Christmas: The Day The Impossible Became A Reality

One of my favorite Christmas songs is “The Most Wonderful Time of the Year,” and the title of that song is very much a reality as it is the most wonderful time of the year.

Christmas is a celebration of the impossible becoming a reality.

Dear friend, you should never let the commercialization of Christmas rob you of the magnificent reality of Christmas. Christmas is special, and may it always be so in my life and yours. We should never grow weary of Christmas unless of course you are not interested in the reality that sprang from impossibility.

As we go through the Christmas narrative this morning, we are going to put to rest one of the great misstatements attributed to the Bible. Every once in a while, you will hear someone say this.

“God will not ask you to do the impossible.” Really?

Dear friend, God will ask the impossible of you, so He can turn the impossible into a reality.

I. THE SHOCKING GREETING

Luke 1:26–33 26 Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, 27 to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 And having come in, the angel said to her, “Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!”

29 But when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and considered what manner of greeting this was. 30 Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name Jesus.

32 He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David. 33 And He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end.”

This is the first mention of Mary in the Bible, and what an appearance in the Holy Scriptures as she is visited by Gabriel, the messenger angel.

Can you imagine Mary?

She was probably in her early to mid teens. She was sitting in her house I presume reading her Bible, and suddenly, an angel from the Lord appears to her. The angel at first tells her that Mary was favored by God. In other words, Mary had been chosen by God for a special purpose.

Mary had the same natural reaction as anyone else in the Bible when they encounter an angel. The Bible says she was troubled which means that this appearance by Gabriel shook Mary up. I am telling you that if an angel appears to you, you are going to be troubled.

That’s how you can know that so many of these so-called appearances today are not authentic. In the Bible, time and time again when an angel appeared to someone, the words do not be afraid or fear not immediately followed that appearance, but the appearance was not the shocking thing for Mary.

The announcement was shocking. Gabriel told Mary that she was going to have a baby, and the angel even told Mary what to name the baby. The baby was to be named Jesus, and this baby would be the Son of God, the Son of the Highest. This Son would rule from the throne of David forever and ever.

There was only one problem. Mary was a virgin. She was a virgin engaged to a man named Joseph. Now, biologically, it is impossible for a virgin to be pregnant. Mary expressed that impossibility when she asked this question.

Luke 1:34 Then Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I do not know a man?”

This was impossible. Mary had not engaged in sexual activity. How could she be pregnant? Mary was about to learn a valuable lesson, a lesson that we all need to heed.

Luke 1:37 For with God nothing will be impossible.

The God who created, the God who parted the Red Sea, the God who made the sun stand still, the God who made it possible for David to kill Goliath, and the God who prepared a great fish to swallow Jonah was about to act in Mary’s life.

Dear friend, with God, nothing is impossible. He can make the sun shine on a cloudy day. He is God, and even though, in man’s eyes, it is totally impossible for a virgin to conceive, God turned that impossibility into a reality.

Yes, Mary was shocked. Mary was puzzled. She asked the angel how this could happen. Mary knew biology. She knew she had not engaged in any act that could result in a pregnancy. She was pure. She was innocent. She was confused, but because she asked God a question, God gave her an answer.

Luke 1:35 And the angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God.

Dear friend, if you want to know the answer, ask God the question, and that is what Mary did, and God gave her the answer. The Holy Spirit would come upon Mary in the power of the Highest and Mary would conceive and bare the Son of God.

The impossible would become the reality.

II. THE SUBMISSIVE GESTURE

God had laid out His plan to marry, but God needed one thing from Mary. What was it?

God wanted marry to say yes. God does not act arbitrarily. When He calls someone to service or to salvation, He does not force Himself on the person He is calling.

That is the amazing thing about God. He loved us so much when He created us that He gave us free will. He gave us the “gift”, the freedom, to reject Him if we choose.

In the Garden, God told Adam not to eat of one tree, but He put that tree there to test Adam’s obedience. It was God giving Adam a choice to either obedience or disobedience.

God had sent the messenger to tell Mary that she was chosen. Gabriel told Mary what was going to happen, and Mary responded with one of the most logical questions ever. How can this be?

Don’t think badly of Mary for asking such a question. I dare say that almost every person in this room have asked God the same question. “God, how can you use me?”

For 700 years, the Jewish people had read the prophecy by Isaiah concerning the birth of the Messiah.

Isaiah 7:14 “Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and she will name Him Immanuel.”

I am sure many Jewish girls had dreamed of being the one chosen to deliver God’s Son, but only one was chosen, and that one was Mary.

It was physically impossible for Mary to have a baby, and she asked the Lord to explain how this could be.

Knowing Mary’s fears and confusion, God explained to her through Gabriel that Mary would conceive a child, and that conception would be the work of the Holy Spirit. The same Holy Spirit that caused the earth to spring forth in creation.

Genesis 1:1–2 “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was a formless and desolate emptiness, and darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.”

The same Spirit that hovered over the surface of the waters was going to come upon Mary, and I am sure Mary did not understand completely what God asked of her, but dear friend, sometimes understanding is not important. Sometimes, having faith is more important that having knowledge, and Mary had that faith.

Luke 1:38 “And Mary said, “Behold, the Lord’s bond-servant; may it be done to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.”

Mary said, “God, I am yours. Make it so according to your word.” Dear friend, it is that kind of faith that turns the impossible into reality.

There is no telling the scrutiny Mary faced being an unwed mother with child, and the entire length of the pregnancy she trusted God’s Word and God’s message and had the faith to respond, and God went to work turning the impossible into the absolute.

God took a lowly virgin from the line of David and used her to deliver into the world the One who would change the world.

III. THE SELECTIVE GENETICS

Jesus Christ came into this world by way of the virgin Mary. It had to be that way. It was the only way the impossible could be turned into reality. I am going to try to give you the condensed version of this.

If Job is the oldest book in the Bible, then the Book of Job asks the most pertinent question in the Bible.

Job 25:4 ““How then can mankind be righteous with God? Or how can anyone who is born of woman be pure?”

How many of you have or had a mother? Well, how could you ever be right with God? It is the great question. How can man be right with God? It is the great question that presented an eternal dilemma. What do I mean?

To be right with God, man’s sins had to be forgiven. For that to happen, blood had to be shed.

Hebrews 9:22 “And almost all things are cleansed with blood, according to the Law, and without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness.”

To be right before God, blood had to be shed to cover man’s sins, but that is the problem. Since it was man that sinned, guess who had to shed the blood to cover those sins? A man, but it could not just be a man. It had to be a man that was blameless, a man with no sin.

Well, the Bible says this about all men.

Romans 3:23 “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”

Romans 5:12 “Therefore, just as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin, and so death spread to all mankind, because all sinned—”

All men have sinned. All men with a human father are sinners, so who could make man right before God? Man had to die for man, but no man was qualified to die for man’s sins. To be right with God seems impossible, but God made it a reality.

For man to be right with God, One had to come into this world did not have the curse of sin. For that to happen, God through the Holy Spirit came upon the virgin Mary, and she conceived and had a Son named Jesus.

To understand what happened, you must understand this. Christ had to have an earthly mother. It had to be. Why? If Christ was going to be man to die for man, He had to have an earthly mother. He could not be God and die for man because God cannot die. He had to be a man, but to be the sacrifice man needed to be right with God, Jesus could not have an earthly father.

So, Jesus did not have man’s blood running through His veins, He had God’s blood running through His veins.

Acts 20:28 “Be on guard for yourselves and for all the flock, among which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God which He purchased with His own blood.”

Dear friend, you must understand. It had to be. Jesus had to come into this world. He came into this world in submission to the Father.

John 10:18 “No one has taken it away from Me, but I lay it down on My own. I have authority to lay it down, and I have authority to take it back. This commandment I received from My Father.””

Jesus did not just come into the picture when He was born in Bethlehem. He has always been, but He knew what was required of Him if man was ever going to be right before God, so He freely left his throne in glory to be born in a manger. Jesus came to this earth to be the agent that linked man to God.

Job 9:32–33 ““For He is not a man, as I am, that I may answer Him— That we may go to court together! “There is no arbitrator between us, Who can place his hand upon us both.”

These two verses paint the best picture for me as to what Christ did. He came to this earth to be nailed to a tree, and as He was outstretched on that Cross, He had God with one hand and man with the other forever linking the two. It is an incredible picture.

I have said this many times, but I am going to say it again. When Jesus was in that manger, He was completely God and completely man. You can never separate His divinity from His humanity because if you ever do, you sever the link that makes man right before God.

That baby in that manger born of a virgin came into this world to die as my substitute. No one could kill Jesus. Jesus gave up His life and the Father crucified Him on my behalf.

Romans 8:32 “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?”

God did not spare His own Son. If I ever wanted to experience the reality of a relationship with God, it required God delivering His Son on my behalf. It is His precious blood that makes my relationship with God possible.

Hebrews 2:9–10 “But we do see Him who was made for a little while lower than the angels, namely, Jesus, because of His suffering death crowned with glory and honor, so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone. For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the originator of their salvation through sufferings.”

Dear friend, Jesus knew from the beginning the cup that awaited Him. He was made lower than the angels meaning that He would experience death. He experienced death for everyone, so that He could be the originator of our salvation. AMEN!!!!

Dear friend, it is Christmas that turns the impossible into reality.