My aim here is to celebrate the immeasurably important work of missionaries.  There is nothing like it in the world.  Nothing can replace it.  Oh, what a rare band—what a rare breed—of human beings are the pioneer missionaries who say with the apostle Paul, ‘I make it my ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named, lest I build on someone else’s foundation, but as it is written, “Those who have never been told of him will see, and those who have never heard will understand”" (Rom.15:20-21).  The One whom the nations have never heard of, the One they will see when we tell them, is Jesus.  In spite of all their sinfulness and ordinariness, there are no people more to be admired and encouraged than the missionaries who share this holy ambition (John Piper, Jesus: The Only Way to God: Must You Hear the Gospel to be Saved? [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 2010], 12-13).

Today is Mother’s Day so we celebrate mothers!  And mothers are worth celebrating!  Motherhood has been a topic of discussion recently because of Time magazine’s cover for the May 21, 2012 edition.

Motherhood is a high and sacred calling!  It is noble and glorious.  But any mother here will tell that the level of glory will vary from one day to the next.  Can I get an “amen,” mothers!  For instance, one mother said that some of her days are entirely taken up with the grand exercise of wiping: wiping faces, wiping noses, wiping bottoms, wiping the table, wiping the counter, and anything else that needs wiping.  Motherhood is not for those who need immediate results.  Dorothy Patterson wrote in a chapter titled, “The High Calling of Wife and Mother in Biblical Perspective” in Recovering Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, “Motherhood is both a demanding and a rewarding profession.  Unfortunately, the reward often comes much later in life, but a prime characteristic of the good mother is unselfishness; she can wait for the final realization of her rewards.  No one—not teacher, preacher, or psychologist—has the same opportunity to mold minds, nurture bodies, and develop potential usefulness like a mother” (Dorothy Patterson, “The High Calling of Wife and Mother in Biblical Perspective” in Recovering Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, 370).

I recognize that there are also women in the shadows today; today is an especially hard day.  Mother’s Day “is simply a reminder of unfulfilled longings, longings that are good” for some women.  There are women who, like Hannah in the Old Testament, experience brokenhearted barrenness but unlike Hannah, have yet to experience the extraordinary privilege of maternity (1 Samuel 1-2; cf. Recovering Biblical Manhood & Womanhood, 369).  If this is you this morning, know this: God has not abandoned you.  We pray that God will grant you the experience of maternity according to His will.

Mothers are perhaps the single most influential people in the world.  Still, they are not women of steel.  Mothers physically struggle with exhaustion as they try to juggle the demands of motherhood and life; they struggle emotionally with sorrow, anxiety, guilt, discouragement, and feelings of being a failure in their grand task.  Mothers, I want to remind you today that God uses you, even as you struggle and stumble along the way, in ways that you can never fathom.  You do not cease to amaze us!  You will leave a lasting imprint in your children.  “Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praises her” (Proverbs 31:28).

If you’re a mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, please stand.  Our ushers are going to give you a gift, Nancy Leigh Demoss’s booklet, Biblical Portrait of Womanhood.  Nancy Leigh Demoss is a trusted advocate for Biblical femininity.  Biblical femininity undergirds Biblical motherhood.  This booklet will guide you through a series of questions that ask whether you are building up and tearing down those around you.  We hope that this gift will strengthen you in your journey as you pursue Biblical femininity and Biblical motherhood.  The generations that come after you are in your debt.

Please join me in a word of prayer.

Our Heavenly Father,

A mother’s heart is so accessible to many of us that You used it as an analogy for the comfort of Your people in Isaiah 66:13, “As one whom his mother comforts, so I will comfort you.”

This morning we set aside an all too brief period of time to recognize and pray for mothers. They are divinely ordained heart-nurturers and life-shapers of the next generation.  This is a task that requires much of these women.  In fact, it requires more than they possess in themselves.  We pray for a rich bestowal of your grace upon these women.  Your grace is sufficient for them in their weakness.  May they be women after your heart.

We pray for aspiring mothers.  We intercede on their behalf, that, according to your will, You would affirmatively answer their heart-felt and heart-broken to be fruitful.  May they one day have the testimony of Psalm 113:9, “He gives the barren woman a home, making her the joyous mother of children.”

Father, grant these mothers, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers perseverance in this high calling of motherhood.  As they spend themselves for their children may they look to You as their portion; may they run to Christ for their identity and sufficiency on the many days when they are beside themselves and bear the crushing weight of insufficiency.  May they commit themselves afresh and anew to this sacred vocation of motherhood in the strength and grace that You richly bestow upon your people.

This we pray, our Father, in your Son’s name.  Amen.

The kind of leaders God will use in the next spiritual awakening here in America will resemble those He used in Uganda—leaders who admit they don’t know what to do, so they fall on their knees in desperation and cry out to God for His deliverance; and leaders who will seek to mobilize God’s people to ‘deep, consistent, groaning prayers that never take no for an answer.’

You can read the brief but excellent article, “Let’s Cultivate Desperation,” here.

“But when they believed Philip as he preached good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women” (Acts 8:12).

Calvin says,

Whereas baptism followed faith, it agreeth with Christ’s institution, as concerning strangers, (Mark xvi.47,) and those which were without.  For it was meet that they should be ingrafted into the body of the Church before they should receive the sign; but the Anabaptists are too foolish, whilst they endeavor to prove by these places that infants are not to be baptized.  Men and women could not be baptized without making confession of their faith; but they were admitted unto baptism upon this condition, that their families might be consecrated to God; for the covenant goeth thus: ‘I will be thy God, and the God of thy seed,’ (Gen. xvii.7.) (Calvin, Commentaries, 18:333; cf. 363).

Some brief observations from a Baptist:

• The teaching of believing adults being baptized is sourced in Luke’s inspired writings, not Anabaptists.
• The absence of explicit references to infants being baptized in the NT is sourced in the inspired authors and ultimately the Holy Spirit, not Anabaptists.
• Calvin employs an OT covenant text to inform a NT church ordinance.   This is consistent with covenant theology but still a larger theological point of division.
• Calvin affirms the practice of believer’s baptism for the first generation only.  Subsequent generations are “consecrated to God” by the baptized adult.  But why then does the infant truly need to be baptized?
• Acts 8:12 would have been an ideal place for Luke to use terms that include children or infants, such as nepios or paidion.  Instead, he used “men” (andres) and “women” (gunaikes).

In short, it seems to me that John Calvin is speaking out of both sides of his mouth.  He is advocating for believer’s baptism on the one hand while undermining it by advocating infant baptism on the other.  Moreover, he identifies the rejection of infant baptism as “foolish” and attributes it to the Anabaptists.  The burden of proof rests on him and others who assert that infant baptism is a NT teaching when it is nowhere mentioned in the NT.  The good news is that John Calvin is quite clear on all of this now.

If, therefore, God desires every knee to bow to Jesus and every tongue to confess Him, so should we. We should be ‘jealous’ (as Scripture sometimes puts it) for the honor of His name—troubled when it remains unknown, hurt when it is ignored, indignant when it is blasphemed, and all the time anxious and determined that it shall be given the honor and glory which are due to it.  The highest of all missionary motives is neither obedience to the Great Commission (important as that is), nor love for sinners who are alienated and perishing (strong as that incentive is, especially when we contemplate the wrath of God, verse 18), but rather zeal—burning and passionate zeal—for the glory of Jesus Christ.

Some evangelism, to be sure, is no better than a thinly disguised form of imperialism, whenever our real ambition is for the honor of our nation, church, organization, or ourselves.  Only one imperialism is Christian, and that is concern for His Imperial Majesty Jesus Christ, and for the glory of his empire or kingdom . . . Before this supreme goal of the Christian mission, all unworthy motives wither and die (John Stott, The Message of Romans (Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 53.