Introduction
We’ve all done someone a favour. And we’ve all asked for favours. We all have favourite foods, music, places to visit, etc. We talk about favourable weather and favourable circumstances. To use a negative example, some parents play favourites with their children. When we use these words—favour, favourable, favourite—we usually mean that there is something special about what it is that we favour.
Luke’s Gospel uses these words—favour, favoured, favourably—a number of times. How we use the word is not necessarily the same way that the Bible uses the word.
Point One: God’s favour enlists the ordinary and insignificant
Where’s Nerepis?!? Near Grand Bay? And where’s Nazareth?!? Oh yeah, in Galilee! Unless you were from Palestine, you wouldn’t know anything about Nazareth—it was an insignificant village.
Mary was a young virgin from an insignificant village. When we look at Mary and Joseph “nothing about their circumstances would have led anyone to suspect the role they would play in God’s plan.”
Mary had a unique and unrepeatable role to play in God’s plan of salvation—to conceive in a miraculous fashion the child who would be the Son of God—but that doesn’t mean she was special in advance of God using her.
God gives us significance by using us; He doesn’t use us because we are already significant.
So this is my first point: God’s favour enlists the ordinary and insignificant. This means that God can and does enlist each one of us. He wants to use each of us.
Point Two: God’s favour includes adversity
Now Mary was chosen and favoured, yes, but what a strange blessing! She got pregnant before consummating her marriage with Joseph—in Jewish culture she could have been stoned for adultery (assuming they didn’t believe in her whole angel story!).
She and Joseph had to travel a long way to Bethlehem to pay their taxes and fulfill the prophecy about where Jesus would be born—that would not have been a fun journey!
And she gave birth to Jesus in a barn where they kept cattle and sheep. Jesus had his first sleep in a feeding trough—these were not ideal conditions for delivering a baby!
When they brought Jesus to be circumcised, a man named Simeon came to them—told Mary that a “sword will pierce your own soul too.” She gave birth to a child out of wedlock that would eventually be executed as a criminal.
Mary was called by God and shown favour—but that doesn’t mean life was a blessing as we would often like it to be. She did not receive the blessings of wealth and comfort and social standing. “Acceptability, prosperity, and comfort have never been the essence of God’s blessing.”
And this is my second point: God’s favour involves adversity.
Following God’s call always means additional, not fewer, challenges. God’s blessing does not look like what the world says we should want.
Point Three: God’s favour requires obedience
So what does Mary do after Gabriel makes his announcement? What does Mary say? “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”
Mary submitted to the word God had given her through Gabriel. She calls herself a servant of the Lord. Mary was obedient. And that is sometimes the hardest part; we want the favour, the blessing, without the obedience.
God’s favour cannot be experienced apart from obedience. Being in a right relationship with God means we are obedient—that we are striving for obedience. There can be no fellowship with the Lord apart from an obedient life.
Yes, Mary was chosen and favoured—but what would have happened had she chosen not to obey? But she did obey, and only then did she really know God’s favour and blessing.
To know God’s favour truly, we have to give ourselves in response to God’s call, just as Mary did.
“The glory of Christmas came about by the willingness of ordinary people to obey God’s claim on their lives.”
God had a claim on Mary’s life. Because she was special? No, because He was her Creator. She owed her very existence and life to God—this is true of every one of us. God has a claim on every one of us—because He is our Creator He also wants to be our Lord.
This is my third point: God’s favour requires obedience.
Point Four: God’s favour has a purpose
And of course, in calling Mary, in showing her favour, God had a purpose for her. Gabriel tells her clearly what her role is—and it is a unique, unrepeatable role: to give birth to Jesus, the Son of God.
But God has a purpose for each one of us. It might not be to become a pastor. And it certainly won’t be a role like Mary’s! But that doesn’t mean He doesn’t have a purpose for you.
Have you ever asked God what His purpose was for you? Have you, like Mary, ever said, “Let it be with me according to your word”?
Mary conceived and bore the baby Jesus for nine months. We can never “bear” the baby Jesus in the same—but we are still called to “bear” Jesus in our hearts so that we can tell others.
God has a task for each one of us. God gave Mary a special role in His plan of salvation. And He does so with each one of us. He still has a plan of salvation and He wants us to participate in this plan. It might not mean giving birth to the Son of God—but it might mean going on a short-term mission trip. It might mean starting up a home Bible study. It might mean taking some courses through a seminary. It might simply mean that share Jesus over coffee with your neighbour on a Saturday morning.
This is my fourth point: God’s favour gives us each purpose. And I believe that God gives us each a purpose so that others can find meaning. And so that others can have hope.
Point Five: God’s favour gives reason for hope
I heard some statistics once that the Christmas season is one of the worst times of year for suicides. So many people find themselves depressed, lonely, and in despair. Christmas reminds them of everything they don’t have: friends, family, fellowship, happiness.
But look at the Christmas message: what a reason for hope! While it was scandalous for God to send His Son to be born of a virgin in a barn in Bethlehem, it was an ultimate scandal—which in the Greek literally means stumbling block—for God to come in flesh and blood in an infant to demonstrate just how much He loves and just how far He was willing to go to show us this love. God entered our violent, depraved, unjust, and corrupt world to say this: I love you.
Gabriel’s announcement to Mary gave her and the people of Israel a reason for hope—God was sending His Messiah! But this announcement was not only for Mary but for all of us. It tells us that God doesn’t leave us alone. It tells us that God does not abandon us in our sin and loneliness and heartache and brokenness—but instead draws near in the form of a child called “Immanuel,” God is with us.
For all of those people out there who have lost hope for whatever reason, this Christmas is an opportunity to take that hope we know and give it away.
This is my fifth and final point today: God’s favour is reason for hope.
But this not a hope we should keep to ourselves. If God so willingly shared His Son with us, we should be willing to share His Son also.
Conclusion
There’s a great unmentioned detail in our passage today. Gabriel tells Mary that she is to give this baby the name Jesus—and when we think of names, we have to remember that names speak about the essence of a person, about their very being. This name means that “Yahweh saves.” God saves. This is what God does, and what He still wants to do, and in fact, longs to do. God is in the business of salvation. This is what Christmas tells us.
We talked about favourites at the beginning. Some parents play favourites. God does too, but not in the same way. He sees all of us as His favourite. He loves every one of us equally—salvation is free for anyone and everyone. God’s favour is God’s grace—grace is undeserved favour. This is what God has shown us—and this is what we are called to show others.
