LIFE LESSONS
JOCHEBED
COMMUNION SUNDAY
DR. JIM DIXON
EXODUS 1:22-2:1-10
JANUARY 5, 2003
Moses is the central figure of the Old Testament. It was Moses who led the children of Israel out of bondage in Egypt. It was Moses who stood before the burning bush and received the Tetragrammaton, the divine name that was revealed to Moses. It was Moses who received the law inscribed on tablets of stone and who presented the law to the people. Moses was the law to the people. Moses was the mediator to the Old Covenant between God and man.
A lot of people do not recognize or remember that Moses also had two very great siblings. He had a sister named Miriam. She was a poet. She was a prophetess. She was a musician. She was skilled and intelligent, a leader of her people. Moses had a brother name Aaron, and he was great. He was the first High Priest of Israel and the founder of the Aaronic Priesthood. He was, at the time, the very mouthpiece of God. Certainly, it is true that no mother in all of history had three greater children than Jochebed. No mother in all of history had three greater than Moses, Miriam, and Aaron. So, this morning we focus on Jochebed, the mother of Moses, Miriam, and Aaron.
From her life we have two life lessons, and the first life lesson is this: The glory is the Lord’s. We should always remember this. The glory is the Lord’s. I have no glory. You have no glory. The glory is the Lord’s. We get this message, this life lesson, from the name Jochebed itself. You see the name Jochebed comes from two Hebrew words. It comes from the Hebrew Yahweh, which is the divine name, the Tetragrammaton, the name of God revealed to Moses on Mt. Horeb or Mt. Sinai through the burning bush. Yahweh. The word Yahweh is combined with the Hebrew word “kavod,” which means glory, so it’s Yahweh kavod “ or “Yokheved,” which becomes Jochebed—Yokheved. That name Yokheved means, “Yahweh is Glory—the Lord is Glory—Jehovah is Glory—the Glory is the Lord’s.”
Now, the name is controversial. In fact, there are some Bible scholars, just a few, who question the etymology of this name. They do this not because of the science of language but because of history. You see, Jochebed is the first person in the whole Bible whose name includes the name of Yahweh. Later there would come Joshua, or “Yahushua,” and many others, but she was the first whose name included the name of Yahweh. And yet, how could that be? Because the name was first revealed to her son Moses on Mt. Sinai when he was approximately 80 years old. If the name of God, the Tetragrammaton, the name Yahweh, was first revealed to Moses, how could it be part of his mother’s name?
Well, there are two explanations. First there are those Bible scholars who believe that God must have made a special revelation to the parents of Jochebed. They must, thereby, have named her that name which included the name of Yahweh. That’s one possibility, though not likely. Another possibility is that this name was given to Jochebed later in life or even posthumously, that her birth name was not Jochebed but later when Moses received the divine name he re-named his mother and gave her this great name, Jochebed—”Yahweh is Glory—the Lord of Glory.” We don’t know for sure, but we do know this. We do know the meaning is that “the Lord is Glory” and we know that the glory is the Lord’s. The word for glory in Hebrew, as we’ve seen, is “kavod.” This word glory really cannot be translated well into English because we have no English word that really carries the full meaning of this Hebrew word kavod. The root meaning of kavod is “to be weighty” or “to be heavy.”
In Genesis, chapter 31, the word kavod is used to describe a person who is laden with wealth, the glory of wealth, somebody whose wealth is heavy. In Isaiah, chapter 8, the word kavod is used to describe somebody who is laden with power. It’s used to describe the glory of power, kavod. In Genesis, chapter 45, the word kavod is used to describe somebody who is laden with position or status or title. It speaks of the glory of human status or the glory of a title. In Exodus, chapter 33, the word kavod is used to describe a person who’s laden with goodness. The word kavod refers to the glory of righteousness.
We can see why the Bible gives us the ultimate truth that only God has glory. Only God has glory because only God is weighty. Only God is heavy. Only God has wealth. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” He hast found the earth in the beginning and the heavens are the work of His hands.” God alone is wealthy. Only God has glory, and God alone has power. Nobody else. None of us have power. Only God. He is omnipotent. He has all power, the Bible tells us. In heaven and on earth, God alone has glory.
Only God has title. Only God has status. Only God has position. There have, indeed, been many kings and queens in the course of history, but they have all lived and died and they are gone because, the Bible says, “All flesh is like grass in all of its glory like the flower of the grass and the grass withers and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord abides forever because God is Jochebed. The Lord is Glory. The glory is the Lord’s. He is King of Kings and He is Lord of Lords eternally. He alone has glory. God alone is good. God alone is holy. God alone is righteous. Indeed, the Bible tells us that before God, all of our righteousness is like filthy rags, so the glory is the Lord’s. God alone has glory.
We come to this amazing passage in the Bible, John 17, where we see the high priestly prayer of our Lord Jesus Christ. In that prayer, Jesus says these amazing words. He says, “Father, I have glorified Thy name on earth, having accomplished the work which You gave Me to do. And now, Father, glorify Me. Glorify Me in Your own presence with glory, which I shared with You before the worlds were made.” Go back and read John 17. What an incredible statement by Christ. “Glorify Me in Your own presence with the glory which I shared with You before the worlds were ever made.” You see, the glory is the Lord’s, Jochebed, and it is the Lord’s in all of His fullness, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
This morning there are people meeting in churches, some of them in churches that have great liturgy. And there are Christians this morning singing the Gloria Patri, “Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, it now and ever shall be. World without end. Amen. Amen.” There are Christians this morning in churches singing the Doxology. “Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him all creatures here below. Praise Him above ye heavenly hosts. Praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.” Of course, the word doxology comes from the Greek word for glory, the Greek word “doxa,” which is the exact equivalent of the Hebrew “kavod.”
But, you see, what’s important this morning for us is not that we, once a week, involve ourselves in liturgy. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with that. What’s important is that we learn to glorify God every day, that we live our lives every day in such a way that we say, “the glory is the Lord’s,” and we wake up every morning and we begin with this thought, “the glory is the Lord’s. It’s not about my glory. I’m not supposed to seek my glory. I’m supposed to seek His glory. The glory is the Lord’s.” Christians are meant to live differently on the earth. The world seeks its own glory. Most people live for their own glory. We are to seek the glory of the Lord.
I read just a couple of weeks ago about a new opportunity that apparently people have to have stars named after them. You can pay thousands of dollars and they will name a star in the heavens after you. There’s a website that explains all of this and how you can do this. For thousands of dollars, they will name a star after you and it will be recorded by scientific and governmental agencies all over the world if you’re willing to spend the money.
Now when you look into the heavens at night with the naked eye, you only see approximately 3,000 stars, and none of those can be named after you because they’re already named. In the course of a year, the naked eye can see 6,000 stars, approximately, and none of them of those can be named after you because they are already named too. If you have a 3” diameter telescopic lens, you can see approximately 800,000 stars but none of those can be named after you either because they’re all basically named. But the most powerful telescopes out there reveal that there are approximately 100 billion galaxies in the universe, in the cosmos, and that each of these galaxies have approximately a hundred billion stars, so that we know there are 10 billion trillion stars—1.5 trillion stars for every person on the planet—and one of those can be named after you. One of those can be named after you if you’re willing to spend thousands of dollars.
Why would somebody do that? I don’t know, but I think that it has something to do with glory. I think it has to do with something the Bible calls vainglory. I think it has something to do with the fact that everybody seems to want just a little bit of glory. But I tell you on the authority of Holy Scripture, the heavens are never going to declare your glory. The heavens declare the glory of God, and we are to do the same thing. We are to do, as Christians, what the stars do. We are to declare the glory of God. For this we breathe. For this we live every day. As we do this, it changes us. The Bible says that “We all, with unveiled faces, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed from one degree of glory to another.” So, we have no glory of our own, but as we declare the glory of God, we are transformed and a certain part of His glory is shared with us as we are changed into His likeness by the power of the Holy Spirit within us. So, we have this first life lesson. The glory is the Lord’s, and it just comes from the name of the mother of Moses, Miriam and Aaron, the name Jochebed- Yahweh is Glory, the Lord is Glory.
We have a second life lesson this morning and it is this: Let go and let God. I’m sure that most of you have heard this expression before. Let go and let God. This life lesson is seen clearly in the life of Jochebed.
One of my favorite stories concerns a man whose name is Richard Johnson. Richard Johnson was a chaplain during World War IL Through a strange sequence of events, he found himself on a bombing raid in the South Pacific. He was actually on the plane to minister to a crewmember, but in any event, he was in a bombing raid in the South Pacific. They dropped their bombs and began to return to their base, but when they were 200 miles from their base camp, they ran out of fuel. The had taken a hit in the fuel tank, and the fuel was gradually leaking, and they ran out of fuel 200 miles from home. The plane went down, and miraculously it’s one of the most incredible stories of World War II—the plane landed safely on a remote uninhabited island in the South Pacific. The plane landed safely, so safely that the plane was still sound and would have been able to take off again had they had the fuel.
So, everyone on the plane, the whole crew, gets out, including the chaplain, Richard Johnson. They begin to look for food and they begin to look for water, but the island is basically barren and there is no food and there’s no fresh water. They realize they’re in a whole lot of trouble and in a short period of time they’re all going to die. The crew gets together and asks this chaplain, Richard Johnson, to pray for them. They all hold hands that night and they pray, and they prayed until 1:00 in the morning. They were desperate. They praying till 1:00 in the morning, holding hands and begging God to rescue them, to save their lives, reminding the Lord of their families back home and their longing to live. They even asked the Lord to provide fuel if it were somehow possible that the plane might take off.
At 1:00 they quit praying. They just let go at that point and they let God. They went to sleep. The next morning, early in the morning, the sun was just rising. Richard Johnson, the chaplain, went down to where the water was breaking on the sand and he was stunned to see a large metal barge had washed up onto the shore. This is an absolutely true story from World War II. On that metal barge were 50 barrels of high-grade gasoline. Fifty barrels of high-grade gasoline had washed ashore. They were able to fuel the plane, miraculously take off, and they found their way home. Subsequent examination by the United States government revealed that an oil tanker 600 miles away, afraid of a torpedo hit, had unloaded hundreds of barrels of fuel onto barges, and one of those barges had traveled the 600 miles and washed up onto the sand of that little island at the exact moment when it was needed by Richard Johnson and the crew.
Coincidence? Some would say so. I don’t believe that. I don’t believe it’s a coincidence, not for a second. God has power. God answers prayer. God is Jehovah Jireh. He’s the Lord who provides, and I believe He provided miraculously in that moment. But, you see, in a sense it’s easy to let go and let God when you have no other choice. What other choice did they have? They couldn’t eat. They couldn’t drink. They couldn’t go anywhere. What other choice did they have? They virtually had to let go and let God.
In a sense, Jochebed was in the same situation. She was in a similar situation because the Pharaoh of all Egypt had observed that the children of Israel were becoming great in number as they dwelled in Goshen in the land of Egypt. The Pharaoh had used the Israelites, the Jewish people, to build cities and to provide agriculture. The Pharaoh had used them as slaves, but all the while through the years the Hebrews had grown in number. They had reached a size perhaps greater than 2 million people. The Pharaoh said, “They are becoming too great in number. We may have an insurrection. We may have a problem on our hands. They have over 600,000 grown men. What are we going to do?”
Pharaoh decided to execute all of the Hebrew males who were born and to have them cast into the Nile. Every son born to a Hebrew woman would be cast into the Nile. It was in that time that Moses was born. What was his mother to do? He was born, and she could see that he was a healthy, wonderful baby. She hid him for three months. How she hid her child from the armies of Pharaoh we do not know, but she hid her child for three months. When she could hide him no longer, apparently something happened. She did the most difficult thing she would ever have to do in her whole life. She took her baby and she put the child in a basket made of papyrus and she sealed it with bitumen and pitch, with tar and pitch, and she placed it into the Nile River. How hard that must have been. And yet she had no choice. She surely prayed without ceasing. Finally, she let go and let God.
Did God ever come through! By the providence of God, the baby’s basket finds its way down the Nile to the daughter of Pharaoh and her entire entourage. The daughter of Pharaoh adopts the baby Moses so that he would grow up in the household of Pharaoh. By the hand of God and the power of God, Jochebed, the mother of Moses, is hired to nurse her own baby and is actually paid to nurse her own child. Wouldn’t that be great? Wouldn’t you love to be paid to nurse your own child? That’s what God provided.
Of course, there’s a sense in which we all need to let go and let God with regard to our children. If you haven’t discovered that yet as parents, I’m sure someday you will. There just comes a point where you realize you’ve got to let go and let God. It doesn’t mean you don’t pray anymore. It doesn’t mean you don’t make an effort anymore. It simply means that in the midst of the prayer and in the midst of the effort, you trust God. Really, this life lesson from Jochebed is all about trust. It’s all about trust. Have you chosen to trust God every day regardless of what happens, regardless of your situation, in every situation of life?
I read recently about John Cavanaugh. John Cavanaugh was a brilliant ethicist and a brilliant man. He went to India to meet with Mother Teresa years ago. He went to what was called “the house of the dying.” Of course, Mother Teresa believed, as I’m sure God believes, that we’re all in that house. We’re all in the house of the dying, but this was a place for the poorest of the poor where mother Teresa ministered to those who were dying of varying afflictions. And so, John Cavanaugh went there, this brilliant man. He went there because he was seeking clarity. John Cavanaugh was a rationalist. The faculty of reason was more important to him than anything. He had a mind which thought in a linear way. He always wanted to be able to connect the dots. As he looked to the future, he wanted to have goals and strategies to attain those goals. With regard to the events of life, he wanted them all to be able to fit, in a very nifty way, into his theology. He wanted everything to be clear.
He went to Mother Teresa seeking clarity. She said to him, “What do you want me to do for you?” He said, “Pray for me.” She said, “How do you want me to pray? What do you want me to pray for?” John Cavanaugh said, “I want you to pray for clarity, that I would have clarity.” Mother Teresa smiled and she said, “No, I will not do that.” He said, “Well, why not?” She said, “Because clarity is the last thing you’re holding onto, and it’s the thing most of all that God wants you to let go of.” He said, “Well, I don’t understand. You have clarity. You seem to have the very clarity in life that I want to have.” Mother Teresa laughed. She laughed and she said, “I don’t have clarity. I’ve never had clarity. What I do have is trust, and I will pray that you learn to trust God.”
Now I tell you, I don’t think she could have given a more profound answer because there is not clarity in this life. You’re not going to have clarity in this life. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 13 that “we see in a mirror dimly, enigmatically.” There’s not clarity in this life. There are tons of circumstances in your life and in mine that just don’t fit nifty little formulas that are hard to explain, that are hard to even fit within our theology. There’s not clarity in this life, but God calls us to trust. He calls us to choose to trust Him. One day clarity will come, and the veil will be pulled back and we will see God face-to-face and we will know fully even as we have been fully known. But now, life is enigmatic, and God is calling us to trust Him.
With this we’ll close. I know our time is up. On Christmas Eve, I received a phone call from H.B. London, who was really just calling to say Merry Christmas to Barb and me. H.B. London is a good friend of this church. Of course, I think many of you know he has spoken here at this church many times. He works with James Dobson at Focus on the Family and is the pastor to pastors. He is a man who just loves Christ and at one time was a pastor. He worked in the Nazarene Church in California. At that time, he had a tragic event.
A young couple in his church had a baby who died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. They had taken their baby to Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, California. The doctors told this young mom and dad, named Jana and Dave, “We’re so sorry. Your baby has died.” They were in shock. H.B. London came as their pastor to try to minister. It was so hard. He had performed their marriage. He had performed their wedding ceremony, seen their joy, and he had sensed the call of God upon their life together. He had baptized the child not that long ago. Just weeks earlier, he had baptized the child. He had seen their joy and their hope and their dreams. Now he saw it all crushed and all dashed. He felt like there were no words, absolutely no words he could say to this young couple that would help them through the pain of their grief. Words just weren’t adequate.
He had no clarity, nothing that would fit in a nifty way into his theology. He said to them, “I don’t know why this awful terrible loss has come to you, but I do know this. God loves you. God loves you as if you were the only ones in the world to love. If you trust His love, you’re going to make it. If you don’t, you won’t.” He didn’t know whether they were really listening. He didn’t know whether they had really heard because they were in so much pain. And anyway, he felt like his words were just so inadequate. As he prayed, that was all he could think to say.
A few years later, he went to work for Focus on the Family and received a letter from this young couple. He was no longer their pastor, but they wanted to let him know that they had a new baby. They sent a picture with their newborn baby and this little note. “H.B.—You probably don’t think we heard you when you encouraged us to cling to the love of God when our baby died, but we heard you clearly. So we have believed over and over that God loves us as if we were the only ones to love. We have learned to live in the love of God. We quote your words to each other often. The Lord is gracious. Notice in the picture we are holding a beautiful new baby, God’s special gift to us. We don’t understand why we lost our first child. We still hurt when we think about it, but we don’t question God anymore.”
No clarity. Still no clarity, but trust. They had chosen to trust, and that’s what God wants of you. That’s what God wants of me. In the midst of all of our circumstances in life, He wants us to choose to trust. As Jochebed chose to trust, He wants us to choose to trust. Ultimately there are only two types of people in the world, those who trust God and those who trust themselves. Those of us who trust God look forward to a heavenly city. We look forward to the day we’ll go home, and then we will see clearly. There will be clarity. But in the meantime, we live by faith. The people of God live by faith.
And so, as we go into this New Year, we want to remember that the glory is the Lord’s. We have no glory of our own. I have no glory. You have no glory. The glory is the Lord’s, and we want to live to declare His glory every day. If we do that, it will begin to transform us. Then also, we need to learn to trust—not to cease to labor, but in the midst of our labor, to trust and, at the appropriate times, to let go and let God. Before we come to the table, let’s have a word of prayer.