Today is Mother's Day. Today is also the Lord's Day. Which is more important, today as Mother's Day or today as the Lord's Day? You might at first say that today as Mother's Day is more important because Mother's Day occurs only once a year, and there are fifty-two Lord's Days in the year. But, no, I do not believe that is the correct answer. In my opinion, it is more important that today is the Lord's Day for two reasons.
The first reason is that Mother's Day is merely a human tradition, but the Lord's Day is a divine ordinance. In the book of Acts, we learn about the practice of the apostolic church as an example for us to follow. We read in Acts 20:7, "On the first day of the week, we came together to break bread." That is a reference to a worship service involving the Lord's Supper at Troas on the first day of the week. In Revelation chapter one, the apostle John saw on the Lord's Day a vision of the risen and glorified Christ in the midst of His churches. We meet for worship on the first day of the week in honor of Jesus' resurrection from the dead on that day of the week, and the risen Christ is then with us in a special way on the Lord's Day. That is why we view Sunday worship as a divine ordinance.
Our culture expects us to recognize and observe Mother's Day, but God expects us to recognize and observe the Lord's Day. Pleasing God is more important than pleasing our culture. Doing what God expects of us is more important than doing what our culture expects of us. That is the first reason.
The second reason why it is more important that today is the Lord's Day than that today is Mother's Day is that there is a sense in which our Mother's Day tradition is dependent upon our culture's respect for the Lord's Day. Let me explain what I mean by that. Our culture's attitude toward Sunday is a good barometer or measure of our culture's acceptance of Christian values in general. To the extent that our culture loses its Christian values, to that extent Mother's Day will lose its true significance. Without Christian values, Mother's Day will become an empty shell or even a relic of the past. You see, if our culture honors the Lord's Day and all that it represents, our culture is also going to properly honor motherhood whether there is an official Mother's Day or not. But if our culture ceases to honor the Lord's Day and all that it represents, our culture is not going to properly honor motherhood, no matter how many Mother's Day cards and flowers are sent each year.
Let me give you just one example of our culture's losing its Christian values in a way that is detrimental to what is represented by Mother's Day. One example is our nation's current debate over the very nature of marriage. In 2001, a prestigious day school in Manhattan's Upper West Side sent a letter home to parents explaining that the school would no longer be celebrating Mother's Day. The letter said, "families are changing ... there may be two fathers, two mothers ..." The letter concluded that because there are now so "many different family makeups", celebrating Mother's Day "may not be a positive experience for all children."
That is certainly a dramatic illustration of how departing from our culture's Biblical heritage debases Mother's Day. I could give you other examples, but I believe this one is sufficient to make my point. Our culture's proper respect for motherhood is more dependent upon the Lord's Day than it is upon Mother's Day.
Now I hope I have established the point that today is first and foremost the Lord's Day and only secondarily Mother's Day. Our primary purpose today, as on every Lord's Day, is to worship the Lord. Having said that, I also believe that this Lord's Day is a good time to look at something the Bible has to say about motherhood and the family. We need to preach periodically on family and parenting and motherhood and fatherhood. And the second Sunday in May is a good time to do so because that is what is already on people's minds.
Let's now look at our passage for today, a few verses taken from the book of Proverbs. We will look at those verses under three headings: the general goal, a specific means, and the happy result.
First, the general goal. Verse 22 of our text is a poetic way of expressing the fifth commandment, the commandment about honoring our father and our mother. We are always to honor our parents as those whom God used to give us physical life. Also, in our youth when we are a part of their household, living under their roof, we are to obey them as those whom God has given authority over us. As with all earthly authorities, children are to obey their parents as long as they can do so without disobeying God, without sinning. As Paul expresses this in Ephesians 6:1, "Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right." What a privilege it is to have parents in the Lord, parents who message to their children is, "Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ."
Not all children have such parents. 1 Peter 1:18-19 says,
In the prophecy of Jeremiah, the Lord spoke about the families in his day which were entrenched as families in rebellion against the living and true God. In Jeremiah 7:18, Jehovah God commented on covenant breaking families within Israel:
18 knowing that you were not redeemed with corruptible things, like silver or gold, from your aimless conduct received by tradition from your fathers, 19 but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot. How tragic to be raised in such a home, a home dedicated to idolatry. How blessed we are to be delivered from such family traditions, or to be raised in a family with God honoring traditions.
18 "The children gather wood, the fathers kindle the fire, and the women knead dough, to make cakes for the queen of heaven; and they pour out drink offerings to other gods, that they may provoke Me to anger." Again, as long as children can obey their parents without disobeying God, they should do so. And even after we have left our parent's household to establish our own families, we should honor them.
Verse 22 in our passage for today states this is a poetic fashion, using a figure of speech called a merism. The merism is the use of two opposites to express a totality. Perhaps the most familiar Biblical merism is the phrase "the heavens and the earth" to refer to the entire cosmos, as used in Genesis 1:1: "In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth." "The heavens and the earth" are opposites used in combination to refer to the totality of God's creation. Now notice the opposites found in verse 22 of our text. We see the gender contrast between the father, the male parent, and the mother, the female parent. We see the chronological contrast between the father's begetting the child in his relative youth, which is often the prime of life, and the mother's old age when she is weak and frail. We see the attitudinal contrast between obedient hearing and irreverent despising. The poetic message conveyed by these merisms is that we are to treat our parents, both our father and our mother, respectfully at all times. In our childhood, we are to obey them. In our adulthood, we are not to despise them but to honor them.
Our general goal is to honor our father and our mother. The passage then goes on in verses 23 through 24 to give us a specific means by which to accomplish this goal of honoring our parents. Or, to put it differently, these verses inform us of the best possible gift a Christian can give to his Christian mother on Mother's Day. This is something far more significant than a Mother's Day card or Mother's Day flowers or a Mother's Day visit or greeting on the telephone. The best Mother's Day gift is the living of a godly life to the joy and satisfaction of the godly parent who raised us to live that way. This proverb assures us that this Mother's Day gift will bring glad delight to the heart of the godly parent.
As we examine these verses, we see that this godly life involves truth, wisdom, instruction, discernment and righteousness. We need to examine each of these terms. Truth is mentioned first as foundational to the godly life. This is that truth which God reveals, that foundational truth revealed to us in the Bible. Those who live in terms of Biblical truth are called in verse 24 the righteous and the wise. Righteousness in this context refers to a sanctified life, to a life lived in conformity with God's law, to submission to God's law as one's rule of life. Wisdom refers to the skillfull application of righteous principles to all of life.
From verse 23, we see that the wise and righteous life also involves instruction and understanding. Instruction refers to the Lord's discipline in life as He teaches us both through the lessons found in His Word and the lessons encountered in life. God leads us in the paths of righeousness, warns us against sin, and chastens us when we go astray. The end result of such instruction is understanding, the ability to discern between good and evil. Understanding is a characteristic of the spiritually mature who have been well educated in God's school.
This education founded upon truth is to be found only in Jesus Christ. In John 14:6, Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me." In Colossians 2:3, the apostle Paul stated that "in [Jesus] are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." It is only through our faith relationship with Jesus that we can obtain a life that is righteous, wise and discerning.
Hebrews 5:13-14 13 For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe. 14 But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil. Proverbs 23:23 says, "Buy the truth, and do not sell it." This is just a way of saying that we must come to regard this truth which finds its ultimate expression in Jesus as so valuable that we will give up anything to obtain it. And we must come to regard this truth which finds its ultimate expression in Jesus as so absolutely priceless that we will not let it go at any price. It is so precious that it is priceless. We are not to be like Esau who despised his birthright and sold it for a morsel of food. We are not to be like Judas Ischariot who sold out the Master for thirty pieces of silver.
"Buy the truth, and do not sell it." This is the same basic message which Jesus taught in the parable of the hidden treasure and in the parable of the pearl of great price:
Now we need to be careful here. In one place, we are told to buy the truth. Yet elsewhere the Bible says that we must receive salvation as a gift.
Matthew 13:44-46 44 "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid; and for joy over it he goes and sells all that he has and buys that field. 45 "Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful pearls, 46 "who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went and sold all that he had and bought it. Now which is it? Is salvation a gift or a purchase? Well, it is both, just in different senses. When it comes to paying the price, it is a gift. There is a price to be paid, but only Jesus can pay it. Jesus pays the price with the exceeding riches of His grace. Grace is free but not cheap. Jesus earned the right to be gracious to us through His life of perfect obedience and through the finished sacrifice of His death upon the cross. When it comes to paying a price, we say together with the hymnist,
Isaiah 55:1 1 "Ho! Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price."
Ephesians 2:8-9 8 For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, 9 not of works, lest anyone should boast. Jesus paid it all,Faith is coming to Christ with empty hands to receive the salvation which only He can provide based upon His perfect and finished saving work.
All to him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.But what about the proverb about buying the truth, and what about the parables about the hidden treasure and the pearl of great price? Those are metaphors not about paying the price - only Jesus can pay the price. Those are metaphors about paying the consequences. There are inevitable, necessary consequences of being in a faith relationship with Jesus. We call these consequences salvation - salvation from our sinful habits and thoughts, salvation unto good works and unto a life in conformity with God's law as a rule of life. Those who are in the fallen state and depraved condition inherited from our father Adam are not willing to pay these consequences. They don't come to the light because they love the darkness. They do not believe because they are not Christ's sheep. No one desires salvation, no one desires deliverance from sin, no one desires the consequences of a faith relationship with Jesus until God changes their hearts. This change is called regeneration, the new birth, spiritual resurrection, a new creation.
The rich young ruler came to Jesus thinking he could pay the price for salvation. He thought he could purchase salvation by keeping the law. He left Jesus aware that much less than being able to pay the price for salvation, in his sinful condition he was not even willing to pay the consequences of salvation. To be in a faith relationship with Jesus meant freedom from his bondage to greed and materialism, and he did not want to be freed. He left Jesus sorrowful and still in bondage to his sin.
The proverb "Buy the truth, and do not sell it," is a reminder that living a life based on God's truth is our moral responsibility, even though we are able to fulfill that responsibility only through the free gift of God's saving grace.
Our first point was the general goal of honoring our parents. The second point was a specific means. We can honor our godly parents by living a sanctified, godly life. And the third point is the happy result. We read about that in verses 24 and 25:
Beloved, if we send our mother Mother's Day cards and flowers, but do not live a godly life, then we are tithing the mint and anise and cummin while neglecting far weightier matters. If you want to honor your mother on Mother's Day, then come to the Lord of the Lord's Day. He will give you His truth without money and without price. He will by His free grace enable you to live a sanctified life which will delight your godly parents.
24 The father of the righteous will greatly rejoice, and he who begets a wise child will delight in him. 25 Let your father and your mother be glad, and let her who bore you rejoice.