12/29/19 Luke 1:26-38 “Do You Truly Believe?”

27 Dec 12/29/19 Luke 1:26-38 “Do You Truly Believe?”

12/29/19   Luke 1:26-38    “Do You Truly Believe?”

We have just finished our Christmas celebrations for another year.  I hope that all went well for all of you folks but I also know that this probably isn’t true for some.  For those of you who didn’t have such a good Christmas for whatever reason, I ask that you turn all of your attention to Jesus.  He wants you to have the best life possible and be happy.  Therefore He has made things like joy, peace and love for you to enjoy.  So whatever it is that keeps you from having a good Christmas or a good holiday of any kind, try to quit thinking about that and concentrate on Jesus.  Who knows, He might even tell you how to do it if you listen carefully.  I’m sure that is what Mary did as she had more problems than most of us have.  She could have been stoned to death but she wasn’t.  She wasn’t because she had decided to follow God through all of this.  Today, I want you to grab a hold of the story of Mary and see if you can fit it into your life.  I think you might be surprised at how much she was like you and me.

I’m going to start today on a lighter note.  This comes from Max Lucado who is an author and pastor.  I think that most of his books are pretty good.  Anyway, he came up with 25 questions that he would like to ask Mary when he gets to heaven.  Many of them are not only thought provoking but fun.  I’m going to go through just a few of them in a hurry so here goes.  He would like to ask Mary what was it like watching Him pray?  When Jesus saw a rainbow, did He ever mention a flood?  Did you ever feel awkward teaching Him about how He created the world?  When He saw a lamb being led to the slaughter, did He act differently? Did you ever try to count stars with Him…and succeed?  Did He ever come home with a black eye?  Did He have any friends by the name of Judas?  Did the thought ever occur to you that the God to whom you were praying was asleep under your own roof?  Did you ever accidently call Him father?  What did He and his cousin, John, talk about as kids?   And finally, did you ever think, that is God eating my soup?  These are just some fun questions and I’m sure that you can come up with many more on your own.

I think that it’s important to know a little about Mary and that is about all we know, a little.  I would say that she didn’t have money.  Her family was poor.  Her family also arranged the marriage with Joseph.  That would have happened quite some time before our story today.  We don’t know exactly but Mary was probably quite young by our standards to be married.  They say she was probably in the 13-15 year old age group because that was when women were married in those days.  And the last thing I will bring us today is that she was a virgin.

What I am trying to say here is that Mary does not seem to be very qualified for the important role she is about to play.  By being unqualified, she was in some pretty good company.  After all Moses was too old.  Elijah was suicidal, Joseph was abused, Job went bankrupt, Moses had a speech problem, Gideon was afraid, Samson was a womanizer, Rehab was a prostitute, the Samaritan woman was divorced, and Noah was a drunk.  Then we come to Jeremiah who was too young, Jacob was a cheater and a scoundrel, David was an adulterer and a murderer, Jonah ran away from God, Naomi was a widow, Peter denied Christ 3 times, Martha worried about everything, Zacchaeus was small and money hungry, the disciples fell asleep while Jesus was praying and Paul persecuted and killed Christians before he became one.  These people and more all had faults and some were terrible faults in our estimation.  You see God has the habit of taking people who are not qualified and then He qualifies them.  Mary was one of these people.

One of the things that Jesus does is He tries to use everyone.  He would like nothing better than to have everyone come to know Him and then He would help you to help Him.  This is one of the reasons that He gives each believer at least one spiritual gift.  When you use this gift as per His directions, then you are furthering the Kingdom.  And when you are furthering the Kingdom, then you will be feeling great.

Jesus Christ will use anyone as we can see by looking at Mary and other Biblical characters.  In our modern world I once heard the story of a very poor young mother with a small child.  She worked hard just to make ends meet.  She also took care of an elderly relative by running errands and just helping when they needed it.  This poor young lady found it in her heart one time before Christmas to go to a nursing home and volunteer to do some of the resident ladies’ hair for Christmas.  She found that many of them had no one to visit them and they were very thankful for what she was doing and for her company.

Elisabeth Eliot also comes to mind when thinking of those who seem to me to be the most unlikely people to serve.  In the 1950’s her husband and several other men traveled to Ecuador to minister to a remote tribe there.  They were all brutally murdered by the tribe they were trying to reach.  One would think that would be the end of the story but it wasn’t.  The widow of Jim Eliot, Elisabeth Eliot, packed up her family and left to live with the very same tribe that had taken her husband’s life.

I’m sure that you can think of lots of other people who seem totally unqualified to serve Jesus.  I’m one of those people.  Until I was 40 years old, I didn’t know a thing about Jesus or God or anything associated with them.  I did many things that are totally against the Scripture.  But one day, Jesus got a hold of me and it has been a fantastic journey ever since.  What I’m trying to say here is that you are not beyond coming to know Jesus.  You cannot do anything bad enough that Jesus would not accept you into His family.  So if you don’t know Him today, then change that.  For the first time in your life allow yourself to be accepted by Jesus as you confess your sins, repent and ask Him to live as Lord and Savior in your heart.  I guarantee that you will never regret this decision.  Do it today.

One of the biggest promises that God makes to Mary is that He would be with her at all times.  The reason that this is so important is that what God was having Mary do was extremely dangerous for her.  At best, she would be ostracized from the community and the worst case scenario would be that she could be stoned.  God was asking her to have a baby out of wedlock.  The baby would be from God but the people of this world would not accept that as a reason.  She was in for some dangerous times ahead but God would be with her.

How many times have you been in dangerous times?  This could be danger for your life, or family or friends or your wealth.  There are many, many dangers in the world.  Some of them are big and some not so big.  However, when you are in the middle of some danger or trouble, it’s pretty hard to see the big picture.  It’s this big picture that is so important.  If you are a child of God, if you have given your life to Jesus Christ, then you should know from experience that God believes in you.  This is a fact.  Jesus believes in you and expects that you do the jobs that He puts out for you.  You should also know that you are more than empowered to do anything that He tells you to do.  He believes in you and is never far away if you falter or stumble.  Therefore your situation is never hopeless.  You have the King of kings and Lord of lords at your disposal to help you in times of trouble.  Use Him before anything else especially during sticky situations.

It’s like the legend of a Cherokee Indian youth’s rite of passage.  The father takes the son into the forest, blindfolds him and leaves him alone.  The youth is required to sit on a stump all night and not remove the blindfold until the morning sun shines through it.  He cannot cry out for help.  He cannot tell the other boys about this experience because each lad must come to manhood on his own.  Once he survives this night, he is a man.  The boy is terrified as he can hear all kinds of noises.  Wild beasts are surely around him, the ones that even harm humans.  The wind blows the grass and earth and his stump shakes.  He sits there stoically and never removes his blindfold.  It’s the only way to be a man.  After a terrible, horrific night the sun appears and he removes the blindfold.  It is then that he realizes that his father is sitting on another stump close to him.  He had been there all night protecting him from harm.  This is exactly what Jesus Christ will do for you and that is what God did for Mary.  You are never alone.  It’s not possible to be alone.

So far we have found that Jesus can use you no matter who you are.  You should know that ‘no matter what happens, Jesus is with you!’  Now the best part of all of this is that no matter what He promises, He can do it.  Jesus can do anything.   Now let’s take a look at this from the perspective of Mary.

First of all, there is something that we just normally pass over.  The angel Gabriel came to Nazareth to visit Mary.  Now maybe you are used to having Gabriel coming to visit you but I’ve never seen him.  A couple of lines later we do find that Mary was indeed troubled.  She was not used to this either but I think that she might have been a little more open to it than any of us would be.  So we have God sending an angel to Mary.

Gabriel goes on to tell Mary that she will be having a baby.  This baby won’t be just any baby but will be the Son of the Most High.  He will reign over the house of Jacob forever.  His kingdom will never end.  I mean she had to be taken aback a little by all of this because she was just a regular person like any of us.

So she has taken all of this in and it doesn’t seem to faze her that much.  She is hanging in there but there is one minor little complication.  She asks, “How will this be since I am a virgin?”  Even back in those days they knew what it took to make a baby.  If you ask just about any scientist today, they would say that this was not possible.  Mary was also thinking that this wasn’t possible.

Then Gabriel explains that the Holy Spirit will come upon her and she will be pregnant with the Son of God.  And just to show her that this is possible he tells Mary that her relative Elizabeth is having a child, who will turn out to be John the Baptist, in her old age.  So not only will Mary have a baby that she thought not possible but Elizabeth will also have a child well after her child bearing years.

We know this is all true because we know that anything is possible with God.  Or do we?  I think that this is one of the big stumbling blocks to many people’s faith.  They or you don’t believe in the miracles of the Bible especially the virgin birth.  Well, if you don’t believe in the virgin birth, then you probably don’t believe in the first 2 chapters of Genesis.  You have been brainwashed by decades of bad science when you should be in tune with centuries of Jesus Christ.  You probably don’t believe that Moses parted the Red Sea or that God sent a pillar of fire to protect them.  You don’t believe in the manna that came every day or the quail.  You don’t believe that Joshua stopped the Jordan River so they could cross.  These are just the miracles that I think about off the top of my head.  The Bible is full of one miracle after another.

They even continue into today.  I had a severe gall bladder problem and they were ready to cut me open.  I woke up the day before and I knew I had been healed.  I know of a person who was losing their eyesight and they prayed.  The person was healed.  That was 50 years ago.  I haven’t had any sign of gall bladder problems for over 20 years.  I’m sure I could ask any person listening and they could tell me stories of healings that didn’t come from doctors.  Jesus had everything lined up perfectly so I survived a massive heart attack a year and a half ago.  People, Jesus is still working miracles today.

So if you don’t believe in the miracles I mention from the Bible, then what else don’t you believe in the Bible?  You see the Bible, Jesus is an all or nothing deal.  I want all of you to know Jesus so that you can have a better life.  I would like nothing better than seeing you all in eternity.

The Christmas story is the beginning of the greatest story ever told because it is about our God, Jesus, who came to live in this world for you and me.  This is what makes this season so special.  It’s special because each and every one of you are special.  You are loved, and loved, and loved by the very maker of the universe. You should praise the Lord for that.  Thank you Jesus for first loving us.  Let’s pray.