Luke 1, 26-38 this morning. And before we look at this together, let me pray for us and ask God's blessing on His Word. Father in heaven, we do thank you that you have breathed out every portion of scripture. We thank you that you have given us a sure word for our souls. We thank you that your word is pure like silver refined in a furnace seven times. We thank you that every word that you have ever spoken has and will come to pass. And we thank you, our God, that you have given us exceedingly great and precious promises that are all yes and amen in Christ. And so we pray, our God, that you would give us the Lord Jesus this morning as an anchor for our souls. Lord Jesus, we pray that you would command a word of life and blessing and salvation and sanctification for each and every man, woman, and boy and girl present here. We pray that we would hear in the ministry of your word, especially in the preaching of the word, the voice of the Good Shepherd. You have said that you know your own and call us by name and that your people follow you. And so we pray that you would call us this morning to follow you and that you would draw us to yourself with great power and mercy. We pray these things in your name. Amen. Luke chapter one, beginning in verse 26. And as Luke, the beloved physician and historian is giving us this, what he has said, an accurate and orderly account the life of Jesus now writes 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 Oh favored one the Lord is with you But she was greatly troubled at the 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. He will be called the son of the most high God, and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David. 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. The power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore the child to be born will be called holy. the Son of God. Behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her, who is called Baron. 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. In those days, Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country to a town in Judah. And she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the babe leapt in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. And she complained, she, she didn't complain, she exclaimed, That would be really weird. She exclaimed with a loud cry, blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leapt for joy and blessed is she who believed. that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord. The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of God endures forever. You may have heard the account. There is a story of C.S. Lewis around Christmas time in the middle of the 20th century. He was in his office with a friend, one of his colleagues. His window was open, and there were Christmas carolers outside. And they heard the words to the great Christmas hymn, lo, he abhors not the Virgin's womb. And as Lewis and his colleague listened to that, his colleague said to him, aren't you glad that we know better? And Lewis said, what do you mean? He said, aren't you glad that we know that that's not true, that virgins don't conceive? And Lewis said, well, isn't that the point? Don't you think that Mary knew that virgins don't conceive? And as you look at C.S. Lewis's writings, you'll find a book that he wrote on miracles, and he has a very short section where he unpacks that very sentiment very carefully. He says, science will tell you virgins don't conceive, never in the history of humanity before this point had a virgin ever conceived. He says gynecologists will tell you that is a physical Impossibility and then Lewis says we like to look back in our sophistication in our modern Sensibilities in all of our scientific advancements and we like to say I listen to the experts I listen to the scientists and the doctors that's impossible and he says we like to look back at these people at this time with scorn and He says don't you think that they felt the impossibility? Don't you think that they knew that virgins don't conceive Joseph certainly knew that Mary here certainly knows that, and everyone around them knew that. And part of the wonder of Christianity, one of the great things about the Christian religion, is that from start to finish it is entirely supernatural. It is entirely supernatural. The beginnings of the life of the Redeemer are supernatural. The entire life of the Redeemer is supernatural. The resurrection of the Redeemer is supernatural. The reign of the Redeemer is supernatural. And the work of the one who was knit together in the womb of the Virgin Mary in the hearts of men and women is supernatural in nature. There is absolutely nothing natural about Christianity. And so it's vital that as Luke is giving us this account and as he is giving us an accurate and orderly description about the life of Jesus, he is now going to focus on the conception. You know, we often mistakenly call it the virgin birth. It's actually the virgin conception. The supernatural act of God knitting together a human nature for the second person of the Godhead in the womb of the Virgin Mary, mysteriously, wondrously, out of the prying eyes of men, out of the sight of men, just like he had created the world out of the prying eyes of men, away from anyone that could behold him bringing light out of darkness. He knits together in the womb of the Virgin the humanity of the one who would redeem us, who would save us from our sins, and who would bring us to glory. And so as Luke is giving us this in the short passage this morning, we're going to see three things. First, we're going to consider the sure word of incarnation in its announcement. Then we're going to consider the sure word of incarnation in its explanation. And then finally, we are going to consider the sure word of incarnation in its reception, the announcement, the explanation, and the reception. We'll notice that Luke is giving us those very details. He's giving us those historical details. It's not my concern to convince you of history. It's not my concern to bore you with history, but it seemed good to the Holy Spirit to work in such a way as to superintend the writing of this gospel by a man who was a careful historian as to tell us all the little details, the time markers, the little time bombs that go off so that you know this is a trustworthy account. Luke gives us the very timing. This is why, by the way, so many believe that Luke had spoken with Mary and that he had gotten accurate facts from the one about whom he's writing. That would make a lot of sense. What happened then? And Mary says, well, then, and maybe now in her old age, and here she is a girl of about 12 or 13. And then maybe in her old age, she's telling Luke after six months, you know, an angel came to me six months after Elizabeth. had conceived miraculously, the same messenger came to me. And the same angel troubled me as he had troubled Zachariah in the temple. And he came with a very similar message. He came with a very similar word of revelation about redemption. But it was unexpected. Notice everything about the announcement is unlikely and unexpected. Mary is an unlikely recipient of this announcement. You know, one of the things that Luke does that's so interesting in these opening chapters is he couples everything. You're going to see this over the next several sections. There's all these coupling of accounts. He'll have an angel in the temple announcing to a priest the birth of John the Baptist, the forerunner of Jesus. Then he'll have that same angel going into the bedroom, not the temple, but the bedroom of the house of a poor, beggar, peasant teenager, Mary, unlikely. An older man, Zachariah, priest in the temple, unlikely, peasant, virgin. And then you'll see all these other couplings of young and old, male and female, and everything that God is doing in sending forth this word in the fullness of time. But she is the most unlikely. You know, the Roman Catholic Church has done us a severe disservice in making Mary a co-mediatrix with Jesus and making her someone who, in their dogma, is more excellent than everyone else. Mary is just like everybody else. Yes, Mary's a sinner. Mary is just like everybody else. There's nothing about this teenage girl that should have made her the recipient of this announcement, let alone to have the son of God, the savior of the world, knit together in her womb. Nothing. There's nothing about her to commend her to God. There's nothing that she does. There's nothing that she says. In fact, We'll see this in a moment. The angel functionally tells her that when she says, you found favor or grace with God. God has decided to be gracious to you. She didn't do anything to deserve that. She is not, as so many in the Roman Catholic Church have mistranslated this portion, full of grace. She is a recipient of grace. God has decided I am going to go to this unlikely one. You know, John Calvin has this really amazing meditation when he asks the question, why? Why a virgin? Now, there's lots of answers to this, and I hope you're interested enough to listen to them. But one of the reasons why it's a virgin, Calvin says, is to test the humility of faith in believers. and to confound the unbelief of the ungodly. So if you're a believer, it takes humble faith to believe that this is how the savior of the world is coming into the world. And if you're an unbeliever, God is gonna overthrow all of your unbelieving pride, and he did by knitting together a redeemer in the womb of a peasant teenage virgin. It lowers us down. It lowers us down. You know, in the 20th century, early 20th century, in the modernist controversy and liberalism that just destroyed the American church, this was the thing, the virgin birth. The German higher critical schools of thought infiltrated the church that, of course, there couldn't have been a virgin birth. I'm going to say this this morning, and I've already sort of said this. Belief in the virgin birth is one in the same with belief in creation ex nihilo, out of nothing, and it's one in the same with belief that the God-man is two natures in one person who hangs on the cross to atone for the sins of his people and take the infinite wrath of God, giving his blood infinite value, and it's one in the same with you believing that God then raised him from the dead. It's all part and parcel with Christianity. It's all supernatural. And so if you struggle, if you struggle, it's because in the flesh we can't believe the supernatural. It doesn't make sense. A virgin, a poor virgin, and the angel Gabriel comes to her. And, you know, I've often been struck by the fact that if you were living at this time as an Israelite, and what every Israelite should have been doing from Abraham until this moment is wondering, is this woman the one that's going to have the Redeemer? Remember Genesis 3.15, Adam and Eve fall, and God comes immediately. He says, I'm going to send a Redeemer. It's going to be the seed of a woman. It's going to crush the head of the serpent. And that's the whole redemptive historical narrative of human history. When is the seed of the woman coming? And here Gabriel comes to this virgin. He says, you're the woman. This is it. This is happening. What God promised in the garden to our parents who brought us into the state of sin and death and misery, what God promised is happening. All the hopes. are found in what's happening here in this announcement. All of redemptive history is bound up in this. And she is a teenager. She is a virgin. Remember, Isaiah had prophesied. You often wonder, Because Mary is treasuring these things in her heart, Luke will say later on, and she's trying to figure out what's going on. She's confused. You know, if the unbelieving scientific world is confused, Mary was confused even more. Because Mary had this going on inside her. And Mary's trying to make sense of all this. And you wonder whether Mary at some point didn't go to Isaiah 7.14, the virgin will conceive and bear a son and you will call his name Emmanuel, God with us. And if at some point that didn't hit this young girl and she became conscious, I'm the virgin Isaiah was speaking about. That all the messianic prophecies, all the messianic promises, all the thousands of years of revelation promising a redeemer, it's all happening now and it's happening to me. How can this be? And she is so unlikely. She's a teenager. She's a virgin. She's an object of God's grace. But then notice it's an unlikely declaration. Notice that Gabriel comes and he says in verse 28, O favored one, the Lord is with you." She was greatly troubled at this saying. Mary, by the way, a truly godly person, is always troubled when they're told that God is with them and has a special plan for them. There's something about that because we feel undeserving. Mary feels undeserving here. And somebody that's sort of flippant about divine things and they're like, yeah, God's with me, it's great. That's a person that doesn't know grace. Mary is astonished that God would have special purposes for her. Mary is shocked because Mary doesn't think she deserves any of this. It is a completely unexpected thing, this message. Notice, she was greatly troubled and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said, do not be afraid, Mary. You have found favor with God. You found grace with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb a bare son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, will be called the Son of the Most High. the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David now keep in mind that Gabriel has just come to Mary's cousin or aunt however we want to parse that Elizabeth and has said that Baron Elizabeth who is past the age of conception is going to have a son in her old age miraculously and that takes our mind back to all the miraculous births in the Old Testament to Isaac, remember the son of promise, that carries our mind back. God supernaturally enabled Sarah to conceive in her old age the one from whom the Redeemer would come. And it takes our mind to Hannah, barren Hannah who can't have children and whose heart is burdened over her barrenness and God comes and gives her the desire of her heart. And there's this supernatural element. And that might lead you, as it has led many, to say, what's the big deal? What's the difference between what God's doing here and what God has done for all these other women in redemptive history? And remember, I told you Luke couples things to draw out comparisons. but he also does it to draw out contrast. Now, consider with me what Gabriel said about John the Baptist. Remember, we saw this word in verse 14. He says, you will call his name John. You will have great joy and gladness. Many will rejoice at his birth. He will be great before the Lord. Now, on the surface, it seems like Mary's getting the same message that Elizabeth got. Same word, gonna have a son. You're gonna name him. It's gonna be great. People are gonna be saved because of him. That's the substance of the similarity. And here's where it's different. The angel says to Mary, she doesn't say, you're gonna have a son, you'll call his name Jesus, and he will be great before the Lord. That's what she said about John, he would be great before the Lord. She says about Jesus, he will be great. And in of himself, he is full of divine greatness. He is full of infinite divine greatness in himself. He will not be great before the Lord. He is the Lord. Notice what Gabriel says in this unexpected message. He will be great. Notice he will be called the son of the most high God. Only one person in all of human history has ever been called the son of the most high God, Jesus. He is the eternal son. He is the only one who has a right to be the everlasting only begotten son of God. He dwelt with the father in all eternity. John tells us that in the beginning was the word and the word was with God. He was face to face with his father and the word was God and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And Gabriel is telling us he is the son of the most high God. And notice what else he tells him about what's gonna happen to this child. In verse 32, the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David. He will reign over the house of Jacob forever. And of his kingdom, there will be no end. Now, maybe that last clause should jump out the most to you. America is a social experiment. And I've said this before we're all just sitting around waiting to see how it's going to end. It's going to end eventually. Every civilization has ended. Don't be so foolish to think America will go on forever. But the kingdom of God will go on forever and Jesus will have a kingdom that will never end. I love the way John Piper puts it. He says 10,000 years After America is just a footnote in a history book, Jesus will still be king. He'll still be king. At his conception, at Mary's conceiving in her virgin womb, not having known a man, she is being told the child. And why not? She's the only virgin that's ever conceived. Why not? This is how God is putting himself into this world. One of the interesting things about the incarnation And the mystery of the incarnation is how can there be one who comes to be with sinners and yet to be separate from sinners? How can there be one who is going to rule and reign over the kingdom of God forever and is gonna redeem his people to be with him in that kingdom forever? How can that happen? You know, that's a question Mary asked. Notice verse 34, Mary says to the angel, how will this be since I'm a virgin? That's a natural question. That's not a question of unbelief. That's Mary saying, Hey, virgins don't conceive. She got it. Like if you're so smart and you think she didn't, she got it. She said, how will this be? She's asking, how is this even going to be possible? And we see that Luke is telling us now the explanation of the incarnation. Notice that he says in verse 35, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, that child to be born will be called Holy, the Son of God now. If you like details and you were doing a careful study of the scripture and of this passage in particular, you would quickly realize that that word overshadow has a rich biblical theological history to it in the Old Testament. The first time we're told the Holy Spirit overshadows something, it's the waters of creation. The Holy Spirit brooded over the waters. He was there. Those are the opening words of the Bible. There was darkness, and the Spirit of God was hovering, overshadowing the darkness of the unformed world God had just spoken into existence. And then by the power of that Spirit, God said, let there be light. And there was light breaking out of the darkness. And here what the angel is telling Mary is that that same spirit who was that creation, the same spirit who then were told brooded over Israel in the wilderness and came down over God's typical new creation, his people that were to be a new creation, kingdom of witnesses to his redeeming grace and then and then he came down on the tabernacle in the cloud and and the Holy Spirit came and filled the most holy place and he Overshadowed the place of God's dwelling would now come over the Virgin Mary and he would knit together in the darkness of her womb Don't miss this He would knit together in the darkness of her womb away from the eyes of men the head of the new creation the second Adam and You know, there are several thoughts here for us to get. Luke is essentially drawing our attention, he'll do this at the end of Jesus' genealogy in chapter three, to the fact that he's the last Adam, he's the second Adam. You know, John the Baptist was in the lineage of the priests, but here the Redeemer is going to be the second man who came to do all that the first man didn't do and undo everything that the first man did. And that means, All the darkness of this world, all the darkness of our sin, all the darkness of the misery of life, all the darkness of this fallen evil age. The Son of God enters into that dark world. He goes into the darkness of the Virgin's womb, and then he's born into this dark world, and then he hangs on the cross in darkness under the darkness of God's wrath, the sun even hiding its face. We've got a solar eclipse coming up in August. You should remember the cross. You should think about the cross. and God pouring out his wrath on the sun in darkness because of the darkness of our sin, and then he is put away in the tomb in darkness and he bursts forth out of the darkness of the tomb to be the light of the world. And no, I'm not reading into this too much. Gabriel is saying the Holy Spirit is going to knit together the Redeemer in your womb, miraculously, supernaturally. I know I mentioned to you at the beginning the supernaturalistic nature of Christianity. If you're one of those people that struggle with the supernatural, we all do. And yet from start to finish, it's all supernatural. It's all theological in nature. It's all tied together. God is fulfilling what he began in eternity, what he planned, what he purposed. I want to read you this quote. B.B. Warfield, who was one of the great theologians in church history, they called him the Lion of Princeton, and Warfield took on all of the naturalistic Ways men tried to explain away the virgin birth and especially this this section about the Holy Spirit Overshadowing the Virgin Mary and knitting together in her womb the Redeemer and and this is what Warfield says I don't I don't want us to miss this this morning. Listen to this He says Jesus is supernatural birth like his supernatural life and his supernatural works forms an indispensable element in the supernatural religion which he founded The supernatural Christ and the supernatural salvation carry with them by an inevitable consequence the supernatural birth. Men have always and everywhere judged that a supernatural man doing a supernatural work must have sprung from a supernatural source. The whole of this supernatural Christianity commended to us by the New Testament is formed by its doctrine of in, The second we say, I believe in the Incarnation, the second we say we believe that Jesus is God and man, the second we say that is the second we are affirming that we believe in a supernatural birth of the Redeemer. Warfield says, the supernatural Savior who has come into the world to work a supernatural salvation could not possibly be conceived by it as of this world. Born into our race he might be and he was, but born of our race, never. So he is born fully man, born of a woman, with all the human faculties, as the second Adam, yet without a father, a biological father, who would have transmitted to him a sin nature, and then he couldn't have saved you. So for him to be fully God and fully man, We needed this supernatural conception. Warfield says, it is obvious that when we talk about the pre-existence of Jesus, we have already said supernatural. As soon as we have said deity, we have said miraculous. That's what Luke is highlighting. He's saying the way this works Even if I tell you that the Holy Spirit's going to come, he's going to overshadow, there's no kind of perverse sexual thing going on there, but that he's going to put the Redeemer in the womb of the Virgin, miraculously overshadowing her as he brought life At the creation, now in the work of the new creation, he's going to knit together the second Adam, the Redeemer. Even when he tells you that, what he's saying is it's supernatural. It's supernatural. It exceeds all logic and reason. And yet every week, at least most weeks, we stand and the Christian church for 2000 years has said, I believe, essentially, I believe in the virgin birth. Now, is it necessary for you to believe in the virgin birth to be a Christian? Yes, it is. It's absolutely necessary because if we deny this, we deny the incarnate Christ, we deny the redemption that he supernaturally accomplishes at the cross, we deny every single thing. We pull the fabric, the thread that pulls the whole thing down. It's all meant to fit together. It's all supernatural. Everything that Jesus is, everything that Jesus has done, everything that Jesus is now, You know, here's how supernatural Jesus is. In the book of Revelation, when he is giving that final word to the Apostle John, he says, and I've always been astonished by this, one of my favorite verses in the Bible, he says to John, I am he who was alive and I died, and behold, I'm alive forevermore. Supernatural. Yes, if you believe that, and I believe that, and you must believe that if you're going to be saved, you must believe in that Christ, then you must believe that this happened, and that this is real, and that this is God's infinite wisdom at work in giving the sure word. Sinclair Ferguson has this great meditation where he says, are you staggered by this? I mean, that's one of the questions, isn't it? We've kind of dealt with sort of all the unbelieving naturalistic objections to something like this. And if you're one of those people that kind of considers yourself intellectual, maybe you've allowed yourself to trap in those unbelieving thoughts in your superior wisdom. But for the rest of us, who feel ourselves in the deep water of mystery here. Ferguson says, are you staggered by this? Does the truth of the incarnation stagger you? He says it staggered Mary, staggered Joseph. Everybody was shocked. Everyone was left dumbfounded. How can this be? Mary's question, how can this be? How is this even possible? That's her question. She's believing God's word. She's not doubting it. But she's dumbfounded. How is this even possible? Ferguson says, the son of God becomes the tiniest part of creation. The one who threw the stars into their places, who created the vast cosmos, is coming into the womb in embryonic form in total dependence on his humanity upon his mother in the long months in a fetal position. If that doesn't stagger us, there's something deeply wrong with how little we meditate on scripture, what we think about ourselves, what we think about the world, what we think about redemption, all of it. The Redeemer who hung on the cross was in a fetal position in the womb of the Virgin for months on end in total dependence on her. The God who hung the stars knit himself together in the womb of the Virgin. The last thing we see, and really where we need to go this morning, is the response. What is the response to a sure word of incarnation like this? Well, we see that Mary gives us that in verse 38. Mary said, Behold, I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word. That is in response to the angel saying, with God, nothing will be impossible. Now, I don't know if you know this. There are two times in this gospel and in the whole of the New Testament where that saying comes in some shape or form. With God, nothing will be impossible. By the way, when the gym placards that on a banner with somebody doing yoga, It's not what that verse is for. When some guy's putting up 450 with God, nothing will be impossible. That is not why God breathed that out. There are two times, I'm sorry if you're offended by that, that is not, it is not an exercise verse. I, by the way, I have a friend who likes to say how everybody abuses the verse. I can do all things in Christ who strengthens me and how they love to just use that for like, Biking and every other kind of activity and triathlons and my friend likes to say except interpret the Bible properly That's the one thing you can't do through Christ who strengthens you but here here and there's one other place in Luke's gospel where Something along these lines is said it is said here about the incarnate Christ. How is this possible with God? nothing will be impossible the whole of Christianity is built on that word about the incarnate Christ and And the other place, listen very carefully, is in Luke chapter 18, when Jesus says how hard it is for those with riches to enter the kingdom of God. And the disciples say, who then can be saved? And Jesus says, with man, this is impossible, but with God, nothing will be impossible. Because salvation is an absolute impossibility for rich or poor, young or old, For all men, it is an absolute impossibility, but with God, because Christ would hang on the cross, and the one who God knit together in the womb of the Virgin would bear the sins of his people and make that salvation possible. I think that Luke is connecting those two things. He hears about Gabriel saying it to Mary at the incarnation. He gets it on the lips of Jesus in Luke 18. The same Christ who was supernaturally put in the womb of the Virgin is the one who said, salvation is impossible with men, but not with God. Now, Mary believes, and there's something beautiful here. I want to talk to the children here because I sometimes think we do our children a great disservice because we essentially treat our children like there's a period of intellectual maturity in which now they're prepared to be saved. And we've pushed that back in our increasingly adolescent society more and more and more because now 25-year-old men are really where 13-year-old boys were 200 years ago. That's true. This is true. So adolescence, everybody's getting older. Here's a word for children. This is a word for children. Here, God has sent the most difficult word of revelation that anyone could believe to a little teenage girl, and she believes God's word. She takes God at his word. She listens to the word of God as a teenager. And she receives that word. as impossible as it is. You know, my dad used to say to my sister and me when we were very young, he'd say, you know, if you know Christ and if you take God at his word, then you know more than the greatest minds in the universe that reject the Christ that made the universe. Oh, he was right. He was right because the Christian receives with humble faith the divine mysteries of God for the salvation of their souls. And God reveals to them and opens for them the vistas of truth and the vistas of understanding and the vistas of joy and rejoicing. Now Mary believes. She says to the angel, I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word. And the angel departs. There's a contrast here, isn't there? Remember Zachariah didn't believe he couldn't speak. Mary, having asked the question, how can this be? Now, doesn't get a scientific answer, by the way. He doesn't, the angel doesn't say, well, let me go into genome theories and explain to you how this will be possible scientifically on a molecular level. He says, the Holy Spirit is going to overshadow you, the power of the Most High is going to come on you, and you're going to have the Holy One of God, the Son of God, knit together in your womb. And Mary says, behold the servant of the Lord, let it be to me according to God's Word. That's what faith looks like. Faith says, I take God at His Word. This is the Word of God. I take God at His Word. It doesn't mean we blindly, in any irrational sense, Say, oh, I'll just believe whatever. This is the word of God. And if the God who made all the laws of logic chooses to defy those laws for a moment and defy all the laws of science and biology to knit himself together in the womb of a virgin, if he says he does that, we better take him at his word. And notice that Mary then goes to visit Elizabeth. Now, there's one thing I want to point out here because It could be easy to say, well, OK, these people lived in the first century agrarian culture, pre-industrial revolution, pre-mechanical revolution, pre-technological. She didn't have an iPhone. She's 13. She doesn't have an iPhone. She doesn't have Snapchat. She doesn't. Mary doesn't have any of the advancements we have. I don't even know what's cool with the kids anymore. I'm getting so old. Mary doesn't have any of it. And so it'd be easy to say, well, yeah, she doesn't have all that. I mean, they're just, you know, they're just naive agrarian peasants. You know what? The next thing Mary does, I want you to listen carefully. The next thing Mary does is she goes to Elizabeth's house. Now remember, Elizabeth is very pregnant at this point. She's getting close to having John the Baptist. And Mary, this 12, 13-year-old girl, makes this very arduous journey, I presume by herself, to visit Elizabeth and Zachariah. And there's only two possible explanations why. Either. Either Elizabeth, and Mary feels like Elizabeth can give her some coaching and counseling and mentoring because both of them have had supernaturalistic births now and conceptions, and so either Mary is going to Elizabeth because she needs someone that she can identify with and she needs some sort of nurturing with somebody else that's going through something similar, which I don't think is the reason, or Mary's parents are ashamed because virgins don't conceive. And so they're hiding her. And I think that's more likely. You know, isn't it interesting you never hear about Mary's parents? I've never even thought about that till I prepared for this this morning. You never hear about Mary's parents. And I think it's highly likely that Mary's parents didn't believe and they concluded the only explanation is our daughter has had a premarital relationship. that she has conceived out of wedlock, and in that culture especially, where they had a sense of morality unlike our culture, we've got to put her away for the shame. Remember, Joseph wanted to do the same thing. He was ready to put her away, just secretly get rid of her out of the sight of society. Now, there's a word there for us. Because we can do one of two things. We can either respond to what we've heard this morning the way Mary does, and we can say, yes, I don't understand all this. I can't logically make sense of all of it, even though I think we can make logical sense of a lot of it if we know the scripture. But I receive by faith that this is indeed true, that the religion that I adhere to, that the salvation that my soul longs for and is hoping in God for, the salvation that God has promised, is absolutely and utterly dependent on this supernatural birth. Or we can say, you know what? Virgins don't conceive. And everybody knows that. And I don't believe that. Now, if you do the latter, you will perish eternally. If you do not believe, you will not be saved. The Bible makes that explicitly clear, whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. The just shall live by faith. If we confess with our mouth that Jesus, the incarnate one, is the Lord and we believe in our heart that God has raised him from the dead, we will be saved. Without faith, it's impossible to please God. You know, it's so simple. I want to leave you with this this morning. We are going to go from this place, and either we are going to go believing and rejoicing and hoping and astonished, and we're going to say, that is the Christ I am trusting. The Christ in the darkness of the womb of the Virgin is the Christ that hung on the darkness of Calvary for me. And I am clinging to him because of the darkness of my sin. And I need his blood to wash that sin away. Or we're going to leave this place and we're just going to go on in unbelief. We're going to act like Mary's parents. We're going to act like everybody else that doesn't believe the gospel. It's a simple word to us this morning. It's a glorious word. Let him who has ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the church. Let me pray for us. Father in heaven, we thank you for the intricacies of this account. We thank you for how you have given us so much in the scriptures. We thank you for the trustworthiness of your word. We thank you for giving us this sure word of incarnation. And Lord Jesus, we thank you that even now you are the Christ who hears us and intercedes for us, who makes our prayers acceptable, who shines light into the darkness of our hearts. We pray, Lord Jesus, that you would shine The glorious light of the gospel into us that you would increase our faith, that you would build us up, that you would send us from this place, both astonished and rejoicing and trusting and telling others about this great salvation, this supernatural work that you have done. Oh God, we thank you and praise you. We pray these things in Jesus name. Amen.