Exodus 1:8-16; 2:1-10       How to Overcome Family Crisis     Sept 11, 2005

   America’s ambassador to Japan, Douglas MacArthur, served as Counselor of the State Department under John Foster Dulles. Like Dulles, MacArthur was a hard worker. One night, Dulles telephoned the MacArthur home asking for Douglas; Mrs. MacArthur mistook him for an aide and snapped irately, “MacArthur is where MacArthur always is, weekdays, Saturdays, Sundays, and nights – at his office!” Within minutes, MacArthur got a telephone order from Dulles: “Go home at once. Your home front is crumbling.” In American society today, it seems that our home front is crumbling.  It seems that never in the history of our society have we witnessed more family crisis. Our children are under attack.  How can we overcome?

    Today I am beginning a sermon series on the life of Moses and his is a life that begins in crisis.  The Pharaoh of Egypt had ordered that all newborn Hebrew males be killed.  It seemed the infant Moses would not live to see his first birthday.  But God had other plans for this child.  And God has a plan for your children even when the culture surrounds them with death.  Moses was saved from death by his mother and father who took decisive action.  And God is still calling mothers and fathers to take decisive action to save their children. 

    How did this situation begin for the family of Moses?  Well, last autumn I taught a series on the life of Joseph who landed in Egypt and rose to high office around the year 1800-1700 BC.  We now have moved four hundred years later.  As the scripture says--a new Pharaoh arose who did not remember Joseph.  The Hebrews were enslaved.  However, they had multiplied.  The seventy family members of Joseph had grown to fill the land.  Pharaoh feared a revolt of these slaves and so he ordered the execution of the children. 

    This was a ruthless act by the hand of a threatened, heartless ruler.  A king such as Pharaoh in ancient times had the absolute authority to make this command. We no longer live in a world of such absolute rulers, but we need to realize that there are still those today who threaten the lives of children.  What are the threats today that adults need to guard children against?

    Let's get right to the hard stuff.  Children are at risk from sexual offenders.  Pedophiles roam our streets.  They go to children's movies.  They hang out at the Mall.  They are not strange looking homeless people.  They wear business suits and carry briefcases.  They are fathers and uncles and the people next door.  Now we cannot live in paranoid fear but we need to face the facts that there is danger.  About a third of my wife's counseling practice is with children who have been abused and it is almost always by someone they know.  Not the stranger who grabs them, but someone they know.  Children in our society are in danger.

     More hard stuff.  Children in our society are in danger from the media.  The violence and sexual content of what young children view is outlandish.  The song lyrics they hear are damaging.  What has happened to the magical innocence of childhood?  It has been swallowed up by an entertainment industry that worships only money and who make their money by attracting us at our most base instinctual level.  Our sexual, aggressive, and hunger instincts are among our most primitive and powerful emotions.  They are not evil emotions.  God made everything for good.  But these emotions are like water running in a canal.  The water is good and important for life.  But when the dams break, the city is destroyed.  When a culture allows everything to run wild, society will destroy itself.  And the children will be the first to be sacrificed.

    What can we do to save our children?  What did Moses parents do?  Let’s look over in the book of Hebrews.  Hebrews 11:23 says, "By faith Moses parents hid him for three months after he was born because they were not afraid of the king's edict."  First of all, they had faith in God.  During the four hundred years in Egypt, many of the Hebrews had drifted into the culture and religion of the Egyptians.  They worshipped idols and would later make a golden cow to worship at Mount Sinai.  But not Moses parents.  They were faithful to God.  Even in the midst of a godless society, they maintained a faithful life.  If we wish to guard the children, the first step we must take is to guard our own hearts and lives.  We cannot talk to our children about living a Christian life while we allow trash into our own lives.  They will see the hypocrisy.  They will know it is all talk.  If we wish to guard the lives of children, we must first live our own lives by faith.

    Secondly, Moses parents acted.  They hid him for three months and then took drastic measures by placing him in a basket upon the Nile River.  If we adults wish to protect our children from today's evils, we too must act.  It is not enough to pray and have faith.  We must act.  James in the NT says, "Faith without actions is a dead faith."  Moses parents did not simply have faith that God would care for their son.  They put into action a detailed plan that suited the particular crisis.  These parents had done their homework.  They knew that Pharaoh's daughter was a compassionate young woman.  They found out the time when she came to bathe. They knew the place where Miriam, Moses' sister, could hide.  Certainly, Miriam had rehearsed her little speech.  And so the child was found by Pharaoh's daughter and given an Egyptian, not a Jewish name: Moshe or Moses which means "taken from the water" in Egyptian. 

    Adults today must develop specific strategies to protect our children.  We must be proactive and not waiting until a problem comes along.  We must decide what we will allow our children to watch, hear, and touch.  We must take care of who our children spend time with.  Too often we are far too casual about this as if it will just all work out.  We must be decisive, making decisions about the lives of our children. I saw a book on child rearing entitled--The First Three Years Last Forever.  The first years do last forever.  What our children experience in their early years will remain with them for a lifetime. Therefore, we must guard the young minds of our children.  This is nothing new. 2400 years ago, Plato wrote, “The beginning is the most important part of any work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing for that is the time when character is being formed.  Shall we just allow children to hear any casual tales and to receive into their minds ideas that are the very opposite of those we should wish them to have.  We cannot.  Anything received into the mind at that age becomes unalterable.  Therefore, it is most important that the tales which the young first hear should be models of virtuous thoughts.”

    Moses parents lived in faith.  Moses parents took proactive action.  Finally, they were not afraid of the king's edict.  How could they not be afraid?  They had God on their side.  They had a plan.  And they acted.  We too have God with us.  We too can plan for our children.  And all of us can act together to provide safety for the children of the world.  What is our church doing?  We are continuing to develop strategies whereby all adults who work with children in our church have a background check.  In addition, we strive to always have at least two adult leaders at all events so that a child is never alone with anyone.  Our Church is united with Strong Communities in providing Mentors for children in need.  But we can all do more.  Even parents of teenagers can come together to make decisions about rules, dating, and curfews.  When I was in Camden SC in the early 1990s, parents of teens did just that. 

    The children of our society need us to provide them protection from the actions of men every much as evil as any Pharaoh.  How aware are you of the factors that exist in your community that threaten children?  Are there items in your own life that are keeping you from bringing up your children or grandchildren in the faith of the Lord?  What proactive approaches are you taking to protect children from evil influences?  How can you help your church, schools, and community better support safety for children?  Moses parents faced a great crisis in their culture and so do we.  But we can have faith in God.  We can act.  We can come together.  We can overcome the crisis.  Amen.