Luke 1:26-38
The Birth of Jesus Foretold
26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favoured! The Lord is with you.”
29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favour with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”
34 “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”
35 The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called[a] the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. 37 For no word from God will ever fail.”
38 “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.
From the Squalor of a Borrowed Stable, by the Spirit and a virgin’s faith: to the anguish and the shame of scandal came the Saviour of the human race!
We are now into our 2nd Sunday of Advent and I wanted to take some time to think about Christmas, specifically starting where it all began, at the birth of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.
No other birth in the whole of history is as widely celebrated as the birth of Jesus. On Christmas Day so much of our world still pauses to think of the child that was born. As Tim Keller writes in his book, Hidden Christmas,“Christmas, like God himself, is more wondrous and more threatening than we imagine.” It is therefore important that we think about it deeply and take it seriously.
This first Christmas has rippled throughout history and will be remembered for an eternity — the miracle of the virgin birth. For Mary, she had no idea her child would be her Saviour, born physically to save spiritually. Each one of us lose the wonder and miraculous importance of the immaculate conception, we either underplay it in our minds or remain ignorant to it. Our Christian conviction leads us to believe that only one child in the whole of history was born this way - Jesus. Mary was a virgin and as well know, virgins do not have babies. Our Saviours brith is the linch pin in all of creation and Mary was the vessel God chose to administer his grand plan of Salvation. Her face is the face that would look most like His.
Gabrielle gives us five indications about the birth of His child:
His name. Verse 31. Jesus is the Hebrew for Joshua which means God saves or delivers. Gods own choice of His eternal name. There is no other name under heaven by which we can be saved.
His Greatness. Verse 32. The human race cannot produce its own redeemer, God has come to save us. Jesus’ greatness is revealed to us in his life, death, resurrection, ascension and will be in His second coming. Christ is great in every way we are not.
His status. Verse 32. ‘He will be called Son of the most High.’ This verse revealed that this is a God title and Mary would have known that. He will have everything God has (Col 1:3), He will be the image of the invisible God.
His lineage. Verse 32. Jesus’ lineage is well known and documented throughout the Bible. Jesus’ life was foretold and prophesied multiple times throughout the old testament, most famously in Isaiah 9.
His Permanence. Verse 33. His kingdom will never end, which means His kingdom is in place now for us. He is alive and ruling over his people, establishing his kingdom. Whatever trials we may face or society or culture faces we have a blessed assurance of kingdom building, on Earth as it is in Heaven until He returns. What an encouragement that is.
The first person in history who had a problem of the Virgin Birth was Mary herself. The answer to her turmoil - the Holy Spirit (verse 35), the conception of Jesus is owing to the mysterious work of the Holy Spirit. We are as close to anywhere in scripture to the incarnation of God, made known to us by the dynamic power of His presence. The Holy Spirit in some way we cannot fathom fertilised an egg within Mary which created the Zygote who was the Son of God, Jesus. There was no sexual activity or substitute of any kind. This is an example of the greatest mystery and wonder in the universe. God was creating THE man, man anew, the essential life, direct and uncontaminated. Fully God and fully man.
Jesus was made like us in everything apart from our sin, there came into life on the first Christmas the only person who could provide salvation. To get Christianity we must get Christmas - Our Emmanuel. At Christmas, God goes to infinite lengths to make himself one who can be known personally.
What a model of believing faith Mary displays in her response — she had not seen the cross she did not know what was to come but she responds in verse 38 with love and devotion and faith to her Lord.
Advent is meant to set us thinking and when Jesus says, ‘who do you say I am’ (Matt 16:15), Christmas redirects us back to our Heavenly Father, to the triune God and the infinite power from on High. Don’t forget or worse, become desensitised to the sheer majesty, magnitude and miraculousness of the conception of Jesus, born of a Virgin by the power of the Holy Spirit. What an incredible God we have.
By Sophie Clarke
Comentarios