SALVATION'S CONCEPTION

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give Him the throne of his father David, and He will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; His kingdom will never end.”

“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on 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. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.”

Luke 1:26-37

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Here is an absolute truth that no believer should ever lose a grip on:

We serve a God who makes the impossible possible and the improbable probable.

We often lose sight of this as life’s circumstances come upon us or those dear to us. These circumstances leave us doubting whether things will work out or not as we look through the conventional lens of the world’s way of thinking. But something amazing happens when we turn our eyes toward the word of God and the scriptures. For when we do, we read of instances where God did amazing things that transcended the boundaries of rational earthly expectations.

Great seas were parted and walls of water were left suspended in the air so God’s people could cross.

Manna and quail fell from the heavens to feed God’s people and water was drawn from a rock.

A beautiful, multi-colored rainbow was placed in the sky as a reminder of God’s covenant to His people.

The sun and moon were made to stop their orbits for nearly a full day so God’s people under the leadership of Joshua could complete a conquest of their enemies.

A donkey belonging to Balaam spoke. Three servants of God – Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego - were placed in a furnace and walked out unsigned. Daniel was placed in a lion’s den and emerged unscathed.

Over and over again, we find the amazing power of God on display and the examples above were just some of the ones in the Old Testament. Indeed, as God professes, nothing is impossible when He is involved.

We take this thought into the account of how Jesus, God’s only Son, was conceived for it was nothing short of a miracle in its own right, a miracle that no one could pull off but the Lord. Look again at these verses from the first chapter of Luke’s Gospel:

In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give Him the throne of his father David, and He will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; His kingdom will never end.”

“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on 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. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.”  Luke 1:26-37

Note that the time reference used to set the scene for Mary’s impregnation is a miraculous story in its own right. Elizabeth, identified in the scriptures as Mary’s cousin, was much older and at an age where childbirth would have been considered implausible. But as we see at the beginning of our passage, Elizabeth was very much with child and close to entering her third trimester. Her son John would be born just ahead of Jesus, a precursor to how he would announce the coming of the Lamb of God who was coming to take away the sins of the world.

Unbeknownst to Elizabeth in her sixth month of pregnancy, Mary was receiving a special, divine visit from the angel Gabriel who was sent by God with a very special mission. The scriptures make sure we know the following things about Mary:

1. She was a virgin.

This was critically important because of this prophecy from the prophet Isaiah:

“Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son.” Isaiah 7:14

God’s word is always true and God is always true to His word. This was just one more affirmation of this fact.

2. She was pledged to be married to a man named Joseph.

Marriage in biblical times was not as we know it today. It wasn’t like Joseph and Mary met in the village of Nazareth, laid eyes on each other, and fell madly in love with one another to the point of wanting to become husband and wife. Rather, the parents of Joseph and Mary made arrangements for the couple to get married (or in other words, Mary was pledged to become Joseph’s wife). She really had no choice but as we know, this was all a part of God’s perfect holy plan.

And before I move on, let’s not lose sight of the importance of Joseph being a descendant of David for not only would this lead him to go to Bethlehem for the census, the place where Jesus would be born, but it also connected Jesus to another prophecy given to Nathan to pass onto David:

“‘The Lord declares to you that the Lord Himself will establish a house for you: When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you, your own flesh and blood, and I will establish His kingdom. He is the one who will build a house for My Name, and I will establish the throne of His kingdom forever. I will be His father, and He will be My Son.” 2 Samuel 7:11b-14a

Many people connect this passage to David’s son, Solomon, but there are personal and eternal references here that clearly indicate Jesus as the one promised to come from David’s lineage, God’s Son through which He would “establish the throne of His kingdom forever.”

With all this as a backdrop, let’s dig into the particulars about how salvation’s conception came to pass.

Returning to our scripture passage, we find the angel announcing to Mary that she had been singled out and set apart by her God who had sent him to share this opening salutation:

“Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

Not surprisingly, the scriptures tell us that “Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be.”  Obviously sensing Mary’s distress, Gabriel speaks four simple words of comfort to her:

“Do not be afraid.”

Maybe you have faced some real uncertainty in your life. Maybe you are facing it right now as you read this. No matter when or where we experience the trials and difficulties of life that tend to stoke the fires of our fear, stress, worry, and anxiety, the words of God spoken through the angel ring true for us:

“Do not be afraid.”

God is always with His people, no matter what they are going through, and He knows every detail of one’s life because He knows the plans He has for all (Jeremiah 29:11). That definitely was the case with Mary who Gabriel told had “found favor with God” as he revealed the following plan God had for the young virgin:

“You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give Him the throne of his father David, and He will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; His kingdom will never end.”

Imagine you are Mary and just heard all this. Maybe you would be like her and lose sight of most everything that was said after the words, “You will conceive.” We know this was her focus because of this question she asked after Gabriel revealed God’s plan:

“How will this be since I am a virgin?”

In other words, how will I become pregnant with this son who I am to call Jesus, this son who you say will be great and sit on the throne of David to reign forever? How exactly will that be possible when I am engaged to Joseph and we are forbidden to have sexual relations?

Gabriel had the answers but, frankly, they weren’t any less confusing than what he said at first. Here’s what he told Mary about how she would conceive:

“The Holy Spirit will come on 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.”

Gabriel made it clear that this was going to be no conventional conception, no baby beginning from the sexual union of Joseph and Mary. Rather, the inception of salvation would come through a divine conception within Mary carried out by Holy Spirit as she was overshadowed by the Most High. It would become the latest in a long line of miraculous acts initiated and ordained by God but none of what He had done prior would have the long reaching impact that this virgin impregnation would have.

For before Jesus could come to bring salvation to all mankind, the advent of God’s new covenant with His people, He needed to be conceived, carried while in the womb, and then born into the world as its Savior through a virgin, in just the way God chose, in the way that was predicted by the prophets. Through all this, we see once again, as the closing words of our scripture passage remind us:

“No word from God will ever fail.”

Tomorrow, we’ll see how Mary responds to this plan of God, this word of God declared through the angel.

Amen

In Christ,

Mark
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