The Announcement of the Savior (Luke 1:26-38) | Worship Service

Good morning, and welcome to Kootenai Church. We're glad that you're here today. Would you please stand as we begin our service this morning with a reading from John chapter three. And it says in John 3, 16 to 19, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

For God did not send the son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through him. He who believes in him is not judged. He who does not believe has been judged already because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten son of God.

And this is the judgment, that the light has come into the world and men love their darkness rather than the light for their deeds were evil. We're gonna begin our music service this morning and we're gonna sing, Sing We the Song of Emmanuel.

Sing we the song of Emmanuel Fist of Christ who was long foretold Oh in the shadows of Bethlehem Promise of dawn now our eyes behold. God most high in the manger laid Lift your voices and now proclaim Great and glorious love has come to us.

Join now with the host of heaven. We too welcome Emmanuel King who came with no crown or throne. Helpless he lay the invincible Maker of Mary now Mary's son Oh what wisdom to save us all. Shepherd, sages before him call Grace and majesty, what humility.

Call the adored for the weary Up your heads for your king has come. Sing for the dark glory shining for all to see. But the God's name is shielded to see. His shepherd, the king who held the stars Lay helpless in a maiden's arms And pressed against her While sheep and cattle raised their voice The babe could speak no.

Her flowing spring of joy.

Had come to share all was our The Lord of the world would stumble As he learned to walk Upon the ground before our feet Glory, Gloria In the high Was our.

Raise us from.

And now the highest praise of all.

Belongs to Jesus.

Wounded on To bear and sin The king gave up his crown so we.

Could ever.

Raise us from Our shame And now the highest praise of all.

Belongs to Jesus.

You may be seated.

Just one announcement and that is that tonight.

Is our Christmas Eve evening service at 6 .30 p .m. tonight. So we'd invite you to come back for that. Turn now, please, if you will, to the gospel of Matthew chapter one. There are two portions of scripture that describe the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ.

One is in Matthew and one is in Luke. And later on, we're gonna be looking at the one in Luke for the sermon, both today, this morning, and this evening. And so I will ask you to turn to Matthew chapter one and we'll begin reading at verse 18 and we'll read through the end of the chapter, verse 25.

Matthew chapter one, beginning at verse 18. Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. When his mother, Mary, had been betrothed to Joseph before they came together, she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit.

And Joseph, her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly. But when he had considered this, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream saying, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child who has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit.

She will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. Now, all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet. Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a son and they shall call his name Immanuel, which translated means God with us.

And Joseph awoke from his sleep and did as the angel of the Lord commanded him and took Mary as his wife, but he kept her a virgin until she gave birth to a son and he called his name Jesus. You stand with me as we pray.

Let's bow our heads.

Our Father, what a marvelous love that you have had for mankind, this fallen race of Adam, that you would send your son into this world to live in our stead and to die in our place so that we may have eternal life.

We come together today to reflect upon the great and marvelous promise of the incarnation and the fulfillment of that promise in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. We are grateful that you have sent a savior who will save your people from their sins.

Thank you that his life is sufficient to merit our righteousness, the righteousness that we need to stand before you on the final day, and his death is sufficient to pay the price for our infinite sin debt that we owed for our violation of the law for all of our transgressions and our iniquity.

We were hopeless and ruined in Adam's sin in our lost condition, unwilling and unable to change our condition and our hearts, unable to do anything that merited even the slightest bit of grace from your hands.

But you, our God, our blessed and triune God, has seen fit to redeem a people for your own glory and to draw an innumerable company to your son and then upon him to lay all of their sin. And so we thank you for that sacrifice and we thank you for the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And as your people, we are grateful to look back upon his first coming and we look forward to his return with great expectation, with great hope, for in his return, we are going to find the fulfillment of all your promises that you have promised us.

And we ask that you would comfort and encourage our hearts in this time and this day as we wait for that fulfillment of those promises. As your people, we love you and we thank you for the Lord Jesus Christ for his coming, for his sacrifice, for his life, for his resurrection and for his reign and rule in heaven even now.

And we ask that you would comfort and encourage our hearts.

Through these truths.

Bless our time of worship and fellowship as we meditate upon them, we ask in Christ's name.

Amen.

Upon a man in song Broke through peace and goodwill toward men Born now in Bethlehem Upon a star, the sovereign son of the universe Breathing the dust of earth One consolation to the tree with nature's saying

In Matthew chapter 11, it says, come to me all who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls.

For my yoke is easy and my burden is light. We're gonna end our music service this morning and sing, oh, come all you unfaithful.

All you unfaithful come Weak and unstable come No, you are not, oh, come Barren and waiting ones Weary of praying come See what your God has done Christ is born for a thing come He is the offering come See what your God has done Christ is born, Christ is born, Christ is born You will need your Bible open.

To the gospel of Luke chapter one. Luke chapter one. Before we read and get started, let's bow our heads and ask the Lord's blessing upon our time. Father Christ is born. What a glorious declaration that is.

It is as if we were to say that he is risen as well. For the resurrection of the body depends upon the incarnation of our great God and Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. A second person of the blessed Trinity became flesh for our sake so that he might redeem us and bring glory to the triune God and to redeem a people for his own sake, for his own glory and do us good all in that process.

And we thank you for that.

He is born.

He has died. He was buried and he rose again. And for this great and glorious gospel truth, we adore you and thank you. And we pray now your blessing upon our study of your word and are looking at the gospel of Luke and his record of what transpired there.

May you be honored through our time and our meditation here in Christ's name we pray.

Amen.

Well, it is Christmas Eve. And so this morning service, as well as the one tonight kind of bring to a conclusion, mini series that we have been working through, looking at the Old Testament promises of a Messiah.

And today we're going to be in Luke's gospel in chapter one, looking at part of the fulfillment of that. And I say part of the fulfillment because not everything that was promised in the Old Testament was fulfilled in the first coming of our Lord.

Galatians chapter four, verse four says, "'When the fullness of time came, "'God sent forth his son born of a woman, "'born under the law so that he might redeem "'those who were under the law, "'that we might receive the adoption as sons.'".

When the fullness of time came, when the long expected culmination of all of those promises came to the time, the ripeness of that time to be fulfilled, then God sent forth his son to be born of a woman.

And we have been waiting now for the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ for 2000 years, which seems like a long time until you realize that prior to his coming, humanity had been waiting for 4000 years for the fulfillment of those promises made back as early as in the Garden of Eden right after the fall of man.

And one of the benefits of our brief survey of Old Testament history of the promises and the prophecies regarding Christ is that it reminds us that God is always at work to accomplish his purposes. He is always at work to fulfill his word and to bring to pass what he has promised to us.

And this is where we started back a few weeks ago in Genesis chapter three, verse 15. And just to bring you up to speed with what we have looked at so far, we started with that passage, which is the first mention of gospel truth and gospel promise.

It regarded the seed of the woman and it was spoken in the context of the curse upon the serpent, where the Lord promised that a seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent and he would be bruised, his heel would be bruised as a result of that triumph.

And we looked there at the virgin birth of our Lord, the vicarious suffering that was promised there and also the victory over the serpent. Then a couple weeks ago, we looked at the indicators of the Old Testament that the seed of the woman would be fully man and that this was necessary in order for him to represent us and to live on our behalf for the sake of our righteousness.

And we saw his humanity and his lineage and his suffering and then in his eventual rule and reign as the promised descendant of David. Then last week, we looked at the indications from the Old Testament that the coming seed of the woman was going to be fully divine.

He needed to be God in order to pay the infinite debt of sin that you and I owe. Even one of us in this room owes an infinite sin debt and we have an infinite debt of righteousness that we do not have.

So we needed one who was infinitely righteous, perfectly so and impeccably so, and one who was fully God so that he could provide for us the full righteousness that we need as well as pay the debt, the full debt of the sin that we had heaped up by our lawbreaking.

So he had to be fully man and fully divine. And we saw that this one from David's line would be divine through his eternality, his origin, his goings forth, Micah 5, verse two. His names indicate that he would be divine.

He's the wonderful counselor, the mighty God. And then we looked at his rule and his reign as an indication of his divine nature. Now, you might expect with all of that in hindsight, now you might expect that with all of those pieces on the table, with all of that information about the Messiah that the Jews had.

And I mentioned to you a couple of weeks ago, we could go back into the Old Testament and go a hundred different directions with the promises made regarding Christ. All the stuff that we've looked at in the last three weeks, it's just scratching the surface of a wealth, an embarrassment of riches when it comes to what is predicted and promised in the Old Testament.

So much that is there. So you would think then that the Jews, having hundreds of years to meditate upon that, to think it out, to reason it out, to put the pieces together, to kind of follow the trajectory of Old Testament revelation with all the promises that unfolded over time, to examine Micah and Zechariah and Isaiah and Jeremiah and all of the passages, all of the Psalms, all of the types and shadows in the Old Testament, the sacrifices, the feast, the tabernacle, and all of that, the promises of the kingdom rule.

You would think that the Jews, with all of that information on the table, would have had a pretty consistent, pretty comprehensive understanding of what to expect in their Messiah. You would think that that would be the case.

They had hundreds of years to think about it, to put it together, to reason it out, to consult commentaries, to pray about it, to study the scriptures. But what was the early first century Jewish expectation of a Messiah?

Did they have a unanimous understanding of what that would look like? Not at all. Not at all, actually. You would think that they would, but they didn't. There's an old adage that says, if you ask three Jews for their opinion, you'll get four, yeah, if you ask three Jews for their opinion, you get four opinions.

You wanna know what a Jew thinks? Get prepared for two or three different opinions. This was the same way in the first century. With all that information, they had all kinds of different ideas of what that messianic fulfillment would look like.

One thing that they all agreed upon, one thing that every Jew agreed together about was that the Old Testament predicted a messianic figure.

That they got.

There's a Redeemer that is promised, Genesis chapter three, we get that. You have the prophecies regarding the king and the kingdom,.

We get that.

Prophecies regarding sacrifice, atonement, we get that. There's a messianic figure coming. What that looked like, how it would be fulfilled, that they did not agree upon. And there were a number of different ideas of just how this would be fulfilled.

For instance, some Jews believed that the messianic promises was just an idealistic, mythological kind of ideal. It was an idea, it was a messianic idea. So they would take all the promises regarding the Messiah and they would say this is to be understood metaphorically or allegorically or he's kind of a symbol.

Like we have our symbols of deliverers and redeemers and heroes in our own culture, like Superman, Iron Man, Batman, et cetera. These are kind of cultural, mythological figures that we look at as being higher ideals of higher virtues.

That's what the Messiah is, some Jews would have said. He's just a mythological figure, kind of a Messiah figure, a redeemer figure, somebody to put your hope in. And not that these things are ever gonna take place actually, literally, physically in front of our eyes, but it's kind of an idealized understanding of, it's like sacrifice and redemption, anthropomorphized.

Always wanted to say that word, that's a big word. Anthropomorphized, put into sort of human language and human ideals. They would have said that the idea of sacrifice is to be understood allegorically or just kind of as a spiritual metaphor.

The idea of a reign was just really a picture of God's ultimate sovereign rulership over all of creation and the deity references in the Messiah in the Old Testament, those were just indicators that Yahweh was the one who was going to sort of bring together this messianic idea of redemption and salvation that none of that should be taken literally or historically.

Second, some Jews viewed the coming Messiah as a military leader. They were expecting someone to come and to gather together the forces to lead a revolt against Gentile nations, to put down Gentile powers, to crush the nations with a rod of iron, to establish a Davidic kingdom and to make Israel the center of the world, world commerce, world worship, world ruler and reign.

They expected that he would crush the wicked rulers of the earth and those who rage and plot together. We can kind of understand why they would have thought that. Psalm 2, ask of me and I will surely give the nations as your inheritance and the ends of the earth as your possession.

You shall break them with a rod of iron. You shall shatter them like earthenware. Psalm 110, the Lord said to my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet. The Lord will stretch forth your strong scepter from Zion saying, rule in the midst of your enemies.

We can understand why they would expect a military, victorious, conquering king who would establish a kingdom. Why would they have expected that? Spoiler alert, it's because that's what the Old Testament promised.

Some Jews would have expected that when the Messiah would come, those roles of the Messiah that are predicted in the Old Testament would actually be fulfilled by more than one person. They thought that there would be one figure who would come and fulfill the messianic prophecies regarding sacrifice.

Isaiah 53, he would die, he would be crushed for our iniquities. Psalm 22, there would be one who would come and they would gamble for his garments and they would pierce his hands and his feet and he would suffer in the stead of his people.

They expected that. But then they had these prophecies regarding one who would also rule and reign over David's kingdom and David's throne. So they thought this must be two different people, one who dies as a sacrifice, cannot possibly come and also reign forever.

So therefore there's going to be one person to come and to offer the sacrifice and another Messiah figure who would come and rule and reign from David's throne forever. And we can understand why they would think that, can't we?

Because these are both things that the Old Testament predicted and promised that the Messiah would do. Now with all of that background and all of that commentary, as needless as you might think that it is, I want you to look at Luke 1, beginning at verse 26.

We're gonna look at how Gabriel announces the fulfillment of these promises to Mary. Luke 1, we're gonna read verses 26 through 38 and that entire passage is going to be our text for this morning. So we will get through all of this before we are done.

Now in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph of the descendants of David and the virgin's name was Mary.

And coming in, he said to her, greetings favored one, the Lord is with you. But she was very perplexed at this statement and kept pondering what kind of salutation this was. 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 name him Jesus. He will be great and 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 his kingdom will have no end.

Mary said to the angel, how can this be since I am a virgin? The angel answered and said to her, the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the most high will overshadow you. And for that reason, the Holy child shall be called the son of God.

And behold, even your relative Elizabeth has also conceived a son in her old age. And she who was called barren is now in her sixth month for nothing will be impossible with God. And Mary said, behold, the bond slave of the Lord may it be done to me according to your word.

And the angel departed from her. We're gonna notice three things here about Gabriel's conversation with Mary. First, his arrival, second, his announcement, and then his answer to her question. That's gonna be our outline for this morning.

Notice in Luke chapter one, verse 26 and 27, that Luke tells us that this thing happened, this announcement happened in the sixth month. The sixth month of what? Not the sixth month of Mary's pregnancy because Gabriel speaking in terms of future, what was about to happen.

So it's not in the sixth month of her pregnancy, nor is it in the sixth month of her engagement to Joseph. It is in the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, which is mentioned in verses 24 to 25, which we didn't get to, but look at verse 24.

After these things, Elizabeth, his wife, became pregnant and she kept herself in seclusion for five months, saying, this is the way the Lord has dealt with me in the days when he looked with favor upon me to take away my disgrace among men.

Elizabeth was a cousin of sorts, a relative, a kin to Mary, and Gabriel had already given an announcement to Elizabeth who was on up in age, in years, and she had been barren up until that point, and Gabriel said, look, you're going to have a son, you're going to be pregnant, and you remember Zechariah was a priest serving in the temple at the time, and Zechariah was struck dumb, speechless, because he questioned that and had doubt, and the Lord sort of struck him, and then after John, this is the prophecy of John the Baptist's birth, and then after John was born, then Zechariah got his speech back.

So this is in the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, and this angelic assignment had to be one that for Gabriel was a choice assignment. Keep in mind that humanity had been waiting for this for 6 ,000 years, and I don't know how it unfolded, I hope to find out someday, I would love to have a conversation with Gabriel and find out what was it like that day when you were finally told, all right, this is it, you've been waiting for four millennia, the time has come, you need to go visit this woman, she is a virgin, and give her this message, and Gabriel's commissioned to do that, he gave the message to Elizabeth, and now he's commissioned to go to Mary, and where does he go?

To Tarsus, the educational center of the world? Nope, does he go to Antioch, the commercial metropolitan center of the world? Nope, Caesarea, the sort of seat of Roman rule and authority there in Israel?

Not there, and certainly not to Jerusalem, which is where you might expect for the Spirit of God to find a virgin and impregnate her in Jerusalem, not in Jerusalem, but to Nazareth, Nazareth. Now last week, we talked about backwater hick towns that were of no significance, and Bethlehem was certainly one of those, Nazareth was on that list as well, Nazareth was on the list of places you didn't put on lists, because it was that insignificant, and the angel Gabriel is sent to a woman who is not yet with child, she is a virgin, she has been engaged, but has not been married, and she is awaiting that consummation of the marriage in the due time, as things would progress over the course of many months, and she is engaged to a man named Joseph, and living in a town called Nazareth, which was on nobody's radar, in fact, Nazareth was the butt of jokes, it was what you said to joke about things, can anything good come out of Nazareth?

Remember, that was an actual saying, we talked about something coming out of Nazareth, can anything good come out of Nazareth? Nobody would have expected that, and yet this is where Mary lived, she is not a princess, she's not an heiress, she's not wealthy, she's living in an indescript little town up in Galilee, far away from Jerusalem, and she is a virgin, which is going to fulfill the prophecy in Isaiah chapter seven, verse 14, therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign, behold, a virgin shall be with child and bear a son, and she will call his name Immanuel.

This is how the prophecy of the seed of the woman would be fulfilled, the seed of the woman, you remember that is an odd phrase to see anywhere, and it described one who would come from the woman, but not be the direct product of the seed of the man, so the Lord Jesus is described as the seed of the woman, for he would be conceived in a unique way, born of the woman without the involvement of any human male seed, and yet, because he is Mary's child, he would be physically a descendant of David, now this is significant, he would be physically a descendant of David, but he would not be legally a descendant of David, because he would not be the offspring of the Davidic line through Joseph, but he could take the throne of David because he was David's legal descendant by adoption through Joseph, but not the physical descendant through Joseph, he was the physical descendant of David through Mary, so one of the gospel genealogies traces the lineage of Jesus through Mary to David to show that Jesus is the physical descendant of David, therefore, he had the physical right to take the throne, but because he wasn't Joseph's son, but only in an adoptive sense, he had no legal right to take the throne, and so in this masterful way, the spirit of God and the providence of God orchestrated a way to make Jesus Christ, not the physical descendant of David through Joseph, legally he was, so he could take the throne, but making the physical descendant through Mary, so he is then the seed of the woman who has the legal right to take David's throne, and this is particularly interesting when you remember that in Joseph's lineage, there was a king who was cursed with a promise that nobody would sit upon, from his line would sit upon the throne, and you take that king who bore that curse, the promise from God that nobody would sit from his line upon that throne, and you trace that down, you get to Joseph, and you say, now this is a conundrum, no physical descendant of that king can sit on David's throne, Joseph is the physical descendant of that king, and so how does the Lord work that out?

By making him the physical descendant of Mary who did not descend from that king, but from another part of David's line, but make him the legal descendant through Joseph, so he has the legal right to take the throne from Joseph, the physical right to take the throne from Mary, ah, the wisdom, the knowledge, and the providence of God.

Tell me that that is not a perfect plan. That is a perfect plan. Notice the angel's greeting, verse 28. Coming in, he said to her, greetings, favored one, the Lord is with you. She was very perplexed at this statement and kept pondering what kind of salutation this was.

The word favored one, or the phrase favored one, there is a translation of a word that means one who is granted great grace, or favor. The fact that Mary is perplexed at this greeting is an indication of just what kind of a woman she was, a pious woman, a godly woman.

She refers to herself down in verse 38 as a bond slave, or a slave of the Lord. She says, the slave of the Lord may it be done to me according to your word, and the angel departed from her, verse 38. She calls God her savior later on in this chapter.

She calls God her savior and understands her own sin and unworthiness, so Mary is a humble woman, a pious woman, one who understood that she and her plans and her reputation were all to be laid on the line in service to Yahweh and his purposes, and so she is perplexed that the angel would come in and regard her as one who is divinely favored.

He said, and her perplexity is somewhat understandable when you remember that she's living in Nazareth, hardly a place of divine favor. She's not sitting on a princess's throne somewhere in Jerusalem.

She's not eating lavish banquets in the palace of a king. She's not enjoying any of those things. She's not even well known at all, probably not known too far outside of Nazareth, and yet the angel refers to her as a favored one.

She's engaged not to a king, not to a prince, not to nobility in any earthly sense, but she is engaged to a carpenter, not a king, a carpenter, and the only thing that she could expect from such humble circumstances is simply to live out her days as any other Jewish woman in Nazareth engaged to a carpenter would have lived out her days, in a small house attached to a wood shop of some sort where Joseph did his thing and she'd kept the house and the animals and they worked together and lived and died and died in ignominy, unknown.

That's what she could have expected. So to have an angel show up to somebody in Nazareth and say, you're divinely favored, would have struck her as quite odd for certain. She is the most unlikely of persons to bear the one who is the creator of time itself.

She is the most unlikely of persons to have such a noble calling and such a noble task. And this is the way the Lord works in exalting the lowly. Psalm 138, verse six. Though the Lord is exalted, he regards the lowly.

He sees the proud from a long ways away. In Isaiah 66, verse two. On this one, the Lord says, I will look to him who is humble and contrite of spirit and who trembles at my word. That's the type of person Mary was.

James four, verse six, says God is opposed to the proud, but he gives grace to the humble. Everything about the incarnation of our Lord is a testimony to humility. It is a testimony to service and to sacrifice and to humility.

Mary was a humble woman who was surprised to find out that she could have any part at all in the fulfillment of God's promises. And so she wonders, what can all of this possibly mean? And now we look at Gabriel's explanation or his announcement in verse 30 through 33.

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 name him Jesus. He will be great and 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 his kingdom will have no end.

Now here we see all of the themes that we've been looking at for the last several weeks all come together. They all come to fruition. You have the one who is the seed of the woman. She is a virgin. She is virgin.

And so Jesus is going to be virgin born. That's the theme of Genesis chapter three. We have the theme here of his humanity. She's going to bear a son. You have the theme of his deity. He's going to be called the most high God.

And you have the theme of his reign and his rule, which we've looked at for the last two weeks in that he is going to be given the throne of his father, David, and reign over the house of Jacob forever and his kingdom will have no end.

All of it now comes together in this one announcement. But you notice three important things about this baby. First, he would be a son. Verse 31, behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son and you shall name him Jesus.

That language is intentional by the angel because it is the same language that is used in the Old Testament prophecies regarding the coming savior. In other words, Gabriel is recalling to Mary the language that was used of the Old Testament concerning the coming Messiah.

Isaiah chapter seven, verse 14, therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son and she will call his name Emmanuel. See, the very language that Gabriel is using is calling back to Mary's mind the very promises of the Old Testament that she was to fulfill where a virgin would give birth to a son.

Isaiah nine, verse six, a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us, and the government will rest on his shoulders and his name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father and Prince of Peace.

And she would know the significance from the designation you will bear a son, she would know the significance of what the angel was announcing to her just from the language that Gabriel was using. She would bear the one who is the son of David because she knew that she was a descendant of David and she would bear the one who is called the son of the Most High God.