This past Sunday, I had the privilege of preaching the Sunday morning service at True Light Church in Jamestown, Tennessee. As always, it was a wonderful hour of worship, and there was a real sense of the Lord’s presence among His people.
The message was entitled “What To Remember When You Put Your Basket In God’s Hands” from Exodus 2:1–10.
To give you a little context, at the beginning of the message I had placed a basket with a lid on it beside the pulpit. I assured the congregation that I was not about to break out any snakes, which brought a good laugh from the room. The basket was simply a visual aid, something I almost never do, but I hoped it would held driver a point home.
In Exodus 2, Moses’ mother came to the painful place where she could no longer hide her baby. Pharaoh had commanded that every Hebrew baby boy be cast into the river. She had protected Moses as long as she could, but eventually she made a little ark of bulrushes, placed her child inside, and set him among the reeds by the river’s brink.
That must have looked like the most frightening surrender of her life. But what seemed to be a helpless basket floating on dangerous water was really a precious burden placed into the providential hands of God.
The burden of the message was this: every one of us will eventually hold something in our hands that we cannot fix, force, control, or carry any longer. It may be a child, a marriage, a sickness, a grief, a fear, an addiction, a burden, a sin, or a future filled with apprehension. And at that point, the question becomes, “What do I do with the basket?”
Sometimes the hardest thing to do is the very thing faith requires: to place what is most distressing to us completely into the care of God’s hands.
That is not careless indifference. It is not giving up because we do not care. It is loving surrender. It is trusting the Lord after we have done all we know to do. It is bringing our burden to the river’s edge, placing it before Him, and saying, “Lord, I cannot carry this any farther, but I believe You can.”
By the end of the message, I picked up the basket, held it open, and asked the congregation, “What is it that you need to put in the basket and place into God’s hand?”
God helped me so much in this message. I told the congregation at the beginning that I hoped the message came across to them as strongly as it had come across to my own heart. By the end of the service, and by the help of the Spirit of God, it seemed that it did.
I am grateful for the kindness of True Light Church and for the privilege of opening the Word of God with them. My prayer is that this message will be a help to you as well.
Whatever is in your basket may be beyond your control, but it is not beyond God’s care. It may be too heavy for your hands, but it is no burden for His. The God who guided that little ark through the waters of the Nile is still the God who sees from heaven above, works providentially behind the scenes, and brings His people safely through.
