Reinforcement

INTRODUCTION

On March 27, 1981, the five-story Harbour Cay condominium under construction in Cocoa Beach, Florida collapsed, killing 11 construction workers and injuring 23 others.

It was a concrete structure.

They used a flat plate construction technique where the concrete floor slabs sat directly on top of the columns.

There were no supporting beams.

Flat plate designs are typically cheaper and quicker to build.

But because there are no beams, there is a lot of force on the concrete slabs where they rest on top of the columns.

Concrete is very strong in compression, but it is weak in tension.

That’s why we add steel reinforcing bar (rebar) to concrete.

The rebar add strength to the concrete in tension and shear.

When engineers analyzed the Habour Cay collapse, they discovered that the floor slab to column connections did not have enough reinforcement to resist the concentrated loads.

All it took was for one of the connections to fail.

Then the other connections became overloaded and failed in sequence and the building came down floor by floor.

Rebar in concrete adds strength to resist tension.

Tension is a force that tries to pull something apart.

It is the pulling, stretching, or bending forces that can cause concrete structures to fail.

Steel is extremely strong in tension.

So the steel reinforcing bar (rebar) absorbs the pulling forces that concrete cannot handle alone.

Rebar adds strength and stability and helps prevent failure.

Some people are like rebar.

When we are facing tension that is pulling, stretching, and bending our lives, our families, or our faith, there are some people who act like reinforcement that help give us the strength to stand instead of falling apart.

They do this by sharing their wisdom, by the example of a life of faith, and by being present and showing love and compassion when we need it the most.

This morning I want us to honor those people.

Thank God for those who stood by us when everyone else left.

Thank God for those who encouraged us when everyone else laughed.

Thank God for those who believed in us when everyone else gave up.

Thank God for those who invested in building us up when everyone else tried to tear us down.

Thank God for those who have been the reinforcement we needed in our lives to keep us from collapsing under the pressures of life.

And this morning, on Mother’s Day, I want to take a moment to honor all of the women of Farm Hill Church.

We’ve got a great group of women at Farm Hill.

I think we have the best.

Thank you for your love.

Thank you for your support.

Thank you for your prayers.

Thank you for your wisdom.

Thank you for your service.

Thank you for being the reinforcement that is needed to help hold this body of Christ together in unity.

This is a Mother’s Day message, but I want to also thank the men of Farm Hill Church as well.

Thank you for all of these things as well:

your wisdom,

your prayers,

your support,

your service, and

your love.

Thank you for your contributions to this body of Christ at Farm Hill and to the Kingdom of God.

It takes all of us following Christ and working together to build a strong church.

God never intended for us to just look look strong. He intends for us to be spiritually reinforced so that we can withstand the pressure, tension, and forces of live without collapsing.

We are and will remain strong as long as we keep God and the Gospel message of Jesus Christ at the center of everything we do.

SCRIPTURE

Proverbs 24:3–4 NKJV

Through wisdom a house is built, And by understanding it is established; By knowledge the rooms are filled With all precious and pleasant riches.

This morning, on Mother’s Day, I want to share with you the stories of six women (three pairs) from the Bible and how their faith in God served as reinforcement for others and is an example for us in how to be reinforcement for someone else in our lives.

MESSAGE

Shiprah and Puah

Everyone remembers Shiprah and Puah, right?

Terrible names, amazing women.

Shiprah and Puah lived during the time of Exodus after the time of Joseph at the end of Genesis.

They were midwives.

So they were responsible for assisting during labor and delivery.

They also lived during a time when the Bible says a Pharaoh rose to power who did not remember Joseph and how Joseph saved Egypt from a deadly famine because of his Godly wisdom.

And this Pharaoh got jealous and fearful of the Hebrews.

He was afraid they would become too powerful and rise up against Egypt.

So he ordered all the midwives to kill any male babies as soon as they were born.

But Shiprah and Puah refused.

Exodus 1:17 NKJV

But the midwives feared God, and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but saved the male children alive.

They were not queens.

They were not generals.

They did not command armies or sit on thrones.

They were women who worked in the dark, in the small hours, in the messy and sacred space between life and not-yet-life.

Nobody watched them work.

Nobody audited their decisions.

They were accountable to no one in that room except God.

And they chose God.

One of the male babies that was saved by these two women was the one who would be named Moses by Pharaoh’s daughter.

There was a house being built in that moment.

The house of Israel.

The covenant people of God.

The line through which the Messiah would come.

That house required a deliverer—and that deliverer required a birth—and that birth required two women to fear God more than they feared Pharaoh.

Shiphrah and Puah are the reinforcement that almost nobody talks about.

Moses gets the burning bush.

Moses gets the ten plagues.

Moses gets the parted sea and the mountain and forty years of leading a nation.

And none of it—not a single miracle, not a single word of Torah, not a single step on dry ground through a divided Red Sea—none of it happens if two women do not refuse an order in a room nobody was watching.

Exodus 1:20–21 NKJV

Therefore God dealt well with the midwives, and the people multiplied and grew very mighty. And so it was, because the midwives feared God, that He provided households for them.

God honored the hidden work. He always does.

What are you holding up right now that nobody knows about?

What refusal have you made in a dark room that no applause ever rewarded?

Who is thriving right now —spiritually, emotionally, physically—because you feared God more than you feared the voice that told you to let it go?

Shiphrah and Puah did not know Moses would become Moses.

They were just doing what the fear of God required in the moment they had.

They were building a house they could not see yet—by wisdom, quietly, faithfully, at personal risk—and the whole redemptive story of Israel was standing on what they built.

That is reinforcement!

Elizabeth and Mary

Fast forward from Exodus to the New Testament.

A young woman named Mary just had her world turned upside down.

There was a visit from an angel with an announcement that she would give birth to the Son of God.

A young virgin.

Engaged to be married.

And now she was with child.

Good luck explaining that one to your friends and family.

Not to mention your fiancé.

The theological implications of this moment were already settled in heaven, but Mary needed someone to talk to.

So she traveled to her cousin Elizabeth’s house.

Luke 1:39–42 NKJV

Now Mary arose in those days and went into the hill country with haste, to a city of Judah, and entered the house of Zacharias and greeted Elizabeth. And it happened, when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, that the babe leaped in her womb; and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. Then she spoke out with a loud voice and said, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!

Notice she hurried.

This was not a casual visit.

This was a woman moving with urgency toward the only person she believed would understand.

Elizabeth was her relative—older, wiser, and herself miraculously pregnant with the child who would become John the Baptist.

If anyone could hold the weight of what Mary was carrying, it was Elizabeth.

And Elizabeth did not disappoint.

Before a single theologian wrote a word about the Incarnation—a woman, filled with the Holy Spirit, standing in her living room, declared the identity of the child in Mary’s womb.

Not a priest.

Not a scribe.

Not a member of the Sanhedrin.

A woman who was six months pregnant, filled with the Spirit, speaking into the life of a younger woman who needed to hear it.

That is reinforcement between women.

That is one pillar steadying another.

Think about what Elizabeth’s words did for Mary.

Mary had the angel’s word—and that was everything.

But she also had

a culture that would not understand,

a fiancé who did not yet believe, and

a story so impossible that she could not tell it to most people without risking her life and her reputation.

She needed someone who would not flinch.

Elizabeth was that someone.

And the moment Elizabeth spoke—“Blessed are you among women”—something was established in Mary.

Not created.

Established.

Confirmed.

Set firm.

The "established” of Proverbs 24:3 happened not just through angelic announcement but through the voice of a Spirit-filled woman who looked at another woman and said: what God told you is true.

Mary’s response tells us everything.

After Elizabeth speaks, Mary breaks into the Magnificat—one of the most theologically rich declarations in all of Scripture.

That is not the voice of a trembling teenager anymore.

That is the voice of a woman who has been established.

Who has been reinforced.

Who walked into that house carrying the weight alone and walked out of it knowing she was not alone at all.

Elizabeth did not carry Jesus. But she carried the woman who did.

And here is what the text quietly tells us that we almost miss:

Elizabeth was in her own miracle.

She was six months pregnant after a lifetime of barrenness.

She had

her own story,

her own wonder,

her own weight.

And yet when Mary arrived, Elizabeth turned outward.

She poured into the younger woman first.

She used her own experience of God’s faithfulness as fuel to reinforce someone else’s faith.

That is the pattern of godly men and women throughout Scripture.

They do not hoard what God has done for them.

They pour it out.

They use their testimony as a tool of establishment in someone else’s life.

Perhaps there is a Mary in your life who is carrying something too large for her to hold alone.

She has heard from God—she knows what He said—but she needs an Elizabeth.

She needs someone filled with the Spirit who will

look at her,

recognize what God is doing, and

say in a loud voice: what He told you is true.

You are not crazy.

You are not alone.

The promise is real.

That is reinforcement!

Lois and Eunice

Fast forward to

after Calvary,

after the resurrection,

after Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus,

to the time when Paul sat in prison near the end of his life,

and wrote his final letter to a young pastor by the name of Timothy.

Timothy is struggling.

Timothy needs encouragement.

Timothy needs guidance.

Timothy needs reinforcement. And Paul knows it.

And what does Paul do for a man who is struggling?

He does not give him a new strategy.

He does not send him a book on systematic theology.

He takes him back to his roots.

He reminds him of the reinforcement in his life.

2 Timothy 1:5 NKJV

when I call to remembrance the genuine faith that is in you, which dwelt first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice, and I am persuaded is in you also.

“Which dwelt first in your grandmother Lois.”

Before it was Timothy’s faith—it was Lois’s faith.

Before Timothy

ever preached a sermon,

before he ever traveled a missionary road with Paul,

before he ever laid hands on the sick or cast out a demon

his grandmother was praying.

His grandmother was embedding sincere faith into the family structure at a level Timothy could not yet understand and did not yet need to.

She was reinforcing in advance.

Before the load arrived.

And then Eunice—his mother—

carried that same sincere faith and bonded it into Timothy’s life

through presence,

through teaching,

through the daily,

unspectacular,

unremarkable work of raising a child

in the knowledge of God.

Acts 16:1 tells us Timothy’s father was Greek—

likely not a believer.

That means in a mixed home,

with a believing mother

and an unbelieving father,

Eunice made her faith known to Timothy

and deposited it as reinforcement in his life.

Performed faith does not provide reinforcement.

A child who watches a parent be one person at church and another person at home learns to separate faith from life—

and that separation eventually becomes a fracture.

But sincere faith—

the kind that is the same on Sunday and on Tuesday,

the same when the crowd is watching and when no one is—

that faith provides reinforcement.

It flows into every groove of a child’s developing life,

locks in,

cures, and

becomes part of the structure.

Lois did not perform faith for Timothy.

She lived it.

Eunice did not merely take him to the synagogue.

She embedded truth in him through the texture of daily life.

And that sincere faith did not merely influence Timothy—

it bonded to him in a way that could not be separated from who he was.

Now notice the generational architecture here.

Lois poured into Eunice.

Eunice poured into Timothy.

And Timothy is now being called to pour into the churches of Ephesus and beyond.

Three generations of transfer—and it all traces back to a grandmother whose name appears exactly once in the New Testament.

Lois never preached at Ephesus.

But she helped reinforce the man who built the church that shaped a region.

You may not be the one who stands on the platform.

But you may be building the one who does.

And the kingdom of God depends more on your faithfulness than you will ever know this side of eternity.

That is reinforcement!

CLOSING

Come back to Proverbs 24:3–4 one final time.

Proverbs 24:3–4 NKJV

Through wisdom a house is built, And by understanding it is established; By knowledge the rooms are filled With all precious and pleasant riches.

Three pairs of women. Three acts of hidden, costly, faithful reinforcement.

Shiphrah and Puah built by wisdom—

refusing an order in a dark room,

letting the boys live,

trusting that God saw what Pharaoh could not audit.

Their reinforcement held up a deliverer before he was ever born.

Mary and Elizabeth established by understanding—

two women, each carrying a miracle,

reinforcing each other at the hinge point of human history.

One carried the Word.

One carried the voice that would announce Him.

And before either of them was ready, they held each other up.

Lois and Eunice filled the rooms through knowledge—

pouring sincere, unperformed faith into Timothy across generations,

bonding truth to him so deeply that it held in Ephesus when the weight came,

and rippled outward into churches and letters and a legacy still shaping the church two thousand years later.

None of these women stood on a stage.

None of them knew the full scope of what they were building into.

None of them lived to see the final structure reach its completion.

They were the reinforcement.

They went in before the weight arrived.

They bonded to the structure at a level no one photographed and no one publicly honored.

And when the load came—and it always comes—what they built held.

The rebar never rises above the concrete. But take it out—and the structure falls.

Reinforcement is not decoration.

Reinforcement is the backbone.

The unseen strength that holds everything together.

Thank God for those who have been reinforcement in our lives.

The moms, the women.

The dads, the men.

The friends.

The coworkers.

The ones whose reinforcement they deposited in us still holds us together today.

Now it is time to think about being reinforcement for someone else.

This sermon doesn’t end when you walk out the door.

Being someone else’s reinforcement is not a feel-good moment.

It is a decision.

And one that I hope you will take seriously.

Take the wisdom, knowledge, and understanding that God has given you and invest it into someone else.

Let your faith being lived out every day be someone else’s reinforcement.

CALL TO ACTION