WWUTT 2253 Nothing Will Be Impossible With God (Luke 1:30-38)

The angel Gabriel appears to Mary, says she is going to be with child, and that this child is going to be the fulfillment of all those prophecies that have been made about a

Messiah, a great king who would set his people free when we understand the text. This is

When We Understand The Text, a daily Bible study in the Word of God that we may comprehend with all the saints how wide, how high, and how deep is the love of Christ.

Tell all your friends about our ministry at www .tt .com. Here once again is

Pastor Gabe. Thank you, Becky. In our study of the Gospel of Luke, we come back to the

Annunciation, the angel Gabriel announcing to Mary that she is going to be with child, and he is the

Savior of the world. So let's read it once again in Luke 1, beginning in verse 26, and I'll go through verse 38.

Hear the word of the Lord. 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 Joseph of the house of David, and the virgin's name was

Mary. And he came to her and said, 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.

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

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 David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.

And Mary said to the angel, How will this be, since I am a virgin? And the angel answered her,

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

Holy, the Son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth, in her old age, has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren, for nothing will be impossible with God.

And Mary said, Behold, I am the servant of the Lord, let it be to me according to your word.

And the angel departed from her. What a great little exchange there.

The angel Gabriel saying that nothing will be impossible with God, and that really is the theme of his address here to Mary, and what he had said previously to Zechariah as well.

What God means, what he purposes to happen will happen, no matter how crazy or impossible it might seem, he will accomplish his purposes, even performing miracles on our behalf.

The miraculous conception of the Son of God, who would be sinless from his conception, who would live a sinless life, he would die a death on a thieves cross, a death that he did not deserve, falsely accused, he would be buried in a tomb, he would rise again on the third day, the miracle of his resurrection, so that all who believe in him will be forgiven their sins and will likewise have eternal life.

So let's go back and read through this address that Gabriel makes to Mary, we covered yesterday through verse 29, where Mary was a little troubled by the saying from the angel.

So Gabriel appears to her and says, Greetings, oh favored one, the Lord is with you. There's nothing about this greeting that is anything more than a salutation.

It's not so supreme or incredible, nor is it even a prayer that the angel prays to Mary.

That's the way the Roman Catholic Church treats it, but that's not what this is. Of course, Mary is a really incredible woman.

Indeed, she is. But what makes her the most amazing is the fact that God chose her.

She wasn't chosen because she was already instrumentally valuable. God chose her by his mercy and grace.

Now this was all foreordained by the sovereign hand of God. It wasn't like at this particular time and place,

God comes down and he starts looking around and thinking, you know, I need somebody who's going to give birth to my son.

Who's it going to be? Give me that one. I think she'll do pretty well. Or that the angel Gabriel appeared to some other woman and the woman didn't want to do it.

So he's like, hey, sorry to have bothered you. And he goes flying around finding somebody else that he can bestow this wonderful honor upon.

No, God had predestined from before the foundation of the world that Mary was going to be the woman that he would choose to carry his son to birth the son of God into the world.

Just as God had foreordained from before the foundation of the world, who would be holy and blameless before him in love as we read yesterday, quoting from Ephesians chapter one, these things have all been settled by the hand of God who has not only ordained the end, but the means to that end.

So God has ordained all that is going to come to pass, but he is still working in the midst of creation to bring those things to its fulfillment.

The Holy Spirit is working in you now to accomplish things that God has set forth to accomplish.

It's not that we don't have any control. We do have control. You have a responsibility to respond to the message of the gospel.

And if you don't respond to it, nobody's going to be able to stand before God on that day of judgment and say, well, you made me like this.

Paul addresses that exactly in Romans chapter nine, who are you, oh man, to answer back to God. Well, what is formed say to the one who formed him?

Why did you make me this way? You can't put God on trial. That is not going to get you anywhere.

We still have responsibility. As said in Romans 14, 12, each of us will give an account of himself to God.

So if you have heard the gospel, it is upon you to turn from your sin, to turn from the way of this world, to turn from the passions of your flesh and to turn to Jesus Christ.

And those who do not will be judged on that day as talked about in, well, I'm thinking of second

Thessalonians chapter one, those who did not obey the gospel. But there's many other passages that talk about the judgment that will befall the one who did not follow

Jesus. Now Mary has a response for this angel here that is at the very conclusion.

That is not Mary saying, Hey, all right, I'm in. Let's do this. You can tell the Lord that I said, that's fine with me.

And giving therefore the angel permission. That's not how this conversation concludes. But we'll talk about that again here in a moment.

We get to the end of the exchange. But in the meantime, the angel says, 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

Jesus. He will be great. And he will be called the son of the most high. You know,

I don't know if you remember this, but back in our study of Mark, this was in Mark five. So, you know, several months ago now, but in Mark five, seven,

Jesus is confronting the demon legion, the man who is possessed by legion.

And they're in the, you know, that area of the tombs there at the garrisons. And the man runs up to Jesus and falls down before him and crying out with a loud voice.

He said, what have you to do with me, son of the most high

God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me. So this was how the demons addressed

Jesus. You are the son of the most high God. And here, what is

Gabriel telling Mary that he will be called? He will be great and will be called the son of the most high.

See, even the demons recognized that he was the son of God. And so the angel

Gabriel saying, this is who, this is who you will be pregnant with. The son of God, God incarnate himself to your womb.

And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father, David, because Mary is descended in the line of David.

She too is also in David's line, even though it was said earlier that Joseph, to whom she has betrothed, is of the house of David.

So Jesus, the Messiah, who's going to be born to her, is the rightful heir to the throne of David.

He's going to be the fulfillment of the Davidic covenant, the Messiah, the king that Israel has been waiting for, who would set the people free.

Every, every prophet who had talked about this, the one who would come, who would set the captives free.

So Jesus is that promised Messiah, the one that the prophets had talked about, would be born in the line of David, who would ascend to his throne, who would release

Israel from their captives, who would be the Messiah, who would establish this eternal kingdom.

The one they had been waiting for, this is the announcement that the angel is making to Mary.

I mean, I can't imagine what this would have been like. Surely it's amazing anyway, because of what we've read earlier about Mary's reaction to the angel speaking to her, an angel has appeared to her and is talking to her.

This itself is astonishing. By the way, a lot of depictions of this, most of the movies that depict this, show

Mary like waking up in the middle of the night and an angel is talking to her at night. I've never understood why that is.

Why is this always at night? Matthew chapter one says that an angel spoke to Joseph in a dream.

And that doesn't mean though, that the angel Gabriel is speaking to Mary in a dream. It could have been in the middle of the day.

As I had said previously, she could have been doing wifely duties and the angel appeared to her and spoke to her wherever she was drawing water from a well or whatever it was she might have been doing.

It could have been in the daytime, not at night. So already this is a pretty astonishing encounter with Mary seeing this angel who is speaking to her, an angel that has been sent from God.

But how incredible would it have been also for Mary to hear, this is it,

Mary. This is the promised one. This is the anointed one of the prophet Isaiah. The one whom

God said he would send in the line of David who would sit on David's throne.

We're here. Finally, these things are going to be fulfilled. The Messiah has come and you get to be the one to bring him into the world.

Again, just an incredible thing to have witnessed. We're kind of eavesdropping on the conversation in a certain sense here as it's been captured for us by St.

Luke. But still, how amazing would that have been to hear this? What emotions would

Mary have been going through? Surely there would have been some element of disbelief,

I can't believe this. But whatever Mary would have been experiencing here, it was not the same kind of disbelief that Zechariah had.

Zechariah doubted that anything that the angel said to him was going to be true, and so Gabriel afflicted him with muteness until the birth of John.

Mary asks how this could be. She says that in verse 34, but it's not said of her that she had some level of doubt like Zechariah had.

But anyway, let me finish out what the angel says, at least in this first part. So the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father

David, verse 33, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.

That's Isaiah 9. Portions of Isaiah 9, 6, and 7 are in there. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be on his shoulder.

And his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end. On the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it, with justice and with righteousness, from this time forth and forevermore, the zeal of the

Lord of hosts will do this. It's exactly that kind of prophecy right there that Gabriel is telling

Mary is being fulfilled in this announcement. And now,

Mary's response, verse 34, Mary said to the angel, how will this be, since I am a virgin?

So she says, how am I going to be the one who will be with this child, because I've not known my husband

Joseph. How can I get pregnant when I am a virgin? And so the angel says to her, the

Holy Spirit will come upon you. That is a completely reasonable question, because this has never happened before.

Now, when Zechariah doubted the angel, the promise that the angel made was first of all in response to Zechariah's prayer.

Mary hasn't been praying that she would receive the Savior of the world. Zechariah had been praying that he and Elizabeth would have been given a son.

And Gabriel shows up to him and says, the Lord has heard your prayer. He's going to answer it and you're going to have a son. And then

Zechariah doubts it. How's this going to be? The way of women is no longer with my wife, though it was in the past that Sarah, who was

Abraham's wife, who also was incapable, biologically incapable of having children.

She was given a child who was Isaac. So Zechariah should have known, and he should have trusted what the angel said, and he did not.

And so he was afflicted with muteness. Though Mary questions the angel here, it is not said of her question that it's anything like the doubt that Zechariah expressed.

And so the angel says to her again in verse 35, 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

Holy, the Son of God, meaning that he will be sinless.

Now, there are the Roman Catholics, of course, who will say that Mary was sinless. They believe in a doctrine called the

Immaculate Conception. And it's often assumed that the Immaculate Conception has to do with this right here, the conception of Jesus by the

Holy Spirit in Mary's womb. No, the Immaculate Conception has to do with Mary's conception when she was conceived in her mother's womb and that she was kept pure from the stain of sin because the mother of Jesus had to be sinless also or this whole thing wasn't going to work.

That is a complete distortion of the doctrine of Christ's impeccability, of his sinlessness, as if Mary has to be sinless in order for him to be sinless.

No, you don't understand how federal headship works. So the sin was passed through the seat of a man.

Every single one of us are born with a sin nature. This is the way that God made things to be. This is what's talked about in Romans chapter five.

Everyone who is a descendant of Adam is born with his sin nature and everyone who is born again in Christ is given a new nature.

So we no longer have the sin nature of Adam by which we rebel against God. We go our own way.

We sin. There is none righteous, not even one. No one does good. Not even one person, as we read about in Romans three.

Now with a new nature in Christ Jesus. Now we desire God. We desire to worship

God. We desire to honor God. And though we are still going to stumble in sin, we don't go after that sin.

We turn from it and continue to return to Christ over and over again, pursuing him. And he is now our federal head.

We're no longer under the federal headship of Adam and thus what we will receive is death. But under the federal headship of Christ, we will receive his resurrection.

We get his righteousness. We get his resurrection. Again, it's passed through the man.

It does not come through the woman. So the only thing that needed to happen here was

Jesus be conceived of the Holy Spirit. Didn't matter whether Mary was sinless or not. It was

Jesus who was conceived of the Holy Spirit and that's what makes him sinless. And that's expressed here.

He will be called holy, the son of God. Nothing like that is said of Mary. So the doctrine of her immaculate conception, that Mary herself was sinless from the moment of her conception and then throughout her life and up to this moment here, that's not in the

Bible. It's nowhere in the Bible. It's completely made up. There's a Roman Catholic apologist named Jimmy Akin.

I've actually heard him say, I'll have to dig up this clip somewhere, but I've heard him say that these Marian dogmas are not found in the

Bible. If a Roman Catholic has to be honest, those Marian dogmas are not in the

Bible. They are extra biblical, but they of course would claim that it comes from tradition, which is every bit as authoritative as the

Bible and simply not true. It's not in scripture. You won't find it here. Mary is not sinless, but Jesus is.

And this doctrine is so very important. The doctrine of the virgin birth is important because if Jesus is conceived of the seed of a man, if the virgin birth doesn't matter and Jesus can just be born, you know, fine, he's born of a man, whatever, it doesn't make any difference.

Well, if that's the doctrine, then Adam is still his federal head and Jesus is not sinless.

And he is therefore not the perfect spotless lamb to take away the sin of the world.

That is only if he's virgin born. So Jesus is conceived, born sinless, lives sinless, dies sinless, and in this way he is the only worthy sacrifice whose death on the cross will take away our sin.

That's why this is so important a doctrine to understand. Don't listen to those preachers who'll say, you know, the virgin birth, take it or leave it.

It doesn't matter. No, you have to believe it or Jesus isn't a worthy sacrifice.

Jesus is unable to take away our sin. He is because he is holy. Verse 36, and behold, your relative,

Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son. And this is the sixth month with her who was called barren.

Now I'm going to talk about this next week because we're kind of running out of time here. But the angel testifies that life begins at conception.

Did you catch that? Look at it again next week when Mary goes to visit Elizabeth. So anyway, the angel talking about Elizabeth is with child.

This is the sixth month with her who was called barren. And then verse 37, for nothing will be impossible with God.

And now this statement from Mary in verse 38, Mary said, behold,

I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word. And the angel departed from her.

There was a TV series. I cannot remember which one it was now.

It was one of the Jesus shows. It might have been, it could have been the Bible miniseries. I don't recall for sure.

But anyway, Gabriel appears to Mary and Mary basically approves of this thing that the angel has just said.

So she gives the angel permission like, okay, fine. You want to choose me?

I'm in. Let's do this. And that is not what this means at all. Mary is saying,

I am a servant. I am submitting to the Lord's will here. It is not her giving

God permission to use her. That's as a common feminist thing that's going on right now where Mary gives

God permission to use her womb to bring about the Savior. No, Mary loves

God. She fears the Lord. She is a worshiper of the Lord God.

And so when the angel says that this is the honor he has chosen you for, she as a worshiper of the

Lord says, behold, I am his servant and let it be to me according to your word.

And then the angel departs. And so may we be in submission to God's every plan.

Nothing will be impossible for God. Everything that is happening now, though it may seem completely out of control, is still being upheld in his sovereign hand.

Do we trust that he is doing something amazing in this day? And no matter what happens to us, we need not fear because our souls are secure in his hand.

And he will deliver us. He will raise us up, giving us eternal life through faith in Jesus Christ.

He will give us his eternal kingdom. And that is where we will dwell forever with God.

Fear not, Christian, for nothing is impossible with God. May we be the servant of the

Lord, servants of the Lord, and let he accomplish what he will according to his word.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we've read. We thank you for this amazing account with Mary and this angel and the announcement of the birth of the

Savior. We would not be able to call upon you as Father if not for our Savior, Jesus Christ, who has reconciled us to God.

And so Lord, continue to work your will in us. May we be convicted of sin, coming back to holiness, grow us in righteousness.

May we desire Christ and be so bold in this message of the gospel that we would share it with others.

It is in the name of Jesus that we pray, amen. You've been listening to When We Understand the

Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study.

Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book. On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers.