Deo Gloria
Sermon for December 20, 2020
Pastor Martin Bentz
Text: Luke 1:26-38
Theme: A Miracle is About to Happen!
- A miracle announced by an angel
- A miracle promised by God
- A miracle accepted by faith
It was a little after 7:00 when Billie slowly opened his eyes. Then all at once he remembered. Today was Christmas Day and he could hardly wait. He jumped out of bed, hastily pulled on his slippers and made a bee line for the family room. Scarcely did his feet touch the floor as he scampered down the stairs and dashed across the living room. But he came to a dead stop when he rounded the corner and entered the family room. Wow! There before him stood the Christmas tree, shimmering with lights and tinsel and beautiful ornaments of every shape and description. And there underneath the tree was a host of presents wrapped in shining paper of green and red and gold. His eyes were as big a saucers and his jaw just about touched the floor.
Do we tend to lose that sense of excitement over the years? As we grow older, does Christmas become old hat, just another holiday? Do we lose the wonder of it all? If we do, shame on us, because as Luke reminds us, there is something very special about Christmas. Christmas is the celebration of a miracle, the miracle of our Savior’s birth. This morning as we listen again to a familiar story from Scripture, one thing will become unmistakably clear: a miracle is about to happen—a miracle announced by an angel, a miracle promised by God, and a miracle accepted by faith. (Read text.)
The miraculous nature of this story can be seen from the very start. Normally a woman might find out that she’s going to have a baby from a nurse or a doctor in the doctor’s office. Or she might find out from a little test strip she purchased at the store. Or she may become suspicious when she missed her normal period; but not Mary. Mary found out she was going to have a baby from an angel. “The angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus’”(vv. 30-31).
This was the second time for Gabriel, wasn’t it? The first was when he announced the birth of John the Baptist to his father, Zechariah. Obviously like John the Baptist, Mary’s baby was going to be a special baby. I mean think about it. Things like that just don’t happen every day. God doesn’t send angels to announce the birth of just anyone. Obviously something very special was about to happen.
Luke mentions another unusual aspect about this story in the second verse of our text: the angel Gabriel was sent “to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary”(v. 27). I’m sure you realize that a virgin cannot have a baby. A husband and wife together can have a baby, but a virgin by herself cannot. True, there are many single women and girls who have babies these days, some only 14 or 15 years old; but sadly they are not virgins. Mary was. She had never had sex with a man. And yet the angel told her that she was going to have a baby. Again, this is something that doesn’t happen every day. In fact, it never happens. This was a miracle that was about to take place.
And notice something else the angel Gabriel said. Not only did he tell Mary that she was going to have a baby. He also told her what the baby’s name would be: “You are to give him the name Jesus”(v. 31). Jesus—Jehovah saves, Jehovah is salvation—that’s the meaning of that name. Yes, there were other children who were given the name Jesus, children whose parents believed in God’s promise to send a Savior, who looked forward to the day when that promise would finally come true. Here is the one who would fulfill that promise, the Savior, the one who would rescue God’s people from their enemies, from Satan, death and hell; the one who would save his people from their sins. Yes, this was going to be a tremendous miracle: the Savior was about to be born.
You know, maybe that’s one of our problems. Maybe we’ve lost some of the thrill and wonder of Christmas because we’ve lost sight of our own sinfulness and how badly we need a Savior. No, we wouldn’t claim to be perfect. Nobody’s perfect. But we’re not really that bad, a lot better than some of the other people we know. We don’t take advantage of people the way they do. We don’t get drunk every weekend the way they do, just once in a while. We don’t sleep around with a bunch of different guys the way they do. We just sleep with our boyfriend. We don’t say the mean and nasty things to people that they do. We just like to gossip behind their backs. And somehow we think that’ll be good enough for God, that God will sort of just overlook our sins and our faults and will accept us into heaven.
Have we forgotten? Have we forgotten what God’s Word says, that the soul that sins is the one that will die, that the wages of sin is death, that all our righteous acts are like filthy rags, that there is no one righteous, not even one? Without a Savior you and I would be lost. Without a Savior we would spend the rest of forever separated from God and his love. That’s what makes Christmas so special. Christmas is the birth of our Savior, the one who came to rescue us from our sins and the punishment we deserve, eternal punishment in hell. That’s what puts a skip in our step and a sparkle in our eyes as we look forward to Christmas. A miracle is about to happen. Our Savior is about to be born.
It’s a miracle that had also been promised by God. Earlier we noted that Mary was a virgin, and that a virgin having a baby was not an ordinary, every day occurrence, that it was nothing less than a miracle. It was also something that had been predicted by God. 700 years before this, to a wicked king named Ahaz God had given this gracious and incredible sign: “The virgin will be with a child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel”(Isaiah 7:14). That promise was about to come true. In Mary that incredible sign was about to be fulfilled. A virgin was going to conceive and give birth to a son. And her son would be called Immanuel, “God with us.” The angel indicated that too, didn’t he? He told Mary that her son would be called “the Son of the Most High,” that he would be called “the Son of God.”
And that’s not all the angel told her. “The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end”(vv. 32+33). A thousand years before this God had told David about a very special descendant of his. We heard about that in our first Scripture lesson this morning. God told David about a son who would build a house for his name, a son who would sit on his throne forever and whose kingdom would never end. This promise too was about to be fulfilled. Mary’s son would be that long-awaited descendant of David. He would be the one who would build the true house of God, not an earthly temple but a spiritual one, the Holy Christian Church. Mary’s son would be the true King of Israel, the one who would rule over God’s people forever. These were very special promises to God’s people, promises that spoke about the Messiah, the Savior God had promised to send. Now these promises were finally going to be fulfilled. This was nothing less than a miracle.
It reminds us that God’s other promises will also be fulfilled. It urges us to look forward to the day when our Savior and King will come again. God kept the previous promises he had made. He sent Immanuel, the son of a virgin. He sent a king, that son of David, who will rule over God’s people forever and ever. As we look forward to the celebration of Christmas, we also can look forward to the day when our king will come again and take us to live with him in his eternal kingdom of glory. What a miracle that will be!
Finally it’s a miracle accepted by faith. When Gabriel told her that she was going to have a baby, that she was to give him the name Jesus, that her son would be called the Son of the Most High, that he would sit on the throne of his father David and that his kingdom would never end, there were naturally some questions that came to Mary’s mind, one question in particular. “How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”(v. 34) Mary’s question was not prompted by doubt as Zechariah’s was. It was prompted by a simple and obvious truth: Mary was a virgin. Virgins could not have babies back then anymore than they can today. Mary’s question was a honest one: “How will this be? How will such a thing happen?”
The angel explained it this way: “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God”(v. 35). In short it would be a miracle. Mary’s son would not have a human father. He would be conceived in Mary’s womb through the power and working of the Holy Spirit. In this way Mary’s son would share in our humanity, but not in our sinfulness. He would be Mary’s son—obviously. But he would also be “the holy one,” the sinless Son of God. Amazing!
Next the angel gave her a sign. Mary hadn’t asked for one, but the angel gave her one to assure her that such a thing would happen. He told her about her cousin Elizabeth, the barren one, that she too was expecting a baby, in fact, that she was already in her sixth month.
And then he concluded with this statement, “For nothing is impossible with God”(v. 37). “Yes, it may seem impossible, Mary, that you could conceive and bear a child without a human father, that your child will be David’s royal Son, that your child will be the Son of God, that he will be the Savior—yes, it may seem impossible. But God can do the impossible. Nothing is impossible with God.”
And notice how Mary responded: “May it be to me as you have said”(v. 38). Mary believed what the angel told her. She accepted it all in faith.
How do you respond to words of the angel, to the miracle of the virgin birth, to the stunning announcement that the son to be born of Mary is the Son of God and Savior of the world? Do you believe it? Do you accept it in humble faith like Mary? Or is your response more like that of Ebenezer Scrooge, “Bah, humbug!” Do we reject the miracle of Christmas like so many do today? Do we reject the miracle of the virgin birth because things like that just don’t happen? Do we attempt to reason away or explain away the miracle of our Savior’s birth and in the process explain away our salvation? I certainly hope not. I pray you have a faith like Mary’s, a faith that believes that nothing is impossible with God, a faith that believes that Mary’s Son is indeed that special son of David and even more the Son of God, a faith that believes that in just a few days we’re going to be celebrating a miracle, the miracle of our Savior’s birth. Amen.