Christmas 2020
The Greatest News Ever
Luke 1:26-45
A very significant event for the world took place this last week. At 6:31 a.m. on Tuesday, December 8th the very first government-approved dose of the Covid-19 Vaccine in the free world was administered. A nurse rolled up the sleeve of a retired 90-year-old retired shopkeeper from Ireland by the name of Maggie Keenan, and gave her the first shot of Pfizer’s Covid-19 Vaccine at University Hospital Coventry in England.
Asked for her reaction, Keenan replied that she was encouraging everyone to “Go for it. Because it’s the best news ever.”
Now perhaps we can forgive her for a little exaggeration at the moment. After all the Covid-19 Pandemic has killed 1.5 million people in the course of 2020 and has changed the lives of nearly every person on the planet as it has raged through the world’s population.
But let’s think a little more carefully here. Is it really the best news ever that there’s a vaccine that will prevent people from potentially dying somewhat prematurely? In Maggie’s case she may have another 10 to 12 years of life at best, even with the help of the vaccine.
The current plague tends to cause us to forget is that there is still another even greater, even more universal plague—it’s called death. And it’s really strange at this time of year, in this Christmas season, that a vaccine that temporarily puts off death should begin to overshadow in some respect the real best news ever. And that is that there is essentially a vaccine against death, a Savior which has been born, who saves us from our sins and death.
So we’re going to review the Christmas story—this time by examining how the response of one of the first people to receive the best news ever, Mary, Jesus’ mother, and the example she sets for how we should respond: She received it humbly, believed it fully and shared it joyfully. And so should we.
Luke’s account of the Good News of Jesus Christ actually begins with the miraculous birth of John the Baptist, Jesus’ forerunner. His coming birth had just been revealed to Zechariah and Elizabeth, in their old age, and Elizabeth is now in her sixth month of pregnancy when the Angel Gabriel makes his visit to the virgin, Mary, who is thought to have been about 15 or 16 years old at the time. The visit takes place in the town of Nazareth in Galilee, and Mary is engaged to be married. Both, as Scripture tells us, were descendants of David, of the tribe of Judah, a fulfillment ultimately of prophecy with regard to the very family who would bear the Jewish Messiah and coming King.
As some of you no doubt know, there was considerable speculation at the timethat the Messiah’s coming might be near. Prophecies which we have studied in the Book of Daniel, chapter nine, placed His coming at right about this time in history. And one of the great honors that were desired by many young women in Jesus’ time was that the incredible promise of Isaiah 7:13-14 might be fulfilled within one of them—that they might be the virgin who was with child and whose name would be “Immanuel” which means God with us.
The kind of person whom God chose to bear the Messiah tells us a lot about the kind of person who will likely be blessed by the greatest news ever. It’s the kind of person that the Virgin Mary of Nazareth epitomized. She was a humble young lady, as she puts it, a bond-servant of the Lord. She was willing to do anything the Lord asked of her.
There are at least three indications in this passage that show just how humble this Mary really was.
First, verses 28-29 show us just how innocent and unassuming she was. She was not the sort to expect anything great was going to happen for her, that she deserved something special. She was entirely innocent as the Angel Gabriel approaches her with his amazing greeting. In verse 28, he approaches her with “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you!”
Now such a greeting ought to cause us to ask why Mary was so favored by the Lord. What was it about her that caused her to be the one He selected for this very honored task—to be the mother of His only begotten Son?
It’s reflected in her response. Again, innocent and unassuming, verse 29 tells us “she was very perplexed at this statement and kept pondering what kind of salutation this was.” She seems totally unaware that there’s anything very special about herself and wonders why she would be the recipient of such a blessed sort of greeting from an angel.
Some of the godliest people I know are like this—unaware of just how special they are. They are truly humble. So clearly, Mary wasn’t expecting that she would be the Lord’s chosen one to bear the Savior.
Of course, the passage then describes her many questions about how she was going to conceive and bear the child, but finally, when Gabriel has explained everything, she responds with what I consider to be one of the most amazing responses to a calling from the Lord in all of the Bible. Now consider this, she’s all of 15 or 16 years old. Having been told she’s going to bear Israel’s Messiah, she simply presents herself to the Lord, humbly, for whatever He would want to do with her. “Behold, the bond-slave of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word.”
Now some of you are familiar with what an Old Testament bond-slave was. From Deuteronomy 12:15-17, a bond-slave was a Hebrew slave, who at the end of the time period that Jews were permitted to be slaves, a six-year period, decided he loved his master and his family, and did not wish to be set free, because he wanted to be part of their family for the rest of his life. So he could choose to become a bond-slave—one who willingly choose to be that family’s servant out of love for the rest of his life.
This was the attitude being expressed here by Mary toward the Lord—that out of love, she was his bondservant for life, and therefore, whatever He asked of her, she was willing to do and to be.
What an incredible, humble, servant-like attitude! No wonder Mary was chosen for this great service. And in verse 48, as she raises her voice in praise toward the Lord for the gift of the Savior to be born to her, she recognizes, that at least in part, the reason for the Lord’s choice of her was her humble estate—a peasant girl from a town that doesn’t have the best reputation. She says in her Magnificat; beginning in verse 46: “My soul exalts the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior, for He has had regard for the humble state of His bond-slave.”
Again, what a godly woman, with a godly response for someone so young! How should we receive the good news, the greatest news ever? Like the first one who ever received it, Mary. Receive the great news with a humble, servant’s heart. For God gives grace to humble; it’s the proud that He resists, as Proverbs and James 4 tells us.
Is that your attitude toward the Lord? I’m not sure it’s always mine. I’ve told God I’m willing to do whatever He wants, but then when it’s a little or a lot different from what I was hoping, well, a lot of times there’s a lot of whining and complaining. Mary’s different. She’s dead serious about whatever the Lord has for her. And it’s eventually reflected by how she endures whatever inconveniences being the mother of the Messiah brings upon her—whether it’s her and Joseph’s flight to Egypt to escape Herod’s wrath, or the division among her other children who doubt Jesus’ Messianic identity or having to endure the crucifixion of her own son. And then the last time we hear about Mary is in the Book of Acts. She is ever-faithful—and is simply and humbly one of the 120 remaining followers of Jesus after His ascension who are praying for the coming of the Holy Spirit in Jerusalem, just as Jesus Himself had directed His followers to do.
Pride is an issue for most people. In fact, it’s the reason that most of the people you talk to have not received the ultimate gift of Christmas—Jesus and the eternal life He offers. I personally witness to at least four or five people a month, and I almost always ask them this question to determine where they are spiritually: “If you were to die tonight and meet God at heaven’s gate, and He were to ask you why He should let you in, what would you say?” Probably more than 90% of the time, the answer is something along the lines of “I’m a good person, or because of the good things I do.” This is the reason people don’t think they need a Savior, the gift of Christmas, because they’re good enough for God. Their lack of humility in understanding that they can’t be good enough for a holy God and that they can’t earn or deserve heaven keeps them from accepting the gift of eternal life. So they don’t realize it comes not by works, but only through through faith, and faith alone, in what Jesus did for them on the cross, rather than what they can do for themselves. Part of our job in winning people to Christ is helping them get lost before they can get saved—that is helping them realize that they can’t be good enough for God on their own so they desperately need to trust in Christ and the forgiveness He alone offers. So receiving this gift humbly, as a sinner who needs a Savior, is the only way the good news can truly be received!
Of course, Mary does have some questions about how all this is going to work, as anyone in her position would. As the angel announces to her in verse 31, “You will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David,” she wonders, how can this be, since I am a virgin?
Well, it’s a very good question when any of us understand “The Birds and the Bees.” She knows that typically this sort of thing—conception--doesn’t happen unless both a woman and a man are involved. And it appears that a man is not part of this conception.
So the angel explains that it’s going to be a miracle, a miracle that only the Spirit of the Lord could bring about. Verse 35: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason, the holy Child shall be called the Son of God.”
Now here Mary’s responses to the predicted miraculous birth of the Messiah are quite different from Elizabeth’s husband’s response to the angel’s prediction of the birth of John the Baptist in his old age. Because he doesn’t believe, he asks for a sign, and he gets one, as a rebuke—that he would be unable to speak due to his unbelief until the child was born. However, once told, Mary simply believes. God can do this. What is impossible with man is possible with God.
But there’s something more she believes as she receives this greatest news ever. It’s this. That because the Holy Spirit would be the One who brought about the conception, the son born to her, as the angel explained, would derive His divine nature from the Holy Spirit. So He would be God. And He would derive is human nature from Mary. So He would be called the Son of God—the God-Man. He would be both God and Man, which might at this point seem to be a detail, but it’s a crucial detail. This son who would be born of Mary would be no average prophet. He would be no exceptional prophet like John the Baptist. He would literally be God in the flesh, God among us, the most exceptional, stupendous revelation of God ever given to mankind, and also the single man among all men who would be called Jesus. His name, in Hebrew, is significant, because it tells us God saves, and indeed, only God can save us. This Jesus would be the Savior!
Now to be honest, I’m not sure how much of this theology she grasped at the moment. But she believed no matter how incredible it may have seemed and believed regardless of how incredible the implications of being the mother of God might seem that Jesus would uniquely be God’s Son. It was quite a stretch for any young woman to imagine this—giving birth . . . to God. But Mary, incredibly, just simply believed what the angel had told her with a child-like faith and was blessed for it.
She believed fully, even as we must believe fully today what God has done in providing us with the best news ever—that God did indeed visit us as a man to save us from our sins. And as it turns out, the very truths so carefully detailed by the angel here are essential to our receiving the full benefit of the Good News. Jesus would tell us repeatedly that understanding and believing that He was the only begotten Son of God who alone saves through His death for our sins are essential to receiving salvation, the gift of eternal life. He even told the Jews, “Unless you believe that I Am—(in other words, that I Am the “I Am that I Am” or God) you will die in your sins” (John 8:24). And John 3:16 even reflects the truth that belief in Jesus as the only begotten Son of God, begotten of God and therefore God Himself, is part of what must be believed to have everlasting life.
And what is incredible today is that so many people who claim in our country to be evangelical Christians do not believe this. Incredibly, a Lifeway Research Study conducted among self-identifying evangelicals in March of this year (2020) demonstrated that 30% agree that Jesus was merely a great teacher, and not God! And fully 65% still agree with the statement that Jesus is merely “the first and greatest being created by God!” This is no small matter of unbelief—it is the difference between eternal life and eternal death according to the verses I’ve already referenced, as well as others. As this passage indicates, Jesus was fully God and fully man, and it’s only because He was fully God as well as fully man that His death for our sins was even capable of saving us. What Mary believed here in this passage-- that this son would not merely be her son but uniquely the Son of God is the very stumbling block that causes so many so-called Christians who regard themselves as part of our movement to fall and fail with respect to such an essential belief.
Mary here again serves as a great example of the kind of person who receives the full benefit of the greatest news ever—with childlike faith she simply believed when she was told her son, the Messiah, would be the Son of God, fully God and fully man. We receive the good news fully when we believe fully as Mary believed.
Who do you believe Jesus was and is? Just a good moral teacher? Just the first of God’s created beings? That’s actually heresy—it disqualifies from salvation. Believe Jesus was 100% God and 100% man, for this is the testimony of the Word of God—that Jesus was the ultimately and final revelation of God in a way we could best understand Him—as a man.
Now, can you imagine being in Mary’s shoes. She really has been one of the very first to receive the greatest news ever. And she’s going to play a huge role in that bringing that greatest news ever to humankind—she is going to bear . . . God, the Son of God, the Savior Jesus, who will save the world! I mean, this is the greatest news ever! We get excited about just any conception—someone’s going to have a baby! But she’s going to have the Messiah! But who is she going to tell? But who in the world is going to believe her! I mean, not even her mother is going to fall for this story! Anyone she told is going to believe she’s either crazy or immoral, and probably both.
But I’m sure she was going to burst--wanting to share this incredible news with somebody. And I think part of the graciousness of God is evident here, because God told her someone she could tell. God gave her the name of someone she knew who would believe her, understand and identify. It was her older relative Elizabeth, the wife of Zechariah. The aged Elizabeth who was now in her sixth month of pregnancy with John the Baptist, a miraculous birth in and of itself because she was well beyond child-bearing age and had never had a child. And she also knew that the time had come for the coming of the Messiah. For if John were to be the forerunner of the Messiah, the Messiah must come soon after.
And so the Angel reveals this important detail as well. Here, Mary, is whom you can tell this great news: Verse 36: “And behold, even your relative Elizabeth has also conceived a son in her old age; and she who was called barren is now in her sixth month. For nothing will be impossible with God.”
Well, having heard this, what does Mary do? Just exactly what you would expect any red-blooded Jewish girl who has realized she is about to give birth to Israel’s Messiah and the Savior of the world, the Son of God would do. She runs off to see Elizabeth, the only person she can reasonably expect would believe the story behind her unplanned pregnancy.
Beginning with verse 39; “Now at this time Mary arose and went in a hurry to the hill country, to a city of Judah, and entered the house of Zacharias and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. And she cried out with a loud voice and said, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And how has it happened to me, that the mother of my Lord would come to me? For behold when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby leaped in my womb for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what had been spoken to her by the Lord.”
In other words, Elizabeth, filled by the Holy Spirit, prophetically assures Mary that what she has heard from the Angel Gabriel is literally going to come to pass.
But what we also see is something else. What our response should be when we have received the greatest news ever. We should be eager, even run to tell others of the greatest news ever. For there has been a vaccine, if you will, that has been given that inoculates against much more than a coronavirus, but against the death that plagues all mankind. It’s a great news that we should all be eagerly sharing with others, whenever we can, however we can, because it is the news of eternal life.
So how can this be applied. Well, a couple of ways. Make the most of this Christmas season in sharing the Good news—send not merely a card, but a tract explaining this great news to all your friends. Take some from the table at the back. Let people know that Christmas isn’t just about giving and receiving gifts, and Christmas trees, as odd as this Christmas is. As people are more aware of their mortality than ever, share with them the gift of life that comes through faith in Jesus.
And invite them to church, as different as church is. They may be more responsive than ever. Next Sunday is the closest to Christmas a Sunday service will be, but we also have a Christmas Eve Service at 6 p.m. Thursday, December 24th, here that will feature an evangelistic message and video.
And finally, if you’re really interested in learning how to share the Good News with your friends and relatives, I offer myself as your tutor. Yes, we’ll probably have to do the training virtually, but I’m willing if you are!
After all, Jesus’ coming, and the eternal life he offers is the greatest news ever. The only proper response to it is to receive it humbly, believe it fully, and share it joyfully to anyone and everyone who will hear!
Let’s pray.
