The Birth of Jesus

Today on Renewing Your Mind. The first person who exercised any kind of skeptical questioning about the possibility of the virgin birth was the virgin herself.

At least she asked the question, how can this be since I know not a man? In other words, for Mary to hear this message sounded to be absolutely impossible. This week we are enjoying Dr. R.C. Sproul's overview of the Bible, his series called Dust to Glory. And today in the busyness of the Christmas holiday season, we have the opportunity of slowing down a bit and considering Mary's shock when the angel appeared to her and her quiet unwavering faith in accepting the angel's message. I once heard a preacher give a message entitled, If I Were God. It's a strange title to be sure, but in his sermon he engaged in some creative imagination. He said that if He were God and He decided to have His Son come to this world, He would not have Him born in a peasant village outside of Jerusalem, but He would dress Him up in something of the uniform of the blue angels or of a space hero and have Him descend from heaven, go straight to the cross, complete the work of redemption, and then return.

In other words, he was saying, I would send my Son in royal garb make a great big splash, and then depart from the scene. But that's not how God did it. And there's a reason why God didn't do it that way. As we saw with the concern of John the Baptist and the baptism of Jesus, that Jesus came not only to die, but to live. That He came to be the second Adam, the new Adam, to do for us what Adam failed to do the first time around.

And so, His mission was to be in submission to all of the requirements of God, to take upon Himself as the eternal Logos and the second person of the Trinity a human nature, a human nature, and to be born of a woman and to be born of the seed of David. And so, for the New Testament, the birth of Jesus is of profound significance because it is the advent of Immanuel, the one who comes as our mediator and who grows up in the nurture of the Lord, who has to learn obedience not from disobedience, but in terms of an expanding understanding and awareness of all of the implications of His mission. But the birth of Jesus begins the humiliation of Christ, that this indicates the willingness of the One who from all eternity was equal with God, who counted His equality with God, not as something to be jealously guarded, but He was willing to empty Himself of His glory and to assume the posture, the rank, and the status of a servant. So, as we look now at the birth of Jesus, let us not underestimate the significance of this dissension, dissension, not D-I-S-S-E-N, but D-E-C-E-N-S-I-O-N, because one of the climactic moments in the life of Jesus is His ascension. But before He ascends into heaven, He frequently remarks that no one ascends into heaven except the one who has first descended from heaven. And so, when the Son of Man comes, He comes to us from glory to humiliation, from heaven to earth, and He first descends to this place.

And the descends to this place, and the descends to this place, and the descension comes to the womb of a peasant girl. Luke gives us this record of the birth of Jesus. We read in chapter 1 of the Gospel According to St. Luke in verse 26, immediately following the record of the annunciation of the angel Gabriel the father of John the Baptist. Verse 26 of chapter 1, now in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent by 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 having come in, the angel said to her, rejoice, highly favored one. The Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women. But when she saw Him, she was troubled at His saying and considered what manner of greeting this was.

Now imagine this. Here's this teenage girl, unsophisticated, poor, and all of a sudden as she's minding her business, an angel appears to her. And the angel appears with a command to rejoice. And the cause for her rejoicing is to be that she has found favor with God.

And she has been chosen of God for a profound and special blessing. And yet, when she hears this, we're told that her initial response is that she's troubled. Now that may sound strange or it may seem inconsistent when an angel of God comes and says you should be happy because you're going to receive a great blessing. You would think that the person who had such an experience would be delirious with joy. But if you think about it for a few moments, how would you feel if an angel of God intruded into your sedate existence and told you that you were about to embark on a special mission? I think you would be troubled too.

And the first thing, you may be not even sure that you were experiencing what your eyes were telling you you were experiencing. And the angel recognizes her discomfort and said to her, do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a son and shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Highest. And the Lord God will give 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. Now, we wonder how much of this announcement Mary understood. If we look a little bit later at the song that she sings under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, the Magnificat, my soul doth magnify the Lord, and we see the content of that song which reveals a profound understanding of the Old Testament Scriptures and prophecies. If we assume that the content was not something simply delivered to her by divine inspiration, but that God but that God, under the inspiration of the Spirit, caused her to sing about things she already understood to some degree, then we could only conclude that this announcement would not be completely arcane to Mary.

Again, listen to the terms of it. You will conceive and bring forth a son and shall call his name Jesus. He will be great. He will be called the Son of the Highest. And the Lord God will give 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. Now, at the very least, Mary would understand that the angel is announcing to her that she is going to be the mother of a king.

And that much is clear. If she has the smallest grasp of the Messianic prophecies of the Old Testament, she would recognize that she's not simply going to be the mother of a king, but she's going to be the mother of the king. Because clear in this message is the notion that she is about to give birth to Israel's long-awaited Messiah, the one who will restore the throne of David and restore his fallen booth.

Now, Mary is plunged apparently even into more deep consternation. And she says to the angel, and she says to the angel, how can this be since I do not know a man? Now, she's not saying I've never been acquainted with a man. The phrase, I do not know a man, is a Hebrew idiom to mean I have never been sexually involved with a man. And I understand enough about biology, Mary is saying, to know that you can't have a baby without the normal process of procreation.

And I am disqualified from that because I'm a virgin. So, perhaps you've come to the wrong address, Mr. Gabriel. And we notice a similar announcement in Matthew's gospel where he introduces the subject in chapter 1 of Matthew by saying, now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows. After his mother Mary was betrothed to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Spirit. And Joseph, her husband, being a just man and not wanting to make her a public example, was minded to put her away secretly.

Now, Joseph has to deal with this announcement as well. Mary at some point has to communicate to her betrothed, I'm with child. Now, what does that automatically mean to Joseph? It means that his bride-to-be has been unfaithful. Now, if I read between the lines, I feel certain that Mary would have tried to explain this situation to Joseph and yet he would have had a hard time, an extremely hard time, being convinced of the veracity of what actually took place. And yet he has compassion. He cares for her.

He wants to stop the marriage from being finalized, but at the same time, he doesn't want to make a public disgrace or scandal of her situation, and he resolves to put her away quietly until there is more intervention. While he thought about these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary, your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she shall bring forth a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. And then Matthew immediately ties this to the prophecy of Isaiah that a virgin would conceive and bring forth a son who's not a virgin, bring forth a son whose name would be called Immanuel, or God with us. So, in both accounts, in Matthew's record and in Luke's record, the astonishing proclamation is set before the church that the circumstances of the birth of Jesus were extraordinary and miraculous, that Jesus' birth was a virgin birth, a point that for some reason has been highly disputed in the last century or two in a somewhat unusual manner. I know all kinds of people who will say, I believe in the resurrection of Christ, but I don't believe in the virgin birth. As if God's having His own Son conceived in the womb of a woman who is a virgin is somehow more difficult than raising that Son from the dead. We have to understand that the biblical account of the portrait of Jesus, the Jesus that is presented in the pages of the New Testament, is the Jesus whose life is ablaze with miracle. His life begins with a miracle, and it ends, or begins again, with a miracle, and in between the power of the living God is displayed in and through Him constantly. Nineteenth-century liberalism did everything in its critical academic power to demythologize the pages of the New Testament and give us a different Jesus, a naturalized Jesus, a Jesus stripped of the miraculous.

And in Emil Bruner's work, Das Mittler, or The Mediator in its English translation, when he summarized the Christology of 19th-century thought, he used one word to do it, and the word that he used was this, unbelief. But as a matter of the historic Christian faith, the New Testament record is clear. Jesus was born of a virgin.

Let's go back to Luke's record of it. The first person, however, who exercised any kind of skeptical questioning or doubt about the possibility of the virgin birth was the virgin herself. At least she asked the question, how can this be?

Since I know not a man. In other words, for Mary to hear this message sounded to be absolutely impossible. And the angel answered and said to her, the Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the highest will overshadow you. Therefore, also that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God.

And indeed, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age, and this is now the sixth month for her who was called barren. For with God, nothing will be impossible. And so, the angel tries to answer the startled question of Mary. And to give her some assurance, and the first thing he does is answer the question, how?

How can this be? And Gabriel says, let me tell you how it can be. That this child who will be born will be born of the power of the Holy Ghost. For the Holy Ghost will be born of the power of the Holy Ghost. For the Holy Ghost will come upon you, and the Holy Ghost will overshadow you. Now, the language that is used here is significant because it is reminiscent of the same language that is found in the first chapter of the Bible. How did creation take place initially? After we recall the description of the unordered universe of being without form and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, then it was that the Spirit of God moved upon the water.

And the image that is used there in the language is suggestive of a bird hovering over the water, hovering over the water, casting its shadow. And it's the same concept that is used here in Luke's Gospel. Just as the Holy Spirit came upon the primordial waters and brought life in the initial creation, so the same power of God, the same Spirit of holiness is going to be upon this virgin and overshadow her so that a child will be conceived in her womb. And then the angel says, Now, Mary, if you're having problems with this, go and see your cousin Elizabeth.

Elizabeth, who was barren, is now six months along. There's tangible evidence for you to examine. To understand the principle that with God all things are possible. It's rare that the Bible speaks so candidly about what is possible and what is impossible. I think it's interesting that at the other point of Jesus' life, the point of His resurrection, statements are made there about possibility as we read that it was not possible for death to hold Him. I mean, people today look at the story of the resurrection and they say, Impossible.

Couldn't happen. The New Testament perspective is 180 degrees different. The New Testament perspective is what is impossible, what is unthinkable, would be for death to hold a man who is sinless. The death would have the power to claim permanently the life of the Son of God.

That's impossible. There's no way that death could keep Him in the tomb. See, all of that depends on whether you understand Genesis 1, 1, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.

Throw that away and we can discuss possibilities and impossibilities forever. But if you make that affirmation that this universe has been created and is providentially governed and ruled by the self-existent eternal Creator, then it's no difficult problem to see the manifestation of His power in the birth and in the resurrection of His Son. Well, after this explanation is given to Mary, again in Luke's Gospel, chapter 1, verse 38, Mary said, Behold, the maidservant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word, and the angel departed from her.

Let it be to me according to your word. This is called, in Roman Catholic theology, Mary's fiat, what Protestantism historically regards as something of a misnomer. It's called a fiat because the word fiat refers back to the Latin imperative form. Because in the Vulgate, when Mary says, Let it be, she uses the imperative form of the verb. In the Vulgate, Mary says, Let it be to me according to imperative form of the verb.

And so, it is the fiat or the command. But what she is saying there is not, I am commanding you, O angel, to bring this all to pass. If she's making a commandment, she's making it to herself. As St. Thomas Aquinas himself said that on this occasion, Mary is surrendering and acquiescing to the authority of God. She's not dictating what is to take place, but she is submitting to what has been announced to her by the messenger of God. And she's saying, God, you can do with me whatever you want to do. If you want me to bear this child, it's a scary thing to be the mother of a king. It's a scary thing to tell my betrothed that I'm going to have a baby when I haven't been with a man.

But if this is what you want, then I will do it. Then we are told shortly thereafter that it came to pass that a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be enrolled. And you know the rest of the story because we hear it every year, every time we celebrate Christmas, that at the very moment that the most powerful ruler in the world issued a decree that would be oppressive to these people in poverty-stricken areas of Palestine. Because of his decree, over and above his decree was the decree of Almighty God determining that His Son be born in Bethlehem as He had spoken through the prophet Micah centuries and centuries before. Walking through the story of Jesus' birth reveals so many utterly miraculous events. Of course, the virgin birth is amazing, but to begin putting all the circumstances together, from Elizabeth's pregnancy to the mandated census, it reveals God's perfect and sovereign hand in all of it.

I think it really helps us celebrate the upcoming Christmas season a little better, doesn't it? Thanks for listening to Renewing Your Mind on this Tuesday. I'm Lee Webb, and this week we're hearing portions of Dr. R.C. Sproul's overview of the Bible.

It's called Dust to Glory. We're concentrating this week on the early New Testament period, but we would like for you to have the complete series. It is so helpful to see how the entire Bible fits together to tell the story of God's plan to bring a people to Himself.

We'll send you the special edition DVD set that includes all 57 lessons, more than 21 hours of teaching, plus a bonus disc that contains the audio of the series and a PDF study guide. Just give a donation of any amount to Ligonier Ministries. You can reach us by phone at 800-435-4343, or you can give your gift and make your request online at renewingyourmind.org. Ligonier Ministries exists to bridge the gap between Sunday school and seminary. We want to help Christians know what they believe, why they believe it, how to live it, and how to share it.

We produce as many tools as we can to accomplish that, including this daily Renewing Your Mind program. I hope you'll take some time to explore a website where you'll find nearly 8,000 resources to help you grow in your knowledge of Jesus. Your generous gifts to this ministry help us to continue producing material like this, so thank you. The web address again is renewingyourmind.org. Not much is written about the early years of Jesus' life, but what we read is so helpful in grasping the purpose of His earthly ministry.

From the time He was 12 years old, He had some understanding, some sense of destiny, some understanding that He had a mission to perform in obedience to His Father in heaven. Dust to Glory continues tomorrow here on Renewing Your Mind. I hope you'll join us. you