There's something about Mary

There’s something about Mary.

Sunday, May 11, 2008

When you really discover the secret of life, the truth that sets you free, you will learn the principle that in reality we were made to live on very little.

All that the world affords is vanity (like soap bubbles); in only a brief time all will vanish away.

JAM 4:13 Come now, you who say, “Today or tomorrow, we shall go to such and such a city, and spend a year there and engage in business and make a profit.”

JAM 4:14 Yet you do not know what your life will be like tomorrow. You are just a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.

The United States has a bomb that contains 18,000 lbs. of explosives.

He hated life and all the labor he had done because soon it would be left to another man — either a wise man or a fool — so that labor turns out to be vanity and a waste of time,
ECC 2:17-19.

Solomon found that there was wickedness in the place of Judgment, and wickedness was found in the place of Righteousness, ECC 3:16.

Solomon found that even riches would not satisfy, for that also is vanity and distress, ECC 4:8.

Your free-will shapes your future.

ROM 14:12 So then each one of us shall give account of himself to God.

Solomon found that even riches would not satisfy, for that also is vanity and distress, ECC 4:8.

PRO 23:4-5 Do not weary yourself to gain wealth, Cease from your consideration {of it.} When you set your eyes on it, it is gone. For {wealth} certainly makes itself wings, Like an eagle that flies {toward} the heavens.

What appears to be substance in this life is more accurately described as an unreal thing, having no eternal purpose at all.

MAT 16:26 “For what will a man be profited, if he gains the whole world, and forfeits his soul? Or what will a man give in exchange for his soul?”

The reason why life does not have tremendous purpose and meaning for most people is simply because most people place the world before God,
the body before the soul,
and time before eternity.

ROM 6:21 What benefit were you then [while on earth] deriving from the things of which you are now ashamed [at the judgment seat of Christ they will be ashamed of living for time rather than eternity]? For the outcome of those things is death.

“Where would you be – ”
If you had all the money your heart desires…
If you had no worries
If you came home and the finest meals were waiting for you…
If your bathwater had been run…
If you had the perfect kids…
If your partner was waiting for you with open arms and kisses…

When you really discover the secret of life, the truth that sets you free, you will learn the principle that in reality we were made to live on very little.

The most blessed mother who ever lived: Mary – what a holy name!

In LUK 1:42, she was said to be “Blessed among women,”

She was like every woman born, was a sinner, and that is why she said in LUK 1:47, “My spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.”

Both male and female were created in the image of God, which means that God must also have a feminine image as well as a masculine image.

There is a feminine aspect in the Godhead.

Ruwh, the Hebrew word for “spirit,” is said to be a feminine noun.

GEN 1:2 And the Spirit of God moved in a feminine manner [merahefet] upon the face of the waters.

In Aramaic, the language spoken by Jesus, the word for “spirit” is also feminine – ruha.

The angel who appeared to Joseph in a dream told him that his bride, Mary, “will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name JESUS” (in Hebrew “Jeshuah,” again a feminine word).

It was this mystery that was expressed in the outward appearance of an orthodox priest: he had to have a beard, but wear a woman’s robe.

God has all the perfections; He cannot be limited to the male ones.

The genealogy of Jesus, as recounted by Matthew, gives forty-two generations from Abraham to Christ. He has three sets of fourteen names each.
The first set of the 14 names in the genealogy is found in the first 6 verses, all the way from Abraham to David.
The second 14 goes from MAT 1:6, from Solomon all the way down to Jeconiah, in verse 11.

Matthew repeats the name of Jeconiah, in verses 11 and 12.

Jeconiah is the last in the second series, and the first in the third, so that the inattentive reader may never observe that one of the alleged forty-two is missing.

The mystery of this found in our Lord’s mother’s name which is really a title, not a name; Mary is a spiritual name for the believer.

PHI 2:9 Therefore also the God has highly exalted Him to the maximum, and bestowed on Him the name or rank which is above every name,

REV 2:17… “To the winner, I will give him blessing from the hidden manna [escrow blessing for time and eternity]; also I will give him a white stone and a new title [your royal patent in the eternal heraldry].”

REV 3:5 To the winner, He who overcomes shall thus be clothed in white garments [uniform of glory]; and I will not erase his name or title from the book of life, and I will confess or acknowledge his title before My Father, and before His angels.

REV 3:12 “The winner, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God. Also I will emblazon on him the title of My God, and the name of the city of My God, the new Jerusalem, which shall descend from heaven from My God; also My new title [King of kings, Lord of lords, bright morning star].”

We have Mary, the virgin; Mary Magdalene; Mary of Bethany; Mary the mother of James and Joseph; Mary the wife of Cleopas; and one simply called “the other Mary.”

MAR 15:40 And there were also {some} women looking on from a distance, among whom {were} Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the Less, and Mary of Joses, and Mary of Salome.

“There stood by the cross of Jesus His mother, and His mother’s sister, Mary …” (John 19:25).

Mary (in Hebrew Miriam) – “the star of the sea” = the star that shows the way to those who sail on the ocean of spirituality… it is used in the Bible as a name only?

It seems like Mary was a title given to a certain type of Christian woman in the early church, as there are titles in the army.
Jesus said, “Whoever does the will of My Father in heaven is My brother and sister and mother,” MAT 12:50.
It is a great privilege to be God’s child, but how much greater a privilege to have God as one’s Child!
Jesus says that the one who fulfills His will can be His mother, can be with Him in the relationship as a mother is toward her child.

The highest form of love is that of a mother for her child.
The child’s love toward its mother contains a grain of self-interest; it turns to its mother for every need.
In every true human love some kind of interest is mixed.
A mother’s love is known to be totally self-sacrificing.

Mary, the mother of God (only as a title and a deduction), gave everything for Jesus.
After the resurrection, when He showed Himself to so many, comforting their sad hearts, He did not show Himself to His mother.
Perhaps He offered her, by this, the highest opportunity: to give to God without requiring anything in return.
Perhaps the genealogy of Jesus according to Matthew is not merely a historical succession, but a ladder of initiation.

You begin by identifying yourself with Abraham, the father of all the faithful.
You pass through the experience of Isaac sacrificed by his father, as Christians in many countries have to deprive their children of a happy childhood in order to remain faithful to Christ.

You then become Jacob, who saw the angels ascending and descending, to teach him that in the spiritual life you cannot stop at any point.
You continue the initiation, reliving the lives of Judah and all the others until you arrive at the stage of Mary, of being toward God as a mother is toward her child.

The Mary of two thousand years ago gave birth to Jesus Christ, the historical person of whom the Gospels speak.

But you too can have your meeting with the archangel Gabriel.
Christ can be conceived in your heart, as a result of the forty preceding experiences of communion with saints of all the ages.
You can be a Mary with self-sacrificing love, who wishes only to give, not asking anything in exchange.
The Christ in you, the hope of glory, will be the forty-second person in the chain.
In this passage wisdom is being personified; it does not refer to The Lord Jesus Christ but to that which The Lord Jesus Christ thinks.