The Complainer, the Doer, and the Mother
Notes
Transcript
Mother’s Day is the hardest sermon in the year for me to prepare.
It is my one chance to give a shot in the arm for mom’s everywhere that they get can get through another year. It is my one shot to urge them specifically to be godly.
It is my one change to put my foot in my mouth and alienate over 50% of the congregation.
So, I am going to try not to do that and to hopefully preach a message that is encouraging to everyone.
Before I make you hate me, Happy Mother’s Day, Moms.
I use the word “mom” loosely. I am speaking to those who are mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers. I am speaking to those who do not have children of their own, but who have spiritual children. I am speaking to those who yearn to have children, but do not. Those who had children and suffered their loss. Those whose children moved away and those whose children are still at home. I am speaking to mom’s who stayed at home and mom’s who worked.
Happy Mother’s Day, mom. I cannot relate to what you go through in your position. But, my prayer is that you are encouraged today.
I’ve been thinking about Old Testament prophets. Specifically Elijah and Elisha. Both had strong-willed moms in their lives.
These were not their own moms. We know nothing about their own moms. But these were women who were moms who were greatly impacted by the ministries of Elijah and Elisha. In fact, both were impacted in the same way.
I thought about preaching only on one of the women, but I couldn’t do it. These two ladies were completely different, but the same miracle happened in their lives. Their stories are in 1 Kings 17 and 2 Kings 4.
I call the first woman “the complainer” and the second woman “the doer.”
Before we dive into these narratives, will you pray with me?
1. The Complainer
1. The Complainer
Let’s talk about the complainer.
Let’s set the scene.
A. The Scene
A. The Scene
Some time later the brook dried up because there had been no rain in the land. Then the word of the Lord came to him: “Go at once to Zarephath in the region of Sidon and stay there. I have directed a widow there to supply you with food.” So he went to Zarephath. When he came to the town gate, a widow was there gathering sticks. He called to her and asked, “Would you bring me a little water in a jar so I may have a drink?” As she was going to get it, he called, “And bring me, please, a piece of bread.”
“As surely as the Lord your God lives,” she replied, “I don’t have any bread—only a handful of flour in a jar and a little olive oil in a jug. I am gathering a few sticks to take home and make a meal for myself and my son, that we may eat it—and die.”
Elijah said to her, “Don’t be afraid. Go home and do as you have said. But first make a small loaf of bread for me from what you have and bring it to me, and then make something for yourself and your son. For this is what the Lord, the God of Israel, says: ‘The jar of flour will not be used up and the jug of oil will not run dry until the day the Lord sends rain on the land.’ ”
She went away and did as Elijah had told her. So there was food every day for Elijah and for the woman and her family. For the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry, in keeping with the word of the Lord spoken by Elijah.
Such an amazing miracle!
But, did you catch her character?
I have a hard time calling her the complainer, because she was telling the truth. She and her son were starving to death.
But, when Elijah asks her to give him a little water and a piece of bread, because he is hungry. She doesn’t answer him. She jumps into a description of how horrible her life is.
But, even in the face of the hardship of that life, in the face of all the facts that she dumped out, she gives him the loaf first, and then made something for her son. The faith that she had to show.
We might have written her off because of her response to Elijah. He didn’t. He looked beyond her complaining, her obsession with the negative, and called her to faith.
B. The Miracle
B. The Miracle
This happens again in her life, at the moment of the miracle which we are concerned about.
Some time later the son of the woman who owned the house became ill. He grew worse and worse, and finally stopped breathing. She said to Elijah, “What do you have against me, man of God? Did you come to remind me of my sin and kill my son?”
Notice the tone of her response to Elijah. She doesn’t ask for a miracle. She is beyond that. She is blaming God and Elijah as God’s representative for what has happened to her son. She is mad and she wants the world to know why.
God fed her and her son miraculously, and now her son is going to die. Why would he save him just to kill 2. ?
On top of the insult, it must be her fault, because she knows all the ways that she has failed as a mother, failed as a follower of the one true God. In that moment she shows that she knows who God is, the holy one who cannot have anything sinful around him.
But God, through Elijah, does not rebuke her for her complaint.
No, he heals the son.
“Give me your son,” Elijah replied. He took him from her arms, carried him to the upper room where he was staying, and laid him on his bed. Then he cried out to the Lord, “Lord my God, have you brought tragedy even on this widow I am staying with, by causing her son to die?” Then he stretched himself out on the boy three times and cried out to the Lord, “Lord my God, let this boy’s life return to him!”
The Lord heard Elijah’s cry, and the boy’s life returned to him, and he lived. Elijah picked up the child and carried him down from the room into the house. He gave him to his mother and said, “Look, your son is alive!”
And the woman responds in that great statement of faith:
Then the woman said to Elijah, “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is the truth.”
All throughout this narrative, she never asks Elijah to give her enough food to live. She never asks Elijah to heal her son. She doesn’t. Perhaps she doesn’t have enough faith to think those things were possible.
She just has enough faith to live, to give the man of God a loaf of bread, to shake her fist at God and confess that she is not good enough.
Have you been there?
Before we dig into this any more, let’s talk about the other woman, the doer.
2. The Doer
2. The Doer
Elijah is taken up into heaven in a flaming chariot. But, before he does, he calls Elisha to take over the ministry.
A. The Setting
A. The Setting
And we pick up the story in 2 Kings 4
One day Elisha went to Shunem. And a well-to-do woman was there, who urged him to stay for a meal. So whenever he came by, he stopped there to eat. She said to her husband, “I know that this man who often comes our way is a holy man of God. Let’s make a small room on the roof and put in it a bed and a table, a chair and a lamp for him. Then he can stay there whenever he comes to us.”
One day when Elisha came, he went up to his room and lay down there. He said to his servant Gehazi, “Call the Shunammite.” So he called her, and she stood before him. Elisha said to him, “Tell her, ‘You have gone to all this trouble for us. Now what can be done for you? Can we speak on your behalf to the king or the commander of the army?’ ”
She replied, “I have a home among my own people.”
“What can be done for her?” Elisha asked.
Gehazi said, “She has no son, and her husband is old.”
Then Elisha said, “Call her.” So he called her, and she stood in the doorway. “About this time next year,” Elisha said, “you will hold a son in your arms.”
“No, my lord!” she objected. “Please, man of God, don’t mislead your servant!”
But the woman became pregnant, and the next year about that same time she gave birth to a son, just as Elisha had told her.
This lady gets an idea in her mind and she does it. When Elisha stops for a simple meal, she decides to build an addition, creating a room in the attic, fully furnished, so that he will stay whenever he is in the area. Great idea. Great hospitality.
We don’t really hear what her husband thinks. She decides they should do it and she makes it happen.
She is always thinking about serving others, maybe to cover her own pain. When Elisha wants to do something to show her gratitude, she doesn’t mention that she is childless and her husband will probably die soon. Elisha’s servant is the one who suggests that she could use a kid, and Elisha prays for her and she gives birth to a son within a year.
B. The Miracle
B. The Miracle
That sets the scene for the miracle that we are concerned about.
The child grew, and one day he went out to his father, who was with the reapers. He said to his father, “My head! My head!”
His father told a servant, “Carry him to his mother.” After the servant had lifted him up and carried him to his mother, the boy sat on her lap until noon, and then he died. She went up and laid him on the bed of the man of God, then shut the door and went out.
She runs over her husband again. When her boy dies, she says that she is going to go see Elisha right away. Her husband says “why” thinking she should wait, but she just keeps going.
She is in pain, because God had raised her hopes by supplying a son, and now she is in a worse condition than before. Doing does not help.
She called her husband and said, “Please send me one of the servants and a donkey so I can go to the man of God quickly and return.”
“Why go to him today?” he asked. “It’s not the New Moon or the Sabbath.”
“That’s all right,” she said.
She saddled the donkey and said to her servant, “Lead on; don’t slow down for me unless I tell you.” So she set out and came to the man of God at Mount Carmel.
When he saw her in the distance, the man of God said to his servant Gehazi, “Look! There’s the Shunammite! Run to meet her and ask her, ‘Are you all right? Is your husband all right? Is your child all right?’ ”
“Everything is all right,” she said.
When she reached the man of God at the mountain, she took hold of his feet. Gehazi came over to push her away, but the man of God said, “Leave her alone! She is in bitter distress, but the Lord has hidden it from me and has not told me why.”
“Did I ask you for a son, my lord?” she said. “Didn’t I tell you, ‘Don’t raise my hopes’?”
She asks God and Elisha ‘why”. Why! Why would you do this to me.
When Elisha sends his servant to check the son, she cannot sit idle, but must go along.
Elisha said to Gehazi, “Tuck your cloak into your belt, take my staff in your hand and run. Don’t greet anyone you meet, and if anyone greets you, do not answer. Lay my staff on the boy’s face.”
But the child’s mother said, “As surely as the Lord lives and as you live, I will not leave you.” So he got up and followed her.
Gehazi went on ahead and laid the staff on the boy’s face, but there was no sound or response. So Gehazi went back to meet Elisha and told him, “The boy has not awakened.”
She never asked for a miracle. She is in pain. Deep bitterness. But, she goes to where there is hope. She goes to the man of God.
God doesn’t rebuke the woman. He gives a miracle.
When Elisha reached the house, there was the boy lying dead on his couch. He went in, shut the door on the two of them and prayed to the Lord. Then he got on the bed and lay on the boy, mouth to mouth, eyes to eyes, hands to hands. As he stretched himself out on him, the boy’s body grew warm. Elisha turned away and walked back and forth in the room and then got on the bed and stretched out on him once more. The boy sneezed seven times and opened his eyes.
And the woman does not say a thing. She comes, she worships, and she leaves to do something else.
Elisha summoned Gehazi and said, “Call the Shunammite.” And he did. When she came, he said, “Take your son.” She came in, fell at his feet and bowed to the ground. Then she took her son and went out.
3. The Mother
3. The Mother
Every single mother is different. Some of you might relate to the complainer. Some of you might relate to the doer. Some of you might relate to neither.
The thing is: both ladies were sinners, charged with caring for a family in the middle of a hard time. Both ladies were faithful in some things and wrong in others. Both ladies made mistakes. Both ladies would probably not consider themselves good role models.
But both ladies were faced with situations that every single one of us goes through, and by the grace of God, they responded, in their own sinful way, how each of us should respond.
Ladies, you know what I am about to say, and if you don’t, you will experience. Every single family goes through times when the mom is worried about someone in her family. Perhaps it is a health issue, like what happened to the sons in our stories. One had a long illness and the other died suddenly from some sort of brain issue. Perhaps it is a spiritual issue. Where a child, or a husband, have turned their backs on Jesus, or at least are acting like it.
And in the face of that issue, whether spiritual or physical, you are helpless. There is nothing you can do, except for one thing.
You can follow the trail left by the widow of Zarephath and the Shunammite woman, and turn to our God.
Perhaps you do it shaking your finger and yelling at him. Perhaps you do it by curling in a corner and crying, not sure how you are going to survive.
The important thing is that you have turned to the one who loves you and is walking with you through this. You have turned to the only one who can actually do something.
And he will not rebuke you. No matter what you say. He will not rebuke you, but will send floods of comfort. And he will answer your prayer.
I don’t know how long it will take. I don’t know if it will be the answer that you want. The women probably didn’t want their sons to die, but God let them die. But, they both saw the power of God through it and came to know and love God better.
Whatever you are going through, whatever you will go through this year, you are never too far to reach out to the God who loves you. And he will work in a way that will leave you speechless, bowing before him, and confessing that he is everything we ever need.
