry, chapter 2. A man of the tribe of Levi married a Levite woman.
[20:13] She became pregnant, gave birth to a son. Well, you know what the law is? It can be thrown in the Nile. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him for three months.
[20:26] The implication is clear. Here is an exception to the rule. However horrible it may be for us to think about it, the reality is that other Hebrew mothers, when they had given birth to their children, threw them into the Nile.
[20:44] That's the implication, isn't it? And that somehow this mother stood up and was different and dared to be different. They hid him for three months while all the other parents obeyed Pharaoh.
[20:59] Simply put, their action was an action of care and love for the well-being of their son in the midst of a hostile and dangerous world. Their concern was for him above everything else.
[21:10] Their love for him, their desire for him to be saved was so great that they were willing to stand out and be different from all the culture around about them. Dear friends, as Christians and as parents, we may have a great concern and rightly so for the well-being of our child, that they have nice clothes to wear, that they have plenty to eat, we make sure we take them to the doctors, they have the immunisation jabs, but dear friends, the greatest need for your daughter and son and grandchildren is that they know the Christ.
[21:43] That's the greatest need they have, to know and to have their souls cared for. To give them that spiritual care in a godless age.
[21:57] And so, we're given instruction about that in Ephesians and chapter 6, verse 4, we're to told fathers, we're to bring up our children in the training and instruction of the Lord.
[22:10] We're to teach our children the things of God. Yes, by the way we live, but also by the way we speak, by the things that we do, the things that we read, the things that we watch. God gave an instruction through Moses in Deuteronomy 6, verse 6, these commandments I give you today are to be on your hearts, but listen to this, impress them on your children.
[22:32] Impress them, stamp them in one sense upon your children. That there's an indelible mark upon them. That means much more than just telling them Bible stories.
[22:42] That's good to tell Bible stories. It's good that they understand the Scripture, but we need to teach them what the Bible stories say. Not just that Noah took the animals into the ark and they sailed away and then it became a sunny day, but that God is a God who judges iniquity and God is a God who saves and rescues.
[23:03] You need to teach them about the person of God, the character of God, the nature of God. You see, in the world, this is the thing that we have to recognize and we perhaps don't recognize.
[23:16] Apart from in the home, apart from what you and I as parents teach our children, they will learn nothing of Christ. Unless they come to a 610 club, of course, unless they come to Sunday school, but that's a very small window, isn't it?
[23:34] Everywhere else they will be taught nothing of Christ or little of Christ or false things of Christ more often than not. We're to give them by our life and teaching and everything a true and full presentation of the person of God.
[23:52] They've got to see the reality of our faith lived out. So it has to be actions as well as words. Surely one of the things that is most upsetting for a child, most difficult for any of us to cope with, but particularly children, is hypocrisy.
[24:09] Saying one thing and doing another. Paul warns against it, I believe, when he writes in Ephesians 6, fathers, do not exasperate your children. And I think what he's saying there is don't drive them mad in one sense by you saying one thing and doing another.
[24:25] Show them a consistency in your life. Of course we're not perfect. Of course we get it wrong. But is there that recognition that my life and my actions and my deeds are the most influential thing in that child's life?
[24:46] It comes from love, doesn't it? Love. Love motivates us to do that. Love motivates us to action as well as word.
[24:58] But it also motivates us as well and just, I know this is getting away in one sense from here, but this is, I believe, what we need to understand is that when we love our children, it means we must discipline our children.
[25:13] We must correct our children so they can know those things which are just and right. You see, we have a heavenly father, don't we? We all know the passage later on after chapter 11 into Hebrews and chapter 12 where God's word says this, endure hardship as discipline.
[25:32] God is treating you as children for what children are not disciplined by their father. If you are not disciplined and everyone undergoes discipline then you are not legitimate, not true sons and daughters at all.
[25:44] Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the father of spirits and live? They disciplined us for a little while as they thought best but God disciplines us for our good in order that we might share in his holiness.
[26:03] And I'm not just talking about physical discipline or corporal punishment. That isn't what I've had a debate about here this morning. I'm talking about setting up boundaries in the lives of our children.
[26:14] Setting up hedges around about them to say thus far and no further. We're to be like a good shepherd of his sheep putting up fences to keep them from wandering into harm's way. Now where we set those fences we need much wisdom for.
[26:28] We need to think about seriously, talk with our husband or wife about. But they need to be there and we need to mark them there and our children need to recognise them as warning signs to a minefield.
[26:41] we know it only so well. But do we actually do it? The world in which we live of course is increasingly more and more saying that's wrong.
[26:56] You've got to let a child be themselves. You've got to give them room to breathe. You mustn't hem them in with rules or restrictions. Christians. Constantly dear friends, as Christians living in this world we will be finding it more and more important that we dare to be different.
[27:16] We cannot follow the world's way of parenting. We cannot follow the popular way of parenting or being a grandparent. We've got to do it God's way.
[27:29] We've got to be different. And when we trust in God we can do that. We can do that because one of the reasons why most people will follow the way that is popular or acceptable is because of course they're afraid.
[27:44] And what made these parents of Moses so extraordinary is because we're told they were not afraid of the king's edict, the king's command, the king's command to throw the male son into the Nile.
[27:56] They were not afraid of him. And so we see that the faith does not dread other people, does not dread man.
[28:08] Proverbs 29, wonderful book Proverbs, Proverbs 29, 25, fear of man will prove to be a snare, a trap. Moses' parents' debate for the trap was, you know, do as we tell you or you'll die.
[28:25] Do as we tell you or there'll be punishment. The child will be killed and you probably will be killed as well. But dear friends, there's a trap set for all of us as Christians, not just in the realm of living as parents, not just as in grandparents, but all of us, there's that trap which has the bait, acceptance, popularity, being thought well of, all those things.
[28:52] Faith enables us not to fear. Faith enables us to be brave. faith enables us not to dread what people will think of us. It doesn't mean that that fear means that we then act in arrogance and we just go stomping around over people's consciences, that we're rude or unpleasant.
[29:13] That's not fearlessness, that's stupidity. Fearlessness is different to that. It has a fear of God, which sets free from a fear of men.
[29:29] It's a fear which is based upon the faith in God and trust in God, a right fear of him that delivers us from all fears. And you see, one of the things that's very hard for us as parents and grandparents, the one thing that we fear most of all is to lose the acceptance of our children.
[29:51] We don't want them to think badly of us. We don't want them to say, I don't love you anymore, or I hate you. We want them to be pleased with us. And that's why perhaps we give in to them and let them have their way and do what they want and we don't discipline them.
[30:10] As a parent, myself, I know this is the hardest thing, the fear of losing a child's love. But dear friends, if we love them, as our heavenly father loves us, then we must discipline them.
[30:26] We must corral them. We must protect them from themselves and from the dark world in which they live. We must hedge them about. This is what I think it means here when we're told that Moses' parents hid him.
[30:42] They hid him. It doesn't mean that they, as we've seen in a moment, they closeted him about for all his life, but they hid him. They protected him. They were a guard around him. Are we guarding what our children are watching on the internet?
[30:54] Are we guarding what they're watching on the telly or DVDs? Are we guarding what they're reading? As much as we possibly can. And yet, of course, we see incredibly that their faith, though great, there came a point where that faith meant that they actually let Moses go.
[31:18] Their faith delivered them from that fear of what would happen to him when he went out into the world. Now, admittedly, he was very young when he was sent out into the world in the basket.
[31:29] He was only a matter of months old having been weaned. But for some of us, that means letting our children go to school. Others of us, we feel it's right to homeschool, and that's fine.
[31:40] We've got to be sure of what we think is the right thing, what's the best thing for our children. But for many of us, it's letting them go to school, it's letting them go to work, letting them go to university, it's letting go.
[31:53] And faith is needed for that. Faith in God that he will protect them and keep them in the world, the dark world. Faith in God that as she places him into the reeds, in that basket that she's woven and waterproofed, that God will watch over this child of hers.
[32:16] What incredible faith that was, wasn't it? It's incredible faith to keep him hidden in spite of the fear that perhaps the soldiers might hear him crying and might report him and then him been taken and then killed and him killed.
[32:29] What faith though to let him go. We've got to have that faith dear friends in God to let our children go, let them out into the world when we've done all that we can, when we shared with them Christ, we brought them up as best that we can, we've got to let them go, we've got to leave them in the Lord's hands.
[32:48] She believed that though Moses was out of her loving reach, he wasn't out of God's loving reach. There's one more thing.
[33:05] It doesn't come out here in the Exodus. It doesn't really come out so much even in Hebrews, but it comes out in Acts. It does a bit in Hebrews, but it comes out in Acts because in Acts chapter 7 we have Stephen's preaching sermon before the Sanhedrin.
[33:23] If you want to find it, it's page 1099 in the church Bible. so what is our faith actually about?
[33:38] When we say I have faith in God, what do we mean? Yes, we trust him, but we're trusting him to do something, can't we? We're trusting him to act, we're trusting him to protect, or we're trusting him to keep safe, or we're trusting him to work, and so on and so forth, to guide.
[33:56] But actually, what are we believing for our children? What are we trusting God for our children? We're trusting that he will fulfill his covenant promises to them and save them.
[34:07] And God had made a wonderful promise to his people, and in Acts chapter 7, you can read about the promise. Chapter 7 and verse 6, it's a promise made to Abraham.
[34:20] God spoke to Abraham in this way, for 400 years your descendants will be strangers in a country not their own. They will be enslaved and ill-treated, but I will punish the nation they serve as saves.
[34:32] God said, and afterwards they will come out of that country and worship me in this place. Then he gave Abraham the covenant and the circumcision. Covenant promise, go down the page a little bit, until we get to verse 17 of Acts chapter 7.
[34:46] As the time drew near for God to fulfill his promise to Abraham, number of our people in Egypt had greatly increased. A new king to whom Joseph meant nothing came to power in Egypt, dealt treacherously with our people, oppressed our ancestors, forcing them to throw out their newborn babies so that they would die.
[35:03] At that time Moses was born and he was no ordinary child. You get it in Hebrews chapter 11 where we're told he was no ordinary child, or they saw he was no ordinary child.
[35:18] In Exodus chapter 2 we're told that he was a fine child or fair child. They saw something in Moses special. They saw in him, not just as every parent, of course every parent when you look at your baby you see your baby and it's special and you say this is the loveliest, most wonderful baby in the world.
[35:40] Everybody else goes, but you go, oh that's beautiful that baby. They saw something else than that. I believe that their faith was such a faith in the promise of God that he would bring salvation to his people.
[35:56] And somehow in that moment when they saw this child Moses who was born, they saw one who could be the instrument of God's salvation. Not saying that they knew for certain or had a prophetic message, but they had a sense, God we believe and trust you're going to do something in this child that we're holding in our hands and we're going to hide him and we're going to trust you for him.
[36:15] And perhaps it may be that in your grace and mercy not only that you will save him but use him as a saviour. See when a Christian looks upon their child and they believe in the covenant promises of God, they see no ordinary child, they see a child of the covenant.
[36:34] Paul writes in 1 Corinthians that we're to consider our children as holy, not that they are sinless, not that they are innocent, not that they are already saved, but somehow they are included in God's covenant promises.
[36:47] In his blessings. And for many Christians that means giving the child the sign of the covenant. For Abraham it was circumcision. In the New Testament it's baptism. It's not making the child a Christian, but it's believing the promises of God and saying I'm trusting you Lord that this child is special in your sight and that you yourself will save them and bring them to faith in you.
[37:10] God. That's exactly what God did didn't he with Moses. They trusted God, they were not afraid, they stood up and they were different, they raised their children according as best they could to God's truth, they hid him and protected him and prayed for him and as Christians when we do that and we look to God we can believe and trust him that one day he will save our children and perhaps in his grace used them to the saving of a nation, that's what he did with Moses.
[37:45] Not just was that boy rescued and saved, not only did he grow up, ultimately to come to faith in God didn't he? Yes, 40 years later, perhaps we have to wait, doesn't mean it's going to be immediate, doesn't mean our children necessarily going to be saved in their infancy or in their childhood, wonder that it would be and marvellous that it would be.
[38:04] But it may be like Moses when he's 80. that God fulfills all their prayers and promises and brings them to himself and through him brings salvation to a nation.
[38:17] Dear friends, as Christian parents and grandparents, can we trust God to keep his promises? Can we trust God to use even me and even you full of faults and failings that we are?
[38:35] Use us with that simple faith and trust in him and obedience to his word that one day through our lives our children may enter into the fullness of the promises of the covenant of God's grace, enter into the blessings and joy that we know.
[38:51] Can we pray and pray and work and trust God for our children and grandchildren? children? And can I encourage those of you here, all of us here, please let us pray for Christian parents.
[39:09] Pray for those Christian parents here in this church whose children are still at home, who still have that influence and that opportunity to serve. Pray for us. And pray for, yes, don't give up praying for your children.
[39:23] Don't give up praying for your grandchildren. Don't give up being that witness as and when you can, that through your light they may see light.
[39:36] Well, let's pray together even now, shall we? Every life, oh Lord, is precious to you.
[39:53] Every child born is a testament to your handiwork, to your craft, craftfulness, to your creation and design.
[40:06] Lord, we thank you for the gift that you've given to those of us who are parents and grandparents of children and grandchildren. How precious they are to us. But they're not ours, they're yours.
[40:20] They're ours on loan, as it were, for a little while. And we have to give them back to you and trust you with them, just as Moses' mother did while he was still very young.
[40:34] We ask, oh Lord, again, that you would give us that faith, that faith which protects, that faith which cares for and dares to be different in our parenting and in our love for our children.
[40:52] We ask, oh Lord, that you would give us that boldness and courage to be real Christian people in the home as well as in the church and in the street, that our children may not be marred or prevented or handicapped from coming to faith because of our hypocrisy, because we say one thing in public and we live one thing differently.
[41:14] We pray, oh Lord, that in your mercy and grace, oh Lord, that even through us, even through our feeble words and feeble lives, you would work in such a way to bring our children to saving faith and trust in you.
[41:31] We do pray for them that they may be saved while they are young. Oh Lord, we plead for them that even while they are in the home, they may be truly born again, that we might have greater courage as we send them out and let them go from the nest into the world.
[41:48] But Lord, even if they have left the nest, even if they are far from you, it seems to us, we ask, oh Lord, that you would be not far from them, that you would draw near to our unconverted children and grandchildren and save them and make them your own and give them the love, the love, oh Lord, which we can never give them, of sins forgiven, of life ever lasting.
[42:12] So help us then, we pray, and continue with us, we pray, in this great challenge of faith. In Jesus' name we ask. Amen. Now to God, who is able to do exceedingly abundantly, above we ask or think, according to his power that is at work in us, be glory in the church, in Christ Jesus, now and forevermore.
[42:47] Amen. Amen.