Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ, what are you waiting for? It's a question you might hear, you might ask yourself from time to time. You know, there's a lot of questions we ask people to get to know them. You know, what do you do for a living? What do you like to do for fun? But I think this is actually a really helpful question to tell you a lot about someone, to ask them what are they waiting for? A lot of our lives, a lot of what we think about on a daily basis are really rooted around that question. We are all truly, in many different ways, waiting for something in our life. Waiting because we have certain unmet expectations about the future, about our present situation. Maybe we're longing to be back with family or people we haven't seen for a while. Maybe we're longing just for a new life situation, for that new season. to begin, maybe we're waiting for a new relationship or a restored relationship. You know, the list goes on and on, of course, but we are all waiting for something. And you may know that today, this is the fourth and final Sunday of the traditional season of Advent. What is Advent? Advent just means the arrival, but the Advent season is, you know, the season that implies for us waiting, that we're waiting for something to come, to arrive. That's, you know, whatever you might think of the Advent season as something the church celebrates, as the church recognizes. What we want to see, what I hope we see, is that the idea of Advent. Advent itself is real, that we, again, we're all waiting for the arrival of something And our text this morning, this story of the angel Gabriel coming to the Virgin Mary, it really confirms that reality that we know all too well that we are all waiting for something. We see this in the situation of Mary, what she's dealing with in her own life, what she will come to deal with. But even in the angel's announcement reminds us that we are waiting for something. I hope we see that this morning. But even more than this, what I hope that we see is not only are we waiting, but that God, through this announcement to Mary, reminds us, he tells us that he gives us what we need in the midst of that waiting. So that's our theme this morning. God gives us what we need in the midst of our waiting. And we wanna see this in three ways as we consider the angel's message. So first this morning, we want to see that God gives us, in our waiting, he gives us a gracious address, or a gracious address, a gracious greeting that we hear through the mouth of this angel. We're told that the angel comes to Mary in the sixth month. That would be the sixth month from him coming to Zechariah and announcing that Elizabeth was going to have a child in her old age. And now Gabriel, he comes to Elizabeth's relative, Mary. This woman, we're told she's a young woman, a virgin, and she's been betrothed. She's anticipating meeting and marrying her future husband, Joseph. And as the angel comes to Mary, she's probably shocked already. Anytime someone sees an angel in scripture, they're pretty surprised. But even more shocking, he comes with this pretty dramatic greeting to her, this opening declaration. He says, greetings, oh favored one. The Lord is with you. As we hear this greeting to Mary, we want to ask ourselves, as Mary, we'll see, she's puzzled by this, we want to ask the question, why? Why does the angel come to Mary with this particular message? You know, why this special greeting? Greetings, oh favored one, the Lord is with you. The question I wrote in my notes is, is there something about Mary? What is so special about her? I mean, depending on your upbringing, you might even hear this greeting to Mary in a very particular way. Maybe you've even prayed this greeting before, right? Hail Mary, full of grace. Is that what the angel is saying to her? Or in other words, we can ask, what did Mary do? What has she done up to this point to merit this greeting, this status that the angel bestows upon her, that she's favored, that God is with her? I mean, what are her credentials you could say? Well, we don't really know much of her at all at this point in the story. We're told that she's a virgin, which literally just means that she's a young woman of marriageable age. I mean, the emphasis we'll see is on her virginity, but I mean, all this is really telling us up to this point is that she's a teenager. She's probably about 13, 14 years old. We do know that she is from the line of David, but clearly she's not living a very kingly life. She's not cashed in those benefits. She's kind of this obscure line that's kind of over history, been forgotten about perhaps. And even thinking of her place of origin, the city Nazareth, it's so obscure that Luke, who is a historian in his own right, he has to tell the reader that she's from the city of Nazareth, which is in the region of Galilee, because most people have never even heard of Nazareth before. In fact, it's never even mentioned once in the Old Testament. So again, what does Mary, or what are her credentials? Well, she's a normal teenage girl from a backwater town that nobody has ever heard of. That's her credentials. And we even see from her response, it's very telling that she recognizes this greeting is profound, it's beyond her. I mean, really, she's, in response, she's asking the question, who, me, really? You're saying this about me? She knows there's nothing in her, nothing special about her that would merit such an announcement, such a greeting. As we hear this greeting, we think about our own lives, and we know all too well that we don't merit such a greeting from God as well, and yet, We could say, we can affirm there's nothing special about Mary that she's receiving this greeting in and of herself. And we can also say that this greeting, this word from God is not only just to Mary, but God actually bestows the same greeting, the same word on each and every one of us. That we as God's people are greeted with this message that we are favored ones and that God is with us. In fact, we see the very same language in Ephesians 1, chapter, or excuse me, 1, verse 6. Very same verb, we are told that God has chosen us, he's elected us from eternity, and we are told that it is for the praise of his glorious grace with which he has favored us, which he has graced us in the beloved, that very same idea that God has favored Mary, he has extended his grace, he has looked upon her in grace, and God tells us the very same thing. God has set his grace upon us. I mean, by definition, to be graced by someone, to have grace extended to you, by definition, is undeserved. Mary could not have done anything to be favored by the Lord. God sets his grace upon his people. He purposes to be near to them, we are told in scripture. So as Mary, she is clearly perplexed. She's wondering about this greeting. We want to ask, well, how do we as God's people, as Christians, how do we respond to this very same word? When we hear from God, when we hear from his word that you are favored, that God has grace upon you, that God is with you, how do we respond to that word? Well, I think we, so often like Mary, we can be perplexed. We can scratch our heads. We can even doubt it. We can question whether that message is true about us, especially when we think of it in terms of waiting for something. So we think about it in terms of those unmet expectations in our lives, those things that we long for that God hasn't seemed to provide as we were expecting, right? We can question, you know, is God really gracious to me? Is he continuing day after day to extend grace? Has he forgotten about me? Is God really near to me? Because right now, frankly, he seems rather distant. from me? What is God's disposition towards me? We can ask those very same questions, and yet God declares to us, I am with you, that I have favored you. And then, as Mary is puzzled as she's questioning, the angel reassures her. He says, fear not. Granted, as I mentioned, angels can be scary. You know, every time an angel appears, usually people fall on their faces, they freak out, they try and worship the angel. And yet, we see it's more than just the situation here of the angel coming, because we see the reason why the angel can tell her, do not fear. Again, he reminds her, he assures her. Don't be afraid, not just in this moment, but in light of what's about to happen, in light of your future. Fear not, because truly, he says, you have found favor with God. Well, we certainly are a fearful people. We are prone to anxiety, to question, to wonder. As we are waiting for things, as we're wondering what God is doing in the midst of our lives, we can become anxious, we can question, we can wonder. Yet God, at the beginning of his greeting to us, and frankly, at the beginning of our Christian life, God comes to us with this greeting. He says that you have found favor with me, that I have come to be near you. God declares that very same thing to us this morning. God confirms that He is continuing, He will continue to have grace to us. Even as we hear that word, we might question how, particularly speaking, practically speaking, how can I know that? What is that message that God wants to give to me? How will God communicate his grace to me? And the angel does that very thing. As Mary is perplexed, the angel continues and declares to her what God will do to show his grace and to show his favor. So secondly, this morning, not only does God greet us with grace, but secondly, God gives us in our waiting a gospel announcement, a gospel announcement. And really to understand what the angel declares to Mary, we have to understand a bit of the Old Testament. We particularly have to understand this promise, this very particular promise God makes to David, which we read this morning from 2 Samuel, this Davidic promise that God would be with David, he would bless him, he would give him a kingdom. We hear even this kind of summary of that promise. The angel says, behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, he will be called the son of the most high, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David. It's a very particular way, a way of expressing the gospel that we typically don't talk about, we don't focus necessarily on this Davidic aspect of it. And yet, this is very much at the heart of the message that God's people at this time would have been waiting for, what they would have been expecting. We see these elements of the promise, or the pronouncement here, that go back to that promise made in 2 Samuel. We see that he will be called the Son of the Most High, which corresponds to that promise that God says, I will be a father to him. That's a royal language that was used not only in Israel, but throughout the ancient world to speak of someone's royal status, that they were a son of God, and God is saying, he will be as a son to me, he will be the true king, in other words. Even as we hear in Psalm 2, this language of the son that will come, that will conquer his enemies. We also see, secondly, this promise that he will be seated on a throne. David ruled, Solomon ruled, all the kings after them ruled, but of course they went away and they never reclaimed that throne that was given to David, and yet here God says he will reclaim, he will take up his throne once again, that the line will be reestablished. And then this final promise is perhaps the greatest of all promises, that his kingdom will have no ends. One of the things that amazes David so much is God's grace, his favor to him in this promise that he has blessed him, not only with a kingship for himself, not only for his sons, but that he will bless him and keep him in the throne. His son will always have a place on the throne of his father. And the problem for us as we try and understand why this is so significant, for us it's just a few pages from 2 Samuel 7 to Luke chapter one, and yet, Think about Mary and the people of her age. It would have been 400 years since they had heard even one message from a prophet of the Lord. Even going back further, it would have been 1,000 years since this very promise was made. They had been waiting for 1,000 years for the fulfillment of this promise. I mean, talk about waiting. We wait for a few days, a few weeks, a few years. They had been waiting for centuries for the fulfillment of this. And if we want to even go back further, we could. If we think about the story of Scripture as a whole, this promise is really the culmination of the whole of the Old Testament. I mean, this goes back all the way to Genesis 3, you'll recall. God makes a promise to Adam and Eve that this one who would be the seed of the woman would come one day. He would conquer Satan. He would crush the head of the serpent. That promise is focused then on Abraham, who's promised to be a blessing to the nations, to have this seed who would come forth from him. And then that's focused even further to the nation of Israel, this holy nation who would rule as God's people, who would one day dwell with God in the promised land. And then we have this narrowing, this focus to that one person, to the king who is the culmination of all of those promises. So when we hear this word, the people, some of them were waiting for a political leader, but it's certainly so much more than that. It's not just a king to rule, it's not just This king who would free them finally from Roman oppression. What is being declared here, what's being announced here is really the promise of all of scripture of salvation itself. That God from the very beginning made this promise he would save his people, he would redeem his people. So we could say in one sense, Advent, this idea of waiting for something to come is really the story of all of the Bible, it's the story of all of history. That it's Israel's experience, but truly even now it is our experience as God's people. Or to say it another way, celebrating Advent, recognizing Advent isn't just about pretending that we're Old Testament Israel for a few weeks and then moving on with our lives. But when we sing, O come, O come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel, we're not just saying that thinking about that story or the Old Testament Israel, we're saying that for ourselves, we're pleading with God that he would come finally, that he would ransom us, he would deliver us. We, just like Old Testament Israel, we are longing people, we're waiting for something to happen. We're longing to be delivered just like they were, to be rescued. Of course, we have heard the good news of Christ coming. We know that Christ came, he died for our sins, that we have new life in him, but still we're waiting for the completion of that. We're longing to be freed from evil, from injustice, from sickness, from even death. And of course, from sin, from our lingering sin, that old man of the flesh that we long to be freed of. just having a conversation just the other night with a member here, and we were just talking briefly about how wonderful it would be, or it will be, when we are in heaven and we don't even have to choose not to sin anymore. We simply will not be able to sin. We will be with God. We will be free of our sinful desires from the pains and the struggles of this life. We're longing for that day to come. The angel pronounces, that day is coming. And then we also are given the name of the child who is to come. The Old Testament, or in the Old Testament, they had been given names or titles, right? The son of David was gonna come, the Messiah was gonna come, the branch even in Zechariah or Isaiah, that he would come one day. And yet here we get a name. The angel says, you shall call his name Jesus. this promised one, thousands of years without a name, he finally gets a name. You shall call his name Jesus. You want to ask, why not David or Solomon or Hezekiah or one of the good kings? Why Jesus? Well, you might know Jesus. It's not what he would have heard. He would have been named Joshua. This name throughout the Old Testament, Joshua after Moses, he brings the people into the promised land. Even Joshua in Zechariah's day was this figure who was in the line of David. We want to think about that name. Why that name? Well, that name very simply means salvation of the Lord or the Lord will save. So how was God summarizing the plan, the purpose of this one? How does he name his son, this king? He names him, God will save. This promise that we have heard throughout the Old Testament is his name. We even get a little bit more of the story. We don't know if this was told to Mary, but it was told to Joseph. The angel says to him, you shall name him Jesus because he will save his people, but particularly he will save them from their sins. You will come and do that thing which from the beginning we have been longing for, which we have been waiting for. Brothers and sisters, as we long, as we wait, both for heaven, for Christ to come, but even in the little things of this life, it's not a thing that's going to satisfy your longing, it's not a change of situation that's gonna satisfy your waiting. could say very simply, the answer to our waiting is not a thing, it is a person, and his name is Jesus. Jesus is the answer to our waiting. Yet even as Mary hears this wonderful news, as we hear this wonderful news, Mary, it seems, has some lingering doubts, some lingering questions in her mind, and really the central question is just how, how will this happen? Tangibly speaking, how can this come about? So as we are waiting this morning, as we are waiting in our lives, not only do we get a gracious address, not only do we get a gospel announcement, but finally we are assured that God is able, that God is able to do it. So Mary asks this follow-up question. She knows enough about biology to kind of put the pieces together. And she says, how can this be? For I have never been with a man. She knows how children are made. And so she says, there's another player here. How is that process going to happen? There's a lot of debate over whether this response was good or bad, whether she was doubting. Think very simply, we could say that this is just a very human response that Mary has. She hears what God says. God says, I'm gonna do this thing. She's given this promise and she looks at her own situation, at what's around her, and things just don't make sense. So the angel gives her this answer. She's asking, how will this child come about? And in this answer, Gabriel is tasked with announcing the most profound mystery ever revealed to human ears, this mystery of the incarnation, that God would come in the flesh, that the power from on high would overshadow her and that she would have child through the power of the Holy Spirit. Again, this Old Testament promise that the Messiah would come, that even this promise of Emmanuel, God with us, is declared, this is how it's going to happen. You know, the Old Testament was really the what, what is going to happen in the future, but now we are given the how. God himself, we are told, he will take on flesh, that he will be born of a woman. This God-man, the mystery of, God taking on human flesh, that he would come, that he would do all that was necessary for our salvation. Something to be marveled at, to be delighted in in this season. And then he concludes, he says, also Elizabeth, she was barren and she's had a child. And then this confirmation, he says that nothing will be impossible with God. Now as we hear this wonderful promise, this truth about who God is, about his character, about his ability, we certainly want to be careful because this is one of those verses that I think can become a coffee mug verses for us, right? God can do whatever he is able to do. Or in other words, God can do whatever I want him to do is how we often might think about this verse. I have this thing that I'm longing for and God is able to do that. Yet what God is affirming here is that there are no obstacles to God's own purpose. Or in other words, what is humanly impossible, God is saying He is able to do. And it's not just because it's impossible for impossibility's sake, right, it's not just so that He can show how powerful He is, it's not just to impress us with the things He can do, but the focus here is on His promises. In other words, what God is saying is if God makes a promise, which he has done in scripture all the way again from Genesis 3, if God makes a promise that he will keep that promise, even if it seems humanly impossible, if we just can't understand how it will manifest, God will keep his promises. He will bring about what to us is impossible. And we finally have Mary's last wonderful response to this word of the Lord. In essence, she summarizes by saying, Lord, do what you will, I'm your servant. Do everything according to your word. Yet even as we hear that response of Mary, we wanna be careful because I think there are two ways that we can take that response. You might hear it as kind of a shrug, I guess, Lord, whatever you want, it's out of my hands. Even as we think about our situation, I think the problem so much in our waiting is really a problem of attitude or a problem of how we go about the waiting. We can wait, we can say yes, God is in control, God's faithful, I know he has all these promises for me, and yet we can act, we can live hopelessly, we can grumble, we can despair even in light or even in light of those promises. I mean, think about Mary, think about her situation. What was Mary waiting for? What was she hoping to happen in the future? This young, newly engaged woman, certainly hoping to be married soon, to meet her husband, and to have a family. You could say she might be waiting to have a normal child, which God doesn't give her, to have a normal life, which God doesn't give her. Just consider briefly the story of Mary. We know things don't get easier for Mary after this announcement. Very shortly after this, Mary and her family is going to be on the run. They're going to go to Egypt for a while. Mary is going to live with open shame and rumors throughout her life. You know, people saying, well, of course, it's not the Son of God. Of course, it's someone else's baby. And ultimately, she is going to live with one day seeing that very gift of a son dying on a cross for her sins and for our sins. And likely for us as well, things won't get necessarily easier for us just because we have this promise. We will still have many unmet things in our life that won't be fulfilled. And yet, for Mary, we see this isn't a grumbling, kind of throwing up her hands and giving up. This is a declaration of faith in Mary. This is a joyful response that we'll even see in her song just a few verses later, this joyful overflowing of what God is able to do. And so we see this faith, not just generally speaking, but a faith in someone, this faith in this God who is able to do the impossible, faith in a God who has announced to her that he is gracious to her. Faith in a God who has time and time again fulfilled his promises. This God who reminds us again, who testifies to us again and again that he loves us. Of course, faith in a God who can truly save his people. So brothers and sisters, as we conclude this morning, God truly has done the impossible for our sake. In sending his son, God has done what we could not. In order that he might have favor on us, in order that he might look upon us in grace, he has sent his son into the world. So that he might be near us as Emmanuel, as God with us, he has sent his son into the world. And of course, so that he might redeem us from all of our sin and misery, he has come in the person of Jesus Christ. So as we hear this good news of the gospel of Jesus coming in the flesh, let us now continue to trust in the God who loves us and the God who has shown favor on us. And let us do so even while we wait in this age. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we do give you thanks above all, Lord, that you are with us in this age of waiting. God, we thank you that you are bringing about that which we long for. We ask that you would conform our hearts to long for the right things. And Lord, help us to wait in faith, knowing and trusting that you are always gracious to your people in Christ. For we do pray in Jesus' name, amen.