OUR MOTHER AND HER CHILDREN
Dr. W. A. Criswell
2 Timothy 1:3-5
5-13-84 10:30 A.M.
This is the
pastor bringing the message entitled Our Mother and Her Children. I am
so often asked, "Pastor, what do you do when you preach through a long
series of messages, which is your custom and habit, such as preaching through
the Bible?” I preached through the Bible one time for eighteen years, and I am
now in a series of four years entitled The Great Doctrines of The Bible.
So people ask me, "What do you do about unusual
days, special days?” And I always answer, "I never hesitate to turn aside
in a series to deliver a special sermon on a special day; such as Easter,”
prepare a sermon on the resurrection on Easter, a sermon on Christmas at
Christmastime; a sermon on thanksgiving at Thanksgiving time. And as you know,
you who belonged to the church through the years, on the anniversary of the
death of the great pastor, Dr. Truett, I always prepare a message on some facet
of kingdom interest to which he gave his life. I have been doing that forty
years. And Mother's Day, unless there would be some providence that I could
never think for, I always prepare a special sermon on Mother's Day. And this
is that beautiful and meaningful day.
Turning to 2
Timothy, Paul's second letter to his young son in the ministry, Timothy;
reading the first 5 verses—to Timothy:
Paul, an
apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, according to the promise of life
which is in Christ Jesus,
To Timothy,
my dearly beloved son: Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and Christ
Jesus our Lord.
I thank God,
whom I serve from my forefathers with pure conscience, that without ceasing I
have remembrance of thee in my prayers day and night; Greatly desiring to see
thee, being mindful of thy tears, that I may be filled with joy; When I call
to remembrance the unfeigned faith that is in thee, which dwelt first in thy
grandmother Lois, and thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded that in thee also.
[2
Timothy 1;1-5]
“The unfeigned faith that dwelt first in thy grandmother
Lois, and in thy mother Eunice; and I am persuaded," you inherited it from
them, “it dwells in thee also.”
I doubt
whether I've ever been pastor of a church that didn't have a TEL class in it,
Timothy, Eunice, and Lois; grandmother, mother and son. So we speak of our
mother and her children, her babies. Long, long time ago I heard a story that
I have oft repeated. It just meant so much to me in the sure and precious
interpretation of life when I heard it.
In the gold
rush in California back in the—in the 1849s—in the gold rush in California,
there was a mother who took her baby to the theater. And when the orchestra
began to play, the baby began to cry. And when the baby began to cry, an old
prospector, grizzled and rough, stood up, and he said, "Stop those fiddles
and let this baby cry. I ain't heard a sound like that in well nigh twenty
years!" So the orchestra stopped, and the baby did its thing, and the
people applauded uproariously.
I just think
that is so beautiful a facet of life; marriage is never a howling success until
the baby is born, never. And a church is never a howling success until the
nurseries are filled with babies. Any time you see a healthy baby, it will be
pink in its complexion, but it will also be a loud yeller, inevitably—these
morning callers, and noonday crawlers, and midnight bawlers, the little
citizens of Lapland—are the very spice and heart and spectrum of life itself.
Some time
ago I was preaching through Nigeria, just all over that West African nation.
And they took me out in the bush—way, way out, where some of those
missionaries, a nurse and a doctor had a makeshift dispensary, a movable
hospital made out of brush and arbor—and they were ministering to all of those
primitives out there in that bush country. So they thought it would be so very
nice and impressive if I would go back home and bring with me a picture that
they take of my holding one of those little babies in my arms. Now it's very
primitive, and they don't wear any clothes until they are of such-and-such an
age. So the baby didn't have any dipey or anything else, and they placed the
little thing in my arms. And here I am holding it, ready for the picture, and
to my amazement, it just ruined me! It just ruined me. I looked down. Oh,
dear! I had forgotten that a baby is an alimentary canal with a loud noise at
one end and no responsibility at the other. And as they grow up, they are so
interesting; no dull or boring moments around those little children.
The little
fellow asked his mother as she held the latest little one in her arms, he said,
"Mother, why doesn't baby talk?” And mother replied, "Well, sonny,
little babies don't talk." And the lad replied, "Well, that's not
what I learned in Sunday school. Last Sunday my teacher read to us out of the
Bible, and it said, "Job cursed the day he was born." They are
always interesting in their observations of life or their response to life is
an education in itself. This mother was getting her little boy ready for a
tonsillectomy—he was going to the hospital to have his tonsils cut out—so she
was encouraging him to be brave, you know. And the little lad replied,
"Well, Mommy, I'm going to be brave, but I don't want no crying baby put
off on me like they did you when you were in the hospital." The little
boy added, "I want a pup!" But the child and the mother is the very
heart of God's kingdom, and it moves in that spectrum.
When I was a
youth, I went to Springfield, Illinois, and there visited the shrine of the
tomb of Abraham Lincoln, those soft and long and dimly-lit corridors, and the
sarcophagus. And in back of it the words of the Secretary of War Stanton, when
his life ebbed away, “He now belongs to the ages.” And then later I was in
Washington and looking at one of the most impressive monuments in the earth,
the monument to Abraham Lincoln rising above the Potomac River and facing the
Mall and the Washington Monument and the Capitol and the governmental
buildings—and the heroic statue of Abraham Lincoln seated inside that great
marble monument.
Then in the
days that I was a young pastor of a village church in Kentucky, driving from
the seminary to my pastorate, I passed by Hodgenville. And there is another
gloriously beautiful and effective monument to Abraham Lincoln who was born in
that place. And under that marble structure is one of the humblest and
smallest log cabins I have ever seen. That is where the great president was
born. And incised on the marble wall just beyond the little cabin is the word
of Abraham Lincoln, "All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel
mother."
They were
Baptists, his father and his mother; and his home was a Baptist home. And
Nancy Hanks Lincoln, his mother, died when the boy was about ten years or nine
years of age. And the father, with the boy, out of rough-hewn lumber made a
coffin. And the lad, with his father, buried his mother when he was so small a
lad. And that word, "All that I am or ever hope to be, I owe to my angel
mother," is so descriptive and reflective of the course of human history.
The whole world follows in that vein and in that direction. It is colored, it
is shaped, it is changed, it is molded by these wonderful, godly,
Christ-honoring mothers.
I read as
you do, in the eleventh chapter of the Book of Hebrews, a glorious tribute to
Moses. And in that tribute the author of Hebrews says:
When he came
of age, he refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter;
Choosing
rather to suffer affliction with the people of God,
than to enjoy
all of the pleasures and blandishments of the greatest courts in the world for
just a season...
For he
endured, as looking unto Him who is invisible.
[Hebrews 11:24-27]
How could
such a thing be in the life of this child who grew up in the court of the
greatest empire in that known world? The answer is easily found. In that day
when Pharaoh had decreed the death—the destruction of every male child in the
Hebrew family—Jochebed, the mother of this latest little baby, took the
youngster, put the little thing in an ark, in a basket, and set it among the
flags on the edge of the Nile River where the princess, the daughter of
Pharaoh, came down to bathe. And seeing the basket, they fetched it for her.
And when she opened the ark, there was the little baby; and it cried. Close by
was Miriam, the daughter of Jochebed and Amram, and the sister of the little
baby. And she ran to the princess when she saw the princess look upon the
little child and asked if she might fetch a nurse that the child be brought up
as her—Pharaoh's daughter's child. And when the princess acquiesced, the girl
Miriam fetched the mother, the baby's mother, Jochebed. And the princess paid
the mother to nurse the child for her and to rear the youngster in her name.
Isn't that a remarkable thing? In those brief and formative years, that mother
so instilled, in the heart and memory of that little growing boy the God of
Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Israel, that in the after-years,
the Book could say, "He endured as seeing Him who is invisible."
There's no
one of you that is familiar with, conversive with all of the gods of Egypt. In
the innermost sanctuary they would worship an ox, or a crocodile, or a serpent,
or a bird. But this lad; taught as a small, small child the great omnipotent
God of the universe who is invisible, and he never departed from it. The whole
story is a repetition of that commitment to mother's God.
In the third
chapter of the first Book of Samuel, it says, "And all Israel from Dan to
Beersheba knew that this lad was set to be a prophet in Israel," [1
Samuel 3:20] taught and loved by his mother, Hannah. Isn't that a
glorious reflection of the prayerful life of that wonderful mother? The story
continues, it's here in the text that I read this morning, "The faith that
is in thee, Timothy, my young son in the ministry, it was first in thy
grandmother Lois, and in thy mother Eunice; and now it lives incarnate in thee
also."
And if we
had time to go through the whole story of human history, it would never vary.
It is ever the same, always the same. Augustine was the most brilliant and
gifted of the ancient Latin fathers. I suppose Augustine is one of the
greatest intellects, one of the most endowed men of mind who ever lived.
Augustine, as a young man, was impervious to the Christian faith. He was a
vile and evil young man, and he was a Greek philosopher. He was studied and
learned in the classics of Greek literature and culture. And as a pagan and as
a heathen, he lived a vile and impossible life, but he had a mother. Her name
was Monica. When you go out to California, Santa Monica—Monica; that
mother was a devout, humble, Christian, God-fearing, prayer-believing woman.
And she prayed for that boy so constantly and so fervently that the pastor of
the church at Carthage in North Africa said to her, "Woman, go thy way.
The child of so many prayers could not be lost." And if you read the Confessions
of Augustine, that will be one of the sentences that you'll read in it, what
the pastor said to Monica. And you'll also read in the unusual, unusual piece
of literature, the marvelous conversion of Augustine: “Mother; A Tribute To A
Mother's Prayers.”
I haven’t
time to speak of Constantine, the first Christian Roman Caesar. He had a
wonderful Christian mother, Helena. Some of these historians say she was a
British girl, that Constantius found her in England and married her there.
Some historians say that, but all of the historians speak of the beautiful,
devout, Christian life of Helena; and Constantine, who changed the course of
Western civilization, is a product, the fruit, a trophy of the praying of that
wonderful Christian mother.
Nor do I
have time to speak of Vladimir, the first Russian czar. In the [nine
hundreds], Vladimir embraced the Christian faith and opened the doors of all of
the vast domains of Russia to the orthodox faith, to the Christian faith. How
could it be? He had a grandmother named Olga, the most respected and loved of
all of the women in the history of Russia. He had a grandmother named Olga who
was a devout Christian in that rough and barbaric land, and she prayed and
guided the footsteps of that grandson, like Eunice and Lois did Timothy. And
Vladimir became a child of the King, a disciple of Christ, and filled Russia
with those great churches and schools. It's an everlasting story.
And do I
mistake? Am I overly persuaded? When I look at you and say almost certainly
the reason you bow in the presence of our Lord and open your heart heavenward
and Christward to Him is because of your praying mother. The men and the women
in this congregation and these who listen on media by the thousand say,
"Pastor, yes. Amen. My godly and wonderful mother opened the door of
faith and commitment and devotion for me."
When I think
of how God has entrusted so much to mother, I am almost overwhelmed. I can
almost say I can hardly believe that God does such a thing, such an
entrustment. Let me show you what I mean. All through this Old Testament I
read of Christophanies, theophanies—appearances of our Lord Christ before His
incarnation—the preexistent Christ. And when I come to the New Testament, one
of the gospels will start like that:
In the beginning was the Logos,
and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God...
and the Logos was made flesh, and dwelt among us,
and we beheld the glory of God, full of grace and truth.
[John 1:1, 14]
That is the
Word of the Lord, I read it in the Bible. Then when I begin to think of it,
Lord, Lord, how could such a thing be? The preexistent Christ, the Logos
of God, the active God, the God of thought and of deed, the only God we'll ever
see and ever know, when I think of the preexistent God, and He was placed in a
cell, in a cell, in the womb of a virgin girl named Mary—God incarnate—and He
was born as a baby, and He grew up in her arms as a baby; Almighty God, how
could such a thing be? I don't know how you could conceive of a greater
tribute to motherhood than the entrustment of the preexistent, theophanic
Christ to the womb of a virgin girl named Mary. But that's the gospel we
preach, that's the message we proclaim—that's our hope of heaven. It's the
Christian faith; it's God's confidence in mother. And I just see that
everywhere and have all of my life. Nor do I persuade myself that I'm bringing
things new to you when I avow it.
Meandering
around one time the streets of Chicago, I inadvertently turned into the Pacific
Garden Mission where Billy Sunday was converted. And as I walked in the
Mission and looked at it, I was dumbfounded. I was amazed. On that side of
the pulpit was written in large letters "John 3:16." And then on the
other side in those same large block letters was written, "When did you
last write to mother? And I looked at that in amazement, how could you equate
the incomparable gospel message expressed in John 3:16 with "When did you
last write to mother?"
And as I
stood there and looked at that, then it began to come to my heart as it does
yours when I speak of it now. The drifter, and the wayward, and the prodigal,
and the lost—coming into that Pacific Garden Mission looking at that question,
"When last did you write to mother?" We think back to the memory of
that prodigal home; the Bible, the church, mother's prayers, mother's love, mother's
God. They are synonymous in the heart of the man that did that. On this side
God, and on this side the best evidence of God's love in the world, a praying
mother.
And as I
thought, God be praised for these who have nurtured us, borne us—borne us, took
care of us when we couldn't take care of ourselves. Lord, be praised for our
godly mothers, loving God, honoring the church, praying for us, paying the
price of our salvation. And how rich and beautiful, how eternal and
everlasting must be her reward in heaven.
If I should be living when Jesus comes,
And could know the day and the hour,
I'd like to be standing at Mother's grave,
When Jesus comes in His power.
There's coming a time when I can go home,
To meet my family there.
Then I shall see Jesus upon His throne,
In that bright city so fair.
‘Twill be a wonderful, happy day,
Gathered on that golden strand,
When I can hear Jesus, my Savior saying,
"Son, greet your mother again.”
[Author
and work unknown]
It's a precious hope, it's a beautiful promise. It's
the heart of our Christian faith, and that's our invitation for you this day.
