Lord Jesus Christ. We read “And the maid went and called the child’s mother.” I hope you will pardon my imagination, but I do imagine that when Miriam burst into the house, she found her mother getting the crib ready for little Moses. Miriam had stayed behind, but Jochebed had gone home, and when Miriam came, and told her that Moses had been picked up and spared, and they wanted a nurse, I can just imagine the mother saying, “ Praise the Lord! Just as I had expected!” For she had left the child with the Lord, and trusted Him. Surely she knew that He would be faithful, and what a reward this woman received. Not only did she get her baby back, but, listen to me, she got paid for taking care of her own baby! Not only was the baby restored, but she got wages for nursing it. Beloved, that’s the way that God does things. If only we trust Him, we can always depend upon Him. Let us rest assured that the wages that Jochebed received were not small. The Pharaohs did things in a big way. We have but to witness the pyramids and the mighty ruins which still reveal how lavishly they spent their money. So the faith of this mother was rewarded in a most remarkable way. She gave her child to God, and trusted Him implicitly, and she received back her child, with wages. I wonder why we can’t trust God that way? When our faith is tested and tried, how often we sink beneath the load, and feel that God has forgotten us. Maybe through sickness, or through loss of loved ones, or mate rial things, or the fact that God hasn’t answered our prayer yet in regard to unconverted loved ones, we begin to grieve and we begin to mope, and we begin to doubt, and the doubt is the very obstacle which keeps God from answering our prayers. Oh, may I plead with you to dare to trust God as Jochebed did. Do all you can, do your part, never cease, never be weary, and then trust God for the results, and then He will do for you what He did for this mother! We do not know how long Moses remained in the home of his parents, before he was taken into the court of Pharaoh, to be groomed for the throne of Egypt. It may have been only a few brief years, but it was long enough for God to accomplish His purpose in teaching and instructing little Moses in the task for which they had dedicated him. Here then is the answer to the ques tion, “Where did Moses get his information concerning his mission and his calling to be the deliverer of Israel ?” He got it from his father and at his mother’s knee during those brief few years that he was under their care. During those tender, formative years he received the most essential and the most important training and instruction in the world—the training of the Home— the instruction at mother’s knee, and what he learned there let us say before he was five years old, was never forgotten by Moses, for forty years afterwards he still remembered it. I can just see Jochebed, his mother, taking little Moses by the hand as a lad and walking to the door of her cabin, she points her finger out there to the fields. There the Hebrews were toiling and sweating and suf fering under the burning sun, beneath the slave driv er’s whip, with bruised and bleeding backs, pining and groaning and wishing to die. I can hear her saying, “Moses, my child, do you see those slaves there? They are your brethren, your people, you belong to them and they belong to you. You have been dedicated to deliver them. God has chosen you to some day save them. You will never forget it, Moses. After a little now, you are going to leave us to go to school in the King’s house, and you are going to hear a great deal against us and about these slaves, but remember, Moses, what I tell
you now, and when the time comes God will help you.” And what he was taught in those early years he never did forget. This knowledge which Moses possessed, and upon which he acted could then have been obtained nowhere else than from his own parents. There is nothing in all the world which can take the place of Christian training in the home during the earliest, tender years of a child’s life. If this is neglected, you may send them later to all the fine Christian institutions in the world, but you will never undo the damage of your neglect in those early years. All the Christian schools and Christian colleges and academies cannot substitute for home training. The job of a Christian father and mother in rearing a family for God is still the biggest business in the world, and the one that is taken more lightly and neglected than any other. No one can substitute for a mother, no, not one. You are still the most important person in all the world in your family. It may not have the glamour or gain the public recognition like other pursuits, but in the directory of heaven, godly mothers head the list above philanthropists, preachers, teachers, and the other luminaries of various fields of service. Your reward will be great, and you can afford to wait. The greatest threat to our national security as well as our spiritual welfare is the appalling breakdown of the old-fashioned Christian home, where father and mother still recog nize that their one first responsibility was to their home and their children. I fear that if the Lord does not come soon this old world is doomed unless we Christian par ents bestir ourselves, and when the crack of judgment comes and doom falls, it will not be for any other reason than that we have forgotten the source of all the bless ings in the home. It will come not because of war pri marily, or because of inflation, or because of our mount ing debt; not because of a wrong administration, but because the Christian home and the altars have been broken down, because a generation of children is grow ing up today whose only memory of a father is a man whose sole interest was to make money and get ahead in this life. Who is there that can measure the power and the influence of Christian motherhood? The tragedy of today is that motherhood has lost its glamour, for it is still the most glamorous thing in all the world. We are living in an age when motherhood is refused, and chil dren are considered as a burden instead of a blessing, and marriage instead of being for the purpose of rear ing children for God, is to many only an excuse for the legalizing of unrestrained lust and passion. Where are the homes where the parents place nothing else ahead of the privilege of being with their children? I want to make this a very personal appeal to all of you who have been blessed of the Lord with the privilege of parenthood. I am asking you, if you really love the Lord and really love your children with all your heart, will you resolve today that you are going to do right by your children? I am not saying this in the spirit of judgment or accusation, but only in a prayerful spirit of helpfulness. I have no other motive than to help you. Take those children to church where the Gospel is preached, go with them, and put them in Sunday school under a born-again teacher, set up your family altar which has been broken down, find some time each day, as far as it is possible in this hectic age,' to get the entire family together, to read from the Word of God and have prayer together. Urge upon your children the need of being saved, and show them the simple plan of salvation. Every parent is in duty bound to lead his own children to Christ. Then having shown them the way, teach them. Teach them the Word of God.
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THE KING'S BUSINESS
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