Does The Virgin Birth Matter?

Introduction:

A. Once there was a Sunday school teacher who asked her class of kindergarteners to draw a picture of the manger scene when Jesus was born in Bethlehem.

1. All the children went to work immediately on their pictures.

2. As the teacher moved from student to student looking at their pictures, she noticed something interesting in the corner of one of the student’s pictures.

3. In the corner of one student’s sketch was a very plump, jolly-looking fellow.

4. As the teacher pointed to the portly character, she asked: “Tell me about this person.”

5. “Oh,” replied the young student, “that’s Round John Virgin.”

6. I can see how a child might think the song was saying “round John virgin” … “silent night, holy night, all is calm, all is bright, round yon virgin mother and child.”

7. It’s easy for all of us to get confused about things!

B. Today, I want us to explore the question: “Does the Virgin Birth Matter?”

1. I prefer to refer to it as the “virgin conception,” because it was the conception and not the birth itself was the real miracle, but either way, it’s a miraculous thing.

2. The Bible reports that Mary was a virgin at the time she conceived Jesus and that she continued to be a virgin until Jesus was born.

3. Mary and Joseph were married between the time of the miraculous conception and the birth in Bethlehem.

4. But let’s ask the question: Does it matter that, Jesus, the Son of God was conceived without the aid of a human father through the divine action of the Holy Spirit?

C. As you can imagine, the virgin conception and birth of Jesus is something that skeptics like to make fun of.

1. The virgin conception and birth is one part of the Jesus story that skeptics love to try to shoot holes in because it sounds so outlandish to them.

2. For example: Bernard Katz, a biophysicist & Nobel Prize winner, refers to the virgin birth as an “immaculate deception.”

3. Atheist Richard Dawkins says the virgin birth and the resurrection of Jesus and Lazarus and the Old Testament miracles are “religious propaganda which is very effective with an audience of unsophisticates & children.”

4. Thomas Jefferson said: “The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the Supreme Being as his father, in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter.”

5. These comments aren’t surprising considering that they come from an unbelieving Jew, an atheist, and a deist.

D. But there are also some believers who struggle with the virgin birth and find it embarrassing and wish it weren’t part of the story.

1. There are Christians who believe that the virgin birth is something that we could dispense with, without it affecting the overall message of the gospel.

2. For example, Rob Bell, the controversial author of “Love Wins,” former pastor of one of the fastest growing churches in the U.S, who was once named by Time Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world, wrote, “What if tomorrow someone digs up definitive proof that Jesus had a real, earthly, biological father named Larry, and archaeologists find Larry’s tomb and do DNA samples and prove beyond a shadow of doubt that the virgin birth was just a bit of mythologizing the gospel writers threw in to appeal to the followers of the Mithra and Dionysian religious cults that were hugely popular at the time of Jesus, whose gods had virgin births? Would you still be a Christian? Is the way of Jesus still the best possible way to live?”

3. In other words, we could still have Christianity without a virgin-born Savior.

4. People who believe that would say that the manner of His birth contributes nothing to our salvation or to the proclamation of the gospel.

E. Advocates of the view that the virgin birth doesn’t matter often point out such facts as these:

1. We have 4 Gospels, but only 2 (Mt. & Lk.) explicitly say He was born of a virgin.

2. The apostle Paul, in all of his 13 NT letters, never once makes a direct reference to the VB.

3. Likewise the letters of Peter, John, James, & Hebrews don’t mention the virgin birth.

4. When the Gospel was preached in the Book of Acts, it was preached without reference to the virgin birth and they would suggest that therefore it can be preached that way now.

F. So, back to our original question: Does the virgin birth really matter?

1. Is the virgin birth important to our faith, or can we just ignore it, especially since it is an idea so hard to “sell” to non-believers?