Mark 14:1-9 After two days was the feast of the passover, and of unleavened bread… What she is said to have done. This standard for our service is, you perceive, at once stimulating and encouraging. It is stimulating, for we are never to think that we have done enough while there is anything more we can do; and it is encouraging, for it tells us that though we can do but little, that little will be accepted, nay, considered by our gracious Master as enough. We are not to condemn ourselves, or to repine, because we can do no more. But something else must be noticed here. I. MARY DID MORE THAN SHE WAS AWARE OF DOING. It is an affecting circumstance, brethren, that wherever our Lord was, and however engaged, His death seems to have been always in His mind. It was in His mind here at a social meal, and what we should have called a happy one, with those He loved the very best on earth around Him, and with the love of some of them towards Him in the liveliest exercise. It is a cheering truth, brethren, that we can never measure the use to which a gracious Saviour may turn our poor doings. As His designs in our afflictions often lie deeper than we can penetrate, so do His designs in the services to which He prompts us. We do this, and we do that, and we mourn that it is so little, and that so little good to our fellow men and so little honour to our God will come from it; but we know not what will come from it. That little thing is in the hand of a great, omnipotent God, and His mighty arm can bend and turn it we know not how or whither. II. We must now ask what MARY'S MOTIVES PROBABLY WERE in this extraordinary act. 1. The strongest of them perhaps was a feeling of grateful love for her blessed Lord. He had just raised her brother from the dead; had just shown a sympathy and affection for herself and Martha, which might well astonish her; had put an honour on her family she must have felt to be surpassingly great. "Thank Him," she perhaps said within herself, "I could not when Lazarus came forth. I cannot now. My tongue will not move, and if it would, words are too poor to thank Him. But what can I do? Kings and great men are sometimes anointed at their splendid banquets. My Lord is to be at Simon's feast. I will go and buy the most precious ointment Jerusalem affords, and at that feast I will anoint Him. It will be nothing to Him, but if He will suffer it, it will be much to me." Do something to show that you are thankful for blessings, though that something be but little. 2. Mary was probably influenced also by another motive — a desire to put honour on Christ. "Let others hate Him, and spurn Him," she must have said, "Oh for some opportunity of showing how I honour Him." It is an easy thing, brethren, to honour Christ when others are honouring Him, but real love delights to honour Him when none others will. III. LET US NOW COME TO THE JUDGMENT MEN PASSED ON MARY'S CONDUCT. They censured it, and strongly. Men are generally made angry by any act of love for Christ which rises above their own standard — above their own ideas of the love which is due to Him. They can generally, too, find something in the warm-hearted Christian's conduct to give a colour to their displeasure. "Why was this waste of the ointment made?" It was a plausible question; it seemed a reasonable one. And observe, too, men can generally assign some good motive in themselves for the censure they pass on others. And mark, also, Christ's real disciples will sometimes join with others in censuring the zealous Christian. "There were some that had indignation." But yet again, the censures passed on the servant of Christ often have their origin in some one hypocritical, bad man. Who began this cavilling, this murmuring against Mary? We turn to St. John's Gospel, and he tells us it was Judas — Judas Iscariot, the betrayer. Trace to their source the bitter censures with which many a faithful Christian is for a time assailed, you will often find it in the secret, unthought of baseness of some low, hypocritical man. IV. The history now brings before us THE NOTICE OUR LORD TOOK OF THIS WOMAN'S CONDUCT. He, first, vindicated it. And observe how He vindicates Mary — with a wonderful gentleness towards those who had blamed her. The practical lesson is, brethren, to adore the blessed Jesus for taking us and our conduct under His protection, and while acting through His grace as He would have us, to feel ourselves safe, and more than safe, in His hands. "He that toucheth you," He says, "toucheth the apple of My eye." But this is not all — our Saviour recompenses this grateful woman as well as vindicates her. "Wheresoever," He says, "this gospel shall be preached, throughout the whole world, this also that she hath done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her." Our Lord had said long before, "Blessed are ye when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for My sake. Rejoice, and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven." But here He anticipates this; there is a reward for this woman on the earth, and a wide and large one. And now, turning from Mary and her conduct, let us think of ourselves and our conduct. What have we done for Christ? "We love Him because He first loved us" — there is the secret of Christian obedience, Christian self-denial, Christian devotedness. (C. Bradley, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: After two days was the feast of the passover, and of unleavened bread: and the chief priests and the scribes sought how they might take him by craft, and put him to death. |
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