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December 22, 2002
4th Sunday in Advent
Luke 1:26-38
Pastor Robert Raasch

THE VIRGIN'S RESPONSE TO THE ANGEL'S ANNOUNCEMENT

1. Why Me?
2. Who Will This Baby Be?
3. How Will It Happen?

Picture this scene if you will. You're relaxing at home when the doorbell rings. You answer the door and man in a uniform hands you a telegram. You've never received a telegram before so you open it up and read these words, "Just wanted you to know that in the very near future, you will conceive a child. Congratulations!"

Now, I don't care if you are happily married, or you're someone who's desperately trying to have a baby, still, to receive an announcement about your conception of a child before it actually happens-that would be a bit spooky, wouldn't it? But now let's take it one step further. Let's imagine that you are a teenage girl, high school age, unmarried-and you hear that you are going to conceive a child. You're thinking, "I'm going to do what? Wait a minute. This can't be happening to me! This can't be for real!"

My friends, now that you've imagined what it would be like to receive a pre-conception announcement, maybe you and I are in a better position to understand what a young Jewish girl must have been going through when she received similar announcement. Only in her case, the announcement was not delivered by a telegram man; it was delivered by an angel. And in her case, it was not just imaginary. It was for real.

This morning we look to Luke chapter one, where we have recorded for us the Angel Gabriel's miraculous appearance to the Virgin Mary. We'll focus especially on Mary's reaction to the words of the angel, as we seek to apply these words to our lives today. Today we turn our attention to what we might call:

The Virgin's Response to the Angel's Announcement

Mary's response might well be summarized with 3 questions:

1. Why Me?
2. Who Will This Baby Be?
3. How Will It Happen?

Our text begins with the words, "In the sixth month." That would be in the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy. In the verses immediately preceding our text, the gospel writer Luke records the appearance of Gabriel to Elizabeth, one of Mary's relatives. The angel tells Elizabeth that even in her old age, she will conceive a child. The child's name was to be John for he would the promised forerunner of the Messiah.

Now, six months after that appearance, the angel makes a second appearance, this time to Mary, who was "a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph." That means that Mary and Joseph were engaged to be married, but they had not yet begun living together. In fact, Mary had never had any sexual relations with a man.

It is to this young lady that the angel Gabriel appears and says, "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you." Now at first glace, those words might strike us as rather flattering. "You who are highly favored." Wow! But notice that Mary has just the opposite reaction. Luke tells us, "Mary was greatly troubled by his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be." Now, why was Mary so troubled by this greeting?

Well, let's take a modern day parallel. Imagine that your telephone rings. You pick it up and a voice on the other end of the line says, "Congratulations. You've just won the 1 million dollar grand prize! How do you feel?" Now, I don't know about you, but I think I'd feel a little bit confused. "What grand prize? Did I enter some kind of contest? Did I do something special to earn this prize? Was it pure luck? Is there some kind of catch? Out of all the people out there, why was I the one selected?"

Don't you think some of those same thoughts were racing through Mary's head as she hears the angel's announcement, "Greetings, you who are highly favored"? It would have been only natural for Mary to be thinking to herself, "Why me?" In fact, maybe right now you're thinking the very same thing: "Yeah, why her?" Out of all the women who have ever lived in the world, why did God choose Mary to be the mother of Jesus? Was Mary somehow holier that everyone else? Did she do something to earn this high honor? Did she have some special "in" with God? No, Mary openly confessed that she herself was a sinful human being who deserved nothing from God but punishment. In Luke 1:47, she acknowledges that she needed a Savior as much as every other human being.

So if Mary was a sinner like everyone else, why did God choose her to bring his Son into the world? The angel answers that question with the simple words, "Mary, you have found favor with God." The Greek word for favor is "charis", the same word that is more commonly translated "grace." Grace is God's undeserved love for sinners. In other words, it was nothing that Mary did, nothing that she was that prompted God to choose her. It was purely an expression of grace on his part.

And yet, couldn't the same thing be said of all the things God has done for you and me, as well? Think about it. Who of us deserved to have God offer up his Son on a cross so that might escape a fate much worse than death? Who of us deserved the chance to hear the good news of what God has done for us in Christ? Who of us deserved to have God the Holy Spirit come and work saving faith in our hearts-while so many other people around the world remain lost in sin and unbelief? Which of us could not say join Mary in saying, "God, why me? Why, of all the people in the world-why did you choose to save me?" My friends, there is only one answer to that question. And the answer is: grace. God's unfathomable love for people who deserve just the opposite. That's what God showed to Mary, and what God, in Christ, has shown to you and me as well.

But now that we've answered Mary's first question, namely, "Why me?", it's appropriate that we go on to second question. After Gabriel tells her that she is going to have a baby, it's only natural for Mary to be asking, II. Who will this Baby be?

In our text the angel addresses Mary's question by revealing three things about this child. 1. What his name will be. 2. What his true identity will be. 3. What he will come to do. First, his name: "Mary you will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus." Already with that name, God reveals something about this child, for the name Jesus means "Savior," or more specifically, "The Lord saves." Even in that name, God Almighty was revealing something about the true identity of this child.

Of course, that identity becomes even more clear when Gabriel declares, "He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High." That term, "the Most High" was a term used throughout the Old Testament as a designation for God himself. In other words, by calling Jesus the Son of the Most High, the angel was saying that Jesus would be the Son of God, that is, the Second Person of the Triune God.

And what would this Son of God do? Gabriel looks to the future with the words, "The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, his kingdom will never end." Now, to our ears, that statement may sound a little bit strange. But you can bet that to the ears of a Jewish believer like Mary, it was ringing all kinds of bells. Why? Because Mary recognized those words as the fulfillment of a famous Old Testament prophecy. In 2 Samuel 7, God makes this promise to King David. "David, when your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you...and I will establish his kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for my Name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be his father, and he will be my son."

Here, through these two statements, one in the Old Testament, one in the New, God was explaining what Jesus was coming to do. He was coming to set up a kingdom that would be far greater than David's kingdom. He was coming to set up a kingdom which will last forever. And because it will be an eternal kingdom, it can't be simply a political, a geographical kingdom. No, it would be a spiritual kingdom, the kingdom that Jesus establishes in the hearts of believers like you and me, when by God's grace, we confess that Jesus is personal Savior from sin and the Lord of our lives. That's the kind of king that Gabriel says this baby will be.

But apparently, that still leaves one major question in Mary's mind. And it has to do with the process that God was planning to use to bring this baby into the world. I mean, Mary knew her birds and bees. She knew how babies are supposed to be conceived. She knew she had not engaged in relations with her fiancée. Nor did she plan to before she was married. So, Mary asks the natural question, "How will this be, since I am a virgin?" Or to put it another way, III. How Will This Happen?

Through his angelic messenger, God answers Mary's question with the words, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you." Elsewhere in Scripture those terms "come upon you" and "overshadow you," are used to describe the Holy Spirit coming down onto the believers at Pentecost and or Glory of God entering into the Tabernacle in the wilderness. In this case God was promising that somehow, in a very miraculous way, God the Holy Spirit was going to cause Mary to become pregnant. And what is even more remarkable, Gabriel says, "the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God." Notice the double miracle there. This child born to Mary would be holy, that is sinless, that is, unlike any other human being ever born-since every child of two human parents comes into this world in a sinful condition. And secondly, Gabriel declares that this child will be more than just the son of Mary. He will also be the Son of God. Fully human and fully divine. True God and True Man in one person.

Does that sound incomprehensible? Well, to tell you the truth, it is incomprehensible. There is no way that our human minds will ever be able to fully grasp the scientific reality of a virgin birth or the dual nature of Jesus Christ. These are both mysteries which are simply beyond our ability to comprehend.

But just because something is humanly incomprehensible, does that mean it is divinely impossible? Of course not. Even though the motto of the modern day skeptic may be, "If I can't understand it…if I can't reproduce it in a scientific experiment…if it goes against the laws of nature…then it must be impossible," still the angel offers to us the only explanation we really need for such an event with the simple statement: "Nothing is impossible with God."

Isn't that a fitting conclusion to this account-and an appropriate application for our lives? I mean, you think about what happened here. God stepped into the life of a poor Jewish girl and promised to do what was humanly impossible. And Mary believed him. Doesn't the same thing still happen today? Isn't God still doing the impossible in our world? God is doing what people said couldn't be done. He's taking people who at one point in their lives wouldn't be caught dead in church and turning them into men and women who truly love the Lord and who enjoy learning more about his plan for their lives. God is taking people whose whole lives once revolved around when the next drink was coming, where the next party was; he's freeing them from the stranglehold of alcohol; he's making them model fathers and mothers and friends. God is grabbing couples who are ready to throw in the towel, and he's helping them grow back together as they grow back toward him. God is giving years of life to people whom the doctors had given only weeks to live. God has already forgiven the sins which we thought were unforgivable.

Friends, God is doing things that everyone, including Satan himself, thought were impossible. And you and I are living proof. As an act of sheer undeserved grace, God has done things for us which even we thought were impossible. And you know, he's not about to stop now. God can still do the impossible. Got something that seems impossible? Got a nut that is just too hard to crack, a problem to difficult to solve? Take it to the Lord in prayer. Let him work on it awhile. And then, trust that God will handle it at his time and in his way, for his glory and for your eternal welfare. That's what Mary did, 2000 years ago. And that's what God invites modern day "Mary's" like you and me, to still to do today. Listen and trust. In Jesus' name. Amen.