Overcoming Christmas Doubts: Mary

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Don Filcek; Luke 1:26-38 Overcoming Christmas Doubts: Mary

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You're listening to the podcast of Recast Church in Mattawan, Michigan. This week,
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Pastor Don Filsack preaches through his three -part series Overcoming Christmas Doubts. Let's listen in.
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I'm Don Filsack, I'm the lead pastor here, and if you can go ahead and find your seats, that would be great. I am very glad that you've chosen to share your
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Christmas Eve morning with us here in Mattawan at Recast Church. God has brought us together to grow by hearing from his word, by interacting with each other and singing his praises together.
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And so that's something, those are all components of what we're going to do here this morning. The reality is we need each other.
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I say that very often up here. God has created the entire idea of church and placed Jesus Christ as the head of the church and obviously, it's him that we celebrate over this this weekend and going on into this week, and we ought to be celebrating him every day of our lives.
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But God did this and started the church so that we would be strengthening one another by encouragement, by relationships, by challenges that come about through interacting with each other.
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How many of you had a couple challenging get -togethers with family already? You've already had a couple of those times, and maybe you're looking forward to a couple of those as well, where it's always great to say hi, and it's always, you know, great to say goodbye to, right?
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So we all have those experiences in real life. And even just, he brings us together here in this gathering each week throughout the year.
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One of the reasons that church is such a great idea and that God has made it is so that you can look around this room and realize that you are not alone in what
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God is doing. Oftentimes in our daily lives and even in the hustle and bustle of the Christmas season, we can, in the midst of crowds, feel very alone, and so God draws us together to remind us that we need one another.
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We need relationships. We need other people. Have you ever gone through a season of life where God was doing something pretty significant in you, and you just didn't have anybody else to share that with?
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That can be a pretty depressing and down thing, right? It could be something good, or it could be something bad that's going on inside of you in your life, but either way, loneliness adds insult to both joy and sorrow, right?
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Loneliness adds insult to joy and sorrow, and that is one of the reasons we have a core value here at Recast Church of Authenticity.
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We want to mourn with those who are mourning and rejoice with those who rejoice, and we want this to be a place where you can share, hey, come and celebrate with me this great thing that's going on in my life, or hey, come and mourn with me.
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I've got some sorrow and some down things that are going on in my life, and I need somebody to share that with right now, and where somebody will weep with you, or somebody will rejoice with you, and jump up and down and dance.
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This morning, we're going to see the internal struggle of Mary, who finds that God is going to do something very unique through her, and obviously we know what that unique thing is.
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If you've been around the Son a few times, you know what I'm talking about. And last week, we saw the need in Joseph to trust what
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God was doing in the life of another person. Again, that that relational component of sometimes what
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God is doing major is in somebody else's life, and we need to trust that by faith. But here in our text this morning, we're looking at what he's doing in Mary's life, and she has to trust
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God for what he's doing in her life by faith. And so she's going to be, we're going to be seeing her wrestling with the truth of what
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God is saying he's going to do in her and through her. Now, an angel will come to Mary and tell her what comes next.
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I think a lot of us would like to sign up for that. In some ways, you'd like to know what comes next. She's given a glimpse of that, and the interesting thing is in our text that we're gonna be looking at this morning, he doesn't ask her.
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He comes to her and tells her what's going to happen. I don't know if you have an imagination like I do, but I imagine that Mary had some plans of her own.
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She had the way that she thought her life was gonna go. She had a vision and a plan for the way that she wanted her relationship with her future husband
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Joseph to go. She's already betrothed at this time. They're within that one -year waiting period before they would actually have the wedding ceremony, and she's got some plans and some thoughts when
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God sends an angel to her and tells her the way it's going to be, not the way that she wanted it to be.
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And often, I would suggest to you that the biggest source of doubt in our lives often comes down to trusting what God is going to do with us.
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Right? Do you think about that? Do you wonder what God's doing with you? What is he going to do with you? Is he trustworthy?
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A fundamental question. Is he going to curse me? Is he angry with me? Is he going to ask something of me that is painful or miserable, or is he going to ask of me something that's socially uncomfortable?
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One of the worst things that God could ask an American to do, right? Something that's socially uncomfortable. Mary went through all of these things, and she stands as an example for us this morning of trust in the
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Lord even in the midst of doubts and questions. So if you're not already there, I'd ask for you to please open your
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Bibles or navigate in your app over to Luke chapter 1 verses 26 through 38.
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Luke 1, 26 through 38. And there is a Bible under the seat in front of you. You can see that on the rack right under there.
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If you don't have a Bible or a means to navigate to the Bible, just grab that Bible, and it's on page 499 in that Bible.
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Easy to find. On page 499, you're going to find Luke 1, 26 through 38. We want everybody to have a copy of God's Word at home, so we give those
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Bibles away that are under those seats. If you don't have a Bible to read on your own, grab that. I recognize the print's fairly small.
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You might need a magnifying glass, and it doesn't come with one of those, but those are free, and we've got a box to replace whatever's taken there.
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So we want everybody to have a copy of God's Word. But follow along with me as we read Luke chapter 1 verses 26 through 38.
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I'm recasting God's Word for us this morning, what he desires for us to be meditating on this day before Christmas.
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He's laid this on my heart, and hopefully you guys figure out why as we walk through it this morning.
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In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was
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Joseph of the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said,
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Greetings, O favored one. The Lord is with you. But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be.
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And 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 call his name
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Jesus. 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
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David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.
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And Mary said to the angel, How will this be, since I'm a virgin? And the angel answered her,
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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
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Holy, the Son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth, in her old age, has also conceived a son.
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And this is the sixth month with her who was called barren, for nothing will be impossible with God.
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And Mary said, Behold, I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word.
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And the angel departed from her. Let's pray. Father, I rejoice and thank you for this model and this example.
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There's an example here, and there's also an event here. The glorious and amazing proclamation of the in -breaking of your son into this world, that you sent him into the world to save sinners just like us.
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And so Father, I pray that you would move our hearts to rejoice and to thank you for that. But then we also have this model and this example of Mary in this text that you give to us as one who went through phases of just living her routine life to being called out and being confused by that calling to a settled resignation to do willingly whatever you desired of her.
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Father, I pray that you'd be moving in our hearts to identify for us where we're at in this story and the way that you're working in us.
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And Father, I just ask that as we have a chance to praise you and to lift you high, I pray that you would work in our midst, help us to see you as you are, not just to sing songs because we know them or just take them in because the band's playing them.
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But at the end of the day that you would even work through the words of these songs to to bring alive our hearts to worship you in a greater and deeper way.
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Thank you for this gathering. Thank you for these who have gathered together in your name this morning. I pray that this would not be wasted time on Christmas Eve, but Father that you would meet us here in this place in Jesus name.
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Amen. Amen, and a big thanks to the band for leading us. I appreciate very much the effort that they put in and if you were to just hear me lead you in worship one time, you would also equally appreciate the work that they put in.
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That would be pretty rough. I'd encourage you to get comfortable if you need to get up and get in the back.
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There's more coffee. There's more juice. I think there's some more doughnuts back there. Take advantage of that while those are still there and then keep your
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Bibles open to Luke chapter 1 verses 26 through 38. That was much more than just a Bible reading that we went through an exercise in reading a story, but we're gonna walk through that very text and so Luke 1 26 through 38 is where we're gonna be during this next half an hour or so.
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So we've all had life throw us some twists and turns, right? Raise your hand if you've had that happen.
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You've had some like kind of surprises, some changes. You've had some days that had some just just within a 24 -hour period there were some radical or massive changes that occurred in you.
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You know, I'm talking about the kind of day that life changed between breakfast and bedtime.
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Sometimes it's bad news. Sometimes it's good news, but everybody in this room knows what I'm talking about because you've lived for a little bit.
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Our lives can be full of those kinds of twists and turns, but I'm confident that nobody in this room has ever experienced a day like the day we're reading about here in the life of Mary.
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You haven't experienced that kind of day. Mary woke up one morning to what she thought was going to be a normal day and by the time she laid her head on the pillow that night, she was convinced that she had been chosen to give birth to the
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Son of God. So where we pick up our account here, pick up in the middle of an account in verse 26, the text is already,
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Luke's been already informing us about the pregnancy of this lady Elizabeth and her husband
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Zechariah. Elizabeth was beyond childbearing years, and she's pregnant with John the
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Baptist who's going to be related to Jesus and in verse 26 we find this statement that could be a little bit confusing if you're only reading the text that we're looking at.
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So I'm giving a little bit of context here. We find that it was the sixth month that the angel Gabriel came to Mary.
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It's referring to the sixth month of Elizabeth, the one who was called Baron, the older lady who has never had a child and it's the sixth month of her pregnancy with John the
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Baptist. Now, it says that the angel Gabriel came to Mary and we know very little about the angel
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Gabriel from scripture, just a little bit here and there. We can, you know, there was a big thing back in the 80s.
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Is anybody around in the 80s where everybody was talking about angels and they wore angel pins and it was angel this and angel that and touched by an angel and all of that stuff.
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We know very little about angels. We just know in scripture that they are, they exist, they're messengers, they do all kinds of different things that we see ascribed to them.
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But this specific angel Gabriel is only mentioned a few times in scripture. One is back in the book of Daniel and he appears to the prophet
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Daniel, which just kind of implies one main thing. He's been around for a while. This specific angel has been around for quite some time and he brought a message of Daniel and then earlier in Luke chapter 1 in verse 19, he brought a message to Zechariah telling him that his wife was going to give birth to a son named, and he was to name him
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John. And now we see here that he comes to the municipality of Nazareth to meet with a betrothed young maiden.
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Betrothed, again, I like that word better than the word engaged as I mentioned last week because that forces you to think a little bit outside of our cultural understanding of what the wedding looked like, what marriage looked like.
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There was a year -long period of time where they were already committed to one another in a social way.
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They didn't consummate the marriage yet, and they didn't have the final ceremony yet. But there was a deeper commitment between their families, again, more than likely, an arranged marriage that we're looking at here according to history and the culture and the context.
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So it's during that period of time she is going to be married within the year.
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We don't know her age other than that the word virgin in the Greek word that's used there has the overtone of a young maiden.
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Probably, in all likelihood, knowing the approximate ages of time during this time when people would get married, she's probably somewhere between 14 and 16 years old as this text is all unfolding before us.
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People wouldn't live very long anyways. I mean, life expectancy during this time was in the 40s. And so, ooh, that's kind of getting close, right?
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And so, you know, you kind of look at it, you say they got married earlier, they died earlier, all of that kind of stuff.
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And so that's what's going on here. So we don't know exactly how old she was, but she's young. And as you know the story, she was going to be married within the year to Joseph who was in construction work.
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We want to call him a carpenter. The word in Greek is not exactly carpenter, but I'll let you believe what you want to believe because it's all very traditional and things like that.
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He probably built houses. Houses were built out of stone. And so he probably, regardless, he was in construction.
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He built stuff with his hands. He had an honest business according to the text that we looked at last week. He's a good, upstanding guy.
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She's engaged, you know, betrothed to this guy. And within the year, she's going to be married to this guy who's got a running business and doing okay.
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We know nothing about the way that this angel appeared to Mary. I don't know if you ever thought about that in the text. I mean, you got to have in your mind what happens in this scenario.
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You know that Gabriel comes to Mary and has this conversation, but what did that look like?
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You see, sometimes in Scripture, angels appear as a human to someone and they just have a conversation.
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Sometimes they appear in dreams and visions. Sometimes they appear in blazing beauty and intimidation.
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And a very common response when a person in Scripture encounters an angel is to fall down and be terrified.
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And the angel more often than not has to say, don't be afraid, and pick the person up off the ground to talk with them.
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But we don't see any of that here. We don't see the intimidation or the fear in this text. We only know that the angel
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Gabriel came to her, greeted her, and she is more stunned by the words that he says than anything to do with his appearance.
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She has an interaction with him. So it's probably quite likely that he appeared just like she's thinking.
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She's not quite sure who she's talking to. It wasn't very common in their culture for a guy, a dude, to walk up to a young lady and talk with her.
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Somewhat even relatively inappropriate. So even that would be kind of troubling to her at some level. And so this guy just comes up and starts chatting her up.
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And that's what we've got going on here in the text. He simply greeted her, he called her favored, and he declared
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God's presence with her. And that's something that I want all of us to use as some structure for our understanding of what's going on here in this text this morning.
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The very first words the angel offers to Mary regarding her future and her amazing role in the bringing forth of the
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Messiah is words of comfort and blessing. That's how he approaches her. He comforts her, offers to comfort her, offers blessing to her.
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And this is a good thing, the angel says. This is a good thing that's going to happen to you, Mary. This is, God is with you,
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God is present with you. He loves you and you found favor in his eyes. Now, if somebody just walked up to you, put yourself in a real context, somebody walks up to you and says,
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God favors you and is with you, how would you respond? Just picture, you're with the family, you're down at the
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Kalamazoo Mall, it's in the evening and you're checking out the lights, doing candy cane lane, taking some pictures and some selfies or whatever, and just kind of checking things out, celebrating
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Christmas together as a family. Some stranger walks up to you and says, hey,
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God favors you. And he is with you. I mean, do you have any questions in your mind?
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Or are you just like, yeah, that makes sense, that's good, it's all good. I'm having to respond, thanks.
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I think, like, I think, who are you? What do you mean by that?
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The words were good, the words were good words of blessing, but without context,
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Mary is doubtful and the text even declares that she's confused. We don't know anything about whether or not
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Mary, by the way, felt blessed. There's that kind of, somebody walks up to you and says, you're blessed, what's kind of going to go through your mind to some degree?
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Am I blessed? Like, I mean, what is this person referring to? Yeah, I feel blessed, like I've got a family, I've got,
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I've got a, you know, a roof over my head and protection from the cold and all of that kind of stuff.
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We don't know if she instantly agreed with Gabriel in her heart. You say, I'm favored?
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Yeah, you're right. Look at the sunshine, the rains have been good, we've had a good, we have got a good harvest coming, business is good,
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I'm betrothed to a good man, and yeah, you're right, whoever you are, I'm blessed. I feel
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God's favor and presence with me. We don't know how Mary responded in her heart regarding the content of what the angel said, but we do know at least that she is confused, which seems to indicate that she might not have been all too quick to connect the dots of what the angel says to her to a specific blessing in her life.
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But verse 29 tells us that she was greatly troubled, she was perplexed at the saying, and she tried to discern what it might mean.
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She's, she's wrestling in her mind during this conversation. Was this, you know, I mean, I almost kind of wonder, like, with the culture and social things and some of the things that I read this week, it led me to wonder if she wasn't, like, is this guy just a bit creepy?
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Okay, he walks up to this young girl, and, you know, is this like, is this like one of those, like, attempted religious pickup lines that he's got going here?
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You know, like, hey, how you doing? You look like you've been blessed by God, you know? Like, I mean, is that, is that what he's got going on here?
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Or, you know, how is this all coming down in her mind? And she's perplexed and a little confused, trying to figure out what in the world these things all might mean.
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And she's not able to connect the dots, but she has some level of fear about it. And Gabriel says to her,
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Do not fear, for you have found favor with God. God has been pleased.
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He says it twice. Do you see that in the text? He says it twice. You've been favored by God. God has been pleased to give you a blessing.
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Let me explain. He goes on, Behold, the Greek equivalent of check this out,
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Mary, check it out. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will call his name
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Savior, Deliverer, Jesus. Now, if Mary was doubtful about this guy before,
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I don't imagine that this has helped her understanding very much. Now you're talking about conception, and this is getting creepier by the moment, right?
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Like, you're going to conceive a son, and, but Gabriel goes on to explain three things that are going to be true of her son that I think began to bring a dawning of understanding to her.
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First, Gabriel says your son is going to be great.
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He's going to be great. Interesting. It's kind of fun to just throw this out there, but the word great in Greek is mega.
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He's going to be mega. He's going to be awesome. He's going to be great, awesome, better than.
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Second, he's going to be called the son of the most high God. You talk about confusing phrase to the Jewish mind during this era.
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It's going to be the son of the most high. What does that even mean? How is that going to work? But third, he will inherit the throne of David, now something that she can, her mind can latch down on.
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When you start talking about the throne of David, you talk about the son of David, you talk about the inheritor of David, the
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Jews were well -versed in this. I believe Mary suddenly, I think, snapped in focus, because when you mention
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David, you mention the throne of David, you're starting to talk Messiah. And I think that is where the lights came on for Mary.
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And she goes, oh, like that David? Like the throne of David? And of his kingdom, says
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Gabriel, there will be no end. And that's a direct promise in the Old Testament to David that a future man is going to be born who will sit on his throne for eternity.
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That was promised to David back in the Old Testament. And so it's called the Davidic Covenant, and that's what's tying in here with this promise to David that has not been fulfilled.
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And Mary goes, oh wait, that's what you're talking about? That's the one who's going to be great?
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That's who I'm going to conceive and give birth to? Now, I think that the message, the content of the message from Gabriel in verse 31 through 33 would be a whole lot for her to take in.
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He's going to be great, he's going to be called the son of the most high, he's going to inherit the throne of David, there's going to be no end to his kingdom.
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But I somehow imagine that the angel Gabriel face -palmed at what happens next. He's just like, oh, are you serious?
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I mean, I almost kind of wonder what angels think about humans. Like, there's just kind of a little bit weirdness about us in the way that we think, in the way that we process things, in the way that we want everything.
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How many of you would admit to being a person who likes to have everything sewn up? You make a plan. You already know what you're having for dinner tomorrow.
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Like, of course you do. Because it's Christmas. But, I mean, you're the kind of person who likes to make a plan, and some of us are kind of go with the flow, a little bit more like that.
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But I just picture him face -palming. He just told her she's going to conceive and give birth to a son, a thing to be celebrated in their culture.
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But not only that, she's told to name him Savior. A little bit of foreshadowing there.
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He will be a descendant of David that will assume the throne, and he will be called the son of the Almighty.
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He will reign forever. There will be no end to his kingdom. And she's like, how? Can you explain the mechanics of this?
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Can you tell me how this is going to work out? Because I haven't been with a guy. Now, I don't want to be too mean to Mary, because it's a genuine and honest question that I think probably most of us would want to know an answer to, but I actually think we learn a lot about Mary's personality in this response.
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She's a bit deliberative. She's a bit of a planner. A bit into the details. Someone comes to you and tells you this kind of big picture, huge blessing that God is going to do, and you're concerned for the details?
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I guess I can understand it, because it's her life that she's dealing with here. But in verse 35,
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Gabriel makes it clear that this is all going to be the work of the Holy Spirit. He will miraculously cause the conception, and it is for this reason that the child will be called the son of the
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Most High, the Son of God. He will be, the child will be holy, unique, set apart, distinct, great, all of these words.
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Obviously, he will be exceptional, even by the way that he comes into the world. Even by the way that he comes here.
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And Gabriel goes on to push aside doubts by giving Mary a clear evidence that what he is saying is indeed true.
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He tells Mary in verse 36 about Elizabeth's hidden pregnancy in her old age. Elizabeth hasn't shared this with other people, so when
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Mary comes to her and says, I know you're pregnant, that's a big deal. That's pretty significant. And the announcements hadn't gone out yet, and she hadn't posted to Facebook yet.
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And so she already knows, I mean, Mary is told Elizabeth is pregnant, and the one who is called barren, you know that Elizabeth hasn't had a child yet, because of the title, and I don't know that that was not a derogatory term that was used for her in her community and in her culture.
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A negative word that is going to be overturned by the Almighty, and Gabriel says to Mary, this is evidence that God can do anything, and I want you to take that on and recognize that even your aunt, or whatever relative, we don't know exactly what the relative and the relationship is between Elizabeth, we just know that they were relatives.
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I know that you've heard different things, but nobody can speak with any specificity of that relationship.
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But God can do anything, nothing is impossible with God, the angel Gabriel says.
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Even Elizabeth, who was declared barren, is now expecting with John the
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Baptist. Why does Gabriel even mention this Elizabeth thing to Mary? To overcome her doubts.
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Mary is struggling with doubts about this. I mean, can you imagine being told something so radical is going to happen in your life?
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And she's like, I don't see it. Virgins don't give birth. And what
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I find very intriguing and interesting and honest in the text is that even the virgin who gave birth knew that virgins don't give birth.
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It's right there in the text. Even she's like, this doesn't happen. This isn't the way that things work. She was no dummy.
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She didn't look at Gabriel and say, oh, no, I'm good, I got it, that makes perfect sense. She's like, how?
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How can this be? But what she does say at the end of our text is amazing. She says, behold,
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I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word.
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She willingly accepted the change of plans because it was God Almighty who was changing those plans.
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And I want us all to take some time this morning to consider the stages that Mary goes through in this text. As we wrap up our time together this morning, she goes through these stages and consider these stages as categories of people and just find yourself in this as we walk through the text kind of thinking about each stage of Mary's life that we see in this text.
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The first at the start, she is minding her own business. She's doing her day.
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She's doing her thing. I don't want to make any moral judgments on her in this state. We don't know what her life was like before the angel visit.
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Maybe she worshiped God with her life. Maybe her plans were full of serving God and doing what was right day in and day out.
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Maybe she aspired to being a good wife and a good mother and doing her work with diligence and kindness and was just looking forward to that day of the marriage that was coming up.
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We don't know. But I want to ask you, does that category define where you're at in your life?
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I would suggest to you that the majority of us right here in this room are in this category. We're in the category of before the angel came.
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We have not received any angelic visits. We are doing what we do. We are living our lives.
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And that's not a bad thing. I'm not casting aspersions on this stage. I'm actually saying that this is a good thing.
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Many Christian books have been written to denigrate the simple life. Many authors, teachers, and preachers act like real life happens after the radical angelic visit, after the mountaintop, after the amazing calling of God on your life and after everything becomes so crystal clear of what
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He's doing for you, then real life begins. But faithfulness and usefulness to God is defined by what we do every day in the routine of daily living.
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That's where it's found. My encouragement to anyone here who is in this routine category of life without the angel is to remain faithful to God.
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Take it on to seek to know God better day by day. Worship Him in your work. Honor Him in your obedience.
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Proclaim Him in the way you relate to others around you. Life does not begin when the angel shows up.
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I don't know if you ever thought about this recast, but there are bazillions of women, that's a technical term, bazillions of women, who were never chosen to give birth to the
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Messiah. And guess what, recast? Every single one of them matters to God.
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Every single one of them. So be faithful where God has placed you.
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Be faithful in your everyday life. There's a second category in this text and it's full of confusion and doubt.
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The angel is there. The angel showed up to Mary and she is not fully on board and she's wrestling with this and she hasn't figured it out.
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But I imagine that there's some of us in this room who are in this stage of wrestling with God's calling on your life.
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He hasn't given you enough detail yet. You're still in doubt. You're not sure how it's all going to work out.
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Or even further, some might be struggling to trust God with your future. And you know who you are because that actually speaks to your heart even when
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I say it. You're not trusting God with your future. He's given you a glimpse of His calling on your life, but you're not sure that God can really get you there.
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You're not sure you believe it. Mary says, how can this be? I'm a virgin.
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And a church planter I know who was called to plan a church in Matawan 10 years ago said, how can this be? I struggle with stage fright.
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I can't stand being up in front of people. And I picture a man standing by a burning bush in the hills of Midian saying, how can this be?
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I don't speak pretty. And the story goes on and on and on of God using people in their weakness and overcoming doubts to get
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His kingdom to grow time and time again. If you're in this category of fear and doubt, do what
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Mary did. Ask questions. Speak with others about your calling. Dig into God's word for clarity.
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Dive deeper into trust in God with your life. He who calls you will be faithful to complete it.
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Trust Him. Trust Him. The third category, the last category of people is defined by Mary in verse 38.
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She has resigned herself to trust the Almighty with her very life. She takes a submissive posture toward the
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Lord. She sheds her plans, her dreams, her future, and she says this phrase, let it be to me as you have said.
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I'm a servant of the Lord. Let it be to me as you have said, she says to the angel.
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In humility, she is trusting the Lord with her very life. The angel is called.
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She has wrestled with that calling and has come out with a greater clarity, and that clarity is expressed in humility.
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She submits to what God will do in her life. The model that Mary gives us is,
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I don't know if you've thought about it, and I'm guessing that you have. There have been a lot of Christmases. We've had a various number of Christmases, depends on how old you are and how much time you've been in the faith and heard these kinds of messages, but it's just a truly amazing message, really.
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Her response is, I would say, supernatural in the way that she responds to this. What is the natural feeling when your plans don't go your way?
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What's the gut -level reaction to that? Don't do it now, because it would be messy, right?
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Some of us are like, we cry like a baby, or we throw a tantrum, or whatever it might be, and her response here by the end, being moved by the
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Spirit, is to say, let it be to me as you have said. Your will be done.
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Not mine. A way you could paraphrase that, isn't it? She shines as a truly humble servant of the
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Most High. Can you picture Mary trash -talking the other ladies around Nazareth?
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I'm chosen, I'm favored, I'm blessed, God's with me. Can you picture it?
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You're laughing because you can picture it. As a matter of fact, we get the exact opposite in the life of Mary here.
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I would encourage you to turn there and read it sometime in the next couple of days.
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We get a song written and performed by Mary. The text is a musical right here.
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I'm not a big musical fan, but she breaks out into song here in the middle of it. I don't know if there's choreography throughout
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Nazareth or anything, or the street merchants are doing their thing or whatever, but she actually sings a song here in verse 46 through verse 56 that is powerful in its understanding about how she processed this information, how she dealt with this in her own heart.
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It's, again, miraculous, showing she speaks in the song about her humble estate.
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She sings this song after the calling, after she realizes that she's been chosen to bring forth the
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Messiah, and even afterward she's not like, wow, I'm so awesome, I'm so impressed with me.
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It's like, you found me in my humble estate, and it somehow seemed fit to bless me.
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She understood that. That's the posture of somebody who understands their calling from God.
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It's the posture that any one of us needs, all of us need, in the light of God's calling.
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God may have some special ministry for some of you in this room, and we all need to trust God with our lives and our callings.
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Mary brought forth the Messiah, that was her calling. He will come into the world to save sinners, and he comes through this young woman here in our text who has been chosen and favored by God.
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So as we come to communion this morning, let's remember together one last time before we celebrate Christmas Day tomorrow that Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
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That's where we started this series three weeks ago. Jesus came into the world to save sinners.
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Sinners like what? Sinners like the Apostle Paul, who was a murderer and an opponent of the church, a violent opponent of Christ.
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And if he can save someone like Paul, he can certainly forgive whatever you and I have done. He is holding out open arms to say, come to me.
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The reason he came, the reason we celebrate Christmas, the reason that we are here this morning, is because he loves us and came as the sacrifice for us, to die for you and I.
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He came into the world with this purpose. His purpose statement stated before he ever arrived, he's coming into the world to save sinners.
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You see, Christmas leads to the cross. God was working a plan that started before time began, and at the right time, in the right place, he brought forth his only son, born of a virgin.
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So we take the cup to remember that he bled for us. We're going to, in just a moment, take the cracker to remember his body that was crushed in our place, where we deserved punishment, where we deserved a penalty.
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He took that on himself. He did that because he loves us.
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If your hope and trust, as you hear this morning, who have already put your hope and trust for forgiveness and salvation in Jesus Christ, if that's where you're at, then please feel free to come to one of the four tables and take communion here on this
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Christmas Eve day. But if you're here and you're not all in with Jesus, then I'd encourage you to please sit out the song, sit this out and just take in the song, rather.
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We do this together as followers of Christ to remember together what he has done for us.
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And from that standpoint, it makes no sense for somebody who doesn't believe that, who hasn't put their trust in Christ, to come to one of those tables.
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It's kind of an illogical thing. You're saying something about yourself that isn't true of yourself. You don't really understand it yet.
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You're trying to wrestle with it. And if that's you here today, please come and talk with me. I would love to interact with you about how you can be forgiven and start a new life, even this
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Christmas Eve, where this could be a very unique and special Christmas season for you, where you come to recognize the true meaning, the true reason why
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Jesus came into the world, and it was to save sinners. And it's not that anybody here in this room is worthy of that table.
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If you come to that table and you feel worthy of it, you feel like you deserve it, then maybe you should just sit this one out as well.
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Because at the end of the day, we come to that table in all humility, recognizing that it is because he loved us that he has given us this.
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He has sacrificed himself for us. And so that's the point of what we do together here.
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We take the cracker to remember his body broken for us, the cup to remember his blood that was shed for us.
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And let me just ask all of us as we go out this week, let me leave you with this one encouragement.
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Trust what God is doing in your life. Whether you're duking it out with the routine of everyday life, let me encourage you to hang in there, trust
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God, remain faithful, even though things become mundane, they can become routine. I look out and I see some young moms here and I can't think of anything that must feel more routine and mundane than that, right?
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It's just day in and day out, diaper changes, feeding, diaper changes, feeding, all the different things. All of us have our routines, all of us have our things, and sometimes life can just get a grind, right?
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Call it the daily grind for a reason. Trust God in that. Be faithful to him in that.
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Hang in there. If you're here and you're in the confusing times, you believe that God has something for you, but you don't quite know what that is, trust that God has the answers.
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He has a plan. He who calls will surely carry it forward.
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Study, ask questions, and seek clarity regarding your calling. You can even come and talk with me.
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If you're believing that there's a calling on your life and you're just trying to wrestle through it and trying to figure out, maybe you're at that how stage, where God has said something great that he wants of you and you're like, how?
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Let's talk through that and figure that out. If you're here and you've heard a unique calling from the
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Lord on your life, then let me encourage you, just this simple one statement, submit to him as a servant in humility.
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Submit to him as a servant in humility. Let's close our time together in prayer.
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Father, I thank you so much that you have loved us and that you've given us this model and this example in Mary, who encountered the angel
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Gabriel with a normal routine, everyday experience, went through a phase of confusion and ended up submitting her entire life and future to you and what you wanted to do in her and through her.
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Father, I pray that you would help us all to grasp what you're doing in us and to trust you with ourselves, even this
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Christmas. Father, I know that there's just a lot of busyness and there's packages under trees and there's a routine and tradition that all of us are gonna go through to some degree tomorrow and there's travel and there's lots of food and lots of cool stuff.
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And Father, I pray that this message would not get lost in the middle of all of that. You have loved us and you have called us out and you desire faithfulness from your people and most importantly, you came down here to save us.
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We were in desperate straits. We all are corrupt.
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We're all broken inside. To a person in this room, that's one thing that I know to be true. But Father, you sent your
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Son to rescue us, to be born of a virgin, to be raised there in Israel, to live a sinless life, to have three years of radical ministry, raising dead people and doing miracles, showing signs of your kingdom that is to come, showing what you can rescue us from and what you can rescue us to, and then most importantly, how desperate we need to be rescued as you gave your life and poured out your blood on the cross for us, allowing yourself to be broken.
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That story arc is phenomenal and amazing and I thank you that it's true.
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So Father, if there's anybody here who doesn't understand that and hasn't put their trust in what Christ has done for them, I pray that you would give them boldness to come and talk with me.
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But Father, for those who are in with you, that you would not allow any shred of arrogance to reside in our hearts, but instead a deep humility that comes to these tables with gratitude, with rejoicing, with thankfulness, that we couldn't do it, but you've done it for us.
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So move in each one of us to give us the challenge, the conviction, and the encouragement that we need.