[I borrowed the basic outline for this message, and a couple of illustrations, from a Mother's Day message by Alistair Begg at truthforlife.org . I take full responsibility for the final form of this study. SN.].
Mother’s Day 2018
Titus 2:3b-5
Introduction: Washington Irving said of mothers,
“…when friends who rejoice with us in our sunshine, desert us when
troubles thicken around us, still will she [mother] cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to
dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.”
When God designed the
family, He formed men and women, each designed with unique characteristics and
abilities. Walter Chantry (cited in a sermon by Alistair Begg) wrote,
“What is involved in
motherhood? After birth pangs bring children into this world there come years
of life pangs. It is a mother’s task and privilege to oversee the forging of a
personality in her sons and daughters. For this she must set a tone in the home
which builds strong character. Hers is to take great Christian principles and
practically apply them in every-day affairs—doing it simply and naturally. It
is her responsibility to analyze each child mentally, physically, socially,
spiritually. Talents are to developed, virtues must be instilled, faults are to
be patiently corrected, young sinners are to be evangelized. She is building
men and women for God. Results may not be possible until she has labored
for fifteen or twenty years. Even when her task ends, the true measure of her
work awaits the full maturity of her children. Moses would be much more than an
Egyptian rebel and an obscure shepherd, but Jochebed (his mother) would not
live to observe the consequences of her motherhood.
The proverb says, “Train up a child in the way he should go,
and even when he is old he will not depart from it...” (Prov 22:6). That is a principle that speaks to an
investment in a human life, for the glory of God. Over a hundred years ago
Woodrow Wilson signed a decree making Mother’s Day a national holiday. Of course
3500 years ago or so, when God gave the Ten
Commandments one of them said “Honor
you father and mother…” That wasn’t a suggestion! And it wasn’t just one
day. This day as we honor mothers, I am using the basic outline of a message I
heard from Alistair Begg (so if it is at all controversial, I’ll go ahead and
give him the credit!). We’ll consider 1)
The privilege of a godly mother; 2) The priorities of a godly
mother; and 3) The potential of a godly mother. We’ll see that in a
unique way…
The Maine* Idea: Mothers can impact the next generation for Christ!
I. The privilege
of a godly mother: Discipleship in
the family and the church (3b-4a).
3Older women likewise
are to be reverent in behavior, not slanderers or slaves to much wine. They
are to teach what is good, 4
and so train the young women…”
The
older women are to “teach good” to
the younger. I recently related to you that during my time teaching at the
Baptist Seminary in Brazil I would commute with a southern Baptist colleague to
the school. He and his wife are Texans, and often times, as we were leaving the
house, she would shout to us, “Y’all
teach ‘um good!” I always had a little interpretive dilemma with that
statement. Did she mean we should teach them “well,” or did she mean we should
teach them “good things,” i.e. the Word? I think there may have been an
intentional double entendre – a dual
sense, to her words! Do a good job teaching them the “Good
Book”! We’ve looked quite a bit at the
meaning of the word “good” in the
context of the work and word of God. In creation, step by step, day by day, God
pronounced “good” His creative work. As
we move on in the Scriptures we see “good,” [Heb. Tov] used to refer to the abundant life of blessing promised to the
covenant people of God. So here the
older women are being encouraged to teach the younger about Christian living,
specifically as we’ll see, God’s design for the family. It fits in to the
bigger picture of our calling to “make disciples.”
All are teachers, and learners! Verse 3
begins with Paul addressing “older women.”
My first thought was, “Be careful Steve, you can really get in trouble with
this!” How do you define older women? That probably depends on how old you are!
You can say that all woman have responsibilities in both directions. One young
mother who had just turned 30, said, “I am starting to feel my age!” Since some
of us were twice her age we wished we felt her age! You can be thirty, and you
are still an “older woman” to the 18-year-old
who just graduated high school! Or even to the 25-year-old who just had her
second child. You are “older” than they are, and in a certain sense you are
potentially, by virtue of your experience in life, an example and role model to
them. You have been through some of what they are experiencing so they can ask
you, “How did you do it? What helped you on the way?” In the same way, a
75-year-old who has been an empty-nester for 25 years, can give advice to the
50-year-old “younger woman” whose last child has just left home. This
illustrates the idea of the church as a family, as God’s family. Jesus
is the head, God is our Father, and we, as brothers and sisters, have
responsibilities to one another.
Teaching by word and by example. You might think, well I don’t have the gift
of teaching, I could never stand in front of a classroom. This isn’t referring to leading a Sunday
School class or giving a seminar. It’s the kind of teaching that happens as we
live life together. It is our example as well as our words. I
love this adaptation of I Corinthians 13, entitled, A Mother’s Prayer…
If I live in a house of spotless beauty with
everything in its place, but have not love, I am a housekeeper—not a homemaker.
If I have time for waxing, polishing, and decorative achievements, but have not
love, my children learn cleanliness - not godliness. Love leaves the dust in
search of a child's laugh. Love smiles at the tiny fingerprints on a newly
cleaned window. Love wipes away the tears before it wipes up the spilled milk.
Love picks up the child before it picks up the toys. Love is present through
the trials. Love reprimands, reproves, and is responsive. Love crawls with the
baby, walks with the toddler, runs with the child, then stands aside to let the
youth walk into adulthood. Love is the key that opens salvation's message to a
child's heart. Before I became a mother I took glory in my house of perfection.
Now I glory in God's perfection of my child.
As a mother, there is much I must teach my child, but the greatest of
all is love—
The writer is not known, but isn’t that great? Mothers
of every age can impact the next generation for Christ! That is a good
transition into our second point…
II. The priorities
of a godly mother: Paul lists a few of the things that older
women are uniquely positioned to teach younger (4b-5). I, as a pastor, can
offer some advice to a young woman, but in those quiet times of conversation
and sharing, the insight and experience of an older woman can be more personal
and impactful than anything I have to say. So, they can teach them, by word and
example…
…to love their husbands and children, 5 to be self-controlled, pure,
working at home, kind, and submissive to their own husbands…
Let’s look at the content of Paul’s
exhortation: First, they are to love
their husbands. This is an interesting phrase here, in that this word
is a compound word, “one-who-loves-her-husband.” It is an adjectival form, a word that
describes something that should characterize the life of a younger
woman. I think I have been guilty of saying that husbands are commanded to love
their wives, but wives are never commanded to love their husbands. I
obviously missed this verse! Since it is something that is to be taught, it
clearly involves a choice, a commitment. Before the Fall, remember, God step by
step pronounced creation “good.” The one thing that he said pre-Fall that was not
good? It was not good for the man to be alone. So… God created the perfect complement
for him: Eve. That is God’s design, and it is good! We’ve had a quite a few 50+
year anniversaries in our church. Ladies, at every age, you need to
teach the younger women the lessons you have learned about biblical womanhood, including
choosing to love your husband, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in
health, sharing with them the story of God’s work in your life.
That command is followed by another, the
older women are to teach the younger to be one-who-loves-her-children. Both words, filandros [“one-who-loves-her-husband] and filoteknos [one-who-loves-her-child] appear on memorials, they were
cherished aspects of the woman’s character and testimony. It was what described
them to people they knew. In our context in Titus, it is something to be
taught, by word and by example, by women to women. Love for children, like love
for a spouse, is a choice. We may not always feel loving! To be sure, there are times when parenting can be a challenge, so
much so that under the weight of day-to-day responsibilities a mom might feel a
like Erma Bombeck the morning she wrote this:
“It hits on a dull, overcast Monday morning. I awake
realizing there is no party in sight for the weekend, I’m out of bread, and
I’ve got a dry skin problem. So, I say it aloud to myself, “What is a nice girl
like me doing in a dump like this?” The
draperies are dirty (and will disintegrate if laundered), the arms of the sofa
are coming through. There is Christmas tinsel growing out of the carpet. And
some clown has written in the dust on the coffee table, YANKEE GO HOME!
It’s those
rotten kids. It’s their fault I wake up feeling so depressed. If only they’d
let me wake up in my own way. Why do they have to line up alongside my bed and
stare at me like Moby Dick just washed up on a beach somewhere?
Have you ladies ever been there? All
of us may have moments like that from time to time! Someone said, “I’m an atheist until I have my first cup of
coffee in the morning!” I related to you before how on one trip down to NJ
to see our daughter and family, at about 5 AM we heard the pitter-patter of
little feet, and grandson and granddaughter, then about 2 and 4, came down the
stairs in the darkness. I whispered to them, “Shhh… Grammy is sleeping.” Hunter
goes over to Mary Ann’s side of the bed, opens her eye lids as if to peek in,
and asks “Why is she SO sleepy?” They
are awake, so should be the world!
No one deserves a special day all to
herself more than today's mother. A cartoon showed a psychologist talking to
his patient: "Let's see," he
said, "You spend 50 percent of your energy on your job, 50 percent on your
husband and 50 percent on your children. I think I see your problem." Love
for spouse and children is an attitude that is embraced, and it gives strength
and direction when we are tested! That brings us to the next pair of attitudes…
Self-controlled and pure. “Self-control” is a quality that is
required of leaders in the church, and indeed it is among the “fruit of the Spirit” that should
characterize the life of every follower of Jesus. Consider the contrast between
the works of the flesh and the fruit of the Spirit in Galatians 5:19-23,
19 Now the works
of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, 20 idolatry, sorcery, enmity,
strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, 21 envy, drunkenness, orgies, and
things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such
things will not inherit the kingdom of God.
22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience,
kindness, goodness, faithfulness, 23
gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
It
seems to me that being a mother requires special grace as a woman deals with
the high calling of raising children, and being the complement to her husband
that God intends her to be. God can empower women to fulfill their calling in
the Lord!
Working at home and kind. Let’s
take the second word first, “kind.” It
is the word agathos which is usually
translated “good” in the New Testament. A related word [agathosune] is translated “goodness” among the fruit of the Spirit
in Galatians 5:22. The English word “good” is so generic we may miss what is
being said. This same word was used in Mark 10 by the rich, young, ruler and
Jesus. Jesus replied to his “good teacher” greeting by saying, “Why do you call me good? No one is good but
God alone.” This recalls the perfection of God, both in His nature, and as
it was reflected in His good creation before the fall. Older women are to teach
younger women to be “good.” I think this must mean that they are to disciple
them, to lead them deeper in their Christian life so that they become more like
Jesus!
What about “working at home”? Let me say
this first: This surely doesn’t preclude the idea of a woman working outside
the home. If you read Proverbs 31, the virtuous woman there is involved in real
estate transactions, manufacturing, and trade! But what really defined her, and
set her apart, was that she was a woman who feared the Lord—she has a
reverential respect for the God who is, the Lord of the universe. Her love for
God guides her primary ministry: to love her family, her husband and her
children. Somehow mothers have a
capacity to shape the home— and the lives of the children in the home—in a
unique way. Whether or not they work outside of the home, they are a homemaker,
that is, they make it a “home.”
- Submit to the leadership of her own
husband. This is talking about recognizing and embracing God’s design for
the family. Remember the older women are to teach the younger “what is good,” that is, God’s truth, His
design for the family. God is the head of every Christian. And He has delegated
authority at various levels—in government—in the church—and in families. In the
family setting of serving one another and loving one another, God has delegated
the responsibility of leadership to the husband. That sounds so
counter-cultural these days that it might be shocking to some. The idea in the
New Testament is not controlling or mean-spirited leadership. As we’ve
seen particularly in Mark 8-10, Jesus modeled servant-leadership, loving,
gentle, patient guiding. As we’ll see later in Mark, that even goes all the way
to the Cross, as Jesus is willing to lay down His life for the church. This
kind of servant leadership and loving submission does not come naturally since
the Fall described in Genesis 3. It is something that our fallen, sinful nature
either grates against, or abuses. But for the believing wife, it is something
to be learned, from older women, and to be embraced, for the glory of God. It
is one more way in which mothers can impact the next generation for Christ!
III. The potential
of a godly mother (5c; cf. I Pet
2:12). “…so that no one may malign
the Word of God…” (NIV). Another
translation says,
“…that the word of God may not be reviled.” (ESV)
Let’s not
miss what Paul is saying in this final clause. A family that is reflecting God’s
design and living by God’s plan, including respecting the complementarian
design of the marriage relationship, may be counter-cultural, may not be
politically correct or in tune with the latest ideas of humans—but ultimately
will glorify of God. We won’t give the world a reason to speak badly about
God’s Word. Peter said a similar thing in a passage we looked at in that series
a couple of years back. In a context where Peter is exhorting his readers on
how to live as pilgrims in a fallen world, he urges them in I Peter 2:12, “Keep your conduct among the Gentiles
honorable, so that when they speak against you as evildoers, they may see your
good deeds and glorify God on the day of visitation.” Both our lifestyle
and our attitude are testimonies to the world, statements that we are God’s
people and have chosen to live our lives and raise our children according to
His design. Ideally, people will see consistency in us that goes beyond the
wishy-washy, easy-believism of nominal Christianity. This is real, authentic
discipleship. That reminds me of the
little boy who forgot his lines in a Sunday school presentation. His mother was
in the front row to prompt him. She gestured and formed the words silently with
her lips, but it did not help. Her son's memory was blank. Finally, she leaned
forward and whispered the cue, "I am the light of the world." The
child beamed and with great feeling and a loud clear voice said, "My
mother is the light of the world!" Well, he actually got it right!
The life and the testimony of a godly mother is indeed light in the world!
What
is God saying to me in this passage? Mothers can impact the next generation for Christ!
What
would God have me to do in response to this passage? Mother’s Day is a day to honor mothers. The correct
spelling, by the way, is MOTHER’S Day, rather than MOTHERS’ Day. The idea was
not to boost the bottom line one day a year for Hallmark and the local florist.
Ann Jarvis actually lamented the commercialism that came to surround the day. It
was intended for each family, individually to recognize and honor the “mother”
in their midst, the woman who makes the family a family. Since God designed the
family, it’s right and proper for us to recognize that one of the Ten
Commandments specifically said, Honor
your father and your mother. That should not be one day a year for Christ
followers, it should be a truth that we affirm, a value that we embrace every
day.
Be
thankful for the mother God gave you. If she is still living, tell her that you
are thankful. My mother didn’t know the Lord during my childhood, but
there is no question but that she loved her children, unconditionally. God commanded us to honor our parents. In the church family we want to honor the women
in our midst, and specifically our mothers. There may be some who never married
or to whom God never gave biological children. We honor you as well for how you
have sown into the lives of children in the church. Think about the mission God
has given us to make disciples. How can each lady here encourage and bless a younger
woman with the experience you have had in the Lord? May God bless you today. AMEN.
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