Scripture: Luke 1:26-38
Sermon Series: Mary, He called her Mother – Sermon 01
Have you started watching Christmas movies? Turn to the person next to you and share what one Christmas movie you have to watch every Christmas?Jane and I are a few Christmas movies into the season. At our house there are a handful we have to watch every Christmas. If we don’t get a chance to watch them, it’s like the Grinch stole a bit of Christmas.
We want to watch White Christmas (picture). Some version of The Christmas Carol (picture). Elf (picture) has gotten on the list. An old made for TV movie called Christmas Eve (picture). And no Christmas Season is complete without watching It’s A Wonderful Life (picture).
While we’ve watched them for decades. We still laugh. We still get nervous. We’re still holding our breath. We still get teary…though they’re all so familiar and we’ve seen them so many times.
Somehow though when we come to the greatest story, the Incarnation, the account of God’s Son coming to earth, when we come to the real Christmas story, we get blasé. It’s like warming up leftovers in the microwave.
Why is it we can get excited about Christmas fiction stories but with the true story, we’re almost bored. The Jesus story is all true, so why is that?
We’re starting a new study, Mary, He Called Her Mother(logo). For most of us this isn’t new. If we really think about it, it’s more thrilling than anything Hollywood can ever churn out. My hope is that we can strip the callouses off of our hearts and see this with fresh eyes. I hope it brings warmth to our souls, so we’re overwhelmed with gratitude for our Savior and His sacrifice for us in a fresh way. Will you pray with me for that as we make this journey over the next several weeks? Let’s pray.
Look again at Luke 1:26-38. Every year nearly every radio station starts playing nothing but Christmas music, most of them right after Thanksgiving. One of the most popular is, Mary, Did You Know? popularized by Mark Lowry (picture) who wrote the lyrics. The words evolved from a series of questions Lowry scripted for a Christmas program at his church. It’s since gone on to become a modern Christmas classic. The song encourages contemplation of the relationship between Mary and her Son, Jesus.
The idea of the song is that someone asks Mary if she knew what would become of her Son. Did she know what her Son would do later on? So, a couple of the lines from the song go like this: Mary, did you know that your baby boy will one day walk on water? Mary, did you know that your baby boy will give sight to a blind man? That song raises this question: What did Mary actually know when Jesus was born?
It’s where Luke 1 comes in. In this wonderful story it’s very apparent, No, Mary didn’t know…This morning we want to answer the song’s question and find some answers for ourselves. If you’re taking notes…
1. God has a plan.
Have you ever been to Woolsey, Georgia (Map)? It’s just south of Atlanta. It’s where my grandparents lived. In 2020 it had a population of 206. When I was a kid, I think there was one little store there.
That’s Nazareth. It (map) was small. “In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth” (Luke 1:26).
While Nazareth is mentioned in Luke, it’s never mentioned anywhere else in the Old Testament. Nor is it mentioned by Josephus (picture), in his historical writings because no one important ever came from or to Nazareth. In Jesus’ day, it was a town of dozens. Maybe 50 or 100 people max.
Ever been on a long road trip, you pull into some podunk town to buy gas, a pop or corn dog, use the bathroom, clean the bugs off your windshield, and get out as fast as you can, praising God it’s not where you live? That’s Nazareth, a gas station and corn dogs, that’s all it’s got.
Nazareth was a small rural farming town. Archeologists tell us there was just one well where residents went for water. Homes were 500 or 600 square feet, and part of that was occupied by livestock. These are very simple, poor, rural people, the majority of which were illiterate.
But then the angel Gabriel shows up. This was totally unexpected. Nathanael says in John 1:46, Can anything good come out of Nazareth? The assumption is, “No,” except for God. Jesus came from Nazareth. The only reason Nazareth has any prominence is because Jesus lived there.
Angels hold an important place in the Bible. They’re referred to over 300 times. Gabriel’s presence is particularly significant. His only other appearance, outside of Luke, happens in the book of Daniel. Gabriel revealed God’s plan for Israel’s future destruction and the coming Anointed One. The Anointed One would reside in the womb of this peasant girl in Nazareth. Gabriel is God’s special messenger, sent to initiate the eternal plan of redemption.
It’d been 400 years of silence from God. No prophet had spoken since Malachi penned the last book of the Old Testament. But light has once again dawned on God’s people. Gabriel appears and pulls out from under his wings a special envelope with heavenly news that prophecy was about to be fulfilled. A virgin was going to conceive. Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel (Isaiah 7:14).
The reason it’s exciting to study the Bible is because the same way that God dealt with people in the Bible thousands of years ago is the same way He deals with us. There’s so much that we can learn from Gabriel’s conversation with Mary. The Bible says God never changes, Malachi 3:6 I, the Lord, do not change. So, as we learn something about the way God related to Mary, we can learn about how He relates to us today. While we’re discussing what God said to Mary 2,000 years ago, I pray that you’ll be faithfully reading your Bible, letting God speak to you from His Word.
2. God’s value system is the opposite of ours
To a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary (Luke 1:27). Mary is betrothed. She’s pledged to be Joseph’s wife.We do marriage differently today, often not well. Betrothal meant there was a pledge to be married. It usually took place when a girl was about 12 or 13. Got pictures of Mary in her 20’s. Delete them from your mental files.
There was a very good reason for such young marriages. In an agrarian culture, if you got married when you were 12 or 13, you could have lots and lots of kids. That’s the free workforce you’d need to run a farm or a family business. That way the husband received the benefits of a childbearing wife for a longer period of time. Practically speaking, her father was able to more easily guarantee his daughter’s purity if he could arrange for her to be married by the time she reached puberty. So, a girl could be as young as 12 and be betrothed to be married. In fact, panic would set in if a girl wasn’t married by the time that she was 30. She was nearly an old maid by then.
This betrothal would last a year. It began with a simple ceremony anticipating the wedding. At the end of the year of betrothal, they’d have an official wedding ceremony. They’d then live together as husband and wife and consummate their relationship physically. Betrothal was so serious that to terminate it required either death or divorce. We find an example of that in the opening pages of Matthew’s Gospel. If your husband died, you’d be considered a widow because betrothal was marriage.
Don’t miss that God didn’t send Gabriel to make this announcement to Herod’s daughter or a member of the elite Jewish society. He sent Gabriel to a poor, illiterate, unimportant teenage girl.
Kent Hughes (picture) describes her likely future before Gabriel descended with his message: “From all indicators, her life would not be extraordinary. She would marry, give birth to numerous poor children, never travel more than a few miles from her home, and one day die like thousands of others before her—a nobody in a nothing town in the middle of nowhere.”
God loves to use nobodies. He’s still doing that today. But you must be a Christ-follower, otherwise your life will never be extraordinary. The greatest news of all time came to a nobody and God is still using nobodies.
God only gives grace to the humble. God loves to use humble people. Scripture continually talks about being humble and humility. We’ve lost that in the Church today. We’re hooked on greatness, but God isn’t impressed.
Mary didn’t believe she deserved this honor that God bestowed on her. She was greatly troubled that Gabriel said she was the favored one. It didn’t make sense to her. She thought, “You’ve got the wrong ‘Mary.’ Surely God sent you to someone else, perhaps the next town on the trade route.”
Next Sunday we’ll work through her song, the Magnificat in verses 46-55. As we read through her song, we see Mary doesn’t have a hint of pride. God is the only one she magnified in her Magnificat. She’s a very humble person.
Medieval artists often portrayed Mary in stained glass windows. But her panes would be the only ones with no color, just clear glass. All the other windowpanes would filter the light of the sun through their distinctive designs and colors, but not Mary’s. No—hers was clear, unfiltered. There was nothing of herself to affect the light that came through.
God is not looking for talent or wealth or beauty or intelligence. God looks for humility when it comes to being the kind of person that He uses. Mary illustrates God’s reversal of human ideas about greatness and significance.
1 Corinthians 1:27, 29, “But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are, so that no human being might boast in the presence of God.” God used Mary because she was humble and willing. God doesn’t need us and apart from Him we’re nothing.
God always keeps His promises. 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 (Luke 1:32-33). D. L. Moody (picture) said, God never made a promise that was too good to be true. A millennium before this happened God had promised King David that his kingdom would never end. Gabriel refers back to the Davidic Covenant in 2 Samuel 7. It’s an unconditional covenant made by God with David. God promises the Messiah would come from David’s lineage. God would establish a kingdom that would endure forever. God doesn’t place any conditions of obedience upon its fulfillment. The certainty of this promise rests on the integrity of God. It doesn’t depend on David or Israel’s obedience. And as God kept His promise about Jesus’ 1st coming, my friend, He’ll keep His promise about His 2nd coming.
Mary is a sinner just like us.The Bible teaches that Jesus is the only redeemer and only way to heaven. Mary is not full of grace. Instead, she’s a recipient of God’s grace, in that God chose her to become the mother of Jesus. The Bible never says Mary is “full of grace.” The Bible never teaches she’s a mediator between God and man, or that we’re to pray to Mary.
Raymond Brown (picture), renowned Catholic theologian notes that saying that Mary is “full of grace” is not what the Bible says. It’s because of the Latin Vulgate’s faulty translation that gave rise to this medieval idea that Mary was a dispenser of grace, resulting in prayers being offered to her.
The Bible teaches that Mary is a recipient of God’s grace, not a repository of grace. She needed a Savior and praises God for being my Savior (Luke 1:47). She’s blessed because God chose her to be the Messiah’s mother.
3. God’s will isn’t safe and often frightening
Though there are thousands of books about angels, and many will claim to have seen one, the Bible records very few interactions with angels. We might think it’s common but in the thousands of years recorded in the Bible, it’s very, very rare.
When angels showed up, people got very scared. Today we’ve grown flippant about angels or God’s presence. He’s the “Big Guy” or a profanity. People in the 1st century didn’t want God to show up. They knew God was so powerful and they weren’t worthy of His presence.
As we study the Bible, we find God’s will is rarely what those individuals would have “normally” done. That’s the case with Mary. God’s will for her wasn’t something she’d have chosen.
With breathtaking brevity, Gabriel summarized the entire ministry of Jesus: His saving work, righteous life, deity, resurrection, glorious return and kingdom rule, and she was going to be His mom. Wow! He will be great!
This was Gabriel’s announcement and God’s plan for her life. Mary would give birth to a Son named, Jesus, whose name means Savior. He’d be the Savior and the Son of God. He’s the most powerful ruler in the history of the world. Mary trusted the angel’s promise and submitted to God’s will.
If you want to be a “Mary” you must learn to conquer fear. The fear of embarrassment. The fear of humiliation. The fear of being talked about. The fear of being criticized. The fear of being hurt. The fear of being poor. The fear of being a failure. Those who aspire to serve God in His great work will face all kinds of fear. That’s why God begins so many conversations with, “Do not be afraid.” There are four of them in the nativity account.
Courage is acting in faith in spite of our fear. You can be courageous no matter how you feel. Courage is defined by what you do. That’s what Mary did. When Gabriel told her she’d have a child before she and Joseph were legally married, she felt afraid. Afraid of what people would say. Afraid of what Joseph would assume. Afraid of the shame she’d bring on her family. Afraid of not being able to provide for her child. She could have easily given in to this fear and done nothing, but she didn’t.
When God called Mary, she showed courage. This kind of courage doesn’t come from self-confidence but from confidence in God. It’s a by-product of humility. None of us can be a “Mary” without God’s help. Mary trusted and believed that God would enable her to do this great and wonderful thing.
Is God calling you to something that’s beyond you, something that’s perhaps frightening and beyond your abilities? I don’t know what that is for you. I do know God’s will often isn’t safe. That’s why He calls us to step out on faith in Him. He says the same thing to us, Do not be afraid.
4. God doesn’t pick dummies
Parents dread that question: Where do babies come from? Some parents get very creative. One Dad told his son, “Well, when a man and a woman love each other very much and there’s nothing to watch on Netflix…” My favorite was by a dad asked that question who told his child, “Amazon.” “Why does it take six months?” “Shipping.”
Moderns act like those in Bible times were Neanderthals. Mary understood biology. “And Mary said to the angel, How will this be, since I am a virgin? (Luke 1:34). She’s puzzled but she asked the right question.
Mary could have whined, “Why me, Lord?” I’m sure she thought about all the negatives in this plan. The social stigma would be harsh. When we’re faced with changes in life, we’re tempted to ask, “WHY?” But the right question is “how?” Mary was saying, “I don’t have any doubt God can do this, but I’d like to know more about how He is going to accomplish it.”
It’s okay to have honest questions. When you face the big experiences of life, a good question to ask is “How Lord? How can I cooperate with you to see Your power released? How will you do this God, so You get the glory?”
Gabriel gives Mary two kinds of information. First, he gives her a personal word about her situation, then a general statement about God’s power. She’s understandably perplexed about how she’ll have a child when she’s a virgin.
Gabriel reveals a little background to the tremendous mystery of the Incarnation. He explains that the Holy Spirit would come upon her. God’s power would overshadow her. That word overshadow pictures exactly what it says, a shadow moving over a person. You can’t really touch or feel a shadow, but you know when you are in the shade.
While it’s not a sexual experience, it’s certainly a conscious experience – something Mary could feel. How could anyone have the Holy Spirit come upon him or her, and be overshadowed with the presence of God, and not know it? Mary understood the awesome significance of what was going to take place. It’s what gave her grace and kept her faithful during the tumultuous months and years to come.
Gabriel also gives Mary the underlying explanation: For nothing will be impossible with God (Luke 1:37). This is a good time to push the pause button on this passage and take a look at your own life.
Is there something in your life that you sense is God’s plan, but you’re clueless as to how it’s going to happen? Maybe it’s your marriage holding together? Maybe it’s dealing with a difficult child or a difficult adult child?
It’s God’s plan for you to read His Word, pray and know Him. It’s God’s plan for you to serve Him. It’s God’s plan for you to share the gospel. It’s God’s plan for you to live a holy, abundant life. I could go on and on. When you reach the end of your possibilities, that’s where you find the God of the impossible. You may be facing a terrible crisis in your life right now.
There are two things here God wants to communicate to you: (1) Don’t be afraid and (2) Nothing is impossible for God. Are you listening? Whenever you learn God’s plans you might say, “That’s impossible!” Congratulations! You’re right on track. God specializes in the impossible! Read the Bible. You’ll find impossible fingerprints from God all through it.
5. God always requires commitment
So far, we have been learning things about how God operates. Our focus has been on God’s part in the process. We don’t have any control about how God operates. Now let’s focus on us and how we should respond to God.
In Mary’s response, we see exactly the way that we must respond. “And Mary said, ‘Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word’” (Luke 1:38). Servant literally means slave. Mary knew the price and what it would cost her.
What a contrast between Eve and Mary. Eve said, “my way” and it cost her everything. Mary said, “Your way, Lord” and God gave her everything.
Gabriel’s visit caught Mary by surprise, but not unprepared. She’d already surrendered her life to God. She began to carry the cross before Jesus was born. She began to suffer for the Messiah before the Messiah suffered.
Martin Luther King (picture) said, Faith is taking the first step even when you can’t see the whole staircase. You and I don’t have to see the whole staircase. In faith we take one step and then another and another—even when we don’t know where the road will take us.
Years ago, Paul McCartney (picture) wrote a song entitled, “Let it be.” According to one interview, he got his inspiration for his song from Mary’s response. Some of the words say, When I find myself in times of trouble; Mother Mary comes to me; Speaking words of wisdom, ‘Let it be.’
Mary had a choice. She demonstrated tremendous faith and humility in her response. You may wonder, “What would God have done if Mary had said, ‘No?’“ I can’t answer that. Nobody can. God knew in His wisdom that Mary would say, “Yes.” Yet, at the same time, He didn’t force her to say, “Yes.”
What about you? God has a wonderful plan for your life. Do you believe that? Have you surrendered to Him? God wants to save you from your sins and clean up your life, making you more like Jesus day by day. Have you ever said, “I am your servant, Lord, may it be to me as you have said?” Have you made the choice to truly follow Christ? This passage is not just about Mary. It’s all about you. It’s about me.
Conclusion
“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” (Luke 1:32-33). Jesus is the King of Kings.
Mary had it right, I am the servant of the Lord. Though Jesus’ mother, He’s also her King. You can’t have Jesus without surrender. You can’t go to heaven without surrender.
Have you committed your life to Jesus as your Savior and Lord? The bottom line for us is: While we should imitate Mary’s faith and submission to God, we should also personally trust in and submit to Jesus as Savior and Lord. My friend, have you done that?
On March 23, 1743, when Handel’s “Messiah” was first performed in London, Britain’s king was present in the audience. When the performance got to the “Hallelujah Chorus,” with its words, For the Lord God omnipotent reigneth, the whole audience, including the king, stood to its feet, and remained standing through the entire chorus. From that time on, it became a custom to stand during that chorus whenever it is performed.
But the custom of the British monarch standing up changed over time. About 100 years later, when Queen Victoria (picture) had just ascended the throne, she went to hear “The Messiah.” Those in her court who knew protocol instructed her that she must not rise when others stood at the singing of the “Hallelujah Chorus.” So, as the singers were exclaiming, Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah! For the Lord our God omnipotent reigneth, Queen Victoria remained seated, but with tremendous difficulty.
Finally, they got to the chorus where they proclaim Christ as King of kings and Lord of lords. Queen Victoria could stay seated no longer. She rose and stood reverently with her head bowed before the Lord who alone is great.
Philippians 2:10-11 says, “That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.”
Have you bowed your knee, really bowed your heart to Jesus? Is He your Savior? No, Mary didn’t know what we know, yet she surrendered to Him. What about you? If you haven’t done that, please surrender to Him today.