you'll take your Bible with you and turn to Luke chapter one, please. Luke chapter one. Our text this morning is Luke chapter one, verses twenty six. to fifty six. Luke chapter one, verse twenty six. To fifty six, let's pray together. Heavenly Father, we come now to your word and ask for the help of the Holy Spirit to preach and hear the word as your word and to believe on your word and to love you, to eat this word, to digest it and bear fruit. We pray, Lord, that the Holy Spirit might also use it to draw men and women and boys and curls, girls to Jesus Christ, Lord, that they might put their trust in you. We thank you for his death and resurrection on our behalf and pray that he would be honored by what is said here in Jesus name. Amen. Let's stand together for the reading of the word Luke, chapter one. We begin at verse twenty six Luke chapter one starting at verse twenty six down to verse fifty six. Now, in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee called Nazareth. To a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph of the descendants of David and the Virgin's name was Mary. And coming in, he said to her, greetings favored one. The Lord is with you. But she was very perplexed at this statement and kept pondering. What kind of salutation this was. 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 name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the son of the most high. And the Lord God will give him the throne of his father, David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever and his kingdom will have no end. Mary said to the angel. How can this be, since I am a virgin? The angel answered and said to her. The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the most high will overshadow you. And for that reason, the holy child shall be called the son of God. And behold, even your relative, Elizabeth, has also conceived a son in her old age, and she who was called Baron is now in her sixth month. For nothing will be impossible with God. And Mary said, behold, the bond slave of the Lord, may it be done to me according to your word. And the angel departed from her. Now, at this time, Mary arose and went in a hurry to the hill country, to a city of Judah and entered the house of Zacharias and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she cried out with a loud voice and said, Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And how has it happened to me that the mother of my Lord would come to me. For behold, when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby leaped in my womb for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what had been spoken to her by the Lord. And Mary said, My soul exalts the Lord and my spirit has rejoiced In God, my Savior, for he has had regard for the humble state of his bond slave. For behold, from this time on, all generations will count me blessed. For the mighty one has done great things for me and holy is his name and his mercy is upon generation after generation toward those who fear him. He has done mighty deeds with his arm He has scattered those who are proud in the thoughts of their heart. He has brought down rulers from their thrones and has exalted those who were humble. He has filled the hungry with good things and sent away the rich empty handed. He has given help to Israel, his servant, in remembrance of his mercy as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and his descendants forever. And Mary stayed with her about three months and then returned to her home. Amen. You may be seated. I want to divide the. Story that Luke lays out for us into three parts, boys and girls, I want you to think with me. Like in terms of a movie in your mind. And I'm going to put before you three specific scenes that I want you to think about. The first scene is when Gabriel comes and talks with Mary. That's going to be seen. Number one, the visitation of Gabriel. The second scene that I want you to think about. Is when Mary goes to Elizabeth's house. and spends time with her. And then the third one will make this movie a musical is when Mary sings here the Magnificat, as it is often known. Those three scenes I want us to think about. What is Luke doing in this gospel? If you turn back to chapter one, Luke tells us what he's trying to do. He says in verse one of this gospel. In as much As many have undertaken to compile an account of the things accomplished among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, Luke says, it seemed fitting for me as well, having investigated everything carefully from the beginning to write it out for you in consecutive order. Most excellent Theophilus. so that you may know the exact truth about the things that you have been taught. What is Luke's purpose? Luke's purpose is to help make known the gospel of Jesus Christ, the things that God has done. And so one of the things that Luke does for us is he gives us these three specific scenes in which God is beginning to do his greatest work of bringing Christ into the world. And he begins with his angel Gabriel, who is an archangel who stands before the very presence of God. Now, we have seen Gabriel before as he was talking to Zacharias. We didn't read that in our text this morning, but you remember how Gabriel comes to Zacharias as well. And Zacharias has told the good news that in their old age, he and Elizabeth are going to have a child, and this child is going to go as the forerunner of Jesus Christ. He's going to pave the way for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And Zacharias does not exactly believe as he should, the very promise, and so Gabriel says that Zacharias will remain silent, unable to speak, until all these things that have been told to him are accomplished. And then we move on to our first scene here. We come to verse 26 through verse 38, where Gabriel comes to visit Mary. Gabriel is sent on a second mission. This time he is not sent to Zacharias, but to Mary. Notice here that he is sent to Mary in Galilee. Notice there in verse 26, Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee. Now, Galilee is in the northern part of Israel, and it is fairly rural. Nazareth was a small town. The town is specifically mentioned, probably because the original audience of Luke's gospel might not have known where Nazareth was, what Nazareth was, where it was. So he specifies specifically that it would be in Nazareth that God would announce the news of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, Mary, we are told, is a woman who is engaged to a man named Joseph, in verse 27. Now, this engagement is stronger than it is in our culture. In the Hebraic culture, an engagement was a betrothal. The vows would already have been taken. The marriage would not yet have been consummated, but the bride price would have been paid, and vows probably would have already been exchanged, so that Joseph and Mary are actually called husband and wife. And so they are in this period when the angel of the Lord comes and greets her. He says, Mary, he hails her as the favored one. Notice there in verse 28 and coming in, he said her greetings favored one. The Lord is with you. And then he notes several things about Jesus Christ. And this is where I want to spend a little bit of time as we consider the greeting of Gabriel to Mary. I want us to think about several things that he says about the coming of Jesus Christ. Now, we should realize that Mary was a very godly woman. She was not a sinless woman, as some teach, but she was a godly woman. We don't want to overreact to those who pray to Mary or to exalt her as a sinless saint. She was not that. But notice, however, that she is, in verse 28, a favored one. And then he says, the Lord is with you. That the Lord really was with Mary. Mary has this extraordinary privilege and calling to be the mother of our Savior, Jesus Christ. She will bear this child in her womb. And note there that the angel says, do not be afraid, verse 30, do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. So God has been gracious to Mary. And he desires to use Mary to bring about the incarnation of our Savior. He says in verse 31, Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son and you shall name him Jesus. Now, let's stop right there. I want to consider several things here about Jesus Christ. First of all, note that she will conceive, though she has not yet known a man. She has not known Joseph yet before the marriage is consummated. She will become miraculously pregnant and she will bear a son. It was very important that we understand that the Holy Spirit, a third person of the Trinity, is going to do the work of bringing about this miraculous conception within the womb. of the Virgin Mary. If you jump down to verse 35, the angel said, answered and said to her, the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the most high will overshadow you. And for this reason, the holy child shall be called the son of God. So what we have here is a miracle where the second person of the Trinity, the eternal son of God, is going to add to his divine nature, our humanity. It will be the very likeness of ourselves. And if I can go so far, I'll be even the likeness probably of Mary. No, nothing about the genetic code is said here in our text, but Mary is going to be his biological mother. I wouldn't be surprised if Jesus didn't favor her in his human nature. He was conceived by the Spirit of God. in the womb of the Virgin Mary so that what we have here is one who is truly God. He is the son of God. That's a title given to Jesus. His name shall be Jesus. Now, his name is significant because his name means Jehovah saves. That's what Jesus means. Now, Matthew brings that point out more strongly than Luke does, but it is here in Luke as well. Because Luke adds to the name of Jesus, the title, the son of God. And that means that he will be both really a man, a son of David, but he will also be the son of God. And both of these aspects are very important. And we must maintain this as a church because this is The hope of salvation rests upon the fact that God has come down among us and he is the one who saves us and not we ourselves. And of course, many of you familiar with evangelical history and modernism and the battles that we fought in the early 20th century know that one of the flashpoints of the controversy between the modernists and between those who were holding to the integrity of the scriptures was this very point as to whether Jesus was miraculously conceived in the womb of the Virgin Mary. There were ministers who were saying it is of not any consequence that Mary necessarily be a virgin. They said, you do not necessarily have to believe in the virgin birth. And this, of course, was a serious error. And J. Gresham Machen, who helped found the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, wrote a book entitled Christianity and Liberalism. And he is saying here, these are not two forces that both are Christian and are struggling with one another. But what we have here are two entirely different religions. and that the true religion must maintain. The divine nature of Christ and the human nature of Christ brought together miraculously in the conception of the Virgin. So that he is both God and man. If we lose either his humanity or his full deity, we lose the gospel. Because if Christ is not fully God conceived by the Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary, if he be not God of God, then he is but an ordinary child of Adam and Eve. And as an ordinary propagated child of Adam and Eve, he thereby then is a sinner and he cannot save us from our sins. Because no sinner can save himself, much less anyone else. At the same time, we must maintain that Christ is really a man. Now, I don't know that the cynicism is the besetting sin of our day. If anything, I think it's the doctrine of the deity of Christ that is often more under attack. But in the early church among the Greeks, The humanity of Christ was often the sticking point because in the Greek mind the idea that you could be a man and sinless was inconceivable because the material world was wrought with evil and therefore anything that was material of consequence had to also be evil. And therefore, there were those known as the De Settis or the agnostics who taught that Jesus really wasn't a man, that he he had the image of a man, but he wasn't really flesh and blood. The Bible teaches boys and girls that Jesus Christ is both and must maintain to both of these truths. Jesus is fully God. He's God of God. Jesus said, if you've seen me, Philip, you've seen the father. I and the father are one. I am the way, the truth and the life. No man come unto the father but by me. Jesus received worship. Jesus forgave sin. The paralytic man is being lowered down. He said, my son, your sins are forgiven. And the Pharisees and the Sadducees are thinking, who can forgive sin but God? Yes, that's the answer that Jesus is fully God. And yet Also being fully gone, we have to maintain as a church that he is also a real human being. He, in many ways, boys and girls, is like you and me, yet without any sin. He had real emotions, feelings, needs, wants, Jesus would get tired, Jesus would get hungry. Jesus probably as a youth, stumbled and scraped his knee and probably bled on his knee. He was he was every bit human. Along with that divine nature and these two natures are in one person found in Jesus Christ, and they are not mixed, they're not separated, they're not confused, but they find themselves together, both they're fully there. Now, we have to understand that Christ is the son of God. It's not that the whole Trinity became a man, but the eternal son, the second person of the Trinity became a man. And yet he is equal with God, the father. Now you have to say, well, if he is truly God, then why does he subordinate himself? to the will of the father. Why do we find Jesus having to do these things? And why does God the father say this is my son in whom I'm well pleased? Listen to him. Well, because congregation, we must understand that though Christ is fully God, as is the father, he's equal with the father and equal with the Holy Spirit. But theologically, We have to understand that for the purpose of accomplishing your salvation, it was necessary that he subordinate himself. That is, he bring himself under the will of his father in heaven. So that that though he is God for the purpose of securing your salvation, he is obeying the father. He is submitting to the father. Not because as a Jehovah's Witness, see the Jehovah's Witnesses look at those passages that show the subordination of Jesus to the will of the Father and they say, see, he can't be God. But they're misunderstanding the nature of Christ and the nature of the Trinity. Ontologically, the son is equal with the father, but economically. He subordinates himself in his humiliation. What we find here and what our confession teaches and the catechism teaches is at the moment Jesus is conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary. Jesus is entering into what our standards say is his ministry of humiliation, he's entering into his humiliation before the conception. He is the eternal son of God with the father, with the spirit from all eternity past. But now what makes this part of our redemptive history so amazing is that now the eternal son is becoming a man and adding to. He's not detracting from his divine nature, but he's adding to his divine nature, a second nature, a human nature without any sin. Now, this is what is extraordinary when you think that Jesus Christ. Taking him to himself, a real body and a true soul, remember that in your in your catechism, Jesus Christ in himself, a real body and a true soul. He has done that forever. Into eternity future, Jesus will always be God and man in one person. I want to impress upon you the extraordinary nature of this. We're talking from eternity past. Up to this moment, he's always been the eternal son of God, but now he's doing something which will change him from this point to eternity future. And that is he added him to himself. A real human nature. Why would the son of God, why would God, the father and the Holy Spirit in their Trinitarian council ever do such a thing? Because the Bible says it is because of his great love for you. Because in the eternal plan of God, God foreloved you. He foreknew you in Jesus Christ. And the only way to accomplish our salvation was that God in the second person would become a man. This is why, congregation, we must hold the line on the virgin birth. We may not give one inch on this subject. To give an inch is to lose everything. To lose the gospel, to lose salvation, to lose our hope, to lose our joy. It is to lose everything. It is to make Christianity just some naturalistic religion on par with Islam, on par with Shintoism, on par with Buddhism. is not just some religion among many. This is the divine plan of God for man, for our salvation. I'm going to show you something else. Not only his two natures are brought forth here in Gabriel's words, but I want you to see that he is also fulfilling messianic promises. Look again at verse. Let's just go back to verse 30, just for the sake of context. And I really want to grab you at verse 32. 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 name him Jesus. Now look at verse 32. He, Jesus, will be great. And we'll be called the son of the most high. Now that again, that's another title, the deity to be called the son of the most high. The title, the deity and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father, David, he will reign over the house of Jacob forever and his kingdom will have no end. Now. Here is. Where Mary probably was overwhelmed at this point. Because essentially what Gabriel is telling her. Not only will God bring about this conception within her. But that this is the long awaited promise of salvation. From the very beginning, remember, boys and girls, when we were studying Genesis and we looked at Genesis chapter three, 15, and I said to you, here's the first preaching of the gospel. Here's the promise where what the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. And now the seed of the woman who's the woman Mary is beginning to realize she is that woman. This is not something that's just just come about by plan B or C. And God, God has been planning this from the beginning of creation. And Mary is feeling overwhelmed that of all the people chosen, God has favored her. That she should bring forth one who will destroy the works of the devil and that he will be that long awaited messiah. You have to understand in the in the mind of of the Jews, this was a theme that was with them from the very time they could understand human language. They were taught that one day God would send a messiah and he would deliver his people. He would save his people. He would come. And he would rescue his people, and this this was a theme that every Jewish home was familiar with. And God here through Gabriel is announcing to Mary that indeed God has remembered his promise to send the Messiah and that he will be of the house of David. You could go to various passages if you want to turn there. Welcome to turn there with me. Second Samuel, for example, chapter seven. I just want to show you a few of the passages that would have been known to Jews and would have been just one of those key texts. One of them is found in 2 Samuel 7. I highly encourage you to become familiar with this chapter, because this is where God has promised to raise up one after David. Who would rule as king among his people, it just the context of 2 Samuel 7 is you remember, David wanted to build the house of the Lord. Nathan said, go, go get him, guy. And Nathan goes home. God speaks to Nathan and says, Nathan, go back and go tell David, you're not going to build a house for me, but I will build a house for you. And the house that God is speaking about is David's line. Look at verse 12. Verse 12, he says, When your days are complete and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your descendant after you who will come forth from you and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. Now, of course, typologically, Solomon was the immediate fulfillment of that promise. Solomon could not, even with all his wisdom, establish the throne of David forever and ever and ever. God would have to do that himself. We know Solomon dies and the kingdom is split. Rehoboam makes a mistake and you have the division in the kingdoms. But notice what God promises David. In verse 16, it says your house and your kingdom shall endure before me forever and your throne shall be established forever. That was the promise God through the house of David was going to bring about the Messiah. And he would he would sit on the throne of David and he would rule forever. We sing about this when we sing in the Psalms. There are two songs I want to bring to your mind. First one is Psalm 89, because that same messianic promise is found in Psalm 89. I have made a covenant with my chosen. I have sworn to David, my servant. I will establish your seed forever and build up your throne to all generations. And then later in that same song, he says, I have found David, my servant, with whom my holy oil I have anointed him. And he says, he will cry to me, you are my father, my God, the rock of my salvation. I also shall make him my firstborn. Now, listen to this. The highest of the kings of the earth. The loving kindness I will keep for him forever, my covenant shall be confirmed to him. So you see what what is being said here through the psalmist, the psalmist is saying, remember the promise God gave to David. And here they're singing about it, God will be faithful. And then if you move to Psalm 110, the same promise is brought again. The Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand. The Lord will stretch forth your strong scepter. What's a scepter, boys and girls? That's the that's the instrument the king holds in his hand and symbolizing his power. So the psalmist in Psalm 110 says that he shall be a king. He will remember his promise to David. And not only that, he not only will he be a king, but a priest, according to the order of Melchizedek. What is the point of all this? When we get back to our text here, notice what he says. He will be great. The son of Mary will be great and he will be called the son of the most high. And the Lord God will give him a throne of his father, David. He is saying to Mary, I am now fulfilling all those promises of the Old Testament. Genesis 315, 2 Samuel chapter 7, Psalm 89, Psalm 110. We could have looked at others. We didn't have time. I am fulfilling that promise that I made to your people through David. I am now establishing that eternal throne and his name shall be Jesus. He shall be the son of David. He shall be the son of God. And he will deliver his people from their sins. Well, let me keep moving here. I'm probably only going to get to the second point here. Mary then goes and she visits Elizabeth with this amazing news. Notice that. God has already said to Mary, because she's wondering, how is this going to be since I'm a virgin? And he explains to her the conception within her womb by the Holy Spirit. And then as proof of that, he says, consider your relative Elizabeth. So this is really interesting, because what this means is that Mary is not only a descendant of David, but she is also a descendant of Aaron. Because when we read about Elizabeth and Zacharias, we are told they are of the House of Aaron so that we see within the person of Mary, you have one who has the lineage of a king and you have in Mary one who has the lineage of the priesthood coming together in this one person and that Jesus Christ is going to be both that priest and that king. And so as evidence of what Gabriel has said, being true. He tells Mary about Elizabeth who is beyond the years ordinarily for childbearing. And yet Gabriel says she's in her sixth month of pregnancy for nothing will be impossible with God. Now when Mary hears this after Gabriel leaves it says in verse 39 at this time Mary arose and went in a hurry to the hill country to a city of Judah. So Zacharias and Elizabeth probably live out in the country. within the tribe of Judah, and Mary comes to visit them. Hearing of this, she goes to see for herself. And we have the account that when Mary greets Elizabeth, Elizabeth's baby, who is John the Baptist, leaps within her womb. And John the Baptist, remember being filled with the spirit while in his mother's womb, has a miraculous response to the salutation of Mary. And I think, again, this is further confirmation that Jesus is the Christ, that John is the promised forerunner of Jesus Christ. Elizabeth is filled with the spirit, and let's just look quickly at what Elizabeth has to say. Look at verse 42 in your text. She cried out with a loud voice and she said, Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. How has it happened to me? that the mother of my Lord would come to me. So notice she acknowledges that. The child that Mary is to carry is to be her Lord, her savior, and she says, for behold, when the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby leaped in my womb for joy and blessed is she. Who believed that there would be fulfillment of what had been spoken to her by the Lord. Let me say a few things. I got to close here because we need to come to the Lord's table. Let me give you a few applications for us to consider. First of all, I want you, as we reflect on this season, to consider the blessedness of Mary. Mary is a godly woman and should be honored by us. We should not overreact to those who would exalt her to sinlessness or to pray to her. Yet at the same time, we should we should honor her. Indeed, she was favored of God. For the for the unique privilege of carrying our savior in his humanity. And at the same time, we must also acknowledge, however, that is Jesus and Jesus alone, who is our savior and our mediator. One of the troubling things about making Mary a mediator between us and Jesus is it makes it seem as though Jesus is distant. And I think that's one of the unfortunate things that other denominations have done who have exalted Mary beyond who she really is. They've made it seem as though Jesus is somebody difficult to reach and that you cannot reach out to him unless you go to his mother for what son refuses his mother, they say. But here's what The gospel really teaches is that Jesus is accessible. And that the father has made him accessible to us, he is the mediator for us, he is the one that we go to in order to approach God, the father. God has done us a great service in sending Jesus Christ to be that mediator between us and him. He is God, so he can represent God to us. He is really a man, so he can represent us to God. We don't need another mediator for the mediator. Jesus Christ is that mediator for us, and we should go to him in prayer. And for those of you who are visiting who may not know Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ, as I said earlier, is the way, the truth and the life. God has given us Jesus Christ so that you can come to know him, that you can come to know God. And there is no other way to come to know God but through him. One more couple more things. We also see that Mary is a great encouragement to us that we should live humbly before God. Mary is an example to us. I think more Protestants should name their daughters Mary. Mary is an example to us and an encouragement to us. Mary was living in Nazareth. Mary was living in a very small, obscure town that was of no note to CNN and Fox News back then. Nobody paid attention to what was going on in Nazareth. Do you remember when they spoke to Philip and said, we think we found the Messiah? And then Philip hears that he's from Nazareth. You remember what Philip's reaction was? Can anything good come from Nazareth? Nazareth was not the place where you would expect the Messiah to come from. But yet God did amazing things through a young teenage girl living in a small, obscure town. Isn't that an encouragement for us who are just ordinary people who don't walk the marble halls of Washington, D.C., who don't trade On Broad Street or Broadway and Wall Street, we don't live there. Isn't it an encouragement to know that even in small towns in Georgia, God is pleased to use people. He can use you wherever you are. Don't think your situation is too humble to be used by God. Don't think your gifts are too small or you're too obscure to be of any use to God. God was pleased to turn the world upside down through the small town of Nazareth and through a very humble teenage girl. One more thing would go to the Lord's table. Notice the amount of praise that fills our text. We didn't have time to look at it all. But one of the things that we do see is Elizabeth's praise and Mary's praise in our text. Both these women were filled with praise. as they were filled with astonishment at what God has done. And I think that should be indicative for us as well. When we think about the incarnation of our savior, we should be struck at times with wonder ourselves and filled with praise. So let me ask you if you have been filled with praise lately for the great things God has done. I want you to think about that. Let's pray together. Father, we thank you and praise you for what you've done for us in Jesus Christ and pray that as we come to the table, we might do so with great humility, exemplified by Mary and made the Holy Spirit who favored Mary also come and meet with us as we remember what Jesus has done in Jesus name. Amen.