R.C. Sproul

We know the song in sacred music that is so widely popular, the Ave Maria.

are words taken basically from the New Testament.

Ave is a simple greeting, and it is the greeting of Gabriel to this peasant girl, and where he greets her as Mary and pronounces to her that she is blessed among women.

Beloved, though Protestants do not embrace Mary,

the theology that attends the veneration of Mary in the Roman Catholic Church.

Nevertheless, we certainly agree that of all of the women who have ever lived on this planet, the one who was most singularly blessed was the mother of Jesus.

And so the New Testament was right in

when the angel and Elizabeth said to her, blessed are you.

What does that mean to be blessed among women?

It means to experience a singular benefit from the grace of God.

And all who receive the visitation of God, the Holy Spirit into their lives,

experience that state of blessedness.

Finally, as I've mentioned to you on more than one occasion in the past, if you really want to get a hold of what blessedness means in Scripture, you look at the classic Hebrew benediction, which is set forth in a certain poetic form

which form is called parallelism because it comes in three verses, and each verse repeats what is asserted in the first verse, only using different words.

And we're familiar with the benediction, which is a beatitude.

May the Lord bless you and keep you.

The second line,

May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious unto you.

And finally, the third line, may the Lord lift up the light of his countenance upon you and give you his peace.

Do you see it in the first clause of each line?