You Have Found Favour With God … Trust What He Says!
Sermon for the 4th Sunday of Advent, year B
Bible reading: Luke 1:30-33
Dear Friends of Jesus:
The message of Christmas is that God, according to His plan, intrudes upon the weak and the vulnerable with His grace and blessings and this is precisely the message that we so often miss. God does not come to that part of us that swaggers through life, confident in our own self-sufficiency. God leaves His treasure in the weak and sometimes broken and fragmented places of our life.
God comes to us in those rare moments when we are able to transcend our own selfishness long enough to really care about another human being. That’s why Missionaries see God and His activity so clearly on the Mission Field. That’s why faithful Pastors and Laypeople see God and His activity so clearly as they minister to the sick and the dying, to the despondent and depressed, to people struggling to cope with life in this sinful world!
On the wall of the museum of the Concentration Camp at Dachau is a large and moving photograph of a mother and her little girl standing in a long line of people waiting to enter a Nazi gas chamber. The mother, who walks behind, knows what’s about to happen, but is powerless to stop the tragedy. In her helplessness she performs the only act of love left to her. She places her hands over her child’s eyes so that the little girl will at least not see the horror to come.
When people come into that museum today they do not whisk by this photo hurriedly. They pause. They almost feel the pain. And deep inside I think that they are all saying: O God, don’t let that be all that there is.
God has heard those prayers from mothers all down through the ages and it is in such terrible situations of life – it is into the hopelessness and helplessness of this world – that His Almighty Son is born.
Mary, a young, engaged Jewish girl, a virgin faithful to Joseph to whom she was betrothed, was chosen by the grace of God to be the mother of His Son. She was not chosen to be the mother of Jesus because she was better than other fine, upstanding Jewish girls of her day, but simply because God in His infinite wisdom chose her over all others by grace.
Now, this is not meant to imply that the eternal Son of God came into being through Mary, for Scripture makes it abundantly clear that He existed long before the Creation of the world. In fact, He assisted in its creation according to John 1. But God chose Mary to be the mother of His Son as a human being.
She was to be the vessel inside of whose womb the eternal Son of God, true God from true God, was to be born as a human being. He was the One long promised by the prophets: the Messiah, the Saviour of all people. As you know, He had come in order to pay for the sins of humanity. He came willingly from the throne of His Father in heaven in order to live the perfect life that you and I could never live and then to pay the full penalty of death on a cross that we deserved because of our sins.
So, can you imagine what it must have been like for Mary when suddenly, out of nowhere, she came face to face with an Angel? She reacted like any sinful human being might react, didn’t she? She was afraid – as Moses was afraid when God confronted him in the Wilderness; or, like Zacharias, the father of John who was confronted in the Temple by the exact same Angel as approached Mary! She was trembling in fear.
Not surprising, is it, for that’s what always happens when human beings come into contact with the heavenly beings! But, the Angel immediately calms her fears by telling her that God has favoured her and that she will conceive and bear a Son and that she is to name him, “Jesus”. But the angel doesn’t stop there, he goes on to tell her what her Son will be like. He shall be great,
said the Angel, and shall be called the Son of the Most High God and He will reign on the throne of David and over the house of Jacob forever.
Now, I think that this was quite a lot for this young lady to digest, don’t you? First of all she has to deal with the fact that she was going to become pregnant, though she has had no sexual relations ... not even with her betrothed, Joseph. Secondly, she has to consider how her friends, neighbours, and relatives are going to react when she tells them she is pregnant and then tries to explain that the Holy Spirit has conceived this child in her womb. Thirdly, she has to try to understand what it means to bear the Son of God!
But the Angel is the Messenger of the Lord God speaking God’s words of prophecy and comfort to her and so her heart is immediately calmed and her response is remarkable. She simply believes and trusts what God has to say and replies from a heart that is faithful to God and knowledgeable of God’s Messianic promises: Lo, I am the maid-servant of the Lord. May it be to me according to Your words.
Today God speaks to us, not through Angels, but through His holy, inerrant Word. There He tells us no differently than Mary that we are favoured. Jesus says in Matthew 5: You are the salt of the earth...you are the light of the world.
(Matthew 5:13a,14). Again in John 14:19 Jesus says: I have chosen you out of the world.
1 Peter 2:9 reminds us: But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s own people, that you may declare the wonderful deeds of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvellous light. Once you were no people but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy but now you have received mercy.
(1 Peter 2:9-10)
When you hear these powerful Words of God, this Gospel message, your hearts should tremble within you just like Mary. We need not fear our calling but like Mary need to say: Lo, I am the man-servant or maid-servant of the Lord. May it be to me according to Your Words.
But there’s more! Mary was chosen by God for a special task, that being the bearing of His only-begotten Son, Jesus, the Christ! Her job was to bring Him into the world as a baby human being and then to feed Him and raise Him, along with faithful Joseph, but it was not without heart-ache was it?
Ruth Graham, the wife of Billy Graham, the American Evangelist wrote the following short poem that I think focuses us on reality as regards what follows a faithful response to God’s Call to faith and to service. It’s in a book she wrote entitled: Prodigals and Those Who Love Them (1991, Focus on the Family Publishing, p.69):
Had I been Joseph’s mother, I’d have prayed for protection from his brothers, “God keep him safe. He is so young, so different from the others.” Mercifully, she never knew there would be slavery and prison too.
Had I been Moses’ mother I’d have wept to keep my little son: praying she might forget the babe drawn from the water of the Nile. Had I not kept him for her nursing him the while, was he not mine? … and she but Pharaoh’s daughter?
Had I been Daniel’s mother I should have pled, “Give victory!” … this Babylonian horde, godless and cruel … Don’t let him be a captive … better dead, Almighty Lord!
Had I been Mary, Oh, had I been she, I would have cried as never mother cried, “Anything, O God, … Anything … but … crucified!”
With such prayer importunate my finite wisdom would assail Infinite Wisdom. God, how fortunate Infinite Wisdom should prevail.
In His infinite Wisdom God chose Mary to bear that Son and then strengthened her for the task of raising Him in the faith, providing for His earthly needs, and finally witnessing His horrendous death by crucifixion on the Cross of Calvary. We know she was there and can only imagine her great pain and agony that day. But we also know she was present for His resurrection and can only imagine the joy that filled her heart in knowing by His resurrection from the dead that she had indeed born the Son of God, the Saviour of the world.
Years ago, a young mother was making her way across the hills of South Wales, carrying her tiny baby in her arms, when she was overtaken by a blinding blizzard. She never reached her destination and when the blizzard had subsided her body was found by searchers beneath a mound of snow.
But they discovered, much to their surprise and delight, that her baby was alive. You see, before her death, she had taken off all her outer clothing and wrapped it about her baby. When they unwrapped the child, they found that he was alive and well. She had mounded her body over his and given her life for her child, proving the depths of her mother love. Years later that child, David Lloyd George, grown to manhood, became Prime Minister of Great Britain, and, without doubt, one of England’s greatest statesmen. (James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited, Tyndale, 1972, p.375)
With Mary, the exact opposite happened, didn’t it? She did not give her life for her baby ... her baby gave His life for hers and ours, and for the life of the world! And He didn’t just become a great Statesman – He was and became the most well-known, and the most beloved person of all time. He became the Saviour, not just of some, but of ALL PEOPLE everywhere, of every age!
Carl Sandburg in Remembrance Rock wrote: A baby is God’s opinion that the world should go on.
The Baby Jesus was God’s opinion that the world should be saved ... that YOU and I should be saved!
To the shepherds later on the Angel said: Fear not...
To Zacharias beforehand the Angel said: Fear not...
To Joseph just before the birth the Angel said: Fear not...
And to you and me today those calming words of the Angel come telling us also: Fear not...
No matter what life may hold for us … no matter what tragedies we may have to face in life, personal or on a world-wide scale … no matter how difficult our service to God in this life may be ... God says: Fear not...for I have called you by name, YOU ARE MINE.
(Is 43). And St. Paul says to us right here this morning:
Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him we have now obtained access to this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in our hope of sharing the glory of God.
—Romans 5:1-2
You have found favour with God. Now … just trust what He has to say! Amen.