Luke 11:27-28--True Blessedness

Luke 11:27-28
English Standard Version
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True Blessedness
27 As he said these things, a woman in the crowd raised her voice and said to him, “Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you nursed!” 28 But he said, “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and keep it!”

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What are the "things" that Jesus said?  This is the danger of splitting the text up into such small pieces, as we lose the context of the larger surrounding text, so let's remind everyone where we are in Luke's gospel and what's been happening.  In chapter 10, Jesus sent out the 72 with power and authority to go ahead of Him into all the villages.  Before they even return, He know which cities are going to reject them because they have rejected Him.  Jesus curses those unrepentant cities and says that it will be better for Sodom and Gomorrah in the Day of Judgment and the children of these cities will rise up and testify against their elders in the Day of Judgment that they had all the evidence that they needed and yet did not believe because they did want to repent (they had hard hearts and loved the darkness and their sin).  Jesus then rejoices that the Father's will has been accomplished and the that truth of the gospel was revealed to those to whom it was to cause regeneration and hidden from those that hardened their hearts against it and it would bring condemnation to them.  The disciples were to consider themselves blessed because they were allowed to see the truth and have the meaning of the parables that Jesus spoke in explained to them.

We then saw the Parable of the Good Samaritan and that the whole Law and the Prophets is summed up in the Greatest Commandments--"Love the LORD your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength," and the second is like it "You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself."  The self-righteous man questioning Jesus that thinks he should be able to make it into heave on his own merit tries to justify himself by asking Jesus, "And who is my neighbor," for the man knows he does not love all people as he loves himself.  Jesus tells this parable and asks which of the people in the parable acted as a neighbor towards the man that was attacked and in need, and the self-righteous man could not even bring himself to say the word "Samaritan" but got the meaning of the story and said, "The one whom had compassion on the man" and Jesus told him to go and do likewise (notice Jesus doesn't tell him that by doing this he will earn his way to heaven, Jesus' answer to that was that the man must keep the Law perfectly, which only Jesus did).

We then met Mary and Martha and saw how Mary listening to Jesus and being close to Him because of how much she loved Him (for He had radically transformed her life) meant more than all the acts of service that Martha was performing.  This builds on what we just talked about that we can never do enough things to earn God's blessing of favor; we need to focus on the relationship that He calls us to.

We then talked about the Lord's Prayer and how Jesus is calling us to pray for the things that God already says that He wants to do and how praying for God to forgive us the way forgive others is hard and convicting to many of us and we saw that this is where Jesus spent some of His time continuing this teaching in the book of Matthew, but here in the book of Luke, we see that Jesus wants to teach His disciples more about praying that God would give us everything we need.  One of those things that we need that the Lord will definitely give us if we ask for it is the Holy Spirit (by way of our salvation) because God wants to give good gifts to His children.

There was then a question about whether Jesus performed His miracles by the Holy Spirit or by the power of another spirit--Beelzebul, the prince of demons.  Jesus said that the argument of these people made no sense and they would believe anything else other than that He was the Son of God, because then that would mean His words were true and that they would stand in condemnation for rejecting that Truth (for He is the Truth).  It makes no sense for a kingdom to be divided against itself and Jesus is about to show that Satan's so-called power is nothing at all because just the "finger of God" is enough to deal with all the powers of darkness, yet there will be some who have been set free from their spiritual bondage (maybe by the exorcisms performed by the Jews that Jesus talked about in 11:19) that have no heart change and they desire for the demons to come back with even more demons that are stronger yet, for they refuse to repent and give their heart to the Lord.  Notice how Jesus keeps coming back to the issue of people intentionally looking away.  The cities were condemned because they chose not to repent.  In the Parable of the Good Samaritan the priest and Levite looked away and crossed on the other side, and here the people are choosing willful ignorance and unbelief and it is just as if they are inviting Satan's minions to come and take up residence in their hearts because they are willing to believe any lie instead of believing the gospel truth.

It seems at this point that no one among the Jews is willing to see Jesus for who He is (we forget from chapter 10 that only the ones that the Father has revealed the truth to have eyes to see and ears to hear).  We are quick sometimes to paint with a broad brush and make anti-Semitic statements that all Jews rejected Jesus and that somehow the Father hates all Jews for this.  Nothing can be further from the truth if you read the New Testament carefully.  We wouldn't have the Bible (both the Old and New Testaments if it weren't for God working in and through Jewish people--Matthew, Mark, John, Paul, Peter, James, and Jude are all Jews who came to Jesus.  If we read the book of Romans we will see that it is God's plan still in the New Covenant for all of Israel to be saved and that there is no longer any distinction between Jew and Gentile in Christ, but God still loves the Jews and the gospel is go first to the Jews and then to the Gentiles.

Now with that out of the way, we see that there is an unidentified woman speaks what she thinks to be a prophecy and word of blessing over Mary the mother of Jesus and imagines that this will please Jesus.  Jesus does not let this stand and corrects her by saying, "Blessed rather are those who hear the Word of God and keep (obey) it."  See how that fits in with the bigger them of what's going on here.  There is not much time left as Jesus is marching towards Jerusalem for what He knows will be the last time.  It is now decision time.  As He said a little earlier in chapter 11, "Everyone that is not for Me is against Me."  And how do we know if we are for Him or against Him?  Jesus makes that quite clear in other places in the gospels.  "If you love Me, you will keep my commandments" and "“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven."  Jesus has told us to not just be hearers of the Word, but doers of the Word.  We'll know the world by their deeds and the world will recognize us by our deeds that are the Fruit of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6, Galatians 6, and Colossians 3 as a few places where we are told what the world looks like and what being in Christ looks like.  Also see Matthew 7).  A right relationship with God isn't going to come to Mary just because she was the mother of Jesus, only after she understood and believed the gospel (after the Resurrection) would that happen.  The same is true for Jesus' half-siblings.  None of them believed until after the Resurrection.  We too cannot claim a right relationship with God by some birthright.  We must make our own person decision to repent and believe the gospel and to obey the Word of God--it is to have authority over our lives in all areas for if God's Word does not have authority than we are saying God does not have authority and then we are saying that we are over God (making ourselves out to be in the place of God) being able to choose which areas He has authority in and which He doesn't.  Was this not part of the original sin in Genesis 3?  "You will be like God knowing [choosing for yourself what is] good and evil."  Like in the Garden all we need to do to be in a right relationship with God is to hear the Word of the Lord and obey it.