I invite you to take your Bibles and turn with me to the Gospel of Luke chapter 1. We're looking today at verses 26 through 38, continuing in a series this month on a royal nativity, focusing on the birth of a royal savior, the coming of not just the Messiah, but one who comes in the line of David, the kingship of Jesus, as we see it in these passages about his birth. And when you approach these passages with this kingship in mind, It's amazing how deeply woven through these passages his kingship and his being in the line of David is. So let's give our attention to Luke 1, verse 26. Here are the word of God. In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David. And the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you. But she was greatly troubled at the saying and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end. And Mary said to the angel, how will this be since I am a virgin? And the angel answered her, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be called Holy, the Son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren, for nothing will be impossible with God. And Mary said, behold, I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word. And the angel departed from her. Let's pray. Father, we love your word. We love you. And we thank you, Lord, for this beautiful passage of scripture, Lord, in many ways, very familiar. Open our eyes, Lord, to see the truth of this passage, to see past the familiarity to the startling nature of this announcement. Father, we pray that you would teach us and correct us and grow us in grace. Lord, nourish our souls on the word of God as we worship you in the hearing and contemplation of it. We pray in Christ's name, amen. Enunciation is how you speak. Perhaps you've had a speech teacher or maybe a theater director who told you to enunciate clearly. An enunciation is an announcement. The enunciation is the announcement that the angel Gabriel gave to Mary that she would carry and give birth to the long-awaited Messiah, there are announcements and announcements as this is the announcement, the annunciation. Now, it's a very special event, although in one sense, there's nothing more common or ordinary than the birth of a baby. In fact, on this day around the globe, almost 400,000 babies will be born. Of course, in any given family, the birth of a baby is a monumental event, but for the world as a whole, it pretty much goes on as usual. Sometimes those babies grow up to be world changers, But it's not known when they're born. We only see that after the fact. And after the fact, we see that this was a birth and hear its announcement that had an impact on the world like no other. Although we recognize that in the event, it happened in the utmost obscurity. In this passage, the angel Gabriel comes to Mary to deliver to her the news that she is going to have a baby. In many ways, this baby would be quite ordinary. I like the hymn, Away in a Manger, well enough, although I think it's probably not true that the baby Lord Jesus, no crying he made. I suspect he cried like any other baby would cry, although he cried without sin. because Jesus was without sin, the Bible tells us so. But babies cry, and they can cry sinlessly, as Jesus no doubt did. However, in other ways, Jesus was far from ordinary. This was no ordinary birth, this was no ordinary baby, and certainly no ordinary announcement, which leads us to the conclusion that Jesus was a baby like no other. And so as we turn our attention to the passage, we'll notice three things in it. First of all, this was a far from ordinary birth announcement. Far from ordinary birth announcement. Here in verses 26 through 30, we begin, in the sixth month, that is of Elizabeth's pregnancy, first part of chapter one of this gospel, in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth. How do you get from God to Galilee? Was this a long journey? Was it no time at all? We don't know. The angel proceeded from the presence of God into this tiny village of Nazareth in northern Israel to deliver a birth announcement, a reveal, if you will. Now, it is out of the ordinary, but it's not unique. You know, the word unique does not admit of degree. It either is unique or it is not. It can't be very unique or sort of unique. It means one of a kind. Either it is or it's not. And an angelic announcement was not unique. In fact, in the Old Testament, there are angels sent from heaven to announce the birth of a child. We think of Samuel or Samson, for instance. And we think of others. You think even in this very own chapter in Luke, just before where we are now, that the angel goes to Zechariah the priest and announces to him that he and his wife Elizabeth are going to have a son. So an angel coming to Mary to announce that she will give birth to the Messiah is not unique, but we have to admit it certainly is far from ordinary. So Gabriel gets there to Galilee, to Nazareth, and he appears to Mary, and he comes to her, and he says, greetings, oh favored one, the Lord is with you. Now there were no doubt countless Jewish girls and young women who dreamed of being the one through whom the Messiah would come into the world, but in fact, it was this one, it was Mary, who was the one favored with that privilege of bearing and giving birth to the Messiah. Gabriel appears to her, he says that, he greets her, and we read that Mary was greatly troubled at the saying and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. Earlier, when Gabriel appeared to Zechariah in the temple, we read that he was troubled. He was afraid. Here, that same word is troubled. In our English version, it's used of Mary. It's a slightly different word in the original. But notice it didn't say she was troubled at the appearance of the angel. She was troubled at the saying. And it says she wondered what sort of greeting this might be, which to my ears makes it sound like Mary was thinking, what's this guy all about? Is he selling vacuum cleaners? What's going on here? It doesn't say she was afraid of him, although it is worth noting that the angel says to her, do not be afraid. Maybe she was afraid or maybe Gabriel was just following good angelic protocol. That seems to be what angels always say when they appear to someone because they usually are afraid and understandably. So maybe Mary was afraid, maybe Gabriel was just, in case she was, do not be afraid. Fear not, you have found favor with God. It's not everyone who gets an angel to announce their birth, their birth reveal. That's a big deal. You see videos sitting on YouTube, you know, on social media, the birth reveal. You're going to have a baby. It's going to be a boy. It's going to be a girl. It's going to be both. In this case, It was an angelic announcement. It was a far from ordinary reveal. The birth of Jesus certainly calls for an angelic annunciation. So far from ordinary announcement, but then as we move on, we see a far from ordinary baby. Verses 31 through 33. You see, it wasn't just how Jesus came into the world, but who he was, of course, that made him special. And Gabriel puts it this way after he greets Mary, verse 31. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son. I don't know if you, many of you by choice had to find out the boy or girl, sex of your child at birth, some of you. They'd be younger, did the sonogram. Barbara and I chose not to. We could have, but we just chose to be surprised. Back in that day, they had no choice. You just were surprised at birth to find out you had a boy, you had a girl, you had both. Mary knew. She had an angelic reveal. You will give birth to a son and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great. and will be called the Son of the Most High God. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end." And here's Mary trying to process who this is, and this is a load of information. that Gabriel is telling her here about this baby who will be born. We can break it down. It's a load of information for us as well. Gabriel says a lot here. He says in the first place, this baby will be a savior, a deliverer. He will in fact be the Messiah. The angel tells Mary that she is to give him the name Jesus. The name Jesus is the New Testament form, the Greek form of the old Hebrew name, Joshua. They both mean the Lord saves. This is even more clear when the angel appears to Joseph in Matthew 1, where he gets his announcement, and the angel says to Joseph, that Mary will give birth to a son. You're to give him the name Jesus. Why? Because he will save his people from their sins. So the name Jesus is the mission. The Lord saves. So this baby will be a savior, Gabriel tells Mary. He also tells her that he was going to be a son. Of course, he would be Mary's son, but he would be more than that. He would also be the son of God. as we read in verse 32. He will be called the Son of the Most High. The Most High is a circumlocution. It's a way of speaking around, just calling God, God. It's like referring to God as providence. He will be Son of the Most High. And he reiterates that again in verse 35. Therefore, the child to be born will be called Holy, the Son of God. So the son of Mary, son of a human, but also the son of God. And we actually see that in Jesus' preferred title for himself as an adult in his ministry, where he refers to himself as the son of man, which points in one sense to his humanity, and that expression is used, for example, Ezekiel, to point out his mortality, his humanness. And that points to Jesus' humanity, But it also was a messianic title, without saying, I am the Messiah, and all the misconceptions that that would provoke in the minds of people, that it from Daniel was a messianic title, although a quiet way of claiming to be the Messiah. So here we see it, the son of Mary, yes, son of a human, son of man, but also the son of God. And third, not only a savior, not only a son, but to continue the alliteration, he would be a sovereign. This child will be a king. Again, in verse 32, the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father, David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end. Jesus was in the line of David, and the genealogies of Matthew 1 and Luke 3 established that, that Jesus is of royal blood through his human family, and that he was, in fact, the one promised in 2 Samuel 7. I like to say the Bible's a big book. You can't know it all equally well, but there are certain chapters that are pivotal, turning points in Scripture. And you might think of many of them. You might not think of 2 Samuel 7, but it really is a critical chapter in Scripture. You may recall how David wants to build the temple, this fixed place of worship for the Lord in Jerusalem. And the Lord comes to him and says, no, your son Solomon will build the temple. You will not build me a house, but I will build you a house. Play on words. I will build you a dynasty where the Lord promises to David, your house and your kingdom will endure before me. Your throne will be established forever. And so it was established in Jesus, the son of David. David, the son of God, the Messiah. And so we see even in this announcement from Gabriel, even in his words, the fulfillment of those promises made so long ago, centuries before, but the Lord doesn't forget. And here he fulfills that promise in this birth, and even refers to it in the announcement of the birth of the Lord Jesus, that this child will be a king, that he is of the line of David, and he is the heir of those promises that God made to David and the fulfillment of them. So a far from ordinary announcement, a far from ordinary baby, to be sure, but then also a far from ordinary birth. Verses 34 through 37, you can almost hear everything's going great. You can almost hear there, this thing screech to a halt when Mary raises a question. Verse 34, Mary said to the angel, how will this be since I'm a virgin? This will be my 57th Christmas. That's not my age. Like the vast majority of humanity, I was not yet one when I celebrated my first Christmas. I think that would be true for everyone except those born on Christmas Day. I guess you turn one on your first Christmas. A lot of Christmases. A lot of celebrating the birth of Jesus, born to the Virgin Mary. A lot of Sundays since Childhood. That I have confessed that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary in the Apostles' Creed. You know, we confess it so much that it starts to seem normal. It becomes unsurprising that we forget. This is impossible! This cannot be. Philip Yancey wrote a book called, The Jesus I Never Knew. It's been out for a number of years and he describes in the book something that was even years earlier. Some of you will remember the 80s TV show, 30 something. But Yancey in the book describes a conversation that takes place in that show where a woman, Hope, a Christian, is arguing with her husband, who's Jewish, Michael, about the holidays. And she asks him, why do you even bother with Hanukkah? Do you really believe a handful of Jews held off a huge army by using a bunch of lamps that miraculously wouldn't run out of oil? Well, you gotta admit, she set herself up because Michael explodes back at her. Oh, and Christmas makes more sense. Do you really believe an angel appeared to some teenage girl who then got pregnant without ever having been with a man and traveled on a horseback to Bethlehem where she spent the night in a barn and had a baby who turned out to be the savior of the world? You feel his point. And we need to be reminded of that. That when we speak of the virgin birth, the world hears it and says, nonsense. The doctrine of the virgin birth in the previous century was at the very heart of the liberal Orthodox controversy, so much so that J. Gresham Machen, the founder of Westminster Seminary and a defender of Orthodox Christianity, Orthodox biblical view of scripture, wrote a massive book, some have called it his magnum opus, called The Virgin Birth of Christ, defending the scriptural teaching of this miracle. But it is worth noting the first skeptic of the virgin birth was Mary herself. She knew how these things worked. It's not that people were just gullible and would believe anything back then. Mary says, how will this be? And Gabriel answers her. The Holy Spirit will come upon you. The power of the Most High will overshadow you. Now, Gabriel is not describing some crass pagan idea of the gods consorting with humans and producing these hybrid offspring. That's not what he's saying. He's simply saying that the power of God, the power that called things into being out of nothing at creation, is going to create this human being in her womb, of her body, but with no man involved." Because here's the principle, with God, nothing is impossible. People sometimes struggle with the miracles in Scripture. Well, the debate really is solved in Genesis 1 verse 1, if you grant in the beginning God, then all the miracles take care of themselves. Because God exists, he creates, he rules. A miracle by definition is unexpected, but God sometimes acted in those unexpected ways to verify his messengers, prophets, apostles, Jesus, God incarnate. And so we are presented here with this miracle. And notice Mary's acquiescence to it. Let it be to your servant as you have said. The mystery to the incarnation, the mystery to the virgin birth lies in this. Nothing is impossible with God. And Gabriel also points to the pregnancy of Elizabeth, verse 36, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son. And this is the sixth month of pregnancy with her who was called Barren. And Mary's aware of this and pointing out the Lord did this for Zechariah and Elizabeth. But here's the difference. Even in the Old Testament, you have the Lord providing a child for people, a couple who had no business being able to have a child. Think of Abraham and Sarah, of course, or here, Zechariah, the priest, and Elizabeth. But they were a couple. Past the age of childbearing, to be sure, but there was a man and a woman involved. But God saves his greatest work for Mary. There was no man. By the power of God, this baby was conceived. By the way, you wonder, Zechariah got in trouble, didn't he, for doubting the word of Gabriel? Gabriel was a little offended when Zechariah pushed back. He said, I am Gabriel. I live in the presence of God. And remember what happened, because he was skeptical, he would not be able to speak until the child was born, and it's not until he designated his name as John that he was then able to talk again. Mary gave some pushback, didn't she? Nothing happened. Why not? Well, let's think about it. Zechariah is a mature man. He is a priest. He is a religious leader in Israel. At that very moment, he was serving in the temple. He pushes back. Mary is very young, probably early teens, which then was considered an adult. She would have been a very young adult. But still, you have a mature priest versus a young woman of Israel. So maybe Gabriel gave her some leniency there that he didn't to the more mature priest, Zechariah, who should have been a greater faith. But it's also true that Zechariah's was a little more doubtful, I think, whereas Mary simply raised the rather reasonable objection that she was a virgin. So how would this be? Whatever the reason, Zechariah was chastened a bit where Mary was not. As we look at this, there's several things I want to notice in closing about this announcement and about the baby, about the birth. First of all, we see in it the grace of God. God sent his son into the world in his sheer grace. And the fact that he sent him to be the savior implies that we are a people who need a savior, that we are a people in need of salvation, as indeed we are in our sin, in our rebellion against God. And yet God, in his mercy and his grace, sent his son to be a savior of sinners. We also see here not only the grace of God, but we also see the power of God. Of course, you see that throughout Scripture in various ways from creation itself to the parting of the Red Sea, all that God did throughout Scripture on into the New Testament. But this passage presents us with the virgin birth, the astounding work of God in this amazing way in which Jesus came into the world. The miracles Jesus did pointed to who he was, but even his very birth in this most unlikely miraculous of ways points to the identity of the one who came to be the Savior. We also see in it the mystery of God. You know, we can define the person of Christ, his deity, his humanity. We can formulate those things theologically. We can formulate the virgin birth theologically, but ultimately, we come up against a mystery of God incarnate. John, more than any gospel writer, comes to just contemplating mystery when he says, the word became flesh. and dwelt among us. We see also here the glory of God, not only His grace, His power, mystery, but we also see the glory of God in that He keeps His promises. It was centuries before, and even before that, even before David, He promised the coming of a Savior, of a Messiah, a Redeemer, the one who would make things right. God keeps His word, and it is to His glory now that Gabriel comes and announces the birth, and then the birth itself. It's no wonder that those angels, when they appeared to the shepherds, said, glory to God in the highest at the birth of Jesus. He is glorified in these things. And then we also see, and finally, and in keeping with the theme of this series, the rule of God. Of course, God rules over all things, but his rule is embodied in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why he's called the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords. The Father has invested all rule, all authority in Jesus, who is the heir to the throne of David, who will reign over the house of Jacob forever, whose kingdom will, in fact, have no end. as he reigns in this world and in the world to come, as his kingdom supplants the kingdoms of this world into a new heavens and new earth for which we long and pray in each day we seek so to hasten. A royal nativity. An angel comes to announce the birth. The annunciation of the birth of Jesus. An announcement fit for a king. Let's pray. Father, we do stand in awe. We stand in wonder in this passage. The miracle of the incarnation. Lord, the grace in the incarnation that you would come down into this world, leaving behind the glories of heaven. that we might one day enter the glories of heaven. Father, we thank you for our Lord Jesus, the Son of David, Son of Man, the Son of God, our King. In his name we pray, amen.