Today on Growing Through Grace, the angel says to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, the power of the highest will overshadow you, that the Holy One which is to be worn will be called the Son of God." You're listening to Growing Through Grace with Pastor Jacobi Allen, a Morning Star Christian Chapel in Whittier, California. But what must it have been like for a young gal to receive a visit from an angel and get the news that she would bear the long-awaited Messiah? Our next installment in Luke 1 verse 26-38 gives us that amazing announcement. Pastor Jack will finish up that passage and then move on to verses 39-56, where we learn about Mary's visit to Elizabeth, who is pregnant with John the Baptist. Here's Master Jack, and he tells Mary, "You're going to have a son and you're going to call his name Jesus, you that found favor with God, and he's going to be great. He's going to be called the son of the highest, the Son of God." If you go to Israel with us and have an opportunity to sit and talk to a religious Jew and you ask them about Jesus, they will tell you that they don't believe that he's the Messiah because he claimed to be God, and he certainly did because he is. They believe that the Messiah that they are waiting for will be a man. Moses in Deuteronomy chapter 18, in speaking to the people, said, "The Lord will raise up for you a prophet like me in your midst, your brethren. You're going to hear him." So he said, "Well, he's got to be a man." The problem with that understanding is whenever you turn in the Bible to anywhere about Jesus, you'll begin to recognize immediately that he has qualities only God has. If you say to this religious man that you're speaking to a woman, well, how will you recognize him then when he comes? They will say to you, "He's going to help rebuild our temple." Jesus said in John chapter 5, I think verse 43, "I came to you in my own name and you won't receive me. I'm in his own name. You'll follow him." Warning them of this antichrist that is coming that will deceive. But in the names of the Messiah, wherever you turn, it always speaks to the fact that he's God. He's not just man. On to us a child is born, that's man, but on to us a son is given, that's God's son. He gave him. Wherever you turn, what will his name be called? His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace, Emmanuel, God with us. And God consistently asserts and declares the Messiah as being God, and it starts with his name here. So he's going to sit on the throne of his father, David, forever as the Lord had promised. By the way, if you go back to 2 Samuel, I think it's chapter 7, David wanted to build God a house, and God had said, "No, you're a man of bloody hands. You've had a lot of war. I'll let your son build it." But I'll tell you what, David, more important than what you're going to do for me. Here's what I'm going to do for you. I'm going to build you a house. I'm going to develop a throne, and you're going to be able to sit on that throne forever. In fact, your descendants will rule from that throne forevermore. Now, in the short term, he gave to David rules by which his sons had they been obedient, could have stayed on the throne without interruption. They broke that very early. They gave it away, if you will. But the Lord would come, and his son would come and establish his throne, and he would rule forevermore. In fact, when Peter gave his first sermon on Pentecost in chapter, I think, two of the book of Acts. He talked about a prophet who got had sworn as the fruit of his body according to the flesh. He'd rise up to sit on the throne of David forevermore. He inserted that into his first, if you will, sermon. Now, put yourself in Mary's shoes. You're 14 or 15 years old, and Angel is talking to you, and this is what he lays on. So you might just go, "What am I going to do with this?" Well, here's what Mary says, verse 34. He says to the angel, "How can this be since I don't know a man? In my womb, the son of the highest, the one who's going to sit on the throne of his father, David, forever, how? She had remained pure in her a spousal period. I know only one way to have kids. That's been unavailable to me." Zachariah had asked the angel how, an unbelief about a promised child in his old age, but Mary wasn't asking an unbelief. In fact, you'll see her response here in a minute. She's asking just the process. How can this work? I don't understand. It's beyond my understanding. It's not that I'm not willing or that I don't believe. I just can't explain to you how this might work. She wasn't wavering an unbelief. She just wasn't sure. Which is why the angel in verse 35 just answers her question directly. He says to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you. The power of the highest will overshadow you, and you therefore also the holy one which is to be born will be called the son of God." In other words, here's how it's going to work. He answers the how question. There'll be the power and the presence of God actively working in your womb. Now as a doctor, I think Luke would have been very interested in this testimony, right? He would want to maybe go over that more than anyone else. Because a woman's egg is usually fertilized by the seed of a man, 23 chromosomes from the male, 23 from the female, 46 gathered together, and the characteristics of a child begin to be formed so that dominant genes take over as God presides and breathes life into a new soul. That didn't happen here. God created life. Which ought to tell us something, evidently, the sin nature is passed along through the seed of a man. Because this Jesus was born without sin. He is without blemish, without inherent kind of defect. He was born sinless, without spot. He was born in the likeness of sinful flesh, as Paul said. And he's the only one who was born without sin. Why? Because a man's seed was not involved. So if you want to know how the sin nature has passed along, just ask your husbands. Way to go, guys. He was tempted in all ways like we were in, yet without sin. So revelation to us, right, biblically so. How is this going to happen? Now, I would tell you that that explanation, if I was married, would be tough to handle. I'm going to need more information, right? I don't quite understand. But she doesn't do that to her. This was fine. And the angel then gives to her before we quit down to verse 38, some encouragement to help her in a faith that had to be challenged at this point. So he says to her in verse 36, "Indeed, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age. She's in her sixth month now, the one who was called barren, for with God nothing is impossible." That's really what the lesson is. And Mary said, "Well, behold, then the maid-servant of the Lord, be it done unto me according to your word and the angel departed from her." Notice the word relative in verse 36. It is not necessarily the word cousin. The Greek word is sugenous, but it is usually translated that way. In the King James, for example, Elizabeth was from the tribe of Levi, Mary is from the tribe of Judah. Now, if you go back far enough, those twelve sons, that would have made them cousins, if you will. However, I don't think that's the issue here. The issue here is, here's a relative that you know, and she has experienced a gracious work of God that has done the impossible and God's about to do that with you as well. So don't be discouraged, don't be afraid, be encouraged, God can do anything. When you talk to liberals who don't believe the Bible, they will often go after the virgin birth. But I think verse 37 just says, if that's a problem for you, it's because your concept of God is too small. God can do anything, anything. If you go back to chapter 1 verse 1, Pastor Chuck used to say it, and I think he got it from J. Vernon McGee. Well, that's where I first heard it. And the words were, if you can believe Genesis 1 verse 1, the rest of the Bible is easy. In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Hey, if he can do that, whatever follows is just fine. He made it out of nothing. So Mary, I know this is a lot to take in, but go visit your cousin. See what the Lord has done. And he can do anything. He can certainly do that work in your life and in your heart as well. And I love Mary's response, young girl, just so in love with the Lord. She literally says, Hey, if that's your plan, do to me what you want. I'm the maid servant. It's the word doulos, bond-slurvert. It means someone who's chosen to be a slave to someone else. They don't have to be. They just willfully choose to do that, just like you have chosen to serve Jesus. Do with me whatever you want. If I was Mary, and again, it's the only way I know how to learn, I'd have had a few more questions. Stuff like, yeah, how do you think Joseph's going to handle this? And what about my parents? And what about the town? She just went, all right, I'll have to let that Lord work that out. But if he's going to overshadow me, if he's going to do this work, I'm going to stay faithful to him. Do whatever you want with me. Before we end, just again, for those of you that are Catholic, how many of you are Catholic backgrounds? See, there's so many of you. We should start a Catholic club, no, it isn't. Mary did not stay a perpetual virgin. She didn't have any relationship with Joseph, according to Matthew chapter 1, until Jesus was born. But after that, they had a rather large family. You can see some of the kids' names in Matthew 13. The last time we see Mary, by the way, and most of her family is in Acts chapter 2. They are gathered in the upper room with 120 folks, waiting for the promise that the Lord promised of the Holy Spirit coming to fall upon them. Don't go out to be a witness until you receive power from on high. It's the last time we see them. If you want to give Mary a significant role in the early church, you can't do it biblically. She was faithful. She found grace. She was chosen by God. She bore the Messiah. She was a faithful mother. She suffered much, watching her son suffer. She hit a lot of things in her heart as we're going to find. And then as a believer with the rest of the church, she gathered for God's power and then disappears off the scenes of the pages of the Scriptures. You won't even find her. There's nothing about her in the pistols and the early church writings. She just loved the Lord and lived her life that way. Quite an announcement, though, and it's good to know that you and I stand this morning by God's grace. He's picked us. Why? I don't know. Don't ask me. Looking around here. I have no idea. Looking up here. You have none. I have it. But if you don't know this Jesus who is coming to save man, he knows you. And without him, we'll be told more than once you'll never get to heaven. So it is better that we open our hearts to him and receive them. And if you haven't, you can do that today. Why did he come? He came to die. Isaiah wrote in 53, "It pleased the Lord to bruise him, to put him to grief, to make him an offering for our sins, that we could find our days prolonged. And if we know him, he will justify us. He will remove. He will bear our iniquities." So look, if you're not saved this morning, if you don't have Jesus as the answer for your hope, then you're barking up the round tree because there's no other name. There's no other way. I hope. But him. What an announcement. Chapter 1 verse 39. We go with Mary as we continue our study up to Elizabeth's home to kind of see what everyone had been hidden from, that she was pregnant indeed. And with the angel told her, you could imagine that this young girl would want to go and see what the Lord had said to her. It is a great portion of Scripture's about God encouraging our faith. And if you'll just take one step, he'll help you in the next two. But faith means we have to step in his direction as he speaks. Verse 39. "Now Mary arose in those days, and went into the hill country with haste, to a city of Judah, and entered the house of Zacharias, and greeted Elizabeth." Not Larry, but Mary, I'll get this right for the second service. Mary lived in Galilee far north of the country, Judah is in the south. Depending on where did the hill country she would go, it was either a 72 about 90 mile trip, if you will, into the hill country. No doubt had been the angel's words to her back in verse 36, I should say. That motivated this trip, Mary was willing to let the Lord do whatever, but this was a tangible kind of physical encouragement to her faith, and she and her cousin Elizabeth would have a lot to talk about. It is impossible, I think, biblically, to determine whether Mary went to tell Joseph what had happened. My guess would be she did not, but it's only a guess. We read here that she went with haste when she met with the angel. I don't think she hung around. She wanted to go to see Elizabeth. She would stay there, we will read today three months, or approximately until John the Baptist was born, maybe helped out around the house, whatever that might have happened. But whether she told him before she left or when she came home, I have no way to help you with determining, but like I said, I'm kind of moved by the word moved in haste. If she told him first, that poor guy had a lot to work out, because she didn't have any answers. It was just God's word to her. There was no physical proof yet she certainly didn't feel pregnant, you know, this had just been delivered to her as a message. We do know that from Matthew chapter one, when Joseph did find out, he really thought about getting out of this whole affair, this whole relationship, this whole commitment, you know, to Mary, and struggled with it, because he loved her, decided he maybe put her away privately, and it was then that the angel came to Joseph and said, look, this is God's word, believe her. And he like Mary trusted God for what seemed to be the impossible. So I'm not sure that he knew beforehand, but like I said, Joseph was as willing to believe God as Mary was, but it does seem to indicate that Mary left quickly. And if you read Matthew chapter one, and when Joseph found out about what the Lord had done, there's an indication there in verse 24 of chapter one of Matthew, that Joseph didn't wait the rest of the year of that engagement, that he took her as his wife right away, and just he was committed to, you know, this is what the Lord has done, and I'm committed to it. As a result, Mary and Joseph and Jesus for that matter would live with this gossip for the rest of their lives, you know, always the suspicion of, you know, when did they get married? Have you got your calendar, is that really work out, you know, and just the gossip that goes around town 30 years later, Jesus will be talking to a bunch of Jewish folks who proclaim their faith in God, and Jesus began to talk about himself, they're in John 8, and they finally in frustration said to Jesus, well, at least we weren't born out of fornication like you. So this is, you know, Mary's going to suffer a lot for her calling. Sometimes you and I will suffer often for your dedication to the Lord, and in this society like we live in today, maybe more than a little often, but yet we've got to serve the Lord, don't we? And so I think that Mary, with a young girl hearing this from this angel, her haste to go find out from her cousin would have been a natural response, right? It's kind of like, gosh, I could use some spiritual encouragement. This is phenomenal, phenomenal. So we read in verse 40 that she comes to Zacharias and Elizabeth's home, where she is now six months pregnant. And it happened when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary that the baby leapt in her womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit fell upon, I think, Elizabeth for the purpose of the prophecy she was about to proclaim about Mary and the verses of that Paolo. It says there in verse 42 that she began to speak with a loud voice, "Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. But why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" Says with a loud voice. I grew up with a lot of kind of costals when I got saved, who I think believed that unless it was loud it wasn't anointed. And sometimes I guess that's the case, right? But there's also that still small voice that God usually speaks through, but this is obviously great excitement. It isn't unusual to have a baby move in a womb at six months, but Elizabeth sensed that this was a particular work of the Lord. And as the Holy Spirit fell upon her, she said some things that she shouldn't have known, that Mary was pregnant, that this pregnancy was the Lord Himself. And so as God began to reveal to her supernaturally Mary, I'm thinking it's taken notes. Oh, that's exactly what I've been hearing. Notice in verse 42, and for you the ex-Catholics, or maybe you see yourself as that way, you remember learning the Hail Mary probably, right? And you should know that except for the part that is written here, the rest of that prayer is nonsense. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, you remember this prayer, not in the Bible. What is in the Bible is this portion. How did Elizabeth know that Mary was pregnant? Not by looking at her. She had just barely got the news herself. I doubt if Mary came to the door and said, "Hello, I'm pregnant by the Holy Spirit. Can I come in?" Probably didn't happen. And yet Elizabeth knew, by the infilling of God's Spirit, that this was a work of God. I think so often we discount that work of God's Spirit in our lives. We quickly rely solely upon our wisdom and inside, and it's a mistake, you know? We have God's Spirit to dwell in us, to lead us, and certainly oftentimes if we're open to hear from the Lord, we will hear things that maybe we wouldn't otherwise understand. We'll just direct our path. Mary, you're blessed among women, and so is the fruit of your womb. By the way, the word blessed, at least in the New Testament, as well as the old, I guess, always speaks about the blessedness of a position. It may make you happy for a time or not, but it is always the comment of a position that God has placed you into, or you find yourself. Mary was blessed because she had been chosen by God amongst women to bear the Son that God was sent into the world, and I don't know about you, but I would think Mary was just relieved to hear these words. She's 14 years old or so. She had an angel visit and been told the most amazing things, and now she's here to kind of verify and be sure that this was something the Lord had indeed done. Gabriel had said these exact same words to her, "You are blessed among women," and now it comes out of the mouth of her cousin. You are blessed among women. We know from what we will read in a minute about Mary's worship prayer or songs, and what Jesus says elsewhere, that his choosing of her was by grace alone, and that it was her faith in God that really stood fast. So I love the assurance that she is told by Mary down in verse, let's see, verse where did we stop, verse 43, so verse 44 says, "Indeed, as soon as the voice of your greeting sounded in my ears, the baby leaped in my womb for joy, blessed is she who believed. For there will be a fulfillment of those things," which we're told her by the Lord, "but the emphasis is on blessed are those who believed." First from now, there will be actually a woman, I think it says on Luke, in the crowd who, when Jesus began to speak, yelled out, "Blessed is the womb that bore you and the breasts that nursed you." And Jesus' reply to this woman in the crowd was, "More than that, blessed are those who hear God's word and keep." Well, that's Mary's emblem, right? That's her distinguishing mark. God had chosen her, but her distinguishing mark was she believed what God had told and acted accordingly. And with that thought, we'll stop there for today and pick up the balance of Luke chapter 1 verses 39 through 56, the next time we're together. This has been the second part of a three-part study taught by Pastor Jack Abilean. If you'd like to get the entire message, we do have that available for you. All you need to do to order, simply contact us and ask for study number 42-36. It's always helpful for us to know the radio station that you're listening to, so be sure to mention those call letters when you get ahold of us. And in the day and age that we live in, I'm sure that all of us struggle one way or another with our finances. But what does the Bible say about money? Well, the world says that money brings power and freedom. Yet God's Word tells us that the love of money can lead to destruction. Now, we're promised blessing as a result of our right attitude about money, along with the promise that God Himself will provide for every one of our needs. Pastor Jack has written a book that's titled "God's View of Money," which really details all of the Bible's perspective on the believer and his money. So if you'd like to order God's view of money by Pastor Jack or to get today's study, just dial our toll-free phone number at 866-88-GRACE, that's 866-884-7223, again 866-884-7223. Or you could find this and all of our resources online at growingthroughgrace.com, that's growingthroughgrace.com. That's going to wrap it up not only for today, but for this week. We do look forward to being with you again in our next program. So until then, as you daily walk with our Lord Jesus Christ, may you continue to grow in His grace. But to grace is the listener-supported ministry brought you by Morningstar Christian Chapel in Whittier, California, a Calvary Chapel outreach. [MUSIC PLAYING]
