"Unto Us A Child Is Born"

Well, this morning, we begin Exodus chapter 2 and we'll be here again next week. So we're only going up to verse 10 in our time this morning. Of course, last week we were reminded of God's great promise to Abraham that his descendants would outnumber the sand upon the seashore and that the time would come, remember when that great darkness fell upon him in his sleep, the time would come that his descendants would be strangers in a land that did not belong to them and they would be subjugated by the Egyptians who now we have revealed to serve them, to be afflicted by them for 400 years and then afterward, the Lord God would bring His people out of that land with great possession.

So that was God's warning in Genesis 15 which is coming to pass between Exodus 1 and what.

Will follow.

Of course, the first chapter introduced us to this major theme of bondage, the bondage of God's people in the land of Egypt, the opposition against God's people at the hands of Pharaoh which ultimately is representative of the enmity that is between the seed of the serpent and the seed of the woman, the enmity between the people of God and those people who are opposed to God.

Ultimately, we see the purpose of Pharaoh in opposition to the purpose of God according to the promise he made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The promises, of course, of God are carrying forth the very hope of not only the people of God but of the world entire.

The people of God, the Israelites at this time, are meant to be drawing all peoples unto the Lord to be a display case, to be salt and light that the Gentiles may come streaming into Zion. They also in the providence of God will bring forth the promised seed, singular, the Messiah in whom all of the promises of God are yes and amen.

We saw last week and we continue to see in the background of chapter two the contrast between the mercy and blessing of God and the cruelty of Pharaoh. God has fruitfully blessed the Israelites and as Pharaoh begins to counteract that blessing with greater cruelty, God continues to turn up that blessing so that the fruitfulness continues to have this back and forth, this sway between Pharaoh's brutality and the fruitful blessing of the Lord God.

Now all of that is backdrop and background as we begin chapter two. A man of the house of Levi went and took as a wife a daughter of Levi. So the woman conceived and bore a son and when she saw that he was a beautiful child, she hid him for three months.

We find the name of this Levite man as we continue to read in Exodus chapter six. Moses' father was named Amram, son of Kohath. We find that his mother's name is Jochebed, not how it's pronounced in Hebrew but that's how it'll work in English.

We know from the unfolding story that Moses wasn't the firstborn. In fact, we discover his older brother Aaron and also here, though she's just called sister, most likely this is Miriam. So this family of Amram and Jochebed, we have Miriam, Aaron, and now little Moses.

Aaron most likely much older because he had been born before this edict had been passed by Pharaoh at the end of chapter one where sons would be cast into the Nile to drown. Moses was born, we read, and Jochebed saw he was a beautiful child and so she hid him for three months.

Now we should not think if Moses had been born not so beautiful that she wouldn't have hid him for three months. Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder and what mother thinks that their child, their beautiful little child, isn't comely and handsome and appealing in every way.

So there's perhaps something more to be said about what this term beautiful means. We'll be circling back to this in a moment. Moses was born, Jochebed saw that he was beautiful, and she hid him, or almost therefore she hid him for three months.

The text in Hebrew simply says she saw that he was good, simply the adjective good. He was good. But the context seems to signify not good in the sense of ethical behavior, he's only an infant, but perhaps good looking or comely and so that's where the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew, translates it as beautiful.

The text simply says good, the Greek interpreters looking at the Hebrew said, oh no, beautiful is the connotation here. When we get to Acts chapter 7 and Stephen is summarizing this part of the story of Exodus, he says, at this time Moses was born and was well pleasing to God.

So that's how Stephen understands this term good or beautiful. It is ethical in the sense of this birth was pleasing to God, this child was pleasing to the Lord, and he was brought up in his father's house for three months.

Now perhaps it's mentioned here in part to explain why Pharaoh's daughter takes compassion.

Upon Moses.

She can see that he's a beautiful little boy and she shows pity to him and even desires to adopt him. So not only does she spare him, she actually wants to have him as a son. Maybe that is being front loaded at this point in chapter 2, but I think we're safest to follow Stephen.

There's something significant about this birth. He was not only beautiful in form and appearance, but he was well pleasing to God. Three months old and a three month old does what three month olds do.

They cry, they start to writhe around a lot, they're not as easy to hide, and of course over the course of week after week, eyebrows are being raised, suspicions and fears are being mounted, and we get to verse 3, Jochebed can no longer hide little Moses.

We don't know the details of how she hid him, we don't know if there was a certain area maybe in the home or maybe outside of the home along the way where she found some shelter, some makeshift way to secure him.

The point is, she comes to the place where she can no longer hide him, she has to take fateful, decisive action. Without any reflection on her emotion and the sorrow, the anguish of having to send Moses away, we read Jochebed took an ark of bulrushes, these would be papyrus reeds, triangular plants growing on the banks of the Nile, famous in the ancient world.

Dobbed it with asphalt and pitch, put the child in it, and laid it in the reeds by the river's bank. Now here's just one example out of perhaps thousands at the time, decisions that Israelite mothers had to make under the evil policy of Pharaoh.

We're zoomed in on Jochebed and this crisis in the family's life, but surely this was played out in household after household, pregnancy after pregnancy, throughout the Israelites encampment in the land of Egypt.

There's merciless infanticide, that is the government policy, and Israelite parents have to decide what to do. Certainly they wouldn't have made it easy for the Egyptians to come and take their children and cast them into the river.

There probably were a lot of children that were smuggled, hidden, put away in secret. There would have been many tears and many prayers that went up surrounding these little Israelite boys. Jochebed cannot keep him hidden, and so she builds an ark.

There's three places in Scripture where we find this term, ark. This is the second time that we see the ark. Of course we've had Noah's ark, we have Jochebed's ark, and at some point later we'll see the ark of the covenant.

Three times we see ark, and with it the connotation of a vessel made for safety, a boat or a car, a coffin in some cases. All of this is front-loaded in the idea of an ark. Now it's significant, we're going to talk about the ark in a moment, but it's significant to keep in mind, though there's no reflection on Jochebed's emotion, we can infer just how painful it was for her to act in faith and let Moses go by the river bank.

This is Jochebed's sacrifice. Abraham, very similarly, made the sacrifice of Isaac to the Lord. In an act of faith, the writer of Hebrews says, Abraham offered up Isaac knowing what God had promised to him and knowing that if his son was sacrificed, then God would surely raise him from the dead, because this was the child of promise.

Now Jochebed doesn't know that Moses is the one upon whom the hope of Israel is resting. We read of no angelic declaration, it seems just to be a mother doing what she can to help her little son survive Pharaoh's cruel grasp.

And yet it's no less a sacrifice, and perhaps we're meant to see the Abrahamic nature of.

It.

Jochebed, by an act of faith, gives Moses to the Lord, even like Abraham gave Isaac to the Lord, and like Abraham, she receives him back. She gets her son back, as we'll see. But notice that she builds an ark.

Moses, of course, writing this account, wants us to see the significance of this term. We're meant to be drawn back to Noah. In terms of biblical theology, we're once again brought to see the symbolic nature of the ark as a vessel of salvation, a vessel of safety.

And just as in Noah's day, the ark carried the hope of the promised seed. The whole world flooded, death and destruction under the furious wrath of God. The entire globe, that blue cloudy marble that we think of in satellite imagery as some of us were reminded yesterday morning, all of that, silent and submerged, except if you could barely see it coasting over the floodwaters, an ark, and in that ark, a family.

And in that ark, the promised seed and all the hope of the world bound up. Now we have an ark coasting over the waters of the river, under the hope of the threat.

Of Egypt.

God's about to unleash His wrath. Within this ark, in Exodus chapter 2, lies all the hope of the promised seed. Moses' safe passage through the Nile here is also meant to draw our mind toward Exodus 14, when God will bring all of His people through the Red Sea to safety.

The ark here, of course, protects Moses from the jaws of the evil serpent seeking to devour the promised seed. And here, of course, the serpentine ruler, Pharaoh, is looking to eradicate Israel in terms of God's purpose and promise for the world.

For believers, we recognize the ultimate ark is the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, in whom we are placed so that we can safely make it through the wrath of God, safely saved from the clutch of our murderous enemy.

So as in Noah's day, he and his family were saved, though all the world was drowned in the wrath of God, those who are placed in Christ by the will of a loving father, just like Moses was placed in the ark by the will of a loving mother, are ultimately saved from the floodwaters that threaten all of creation itself.

Exodus 2, beginning in verse 4, his sisters stood afar off to know what would be done to him. It seems that Jochebed had cried all her last tears, prayed all of her last prayers at the riverbank, and couldn't bear to look at the basket anymore, and she had to leave.

But the sister, again, most likely Miriam, she can't stop staring at the basket. You get the sense that she would have to be dragged back into the home. Maybe mom and dad don't notice. They're busy consoling each other, gripping each other as they weep into their shoulders.

Moses is in a basket, and their mind's never to be seen again, but there's the sister watching over her baby brother.

What will happen to him?

And the daughter of Pharaoh comes down to bathe at the river, and her maidens walked along the riverside, and when she saw the ark among the reeds, she sent her maid to get it, and when she opened it, she saw the child, and behold, the baby wept.

So she had compassion on him and said, this is one of the Hebrews' children. The thing that strikes me, even before we get to Pharaoh's daughter, is the fact that the sister was watchful. It had only been three months, but in those three months, this sister had become very fond of her baby brother.

Surely she would have helped Jochebed in the task of hiding away and making sure she had been trained, you never mention anything about this boy to your neighbors. You hide any and all evidence that we have a baby being smuggled and hidden away under the shadow of Pharaoh.

She had been very concerned about her brother, knowing perhaps that his very life was on the line, and maybe her whole family's life was on the line if they were to be discovered. And of course, maybe she's putting her baby brother at risk, but she can't help watch to see what would happen.

I'm reminded of this just having, not quite three months, but getting there ourselves, and when we took Callum home, it's worn off a little bit lately, but at least for the first few weeks, whenever Callum woke up from a nap, it put the girls in a crisis mode.

If he started crying, mom, mom, hurry, hurry, help him. It must have been the burning instinct of Miriam. You can't leave him.

We have to help him.

We have to do something. So she's intently watching, watching over her sibling. Here's a word to siblings. It's the cold, cruel, godless Cain, who says, am I my brother's keeper? Yes, yes you are. Yes, you are your sibling's keeper.

Yes, you are an example. Yes, you are an intercessor. Yes, you are an influence. In more ways than perhaps any of us realize, we are our brother's keeper. Here's a word to siblings. Are you watchful over one another?

You sisters, are you watchful over your sisters and brothers? You brothers, are you watchful over your brothers and sisters? Are you concerned like Miriam was concerned to see what would happen, what's going to.

Happen?

His very life is on the line. How much more?

Souls are on the line.

I say this as a brother.

I have a sister.

I wish I had Miriam's heart toward my sister. It's a word to siblings. Before we even get to Pharaoh's daughter's compassion, we see the compassion of Moses'.

Sister.

Do we have that kind of compassion on our family members? You know, when you're little, you spend so much time together and you irritate and annoy each other and tease each other and you have to share and do all these things that you better work really hard to maintain something of unity before you get old and begin to drift apart.

I'm speaking here from experience. And perhaps there's other people in this room that could say the same thing. Life and relationships, marriage and different directions, they only bring further and further estrangement.

You are right now as close to your siblings as you will perhaps ever be. Are you watchful over them? Are you using the influence and example you have while you can? Are you present enough in their life to yield it unto the Lord, whatever He's pleased to do with it?

There may be a day that you'll wish you had been more faithful, but you just don't have the opportunity. You're just not welcome in the same way anymore. The Lord God is working in His providence and He's ordained Pharaoh's daughter to pass by with her maidens at the very moment the ark is resting among the reeds on the river.

Bank.

And of course, Pharaoh's daughter is oblivious as all of God's enemies are oblivious to the larger providential outworkings of God's purpose. She ends up hosting the very doom of the Egyptian empire. Pharaoh is trying to wipe out the Israelites and yet within his very palace is the nuke, the nuclear weapon that will topple his entire empire.

We should say this about Pharaoh's daughter, she had compassion. There's xenophobia, racism, rife within the Hyksos rulers of the Egyptian empire and she has every reason to just say, oh, look at one survived the drowning, I guess we'll take it from here.

But instead, she has pity. She recognizes this is one of the Hebrews. But she takes pity on him. We admire that. Even people who are unregenerate can show great compassion. Sometimes there are people who don't know the Lord that show God-like compassion in ways that even well-meaning Christians don't care to show.

Perhaps Pharaoh's daughter's example should put some Christians to shame. She has compassion in an area where there's really no requirement, not an eye would be blinked if she just let the baby be. She could think that's compassion enough, I'll just let him be.

I'll pretend I didn't see him. Look how fair-minded and compassionate I am. But she actually cares for him. She raises him, she adopts him. She takes compassion all the way. Christians have something to learn from the compassion of Pharaoh's daughter.

There are a lot of non-Christians that are fully engaged in taking in orphans and adopting and seeking to adopt. That used to be the domain of Christians in the ancient world. There were no adoption agencies.

There were no forms of welfare in society. If you didn't have connections, if you didn't have security in the form of men and women and relatives that could support you and protect you, you were on your own.

And it was the Christians who went and rescued exposed infants. It was the Christians who had an eye for the widow and for the orphan. This is godliness as far as James is concerned, unstained by the world.

This is pure religion, something that we have lost and we've outsourced and exported our opportunities to show this kind of compassion. And I think with it, we've outsourced and exported the possibilities of the gospel.

Then a sister said to Pharaoh's daughter, what a bold little girl, shall I go and call a nurse for you from the Hebrew women? She sees what's taking place and she sees the opportunity. She sees perhaps the delight on the face of Pharaoh's daughter.

And very quickly she's able to say, shall I go and fetch a nurse? I have one right on the top of my mind that would be perfect for this little boy. And Pharaoh's daughter said to her, go. And so the maiden went and called the child's mother.

So Jochebed receives her sacrifice back in full. Again, no reflection on the emotions of the moment. She has just been pulled away from the shoulder of Amram as they're weeping and praying for God's protection.

It's almost like Peter knocking on the door as they're praying for his release. Please protect him, Lord. I pray that someday somehow we may see him again or at least have some proof that he survived and he's doing.

Oh, Father, please show him mercy. And there's Miriam perhaps pulling on the rope. Mom, Dad, you won't believe what's happened.

It's enough, honey.

We just need to be alone right now. We're grieving right now. No, you don't understand. Moses is coming right back home and it's out in the open now. Pharaoh's own daughter has saved him. Take this child away and nurse him for me.

This is the command that I will give you ages. Hey, mom, more good news. You know how you were secretly trying to hide and nurse him and hope that no one even heard his little cries? Well, now you can openly nurse him.

In fact, Pharaoh's going to pay you for it. In-home work, isn't this like every homeschooling mom's dream? Can you ladies imagine if you got paid to nurse? Oh, wonderful. So the woman took the child and nursed him.

Again, no reflection on the emotion, just the details here, but we can only imagine. Talk about prayers of rejoicing, prayers of gratitude. And the child grew and she brought him to Pharaoh's daughter and he became her son.

This is all setting up everything that will follow in the rest of chapter two. We know ultimately that there's going to be a showdown between Pharaoh and Moses. Pharaoh representing the serpentine kingdom, opposition to God in the form of a satanic power and principality.

And Moses being the very mouthpiece of God, the one whom God speaks with face to face. It is the enmity that God has put between the seat of the serpent and the seat of the woman at the highest echelons of the ancient world.

It's the showdown. But before Moses can get there, and this is often a truism in the Christian life we'll talk about next week, he has to go out to the wilderness for a while. He's not prepared yet to be able to face and oppose Pharaoh.

But the working is here and it is clear. Moses will be brought up with all of the sophisticated learning and cultural capability of an Egyptian palace. And of course she names him as well. She called his name Moses.

So here Pharaoh's daughter names this little Hebrew boy, her adopted son Moses, because I drew him out of the water. So in God's providence, Jochebed becomes the wet nurse for little Moses. Moses, in God's providence, will now be raised in the very house of Pharaoh.

And he receives this name Moses, and it's very significant that that's mentioned here at this juncture in redemptive history. She drew him out. Moses means to draw out of. And the idea is being drawn out of the water, of course water being ultimately this picture of death, the flood judgment, or the chaos water.

So drawn out and implicit within that, his name is implying drawn out from the water, drawn out from death. Very significant detail and recorded because Moses ultimately is going to find shelter under Pharaoh's roof.

He's drawn out and sheltered away from that environment which would seek to destroy him. In the same way God draws his people out of the world which would seek to destroy them and allows the world to in some ways provide for their needs.

We see that with Moses and his life. But more importantly than that, Moses is drawn out of death so that he can save his people. In the same way our Lord Jesus Christ was drawn out of death on the third day unto the salvation of his people.

Applications, and I have three this morning. Three things that we see in verses 1 through 10. And the first is as much an application as an encouragement. We'll be discussing tonight if you come to the study on the 1689 tonight, we'll be discussing the first paragraph in chapter 5 on divine providence.

We certainly see that here in chapter 2. We see the glory of God's providence. Now this was a major theme when we came to the Joseph cycle within the book of Genesis. God's providence was front and center.

It's undeniable that one of the major themes of Joseph's life is the careful and precise workings, often secret, confusing workings of God's providence. And in the same way we see that here in Exodus chapter 2 verses 1 through 10.

God is always working in providence. He's always, in ways perhaps unnoticeable to us, he's always accomplishing his ultimate ends, secretly preparing vessels that he has prepared beforehand for glory.

For their appointed work in due time, he loves to, at an unexpected time, in an unexpected way, bear his might, show forth his power, not share his glory with another. And we see that very clearly here with Moses.

We see the presence of God in the life of Jochebed and Amram. We see the presence of God in his family. What a family! Miriam, Aaron, Moses. We see his power and his glory. Only God could put an infant in an ark and go from the household of a slave into the palace of an Egyptian.

I love what Alexander McLaren has to say, God's chosen instruments are immortal until their work is done. It seems to us so precarious, Moses is so vulnerable, there's no way he could make it even through a single night, but God's chosen instruments are immortal until their work is done.

No matter how forlorn may seem their outlook, how small the probabilities in their favor, how divergent from the goal may seem the road that leads them to it, he is watching them. Listen to this. All around that frail ark, half lost among the reeds, is cast the impregnable shield of his purpose.

All things serve his will. The current in the full river, the lie of the reeds that stop it from being borne down, the hour of the princess' bath, the direction of her gaze, the cry of the child just at the right moment, the impulse welling up within her heart, the resolve, the diplomacy of the sister, the shelter of the mother's breast, the safety of the palace, all of these and a thousand more trivial and unrelated things are spun into the strong cable which God draws slowly by his sure yet secret purpose.

That's the providence of God. Do you know that that same providence is at work in your life? Have you been able to discern a few strands of that strong cable of how God has brought you to this place at this time in your understanding of him and his word?

In the relationships that you have, in the things that stand before you, even in the difficulties that lie ahead, Moses is going to have to face a number of difficulties. Do you see the providential hand of God?

Do you trust him? You certainly see the tender care of God the Father in the way that Jochebed cares for.

Her son.

Can you imagine how delicately she placed him in the ark? How carefully she tried to make it as secure as possible? Even though it seems so futile, so hopeless, that's just a faint reflection of God the Father's care, a faint reflection, a paltry imitation of how God is toward his children.

We see, secondly, so first we see the glory of God's providence, second, we see the faith of Moses' parents. Let's not get too carried away with Moses before we highlight Jochebed and Amorim. We see the faith of Moses' parents.

It's so fascinating when we get to Hebrews chapter 11 and it's the gallery of faith, and of course Moses is very prominently described in Hebrews chapter 11, and of course every figure that's highlighted has the same recurring refrain, by faith, by faith, by faith.

And we start in verse 23, by faith, Moses. What did Moses do by faith? How did Moses act in faith? What great steps did Moses do in faith? Well listen, by faith Moses, when he was born, okay that's not really what he did, was hidden for three months, okay well again that's not really Moses acting in faith, by his parents because they saw he was a beautiful child and they were not afraid of the king's command.

It's by faith Moses, but every act of faith in verse 23 is the faith of the parents. It's the faith of a mom and dad hiding their son. It's the faith of a mom and dad praying, Lord we know that we'll be executed if this is found out, but we will not disobey you.

We fear you more than we fear Pharaoh. How has this been a recurring theme? We already saw it with Shiphrah and Puah last week. The fear of God rather than the fear of the ruler. And we see it here again with Amram and Jochebed.

They did not fear Pharaoh, but they did fear God. This decree, it was repulsive to them. They wouldn't entertain it for a moment. They would not defy a command of God. They would not let their son be drowned, taken from them.

They defied the king. And in order to defy the king, they had to trust in the Lord. And sometimes trusting in the Lord looks like defiance to the state. We talked about that again last week. We spoke about that a little bit with Wang Yi and Early Rain Covenant Church in Chengdao.

Many more examples today in the headlines today. Now please notice this. They did not fear Pharaoh. They were trusting in the Lord, but it was not easy. We see the faith of Moses' parents, and we see that this act of faith wasn't natural.

It didn't all just line up for them to just start coasting their way and gliding along in their trust upon the Lord. You could not have met Jochebed and Amram on one of the streets of Egypt and just seen them smiling and whistling and hopping along.

Excuse me, excuse me, what's gotten into you? Oh, we're just trusting in the Lord. We know somehow it's all going to work out and be marvelous. I wish you had faith like us. I doubt that's how they were feeling.

You would have seen them with dark circles under their eyes. They would have been hiding their gaze from everyone. Heart palpitations, high blood pressure, lack of sleep. Sometimes that's what faith looks like, brothers and sisters.

It's not easy.

Notice that God didn't send an angel? This is the one on whom all of the promises currently rest. If Moses doesn't deliver Israel, then the promised seed of Israel is cut off from history and therefore the hope of history.

But God, even though all of that is resting on Jochebed's infant boy, all of the promises of God, the promises confirmed to the woman in Eden, shown by the faith of Noah, and down through all those who called upon the name of the Lord, confirmed in promises made to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, all of that has now filtered down to this infant boy.

And God doesn't send an angel to take him up to heaven until he's an adult. God doesn't say, hey, don't worry. I've got a plan. This is all going to work out. He doesn't do any of that. It's a crisis for them.

It's an act of faith for them. That's what Hebrews 11 .23 is saying. By faith they did these things. Not by sight, not by reason, not by instinct. Against all that, it was an act of faith. She has to get creative.

How many crumpled-up Post-it notes were there about what to do?

What can we do?

Before it was like, I guess we're just going to have to build a boat and put him on the river. She has to continually cast herself on the Lord, keep reminding herself that though she's not always feeling this way, she knows that God would never leave her or forsake her, and he's a help to those who trust in him.

It doesn't always feel that way when you're walking by faith. You feel forsaken. You feel that God's not there to help you. The faith of Moses' parents is more than just risking the wrath of Pharaoh. It's a faith acting according to God's desire and God's purposes.

They know that the most evil thing they could do is allow Pharaoh to get hold of their boy, to kill their boy, to spare their own necks. Their whole lives are being lived sacrificially. That's an act of faith.

They're putting their lives on the line for the sake of their son's life. It's something natural. It comes to apparent. Jesus says there's nothing greater than a man who lays down his own life for the sake of his friend.

Even then you'd find someone who would lay down his life for the sake of a friend, but to find a man who would lay down his life for the sake of an enemy. They're willing to take the route of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in Daniel 3.

They will not bend the knee to this dictate from the evil tyrant. And in God's providence, we also see the faith of Moses' parents in the way that they were able to raise Moses. They were able to have an influence for at least a short period of time before he was taking up residence within the Egyptian palace.

For those early months and years, maybe more years than is typical for modern babies, Jochebed was the central influence in the life of Moses. All of Moses' early training in identity was a direct result of the faith of his parents.

It was the faith that we find evident in Miriam and in Aaron, but here chiefly even in Moses. We don't know, again, the number of years, but it was at least long enough for her to give him the most basic training that we could see lasts him for the entirety of his life.

What a word to mothers here. What a word to mothers here in Exodus 2. She has this short little window of time to have Moses' ear and to have Moses' mind and his burgeoning imagination and his beating heart and his steps and his activities.

She has the influence, and she knows it's short, so she will not waste a day before he's taken from her and brought into the Egyptian palace, and she can only come as a visitor to see Pharaoh's daughter's son.

Theodore Epp, writing on this, says,. It was doubtlessly under his mother's care that Moses began to trust God for salvation. She must have impressed on him the need for the Israelites to be delivered and the promise that had been given to Abraham that indeed after 400 years they would be delivered.

Again, perhaps not knowing that she was speaking to the very deliverer. She was stoking his heart and his imagination to understand who he was in light of God's people and God's lineage and God's promises, reminding him often that God had promised to bring His people out of that land and return them into the land He had promised them.

What a godly woman. There ought to be more Jokabeds. Why are there so many Sarahs and other random names like that? Where's the Jokabeds? This is the kind of name you want your daughter to have. I was reading this week W .A. Criswell.

I don't often read him, but he's such an interesting preacher. And I love how he reminded me of Augustine. He brought up Augustine's mother, Monica, another very godly woman in church history. Augustine, the brightest mind of his age, perhaps the greatest influence in Western intellectual thought, perhaps the greatest in philosophy, in literacy, language, all sorts of ways.

But, of course, he had a very depraved life, and he was very capable. He had all sorts of prowess and opportunity ahead of him. If he could leave this sort of backwater of Carthage in North Africa and go to Rome, then he could really hit the big times.

And, of course, his mother knew his debauchery and his pride in his youth, and she thought, if he ever leaves, I'll never bring him to the Lord. She often wept. She constantly prayed for him. Monica would always intercede, and the day came when he sailed away.

And, of course, she protested, and she wept, and she prayed. And the bishop at Carthage assured her, as she communicated with him, there's no way that the child of so many prayers could ultimately be lost.

That's a godly woman. Somehow, a mother, coming constantly to the throne of God, interceding for her wayward son, knowing that as things stand presently, he's utterly captive to the way of the flesh and the way of the world and the deception of the enemy.

And she just intercedes, and she intercedes, and she intercedes. And in the mysterious design of God, he's so pleased at these intercessions that he answers them, and Augustine's life is remade. And he becomes a new man in the Lord Jesus.

Criswell's talking about this, and he says, there's these men that appear in the Bible just suddenly.

Here they are.