Some mothers in the Bible can teach us a lot about how to respond to great challenges.
Men and women can benefit from how these women responded to things that would have crushed many people in similar situations.
Finals of Kant get Marx 2.0 : a general politics quiz
Mother's day 2013
1. In the movie the Hobbit, the good wizard, Gandalf, explains
why he picked Bilbo Baggins, a humble, small, weak creature
called a hobbit, to be part of the 14 man team to defeat the
great powers of evil afoot in the world then. The Saruman he
refers to was the chief wizard of the earth back then. This is
what Gandalf says:
“Saruman believes it is only great power that can hold evil in
check, but that is not what I have found. I found it is the small
everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay.
Small acts of kindness and love. Why Bilbo Baggins? I don't
know. Perhaps because I am afraid, and he gives me courage.”
When I think of mothers, I have similar thoughts. Human history is
full of examples of great men and women who shook cities,
nations and won great battles and built great empires. Think of
Caesar, Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, Anthony and
Cleopatra, Hellen of Troy, Samson, King David, Hitler, Stalin,
George Washington & Lincoln.
But the small, everyday actions of mothers have done more than
all that.
The small, daily, ordinary, routine love of mothers has shaped
humanity more than any other human force and, As Gandalf said,
has “kept the darkness at bay.””
That is why a line from a poem says, “The hand that rocks the
cradle, rules the world:
The author of that poem called THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE IS THE HAND THAT RULES THE WORLD is
William Ross Wallace (1819-1881).
All my life, I, like many others, have marveled at the ability of
mothers to love their children in small, ordinary ways day after day,
after night, after year after year with such a tenderness, such selflessness,
such devotion, courage, patience, compassion and persistence.
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2. Carrying children, rushing to their aid when they fall and get hurt,
mending their bleeding knees and fearful hearts, changing their diapers,
feeding them day after day and helping them realize that despite all their
supposed defects, pimples , freckles and crooked teeth, they are priceless
to her and to God. No one loves like a mother.
At times, I have been literally stunned by displays of such love. Few
men can love anyone like a mother loves her children.
There really is no other comparable being in existence, no other love
of a creature that comes close to that of a human mother to her
child.
(As a dog lover, I might have said that dogs also impress me with their
love for their masters, but on Mother’s Day, I will not mention such a
thing.)
For most people, this incredible, selfless love mothers have for
their children also gives us a glimpse of God’s love.
Jewish Prover: God could not be everywhere, so He made
mothers.
In fact, the poet who gave us that wonderful line about ‘the hand that
rocks the cradle, rules the world’ goes on to say:
Woman, how divine your mission,
Here upon our natal sod;
Keep—oh, keep the young heart open
Always to the breath of God!
All true trophies of the ages
Are from mother-love impearled,
For the hand that rocks the cradle
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3. Is the hand that rules the world.
My wife, Beth, is such a mother--as, I am sure, are all the mothers
here today. Where so such creatures come from?
Mother’s of the Bible
Eve: A mother who should not have survived but did.
Five women are mentioned in Luke’s Gospel ( 3) as being in the
lineage of Jesus. Eve was not one of them, but obviously, without
Eve no other mother would have ever been born.
Without meaning to, Eve’s sin started a chain reaction of sins
that has brought the entire human race under the power of
sin.
Her sin led to Adam’s sin and they were cast out of Paradise,
bringing sin, sickness, pain and sorrow on their family and all
mankind. Imagine the shame, guilt, despair and self-hatred Eve
must have wrestled with.
Every time Adam came home tired and cut up by the thorns in
the fields he was farming, every time she had pain in childbirth,
she was reminded of Paradise Lost---because of her momentary
lust for power in eating the forbidden fruit.
How did she cope with the look on Adam’s face when they
remembered all that they had lost? Her short rebellion against
God’s only commandment had ruined their lives--and they had
hundreds of years to think about that loss!
Then, her oldest son, Cain, murdered his brother, Able in a fit of
jealous rage.
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4. “What kind of mother am I that my sons could do such a
terrible thing?”, she must have thought to herself. Adam may
have blamed her, too, just as he did in the Garden when God
asked about the fruit.
Many women would have given up at that point. The guilt and
shame of marring mankind and not raising a murderous son might
have driven many women over the edge into suicide or insanity.
She knew God could make another wife for Adam and another
mother for Cain. “Why not? She will be a better wife than I have
been. Maybe another mother can help Cain change his evil
ways. I am worthless and a curse to all I touch,” she may have
thought. “Everything I love, I destroy.”
But Eve did not self-destruct as she could have. Why?
She knew the incredible love a God as her Heavenly Father.
She had walked with Him in the cool of the day in Eden and felt
His deep affection, tender heart and joyful Spirit as they talked
each day about life in the Garden. She knew that despite her
great failures, her Heavenly Father would always love her,
even as he lovingly disciplined her.
Eve also had the love of Adam. She was the only woman on
earth, the first woman and God made her from Adam’s rib.
How could Adam reject Eve even in his great pain and
shame?
Adam also knew that if God could forgive Eve and HIm for
their great sins, Adam could forgive Eve and himself.
Adam also had experienced the tender heart of His Heavenly
Father. He could never reject what God would not reject. He
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5. knew God loved sinful, broken, weak Eve just as much as
God loved Adam, who also had sinned.
So, knowing the FAther’s tender love and Adam’s love, Eve
survived and went on to produce a son named Seth, whom Luke
Gospel shows to be part of the lineage of Jesus Christ, the Savior
of the World!
Eve should have become an alcoholic or jumped off a cliff to kill
herself but instead, she remembered the tender heart of her
Father and the forgiving love of her husband and chose to live
despite her great pain and shame.
Eve shows us that just doing the normal, ordinary things of
life can be heroic and impact many. Eve changed the world by
just continuing to be a wife and mother. Her life helped birth
Jesus centuries later.
Thank God for Eve. Thank God for all the mothers who did not
give up on themselves but trusted God’s love and just kept
keeping on until God made something beautiful of their broken
lives.
“Something beautiful, something good. All my confusion, He
understood. All I had to offer HIm was brokenness and strife but
He made something beautiful of my life.”
Sarah, Hannah, Rebecca, Rachel, Samson’s Mother
and Elizabeth: Failed Mothers---or so It Seemed.
Barrenness is one of the worst things that could happen to a wife
in biblical times and even today in certain parts of the world. In the
early 1500’s, King Henry VIII ripped the Church of England from
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6. the Roman Catholic church in order to divorce a barren wife so he
could get an heir from another woman.
To be old and barren was sometimes seen as a curse from
God by people in the Bible because they knew God was the One
who opened and closed wombs for children.
What does a wife do when her husband is embarrassed,
ashamed and disappointed in her due to barrenness?
What does a wife do when her husband’s other wives mock
her constantly because they have children and that wife does
not.
Sarah, Hannah and Rachel had to endure the taunts of their
husband’s co-wives who already had produced children. Their
agony of soul had to be great.
So what does a wife do when almost everyone, including her
husband sees her as a failure?
Some of these women were old now. How does it feel to be
barren and old with no hope of ever redeeming yourself?
Does such a wife turn to drugs, alcohol, to other men or just bury
her self in self-pity, daily chores and resign herself to a miserable
life as a failed mother?
These six women did not. They turned to God, begging Him to
intervene. They also begged their husbands to pray for them. But
they were women who also loved God and believed that he is the
worker of miracles--even for old, barren, rejected women. God
honored those choices.
To such desperate wives, God gave sons who changed the
course of humanity.
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7. • At 90 years old, Sarah became the mother of Issac, thus
beginning the Jewish race that produced the Messiah.
• Rebecca, the wife of Issac, after years of infertility, finally
birthed Jacob, the father of the 12 tribes of Israel.
• Barren Rachel and her handmaidens helped birth the 12 sons
of Jacob who led those 12 tribes. Rachel’s pregnancies came
just before her death.
• Samson’s barren mother miraculously birthed a Judge of Israel
who has made God famous for 3000 years.
• Old, barren Elizabeth gave birth to John the Baptist, a man
Jesus called the greatest man of the OT!
These six women illustrate several truths worth
remembering:
• It isn’t over until it is over. Just when you think you are too
old, too barren in any area of your life, too much a failure, too
shamed, too guilty, too rejected, too broken, too crushed, too
ruined, too much a mess that nobody has hope for----even then,
God can use you to do things that will bless generations of
people! Don’t give up on yourself if God hasn’t.
How will I know God has given up on me? When He calls you
home to heaven. Until then, trust Him and do what you can to be
faithful.
• God always knew those women would be mothers of
incredible sons. All they had to do was ask and wait and not
give up on God and turn to sinful ways to dull their pain. Waiting
and being faithful to do normal, everyday tasks was exactly
God’s perfect will for them. Ordinary, routine life lived for God
is usually the perfect pathway to God’s best.
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8. • Doing dishes, washing clothes, cleaning house, dressing
young children, making meals, loving your husbands and
family--these ordinary events make a mother famous in
heaven and famous on earth to her family. In God’s
hands, such ordinary things are holy, full of purpose and
powerful to shape children for eternity.
• The hand that does these common, ordinary things has
indeed ruled the world through her children and held
back the darkness that might have destroyed many.
• Finally, the delayed pregnancies of those six women brought
them great emotional pain but it brought God greater glory
because everyone knew it was a miracle of God when they
conceived and that their children had a special destiny due to
the supernatural nature of their conception.
Aside
Picture of strong man saving a desperate, drowning woman
It is no secret that many men all around the world are waging a
war against women through violence, sexual abuse, kidnapping,
slavery intimidation and subjugation. This is a darkness that is
becoming darker each year. It is a scheme of Hell to destroy
mothers and women in general, whose love is so important to the
human race and to God’s Kingdom.
I want us to be a church that stands in defense of women as
Jesus did when the crowd wanted to stone the prostitute.
Let’s look for opportunities to show women that we who are
strong are here to protect those who are weak.
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9. Application
Perhaps you are a person, male or female, who feels somewhat
barren. Your life has not produced the fruit you had anticipated.
Welcome to the crowd!
Perhaps you feel like you are over-the-hill and its too late for
God to use you to do something wonderful for others.
God owns the cattle on 1000 hills and He owns the hills. If you
are over the hill, He can always give you another hill to climb,
another mountain to climb, another victory to enjoy before
heaven.
All of us are being called forward into a visitation of God that will
take us places in the Spirit we may not have been to before.
It will require that we not give up on God or on ourselves, like
those six women & Eve. God wants to make all of us pregnant
with ministries of Jesus! God delights to use the weak and
foolish things of the world to do the impossible--that way he
gets all the credit!!!
We may be older, but we can still be bolder,
We may be slower, but still have power.
We may be living ordinary, routine lives but that’s where God
always shows up with super-ordinary power.
We may be barren now, but God loves to make the barren fruitful
so he gets more glory.
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10. Is 54
The Lord gave this chapter to our family back in 1984 or so. I
think He wants me to declare it over our fellowship today. This is
for us, too.
Isaiah 54
54 “Sing, O barren one, who did not bear;
break forth into singing and cry aloud,
you who have not been in labor!
For the children of the desolate one will be more
than the children of her who is married,” says the Lord.
2 “Enlarge the place of your tent,
and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out;
do not hold back; lengthen your cords
and strengthen your stakes.
3 For you will spread abroad to the right and to the left,
and your offspring will possess the nations
and will people the desolate cities.
4 “Fear not, for you will not be ashamed;
be not confounded, for you will not be disgraced;
for you will forget the shame of your youth,
and the reproach of your widowhood you will remember no more.
5 For your Maker is your husband,
the Lord of hosts is his name;
and the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer,
the God of the whole earth he is called.
6 For the Lord has called you
like a wife deserted and grieved in spirit,
like a wife of youth when she is cast off,
says your God.
7 For a brief moment I deserted you,
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11. but with great compassion I will gather you.
8 In overflowing anger for a moment
I hid my face from you,
but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you,”
says the Lord, your Redeemer.
9 “This is like the days of Noah to me:
as I swore that the waters of Noah
should no more go over the earth,
so I have sworn that I will not be angry with you,
and will not rebuke you.
10 For the mountains may depart
and the hills be removed,
but my steadfast love shall not depart from you,
and my covenant of peace shall not be removed,”
says the Lord, who has compassion on you.
11 “O afflicted one, storm-tossed and not comforted,
behold, I will set your stones in antimony,
and lay your foundations with sapphires.[b]
12 I will make your pinnacles of agate,[c]
your gates of carbuncles,[d]
and all your wall of precious stones.
13 All your children shall be taught by the Lord,
and great shall be the peace of your children.
14 In righteousness you shall be established;
you shall be far from oppression, for you shall not fear;
and from terror, for it shall not come near you.
15 If anyone stirs up strife,
it is not from me;
whoever stirs up strife with you
shall fall because of you.
16 Behold, I have created the smith
who blows the fire of coals
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12. and produces a weapon for its purpose.
I have also created the ravager to destroy;
17 no weapon that is fashioned against you shall succeed,
and you shall refute every tongue that rises against you in
judgment.
This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord
and their vindication from me, declares the Lord.”
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