G'day, Dave here.

Welcome to stories of a faithful God for kids.

It's great to have you back for our second episode from the Book of Exodus.

Just a quick heads up before we start.

There are actually going to be two kids

episodes this week.

The next one will come out on Thursday morning

if you're roughly on the australian side of the planet.

And it's probably Wednesday afternoon if you're on the other side of the planet.

Adults, the next longer deep dive episode in stories of a faithful God is coming on my

Monday morning, the australian side or Sunday afternoon.

If you're on the other side of the world.

Don't miss out on that.

It's where God suddenly reveals himself in a stunning way at Mount Sinai.

It's going to be great.

Did you know that God loves using weakness to

show his power? He loves using things that seem silly to

everyone else to show how wise he is.

He loves to win just when everyone thinks he's

lost.

Do you remember the story we looked at with

Elijah? There was a big competition between God and

Baal.

Baal had 450 prophets and God only had one.

Baal's prophets prayed for Baal to send fire all day.

God's prophet only prayed for about 30 seconds.

Baal's prophets had a dry sacrifice that was sitting on dry wood ready to catch fire.

God's prophet poured water all over his sacrifice and wood until it was soaked

through.

It seemed like God would lose big time.

It seemed like God was weak and silly.

But then he was the one who sent fire blasting

down from the sky.

And everyone knew that he is the one true God.

In Exodus, chapter two, God looks weak.

It looks like he's about to lose.

But that is when you know something's about to happen.

Get ready for our next episode of stories of a faithful God for kids.

At the end of the last show, it seemed like Pharaoh was about to win at destroying God's

people.

He'd tried lots of things to stop God keeping

his promise.

Remember, God had promised to make the

israelite family enormous.

Pharaoh tried to stop that, but none of his

plans had worked.

Now he's come up with a really deadly plan.

He's told his own people, the Egyptians, to throw every israelite baby boy into the river

Nile.

The Nile river is what keeps Egypt alive.

If you look at a satellite photo of Egypt, it's all desert except where the Nile runs.

And all along its banks, it's green and beautiful and there are lots of farms.

The Nile usually brings life.

But now pharaohs made it a place of death.

In Exodus chapter two, we zoom in on the home of one israelite family.

Somethings happening there that would normally be a time of big celebration, a time of

happiness and parties.

Theyve just had a baby.

If you're an older brother or sister, I don't know if you remember when your baby brother or

sister was born.

Maybe afterwards you could talk to your

parents about what it was like when you were born.

For this family, though, there's no celebrating.

Instead, it's terrifying because their baby is a boy, which means the Egyptians are going to

want to throw him in the river.

In verse two of chapter two, it says how his

mum became pregnant and gave birth to a son.

She saw how wonderful the baby was and she hid

him for three months.

You can just imagine this mum looking at her

newborn son and thinking, I'm gonna do whatever it takes to save my boy.

But for the next few months, every time someone walks past the house, every time

there's a knock on the door, she'd be scared of who it is.

After three months, he's getting too big to hide.

So she comes up with a plan.

She takes a basket and makes it into a tiny

boat.

Verse three says this.

So she got a basket made of reeds and covered it with tar so that it would float.

She put the baby in the basket.

Then she put the basket among the tall grass

at the edge of the Nile river.

Wait, where did she put it?

At the edge of the Nile river.

That's a terrible place, isn't it?

That's the place of death.

That's where all the baby boys are being

thrown.

Why would she try and hide her son there?

Hmm? By the way, before we go any further, there's

something that just has to be said.

I know some of you will have seen the movie

Prince of Egypt.

In that movie, the mum pushes the basket out

into the river and it gets attacked by hippos and crocodiles.

Let's be really clear.

That is not what happens at all.

The basket is in the water, but it's surrounded by tall reeds or grass that holds

it in place.

It's not going anywhere.

It's in a hiding place.

More than that, theres someone watching the

basket.

Verse four tells us that the babys sister

stood a short distance away.

She wanted to see what would happen to him.

So even though this seems like a crazy place to hide the baby, the place where baby boys

are being thrown to their death, the mums being careful, shes hiding her son in the tall

grass.

The basket's waterproof.

The sisters watching from a distance.

And then disaster strikes.

An Egyptian comes along for a swim.

One of the very people who's been ordered to

kill the israelite boys.

And not just any Egyptian.

This is the daughter of the king of Egypt herself.

The princess of the royal family.

If any Egyptians would be most afraid of the

Israelites, it'd be the royal family.

Because they've got the most to lose.

There's almost no more deadly enemy.

Who could have turned up at the river that

day.

It's okay, though.

The basket's hidden.

But then disaster strikes again.

The princess sees the basket in the tall grass.

She sends one of her servants to get it.

This is terrible.

She takes the basket.

She lifts the lid.

And she sees the baby boy.

He's crying.

Immediately, she knows this is a hebrew baby.

Remember, Hebrew is another word for

israelite.

This is everything the mom's been working so

hard to not let happen.

Here's an Egyptian.

The daughter of the guy who's commanded the death of her son.

She's now holding the baby at the Nile river.

The very place where the Egyptians were meant

to throw the babies.

All she has to do is let go.

Everything seems lost, except God's in charge.

And at this very moment, when everything seems

so bad, when the israelite position looks so weak.

Where even God might seem to be really weak.

We discover that God's been working all along.

The very person who seems like the worst person to come along.

The king's daughter.

Well, God's actually made sure that she's the

perfect person to save this child.

Suddenly we see just how clever God is.

Verse six says the king's daughter opened the basket and saw the baby boy.

He was crying, and she felt sorry for him.

She said, this is one of the hebrew babies.

She doesn't want to kill the baby.

She wants to save him.

Then things get even better.

Remember how the baby sister's been keeping an

eye on her brother? Well, now she thinks really quickly.

She must see that the princess is not about to kill her brother.

So she runs up to her.

In verse seven, she says, would you like me to

find a hebrew woman to nurse the baby for you? In other words, feed the baby, take care of

him.

The princess likes this idea.

So the sister runs off.

And who does she get to look after the baby?

Her mum.

The baby's mum.

And the princess says to the mum in verse nine.

Take this baby and nurse him for me.

I will pay you.

Whoa.

Hang on a second.

We started this passage with the mum having to hide the baby, terrified that one of the

king's people would come to kill him.

Now she gets to care for her own son under the

protection of the king's own daughter.

Not only that, she's actually being paid to do

it out of the king's daughter's own money.

This is so great.

And here's another funny little thing.

Did you notice that the king only wanted to

kill the israelite boys? It's like he thinks, ah, they're the only ones

who are going to cause me any problems.

They're the ones who become soldiers and

fight.

But even in that, God's turned everything on

its head.

Do you remember last week, who kept the hebrew

boys safe? It was two women, the israelite midwives,

Shiphra and Puah.

And today it's the mum protecting her son.

And the pharaoh's daughter.

And the quick thinking sister.

Even as the king's trying to get rid of all the boys, God keeps stopping his plan with

girls and women.

Then, just when you think it can't get any

more amazing, it does, because something happens.

As the boy gets bigger, he isn't going to keep living with his family in slavery.

Listen to verse ten.

After the child had grown older, the woman

took him to the king's daughter.

She adopted the baby as her own son.

Whoa.

This kid's become the son of the princess.

He's living in the royal palace.

This is so not what the king was hoping for.

He wanted the israelite boys dead.

Now there's one living in his home, which

means in the future, he could become a part of the government.

It could possibly even mean he might even become pharaoh.

The king of Egypt.

This kid is now perfectly placed to one day

save all the Hebrews or Israelites from their slavery.

Can you see how God's taken a situation that looked like a disaster and turned it into

something fantastic, a situation that looked like death, but he turned it into salvation.

That's what God loves to do.

This is just a small example, and it points to

when God was going to do it in the most amazing way possible.

When Jesus died on the cross, all his enemies thought it was over.

All the fuss that Jesus had made, the way he'd challenged them and accused them of not really

following God.

They laughed at him and teased him.

They thought they'd won.

His disciples thought everything was over,

too.

Everything they'd hoped for, all the things

they were so excited about with Jesus, all the dreams they had of what they thought he'd do

now.

They thought it was all gone, finished.

Dead.

As dead as Jesus lifeless body that was taken

down and placed in the tomb.

What they didn't realize until later was that

when Jesus died, it wasn't a moment of defeat.

He wasn't weak.

He hadn't lost.

In fact, it was the moment of his victory over

sin and death.

Sin and death are our greatest enemies.

We have no power to stop them.

But when Jesus looked at his weakest, nailed

to wood, unable to move, bleeding everywhere, being laughed at by his enemies, that's the

moment when Jesus won.

Sometimes you might feel like God is losing,

like everything's gone bad, like people are laughing at God and Jesus.

But don't panic when things look at their worst.

You know God is able to do powerful things.

In fact, even today, the country where the

most people are turning away from sin and putting their trust in Jesus is a country

where it's illegal to do that, where you can even be killed for doing that.

It looks like Jesus has lost there, but actually that's where Jesus is doing his most

powerful work.

So don't ever panic.

Trust the faithful God, especially when things look bad.

Back in Egypt, the boy has been given a name, Moses.

As he grows up, it seems like God's put him in the perfect position to save his people.

Suddenly though, disaster strikes and Moses will have to flee for his life.

But that's a story for next time.

See you then.

Thanks so much for listening, adults.

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X. Bye for now.