Announciation of Jesus
Notes
Transcript
Annunciation of Jesus
Annunciation of Jesus
Last week we spent time looking at the announcement of John to his Parents, Z and E.
The Lord made a promise that this older and barren couple would have a child, and not only would they have a child, but that this child is going to serve a specific purpose.
That purpose is to make read for the Lord a prepared people.
Meaning that he was going to pave the way for the Messiah to come.
John was going to be set apart for this miraculous purpose through a miraculous birth.
And as miraculous as John’s birth was, it is nothing compared to what the Lord had planned.
Luke turns his focus from John’s announcement to the prediction of Jesus’ birth.
This is the most profound work of the Lord in the history of redemption.
Just recently we celebrated Christmas and it is so easy to take Jesus’ birth for granted.
I mean, we realize that he’s God in the flesh.
We celebrate his incarnation.
We recognize his sacrifice.
But I think too many Christians don’t plumb the depths of what this really and truly means.
We get so stuck in going through the motions that the awe and reverence of Jesus’ incarnation doesn’t fully compute.
And I get it, the Christmas season is jam packed with distractions.
From gift giving, to Christmas parties.
Family gatherings to other festivities.
So I’m excited to take our time through the opening chapters of Luke so that we can truly examine and see the beauty of Jesus’ Birth.
With that being said, we aren’t even going to talk about his birth this morning.
Instead we are going to look at simply the announcement of his coming to Mary.
And before we do, let’s go to the Lord with a word of prayer.
26 In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth,
27 to a virgin engaged to a man named Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.
28 And the angel came to her and said, “Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you.”
Insignificant Made Significant
Insignificant Made Significant
In these opening verses of the narrative I want us to see and understand how the Lord chose the insignificant to be made Significant.
What do I mean by that?
Think about it this way, the messiah is going to be born.
God sends one of his chief angels to deliver the message.
And where does the Lord send him?
Does he send him to Judea, the heartland of God’s work throughout the centuries?
Does he send Gabriel to the temple?
The most holy place for the Jewish people?
Does the Lord announce the birth of the Messiah in the sanctuary like he did with John?
Does the announcement of the Messiah happen in any town or any place of any significance or to any person of Prominence?
The Lord had his choice of any place, any person, and any time to send the savior of the World.
And where does he choose?
A little town called Nazareth in the region of Galilee.
For all intents and purposes, Galilee is a non-place.
An insignificant dot on the map.
It’s not mentioned in the OT at all.
It’s not mentioned in the rabbinic writings.
It is literally one of the last places that anything of significance would ever arise from.
Nazareth is a Podunk town in the middle of nowhere.
Not only that but it was overrun with corruption.
Gentiles and Roman Soldiers ran rampant in the area.
So it’s no surprise that Nathaniel said in John 1:46 “46 “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
This was the implication that Nazareth was extremely corrupt and not a place that the messiah would come from.
So the Lord chose an insignificant town, in an insignificant region, but even more than that he chose an insignificant girl to be the messiah’s mother.
Gabriel bypassed Judea, the temple, and the high priests home and made his way into the home of a young woman named Mary.
Let’s talk about Mary for a moment.
The text here says that she was a virgin.
In this time period, girls would get married young.
It’s funny just the other day I was talking with some friends and one of them said that she told her kids not to get married til they were 25.
I say that’s funny, but for most of human history people would get married at much younger ages.
Partly b/c typically they didn’t live as long as we currently do.
And b/c they were really into having babies b/c the infant mortality rate was very high.
Not only that, but though we don’t like it and it may make our skin crawl, women and girls were seen more as property than people.
This can be hard to wrap our minds around, but women were not always held in high esteem in society.
We also have to understand that marrying for love wasn’t the chief concern for most civilizations.
Therefore, most ladies didn’t get to chose their husband, he was chosen for them.
Again, I know how most of you may feel as I talk about this, but we can’t hide from the reality of history.
With all that being said, girls would typically get married younger than we would see appropriate today.
Now we don’t know Mary’s exact age at the time that Gabriel approached her.
But we do know that she would have been pretty young.
Most scholars agree that she probably would have been between the ages of 12-15 years old.
If Mary lived today, she would have been somewhere between the 6-10th grade.
She was a young woman who’s whole life is going to change.
The reason I point this out is b/c when Mary is depicted in art and even in the catholic Icons she usually looks like a woman in her mid-late twenties when Jesus is an infant.
But Mary was a young girl who had been chosen to raise the Son of God.
We’re not 100% sure, but Joseph was probably around the same age as Mary at the time of the Betrothal.
This really puts into perspective the maturity of these young people when it comes to what they are called to do for the Lord.
They are truly sold out to him.
So in God’s choosing of Mary, he chose a girl who had essentially no experience in the world.
She wouldn’t have accomplished anything.
She was a poor girl from a Podunk town
Her life would have been a pretty ordinary life.
Nothing extraordinary.
If her life followed the path of many her age.
She would marry young.
Have lots of kids.
Never really travel.
Not see the world.
She would have been insignificant in the eyes of the world.
She would have been a nobody and nothing.
Like countless others who have gone before her, she would have lived an insignificant life in an insignificant town.
And yet the Lord of all creation revealed himself and his plan to this woman.
God took what is insignificant to the world and made it significant.
What this means is that no matter how much you may think your life doesn’t matter, it absolutely does.
Your life, your talents, even your beginnings matter to the king of the universe.
There is nothing insignificant in God’s creation when he chooses to use it for his glory.
Now, I can assure you that you will never be Mary the Mother of Jesus, but that doesn’t make you, your life, or your actions insignificant.
Mary could have never dreamed of how the Lord would use her, until he did.
Find comfort in the fact that if you have been called, saved, and redeemed by the Lord then he has a purpose and place for you.
He sees you.
He knows you.
And he chose you to glorify him.
Luke, Vol. 1—That You May Know the Truth Chapter 3: The Annunciation of Christ
we cannot miss an inescapable fact: the greatest news ever proclaimed in Israel came to the humblest of its people
I love what Martin Luther said about this
Martin Luther remarked, “He might have gone to Jerusalem and picked out Caiaphas’s [the high priests’] daughter, who was fair, rich, clad in gold embroidered raiment and attended by a retinue of maids in waiting. But God preferred a lowly maid from a mean town.”
Okay, so what else do we learn in these first verses.
We learn that Mary is betrothed or engaged to a man named Joseph.
In Luke’s account we don’t get a whole lot of information about Joseph.
Other than the fact that he is of the house of David, which is important for the new kingly messiah.
This is an allusion to Isa 11, where Isaiah talks about the Messiah being a descendant of David.
So Jesus’ link to David through Joseph is important to the promise the Lord made in the OT.
The Messiah, the savior had to be a descendant of David.
Now, The marriage process during this time was a little different than it would be today.
In the ANE, the engagement would usually last about a year.
Now their engagements or betrothals were just as binding as the actual marriage. So for all intents and purposes the engaged couple were considered husband and wife.
Remember these marriages were most often arranged marriages.
The father of the groom would seek out the father of the bride and make a commitment to one another.
This was the engagement process.
The father of the son would give the bridal price to the father of the daughter, usually either land, livestock or something else of value.
Again this engagement was as binding as marriage and could only be ended through divorce.
However, any type of sexual contact was forbidden and was considered adultery.
We also learn that Mary is a virgin.
In fact, Luke mentions it twice in v.27.
This is to demonstrate how miraculous the announcement of her conception would actually be.
As we talked about a couple of weeks ago, in the OT it wasn’t unusual for the Lord to cause barren women to have children.
Sarah, Rebekah, Hannah, etc.
However, no man had ever been born to a virgin.
Jesus’ conception was wholly different from every other conception.
This was an act of God doing the impossible.
Jesus’ virgin birth is one way that demonstrates Jesus is superior to John.
Jesus is totally unique even from his conception.
In fact, there is only one other man who had such divine intervention in his birth, and it was Adam.
This is why Jesus can be called the final Adam.
Demonstrating that he is different and unique from the rest of creation.
Even from his conception Jesus, though he can identify with us, is distinct.
Mary’s virginity is another link back to the OT in Isaiah 7.14
14 Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign: See, the virgin will conceive, have a son, and name him Immanuel.
Not only that, but even in Gabriel’s introduction to Mary what does he say?
“The Lord is with you” Immanuel.
The Lord is with Mary.
This is a declaration that the Lord is with Mary.
His mighty power and presence are upon Mary.
This is a special moment in the history of the world and in the life of Mary.
She has been set apart and called to be the Mother of Jesus.
and Luke paints a significant picture of her faithfulness.
In this retelling of the announcement.
But here’s one thing that we have to get right.
We have to understand why Mary was chosen.
Why out of the billions of people on earth who have lived is Mary the one who was chosen to carry the Son of God.
What was so special about Mary?
I know that we have a large contingent in our church who were raised Roman Catholic.
And the RC have a devotion and admiration for Mary.
And I do believe that Mary is someone who should be celebrated as a faithful witness to God’s purpose and plan.
In fact, we could even say that she is the most significant woman that has ever lived.
I also can tell you that from the Scriptures we get the understanding that Mary was chosen to carry Jesus not b/c of who she was.
But b/c God was pouring out his grace on her.
She didn’t inherently possess any merit that caused the Lord to choose her.
Rather she was chosen, like Z and E, b/c it simply pleased the Lord to choose her.
She is the recipient of God’s unmerited gracious favor.
Her description as one who has found favor with God (kecharitōmenē, v. 30) makes it clear that God has acted on her behalf and not because of her
The favor or grace that Mary recieved was God’s presence with her.
And what he is going to do through her.
The choosing of Mary by the Lord goes to show us that the Lord goes to great lengths to identify with the most humble of people.
God is the King of the universe, but he isn’t an elitist.
He doesn’t need to seek out power and might in the world to accomplish his will.
In fact, he chooses the most unlikely of people to play magnificent and mighty roles in the history of redemption.
This is demonstrated in his choosing of Mary.
A young girl in an obscure place chosen by God to bring forth the greatest and most majestic news that will ever be told.
All of this sets the stage for the message that Gabriel will give to Mary.
We must not forget that Mary is in the presence of an angel.
And the way people react to angels is generally the same.
They are overcome with Fear.
And what is the classic response from an angel when they appear.
“Don’t be afraid”
That’s what happens next.
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.
We see here that Mary was troubled by the statement that Gabriel brought her.
What statement?
Luke 1:28 “28 And the angel came to her and said, “Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you.””
What could this have possibly meant?
What Kind of greeting could this have been?
Luke tells us that she was wondering what kind of greeting this would be.
This lets us know a little about Mary.
She was reflective and Meditative.
In fact we see this in another place of the birth narrative.
Luke 2:19 “19 But Mary was treasuring up all these things in her heart and meditating on them.”
She was one who like to think and contemplate the the things of the world and the things of the Lord.
She was genuinely thinking about what this meeting could be.
She wasn’t completely overwhelmed with fear.
Cowering in the corner.
She wasn’t a shallow and flighty youth.
She was thoughtful and ready to hear, yet a little overwhelmed and troubled by this visitation.
And yet she doesn’t need to worry, she doesn’t need to be confused b/c she has found favor with God.
God has poured and will continue to pour out his grace upon her.
After Gabriel reassures Mary he brings forth the message of hope.
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.”
Announcement of Jesus
Announcement of Jesus
Gabriel finally gets to why he has shown up.
He has come to tell Mary about the Son she is going to have.
Like in the OT birth announcements, we see that the Lord has already decided what his name is going to be.
In English his name is Jesus, but in their Native Language his name would have been Yeshua.
Meaning the Lord Saves.
The meaning of his name would not have been lost on Mary.
She would have immediately thought about the Messiah and the salvation that was promised to Israel long ago.
In fact, she would have been drawn back to Gen 3:15.
Gen 3:15, comes right after Adam and Eve disobey the Lord in the Garden of Eden.
The Lord is laying out the curses that come with Disobedience and in the midst of them he makes a promise about the future deliverer.
This promise of a deliverer is made not to the man or the woman, but to the serpent.
Any victory he has is temporary.
The Lord will prevail.
This is the first gospel or The Proto-Evangelium.
And it reads
15 I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.
The Offspring of the woman will be the one to conquer the serpent.
To destroy sin and death.
The answer to all the suffering, sin, death, and the problem of evil is that a son will be given through the seed of the woman.
The child that is going to be born to Mary through this miraculous birth is that seed of the woman.
This is the Lord providing salvation.
Gabriel stresses two things about Jesus in the first part of this announcement.
First, He is going to be of a high position.
The child is going to be the Son of the Most High.
To the Jewish hearers this would have meant that he was going to be a kingly figure.
Remember in the OT, Kings were often referred to As the Son of God or Son of the Most high.
The Jewish audience didn’t expect the Messiah to be Divine, they simply expected him to be kingly.
But we can tell from his birth that Jesus is more than a king.
He is the true Son of God. The Holy One Himself.
The Only Begotten of God.
Second, Gabriel tells Mary that Jesus is going to sit on David’s Throne.
This depicts the authority and power that Jesus will carry.
This is another divine promise about the Messiah.
In 2 Sam 7, the Lord makes a covenant with David that he will have a descendant that will be enthroned forever.
His kingdom will know no end.
And here Gabriel is telling Mary that this is what is in store for her child.
This is the throne and authority that God had established so for him to sit and reign on it forever earmarks him as the promised Messiah.
This child, Jesus, will be the Davidic King that has been promised throughout generations.
Being God’s Son also draws our attention back to Isaiah 9:6 “6 For a child will be born for us, a son will be given to us, and the government will be on his shoulders. He will be named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.”
This indicates that the child shares the nature and identity of the Lord himself.
It is possible at this time that Mary doesn’t even know the significance of all these promises.
She may only think or understand that Jesus is going to be the savior of Israel and will one day sit on the throne of David to rule and reign.
But eventually she will understand the depth and promise of this announcement.
And what we know about Luke’s writing is that he is taking us on a journey just to see how important Jesus is.
For a large chunk of his gospel, there’s this over arching question on the hearts and minds of the people.
Who is Jesus?
And the way that Luke chooses to present Jesus is from the “earth up” point of view.
That is showing one step at a time that Jesus is the divine son of God.
The messiah.
He starts his gospel by presenting Jesus as the promised King and wise teacher.
Then reveals him as a profound prophet.
Leading up to the realization that Jesus is absolutely, 100% without a Doubt the Lord of all Creation.
But this process is slow and people take a while to come around to it.
Now this is true for many today.
It takes some people a while to fully grasp the greatness and magnitude of who Jesus is.
We tend to forget that and we focus on teaching about Jesus from Heaven down.
This isn’t a bad way to teach about Jesus, but at times we can lose the realness of Jesus if we don’t ground our teaching about him in history.
The Heaven Down approach can push us away from humanity of Jesus.
If you want to think of it this way, the heaven down approach is like the gospel of John, that starts with a high view on the divinity of Jesus with only glimpses of his humanity.
While the earth up view starts with the humanity of Jesus and leads to the realization that Jesus is truly God and truly man.
Both approaches are true and good So its best if we have a balanced approach when talking to people about the good news of the gospel.
This gives us a fuller more well rounded view of who Jesus is and what he came to accomplish.
For many of the people living at Jesus’ time all they had was an earth up view.
Remember they didn’t gain full insight until after the resurrection.
So they grew to know who Jesus is throughout his life.
This is true for Mary as well.
She couldn’t fully comprehend everything that was about to happen.
She couldn’t even comprehend exactly what Gabriel was saying about this child that was to be born.
34 Mary asked the angel, “How can this be, since I have not had sexual relations with a man?”
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 of the Impossible
God of the Impossible
Mary, still overwhelmed with Gabriel and his message asks an honest question.
“How can this be, since I have not had sexual relations with a man?”
This is different than how Zechariah responded to Gabriel in the Temple.
Zech didn’t believe and wanted a sign to prove that this was true.
Mary was simply puzzled it’s not that she didn’t believe she just didn’t know how it would work.
Meaning that she knew the pieces that needed to be brought together to make a baby, and knew that one of the vital pieces were missing.
So, Gabriel explains that this conception is going to be an Act of God.
A great miracle was going to take place and the HS would cause her to conceive.
This isn’t something that could be done by man.
God had to step in to make it happen.
And b/c it was the Lord making it happen.
This gave the child the right to be called the Son of God.
The Holy one.
To add an extra layer of reassurance, Gabriel tells her about Elizabeth.
Elizabeth is pregnant.
A relative of Mary who she no doubt knew was barren and old.
Is now with child.
So if Mary wanted to she could go and verify that this miracle had taken place.
She could go out and visit Elizabeth and see that God is working.
B/c Nothing is impossible with God.
What an amazing statement.
Nothing is impossible with God.
Too often, I believe that have an inaccurate view of how powerful God is.
Our view of God is often way to small.
What we need to understand is that the God who created the universe with is words.
The God who parted the red sea.
The God who caused an elderly lady and a virgin to conceive children.
Is the same God today.
He’s the same one who Raised Jesus from the dead.
He’s the same one who gives us new life if we trust in him as savior and Lord.
He has never changed.
He still does the impossible.
Trust and believe in him.
The greatest miracle he performs is saving sinners.
When God takes the one who is dead in his sins and trespasses.
And he makes us alive in Christ.
That’s an amazing miracle.
In fact, apart from God’s grace, mercy, love, and kindness it would be impossible.
But nothing will be impossible with God.
And Mary’s response to Gabriel, couldn’t be any better.
38 “See, I am the Lord’s servant,” said Mary. “May it happen to me as you have said.” Then the angel left her.
A Servant’s Response
A Servant’s Response
Mary’s response reflects the true heart of a servant.
The heart of one who will do anything to serve her Lord.
She willingly gives up her life to glorify God.
I’m not sure if you’ve ever thought about all that Mary would have to give up or endure in order to be Jesus’ Mother.
She will live under ridicule for the rest of her life.
She will receive wandering eyes and skeptical glances from people in her hometown.
“Sure she’s a virgin.” “I wonder who Jesus’ real dad is.”
In serving God she forfeits her honor.
She is blessed to be the Mother of Jesus, but the people in the town will still have questions about her story.
Listen, it’s a big deal that this young teenage girl is willing to give up her life, reputation, and honor to serve the Lord.
This is a great sacrifice.
And she doesn’t for one minute hesitate.
“I am the Lord’s Servant, may it happen to me as you have said.”
She knows that faithfulness to the Lord is more important than how the people of the town treat her.
She knows that living for God’s Glory is more important than appeasing man.
She knows that trusting in the Lord means actually trusting in the Lord completely.
I know some people who have been following Jesus for decades that don’t have the same amount of faith as Mary.
It’s easy to look back and say, well it all played out pretty well for her.
But on this day that Gabriel appeared to her she had not one idea how her life would play out.
She had no idea that the boy she would give birth to would one day rise from the grave conquering sin and death.
She had no idea what the future held.
But do you know what she did know.
She knew that she could trust the Lord.
She knew that she was better off listening to and following his will for her life then she would have been by doing her own thing.
She knew that serving the Lord is the greatest privileged we as his creation get to have.
So she sacrificed her own will.
Her own future.
Her own desires.
Her own reputation.
Her own honor.
To submit to the Lord.
B/c she trusted him.
Do you Trust the Lord?
Do you have that same level of faith?
Do you believe that God’s plan and design for Life is better than any one that you can come up with?
Are you willing to lay it all on the line to follow after the Lord?
No matter the cost.
B/c that’s what Jesus wants from us.
He wants us to lay aside our own desires, our own will, our own futures to serve him wholeheartedly.
And we can trust that if we do, we may face struggles on this earth, but we will a pleasing servant to him.
Now hear me carefully, this isn’t a call to be a better person.
This is a call to lay your life down at the feet of Jesus.
To receive the grace that he has extended to you.
To respond the the gospel message.
Knowing that you are a sinner who is separated from the Lord.
And it is only through the life, death, burial, resurrection and ascension of Jesus that you can have life.
And believing in the gospel will lead to a life change of living for him, submitting to him, and serving him wholeheartedly.
Recognizing the grace that we have recieved leads to a life of devotion.
I pray that our faith.
That our trust in the Lord will be as strong as Mary’s.
Let’s pray.