Mother's Day 2021: The Holy One In Our Midst

MOTHER’S DAY 2021: THE HOLY ONE IN OUR MIDST

Hosea 11:1-12

#MothersDay2021

INTRODUCTION … You Know You are A Mom When (humormatters.com/holidays/mothersday.htm#)

* Your feet stick to the kitchen floor.....and you don't care.

* When the kids are fighting, you threaten to lock them in a room together and not let them out until someone's bleeding.

* Your idea of a good day is making it through without a child leaking bodily fluids on you.

* Your baby's pacifier falls on the floor and you give it back to her, after you suck the dirt off of it because you're too busy to wash it off.

* You're so desperate for adult conversation that you spill your guts to the telemarketer that calls and HE hangs up on YOU!

* Spit is your number one cleaning agent.

* In your bathroom there is toothpaste on the light fixtures, water all over the floor, a dog drinking out of the toilet

* You automatically double-knot everything you tie.

* You can never go to the bathroom alone without someone screaming outside the door.

* You actually start to like the smell of strained carrots mixed with applesauce.

* You weep through the scene in Dumbo when his mom is taken away, not to mention what Bambi does to you.

* You spend a half hour searching for your sunglasses only to have your teenager say, "Mom, why don't you wear the ones you pushed up on your head?"

* You are out for a nice romantic meal with your husband, enjoying some real adult conversation, when suddenly you realize that you've reached over and started to cut up his steak!

Today is of course Mother’s Day and it is a day to honor those women in our lives who have made an eternal difference. Maybe it was the woman who gave birth to you, but it also may be an aunt, a sister, or another dear woman who has changed your life for the better. Perhaps your mom is here with you today, perhaps she has passed away. We can honor our mothers by thinking of them.

Since the time of Eve, the very first mother, it has fallen to mothers (and fathers) to raise their children for the Lord. Our mothers bring us into the world. They nurture us. They provide for us. They raised us up. They teach us. They discipline us. Mothers have a remarkable ability to change the world through their children.

God is most certainly our Father in Heaven and ‘our Father in Heaven’ is the normal way that we frame Who God is for us. God is so transcendent that we need some kind of framework to understand Him. I was listening to a CS Lewis audio book recently, which is not easy by the way, and he said (CS Lewis, ‘The Problem of Pain’): “What would really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, 'What does it matter so long as they are contented?' We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a Grandfather in Heaven—a senile benevolence who, as they say, 'liked to see young people enjoying themselves' and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, 'a good time was had by all'.” (cslewisinstitute.org/God_is_Love)

How we think about God and what we know about Him and what we believe about God Almighty is significant, important, and steers our hearts in our relationship with Him. Most of the time we relate to God as our Heavenly Father and we do so with good reason. Many passages refer to God in this manner to help us relate to Him on some kind of human level. He is so far beyond us that we need help in trying to understand What and Who is God.

Believe it or not there are several passages in the Bible that frame God in terms and words and concepts that we would normally associate with mothers:

Deuteronomy 32:11-12 describes God as a mother eagle guiding and raising Israel like young birds in the nest.

Deuteronomy 32:18 describes God as a Rock that gave birth to Israel.

Isaiah 42:14 describes God wanting to get Israel’s attention in a loud manner like a woman screaming at childbirth.

Isaiah 49:15 God says He will not forget Israel any more than a nursing mother would forget her own child.

Isaiah 66:13 God is described as a comforting mother.

Hosea 13:8 describes God as a mother bear defending Israel.

We also have Hosea chapter 11, the passage we will look at today, which is an entire chapter that focuses on God and His interactions with people… and many of the terms and ways God is described are ways we think about mothers. I hope you do not think I am bringing you some sort of strange or false teaching today, but I do want to present solid Biblical Truth about our Father in Heaven and how He relates to us. The occasion of ‘Mother’s Day’ gives us the opportunity to look at Hosea 11 and meditate on the Holy One in our midst a bit differently.