TOPIC: Mother's Day
TITLE: ADAM’S DREAM: Or The World’s First & Best Dream
TEXT: GENESIS 2:18 "It is not good for man to be alone."
Were you aware there are critics of Mother’s Day? Just who are the critics? For the most part they’re women …
It’s all right to wish a woman “Happy Mother’s Day,” if she’s your mother or the mother of your children; just don’t try it with a California-girl on her way to the fitness center! Relax around Mervyns and Food-4-Less, but watch your side mirrors around Nordstroms and Robinsons.
You know the list of “Mother with” awards we usually do. Before you know it we’ll be giving roses for things like, “Mother with the fewest children in the state penitentiary” or “Mother with the most children still living with their biological fathers.”
Well, I’m a critic of “Mother’s Day” too. Oh, I appreciate moms, I loved my mom … this is my first Mother’s Day without her … I even love my mother-in-law. But the day should be “Woman’s Day.” We ought to be honoring the day of God’s great blessing to all men.
Truthfully, I’d rather honor women than mothers. How can we have the latter without the former … and logically this takes us back to the very first woman … Eve, the mother of all women.
I’ve decided, unless there are compelling reasons for doing so, I will no longer preach “special-day” messages … but will instead bring messages that honor the Lord Jesus Christ and His Word.
My attitude began to change when I noticed the number of topical or special messages we’re encouraged to bring each year … I count over half of our 52 Sundays! That’s like having a lectionary!
Considering that average attendance among church members is something like 35 times per year, we only get 17.5 hours with you each year. Your TV gets twenty times as much.
Now the church is in competition with the world, the entertainment industry, and the government for the minds and hearts of our people. At that rate we’re losing, and losing badly.
What bothers me is that God has chartered His pastors to feed His sheep. I just can’t see how some of the preaching we feel compelled to bring is doing the flock any good.
So, after today, unless the Lord or common sense tells me to do otherwise, I intend to return to my charter and feed you sheep the unadulterated Word of God.
FOUNDATIONAL INQUIRY: What does our text tell us about our God?
CONCISE OUTLINE:
You see God, who knows everything [and in advance] saw that it was "not good for man to be alone." Any man worth his salt can see that. It’s really hard to be alone, we’d rather adopt a stray at the pound than be found alone.
Then the LORD God said, "I will make him a helper suitable for him." [v.18]
Now today I want to do something I don’t do very often, but before I do, let’s be reminded that we are here to worship God … the one and only living and true God, Almighty God!
Charles Lowery article (not archived that I could find - sorry): What I want to do is read from a tongue in cheek article written by one of the funniest writers to enter Christianity since Glower. The man’s name is Charle’s Lowery, a former Southern Baptist preacher, now psychologist-motivator.
Humor is a good thing, it’s a God send in a world gone nuts … a dying world. And even though we’re here to worship, let’s feel free to laugh … let’s just remember to worship in the midst of our laughter.
FOUNDATIONAL INQUIRY: What does our text tell us about our God?
EXPANDED OUTLINE:
I. IT TELLS US HE IS CONCERNED ABOUT OUR WELFARE!
II. IT TELLS US HE IS WILLING TO WORK FOR OUR BENEFIT!
APPLICATION/CHALLENGE: Now God first made MAN. Then God made the WOMAN. He made the WOMAN for the MAN in order to MAKE MAN BETTER.
When a thinking person looks objectively at what one is leaving, when he leaves home, one sees that it ought to take a great deal to make him leave. But here in the holy word of God it says, “for this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife … .”
What is this “cause”? “Because she was taken out of Man.”
That is, she is a part of man. The man is a part of the earth, but the woman is a part of the man.
So, I conclude God made woman better!
But the bottom-line is found in verse 24b: “… and they shall become one flesh.”
Marriage is a God ordained institution. My heart grieves for those perverting His estate.
TITLE: ADAM’S DREAM: Or The World’s First & Best Dream
TEXT: GENESIS 2:18 "It is not good for man to be alone."
Were you aware there are critics of Mother’s Day? Just who are the critics? For the most part they’re women …
There’s the Gay/Lesbian crowd, [It’s irrelevant!] … then there’re the single militants, [It’s not representative!] … the children of abusive mothers, [It’s immoral!] … the career oriented, shaker & mover ladies, [It’s demeaning!] … and there’re the feminist-activist-pro-ERA women, [It’s a ploy by men who want to buy their wives off with a bouquet from the kid at the off ramp or a “Happy Meal” for lunch or a Hallmark computer-generated “thought” once a year!].As one writer said, “It’s a national neurosis!” We’re becoming so pluralized we’re never going to get together.
It’s all right to wish a woman “Happy Mother’s Day,” if she’s your mother or the mother of your children; just don’t try it with a California-girl on her way to the fitness center! Relax around Mervyns and Food-4-Less, but watch your side mirrors around Nordstroms and Robinsons.
You know the list of “Mother with” awards we usually do. Before you know it we’ll be giving roses for things like, “Mother with the fewest children in the state penitentiary” or “Mother with the most children still living with their biological fathers.”
Well, I’m a critic of “Mother’s Day” too. Oh, I appreciate moms, I loved my mom … this is my first Mother’s Day without her … I even love my mother-in-law. But the day should be “Woman’s Day.” We ought to be honoring the day of God’s great blessing to all men.
Truthfully, I’d rather honor women than mothers. How can we have the latter without the former … and logically this takes us back to the very first woman … Eve, the mother of all women.
I’ve decided, unless there are compelling reasons for doing so, I will no longer preach “special-day” messages … but will instead bring messages that honor the Lord Jesus Christ and His Word.
My attitude began to change when I noticed the number of topical or special messages we’re encouraged to bring each year … I count over half of our 52 Sundays! That’s like having a lectionary!
Considering that average attendance among church members is something like 35 times per year, we only get 17.5 hours with you each year. Your TV gets twenty times as much.
Now the church is in competition with the world, the entertainment industry, and the government for the minds and hearts of our people. At that rate we’re losing, and losing badly.
What bothers me is that God has chartered His pastors to feed His sheep. I just can’t see how some of the preaching we feel compelled to bring is doing the flock any good.
So, after today, unless the Lord or common sense tells me to do otherwise, I intend to return to my charter and feed you sheep the unadulterated Word of God.
FOUNDATIONAL INQUIRY: What does our text tell us about our God?
CONCISE OUTLINE:
I. IT TELLS US HE IS CONCERNED ABOUT OUR WELFARE!TRUTH CLAIM/CONTEXT: As far as we know, Adam had no dream when the Lord brought a sleep upon him … at least not until he awakened, … Adam, the first man, awoke to find Eve, the first woman, the first and best dream man ever had.
II. IT TELLS US HE IS WILLING TO WORK FOR OUR BENEFIT!
You see God, who knows everything [and in advance] saw that it was "not good for man to be alone." Any man worth his salt can see that. It’s really hard to be alone, we’d rather adopt a stray at the pound than be found alone.
Then the LORD God said, "I will make him a helper suitable for him." [v.18]
Now today I want to do something I don’t do very often, but before I do, let’s be reminded that we are here to worship God … the one and only living and true God, Almighty God!
Charles Lowery article (not archived that I could find - sorry): What I want to do is read from a tongue in cheek article written by one of the funniest writers to enter Christianity since Glower. The man’s name is Charle’s Lowery, a former Southern Baptist preacher, now psychologist-motivator.
Humor is a good thing, it’s a God send in a world gone nuts … a dying world. And even though we’re here to worship, let’s feel free to laugh … let’s just remember to worship in the midst of our laughter.
FOUNDATIONAL INQUIRY: What does our text tell us about our God?
EXPANDED OUTLINE:
I. IT TELLS US HE IS CONCERNED ABOUT OUR WELFARE!
A. God cared about man’s feelings … the LORD said, "It is not good for the man to be alone …”Lowery said that he read that single men commit 80-90% of all crimes in the USA. “So,” he asks, “what do we do? We send them to prison with other men. What we should do is start a dating service, so they can find a good woman.”B. God allowed Adam to participate in His program …And the man gave names to all the cattle, and to the birds of the sky, and to every beast of the field, but for Adam there was not found a helper suitable for him.C. God protected them …
All the animals, with their mates, came to Adam to be named by him. And in all of this man was reminded that he alone of all of God’s creatures had no mate.
Not until God had created both man and woman would He say, at the end of the sixth day, “it was very good!” It was not good prior to the existence of woman. God cared!
Only then could God’s program for man unfold to its divinely-instituted conclusion.
“…God blessed them; and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it …” [1:28a]So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and he slept; then He took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh at that place. And the LORD God fashioned into a woman the rib which He had taken from the man, and brought her to the man.
Our immediate reaction might be to see this as an anaesthetizing of the man to prevent pain … but this is God not man, there would be no pain of any kind.
God used the sleep as a veil for both the man and the woman. Like a protected “first bike” at Christmas, the Lord kept the man from his prize until it was time to reveal her.
II. IT TELLS US HE IS WILLING TO WORK FOR OUR BENEFIT!
A. God said, “I will make …”Notice, God "formed" the beasts out of the dirt but "built" (or manufactured) the woman out of man.Verse 18b uses a term meaning “fit for” or “corresponding to” or “in likeness.” This suggest that God made a creature worthy of another. Not as a slave as some would suggest, but rather as a mother for a son, or a Queen for a King.B. And out of the dirt “the Lord God formed every beast … and bird …”“For man does not originate from woman, but woman from man; for indeed man was not created for the woman's sake, but woman for the man's sake.”1 Corinthians 11:8
C. and “God brought them to the man…”
D. God caused a sleep …
E. God built the woman …
F. God brought her to him …
APPLICATION/CHALLENGE: Now God first made MAN. Then God made the WOMAN. He made the WOMAN for the MAN in order to MAKE MAN BETTER.
“For a man … is the image and glory of God; but the woman is the glory of man.”God made WOMAN WORTH LEAVING MOM AND DAD FOR!1 Corinthians 11:7
When a thinking person looks objectively at what one is leaving, when he leaves home, one sees that it ought to take a great deal to make him leave. But here in the holy word of God it says, “for this cause a man shall leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave to his wife … .”
What is this “cause”? “Because she was taken out of Man.”
That is, she is a part of man. The man is a part of the earth, but the woman is a part of the man.
So, I conclude God made woman better!
But the bottom-line is found in verse 24b: “… and they shall become one flesh.”
Marriage is a God ordained institution. My heart grieves for those perverting His estate.
- Let’s remember that it is not just mothers who ought to be honored, but all women!
- And let's remember that Jesus ought to be honored even more!
- And let's remember that 35 hours a year is not enough for sheep to stay healthy, so let’s make those hours count … and keep our strength up.
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