A Mother's Priorities

So today is Women of God Day, and the title of the message is A Mother's Priority.

And Laura Ingalls Wilder, you know Laura Ingalls Wilder. Well,

you probably don't know her in person.

But she said this, lessons learned at a mother's knee last through life.

She also said the mother is and must be, whether she knows it or not,

the greatest, strongest, and most lasting teacher her children ever have.

A Yiddish proverb says this, one mother achieves more than a hundred teachers.

And then Abraham Lincoln said this, the greatest lessons I ever learned were at my mother's knees.

Now, I might have to rephrase that and say, the greatest lessons I ever learned

was when I was bent over my mother's knees.

But anyway, the sustaining influence on Timothy is traced back to his early

life, his early home life.

Paul began this, his book of 2 Timothy, by reminding Timothy of the godly heritage

in which he had been raised and with which he was blessed.

In 2 Timothy 1, verse 5, he states, I'm reminded of your sincere faith,

2 Timothy 1:5

which first lived in your grandmother Lois and in your mother Eunice,

and I am persuaded now lives in you also.

It's amazing how many people, when I go to do funerals or things like that,

think that their life and their faith should be, they should be riding to heaven

on the shirt tails of their loved ones.

Basically, my grandma was a believer. She went to church all that time, and so I must be too.

But Timothy learned this from his mother and his grandmother.

God had performed a genuine work in Timothy's life through his mother Eunice

and his grandmother Lois.

Eunice was a Jewish believer in Jesus.

She lived in a scary world for Christian believers because it was not the thing

to do as a Jewish person to believe in this Christ.

According to Acts chapter 16, she'd been married to a Greek unbeliever,

Acts 16 · chapter mention

but there was now no word of him.

And then like today, raising a child was no picnic.

There seems to be little rest from worry, even after the children are grown.

Even after our children are grown, we still worry about them and are concerned for them, aren't we?

And I know my mom and dad had a lot of that.

My mom was a worrywart, and she worried about me all the time, I'm sure.

Whenever we were traveling, we'd go to see her come back home.

She'd want us to call and make sure, let her know that we'd gotten home safely.

Well, I won't tell you other stories. But there's also times of reward.

A little boy invaded the dress department of a large department store and said

to the salesperson, I want to buy my mom a dress, but I don't know what size.

The sales clerk said, is she tall or short, fat or skinny?

Well, she's just perfect, answered the boy.

So the sales clerk wrapped up a size eight dress for him. Two days later,

mom came back and exchanged it for a size 16.

But she's perfect. Eunice's boy, Timothy was that kind of compensation and became

an even greater one, not just to her, but to the Lord.

There was good reason that he became such a man of God, as he was called.

Eunice was a wise and spiritually strong mother.

Her priorities were learned at her mother's knees and passed along to Timothy.

This world pushes transitory values like money and fame and position and power,

but you can sense that with a look at the TV lineup that you see most evenings,

even now with the American Idol or, oh, what's the one with Simon Cowell?

America's Got Talent and all of these, you know, Survivor and the old show,

I don't think it's still on anymore, but Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? Some of those.

It's like money and fame and all of that is most important to most people.

But in this day in culture, in what we were looking at, the home is what's most important.

Mother's Day is a good day to review a mother's priorities.

So we find four priorities in the scripture that we are going to be reading.

Paul is writing to a young pastor whom he had taken under his wings to teach and to train.

Now, there's actually three books to Timothy or three letters to Timothy.

Our Bible only contains two of those, but there's a third one.

And so if you want to look that up, you can find that and see some of the similar teachings.

But we have recorded in our Bibles, 1 and 2 Timothy, these are letters to Timothy

from the Apostle Paul. So let's look at these.

There'll be passages from 2

2 Timothy 1:3–12

Timothy 1, verses 3 through 12, and then chapters 3, chapter 3 through 17.

So it says this, I thank God whom I serve as my ancestors did with a clear conscience as night and day.

I constantly remember you in my prayers.

Now, how many of us parents remember our children constantly in our prayers?

And Paul referred to Timothy as his son in the faith.

He goes on to say, recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy.

I am reminded of your sincere faith which first lived in your grandmother Lois

and in your mother Eunice, and I am persuaded now lives in you also.

For this reason, I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God which is in

you through the laying on of my hands.

Now, sometimes when I was growing up, my dad liked to lay hands on me hard and fast.

But anyway, for the Spirit of God gave us does not make us timid,

but gives us power, love, and self-discipline.

So do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord or of me, his prisoner.

Rather, join with me in suffering for the gospel by the power of God.

He has saved us and called us to a holy life, not because of anything we have

done, but because of his own purpose and grace.

The grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time,

but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ,

who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.

And of this gospel, I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teaching.

That is why I am suffering as I am.

Yet this is no cause for shame, because I know whom I have believed,

and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day.

You, however, know all about my teaching, my way of life, my purpose,

faith, patience, love, endurance.

Persecutions, sufferings, what kinds of things happened to me in Antioch,

Iconium, and Lystra, the persecutions I endured, yet the Lord rescued me from all of them.

In fact, In fact, everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will

be persecuted, while evildoers and imposters will go from bad to worse,

deceiving and being deceived.

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced

of because you know those from whom you learned it, and how from infancy you

have known the Holy scriptures,

which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Jesus Christ.

All scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking,

correcting, and training in righteousness so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped.

With every good work. Paul has just given his own testimony of faithful service

and now directs his personal challenge to his beloved disciple, Timothy.

Paul calls his young friend, as I said, his son in the faith,

and he calls him to be faithful to Jesus and the word while he walks in this world.

This is a world prone to evil because it is inhabited by deceit and deceitful people.

Each of us is susceptible to

this dangerous trap of deception unless we diligently obey the Scripture.

So it's up to us to be in the Word of God constantly.

The Word of God is faithful and true. It is the true Word of God.

It is for our admonition and our growth and our nurture.

So we're going to look at some of the priorities in this mother's priority,

and priority number one is this, having a strong substructure.

Scripture stands as a foundation for all truth.

The sustaining influence on Timothy is traced back to his early home life.

Timothy's mother gave him a solid foundation for living life.

If you don't give your children a solid foundation in God's Word,

they will be deceived by the deception of this world, as 2 Timothy 3,

12-15 discloses when it says, In fact,

everyone who wants to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted.

While evildoers and imposters will go from bad to worse.

But as for you, continue in what you have learned and have become convinced of.

Just as those taught by the Word of God grow better through the grace of God,

so bad men grow more evil through the counsel of Satan and the bondage of their own corruptions.

So we as parents, it is significant that we raise our children in godly ways

in such a way that we train them to be people of God.

The way of sin slopes downhill, moving people from bad to worse.

Deceiving and being deceived.

You've heard about the slippery slope, talking about that.

When we begin to give in to temptations, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger

and we begin to slide downhill in those aspects.

Those who deceive others open themselves up to even worse deception.

Yes, the exhortation to continue in these things Timothy had learned and he

was convinced to be following in those ways.

In another passage, Paul tells him, don't let those look down on you because

you are of your youth, but give them an example of purity in truth and love.

Timothy knew the character and quality of life of those who had taught him the

truth he now held to be non-negotiable.

The word translates into whom being plural most likely alludes to Timothy's

mother and grandmother who, in addition to Paul, had spiritually impacted Timothy's life.

Proverbs says, to train up a child in the way he must go, and when he is older,

he will not depart from those ways.

So we need to train our children and those younger than us to grow in the admonition of the Lord.

I know there's, I can't imagine the agony my parents had gone through when they

saw me struggling through the years and in my growing up and in my high school

years and the wayward life that I lived.

And I can't imagine what their thoughts were in all of this,

you know, sometimes I wonder if they just felt like they should just give up.

But thank the Lord they didn't.

Parents and grandparents, we need to instill God's truth in our children and our grandchildren.

As you teach the Holy Scriptures to your attentive children,

they take root in their lives.

Memorization of Scripture and memorization of those things, repeating them over

and over with our kids, then writing them down.

You can remember things often if you begin to write those down.

Then as the child grows, a child can draw faith from the word which you have instilled in them.

Things Timothy had learned and became convinced of had come from three sources.

They'd come from his teaching of his Christian mother and grandmother,

from Paul's own teaching, and from scriptures.

Timothy's complete confidence in those sources would soon be enough to prevent

any slippage in his faith.

It is said that Susanna Wesley, John Wesley's mother, whom the movement of Methodism

began under John Wesley, it is said that Susanna Wesley had 19 children that survived.

She had actually had more than

that that didn't survive, and then she came from a family of 25 children.

Okay, so, yeah, all right, never mind.

That's almost as, you know, Solomon prays for wisdom in the Bible,

and then he married 700 wives and 300 concubines.

I mean, that's not very wise. But anyway, that's an aside,

but she had 19 children that survived, and she came from a family of 25 children

living in the 1700s, married to a poor man who often found himself in trouble due to bad debts.

Susanna could have been a worn-out mom having to take care for all of the needs

of the home and that many children, but this mother of Samuel,

Charles, and John Wesley, the founders of Methodism,

took each of her children aside, all 19 of them aside, for one hour every week

to discuss and teach them the Word of God and the principles of spiritual living.

One hour apiece individually during every week. If you want your children to

have eternal values, you need to give them two pieces of advice.

And one is this, bring them to church every opportunity you have,

and two, personally hold them accountable and help them apply what they've learned

in church throughout their lives.

Mothers, nobody will make you do this.

It's not something written in the rule books of being a mother In fact,

I haven't seen a rule book of being a mother.

Oh, yeah, I have. In fact, it's the opposite today.

With God removed from most public places, your child has little chance of growing

up to be like Timothy or having any kind of Christian values unless we teach them in the home.

With all the demands of today's world, if this is just another pressure or something

to do, further convocation, what are we going to do?

When do single mothers and working moms have time for the same kind of upbringing

and mothering that Susanna Wesley did.

And yet she had a lot of things too.

I mean, that was in a day that you didn't have all of the technology that you have to run a home.

With all of the demands of today's world, it's just another pressure.

But if we make God's word a priority and we teach them to our kids,

and you're rising and you're falling, and if you're walking and you're sitting

down, God's Word will be instilled with them.

Second priority we find is we need to have solid faith in a Savior.

We grasp that from verse 15, where it says that Timothy's mother and grandmother

were teaching him the Old Testament.

Now, that's what the Scriptures, this passage says that all Scripture is God-breathed.

That is talking about the Old Testament, because that's the Scripture that they had at that time.

And so it's talking about that how from infancy he learned from the Holy Scripture.

He was taught by his mother and grandmother the Holy Scriptures,

the words of the Torah, the first five books of the Bible, prophecies,

and the words of wisdom, and all of that that was being taught to him early on.

Scripture implies that Timothy's salvation occurred prior to his acquaintance

with Paul. It happened in his home.

I think I've told you this before, but my oldest sister, Vicki,

and her husband led each one of their four children to Christ in their own home,

sharing with them the need for salvation and the way to be saved by grace through

faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.

What a better place for a child to learn about Christ than in the home with his own parents.

Eunice also led her son Timothy to know the Lord Jesus Christ.

She taught him about Jesus, and she expected that he would accept Jesus as Savior at a young age.

The word leads in this verse speaks of anticipation.

When a mother anticipates praise and leads toward Christ, she has every right

to expect the cooperation of God in bringing her child to the Lord.

When I expressed to my parents that I'd had the calling to,

come and move into the ministry, my mom was elated.

She knew that was going to be happening. I don't know if I've ever told you

this, but when I was born, my dad was away.

We lived in, my parents lived in Barron, Wisconsin, where his dad was pastor.

And dad was away holding revival services somewhere else.

So my mom was down in Burlington, Wisconsin with my grandparents when it came

time for me to be born. And she said when she was in the hospital room waiting for me to be born.

She said a light, it was at night, and light came in, shone in from the window

and landed on her abdomen.

And she said she just knew there was a sense of God that everything was going

to be okay with her child, that he would follow the Lord.

So they were going to name me something else, but they decided to name me Timothy

because it means lover of God.

And miss you, Mom. in addition to teaching her children an hour each week individually,

Susanna Wesley also spent an hour in prayer for each child each week.

38 hours.

That's a full-time job before you do anything else. So mothers,

your job is a full-time job. Thank you for doing it.

She had six rules for teaching her children the priorities of the Savior.

One is subdue self-will in a child.

Two, teach him how to pray as soon as he can speak.

Three, give him nothing he cries for and only what is good for him when he asks politely.

Four, punish no fault confessed, but let no sinful act go unnoticed.

Five, reward good behavior. And six, strictly observe all promises you have made to your children.

You know, there was one phrase that I told myself when we got married and we're

getting ready to have children.

I told, there's one phrase I told myself I would never repeat from my parents.

What? Because I said so. I said I was never going to do that. Well, yeah.

Knowing the love of the mother up close and personal, the children will learn

to love the love of the Father in heaven.

Paul said, ever since childhood, you've been taught the word,

Timothy, and it is the word that will make you wise in the way of salvation.

Scripture wises us up or gives us understanding as to the way of God's salvation.

Priority number three is a knowledge of Scripture. How can we teach our children

Scripture if we don't have a knowledge of that Scripture, right? It's pretty tough to do.

So let's look again at verse 15. It says, And how from infancy you have known

the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.

Other translations refer to the Holy Scriptures as the sacred writings.

This is synonymous with the Word of God. Jesus is the Word of God become human

flesh, and the Scriptures are the written Word of God, here called the sacred writings.

And they give us everything needful for salvation and sanctification through faith in Jesus Christ.

Without them, we would have little significant knowledge of Jesus and certainly

no knowledge of salvation.

And it's the parent's sacred honor and duty to instruct their children from the sacred writings.

Paul had just noted that the scriptures are able to make one wise with regard to salvation,

but now Paul wants to reemphasize to Timothy the crucial role of God's written

word and revelation to his faith.

So he says, therefore, he reminds Timothy in verse 16 of the divine inspiration

of the sacred writings as Scripture is inspired by God.

All Scripture is God-breathed.

As to the nature of the scripture, the apostle proclaims, we are given inspiration by God.

The word used here is pneumos, P-N-U-E-M-O-S, which means breath or spirit.

God has breathed into them the word of God.

Do you know what else that word starts with or why that word is significant,

pneumos or pneuma? What's pneumonia?

Lungs, where your breath, problems in your lungs. Have you ever heard of that

pneuma being spoken about in Scripture before?

In the beginning, God created man in his own image, and he breathed into him

the breath of life, and man became a living being.

Then in the New Testament, when Jesus was getting ready to leave this place

and go back to his father, he had gathered his apostles, and it says he breathed

on them, and they received the Spirit of God.

So that life-giving breath is what birthed our Holy Scriptures.

The Word of God breathed into us.

As to the nature of Scripture, the apostle proclaims that they are given to us by inspiration.

On the one hand, the writings are by human author.

The writings of Paul are clearly distinguishable from those of Matthew and those

of Mark and those of Luke.

On the other hand, we affirm them as a complete written word of God and as God words to us.

Yes, they are written by humans, but they are inspired by the pneuma breath

of God that breathes into them.

So I'd rather trust the Scriptures than any other theories about them.

And finally, the fourth priority is providing service. Paul stated clearly his

firm convictions about the unique role of the Scriptures in their lives because

of what the Scriptures are able to do.

Therefore, he asserted the usefulness or profitableness of the Word in the rest of the Scripture.

He says, all Scripture is inspired by God and God-breathed and profitable for

teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.

For each aspect of Timothy's life and ministry, Scripture was useful, whatever it might be.

And they are our source for doctrine, our source for truth, our source to be

grounded in right beliefs or doctrine.

They are profitable for reproof or rebuking us of sin.

That thought fascinates me, for I don't readily think of reproof and chastisement

as something desirable.

I never thought when my dad or mom were punishing me, I thought,

oh man, I'm going to profit from this.

I know none of you ever got punished.

Let's go on. But the Bible also corrects us. Reproof in itself can be devastating or discouraging.

I never had a coach who wasn't strong in reproof.

They would always teach us and coach us in what we were doing,

what we were doing right, but what we were not doing right.

They didn't have to just go out there and let us run.

They taught us in what to do was proper use. They taught us theory a lot in

high school and college.

Theory about running? What?

And yet they gave that to us. Scripture is for correcting, for showing us where

we've strayed from truth.

God breathed Scripture, also trains us in righteousness, as Scripture says.

It teaches us right belief, which leads to right thinking, which leads to right

or righteous living. Oh, wait a minute, I remember something we've said in here before.

Thoughts produce feelings. Feelings produce actions.

Actions have consequences, right?

Isn't that the truth? I mean, when we think on the right things,

when we think on the right things, when we think on Scripture—in fact,

Scripture tells us to be doing that in Philippians 4, verse 8—when we think

Philippians 4:8

on those right things, it develops thoughts and feelings and emotions in us

that want to drive us to do acts of good.

And just as unrighteousness does, righteousness gives us consequences of good.

It makes our lives so much better.

Righteousness leads to a right relationship with God and others.

For all of these reasons and more, the written word of God is profitable.

Paul placed heavy burdens of ministry on this young man, but he didn't do it

irresponsibly. He was confident in Timothy's commitment to and dependence on the Scripture.

The bottom line is that all Scripture equips us for service,

as verse 17 states, so that the men of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.

Now at the bottom of the inside of your bulletin where it has the order of service, what does it say?

Oh, wow. Go and serve a world that desperately needs Jesus. Isn't that part

of that what we are to do, be living lives of righteousness and holiness before others?

As Timothy's instruction in the Word and God's way had to do with preparing

for him for service and ministry, as we learn in Acts 16, verse 1 through 15,

Acts 16:1–15

Timothy's good reputation had to start in his mother's good reputation.

Oftentimes the best legacy we can leave to our children is not a pile of money

or possessions, but a good name and a good example.

Eunice's reputation replicated itself in her son, and Paul had no trouble discipling this one young man.

Going to choked up because when I entered the ministry, you know how Elisha

prayed to God and asked him to give a double spirit of Elijah?

I thought of my dad and all that he had done in his life. in ministry.

And I thought, Lord, if you just give me half of what he had,

I'll be a blessed man in your service.

Many good women and men and faithful servants of God had the same testimony.

The great Baptist preacher, G. Campbell Morgan, had four sons.

They all became ministers, all became preachers.

In a family reunion, a friend asked one of the sons, which Morgan is the greatest

preacher, with the eyes beaming with delight, the son looked over at his father and said, it's mom.

When a child is born, there are at least two emotions, great joy, my baby's here.

And oh my, what do I do now? Dump the trends and the fads, take hold of the word of God,

become a godly mother and father, get your priority state straight,

substructure, savior, scripture, and service.

Mother and father are not honorary titles.

They are job descriptions. And a Spanish proverb says this, of course,

it's translated, because the only Spanish I know is taco burrito enchilada.

But a Spanish proverb says this, an ounce of mother is worth a pound of clergy.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, as we close on this Women of God Day,

we give you thanks for our moms and these women who stand up and live lives of righteousness.

Father, we pray that you will not only honor them, but help us to honor them.

In Jesus' name, amen.