Seeing God Through the Window of Motherhood
Isaiah 49:14-18
Isaiah 49:14 But Zion said, "The LORD has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me." 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! 16 See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me. 17 Your sons hasten back, and those who laid you waste depart from you. 18 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.
INTRO. ANALOGICAL PORTRAYALS OF GOD IN SCRIPTURE
Mother’s day comes around every year and there is a requisite pressure to address the topic of motherhood in the Sunday sermon. I have only had to do this a couple of times and I am amazed that men who have been pastors for decades are able to come up with something fresh every year. Many of the sermons that I have heard in the past have either been on topics like the dignity of motherhood, the necessity of disciplining children, or the duty that children have to obey their parents.
These are all important topics but as I was preparing this message I started thinking about what might be the underlying reason that God invented the idea of motherhood in the first place. I would like to suggest to you that motherhood, like many other human institutions, is a window through which we see and progressively understand the nature and character of God.
In many places in Scripture we encounter descriptions of God that use the imagery of motherhood. It is no stretch for us to speak of and understand the language about the fatherhood of God, but what about those places that speak of God giving birth and nurturing his people as a mother?
Now these Scriptural occurrences should not surprise us because they make perfect sense in light of what the Bible teaches about how humans were made in God’s image. Let’s remind ourselves:
Genesis 1:26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created
them.
Do you see how both men and women bear the image of God. In other words the distinctive characteristics and qualities of both men and women are necessary to fully reflect the divine image. It follows therefore that the unique response that a mother has for her child has an analogy in the nature of God.
Two cautions should be made here.
1) By saying that God can be described in maternal language I am not advocating that we call God “mother”. In fact, while the Scripture is full of instances where God is addressed as “father” there is a conspicuous absence of places where he is called mother. We should maintain this practice in our praying.
2) By describing God in feminine and maternal imagery, we are not saying that God is essentially a male or female in terms of sexual distinction. God is a pure spirit and is therefore neither male or female. Metaphorical descriptions of God in the Bible depend upon us being able to recognize both the similarities and dissimilarities in the metaphor. In other words when we speak of God as “our father”, we are saying that he loves us like a father or disciplines us like a father or that he provides for us like a father. We are not saying that he sleeps in the same bed as mommy. The metaphorical image has limits and because no one metaphor could fully take in a being as infinite as God the Scripture uses many different and overlapping kinds.
With that in mind lets look at Isaiah 49
I. THE COMPLAINT OF A NEEDY CHILD (V. 14)
14 But Zion said, "The LORD has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me."
A. The broader context of this section of Isaiah is how God is going to deliver the people of Israel from their captivity in Babylon. Isaiah shares with us the complaints of those who are in captivity. He speaks of it in terms of a child crying out for its parent. The LORD has forsaken me and the LORD has forgotten me. Here, as in chapter 40 is the familiar complaint that God doesn’t know and God doesn’t care.
B. Tracy and I have a close friend that has a six month old girl and we get to take care of her often. Now from time to time when I am watching her I have to move to another part of the room or to somewhere that is out of her immediate line of sight. When this happens very frequently she will start screaming bloody murder. Now I haven’t really left her unsupervised or in danger, but, of course, any time you are out of her line of sight she feels alone and un-cared for.
C. Now what is really remarkable is that God addresses Israel and, by application, all of his people who are in need just as we would comfort a crying child.
II. GOD IS A MOTHER TO ISRAEL (V. 15a)
15 "Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne?
A. God compares himself to a loving mother. Now as I said, understanding metaphorical images of God depends on being able to recognize the similarities and the dissimilarities in the comparison. So what does the language of this passage show us about the similarities and, by implication, its limits. The passage speaks of how the child is born and given nourishment by its mother. In other words our lives are both given by God and then sustained by God
B. The passage speaks of something more however because the issue is about forgetting and neglecting. Here the metaphor is about the intensity of the relationship. You know it is amazing to me how whenever the God describes the nature of his relationship with his people he always speaks of it by comparing it to the most intense relationships that human beings have with one another. Did you ever notice that God never compares this relationship to a business partnership or a casual acquaintance. God is always our Father, or our Husband, or our Friend who is closer than a brother and who lays down his life for us.
C. The experience of mothering a child is such that mothers don’t neglect to nurture and nourish their children and they certainly don’t forget the experience.
III. THE FAILURE OF MOTHERHOOD (V. 15b-16)
Though she may forget, I will not forget you! 16 See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me.
A. Now the power of this metaphor of course depends on a positive image of motherhood. Now maybe you are one of those people who has a less than positive view of motherhood. Maybe you are reflecting on your own experience as a mother or your experience as a child. Maybe you are sitting there and feeling guilty about your failures as a mother or reflecting on very painful and maybe even abusive experiences that you had with your own mother. After all, all of us know of irresponsible mothers who neglect and abuse their children. In the face of these things can this image still retain its power?
B. The good news about this passage is that when we feel forgotten and forsaken we find comfort, not from a flawed mother or an abusive mother, but from a God who will not fail to care or fail to remember us – even when the whole world us turned upside down and the best human mother runs out of maternal compassion. In this, Israel could find comfort and faith that she would indeed be preserved through her Babylonian exile and would indeed return to the land God had promised her. And in this we can find comfort that God will preserve us through our exiles and return us to the joy of his blessing.
IV. STEPPING THROUGH THE WINDOW: AN APPLICATION
A. Now there are a couple of other things that we can say about this maternal image of God that are important to all of the other things that mother’s day sermons usually focus on – the stuff like the dignity of marriage, the necessity of disciplining our children, and the duty that children have to obey their parents.
B. The way to reflect on the implications of this picture of God is to recognize that motherhood is God’s invention. His purpose was to provide us a living example to understand him and know him better. Because motherhood pictures for us the compassion and care of God it is the foundation and the model for earthly mothers.
In this way we step through the window.
C. Here, then, is the dignity of motherhood. When you who are mothers and grandmothers reflect on you role remember that you reflect the image of God when you give birth to and nurture your children. The rest of us should honor our mothers and motherhood in general for the same reasons. This is particularly relevant in our culture where motherhood tends to be denigrated. It is an unfortunate drawback of modern feminism that the stay-at-home mother is regarded as a second-class citizen or a sellout.
D. Here also is the need for mothers to discipline and care for children. Because motherhood reflects the divine image it is important that the picture of motherhood which we present to our children be a reflection of those perfected maternal attributes in God. Our children need godly mothers because they need to see and understand God. They need to be disciplined and taught to obey their mothers because it is in this that they learn to accept the discipline of God and learn to obey him.
E. Finally, we as children need to honor our mothers because in this we honor and obey God. It is significance that in his exhortation to children that they obey their parents “in the Lord”.
Ephesians 6:1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 "Honor your father and mother" — which is the first commandment with a promise — 3 "that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth."
© 2001, Rev. Michael J. Pahls
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