Back to the study on Christology. Who is Jesus? What's He done? Article 6. We sort of ran through Article 7 last week on page 8. It gets us into Article 8 as we're talking about Jesus and who He is. Article 7 was primarily about Him being truly a man with all the limitations and infirmities of a human nature, just like us in every way except for without sin. Article 8 sort of talks about his birth, his conception and birth. Obviously an important theological understanding. In Article 8 it says, We affirm that the historical Jesus Christ, by the power of the Holy Spirit, was miraculously conceived and was born of the Virgin Mary. We affirm with the Chalcedonian Creed that she is rightly called Mother of God, Theotokos, is the Greek word, in that the child she bore is the incarnate Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity, we deny that Jesus Christ received His divine nature from Mary or that His sinlessness was derived from her. Two parts, and one that will be the controversy that we go over. Two parts of the affirmation is that Jesus is an historic person. He's not some made-up fable. He's not some other thing that the apostles just made up and wrote stories about that we somehow have mistakenly understood to be true history. His life, everything that we read in the Bible is historic. There's evidence outside of the Bible for all of it. And where does He come from? How does He come? We've already kind of talked about the two natures of Christ, right? The hypostatic union that He's God, the Son, the second person of the Trinity, that He is from all eternity past, eternal God, one with the Father, All of that we've studied in the Trinity. We've studied it in this study. And hopefully have that. And then we say He's incarnate. How does He become a man? How does He add the totality of human nature to the divine to where He's got two natures distinct? Man and God. He's born. He's born after being conceived, miraculously it says, by the power of the Holy Spirit. He was born of the Virgin Mary. Okay? We got that one okay? Good. No? Yeah? I guess the Catholics think that Mary was kind of... Yeah. Yeah. Equal equally her and God, I think, technically, but yes, the Eastern Orthodox churches kind of believe in something similar. They're really the ones who the Eastern Church is the one who came up with this term that they applied. Theotokos thing, which we'll talk about specifically. But the denial statement is really denying that. Like in the Roman Catholic Church, which I'm a little more familiar with, and Sam can correct me, but they believe that Mary herself was immaculate, that she had no sin, that she somehow was born not a sinner, and so when she contributes her human nature to Jesus, it's a sinless human nature. and it's not sort of from God the Father necessarily or it's equal parts. They say they believe that she was perpetually sinless and perpetually a virgin. forever. Like from before Jesus was conceived and after Jesus was conceived, all the way up until the point of her natural death. She was always a virgin. She was always sinless. All the brothers that Jesus had came from somewhere else or something. Brothers and sisters and other kids that she conceived with Joseph and gave birth to. All that's not true. They deny all of that. And so they're trying to figure out In the end, it's an adoption of Mary. It's part of the Mary worship stuff. You see, there's a couple of them in Denver. There's one on Speer Boulevard right next to the river on your way downtown after Cherry Creek. I always see it when I drive by down there. You go past the mall and on your way downtown on Speer Boulevard, there's a Catholic church, the Mother of God Catholic Church. And the Mother of God is this How does she have this? Well, she has not a divine nature, but a sinless nature. And so, she has some special place in their theology. Sam? That's right. I forgot about that. Yeah, she doesn't have any sins, so she doesn't die. She never died. She's one of the people that was assumed. The Assumption Day, right? The Assumption Day was more about Mary than it was about Jesus, right? Yeah, yeah. It's a good day not to work, right? Have a feast. So this is kind of a question for both of you, I guess, or maybe more for Calvin. But is the Catholic Church, obviously they're wrong. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, by the time you get to the second and third generation of the doctrine, it's no longer that they think that somebody made it up. They think, well, this is the tradition handed down from God directly to the guy who then told us and now we believe it because it's equal with Scripture. Right? All that tradition stuff. Right. Right. Yeah. Right. Well, their brain. Yeah, they enforce that by... Yeah, in history they actually enforce that by eliminating all the competition and silencing all the critics. And then they teach everybody that you can't read it for yourself, you've got to be taught by the priest. Right? You're not capable of seeing on your own that this says that Mary had other children or something, or that she needed a Savior in Luke. So, yeah, that's primarily the denial statement, is this, that Jesus doesn't derive His sinlessness from Mary. He derives it from God, who is His Father. Now, they stick in the first statement, the affirmation, that we affirm with the Chalcedonian creed that she's rightly called the mother of God. I was trying to look at this Theotokos idea. Actually, it was something that was first introduced in a council in Ephesus, but reaffirmed in Chalcedon. But nonetheless, they use this word And it doesn't really appear as far as I could figure out. It doesn't appear in the Scripture. It appears somewhere in a council around the 350s, 400s in Ephesus. And it's brought up. Personally, I don't like it in this statement because of wrong understandings that it generates and it's not actually something that we read in the Scripture. Mary is never called in the Bible the mother of God. And we probably can understand some of the problem with that, saying it that way. The word Theotokos actually may be better translated as the God-bearer. In other words, Jesus comes into the world through the womb of his mother Mary, but That's a bit more that you have to explain than the word itself signifies. And so for our friends here in Ligonier to talk about it like she's rightly called the mother of God, well, you better define that really well before you end up thinking that she's the Divine One. I mean, a mere mortal can't give birth to God, right? And so, she's something more than us. And so you end up with all these wacky doctrines that that's it. They do define it a little bit, and they say that the child she bore is the incarnate Son of God, but calling her the mother of God sounds like it makes her into some divine person who bestows her divinity upon the Son. That's all incorrect. Yes, dear? No. Yeah, it's a term, right? It's one of those problems when as a theologian you think that the Roman Catholic stuff has been the church all along. And so, you think that there's some validity in the things that they say and the things that they teach. It's the problem that knowledgeable Baptists avoid. because we don't look at that thing like it was the church. But these are coming out of the councils that we do mostly still say are sort of the establishment of the orthodoxy. Why does it have to say that she, Mary, was the mother of God? Why can't she just be the mother of Jesus, the human Jesus? There is a non-divisibleness of Jesus, the one-person Jesus with two natures. So she really is the mother of Jesus who is revealed in these two natures in one person. Yeah. Yeah, fine. I don't know why. I keep not knowing why I can't. I tried the seance thing to get a hold of R.C. Sproul to ask him why he wrote it like this, and he keeps not answering me. So I'm not exactly sure why they put it together this way. Not only that, all the elders at the councils from the 400s aren't answering the phone either. All of that to say that like there is some way that we have to say it But when they're trying in my opinion when they're trying in an article like this to explain it There's needs to be more explanation than just the bold statement and they're basing it on the authority of the Council of Chalcedon Obviously they wrote it into the affirmation and there it is true Mary is the mother of Jesus, who is the son of God. That's true. But 1,600 years later, because of the development of things in the Catholic church and the Eastern Orthodox churches and all of these different things, the term, the words mother of God have taken on a whole new meaning. And just this bold statement of theirs makes it sound like they might agree with the way that the Roman Catholics define that. For me, that's problematic. I think you change the name especially because it's not in the scripture this way. So that's my opinion. Yes. Yeah, I disagree with them using the term, but the definition of it. I would probably want to look at some of the verses that we'll look at and use one of those terms like Mary who gave birth to Jesus or something. I think that this statement would be fine without affirming. You could take that sentence out completely and it would be just fine. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. It's a useful... I find them to be useful, helpful tools to study, like we're trying to do. But yet, we just don't accept them all as being the same as the Bible. I'll never sit down and write one, I'm sure, if I did. I'm disrespecting the guys there. Maybe. Right. Right. It's not like they didn't spend time on it, and some of it's not in the base of the Bible. They did write sort of an explanation, but I could get rid of, we affirm the Chalcedonian Creed that she's rightly called the mother of God, and the child she bore is the incarnate Son of God, the second person of the Holy Trinity. You could just say that. He derives his human nature from his mom. Good for her. Yeah, you think? It didn't have all of the background of 1600 years of Roman Catholic history that's erected. Maybe. I mean, so it seems. Like the term doesn't appear in the literature, according to my little bits of research until then. And so even the early church fathers didn't talk about him like that. And so we can just stick with the Bible and that's okay. Yeah, in my opinion. and say that the human nature and the divine nature are separated. Yeah, I'm not sure if that particular thing that they identified as heresy is in full. I didn't study through exactly what Christotokos means and how they used it and how it was different than Theotokos, that she's the mother of Christ, the mother of the Messiah. To me, there's something that's better about that based on where we sit in history. But they might have meant something different. I wouldn't want to include in the creed that we affirm with the declared heretic so-and-so Nestor that Jesus something-something, right? So, yeah. It's not a verse, it's just a page, like Googling it. It's Google's idea. trying to get at is what Mom asked, which is, is Mary only the mother of the human part of Christ? Which is, no, she's not. She's the mother. They might be trying to get on that. Yeah, it might be true. No, no, it's one person. It's not two people. And so it is two different natures that get combined. But there's a distinction in the divine nature being from the Father and the human nature being from the mother. So maybe they could have said that, I guess. Right. Right. Right. Yeah, yeah. And maybe it is partly because of the rosary and the way it's used and all this stuff, like it's somehow, they pass it off like it's something that's really from the Bible, but it's not. Yeah, the whole thing just doesn't sit right, right? God doesn't have a mother. Yeah, right. Right. Pray for us. We're not going to pray to God the Father or Jesus or something. We'll pray to Mary. All the implications of that are kind of devastating to keeping God where He's supposed to be. It really does lower Jesus beneath His mom. That's the whole theory, right? Why do we pray to Mary? Because she's got His ear, right? Remember changing the water to wine? He didn't want to do it until she said do it. And then He goes, okay, Mommy. I'll do it for you. And so now we spend all of eternity trying to get him to do stuff by getting her to manipulate him. What? Because she's the mother of God. Like there's just something really whacked out about all that. Right. Yeah, which of us doesn't want to do what our mom tells us, right? And she's all Yeah, Jesus is kind of a hard guy, and you don't really want his father from the Old Testament to be the guy either, right? You want the soft love thing. Andrew? I have two questions. First is, Roman Catholics, do they believe that Jesus was existing before he was born as a human? Like, do they believe he was pre-existent? I don't... I mean, as a human, I don't think so. I'm not sure, though. I'm not sure if the Roman... So probably not. I mean, preexistent as God, but not preexistent as a human. Probably not, I think. Yeah, yeah, no, but the Trinity's not that He was a human before He was born. Not his human nature no like it begins at the incarnation So the person the person he's not known as Jesus he's not known as Jesus till the incarnation But the person of the Son, the Trinity, the God, yeah, of course, they are Trinitarians as we are, mostly as we are, Roman Catholics. So yes, Jesus exists before the incarnation, just not with two natures. When I was in the Philippines in all my classes, whenever I thought of this subject, I started out with the question, when do you guys think the beginning of Jesus is? Is it from the Virgin Mary? And they all said yes. That's the end. That's the canon. Because they say Mary is the mother of God. Right. Yes, so it complicates it about then who's Mary and who's her mom and who are her parents. And they end up backing up trying to figure this all out. So somehow God conceived Mary in her mother's womb somehow. The immaculate conception. Right? She's conceived without sin somehow, and God's involved with Mary's conception. Right? The immaculate conception. The Catholics would say, what's Jesus being conceived? Okay. That's Jesus. Oh, the doctrine doesn't say that. It's the reasonable conclusion if you believe the first thing that is the doctrine, though. Right? Okay. Gotcha. Okay, so I was wrong. Immaculate conception's about Jesus, but how is He immaculately conceived in the womb of Mary if Mary's not herself sinless? Immaculate means sinless, right? Is that right, the word? No? Go ahead. I'm just trying to get it right, correct it. Uh huh. Okay. Gotcha. Okay. Got it. Cousins. Right. Yes. I mean, yes, we also believe that Jesus is conceived without sin. Right. But Somehow that's more miraculous that Mary's actually a sinner and not sinless When they get a new pope, we'll send him a letter and see if he answers. I think it's Andrew's question that he just asked. you know, also was, do they deify Mary? Do they consider her to be God? And I think doctrinally they don't. I don't think they draw all of these conclusions into their official doctrinal statements. They leave them hanging out there so you still need the church to explain stuff to you. You can't figure it out on your own. But no, I don't think that they deify Mary, but they attribute certain characteristics of God to her like we're supposed to pray to her. and she can hear us in the hereafter. And so they don't see it that way, but that's the reality of how they operate, is they sort of treat her like that a little bit. But officially, I don't think in the doctrine, they don't say that she's God, and so even if she was sinless, maybe that'd be their answer. Like I said, I don't think they thought all that through. They won't say we worship Mary. They know better than that because of, you know, 400 years of Protestant Reformation theology. It's not just Mary you pray to, right? It's other saints, right? Yeah, it's it's yeah, it's some. Of course, yeah. What do you need the Holy Spirit for when you can wear St. Christopher around your neck and stuff, right? Other than when they do some blessing where they invoke the three persons of the Trinity, right? In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The Holy Ghost. They mention Him then a little bit, right? But that's only when you get confirmed and baptized? Right. Right, right. When I recite the pledge of allegiance, remember that one? Nobody does that anymore. I pledge allegiance to the flag. What does that mean? We're just a bunch of anti-traditionalists. See, that's the problem. Somebody somewhere probably benefited from it once upon a time. Some priest or something. Alright, Matthew? In the church and church-adjacent religions, there's this fixation on her. Why isn't she just on the same level as all the other saints? In our church, she is, unless we're talking about Roman Catholic doctrine. I think in the true church, I think she is just another saint. She's just no different than... Honestly, the apostles are the same thing. Even in our understanding in theology, she doesn't quite rise to appall in my mind about being some saint from whom I learn lots of things. the same level as the disciples, because she thought, at least from one passage, that she Yeah, at one point, she and Jesus' brothers thought, you know, he needs to quit this nonsense, you know, which is quite a statement from her. I assume that she's probably influenced by his brothers who are jealous of him, but that's just my thought, because I know how family dynamics work. You know, I can observe that in other people's families, not mine. No, but like, I just, however it was, she doesn't, She doesn't have a perfect understanding of who he is and how that is, you know. There's a whole counter argument about the him changing water to wine thing about how she's, you know, if she really understood who he was, who does she think she is to put him in such a spot after he said no. But obviously he wanted her to do that or he wouldn't have gone through with it. Yeah, I think that the elevation of Mary is a kind of human attempt at understanding or trying to bring something of somehow God and Jesus are more like me than different than me or something. Yeah, yeah, that's a good point. The devil would like us to worship something that's really close that's not true, right? And so this angel of light concept, you know, the best deception is the one that's really close and is based, you know, 50% on the Bible, but then it adds other stuff. So whether you're talking about, you know, Mary worship or Mormonism, The degree to which you have agreement about a lot of things but disagreement about something that's important sort of shines a light on that. Right. So they use this for proof that Mary is this really true. And what her message was to these children was, listen to Jesus. So now you've got this answer issue telling you something is true. Mary appears and goes, can you tell us who Jesus is? Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary. Mary Right. It's like, it's yeah, it's a it's a very close deception. It's like, because it's How can Mary be the devil? She told us to follow Jesus. But then I decided to follow Jesus because Mary told me instead of because the Lord told me Himself, right? How close is that? Right. Right. So there's reason to know something a little bit about all of this and how it can be distorted. I think that's an important part of the article. What do we affirm? But then how's it been distorted with this mother of God thing? They don't really acknowledge that as much. I mean, the denial statement, we sort of started with that. They sort of work it in there, but it doesn't address everything fully. So, in my opinion, yeah. Well, I was just going to say about Mary, obviously we don't elevate her above humanity. We don't deify her or any of that sort of stuff. But she is given sort of a special place. in the scriptures and addressed in a special way. The angel Gabriel asks her, greetings, favor, will the Lord is with you? And Elizabeth says, she cried out with a loud voice and said, blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. How has it happened to me that the mother of my Lord would come to me? And so she is given kind of an honored place even among humans, but she's not superhuman. Right Right, I think it's I think yeah, I think it's the recognition of yeah that There is something that God favors her about right nobody else Nobody else's womb is the Holy Spirit conceive the Son of God That is that is unique What is that? What effect does that have on us? I? I think is a reasonable question. I recognize that it says she's blessed and favored, and it's true, but how does that, what does that cause me to do with her? I think, you know? It seems like in a lot of like the Catholic, I just remember reading a whole new version of Mary, it's Robin Hood, and like every couple paragraphs, Robin Hood's constantly talking about the Virgin Mary, and how wonderful she is, and all these things, and it almost seems that Yeah. Yeah, she becomes legendary, right? And in a way that I tend to think that if she, knowing the little bit that we read about her in the Scripture, I think that she would tend to be disgusted that it's turned into this other thing. Like, yeah, of course, I'm favored. And you know, that God gave me something unique here, but he gave you something unique, too. And, you know, the fact that you're a believer, and I could, I could, you can more easily imagine her in real life, thinking and talking like that. But yeah, she's elevated and to this legendary status. And so, you know, who's my idol? Who do I want to be like? Well, some people like Mary. She becomes an idol. That's the accusation is. Mariology is idolatry. Yeah, we recognize that the scripture kind of confirms that she's... Something unique happened with her. The Lord used her uniquely. Jovita? little, and they prayed to Mary, and that is what I started with. My dad was blind when he was little, and when they prayed to Mary, and that is what he prayed about, and he idolized her. We used to have to sit there as kids with the Mary statue, and the whole month of Mary's name was the name of Mary in the statue. But my dad was such a horrible one. Aside from that, he's got no real testimony of knowing the Lord. Yeah, that's an interesting story. It sort of relates to what Sam was talking about, about these miracles that accompany things. Like, your dad's born blind, somebody prays to Mary and he gets his eyesight back. And we actually read about something like that in the Scripture, right? That Jesus cast a demon out of a guy and he recovered his sight. So is Mary doing something or is it a demon? Well, we never read about Mary being able to perform that miracle in the Scripture, so it seems like if all you had was a Bible, it's more likely that the demon can restore your sight in order to cause you to worship Mary instead of the real God. And that's harsh to say, but you know, it's probably the reality in some way. Sam? Pastor Petron. I'm sorry, Sam? where they were offering sacrifices to the Queen of Heaven, which is one of the titles of marriage. And then they said that they would paralyze the West Coast. They don't do that. And they said, we may certainly continue doing that. And the issue was, when we stop doing that, we don't get our crops. So this thing about the answer period reinforces me. Is this a false documentation? Right. Yeah. Who are my mother and brothers? Those who hear the word of God and obey it. So he's intentionally, he's not disrespecting her, but he's intentionally getting in her way. Don't do this weird thing. It's about this other thing. It's about those who hear the word of God. It's not about my physical family, my mother. It's nothing like that. When that story is preceded by Jesus preaching and a lady in the crowd cries something out like, blessed is the woman at whose breast you nursed or something, right? Right? Something like that? Right. Blessed is your mother. No, no. Not like you mean this way. He cuts that off. Yeah. Not that he's being disrespectful to her. but she's not to be venerated like that. Yeah, I think so. Yeah. It is a powerful statement, yeah, when he says that my mother and brother are those who do the will of God, not just these biological guys. That's really no different than what he told the Jewish guys that just because you're Hebrew doesn't mean that Abraham's your father. It's the same kind of argument. And so, like you said, Moses is a highly respected guy, but he's never supposed to be venerated either. There's all kinds of guys like that in the Scripture. David and all of the apostles. Paul denies that a few times. You know, different things. Like, we're not supposed to divide up teams. I'm with Paul and I'm with Apollos and all that stuff. Centuries down the road, it's the same sort of thing. Jesus cuts that off. Yeah. Okay. Caleb? Okay. So, this whole time we've been talking about this false doctrine of Mary, this false... I don't know if we call it quite heretical. Maybe that there is another sinless person besides Jesus that's kind of heresy. But it's kind of, it's a false doctrine that we have to address. And so, how do we address it? Well, we write creeds to address different theologies. We write alternate theologies. So when the Catholics say, oh, she's the mother of God, she's venerated, she's all this other stuff, how do we address that? Well, we say, yes, by the words of what you're saying, she is the mother of God because she rightly is called this because she bore the incarnate Son of God. She is the second person of the Holy Trinity, but we deny that Jesus derived his nature from her, that she's sinless, and all these other things. So we have to address these by saying, well, you're right in the word and the semantics, I hear what you're saying, and I think that's probably the mindset that these guys were operating in, but I don't think that I have to say that. The way I already said, I think that you don't have to say, you don't have to confirm that she's rightly called the mother of God. The scripture never says that. Only men have ever said that. Jesus never said that. The apostles never said that. Mary never said that about herself. The voice from heaven never said that. The Scripture never says that. Never. Why would I confirm that in a creed? Because I'm paying homage to these men who I'm semi-deifying. by including it. That's my opinion. That's what I think is an issue with it. It's not scriptural to say she's rightly called the mother of God, especially in light of 1,500 years of the Roman Catholics abusing that and tying meaning to it that then they try to back out of. Why say that in the first place? I think it's probably because they think, well, we have to say it because Chalcedon said it. And I just don't think you have to say it. I think you can say Chalcedon said it, but we don't like the term because we think it's been twisted by history. If you guys are happy with it, you can keep it. In mine, I'm going to cross it out and I'm going to stop arguing about it now. Because you're not going to convince me that I think that they're right to confirm and affirm that she's rightly called the mother of God. That term doesn't exist in the Bible. It's right on the edge for me of calling it rightly called that as if I'm immoral for disagreeing with you. Not true. If anything, you're immoral for not agreeing with the Bible. So, who's the heretic? The guys who think Jesus is the mother of God. They're the heretics. Why are we confirming stuff that they teach? I've got options. I can say we broadly accept Chalcedon and perhaps the definition that they first used with the word, but that's been twisted and messed with over history through these heretical churches, and I'm not going to say that I agree with them. Can I ask a question? Sure. Do you agree that the child she bore is the incarnate son of God, the second person of nature? Yes. I said, all I want to do is cross it out. The part about we believe that she's rightly called the mother of God, cross that out. They even put the Greek word there that doesn't exist in the New Testament. So I mean, just because I have a Greek word that I make up doesn't mean that it's suddenly rightly the right title when it was never given her in the Scripture. Can we just say that we need to always make a distinction between the Scripture Probably. No. They say they do, but then in operation, they don't actually do that. Right. Yeah, fine. Yeah. Anything like that's fine with me. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, that's the thought. OK. All this talk, we haven't even looked at the Bible verses. We've got to at least look at the Bible verses, right? Yeah, so at the bottom of the page, the footnote number 8, The one that they quoted is from Luke 1.26 about the conception in the sixth month. The angel of Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David and the virgin's name was Mary. There we go. See, Mary, she's a virgin. She has the baby conceived as a virgin. Now, there's not really much controversy about this part because it's so clear in the Scripture, right? Matthew 1 has the same sort of stuff. We see Matthew 1.23, "...Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son. They'll call His name Emmanuel, which means God with us." She's a virgin. The Son is conceived in her and known as God. That's the Incarnation statement. He's not only known as God, but He is God with us, Emmanuel. In the next chapter, 2.11, talking about the wise men, the guys who went to visit the king. They went into the house and they saw the child with Mary, his mother, and they fell down and worshipped him. Then opening their treasures, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. These are the guys who evidently somehow through Scriptures and other means and perhaps the direct revelation from God knew that there was a king that had been born. But when they show up there, they worship him. He's a little baby. He looks like a baby. He talks like a baby. He doesn't talk. He coos and whines and stuff. Anyway, there's God in their eyes that they see him that way. The other passage in Luke 1 down at the bottom down there are these few verses still in the conception story. Luke 1.31, 35-43 says, Behold, the angel Gabriel told Mary, You will conceive in Your womb and bear a son. You will call His name Jesus. Verse 35, and the angel answered her when Mary asked, how will this be since I'm a virgin? He said, the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be called Holy, the Son of God. And verse 43, and why is this granted to me? Mary asks that the mother, or sorry, this is Elizabeth asking, why has it been granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? So, um, the mother of my Lord is a, in my view, a different thing than what is this mother of God. It's not the term, it's not the Greek term that they quote here. It's a different set of words or complex word, complex than mother of my Lord. And it's true, right? When properly understood that she is the mother of our Lord, she has, Jesus is called Lord all over the place. It's not hard to see that. And she is in fact His mother. It really is for me, I'll say it again, the complication of what do we have in history of why am I allowing the confusion of using terms that for the most part mean something different than I intend them to mean? So I've got options, especially since it's not something in the Scripture. Romans 1.3, this is a verse that we've seen again and again speaking about Jesus. The Scriptures speak about the Son. the Son of God who was descended from David according to the flesh. It's the two natures of God. He's God. He's man. He has a lineage. He has an ancestry. It's all wrapped up there. Galatians 4.4 says, "...but when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law." So God like the passage in Luke 1, has overshadowed Mary as the mother and conceived in him a child who's a boy, just a normal human boy in his human nature, and he ends up being born of a woman just like everybody else. He doesn't have some, it is a miraculous conception that he has, but his birth is actually pretty normal as far as we know, right? Nothing in particular about his birth or his early childhood that would differentiate him much from any other kid as far as we're ever known from scripture. So, that's all, that's the verses that they gave us in support of all of these things and part of the denial stuff that we worked through. So, I figured we'd have the, you know, We'll have a long conversation about that one. Yeah, it's far enough along. I'll just pray. And if you've got more questions and comments, you can talk to me afterwards. It's fine. Lord, thank You for the morning together here. I thank You for all that You've given to us in Your Word. Lord, I thank You that even the discussion, the disagreements that might be had here, Lord, I thank You We have the opportunity to try to understand these things in a way that we can open up your word and take things to you as the one who explains all things well. And thank you that we can elevate everything that you've given us to its proper place in our hearts and our minds. Lord, I pray that you would keep us from wrong thoughts wrong applications of these things. Lord Jesus, I thank you for coming into the world born as a man to take my sin to pay for my debt. Father, I thank you for sending your son into the world born of a woman conceived by you and Mary and just thank you for our time together this morning in Jesus name. Amen.