When a Slave Becomes a Prince

Can you imagine the horror of having the government order you to murder your baby by throwing it into a crocodile-infested river? That is exactly what happened to the Jewish mothers who were slaves in Egypt. At birth their male children were snatched from them and fed to the Nile.

Then along came a Jewish slave couple named Amram and Jochebed. They already had children, and their son Aaron was old enough not to be subject to Pharaoh’s order. However, Jochebed gave birth to another son during the time that the Pharaoh’s edict was in force, and when she saw that he was an unusually beautiful child, she refused to obey. Hebrews 11:23 tells us that Moses’ parents ‘trusted that God would save him from the death the king commanded, and they hid him for three months, and were not afraid.”

When Moses was three months old, his parents realized that they could no longer hide him, and Jochebed made him a little boat from papyrus reeds and waterproofed it with tar. She then set the basket on the Nile River—the same river that Pharaoh had commanded that all the male children be thrown into.

What emotions did Jochebed experience when she saw her little son float away into the crocodile infested waters? The Bible does not say, but as a mother, I can imagine the grief and dread that she must have experienced at that moment. I believe that this act required more faith than she had exhibited during the entire previous three months. Prior to placing her son in the water, she had maintained some control over the situation, but in that act she had relinquished any ability to manipulate the situation or impact the outcome.

Apparently, Jochebed had no idea what would happen to her baby boy because she instructed his sister Miriam to watch the little boat and report back to her what happened to it. She put her faith in God, entrusted her son to Him, and walked away.

What Jochebed did not know was that her actions had set into motion forces that would alter the future of the entire Jewish race. The baby Moses entered the Nile as a slave, but, for all practical purposes, the slave child died there because moments later he was drawn out as a prince of Egypt who would one day become the deliverer of the Jewish people.

This story is a wonderful illustration of what happens to the man or woman who accepts Christ as his or her savior and follows that conversion experience with baptism.

Most of us come to Christ because of someone else’s faith. While we are still living under the death sentence that sin imposes upon all mankind, someone comes along who sees someone beautiful in us and tells us about Jesus Christ’s saving power.

After a time, however, we must stop depending on their relationship with God and find what He has for us. When we determine that we want to be baptized, we enter the water as slaves to sin and death, but our old nature dies there, and we are drawn out of the water as children of the King.

We then have the privilege of becoming a deliverer to others who are slaves to sin. Only Christ can forgive them and take away their sin, but we can tell them about Him and share the wonderful things He has done in our lives. We can look into the faces of all those living under the sentence of sin and death and see the beauty that is theirs in Christ. We can have a small part in helping them make the transition from slave to child of the king.

Joyce Swann is a nationally-known author and speaker. Her book, Looking Backward: My Twenty-Five Years as a Homeschooling Mother recounts her own years teaching her ten children from the first grade through master's degrees before their seventeenth birthdays.  For more information, visit her website at http://www.frontier2000.net/ or like her on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/frontier2000mediagroup.