Mother’s Day: What I Like About Bathsheba

Below is an excerpt of the sermon…

If you have your Bibles, would you open them, please, to the book of 2 Samuel this morning? 2 Samuel.

All of us have a different relationship with our mom. Every one of us. Some have had a very godly mother, one who knew how to raise you, and you’ve grown up to call her blessed. Others, perhaps, had a mom who was just never taught. I think of one of our men who told me—he said, “Pastor, I don’t like Mother’s Day.” I said, “How come?” He said, “My mother taught me how to shoot up heroin when I was younger.” He said, “I never had a good relationship. She was a terrible example.” So, for some today you look back and maybe there’s a mom that wasn’t a good example. Here’s what you do: you forgive her and realize if you’d have been raised just like that, you would have turned out just like that, and she probably did the best she knew. So, for some, not a good example. For others, great examples. And then some of you right now have a mom that’s in Heaven right now in a perfect body, a brand new body, and can’t wait till you get there. And so, it’s just a mixture of emotions today. I’m going to speak on something—it’s probably going to surprise you. It is Mother’s Day, and so we’re in 2 Samuel just for a moment.

Before I read the text, Ii’s not every Sunday that my mom is here, much less for Mother’s Day. And I got to thinking just some of the things I’ve admired about my mother through the years: One, she got saved. And so, I was at church one Sunday when the pastor in Louisiana said, “If you’d like to accept Christ as your Savior, leave your seat come forward.” She came down and he said, “Barbara, have you been saved?” She burst into tears and said, “I’ve never been saved.” And I remember seeing my mom pray and accept the Lord as her savior in 1965. Did they have salvation back then? Yeah, it had just started and… no, no. And she accepted the Lord. So, I’m glad I know I going to spend eternity in heaven with her. She won’t be 91 up there and I won’t be 31 down here.

Then second, I remember seeing her at our little coffee table. She had a little brown coffee cup and had her Bible open before school. She had read it every morning. I remember walking in, she said I just finished reading the whole Bible today, and I remember thinking, “What an example, what an example to me.” My mother loves the Bible.

Not only that, I remember when my dad was gone and that’s kind of how it was. He was just MIA (missing in action). We were going through a hurricane, and it was predicted I think 15, 20 inches of rain. The street was flooded. There were boats in our street, boats going down the street in a big ditch in front of our house. The water was right at the edge of coming in our house. She brought my brother and me in the back bedroom. We knelt down by the bed, and she said, “We’re going to pray and ask God not to flood our house.” We needed her here in Napa back in ‘86 and some of the other floods here.

I remember that water came right to the edge of the door and stopped. It was a praying mother. I remember when mom got her first car. She got her driver’s license so that she could drive to church. And dad bought her a car. Don’t hold this against us—a Corvair Monza. Ralph Nader didn’t like it. But a Corvair Monza. And she got that car and invited the Haley family to church. They rode with us, and they all got saved. So, my mother was using her car to help the neighbors get saved.

Then, I remember my mother taking me fishing. We moved to Florida again. Dad was missing and you know, I begged mom, “I want to catch a fish in Florida. I want to go fishing.” So, she found a bridge. I mean a bridge, not a pond…like we’re on a bridge about as high as the southern crossing. My little line went down dozens and dozens of feet. I think it barely touched the water. But we were fishing. I couldn’t even see the line. I mean it was just off the bridge. But I remember her trying to take her boy fishing.

I remember that the whole time she was faithful to dad. She could have had opportunities not to be because he was never home. She was faithful to dad.

And then the day I got saved. I found out later my mother had knelt down behind me while I was praying to accept the Lord. She was praying for me. A Godly mother. Everybody needs a Godly mother. Everybody needs one. You men, you won’t be one, but you can encourage those that are.

So, here’s the passage here. Notice 2 Samuel 11, and I’ll let you remain seated. We’re going to jump around just a little bit in the Scriptures. And I’ve got to really get going here. 2 Samuel 11:1-5, and it says, “And it came to pass, after the year was expired, at the time when kings go forth to battle, that David sent Joab, and his servants with him, and all Israel; and they destroyed the children of Ammon, and besieged Rabbah. But David tarried still at Jerusalem. 2. And it came to pass in an eveningtide, that David arose from off his bed, and walked upon the roof of the king’s house: and from the roof he saw a woman washing herself; and the woman was very beautiful to look upon. 3. And David sent and inquired after the woman. And one said, Is not this Bath-sheba, the daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite? 4. And David sent messengers, and took her; and she came in unto him, and he lay with her; for she was purified from her uncleanness: and she returned unto her house. 5. And the woman conceived, and sent and told David, and said, I am with child.”

And we’ll finish some of this in just a moment here. Call the roll of great moms in the Bible. Who do you speak about on Mother’s Day? Eve, the mother of all living? Sarah, the mother of the nation of Israel? Rachel, the one worth working fourteen years for? Hannah, the one that asked for a son, and God gave her Samuel? Jochebed, Moses’ mother, who obeyed God’s plan and saved his life? Who do you preach about? Elizabeth, the one that had a son named John, of whom it says, “Born of women, there was no greater than John”? You speak on Samson’s mother, where she asked the angel, “How shall we order the child?” Or, do you speak on one of these women who are characterized by the negatives in their lives? Ruth, the Moabite, Rahab, the harlot? Or maybe women like Lydia from Macedonia; Jael, the woman that killed a man by nailing a stake through his skull; Deborah, the one that because of a lack of men, she had to be the general of Israel and lead the nation; or maybe the unnamed woman that dropped a millstone and it killed Abimelech and won the war? Or do we speak on Job’s wife, The one with the famous statement, “Why don’t you curse God and die?” (I don’t think anybody likes Job’s, wife.) I want to speak on this subject for a few moments: What I like about Bathsheba. What I like about Bathsheba.