Blessed Mary Mother of God - Luke 11:27-28

There's an old story about a mother who was introducing her two sons to someone, and proudly she said, This is my oldest son, he's a doctor, and this is my youngest son, he's a lawyer.

The younger son smiled, said to his mom, Mom, you know we do have names.

It's funny, but we do that all the time, right?

We tend to define people by the most impressive thing about them.

Or sometimes we define them by the most impressive person or title they're connected to.

We might say, Well, that person is a CEO or a president of a company, or that person is the brother of so-and-so, or the sister of so-and-so, or mother of so-and-so.

And sometimes the thing is that we we think that the most significant thing about a person is that, is who they're connected to, is their status, is is their title.

But most often that's not the case.

Most likely, most often, the most significant thing about a person isn't actually the most thing that we tend to think it is.

It is something a little more, something a little deeper.

And I think we see something similar like this in our passage this morning.

You know, every once in a while we will stumble upon a passage as we walk verse by verse through the scriptures.

We'll stumble upon a passage that gives us an opportunity to stop and consider a particular doctrine of Scripture, whether that be a true doctrine that we can grow in or a doctrine that we should be aware of.

And I believe this passage before us is one of them.

So to bring us up to speed, after Jesus exercises, as we've been walking through the gospel, as after Jesus exercises his power over the demoniac, and after teaching a couple of valuable lessons on Satan and the demonic activity, we now come to a response from those in the crowd.

We already know that there were some skeptics and critics of Jesus who didn't believe what he was doing was from God, but we also have some in the crowd who were amazed and captivated by what he was doing.

Next week we're going to look at some more of those critics, but today we have a woman in our passage who was quite taken by what she saw Jesus doing.

So much so she blurts out and speaks out about how blessed the mother of this man must be.

Of course, the mother is not named in the passage, but we know who this is.

This mother of Jesus is Mary.

Now, Protestants, meaning Christians who are not Roman Catholic like us, always get a little nervous when it comes to Mary.

We know how much the Roman Catholic Church venerates her, and we want to distance ourselves from that.

And, you know, rightfully so, we, after all, are sola scriptura people, we are people of the book, and we don't want to follow doctrines that are formulated outside of Scripture.

But we also want to be careful not to minimize or overlook her plays in redemptive history.

The Catholic Church certainly tends to make too much of Mary, but the Protestant Church has often made too little of her.

I titled this sermon, Blessed Mary, Mother of God.

Now the fact that you're thinking twice about that title proves my point.

We get a little nervous elevating Mary to such a title.

But in reality, that title has more to do with Jesus than it has to do with Mary.

The early church wrestled much with who the scriptures said Jesus was.

Who was Jesus?

Was he spirit only?

Did he come in the flesh?

Was he truly divine?

And so forth?

They had these questions.

So to help them understand what the scriptures taught about him, they affirm a term Theotokos, the Council of Ephesus in 431 A.D.

This term is a Greek term which means God-bearer or mother of God.

It confesses that Mary gave birth to one person, Jesus Christ, who is truly God and truly man.

The title was originally intended to protect the truth about Jesus, not necessarily to elevate Mary.

So who was Mary?

And what should we think of her?

What is her place in redemptive history?

Well, what I want to do this morning is look at the passage and allow it to help us look deeper into the following things.

Number one, who Mary was, number two, who Mary wasn't, and number three, why we should want to be like Mary.

Let's look at that first point.

Who Mary was in verse 27.

He says, or the scripture says, and he said, as he said these things, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breast at which you nurse.

Let me stop there.

So after Jesus exercised his power by freeing this man who was mute over the demon, some in the crowd, like the Pharisees and the scribes, as we read, criticized him.

But the other others in the crowd marveled at him.

And some like this woman shouted out, who shouted out, were amazed at this amazing display of power that Jesus was showing.

They were astounded with the authority that he was displaying, not only through his power, but also through the way he taught.

So this one woman raises her voice and says, Blessed is the womb that bore you.

It's a natural reaction, really.

We all know how it is to give praise to the parents of someone who does or accomplishes something great.

For example, when someone graduates or gets married, we tell their parents, You must be proud.

And it was even more common to give praise to the mother of a child in ancient times because motherhood was typically where women in these days found their identity.

So Jesus, hearing this reaction, redirects the woman's claim.

But notice what he doesn't do.

He doesn't reject the woman's claim.

In other words, he's not saying that Mary isn't blessed, but instead, he says that the ones who are blessed are those who hear and keep God's word.

So what are we to think of Mary?

What is her place in redemptive history?

Every year around Christmas time, we're reminded of the part she played in the biblical narrative as we sing or hear her name sung in songs, and we see her in nativity scenes and so forth.

Well, the first time we encounter her in the scriptures in the New Testament is in Matthew chapter 1, verse 16, where we read, And Jacob, the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ.

Matthew 1:16

So there she shows up in the genealogy, and she is mentioned as the wife, or Joseph is mentioned as the husband of Mary, and Mary is mentioned as the one who bore Jesus, who's called the Christ.

So the first thing that Scripture tells us when we open up the New Testament about who Mary is, is that she is the one who gave birth to Jesus.

Now, that alone would be a wonderful accomplishment.

Of that is all the Scriptures had to say about Mary.

She would still be one of the most important figures in redemptive history.

But Scripture does tell us more about him.

For one, it tells us that she was favored by God.

In Luke chapter one, verse twenty six.

Luke chapter one, verse twenty-six, we read this.

In the sixth month the angel 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.

And he came to her and said, Greetings, O favored One, the Lord is with you.

But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be.

And the angel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.

So up to this point we don't know much about Mary other than the fact that she was a young woman about to get married.

Then one day she gets a visit from an angel from God who tells her that she is a favored one.

Notice that the scripture really doesn't give us a reason for why she was favored.

She wasn't at the temple day and night like we are told Anna the prophetess was earlier on in Luke.

Nor was she found fasting when the angel appeared or anything like that.

Some might say, well, maybe she was chosen because she was engaged to Joseph, and the verse says that he was from the house of David.

However, it wouldn't have been too difficult to find an Israelite from the house of David living in Judea in the first century.

It would be like trying to find a person of Mexican descent living in Texas with the last name of Hernandez or Garcia.

If you needed one, you could find one.

So there was nothing really special about Mary's situation.

If anything, there were many things unspecial about her situation.

She was young, she was likely poor, she was living in a small town, an obscure village.

In John's gospel, one of the disciples asked, Can anything good come from Nazareth?

So there she was, just minding her own business, when this angel appears to her.

There's nothing remarkable about Mary that made God shine his favor upon her.

Yet one day God's angel appeared with a message.

Mary, you have found favor with God.

Which, if you're a Christian, you should not find strange.

Because this is what happened to us.

We were dead in our sins and trespasses, but God, being rich in mercy, came and made us alive together with Christ.

Every believer is favored by God.

If you're a Christian, God has set his electing love upon you, not because of who you are or what you have done or what you have, but because of who he is, of who he is, what he has done, and what he has.

Who is he?

He's a loving and merciful God.

What has he done?

He has sent his only begotten son to die for your sins.

And what does he have?

He has endless grace and endless mercy to offer whomever he freely sets his love upon.

And if you're a believer, that is you.

He didn't consider your deeds, your good deeds.

He didn't consider your works, he didn't consider your gifts or your talents or your background.

He didn't take into account your family history or your status in the community.

He came to you where you were and said, You are favored.

Let me give to you the gift of my son.

Who else is married?

She's also someone who is a remarkable example of faith.

And Luke 1 35, Luke chapter 1, verse 35.

Luke 1:35

We read this.

And the angel answered her, 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 behold, your relative Elizabeth, in her old age, has also conceived a son.

And this is the sixth month with her, who has who was called barren.

For nothing will be impossible with God.

And Mary said, Behold, I am your servant of the Lord.

Let it be to me according to your word.

And the angel departed from her.

When the angel told Mary she would bear a child, yes, she did question how, but notice that when she was told this would be by the power of the Holy Spirit, she didn't question any further.

Instead, she said, Let it be done according to your word.

The virgin birth is was truly a miraculous wonder.

No one in the history of the world had ever heard of anything like this being done before.

Even the barren woman in the Old Testament, even Elizabeth, her contemporary, would receive a child through conception.

But here, Mary would bear a child by the power of the Holy Spirit.

What a miraculous wonder.

And instead of laughing and saying, not a chance, Mary believed.

She placed her faith in a God who can do impossible things.

Again, what remarkable faith.

It is a faith that is rarely found in the scriptures or out of the scriptures.

Mary is a great example of believing God for the impossible and believing God's word over her own circumstances.

So that's a little of who Mary was.

She was a woman, the woman who gave birth to Jesus, which she's to be honored for.

She was highly favored of the Lord, and she was a woman of extraordinary faith.

Now let's look for a moment of who she wasn't.

Verse 28.

But he said, Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it.

So while Jesus didn't minimize Mary's blessedness, he didn't magnify it either.

Instead, he pointed to what marks out true blessedness.

As he said, Blessed rather are those who hear and keep God's word.

This isn't the first time Jesus makes this point concerning his mother.

You may remember back in Luke chapter 8, we read we read this in Luke 8, verse 19.

Luke 8 · chapter mention Luke 8:19

We read, Then his mother and his brothers came to him, but they could not reach him because of the crowd.

And he was told, Your mother and your brothers are standing outside, desiring to see you.

But he answered them, My mother and my brothers are those who hear the word of God and do it.

Now we've already established that Mary was someone who heard God's word.

And someone who obeyed God's word, who kept God's word.

Which means it wasn't Mary's accomplishment in giving birth and nursing a son that made her blessed.

Instead, it was who she was before God.

Who are the ones who hear God's word and keep God's word?

It's his children.

It's children who obey the Father.

So Mary's blessedness wasn't in being a mother, but in being a child.

As a side note, never feel that your role or your relationship to others define who you are.

You know, sometimes we we might think because I'm not this or that, because I'm not successful, or because I don't have many friends, or because I'm not a father, I'm not a mother, or I'm not a husband or a wife, that I'm somehow incomplete.

Or I'm not everything that I could be.

But anyone who's in Christ is everything that they should be.

The Christian should never define themselves by what they've done or what they have or what they don't have, but by who Jesus is, who they have in Christ, by the favor that they have of God the Father.

Blessed rather are you.

Mary was not simply blessed because of her role and her relationship, but she was more blessed by who she was in Christ, which is something that the Roman Catholic Church often gets backwards.

Maybe intentionally, maybe unintentionally, but they do so.

Sometimes they might give the impression that Christ is the one who's blessed through Mary rather than Mary is the one who's blessed through Christ.

What I want to do is take a moment to point out a few things that Mary was not, in contrast to who Christ is.

And in doing so, I want to show how Scripture contradicts some of the teachings about Mary by the Roman Catholic Church and why Protestants have have and should reject what what their Marian dogma is, which is their authoritative doctrinal claims of who she was.

As I said earlier, it's not often we get a chance to do something like this on our Sunday morning sermons, and we get to stop and teach on some doctrines, but I think many of us have friends and family who are embedded in Roman Catholicism, and it will be helpful for us to know a little bit of what they believe about Mary in this one point that I'm showing here of who Mary is not.

Let me say this.

I'm not saying that Roman Roman Catholics, all Roman Catholics are unbelievers.

I believe that you know we are saved not by the church that we're a part of, we're saved by Jesus Christ, by believing and trusting in Jesus Christ alone for salvation.

Sola fide, sola gracia.

We're saved by faith alone, by grace alone, in Christ alone.

So there, I'm not, I'm not saying all this to say that everyone in the Roman Catholic Church are are damned to hell.

We do we do we do believe that if they if there are people in the church that believe in Jesus Christ for salvation, they are brothers or sisters, but we do believe that there are some teachings out there that we have to be aware of and that we want to make clear are not taught in the scriptures.

So the first one I want to point to is this teaching of her perpetual virginity, meaning Mary remained a virgin throughout her entire life.

At the Second Council of Constantinople in 55 AD, the church gave her the title Ariparthenos, which means perpetual virgin.

And at the Laturian synod of 649, Pope Martin I emphasized the threefold stages of her virginity.

They are these antipartum, these are Latin words, virgin before Christ's birth, which we affirm, anti, I'm sorry, in par to, virgin during Christ's birth, which we also affirm, and postpartum, virgin after Christ's birth, which we should not affirm because Scripture does not affirm.

In fact, Scripture explicitly tells us that Jesus had brothers and sisters.

Now, I want to be clear, believing in this doctrine alone doesn't make one a heretic.

In fact, some Protestants throughout history have affirmed the perpetual virginity of Mary.

Even some of the reformers did so.

I was surprised to hear that when I was doing my study.

But scripture never presents marital intimacy as a defilement from which Mary needed to remain separate from.

The point here is why insist on a perpetual virginity that Scripture itself never requires?

There's nothing to be gained from it.

The scripture never requires it.

Sure, she still needed to nurse and raise and instruct Jesus as a child, but she didn't need to keep her virginity for Christ's sake.

If so, this would imply that Christ's purity was dependent upon Mary's purity.

When in fact it was the other way around.

Mary's purity was dependent on Christ's purity.

Another Marian dogma, which is closely related, is the teaching of the Immaculate Conception, which is the teaching that Mary was born without original sin, and that she remained without sin throughout her entire life.

The catechism of the Catholic Church states in paragraph 491 the most blessed Virgin Mary was from the first moment of her conception preserved, immune from all stain of original sin.

But notice what Luke 146 says.

This is in Mary's song, her Mary's Magnificon, as it's called, as she sings in praises to the Lord, praises out to God.

Verse 46, and Mary said, My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior.

This she was singing about the child that was to be born.

Why did Mary need a savior?

Because Mary, like us, like all of us, depended entirely upon the saving work of her son.

Now Catholics will respond that Mary was indeed saved by Christ, but she was saved prevedentially, meaning she was preserved by Christ from sin rather than rescued by Christ from sin.

But nowhere, again, is that taught in the scriptures.

Furthermore, this doctrine of the immaculate conception risks obscuring the biblical uniqueness of Christ's sinlessness.

It was Christ who was the Lamb, the spotless lamb, to take away the sins of the world.

It was Christ who was born to succeed where Adam fell.

Adam, who sinned and brought sin unto mankind, was succeeded by Christ, the second Adam.

Adam was a son who disobeyed.

There was only one other who obeyed, and that was Jesus.

There is no reason for Mary to remain sinless.

She has no merit to apply to anyone.

Everyone who is saved is saved through the merit of Jesus Christ alone.

He is the one whose righteousness we receive.

And he didn't receive his righteousness from his mother.

He obtained his own righteousness through his own obedience.

And as the Son of God, he has the power to apply that righteousness to us.

He became sin who knew no sin, so that we might become the righteousness of God.

Philippians 2, verse 5 tells us Have this mind among yourself, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and being found in human form, he humbled himself.

Philippians 2:5

By becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross.

Therefore, God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.

Paul here in Philippians is highlighting the uniqueness of Christ's humbleness and the uniqueness of his obedience, which are two things that the Catholic Church will often praise Mary for.

She is regarded as a highly humble woman and a highly obedient woman in life.

And that she was, we've already noted that, and how she should be honored for that, just as the other great saints in the scriptures should be honored for it.

Mary's humility is worthy of imitation, but Christ's humility is utterly unique.

The eternal Son of God humbled himself, and he took upon himself the form of a servant, and he became obedient even to the point of death, even death on the cross.

He is our example of humility.

He is our example of humbleness.

He is the mind, as the apostle says, that we should put on.

And he, as the passage says, is the one who is highly, who has been highly exalted.

He is the one who has the name that is above every other name.

Mary should be honored, but only Christ should be exalted.

That leads to one other thing I want to point out about Marian dogma.

That is the view of Mary being a mediatrix or a mediator.

The Catholic Church has historically taught that Mary continues to cooperate with Christ's work and continues to exercise her maternal role of intercession for Christians.

This is why you will hear sometimes people praying to Mary.

Now, to be clear, I want to paint them in the best light.

They don't say that Mary answers prayers.

When people pray to Mary, they don't believe that it is Mary who answers prayers.

They do believe that it is God who's answering the prayers.

But that Mary, being the mother of Christ, has this unique relationship to intercede on our behalf.

They will say that it's sort of like a prayer request.

I've heard some Catholic apologists put it this way: it's the same as asking your brother or your sister in Christ to pray for you.

If you were to ask other brothers to pray for you, which we do, right?

We do this often.

We say, brother, can you pray for me?

Can can, sister, can you pray for me?

Why will we not ask Mary to pray for us, who has the closest relationship to Jesus?

Well, first, we can ask prayer from each other.

We can ask prayers from brothers, our brothers and sisters in Christ because we have a relationship with each other.

We can speak to each other.

They can speak to us.

But there is no biblical warrant for saying that we have a relationship with departed saints.

There is no warrant for that.

Secondly, why would Mary or any of the other saints be listening to our prayers?

They're in glory now.

I think they have better things to do than to be listening to Uncle Bob pray that he wins the lottery.

And most importantly, Scripture makes clear that Jesus Christ is the one who is interceding for us before the Father.

Hebrews 7, 25 says this.

Consequently, he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.

He being Christ.

We don't draw near to God through Mary.

We don't draw near to God through any saints.

We draw near to God through the Son of God.

As Jesus Himself claimed in John 14, 6, I, Jesus Christ, am the way, the truth, and the life, no one comes to the Father except through me.

Anyone who has seen the Father has seen the Son, not the Son's mother.

Christians can now come boldly to the throne of grace because Jesus has granted us access to this throne.

The author of Hebrews makes this perfectly clear that Christ is the great high priest, that Christ is both the final sacrifice and the final priest by which we are able to come to God and by which we are able to find mercy and find grace and find forgiveness for our sins.

We don't find mercy and grace through the hand of another.

It is Christ and Christ alone.

1 John 2, 1 tells us, my little children, I am writing these things so that you may not sin.

But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteousness, the righteous.

An advocate is someone who speaks and pleads on behalf of another person.

And many people believe that's what Mary is doing for them in heaven.

That she's speaking and pleading to God on their behalf.

But as John tells us, we already have an advocate, and his name is Jesus.

And he doesn't just speak for us, and he doesn't just plead for us.

But but this Jesus has acted for us.

He says to the Father, I have taken their sins upon me, I have given my obedience to them.

Jesus is, you know, we often think when we hear this text about Jesus interceding for us, that he's just there and that he's praying to God and that he's kind of just passing the information along.

We pray to Jesus, and then Jesus kind of relays it to God, and people will say, Well, Mary can do that too, or other saints can do that too, because they're up there in heaven, and we can pray to them and they can pass our request to God.

But that's not what Jesus is doing when he's interceding.

He's standing before God.

He's standing before the throne, and he's saying, Look at me and look what I have done.

I have paid the price for them.

I have gone to the cross for them.

When you see them and when you look on them, don't see them as the sinner that they are, but see them as the one who has been forgiven, the one who has had their sins nailed to the cross, the one who is alive today with me.

That is what Jesus is doing as he is interceding before God.

And no saint can do that.

No, no other great, however great they were in the Bible, no other person in history can do that but Jesus Christ alone.

Mary is not many of the things that the Catholic Church attributes to her.

And look, she didn't ask to be.

She fulfilled her role.

And she did so, as we already mentioned, faithfully.

And though she is not many of those things, she is one thing.

She is someone we should want to be like.

That leads to my last point.

Why we should want to be like Mary.

Again, Christ didn't say that Mary wasn't blessed.

When the woman in the crowd shouted out, Blessed is the mother who bore you.

He didn't, he didn't say that wasn't the case.

Instead, he redirected the blessing to those who are truly blessed.

And in doing so, I don't believe he left out Mary in that category.

As he said, Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it.

Now we just read a few passages where Mary heard God's word and was obedient to God's word.

As she said in Luke 128, let it be to me according to your word.

What an example of faith, what an example of doing God's word.

So Mary falls into this category of those who hear God's word and keep it.

In other words, Christ could have easily said, My mother may be blessed because she gave me birth, but she's even more blessed because she hears and keeps God's word.

This is why we should want to be like Mary.

Because Mary is a model of faith.

She is someone who not only believed God's word, but someone who also kept God's word.

And you know as well as I do, there are many people who say they believe God's word, but don't keep God's word.

You're gonna be hard-pressed to find someone who says they don't believe in the Bible these days.

And I know there's some, and I know they're out there.

And you know, Jimmy would Brother Jimmy will tell you when we evangelize on the bridge, there's people who who are, yeah, they're atheists.

They don't believe in the Bible.

And they'll they'll they'll they'll press up and they'll they'll push up against us.

But we all know that your average coworker, your average family member that has some been somewhat influenced by cultural Christianity, be that Protestant or Catholic, is not going to tell you they don't believe in the Bible.

But here's the question Do they keep it?

They might say they believe it, but do they keep it?

Do they obey it?

Do you keep it?

Because it's easy to say you believe in something, but your actions will show if you truly do.

I can say all day long that I like spicy food, but if everyone always sees me turn it down, they're gonna question some things.

Jesus says in John 14, 15, if you love me, you will keep my commandments.

And that shouldn't be a hard concept for us to grab because we all live in relationships.

We all know what it means to love someone, or we all know what it means for someone to love us.

And we know that just saying that you love someone isn't enough.

We have to show it.

If we were to tell our significant other that we love them but never show them our love, they're gonna say, your words are empty.

And here's the sad truth.

Many people feel that their relationship with Jesus is the only relationship that they have where they can say they love someone without showing it.

In no other relationship will that slide.

In no other relationship, be it a brother, a sibling relationship, or a mother-father relationship, or a husband-wife, or a boyfriend and girlfriend, in no other relationship will it will we let slide saying, I love you, but never showing it.

But yet with the relationship with Christ, we say that works.

We can tell him we love him without ever truly showing it.

And some will say, Oh, but I do love him.

He knows my heart.

He knows how I really believe his word.

I really believe the Bible.

Or he knows that, you know, I get emotional when I think of him.

I hear a song and it makes me cry.

But that is not how he told us to prove our love to him.

He didn't say, if you love me, you will believe the Bible.

Or he didn't say, if you love me, you will feel it in your heart.

Or he didn't say, if you love me, when you hear your favorite worship song, you're gonna get emotional.

Instead, he said, if you love me, you will keep my commandments.

As we look over Mary's life, we can say, that's who she was.

She was someone who truly loved Jesus.

She kept his commandments.

She not only believed God's word, but she also kept it.

She believed, and she showed that she believed by the way she lived, by the way she lived her life.

That's why Mary is a great example for us.

Hebrews 11, 6 says, without faith it is impossible to please God.

Which means that faith is what pleases God.

Mary responded to God's favor by faith, by trusting in his word.

But only trusting, but also obeying his word.

She lived it and she was blessed.

But here's the thing: her ultimate blessing didn't come through her own obedience, but it came through the obedience of her son, which is where anyone's ultimate blessing is going to come from.

Mary believed and obeyed, but Jesus Christ did even more so.

Galatians 4, 4 tells us this.

But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law so that we might receive adoptions as sons.

Jesus was born under the law.

What does that mean?

Well, it means that he was born under the same law that we needed to keep.

What law?

God's law.

God is the creator of all mankind.

God is the creator of all creation.

And he has his laws.

You see it right at the beginning, right?

You don't have to be a biblical scholar to turn to Genesis 1 and 2 and know that he gave Adam a command, right?

He told Adam, the day that you eat of this tree, you will surely die.

This is my law.

We're further revelation.

As we get into the Bible, we know that there are other laws, that there are that God has laid down his laws and he has required his creation to keep and to obey his laws.

We couldn't do that.

We couldn't do that.

We messed up.

And Adam all died.

We messed up and we couldn't do it, and we know we can't do it.

So Christ, in due time, God sent his son to be born under the law, to keep that law.

We needed someone who could obey on our behalf.

Since we couldn't obey the law, we fell under this curse.

Our disobedience separated us from God.

But when Jesus was born, he lived and he walked in his perfect obedience and he fulfilled every part of the law.

And since he fulfilled it, he was able to redeem all those who couldn't.

And look what the text says.

So that we might receive adoptions as sons.

There it is.

There is the blessing.

This is the blessing that you want.

This is the blessing that means everything.

You hear a lot of Christians talk a lot about blessing, right?

We talk a lot about blessing, is one of those words we love to use.

When we, you know, we have a child, we're blessed with a child.

When we get married, we're blessed with marriage.

When we get a new job, when we get a new home, we're blessed with these things.

And that they are.

Those are blessings.

We don't want to take away from God and what he's doing and how he's blessing us in those wonderful ways.

He blesses us with those things.

But this is the blessing that you really want.

This is the blessing that every person should strive for.

The blessing of being called a son or a daughter of God.

Mary's biggest blessing was not that she was the mother of God, but that she was a daughter of God.

And that is attributed not to her own obedience, but to the obedience of her son.

Christ is the perfect, obedient son who fulfilled God's word on our behalf, which means that he is the embodiment of true blessedness.

And anyone who wishes to be blessed, and anyone who wishes to be favored by God must be blessed and favored through his son Jesus Christ.

Yes, you are called to believe.

Yes, you are called to obey God's work and word, but your salvation doesn't ultimately rest upon the perfection of your own faith nor the perfection of your own obedience, but upon the perfection of the obedience of Jesus Christ.

Which is why we should want to be like Mary.

Because Mary understood this.

Had she sung to the Lord, she knew who was her Savior.

She knew in her heart that these are great things.

The angel appeared to me.

I am highly favored of the Lord.

But above all, Lord, I want to praise you because you have saved me.

You have rescued me.

You are my deliverer.

Why should we want to be like Mary?

Because at the end of the day, Mary wanted to be like her son, Jesus Christ, which is our ultimate aim.

Amen.

Let us pray.