Exo 2:3 And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink.
It was a dangerous time, but Moses was born in a perilous time for babies because Pharaoh had determined to control the population of Israel. Exo 1:15 And the king of Egypt spake to the Hebrew midwives, of which the name of the one was Shiphrah, and the name of the other Puah: Exo 1:16 And he said When ye do the office of a midwife to the Hebrew women, and see them upon the stools; if it be a son, then ye shall kill him: but if it be a daughter, then she shall live.
Pharaoh said, “All right, so the hard labor and the taskmasters aren’t accomplishing the goal. They continue to grow in population. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to kill all the male children, and we’re going to diminish their population that way.” The instructions to the midwives were to kill the children, to murder them at birth, the male babies at their birth. But in Exo 1:17, the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them but saved the men’s children alive. The Bible tells us that the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the male children alive.
They refused because they feared God more than they feared man. They said, “No, we’re not going to do that.” The midwives went about their jobs and continued to serve the women of Israel, but they disobeyed the orders. When they were asked about it, they lied to protect the lives of the children. So, the king issued a second order. Exo 1:22 And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive.
Pharaoh sent out a second decree. That decree stated that every Egyptian who saw a male child—a newborn below a certain age—was instructed and given license to rip that child away from his mother and father and throw it into the Nile River, where it would drown and become food for the crocodiles that lived in the river.
Moses was born at a time when his life was in great danger for no other reason than that he was a baby, a gift from God to this godly couple. We noticed the faith of the parents of Moses. They were faced with a choice: to not have any more children or to continue having children and take the risks that would come with that. They chose instead to grow their family and allow God to protect them. In Hebrews chapter 11, verse 23, their names are not mentioned, but Moses’ parents made it into the Hall of Faith. It says, “By faith, Moses, when he was born, was hid by his parents for three months because they saw he was a proper child, and they were not afraid of the king’s commandments.” They knew what the order was, yet they had Moses anyway. When he was born, they hid him for three months. It says here that they did not fear; they were not afraid of the king’s commandments. This was listed as a point of faith. They believed God was greater than Pharaoh; they believed that God could take care of their child and them, no matter what happened. They believed that God could do it.