"Mother's Day Sermon" By Brother Parrish Lee May 11th,
2014
What an awesome day to come and just
worship the Lord. What
an awesome day it
is just to know the Lord. What
an
awesome morning it is to be able to open your eyes, and, if you can
walk, to
walk across the floor, to open your mouth and to breathe His name and
to know
that there is no other Savior like the Son of God who has come to rise
in our
hearts and in our lives, and, according to the Scriptures, give us good
and
precious gifts (James 1:17). What
a
beautiful day it is to give homage to our moms all over the world, all
over the
world, and to give honor to the one true and wise God who has not only
given us
moms, but He’s given us everything else that we could ask for. God is truly good to us. Amen.
As we have said, our theme for the
month is: 2 Corinthians 5:17
Therefore
if
any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away;
behold,
all things are become new. But, we will not be ignorant of the fact that today is Mother’s Day, so, how will we do this? We pry that God blesses it. Giving honor to that self-same God who is the Head over all our lives. God, who is the head over everything. Giving honor to our Maker, our Redeemer, our Savior, our Forgiver, our longsuffering One. God, our present giver. Giving honor to God for all those things. Giving honor to our founding pastor and his family, and our pastor and his family, whose burden is just immense. Thankful for any man of God who has come and has done without, that they might feed the flock. Giving honor to all of y’all, who have attended, and said, “This is the day that I show up, and I give God—I might not even have that much…” You know, some people say, “I’ve got a boatload of blessings to give God.” Sometimes, you’re not in the boatload arena; sometimes you’re in the teacup arena. “God, I ain’t got a lot to give today, but what I have, I’ll give you that.” Amen. So, giving honor to everyone that shows up and brings their heart before the true and wise God that He might bless us. Our scripture thought for today is going to be from Genesis chapter 3: Genesis 3:20
And
Adam called his wife's name Eve; because
she was the mother of all living.
If you could bow your heads with me for just a minute. Lord, we have to come, and mention Your name, and just say, “Thank You.” God, if You called us home right now, You have been so tremendously good to us, we can’t even thank You enough. We thank You for this service; we thank You for this day; we thank You for praise and worship time. We thank You for our fellowship; we thank You to be able to sit down and share, Lord. We thank You for all these things that You’ve given to us this very morning, Lord. God, we ask for a blessing on Your word, today, that it would bless our hearts, our minds, that You would bless that, as You said in Your Word, that it would not return unto void, but that it would surely accomplish that which You have sent it to do. We ask that blessing on the reading and preaching of Your Word as we come this morning as we come and submit and claim in Jesus’ name, and everyone said, amen. And Adam called is wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. You know, we Christians, we are a very interesting people. We come in all kinds of shapes and sizes. We come in all different ethnicities. Generally, we are great people to work with—yeah, you noticed that qualifier, ‘generally.’ Generally, we are great people to work with; we’ve got some Christians that are real go getters—and we know those guys—they get up early in the morning, no job is too small or unimportant and will work until the wee hours of the night. Yeah, some Christians are real go-getters. Some Christians aren’t so much those go-getters; maybe they don’t like getting up early in the morning, in fact, maybe they’re not morning people at all. Some Christians are not real go-getters, and, in fact, “I never met a break I didn't like.” Still, we have Christians under the auspices of Jesus being our Lord and our Savior. Yes, we come in all different shapes and sizes, and we have all different kinds of job and everything, and people, they kind of like being around us, generally . But you don't usually find Christians being the most popular people, generally. You don’t find Christians being the people that everyone draws up to. You know, even when Tim Tebow was Tebowing, they decided to make fun of him. That’s football; then again, they make fun of everybody in football. Generally, they like being around Christians—they’re kind of nice to pal around—but they’re not the most popular people. They’re not listening to everything they have to say, o that they can follow them. See, Christians have this thing about them: They follow as close as they can to being humble, and peaceful, and, you know, hospitable. Generally, when we’re in worldly environments, sooner or later, something comes along that makes an opposition; it’s an affront comes at odds to our Christian walk. Let’s face it; Christians know all over the world, when something is making you choose between them and God, hey! Whatever it is—I might like it, I might love it, I might want more of it—but, if it’s between you and Him, I’m on this side. That’s the way Christians are, so people know that while it’s nice to have Christians around, but if I start telling those, you know, those off-color jokes, or whatever, they’re not going to do the most laughing. Usually they’re going to withdraw from around it. Usually, Christians, they don’t want to be in a non-Christian environment, where things are going to make them choose between God and them. It’s almost like they have the same mindset; they have the same heart. You get a group of them together, and they kind of click together, and they kind of talk about the goodness of God. You know, you find that they have a common mindset, almost like they’re part of some kind of exclusive club. Christian people; generally they’re good to be around. There’s another group of people, and they’re kind of like a club, too. You know, they kind of have the same mindset. They kind of have the same heart on things. Yes, we all that group of people mothers. They kind of think the same way, and they come in all different shapes and sizes, and all different ethnicities. Thank God. All those things combine to promote us having mothers in the room. That whole thing about compassion, and love, and that whole nurturing ting; it’s hard to understand, if you’re not in that realm. That whole thing seems to be like they’re part of some sort of club, you know? Moms. It’s kind of like—I haven’t seen it; I’ve looked for it a couple of times—a secret password or a secret handshake. They kind of get together and they kind of have a conversation; they laugh at things that I don’t even thin they’re jokes… You now, you put a bunch of them in a room, and you put a bunch of men in that room, and, after awhile, it’s like they start divvying up, and it’s like, “I can’t be a part of that.” They’re over there in another conversation. It’s some sort of secret club. I’ve always wondered about that. Well, I’ve actually seen that they kind of have a certain look that they get. I don’t know if they get a card that reads a certain rank… They’ve got something that they can bring up in their voice, almost automatically; it’s like a secret spy decoder ring. It’s comes out, and everybody else is just a spectator, because mom has spoken. I was in the military—and I had to wait until I was a certain age, and thank God for our young men who are in the military and keeping our country strong. Anyway, I joined a long time ago, and I was sure when I came out, then I’m going to be a man. After I’m a man, that’s it, all bets are off; I’m the dude! Because, you know, military people, soldier, sailor, whatever, that’s it! You don’t go no higher; you don’t become no more of a man than a military man. Well, I saw this guy who was in the military, and he had the same mindset, you know? Join the military, become a military man, but I had the opportunity to see—he was home on leave—and I saw him do something in front of his mom with something that I knew—and he knew—she didn't like. She didn't like it! And, so, when he did it and she didn’t like it, he kind of, his chest grew out, and he kind of gave his mom a look to say, "I'm a man now!" You know, he didn’t even say a word, he just cut her a look, and at that same second, as she was there, she cut him a look. I saw the look that she gave him—she didn’t say a word, she just gave him that look, and you saw all that “I’m a man now!” just start to lift up off of him. It started to go somewhere. And her look never stopped; she just kept looking at him, and her lips were just like they were, and I was glad I wasn’t in the middle walking past; I’d have been cut in two. A marvelous thing happened, as all that ‘man’ stuff was going on, she gave him a look to say, "I don't care who you think you are, you're my child". That came up off of him, and without any words being exchanged, the next words I heard were, ''I'm sorry Mom". All I could say was, “Wow.” I remembered when I was feeling like that, and I did, and I received, and I remembered. So, I think it’s a very fitting Scripture for us to go to in the book of Genesis chapter 3. Genesis 3:20
And
Adam called his wife's name Eve; because
she was the mother of all living.
Yes, we are keeping in mind our Scripture thought for the day, and it’s for a very specific purpose. “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” (2 Corinthians 5:17) Adam called his wife’s name Eve, because she was the mother of all living. You know why we give flowers to women and not men? If somebody gives a man a flower, you know what? I don’t know. You don’t see that being commonplace. I work at a place where there’s like 500 people. If you see flowers for the ladies, at different times… If somebody gave a bouquet of flowers for a man getting off of work, us guys, we’d be asking. We give flowers to women because the flowers represent life. They bloom; all of spring is about lie1 Plant lie is coming back about. Here it is, you’ve got birds chirping, you’ve got temperatures going to be in the sixties and seventies—Hallelujah!—no more frost for a while! “Thank You for the spring, Lord!’ Flowers, they represent life, and she is the mother of all living. We know the story of Adam and how it goes. Adam, he was formed from the dust of the earth, and God formed him, and how He breathed in him the breath of life. Adam started walking around, and it must have been a great time with Adam. You know, having God be there alone, and then he named all of the animals. He must have been pretty bright, because I can’t remember the names of half of the animals I’ve already known. If it had come to insects, I would have just said, ‘Squishy bug.” Adam must have been tremendous to name all the animals. And that relationship he had with God—that could have gone on for eons for all we know. We don’t know how long that went on. That could have gone on for millennia for all we know. We don’t know. Then we see that the Lord said that it’s not good for Adam to be alone, and He caused a deep sleep to came over Adam and the Lord took from Adam a rib, and from that rib, He made a woman. He made this woman, and Adam went on to say, “…bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh...” (Genesis 2:23) But, it wasn’t until the woman came about, after eons, or however long it was, that Adam would go on to say, “This, here, this one, this is the mother of all living.” He didn’t say mother of living before that, and her name is called ‘Eve.’ Quite a tremendous legacy for moms to have there. He called her the mother of all living even before she had children. I have to be honest, we were doing a study–the Bible in a year—some time ago, and we had several people—I don’t know, it might have been ten or twelve people there talking; we were going over parts of Genesis… The conversation got to you know what? Eve, she was beguiled by the serpent. Let me tell you something, fellows, if you’re having study time, and you—you should be having some study time sometime, let’s just ay that—if you’re having study time, and you want to make it interesting, make sure some ladies are there, involve them in some of the Bible talks. You really want to get some eye-opening? Get some other opinions. As we were there in this Bible discussion--we were going through the Bible in a year—and, we were talking about the serpent beguiling Eve, you know, she was the one who ate, and then she went over and gave it to Adam and that was the cause of all the problems. And one of the ladies didn’t even bat an eye, she said, “Hold on there for just one minute! Who did God tell not to eat?” “Adam.” “Well, if God told Adam, and he was doing his job, he would have made sure that they couldn’t get to the tree. So, it was Adam’s fault; he didn’t put the precautions in place.” “Wow! Okay.” Okay. In another conversation, I was talking to another lady—every now and then, that testosterone flows. Hey, you know—If I could go back in time and tell Adam, after Eve took that first bite, “Hey, dude, that’s on her. You don’t have to eat it; we could still be there, man! We can do this thing!” She didn’t even bat an eye; she looked at me and said, “Hey, Eve wasn't stupid, she said, ‘If I am leaving, you are going with me. We are doing this thing together; I am not going to be alone.’” I thought it was very interesting that there were so many takes that they could have of the Word. Another thing that we have seen about women—and I am making a special point here—is because we have all seen women be mothers, even when their bodies betray them--whether it betrays them out of sickness or injury. You see a woman come along, she just enters the picture like she was looking for an opportunity. You see them become teachers, and you see them adopt children and take care of them. Where did you find that type of compassion, and nurturing, and love? it was always there. They just looked for the opportunity. We see that, even though their bodies could betray them, their heart and their mind never does. Their soul never does, and it seems like they have an immense capacity for truly, they are the daughters of Eve. The mother of all living exists within them. We’ve seen a mother's love be so precious that children have actually fought over it. Yeah, children that are younger; they might not know how to put it in words, they just know that if it seems like mom is giving more love and attention to you, then you are the one I have to take out, then I can get it all for me. When they get older, they kind of get fancy with it. Sometimes the words come out, and I’ve even heard it in my own family: "You know Mom always loved you more ‘cause you're the oldest,” " You know Mom always loved you more ‘cause you're the youngest,” “You know Mom always loved you more ‘cause you're the favorite son,” “You know Mom always loved you more ‘cause you're the favorite daughter." One of the things that children can get wrong sometimes—and, yes, children even in our fifties and sixties; I’m in that page: I’ve got five brothers and five sisters. I’m one of them—One of the places where children can go wrong is when they look at mom, they sometimes see a reservoir of love and compassion and wonderful things, and not realizing that that reservoir is fed by one of those deep underground streams that never seems to go try. That is all in semblance to that mother of living thing.
And
we’re not ignorant to know that, because of this world being so crazy,
there’s
even been some Moms that haven’t been able to live up to their motherly
responsibilities or duties. Just
on the
news the other day, I saw this caption of this woman who was going to
trial,
because she killed her children, and then waited for her husband to get
home,
and then said, “Hey, I bet this really ripped your heart out, didn’t
it?” I thought,
“Oh, what a world we live in.” Whether
it is something that they can do
something about or whether they can’t, it might be biological, or maybe
they
just missed the boat on some of that compassion, God does not leave
anybody
out. God does not
leave any child, any
son or daughter, any family that feels like we haven’t received our
motherly
portion, we haven’t received what God would own unto us, God covers
that. Psalms 27:10 When my father and my mother forsake me,
then the LORD will take me up. I’ve seen times that I’ve been at odds with families, and I’ve seen families at odds; I just want to say that if you ever have odds or a feud with your family, God can—I’m not saying God’s going to make everything like a TV show—but God can bring intervention in there to be an answer. That’s why Christians have such a great opportunity to come in and say, “I’m going to call on the name of the Lord my God.” You know what? it might be a few days, it might be a few weeks, it might even be a few months. Who knows? But I know when we call on the name of God, he will her our cry. So, if our mother or father do forsake us, the Lord will lift us up. We’re also not ignorant to know that this time of year—my brother Andy, I can 100% empathize with you. Eleven years ago for myself—but, this time of year, there’s several people that—and this might be the first time, first service, first Sunday, first Mother’s Day, first May that you’ve to go without your mom. Whether separation, or maybe she’s gone on. God knows that, too. The pray that we have for anybody who is going through it with a heavy heart, is that God would give you a comfort and a blessing, to be able to endure and to remember the good. As the Lord said, you actually can find motherly love in God’s house amongst God’s people. You can find fatherly love in God’s house amongst God’s people for they carry that in their lives.
Down
through the ages we have seen society put different stipulations on
moms. I’m about to
bring this to the point of our
scripture in 2 Corinthians. We’ve
seen
society put definitions on—they try to describe that relationship that
people
have with their moms. They
call it
nurturing, they call it maternal, they call it compassion, they call it
several
things because they realize its so important to be inside of the family
unit,
because those years are so important that it makes society go on. Job 12:7
But ask
now the beasts, and they shall teach
thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: We’ve seen the relationship of mama bear over her cubs. We’ve seen the relationship of mama pig over her little piglets. Mama anything—they’ll tear anything apart if you come between them and their young. What do we learn from that? Where do they get that? Where did it come from? Why is it there? What shall they teach thee? Is the whole purpose of this thing to sustain lie, and have a nice family environment, and have a nice little atmosphere? Is that the whole purpose of that immense compassion and love that’s supposed to be there? Is that the whole purpose for it, or does it have a greater purpose? Does it actually have a greater purpose? Ephesians 5:28-32
So
ought
men to love their wives as their own bodies.
He that loveth his wife loveth himself.
For no man ever yet hated his own flesh; but
nourisheth and cherisheth
it, even as the Lord the church: For
we
are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones. For this cause shall a man
leave his father
and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be
one flesh. This is
a great mystery: but I speak
concerning Christ and the church.
This is a great mystery but I speak concerning Christ and the church. It’s not just a mystery, it’s a great mystery. This whole man, woman female thing coming together and creating a union, it has a purpose, and it’s purpose is Christ and the church. This is the lesson that we are to learn from them. You see, you notice how, when the Lord made the model for the church, He didn’t use man, the strength, the one who gets silent, the one who has to be hit on the head to learn sometimes. He didn’t use that model, He used the model of the woman. She’s the model for the church, that there would be that nurturing, and that compassion, that love, that protection over the young. He used that for the model for the church that we would have love and compassion one to another. That we would nurture one another. That we would also, yes, accept one another. He went to take it even further, that even her young would be protected, the young would be looked out for, the young would be taught, the young would be raised up in Him. The model of the Lord. What a wonderful lesson that is. You see how sometimes a mom just hears something that nobody else in the room is able to hear, in the middle of a long conversation, and she will just take off. “Where’d you go?” “Well, I heard a baby crying.” Good gracious alive; I couldn’t hear anything in all that noise, but she could hear that faint sound. That’s the same semblance for the church, to be able to look on the needs of the young. To be able to look and say, “This one needs encouragement. This one needs some strength. This one just needs company, and this one needs some food. This one needs some help.” That we would have that same model in the church. And, lastly, this theme of the month, talking about being a new creature, what really, really, really, really has become new for Christians? this new love. God has brought us to the place where we will love like we’ve never loved before, because we have come to know one another like we have never known one another before. Today is Mother’s Day. We honor mothers. Both moms who have had children of their own, and moms who have taken it on their heart to love unrepentedly, regardless of whatever the mistakes might have been, they our it out. But, not everybody seems to be included in it. To be sure—Andy and I talked about this—on May 25th—that’s two weeks from now—On May 25th, what we’re going to have here is Women’s Day. Next month we’ll have Men’s Day, but on Women’s Day, the last Sunday of the month, we would like the ladies to come and dress as wonderfully for church as you can. Amen. We’re going to have women’s Day, where we’ll learn about their burdens, their hearts and all that; we wanted to give a time to honor our ladies. Amen? Amen. We ought to give the Lord a praise on that one. And that is our service, honoring our moms, and the Lord on Mother’s Day. Happy Mother's Day, everyone!
|
|
|
|
