The Birth of God Foretold

your name on high this morning to proclaim that there is so much evidence just in this room in our own lives and our own testimony that you are god and you are good and we just lift your name up and just thank you this morning amen amen you guys can go and have a seat we're going to go and dismiss our three to five-year-olds to their class three to five-year-olds y'all can go ahead and head out the back doors and for the rest of us we're going to be continuing in our luke series uh so we are in week three of uh a hundred weeks

or so of the book of luke over the next couple of years and so uh if you have your bibles go ahead and grab them luke chapter 1 verses 26 through 38 is what we're going to look at if you don't have a bible there should be a mangled hard hardback black one around you somewhere that we just found in the closets and so feel free to use those if you don't own a bible that's our uh that's our cheap gift to you as well uh but it's worth everything you know so it's great um but anyways luke 1 26 through 38 is where we're

going to be this morning and what we're going to be looking at is a simple town a simple couple a simple faith and a significant savior so if you take notes those are our four points that we're going to be looking at and within those points today you're going to be meeting mary one of the greatest women one of the most significant women in the history of the world and so before i sound to roman catholic we're going to pray and dive into this so father god is my greatest joy and and just honored to be able to preach your word this morning and it's

my request on behalf that you would send us the holy spirit as you sent the holy spirit to mary that as she learned of jesus that we would also learn of jesus as she responded in faith to the revelation of christ that we would also respond in faith to the revelation of jesus so god as we open your word this morning we ask for faith like hers and we ask for it in her son jesus's name amen all right so in the past as we kind of set this up you're there in luke 1 and we'll get to it in just a minute but in

the past you've heard me use a term before called proto-evangelion all right and so i'm gonna kind of uh this is a pop quiz how many of you uh remember me saying the term proto-evangelion at some point all right how many of you remember what it means is anybody that's not an elder in here first gospel all right awesome all right thank you first gospel all right so mary is a significant woman in history but her story actually begins with the first woman eve and so i'll begin in genesis 3 15 and you'll see the correlation here but the first woman that god made was

named eve god created adam and eve and he placed them in a garden and he gave them a value dignity worth he called them to cultivate the garden to steward the garden to have oversight over the garden and he gave them essentially just one rule don't eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil but other than that you can enjoy anything and everything that that was in creation like they had a good thing going but sadly our first parents disobeyed all right they sinned against god they ate of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and and rather than leaving

them in the punishment that actually came with that disobedience rather than leaving them in their death in the headed for hell god came to them in genesis 3 and he did something miraculous he pursued them as he pursues us and he spoke to them as he speaks to us and in genesis 3 15 we get what is called the proto-evangelion we get the first gospel that was ever preached and so god shows up and he preaches against satan the serpent the dragon who tempted adam and eve and god says this to the serpent and i will put enmity between you and the woman and between

your offspring and her offspring and he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heel and so what is the answer to human sin what is the answer to their their rebellion what's the answer to their folly and their separation from god well he tells them there is going to be a son that will come through the lineage of this woman eve who will one day be born and this son will ultimately crush the head of the serpent who deceived them but in so doing he will also bruise the heel of this son that will be born so from this point forward as history

just continues to play itself out the people of god are holding on to this prophecy they're holding on to this promise that hey what we did that was wrong what we broke god is ultimately going to fix it and solve it through a son that will eventually be born so they're just on the lookout for a son that will be born and then as you kind of fast forward through history proceeds forward there's a prophet of god that's raised up a man named isaiah and this is 700 years before the birth of jesus christ and isaiah prophesies this he says in isaiah 7 14 and

you've heard this if you've been around church especially around christmas time he says therefore the lord himself will give you a sign behold the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name emmanuel so he says you cannot you should not you you will not miss this sign the most significant birth that's ever going to happen this son that was promised you're not going to miss him coming because get this he's going to be born via a virgin all right that doesn't happen and that's never happened in the history of the world and so he says when when jesus shows up when

this messiah shows up when this chosen one shows up that i have long prophesied already and that you're now going to wait another 700 years for you won't miss him because it's going to be a miracle when it happens and honestly this he says you you can't miss it this son shall bear the name emmanuel which means god with us thank you this is this is how christmas disciples you okay like you you know that because we sing it every single year emmanuel god with us and what every false religion tries to do and what they're based on is really the lie in genesis 3.

the lie in genesis 3 to adam and eve is that they could actually become like god that they could become god that they could become part of the divine but instead what god is actually preaching and proclaiming to us is that god is willing to humble himself and become like us and to become one of us and to be able to send his son jesus to come to us and that's what we see as we come to luke 1 26 is what was prophesied in genesis 3 15 and what was prophesied in isaiah 7 14 is finally happening several thousand years has already gone on

from adam all the way to joseph and mary several or 700 years from isaiah to joseph and mary and we finally find ourselves at the arrival of this promised child who will finally once and for all crush satan and so let's dive into this as we look at it in the sixth month the angel gabriel was sent from god to a city of galilee named nazareth and so i want to begin with this simple town and and as we walk through the book of luke what we're going to do is we're going to dive into the details of these things because i believe there's truth

in the details and we don't want to just pass over it would be easy just to read this and be like gabriel was sent from god okay an angel came down sent from god to a region of galilee to a city called nazareth great all right let's move on let's continue to see but there's there's there's points and why luke who is a phenomenal storyteller would include these details as he is writing out this narrative in order for us to understand and so why include nazareth why even talk about that because the the reality here is that nazareth was nothing all right nazareth was nothing

and this is amazing to me because nazareth is only mentioned here in luke it's not mentioned in the old testament outside of scripture it's not mentioned in the apocrypha it's not mentioned in the talmud it's not mentioned in the ancient historian josephus's record because no one important came from or went to nazareth like no there was no reason to talk about nazareth because it was simply nothing but if you were to go to nazareth today you would get a false impression of what it actually is because nazareth today is is filled with several hundred thousand people all right it's it's uh 60 muslim 30 jewish

10 christian but in jesus's day it was filled of dozens of people all right maybe 50 maybe 100 at most a couple of hundred people i mean it's a it's a very small rural simple town it was between two cities and so it was the kind of town that people would just pass through but they wouldn't necessarily venture to and so if you've ever gone on like a long road trip and you're going from one destination to the other and you pit stop somewhere to grab gas real quick but it's just like one gas station and really nothing else like that's what nazareth is you

can stop fill up grab a hot dog from the gas station if if you're that kind of person um and and and you this is what nazareth was like there was nothing else there and and even doing some archaeological digs in the actual city of nazareth when they found old town nazareth the homes were only like 500 to 600 square feet and a portion of the home was even designated for livestock so it was like an attached barn if you will and so this is very small one well in the town very small not a lot of people not a lot of reason to go

there even nathaniel later says in john 1 46 can anything good come out of nazareth and it wasn't like an honest question it was a rhetorical question he's he's saying like can anything good come out of nazareth like there's nothing good there there's no reason to go there it's not a place that we would venture to nor really include in the story of of our savior of this this christ who's going to be born who we've been looking for and longing for for thousands of years at this point like why would we even consider nazareth and this is one of the things you need to

learn about our god you can't put him into a box and predict how he's going to work you just can't like if this was today we're expecting god to be born in like a rich suburb nice boutique town i'm kind of thinking like zionsville all right and zionsville is appropriate because mount zion if you know anything about scripture is the hill of jerusalem in which the city of david was built all right and so like if jesus is going to be born anywhere let's go to zionsville all right it's literally named after what you're going to rule okay and so that's kind of what we

think when we think of where he should be born but the reality is is he's born in comparable to nazareth newtown indiana how many people have heard of newtown indiana all right you've only if you raised your hand it's only because you visited old 55 distillery that's out there newtown indiana has a population of 256 people and the post office is also the gas station all right like it's that kind of town so you can like mail a letter and grab a hot dog at the same time and and and that's what this kind of place is it literally is only made up or it

keeps afloat because of corn fields and and the wonderful distillery that's out there um but god chooses to incorporate in his narrative of redemptive history people in places that we would not choose to incorporate he flips the script this is what we call kingdom economics all right how god does things that we would not choose to do all right he's always picking the least person he's always choosing the last person you know that joins the softball team or whatever it looks like the one that you would not think is the one that he chooses the apostle paul says it this way in first corinthians 1

26-29 for consider your calling brothers not many of you were wise according to worldly standards not many were powerful not many were of noble birth 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 that's what he's doing with nazareth that's why jesus wasn't born in rome all right he was not born like he and for that matter

rome was actually last to receive the gospel according to the book of acts because again god goes to the least of these a simple town nazareth and he says i'm going to do something miraculous in this place let's keep going as we move from a simple town to a simple couple gabriel appears to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was joseph of the house of david and the virgin's name was mary now here we meet mary and joseph historically speaking a lot has been said about them all right we're we're reminded of them literally every christmas season when you dust off the boxes

and you pull out the nativity scene and you set it up in your house like you you you are seeing mary and joseph every year around this this nativity scene and so in some ways we feel like we know them but do we really know them or have we just been decided based on christmas culture and who mary and joseph actually are and and we have like several nativity scenes that get put out each year we have a kids version of one we lost joseph um not exactly sure where he is which i think is biblical because after jesus goes to the temple when he's

12 years old we don't hear anything else about joseph in scripture all right he just gets lost and no idea what happens to joseph all right so i've replaced him with this like john deere tractor driving farmer or whatever which i still think is appropriate um but that's just beside the point that's free so who are these two people who are mary who are joseph i'll start with joseph um because again god just chooses insignificant people joseph was a young man most theologians believe that he was probably in his teenage years because in that day they married literally between the ages of 12 to 16.

all right it's it's mind-blowing at the age in which they would engage or get betrothed and be married and he was also poor and a carpenter he lived in nazareth and he was from the kingly line of david now if you're thinking well if he's from the lineage of david why is he poor where'd the money go well if you were to trace the lineage back in matthew's gospel you're going to see that from david to joseph is 28 generations a lot happens in 28 generations and a lot that happened in those 28 generations did not go well for them okay did not go well

for them so there's nothing left to show for where they came from solomon now one of the things that i love about solomon being david's son one of the things i love about this and incorporating this in the lineage is you get the pendulum swing of what god is willing to use in his narrative of redemptive history you get the wealthiest man who has ever lived on this history in the face of the earth king solomon all right like when they talk about the treasure that he had and this is the reason why the books like the book of ecclesiastes was written was because he's

looking at hey i've had everything that you could possibly possess when it comes to materials riches and wealth and it didn't mean anything and then at the same time in the lineage you can go all the way down to a poor man like joseph who has nothing to show for his life other than i can build some things as a carpenter but i'm from a poor town poor family nothing to show for it but i'm excited i want to get married and i'm going to live a life and i'm going to build a life for myself it just shows you that god is woven into

the narrative of redemptive history anybody and everybody who's willing to trust him and believe in him and so where you come from or what you have does not dictate whether or not god chooses you but just belief and trust in him and willing to surrender your life to him he is able to then use you and work you into his narrative history and so this is what we know of joseph a lot has occurred again young guy probably barely you know having a driver's license for the donkeys in the area meets mary probably at a young age there's there's not a lot of options all

right if it's a town of barely a couple hundred people uh he's probably known her from a very young age in some ways joseph and mary kind of remind me of john and miranda which i can mention them because they're not here today they were supposed to be doing baby dedication but their oldest marshall got sick but i'm pretty sure and someone can correct me i think they've been dating since they were like in fourth grade like do i remember remember that correctly i don't think they know a time that they've not been together and like that kind of reminds me of joseph and mary

when it comes to like their type of town and the type of culture where you just like grow up in grade school with one another and like you got three options and like i'm going with this option all right like that's that's kind of where they're at uh but anyways that's joseph and that's honestly that's all we know about joseph all right there's nothing else that we know about joseph as for mary i want you to imagine this because of luke's investigative research like we can infer that luke actually probably sat down with mary that as she's an older age at this point and he's

going on this investigative research he probably if she was still residing in nazareth went back to nazareth sat down with her for hours or a couple of days and is asking her questions like hey were you really a virgin like i've heard that that's true were you really a virgin and like can i corroborate that like did you have doctors did you have other friends and family like can i ask them questions and as he's putting together all this research in order to write the books of luke and the books of in the book of acts as he's writing these things this is what he

is responding and this is what he's recording out of all of his research and he sits down and he begins with this one thing we learned that she was betrothed we learned that she was betrothed and we hear that word and it doesn't make a lot of sense to us because we do marriage differently in our culture all right betrothal was a legal pledge to be married it's weightier than just an engagement all right it's weightier than that it was actually a legal act where you had to get certification in order to get engaged in order to be betrothed it wasn't just like going to

the courthouse and getting it but it was also having the approval of your family and so the two families would come together and this is where we kind of get the idea of courtship the two families would come together with legal action as well representatives and they would say as they are observing the couple and as they are seeing that they are falling in love they would say we think this is a good thing we think this is god's idea we think that this is god's blessing and so we are going to put our stamp of approval on this and we're going to say yes

we believe that these two should engage and enter in into a betrothal in order for them to then spend the next year planning for the actual official wedding ceremony and so what they would do at that point they would get together and they would have actually a betrothal ceremony where they would bring in a priest or a rabbi there would be scripture reading there would be praying there would be singing there would be a a little ceremony and they would actually enter into with the whole family putting an approval on it a betrothal and it was act like i said this was legally binding all

right to actually break a betrothal would you need to get a certificate of divorce in order to do that we know that because when you look at the same parallel in matthew when joseph finds out that she's pregnant he's like um that that usually doesn't happen without something happening and so he's kind of confused a bit and he's like i i think i need to divorce her at this point and so he's willing to actually break off the betrothal the engagement in order to to not enter into this and then obviously an angel stops him in the place and kind of fills him in on

hey this is what's actually going on but this is weightier it's deeper than what we are used to and so she's she's excited she's planning her wedding i know that there's ladies in our church who are planning our weddings planning their weddings not our weddings planning their weddings i know that they're they're ladies in our church who just came out of wedding season who just got married as well and it is an exciting time but i think there's some things that we need to look at in this all right um that like that's kind of what mary's thinking about oh yeah i'm getting ahead of

myself so i'm going to stop there i'll come back to that but what they would do is they would not ultimately they would do it in this way all right our culture says when you get engaged you move in together you experience one another and then eventually you kind of just sign the sign the document you're good to go this culture is you are to in betrothal remain separate you don't live together you don't sleep together you don't engage in intimacy and you wait for that official day and that official day comes in the wedding day now when it comes to mary and i'll have

more on that here in a minute but when it comes to mary i want to also take some moments and pause as we walk through this to be able to hit on some kind of cultural moments that we have and we'll be doing this as we kind of walk through luke as well where we'll just be preaching the text but as the text also is very applicable to just current topics that are going on in our world or current uh denominations or theologies that are going on we'll pause and we'll just address those things in the moment as well when it comes to mary the

catholics have sort of cornered the market on mary right like they they mary is sort of their specialty if you will um all the pictures i've seen of mary aren't very accurate and so i'm going to show you one as as an example here if we can pull it up here all right so most of our pictures of mary do come from just historical catholic art all right historical catholic art and and what they do is they've adorned her in a way that she's not actually adorned all right like mary does not wear a crown of gold all right mary is not welding a a

golden scepter as well um jesus doesn't usually look like that either you know dressed in a white gown as a baby as well she doesn't have angels worshiping her around her she's not sitting on a throne i mean we got to remember like mary is from nazareth all right she's living in nazareth she's she's not wealthy she's not prominent she's not in her 30s all right like it's it's you got to think like she's women were allowed to be married or betrothed at 12 and married at 13. and so we need to think i'm sorry lynnea we need to think like lynnea okay like that's

what mary is more kind of in that age range when it comes to what she actually looks like you also need to think again she's poor she's poverished she's probably wearing peasant girl dress um she's probably dirty wearing dirty sandals because she's walking back and forth to the one well that's in nazareth to get water to bring back to their 500 square foot home like we can't picture her like this and at the same time even in heaven we should not picture her like this the reason why is because if we were in heaven and we were to come to mary in this way she

would tell us don't do that don't do that because that's not what i am and that's not what i represent now how did we get to this place and i think luke helps us with this here how did we get to this place look at verse 28 and he came to her and he said greetings o 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 now it says she was greatly troubled which is not a shock all right first because if gabriel likely appeared as a man and the reason why we believe he likely appeared as a man is because that's also the way that he appeared to daniel in one of his dreams so that would have been startling because men would not customarily approach an engaged woman in private all right like that's just not the way that they would do it in this custom additionally we hear that she has found favor with god all right gabriel shows

up and gives this great announcement god has favored you he's he's elected you he's chosen you he's he's looked over the earth and he's favored you mary do you remember hearing in the synagogue that a virgin would give birth to a child that's you mary like you're the one that god has chosen like he's gone thousands of years at this point 700 years since the last announcement and you're going to be the one that he favors in this moment now do you know what the word favor literally means like in its original text it means grace grace undeserved grace unmerited grace she didn't do anything

for god to look upon her and say uh you you have perfectly memorized whatever scriptures you have access to because if you realize they they didn't have what we have here all right they did not have a full 66 book canon all right luke is still doing investigative research and hasn't even written the book of luke when he's talking to her she's got bits and pieces of the new testament that's been written up to a certain point she has bits and pieces of the old testament fragments if their family was lucky to have any types of copies but likely what they would do the only

time they would ever hear is when they went to the synagogue and had a priest that would actually just preach and declare the word of god or read the word of god from the old testament canon and so she's basing it all off of of memory of just remembering what's been written like there's nothing in her or in her her lifestyle that would have allowed her to merit herself to earn god's favor nothing and so our first question is why then would god favor her and the question or the answer is simple because he's good because he's good and because he chose her because he

simply chose her god could have looked down and said i'll pick a wealthy young woman or i'll pick an affluent successful significant woman or i'll pick a beautiful town i'll i'll pick a palace so that the second member of the trinity the son of god could grow up in influence and wealth and prominence and significance and have the best education and tour and travel and instead he said mary i choose you like that's amazing to me and this is why we hate man-made religion religion is all about what you do to earn god's favor and christianity is all about god favoring you by grace taking

nobody from nowhere and giving them love and that's what he does that's why we can't stop singing about how wonderful this god is and that he tells her you're going to give birth to a son you need to name him jesus which means god saves me from my sins her son will be her savior more on mary in a minute but let's look at her response a simple faith her response is very important because when we looked last week at zechariah the the priest's response his his wasn't the best and god muted him for it all right like god silenced him for it his response

was more like how can this be i'm an old man my wife is old we're both old i don't know how this works i i don't know if you know this but old people that are barren they don't have babies like he just kept talking too much and god muted him god rebuked his disbelief of what gabriel came and told him and he rebuked him for it mary's question is different than zechariah's question and and arguing kind of complaints that he had with gabriel in that moment here was mary's response and mary said to the angel how will this be this is verse 34 i

know i'm skipping a few verses i'll get to that mary said in 34 how will this be since i am a virgin so a little work here she doesn't have unbelief she has questions some of you are here you say i believe in jesus he's my god he died for my sins he rose from my salvation but i do have some questions and i've met with many people today who have asked if i believe in jesus but i still have questions am i still a believer am i still am i am i a christian i say absolutely yes absolutely like when when i became a

believer in jesus which was around the age of 14 um i i knew like the bullet points all right jesus was good jesus was sinless jesus came to die for me and and he did that because i was a sinner and i needed forgiveness in order to be back in a relationship with god and this is this is what god did and and so by believing that i became a christian but i had tons of questions but i didn't know what questions to ask i would actually say today that i have more questions than i had when i became a believer at the age of

14 because as i continue to walk through the narrative and i walk through the story i'm like how can a donkey in the old testament speak how does that work how can water just come out of rocks like how can god take my sin and supernaturally place it on his son jesus and then take jesus righteousness and supernaturally place it on me like how does that exchange work i've got questions i believe it to be true but i still have questions on logistics and god's okay with that he's okay with me having questions on logistics and the reason why i think he has he's okay

with our logistics is because that's exactly how the angel answers mary he provides her with some logistics because mary's asking this question um i don't know if you know this or not but virgins don't have babies so how's this going to work like she believes that god is going to give her jesus to raise and she asks the question how how's that going to work and the angel answered her this way 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 has been called barren for nothing i mean nothing will be impossible with god i mean that's all he had to say when she said how will this be because i'm a virgin all he had to say was nothing's impossible with god but he does give her more than that he said the holy spirit is going to be the active agent in this what he's going to do just like supernaturally god takes our sins away and gives us righteousness he says supernaturally i'm going to give you a

baby in your womb that's just going to happen do i have the power to do that yes i'm god all right i spoke and oceans formed i spoke in mountains sprouted up i spoke and and literally humans molded out of dirt and came into being i spoke and a ribbed was removed and i made a woman out of a rib when i speak things happen and all of that was out of nothing if i can create everything from nothing just the word that comes out of my mouth i think i can place a baby and a womb that has not had physical intimacy before that's

exactly what god is saying here and that's exactly how he's answering it it kind of blows my mind at some times when people are like man i believe i believe in god i believe that he created i believe that he did all these things i i'm just kind of struggling with the virgin birth i'm like why like if he can part a red sea and an entire like group of people an entire nation could just walk through it on dry land like if he can just tell the storms to stop and they listen i think he can put a baby in a womb without there

being physical intercourse nothing will be impossible with god god can do whatever he wants and honestly like that's why we're able to be joyful to be happy to be hopeful it's why we're able to sing and pray because our god is the god of the impossible god could take nobodies from nowhere and raise up churches like that's what he does nothing is impossible with him and that's where we put all of our hope that's that should be the foundation of every prayer that we pray is god i can't do this i can't figure this out i don't understand the logistics but i believe you are

capable i believe that you can do anything that we consider impossible and that's the foundation of my prayer i believe you and i know that you're powerful and that you can accomplish this and so what was mary's response to his answer she says this in verse 38 behold i am the servant of the lord let it be to me according to your word and the angel departed from her here's this simple woman from a simple town and she has a simple faith she has a simple faith but it's a sincere and simple faith she knows very little she doesn't again she doesn't have the new

testament canon she has bits and pieces of scripture that she treasures in her heart but here's what she has she has faith she believes what god says she believes what god says so many of us have far more information than her and far less faith in it it's just true some of you think i need to learn a lot more and maybe you do but first things first do you believe what you've already been taught do you believe what you already know mary knows very little but she trusts it all it's amazing that's why i believe martin luther said rightly that perhaps the greatest miracle

is faith the greatest miracle is faith she actually trusts god she actually takes him at his word she responds and says i'm the lord's servant some of your translations will say handmaiden that's the lowest servant like that's what she's considering herself a bond servant she says whatever he wants that's what i want i will serve as he calls guys this is amazing some of us have a life charted out for ourselves and we want god to bless it and make it happen like we've planned it out and then we kind of hand it over and we say god will you sign this will you make

this happen and if god should rewrite our script we're not very happy about it right like we've planned it out and if it doesn't go that way we're not happy now she has a script for her life she's going to marry joseph they're going to have a great wedding dress is going to fit they're gonna consummate our marriage and then they're going to have babies and everyone's gonna think that they're just good people in this small town of nazareth they're gonna build a life for themselves like that's her plan and the angel shows up and says new script and mary says well whatever the lord

wants he gets to write the script for my life she just responds with simple faith i love him i trust him i'm his servant i think it's amazing and so we read that and we may culturally miss what she's willing to give up because again we have our beautiful nativity scene of what we view them but i need you to see this i need you to see what god is is doing for her that might have some cultural consequences that wouldn't necessarily be what we would write for our script shows that she does not idolize marriage she does not idolize her identity she does not

idolize comfort and security she's willing to open her hands and forego all of that and let it be taken from her like there was a provision in the law that actually and i said i mentioned this earlier that he could divorce her it says in matthew's gospel that he was going to until literally the angel showed up and told him not to so what she's saying when she says lord i'm your servant she's saying god if if i don't get to marry joseph i'm okay with that i'm okay with that how many of you if god showed up and said no you need to let

that go now if you're married don't say i would be okay with that all right you already said yes but that's what she's saying i'm totally fine with that that was mary's response there was also a provision in the law to make an example of her for all the other young women because here's the reality if if no one else in nazareth at this moment is believing that she's like when they realize and understand that she's pregnant the majority of them are going to be looking at this and saying yeah we're not believing your story we're not believing your story so there was actually a

provision in the law to make an example of her for all the other young men they would strip her naked they would redress her in rags they would abuse her verbally and physically they would tie her up in the town center they would call her scandalous and derogatory names and they would leave her there for a good long while so that all the other women would get the idea that being a fornicator and an adulteress is unacceptable and she's saying lord i'm willing to be your servant i'm okay with that i'll let go of joseph and my reputation so she's willing to let go of

her comfort her security her identity her reputation her marriage and she simply has faith she trusts that god is good and that he's going to be good to her to her i'm the servant of the lord and what happens from this point forward is that history and the theologians and traditions and the agendas kind of set in there some make way too much of mary and some make way too little of mary as i i know i'm going to pick on the catholics here for this so if you're there i'm sorry but i think i think it's good to draw in on this because again

if you get it wrong scripture is clear we need to be corrected and i'm not just saying that like i love i love catholics i'm not saying that i hate catholics but what i am saying is that if you get it wrong it needs to be corrected are there things that we get wrong that need to be corrected 100 percent and i think that's why we again are we refer to ourselves as reformed and what i mean by that is that we're always trying to get back to what the bible is actually teaching not what we think and have created based on culture or our

own opinions our own ideas what christianity should be we're not trying to reinvent it we're trying to get back to what it was we're trying to reform back to what it was we don't want to add to scripture and what the roman catholics have done and what orthodox christianity has done is they've added too much to marry and i think it's i think it's good for us to know so that as we have these conversations with our catholic friends we're able to pull this out and be able to have conversation they tend to make too much of mary they here for example um they will

say that not only was mary able to give birth to jesus as a virgin but her mother was also a virgin too that's a part of their doctrine not true there's no evidence for that they say as jesus was sinless mary was also sinless too which is not true you'll see that actually coming up in one of our chapters she goes to the temple to offer a sacrifice which is what sinners do to forgive their sins all right so she's a sinner going to offer a sacrifice to forgive her sins in addition to that some would say as well that she was ever virgin that

she never had any intimacy with joseph which just isn't true the author of the book of james the author of the book of jude would have issues with that because they're brothers of jesus mary's their mother they might try to figure out mom dad if you're ever virgin how did we get here as well the pope has said in recent years that she was a co-mediatrix a co-rib redemptor that she is our co-mediator or co-redeemer along with jesus it's just not true at all the bible says there's one mediator between us and god it's the man her son christ jesus mary doesn't connect us to

god jesus does that's why we see mary in the early church worshiping her son as god in the opening chapters of acts additionally she's not co-redeemer it's not that we will stand before god and say thank you for saving me through jesus and mary that's not how it's going to work if you say that mary will be again shaking her head don't do that don't pray to me don't worship me don't venerate me this is actually a prayer verbatim from roman catholic doctrine to pray to mary it says this hail mary full of grace the lord is with thee blessed art thou among women and

blessed is the fruit of thy womb jesus holy mary mother of god pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death amen now you might hear that and you might sound like oh that sounds sweet but it's an unacceptable and it's a dead prayer because it prays that mary is the dispenser of grace not the recipient of grace she is not the dispenser of grace her son jesus is so they would make way too much of mary adding to the scriptures putting in superstition and folklore that doesn't belong there mary is not our deliverer she delivered our deliverer that's it she's a

servant of the lord and then others will overreact to that and they'll make way too much or way too little of mary some protestants don't even really speak of marriage some churches hardly ever mention her name other than again just she birthed jesus and that's it let's move along just sort of kind of skip over her there was one noteworthy young pastor in this country who wrote a book basically saying that maybe the virgin conception and the birth were taken from pagan mythology just to kind of make the story fluffed up a little bit more maybe jesus mother was actually a lying adulteress and if

so what's the big loss well if the bible lies about jesus and it lies about mary's virginity and that she raised a boy who says he's god that does affect the story considerably considerably so we shouldn't belittle mary and her testimony so we don't make too much of mary we don't want to dishonor her we want to believe what the scriptures say about her and what do they say and they say that she loved the lord she was not a perfect woman but she was a woman of faith a woman of faith and in the most amazing moment of her humble life she was willing

to let go of her reputation her marriage her comfort and security so that she could just simply serve the lord so that she could lovingly serve jesus let me say this to you mary should not be an object of our faith but she should be an example of faith for us that's what she should be she should be an example of faith for us to serve jesus like she did to have the same kind of heartfelt devotion as she had an affection for jesus as she did not the object of our faith but a wonderful example of faith in jesus for jesus is our significant

savior last point verses 31 32-33 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 now i don't want you to just think that i'm going to skim over those three massive verses i'm actually going to cover them next week when we talk about john the baptist and jesus having kind of

a play date when mary comes to to meet with elizabeth as they play date they're both still in womb so they're not really playing together um but there is a reaction that happens when they come together where john the baptist leaps for joy in elizabeth's womb as jesus comes in as he's in mary's womb and i'm going to preach on these three verses as they are revealing the reason why john the baptist is leaping in the womb and so she says there in verse 31 and this is where i'm actually going to kind of lead us into communion or as luke says in 31 behold

you will conceive in your womb and bear a son and you shall call his name jesus where i want to lead us in communion is looking at just that name that name jesus names matter names have meaning when having a baby one of the biggest decisions you have to make is is naming them because it's it's a permanent thing you don't get to wait and say well he sort of acts like a chad so let's name them chad like you don't get to wait and figure that out you don't get to say like well they're like a karen so just name them karen if your

name's karen i'm sorry um but oftentimes you make the decisions sight unseen like when they're still in the womb and you give them names that you either like or they have meaning behind them for example my oldest son is ezra james gibbs if you were to read his name it's like we thought through this all right so it's old testament new testament and then obviously my last name and so it's ezra means with help all right with god's help james being a book where the theme is faith producing works and so the idea of reading his name is with god's help faith produces works like

that's what we are praying for his life as he is continuing to grow up now if you add the meaning of uh my last name gibbs it is uh with god's help faith produces work for this bright hostage that is actually what gibbs means is a bright hostage so it's interesting nonetheless but names matter and so mary naming him jesus has a meaning behind it and it's perfect because he just walked in not jesus but the bride hostage jesus means jehovah is salvation jehovah is salvation what she's saying when they're asking mary what are we going to call them and actually typically it's the man

who names but the a the angel gabriel says this is what you're going to call them you're going to you're going to name them jesus and so when joseph may have thrown out some names you know at that time and mary said no it's going to be this one because that's what god told us to name him it has a meaning the child will save you from your sins this child that you're about to deliver is going to deliver you as the song goes mary did you know that your baby boy will someday walk on waters mary did you know that the sun you'll soon

deliver will soon deliver you when you give birth to him a sign of life he's going to go on to die for you in order to actually grant you life to actually grant you life he'll do it as genesis 3 15 process prophesied he's going to crush satan's head but in order to crush satan's head his his heel is going to be crushed as well he he's going to go through a bruising he's going to go through a torture he's going to go through a death himself that's going to be temporary he's going to crush his body he's going to shed his blood so that

we would not experience the crushing of our bodies in the shedding of our blood for eternity but rather that we would be forgiven of our sins and brought back into relationship with god the father this son is here this is this is the the birth announcement of god coming as a man to ultimately live a perfect life that we could not live earning for us the righteousness so that we don't have to earn it ourselves and then he's going to go to the cross and he's going to crush his body he's going to shed his blood he's going to be beaten he's going to be

tortured he's going to wear a crown of thorns that presses into his skull he's going to bleed he is going to experience the full weight of god's wrath poured out onto him the hatred of god towards our sin every poor decision that we make every evil thought that we have every deceitful lie that we speak all of those things are going to be placed on this beautiful child jesus this name given to him sets the trajectory for his life he's not just going to to excel at all the sports which he probably could have he's jesus he does everything perfectly but he's going to perfectly

live for us in order to then go and perfectly die for us so that he can then raise three days later from the grave and raise us out of our sin raise us out of our death raise us out of our eternal punishment that is due that is due and rightfully do we deserve it we deserve it but jesus comes into the scene and he says no no not today satan not today i want you to go ahead and stand as you stand if you don't have the elements leo you can go back to the table and grab them and then i want you to

come back and we're actually kind of going to do a little little exercise with this this time we do communion every week but i want you to think a little bit more on it this time so you grab your communion you come back to your table take your table it is the proverbial table i want you to think i know i had you stand i'm gonna actually have you sit again all right we're going catholic all right so stand sit stand sit i want you to go ahead and and uh take the wafer out and have the wafer in one hand and i want you

to have the juice in the other hand isaiah 7 14 when he prophesied that this son would be born from this virgin later on in isaiah 53 he also continues to prophesy about this child that this child would grow up to be the suffering servant and that this child the suffering servant would take all of our iniquities and would place them on himself and he would be crushed for our iniquities he would be bruised for us and he would be ultimately led to the slaughter to the breaking of his body in the shedding of his blood and so what i want you to do right

now because i know like it we are a church that believes once saved always save so when you got saved whenever it was that's god's grace to you that's god's favor to you god came down and redeemed you and saved you and that's once for all your past sins are forgiven your present sins are forgiven your future sins are forgiven but can we also still understand the fact that when we continue to sin when we continue to mess up whether you messed up yesterday whether you had an argument with your spouse or you didn't do what you were supposed to or whether you did something

at work that you weren't supposed to whether you there was someone who um cut you off and you let a word fly or whatever it was on the on the interstate whatever it was this week there were moments and you can think of them you can bring them into mind right now there were moments where you sinned and you felt bad about it you felt that guilt you felt that shame you felt that grief in the moment and it might be if you've got children it might be you the way that you reacted towards them when they were being children and you're like i should

not have handled it that way like you feel the weight of sin in your hands right now are representing exactly what jesus did in order to remove that from your heart from your mind from your conscience from your life for past present future we do this every week because it is reminding us that the guilt that we feel when we sin is gone and it's removed and that jesus says that god has adopted us and brought us into the family and that he loves us and that he delights in us and so what i want you to do right now is i want you to

imagine whatever those sins are this week that you committed maybe you're you're pulling them to mind right now it's those things that kind of haunt you on a daily basis as you look at that wafer that's in your hand i want you to just take this mental note and just place them on the wafer the lie that i did or the argument that i had or the reaction that i had towards my kids or or the the way i treated a certain person or maybe it was a lustful thought that i had or maybe it was a deceitful lie that i gave or whatever it

is i want you to place it on that wafer in this moment and i want you to think jesus took this sin and he crushed himself on the cross in order to remove it from me to take it from me and as he's taking it from me what he also does is he has to pay a price in order for god to to literally purchase it from you and to remove it from you and to forgive you forever and so what he also does is he then pours out his blood as payment for that sin that's being crushed he pours out his blood as payment

so i want you to think about the juice that is in your hand right now this is god paying for your sin in full past present and future so i want you to imagine that i want you to jesus is bringing the money of his blood to the temple to the to god as the high priest and he's bringing it to him he's saying i am paying in full for their sins here it is and he pours out his blood and we're remembering that in the moment the sins are being crushed and the payment is being paid and we get to receive it we get

to receive it as a gift as a gift think about that right now meditate on that right now whatever those sins are this week think about them in your hands for i received from the lord but i also delivered to you that the lord jesus on the night when he was betrayed he took bread and when he had given thanks he broke it and he said this is my body which is for you do this in remembrance of me take that wafer right now with the sins that are on it that are being crushed on jesus at the cross and receive it partake right now

in the same way also he took the cup after supper saying this cup is the new covenant in my blood do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me for as often as you eat this bread and you drink the cup you proclaim the lord's death until he comes receive the payment right now of his blood being shed for you for all of your sins partake father we thank you so much for your goodness to us we thank you so much for your favor for your grace that has come through your son jesus christ we thank you that you have woven this

throughout our entire history that you've prophesied this from the very beginning that there would be a son born through a miraculous event and that his name would be jesus and that he would come to take away our sins freeing us from that bondage and that slavery freeing us to be able to worship you in your goodness and in your character and in your pursuit of us we thank you jesus it's in your name we pray amen let's stand and let's thank him in worship as we continue on [Music]