Elevate - Mother's Day 2024

Men and women reflect the attributes of God when combined. Mother's Day can be both happy and sad for different people. Moms are special because they reflect God's attributes. Moms display the attributes of God through their love, comfort, discipline, and mercy. God is both a fierce warrior and a comforter, just like moms. Isaiah uses the imagery of a mother to describe God's comfort for His people. Men and women are just so different, yet when you put all of our attributes together, we reflect the wholeness of God and all of His goodness and all of His attributes. And you know what? Sometimes these attributes cross over. We have some men that are more sensitive than others. We have some women that are more driven. The point is, together we reflect the wholeness of the attributes of God. Welcome to Elevate, the radio ministry of Authentic Life Church in Mobile, Alabama. We pray that it builds your faith, helps you to live a life for God that you've always wanted to live, and that it inspires you to be a fully devoted, authentic follower of Jesus Christ. Here's today's message from Neil DiQuatro. Today we're going to honor moms as we share God's Word. But I want to start out by recognizing that Mother's Day is sort of a mixed bag. It's this wonderful time to honor such an important role, but for many people it can be a bit of a gloomy and a sad day. You know, some folks don't have great relationships with their moms, so it reminds them of a pain, a wound. There are other folks who have lost a mom, maybe recently, so Mother's Day can be painful. There are some of you who wish you were a mom or know someone who wishes they were a mom, and for some reason your body just hasn't been able to do that. And then there are some who, they're believing God for a spouse so they can be a mom, right? And so all of these things are at play on Mother's Day, and we want to recognize that and be sensitive to it. So can we just open up in a word of prayer and believe that God will bring comfort to all those who need comfort on Mother's Day? Lord, we thank you so much that you are a good God, that you're a gracious God, that you love us, that you have plans for our lives. But Lord, we know that there are certain times and days and seasons where people are struggling. They struggle, and they feel sadness, and we know you understand because you struggled before the cross, and we know that you felt sadness, Lord. And so God, I pray that you would bring the peace of God that passes all understanding in this room this morning, Lord. I pray you'd meet the need of every heart, Lord, and that you would just be so gracious to those who might be struggling today. In the name of Jesus, we pray. Amen. Well, thank you. Thank you for praying with me because that's important. That's important to recognize that. But regardless of where your relationship is with motherhood today, we still wanted to honor God's design for women and mothers and how we've all been impacted. So whether we're a mother ourselves, all of us have been impacted by a mom in some way or another, whether it's a physical mom or a spiritual mom. So this message this morning is a message for birth moms, for adoptive moms, for caregivers who swooped in at the right time and saved the day, and for spiritual moms. It's for all moms. So when I think of motherhood, I think about this book. It's called Love You Forever. Anyone familiar with this book? Anyone seen this? It's one of my favorite books because it's my wife's favorite book. Her mom would read it to her when she was little. It's called I Love You Forever. And over and over and over again in this book, you hear the phrase repeated by the mom, I love you forever, I like you for always. As long as I'm living, my baby, you'll be. And it goes through every season of the child's life, from being an infant, where the mom's holding them, saying, I love you forever, I like you for always. In fact, you can see a picture of that here, the mom holding the baby. I love you forever, I like you for always. Then the child becomes a toddler and a young kid, right? And the mom is holding them as the child gets bigger and saying the same thing. And then they become an adult and they become an older adult and have their own kids. And then mom's elderly. And look at this next picture. Mom is still holding the baby. Then I love you forever, I like you for always. As long as I'm living, my baby, you'll be. And I thought to myself, isn't that just the picture of moms and how they operate? No matter how old you get, you're still mom's baby. They're still caring about you, thinking about you, praying for you. Moms are special. Why? Well, to understand why moms are so special, we just need to look back at the beginning. Look at the design that God created. In Genesis chapter 1, verse 26 and 27. Then God said, Let us make mankind in our image after our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the heavens, and over the livestock, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth. So God created man in his own image. That means mankind in his own image. In the image of God, he created him male and female. He created them. You see, both men and women are special because you're created in God's image. And so part of the attributes of God is reflected in men and women, in fatherhood, in motherhood. And we don't have all the same attributes. It's almost as if God gave half of himself to one and half of himself to other. In fact, theologically that might not be too far from the truth. And you see this in reality because men and women are just so different. Yet when you put all of our attributes together, we reflect the wholeness of God, and all of his goodness, and all of his attributes. And you know what? Sometimes these attributes cross over. We have some men that are more sensitive than others. We have some women that are more driven, right? And don't fit necessarily the standard stereotype. Be free. That's okay. You be you. In fact, if you want to see a more aggressive woman, take a mom and mess with her child, and she'll rip your chest hair out. And so we know that this sometimes overlaps. And it's okay. The point is together we reflect the wholeness of the attributes of God. And so today as I preach about the attributes that are on display in the life of a mom, I want you to know, I just want to say this first, I'm not feminizing God. But you see God is complete and lacking nothing. He's a mighty warrior and he's also a comforter. He's both. For God, when he's one thing, it doesn't mean that he's not another thing. He's quite literally everything deficient in nothing. So we can talk about all of the attributes of God and we're not concerned that we're painting them with one brush too much. And so when we look at the design for his image bearers, image bearers, you and me, men and women, we see all of God's attributes on display, yet sometimes many of us only see God as a fierce warrior, mighty in battle, and he is. In fact, the ancients often saw him like this. It was the God who was fierce in battle and he was so holy the ancients wouldn't even say his name out loud, Yahweh. But this morning we can also complete our understanding of God when we see that he's both a fierce warrior and also a comforter, and also a caregiver. And there's no place that I can think of where those attributes are more on display than in the life of a mom. So how do moms display the wonderful attributes of God? Well, let's look at our passage. We're going to take a quick walk through a few passages in Isaiah, because God's relationship with Israel as displayed in the book of Isaiah is a really interesting one. It's at times, you know, you see God's love, and then you see God's discipline, and then he's a rescuer, and then the Israelites act foolish again, and they turn away from God, and then God shows his mercy anyways. Moms, can you relate? Sometimes this happens all in one day. And so it paints a great picture. So let's look at Isaiah, our first passage, chapter 66, verses 13. As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you. You shall be comforted in Jerusalem. We see first that God is a God who comforts. How many of you know that's true? He's a God who comforts. So Isaiah is prophesying at a time here, after King Solomon's death, the nation's in shambles because his son, Rabban, was just a jerk, and as a result of Solomon's son's behavior, the nation is split into a northern kingdom and a southern kingdom, and as often happened in antiquity, this nation would turn away from God and be seduced by other nations' gods and these idols, and so they were constantly in threat of other nations attacking them. They rarely had peace. In fact, this happened to the northern kingdom as they were hauled away by Babylon. And this was all due to the rebellion against God, against Yahweh. But in our specific passage here, in chapter 66, Isaiah looks past just what's happening in the now, and he sees into the age of the Messiah, and he brings this beautiful message of comfort. When the Messiah is revealed, and salvation is provided, and comfort comes, and God sets everything straight. This is what Isaiah is peering into. And he speaks of a God comforting His people after God disciplines Him. So that's the context of this verse. But as Isaiah looks to the Messianic age, when Jesus the Messiah would come, he offers us here, at the end of the book, this climax of the greatest comfort God could ever provide by sending His Son. And when He explains this great comfort, He chooses, God chooses, through the prophet, to use the imagery of a mother to make His point clear. Isn't that powerful? That God was going to give the ultimate comfort to His people that He could give, and to make His point clear, and He draws from the imagery of motherhood, so no one was confused by what He meant. Charles Spurgeon, we're probably all familiar with him, one of the greatest preachers our modern age has known, said this regarding this passage. This is a peculiarly delightful metaphor. A father can comfort, but I think he's not always comfortable with this. When God speaks about His pity, He compares Himself to Israel's father. But when He speaks about comfort, He selects the mother. When I have seen the little ones sick, I have felt all the pity in the world for them, but I did not know how to comfort them. But a mother knows, by instinct, how to do it. Isn't that true? That's not always true of every guy, everywhere, but I know that it often was true for me. And Scripture is full of reminders that God is this comforter. In fact, when Jesus is speaking to His confused and heartbroken disciples, knowing that He's about to ascend to heaven and leave them behind, He says He's going to send the Holy Spirit in His place, and what is He described as? A comforter. He sends a comforter. And then Paul reminds us in 2 Corinthians 1, verse 3, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort. He's a God of comfort that we serve. And when you think of Christ, the comfort Christ gives us is the comfort of the Gospel. We've been talking a lot about that. To know that we can be at peace before God and to have our sins forgiven, and to know that we're not an object of His wrath anymore. That's comforting. To know that He's with us and He'll never forsake us. That's the comfort of the Gospel. So mothers, you're amazing, but there's no comfort like God's comfort. But it's often hard to understand this, to imagine it, to picture God's great comfort, and so let me say this. Thank you, moms, for showing us the way God comforts. Through your tender hugs, your kind words, your affectionate gaze, we see an example of the comfort of God through your life. Thank you. Thank you, moms. So we see God as our comforter through the life of a mom. We also see that we serve a God who nurtures. Believe it or not, this fierce warrior is also a God who nurtures. Let's look at Isaiah chapter 46, verse 3. Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been born by me from before your birth, carried from the womb. Even to your old age I am He, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made and I will bear, I will carry and will save. Isn't that such a good picture of God? Such a great scripture. And so here, Isaiah pictures God with qualities that remind us of a mom. God is pictured from our birth to our death as one that provides for us, who cares for us, He nourishes us. And think about that. In this passage, God says, even to your old age I am He, and to gray hairs I will carry you. Isn't that the picture of the book I just showed you? Right? Even when we're not just a little kid, but we're grown up in the faith, and we're grown up just in the natural, and maybe we're elderly, and the Father is still holding us to the very, very end of our life. That's the picture we get from God. And just like the mom in our book, God never stops desiring to help us, and to nourish us, and to take care of us. I think about this imagery of Isaiah, and it reminds me how fitting that imagery is, because you can't deny the special bond between a mother and her child, and particularly a mother and her baby. So I think about when we had babies, Micah and Levi were infants, and so we'd get home from the hospital, and we're like, now what? And just try to keep this thing alive, right? That's pretty much all they do. They're like, here, you know? And the baby would cry in the other room, and what do I do? I was pretty decent about getting on a rotation to get up in the middle of the night. I had some time off from work. I did my best. But sometimes the baby would cry, and I'd listen to see if the baby would calm himself. If he would, you know, comfort himself in some way, or if the crying would stop. But not mom. Mom's empathy, particularly in those first few days, is on overdrive. And she's ensuring. I'm thinking, oh, is the baby going to calm himself? And she's thinking, does that baby have everything that they need? Are they hungry? Are they cold? Are they warm? Are they afraid? And so it is with our loving God. That's how God sees you. That's how He sees us. And we see this attribute of God nurturing taken even further in Psalm 147. In verse 2, the Lord builds up Jerusalem. He gathers the outcasts of Israel. He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds. It's part of God's nurturing. It's not just the providing. Sometimes it's the healing. Like a mom putting the Band-Aid on the skinned knee of the little boy who, you know, ran into the house too fast and tripped over the threshold. Like, you know, this is... He's going... He knows it's happened. And so we put a Band-Aid on them. God does that. You need to see God as one who nurtures and heals your brokenness. He heals you physically at times. He certainly heals your broken heart. He certainly heals your broken spirit. This is the God that we serve when we feel abandoned. When we feel hurt. When people have hurt us. God comes in with a Band-Aid. And He takes care of us. And He touches us. And we get the same imagery in the life of Jesus. So remember when Jesus is standing on the top of the mountain, so to speak, and He's looking down at Israel. And He's reflecting on the fact that they've rejected Him. And He wanted to gather them, but they rejected Him. And Jesus, in sadness, in Matthew 23, 37, cries out, Oh, Jerusalem. Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it. How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings. Isn't that beautiful imagery? And you were not willing. You get the picture of Christ's heart to overshadow, to protect, to provide for. That's what God wants for you and me if we would yield to Him. If we'll yield to Him. So when life is difficult, and life is overwhelming, thank you, moms, for giving us a real life picture of what God's nurturing hand looks like. When we feel abandoned or forgotten, you show us how God nurtures. You show us how God protects and bandages our physical and our emotional and our spiritual wounds. So, mom, thank you. Thank you, moms, for showing us a physical representation of who Christ is. And so we see God as our comforter and our nurturer through the life of moms. And finally, we see God as the one who unconditionally loves us. The one who unconditionally loves us. You know why I saved this one for last, because it's one of those things that moms do best. Let's look at Isaiah chapter 54, verse 7. For a brief moment I deserted you, but with great compassion I will gather you. In overflowing anger for a moment I hid my face from you, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you, says the Lord, your Redeemer. You see, these verses are describing how it seems God left Israel to their own devices for a season due to their sin and idolatry. Remember, they were taken away into exile. And so Israel felt deserted because they were taken away to Babylon. And for an Israelite whose spiritual and cultural identity are just, they're at the hip. You know, in America, you can be a Presbyterian or a Pentecostal or a Baptist, and if you cease from being an American, you can still be a Baptist or a Presbyterian, or you can stop being a Presbyterian and still be an American. But for a Jewish person, their belief in Yahweh and their national identity are like one. So can you imagine how abandoned they felt? They had this shameful change of location, and then the shame of a culture that is thrust upon them. So there's a dark time for them. But suddenly, with Isaiah's words, Israel has hope. Why? Because they get reminded of God's unconditional love. Remember this. Verse 8, In overflowing anger for a moment I hid my face, but with everlasting love I will have compassion on you. Deep in the psyche of the Israelites, of the Jewish people, through all of the mistakes, through all of the exiles, through all of the punishment and discipline they received, they always held on to the sense that God will come for us. God will redeem us. He will protect us. You see this in their secular writings. You see it in the biblical writings. For some reason, no matter how bad it got, they had a sense of, our God will come for us. They still have that to this day as they still await a Messiah. And we want to tell them the Messiah has already come, but it's still beautiful that in their mind and in their heart they know and are expecting a time where God is going to come for them and rescue them. And so like Israel, we know that we are unconditionally loved by God. And think about the hope that provides for you and me. It forms the very backbone of our entire walk. When you're unconditionally loved, you feel like you can do anything. It doesn't matter how bad life gets or how bad you mess up. There's something about knowing that someone is there that is always going to love you, that keeps you on the right track, that changes your life. And knowing we're unconditionally loved by God provides that hope. And there's no better place that we see this unconditional love on display than with the love of a mother and her child. You know the best way to illustrate what unconditional love does is to sometimes look at the opposite of that. And so there's a condition, and it's a sad condition, called failure to thrive. And it's when a young baby is sort of abandoned and they don't have physical touch and no one's caring for them and holding them and loving them. What happens to them is they literally stop growing physically and emotionally. Not because they're not being fed or have water. They have the nutrients that they need to sustain life. But literally their bodies and their minds and their emotions stop growing. And in some cases, a child can pass away simply because they've been left and haven't been touched. Even if they have food. But now think about the opposite of that. What the unconditional love of a mother does for a child as they're growing up. That touch, that closeness, those words of affirmation, that comfort they provide. It's the unconditional love of moms that in so many ways cause human beings to thrive. And as wonderful as a mother's love is, Christ demonstrated the ultimate unconditional love. And Paul highlights this when he writes in Romans 5.8. But God shows His love for us that in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Do you realize? The picture that's being painted here is when we were rejecting God and shaking our fists at God and angry at God, when we were steeped in our sin, it's in that place, in that moment, where Christ made the decision to die for us. When we were undeserving, unworthy, rejecting Him. That's the unconditional love that we see in the life of Christ. And we're blessed to have perhaps one of the best pictures of this unconditional love in Ephesians chapter 3, verse 14 and 19. Paul says, For this reason I bow my knees before the Father from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named, that according to the riches of His glory He may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. Now why is he saying all this? Why is Paul leading up to this? To get to this part. That you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth. And to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge. That you may be filled with all the fullness of God. Paul here is interested in the comprehension of God's people. To say, if you only knew how much He loves you. If you only knew the unconditional nature of Christ's love, it would help so much. So this whole Scripture, one of the most famous passages in Scripture, yes, it's about how big and wide Christ's unconditional love is. But it's also about comprehending, understanding, seeing how great this love is for us. And it's hard to comprehend. I can't comprehend it. But the best, the closest sometimes we can get is looking at the life of a mom. No matter what that child does or says, no matter how much that child shakes their fist, ugly words, rejects them, that mom always continues loving that child. No matter what. I know in our family, both of my older brothers wandered away from the Lord and they were loved back to a relationship with Jesus Christ. Many of you have that same experience. Because a mother's love never stops. Guys, sometimes we can just get mad. We turn our back. Get prideful. I'm not going to let that happen. And there's a mom on the corner going, No! That's my baby. We can't ever stop loving them. So like the Ephesians, it's hard to imagine Christ's unconditional love. It's easy to feel like we've messed up too much for God to love us or even like us. Sometimes we wonder when God is just going to be totally fed up. But thank you, moms, for reminding us through your unconditional love that nothing can separate us from the love of God. Thank you, moms, for that. So moms, you are a real-life, tangible example of Christ's comfort, of His nurture, and His unconditional love. You know, when we speak of Christ's love, we get a picture of Christ on the cross, don't we? Where it fully exposes the heart of God. And we see this in 1 John 3.16 as I close here, where John says, By this we know, love, that He laid down His life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. Thank you for listening to Elevate. We pray that this message encouraged, inspired, and challenged you. Authentic Life Church is located at 2750 Michael Boulevard in Mobile, Alabama. Visit our website, AuthenticLife.tv for more information about Authentic Life Church, to find out what we have going on, or to make a donation. We'd love for you to join us on Sundays at 10 a.m. for our weekend service. We have excellent children's, nursery, and youth programs, so bring the family. Thanks again for listening to Elevate, and may God bless you.