The Bible has so many accounts of people who acted in faith. They heard from God, believed and then acted on what God had commanded. The eleventh chapter of Hebrews lists some of those. If we are familiar with their names perhaps also their acts of faith is likewise known to us. Men like Noah or Gideon had special actions that they took and thereby we have recorded for us, the effects of faith in the hearts of those who trust God. There were others who did not make a list or who were not recorded for some act of faith that they demonstrated.
The young prophet going against Jeroboam or Amos going to the northern kingdom were both men of faith. There are still others whose life was given to serving God and by such lives were producing the evidence of faith in their own hearts. The writer of Hebrews points to all these and states, the world was not worthy of them (Heb. 11:38). In this article I would like to speak briefly of Amram and Jochebed. There was evidence in their lives of trusting in God and imparting that evidence into the hearts of their children, Miriam, Aaron and Moses.
Pharaoh in Egypt was trying to deal with the problem of the growth of the Israelite nation that lived in and among his people. The fear was due to their growing size that if some enemy attacked them, the Israelites would turn on the Egyptians. He first tried to get the Hebrew mid-wives to kill the male children. Those midwives feared God and would not participate in killing of babies. A lesson many in our country should learn not only from participating in the act but also opposing those who do. The original plan failed and so the next step was to tell the Hebrew people to throw all male children into the Nile river.
Chapter two of Exodus opens by telling us that Amram and his wife (Jochebed) came together and she conceived. The law or the government said she must throw her child into the Nile river. Some three years earlier she had a son and called him Aaron. The timing of it must have been that she had Aaron before Pharaoh made the decree. There was no written law at this point but the idea of murder has always been opposed by those of a civilized society. Jochebed hides her precious little boy for three months. She reached the conclusion that they could not continue to hide this little boy.
She makes an ark or little boat for the baby. Places the baby in the ark in the Nile River. This is not the end of her efforts to protect this little boy. She has her oldest child, Miriam to hide and watch the ark. The growth of faith is often times in increments, that is in stages. It took some four signs to convince Gideon of what he needed to do in order to lead Israelites in a victory over the Midianites. Jochebed gave birth but did not kill her son. She places him in an ark and causes her oldest child to watch the ark. All of these efforts speak about trusting God and man making every effort to carry out the will of God.
How long did it take Noah to build the ark? We know the grace period was a 120 years (Gen. 6:3). How much of that 120 years was needed to finish the ark, we are not informed about. When it was finished in the 120th year, time for all humanity had ran out. Think of how much effort it took to build this very huge ark? Faith is about learning to trust God no matter what the circumstances are in which we are confronted.
The historical record is that Jochebed became the Hebrew woman who nursed her own child. The child was then given to Pharaoh’s daughter. The influence of this woman did not stop when she brought the child to Pharoah’s daughter. Given the known circumstances Moses would have been given to her shortly after his third month on earth. When he reached the age of 40, he knew who his people were (Ex. 2:11). The only place he could have learned that was from his godly mother, a Hebrew who taught her son about God, a woman of faith.