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You can't study too much of the Old Testament without realizing how much importance and significance children and having babies was to the Jewish people. I realize that I'm probably digging myself a bit of a hole here seeing that many of you want me to have kids and we have not as of yet had any, but let me take a minute and express upon you the importance of having children and giving birth to newborns in the Old Testament.

To the Israelite, having children was a sign of God's blessings and abundance upon them. And it was a scriptural attitude for the Psalmist said:

Bro. Timothy often tells me that I need a "quiver" full of kids! But it is no lie that to the Israelite, they viewed children as a "heritage of the Lord" and special as good "fruit" and as a blessing and reward from the Lord. They brought happiness because back then, the more children the more work that a family could do and more land that they could cultivate and they literally "had" their farm hands and such, and so in the physical sense at least in that day there was definitely truth in these statements. Today, children are still your heritage and nothing is more important than teaching them to love God and love truth and love church and to obey His commandments because they are a gift placed in your care. God has loaned them to you to train for His purpose. And so there comes a great responsibility with kids. And if you will train them up to fear the Lord, they will be a source of happiness to you and your spouse.

But even if that is so today, I want to impress upon you that our love for kids and emphasis on children pales in comparison to the Israelites in the Old Testament. We find Jacob's two wives, Leah and Rachael in a "baby-making" contest because they saw their children as a sign of God's favor. We find women who were desperate to have babies: Sarah, Rachael, Tamar, Hannah, Samson's Mother, Elisabeth, and the list goes on and on -- the scriptures are full of women who were desperate because they took their barrenness as a sign of God's disapproval and judgment. In the Old Testament for a wife to be barren was a curse that was viewed as God's disapproval upon their lives and so the worse possible judgment was for God to not allow a woman to give birth as happened with Michal, David's critical wife or to let the baby die as happened with David and Bathsheba's first child that was conceived in adultery and murder.

The flip side of that was that children came to represent the goodness and mercy of God. They represented the promise of God. When Eve had her third son, Seth, she recognized that he had been appointed by God to bring redemption and God promised her that her seed, through this child, would one day stomp the devil's head! When God made promises to Abraham for his life, they were to be revealed and come to fruition to a child that would be born to Sarah even though she was far past the child bearing age. The same promise was made to John the Baptist's parents, Zacharias and Elisabeth, who were promised a son that would be great and prepare the way for the Messiah. To Hannah, Samuel's mother, her son represented an answered prayer. To Samson's mother, her baby represented the fruition of God's power in her life. And of course, when that baby -- Oh that precious baby -- was born to Mary, it represented more than any baby had ever represented before: for it represented life everlasting and the redemption and mercy and love of God coming to save a sinful mankind! In that little baby was miracles, and prophecies that would be fulfilled and great sermons and salvation that flowed through it's veins! The song is true: one king held the frankincense, one king held the myrrh, one king held the purest gold and one King held the "hope of the world!"

Have you ever wondered why? Have you ever wondered why God allowed birth and babies and having children to represent so much and mean so much, so much that the New Birth, the process of salvation was based upon it? Have you ever wondered why so many promises of God were signified with the birth of a baby? Could it be that the process of conception and delivery illustrates exactly the process of receiving God's blessings in your life? I have certainly learned for the blessings of God and for me to receive the promises of God, there is a process and conditions that have to be met. First the seed of that promise from the Word of God has to be placed in your heart. And then you must allow the seed of that promise to develop and grow and if you do so, then in the fulness of time, you will reach a place where you are "pregnant with promise" (pardon the pun). God sometimes (I would even say often) has to get us a little uncomfortable to receive many of His promises and get us out of our comfort zone to let Him bring forth what He wants to bring forth. And then I have found that right before that promise is to be realized in your life, there is usually some difficulty and some labor that comes about. There is usually some exertion and physical energy that must take place, but when that promise comes, all the pain, all the waiting, all the discomfort, are quickly forgotten and pushed to the back of your mind as the joy of finally possessing what God has promised makes it all worthwhile! It may take a little work to see the promises of God come true in our life and to see the revival and the anointing that He has promises, but when the birth finally comes and we hold the revival and power in our arms, whatever the course and whatever the struggle and whatever the pain, it WILL be worth it all! And so now we know why God used childbirth to represent the promises of God because the struggle to see them in our life mirrors the process!

Let me stop here and point out that you can't blame God that it does require some effort and sometimes pain to see the blessings of God and promises come true in our life. Because God intended for childbearing to be a painless pleasure. Before sin entered into the garden, there was no travail and pain in childbearing. And when God does things on His own, that is still how he operates. The prophet Isaiah said talking about God's will:

Understand that the travail and pain of childbearing came first to Eve after mankind's sin and was a result of things between man and God. When we have to travail or we have to put our flesh into submission or we have to work for some things or patiently wait for the things of God to come into our life and then it seems that to have them we must get out of our comfort zone and push a little extra in the Spirit, remember that we are fighting against the work of sin in our life. And that is why to have some things in God you have to fight: it wasn't God's original plan but is a result of sin. When people have to travail and have to push through to something, it is because of their sinful nature and their natural doubt and their previous disobedience and the condemnation of the devil is trying to keep that promise from being born! They are not fighting against God, but are fighting through the crowd tying to touch God! The labor comes from our inconsistencies not from God's command!

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So understanding all of that, we come to our first text found in Exodus chapter 1. It is perhaps not about two women that you already knew by name. They are only mentioned in scripture this once. They are Shiphrah and Puah, who were the head midwives of the midwives that serviced the Hebrew women while in Egypt. We don't know a whole lot about them, and Bible scholars are firmly divided as to whether they were Egyptian women or Hebrew women. We do know that they were able to speak directly to Pharaoh, and he expected them to obey his command to kill all male Hebrew children born at that time. That would seem to indicate that they were Egyptian. But we also know that they have Hebrew names and feared Jehovah God, which seem to indicate that they were Jewish. They could have been Jewish women whose skill at what they did caused them to be greatly respected and exalted in Pharaoh's court, or they could have been Egyptian women who were won to worship Jehovah God by the Hebrew women that they were continually around. It doesn't matter, but I tend to favor the last view that they were Egyptians that had been converted to worshipping the one God of the Israelites because it makes better sense with the rest of the story and would be the only thing that I can think about that is so remarkable to have them listed and named here in scripture.

We do know that they were midwives. Midwives were women skilled in assisting the child birthing process. Scholars say that because information was passed down from practical experience from woman to woman, a good midwife was one of the most medically skilled occupations in the Old Testament. Simply put, many of these women were very skilled at straightening out complications and easing the painful and -- back then, often deadly -- process of producing children. They would carefully study and prepare and were available to call on day and night whenever the cry of travail come forth. That there would be so many of them to have to have two "head" midwives of just the ones for the Hebrew women, indicates to us the importance of the midwife to the Israeli mother. The children of Israel placed great stock in such women that could assist through such a dangerous and yet important and elevated process!

In the story, Pharaoh is jealous because the nation of Israel's population is growing tremendously and so orders that the midwives kill all babies that are male. The ladies fear Jehovah God enough that they disobey Pharaoh's orders and save the babies and then when Pharaoh asks why there are still infant boys everywhere, they tell him "because the Israeli women are in shape and quick to deliver their babies, often delivering them before we get there." And apparently this story is important because we have several verses recording their exact dialogue with Pharaoh and even the two head midwives names!

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Now let me preach to you. Now that you realize what having babies represented in the Old Testament, especially male babies, then you can realize that there are some important lessons to be learned from this story (aren't there always an important lesson to be learned?):

First of all, there had to be some truth to the fact that the Israeli women tended to have easier and faster deliveries than the Egyptians or Pharaoh wouldn't have bought the story. Let me say that doctors say that women who are "in shape" and used to strenuous physical labor have much shorter labor times and usually easier deliveries than women who are not. The Israeli women, being slaves, were used to working hard, long days and were more physically fit than their Egyptian counterparts, thus there was some truth to the midwives' statement!

Isn't it the same in the spiritual!? The people who are putting some effort into serving God and exercising and active spiritually are going to have an easier time seeing the promises of God come to pass in their life! If you are praying, fasting, witnessing, and growing, and reading, and studying, then you are going to have an easier time winning souls, receiving the blessings, and yielding to the Spirit of God. There will still be some effort and labor required, but you will have it easier than an "inactive, out of shape," lazy Christian!

The next thing to get from this story, is that the enemy of your soul wants to destroy the blessings of God and keep you from holding God's promises in your life! He wants to kill your baby! He doesn't really care whether a promise or blessing is placed within your mind. He doesn't even care if it begins to grow, as long as he can kill it before it lives and you actually can grasp it and nurture it, then the enemy is happy! The devil doesn't care if you hear the Word of God as long as you don't allow it to develop into a lifestyle! He doesn't care if you feel the Spirit and even get hope as long as he can keep you from receiving what you hope for.

He gets some people to abort their promises. I could preach a whole message on that. They aren't willing to wait the full term of their promises of God. They are willing to handle the responsibility of the promise when it comes. It's easier to just live without the blessings and promises of God and deal with shame and shattered dreams -- they think -- than to wait for God's plan to come to birth!

But from this story, we can also see that our enemy's chief tactic against people seeing their promises come to life is to use other people to kill them! How many people allow themselves to become midwives to death and midwives to judgment? How many people seem to "make a living" by bringing hurt and pain in others' lives!? A critical word spoken here. A negative witness there. Some doubt and unbelief planted here. It seems that there are some people that you can be around just for a few minutes and you leave more depressed, worst off, and more down and discouraged than when you came! They are "midwives to misery," and bring forth the bad and the opposite of God's goodness in the people that they are around and touch! When they see people struggling in their life and in a state where God is trying to bring forth a promise, they plant confusion and discontentment and rebellion. I've made up in my mind: I'm not going to be a midwife to misery and I'll not hang continually around with such people! I'm going to see the promises of God come true in my life! I'm going to allow them to come forth and I'm going to nurture them and keep them and cradle them and develop them! I will see the promises of God come to past, no matter who I've got to guard my baby against!

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Let me fast forward to our other text. It's the story of Mary finding out that she was about to be pregnant with Jesus. We've already talked about what her son represented, and most of you know the story of how the angel came and talked with her about that the Holy Spirit was going to overshadow her and that she shouldn't fear because this "Holy Thing" was going to be the "God with us!" In our text, we read about how that one of the last things that the angel told Mary was "by the way your cousin, the one who is so old and childless that she has been nicknamed 'barren,' Elisabeth, she's going to have a child too and in fact she's already six months along! The angel then says, "for with God nothing shall be impossible!" In other words, when God promises something, it is impossible for nothing to happen! This son of Elisabeth's would become John the Baptist and would be the forerunner of Jesus Christ. He would be the voice crying in the wilderness preparing the way of the Lord's ministry. His preaching would shake Israel, and he would be the man that Jesus Christ would say was the greatest of the prophets that had lived to that point!

When Mary hears about Elisabeth's promise in the making, she does an interesting thing. She leaves immediately, her family and fiancé, Joseph, and travels to immediately be with Elisabeth. When she gets there, the Holy Ghost moves upon Elisabeth and she prophesies about the children. And we can preach on all of that in another sermon. I simply want you to recognize the element of time in the story. When the angel comes to Mary, the scripture records that the angel said it is the "sixth month" of her pregnancy. We know that the average time of a human pregnancy is nine months. The scripture goes on to say that Mary doesn't just stay for a week or two, but that she stays for exactly three months! Mary stayed until the promise was due. In fact the scripture says in the very next verse that she didn't leave until "Elisabeth's full time." Now I don't know if she actually performed the birth process for Elisabeth, and probably not because she was very young, but there is a principle that we can learn from Mary in these verses! Mary -- at least in a spiritual sense -- became a midwife to a promise! When she heard about what God wanted to do in someone's life, she acted immediately and went forth and didn't leave until that promise had come to pass! Because of her unselfishness and determination, Mary placed herself in the league and skill of Shiprah and Puah! Just as they refused to bow to the demands of Pharaoh and committed themselves to the delivering of other's promises and blessings and in so doing became midwives to a promise, so did Mary push through the doubt and the human logic of Elisabeth's age and condition and believed God's promises were true and acted upon it until she saw her friend receive what God had promised!

And so I'm preaching to you a very simple and yet powerful thought: what Castroville needs. What Medina County needs. What this church needs is some people with the determination and spirit of Shiprah, and Puah and Mary! We need somebody that is willing to be a midwife to a promise! That is not going to faint in the desperate situation. Who can believe for the blessings of God in the midnight hour! Someone who is not afraid to get their hands dirty in order to see the mandate of God fulfilled. Someone who is not afraid to sacrifice time, effort, and schedule to help someone else realize the promises of God. Someone who will stay and pray as long as someone needs to pray. Someone who will teach a Bible Study UNTIL they receive it. Someone who will prepare and get themselves ready to answer the dilemma and the situation that rises up unexpectedly in someone's life. God needs someone to get a revelation tonight: for us to have the revival of "new births" that we have been promised, it's not going to be just one or two people needed, but like in Exodus chapter 1, we need an entire team, an entire church of people who will be skilled in soul winning and faithful enough that they believe that God can fill people with the Holy Ghost and that are willing to pray them through.

This world may be an Egypt and we may be sojourners in a desert land. The gods of this world may be doing everything that they can do to keep people from receiving the blessings and promises of God, but just like the Israelites in Egypt, it is the will of God that His people multiply and prosper and reproduce spiritually and do so easily! But the revival will only come when some people make up in their minds that whatever I have to learn, however I have to be committed, whatever I have to change, and whatever I have to do, I'm going to be a midwife to a promise! The revival that has been promised will only come when we get the mentality that I will be such a person! I will be willing to sacrifice and put myself out to see the coming of the promises of God in another person's life!

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We need midwives to a promise! There are a couple of stories in the Bible where a midwife figures prominently in the story and let me mention briefly the details and what it means to you and I.

The first story is that of the labor of Tamar. It's found in the book of Genesis 38 beginning with verse 27:

We don't have time to go into the lesson represented by the scarlet thread except that it served to mark which of the twins was the firstborn which in Biblical days was very important. What I want you to notice about this passage is two things: 1.) The midwife was very prepared, even having scarlet thread handy as to mark the firstborn. 2.) That this was difficult, troublesome, and complicated birth. To have twins born with both babies vying for the exit ramp is a complicated procedure and indeed WITHOUT the midwife, it is likely that things would not have gone as smoothly or possibly even resulted in the death of one or both of the children and even the mother. Everything was find because of the preparedness, presence, and skill of the midwife.

We need people who can be midwives of promise to people that are in difficult, troublesome, complicated situations! There are no normal new births today. Everyone has baggage and scars and a past! But we cannot run from people's trouble and horrible situations and let them fend for themselves, because to do so will mean the death of the promises of God in their life and maybe even their own spiritual destiny will be lost! We need people who will look at a horrible situation and at a life destroyed by sin and at the complicated situation and see the promise in it! That will be prepared with a scarlet thread of the blood of Jesus to present into the situation and to guide people to receiving the blessings of God!

The second story where a midwife figures in prominently is the story of Rachael's birth of Benjamin. It's also found in Genesis, in this case, the chapter is the 35th:

Rachel died during this birth process, but the midwife was able to save the baby. He became Benjamin, one of the fathers of the twelve tribes of Israel. From this story we can learn that there are some promises that only come forth through the death of the individual. It is true in the Spirit. In order to receive the Holy Ghost, the individual must die out to their old lifestyle in Repentance. In order to receive healing, the individual must swallow some pride and die out to such trivialities and ask for prayer and help. In order to receive a deeper anointing or to win souls, a person must die out to their personal agenda and be willing to give of their life for the kingdom's sake. A midwife of a promise must not hesitate in such matters but must do whatever they can to save the promise of new life! We cannot afford to stop preaching on Repentance and sacrifice and such, because only through those things will the will of God and His promises be born in other's lives! And, so to be a midwife of a promise, we cannot shy away from sacrifice and death and great effort ourselves! We must take it on with an eye on the promised prize that God is trying to bring forth!

That is all well, good, and true, but there is a little more to this story. The midwife attending the birth of Benjamin is unnamed here in scripture. To get exactly what else was going on here, you have to rewind back up to verse 8 in the chapter to something that happened before they left Bethel. The scriptures read:

This is not the judge Deborah, but is another, much lesser-known woman. She was "Rebekah's nurse" which means that she was the nanny and midwife to Rebekah, who was the bride of Isaac and was the mother of Jacob. You may remember the story of how Abraham sent a servant to find a wife for Isaac and Rebekah was found. In Genesis 24:59 we find that Deborah was sent off with Rebekah to care for her. Deborah had probably assisted in the birth of Rebekah herself and then assisted in the birth of Jacob and Esau and here is still with the family after all of these years being a midwife and a help. In those days such women became a part of the family and were invaluable because of their expertise and knowledge. This is an amazing scripture because the fact that Deborah is alive here indicates to us that she was well over 160 years of age! She has been faithful for over a century and a half as a midwife and as a friend to the family! It is a testament to their love and her significance in the family that her death is recorded here and her name preserved for us to see today.

The point that I want to make is that when it comes time for Rachael to travail and give birth to Benjamin, something went drastically wrong during the birth and she died. This is not her first birth, however, but it IS her first birth WITHOUT Deborah, the faithful nurse and midwife of the family! For the first time, someone else performs the duty of the midwife and in the process, Rachael dies! Obviously there was something lost in the transference of the mantel from Deborah to this new lady. There's more than inexperience at play here, for it seems that vital knowledge about Rachael's condition and what to do and what not to do has not been passed down. Something has been lost in the next generation of midwives. Now, this is just supposition, but what if Rachael died because of a lack of preparation of the midwife?! Or what if it was because the midwife wasn't as committed and devoted to her duty as Deborah had been?! What if she was distracted at a crucial element and through her inexperience didn't realize the importance of what she was doing and what exactly was at stake until it was too late? Whatever happened, the difference of the two midwives cost Rachael her very life!

Later in the scripture, several of the prophets used Rachael as a symbol for God's people. When Israel mourned because of the death of their infants by Herod, it was stated:

With all of this in mind, let me say that the previous two generations of this great Apostolic Church have paid the price and have been faithful. They have been midwives to a promise! They have worked hard and labored for a Holy Ghost revival before anyone knew what a Holy Ghost revival was and back when they experienced real persecution for believing truth. They fearlessly taught water baptism in Jesus' name and in the infilling of the Holy Ghost with the evidence of speaking in other tongues and the Oneness of God and the need for clean and holy living separated from this world on the inside and the outside. They did well, because they brought forth the promise of God that He would pour out His Spirit upon all flesh! Because of their commitment, and sacrifice, and labor and dedication, you and I can stand today and continue to build upon their foundation enjoying the fruits of their labor. Thank God that someone blazed the trail! Thank God that someone broke the ground and showed us this way back to the truth of the Apostolic doctrine and lifestyle. They were midwives to a promise and for over a century they preached truth and brought forth the revival that God had for them.

But now many of them are no longer in active ministry or even sitting on a pew. Time has passed and now the reins of the church and constituency of the modern day Apostolic church has been turned over to you and I. And again Rachel is travailing the second time and again God has a promise to bring forth! There has been a revival promised and an outpouring of His Spirit proclaimed and even received. And now the church in your hands and in mine. If we do not prepare even better than they prepared, then this church will die. If we are not willing to sacrifice as they were willing to sacrifice, in time, prayer, fasting, faithfulness, money, and burden, then this church will die. If we will not be bothered with the demands of revival and becoming passionate to see others receive what God has promised and are distracted by the cares of this life and the routine of everyday living to the point that we forget that about our highest occupation, then this church will die!

We have been called to the holy calling of being a midwife to a promise! The very end time revival promised by God is in our hands. We will decide the very fate of whether or not this Apostolic Church lives! Let's stand and realizing the duty that we are faced with, face even the most difficult and troublesome situations with faith believing that God will perform and bring forth what He has said! Let's not forget about the lesson of Deborah and what she has taught us! Let's dig in and somebody do something about this revival that God has placed in our hands and let's bring it forth to see it live! Somebody be a midwife to a promise!

If we are midwives to a promise, then we will be like Shiphrah and Puah because the scripture says that because they feared God and performed their duties, they had houses built for them. Most scholars believe that the phrase indicates more than a physical building, but that they joined the Jewish way of life and married into Jewish families and lived in the presence of the Jehovah God! If you will be a midwife to a promise, you will see the promises come true in your life as well! You will find yourself in the perfect will of God and on your way to a Promised Land yourself! And you will find yourself spending eternity with the one, true living God! Let us learn to be midwives to a promise -- there is a lot that rests upon it!