Christmas 2007…In The Red Zone
Mary, Did You Know? Part 1
Matthew 1&2, Luke 1&2
Roy shared with me this week that according to CCLI, an organization that monitors the songs that are being sung in churches each week, and for the past month, the song Mary Did You Know? Has been in the top 10. I’m not surprised. It is one of the most beautiful and memorable Christmas songs of the modern period, in my estimation.
This Christmas Season, we’re looking at the story of the Greatest Night in Human History through the lens of that song. As I said last week, for the past year, I have been impressed over and over with what I believe is the answer to that question – “No, Mary didn’t know!” She had no idea what she was getting into. But that makes her story all the more wonderful!
The obstacles Mary, and Joseph and the rest of the people in the Christmas story faced, and the faith they demonstrate in the face of almost overwhelming circumstances, stand as wonderful testimonies and examples for each of us. On the Greatest Night in Human History, when “the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us,” God used ordinary people in extraordinary ways. As we examine these stories, I trust that we are able to take hope and encouragement in knowing that God sometimes brings us to our greatest point of crisis in order to bring us to our greatest opportunity for significance. Without the birth of John the Baptist, Zechariah and Elizabeth would be lost forever unknown to history. Without the birth of Jesus, none of us would know the names of Joseph and Mary of Nazareth. Their greatest significance came through the channel of their greatest challenge!
Today, on this Sunday before Christmas, we’re moving toward the epicenter of the story – and we are going to focus our attention this morning, and tomorrow night (Christmas Eve), on the person of Mary – and we ask, Mary did you know?
Mary, as we have said before, would have been a young girl, probably about 14 or 15 years old. Her parents had recently informed her of their agreement with the family of Joseph, the village carpenter, that the two of them would be husband and wife. After the formal engagement ceremony, Mary, who would now be known as Joseph’s wife, would have gone back to her parents home, to prepare for her life as a faithful wife and mother, while her “husband,” Joseph, spent that year of engagement preparing a place, most likely a new additional room built on to his parents home, where he would bring her after their wedding ceremony was completed.
It is sometime during that year that Mary is brought to her crisis of faith. We read in Luke 1:26-37 of her life-altering encounter with Gabriel.
26 In the sixth month [of Elizabeth’s pregnancy], God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you." 29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. 31 You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end." 34 "How will this be," Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?" 35 The angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. 36 Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. 37 For nothing is impossible with God." 38 "I am the Lord's servant," Mary answered. "May it be to me as you have said." Then the angel left her. [My notes added.]
I want you to listen carefully to the words that Gabriel used to describe Mary: “You who are highly favored…” and, “You have found favor with God…” When Dr. Luke wrote this biography of Jesus, he wrote in Greek, and the Greek word that we have translated in our Bibles as “favor” or “favored” is charis, which means, “grace-filled, touched by or the recipient of grace, to be blessed, to be encircled by grace.” It means that Mary is the recipient of God’s grace – Gabriel tells her that she has been chosen, in God’s sovereignty, to be the beneficiary of blessings from Him.
Elizabeth, Mary’s cousin, also recognizes the grace of God that has been given to her. When Mary goes to visit her pregnant cousin, in verse 39 and following, Elizabeth greets her by saying, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear!” Later she says, “Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished.” Mary knows she has been the recipient of God’s grace, too. She spontaneously erupts in praise to God in a psalm of praise that we find in verses 46-55. In verse 48 she says, “…From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me…”
And what a blessing it is! We talked last week about the fact that God, being God, is able to scan the entirety of human existence, from creation to the end of days. He is able to see the content of every human heart – and as He scanned the length and breadth of human history, His all-seeing eye fell on young Mary of Nazareth to be the mother of His Son. She is indeed highly favored, blessed by the grace of God, blessed like none other in history.
But with that amazing blessing came tremendous burden. With the grace of selection came the cost of following. When Mary said, “All generations will call me blessed,” she was almost right – there was one generation that didn’t quite see it that way – her generation. When Mary was chosen among all the women in human history to be the mother of His Son, she was also selected to be object of suspicion, gossip and ridicule among her own family and the people in her village.
Imagine her parent’s reaction! Put yourself in their shoes – your daughter comes home and tells you that she’s pregnant, but she’s never had sex, and that an angel has told her that the baby will be the Son of God. Seriously – think about that! Her parents were no different than yours – their reaction would naturally been similar to ours!
We talked last week about how Joseph and his parents would have reacted when Mary returned from her three-month trip to Zechariah & Elizabeth’s home and was “found to be pregnant.” Joseph felt all the emotions you would expect - shock, disappointment, anger, fear, confusion. His family and friends would have been angry and urged him to demand his rights as an offended fiancée. The entire village would know, and the whispers and gossip would have spread like a brush fire through Nazareth and the surrounding communities.
In fact, that’s why I believe Mary and Joseph stayed in Bethlehem after Jesus was born there – When we read of the Magi showing up looking for the birth child, it is obvious that some time has passed. Matthew tells us that when the followed the star, the came to a “house” – not a stable, and Matthew says that they saw the “child,” not an “baby.” That, coupled with Herod having all the boys under two years of age killed based on the timing that the Magi gave him, leads many scholars to believe that Mary, Joseph and Jesus had settled in Bethlehem after his birth for a while. Who could blame them? No one in Bethlehem would have known the rumors and suspicions of Nazareth. And after the flight to Egypt, when an angel told Joseph to return to Israel, his first impulse was to return to the southern part of the country, to Judea, but an angel warned him, and Joseph returned to the only other place he knew – Nazareth.
Eventually the suspicions spread across all Israel. With the increased spotlight on Jesus, the rumors were dug up as the Pharisees and Sadducees started slinging mud at him. In John 8, during a rather ruthless battle of words between Jesus and the political/religious leaders, they challenged Him repeatedly, trying to destroy His credibility. At the end of the debate, as Jesus builds steadily on His identity as the Son of God, the Pharisees get more and more nasty in their accusations until they finally yell out – “WE are not the illegitimate children of fornication – WE are sons of Abraham!” If you have the Message, it puts their accusation into somewhat more contemporary language that I will spare you from this morning – but it is accurate and to the point. They accuse Jesus of being an illegitimate child or a lose woman who got pregnant before she was married.
Here it is, thirty years later, and the swirl of suspicion and accusation are still spinning around Mary and her child! In our day of ruthless politics and campaigns to smear the opposition, we can easily imagine the religious and political leaders of Jesus day saying things like they did. If USA Today had been around in first century Jerusalem, this would have been the lead headline. Where do you suppose they got that information? Where else but from the people of Nazareth, who still had their suspicions and accusations?
Such is the life of this woman who was “highly favored.” Here is the legacy of one who is “blessed among all women!” This life of blessing, this recipient of God’s grace, would have had no idea what burden she would bear.
From the day that angel showed up, fast-forward three months to the public discovery of her pregnancy – “This is what it means to be blessed?”
From the day that angel showed up, fast-forward nine months to a stable in Bethlehem– “This is what it means to be the recipient of God’s grace?”
From the day that angel showed up, fast forward thirty years to the public ministry of Jesus, and the opening of old wounds – “This is what it means to be highly favored?”
From the day that angel showed up, fast-forward thirty-three years to the foot of a Roman cross bearing the bloodied, nearly unrecognizable form of her first-born son – “This is the one who will ‘reign over the house of Jacob forever?’ This is God’s plan?”
Mary didn’t know. When Gabriel showed up, and startled her with his amazing news, she had no idea all that lay ahead…
But I want us to notice something of profound importance. Mary’s identity before God did not change with shifting of her circumstances. When no one believed her story, she was still “highly favored!” When Joseph was thinking of divorcing her quietly, she was still “the most blessed among women.” When thirty years later people were accusing, she was still the one that “all generations will call blessed.”
The reality of her blessing was not altered by the weight of her burden. God had selected her from all the women in human history, and poured His grace out on her like none other. The Word had become flesh within her, He had matured in her virgin womb, He had been delivered through her to save the world! No circumstance, no difficulty, no confusion about God’s plan could change it! When life seemed to go in all sorts of senseless directions, she had the certainty within her that “this is God’s work, even if I don’t understand it!”
You know what? You and I have more in common with Mary than you’ve maybe realized before. If you have trusted this Jesus as your Savior, and believed on Him, then you, two are “highly favored.” The Bible tells us that “it is by grace (charis,) we have been saved, through faith, and that not of ourselves, it is the gift of God…” If you believe, then you have been saved by the grace of God – you are a recipient of His grace – you are “highly favored!” You have been blessed!
If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, then in a powerful way the Living Word of God has entered within you, and as you allow the Word of God to grow and mature within you, and be delivered through you in the power of the Holy Spirit, you and I become part of the redemptive work of God. Paul tells us that we “have been blessed in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing!” (Eph 1:3)
Mary didn’t know…but she was blessed. She didn’t know the hard path that she was being asked to follow as part of God’s blessing and calling in her life – but she was blessed. She certainly didn’t understand all the twists and turns her life took – suspicion, poverty, widowed, pierced to her very soul – but she was blessed – she was chosen by God to bear His Son into the world – she was blessed among all women!
You and I don’t know…but we are blessed. We don’t always understand the hard paths we are asked to tread – but we are blessed. We don’t comprehend how lost jobs, illness, unfairness and even death can be part of God’s plan – but we are blessed. We have been “chosen in Him before the foundations of the world to be holy and blameless in His sight,” (Eph 1:4) and we have been chosen by God to take the good news of His Son into the world – we are most blessed of all people!
If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, then rejoice this Christmas in the certainty that even when you don’t know what lies ahead, or understand what is going on, you are blessed and highly favored by God – He has chosen you and is using you for His purposes!
If you have not placed your faith in Jesus, if you feel lost and overwhelmed by the struggles of this life, without purpose or direction, then allow the Christ of Bethlehem to be born in your heart today – ask Him to come into you, His influence to grow within you, and His salvation to be delivered though you – and you, too will know His blessing.
“Lord God, in this Christmas Season, may we echo the words of Mary, ‘We are your servants, do to us as You will…’”
[Worship Dance: Mary Did You Know?]