Are you seriously talking about Christmas in October?

We now hear stories of people who come back from states away to see the Christmas display because it is there tradition. Families that make their treks to get their pictures done here. We have buses of seniors who will be coming by and last year we began r giving tours of the Christmas story all the way from the angel telling Mary she was going to have a Child to Jesus rising from the dead.

The man most excited by these tours last year was Bobby Luke. His first ever event he did with us. At his memorial this past Friday I thought about all the ways Bobby showed us to share Jesus with others. Bobby was himself and still is as he lives healed with the Lord today! He was himself in sharing Jesus but one of the things that the way we do our fall holidays like Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas here at New Day is all about us being ourselves, who Jesus created us to be and showing the love of Jesus the way that comes perfectly natural to all of you.

From Stephanie handing out our candy at Halloween to Karen putting up the huge Christmas light tree, and Robin inviting people from there cars to come in to get a picture taken, Deborah organizing so much and this year Arielle’s getting in the action with some art. Friends we are about to have a whole lot of fun and live out the joy of following Jesus this fall. But now, we need to study! We need to know the Christmas story!

Today you might have come expecting a word from God in your life, and even though I’m sharing with you a story you think you might know I am telling you that Jesus wants to show you about your life, what you are going through right now matters. He shows it to us throughout all of the Bible.

2 Timothy 3:16 CSB

16 All Scripture is inspired by God and is profitable for teaching, for rebuking, for correcting, for training in righteousness,

So even though its not the normal time of year this piece of scripture about the birth of Jesus is telling us more than a nice story to warm us when it’s cold outside. This is the actual living out of faith, the way God works, the principles of hope that help us on Tuesday October 18 too!

Frankly we need to know this story! We need to have it memorized. Because it makes a difference to me when bad or hard things start coming my way, when feelings of abandonment and anxiety hit all time highs, when loneliness, insecurities and the feelings of emptiness come my way this truth matters.

When your friends come up to you and share the wildest, scariest things, where only your faith in God can carry you through.

When your friends seems like all of the world is to crazy and insane and no one could have seen what’s coming, you can tell them that God is in control because of what God shows you in this, the Christmas story

We have the awesome opportunity to share about Jesus, to bring Jesus into people’s lives.

Think about what it means for you to have Jesus in your life or maybe your not sure you have Jesus in your life, you can see Christ in the life of one person, what it means to be faithful to God. Let’s begin the story

Luke 1:26–38 (CSB)

26 In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth,

I am going to break up this story and tell you some facts along the way. It’s so intense to me how specific this part of the story is, it opens up with a date, but not a normal date. The sixth month is not a calendar date but the sixth month is based on the pregnancy just mentioned in the Bible before the Christmas story. Mary’s cousin, Elizabeth is in her six month and just months away from giving birth to John, who would be called John the Baptist.

So Gabriel shows up at that time but there is more! Why angel Gabriel? It’s interesting because there are only two named angels in the Bible: Michael and Gabriel.

Gabriel is the messenger of God and reveals to Mary what will happen to her but he also had over 500 years prior revealed truth to Daniel.

Daniel 8:16 CSB

16 I heard a human voice calling from the middle of the Ulai: “Gabriel, explain the vision to this man.”

Daniel’s prophecy would tell us this

Daniel 7:13–14 NLT

13 As my vision continued that night, I saw someone like a son of man coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient One and was led into his presence. 14 He was given authority, honor, and sovereignty over all the nations of the world, so that people of every race and nation and language would obey him. His rule is eternal—it will never end. His kingdom will never be destroyed.

Jesus called himself the Son of Man. The Christ, another name for the part of God that Jesus is has always existed. The Son of God is ancient and was never created.

What Gabriel told Daniel 500 years earlier and now Gabriel announces the finishing of the job with Mary

Gabriel developed an extra biblical tradition, outside of the Bible as one of 4 archangels and had showed Daniel of the coming messiah, and here he was announcing it to Mary that it would come through her.

There is a lot of extra stuff that we have from our culture about angels that isn’t biblical like there is a lot of extra stuff about Christmas which is fun and stuff but when you just recognize the truth, that God has angels which have been around for thousands of years and that he can, if he chooses call on them to deliver messages and they even take part in battles we do not see our problems can start to seem not as big. What is an angry customer to an army of angels. Even the devil had to admit that Jesus had an army of angels available to him.

Psalm 91:11–12 CSB

11 For he will give his angels orders concerning you, to protect you in all your ways. 12 They will support you with their hands so that you will not strike your foot against a stone.

Yes, even the devil acknowledges that Gabriel and the other angels have the power to do God’s work. When we pray we are involving a warfare that most don’t understand and one that really matters.

The archangel Gabriel is proving God is faithful! God comes through! His timing is perfect and He answers prayers. God might use you to answer a commitment He made over 500 years ago.

Even when we are battling the future and our fears God’s angels are available to God. That’s why I want to be on God’s side and God’s side isn’t always with the famous, the popular, the “important” and just to prove that God doesn’t care about what people think is important we have the last part of this verse .

Think

Luke 1:26 (CSB)

26 In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth,

This was a location meant to point you towards the northern area, far from Jerusalem to a no-nothing insignificant place. It really wasn’t important to anyone but God. In the first century AD, Nazareth occupied only the ridge and did not extend into the Jezreel Valley . The population might have been able to get to 2,000 or the population roughly of the Parkwoods area. But most archaeologists believe that at the time of Jesus there was only 200 - 500 people there. Most of the high schools in Stockton have more kids than the whole town had people. The village likely grew crops, it could maintain itself but was likely poor. No special architecture just houses of local stones, mud, and plant thatch roofs. There has never been discovered any mention of the town other than in the Bible and other Christian documents. Nobody thought Nazareth was important and that’s where God choose a woman to bear Himself, the Savior of the world.

The world may call you worthless but God can display His glory through you!

I don’t care who you are, Mary didn’t matter. Yet God made her matter. Jesus comes to us and does more than just offer us forgiveness, he offers us calling, he offers us gifting, he offers us a role to play in His kingdom. You can have a roll to play if you follow what Mary did.

27 to a virgin engaged to a man named Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.

In this most unimportant place, is a young woman, not a mom, wife, queen, princess but a young unmarried girl. In her culture she was the property of her father. She was learning all the things that currently we have invented lots of machines to do. She would become the one who purchases for the daily needs of the family, the cook of the family, the one who can make, wash and clean for the family. Think about it before dishwashers, washers/dryers, mass produced clothing, cook books, education, and so much more there was only one person who would be an expert at doing all of those things and that was the woman. I’m not being sexist, this was historical fact. I don’t know how to work a loom but she might have. I don’t know how to clean fabric by hand but she would have.

Yet her was a girl, in training, almost ready to graduate through marriage to take on the most important role she would have for her life that of being a wife. She worked hard enough and was ready. She also was ready to be used by God. Because she had been obedient to God. Now God was calling her to separate herself even more.

There is a word called Holy.

Holy means to be set apart, something that is special.

In a house today people might have something very nice, like China ware, the plates and glasses that only come out for a very special dinner.

Sexuality is something by its very nature that is Holy. Sex is something we give to another . We tell children as they get older to keep their bodies private, the overwhelming majority of people in the world no matter what they believe, see sex as something where a person should choose specific people they are willing to engage in it.

Sex is Holy.

The whole world believes that sex is something set apart. God defines what sexual intercourse is to be, it is to be holy and set apart for Him.

1 Corinthians 6:18 CSB

18 Flee sexual immorality! Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the person who is sexually immoral sins against his own body.

Sex is important. If a person is unable to choose to whom they will give their body the whole world recognizes this as a crime. I can not say it enough, if sexual crime has happened to you, this was not your fault, the Lord loves you, the Lord loves you, You have value, He finds you so valuable He died for you, and the Lord is near you, He is near the broken hearted. All of this pain you have is for giving to God. Give it all to God, the Lord Jesus can take it, every time, any time you feel it. God is there and we love you and we support you.

This is not a sermon to make everyone wallow in their sexual sins of the past either.

Yet, for those of you who sexual immorality is seen as no big deal, after all you have lost your viriginity a long time ago. That isn’t it. Virginity is a physical sign of the separateness of sexuality; I haven’t studied this but I don’t understand why there would be a biological reason for the physical sign of virginity. It seems to me that God reveals in a woman’s biology the holiness of sex and it is also a symbol of Holiness for all other aspects of keeping ourselves set apart. Holiness comes into all kinds of areas of the life of the person who follows Jesus.

We are to love others in different way than everyone else. The way we love is Holy.

I had a person who was my enemy. Everyone knew how this person felt about me. One of my friends and I were talking about how I was doing and handling the issue. Not gossipping but thinking about how to handle it. I said, “I’m just trying to figure how to do what I was told, to love my enemy.” She angrily said, “Who said that?” I didn’t say a word, I waited. Boom the light bulb went off in her head. “Oh yeah.” We laughed as she came to full realization how Jesus called us to a separate way of life, how Holy it is to love others even our enemies.

Virginity was not Mary’s greatest blessing. There is no reason to believe, no necessity, that Mary would not have enjoyed as much sex as any other woman after the birth of Jesus. As we see in Joseph’s part of this story:

Matthew 1:24–25 CSB

24 When Joseph woke up, he did as the Lord’s angel had commanded him. He married her 25 but did not have sexual relations with her until she gave birth to a son. And he named him Jesus.

Notice it was “until she gave birth,” Sex is a beautiful and wonderful thing which God has ordained should be in a covenant, a promise to a man and a woman as a joyful physical representation of their promised union, their marriage to each other.

Virginity was so God could do something unexplainable.

Mary’s obedience led her realization that she would be the greatest blessing of a mother the world will ever know. She would become the fulfillment of a promise a thousand years earlier, to her great, great, oh keep saying great for a long time grandfather, King David, that His kingdom will never end. It was the promise told again over 300 plus years before to the prophet Isaiah

Matthew 1:23 CSB

23 See, the virgin will become pregnant and give birth to a son, and they will name him Immanuel, which is translated “God is with us.”

Her obedience was better than any prayer, any offering she could give God and God would use her obedience to bless the entire world.

My friends in Mary we see that obedience is better than sacrifice.

God wants our obedience.

Obedience to God is better than giving money. Obedience is better than volunteer hours. Obedience to God is better than prayer. Obedience to God is rewarded.

Everyone in Mary’s world considered her to be of value only as a mother. Even then she wouldn’t matter that much. What mattered was her obedience. She was from an incredibly small town with nothing special about it. Instead she would become the answer to prayers said thousands of years earlier. God would take this humble woman and make her the greatest mother ever.

28 And the angel came to her and said, “Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you.” 29 But she was deeply troubled by this statement, wondering what kind of greeting this could be. 30 Then the angel told her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.

Over and over in the story of Christmas you will hear angels often have to say “Don’t be afraid.” I imagine it is the first day of training angels how to speak to humans. The teacher is all, “if you don’t say right off the bat, “don’t be afraid” it won’t work.

I could just see the rookie angel, “God is blessing you today. You are to go to Africa and be” and then the person just running away screaming, oh man, I forgot to say “don’t be afraid.”

Mary didn’t leave afraid.

Women were not used to being addressed by men outside the home. It was not forbidden it just wasn’t normal and nothing about seeing a being she had never seen before would be normal. Yet she stayed.

31 Now listen: You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David. 33 He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will have no end.”

34 Mary asked the angel, “How can this be, since I have not had sexual relations with a man?”

It’s funny to me that Mary focused on the scientific impossibility of her bearing children instead of the fact that her coming son would rule a kingdom that never ends. You know his kingship is pretty impossible too. Nobody thought that anything special would be coming from Nazareth or from some nobody.

If today you know God is calling you to accomplish something great but you get so overwhelmed with what that will mean for you personally. How much you don’t understand how God will use you to do it, you are in good company. Mary was the same way. She didn’t have a lack of faith. She knew God could do it, she just didn’t understand how.

It’s OK to ask God how He will do what He is calling you to do, as you accept the calling by faith.

35 The angel replied to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. 36 And consider your relative Elizabeth—even she has conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month for her who was called childless. 37 For nothing will be impossible with God.”

God chose her, in her virginity, to show that He did it. That nothing, not even childbirth is impossible to God. The most important thing any woman of her day would ever do and God was going to take care of it.

God did not have sexual intercourse with Mary. She remained a virgin. Their are pagan stories of God’s have sexual intercourse with women but they never considered them to be virgins. This was specifically life began in a separate from normal way. What do we call something separate from normal? Holy

Even the conception of Jesus is Holy. It was separate. Half of his DNA was supplied by God.

Even if an animal can reproduce spontaneously they will only produce their gender. Females can only produce females. The fact that Jesus was a man is another miracle. It is the separateness of this whole thing, that points to the glory and majesty of God.

God loves to show His glory through us.

He talks of the impossibility of Himself.

He did it thousands of years earlier when the Christ was talking to Abraham about Sarah.

Genesis 18:14 CSB

14 Is anything impossible for the Lord? At the appointed time I will come back to you, and in about a year she will have a son.”

Jesus even said it about how can the most unlikely people be saved. How can God rescue anyone, call Him to Himself and make him a completely new person.

Matthew 19:26 (CSB)

26 Jesus looked at them and said, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”

After hearing all this impossibility Mary shows us how we are to always obey God.

38 “See, I am the Lord’s servant,” said Mary. “May it happen to me as you have said.” Then the angel left her.

The challenge is this, in your life this week will you live as the Lord’s servant.If you are insignificant and everyone has told you that you have no value. Jesus tells you what I am telling you know, He Loves You, You matter so much to Him He died for you, and He has a purpose for your life. Will you be obedient and follow Him? If you are a follower of Jesus it is your calling to follow Jesus, into the unknown of how He will do it but to go as his obedient servant to