A sermon on Exodus 1:22-2:10 by Rev Richard Keith on Sunday 8 February 2026
Last week we began our series on Women in the Bible by looking at two Israelite women who changed history. Today we continue that series, because these aren’t just inspiring stories. They help us understand how God works in the world. These women aren’t side characters in the Bible’s story. They are people through whom God chose to accomplish his purposes, and their lives have as much to teach us today as any king or prophet.
Last week we saw how the king of Egypt, driven by fear and hatred, plotted the destruction of the Israelites. He enslaved them. He worked them ruthlessly. And when that didn’t stop their numbers from growing, he ordered something unthinkable, the murder of every Hebrew baby boy. He commanded the midwives Shiphrah and Puah to kill the boys at birth, to carry out genocide while the mothers were at their most vulnerable.
But those two women feared God more than they feared the king. They refused to kill the baby boys. They deceived the king to protect innocent life. And God blessed them for it, preserving the names of the midwives in Scripture while Pharaoh’s name is forgotten.
But the king of Egypt didn’t give up. When the midwives’ quiet resistance foiled his secret plan, he issued a new decree, public, brutal, and impossible to escape. Exodus chapter 1 ends with these chilling words: “Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: ‘Every boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.’”
No longer a hidden command to a few midwives, now every Egyptian was ordered to take part. Hebrew baby boys were to be drowned in the river. In giving that command, the king did not just dehumanise the Hebrews. He stripped away the humanity of his own people as well. He turned ordinary men and women into instruments of cruelty. He demanded that they silence their compassion, ignore their conscience, and become participants in evil.
It’s hard to imagine a darker moment in Israel’s history. It looked unstoppable. It looked hopeless. And it is right here, at this moment of greatest danger, that we meet three more women who refused to let evil have the final word.
Exodus chapter 2 opens with a woman facing an impossible choice. Her name was Jochebed, an Israelite woman from the tribe of Levi who gave birth to a son. And in Egypt, that meant her child was marked for death.
This wasn’t her first pregnancy. She already had two children, Miriam and Aaron. Miriam was the eldest and shared the duty of caring for her younger brother. Aaron had been born when Pharaoh’s decree was still secret, when the midwives were ordered to kill Hebrew boys at birth. But through the midwives’ faithfulness, Aaron had lived. Jochebed had known fear then, but she had also known hope.
Now everything had changed. The king’s decree was public. Every Hebrew boy was to be thrown into the Nile. And Jochebed was pregnant again. For nine months she carried this child under the shadow of that command. Every movement of the baby raised the same terrible question: boy or girl? Life or death?
Perhaps she hoped for another girl, not because she loved daughters more, but because a daughter could live. Perhaps she hoped for another boy, trusting God’s promise that Abraham’s descendants would become a great nation. Or perhaps she was afraid to hope at all, because hope crushed too often can break the heart.
But the baby came. And when Jochebed looked into her child’s face, she saw she had another son. Every Hebrew mother who gave birth to a boy faced this horror. They carried their child for nine months, endured labour, held their newborn, and knew he was condemned, not for anything he had done, but simply because he was Hebrew and born male, born under a king who had declared war on the Israelites.
Most mothers would have been paralysed by grief and fear. But Jochebed looked at her son and saw that he was fine—beautiful, good, and full of promise. She saw a life worth fighting for. And she made a decision. She would not comply with the king’s inhuman command. She would hide him.
For three months she kept him alive in secret, muffling his cries and living in constant fear of discovery. For three months she defied the most powerful king in the world from her own home, sustained only by courage and faith that this child’s life mattered to God. But babies grow louder. Eventually he could no longer be hidden.
So Jochebed took a basket, coated it with tar and pitch, placed her baby inside, and set it among the reeds along the bank of the Nile, the very river where Hebrew boys were meant to die. She placed her son in the waters of death and entrusted him to the God who gives life. She could not control what would happen next. But she could place her child into God’s hands. And sometimes that is what faith looks like, doing what we can and trusting God with what we cannot.
How many of us are holding onto things we cannot control? A child’s future we cannot secure. A situation at work we cannot fix. A relationship we cannot heal. A diagnosis we cannot reverse. We do everything we can, and it’s still not enough. That’s when faith means placing what we love most into God’s hands and trusting him with the outcome. Not because we stop caring. Not because we give up. But because we recognise that some things only God can do. Jochebed couldn’t save her son. But God could.
But Jochebed was not alone. Her daughter Miriam stood at a distance, watching to see what would happen. She was not merely curious. She was ready. This was courage of a quieter kind, the courage to wait, to watch, and to be prepared for the moment God might open a door.
And then Pharaoh’s daughter came to the river to bathe. Of all the people who might have found the basket, it was the king’s own daughter, the one most expected to carry out her father’s command. She saw the basket. She had it brought to her. She opened it and saw the baby crying.
Everything hung in the balance. One word from her could have ended his life. But something her father could not command happened. The princess felt compassion. She saw in the baby not an enemy to be eliminated, but a child in need.
Remember what we saw earlier. The king did not just dehumanise the Hebrews. He stripped away the humanity of his own people by his command. He demanded they silence compassion and ignore conscience. But his daughter refused. She remembered the humanity she shared with the baby. And she chose mercy over obedience to evil.
But compassion alone wasn’t enough to save the boy. The princess had a problem. She wanted to keep the baby, but he needed to be nursed. She needed a Hebrew wet nurse. And that’s when Miriam stepped forward. This is the crucial moment in God’s plan. A Hebrew slave girl approached an Egyptian princess and made the exact suggestion the princess needed: “Shall I go and get one of the Hebrew women to nurse the baby for you?”
Think about what Miriam did. She saw what the princess needed. She offered the solution. And then she executed the plan, running to fetch the wet nurse and returning with her own mother.
Without Miriam’s boldness, the princess might have taken the child and raised him with Egyptian nurses. Without Miriam’s quick thinking, the baby would never have been returned to his mother. Without Miriam’s action, God’s rescue wouldn’t have happened the way it did. She was absolutely crucial to God’s plan. And the princess said yes.
Miriam ran and brought back her mother. Jochebed, who had placed her son in that basket only hours earlier, now stood before Pharaoh’s daughter. And the princess said, “Take this baby and nurse him for me, and I will pay you.” Jochebed would raise her own son and teach him the promises of God, and the king of Egypt would fund it.
What the king meant for evil, God turned for good. The river intended for death became the means of salvation. The palace that ordered destruction became the place where the deliverer would be prepared. Through three women—a mother who refused to surrender her child, a sister who watched and acted with courage, and a princess who chose compassion over cruelty—God preserved the life of the boy who would grow up to be Moses, the one who would lead the Israelites out of their slavery in Egypt. Through these three women, God was doing more than preserving one child. He was shaping the deliverer through whom he would rescue his people.
And centuries later, the writer to the Hebrews helps us see what God was doing behind the scenes. Hebrews chapter 11 says: “By faith Moses’ parents hid him for three months after he was born, because they saw he was no ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.”
The faith of Moses did not appear out of nowhere. It was nurtured. It was formed. It was planted into him long before he stood before Pharaoh or led Israel through the sea. Moses learned courage from a mother who risked everything rather than surrender her son. He learned watchful faith from a sister who trusted God enough to step forward when the moment came. He learned compassion and justice in the household of a princess who defied her father’s cruelty.
But God was doing even more than this. In those early years with Jochebed, Moses learned who he was. He was Hebrew, not Egyptian. He was one of God’s people, not one of Pharaoh’s subjects. His mother would have told him about Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, about God’s promise to make them into a great nation, and about the land God had sworn to give them. She gave him an identity that no Egyptian education could erase. Even when he lived in the palace, even when he wore Egyptian clothes and spoke with an Egyptian accent, Moses would know he was a stranger in a foreign land. He belonged to God’s people, not to Pharaoh’s court.
And then in Pharaoh’s palace, Moses received the best education Egypt could offer. He learned to read and write. He studied administration and governance. He understood how Egypt’s economy worked, how its military functioned, and how power was organised and maintained. He learned to lead, not in theory but in practice, watching how decisions were made, how nations were ruled, and how conflicts were resolved. God was preparing Moses for a task no one else could see coming. No Hebrew would have ever had the education to challenge Pharaoh’s court. No Egyptian would have ever had the identity or the compassion to lead God’s people to freedom. But a man raised in both worlds, knowing who he was and equipped to lead, could become exactly the deliverer Israel needed.
In hindsight, we can see what these women couldn’t: God was using them not just to save one baby, but to form a saviour.
And Hebrews goes on to tell us that when Moses grew up, he chose to identify with God’s people rather than the power and privilege of Egypt. He chose suffering with God’s people over comfort in Pharaoh’s palace. He chose faith over security. That kind of faith is rarely formed in a single moment. It is shaped over years, often through the quiet influence of people who simply live faithfully before God. God used these remarkable women to help form the saviour that Israel needed.
And that pattern should sound familiar to us. Centuries later, another child was born under the shadow of a tyrant’s violence. Another ruler ordered the killing of baby boys in an attempt to destroy God’s purposes. And once again, God worked through the faith and courage of those entrusted with a child.
Mary trusted God’s promise when it overturned her entire future. Joseph obeyed God when it meant risking reputation, security, and safety. They protected the child Jesus. They raised him. They taught him the Scriptures. They nurtured him in faithfulness to God. And through their obedience, God was shaping not just a deliverer for one nation, but the Saviour the world needed.
In both stories, God is the one accomplishing salvation. But he delights to work through ordinary faithfulness, through parents who trust him, through families who nurture faith, and through people who may never see the full significance of what they are doing. Jochebed didn’t know she was raising Israel’s deliverer. Miriam didn’t know she was protecting the future leader of her people. The king’s daughter didn’t know she was raising the man who would challenge her father’s kingdom. Nor could Mary and Joseph fully see where their obedience would lead. They simply trusted God and did what was right in the moment they were given.
And God used them, because that is still how God works. God does not wait for perfect circumstances or extraordinary people. He works through ordinary acts of courage, compassion, and faithfulness. Through a mother with no options left. Through a young girl willing to step forward. Through a princess who remembered her humanity and listened to her conscience. Through people who choose faithfulness when no one else sees. It’s moments like these that we walk by faith and not by sight.
Maybe you’re a parent wondering if what you’re doing matters. You try to model faith in everyday moments, but you don’t know how God’s using your faithfulness to shape who your children will become.
Maybe you’re a teacher, someone investing in the lives of others. You show up week after week. You care when it would be easier not to. And you wonder if any of it makes a difference. You don’t know what God is doing. You don’t know who he’s preparing through your influence. But God sees. And he’s at work.
Maybe you’re in a situation that feels impossible. You’ve done everything you can and it’s still not enough. You’re facing something that only God can change. That’s when faith looks like Jochebed, doing what we can, then placing what we cannot control into God’s hands and trusting him with the outcome. We walk by faith and not by sight.
God used three women to shape the faith of Moses. God used Mary and Joseph to shape the earthly life of Jesus. Then we should never underestimate what God can do through faithful obedience in our own lives—not because we are powerful, but because he is. Not because we can see the whole plan, but because he can.
The question is this: Will we act with courage when courage is needed? Will we show compassion when cruelty is expected? Will we trust God enough to take the next faithful step, even when we cannot see where it leads? Because God is always at work, and he is still writing his story through the faith of ordinary people.