“One of the most startling, collective doctrinal statements
in New Testament Scripture for the study of prophecy is what the angel tells
Mary, and if you’ve got that straight, you can straighten out about 98 percent
of the heresy in Roman Catholic and Protestant theology,” says Jordan.
“The Hebrew form of the name Mary is Miriam. As you know
Miriam was Moses’ sister and it’s the same name.
“Luke 1: 28 says, ‘And the angel came in unto her, and said,
Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed art
thou among women.” When Gabriel says, ‘Hail,’ he doesn’t fall down to worship
her, you notice. The next verse says, ‘And when she saw him, she was troubled
at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be.’
“Notice Dr. Luke, as a good physician, his evaluation of the
condition of Mary when Gabriel came was that she was a virgin. Verse 34 says, ‘Then
said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man?’
“Now the Revised Standard Version says, ‘How shall this be
seeing I have no husband?’ Then it wouldn’t surprise you when you go Back to
Isaiah 7:14 that the prophecy that the RSV and those kind of Bibles translate is
that, it’s not a ‘virgin,’ but ‘young women, young maiden’ and that kind of
thing.
“But there’s 12- 14
year-old kids not a half a mile from here having babies and they don’t have
husbands. That isn’t what the verse said. She said, ‘How can I be pregnant with
a child when I’ve never had sexual relationships with a man? I know not a man,’
with ‘know’ being in a biblical sense. Pretty straightforward.
“Dr. Luke, in his evaluation, said Mary is a virgin. The reason
that’s important is come back to Matthew 1. There’s a great controversy about
that, of course, because that’s a basic miracle. Isaiah 7:14. The Hebrew word ‘virgin’
there is the word ‘alma’ and sometimes that word is used to describe a virgin.
“Genesis 24:42. A word in Hebrew that means the same as our English
virgin. Then there’s the word ‘alma’ that sometimes refers to a virgin and
sometimes maybe doesn’t. But as it’s used in the Bible, it always does.
“In order to find where it doesn’t refer to a virgin you
have to go out into other kind of literature. Talking about Rebekah. Eliazar is
describing how he found the wife for Isaac. Notice what he calls her—a virgin. Now
that’s that word ‘alma.’ But look back in verse 16.
“When the Hebrew word allowing some leeway in it. By the way,
you hear about ‘alma mater.’ That’s the Latin word for mother. Alma mater means
virgin mother.
“But all of that is moot when you come to Matthew 1:23. This
is why I say to you all the time, if you study the Bible, compare verse with
verse. The Bible contains its own definition, its own system of understanding.
“And while it may be wonderful to know what Josephus said
about something, or what Will Durant said about Roman history, or what somebody
says the word is used in the secular culture of that day, the key is what does
God mean when He used it in His Book!
“So if I’m trying to figure out what Isaiah 7:14 is talking
about, and it’s quoted in Matthew 1, I get some help. Matthew 1:22-23: 22]
Now all this was done, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the Lord
by the prophet, saying,
[23] Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.’
[23] Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel, which being interpreted is, God with us.’
“Now that word translated ‘virgin’ there, the Greek word
means nothing other than exactly what our English word means, so if there’s the
possibility of two different definitions in Isaiah, Matthew 1:23 tells you
which definition to use.
“So the RSV and the J.B. Philips and the New English Bible,
and the Jerusalem Bible, and all these versions that say ‘young woman’ and ‘maiden’
back there, and all the preachers and teachers and commentaries that do the
same, are wrong because Matthew 1:23 doesn’t allow two definitions. It only has
one definition. And so it picks for you . . . you see, if you can translate it
one of two ways, which way do you choose? Well Matthew 1:23 tells you which way
to go.
“Now, I know YOU don’t have a question about that but you’re
going to hear people when you get out there in the marketplace constantly tell
you, ‘Well, that word virgin didn’t mean a virgin.’
“When I was coming up through school back in the ’60s I was
raised as a lad in a modernist denomination. We actually finally had a pastor
who stood in the pulpit and said that he did not believe in the virgin birth of
Christ! Fortunate for me, I had believing parents and that was the last time we
went to that church.
“There was a guy, Neil Sorey?, a very famous theologian 60
years ago, who propagated the idea that Jesus Christ was the illegitimate son
of a blond-haired, blue-eyed German soldier who was down in Palestine from Rome
(one of the Roman soldiers who came out of Europe down into Palestine and was
there ruling) and that he had a relationship with Mary and that’s where who the
father of the Jesus Christ was.
“Now, Neil Sorey didn’t invent that idea. That idea’s been
around for 2,000 years. He just popularized it. I remember hearing that and I
remember later on learning that that idea was as old as two millenniums ago and
I got real mad, thinking, ‘Here’s a guy that wrote a book, made a name for
himself, going around propagating this like it was all brand new and he
discovered it and it had been around for almost two thousand years!’
“There are people, you hear it at Easter time, who talk
about, ‘Jesus didn’t really die, he just passed out and they put him in a tomb
and because the tomb was cool he had just swooned and he was revived.’
“That idea is as ancient as the hills! You just need to know
about some of these things. There’s the idea that Isaiah didn’t write all of Isaiah
that it was written by Deutero-Isaiah. Two Isaiahs. Then there’s the Graf-Wellhausen
theory that Moses didn’t write the Pentateuch and that was really written by JPED
and R.
“All that stuff has been debunked and proven wrong but you’ll
hear it repeated. So what you have in Luke 1 is an historic account written by
a good historian who happened to be a medical doctor. He makes a medical
evaluation and says that the virgin was ‘espoused.’
“In Old Testament terminology an espousal is equivalent to
marriage prior to the couple living together as husband and wife. They’d been
committed to one another but they hadn’t taken up the relationship of living
together as husband and wife as yet.
“So Luke is making a very defined medical declaration here
in Luke 1:27.
“When it says ‘hail,’ he doesn’t worship her, he just greets
her. Notice it doesn’t say blessed art thou ABOVE women or blessed art thou
OVER women. It just says blessed thou art AMONG women. She’s viewed just like
any other woman but she’s especially BLESSED.
“That word ‘favor’ means to have grace shown unto you. When you
favor somebody, you give them a special gift of attention.
“In Psalm 116:16 the Messiah identifies Himself as ‘the son
of the handmaiden of the Lord.’ What Mary’s doing is she’s saying, ‘Okay, I
believe that this Scripture is being fulfilled.’ Mary’s heart and mind was
filled with the Word of God.
“She didn’t do what Zacharias did. It says he was troubled and
fear fell on him and he said, ‘Well, beh, uh, heh, uh!’ Mary said, ‘Here’s this
message,’ and she starts thinking in her mind and what’s in her mind?! The Word
of God.
“Listen, folks, the way you respond to things that happen,
you begin to think about them, if you’ve got the Word of God filling your heart
and mind and dominating your thinking processes, and you begin to think about
what’s happening in life, in what context, what’s the frame of reference that
you’re thinking about them in? The Word of God.
“Psalm 116:16. When the Messiah comes that’s going to be His
profession. Mary says, ‘Okay, if I’m going to be the one through whom the Messiah’s
going to be born, behold here I am. Do exactly what the Word of God says; I’m
ready. I’m here.’
“Now you talk about the reverence that’s due to Mary--there
it is! You talk about an example of ‘present your body a living sacrifice,’ a
completely, totally dedicated vessel for the purpose of God, there it is.
“There may be her equal in Scripture, but there’s not her
superior when it comes to this issue. The reason she was highly favored, given
much grace, is because she BELIEVED God’s Word. She had an intelligent
understanding of God’s Word, and when the angel Gabriel came to break the silence,
she knew it was going to be broken.
“There are people there in expectancy waiting for Him to
come. They knew the time schedule and when Gabriel came and appeared to her,
she knew she got a message from God; she believed it.
“Luke 1:48 says, ‘For he hath regarded the low estate
of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me
blessed.’
“Come with me to Malachi and notice why she said that. Malachi
3. I have to tell you I run in to a bit of a conundrum when I get to passages
like this because we can take almost every line of these verses about what
Gabriel says to Mary, and what Mary’s going to say here, and we could spend the
next year, because almost every line in it is a reference to an Old Testament
passage that begins a chain of passages through the Old Testament that’s a
whole doctrinal chain of categorical information.
“So connected into the Word of God was Mary that everything
she says just hooks into verses that hook into another verse. If we got involved
in it, we’d never get through with the Book of Luke.
“Malachi 3:12. The point is Mary knows that there’s more
than just her getting a blessing here. She knows that she’s just a
representative of her whole nation and what’s going to be said of the nation is
said of her because she’s going to be the one through whom the Messiah, the
Savior of the nation, is going to come.”
No comments:
Post a Comment