Mother - A Priceless Gift
Pastor Tan Thai · May 11, 2014
This Mother's Day sermon reflects on the priceless love of a mother through the story of King Solomon's judgment between two mothers in 1 Kings 3:16-28. A mother's selfless love is presented as a reflection of God's sacrificial love for humanity through Jesus Christ.
The sermon opens by honoring mothers as a priceless gift from God to every person. The pastor uses vivid illustrations: a 15-year-old boy who stowed away in the wheel well of a Boeing 767 from San Francisco to Hawaii just to find his mother in Ethiopia, statistics about billions of dollars Americans spend on Mother's Day, and the story of hardened prison inmates lining up to send cards to their mothers. All of these powerfully illustrate the invisible yet sacred bond between mother and child.
The central passage is 1 Kings 3:16-28, recounting Solomon's famous judgment between two prostitutes and a newborn baby. The pastor emphasizes that God does not evaluate people according to their social status as we do. Even the most despised women in society were cared for by God, and Jesus himself declared that tax collectors and prostitutes would enter the kingdom of God ahead of self-righteous Pharisees (Matthew 21:31). This serves as a warning to the congregation not to look down on others because of their sins or social standing.
When Solomon ordered the living child to be divided by a sword, the reactions of the two women revealed the truth. The real mother, moved in her deepest inward parts, was willing to sacrifice her rights so her child could live. The Hebrew words for "inward parts" and "yearning" convey a burning, scorching pain originating from the womb that had carried the child for nine months. In contrast, the false mother chose selfishness — if she could not have the child, neither would anyone else.
The pastor draws a direct parallel between the real mother's sacrificial love and the redemptive love of Jesus Christ on the cross. True love always seeks the benefit of the one it loves rather than its own interests — and this is the very meaning of salvation: Christ died so we might live, and God gave His only begotten Son to save humanity. The sermon closes with an exhortation for the congregation to honor and cherish their mothers, especially in old age, echoing Proverbs 23:22 and the praise for the virtuous woman in Proverbs 31.