We studied the text before this of John the Baptist's birth being announced to Zachariah, and Zachariah's response, which was doubtful, and his rebuke, and yet the Lord was gracious, and Elizabeth conceived, and now we're going to hear about the announcement to Mary, the young girl from Nazareth. Let's give our attention to God's Word. Verse 26. 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 this 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 just ask the Lord to bless. Father, as we open your word, this wonderful good news, I pray you give us ears to hear it. And may we see the wonder of your salvation for us and your call upon our lives to trust in you, to serve you as we wait for the return of our Lord Jesus, we pray in his name. Amen. Well, the Christmas story is a story that we're very used to, and yet a story that in our comfortable acquaintance can fail to really grab us with the importance of it, with the significance of it. 15 years ago now, Rob Bell wrote a book called Velvet Elvis. Some of you remember that book. And in the book, he raised the question Is the incarnation really that significant? He compared the Christian faith to jumping on a trampoline and asked the question that if one of the springs of the trampoline is removed, can you keep jumping on the trampoline? Boys and girls, if you've jumped on a trampoline, you know that you can remove some of the springs and you can keep jumping. And Bell said, well, what if you remove the spring of incarnation? Could you keep jumping as a Christian, can you keep living the Christian faith if you remove that spring? If it were shown to be actually true that Jesus was not born of a virgin. Could you continue jumping on the trampoline of faith? And Bell's suggestion was, absolutely you could. And in fact, if you could not keep jumping, then your faith was not that strong to start with. If your faith depended on that one spring, then maybe your faith wasn't as strong as you thought it was. Well, the problem with Bell's analogy, of course, is that the incarnation is not one of the springs on the trampoline, it's the mat. It's what makes jumping possible. The miracle of God Himself becoming man in the womb of the Virgin Mary is the miracle that makes the Christian faith true. And if you remove what makes it true, there's nothing left to believe. The whole Christian story depends on this fact. that God became man in the womb of the virgin. And my hope this morning is that as we revisit this wonderful story, that we will be encouraged and empowered and emboldened in our faith, and that we'll leave here more deeply assured and convinced that of all that God has accomplished for us and promised to us, in Jesus, the virgin's son. We'll be looking first of all at the appearance of the angel, and then we'll look at the announcement itself, and then the assurance the angel gives, and then finally at the acceptance of Mary. First, then the appearance. So we're told in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth. The announcement of the Christmas story would have been, it's full of surprises. It's saturated with the implausible and improbable. If you were a first century Jew listening to Luke tell you this story, you would have noted there are things in here that would be highly unlikely. For instance, the idea that an angel would be sent from God to a place like Nazareth Nazareth, as we've said before, it's just the last place in the world anyone would have expected such an appearance. When Philip said, can anything good come out of Nazareth, he wasn't making a joke. It was just common perception. You see, Jerusalem is the center of the world as a Jew. You're convinced it's the center of God's world, the way that God looks at this world. Jerusalem is the apple of His eye. Jerusalem is where the temple is. Jerusalem is where the sacrifices are made, where the priests are. God's name is there in Jerusalem, and so if you're going to announce something as significant as the birth of the Messiah promised all those years ago through the prophets, if you're going to announce the Messiah, it has to happen in Jerusalem. Nazareth, well, it's barely on the map. Certainly, it's removed. Distance-wise, it's on the other side of this vast chasm called Samaria, that pagan country, and it's way up there in the north in Galilee. Galilee already is backwater. Nazareth is in the back 40 of Galilee. It's barely discernible. It's as far removed from Jerusalem as you could possibly be, theologically as well as socially and politically. It's a very unlikely place. This person, Mary, is nearly the last person you would have expected to receive the announcement. She's a very young woman, maybe 13, 14, possibly 15 at the most. That's when girls in those days were betrothed. She's a very young woman in a culture that reveres age and men. She's not a likely candidate. She's also a poor member of the working class in a culture that celebrates the wealthy, the accomplished, the scholars, the priests. Phil Reichen in his commentary says, it is doubtful whether Gabriel could have found a more unlikely person to greet anywhere in Israel. Again, it's not intuitive to us as we read the story. It would have been intuitive to the first century audience. But Gabriel knows what he's about, and he greets Mary with a message of grace. Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you. And that concept of favor shows up again in the next verse, verse 30. Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Unfortunately, there's a great deal of misunderstanding what those words are about. The Roman Catholic Church, of course, takes that to mean that Mary is in some way uniquely godly, uniquely righteous, uniquely meriting the favor of God, that God looked over the world and Mary stood out uniquely as a righteous person. That's not in the text. In fact, the word that is used here for favor is a word related to the word for grace. You could translate it as greetings to you who are highly graced. You have found grace with God. The word grace, of course, refers to unmerited favor, unmerited blessing, unmerited honor. And that's what the angel is communicating to Mary. He's not pointing to the magnificence of Mary, but the magnificence of the grace of God to this particular young peasant girl. Mary is to be the recipient of the unmerited and yet abounding goodness and kindness and compassion of God in a way that no other person would be. Mary is to become the mother of the Messiah. And that is what the angel comes to announce. Wouldn't it be wonderful to have an angel show up at your house some morning, maybe just as you're getting ready to go to work, an angel sent by God himself to say to you, the Lord just wanted me to tell you You are highly favored. The grace of God, God wanted me to communicate to you that His grace is going to be lavished upon you today. He's going to pour out His infinite goodness and kindness upon you. That's what the angel Gabriel is saying to Mary. The announcement then is that, it's the most astonishing thing. You will conceive in your womb and bear a son and call his name Jesus. He will be great and 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." Now, there are two stunning announcements here. One is a theological fact, the other is a biological fact. The theological fact would be what stands out first to the readers. Because the language here is thoroughly messianic language. This is taking the words of the prophets of old and applying it very specifically and directly to Mary's son. It's hard for us to grasp what the concept of Messiah would have meant to old Israel. We think of the Messiah, of course, as Jesus, the one who comes to save us from our sin. But when the Israelites thought of Messiah, they thought of much more political, economic, covenantal, and cosmic terms. They thought of the one who's come to rescue Israel as Israel. You see, in Mary's day, the nation of Israel was an absolute mess, under the rule of pagan Rome. A stench to every Israelite. Her spiritual leaders are corrupt. She's impoverished, weak, utterly irrelevant in the world. Everything that Israel was meant to be, she's not. But God had promised, through the prophets, that He would send them a great king, David's greater son and that great king would come and restore israel and make israel the most powerful and peaceful and prosperous blessed nation on the world but that blessing would not just stay with israel but the the the israelites understood that when the messiah comes Israel will become the vehicle through which God displays His glory and blesses the nations and ushers in the eternal kingdom. So it's cosmic in scope. And so if you loved Israel, you prayed for the Messiah to come. If you longed for God to glorify His name in the midst of a broken, wicked world, you prayed for the Messiah to come. If you longed for everything wrong to be made right, You prayed for the Messiah to come. And Israel had been waiting for a long time. Isaiah had prophesied most poignantly about him 700 years ago. The last prophet had spoken 400 years ago. That's a long time to wait. That's a long time not to hear anything from the Lord. And now suddenly an angel, Gabriel, sent from God announces to Mary that the Messiah was about to be born. It would be an exhilarating message. God has not abandoned his people. The Messiah is coming and all that was promised, he will come to accomplish. That's the theological fact. It's an exhilarating fact. The second fact is the biological one, and that's the one that seems to have gotten Mary's attention. Undoubtedly, she's overwhelmed at the thought that she's going to give birth to Messiah, but you see that the question she asks is the biological one. How will this be since I'm a virgin? It's a very natural question. And Gabriel gives her assurance. People have asked, in fact, after the service last week, some people came and said, how come Zachariah gets rebuked and Mary gets blessed? Mary doesn't get rebuked. They seem to be very similar questions. Remember, when Gabriel went to Zechariah and said, you're going to have a son, you and Elizabeth, in your old age, Zechariah's response was, how shall I know this? For I am an old man and my wife is advanced in years. Mary says, how will this be since I am a virgin? It sounds similar. Zachariah wondered how he could have a baby, he and Elizabeth, given the biological reality of their age and the barrenness of Elizabeth's womb. Mary asked how she's going to have a baby given the biological realities of her virginity. And so people will ask, well, what's the difference? Well, it's subtle, but it's very significant. You see, Zachariah is asking for a sign. How shall I know this? I know, Gabriel, you've said it, and I know you're an angel from God, and God doesn't lie, but how can I know this to be true given the reality of our old age? How can I be certain? So he wants a sign. He wants proof, but if you remember your Gospels, Jesus in Matthew 16 says an evil and adulterous generation asked for signs. They don't take God at His word. Zechariah didn't take God at His word, and Zechariah was rightly rebuked for it. Mary doesn't say, how can I know for sure? She's not doubting and asking for a sign. She is believing and asking for clarity. That's the difference. That's the disposition of her heart. She's believing it's true. She's leaning into the truth. She's not doubting the truth, but she's looking for clarity. How will this be? Not, how can I know? How will it be? Lord, how are you going to do this? And we know that she's believing because the Bible tells us so. So in verse 45, when she goes to visit Elizabeth, Elizabeth says, blessed is she who believed there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord. And so Mary is seeking clarity, and Gabriel responds to that by giving her two blessings. First, an answer to her question, and then evidence of the power of God. The first is the answer to her question. The angel said to her, well the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you, and therefore the child to be born will be called Holy, the Son of God. Jesus is going to be supernaturally conceived. That's how it's going to happen. Just as the Holy Spirit hovered over the dark, vast void of Genesis 1 and creates something out of nothing, the Holy Spirit is going to create life from the virgin womb of Mary. But secondly, Gabriel gives her evidence. of the power of God, and that is in the person of Elizabeth, verses 36 and 37. Behold, your relative Elizabeth, in her old age, has conceived a son. And this is the sixth month with her who was called barren, for nothing will be impossible with God. You see, God is willing to give signs to those who believe. And Gabriel gives her proof of God's ability to do the impossible and God's commitment to work this in Mary's own life. The message is going to come true and Mary accepts it. Behold, I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word. Now again, we can easily miss the astounding choice that Mary made here. The text doesn't make a big deal of it. The first century reader would have immediately understood the perilous predicament that Mary finds herself in. You see, in Mary's day, society was not built on the individual as it is here in America. The mantra today, if you want to live a fulfilling life, is be true to you. You do you. True to yourself, that is radical individualism. Well, in Mary's day, that was the last thing in the world someone would have said. In that day, your life was defined by your family, your clan, your tribe. Your purpose in life was to uphold the honor of the family name. The greatest crime you could commit in that day would be in some way to shame, bring shame or dishonor to the name of your family. And so here's Mary in this predicament. How is she going to explain what's happening to her? We hear this news cheerfully. Mary's going to have a baby. Wonderful. Well, her family and friends would hear it with horror. How do you explain this? God did it? I mean, it sounds like a pathetic way to deny the undeniable. To be pregnant while betrothed, while unmarried, is already to be guilty of the sin of adultery. To try to blame it on God is ... Man, that's just twisted. How do you explain this to Joseph? There's a world of questions here. And the angel doesn't give her information. The angel doesn't say, now, this is how you navigate this. The angel just calls her to trust. God just calls her to trust. You probably find yourself in circumstances like this where you're in a difficult spot and you don't know how to navigate it and you're looking for understanding. Lord, what are the steps? What are the ways that I can make this work? Give me the big picture. Give me the details. Well, Mary doesn't get the details and that's exactly what makes her faith so God-honoring. God simply says, trust me. Trust me. And that's what Mary does. She doesn't have the details and yet that's what makes her faith so beautiful and so God honoring. I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word. She trusts and submits herself and her future and all the questions that have to be going. She gives it all to the Lord. It is beautiful faith. It is God-honoring faith. I don't know the answers. I don't know how it's going to work out. I don't know how we're going to do this. But God does, and I trust myself and all of those details to Him. That is wonderful faith. How do we apply this? Today, why did Luke write this? He's the only gospel writer that includes this part of the story. Why does he include it? What does he intend for this? Well, remember, Luke is writing his gospel to encourage and build up the faith of his friend Theophilus. He's writing these things so that Theophilus will have certainty concerning the things he'd been taught. Certainty concerning the reality of the gospel. And of course, this text is written for the exact same reason for you and I today. You see, friends, we don't always have certainty. We often maybe don't have certainty, not in the sense of the certainty that emboldens and empowers us and gives us peace and joy even in the midst of hard things and hard times. There are times that we stumble in our faith, times where our life is in shambles, a lot like old Israel, where we feel insignificant and abandoned and all alone in the backwaters of life, out of reach of God's care and concern, forgotten maybe by God. Maybe some of you feel that way this morning. It was just a quiet, deep skepticism. Is God actually really for you? Does he care? Does the gospel really make a difference? You see, Luke is communicating to Theophilus and to us that The gospel is the evidence that we have not been forgotten. We've not been forsaken. The Messiah has been born. That cosmic reality has broken into the reality of this world and the reality of our lives. Joy has dawned upon the world, promised from creation. This story is proof to us that God has not forsaken or forgotten us. He has come to rescue us, he's come to redeem us, he's come to save us from our sin and save us to the uttermost. Notice the importance when the angel makes the announcement. He says immediately to Mary, you're gonna have a son, you shall call his name Jesus. That's not just a divine preference. You shall call his name Jesus is pointing Mary and the reader and you and I who he is and why he came. Jesus means God saves. God saves. And it's exactly that name that makes the story so comforting and assuring for people like you and me. You see, that name answers the great problem of our life, the great need of our life. If you're downcast and a friend comes to you and says, what's going on? Why are you so down? You look so sad. Most of us, when we're asked that question, we would point to the circumstances that were on our mind. Well, I got fired, or I'm not feeling well, or this is going on. We would point to the circumstances of our life. And yet, if you would just stop and think about the question, what really does present the single greatest obstacle to your happiness in this world? What's the greatest thing? What's caused you more grief Has been a greater barrier to happiness than anything else in your life any other circumstance and the answer if you're honest has to be your sin Your failures your weakness your unbelief your addictions your idols Those are the things that that wreak havoc on our happiness in this life. It's our sin our And what is the thing that presents the greatest danger to your eternal well-being? Well, it's your sin. It's my sin. What's the most significant thing that's wrong in your life today? Well, if you're honest, you have to say, it's my sin. It's not what other people are doing to me. That all is real and it matters. But there's lots of people who are experiencing things like that and they are responding with joy and with peace and love and grace and forgiveness, and I'm not. You see, the most significant thing that's wrong with me is that I have failed in my calling as a created human being. That's significant failure. You and I were created to love and honor and obey and worship God gladly, constantly. And we have failed at that most fundamental level and worshipped our idols and worshipped ourselves and served ourselves and gladly rebelled against God. And so we stand justly condemned in and of ourselves. But that's what makes the message such good news. You see, the Messiah's name is Jesus. God saves. The angel in Matthew 121, when he's explaining this to Joseph, said it more clearly. You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. That's the Christmas message. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners, Paul says, 1 Timothy 1.15. His mission is explicitly redemptive, that Jesus Christ has come to rescue us from our sin, the thing that separates us from God, the thing that brings alienation and brokenness and sadness in our life. Jesus came to rescue us from that, and being rescued from that means being set free to all the grace and goodness and glory of God. Christmas time is the time to marvel that God has set us free from the bondage of our sin, from the judgment we deserve. We've been set free from the judgment of the law. We've been set free to be the children of God, to live in the peace and love and joy and grace that God gives. And the wonder, you see, of this story is that for those who believe, those who believe have been caught up in the miracle of Mary. Someone pointed out to me just this past week how the language of Luke 1 sounds like the language of Acts 1 and 2. So here we are told, Mary is told that the power of the Holy Spirit would come upon her so that there would be new life within her womb. Well, in Acts 1, Jesus tells his disciples something almost identical when he says the power of the Holy Spirit will come upon you so that they would have the ability to believe and to bear witness. So just as Mary was going to have the ability to conceive by the power of God, they would have the ability to believe by the power of God and to live then with God dwelling within them. You see friends, Jesus came in Luke 1 & 2 so that Acts 1 & 2 could happen. The incarnation happens for the sake of Pentecost. The Son is born so the Spirit could be poured out. Jesus indwelt the womb of Mary so that God could come and dwell within you. God dwells within you. The Holy Spirit himself, third person of the Trinity, has taken up residence in your heart, in your life. He dwells within you. That's the message of Scripture. That's the miracle that Jesus Christ has come to accomplish. That God and man have been reconciled. And now the Lord asks us to trust Him, to trust His work, to receive His Word. I am the Lord's servant. May it be to me as the Lord has said. I just want to give you a brief quote here by Jackie Hill Perry. Maybe some of you have seen this. I ran across this this week. Speaking to the issue of trust. If God is holy, she says, if God is holy, then he cannot sin. And if he can't sin, then he can't sin against me. And if he can't sin against me, shouldn't that make him the most trustworthy being there is? God is holy, God can't sin, God can't sin against you. God has committed himself to love you. In Jesus Christ, he's committed himself to rescue you, to ransom you, to bring you into a new heaven and a new earth, and to be at work every day of your life in this world for his glory, for your benefit. And God asks us to trust him. And so friends, this Christmas, let's follow in the steps of Mary. Let's step into the wonderful cosmic truth of this story. Let's submit ourselves to Jesus. Let's believe in Him. Let's serve Him gladly as we wait for His coming again. Amen. Oh God in heaven, we need to hear a message from God. We need to hear of your faithfulness to us. We need to hear of your commitment to us. your purposes for us. And Lord, those glorious gospel truths need to become the reality by which we live and think, the way that we judge our feelings. And Father, we confess all the responses of fear and anxiety and anger, impatience, that are driven by our unbelief. We confess them as sin. And Father, we pray that in their place there would come hope and patience and joy and peace in believing that this is not just a story. but that God, you've taken action in time, in space, in our world, in our life, to bring us redemption, to bring us to yourself, that the life of God would dwell within us. And the work that you've begun, then, you are gonna carry on to completion. The Spirit has been given as a guarantee. And so, Lord, I pray that this Christmas, Season we would not get lost just in the traditions and the sentiments But Lord we would embrace and grasp the truth of what this means for us today and for us forever May God grant it in Jesus name. Amen We're gonna respond by singing a Trinity hymnal 2 to 1 low how a rose air blooming the first two in the last two stanzas I Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave Christ is here, the cross for tol'n, the cross I have in mind. With every knee he holdeth, the burden of other gods. ♪ To show God's love aright ♪ ♪ He pours to let us ignore ♪ ♪ Then passes and falls the night ♪ ♪ The shepherds heard the story ♪ ♪ How Christ the Lord of glory ♪ ♪ Was born under this sky ♪ ♪ To heaven and earth we stand ♪ ♪ One in the cold of winter ♪ ♪ And in the light of day ♪ O sacred splendor, misty heads to the air, dispels with glorious splendor all our questions. O Savior, Child of Mary, who wilt love me? O Savior King of glory, who does our weakness know, bring us at length, we pray, to the bright courts of heaven and earth. Because Jesus Christ has come, you are free to receive the blessing of the Lord. The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up his countenance upon you and give you his peace. Amen.