Luke 1:26–45

0:00 Everybody loves a good rags-to-riches story. Little orphan Annie getting adopted by a billionaire and going from the orphaned life of poverty into a life of unimaginable riches. Everybody loves that kind of story. The poor man who just hits it lucky on the lotto and wins $150 million or whatever it is and goes all of a sudden from life in poverty to life among the most unimaginable wealth. Our story today is not so much a story of rags to riches as much as it is a story of riches to rags.

0:37 That's what we're going to be talking about today as we continue our series through the book of Luke. Let me invite you to take a Bible, if you've got one, and turn over to the Gospel according to Luke chapter 1. If you want to use one of these red pew Bibles in front of you, that's great. You can find those in the pews in front of you, maybe under your seat if you're in the chairs that are chairs instead of pews. And we're going to be, the entire time today, as we talk, in the first chapter of Luke, we're going to be looking at about a third of that chapter. We're actually continuing this morning a study of the book of Luke that we've been in for exactly one week now.

1:10 I was not preaching last week, and so the first week of this series was two weeks ago, where we looked at the beginning of Luke chapter 1. In that chapter, if you remember, at the beginning of that chapter, Luke declares to his friend Theophilus that he's undertaken this massive project to write a carefully researched account of Jesus' life. He's not interested in hype. He's not interested in fluff. His aim for this guy, Theophilus, whoever Theophilus was, is to write it like it was. And he did that, apparently, by interviewing those principal players that lived their lives in and around the events of Jesus' life.

1:47 Luke starts his story, as we saw a couple of weeks ago, with an announcement that happened some months before Jesus' birth, where an angel told a priest named Zechariah that he and his barren wife Elizabeth were going to have a son, who would turn out to be John the Baptist, the last of the Old Testament prophets, who would finally get to say not just that the Messiah is coming, the Messiah is coming, but rather, all of a sudden, the Messiah is now here. The announcement of that baby's birth, John the Baptist's birth, Zechariah and Elizabeth, was a huge event. And if you go back and read the first part of Luke chapter 1, you can see that it was a huge event. It happened in the Holy of Holies of the temple in the capital city of Jerusalem. It happened during one of the highest holy moments of temple worship, probably the evening prayers. And it told in all of this amazing language of the fulfillment of all these different Old Testament prophecies but for all that for the fact that it happened in the Holy of Holies in the capital city at the high moment of prayer John the Baptist wasn't the

2:54 main point he was just the forerunner of the one who was the main point as he would say later I'm not worthy to untie the sandals of this guy who comes after me and so when we get the announcement of John the Baptist's birth, we're actually expecting a much bigger announcement to come. And that's where we pick up the story this morning. We're going to be looking today at verses 26 to 45 of Luke chapter 1. So the sort of middle third or so of that particular chapter.

3:25 So look with me at Luke chapter 1 verse 26. If you're using one of the pew Bibles, you can find it on page 855, right at the beginning of the gospel according to Luke. And here's what Luke writes, in the sixth month, that would be of Elizabeth's pregnancy with John the Baptist. So in the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, 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 and will be called the son of the most high and the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever and of his kingdom there will be no end and Mary said to the angel how will this be since I am a virgin and the angel

4:27 answered her, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be called Holy, the Son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren, for nothing will be impossible with God. And Mary said, Behold, I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word. And the angel departed from her. In those days, Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah.

5:00 And she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. And she exclaimed with a loud cry, Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And 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 leaped for joy. And blessed is she, who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.

5:31 Now, I think in the main, there's nothing particularly difficult about this text except believing that it happened. I think that's difficult. And I think most people, if they were to run up against a story like this with no context and with sort of, you know, no preparation, it would be really, really hard to get your mind around the fact of what's being said to have happened here. The natural human inclination is to dismiss it as a kind of fairy tale or legend. But it's worth talking about again that Luke does not see this as a fairy tale or a legend.

6:03 He intends very much to be writing history. He said that much in the first four verses of the entire book. And he starts this story here, you know, verse 26, not with something like once upon a time, but in the sixth month of the actually real pregnancy of this actually real woman who lived in the days of Herod, king of Judea. He doesn't intend to be writing a legend or a fairy tale or a fable. This is history. It really happens, and that's important.

6:35 But once you embrace that, once you kind of get through the door of realizing, okay, Luke intends this to be real. He intends for me to think that this actually happens. Well, then you're kind of free to focus not on the question of did it happen, but free to focus on, okay, if it did happen, then there is a sheer magnitude to what's going on here, to what's happening in this story. I want to try to show you the magnitude of that and some of its ironies and backs and forths and all the rest of it. I want to unfold it all by looking at two threads that run through this story.

7:07 So we're not going to break it up like we normally would. We're just going to kind of look at the whole thing all at once and trace a couple of threads that show up throughout the story. First, the announcement of who this child is. So the fact that Mary is going to have a baby and who this child is, his identity and his role in God's plan of redemption history. And then second, we're going to look at the response of Mary herself to the announcement. So two points to the sermon. Number one, the birth of the king. And number two, the belief of a girl. The birth of the king and the belief of a girl.

7:40 That's what we're going to be looking at this morning. So let's dive into it. Number one, the birth of the king. So we've already touched on it for a second, but after the announcement of John the Baptist happening as it did, where it did, under the circumstances in which it did, you are, by the beginning of verse 26, expecting an incredible announcement of the coming of the king. And if you've never heard the story before, you're supposed to be sort of on the edge of your seat wondering how that announcement is going to happen and when and where and under what circumstances.

8:11 I mean, if the forerunner, if the prophet, if the one who's pointing to the king gets all this fanfare, holy of holies in the temple, in the capital, then you're expecting the announcement of the king himself to be spectacular. I mean, where's that going to be? Is it going to be in the palace? Is it going to be in the temple again on top of a mountain? Is there going to be thunder, lightning, flashes of fire, an earthquake maybe? What's going to happen? Well, as you start reading verse 26, it turns out none of that.

8:44 In fact, what happens actually seems so quaint and normal and sort of just sort of standing there that it seems to be almost funny. I mean, look at what happens in 26 when you're prepared for thunder and lightning and earthquakes. All you get in 26 is in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David and the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you.

9:15 So where does it happen? It happens in this town Nazareth of Galilee, way up in the northern reaches of the Israelite territory. There's nothing majestic here. There's no temple. There's no holy of holies. There's no priest. There's no royalty. Nothing like that. Mary's just a normal girl, and she's about to marry a normal boy who is training to be a carpenter in this no-account town. of Nazareth. And the whole thing, 26 through 28 or so, other than the angel, of course, you only get sort of one hint that there is anything great at all about Joseph or Mary. And it's that little phrase in 27 that says that Joseph was of the house of David. In other words, he's descended from the great King David, the golden age leader, the ruler of Israel who united all of the different tribes of Israel into one kingdom and took them off into a golden age. Joseph is descended from that God, which is just amazing, right? I mean, if you're descended from the great king, you're

10:19 probably living in a palace. There's probably family wealth going on. I mean, this is incredible that Joseph is descended from David. Well, I don't think it's all that amazing. I mean, I don't know if you knew it, but there is some non-zero chance that I myself am descended from the kings of England. In fact, I have an ancestral castle in England, in the province of Devon, that my family and I went and found last summer when we were in the UK during sabbatical. It's a cool castle. I mean, it's, you know, exactly what you would think of with a castle. There's no moat, but there's definitely sort of, you know, the portcullis that comes down, and the cages, and the turrets, and all the rest of it. The central part of the castle was actually built in the 10th century, so 900s A.D., and it has been occupied by the Gilbert family for like 1,100 years now. My family from that castle actually fought in the Wars of the Roses. The reason I'm not the king right now is because

11:20 we got beat by the Tudors, but we did fight, and so when my family and I went to the UK, we just decided to make it a kind of thing, like we're going to go out into Devon, and we're going to find this old castle it's called Castle Compton where Gilberts still in fact live and my plan was to walk up to the portcullis and just be like I have returned I didn't do that but I did introduce myself and my my family as uh Gilberts who were you know 16th descendants of blah blah blah whatever whatever and and there was one gardener from she was a volunteer she wasn't even employed by the by the castle but she was a volunteer gardener from the local gardening club and she was planting some kind of flowers in the in the landscaping of the castle and and she treated us like royalty it was like oh it's Gilberts have returned home to their native land and she she said oh I really wish that you could meet the family who still lives here they're going to be your such and such cousins blah blah blah and I wish we could take you to them but they're on holiday at the beach over you

12:23 know wherever they were so she she treated us like royalty sadly the guy who was in charge of taking money for the tickets to see the castle couldn't have cared less and he charged us the entire 15 pounds ahead to get in to my own castle it's humiliating so is it a big deal that joseph was descended from kings well kind of the same question is it a big deal that there's a non-zero chance that i am descended from kings not really because there's no throne that's available to me and there was no throne that was available to joseph i mean there used to be right and david was the great king who sat on the throne and then his son solomon came along. And then you get all the kings of Israel through all the centuries. There used to be a throne. But for 600 years, the Davidic throne had been empty because the empire of Babylon put an end to it. It's a fascinating point to me that Joseph was descended from kings and yet didn't

13:27 have a throne. I mean, if you think about it, it turns out that it was not impossible for the Israelites to figure out who was the rightful king. Like if there could have been a rebellion against the Romans and they could have set up a throne in Jerusalem and re-established the Davidic throne. It wasn't impossible for them to figure out who would have been the one to sit on that throne. Matthew figured it out. Luke figured it out. And you know who the rightful king was? You know who the heir to the throne of David was? The rightful lord and ruler of Israel? Joseph. Joseph was the rightful king of Israel. But nobody cared.

14:06 Nobody cared. It's not even clear that they took the time to figure it out until Matthew and Luke did it. So the rightful king of Israel was just a carpenter in Nazareth because there is no throne. And yet now the angel comes and says this. Look at verses 30, 31, 32, 33. Look with me. The angel said to her, do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.

14:37 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. It's a massive announcement that Gabriel makes here. He's already announced the forerunner of the Messiah. Now he shows up in Nazareth, not the temple, but Nazareth to announce that the king is coming. And the whole thing is just glittering with this royal, Davidic, Old Testament, prophetic, covenantal language. It's everywhere. And every phrase of it is piling up royal glory for this little baby who's about to be born.

15:14 I mean, if you think about it, that kind of thing happens throughout sort of royal history. I mean, do you know what King Charles of England's full title is? Let me read it to you because I could never memorize it. But here's his full title. His Majesty Charles III, by the grace of God of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and of Northern Ireland and of his other realms and territories, king, head of the commonwealth, defender of the faith. The reason all those titles pile up and all that formal language is so that you will be a little bit awed if King Charles ever walks into the room and is announced like that. Well, the same thing is happening here when Gabriel piles up these royal phrases. He's saying here, here comes His majesty, Jesus the great, son of the most high God, rightful occupant of the throne of David, and king over Israel, all the house of Jacob, forever.

16:08 That's who's coming. You can see it all happening in 32 and 33. All the hopes and promises of the prophets, all the broken hopes of the throne of David are all finally coming together into something new. And now with the birth of this baby, real. Let's look at it in some detail. Several things to notice here about the details. First, notice there in 32 that Gabriel says this baby will be great. This baby, he will be great.

16:39 Now, look back at verse 15 because something very similar. You don't even have to turn the page. Just go over to the other column. Look at verse 15 because something very similar is said about John the Baptist. But look at verse 15 and then look back at 32 and see if you can figure out what the difference is between what the angel says about John the Baptist and what he says about Jesus. The angel says that John the Baptist is going to be great before the Lord. He says about Jesus, simply, he will be great.

17:12 Do you see what that's doing? It's elevating Jesus. It's not just saying that Jesus will be great before the Lord. It's saying that he will be great. It's unqualified greatness. It's higher greatness. In fact, you start looking through the Old Testament. Anytime the word great is used to describe someone all by itself, like without any modifiers, great before the Lord, great before this, anytime the word great is used to describe someone without any further modifiers, it is only used ever of one single person, God Almighty.

17:49 It's the only time it's ever used like that. And yet that's what the angel says about Jesus. He will be unmodifiedly great. Look there, too, that phrase, son of the most high. That's also kingly language. And essentially, if you look back at the Old Testament, it points to a person who has a special relationship with God. Now, Christians have talked for a long time, for centuries, in fact, about whether that phrase, son of the most high, is a straight up declaration by Luke of Jesus' divinity. So does that mean that Jesus is God? I don't think it does, not quite yet. Now that's going to become clear later on in the story, but here Luke is just kind of planting the seeds.

18:33 And the reason it's probably not talking about divinity just yet is because the Old Testament judges in the Psalms are called also sons of the most high. And in fact, if you even flip over to Luke chapter 6 verse 35, Jesus even says that you and I as believers in him can be sons of the most high. So it doesn't mean a divine one, at least not yet. Luke's going to fill it in with that meaning as he goes on. What it does mean though is that Jesus is going to be in a special relationship with God, a unique relationship to God. He says there, the angel says that God is going to give him the throne of his father David. He's going to reign over the house of Jacob forever. Now we've already talked a little bit about why this is a big deal, but I want you to notice something else here too. So earlier in the service, you can look back in your bulletin if you want to, we read, Sam read to us from 2 Samuel chapter 7, where God makes this covenant with David.

19:29 And as you go through that covenant, you'll notice that essentially God promises David four things. He says, I'm going to give you a great name. I'm going to establish your throne. There's going to be a sonship between you and me, fatherhood sonship between you and me. And you and your descendants are going to have an eternal reign. Great name, throne, sonship, and eternal reign. And now look here in verses 32 and 33, what the angel says is about to come to pass.

20:01 A great name, he will be great. A throne, I will give him the throne of his father David. You are the Son of the Most High, and you will reign forever without end. You see that? All of those promises that God made to David in that covenant are here being fulfilled. They have not been up to this point, and yet they are right here. This is just a shining example of God keeping his prophetic and covenantal promises. And he always does that, and he always does it meticulously.

20:35 I promised you a name. Here's a name, a throne, here's a throne. Sonship, here's sonship. An eternal reign, here's an eternal reign. Point by point by point. I mean, just as a kind of side comment, friend, why would you ever, ever doubt anything that God says in the scriptures? He always keeps his promises. Even down to the most meticulous detail. I want us to pause here for just a second to just reflect on what the angel has said so far.

21:08 Because this description of Jesus and his office as Messiah, King, Davidic ruler, it tells us something important, I think, about what it means for you and I to be a Christian. What it means for us to be in relationship with Jesus. And what it means most fundamentally is that when you become a Christian, when you put your faith in Jesus and you repent of your sins, Most fundamentally, you are bowing to a king. That's what it means to be a Christian.

21:39 You are recognizing what he's done to save you in his life and death and resurrection. You're trusting him to carry that work on to completion until the end. And then you are pledging your loyalty and your allegiance and your love to him for the rest of your life and eternity. That's what it means to be a Christian. You know, there's this phrase that I have grown up for 48 years hearing. And it's sort of come to dominate evangelical language and evangelical piety in my lifetime. And it's meant to describe what it is to be a Christian.

22:11 I mean, even to the point that it's taken on a kind of tyrannical flavor. Like, you know, I don't care what you say about Jesus as son of God or king or this or that. If you can't say this phrase, then you're not really a Christian. You know what that phrase is? It's to have a personal relationship with Jesus. If you've been around Christian circles very long, you've heard that phrase. If you're going to be a Christian, you need to be in a personal relationship with Jesus. Now, that's fine as far as it goes, even though the Bible itself doesn't ever use that kind of language.

22:51 But even if you're going to use it, you have to be careful to define what kind of personal relationship we have with Jesus. Friend, when you become a Christian, you're not just entering into a peer-to-peer personal relationship with Jesus as if you're good buddies with one another. Much less are you entering into a personal relationship with Jesus in a kind of Jesus is my boyfriend sort of situation. No, what you're doing when you enter that personal relationship with Jesus is that you are bowing your knee to him as king.

23:29 Friends, that's really, really important. Because what the world is going to demand from you is that you abandon your allegiance to your king, often at the cost of your life. And if all you know about Jesus is that he is my friend or my boyfriend or my intimate personal relationship and Jesus wants what's best for me, then there are going to be all kinds of times in your life when the world demands something of you and your reasoning is going to be, well, Jesus is my friend and he wants good for me.

24:07 He wants me to feel good and fulfilled and so therefore he won't mind if I compromise. But, friend, if Jesus is your king, and if you've bowed your knee and sworn your loyalty and allegiance to him, then when the world tells you to compromise on that and abandon that allegiance, you will say, no, even at the cost of my life. He's my king, and I won't abandon him. In 34, if you look down at it, after Gabriel makes this announcement, Mary asks the angel a question about how all this is supposed to happen when she's never known a man.

24:46 That's the literal word. What she means is, I've never had sexual relations with a man. So therefore, how am I going to have a baby? She knows basic biology. She's not an idiot. We're going to talk about that more later and what exactly it means in her. But for now, we need to look at what Gabriel says next about Jesus in verse 35. Because in answering Mary's question of how is this going to happen, he says arguably one of the most amazing things that's ever said in the entire Bible. Look at verse 35. So the angel answered her, here's how it's going to happen. The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.

25:21 And therefore the child to be born will be called Holy, the Son of God. I think that's one of the most awe-inspiring verses in the entire Bible. I mean, how do you even summarize what Gabriel is saying there? He's saying that God, the creator of the universe, the second person of the eternal trinity, is becoming human. I mean, Gabriel describes it kind of vaguely, right? The Holy Spirit will come upon you.

25:51 The power of the Most High will overshadow you. That's not a sexual relationship at all. The word overshadow there is a very particular word that's used in the Old Testament in very particular circumstances. So it's only used a few times in the Bible, but it's what happened when the presence of God came into the tabernacle and the temple. The presence of God overshadows the tabernacle, overshadows the temple. And so the presence of God is there among the people. Well, that's what Gabriel is saying is going to happen.

26:23 the Holy Spirit will overshadow you, be present with you, and ultimately, right, in the second person of the Trinity, in you. It has to do with the presence of God, just like God came to be present in the temple when he overshadowed it, so he comes to be present here in Mary. Now, why is all of this important? Why is it important that Luke insists that Mary was a virgin and that Jesus was conceived in her womb by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit and not through the normal means. Why is that important? And for 2,000 years now, the virgin birth has been scoffed at. Sometimes it's been ignored, but it's not a small thing. It's not a small thing theologically. It's not a small thing historically. And why is that? Well, I mean, one thing to just notice about the virgin birth is that neither Luke nor any of the other gospels nor even Paul or John or Peter in their writings ever does much with it theologically.

27:25 You ever notice that? They just kind of state it as a fact and you can think about it and come up with all kinds of theological implications for it and yet in their writings they don't really mention it again. They don't really talk about it that much. Some people have argued, well, you know, the idea that Jesus had to be born of a virgin was so theologically important that people made it up later, right? Like 200 years later they came up with a virgin birth and they stuck it into these places. But that doesn't make sense given that they don't use it theologically, right? It just doesn't show up. It's like, all right, here's this fact.

27:56 Jesus was born of a virgin. We don't really know what to do with that yet. And so they just kind of leave it alone. And it's over the centuries that people realize there are theological implications to this. Well, what are some of those? I mean, one thing that the virgin birth does is that it simply shows us that God does miracles. It shows us that God does miracles even greater than bringing life out of barrenness, like Elizabeth. He does an even greater thing. He brings life out of nothing. Life where there has not been life and there cannot be life.

28:32 It's an incredible thing that God does there. You know the old Christmas hymn, Raise, raise, the song on high, the virgin sings her lullaby. There's a beautiful irony in that. A virgin singing a lullaby to a baby. It's a life where there should be no life. Do you know that that's essentially what you start with when you come to Christ for salvation? You start with the conviction that God, I believe you can bring life where there is no hope of life.

29:08 I believe that you can bring salvation where there is no hope of salvation. That you can declare to be righteous that which is not righteous. and you can forgive that which is unforgivable. Friend, if you believe that about God, then you've taken the first step toward finding salvation in Jesus Christ. Here's another thing that the virgin birth does. It helps us understand who Jesus really is, that he is both God and man, nothing else and nothing less.

29:42 I mean, think about it. Let's say that God had just decided, I'm going to create Jesus, the person in heaven, and then I'm just going to send him down, right? Like a lightning bolt, and there he is, fully grown. What would we have thought about him? We would have thought that he was somehow less than human. We would have never believed in a million years that this guy who shot down from heaven like a lightning bolt, fully grown, is fully human. We would not believe it. On the other hand, what if God had just done it like all of us were conceived and born, right?

30:12 Through the union of a man and a woman. Well, what would we think about that? We would doubt his divinity. He's too much like us. He can't possibly be God. But this, the way God did it, this way is perfect. He's born like we are, and he has to grow up. But it's all so different from all of us. Here's a third thing. Here's the third thing, probably the most profound theological truth here.

30:45 In a way we don't understand, and that the Bible doesn't really help us understand, the line of Adam, in all of its corruption, is broken by the virgin birth. So sin's guilt and sin's corruption are interrupted. Now exactly the mechanism of how that happened, if you start trying to figure that out, you're going to run into all kinds of theological problems. The Bible hasn't told us the mechanism by which Adam's sin and corruption is stopped and interrupted. But it's important to realize that that's what's happening because it tells us that if we human beings are going to be saved from our sins, we cannot do that ourselves.

31:25 We are wholly incapable as a human race of producing our own Savior. There's going to have to be an interruption of the normal course. Somebody else is going to have to take the initiative, and that's exactly what God does. Now, that's true of the human race, but, friend, it's also true of you. If you are ever going to be saved, you are unable to produce your own salvation, which is what every other religion in the world would tell you is the case. You can do it. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

31:56 Do enough of this kind of prayer. Do enough of this kind of work. Do enough of this kind of super-arrogatory, gracious work, and you can save yourself. But what the Bible tells you is, no, you can't. No, you can't. If you're going to be saved, the course of your life is going to have to be interrupted. That's exactly what Jesus does when he comes in. You hear the word of the gospel, maybe on a day like this, and your whole life is changed because you have a new king. It's no longer yourself, but it's him. And your whole life then orients to take in that reality.

32:31 So God sends a divine king to save us from our sins. But he sends him first, of course, to this young girl named Mary. So point number two, the belief of a girl. The birth of a king and number two now, the belief of a girl. Mary, in this story, we've already read it. We're not going to read it again. I'll point you to some details. But she's a wonderful character, isn't she? And she shows up at various places throughout the whole story of Jesus' life.

33:03 We don't know a lot about her, but there are certain flashes and vignettes that we get of her as she interacts with Jesus and people around Jesus. And when she shows up, you can just tell she always shows up with a palpable grace and dignity about her. She's always just kind of in charge of the situation and pointing to Jesus. You think about the wedding in Cana when they run out of wine, right? It's not even her party, but she goes up to Jesus and says, hey, Jesus, they've run out of wine.

33:34 And he says, what do you want me to do about it? She didn't even argue with him. She just looks at the servants and says, do whatever he tells you. She knows. He hasn't even done any miracles yet. John tells us that that's his first miracle, the wedding at Cana. And yet she knows there's a problem. I take it to Jesus. And even if he argues with me about it a little bit to make his point, I still just go, do whatever he tells you. Because I know he's going to solve the problem. She's right there at the foot of the cross when he dies. She's right there at the empty tomb when he rises from the dead.

34:09 And unlike most of Jesus' family, his brother, Joseph seems to have died early on in his life, as far as we can tell. Joseph probably didn't live to see Jesus as an adult. But unlike most of Jesus' family, Mary never seems to waver in her faith in him. which makes sense, doesn't it? Once you realize what she experienced here when the angel told her who he was. I mean, if you had that kind of experience, you wouldn't doubt Jesus either. You too would be like, do whatever he tells you.

34:41 What doesn't quite make sense and what leaves you kind of reeling mentally from all of this are just the humble circumstances under which all of this is happening. And Mary's told he's going to be a king, and yet it happens in Nazareth. You remember the people make fun of Jesus for being from Nazareth. Can anything good come out of that place? It just kind of leaves you reeling. It's the announcement of the birth of a king to this young girl, and she was young.

35:14 She's not a priest. She's not a king's daughter. We don't know exactly what her social station was, except that she was engaged to a carpenter named Joseph, so it's not that high. I mean, he's a tradesman, right? But he's not a king. He's not a priest. Nothing like that. She's not upper class. She's not distinguished in any way. In fact, if this was a pretty traditional kind of marriage, and it seems to be, Mary was probably only about 14 years old when this happened to her. Can you imagine that? She's something like 12 to 14 years old.

35:49 And Joseph himself would have been very young too, by the way. Probably something like 14, 15, 16 years old himself. I know in your nativity scenes at Christmas, Joseph is always presented with this long, full gray beard, right? That is not Joseph. Joseph did not have a gray beard. Joseph did not have a beard. At best, he was super proud of the little peach fuzz that was showing up on his jaw. Spraying his axe body spray all over him. And it worked.

36:21 I mean, he got the girl, right? He's betrothed. And there's the announcement itself. The angel shows up, right, and says, greetings. It's a very strange thing to say, right? Because essentially, it's the equivalent of our English word, hi. It's charis. That's what the word is. And in the Roman world, it was like the quick way of saying hi. It's just hi. It's not even the more formal hello, right? It's just, hi, hey, which is incredible because he's an angel for crying out loud.

36:57 He comes from standing in front of the face of God and now he stands here in Nazareth and says, hi. Hi, oh favored one, right? I mean, you gotta see the significance of that because normally when an angel shows up, it scares the daylights out of whoever they're appearing to. Normally an angel seems to be trying to make a point when they show up, but for whatever reason, not here. You know, this archangel from the throne of God who comes to this girl, but apparently there's no blinding light, there's no trumpets, there's no rush of waters, it's just, hey, and she's bothered by it. She's trying to figure out what kind of greeting is this?

37:36 And you'd be trying to figure out the same thing. I want us to look, though, at Mary's response to the angel, because her response, I think, is a model of exactly how we ought to respond to the good news of Jesus. So first look at verse 29. In verse 29 it says there that she's troubled because she's trying to discern what sort of greeting this might be. In other words, you see what she's doing there? By trying to discern something, she's thinking. She's keeping her wits about her and she's trying to discern what is true about the situation. Friend, believe it or not, that is exactly the right way to respond when you are confronted with the reality of the Christian gospel. The way to respond to the truth of the Christian gospel is not with some overwhelming emotional catharsis or some burning in the bosom that you can't explain. The way to respond to it is to go, now hold up. I have some questions about that. I'm trying to discern what kind of good news

38:36 this might be. That is exactly the right way to approach the Christian gospel. Christianity is not a religion that asks you to stop thinking. It's not a religion that asks you to accept contradictions because God is just bigger than you. It's not how it works. Christians don't want to lead you. The gospel of Jesus doesn't want to lead you into some unthinking, unfeeling nirvana. No, exactly the opposite. Christianity presents you with the claims and evidence of who Jesus is, and then it invites you to think and discern whether or not it's true. And it is. So she thinks. Second, look at her question there in verse 34. It's interesting because this question, if you line up the sort of elements of the story of Zechariah and then the elements of the story of Mary, they track almost exactly together. You get the same thing happening in the same order. And so this question of hers is an exact parallel to the story of Zechariah

39:39 getting announced about John the Baptist. Remember when he asks his question, how am I going to know this is the truth? You've got to give me a sign, right? But notice the difference in the two questions. Zechariah's question is one of unbelief. This is impossible. You're going to have to give me some supernatural sign to prove it. As if this shining supernatural absolute unit standing in front of him is not a sign enough. He wants another one. And he gets it, right? Here's your sign. Shut up. Mary's question is different though. It's, okay, how is this going to work? Did you see that?

40:21 It's not disbelief, it's belief that is in search of more information. Okay, how is this now going to work? And Gabriel just answers her. I mean, you see the point? She believes and asks questions. And you notice the way I kind of carefully worded that sentence right there? It's not she believes but she asks questions. It's she believes and she asks questions. Friends, that's a good thing to do, and it doesn't matter how long you've been a Christian.

40:55 It is good to ask questions of the gospel of Jesus Christ. How exactly does it work that I can be saved? How exactly does it work that I can be united to Christ? What does that mean? That's how you're going to understand the gospel. It's how you're going to dig layer after layer after layer into the depths of the glories of the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's by asking questions. I think most Christians walk through their entire Christian life mostly with their theological eyes blurred.

41:27 You just take it. Okay, Paul says something about union with Christ. Whatever, all right, union with Christ, that's fine. Uncross your eyes. Uncross your eyes. Ask what it means to be united to Christ. What does Paul mean there, and how does that work? And I promise you'll see far more glory in the gospel than if your eyes are crossed and blurred. Ask questions. Mary did. Third, look at 38. She submits to God's will. She trusts his plan for her, even in the face, you get this, she trusts him, even in the face of potentially catastrophic consequences.

42:08 I mean, you get that, right? Mary had an extraordinary amount of courage. Because here in about four months, she's going to turn up pregnant and unmarried. It's going to show. And that is not good for her. She could lose her husband. She could lose her family. She could lose her dignity. It's even possible she could lose her life. She could lose everything. But she says, let it be. Let it be to me just as you have said. I'm trusting God to take care of me.

42:40 Brothers and sisters, being a Christian is not cost free. You know that. Jesus told us that that was the case. but it's worth it. And whatever cost it is that you're afraid of paying to continue on the Christian road or to be a Christian for the first time, the right thing to do, friend, whatever cost it is you're afraid of paying, the right thing to do is to do exactly what Mary did here. Submit to God's plan and trust Him to work it all out. I mean, look down at the very end, verse 45, what Elizabeth says to her as she's celebrating this.

43:15 Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord. The word blessed there is happy. Happy is she. Happy is the one who believes God will keep his promises. Friends, same thing is true for you. Whatever the cost, happy are you if you will believe that God will keep the promises he's made. Trust him and let him work it out. Last and most importantly, I want you to look at what Gabriel says about her in verse 28.

43:53 What he says about Mary in verse 28. He came to her and said, greetings, hi, oh favored one, the Lord is with you. He essentially says two things there besides the greetings, right? So first he calls her the favored one. Second, he says that God is with her. Now that second one I think is easier to understand. It's not a wish, it's not a prayer, may God be with you. that's not it. Gabriel's declaring something. He's saying the Lord is with you. It's a present reality. God is with you. He is for you. He's on your side, and he's determined to do good for you.

44:27 So that one I think is pretty easy to understand. It's that first phrase, though, that has caused unending confusion throughout history. See, the word there is really, the Greek word underneath favored one is really just another use of the word charis or grace. And it's used here to mean oh graced one. So it's like grace, that's the underlying word to high. Grace, oh graced one. In other words, oh you to whom grace has been shown. Oh you who have been shown grace. That's what it means. So favored one is a pretty good translation. Graced one. The problem though is that back in the fourth century, way back, like 1,700 years ago, a Latin translator of the Bible mistranslated that phrase, that word, graced one, as being full of grace.

45:23 Greetings, O one who is full of grace. He mistranslated it, which over the centuries, as they read that Latin mistranslation, caused people to start thinking that instead of Mary being the graced one the one to whom grace was shown that she's actually the one who is full of grace and could now give that grace to us well over time that belief took the form of the prayer said today throughout the Roman Catholic world hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with you pray now for us sinners and that belief that mary is full of grace and can dispense it to us which was launched by a mistranslation into latin way back 1700 years ago took its final form in 1858 when pope pius the ninth declared it to be the formal doctrine of the roman catholic church which has led people since then and before into spiritual tragedy because there are people all

46:26 over this world who think that the way to get God's grace, the way to find God's favor is to go to Mary instead of to Jesus, to pray to Mary instead of to her divine son. I mean, I don't know if you saw it a week or so ago when the new pope, Leo XIII, had this moment out on the balcony right after he'd been announced, right? He had this moment where the eyes of the entire world were on him and he had just a few minutes, just like 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 minutes to speak to the entire world who was interested in this whole thing and he took that opportunity to pray not to Jesus but to Mary.

47:16 Friends, I doubt, I doubt very much that in the presence of God Mary is even hearing these false prayers from people all over the world that are coming to her. I doubt she's even hearing them. But if she could, she would weep. And she would tell you, stop that. Pray to my son, the king. He's the only one that can save you, just like he saved me. Friends, this idea that Mary is the one who dispenses grace?

47:53 That she's the one who's full of grace that can give it to you? Mary herself would have been appalled at that idea. Just appalled at it. I mean, just turn the page. Look at verse 46. Look at Mary's own heart in the wake of this. It's not a heart that says, I'm going to give you grace. Look what she says. My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God and my Savior. For he's looked on the humble estate of his servant. Behold, yes, Now all generations will call me blessed, but why? Because he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name.

48:29 And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. She knew she wasn't full of grace. She knew right down to the bottom of her heart that she was the graced one. Just like you and me. Out of his sheer mercy, out of his sheer grace and love, He had chosen to show her unmerited favor and make her the mother of the incarnate word. Friends, what Mary realized so obviously there in the Magnificat, what she realized is what being a Christian is all about.

49:04 It's to realize that if we're going to be saved, we're going to have to be graced ones. Ones who are shown completely unmerited favor by God. Like Abraham, like Moses, like David, and like Mary, we have been given what we do not deserve. So praise God. Let's pray. Our Lord God, we thank you and we praise you that you are the one who gives grace.

49:39 You are the one who is full of grace. And you yourself are the one who dispenses it from your own nail-scarred hands. Our God, we thank you. For those of us who are believers in you, who have repented of our sins and trusted in you, we thank you that you have made us righteous in your sight. And our Father, we pray that you would never, ever let our eyes and our faith turn to anyone else but you. Father, we pray that in all things we might honor you with our lives and serve you as the King of kings and Lord of lords who has saved us from our sins.

50:12 We pray all of this in the name of Jesus and always to his honor and glory. Amen.