Why Mary - Part 2

This podcast is made available by Vision Christian Media, thanks to the generosity of our supporters. Your donation today means great podcasts like this remain available to help people look to God daily. Please make your donation to Visionathon today at vision.org.au. You're a teenage girl who's just learned that you're not only pregnant, but the baby that you're carrying is the Saviour of the world.

How do you handle all of that? Well, today on Turning Point, Dr. David Jeremiah takes us back to the story of Mary, and how she processed the most incredible news given to any expectant mother. Listen now, as David introduces the conclusion of his message, Why Mary?

And thank you for joining us. We're celebrating Christmas on Turning Point by asking questions about the meaning of the season. We've already talked about why Jesus became a man, why Joseph, and we're in the middle of our discussion of Why Mary? Well, we started it on Friday.

Let's finish it today. Why Mary? We move from the announcement of Jesus' birth to the agony of his death.

It is the right transition to make. I remember years ago in our Christmas program, we used to start with the birth of Jesus and all of the celebration of Jesus, and then we actually went through his life story and we acted it out and we ended up at the cross. I cannot tell you how many people wrote me letters angry that we had the cross in the Christmas story and saying that was a bloody story and it took away from the joy of Christmas. Well, I had to explain to them that if you don't have the cross, you might as well not have the cradle.

There's no reason for the cradle if there isn't any cross. And so, the transition from the birth of Jesus to his death is a normal and natural one. Ladies and gentlemen, Jesus Christ was born to die.

That's why he came to this earth. As most of you know, the words from Jesus on the cross, the seven distinct statements that Jesus made in his dying hour before he gave up his spirit to the Father, and those seven statements are found in all the gospels, spread out in the gospels, some here, some there. They're usually a series of messages that some preachers preach before Easter, the seven last words from the cross. And I want to give them to you quickly.

I just want to show you what they are because there's a point I want to make from all of this. The first word from the cross is in Luke 23, 34, Father, forgive them for they know not what they do. That is a prayer for God to forgive those who were crucifying Jesus Christ. The second word is Luke 23, 43, Jesus said to him, Assuredly, I say to you, today you will be with me in paradise. That's a word of forgiveness to the repentant thief who was hanging next to Jesus. The fourth word is Matthew 27, 46, and about the ninth hour, Jesus cried out with a loud voice saying, Eli, Eli, lama, savachthani, that is, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? A word of resignation spoken to the Father in heaven. The fifth word is John 19, 28. After this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, said, I thirst. The sixth word, so when Jesus had received his sour wine, he said, It is finished.

Bowing his head, he gave up his spirit. And the seventh word is, and when Jesus had cried out with a loud voice, he said, Father, into your hands, I commit my spirit. Now, if you've listened carefully, you know I left one out.

And some of you are saying, I'm going to have to go up and ask him afterwards, what was the third one? Well, I left it out on purpose because in many respects, it doesn't belong. It's out of context.

It doesn't fit. All these words, these profound words from the cross, from the lips of Jesus, words of forgiveness, words of resignation, words of thirst. But the third word is the word we read a few moments ago. When Jesus therefore saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing by, he said to his mother, Woman, behold your son. And he said to the disciple, Behold your mother. And from that hour, that disciple took her to his own home.

And you say, Pastor, so what's the big deal about that? Is it not an amazing thing that when Jesus hung upon the cross in the agony of the crucifixion, in the last moments of his life here on this earth, he turned his thoughts away from all that was involved on the cross to his concern for his own mother? Around the cross that day were the onlookers and the bystanders. The Greeks of our Lord were there. Many were there who had mocked him with their words.

Some were heard to say, If you are the Son of God, save yourself and come down from the cross. The chief priests, the scribes, the elders of the Jews pointed their fingers at him and shouted, If you're the Christ, save yourself. And some of Jesus' friends were also there. John mentioned some who were present that day. If you merge the two lists where the names are given, you will discover that Mary, Jesus' mother, Mary, the wife of Cleopas, and Salome, and John's mother, and Mary Magdalene, and John, his beloved disciple were there.

Isn't it interesting? Three Marys left at the cross. And Jesus turned to John in one of the last moments on the cross and concerned himself with the well-being of Mary. And the Scripture says that when they left the place of crucifixion, John took Mary to his own home. It has to be one of the most tender moments in all of the New Testament record. By the way, did you notice the first three words from the cross from Jesus were all about others?

Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. This day you shall be with me in paradise. And John, that's my mother.

You take care of her. The record concerning Mary and John is filled with insights about godliness translated into our culture and into our very homes. As we think back through the life of Jesus and his mother, we identify with so much they must have experienced. In fact, in the Christmas story, there is a little prophecy that makes us look into the crucifixion. Do you remember when Jesus was taken to the temple by his parents and presented to Anna and to Simeon?

Do you remember that part of the story? It's right there in Luke chapter 2, often omitted from the Christmas message. But let me just read to you verses 34 and 35 of the second chapter of Luke. Then Simeon blessed them and said to Mary his mother, Behold, this child is destined for the fallen rising of many in Israel and for a sign which will be spoken against.

Yes, a sword will pierce through your own soul also, that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. These words recorded by Luke were spoken by Simeon when Jesus as an infant was presented to Simeon and Anna in the temple. Now, the Bible says that Simeon took Jesus in his arms and blessed God, and then Simeon turned to Mary and prophesied the words that we just read. And he told Mary that her child would be the cause of much sorrow and much pain in her life. He spoke of a sword piercing through her own soul.

This prophecy was given 30 years before the crucifixion, but it was being fulfilled now as we have read from John. Mary watches her son being beaten and nailed to the cross. One of the most solemn moments in the movie, The Passion of the Christ, is the scene where Mary is watching her son as he is being beaten by the Roman soldiers.

What an awful moment for her. I can see that play in my mind, though I've only seen the film two or three times. And we shied away from that.

I remember being in the film watching people. Some covered their eyes so they didn't have to watch. I have to say to you, men and women, that Mary knew more pain in her life than most of us will ever, ever know. She knew about the godliness of suffering. And I'm sure there's no one in this building who has not wept and agonized in some way, perhaps over your children.

Not like she wept for Jesus, but in other ways. I think Simeon's words are very appropriate. He said, when something's wrong with one of your kids, it's like a sword piercing through your soul.

Is that not true? I mean, there's pain, and then there's pain. And most of us as parents, we would take on a hundred times the pain that we witness in the lives of our children if they're going through a tough time, maybe a sickness or a disease, or some relational issue at home or whatever.

Simeon told Mary, Mary, you're going to suffer in your godliness, and there's going to be a day in your life when your experience is going to be like someone put a sword right through your soul. All of us know that children can be the source of the greatest heartache and the source of the greatest joy. Is that not true? And let me just add grandchildren to that list. Could I say that too? Yeah.

No. In fact, grandchildren are the blessing that we should have had before we had our children. Amen. My grandchildren were in the green room a few months back, and we had just published a Bible. It's a beautiful, leather-covered Bible.

Two of my grandchildren came in the room, and they wanted to know, since they saw how beautiful this was, if they could have a copy of it. So I made a deal with them. I said, yeah, you can have a copy of this Bible, but you've got to promise me one thing. You'll read it. They started to read, and we're reading better.

So I said, you've got to start at the beginning, and you've got to read it. So the next week, after they'd had this Bible for a few days, Cami called me on the phone, and she said, okay, Papa, you got them reading the New Testament. Now you can answer their questions. I said, okay, what's the question? She says, one of the children want to know how Mary and Joseph had a baby if they didn't know each other. I said, tell them to ask their father. Yes, we have great joy with our children, don't we? But if you've ever gone through a crisis with one of your kids, you know there's also great, serious, sword-piercing kind of pain. As I've said before, there is no pain like parental pain. The day when Jesus was crucified, Mary experienced the fulfillment of Simeon's words and a sword pierced through her soul.

James Stalker, who is a wonderful writer of New Testament truth, has written some wonderful books on the life of the Lord Jesus. Describing this moment in Mary's life, he wrote, there Jesus hung before her eyes, but she was helpless. His wounds bled, but she dare not touch them. His mouth was parched, but she could not moisten it. The nails pierced her as well as him. The thorns round his brow were a circle of flame around her heart. Motherhood, let's face it, is born in pain.

They don't call it labor for nothing. In fact, I suspect that if God did not repress the pain of childbirth in the minds of mothers, there would never be any families with more than one child. Think for just a moment of the pain in Mary's life. She had known pain in the anxiety and the anticipation of her own son's death. She knew it was coming.

It was like out there wondering, when is the shoe going to drop? She knew that he was born to die. How much she knew about the way in which this would take place, we can only guess. But she saw the events transpire that led her son to this moment. And finally, the day of her son's death arrived and all of its stark tragedy.

Her dreaded dreams had come true, and they were more terrible than she had ever anticipated. The babe of Bethlehem, the boy of Nazareth, the brawny workman of the carpenter shop, the gentleman of Galilee, the teacher without equal, the mighty man of merciful miracles, the humble man of patience and grace. Her own son is now writhing before her own eyes in the throes of agony and death. A 13th-century Latin writer described this moment in Mary's life in these poetic lines. He wrote, "'Near the cross, her vigil keeping, stood the mother, worn and weeping, where he hung the dying Lord, through her soul in anguish groaning, bowed in sorrow, sighing, moaning, past the sharp and piercing sword. Oh, the weight of her affliction, hers who won God's benediction, hers who bore God's holy one.

Oh, that speechless, ceaseless yearning. Oh, those dim eyes never turning from her wondrous, suffering son.'" Can I say to you, mothers, it could not have been too different for Mary than it would have been for you. I have watched as a father with four children all at home for several years the special kind of chemistry that exists between a mother and her children, especially the little ones. Have you noticed, fathers, that when the little one falls and skins up her knee or his knee in the driveway, gets all bloodied up, they don't run for you. They run for Mom.

Mom wishes they would run for you, but they do not. And you have watched as I have as a loving mother takes that little child and tenderly and carefully ministers to their need, wiping the dirt and blood and all the rest off of the sword, gently ministering to the child, and there must always be a Band-Aid. Lots of hugs and kisses and reassurances, and that was the way it was for Mary and Jesus.

He grew up just like our children grow up. All of those memories of those early days played through the memory bank of her mind when she stood there that day watching the awful apparent ending to his life. That was all a part of Mary. She remembered those moments, and can you imagine what she felt as she stood there watching her son dying where the crown of thorns was placed upon his brow? She had planted kisses when he was a boy, and those hands and feet she had held when he was an infant were now nailed to the cross. The disciples, they would leave him.

His friends would forsake him. The nations would reject him, but his mother, she was there to the very end. And what did she do? Interestingly enough, I have searched the Scriptures and have found not one word, not one. She suffered in silence as her son died. She was pierced through with a sword. The cold steel of that sword pierced that mother's heart when Jesus died and when in his dying moment he called out to her. In these two snapshots of Mary, his birth and his death, we are reminded that God wants us to learn from the people of the Bible that he paints in living color. And we learn from Mary the submission of godliness and the surprise of it, and then a lesson we would rather not learn, the suffering of it. But does it not do our hearts well? Does it not feel a sense of identification with him in our own suffering, that we suffer not as others who don't suffer? We suffer as the Lord Jesus who suffered and as Mary who suffered. That's a part of life.

We either embrace it and learn from it or we spend our entire existence on this earth fighting against something which we can never, ever overcome. Interestingly enough, Mary is mentioned once more in the Bible after the events that we have discussed today. In a list of people who are in the upper room, she is listed last after everybody else. For all of you who want to elevate Mary beyond the place where she belongs in the Bible, just remember that. And then after that, she's never mentioned again in all of the New Testament. I don't know if you read a devotional throughout the year.

It's about that time to select one if you haven't done so already. Many of you have told me that you have read Oswald Chambers' My Utmost for His Highest. It's a great, great read. And though it's written a little bit before our time and has some archaic language in it, it's worth it just to get the message from it. And I want to close today with a little reminder of what the meaning of all this should be to us as we think about the Lord Jesus and Mary and Christmas and all of it. In his December 25th devotional, Oswald Chambers said this. He said, listen, Jesus Christ was born into the world. He came into history from outside of history. He did not evolve out of history.

Our Lord's birth was an advent. He did not come from the human race. He came into the human race from above. Jesus Christ is not just the best human being there ever was. He is a being who cannot be accounted for by the human race at all. He is God incarnate, not man becoming God, but God coming into human flesh, coming into it from the outside. Jesus' life is the highest and the holiest, and it entered into humanity at the lowest door. Our Lord entered history by the Virgin Mary. He came into this world from outside of the world.

And then Chambers makes this point. Listen carefully. Just as our Lord came into human history from the outside, he must come into us from the outside. Contrary to what many say, there is no divine spark in every one of us that just needs to be fanned into a flame.

There is none. There is nothing within us that can ever make us acceptable to God. The only way we can ever be acceptable to God is if God from the outside allows his Son to come and live within us, and here's the remarkable thing as it relates to Mary. Mary was the mother of Jesus, but she needed Jesus to be her Savior as much as every one of us in this room.

In fact, when she was singing the song, which we know is the Magnificat that she sang when she met Elizabeth, here's what she sang. "'My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior.'" Listen, as fantastic as this is, the Savior who was born in the womb of Mary had to be born again in the heart of Mary. And the Savior whose birth we celebrate during this season is a Savior who must be born in our hearts as well. He comes into our hearts from the outside, and the question I have to ask you today is this. Have you invited him to come into your heart and take up his residency within you?

Amen. Friends, the material that you're listening to, The Nativity, is available in a study guide format. You can get this from our website. It will give you the outlines of all of these Christmas questions. If you're a pastor or a teacher or a small group leader, this is a good way for you to dig into the real meaning of Christmas.

It may not work for you this year because of the timing, but you'll have it for the next season and be ready to really celebrate Christmas according to the Scripture. We'll see you next time right here on Turning Point. Today's message came to you from Shadow Mountain Community Church and Senior Pastor, Dr. David Jeremiah.

We'd love to hear your story of Turning Point's impact on your life. Please write to us at Turning Point, Post Office Box 3838, San Diego, CA 92163 or visit our website at davidjeremiah.org. Ask for your copy of David's 365 day devotional for 2021.

It's called Strength for Today. It's filled with biblical truth for each day of the year ahead and it's yours for a gift of any amount. You can also download the free Turning Point mobile app for your smartphone or tablet or search in your app store for the keywords Turning Point Ministries so you can access our programs and resources. Visit davidjeremiah.org forward slash radio for details. I'm Gary Hoogfleet. Please join us tomorrow as we continue the series Why the Nativity. That's here on Turning Point with Dr. David Jeremiah.