Believe It Or Not, The Virgin B Irth

Believe It Or Not-Part 3 The Virgin Birth

12/14/2014 Jeremiah 1:4-8 Luke 1:26-45

How many of you have ever been in a place in which you were saying, “I can’t believe this is happening to me.” It may have been something good or it may have been something not so good. I can remember back in 7th grade the most popular couple was Leila Butler and Willie B. King. One day Willie B broke up with Lelia to go with Louise. Out of jealousy Leila, put out that she had decided to go with me. I heard through the grapevine that Leila was saying I was her new boyfriend. I was excited to be going with the most popular girl in the 7th grade. I couldn’t believe my wonderful fortune.

We didn’t have any classes together so I didn’t get a chance to talk with her and I didn’t have her phone number. I went home knowing that tomorrow was going to be my big day. I couldn’t wait for the night to pass and to get to school the next day. Well on the way to school, I heard once again through the grapevine, that Willie decided to leave Louise and go back to Lelia who gladly accepted him back. I had won and lost the most popular girl in the 7th grade without her saying as much as a hello or goodbye. I did learn not to believe everything you hear through the grapevine. Believe it or not my heart was broken.

We are in part 3 of our series “Believe It Or Not.” Pastor Kellie had us looking as to whether or not to believe the Second Coming of Christ. Pastor Toby had us looking at Believe it or not Peace is available to us because of the first coming of Jesus. Today we are going to look at the virgin birth and how it should affect our faith and shape our views.

We speak of the bible as though it is one book. The bible is actually 66 books that have been collected and put together over the centuries. It actually took over a thousand years for the bible to be written. There were other books along with the 66 books that were examined, but were rejected because they did not rise to the same level of inspiration from God and truth as these 66 books did.

There was a council of church leaders who studied, examined, prayed over and concluded these 66 books are the most reliable and trustworthy manuscripts that we have of what God has said to us. Now God used different people from different backgrounds to write the 66 different books.

When somebody says how do you know that some old guy didn’t just write the bible and make up a bunch of stuff. You can say believe it or not, history itself proves that did not happen and if one person wrote it, that person would have been over a 1,000 years old.

The story of the virgin birth appears in the gospel of Luke. Luke writes the gospel of Luke and the book of Acts. Luke interviewed a number of eyewitnesses and recorded their testimonies before writing the book. Luke was educated in that he was a medical doctor. So he knows all about how a woman normally gets pregnant. Before Luke tells us about the story of Mary and the conception of Jesus, Luke tells us about the conception and birth of John the Baptist.

Zechariah was a priest and was married to Elizabeth. Elizabeth is a cousin of Mary. Zechariah and Elizabeth were getting up in years and had had no children throughout their marriage. Luke the doctor tells us they were beyond the child bearing years. Yet God sent an angel to tell Zechariah, he and Elizabeth would have a son, and they were to name him John.

John would prepare the people’s hearts for the coming of the Lord. Zechariah told the angel, “this can’t happen, I am an old man and my wife is well along in years.” Gabriel told him it would happen but because he didn’t believe it, Zechariah would not be able to speak until what the angel said had come true. Just as Gabriel said, believe it or not, Elizabeth got pregnant. When she was in the sixth month of her pregnancy, we pick up the story of Mary.

Mary was not from a wealthy family. She is from Nazareth, a city with a bad reputation. She’s a teenager, maybe 14, 15, 16 years of age. That was the age of getting married in those days. Joseph is older and he has worked out a deal with her parents for the two of them to get married. They are officially engaged. But being engaged was much more binding than it is now. To break the engagement you had to go through divorce proceedings. The couple would live apart for that first year to remove any doubt that if a child was born during the first year, it was actually the child of the father. For a woman to get pregnant during that one year safety window meant bringing a lot of shame and disgrace on her family. She could possibly be stoned for committing adultery. Mary would have known all of this.