Does Your Mamma Love You?

Several of us go pick up the inner city kids and bring them to Bible classes once a week. One of the questions I like to ask the kids at Inner City is this:

Does you mamma love you? They always answer, “Yes!” Then I ask them why and they tell me, “She has to, she’s my mamma!”

You can’t ask them if their daddy loves them, because some of them have no idea who their daddy is. But so far, every one of them has said that they know their mamma loves them. A mother’s love is a powerful thing. You may remember Shannon Wright, a member of the Bonno Church of Christ and an elementary school teacher who was shot to death in Conway, Arkansas a few years ago. A couple of young boys stole some guns and set off the fire alarm of the school. Then they hid outside and waited. When the teachers and children came out, they started shooting them. Shannon Wright jumped in front of her class to protect them and was shot to death. She was the mother of a 2 year old baby. When the shots rang out, she did what a mother instinctively does. Save the children!

God’s law in Deuteronomy 22: 6-7 has been called the least commandment in the Bible. But it reflects God’s protection of the mother who has this powerful instinctive system in her heart. It says: 6 "If you happen to come upon a bird’s nest along the way, in any tree or on the ground, with young ones or eggs, and the mother sitting on the young or on the eggs, you shall not take the mother with the young;

7 you shall certainly let the mother go, but the young you may take for yourself, in order that it may be well with you, and that you may prolong your days.

God knew that the mother was particularly vulnerable at this point and could easily be caught as she tried to save her young. It was a time of weakness. But this weakness was based on the strength of her relationship with her babies. God said don’t take advantage of this. God understands becoming vulnerable in order to protect those you love. Isn’t that what Jesus’ death on the cross is all about? If there is one, this is God’s weakness. His deep love for us drove him to send his only begotten Son to the cross in order to save us. The Bible says, God’s weakness is stronger than man’s strength. Perhaps God’s weakness is his love for you.

Does you mamma love you?

Listen to Isaiah 49: 13 Shout for joy, O heavens! And rejoice, O earth! Break forth into joyful shouting, O mountains! For the LORD has comforted His people, And will have compassion on His afflicted.

14 But Zion said, "The LORD has forsaken me, And the Lord has forgotten me."

15 "Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!

16 "Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; Your walls are continually before Me.

Listen to what God is saying here. Can a mother forget her nursing child? Can a mother have no compassion on the son of her womb? God says, “Well, even if they forget, I will not forget you!” Even if your mamma doesn’t love you, God does. You’ve heard the expression, “He has a face only a mother could love.” Someone said, “He was so ugly when he was born, the doctor slapped his mother.” Well, even if mother doesn’t love that face, God says, “I do.” No wonder Paul wrote in Eph. 3: 14 For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father,

15 from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name,

16 that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in the inner man;

17 so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love,

18 may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,

19 and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fulness of God.

And John wrote in 1 John 3: 3:1 See how great a love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called children of God; and such we are.

Romans 5: 7 Very rarely will anyone die for a righteous man, though for a good man someone might possibly dare to die.

8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.