A Model For A Mother’s Love

Isaiah 49:14-16; Isaiah 66:12-13; Jeremiah 31:20; Hosea 11:1-9; Ephesians 3:17-18

Intro: - video clip – Anita Renfroe singing “Momisms” from the video “Total Momsense” – 3:20 .

That speaks for itself, doesn’t it? Truth is stranger, and funnier, than fiction.

Gina Doll was 7 months pregnant and playing with her 4 yr old nephew Connor. Being a boy, he was getting a little too rough and was pressing on Gina’s belly to the point where it hurt. She told him, “Connor, please don’t press on my tummy – there’s a baby in there.” Connor looked shocked and said, “You mean, you ate a baby?”

Mothers Day, 2011. How did we get here? I could answer that with the history of Mother’s Day – Anna Jarvis, born in WV in 1864 wanted to do something to honor mothers. She pushed for a day to be set aside to do that. Then, in 1914, Woodrow Wilson made Mother’s Day a national holiday and it’s been happening here ever since.

I could answer by tracing what has happened to motherhood over the centuries – what has changed, and what hasn’t, and how it has developed into the complex web that it is today.

Or, I could just say we got here by our mothers – every one of us, good or bad, happy or sad, we all had a mother who carried us and gave birth to us and that’s how we got here! That’s how Paul could write

1 Corinthians 11:11-12

In the Lord, however, woman is not independent of man, nor is man independent of woman. For as woman came from man, so also man is born of woman.

So, yes, we owe our very existence to our mothers. But we also know we owe them more than just getting us here and started.

A Mother's Day card said: "Now that we have a mature, adult relationship, there's something I'd like to tell you. You're still the first person I think of when I fall down and go boom!"

Quote - Theodore Roosevelt - When all is said, it is the mother, and the mother only, who is a better citizen than the soldier who fights for his country. The successful mother, the mother who does her part in rearing and training aright the boys and girls who are to be the men and women of the next generation, is of greater use to the community, and occupies, if she would only realize it, a more honorable as well as a more important position than any man in it. The mother is the one supreme asset of the national life. She is more important, by far, than the successful statesman, or businessman, or artist, or scientist.

There are all kinds of ways we could honor godly moms today and talk about their great value to society and every one of our lives. But I want to do something different this morning. I want to deepen our appreciation for godly mothers by looking at some specific Scriptures that speak of God’s love.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not going to end up suggesting that God should be called our “Heavenly Mother” or that He’s just really in touch with His feminine side. But all that is feminine was first created by God, and all that’s beautiful and feminine about motherhood today comes from the mind of God. So, God finds it appropriate to use a mother’s love to help us understand His great love.

Ephesians 3:17b-18

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ,

It’s an awfully big love – with width and length and height and depth. It’s something that we can hardly grasp. It will even take power to understand it. Just how much does God love us? How can we begin to appreciate it? If only there were something most of us could already relate to, something in life that would be a good picture of God’s love – say, a mother’s love! That’s exactly what He does.

The setting is Hosea, the first book in what we call the Minor Prophets. Israel has fallen away from God – like a wife that wanders off from her husband for other men. They’ve been worshiping false Gods, turning to idols instead of the one True God. They knew better. So, there is an Assyrian invasion in their future. God is going to allow them to be punished by those cruel, warring people, and He’s even giving Israel fair warning by the mouth of Hosea. But as He does, listen to the appeal God makes while He speaks about His mother-like love for His chosen people: