Blessed Like Mary • Luke 1:26-38
31:53 Teaching begins
Notes
Tough Christmas, dark Christmas. I want a relaxed, stress-free Christmas, and a stress-free life while we’re at it.
But that’s not going to happen. We do not seem to be able to escape our circumstances that close in around us. We can hope for happiness but we might be disappointed. Some call it realism, others call it pessimism.
What is possible is to receive the word of the Lord and be highly favoured by God. To be blessed by God is better than to be happy.
I’m reading in Luke 1 from verse 26.
1. Verse 26 sets up the context for the announcement.
A. Sixth month refers to that sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy with John the Baptist.
B. Gabriel was sent to her husband Zacharias to announce that his prayers would be answered, and he and his wife would have a son. Good news?
C. Zacharias says, “Really? Aren’t you a bit late? We’re old.”
D. Gabriel says, “Well, it’s going to happen anyway, even though you did not believe me. And you’re not going to be able to speak until it happens.” So Zacharias can’t speak now, but he is a believer in the word of the Lord.
E. Because it’s now the sixth month we realise that the word of the Lord is being fulfilled even as Gabriel is sent to make another announcement. This is our context for what happens next.
2. God sends Gabriel to Mary to announce His will for her.
A. I notice that Gabriel is sent from God to Mary.
1. God is not speaking through men for these announcements. He sends His word through angels. These are glorious beings who are from God, glorious, powerful, impressive. You don’t have to wonder if this comes from God.
2. But the angels are not emphasised here. You don’t get a sense of, wow, this is the same Gabriel that spoke to Daniel 500 years ago.
3. The word of God is the most important element, not who is delivering it.
B. The message is about grace—it’s there three times.
1. It’s in his greeting. The word can be translated greetings, but it’s derived from the Greek word for grace and means rejoice. Favour makes you rejoice.
2. The angel says, the Lord is with you, highly favoured one. The word means to make graceful or to endow with grace. God is singling out Mary to endow her with grace.
3. You have found grace with God. He favours you, He accepts you, He approves of you, He gives you His attention, His commendation, His praise. He is pleased with you.
4. When you have found favour with the Lord you don’t need to be afraid. It’s okay, it’s a little bright and sudden, and you may not understand what’s going on, but everything is okay.
C. You will miraculously bear the Messiah.
1. You will conceive and bear a Son and name Him Jesus. That name means Yahweh, or the Lord, is saviour. Yehoshua. In the Old Testament that comes out as Joshua.
2. He is the Son of God, the Most High. He is also the Son of David, descended from King David as God spoke when He made His covenant with David. According to the promise, this Son will rule on the throne of David forever. This also connects with Daniel 7 where that kingdom is described, and we are introduced to the Son of Man, who is an equal with the Lord.
3. This is momentous news. God made covenants, eternal promises, to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and David. They are all fulfilled in the descendant of Abraham and of David. That’s why Matthew begins his gospel with a genealogy showing that Jesus is the son of Abraham and the son of David.
4. The One who will fulfill every word of God is coming.
3. This is unexpected and Mary is trying to process this announcement.
A. She was surprised, agitated, and perplexed.
1. Angels are overwhelming and impressive in themselves.
2. What he says is understandable enough, but it presents problems and difficulties.
B. The word of the Lord is impossible.
1. The only way we know to conceive and bear children is through sexual reproduction. There is no other way.
2. And Mary says that can’t happen because, as she says literally, I do not know a man. She is betrothed to Joseph. The betrothal was as binding as marriage and could not be consummated until they are married. It would be considered adultery if she were to conceive and she would be stoned for breaking the Law of Moses.
3. This is not normal. It’s humanly impossible. How can this happen?
4. The angel says it will happen because God says it will.
A. This is not by human life or human power. Therefore it will not happen in a normal human way.
B. It will happen through God’s life, that is, His Spirit, and through God’s power. Because it’s God’s life and God’s power that holy child will be the Son of God.
C. The same holy life and power that said, “Let there be light,” and light came into being, is the same One who now says, “Let the virgin conceive and bear a Son, and let His name be called The Lord is Saviour.”
D. God has already called for life to come out of human inability.
1. He told Abraham I will give you a son, and Abraham says, “I’m 99.” God says, “Is there anything too difficult for the Lord?”
2. Isaac’s wife Rebekah was barren, and Jacob’s wife Rachel was barren and God gave them children.
3. Manoah and his wife couldn’t have children and an angel told them the word of the Lord: you will have a son. Elisha told the Shunammite woman by the word of the Lord, you will have a child.
4. And then, by the word of the Lord Elizabeth has conceived. She was old and barren and God said she would conceive the one He promised would go before His Messiah, in the spirit and power of Elijah.
E. This is going to happen because God says so. The angel says literally in verse 37: for not even one word from God will ever fail.
5. Mary submits to the word of the Lord.
A. She did not necessarily understand everything. We still don’t know exactly what God did, but for certain it was not in the usual human way.
B. But she humbles herself before the Lord, submits herself to the Lord and receives that word. There is no argument.
C. Believing God doesn’t mean you understand everything. But a true bondservant of God believes His word and submits to that word.
1. This is a part of Christianity that Islam has a hard time with and they say it is blasphemous, that God cannot have a son because they take it to mean God having a child in the ordinary human way. They reject that as blasphemous.
2. Christians agree. That is blasphemous. We reject it too because that understanding is wrong. It’s not what God said would happen.
3. Mary believed God and received His word.
4. The reason why Muslims have a problem with the virgin birth of Christ is that they do not listen to the word of God, they do not believe God, they do not receive His word.
5. True bondservants of God are submitted to the word of the Lord.
6. The result of believing and receiving the word of God is fulfillment and joy.
A. Mary immediately goes up to the hill country of Judah to visit Elizabeth.
B. She walks in the door, says hi to her.
C. The baby in Elizabeth’s womb leaps for joy and Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit.
1. The angel told Zacharias that the baby would be filled with the Holy Spirit while still in his mother’s womb.
2. This just happened when Mary walked in the house.
3. Because John was filled, Elizabeth was filled as well with the Holy Spirit.
D. And it’s extraordinary, because Elizabeth knows by the Holy Spirit what’s happening here.
1. You are blessed!
2. You will bear the Messiah! You are the mother of my Lord!
3. You are blessed because you have believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken by the Lord.
E. Mary goes on to worship the Lord because she too is filled with the Spirit. She believed what God said. Here’s our scene: Mary, Elizabeth, and even John in the womb, experience joy and exaltation by the power of the Holy Spirit.
7. So what?
A. The first joy of Christmas is that not even one word of God will ever fail. That’s how valuable and precious it is. Sure, infallible. It will never return to God empty, not accomplishing what He sent it out for. Everything that God has said must be accomplished.
B. You will always be blessed when you believe and submit to the word of God.
1. It’s easy to think of happy as when circumstances go well. Things do line up from time to time. That was great. That’s the way life ought to be. But instead life is a struggle, complicated, difficult. Life is hard.
2. Mary’s life was not smooth and free of difficulty. When she submitted to the word of God her life became more complicated. She had to explain what happened to Joseph. He didn’t believe her. He didn’t want her to get stoned for adultery so he was going to divorce her secretly to save her life. Though they lived in Nazareth she had to give birth in Bethlehem. She had to watch her Son be crucified. Things did not get easy when she received the word of the Lord.
3. But she was blessed because she believed that there would be a fulfillment of what the Lord said. She did give birth to the Son of God. And she was among those who saw Him after He rose from the dead.
B. The second joy of Christmas is to be highly favoured like Mary.
1. I think that would beat any present you would ever get for Christmas. It’s going to last longer than any present! Favoured by God, accepted by Him, pleasing to God, approved by God.
2. You think, no way. What Mary did was unique. There’s no repeating that blessing.
3. This word for highly favoured is used twice in the New Testament. The other use is in Ephesians 1:6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved. Highly favoured, accepted in the Beloved. We believe the word of the Lord, that Jesus died for us to redeem us from our sins. He rose from the dead to give us eternal life.
C. My prayer for us this Christmas is for each of us to believe and receive the word of the Lord, and be highly favoured by God in the Beloved, Jesus Christ, and be filled with His Spirit, just like Elizabeth, Mary, and John.
D. My prayer for all of us is in Psalm 36:7-10 How precious is Your lovingkindness, O God! Therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of Your wings. They are abundantly satisfied with the fullness of Your house, and You give them drink from the river of Your pleasures. For with You is the fountain of life; in Your light we see light. Oh, continue Your lovingkindness to those who know You, and Your righteousness to the upright in heart.
Let’s pray.