Mary

We are continuing with our sermon series Called “The Supporting Cast.” It is the supporting cast that allows us to better understand the story about the star, in this case Jesus. This week our focus turns to his mother Mary who offers us a great example through her interaction with the angel Gabriel of who Jesus is and what it means to trust in God, our scripture comes from Luke chapter 1 verses 26-38.

26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from 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. And the virgin’s name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” 29 But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. 30 And 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 bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. 32 He will 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, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

34 And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”

35 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. 36 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. 37 For nothing will be impossible with God.” 38 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.

Please pray with me…

When we look at today’s scripture, we have the angel Gabriel offering us information on who Jesus is and how he will impact the world. He begins by giving Mary and us an understanding of who Jesus is by stating that Jesus will be called the “Son of the most high.”

A Jewish person would only consider one person to be the most high, and that would be Yahweh or as we call him God. This would have been the first sign to Mary that Gabriel is talking about the Messiah.

Gabriel thoughdoes not stop there he continues on by stating that God will give Jesus the throne of his father David. David is considered the greatest of the Jewish kings. He also comes from what would be considered a lowly upbringing, he had been a shepherd.

Jesus also will come from a lowly upbringing. Jesus earthly father is a carpenter. Old Testament prophecy also predicted that the Messiah would come from the line of David.

The next sign offered to Mary was that he would reign over Jacob’s decedents. This would be Gabriel making a link to the Jewish people. He is telling Mary that your son will become the king of all the Jews throughout the world meaning Jesus would not only reign within the Jewish area.

We also discover why Jesus often stated that he came for the Jews. This is further reiterated within this text. It was the hope of God that through Jesus the Jewish people would spread the word to the gentiles. They would get the first chance to be of saved through Jesus dying on the cross.

Gabriel continues to pass on information to Mary and to us by letting Mary know that unlike earthly kings, the reign of Jesus will never come to an end. Jesus is the king of kings and the Lord of Lords.

We have all these words from the angel leading to one definitive answer. Mary is giving birth to the Messiah. The one who will come to save the lost. The one that the Jewish people have been waiting for.

Gabriel’s last words to Mary may be the most important for us to remember as followers of Jesus. Verse 37 states that “no word from God will ever fail.” We often doubt God. We want to keep on living our lives our way, so we don’t want to believe that when we are called by God to do something that he is speaking to us.

We are not confident that we can do what God wants us to do so we believe that we are misunderstanding God. That God has chosen the wrong person for this task. God must be the one who is confused.

When we look at scripture, Moses, the person that would end up leading the people into the promised land felt the same way. When God told him that he was to lead the Israelites out of Egypt he came up with a list of excuses on why he was not the right choice.

One of those excuses was that he was not a good speaker. God responded by giving him someone to do the speaking. But when we read the story of Moses, guess what, we have Moses doing most of the speaking.

When we trust God to fulfill our calling, he will give us the words to say, he will offer us the actions to take. We should trust him enough and believe that his word will never fail.

Another reason we may choose to not respond to God’s word is we do believe that God’s word will never fail but we don’t like what God wants us to do. We can look to Jonah as an example of this.

God told Jonah to go to Nineveh and tell the people there to repent. The people of Nineveh were some of the greatest enemies of the Israelites. So, either from fear or a hatred of them, Jonah instead went in the opposite direction.

Many of us know what happens next, Jonah ends up on a ship that gets caught in a storm. He has those on the ship throw him overboard, he ends up getting swallowed by a big fish and lives in the fish until he finally agrees to fulfill the mission given to him by God.

I am not saying that God will go to those extremes to get the mission given to you completed, but what I have discovered in my own life is that no matter what your reason is to choose not to fulfill your God given calling, you might be left searching.

You will most likely never truly be happy with where you are. You will hopefully eventually be willing to accept that God is leading you to what he called you to all those years ago and eventually give in and respond to your calling or if not, you may continue laboring away always wondering what could have been.

Mary, the mother of Jesus, is one of those individuals in the Bible that offer us a glimpse of what it means to truly be a follower of God. She shows us that what we may view as impossible, God can make possible.

When we move from what was said from the angel Gabriel regarding Jesus to what he said to Mary and the responses given by her. We can discover how Mary gives us an understanding of how we should react when we are called by God.

It is true that her calling was obviously a super-natural calling but no matter what are calling looks like; we need to trust God to work within our lives and those that he is calling on us to influence.

In verse 28 Gabriel tells Mary that she is highly favored and that the Lord is with her. We should believe that this is also true for us. In fact, God through the actions of Jesus has showed us that all people are highly favored in the eyes of God. He does not discriminate based off of ethnicity, income level, or even belief.

He showed through Jesus that God loves all people. He wants all people to be willing to believe that he wants to be their Father in Heaven. I have talked many times before on how God through his grace is attempting to woo those that don’t believe into a relationship with him. He wants everyone to be able to say that the Lord is with them.

We know he doesn’t stop there. After we believe God continues to attempt to guide us into an even deeper relationship with him. He wants us to be as close to him as we are willing to be. He wants us to be willing to speak to him and learn about him.

The Holy Spirit is our guide. We find the Holy Spirit intimately involved in the birth of Jesus. Just like in Mary’s case when we decide to allow Jesus to be our Lord and Savior and ask that our sins be forgiven the Holy Spirit enters us. It becomes the conduit between us and God. The Holy Spirit is the way that we are able to discover what God wants to accomplish through us.

It might not be as great as becoming the mother of the Savior of the world but no matter what God has called you to do is it is important in the eyes of God. Verse 35 tells Mary that the Holy Spirit will overshadow you.

This is the same word used during the transfiguration of Jesus when God called out to the disciples announcing to them “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased. Listen to him!” Let him overshadow you.

God calls out to us as well. It is so important for us to pray and listen for God’s voice. It may not be an audible voice, it may just be a feeling you receive that you are supposed to do something, but when we respond to it we are responding to the will of God.

When we examine the words expressed by Mary, we are able to find how we are to respond to God. Mary first tells the angel that she is the Lord’s servant. We can sometimes in America struggle with being called a servant.

We want to be in charge. We want to make our own decisions. God allow us to have the free will to decide if and when we want to respond to him. He doesn’t force us to be one of his followers. The decision is ours.

This is wonderful for God to give us a choice, but we should want to respond to him as if we are a servant. We should want to fulfill his requests for our lives. We should want to live our lives as he chooses. We should want to let him lead and us follow. We should want to do these things because they are for our own good.

When we listen and follow the commands offered to us by God through the Holy Spirit, we will discover that we are in a better place than we would have been if we would have taken our own path.

Even though we have the free will to refuse, we should act like we are an indentured servant of God. There were a number of indentured servants during the formation of America. These individuals would agree to become a servant to a person for an agreed upon length of time if the person was willing to pay their way to America.

We should choose to be God’s servant. Jesus has paid our price for salvation. We have been given eternal life. We therefore should want to be God’s servant for our additional time here on earth.

We should want to serve God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength. We should want to be the best servant that we can be, and we should want to do it because God has paid our way to freedom through him son Jesus.

The last words from Mary to Gabriel are “May your word to me be fulfilled.” This is one brave woman. We have a virgin who is pledged to be married not questioning what God wants to accomplish through her despite all the consequences associated with this situation.

We in America often don’t fully understand Mary’s situation. When we hear that Mary was engaged to be married, we just think of it as a ring and a promise. In the Jewish faith it was much more than that. It was a covenant. It was a woman telling a man that she would marry him when he had prepared a place for them to live.

The man would than begin building, usually onto his father’s house, a home for what would become his new family. When he had completed this task and received approval from the father of his soon to be wife, he would go to her and they would be married.

Choosing to break the engagement was similar to filing divorce. Choosing to have sex with another man during this time was a religious crime and was punished by stoning. Mary had to believe that if Gabriel was right that it was only through God’s protection would she not be killed.

Are we willing to believe that God will be with us while we are fulfilling the calling he has given us? This does not mean it won’t be without its down times. Mark Batterson who is an author and pastor tells the story about his first service at the church he was starting in Washington D.C. Everything was prepared and a blizzard occurred on that day. He says that the only people that made it to that first service were his family and the Holy Spirit. He did not let that stop him.

That same year the owner of the building they were using for worship informed him that the building was no longer available to him, and he had two weeks to find a new place. This would lead him to eventually have his services in a movie theatre. He now has services in numerous movie theatres throughout the D.C. area.

Batterson could have given up after the first service was snowed out or after he was kicked out of his worship space but be realized that God had called him to that city for the purpose of starting a church that would reach people that other churches were not reaching. It was through these events that he grew even more on his reliance on the Holy Spirit. God used these negative events to strengthen his faith.

We are called by God to fulfill a calling. I am confident that will not be to become the mother of the Messiah and most likely will not be to start a church. But whatever it is and wherever it is we need to be willing to accept our calling and recognize that God will be with us leading us through the good and bad times never leaving us to make it on our own.