Welcome and thank you for worshipping with us this morning. Keep Colossians 1 open before you, will you? You can find a link to our sermon notes in the chat and a communication card. For children’s and student resources, please visit our churchonline page at our website.
Happy Mother’s Day to you! The Maze family has big plans for later this weekend and I hope your family does as well. Mother’s Day is a very special day – a day when we remember our mothers.
Have you ever wondered what to purchase for your mother? It’s difficult proposition for many children.
I heard about a wealthy son who decided to do something special for his mother on Mother’s Day. He went to a pet shop and saw a very expensive talking bird. This was an unusual bird. This bird could whistle Amazing Grace. This bird could quote even the Psalm 23. It was an highly unusual bird. The cost of the bird was $30,000. He was wealthy so he didn’t he care. So he spent the $30,000 and bought the bird for his mother and had it shipped to her. On Mother’s Day he made his call to his mother. “Mother, how did you like the bird I sent you?” She said, “O, it was delicious, son.”
I hope you know what to get your mother this Mother’s Day.
Let me turn more serious for a minute…
To those who gave birth this year to their first child, we celebrate with you.
To those who lost a child this year, we mourn with you.
To those who are in the trenches with little ones every day and wear the badge of food stains, we appreciate you.
To those who experienced loss this year through miscarriage, failed adoptions, or a child that ran away, we grieve with you.
To those who walk the hard path of infertility, fraught with disappointment, we walk with you.
To foster moms, mentor moms, and spiritual moms, we need you.
To those who have warm and close relationships with your children, we celebrate with you.
To those who have disappointment, heartache, and distance from your children, we wait with you.
To those who lost their mothers this year, we grieve with you.
To those who were encouraged to have an abortion, we cry with you.
To those who lived through driving tests, medical tests, and the overall testing of motherhood, thank you.
To those who will have emptier nests in the upcoming year, we rejoice and grieve with you.
And to those who are pregnant with new life, we anticipate with you.
To all of you, we honor you.
Today, I want to speak to you about “Mothers with a Mission.”
Today’s Scripture (Passage Read Before Sermon)
“For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face, 2 that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ, 3 in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. 4 I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments. 5 For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ” (Colossians 2:1-5).
We continue to explore the New Testament book of Colossians together. Now, Paul was a spiritual father to many of the early Christians: “For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel” (1 Corinthians 4:15). Paul is author of thirteen of the twenty-seven NT letters. Outside of Jesus, he’s the most influential person in Christianity’s history. He wrote the book of Colossians and he acts like a spiritual father to so many Christians. But he also compares himself to a mother: “But we were gentle among you, like a nursing mother taking care of her own children” (1 Thessalonians 2:7).
For the next few moments, I want mothers to view your role through the lens of THIS spiritual father. Not just any father… Psychologists tell us that girls tend to marry men like their fathers. Maybe that’s why mothers cry at weddings ?. I want you to see the role of mothers through the lens of THIS spiritual parent.
Today, I want to speak to about raising the next generation to continue in the faith.
1. I Love to Encourage You
Paul expresses three progressive purposes in these verses. Think of steps on a staircase as you take each step to reach the second floor. Just like this, each purpose progresses in order to reach one ultimate goal: you are firm in your Christian faith.
“that their hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, to reach all the riches of full assurance of understanding and the knowledge of God’s mystery, which is Christ” (Colossians 2:2).
Mothers, make our children successful as what matters most. You need to see your home as a church.
1.1 All Your Effort
“For this I toil, struggling with all his energy that he powerfully works within me” (Colossians 1:29).
The Bible uses the language of athletics here. Paul uses the noun agon for our word “struggle” in verse 1; it’s the from where we get our word agony. The word originally was pictured the ancient Greeks agonized in wrestling and footraces in their Olympic games. Just as an athlete will struggle in the weight room, a mother exerts all her strength. A mother fights to see her children to surge forward in spiritual progress. A mother fights to see her children stand on pedestals emotionally, morally, and spiritually.
Any parent knows that successful children take a considerable amount of work. Did hear about the young father who was raised in a family where his father never, ever, ever did any of the domestic chores? He never even saw the inside of a dirty diaper. He didn’t even know what was in there. He had vague ideas. So this young father has his first child. Then one day, he’s sitting there with the child and he notices a funny smell. He says, “Sweetheart, the baby needs to be changed.” His wife says, “Finders, keepers!”
Again, any parent knows that successful children take a considerable amount of work. Paul had been agonizing, fighting for the Colossians with everything he had. Look how he says he toils to the point of exhaustion: “For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face…” (Colossians 2:1).
It’s so challenging to see you children take their own steps of faith, isn’t it. Again, you need to see your home as a church.
Harvard Business Review reported that only 10% of family-owned business get passed down successfully to the third generation. Indeed most family-owned businesses – approximately 70% - last just one generation. If a family-run business struggles to survive for 2 generations, how much more your family’s faith in Jesus Christ?
You need to give every effort to ensure they walk in Christ. Turn up your sleeves and put some elbow grease into it. I am challenging you to place every effort into raising the next generation to continue in the faith once delivered to the saints.
1.2 Feelings of Frustration
Paul, our spiritual father described his daily job and then asked rhetorically, “Who is sufficient for these things?” (2 Corinthians 2:16b). We need a generation of mothers who mean business for God. Mothers, in your day-to-day experience, you think you’re invisible. … you’re worried about your children and the impact you’re making. Many of you feel guilty because you think you’ve failed as a mother.
This was recently highlighted New York Times article entitled, “A Job Description for the Dumbest Job Ever.”
The article presents motherhood as a job description like this, “This position manages to be of the utmost importance and yet somehow also the least visible and/or respected in the entire organization,” and, “Although you will coordinate, plan and do almost everything, you should expect to crash face-first into bed every night feeling that you’ve accomplished basically nothing.”
Raising the next generation to fervently love Christ is humbling job. Yes, it’s the one job where you don’t truly know the results for two - three decades. Don’t allow your feelings to be your report card. Again, don’t allow your feelings to be your report card. Spending yourself for the next generation is nothing close to failure.
1. I Love to Encourage You
2. I Want to Protect You
A mother with a mission says to her children, “I want to protect you.” Spend your mental efforts strategizing how to see your kid’s faith flourish. Do you have vision for your spiritual health of your children and grandchildren? I want to challenge you to become a spiritual grandparent where your disciples disciple others.
2.1 False, Enticing Words
“I say this in order that no one may delude you with plausible arguments” (Colossians 2:4).
No one wants to be a “sucker.” No one wants to see the next generation be suckered. As a parent, you need to teach the next generation God’s Word. The great problem today is not dropout kids, but dropout dads and misguided mothers who have failed to hand down these truths from one generation to another. Your children need your help. Help them avoid the deceitful traps of smooth talking religious salesmen, agnostic salesmen, and atheistic salesmen.
Mom, do you have a goal for your children to spiritually flourish? Mom, do you have a goal for your children to know their Bibles well?
I heard of a pastor one time who came into a family’s home, and the mother tried to impress her pastor, and so she said to the little boy, “Go get the old book that mother loves so well.” He came back with the latest edition of Cosmo. Mamas, write down goals for your children and goals for your life.
2.2 Lies
Imagine for a moment that your city is surrounded by enemy forces who aimed to destroy your family and you. You become aware that there are enemy sympathizers who are living and working in your city, hoping to undermine your city’s defenses. You do would everything possible to ensure your family doesn’t listen to the lies of their argument. Mothers, you need to be a voice in your children’s head, the walls of defense for their minds. Teach them to think carefully about consequences, especially moral consequences to their decisions.
“…such persons do not serve our Lord Christ, but their own appetites, and by smooth talk and flattery they deceive the hearts of the naïve” (Romans 16:18b).
2.3 Bringing Shame
Why? Because when the next generation believes a lie, it can bring tremendous shame to your family. The Bible says that a child can bring his mother shame (Proverbs 29:15b). Why is that? Because we are extensions of our parents. Their lives are in us. We are extensions of them. And if I live an honorable life, then that honors my parents. But it doesn’t have to be that way: “Let your father and mother be glad; let her who bore you rejoice” (Proverbs 23:25).
Some sons have put their mothers in an early grave. Some husbands have put their wives in an early grave. Some of you have pinched wrinkles into your daddy’s forehead and put gray hairs in your mother’s head because of the way that you live. But others of you have created laugh lines on their faces!
The next generation needs your protection and encouragement from delusion!
1. I Love to Encourage You
2. I Want to Protect You
3. I Want You to Reach Your Full Spiritual Potential
A mother on a mission says, “I Want You to Reach Your Full Spiritual Potential.”
Remember, these three steps are progressive. The only reason you take the stairs is to arrive at a desired location. Look at the end of verse 5 for the ultimate goal: “For though I am absent in body, yet I am with you in spirit, rejoicing to see your good order and the firmness of your faith in Christ” (Colossians 2:5).
Look back at verse 1 with me: “For I want you to know how great a struggle I have for you and for those at Laodicea and for all who have not seen me face to face…” (Colossians 2:1). Does it surprise you to know that Paul had not met many of these believers face to face? Paul is physically separated from the people of the churches of Laodicea and Colossae. Paul is in prison for sharing the gospel as he writes this letter. We can appreciate this in a day of social distancing. We long to be together again; absence from one another has isolated us. Just because you are separated from your adult children, doesn’t mean you cannot influence them.
Paul uses two words here in verse 5 that were also used sometimes of soldiers: “order” and “firmness.” A mother’s desire is to see her children reach their full spiritual maturity. This is the cherry on top of the Sundae. This your life’s goal. This how you know you’re a success decades after they leave the home.
Look and listen carefully mothers, you cannot think your children are going to drift to Jesus in this culture. The liberals and the cultural left were capturing the imaginations of our children. When the Boy Scouts recognize transgender boys as real boys, do you think you can let your children drift into Jesus and real Christianity. The culture is pushing back against you and you need to spend your mental energy in discipling the next generation.
Some years ago, the Christian sociologist Christian Smith has spent a decade or more studying the same group of teenagers. He is following the very same 3,000 teens into their young adult years. His finding are amazing. He found that interviewing Christian kids alone, young adults 18 to 23, 61% of them had no problem with materialism and consumerism, an additional 31% of them said they do have some problem with it, but not much of one. That leaves 9% of confessing Christians saying that, “Yeah, materialism and consumerism, that’s a problem for me as a Christian.” Nine percent; this is the people of God that has been conquered by the culture.
Let me close with this…
Three Aspects of Godly Parenting
3.1 Pray Constantly for Your Children’s Conversion
3.2 Model a Godly Life
Abraham Lincoln is reported to have say, “No man is poor who has a godly mother.”
How do I do this? How do I model a godly life when I am a sinner?
3.2.1 Read the Bible Aloud
This includes both formal and informal times of instruction. Formal times where the church instructs your children. Formal where you, the parents, sit down with the intention of teaching your children. This is purposeful and intentional time so there will not be gaps in their knowledge. But also informal where “teachable moments” present themselves. We constantly teach our children the things of God (Deuteronomy 6:4-9; Psalm 78:3-6).
3.2.2 Pray with Your Children
Throughout this series, we want to continually encourage you to pray out loud with your children. Let them hear you pray!
3.2.3 Own Your Mistakes
One of the best things you can do is to admit to your children when you have blown it spiritually.
3.3 Don’t Try to be God
Recognize God does the saving and you don’t (John 3:8).
Mothers, you have been given to the opportunity to be a spiritual influence. Don’t waste your opportunity for Christ. Don’t waste your opportunity in your children’s lives.
