Sermon
A Celebration of Motherhood and the Family
May 11, 2003
Pastor Leighton Sheley

Today we celebrate motherhood, and by extension we also celebrate parenthood and the family; God's first and foundational institution. If you'd like to take your Bibles you can open it to Ephesians chapter 6, but I will tell you it'll take us a little while to get there.

All of the structures of society from the most simple tribal to the most extensive and elaborate, all civilizations are built upon the family. Before God established the church, the early history for which is recorded for us in the book of Acts, God establish the family. Before God established civil authority, as recorded for us in Genesis chapter 9, God established the family. It was God's first societal structure.

Satan's goal is to undermine anything and everything that God has fashioned for good, and because God's plan is to build and strengthen the family, Satan's plan is to weaken and destroy it. Why is it that family is so important? Why is it that motherhood is so important?

From the earliest chapters of the Bible it is clear that children are no accident but rather an intentional blessing from the Lord. When the first child entered the world, Cain, Eve said, I have gotten a man child with the help of the Lord. Eve, who walked with God, knew and understood that children are conceived and prepared in the womb by the hand of God.

The psalmist wrote in 139: For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place. When I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

I am fearfully and wonderfully made. God knit me together in my mother's womb, says the psalmist. God knows and has touched every child that has been conceived.

Psalm 127 says, Sons are a heritage from the Lord, children a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one's youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.

The more arrows a warrior carried the more effective he could be in battle. The picture that comes to my mind is that of Legolas in J.R.R. Tolkiens' book, and now the movie, Lord of the Rings. He never seems to run out of arrows. He can shoot them 4 and 5 at a time and his quiver is always full of arrows. That makes him a very effective warrior. Would you not agree? Blessed is the warrior whose quiver is full of arrows. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of children.

When a child is conceived an eternal soul is born for the purpose of glorifying God, but that noble goal is not accomplished by accident. The Minnesota crime commission issued a report saying every baby starts life as a little savage. He's completely selfish and self-centered. He wants what he wants when he wants it; his bottle, his mother's attention, his playmate's toys, his uncle's watch, or whatever. Deny him these and he seethes with rage and aggressiveness which would be murderous if it were not for the fact that he's so helpless. He's dirty. He has no morals, no knowledge, no developed skills. This means that all children, not just certain children, but all children, are born delinquents.

If permitted to continue in their self-centered world of infancy given free rein to their impulsive actions to satisfy each one, every child would grow up a criminal, a thief, a killer, a rapist. If every child were permitted to continue, every child would grow up a wretched sinner destined for hell. What keeps children from continuing down this destructive path is the guidance of mothers and fathers who endeavor to provide their children with a sense of right and wrong. Not all parents are God-fearing nor do all know the Bible, but most parents understand and pass along to their children at least the most fundamental values in society. Children who grow up to be righteous are a source of great satisfaction and joy for their parents.

Proverbs 23:24 says, The father of a righteous man has great joy; he who has a wise son delights in him.

As a father God gave guidance to parents through his servant Moses in Deuteronomy 6. Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one. Love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

I remember visiting Jerusalem a number of years back and on the plane where some devout Jews and they had boxes with scrolls that where attached to their wrists and to their foreheads. They took this passage exceedingly literally.

God's guidance and salvation are inseparable, and God commands parents to impress upon their children his commandments, his guidance always. When you're sitting at home or when you're together away on a trip, the last thing you do when you lay down at night to go to bed, the first thing you do in the morning when you get up. When your children see your face and your hands they should be reminded of the guidance of God, and things in and around your home should constantly remind your children of God's guidance and providence.

In other words, things of God should not be limited to Sundays and a building far away from home. There are many godless influence in the lives of our children today. There is a war for their souls. Concerning this war, later in this same chapter Paul writes and directs believers to put on the full armor of God, saying; For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

The word for authority is exousia, which has the meaning of doing as one pleases, or lawlessness. It's one of the popular mantras, if you will, of our day. The banner of a generation who are guided and enslaved by their own fleeting passions. Parents who do not faithfully and tirelessly commit themselves to godly teaching and training may someday wake up to find their children enslaved to the ways of this world.

Godless philosophies are promoted through public schools, television, movies, radio and every conceivable medium of influence. Parents cannot protect their children completely. We must, as best we can, prepare our children to fight their own battles.

In Ephesians chapter 6 Paul writes concerning the parent-child relationship. It is one of several relationships he gives counsel concerning, others being the husband-wife relationship and the master-slave relationship. Now before writing concerning any of these relationships Paul establishes the essential foundation for all godly relationships when he writes: Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.

The foundation for a godly husband-wife relationship is submission to each other. The foundation for a godly parent-child relationship is submission to each other. The foundation for a godly master-servant relationship is submission to each other. All of these relationships must be conducted in submission to the Lord.

Now there has been considerable misunderstanding and rejection of the word and concept of submission even among believers. Submission has often been misrepresented as groveling, self depreciation, cowering under the heel of tyranny. That is not biblical submission. Biblical submission is voluntarily participating in God's order and plan.

1 Corinthians 14 tells us God is not a God of confusion. He always has a plan. He has an order for things. Jesus himself modeled biblical submission for us by fulfilling God's plan for his life. Jesus came to seek and to save that which was lost. In order to save us from our sin, God had ordained that Jesus would suffer and die. Many centuries before God's prophets carried along by the Holy Spirit had written in great detail concerning the life, suffering, death, and resurrection of the promised Messiah.

Psalm 22 written centuries before crucifixion had even been conceived by the mind of man, describes in vivid detail the scene at the cross of Jesus. When Jesus prayed his prayer in the garden of Gethsemane, he asked, Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou will. He was participating voluntarily in God's order and plan.

As someone has observed it was not the nails that held Jesus to that cross, it was his love for us and his obedience to the Father. The hymn writer penned, he could have called 10,000 angels to save him free.

Paul challenges believers in Philippians 2, Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death--even death on a cross!

Jesus modeled submission by being obedience to the Father's plan. It was God's plan. It was God's order of things. In God's order of things it is not that one person is inherently more valuable or less valuable than another. In Christ there is no male or female, Jew or Greek, slave or free. Every person stands before God in equal standing. It is not that one person is inherently more valuable than another, it is that no institution whether it be government, church, or family can function without an order of authority and submission to that authority. That's is God's order. Furthermore, all authority is given for the purpose of service.

The story is told for us in Mark 9; They left that place and passed through Galilee. Jesus did not want anyone to know where they were, because he was teaching his disciples. He said to them, "The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days he will rise." But they did not understand what he meant and were afraid to ask him about it. They came to Capernaum. When he was in the house, he asked them, "What were you arguing about on the road?" But they kept quiet because on the way they had argued about who was the greatest in this new kingdom.

Sitting down, Jesus called the Twelve and said, "If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last, and the servant of all." God measures the success of leaders by their ability to serve those they lead. After the death of Christ the apostles became the leaders of the Christian church, and they lead through service.

Jesus left this teaching with us recorded in Matthew 20, "You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be your slave--just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."

All authority that is godly is given for the purpose of service, and all authority that is godly is given with a specific commission and limitation. God established an authority of the church to serve the spiritual needs of its congregants. God established the authority of civil government to serve the physical needs of its people. Sometimes abuses are made, governments kill, torture, and rob their citizens. Sometimes church leaders turn their churches into cults. These are not an exercise of God-given authority, they are an abuse of power.

God gave parents authority over their children to serve their children, to lead their children, to nurture their children, to educate and prepare their children. God did not give parents the right to molest or abuse children. That is an abuse of power. It is not God-given authority. God gave parents authority over children to serve and protect them. They stand in the gap between children and God while the children are yet too young to have a personal relationship with him themselves. Children are for a time on loan by God.

Ephesians 6 says, Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. "Honor your father and mother"--which is the first commandment with a promise--"that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth." Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. Children are commanded to obey their parents. The only exception is if the child is asked by the parent to do something that is clearly against God's will as taught in the holy Scripture.

There is no authority that is higher than God's. If any authority, whether it be ecclesiastical or civil, asks someone to do something which is in violation of God's law, God's law must take precedence. The Sanhedrin told the apostles they were to quit preaching the gospel, they were to be silent. But those same apostles had received the great commission which told them to go into all of the world and preach the gospel. The apostles told the civil authorities that day, we're not going to do what you've said because God's law, God's word, God's authority, takes precedence over yours.

Children, is not limited to young children, but is used of all offspring, sons and daughters, who are under their parent's roof are to obey and honor them. Obey relates to action, honor relates to attitude. Now at the end of the previous chapter Paul wrote, For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife. Quoting from Genesis chapter 2, "and the two will become one flesh." And so when a man leaves his father and mother to establishing a new family, the obedience is a different obedience than those who live under the roof.

Nevertheless, no matter where a child lives they are always expected to honor their parents. Obey literally means to hear under, and it means that children are to put themselves under the words of their parents. "In the Lord," refers to the motivation for obeying parents. To honor and obey parents is to honor and obey the Lord. Right, dikaios, refers to that which is correct, just, righteous, as it should be. Honor, timao , means to highly value and to hold in highest respect and regard.

When God established the Ten Commandments his first law relating to human interactions was, honor your father and mother so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. It was the first of the Commandments with promise, and Paul's use of that whole reference means that the promise was for us also.

The societal principle is so important that when it is followed it establishes a foundation in the heart of a child of respect for all authority and people in general. The respect for parents was so important to God that Moses commanded anyone who attacks his father or mother must be put to death, and if anyone curses his father or mother he must be put to death. Dishonoring parents was a capital offense in God's law.

To honor your parents also includes providing for them in the sunset of their life. They sacrificed many years providing for their children. It is proper for the children, if called upon, to provide for their parents.

Ephesians 6:4 says, Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. This verse has a negative and then a positive instruction. The negative command is do not provoke your children to anger. You know, that may not seem strange to us, but that was a totally new concept for the culture of Ephesus and Rome. Most families were in shambles and mutual love among members was almost unheard of. A father's love for children would have been hard for a person even to imagine. By Roman law the father had total life and death power over all of the members of his household; wife, child, servant, slave. He could kick them out. He could sell them as slaves. He could have them killed and there was no one to be accountable to.

A newborn child was placed at the father's feet and his decision determined its fate. If a father picked up that child, it would go home. If a father turned and walked away, it would be left to either die of exposure or to be taken into the city to be raised as a slave or a prostitute.

Seneca, a renowned statesman in Rome at the time of Paul, wrote, we slaughter a fierce ox, we strangle a mad dog, we plunge a knife into a sick cow, children born weak or deformed we drowned. It was into this callous, uncaring society Paul writes, Fathers, do not provoke your children. Respect your children.

And though fathers often refers to male parents, it is sometimes used of both parents as in Hebrews 11:23 where it speaks of both the parents of Moses. And since Paul has been speaking about both parents in the preceding three verses, it is quite likely that he had in mind that when he used this term in verse 4 and obviously mothers can also be guilty of provoking their children.

Harvard University sociologists Sheldon and Eleanor Glick developed a test that has proved to be 90% accurate to determine whether or not 5 and 6-year-olds would become delinquent. They discovered that there were four primary factors necessary to prevent delinquency.
1. The father's firm, fair and consistent discipline.
2. The mother's supervision and companionship through the day.
3. The parent's demonstrated affection for each other and for the children.
4. The family spending time together in activities where all participated.
That last one is hard to achieve in today's society, is it not? The kids come home, plop themselves on the couch, turn on the television, and they are gone in everything except body.

I was reading somewhere a while back that there was a statistical aberration -- families that camp together, 95% of them stay together. Maybe it's because there is no television.

Consistent discipline is one of the most important requirements for producing happy, healthy children. Such discipline doesn't depend on how the parent feels. What was wrong this morning is wrong tonight. I don't care how tired I am. Sometimes, as a parent, I got angry at my children. That's not when I disciplined them. It was not an appropriate time. Sometimes I would say, go to your room. That wasn't for their benefit; it was for mine.

And with regards to being fair, we have a principal in our family -- there are no surprise spankings. When my children were growing up they got a few, and it never should have been a surprise to them because they knew the rules and they knew the consequences, and they chose their course.

In fact, I remember one time my son, where he did something he knew was wrong. I knew he knew it was wrong. And we sat down and I said, now son, you did what was wrong. And I know you know what you did was wrong, but I have never told you it's wrong, and I have never told you what's going to happen to you if you do it. So let me tell you what's going to happen to you if you decide to do it again. No surprises.

Christian psychiatrist Dr. Paul Meyer gave another list very similar to this and he also observed that the vast majority of neurotics have grown up in homes where either there was no father or where that father was dominated by the mother.

Now to provoke to anger suggests a repeated ongoing pattern of treatment that builds in deep-seated anger and resentment that eventually boils over in hostility. And there are several ways that this anger can be provoked. One can be a well-meaning overprotection that can cause resentment and a child -- no, you can't go out. And in this day and age, we as parents, are inundated through that television through stories of children being taken to be overprotective. And if we are going to be protective, we need to at the same time communicate very clearly with our children why. Why? It's because we love you, and we want to protect you.

Another common cause for provoking children is favoritism. Isaac favored Esau. Rebekah favored Jacob. I often tell my daughter, you're my favorite daughter. She loves it. She's my only daughter. I can say that.

Parents comparing one sibling, one child, with another often times say something like, why can't you be more like your brother? Or more like your sister? The answer is obvious. I'm not my brother. I'm me. I'm not my sister. I'm me.

Another thing that can provoke a child to anger is constantly being pushed for achievement beyond reasonable balance. It is basing love on performance. Or never giving a word of encouragement to a child. Never letting them here the words from their parent -- good job, well done, I'm proud of you.

Jesus hadn't even begun his earthly ministry and his Father couldn't wait to say it. He was baptized -- that was the start of his ministry -- he came out of the water and God said, This is My Son, in whom I am well pleased.

By physical or verbal abuse. There was a saying that we all had growing up -- sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me. That is so untrue. The words can leave scars so deep that they, without the grace of God, cannot heal.

And then Paul transitions to a positive instruction using the word 'instead'; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. Discipline, paideia, comes from the word child and refers to a systematic way of training a child. Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it, Proverbs 22:6 says. An instruction is literally putting in the mind. It refers to the type of instruction that is given to us or modeled for us in the book of Proverbs. It has as much to do with factual information as it has to communicating right attitudes and right behavior.

The key to right discipline and instruction of children is being of the Lord, everything that we should do should be of the Lord, of his word, his guidance, of his Holy Spirit, of his patience, of his grace, of his mercy.

I know this is Mother's Day and there might be some mothers who are listening to this and they are thinking, I wish I would have had this biblical instruction when I was starting out because my children haven't turned out the way I would like them to.

Ken Poure is one of our favorite guest speakers and we've invited him to a couple of our men's conferences, and he relates the story. He was the director of Hume Lake. Hume Lake is a conference center and they have a lot of world renowned speakers. He invited one of those speakers for a walk one day. They got together and had just on a few steps and he said, how are you doing? This world renowned speaker just broke down in tears and started crying. And as they continued to walk together the story came out that he had given his heart for ministry, his life for ministry, but his son was in prison.

And Ken related to that because his son had also disappointed him. Eventually they ended up on a rock sitting together. In quiet and watching the sun raised dancing off the lake, and this world renowned speaker all of a sudden started laughing. Ken said, can you let me in on what's so funny? And the speaker said, well, it just occurred to me there was a case where there was a perfect parent, God, perfect children, Adam and Eve, a perfect environment, the garden of Eden -- no television, and those kids didn't turned out exactly perfect. How could we as imperfect parents with imperfect kids in an imperfect environment expect otherwise? We do our best. The rest is up to God.

Let's pray. Thank you Lord for our time together, and thank you for this day, and thank you for mothers. Thank you for your family, and thank you Lord for your love. In Jesus' name we pray, amen. God bless you.