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[0:00] Take your Bibles this morning and you can go ahead and open them if you would to Hebrews chapter 11 and I'll get to that text in just a moment.

[0:21] But before I read that text, I want to read another one to you. Let me see if I can find it here.

[0:33] I thought I had it marked and I just failed to do it. No, that's not it.

[0:47] You can be looking for Hebrews chapter 11. Do you have it? All right. Good. Say amen if you have it.

[0:59] All right. Listen to this verse. This is not in Hebrews. This is in Proverbs 23 verse 22. Don't turn to it. But I want you to stay right there at Hebrews chapter 11.

[1:13] The Bible says, listen to your father who begot you. And do not despise your mother when she is old.

[1:25] You know what that means? It means you honor her all her life and all your life. In fact, I would even add to that if you're here and your mother's already with Jesus, you still honor her even now.

[1:40] Buy the truth. Do not sell it. All wisdom and instruction and understanding. The father of the righteous will greatly rejoice.

[1:52] And he who begets a wise child will delight in him. Let your father and your mother be glad and let her, he emphasizes the mother here, let her who bore you rejoice.

[2:07] That's a tremendous verse of scripture. Now, wouldn't you like to be the source, the ongoing source of your mother's rejoicing?

[2:20] Your mother's gladness? Well, you should be. Right? And not just on this day. All right. But every day of your lives. Now, this morning, I'm going to talk about one particular mother.

[2:35] One of my favorite mothers in the Bible. And before I identify her or give you her name, let me give you just a little or ask you a little Bible trivia question.

[2:49] Who were Amram and Yochebed? That's how the Hebrews would pronounce it. Who were they? Don't answer that yet.

[3:00] Just start thinking about that and searching your Bible knowledge that you have. Amram and Yochebed. All right?

[3:12] As I search through the Bible, did you know the Bible mentions quite a number of mothers? It really does. In fact, someone has done a study and they have come up with 122 mothers that are made mention of in some way or another, most of them in passing.

[3:31] 122 of them in the Word of God. And as you look at the mothers that are mentioned or alluded to in the Bible, you come to realize that very little is said about them.

[3:43] I mean very little. Now, I know that we might be able to explain some of that by way of the culture, the Jewish culture and Hebrew culture. But the Bible just doesn't mention much about them.

[3:56] In fact, many of them are not even named in the Bible. Out of 120 of them. Two of them. We don't even have their names.

[4:09] And yet, I would suggest to you that we can gain a wealth of knowledge about nearly every one of these mothers. How? By studying their children.

[4:20] Because the mothers that are mentioned in the Bible, many of these mothers had children that were great and did great things for God.

[4:31] And so we can study the lives of their children and we'll know something about, a lot about, by the way, about the mothers. You see, God didn't call some of these men, these great men that we read about the characters in the Bible, didn't call them and then suddenly they went from, you know, kind of mediocre, not so faithful kind of people to suddenly great faithful people.

[4:53] These people were brought up and raised in a family and influenced greatly by their parents. And I would say specifically by their mothers. And so we just study the kids and we learn something about the mamas.

[5:09] Now, the Bible doesn't have to say a whole lot about these mothers for us to learn something about them. For example, there's Sarah.

[5:20] There's a mother in the Bible, a very godly mother. And you know who she was, the mother of nations. She was the wife of Moses, of Abraham, excuse me.

[5:32] Did you catch that? All right. So there's Sarah. And Sarah, you know, Sarah left her or her, you know, Moses, Abraham took Sarah out of her home country and hometown of Ur.

[5:52] You know, I can just imagine she was living there in a plush apartment in Ur. And she could have said, no, Ur is where I'd rather stay.

[6:04] I just get allergic smelling hay. All right. And yet she went.

[6:15] So Sarah was obedient and followed her husband Abraham, actually followed the Lord. And then there was Lot's wife. And you remember Lot's wife in the Bible. Now, while Sarah was willing to leave everything behind there in Ur and move with her husband Abraham to this new land that God had given them, she left.

[6:38] But Lot's wife, on the other hand, so loved Sodom and so loved her life in that wicked city that she looked back forsook her husband, forsook her family, and forsook God himself.

[6:54] And she looked back and she was turned into a pillar of salt. Probably not a good candidate for a Mother's Day sermon. And then there was Rahab.

[7:05] You say, well, she's not a good candidate either because Rahab was a harlot, right? Well, I don't know about that. In fact, there's some pretty convincing scholarship out there, Bible scholarship, that says that Rahab was simply an innkeeper.

[7:21] And in those days, female innkeepers were often called harlots. Now, some of them were harlots. Immoral women. But I don't know that that's necessarily true of Rahab.

[7:33] But be that as it may, I do know that you find Rahab in the genealogy, in Matthew chapter 1, the genealogy of the Lord Jesus Christ. Bible scholars believe that she married the prince of Solomon, possibly one of the two spies that went into Jericho to check them out and to find out what kind of fortified city it was.

[7:56] You know, it was Rahab who hid the two spies. One of them was Solomon. And they think that maybe Rahab married Solomon. We don't really know. And then became the mother of Boaz.

[8:10] We do know that to be the case. Her son Boaz. And Boaz married Ruth, the Moabitess, a Gentile. And they had a son by the name of Obed.

[8:26] Thank you. And Obed had a son named Jesse. Y'all are good. And Jesse had a son named...

[8:37] Alright, say, you don't even need me here this morning. David, King David, through whose line came Jesus.

[8:48] Now, of all those you missed, you shouldn't miss that one. That's where it was all headed. So Rahab, you would have to admit, was a pretty important mama in the Bible. And there's Ruth, and Hannah, and Eunice, mother of Timothy, and Mary, of course.

[9:09] A lot of Marys in the Bible, but Mary, the mother of the Lord Jesus Christ. And many, many, many other mothers in the Bible, like Yochebed.

[9:22] Have you figured it out? Who were Amram and Yochebed? Moses' mom and dad. That's right. In Numbers, let me read that to you, so you'll make sure you know I'm right.

[9:39] And others who whispered it will know that we're right here. Numbers 26 and verse 59. The Bible says, The name of Amram's wife was Yachabed.

[9:54] I know you have a J there, but it's pronounced Yachabed. The daughter of Levi, who was born to Levi in Egypt and to Amram.

[10:05] She bore Aaron and Moses and their sister Miriam. All right? So now we know who Yachabed was. What do we know about her?

[10:15] Well, now, if you have your Bibles open to Hebrews chapter 11 and verse 23. I'm going to start there. And really kind of read on down a little ways, though our focus is going to be primarily verse 23.

[10:31] By faith, Moses, when he was born, was hidden three months by his parents because they saw he was a beautiful child. And they were not afraid of the king's commandment.

[10:45] By faith, Moses, when he became of age, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God than to enjoy the passing pleasures of sin.

[10:58] Esteeming the reproach of Christ, greater riches than the treasures in Egypt, for he looked to the reward. By faith, he forsook Egypt, not fearing the wrath of the king, for he endured as seeing him who is invisible.

[11:14] By faith, he kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, lest he who destroyed the firstborn should touch them. By faith, they passed through the Red Sea as by dry land, whereas the Egyptians attempted to do so were drowned.

[11:30] So, here is Yaakabed, a mother. A mother in the Bible. The mother of Moses. And Yaakabed, her name by name, you'll only find it two times in all of the Bible.

[11:46] This great mother. Just twice. I read one of them, and there's another place. And yet, we need to know, we need to understand that her faith is clear in Scripture through what we understand about her son.

[12:04] But not just about her son, but about some very key things she did as a mother. And the implications of these, we can learn a great deal about this mother.

[12:15] Her faith rises up as a monument to all mothers. And it does so primarily through her son, Moses. Now, I want you this morning to notice several things about her faith.

[12:30] The faith of a mother. And the first one ought to be comforting to all of us, but especially to the mothers among us. Her faith was a simple faith.

[12:40] Just a simple faith. I mean, that's the only way you could label it. Just considering what the Bible says about it. And by the way, what it says here in Hebrews pertains to her faith.

[12:55] Everyone mentioned in the 11th chapter of Hebrews are mentioned there because of their faith. And we are given, in many cases, some cases a little bit more information than other cases, but we are giving some information on their faith.

[13:11] And why God commended them as people of faith. And Jacobed was a woman of faith. And it was a simple, simple faith. Now, I think you have already noticed here as I read through this passage in Hebrews chapter 11 that the Bible is not just identifying the mother only issue.

[13:32] In fact, it says there, they. That is, the Bible there in Hebrews is identifying both father and mother.

[13:44] And Stephen, you can go to Acts chapter 7 sometime and read Stephen's sermon. He preached that great sermon and then he got paid with a truckload of rocks after he preached.

[13:55] But he preached also this very same history and also mentioned Moses and also mentions Moses' father. But Stephen, in his sermon in Acts 7, doesn't mention the mother.

[14:09] But, Moses himself, in Exodus, in fact it's Exodus chapter 2, Moses speaks of his mother.

[14:22] Specifically. Identifies her specifically and ascribes the faith that's mentioned here in Hebrews chapter 11, this act of faith, ascribes that act of faith to her.

[14:36] He said she hid him, hid Moses, three months. Now, do you wonder why Moses would speak of his mother and not so much his father?

[14:49] I don't wonder about that. In fact, how often do you hear a man speak of his godly mother? And it doesn't mean that we don't have godly fathers as well.

[15:00] But there's just something about the mother. And there's just something about the way that God uses a mother to teach spiritual truths to their children.

[15:11] And the sons will look back with reverence and praise of their godly mother. And so it's not an amazing thing that the writer of Hebrews, that's Paul, by the way, the writer of Hebrews, now Tom's not up here, so Diane, you pass that on to him, would you?

[15:34] He's praying for me. He better pray harder. Better pray about getting it right about Hebrews. But Paul didn't mention the mother. Stephen didn't mention the mother.

[15:45] But her son mentions her. And so we need to realize that what is said here certainly is true of Amram. I don't doubt that he was a man of faith. But specifically, it's ascribed, this act of faith, this wonderful thing that was done here to preserve Moses' life, was ascribed to the mother, Jacobed.

[16:08] See, I believe it was the faith of Jacobed that had such a profound impact upon Moses. And it was a simple faith.

[16:19] I mean, there's no other way you could label it. Verse 23 says, they, or when he was born, was hidden, that is, they hid him three months.

[16:33] Three months. They hid him three months. That's it. Now, Moses said, in Exodus chapter 2, verse 2, she hid him three months.

[16:45] Now, we're talking about an act of faith. Something that they did that, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, got them put in Hebrews chapter 11, this great hall of faith.

[16:59] And what did they do? They hid their child for three months. Big deal. We might say. What a simple thing.

[17:10] We don't read here in Hebrews chapter 11 like we could read a little bit later in the book. We don't read about them subduing kingdoms. We don't read here about them, you know, their righteousness or that they wrought righteousness or that they moved mountains.

[17:28] By faith, when he was born, was hid three months. That's it. No fanfare. No trumpet sound to it. And nothing about stopping lions' mouths and quenching fires and calling down fire and all those tremendous things that we read about in the book of Hebrews.

[17:50] And yet, listen, in God's viewpoint, hiding a little baby for three months is as great an example of faith as any of the others mentioned here in Hebrews chapter 11.

[18:01] It really was. Just a simple faith. Even when David slew Goliath and the armies of the Philistines, that may not have been a greater faith than defeating the evil desires of a Pharaoh by saving one little baby boy from death.

[18:25] Well, you know, someone will say, well, isn't that just simply the natural thing that a mother would do? I mean, wouldn't a mother just always do that? Want to protect her child?

[18:37] Well, certainly. And that is praiseworthy in and of itself, isn't it? And yet, God, here in Hebrews 11, was not praising Jacobed for her natural affections.

[18:52] He was praising her, honoring her here for the supernatural. And we would say, you see, nature, we would say nature led her to conceal the baby, but God said faith led her to do that.

[19:07] To conceal that baby for three months. Could she begin to fathom all that God would do through Moses eventually? Could she look out into the future and see that and know that?

[19:20] No, she couldn't even begin to comprehend what God would eventually do with Moses. She didn't have to. All God needed was for her to hide the baby for three months.

[19:37] That's simple faith. Secondly, not only was it a simple faith, but it was a smart faith. Very smart faith.

[19:51] Now, can you imagine keeping an infant concealed for three months? Huh? Can you? Three months. Yeah.

[20:04] I'd say three days would be next to impossible. With some babies, three minutes would be a major challenge. But Yaakabed did it.

[20:16] Did it. Now, how did she do it? Well, I don't have any idea. The Bible doesn't explain that. But she did it. And that implies some pretty significant things about her faith, the smartness of her faith.

[20:32] And let me just give you three. First of all, just think how wise it was. The wisdom of her faith. You say, that's something different.

[20:43] It isn't faith and wisdom. Oh, those are two different things. No, they go together. Hers was a wise faith. Can you imagine, I guess we could imagine that she hid the baby maybe in the stable with the animals or maybe hid the baby in some kind of storage area, storage room or, you know, walk-in closet.

[21:02] I don't think they had walk-in closets in those days. Or maybe hid the baby under the bed or something like that. Wherever it was, she was wise in the selecting of it.

[21:15] Now, see, listen. Understand this about faith. Faith that is not expressed through wisdom is foolish.

[21:29] Faith and wisdom go together. Faith without wisdom is foolish. Faith is expressed with the heart but also with the head. You see. She didn't just throw all caution to the wind.

[21:40] You know, I've got great faith and I know that God is going to protect this little baby so I'm not going to take certain measures, certain steps and be wise about this. She could have carried the baby out, you know, to the front door of their home for everybody to see it or maybe take the baby down to the local grocery store or when she's out shopping or going to church and taking the baby with her.

[22:00] She didn't do that. She didn't sit on the front porch and nurse the baby so that everybody could see. She acted wisely. She acted as though everything depended upon her concealing that little baby and God called it what?

[22:18] Faith. Called it faith. But it was a smart faith. A wise faith. And you see, there are a lot of folks who have this idea that if you have faith, you know, you can just act foolish.

[22:30] You can act like a fool. You know, with this kind of idea that we're, you know, using your head and wisdom and understanding and maybe even experience and education and other things like that or just plain old common sense that using that is somehow a show of unspirituality.

[22:48] It's not. God's given you a head to use. And it is to be used in perfect concert with your faith. And that's what this mother did.

[23:01] Albeit it's a very simple thing. But she was very wise about it. See, faith makes a person wise. Now, grant you, there are times when having faith is all you can do.

[23:13] Sometimes you are brought to that place and God allows you to be in that place. Sometimes God puts you in that place to test you, to try to reveal in you whether or not you have a complete faith in Him.

[23:28] And sometimes God puts us in those kind of situations. But if God has given you wisdom, if God has given you a head to use, then use it.

[23:42] See, the Christian life is not let go and let God. Not in that sense. And this mother had faith that was smart. She was wise in her faith and God honored her for that.

[23:55] But also, a second thing about her smart faith, it was a working faith. A working faith. Now, we don't know a lot about it. In fact, in Exodus chapter 2, just listen to it.

[24:07] Exodus chapter 2, verse 3. The Bible says, and 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.

[24:24] That's what she did. She worked. See, Jacobed was a mother of faith. And though it may seem odd to you, and certainly the details of the story seem a little odd to us, and yet she was doing what needed to be done in order to preserve this child, and she was working at it.

[24:46] And we need to draw that and apply that to our faith as well. Martin Luther wrote, he said, faith is a living, busy, active, powerful thing.

[24:58] It is impossible for it not to do us good continually. It never asks whether good works are to be done, but has done them before there is time to ask the question, and it is always doing them.

[25:11] Works. Anything wrong with works? And a faith that does not have works is a dead faith. or it is a worthless faith.

[25:24] And so, she worked. So it was not only, you know, this smart faith was not only a wise faith and a working faith, but thirdly, I think, is implied that it was a worshiping faith.

[25:40] Don't you know that she had to stay close to God during those days? I mean, at any moment, that baby could let out a cry.

[25:53] Some Egyptian soldier might be walking by or stationed outside the house at that time and hear that baby cry. All, that is all what could happen.

[26:05] At any moment, she may lose her baby. Can you imagine you as a mother the kind of faith that would be required?

[26:19] A faith that kept a close, constant devotion with God. Devotion and worship and prayer. I tell you, the tough job of motherhood, not like I know anything about it, but from my perspective, the tough job of motherhood demands a closeness to God.

[26:42] Closeness. This is a mother of simple faith. Smart faith. And then third, a mother of sensitive faith. She was sensitive. Sensitive to what? Sensitive to the will of God.

[26:58] Now see, we're getting much deeper as we go along here. More tangible things, more significant things about her faith, I think, are revealed in Scripture.

[27:09] Albeit, some of them implied. But she was sensitive to the will of God. Even though she could have never comprehended it. Never.

[27:21] Not in a million years. The text in verse 23 says something very interesting. It says that they saw He was a beautiful child.

[27:34] child. That's how it is translated in my version. King James, I think, says, now I've lost the name, goodly.

[27:48] Goodly or proper child. This says beautiful child. If you go back to Exodus chapter 2, you find the same thing.

[27:58] He is called a beautiful child. That is, the idea is that she did all this to protect him because he's a beautiful kid.

[28:14] Well, aren't all babies beautiful? To the mothers if to no one else. In fact, I heard about a family that had a lot of kids and named them all Bible names.

[28:27] And lo and behold, another one comes along and they named it Theophilus. Bible name. Bible says, Luke says he wrote the book of Acts to Theophilus.

[28:41] And somebody asked him about that and he said, well, you know, yeah, it's a Bible name and we've searched long and hard to find it. But really, it came from this. When he was born, we looked into his face and we saw that he was Theophilus looking baby we'd ever seen in our lives.

[28:57] I couldn't resist. And so maybe some parents might even admit that maybe their baby is not the prettiest baby that's ever come out.

[29:11] But really, to parents and to a mama, all their babies are beautiful babies. But that's not the idea here.

[29:22] That's not what the Bible's talking about here. In fact, it's not speaking to the outward appearance at all.

[29:34] The word here means fair. Fair to God. As a matter of fact. Stephen, in Acts chapter 7 and verse 20, said it this way.

[29:50] He said, he is well-pleasing to God. Literally, that's what he said. Well-pleasing to God. Now that's something different than the outward appearance and features of the face and so forth.

[30:04] Well-pleasing to God. I think, and you know, I'm not a big fan of the NIV. Some of you have an NIV. But I think they interpret here better. And they have it, he was no ordinary child.

[30:20] And in a sense that's the meaning. And when you bring all of the various references to this to bear, then you understand literally that it means that they saw something special about this child.

[30:34] They saw literally that God's hand was upon him. God had a special plan for him. Now, they didn't see what it was. I'm not suggesting that.

[30:45] And God didn't reveal this to them in a dream or some kind of vision or some prophet coming by and identifying well, God's got great things in store for him.

[30:56] They couldn't see that and know that and yet they did know that there was something different about this child. And they were very sensitive to the will of God.

[31:07] Something just beamed from the face of this child that only a godly mother could understand. And though she could not see it, specifically, she was sensitive to it and she hid the child and God called that faith.

[31:25] God called it faith. He was special to God. Number four, it was a strong faith. A strong faith.

[31:36] Again, there in verse 23 of Hebrews 11, the Bible says they were not afraid of the king's commandment. You see how much we're learning about the parents of Moses just from one verse of scripture in the Bible?

[31:53] They did not fear the king. Now you know the story at the time that Jacob had gave birth to Moses. The Pharaoh had issued an edict in the land that all the male Hebrew babies that were born were to be put to death.

[32:12] and you can imagine the kind of fear that was spreading throughout the land of Egypt and that place where the Hebrews lived.

[32:26] And yet the Bible says that Amram and Jacobed were not afraid. Were not afraid. They didn't have any fear. She did not fear.

[32:39] She had faith. Had faith. See, listen, four lives were in danger there. For the sake of Moses. Her husband, herself, Aaron, their older boy, Miriam, their daughter.

[32:58] And in faith, she will risk, run all risks. And so will, apparently, so will her family. And listen, through faith, you see, here's the application.

[33:09] Through faith, we must always do the right thing. Always the right thing according to God's will regardless of the consequences or the dangers that might be attached to it.

[33:21] Or even fears that we may experience. See, this was a strong faith. And also, this was a shared faith.

[33:34] Shared faith. This is interesting. The Bible says in verse 23, and I read it a moment ago, they were not afraid of the king's commandment.

[33:46] Then you skip on down there to verse 27. Do you see what it says there? By faith he, that's Moses, forsook Egypt, not fearing, not fearing the wrath of the king.

[34:00] You see that? Isn't that amazing? who taught Moses not to fear the king? Do you think?

[34:14] His godly mother. His mother. She shared her faith with him. And we could go on and read, and I did a moment ago at the beginning of the sermon.

[34:26] All that God did there in Moses' life. How he forsook Egypt and he chose rather, chose God.

[34:38] And all that God did for him. The faith, see, the faith Moses had developed because of his mother's faith. Now, isn't that what the Bible promises?

[34:50] In a sense, it's a promise in Proverbs 22. 6, where the Bible says train up a child in the way he or she should go, and when he or she is old, what?

[35:05] Not depart from it. This is a principle in Scripture. And by the way, train up a child means to, the short answer is to create a desire for God.

[35:20] To raise your child in such a way that you create a desire in them for God. Jacob had a simple faith in God and she shared it with her son Moses.

[35:34] And he went on to be one of the greatest men of faith that we read about in the Bible. Now, let me close by saying this to mothers and fathers.

[35:46] It is your faith shared with your children that prepares them to be all that God wants them to be. That's our responsibility as parents.

[35:58] To share the faith. The Bible says in Psalm 127 3, Behold, children are an heritage of the Lord, and the fruit of the womb is his reward.

[36:10] As arrows are in the hand of a mighty man, so are children of the youth. Happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them. Seems in our culture we don't care much for full quivers anymore.

[36:24] But the Bible says happy is the man whose quiver is full of them. Likening children to arrows. Have you ever considered that your child is an arrow?

[36:38] And what do you do with arrows? You shoot them. That's one location. We shoot them. See, through faith in God, Jacob had shot an arrow.

[36:51] arrow. And mothers over the centuries since have been shooting arrows. Some of those arrows have become missionaries in foreign countries. Because you see, an arrow can go where you can't go.

[37:05] And some have become preachers and some teachers and some just simply godly workers out there in the world and thank God for that. How important is that?

[37:17] And some have become faithful mothers and fathers with arrows of their own and they're shooting them. Jacobed was a mother of faith.

[37:30] What kind of faith was it? Simple, smart, sensitive, strong, and most of all, shared.

[37:42] Shared. And it led to a supernatural result, didn't it? In the life of Moses, Jacobed was a mother of faith. But it all started with a saving faith.

[37:57] That's the last one. It all started there, didn't it? That's the foundation for all these other features of her faith.

[38:10] There isn't any way for any of us to exercise faith in the sense of an active, working, worshiping faith if we do not know Jesus.

[38:27] If there hasn't first been a saving faith in the work of Jesus Christ at the cross. I think every mother ought to be a Christian.

[38:41] Don't you? I hope every mother in this room, every mother, born again Christian. And if you're not, why don't you start there?

[38:57] Place your faith in Jesus Christ. A saving faith is what everyone needs. Fathers as well as mothers. Husbands and wives.

[39:10] Men and women. Boys and girls. Faith in Jesus Christ. Have you believed in Jesus?

[39:22] Have you believed in Him? Trusted Him as your Lord and Savior? Then why don't you do that today? Why don't you respond with faith right now today?

[39:34] Thank you.