Last week, in verse 16, Luke 1, And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, to a virgin, espoused to a man, whose name was Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary. The angel came in unto her and said, Hail, thou art highly favored. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women. And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. The angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favour with God. Behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest. The Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David, He shall reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end. Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? The angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, the power of the highest shall overshadow thee, therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And behold thy cousin Elizabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For with God nothing shall be impossible. And Mary said, Behold the handmaiden of the Lord, be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her. I got behind a car today, had verse 37 on a bumper sticker. for with God nothing shall be impossible. And as we once again visit this scripture, and it's fitting for this season of the year and this celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, and we're going to think along some different lines of thought than we did last week. This is a very unusual birth, as you know, there's none like it before, and never is going to be none like it again. And it's very unusual that a woman should have a child without an earthly father. Never has happened, never will happen again, and which raises the question, why must it be that way now? Why did it have to be this way? Well, I know most of you know, you've been coming to church long enough, I think you know, that Adam was not just an individual man, but Adam was the representative of the human race, the first man. And when Adam and Eve violated the covenant of God, they brought upon the whole human race a curse. and all of his descendants. The Lord told him, if you eat of this tree, that you shall surely die. And we know that Adam, I think he lived to be 130, I believe that's right. He lived a long time after that he ate of that. And we know what happened was that uh... he began to die physically but he did die spiritually uh... the moment that he uh... partook of that and uh... and because he was the head of the human race that what he did uh... it went down through all of humanity it affected all of humanity we know that because not only do people get sick and die and people grow old and die, but even little babies and little children die that has no knowledge of sin, does not know anything about good or bad, and yet sometimes they die. And so this lets us know that this sin of Adam, that it affected every human being on the face of the earth. I think Romans 5 and 12 says, Wherefore by one man that sin entered into the world, and death by sin. And so it is true what the Bible says in I Corinthians 15 and verse 22. The Bible said, In Adam, we were in Adam. In Adam I'll die. And so the Mormons, I don't know about anybody else, but I know the Mormons, they don't teach that. The Mormons don't teach that you're born with a sin nature. They don't teach that Adam's sin filtered down to everybody. They just think that, you know, you get a certain age and you sin, which is true, but one of the reasons that we do sin is because we have this fallen nature. Let's go to Genesis 5 tonight, Genesis 5, and there we have the book of the generation of Adam, and we want to notice what it says here. It said, In the day that God created men, in the likeness of God made he him. God made Adam in his likeness. But notice, He made them male and female. He created them and blessed them and called their name Adam in the day when they were created. And Adam lived a hundred and thirty years. Okay, lived a hundred and thirty years, but got a son in his own likeness. Notice that. Adam was made in God's likeness, but after Adam sinned and failed, his son is not in God's likeness, his son is in Adam's likeness. You say, Well, wasn't Adam like God? Yeah, until he sinned. And Adam still has some of the image of God, just like all of us bear some of the image of God, but sin has greatly marred it. It's still there, but sin is greatly martyred, just like sin does everything. If you see somebody that really goes deep into sin, some young person or some middle-aged person or even one of us, if we were to turn from God and go deeply into sin, and you were to see us in a few years, we would look different. It marrs you, it affects you, and so it did Adam. So while Adam still HAD some of the image of God, he was made in the image of God, and he still had some of the image of God, but it was greatly marred. And everyone after Adam is marred a little bit more. It's like if I took this paper and went back in the office, and this is the original copy, and I put it in the copier, and I ran off a thousand copies. The first copy would look close to that. The second copy would look a little different, though maybe not detected by the human eye. But by the time we get to the thousandth copy, there's going to be quite a difference. And so Adam, he looked like God, but he lost the image of God, and with every generation we lose a little bit more of the image of God. If we go back to the 1930s or 1940s, pre-TV, pre-cell phone, social media, pre-a lot of things. Back then, people went to church. They might not have had it every week, but they went to church and they courted in church. They found a girlfriend in church. They went to church for the fun because there wasn't nowhere else to go but church. But now there's so many other places that people can go, and that's why I say that every generation is a little bit more unlike the image that Adam was made in. Now, while Jesus was born, like all the sons of Adam, Jesus was born, we would not nor be any the better if Jesus was fathered by the Adam's race. In other words, if Joseph really was Jesus' father, which he's not, Christ would be just like us. He had been born with a sin nature, and he couldn't save anybody. And Job tells us this in Job 14, verse 4, he said, Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? So none of US could have died for sin because you can't bring a clean thing out of an unclean thing, and the Bible said we're all AS an unclean thing. So Job 25, verse 4 said, How can he be clean that is born of a woman? And meaning the natural birth of a woman with an earthly father, there's no way that they can be clean, right? No way. And so Jesus could not be born the way we were born or He couldn't save anybody. For Christ to bear our sins and take away our sins as the Lamb of God, the proper and accepted sacrifice for our sins, He could not be born with or have any sins of His own. So he wasn't born with sin, because it's a virgin birth, and he had no sins of his own. Even Pilate said, I find no fault in him. But then in another place, Pilate even went further than that. He said, I find no fault in him at all. Now there's, I might say I don't find any fault in Mr. Ritchie's witnessing, but I might I wouldn't be able to say, I find no fault in Him at all, because we all got faults. But when you look at Jesus, you could look at Him and say, I find no fault in Him at all. And we know He never sinned. You say, how do you know that? He never did get sick. And He never died. You say, I thought He died on the cross. He did, but He dismissed His own spirit. You can't do that. I can't do that. Only God could do that. So it had to be this way to fulfill the Scriptures, otherwise the Bible could not be trusted and true. As we showed you last week, the first hint of the virgin birth was seen in Genesis 3 and verse 15. And He said, I will put enmity between thee and the woman's seed, and between thy seed and her seed. So he didn't say, I'll put enmity between the man's seed and the woman's seed, or Satan's seed, serpent's seed. And so that's the first hint that there's going to be a virgin birth. It's not a man, earthly man, physical man involved in it. Now there's something else to note here that I didn't note last week, but it's worth noting. The Lord said, I'll put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed. Okay? We did talk about her seed last week, but we didn't talk about thy seed. He's talking about the devil. The devil has a seed. Note here, not only is it interesting that the woman has one, And that's a little different, but Satan has a seed as well. In John 8 and verse 44, John 8 and 44, Jesus said, talking to some religious Pharisees, lost people, He said, Ye are of your father the devil. Well, for of him, I guess it'd be of his seed. I John 3 and 12 said, Not as Cain, who was of that wicked one, the Bible said. Now, there are several people that I've read down through the years that taught that Cain was not Adam's child, but Cain was the devil's child. Now, I've never believed that, but I want you to know that you might hear that out there. You say, why haven't you never believed that? Because of what my Bible says. If you look in Genesis 4, it's pretty plain. It said, Adam knew his wife, and we know what that means, and she conceived and bear Cain. So, to me, there's no room to even speculate what they insinuate. And so by putting all them scriptures together, I'm going to say this, that Satan's seed is the lost that don't follow Jesus Christ until they get saved. And they can get saved. We can't talk about that without thinking about John 17 and 12, and the Bible calls Judas the son of Perdictition. Now, if Satan has a seed of that way of speaking, that might be it, because there's only two times, I think, that the Bible speaks about the son of Perdictition. and one of them is uh... judas in john seventeen twelve and the other ones the antichrist in uh... revelations thirteen two uh... the bible said the dragon or the devil talking about the antichrist gave him his power so i think we could say you know you've heard of the son of satan and we've talked about in bible studies before that the antichrist he is a great imitator of the Christ. The devil's a great imitator. Everything that the Lord has that's real, the devil imitates that. Yeah. Could be, yeah. So we know that the Antichrist, everything God has, everything Christ has, the devil has a counterpart. God has a real Bible. There is a satanic Bible. I've held one in my hand and looked at it a long time ago. There is God's Church, the true Church, and there is the Church of Satan as close as maybe one closer than that. There is the Holy Spirit and there is the unholy spirit. There is biblical tongues, like at Pentecost, and there is false tongues created by the devil to cause confusion. And so, just, you know, everything that God has, the devil has. And God had a Son, that's what we'll be talking about, thinking about this weekend. God has a son, and so the devil has to have a son. That's going to be the Antichrist. And I'm not sure how all that's going to pan out, but I know it will. Now, we know what Isaiah prophesied in Isaiah 7 and 14. Isaiah said, A virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and thou shalt call his name Emmanuel." And we all know that verse because we always hear it about this time of year, if not other times. Anytime we're talking about the virgin birth, we think about Isaiah 7 and verse 14. But Isaiah is not the only one that says it. There's another verse in the Bible that hardly is ever mentioned. Most people wouldn't even know anything about it. but it's in jeremiah thirty-one and verse twenty-two and uh... jeremiah's trying to get the people of israel to come back to god and he says uh... inverse twenty-two jeremiah how long without go about all about backslidden daughter now watch it for the lord has created a new thing in the earth a woman show compassion man or in other words uh... she show uh... barren child without a man and uh... so jeremiah uh... he also uh... hits at that uh... jeremiah uh... thirty one twenty two jeremiah thirty one twenty two uh... we've looked at why christ had to be born this way this way and uh... because the bible uh... it's got to be true the bible's got to be true So we looked at that, but now I want us to go in a different direction and leave all that, and I want to think about Mary's acceptance of the message that we read about tonight. The Bible said that the angel came unto her and said, Hail, thou art highly favored. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women. And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. The angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favour with God. Behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and he is, and he shall call the Son of the Highest, and he is. And the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David, and he will. And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever and ever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end. And then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? Now, unlike Zacharias, look in the same chapter there, but look in verse 13 to verse 20. Of course, Zacharias was John the Baptist's father. An angel came to him, too, and he said, But the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zacharias, for thy prayer is heard. Thy wife Elizabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John. Thou shalt have joy and gladness, and many shall rejoice at his birth. He shall be great in the sight of the Lord, shall drink neither wine nor strong drink. He shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb. And many of the children of Israel shall he turn to the Lord their God. He shall go before him in the spirit and power of Elias, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord. And Zechariah said unto the angel, Whereby shall I know this? For I am an old man, and my wife is well stricken in years. And the angel answered and said unto him, I am Gabriel, that stands in the presence of God, and am sent to speak unto thee, and to show thee great tidings. And behold, thou shalt be dumb, and not able to speak until the day that these things shall be. And Zechariah, because of unbelief, Zacharias because he didn't believe what the angel said. He questioned it. He doubted it. And because of that, he was struck dumb until John the Baptist was born. And yet Mary was told pretty much something FAR more unbelievable than what he was told. I mean, it's stretching it. It's kind of unbelievable that an old man would father a child, but it's more believable. It could happen. But what the angel told Mary was something far more unbelievable. The angel said, You're going to have a child without a father. Now, what you want to see here is Zacharias, he didn't believe it, and he was struck dumb. Can I tell you if you don't believe the Word of God, you'll be dumb. I don't mean dumb like not smart up here, that too. But I mean if you don't believe the Word of God, what are you going to say to anybody? How are you going to talk to anybody if you don't believe the Word of God? You won't have nothing to say. And I have it in the Andersonville Bible study I did years ago, and I also seen this on the John Ankerberg show, but I couldn't find it, and I couldn't find my material. But when they were revising the Bible, some version, I forget which version it was, but one of the people on the board of advisors, he made the statement, and he said, I think we're in trouble with God. And before they got done, he lost his voice. and that's very well documented. If you look hard enough, you can find it. You won't have to look too hard. And so Mary was told that she would have a child without a father. Now Mary's question, how shall this be, seeing I know not a man? She wasn't doubting. She never said, I doubt it. I don't think this could happen. It wasn't that way. It was not of doubting. that it was going to happen, but she was asking, how is this going to happen? Mary is like Abraham. Abraham, God said, Abraham, in the Old Testament, God said, Abraham, leave what you're at, go where I tell you, you don't know where you're going to go, but just go. And the Bible said Abraham went. He just believed God. And Romans 4 said he never staggered at the promise of God. Not when God called him, he did with Hagar and all that, but he did when God called him, he just packed up and took off. If Abraham is the father of faith in the Old Testament because of the great faith he showed He just believed God. He didn't know where it was going, how it was going to happen. He just believed God. If Abraham is the father of faith in the Old Testament, then Mary is the mother of faith in the New Testament. Mary just believed God. She just went. Mary and her acceptance of the promise gives us an example of how we should receive difficult promises that God has made to us. You say, how'd she do it? She didn't question it. You know what she said in verse 38? Be it unto me according to thy word. Lord, I don't know how you're going to do it, but your Word said you will, and I'm just going to believe you. That's the way we ought to grasp and receive difficult promises that we find in the Word of God. I want to look at Mary's submission to this appointment to be the chosen one. There are a lot of things that we don't really think about, you know, until we think about it. And you get to thinking about what's happened to Mary, what the angel told her. Mary, the Bible said in Luke, after Christ was born, the Bible said Mary pondered all these things. Well, I think Mary probably pondered some things before Jesus was born. And Mary had to know that what God was going to do to her, what God had promised her, she had to know this was going to put her life even in jeopardy. You say, How so? Well, Mary is under Old Testament. It's under Old Testament law. And under Old Testament law, she had to know that a virgin betrothed, if found unfaithful to her engagement, would be punished by death. So her saying, I'm with child, but I haven't been with any men. She had to think, this could cause me to lose my life. Because to be espoused, and I said last week that Mary was espoused to Joseph. They wasn't married yet. They didn't get married after Jesus was born, but she was espoused to Joseph. And I said, 1 Corinthians 11, you hear people say, well, we're married to Christ. Not yet. were espoused to him. But in a Biblical sense, to be espoused was just as demanding as being married in an Old Testament setting in a Biblical sense. So for Mary to be espoused to Joseph, they wasn't married. The only logical conclusion that lost sinners would have to come up with was Joseph was her father. or she had been with somebody else. And we know what Joseph said. Joseph was going to put her away privately. It seemed like even Joseph suspected that until the angel came, the dream came. Because she never questioned about how she would be protected. She never questioned that anywhere in the Bible. She's like Abraham. She went forward not knowing what was going to happen, but she just believed God. Not only would her life be in jeopardy, but she would put her reputation for the rest of her life in jeopardy. Because even though there were many that would believe on Christ, there would be many that would never believe it, just like there's many that don't believe it tonight. And we know that even after Jesus was 31 or 32 years old, they were still accusing Him of being born of fornication. And so we know that Mary, she had to know these things. And Joseph as well, we have to salute Joseph for his faith and obedience. Because he had this dream and God spoke to him. God said, Don't put her away. And God says she's going to have a child. His name is going to be called Jesus. And so Joseph, he BELIEVED God. He LISTENED to God. And he makes us know, as always we know, the Lord knows sure who to pick for His Work, don't He? Think about all the people living on planet Earth, and the Lord picked Mary and Joseph. What an honor. Amen. What an honor. Now, let's look at this as we finish. And I want us to see her, Mary's joy over being chosen. Luke 1, 38. And Mary said, Behold, the handmaiden of the Lord being unto me according to thy word, and the angel departed from her." It's at first, when we look at Mary, it's at first we see a meek and a humble submission. Mary just seems meek and humble. But as more of this thing is confirmed, it appears her meek and quiet spirit turns into rejoicing and expresses of joy and happiness. Isn't that how it is with us? We get saved. We're happy we got saved. But as we go on living for God and the more that's confirmed in us that we are saved, we learn why we're saved. We learn how long we're saved for. We learn that it's all by grace. And the more people know about their salvation, the more excited they are about it. Some people are saved, but they're not excited about it because they don't understand everything that it took for them to be saved. I've heard Billy Mitchell say a hundred times, he'd say, some of you folks think you can lose your salvation. And he said, and you still enjoy it some. But he said, if you ever find out how long it's for, you're going to really enjoy it. And so the more our salvation is confirmed by different things, the more we enjoy it. The Lord gives her confirmation in Luke 39 through 41. Elizabeth comes down to see her. You remember what happened? When Elizabeth came down and she saw Mary, she said the babe leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost And with a loud voice, she said, Blessed art thou among women. Well, when Elizabeth came, and she done this in front of Mary, this is just more confirmation. This thing's a God. It's like somebody walking up to you, and you don't even know them, and they say, You're a Christian, aren't you? You're saved. I've been watching and listening to you. That just gives you more confirmation. saved. Other people are seeing it in my life. You see, Mary was having more confirmations all the time, and in Luke 1 and 46, Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord. She's rejoicing over this. She's magnifying the Lord. Verse 47, she said, My spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior. You see, when you get rejoicing and get happy in the Lord and give a testimony, get in a good service, that's not your flesh doing that. Your flesh don't do that. That's your spirit within you rejoicing and magnifying God the Savior. In verse 48, she said, Hence, all generations shall call me blessed. What God had done for her wasn't going to be over with in nine months. What God did for her, we're still rejoicing in it and talking about it tonight. Now, what God did for you when you got saved, it wasn't over when you left the altar. It's been going on a long time, and I've got news for you, it's going to be going on all through eternity. No wonder she's rejoicing. We ought to get a little happy every now and then. You and I should be happy that we have been chosen to carry Christ. See, Mary was chosen to carry Christ Jesus to the world. You and I are the same way. We've been chosen. We have Christ in us, don't we? We've been chosen to carry Christ to the world. You ought to be excited about that. You ought to do a little bit more of that. And you and I should be happy because He chose us. He chose Mary. And Jesus said in John 15, 16, You have not chosen Me, I have chosen you. He chose us a long time back yonder in the eons past. Christ was crucified. before the foundations of the world. And the Lord chose, and He said, Anybody that gets into Him, I'm going to take them. Anybody that accepts Him are accepted in the Beloved. So, the Lord chose us. If He hadn't chosen Mary, she couldn't have that baby. And if He hadn't chosen us, we couldn't be saved. He chose to save us. Now, Paul expresses thanksgiving for having been chosen of the Lord in Acts 9 and verse 15. Turn over there real quick. Acts 9 and verse 15. The Bible says, But the Lord said unto him, Go thy way, taught Ananias, for he, Paul, is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, kings, and children of Israel. For I will show him how great things He must suffer for my name's sake, and boy, did he. Boy, did he. Yet Paul's happy about that. Look over in I Timothy. Listen to what Paul has to say, even though he suffered a lot. He said in verse 12, And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he should count me faithful, put me into the ministry." Paul is thankful that God chose him. I'm thankful that God saved me. I'm thankful God called me. Aren't you? Amen. Amen. Now, like Mary, the first Christmas was a season of thankfulness for the Lord Jesus Christ, and it ought to be that way for me and you tonight. During this season, we ought to be thankful for Him all the time, but at this particular season, we ought to be thankful and grateful for the Lord Jesus Christ that He let us be a part of this thing. He could have done it another way. He could have done it another way. But he chose us. Why? I don't know. But I'm sure glad he did. Amen. Amen. All right. Any comments, questions, testimony, anything tonight before we close? Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Y'all remember Lorraine Troxell? They took her from the hospital.