The Life of Moses – Moses and The Daughter of Pharaoh

Lesson 3 – Moses and the daughter of Pharaoh

The first two lessons we looked at meekness, a great characteristic that Moses learned later in life.
Today we are going to start to look at the life of Moses. A man who grew into a great leader, and grew into the meekest man on the earth at that time, and man who the Bible calls the servant of God. The man God used to deliver the nation of Israel out of bondage, institute the Passover, and give us the law of God. Moses was used to show us many great types and pictures of Christ. The bitter waters healed, water from the rock, and the serpent on a pole, just to name a few.

In many ways Moses himself was used to picture the coming Christ. Moses was the law giver. Jesus as God created all laws.
Moses was the intercessor. Without Moses God was going to wipe them out, but Moses interceded and prayed and the people were saved. Without Jesus interceding on our behalf and going to the cross we would all be destroyed in hell for all eternity.

Moses was the deliverer. He delivered the nation from bondage. Jesus is the great deliver. He delivered us from the bondage of sin.

Moses was a prophet. Deu_18:15 The LORD thy God will raise up unto thee a Prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken;
And of course Jesus was that prophet.

Moses was born unto a race of people who were under oppression. Moses was born poor. Both Jesus and Moses were born under rulers who wanted to kill them after they were born.

Moses lays down his position and access to the royal house to go live in the wilderness. Jesus left His throne and the glories of heaven to come live in a desolate sin stained world.

Moses, the one who delivered Israel was rejected by them. More than once. Jesus the great deliverer was also rejected by His own.

Moses takes a gentile bride, Jesus will also take a gentile bride. (The Church)

And so on. It really is amazing when you add it all up how many times Circumstances in Moses’ life were arranged to picture the life of the coming Messiah.  And a great place to start to look at his life is his birth.

It was a bad time. The children of Israel were now under a Pharaoh who knew not Joseph. If you remember the early years in Egypt was a good time for them. They were given the best of the land in Goshen. A place that was well suited for an agricultural people. And they did prosper.

Exo 1:7 And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them.

But now years later there is new leadership and to them the Hebrews are a threat.

Exo 1:8 Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph.
Exo 1:9 And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we:
Exo 1:10 Come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land.
Exo 1:11 Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses.
Exo 1:12 But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. And they were grieved because of the children of Israel.
Exo 1:13 And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigour:
Exo 1:14 And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour.
Now they are in bondage. Hard slavery. They were made to serve with rigour. But it gets worse.
Exo 1:15 And the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives, of which the name of the one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah:
Exo 1:16 And he said, When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the stools; if it be a son, then ye shall kill him: but if it be a daughter, then she shall live.

Now orders are given to kill any male that is born. Can you imagine that? Cold blooded murder of your precious baby. No legal recourse, no complaint you can file, no organization or agency to turn to for help. Conditions were about as bad as you can get.
Conditions were too bad for anyone to fix. Any man to fix that is. But nothing is beyond God’s ability to fix. He can change anything. He has all power. And if He chose to, all He would have do to is speak and things would be changed. But most of the time you will see God working to change things in a different way.

God likes to use His omnipotent power in the circumstances of life. God devises means to accomplish what He wants. This is stated in the Bible, and we often miss it. It is in the middle of a hard to be understood story. David has a heart for Absalom, Joab sees this and gets a woman to tell David a story to try to get David to bring Absalom back.

The woman might not be doing everything right, but in the middle of her talk she says something that is absolutely correct. We want to look at what she says in the last half of 2 Sam 14:14. Starting at the semi colon.

2Sa 14:14 …; neither doth God respect any person: yet doth he devise means, that his banished be not expelled from him.

The subject here is God. Neither doth God respect any person. We are talking about God. So when it says yet doth he devise means, the he there is God. She is proclaiming that God devises means to accomplish things.
In the context of this story God is using people. God is bringing Absalom back so He can use him to fulfil a prophecy that he gave to David when David sinned. We are not going to get into all that today. The point is that God uses His power in the circumstances of life. He devises means to accomplish His will.  God loves to use His creation. In the Bible we see Him use storms, fire, water, rivers, birds, locusts, and bees just to name a few.

God loves to use His power in the circumstances of life. And He certainly did in the life of Moses.

Conditions when Moses was born

We have already seen that conditions were bad when Moses was born. God is already aware of the cries of the people. He sees the hard bondage. And 80 years before He will deliver them He is already at work to bring that about. God is going to raise up a man that He can use. And that starts with him being born. God chose this time for Moses to be born.

Born to believing parents

This is important. God needed Moses to have a strong foundation. We will see next week the impact that his mother has upon Moses during his early years. She teaches him things that he does not forget.

We learn later in scripture how so many of the Israelites participated in the idolatrous rites of the Egyptians. Jos 24:14 Now therefore fear the LORD, and serve him in sincerity and in truth: and put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt; and serve ye the LORD.

Enough of the Israelites in Egypt served false Gods for Joshua to declare put away the gods which your fathers served on the other side of the flood, and in Egypt. It clearly was not an isolated few. A great number of Israelites in Egypt were serving false gods.

But God has always worked to maintain Himself a remnant. People who will love Him and serve Him even though goes against the flow of the multitude. There were some families that stayed faithful amid the prevalent corruption. A family that would still teach the truths of God that were handed down to them. About creation, the flood, about Abraham, Isaac, and Joseph.

And about the promise that God would deliver them from Egypt.
Heb 11:22 By faith Joseph, when he died, made mention of the departing of the children of Israel; and gave commandment concerning his bones.

A family that still lived by faith. Israel really needed families like this. Families that would be willing to be used by God. The majority of Israelites would not agree that they were needed as they were worshiping their false gods. But they desperately needed them just the same. Their very future depended upon it. Without this family that God was going to use, they would be kept in bondage.

By the way. Our society is not much different. They greatly need families that are willing to be used by God. Our society would not admit it while they worship self, money, position, and entertainment. But their very future depends upon it. Without families that are willing to be used by God, our society will stay enslaved to the bondage of sin.

We need families of faith just like Moses’ parents.

Heb 11:23 By faith Moses, when he was born, was hid three months of his parents, because they saw he was a proper child; and they were not afraid of the king’s commandment.

They trusted God more than they feared the king of the land. They did not hide Moses out of rebellion to Pharaoh. They did not hide Moses because of some selfish desire. The Bible tells us they did it by faith. It is no accident that God used this family.

Pharaoh’s daughter

Exo 2:3 And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink.

We are not told exactly why, but it became impossible to hide Moses any longer. This again is no accident. God was using His power in the circumstances of life. God wanted Moses to spend time in the royal court of Egypt.

Again we see the faith of Moses’ mother. She does not despair and just throw up her hands and let them take her son. She had faith that God was going to take care of the situation somehow. So she puts Moses in an ark and puts it in a protected area of plants by the river’s brink.

Exo 2:4 And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him.
Exo 2:5 And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river’s side; and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it.
Exo 2:6 And when she had opened it, she saw the child: and, behold, the babe wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, This is one of the Hebrews’ children.

This again is God working. Pharaoh’s daughter knew that this was one of the Hebrew’s children. She had no doubt. It was not this could be. She full well knew it. She knew her father’s rule to have all those babies killed. In their society it would have been normal and expected even for her to look down on the child. To not care.

Here we see God work once again. Verse 6 tells us that she had compassion on him. One of the places that we see God using His power is in the hearts of people.

Ezr_6:22 And kept the feast of unleavened bread seven days with joy: for the LORD had made them joyful, and turned the heart of the king of Assyria unto them, to strengthen their hands in the work of the house of God, the God of Israel.

God turned the heart of the king of Assyria. Pro_21:1 The king’s heart is in the hand of the LORD, as the rivers of water: he turneth it whithersoever he will.

God can work in anyone’s heart to accomplish His will. And this is exactly what He did with Pharaoh’s daughter. She had compassion upon Moses.

Moses gets to be raised by his own mother

Exo 2:7 Then said his sister to Pharaoh’s daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee?
Exo 2:8 And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, Go. And the maid went and called the child’s mother.
Exo 2:9 And Pharaoh’s daughter said unto her, Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages. And the woman took the child, and nursed it.
Exo 2:10 And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses: and she said, Because I drew him out of the water.

I get excited every time I read this part of scripture. I mean what an incredible turn around. From having to hide Moses to getting to raise him openly. The stress and burden of hiding him is now gone.

Before the baby would have received a death sentence from Pharaoh’s solders. Now he gets some protection from Pharaoh’s solders because he is considered Pharaoh’s daughters son.

Before Moses would have been a drain on resources of time and energy in hiding him. Now she is getting paid to nurse him. This situation went from the state wanting to kill him to the state paying to raise him. This is a 180 degree turn around. A total change. God has all power to change any situation no matter how bad. He certainly did it for Moses’ mother.

And all in a moment because God worked in the circumstances of life. He arranged it all and He worked in a heart to have compassion.

It is true that God can do above and beyond what we can ask or think. Can you imagine the joy in the heart of Moses’ mother? The praises that must have been on her lips for her great God.

And little did she know that God was only getting started. She did not know that all of this was just the beginning of God’s plan to deliver all of her people from bondage. She was just a woman who was willing to have faith in God and be used of Him, and God did great and mighty things.

That really is key. We need to be willing to have faith, and willing to be used of God and just let Him work. What we see here is not limited to the life of Moses.

God used His power to work in the circumstances of life for David.

Near the beginning of this lesson we looked at a woman who said that God devises means. Meaning that God likes to use His power in the circumstances of life.

Not only did she say that, we have also seen that it is true in the life of Moses, and we see God telling us the same thing thru His prophet Nathan.

2Sa 12:7 And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man. Thus saith the LORD God of Israel, I anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul;
2Sa 12:8 And I gave thee thy master’s house, and thy master’s wives into thy bosom, and gave thee the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would moreover have given unto thee such and such things.

David is being rebuked here, and we are not going to go into all of that. We just want to notice a few things mentioned here. Who takes credit making David king? God does.
Who takes credit for delivering David out of the hand of Saul? God does.
Who takes credit for giving David his house to live in? God does.
Who takes credit for giving David the house of Israel and Judah to lead? God does.
In the middle of David’s rebuke God says I did this for you, and I did, and I did. God is clearly stating here that He used His power in the circumstances of life on David’s behalf.

God still uses His power to work in the circumstances of life for us.

You see God working in the circumstances of life over and over again in the Bible. One that always comes to mind is Ruth.
Rth_2:3 And she went, and came, and gleaned in the field after the reapers: and her hap was to light on a part of the field belonging unto Boaz, who was of the kindred of Elimelech.
But God working this way did not stop with the writing of the Bible. It is not limited to Moses, David, or Ruth. God still works today in the circumstances of life on behalf of His children.

A young man ended up serving on a submarine. And it just so happened that this sub had no one to lead a Bible study. He says that he did not know it at the time but looking back it was clear to him that God set that circumstance up and used it to help build him and prepare him for the future.
Later when he was a pastor he was in his office and heard an incredible noise, looked outside and saw a tornado coming right for the church. He went and got under his desk. Pretty soon the light changed in the room and he realized the roof was now gone. When it was over he climbed out of the rubble to see the church was just gone. Totally destroyed. Months later he realized that this was of God. He was working in circumstances to build the people of the church as well as giving them a new larger building that would seat many more people. God was using His power in the circumstances of life.

Pastor Truax tells of how he wanted the military, went thru boot camp, hurt his back and so they discharged him. That summer he went and served at a Bible Camp. That is where he met his wife. He sums it all up this way. He wanted the military but what he needed was Carin. God new best and used His power in the circumstances of life.

God can use His almighty power in the circumstances of life for our benefit. He can also use His power to turn lives upside down.

Psa_146:9 The LORD preserveth the strangers; he relieveth the fatherless and widow: but the way of the wicked he turneth upside down.

We need to live in a way that God can bless. And not in a way where He must, as a loving Father, chastise us.
Knowing of His great power we need to trust God to take care of those situations that are beyond our control. We need to let Him open doors and close doors. We need to be tender to His leading.

See more lessons on The Life of Moses