SUNDAY SERMONS

 

Two Mothers

 

1 Kings 3:16-28  Now two prostitutes came to the king and stood before him.  17  One of them said, "Pardon me, my lord. This woman and I live in the same house, and I had a baby while she was there with me.  18  The third day after my child was born, this woman also had a baby. We were alone; there was no one in the house but the two of us.  19  "During the night this woman's son died because she lay on him.  20  So she got up in the middle of the night and took my son from my side while I your servant was asleep. She put him by her breast and put her dead son by my breast.  21  The next morning, I got up to nurse my son—and he was dead! But when I looked at him closely in the morning light, I saw that it wasn't the son I had borne."  22  The other woman said, "No! The living one is my son; the dead one is yours." But the first one insisted, "No! The dead one is yours; the living one is mine." And so they argued before the king.  23  The king said, "This one says, 'My son is alive and your son is dead,' while that one says, 'No! Your son is dead and mine is alive.'"  

24  Then the king said, "Bring me a sword." So they brought a sword for the king.  25  He then gave an order: "Cut the living child in two and give half to one and half to the other."  26  The woman whose son was alive was deeply moved out of love for her son and said to the king, "Please, my lord, give her the living baby! Don't kill him!" But the other said, "Neither I nor you shall have him. Cut him in two!"  27  Then the king gave his ruling: "Give the living baby to the first woman. Do not kill him; she is his mother."  28  When all Israel heard the verdict the king had given, they held the king in awe, because they saw that he had wisdom from God to administer justice.

 

I.                 Circumstances do not make a Mother!

a.  Both women were in bad circumstances.

II.              Tragedy does not make a Mother!

a.  The response to tragedy reveals the core values of a person.

III.          Deceit does not make a Mother!

a.  The woman lies about everything that happened.

IV.         Sacrifice is a jewel in the crown of every Mother!

a.  What would you give up for your child?

V.              

………………………………………………………………..

I.                 THE JUDGE.

a.  It is the Son of David. We do not read of David’s judgments.

b.  This a duty which he was apparently remiss in discharging.  

c.   He placed the duty of judging and punishing upon his son.

d.  Even so, the "Eternal Father judges no man, but commits all judgment to the Son."

e.  Our Lord will judge the sons of men. The Judge is, therefore, one who knows us, one who feels for us.

f.     It is the wisest of men.

g.   "He was wiser than all men" .

h.  The Judge of men and angels not only has, but is the Wisdom of God (Pro_9:1-18; 1Co_1:24).

i.      The Supreme, the Essential Wisdom will sit upon the great white throne. His judgments, therefore, he must be "just and true."

II.              THE JUDGED.

a.  They were of two classes.

b.  There was the innocent babe and the impure women.

c.   And of the latter one was true, the other false; one right, the other wrong.

d.  There will be two classes, and only two, in the judgment to come: sheep and goats, wheat and tares, good fish and bad, the righteous and the sinner.

e.  Our pleasant vices are often undetected; or, if known, are not reprobated. But see 1Co_5:11; 1Co_6:9-19; Gal_5:19-21.

III.          THE JUDGMENT.

a.  Thereby a sin was brought to light.

b.  No eye saw that midnight theft. They two were alone.

c.   But the deed is now dragged to the light of day.

d.  And the Lord "will bring to light the hidden things of darkness."

e.  What was "whispered in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops."

f.      A wrong was redressed.

g.   The pretended mother probably held the child when they came before the king. The true mother carried it in her arms when they left the judgement seat.

h.  Restitution, i.e; was enforced.

i.      And the judgement seat of Christ shall accomplish the restitution of all things.

j.      There every wrong shall have its remedy.

k.   Might stands for right.

l.      Possession is nine points of the law.

m.                          It is related of one of the Wesleys that on paying an account which was a gross imposition, he wrote upon the bill, "To be readjusted in that day."

n.  Character was revealed.

o.  The true mother and the pretended alike proclaim themselves.

p.  A word from each decides the question, and reveals their inmost thoughts.

q.  So shall it be at the end of the world.

r.    "Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee." "

s.    By thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned."

t.    The Son of Man shall "make manifest the counsels of the heart."

IV.         THE REWARD AND PUNISHMENT.

a.  To the one the tribunal brought justification, joy, peace. To the other, condemnation, shame, contempt.

b.  But notice especially the difference it made in their emotions and the difference in their reputations.

c.   The joy of the mother who had received her child again may be better imagined than described.

d.  The same may be said of the vexation, confusion, remorse, of the pretender when her villainy was made manifest.

e.  And in these emotions we may see a faint image of the unspeakable joy of the saved: of the weeping and gnashing of teeth of the lost.

f.     The true mother would have the sympathy of bystanders, the congratulations of her friends, etc.;

g.   the other would be pointed at with scorn and reproach.

h.  Here, too, we have a picture, albeit an imperfect one, of the issues of the day of judgment.

i.      To the saint, the "Come ye blessed" of the Judge will lead to "pleasures forevermore;" to the sinner, "Depart ye cursed" will be the beginning of "shame and everlasting contempt."

V.             Let it be neither mine nor thine but divide it.

a.  "The Word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart."

b.  The judgment of Solomon is a striking commentary the Word was sharper than the sword they had just brought him in wounding the mother’s heart (Cf. Luk_2:35); while not more surely would

c.   the king’s sword, had it not been stayed, have pierced to the "dividing asunder of the joints and marrow" of the child, than did the king’s word distinguish between the true and the false, revealing both the tenderness and yearning love of the real mother, and also the thoughts and intents and workings of heart of the pretender.

d.  It is probably, in part at least, because of their revelation of character that they are recorded here.

e.  Let us now, therefore, consider the character and motives of the pseudo mother, as disclosed to us in her words and conduct. And first, let us ask, what can have led to this cruel and unnatural speech?

                                                            i.      Here is a woman who has recently become a mother, and who claims to be the mother of the child, having no pity on a helpless babe.

                                                         ii.      At one moment, she strenuously contends before the king for its possession, and at the next she connives at, and indeed clamours for, its murder.

                                                      iii.      She has surreptitiously taken it from one who would have guarded and cherished it; she loudly protests that it is hers; she is so anxious to have it that she will plead for it before the royal tribunal, and yet, when it is gravely proposed to cut the hapless child in two, she is loud in her approval of the plan.

                                                      iv.      How can we account for such strange inconsistency?

                                                         v.      The usual explanation is that she was impelled to do and say what she did by spite, by jealousy. And, without doubt, there was an element of spite in her conduct.

                                                      vi.      If she was to be denied the child, she was resolved that none else should have it.

                                                   vii.      She would never submit to the humiliation of leaving the judgement seat with the character of an impostor, while that other one carried off the babe in her arms in triumph.

f.      we must ask another question, viz; What led her to steal this child from its mother’s arms and to claim it for her own?

g.   What induced her when she woke in the night and found her own child dead, to creep in the darkness to her companion’s couch and take a changeling for her son. For this was surely a strange thing to do.

h.  It is clear, then, that she was not actuated by love for the child. It is unlikely that a woman such as she was could have love for a child such as this was; while it is inconceivable that if she really loved it, she would have consented to and counselled its death. Nor can it have been the pride and joy of having a man child to call her son (1Jn 16:21). For the child was not hers, and no one knew this better than herself. No doubt the Jewish mother had special reasons for desiring offspring and for cherishing her children, but this was the child of stranger.

i.      What then were her motives? Were they not these?

                                                            i.      First, the fear of reproach, and secondly, jealousy of her more fortunate companion. F

                                                         ii.      ear of reproach; for no woman, in any age of the world, or under any circumstances, can fail to be mortified and humbled and ashamed at having occasioned, by her maladroitness, the death of her child.

                                                      iii.      She knew what the tongues of the neighbours would say: she could see them, perhaps, even mocking her as a murderess.

                                                      iv.      For they could not know that the death was accidental and some of them, she feared, might think, if they did not say, that there had been foul play on her part.

                                                         v.      These thoughts, as they rushed through her mind in the black and dark night, would be accentuated and made well nigh intolerable by the thought that her companion had been more careful or more fortunate.

                                                      vi.      What may have passed between these two women we cannot say. For aught we know, each may have boasted of her child, or the one may have disparaged the child of the other.

j.      is there any wonder that she caught eagerly at the first chance that offered, and that without a moment’s reflection as to the morality of the remedy, and without the least perception of the snare that was spread for her.

k.   All she thought was that it promised an honourable retreat from ground which was every moment becoming more insecure; that it opened to her, in her despair and dread of detection, a door of escape. It is this accounts for the cry, "Divide it."

l.      The murder would cover her multitude of lies, the blood of the innocent would efface the traces of her guilt.

VI.         Truths to Consider

a.   Impurity almost inevitably leads to deceit. The root of all the mischief here was the unchastity. The sin against the body makes other sins comparatively easy. "It is only the first step that costs." And what a step is that!

b.   Moral cowardice may lead to murder. The fear which prompted the hasty resolve to possess herself of the living child, led this miserable woman to stealing, lying, persistent falseness, and to murder, in thought and will.

c.   Falsehood leads to falsehood. The proverb says, "If we tell one lie we must tell twenty more to bury it." "One lie must be thatched with another or it will soon rain through."

d.  "O what a tangled web we weave

e.  When once we venture to deceive."

f.     Jealousy dries up the milk of human kindness. It is "cruel as the grave."

g.   It led this woman to act like a fiend; to desire the butchery of an innocent babe.

h.  Sin overreaches itself. The pretender was caught in her own toils. She had no sooner said, "Divide it," than she saw she was undone. She had proclaimed her own falseness. "Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee."

i.      When the sinner is most secure, then sudden destruction comes upon him. This woman had never breathed freely till Solomon said, "Divide it." That seemed such a certain deliverance that she echoed the cry. Now she began to feel safe. The next moment she was disgraced, condemned, ruined.