I'd like to read a few verses
from Luke chapter 1. If you can turn with me, please,
in your Bibles to Luke chapter 1. And we're going to read from
verse 26. Luke chapter 1 and verse 26 down
to verse 38. And in the sixth month, that
is the sixth month after the angel had spoken to Zacharias
about the birth of John the Baptist, in the sixth month, the angel
Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee named Nazareth. to a virgin espoused to a man
whose name was Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin's
name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her
and said, Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is
with thee, blessed, our blessed art thou among women. And when she saw him, she was
troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation
this should be. And the angel said unto her,
Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favour with God. And behold,
thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt
call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall
be called the Son of the Highest, and the Lord God shall give unto
him the throne of his father David. And he shall reign over
the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there shall
be no end. Then said Mary unto the angel,
How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered
and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the
power of the highest shall overshadow thee. Therefore also that holy
thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son
of God. And behold thy cousin Elizabeth,
she hath also conceived a son in her old age, and this is the
sixth month with her, who was called barren. For with God nothing
shall be impossible. And Mary said, Behold the handmaid
of the Lord, be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed
from her. Amen. May the Lord bless to us
this reading from his word. Luke, the Gospel writer, Luke
has provided Theophilus with a true and faithful account of
the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ and thereby To us, he has also
supplied a clear statement of the virgin birth of Christ as
was believed by the apostles and the early church and as was
recorded by God the Holy Spirit. So let us just pause on that
for a moment and realise that we are reading again a first-hand
account. This is the same Luke who was
mixing with the apostles. This is the same Luke who was
a fellow labourer, a fellow apostle, if you like, of the Apostle Paul. And as he was travelling around
with the Apostle, and as Jesus would be spoken of, and as Jesus
would be ministered, there would be as well as a curiosity of
the doctrine that was preached, there would be an interest in
the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, his own history. And here Luke is setting forth,
as he said in the opening verse of this little, or opening couple
of verses of this chapter, he is setting forth a declaration
of those things which are most surely believed amongst us. And that refers to the virgin
birth of Christ. So much as this doctrine, circumstance,
this event has been mocked and ridiculed. This is the testimony
of the Church. This is the testimony of the
Apostles down through the history of the Church. And this was believed
by the early church and by the apostles. So that six months
after Zacharias and Elizabeth had been informed of the birth
of John the Baptist, the angel Gabriel is again sent from God
and he visits this town, this city in Galilee and he goes to
the family home of a young woman called Mary. and she's betrothed
to a local carpenter called Joseph, but she's not yet his wife and
she's a virgin. This city, Nazareth, it was not
a great place to live. It was not a great place to be
brought up. It was despised. You'll remember that Nathaniel's
words to the Lord was, can any good thing come out of Nazareth. It was not a highly regarded
place in any way amongst the Jews and yet from here, from
amongst the lowest levels of society, though they sprang from
the descendants of David's line which shows you just how far
David's line had fallen in the intervening centuries. Here we
see that God chose Mary to be honoured and blessed as the mother
of Christ the Saviour. And the conversation between
Gabriel and Mary that is recorded here by Luke shows that Mary
was both astonished at what was being said to her, what was happening
to her, and fearful. She was troubled by what was
happening and yet we discover that she believed what she was
being told. Even in this first telling, such
was the demeanour of Gabriel, such was the authority with which
he spoke, such was the spirit of faith that was implanted in
her that she trusted. Even as Zacharias had doubted,
she did not doubt, but spoke humbly and received the words
of God by the angel. And in reply to a question, that
she posed in this dialogue that was taking place because it wasn't
a monologue, it was a dialogue, they spoke together. In reply
to a question as to how she could produce a son being still a virgin,
Gabriel explains that the Holy Spirit would overshadow Mary
and that a child would be born from her womb, of her flesh,
and yet without the involvement of a human father. It would be
a unique act of God, and the child to be born would bring
to pass all the Old Testament messianic prophecies, which I
have no doubt Mary was aware of. Mary would know them, although
I don't imagine for a moment that she ever expected herself
to be involved in their fulfilment. And the passage that we read
ends with Mary being granted a sign of... a sign by the angel that witnessed
to the truth of what he was saying. She would see the unexpected
pregnancy of Elizabeth, who's called her cousin. And this would
be a token, this would be an evidence to her of the truthfulness
of Gabriel's words. But what we can tell from this
little passage is that there is a uniqueness in the incarnation,
the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ. There's a uniqueness
in it as far as the history of the world is concerned. No child
had ever been born like this before. And this signals God's
singular way of delivering his people from sin. The Lord God
himself must be our salvation. No angel could do this, though
sinless and perfect, no angel could save fallen man. And no man, being found without
sin of his own, could atone for another's iniquity and transgressions
of God's law. A new work must be done, a new
work that would supply a suitable saviour, one that was both flesh
and yet one that was able and anointed and set apart in order
to do that which no mere man could accomplish. One was needed
who would be eligible to represent men and yet would be like a second
Adam, outside of the fall of Adam, and so himself perfect
and able to bear the curse of the law as a fit substitute. No angel could do it, no man
could do it. Only God himself in the person
of the Son could be joined to our flesh and bring about our
spiritual salvation. Only God the Son could unite
himself in such a way as to supply the needed deliverance. Isaiah
had prophesied of this some seven or eight centuries previously. He had said, behold, a virgin
shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel. And Matthew tells us that Emmanuel
means God with us. And Jeremiah also explained,
for the Lord hath created a new thing in the earth. a woman shall
compass a man. And I'd like just for a few minutes
more to draw your attention to what I think is a very rich and
full explanation or we should say revelation given by Gabriel
to Mary concerning the work of this child that was to be born
because Mary really had this gospel preached to her very early
in that sense, in this awareness that she was given of the identity
of Christ. This mighty angel Gabriel who
500 years before had spoken to Daniel about this very moment
in time, this very moment in history, when the Saviour would
appear. Now, Daniel was amongst the highest
men in the whole kingdom. Now he speaks to a poor, timid,
and yet a highly blessed girl, telling her who this divine person
is and how he will be made in her womb and born of her body
and of her flesh. And so there's six things that
Gabriel says here that I just want to draw your attention to.
He says, a son would be born whose name is Jesus. He says
that he shall be great. He says that he shall be called
the son of the highest. These are all phrases that are
taken. Oh, I've lost the place. These are all statements that
are made by Gabriel in these verses. He shall be called Jesus. He shall be called Great. He
shall be called the Son of the Highest, the Son of God. The
Lord God will give him the throne of his father David. He will
reign over the house of Jacob forever and his kingdom will
be everlasting. So these are the statements that
Gabriel makes to Mary. and I just want to sort of lightly
touch on each one of them just to deal with this passage as
we pass through it. The first thing that is said
here is that this son will be called Jesus and that means saviour,
that's what Jesus means. So that at once Mary is informed
that the child whom she will bear is to be called Jesus. There's no mistaking, therefore,
who we are speaking about here. The Lord Jesus, whom we trust
today, was provided by God and sent by God with the explicit
purpose, the express purpose, of saving his people from their
sins. This child was divinely appointed
to this end. This was the task and Christ
was named accordingly. His very name declares his identity
as well as his role and his office. He is God's appointed saviour
for sinners. Joshua in the Old Testament,
because it's the same name in the Old Testament and in the
New Testament, Joshua and Jesus are the same name. Joshua in
the Old Testament had been a saviour and deliverer of the nation Israel. He had been a mighty man of valour,
but Christ is a saviour whose salvation goes beyond the mere
temporal salvation of an particular nation. He's a spiritual saviour. He is able and willing to save
all who come to him in faith. He's a unique saviour. Neither
is there salvation in any other. He's the saviour of God's elect
people, whom the Father gave for the express purpose of saving
them from all their sins. And in this child, God was freely
providing a complete and eternal salvation to the people whom
he loved. And the second thing we see is
that Gabriel tells Mary that this child shall be great. He shall be great. This saviour
Jesus is great. His greatness extended to all
his works, all his ministry. When he was in this world, people
testified of him. He hath done all things well. He is the great High Priest. He is called King of Kings, Lord
of Lords. He obtained a great salvation. He revealed to men and women
the divine perfections of Almighty God, for in him dwelleth all
the fullness of the Godhead bodily. His works of redemption, resurrection,
and his bodily ascension into glory reveal his greatness. And his return to earth in a
day to come to gather his church and his people will further lead
to a recognition of his greatness in that day when every knee shall
bow to him. Then he will lead his people
triumphantly into their eternal rest and into glory. The third
thing that we read about Gabriel telling Mary is that he shall
be called the Son of the Highest, he shall be called the Son of
God. And that's not a title of subservience,
but it shows Christ to be the eternal Son of God, of the same
nature with God and equal to God. By Christ's coming, the
glory of the great and high God was revealed bodily to men and
women. Another thing that Gabriel tells
Mary is that the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his
father David. And here Mary is being told,
Mary who's getting ready to marry a carpenter. Carpenter sounds
very grand and I don't want to take anything away from Joseph. But we often think about a carpenter
as perhaps a craftsman in wood. Well, maybe he was, maybe he
was. I suspect he made doors and tables and gates, and we
would call him a joiner. He wasn't a high social person,
Joseph. But here, Mary is told that her
son shall reign as king and sit upon the throne of David. What
a difference there was in such a view given to her. But that's
not even reference to an earthly kingdom. What Mary was learning
here was that this was a spiritual kingdom, it was a kingdom of
priests, a kingdom of sanctified and set apart people in whose
hearts Christ reigns by his spirit and by his grace. The church
is the kingdom of God and is the kingdom that has been given
to Christ over whom he reigns and amongst whom his throne is
set up. Fifthly, we are told by Gabriel
that he shall reign over the house of Jacob forever. Over this kingdom that was given
to Christ, he will reign forever. The Old Testament titles of Israel
and Jacob are typical of the New Testament spiritual people
who bear these names as the children of promise according to the covenant
purposes of God. David reigned over an empire
comprising of many different nations, not just the nation
of Israel after the flesh, not just the 12 tribes. So Christ
shall reign over men and women and boys and girls chosen to
salvation in eternal election and they will be committed to
the charge of Christ for their salvation and brought into his
kingdom as citizens of a continuing city. whose builder and maker
is God. We are the house of Jacob. We
are called by the gospel from one end of the earth to the other.
In successive generations, we identify ourselves with the promises
that were bestowed upon Abraham, upon Isaac, and upon Jacob. and
we see that we can call ourselves by the name of spiritual Israel
from whatever earthly nation we may be drawn from. This is
Christ's worldwide kingdom and we have brothers and sisters
in every nation of the world. And just finally, the last point,
and then I'm done. I've kind of gone on a little
bit today, I'm afraid. But of this kingdom, Gabriel
says, there shall be no end. This is the everlasting kingdom. Gabriel ends this list of accolades
by testifying to the enduring nature of Christ's kingdom. Not
an earthly kingdom, that's where the disciples got it so wrong
for so long. but a kingdom that cannot rise
and fall like a worldly kingdom, rather a heavenly kingdom, a
spiritual kingdom that is possessed by Christ's beloved people. And some have already gone before
us into the experience of the eternal everlasting life. and
soon we who are yet here on earth will join them in that eternal
realm. We can speculate a little with
the help of scripture as to what that will be like, but it will
be wonderful as he is wonderful, that everlasting kingdom. It will be wonderful as he is
wonderful. It will be great as he is great. and it will be everlasting as
he is, the everlasting Father and the eternal God who has been
pleased to join himself to our flesh that we might be partakers
of his holiness and eternal glory. What a blessed promise for all
the Lord's people is bound up in these descriptions provided
to Mary by the angel Gabriel. And what thrilled the mind of
that young woman on that occasion should thrill the mind of every
believer who is as entitled to lay hold upon these descriptions
and believe in them as Mary was and as Mary did. So may we possess
the same humility and the same faith, the same praise and the
same gratitude for the very same things as Mary did. And may we know the same blessedness
in believing as did she. Amen.