Okay, let’s have a Christmas pageant. Let’s just pretend for a moment:

Who wants to be the innkeeper? Raise your hand

Who wants to be Joseph? Raise your hand; someone is Joseph.

Who wants to be the camel? Ha, come on, someone play a camel.

Who wants to be the wise man? Raise your hand.

Who else do we need? Who wants to be shepherds? We need several raise your hands.

Who wants to be the doctor? The doctor? She was having a baby; do you think there was a doctor there? No, there was not. Who wants to be the nurse? Who wants to be the mother of Mary?

No nurse.

No doctor.

No Mother.

Who wants to be Mary? Someone raise your hand.

Do you think Mary wanted to be Mary?

Have you ever been asked to do a difficult, honorable, or noble task, but you did not know that you could do it? Have you been there?

That is what Mary felt. Mary was a world changer. She changed the world as the mother of Jesus. We would not be here if it were not for Mary. Think about this: We have a mission statement from Matthew 28:19–20 (ESV)

¹⁹ Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, ²⁰ teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

This could not have happened without Mary. Mary gave birth to the One who gave that commission.

Let’s look at Mary’s commissioning:

Luke 1:26–38 (ESV)

²⁶ In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, ²⁷ to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸ And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” ²⁹ But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. ³⁰ And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. ³¹ And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. ³² 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, ³³ and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

³⁴ And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”

³⁵ And the angel answered her, “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. ³⁶ And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. ³⁷ For nothing will be impossible with God.” ³⁸ And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.

Theme:

Mary was highly favored for a difficult task, which she humbly accepted.

Application:

Sometimes, God’s call is not easy. Accept the call as Mary did.

1. I want to focus on one word: “Highly Favored.”
   1. This word is the word for “grace.”
   2. It is only used in this way in Ephesians 1:6 having to do with God giving us His grace.
   3. This verse is saying that Mary has received God’s grace or God’s favor.
   4. This is Gabriel’s greeting to Mary. Gabriel says, “The Lord is with you.”
   5. She is twice told that she has received grace or favor, in verse 28 and verse 30: ³⁰ And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.
   6. As one writes about grace: Grace is at the center of what God was doing in Christmas. The child to be born of Mary would embody and incarnate grace. His message would be a message of grace. His life would demonstrate grace to sinners, tax collectors, and prostitutes. They had been taught that there was no place for them in the synagogue, that God’s judgment and wrath was upon them; Jesus devoted his life to showing them that it was God’s love, mercy, and kindness that were offered to them. Jesus showed them grace.[1]
   7. Do we realize who she would be the mother to?
   8. Those who wrote the great hymns of Christmas know it.  They’ve always known it.  Our carols celebrate it.  “Joy to the world, the Lord is come.”  “Yea, Lord, we great Thee, born this happy morning,” “Come adore on bended knee Christ the Lord,” “Christ by highest heaven adored, Christ the everlasting Lord,” “Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, hail the Incarnate Deity.”  “Jesus, our Immanuel.”  “Yet in the dark street shineth the everlasting light.”  “Oh come with us, abide with us, our Lord, Immanuel.”  The carol says, “Jesus, Lord at Thy birth,” “Incense owns a Deity nigh,” “The virgin’s sweet boy is the Lord of the earth,”  “Word of the Father now in flesh appearing,”  “How that in Bethlehem was born the Son of God by name,”  “God with man is now residing, suddenly the Lord descending.”  The carol says, “Thou didst leave Thy throne and Thy kingly crown when Thou camest to earth for me.”  “And the Father gave His Son, gave His own beloved One.”  Son of the Most High, Son of God, God in human flesh; this amazing child is God come down. Grace has power. When you show kindness, compassion, goodness, or love to someone who does not deserve it, the act of grace has the power to change hearts, to heal broken relationships, and to reconcile people and even nations. Grace changes the one who receives it, but it also changes the one who gives it.[2]
   9. She certainly is the mother of God; she raised Jesus.
   10. Do you think she was happy for this task?
2. Let’s talk more about Mary.
   1. Mary was from a tiny town called Nazareth.
   2. Nazareth would not even make it on a list of cities. It was just a tiny little village.
   3. We would think if God were going to send His Son into the world, He would pick a woman from Rome or Jerusalem, but He didn’t.
   4. I believe God wanted to show that He chooses the nobodies.
   5. Mary was likely 13 years old. Think about that.
   6. She was from humble beginnings.
   7. She was likely uneducated.
   8. She was likely raised to be very devoted to God.
   9. Mary is told how things will happen. The power of God, the Most High, will overshadow her. Mary is not told exactly what is going to happen, but if God did not cause her to conceive, then Jesus would be a clone of her. People have lacked faith in the virgin birth in the past, but with all of the science these days and how we can artificially inseminate, do we need to doubt God?
   10. So, Mary is told precisely what will happen.
   11. Again, I return to the question: Do you think Mary wanted to be Mary?
   12. Do you think Mary wanted to go and tell Joseph she was pregnant? Do you think Mary was scared? Do you think Mary was concerned to talk to her parents? Having a baby was scary back then, but all these responsibilities and the great humility also.
   13. As a brief aside think of how confounding it is that God became a man.
   14. Look at verses 34-35:
   15. Luke 1:34–35 (ESV)
   16. ³⁴ And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”
   17. ³⁵ And the angel answered her, “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.
   18. God became a man!
   19. This comes from Timothy Keller:
   20. For example, all relationships (certainly marriages but all relationships) … Certainly parent and child, all of this always happens. Sometimes you get into conversations that go roughly like this:
   21. “You’re to blame.”
   22. “Oh, no. You’re to blame.”
   23. “Oh, no, no. It’s you.”
   24. “Oh, no, no, no, no, no. It’s not me. It’s you.”
   25. “No, it’s you.”
   26. “No, it’s you.”

• “No, it’s you.”
• What’s happening? The relationship is falling apart because neither side will budge an inch. Neither side will take any blame. Neither side will make any concession. Neither side will admit. Neither side will drop the defenses. You are defending yourself at every point where the other person is accusing you or charging you. At every point! As long as those defenses are up, your relationship is going away, and on it goes. Sometimes this happens:
• “No, no. It’s you.”
• “No, no. It’s you.”
• “No, no, no, no. It’s you.”
• “Okay, it’s me.”
• “No, no … Yeah!” Now what happens there? Sometimes it’s:
• “It’s you.”
• “No, it’s you.”
• “No, it’s you.”
• “No, it’s you.”
• “No, it’s you.”
• “Yes, it’s me.”
• “Yes, it’s you. Yes, it’s you!”
• Sometimes the piling on happens for a while, but I’ll tell you what begins to happen immediately. The relationship starts to heal. Sometimes it starts to deepen. It starts to come back. Why? Because one of you dropped defenses. I mean, certainly it goes like this. You know, even if you feel like the other person is 80 percent wrong, exaggerating, throwing in a lot of fabrications, almost always the person is at least 20 person right. You know it.
• The relationship starts to come back because you take that 20 percent, and you admit it. You say, “Yeah, it’s me. Yes, I am to blame. I am to blame here. I am willing to do that.” You make yourself vulnerable, and you drop your defenses. It can hurt! It’s very hard, because very often the other person keeps piling on for a while. In general, it won’t be long before not only the relationship is restored, but very often it’s deeper than it’s ever been before. It’s more intimate than it’s ever been before.
• Why would you do that? Because in the midst of all the yelling and all the hostility, one of you decides, in spite of how distorted that other person is right now and how distorted we are both because of our anger, “I want that person back. I want the person I love back.” The only way to do that is you take down your shield somewhere, and you let one of the verbal blows land. You say, “Yes, it’s true. It’s me. I’m wrong. I admit it.”

• It hurts, but it’s the only way. In fact, almost always it works, and the relationship begins to at least come back. At least it stops deteriorating. Later on, it might actually get better. In many, many cases, it gets deeper than it ever was before because you have done a costly act of redemption for the relationship. You let your defenses down.
• Why does that work? Do you know why that works? It works because you are made in the image of the One who gave the ultimate expression of this part of his own nature at Christmas, because at Christmas when the unassailable God, the omnipotent God, became a baby, we have the ultimate example of letting your defenses down.^[3]
• C. S. Lewis years ago very famously put it something like this: “If you want your heart to never be broken, give it no one. If you don’t want your heart to be broken, if you don’t want to be vulnerable, if you don’t want your heart to be broken, then don’t give it to anyone.” He says, in that little casket of self-centeredness, your heart will not be broken. It will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable.

• Because, you see, there’s absolutely no way to have a relationship without becoming vulnerable. There’s no way to get back a relationship or deepen a relationship or get it more intimate without becoming vulnerable and hurt. Here’s what Christmas tells you. There is no other religion that even tells you this about God. No other religion even claims it. Secularism says the incarnation is a miracle. It’s impossible. Judaism and Islam say it’s impossible for God to become a baby. Eastern religions say it’s impossible.
• Only Christianity says God became breakable. God literally became breakable. God became fragile. God became breakable. God became someone we could hurt. Why? To get us back. To get you back! Jesus Christ became utterly fragile. God became utterly breakable and died on the cross to pay for our sins and to reconcile to himself anyone who was willing to admit they need that extreme a salvation.^[4]
• Martin Luther, in one of his nativity sermons, put it like this. He said are you afraid of God? He places before you a Babe with whom you may take refuge. You cannot fear a Babe, for nothing is more appealing to the human heart than a baby.
• “To me there is no greater consolation given to mankind than this, that Christ became man, a child, a babe, playing in the lap … of his most gracious mother.” You see, the consuming fire, the whirlwind, became a baby in order to become someone who could be hurt. Why? Why? To have intimacy, a relationship. He did all of that to get near us. If you know that, if this isn’t just a metaphor, this isn’t just a sweet symbol, if you know it, blessed are you if you know it was really accomplished.^[5]
• Mary would tell her relatives and Joseph. Mary goes to visit Elizabeth, and then we have the Magnificat.

• Let’s look at Mary’s response.
  1. And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her (Verse 38).
  2. Sometimes, the Lord’s calling is difficult, but we must follow through.
  3. We must follow through like Mary did and just respond, I am the servant of the Lord…
  4. There’s a place where Martin Luther in one of his nativity sermons says something like, “Do you know what a stable smells like?” Now I’m paraphrasing, but this is Luther, and this is the way he was. He said something like, “Do you know what a stable smells like? Do you know what that family would have smelled like after the birth and they went out into the city? If they were standing next to you, how would you have felt about them? How would you have regarded them?^[6]
  5. Verse 29: ²⁹ But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be.^[7]
  6. I like what Timothy Keller shares:
  7. Literally it says, the word wondered is the word dialogizomai, which means to logic through something, to rationally think. Dialogizomai. You can see it (logic). To think through. To furiously analyze. Then it says to furiously analyze what kind of greeting this might be. What that means is she is sitting there saying, “Is this a hallucination, or is this a dream, or is this the real thing?”
  8. She is going through categories of possibilities, and she is saying, “Am I seeing things?” Now this isn’t the way you write a legend. No, if you’re going to write a legend that’s supposed to promote the piety of the faithful, you don’t say, “And the angel appeared unto Mary and said, ‘Greetings! Hail!’ ” Then usually what happens is Mary says immediately, “I am the Lord’s servant.” Right?
  9. That’s how you write a legend, but that’s not what happens. Here’s what Luke tells you what happened. The angel appeared, and Mary sat there and said, “Am I seeing things? Are you real? What’s going on here? I can’t be seeing this. What’s the matter? This is weird.” In other words, Mary is reacting just the way you would react.
  10. There are a lot of people maybe in this room and a lot of people who would say, “Well, I’m a modern skeptical person. Back then, people were primitive. They believed in these things, but I’m different.” No, you’re not. Not at all. Don’t you dare hide behind that. Mary is reacting exactly like you would have. She is dialogizomai. She is trying to think logically through it. She is trying to figure out, “What in the world? How do I account for this? How do I account for this? Am I dreaming? Did I eat something? Is this a flashback? What is going on here?”
  11. Let me show you how it works. Let me show you. Let’s enter in here. Let me help you do the same thing. How do you account for this? That’s what she is saying. She is saying, “How do I account for this data?” See? She did not have a grid. She did not have a worldview that included angels and visions and things like that happening to her. Okay, now let’s do it with us ourselves.
  12. How do you account for the fact that Mary … or maybe let’s just say Luke … these early Christians believed God had become flesh and the one he had become, a human being, Jesus Christ, needed to be worshiped? How do you account for that? Would you think with me? Think through it. Was this a kind of development, you know, a trend out of Greek thinking? No. There was absolutely nothing about Greco-Roman thinking at the time.
  13. Everything about their worldview said, “Matter is bad. The physical is bad.” They mean nothing. Nothing! There was no trend. There was nothing in that culture that would ever lead anybody to believe the creator God would become human. Oh, okay. Eastern religions. Is this sort of a development, an extension of Eastern religions? No. Eastern religions believe matter and the physical is an illusion, that it’s going to pass away eventually.
  14. Well, the Jews. Oh, yeah. But listen. In other words, as much as we can say Eastern and Western religion and philosophy were completely against … totally against … the whole concept, there was absolutely no way this developed out of there (the concept of the incarnation). The last people in the whole world who would ever believe some human being should be worshiped would be the Jews, who didn’t even speak God’s name, don’t even write God’s name, even to this day.^[8]
  15. S. Lewis used to say something like, “The reason I believe in Christianity is because nobody is brilliant enough or crazy enough to have thought this up.”^[9]
  16. Later Mary says, “I am the Lord’s servant…”
  17. Can we respond this way? Can we respond to God’s Word and honorably say.
  18. “I am the Lord’s servant, and I will follow the rules.”
  19. “I am the Lord’s servant I will walk in integrity.”
  20. “I am the Lord’s servant and will not spread that rumor.”
  21. “I am the Lord’s servant and will not gossip on Facebook.”
  22. “I am the Lord’s servant, and I won’t look at that website.”
  23. “I am the Lord’s servant, and I will not have road rage.”
  24. “I am the Lord’s servant, and I will apologize for my behavior.”
  25. “I am the Lord’s servant, and I will treat people with respect.”
  26. “I am the Lord’s servant. I will share the Gospel with people, pray, read the Bible, work at the food pantry, help someone with a meal, and give someone grace.”
  27. I am the Lord’s servant… we must pray about it and live like Mary.

Remember grace and favor; it is such a gift. That was such a privilege for Mary. Give people grace this week. Give people favor this week.

Dorothy Sayers says, “[The incarnation] means … that for whatever reason God chose to make man as he is—limited and suffering and subject to sorrows and death—he [God] had the honesty and courage to take his own medicine. […] He can exact nothing from man that he has not exacted from himself.

He has himself gone through the whole of human experience, from the trivial irritations of family life and the cramping restrictions of hard work and lack of money to the worst horrors of pain and humiliation, defeat, despair, and death. […] He was born in poverty and died in disgrace and thought it well worthwhile.” So in the package, there’s a unique resource for suffering.^[10]

Timothy Keller:

If you believe in Christmas, you’re also in this unique spot. No other religion … whether it’s secularism, Greco-Roman paganism, Eastern religions, Judaism, or Islam … no religion believes God became breakable. No religion, no view, believes God suffered. Thirdly, none of them believe God has a body. Eastern religions believe the physical is an illusion. Greek and Romans at the time believed the physical was bad. Judaism and Islam don’t believe God would do such a thing.

Christianity, Christmas, teaches God is not just concerned about the spiritual because he is not just a spirit anymore. This is so outrageous. He has a body! Because he has a body, he knows what it’s like to be poor. He knows what it’s like to be a refugee running away from persecution, having to go to Egypt. He knows what it’s like to be hungry. He knows what it’s like to be beaten. He knows what it’s like to be stabbed. He knows what it’s like to be speared. He knows what it’s like to be dead. He knows what it’s like.

Therefore, if you put the doctrine of the incarnation and Christmas together with the doctrine of the resurrection … In other words, if you put Christmas and Easter together, here’s what you have. We have a God who is not just concerned about the spirit but also the body. He created body and spirit. He is going to redeem body and spirit. Christianity is the one religion (Christmas, in particular) that leads us to be able to talk about redeeming people from guilt and unbelief and creating safe streets and warm, affordable housing for the poor in the same breath.^[11]

Be encouraged. We have all received God’s grace.

So, would you want to be Mary? But remember Mary’s response; we can respond in the same way.

Pray

[1] Hamilton, Adam (2011-09-01). The Journey: Walking the Road to Bethlehem (Kindle Locations 238-242). Abingdon Press. Kindle Edition.

[2] http://www.gty.org/resources/sermons/42-7/the-greatest-child-ever-born

^[3] Timothy J. Keller, The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).

^[4] Timothy J. Keller, The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).

^[5] Timothy J. Keller, The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).

^[6] Timothy J. Keller, The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).

^[7] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), Lk 1:29.

^[8] Timothy J. Keller, The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).

^[9] Timothy J. Keller, The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).

^[10] Timothy J. Keller, The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).

^[11] Timothy J. Keller, The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).