This article is a summary of a sermon by Halim Suh on abortion from the early chapters of Exodus.
In Exodus 1 and 2, under threat of infanticide and genocide, God provided the way of salvation and rescue through a group of courageous women.
By looking at how he used Moses’s mother, his sister Miriam, Pharaoh’s daughter, and even the Hebrew midwives to oppose and deliver from infanticide, we as Christians can be instructed on how to oppose and deliver from abortions that are happening today.
Particularly I think there’s a special calling on women in the battle that the church needs to see and embrace.
Moses’s Mother
From mere inconvenience to truly feeling there’s no other option, a woman contemplating abortion is thinking through a whole spectrum of things. Moses’s mother is a prime example of a woman who experienced not simply an inconvenience, but a threat on her life if she kept the baby.
When she bore Moses and saw he was a fine child, however, she didn’t kill him. She hid him for three months.
This picture—a mother hiding her baby—is beautiful. She was hiding him, of course, to protect him.
When a child is in infancy, they need the utmost protection and care; so you keep the child next to you. But what about a preborn child? In God’s infinite wisdom he saw fit to place babies inside their mothers—not just next to them—during their most vulnerable and dependent stage.
Yet for a baby today, the very place God designed as the safest in all the world has become the most dangerous.
If you’re pregnant and contemplating abortion, God is calling you to have the courage of Moses’s mother. Even at the risk of inconvenience and possible death, she saw her baby was beautiful and worth hiding from harm.
Moses’s Sister
Moses’s sister Miriam enters the story in Exodus 2:4–10. Though she’s not the mother and therefore not in the position of having to decide Moses’s fate, she’s relationally close to the person in crisis. Miriam is watchful, creative, and inventive. She’s also available and faithful, and serves as an advocate.
Miriam represents the role most of us will play. Most of us may never have to contemplate abortion, but all of us need to pursue relationships with women who might find themselves facing that difficult decision. To play the part of Miriam in this world means there must be proximity—a closeness to the woman in crisis. And yes, this means we may have to step outside our community of people who look like us, talk like us, and act like us.
Pharaoh’s Daughter
Another major figure in this narrative is Pharaoh’s daughter. Out of the core of the genocidal royal family comes this precious person, a tenderhearted princess. She possesses a maternal heart, and eyes easily moved to tears.
What can we learn from her? Who does Pharaoh’s daughter represent? She represents someone in a position of power, someone with influence, someone with the power to protect life.
College students, this might be you one day if you choose to pursue a career in which you’d have the opportunity to affect laws. We all bear this responsibility to one degree or another in the stewardship of how we vote. Moreover, Pharaoh’s daughter could represent individuals who have resources to help fund crisis pregnancy centers.
Pharaoh’s daughter is also representative of adoptive families. It’s vital to see that God is weaving a story. Even if the circumstances are so bad you have to give up the baby, you do something truly incredible when you choose life—not just for your baby, but for adoptive families too.
In one way or another, God is calling some of you to play the role of Pharaoh’s daughter.
Shiphrah and Puah
Finally, there are Shiphrah and Puah, the midwives who feared God more than Pharaoh and refused, at great personal risk, to slaughter babies. Their names sound odd to us, but Shiphrah means “beautiful one” and Puah “splendid one.” And in God’s sight these two women were indeed beautiful and splendid, for their actions were exactly that.
God used Shiphrah and Puah to rescue babies. They are the first pro-life heroines in Scripture. And we need to learn from and imitate them too. As John Piper has said, we need to be involved in the pro-life movement “redemptively and not accusingly.” After all, our Savior himself has called us to a life of service: “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:35).
And that’s exactly what these obscure women did. They served. Through humility and suffering—not arrogance and feistiness—they risked their own lives. And in so doing they point us to the one who not only risked his life, but laid it down. And the Lord Jesus Christ did not do this to rescue “innocents”; he did it to rescue great sinners like you and me.
What About You?
Is God calling you to be courageous like Moses’s mother and to choose life? Or to be a faithful advocate like Miriam? Or one who provides influence—or who adopts—like Pharaoh’s daughter? Or a hero like Shiphrah or Puah, who did the beautiful and splendid thing by fearing God more than Pharaoh and risking their own lives to rescue others?
We often look back at horrific injustices of the past—such as the Holocaust, slavery, or racial segregation—and assume we would’ve hid the Jews in our home, run the underground railroads, or marched in Selma.
Well, laboring to end abortion is our chance to do this. With God’s help, we could end one of the greatest injustices the world has ever known.
Involved in Women’s Ministry? Add This to Your Discipleship Tool Kit.
We need one another. Yet we don’t always know how to develop deep relationships to help us grow in the Christian life. Younger believers benefit from the guidance and wisdom of more mature saints as their faith deepens. But too often, potential mentors lack clarity and training on how to engage in discipling those they can influence.
Whether you’re longing to find a spiritual mentor or hoping to serve as a guide for someone else, we have a FREE resource to encourage and equip you. In Growing Together: Taking Mentoring Beyond Small Talk and Prayer Requests, Melissa Kruger, TGC’s vice president of discipleship programming, offers encouraging lessons to guide conversations that promote spiritual growth in both the mentee and mentor.
