So two weeks ago, we highlighted from Matthew the fact that John had some concerns about who Christ was. Because by divine revelation, he understood that Jesus was the Son of God, the Lamb of God, the Messiah. who would come and do two things. One was grace in terms of dealing with the sins of the people, and two, as a mighty warrior, deliver them from their enemies. And John was confused because having heard the works of the Christ, as it says, he asked his disciples to go and ask, are you the coming one or should we expect another? And we highlighted at the time that it's easy for us to read prophecy and not understand, one, that there might be tremendous gaps between sections of the prophecy as there is in this case. Or there might be a near and far fulfillment. And we're reminded by Peter in 1 Peter 1 and verse 10 that the Old Testament prophets who spoke by the Holy Spirit often didn't fully understand what they were saying and had to search their own prophecies to find the meaning of the glory of Christ and his sufferings. And the reason, and so this morning what I want to do is really focus, or the point I wanna push for us is this great statement found in 32 and 33. 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, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will have no end. That's the prophecy that the angel gives to Mary. And it's one that I think all of us would, like John the Baptist, would go amen to. That sounds great. We're all on board for that. But then we look around and we end up being like Peter walking on the water in the midst of the storm. You know, Peter sometimes mocked because he looked around too much and fell, right? But at least Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water. But like Peter, we can look at our circumstances and quickly the circumstances become more pressing than the promise. and I've recently repeated to you at least twice now, and I've tried to teach it to you over the years, that when you look at prophecies, you have to handle them carefully, because prophecies are not given so that we can mark our calendars and say, well, this is the point of history that we're in, or Jesus is gonna return in this day or that, I've made mention to you of a book, 88 Reasons Why Jesus is Coming Back in 1988, and clearly that book was false. But prophecy is meant to encourage us to remain steadfast, immovable, and always abounding in the work of the Lord, despite our circumstances. Despite what we might see, as Paul will say on occasions, that we are to walk by faith and not by sight, just as Peter, when he walked by faith, walked on water. When he walked by sight, he fell under the water. And the pursuit of understanding of so-called last things is not so we can have a clear mechanical understanding of how those things will shake out. If it was, I'm sure that the great debates between premillennial dispensationalism, historical premillennialism, amillennialism, and postmillennialism would have been thought out and worked out a long time ago. What God wants for us is to know that just as he has infallibly worked in the past, so he will work in the future to fulfill all that he has promised and therefore we are all the more to wait on him and to trust him. I made reference to this in the Sunday school class this morning and one of the great studies that you can do if you're so inclined is take the word wait and its synonyms and run them through the book of Psalms and see how often the people are called to wait on God for his help comes in the morning. But I would thought of the book of Habakkuk. Remember the book of Habakkuk, the prophet is deeply distressed because in the nation Israel, in the people of God, There was violence, there was iniquity, there was wickedness and destruction and strife, and the law of God was not being taken seriously, and the justice was being perverted. And he says to God, are you going to do anything? God says, yep, I'm going to send the Chaldeans. Habakkuk's response is, how can you send them? They're more wicked than we are. And in the midst of this book, God answers him. and says that the Lord answered me and said, record the vision and inscribe it on tablets that one who reads it may run. For the vision is yet for an appointed time. It hastens toward the goal and it will not fail. Though it tarries, wait for it, for it will certainly come. It will not delay. And then a very important verse that is linked very clearly to the gospel by the apostle Paul, and one which will help Martin Luther in his recovering of the gospel. Verse four, behold, as for the proud one, his soul is not right within him, but the righteous will live by his faith. God has a set of times and appointed times. And history is moving toward a specific goal in which all things will be summed up under the headship of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is what the Bible teaches us. We must wait for it. Why must we wait? Because by waiting, we are learning to trust. We're learning to do what we say in terms of sola fide, faith alone. Faith is trust. God has spoken, and I stressed this last week, how often we will trust all sorts of people. And I learned a lesson last week. I will never use the illustration of toothpaste again because at lunch I found that that's the only thing some people heard was toothpaste. but we trust all sorts of things and people whom we've never met, but we don't trust God. See, faith is part of who we are, but in our fallenness, we will believe all sorts of truth claims from all sorts of people, but in our fallenness, we don't want to trust God. And we come by this honestly, because that was part of the very first sin, wasn't it? God said, do not eat from the tree in the center of the garden. Now that's not a complicated command. Now, if you were all fluent in Hebrew and could read Hebrew idiomatically and you went back to Genesis 2 and read it in the Hebrew, you know what you would find? It says simply, do not eat from the tree in the center of the garden. There's no great mystery here. And yet, in the wisdom of Adam and Eve, they thought they knew a better way. And that better way not only led to their death, their spiritual and physical death, but cast the entire world into both spiritual and physical death, and is the source of all the evil that has come upon us since then. We must learn to wait. It's easy to say, I trust God, until you have to wait for him. And wait for him for not just days or weeks, months, maybe years, maybe decades. Remember, it's 400, what some people call the 400 silent years between the prophet Malachi and the coming of John the Baptist. Four centuries. Not a single word from God. Now in this case, the book of Luke, we have this wonderful statement about he will reign over the house of Jacob and his kingdom shall have no end. When was the book of Luke written? Well, we don't know exactly, But some of the more liberal end of scholarship suggest that was written after somewhere around the year 80 or later, 80 AD, the first century. Let's take for a moment and ask, what would that mean? Well, that means the book of Luke was written after the fall of Jerusalem, after the destruction of the city of David. And these words, if you were Luke, would you include these words? How amazing those words would have sounded if the book was written after the destruction of Israel. Now, I don't think that's an argument against the dating. I think that just shows that if that was so, how much more profoundly these words would resonate to the first readers that this is the promise. Not only is David or one of his descendants not on the throne, there is no throne, there's no city, there's nothing. And how easy it would have been for the believers to have despaired and said, this is not true, but that's not what we find the church doing. But let's consider the more conservative scholarship. And some would place this, the Gospel of Luke being written before the fall of Jerusalem, probably in the late 50s, early 60s. Probably it was begun to be written by the conservative scholars assessment, why Luke was still traveling with the apostle Paul. And possibly why Paul was in Rome for his first imprisonment. Again, we don't really know which way. But think about it, let's consider the book having been written before the fall of Rome. And the early Christians are reading this and going, wow, this is a great promise. And then Jerusalem falls. Did I say the fall of Rome? I meant the fall of Jerusalem. Jerusalem falls afterwards. Well, what might you think? How would the early church react to that? Well, see, it's really not true. We had this great promise. And again, there's not only not a descendant of David on the throne, there is no throne because there's no city. And you might expect the early church to then be cast into despair. We put our hope that Christ was coming soon and he would restore these things, kind of like John the Baptist. And when something as devastating and as profound as the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 AD, how easy it would have been for Christians to start to question the veracity of the Bible. But that's not what we find. We find them still believing. And the circumstances of our day are not any worse, in many cases, much better than theirs, regardless of when the book was written. But how quickly we might become discouraged or despairing, or, I think, more to the point, the way our Psalm just spoke of sinners, those who forget God. Now you think, well, I don't forget God. I think of him every day. I might read my Bible. I might pray. Certainly he's important to me. But you read and you pray and then you turn on the news. You read and pray and then you go to work and you hear what everybody's talking about. You read and pray and you realize the terrible wickedness that's going on in our land. And pretty soon you start to think that it's hopeless. Or, where I wanted to go was, you forget God. We forget God and the promise of his coming kingdom. Well, what might that look like if it's not despair? It might look like I'm living my life for now. It's like someone said to me one time, Why do you go to school? I go to school because I want a job. Well, why do you want a job? So I can make money. So why do you want to make money? So I can buy a house. And why do you want to buy a house? So I can have a family and a place for them to live. And why do you want to do that? I forget. To live. in a manner where all that we say and do isn't tied in some way to the coming of Christ and his kingdom, is to forget God. That doesn't mean it's always obvious and we have to be able to be quick to answer, how is my children playing in a sports program tied to the coming of the kingdom? It's not a silliness like that. Exactly how is my buying this house tied to the second coming of Christ? I'm not asking you to do that. But those who forget God tend to live as if the coming of the kingdom, even as I profess faith in it, doesn't really take into account much of what I do. And yet how often Paul ties it back to both positively and negatively. Like he says in Titus, he says, Those, the true believers are those who are looking for the coming, the blessed hope of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. That is a common description of Christians in the New Testament. They're the ones who are looking for the coming of Christ. And by definition, if you're talking about that in the New Testament, it can't be the coming of its first coming, it must be the second coming. But negatively, he reminds us that that we all will be judged according to the things we've done in the body, the things that we've said, all that will be in account at the judgment seat. And Jesus says that a man will be judged by every idle word that passes out of his mouth. I hate that verse, because you all know I'm kind of chatty. I speak and speak freely and sometimes speak expansively and can go on and on. I have a lot of idle words, but so do you. We're gonna be judged by every idle word that passes out of our mouth? That's linking the coming of Christ's kingdom to how we live and how we speak, what we do and don't do this afternoon or tomorrow or whenever. And so the point I want to make this morning is, as we look briefly at this passage, is that we need to be men and women who, as we confess every Lord's day, that not only is Jesus coming to judge the living and the dead, but we are looking for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. You know, sometimes it's in the business world, I guess, I don't know if this is still the trend, but I know back in the 90s it was the trend, you know, say, where do you see yourself in 10 years? I had a pastor ask me that. Of course, he was a megachurch pastor, and he wanted me to be thinking about how I could be a megachurch pastor too. I don't really remember what I responded to him, but it was probably not exactly this, but something like this. Well, I want to love my wife more. I want to be a better father and a more sound exegete. It's not the answers he was looking for. But in 10 years, don't you want to be further down the path to the celestial city? Don't you want to be more conformed to the image of Christ? How will that happen? Well, that's a big, that's a sermon in itself, but it at least includes taking seriously the fact that Jesus has been declared to be the one who will come, who will sit upon the throne of his father David forever, and his kingdom will have no end. Faith takes that statement and believes it. Like I said, we believe all these other statements. We believe all these other people. You go to a restaurant, you order something, you don't see who cooked it. You don't see, do they have the flu today when they made your food? Do they have a really bad attitude and want to add things to your food that shouldn't be in there? You just bring that Luguini out and you eat it. that nice creamy sauce. You believe all sorts of people, but you and I do not want to believe God. But God says, this is my son in whom I'm well pleased, and his kingdom will have no end. And if we believe that, we will wait for it, we will look for it, and it will be a defining principle for how we live each day in the most ordinary things. So let me just highlight a few things from this passage. First of all, notice the unassuming manner in which Jesus comes. It says in the sixth month, verse 26, Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee called Nazareth to a virgin engaged to a man named Joseph. There's nothing in those words that should impress you. Galilee was not the high rent district. It wasn't the upper west side of Manhattan. If you lived in Galilee, you were definitely probably second class. There was nothing exceptional, the city of Nazareth. And Angel comes to a woman, probably about 14 years of age, as best we can guess. A woman, a young girl, young, she's got no credibility. And as a woman, she can't even testify in a court of law. So God takes the most unassuming, humble place to begin to work his great redemption. One writer put it this way, the angel who announced his advent was sent to an obscure town of Galilee named Nazareth. The woman who was honored to be our Lord's mother was evidently a humble position of life. Both her station and her dwelling place, there was an utter absence of what the world calls greatness. And he comes and he says, greetings, favored one, the Lord is with you. The favored one, the idea of being favored of that is to be graced, is to be graced. The idea is that, in fact, the word therefore, A greetings is also tied to the word grace and favored one could be translated, you have been graced. And the definition of this gracing is that the Lord is with you. And it's easy for us to kind of skip over that. You think about what this young girl is gonna go through. First of all, she's gonna be pregnant out of wedlock, engaged, but out of wedlock. not a good position to be in, especially in her culture. She's going to be given the responsibility of caring for the savior of the world. Every mom, especially every first time mom, guards that child with great care. After the second, third, fourth, or fifth one, mom maybe not be so careful. They learn, well, yeah, they're gonna fall down a lot and they'll be okay. Their heads are made of incredible stuff. You know? But that first one, and we know where's the most dangerous place to be in the world between a grizzly bear and her cubs. She's gonna be responsible to care for this little one. And then when she's told about his life, She's even told that you understand that he's appointed for the rising up and the taking down of many of Israel. Her son will grow and no one will understand him. She won't either. His own family will think he's out of his mind. There's not a mother in the world that's heart isn't broken. We're having a child that just seems out of sorts. We don't know what happened to Joseph, but it appears that she raised him on her own. She might've been a single mom, because Joseph passes out of the story pretty quickly. And through all of this, God will be with her. God will sustain her. God will protect her. God will provide for her. And she's perplexed. I always chuckle at that, perplexed. I'm sitting in my house minding my own business and an angel standing there talking to me. What in the world does this mean? And the word kept pondering is an important word because the word there has the idea of thinking, reasoning, This isn't a vision, it's not a dream, it's not an hallucination. She's seeing something, she's hearing something, and she's in a state of mind to think about and reason about what is taking place. And as she does so, she's able to all the more think through exactly what's going on. The word is used elsewhere in the New Testament to describe this type of activity, like in Luke 5.21, the scribes and the Pharisees began to reason, saying, who is this man who speaks blasphemies? It's used again in Luke 5.22, Jesus became aware of their reasonings and said to them, why are you reasoning in your heart? So Mary in the midst of this is thinking. She's alert, she's awake, and she's taking in and contemplating what is happening to her. And the angel says to her, do not be afraid, Mary, For you have found favor in God's sight. You have found favor in God's sight. Again, the word favor here is the word tied to the word for grace. There's a joy that you are to have. There's a, do not be afraid, have a joy. You've received a gift. The word joy and gratitude and gift are all built off the same kind of word in the Greek. And she truly has been graced. You have found favor with God and behold, you will receive, conceive in your womb and bear a son and you shall name him Jesus. This is not part of the prophecy. This is part of a command. He's commanding her to name him Jesus. He's not saying, I think this is the name you're going to pick out. No, he's telling her the name she will pick out. And what does the name Jesus mean? Jehovah saves. Just like in Matthew, the angel comes to Joseph and says that, don't be afraid to take Mary as your wife, she's gonna bear a son, he's holy, and you should call his name Jesus, and he is the one that shall save his people from their sins. And the language is very intentional. You know, we use bold and underlines and italics and all sorts of things to highlight words. Well, in those days, you didn't have that kind of freedom. And so, especially in Greek, words that are emphasized are placed in a particular orders or certain words are added to bring emphasis. And one of the things I like about Matthew 1.21 is that if you want to read it very woodenly, It is he himself shall save his people from their sins. And therefore you shall call his name Jesus. His name fits his office. And then the angel says in verse 32, and he will be great and he will be called the son of the most high and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father, David. Now this is tricky language here. He will be called great. Well, the angels had also said that John would be called great a little earlier. But Jesus is gonna be great in a different way. He will be great and He will be called. He will be recognized. That's what's important. He's great, but His greatness is not a secret. His greatness will be known. He will be called. He shall be called the Son of the Most High. He will be called the Son of the Most High. And as the Son of the Most High, he is one who will be identified very closely with God. Now this language of the Most High does not mean he is, this is not appealing to him as God himself. And this is one of the ways in which this passage is tricky, because you wanna jump to, he will be great, he'll be called the son of the most high, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father, David. Is this speaking, is this verse speaking of Jesus in terms of his divine nature? Or is it speaking of him in terms of his earthly nature? And I would suggest to you it has to do with his earthly nature. The term most high is used also by Luke in Luke 6.35 of all believers, but love your neighbors and do good and lend expecting nothing in return and your reward will be great and you'll be the sons of the most high for he himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men. You and I, by doing the will of God can also be called the sons of the most high. Now, obviously he's being called this for a slightly different reason than us, but I believe that this is not focused primarily upon his divine nature, but his human nature. In his birth, in his conception, in his being called Jesus, In his earthly ministry, he will in fact have a very close relationship with God the Father. Remember at his baptism, now remember he's not being baptized according to his divine nature, he's being baptized according to his human nature. And from heaven we hear the words, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. Again, at the Mount of Transfiguration, the voice comes from heaven. This is my beloved Son in whom I'm well pleased. Listen to him. And what the angel is telling us is that in his earthly ministry, the infinite God-man, focusing now briefly on the human side of that person, he will have an intimate relationship with the most high God, the Lord God himself. The Lord God himself will give to him and set him on the throne of his father, David. You think of Psalm 2 where Jesus speaks in that Psalm and says, I speak, I declare the decree of God. That you have, that today you've begotten me. That would be in the resurrection. But what's the promise or what's the statement that's stated in that psalm? That the father says, I have placed him, my anointed on my mountain and on his throne in Zion. No one else will have that. In fact, it's interesting, this is a grammatical nuance, when it says, it doesn't say in the Greek text as it says here, the most high. That word the does not appear in the actual Greek text. It has to appear in the English text, because it doesn't make the same sense. But how many most highs can there be? In this case, only one. He is gonna be called the Son of the Most High. There's a uniqueness in this relationship, is what the language would want us to pick up. And in verse 33, he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and there will be no end to his kingdom. We see this all through the scriptures in the Old and New Testament. In Daniel chapter seven, verse 14, you sure know, it says, to him was given dominion, glory, a kingdom that all the peoples and nations, the men of every language might serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away. His kingdom is one which will not be destroyed. In Revelation 11 verse 15, the seventh angel sounded and there was a loud voice in heaven saying, the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ and he will reign forever and ever. And so Mary asked the question, how can this be? I'm a virgin. And the angel says, the Holy Spirit will come upon you with power, the Most High will overshadow you. And for this reason, the Holy Child shall be called the Son of God. He's gonna be born in a way that no one else could. It's not by flesh, but by spirit. He will be holy and not corrupt like every other child that's been born since or the fall of our first parents. The power of an indestructible holy life. He will be able to reign forever and ever. The one thing that is true of every earthly king and tell Jesus is they all die. They all come, they all go. The nations come and they go. Nothing lasts. Everything passes away. But this one is not like any of those others. He will come and he will reign forever. And this isn't just hyperbolic language, you know, like God saved the queen, make sure you live forever or whatever. This is truth. Again, going back to the beginning of the sermon, do we trust that? God is making a claim. God is making a statement that requires us to respond. And as I highlighted already in last week, we trust just about anybody and everybody before we trust God. We are inclined to trust. It's always, one of the greatest things that I love about little children And I mean little ones. They know the voice of their mom and dad. And to the chagrin of most dads, they know the voice of their mom better. And so a little kid doesn't know anything. A little kid who knows nothing of the world is able to distinguish mom and dad from every other adult in the world. Isn't that amazing? They trust their parents, they're inclined to. And we grow up and we trust our parents and we trust our loved ones, we trust our friends, but we also trust strangers. As I said, you get on board a plane, you don't even know if the plane can fly, you don't know the mechanic. He might've had a really bad day and decides, you know, I want a little retribution. You don't know, you just get on that plane Turn on, plug your, connect your seatbelt, and close your eyes, and wait for takeoff. You can always tell first-time flyers. They're the ones that are holding up that little plastic card, paying close attention to the stewardess in the aisle. This is where you're gonna find, and those who have flown a lot, you know, headphones on. I know where all that is. You trust, you're trusting somebody. But when it comes to trusting God because of our sinfulness, we don't. But just like the world, God has made some promises, just like our parents, just like our friends, just like a politician. God has made some claims. He's made some truth statements. This is my son, Jesus, whom I'm well pleased. His death, I mean his birth rather, is not like any other birth, it's supernatural. It's by the Holy Spirit on a virgin. And he will be given a kingdom and it will not end. He will live forever, he will reign forever, and he cannot be thwarted. If all the king's men and all the king's horses gather together, can they put Humpty Dumpty back together again? No. And if they can't put Humpty Dumpty back together again, can they withstand Christ? Can they thwart Christ? Do you believe that? I'm sure everybody's nodding inside. Yes, of course, pastor. Yes, of course, pastor. Then let me call you at 1117 tomorrow afternoon and ask you, what are you thinking about? We're called to trust God. And sometimes he makes us wait, just like he did and said to the prophet Habakkuk. going to wait. It's an appointed time. It will come. And your job right now is to wait for it, to look for it, and to live in light of it. How do we live in light of it? We are to abound in good works. We're to be steadfast and immovable in how we live our lives for his glory and for the welfare of our neighbor. That is who and what we are to do. And the degree that we find ourselves doing that is the degree in which we actually believe in the coming of Christ and his kingdom. Failure to live that way, no matter how much of an expert you are in eschatology, says you don't believe it. This very moment that we're in right now, the moment, this moment, not the one that's about to come, this moment is the only moment of eternity that you have any control over. And right now you're making a choice. Does that choice that you are making and how you will live the rest of this day or the next 15 minutes or whatever, reflect an abiding confidence in God that his son is coming to establish a kingdom that will never end or fail? Or, as soon as the service is over, will you quickly forget God and his promise? In the weakness of our flesh, in the frailty of our flesh, in the sinfulness of our flesh, we will probably quickly forget, but it should not be so. And so we must pray and ask for the grace to not be like our first parents, Adam and Eve, but to trust Him, to wait for Him, and to live in light of all that He has promised. And when we do that, then Christmas will take on a special meaning, and you won't need a lot of the trappings that come with Christmas in our culture. Because all you will need is Christ and the promises surrounding the meaning of his birth and of his life. Because in the end, that's all there is. That's why they call it Christmas. Amen? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we would ask that you would help us, cause us, work in us those things we need to genuinely trust you and to rely upon you and to wait for you, believing that Jesus is coming again in the kingdom that he brings and the kingdom that he will reign over will be for his people. It will have no end. and it will be the fulfillment of all that you have said. In Christ we pray, amen.