We are indeed able to boldly approach God’s throne, laying our burdens, cries, and groans before Him with the steadfast hope that He will hear, He will see, and He will know. And this hope is rooted, not in God’s remembrance of any good that we have done, for as Jonathan Edwards (I believe) rightly noted that we contribute nothing to our salvation except the sin that made it necessary. Instead, we know God looks favorably upon us as His children through His remembrance of Christ and the covenant that He made through His blood.

Chapters 2 and 3 of Genesis set the scene for the remainder of the book of Genesis as well as the Bible as a whole. Chapter 2 establishes how the world was created to be, the garden paradise that we still yearn for. Chapter 3, however, purposely mirrors chapter 2 because it reveals how paradise was lost to humanity. These first two chapters of Exodus form a similar, though reverse, picture. In chapter 1, we saw the enslavement of God’s people under the wicked hand of Pharaoh, yet when enslavement failed to sufficiently beat down the Israelites, Pharaoh resorted to infanticide. Chapter 2 mirrors chapter 1, giving us a glimpse of how God will rescue His people from their oppression through how God rescues Moses as their future leader. Just as chapter 1 ended with Pharaoh’s attempted infanticide, chapter 2 begins with God’s preservation of Moses in the midst of that slaughter. The account of Israel’s enslavement in chapter 1 then contrasts with Moses’ exodus from Egypt in chapter 2. Finally, just as chapter 1 began with the names of the patriarchs to remind us of God’s providence in bringing them into Egypt, chapter 2 ends with God preparing to deliver His people from their slavery.
Moses & the Ark //Verses 1-9
These first nine verses continue the battle between the Serpent and the woman that was being waged in Egypt. Just as the plans of Pharaoh were undone by the faithfulness of two Hebrew midwives in chapter 1, so too are they thwarted again by three women here.
First, we see the faithfulness of Moses’ mother, later identified as Jochebed (6:20). She begins by seeing that her child was a fine child, which might literally be translated as “she saw that he was good.” There certainly seems to be an echo of God’s pronouncement of the goodness of His creation in these words. If so, this clues us into the fact that Moses’ mother had a godly vision of the value of her child, in contrast to the Satanic anti-natal vision of Pharaoh.
But, of course, it is not enough to simply see the value in what God has made, we must also act in a godly manner. And Moses’ mother did just that. She hid her child for three months, which, given how much newborns cry, must have been an utterly terrifying experience. Nevertheless, she was faithful to protect her child as long as she could, and when she could hide him no longer, she cast him into the Nile. Of course, she did not do so in the manner that Pharaoh had commanded. Instead, she built a basket, although the Hebrew word is the same word used for Noah’s ark and surrendered him into the hand of God. And just as God kept Noah safe from the waters within the ark, so too did he keep Moses safe from the waters of the Nile within his own ark.
Second, we see the faithfulness of Moses’ sister, Miriam, who followed her little brother from the riverbank and then was bold enough to speak of Pharaoh’s daughter. Stuart writes of her bravery, saying that “Miriam’s oversight of Moses as he floated among the rushes of the Nile and her quick thinking in proposing an Israelite nurse for the baby (knowing full well she would “recruit” his own mother) helped preserve Moses for her family and for Israel’s salvation.”[1]

Finally, we see the faithfulness of Pharaoh’s daughter, which is surprising because she was almost certainly not a believer in the LORD. She was, nevertheless, faithful to God’s creational design for women to be givers and nourishers of life, especially toward children. Moses’ crying stirred up pity within her heart that led to her blatant rejection of her father’s command, since she knew immediately that the baby was one of the Hebrews’ children.[2]

Thus, through three women, one of whom was still a child, Pharaoh’s plan was undone, and the future savior of the Israelites was saved from death. And he was saved by being brought into Pharaoh’s own house and educated on his dime. It is also significant that these women defeated the most powerful man in the world by simply doing what they were naturally designed to do. Moses’ mother took care of her child. His sister looked after her younger brother. Pharaoh’s daughter rescued a crying baby. These were three women who faithfully continued to be women, even as the Serpent hissed his threats their way.
Two thoughts.
First, this is a glorious example of God overturning the strong through the weak. Not only were these three women physically weaker than Pharaoh; they also had radically less authority. God, however, chose to work through their lack of strength and lack of authority, giving us a foretaste of how utterly powerless Pharaoh is before the Almighty. Let us not grow weary of doing good nor of being faithful in the ordinary course of life. God very often uses such ordinary faithfulness to overthrow the grandest schemes of the devil.
Second, I pointed out last week that our society has taken up the satanic attack on children via abortion, yet we need to also broaden out our focus to see how we have largely taken the wrong side in the war between the Serpent and the woman. You see, for all the rants against the patriarchy and toxic masculinity, our culture does not respect women; it abhors them. Conservative commentator Matt Walsh recently got suspended from Twitter for making this very point. He tweeted:
The greatest female Jeopardy champion of all time is a man. The top female college swimmer is a man. The first female four star admiral in the Public Health Service is a man. Men have dominated female high school track and the female MMA circuit. The patriarchy wins in the end.[3]
Apparently since the ‘future is female,’ the patriarchy just decided to become female, and in our Gnostic age where the body is nothing more than a machine to be molded as we see fit, why not become female? Feminists bear a significant amount of the blame because rather than fighting for society to place more value upon femininity, they fought for the right to act like and be treated like men (and often the worst kind of men). They ushered in a world where a woman is lauded for doing anything as long as it is not the one thing that only women can do: bearing children. The coming population bust[4] is a direct result of our devaluing of motherhood.

In Eden, God gave Adam the task of working the garden and Eve the task of bearing children. Together, they would fulfill the Creation Mandate of being fruitful, multiplying, filling the earth, and subduing it (Genesis 1:28), which itself is a reflection of how God created the world by forming (masculine) and then filling (feminine). Yet notice that three words are used for the same action of bearing children (fruitful, multiply, and fill the earth), while only one word is given for Adam’s task of working the ground (subdue it). Just as God formed the earth on days 1-3 in order to fill the earth on days 4-6, so too are men called to subdue the earth to make ready to be filled by women and the children that they bear.

Now do not hear what I am not saying. A woman that never gives birth is not a lesser woman. Especially under the New Covenant, we now have an even greater mandate to make disciples of all nations. I am speaking, instead, on a societal level, and a society that has rejected the value of the uniquely feminine work of motherhood is a society that has abandoned the Creation Mandate and has taken the Serpent’s side. May God grant us repentance rather than the judgment that we so rightly deserve!
Moses in the Wilderness // Verses 10-22
Verse 11 jumps to Moses as an adult.
One day, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people. He looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand.
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Really loving your child might well mean telling the experts to get out of the way – or telling the drug pushers to butt out because there might be better ways to proceed. And good parenting will often mean just letting our kids be kids: letting them learn by trial and error, by failure, by disappointment. Trying to give them a sterile, hygienic and risk-proof life will not help them in the long run.

Our children are under massive attack in ways not even conceived of until just recently. Obviously the trans assault on our kids is one major example of this. And one of the best books penned on that subject was Irreversible Damage: Teenage Girls and the Transgender Craze by Abigail Shrier (Swift, 2020). See my discussion about that very important volume here: Link
Shrier has just released a new book, Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up (Sentinel, 2024). In it the investigative journalist examines the huge mental health crisis that our young people are experiencing. And much of the “therapy” that most children are receiving is simply making matters worse.
Many have written on our therapeutic culture and the enormous pressures our children are under. Shrier’s new volume may be among the more important books on these matters. She lays out her case early on: What children need most are loving and caring parents, not an army of “experts,” therapists and bureaucrats:
“We parents have become so frantic, hypervigilant, and borderline obsessive about our kids’ mental health that we routinely allow all manner of mental health expert to evict us from the room. (‘We will let you know.’) We’ve been relying on them for decades to tell us how to raise well-adjusted kids.” (xiv-xv)
Many well-meaning and caring people have made our children worse off in terms of mental and psychological health. Shrier does not decry all those in the helping professions, but she does remind us that wanting to help someone is not the same as actually helping someone.
And the history of recent therapy has been a mixed bag of frauds, fakes and fails, including of course lobotomies. Today therapists are pushing the gender dysphoria madness, resulting in a massive increase in diagnoses of this “condition.” Never mind the countless cases of regret and detransitioning.
This book looks at many of the recent therapies being foisted upon our young people, examines the research and various studies on them, and shares a number of personal stories along the way. She looks at how the digital age is causing extra stress and problems for young people, and examines various adult issues being foisted on our kids, such as radical sexualities, and fear mongering resulting in things like “climate anxiety”.
Yes the experts are now telling us that climate panic attacks are real things, and we need an army of therapists to “help” kids suffering from this. Hmm, maybe keeping adult worries and ideologies away from impressionable young people might be a better strategy.
Instead of feeding our kids the fantasies about how we are all going to die tomorrow, why not try telling them the truth, including the fact that trends in the environment are moving in the right direction. Shrier quotes Michael Shellenberger on this: “Deaths from natural disaster have declined over 95 percent over the last century. Actual disasters themselves have gone down over the last twenty years. . . . We’re more resilient than ever.” (p. 28)
But too many therapists, social workers, counsellors and drug companies all thrive on keeping our children in a constant state of panic and fear and depression – about everything. And since it is so often the far left pushing all this fear porn, be it about Covid or saving the planet, it is not surprising that teens “who identify with liberal and left-leaning politics have suffered worst of all” in terms of mental health problems. (p. 29)
Talk about creating a crisis and then perpetually pushing the therapy and help needed to deal with it all. Again, not all carers and helpers are in it for the money or what have you, but certainly many are. Simply consider the controversial and contentious issue of things like ADHD and a whole host of medicines and drugs that are being pushed out in the millions to deal with such matters.
Chapter 10, “Spare the Rod, Drug the Child” deals with this in some detail. She quotes from studies and experts who believe that “ADHD – characterized by overstimulation and distractibility – didn’t meet the standard definition of a ‘disorder.’ And Ritalin was no solution at all.” (p. 198)
Often behavioural modification, instead of a host of pharmaceuticals, is what our children in fact need. Moreover, instead of doing all we can to rid children of every sort of depression and anxiety, we need to learn that these two things may be an important part of our growth into mature and capable adults.
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The real freedom that we have is freedom within the bounds of the law of God to honor it as a way of gratitude. People today are making the assumption that freedom is freedom to live outside the law of God. Simply put, “If you come to us, we won’t require anything of you.” We need to properly define legalism as putting a yoke over people for their justification before God, in addition to faith in Christ.

What is legalism? The charge of legalism is so carelessly flung around today that people have no idea what the term means. It’s become a catch phrase to write off any teaching of God’s moral law.
There are three ways this term is being misapplied and abused to attack churches that have remained confessionally Protestant.
First, churches that are serious today are characterized as legalistic. In fact, any church that is serious or formal anymore will “stand out like an organ stop” (quoting David Wells) and be labeled as those who are joyless and legalistic. People are equating legalism with formality, as if freedom means casualness before God. I’m reminded of the Lord’s complaint against Israel,
For My people are foolish, They have not known Me. They are silly children, And they have no understanding. They are wise to do evil, But to do good they have no knowledge.” (Jer 4:22)
Just before Israel’s impending judgment for apostasy, the Lord tells us that the worship became full of sheer “silliness.” No word could better capture the feel of today’s worship than silliness. We have forgotten the Lord’s warning, “By those who come near to me, I must be regarded as holy.”
Second, legalism is being carelessly used to attack people’s liberty. I have noticed the reverse problem of striking at a brother’s liberty because he wants to, for example, offer his first-fruits in the way that he dresses or looks. “They make all their people dress a certain way at that church.” Broad characterizations and generalizations are made this way and lumped together as a “legalistic” when, in fact, practices of people are often birthed out of genuine gratitude for the grace given. In other words, marketing mega-churches keep kicking the traditional churches as legalistic in matters of Christian liberty—they wear ties, they sing out of a song book, etc.
Third, and most dangerous, the charge of legalism is made against those who are sincerely trying to honor the law of God out of gratitude. Now none of these people would advocate that Christians should murder, steal, commit adultery, etc.; but when a Christian wants to, for instance, keep the second commandment and not make images or have icons for worship, since it is expressly condemned in that commandment, well, that is now said to be legalistic. If someone says, “I want to honor the fourth commandment and keep the Sabbath day holy” this is the kind of stuff being labeled as legalistic, when in fact, it is a law of God.
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