Truly Blessed

to once again, the Gospel of
Luke. The Gospel of Luke, we find ourselves
still in chapter 11, a little further advanced than perhaps
you expected in verse 27. When I come to a passage this
morning and I’m going to take some time, we may not make it
all the way through even these two verses. Because I want to
take the time to address what really has become rampant idolatry
in our land with regards to Mary, Jesus’ mother. This passage is
one that has been in part used to advance idolatry, what can
only be called as pure and simple idolatry, as I’ll show in a moment. I don’t believe that that was
ever the intent of this passage. I don’t believe that that was
Jesus, either His active intent or His passive allowance in this
passage at all. What we want to look at this
morning is the source of blessing. Where does true blessing come
from? To whom is true blessing bestowed? Who are the recipients? of true
blessing. What is the nature of true blessing,
true and lasting blessing? And what do we do to get it? If you would look at chapter
11, verse 27, just two verses this morning. where we read Luke, Luke records,
while Jesus was saying these things, one of the women in the
crowd raised her voice and said to him, the womb that bore you
and the breasts at which you nursed. But he said, on the contrary,
blessed are those who hear the word of God and observe it. This woman, we don’t know her
name. The detail is very scant and that’s as it should be. She
was struck by the power of Jesus’ ministry. She was amazed at what
she was seeing. She was thankful to God. And
this woman cried out in a very typical fashion according to
the Eastern custom. Very demonstrative. Cries out
to give expression to her feelings. To express her admiration of
this Jesus. And in her eyes, he was so wonderful. He was so powerful. His words
rang so true that instead of praising him, she glorifies his
mother. Don’t get all hung up when it
speaks of the various parts of Mary, the womb and the breasts. It was merely a way of referring
to Mary herself. The woman didn’t know her name.
What she was doing, though, was attempting to exalt and to say
how very blessed and honored this woman must have been to
have given birth to a son like this. And really, on the face
of it, it’s true. She was blessed. If you go back
to the Gospel of Luke in chapter 1, flip back there for a moment.
This woman didn’t say anything untrue. She didn’t say anything
blasphemous. She didn’t say anything that
the angels and Mary and others didn’t also say of Mary. Begin
with me back in chapter 1 and verse 26. In the sixth month,
the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee called
Nazareth to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph
of the descendants of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary.
Those facts we have about Mary and not many more. And in verse
28, it says, And coming in, he said to her, Hail, favored one. If we want to right here, accuse
the angel of blasphemy or of provoking idolatry, we would
be incorrect. He wasn’t exalting her beyond
her human sphere. He wasn’t elevating her to the
status of deity. He was saying that she had found
favor with God. Not even necessarily because
of what she was inherently. God had simply favored her. Look
on, if you would, later in that chapter, Picking up in verse
39. Now, at this time, Mary arose,
went with haste to the hill country, to a city of Judah and entered
the house of Zacharias and greeted Elizabeth. And it came about
that when Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in
her womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. And she
cried out with a loud voice and said, Blessed among women are
you and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Now, in a few moments, I’m going
to take you to some Catholic documents, Catholic statements.
If you recognize those words, those words are part of a Catholic
prayer. But if you want to criticize
those words, you’ve got to be careful because those words were
attributed to a statement prompted by the Holy Spirit himself. Blessed
among women are you and blessed is the fruit of your womb. There
isn’t anything untrue or uncomfortable or improper or provoking to idolatry
about any of those statements. Mary was very blessed, blessed
among all women to be chosen to carry the Christ child. And
what could have been more blessed than the child that she carried?
True statements, true statements. Jump down, if you would, same
passage to verse 46. Mary began to respond to her
cousin Elizabeth. Mary said, My soul exalts the
Lord. Difficult thing to do for one
who is a co-mediator. My soul exalts the Lord and my
spirit has rejoiced in God, my Savior. This is not one that
is on a par with the deity. This is one who is as desperate
in need of a Savior as you and I. But look at her words, verse
48, for he has had regard for the humble state of his bond
slave. For behold, from this time on,
all generations will count me blessed. And that’s true. There
isn’t anything that prompts idolatry in that either. All generations
do look back and rightfully so upon Mary and say how very blessed
she was. She didn’t deserve to carry the
Christ child more than any other. God simply favored her. Unfortunately, those very statements
have been taken And for thousands of years, used by the Catholic
Church to promote an idolatry that to this day is rampant and
completely out of control and completely uncalled for. It blasphemes
the very Christ that Mary was exalting. Now, because of my
upbringing, because of my strong roots in the Catholic Church
from time to time, I’ll say things and I hope to see these on. From
time to time, I’ll say things and people say, you know, oh,
you’re just anti Catholic. Don’t you think that a Catholic
can be a Christian? Let me just say what with the tape on. I
do think a person can be saved and be a Catholic. The question
is, how long can they remain in an idolatrous system? How
long? And what I want to show you today
is pure and simple idolatry. It’s idolatry. And this is not
what Jesus was promoting when he gave a passive answer to these
words. He wasn’t giving assent to the
idolatrous worship of Mary. Scripture has very little to
say about Mary. We don’t ever see the apostles
praying to Mary. We don’t ever see the apostles
giving her anything more than the courtesy of one would give
to an older woman. Nothing. Nothing that stands
out as promoting the idolatry that we’ve come to know in our
day and age. But the doctrine that one church
has begun to promote over the years, the doctrine of Mary as
the mother of God. 451. There was an issue that was arising
and it was challenging Jesus’ deity. When the Council of Ephesus
in 431 spoke of Mary as the mother of God, they weren’t intending
to exalt Mary. What they were intending to do
was establish once and for all the deity of Christ. They just
happened to use a term mother of God to do that. They didn’t
say that Mary was deity. The mother, the natural mother of the one
that carried forth the deity, the Christ child. That’s not what happened, though,
in the church. The term grew, the term grew
on Mary and they began to glorify her and exalt her to the level
of deity. placed her on a par with Christ
Himself. And so the term today that was
once used to exalt Christ now is used to exalt Mary herself,
the mother of God. It exalts her to a supernatural
status. She’s also called the queen of
heaven, the queen of the angels, that her position is of such
prominence that she is able to approach the Son directly and
to influence God exclusively. Mary didn’t give birth to God, not in her humanness. She gave
birth to the Christ child who was deity, but she had nothing
to contribute to that. The Bible goes on and calls Mary
the mother of Jesus. That’s true. That much we know. But all it contributes is to
His humanness. We’ve studied that in times past
and seen that without His humanness, He would not have been a mediator
for us. Without His deity, He would have
been a worthless mediator. And so God in His infinite wisdom
created just the right person in Christ. Let me trace just briefly the
history of the worship, this idolatry of Mary. The early church
didn’t know anything of it. As I said, about the 4th century,
though, the world came off the bus proverbially. The church
began to worship Mary. For the first 150 years, it wasn’t
the case, but then The idolatry of Mary began to
take off. People began to kneel and to
pray to her. And to assign to her titles and
stature that was never intended. In several countries, Roman Catholicism
has also absorbed into the entity of Mary several little deities
and idols from culture. Goddesses. The Virgin of Guadalupe,
a goddess that was worshipped by the Indians in Mexico, ultimately
resulted in a curious blending of the two in Roman Catholicism
in that area. And from the fifth century on,
the cult of Mary grew and advanced with great rigidity. Many saints are prayed to, but
Mary is the ultimate. Mary is the one that is prayed
to more than any other and with an apparent or a believed greater
effectiveness than any other. One man, and some of this stuff
is even, it’s hard for me to revisit coming out of it because
some of it is just, it’s stomach turning to hear what people advance. One man who had more effect in
promoting the worship of Mary than almost any other was responsible
for essentially formalizing her worship in the Catholic Church
and in essence, dethroning Christ and enthroning Mary instead of
excommunicating him as the Catholic Church should have. They exalted him, they canonized
him as a saint. People now attend these services called
novenas, which are just outright idolatrous worship of the person
of Mary. Listen to some of the titles.
I mentioned a few already. Some of the titles that are given
to her. She’s called the Mother of God,
the Queen of the Apostles, the Queen of Heaven, the Queen of
the Angels, the Door of Pedice, the Gate of Heaven, Our Life,
The mother of grace, the mother of mercy. None of which Scripture
speaks of, heaven doesn’t have a queen, heaven doesn’t need
a queen. In fact, it’s interesting, the only
reference in Scripture to the queen of heaven was found in
Jeremiah 17, 7, 18 and 4417, and there it’s severely condemned
as a heathen custom practiced by apostates. Who created a false
god. I said already that the typical
Catholic person essentially worships Mary. And there’s nothing in
Scripture to indicate that that there’s anything acceptable about
that behavior. Many will come out and they will
say that they don’t actually worship her. They give her honor. But when they pray to her, when
they pray directly to her, that takes the place of God and takes
the place of Christ. The fact is that they do worship
Mary in their prayers to her, in their devotions to her, the
way that they treat her, the way that they present her. There’s a little tool that the
Roman Catholic Church uses, some of you who have come out of that
background are familiar with it, called the rosary. It’s a
series of beads, each bead representing a prayer. Ten times as many prayers
are offered to Mary as are directed to Christ. Ten prayers for Mary
for each one directed to God. Idolatry. Officially, the Catholic Church
says that Mary is just a creature highly exalted, but that’s been
debated over the centuries and so much so that the Catholic
Church had to have a special council called the Lateran Council
in 77. And in 787, Rome tried to make
a distinction between the veneration worship that was due the saints
and the worship that was due only to God. But they set aside
a completely different form of worship for Mary. Even as early as the Lateran
Council, Mary was believed to be in a class beyond the saints
of the church, as one said. To her, the believer rendered
higher veneration. That’s worship. which places
Mary beyond all other saints, but allegedly below God himself.
But then at the Council of Trent, due to reaction against the Protestant
opposition and fears that they were losing their grip on what
they held to be essential to the Catholic Church, they affirmed Mary’s sinlessness
and her perpetual virginity adding to the blasphemy to this simple woman that was
never, never intended to be used as such. They added to that the
immaculate conception, which Bible presents that Jesus
was conceived in a virgin, but they add to that by saying that
it was conceived in Mary without original sin. It was recognized finally by
the church in 1854. Nearly 2,000 years had gone by
before the Catholic Church recognized that. As late as 1950, the Catholic
Church officially accepted that teaching of the assumption of
Mary, where Mary’s body went physically up to heaven to be
with God, join up with her soul. That is a big assumption. The non-Catholic reader oftentimes is willing
to grant Catholics more grace in this, not knowing what they
hold, not knowing what they believe, but what can only be called idolatry. Some of the things I’ll share
with you here in a moment will shock you. The worship of Mary is a great
injustice, not only to God and not only to Christ. It’s an injustice
to Mary. It’s an injustice to her. So nothing that God ever intended
for her. Nothing more than the simple
honor of bearing the Christ. I wonder what Mary would think
if Mary saw all that was going on. She certainly doesn’t hear
the prayers. She doesn’t hear the Catholic prayer that reads
like this, taking so much of the verbiage that I just shared
from Scripture, called the Hail Mary. It was completed in 1508. And it was finally approved for
use by Pope Sixtus at the end of the 16th century. This is
not the way things always were. This is an evolving, or really
a decline in the church. The prayer goes like this, Hail
Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou
among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy
Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners. Do you see where
they depart from Scripture? It’s when they ask Mary to intercede
on our behalf. Sinners. Unlike Mary, who is allegedly
sinless. Pray for us sinners now and at
the hour of our death. Hail Mary is a prayer. And it’s
repeated over and over and over and over again. And every time
it’s said, it’s blasphemy. Every time it’s said, it’s an
act of idolatry. And that’s why I say, I don’t
doubt that a Catholic person reading a Catholic Bible Coming
across Romans Road can come to Christ. I don’t doubt that a
bit. Martin Luther did. My question is, how long can
the Catholics stay within that idolatrous system? Here are the shocking details. Mary is called at times the co-redemptrix,
the co-redeemer. This is how their own booklets
describe it. They say that Mary suffered with
Christ in Christ and nearly died with him when he died. Thus,
she may rightly be of be said to have been to have redeemed
the human race with Christ. To redeem the human race with
Christ, the virgin of sorrows shared the work of redemption
with Jesus Christ. Shocking, shocking. Because now
they want to dethrone Christ or at least make him share part
of his office. As the redeemer, the only redeemer
for all of mankind. Pope Leo in 1891 said no one
can approach Christ except through his mother. So now we’ve got
to have a mediator to get to the mediator. He goes on to say, my salvation
depends upon Mary’s mediation in union with Christ because
of her exalted position of mediatrix of all grace. Blasphemy. We go on to learn about, as we’ve
mentioned, the perpetual virginity, Mary’s divine motherhood. Mary was truly the mother of
Jesus, and as Jesus was truly God from the first moment of
conception, Mary is truly the mother of God, as they’ve said.
We read about Mary’s perfect sanctity that she is the mother
of Him who is in Christ. Hence, man has an indirect claim
to Mary as mother. So what they say is she’s all
of our mother and more of a mother than even an earthly mother to
us. She’s the anti type of Eve said
one Eve is our natural mother because she is the origin of
our natural life. So Mary is our natural mother
because she is the origin of our spiritual life. Blasphemy. Blasphemy. You think it’s old old stuff,
Pope John Paul. to a general audience on October
25th, 1995, gave this address entitled, Mary was united to
Jesus on the cross. She’s the co-redeemer, so says
the Catholic Church. And for thousands of years, And
even more popularly in the last few hundred have been these so-called
apparitions of her. And no wonder when the Catholic
Church allows this kind of blasphemy to be said about her. No wonder
they have this superstitious superstition run rampant throughout
the world. She allegedly appeared in Guadalupe
She allegedly appeared in Lourdes, France and in Fatima and other
places. And in every place she’s given
these titles, Our Lady of Fatima, Our Lady of Lourdes, Our Lady
of Mount Carmel, Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal, over and
over again. And it never stops. It never
ends. Nineteen ninety four. Cardinal
Ratzinger, the head of the Roman Catholic Church’s Congregation
for the Doctrine of the Faith, declared that one of the signs
of our times is that the announcements of Marian apparitions are multiplying
all over the world. And to say the number and frequency
and breadth of the events such as these have not has not been
witnessed in the last last 1900 years. And in a sense, he’s right. It hasn’t been witnessed. It’s
out of control. Everybody thinks that they see
Mary on everything from a potato chip to a tree trunk. In Dayton, Ohio, a lady saw it. So now we need a lady of Dayton.
In Worcester, Massachusetts, some lady named Eileen saw Mary. So now we need a lady of Worcester
and a lady of Cleveland and a lady of Santa Fe and a lady of Lubbock.
We even need a lady of Denver. and a lady of Hollywood. Brazil in 2002, 123,000 people
flocked to the alleged apparition of Mary in a window. In Watsonville,
California. They seem to have a lot of them
in California. In Watsonville, California, a four foot high
image of the Virgin Mary can be seen in the bark of an old
oak tree. So now we need a lady of Watsonville, as they’ve called
her repeatedly. These things come up in Saskatchewan. She’s seen in a greenhouse window
in Coleman, California. I told you there’s a lot in California.
She’s seen in a tree. And then there’s another one
in the same tree to Mary’s competing in the same tree in Jalisco,
Mexico. The luminous image of the Virgin
Mary was reflected on the wall of the church so much so that
they arranged all the church services to to coincide with
this daily apparition as the sun shined through the window
so that at the right moment they would be partaking of the Lord’s
Supper. The Madonna and Child. In 1987,
a man snapped a picture of a plume of volcanic molten lava going
up and there was the Virgin Mary and child and they all flocked
to see the picture. The image of the Virgin Mary.
Remember, little Elion, who was going to be sent back to Cuba?
One of the arguments against sending little Elion back to
Cuba was that in the bathroom there was an oval mirror and
in that mirror was the image of Mary. The Virgin Mary was
seen in a U.S. hospital one time ago. She was seen in a car dealership
window. I mean, where hasn’t she been seen? Where isn’t the
Catholic Church willing to allow her people to claim? An apparition of Mary, and no
wonder there are dozens and dozens and dozens of prayers to marry
idolatry, all of them. And the Catholic Church never
says a single word about any of it. Only dozens and dozens
of years after some of these things does the Catholic Church
ever stand up and say, either we affirm that or we deny that.
Usually, they affirm them. Usually, they give hearty approval
to these so-called apparitions. So, a woman stands up and she
says to Jesus, Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breast
at which you nursed.” And Jesus doesn’t deny it. Is that his
affirmation of the worship of Mary? Is that what that passage
was meant to say? That the worship of Mary is a
good and healthful thing and that we all ought to worship
Mary? No. She’s doing what we’re all prone
to do. We are all prone to bless persons for their external privilege. We’re prone to honor them for
that. And let’s be honest. Let’s be perfectly honest. You’re
born, many of you, white. Do we not consider that just
a privilege beyond measure? You’re born in America. You’re
born male. Don’t we put external blessings
on those things? Don’t we consider that an extreme
privilege to be a man? Men, to be strong, to have big,
strong muscles. Don’t we glorify that? To be
beautiful. Look at our billboards. Look
at any advertisement. Don’t we glorify that? To be
rich and to be privileged. That’s all she was saying. And
in those things, there is a degree of blessing. There is a degree
of what can only be called happiness. But is that where it comes from?
Is that the source of true happiness? Is that the source of true blessedness? Jesus says no. There is a kind
of happiness that is born out of providence, born out of your
regular station in life. There is a kind of happiness
in being born an American. Ladies, there’s a kind of happiness
in being born a man. But Jesus says, on the contrary,
sadly, a couple of little words that are completely obliterated
from many translations of Scripture. On the contrary, little particle,
it’s two words blended together. Sometimes it was confirmatory.
Sometimes it was corrective. Sometimes it was a little. One time it’s translated, yea,
verily, it could have been. Jesus could have been. Yea, verily,
Mary was blessed. My mother was very blessed. It
doesn’t have to be a strong contrast. To what was said, he doesn’t
deny the woman’s statement. That doesn’t give the Catholic
Church the right to promote idolatry. He doesn’t deny the woman’s statement.
Mary was blessed. Oh, so very happy she was and
having been used by God to give birth to the Christ child. Jesus
doesn’t deny it. He confirms it. Then he goes
on and he broadens the scope of what true blessedness is.
Mary’s blessedness didn’t consist exclusively or only in the fact
that she had given birth to the Christ child, but that she had
heard his words as the Redeemer and she came to faith and she
placed her trust in him. And then she began to grow in
grace. That’s where her blessedness lay. That’s where true blessedness
is. It’s in hearing Christ, heeding
his words, coming to faith, Jesus Christ repeatedly and systematically
discouraged any attempt that people would make to exalt the
merely human relationship with Him. He taught that the presence
of the Spirit was to be a nearer and more enduring blessing than
even a sound relationship with Him earthly. Paul writing 2nd
Corinthians says, therefore, from now on, we recognize no
one according to the flesh, even though we have known Christ according
to the flesh. Yet now we know him this way
no longer. Jesus said, I will ask the father,
John 14, 16, and he will give you another helper that he will
be with you forever. There’s that internal dwelling
of Christ that is a richer blessing than if we had been born the
Lord’s brother. and lived in his house for 20
years. What a great blessing that would
have been. But it doesn’t compare, Christ says, to the blessing
of knowing him now, listening to his words, listening and obeying
and heeding his counsel. That’s what counts. It’s not
just hearing his word either. Interesting word there. Blessed are those who hear the
word and observe it.” It’s not just that we read our Bibles.
That’s not enough. The word literally means to keep.
It’s used so often in the Scriptures of guarding. Luke 2.8, the shepherds
were out in their fields keeping watch, guarding their flock. Luke 8.29, the man that was bound
in chains, and he was kept under guard. Same word. That’s what God wants us to do.
He isn’t even telling us in this passage what to listen to. Many
times Jesus would give great content when he would say, blessed
are the hearers that hear. He isn’t saying anything. He’s
just giving a general axiom that if we listen to his words and
we hold on to them, there’s some of us that don’t even have anything
to hold on to. We don’t spend any time in His
Word. We don’t spend any time meditating on it. No time memorizing
it. Very little time studying it.
We have nothing to hold on to. One pastor said, hearing without
obedience is valueless. It’s worthless. That’s what Jesus
was saying. All the accolades in the world
given to his mother were worthless to this woman if she didn’t hear
his words and retain them, keep them, protect them. No wonder he said, blessed, oh,
how very happy. How very happy is the one who
hears and holds on. J.C. Ryle said these words declared
That to hear the word of God and to keep it is more blessed
than to be connected with Christ by the ties of flesh and that
to be the mother of Christ doesn’t confer on anyone any greater
honor and privilege than to believe and obey the gospel. Do we believe
that today? If you were to say these things
to the average Catholic, they would want to tie you to a stake. To say that you are more or less
than the blessed mother, but people, that’s what Christ says.
To hear, to retain what Christ says makes you to be even more
happy than even Christ’s own mother. Let’s pray. Oh, our Father and our God, even
while our hearts are heavy, And we lament what has been done
with Christ’s earthly mother. Lord, even at the same time,
we rejoice because Your Word is true. And if we will only
look to Your Word and listen to Your Words and hold to Your
Words, we will be more infinitely happy than even that closest
relation to You. Father, we thank You and praise
You for these words. In Jesus’ name, Amen.