Proverbs 31:28-29
Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.
Introduction
I want to take a moment to thank every woman in this church today for being an example of Christian living to those around you. I know from personal experience that this day is a hard day for some women. But today we honor all of the women in the church because even if you do not have a child of your own, you help to take care of those around you. You have been a mother to children around you, and you help to guide and show them the true meaning of Christian living. We honor you today for that! As a token of our appreciation, we want you to enjoy this.
(have kids pass out flowers)
As I was getting ready for this week’s lesson, I came across a couple of real wisdom points about mothers. There is a diagram with all the questions that are asked a Mom, such as “When do we eat, and where’s my stuff, or can I go and do”. There is another diagram that has a question for Dad. It’s “Where’s Mom?” Right? I saw another one that said “A little boy who was told by his mother that it was God who makes people good, replied, “yes, I know it is God, but mothers help a lot!”
Mother’s Day is not just another day to celebrate your Mom. It’s a day to celebrate God and his wisdom to know that we all need mothers in our lives. Do you know, though that the Mother of Mother’s Day fought against the holiday in the later years of her life? Her name was Anna Jarvis. She began campaigning for an official day to honor mothers in 1905, the year her mother passed away. By 1908, she had the first major event honoring mothers in her hometown of Grafton, West Virginia. She kept pushing for the holiday to be recognized by the US government, placing it on the 2nd Sunday in May. In 1914, she would be successful in her attempts, and Woodrow Wilson would sign the 2nd Sunday in May as the official holiday.
But shortly after the establishment of Mother’s Day, Jarvis realized that people were using the holiday to make a quick buck on the sentimentality of the day. She would say “a printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world. And candy! You take a box to Mother - and then eat most of it yourself. A pretty sentiment.” She was disgusted with the way that the day had taken the meaning away from the holiness that she sought to show as a lay Methodist minister to mothers everywhere. As she put it, Mother’s Day, and I am quoting her again here, “is in honor of the best mother who ever lived - the mother of your heart.”
As I have prepared for this week’s lesson, too, I found out that we are to honor mothers out of an abundance of Love in Christ rather than just our own love for the women that we call Mom. The woman are blessed, and we call them blessed through recognizing certain traits. Let’s look at a few of them.
We call her blessed because:
Her Motherhood - gave them life
Why are we required as children to honor our mothers? It is because it is through our mothers that we are given life. Think about it, your mother carried you in her womb for months on end, enduring pain of childbirth. It is a biological thing for a woman to be called a mother. Did you know that ‘mother’ occurs for the first time in the Bible in Genesis 2:24? It’s a verse that we use often in marriage ceremonies. It reads “For a man shall leave his father and mother and cleave unto his wife.” It is God’s plan for one man and one woman to forsake all others, including their parents, to be a God-designed team from which God can give them children to raise up in the fear of God. That means that the mother is a spiritually ordained position by God!
In Exodus 20:12, one of the commandments that God gives to his people is “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord God is giving you”. We are to honor our mothers because this is one of the main ways that we please God. But more than this, it brings us rewards as well! Look at the end of that verse: if we honor our mothers and our fathers, we will be rewarded with long life.
Husbands are to honor their wives as well. We know that one of the reasons that God ordained marriage was for them to have families. We see in Colossians 3:19, “Husbands, love your wives, and do not be harsh with them.” This is a command for husbands to love their wives, not only as a wife, but in a way that honors them. There are many other verses that deals with how husbands deal with their wives. Every single one of them relates the thought that husbands are to love them like Christ loves the church, and to honor them in a way that is similar to the way that man honors the church. Ephesians 5:21-33 gives clear instruction on how a Christian household should work. I won’t go into it right now in the detail that it deserves, but rather I will say that in those verses that the husband is to love his wife like he loves himself. In verse 29, it says “after all, no one ever hated their own body, but they feed and care for their body, just as Christ does the church”. When a husband respects, loves, and honors his wife and mother of their children (and even the children that make up his entire family!), he is honoring God in turn.
Her Ministry - cares for them
Next, children and husbands honor their wives through the ministry that she provides them. Look in this passage of scripture, Proverbs 31. All through verses 10-31, the woman being described here is described as selecting goods and working with others. She has good sense to represent her husband in the marketplace because it brings him honor. Her family wants for nothing. She even takes care of those outside of her own family, caring for the poor and the needy! If you’ll permit me, I want to brag on the mother of my children. When I read these verses, I am reminded of the kind of woman that Tasha is. And she has a ministry, not only to me, but also to our children. She has a ministry to the children that she works with at her school. She has a ministry to each one of you in this church as well, praying often for you and the trial that you are going through. When you have a wife who is the kind of mother that she is, she does bring a man like me prestige!
The ministry of mothers is also why we honor all the women in our congregation with the flowers today. You are the kind of people that have a ministry to others within the congregation. You are the ones that people can turn to and say “will you pray for me?” and you know that it will occur. I was reading this week about church mothers in the black churches in America. What the article I read said was that when a church mother says something, then it needs to be heeded. They also said that one of the worst things that a person could do is to do something in their behavior that would draw the attention of the church mothers! As one deacon of a church in Orlando put it, “when they turned around and gave you one of those looks, you knew what that meant!” We see these kind of women, and can remember these kind of women in the church. Their ministry is not to gain power, but to reprove in a manner that will keep people on the straight and narrow path, to love them in the same way that Christ loves them, and to minister to not only their physical, but also to their spiritual needs. The church needs mothers in it to help it to stay healthy, to keep it from harm, and to protect it like a mother would their own children.
Her Methods - mature decisions for their proper growth
One last part for children to honor their mothers is to emulate her methods. As one author put it, it is honoring her mature decisions for the children’s proper growth. But what are these? First, they are diligent and have wisdom, exemplified through verses 13 through 19. Sometimes the wisdom that mothers have for their children is through education, but more often than not it is having the children emulate them by NOT doing what they did. Moms, ever have a time where you had one of your children (or a child that you had to reprimand that was in the church) do something that you did, and you said, “well, I told you not to because of what happened to me!” But how did you fix it? You helped them to overcome that same mistake.
Mothers are also trustworthy and devoted. I was reading the story of St. Augustine of Hippo. His mother, Monica, prayed for years and years that her son would come to faith in Jesus. She suffered at the hands of her husband, being that he was an adulter. Her son would go and try to find truth in false religions, and would become wayward. After 17 years of resistance to the Gospel, Monica was able to convict Augustine of the truth, and he accepted Christ as his savior. Before his conversion, she wept for her son, convinced that he would die before she could reach him for the Gospel. But thank goodness she did! He became one of the great church leaders in the early church, and helped to shape what the church would be like. But without the devotion of his mother, there would not have been a St. Augustine of Hippo.
Mothers are giving. See in verse 20, it reads She opens her arms to the poor and extends her hands to the needy.” I was reminded of Mother Mary Bickerdyke, helping the needy soldiers in hospitals of the American Civil War. When a surgeon asked on what authority she had to take action in the hospital, she said to the man “On the authority of Lord God Almighty, have you anything that outranks that?!” She would, in total throughout the war, build more than 300 hospitals and aid the wounded on 19 battlefields. The soldiers that she cared for gave her the nickname ‘Mother’, and was so beloved by her soldiers that they would cheer her when she appeared. So loved by General Sherman, who once said after someone complained to him about her that “She outranks me”, Sherman had her at the head of the XV Corps in the Grand Review of the Armies in Washington D.C. After the war, she would work with the Home for the Friendless in Chicago, and would continue to help former soldiers as she could.
Bickerdyke’s example is one of greatness, but we also see the giving nature of mothers within our own community. How many times have mothers given food, shelter, clothing, and other items to help people within our community? I would say more than we will ever know. Giving is always a hallmark of the Christ-centered mother.
Mothers are also dependable. To remind all of us, dependability is defined as the quality of being trustworthy and reliable. They are dependable for good advice, and they are dependable for loving even in the worst of situations. I am reminded of a story that President Dwight Eisenhower told of his mother. When he was growing up, his mother and brothers would play a card game called Flinch. One particular time when they were playing, Dwight was dealt a bad hand. He complained about it loudly. His mother made all the boys put down their cards and said to them, “You are in a game in your home with your mother and brothers who love you. But out in the world you will be dealt bad hands without love. Here is some advice for you boys: take those bad hands without complaining and play them out. Ask God to help you, and you will win the important game called life.” Having a mother that is trustworthy and reliable, one that you can truly depend on is worthy of praise and of honoring.
When a mother loves the Lord, that is the ultimate reason for people to honor her. In verse 30, it reads “charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting; but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.” The true worth of a woman is not found in her beauty, for we know that it will fade over time. It is not in her charm, because charm can be broken. The worth of a woman is in her devotion to God above all things. She is no slave of a master husband, but a person in her own right who takes a full and honored place in the life of the home and the community. As verse 28 says, “her children arise and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her”.
Conclusion
We’ll finish with one more story of a mother’s love. I think that it sums up what we’ve been talking about today well. When Dr. D. M. Stearns, the great Bible teacher at the turn of the 20th Century, was asked this: “if you had prayed all your life for the salvation of a loved one, and then you got word that that person had died without giving any evidence of repentance after having lived a sinful life, what would you think, both of prayer itself and of the love of God and His promises to answer?”
This, of course, was a striking question, and it caused everyone to take a little more notice. Many wondered how Dr. Stearns would answer. He said, “Well, I should expect to meet that loved on in heaven, for I believe in a God who answers prayer, and if He put that exercise upon your heart to pray for that dear one, it was because He, doubtless, intended to answer it.” Then he told a story.
Many years ago there was a dear old lady living in Philadelphia who had a very wayward son. This young man had been brought up in church and Sunday school, but he had drifted away from everything holy. He had gone to sea and had become a very rough, careless, godless sailor.
One night his mother was awakened with a very deep sense of need upon her heart. When fully awake, she thought of her son and she was impressed that he was in great danger; as a result, she got up, threw on a dressing gown, knelt by her bedside, and prayed earnestly that God would undertake for the boy, whatever his need was. She didn't understand it, but after praying for perhaps two or three hours there came to her a sense of rest and peace, and she felt sure in her heart that God had answered. She got back into bed and slept soundly until the morning. Day after day she kept wondering to herself why she was thus awakened and moved to prayer, but somehow or other she could not feel the need to pray for that boy any more; rather she praised God for something which she felt sure He had done for her son.
Several weeks passed. One day there was a knock at the door. When she went to the door—there stood her boy! As soon as he entered the room, he said, "Mother, I'm saved!" Then he told her a wonderful story.
He told how a few weeks earlier, his ship had been tossed in mid-Atlantic by a terrific storm; and it looked as though there were no hope of riding it through. One of the masts had snapped; the captain called the men to come and cut it away. They stepped out, he among them, cursing and reviling God because they had to be out in such an awful night. They were cutting away this mast when suddenly the ship gave a lurch, and a great wave caught this young man and carried him overboard.
As he struggled almost helplessly with the great waves of the sea, the awful thought came to him, "I'm lost forever!" Suddenly, he remembered a hymn that he had often heard sung in his boyhood days, "There is life in a look at the crucified One; There is life at this moment for thee; Then look, sinner, look unto Him and be saved; Unto Him who was nailed to the tree." He cried out in agony of heart, "Oh, God, I look, I look to Jesus." Then he was carried to the top of the waves and lost consciousness.
Hours afterwards when the storm had ceased and the men came out to clear the deck, they found him lying unconscious, crowded up against a bulwark. Evidently, while one wave had carried him off the deck, another had carried him back again. The sailors took him into the cabin and gave him restoratives. When he came to, the first words from his lips were, "Thank God, I'm saved!" From that time on he had an assurance of God's salvation that meant everything to him. Then his mother told him how she had prayed for him that night. They realized that it was just at the time when he was in such desperate circumstances, and God had heard and answered.
Now suppose that that young man's body had never been brought back to the ship. Suppose he had sunk down into the depths. People might have thought he was lost forever in his sin, but he would have been as truly saved as he actually was. God had permitted him to come back in testimony of His wonderful grace.
A mother’s prayer, one of devotion to God, given in humbleness to the Lord most high, to save her child. Not just from the rough seas, but from the raucous living that he was living. And God hears those prayers. He hears those prayers, and to the humble that ask in His will, he grants. Thank you mothers, thank you women of the church, for being the people who love God and show it to your children and to the people of the church. Let’s pray.
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