Hang On Love

Opening – Climbing the Hill Together

Happy Mother’s Day!

Today I want to take you on a journey—up a hill.

Not a hill of soft grass and wildflowers, but a rocky ridge where a mother once stood guard for months.

Before we start, imagine putting on a pair of sturdy hiking boots.

This is more than a walk in the park.

It’s a climb of the heart.

Our story begins in 2 Samuel 21:

> “Then there was a famine in the days of David three years, year after year; and David inquired of the Lord.”

Three years of drought.

Three years of cracked earth and empty fields.

Finally, King David asked God why.

God answered with something that surprised him:

> “It is because of Saul and his blood-stained house; he put the Gibeonites to death.”

In other words, a covenant had been broken generations earlier.

King Saul had attacked a people Israel had promised to protect, and God’s honor was at stake.

That sets the scene, but today’s heart is not about political treaties or ancient law.

The beating heart of this story is a mother named Rizpah.

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Meeting Rizpah

When David sought to make things right, the Gibeonites demanded justice.

Seven male descendants of Saul—two of them Rizpah’s own sons—were executed and left hanging on a hill called Gibeah.

In that culture, executed bodies were left until scavenging birds and wild animals had finished the grim work.

But Rizpah could not, would not, leave.

Picture her:

A mother well past her prime.

Face lined by years of care.

Carrying only a rough piece of sackcloth for shade.

Day after day, night after night, she stayed—

from the time barley was planted in May until the rains finally fell in September.

Four, maybe five months of unbroken vigil.

By day she waved off vultures with her sackcloth banner.

By night she hurled stones and raised her voice to drive away jackals and prowling wolves.

Sunburned, sleepless, hungry, she stayed.

Why?

Because love hangs on.

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A Mother’s Love That Hangs On

On this Mother’s Day, Rizpah’s example calls us to celebrate what every godly mother knows in her bones:

Love is tested.

From conception to the final goodbye, a mother’s love faces trials.

Sleepless nights. Worry over choices she cannot control.

Rizpah knew that pain.

Love is self-denying.

Real love costs something.

It gives without expecting applause.

Rizpah gained no fame, no comfort—only calloused hands and a back bent from standing.

Love is persistent.

Four months. Through heat and cold.

Love does not clock out.

Once a mother, always a mother.

Love is hopeful.

She stayed until the rains came, believing that honor would one day be restored to her sons.

And in the end, King David heard of her vigil.

He ordered the bodies taken down and buried with dignity in the royal tomb, alongside Saul and Jonathan.

Rizpah’s love did not bring her sons back to life, but it brought them honor.

It turned a place of shame into a place of remembrance.

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Honoring the Mothers Among Us

This is where we pause to look around the room.

Some of you have spent long nights beside a hospital bed, praying for a fever to break.

Some of you have waited on a porch light until a teenager finally came home.

Some have carried a quiet grief for children you never got to raise.

You know something of Rizpah’s heart.

You understand what it means to hang on in prayer when answers seem delayed,

to keep believing when the world calls it pointless,

to love when love is not returned.

Today we honor you.

We see the sacrifices you make that no one else notices—

the meals, the prayers, the words of guidance whispered when the house is dark and still.

Your faithfulness is a living sermon.

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From Gibeah to Golgotha

Rizpah’s hill points to another hill.

Gibeah whispers of Golgotha.

Centuries later, on another rocky rise outside Jerusalem, another mother stood near another cross.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, watched her Son suffer and die.

If Rizpah teaches us about a mother’s persistent love, Calvary shows us the perfect love of God.

John 3:16 says,

> “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have everlasting life.”

At Gibeah, innocent sons suffered because of another man’s sin.

At Golgotha, the innocent Son suffered to take away our sin.

Exodus 34 tells us God will not simply “clear” the guilty.

Sin must be dealt with.

But Psalm 32:1 rejoices,

> “Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered.”

God does not ignore sin—He covers it with the blood of His Son.

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An Invitation to Hope