The Ark That Saves Lives (Part 1)
1A man of the house of Levi went and took a daughter of Levi as his wife. 2The woman conceived, and bore a son. When she saw that he was a fine child, she hid him three months. 3When she could no longer hide him, she took a papyrus basket for him, and coated it with tar and with pitch. She put the child in it, and laid it in the reeds by the river’s bank. 4His sister stood far off, to see what would be done to him. 5Pharaoh’s daughter came down to bathe at the river. Her maidens walked along by the riverside. She saw the basket among the reeds, and sent her servant to get it. 6She opened it, and saw the child, and behold, the baby cried. She had compassion on him, and said, “This is one of the Hebrews’ children.” 7Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Should I go and call a nurse for you from the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for you?” 8Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Go.” The young woman went and called the child’s mother. 9Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child away, and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages.” The woman took the child, and nursed it. 10The child grew, and she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. She named him Moses, and said, “Because I drew him out of the water.”
I would like to share God’s word with you in two messages, under the title “The Ark That Saves Lives.”
Through Scripture we have watched every step of Moses’ birth and protection as God’s word was being fulfilled. We have seen the faith of the midwives, who put their own lives on the line to save the baby boys, and the love of parents who risked their lives to save their son. Just as God’s Kingdom flourished because his people had the faith to save the baby boys, the church has flourished because believers gave themselves to saving those boys. Without the devotion and faithfulness of God’s people, the gospel cannot reach the ends of the earth, and unless they show their faith, the church cannot grow.
God had promised that four hundred years after Abraham’s descendants went into a foreign land, he would bring them out. To fulfill that promise, he used the faith of Jochebed, the mother of Moses. Jochebed was born into the tribe of Levi, and her name means “Yahweh is glory.” That her parents gave their daughter this name tells us something about the home she came from: it was a family that longed for God’s glory and strove to live by faith. What does your name mean? Whatever kind of person your parents hoped you would become is likely written into the name they chose. God himself named the Savior who came to atone for sin. He named him Jesus, which means “the one who will save his people from their sins.” True to his name, Jesus saved his people from their sins, and, just as God desired, he gave the souls of sinners new life as people of God’s Kingdom.
Among the Jews, it is the mothers who carry the responsibility for their children’s faith. This is why Jochebed, to save the baby boy who would extend God’s Kingdom, prepared a papyrus basket to hold her son. She coated it with tar and pitch so that no water could seep in, and then she laid the child inside.
The reed used to make the basket was papyrus, a very common plant that grows one to two meters tall in the marshes along the Mediterranean coast. It is a remarkably useful plant: once its tough outer skin is peeled away, the pith inside is made into paper, and it is eaten as food as well. The peeled skin is so tough that it is made into rope for boats and masts. With papyrus, a plant found everywhere, Jochebed saved Moses.
When God rescued the future deliverer of Israel with a basket woven of papyrus, we see how desperate the Israelites’ plight had become. To save Moses was to bring Israel out to Canaan, and because so much hung on it, God must have taken great care to make sure Moses escaped Satan’s attack.
That small papyrus basket was the only place where Moses could survive. Without God’s absolute protection, he could have capsized and drowned in the surging Nile, or been put to death by Egyptians hunting for baby boys. Moses, so small and in such danger, is a picture of us, making our way through a world as perilous as the Nile. We, too, can go on living only because God’s protection is complete. Our lives are like little boats, exposed to every danger on the violent, heaving sea of this world. A large ship like a warship may look safe, yet large or small, every ship is afloat on the same sea. The moment you step off, you can only sink, so on the open sea you must stay aboard. In the same way, we will be safe only if we remain in Christ.
The size of the ship is the size of your faith. Someone full of faith can take many souls aboard and sail together toward heaven, but someone of little faith will save no one but themselves. So you must prepare a ship as large as a warship.
Noah’s enormous ark and Moses’ papyrus basket are called by the same word, tebah. From this we learn that God uses a vessel to save souls, whether it is large or small. We are told that the ark had no power to drive it and no rudder to steer it. It served only to stay afloat on the water; it could not move in any direction it chose. Salvation is like that. It does not come about by human strength or according to human plans. It is God’s special providence and his guiding hand.
The rescue of Moses, chosen to lead Israel, and of Noah, called righteous, shows us plainly what an ark is for. When we look at these events with the eyes of faith, we see that faith is assurance of things hoped for, proof of things not seen.
Think of a bride and groom. They make a home because they love each other, yet from the day they marry, the child who will one day be born to them is already there with them. In the same way, though Moses seems to be alone in that small papyrus basket, the people of Israel who will come out of Egypt with him are riding in it too. Just as the whole human race multiplied from the eight people in Noah’s ark, all of humanity was aboard that ark. It is the same with the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross: every soul who will be saved is there with him.
God included the united kingdom of Israel in the suffering David endured and the fire he was put through, and David’s descendants were there with him. The hardship you are going through now holds within it every soul who will meet Christ through your mature faith. I hope you will not forget that.
The Israelites, like papyrus rooted wherever it happened to grow in the marsh, had come to the point where they could not survive unless God laid them in a basket of his grace. Papyrus is a plant that puts down its roots under the water. Half of it stands in the water and half rises above it, so it differs a little from the ordinary reed. This is much like believers: we are rooted in Christ, our rock, yet half of us remains in the world until the day our life in the flesh comes to an end.
Jochebed knew the baby would die the moment river water seeped into the basket, so she coated it with tar and pitch to keep the waters of the Nile out. We must keep in mind that we, too, die spiritually the moment the waters of the world seep in, and we must hold fast to our faith through the Holy Spirit and the grace of God. Inside that basket lay God’s good promise, and with it was the Holy Spirit, who works without rest to bring that promise to pass. God has chosen you, and he is still at work to accomplish the salvation he promised you. You have nothing to fear.
1 Samuel 15:29
29Also the Strength of Israel will not lie nor repent; for he is not a man, that he should repent.”
People can change their minds as their surroundings and circumstances change. But the purpose God has set for the saving of souls never changes. His plan to bring Israel out of Egypt, and his plan to save Moses, who was to lead the people, were part of his work of salvation, so they could not change. Because Moses had a calling from God, God would protect him to the very end.
If the troubles you meet in life are not the result of your own foolish sin, there is no need to doubt that God will resolve every one of them so that you can fulfill your calling. Even if there seems to be no way out right now, as long as you keep a good heart and strive to live uprightly, you need not fear the world.
God does not work within the bounds of human reason and thought. Jochebed and Miriam may well have feared that the baby might die. Yet God had already completed his work of salvation through that papyrus basket. Of course, a parent could well find it heartbreaking and frightening to put a baby in a small basket and send it out onto the wide Nile.
But Jochebed had leaned on God and raised her baby by faith for three months, so she would not have doubted God’s care in the least. Those who doubt are like a wave of the sea, driven by the wind and tossed. They cannot rely on God fully, and their lives, like little boats, will always be unsettled. If you have met God, I hope you will trust that he will lead you, wait patiently and quietly, and commit yourself into his hands.
The trouble was that the basket could be swept away by the strong current. Jochebed knew this, so she set the little basket among the reeds where it could not drift away. God, too, knows that none of his people can withstand the torrents of the world alone. That is why he has made his people members of one body in Christ, for even the wisest and boldest of them cannot overcome the world’s fierce attacks unless the other members stand with us.
To put it simply, the reeds are our fellow members in Christ. The tar and pitch that kept the water out of the basket are the strong help of the Holy Spirit, and the basket woven from the reeds has Christ himself as its substance. So it was that Moses survived through the thoughtful care of both God and people.
If you were Jochebed, could you choose to put the son you love in a small basket and give him up to the Nile, even if it was the only way to save him? Those of you who have raised children will know how painful a decision it was for Jochebed to give up her child in order to save him. If you love your children, I hope you will not hold them tight to yourself but entrust them to God. If we clutch a frail child to ourselves, we may lose that child to Satan. So we should place our children in the hands of God, the safest keeper of all, so that they are born again as his strong people. The way Jochebed chose is the way God chose to save his people. It was because God loved his Son that he, too, gave Jesus up to the cross.
John 5:22-23
22For the Father judges no one, but he has given all judgment to the Son, 23that all may honor the Son, even as they honor the Father. He who doesn’t honor the Son doesn’t honor the Father who sent him.
God chose for Jesus the way of suffering on the cross, so that he would receive full glory. Through the victory of the cross, God gave him authority to judge the world, raised him to a place equal with himself, and crowned him with glory.
You are precious, and Christ loves you with a wonderful love. Now, relying on the Holy Spirit and joining in the work of Christ, may you build an ark of salvation where more souls can find refuge. Christ’s ark is perfect. The arks we build in this world are not perfect, so as long as we have the wisdom to set them among the reeds so that the current cannot carry them off, we will be able to rescue many souls and families from the waters of death. Holding someone in our arms does not mean we can save them, and putting a child in a papyrus basket among the reeds does not mean the child will die. To wait eagerly for God’s hand and to entrust the child to him: that is how we save our children, as Jochebed did.
What kind of faith are you living by now? Life certainly brings plenty and hardship by turns, but if you learn to give thanks and be content wherever you find yourself, God will use that faith. When all you can see is bare branches, look forward to the day the flowers bloom; and when they bloom, may you give thanks that you can breathe a fragrance you could never have produced yourself. I hope you will not merely pray that God will turn this passing life into a garden of faith, but labor to offer him a beautiful garden of your own. No life is all thorns, and no life is all flowers. Just when we think we have made it, life falls apart; and just when we lose heart, sure that we will never rise again, life lifts us up with surprising ease. Whether you are standing or falling, only a faith that gives your whole heart over to God and leans on him can turn every season into thanksgiving.
God drew Moses, the deliverer of Israel, out of the waters of death through Princess Hatshepsut, daughter of Pharaoh Thutmose I, the very king who had ordered every baby boy to be killed. This is the work of God, beyond anything a human being could imagine. This is what the papyrus basket does: it saves a life that was bound to die. Now it is your turn to make that basket.
Genesis 1:27-28
27God created man in his own image. In God’s image he created him; male and female he created them. 28God blessed them. God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”
Each time God created, he said that what he had made was good. He made everything so that the people created on the last day could want for nothing, and he looked on that perfect world and was pleased. God made human beings in order to share the great glory he enjoys with the children he loves. Yet people did not grasp the depth of his love, and they poured all of that grace away.
Satan is always at work to keep us from being content with the life we have, tempting us with the thought that we could have more. He tempts human beings with the promise that they can become gods, like God himself. The moment that temptation catches our ear, we will find ourselves walking away from God. Of course, when believers face such a moment, they know they are giving in to temptation and greed, and they know they must turn back, since no one sins without knowing it. But the pull of the world is so strong, and human greed holds on so tightly, that people end up choosing unbelief and sin for themselves.
When we share the gospel with someone who has great wealth, they tell us they need nothing right now and so have no need to believe in God. When we share it with someone in good health, they say they are healthy and have so much to do that they have no time for church. But they have not stopped to consider that every human life ends in death. People who will live out their appointed years and then pass away treat God lightly, as though what they hold in their hands today were everything. As if the world would last forever, they chase after money alone and take no interest in why God gave them life. They live with the idea that if only they could gain the world, they would be willing to abandon faith and strike a bargain with Satan.
God longs to see you content with what you have been given and sharing it with your brothers and sisters in the faith. Human greed has filled the world with sin and is driving it toward destruction. Here in our own country, freak weather brings hail, drought grows severe, earthquakes strike, and the water is turning foul. Around the world, earthquakes kill great numbers of people, and disasters and accidents never cease. Suicides are soaring, and people kill without a flicker of guilt. Because human wickedness has grown so great, all of nature and the whole created world have come under a curse. And those who suffer most from human sin are, in the end, human beings themselves.
The world is now racing toward its end, just as God told us in Revelation. In this world, rushing toward the final judgment God has prepared, the only way to survive is to board the ark. Moses lived in a papyrus basket, and Noah’s family survived in the ark. In the same way, we can live only by boarding the ark of Christ. The church building is never the ark, and attending church is not salvation. The ark is faith in Jesus Christ. It means living in step with his will, his mind, and his word.
Moses survived in the papyrus basket. God used Princess Hatshepsut as his instrument, and through her he shut out every attack Pharaoh could make. Hatshepsut was the king’s only child; she had no brother. She married her half-brother, Thutmose II, but they had no children together. So Moses, raised as her son, held a secure position and wielded great power.
Yet God made sure that Moses did not settle down comfortably as an Egyptian. When her husband, Thutmose II, died young, Thutmose III, the son of a concubine, was set on the throne, and Hatshepsut ruled as regent for twenty years. I have told you about her in such detail so that you can see how much authority the princess who drew Moses out of the Nile possessed. God caused the baby to catch her eye because she was a princess with such commanding power that no one could object, even if she adopted a Hebrew baby boy as her own son. God placed Moses in the frailest of vessels, a papyrus basket, and had him raised in the household of Pharaoh, God’s enemy. So it is today: Satan holds the power of the air over this world. But God places his people, who are to receive eternal life, under Satan’s power, and he earnestly longs for them to overcome sin as his children should.
God is asking you to become a basket of salvation that can hold souls who are dying as Satan’s slaves. Even if we are as frail as common papyrus, if we come together as one with upright hearts and build the ark of salvation together, we will be able to fulfill the task he has given us.
May you take up every task he gives you with joy. And there is one thing we must not forget: you are aboard the ark under the mighty protection of the Holy Spirit. No matter how strong Satan’s attack may be, the Holy Spirit will not hand you over. If you believe this, every blessing of heaven is yours. I hope you will not believe only in what your eyes can see, but believe in the unseen Kingdom of God and live as one who beholds his glory. That faith will do the work of the ark for you. May each of you become a mighty warship, a vessel of great blessing that sails toward God with many souls aboard.
May you always receive blessing in body and soul and enjoy it as God’s treasured people. I bless you in the name of Jesus Christ.