GOD’S PROMISE FULFILLED Luke 1:26-56 The Visit of Gabriel to Mary Angels are not at liberty to go places and do what they want without immediate consequences. They are designated messengers of God responsible for doing and saying what God tells them. Those angels who “kept not their first estate” but rose in the rebellion led by Lucifer are kept in chains until the “judgment of the great day.” When Gabriel appeared to Mary, he had come right from God to speak the words of God to her. The fact that he brought a message directly to a young, poor female in a rural community helps us understand the omnipresence of God and His sovereign will that is not limited to our human concept of things that happen. God does not limit Himself to using important people to do significant things. A young virgin girl would seem unusable for a major responsibility, but God chose Mary to carry out one of the most important things that have ever been asked of anyone.
Obedience to God is not something we have the right to choose to do or not do. To limit ourselves in our own minds to our natural talents or abilities or our own experience and education is to take away authority from God, who calls us to serve Him. He knows us better than we know ourselves and can make a vessel of human clay into what He wants. He can make clay lips sing God's praises and testify to His grace's riches. His choice of those He wants to serve Him is not for the praise of men but for His sovereign will so that “No flesh will glory in His sight.” Submission to divine authority is expected from every child of God.
When Gabriel told Mary the Lord had favored her and would be blessed among women, just like any young person would respond – she was afraid. That would have been astounding when Gabriel calmed her fears and told her that she was to have a son, and they were to name Him Jesus. When the message went further, and the angel told her three reasons her Son would be great, she accepted what he said without equivocation. He would be great because He was the Son of the Highest, the Son of God. God would come among the people, and He would be her son. He would also sit on David's throne. At the appropriate time, her son would be the Ruler of Israel. His reign would never end like that of every other ruler.
The One we live for and serve today is that same Jesus, who is both Lord and Christ. His authority is the same, and we submit to and gladly obey Him who has loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood – by giving His own life for us. His mission to save His people from their sins is ongoing. Under His commission, we press ahead with the Gospel message to the world and promote the truth of God to those who know and love our Lord Jesus Christ. Only by faith can we truly grasp how important every command of the Lord is to us.
Even though Mary was a virgin, she was told she would have a son by the power of the Holy Spirit who would come upon her. She accepted that as true and went forward in her mind and heart by faith. She didn’t doubt the message, and she didn’t doubt God, but she did have an honest question. How would this happen? She submitted to God’s plan for her even though it had every characteristic that would disgrace a young woman in her day. She was reassured by Gabriel’s words and praised God for what He would do through her.
It is cause for thanksgiving and praise to God whenever He is willing to use us in some way to serve Him. When God gives a task through those whose leadership we follow, we do it with our might as to the Lord and give Him thanks for such a privilege. We may never know the outcome of simple obedience to the will of God. It is enough for us to know that He has allowed us the opportunity to serve Him. Let us always do such service with our whole heart, in full assurance of faith, and with our might. True faith believes nothing is impossible for God to do, even working through us. What He says will happen is a promise that will be kept even though it defies human experience and comprehension.
The birth of a child to a virgin is inconceivable to most human beings because people generally only accept as true that which they have observed or experienced themselves. God, who created all things by the word of His power, is not limited in any way to what He can do. In her simple faith, Mary took God at His word and accepted what she was told as the absolute truth. She didn’t know the process. In humble trust and willingness to be what God wanted and do what He said, she said, “Let it be done to me according to Your word.” Faith turns those things we thought were impossible over to God with a glad heart and goes forward without hesitation.
The virgin birth of Christ is important to the Christian faith because it means that Jesus was born without a sinful human nature that has been passed on to all people because of Adam’s sin. Adam disobeyed God, and in contrast, Jesus obeyed God in everything. He dealt with the consequences of our sins because of His innocence and moral perfection. He was free from our sinful nature. He was a true human being because He was born of a woman but without any trace of sin in His conception, birth, and life. He lived as a man and understood what human beings experience in our difficulties because He had them, too. He knew what people think, feel, and need in life. He has been where we are and knows what kind of help we need.
There was no doubt in Mary's mind and heart that she was getting a message from God, so she did not ask for a sign like Zacharias had. She believed God but didn’t know what she should do. How was the miracle to come about, and what was her responsibility? Then, the angel explained that the conception was a work of God, the Holy Spirit. He would make this miracle happen. It wasn’t up to her. It is important to those who read Luke’s Gospel that we remember Luke was a doctor who knew all about conception and how human life begins, as well as birth and how all that happens. He had no questions or hesitations when writing about this whole event. This is one of the ways it is reasonable to think he had heard this from Mary personally and then wrote it down in his account of the life of the Son of Man.
It is a normal human response to doubt what we haven’t experienced ourselves when a matter is out of the ordinary. By faith, however, a large door of understanding is opened to us, revealing the reality of things not seen that open a whole new life to us. The dimensions of faith are limitless, but true faith relies on facts from the Source of truth. We know the truth of those unusual things because faith “comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” The freedom knowing the truth brings to us enables us to see beyond limited human intellect and experience to where we can see what God, in whom we have put our faith, unfolds to us. There is more truth in the scriptures of the Bible than we will ever be able to grasp. Even the limited amount we learn gives us liberty from human limitations, which is real freedom.
The angel told Mary that the Holy One begotten of God was “The Son of the Most High.” That title indicates two significant things about Him. He was the divine Son of God and the Messiah of Israel, whom the prophets had written about. The title, “The Most High,” refers to our Lord in the Old and New Testaments. The “throne of His father, David,” refers to the promise made that the coming Messiah would be a descendant of David to whom the promise was given. That part of Gabriel’s message, in which he says His kingdom will never end, is yet to be fulfilled.
The authoritative statements made right at the beginning of Luke’s Gospel are essential information that sets the stage for all he wrote after. The story begins with the Son of God, the Son of the Highest, becoming the Son of Man. His unique relationship with the Father and the Holy Spirit establishes that even though Jesus was “found in fashion as a man,” His divinity was never set aside. It was veiled in His humanity, but He was, is, and always will be the second Person of the Trinity.
The teenage girl Mary was more responsive to God's promise than the old priest Zacharias. She could accept that the “Holy One” would be conceived outside the normal path of human generation. With God, nothing is impossible. Her acceptance of the “impossible” as a fact is proof of her faith in God, which sets her apart from other women. She is not to be worshipped but is honored for her faith as “the maidservant of the Lord.”
When we are given a role to fill by our Lord, there will likely be some personal costs that cannot be avoided. There will be misunderstandings by other people and unfair criticisms that cannot be explained. Unless others have strong faith in God and believe He does things that are impossible to humans, there will be some things we will need to accept and move forward despite what others do and say. People who are bound by “the laws of nature” and can’t conceive of a God who can reorder those laws if He chooses will never take the virgin birth as truth. Many people now have a new god, science, and their buzzword is “follow the science.”
A visitor from heaven to a teenager in a village seems like an unlikely story. Then added to that is the virginal conception of God in human form in the womb of a virgin, and skepticism rises unless they are willing to accept the actual outcome of the matter as they see it lived out in the lives of millions of people. Miracles have happened and still do happen. The extent of the miracle of the virgin birth of Christ puts it into a class of its own. The combination of Jesus being the God-Man is a fundamental point of the Gospel message. Explaining the miraculous conception of our Lord Jesus Christ to skeptics is a waste of time if we first approach the Gospel with that truth. Speaking of our need for forgiveness for our sins and our helplessness as sinners, to do anything about sin comes first. Then, it will make sense to tell of the uniqueness of God’s only begotten Son, coming into the world to save us from our sins. The perfections of His person will then make an earnest seeker after God realizes how essential His sinlessness is to deal with our sins as our substitute justly.