Mary’s Fiat

There are those of the Roman Catholic Church to elevate Mary to biblical heights venerating her and calling her a co-redone tricks with Christ and because of that Protestant strand to flee in the other direction. So far, that we almost despise this one who was highly favored by the Lord's, and was filled with the grace of God and was a model of submission to the authority of God himself. So how should we view the mother of Jesus, to be certain she is not interceding for salvation that will belong solely to Jesus himself, but at the same time.

Mary is worthy of our honor and respect today and Renewing Your Mind be returned to Dr. RC's prose verse by verse series through the gospel of Luke. He preached the sermons at the church.

He pastored for many years. St. Andrews Chapel near Orlando, Florida.

Getting your car this afternoon and arrived down alive for in the direction of what the news commentators refer to as the attractions you will notice as you near the attractions on your left sign first shrine that is titled in honor of Mary Queen of the universe, and every time I pass that shrine on I four. Think in terms of the narrative we considered last week of this young girl who was a peasant in an obscure village in Nazareth was visited with this startling announcement by the angel Gabriel. I want to say, somewhat irreverently used, long way baby from peasant girl in Nazareth, to Queen of the universe like to explore this morning. How in the world such a transition could have happened in our civilization back in the 16th century. Of course, the greatest schism in the history of Christendom took place with the Protestant Reformation, which we celebrate every year on Reformation Sunday which happened to be last Sunday and we know at the time of the Reformation. The dispute became so better and the hostilities so escalated that we saw the formation of the Spanish Inquisition and the people being tortured on the rack and burned at the stake, and Christendom was at war with each other and today we have seen the attitudes that prevailed in the 16th century to have been greatly mollified and that we think of the rack and the burning at the stake as a aberration of the past and not of something that is commonplace in the theological disputes of our time and facts so much as the division between Roman Protestantism and ameliorated that there have been initiatives in recent years to announce to the world of certain accord and agreements between Roman and Protestantism, and in so doing we see again all whole new attitude in the air now at Vatican one in 1870 under the authority of Pope Pius IX.

Protestants were described as schismatics and heretics. Fast-forward to the 1960s, the Vatican Council to and in that counsel.

Protestants were referred to as separated brethren to see the stark difference.

In contrast, in the language of communication between the two bodies all the hostilities have settled down I saw here from people frequently that really the things that divide Rome from evangelicalism are not that great anymore and I just like to remind you that the differences between evangelical Christianity and Roman Catholicism are far, far greater today than they were in the 16th century. The issue of the gospel is still very much a stake.

The recent Roman Catholic catechism of 1994, reaffirmed the Council of Trent than its teaching of their doctrine of justification, their understanding of salvation, the treasury of merits indulgences, purgatory, and all arrests, but despite the ongoing dispute of the heart of the matter of the gospel itself on how a person is say since the 16th century, though there were many in the church at that time who believed in papal infallibility. It was not a formal doctrine defined they feed a buy Rome until 1870 at that counsel. I mentioned a moment ago Vatican one where papal infallibility was decree, but in addition to the issue of the authority of the church and the doctrine of justification, we have this whole phenomenon of Mary urology, and most of the Mary illogical decrees that have come the place in Rome have come forth in the last hundred and 50 years. Much later than the 16th century Immaculate Conception.

For example came in the middle of the 1950. Excuse me the 1850s, and followed up by the vision and apparition of the Virgin Mary at lower days in France, in which he was said to have that was hard to have said, I am the immaculate conception, but the doctrines of the perpetual virginity of Mary, the sinlessness of Mary, the bodily Assumption of Mary into heaven, the coronation of Mary as the queen of heaven are all of much more recent vintage.

In the 1950s 3 Critical Encyclicals Took Pl. with respect to Mary munificent test misdiagnosis, which is sperm the bodily assumptions falcons Corona and quality writing them, affirming the coronation of Mary as the queen of heaven.

This is recent stuff and is very very important to the actual daily practice of religion in Rome. Devout Roman Catholics frequently have shrines to Mary in their yards. Certainly in every church, and we wonder how can this be, and again as recently as the catechism of 1994. Mary is referred to their as the mother of the Christian church as the queen of heaven as the exemplar or icon of true Christianity, and is immediate tricks immediate tricks a mediator between the church and God. Beloved theology can hardly sink lower than to obscure the uniqueness of our Lord's saving work as the mediator between man and God, and that the apostle Paul wrote in his pastoral epistles. There is one mediator between God and man. And that is the Lord Jesus Christ's another one great doctrinal issue that emerged at Vatican II had to do with the role of Mary and the church. But again, it was subsumed under the study of the church and where Mary fits in to the church and at Vatican II there was a significant debate that went on between two factions of the church, basically between the Latin wing of the church in the West Wing of the church and the two groups with respect to Mary were called minimalists and maximalist without getting into all the details of what separated the minimalists from the maximalist. The great issue that divided them was the issue of whether Mary should be regarded not only as media tricks, but as oh redemptive tricks. That is where she a oh word team or of the church with Jesus now happily the church did not embrace the maximalist position in its fullness, but there remains a strong current in favor of maximal is him within the Roman communion.

To this day. Now I've said all that to say this word is this all come from one of the capital texts upon which the debates at Vatican II focused upon was the last verse of the section of chapter 1 that I read last week. Mary's response to the announcement of the angel Gabriel that she was going to conceive and have a child by the power of the Holy Ghost, the virgin birth was announced to Mary by Gabriel, and we know her initial response was one of stunned amazement and she asked the question how can this being since I know not a man, and we consider that last week how it was going to take place through the power of the Holy Ghost. The same power that brought the world and the being of creation was going to overshadow her and so that the child in her womb would be called the son of God, he would be most holy and he would be the son of the most high, and all the things that we considered last week that after all this explanation that the angel Gabriel provided to this young woman than the rest of the chapter of the rest of the story has to do with her responsive. What did Mary say then after the angel explained all of these things to her now. What does she say all okay I see how this is going to happen and this is a tremendous thing.

I can't believe I'm going to be the mother of the Messiah and all that.

Listen to what she and fax it, she said, behold the maidservant of the Lord to come back to that.

Then she said let it be to me according to your work now in the nomenclature of the Mary illogical doctrines of the Roman communion. This response of Mary is referred to as Mary's fiat. This does not mean that she owned a little Italian car that got great gas mileage.

No, the term fiat is the present imperative form of the verb to the in Latin and the Latin language. It's the imperative letter be. She says now go back to creation where we experience the first fiat in all of history, the divine imperative, by which the whole universe was created when the fiat came from the mouth of God. Let there be light and there was light left the oceans team with fish in the fields with burden gross and all of the work of creation was accomplished through the command. The imperative of God.

What we call the divine fiat at the grave of Lazarus, where Jesus comes in the midst of the morning he doesn't invite Lazarus to come back to life. He speaks to him with the imperative/ref come forth. There was nothing that Lazarus could do but come forth under the weight and the authority of the imperative command of Jesus. So the idea of the fiat has a rich history throughout all of redemptive history and when the theologians the Roman theologians come to this text. I say well here comes out of the lips of Mary D.

So the maximalist jump on this tax them. They say the incarnation took place because of the will of God, but also because of the imperative of Mary Mary exercise her authority, without which there would be no virgin birth, without which there would be no redeeming Jesus, without which there would be no salvation. So salvation depended. According to maximalist on Mary's imperative response to the angel's announcement said earlier theology can hardly sink much lower than this November.

A statement had been rudely torn and ripped all the context in which it is made, it is Mary's fiat. Yes, the imperative form of lease in the Latin Vulgate is used here but notice how it is couched. Parenthetically, in the context in which Mary says a first thing she says is behold the handmaiden of the Lord before there's any let it be theirs. First look one of my Maloley sleigh kitchen servant of the Lord. What is the attitude being expressed by this girl to the announcement of the angel Gabriel look at me and me.

I'm not the owner of the house of any authority in this matter, but I am your servant, and if the Lord wants me to have this baby. So be it.

Melissa a long way from B to is the Lord wants me to have this baby. Whatever the Lord wants. I will do, because I'm certain you know at creation God the father didn't stand before the darkness in the void, the formlessness of the deep and say to the uncreated universe.

Behold, the servant of creation.

Okay, let the light shine. None when the imperative comes from the lips of our maker. There's no sense in which he is our servant.

We are his servant.

He's not our servant, and there's probably no human being in the history of the world that more fully manifested that than this magnificent young girl, Mary, who, because of the maximalist exaggeration and heretical veneration that realm is given to our of the century Protestants 10 to flee in the other direction.

So far, that we almost despise this one who was highly favored by the Lord and was filled with the grace of God and was a model of submission to the authority of God himself. Even though she asked questions.

Gabriel didn't have to shut her mouth up until her son would be born like he did with Zacharias. She was humble.

She was willing she was obedient, let it be to me according to your heart, not according to my work, not according to my authority again. One of the maximalist do with this.

They make another parallel. They say that there's a parallel between Adam and Jesus. Jesus is called in the New Testament the new Adam, the second man through the first Adam's disobedience. Death comes in the world through the second Adam's obedience life comes into the world.

The structure and disaster damnation comes through the first Adam, salvation and deliverance comes through the second Adam, Jesus, so they say the same parallel exists between a and Mary is there one woman's disobedience. Beth came into the world so the other woman's obedience life came in to the war. That's why they are jealous to elevate her to the real level of co-redone tricks because she participates virtually as an equal with her son and affecting our redemption. Her son is the second Adam C is the second Eve and to gather mother and son. They bring about salvation. I would bet everything I own that Mary, who is in heaven right now would be nothing but offended by anyone suggesting that there was a real parallel between Eve and herself. Mary's not the queen of the universe, the church is the queen of the universe, the church is the bride of Christ, and Christ is the king and his only queen is his bride, not his mother. But again, we need to understand what a singularly blessed woman. This lady wants and not only did she acquiesce to the announcement, but as the early creeds call Mary see Atoka's the mother of God, not in the sense historically, the Jesus derived his divine nature from Mary no no no no no, but in the sense that she was mother to the one who was God incarnate, she was at the cross, where the sword pierced her own soul. She was at the two and she will participate in the fullness of the bodily resurrection when Christ's kingdom comes that Mary died she went to heaven. She doesn't have the eschatological glorification of her body as Rome climbs over the bodily assumption that having none of that stuff. We don't pray to Mary.

I've had my Catholic friend said he put why not free to marry if she asked her son for something, he stopped and refuse her own not told to pray to Mary were told to pray to the one who is the mediator we have a great high priest. We don't have a great high priest. That's we have our great high priest who intercedes for us is that not enough silly Prater. His grandmother, grandfather, who else, no, Mary's not divine. She is a sinner saved by grace, just as we are, but what a gracious gracious sinner. She was reading this text, a willingness to do the will of the Lord. Now that's what we can learn from Mary how to be in subjection to God?

I know that I speak for so many of you in expressing how much I appreciate the balance in careful teaching of Dr. RC Sproul, we have continued his verse by verse series from the gospel of Luke today and were glad you joined us for Renewing Your Mind on the Sunday I'm Lee Webb as copastor of St. Andrews Chapel Dr. Spruill had the opportunity to preach through entire books of the Bible and much of that biblical wisdom was captured and put into a commentary series and let me say from first-hand experience of these commentaries are a joy to read the winsome lists and little clarity you heard in today's message is throughout his commentaries and when you contact us today with a donation of any amount we will be glad to provide you with a digital download of his commentary on the Gospel of Luke. This is an online offer only so invite you to go to Renewing Your Mind.org to make a request that's Renewing Your Mind.org left to marry her.

She was going to bear the Messiah.

She went to visit her cousin Elizabeth and we will hear about the amazing response of Elizabeth baby next week as we continued on people series from here on Renewing Your Mind help you make plans to join us