Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – John 2:1-11

Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

On the third day, there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Now, both Jesus and his disciples were invited to the wedding. And when they ran out of wine, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does your concern have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Whatever he says to you, do it.” Now there were set there six water pots of stone according to the manner of purification of the Jews containing 20 or 30 gallons apiece.

Jesus said to them, “Fill the water pots with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, “Draw some out now and take it to the master of the feast.” And they took it. When the master of the feast had tasted the water that was made wine and did not know where it came from, but the servants who had drawn the water knew, the master of the feast called the bridegroom. And he said to him, “Every man at the beginning sets out the good wine, and when the guests have well drunk, then the inferior. You have kept the good wine until now.” This beginning of signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee and manifested his glory and his disciples believed in him.

Let’s pray. Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you, Lord God, for the joyous word this is to us. We pray that your Holy Spirit of joy and rejoicing in the context of the kingdom would cause our hearts to delight and to enjoy this text, to be fed by it, to the end that we might better understand relationships in the context of our families. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

It’s a delight to be back with you. Howard L. and I had a wonderful trip to Poland. We’re going to have a presentation of the trip, kind of an overview of it next Lord’s Day in the afternoon. That’ll replace the normally scheduled regional prayer meetings for next Sunday. And we’ll talk about the many evidences of God’s providence that we saw demonstrated in the trip, bringing back what I think should be very encouraging news of the developments of the churches in Poland and what’s going on there.

Today is the—I think this is the first Mother’s Day sermon I’ve ever done. I’ve always sort of avoided Mother’s Day sermons like the plague. I think it’s important to guard the Lord’s day as the Lord’s day, and so I’ve kind of been reticent to speak on the subject specifically of mothers. And yet the providence of God—here we are in John chapter 2:1-11. And Mary, Jesus’s mother, plays a significant role in this text. So I thought it’d be good to look at this role and what Jesus says. It’s kind of ambiguous to us. It’s hard to understand what’s going on. And hopefully we can bring a little bit of clarity to our Savior’s view of his mother based upon the Proverbs.

Many people see in the prologue of John’s gospel a reference to wisdom. You know, wisdom is said to dwell with God in eternity. In eternity, God possesses wisdom. Jesus is the Word dwelling with God in eternity. And Jesus is wisdom personified. He is the greater Solomon. He is wisdom. And so we’ll see the relationship of the wisdom of Proverbs to how we know Jesus must have interacted with his mother. And maybe that’ll bring a little light on the text to us.

You know, in considering Mother’s Day, I know it was a commercial day set up by a card company as I understand it. But, you know, I don’t really think it could have had the success in a non-Christian country originally as it had here. We’ll talk about this more, but I think it’s very significant that in the Ten Commandments, children are not told just to honor their fathers, but to honor and obey their mothers. In various other cultures, fathers are certainly held up as the supreme authority. In Roman culture, the father was the ruler of all things.

But in Christianity, in the Old Testament as well, in God’s word to us, mothers and women have a very highly exalted state. And so I think that probably that has something to do with the success of the holiday in our day and age. And it’s certainly proper to reflect on how the Lord’s day informs us of the Lord’s attitude toward his mother and, as a result, what our children should do in terms of their families as well, and specifically their mothers.

The mission from this text for you young children is to honor your mother, to honor our mothers. That’s what this text, I think, would have us meditate on in relationship to the book of Proverbs.

Now, setting this in context a little bit, we’re going to spend three sermons on this wedding feast in Cana of Galilee. In John chapter 6, later in the Gospel of John, you know, Jesus feeds the 5,000. And Jesus says this to them in verse 26 of John 6: “Most assuredly I say to you, you seek me not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled.”

They didn’t see the signs. They didn’t understand what Jesus was doing in feeding them this bread, and they really didn’t understand the sign of the manna in the wilderness either. They didn’t understand that all of these things pointed to the Lord Jesus Christ and his provision in our lives. They didn’t understand that he was telling them, as he fed them bread to the 5,000, that they were in essence in the wilderness and needed to go across the water into the promised land. They didn’t understand that they were in unbelief. They didn’t understand what was being pictured in this real historical event where miraculously our Savior takes small provisions and feeds 5,000 people.

Well, I think it’s appropriate then as we read this text—and the text specifically says this is the first sign that Jesus did. He reveals his glory and his disciples believe in him as a result. It’s I think it’s proper for us to say that we need to see the sign of what’s going on in the wedding feast at Cana of Galilee. We need to think through it a little bit more than just the bare historical events as real as they are to us. We never want to lose grips on that—it really shows Christ’s miraculous authority over the elements of the earth to change water into wine.

Still, there are truths being displayed here for us that we’ll want to delve into at some length. And so next week we’ll talk more about the specific event of changing water into wine. And this week, I want us to focus a little bit on this relationship of the mother of Jesus and Jesus that the text pictures for us, a pretty important item in the opening verses of this miracle.

So signs were to be interpreted correctly, and this sign is to be interpreted correctly. And this sign is part of a series of events that Jesus will now take place in, recorded by John in his gospel very carefully and deliberately to show particular aspects of truth. Jesus will, in the next oh 10 chapters or so, go through a series of institutions of Judaism, so to speak. And he will also be seen doing things on particular festival days—Sabbath, Passover, Tabernacles, and even the Feast of Hanukkah, which was not an Old Testament feast, but nonetheless, he participated in.

He will transform these events and really reveal their true nature and purpose as God had provided these events from the Old Testament. He’ll restore the true meaning of the Sabbath by healing men and making them whole, restoring sight and restoring vocational ability to the lame man. He’ll show that the Feast of Tabernacles is really about the flowing forth of the Holy Spirit from Christ to his people and then to the world, and gathering the world in for the great harvest feast at the end of the festival cycle.

And here Jesus attends this institution—this marriage celebration. The institution of the family is focal here. It’s at the heart of this institution of the marriage feast. And in the second half of this chapter, Jesus will cleanse the temple. He’ll participate in the institutional worship there and tell us some important things about it. In chapter 3, he’ll have a discussion with the leading rabbi, Nicodemus, and he’ll say that he doesn’t just bring education or learning to us. He transforms men. He transforms men’s lives.

And so he kind of goes through these institutions and also festivals of Judaism and transforms them. So I think it’s proper as he looks at this institution of marriage and the wedding feast to look at this institution of the household and what this text can tell us about households with the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ restoring proper meaning to these things.

Now one other point by way of introduction. This is the culmination of these series of sequential days that follow the prologue. You remember we’ve talked about this. This is the great third day, seventh day, eighth day, all sort of wrapped up in one. This is the culmination event of the sequence of days in the beginning days of our Savior’s ministry. And so it shows us what all this new creation culminates in, which will be quite important for us next week as we consider joy at the center of this event that Jesus engages in.

Joy at the center of the new creation affected by our Savior. Joy at the center of our lives. And we’ll talk more about that next week. But here as we begin to read this text, we become a little confused in this relationship going on between Jesus and his mother. And I want to talk first of all then about Jesus’s attitude toward his mother in the context of the narrative.

Notice first of all the significance of the mother of Jesus in the narrative structure of this event. In verse one, we read that it was the third day, the wedding in Cana of Galilee. Cana was a small, unimportant town north of Nazareth, and the mother of Jesus was there. So right in the first verse we’re told that the mother of Jesus is there. This is important. It sort of sets her forward as the first character mentioned in this narrative. So she has significance to her.

Now both Jesus and his disciples were invited to the wedding. So now they’re there as well. And when they ran out of wine, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” The mother of Jesus acts to demonstrate this need to our Savior. And then he responds to her, “Woman, what does your concern have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” She then says to the servants, “Whatever he says to you, do it.” And then of course he commands them to do these things and water is turned to wine.

So we see in the way this text is written, God brings our attention to the mother of Jesus in the context of the narrative. She has significance both according to the narrative structure. She is the first person mentioned as being at this wedding in Cana. She’s the first person mentioned.

Secondly, the mother of Mary seeks Jesus’s help. There’s a situation going on, and the situation—if you’re at a wedding feast and a party is being thrown, weddings were times of great celebration in Judaism. Wine was an essential element of that time. The rabbis said, “If there’s no wine at a celebration, there’s no joy at the celebration.” These wedding feasts could go on as long as typically seven days—times of great joy, great partying, great celebration, but all accompanied by the wine that God had provided to man to make his heart joyful.

So when the wine runs out, the joy is going out of the festival. Mary, for some reason unbeknownst to us, has this significant role, and she sees the need of the bridegroom and the master of the ceremonies who’s providing this joyous celebration. She doesn’t want them to be humiliated by running out of wine midfeast, and she then engages herself in doing something about it.

Tradition has it that this is John the evangelist getting married at this. We don’t know that’s the case, and that Mary was related to the party that John was marrying into. But for whatever reason, Mary sees a need and seeks to meet the need. And Mary is seen here—and particularly, I suppose, in Catholic commentaries, but I don’t think we should be afraid of—Mary’s seeing a need and meeting it here. Mary seeks help from Jesus, and when we see needs in the context of our culture, needs of joy in a situation, needs of deliverance from a particular problem, Mary is a picture here for us that we should turn to Jesus to help, seek that, meet that need. We should turn to Jesus for his help.

Now Jesus then speaks to Mary, and in our English translations it sounds a little harsh. Sounds like words of rebuke. “Woman, what does your concern have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” He doesn’t say mother. And this is significant. I think that he doesn’t call her mother. But we don’t want to read into this statement “woman” something that isn’t there.

In the Greek term that’s used here to describe Jesus’s words probably spoken in Aramaic, this Greek term is one of respect and even tenderness. And so there’s no real English equivalent. We could say, as some commentators say, that it should be translated “lady,” you know, but not like we use the word lady—”Yeah, lady, what do you want?” “Lady” is a term of respect and endearment. It means, as Westcott put in his commentary—and I quoted this for you on the outline—”It has not the least sting of reproof or severity. This term ‘woman’ has courteous respect, even tenderness in the context of it.”

So on the children’s outlines, what did Jesus call his mother? You know, it’s a single word, but I’m saying what maybe a way for you children to think of it is he calls her “dear lady.” And he gives us a picture of even how a 30-year-old son addresses his mother when he is working in the context of wisdom, fulfilling of the spirit and obedience to the Father.

The son moves to respect his mother and calls her a term of endearment—”dear lady.”

Next we have this phrase, however, by Jesus which is somewhat ambiguous. It is hard for us to understand. It is an idiom. It’s a kind of set phrase that’s frequently used. “What do you have to do with me?” And on your outlines, you know, the literal translation—”what to I and you”—would be kind of a literal translation of the Greek terms used here.

And while sometimes this phrase can mean—can be a rebuke, “What do I have to do with you? Quit bugging me about this thing”—it’s not always used that way. The term can be used in kind of a friendly way to describe, “Well, there’s a misunderstanding going on here. You don’t understand my relationship to this event.” Or it can actually mean “What do we have in common?” Some degree of divergence is indicated. In other words, Mary wants this, and Jesus has a different take on what’s to be done at this particular point in time, but it doesn’t have this kind of ring of rebuke or reproof to it that we frequently read into the context of this here.

So another translator put it this way. It can mean this as well: “Don’t worry, you don’t quite understand what’s going on. Leave things to me. I’ll settle them in my own particular way.”

Jesus—one thing we do know about what’s happening here is Jesus is telling Mary to leave the event with him, that he’ll have priority in meeting this need. He’ll decide what to do and not to do. He won’t just do whatever she tells him to do. But the phrase is somewhat ambiguous in terms of what it means.

So Jesus uses a term of endearment. This is a term that men in Greek culture who love their wives very much are described as calling their wives this “dear lady” or “woman” phrase. And Jesus’s supposed rebuke that some people interpret as rebuke is somewhat ambiguous and does not have to be taken in the context of rebuke at all, but rather a little parting of ways and a simple statement to his mother to convey the fact that he’ll take priority in deciding what to do.

And then he says that “my hour has not yet come.” He now very self-consciously—the rest of the book is all about Jesus coming to do the Father’s will. So there is this—it seems this idea of a transference of allegiance. No longer obeying his mother for 30 years, and now a transfer over to very explicitly obeying the Father’s commands and doing in the context of the Father’s timing in everything that he’s going to do.

His public ministry is beginning—that’s the point of this phrase. I think—remember this is the end of a sequence of 7 days or so. And this sequence begins with the initial recognition by John the Baptist of who Jesus is. Jesus’s baptism has happened. He spent 40 days in the wilderness. He comes back and probably immediately after his return, John recognizes him: “Behold the Lamb of God.” The next few days he gathers five disciples around him, takes off up to Galilee, ends up at this wedding feast in Cana. So we’re just a week into the public ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And it seems like this phrase that Jesus is using to speak with his mother and the deliberate use of the term “woman” instead of “mother” shows this transference now of Christ to his public ministry. His baptism at the Jordan River has occurred. He’s gathered disciples. He’s now going to begin the first of his miracles to begin to reveal his glory, leading up to the hour of his death—death on the cross, the death that brings joy to all his disciples through the work that he does dying for their sins and being raised back up.

Now, it’s interesting too in this text the structure of this particular story. You know, Mary says they need wine, and Jesus says, “Well, I’ll take care of it my way.” And she says, “Whatever he does to the servants, whatever he tells you to do, do it.” He then meets the need. And then the master of the feast says, says to the bridegroom that he now has brought out the best wine. And that’s the end of the narrative. Then there’s a little comment on it: “Well, so he’s saying, ‘You, the bridegroom, have brought out this great wine.’”

And it’s almost like what we’ll see later on in chapter 20 of John’s gospel where another Mary sees Jesus and supposes him to be the gardener. She’s in a garden. He’s raised up in the garden. He died for their sins in a garden. He’s been arrested in the garden. He delivers his people in the garden, and she thinks he’s the gardener. Well, he is. I mean, he’s not the gardener she thought, but he is the gardener. He is the greater Adam come to restore his people and create us into a beautiful vine.

Well, here he’s not the bridegroom that’s getting married, but he is the bridegroom that provides this wine, that provides the best of wine, the joy of the celebration.

I want to talk more about that next week. But for now, you see, there’s a sense in which Jesus is now wedded to his ministry and task. He’s begun to gather the members of his spouse, the bride, the disciples. And he’s—this whole miracle is intended to produce belief in those disciples, increase the members of the bride, so to speak, collectively the spouse of our Savior. He is the bridegroom. And as a bridegroom, now he’s moving away from the covenantal authority of his parents.

And so I think we can sort of see in this a transition away from Jesus’s obedience to his mother to a different relationship now that he takes on ministry and moves to the vocation or calling that he has gone to, and now that he basically has gone and sought a wife for himself and began to wed her.

Well, Mary’s response to Jesus isn’t, “Oh, okay. I’ll just not do anything about the wine then.” She doesn’t see in this a rebuke of her making known the needs of the people. She sees Jesus is saying, well, he’s going to take care of this in his time. So she begins to make preparations for that. Mary trusts Jesus explicitly. And she is shown here again in an exemplary fashion. The mother of our Savior is shown as having trust in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. “Whatever he tells you to do, do it.”

Now, remember that John expounds the Old Testament and talks about Old Testament truths and the fulfillment of them in Christ. Many millennia before this, Egypt had a problem. They ran out of bread. Whole world ran out of bread. And Pharaoh told his servants, “Whatever Joseph says, do it.” See, Jesus is the greater Joseph. He’s going to provide for the difficulties, the shortcoming of joy and wine at the feast. And Mary, like Pharaoh, tells the servants, “Whatever he says, do it.”

Now, she had some kind of authority at the feast. I don’t know why, but she has some kind of authority. And she demonstrates the faith of us. As we’re members of the church of Christ, we want to look to Jesus the way she looked at Jesus to help out in situations of need. We want to understand that he’s going to meet our needs in his timing, his priorities. The Father’s going to dictate the way these prayers are heard. And we want to make preparation and trust the Lord Jesus Christ to be moving to meet the needs—for instance, of the church, of our homes, of our lives.

So Mary is an example here to us, as someone who exhibits this trust and faith in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now I want to then move from this consideration of this narrative and now look at a more clear perhaps manifestation of the work of our Savior, or the attitude of our Savior rather, toward his mother. As I said, Jesus is wisdom incarnate, and we know that we could look at the law of God and its requirements of children to honor their parents and we could say that the Lord Jesus Christ came and kept the law of God fully, being God himself, exhibiting in his character what that law meant. And Jesus obeyed the law, and so described this attitude toward his mother that the law describes, or we can say here that Jesus is wisdom incarnate.

And whatever the book of Proverbs says about one’s relationship to his mother, this is what the Lord Jesus Christ did and is doing in the context of this particular narrative from John’s gospel. So we’re going to look now at the Proverbs and say what do they show us? What do they tell us about the significance of mothers and the attitude that sons should or should not have toward their mothers?

And the first point of observation I want to make is that there is a significance to mothers in the training up of kings. And this is seen in the narrative structure of the Proverbs. The Proverbs—and I’ve mentioned this over the last few months several times—but the Proverbs are the book I think that we want to take to teenage boys and young men to train them up, to put the final spin on them, as it were, as they go into this world to exercise vocation for the Lord Jesus Christ.

The book of Proverbs is specifically written to train up young princes so that they can be kings. It’s a king’s manual, and all of our young men are king’s kids. They’re all princes, and they’re going to be prophet priests and kings in their own particular callings and in their homes. And of course, the implication is that our young daughters are becoming queens. And the wisdom of the king is the wisdom of the queen.

So the book of Proverbs seems to me is an absolutely critical book for training up young people as they’re moving into that adult stage of life to begin to study, immerse themselves in the Proverbs so that they’ve learned that law stuff as children—the flat kind of regular patterns of the law—and now we’ll have the wisdom to apply it in the context of their vocation or calling.

I think the book of Proverbs is also probably the place, a book that ought to factor high in our training and maturation of church officers to make wise decisions as deacons and elders. We need the wisdom of Solomon. We need the wisdom of these Proverbs. And so this book is absolutely critical for training up young people.

And I think that the way this book is written is intentionally highlights the great importance of the relationship of young princes and princesses to their mothers.

I say this for several reasons. First of all, there are 14 occurrences of the specific Hebrew term that’s translated “mother.” And while we don’t want to pay too much attention to that, perhaps this is a double witness of seven. There’s a fullness of references to the mother in the context of this very important book.

Secondly, there are key references or placements of this term “mother” in the context of the structure of the Proverbs. You know, there is this structure to the Proverbs. One commentator describes it as kind of an opening, middle, and close to the book—sort of a three-part structure. Chapters 1 to 9 open with the format of instruction from a father to his son. Chapters 10 through 30 then are filled with a bunch of specific Proverbs, and 31:1-9 begins the closing section of the book.

Well, what you find is that in the beginning section—in the first nine chapters—we have a little prologue that says the purpose of these. Then it begins by saying the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and immediately there’s instruction to the son to hear the instruction of the father and to keep the law of the mother. So at the very beginning of the book of Proverbs, in the introductory section linked to a proper display of fear of the Lord, is a proper relationship to hearing and retaining what one’s parents tell them. And specifically, as I said, the mother is singled out here—the law of the mother.

Then as we go to chapter 10, which opens the specific section of all these small Proverbs, immediately at the beginning of chapter 10, in verse 1, we have a reference again to fathers and mothers. Turn if you will to Proverbs 10:1.

And you see right at the beginning it says, “The Proverbs of Solomon.” So this is a divinely inspired break to the narrative. There’s nine chapters of introduction. Now the specific Proverbs begin, and the first Proverb at the head of the list: “A wise son makes a glad father, but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.”

We’ll talk about that a little bit in a couple of minutes, but for right now, notice the structure that this provides us in the context of the Proverbs.

Then turn to chapter 31 of Proverbs. And now this sort of—this is like the conclusion of the book. What one author described as the other side of the envelope as chapters 1 to 9. And what do we read? “The words of King Lemuel, the prophecy that his mother taught him.”

The conclusion of the book of Proverbs are first a series of Proverbs or truths taught to a king by his mother. His mother is the ghost writer, so to speak, of this text of Proverbs. His mother gave him these things. Lemuel, as an obedient and wise son, records the words of his mother. And then of course Proverbs 31 concludes with this picture of the excellent wife who is also of course the excellent mother, and it’s in the context then of this great conclusion to this book written to kings or would-be kings that the children are instructed that they are to praise her in the gates. The children shall rise up and praise her.

So here in the placement of the term “mother,” we have some very significant elements in the flow of the Proverbs. The use of the term “mother” is used at the beginning of wisdom—the father’s instruction and mother’s law—and then at the middle when the Proverbs themselves start in chapter 10, it’s put forward as Lemuel’s mother teaches him the words of closing. In 31:1, it’s there, and then in the conclusion, we have a wife and a mother. So very important placement in the context of the narrative.

Let’s talk now then about let’s go through a brief summary of observations on sons and mothers in this book of Proverbs. We’ve seen its importance. Now let’s talk about what actually is said to sons and daughters about their mothers. How important is your attitude towards your mom? Young men and young women. It’s just not somewhat important. It’s not just important. It’s not very important. It is very, very important—is what the Proverbs are telling us.

You want to be a king? You must, to rule properly, you must have an understanding of your proper attitude and relationship to your parents. And very specifically included is to the mother. To the mother. Who is the wisest of all men? Well, it’s not Solomon. It’s Jesus. And so as we see in these Proverbs what men are to be like, we can see the attitude of the Lord Jesus Christ to his mother. Certainly, Jesus’s attitude toward his mother can be seen in the Gospels, in these small records. They’re seen in the epistles and the law, but preeminently I think—with all these references to son’s attitudes toward their mother—we can see what our Savior’s attitude must have been toward his mother, and what we see reflected finally in this culminatory event of the wedding feast at Cana and Galilee.

Okay. So let’s talk about the most important person in our lives in terms of whether or not we are going to exhibit wisdom in the context of our world. And we’re going to talk about mothers. Okay.

First, wise sons listen to and retain the mother’s law and they as a result are beautified and protected. Turn to chapter 1 of Proverbs, verses 7-10.

What have we read? “Verse 7: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge. Beginning of wisdom is fear of God. Well, how do you know if you have it? Fools despise wisdom and instruction. Well, how we know we have wisdom or not is how well we do in relationship to the wisdom and instruction that’s going to be spoken of. And very specifically, that comes from parents.

My son, hear the instruction of thy father and forsake not the law of thy mother. So there’s two things required here of children. You’re to have big wide open ears. Shama—listen with big ears. The Hebrew word means it means have big ears without earplugs in them. When your mother speaks, wow, those ears move forward. You want to hear what your father and mother have to say. That means you’re going to want to stop talking. Hard to hear when you’re continuing to speak. You want to hear with wide open ears, without earplugs, without distraction.

You want to attend to the instruction of your father and the law of your mother. This is an interesting phrase. It’s used again later in these Proverbs. The instruction of the father and the law of the mother. What does it mean?

The word for instruction is translated in the Greek in New Testament paideia. And both the Greek word and this Hebrew word have a connotation to them of discipline, chastisement, correction. Now it’s discipline, chastisement, or correction to an end of instruction. And sometimes this word can just mean oral instruction—just “I give you a command to do.” But frequently this word has the connotation that the father is bringing chastisement—the rod or discipline of some type—upon the son or daughter for the purpose of training them in the particular direction of God’s word. That’s the idea of the word here used of the instruction of the father.

Now the word for the law of the mother, the word is Torah, which we’re hopefully fairly familiar with. It refers to the first five books of the law. More than that, Torah means to point with your hand in a direction, and it eventually basically the idea of Torah is a way of living. The Torah is a set of commandments, but they describe for us a way of life. So the mother is by her actions and words to describe a way of life to her children—a law.

The father is to bring instruction that is including with it chastisements to the end that children would understand these laws and be raised in the context of obeying them. Now, this clearly gives us obligations on parents. And I think that we can read here at least an implication—and I don’t want to go any further than that, but at least an implication—here that it seems that it’s the fathers who are primarily responsible in bringing these chastisements upon young princes, physical punishments, removal of privileges, handing out of disciplines, etc. Because the specific word used to him—and it’s consistent in other places in Proverbs—the word has this connotation of correction, whereas the connotation of Torah is simply the way of the law, a manner of life.

And so it seems like this kind of gives an implication that the father is the disciplinarian and the mother is kind of the model, the way, instructing certainly by words, but in the context of God’s law—the law of your mother. So children are to hear, but not just hear, retain the teachings and instructions of their father and mother, not to forsake them. The end result of this hearing and retaining will be a beautification and a protection to the children. Says, “For they shall be an ornament of grace unto your head and chains about your neck. True beauty is found in those children who have learned to honor and reverence their parents.”

The Lord Jesus Christ, his beauty of his submission to his mother, his correct attitude toward her is demonstrated in these Proverbs. And we take that into the account in Cana of Galilee and say, “Yes, whatever he was doing was respectful, endearing,” and we want to put that spin on the words that are recorded there. They’re an ornament to your head. Children, you want to be beautified? You want to have chains about your neck? You want to look good to people? Look good by being submissive to your parents.

And then verse 10 says, “My son, if sinners entice thee, consent thou not.”

Now, I know it’s a little bit of a transition here going on, but it seems like there’s a relationship here in the way the text flows between honoring your mother and hearing the instruction of your father and the ability to withstand temptation by peers. So there’s a relationship of fear of God. This relationship is talked about in relationship to the superiors primarily in the family but by implication church and state. And then there’s horizontal relationships talked about—don’t be enticed by people of your peer group. And I think that we can follow that this is a protection against this. And so Proverbs 1:7 and following give us this idea.

Now I’ve got another reference for you here in this section of the outline. Chapter 6:20-24. Please turn there.

Okay. So here we read kind of a parallel passage. “My son, keep your father’s command. Verse 20. Do not forsake the law of your mother. And see now, here are the same two Hebrew words used here in the same way. Command linked to father with idea of chastisement, law or Torah to mother. Bind them continually upon your heart. Tie them around your neck. When you roam, they will lead you. When you sleep, they will keep you. And when you awake, they will speak with you. For the commandment is a lamp and the law a light. Reproofs of instruction are the way of life to keep you from the evil woman, from the flattering tongue of a seductress.”

And here we have a very explicit relationship of this hearing and retaining, paying careful attention to your mother’s teachings. Young men and young women, there’s a relationship here—rather obvious and stated relationship. These instructions, this way that you learn from your mother, will keep you when you sleep. When you awake they’ll speak with you. They’ll give you guidance and direction, and they will protect you from evil.

So how do you have long life in the context of the world? Well, the law of God says very clearly that the key to longevity is obedience and submission and honoring parents. And here it’s not magical, but rather the obedience and submission to the law of parents keeps you out of the way of sinners and keeps you from harm.

So wise sons are to hear, retain the way of the mother, and by doing so are beautified and protected.

Secondly, wise sons bring joy to their mothers. Proverbs 23, verses 21-26. Turn there please.

“Verse 21: For the drunkard and the glutton will come to poverty, and drowsiness will clothe the man with rags. Listen to your father who begat you and do not despise your mother when she is old. Buy the truth and do not sell it. Add wisdom and instruction and understanding. The father of the righteous will greatly rejoice, and he who beggets a wise child will delight in him. Let your father and your mother be glad, and let her who bore you rejoice. My son, give me your heart. Let your eyes observe my ways.”

Okay, so the end result of the wise son is he brings joy and gladness to his father and mother. So we have this story in Cana of Galilee where our Savior brings wine, joy, to make the wedding feast joyful. And it’s set in the context of the greater Solomon interacting with his mother in a way to cause her joy, give her joy and gladness.

Notice here that it says to listen to your father who begat you. Do not despise your mother when she is old. Now this particular word for despise almost has this connotation of discrimination to it. People despise in this Hebrew term other people because of their race. They can despise people because of their station in life. It’s to have a negative disposition to somebody based upon external circumstances. And the circumstance here is an old mother.

Now, young men may have a degree of reverence and respect for their father, particularly if the father is the disciplinarian. And they’re going to have at least an external show of obedience to him and reverence. But to one’s mother, the Adamic nature is such that men despise women in their hearts in their fallen state, and boys despise their mothers in their fallen state in Adam. God—the sin broke. Adamic sin breaks all these relationships. Whatever we’re supposed to be doing, we do just the reverse. We have to know what to put off the old man as well, what to put on. And we’ve got to confess to God and to each other that we hate each other in the Adamic flesh. Men look down upon women. That’s the way it is.

That’s why God’s word has been so important in establishing the kind of freedom, the kind of position and prestige that women can have in the context of Christian cultures. That’s why we have a problem with egalitarianism. That’s why we have a problem with women—some women desiring to operate outside of their normal function. You see, we wouldn’t have that problem if we were in an Adamic culture that just despised them and always put them down.

So we don’t want to go back in our Calvinistic ways to some sort of Adamic nature that sort of looks down upon women as stupid or demeaning somehow or less powerful than men. But that is exactly what our children in the context of the demonstration of their sin will do. And the height of their discrimination, their sense of despising of their mother, will be in her old age—weak old woman. And so you see this in pagan cultures all the time where older men have complete despising, a complete attitude of disgust toward their mothers and particularly their older mothers.

And that’s what we’re to put off. That’s what the children of this church must be trained to put off—is that sort of attitude toward their mothers. Why? My sons will bring joy to their mothers. And this text goes on to say that. Buy the truth and don’t sell it. The most important thing you have to hear is what this wisdom is. This text says, and it’s put in the context of your relationship to your mother and father. I mean, I don’t know how God could say it any more emphatically than what these Proverbs—how these Proverbs say it—that mothers particularly and fathers are important in terms of the success of young men and young women.

Third, foolish sons weary, despise, chase away, and shame their mothers. Weary, despise, chase away, and shame their mothers. In Proverbs 15:20-21, we read this. “A wise son makes a father glad, but a foolish son despises his mother. Folly is a joy to him who is destitute of discernment, but a man of understanding walks uprightly.”

Here the is a different word for despise, but it means to accord little worth to something. It may or may not involve overt feelings of contempt or scorn. Means, in other words, this word may just be kind of a passive ignoring. It’s “She’s not important to me. Not much weight or glory is given to her.” And so that’s what this means.