Study in Luke’s Gospel

1. Study in Luke’s Gospel Presentation 02

2. The Annunciation Chap 1v26-38 Presentation 02

3. Introduction There is lying in the heart of man a longing, perhaps even a craving, for a God who can be seen. It was the lament of Job that, although he sought after God he could not see him. 'Behold I go forward but he is not there... I cannot behold him‘ Job 23v8. Philip expresses the same desire when he says to Jesus, 'Show us the Father and that is sufficient’ john 14v8. The incarnation answers that longing. But more than that, both the way in which Jesus entered the world and the way by which he exited from it are presented in scripture as supernatural. The entry and exit miracles carry the same message. First, they confirm that Jesus, though not less than a man, was more that a man. His earthly life though fully human was also divine. He, the co-creator, was in this world - his own world - as a visitor; he came from God and went to God. Presentation 02

4. Introduction Secondly, these two miracles indicate Jesus’ freedom from sin. He did not inherit the guilty twist called original sin. And being sinless he could not be held by death once his sacrifice was complete. The mystery of the incarnation has stretched the minds of men throughout the history of the church and it has caused some, in recent years to question the fact of the virgin birth. The conception of Christ without the benefit of a human father has always staggered the unbelieving mind both within and outwith the church. There have been those who have denied it thereby reducing Jesus to no more than a good, religious man. It is therefore important that we should be able to defend this important doctrine of the faith. Presentation 02

5. A Message Is Announced One of the things to remind ourselves when approaching this passage is that in general, God is very sparing in his use of angelic messengers. Whenever they appear visibly on the stage of human history it is never to make trivial announcements or to perform unimportant tasks. There is a significant cluster of angelic appearances around the birth of Jesus, but then we have to wait until after Jesus’ exhausting trial in Gethsemane for their next appearance, when angels came to comfort him after his exhausting struggle as he steeled himself to walk in obedience to the cross. Angels next appear in order to announce the resurrection 24.4. However, it is the birth of Jesus that causes the greatest angelic activity in the Bible! Presentation 02

6. A Message Is Announced Something of great moment was about to happen. Something unprecedented was about to take place on the stage of human history. God was about to become man. And that called for special preparations! Next notice that God doesn’t force service upon us that we are unwilling to undertake. Mary, the woman chosen to bear the eternal Son of God was to be informed and given the opportunity to co-operate. Gabriel was entrusted with this mission. How you would react if an angel suddenly appeared before you? Clearly, Mary is not so much startled by the appearance of the angel as with his initial statement in v28-29... The thing that really blew Mary’s mind was that she had found favour with God and that she had a significant role to play in his purposes! Presentation 02

7. A Message Is Announced There's a marvellous lesson is humility here. Mary doesn't say, "Well between you and me I always thought I was a cut above the average, I'm not surprised to be singled out by God for special service". Instead, Mary betrays an unaffected humility. "Why should God want me?" That is the kind of person God can use. We do not know what lay in Mary's background and life experience that helped to shape her response. We are challenged to ask what our reaction might be to discover God wanted to use us in some area of service. Would we think, "Yes I am suitably qualified to do this job", or think "Help why on earth should God choose me?" The absence of that kind of humility explains the lack of fruitfulness in the lives of some of God’s people. Presentation 02

8. A Message Is Announced The R.C. church uses a translation based on the Latin Vulgate which addresses Mary in v28 as, "Hail Mary full of grace".A mistranslation causing the development of unbiblical doctrines. e.g. the "Immaculate conception" a view that Mary was born without sin and also the doctrine of the "physical assumption" i.e. that because of her sinlessness Mary did not need to die but was taken directly to heaven. And from this it is deduced that she is the co-redemptrix of the human race and a co-mediator in heaven. But the Greek text makes it clear that Mary is a RECIPIENT of grace and not a DISPENSER of it. Grace found her and chose her. Exactly the same expression is found of Noah in Genesis 6:8. Noah and Mary found favour in the eyes of God. They did not attract God’s attention as much as he attracted theirs. Presentation 02

9. A Message Is Announced Have you ever discovered you were being watched by someone who was smiling at you even before you became aware of it? Mary was to give birth to Jesus not because she was better than others were, but because God's favour alighted upon her and she responded to his Grace. The place of Mary in Christian teaching is a subject that cannot be ducked when dealing with the subject of the annunciation. While it is true that some R.C.s have recoiled from the extreme forms of Mariolatry, the doctrine still exists in the R.C. church. But why comment upon it especially in a day when there is a growing openness between different denominations and churches? Well it is surely much more healthy and honest to confront the important theological differences that separate us, than it is to pretend that they do not exist. Presentation 02

10. A Miracle Is Assumed As we unpack the substance of the angel's message we find that beyond the fact that Mary has been chosen for special service lies the special nature of that service. She was to give birth to a miracle child, whose birth was to be qualitatively different from anything preciously recorded. It belongs to a quite different category from that of cousin Elizabeth. Elizabeth's pregnancy was abnormal in that she had been barren throughout her married life. There was no infertility clinic to help her and short of God's intervention conception would have been impossible. There were O.T. precedents for this type of divine activity cf. Sarah, and Hannah after which conception followed the normal human pattern. But Mary's conception was to be unique - a biological miracle producing what we call today the virgin birth. Presentation 02

11. A Miracle Is Assumed Some today argue that it is unimportant whether or not Jesus was born of a virgin. They teach that his divine sonship is not due to the nature of his birth but to the fact of his obedience. And because of that obedience God adopted him and made him in a unique sense his Son. But what does the text teach? The language used here stresses two important things about the nature of Jesus. First, he will be truly human and secondly, he will be truly God. All the heresies concerning the nature of Jesus fall into two categories, on the one hand they deny his true humanity and on the other, his true divinity. All the early creeds of the Christian church are insistently emphatic on this, that in his incarnation he was, 'very God and very man.' We need to resist any suggestion to the contrary. Presentation 02

12. A Miracle Is Assumed Are we surprised that Mary's first words to the angel were, “How can this be since I am a virgin?”. We must contrast her reaction with that of Zechariah mentioned in our last study. Indeed as I was reminded last week much of the effectiveness of Luke’s teaching rests upon contrasts that he holds up before us in the gospel. Zechariah’s response was one of unbelief. Gabriel had told him that God was going to overcome Elizabeth’s barrenness and his old age and as a result of that intervention a child would be conceived. Now Zechariah knew his O.T. He knew that God had done this sort of thing before. Nevertheless he found it hard to believe that what he was told was true. That is what unbelief does. It examines God’s promises and shakes its head and says, ‘I don’t believe you!’ Presentation 02

13. A Miracle Is Assumed In contrast, Mary didn’t doubt God but was puzzled as to how such a thing could be achieved. Mary was not naive she knew how children were conceived. It was the process through which she might conceive that baffled her. Unbelief is sinful but it is not to admit ignorance of how God will do as he promised. Now God is not unreasonable. He does not call for the type of blind faith that demands we kiss good-bye to our brains. And for this reason Gabriel answers that God's power would overshadow her. Indeed, the underlying principle that Mary was to hold onto concerning all that was promised her is that "nothing is impossible with God." The God who could make Elizabeth's barren womb, fertile is the God who could create life in Mary's womb without any outside human interference. Presentation 02

14. The Messiah Is Anticipated Mary too, would have been familiar with the scriptures of the O.T. God had prepared the ground for such a marvellous event? The first prophecy concerning the coming of a Messiah deliverer found in Gen.3.15 significantly speaks of the ‘seed of the woman’ coming into the world to defeat the devil. It is no accident that this language is employed. Normally, biblical language would describe a child as ‘the seed of a man’. But in this very first prophecy we find a hint that something out of the ordinary surrounds the Messiah’s birth. A hint which receives clarification in Is.7.14. "a virgin shall bear a son and you shall call his name Emmanuel". Presentation 02

15. The Messiah Is Anticipated In v32-33, and 35 the angel is quotes other O.T. prophecies in order to impress upon Mary the uniqueness of the child she is to bear. He will be called, the Son of the Most High. He will be given the Davidic throne. His will be an everlasting reign and his kingdom will be endless. The child was to be "holy" in character, something which was quite impossible for a child conceived in the normal way cf. Ps. 51:1, Eph.2:3. People sometimes speak of innocent little babies but there really is no such thing for even the smallest baby has inherited his parents’ fallenness. But Mary's child would have no human father, and therefore no fallen human nature. In a way true of no other person he would be called "the Son of God." Presentation 02

16. The Messiah Is Anticipated In the conception of Jesus the Holy Spirit would violate the laws of nature, and demonstrate disregard, for ‘proper religious feeling’ – a child born of a virgin. In a similar way Jesus when born would provoke both wonder and scandal in the minds of the religious leaders of his day. He would upset the religious feelings of many as he defied the customs and religious traditions of his day. But this cost he was prepared to pay as he sought to live his life in obedience to the Father. However marvellous all of this sounded to Mary, it remained staggeringly mysterious. Yet at the end of the day she accepted it all. Presentation 02

17. The Mystery Is Accepted Her final words to the angel were, "I am the Lord's servant. May it be to me as you have said." Her submission took great courage. Mary must have known that she had everything to lose, in human terms, if she obeyed the angel’s voice. She would live with the shadow of scandal hanging over her for the rest of her life. Her response was costly. There were many things she could not understand but nothing that she was not prepared to accept. There is an important lesson here. For our greatest thoughts cannot truly comprehend the mystery of the incarnation. But where we cannot understand we can worship. It was G. K. Chesterton who said, "A thing cannot be completely wonderful so long as it remains sensible." Presentation 02

18. The Mystery Is Accepted We are not always clear about what God is doing with our lives. His ways are mysterious and sometimes perplexing and painful. Yet we are called upon to submit to his "good and perfect and acceptable will" whatever that might mean. Mary’s obedience transformed the world's commonest prayer, "Thy will be changed" into, "Thy will be done". The virgin birth remains for many a great stumbling block. Anselm, the mediaeval scholar has reviewed a variety of ways in which God can make man: a. By the law of natural generation - man and woman b. without a man or woman - Adam c. a man without a woman - Eve d. through the divine empowering of man and woman both past age - Isaac Presentation 02

19. The Mystery Is Accepted Anselm concludes that if we are prepared to accept the biblical record then it is only a short step to believe that, Jesus was born of a woman without the involvement of a man - conceived of the Holy Spirit. The scepticism around the virgin birth began as a rationalist quest for a non-miraculous Christianity. That quest is now thankfully out of fashion but the scepticism lingers in people's minds as the smell of cigarettes clings to a room after the ashtrays are emptied. To reject this doctrine, is not only to display a Zechariah-type of unbelief, it is, in fact, to undermine the whole gospel of grace. Quite simply, if Jesus were born of a human father, he would possess a fallen sinful nature and be immediately disqualified from offering up to God the sinless sacrifice of a life of perfect obedience. In short there would be for us no forgiveness, no hope of heaven, no acceptance with God. Presentation 02

20. Conclusion Mary accepted what she could not understand because she trusted God when her understanding had ground to a halt. It cost her to trust God. As it costs every true believer to face up to the ridicule of an unbelieving world and to be assailed by the scoffing and jeering that is often thrown their way. Mary may serve as a model for Christians in that she responded obediently to the call of God. Her troubled state is one which is common to many Christians when they are called to a particular form of service for God. Which of us is sufficient for the task? How can we ever claim such familiarity with the ways of God, that his work in our lives should never take us by surprise? Presentation 02