Mother's Day - Behold, Your Mother - John 19:25-27

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Introduction
In the 1600’s, there was a church declared holiday in England for those in the working class who served their families. They were allowed not to work, to travel to their home towns to be with families, to have a holiday from the fasting and penance of lent in order to enjoy a feast. The holiday was declared by the church as Mothering Day. This clerical declaration is probably the origin on the day that we now know as mother’s day sans all the commercialization.

Describing the Biblical Text
As we look at our text this morning, we see a very poignant picture of the cross.
Jesus is dying and as he is hanging there and bearing the penalty for the sins of His people, He sees his mother in the crowd and immediately makes provision for her before He dies.

Narrate the Contextual application
We see here a man who was dying.
He literally had the weight of the world on His shoulders and yet in hid dying hours, he remembered that His mother needed care and he made the provision for it.
Jesus was simply doing what he knew the scriptures would demand and that would be to honor his father and his mother.
No one really knows what happened to Joseph but it has been surmised that he had passed away but Jesus mother, Mary is still there at his death.

Life Application (thesis)
We need to remember that even though the Law cannot save us because we cannot perfectly keep it, it is still the standard by which we are judged by God.
The only person who ever did fully keep the Law was Jesus and he continued to honor his mother even at His death.
The conclusion that we must draw then is this.
We are to honor our mothers throughout our lives.


SO WHAT!! (Outline)
As we consider this theme this morning let’s look at 2 principles on which we can build lives of honor to our mothers.
We cannot ignore our mothers due to our circumstances.
In 1999, there were more than 1.6 million people living in nursing homes.
When you think about that you have to wonder just how many of those people were forgotten moms. You know what I mean. Bobby and Susie had gone out gotten married, had kids, made a name for themselves and then Mom got sick so they checked her in to the home and they show up to see on mother’s day or maybe her birthday or to take the kids by to get their annual 5 dollar bill on their birthdays.

The scarier part of that though is that it might be us one day.
What has tended to happen is that people have gotten bogged down just trying to make ends meet, taking the kids from soccer to karate and meeting with the PTA, the civic association, the lodge and the Lions club.
In the midst of those circumstances, we start to overlook the relationship with the woman who brought us into the world and who wiped our snotty little noses and fixed our meals as we grew up.
I wonder what our lives would be like if our mothers would have treated us the way that we treated them as they aged and as we grew up.
I doubt that we would be the same people that we are now.
We would be like the kids raised by wolves and living off raw fish and tree roots.
Our moms did a lot for us.
I believe that I am a follower of Jesus right now because My mom prayed for me to get saved

None of us can probably imagine the pain and the suffering associated with something like a crucifixion.
It is horrendous to even think about and as graphic as the passion of the Christ was, I don’t think it did justice to the suffering of our Lord.
Yet, in the midst of the suffering of the cross he looked up and saw his mother.
He honored her.
He made sure that her care would be given for her whole life by declaring her to be John’s mother.
He kept the fifth commandment even in his dying hours.

Bearing that in mind you may or may not remember some of the criticism that he heaped on the Jewish leaders over their practice of corban.
In Mark 7, the Jewish leaders confront Jesus about his disciples eating without ceremonially washing their hands and Jesus comes back at them accusing them of dismissing the law for the sake of their traditions.
And, He uses the practice of corban as his example.
Listen to these verses from Mark 7 as Jesus answers the Pharisees.
Neglecting the commandment of God, you hold to the tradition of men.” He was also saying to them, “You are experts at setting aside the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition. “For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘He who speaks evil of father or mother, is to be put to death’; but you say, ‘If a man says to his father or his mother, whatever I have that would help you is Corban (that is to say, given to God),’ you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or his mother; thus invalidating the word of God by your tradition which you have handed down; and you do many things such as that.

Honoring our mothers is nothing short of obeying the will of God.
In their older age, it is our responsibility to care for them and to keep them.
It is our responsibility to meet their needs as best we can with the resources that the Lord provides.
In our younger age is our responsibility to obey and listen to them.
It is our responsibility to honor them and our circumstances become secondary to the privilege and opportunity to obey God by honoring our mothers.

Our second principle this morning in reality is just a restatement of our thesis.
Honoring our mothers is a lifelong responsibility.
Of course as we see Jesus on the cross, he is remembering his mother.
It is not as often that we see parents outliving children yet in the case of Jesus, he dies around the age of 33 leaving his mom in the hands of John the disciple whom Jesus’ loved.
You might be thinking, “What if my mom was never very supportive of me or hates my wife or has disowned me?”
In Mark 3, there is a passage where Jesus mother and brothers are trying to speak with Him and the implication is that they think he is maybe not exactly doing what he ought to be doing.
Actually, they think he might be crazy.
So, she was not exactly supportive of his ministry all the way through even though she treasure all that stuff in heart when he was born.
Did Jesus hold that grudge; did he forget or write off his mom?
No, He remembered her and he cared for her.
We have no less a responsibility.

I think that it is important that we see this take place while he was on the cross.
I divine transaction was taking place.
You see, Jesus was paying the price of sin and ransoming himself for the salvation of His people.
He was dying to give life to all those who would follow Him.
It behooves us this morning then to ask the question, “Are you a follower of Jesus Christ?
What does it mean to be a follower of Jesus?
It means that we have come to a place in our lives that we have understood our absolute wretchedness before God because of our sin.
We have violated the law of God and because of that, we stand poised for Judgment and the wrath of God is upon us.
Unless of course Jesus, in his death on the cross, paid the price for your sins.
We have become jaded in our view of what salvation is because we want to count decisions.
But if we really look at Biblical salvation, it is not walking an aisle and repeating a prayer.
That is a modern perversion of what salvation is.
Salvation is following Jesus Christ and living for him to the Glory of God.
Being saved is realizing your pure wretchedness before God and then realizing that Only God through the cross of Christ can remedy that.
It is calling on Christ by the faith that God gives through His grace because we realize that God’s mercy through the cross is the only hope we have.
It is calling on Christ knowing that God’s strength will enable you to live for him and to serve Him.
He changes us and causes us through being born again to become new creatures that we live our lives for Him.

I want to encourage you this morning to consider the idea of sinful wretchedness as it applies to our lives.
Then consider whether or not we have been living for Jesus, not just living while knowing about Him but actually living for Him in all that we do.
It is not enough to have walked an aisle and said a prayer.
As a matter of fact, if you are basing your salvation on that, you will in all likelihood be disappointed when you hear the words, “depart from me for I never knew you.”

To honor our mothers is to keep the law and to follow Christ is to walk in His grace.
I pray that you will leave here today doing both.