Sermon Snippet – A Mother’s Day Message … Eventually
INTRODUCTION – The title indicates that the message may meander a bit but will arrive at a place approximating a conclusion. We begin in John 14:6 and John 1:1. Crucial absolute statements are made here about our Savior, Jesus Christ. Such claims are vigorously rejected by the postmodernist elites of our nation. These powerful atheists ridicule the very reality of truth (and, of course, contradict themselves in so doing) and feel that language is a weapon that should be used to destroy anything traditional and promote anything radical. These people despise folks like us, but really they are attacking Jesus. The implications are serious, eternally serious.
1. WE ARE CREATED IN GOD’S IMAGE
In Genesis 1:26-27, we find a most blessed certainty: God has created us in His image. Any absurd, unscientific attempt to blur male and female has its basis in opposition to the existence of God. Of course, if we believe that there is nothing special about another human being, everything becomes permissible to those in power. One of the sad failures of feminism is that it minimizes the inherent value of women by an insistence that they become just like men. This practical outworking of feminism thus actually presents women as inferior to men! The Bible teaches otherwise, for each one of us is created in God’s image.
2. MARRIAGE IS GOD’S IDEA
Genesis 2:24 establishes the sanctity of marriage and defines its logical boundaries. This foundational concept is employed in Ephesians 5:31-32 and applied to the eternal relationship between Jesus and His people. Any assault upon marriage is more than a manipulation of language (although it is that); it is an open repudiation of our loving God.
3. FAMILY IS GOD’S IDEAL
Because I am a master of the obvious, let me state the following: not all of us are mothers, but all of us have or have had a mother. This basic biological fact was established by God (“after his kind” – Genesis 1:12, 21, 24, 25 and “Be fruitful, and multiply” – Genesis 1:28, the latter being God’s kind commandment to us). Romans 8:14-17 employs the language of family to describe the everlasting security that we possess in our relationship with God. Each believer in Jesus Christ is thus a full member of the great family of God.
CONCLUSION – Motherhood is to be respected and cherished, for it is ordained by God. Moreover, we must remember that, in order to be our perfect substitute, God the Son, Jesus Christ, was born “of a woman” (Galatians 4:4). It is no wonder, then, that our increasingly postmodernist culture deprecates motherhood. Let us make sure that we do not respond with anger and violence (as the enemies of God do), for God sternly tells us that any final accounting belongs only to Him: ‘ “Vengeance is mine; I will repay,’ saith the Lord” (Romans 12:19b). Rather, “be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good” (Romans 12:21). Let us pray for those who, wittingly or unwittingly, mock God – may they repent.