Mary’s Christmas Invitation
Download MP3If you have a Bible, I invite you to turn to Luke chapter 1. We are going to be taking a break from Mark over the next few weeks during the Advent season, to take a look at the Christmas story, as found in the gospel of Luke. If you don't have a Bible, it's there in your worship guide. For those of you who have been over to, to my house, you you know that Lauren and I live in a very old house. I think it's a 113 years old.
Joel Brooks:And it sits between 2 sets of train tracks. Many of you who've come over, you've heard the trains. Because a train takes approximately 1 minute and 15 seconds to go by, with the horns blaring most of the time. Now when Lauren and I bought this house, we were not thinking about the trains. It didn't cross our mind.
Joel Brooks:But let me tell you, that first night it did. That that first night we are we are just laying down on the ground. Nothing's really put together yet. Certainly nothing's up on the wall. And when the first train came through, it felt like it was coming through.
Joel Brooks:Coming through our house that it was so loud as a sound, the horn was was bouncing off all of the walls. Our house felt like it was shaking because it was. And Lauren and I just thought, we have made a terrible mistake. So that was 25 years ago. Now if you were to ask us about it, this train doesn't keep us up at night.
Joel Brooks:The trains don't. They put us to sleep. We we hear those trains, and it's just warm and comforting. We love the sound. It's hard to sleep if we don't hear trains.
Joel Brooks:A matter of fact, one time we were trying to find a place to stay at Glacier National Park, and you couldn't find any place there. All the hotels were booked. Finally, we found a hotel and they said, well, we do have one room. It's never booked though because it's right by the tracks. And we're like, we'll take it.
Joel Brooks:And it was the best night sleep we had all week. If if they made little sound makers that you could travel with and instead of the sound of the ocean, they had the sound of trains, that would be perfect. -Living in between the tracks is how I've come to kind of view the Christmas story. What should feel like a freight train coming through the house, rattling us, stories with angels and virgin birth as a fragile human baby. Those those facts should startle us.
Joel Brooks:But instead, when we hear the stories about the angels singing, it's it's not like train horns blaring. It's more like a lullaby. We hear this Christmas stories and they're just so familiar. And they're like a warm cozy blanket to us. And, we could kind of miss the wonder.
Joel Brooks:And so my hope for us is that, over the next few weeks, as we enter into this Advent season, and we go through these stories once again, that they would once again shock us, that we would stand in awe before them, and maybe feel the walls of our heart shake a little. And so let's read Luke chapter 1, we'll begin reading in 26, and we'll go all the way to verse 43. In the 6th month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to the city of Galilee, named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, greetings, oh favored one.
Joel Brooks:The Lord is with you. But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And 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 call his name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the son of the most high.
Joel Brooks: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 Mary said to the angel, how will this be, since I am a virgin? And the angel answered her, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.
Joel Brooks:Therefore, the child to be born will be called Holy, the Son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth, in her old age has also conceived a son. And this is the 6th month with her, who was called barren, for nothing will be impossible with God. And Mary said, behold, I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word.
Joel Brooks:And the angel departed from her. In those days, Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah. And she entered the house of Zechariah, and she greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.
Joel Brooks:And she exclaimed with a loud cry, blessed are you among women, blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? This is the word of the Lord. Amen. Would you pray with me?
Joel Brooks:Father, I pray that you would open up our hearts and our minds to, to see once again the the truly wonderful things in this story. Lord, I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore. Lord, may your words remain, and may they change us. And we pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen.
Joel Brooks:This story doesn't need any embellishment. It doesn't need any bells or whistles added to it, and, I actually think those things take away from the story. What's needed for us is for the Spirit to give us fresh eyes to see this, and so one of the things I wanna do is just to simply walk through this story, verse by verse, as simply as I can. The story begins in the 6th month, when the angel Gabriel goes to Nazareth. Now this isn't the 6th month of the calendar year, this is the 6th month of Elizabeth's pregnancy.
Joel Brooks:Elizabeth was a relative, possibly the aunt of Mary. And she was pregnant now with John the Baptist. 6 months ago, Gabriel had gone to her and had broken 400 years of silence when he pronounced to Zechariah and to Elizabeth that they would have a child. 400 years of waiting to hear from the Lord. And finally, the Lord broke through that silence saying, the front runner or the forerunner of the Messiah is going to be born through you, Elizabeth, even in your old age.
Joel Brooks:And after telling Elizabeth that news, Gabriel is now sent on another mission. 6 months later, this time to the little town of Nazareth. To call, Nazareth a city, which is what you read there in your translation, that's a stretch. Nazareth was maybe 2,000 people at this time. Any of you ever heard of, Rehoboth?
Joel Brooks:Anybody? We got we got 1. We got 2. Anybody know where it is? Yes.
Joel Brooks:You would have to say it's outside of Dothan. Because nobody knows where Rehoboth is. It's it's a little little town of 2,000 people. If I were to say, where is Aliceville? You would say, I have no idea.
Joel Brooks:But if I said it's a little town of 2,000 people just outside of Tuscaloosa, well, it helps give you a sense of geography. That's that's what Luke is doing here. Nobody knows where Nazareth is. So he says it's in the region of Galilee, which people were vaguely familiar with. All that to say is that Nazareth was in the sticks.
Joel Brooks:I mean, it was out there in the country. Country with a k. Jesus, he would've spoken, living there, he would have spoken with a noticeable country accent. I don't know what the Aramaic version of y'all is, but Jesus would have used it. If he had a stream going in his backyard, he would have called it a creek.
Joel Brooks:So so people would have known where Jesus was from, what region he was from, just from hearing him speak. But we read that the reason that Gabriel was sent to this small country town was in order to find a virgin who was betrothed to a man named Joseph. And that this virgin's name was Mary. Now, Mary at this time was likely 12 years old, maybe 13, because that was the typical age for betrothal during this time. The legal age for a child to actually go ahead and get married was 12 years old.
Joel Brooks:For a boy, it was 14 years old. That's when it was legal in Roman society and the Jews typically followed this. And one of the reasons that they got married so young was this, this made sure that the the woman was a virgin. Actually, they didn't have different words from virgin and unmarried. They were the same word there.
Joel Brooks:These marriages, they would, of course, all been arranged by their parents, which, unfortunately, is not how we still do things. I I would love to arrange my children's marriage. And, if you wanna send in your resume, their legal age, we could start negotiating a bridal price. We'll we'll come up with something. But but a 12 year old girl would often get betrothed to someone, and that's a legal type of engagement in which the bridal pie price would be paid, a contract would be signed.
Joel Brooks:The only way that these two can now separate would be through divorce. This engagement period typically lasted 6 months to a year. And during this time, what would happen is that, the groom to be, he would leave his fiancee. He would go to his father's house, and he would begin making preparations. Often, he would begin building an additional room to his father's house.
Joel Brooks:When that room was completed, he would then come home, there would be a week long wedding, and then he would take his new wife and they would go back to live with his parents in the new room. It's what every bride dreams about. Getting to go and to live with your new husband's parents. Now this is almost certainly what Jesus would later refer to when he told his disciples this before he ascended into heaven. We read this in John 14.
Joel Brooks:In my father's house are many rooms. If it were not so, would I would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, And I will take you to myself, that where I am, you may be also. That's wedding language. Jesus, he's essentially telling his disciples here that he's betrothed himself to them.
Joel Brooks:And and one of the reasons that he is now leaving and he is ascending back to heaven, it's only a temporary thing. He's going there to prepare a place for his bride. And then he will come back, there will be a wedding, and then he will take his bride back to himself. We're living in that period of betrothal, in which Jesus is gone and he is preparing a place for us. And he's been working on it for 2000 years, so it's going to be amazing.
Joel Brooks:But then he's going to return. There's going to be the wedding feast, which we read all about in scripture. There'll be the wedding, the wedding feast, and then we will go into our new home that he has prepared for us. So so Jesus, he he uses this language later. Now one of the things that strikes me so far about this story in Luke, maybe you've noticed that it's just there's not many details given.
Joel Brooks:It's it's very nondescript. There's not really any embellishment. No bells and whistles like I mentioned earlier. We actually know almost nothing about Mary. I mean, we know her name.
Joel Brooks:We know that she was a betrothed virgin, but nothing else. We're not told about her character. We're not told about her family. We don't know what she was doing at the time. Now you could contrast this to to when Gabriel went to Zechariah and Elizabeth earlier to tell them they were gonna have a child.
Joel Brooks:We actually know a number of things about them. It says Zechariah was a priest, and we were told that both of them were righteous before God and they walked blamelessly in all of the commandments and statutes of the Lord. And that was quite a commendation concerning that couple. It's it's easy to understand why Gabriel would be sent to a couple like that. But we know hardly anything about Mary.
Joel Brooks:Nothing about her righteousness, nothing about her character, nothing about her family background, we don't know if she had her quiet times in the morning. We we know nothing. She is just a name. And that's the point. The point is, so far in the story, this is the point, God has chosen a nobody who lived in the middle of nowhere to do something extraordinary.
Joel Brooks:He he picked a poor, essentially 12 year old girl from Rehoboth, Alabama. Picked a small little girl from nowhere to be the bearer of the Messiah. Verse 30, we read that the angel came to Mary and said, greetings, oh favored one, the Lord is with you. That word greetings is just the Greek for hello. Once again, I'm struck by how simple the story is.
Joel Brooks:When the angel comes, there's no trumpets. There's no claps of thunder. There's no smoke. There's no earthquake. Nothing like that.
Joel Brooks:God is breaking 100 of years of silence with a hello. We don't know what Mary was doing at this time. We know she she was alone. Likely she's, you know, inside whatever domestic duties that a 12 year old girl at that time would be doing, probably preparing food. And all of a sudden she turns around and there's an angel.
Joel Brooks:And he just says, hello. And then he calls her favored one and says that the Lord is with her. Now we read that Mary was greatly troubled at this saying. She's not troubled by the angel. That's not what it says.
Joel Brooks:She's not startled or scared of the angel. Maybe it's because she's 12 years old and like, she she doesn't have many experiences, and so, she doesn't know what she's supposed to be terrified of or not, but she's not really troubled by the presence of the angel. But she's troubled at what the angel says. It says that she tried to discern or she's trying to figure out what sort of greeting this might be. And you might be wondering, why is Mary troubled at what the angel said here?
Joel Brooks:I mean, he just kinda says, hello and you you found favor with God. I want you to imagine this. Imagine this week, you're you're in your kitchen, you're cooking, you hear a knock on the door, you go, you look through the peephole, and there is Uncle Eddie, because all uncles had to be called Eddie in stories. So you see Uncle Eddie, whom you have never met, whom you've only seen a few pictures of. But there he is on your door, at your door.
Joel Brooks:So you open up the door, and uncle Eddie just goes, hello. To ever tell you how much I love you and how favored you are by me, Does that comfort you? Or in that more moment are warning bells going all off in your brain at this moment, like loudly going off warning bells about Uncle Eddie. A divorce. She knows that God's not going to break all those 100 of years of silence to send an angel to her just to say hello, And that she has God's favor.
Joel Brooks:Something's about to happen. Something's about to happen to her. Or she's gonna be asked to do something. And she's wondering what is it? What would bring an angel like that here to say this to me?
Joel Brooks:And so Gabriel senses her anxiety, and he says, do not be afraid. And then once again, he tells her she has found favor with God. And once again, I don't know how comforting that would be. Because if Mary was any student of the bible, she would know what that has meant throughout scripture. Noah found favor with God.
Joel Brooks:Gideon found favor with God. David found favor with God. Same expression is used. And every time somebody has seemed to found favor with God, they are asked to do something incredibly hard. And so Mary's wondering what what could this be?
Joel Brooks:Because God doesn't just give us grace. He gives us grace in order to do something. He gives us grace in order, to accomplish the great task that will be before us. And so Mary's wondering, why is this grace coming to me? In verse 31, Gabriel tells her.
Joel Brooks:Says, behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great, And he 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 of his kingdom, there will be no end.
Joel Brooks:This is a bombshell. Every one of those lines deserves an entire sermon. Mary has just been told right here that she's going to give birth to the long awaited messiah. The one who was coming in this world to right every wrong. The one who is going to deal with evil once and for all.
Joel Brooks:The one who is finally gonna bring healing to this broken world. God's people have been waiting for this messiah forever. Since the earliest moments in history, they've been waiting for him. And now, Mary's being told that she will give birth to him. But here's the shocker.
Joel Brooks:This Messiah, not only is she gonna give birth to him, he's not just gonna be a man, He's gonna be the son of God. So the messiah is not a mere human. He's actually the son of God. And this is why, he's described here as not just one who's going to sit on the throne of David for a mere human lifetime. He's gonna sit on the throne of David, and this kingdom's gonna go on forever.
Joel Brooks:So Mary was somehow going to give birth to the messiah, who was the eternal son of God. It was a bombshell. So absolutely, no one was expecting the Messiah to be God. Although they should have. They should have.
Joel Brooks:If they if they have been actually looking at their bibles and really reading and studying it, they should have noticed all along that the old testament had been leading to this one moment. They should have known this because when you read through the old testament, what you are essentially reading when you get all of these prophecies about the Messiah, is you're you're seeing God write out a job description. Any of y'all have job descriptions? I mean you probably do and you've never read them. Alright?
Joel Brooks:I I've had at least, I think, 6 or 7 different job descriptions here at Redeemer over the years, which makes sense as the as the church grows and changes. My my role needs to grow and change with that. If you have ever been hired in some corporate job, you were likely given a job description. And on that job description, there were several elements to it. 1st, you're given your title.
Joel Brooks:This is the title you will hold. Then you are told what authority you will have. This is who you will report to, and this is everybody who reports to you. And these, this is the authority you have where you could just make decisions without asking anybody. And then you are given a list of all the things that you were expected to do.
Joel Brooks:A good way to read through the Old Testament is basically to see throughout the Old Testament, God is writing a job description for the Messiah. And when you begin to read through it, you begin to realize that the titles that are given to the Messiah, well they are so grand. And the authority given to the messiah is so absolute. And the list of things that the messiah is supposed to do is so expansive that no human being could actually ever do it. In other words, God was making a job description so big that only he could fill it.
Joel Brooks:I mean, look at the titles. The Messiah, he's given titles like Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, Emmanuel, God with us. He's given an authority that spans the entire globe. And we're told that his kingdom will know no end. And the list of all that he's supposed to do, well, it spans from well, he needs to live a perfect life, to being one who heals the lame, and the blind, and the deaf, to one who is strong enough and righteous enough to bury bear away and carry away all the sins of the world.
Joel Brooks:You begin to realize as you're reading through the old testament, no human can do this. Different humans have tried. Different people have applied for this position. Moses, you know, he's applying. You have David applying.
Joel Brooks:You have Solomon. You have people like Gideon. But but they would all fall drastically short of this because no human could ever do this. No human could actually fix the world. But you know what?
Joel Brooks:If God came down to this world as a human, he could do it. And now, Gabriel is telling Mary that's exactly what's gonna happen. That's what God's gonna do. And that's the freight train that's running through Mary's house right now. I want you to notice that because of the uniqueness of this baby, Mary is told that she will relate to this baby differently than a mother does to a typical child.
Joel Brooks:We see this in the fact that she won't even get to name this child. The name is given to her. God already has the name, and he says, you will name this child Jesus, which means the Lord saves. And that's how we are to relate to Jesus as our savior. Parents, they always had the right to name their own children because the parents were the authority.
Joel Brooks:You when you name something, that's a way of saying that you have authority over that something. And that's why God said, you don't get to name this child because you will not have authority over this child. This child will have authority over you. You're gonna have to learn to relate differently to him than a mother into a son. That is how all of us, Mary included, have to relate to Jesus.
Joel Brooks:We all come to him as a savior or we don't come to him at at all. And now being told by an angel that you are going to give birth to the Messiah, who's actually gonna be God's son, it's a whole lot to take in. Questions, as any 12 year old would. And she decides to ask the most pressing of all the questions for her personally. And that's, how exactly is this gonna happen since I am a virgin?
Joel Brooks:Even 12 year olds who lived 2000 years ago, they they know what we know as modern scientific people. You can't have a child unless you have sex. And so, this is the question that Mary is really wondering about. For those of you who struggle with this whole idea of a virgin birth, know that Mary, she had doubts too. And, God overcame those doubts.
Joel Brooks:And when Mary asked how this could be, God didn't rebuke her. Gabriel didn't rebuke her. Which is interesting because when you read earlier, when Gabriel went to Zechariah, Zechariah had questions and God rebuked Zechariah and made him mute. But we don't find that with Mary. And the difference is this, Zechariah was asking if God could do this.
Joel Brooks:Mary was asking how God would do this. It's a huge difference. Mary's not wondering if this is going to happen or if God can make it happen. That's not her doubts. She's just wondering how this is actually gonna play out in her life.
Joel Brooks:And it was okay for her to ask that. That's one of the things we learned from this. It's okay to ask God those type of questions. Not if he's going to do something, but but how is that gonna look in my life? How are you gonna do this?
Joel Brooks:And we see that Mary is actually rewarded with one of the greatest verses in all of scripture. For nothing will be impossible for God. He then goes on to explain how this will happen. He says the Holy Spirit's gonna come. Power of the most high is gonna come, and is going to overshadow her.
Joel Brooks:It's very similar to the language we find in creation, in which the spirit of God hovers over the waters. And as it hovers over the waters, creation new creation begins in life. And the spirit of God is gonna hover over Mary. It's the same language actually you find in Exodus When we read about the cloud of God's presence, and it would go over the tabernacle, and it says it would overshadow the tabernacle. And when that cloud would overshadow the tabernacle, what it meant is God's presence was in the Holy of Holies.
Joel Brooks:And so one of the things you can actually see here is that Mary's womb, in a sense, kind of becomes a Holy of Holies. In which God's presence comes and dwells within her. So Gabriel explains this to her, that this is what God will do because nothing is impossible for him. And when Mary gets this answer, she doesn't ask any more questions. She just says, behold, I'm the servant of the Lord.
Joel Brooks:Let it be to me according to your word. This is just a remarkable response, especially from someone so young. It's a response that's a model for us and how we are to follow Jesus. This response was going to cost her. Saying yes to Jesus will always have a worldly cost.
Joel Brooks:We see it at the very beginning when Jesus came to this world. Things haven't changed. You say yes to Jesus coming into your life, it will cost you. By saying yes to Jesus here, she's also saying yes to all of the abuse, all of the gossip, all of the sideways glances that she will receive as being, a pregnant teenager outside of wedlock and living in a small, close knit religious town. No one would believe her.
Joel Brooks:Would you have believed her? No one was going to believe her. I don't even know if she would have told anyone. Guys, I'm only pregnant because there was this angel came down and said that the Holy Spirit was gonna overshadow me and, you know, Job, baby. Like, no one would believe her.
Joel Brooks:She knew that. She was saying yes to her reputation being permanently tarnished. This was gonna follow her her entire life. It would follow Jesus for his entire life. I mean, read through the gospels, especially through the gospel of of John, and read about anytime Jesus talked about his father and people's reaction to it.
Joel Brooks:He would be talking about his heavenly father, how he lives to obey his father. He only does what his father tells him to do all this. And the people go, tell us Jesus exactly who is your father again? They're not questioning about the heavenly father. They're they're giving him the jab.
Joel Brooks:You were born out of wedlock. This would follow Mary, it would follow Jesus all of their days. Mary knows that. She considered the cost, and she said yes to it. Once again, whenever you invite Jesus to come into your life, there is a cost.
Joel Brooks:And we see it at the very beginning. And the only way that you can do that and say yes to Jesus coming into your life, is if you see he is of infinite more worth than anything else the world has to offer. Worth more than your reputation. Worth more than living in a palace, worth more than all the gold the world has worth more than anything is having Christ come into your life. Mary models this for us so well.
Joel Brooks:That said, I want you to notice one thing that's missing in Mary's response. She's very dutiful, faithful in what she says here. But she doesn't seem to be rejoicing at the news. That it's gonna come later. But she doesn't hear.
Joel Brooks:She doesn't suddenly break into song. She doesn't begin praying out loud. Thank you God for giving me this privilege. Thank you God for sending your Messiah into the world. Thank you God for the healing that's about to come.
Joel Brooks:She doesn't break into any of those things. Instead, she she's very faithful. She just humbly submits to the Lord. Be it done to me according to your word. But there seems to be this absence of joy as of now.
Joel Brooks:And I actually believe that this is one of the reasons that Gabriel told her about her, her relative Elizabeth. And said that she is now having a miraculous baby of her own. Gabriel wants Mary to go to her. Because Elizabeth was going to be the one person on earth that would understand what she was going through. And so Mary goes.
Joel Brooks:It says she goes with haste. She immediately goes to Elizabeth, and notice that it is only after seeing Elizabeth and having Elizabeth confirm and rejoice in what God is doing through Mary, it is only then that Mary breaks out into song and rejoices. And we were given the Magnificat, which we didn't read here, but, the Magnificat, which we have celebrated for centuries ever since. That beautiful, glorious song of Mary. But it's only only comes out of her when she becomes part of that faith community as small as it was.
Joel Brooks:I think there's a lot to learn from that. I think we see here the extreme importance of a faith community, of gathering together with other believers. When Mary sees Elizabeth rejoice, it's only then that she rejoices. When Mary hears Elizabeth affirm the miracle that is happening in her womb, it's only then that she breaks out into song. I mean, look at what Elizabeth said to Mary in verse 42.
Joel Brooks:I mean, talk about theologically deep. Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? And did you get that verse 43? I mean, you're you're throwing in the the deeps of the ocean there.
Joel Brooks:Why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? In other words, Elizabeth understands that the one who sent the baby is the baby. Did you get that? The one who sent the baby is actually the baby. I mean, the bottom drops out there.
Joel Brooks:That's the freight train running right through. But that theological point, which they all knew, they knew, it only became joy when they gathered together. They gathered together as a community of faith, and then it burst into song. And I think that's why us gathering together like we do is so important. You won't read anywhere in the Bible that, God wants you to be a Christian alone.
Joel Brooks:Yeah, you can listen to all the podcasts you want in your car. You can have all the personal quiet times you want, those are great. But you're gonna die on the vine if that's all you do. It's gonna be just a theology. There is something about when we gather together and we affirm these truths in one another, that it bursts from just the head, it goes to the heart and it bursts in praise and song.
Joel Brooks:And we see that here. We don't just remind one another of truths, we bring out in one another the rejoicing of those truths. And that is my prayer for us as we go through the next few weeks or in this Advent season. We don't just remind one another of these truths, but it brings it to our heart to where we can rejoice and celebrate them together. And pray with me, church.
Joel Brooks:Jesus, thank you. Thank you for coming to this world. Thank you for doing what we could never do, which is fix the brokenness that's all around us. And, Jesus, I pray that this season, as we we enter into Advent, we would remember just the truly miraculous thing that you have done on our behalf, and we would stir up one another's affections and that we would truly rejoice and praise you for these things. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus.
Joel Brooks:Amen.
