A Mother’s Worth: What Makes a Mother Praise Worthy
Sermon Title: A Mother’s Worth: What Makes a Mother Praise Worthy
Sermon Text: 1 Timothy 5:5, 9-14
Sermon Purpose: To call the hearer to celebrate and practice the characteristics of a praise worthy mother.
Sermon Proposition: There are 4 characteristics of a praise worthy mother.
I. A mother’s worth is demonstrated by her voluntary supplications. V.5
II. A mother’s worth is demonstrated by her voluntary submission. V.9
B. She is committed to the marital crowning.
Proverbs 12:4 An excellent wife is the crown of her husband, But she who causes shame is like rottenness in his bones.
C. She is committed to the marital companionship.
Proverbs 19:13 A foolish son is the ruin of his father, And the contentions of a wife are a continual dripping.
Proverbs 27:15 A continual dripping on a very rainy day And a contentious woman are alike;
Genesis 2:18 And the LORD God said, "It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him a helper comparable to him." 19 Out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them. And whatever Adam called each living creature, that was its name. 20 So Adam gave names to all cattle, to the birds of the air, and to every beast of the field. But for Adam there was not found a helper comparable to him. 21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall on Adam, and he slept; and He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh in its place. 22 Then the rib which the LORD God had taken from man He made into a woman, and He brought her to the man.
D. She is committed to the marital bearing of children.
E. She is committed to the marital romance and sexual union. (Prov 5:15-20; 7:10-27; 1 Cor 7:1-7)
F. She is committed to the marital domestic charge.
III. A mother’s worth is demonstrated by her voluntary service. V.10
A. The service is demonstrated in the raising up of children. V.10a (1 Thess 2:7-8)
Proverbs 1:8 My son, hear the instruction of your father, And do not forsake the law of your mother;
Proverbs 6:20 My son, keep your father's command, And do not forsake the law of your mother.
Proverbs 31:28 Her children rise up and call her blessed; Her husband also, and he praises her:
B. The service of demonstrating hospitality toward humble people. V.10b (1 Cor 1:11; Gen 18:6-7)
Colossians 4:15 Greet the brethren who are in Laodicea, and Nymphas and the church that is in his house.
Romans 16:3 Greet Priscilla and Aquila, my fellow workers in Christ Jesus, 4 who risked their own necks for my life, to whom not only I give thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles. 5 Likewise greet the church that is in their house. Greet my beloved Epaenetus, who is the firstfruits of Achaia to Christ.
3 John 5 Beloved, you do faithfully whatever you do for the brethren and for strangers, 6 who have borne witness of your love before the church. If you send them forward on their journey in a manner worthy of God, you will do well, 7 because they went forth for His name's sake, taking nothing from the Gentiles. 8 We therefore ought to receive such, that we may become fellow workers for the truth. 9 I wrote to the church, but Diotrephes, who loves to have the preeminence among them, does not receive us. 10 Therefore, if I come, I will call to mind his deeds which he does, prating against us with malicious words. And not content with that, he himself does not receive the brethren, and forbids those who wish to, putting them out of the church.
C. The service of demonstrating helpfulness toward holy people. V.10c (Rom 16:1-3)
Acts 18:26 So he began to speak boldly in the synagogue. When Aquila and Priscilla heard him, they took him aside and explained to him the way of God more accurately.
1 Corinthians 16:19 The churches of Asia greet you. Aquila and Priscilla greet you heartily in the Lord, with the church that is in their house.
D. The service of demonstrating healing toward hurting people. V.10d (Acts 9:36-41)
E. The service of demonstrating diligence in every good work. V.10e
IV. A mother’s worth is demonstrated by her voluntary selectivity. V.11-14
A. Mother’s are to avoid divisive loyalties. V.11-12
B. Mother’s are to avoid demonic lifestyles. V.13
C. Mother’s are to avoid devilish litigation. V.14
1) In recent years our culture has sent hostile signals about the job of parenting, even though few men and women will ever do anything more important than nurturing and raising the next generation of children.
- James Dobson and Gary L. Bauer
2) There is only one way to bring up a child in the way he should go and that is to travel that way yourself.
- Abraham Lincoln
3) If you bungle raising your children, I don’t think whatever else you do well matters very much.
- Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis
4) Your children are a mirror which reflects back on you the kind of image you cast.
- Fulton Sheen
5) If we never have headaches through rebuking our children, we shall have plenty of heartaches when they grow up.
- C.H. Spurgeon
6) A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove. But the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child.
- Kathy Davis
7) I pray you so live, that when you stand over your child’s dead body, you may never hear a voice coming up from that clay, “Father, your negligence was my destruction. Mother, your prayerlessness was the instrument of my damnation.
- C.H. Spurgeon
8) You have omitted to mention the greatest of my teachers – my mother.
- Winston Churchill, on being asked to check a list of those who had taught him.
9) The greatest teacher is not experience; it is example.
- John Croyle
10) I grew up to have my father’s looks, my fathers speech patterns, my father’s posture, my father’s opinions, and my mother’s contempt for my father.
- Jules Feiffer