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  EXAMPLES TO FOLLOW, MARY AS A MOTHER AND JESUS AS A CHILD
  by Zac Poonen
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Summary: This sermon emphasizes the importance of honoring God's
commandments, particularly focusing on loving the Lord with all our
heart and loving our neighbors as ourselves. It highlights the
significance of honoring parents, especially mothers, as a key
commandment with a promise of well-being and long life. The sermon
delves into the exemplary motherhood of Mary, Moses' mother, and
Timothy's mother, showcasing the impact of mothers in building a home
through humility and submission.

Topics: "Honoring God's Commandments", "The Role of Mothers in Faith"
Scripture References: Exodus 20:12, Luke 2:51, Proverbs 23:22, Proverbs 14:1, Proverbs 31:10

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DESCRIPTION
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This sermon emphasizes the importance of honoring God's commandments,
particularly focusing on loving the Lord with all our heart and loving
our neighbors as ourselves. It highlights the significance of honoring
parents, especially mothers, as a key commandment with a promise of
well-being and long life. The sermon delves into the exemplary
motherhood of Mary, Moses' mother, and Timothy's mother, showcasing the
impact of mothers in building a home through humility and submission.

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CONTENT
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So, continuing along the line we were just singing, in the Old
Testament, God gave 10 commandments to his people, the Jews, and when
the scribes came to Jesus and asked him which was the great commandment
among those 10 that forbid, were implying, for them the great
commandment was keep the Sabbath, they ignored a lot of the others. But
Jesus said that first commandment is love the Lord your God with all
your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and he said I can't give you just
one commandment, that coin has got another side, and if it doesn't have
another side, it's a fake coin, you love your neighbor as yourself. And
John says later on, you know, that if you don't love your neighbor, you
can't say you love God, you don't love your brother, you can't say you
love God.

But Jesus summed up the 10 commandments in two statements, love the Lord
your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as
yourself. So when you go back to the 10 commandments, you know, God gave
Moses two tablets of stone, and one tablet was to show how you love God
with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind, and the other tablet was
to show how you love your neighbor as yourself. So the first tablet had
four commandments, which related to God, which when you turn to Exodus
in chapter 20, you read all the 10 commandments there, I'm the Lord your
God, you shall have no other gods but me, don't make an idol, and don't
worship them, and don't take the name of the Lord in vain, number three,
and number four, remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy.

That's it. Then you go to the other tablet of stones, love your neighbor
as yourself. And there are a lot of commandments there about, you know,
if you love your neighbor, you don't commit murder or adultery or steal,
or you don't covet your neighbor's wife or daughter if you really love.

You know, whenever you lust after a woman, it's the proof that you don't
love, you hate. But in that list, just like in the other list, the first
commandment is I am the Lord your God, and you shall have no other gods
but me. The first commandment on the second tablet is honor your father
and mother, Exodus 20 verse 12.

Isn't that interesting? When the Lord spoke about loving your neighbor
as yourself, you go back to the commandment and check it. That is the
number one commandment on that second tablet of stone. And what does it
actually mean? In practical terms, the New Testament explains it in
Ephesians six, as children obey your parents, or this is right, because
this is the first commandment with promise.

And it's interesting that out of all those commandments, none of the
commandments had a promise attached to it. It was just a statement. I'm
the Lord your God, don't worship idols, don't take the name of the Lord
in vain, keep the Sabbath.

But when it came to the first commandment on the second tablet, there's
a promise attached to it. So there are two significant things about
that. First, it was a number one commandment on that second tablet.

And second, there was a promise attached to it. And God could have
attached a promise to many of the commandments, but he chose to attach
it only to one. And that's emphasized in the New Testament.

That promise is that it may go well with you, and that you may live long
on the earth. Live long means live the full number of your days. That
means you don't die before your time.

For Jesus, it was only 33 and a half years. He lived a long life. He
obeyed us.

Nobody honored Joseph and Mary as much as their parents, as much as
Jesus honored Joseph and Mary. And so he lived long on the earth, 33 and
a half years. So it's not a question of 100 years or something like
that.

The period of time God's appointed for you. For all of us, God has an
appointed time, but it's possible to die before that time. And it's
possible with medical science to unnecessarily extend your life beyond
that time.

But the right thing is the appointed time is God's appointed for us. And
so that it may go well with us. I don't think there's a single believer
on earth who does not want it to go well with them.

I want it to go well with me. And I'm sure all of you want it go well
with you. And the Bible says, if you want, if you want that, you better
honor your father and mother and obey them on your children at home.

That's why we need to teach our children. The first thing we need to
teach our children is not how to eat and drink and say thank you and
sorry, and all that, but to obey and respect their father and mother.
And I would say, especially the mother, because children are a bit
scared to dishonor or disobey their father.

But the children know the mother is the weaker vessel. They know it
pretty much from right at the beginning. So they feel they can take
advantages there and be rude and dishonor.

Then the father must step in and stop and tell that child, you've got to
stop whatever you're doing right now and go and apologize to your mother
and then continue. Honor your father and mother. I, you know, as
disciples of Jesus, we have to relate this to Jesus' commandment that
this must not supersede our love for him.

Love for Christ must, of course, be far above love for father or mother.
I mean, to me, it is like the illustration I've always used is like the
light of the sun compared to the light of the stars from when we stand
on earth. There's absolutely no comparison.

When the sun rises up, the stars almost become dark. That's why Jesus
said you must hate your father and mother if you want to be my disciple,
meaning that your love for them is so small compared to your love for
me. And I believe we can really honor our father and mother and love
them properly only if we love Jesus as much above our love for our
parents as the sun is brighter than the stars during the daytime.

That's a fantastic example. Love the Lord your God with all your heart
and all your strength and all your mind, and there's no place there for
anybody else. You know, to have a pure heart, blessed are the pure in
heart, for they shall see God, is not keeping a clear conscience.

Keeping a clear conscience is just confessing all known sin, making sure
our heart is cleansed, our conscience is cleansed in the blood of Jesus.
But a pure heart is more than a clean heart. A pure heart is not only a
clean heart where every sin is confessed.

A pure heart is a heart that has no place in it for anyone other than
God, anyone other than Christ. Nobody, not even parents, nobody else.
Christ occupies, it's not that I have Christ in 90% of the heart and 10%
for my parents or wife or no, it's 100% for God.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart. Then only can I
really love my wife the way I should. The reason a lot of husbands
cannot love their wives properly, I'll tell you why.

It's because they don't love Christ with all their heart. If they did,
they would be infinitely patient with their wives. They would never have
a complaint, never mama, never grumble.

And wives would be infinitely patient with their husbands. It's because
they do not love Christ with all their heart that they find irritated
and getting upset and all that. And yet a lot of believers think that I
love Jesus with all my heart, the problem is with my wife or the problem
is with my husband.

No, it is not brother, sister, the problem is with you. You don't love
Christ with all your heart. If you did, it would be easy to love your
neighbor and to be patient with those difficult people around you.

Everything depends on loving Christ with all our heart. That's why he
said, compared to your love for me, your love for others must be almost
like hatred, father, mother, brother, sister, everything else. Having
said that, once you've understood that, but the fact remains that we
still have to honor our father and mother till the end of our lives.

Even at home, we obey them. But even after we leave home, we honor them
and respect them. And I believe it's right for us to teach our children,
especially to honor their mothers.

And it's right for fathers by respecting their wives to show their
children how to honor their mothers. I mean, if you're rude to your
wife, you're not going to teach your children how to honor their mother
because they see how you don't honor your wife. You're rude to her and
speak angrily and get upset and all that.

And your children see it. And God gives us a period of time after our
children are born. I mean, from the time you're married, even if you
have a child after a year of marriage and your children don't seem,
don't understand much for the first couple of years.

So it's almost as though God gives you about three or four years after
you get married to get over this business of getting irritated and upset
and moaning and complaining against your husband and wife. If you
haven't done it by then, the time is up. Your children begin to see.

And by the time your children are three or four years old, they see. Dad
and mama quarrel. They're fighting.

They're not getting along with each other. That initial period before
your child can become three or four is the time in which you have to
learn to be patient with your marriage partner, to respect and love. And
it's a sad thing when Christians who think they are so spiritual cannot
manifest this in their relationship at home.

Then their Christianity is a deception. You know what the Bible says in
James 1, 26, it says, if a man cannot control his tongue, his
Christianity is worth zero. That's one verse in the Bible which teaches
us when our Christianity becomes zero, when our tongue cannot be
controlled.

And that's especially at home with those we say our loved ones. We talk
very kindly to the stranger who comes to the door, but to our loved
ones. So I want to say we must teach our children to honor their
mothers.

Today is Mother's Day, as we heard. Well, it's a good opportunity at
least once a year to teach our children to honor their mothers. And it
begins with the father showing by his relationship to his wife how the
mother must be honored.

You see the balance in the life of Jesus that he, the Bible says in Luke
chapter 2, that he was subject to his mother throughout the years he was
at home. The last, Luke chapter 2 and verse 51, it says when he was in
Nazareth, he continued in subjection to Joseph and Mary. And his mother
valued that, treasured it.

How this person who is Almighty God who has come, I mean she's the one
person who is absolutely sure that this is Almighty God come in the form
of a baby and a little boy in my house. He's my creator. And it's
amazing how he listens to what I say.

He doesn't get upset with me. I make so many mistakes, Mary says, but he
respects me and obeys me. And whatever I tell him to do, he does.

She treasured it in her heart, it says, and learned something from that.
We need to teach our children that. He was the perfect Jesus.

Submitting to an imperfect mother. I hope you all know that Mary was
imperfect. I hope you all know that Mary and Joseph yelled at each
other.

Unless you're a Roman Catholic, you've got some false idea about Mary.
She was an old covenant person who had no victory over sin. And you know
how many so-called new covenant husbands and wives behave.

At least those who imagine they're in the new covenant. It's normal in
every single home for husbands and wives to fight and quarrel with each
other. And I have no doubt in my mind that Joseph and Mary were exactly
the same.

I don't believe in the sainthood of Mary as if she was different. She
was an amazing woman. Certainly I respect her highly because out of all
the women through the generations in Israel, God waited till he found
one person, a young 19 year old girl, 19 years old, to be fit to be the
mother of his son.

That's amazing. It's an amazing testimony to her humility and to her
willingness to accept the shame of being considered immoral for having
had a son before marriage. Who understood that? Joseph and Mary
understood it.

But who else understood? Elizabeth and Zechariah probably understood it.
But the others in Israel didn't know that. So everywhere in Nazareth,
here was this young girl who became pregnant before she got married.

And you know in a little village, news like that spreads like anything.
And Mary knew that would happen when the angel came and said, you're
going to have a child. And she said, how can I have a child when I'm a
virgin? And the angel said, the Holy Spirit will come upon you and a
child will be conceived in you and be born to be a holy child.

There'll be no sin there in that child. He's the son of God. You read
that in Luke 135.

The whole conversation between Mary and that angel was less than
probably just about one minute. That's all. There was no long
explanation, nothing, nothing.

Just one minute. We read that whole section, the angel speaking to Mary.
One minute or maximum one and a half minutes.

And what does Mary say at the end of it? Here is the handmaid of the
Lord, this born slave. And in her mind goes all the shame and ridicule
and all that goes on. It's going to happen when she's pregnant.

People don't know the reason. Let it be to me as you have said in your
word. It's in that simple statement, you see a tremendous amount of
submission to the ridicule and misunderstanding that would follow.

That was the woman God chose. And she was a young girl. I've often told
young sisters and young women, would God have chosen you to be the
mother of Jesus? Think about it.

Looking at your life as a young girl at your time when you got married,
would God have chosen you to be the mother of Jesus, to be willing to
accept the shame for the Lord's sake? And I see another thing. When they
traveled together to Bethlehem, that long, difficult journey. So
Bethlehem was Joseph's hometown.

That's why he was of the seed of David. And that was his hometown where
his relatives were. And in those days, unlike today, relatives usually
stayed in their same place where they were always lived.

So he had numerous relatives in Bethlehem. And they end up there and
they find an inn, no place in any inn. And finally, she has to give
birth in a cow shed with cows and donkeys and sheep and I don't know
what else.

With all that filthy surroundings. Can you imagine a mother giving birth
to her first baby in that situation and not complaining? That's the
point. It would have been terrible if Mary was like a lot of other
mothers saying to her husband, why in the world didn't you plan ahead?
Why didn't you send a message ahead? You've got so many relatives here.

You could have asked them at least to provide one room for me to have a
baby. Instead of that, you want me to deliver in this wretched place. Do
you think God would have selected Mary if she had been talking like
that? No, she submitted.

Without the indwelling Holy Spirit, without a Bible in our home, amazing
mother. I'm not a Roman Catholic, but I respect Mary very highly for the
mother she was. An example to all mothers.

And I believe God saw that this girl will not complain even in those
circumstances. Even when she has to deliver in a filthy, dirty place,
she'd say exactly what she said to the angel. Behold the bond slave of
the Lord.

It's fine. Let me deliver in this place. A complete submission to the
will of God.

And Jesus grew up. You think he didn't know all that? He knew what all
his mother went through. And he honored and respected her.

I believe it's an example. And you know, we tell people to be like
Jesus. We've got to teach our little children to be like Jesus.

And here's one thing that Jesus was. Don't forget. I mean, we tell our
children, Jesus never told lies.

That's right. Follow his example. Jesus never fought with his younger
brother or sister.

Good. Follow the example. Jesus respected his mother.

Every single day. Didn't argue with her. Obeyed her.

You teach that to your children to be like Jesus from childhood. That's
our calling. Jesus is our example from day one.

That's why he came as a baby. I mean, God could have made Jesus a full
grown man like Adam in some wilderness. And then he walks into Israel.

And there he is. He could have died for the sins of the world. Why did
he come as a baby? Why did God send him as a baby? Because he has to be
an example for children, for human beings at all ages.

And especially if he had come in as a full grown man like Adam, where
would there be an opportunity to demonstrate how he had a mother whom he
obeyed? And an imperfect mother. A mother whom he saw fighting with the
father, Joseph, but he would not despise her. You teach your children
not to despise their mother.

The Bible says in Proverbs 23, sorry. Yeah, Proverbs 23, verse 22. Do
not despise your mother, especially when she's old.

Maybe she's getting dementia. And forget something. Don't despise your
mother when she's old.

Don't forget children, teach your children also, and also all your
adults, all that your mother had to go through when you were a little
baby and brought you up. I'm not asking you to love her more than you
love Jesus. No, never.

Love Jesus with all your heart and don't despise your mother. And
thereby you will be an example to your children that they don't despise
your wife, their mother. I believe that's what we need to teach on
Mother's Day, to respect and value mothers because there's a lot they
have to go through.

And it's interesting that, I know I thought of this, that when Joseph
and Mary went back, I don't know how Mary slipped up to walk away from
Jerusalem, not even check up whether it was Jesus. I think there must
have been such close families those days, children playing around with
each other. She must have assumed Jesus was one of the other families.

But it's after three days that they finally found him when they came
back. And it's interesting, it's not Joseph who asks Jesus. Did you
notice that in Luke chapter 2 and verse 48 that they come back after
three days and they find him.

And it's not Joseph. He's the father. He's not the one who asks, hey,
what happened? Why are you here? It's his mother who said to him in Luke
2, 48, son, why have you treated us this way? Your father and I have
been anxiously looking for you.

Boy, she was a fantastic mother, a great example. She's not the only
one. Moses had a fantastic mother who had Moses only for a few years and
brought him up in such a good way that when he was 40 years old, he
refused the three things that all people in the world seek for.

You read that in Hebrews 11. The pleasure of the world, pleasures of
sin, the wealth of the world, and the honor of the world. I will not be
called Pharaoh's daughter.

I refuse the treasures of Egypt and I refuse the pleasures of sin. Those
are the three things everybody in the world seeks and his mother had
drilled it into his head before he left home for Pharaoh's palace when
he was less than 10 years old, maybe nine years old, before that kid was
nine years old. The mother had drilled into that child's head.

Don't seek for the pleasures of sin. Don't seek for the treasures of the
world. Don't seek for the honor of the world.

And he remembers it 30 years later and says, no, I reject it. Another
fantastic mother. Timothy's mother, another great mother who had a
father who was an unbelieving businessman who was only interested in
making money.

Your mothers, if you have a husband who is only interested in making
money, and I tell you a lot of Christians, even so-called newcomer
Christians, the main aim is money. Their mind is always, very easy to
find out. If your mind is always on money, that's what you worship,
believe it or not.

And you may have a husband like that, always interested in money and
position and all that, and not in God. And it doesn't put money and all
in subjection to God. Timothy's father was like that.

He was a businessman, Greek, but his mother single-handedly made Timothy
such a wonderful young man. At the age of 20, Paul said, I want this man
on my team. I tell you, brother, sister, if you have brought up your son
in such a way that at the age of 20, Paul would select him to be on his
team.

You've been fantastic parents. But Timothy's mother did single-handedly.
Don't ever complain, mothers, that your husband is not cooperating.

Look at Timothy's mother. Moses' father was a slave who worked from six
o'clock in the morning until 10 o'clock at night. He hardly saw Moses,
the baby.

Again, it was the mother who brought him up. So we want to honor mothers
who are like that. We pray there'll be many more like that in CFC
churches and NCCF.

And it begins with the fathers respecting the mothers and valuing them
and teaching the children to respect the mothers. So there's a dual
thing we can think of on Mother's Day. One is that fathers and children
must learn to respect.

Fathers respect the wives and teach children to respect their mothers.
And also for mothers themselves to see that God can help you to be the
mother you should be. Because the Bible says in Proverbs in chapter 14,
in verse 1, it's a woman who builds the house, not the man.

It's the wisdom of a woman that builds the house. And that means the
whole atmosphere in the house. It's the woman who does it.

How does she do it? Because the greatest thing in Christianity is not
preaching. It's not teaching. It is humility.

Jesus demonstrated humility and that and submission to the father. And
it's a mother, it's a wife who shows that in a home by submitting to her
husband. That's why she builds the home.

And that's why in the last chapter of Proverbs, it says a woman like
that is worth far more than rubies. She shall be praised because she
fears God. I pray that we shall have many, many mothers like that in
NCCM.

God bless you all.

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Video: https://sermonindex2.b-cdn.net/FON5D2nxKtM.mp4
Source: https://sermonindex.net/speakers/zac-poonen/examples-to-follow-mary-as-a-mother-and-jesus-as-a-child/
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