As Jesus was saying these things, a woman in the crowd called out, “Blessed is the mother who gave you birth and nursed you.”
He replied, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it” (Luke11:27,28, NIV).
.It is fondly imagined by some that it must have involved very special privileges to have been the mother of our Lord, because they supposed that she had the benefit of looking into His very heart in a way in which we cannot hope to do. There may be an appearance of plausibility in the supposition, but not much. We do not know that Mary knew more than others; what she did know she did well to lay up in her heart [Luke 2:19]; but she does not appear from anything we read in the Evangelists to have been a better-instructed believer than any other of Christ’s disciples.
All that she knew we also may discover. Do you wonder that we should say so? Here is a text to prove it:
“The secret of the Lord is with those who fear Him,
And He will show them His covenant” (Psalm 25:14).
Remember the Master’s words:
“No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you” (John 15:15).
So blessedly does this Divine Revealer of secrets tell us His heart, that He keeps back nothing which is profitable to us; His own assurance is, “If it were not so, I would have told you” [John 14:2]. Does He not this day manifest Himself unto us as He does not unto the world? [John 14:17]. It is even so; and therefore we will not ignorantly cry out, “Blessed is the womb that bore You,” but we will intelligently bless God that, having heard the Word and kept it, we have first of all as true a communion with the Saviour as the Virgin had, and in the second place as true an acquaintance with the secrets of His heart as she can be supposed to have obtained.
[“But the anointing which you have received from Him abides in you, and you do not need that anyone teach you; but as the same anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you will abide in Him.” – 1 John 2:27 NKJV
“that [your] hearts may be encouraged, being knit together in love, and attaining to all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the knowledge of the mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ, in whom are hidden all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” – Col. 2:2,3 NKJV]
Happy [are we] to be thus privileged!
from Charles H. Spurgeon, Morning and Evening [June 24 AM]
“Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-92) was England’s best-known preacher for most of the second half of the nineteenth century. In 1854, just four years after his conversion, Spurgeon, then only 20, became pastor of London’s famed New Park Street Church…”
Bracketed Scriptures added.