Mary's Real Blessedness

Minister:
Date: PM
Text: Luke 11:27-28
Psalters: 256, 204, 290, 82
  1. Incorrect thinking.
    1. Rome’s doctrine of Mariolatry is seriously wrong.
      1. They believe Mary also was conceived and born without sin (immaculate conception), and therefore worthy of worship
      2. However, Jesus here and Scripture elsewhere does not present Mary as an object of worship.
    2. And it is not true that Mary is blessed because she lived in such close proximity with the Son of God.
      1. She did carry Him in her womb, nurse Him, watch Him grow, hear His first word, observed His childhood piety.
      2. Every Christian is and can be as close or closer to Jesus than Mary was.
  2. Mary’s true blessedness was that she heard the Word of God and kept it.
    1. After acknowledging that Mary was blessed (“Yea,” 28), Jesus changed the reason for her blessedness: “rather.”
      1. The woman limited Mary’s blessedness to her; Jesus broadens the scope of Mary’s blessedness to all believers.
      2. Mary’s chief blessedness is the fact that she was graced to “hear the word of God, and keep it.”
    2. What really counts is hearing God’s speech in Scripture and providence, and holding it for truth, and striving to keep it.
      1. It is to hear God with our inner, spiritual ears, i.e., the ears of the heart.
      2. 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.
    3. This is not our work, not Mary’s nor ours; only God’s grace works such hearing and keeping.
    4. This is true blessedness.