The Cost Of The Call
Jeremiah 1:4-9 Luke 1:26-38 10/31/2019
Let me ask you something and try to be as honest as possible, when you hear the word East Cleveland, what comes to mind? Poverty, abandoned houses, crime, bad streets, dilapidated buildings, shootings, or place I don’t want to live.
Or perhaps you have a slightly more favorable impression thinking Rockefeller Park, the pond, Shaw High School Marching Band, the place I grew up or even the place where I live. I think if you asked God today, what comes to mind when you hear East Cleveland, God would say, “Behold, that’s the place I chose to send my spirit to one who is highly favored and has my call upon her life.”
For even before my child was in Madeline Martin’s womb there on Forest Hill Avenue, I called her and appointed her to be a prophet to the nations. For I intended my Spirit to fall upon Antonia Martin to preach the good news to the poor, to proclaim hope to those who have none, and to serve as the hands and feet of my Son Jesus Christ in this world.
Aren’t you glad today that God is able to see diamonds where others only see broken pieces of glass. Mary, the mother of Jesus, was from the town of Nazareth which didn’t have much of a difference of a reputation as a city, than the city of East Cleveland has from which Antonia came out of. As a matter of fact Nazareth had such a bad reputation, that it almost cause one person to not to even consider listening to Jesus.
In the gospel of John in the Bible, a guy by the name Phillip had run into Jesus just as Jesus was starting his public ministry. Jesus had told Phillip “come follow me.” Phillip began that journey. Phillip was so excited ,he had to go and tell one of his best friends. He found Nathaniel and told him, we have found the one Moses said was coming, and the one the prophets have written about.
At this Nathaniel started smiling and his eyes got big. They had been waiting for hundreds of years for the Messiah to come. Could it be. this guy might really be the one?
I can see him saying, “Who is it, who is it.” Phillip said. “It’s Jesus from Nazareth the son of Joseph. At that, Nathaniel face dropped and the joy left from his eyes. “Are you kidding me, Nazareth? Nazareth, can anything good come from there?
I’m so glad we serve a God who is not limited by where we come from, how old we are, what we’ve done, or how bad we’ve been. God’s grace can more than make-up for the failings that we have in our lives because all of us have failed, and none of us deserve the love and mercy that God offers to us all.
God offers us His grace and His mercy because He has a call and a claim upon each of our lives whether we know it or not. When God looks at us, God sees far more than we can think or imagine.
When God called Mary, she was basically a nobody. She was probably poor. Her family was not that significant. She came from Nazareth, a place that the Jewish people avoided because of the Roman Garrison that was stationed there. You may remember those soldiers who ordered you to carry those bags for a mile. Nobody wanted to go to Nazareth and get trapped.
Mary was not a prophet or a priest. She was not a worker in the temple. There were young women who practically lived at the temple in hope they would give birth to the Messiah. Mary was simply at home, in Nazareth planning the details for her wedding. Nobody was more shocked that God wanted to use her than she was.
And yet here she is, and God sends the angel Gabriel to her. First of all to see an angel was frightening enough, but to hear the words, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.” Must have been somewhat overwhelming.
The angel explains to Mary that she is going to have a Son who is to become the Savior of the world. He will become Great and will be called the Son of the Most High God. The Lord will give him the throne of David and his kingdom will never end.
Mary tries to explain this can’t happen because she is engaged, and she is a virgin so that rules out any kind of pregnancy. The angel explains to her, “that’s no problem because the Holy Spirit is going to come upon you so the one born to you is going to be called the Son of God. Nothing is impossible with God.”
Mary is receiving a call that is coming at a price. Every call of God comes at a price. The cost is obedience and sacrifice. You cannot follow Jesus’s call without obedience and sacrifice. Jesus says, if you love me, you will keep my commandments.
Now think about what the angel is asking Mary to do.
1) Risk your engagement. How do you her fiancé is going to receive the news, “I’m pregnant but don’t worry it’s by the Holy Spirit.”
2) Risk your reputation. How does she explain to her parents that she’s pregnant but not by Joseph and they have already given Joseph’s family a payment of a dowry.
3) Risk ridicule by the community. Oh my goodness, this is just the kind of thing you expect from a teenager from Nazareth?
4) Risk condemnation from the religious community. To have sex with another man during this year of engagement was tantamount to adultery. You could be stoned for that.
5) Risk feeling lonely and isolated from others with only God knowing what’s truly happening inside of you.
Mary knew this call was coming at a price. Antonia, your call into ministry is going to come at a personal price. Its going to alter some of your relationships. It’s going to put you at odds with some of your friends. You cannot rise up closer to God, without leaving some things behind. Sometimes you even leave some people behind, some who will walk away from you and others you will have to walk away from.
Jesus warns every believer about the cost of following him. He put it this way” “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. 24 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will save it. 25 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, and yet lose or forfeit their very self?
Mary considered the cost and she chose to put her trust and her confidence in God. I think the words that stuck with her the most was that she had God’s favor and that the Lord is with her. There is nothing greater than to have God’s favor upon your life. You never know what God is going to do next. Mary made her choice, knowing that her life was never going to be quite the same again.
After the angel told her that nothing is impossible with God, she said, “I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said.” In her statement, Mary recognized something that many of us do not. She recognized that all of us are serving somebody or something. She made her declaration to the be the Lord’s servant. What does your life say about whose servant you are today?
Are you serving yourself and you are in charge of you? That’s kind of dangerous isn’t it. Can you really guarantee what tomorrow is going to bring into your life? Are you ready for those things you can’t control?
Are you serving your career? When we serve a career we tend to miss out on the relationships we have in life because the career can cause us to make sacrifices we probably shouldn’t make?
If we had made ourselves a servant of money and wealth, then realize it will never satisfy us because there is always more to be made. If we make ourselves servants of sin or addiction, then realize they can only promise us death in the end. None of these things will ever as attractive as God’s favor which comes to us through Jesus Christ.
We can learn several things from God’s call to Mary and how she responded. Mary allowed God to produce within her patience. Jesus was not born the day after the angel left. It still took nine months for her to give birth but it took thirty something years before she and the world could see that Jesus was actually the Son of God, by the words he spoke and the miracles he did.
He turned water into wine. He fed 5,000 with five loaves and two fish. He opened the eyes of the blind. He caused the lamed to walk. He raised a dead 12 year old girl to life along with others. 30 something years is a long time waiting for God to fulfill his word.
Mary allowed God to produce within her perseverance. When she told Joseph this wonderful news, it was not at all wonderful to Joseph. Joseph made up his mind to quietly divorce Mary, which meant he wouldn’t publicly humiliate her, but he wasn’t going to live with her. Mary persevered in going through with the marriage with the knowledge that Joseph had not believed her. She had to have felt some element of betrayal. How could Joseph had actually believed she had cheated on him? Didn’t he know what kind of a person she was?
Sometimes God gives us a perspective that others do not have. We can’t expect them to jump on board and accept our reality as the only reality they can see. God knows when we are about to reach our limit and God’s favor will cause others to see things as we see them if we persevere. God sent an angel to let Joseph know that Mary was pregnant by the Holy Spirit, and that he should not be afraid to take her as his wife because the child inside of her would save the people from their sins. Joseph immediately received Mary as his wife.
Mary allowed God to produce courage in her. She stood up for God despite the hostility she faced from others. Most people didn’t believe this story about a Holy Ghost pregnancy. That didn’t keep her from walking in the community with her head held high. She still went to the temple when it was time to go. She, Joseph and Jesus were together in the temple when Jesus was 12.
When Jesus was in the midst of preaching and teaching, there were those who tried to discredit him based on his mother’s behavior. When Jesus told the religious leaders they were not Abraham’s children, they responded they were not illegitimate children. Some commentators think they were throwing a slur at Jesus and how he was born. We know all about that funny business going on when you were born.
Mary was there watching Jesus die on the cross. This was not what she had in mind when she said yes to the call of God upon her life. It was one thing to imagine your child being the Savior of the world. It was quite different to see him with nails in his hands, and nails in his feet, with a face beaten so badly he barely bore resemblance to the young man she had watched grow up. All she saw in the natural was a bloody mess of a man hanging on a cross. Can you imagine your own child being beaten beyond recognition.
She was there when the sky turned black from 12 to 3 that day. She must have been angry, but then she heard him cry out, Father forgive them for they know not what they are doing. Did her son really want to forgive his tormentors? Then must she also forgive them?
She watched Jesus talk to the two thieves on the cross. She watched when he was able to lift his swollen eye lids and look down at her from the cross and she couldn’t stop hearing him say, “Woman, behold your Son.”
She was there when the soldier took the spear and rammed it into Jesus side, only to see the blood and water flow out. She was there to hear him say it is finished, “Father into Your Hands I commit my spirit.”
She thought than when he died it was all over. Had God deceived her. Had she gone through the last 35 years in vain. Hadn’t the angel promised her that Jesus would sit on the throne of his father David, and that his kingdom would have no end.
Yet at the end of his life, the city of Jerusalem had turned against him crying out that he be crucified. Why on earth did God allow the throne to be switched with a cross.
Three days later on a Sunday morning when she was still in her moment of grief reliving the horrific events from 3 days earlier, word came that her son Jesus, had risen from the dead. A group of the women she hung out with, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary had gone to the tomb to anoint the body of Jesus for burial.
Instead they found an angel who told them, “I know who you are looking for, but he is not here. He is risen from the dead and he will appear to you in Galilee.” Not only that Jesus himself appeared to the two women and they had grabbed him by the feet. He told them to go tell the disciples that he had risen and would meet them in Galilee.
All of a sudden, Mary realized things were coming together just like God had promised. When Jesus said it was finished, he wasn’t saying that he was finished. He was saying, what he came to do was finished. You see the blood that she saw pouring out his side, was the blood that washes away our sin. The throne God had placed him on was not in Jerusalem, but in heaven.
The power that God used to raise him from the dead, established his kingdom that would never come to an end. He is still being called, Son of the Most High God. God had kept every single promise the angel had given to Mary before she said, “I am the Lord’s servant, May it be to me as you have said.”
Mary’s call had come at a price of great joy and great suffering. Antonia, I can’t tell you what its going to cost you to accept this calling, this assignment from God. All I can guarantee is that if you give your all to God, one day it’s going to all be worth it.
For as surely as we stand here in this place today, we will all one day stand before the judgement seat of God and give an account for the lives we have lived. On that day none of us shall be declared righteous in the eyes of God based on the lives we have lived and the things we have done. Antonia God is ordaining you to prepare others for that day which is sure to come
We can be assured that all of us will fall short of what God requires and that all of us will need a Savior who can stand up on our behalf and say, “my blood has paid the penalty for that one’s sin.”
All who follow Jesus Christ by putting their trust and confidence in him, making him the most important part of their lives, will have a Savior seated upon a throne, to declare” this one is mine and shall be with me for all eternity.”
God did not make Mary say yes to His plan for her life. God will not make us say yes to the plans God has for us. God only tells us the consequences for rejecting them for the word of God says:
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
