The Christmas Angels – Part 2 CCCH 12-12-99
INTRODUCTION
Growing up as a Gen X’er wasn’t always easy for me. But as a boy living at the end of the 1970’s there were still a few things I could count on to bring order to my life:
1. That the Cowboys or the Steelers would be in the Super Bowl.
2. That Kiss would always be cooler than the Village People.
3. And that the Brady Bunch would be on when I came home from school
Illus – Brady Bunch episode - Vote for Jan Brady for most popular girl in school. Many other students ask her what she’ll do if they vote for her. Each time she sayd, "Sure. I’ll do that. i.e. My brother is good at math, he’ll help you. If you vote for me, I’ll babysit for your little brother, etc." After election – those were just campaign promises. They don’t mean anything. She became least popular. Her dad told her she could use a little character building.
A. What a person does with a promise reveals a lot about his or her character.
We learned last week that even though times and cultures may change, God’s character remains the same. In the account of the angel’s visit to the virgin Mary, we see that…
B. THESIS: We can trust God to perform His promises.
TRANSITION: There are two fields of promise in this text that show us we can trust God.
I. WE HAVE BEEN PROMISED HIS SON
A. Jesus was promised long before his birth.
1. Throughout the pages of the Old Testament, God reveals a promise to His people.
a. He said to David concerning his offspring, “I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son…Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever.” (2 Samuel 7:14, 16)
b. “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.” (Isaiah 7:14)
2. When Gabriel shows up to visit Mary, it is announcement that God’s promises are being kept.
a. “You (a virgin) will be with child and give birth to a son. (v. 31)
b. “He…will be called the Son of the Most High.” (v. 32)
c. “The Lord will give him the throne of his father David” (v. 32)
d. “He will reign…forever; his kingdom will never end.” (v. 33)
B. God kept his promises in Jesus
1. It’s very unlikely that anyone other than someone sent by God could fulfill all of the promises God made about the Messiah.
Illus - Two guys were in a bar. After a while, they started chatting with one another. One said, "Where are you from?" The guy said, "I am from Pittsburgh." The one said, "Really, I am from Pittsburgh." He said, "I lived there in the 60’s and 70’s. I graduated in 1978." He said, "Are you kidding me? I graduated in 1978 from Lincoln High." The guy said, "I went to Lincoln High. This is unbelievable. Where did you live?" He said, "I lived at 463 Elm Street." He said, "That is amazing to me! I lived at 463 Elm Street." All of the sudden, the phone rang. It was the bartender’s wife. She said, "Anything going on?" He said, "No. It is a slow night. The Johnson twins are here again and they are both drunk."
No one else other than Jesus matches up with all the promises that were made about the Messiah.
You might be saying, "Somebody else could have done that. Somebody else could have fulfilled those prophecies that were spoken thousands of years before, some hundreds of years before, a long period of time where they were giving clues and prophecies about this Messiah. They tell us where he would be born, how he would be born, what his life would look like, how he would die, what family line he would come from.
Dr. Peter Stoner, Mathematics professor of Pasadena Community College calculated that for one person to even fulfill eight of the prophecies of Christ, of the Messiah, being fulfilled is one in ten to the 157th power. That is a big number. There is not much chance that even one person could fulfill eight of the prophecies.
Let me give you an illustration that I have used before, but I think it helps us get a picture. I’m assuming a mathematician with not much of a social life figured this out. The odds of someone fulfilling even 8 of the prophecies would be like the odds of taking the state of Texas and filling the state of Texas with silver dollars, two feet deep throughout the whole state. We take one of those silver dollars and put a big X on the back of it. Then we stuff it into the state of Texas and get some of the big guys here in church and mix it all up. Then we will take Hank Wilson and blindfold him. We send him to
Texas. We would actually take him to Texas first and then blindfold him because he would never find it. We would put him in Texas and let him wander around.
As he is wandering around, finally Hank bends down the first time and picks up a coin. The odds of that coin having the X on it are greater that he could do that than one person fulfilling even eight of the three hundred and thirty
prophecies.
Illus - Sampling of risks that a typical American encounters in everyday life. The odds that:
You will crush a finger with a hammer in the coming year - 1 in 3000
Your child dislikes school - 1 in 3
You will be driven from your home by a flood in the coming year - 1 in 4000
Your aged mother will come to live with you - 1 in 9
Your television set will catch fire this year - 1 in 7500
You will have some sort of serious mental disorder in your lifetime - 1 in 2
You will have an operation requiring a hospital stay in the coming year - 1 in 12
Your doctor is an imposter - 1 in 50
Your next meal will be from McDonalds - 1 in 8
(New York Times Sunday Magazine)
The odds that one person could fulfill just 8 of the prophecies made about the Messiah in the Old Testament are 1 in 10 to the 157th power.
2. There are 60 major prophecies and 270 minor prophecies in the Old Testament concerning the Messiah. Jesus fulfilled every one of them.
C. God keeps his word when he promises to do something.
1. For us, the promise of Jesus is the difference between life and death.
2. Because he has made good on His promise concerning Jesus, He can be trusted to keep His other promises too.
TRANSITION: We can trust God to perform His promises because he promised His son, and he kept the promise. The second field of promise in this text that shows us we can trust God also appears in what the angel said to Mary.
II. WE HAVE BEEN PROMISED HIS PRESENCE
A. Through the angel, God made a very significant promise to Mary.
1. “The Lord is with you.” (v. 28)
2. What God is asking of her is no simple matter. She is being asked to bear a child as a virgin without being married.
3. “A young unmarried girl who became pregnant risked disaster. Unless the father of the child agreed to marry her, she would probably remain unmarried for life. If her own father rejected her, she could be forced into begging or prostitution in order to earn her living. And Mary, with her story about being made pregnant by the Holy Spirit risked being considered crazy as well.” (Life Application Bible note on Luke 1:38)
4. Mary would live her whole life under a cloud of suspicion from her family and neighbors.
Embedded in her decision to be fully submissive to God’s call was a willingness to suffer possible ridicule, loneliness and contempt.
B. Mary could do whatever God asked her to do because He had already promised He would be with her.
1. “I am the Lord’s servant…May it be to me as you have said.” (v. 38)
2. “God certainly didn’t force this choice on Mary; she willingly embraced what God had for her. But the decision was made with no assurance that anyone except God would ever fully understand.” (Douglas Connelly, Mary: What the Bible Really Says, p. 23)
Mary said, “Let it be to me as you have said.” Where the Beatles got “Let it Be.” She could do it because God had promised to be with her.
C. The Lord’s presence with us today is incredibly significant.
Randy Reid, a 34 year old welder was working near the top of a newly constructed water tower outside Chicago when he slipped and fell 110 feet. Barely missing rocks and debris, Reid landed in a six-foot pile of soft sand near the base of the tower. Co-workers called 911 and within minutes the rescue crew was on the scene. Miraculously a bruised lung was the only injury the construction worker sustained. Ironically while he was being carried to the ambulance on a stretcher (about 3 feet above the ground) he looked into the faces of the paramedics and nervously pleaded, "Please don’t drop me" The guy falls off an 11 story water tower and lives, only to be concerned about a stretcher ride a couple feet above the pavement.
1. When we realize the ultimate Fall from which God has saved us, his promise to continue to carry us makes a lot of sense.
2. He’s made a promise never to leave – “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.” (Hebrews 13:5)
Illus – I used to tell my dog to stay. He would, but he’d lose interest after awhile. We don’t tell God what to do, and still he never leaves. We’ve been promised his presence.
The Lord told Zechariah, “Your prayer has been heard.” He needed hope. He gave Mary the promise, “I’ll be with you.” She needed that assurance. And so do we.
TRANSITION: We can still trust God to perform his promises. His character doesn’t change. He was with Mary throughout her pregnancy, and throughout her life. He’ll surely be with us always too. Because He said he would.
CONCLUSION
How good are we at keeping our promises?
1. God follows through when he promises to do something. How well do I?
All the time…10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1…Never
2. God follows through when he promises to be with us. How well do I follow through with my presence in the lives of people who are counting on me?
All the time…10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1…Never
COMMITMENT!
I will never leave you
Others may come and go in your life
But I will never leave you, ever!
If you wrinkle, I will love you
If you fail I will stay with you
If you get sick I will feed you
Bathe you, set up with you
Anything except leave you -
I will never leave you ever!
Stay in marriages
Stay as parents
Stay in commitments we’ve made
