Here is your Mother - Life of Christ Part 104

You know, I meet people all the time who say to me, being a pastor, you know, has got to be the world's most demanding job.

And I always say to them, no, you're wrong. Being a mother is the world's most demanding job. Pastors aren't even close compared to that. There was a survey taken not too long ago, a poll among women executives who were also leaders. And what it found was by an overwhelming margin, these women said that raising children requires more intelligence, drive and tenacity than holding even a top executive job in government or industry.

And if you've ever tried to raise children as a mother, you'll agree it's harder than any job in the world. Now, today's Mother's Day. And we're also involved in a series here at McLean of studying the seven things Jesus said as he hung on the cross.

And we kind of worked the schedule so that we got to the right one at the right day. Because today, the third thing Jesus said from the cross has to do with his mother. And it ties in perfectly with some of the thoughts that I want to share with you about Mother's Day. So I want us to look at what Jesus said and how he honored his mother, and then talk to you and me about how we can honor our moms.

Let's look here, verse 25 of John chapter 19. Near the cross of Jesus stood his mother, his mother's sister, Mary, the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. And there were some other women there as well. I don't know if you saw the Peanuts cartoon, but I love this cartoon. It's got Lucy and Linus in it. And they're both inside this house and it's just pouring down rain.

I mean, raining cats and dogs outside. And Lucy's looking out the window at all this rain and she turns to Linus and she says, boy, she says, look at it rain. She said, what if it floods the whole world? And Linus says, it will never do that. He says, in the ninth chapter of Genesis, God promised Noah that that would never happen again. And the sign of his promise is the rainbow.

Lucy turns to him and says, you've taken a great load off my mind, Linus. To which Linus says, good theology has a way of doing that. And that's true. Good theology has a way of taking a lot of load off our mind. And you know, the converse is true as well, that bad theology has a way of messing up all kinds of stuff. Now, the rabbis back in Jesus's day had developed some really bad theology about women and about the role of women in the world. They believe that all the evil in the world began with Eve in the Garden of Eden.

And that since that point, the Garden of Eden, ever since then, women were the primary culprits in all the sin of the world, especially sexual sin, that every woman was a Delilah at heart. Now, I don't want you getting mad at me. I didn't say this. I'm not a rabbi.

You go down, look at my office. It doesn't say Rabbi Solomon on my office. I'm not a rabbi. I didn't say this. I'm telling you what the rabbi said.

This was their position. And as a result of that, the rabbis implemented some very strict taboos about the interaction and the contact between Jewish men, particularly Jewish holy men like themselves, and women. For example, in Jesus's day, do you know that rabbis were not even allowed to speak to their wife if they happened to see them on the street?

Because the rabbi said that it might raise or arouse sinful desires inside of the rabbi to talk to his wife in public. So he wasn't allowed to do that. How many of you saw Fiddler on the Roof? Okay. Remember the scene where at the wedding, they're going to have dancing and everybody's going, no, no, no, you can't dance. It's wrong.

It's wrong. And you know, he goes, you know, the whole, you know the deal. Right.

Okay. Well, you remember when everybody else started dancing, the rabbi wouldn't get up. And when they finally got him over and pulled him up and got him up and they started to dance, you remember he went, oh, no, no, wait a minute. And he pulls out of his pocket.

Remember what it was? A little white handkerchief. And he held one side of the handkerchief and the woman held the other side.

And he danced with the handkerchief, but he wouldn't touch the woman. Now that, folks, is an outgrowth of some of this bad theology that goes all the way back to the time of Jesus about the contact between holy men and women. Now, how did Jesus Christ relate to all of this bad theology?

Well, the answer is Jesus rejected it. Jesus honored women and he valued women in a way that no rabbi of his day would ever have done. When Jesus went to his death, we see right here, he was attended by a loyal following of women. The same group of loyal women had gone with him and followed him throughout his whole earthly ministry.

The Bible lists the names of about six of them, which I don't have time to give you, but they're all in the Bible. And the reason they were around Jesus is that Jesus actively encouraged women to get close to him and to become partners with him in the advancement of the kingdom of God, in the work of God. We know from the Bible that women listened to his teachings, Luke 10. They accompanied him in his travels, Luke 8. They supported him financially in his ministry, Luke 8.

They offered him hospitality, Mark chapter one. They stood with him here at the crucifixion and through his suffering, John 19. And might I remind you that except for John, all the men apostles were gone.

They weren't around. It was the women who stood with him. They assisted in his burial, Mark 16. Women were the first people to see Jesus Christ raised from the dead, John chapter 20, and to go tell people about it. And even after that, women played a significant role in the advancing of the kingdom of God and the message of Jesus Christ throughout the Roman world. Romans chapter 16, the letter Paul wrote to the Romans in that letter in chapter 16, he mentions five ladies by name, Priscilla, Mary, Trophina, Trophosa, and Persis, women whom he said, and I'm quoting now, who have worked very hard for the Lord.

And in Philippians 4, he mentions two other ladies, Euodia and Syntyche, and he says about these women that they have contended at my side in the cause of the gospel. There are a lot of women's groups and feminist groups around today who posture themselves as though Christianity and the Bible were their worst enemies, as though Christianity and the Bible were tools that are used to subjugate women and dominate women. And if we could just free the world of the Bible and free the world of biblical Christianity, we could emancipate women. Now that's nonsense.

People who say that don't know anything about history. Jesus Christ did more to emancipate and dignify women than any man who's ever lived. Do you realize at the time of Jesus, if you were a Roman citizen and you were male, you had what was called the right, R-I-G-H-T, the right of the Father. And what this means is that when your wife had a baby, you would be sitting outside.

They didn't have the deal yet where the guys went in the delivery room. But you'd be sitting outside, and they would come out and let you know whether you had a son or a daughter. Now if you had a son, well that's a keeper.

You know, you keep a son. But if you had a daughter, a father had the right to signify by thumbs up or thumbs down whether he wanted to keep the daughter. And if he signified thumbs up, well that was great, then they kept the daughter. If he signified thumbs down, his servant would take the daughter out and throw her in the river.

And she'd drown. You say, well, well didn't they take people to court for that? No, that wasn't illegal. That was the right of the Father.

If you did that to a son, you could be prosecuted for murder. If you did it to a daughter, it was your right. It was into this world that Jesus Christ came, bringing with him a different view of women. A view of women that the Bible preserves for us in which it demands that women be respected and honored and treated with dignity and held in esteem and be regarded as equal participants in the kingdom of God.

And I don't have time to give you all the passages from the Bible that speak to that, but if you'll fax me or email me, I'll be happy to send them back to you. Don't call me. This is the 90s. That's it. Don't call me. This is the 90s.

Fax me or email me. Okay, good. Now, Jesus Christ amplifies this attitude of honoring women in the way he honors his mother. Look at the next verse, verse 26. He says, when Jesus saw his mother there in front of the cross and the disciple whom he loved, which most people think is John, the one who wrote this book, standing nearby, he said to his mother, dear woman, pointing to John, here is your son. I'm not going to be here anymore to take care of you.

Here's your son. And he said to John, the disciple pointing at his mother, here is your mother. John, you honor her and you take care of her and you provide for her the way you would provide for your own mother because I'm not going to be able to be here and do it anymore. And from that time on, the disciple, John, took her, Mary, the mother of Jesus, into his home, the Bible says. He said, well, where was Jesus' dad? Jesus' dad, Joseph, his earthly father, had been dead probably for who knows how long, many, many years.

He said, how do you know that, Lon? Well, I know it because whenever in the New Testament we hear about Jesus' family, it's always his mother and his siblings, never his dad. And I don't think his dad was away on travel.

You know what I'm saying? His dad was probably dead. And for many years, Jesus had been providing for his mother and his brothers and sisters by working as a carpenter. Now he was hanging on a cross. Now he was going to die and be gone.

And he was deeply concerned who was going to take care of his mother. And he said to John, John, you take care of my mother. Now folks, Jesus only said seven things from the cross. This was not a trivial thing. He was hanging there dying.

You don't say trivial things when you're hanging there dying. And the fact that he would have made one of those seven things that he said as the Son of God, a comment about honoring and taking care of his mother, says to me that he took the commandment very seriously that says, honor your father and your mother. And church history tells us that Mary then went to live with John in Jerusalem. And she lived there for 11 years with the Apostle John before she finally died 11 years later.

John took her in and John took care of her just the way Jesus said. Now that's the end of our passage, but it leaves us of course with the really important question. You know what that is. What is it? So what?

Right. And since this is Mother's Day, since Jesus honored his mother and what he said in the third thing from the cross, we want to talk about honoring our mothers. Now, no matter what age you are as a child, God expects you to honor your mother. But how you do that practically depends upon what age you are. It's different depending on your age. If you're a child or you're a teenager, if you're under the age of 18, the way you honor your mother is slightly different than what happens after you're 18 in our culture. So let me speak to both groups. If you're under 18, how do you honor your mother?

You honor your mother by obeying her and submitting to her authority. And I have one more nice word for you. Cheerfully.

Yeah, that's the key word. Cheerfully. Cheerfully. I want to show you another passage of scripture.

Would you turn there? Ephesians chapter 6. If you're using our copy of the Bible, it's page 829. Page 829, Ephesians chapter 6. And let me show you this right here from the Bible.

First one, Ephesians chapter 6. Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. Honor your father and your mother. How do you honor your father and your mother? You do it by obeying their authority, which is the first commandment that comes with a promise.

And what's the promise? Verse 3, that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth. God says, you honor your parents as a child. You honor your mother. You obey her and submit to her authority cheerfully.

And God says, I'm making you a promise. It will go well with you on this earth. Now, why is that? Why will it go well with you and me if we do that?

I have three quick reasons to give you. Number one, because with very few exception, mothers are going to try to instill into the lives of their children the kind of habits that will lead to success in life. Mothers have been down the road a little bit farther than their children.

They've suffered more, they've failed more, they've learned more, they're wiser, and they understand better than children do what it takes to be a success in life. And mothers are going to try to build those lessons and build those values into their children's lives. And if you're a wise child, you will let your mother do that and cooperate with her as she does that so you don't have to repeat the same stupid mistakes that she made.

That's what she's trying to help you do. And when we obey and we submit to their authority as our moms, we benefit from their experiences and things go better for us. Second reason is because by obeying mothers at home, we are developing the lifestyle, the habit of submitting to authority everywhere. And folks, submitting to authority is a huge door to success in life. I mean, if you submit to authority, you won't lie, you won't cheat in school, you won't steal, you won't drag race on the GW Parkway. You'll be a faithful employee, a faithful neighbor, a faithful soldier, a faithful spouse, a faithful parent, a faithful citizen, and a faithful servant of God.

And that's a formula for success. And the best place to learn to submit to authority is not at school and not in jail, but at home at your mother's knee. She'll teach you to submit to authority and it'll be a blessing for you the rest of your life. Third and finally, why will God bless your life if you submit to the authority and obey your mother? Third and finally, because supernaturally, God will honor you back for honoring your mother. God will supernaturally bless you for honoring your mother. So if you're here and you're under 18, how are you going to honor your mother? Submit to her authority and do what she tells you and do it cheerfully. That honors your mother. Now what happens if you're over 18? I mean, if you're over 18, if you're a grown child, honoring your mother is still your duty and to show our mother's reverence and esteem is still commanded us by God, but you have to do it a different way. I'm not suggesting if you're 25 years old that you obey your mother. There are people who do that.

I don't. I don't think God says that. But there are still ways that we are to honor our parents. And I have three that I want to suggest to you. So if you're over 18, I still have three ways to suggest that you can honor your mother. Here we go.

Number one. As a grown child, here's a way you can honor your mother. Do the little things that you know, make your mother happy? Do the little things that you know, bring joy to your mother? Proverbs 23 verse 25 says that a good child does things that cause the one who gave birth to him to be happy. A good child does the kinds of things that causes his mother to rejoice. What are some of the things you can do to make your mom happy? Well, I got some suggestions. How about remembering those special days like anniversaries and birthdays and Mother's Day? Did you send your mother a card? Did you? Good. You're going to call her today? Listen, this is important to do this kind of stuff. Peoples are still open.

Run on up there if you forgot. This is a way of honoring your mother. I was at the post office a couple years ago with one of my sons, Jonathan, who then was nine. And we were there standing in the passport line getting a passport for him because he was going to Israel with me. And the guy right in front of us was about 40 years old. He's obviously well educated.

He was very well dressed and very sophisticated. And he was in the passport line. And when he got up there and he handed the guy his passport application at the post office, the clerk looked at him and said, you didn't put down your mother's birthday here. What's your mother's birthday? And the guy goes, well, he said, I think she's 62.

I'm standing right behind him. So I'm hearing this. He said, I think she's 62. And I think I know the month she was born in, but I don't know the day. And the postal clerk said, what? You don't know your mother's birthday?

And the guy goes, no. Now I had somebody in one of the other services come up and said he knew his mother's month and day, but she'd never would tell him the year. That's all right. If you know the month and the day and not the year, that'll work, I think.

But you got to know the month and the day. Well, this guy didn't. So the clerk went on and he was kind of incredulous about the whole thing.

We're next. And he turns to John when we get up there and he says, son, he says to him, do you know your mother's birthday? And John said to him, you bet I do. He said, I better or I'd get killed.

And he's right. He would. And when we were leaving, we were driving away in the car and it was kind of real quiet.

John was real quiet. I knew he was thinking something. And finally he turned to me and he said, dad, he said, if that man doesn't know his mother's birthday, how can he send her a card? And I said, well, John, I guess he can't. And he said, wow, doesn't that make her sad?

And I said, yeah, I bet it does. You know, there are mothers all over who feel pretty sad about how their children neglect to show them honor in the little things of life, something as little as a birthday card. Listen, if a phone call once a week is important to your mother, do it. Call her. If asking her advice makes her feel good, ask it.

You don't have to take it. Just ask her. Make her feel good. If kissing her when you first come through the door is important or before you leave, my mother was a nut about this. She used to always go, give me kiss, give me kiss, give me kiss, give me kiss. But I'd kiss her.

You won't get cooties. You can kiss her. Do it. If seeing the grandchildren is important to her, you make sure she sees the grandchildren. Don't you wait till she schedules a flight. You see to it. If coming to family reunions and being at family events is important, just go, just go.

Being nice to your brother makes her happy. You can put up with him, right? You say, but Lon, you don't understand.

You don't understand. Some of the things that are important to my mother drive me nuts. Well, I'll bet you some of the things you did growing up drove her nuts. But in spite of that, she fought off the urge to commit homicide.

You're still here. And I believe that that woman deserves some slack guys. I believe that woman deserves some grace. I believe that woman deserves a break. So stop whining, suck it up and do what makes your mother happy. That's what the Bible says. Sort of.

It's true. Just suck it up and take care of honoring that woman. Number two, tell your mother. Here's another way you can honor your mother.

If you're a grown child, tell your mother how much you love her and appreciate her while you still can. Why she's still here. I got a letter from Ann Landers that I cut out the paper.

Listen to this. Dear Ann Landers. This is the second year my father, brothers, sisters and I have gotten together to give my mother flowers for her birthday. The only thing missing is my mother.

She died in January 1994. Mom gave endlessly to family, friends and neighbors. I wish I could turn the clock back and give her a fraction of what she gave me. I guess I was so busy being a wife and a mother myself that I didn't pay much attention to being a daughter. It's too late for me to start over with my mother, but I urge every daughter and son to take a minute to phone or drop a note and say I love you and I appreciate the sacrifices you made for me when I was growing up. We have our parents for too short a time after we reach adulthood. Live your life in a way that you'll have fewer regrets.

I'm sorry that I didn't. And she signs it slow learner in South Carolina. Ann Landers wrote back and said, may I add a thought? Children tend to treat their parents the same way they see their grandparents treated.

What goes around comes around. Part of what it means to honor your mother is to tell her how much you love her and tell her how much you owe her and tell her how much you appreciate her while she's still around to hear it. Bo Jackson, the famous athlete, you know, he played professional football, professional baseball at the same time, injured his hip playing football, had to have a hip replacement surgery and eventually came back to play Major League Baseball for a short time after that.

Right when he came back after the hip replacement to play Major League Baseball, he wrote this and I quote, he said, when I get my first hit, I'm going to ask the pitcher for the ball. And if he's nice enough to give it to me, I'm going to bronze it and I'm going to bolt it to my mother's tombstone. My mother, Florence, who inspired me to rehabilitate my hip and return to the big leagues, died three weeks after my hip replacement surgery.

I think that's a sweet thought, don't you? But you know what? If your mother's still alive, don't wait till she's dead and then decide what you're going to bronze and stick on her tombstone.

This is the wrong way to do this. Go to your mother now. Tell her how much you love her now. Tell her how much you appreciate her now. Moms don't care about stuff bolted to tombstones, folks. They don't care about flowers on graves. They want to hear their children say now, I love you for what you did for me and I appreciate it. That's the way you can honor your mother.

Third and finally, is not only by doing the little things that make her happy and not only by telling her now how much she means to you, but third and finally, the way you can honor your mother as a grown child is to provide for her earthly needs as she becomes unable to do so. I want you to see one other passage of scripture. It's in 1 Timothy 5. It's page 840 in our copy of the Bible.

Would you turn there with me? 1 Timothy 5, page 840. Here in 1 Timothy 5, Paul is talking about widows and which widows the church should get involved in helping to support. And I want you to see what he says about widows who have living children and grandchildren.

Verse 4 of chapter 5. But if a widow has children or grandchildren that are living, these, that is the children and the grandchildren, should learn first of all to put their religion into practice by caring for their own family. And so repaying their parents and their grandparents for this is pleasing to God. An elderly man who used to come here years ago once came up to me when I was much younger and said, Lon, you know what? When I was your age, the greatest problem in my life was worrying about who's going to take care of my children. He said, when you become my age, your greatest concern becomes who's going to take care of your parents. I never forgot that. And he's right. And friends, it's a concern that God wants us to take very seriously.

I don't know how God can say it any simpler than he just said it right here in 1 Timothy 5. Take care of your parents, particularly widows. Now, I didn't do such a good job of that with my mom. When my dad died, he left my mom nothing, absolutely nothing, no home to live in, no life insurance, no money, no stocks, no nothing. She was penniless.

And at the time, Brenda and I were in some real tight financial shape back then. We didn't have much money, and we didn't have enough money to keep giving what I had committed I was going to give to the Lord every month and to meet the needs of my mother. You say, well, why didn't you just give up some luxuries? What luxuries? What luxuries are you talking about? We had not bought a car or furniture or clothes or been on a family vacation in years. We didn't have any luxuries. We were barely making it buying food for the table and paying bills.

That was it. And I had a decision to make whether I was going to keep giving what I had committed to give to the Lord to him every month and give my mom the scraps or whether I was going to stop giving to the Lord and give that money to my mom instead. Now, I'd been to theological school, and I'd learned in theological school that giving to God comes first, that the first thing you do is take the money and give it to God. Right off the top, it goes to God.

Nothing else. Don't let anything touch that. And I was a lot stupider then. And so I said, Ma, you know, I can't take that money and give it to my mother. That money belongs to God. And so I didn't give it to her. I gave her the leftovers. I want to say to you, that was a bad choice.

That was wrong. The most important thing you do with money is not give it to God. That's an important thing, but it's not the most important thing. And I believe if I could have heard God better in those days, God would have said to me, Lon, listen, your first duty is to your mother, not to me to give me money, but to your mother.

And I'll take care of the church and I'll take care of the work of God. You take care of your mother. I had to go back years later and apologize to my mother.

Did it make life any easier during those years that she struggled? No. It was a mistake.

It was wrong. Because God says here, my first responsibility in a way I honor my mother is I take care of her when she can't take care of herself financially. And many of us here have got enough money that we can both give to the Lord and we can take care of our moms. That's great. But if you honestly, honestly don't, then God says to you, hey, I'll take care of the work of God. You take care of your mother.

And that's right. And there's some of us here who need to hear that because there's some of us here. I can't help but believe in a crowd like this who have mothers that are living on a shoestring and we could be helping them and we're not. Friends, let me tell you something. That is displeasing to God and dishonoring to your mother.

And God expects better from you and me. I got another letter I want to close with from Ann Landers. Mother in New York wrote, said this.

She said, I've lived 70 years and I speak from experience as a mother of five. Was it worth it? No.

That's what she said. No. Not one of our children has given us any pleasure. God knows I did my best, but I was a failure as a mother and they are failures as people. Is that a tragic letter? Is that tragic? Five children and not one of those children has honored their mother enough that that mother feels it was worth it being a mother.

That's a tragedy. And that's sin against God and against your mother, whoever these five children are. And if you're a Christian, God wants your mother feeling differently. God wants your mother saying because this is my child and because of the way this child has honored me, it was worth everything I ever did to be the mother to this child. That's the will of God for our mothers. And I hope if there's a need for us to change some of the way we live in regard to our parents, that we'll do that.

Let's pray together. Dear Heavenly Father, I know that family relationships are not always simple. In fact, usually they're pretty complex. I know relationships with grown children and mothers are often very strained.

Sometimes there's a lot of fireworks in those relationships. But in spite of that, even as our drama demonstrated, I pray that you would help us as Christians to humble ourselves and to return the honor to our mothers that they deserve and that you tell us to. Lord, I know all of our mothers weren't perfect. Some of them weren't even good mothers. But nonetheless, they were our mothers.

And nonetheless, much of where we are today in the good sense still can be traced to things they did for us, including feeding us when we couldn't feed ourselves. And so I pray that you would help us to honor these women as a service to you, not because they were perfect, but because this is what you tell us to do and they're our mothers. I pray you change the way we live, change our family relationships because of what we've heard here today from the Word of God. And may our mothers, because of the honor we show them in the name of Jesus Christ, may our mothers feel that it was worth being mothers. And may we thereby serve you, Lord, by making them feel that way. And we pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen.