Mother's Day (3)

Mothers of Promise

Suit:

Well for 12 years I have been wearing a suit on mothers day, Its not for you, its not for my wife but its for my mom who watches every Sunday from Tennessee. So Mom, happy mother’s day ...

If you are new or newer with us..>Soak it up…Unless I am at a wedding or a funeral this is the only time I will be in a suit....Jesus doesn't care what you wear to church but my mom does...

Welcome to REC, we love our mom’s here and before we get deep into the message today I wanted to show

Mother’s Day Video 3:25

This morning I want to talk about one of the early mom’s in the bible

And what I love about the story of Sarah is that it is so human.

Honestly if you are here and your investigating faith, one of the reasons why we have come to rely on the Bible as God’s holy word is that the people in it are real people that make real mistakes. The Bible is honest about real life

In other ancient works the hero characters do no wrong, they are basically perfect people...

In ancient works where kings are talked about some of them had mythical powers

But the bible portrays people as they really are, flaws and all

The road that God took Sarah on was no easy road

Now here is a little bit of backstory in case you are new to this story.

In the first book of the Bible, the book of Genesis There is this wicked city named Babel and it is from this city that God has an encounter with two people

Abram and Sari

This couple he sets apart and begins a new story with them

Now keep in mind when God calls Abram and Sari out of Babel to the land he would show them Abraham is 75 and Sari is 66years old…So they have a few years on them

Its a story about waiting on God and so your first fill in today is:

Wait on God, he rewards waiting.

Genesis 12:1–3 NIV

The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you. “I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.”

Genesis 12:7 NIV

The Lord appeared to Abram and said, “To your offspring I will give this land.” So he built an altar there to the Lord, who had appeared to him.

So God makes it clear, that Abram is going to have kids…And these kids will bless all the people in the earth

All the people. This is huge!

God is making his new family on earth through this guy Abram and his wife Sari

There is only one problem with this promise...

What woman is having children at age 65?

They are older…And having a family takes time…it seems impossible

So seven 11 years into this promise, We don’t know exactly what Sari is thinking but she gets tired of waiting

But she is called to wait on God because God will reward it with a family

Waiting on God is trusting the words of God even when his timing seems late

See in waiting, despair sets in, you begin to wonder if God will ever be good to you

if God will ever keep his promises to you

See waiting on God trains you to live through despair and still have your hope firmly rooted in him.

After 11 years of waiting Sari may have thought back and wondered…is this promise really for me…Or is it just through Abraham? Maybe he needs to have kids with someone else

We know at this point that Abraham and Sarah were very wealthy in fact this is a different story for a different time but Abraham lies to the pharoah of Egypt, exploits his own wife and becomes very wealthy as a result

In fact I think one of the ways that we can sum up the story of Abraham and Sarah is that they continually fail a test that God is putting before them. God promises…They take matters into their own hands…They go to foreign countries and in their fear they lie to the king...

In fact we know that they keep failing tests because the author of Genesis whenever he is talking about them doing something wrong, uses a lot of the same words and in the same order of Adam and eve eating from the tree of knowledge of good and evil

And again this is a different sermon for a different day. When Abraham and Sarah ultimately do have a child with Isaac they end up passing the test

So here is where the story is going....

After 11 years of God promising Abraham and Sarah that they would have decedents as numerous as the stars in the sky…They begin to try to fulfill God’s promise in their own strength.

Wealthy people had servants

and in the culture that Abraham and Sarah came from, Ur of the Chaldeans, under the Code of Hammurabi to use your servants as surrogates for you to expand your family

This was a pagan code but after 11 years of waiting Sari hatched a plot to have a family outside of God’s plan

If God wasn’t going to fulfill the promise then Sarah would...

Parents…Mom’s

If you are experiencing infertility, waiting on God is tough

Desiree and I have walked alongside many families in this journey and we know how painful and devastating it can be. It is hard to wait on God.

And we have seen some couples wait on God and get pregnant and have a family and other go the route of adoption...

And still others, they wait on God and they are childless...

This is a hard pill to swallow, an no where in the Bible does God promise children for everyone. So this is hard!

But for Abraham and Sarah, what is unique is that God said, “you will have a child”

So they knew the promise

Waiting on God is hard but it is fruitful

It teaches you to begin to rely on God...

Waiting on God teaches you patience and here is your next fill in...

You have to teach your kids patience because

Without patience, your prayer life will never be productive

Patience comes from waiting!

Parents, teaching your own kids to wait is probably one of the greatest gifts you can give them

Because as they grow up they need to know that God Isn’t on their timetable....God is not a cosmic slot machine, God is not a tool that we can use for spiritual blessing and that he is not at our “beck and call” That often times a relationship with God involves prayerful waiting

Often times your Kids get you with the tyranny of the urgent....I’m hungry! ....I’m bored!

See kids come pre-programed to say meet all of my needs right now or I am going to throw my yogurt everywhere

I have learned so much about good parenting from my wife. One of the things that I have learned is that it is impotrant to teach your kids to wait

I remember as a new dad Emma crying as a baby and I would jump up to go attend to her

And Desiree would stop me and say…Its ok, let her cry she will go back to sleep…....She would tell me…Let her cry, it strengthens the lungs…It was so hard as a dad to not go pick up my baby but sure enough, Emma would cry for a minute or two and then go back to sleep....

The summer before Jacob’s kindergarten year we knew that our little boy had way too much energy…that his energy level would get him into trouble so every day we did kindergarten training and we knew we had to train him to wait

we called it

Sitting Bored: over the summer we started with one minute of sitting and doing nothing…and if he said anything or did anything the time started all over…and over the course of the summer we moved it up to 30 minutes of sitting bored...

It was painful and hard work but our kindergarten teacher thanked us for it....

And if your kids are going to succeed in their relationship with God then you need to teach them to wait!

We have an instant gratification culture. and in that culture it becomes so difficult to wait on God because we want everything now…Amazon has practically trained me, if I cant get it in two day shipping then what is this world coming to?

So Sarah decides that for her, she is done waiting

When you interrupt the waiting period of God then you will usually create more sorrow then solution

And we don’t have time to go into it now but that is what happened. Sarah has Abraham sleep with the servant girl to produce an hear and it just leads to more heartbreak

Sarah gets tired of waiting and she inserts herself in God’s plan...

The more Sarah’s plan unfolds, the worse it gets

So what God does is that he re-states the covenant…Let’s look at Genesis 17.

Genesis 17:15–17 NIV

God also said to Abraham, “As for Sarai your wife, you are no longer to call her Sarai; her name will be Sarah. I will bless her and will surely give you a son by her. I will bless her so that she will be the mother of nations; kings of peoples will come from her.” Abraham fell facedown; he laughed and said to himself, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?”

So God restates the promise but this time he says that specifically Sarah will be the mother of all nations

and this is literally right after the scene where Sarah tells Abraham to sleep with Hagar so that she can have a child

Sarah had to wait on a child, she was 65 years old when God gave the promise and 90 when Isaac was born.

25 years, are you kidding…It feels like a long time to wait!

After 10 years she got tired of waiting...

So God makes her wait again and I wonder if she is thinking...

Okay God but I am getting older!

So then in genesis 18, there are three visitors…Again..A whole other sermon for another day but the twitter form is that this is God in human form, probably representing the father son and the spirit.

Genesis 18:9–15 NIV

“Where is your wife Sarah?” they asked him. “There, in the tent,” he said. Then one of them said, “I will surely return to you about this time next year, and Sarah your wife will have a son.” Now Sarah was listening at the entrance to the tent, which was behind him. Abraham and Sarah were already very old, and Sarah was past the age of childbearing. So Sarah laughed to herself as she thought, “After I am worn out and my lord is old, will I now have this pleasure?” Then the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the appointed time next year, and Sarah will have a son.” Sarah was afraid, so she lied and said, “I did not laugh.” But he said, “Yes, you did laugh.”

So again…God reiterates the process and implements yet another waiting period...

One year

Sarah laughs…she calls herself worn out and old

Sara denies it…She hides because her laugh is a mocking laugh

It is laughter in disbelief

And look what one of the three visitors say?

Genesis 18:13–14 NIV

Then the Lord said to Abraham, “Why did Sarah laugh and say, ‘Will I really have a child, now that I am old?’ Is anything too hard for the Lord? I will return to you at the appointed time next year, and Sarah will have a son.”

Mom’s

this rhetorical question that the three visitors asks Abraham should colonize your brain

is anything too hard for the Lord?

I mean really...

with God all things are possible but it is easy to look at your kids or your situation and think that this is just too hard!

And when you are looking at that situation its easy to stop waiting and to do things your own way!

But you have to remember, is anything too hard for the lord?

Parents: You are not raising children…You are raising adults

You have to preserve their childhood and their innocence but they are only kids for such a short period of their entire life

Your task is HUGE

You have to take this kid who picks their nose and eats their buggers and mold them into a person who makes good decisions and can hold down a job.

and more than that you shape their spiritual future....

Of course they will grow up and make their own decisions when they are older regardless of how great of a parent you are

But what you do now sets the stage for their adult faith

And if our kids can’t wait on the Lord then they are in trouble

Parenting is full investment, 24/7

Its hard

especially if your a single mom its even harder

But you have to remember

Is anything too hard for the Lord?

Genesis 21:6–7 NIV

Sarah said, “God has brought me laughter, and everyone who hears about this will laugh with me.” And she added, “Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children? Yet I have borne him a son in his old age.”

See at first Sarah has laughter for God.

She laughed at his promise to her because it sounded absurd

But this time she has nothing but joy

Sarah was given the task of having a baby that would set in motion a family that would bless the world

Abraham and Sarah had Issiac, Issac and Rebecca had Jacob & Esau

Jacob had 12 sons that would become the 12 tribes of Israel

Through which the messiah would be born

Is anything too hard for the Lord.

When Sarah was finally obedient to the Lord and his plan, she had a son who would revolutionize the world....But she would have to wait!

This brings me to my last point mom’s

Raise kids who are passionately devoted to Jesus

And of course if you want to raise kids like this…you have to be passionately devoted to Jesus

The apostle Paul was parenting a number of churches in his day and when he was writing to them he knew that they were not immune from the culture that they lived in

In Rome there were fertility cults

There were strange teachers in other parts...

And Paul writes to a church that he never even started or visited in fact when Paul is waiting in prison he decides that he is going to do some church parenting through writing letters

And in this he wrote the book of Colossians

And Paul tells them right in the beginning that he is praying for them and that here is his prayer

Colossians 1:9–14 NIV

For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.

Paul’s parenting prayer for the church is that they might endure…Why because there was a lot of pressure and persecution in the church and the only way that they are going to move forward is if they are so passionately devoted to Jesus that they can endure the suffering that is coming to them

To put it another way, they need to learn to wait patiently on the lord and they need to learn that there is nothing too hard for the Lord!

See Paul is writing this from prison…He is showing the people of Colossi that there is nothing too hard for the lord!

Paul is telling them that they have to live passionatley devoted to Jesus and it will change everything

As we wrap up today: Mom’s

Mom’s maybe you have an adult child who has walked away from the lord....

Nothing is too hard for the lord...

Mom’s maybe you are frustrated and you want to do things your own way …Faith is waiting on God’s timing even when everything else seems late

But either way…If you are sitting next to a mom that you came with or even that is just a friend of yours, would you grab her hand as we pray for mom’s

Prayer for Mom’s

Father: You have in your wisdom given us mom’s. Mom’s to grow us, to love us in our hardest times and to shepherd us. Lord today I pray a special blessing over the Mom’s of REC.

Would you strengthen them because parenting is hard work

Continue to give them your wisdom to pass into their kids

Would you give mom’s the endurance necessary to run the race of parenting

Would you give them rest when they need it

And lord would you give them the glimmers of hope when parenting is difficult!

Lord continue to reveal your love to our moms.

Amen