Several times, pastors have said to me down the years, they had a problem. They had a problem, even living. Their church was blessed, the people were being saved; the Lord was with them. They had supportive officers, elders, deacons, but their deacons didn't seem to realise that they were unable to live on the meagre support they were being given. The church, these men would complain, has income, and the giving is good, but somehow the officers don't understand that the pastoral family has needs, and they are desperately short. The same problem happens in families too. Sometimes mother has to work, and yet she is doing all the looking after, even though there are teenagers in the house. They are grand youngsters, boys and girls, but now they've got a lot of interests of their own outside the home, and a busy programme, and they are studying and they have got many things to do. Mum is completely weighed down, and she’s having a bad week or two, and she’s overwrought, and she can scarcely cope. Sometimes, alas, the last place she will look for help is from her teens. She does everything for them – she wouldn't be without them – and yet they don't notice that she could do with some help. They have grown up in so many ways, but not altogether in responsibility, and in the capacity to notice, and come alongside and help. In that respect they are still children. These two examples illustrate the difference between Mary and the disciples. Think of the Lord. In two days, he is going to be arrested. He is God. Yes, but he is man also. He has entered into human flesh. He has human frailties and feelings. He has human tiredness and vulnerabilities, and now he is treading the winepress alone. He must lay his divine power aside. He must submit in obedience and weakness to his own plan, the plan formed by God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit in eternity: that he would come and be a representative man, and live a perfect life, and go to Calvary and bear the punishment of all those for whom he would die. He has got to face terrible torture: the torture of the garden of Gethsemane, the realisation of all was about to take place; the torture of abasement and humiliation, the pain of Calvary's cross, and the invisible agony of having the guilt of his people laid upon him and God the Father strike him instead of them, so that by suffering and dying on their behalf he might purchase their salvation for them. And the disciples don't see any of it. With utmost respect to them, they are like big children, looking to him, dependent upon him, taking from him. There's only one person there who says, ‘My Messiah, my Saviour, needs encouragement, needs solidarity from his disciples, needs understanding, needs even me’, and she formulated how she would do it. You see the magnificence of what Mary of Bethany did.
Are you a husband, a Christian husband? Do you believe the Bible that the husband is the head of the home, and that’s right, and you are, and you are responsible before God for everyone in that home. But don't be like some foolish Christians who think that being the head of the home, means that men are superior to women. They reason, quite wrongly. If ever there was a chapter in the Bible that puts the women ahead of the men for discernment and belief and understanding, it is this one. Why do you think it is, that in the will of God and under his superintendency, it was a woman who was the only one to see the point at that supper, and to see what was going to happen, and to feel it? She was the only one to realise she must identify with Christ, and she must honour him in a special way, and she must give him her love and her encouragement, her support and her trust. Why did God so ordain that it should be a woman? It is to wake up husbands who think they are superior. Exercise your headship with great care, and never lose go of mutual respect. Never let that go.