Ark in the Reeds: Small Acts, Sovereign Power

Ark in the Reeds: Small Acts, Sovereign PowerThe Rev. Brad Eubanks

17:53

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Last week, we left Joseph at the pinnacle of restoration. We witnessed that breathtaking moment in Genesis where tears washed away twenty-two years of bitterness, when a broken family was reunited, and when Pharaoh himself welcomed Jacob’s children to settle in the fertile pasturelands of Goshen. It was a storybook ending of reconciliation, abundance, and imperial favor.

And then this week, we turn the page into Exodus, and the atmosphere changes in an instant. We read: “Now a new king arose over Egypt who did not know Joseph.”

In a single sentence, centuries of history shift. Gratitude has a notoriously short shelf life in the corridors of power. The memory of Joseph—the Hebrew boy who literally saved the Egyptian Empire from starvation—had faded into dust. In his place sat a ruler governed not by memory, but by anxiety.

Pharaoh looked out over the expanding Israelite population and panicked. He did not see neighbors who had helped build the nation; he saw a demographic threat. He said to his court, “Look, the Israelite people are more numerous and more powerful than we are. Let us deal shrewdly with them.”

Fear is always the native tongue of empire. When leaders operate out of scarcity and fear, their immediate instinct is control, oppression, and ultimately, violence. Pharaoh enslaved the Hebrews, wearing them down with ruthless, forced labor.

Yet the text tells us something remarkable: the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied. Life, it turns out, is remarkably stubborn when God has something to do with it.

When harsh labor failed to crush the people, Pharaoh escalated to genocide. He summoned two Hebrew midwives and issued a lethal imperial edict: whenever a Hebrew boy is born, kill him; only the girls may live.

Here, Scripture does something utterly brilliant that we often miss. The Bible never records the name of this mighty Pharaoh. History may have carved his face into towering stone monuments, but in this sacred record, he is merely an anonymous, fearful tyrant.

Do you know whose names are written there, remembered forever?

Shiphrah and Puah.

Two working women. Two midwives whose hands were calloused from catching babies in the dark. When commanded by the absolute authority of the ancient world to extinguish innocent life, Shiphrah and Puah quietly refused. Scripture tells us the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them; they let the boys live.

When Pharaoh dragged them into the palace to demand an explanation, they did not mount a violent rebellion. They simply offered a brilliant, subversive excuse: “You see, Pharaoh, these Hebrew women are vigorous. Before we can even arrive, they have already given birth!”

They risked their lives by choosing holy disobedience. They understood what Paul would write centuries later in Romans 12: to not be conformed to this world, but to be transformed by the renewing of their minds. Shiphrah and Puah refused to be conformed to the lethal logic of the empire. They chose to be living sacrifices for the sake of the vulnerable, and God honored them for it.

Furious that his quiet scheme had failed, Pharaoh dropped all subtlety and issued an open decree to all his people: “Every boy that is born to the Hebrews you shall throw into the Nile, but you shall let every girl live.”

The Nile—the very lifeblood of Egyptian agriculture, religion, and culture—was weaponized into an instrument of death.

Into this nightmare, a mother named Jochebed gave birth to a son. She hid him for three months until his cries could no longer be muffled. In desperation, she crafted a basket, placed her baby inside, and gently set it among the reeds at the river’s edge.

In the original Hebrew, the word used for this little floating basket is tebah. It appears only twice in the entire Hebrew Bible: once here, and once for Noah’s ark, which carried humanity through the deluge of the flood.

Think about that. When human cruelty unleashes a flood of destruction, God prepares an ark. God did not send a legion of angels with flaming swords to shatter Pharaoh’s palace. God sent a three-month-old baby in a waterproofed basket, watched over from the shore by his big sister, Miriam.

Then comes the crowning irony of divine providence. Who walks down to bathe at the river? None other than Pharaoh’s own daughter.

She hears the baby crying. She sees the child and feels compassion. She knows the decree; she knows this is one of the Hebrew children her father ordered murdered. Yet she reaches into the water herself and draws the baby out.

Right then, Miriam steps out of the shadows and asks, “Shall I go and get you a nurse from the Hebrew women?”

In that supreme irony of ironies, Pharaoh’s daughter ends up paying Moses’ own mother to nurse and raise him—right under Pharaoh’s roof, financed by the royal treasury. What was meant to be a grave of drowning became a cradle of deliverance.

It is just as we heard in the Psalm today:

“If it had not been the Lord who was on our side when our enemies rose up against us, then the flood would have swept us away, the torrent would have gone over us... The trap is broken, and we have escaped.”

Centuries later, in Matthew 16, Jesus stands with His disciples in Caesarea Philippi—a city dominated by imperial power, this time Roman. The empire always seems to find us. Towering above the city stood a massive cliff of rock dedicated to the pagan god Pan, alongside magnificent marble temples built to honor Caesar as Lord.

Against that backdrop of imperial power and stone monuments, Jesus looked at His ragtag group of followers and asked: “Who do you say that I am?”

Simon stepped forward and proclaimed: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

Jesus replied, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.”

Consider the symmetry between these two stories. Pharaoh built monumental cities with slave labor and tried to secure his throne through terror and violence. Rome carved temples into stone and proclaimed Caesar sovereign over life and death.

Yet both empires missed the real power at work in the world.

Real power was not in Pharaoh’s decrees; it was in the hands of two midwives who refused to kill. It was in a mother who built a basket of hope, a sister who stood watch, and a princess who chose compassion over cruelty.

Real power was not in Caesar’s legions, either. It was in the humble confession of a Galilean fisherman declaring that Jesus—not Caesar, and not the empire—is the Lord of life.

So what do these ancient stories say to us as we walk out the doors of the church this morning?

First, never underestimate the power of small, faithful acts.

It is easy to feel helpless when looking at the enormous problems of our world—systems of injustice, violence, and anxiety that seem as immovable as the pyramids of Egypt. But remember Shiphrah, Puah, Jochebed, and Miriam. They did not hold political office, and they possessed no military might. They simply decided that right where they stood, they would do what they could to protect life. God took their small, courageous choices—a word of truth, an act of mercy, standing up for the vulnerable—and wove them into the deliverance of the world.

Second, refuse to be conformed to fear.

Pharaoh’s tyranny was born entirely out of fear. When fear drives our lives, we view the neighbor as a competitor, the stranger as a threat, and scarcity as the ultimate truth. As followers of Christ, we are called to a different way. Romans 12 reminds us to present our lives as living sacrifices—not driven by the world's anxieties, but transformed by God's renewing love. When society tells us to hoard, we give. When the culture tells us to despise our enemies, we pray for them. When fear tells us to build higher walls, we set a wider table.

Finally, trust the God who defies the current.

If you feel as though you are floating in a reed basket today—carried by currents of grief, uncertainty, illness, fatigue, or a lingering cough—take heart. The God of Moses is the God who meets us at the water’s edge. He breaks the snare and pulls us out of deep waters. The gates of hell, the edicts of tyrants, and the power of the grave cannot and will not prevail against the living God.

This week, Jesus turns to each of us and asks that very same question: “Who do you say that I am?”

May we have the courage of Peter to confess Him as Lord. May we have the bravery of the midwives to stand for life. And may we trust that the God who watched over an ark in the Nile holds our lives, our church, and our world in His unshakeable hands.

Amen.