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The Insanity of Christ’s Birth
You can imagine the scene.
Mary is standing in the living room with concern all over her face.
It’s so obvious, Joseph is forced to ask, “Mary, what is going on?” “I have something to tell you.”
She says.
“It’s going to seem crazy, but I promise you it is the truth.
I am pregnant.”
Upon the last the syllable, Jospeh feels his legs get a little weak and his heart begins to race.
“What?”
He murmurs.
She quickly tells him that she has been faithful.
“How can you say faithful,” he responds.
“Joseph, I one hundred percent promise you.
I have not cheated on you.”
Mary tearfully explains.
“Did someone hurt you?
Did a man take advantage of you?
Good lord, my wife was assaulted,” he says out loud.
No, she assures him.
God caused me to be pregnant.
Mary explains, “An angel came to me in the middle of the night and said
Luke 1:30–35 (ESV)
“Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.
And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.
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,
and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
And I said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”
And the angel answered me, “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.
The quiet tension is so thick you almost need a knife to cut through it.
Joseph just stares at Mary.
His face is somber while his mind is racing, drawing the only obvious conclusion he can think of…she’s insane.
This whole thing is insane.
Put yourself in Joseph’s shoes at that moment.
Imagine your wife or your daughter coming to you and saying, “I’m pregnant.
And my baby’s daddy is God.”
Your first thought that lands squarely on your tongue is, “She is obviously insane.”
We all know how this works.
It takes two human beings to tango.
Joseph is a smart man.
Hearing Mary explain herself does not line up well with what we know to be a reasonable explanation to her pregnancy.
It is out of this world insane.
Just think about it for a minute.
Why would God leave heaven to come to earth?
Why would he surrender himself to take on flesh?
Why would he even consider coming into the world through the womb, and the womb of a teenage girl of all things?
Why would he would allow himself to be born into a poor carpenter’s family?
Why not a king’s palace?
Why would he dare become human?
This is pure insanity!
And so we see the the way of Christ’s birth.
I can understand why Joseph is unable to wrap his mind around Mary’s explanation.
The way of Christ’s birth is a stumbling block to a lot of people.
It doesn not make sense in the way the world works.
Kings do not bow down to servants.
Presidents do not allow themselves to be put in vulnerable positions.
And God is not supposed to become a human being.
Last week God showed us that his ways are not our ways.
He showed us that he takes what is foolish in the world and shames the wise, and takes what is weak to shame the strong.
God takes what is low in the world to bring to nothing things that are.
And what seems like insanity to us is really God’s sane way of demonstrating his profound love for you and me.
The miraculous way of Christ’s birth demonstrates God’s insane love for you.
This morning, let’s walk through the miraculous way of Christ’s birth and ponder how it demonstrates God’s insane love for you.
The Insanity of the Holy Conception (Matthew 1:17-18)
Mary is pregnant.
There is no denying.
Joseph did not know his wife.
How did she become pregnant.
As we have already seen, God sent an angel to tell her
Matthew’s account says
Luke obviously helps us know a little more about her conception.
First, it is ordained by God.
God promised through the prophet Isaiah that a virgin will bare a child (Isaiah 7:14).
He sent an angel to tell Mary he is keeping that promise through her womb.
Second, the child will be called holy.
He will be without sin.
That is the purpose of the Holy Spirit hovering over her.
God himself was going to conceive in her a child, not like the first Adam, but a second Adam.
Conception and birth is the way human beings enter the world.
By doing it this way, God can have two full natures.
The child can be fully God and fully man; one nature conceived of the Holy Spirit, and the other nature of Mary.
Having God’s nature is what makes him holy, without sin.
The Bible describes Jesus’s incarnation in this way
Taking on flesh he was able to sympathize with us, and yet be holy.
and John says
His conception by the Holy Spirit ensured Jesus was not born into sin like we are.
He was born Holy and remained Holy throughout his life, death, and resurrection.
Norm McDonald, the famous comedian who died recently, had a fondness for Christian doctrine.
I’m not sure if was a Christian, but he thought Christianity better explained the paradox of humanity.
On the one hand he could see how some would believe we are divine in some ways.
He saw the beautiful complexity of human beings.
He saw how we love art and aesthetics , and how we build things and reason among ourselves.
But he also saw how wicked we can be to each other.
He understood that as amazing as human beings can be, we are deeply flawed.
He reckoned in his own heart that human beings are both made int he image of God and are sinful.
So to say that a human being was sinless, holy, was insane to Norm McDonald, and I would agree with him until we looked at Jesus.
Jesus’s life was marked by holiness.
Everyone who met him, who really know him, knew he was sinless.
Well, he was born that way.
The child in Mary’s womb was going to be a special human being.
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