Birthing and Releasing Deliverance

Morning, or were you, uh, mindful that at 9:38 this morning, the largest meteorite in history came within striking distance of Earth? In fact, only five times, to our knowledge, has a meteorite of this size come close to Earth in its history. Moreover, it came within about 250,000 miles of Earth—quite close if you have any familiarity with how astronomers operate.

And had it struck Earth, it would have caused a massive crater several miles wide. If it had hit the ocean, it would have immediately generated a tsunami wave 200 feet high. To put that in perspective, imagine taking this building and multiplying its height by about seven times to get an idea of the scale of that wave.

In fact, one astronomer mentioned that there has never been an object of this size that came this close to Earth, as far as we know. And you either slept through it or were on your way to church, but here we are, grateful that it didn’t strike us, allowing us to continue our day. Thank you for your prayers last week as we ministered at the 10th-anniversary celebration of our sister church in Southington, Connecticut.

It was a strategically significant weekend. Additionally, I hope you’re keeping Pastor Jeff and Sherry in your prayers as they take a much-needed break with two, or actually three, other couples. Please pray for their safety, recovery, and refreshment during this time. As for us, here this morning, we continue with this challenging series of messages from the Old Testament book of Exodus.

You might want to prepare your Bibles for that. Our challenge in this series is to reshape our future by aligning with a different set of priorities. We aim to stand with the principles of God in our personal lives, our family life, and our collective life as a body, like Peninsula Christian Center.

Now, all of us have to make sacrificial choices in our lives—choices for God over self, choices for the spirit instead of the flesh, and choices for the eternal rather than the material. That’s the essence of faith. It’s not some manipulative endeavor, like ringing a doorbell to summon God as if He were a bellboy ready to fulfill our desires. That’s not faith, not biblical faith. Faith is a way to identify with God’s eternal purpose. It commits us to take a stand against the world system, a system that revolves around materialism, the here and now, and self-indulgence.

The world constantly chants its slogan: “Do for me, please me, make me feel good, do something for me.” Faith, however, commits us to take a stance against that system and align ourselves with God’s purpose. In the past few Sundays, we’ve explored what I like to call the Joseph challenge. What does this challenge entail? It’s about living and prospering in the material world while never treating it as the ultimate goal or purpose of life.

For Joseph, the Word of God and the Covenant it represented—a promise made to his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, as well as God’s personal promise to him—became the test of his life. Could he avoid becoming bitter in the face of his brothers’ hostility? Could he withstand the subtle pressures of power and position? Could he resist the temptations of sensual compromise and lust? Could he endure the unfairness of his circumstances, having been sold into slavery and imprisoned without any say in the matter?

These tests loomed large in Joseph’s life, but he passed them. For every nine Christians who can withstand persecution and remain steadfast, there’s only one who can endure the test of prosperity and stay true to the Lord’s purpose. Could Joseph rise to become Pharaoh’s chief advisor, the governor of Egypt, and the possessor of more wealth and power than we could collectively fathom here this morning?

Could he be raised to the dizzying heights of control even over the family of Pharaoh himself? Could he even there yet identify only with the purpose of God? Could Joseph do it?

That, my friend, is what Psalm 105 is talking about. I hope you’re not tired of this verse. Psalm 105, verse 19, until the time his word came to pass, the word of the Lord tested Joseph. You know what repeating a word like that does; if you really let it, it builds up your immune system. And I need to say something to you.

As tragic as this contemporary AIDS problem is—this acquired immune deficiency that’s sweeping the natural world and society—there’s a spiritual AIDS that believers suffer from. Born-again people who’ve lost their immune system against the sidetracking, life-destroying, spirit-limiting effects of this world system, control of this world, the penetration, and infection of this world.

How is your spiritual immune system doing this morning? This is a good time for checking in on that immune system. Joseph’s religious family betrays him. His masters abuse him and deceive him and cast him away. Finally, a fearful Hyksos pharaoh in the 16th century B.C. elevates him. But it’s all the same.

Only the names are changed to protect the guilty. But the real agent of all these tests isn’t the Pharaoh, it isn’t Potiphar’s wife, it isn’t Joseph’s religious family that betrays him. The real agent of every test is Almighty God himself. That’s the toughest thing for all of us to know. The real agent of these tests for Joseph is Almighty God himself, and Joseph passes them.

He succeeds in this trial of faith. In fact, God’s verdict on the life of Joseph is found in Hebrews, and it’s contained in a one-sentence summary. And that one sentence says more about Joseph than anything else. Hebrews 11:22. By faith, Joseph, when he was dying, made mention of the exodus of the departure of the people or children of Israel and he gave instructions concerning his bones. Now that doesn’t sound sensational. I’ve referred to it on several of these messages. When he’s dying, he talks about the exodus. He gives instructions about his bones or his body. You see, Joseph believed that the covenant that had been given to his great-grandfather Abraham, the covenant that had been renewed through his grandfather Isaac, the covenant that had been renewed again through his own father Jacob.

He believed that covenant was true. God had said the land of Canaan is yours. God had said you’re going to multiply until you’re a great nation. God had said through the nation of Israel all the nations of the world will be blessed, and Joseph believed it. And in fact, God had also told Abraham there would be hundreds of years, 400 years in fact, in which they’d be in a strange land.

Then God said in Genesis 15, “But afterwards you will come out of it, and you will have great possessions.” That’s the place most of us just can’t handle—business of a promise that doesn’t quickly come to pass, delay. When Joseph was dying, his concern wasn’t in dividing up the meaningless material things among his sons.

His concern was not in being carved into some niche in some pyramid that was being built to honor him by a Pharaoh or a grateful people. Forget that, Joseph said, “I’m dying, I don’t belong to this material system. I’m a son of the covenant. I know there’s coming a great miraculous exodus of my people. God’s covenant is true. I want even my bones to be taken away from this rotten sand foundation in Egypt.

Even my bones must lie with the covenant of God. Even my bones must be with the eternal, and not with the material. My bones are to be with the word of the covenant.” Now let me repeat something I said two weeks ago. In death, the Christian says so much about his life. In fact, that which has been the focus of our life carries a responsibility beyond our death.

The Bible says about Abel being dead, he still speaks. And the way Christians handle the stewardship of their life beyond death, it’s a disgrace in this day because many Christians do not understand this principle at all. Our struggle may seem very small compared to this bigger-than-life epic and the struggle of Joseph, but we also must make choices.

When was the last time you said to your flesh, “You are subject to my spirit”? When is the last time you said to the flesh, even concerning some legitimate desire, “I will not let you control. Christ is the Lord of my life. You will not take charge of my life.” And so our priorities speak to our family and our spirit.

Speak so vitally to the world. And this is a good time for Christians to kind of check up on their spiritual blood pressure. And I think some of us have very low blood pressure. We need some pills that respond to blood pressure the way they do on this earth in the material.

I’ve reviewed for you, and that’s not supposed to be a good thing, but I don’t think we could get to this message without that review. Quickly now, turn with me to Exodus chapter 2. That’s where I want to be with you this morning. The first 10 verses of Exodus chapter 2. Will you open your Bible and stand with me, please?

This is a good time to change your position, and let me read with you these words. A man of the house of Levi went and took his 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. But when she could no longer hide him, she took an ark of bulrushes for him, daubed it with asphalt and pitch, put the child in it, and laid it in the reeds by the river’s bank.

And his sister stood afar off to know what would be done to him. By the way, that’s where most Christians are, right there. Most Christians are in that Miriam role. Well, what will be will be. I wonder what’s going to happen. Then the daughter of Pharaoh came 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 and saw the child, behold, the baby wept. So she had compassion on him and said, “This is one of the Hebrews’ children.” Then his sister said to Pharaoh’s daughter, “Shall I go and call a nurse for you from the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for you?”

And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Go.” So the maiden went and called the child’s mother. Then Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, “Take this child away and nurse him for me, and I will give you your wages.” So the woman took the child and nursed him, and the child grew, and she brought him to Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son.

So, she called his name Moses, saying, “Because I drew him out of the water.” Thank you. You may be seated. I really suggest you keep your Bibles open to this imperative passage. The context of the deliverance of God’s people was conflict. There had been a Hyksos ruler in Egypt by the name of Apepi. I think the transparency has his name misspelled.

It’s A P E P I. Okay. Thank you. Apepi had befriended Joseph and made him ruler, governor of Egypt. Not only was that Pharaoh now dead, but the entire Hyksos, or shepherd kings, had been overthrown by a great revolution in Egypt, and that revolution, in turn, which had destroyed the Hyksos royal city of Tanis, was also overthrown by a second native revolution, or a third if you’re counting the Hyksos revolution.

And there was a new group of Pharaohs who had come to the throne, the Rameses dynasty. And, of course, we know much about them from archaeology. Joseph was no fool. Joseph said, “Don’t bank my memory. Don’t put my progeny on the shifting worldly authority and popularity, but put my bones on the number. G O D, put my bones on God, identify me with God, not with Pharaoh.”

And here it is now, 300 years later, three dynasties later, the powers that be don’t even remember the man whose spiritual insight and wisdom had saved the nation from starvation and had literally reformed the economic basis of the entire region. The Bible says a new king arose who did not know Joseph.

So much for building your hopes for immortality on the acceptance, love, fondling, success, popularity, position, bathrooms, bedrooms, and jacuzzis of the material world. So much for the idea of immortality. But God had not forgotten. God had been faithful. Point two of the covenant had been fulfilled. First by prosperity and then by persecution.

The Israelites had multiplied. They had grown until Egypt was literally filled with them. The literal Hebrew in chapter one says they were swarming like locusts over the land. Joseph’s body was now a mummy in a burial case waiting to be carried away when the deliverance would come. And in the meantime, the Israelites had grown from 70 people to several millions and were now a mighty nation, as God had said.

Pharaoh then set about to destroy the vision. He set about to destroy the hope of the covenant. How did he do it? This again is my way of review. First, he appointed taskmasters, gang pushers. The literal Hebrew says they were lords of tribute. They were lords of service. And Pharaoh enslaved the covenant people of God and forced them to build treasury cities in which he would place the materialistic treasures and militaristic stores of his own world system.

My friend, that’s exactly right. What the Pharaoh of this world does for you. He takes the covenant people of God into economic enslavement. He brings covenant people of God into moral bondage to a failing material system. And I ask you two weeks ago, I ask you again this morning, Who are the taskmasters in your life?

Who have you spent your time pleasing this week? Whose treasury house are you building? Well, then, even the taskmaster bondage failed to stop the progress of God’s purpose, and so he entered a second stage. He caused the Israelites to serve with rigor, and that word is used twice in Exodus 1:13 and Exodus 1:14. It’s a rare word in the original language. It means to crush, to break into pieces. It suggests that Pharaoh constructed a new campaign that was designed to eliminate hope. It was a campaign to produce bitterness, to crush the spirit of the Israelites. Covenant people are always the target of circumstances and pressure, arranged to bruise and then embitter their spirit.

And some of you this morning are proof that that works. A wounded spirit is harder to heal than a broken body, and it’s a far more subtle but devastating attack when Pharaoh goes from physical injury to trying to wound our spirit. But again, even this didn’t work to keep Israel from victory. He schemed a third plan to eliminate male progeny through the process of birth abortion, a plan that was to be carried out by the midwives.

It was secretive. It was demonic. Male children would peculiarly begin to die. There would be studies made, and the papers would scream about their dying. People would wonder. But Israel would be left without an entire generation. What a scheme this was. But the midwives, who probably were Egyptians themselves, one named Shipra, meaning elegant and beautiful, the other named Pua, meaning one who cries out.

These women feared God. They risked civil disobedience. They gave Israel an unexpected confirmation of the purpose of God. And boy babies lived instead of dying. The future of a covenant people progressed. And Pharaoh was incensed. Friedrich Delitzsch, the great German Old Testament scholar, writes, “Pharaoh was urging forward the extermination of the Israelites, but God was preparing for their emancipation.”

What a word. Pharaoh urging forward their extermination, God preparing their emancipation. And that’s always how it works. Pause with me and ponder for a moment. Are there subtle forces of death working mysteriously against the birthing of God in you? Have you ever wondered why the things birthed in the collective will of this church have been aborted?

Is there any spiritual question about the source? Pharaoh has a plan to abort vision. Pharaoh has a plan to destroy dreams. Pharaoh has a plan to devastate futures. But the Sovereign Lord is always arranging an intervention, a revelation, and there are always people or forces around like these God-fearing midwives.

Listen to me this morning. Learn to cooperate with those that God brings into your life. Learn to cooperate with the individuals or forces that fear God and with the voices that want to spare life inside of you. Don’t cooperate with death. Yield to life, birth, hope, believe in deliverance. God has a going out for you so that he can bring you into his full covenant purpose.

He will take you out so that he can bring you in. And now, of course, Pharaoh is really incensed. God’s purpose is prospering in spite of his abortion plan. So now the veil is rent. There’s no more time for subtle schemes, and the fangs are now revealed. It’s no longer an end run to the target. There’s no veil of secrecy now.

And Exodus 1:22 simply declares, “So Pharaoh commanded all of his people, saying, ‘Every son born is to be cast into the river, and every daughter will be saved alive.'” Get ready. Don’t settle too quickly, Christians. Don’t relax. Evil must ultimately bear its destructive heart. Satan always purposes nothing short of genocide against God’s people.

Hitler’s Holocaust was a given. It was predictable. It was not an exception. It’s always Satan’s purpose to destroy the covenant people of God. In fact, Satan will destroy all male life. He’ll blow up society itself. There’s such a maniacal hatred of those who bear the stamp of God that a demented society will commit self-destruction.

In order to eliminate the people of God, and that’s a proven fact historically. The Hitler government had at their command everything necessary to conquer the world. There was no limitation on the material, mental, or technological purposes. But they had such a maniacal hatred for the people of God that they destroyed their own society.

Now, hold on, friends, because this is important. It’s the context of Exodus 2, which we’re reading this morning, and you have it open before you. Biblical faith always has a context. Faith isn’t some childish manipulation to get your way. Biblical faith is an ultimate declaration of what we believe to be true and what we know to be the word of God.

Biblical faith is taking a stand. It’s siding with the eternal God, and the declaration of biblical faith always has a background. That’s why the rainbow appears all the more bright when it’s dark against the gray, blue-darkened sky. And there’s a context for our faith too. In fact, the New Testament declares, by using the word “race,” that faith is a race, and the Greek word for “race” is “agona,” which means agony.

It’s not a “Bay to Breakers.” It’s an agony. Faith isn’t a tempered preference, like comfortably regulating your central heating. Faith isn’t controlling lukewarm water for your bathtub spout. Faith is life against death. It’s resurrection against the bondage of the tomb. Faith is always a conflict. It’s a decision against the odds.

And that’s why people who play their cards close to their chest are never people of faith. Faith is revolutionary. It’s taking action against the system. Faith is the action you take against the dominating principle and against the slogans that make this material world its source. The world says nobody’s going to take care of you when you’re old and gray.

The world says, “Get what you can and can what you get.” But faith stands against this principle. It trusts in God. It believes a word from Him.

“A man of the house of Levi went and took a wife of the daughter of Levi.” First of all, that little conjunction, “and,” is the same that begins the book of Exodus. From Genesis to Exodus, it’s just an “and.” And this chapter is an “and.” Why? Because God wants you to know something. There are pharaohs. There are enslaving taskmasters.

There’s a purposeful plan. There’s a scheme of death against the purposes of God. But life moves on in the current of God’s reality. And there are some people, in the midst of all that, who decide to go on with God. And that’s an incredible truth. Hebrews 10:35 and 36 make an interesting statement: “Don’t cast away your confidence, because this is the great reward. You have need of endurance, so that having done the will of God, you will receive the promise.” That’s an interesting word, “endurance,” there. The Greek word is “shupomena,” which means fortitude, confidence, outspokenness, or boldness. What the passage says is, you must speak boldly the promise of God, because though there is a great reward for you, it’s only for the people who endure and who hold to the promise.

God’s people must have a blunt, outspoken way of declaring and confessing confidence in God’s ultimate purpose. God likes that. That’s the kind of confidence he says will bring a great reward. Times are terrible. The entire nation is committed to the genocide of the people of God. In this instance, might as well crawl into a cave and die, right?

Everybody hates me. Nobody loves me. Guess I’ll go eat worms. How many times have you heard statements like this? I don’t know if we should have children today, but we certainly shouldn’t have many because it’s such a sin-cursed, destructive, bound society. How many times have you heard people say, “Well, I just think we need to hold on to what we have”?

“I don’t think we should be planning anything great. This is a day of great economic trial.” I see so many tragedies in Christian families. It seems impossible to raise children, somebody says, against the pressure of society. How many times do you hear those voices? Forget it, Pharaoh. This young Levite is going to go on with the covenant life of God, Pharaoh’s edict or no Pharaoh’s edict.

Pharaoh can pronounce all he wants of death against the purpose of God, but the Word says, this Levite goes out, takes a wife, and he declares that he’s going to go on. By the way, his name was Amram. We know that from chapter 6 and verse 20 of the book of Exodus. And Amram is an interesting name, because it means to exalt the people or kinsmen of God.

Exalting or lifting up the kinsmen, that’s what the name means. And his family name is Kohath. And the meaning of Kohath is to ally oneself or to be in allegiance with others. And you know that that family of Kohathites is a Bible study in itself. They become some of the most important people in the Bible.

They become the most important ministers in the tabernacle. It’s under David that the Kohathites help return the Ark. And in 1 Chronicles 6, he appoints them in the service of song for the house of the Lord. And it’s the Kohathites that stood against Jehoshaphat, or stood with Jehoshaphat, when the Moabites and the Ammonites were coming against Judah.

And as the Moabites and Ammonites mobilized against Judah, the Bible says that the Kohathites ministered to God in the temple. First Chronicles 20 states that when the Ammonites, men, and Moabites came against Judah, the Kohathites stood up in praise of the Lord and praised the God of Israel with a loud voice.

In the later reform movement under Hezekiah, it was the Kohathites who cleaned the house of the Lord (2 Chronicles 29). And during the reform led by Josiah, they repaired the temple. The Kohathites were the ones entrusted with the entire task of temple repair.

Now, I need to share something with you, something you may not particularly like, and that’s perfectly fine with me. But I want you to understand this: choices shape families. Godliness has a greater impact on destiny than genetics, and a bank account of righteous faith is a far more valuable inheritance to leave your children than a pile of material wealth. The Kohathites, or Levites, are the descendants of Levi, the son of Jacob. By the way, one of the most negative things Jacob ever said about his children was regarding Levi.

I don’t have time to read it to you, but I reviewed it this morning in the 49th chapter of Genesis. He called Levi, um, “instruments of cruelty” and said, “Let not my soul enter into their council.” You can read it for yourself. I’ve often wondered how the Levites, initially cursed by Jacob’s words, became the most important tribe in ministering to God. What brought about this change? How do you shift from a cursed family to a blessed one? And, on the flip side, how do you go from a blessed family to a cursed one? It all comes down to choice.

I believe the choice made by Amram is one of the key decisions that set this transformation in motion. I want you to understand this because many people here seem to think that it’s ministers and missionaries who determine their children’s destiny. You might think that it’s the Christians in Russia or China who take a stand for God and then their children can’t attend universities or have conventional jobs.

Let me tell you something, sir. You also shape your children’s destiny. You may not realize it, but you sacrifice them on the altars of materialism and sensual lust and desire. No father ever spares his son, and no mother ever spares her daughter from these altars. It’s the priorities they observe in your life. Choices shape the family.

Do you think it’s a mere coincidence that Amram’s greater son, Moses, is described by God this way: “Moses chose to suffer affliction with the people of God rather than enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season”? Is that a coincidence?

Amram chose, in the midst of uncertainty, to walk with God, and he raised a son who knew how to resist the fleeting pleasures of this world and opt for the people of God. Interestingly, this young Levite, in the darkest of times, couldn’t foresee that these challenging times were about to turn into the best of times. He didn’t know that. Nevertheless, he ventured out in those challenging times and connected with a lovely Levite woman named Jochebed, whose name means “God is glory.” And if you study her genealogy, you’ll find that she was even more closely connected to the family of Kohath.

Now, let me share something important: If you’re planning to serve a greater purpose for God, you should align yourself with people of the same spirit. In fact, who we choose to be with reveals a lot about who we are. Two cannot walk together unless they agree. One of the major challenges in a church moving forward is the presence of a mixed multitude without a shared spirit. Amram found a woman who shared the same spirit.

You better watch out, Pharaoh, when you get someone who’s concerned with exalting God’s people and link them up with someone who’s promoting God’s glory. Let me tell you, that’s a blending that can never be conquered by death. That’s a product of love for the church and glory for God. I’m so tired of hearing people say, “Well, I love God, I just don’t like Christians.”

I can serve God in my home. I get enough Christian television, bless God. That’s the church. Honey, the product of that kind of life is barrenness. It’s the linking of love for the people of God and the seeking of God’s glory. And when these two are linked up, there’s a product conceived. In fact, Exodus chapter two simply says, she conceived and bore a son.

When she saw he was a goodly, beautiful child, she hid him for three months. But here’s something also I want you to know: ideas are more powerful than armies and the potential of one man who’s armed with truth and dedicated to God is a thousand times more significant than the wills and governments of all the Pharaohs and armies of Egypt combined.

The thing which Pharaoh had feared was now conceived. He had said to his advisors in chapter 1 verse 10, “Let’s deal wisely with these people lest they multiply and they will go up out of the land.” I want to tell you something: what Pharaoh fears with you is not getting saved. He has nothing to do with your getting saved.

Satan can’t change God’s purpose for you. He can’t change God’s mind for you. He can’t send you to hell. No, that isn’t the issue. What Satan is concerned about is once you’re a Christian, so entangling you, so subtracting from your value, so detouring God’s purpose for you, that you’re saved. Pharaoh had said, “We’ve got to do something because they’re going to leave us.”

And the means of escape, the beginning of the exodus, was being birthed out of the seed and womb of somebody who had spiritual confidence in a moment of darkness. Now this may be facetious to you, but I think there was a stirring in Joseph’s bones about this time. I think if you’d have stood near that mummy case, you’d have heard them beginning to rattle.

Because Joseph understood that the thing he had put his life upon was about to be fulfilled. This exodus with which he identified was now prefigured in a squalling infant hidden in a woman’s room in a servant’s quarters. These children we have with us in church, you know, the ones we can’t get Sunday school teachers for, and these youth, you know, that we have hanging around, these gum-chewing teenagers that we can’t afford a full-time youth pastor for, these are the current downfall.

Of Satan’s plan, but let me say, let me tell you something: think beyond literal children for a moment as well. Think of your dreams and vision, the words you’ve received from God, the callings and longings in your spirit. These are also your progeny. These are also God’s means of deliverance. These are God’s means of your freedom of going out so that you can enter in.

Both Exodus and Hebrews clarify Amram and Jochebed’s daring decision to defy authorities. In Exodus 2, it says, verse 2, “She saw he was goodly or beautiful.” But in Hebrews 11. 23, it seems to repeat this, but it adds a different word. Here, in the book of Hebrews chapter 11, it says, “Faith Moses when he was born was hidden three months by his parents because they saw that he was a beautiful or comely or proper child and they were not afraid of the king’s command.”

Now, come on. God isn’t repetitious. He doesn’t play word games. I know every child is acceptable to his parents, although I think there are some babies only a mother can love, but you understand that when God repeats this word twice, there’s got to be a reason. The Spirit is trying to say something to you.

Amram and Jochebed identified something unique about this child. Now this is such an extremely important point that I cannot underline it enough for you. They already had two fine children. Aaron, who we know, their firstborn son, Miriam, who was about 13 years old at this time, was already an outspoken, liberated, young Israeli woman.

Why spare an entire family? Why challenge an entire family? Why take the danger of submitting this entire family to death? Because, the Bible says, that’s a word of deliberation. Because, that’s a word of decision, choice. Because this child was unusual. Maybe a natural handsomeness, because he must have been unusually comely to have even caused Pharaoh’s daughter to defy her father’s command.

But there’s something else here. The word in Hebrews 11, “they saw he was a proper or beautiful child,” is a most rare word in the original Greek. It is the word osteos. And the word osteos, translated beautiful, for whatever reason, in Hebrews 11, is actually the word that means city. That’s right, city. The place where there’s buildings and people and streets and industry.

What on earth does a city have to do with a baby’s countenance? Well, let’s try something on for size. Four times in the book of Hebrews, in chapters 11:10, 11:16, 12:22, and 13:14, the believer’s struggle is referred to as a search for or a commitment to a city whose foundation’s builder and maker is God.

The contrast, of course, is made with any other earthly city. In fact, Hebrews 13:14 specifically states that the believer has no continuing city here but searches for the city which is to come. In other words, the only way you can really understand the struggle that believers have with this material world system is that we walk through the cities of this world, we have citizenship in the cities of this world, but our hearts are set on a city whose foundations are built by God.

And this little Levite child had the countenance of the city of God. You’ll never persuade me that God uses this word simply because he was a bonny child. He was handsome. Amram and Jochebed would risk their whole family because they saw in that baby’s countenance the light of the heavenly street lamps of the city of God.

There was a set to that baby’s jaw that said he came from some different kind of architecture. I need to say this to you: Divine origin always has a recognizable stamp to it. You’ll know what’s born of God and conceived by His Spirit, because that which is born of God’s purpose has its own rare separate countenance, and godly people recognize it.

Listen, I don’t have time, and I wouldn’t get sick for the designs, conceptions, and institutions that men birth. I cannot risk my life or my limb for somebody else’s good ideas. Good Christian stewardship demands that I know the difference between that which is born of God and that which is born of men.

I’m in an era surrounded by pharaohs and under the sentence of death. And as a believer, I must have discernment. I must protect that which is born of the Spirit, not that which is born of the flesh. When Paul cries out in Philippians 1:10, “Learn to approve things which are excellent,” he means things that differ from other things by being superior.

Know how to put priorities in your life. Now, this child was a sovereign link in the covenant. This child had a purpose in the darkest moments of Israel’s history. So, Amram and Jochebed decided, in fact, Exodus says, they hid him for three months. But the writer to the Hebrews says, by faith, Moses, when he was born, was hidden by his parents for three months.

Naturally, Jacob did the actual hiding. Three, of course, is a biblical number for death. It’s the biblical number for surrender. Three is the biblical number to prepare for a miracle. Jonah was in the whale’s belly, Jesus in the grave, and so forth. Let me tell you something: Ninety days is a long time to hold your breath.

Every time a soldier walked outside your little hovel, how many times did that little baby cry just as a soldier was passing by? How long is three months when the sentence of death attends every outcry of a baby? How well could you sleep with soldiers outside knowing that at any time the baby cries, it’s death for your household?

I have a mystery for you. God identifies Amram and Jochebed’s faith by the process of their hiding, not by the seemingly more significant act of surrendering the child to the river. Do you understand this? Maybe you need to consult with me about a third important biblical principle this morning. I refer to Stephen’s dramatic message given in Acts chapter 7 to the elders and scribes.

Perhaps you want to turn to it, or just follow the words. When the time of the promise drew near, which God had sworn to Abraham, the people grew and multiplied, till another king arose who did not know Joseph. This man dealt treacherously with the people, oppressing our forefathers and making them expose their babies so that they might not live.

But at this time, Moses was born and was well-pleasing to God. He was brought up in his father’s house for three months. And when he was set out, Pharaoh’s daughter took him and brought him up as her own son. Now here is an entirely different word. First, in this time, in that Acts chapter 7 passage, both words are used.

During this time, the Kronos time. But in this particular phrase, at this time, meaning at this season of time, at this particular crisis, as the promise of God grew particularly near, this child was born, and he was brought up for three months, not just hidden. Notice the difference. Acts 7 says he was brought up.

And by the way, that word in the original means he was reared physically or mentally. He was nourished, and it’s from an important Greek word source, which means to cause something to rise, to cause something to stand. In classical Greek, it always meant to nourish a child so that it’d be improved not only by growth.

Listen, sir, you might as well abort that child on the birth stool as to wrap him up in a cloth and submit him to the dark rivers of death without having nourished and caused that projection of God’s purpose to stand up. There’s a real Pharaoh and a real river of death and a real death. And unless God’s people know how to strengthen, nourish, fatten, and bring up the thing which God has given, it will not stand.

Go with me again to that little Egyptian hovel, that little slave hovel. Every time a diaper is changed, every time there’s a feeding, there’s an intercession. Amram, the father, stands at the doorpost, quoting the promises of the covenant. Aaron and Miriam kneel at the crib side, noiselessly mouthing intercessions to God.

Amram crosses to the crib as he has a hundred times, and he lays his patriarchal hand on that baby’s brow, and he anoints him for the hundredth time. They are making the promise of God stand. They are nourishing. They are feeding. They are establishing. They are strengthening the word.

Now, brother, there’s the weakness of current Christianity. If it is of God, it will succeed. If it’s not of God, it will fail. Que sera, sera. What will be, will be. Who says so? Faith is a stand. It’s an outspoken declaration. God honors these two people because for three months they nourish, they prepare, and they cause the purpose of God to stand up.

If we ever do reach the point of conception, if we ever do reach the point of going on in the covenant despite all the fearful prospects of the antagonistic world system, if we ever birth a future, if we ever do cooperate with God to bring forth a purpose, we too often commit that purpose to the premature bath of the waters of death.

There’s no agony of spirit. There’s no walking out on the floor of identity. There’s no claiming the promise. There’s no praying through. It’s birthed, and we say good luck, and when it dies, we say, “Well, I didn’t think it was gonna work anyway.”

These spiritual promises, God won’t deny himself. By faith, Abel offered. By faith, Enoch walked. By faith, Noah prepared. By faith, Abraham obeyed, went out, and sojourned. By faith, Sarah received strength to conceive. Listen to the word of God, sir. Without faith, it’s impossible to please Him with whom we have to do.

He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. Oh, I have faith. Pew sitting and arm folding. God wants me to do it; it’s alright with me. If God wants to do something, great. Go to it, God! That’s why we’re barren. Some of us have a backyard filled with aborted spiritual children. And our churches collectively have whole graveyards of aborted spiritual purposes.

Because we don’t diligently nourish and cause to stand up what God has said. I want to ask you a question this morning. What great leader that God intended to stand, what great intended plan, what great intervention of God, have we destroyed, failing to hide it, to nourish it, to improve its growth, before committing it to the sovereignty of time?

We know that the Satanist churches fast and pray every Thursday of every week for the spiritual failure, the moral failure of ministers. Name me a church that fasts and prays one day a week for the spiritual strength of its spiritual leadership. Oh, that will be; it’s in God’s hands. Well, I hope you have that understanding.

Three months they nourish the ideal of God, and go back again to Exodus chapter 2, verses 1 through 14. When it cannot be any further nourished, and they have the release of God, when she could no longer hide him, she took an ark of bulrushes, daubed it with slime and pitch, put the child in it, laid it to the flags by the river’s brink.

And I know time is limited this morning, but you must hear that. What was she doing? Was that a fatal act? We can’t take a chance anymore with this baby’s crying. It’s going to destroy us. Was it a fatalistic kind of thing? Let me quote to you from one of the great Bible scholars of all time, Dr. C. H. McIntosh. He asks this question: Was this babe placed in the ark as a suggestion of a mother’s heart? Was she cherishing the fond but visionary hope that thereby she would save her treasure from the ruthless hand of death? Were we to reply to the above inquiry in the official affirmative, we should, I believe, lose the beauteous teaching of this entire scene.

How could we ever suppose that that ark was devised by one who saw no other portion or destiny for her child but death by drowning? Impossible. We can only look upon that significant little structure as faith’s draft. Now that’s the old English word for check, okay? A check, a bank check, faith’s draft.

Macintosh said we that little structure as the

check of faith that is handed into the treasury of the God of resurrection. It was devised by the hand of faith as a vessel of mercy to carry a proper child safely over death’s dark waters into the place assigned to him in the immutable purposes of the living God. Do you hear what that man says? That ark was a check written by faith on the treasury of the God of resurrection.

When she knew the nourishing was over, when she knew that experience was over, it was time to release. And she could release, by faith, the thing that she knew she had nourished and caused to stand up. And just before we pray, Ken, you can turn off the machine, please.

This is such an inimitably, inevitably personal thing. Not one single man in this room will ever stand before Jesus Christ and say, “It’s because of the preacher you gave me. It’s because of the church I was with. It’s because the day was dark. It’s because there was so much opposition.” When you stand before Christ, sir, it’s a far more personal thing than that.

And if ever there’s a story to be told out of this incredible passage of scripture, it’s a man who in the midst of the darkness of everything says God’s purpose will go on. And having joined himself with one who’s allied by spirit to that decision, they conceive and birth a child. But being not fatalist like most of us but people of faith, they understood the necessity of causing that child to be nourished and rise up.

And then, in the moment of God’s purpose, to be released. No case, salah, salah, if it be, it will be. Not with these people. They understood. And I so love those words, I gave them to you, I hope they stay in your heart. I love those words of that old English scholar who says, “Listen, if you think that ark was just some fatalistic act of a mother who hoped to save a child, forget it.

That ark was a check that was written on the treasury of heaven. It was written on the treasury of the God of resurrection. It was backed and nourished by faith. And when finally the releasing came, when the child is put into the river, it’s not the fatalistic act that most of us spend our lives with. It’s an act of ultimate companionship with the covenant purposes of God.” I asked a moment ago, it’s not. What’s your backyard look like? Spiritually speaking.

How many of the purposes that God meant to be, and isn’t that really going to be the subject of the judgment seat of Christ? One dear woman who heard us speak many years ago wrote a lovely poem. I wish I could quote it exactly, but she said when we stand before the judgment seat of Christ and we see the plans of our life as he would have had, had we not blocked him there and checked him here and would not let him rule.

God doesn’t have you in a comparison game with somebody else. It’s not you versus this one. It’s what God intended for you. What he means for you in the midst of the circumstances, however, they are dark, they are to believe in the covenant of God and to go on, go on, go on. When everything says quit and give up and run for cover, you stare the Pharaohs of the world in the face and say, “I believe in the God of resurrection and I plan to be involved in God’s means of deliverance.” Let’s bow our heads together, please.

There isn’t anything that involves anybody else in your life, ultimately. You know, you can spend your life saying, “The wife you gave me, the husband you gave me, the children you gave me, the place you put me.” That’s all facetious. Ultimately, I stand, you stand before the Lord based on all that He knows to be true of our lives.

And certainly, He knows us better than we know ourselves.

But the challenge before you this morning, the challenge of the Word before you, is to cooperate with His purposes in your life, however dark the circumstance. While our heads are bowed, just for personal, I want to ask a question. How many of you know that there was a divine purpose of God in your life that was aborted because you didn’t cause it to stand up?

You didn’t really put the intercession behind it; you just kind of thrust it out on the river too quickly, and you know that’s a clear word from the Lord in your life. May I just see your hand? You know that to be true. Yes. Yes. Amen. Yes.

He wants to work a new work in you. He wants to take that moment and bring out of that moment a sense of understanding. The next word He gives you, you’re going to know how to deal with it by His grace and power. We ask you this: Does God ask, is God asking of you right now a declaration of faith?

Against discouraging circumstances. Is He asking you to be outspoken and blunt, confessing His purpose when everything seems dark around you? And that’s the commission you’re in right now. May I see your hand? God is asking you. He’s asking you like this man. Go ahead. Conceive life when all around you is the sentence of death.

Thank you. Stand with me, please.

Would you, uh, just kind of move into this center aisle and join hands? I’d like you to do that this morning as we close this service together.

You know, you are such a, uh, purposeful group of people. God really… Gives you and deals with you. And I’m always surprised sometimes at how intensely the word emerges in these services. And, and, and some of you might say, why? You know. What’s there about this group that makes such a word so important? I want you to understand with me this morning.

It’s one man, one woman. In a culture that is so enslaved, even among the people of God, so attentive on just surviving, but it’s a man and a woman who can believe God to be the source through which the Word comes. Understand your importance before the Lord this morning. One of you. Ideas are more important than armies.

One man’s choice shaped the destiny of his family. Changed the direction of life. That’s because God knows the power He’s invested in you. When He, the Holy Spirit, this morning, works a word in you, any kinds of work, works it in. How many want to let that word work in? How many say, God’s spoken to me this morning.

I want that word to work in my spirit. Alright. Amen. Let it happen. Don’t let the birds pick the seed of the word, but let it happen. The prayer rooms open here. Of course, we also have a time of sharing out there with some coffee and opportunities for you to share with others, but just. Let that word complete its purpose.

That’s the most important thing for you today, is that the word fulfills its purpose in your life. Let’s pray. Lord, thank you for this group of people. Thank you for the honesty with which many have expressed in their own lives portions of the word that already have begun to spotlight and pinpoint areas of change.

We ask you, Lord, by your grace to complete and work that word to your glory, fulfill it. Don’t let one person come short of nourishing by one day that which you’ve committed to us. Until the thing you’ve said will come to pass.