Mary didn’t just suddenly appear on the earth. She was born, just like any other baby girl. She wasn’t from a thriving center of commerce and wealth. She was from a little town in the region of Galilee - a town where someone asked, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
We know something indeed good came out of Nazareth! The Law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. The journey of Jesus to earth was a mission of grace - God’s amazing grace.
It was first a grace given to Mary, beginning with a visit from an angel who appeared to her and said,
Luke 1:28 “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!”
1. Go ahead and be shocked that God has “graced” you!
God’s grace is perplexing.
We (that is mankind right up to this present day) get this so backwards. We create God. We start with mankind as the ultimate reality, and from there build a god in our own image. Since He’s a god, we’ll accord him lots of power, and abilities, so that he can do things that we like and want him to do - kind of like Santa Claus. But we’ll also have some flaws built into him, to help explain why things in life go wrong sometimes. We’ll limit his authority, so that he’s not too much of an imposition on our lifestyle. Let’s give him just enough of it to motivate us to be “good,” kind of like Santa Claus. And if we do mess up too much, he’ll overlook it. He’ll give us grace - just like Santa Claus. That way, neither we nor him will have to take our sin very seriously. We can just kind of laugh it off together.
When that’s the kind of god you believe in, amazing grace isn’t really that amazing. It’s just what you’d expect from someone who’s already a lot like you are and who doesn’t get too bent out of shape over your selfish choices. He’s just a bit nicer than everyone else…kind of like Santa Claus.
But that’s not the God of Scripture. That’s not God Almighty Who sent His messenger Gabriel to a young woman in Nazareth with the message that the whole world was about to be changed, and she would have an important part in it.
While we don’t have a lot of details about Mary given to us, what we are told about her is nothing outstanding really. Last week, we looked at the visit of the angel Gabriel to Zechariah as he served in the temple. Now, as Gabriel visits Mary, the same word is used to describe her first reaction - she’s “stirred up” inside - like a can of paint in the shaker at Menards. We also get to see that Mary is a thinker - observing things, and trying to understand what they all mean - pondering them. “Favored one? What makes me a receiver of God’s gift? Why is God with me?”
And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.” Literally, it means “you have found grace with God.”
Grace, by its very definition, is a gift. It’s not something you earn, not something that you merit by your own goodness or achievement. In fact, it’s in spite of what you’ve earned. Mary had found grace with God.
We’re wrong to make more of Mary than Scripture makes of her. She’s presented to us as a very ordinary person who’s surprised by the idea that God would show His favor to her. That’s probably the character quality that Mary has that I admire the most: she knows who God is and who she is in light of His greatness.
A little later on in this chapter in Luke, we have her words as she breaks out in praise to God…
Luke 1:46-50 And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed; for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name. And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.
Ill - What if a great plague was engulfing Rockford - a terrible, fast-moving disease that gave little warning of its presence. You work for the Center for Disease Control, and you have been dispatched to go door-to-door in a particular neighborhood, telling everyone there that this horrible disease has arrived and they are certainly already infected. It will ultimately kill them. Can you imagine the uproar that would create across our city?
But there’s good news! A cure! All they need to do is show up at the CDC shelter down on the corner, and they can receive the cure for the disease free of charge, right there. It will work the same for every person. But they must go and get it. It will mean the difference between living and dying. That’s kind of the story of God’s grace.
God’s grace is also retold in C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. In The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, he invites you to imagine a place called Narnia - a land under the clutches of the White Witch, who makes it always winter and never Christmas. Then imagine the true King, Aslan the Lion, who represents Jesus, has returned to Narnia, and so has spring. 2 brothers and 2 sisters, the Pevensies, are visiting, but one of them, Edmund, has fallen into the queen’s power.
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One reason grace may not seem amazing to someone is because they don’t realize the seriousness of their situation without it.
Colossians 2:13-14
And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross.
Dead? Trespasses? Record of debt? Legal demands? Yes - a legal situation so serious, a guilt so real, a debt so huge, that getting rid of it involved figuratively nailing it to a cross where Jesus took it as He was literally nailed there.
When you consider Mary this Christmas season, I want to suggest to you that you go ahead and think like she did - go ahead and be shocked that God has extended His grace to you and me. We ought to be stirred up and thinking it through when we hear that we too have found grace with God. And we ought to be comforted that it’s true.
Romans 3:23-24
for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus,
Another feature of God’s undeserved favor is the way that we must accept it on His terms
2. God’s grace enters your life on His terms
Ill - This Christmas, in order to make sure that all gifts given to me are up to standards, I’m going to publish a checklist. It will be the “Making sure that your gift is just right for Sherm” checklist. You know how annoying it can be to be given something that you don’t really want or need. So, to help avoid that this year, I’m going to, you know, set some parameters for gifts - when and where I’ll be accepting them; what’s an acceptable price range - those kinds of things.
That’s OK, isn’t it? Or could it be that when someone is giving a gift, the person receiving the gift is simply supposed to accept that gift on the giver’s terms? Have you heard the expression, “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth”? It means, when someone offers you a gift, you accept it. You don’t start laying out a bunch of terms under which you’ll accept a gift.
Just imagine the Christmas story at this point if Mary had received this news from Gabriel and responded with a different agenda…
Mary! Don’t be afraid. You have found favor with God!
And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.
And Mary said to the angel, “Wait a second. I’ll be glad to go down in history as someone who raised the Messiah and all, but this pregnancy before marriage thing isn’t going to work. We’ll need to work this out as an adoption. And, if He’s going to grow up in my house, eat at my table, and take up my life, then it seems reasonable to me that he is known as my son and Joseph’s son. Also, I’ve always liked the name Oliver. I think I would prefer His name be Oliver, Okay?
It would make for some interesting Christmas carols, wouldn’t it?
We laugh, but when God offers His grace to us, it’s a gift.
I sit in wonder at the posture of some people who hear the good news about Jesus, hear what it means to follow Him and to cross over from death to life, but then who insist that the whole change takes place on their own terms. If that’s you this morning, please, please, take a step back. Look at this young woman named Mary who heard about God’s gift to her, and to the world, and how it was going to change everything. If anyone could have presented a list of objections, it was her. She didn’t object to how it was going to take place. She didn’t present a list of conditions that would have to be met. She simply accepted that God was going to do what He promised, and that she got to have a role in it. That’s because God’s grace is given on God’s terms.
This story of Mary gives us another insight concerning grace:
3. God’s grace is proven in the lives of others
Mary is just one story. There are many others in the Bible where it looks like God is taking big risks. Just creating us humans, and giving us freewill, seems like a disaster waiting to happen.
God chooses people to be key players in His grand plan - people who make bad choices and mistakes. God points to Job and says to Satan, “See my servant Job? There’s no one else like him on the face of the earth.” God commits His plan to be carried on by the likes of 11 disciples, and adds to their number a man who was formerly trying to destroy the whole plan.
That man wrote these words:
Ephesians 3:7-10 Of this gospel I was made a minister according to the gift of God’s grace, which was given me by the working of his power. To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, this grace was given, to preach to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ, and to bring to light for everyone what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places.
Somewhere, in the spiritual realm, spiritual beings are watching. Angels are longing to look into the whole working of the gospel message. And rulers and authorities - spirit beings - are watching as God gives His grace to people with checkered pasts. He gives forgiveness to people who don’t deserve it. He places His Spirit inside of people to direct their steps, if they will follow His lead. He frees them from Law-keeping as a way to be right in life, and instead invites them to be saved by grace through faith in Jesus Christ. He gives them the freedom to choose to obey or disobey, to love or to be indifferent toward Him. And it’s as if the forces of evil are saying what Satan said about Job, “Take away all that he has, take away his health, and he will curse You to Your face.”
But God isn’t shamed. God hasn’t acted foolishly by giving us His grace. Instead, the multifaceted wisdom of God is being made known in the spiritual realm, on display like a diamond on a rotating stand.
What? People are going to…
• love one another because they experience the love of God? Will that work?
• grant forgiveness to others who wrong them just because they’ve been forgiven first?
• live righteous lives just to please God, rather than being driven by threats and guilt?
• have the same regard for one another, despite what they were before they were following Jesus?
Will it ever work? According to God, it will. Powers in the spiritual realm will look at the Lord’s Church and see His wisdom.
Wouldn’t you like to be a part of that? Well, you are, when you’re a part of His Church. That’s what we’re supposed to be doing - being a display of the wisdom of God.
As Mary wrestled with all of this news, Gabriel gave her some help. “Don’t be afraid, Mary, for you have found grace with God. How is that possible? What if someone else was to be given God’s grace in the same way?”
Luke 1:36-37
And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.”
Mary went to see first-hand this woman who could never have a child, who was now too old to have children. Mary went to her cousin to visit with her, and to see this thing that God was doing in her life. Can you imagine the discussions that Mary and Elizabeth had for the 3 months she spent until it was about Elizabeth’s due date? If anyone would believe Mary’s claim that she was pregnant by a miracle, it would be Elizabeth!
It’s not just in the spiritual realm that God’s wisdom is on display. When I look at you, when you look at me, we can say, “Wow. God’s grace is amazing!” Go ahead, look deep into the eyes of someone near you this morning and say, “Wow. God’s grace is amazing!”
Yep, I used to wonder at the idea that God might forgive me, but then I realize He forgives you! He forgives Rahab, He forgives Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, He forgives David, He forgives Paul. He forgives me. Don’t be afraid. You have found favor with God. No matter who you are or what you’ve done up to this day. God’s gift of grace to Mary was a gift of grace to everyone.
Conclusion:
You might be right on the edge of receiving God’s grace as your own today.
Remember the plague story? The plague is sin. It surely has infected our city, our whole world, in fact. And it has affected you. It has affected every one of us, because everyone of us has sinned and are falling short of the glory of God. The result of that sin is death - not just physical death, but eternal death and punishment in Hell.
And the good news is that there also really is a cure for our sin infestation.
If someone was truly convinced they were going to die, and that there was a cure that would stop it, wouldn’t they accept the cure? I suppose they could just go on, living like their imminent death isn’t reality, convinced they are the exception to the rule. Maybe that’s you right now, and you stay there, even though it’s a bit frightening when you give it some thought.
You can choose to be afraid every day until you accept God’s gift, or you can be like Mary.
“Let it be to me according to your word.”
