The Miraculous Birth

If you have your Bibles with you today, turn with me, if you would, to Luke chapter 1, and we're going to be looking at verses 34 through 38 And this is a six month with her who was called barren. Luke's dad today suffered with COVID all week long and was dizzy and fell and had to be taken to the hospital. We pray, Lord, that you would have mercy on him, that you would help him, Lord, that he might heal quickly.

We pray that his hospital stay will be short, that you will heal him from this COVID. Heavenly Father, in your perfect sovereign will, with impeccable sovereign timing, you took Joni Presley to heaven yesterday. One minute she was on a ventilator and within a few minutes of removal from the ventilator, she was in your presence. She's no longer struggling to breathe. She's now taken in celestial air.

She is face to face with you. We rejoice over her homecoming. But, oh Lord, we're going to miss her. Her joy was contagious.

Her love for Jesus was always shining. Father, help Randy and help us with our grief. Bolster our faith so that we can rejoice with Joni. Father, today we have the privilege of studying the miraculous nature of the birth of Christ. Liberal critics have mocked this idea of a virgin birth.

Secular philosophers have snickered at the idea. But as your covenant children, we bow in humility and we praise God that Jesus was born of a virgin. Father, thank you for sending your son to die for undeserving sinners like us. Please use this message today to exalt Christ and to feed this congregation for it is in the precious and holy name of Jesus that we pray. Amen.

You may be seated. Someone asked me a question about the virgin birth that we probably all need to ponder. And that question is, is it possible to be a born again Christian and yet somehow deny the doctrine of the virgin birth of Christ?

I think we need to be careful here because I know people who were not raised in the church. They had very little understanding of the Bible whatsoever. And they went to an evangelistic crusade. They heard the gospel. They came under great conviction. They repented their sins.

They trusted Christ as their Lord and Savior. And they became a new creature in Christ just like that. Everything changed for them. Their habits changed. Their language changed. All of a sudden they had this deep hunger for Christ. They were at church every time the doors were opened. If you were to go to them right at the first of their conversion and you were to say to them, do you believe in the doctrine of the virgin birth, they might say to you, I don't know what you're talking about here.

I've never been instructed in that. All I know is this. Once I was lost but now I am found. All I know is this.

Everything has changed in my life and I am different and I'm no longer the same. We have seen little children here in this church that I believe are regenerated. And yet they have not come to the point where they're able to grasp the truths, the great truths of scripture yet. And perhaps this doctrine of the virgin birth of Christ is too much.

They're not quite able to get there to grab it yet. But I would believe with all my heart that they're okay. So folks, I would say you don't have to understand or even be aware of the virgin birth of Christ and that doctrine to be genuinely saved. But having said that, once a person is truly regenerated, once a person has been born again and then he is subjected to this doctrine of the virgin birth and he comes to understand what the Bible says about it, then that person, if he's genuinely born again, is going to accept that doctrine.

He's going to believe that doctrine and it's going to change his life because he's going to cherish it. If he rejects that doctrine, I would say that is evidence that he's not truly been saved. Ephesians chapter 1 verse 17, Paul said that the Holy Spirit is the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him. So the Holy Spirit is not going to say something in the Word of God and then turn right around and speak something else to your heart. The Holy Spirit of God is the one who inspired both Matthew and Luke to write the beautiful glorious doctrines of the virgin birth of Christ. And the Holy Spirit is not going to speak to your heart and tell you, well, that's not true.

Folks, listen very carefully. The Word of God and the Holy Spirit of God can never contradict each other. So you can be saved without knowing and understanding this doctrine. But a true Christian will not deny it or reject it when he is subjected to it.

Now how can I say that? Because to deny the virgin birth is to deny the deity of Christ. To deny the deity of Christ is to reject the gospel. In John chapter 8 verse 24, Jesus said, If you do not believe that I am, and what he means there is that I am Jehovah God, then you will die in your sins. Folks, that's why this doctrine is so vital. That's why it is a life and death issue.

It is that important. Now why would anybody deny this great, wonderful, and glorious truth? Well, let's do a quick history lesson. Go back to Isaiah chapter 7 verse 14, and the scripture says this, Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. After the death of King Uzziah and Judah, who was a very godly king who served Judah for 52 years, his worthless son Ahaz, who we would describe as a gutless wonder, ascended to the throne of Judah. At that time Judah and Israel had separated.

Israel was in the northern region, and Judah was in the south. But Israel had a king whose name was Pekah. Pekah went to Ahaz, King Ahaz, and said, We need to join our forces here so that we can fight other nations to be successful. And Ahaz said no.

So Pekah got mad, and he went to Syria to a king whose name was Rezin. He said, I want us to get together, and once we get together, we'll go and we'll fight Judah. And we'll defeat King Pekah, I mean King Ahaz, and we'll kill him. And then we will destroy the bloodline, the kingly bloodline of Judah.

We will destroy that. Well, Ahaz got word of that plan, and it literally scared the old boy to death. Instead of going to God like he should, he went to another nation. He went to Assyria. He went to King Tiglath-Pileser, and he said, If you will help me out here, we will become a puppet state to Assyria.

We will be your slaves. But you must promise me that you will protect me from Pekah and Rezin, that you will not let them kill me and destroy the kingly bloodline that leads to the Messiah, that you will not let that happen. Well, the prophet Isaiah heard about what King Ahaz did, and he absolutely went berserk. He walked into the palace with steam coming off his head, and he looked over at King Ahaz, and he said to him, Don't you believe in the promises of God? Don't you believe in God's word? He said, God told David that in his bloodline the Messiah will be born, and it's a promise to us, and we can count on it.

We can put it in the bank. And what do you do? You go off running like a yellow scared chicken, and you go off, and you give the country away. He said, What is the matter with you? Don't you believe the word of God? And King Ahaz said to him, Well, you know, my faith is not what it needs to be. And Isaiah said, Okay, then you ask God for a sign. And he said, Oh, no, no, I could never ask God for a sign. I don't want to tempt God.

I could never do that, so I won't do that. And Isaiah got mad. And Isaiah said, Okay, if you won't ask God for a sign, I'll give you a sign.

And here's the sign. And he said, Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and you shall call his name Immanuel. Folks, the word you in that verse is written in the plural.

So that means that he's not just talking to King Ahaz, that he's talking to the entire nation. And he says that the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel. Now, Immanuel, that word means the creator God who will be with us. Now, here's where our liberal friends have attacked the virgin birth. Does anybody here have a Revised Standard Version Bible with them?

Good. I'm glad you don't have that because that Bible has some bad translations in it. And one of them is in this verse, Isaiah 7, 14. They take the Hebrew word Alma, which can mean virgin or can mean young woman. There's another word, Bethulah, that always means virgin. That one's not used, but they take this one and they mistranslate it, and they say, A young woman shall conceive. And that's the translation they use.

It's very interesting. If you go through the Bible and you check out all the other references to when Alma is used every other time in the Scripture, it has to do with a virgin and not just a young woman. But we say, well, how do we know then that Isaiah meant a virgin? How can we be sure? Well, first of all, if King Ahab wants some proof that God is going to not falter on his promises and the proof is to be a sign from God, then what kind of sign would it be that a young woman is going to conceive and have a son?

I mean, that's going to pretty much happen every day, isn't it? That's not much of a sign. That's not much proof.

That's like me saying, here's proof that what I'm telling you is true. If the sun comes up in the morning, then you'll know it's true. Well, you know the sun's coming up in the morning.

That's not a real sign. We used to have a young man in our neighborhood. He was a little bit mentally ill, but he climbed up on top of his house. He put a big red light on the top of his house. His name was Bud. And I said, Bud, why'd you do that? Why'd you put that big red light on your house? He said, I put it up there so that airplanes wouldn't run into the house. And I said, you didn't need to do that. And he said, why not?

It's worked so far. That's a true story. So if this word Alma just means young woman, that's no miracle. That's not a sign at all.

That would not bring comfort and conviction into the heart of Ahaz. But when he heard that the Messiah, Emmanuel, will be born of a virgin, that's a miracle. That is the intervention of God.

That is a sign. Now later on when the Old Testament was translated into the Greek language, it's called the Septuagint. And in the Septuagint, when he translated the word Alma, which is in Hebrew, to the Greek word, he used the word parthenos, which means virgin and only virgin. Now if you still have problems, go to Matthew chapter 1 and verse 23. And Matthew writes the Gospel under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God. And in the first chapter, verse 23, what does he say? He tells us that Jesus is the fulfillment of this prophecy and says this, Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear forth a son, and you shall call his name Emmanuel, which means God with us. That word used for virgin in the Greek means virgin and only virgin.

Folks, the best commentary that we have for the Old Testament is the New Testament. And the New Testament says, without a shadow of a doubt, that Mary was a virgin. That's another argument that liberal theologians use to deny the veracity of the doctrine of the virgin birth of Christ, and that has to do with Greek and Babylonian mythology.

I want you to listen to what Harry Ironside said here. He said, Some opponents of the truth of the incarnation have even gone so far as to declare that the story of the virgin birth is not peculiar to Christianity, but that in the midst of the heathen gods we have many instances of virgin births, this one we can unhesitantly deny. There is no comparison between the sweet, pure, lovely story that we have here and the vile, lewd stories of the heathen mythologies. What some have presumed to call virgin births are the very opposite. In these stories, certain gods are represented as lustful, licentious beings. They are pictured as falling in love with some earth-born maiden, assuming a human form in order to seduce her, as a result of which she becomes the mother of a demigod. Surely there is nothing in these corrupt tales that can be linked in any proper sense with the story of the virgin birth of Jesus Christ our Lord.

With that said, I've got five quick points that I want to share with you. Point one is the supplication. Look at verse 34. And Mary said to the angel, how will this be since I am a virgin?

Notice she says, how will it be, not how can it be? And this brings up another argument that liberal theologians bring up to cast doubts on the doctrine of the virgin birth of Christ. They say there is the possibility that Jesus was the illegitimate son of a Roman soldier. Let me ask you something.

Is that a possibility? And the answer to that is absolutely no. It could not have happened. But Mary says to the angel, how will this be since I am a virgin?

That's a legitimate question. How could this possibly happen? How could she have a baby when she has never had any intimate relationships with any man? Not a Roman soldier, not Joseph, not anybody.

It could not happen. Then consider John chapter 8 verse 41 through 44. Jesus is talking to the Pharisees.

He says this. You are doing the works your father did. They said to him, we were not born of sexual immorality. We have one father, even God. Jesus said to them, if God were your father, you would love me for I came from God and I am here.

I came not of my own accord, but he sent me. Why do you not understand what I say? It is because you cannot bear to hear my word. You are of your father, the devil, and your father's will is to do your father's desires.

The Pharisees said very smugly, we're not like you, Jesus. We're not born of fornication. You were illegitimate. You were born out of wedlock.

Your mother is just a woman of the streets. Boy, Jesus just hit them with both barrels. What did he say? He says you are of your father, the devil, and the works of your father you will do. He says I was not born of fornication. He said I was not born of fornication because before Abraham was, I am.

What was he saying? He was saying before Abraham was even born, I was and am Jehovah God. In other words, he was claiming deity. For Jesus to be God, he had to have been born of a virgin. So Mary's got a question.

That's not surprising, is it? She had just been told that she is going to give birth to the Son of God. That might raise a few questions.

So what I want to do very quickly is I want us to take a look at a comparison of questions. You remember when the angel Gabriel came to Zechariah the priest, told him that he and his wife, who were way beyond childbearing age, were going to have a son, and that son was going to be the forerunner of the Messiah? John had a question that he had to ask, but Mary's question is much different than the question that Zechariah had. Zechariah's question was filled with doubt. Mary's was not. Zechariah said, how can I know that what you're telling me is true?

That's what he said to the angel. Mary's question is not filled with doubt. Her question is filled with wonder.

She is not asking for evidence or assurance. She's asking for enlightenment. She is saying, OK, you're telling me that I'm going to give birth to the Son of God.

Well, fill me in on some logistics. She says, I know how babies are conceived. And she said, we have not consummated the marriage.

I'm a pure chaste virgin. Mary has to realize that this is a God thing. This is a miracle. This is supernatural.

This cannot be explained or understood in human terms. This is not a lack of faith on Mary's part. Mary just wants to know how. This is not doubt. It is wonder.

It is absolute awe. She is seeking clarification, not confirmation. God said it. That settles it. That's not the issue with her. She believes that.

She just wants to know how. I remember back in 2007, I had diverticulitis. I went to the doctor and they told me that I was going to have to have surgery. They were going to take 18 inches of my colon out.

And so I had some questions. And I asked him, I said, how big is the incision going to be? And I said, when you cut 18 inches of my colon out, how is it that you're going to stick the two ends back together? And then I said, how long is it going to take me to heal? I was not questioning the doctor's ability to do this. I knew that he could do it. He had done this hundreds of times before.

I just wanted to know how it was going to affect me. I just wanted to know how he was going to do it. That's what's going on with Mary.

Point two, the strategy. Look at verse 35. 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 the Son of God. I've heard preachers try to describe this explanation that Gabriel gives is in almost crude sexual terms. Folks, this is not a sexual union between a human being and a divine being.

There are no sexual overtones here whatsoever. But Gabriel says the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. What's an overshadowing? When the Holy Spirit appeared in the Old Testament, it appeared most of the time in the form that's called the Shekinah glory. It was a bright glory cloud. On the day of atonement, one time a year, the high priest would go back behind the veil and he would take a branch of hyssop and he had a bowl of goat's blood in his hand. He would dip it into the branch of hyssop into the goat's blood and he would sprinkle it on the mercy seat to atone for the people's sins for that year. And so when he did that, the Shekinah glory of God would come and would hover between the wings of the cherubim to assure the people of God that their sins had been covered for that year. And that was called an overshadowing. The Holy Spirit of God, visibly present to the high priest, he could see it and it was called an overshadowing. When Jesus was baptized, his baptism was a part of the ceremonial ordination in the priesthood, he's coming up out of the water. And the scripture says that the Holy Spirit descended upon him like a dove and it landed upon his shoulders and rested upon him. That was an overshadowing.

It's a different purpose there, but it's the same similar methodology. Several years ago, my wife gave me some insightful comments on this idea of overshadowing by Nancy Guthrie. I want to take a minute and read you this.

Listen carefully. If you have ever driven through thick fog, so thick you could barely see what was in front of you, you know it can be kind of scary. Fog is basically a cloud close to the ground. In several places in the Bible, the presence and power of God in the person of the Holy Spirit is described as a cloud in which God came close to earth.

But it usually didn't scare people. In the second verse of the Bible, we read that the earth was formless and empty and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters. The Holy Spirit hovered over the unformed earth like a cloud. Later, God's presence like a cloud led the cloud that came down when Jesus was on the top of a mountain with three of his disciples. And that a voice from the cloud said, this is my dearly loved son who brings me great joy.

Listen to him. We get that same sense of an enveloping cloud of the presence of God when we read the words the angel said to Mary. The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby to be born will be holy and he will be called the Son of God. The angel said that the Holy Spirit would come upon Mary and overshadow her similar to the way a cloud might.

God in the person of the Holy Spirit would come over her and do a creative work in her womb making new life. While Mary's experience was certainly unique, we all desperately need the Holy Spirit to come upon us and overshadow us. We need him to make new life where there's deadness in our spirits, to bring light where there's darkness in our hearts. We need the Holy Spirit to enter into the chaos of our inner thoughts, emotions and desires and change us from the inside out. We can't create new spiritual life on our own.

We need the power of God to work inside us so that Christ can be born in us. This was not a sexual experience for Mary, but it was a very conscious experience. She felt this. She knew this was taking place.

Kent Hughes said perhaps it was in the very moment of Gabriel's statement that she was overshadowed. Or perhaps it was after the angel left. It is the Spirit that gives life. Jesus said that that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. And people, when the Spirit of God comes to you, you will experience life. When the Spirit of God regenerates you, he makes out of you a new creation.

Old things are passed away. Behold, all things are become new. Romans 8 16 says the Spirit himself beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. 1 John 3 verse 24 says, And hereby we know that he abides in us by the Spirit which he has given us. So the virgin birth was a divine, creative miracle performed by the Holy Spirit. And what did the miracle bring forth? Number one, it showed forth the holiness of Christ. John MacArthur said, In a matter beyond human comprehension, Jesus was fully human yet completely sinless from conception.

The explanation of how that could be is shrouded in the unfathomable mystery of the Incarnation. Because of the virgin birth, the Holy Spirit overshadowing Mary, Jesus was born without a sin nature. And because he was without a sin nature, he had the right to be our Savior. The second thing this miracle shows forth is the sonship of Jesus. The virgin birth did not make Jesus God's Son.

It did not. Jesus was eternal. He's been the Son of God, the second person of the Trinity, all the way through eternity past. So it didn't make him the Son, it manifested his sonship.

All right, number three is the sign. 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 is called barren. Mary did not ask for a sign of confirmation, but the angel graciously gave her one. She was told that her aunt Elizabeth, who was past the childbearing age, had been barren for all of her life, was now six months pregnant. That was a shock to Mary. So the angel knew it was a shock, so he said to her, Behold, which means listen very carefully, and then he said, You're not the only one experiencing a miracle now. He said, Your aunt has wanted a baby all her life, over 50 years old, and now, way past her childbearing years, now she's expecting a baby. That baby will be the forerunner of the Messiah. Folks, Gabriel doesn't tell Mary all the details, but I tell you, she gets excited about this, for she knows that mama and daddy and her betrothed husband Joseph and her brothers and sisters and her neighbors are going to have a lot of trouble believing this story of the virgin birth of Christ. But now she is told that Elizabeth, her aunt, has experienced a great miracle, and she's going to give birth to a miracle baby. And so she says, I'll go to Elizabeth, and Elizabeth will be able to understand what I'm going through, and she can rejoice with me. So it was a blessed, comforting sign from God.

Point four is the sovereignty. Look at verse 37. For nothing will be impossible with God. That's the verse that you need to commit to memory.

That's the verse that you ought to go home and you ought to write it out in calligraphy, and you ought to put it in a frame and put it over your mantle, over your fireplace, and look at it every single day. For it tells us that our God is an almighty God. He is a powerful God. He is an all-sovereign God.

We are limited in everything that we do. God is limited in nothing. Now think about this statement that Gabriel had made here.

Nothing is impossible with God. That verse ought to immediately send you back to the Old Testament. And you immediately ought to think about another couple, an older couple, Abraham and Sarah.

Abraham was almost 100 years old. Sarah is almost 90 years old. And the angel of the Lord speaks to Abraham and says, your wife by this time next year will have a son. What did Sarah do?

She laughed at that. Genesis 18, 12 through 14 says this, So Sarah laughed to herself, saying, After I was worn out and my Lord is old, shall I have pleasure? The Lord said to Abraham, Why did Sarah laugh? And say, Shall I indeed bear a child now that I am old? Is anything too hard for the Lord?

At the appointed time, I will return to you about this time next year, and Sarah shall have a son. Gabriel's statement answering God's question to Sarah. God said, Is anything too hard for the Lord? And Gabriel says, No, nothing.

Nothing's too hard for the Lord, for with God, nothing is impossible. If Sarah can have a baby way out of her childbearing years, when she is way older than any other woman that has had a baby, if she can have a miracle baby, then Elizabeth can have a baby in her older years. And if Elizabeth can have a miracle baby, then Mary can have a miracle baby. A virgin-born son, Jesus Christ. How can that happen? It can happen because of this. Nothing is impossible with God.

Point five, the submission. Look at verse 38. And Mary said, Behold, I am the servant of the Lord.

Let it be according to your word. And the angel departed from her. Mary's response is very similar to Hannah's response in the Old Testament. Hannah is desperately wanting a baby, and she gets a baby, a son. The Lord gives that to her. His name is Samuel. He became the great prophet. But before that baby came, she cried out to the Lord, and she said, I am your slave.

Please give me a son. Mary also expresses herself in that very same way. She says, I am a servant.

That's what you have in the ESV. If you read this in the Greek, it doesn't say servant. It says doule or doulos, and that word doesn't mean just servant or bondservant.

It's much stronger than that. It means slave. She is saying, I am your slave, Lord Jehovah. I am your slave. I will do whatever you command me to do.

Let it be according to your word. Now think about what she could have said. She could have said, what about mom and daddy? They're not going to believe this.

What about them? She could have said, what about Joseph? He might divorce me. Or worse, he may have me stoned to death for this. Or what about the neighbors? They're going to make fun of me. They're going to call me an adulterous woman.

They're going to hurt my feelings. You know, she didn't do any of that. It's like all that didn't matter. She didn't care about her reputation. She didn't care about the slander. She didn't care about the danger.

She didn't care about the abuse. What she cared about was glorifying the Lord. And she said, I am your slave, Lord. Let it be according to your word.

Would to God that everybody in this congregation could say that same thing. I am your slave, Jesus. Let it be according to your word. I am your slave, Lord.

I will do whatever you call me to do. Mary is not the co-redeemer of humanity. She is not the queen of heaven. She is not the sinless dispenser of grace, as the Catholic Church would tell us. But she is the humble handmaiden of the Lord. She's the Lord's slave. And in that, we should praise her and thank her for the example that she has left for us.

Let's pray. Heavenly Father, for way too long, the Catholic Church has made way too much of Mary. They have called her sinless. They have labeled her as a redemptress. They have said that Mary is to be worshipped, for she was able to show a deeper and more tender love than Jesus could.

She had that ability because she was a sensitive woman, they say. Father, we reject all those lies and false statements. She's not the queen of heaven. But we confess to you today that we way too often go to the other extreme, and we don't give Mary the respect and honor that she deserves. You chose her to be the mother of the Son of God. She lived a strong, moral, ethical, honest life. She was a lady of great integrity and deep humility. She told the angel Gabriel that she was Jehovah's slave. We absolutely refuse to worship Mary, but we will definitely endeavor to follow her godliness. Lord, help us to love Mary's son in the way that she loved him, for it's in Jesus' name we pray. Amen.