OPEN: I recently ran across an article that gave some of the signs of the Christmas season:
- A toy store advertised: “Ho, ho, ho spoken here.”
- In a bridal boutique sign declared: “Marry Christmas.”
- Outside a church – this proclamation: “The original Christmas Club.”
- From a department store: “Big pre-Christmas sale. Come in and mangle with the crowd.”
- In a Texas jewelry store was this offer: “Diamond tiaras: $70,000. Three for $200,000.
- A reducing salon warned: “24 Shaping Days until Christmas.”
- In a stationery store was this come on: “For the man who has everything: A calendar to remind him when payments are due.”
- And a sign in a department store: “Make this Christmas one you will not soon forget – charge everything!”
APPLY: There are certain things we’ve come expect at this time of year and, advertising of this nature, (while unique) is part of the season. It is part of what we expect.
Did you know that until the 1930’s Thanksgiving was actually celebrated on November 30th? It’s true. At that time, the country was struggling with the great depression, and FDR sought to stimulate the economy by setting the Holiday back a week in order to allow for a longer period for people to buy Christmas presents between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Ever since that time, advertising has been a pervasive part of the holiday season. In fact, I’ve noticed that the push for advertising Christmas buying has sometimes even begun as early as October - right after Halloween.
AND SO, while we may not appreciate it, Christmas advertising has become part of what we expect during this season.
BUT perhaps that’s only right - since the original Christmas began with an advertisement. A promise of a new thing. A proclamation that all men would want what God was going to offer.
And this proclamation - this promise given by an angel to Mary - was expected.
Notice in our text that Mary doesn’t react to Gabriel’s announcement like Zechariah did. When Gabriel told Zechariah that he and his aged wife are about to have a child, Zechariah literally looked Gabriel dead in eye & said something like: “You’ve got to be kidding.” And the angel rebuked Zechariah for his unbelief.
BUT when Gabriel gave his message of the child’s birth to Mary she responds: "I am the Lord’s servant, may it be to me as you have said." Luke 1:38. Instead of doubt or skepticism Mary responds almost calmly: “Ok. I’m God’s servant & whatever God wants…that’s what I’ll do.”
I. Why the contrast?
Why would nearly the same exact promise from exactly the same angel cause Zechariah to be skeptical but cause Mary to be quietly accepting?
(Pause) Well, possibly because the promise to Mary was… almost expected. Every mother in Judea was expecting and hoping that the promise made to Mary would be made to them. Ever since Adam & Eve sinned in the Garden by taking of the forbidden fruit, there was an expectation that the Messiah would come AND that He would be the offspring of a woman.
In Genesis 3:14-15 we’re told: “So the LORD God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, Cursed are you above all the livestock and all the wild animals! You will crawl on your belly and you will eat dust all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.’”
The prophet Micah picked up on that theme when he wrote: Therefore Israel will be abandoned until the time when she who is in labor gives birth and the rest of his brothers return to join the Israelites. (Micah 5:3) In other words, the restoration of Israel’s power was seen as tied to the birth of a son by some future woman.
And Mary had as much (if not more) reason to believe that she could be the mother of that Messiah, the mother of the promised deliverer of her people.
You see, the Jews knew that according to the Old Testament, the Messiah had to be born of a specific royal ancestry.
· They knew the promised one would be a descendent of Abraham
(God promised Abraham) "And in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice." Genesis 22:18
· They knew that He would be descended from the tribe of Judah
"The scepter will not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until he comes to whom it belongs and the obedience of the nations is his." Genesis 49:10
· AND that He’d be of the line of David
Jeremiah 23:5-6 "’The days are coming,’ declares the LORD, ’when I will raise up to David a righteous Branch, a King who will reign wisely and do what is just and right in the land. In his days Judah will be saved and Israel will live in safety. This is the name by which he will be called: The LORD Our Righteousness.’"
That’s why the Gospels of Luke & Matthew spend so much time tracing Jesus’ background. Matthew lists Joseph’s ancestry all the way back to Abraham, which would have been the only genealogy the Jews would have been concerned with, even tho’ Joseph was only Jesus’ step-father.
BUT, just in case someone said “wait a minute, Joseph was only Jesus’ stepfather," Luke traced Mary’s ancestors even farther back, all the way to Adam & Eve.
SO, Mary had good reason to believe the Messiah could be born to a woman like her - AND that’s why she was so calm and accepting about what the angel said. That’s why she didn’t question the announcement of the angel
II. Now, that’s not to say that Mary didn’t ask a question.
In fact, she asked a very good question: "How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?" Luke 1:34 This is not an easy question. There are people (even today) who have trouble with believing that God would do anything like a "virgin birth."
ILLUS: There a joke about a little boy that was asked who the Virgin was that was the mother of Jesus. He replied: “The King James Virgin.”
There are those who don’t care what virgin you may be talking about, they will refuse to accept the idea that God would or could have a virgin give birth.
ILLUS: Back in 1961, Redbook Magazine hired a top pollster to survey a cross section of students from seminaries across the nation. Questions ranged from their attitude toward Scripture, to whether or not they believed in life after death. Of those seminary students who were surveyed, 56 percent rejected the idea of the virgin birth of Jesus Christ.
Back when I was in Bible College, I did a similar survey of the all the churches in a small city I lived in. Of those preachers and priests that I questioned, 25% denied the virgin birth.
I was shocked. How could anyone have the audacity to stand in a pulpit and reject such a basic Biblical teaching? More than that, how could they reject the idea the God could or would do what Scripture said that He did. There denial of the virgin birth was ultimately a rejection of God. Himself. It defied the imagination.
III. Not only does it defy the imagination, it would have been easier on Mary for God not to have had her give birth this way.
Remember: Mary was a young, single girl. If she turned up pregnant now there was a chance that her fiancé would reject her (in fact, Joseph contemplated that very thing). And not only that, a single pregnant girl would face the disgrace that would accompany the reaction of the people of Nazareth. The whole town would talk about her behind her back, and possibly even to her face (people can be cruel). It’s not easy being pregnant and alone, even in our day. But in that day, Mary would face an even crueler threat. There would be potential of being taken outside the city and stoned for immorality.
SO, you could almost understand if Mary’s question had held doubt that God could actually do what He promised (as so many have doubted then and since). Or even if her question had held a hint of rebellion. For this was a dangerous task God had set before her.
BUT, instead, she follows her question with a humble acceptance: “I am the Lord’s servant, may it be to me as you have said” Luke 1:38 In that short statement Mary was saying two things:
#1: I know God can do whatever He sets His mind to do.
#2: I’m convinced that if I give myself and this child to God, He’ll protect us. There is no danger that God can’t deal with.
As David wrote in Psalms 46 “God is (my) refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore (I) will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea (Ps. 46:1-2)
There is no danger - there is no difficulty - that we will ever face, that God can’t handle.
And so her question held neither doubt nor rebellion, but a humble faith and obedience.
However, I do have one problem with Mary’s question
IV. I think Mary asked the wrong question.
When she asked “How can this be?” that sounds like a birds & bees type question. Basic biology 101 (with a fair amount of the miraculous mixed in). If I had been Mary, that question would never have bothered me. If I’d have been Mary, my question wouldn’t have been “how?” My question would’ve been “WHY?”
"WHY" was it necessary to have a virgin give birth to this “Messiah?” Why not simply wait until after Mary... got married. It would have been so much simpler.
So, why? Why would it be necessary for God do the unbelievable and the difficult in order to bring the Messiah into the world?
Well, partly, it was necessary for God to do it this way because that is what God had advertised. God had declared thru the prophet Isaiah: “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
That’s what God had advertised, and that’s what God delivered.
But more than that, the promise (out of Isaiah) had been that this Messiah would be called Immanuel, which translated means: “God with Us.”
Had Jesus had both a mortal mother AND a mortal father, he would not have been divine. And if the Messiah was merely mortal, he could not have offered the sinless sacrifice that was necessary, for amongst men – “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23)
But then, why would Jesus need to be born of a mortal woman at all? Why not have God step down out of heaven in all of His glory to perform the required sacrifice? Because, had Jesus simply come down bodily from heaven, He would have been no more than God. And in this He would have lacked an essential element in our salvation. Consider: how could God (if He had come only as God) feel our pains and sympathize with our frailties? By His very nature, God would feel no pain, struggle with no temptations. Thus, it would have been difficult for those of us who are human to identify with the divine. Jesus had to be human, because then He would be like us.
Hebrews 4:15 “…we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses.”
Hebrews 5:2 “He is able to deal gently with those who are ignorant and are going astray, since he himself is subject to weakness…”
And Philippians 2:7-8 explains that Jesus’ becoming human was critical to His mission: (Jesus) made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death— even death on a cross!”
In other words, Jesus couldn’t have died on the cross for us as He did, if He had not become human.
Paul Harvey told a parable of a man that illustrates what Jesus did by having a human mother, by becoming mortal: This is about a modern man, one of us, he was not a scrooge, he was a kind, decent, mostly good man, generous to his family, upright in his dealings with others. But he did not believe in all that incarnation stuff that Churches proclaim at Christmas time. It just didn’t make sense to him and he was too honest to pretend otherwise. He just could not swallow the Jesus story about God coming to earth as man.
“I’m truly sorry to distress you” he told his wife, “but I’m not going with you to church this Christmas Eve.” He said he’d feel like a hypocrite. That he would much rather stay home, but that he would wait up for them. And so, he stayed, they went.
Shortly after the family drove away in the car, snow began to fall. He went to the window to watch the flurries getting heavier and heavier, then went back to his chair by the fireplace and began to read his newspaper. Minutes later he was startled by a thudding sound. Then another and another.
At first he thought someone must be throwing snowballs against his living room window. Well, when he went to the front door, he found a flock of birds huddled miserably in the snow. They had been caught in the storm and in a desperate search for shelter they had tried to fly through his large landscape window.
Well, he couldn’t let the poor creatures lie there and freeze. Then he remembered the barn where his children stabled their pony. That would provide a warm shelter -- if he could direct the birds to it. He quickly put on his coat and galoshes, tramped through the deepening snow to the barn, opened the door wide, and turned on a light. But the birds did not come in.
He figured food would entice them in and he hurried back to the house, fetched bread crumbs, sprinkled them on the snow making a trail to the yellow lighted wide open doorway of the stable, but to his dismay the birds ignored the bread crumbs, and continued to flap around helplessly in the snow.
He tried catching them. He tried shooing them into the barn by walking around them waving his arms - instead they scattered in every direction except into the warm lighted barn.
Then he realized they were afraid of him. To them (he reasoned) I am a strange and terrifying creature, if only I could think of some way to let them know they can trust me. That I’m not trying to hurt them, but to help them. But how? Any move he made tended to frighten them, confuse them. They just would not follow him. They would not be led or shooed because they feared him.
If only I were a bird myself he thought. If only I could be a bird and mingle with them and speak their language, and tell them not to be afraid, and show them the way to the safe, warm barn. But I’d have to be one of them, so they could see and hear and understand. At that moment the church bells began to ring. The sound reached his ears above the sound of the wind. He stood there listening to the bells. Adeste Fideles they played. And then, listening to the bells pealing the glad tidings of Christmas he sank to his knees in the snow.
If only God could become one of us. If only He could be there so that we could see Him, hear Him and understand. Then, maybe we would follow Him into the safety and warmth of God’s love and escape the coldness and death of this world.
But, of course, that’s what God did by becoming a man and living amongst us… and then dying to show the way out of this cold and dying world into His warmth.
Other Sermons in this Series:
Believing To See Luke 1:5-1:25
Truth In Advertising Luke 1:26-1:38
The Exciting Promise Luke 2:1-2:20
The Gift Of The Warm Heart Luke 2:21-2:40
