Thoughts on Mother's Day

Thoughts on Mother’s Day, 2013 Mt. 16:25 The passage we are going to be meditating on this morning is found in Mt. 16, and it is verse 25. How many of you ladies are glad we aren’t turning to Prov. 31? That is the passage where the qualities of the excellent wife are laid out, and so there are many pastors around the country preaching out of Prov. 31 this morning. And I always feel bad for the mothers when that chapter is being taught because the standard is set awfully high. On the other hand, I doubt if you’ve ever thought about this verse in the context of Mother’s Day, but I believe there is a truth in here that is beautifully exemplified by motherhood. When we think of motherhood, we often think of it in positive terms, don’t we? I once asked an audience to tell me what terms came to mind when they thought of their mothers, and the terms were all positive – loving, caring, patient, sacrificial, kind, selfless, hard-working, gentle, serving, and so forth. But I hope you can appreciate that if the demographics of our group were a little different – in other words, if we weren’t rural, educated, and middle class – we wouldn’t be hearing such endearing terms. All around our country there are people who would describe their mothers as selfish, addicted, aloof, abusive, or even evil. For most of us, motherhood conjures up warm, positive feelings; but for many, motherhood conjures up images of pain and alienation and rejection. We are all disgusted when we hear stories of mothers who give birth and then abandon their newborn babies in dumpsters, or starve them because they need money for drugs, or drug them so they can beg for money, or discipline them by keeping them chained to a radiator. And the reason we recoil when we hear these stories is because these kinds of actions are so aberrant. They are contrary to nature. So we are familiar with good mothering, and bad mothering, and then, of course, there are all kinds of mothers between these two ends of the spectrum. So when we think about mothers, the question comes up, what separates an outstanding mother from a good mother from a mediocre mother from a terrible mother? And I believe the key is in this verse we find in Matthew 16:25. “For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake shall find it.” In the immediate context, Jesus is talking about your eternal destiny. Biblical Christianity is all about dying to self and living for God. We offer our bodies as living sacrifices (Rom. 12:1), we die daily (1 Cor. 15:31), we put to death the deeds of the flesh (Rom. 8:13) – and we do this because it is that mortification of the flesh that opens the way to eternal life in the presence of God. That is the specific point Jesus is making. But at the same time, we can generalize this concept by saying that Jesus is also teaching, in broad terms, that when you make self the focus of your life, you will ultimately end up missing your goal. In other words, if you make your goals and your comforts and your plans and your desires the focus of your life’s energy, you will end up tragically short of what you are living for. And it is this matter of dying to self that separates the excellent mother from the good mother from the mediocre mother. I can state this same principle positively by saying that it is living for someone else that sets the excellent mother apart from the average mother. So what I want to show you this morning is three ways excellent motherhood exemplifies this principle of dying to self, or living for someone else. We see it first of all in the very activity that makes a woman a mother – childbirth. When a woman conceives and then chooses to carry that new life for nine months and then give birth to the child, she is demonstrating this principle of losing her life to gain something greater. And she does it in two ways. First of all, she is exemplifying dying to self from the perspective that her life, and her goals, and her comforts, and her personal space, and her time, and sometimes even her dreams are basically put on hold for the next 18 years, or until that point when the child leaves the home and starts his own life. When you think of all the physical inconveniences a mother goes through year after year after year when she is raising her family; all the sleepless nights, all the runny noses and dirty diapers, the tedium of being at home all day long when the husband gets to go out and go to work – the mother who excels in this environment is the mother who has a firm grasp of this principle of dying to self and investing her life in her children. When I was in college I did yard work every weekend for a couple of years for a very successful young couple. He was CPA, and she was a doctor in the local hospital. When I first started working for them, she had just had a baby and was on a 12 month maternity leave (which she should be commended for – companies are only required by law to give you 12 weeks!), and then went back to her practice. She would drop her baby off at a Nanny’s house every day on her way to the hospital, and then pick him up again on the way home. And it wasn’t uncommon for them to bring in a Nanny for the weekend when Clemson was playing and they would have a big party. They did not want to be saddled with the responsibility of child oversight when they were getting ready for and then hosting the party. That is not an example of dying to self and investing your life in something important. Where was her time being spent? Where were her energies being expended? Many of us here today grew up under mothers who were highly capable and tremendously talented who could have pursued lucrative careers outside the home – yet they gave it all up to raise their children and nurture their family. That is excellent motherhood. Secondly, when a woman conceives and gives birth, she is demonstrating this principle in a very real way because childbirth is an activity that genuinely puts the life of the mother at risk. When you consider everything a woman goes through in those nine months of pregnancy, and then add to it the trauma of labor and childbirth, I can’t come up with a better illustration of this principle of dying to self. Fortunately for us today, medical care has come a long way in the last 200 years, but the mortality rate for birth-giving women in the 1800’s was sometimes as high as 40%! That is hard to comprehend, isn’t it? If you got pregnant in the early 1800’s, you basically had a 50 – 50 chance that you were going to die in the process. At the beginning of the 1900’s it was down to about 1 in 100, and today it stands at about 24 per 100,000, or .024 %!1 So today the decision to give birth isn’t as “life and death” as it was 200 years ago, but you can see how the decision to actually carry through with the pregnancy and give birth is a great illustration of this principle that defines excellent motherhood. I remember after Holly gave birth to Julie Ann, I was so traumatized by the ordeal that I told her, “no more babies! We’re done!” That attitude is the exact opposite of what I’m talking about here in excellent motherhood. And unfortunately, this is precisely the attitude that is so prevalent in the pro-choice movement. Many times, the driving force behind the decision to abort is the impact the child is going to have on the mother. She’s either on a career track, or doesn’t want to be saddled with the responsibility of motherhood, especially if the father is nowhere around, or simply doesn’t want the inconvenience that pregnancy and parenting necessarily involves. So do you see how excellent motherhood is demonstrated by childbirth? Few things exemplify this principle of dying to self like this does. The third way excellent motherhood illustrates this principle of dying to self is by living in front of your children in such a way as to perpetuate the next generation of excellent motherhood. This is something I feel like I can speak with authority about (unlike childbirth), because if being an excellent mother is anything like being an excellent father, it’s easier to talk about being an excellent mother than it is to actually be an excellent mother. It’s easier to be an excellent mother at church than it is to be an excellent mother at home. But being an excellent mother demands that you live in front of your children, in the home, in such a way as to perpetuate the next generation of excellent motherhood. Little boys learn how to father by watching their own fathers, and little girls learn how to mother by watching their own mothers. I came across a good quote the other day. “Children have never been very good at listening to their parents, but they have never failed to imitate them.” So moms, if you are going to be excellent mothers, you are going to have to live it out in the most difficult arena there is, the home. I believe the greatest legacy my first wife left our children was her walk with God. Almost every morning when I woke up, she was already awake and reading her Bible in bed. And I am immensely blessed and our children are fortunate that Nancy has perpetuated that very same legacy. The two most enduring memories I have of my own Mother are her prayers during family devotions (and you could tell by her prayers that she had a vital relationship with God), and her fasting and praying every Saturday for nearly two years for her out-of-control teenage son who happens to be your pastor today. I have been blessed in my lifetime to see outstanding examples of excellent mothering in the trenches of life at home, and Moms, I assure you that living your faith in front of your children involves this principle we are talking about – dying to self. It is no easy thing to live in a biblically consistent way, day in and day out, year after year, in the home, but that is one of the marks of excellent motherhood. In the Bible we have many wonderful examples of this, the most prominent one in my estimation being Timothy’s mother and grandmother. The Apostle Paul tells us in 2 Tim. 1:5, “I am mindful of the sincere faith within you, which first dwelt in your grandmother Lois, and your mother Eunice, and I am sure that it is in you as well.” It is very curious that there is the absence of a father or grandfather being mentioned in Timothy’s spiritual lineage. And I believe illustrates the profound impact a godly mother can have. We don’t know if Eunice was a single mom, or simply married to an unsaved man, but the testimony of Scripture is that she was directly responsible for the successful transmission of her faith to her son. That is excellent mothering. It doesn’t require a degree, it doesn’t require education, it doesn’t require lots of resources at your disposal, it doesn’t require a nice house, or a husband, or lots of money. What it does require is living for others and not yourself. So as we think about the spectrum of mothering types, we see all kinds of mothers in our society, but hopefully for you mothers this morning, your goal is to be an excellent mother. You know as well as I do that the absence of children in the home makes no difference – you never stop being a mother. And I can assure you that every mother here is already on the path to being an excellent mother! How do I know that? Because of you willingness to go through with the pregnancy and give birth to your children. But that is only the first mark. It needs to be followed up by nurturing and raising the child instead of delegating that responsibility to someone else. And then it needs to be carried on by living in front of your children in such a way as to perpetuate the next generation of excellent motherhood.

Introduction to Revelation

This morning we start our study of Revelation. As tempting as it is to jump right into chapter one and start looking at the message God has for us in this great book, we have to take the time to set up the foundation we are going to be building on for the next few months (years). The planks that we lay down this morning will determine where we end up as we go through the book. Now, I want to start by warning you that Revelation is a complex book. We have talked before about how the Scriptures are simple, but not simplistic; and Revelation is about as good an illustration of this truth there is. Vast amounts of ink has been spilt writing books about it, churches split over how to interpret it, profiteers make lots of money claiming to have unlocked its secrets, and in general, Revelation can be controversial. And in light of this, let me make something explicitly clear right here at the beginning of this series. There is no doctrine in the book of Revelation that you have to believe in order to be genuinely saved. Now of course, the clarification here is that yes, Revelation talks about Jesus and you have to believe in Jesus to be saved. Revelation talks about God, and you have to believe in God to be saved. But there is no doctrinal issue that Revelation teaches that is vital to your salvation. For instance, there are people who believe that everything that goes on in the book of Revelation has already taken place. And believe it or not, they have evidence to back them up in the repeated insistence of John that the things in the book will take place soon, or quickly, or shortly. They would insist that there is nothing futuristic about it at all, that everything John prophesies was fulfilled by AD 70 when Titus destroyed Jerusalem. They would say that there is benefit in reading it because it is part of the inspired Word of God, but as far as giving us any insight into the future, Revelation has no value. You are going to be spending eternity in heaven with these people! Now of course, they will have changed their view by then, but for right now, they are genuinely born again followers of Christ. So in a nutshell, and this is the first plank in our foundation, just keep in mind that how you interpret Revelation has no bearing on the legitimacy or illegitimacy of your salvation. I can promise you that I am going to say things you disagree with. But don’t let that throw you for a loop. We can agree to disagree over these issues of secondary importance. The second plank I want to lay down has to do with keeping your focus on the big picture. When we study the book of Revelation, we run the same risk we had when we studied Leviticus. Leviticus is full of curious, even odd details, and our tendency is to focus on the minutia and miss the main point. I gave you the illustration at the beginning of that series that will serve us well now as we get into Revelation. Do you remember the man who had the house on Long Island with the huge picture window overlooking the ocean? He invited his friend over to show him the view, and the visitor walked over to the window and started examining the molding around the window. He said, “Is this cherry?” And the owner said, “Well, yes it is, but look at this amazing view.” And the visitor said, “I’ve never seen this design before. Did you make this trim yourself? It’s exquisite.” And the owner said, “Yes, I did make it myself, but what do you think about this view?” And the visitor looks at the corners and says, “You did an amazing job joining these corners – you are an incredible carpenter.” And the owner said, “Why, thank you. But what about this view? Isn’t it amazing?” If we aren’t careful, we’ll spend all our time scrutinizing the incidentals and miss the big picture. So I want to warn you in advance that we aren’t going to spend a lot of time speculating about all the bizarre things you will read in this book. What those creatures are that come out of the abyss with the body of a horse that can sting with its tail and has hair like a woman and teeth like a lion isn’t important. The point of that passage is in no way tied to their identity. So we are going to keep our focus on the big picture. The third plank we need to lay down has to do with the type of literature we are dealing with when we read Revelation. When you pick up a book and start reading, and the first sentence says, “A long time ago in a land far away there lived a beautiful princess,” you know you are reading a fairy tale and you are going to follow a certain set of guidelines as you interpret it. And those guidelines are going to be very different from the ones you will follow when you pick up a book that says on the cover, “A Thorough History of the Civil War.” And the way you read that history book is going to be different from how you read a James Michner historical novel. Because even though the Michner book is rooted in real history, he takes liberties with the facts and it isn’t designed to convey genuine history. In the same way that we have a variety of literature types in the English language, you need to understand that the Bible is comprised of a variety of literature types as well. We have historical sections where the author simply records the events of the age. We have prophetic sections where prophecies of the future are made. We have poetry where the author uses highly figurative language to convey concrete truths. We have what is called wisdom literature (Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon) and there are special guidelines we follow for interpreting them. We have the gospels and the epistles, two distinctly different types of literature. And then we have a type of literature in the Bible called apocalyptic, which we’ll talk about in a minute. Each of these types of literature has a specific set of rules you need to follow to interpret it correctly. If you try to interpret the historical sections of the Bible the same way you interpret the epistles, you are going to get into trouble very quickly. If you try to interpret the book of Proverbs the way you interpret the book of James, you are going to have problems. And when it comes to this matter of apocalyptic literature, which is what Revelation is, there are some very specific ways we need to view it. So what is apocalyptic literature? The full definition is “the communication of a vision using spectacular imagery [do you see how Revelation is already fitting into this definition?] designed to move the recipient beyond his current situation and into a transcendent reality.” What that means is that apocalyptic literature is designed to broaden the readers perspective and help him see reality. “The result is a reversal that makes heavenly mysteries real, and the earthly situation temporary.” From a historical perspective, what is curious is that apocalyptic literature flourished when God’s people (both Jew and Christian) were being persecuted (in Daniel’s day during the Babylonian captivity, inter-testamental period between Malachi and Matthew, the 60’s AD). So what we see is that the purpose behind apocalyptic literature is to bring assurance and comfort to those in doubt or undergoing persecution. The overall message of Revelation is that God wins! Good ultimately triumphs, evil ultimately is punished, so don’t throw in the towel when things seem hopeless. Yes, you may die in the process, but that is when you really start living! That is the basic message of Revelation and it is seen in the 12 references in the book to “the one who overcomes.” Let me give you two things to keep in mind about apocalyptic literature. 1) As a form of communication, it is even less direct than poetry. 2) The message uses symbols, drama, cataclysmic images, vivid imagery and hyperbolic language. One author puts it this way, “In apocalyptic, nothing is revealed in a straightforward fashion.” And it is because of this intentional vagueness that followers of Christ have interpreted the book with such diversity over the years. As I said earlier, there are some who think that everything in the book has already taken place – there is nothing futuristic about it at all. This is the preterist viewpoint. The historical perspective is that the events of the book describe world events starting from the days of the Apostle John and going through the end of the age. For instance, the breaking of the 7 seals in Rev. 6 and 7 refer to the Barbarian invasions that sacked the Western Roman Empire, the scorpion / locusts that come out of the pit in Rev. 9 are the Arab hordes attacking the Eastern Roman Empire, and the beast of Rev. 13 was the Roman Papacy. Interestingly enough, this was the prevailing perspective in the church for hundreds and hundreds of years. In fact, the biggest names in Christendom held to this perspective: Wycliffe, Knox, Tyndale, Luther, Calvin, Zwingli, Jonathan Edwards, George Whitefield, Charles Finney, C. H. Spurgeon, etc. The predominant school of thought today in evangelical circles is the futuristic perspective. This is the idea that all the events from chapter 4 through the end of the book have yet to take place. They say the symbolism and imagery is an attempt by the author to describe things that could not be expressed in the vocabulary of the day (i.e. a nuclear explosion being described as a star falling into the sea). Unfortunately, this preoccupation with interpreting the symbols and imagery has caused this perspective to come into some disrepute. I can remember hearing sermons about a special breed of red heifers being bred in Arkansas for use in the temple sacrificial system, and a special limestone being quarried in Tennessee for use in rebuilding the temple, and a computer in Belgium that is called the beast, and the list goes on and on. It’s all rumor, and speculation, and sensationalism and the net effect is that of discrediting the futuristic view. The final perspective on how to interpret Revelation is called the idealist method. You could also call it the “spiritualists” method, or the “allegorical” method, or the “symbolic” method. However you want to label it, the focus is on a non-literal interpretation. The idealist doesn’t focus on either historical or future events, but on the spiritual truth that underlies the story. He would say that the text isn’t about swords and dragons but about God’s Word and Satan. So the obvious question is, how are we supposed to interpret it? Out of the four possibilities, which one am I going to follow? And the answer is, none of them exclusively. Each one of these viewpoints has merit, which is why each perspective has godly adherents. But if you try to follow any of them rigidly, you will eventually run up against indefensible interpretations. I want to close with a word of warning. After all this talk about how difficult this book is, and how there no consensus of opinion in the evangelical world about what much of it means, and how it is purposefully vague, and about how there are no critical doctrines in it, our response may be to throw up our hands and say, “Why bother?” Let me give you three reasons why we are going to do this. First of all, Revelation is in the Bible and therefore worthy of our time and effort. Secondly, Revelation is the only book of the Bible where we have an explicit promise given to us if you hear it read out loud. I want that blessing for us! And finally, by way of illustration, if you knew that the IRS was going to audit you this coming Dec. 21, when would you start getting ready for that audit? Probably sometime in Oct. or even November. On the other hand, if you got a notice from the IRS that said, “we are going to audit you soon,” when would you start to get your books in order? Right away, right? The uncertainty of when the audit was going to take place would keep you in a place of readiness and expectation. That is a large part of what is going on in Revelation. God is coming back and He is going to judge the world in righteousness and justice and we better be ready. If Revelation was as clear and straightforward as the epistles, and if we could interpret the symbols and figures and ascertain when all these things would take place, we’d be lulled into a sense of complacency. God doesn’t want that. He wants us on our toes. He wants looking for His return. This is why He tells us in Rev. 3:2, “Wake up!” We do not know when the end is going to come, nor can we figure it out from what we see in Revelation. So we are going to whet our appetite for the Lord’s return by studying this book, and we are going to follow the advice Jesus gives in Mt. 24:42 – “Be on the alert, for you do not know which day your Lord is returning.”