A little boy entered into a woman’s
clothing store and approached the clerk asking “Sir, I want to buy my mom a new
dress, but I have no idea what size she is.”
The clerk responded back “Well, is your mother tall or short…is she fat
or skinny.” The little boy responded
back with a beaming smile, “My mommy is just perfect.” The clerk decided to box up a size ten with
beautiful wrapping paper and off the boy went.
A few days later a woman came back with the size ten dress to return and
the same clerk waited on her. She said
my son came in the other day and bought this for me, I need another size. She exchanged that size ten dress for a size
forty two. As the man watched the lady
leave the dress shop he smiled and knew what the little boy meant about the
perfect mother. She might not look the
part, but she loved the part of a mother.
Let's talk about one of the most famous mothers in the Bible, Mary. There is much confusion about Mary and sadder yet there is a lot of false teaching about Mary. Mary is
probably the most extraordinary woman mentioned in the Scriptures, she is the only one that is mentioned as highly favored of God, as being most blessed. Mary, the mother of the Lord Jesus was sovereignly chosen by the Lord to be the instrument through which the greatest of miracles would come, the incarnation of Christ!
Yet when I write that Mary is one of the most
prolific women in the history of the Scriptures I write it with trepidation. The reason for this is because there is so much
“over-emphasis” of Mary in certain camps that claim Christianity. Certain camps label Mary as
worthy of veneration, or worship. Some even claim that she holds the same authority as the God-head and thus should be considered equal to God.
The Roman Catholic Church claims that Mary was without sin, thus without original sin. Their claim was that Mary was a co-redeemer with Christ and that Christ
was not sufficient alone for redemption. Catholic dogma also teaches that she was taken bodily to heaven where she was
crowned the queen of heaven and thus she sits in heaven
interceding for man’s sin. Many even believe that Mary and Mary alone is the instrument by which they can speak to
God.
We can not grow numb in our
understanding of Mary worship. It is not something old and dated like many might claim; let us not forget that in 2004 a grilled cheese sandwich sold on e-bay for $28,000. Why? Because the burn mark on the bread looked like Mary. In the
city of Chicago a small make shift shrine was erected in an underpass because there was a salt stain that looked like Mary.
In the Mid-West there is a “Church” built around a tortilla that has an image of Mary. We laugh at this, but literally thousands of people visit these sights every year, which teaches us that Mary worship is far from dead. One of the previous Pope's, John Paul III beatified Mary so much that he had an M stitched on his priestly garments and in his will he left the care of the Roman Catholic Church to Mary.
With so much false teaching and confusion one can
understand
why most Protestants veer away from discussing Mary, we don’t
want people to confuse us as giving her too much attention, we
don’t’ want to be associated with being a “Mary worshiper”
instead of being a worshiper of God. Let's just take a look at solely
what the Scripture says about Mary, we will not look at dogma,
we will not look at just history, but we will settle the issue
by staying only with the Scriptures. Through this study I want you as a mother to
ask yourself a vital question, am I a mother
like unto Mary? Am I rearing my child in a godly and holy
manner?
The first thing I want to note about Mary is her purity (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+1%3A26-36&version=ESV).
The angel comes to this young
woman in the city of Nazareth and delivers probably the most shocking message in her life, the angel declares that she is going to bear the long awaiting Christ child, that she was the one that would
be used as the instrument of God. Throughout history, starting
with Eve, each woman looked forward to bearing a child,
each time hoping that she just might be the one to bear the Messiah, to be the woman that would be honored and
favored above others.
In Genesis chapter three we
can well remember the promise that God made unto mankind. Man had fallen into sin, they willingly and
voluntarily defied God and thus a punishment must be paid, and
the punishment that was prescribed for sin was
then and is now, DEATH! God in His mercy and grace killed one of His own creation in order to cover
man’s sin, thus teaching them the importance of a blood sacrifice. But God made it clear that the
skins of animals would not always be the means to cover sin, soon
God would send a Redeemer through the seed of the woman
that would crush the head of Satan and thus
destroy sin, evil, and death!
Nearly four thousand years had passed since that promise and some might have lost hope, others might have
even forgotten about the promise, but God hadn’t forgotten. God would send an angel to the little town of Nazareth. Think
about Nazareth for a moment, the city was hated by others, even the disciples
questioned “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” It seemed odd that God would pick a woman from such a hated
city, from a small town that was barely even on the map.
Notice a key trait
of Mary found in these passages, she was a woman of purity. In verse twenty seven she is described as being a virgin, then in
response to the angel’s message the she would bear a child
she said “How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?” Mary at this time was engaged to Joseph and Joseph was readily preparing their home for their upcoming wedding. It was forbidden to have
physical contract before the actual union, so Mary at this time is still a chaste young virgin, never having a physical relationship with a man. Do you think this was a tough thing to cling too?
Mary’s day would have been
similar to our day, she would have “dated” Joseph, the same
temptations might have been there, but she abstained. Her
goal was to save herself till her wedding. The problem arises when we find that over 80% of teenage girls
under the age of eighteen have already given themselves away to a man
they will not marry. Here is the scary statistic, over 60% of girls in Churches give
themselves away before the age of eighteen!!! It seems like purity is a lost practice and desire in our
age. It seems like saving ourselves, both men and women no
longer seems like the honorable and right thing to
do. Instead we throw away one of God’s greatest gifts as
if it were garbage, and to those of that did they
typically regret it and it pains them and it haunts them the rest
of their days!
We can not isolate the idea of
purity to what happens in privacy. Purity is lived out
through every action and thought. A godly mother’s purity is a way of life for her, it defines her. My family and I work with a
lot of children, usually from broken homes. We love
working with broken families, but there are two common traits with most families that we work with. First of all is the
absence of a father figure, and typically there is the absence of a mother of purity. There is a mom, but she is far from pure. It
is tragic because little eyes watch a mommy, and what little eyes typically see is what little legs and hands usually do in the future.
Not only did Mary live a pure
life, but she was a woman that produced faith!
Notice Mary’s response to the message that the angel gave unto her, she simply said that the news was too
unbelievable, too good to be true.
I think there is much to be said here in these passages, first thing is that Mary was humble. Mary didn’t feel that she deserved this honor that was bestowed upon her, we do not find her
bragging about this blessing, but instead we find her saying
simply that it was solely the work of God. Mary was highly favored by God, but she didn’t let this become an area of
pride and contention, instead she was humble and put the matter
completely in the hands of an all powerful God.
Imagine that an angel comes to you
and tells you of this amazing event. How many of you as
women would believe
this? How many of you would
grapple with this to some degree? Some of us would say
“this is impossible, this can’t be true.” Yet in the very heart
of Mary she knew it to be true and she knew she could trust in God wholeheartedly. Notice what promise Mary clings to in verse thirty seven, “for
with God nothing shall be impossible.” She realized that the power of God exceeded that of the power of man, she knew that God could and would move beyond the reason of man!
Mary was a mother who based the
rearing of her child on
faith, starting at pregnancy. I
think of how often we as humans in general dis-believe God, we lack faith that God is able and capable of taking care of us.
God declares over and over in the Scriptures that He desires to care for us, yet think of how we raise our children. We often tell our children “we can trust God with anything” but we then sit
and say “these bills are too much, how am I going to make it
through, I have no idea how we are going to make ends
meet.” Our actions speak louder then our words. We say God is able, but when we doubt, complain, worry and woe over
things we are actually teaching them that God isn’t able
and that putting faith in Him is merely an action of the
tongue instead of an
action of our entire self. What we say and how we live must be in tune.
Imagine hitting two different keys on the piano. Do they sound
different?
Is it noticeable? Of course! The same can be said with being a mother, father,
grandfather, grandmother, uncle, aunt, etc. If our actions do not match our words then we are “out of tune
spiritually”and we are teaching some very dangerous
lessons to our young family.
Do you believe all things are possible to God? I do.
Faith
doesn’t limit your “scope” of what is
possible. I personally
believe that God can mend marriages, can heal
the sick, that God can fill this Church. Let us be like Mary and say that nothing, NOT ONE THING is impossible to God!
The final trait I want to see in Mary is that she was a mother of praise. The angel just finished telling
Mary about coming of Messiah and Mary travels to her cousin Elisabeth’s house, who was
at that time bearing John the Baptist.
The response of
Mary to the message of the angel was to worship,
she became a mother of praise (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+1%3A47-55&version=ESV)
. Mary was bubbling over with joy and praise and her only response was to lift her
voice on high. The words of Mary
here in Luke one are similar to the words of Hannah in 1st Samuel chapter
two, they are the words of song of inexpressible joy and shared in the
beauty of Psalm!
I think Mary’s response to the
angel’s message gives us another key trait of a godly mother.
A godly mother
teaches her children the fine art of praising God, of
returning thanks for all that he has done, but yet I find
there are many ungrateful and unthankful children. Our generation is sadly filled with spoiled children born with a silver spoon in their mouths.
They are thankful over nothing and nothing can please their gluttonous attitude!
Most of us as moms and
dads have not learned the lesson to be content in our state, instead we
drag ourselves into the dredges of debt just in order
to have something better, or maybe even the
best. We say we are doing it for our family, but the lesson
that we just
taught our children is that if it’s not the
best, then it isn’t worthwhile being thankful over!!
Mother’s, you have an extremely needed role to teach your
children to be thankful and to give praise
unto God. If something goods happens to your family then you
need to return thanks.
It is one of your duties as a mom to teach children how to pray, how to praise their voices in
song, how to give thanks over a meal, how to appreciate even
the smallest of things in this life. BRAG ON GOD
Mary talked about God’s goodness,
God’s glory, the strength of the Lord, His faithfulness, His arm of Might. Notice that Mary’s conversation was holy unto the Lord and that it pointed unto Him, yet another trait I think that each mother (and father for that matter) should teach their child. We as parents need to speak in a manner that is honoring unto God, if we don’t then we can only expect our children to quickly pick up on our foul words and then they will begin to share them, maybe even at Church. Our words that we need to speak need to build up one another, namely our children. And our words should be spoken as if in the presence of God (and let's be honest, they are spoken before Him).
Let's conclude briefly. As a mother you should be pure and teach that purity to your children. Remember that purity is A LOT more then what happens in the privacy of your bedroom. As a mom you are called to produce faith and to share that faith with your children. Finally as a godly mother you should be filled with praises for God and lead your children in the pathway of praise. Thank God for godly mothers (women).
