The Making Of A Mother: The Unique Path of Motherhood begins with the creation of woman, who was first formed as a helper, source of strength, and protector for man, distinct from all other creatures. Only later does she become “Eve,” the life-giver and mother of all living. Motherhood is woven into a woman’s being, expressed through nurturing, surrounding, and protecting her family, and ultimately giving life, love, and guidance through every stage of her children’s lives.
The Making Of A Mother: The Unique Path of Motherhood
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The Making Of A Mother: The Unique Path of Motherhood
Mother’s Day
It’s Mother’s Day and my first Mother’s Day without my mother. She passed this last April. I have many “fresh” thoughts I want to share with you.
In Genesis chapter 2, we read about creation and the making of a mother, i.e., the creation of woman.
Genesis 2:15-20
15 And the LORD God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.
16 And the LORD God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:
17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
18 And the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.
19 And OUT OF THE GROUND the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.
The Making Of A Mother: The Unique Path of Motherhood
Eve was Present at the First Command
I want to point out that when the Lord gave the command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, the woman was present. She was combined with the man in one being, but she was there. Man was created as both male and female. We give Adam a bad rap on how he didn’t explain to Eve about the tree, and so forth, but she was there. At that particular time, they were both one.
Verse 18 says the Lord God would make him a help meet. Even though they were one, was he still alone? Was he still lonely? Can you become one as much as a man and a woman can become one and still be lonely? According to this passage, you can. They are one, but yet Adam is still alone or lonely.
Loneliness is not determined by the presence of people or even by our connection with others. What loneliness, as we’ll see as we move through this passage, is determined by whether someone is aiding you, helping you, surrounding you, protecting you, and getting you through life.
Verse 19 tells us that out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air. Then the Lord brought them to Adam to name them, but for Adam there was not found a help meet for him. Adam is investigating every creature to see if any of them could be his help meet.
The Making Of A Mother: The Unique Path of Motherhood
No Help Meet for Adam
To get the picture, here is Adam naming all the animals, birds, reptiles, and so on. They come parading. Maybe a hippopotamus walks up there, and Adam says, You’re a hippopotamus. You can’t be my help meet because it’s too hippy. Maybe a duck walks across, and Adam says, You’re a duck, but you can’t be my help meet because your feet are too flat. Perhaps a giraffe comes along and Adam says, You’re a giraffe, but you can’t be my helpmeet because your neck is too long.
Adam was given this chore, but all the creatures that God formed out of the ground were good enough to be Adam’s help meet. Nothing could fulfill what he needed fulfilled in his life, not the hippopotamus, not the duck, not the giraffe, not the kangaroo, nothing. There was nothing that could take away this loneliness from Adam. What we’re seeing is that in the creation, woman’s first and primary purpose is to be a help meet for the man.
Before a woman is a mother, she’s a woman. I want you to see what some of these word meanings are to help us understand the Bible a bit better. What does help meet mean? The word help meet means “the aid.” Adam was alone because he didn’t have an aid, or a help meet. Even though he and Eve were as one, as one can be, he was still alone; he didn’t have this aid around him. As we trace the word to its root meaning, we find that it’s a primary word meaning “to surround and to protect.”
The Making Of A Mother: The Unique Path of Motherhood
Why Eve was Created
Adam didn’t have anybody to surround him. Adam didn’t have anybody to protect him, and that’s what he needed. This caused him to be alone or lonely. What makes us lonely, what makes us alone, is when we don’t have that person around who we feel protects us and aids us get through life. That’s what a wife and a momma does.
Women surround their families, including their husbands and children. Bear with me, please, as my mother’s passing is still fresh in my mind. Every time I go into my mother’s home, my dad’s home, there’s my mother. What I mean is she’s surrounded that place. Everything speaks of my mother. She had two houses. Mother was a kind of person who liked to have two of everything. She had two mixers. Not these little $20 beaters that you mash potatoes with. These are the big ones that you knead bread with. She had at least two of everything.
Whichever house you go to, there’s mother. She surrounds it. She got two utility buildings. Whatever she did, it seemed like she was always doing two.
A woman goes into a home, and it doesn’t take long for her to surround the home with herself. She puts pictures up. She makes it something that a man can’t do. Oh, he can hammer a nail in the wall to hang a picture, but there’s something about the way the woman hangs it. There’s something about the woman and how she makes the man an aid there. There’s… something about the way a woman does things.
The Making Of A Mother: The Unique Path of Motherhood
This is what Adam missed. This is what made Adam alone. Adam was surviving, but he didn’t have what he needed to be complete. He needed a woman. The primary purpose of a woman is to be with a man, to aid the man, to surround the man, and to protect the man.
I know that the word protect is a little different from what we think. We project it as the man protects the woman, and he does, but my wife protects me. She knows immediately when a woman is coming at me with the wrong spirit. Bang, she protects me. She says, Watch out. She protects me when she sees things happening that maybe I’m not aware of.
We know how a mother hen will protect her babies. Don’t mess with a mama hen when she’s got chicks. She protects them, or a cow when she’s got a calf. You don’t mess with a mama. There is a protection aspect built in. If you want to get a mama upset, start messing with her children or her family.
I’m trying to show you that before a woman becomes a mother, these things are built into her. This is the deepest part of the woman. This is how she was created and who she is. There’s this aspect of surrounding. There is an aspect of aiding, and this is what Adam needed, and this is what we need as men. We need this. If we don’t have it, we’ll be lonely. I need my wife to help me go through what God has called me to do. It’s impossible to do it well by myself. We need the woman.
The Making Of A Mother: The Unique Path of Motherhood
Remember, she’s not Eve yet. The Lord called her “woman.” He has not called her Eve yet. Before she’s Eve, before she’s mother, which is what Eve means, she’s woman.
Woman Became a Mother
Genesis 2:21-23
21 And the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;
22 And the rib, which the LORD God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.
23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.
Genesis 2:24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.
Genesis 2:25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.
The Making Of A Mother: The Unique Path of Motherhood
The word rib or ribs means “a rib, a door, a side, a timber.” It could be interpreted in various ways, but what we understand is that the Lord God took a rib, a part of Adam, to create the woman. Eve was not formed from the ground, as everything else was formed. Everything else was made from dirt. Woman was made from man. She is like him and made from the same material. Adam looked at her and said, ‘Woman, because you were taken from my side.’ You’re a woman. You’re a man with a womb and a different kind of human. Man is made from the ground. She’s made to be like man.
The successful marriages I see, those that make it through life’s storms, have women who have learned this. They become what they need to become to be like their man.
I find that in marriages where both partners want to go in different directions, the marriage never really works well. They may exist, but they never work well. She’s created to aid him, to be with him, and to surround him. God created her from him to be like him, to have his nature, to be what he is, and help in what he does. This is woman. She is the door to his innermost parts and is the doorway to entering the realm of his key organs, his heart, his very breath.
She’s a timber, a pillar, and a strength for him. Woman. This is what she is. This is what a woman is. She was taken from him to be a part of him, to be joined back to him so that they can minister to each other, aid each other, surround each other. She is a door into his life.
The Making Of A Mother: The Unique Path of Motherhood
The serpent knew the woman was the door to Adam. What did the serpent do? What door did he use? The woman. Remember, the woman is not Eve yet. She’s not Eve until after the serpent. She’s woman. The woman is the key to the man. You want to know about the man? Look at the woman. She’s the door to him. She’s the strength to him, the pillar, the timber that causes him to exist, that holds him up, supports him.
The woman was taken out of the man. The word woman is Ish-shah. Ish is the word for man. Ish-shah is woman. The woman is like man because she was taken from man. Tracing the word into its primary, into root word, it means to be frail, feeble, melancholy. Adam looked at her and he says, WOMAN! You’re a bit frailer than I am. Maybe a little weaker than me. But yet in your frailty, in your weakness, you give me strength. You protect me.
How many men know what I’m talking about? How many men understand what I’m saying? You get strength from your wives. Even though she might not have the physical strength that I have, in many ways, my wife is much stronger than I am. My wife has a door to me. She aids me.
First, Adam called her woman because she was taken out of man. That’s what the Bible says. She was a man with a womb.
The Making Of A Mother: The Unique Path of Motherhood
In verse 24, it says, Therefore shall a man leave his father and mother. Why? Why shall a man leave his father and his mother? Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and shall cleave unto his wife and they shall be one flesh. The purpose of marriage is to reunite as one. Not one to the extent that we’re lonely, but one to the extent that we aid the purpose of one another’s lives. To the extent that we make each other strong.
You’ve heard me speak on this last verse in 25 chapter 2, and they were both naked. The man and his wife were not ashamed. We seek a marriage relationship where we are not ashamed. Nothing to be ashamed of.
So what do we learn? What I’m trying to get here, first of all, is that the woman becomes the mother. She is first created a woman and then becomes a mother. She is created from a part of man. She’s a door into him and a timber and a strength in his life.
Number two, the woman was made from Adam, not from the ground. She was created differently, yet she was created like him.
The Making Of A Mother: The Unique Path of Motherhood
Number three, nothing God created is capable of fulfilling the man’s needs. No beast, no fowl, nothing God created can fulfill man except woman. Nothing can make a man happy as does a woman. Not in this context that I’m speaking of now. I’m not talking about the relationship with the Lord. You understand what I’m talking about here.
Genesis 3:20
And Adam called his wife’s name Eve; because she was the mother of all living.
Before Eve was Eve, she was woman. This is where she becomes… Eve. Up until now she’s woman. Hey woman, come here. Up until now she’s been woman. Now she’s Eve. And Adam called his wife’s name Eve. Why? Because she was the mother of all living. Every person here, every person in existence, every person on the earth came from a mother. A woman becomes a mother.
The word Eve means life giver. Your mother gave you life. Then your mother took you and showed you how to live it. It was in your mother’s womb that you were conceived. You spent the first nine months of your life there. Your house was her womb. You became the center of her thoughts. She prepared a place for you to live. Her mind and her thoughts were consumed with your coming forth. She brought you forth with a lot of pain.
The Making Of A Mother: The Unique Path of Motherhood
We were at Pastor Thiebaud’s mother’s funeral. We were at the funeral home. His mother’s and my mother’s deaths happened very close. I walked up to him, hugged him, and he said, Tough, ain’t it, buddy?” He said, “You know, she gave me life.” Eve, the mother of all living. Eve, she gives life. Mamas give life. Eve gave life and then showed those whom she gave life to how to live it.
You can take a cardboard box and give it to a little boy, and you say Here, take this cardboard box and play with it. And he’ll take that cardboard box and he’ll make him a spaceship or an Apache fort or a race car, something that he can use to conquer and to defeat or outmaneuver or outrace something else.
You get that same box and give it to a little girl. What will she do with it? It becomes a home. It becomes a house. She begins surrounding it with things. She’ll put little chairs in there or little ovens in there. She’ll put little teacups in there. Put her dolls in there. The box becomes a home. In her mind and her fantasies, she begins to practice becoming first a woman and then a mother. And she starts practicing this. God put that into her. It’s her innermost or very depths of her being. A woman is made this way. This is how God created her.
The Making Of A Mother: The Unique Path of Motherhood
Mother Gave Us Life
She will give them life at least as much as she can. She will give them names, feed them, make mud cakes and mud water, and have tea parties with her dolls. The girl will read them stories, and she’ll play house with these dolls, carry them, change their diapers and clothes, and even discipline them. Why? Because that’s what she is. She’s created that way. A woman. And I know that the woman becomes the mother.
We are conceived and receive life in our mother’s womb. We make our home for the first nine months in that womb. Then we become our mother’s constant thought. She makes ready for our arrival in much pain, and she births us into the world. Mother holds us close to her more than anyone else holds us. She puts up with our crying. She puts up with our messes. Mother nurses us from her breast and then feeds us with a little spoon. Mother worries about us when things go wrong and nurses us back to health when we’re sick.
Our mother teaches us how to count and recite the ABCs. Mother reads us stories and makes sure we have clothes to wear. She is the one who tells us that all our problems will be alright. Our mother loves us when it seems no one else should. Mother watches us grow, graduate, marry, and begin our lives. Mother is always there, close by, but not wanting to be in the way. A mother watches us have children and loves them because they are part of us. She watches them grow and begin their own lives.
The Making Of A Mother: The Unique Path of Motherhood
Then one day, you look, and your mother is gray-headed and old, and she doesn’t feel very well. The person who has always been so strong for you is now becoming weak before your eyes, and you can’t do anything about it. It seems that in a moment, somehow, the time gets away, and on that dark day, mother’s gone. How did it happen? How could it happen? Yesterday she was fishing with me. Today I’m burying her. She gave me life. She gave me love. It’s from her I came, and now she’s gone.
I encourage you to contact your mother today. If at all possible, go see her. At the very least, call her. If your mother has passed, take some time today and thank the Lord for her while you talk to the Lord about the memories you have of her.
The Making Of A Mother: The Unique Path of Motherhood
Other Related Sermons:
Purpose Seen Through Adam and Eve
God’s Purpose For His People Audio Series
Wicked Woman Eve sermon video audio notes
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