Celebrating Love

Open with the Skit Guys Mother’s Day video (Mommy Needs A Quarantine)

This morning, as I approached the church and pulled into the parking lot and got out of my car, and as I opened the door and walked in, a thought went through my mind! I have been walking into this building for 20 years now! For 20 years, this building has been my church and this group of believers have been my church family! And over the last 20 years of my life and of my coming into this building, I have seen and experienced a lot of different things.

I became a husband to my wife Desirae, within that first year of coming to this church. And it was in that same time period, that faithful men and women of God began to pour into me and love on me and entrust me with serving in various positions.

And it was in that first year that I really began to see that what I thought being a Christian was, all those years before in my life, was not accurate at all.

I began to see and understand what the Bible truly had to say about being a servant of Jesus the Christ!

And throughout the coming years of serving in this church, my wife and I have witnessed many families come and go from this church building.

And with regards to the subject of family, it was in this very church, that my wife and I watched our own family grow. We have seen both of our daughters grow up in this building and into beautiful young ladies and we have watched them go through elementary school and then through high school, as my youngest is about to graduate and then start college this fall.

And now, I am looking at becoming a grandfather this August, as our oldest daughter and her husband are expecting their first child!

And during the 20 years of being in this building, I have served under two different senior pastors and I watched as many different leadership positions within the church have changed hands and new faces and talents were added to our church body.

My wife and I have had the privilege of helping to raise many of your own children and grandchildren in this church family!

And now, in this present day and time, we have the glorious blessing of coming into this same building and watching and witnessing as some of those same children and youth, in which we were allowed to help pour into, now stand in this same building and serve as a part of the leadership of this church body!

It’s the circle of life, both in the natural/physical world, but also in the spiritual kingdom that we walk in, that is playing out. You live and grow and serve and plant and gather during the harvest season.

And the all the while, you are helping to raise up the next generation of servants in God’s kingdom!

So, that when the time has come and God is ready, you will move on to the next phase of your own journey, whatever that may mean!

I have stood in this same sanctuary for 20 years now and witnessed some of the happiest and most rejoicing moments in life. Numerous weddings and baby dedications and graduation services and various dramas and plays as well as a host of other events and life moments!

I have laughed and and celebrated with many of you in the glorious seasons of our lives, while standing in this very room!

And, I have also cried and wept alongside of many of you in this same building!

Over the last 6 years of my life, as my wife and I have been serving as the senior pastors of this church, I have walked into this building numerous times, come straight into this very sanctuary and dropped to my knees and wept before the Lord for various reasons!

Even today, as I stand here before you, my heart is heavy as I look over and see the empty seat of my dear brother and spiritual father, Pastor Clyde Webb, whom the Lord called home this past Tuesday!

And yet, even in the midst of grieving the loss of someone so dear and precious to me and my family and amongst various other trials that have come our way in recent weeks, I stand before you today with much joy in my heart!

Over the past 20 years of my walking into this building, for all of the various services and meetings and functions, this particular day stands out as the most longed for and excited for!

Today, as you and I gather together in this building, even though we have done this very thing time and time again throughout the years, today’s gathering is special!

There was an excitement in the air, as I walked in here today, because I knew that I would be joining in with each and every one of you for this service! And why this service?

Because for the past 8 weeks, this hasn’t been able to take place! (At least not together in the building.)

For 2 months now, we have been told not to assemble together and to keep social distance from one another.

But today, this day, Mother’s Day, 2020, we have come together again in this house to worship our Lord and Savior!

This day, we have assembled together as a family, to praise and exalt the name of almighty God and thank Him for all that He has done and is doing for us in this trying season.

LET’S BOW OUR HEADS AND GIVE THANKS TO GOD FOR THIS DAY THAT HE HAS BLESSED US WITH!

You know, the world as we know it is changing right before our very eyes. World powers and the world’s market’s and its economy are being thrust into a new direction. People are being told as to how they will begin to re-enter the work place and of how everything is going to be different! Biblical and secular history is unfolding before us!

We are hearing politicians and news reporters state that social distancing may become the new norm in our lives and that we possibly may never go back to life as we knew it and before this pandemic happened.

This silent, unseen predator that was moving behind the scenes, the coronavirus, has changed the course of not just a nation, but of the entire world!

We seem to be living our lives now looking for the next change that’s going to take place, right?

What new law is going to be implemented, what new set of guidelines and safety precautions are going to be imposed upon us?

I’m waiting for one of the big fashion designer gurus to come out with a new line of clothing for this new life we are being thrust into, A fashionable line of HAZMAT suits, that have their logos branded on the front!

Here’s my point, we see a lot of changes taking place all around us right now and to some of us it’s a little daunting, maybe even to some of us, a little frightening, right?

But TODAY, we are here together in this building, not because of what changes are taking place in the world around us, but rather, we are here together because of something that NEVER changes in our lives!

Though kingdoms have risen and fallen throughout history of the world and whole nations have come and gone, though world powers have changed hands and economies have collapsed and been revived.

Though people come and go in our lives and the perpetual cycle of life and death keep us ever moving forward to new and unforeseen terrain.

There is but ONE constant in our lives and in the world around us!

And it is because of that ONE CONSTANT, that we are here today.

“Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable.”

“The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations.”

“For I the Lord do not change!”

“God is not man, that he should lie, or a son of man, that he should change his mind. Has he said, and will he not do it? Or has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?”

“Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever!”

“Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”

The Lord God changes not! That is why we are here today! That is the reason for my heart’s excitement in coming into the building today!

Because He is faithful and has promised us, “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them!”

Do you believe that He is faithful and with us in this place today?

Those of you watching from home, do you have the faith and belief in your heart right now to know that as you are sitting there watching this service, the Lord God is with you and all around you and that He holds you in His merciful hands?

And as God never changes, there is one very beautiful aspect of His unchanging character that is the core reason for our coming together today.

The Lord tells us in Jeremiah 31:3, “I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.”

We are here today because God’s love and His faithfulness to us, never changes!

And it’s because of this great love of God that He has for us, that we CELEBRATE together today!

God the Father has displayed His amazing love for us in many different ways. The greatest display of His love, was of course His Son and the price that was paid for us upon the cross. Everybody say it together with me, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

Did you ever stop and wonder why Jesus, the Son of God had to pay the price for our sins?

I mean, think about it. If pure, spotless, sinless blood, had to be the price for the atonement of your sins and for my sins, why didn’t God just create another man and place him here.

One that was not of the flesh of any human from this earth and thus not corrupted by sin, and who was filled with God’s own Spirit

One who was only allowed to do and say as God told him to do and thus who would never sin.

If God placed another man like that upon the earth, couldn’t he have went to the cross and paid the price with pure, spotless, sinless blood?

I mean, God is God and He could have easily created a man like that, right?

Then why didn’t He? Why did Jesus, the Son of God, have to be the one to pay that high price?

I believe it was for one reason and one reason alone. The man that went to that cross, to pay the price for the sins of the world, had to be a direct expression and carry the exact LOVE of God within Him!

It was because of LOVE that Jesus had to go to the cross and not another created being, that God could have put here.

Only “agape” love could go the distance that was required for demands of the cross.

Anything less, any other form of LOVE, other than “agape” love, would have turned away and never allowed the cross of Calvary to take place!

And since pure and unchanging “agape” love comes only from God, it had to be God, who would go to the cross for us!

Jesus said this very thing, when He said, “Greater LOVE has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.”

Paul reminds us of the same thing, where he says in Romans 5, “For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows HIS LOVE for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

But there is another form of God’s amazing love that I wanted to share with you this morning. It is this other form and expression of God’s own LOVE that has prompted many people all over this nation to get out and to go to church this morning!

God, in His infinite wisdom and grace and mercy and faithfulness to you and I, created something so powerful and so wise and so beautiful that it would be likened to God Himself in the Word of God!

What was this created thing that God placed here on the earth, to be a carrier of His own heart and an expression of His own love for you and I?

The “MOTHER”! God loves us so much, that He created the MOTHER and placed her here, to be His hands and His voice of comfort and LOVE to His children!

I BET A LOT OF YOU WERE THINKING, “MAN, HE’S COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN ABOUT MOTHER’S DAY”!

Quite the contrary. We are going to acknowledge and recognize the great LOVE of God right now, by asking His daughters to stand at this time. (Whether you are a first time mother, a veteran in the field of child rearing, or even a woman who has never given birth to a child, you carry the spiritual genetic code for His love within you!)

SO, WOULD ALL OF THE LADIES OF THE HOUSE PLEASE STAND AT THIS TIME!

Normally, we would have had a gift for each one of our mothers here today at the close of the service, as the children’s church traditionally has always had something ready to give as the ladies are leaving.

However, due to obvious fact that we have not been able to come together for the last 2 months, we have been unable to make, or put together such gifts!

That being said, I wanted to be able to do something and to give you each something as an expression of our LOVE and GRATITUDE for you.

So, at the close of the service, my dear friend and brother, WARREN SCHREIER, would like to present each one of you ladies with a personal check for $10,000 as a way of saying thank you and to bless you!

Seriously though, in speaking about God creating the mother to be an expression of His love for us, I would like to read you something, that I actually read a few years ago, but it is still good and relevant!

It is a little story written by Erma Bombeck, entitled, “When God Created Mothers”

READ POEM, “WHEN GOD CREATED MOTHERS”

There is something so amazing and so special about the MOTHER and the way that God created her! And it is because of that unique and beautiful design of the Heavenly Father, that her impact stays with a child for life!

There is nothing, in the natural/physical realm, like the love of a mother and that bond that is formed at birth, between her and her child!

God and His great love, is so very much expressed and seen in the role of a mother, that one author made the quote, “Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.”

And another author wrote, “The love of a mother is the veil of a softer light between the heart and the heavenly Father.”

A couple of other quotes about mothers that I liked, “A mother is she who can take the place of all others but whose place no one else can take.”

“Mothers hold their children’s hands for a short while, but their hearts forever.”

There is something amazing that takes place during the years of a mother raising her children.

There is a bond that is formed at birth and it continues throughout the child’s life.

At birth, the bond is a chemical bond, as God created it, but that bond is soon enough replaced by the very unique and comforting LOVE of the mother, that God has placed within her!

There is most definitely a grace that God gave to the mother, to do all that she does for the family!

I am not knocking the role of the father and saying that he is less important in the role of rearing the children, as God has designed both male and female, husband and wife, father and mother, with unique and very distinct attributes and characteristics of Himself, which are displayed and seen between the two roles.

This is why I say, the most complete picture of our Heavenly Father, is seen between the union of ONE MAN to ONE WOMAN, as the two become one flesh and as they form that irreversible union, they make the complete image of God.

For God created man and woman in His own image!

Still, though, the mother, as I just said, has a grace given to her to accomplish amazing feats within the home!

I really don’t know how you guys do it!! I thought that I was going crazy during those times that my wife would leave me alone with our girls for a week, when she was gone on mission trips!

I understand why woman wrote, “May your coffee be stronger than your toddler!”

But in getting back to God’s love and out of this great love, His special creation, which was the “MOTHER”, let me expound on this for a minute!

A mother’s love is a mirror image of our Heavenly Father’s love for us in so many ways.

Her love is nurturing. She pours herself into her children, physically, emotionally, spiritually, so that they have every opportunity to grow into young adults and have lives of their own!

One theologian said, “After a mother has smiled at her child for many days and weeks, she finally receives the child’s smile in response. She has awakened LOVE in the heart of her child!”

That is so true, the nurturing, caring face and voice and touch and smile of a mother, awakens love within the child!

A mother’s love is faithful and sure. There is no end to her love and there is no way to measure that love that she holds in her heart for her child!

A child always knows that “momma’s” love is there waiting for them. Regardless of what they do, a mother’s love is faithful!

A mother’s love is protective and secure for the child! (Did you ever wonder why the mother in most species, is the most tenacious and vicious and ferocious to mess with, when it comes to the young?)

And that same thing applies to human mothers! (Elaborate)

A mother’s love is sacrificial. She will give and give and give of herself for the well-being of her children and even at the cost of herself!

As Jesus said, “No greater love has a man/woman than this. That they lay down their own life for another!”

A mother’s love is pure. There is nothing that is needed to earn that love, it is just there!

No matter how much the enemy tries and tries to pollute and taint that love, and distort the role of a mother and no matter how he tries to downplay her role and position in the home and warp that image, the LOVE, the pure love that God has placed within the MOTHER remains.

When it comes to raising the children and running that well oiled machine known as the home, the mother’s love is seasoned with Godly wisdom.

James tells us that, “But the wisdom from above is first of all pure. It is also peace loving, gentle at all times, and willing to yield to others. It is full of mercy and the fruit of good deeds. It shows no favoritism and is always sincere.”

That sounds a lot like that of a mother and of how she runs the home, doesn’t it?

There is a reason that God compares Himself to that of a mother and her role, and that reason is that the love that she has within her, for her children, is much like that of His great love for us, as HIS CHILDREN!

In Isaiah God says of Himself, “As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you.”

And He goes on and compares Himself of that of a nursing mother, where He says, “Never! Can a mother forget her nursing child? Can she feel no love for the child she has borne? But even if that were possible, I would not forget you!”

And compares Himself and His protection over us to that of a mother bear with her cubs, or an eagle with her young, because of His great love for us!

God is love! And in that great and unending love that He has for us, He created the most caring and compassionate gift to the world that He could.........He created the MOTHER!

I am reminded of the closing verses, found in Proverbs 31, which talks about the prowess and greatness of the “wife” and the “mother”. We call this passage, “The Virtuous Woman”, but in its truest form to the Hebrew meaning, it really stands for the “strength, might valor”.

The closing of this passage says in Proverbs 31:28-31 says,

Proverbs 31:28–31 ESV

Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her: “Many women have done excellently, but you surpass them all.” Charm is deceitful, and beauty is vain, but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised. Give her of the fruit of her hands, and let her works praise her in the gates.

The word for “praised” that we see in these verses, in the Hebrew is the word, “hā·lǎl” and it means, “to praise, to make shine and to celebrate”!

That is what we are doing today.......we are CELEBRATING our mothers and the great gift that they are to us from God. We are CELEBRATING LOVE today. AMEN?!

I’ll close with this passage from I John 4:9-11, which reads,

1 John 4:9–11 NLT

God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other.