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We're in our 19th in the series
of Women of Faith. We've come to Mary, the mother
of Jesus, and I'm going to read from Matthew 12, verses 46 through
50. Hear the word of God. While he
was still talking to the multitudes, behold, his mother and brothers
stood outside seeking to speak with him. Then one said to him,
Look, your mother and your brothers are standing outside seeking
to speak with you. But he answered and said to the
one who told him, Who is my mother and who are my brothers? And
he stretched out his hand toward his disciples and said, Here
are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of
my father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother. Amen. Father, what an incredible privilege
it is that you give to your disciples to enter into these kinds of
heights of relationship with you. Father, may you guide my
preaching, keep me from stumbling or error, and enable each one
of us, Father, to grow in our relationship with you as a result
of looking at this marvelous model of faith that you raised
up, Mary, the mother of Jesus. Bless this time of our continued
worship and our continued interactions with you. And we pray this in
Jesus' name. Amen. Well, the passage we just read
corrects three of numerous errors that Roman Catholics and Eastern
Orthodox have propagated about Mary. One error is to think that
Mary had closer access to Jesus, and therefore we ought to pray
to Mary. The idea is she can kind of help
us to get our foot in the door when we need access to Jesus.
And indeed it does seem, according to commentators, that this may
have been one of the motives and actions of these brothers,
they brought Mary along in order for them to be able to get access
to Jesus. Well, this passage says that
anyone who does the will of God, who believes in him, has equal
access to Mary or his brothers. Now, related error is the belief
that Jesus always answers the prayers of Mary, And therefore,
if she prays on your behalf, your prayers are always going
to be answered. You've got to pray through Mary. Well, both
this passage and the water into wine passage in John 2, Mary
receives a rebuke from Jesus and does not exactly get what
she had asked for. He is helping her to move past
her blood and flesh relationship. And he is helping her to recognize
that her place in the kingdom is very similar to other mothers
and brothers. that are believers in him. A
third error that Roman Catholics have about Mary is that all grace
flows through Jesus and then down to Mary to us. And yet here is a passage where
people had direct access to Jesus without going through Mary. And
so even this passage is a corrective to some of the errors that are
out there. And so yes, Mary was highly favored by God. There
could be no higher favor than burying Jesus in the womb from
a human perspective. This is huge. What an awesome
privilege. And yes, Mary was honored by God. And we need to
honor Mary. Protestants should not neglect
the honor. We are commanded to honor Mary.
But making up false theology about Mary actually dishonors
her. It does the exact opposite of what they were intending.
And before we look at What an incredible model that Mary is
to our faith and how we can follow her and imitate her. I'm going
to spend the first half of the sermon really looking at what
she is not and undoing some of the false assertions. By the
way, Mary would be absolutely horrified at the false assertions
that Rome and the Eastern Orthodox Church have made about her. The
first falsehood propagated by Rome is their doctrine of the
Immaculate Conception. This doctrine teaches that Mary
was not born in sin, did not inherit a sin nature, and at
the moment of her conception, she had more holiness than any
other human being. That was at the time of conception. Quoting from the official catechism
of the Catholic Church, they say, the most blessed Virgin
Mary was from the moment of her conception preserved immune from
all stain of original sin. The splendor of an entirely unique
holiness by which Mary is enriched from the first instant of her
conception comes wholly from Christ. The Father blessed Mary
more than any other created person in Christ with every spiritual
blessing in the heavenly places and chose her in Christ before
the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before
Him in love. She is the all-holy Panagia,
and is free from any stain of sin, as though fashioned by the
Holy Spirit and formed as a new creation." Now, the sad thing
is the two scriptures that they quote to try to prove her immaculate
conception, it's Ephesians 1, 3, and 4, it's written to the
church, right? And the church is not exactly
conceived without any sin. The other scripture they sometimes
cite is Luke 1.28, where in their Latin version it says that Mary
was full of grace. And they say, this is their argument,
if she's full of grace, you can't fit any more grace in, which
means she's perfect. There you go. She was conceived
as a perfect person. Well, besides being a lousy translation,
because heretou does not mean full of grace. It means highly
blessed by the Lord. But besides being a lousy translation,
the exact same word is used in Ephesians 1 6 of all Christians. being blessed or accepted in
Christ. So there's not a shred of biblical
evidence for this doctrine, nor was this doctrine the doctrine
of the ancient church, you know, what people call the Catholic—they've
abandoned the Catholic faith on these and many other doctrines.
And I'll include notes on the web that Show this, for example,
Augustine. He said that anyone who claims
that anyone other than Jesus was conceived without original
sin is guilty of the error of Pelagius. Read that. Augustine's
basically accusing the modern Roman Catholic Church of being
guilty of heresy, of the doctrine of Pelagius. And many other respected
church fathers explicitly said that Mary was a sinner, and certainly
the Scripture does. That's the most important thing,
right? Paul said, for all have sinned and fall short of the
glory of God. There is none righteous, not
even one." The phrase, not even one, excludes Mary. Now, what
makes Mary great is not a sinless conception, but the fact that
she appropriated God's grace and lived by God's grace all
through her life. She is a model of faith to our
children because she had to fight against the same sin nature that
you children have, and yet she was able to resist those sinful
impulses to a greater and greater degree. So that by the time that
the angel met her, this angel blessed her and said, do not
be afraid, Mary, for you have found grace with God. And it
was by God's grace that she could believe God for impossible things.
Elizabeth said, blessed is she who believed, for there will
be a fulfillment of those things which were told her from the
Lord. The second falsehood is stated in the Catholic catechism
this way, by the grace of God, Mary remained free of every personal
sin her whole life long. And we've already read one scripture
that denied that. Here's another one. Romans 5.12
says, death spread to all men because all sinned. This is why
Luke 1.30 says that Mary needed God's grace. What is grace? Grace is undeserved favor. It's undeserved. She had grace. It's undeserved because she is
a sinner. That's why Mary says in verse
47, my spirit has rejoiced in God, my savior. She too needed
a savior. Jesus himself said, no one is
good, but one that is God. Now, of course he was God, so
he was good. But that phrase, no one is good,
but one, That is, God completely rules out Mary being good. In Revelation 15.4, the saints
in heaven do not worship Mary. They worship God and say, for
you alone are holy. To call Mary perfect throughout
life contradicts the Bible, contradicts the ancient church fathers who
actually submitted to the Bible. They wanted to be biblicists.
And it puts Mary on a pedestal where no woman feels that we
can even follow in her footsteps. Now, who in the world could follow
in the footsteps of the kind of Mary that Rome paints? Nobody
could. In contrast, the true Mary that I'm going to be painting
for you in the second half of this sermon is a model for us
that despite our sin nature, we can grow in holiness. A third
falsehood about Mary is that she did not go into labor pains
or deliver Jesus via natural birth. Instead, and I've got
bazillions of quotes here that I'll put up on the web from the
Catholic Catechism, from Popes, from the Council of Trent, they
all say that what happened is that Jesus miraculously just
passed through the walls of her stomach, sort of like Jesus,
you know, after His resurrection and His glorified body passed
through the walls and came into the room where the disciples
were at. And by this means, her hymen was left intact, and she
could still be a virgin after the birth of Christ. And I'll
give you plenty of quotes if you want to search for this later.
Sounds like a cool story. But is it true? Absolutely not. Micah 5, verses 2 through 3 prophesies
the birth of Jesus in these words. But you, Bethlehem, Ephrathah,
though you are little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of
you shall come forth to me the one to be ruler in Israel, whose
goings forth are from of old, from everlasting." New Testament
quotes this, absolutely says this is dealing with the birth
of Jesus. And the very next word is therefore, so that's connecting
this birth of Jesus with what's going to be said, it says, therefore,
He shall give them up until the time that she who is in labor
has given birth." Now, the word for labor is the ordinary word
for painful labor, and the word for birth is the ordinary word
for natural birth, right? Now, the Roman Catholics are
trying to protect Mary, but in the process, they actually fail
to make Mary a model for women. Point by point, Rome is robbing
you of the various ways in which you can imitate Mary and follow
Mary's faith. Aubrey Smith says, as a Christian
who went through childbirth three times, it never occurred to me
to think of Mary as an example. Perhaps if my babies had been
due around Christmas, the connection might have crossed my mind. But
Mary's experience of pregnancy and labor, especially her body's
role in the incarnation, was the subject of many early theologians'
wonderings. And she talks about them. And
then she talks about how that morphed. And later theologians
denied that she went through labor, had any pain whatsoever. And she says, while these Roman
Catholic theologies seek to protect Jesus's divinity, from taking
on human defilement within Mary's womb, they missed the point.
The incarnation was the moment that Jesus fully entered into
the human reality. He did not shun it or protect
himself from it. So Mary did not shun the mess
and the hard work of labor and birth. She went through enormous
discomforts when she was riding that donkey from Nazareth to
Bethlehem. She, you know, went through the
inconvenience that many women in India and third world countries
go through when in their poverty they give birth to a baby in
the outside or in a shed instead of in their home. She was a woman's
woman and she went through it with faith and the scripture
says she pondered these things in her heart. I'll try to demonstrate
that Mary was a real woman of faith that you can imitate. The
next falsehood is that she was perpetually a virgin after the
birth of Jesus. Now, we totally agree with the
Roman Catholics and the Eastern Orthodox that she was a virgin
prior to the birth of Jesus. It was a virgin birth. Matthew
1.25 affirms that. But that same verse affirms that
she had sexual relations with Joseph after the birth. And by
the way, if that seems wrong to you, then you need to repent
of an ungodly, unbiblical view of sexuality. You need to repent
of that. It says, And Joseph did not know
her till she had brought forth her firstborn son, and he called
his name Jesus. Now, the two words translated
as till imply that Joseph had sexual relations with her afterwards. But Roman Catholics, they're
just appalled at that thought. They think it is blasphemy because
they've been infected with this idea that sexual relations are
inevitably accompanied by sin. They have taught that it would
be blasphemy to affirm any defilement of the womb, the womb that held
Jesus. That's got to be kept sacrificing.
We say, what defilement? What defilement? God honors the
marriage bed. Hebrews 13.4 denies that sexual
relations defile anything. Indeed, it says, marriage is
honorable among all, and the marriage bed undefiled. And the
word for marriage bed there is kowitte, which really means coitus,
sexual relations. They do not defile. Third, Mary
would actually have been in sin if the two of them had abstained
forever from intimacy because God commands all couples to be
fruitful and multiply. It's a command of God. You got
to try. Fourth, It wouldn't be a proper marriage if there wasn't
eventual consummation. Indeed, Exodus 21 says that deliberate
failure to have sexual relations is such a serious sin, it is
grounds for divorce. Verses 10 through 11 say, he
shall not diminish her food, her clothing, or her sexual rights.
And if he does not do those three for her, then she may go out
free. She can divorce him. Why? because it's a breaking. It's a fundamental breaking of
the marriage covenant. Fifth, Jesus is spoken of as
Mary's firstborn son in Matthew 125 and Luke 2 verse 7. The latter
verse says, and she brought forth her firstborn son. Well, that
implies she had other born sons after that. If this was her first
son, then there had to be at least a second. Sixth, Paul condemns
the asceticism of this sort of thing. Asceticism came from the
Greeks. It did not come from the Bible. He condemns this asceticism
in Colossians 2 and 1 Timothy 4. And I won't read those touch
not, taste not, handle not passages, but they're basically castigating
this idea that those things are sinful. Seventh, in 1 Corinthians
7, Paul commands, let the husband render to his wife the affection
due her. and likewise also the wife to
her husband. The wife does not have authority
over her own body, but the husband does, and likewise the husband
does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.
Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time that
you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer and come together
again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack
of self-control." Eighth, the scripture explicitly says that
Jesus had brothers and sisters. He had four brothers and at least
two sisters. Let me read you some scriptures.
Matthew 12, 46, it says his mother and brothers stood outside. Mark
3, 31, his brothers and his mother came. Luke 8, 19, then his mother
and brothers came to him. John 2.12 – After this he went
down to Capernaum, he, his mother, his brothers, and his disciples,
and they did not stay there many days. John 7.3 – His brothers
therefore said to him. John 7.5 – For even his brothers
did not believe in him. John 7.10 – But when his brothers
had gone up, Then he also went up to the feast, not openly,
but as it were in secret. Acts 1.14, these all continued
with one accord in prayer and supplication with the women and
Mary, the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers. Psalm 69.8
is a prophecy of Jesus. And it says, these are words
of Jesus. I have become a stranger to my
brothers. and an alien to my mother's children." So yes, his
mother had children, plural. And there are other references
to his sisters that I won't read. It is inconceivable to me that
Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Psalm 69 would all use the normal
terms for brothers and sisters if indeed they were cousins,
as the Eastern Orthodox claim that they are. There's a perfectly
good word for cousins in the Bible, and it's used in the New
Testament. The Roman Catholics have a different theory. They
say that Joseph was married to someone else before he married
Mary, and that these were children from that previous marriage.
They're his children. But Psalm 69 speaks of his mother's
children. D.A. Carson explains why this
and a similar theory are a real stretch. He says, yet it is very
doubtful whether such a meaning is valid here, for it raises
insuperable problems. For instance, if brothers refers
to Joseph's sons by an earlier marriage, not Jesus, but Joseph's
firstborn would have been legal heir to David's throne. The second
theory, that brothers refers to sons of a sister of Mary,
also named Mary, faces the unlikelihood of two sisters having the same
name. All things considered, the attempts to extend the meaning
of brothers in this pericope, despite McHugh's best efforts,
are nothing less than far-fetched exegesis in support of a dogma
that originated much later than the New Testament. Now, if those
eight points are true, then it means Mary is a wonderful example
in another area of life, in marriage, okay? She is a godly example
of self-control, and both Joseph and Mary would have had to exercise
great self-control in those, because he married her quite
a ways into the pregnancy, but during those months before she
delivered. And there are times where husbands
and wives must learn to exercise self-control. There are times
to abstain, right? So she's a godly example of self-control. She's also a model of how to
embrace intimacy and labor and birth and having multiple children
and of being a faithful wife to a faithful husband. She's
a wonderful model of faith. She knew what it meant to miss
sleep because of sick babies, you know, staying up at night. She is a model to us. She's not
some figment of our imagination that we have a hard time relating
to. But there is a fifth falsehood that robs Mary of reality and
in the process robs us of a wonderful role model. We're trying to clear
away the rubbish here in the first half of the sermon. Too
bad there is even rubbish, but we're trying to clear it away
so we can see what a great role model Mary is. While there are
some Roman Catholics who believe Mary died and was immediately
resurrected, caught up to heaven before her body could decay,
the official teaching of Rome denies that Mary died. For example,
in 1950, Pope Pius XII stated dogmatically that Mary did not
die. Now, this is an area where the
Eastern Orthodox differs with the Roman Church, and they say,
yeah, she died, and on the end of history, her body will be
raised. Okay, that's the Eastern Orthodox. But in contrast, Pope
Pius XII said that Romanists must believe that she was taken
body and soul into heaven without dying. Roman Catholic Catechism
says this. Finally, the Immaculate Virgin,
preserved free from all stain of original sin, when the course
of her earthly life was finished, was taken up, body and soul,
into heavenly glory, and exalted by the Lord as queen over all
things, so that she might be the more fully conformed to her
Son, the Lord of lords, and conqueror of sin and death. Let me read
some scriptures that say the exact opposite. All flesh shall
perish together, and man shall return again unto dust. all go
to one place, all return to dust. Therefore, just as through one
man sin entered the world, and death through sin, and thus death
spread to all men, because all sinned, as in Adam all die. I think it's pretty clear that
even after the time of Mary, the apostles said, all die. There's
no exceptions because all have sinned. Roman Catholics are trying
to elevate Mary by giving her these Christ-like characteristics,
but in the process, they are painting an unrealistic woman
that we cannot relate to. She faced the death of Jesus
with pain and with faith, and she faced her own death with
faith as well. She was a real woman. Falsehood
number six is absolute blasphemy. Roman Catholic popes and councils
have declared that Mary is a co-redeemer with Jesus, using her merits
to help redeem mankind. In 1935, Pope Pius XI called
her co-redemptrix. Pope John Paul II did the same
in a 1985 speech. Bernard stated the false doctrine
this way, Mary is called the gate of heaven. Wait a minute,
I thought Jesus was the only door to heaven, but Mary is called
the gate of heaven because no one can enter that blessed kingdom
without passing through her. They say you cannot save without
her provision of redemption. In 1997, Pope John Paul said,
Mary cooperated during the event of the cross
itself and in the role of mother, thus her cooperation embraces
the whole of Christ's saving work. She alone was associated
in this way with the redemptive sacrifice that merited the salvation
of all mankind. In union with Christ and in submission
to him, she collaborated in obtaining the grace of salvation for all
humanity. Trusting in this maternal cooperation,
let us turn to Mary, imploring her help in our needs." But more
official statements have said the same thing. The Second Vatican
Council stated, Rightly, therefore, the father see Mary, not merely
as passively engaged by God, but as freely cooperating in
the work of man's salvation through faith and obedience. Taken up
to heaven, she did not lay aside this saving office." So she's
got a saving office. They say she was co-redeemer
in two respects. First of all, she offered up
Jesus as a sacrifice. And secondly, she offered up
her soul as a sacrifice, or what they call a holocaust. Let me
quote them. She, it was, who immune from
all sin, personal or inherited, and ever more closely united
with her son, offered him on Golgotha to the Eternal Father
to gather with the Holocaust of her maternal rights and motherly
love. Mary suffered, as it were, nearly
died with her suffering son for the salvation of mankind. She
renounced her mother's rights, and as far as it depended on
her, offered her son to placate divine justice, so we may well
say that she with Christ redeemed mankind." Now, based on all these
official pronouncements of the Church, Pope Pius XII said that
Mary, in a subordinate role, had a part with him in the redemption
of the human race. Wow, the church of the first
many centuries would be absolutely aghast that these kind of statements
are being made about Mary. In fact, they would consider
the modern Pope and the Vatican, the Second Vatican Council to
be Antichrist because of these kinds of statements. Humble Mary
herself would have wept that her name was being used to undermine
the gospel, a gospel that she herself trusted. Rather than
Mary offering up Jesus as a sacrifice, Hebrews 9.14 says that Christ
offered himself without blemish to God. Rather than Mary crushing
the head of the serpent while she was beside Jesus at the cross,
which is what Rome teaches, Genesis 3.15 says that the seed of the
woman, that's Jesus, would crush the serpent's head. Rather than
there being two redeemers, scripture is quite clear that there is
only one. It is in God's Son that we have
redemption, the forgiveness of sins, Colossians 1, 13-14. We are only justified through
the redemption which is in Christ Jesus, Romans 3.24. God says, I, the Lord, am your
Savior and your Redeemer. And Mary put her trust in the
only Redeemer in Luke 1.47 when she says that He was God, my
Savior. She is a woman of faith whom
we can all imitate, not a superhuman Redeemer. She trusted in Christ
alone. The seventh falsehood is the
claim that Mary is a co-mediatrix of all God's grace. So where
the previous point deals with her suffering as a sacrifice,
this one says that all of God's graces are mediated to us through
her, and all of our prayers have to be mediated through Mary to
Jesus, to the Father. Okay, so the Catholic Catechism
number 969 says, taken up to heaven, she did not lay aside
the saving office, but by her manifold intercession continues
to bring us the gifts of eternal salvation. Therefore, the Blessed
Virgin is invoked in the church under the titles of advocate,
helper, benefactress, and mediatrix. And if that's not bad enough,
the official teaching of the church is that, quote, nothing
comes to us except through Mary's mediation, unquote. If you listen
to the blasphemous Our Lady of Fatima radio program, you will
hear them repeatedly saying no one could be saved apart from
the mediation of Mary, okay? It's just horrifying. Rome calls
her quote, the most powerful mediatrix and advocate of the
whole world. Mary is all powerful with her
divine son. And don't think that it's only
the intellectuals in Rome who believe this kind of stuff, because
when the average Catholic is praying the rosary, One of the traditional endings
of the rosary is Hail Holy Queen, which explicitly says that Mary
is our hope, and it's to her that we turn. Now, this is all
painful to hear, and you might wonder, why on earth am I inflicting
these painful things that are like punches to the stomach?
Well, part of the reason that I am doing this and felt led
to do this is because some of you wonder why we do not accept
Roman Catholic baptism. It's because they are not a true
church of Jesus Christ. They are a cult. We cannot accept
them as a true church. The Westminster Confession of
Faith says that Rome is a synagogue of Satan and anyone who says
otherwise is deviating from the Protestant Reformation. They're
deviating from the Protestant Reformation. We need to understand
this. And some of you, by the way,
have relatives or friends who are toying with Rome. Some have
already become Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox. And you
need to understand that this is toying with witchcraft and
the demonic. And I've got plenty of evidence
that there is witchcraft and demonic all through the Roman
Catholic Church. It is not a true church. Let
me read you some scripture that opposes this particular false
teaching. 1 Timothy 2.5 says, For there is one God and one
Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. One mediator,
not two, and it's one in the same sense that there is only
one God. Jesus over and over invites us
to come directly to Him. In John 14, verse 13, He says,
Whatever you ask in my name, that I will do, that the Father
may be glorified in the Son. If you ask anything in my name,
I will do it. Now, some Roman Catholics think
that because Mary is a mother, she's going to be far more compassionate
than God is. But Peter tells us, casting all
your care upon him, for he cares for you. The eighth falsehood
is the claim that Mary is the queen of heaven, and that, quote,
Mary sitteth at the right hand of her son, and her dominion
is the same as his, extending over all heaven and earth. Did
you know that the Bible identifies the Queen of Heaven with a powerful
demon in the Old Testament that wanted to be worshipped? Yes. The only time that the phrase
Queen of Heaven occurs, it is a reference to Ishtar, and they
worshipped Ishtar in exactly the same way that they venerate
Mary today. In Jeremiah 44, 17, they burn
incense to the Queen of Heaven, just as the Roman Catholics do
today. I have five references to the Queen of Heaven in the
Old Testament. They are all references to the same demonic ruler. Rome
is engaged in witchcraft in their rituals. Against any supposed
other human ruler of heaven, 1 Timothy 6.15 declares that
there is only one potentate, not two, and he is Jesus, the
King of kings and Lord of lords. In complete contrast to her supposedly
having authority over all flesh, on the cross, Jesus put her under
the protection and under the authority of his friend, John
the Apostle. In Acts 1, she operates under
the authority of the apostles. There is not the slightest hint
that she is treated as a queen. And if they want to appeal to
Revelation 12 as being Mary giving birth to Jesus rather than the
church, okay, they're gonna have to admit that they were absolutely
wrong about her having pain, not having any pain in childbirth,
because verse two says, when being with child, she cried out
in labor and in pain to give birth. They can't have their
cake and eat it too. But in any case, Revelation 12
doesn't speak of that woman as being the queen of heaven. The
ninth falsehood is that Mary is called the mother of the church.
But in the passage we read at the beginning, Matthew 12, 46
through 50, Jesus minimized even her role of mother in his life,
let alone in the life of the church. She was explicitly said
to be outside the building that he was at, and Jesus did nothing
to let her in. Now, she obviously is in the
church, but she comes in on his terms, not on her terms. And she comes in to do his will,
not vice versa. Okay? Jesus doesn't do Mary's
will. Mary, like all believers, comes
to do His will. And so Acts 1.14 shows Mary to
be just one among others as members of the church who are praying
to God. It shows her to be a member of the church, not the mother
of church. 1 Corinthians 12, 13, and 27 do the same thing.
Okay. Why do I bring this up? Well,
she's a model to us in this as well. God did not ordain for
women to rule the Church. Mary was not a feminist. All
feminism is the product of demonism. In stark contrast, Mary was a
faithful servant of the Church in the book of Acts. Falsehood
number 10 is stated this way in the Catholic Catechism, number
2677. It calls us, quote, to surrender
the hour of our death wholly to her care, unquote. And get that word wholly. Why
would they do that? Because as Pope John Paul worded
it, she is our hope in death. But Philippians 1, 21 through
23 shows that Christ was Paul's only hope in death. And 1 Corinthians
15 connects the resurrection with Christ alone. There is not
a single scripture that calls Christians to put their hope
in Mary. But Romans 15, 12 says about Jesus, in him the Gentiles
shall hope. 1 Peter 1.21 commands us to put
our hope in God. 1 John 3.3 describes believers
as those whose hope is in Christ. Even Mary's Magnificat shows
that she put her hope wholly in God, verse 47. And looked
to God for mercy, verse 50. And threw off all self-trusting
pride, verses 48, 51 through 52. And we'll be singing that
later on. Falsehood number 11, we're almost
done here, is that we are commanded to venerate Mary and to pray
to her. Now, they try to avoid the charge
of worshiping a creature or, on the other hand, of deifying
Mary by making three false distinctions on worship or veneration. They
will say that Latria veneration or worship is only due to God. But dulia veneration, which really
amounts to worship, can be done to saints, and hyperdulia veneration
or prayer can be made to Mary. Now, why do they pray to Mary?
Well, it's because as mother she was supposedly a woman who
had far greater compassion than God. But Psalm 111 verse 4 says
that God is full of compassion. If He's full of compassion, you
can't get any more compassion in. And to say that Mary has
more compassion than Jesus means He's not full of compassion.
And far from relieving Protestant concerns about deifying Mary,
for Mary to be able to hear billions of prayers around the world at
any given moment, to be able to deliver those prayers to Jesus,
she has to be omniscient and omnipresent. This is indeed deifying
Mary. It makes her into a goddess.
Actually, it makes her more than a goddess, because what goddess
do you know that's omniscient and omnipresent, okay? So it
is blasphemy. It is beyond blasphemy. There
are many other false doctrines about Mary in Rome. In James
McCarthy's book, The Gospel of Rome, that's pictured in your
outlines, and I highly recommend that book, it gives extensive
documentation proving that the official declarations of Rome
about Mary are identical to the declarations about Jesus and
the Father. I'll just give you a sample.
She is called by Rome, most holy, most holy, most powerful, the
seed of wisdom, The Morning Star, and as Pope Leo XIII worded it,
the power in her hands is all but unlimited. I believe that
Mary would be deeply pained to the root of her soul if she knew
that this kind of stuff was being done in her name. So let's move
on to who she was. Mary was a descendant of Judah.
There are some, like Bojedar, who claim that she was of the
tribe of Levi. But Hebrews 7, 11 through 14,
is quite clear. Our Lord arose from Judah, and
later it says was of a different tribe than Levi. Romans 1, 3
also contradicts that theory and says that Jesus was, quote,
the seed of David according to the flesh. not according to adoption. So, according to the flesh would
be from Mary, according to adoption would be from Joseph. And for
her to be the seed, for Jesus to be the seed of David according
to the flesh, that means Mary that Jesus came from. Mary had
to have descended from David. Now I'm not going to delve into
it, but Luke 3, 23-38 is Mary's genealogy. It starts by saying,
talking about Joseph being, being as was supposed the son of David,
but the idea being it's wrongly supposed. Okay, so instead of
mentioning Joseph's father, Jacob, like Matthew's genealogy does,
The first male mentioned in Jesus' ancestry was Heli, the father
of Mary. So, some supposed Jesus to be
of Joseph, but he was really of Heli. That's what Luke 3 is
doing. Now, I do want to deal with something
that evangelicals sometimes get nervous about if they haven't
studied it much. The councils of Chalcedon and
Ephesus both declared Mary to be Theotokos, or the God-bearer. They were very, very careful
not to call her Mater Theou, or Mother of God. That is wrong. That's what Rome calls her, is
Mother of God. Very careful not to do that.
Literally, Theotokos means God-bearer. It means that the person whom
Mary bore in her womb was not just a human, okay, He was already
the God-man, and she didn't just bear an empty shell of a body
in her body. No, she bore a person, and that
person was the God-man. Protestants at the time of the
Reformation had absolutely no problem affirming Theotokos,
and we shouldn't either. She bore the God-man as to his
manhood, which the confession is very, very clear to add. It's
not as to his Godhood, but she bore the God-man as to his manhood. And even though his divinity
could not hunger, thirst, or die, he was a person experienced
that. And it was the one person, two
natures that they were trying to defend. So enough on that.
They were not worshiping Mary. That came much, much later. Now
let's look at her conception. Luke 2 affirms that there was
no human father. God the Spirit supernaturally
created a human body and soul. And yes, you have to affirm it
was body and soul that was taken from Mary. Otherwise, there's
no connection to the human race. Body and soul that was taken
from Mary. And not surprisingly, she was
confused as to how all of this was going to happen, but she
showed faith by submitting to God's will. And I think in this,
she is a model to us. Luke 2, 26 through 38. Now, in
the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of
Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name
was Joseph of the house of David. The virgin's name was Mary. And
having come in, the angel said to her, Rejoice, highly favored
one, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women.
But when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and considered
what manner of greeting this was. Then the angel said to her,
Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And
behold, you will conceive in your womb, and bring forth a
son, and shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, and
will be called the Son of the Highest. And the Lord God will
give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over
the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be
no end. Then Mary said to the angel, How can this be, since
I do not know a man? And the angel answered and said
to her, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power
of the highest will overshadow you. Therefore also that holy
one who is to be born will be called the Son of God. Now, indeed,
Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old
age, and this is now the sixth month for her who was called
barren. For with God, nothing will be impossible. Then Mary
said, Behold, the maidservant of the Lord. Let it be to me
according to your word. And the angel departed from her."
So here she was. She gave submission without full
understanding. I think it's beautiful. She knew
enough that she knew how to submit, but she did not know exactly
how God would do this, when he would do it, what the consequences
would be. And we too must be ready to obey
God rather than resisting his will. She's a model of sweet
submission to God's will. God then formed the new life
within her. She went immediately to her cousin, Elizabeth's house,
verses 39 through 45. This is of Luke 1. Mary arose in those days, and
went into the hill country with haste to the city of Judah, and
entered the house of Zacharias, and greeted Elizabeth. And it
happened, when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, that the
babe leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the
Holy Spirit. Then she spoke out with a loud
voice, and said, Blessed are you among women, and blessed
is the fruit of your womb. But why is this granted to me,
that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For indeed, as soon
as the voice of your greeting sounded in my ears, the babe
leaped in my womb for joy. Blessed is she who believed,
for there will be a fulfillment of those things which were told
her from the Lord." So blessings do flow from a submissive faith. But we're going to see shortly
pain can flow from a submissive faith as well, from doing God's
will. But Mary prophetically bursts
into a song of trust and praise to God, verses 46 through 56. And Mary said, My soul magnifies
the Lord, and my spirit is rejoiced in God my Savior, for He has
regarded the lowly state of His maidservant. For behold, henceforth
all generations will call me blessed. For he who is mighty
has done great things for me, and holy is his name. And his
mercy is on those who fear him from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm. He has scattered the proud
and the imagination of their hearts. He has put down the mighty
from their thrones and exalted the lowly. He has filled the
hungry with good things and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has helped a servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy.
as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed forever.
And Mary remained with her about three months and returned to
her house. Now, I can only imagine the excitement and the conversations
that were constantly going back and forth during those three
months that she was in Elizabeth's house. And I think Christian
women today need godly friendships and the ability to process the
things that God has laid upon their hearts. Now, what about
Mary's parents? Were they disappointed in her?
Or did they believe her story? We aren't told. The true story
certainly didn't get to Joseph right away. Matthew 1, 18-19
says this, The birth of Jesus was as follows. After his mother
Mary was betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she
was found with child of the Holy Spirit. Then Joseph, her husband,
being a just man, not wanting to make her a public example,
was minded to put her away secretly. She was found with child. Her parents found out, the neighbors
found out, eventually Joseph found out. I mean, this talk
about humiliation. Mary knows she's in the right,
but she is immediately accused of being involved in fornication,
of being in the wrong. How do I know that? Well, two
reasons. Joseph believes that she's committed adultery, that
this is something worthy of divorce. And secondly, the gossip chain
must have been circulating during Christ's whole life that He was
born out of wedlock. Even the Pharisees twice accused
Him of that in John 8. In verse 19 they say, Where is
your father? An idiom around the world and
in every culture that means you're a bastard. You're illegitimate. Where is your father? Okay. And
then in verse 41, they say, we are not born in fornication.
And the Greek has an emphatic. We as a, we, as opposed to you
implying Jesus was born in fornication. And this is the first of multiple
painful things that both Mary and Jesus will have to endure
the false charge of immorality. Now, there is no indication that
Mary gets bitter over this. She trusted that if this is God's
will, she's going to try to handle this by God's grace. And we,
too, need to learn how to handle gossip and how to handle slander
against our name without getting bent out of shape. It's hard,
but it is possible. We can do it. We can cast our
burdens on the Lord and thank Him for these ways. This is what
I do many times when I have been slandered. Thank Him for yet
another opportunity to crucify my pride. Even slander can be
a gift if we use it to crucify our pride. But sadly, it wasn't
just the rabble in Nazareth who believed this false rumor. Joseph
did too. Indeed, he planned to divorce
her. Her love turned against her. He could have had her stoned
for infidelity, but talk about a stressful moment in Mary's
life. Matthew 1, 19-25 gives that part
of the story. Then Joseph, her husband, being
a just man but not wanting to make a public example, which
would be execution, was minded to put her away secretly. Now,
the text emphasizes the fact that he was just, which means
he followed the Old Testament law. OK, and the law of God allowed
for divorce or this would not be a just action. But he was
also kind. He no doubt felt sorry for her
and he didn't want to make a public scandal of her, so he considered
filing for divorce privately. But again, God allowed Mary to
face false accusations. She might have tried to defend
herself, but who on Earth is going to believe her story? That
seems like an incredible story, right? So God himself intervened
on her behalf. Verse 20. But while he thought
about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to
him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid
to take to you Mary, your wife, for that which is conceived in
her is of the Holy Spirit. And she will bring forth a son,
and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from
their sins. So all this was done that it
might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the Lord through the
prophet, saying, Behold, the virgin shall be with child. and
bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel, which is translated
God with us. Then Joseph, being aroused from
sleep, did as the angel of the Lord commanded, and took to him
his wife, and did not know her till she had brought forth her
firstborn son, and he called his name Jesus." Now, if God
had revealed that message to you by his mighty angel, you'd
be very motivated to keep your hot hands off of her, you know,
until the baby had been delivered, right? Both Joseph and Mary showed
great self-control and an example to all of the young men and women
in our midst. Now, they had an excuse to be
intimate because they were, after all, legally married. But they
feared God above all else. And in this, both of them are
models to us." But Luke reveals that there were other troubles
that Mary faced during the pregnancy. Caesar Augustus made one of the
most disruptive decrees ever, that everyone had to go back
to the town of their origin and get registered. I mean, yikes. The timing of this would have
been incredibly inconvenient for Mary because she was almost
due. It would have been tough. This
would mean a 75-mile ride from Nazareth to Bethlehem on a donkey.
Now, that would be better than walking, but I've ridden on a
donkey, and this would not be comfortable. They're bouncy,
right? In your final days of pregnancy, you don't want to
be on a bouncy donkey, and 75 miles is further than from here
to Lincoln. And furthermore, Bethlehem was
2,300 feet above sea level, and it's going through mountainous
terrain, so there's a lot of climbing with this donkey, okay? But God was in this decree since
it was imperative that Jesus be born in Bethlehem to fulfill
prophecy. Now, here's the point. It was
God's will for her to face this discomfort and this inconvenience. And if it was God's will for
her, you cannot see any of your discomforts and pains and inconveniences
as outside of God's will. And yes, you can blame the tyrants
for their evil actions, but God is still in it. Galatians 4 verse
4 says that this baby came in God's perfect timing. It may
have seemed like it was bad timing, but it says it was perfect timing
in the fullness of time, and all your circumstances are perfectly
ordered by God. Now, that doesn't mean you can't
pray against those tyrants who make decrees that are utterly
stupid. We should pray against those kind of tyrants, but make
sure that that does not carry over into complaining against
God. God was over Caesar and over
these troubles. Well, the troubles just kept
compounding. Mary's starting to feel the baby coming, and
they go from inn to inn, from house to house, and they cannot
find a spare room for her to stay in. It appears that they're
going to be homeless. You know, it's very easy to assume
that God is not in control of your situation when you are in
desperate circumstances. And yet? God is in your less-than-ideal
solutions, just like he was in their less-than-ideal stable. They had to improvise on the
fly, and they laid Jesus in the feeding trough for an animal.
Now, Joseph appears to be a sharp guy. He was a skilled carpenter,
so I doubt they were in that stable for very long. I mean,
I'm sure he was working really hard. to get her into a better
circumstance. By the time the wise men came
to worship Jesus in Matthew 2, verse 11 says that they were
living in a house. And so trusting God and doing
what you can to better your situation, those are not opposites, right?
They did both. And as they trusted and were
responsible, God supplied them with enough finances to last
them all the way through their sojourn in Egypt. Now, let's
go back to being in order. The pain of Christ's circumcision
on day eight was a covenant sign of their commitment to God come
hell or high water. You know, I won't get into it,
but the Apostle Paul calls Christ's crucifixion a circumcision. And
it's just an indication that circumcision was a sign of the
family's commitment to God until death. Luke 2. Verses 22-24 shows
what happened 33 days after Christ's circumcision. It says, Now when
the days of her purification according to the law of Moses
were completed, they brought him to Jerusalem to present him
to the Lord, as it is written in the law of the Lord, every
male who opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord, and
to offer a sacrifice according to what is said in the law of
the Lord, a pair of turtle doves or two pigeons. So this is one
of several indications that Joseph and Mary were committed to keeping
God's laws completely. And the fact that they offered
two pigeons shows that they were extremely poor. The law only
allowed that provision for poor people. And so that's yet another
trouble. God's highly favored one was
poor. Don't look down on poor people
as if they are unrighteous or they're not doing something right.
God's favored couple was poor. And then Joseph and Mary dedicated
Jesus to the Lord, as we too must do with our children. Simeon
blessed Jesus, prophesied that he would be the Messiah, and
he blessed Joseph and Mary, which would have been cool, but also
introduced a somber note into that blessing, saying this in
verses 34-35, Behold, this child is destined for the fall and
rising of many in Israel, and for a sign which will be spoken
against. Yes, a sword will pierce through
your own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts may be
revealed." Mary would have a sword piercing through her soul as
well. Now, some interpret that as the
pain she would experience in seeing her son, Jesus, mocked
and persecuted and crucified. Others, because of the context
here, say, no, this is the pain she's going to experience of
being sidelined in Christ's ministry. Either way, a sword piercing
her soul talks about inward pain, and she experienced both kinds
of inward pain in the years to come. She was blessed, yes, but
with blessing sometimes comes suffering. Don't think there's
something wrong with you simply because you suffer. Some people
wonder, where is God? What have I done wrong? No, don't
assume something is wrong with you simply because you suffer.
Mary, God's highly favored one, had suffering. And of course,
the fleeing to Egypt was another trouble Mary had to endure. This
story should probably be read in full. Matthew 2, 7 through
18 tells us what happened after the wise men from the east found
out Jesus was going to be born or had been born in Bethlehem.
And I'll dive into the middle of the story at verse 7. Then
Herod, when he had secretly called the wise men, determined from
them what time the star appeared. And he sent them to Bethlehem
and said, go and search carefully for the young child. And when
you have found him, bring back word to me that I may come and
worship him also. When they heard the king, they
departed, and behold, a star, which they had seen in the east,
went before them, till it came and stood over where the young
child was. When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceedingly
great joy. And when they had come into the
house, they saw the young child with Mary his mother, and fell
down and worshipped him. And when they had opened their
treasures, they presented gifts to him, gold, frankincense, and
myrrh. I'll stop there for a bit before
I keep reading. Notice that they venerated him, not Mary. And they honored Jesus with their
personal presence, as well as the long trip that they made.
That's one language of love. They honored him with worship.
That's another language of love. They honored him with gifts.
That's yet another language of love. And each of those gifts
actually were symbolic. Gold represented his deity. Frankincense
represented his priestly intercession, and myrrh represents his death. It's always associated with death. But here's the point in terms
of God providing for Mary. These were all such costly gifts
that they would be able to, little by little, barter, trade, sell
these things, and it would help them through their sojourn over
the next couple years in Egypt. God was good in providing for
them in their poverty. Okay, picking up at verse 12.
Then being divinely warned in a dream that they should not
return to Herod, they departed for their own country another
way. And when they had departed, behold, an angel of the Lord
appeared to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, take the young
child and his mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I
bring you word. For Herod will seek the young
child to destroy him. When he arose, he took the young
child and his mother by night, and departed for Egypt, and was
there until the death of Herod, that it might be fulfilled which
was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt
I called my son. Then Herod, when he saw that
he was deceived by the wise men, was exceedingly angry, and he
sent forth and put to death all the male children who were in
Bethlehem and in all its districts from two years old and under,
according to the time which he had determined from the wise
men. Then was fulfilled what was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet,
saying, A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, weeping,
and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children, refusing to
be comforted, because they are no more. Trouble dogged them
their entire life because Satan hated Jesus and wanted to kill
him. Revelation 12 says the moment
Jesus was born, Satan tried to kill him using his tool, which
was Herod. And don't think that Satan cannot
manipulate unbelieving civic officers to persecute you today.
He can. 1 John 5, 19 says, quote, the
whole world lies under the sway of the wicked one. So don't be
surprised when civil magistrates do satanic things. They are under
the sway of the wicked one if they are unbelievers. Jesus told
the leaders of Israel, you are of your father, the devil, and
the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer
from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there
is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks
from his own resources, for he is a liar and the father of it.
Satan, the arch murderer, can move civic officers to murder,
and he has in America with millions of murdered babies in our nation. and millions being, or at least
hundreds of thousands being murdered through ungodly wars. Satan,
the arch liar, can move unbelievers to lie, and he has in America,
with lies permeating almost all of the actions of Congress, various
agencies, and the media. But God can protect those who,
like Mary and Joseph, are faithful to Him. He can protect them with
guidance, like He did them, with finances, with jobs in new places,
with housing, with places to flee to, with protection while
you're traveling. Joseph and Mary, I think, are
wonderful examples of how God can provide for us even during
the toughest of times. Even finding sanctuary in another
country can be a good thing. Now, when God took out Herod,
Joseph had the family come back to Israel, but God warned him
not to go to Judea, so he moved to Nazareth, where he set up
his former business of carpentry. But let's consider why Galilee
and Nazareth were also places of trouble. Wow, did she go through
a lot of trouble by God's will. Galilee was the most despised
of the provinces by the religious leaders. They were put down. Matthew 4.15 speaks of that province
as Galilee of the Gentiles because there were so many Gentiles there.
They thought of it as being defiled, and in some senses it was. In
John 7.41, people were dubious about any good thing in Galilee
and said, shall Messiah come out of Galilee? Galilee was despised
as a place of sinners. And in Luke 13, 2, Jesus builds
on that reputation and says, do you think these Galileans
were worse sinners than all other Galileans? I mean, he's saying
all of the Galileans really do have a deserved reputation. Even
their speech and customs were considered uncouth and received
persecution of mocking. That's another kind of trouble.
It was Peter's Galilean accent that got him into trouble at
Christ's trial and made others say, surely you are a Galilean
too, for your speech shows it. In Acts 2, people are amazed
that these Galileans can preach. Galilee did not have the best
of reputations. But you know, if Galilee was
bad, Nazareth was the pits. Remember Nathanael's doubtful
statement that he made about Jesus. Can any good thing come
out of Nazareth? John 1 verse 46. Nazareth was
the main Roman military garrison in Israel. And like other garrison
towns, it had a great deal of prostitution and other sinful
activities. And you may remember that some
of the disciples were zealots. Who were the zealots? They were
people who had dedicated their lives to killing as many Roman
soldiers as they could. They would hide a knife up their
sleeve, and at opportune times in a crowd when there was a Roman
soldier, they would let that knife fall down, stab in the
back, walk off as if nothing had happened. And so since Nazareth
was the main Roman garrison, it became one of the main holdouts
for, yeah, for zealots. And so Nazareth was a hotbed
of prostitution, theft, rowdiness, and violence. And Christ came
into the midst of all that. I can imagine Joseph and Mary's
relatives saying, man, man, man, don't go to Nazareth. It's a
bad town. But as Ron Doestler used to say,
the safest place to be is in the center of God's will. But
Mary experienced trouble even when Jesus moved into his teens.
Jesus was a different child, and they didn't always know exactly
how to deal with Him. Luke 2, beginning to read at
verse 41, His parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast
of Passover. And when He was twelve years
old, they went up to Jerusalem according to the custom of the
Feast. When they had finished the days, as they returned, the
boy Jesus lingered behind in Jerusalem, and Joseph and his
mother did not know it. But supposing him to have been
in the company, they went a day's journey and sought him among
their relatives and acquaintances. So when they did not find him,
they returned to Jerusalem seeking him. Now, it was that after three
days, they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers,
both listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard
him were astonished at his understanding and answers. So when they saw
him, they were amazed. And his mother said to him, son,
why have you done this to us? Look, your father and I sought
you anxiously. Now, some of you parents, I think,
can relate to their anxiety. I mean, what if he had been kidnapped?
They're probably really scared. And the longer it goes, the more
worried they are. And verse 49 says, he said to
them, why did you seek me? Did you not know I must be about
my father's business? But they did not understand the
statement when she spoke to them. There were probably a lot of
things about Jesus that they did not understand. This was
part of the pain that Mary faced. They want him to sympathize with
mom and dad over their anxiety. And he's mystified as to why
they are anxious at all. We shouldn't worry. He's about
his father's business, his heavenly father's business. And so they
didn't get a lot of sympathy from Jesus on that point. Now,
it's not as if he did not submit to them. He did. He followed
their lead. He submitted to them. But verses
51 to 52 go on. Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth,
and was subject to them. But his mother kept all these
things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom
and stature, and in favor with God and men." And I'll just briefly
comment on Mary's inward responses, because it gives you kind of
an insight into her. So what kind of a personality
she had? Verse 51 says, his mother kept all these things in her
heart. Now earlier when the shepherds
came to the stable and worshiped Jesus, told them about all of
the things that the angels had said and done, Luke 2 19 says,
Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart. She
does not appear to be somebody who verbalized a lot. She was
not a real talkative She was a thinker, and she kept these
revelations in her heart. She reviewed them. She did not
let them go. Though you may have a different personality than
Mary, you can imitate her in giving yourself to memorization
and meditation upon God's Word. The Bible is filled with His
revelations for you. Let me help you notice one other
inward response. Luke 2 says that Joseph and Mary
marveled at the prophecies that Simeon and Anna brought. Now,
they already knew Jesus was going to be the Messiah, so there's
a sense in which what Simeon and Anna prophesied is nothing
new. They knew that he was doing it, but as God gives new revelations
through them, it makes them marvel. It makes them marvel, and we
should approach each new revelation of Scripture with the same wonder
and awe, that God cares for us enough to reveal his word to
us. When there's a constant freshness about God's presence in our lives,
it leads us to marvel over and over again. Now, where the temple
scene is one passage that gives us hints that Jesus was different,
there are two other passages that hint at how his brothers
had a hard time relating to Jesus. He was different, and different
people are sometimes persecuted and put down. They have it rough. It's sad, but it's true to life.
First passage is John 7, verse 5, which says, For even his brothers
did not believe in him. Now, if they did not believe
in him, then when Jesus makes claims to deity and claims to
being the Messiah, they had to have thought, there's something
wrong. You're crazy. to think you're Messiah. If they
don't believe, there's only two options. You believe what he
says, or you think that he is crazy, that he's a fool to be
saying these kinds of things. And the next passage says that
explicitly. Mark 3 verse 20 shows his family
being concerned about him, and it says, they went out to lay
hold of him, for they said, he is out of his mind. This is his
brothers. He is out of his mind. In fact,
many commentators say that this was probably why Mary and his
brothers came in the passage that we looked at. So they have
three. I'm only going to do two. But they say they were probably
concerned, worried about Jesus, and they want to try to talk
him into being more reserved. Don't get yourself into trouble.
In any case, at least the first two passages hint that his brothers,
who didn't believe in Jesus until after the resurrection, had a
hard time relating to him. He was a goody two-shoes who
could never do any wrong. Why is Jesus the only one that
never gets a spanking, you know? They're always getting spankings,
and he's a mister goody two-shoes, right? So this too would have
put real stress upon Mary. Mary could relate to your family
squabbles and stress. But when Jesus corrected her
in John 2 and Matthew 12, she responded with a good attitude.
She does not push her agenda in John 2. In fact, she tells
her servants, he's the boss. Whatever Jesus says, you do what
he says to you. But we're getting ahead of the
outline. The next trouble that she faced was that Joseph died.
That, too, is a stressful time for anybody to lose their loved
one. By the time Jesus had entered
ministry, the dad was nowhere to be found, and it appears that
Jesus had taken over the carpentry business, and this means Jesus
was acting as the head of the home. That, too, would create
pressure for the siblings. He was, after all, the oldest
one. Contrary to Roman Catholic theology,
that's why Jesus took over. All of this illustrates the truth
of Isaiah 53, verse 2, which says this. For he shall grow
up before him as a tender plant and as a root out of dry ground.
He has no form or comeliness, and when we see him, there is
no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected
by men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. And we
hid, as it were, our faces from him. He was despised, and we
did not esteem him." This, too, would have been very painful
for Mary. Jesus was not good-looking. Moms
want a good-looking son, right? He wasn't good-looking. He was
despised by others. He was not desired by others,
even though Mary loved him dearly. And there were men who saw him
with favor. Luke affirms that. But there
were others who rejected him and despised him. But I especially
want to focus on Isaiah's prophecy that Jesus would grow up as a
root out of dry ground. That means his growth was supernatural. It was not dependent on any of
the circumstances around him, nothing but dry ground around
him in Nazareth. While that's true of Jesus, it
was also true of Joseph and Mary. Now, the dry ground could partly
explain why the brothers were not believers. But Joseph and
Mary trusted in God and flourished in dry ground as well. You may
have nothing good surrounding you, but like Mary, you need
to make sure that you daily go to the refreshing streams that
flow from Christ's throne, not looking to broken cisterns that
will let you down, that do not have water. Dry ground forces
us to find our life in God. Now, in the introduction, I've
already discussed the fact that Mary had four other sons and
at least two sisters. So Mary models having large families,
having lots of kids, right? Her ministry was first and foremost
to her family and secondarily a ministry to others. And we'll
see she did minister outside the home. And by the way, don't
judge parents who have unbelieving children. This is a heartache
and they don't need more heartache put upon them by you. Mary's
children were unbelieving." We don't always know the circumstances
for these things, but for at least a period of time, God allowed
this most blessed woman, highly favored by God, to have unbelieving
children. And if you're a perfectionist,
you do need to think about that. And don't give up hope on your
believing children. If you've got unbelieving children or other
relatives, you've got friends who have unbelieving children,
appoint them to marry. It was only after these brothers
had been adults for some time that they came to faith. So don't
allow your negative thinking to kill your faith in covenant
succession. Keep pestering the Lord like
the unfortunate widow. your children. But let's look
at how Jesus helped Mary to transition from family relationships to
being primarily spiritual relationships, being primary as she grew up.
We've already looked at how 12-year-old Jesus was helping his mother
to remember that he had come into the world to serve his heavenly
Father's purpose and she needed to be good with that. It does
appear that Jesus took over the carpentry business. In this,
he was being the provider for his mother. He must have left
the carpentry business to the care of one of his brothers.
So Mary, no doubt, continued to do whatever needed to be done
to help that business prosper. No reason to doubt that Mary
helped with the family business. And let's read the story in John
2 of the wedding at Cana, because this also shows Jesus transitioning
her. John 2, verse 1. 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. Now, this
shows to many commentaries that Mary must have been hosting this
wedding. And then they conclude, well,
if she was hosting it, this must have been some family member's
wedding. I'm not sure you have to assume that. There's no reason
why this could not have been a side business that she had
to supplement the family's income. Point is, when kids are grown,
there is no reason why women cannot do more things outside
the home. Now, she's stressed. She's not
used to running out of wine, I guess. She is stressed. She
wants Jesus to help. He has helped so many times in
the past, but verse 4 shows a mild rebuke. Jesus said to her, Woman,
what does your concern have to do with me? My hour has not yet
come. Now, he could have called her
mother, but he called her woman. Though she will always be his
mother in one sense, her role of mother is going to disappear. He could have been solicitous
about her concerns, but he wants her to realize her concerns must
now be subservient to his concerns. His kingdom will now dictate
all requests, not vice versa. One commentator worded it this
way. Thus, family relationships were not to be the determining
factors in Jesus's life. As his brothers later could not
force Jesus's timing of his destiny, John 7, 3 through 9, so his mother
here was not to govern his activity. Although a Jewish mother might
normally be able to exercise pressure on her children, it
was not to be the case with Jesus. And so this is not only a correction
of Mary, it's a correction of Roman Catholic theology. And
Mary gets it. She no longer even bosses her
own servants around. She says, Jesus is the Lord.
Verse 5. His mother said to the servants,
whatever he says to you, do it. And the servants obeyed Jesus,
even when it seems foolish to do so. And then it's discovered,
oh, he's turned water into wine. Verse 12. After this, he went
down to Capernaum, he, his mother, his brothers, and his disciples,
and they did not stay there many days. I want you to notice from
now on, Mary and his family are called to follow Jesus. And so
it appears that they left their family business, at least for
a time. Now, the brothers probably went back to it, but this put
additional pressures, especially since the brothers try to push
Jesus around in John 7, even though that same chapter says
they did not believe in him. But stresses didn't keep Mary
from following Jesus. We've dealt with the who is my
mother passage, another critical transition passage. Let me skip
ahead to Luke 11, 27 through 28. And it happened as he spoke these
things that a certain woman from the crowd raised her voice and
said to him, blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts
which nursed you. But he said, more than that,
blessed are those who hear the word of God and keep it. Now
the new King James interprets the grammar correctly here. There
are three ways of taking the grammar. One way is that Mary
is not blessed. That's an impossible translation.
The second way is that both are blessed. But the third way is
more consistent with the way that Luke uses this grammar throughout
the book of Luke and Acts. And that is that, yes, Mary was
indeed blessed for bearing Jesus, but there is a far greater blessing
for those who simply hear God's words and keep God's words. Okay? Now, since Mary also heard God's
word and kept God's word, she's got both blessings, and that
way she's more blessed, right? But the point is, Jesus is emphasizing
that the blessing that any believer can have through obedience is
greater blessing than being the mother of Jesus. That's exactly
what the text says. And I don't know about you, but
for me, this is a huge motivator to pursue after holiness, you
know? Holiness brings even greater
blessing than being the mother of Jesus. Now, there's one last
transition that Jesus made for his mother, and it's seen in
John 19. while Jesus was dying on the cross. His mother was
nearby, as was the Apostle John. And the passage says this, when
Jesus therefore saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved
standing by, he said to his mother, woman, behold, your son. And
he said to the disciple, behold, your mother. And from that hour,
that disciple took her to his own home. Notice that he, once
again, does not call her mother, even though he obviously is related. It's true that she's a mother,
and John says that she was his mother. But Jesus is deliberately
de-emphasizing her role of being mother, and he is giving her
to be John's mother. From now on, as far as role is
concerned, she is John's mother. There is a transition here, and
this too is a rebuke to the Mariolatry of Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy
that makes Mary the key to our relationship with Jesus. And
Jesus says, no, her motherhood does not factor into your prayers
being answered, your relationship with Jesus, or anything else
in heaven. But on the other hand, this passage shows that Jesus
loved his mother, just like he loves other mothers, right? He
loved his mother. He took care of her in her old
age. After all, he's making sure that she will be physically provided
for after he dies. He puts her under the protective
care of his best friend, John. And so that's a financial and
a protective transition. But calling her relationship
to him as woman and calling her relationship to John as mother
shows yet another transition. In heaven, her motherhood of
Jesus will have no spiritual value or role. Yet even at the
cross, Mary is a model of courage to all of us. She did not run
when other men ran. She was not ashamed of Jesus
when others were. But she did not drink His blood
at the cross like some Romanist mystics claim. And she did not
have a super-saint relationship to the Church. As we read earlier,
she was a prayer warrior and a servant of the Church in Acts,
opening up her home to other believers. But I hope I've demonstrated
that Mary, above all, is a wonderful model that we can imitate, not
a goddess that we venerate. Amen. Father, thank you for your
word. Thank you that your grace raised
up people like Mary, who more and more learned what it meant
to live by grace and to make you the focus of their lives.
And I pray that You would bring the Church of Rome and the Eastern
Orthodox Church to repentance for making Mary the center of
their veneration and their prayers. Help us, Father, like Mary, to
see You and Your Son Jesus as the center of our lives. Help
us to fix our eyes on Jesus, who is the author and finisher
of our faith. In His name we pray, amen.
Mary, Mother of Jesus
Series Women of Faith
This sermon clears away the errors propagated by Rome and Eastern Orthodoxy concerning Mary, and then demonstrates how Mary is a role model for us in several areas of life.
| Sermon ID | 11142141522997 |
| Duration | 1:19:13 |
| Date | |
| Category | Sunday Service |
| Bible Text | Matthew 12:46-50 |
| Language | English |
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