Rev. David Holwick Q Mother's Day
First Baptist Church
Ledgewood, New Jersey
May 9, 2004
Proverbs 31:10-31
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I. Mother's day.
A. An expensive holiday:
1) Flowers from Walmart, conveniently near checkout stand.
2) Wendy's hamburger. (high-class places are too crowded)
B. Are they worth it?
1) This is not a question to ask verbally.
2) One website reports that the government calculates the
value of motherhood as $7,600 per year.
a) The estimate is 25 years old, and the minimum wage
was much less then!
b) How much would someone have to pay you to wash, cook,
and babysit 24 hours a day, 7 days a week?
3) The Bible gives its own answer - moms have very high value.
a) They are said to be worth more than rubies.
1> On the internet, you can find a ruby ring for $179.
2> On the other hand, quality rubies go for much more.
A website that focuses on gems says the beauty, rarity and
historical mystique of rubies are undeniable.
The earliest record for the mining of rubies goes back more
than 2,500 years ago in Sri Lanka.
The ancient Hindus were enchanted by the color of rubies and
considered them to be the Rajnapura or "The King of Gems."
Above all other gemstones, including diamonds, rubies command
the greatest prices per carat.
For example, in October 1988 a 16 carat faceted Mogok ruby
at Sotheby's in New York fetched a staggering $3,630,000
or $227,301 per carat.
#12648
b) The Bible adds an important qualifier - only mothers
of noble character are worth this much.
1> What is noble character? Proverbs 31 lays it out.
4) A unique section of Proverbs.
a) Most proverbs are short, pithy sayings.
b) This section is a long acrostic poem.
1> Each line begins with a letter of the alphabet.
c) More remarkable than the structure is the content.
II. She excels in relationships.
A. Her husband.
1) Corollary of saying, "Behind every successful man is a good
woman": Behind every strong woman is a decent man.
a) Not every mom is a wife, and not every wife is a mom.
b) But it is easier to be a super-mom if you have someone
supporting you.
2) She is a positive force in his life.
3) He is assumed to be a leader in the community (v. 23) and
she is just as respected.
a) Because of her, he has confidence and lacks nothing.
b) Husbands, honor your wives!
B. Her children.
1) She sees that they get the best. 31:21
a) This takes a lot of time.
In England, women with small children devote 50 hours
a week to child-care alone.
b) It also involves a lot of dirty work.
James Dobson tells the story of one family.
It was January 1992, 1 a.m.
One very tired Mom heard a cough.
She bolted from her sleep to a standing, running position,
and with one leap made it to the bathroom.
She flipped on the light to find her 6-year-old daughter
sitting on the edge of the tub.
Stuff from her tummy was all over the floor, the lid of
the toilet and all over herself.
The mom proceeded to clean the floor and surrounding areas,
then placed Sarah into the tub to wash down.
As she turned on the shower, Sarah said with a wrinkled nose,
"Mom! I threw up on Collette too!"
Collette is her 9-year-old sister who happens to share the
bed.
Mom closed the shower curtain and ran to see.
She met Collette in the hallway and she said that Sarah
had thrown up on her.
Mom turned on the bedroom light and beheld the dreaded sight
of Sarah's dinner on 5 blankets, 2 pillows, 2 sheets,
a baby blanket and Collette's pajamas.
She bundled it all onto the bottom sheet and placed it at
the back door.
She put fresh bedding on the bed and placed a bucket beside
Sarah.
She then crawled back into her own bed at which time her
well-covered, half-asleep husband asked, "WHAT'S WRONG?"!
#4260
2) She gives them faithful instruction.
a) Moms have always been the most important source of
wisdom for children.
III. She excels in industriousness.
A. Amazingly, this biblical mom doesn't stay at home.
1) She has business interests all over the place.
a) She is a real estate agent. 31:16
b) She is a farmer. (vineyard)
c) She manufactures clothes.
d) She trades for profit. 31:18
e) She even has servants.
2) Her day runs from dawn to dusk. 31:15,18
B. Not much has changed.
In the Third World, women in Tanzania, Africa, spend 4 hours
each day carrying water.
The task consumes between 12% and 27% of her daily calories.
In Mexico, a woman spends 4-6 hours a day grinding grain.
In Indonesia, women spend 3 hours a day just preparing meals.
In the rich world, Australian women do between 50 and 80 hours
of housework each week.
One survey in the United States put the figure even higher, at
99.6 hours a week.
A survey of 650 English housewives found that they vacuumed
the living room carpet an average of 215 times a year and
cleaned the bath 182 times.
#26614
[I mentioned in my sermon that my 13-year-old son, Josiah, does
does all the vacuuming in our home, with lots of complaining,
so it is only done once a month. He later informs me he does
it TWICE A DAY, so apparently he beats the fastidious English
by 239%. His dog Ollie sheds a great deal.]
1) What kind of credit do they get for all this hard work?
2) Some see a change in attitude, but others do not.
Several years before the first Gulf War, Barbara Walters
did a story on gender roles in Kuwait.
She observed that women traditionally walked about 10 feet
behind their husbands.
Walters returned to Kuwait recently and discovered men were
now walking several yards behind their wives.
Always the investigator, Walters approached a woman on the
street and asked for an explanation.
"This is marvelous!" Walters said. "What enabled women
here to achieve this reversal of roles?"
The woman replied, "Land mines!"
#5560
IV. She excels in godliness.
A. Godly values: her heart has compassion for the poor. 31:20
B. Godly perspective: she has no fear of the future.
1) Practicing simple trust in God.
2) She only fears God. 31:30
C. She knows where real value lies.
1) Superficial things like charm and beauty will fade.
2) Only our faith lasts forever.
D. Are you passing on your spiritual and moral values to your kids?
Erma Bombeck once wrote:
Someday when my children are old enough to understand the logic
that motivates a mother, I will tell them:
• I loved you enough to bug you about where you were going,
with whom, and what time you will get home.
• I loved you enough to insist that you buy a bike with your
own money, that you could afford.
• I loved you enough to be silent and to let you discover on
your own, that your boy friend was a creep.
• I loved you enough to make you return a Milky Way with a bite
out of it to a drugstore to confess that you had stolen it.
• I loved you enough to stand over you for two hours while you
cleaned your room, a job that would have taken me 15 minutes.
• I loved you enough to let you see anger, disappointment,
disgust and tears in my eyes.
• I loved you enough to admit that I was wrong and ask for your
forgiveness.
• I loved you enough to let you stumble, fall, hurt and fail.
• I loved you enough to let you assume responsibility for your
own actions at age 6, 10, or 16.
• I loved you enough to accept you for what you are, not what I
wanted you to be.
#14750
V. Give her the praise she deserves.
A. All in her household call her blessed.
B. You should tell her she's the best of them all. 31:29
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SOURCES FOR ILLUSTRATIONS USED IN THIS SERMON:
# 4260 "Who Has To Clean Up The Vomit?" by James Dobson, contributed by
Rev. Glenn Gunderson of First Baptist Church in Pomona,
California, 1998.
#12648 "Rubies, The King of Gems," unknown author;
http://www.thaigem.com/buyer_ruby.asp
#14750 "I Loved You Enough," by Erma Bombeck, quoted by Rev. Dan
Warkentin in sermon "How Moms Can Have Lasting Impact"
(sermon #16220 in Kerux Database).
#26614 "Housework - The Facts," in New Internationalist, issue 181,
March 1988; http://www.newint.org/issue181/facts.htm.
These and 25,000 others are part of a database that can be downloaded,
absolutely free, at http://www.holwick.com/database.html.html
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