Humble Belief

Transcript

All right, well, good morning, everybody. Good morning. As Jan said, we are in our second sermon series in the Advent calendar series that we’re going through this year. So if you have not had a chance to go through Jan’s sermon from last week, make sure you guys go back and check it out or at least read through the beginning of Luke because we’re gonna be following up today directly after that with the angel Gabriel talking to Mary. So if you have your Bibles with you, go ahead and flip over to Luke chapter one. We’re gonna be starting in verse 26.

And these stories parallel each other quite a bit. And so I’ll be jumping back into Jan’s sermon a little bit. So you have to bear with me as we bounce around a little bit. But it’s important to think about Advent this year. And I think not everybody has grown up maybe celebrating Advent in the same way. And so my family, it was a pretty important tradition for us we would have my grandma make a calendar for us every year that had all the days lined up on it. And it was on this big like card stock kind of paper. The kind you would use if you were in school to make a presentation with all your things lined up correctly. And if you’re homeschooled, you just find something in the recycle bin and use that instead. But so my grandma would have all the days for Advent

lined up on there. And there’d be different things glued onto the calendar on different days. Most days would have like a little piece of candy on there. So like December 3rd, you would just take down a little tiny Snickers bar and enjoy that. And then the other days was a little piece of paper that was taped shut. And those days were the exciting ones because you didn’t know what was in there and you’d open it up and not, dang it, this was just a scripture verse. That’s not as exciting. bummer. But you would be expecting because then the next one would have a little clue in there. Look near the dryer. And so you’d go running into the laundry room and I open up the dryer. Dang, nothing in there. All right, where else? In the cupboards above it. Oh, there’s nothing up here either.

Maybe on the other side of the dryer. And I would crawl up on the dryer and look behind it. Oh, there’s something down there. And so you’d reach down and pull out a tiny little present and open it up hurriedly. And it’d be a little slinky or some sort of toy. Just a small little gift that my grandma would have for us and hidden around there. And it just reminds me so much of how there are so many clues that point towards Jesus in scripture that point us to what he has done. And this time in this season, we want to be focusing in on the birth of Christ and why he came and why he did what he did for us. Like children, often we get distracted so easily with little trinkets. And it is good for us to spend time in the scripture

The Angel’s Call

and look at what God has to say about his son and how he came to save us. So advent in its really basic form means the arrival of somebody important or an important event. And it is good to be anticipating what Christ is going to do on Christmas. And so if you would with me, read through Luke chapter one, starting in verse 26. In this sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. And he came to her and said, greetings, oh favored one, the Lord is with you. But she was greatly troubled at the saying and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, do not be afraid, Mary,

for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus. He’ll 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 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. Continuing in 39.

In those days, Mary arose and went in haste into the hill country to a town in Judah. And she entered the house of Zachariah 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 there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.

— Luke 1

(ESV)

And Mary said, my soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God, my savior. For he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on, all generations will call me blessed. For he who is mighty has done great things for me. And holy is his name. And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm. He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate. He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent away empty. He has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever. And Mary remained with her about three months and returned to her home.

— Luke 1

(ESV)

This is the word of the Lord. Amen. Thanks be to God. Let’s pray and ask that the Lord would teach us all from this text today. Holy one, we praise you when we lift up your name. You have performed a miracle in sending your son. And you use Mary as an example to us as someone that we can look to and how we can respond to you. Lord, would you help us to hear you this morning and you alone? Would your Holy Spirit come and fill me and your words be spoken, not mine. Lord, would you encourage us? Would you show us how you look out for us? Would you show us how you love us so much that you would give up everything for us? Lord, grow us in love of you today. In the name of Jesus we pray, amen. Since Thomas hasn’t preached to us in a while,

I figured we should go and break this down in four points and enjoy this. So we’re gonna walk through this in four different ways since we are dealing with a large text today. So we’re gonna look at how we see the angel preaching to Mary through the call and then we hear her concern. And then we’ll look at the comfort that God provides for her and the confidence that she goes forth with from this. So let’s begin with the call and we’ll set it up a little bit. Now in the sixth month, in verse 26, we gotta set up where this is happening. This is directly happening right after the last passage. So Elizabeth has become pregnant with a son and now is in her sixth month of pregnancy. And so what Luke is trying to do, what he’s pulling out for us is that these two stories are connected.

They’re meant to be read together. So the birth of John and the birth of Jesus parallel each other really well. But there are some key differences that we’re gonna notice and we’re gonna wanna highlight today to see what is different about the birth of Jesus than that of John. And so we know that it is shortly after Zachariah has had his vision in the temple of the angel. And we read now in verse 26 that the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth. I wanna point out something that I thought it was just absolutely beautiful. The angel was sent by God. God planned this. God had a goal and a purpose and he is the one who is acting this out on behalf of his people. Nobody is doing this on their own accord. God is acting out his love story for us.

If you were at the men’s retreat, we heard about the father’s love and how we can better understand that the father is the one who loves us so much that he sent his only son for us. And so we see that fatherly love to pursue us in our brokenness, in our sin. And so God sent the angel to a city of Galilee in Nazareth. And Nazareth was in Galilee, which is way outside of Jerusalem. So quite a ways out in the boonies, probably like seven miles or so. So you think like rhododendron compared to Portland. If you don’t know where rhododendron is, that’s exactly what’s going on here. Not a lot of people would have understood where Nazareth was unless you were in that area. So way out in the middle of nowhere. And part of the thing that’s important to realize about this is that this is something that would follow Jesus

throughout his ministry. And why people would say like, what good come out of Nazareth? Nothing comes out of there. I mean, we don’t hear people coming from out of town to visit rhododendron. What are they gonna go see out there? I mean, it’s beautiful. If you haven’t been out there, it’s absolutely gorgeous. So I recommend it. It’s a hidden gem. So way out in the boonies, the angel goes to a virgin in 27, who is betrothed to a man whose name is Joseph of the house of David. And the virgin’s name is Mary. And here we’re introduced to the key character in our story today. But it’s important here also to see, God is revealing a couple of facts about who Mary is. She is part of a Jewish household. And so she would have been without knowing a man until she was married. However, she was of age to be married.

So she was ready for that. And she in fact was engaged to somebody already. And so we know that she has submitted well to her father’s rule in her household and has obeyed the commandments laid down in the Mosaic law. And she would have been familiar with all of the scriptures written for the Jewish people in what we call the Old Testament. And so she would have all of that as a reference and a framework for how she lives her life. And it’s here where the angel comes to Mary. And in verse 28, he says to her, greetings, oh favored one, the Lord is with you. And this is where the call begins. The angel comes to her and says, you are favored. And this is also where we start seeing some of the differences between the call for Mary and the call that happened in Zachariah and Elizabeth.

Zachariah and Elizabeth are described in the beginning of Luke as being righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all of the commandments. And they had been doing this for a long time, all of their life. Mary was young in comparison to them, but yet God chose her. Not because she had done anything, but because she was who she was. God chose somebody who was of humble estate in the middle of nowhere that nobody would have known about or recognized to do something amazing. And we, looking back on this story, we know what happened. That she gave birth to Jesus, who saved us all. And it was not because she did anything cool or great or amazing. God chose her and used her. And that should be inspiring to us. And we’ll continue the call here. We’re gonna read through 29, but we’ll come back to that in the concern that she shows.

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. It’s not because you’ve done anything that God is coming to you, but he has chosen you specifically. He knows who you are and he wants to use you in his plan. And then he lays it out here. Here’s the plan. 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.

So he’s laid out a couple of points of the plan. It’s very clear and very plain. And Mary would have understood everything that he was saying. Because of her knowledge and her raising up under the scriptures, she would have seen some of these things that popped out to her. First of all, he’ll be a son of the most high. So this child that she is going to bear is gonna be of a heavenly nature. He’s gonna be completely other than her and yet she is going to bear him. And that’s huge. So that’s the first thing that she would have instantly recognized that this language is that this baby is gonna be something incredible that she would have never really known before. And the second thing, which comes in two parts, is that the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father, David.

And she would have understood the messianic promises that God made to her ancestors. In Genesis, in 2 Samuel, in the Psalms, in Isaiah, all those places that point out and tell the Israelites that, yo, there is going to be somebody who will save you and rescue you. God is coming for you. And she would have seen this language as being a Davidic messianic call from God that this is the Messiah. He is of the line of David. Here’s that confirmation. He is coming from the line of David and he will save you. And the second part of that is that he is going to reign over the house of Jacob forever. And of his kingdom, there will be no end. God had promised Israel that he would establish a kingdom for them that would last forever. Now, it’s quite likely that she would have seen this

Mary’s Faithful Concern

a little bit short-sightedly like all of the apostles and many of the other people did of Jesus. They expected him to establish an earthly kingdom, free them from the Romans and let them live in peace in their land forever. They would not have had the long-term vision and goal that God did. But yet she believed that God was actually going to bring the Messiah here, which is true. She actually recognized what this call was about. And that leads to her concern. So her concern is broken up into two passages. First in 29. So she heard the greeting from the angel and her response is that she was greatly troubled at the saying and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. So she would have heard so many stories from the Old Testament of God coming to his people and calling them out of their ordinary lives

to follow him and serve him. And that call usually required a great sacrifice. That call usually required a lot of the individual that God was calling them into and it often required their life. And so she would have been in a little bit worried like, okay, what are you trying to do here? This is a big call and God doesn’t just come and call people into his service randomly. He has a goal and a purpose. And I kind of relate this in a little bit of a way. If my wife texts me and says, hey, we need to talk. I get a little bit scared. I think we all get scared of that phrase. It’s a serious phrase, but it can be like, hey, we need to talk and figure out what we’re gonna do for dinner tonight. Yeah, that’s great, I’m all down for that, I love dinner.

But it can be, hey, we need to talk. You said something the other day that really hurt my feelings and you’re not realizing it and we need to hash that out and deal with it. And so Mary right here is hearing the ‘hey, we need to talk’ from God. And she’s like, all right, what’s going on? Where are we going and what’s the plan? And so the angel lays out the plan for her and she understands, she knows what he is calling her to do. She understands that the angel is calling her to bring the Messiah into the world. That’s massive, that’s absolutely massive. And it would have been greatly troubling and concerning for her. God is asking her to bring a child into this world in a context that would not have understood why God was doing this through her. Read her question here in verse 34.

And Mary said to the angel, how will this be since I’m a virgin? She knows how babies work. And she’s like, I’m not married, I’m not with a man. How are you going to do this? And that concern also carries over into the fact that she would have been under such pressure and social stigma. If she gets pregnant outside of wedlock, she can be tried and found guilty of being unfaithful to her future husband. And so very easily she could have been killed for having this baby. And so she’s trying to take a step and be like, God, how are you going to do this? Like, I understand your plan, but how is it actually going to work out? But notice here is the other massive difference between her response and Zachariah’s response. Though they are worded very similarly, let’s read them right now. In verse 18, Zachariah said to the angel,

how shall I know this? For I’m an old man and my wife is advanced in years. And Mary says, how will this be since I am a virgin? Those two responses to the call of God in their life are very identical, but the heart behind them is vastly different. The angel calls Zachariah out and rebukes him for his response in his heart that did not believe truly what God is going to do in his life. He says to him later, behold, you will be silent, unable to speak until the day that these things take place because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time. And what is the response that God gives to Mary for this question? We’re going to skip ahead just a little bit, turn with me over to 45 and hear how God, through the Holy Spirit,

uses Elizabeth to confirm for Mary what she believed. In 45, it says, and blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord. Now that’s huge. That’s the main difference that Luke is trying to say here. Like Mary actually believed what God was calling her to come into. She understood very fully and very clearly and she believed it. She knew it was going to happen and she knew it would take place. She had faith in God to fulfill his promises and to do through her what he had promised to do to all of her ancestors, which is bring about the Messiah, somebody that they needed. It’s natural for us to try to push on Mary this sort of crazy childlike innocence, but she was mature and she understood exactly what she was stepping into. She was ready to be married

and God is calling her to have a child before she gets married. And this is important because God is doing the work. God is the one who is bringing about this miraculous birth. She isn’t using two people to bring about a child, but he is the one who is bringing this about and making this happen. And therefore he gives Mary extreme comfort. So that’s where we get to a third portion of this. And so God through the angel answered her question, the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the most high will overshadow you. Y’all, this is absolutely beautiful and poetic that God is going to be with her in this trouble, in this time that people are gonna call her out, be angry with her, frustrated, not believe a word she said. She’s gonna go and tell her parents, yo, God called me to do this thing.

And they’re gonna be like, yeah, right. No, no, you were just unfaithful to your future husband. That’s all you were. And God says, I’m gonna send my spirit and he’s gonna be with you. He’s gonna comfort you and shadow over you in all of these things, in all of these aspects. Luke here is drawing a little bit of a correlation to how God led the Israelites out of Egypt, across the Red Sea and into the desert as they wandered in the wilderness. God was over his people as a cloud. He was overshadowing them and providing for all of their needs. Not in one moment did he leave them alone in their trouble and their confusion. He gave them food. He provided for them in the desert. And here he is promising to provide for Mary, to support her and sustain her through all of this trouble

and all of this strife that she is going to go through as a woman in that time to deal with being pregnant outside of marriage. That’s wonderful, y’all. That is a God that we can believe in and serve is that he comes to us when people don’t understand us. When the world around us tries to combat what we know to be true and what God says is right. When we choose to believe God and follow his will and his word in our lives and the world says, no, that’s not okay. You can’t be doing that. God comes into us and supports us. He gives us encouragement. He gives us his word to go to and see how he will lift us up. He gives us a body of believers to do this with, to walk alongside. And that’s the second way that God comforts her

is he sends her to go see her cousin, Elizabeth. So read in 39, in those days, Mary rose and went with haste into the hill country to a town in Judah. And she entered the house of Zachariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. Y’all, John is already doing his job. He had been called to proclaim the coming of the Messiah and he’s already getting to work and he’s not even out of the womb yet. Barely six months old. Well, that’s crazy. And Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary when the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. God came through Elizabeth and spoke to Mary and she exclaimed with a loud cry, blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. God is confirming through Mary

that what she is doing is the plan. And it’s part of what he has set in motion. And she is not to be afraid. She doesn’t have to be alone in this. And she goes to somebody who would have experienced something very similar to her in the miraculous birth that she was going to experience. Elizabeth also would have understood that calling of God on her life. Though Zachariah may not have been able to communicate everything that happened in the temple to his wife, I’m sure she understood something was crazy when she miraculously became pregnant. And she was beginning to have the process of being pregnant and then Mary comes to her, someone who would understand that miracle that nobody else would have understand. Mary may have been thinking after the angel left, you know, am I crazy? Did I just have like some weird dream

and that’s not really happening? So she goes to her cousin who’s experienced something miraculous and gets confirmation from God that no, this is true. This is real. This is happening. You are not crazy. I am with you and I’m going to sustain you. In 43, Elizabeth has this beautiful reaction. Why is this granted to me? That the mother of my Lord should come to me. We’re getting a bit of role reversal here. Normally an older woman in that culture in time would have been the one who was esteemed with honor and held in great high exalt among the younger women. But here she is turning the tables and lifting up Mary as above herself as worthy of honor and praise and blessing. And I think that’s absolutely beautiful because it’s absolutely correct. That Mary is doing something that’s difficult and this is the part of God

giving her extreme and great comfort. Allowing her to build a joy in this baby who is growing inside of her. You can be happy and excited about this, Mary. You do not have to be afraid and worried and concerned because God is with you. 45 is just one of my favorite parts in here. When Elizabeth tells Mary, blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.

God’s Abundant Comfort

So the comfort of Elizabeth would have greatly helped Mary. But I think there’s a third comfort that God provides. It’s not in this text directly, but in Matthew. And I don’t wanna get into that too much because Christian’s gonna be doing that next week for us, teaching us from how Joseph responded to what he heard about Mary. He was getting ready to divorce her and leave her quietly. But God comes to him in a dream and tells him, no, marry Mary and take care of her, sustain her, help her, protect her, guide her and lead her through this process and be a very real comfort to her. God uses the people in Mary’s life to lift her up and support her through this and provide great comfort.

And then we see finally how Mary had confidence in the Lord. Look back on verse 38. Because of all these things that the angel had said to her and she knew that these would be true, she was able to respond to the Lord from the truth of her heart. 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. Mary completely submitted to God and his plan for her life. In humility, she recognized that he knew what he was doing and that he was gonna get it done. He provided for her the comfort that she needed to be able to go forward and persevere and take care of these things.

Oftentimes I think I get bogged down by all the stresses in life and the worries that I go through and I forget that God says these same things to us, that he is with us, that he is going to sustain us and carry us through. That’s why he sent Jesus. So that then after Jesus lived his perfect life and died on the cross and then rose from the dead, he would ascend into heaven and reign as he promised Mary and send the Holy Spirit to be in us, to comfort us, to lead us and to teach us and to correct us and help us. And so Mary’s response should also be our response. Behold, I am your servant, Lord. And this is servant in a really deep and intense, humble way of actively submitting yourself to somebody else’s plan for your life, of relinquishing your own control

and your own thoughts of pride and way, I’m gonna do it this way and I have everything laid out for like the next 40, 50 years, whatever. But submitting to how God is going to lead in your life. And it may look different than how you plan it, than how I plan it. Things that I wanna do may not be what God wants me to do. And I need to be humble in that and submit to that. And Mary’s confidence is a true inspiration for me, for all of us today. And it’s especially fulfilling to look at how she ends this with a song. One of the earliest hymns in the Christian church is given to us right here. And Mary praises the Lord that he has had the victory, that he has done the work. Not that she is so awesome and great. She is blessed for sure and she will be called blessed,

but not because she has done anything, but because God has had the victory. The other thing that she says in here is everything is in past tense. All of the things that she’s proclaiming about God is that he has already had the victory. She believed fully that God had won the minute he spoke to her. She didn’t have to worry about, okay, well, I mean, down the road, this may or may not come true. And I hope that this song she sings would ring in her ears afterwards. I was reminded by a brother this week that when she saw Jesus in the temple, talking to everybody and she went to go see him and find him and say, why didn’t you come with us? He’s like, well, I was in my father’s house. She took all these things and she treasured them in her heart.

So she was trying really hard to remember all of this so that she could keep track of what the son that she had brought into this world was gonna do, that her Messiah was gonna do. I don’t wanna put too much into Mary’s mind and thought, but I think that seeing all of these things and then to watch him enter triumphantly into Jerusalem, worshiped and praised by everybody as the Messiah, only to shortly after be killed on a Roman cross would have been devastating. She, along with many others, would have thought my Messiah wasn’t real. He didn’t do it, he couldn’t get it done. Yet Jesus rose three days later and proved her wrong and proved that God was right and he had already had the victory fully and completely. That he fulfilled his promise when he spoke in Genesis that through the seed of the woman,

he would crush the head of the serpent and be struck by its heel. That he would defeat sin and death once and for all through his own death. And that he rose in power because death could not hold him back. The grave could not contain him. And he has offered that to all of us, that same life that he has, he gives to everybody. That we in our own sin, we cannot pursue God hard enough or well enough or right enough to do things our own way. And he has offered us forgiveness that we can take on his righteousness. The life that he lived perfectly, we cannot do. But he offers to us that same righteousness even though we’d have deserved condemnation. And so I think for us, reading Mary’s song here, can help us to stand strong and have that confirmation that the Lord has victory in our lives.

Confident Submission

And if you’re here and you don’t know the Lord, what do you base your confidence in? What do you stand on that gives you surety every single morning? How can you work in your heart to submit to Jesus? Because out of his great love for you, he came to pursue you. Amen.

I’m gonna close this out by reading the Magnificat and then we’re gonna pray. So take this time to just hear these words as a blessing and a praise to God and as a stance of confidence that you can take hold in your own life. My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant. For behold, from now on, all generations will call me blessed. For he who is mighty has done great things for me and holy is his name. And his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. He has shown strength with his arm. He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate. He has filled the hungry with good things

and the rich he has sent away empty. He has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever. Family, let’s use this time of Advent to look back on the birth of Christ and the victory that he had there so that we can look forward to his second coming, to the second advent of Christ when he will make all things new and restore us in full relationship so that we can see him clearly and sing as Mary did that my soul magnifies the Lord. Family, would you pray with me?

Jesus, would you teach us every single day of your gospel truth, how you came and took on flesh and lived a life that we could not in order to take the punishment that we deserved so that we can have life, that those who put their faith and their trust in you, you will not die. Death is not the end for us, Lord. You have promised us life and we believe in that. We stand strong in that, Lord. Would you teach that to us day by day? And in this season, Lord, would you help us to be confident with that truth as we proclaim it to others that we use this season of Christmas of remembering your birth, the miracle that you performed through Mary. And we can proclaim your love that extends to all who would believe.

Lord, we wanna submit to you fully and completely. Would you break down any resistance, any barriers that we have to submitting to you? Would your Holy Spirit speak to us of your comfort and your love? Would your shadow reign over us, guide us and direct us, leading us always to humbly submit to you? We love you so much, Lord. In your name we pray, amen.