Mother's Day 2026 "A Legacy Of Grace"

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:32

Some call you. Some call you the most smartest. Some call you so funny. Some call you. Some call you hi. Hi. Some call you. And also protecting you. Some call you dad. Or boiler. Meme. Some call you mother. Please stop spoiling. Some call you a mentor. Some call you a friend. Some call you God kindness for the mother in the call you from the beginning.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Can we give it up for all the incredible women in our lives? Man. That's our moms, our aunts, our mentors, all those caring women who made us who we are today. Ladies, we love you. We're so grateful that you're here with us today. Thank you for choosing to be at FWC this morning. We hope that you know Sundays are our favorite day of the week because we get to hang out with all of you. We love families at FWC, and there is no better picture of a family than Mother's Day. Earlier this week, a friend of mine sent me a picture of a t-shirt that said, if you met my family, you would understand. And I feel like I understand some of you a little better today. I'm kidding. We're grateful that you're here. Mother's Day is such a strange holiday. Don't get me wrong. Moms deserve to be celebrated and definitely deserve more than one day a year when you remember how much they do and let them have a nap. But in reality, it's a really, really tough day for a lot of people every single year. I remember there were a lot of years in my own life when I had to give myself a serious pep talk to go to church on Mother's Day because I knew that my very well-meaning pastor would do the whole thing where he said, If you're a mom, stand up and let's just clap for all the moms. And I wasn't yet. And it hadn't happened easily for us. So I was sitting there with my fake church folks smile on, clapping for all the moms, and really wondering the whole time if this was ever gonna happen for me. So I get you, if that's where you're at today, Mother's Day can be rough. Then there were the years after my mom passed away where that wasn't so fun. It's not so fun to celebrate Mother's Day when you don't have your mom there to celebrate. Or the year after my grandma, who raised me better than my mom and my dad together ever could have, passed away. And it's just kind of hollow at that point. When you're feeling all the feelings at the same time, don't get me wrong, I have the best husband and the best kid in the whole world who always make sure it's a special day. But there's always something that's just a little bit raw about Mother's Day. So we want you to know we see that. We know that this is not an easy holiday for most people. So I've chosen to speak for you a message that's not necessarily entirely mommy-based. So we're gonna get there. Um, I promise. Um, but I promise too that for months, probably at least, God's been working on this message in me. So I've just been in my reading and all my daily um time with God, I have been coming back to what we're gonna talk about today. Um, and I know that it's because God knew that you would be here today, because he knew that you would be in this room and that there was a part of this message that was gonna speak to you. So I don't know what that is, but I know that he was prepared for you to be here. So let's pray today. God, I am so grateful for every single person in this room. I'm grateful that you have allowed us all to be together, that you have moved in our hearts and our lives, and even for some of us, moved mountains to get us here today. I ask that you help every word that comes out of my mouth to glorify you. I ask that you would go before us and that you would lead the way, that you would open our hearts, and that you would open our minds, and that you would speak over us exactly what we're meant to hear today in Jesus' name. Amen. All right, so today we are talking about motherhood and a legacy of grace. Now, when I say motherhood, it's heavy on the hood. I need you to know that that motherhood is the craziest hood I have ever been in. And I have seen some things. It is a hood like no other, ain't no hood like motherhood. Um, it's less like crime syndicate and more like organized chaos with goldfish crackers for bargaining. In this hood, nap time is protected by stronger laws than witness protection. And everybody is mostly just surviving on iced coffee and empty threats. At least if you're in my hood. But really, motherhood it tests your patience, it tests you uh every single minute of every single day. Um, and it also brings on something that nobody really warns you about. They warn you about like the sleepless nights and and all the things, and it goes so fat, and all of those things, yes, they're true. Um, but they don't warn you about the heaping dose of guilt and comparison that starts to happen when you're living in your motherhood life. Um, I grew up in the kind of house where I knew that one day, God willing, when I had children, I did not want to emulate the parenting tactics that I was observing. I did not want to be like my own mom or my dad. I wanted to break family cycles when that day came for me. And I was confident of that long before we ever had a child to practice those things on. But I know that also along with that, I make mistakes every day. And I find myself adding more pressure to myself all the time. You know, if you're a mom, you've probably experienced this. In fact, I read about a study that was done really recently where it said 91% of moms experience mom guilt. I had to explain to Philip what that meant the other day because that doesn't affect dads. Um of moms feel pressure to live up to an expectation of perfect motherhood, to be a perfect mom. You know the drill if you've experienced this, um, where you're you're just in this mental mental spiral of all the things that make you feel insecure in this particular hood, where you're thinking things like the house is a mess. How do I not have enough time to pick it up? I can't believe I had to miss that school event because of work. She's probably gonna remember it her whole life that I didn't show up. Uh, I'm not organized enough. If I was more organized, I would have this figured out. If I just kept better track of my time, I'm I'm too distracted. I was on my phone too much today. She's gonna remember that for sure. Uh I can't believe I yelled. I hate it when I yell. I don't like that about myself, and I can't believe I was that person today. I gave her too much screen time. Her brain is probably rotting. I'm not entirely sure, but I'm pretty confident. I didn't play with her enough. Did I did I pretend play? I mean, I remember she asked me to play, and I said not right now. I didn't circle back. When is the last time that she ate a vegetable? What does that do to her body, I wonder? Did we actually go outside today at all? Hmm. The list and the noise, it goes on and on and on. And if you've ever experienced even an ounce of this as a parent, or for those that you of you that are non-parenting or not parenting yet, those of you who are students or kids or anything else, if you've ever beat yourself up with comparison, with shame, with guilt, then today is for you. Several months ago, I kept finding myself stuck on the lineage of Jesus, reading through each story in the ancestral line of the King of Kings and consistently being reminded of just how crazy it is that any of them are included in the Bible at all, let alone in the lineage of our Savior. We really live in this sweep it under the rug, or just don't talk about the messy stuff kind of culture. Um, and reading about the lineage of Jesus, there is some real raw, unfiltered, unedited craziness in there. Several years ago, my gram decided that we were gonna do the ancestry DNA thing, uh, ancestry.com. It was really popular when she decided we were gonna do this. If you did it, you know the drill, you get the tube that comes in the mail, and then you spit all up in it, and then you send it off to the people, and then they tell you who you're related to all the way back to Adam and Eve. Not quite, but if you've ever done it, you know what I what I mean. And as I was spitting in this tiny tube, I started really questioning my gram's sanity. And I was like, tell me again why we're doing this. And she was like, Well, then we can see the lineage all the way back, and it's gonna be really special. And I was like, Why do I care about people who've been dead a really, really long time? Like, that that does not matter to me. And she said it was because our heritage is important. And today we're gonna dive a little bit into the women that were part of the heritage of Jesus in ancient Jewish genealogies, genealogies in the Bible. Now, here's the thing when genealogies are mentioned biblically, or just for all time, for most times, women are very rarely mentioned. Lineages were almost always traced through men. If you've read your Bible, you know this drill, this guy begat this guy, begat this guy, there was a lot of begatting because genealogy mainly served for legal, tribal, inheritance related, and covenant purposes, and they were tied to male ancestry. Girls, not so much with the mattering. In Matthew 1, we read about the genealogy of Jesus. And before Mary, Matthew um explicitly indicates four women. He talks about Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba, who was referred to only as the wife of Uriah. Now, in Second Temple Jewish culture, this was really unusual and it would have really stood out to ancient readers. Most biblical genealogies and books like First Chronicles and Genesis overwhelmingly talk about those male ancestors. They talk about those things and only mention women in occasions of great exception or crazy circumstances. What makes the inclusion of these women even more important and notable is that these women are all associated with really complicated and socially scandalous stories. Now, most of my favorite people in the world have been defined at one point or another as complicated or scandalous. And that is also true today. Now, we know there are kids in this room too. So when I talk through these stories, it is gonna be with kid gloves. So if you're not familiar with the stories, I would encourage you at some point go back and read them because they're that kind of story. Like I can't tell you all the juicy details up in here this morning because we have little friends and little ears with us. So if you don't know these stories, go read them after today. Um, but we're gonna talk about these ladies and look at the genealogy of Jesus through the lens of grace. And I bet that it will change your perspective on guilt and shame and your own probably complicated family tree. Okay, so the lineage of Jesus is broken into three segments. Each is 14 generations, starts at Adam, goes to David, then David to the exile, and then the exile to the Messiah. I'm gonna read this to you, and I feel pretty confident on most of the names, but um, my pastor told me that if you read the names you don't know fast enough and with enough confidence, people think you know what you're talking about. So we're gonna give it our best shot today, okay? We're reading in Matthew 1, verses 1 through 17. The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac, the father of Jacob, and Jacob, the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah, the father of Perez, and Zara by Tamar, first woman mentioned there, and Perez, the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram, and Ram the father of Aminadab, and Aminadab, the father of Nashon, and Nashon the father of Salmon, and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, another woman there, and Boaz, the father of Obed, by Ruth, there's another, and Obed, the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David, the king. And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, mentioned there, and Solomon the follower, father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam, the father of Abishah, and Abijah, the father of Asaph, and Asaph, the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat, the father of Joram, and Joram, the father of Uzziah, and Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah. These are great baby names if you're needing some. Hezekiah, the father of Manasseh, Manasseh the father of Amos, Amos the father of Josiah, and Josiah, the father of Jehosh. That's the special one. Do that one. He won't spell it until third grade. And his brothers at the time of deportation to Babylon. And after the deportation to Babylon, Jehoshann, the father of Sheelteel, and Sheelteel, the father of Zerubbabel. There you go, another one. Zerubbabel, the father of Abaiud, and Abayud the father of Elichim, Elichim the father of Azor, Azar the father of Zadok, Zadok, the father of Ahim, Ahim the father of Eliud, and Eliud the father of Eliezer, Eliazar, the father of Mataan, and Mathan, the father of Jacob. Jacob, the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ. So all the generations from Abraham to David were 14 generations. From David to the deportation to Babylon, 14 generations, and from deportation to Babylon to the Christ, 14 generations. So from the jump, the genealogy of Jesus begins with Abraham and his wife Sarah. Now, Sarah's not mentioned by name, but theirs is a story that has spoken to me personally for a lot of years. And it's one that I think is worth mentioning today. Now, if you've ever doubted God's goodness, if you've ever gotten sick of waiting for his promises to come to fruition in your life, if you've ever doubted who he is, if you've ever struggled with infertility or with longing for something that hasn't happened yet, Sarah's your girl. God told her she would become the mother of many nations, but then year after year passed, decade after after decade passed, and Sarah lost any kind of hope that what God promised for her would actually come to pass. Maybe you've been in this situation. Maybe you've been in a similar one. You see God's promises coming true for other people, but you are stuck in that waiting and longing, and then doubt starts to overtake your faith. In Sarah's story, God repeats his promise to her. And after all that time, after all that waiting, after every bit of that longing, Sarah laughs out loud. And I don't mean laughs with joy, I mean laughed with disbelief because she did not believe that this was real. Because disappointment can make promises really hard to trust. Time and waiting can make your faith smaller and smaller. Maybe you can relate to Sarah today in that pain of waiting for something, the ache of unanswered prayers, that exhaustion of just hoping and hoping for something that never seems to arrive. And God loves Sarah. I get this girl. She tries to help God. She's like, it's okay, dude. I can help you with this through her human effort. Because surely God needed help. It hadn't happened yet. So he she was she was there to assist. She gave her maid to Abraham, and the consequences of this action brought pain into their family for generations. And yet, God didn't erase Sarah from the story. The lineage of the King of Kings starts with her. God didn't define Sarah by her moments of doubt, He defined her by his covenant. Because God is true to his word. At an age when motherhood should have been biologically impossible for her. Sarah and Abraham's son Isaac was born. Because grace is greater than our unbelief. Maybe you feel disqualified today because you really struggle to trust God when you're in difficult seasons. Sarah reminds us that God's promises are not sustained by the perfection of our faith, they're sustained by his faithfulness. The next woman we're gonna talk about, and the first listed by name in the lineage of Jesus is Tamar. Tamar's story is uncomfortable and it's messy and it's painful. She was widowed and she was neglected and she was rejected by the family that was responsible for protecting her. In her desperation, she disguised herself and she became part of a very scandalous situation with Judah by cultural standards and even really by modern day standards. Tamar should have disappeared into shame and obscurity. But God saw something deeper in her. Not only did he choose her, but he added her name as someone worth remembering. Why would God preserve her name in what is arguably the most important lineage in history? I believe it's because Grace specializes in restoring people that other people would throw away. There are people sitting in churches every Sunday who carry labels. Placed on them by other people: divorced, addict, failure, dirty, worthless, unlovable, too broken, too messy. But then there's Tamar. Her story reminds us that God does not care about public opinion before He extends grace. People might remember your very worst chapter and even enjoy pointing that out to you. But God writes our redemption stories. The next woman who is specifically named in the lineage of Jesus is Rahab. Now, Rahab was a woman of questionable moral character. When she was in Jericho, she made her money in distasteful ways and she earned titles that came along with her career choice. Rahab's choices would have disqualified her in the eyes of the religious society. And if we're honest, they would still disqualify her in the eyes of society today. She's the kind of woman who experienced whispers when she walked around in public places, the kind of lady that people scooted away from and instructed their children not to talk to. She was not an Israelite. She did not grow up in covenant with God. And yet, when the spies came into Jericho, her home, Rahab believed in the God of Israel. And while everyone around her resisted God, Rahab surrendered to him. And grace changed everything. She was an outsider who God intentionally brought inside. And she eventually became part of the lineage of Jesus Christ. Can you imagine the whispers? Can you imagine the judgment that she must have faced? And yet heaven was not embarrassed by her story because God is not intimidated by your past. So often we think, God can't use me. Why would he even want me? I am a mess. I can't go to church. Everyone knows what I have done. They know my mistakes. I can't do anything for Jesus. I can hardly keep my own self together. And we let that disqualify us from things that God has already promised to us. The genealogy of Jesus says God can use unworthy, broken people. It reminds us that included in the very bloodline of Jesus Christ were people who needed unimaginable mercy. No past is too dirty for grace. No mistake is too big for redemption. No shame is too deep for God to restore us. And Rahab's story is proof that grace can rewrite an entire identity. Next up is my girl Ruth. Ruth was a Moabite, and to Israel, that was a really big deal. That really mattered. Her very inclusion is super scandalous. Including Ruth, a Moabite, shows the beginning of a shift from legalism to grace biblically. She came from a nation that was viewed with both suspicion and hostility. She was widowed and she was vulnerable. She had no social standing and she had no security. And after Ruth's husband died, she had every reason to return home and abandon her mother-in-law, Naomi. Now, I was blessed with an awesome mother-in-law. Um, but for some of you, the idea of altering your entire life and identity to hang indefinitely with your mother-in-law is mildly terrifying. Ruth was awesome. She told Naomi, Your people will be my people. Your God will be my God. And her faithfulness brought her into this random field that, of course, wasn't actually random at all, because God had a huge plan for her, even in her season of poverty, uncertainty, and loss. God used a situation that looked super ordinary to show that he had complete providence and truly reminds us that he can work just about anything out for our good. Ruth met this man named Boaz, and through God's ultimate matchmaking work, the woman who was collecting scraps in a field just to survive married the man who owned the field. Grace bought brought an outsider all the way to the center of the greatest redemption story of all time. Maybe you're here today and you feel unseen because your life seems ordinary. You feel like you're not standing on stages, you're not famous. What do you really have to offer? But you're faithful. Changing diapers, working jobs, driving kids to school, cooking meals, praying prayers that nobody hears but God. Ruth reminds us that quiet faithfulness matters in the kingdom of God. God works through ordinary obedience. Now, if you're following along, you might know who comes next. Our girl Bathsheba. So Bathsheba's story is quite possibly the very messiest of them all. She was called for by the king and entangled in a situation that she did not ask for. The king abused his power and he took advantage of her. The Bible is very clear that God puts no fault in the situation on Bathsheba. After being used by the king, Bathsheba's husband is murdered and her child dies. Her story includes grief that no one should have to carry. And interestingly enough, Matthew doesn't even call her by name. He calls her the wife of Uriah. Why is that? Because the scandal and the abuse mattered to God. There was no gaslighting in this situation. There's no brushing it under the rug. Bathsheba's pain and injustice mattered to him. Scripture doesn't sanitize brokenness to make us feel better when we're reading it. It shows us the real, raw, honest stories of broken people so that we never have to feel alone. Not only is Bathsheba's story included, but she is included in the lineage of the King of Kings. Because even in the middle of her tragedy, Grace was still at work. God brought redemption through one of the darkest moments in Israel's royal history. That doesn't excuse the sin. It doesn't excuse what took place. But and it doesn't justify what Bathsheba went through, but it does reveal the power of God to use broken people and messy stories for his greater purpose. Maybe you're here today and you carry wounds from things you did not choose. Betrayal, abandonment, abuse, loss, heartbreak. Bathsheba reminds us that even when those things happen and they don't make any sense and we face unimaginable pain, God can still redeem our story and he can still make it beautiful. And then, not mentioned in Matthew 1, but perhaps the most well-known woman in the lineage of Jesus is his mother, Mary. Now, Mary was an unwed teen mom. Most historians guess that she was between 12 and 14 years old when the angel approached her and told her that she would give birth to the Son of God. And she was between 13 and 15 years old when she had him. We often romanticize the Christmas story, but Mary's reality was terrifying. She was pregnant before marriage in a culture that would have assumed that she had committed adultery. This was a sin that was punishable by stoning to death. In any culture, at any time, Mary sharing her story would have made every single person think she was completely crazy. She would have been rejected and totally alone. And she had to choose extreme faith and extreme trust in God with a completely unknown future. And yet she responded in complete surrender. She wasn't chosen to carry the Son of God because she was wealthy or influential. She was a nobody by anybody's standards. She was chosen because God uses people with willing hearts. People with trust to put in him, even when circumstances don't make sense. And through Mary came Jesus, the savior of the world. And that is exactly the point. The genealogy of Jesus preached the gospel before Jesus ever began his ministry. Before Jesus even walked on the earth, from the very beginning, God was showing us that he redeems broken stories. Jesus did not come from a perfect, flawless family tree. He came through generation after generation of raw humanity, marked by weakness and failure. Why would God choose that path for Jesus to come through? Because he came for people just like us. Jesus' genealogy is proof that grace has always been God's perfect plan. Maybe you need to hear that today. Maybe you feel inadequate. Maybe you feel completely exhausted. Maybe you replay your failures every night before bed. Maybe you wonder if you've done enough. Maybe you carry guilt over situations you could never undo. The women in Jesus' lineage remind us that God does not require perfection to accomplish his purposes. He works best through imperfect people, broken people with surrendered hearts. The world tells us that we're supposed to hide the raw, real parts of ourselves in our histories. It tells us to fake it till we make it, to try to do everything perfectly, to put on a good face and just suck it up. But scripture tells us a different story. The legacy that changes the world is not perfection. It's messy and it's broken and it's made beautiful through grace. It's marked by people that just kept praying, that just kept loving and kept trusting and kept getting back up after failure and heartbreak because they believed that God could still use them. That is the legacy that these women left behind. And because of grace, their names are forever connected to the name above every name, Jesus Christ. If the band can come, please. Your story is not disqualified by its messy chapters. Grace still writes people into the family of God. And through grace, ordinary people can become part of an eternal legacy. Will you bow your heads today? I believe that every single person in this room is here on purpose for a purpose. Maybe your mom invited you and you came because it was the one thing she asked you for. Maybe you are a mom and you came because your kids just wanted to spend a day with you and this is where they would be. I'm not sure why you're here today, but I know that God knew you would be. And I know that your story matters. If you're in this room and you do not have a relationship with Jesus, I believe that He's speaking to your heart today. You are here because you are fully loved. Your story, your past, your hurts, and your hangups do not disqualify you from grace. I hope you hear me today, and knowing that the very blood of Jesus that carried all of these broken people was given freely for you so that he could know you and love you. And it's a really simple choice. Today, if you're feeling that and you know that it's the day that you should give your heart to Jesus and just start a relationship with him. Maybe you're not sure what that means. We can talk more about that with you after church. But if you are feeling that, that's the Holy Spirit. And you want to make a decision to start a relationship with Jesus today, will you just lift up your hands? Thank you. Thank you for that hand. Thank you for that hand. Thank you so much. Now I wonder if there's any of us in this room who can relate to one or more of these women that we talked about. Maybe you have been a person who is tired in waiting. And you have come to a place where your doubts are heavy. Maybe you're a person that feels so broken you don't understand how you could be restored, how there could be any kind of redemption for you. Maybe you're a person who's lived the kind of past that consistently gets in the way of your future. Maybe you live a quiet life and you feel like you're often overlooked and unseen. Maybe you've experienced some pretty extreme pain. Things have been done, things have been said, and the hurt is still there. Maybe you need a little grace today. If that's you and you can relate to one of those women and you want God to just meet you here today, will you just lift up your hands? Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I'm gonna ask our prayer team to come forward, please. And today, if you are in this room and you can relate to any of those women, or you just need a touch from Jesus for whatever you're going through. If you just need to be reminded of his faithfulness in the midst of your story, we want to meet you here today. We want to speak life over you. We want to speak the name of Jesus over you because all of us are part of that bloodline. All of us carry those same people with us, but most especially the blood that matters is that of Jesus Christ, which can meet us here today. He will speak over you and give you brand new hope. So if you raised your hand for any of those things, if you raised your hand to meet him, or because you're in a season where you can relate to any of these things, we want to pray with you. If you're not comfortable coming forward, we can also pray with you after church in the lobby. Or you can just reach out to us at any time. This isn't meant to call you out, it's meant to give you a space where you can meet Jesus here and we can come alongside you and walk you through that. So I'm gonna start to pray. And as I do, if you raised your hand for any of those things, will you just come forward? Let's stand together and we're gonna we're gonna worship as we pray. Thank you, Jesus, for your life. Thank you that in your very blood you carried people who should never have been included. I pray over every person in this room that feels like they're a bit much, that feels like the things they've been through disqualify them, that feels like they have some heavy parts to their story. I pray that you would lighten the load, that you would meet us here, that you would help us to know that we are fully loved and fully seen by the King of Kings. In Jesus' name. Amen. Again, if you have any prayer needs, that's what we're here for, and we'd be glad to meet you here today.