A Tribute to Moms

A Biblical Theology on Mothers/Mothering

A few things stand out:

They are necessary (I’m pretty sure we all have had one)

They are formative

They carry a big responsibility

They reflect the heart/character of God

I had thought I might do a Biblical Theology on moms. Go through the Bible and look at all the amazing characteristics of mothers in the Bible. But I only got through Eve, and thought… woah, there is enough here to go from. So we’ll see how we do.

I’m going to try and make this a little interactive and reveal how much we really know about the Bible!

Who is the first woman named in the Bible?

Where in the Bible do we find that? Gen 3

Eve:

Gen 1:26-27 “Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, according to our likeness. They will rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, the livestock, the whole earth, and the creatures that crawl on the earth.” So God created man in his own image; he created him in the image of God; he created them male and female.”

What were they created to do?

They both were to be fruitful and multiply, filling the Earth, managing it. Steward the Earth and all that is in it.

Eve came from Adam. God calls her a helper (ãzer). Often times this word is referred to when referencing God as our helper, but it gives the idea it is the stronger coming alongside the weaker.

Adam and Eve sin and are ushered out of the Garden

Adam and Eve conceive Cain and Abel.

We don’t know specifics, but we see Adam and Eve spoke to their sons about God and they had their own relationship with God. God speaks specifically to Cain (Gen 4).

Necessary in teaching children and introducing them to God.

The Bible uses motherly virtues in describing how God feels/thinks about His people:

What kind of imagery comes up when you think of God and motherly virtues?

Isa. 49:15 ““Can a woman forget her nursing child, or lack compassion for the child of her womb? Even if these forget, yet I will not forget you.”

Isa 66:13 “As a mother comforts her son, so I will comfort you, and you will be comforted in Jerusalem.”

Jer. 31:15 “This is what the Lord says: A voice was heard in Ramah, a lament with bitter weeping— Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to be comforted for her children because they are no more.”

Matt. 23:37 ““Jerusalem, Jerusalem, who kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to her. How often I wanted to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!”

Mothering is a holy and good work

Where in Eve’s story do we know that she experienced pain and difficulty? Eve experienced the effects of the curse immediately when Cain killed Abel.

Gen 3:16 “He said to the woman: I will intensify your labor pains; you will bear children with painful effort. Your desire will be for your husband, yet he will rule over you.”

This isn’t punitive in the sense of God making life miserable, but it is descriptive of God saying, this is what Sin does and it will multiply your pain in child rearing. Raising kids is going to hurt. It will leave Sacred Scars.

Mothering brings heartache. But it is heartache that God experiences and therefore we are formed to be more like Him in that work/experience.

God gave Jesus a mother. Mary bore a lot of grief and yet, must have been so full of hope at the same time.

Though Eve would lose a son tragically, there would be a son of promise that would come through Seth.

God’s character is laid out in Ex 34:6-7 “The Lord passed in front of him and proclaimed: The Lord—the Lord is a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love and truth, maintaining faithful love to a thousand generations, forgiving iniquity, rebellion, and sin. But he will not leave the guilty unpunished, bringing the consequences of the fathers’ iniquity on the children and grandchildren to the third and fourth generation.”

Mothering brings out compassion, grace, patience, faithful love, truth telling, forgiveness, and the ability to help others navigate life in a way that can cause them to flourish and reap fruitfulness. This is the character of God.

Mothers are to be celebrated and given honor. So I honor you today. And may we also not just limit this to our nuclear understanding of motherhood. The Bible was written with a tribal context, people living in community, where people filled many roles for each other in the community. So there are biological mothers along with spiritual mothers, foster mothers, adoptive mothers, grandmothers and all the same variants of that as well. There is a wide spectrum of mothering that we can honor and see God’s hand and favor towards.

Thank you, moms.

Let’s pray.