Costs and Blessing of Motherhood
In this Mother’s Day sermon, we explore the unique challenges and blessings of motherhood through a biblical lens. By examining passages from 1 Timothy and Genesis, the sermon delves into the concept of the curse from the fall of humanity and its impact on women, particularly experienced through childbearing. It clarifies that salvation for mothers comes not through the act of childbearing itself but through faith in Christ who took the curse upon Himself. This message celebrates the sacrifice and resilience of mothers while pointing to the hope and redemption available in Jesus Christ. By Eve, the “mother of all living” beginning the journey of women across history in suffering bringing children into the world, Christ was born as the result. By His coming on the mission to be our Saviour and this including His death of the cross for our sins, the curse on humanity due to the all was lifted and salvation was available for all. Motherhood was a vital link in the answer of God to the curse of the Fall.
Automatically Generated Transcript
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We are having a treat today, not only in the dedication of the two little ones but also that this is Mother’s Day. For a little while I was asking myself, what is the difference between a woman and a mother? That’s fairly straightforward, that they’ve had children. And Mother’s Day is when we remember that there is a section of our society who pay great cost in order to be involved in raising children. Not that the other family members don’t participate as well but there is a special role that a mother has, day, so I’m going to give a message aimed at the whole idea of mothers from the scriptures and some of this something you may have heard before and some of it you may not, but follow along because the Bible tells us that there is something that is a price that mothers pay to be mothers. There has to do with the history
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of the world and has to do with the fall of humanity that all of us have been implicated in, and also has to do with God’s method of bringing salvation to that result of the fall. And so we begin in the verse, in 1 Timothy in Chapter 2 and verse 5. and as you look and see in 1 Timothy and Chapter 2 and verse 5, it will appear in a moment, it’s talking about the fact that there is childbearing yet she will be saved, talking about women, through childbearing. This has been a mysterious verse to me. I don’t think women get saved as in forgiving and belong to God. make peace with God any way different from other people who are not women or mothers. But talking about God talking to Eve and talking to Adam and Eve and recognizing
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or telling that there is a curse that’s come because of the fall and the curse has applied to the different persons in the happening of the fall as various in the way that he does things to the man that is when he works. He works with the sweat of his brow and he works and there is a sense in which there is a difficulty of the burden of work that the person of the household who is the worker feels. But similarly for the woman in particular
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she has the problem. She has the difficulty that being a mother brings along a number of areas of suffering. Now without going into the details of what they might be, but particularly in childbirth, there are some women who fear childbirth and never have children because of that fear. There are others who were totally unaware of the difficulty of childbirth, but having had one child decide that one’s enough
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and there are others who might have more, but nonetheless in childbearing and all the things that’s go along with being female there is an application that that Genesis account tells us that there is a cost. Now what is fascinating, what is an unusual thing in this in the storyline of the book of Genesis is that that cost involves a curse. It’s really been troubling me to know how to say this this this morning as I was preparing this message, but God’s involved in giving curses,
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and I had this picture of God leaning down from heaven and swearing at us, and that’s the wrong idea of the curse. A curse is something that’s come because of the sinful actions of the human race, in which as I mentioned before we’re all implicated in the fall of the human race. The book of Genesis that’s really what it’s talking about. but it’s not just that they at the beginning fell, but we have also sinned, and so the New Testament speaks about the fact that all of us have confirmed our sinnerhood, for all have sinned, each individual has sinned, you have, I have, we’re all people who are convicted of the Fall, and there’s a curse involved in various aspects of that, that have come,
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to women, the curse involves the difficulty in being female and in being a person that has sometimes involvement in childbearing. But this verse is such a puzzling verse because what is it talking about when it says she shall be saved through childbearing? Now by the way, the actual wording there childbearing is only used one other place which is in 1 Timothy 5.4. So people might have questioned and said is it really talking about child bearing the physical part or is that just a stand in for the role of looking after kids in which we all are involved? But if you look at 1 Timothy in in Chapter 5 and verse 14 And just the discussion here is about widows and what’s interesting is that
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the writer of Genesis has said that there’s real widows and there’s ones that shouldn’t be taken as widows, and when you track it down, he actually, if you read in Leviticus and the other books of the first five books of the Bible, one counted by them as a real widow with someone over sixty years of age. So, clearly, the idea of widow wasn’t only the fact that they didn’t have a husband and hadn’t had children,
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but it was because they were left without anybody who could support them. And that was a part of the definition of the word as it was used. And so he says the younger widows they should marry”, that means get married again, and bare children – and the actual word for bare children is the same wording that was in that other verse in Timothy where it talks about through bearing children, women are going to be saved. Now, this introduces a very awkward question and people who have been Bible expositors, preachers, pastors, theologians, have worried what does it
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because clearly the rest of the Bible doesn’t teach that you get saved for Heaven by having babies. So what does it mean? Well, the answer is found because the word saved can mean a broader sense than just saved for eternity, or saved from Hell, or saved from your sins.
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Sometimes it is used that way, but not always. The word is a general word that means rescued, or an answer is found. And so the theologians or the exposition people who preach sermons, they’ve been looking to see what is it that women are saved from, in particular, by having children. Where does that come from? And there are some varying suggestions that are made, and one by a very famous preacher that you might know.
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And he proposed he’s a person who graduated from Wheaton College, which is a very good training place in Chicago, and so he has suggested, I’ll tell you his name in a minute, he has suggested that it’s because when you read the Genesis account, what you discover is that it’s talking a lot about this curse. Then we go to Genesis in chapter 3 and this curse that came because of the fall
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and in verse 14, And as God turns, first of all, to the serpent and says that he’s going to have no legs to walk on, can eat the dust, turns to the different people in the event of the fall and eventually speaks to the woman, or fairly soon speaks to the woman and he says because you have done this, her role in it and taking the fruit, giving it the forbidden fruit and giving it to her husband, because you have done this, cursed are you, No, this is what he says to the snake. K onions, as you above all life stuck in above all the beasts in the field and on your belly you shall go and dust you shall eat
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and then going further he speaks to the woman and so if you look in the verses it says in three fourteen and three fifteen. There we go. If you look on the screen, I think you’ve got to the woman he said. We’ll go to the next slide. And here is where the curse is brought to women. I’ll surely multiply your pain in childbearing. In other words, the pain of childbearing is greater after the fall than it was intended to be before. In pain you shall bring forth children.
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Next, the most unusual verse. It says, Your desire shall be contrary to your husband. And that’s an interpretation of the word. If you’ve got your Pew Bible, the one that looks like this, and you look at it there, for this particular verse, you’ll notice that, at that little point, tehn you’ll notice, that at that little point, contrary’ or whatever word they’ve got there, they’ve got a little thing to look down the bottom. And they say there it could mean for or against.
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And some people will take it your desire shall be for your husband, which would then fit in because it’s talking about the fact that it is a part of being feminine, that there is this deep desire for a husband and for connection with a husband. Sarah, when she was told that she was going to have a child when she’s in her nineties. She laughed, and the angels had come to deliver the message. They said, you laughed, and she tried to deny that she did, but she … they don’t listen, they know she did. And they tell her she is going to have a child. And … but she said in the laugh … she says, Shall I my old age have pleasure?
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And what she’s talking about is that she and her femininity has gone past the age of there being that connection with the husband where there’s pleasure to have a child born. But she’s also referring to the pleasure, the joy that you see in women when they have a baby. And it’s very visible when you’re living amongst a bunch of people who’ve got babies,
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women, obviously involving women, and the joy that’s there. And that’s also what you see in women who have found other things to do with their life. But they’re glad of the other things because there’s something they’re choosing not to have the joy of having a child, or perhaps they can’t. And, but there is a joy that Sarah recognised, that she was being prophesied by the angels that she was going to have when she was 90, of all things, and she laughed at it and the angels told her off. And it happened just as I said in the very next year. She was found to be a child. And that’s how Isaac was born
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and how God established the line of people that have become the Israelites. And, anyway, this idea that um, there is something wonderful about having a child but yet, pain in it is something that is a part of being a mother, and mothers, when they get together and talk and share their stories and share their experiences, it is a part of human life
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that is just an enormously strong thing, a big thing, an enormous thing of all that’s involved in having children, and yet, it is not a painless operation from beginning to end. Now, that verse finally, your desire shall be contrary to your husband. Interestingly, when you find a way to read the Bible and you’re not sure. This one says your desire shall be contrary to your husband.
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It sounds like they’re going to be not listening to the husband’s lead or having fights with him or something. But actually that little word, I’ve been busy during the week looking it up and you’ll find in your Bibles right now if you look at the Pew Bible we’ll have a point And you look down the bottom and it says it CAN mean FOR and it CAN mean AGAINST and the particular version that’s been put up on the screen has chosen the AGAINST.
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Your desire shall be contrary to your husband. I think both of those are true. I think, like Sarah explained that at her old age, she was surprised that she was going to have pleasure in what would be the bringing about of a child, That there’s a four that’s also equally an interpretation. That it is a part of womanhood, in terms of the desire for the fellowship and the togetherness that’s involved in being married. That is, a very deep desire but, it says, he shall rule over you.
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Now this is not just the cultural thing alone, and some people try and say but it is because of the makeup of men and women. There is a sense even where sexuality is done wrong in a society where there’s terrible things like rape or whatever, there’s a sense in which the male often is doing is you know in a role or doing something that is hard for the female to take. In the extreme sense you can imagine what I’m saying, but also in the everyday sense that there is something within women that is giving them as it were like the experience
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of something that is a result of the curse. Now, the other preacher that I found who talked on this is John Piper, and he has a very worldwide ministry of teaching, and he’s about the process, I found that he was giving a sermon trying to achieve the same thing that I was doing in this talk being developed. In his development of it, his answer was that there is something very big
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in the Book of Genesis account about the curse, and that the women have a curse, that in being a mother there’s an experience of that that is very costly. And why this is going to be a part of their salvation is not because the Bible words that the curse will be lifted only and everything will be easy, and there are some people who do tell women if you’re spiritual enough you’ll have your babies and there’ll be no pain at all.
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it’s actually not true, I don’t think. I don’t think the presence of the difficulties that women have in looking after children either is something that if you’re the right spiritual people it will go well for you. But if you’re a person that is not knowledgeable and don’t do it the right way you’ve got all sorts of problems. I think it’s a very cruel doctrine to keep in your head and to beat yourself up with
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because there’s many times in the sovereignty of God and for who knows why, but there is a sense in which motherhood brings many pains. And it is a point about women who experience and go through these pains but love their kids and do it anyway. There is a marvelous thing for which we have very good reason to be looking after Mother’s Day and to be saying that you are to be congratulated and you are to be prayed for and you are to be understood and that’s what we’re doing this morning.
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But it is because there is this difficulty that’s come because of the fall and it’s worded in Genesis and so that preacher I just mentioned, he words the way to it that what’s going to happen is that God eventually is going to overcome the curse. And so there will be an eternity, a recognition of the great salvation that all people have through women having gone through the exercise or the difficulty of having children. How can that be so? What has having children got to do with Christian salvation? I’m on the journey to explain that.
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Now one thing we can do is notice along the way I have another sermon I’ll give another day that that parallel of that for or against, you’ll notice in the book of Genesis when you look down the bottom in Chapter 3 and where it says contrary, and the one we got on the screen, other versions as in your pew Bible, will say, not contrary, but will say for, Your desire shall be for your husband. your husband. But one way we know that it the meaning contrary all for is a good meaning is because the very grammar that’s set out is parallel to the next chapter which is Chapter four. And so let’s go to Chapter four in Genesis 4 and verse 7. Now it’s a different scenario and so I’m not wanting to expuzzle what
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happened in this scenario of Cain killing Abel and him being punished by and the curse being pronounced on him because of the murder the first murder in human history by Cain but God said you do well if you do well will you not be accepted because it tells of Cain that he knew he’d done the wrong thing and it says his face fell. Now face falling isn’t only what happens when you’re old and your face falls but face falling is when he got really grouchy and grumpy grumpy of his entire person, his face fellas the way they used to use back then to say that they were really suffering under what’s occurred. If you do well will you not be accepted in the part in the Hebrew translation of the Old Testament.
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Remember there’s a Hebrew one that’s a Greek translation and his English Bibles which approximate somewhat. If you do well will you not be accepted in the Hebrew Bible it literally means will not your face be lifted? If you find the way to do well with God, in the Old Testament it was a simple way. It was to find his laws and obey them and keep obeying them. And where you failed God do do the sacrifice necessary, which in the case of Abel was to offer
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the right offering, which he didn’t do. He had a wilful way to bring what he thought he could do, which was his wheat and his fruit from the ground, and not to bring a blood offering, and God didn’t accept it. And God says to him, but if you don’t do well, if you stay grumpy, with a fallen face, angry at me he says, sin is crouching at the door. And what this is talking about is that there is an evil that has come. It’s a part of the curse
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that sin has come in on the human race and its desire, it meaning the sin, is contrary to you. And here’s the word which again down the bottom I think it’s got four against the same because it’s the same word Dio in the Greek translation. Its desire is either for you or against you and when it says its desire is for you it’s talking about the fact that sin is looking for an opportunity to jump in on you. And if you get grumpy at God and you react to him — so, you’re one that he described with a fallen face
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because you’re angry at not being accepted — sin jumps in on you. But you must overcome it so you have a responsibility to work your hardest not to let sin dominate you. You know, as evangelicals we’re very big on telling people everybody’s a sinner and that’s why they need salvation. But we’re only telling half a story. Because the story actually is that not only is it the case that sin is something we’ve all done and we all deserve to die and be cast into hell. That’s true enough. But it doesn’t mean that you are as rotten as you could become. It doesn’t mean that you’re a person who’s … the switch is on total sin and you’ve got the lot, or no sin and you’ve become a Christian,” we Christians know that’s not true
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because we fight with the flesh and the spirit struggles and we still sin. But sin is of a nature that if you give in to it, and it’s got a desire as it were to jump in on you and conquer you, but you are responsible to overcome it, you must rule it. You have to do something about your sinful nature to try and curtail it. The Old Testament giving of the Law and then giving of the Temple worship and the sacrifices that were made to be made, these were all about the process of them observing the Law to the best that they could. And there were sacrifices where they didn’t succeed,
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but it was all for us to try and deal with sin and not let it dominate us. Sin is crouching at the door, it’s desire is against you. It’s out to get you and you just give it the opportunity and it’ll take it with you. We see that in Christian ministry again and again, of people get close to coming to Christ but then some temptation draws them away and they decide not to come, and then what happens? Their life goes in a direction, in a wreck, that wouldn’t have happened at all if they had of listened.
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Sometimes little children who come to the Lord in Sunday school but then get led astray in later years, they are Christians, But this flesh-in-the-spirit question the book of Galatians talks about is really true of them and they actually fail by giving in to the sin side and it is dominating them. I’ve told you my stories in the pass of the Perimeter used to have every weekday morning in Baptist house where we had young people come. All very keen young people, many of them who used to come with us in teams, teams we had going evangelizing and were really good soul-winners. But some of those best soul-winners, as time went by had a job elsewhere or something happened
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and they got taken over by sin or the society’s fallenness and made a wreck of themselves particularly when that involved drugs, boy do you see the difference when you run into someone who was a real prayer winner and soul-winner and someone … and then you meet them, and they’re wrecked by drugs, and they come stumbling up to you, somewhere wanting to come back, and of course God will take them back. He’ll help them, but they’ve made a mess of their lives. Sins like that it’s crouching at the door. It’s desire is against you. But you must rule over it.
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Find the resources of Christianity To be able to handle that is the statement of Genesis. And there’s a curse that’s involved in every area, including the men. A curse that’s there that God witnesses at least. Is it his anger making it to be the case? I don’t know what to say. I think God is a loving God, but it doesn’t mean that sin hasn’t taken its toll on the human race. If you don’t believe that you don’t read the papers, you don’t see what happens inside society, you don’t meet up with the people whose lives are wrecked. You must rule over it. Now, how will the curse be handled, is the question?
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question and in the area of motherhood. How does the curse happen? Well, there’s a verse and John, what’s his name? I just gave you his name, piper, yeah. He is a very good teacher and Wheaton College is a college I went to, too, so I have to stick up for them ,and John Piper, his way is to show how the Gospel answers the existence of the curse. I think what he takes as a way to answer the question for women like this for a mother’s day it’s the same as mine but mine is slightly different. And they really add up to the same thing.
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Because as you read the Scriptures what you realise is that God has acted and in fact right back in the Garden of Eden he gave a prophecy It’s actually written up by ancient theologians as well as modern ones and it’s called the Proto-Euangelion. Those of you who’ve been a long time in our church, I’ve preached on this before, Proto means beforehand, euangelion is the Gospel, eu was good and engalos in message. So a before announced Gospel message is in the words that is here in Genesis where it says, if I can get in the right spot I should put my glasses on.
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If you go to back to Genesis 3 and one of the final verses I have there you’ll see where God talking to the woman is giving what is a proto euangelium. I will surely multiply your pain and shoulder bearing and pain you shall bring forth children your desire should be contrary to your husband or for your husband for he shall rule over you. What’s the, tell me the previous verse or the following verse. So, Genesis, let me pick it out.
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Alright, verse 15. Now you’ve got that on your screen. And here is what is known by the classical theologians as this beforehand announced Gospel. It’s a prophecy of what will eventually be the Gospel of the Forgiveness in Christ but I’ll put in verse 14, oh yeah, that’s in verse 15, I will put enmity between you and the woman, between you’re offspring or the old fashioned word was seed, you’re offspring and her offspring. He shall he, talking about the snake right, he the devil. He shall bruise your head, and you shall… No, you shall bruise he, the offspring of the woman
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shall bruise Satan’s head, and you shall bruise his heel. And how these ancient interpreters saw that as a prophecy was that’s actually angling in on the one who went to the cross and took on him all the sin and allowed himself to be vulnerable to the attack of the evil one. In Mel Gibson’s film, that very graphic film that’s hard to watch about the death of Christ, as Christ is taken away
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there’s is this ugly evil representation of a laughing Satan face in the corner of the screen that he is going to get at the Christ. He did. But he didn’t know the wisdom of God, Satan didn’t, he didn’t know that God was going to let that happen and that in Jesus dying on the cross he was going to take the curse. He was going to take it on him. He was going to bear our sin and earn our forgiveness and salvation and by so doing ruined the whole ambition of the devil he was going to have his head bruised like a snake does when you whack it on the head by Jesus’ death on the cross. Now let’s go to the Book of Galatians and hear this said more exactly because
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if I were just tell you how the ancients interpreted that proto-Eugene Killing you could say, how do you know they got it right? It might be a guess or an interpretation but But in the book of Galatians it says about the comparison to what the Law could help and do and what the Gospel would do. It says, For all who rely — this is Galatians in chapter 3 verse 10 — For all who rely on the works of the Law are under a curse. This is the same curse. For it is written,
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Cursed be everyone who does not abide by all things, written in the Book of the Law, and do them. Not only agree with them and abide by them, but do them. And the Law is of a nature that addresses lots of areas of life and there’s nobody who can. Well, there was one, Jesus, who obeyed the Law, maybe not the Pharisee’s interpretation thereof, but Jesus obeyed the Law and was without sin.
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but the rest of us can’t live up to this. So we’re under a curse, delivered by the law but announced in the garden when the Fall first happened. Those who don’t,ifications be everyone who does not abide by all things. All things. All things written in the Book of the Law and do them. Now it’s evident that no one is justified through evident meaning you can see. No one is justified before God by the law. And the whole Old Testament way of pointing out the depth of our sinnerhood through the law, certainly achieved that. But did it get people right with God? That’s why they had a sacrificial system
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that there was visibly made. Some sacrifice had to be made. Later, the Book of Hebrews says well, those death of the bulls, and sheep, and sheep and goats, birds and all the rest, they couldn’t really get rid of sin. It was only Jesus, and his one for all sacrifice on the cross that could do that. Isn’t it evident that no one is justified before God by the law? The righteous shall live by faith, and that’s why the gospel, which offers a way to get right with God, nothing to do with your performance, nothing to do with your failure! Because of your failure, it is that God is going to give you a righteousness that he has achieved! it to you free. The righteousness of God is a free gift. But the law is not faith. Rather the law works the one who does them shall live by them. For Christ
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redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us. For it is written, cursed is everyone who hangs on the tree, the execution method came with curse from God, so that in Christ Jesus, the blessing of Abraham, which was the promise of the Holy Spirit, forgiveness in the Holy Spirit, might come to the Gentiles, the non-Jews, ones who do nothing to do with the law, so that we might receive the promised spirit through him. It’s a faith gift, a grace gift. And the thing about the Christian gospel is those little words – grace and faith, grace because you didn’t deserve it you never could have, grace because he isn’t going to take it away once you’ve got it, faith because it is appropriated by simply receiving with a heart that believes. Faith, is that simple. A lot of
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people miss it. You meet people who have been religious people all their lives. You’ve heard my stories of some of the people when we traveled around who’d come to find Christ, and then they’d say that … you’d find out about them that they’ve been missionaries overseas all their lives, and never really come to receive a simple gift that they couldn’t earn! One that you just received. You’d come to Jesus by faith. Just believe him and trust him and receive what you cannot earn. Of course that’s why we have to repent, because the word repent means to reverse your verdict. It means, turn yourself around, don’t keep on trying the same old way.
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Come and simply believe.” And if you believe, Peter preached the first gospel message in the Christian era. That is, in the Book of Acts at the day of Pentecost, and he finished it up by saying, that this message is for those to whom the LORD our God shall call. And he urged them to come and receive Christ, and confess it in baptism, and be on the receiving end of the gift of the Holy Spirit. And as you’ve probably heard me many times say, the two things you get when you come to Christ.
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One is the forgiveness that you didn’t earn. That’s involving the lifting of the curse. So John Piper’s way of emphasizing the curse is quite correct. It’s just not the only way. It’s also the promise of the Gospel. They both ideas click together so well. But the second blessing is you receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, and the one way for mothers to be helped is to get into that close relationship with God who wants to help them in their motherhood, and to rely upon the Holy Spirit.
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And, in my previous church we had some visiting speakers come and they came, it was a husband and wife team and the wife was an evangelist and she spoke about her time of having little children and the fact that she had to … she was a busy person in her preaching often to women but sometimes to mixed audiences but she had to take leave of that when she had a bunch of little ones, and she explained So my family, there was a time when she had to recognize her ministry was between her legs. She meant her feet. Between her feet. The little ones running around. They took precedence. But God’s deliverance from the curse is through the Gospel of the availability of the Holy Spirit.
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How does he come into it? He helps your temperament. Being filled with the Spirit can do marvels for cranky men and for women who are oppressed in many things. There is something about a personality who walks with Christ. In Tasmania, where we lived in Sheffield, there was a family that ran a store and they had a very wonderful family life. But they used to have that atmosphere of the Spirit of Christ and the women who went in there to buy clothes or whatever, got ministered to and in the church where they attended the brethren chapel there was a godliness, a godliness that helped anybody who was in need.
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And there is something that God does through the Holy Spirit that overrules all the other factors. Sometimes you meet people who have all their life suffered under something that’s been a difficulty, a difficulty you could actually trace back to being a part of which the whole US humanity have because of the curse. But God has lifted the curse. Jesus took the curse on him on the cross And he’s given us not only forgiveness of sins, but he’s given us the gift of the Holy Spirit. What a silly thing it would be to try and live any type of life without the help of the Holy Spirit.
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And the Holy Spirit is yours as a gift. When you come to Christ, receive Christ, and you get forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit. Is God trying to talk to somebody here today? Not only have you had the joy of watching the babies dedicated, and what we prayed for them was that at some time in their life, because there’s a mystery as to when this happens For me, I was nine. Other people, it’s a teenage thing that happens where they suddenly wake up
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to the offer of the gospel and they get serious They take off as a Christian. There’s some that you meet, you go through the best of Christian homes and you shouldn’t criticize the home. But the miracle hasn’t yet happened or did they shut their ears, who knows. And then you meet them out and they’re in the world and lo and behold they’ve had a Christian upbringing.
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They threw it out the window. But God finds them. One of my heroes of the faith and I do have heroes that I listen to is The man is in heaven now, but Jeff Bingham was an Anglican preacher who went to Pakistan. He was in World War II. He was in a Japanese prison of war camp and saw many atrocities and things, and didn’t always survive, Christian-wise, in all those difficult things he had, but God met him and he became a mighty man of the Spirit. And he had a son who didn’t come to Christ, but there was a convention that he was speaking at, and the boy as an adult turned up. Jesus having found him and converted him, what a joy for the dad.
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I can’t explain the mystery of how it happens, and some are lucky. I consider myself lucky that I found Christ when I was nine. I consider myself lucky because of the family who had taught me the truth. Even if my mother bribed me with those two shilling pieces to learn the Bible verses, though I do well on the Sunday school exams, but for the background that introduced the gospel to me, I can’t explain the mystery as to why there are some who suffer and have sufferings far greater than the average person that, you know, people who’ve been like Joanie, Erickson, Tada, with a broken neck, does her paintings with a paintbrush in her mouth, but has had a glorious witness for Christ, because she came to know the fullness of the Holy Spirit. The Gospel offers so much. Don’t put off, put up with
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being cranky for the difficulties you’ve had, when God wants to bless you and bless you and pour out into your life so many things. Believe His love and welcome yourself into the warmth of it, and let Him bless you of all that He has. Repent, which means change your verdict, your position and be forgiven, and receive the Holy Spirit. And if that’s someone here when you go home and think about this morning. I’m in a praying a moment for God to not let you forget. So you could blame me but when the Lord begins to remind you he he’s only a prayer away from you by a simple act of faith of accepting his forgiveness and his free gift of the Holy Spirit. Let me pray, Heavenly Father, thank you for this morning and for the dedication of the Two Little Boys and, Lord, we praise you
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for them, and we’ve prayed already that there will be a moment when you will find them, Lord Jesus, and turn them into your own and let them know the depth of what it is to walk with Christ. Bless that family we pray. Lord, we also ask if there are folk here who for whatever reason one side or other of the cursor’s affected them or just the distance of not really understanding your love would you break your love in on them to understand that the gospel offer is a breaking of the curse but it’s also prophecy of people finding the love of of God, and forgiveness. Sin in the fall being answered by the death of Christ, the once and for all sacrifice for our sin. And I praise you for that gift of not only forgiveness, but along with it, the gift of the Holy Spirit to be the
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one who can help where there are still many difficulties to be faced. We pray that Lord that you will keep this in the mind of if there are some who need to make that response, as they go home as they think about this, would you bring it to their minds and that may there be that moment when they give in to you and say Lord Jesus what do you want me to do? Just trust him is the answer. Believe in him. Let his spirit fill your life. May that happen in the days to come, we ask in Jesus’ name. Amen.