So, of course, today's Mother's Day, and it's customary, typically on Mother's Day, to preach
a Mother's Day sermon, and that's exactly what I'm going to do.
So I'm trying to bluff a little bit, but I thought about if you don't preach a Mother's
Day service, bad things are going to happen.
The muffins are going to burn, you're going to get that stink eye, and everything goes
on.
But here's the reason.
There's a reason why you might get a bad reaction if you decided to kind of gloss over the Mother's
Day sermon, because that sermon is an important sermon.
That's a sermon that's got to be preached, and quite frankly, it's one that really one
day doesn't warrant it, and I'm not trying to just earn brownie points here either, okay?
That really is the truth.
You don't understand it as much when you're a child, but after you become a parent, even
as a husband, and you watch your wife become a mother and go through those things, you
start to understand the real importance and the real work that goes into being a mother.
And of course, lots of people will be preaching lots of Mother's Day sermons today, and some
Mother's Day sermons, they're going to be directed more towards the mothers themselves.
They're going to try to encourage the mothers and things like that, and I've preached those
types of Mother's Day sermons in the past, and then there's going to be other sermons
that are preached to those that have mothers, which is if everybody in the room, right?
And today is going to lean more towards that.
This Mother's Day sermon is going to be more directed towards those of us that might not
be mothers, but obviously have mothers.
And really all the reasons that I'm going to go into, well, first let me give you the
title, okay?
The title of the sermon is, Why Celebrate Mother's Day?
Why Celebrate Mother's Day?
And I'm going to give you some generic reasons, probably the reasons that we could all think
of, but these are reasons that need to be emphasized.
These are things that we need to be reminded about when it comes to mothers.
They need to be emphasized.
And I was kind of thinking about this over this week or two leading up to the service.
We have Mother's Day, and then we have a daughter, Karen, she's celebrating her birthday on Tuesday,
and other people had birthdays, and it kind of got me thinking about the fact that we
kind of have it backwards when it comes to this thing of Mother's Day.
Maybe we should have Children's Day, which would be the day where we just celebrate all
the children being born, right?
And rather than all the mothers having given birth.
And then on the children's birthday, that should be a celebration of mom.
I mean, really, when you think about it, she's the one that did all the work that day.
All the kid did was show up, and it's usually another decade or even longer before that
child even starts to really pull their own weight.
We're celebrating them.
Of course, we're glad they're there and stuff like that, but I thought about it like, we
kind of have it backwards.
We should have a Children's Day where all the kids were like, all right, we're glad
you're here.
And then every birthday, we celebrate the mother instead, because after all, she's the
one that did all the work.
Of course, I'm not advocating that we actually do that, but there's a thought there.
So let me just give you some reasons why this morning, why we should celebrate Mother's
Day.
It's an important holiday.
It's not something that we want to just gloss over.
And we should be careful that we never take our mothers for granted, or we never take
the mothers of our children for granted and the work that they do.
And quite frankly, that's an easy thing to do.
Once you kind of get into the routine of being a parent and you've got a few kids, it kind
of just becomes part of life, just like anything else that we do on a regular basis.
And that's why we need these sermons every once in a while to just kind of remind us
the importance of mothers and why it is that we should celebrate them at least one day
out of the year.
And one of the first reasons we want to talk about, of course, and again, these are all
going to be generic, nothing profound here, but these are the reasons why you celebrate
Mother's Day.
One, because bearing children isn't easy.
And anyone who's gone through that process, and I don't think we have any first time expectant
mothers in the room this year.
There's no one here.
So we can kind of tell the truth a little bit more, right?
We don't have to hold back and try not to scare anybody.
Everybody's kind of gone through that, right?
And it reminds me, every time I think about that, when my sister first got pregnant with
her first child, she tells a story about how she went to my mom and my aunt, and she's
like, is it really that painful to go through childbirth?
And they're like, no, the movies, they blow it out of proportion.
It's all acting.
It's just drama.
And then she went through it, and she's like, you lied to me.
And they're like, yeah, we did, because they didn't want her to be scared.
And here's the thing, bearing children is not easy.
Everyone who's gone through that process knows that.
Of course, if you're there in Genesis chapter 3, look at verse 16.
It's not supposed to be easy.
It's not supposed to be something that's a cakewalk or a breeze.
He said here, the Lord said unto the woman in verse 16, he said, I will greatly multiply
thy sorrow and thy conception.
In sorrow shall thou bring forth children, and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and
he shall rule over thee.
You think the childbearing was enough, right?
That's enough of a punishment.
And then she's also got to deal with the husband too, but that's kind of another sermon.
Maybe we'll work on that on Father's Day.
But one right here, we can look at one part of this verse and say, being married alone
is a lot of work for both people involved.
And the woman as well, she's got to submit to her husband and all of that that comes
along with that.
But part of that relationship is the fact that they're going to be fruitful, they're
going to multiply, and it's not going to be easy.
Why do you think the world puts it off?
Why do you think the people out in the world today go to such great lengths to try to prevent
having children?
It's because it's not easy.
Not just the actual burden of having a child, which they're worth every penny, financially
speaking, and all the other things that come with childbearing, but just the actual physical
act of giving birth to a child is a very traumatic experience.
It's something that's very difficult.
I mean, we could think about, first of all, even before you get to the childbirth, just
the pregnancy itself.
I mean, just an incredibly uncomfortable and inconvenient situation to be in, especially
if you're living in a climate like this, where you get pregnant and you're going to go through
those most difficult months in the hottest part of the year.
All the type of things that go along with that, the back pains and everything else.
The morning sickness is probably one of the first things we could think of.
I'm trying to remember all the things.
I've never gone through the process.
I'm relying a lot on what I've seen my wife go through.
There's probably going to be things that I miss, just being a man, but the morning sickness
is probably the first thing that comes to mind.
That's usually one of the first onsets of pregnancy, just the being nauseous all the
time.
I always think about this every time I get a little ... If I get sick, if I get a stomach
bug or something, I'm nauseous.
We men, I guess I can only speak for myself, I mean, I turn into a baby.
I'm laying on the bed, oh, my tummy.
When my wife gets pregnant, she's going through this for weeks.
It comes on and it goes away, then it comes on and it goes away.
You look over in the car and they're just like ... You feel bad for them, but that's
part of it.
Again, we're going to talk about Mother's Day.
Why do we celebrate it?
Because of all the things that they go through to be mothers.
One of them would be the morning sickness.
What about all the hormonal changes that take place?
The mood swings and things like that, all the hormones in the body that are changing.
How about the fact that life doesn't stop just because you're pregnant?
The other kids still need to be fed, the other kids still need to be bathed and educated
and everything else that comes along with that.
The bills keep coming in.
It's not like life goes, oh, you're pregnant, well, let's just put everything on pause for
you.
No, life continues to go on.
All the responsibilities, all the work that needs to be done, all the house cleaning and
meal preparation and everything that takes place, all the things that come up in life,
even more difficult by the fact that you're pregnant.
And then, of course, there's the actual birth itself.
And again, just being very blunt this morning, it's a very painful and even dangerous process
that a woman goes through.
It's literally passing through the jaws of death.
You say you're being melodramatic.
No, I'm not.
And if you would, turn over to Genesis chapter 35.
And this is probably a more somber point in the sermon this morning, but it's one that
we need to think about.
It's one that we, as those of us, I keep wanting to say, obviously, we all have mothers, but
this is something that we need to be reminded of when we think about our mother.
The fact that they stared, in many cases, looked death right in the face and went through
that process.
Now, praise God, we live in a country and a society today with all the medical advancements
that we have, to where a lot of compromising situations when it comes to childbirth can
be remedied.
Life-threatening circumstances can be taken care of, and the mortality rate is much lower
than it has been in times past or in other underdeveloped countries where it's much higher,
because birth is a dangerous process.
It's very painful and dangerous.
If you look at Genesis chapter 35 verse 16, and they journeyed from Bethel, and there
was but a little way to come to Ephrata, and Rachel travailed, and she had hard labor.
I don't know that there's any other kind, but it's saying here that this was especially
difficult labor that she went through.
And it came to pass, when she was in hard labor, that the midwife said unto her, Fear
not, thou shalt have this son also.
And it came to pass, as her soul was in departing, for she died, that she called his name Benonai,
which his father called Benjamin.
And Rachel died and was buried in the way to Ephrata, which is Bethlehem.
So this is a start, a very sobering reminder of the fact that there's a mortality involved
when it comes to childbirth.
And in some instances, wives or the mothers even die.
And this is something that strikes a little bit closer to home.
My wife, and I try not to be too personal here, and I do really ask her for permission,
but I'm sure she doesn't mind me sharing, and we've talked about it with other people
in the church.
We came close.
I remember one of our children we gave birth to, and there was a lot of blood loss.
The midwife didn't really know what she was doing, and I'm going to talk about that in
a minute here.
And I remember my wife talking about it.
All of a sudden, this home birth turns into this home nightmare, and we've got to get
the ambulance over there.
There's all this blood loss.
The midwife is not a good midwife.
And my wife, I remember later she recounted to me, she's like, I was ready to go.
Everything was blacking out, and she was just kind of feeling like, that's a scary feeling.
And that would have been terrible.
It would have been a tragedy.
But here's the thing.
We kind of take it for granted today because of the country we live in.
We were able to get in the ambulance, get over there, stop the bleeding, and take care
of her and get her back in good health over time.
But here's the thing.
What if we weren't living here?
What if there wasn't an ambulance to rush us over there?
What if there wasn't blood there to be received?
What if there wasn't somebody who knew how to treat the situation?
That would have been a tragedy.
And that's something that happened a lot more often in our past.
And because we kind of live in a society today where that's avoided, the tendency might to
think that, oh, childbirth isn't really that bad.
It's not that traumatic.
It's not that dangerous.
People live through it all the time.
And that's true, but it's only in lieu of the fact that a lot of treatments are available.
So I did kind of want to touch on the whole thing about giving birth, home birthing.
And I've said this to several people already.
But home birth can be the most wonderful, just a great experience, or it can be a terrible
experience.
And that's when people come to me and ask me about home birthing and my opinion about
it, if they ask for advice, that's what I tell them, because that's been my experience
with it.
That's where I'm speaking from.
It's either one of the most just wonderful experiences.
When everything goes well, the best part is when everything's done, you're at home.
You don't have to pack up and get in a car.
You don't have some nurse or doctor come in poking and prodding everybody and trying to
put vaccines on you and everything else.
You get to make your decisions.
And you're at home.
It's very comfortable.
The family's all together.
And you can move right into helping mom, taking care of her, and her taking easy.
But when things go bad, and now you have to transfer to hospital, that's one of the most
just emotionally draining, just exhausting experiences that you probably ever go through.
I know it was for me.
Because when you get back out of the hospital, you come home and it looks like somebody just
given birth there, because that's what happens.
There's a mess to clean up and life goes on and all that.
So that's my advice about home birth.
And here's the thing.
If you're considering that option, and I wouldn't discourage anybody from it, and everyone's
got to make their personal decisions.
I'm not saying you're insane if you don't do it.
People can make their decisions, whatever they want to do.
But if you do do it, here's my recommendation to everybody, is that don't let the personality
of the midwife be the determining factor.
Because when you get into this midwifery, you get into kind of this more of this earthy,
kind of all natural, holistic, kind of hippy dippy stuff, where they want to get into all
this channeling the energies of the universe.
It's like, no, I don't want to be crass or anything, but we're just giving birth here.
And here's the thing.
You don't go to your mechanic.
These are the parallels I draw.
I'm often comparing women to cars and things like that, but I'm trying to get us to understand
a concept here.
It's not that I'm disparaging of women.
We don't go to a mechanic and look at the mechanic and go, well, I don't like his piercing.
Oh, he's got dreadlocks.
He smells like patchouli.
I don't think he can work on my car.
He wears sandals, for crying out loud.
He can't work on my car.
If he does a good job, I don't care what he looks like.
I don't care what he smells like.
I don't care what he says.
If he's good at his job, that's what I'm paying him to do.
You got to take that same philosophy into when you're picking a midwife and ask very
pointed questions.
And I'm not going to spend the time going through that.
If people want to know about that, come talk to me, talk to my wife.
We can walk you through that process.
But the whole point being is that birth is a very painful and very dangerous situation
to be in.
And that's why we need to celebrate Mother's Day today, because your mother went through
the jaws of death for you.
Even if the birth went great, there was no complications, amen.
But there was no guarantee of that when they went into it.
I don't think there's anything Rachel did here to cause this to happen.
Sometimes that's just the way things go.
And not only that, let's say you go through that process, even in the best birth, there's
still a time of recovery that has to take place.
And different ladies can recover at different rates, and a lot of it has to do with the
health that you have going into it and things like that.
But recovering from birth, no matter for anybody, is difficult.
Again, it's very traumatic.
There's more of the hormonal changes.
All of a sudden, the hormones are changing again.
You have to start learning how to breastfeed the child if you're going to do that.
That can be a whole other process, maybe the child has lip ties and things like that.
That's going to be a very difficult time, a very trying time in a mother's life.
And even some ladies, and I believe they all probably go through this to some degree, but
some ladies even suffer from severe postpartum depression.
We've probably all heard of that, postpartum depression, where there's just this huge change
in hormones and all of a sudden this mother you'd think would just be this joyful, beaming,
radiant being of just gratitude and thankfulness can become very depressed and can become very
saddened and even start to think very horrible thoughts.
And here's the thing, if you ever know anybody that goes through this, do not despise that
person because that's a big part of why ladies don't ever get help is because they're so
ashamed of the things that they're feeling, the things that they're thinking, they don't
want to say that to anybody because they're afraid of the repercussions or the backlash
they might get.
And here's what they have to understand is that you're not in your normal frame of mind
when you go through that.
And I'm going to say this, okay, there have been ladies that I know that have given birth
that have thought with murderous intent towards their children, their newborn, and you say,
wow, what's wrong with them?
There's nothing wrong with them, nothing.
It's just their hormones.
It's just this traumatic thing.
We can't understand it if we haven't gone through it.
And I bring that up not to put somebody, and I don't know if anybody in the room has gone
through that, and I'm not trying to put anybody down that has because that's just something
that happens.
But what I'm trying to get across here is that if we know somebody that's gone through
that, we should not despise that person.
We should not look down on that person.
We should try to encourage them and help them and being a blessing to them.
And now go around telling everybody about it.
You hear what she was thinking, that kind of a thing.
That's a very dangerous thing, and it's a very concerning thing.
And if you ever go through that, you need to seek professional help.
You need to get with somebody who can help you through that.
By all means, tell somebody you're confident in, express that to your spouse, but don't
just sit on that.
Ladies need to address that.
And I don't want to mention that because that needs to be mentioned because people go through
that.
We sometimes don't even realize that people go through that kind of a thing, but it does
happen.
And never despise a mother who goes through that.
We should care for her.
So why are we celebrating Mother's Day today?
Well, because of the fact that bearing children isn't easy.
It's the process of being pregnant, what that leads up to.
The childbirth itself, there's nothing easy about that.
And what about beyond that?
Okay, so mom gives birth, she goes through her mood swings, her hormones start to balance
out, she learns how to feed the child, and everything starts to kind of pan out, and
then it's just a cakewalk from there on out.
Motherhood's just a breeze from there on out, right?
No, now the real work has begun.
Now some of the hardest work of being a mother is just getting started, okay?
Caring for infants and toddlers is very demanding.
You ever wonder why God made little kids so cute?
The more I've had, and I've got some cute kids, I'm not afraid to admit it, is because
you go, I can't hurt this, when they're frustrating you, you're like, well I can't just get rid
of them, look how cute they are.
Just to balance everything out, right?
And of course we love all the kids and stuff like that, but it's a process, it's frustrating.
There's the fits they throw, just all the things that kids do, the things that we did
to our parents too, they get back at us.
It's just a natural process of being a child.
It's very demanding.
You think about through the infant stages, the midnight feedings the moms have to do,
just up at all hours, you're on that baby's schedule.
Whenever the baby wants to eat, that's when you're going to get up and feed it.
Whenever the baby needs a diaper changed, that's when you're going to change it.
Since it's Mother's Day, let me brag on my wife a little bit at this point, okay?
That woman can change a diaper in the dark faster than anybody I know.
I've changed maybe a handful of diapers in my life with my kids, and I'll do it, I'm
not as good as she is.
Here's the thing, here's how you know you don't change very many diapers.
When you remove the diaper, it's like removing the scalp of your enemy.
You're like, whoo, whoo, whoo, you're doing a dance through the ... She's like, great
job, honey, yeah.
Can you do it at 2.30 a.m., coming out of a deep REM sleep?
I've seen her, I've rolled over and I heard something, and she's just like ... Man, record
time.
I'm talking.
It's impressive, folks.
It really is, but you know what?
It's challenging to have to keep up with ... He's like, what could possibly be so hard about
this little tiny person?
How much trouble could one little person really cause?
Let me tell you, they can be a real inconvenience to the mother a lot, and even dads too, but
we're not going to talk about the suffering they go through, because this is Mother's
Day.
The constant watching, when the kids start to move around, they start to crawl and stand
up, and now they're walking.
It's like, oh, they took their first step, and they're all excited, and then very quickly
they realize what they're in for.
Now they can move in on their own.
All of a sudden, it's like, now they can get into every cupboard, and they have to watch
the stairs.
You have to watch whether or not they're going to run towards the road or into traffic or
the parking lot.
You have to start to keep constant vigilance over these little people.
The process of, let's say, weaning, if you're breastfeeding the child, and now you have
to go through that process of weaning, that's not easy.
They have to put up with the fits, and everything goes along with that.
So it's not like mom gives birth, and all of a sudden her work's done.
Some of her hardest work has just begun, and this is one of the many reasons we need to
celebrate Mother's Day today.
And even beyond that, you say, okay, well, she went through the difficulty of pregnancy.
She faced the dangers of childbirth and came out on the other side.
She's got the child through infancy and early childhood.
Surely now things are getting easier for her.
Surely now this is where life just becomes a breeze.
No.
Now the training of the children begins.
The education of the children begins.
And this can be a very daunting task to the ladies who homeschool, which we are proponents
of here.
If you're doing that, especially if you're jumping into that later in life, let's say
you decide that that's something you want to do after having children that have been
in the public education system, and you pull them out and you say, well, I'm going to start
homeschooling them, that can be very daunting to people in that position, even to a mother
who's starting out with just one child.
From day one, she's going to instruct that child and teach that child.
In either situation, homeschooling can be very intimidating.
It's much easier to just ship them off and let the state do it.
And here's the problem with that.
They're going to be taught a lot of anti-Christ type of things.
They're going to be taught a lot of science, falsely so called.
They're going to have to come home and you have to do the work of trying to unravel that
mess and get the lies out of their head that they're being taught.
That's another sermon.
But all the educating that takes place, if you go over to Proverbs chapter 29, and that's
just one small area of raising children, the education.
Feeding the children the proper nutrition, making sure that they're getting the vitamins
that they need.
If the child has a food allergy or their stomach is sensitive to certain foods, moms have got
to figure that out.
They've got to know their child's diet and feed them accordingly.
They've got to educate them.
They've got to spiritually instruct them as well.
They have to read the Bible to them, teach them things out of the Bible.
And you say, well, what about dad and all that?
Yeah, dad has his part too, but the vast majority of this falls upon the mother.
That's not a real popular notion today, but that's biblical.
Dad has to be going out and working for a living and providing for the family.
Therefore, mom is at home spending the vast majority of the time with the children and
she's the one that is to raise up children.
The Bible teaches that, that they're to love and nurture their children, bring them up.
You're going to Proverbs 29, I'll read Proverbs 17, it says, he that begetteth a fool doeth
it to his own sorrow and the father of a fool hath no joy.
So we know that fathers certainly have a part to play and maybe that'll be the Father's
Day sermon.
The Bible says in Proverbs 23, the father of the righteous shall greatly rejoice and
he that begetteth a wise child shall have joy with him.
One of the greatest joys you'll ever have in life is raising a godly child, raising
a good kid and it goes on, it says thy father and thy mother shall be glad and she that
bear thee shall rejoice.
So we know that mom and dad each have their part to play and that if they raise a fool,
it's going to break their hearts, both of them likewise.
Look at Proverbs chapter 29 verse 15, it says the rod and reproof give wisdom and what's
that talking about?
It's talking about a spanking, right?
The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame.
Notice it's exclusive to the mom.
I'm not saying the dad, we already read, you know, the dad that begetteth a fool doeth
it to his sorrow.
You know, if his child turns out to be a fool, he's not, it's going to, it's going to be
a sorrow to him.
It's going to be a grief to him, but the Bible says that a child left to himself bringeth
his mother to shame.
Why is that?
It's because a child is not to be left to himself, meaning, you know, he's supposed
to be left in the care of his mother, children and mothers are supposed to be the ones that
are bringing up the children, not leaving them to themselves.
Now what does that look like today when a child is left to themself?
You know, we could think about the mom who's just, you know, one, maybe just shipping the
child off to daycare, shipping them off to, you know, the public education system, you
know, and leaving them essentially to them to fend for themselves in a world that, you
know, does not have their best interests in mind.
It's going to teach them things that are not biblical and anti-biblical, in fact.
Well, what about, we'll say, well, I keep the kids home, we take care of them, you know,
you could still do that, you know, even though you keep them at home today, you could still
leave your child to themself.
Through, I don't know, social media, the mom who's just constantly, you know, letting the
children just run amok, rather than doing the housework and the raising and everything
else that goes along with it, you know, she's just, you know, leaving, you know, she's just
on Facebook or YouTube or on the phone with her girlfriends or whatever, watching the
soap operas, eating the bonbons and everything else.
You know, the mother has a big role to play, and that's why it's work, right?
And that's why so many, you know, ladies today, they want to avoid this.
They want to go out and work a secular job, as if that's, you know, any easier.
But they don't want to do, go through the feeding, the education, the spiritual education.
Why?
And if you would, go over to First Samuel chapter one.
Because motherhood is sacrifice.
Come up motherhood in one word, sacrifice.
You know, what are other words that might come to mind?
Selflessness.
You know, that's motherhood in a nutshell.
It's just one long life of giving up your own desires, your own comfort, your own, the
things that you want for somebody else, just over and over and over again.
Look here in First Samuel chapter one.
I think this is a great picture of motherhood.
Verse twenty-four, talking about Hannah, right?
Hannah who had prayed for the Lord to give her a child, and the Lord granted that request.
Because why?
Because she had lent him on to the Lord.
She said, Lord, if you give me a man child, he'll be yours all his days, and he'll serve
you.
And of course, that was the prophet Samuel.
And it says in verse twenty-four, and when she had weaned him, she took him up with her
with three bullocks and one ephah of flour.
Now I've preached in the past, ephah of flour is a lot of flour.
I can't remember all the calculations, but that's enough to make a lot of bread.
So she's bringing a big sacrifice, right?
Three bullocks?
I mean, how many families could you feed on three bullocks?
Probably a lot.
I mean, basically today that would be like three beef cows, right?
That's a lot of, I mean, today's standard, I mean, I haven't looked at it in a while,
but that's got to be like, who knows, what would it cost?
Just how many thousands of dollars would three heads of steer be?
It's got to be over ten thousand, ten grand, right?
Yeah, about twelve thousand dollars, that's what I'd figure.
So that's what she, now of course this is their currency back then, but I mean, think
about what she's bringing here as a sacrifice for this child.
And one ephah of flour and one bottle of wine shows you one thing, that you know, wine in
the Bible was a very precious commodity back then, right?
And brought, you know, that's why it was so special to drink a glass of grape juice back
then.
People go, oh, wine in the Bible, and I'm kind of going off here, you know, and why
do you, what do you mean it's non-alcoholic, it's just, you're telling me that's just Welch's
grape juice?
Yeah.
Well, what's so big deal about that?
Well, I don't know, it was really hard to come by, you know, because it wasn't hand
pressed or it was hand pressed, it wasn't just being made in some factory while you
sleep.
And it says here, she brought a bottle of wine, and she brought him unto the house of
the Lord in Shiloh, and the child was young, and they slew a bullock, and the child, and
brought the child to Eli.
So she's making this great sacrifice of her substance, right, and goes on to verse 26
and says, and she said, O my Lord, as thy soul liveth, my Lord, I am the one that stood
by thee here, praying unto the Lord for this child I prayed, and the Lord hath given me
my petition, and which I asked of him, therefore I have lent him to the Lord, as long as he
liveth he shall be lent to the Lord, and he worshipped there the Lord there.
Jump down to chapter 2, verse 18.
Of course, we know the story of Samuel.
So she's making the sacrifice of her substance, you know, she's giving her child to the Lord,
this one that she'd prayed for, you know, this is a very precious thing that she's doing.
And she says in verse 18 of chapter 2, But Samuel ministered before the Lord, being a
child.
So she takes them up there and she just leaves them to be raised by Eli, you know, and to
serve God all of his days.
And being a child girded with the linen ephod, moreover his mother made him a little coat.
I love that, and I've preached other Mother's Day sermons on this passage.
Moreover his mother made him a little coat, and brought it to him from year to year, and
she came up with her husband, when she came up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice.
So as they came up there to Shiloh to sacrifice every year, she knew, you know, Eli was going
to be there, and he's going to be a little, or not Eli, excuse me, Samuel's going to be
there, and you know what, he's going to be a little bit bigger this year.
And some years he's going to be even a little bit more bigger.
They reach a point where they really start to shoot up.
So what would she do?
Every year she'd bring him a nice new coat that would fit him.
Now think about what that would entail.
First of all, she has to, you know, go out, because it wasn't like she just went down
to the Goodwill and picked up a secondhand little coat and brought it up there.
You know, she might not have even been able to go get the fabric herself.
She didn't just go to, she might not have been able to go down to a place like Joanne
Fabrics and pick out a nice pattern.
She might have even gone so far as to actually make the fabric herself.
And I don't know a lot about it, and quite frankly, a lot of people don't know a lot
about it, because we don't really have to deal with that today, but that's a very laborious
process of having to gather wool or linen and, you know, weave those things together
and, you know, just to make, get the fabric just to make the garment.
Now you got the fabric, now you have to cut out the pattern, sew it, put it all together.
It's a lot of work.
That's why today, you know, it's so much cheaper just to go buy clothes than to try to make
them yourself.
But she said, so there's the aspect of her just having to gather these materials, the
effort that went into that.
So think about the fact that she only saw this boy, as far as we know from Scripture,
once a year.
So she had, while she's making this coat, she has to think in her mind about what size
he might be.
You know, she has to look at the boys around her that are his age, you know, and start
to think about how, you know, I got to make a coat, this coat's got to be a little bit
bigger than maybe he is fit for him now, he's got to last him here, he's got to grow into
it.
What's going on here?
There's a lot of planning and intention going on in Hannah's mind.
I think it's a great picture of motherhood.
You know, this is a mother weaving something together for her child, something that's going
to fit him just right and be durable and last.
You know, we could apply that to our own, you know, to ourselves as mothers today.
You know, what are you weaving into the fabric of your child's life?
Are you planning?
Are you doing the work?
Are you cutting, do you have a pattern for your child's life?
Are you putting it together?
Is it going to fit them?
Are they going to grow into that?
I think this is a beautiful picture of motherhood, of her taking the forethought and the, you
know, having the insight and the ability and just really planning for her child to suit
him appropriately.
A little coat every year, all the forethought, all the intention and the effort that it took
for her to get Samuel that coat every year.
If you look at verse 20, it says,
And Eli blessed Elkanah and his wife and said, The Lord give the seed of this woman for the
loan which is lent to the Lord.
They went on to their own home, and the Lord visited Hannah so that she conceived and bare
three sons and two daughters, and the child Samuel grew before the Lord.
So it's not like motherhood is just this, you know, thankless task.
You know, there is a reward for motherhood, and it's more than just you get a special
day once a year where the preacher is going to stand up and laud your praises.
And there's a lot, there's a greater reward for mothers.
I mean, for Hannah here, we know that, you know, she was barren prior to this, and because
what she was willing to do, the Lord blessed her and opened her womb, and she conceived
and she had even more children.
You know, and the Bible is showing us that that's a blessing.
The fact that she had more kids was a blessing, not a curse, not an inconvenience, not a burden.
That's what she wanted.
And wouldn't it God that that's the way all women were today, that they would desire to
have children, because that's what God wants, you know, to have children is a blessing.
And God blesses her.
That was the reward.
More children for doing such a good job.
So the Lord, you know, of course the reward for the sacrifice that she made was, you know,
we could look at it numerically.
You know, she multiplied, she had more kids, there's that part of it.
But also spiritually.
If you look at the end there, it says, and the child Samuel grew before the Lord.
And of course we know Samuel goes on to become a great man of God.
I mean, he's used mightily by the Lord.
He anoints, you know, the first two kings of Israel, and he does great exploits for
the Lord.
Now, none of that would have happened if, you know, a little, just meager mother, you
know, to be, nobody knew, nobody paid any mind to, hadn't gone to that temple and prayed
for that child and lent to the Lord.
And then took the time to care for that child and wean that child and bring him back and
follow through and make the sacrifices and do all the planning.
You know, Samuel just didn't, just, you know, the stork didn't drop Samuel off at Eli's
footstep one day.
You know, it took somebody to make a sacrifice.
And that's the way it is for moms.
You know, if moms are going to have children that grow up before the Lord and do something
for God, they're going to have to make sacrifices.
You know, they're going to be the ones that are going to have to sit down with intent
and plan out what it is they're going to put and weave into their child's life spiritually
in all these other areas as well.
And here's the thing, it's worth it.
See, it sounds like a lot of work to be a mother this morning.
It is.
It's probably, you know, and I don't say this just to, again, earn brownie points or,
you know, whatever.
It's a very hard job.
I don't want, I don't think I could do it.
I mean, if I had to, I'm sure I could, but, you know, we as men, we think we work very
hard and we do.
You know, we go out and we work very hard jobs.
But here's the thing.
At some point, most of us get to punch out.
We get to come home and put our feet up and enjoy a meal.
That's not always the case with mom.
I mean, they get their breaks here and there, but they're on call 24-7.
You know, I remember there was that video people put out years ago, this fake job interview
where they had candidates come in.
They didn't tell them what the position was.
And they started to tell them about the position and they're just like, well, here's the thing.
You know, our client, you know, needs constant care and attention.
You're going to, you know, no vacations, no sick days, no holidays, no personal days.
You know, you're going to have to be there available 24-7.
They're going to need you in the middle of the night.
If you're sick, you still got to come in.
You know, they're going to be sick.
You're going to have to take care of them.
And people are like, who would do this job?
And they're like, oh, by the way, that there's no pay, just none.
There's no retirement plan.
There's no 401k, none of that.
And people are like, thanks, but no thanks.
And they're like, but what is the job?
And they're like, oh, it's called being a mother.
They're like, oh, you know.
And it was this thing that kind of guilts you into calling your mom, which you should.
But here's the thing.
You know, motherhood is a lot of work, but it's worth it.
It's worth all the sacrifice.
It's worth all the toil.
I was trying to direct it more at those of us, you know, at the mothered more than the
mothers, but it kind of turned into a sermon for both.
Go back to Proverbs chapter 23, Proverbs chapter 23.
Mothered is a very special thing.
One, you know, only half the population gets to do it.
And the rewards are exclusive to that portion of the population.
But they can make a profound impact on the world through the children that they raise.
You know, a lot of mothers aren't ever, they're never going to be lauded in today's society.
They're not going to be in the spotlight, you know, they're not going to get invited
to the White House and, you know, not that a lot of them probably want to go anyway.
You know, the world's not going to sing their praises.
In fact, today, a lot of them, they, the world, in many cases, downplays the role of a mother
unless you're a single mother, right?
But here's the thing.
It's a very special thing to do, to be, to be a mother.
And here's another aspect that I want to think about that makes it special.
The fact that you only have this life to do it.
Sorry Mormons.
It ends at this life.
You have this one time in your life to be this type, to be this person, to be a mother.
Don't let that pass you by, you know, embrace that.
You know, some people, you know, they, maybe they don't get to experience that till later
in their life, and maybe to not the degree that other ladies do, maybe they only have
a few kids, maybe they only have one child.
You know, still, all the same, embrace that, be thankful for that, it should make you even
more grateful.
But here's, here's the thing I want to, I want to close on.
Look at Proverbs chapter 23 verse 22.
It says, Hark unto the father that beget thee, and despise not thy mother when she is old.
Despise not thy mother when she is old.
Why would the Bible have to tell you to not despise your mother when she's old?
Well, maybe people have a tendency to do that, and maybe not so much despise as take her
for granted.
You know, we grow up, we become adults, and we think, well, I made it through, you know,
she's done mothering me, you know, was it really that tough, was it really that big
of a deal?
Yeah, it was.
We don't appreciate it as much as children, you know, we just, as kids, we just kind of
expect it.
Well, of course, she's going to cut the crust off, and cut it diagonally, you know, when
she feeds me, the PB&J, that's what mom does, you know?
Yeah, it's time to brush my teeth, mom, come on, you know, they just, they expect it.
And then we kind of, but when we get older, you know, we should look back on that and
be grateful, not take our mother for granted, everything that they went through.
Why should you celebrate Mother's Day today?
Because all the hard work she went through to bring you into this world, and then to
raise you to become the person that you are today, or going to become one day.
So here's a question, have you called your mother?
Have you?
Or is this just another routine holiday?
Is this another just, you know, you're going to go home and cross it off the calendar?
Well, we got through that one.
This is a, there's a reason why Mother's Day is on the calendar, to make you stop and
make you think about the fact that your mother went through a lot for you.
And that's why we're preaching the sermon this morning, to remind us of the hard work
that our mothers go through.
So let's not take our moms for granted.
Let's remember everything they did for us.
And you know, let's, let's, let's love them.
Let's pray for them.
And let's, let's, you know, and praise them for what they've done, because it's a lot
of hard work.
And none of us would be here if they had gone through it.
All right, let's go ahead and pray.