Read Luke 1:26–33 and Luke 2:25-35
I. Mary highly-favored
A. 1:28 Gabriel came to the virgin Mary and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!”
1. XAIRE — A greeting formed from the word joy, meaning “Joy to you!”
2. XARITOO is the verb of the word for grace. It is in the passive voice, meaning that Mary was the object of the grace, not the one gracing but the one being graced.
3. The only other place where this verb is used in the passive voice in the NT is Ephesians 1:6, “to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed (graced) us in the Beloved.”
4. So what the angel said was this: Joy to you, O graced One!
5. You can tell that Mary gets this when she responds a few verses later rejoicing in God’s blessing: “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed...” (Lk.1:46–48)
B. How Mary was blessed
1. First of all, it’s a blessing to be a mother, to be given the gift of a child. Psalm 127:3 “Children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward.”
2. But Mary was blessed more than that. Elizabeth says to her “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!” (Luke 1:42)
a. She was blessed more than other women, because of the Fruit of her womb: she had the blessing of being the mother of the Lord, the Savior of mankind, the Son of God.
3. Let’s think about what it meant to be the mother of Jesus.
a. Proverbs: A number of verses in Proverbs (e.g. Proverbs 17:25; 23:24–25) talk about what a blessing it is to parents when their children are righteous and wise.
(1) Well, if the mother of a righteous and wise son has reason to rejoice, think about how blessed it would be to be the mother of Jesus!
b. Think about the bleeding woman who touched Jesus and was healed. Think about the people who traveled long distances just to get a glimpse of Jesus or hear what He was saying. Only a few had the privilege of having personal contact with Him while He lived here among us.
(1) Think about His disciples, who got to spend three whole years with Him, watching Him live, hearing His words, seeing His facial expressions.
(2) Then think about Mary, who knew Him for all of His 33 years, who carried Him in her womb, who nursed Him at her breast, who held Him and smelled Him and watched Him sleep and listened to His coos.
c. Think about the woman who wept at Jesus’ feet and wiped them with her hair in Luke 7:36-49 and the woman who anointed Jesus with expensive ointment in Matthew 26:6-13. They couldn’t get close enough to Jesus. For a brief moment, they displayed their affection for Him with their whole heart. But Mary had hour upon hour and day after day to gaze and stroke and snuggle and anoint His little body with oil and sing lullabies of praise to Him.
d. It’s no wonder that at one point a woman in the crowd cry out to Jesus in Luke 11:27 “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed!”?
II. Mary deeply-pierced
A. Simeon says to Mary in Luke 2:35, “a sword will pierce through your own soul also.”
B. Every mother is pierced. God tells us that in Genesis 3:16. And Mary had to go through the pregnancy with all of its pains and burdens and discomforts. She still had to go through the pangs of labor and delivery. She still had to nurse Him and change Him and hold Him and raise Him, like any mother with any child. It required all the same sacrifices as mothering another child, and even additional ones, like having to flee out of the country in the middle of the night because soldiers were on their way to kill the Baby.
C. But just as Mary was blessed above other women, her heart was also pierced above others.
1. How was she so pierced? We can see it in John 19:25 “... standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, and Mary Magdalene.”
D. Mary was highly favored AND deeply pierced. Does the suffering tarnish the privilege? No, it polishes it. Think about it. When you become a parent, when God gives you the precious privilege of having a child, does it diminish that privilege that you also will carry the burden of caring for the child when he is sick, or teaching the child to use the bathroom, or have to watch the child get pierced by needles at the doctor’s office?
1. Now it’s not fun to do those things, but it’s part of the privilege of loving someone.
E. Mary didn’t avoid the cross so as to avoid the pain. She never resented God for allowing His death. She maintained her “May it be to me as you have said” attitude to the very end.
1. And how she was rewarded!! It was His very death which brought her salvation and forgiveness and justification before the holy God.
F. And think of the pride and gratitude she must have experienced watching Him give Himself for the world.
G. Some folks would wonder why didn’t God spare Mary if He loved her so much. I think God didn’t spare Mary because He loved her so much.
III. Like Mary, believers are highly-favored.
A. She was blessed to be the mother of Jesus, but believers are blessed even more.
1. Remember the woman who cried out to Jesus about how blessed His mother was? Jesus answered her in this way, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!” (Luke 11:28)
2. The blessing of being Jesus’ eternal kin is greater than the blessing of being His earthly mother!
3. Mary knew this as well. She was both, of course. In the Magnificat, her great song of praise to God in Luke 1:46-55 at Elizabeth’s house, she doesn’t praise God for the privilege of being the mother of Jesus, but for the salvation He brings to her and to mankind.
IV. And also like Mary, believers can expect to be deeply-pierced.
A. We are also promised piercings: persecutions and trials and sufferings.
B. Sometimes He sends us a thorn in the flesh and even when we repeatedly pray, He does not remove it (2Cor.12:7-10).
C. The people most highly favored don’t usually have highly comfortable lives.“The Lord disciplines those whom He loves.” (Heb.12:6) If you are highly-favored, you will be deeply-pierced.
D. And God has a good purpose for the piercing. Suffering is part of the balm which heals us. It isn’t painless therapy.
E. We are like Mary. God has given us Jesus, the most precious gift which could ever be given. And He wants us to know that.
1. And He wants us to know that there will be pain in our lives, so we won’t be surprised by it.
F. But He also wants us always to know that our favouredness is far greater than our piercedness.
1. Our favored status is eternal, our piercedness is but momentary.
2. Our piercedness will never trump our favouredness for nothing can separate us from the love of Christ (Romans 8:35, 37-39).
3. But one day our favouredness will trump our piercedness, and there will be no more tears and no more sorrows and no more loss and no more sin and no more pain.
4. And that’s why it’s such a blessing to be one of those who hear His word and embrace it.