Mary's Real Blessedness
Minister: |
Rev. Ronald Van Overloop |
Date: |
12/29/2019 PM
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Text:
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Luke 11:27-28
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Psalters: |
256, 204, 290, 82 |
- Incorrect thinking.
- Rome’s doctrine of Mariolatry is seriously wrong.
- They believe Mary also was conceived and born without sin (immaculate conception), and therefore worthy of worship
- However, Jesus here and Scripture elsewhere does not present Mary as an object of worship.
- And it is not true that Mary is blessed because she lived in such close proximity with the Son of God.
- She did carry Him in her womb, nurse Him, watch Him grow, hear His first word, observed His childhood piety.
- Every Christian is and can be as close or closer to Jesus than Mary was.
- Mary’s true blessedness was that she heard the Word of God and kept it.
- After acknowledging that Mary was blessed (“Yea,” 28), Jesus changed the reason for her blessedness: “rather.”
- The woman limited Mary’s blessedness to her; Jesus broadens the scope of Mary’s blessedness to all believers.
- Mary’s chief blessedness is the fact that she was graced to “hear the word of God, and keep it.”
- What really counts is hearing God’s speech in Scripture and providence, and holding it for truth, and striving to keep it.
- It is to hear God with our inner, spiritual ears, i.e., the ears of the heart.
- And it is to keep it: to hear with the intent to believe it to be true, and to submit ourselves to its commands, i.e., to obey.
- This is not our work, not Mary’s nor ours; only God’s grace works such hearing and keeping.
- This is true blessedness.