Mary’s Call to Faith

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We had a little bit of a crisis at our house on Thursday night. I went upstairs to help the little kids get ready for bed. And then I heard quite a commotion going on in Charlie’s room.

Heard him about to lose his mind. And I walked in there and tried to calm him down enough to ask him, what is going on? And finally, I get him to tell me there’s one of those evil butterflies over there.

So what evil butterflies? Is this something he saw on YouTube? Or what is it?

It’s a moth. There was a moth in his room, and he just was not having it. He wanted me to protect him from the moth.

Well, that’s fine, but I can’t see where the moth is. I don’t have anything to kill the moth with besides my bare hands, and I’m not that country yet. And so I said, you’re going to have to wait a minute.

I’ve got to go do Jojo’s heart medicine, and I’ll get a fly swatter. and can you just start getting dressed? Can you at least put some pajamas on and then I’ll help you with everything else you need to do?

No, I can’t do it. Can I wait until you get back? I need you to get started.

But I can’t. I can’t go in there. The moth is in there.

Love that boy. The moth is in there. At least go grab your pajamas and put those on in the hallway.

Can you do that? No, it’ll get me.

Charlie I promise you that moth is not going to come get you can you just have a little faith in me and he tells me no you said they eat clothes I’m not going back in there with clothes on yeah they don’t eat clothes while you’re in them so he’s where I did everything I could do to try to convince that boy to have a little faith does daddy ever lie to you no then just go grab your clothes no I can’t I wish I could tell you I got him to believe me but no I had to go do the medicine get the get the fly swatter come show him the uh carcass of the moth to assure him it was okay and I just thought can you not I understand you’re scared of the moth can can you not just have a little faith in me have a little faith that what I tell you is is true but folks we do the same thing with the Lord sometimes actually I do the same thing with the Lord more often than I’d like to admit I know what he’s telling me to to do is true I know what he says is true but it’s just hard to wrap my mind around it enough to go along with it and and we’re going to look this morning at the story of somebody who who did a little better job of that than I typically do we’re going to look at part of what Bob talked about this morning the story of of Mary and the angel coming to her.

And for most of you, it’s probably a familiar story, probably a very familiar story. You may even be tempted to check out this morning because you’ve heard it so many times. But let me assure you, if you pay attention to what you’re reading and don’t just gloss over it, no matter how many times I read this story or really anything out of the Bible, I see something I’ve never seen before.

That doesn’t mean I see something no one’s ever seen before because if the preacher tells you, I’m seeing something that nobody’s ever seen in 2,000 years, run, okay, but I’m not telling you I’m seeing stuff nobody’s ever seen before, but I see things that are new to me each time. And I think if we’ll come to God’s Word with an open mind and a willingness to learn, we’ll see new things even from a familiar story. And so we’re going to be this morning in Luke chapter 1.

Luke chapter 1. I don’t always do a Christmas series. As a matter of fact, last year on Christmas Day I preached from Genesis 3, which some of y’all thought was totally bananas.

But I don’t always do a Christmas series, but talking about faith, it really worked out well to be able to talk about Mary this morning. So once you’re with me in Luke chapter 1, if you’d stand as we read together from God’s Word, and if you don’t have your Bible this morning or can’t find Luke chapter 1, that’s all right, it’ll be on the screen for you. But we’re going to start in verse 26 and read through to about verse 38.

And it says, Now in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the descendants of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. And coming in, he said to her, Greetings, favored one.

The Lord is with you. But she was very perplexed at this statement and kept pondering what kind of salutation. What kind of greeting this was.

The angel said to her, 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 name him Jesus. 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, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom will have no end.

Mary said to the angel, how can this be since I am a virgin? The angel answered and said to her, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you, and for that reason the Holy Child shall be called the Son of God. And behold, even your relative Elizabeth has also conceived a son in her old age, and she who was called barren is now in her sixth month, for nothing will be impossible with God.

And Mary said, Behold the bond slave of the Lord, may it be done to me according to your word. And the angel departed from her, and you may be seated. one thing I want to share momentarily that doesn’t have a lot of bearing on the on this message in particular but may address some things that you hear out in the world there’s been a lot of talk the last few years and it seems to escalate every year about the pagan roots of christmas and and most of what we see on the internet about the pagan roots of christmas is pure fabrication One of the things that is attacked is there’s no reason to think that Jesus was born on December 25th.

And I’ve said this before too. I’ve had questions about would they not have. .

. They were out watching their flocks by night, and would they really do that in the cold? I really don’t know.

But just to tell you, the idea that Christmas was set on the 25th to try to co-opt a pagan holiday, I discovered this the last couple weeks in doing my research into this passage that based on the story of Zechariah serving in the temple when the angel came and spoke to him about the coming of John the Baptist, based on what we know historically about the rotations of the workers in the temple, Bible scholars in ancient times and now were able to look and say, okay, this must have happened at such and such time of the year. then you fast forward six months to now, and then you go 40 weeks out from that, and they arrived at December 25th. So it wasn’t just pure pagan superstition.

Do we know for sure that Jesus was born on December 25th? We don’t know. If it was vital for us to know exactly what date he was born, God would have told us.

But the idea of us celebrating Jesus’ birth on the 25th being rooted in pagan mythology, No, there’s a biblical basis for how they got to where they got, whether it was the right day or not. So this story, though, is a story about God telling somebody what He was going to do, something that did not make sense from a human standpoint, and their response being a choice between belief or disbelief. We’ve been talking about faith over the last few weeks, And Mary is one of the best examples of what it means to have faith.

Because this angel came to her with a message from God of something that was not only unbelievable, but something that was going to change the trajectory of her entire life. And her response was faith. As a matter of fact, the way she responds with such a pure and accepting faith is incredible.

It’s noteworthy. it’s worthy of us looking at and saying, I want to follow that example. And I think it’s put here for us to learn from.

But we see she exhibited faith in, I think this would be a difficult situation for any of us to be in, to be given a message like that. And we see throughout Scripture and in our own lives that faith can be the most difficult in situations where it’s most necessary. Doesn’t it seem that way that the times that you most need to have faith are also the times it’s hardest to have faith?

You know, telling Charlie, I promise the moth is not going to come eat you. That was hard for him to believe because he was scared of the moth. He really needed to have faith in order to go in there and get his pajamas and all that.

He has never, if I told him, I promise that the chocolate ice cream is delicious, I just need you to have faith. No problem. It doesn’t even require faith out of him, and yet faith would be so easy in that situation.

But it’s the situations that are hard to have faith. Those are the situations where faith is most often needed. It’s one of the great ironies of life, that when we most need to step out and trust God, it’s also the times when it’s hardest to do so.

Let’s go back over the story of what happened to her. So we see that this angel came to her with a message from God, that she as a virgin would conceive a son. In the sixth month, the angel was sent to her.

And it says she was engaged to a man whose name was Joseph. He was of the descendants of David. And the angel comes and says, greetings, favored one, the Lord is with you.

And it says she’s perplexed at this statement. She probably does not realize at first that he’s an angel. Certainly not the kind of angel that is described in some parts of Scripture where we’re talking about multiple sets of wings and eyes in strange places.

We don’t get the sense that she’s terrified here, just a little perplexed. Like, where did you come from and what are you talking about? The Lord is with me.

She’s perplexed at his greeting and was pondering, what does this mean? And finally, he says in verse 30, do not be afraid for you have found favor with God. He starts off all of this by saying, God has blessed you.

God is blessing you. God is going to continue to bless you because you have found favor with him. And here in verse 31 is where he gets to the challenging part.

Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name him Jesus. Stop right there for a minute. She even says, this is impossible.

We know, we understand that this is impossible. And yet he said it’s going to happen. You’re going to have a son.

You, Mary, the virgin, betrothed to Joseph, you’re going to have a son, and you’re going to name him Jesus. By the way, this is another thing that gets picked on this time of year. That the Old Testament prophecies say that this child would be born and he would be called Emmanuel.

And skeptics will look at the Bible and say, well, first he’s going to be called Emmanuel, then he’s going to be called Jesus. Isn’t this a contradiction? Emmanuel means God is with us.

Jesus, the name that was actually given to him, means the Lord saves. And I believe it was Tim Barnett who runs a social media ministry called Red Pen Logic said, Emmanuel tells us who he is and Jesus or Yeshua tells us what he does. So both of these titles are applied to him.

Who is he? He’s God with us. What is he doing?

He’s God saving us. And so both of those titles apply appropriately to Jesus. There’s no contradiction there.

They’re both telling us something about who he is. So he would be called Jesus. He would be great and be called the son of the most high.

So not only is the angel telling this simple peasant girl from Galilee, you’re going to have a son, even though there’s no physical means for you to have conceived a child, you’re going to have a son. But not only that, he’s going to be great. He’s going to be called the son of the Most High.

The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David. He’s going to be the promised Messiah. He’s going to be the ruler over Israel that’s been promised throughout thousands of years of Old Testament prophecy.

And the reign over the house of Jacob will be forever, and his kingdom will have no end. So not only is the angel telling her, you’re going to have a son, but saying to this simple peasant girl, your son, who is not physically possible for you to have, is going to be the greatest king in the history of Israel, or for that matter, the greatest king in the history of the world. That’s a lot to swallow.

I mean, that’s a lot of information to take in. I don’t care how spiritual you are. But I love the way she responds.

And I think oftentimes our English translations of the Greek here do Mary a little bit of an injustice. Verse 34, Mary said to the angel, how can this be since I’m a virgin? It almost sounds like I half believe this, how’s this going to work?

She’s not saying there, when you look at the Greek, she’s not necessarily saying how can this be? Like how is this possible? It looks like she’s saying how will this be?

How will this happen? And there’s a subtle difference there. How can this be means how could this possibly happen?

How will this be is okay. I guess so. How are you going to do that?

And as I read this, I don’t get the sense that Mary’s questioning, is it possible or not? She seems to believe it. She seems to be a lot more accepting of the message than I would be and you would probably be.

She says, okay, but I’ve got a question. How is all this going to work? how is this going to be?

And Gabriel explains to her in verse 35, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, the power of the Most High will overshadow you, and for that reason the Holy Child shall be called the Son of God. And this is another place that the skeptics have a field day and sometimes make off-color jokes. And folks, the fact is the Holy Spirit, being the Spirit of God, can create whatever and wherever the Holy Spirit wants to create.

When you consider the fact that we are talking about the God that spoke the entire universe into existence, if you start from that premise, then the idea that God would speak into existence two cells that start dividing and going through the process of growing into a fully formed baby, the idea that God could speak, it puzzles me, the idea that God could speak the entire universe into existence and then we think it’s too hard for him to do the same thing to two tiny cells. To create a body for the Lord Jesus to take on. And I get it that there are a lot of people in our world who don’t think that God did that or that God has that power or even that God is.

But instead of mocking our theology, at least understand that it’s not inconsistent. If we start from that premise that God is and God can do these things, then there’s nothing crazy at all about believing that God could create two cells. And that’s exactly what the Holy Spirit did.

when she says how is this going to be what’s the plan here gabriel says the holy spirit’s got it under control this idea of him overshadowing her you know sometimes the presence of the lord would appear in in earth-shaking ways and yet this idea of being overshadowed it’s it’s the very gentle work of god and he’s going to come and he’s going to take care of it and for that reason the holy child shall be called the son of God. And then Gabriel provides an example. If you recall back to the beginning of this series, I’ve told you that faith is not the same thing as blind faith.

That oftentimes the world thinks that what we are called to have as Christians is blind faith. Just believe without any evidence or believe in spite of the evidence. But all throughout God’s word, when he calls them to believe something, he frequently gives them some kind of example of what he’s done in the past to show that he can do the thing he’s promising now.

and here Mary is being asked to step out in faith and believe that God can give her this child and do all the things that he’s promised and one of the one of the evidences that’s provided to her that God can do this over here is look at Elizabeth because everybody thought she was barren and she’s in her old age it was not possible for her to have a child either with or without a husband and yet look she’s six months pregnant and so the angel says not only not only here’s how God is going to do this, but here’s the evidence that he can, because he’s already shown that it’s possible. And verse 37, I think, is key to this whole thing. For nothing will be impossible with God.

Don’t limit God. Don’t try to think that because you can’t imagine how it’s going to work, that God can’t do it. Nothing is impossible with God.

Now, don’t take this to absurd conclusions. Don’t assume that this. .

. Folks, there are some things, according to Scripture, that God cannot do. God cannot sin.

God cannot lie. God cannot do anything that is outside of His nature. So this is not the answer to the whole, well, could God build a rock so heavy He can’t lift it?

Okay, that is a logical impossibility. God is a God of logic. The way I explain it is that God can do anything God would do.

Anything that’s within the nature of God to do, He can do. He has no limitations except for what’s in His own nature to do. So while God can’t sin, God can’t commit acts of evil, which by the way, by definition, if God does it, it’s not evil because of His nature.

Thank you. But He says, nothing is impossible. He said, just because you don’t understand how it’s going to work, just because in the human standpoint, in the human mind, it doesn’t make sense that a woman would be able to have a child without a husband, without a man involved somewhere.

There’s nothing about this that violates God’s nature. God can do it. God can do anything that God would do.

Anything that God would desire to do, God can do. And God’s not limited just by what we can imagine Him being able to do. And so in response to that, nothing will be impossible with God.

Anything God wants to do is possible for God to do. Verse 38, Mary said, behold the bond slave of the Lord. Now, what does that mean?

She’s saying, I’m yours. I’m yours, Lord. Do what you want.

May it be done to me according to your word. Everything you’re saying, let it happen to me. This was an incredibly difficult thing to process or to swallow, to wrap our minds around.

And yet she looked at it and she said, okay, Lord, do what you want to do. That’s incredible faith. That’s faith that I very much want to have and still fall short of.

But I can’t imagine a situation more difficult than this. A situation certainly more difficult to believe, a situation more difficult to figure out. She’s in a culture where she can get stoned to death over this.

At the very least, she’s going to end up, she could end up without a husband and unable to find a husband and thus unable to support herself. There’s a lot of ways this story could have gone wrong from a human standpoint. This would be an incredibly difficult situation to have this kind of faith, and yet that’s exactly the kind of situation where faith is most necessary.

And this brings my attention to what stuck out at me for the first time reading through this passage. One of the things that the angel said to her as he was presenting all of this, he said to her in verse 28, Greetings, favored one. The Lord is with you.

Then he also says in verse 30, You found favor with the Lord. And that kind of jumped out at me this week. This connection between the favor of God and what she was being called to do or called to believe.

And I realized that this call to walk by faith can be a sign of God’s favor. Now, why is that important to point out? It’s because oftentimes, at least I’m guilty of this, and probably some in this room are guilty of this, that we look at the circumstances where we’re called to walk by faith and we look at it as a punishment.

Have you ever done that? Have you ever been in a situation where it’s difficult, you don’t know how you’re going to get through it, and you’ve just got to trust God to get you through it, and you look at it and say, what have I done wrong that I’m here? Anybody else?

You don’t have to show your hands, but I’ll know by the look on your face. I think a lot of us have been there. And yes, I know we can get into difficult circumstances because of things we’ve done wrong.

I’m familiar with making a mess of things. That’s happened to me too. But there are times that God calls us to step out and do something difficult and trust Him while He does something that we can’t imagine.

And many times, because it is difficult, I look at that and say, what did I do wrong to get here? Why am I being punished? That wasn’t the angel’s message to Mary at all.

If God’s calling a person to trust Him and follow Him and believe Him as He does what only He can do, and then that person is walking by faith and getting to see God do amazing things, it’s a sign of walking with God. It’s a sign of God’s favor. It’s God at work in your life and allowing you to see and allowing you to witness the things that only God can do.

And so that jumped out at me because of the way I look at difficulties to realize that she wasn’t being put in this position because she’d done anything wrong. She was being called into this opportunity to walk by faith because she had found God’s favor. And we might need to change the way, okay, I might need to change the way I look at some of the difficulties that I face on a regular basis.

Instead of, woe is me, what have I done wrong? Why do I deserve to be here? Lord, why do I get to be here being the one to see what you’re going to do in this situation?

Because I know I can’t fix it on my own. And I tell you this knowing that I’m sure I’m going to have to remember this this week, and I’m initially going to hate it. Because these things are easy to talk about and very hard to do.

But if we could retrain the way we think, to realize that having to step out in faith is not a punishment. It’s actually a sign that we’re walking with the Lord. If we could retrain ourselves to think that way, it would change so much.

But I think the biggest lesson we can learn from Mary and her faith here is that when God promises to do something extraordinary, faith is the right response. Everything about Mary’s response was faith. even her questions.

And it’s okay to have questions. God can handle your questions. It’s one thing to look at a situation and say, God, how are you going to fix this?

How could you possibly fix this, God? It’s one thing to say that. It’s another thing to say, God, I believe you can fix it, but I sure would like to know how.

See, one looks at the circumstance and doubts he can fix it. The other says, I believe he can fix it. I just don’t know how he’s going to do it.

And that was her response. Okay, how’s this going to work? And she still didn’t get a complete answer.

I mean, he didn’t, Gabriel didn’t pull out the biology textbooks and the physics textbooks and explain exactly what God was going to do where and when. He didn’t explain any of that. He just said the Holy Spirit’s going to come take care of it.

And that seems to have been enough for her. Mary believed God even though she still had questions. Folks, when God promises to do extraordinary things.

When God promises to work amid difficult circumstances, the time and the energy and the effort that we put on looking at those circumstances and saying, I don’t know how he could possibly fix these circumstances. I don’t know how he could possibly work here. I don’t know how he could possibly do this.

The time and energy and focus that we spend fixated on those circumstances our time and energy and focus that we take away from our trust in God. We are taking the focus that we should put on God and our trust in Him and glorifying Him for what He’s going to do, and instead we’re putting that focus on our circumstances. And we do this a lot.

God says, I want to do this in your life. There have been times I’ve said, I really don’t think you can use me in this way. Again, anything God wants to do, God can do, even if it doesn’t make sense to me.

God, I don’t know if you could work in our church that way. I don’t know if you could use us to do that. God can do what he wants to do.

If God’s called you to do something, even if it doesn’t make sense to you, even if you don’t see how it could possibly work, trust him enough to step out and do it. Trust him to work in your life. Trust him to work in your family.

Trust him to work in in this church and in this community believe that God can do what God wants to do. And the reason all of this is so important is that faith is at the very heart of our relationship with God. Faith is at the very heart of our relationship with God.

That’s why we studied weeks ago that he says without faith it’s impossible to please him. Without looking at God’s record and saying, I’ve seen where you’ve been powerful and faithful all these times, and so even though I don’t have it in my hand already, what you’ve promised over here, I can take that extra step and believe based on this that you’re the same God and you’re going to do this over here. Without believing that, it’s impossible to step forward and do what he’s called us to do.

It’s impossible to live lives that please him. And honestly, faith builds the relationship. Faith deepens the relationship.

Every time I have one of those conversations with my kids, and they don’t always go the way the moth conversation did. But every time we’ve had one of those conversations and I’ve said, I need you to trust me, and they do, that relationship gets a little tighter. And I think it works the same way with God.

Every time God calls us to step out and trust him, and we do, that relationship grows a little deeper. And I’d like to say it becomes easier to trust him with the next thing. Sometimes that’s the case.

Sometimes we get the opportunity to trust him with even bigger things. but Mary trusted God and Mary got to experience the work of God in ways that most of us will never see. What is it that God wants to do in your life?

What is it that God wants to do in the life of this church? What is it that God wants to use you for? And he can do it however he wants, but he wants to use you or he wants to use us.

What is it that God wants that he’s just waiting for us to have faith? If there’s something God’s calling you to do, it’s okay to still have questions, but believe that He can do it.