May 11, 2025
Moms Who Impact Eternity
Exodus 2:1-10
This week, we are going to take a break from our sermon series on “Churchy Words” because today is Mother’s Day. When it comes to Moms, it’s tough to specifically define what it means to be one. Sure, we can go to the Hebrew in the Old Testament, and if we do, we will see that in Hebrew, Mom means biological Mom. When we go to the New Testament, we find that the Greek word means the same. There is only one slightly interesting thing in the Greek when it comes to the word Mom and that is the word mother. This is where they get the contemporary term for “factory-built”. This implies your Mom is the factory in which you were built. Psalm 139:13 tells us that God knit us together in our Mother’s womb, so there is also a Biblical precedent for this idea. However, when it comes to defining Moms, it’s very difficult because they wear so many hats. It’s almost impossible to define one properly outside of the biological sense. The person who fulfills the role of a Mom (outside of a biological sense) can look different, too. It can be your biological mom, a stepmom, a grandmother, an aunt, or a sister. That list can go on and on as to who can step in and act as a Mom to a child. Therefore, instead of continuing in our sermon series and trying to specifically define what a Mother is, I want to look at a Mom in Scripture who not only impacted their child’s life positively, but she made an impact on eternity. My prayer is that whether you are a mother this morning or not, you can see what we can all do in our own lives, as well as the lives of others, to make an impact on eternity.
Before we turn to our passage in Exodus this morning, I realize that we do have a “Churchy Word” that we need to briefly define this morning, and that’s the word “Eternity”. Eternity is sometimes a hard concept to understand. When we speak of eternity, we are speaking of anything that is outside of time, space, and matter. Scripture tells us that eternity is where God exists (Isaiah 43:13), and we exist in the space and time that God created at the beginning, as recorded in Genesis 1:1. Because God created time and space, He must transcend (or exist outside of) time and space. When we speak of eternity, we are speaking of something (usually in the future) that takes place outside of the time and space of this world. We all have a part of us that will live in eternity, and we call that part our soul, but where your soul will spend eternity depends on what you do with Jesus Christ before you get to eternity. If you place your faith in Jesus, you will spend eternity with Him. If you do not place your faith in Jesus, you will spend eternity apart from Him. When we speak of making an impact on eternity this morning, we are speaking of making an impact so that more people will have the opportunity to trust Jesus as well and spend eternity with Him. Yes, anyone can make an impact on this world, but because our time here is so fleeting and our time in eternity is so unfathomably infinite, we need to invest in the eternal with lives in our present. That’s what we are going to see a mother do here in Scripture this morning. So if you have your Bibles, turn with me to the second chapter of the second book of the Old Testament, to the book of Exodus, where we meet an amazing Mom named Jochebed.
Moms who Impact Eternity have Courage. - Exodus 2:1-2
About this time, a man and woman from the tribe of Levi got married. The woman became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She saw that he was a special baby and kept him hidden for three months.
Before we start speaking about Jochebed and her courage, we need to understand the circumstances that led to her needing to be courageous in the first place. The first chapter of Exodus tells us just that. It all starts with the story of Joseph from the book of Genesis. Despite how he was treated by his brothers, he rescued his family during a famine because of his position in the court of Pharaoh. After that, Jacob (Joseph’s dad) brought all his sons and their families to Egypt, and everything seemed to be going fine. Well, time passed, and the children of Israel (or Jacob) grew in number. Those in Egyptian leadership who remembered Joseph and what he had done had all passed away. When new rulers came along, all they knew was that these Israelites were more numerous and stronger than the Egyptians. They worried the Hebrews might rise and side with their enemies and wipe them out. Therefore, the Pharaoh had the children of Israel enslaved, and they made sure those who ruled over them were extremely harsh. The Pharaoh was hoping this would wear them down so that they would no longer be a threat, but that didn’t work. So the Pharaoh gave an order to the Israelite midwives that they were to kill every male baby that was born to the Israelites. Of course, the midwives didn’t obey, and God blessed them for it. However, that act of defiance by the midwives was the last straw for Pharaoh. He made a command to all the people to throw every newborn Hebrew boy they found into the Nile River, and this is where we find ourselves as we start in Chapter 2.
It’s here in the first verse that we meet Jochebed (even though we aren’t told her name till Chapter 6 of Exodus). She would be the Mother of Moses and quickly finds herself in a rather serious situation. She became pregnant at a time when more than just the Hebrew midwives were looking to kill all newborn male Hebrew babies. The Pharaoh had now commanded everyone to be on the lookout and throw any Hebrew male newborn into the Nile River. I’m sure this fact alone made Jochebed a little unnerved throughout her entire pregnancy, not knowing if the child she was carrying would be a boy or a girl, or whether she would be able to keep it or it would be killed. Then, after all those months of concern, the day came when the midwife told her, “It’s a boy”, and that proclamation led her directly into a very tough decision for her and her husband. Would they be obedient to the government that commanded that the child be put to death immediately, or would they be obedient to God and choose life for her child (Deuteronomy 30:19)? This seems like it should be an easy choice. We must remember it’s one thing to say you will do the right thing and a very different thing to do it. It was during this choice that we saw the courage of a Mother. (While Hebrews tells us that Moses’ Mother and Father were both part of this decision, since the text only mentions his Mother, from this point on we will just speak of his Mother.) You see, by choosing life for her child, not only was her child's life still in danger, but she had now put her own life in jeopardy as well because if she was caught with a newborn boy, she would be found guilty of defying the Pharaoh and could have been sentenced to death. Despite all the possible consequences of her actions, Jochebed made the courageous choice by choosing life for her child, even though the culture discouraged her from doing so. This was the first of many decisions to be obedient that God would bless and use to impact eternity. This obedience would be the first step in Moses being called by God to fulfill the promise He had made to Abraham. He was to bring the Israelites out of captivity in Egypt and into the promised land. He would then use His chosen people to bring Jesus into the world to bring forgiveness to mankind. Want to talk about a single choice of a Mom making an impact on eternity? Jochebed’s courageous obedience did just that. We are still feeling the effects of her courageous decision to choose life even to this day.
When it comes to being a mother, as well as a follower of Christ, each of us has a very similar decision we must make, and we must make it every day. To make the correct choice, it is going to require the same courage that Jochebed showed. Jochebed lived in and brought Moses into a culture of death. Despite the culture, she chose life no matter what it would cost. We live in a culture that promotes death as well, whether it’s disguised as a choice of convenience before a child is even born, or it’s all the seemingly wonderful things this world has to offer. All of it is death because when it’s not of God, it’s of sin, and all sin leads to death (Romans 6:23). We are going to have to make courageous choices for ourselves as well as our children and choose the things of God in every part of our lives. The truth is, we can have all we want of either; the world is more than willing to give you everything that it offers, and Jesus will give you all of Himself that you want, but only one of those choices will lead to life — we must choose wisely. The reason this takes courage is that when we choose Jesus for ourselves and our children, the world will look down upon us. Now I’m not trying to make us a victim because when we have Jesus, we aren’t victims, but we must understand the results of following Jesus in a broken world. When we make the courageous decision to follow Jesus and live a Kingdom life, raise Kingdom children, and live on mission, telling everyone about the hope we have in Jesus, it’s going to take more than just courage. It’s going to take faith as well. This is exactly what Jochebed had. She had so much faith that she is recorded in the Hall of Faith in the book of Hebrews because of what her faith spurred her to do.
Moms who Impact Eternity have Faith. - Exodus 2:3-9
But when she could no longer hide him, she got a basket made of papyrus reeds and waterproofed it with tar and pitch. She put the baby in the basket and laid it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile River. The baby’s sister then stood at a distance, watching to see what would happen to him. Soon, Pharaoh’s daughter came down to bathe in the river, and her attendants walked along the riverbank. When the princess saw the basket among the reeds, she sent her maid to get it for her. When the princess opened it, she saw the baby. The little boy was crying, and she felt sorry for him. “This must be one of the Hebrew children,” she said. Then the baby’s sister approached the princess. “Should I go and find one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?” she asked. “Yes, do!” the princess replied. So the girl went and called the baby’s mother. “Take this baby and nurse him for me,” the princess told the baby’s mother. “I will pay you for your help.” So the woman took her baby home and nursed him.
The time came when her baby could no longer be hidden from the world, and Jochebed was faced with another problem. How could she raise this child without facing the consequences of her disobedience to the Pharaoh, not only for herself but for her child as well? Just as she had done at his birth, Jochebed trusted God because He had shown her what she was to do. Even though it might not have made a lot of sense at the time. She trusted God and trusted her child into God’s hands, and her obedience showed it. As we spoke about last week, when God calls us to a task, it’s always going to be a God-sized task that will require us to trust Him and not ourselves to accomplish it. This was a God-sized task for a mother to place her three-month-old in the Nile River. Not only does it seem like her child would be at the mercy of the currents, the crocodiles, and every other nasty thing that the river held, but his mother wouldn’t be there to take care of him through it all. She had to trust God completely with the life of her child, and she did. She was obedient to what God had called her to, and then her faith caused her child and her family to be blessed. Just look at the blessing God brought to her because of her obedience. God gave Moses safety that she could not have offered to himself. Because of her obedience and faith, there was now an adoptive mother (Pharaoh's daughter) in the picture who had the authority to make sure the baby would not be harmed. God’s blessing because of the faith of Jochebed didn’t stop there. God went above and beyond, like He always does. Not only was the baby safe, but she was going to get the chance to raise the child and pour into the child during his most formative years. This was a blessing that I’m sure she thought was all but impossible just a few days before, but with God, all things are possible. The blessings still didn’t stop there. Not only was she given the ability to raise him, but she was now going to be paid for something she would have done for free. Her faith in God had caused her to resist the world. Her faith caused her to release her child, and now her faith was going to let her raise her child. This is extremely important because it would be in these moments that she would have gotten to share the stories about God with Moses. These were the times when she would have been able to pray with Moses, and she would have gotten the chance to pray for Moses. She set a Godly foundation in the life of her child that was paramount to his life. We see that this investment paid off because Moses decided to side with the God of Jacob instead of the gods of the Egyptians. Again, this is an excellent example of how we are living out our faith and instilling faith in our children. There is a day when we are going to have to release our children into the world. Psalm 127:4 tells us that children are like arrows in the hands of a mighty warrior. The idea is that there is a season when you are finished aiming at the child and investing in your child — you must let them go. What have you been aiming your child at during this time? Are you aiming at them in such a way that they are obsessed and seeking the things of this world, or have you aimed them in such a way that they seek the Lord in everything? Only one of those choices will have a positive impact on eternity. What we have decided to point our children to tells us a lot about our faith in God and, in turn, our relationship with Him. What is our faith and obedience showing the world about God?
Moms Who Impact Eternity Dream for Their Children. - Exodus 2:10
Later, when the boy was older, his mother brought him back to Pharaoh’s daughter, who adopted him as her own son. The princess named him Moses, for she explained, “I lifted him out of the water.”
Parents have seemingly lost the ability to dream for their children. So many parents today are only looking out for themselves to the detriment of their children. If you just look around, you will see many children in our community who are continually suffering from the selfish decisions of their parents. However, many parents who do dream for their children only dream of earthly things for their kids — to be a doctor or an athlete. Very rarely do we dream Biblically with eternity in mind for our children, but that’s what Jochebed did. No doubt from the moment Moses was born, she prayed and dreamed big for him, wanting the best God could offer Him, and maybe even dreamed that he might be the one to set them free from captivity. Her dreams would have been just that unless she had acted in faith and courage on his behalf. When she did, she had set him up for spiritual success. She was able to raise him in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, she was able to give him that foundation that he would need to be used by God, and now, as she released him into the world. Because of her faith, the Lord gave him everything he would need to be used by Him. He would receive the education and leadership training that he would need for God to use him to lead the children of Israel to the promised land. Of course, there is personal responsibility on Moses' part, but his Mother was faithful to Proverbs 22:6, which says, “Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it”. That gave him a great starting point. We need to do the same for our children as well. Not all will be the president, not all will be doctors, not all will be professional athletes, but every one of them will have to stand before God and give an account of what they have done with their lives. We need to be like Jochebed and make sure we are giving them the best start that we can. This world will do everything it can to stop God from using our children and ourselves to impact eternity for Christ. We need to make sure we are doing everything we can to make sure the world doesn’t win.
