Sermon Cloud

I Will Never Forsake You

Mother’s Day.

It’s not that it’s tough to preach a Mother’s Day sermon.  It’s just that it’s tough to preach an original one.  I think a lot of mothers are a little tired of hearing sermons based on Proverbs 31.  You know.

She gets up while it’s still dark.  She is like the merchant ships, bringing her food from afar.  She considers a field and buys it.  She sees that her trading is profitable.  Many women do noble things, but you surpass them all.

That’s beautiful…if you’re bionic.

Motherhood brings many emotions.  Love for sure.  Generosity to a fault.  Sympathy and empathy.  Sensitivity.  And another one, not so pleasant.

Guilt.

Mothers are often possessed by the “shoulds.”  I should have done this.  I should have done that.  I should do this.  I should do that.  Motivated by guilt.  Sometimes, motivated even by fear.  If I don’t do that, perhaps they won’t love me.  Or, more likely, if I don’t do that, perhaps they won’t know that I love them.

So.  No Proverbs 31 today.  Instead, it’s Isaiah 49:15-21.  No fear or guilt today.  Today, it’s reassurance.  Compassion.  Restoration.  Many, many good things.

And that nicest thing of all.  We’ll be studying God…as well as motherhood.

Isaiah 49:15-21.  "Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne?  Though she may forget, I will not forget you! See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;  
your walls are ever before me. Your sons hasten back, and those who laid you waste depart from you. Lift up your eyes and look around; all your sons gather and come to you. As surely as I live," declares the Lord, "you will wear them all as ornaments; you will put them on, like a bride. "Though you were ruined and made desolate and your land laid waste, now you will be too small for your people, and those who devoured you will be far away. The children born during your bereavement will yet say in your hearing, 'This place is too small for us; give us more space to live in.' Then you will say in your heart, 'Who bore me these? I was bereaved and barren; I was exiled and rejected. Who brought these up? I was left all alone, but these—where have they come from?' "

This entire section is a great word for discouraged hearts. If you ever feel like God has forgotten you, that he has turned his back on you? Perhaps you have made mistakes and you think that God is going to punish you all the rest of your life. In our prayer requests this morning there is an appeal for a man who feels forsaken, discouraged, defeated. Many people feel that God has totally forgotten them.

Though this passage is addressed to Israel (Zion) as a nation, we Christians have a right to claim these promises for ourselves. In Hebrews 12 the writer says we believers have not come to Mt. Sinai, the mountain that cannot be touched, to the intolerable sound of the trumpet and the darkness, etc.

"But," he says, "we have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, to the heavenly Jerusalem," (Heb 12:22). Therefore these promises apply to us on a spiritual level.

We see that God shares many characteristics with mothers.  The first is remembrance.  Verse 15.  "Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne?  Though she may forget, I will not forget you!

Can a mother forget her child?  Unlikely, but tragically possible.  We’ve all heard stories of mothers who forget their children, abuse them, or even worse.  But the reason such stories are news is because they are so unusual.

Our daughter Keri and her husband Marc serve as foster parents in Cincinnati.  Often, their foster children come to them right off the front page of the Cincinnati newspaper.  Awful situations.  Abuse and neglect.

Just as an example. Keri noticed that whenever they would take two little children out to eat, they would reach for the condiments.  Ketchup and mustard.  She realized to her horror that condiments were all they had had to eat.

With awful impact of drugs and the lack of training when it comes to parenting skills, mothers DO actually forget their children.  But not often. 

You just don’t hear about a mother of five who sets a table for only four of them because she forgot one.  If she sets it for four, there’s a reason.

And God, the ultimate -- the perfect -- parent, will never, ever forget His children.  And that means that God will never, ever forget you.

Mothers might – under terrible and unusual circumstances -- forget their children, but God cannot:

Verse 16.  See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me."

Behold, I have inscribed you, engraved you on the palms of my hands." We are reminded of that scene in the gospels when Jesus, after his resurrection, appeared to his frightened disciples, huddled together in the upper room, and said to them, "Behold, my hands and my feet and see that it is I," (Luke 24:39). Those wounds in his hands were marks of love and their very names were engraved in his hands.

There’s another sense of this.  When a Jewish man would pray, he would not fold his hands as we do or put them together in prayer.  He would keep them open, palms up, to receive God’s blessing in response to his request.

So, when the Bible says that your name is engraved on the Lord’s hands, it means that His prayers are constantly for you.  He never forgets.  He never forsakes. 

And more, your walls are ever before him.  In other words, your protection is always on His mind.

That is another inherent characteristic of motherhood. Mothers protect their children.  In every way they can.  In fact, they usually strive to protect them long after it is appropriate or necessary.

God is the same, only in a much greater sense.  God is constantly looking over your situation.  Most of us don’t realize it.  Most of us don’t think we need it.  I think it’s going to come as a shock to us – when we get to heaven – just how much our Heavenly Father has protected us all through our lives.  We’ve going to be amazed.  And we’re probably all going to regret not asking for protection more often…and thanking Him more often when it was provided.

I can give you an example from just this last week when Diane and I were vacationing in South Carolina.  We were walking back from the beach.  There was beautiful foliage along the sidewalk.  And Diane heard some rustling in the underbrush.  Near a cyclone fence along a tennis court. 

“What’s that?” she wondered.  And when we looked, there, not six feet from us, was a six-foot alligator.  We weren’t in any danger.  The gator was just lying there.

Apparently, it has just eaten someone else.  Just kidding.  But there it was, literally right next to where we were walking.  And had it remained still, we would have wandered by without ever noticing.

How often does that happen in life?  How often has it happened to you?  With very real dangers, very near by?  How often has the hand of God held back the terror that could have seized you?

A man in California was taking pictures of his daughter playing on the swing in his back yard.  He wanted to take more, but the batteries went dead in his camera.  So he called his daughter inside and they did something else.  Later that week, when he had the film developed, he looked closely at the picture.  There, crouching in the underbrush, ready to attack, was a mountain lion.

You never know.  And you will never know…the degree to which God protects you.

And similarly, you will never know – until you become a mother, the degree to which you want to protect your children. And the lengths to which you will go to do so.

Then there is restoration.  Especially restoration of the family.  Verses 17-21.

Your sons hasten back, and those who laid you waste depart from you. Lift up your eyes and look around; all your sons gather and come to you. As surely as I live," declares the LORD, "you will wear them all as ornaments; you will put them on, like a bride.

Mothers love their family.  They love it when children come home.  They love it when everyone gets together.  They love reunions, holidays, birthday celebrations.  Family get-togethers of any kind.

God does, too.  There is a celebration coming.  And compared to it, every reunion or family celebration you could imagine will pale.  We’ve all seen the wonderful celebrations when soldiers come back from war.  After the battle is done.  The joy is boundless.  The men and women are safe.  No more wounds or suffering.  No more danger.

But those celebrations, wonderful as they are, are nothing compared to the celebration God is planning for every mother, every father, every child.

Mothers want restoration.  They want the family together.

God wants restoration.  He wants His whole family together.

Then, of course, there is hope.  Verse 23. 

Kings will be your foster fathers, and their queens your nursing mothers. They will bow down before you with their faces to the ground; they will lick the dust at your feet. Then you will know that I am the Lord; those who hope in me will not be disappointed."

By the way, this verse harkens back to Moses.  Didn’t God arrange for the King to be his foster father?  The queen of Egypt to be his foster mother?

Do you worry about the future of your children?  Are you frightened for their safety, concerned for their provision?  Fine.  Every parent wants the best for his or her child, and does everything possible to provide it.

But what about things that are beyond your control?  Well, God says, leave those to me.  Hope for the best.  Better still.  Hope IN the best.  And God is the best.

Memorize those words in verse 23.  Engrave THEM on the palms of your hands, so to speak.  I am the Lord; those who hope in Me will not be disappointed.

And that’s my message for Mother’s Day.  That’s my message for mothers.  And TO mothers.

God will ever remember you.  God will ever have compassion on you…AND your children.  God will always be attentive to your cry.  Seeking always to bring you and your children together…with Him.  God will always protect you, always be generous toward you, always give you reason to hope.

That is my message to you.  And now, I have a gift for you.  I’m not talking about the flower you received this morning.  I’m talking about a blessing from God that is especially relevant to you, in your role as mother.

It’s a story about regret.  About fear.  And about loving forgiveness.  It’s call the Devil and the Duck.

A little boy was visiting his grandparents on their farm.  
 
He was given a slingshot to play with out in the woods.  
 
He practiced in the woods; but he could never hit the target. 
 
Getting a little discouraged, he headed back home for dinner. 
 
As he was walking back when he saw Grandma's pet duck.  
 
Just out of impulse, he let the slingshot fly, hit the duck square in the head and killed it.  
 
He was shocked and grieved! 
 
In a panic, he hid the dead duck in the woodpile, only to see his sister watching!  
 
Sally had seen it all, but she said nothing. After lunch the next day Grandma said, 'Sally, let's wash the dishes.'  
 
Bu t Sally said, 'Grandma, Johnny told me he wanted to help in the kitchen.'  
 
Then she whispered to him, 'Remember the duck?' 
 
So Johnny did the dishes. 
 
Later that day, Grandpa asked if the children wanted to go fishing, and Grandma said, 'I'm sorry but I need Sally to help make supper.'  
 
Sally just smiled and said, 'Well that's all right because Johnny told me he wanted to help.' 
 
She whispered again, 'Remember the duck?' 
 
So Sally went fishing and Johnny stayed to help.  
 
After several days of Johnny doing both his chores and Sally's, he finally c couldn’t stand it any longer. 
 
He came to Grandma and confessed that he had killed the duck. 
 
Grandma knelt down, gave him a hug and said,  
'Sweetheart, I know. You see, I was standing at the window and I saw the whole thing, but because I love you, I forgave you.

I was just wondering how long you were going to let Sally make a slave of you.' 
 
Mothers, whatever is in your past, whatever you have done.  Or not done.  As a mother, a wife or a woman.

The devil keeps throwing it up in your face . . . (lying, cheating, debt, fear, bad habits, hatred, anger, bitterness) . . .  
 
Whatever it is, you need to know something.  God was standing at the window.  He s aw the whole thing. 
 
He has seen your whole life. He wants you to know that He loves you.  HE wants you to know that you are forgiven.

He's just wondering how long you will let the devil make a slave of you.

Listen again to Isaiah.  Listen closely.  God is talking about you.

"Can a mother forget the baby at her breast  
 and have no compassion on the child she has borne?  
       Though she may forget,  
 I will not forget you!

     See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;  
 your walls are ever before me.

     Your sons hasten back,  
 and those who laid you waste depart from you.

     Lift up your eyes and look around;  
 all your sons gather and come to you.  
       As surely as I live," declares the LORD,  
       "you will wear them all as ornaments;  
 you will put them on, like a bride.

    "Though you were ruined and made desolate  
 and your land laid waste,  
 now you will be too small for your people,  
 and those who devoured you will be far away.

    The children born during your bereavement  
 will yet say in your hearing,  
       'This place is too small for us;  
 give us more space to live in.'

     Then you will say in your heart,  
       'Who bore me these?  
       I was bereaved and barren;  
 I was exiled and rejected.  
       Who brought these up?  
       I was left all alone,  
 but these—where have they come from?' "

     This is what the Sovereign LORD says:  
       "See, I will beckon to the Gentiles,  
 I will lift up my banner to the peoples;  
 they will bring your sons in their arms  
 and carry your daughters on their shoulders.

     Kings will be your foster fathers,  
 and their queens your nursing mothers.  
       They will bow down before you with their faces to the ground;  
 they will lick the dust at your feet.  
       Then you will know that I am the LORD;  
 those who hope in me will not be disappointed."