Today’s Parashah portion for Shabat is Exodus 1:1 – 6:1. It begins with the birth of a son, a very special son, who according to Hebrews 11:23 was no ordinary child.
By faith Moses’ parents hid him for three months after he was born, because they saw he was no ordinary child, and they were not afraid of the king’s edict.
Is it not then a co-incidence, that today, the day on which this Torah portion is given in the synagogues all over the world, people all over the world are also celebrating the birth of Yshua HaMashiach (that’s Jesus the Christ in Hebrew), the Son of the Living God, regardless of the fact that no one really can prove for certain which day of the year Jesus was actually born on.
Moses, “no ordinary child”, is an Old Testament biblical type of Jesus. In the same way that Moses was no ordinary child, Jesus was no ordinary child. More-so, Jesus was born in no ordinary way, as we know well that he was born of a virgin.
What makes the birth of Moses and the birth of Jesus so remarkably similar, is that both Moses and Jesus were born into an environment that was hostile to their existence, even to their existence from birth. This is because that environment, affected by Satan’s hostility towards God, was hostile to God’s purposes which he was to fulfil in both Moses and Jesus:
Then Pharaoh gave this order to all his people: “Every Hebrew boy that is born you must throw into the Nile, but let every girl live.” (Exodus 1:22 NIV)
Through Moses, God’s purpose was to fulfil his promise to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to return the children of Israel back to the promised land. That purpose through the special son Moses was to be fulfilled in order that God’s higher purpose of establishing a carefully cultivated people amongst which his only begotten son Jesus would be raised to fulfil God’s purpose in bringing a means of salvation to all of mankind.
So just as Moses’ life was threatened by Satan even from birth, so Jesus’ life was threatened from birth:
When they had gone, an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream. “Get up,” he said, “take the child and his mother and escape to Egypt. Stay there until I tell you, for Herod is going to search for the child to kill him.” (Matthew 2:13 NIV)
Evidently, Satan is opposed both to the establishing of the household of Jacob and to the emergence into this world of Jesus for the redemption of mankind together with the seed of his life-giving gospel through which mankind can be saved.
Another way in which Moses’ life resembles the life of Jesus is that Moses was to be a saviour to Israel, one who would take God’s people Israel out of hard slavery, bitterness, misery and oppression and lead them back towards the land promised to their fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
Jesus, born just as Moses was born in no ordinary way, was himself such a saviour, one who would save far more than Moses could save, by providing a way for not only the children of Israel to be saved, but a way of salvation for the whole world.
Jesus is Lord of the Shabat (Mathew 12:8). How wonderful that this year, on this day that people celebrate his birth, He is Lord of this same Shabat day.
