Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":
The Bible reveals considerable about the Virgin Mary:
(1) She confesses her need of a Savior, and only people who are in what the Bible says “all have sinned” (Rom. 3:23) can dare to say that. Therefore they have to include the Virgin Mary. She was a member of the human race, a descendant not only of Abraham but of our fallen father, Adam. The idea that she was an extra-terrestrial import with a sinless heredity is profound error. She was human!
(2) The Bible is totally silent about any special privilege given to her at her birth; the “Immaculate Conception” theory proposed by the Pope in 1854 is extra-biblical; his “christ” has to remain for all to see, an invention.
(3) Mary’s husband-to-be had at least six motherless children after his first wife either died or disappeared. We have the names of four: “James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas [not Iscariot]” (Matt. 13:55). Then there are “sisters,” at least two. So ...
(4) Joseph was therefore looking for some woman to be the stepmother to those at least six children of his. If any woman wants a stormy life, that’s where she’ll find it—be stepmother to such a brood. God doesn’t call a teen girl to such a task.
(5) It seems obvious that if Joseph were in his right mind he would not want to be betrothed to a teenager, no matter how Hollywood-like beautiful she was. The artists who have painted their ideas of the Virgin Mary needed some biblical research first. Joseph desperately needs a mature woman.
(6) Mary is more than that—she is a woman who in her way is like her divine Son: “despised and rejected of men” (Isa. 53:3). No village swain had sought her hand; there must have been a reason why they passed her by.
(7) Mary tells us the reason in Luke 1:46-54: She had a TAIPAINOSIS (Gr.); a self-humiliating handicap, rendered “low estate” in the KJV. In Acts 8:33 the word means (of Christ) “in His humiliation.” Mary was mature enough to know the bitterness of humiliating rejection. In becoming the Mother of “a Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief” she knew something of the painful experience.
In Jesus we have a Savior who is rooted and grounded in our human experience. The Father sent Him “in the likeness of sinful flesh” with the job description: condemn sin in that “sinful flesh,” outlaw it, conquer it, trample on it, and deliver from it every human soul who will choose to exercise His faith (Rom. 8:3, 4). You are included.
He will have a final generation who like us all have been born in sin, and have that same “sinful flesh,” but who “overcome even as I overcame” (says Jesus, in Rev. 3:21). They are symbolized as “144,000” who “follow the Lamb wherever He goes” (Rev. 14:1-5). It’s a symbolic number—plenty of room for you. Say “Yes” to the call of the Holy Spirit, as Mary “believed” what the angel said to her. It’s the same faith!
Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.
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