Luke 1:26-38
The Birth of Christ
Woodlawn Baptist Church
November 13, 2005
Introduction
Read Luke 1:26-38.
In our last message from Luke 1, I told you that when God invades our lives, He alone chooses the time He will do a thing, the people He through whom He will work, the methods He will use to accomplish His will, and He chooses the purpose for which He will invade our lives. Certainly all of those things are true of our passage today. When God invaded the lives of Mary and Joseph, He did so in an extraordinary way for an extraordinary purpose – to announce the birth of Christ!
The birth of Christ is certainly one of the greatest events in all of history. During our time together this morning I want to give you some reasons you ought to rejoice and praise God concerning what He did then and for what He promised to do in the future. The birth of Christ was an invasion on mankind that should result in spontaneous praise to the Lord of heaven! Here is God fulfilling His promise of a Savior and demonstrating His great love for fallen man! He could have left us in our sin. He could have turned His back on us forever. “But God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son…!” However, the announcement God gave Mary should result in more than a response of praise. The announcement did not only concern Christ’s first coming; it also looks ahead to His second coming. So while our passage should result in praise and adoration to God, it should also cause us to be prepared for the Savior’s return.
Christ’s Birth Was Obscure In It’s Origin
Of all the places God could have chosen for an event like this to take place, Nazareth was an unlikely choice. Located about 60 miles north of Jerusalem, Nazareth was a little hick town out in the middle of nowhere. Remember that the people would ask in astonishment, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Surely not! Why not Jerusalem, the center of the Jewish world?
Not only did God choose to give the news in an obscure village, He chose an obscure girl. Verse 27 says that Gabriel came to a virgin by the name of Mary who had been formally engaged to Joseph. Who was Mary? Was she rich and famous? Was she the daughter of kings or queens? She was none of this! She was just a teenage girl who was quietly living out her life, who had expected to marry this common carpenter and enjoy her life in Nazareth.
While Mary may have been obscure humanly speaking, obviously she was not obscure in the eyes of God. Verse 28 says that she was highly favored. Favored is the word for grace. In other words, God bestowed His grace on Mary. He thought very highly of her. I’m reminded of Noah. Remember that Noah found grace in the eyes of God, and here Mary found grace in God’s eyes as well. This has nothing to do with her salvation – but it does indicate that God was very fond of this girl.
I think its worth noting that while Mary should never be elevated so highly as Catholicism has lifted her, don’t overlook the fact that of all the millions of women ever born into humanity, she alone was chosen to be the mother of our Savior. You cannot deny the high honor of her human position, but the honor belongs to God – He chose her! Gabriel went on to say that God was with her and that she was blessed among women.
Christ’s Birth Was Fantastic In What It Would Accomplish
If Mary was troubled at seeing Gabriel and hearing the first announcement, you can imagine what must have run through her mind at he continued. Gabriel told Mary she would have a son and that she would name Him Jesus – Jehovah is salvation. This would have been a common name in Jewish families, but now for the first time they would know what the salvation of the Lord was really all about.
“He shall be great.” From our viewpoint we know that He was great in His conception and in His sinlessness and power and love and miracles and in every other way. But remember that Mary has no knowledge of any of this. All she knows is that she’s going to have a son, she was going to name that son with a common Jewish name and that he’d be great somehow. But then Gabriel starts getting more specific.
“He shall be called the Son of the Highest.” The Son of the Most High God. That was the name used throughout the Old Testament for God. It was the Most High God who allotted land to the nations. It was the Most High God who delivered in times of need. In Psalm 97:9 David wrote, “For thou, Lord, art high above all the earth: thou art exalted far above all gods.” The Lord Himself said through Isaiah, “I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me…” It is that High and Mighty and Holy God that Gabriel had in mind when he told Mary that her son would be called the Son of the Highest. It signified great power and authority, but it also signified that by His very nature He was the Son of God in the most intimate sense possible.
Verse 32 continues. “The Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David: and he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end.” So far as the Jews were concerned, you could lump all of God’s promises into two. First was the promise to Abraham concerning the land and the people. Second was the promise God made to David. God said to David that the throne would never depart from his family, and that eventually one would sit on that throne who would rule the nations. Every Jew knew that promise, and that’s the promise Mary understood as Gabriel foretold of its fulfillment.
This son Jesus wouldn’t just be a great man. He wouldn’t just be known as being in special relation to the God of heaven. He was going to sit on the throne of David, which had not been done in over 400 years, and he would do so forever. His kingdom would never end. Finally Gabriel is making clear that this child she would bear is the Savior foretold throughout God’s Word. This child would be the Messiah that all the Jews were awaiting. This Jesus was the Son of God spoken of by the prophets!
Christ’s Birth Was An Impossible Possibility
Notice Mary’s response to all this news. “Oh yeah! It all makes perfect sense to me now! Thanks for the heads up!” Not hardly! The angel told Mary that she had no reason to be anxious about his presence. Then he told her the good news. But notice in verse 34 that his good news didn’t settle her – she couldn’t understand how this could be possible. She was a virgin after all.
Now even though this is basically the same question Zacharias asked in the previous section, it does not carry the doubt that his question did. The angel does not chastise Mary for her question. Keep in mind that Zacharias was an old man who had served God for many years as a priest. He should have known to trust God, but here is a young teenage girl, probably thirteen to sixteen years old, standing in the presence of one of God’s archangels, hearing the most amazing news of her life. It is no wonder she is anxious and perplexed. I have a teenage daughter. I know how easily she can get flustered, and Mary was certainly flustered right about now.
So seeing and hearing her wonder, Gabriel makes it all clear in verse 35: “The Holy Ghost shall come upon you and the power of the Highest will overshadow you.” Now, call me a skeptic, but I don’t think Mary understood that any more than we do. “What do you mean the Holy Ghost is going to come upon me? What do you mean that the power of the Highest will overshadow me?” Do we understand this?
Listen to me: there is no need to understand it. I think there is a real danger here for anyone who would try to explain it – for if you could explain it, then I believe all you would do is to minimize it. The conception of Jesus Christ in the womb of Mary was a divine miracle, heaven sent, and it will always be a mystery to us. If you could figure out what it meant then you have conquered the wonderful mind of God, which is why I believe that in doing so you only minimize the miracle of the incarnation.
Mary did not understand what Gabriel meant, so he said something that would make more sense. She asked him, “How can this be?” So he said, “You know, that’s what everyone said about your cousin Elizabeth. There’s no way she could get pregnant in her old age, but she’s six months pregnant right now. You see, with God nothing shall be impossible.”
Mary may not have understood how God could accomplish the impossible, but she could recognize from other impossible accomplishments that God can make it happen whether it makes sense or not! So she says to the angel, “Okay, I believe and I accept this as God’s will for me.” Remember that Zacharias said, “I cannot believe this.” When God invades your life the only right response is “I believe.”
Conclusion
When I step back and consider what God promised and delivered all those years ago, I am filled with wonder and amazement. Of all the ways He could have worked out our salvation, He chose for it to begin with an obscure teenage girl in an obscure country village on a night like any other night. God certainly chose to begin this invasion in an unlikely way.
For those of us who have received Christ as our Savior, our responses today ought to be responses of praise and adoration. We ought to thank God continually for his gracious gift of salvation. He could have left us to die in our sins. When our sins condemned us to eternity in hell God intervened and not only did He promise a Savior, He delivered that Savior! He brought to humanity forgiveness and salvation in the form of His only begotten Son!
I wonder today whether you have ever experienced that salvation and forgiveness. You see, you can hear God’s invitation, you can read an account like this one today and you can respond in a number of ways. You can simply say that you don’t believe it, and certainly you have that right. You can deny that it happened. You can pervert it like so many have done before, or, like Mary, without having all the answers, without understanding everything about the way it works, you can simply say, “I believe.”
Why did Jesus Christ have to be born? Because man is dead in his sins. Man in his sin is at enmity with God, but the life, death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ removed that enmity, and now God offers to each of you the gift of eternal life based on the redemptive work of Christ. The only thing that separates you from God now is your decision. Will you trust Him? Will you admit that you need a Savior, repent of your sin that caused Him to have to die for you and trust Him to save you?
Just as surely as He came the first time, He is coming again. The things Gabriel said to Mary that day were true, but they have not all been fulfilled yet. He is Jesus: Jehovah is salvation. He is great, and He was and is called the Son of the Most High. God did give to Him the throne of His father David, and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever. But you need to recognize that while all of that has been given to Christ, we still await the day that He will return and establish that kingdom.
The Bible tells of a future day when Jesus will once again leave the glories of heaven, but that coming will not be veiled in obscurity. The apostle Paul said that “the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God!” There won’t be some secret snatch from heaven. When Jesus Christ returns to earth He’s going to make sure everybody knows!
“I can’t believe it,” you say? “There’s no way that’s going to happen. I’ve been hearing that all my life. You people have been saying that for 2000 years and it hasn’t happened yet.”
If you’ve been putting off a decision for Christ for those kinds of reasons, just remember two things: first, that’s what they said the first time, and secondly, with God nothing is impossible. Christ’s return not only can happen; it will happen. Won’t you come to Him today?
Before I conclude, I want to add this one final thing. So often we limit God’s work in our lives by our thinking or with our actions. We limit God because we cannot understand a thing. We can get so worked up by our circumstances and anxious about the problems in our lives. All too often our faith becomes feeble and we struggle to trust God as we ought. You may be there today. If that’s the case, let me urge you to revisit the omnipotence of God.
Like Mary, you may find yourself anxious and troubled at where your life is right now. Things may seem all array. A preacher of old once said this, “Faith never rests so calmly and peacefully as when it lays its head on the pillow of God’s [almighty power.]” You may not understand how God can do a thing, but you can be reminded that He has always been faithful in the past, and He will continue to be faithful to you in the future. You can leave your cares at Calvary today.
