Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2317
“His mother said unto the servants, Whatever He says unto you, do it.” John 2:5.
IT does not need a strong imagination to picture Mary, probably at that time the widowed mother of our Lord. She is full of love and of a naturally kind, sympathetic disposition. She is at a marriage and she is very pleased that her Son is there, with the first handful of His disciples. Their being there has made a greater demand upon the provisions than was expected and the supply is running short, so she, with an anxiety that was natural to such a mother of her years, and of her gentle spirit, thinks that she will speak to her Son and tell Him that there is a need. So she says to Him, “They have no wine.”
There was not much amiss in that, surely, but our Lord, who sees not as man sees, perceived that she was putting to the front her motherly relationship at a time when it was necessary that it should be in the background. How necessary it was, history has shown, for the apostate church of Rome has actually made Mary a Mediatrix and prayers have been addressed to her! She has even been asked to use her maternal authority with her Son. It was well that our Savior should check anything that might tend to give any countenance to Mariolatry which has been altogether so mischievous. And it was necessary for Him to speak to His mother with somewhat more of sharpness than, perhaps, her conduct, in itself, alone, might have required. So her august Son felt bound to say to her, “Woman, what have I to do with you in such a matter as this? I am not your Son as a miracle-worker. I cannot work to please you. No, if I work a miracle as the Son of God, it cannot be as your Son—it must be in another character. What have I to do with you in this matter?” And He gives His reason—“My hour is not yet come.”
It was a gentle rebuke, absolutely necessary from the prescience of all that would follow. You can easily picture how Mary took it. She knew Christ’s gentleness, His infinite love, how for 30 years there had never come anything from Him that had grieved her spirit. So she drank in the reproof and gently shrank back, thinking much more than she said, for she was always a woman who laid up these things and pondered them in her heart. She says very little, but she thinks a great deal—and we see in her later conduct, in respect to this very miracle, that she thought very much of what Jesus had said to her. Brothers and Sisters, you and I, with the very best intentions, may sometimes err towards our Lord. And if He, then, in any way rebukes us, and puts us back—if He disappoints our hope, if He does not allow our ambitious designs to prosper—let us take it from Him as Mary took it from Jesus. Let us just feel that it must be right and let us, in silence, possess ourselves in His Presence.
Notice, then, this holy woman’s quietude, ceasing to say a word, quietly drinking it all in. And then observe her wise admonition to the servants who were there to wait at the feast. Inasmuch as she had run before Him, she would have them to follow after Him and she very wisely and kindly says to them, “Whatever He says unto you, do it. Do not go to Him with any of your remarks. Do not try to press Him forward. Do not urge Him on—He knows better than we do. Stand back and wait till He speaks, and then be quick to obey every single word that He utters.” Beloved, I wish that when we have learned a lesson, we would try to teach it. Sometimes our Master gives us a sharp word all to ourselves and we would not tell anybody else what He has said. In our private communions He has spoken to our conscience and to our heart—and we need not go and repeat that, as Mary did not. But, having learned the lesson well, let us then say to our next friend, “Do not err as I have done. Avoid the rock on which I struck just now. I fear that I grieved my Lord. My Sister, I would not have you grieve Him. My Brother, I would try to tell you just what to do that you may please Him in all
things.” Do you not think that we would minister to mutual edification if we did that? Instead of telling the faults of others, let us extract the essence from the discoveries which we make of our own errors and then administer that as a helpful medicine to those who are around us.
This holy woman must have spoken with a good deal of power. Her tone must have been peculiarly forcible and her manner must have made a great impression upon the servants, for you notice that they did exactly what she told them. It is not every servant who will let a guest come into the house and set up to be mistress. But so it was when she spoke to those servants, with her deep, earnest tones, as a woman who had learned something that she could not tell, but who, yet, out of that experience, had extracted a lesson for others. She must have spoken with a wonderful melting force when she said to them, “Whatever He says unto you, do it.” And they were all looking on with awe after she had spoken, drinking in her message to them as she had drunk in the message of the Lord.