Take this child and nurse it for me

“ Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages.”
—Exodus 2:9

These words were addressed by Pharaoh’s daughter to the mother of Moses. Of the circumstances that occasioned them, it can scarcely be necessary to inform you. You need not be told that soon after the birth of this future leader of Israel his parents were compelled by the cruelty of the Egyptian king to expose him in an ark of bulrushes on the banks of the Nile. In this situation, he was found by the daughter of Pharaoh. So powerfully did his infantile cries excite her compassion that she determined not only to rescue him from a watery grave, but to adopt and educate him as her own. His sister Miriam, who at a distance had watched his fate unseen, now came forward like a person entirely unacquainted with the circumstances of his exposure and, on hearing of the princess’ determination, offered to procure a Hebrew woman to take the care of him until he should be of sufficient age to appear at her father’s court. This offer being accepted, she immediately went and called the child’s mother to whose care he was committed by the princess in the words of our text—“Take this child and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages.”

In similar language, my friends, does God address parents. To everyone on whom He bestows the blessing of children, He says in His Word and by the voice of His Providence, “Take this child and educate it for Me, and I will give thee thy wages.” From this passage, therefore, we may take occasion to show what is implied in educating children for God.

The first thing implied in educating children for God is a realizing, heartfelt conviction that they are His property, His children, rather than ours. He commits them for a time to our care, merely for the purpose of education, as we place children under the care of human instructors for the same purpose. However carefully we may educate children, yet we cannot be said to educate them for God unless we [believe] that they are His; for if we [believe] that they are ours exclusively, we shalt and must educate them for ourselves and not for Him. To know that they are His is to feel a cordial, operative conviction that He has a sovereign right to dispose of them as He pleases and to take them from us whenever He thinks fit. That they are His and that He possesses this right is evident from innumerable passages in the inspired writings. We are there told that God is the former of our bodies and the Father of our spirits, that we are all His offspring, and that consequently we are not our own but His. We are also assured that as the soul of the parent, so also the souls of the children are His. God once and again severely reproves and threatens the Jews because they sacrificed His children in the fire to Moloch (Eze 16:20-21). Yet plain and explicit as these passages are, how few parents appear to feel their force. How few appear to feel and act as if conscious that they and theirs were the absolute property of God, that they were merely the foster parents of their children, and that, in all which they do for them, they are or ought to be acting for God. But it is evident that they must feel this before they can bring up their children for Him; for how can they educate their children for a being whose existence they do not realize, whose right to them they do not acknowledge, and whose character they do not love?

Nearly connected with this is a second thing implied in educating children for God—namely, a cordial and solemn dedication or surrender of them to Him to be His forever. We have already shown that they are His property and not ours. By dedicating them to Him, we mean nothing more than an explicit acknowledgment of this truth or an acknowledgment that we consider them as entirely His and that we unreservedly surrender them to Him for time and eternity…If we refuse to give them to God, how can we be said to educate them for Him?

In the third place, if we would educate children for God, we must do all that we do for them from right motives. Almost the only motive that the Scriptures allow to be right is a regard for the glory of God and a disinterested desire to promote it; and they consider nothing as really done for God that does not flow from this source. Without this, however exemplary we may be, we do but bring forth fruit to ourselves and are no better than empty vines. We must be governed therefore by this motive in the education of our children if we would educate them for God and not for ourselves. In all our cares, labors, and sufferings for them, a regard to the divine glory must be the main spring that moves us. If we act merely from parental affection, we act from no higher principle than the irrational animals around us; many of them evidently appear to love their offspring no less ardently and to be no less ready to encounter dangers, toils, and sufferings to promote their happiness than we are to promote the welfare of ours. But if parental affection can be sanctified by the grace of God and parental duties hallowed by a wish to promote His glory, then we rise above the irrational world to our proper station and may be said to educate our children for God. Here, my friends, we may observe that true religion, when it prevails in the heart, sanctifies everything. [It] renders even the most common actions of life acceptable to God and gives them a dignity and importance, which of themselves they by no means deserve…Thus, the care and education of children, however trifling it may be thought by some, ought to be attended to from a regard to the divine glory. When this is done, it becomes an important part of true religion.

In the fourth place, if we would educate our children for God, we must educate them for His service. The three preceding particulars that we have mentioned refer principally to ourselves and our motives. But this has more immediate relation to our children themselves…In order to qualify yourselves for instructing and preparing your children for God’s service, you [must] diligently study His Word to ascertain what He requires of them and frequently pray for the assistance of His Spirit, both for them and yourselves…You will carefully guard against saying or doing anything which may, either directly or indirectly, lead them to consider religion as an object of secondary importance. On the contrary, you will constantly labor to impress upon their minds a conviction that you consider religion as the great business of life, the favor of God as the only proper object of pursuit, and the enjoyment of Him hereafter as the only happiness, while everything else is comparatively of no consequence, however important it may otherwise be.