Mary: Faith in the Impossible
Christmas '23 • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Planning the Details
Planning the Details
The Xmas season has special meaning to me and Sara. We’ve been married almost 40 years. Our wedding anniversary is in July.
But, we got engaged over Xmas, 40 years ago.
Sara will tell you that she proposed to me. The way I remember it, she didn’t propose. What happened was, we’d been dating about a month. It was August or September, she called me, invited me over to her apartment, there was something she wanted to say, and when I got there, she told me she wanted to marry me. There was no proposal. Question. Or, request. It was more of a statement.
A month. I’ll admit it, I was in love. She was beautiful, god-loving, faithful, and quite the catch. But, 1 month.
My thoughts were, ya, let’s wait and see how this goes. Infatuation is real. But how stupid was that! I had her on the hook and didn’t start reeling.
How many chances do you get at someone like this?
I’m thinking there are some details we have to figure out if we are going to do this.
Reality is, you can’t really figure it out until you’re committed to doing it.
By Thanksgiving that year, 1983, I had come to my senses. I had played hard to get as long as I dared.
The way I did it, there was no real proposal, either. It was more of a convo. I was pretty committed to talking things thru, making sure we were both on the same page. And, deathly afraid she’d say ‘no’. if it was a simple yes/no question.
Rather than take the chance on 1 knee w/ a one-word answer, we talked it out on her sofa. That’s in case I needed to talk her back into it rather than just waiting for her to answer.
Not the most romantic thing. But, here we are.
As far as who asked whom, nobody really asked any questions. It was more like, let’s do this.
Once we’re committed to it, then there are things that need to happen in the right order in the right way.
And, there are no sure things at this point.
We went home for Xmas, each to our own family, talked to them about it. We each got the tentative okay.
I think my family was more excited about her than hers was about me.
For obvious reasons!
Her parents had only met me once. They came thru Dallas for a day in the summer. We barely had any time together. Her mom would say later she would have spent more time there had she known where Sara and I were headed.
Her dad came to our singles’ bible study and played volleyball w/ us after. That was the extent of their knowledge of me. And the next thing they knew, she was talking to them about marrying me.
Next, I had to get permission from her dad. He barely knows me.
The plan was for me to join them on a ski trip after Xmas to their cabin in Pinetop. Sunrise Ski Area is out there.
I flew to Tucson, we loaded up their Subaru wagon, and made the 4-hour drive thru Globe and the Salt River Canyon. We arrived shortly after lunch time. Sara and her mom immediately went grocery shopping.
Here’s my chance. 1st chance I had. I was not going to wait. I took advantage of the private afternoon to pop the question to her dad and have that talk.
Yes I asked him. That was my proposal. After that, it was a 1-sided convo that he dominated after I initiated.
Obviously, he was gracious and gave me the permission I was after. That was a load off my mind.
But, as nervous as I might have been ahead of the convo w/ Sara or asking her dad for permission; that was nothing compared to what Sara faced when telling her mom that we planned to get married in Dallas, not Tucson.
In their hearts humans plan their course,
but the Lord establishes their steps.
There is a Yiddish version, “We plan, God laughs”.
Then there’s another version that goes something like this, “We planned our wedding and Sara’s mother didn’t laugh.”
B/C, she had a plan. She’d had this plan for a long time. She’d sit in church on Sunday mornings and plan how to decorate the place.
Mom’s plan all along was, Sara would come home to Tucson to their church and she would get to plan it all there.
Appreciate where her mom was coming from. Old school, generational, wedding planning. She did not get to plan her wedding. Her mother did. So, the wedding she counted on planning was Sara’s.
Their little girl, only daughter, wanted to do this a long way away from Tucson.
That took some time and convincing. But, mom gave her permission, too.
On the condition that we would come thru Tucson after our honeymoon and she could have a reception for her friends there.
What it meant to us is one more big party, but more presents.
Mom and dad each had their plan about how their daughter’s engagement, wedding, and life was supposed to go.
But what convinced them to change their plan was their faith in Sara.
They trusted Sara. They had faith in her ability to make good choices. You may question her choices at this point. And, of course, I’m still on probation for this relationship. 1 big mess up and I’m done.
But, her parents’ faith in her made it possible for us to do what we planned to do.
Truthfully, we would have abandoned our plan, surrendered to their plan if they insisted. They knew that.
It all started at Xmas, 40 years ago.
Long before, there was a teenage girl and her mother who had her wedding planned out. They had dreamt and schemed about how the year-long engagement would go.
What the couple would do to gradually get to know each other and fall in love.
Both the bride and groom would live with their parents during this time so the entire family had a hand in how this was supposed to play out.
They planned the feast at the end of the engagement. The celebration where the groom would take his bride into his house for the very first time.
The innocent, maybe embarrassing first time they would be intimate.
This had probably been the bride’s and her mother’s plan from the time she was a little girl.
But then, they had to scrap their plan for another, higher priority plan. What could possibly be a higher priority than a wedding? It involved the arrival of her first child.
So much that seemed to start out so right, began to look so wrong.
She never planned to get pregnant before her marriage. She was devoted and faithful to God, trying to do everything the right way in the right order.
But, ironically, it was b/c of her faith she accepted her fate and scrapped her plan.
But the plan she scrapped hers for was impossible, unbelievable.
But b/c of her faith in the One who brought the new plan, she accepted it as her own, trusting Him for the details.
We all face situations, when we first encounter them, they seem improbable if not completely impossible. That conversation. That confrontation. That question of what to do and what to say next. The details escape us.
We have no idea what to do next, much less how to get where we want to go even if we believe it’s exactly where God wants us to be.
Why would He command us to do what we cannot do?
When you find yourself in one of those situations, you need to remember God specializes in the details. Impossible? Improbable?
Keep moving forward. Don’t stop. 1 step at a time.
Slide
When you accept your situation faithfully, believing God has led you there, then you can surrender control to God, and trust Him for the details, and no matter how unbelievable they may be He will work them out.
You will know what to do and be able to do it, when you need to do it.
Maybe you got yourself into it. Maybe someone else did, no fault of your own. Either way, God’s got your details.
And the prime example of that is when Mary found out she would be tasked w/ the responsibility to deliver and raise God’s son.
Why would God tell Mary to do something impossible for her?
He wanted her to depend on Him for everything.
He wanted us to know He can be trusted for the details of our lives that seem impossible.
Luke told Mary’s story. Here is how she found out she would be the mother of God’s son.
Her story is written about in Luke 1.
Mary’s Story
Mary’s Story
There are actually 2 versions of the Xmas story. Reconciling the 2 is not difficult when we understand that Matthew wrote the story from Joseph’s perspective. And, Luke wrote the story from Mary’s.
I talked about Joseph last week. If you missed it. Then, look it up online on our website.
What do we know about Mary?
Her father was named Eli. She was a descendant of David thru his son, Nathan.
She had a sister named Salome.
She had relative named Elizabeth. More on her in a minute.
She was a teenager when this took place. We don’t know for sure how old. She could have been as young as 13 or as old as 18. So, guess about 16 years old.
She was poor. Her family was poor.
And she was devout believer in God w/ a strong faith.
Her parents had arranged for her marriage to Joseph and she was in the betrothal period, making plans for her wedding.
And, she was on board w/ their plan.
The betrothal period is something we sometimes compare to our engagement before marriage. But it was different.
The man and woman were consider married, called husband and wife.
But, they did not live together nor consummate the marriage.
The is the time when they would get to know each other, learn to love each other, and prepare to make a home together.
This is the time the bride and her mother planned the wedding. The arrangements had been made, contracts signed, and now the wedding planning had begun. Both families had done a good job choosing for their child.
Now, it was time to get on w/ the details. They had a year.
Everything is humming along as planned. Just like it had been done for centuries and families just like these.
The possibilities for their future are endless. Family, faith, and full support of everyone involved.
But then, God broke in.
He was about to tell a virtually unknown teenage girl she was going to take part in something that is so shocking as to be totally unbelievable.
What God told Mary to do would change her life forever and change her wedding plans for the foreseeable future.
It would also change the course of mankind.
Do you think you could scrap your plans if it meant changing the course of history toward God?
Gone are the happy dreams of a beautiful wedding; gone are the days of sweet anticipation of the perfect day; gone are the innocent anticipations of the consummation of her marriage w/ her beloved new husband.
All this would eventually happen, just not as she had envisioned all her life.
Here’s how it went down when God broke in and the angel Gabriel broke the news of what God had planned for her.
God Broke In
God Broke In
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.”
“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.
So much of this would not make sense if it was not in the bible. No on would make this story up b/c no one would believe it.
Mary was from Nazareth which was in Galilee. And Galileans were looked down upon by Jews in Jerusalem as inferior.
One reason was b/c Galileans would only occasionally attend services in the temple in Jerusalem, so they were considered 2nd class. In their defense, the journey was long and hard. It was about 100 mi up hill to Jerusalem. A rugged climb.
But at least annual temple attendance was a criteria of acceptance among the Jews.
Galilee provided grain and fish. There were farms and fishing businesses. Some ppl made a lot of money there.
There was the attitude that if you wanted to get rich go to Galilee. If you wanted to get educated go to Jerusalem.
Galileans were considered materialistic. Immoral. Less spiritual.
Then, the Romans set up a military base nearby. And soldiers, being soldiers, liked to play when they were not on duty. Nazareth was also known for its party scene where the soldiers blew off steam.
And young, teenage girls were the objects of the soldiers intentions when they came into town to play.
This was not a place where you would expect God, or an angel of God, to show up and pick a resident for such and important job.
Mary would have been a teenager. Joseph would have been in his late 20s or 30s. Men waited longer to marry.
They were extremely poor. And, in a place where there was money to be made, they didn’t get much. The religious Jews looked down on Galileans and the wealthy looked down on the poor of Nazareth.
So, two strikes against them right away if you’re keeping score.
This young couple would have been seen as country bumpkins, rubes, simpletons. If they would have been just a little more on the ball they would have been worth a lot more.
They were betrothed, or engaged.
Both were committed not only to ea other, but committed to doing things God’s way. No adultery.
Adultery is simply intimacy w/ anyone you’re not married to.
Even fantasizing about it, thinking about it is sin.
Which is a challenge for a young couple looking forward to the day.
They were more than what we consider dating or engaged, but less than what we consider married.
Elizabeth. A relative of some sort. Her husband was Zechariah. He was a priest in Jerusalem. His name was drawn for special duty on that Passover. While in the temple, the angel showed up and told him he and his wife would conceive and have a son.
Two big problems w/ that.
First, they had been unable to conceive their entire married life.
Second, they were both too old to conceive at that time. That ship had sailed.
They trusted God for the details that seemed unbelievable and impossible and it happened.
Well, at first Zech did not believe. So, the angel muted him until he named the boy.
The boy grew up to be JB.
So, right away, Luke adds this detail that would have been a sign to Mary that she can trust what the angel is about to tell her will happen.
He greets Mary w/ the words, “highly favored” You found favor w/ God.
The Greek root of favored, is grace.
IOW, this is not an honor she deserved or earned. This was God bestowing on her a gift.
Also, when the angel announces Jesus’ birth to the shepherds, he said, “Peace on earth to those who are favored by God.”
That is, those who, by faith, are saved b/c of the grace of God.
Mary was sweet, innocent, a believer in God, did her best to obey God and her parents. But what God did for her this day was far greater than anything here belief and behavior could have earned her.
Mary was like Abraham in this sense. Of all the ppl on earth, God chose Abraham to be the father of Israel.
There wasn’t much special about Abraham. He was religious. But his father was a Pagan priest.
What was special, God saw in Abraham’s heart was a receptivity to Him. God knew if He introduced Himself to Abraham, Abraham would believe in Him and obey him to the best of his ability. Certainly not perfectly, but faithfully.
Making him the perfect father of Israel.
That’s Mary. God recognized something in her heart that if he chose her for this role, she would do her best to fulfill it faithfully and obediently.
Making her, in God’s mind at least, the perfect mother of Jesus.
Mary hadn’t heard about Elizabeth, yet. So, in her mind, to the best of her education and recollection, God had not spoken to any human being for over 400 years.
Remember, no prophets w/ visions, no burning bushes, no talking donkeys.
There had been no appearances of angels or the Lord Himself since Malachi wrote the last book in your OT.
400 years.
This was totally unexpected and out of the blue.
In Nazareth of all places, the region of Galilee.
Mary, in many ways, your average, run of the mill teenager, from a good family, engaged to a good man. But in poverty. On no one’s radar but God’s.
And God had been on the down low for a long, long time.
She was just doing her thing, the usual family chores. Maybe her mom was training her to be a godly wife for when she consummated her marriage.
And on a normal, unspecial day, an angel interrupted her and changed her plans.
Mary was terrified. Gabriel did his best to put her at ease. This message is from God, and he is being gracious w/ you.
Which would have immediately calmed her. The peace of God would have overcome her at that point preparing her for what was coming.
These words; conceive, give birth, a son, Jesus.
Son of the Most High, Great, given the throne of His father, David.
How much did she comprehend right away? Details!
Was this like the adults in Charlie Brown cartoons? Wah Wah wah wah wah?
Like very other religious Jew, she was expectantly waiting for God to send His Messiah.
Jesus. The Greek version of the Hebrew name, Joshua that means the Lord saves. He delivers his ppl out of slavery and into freedom.
Just like Joshua in the OT who led Israel into their PL, Jesus will lead all of us believers into our PL, heaven. Or, the kingdom to Jews.
He will be great.
The son of the Most High.
In Greek culture the son was equal to his father.
The name was the equivalent of the Hebrew; El Elyon.
The greatest God of all. He is God. He is the greatest God.
Not one of those lesser, puny gods.
He will be given David’s throne.
Thru Mary, Jesus is the genetic heir to David’s throne. Thru Joseph He is the legal heir. But remember, Jesus won’t have Joseph’s DNA.
He will reign over Jacob’s descendants.
His reign over the Kingdom will never end.
Key words used; Throne, kingdom, house of Jacob. The same terms God used when making his promise to David that a descendant would sit on his throne forever.
An obvious question. How?
She knew the birds and the bees. She and Joseph were committed to no intimacy before marriage. They hadn’t.
So, How will this happen?
When Zechariah questioned Gabriel about he and Elizabeth having a son, he questioned b/c he didn’t believe it. So God disciplined him by muting him.
Mary’s question was simply a biological question. She believed God could and would. This just didn’t jive w/ the story her mother told her about how it was supposed to happen.
The HS will come over you and God will miraculously be you son’s Father.
And since it will be a supernatural conception, Jesus will be protected and prevented from the corruption of sin.
Among the father’s contribution to conception is the blood. There is no blood in the egg. Blood is life.
You know this if you’ve ever cracked a chicken’s egg and seen a little blood. Then you know the rooster got to the hen.
No blood, then an unfertilized egg.
Every natural human conception passes on the flawed and impure blood from father to the children.
Jesus got His Father’s blood which is pure.
The virgin birth and supernatural conception maintained Jesus’s qualification to be our Savior. If He was sinful Himself, the only sin He could account for was his own. But b/c he is sinless, He could account for everyone else’s on the cross.
Mary’s DNA made him human.
God’s DNA made him God.
With all these great things Gabriel said about her and her soon to be born son, maybe a little confirmation would be helpful.
She didn’t ask for a sign. But Gabriel offered one. Elizabeth, your relative is 6 months pregnant. She was never able to conceive herself. Then, she became too old. But, God performed a miracle for her, similar to the miracle he is performing for you.
Count on God’s word to be true and God to be true to His word.
She didn’t ask for this. She didn’t have the choice Joseph did.
But she willingly submitted to God. She did not rebel nor question God’s call on her life.
How? Not just conception, but how is she going to raise God’s son. How will she be rec’d by Joseph, her parents, her synagogue, her community?
How will she endure his 3-year ministry, torture, and cruz?
Mary trusted God for the details. B/C God specialized in the details.
Imagine that first conversation w/ her parents. Mom, dad, I’m pregnant.
Their first assumption; Joseph.
Their second assumption; those partying soldiers.
Was she raped or did she consent?
Dad was still responsible for her. What would he do?
And her mom had plans.
Once again, there is one application to today’s message.
Sara’s mom had plans. She’d been making them for a long time. It was not easy process to get her to accept her plans were not going to take place.
But, her faith in Sara made it possible.
Mary, her mother, her father, Joseph; all had plans, too. But they ended up scrapping their plans for God’s plan.
The question for us is, are you willing to scrap your plan, your plan for your entire life, your plan for the next few years, your plan for today; if God presents you w/ another plan?
Are you will to trust Him for the details? Are you willing to cede control and surrender even if what He’s asking seems impossible?
Slide
When you accept your situation faithfully, believing God has led you there, then you can surrender control to God, and trust Him for the details, and no matter how unbelievable they may be He will work them out.