Introducing the Savior
As we launched a new series on the life of Christ last Sunday, we were introduced to John the Baptist, the one whom God called, even before his birth, to introduce Jesus to the Jewish people as their Messiah. He would be the voice of one calling in the wilderness; he would come in the spirit and power of Elijah; he would turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous; and he would prepare the people for the coming of the Lord.
Today we return to Luke 1 to be introduced to the One whom John came to exalt—Jesus, the Son of God. Let’s begin our reading in Luke 1:26 and read through verse 38:
In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”
Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.”
“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”
The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month. For nothing is impossible with God.”
“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May it be to me as you have said.” Then the angel left her.
The amazing birth of Jesus foretold
Technically there was nothing miraculous about the birth of Jesus; it was his conception that was miraculous. But since Christians have traditionally referred to the miracle recorded here as the Virgin Birth rather than the Virgin Conception, we will stick with the traditional terminology.
The time indicated in verse 26 is “the sixth month.” That refers to the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy with John the Baptist, mentioned in the previous verses. Elizabeth and Mary are cousins, and their lives will be tied together inextricably by their two miraculous pregnancies.
But the time is further defined in Galatians 4:4 as “the fullness of time.” It says, “When the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.” God’s timing is often an enigma to us, but we can be confident there were good and sufficient reasons why Messiah was sent at the time he was. The time was ripe.
The place was Nazareth, a town in Galilee. This is not the place you would have chosen for a major unveiling. When General Motors unveils their new models, they do not do it in Sedalia, Missouri, or Gallup, New Mexico, or Helena, Montana. They do it in Chicago or Las Vegas. Well, Nazareth was the Gallup of the first century. In fact, there was a proverb common in that day, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Well, yes, if God is in it. And he certainly was in this.
The main characters in this little vignette are a virgin named Mary, a man named Joseph, an angel named Gabriel, and a God who performs miracles.
A virgin named Mary. I’m not going to focus on Mary this morning because Paul will be preaching an entire message on Mary next Sunday. I would like to prepare you for that, however, by saying that I believe Mary is one of the least understood characters in the Bible. Catholics tend to exalt her way beyond what the Scriptures teach, and Protestants react by diminishing her importance beyond what the Scriptures teach. She was without doubt a remarkable woman, and all generations should call her blessed. Yet at the same time a lot of religious traditions have grown up around her that have no basis in Scripture. We want to speak the plain truth about the virgin Mary. This will not be Catholic bashing—we don’t believe in that, and frankly, we have far more in common with conservative Catholics than we have differences. But it helps no one if we ignore our differences and pretend they are not there. I think you will profit from Paul’s message. Having grown up Catholic, he has a unique perspective to speak on this topic.
A man named Joseph. All we are told in this text is that he was a descendant of David. Elsewhere in the gospels we learn that he was a righteous man, a poor man, and a man of great faith. He neither rejected Mary when he learned of her pregnancy, nor did he take advantage of her. Matthew 1:25 says, “He had no union with her until she gave birth to a son.”
An angel named Gabriel. We met him last week as the primary messenger of almighty God. He is the same one who announced the birth of John the Baptist to Zechariah and Elizabeth.
A God who keeps his promises. All through the Old Testament are found promises that God would fulfill his covenant with Israel by providing someone to sit on the throne of David and reign over the house of Israel forever. God is now about to fulfill that promise. The child born to Mary will be the Son of the Most High; his kingdom will never end.
The incredible message Gabriel brings to Mary is that she would become pregnant without the agency of a human father. This had never happened before, and it has never happened since. So amazing is it that Mary asks, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” And the angel tells her that the Holy Spirit would come upon her and the power of the Most High would overshadow her. That’s all she needs to know about the “how.” Apparently that’s all we need to know, too. The NT never explains the mechanics of the virgin birth.
The remarkable response Mary offers is seen in verse 38: “I am the Lord’s servant. May it be to me as you have said.” What’s remarkable here is that she was well aware of the wagging tongues that gathered by the river just outside Nazareth to wash clothes. She would face ridicule, ostracism, perhaps even the loss of her beloved for her perceived infidelity. But if that is the Lord’s will, so be it.
Now that is in essence the account we are given here in Luke 1 about the annunciation of the birth of Jesus. Millions of people will read this story in the coming two and a half weeks, but a great many of them will not accept it at face value, especially the part about a virgin birth. They will consider it a cute tradition, a religious myth that has the same value as one of Aesop’s Fables.
We believe the account give here is more than that; we believe it is literally true. Throughout the history of the Church one of its central affirmations has been that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin. It is in the Apostles’ Creed; it is in the Westminster Confession of Faith; it is in the Augsburg Confession; it is affirmed in all the Catholic creeds, including Vatican II; and it is part of our Evangelical Free Church Statement of Faith.
Nevertheless, probably no doctrine in history has been the target of so much skepticism and so much outright denial as the virgin birth. Back in the 70’s the Survey Research Center of the University of California at Berkeley polled the denominations to get their views on the virgin birth:
69% of the American Baptists believed in the virgin birth,
66% of the Lutherans,
57% of the United Presbyterians,
39% of the Episcopalians,
34% of the Methodists,
and only 21% of the Congregationalists.
I’m sure those percentages would be down considerably today. In the face of that kind of unbelief, I think we need to ask, “What does Scripture say?”
Is the virgin birth a clear teaching of Scripture?
Of all the miracles in the Scripture, the virgin birth is probably the most private and the least open to scientific analysis. This distinguishes it from, say, the resurrection of Christ. That miracle had many witnesses and was subject to independent verification. This one is strictly a matter of faith. Nevertheless, for a person who accepts the basic reliability of the Bible, the case for the virgin birth is very solid.
The Old Testament predicts it. There are three Old Testament prophecies I want us to consider:
Genesis 3:15. In this passage God is delivering curses and judgments upon Satan, Adam, and Eve due to their sin in the Garden of Eden. Part of the curse on the serpent includes these words, “And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” This passage predicts that the Headcrusher will come from the woman’s offspring, not from the man’s, nor from both.
Isaiah 7:14. This familiar passage says, “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.” Now there has been much written by liberals to the effect that the Hebrew word for “virgin” can mean simply “a young woman of marriageable age” and therefore one need not postulate a virgin birth here. But one thing is clear—the Apostle Matthew believed Isaiah 7:14 predicted a virgin birth. In Matthew 1:22,23 he wrote:
All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin (the Greek word Matthew uses here can only mean ‘virgin’) will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel”—which means, “God with us.”
The issue is really very clear for those of us who believe in the inspiration of the Scriptures. If the Holy Spirit is the ultimate author of both Isaiah in the Old Testament and Matthew in the New Testament, and if Matthew interpreted Isaiah 7:14 as referring to “a virgin,” then “virgin” rather than “young woman” must be what Isaiah also intended.
Micah 5:2-3. This OT passage contains an indirect reference to the virgin birth:
But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times. Therefore Israel will be abandoned until the time when she who is in labor gives birth ….
The one to be born in Bethlehem does not come into existence at the time of his conception, as happens to all the rest of us; rather he existed from all eternity. How could a pre-existing person become incarnate except through some miracle like the virgin birth? We’ll come back to this point a little later.
Not only does the Old Testament predict the virgin birth; it is also true that
The New Testament teaches it. In fact, the virgin birth is clearly taught in its very first chapter.
Matthew 1:16-25. At the very end of Matthew’s lengthy genealogy of Christ, we read in verse 16, “and Jacob the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.” The pronoun “whom” in English is ambiguous; it can refer to one person or more; it can refer to a man or a woman, a group of men, a group of women, or a mixed group. But in Greek the pronoun used here is a feminine singular, indicating clearly that Jesus was the son of Mary alone, and not of Mary and Joseph.
Then we see in verse 18 that Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, and it states that before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. The words are very clear here in affirming that they were not intimate prior to the conception of Jesus.
Further, in verse 20 of Matthew 1 the angel tells Joseph that the child within Mary was from the Holy Spirit. Now let me take a little side excursion here, for while the Holy Spirit is offered as the explanation of Mary’s pregnancy, it would be a serious mistake for us to conclude that there was some kind of physical cohabitation between the Holy Spirit and Mary, resulting in an offspring that was half man, half God. That is actually the picture of the virgin birth painted by some cults. The Holy Spirit was the not father of Jesus; the Holy Spirit merely performed a miracle so that Mary could conceive without the agency of a human father.
Still another indication of the virgin birth is found in Matthew 1:24-25, where we are told that Joseph kept Mary a virgin until she gave birth to Jesus.
Luke 1:34-35. This is the text we began with this morning. When Mary is informed by the angel Gabriel that she is going to conceive, she responds, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” As we noted already, she knew how babies are made, and she knew that she didn’t qualify.
Galatians 4:4. “But when the time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under law, that we might receive the full rights of sons.” Why should Paul refer to Jesus as one “born of a woman?” After all, isn’t every human being born of a woman? Yes, but Jesus is the only one was born only of a woman.
So far we have seen that the Old Testament predicts a virgin birth and the New Testament teaches it. A third line of evidence I want us to examine is that …
The reactions of Mary, Elizabeth, and Joseph substantiate it. Mary has just become engaged to a young man she dearly loves. An angel comes and tells her she will conceive a child. Her reaction is, “How can this be since I am a virgin?” Now some have suggested she is just feigning shock to cover up the fact that she had been intimate with Joseph, but what would be the point of lying to an angel and telling an angel that she was a virgin if she were not? Mary’s response is that of perfect, but intelligent, innocence.
Malcolm Muggeridge observed that in our day, with family-planning clinics offering convenient ways to correct “mistakes” that might disgrace a family name,
“It is, in point of fact, extremely improbable, under existing conditions, that Jesus would have been permitted to be born at all. Mary’s pregnancy, in poor circumstances, and with the father unknown, would have been an obvious case for an abortion; and her talk of having conceived as a result of the intervention of the Holy Spirit would have pointed to the need for psychiatric treatment, and made the case for terminating her pregnancy even stronger.”[i]
The virgin Mary, though, whose pregnancy was unplanned, had a different response. She knew in her heart that He was a miracle child. She was the first person to accept Jesus on His own terms, regardless of the personal cost.
Next, consider Elizabeth, who is Mary’s cousin. In Luke 1:42 she says to Mary, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear!” Friends, this is certainly not the reaction one would expect of an older woman in a religious family when a teenage girl gets pregnant out of wedlock. The only explanation is that Elizabeth, who had also been visited by the angel, believed Mary’s conception was indeed a virgin conception.
And what about Joseph? He was neither naive nor ignorant; he too knew how babies were made and he knew that he had nothing to do with Mary’s being pregnant. Imagine how his heart must have sunk when he heard the news. We don’t know whether Mary even tried to explain it to him, but if she did, one can imagine his initial human reaction: “Sure, Mary, I’ve heard everything now! And here I thought you loved me and wanted to be my wife.” Two avenues were open to him: (1) a public lawsuit against her because she had violated the terms of their engagement, or (2) a quiet bill of divorce. He chose #2.
But an angel came to Joseph, and he changed his mind. It took a divine revelation to accomplish that, for he never would have accepted it otherwise.
The announcements of Gabriel confirms it. Do you remember from last Sunday that the angel Gabriel came to Zechariah, not Elizabeth, when he was ready to announce the birth of John the Baptist? Why is that? Because Zechariah was intimately involved in that conception. But when Gabriel announces the birth of Jesus, he comes to Mary alone. True, after Jesus was conceived the angel went also to Joseph, but beforehand, the announcement was made only to Mary because she was the only one who played a part in it.
The early church accepted the virgin birth without question. The only denials of the virgin birth that we find in early church history were from the heretic Marcion, from a sect named the Ebionites, and from a few Gnostics. Outside of those challenges the virgin birth was universally accepted by Christians until the rise of modern liberalism. But now in our day, despite the clear biblical evidence given above, there are many who call themselves Christians, including the leaders of many mainstream denominations, who reject the virgin birth. Most of them say simply that a virgin birth is impossible. Is it?
Is a virgin birth impossible?
Of course, it is, humanly speaking. But that’s the very point the angel made when he spoke to Mary in Luke 1:37: “Nothing is impossible with God.” If one believes in the God of the Bible, the virgin birth is not impossible; in fact, it’s not even difficult. The real reason why most religious liberals reject the virgin birth is because they have already rejected the supernatural. If you don’t believe in an all-powerful God, or if you doubt that God has invaded human history, then you’re not going to have any room for a virgin birth.
Now our third and final question is this:
Is the virgin birth important?
Someone once asked me, “Can’t a person be a Christian without believing in the virgin birth?” To me that’s the wrong question. The believer should not be asking, “How little of the Bible can I believe and still to go to heaven?”, but rather, “What does the Scripture say?” The virgin birth is important in several respects:
It serves as a sign that Jesus is the Messiah. Isaiah 7:14 prophesied that Messiah would be born of a virgin. In fact, the prophet said, “The Lord himself will give you a sign.” A sign is a unique event to watch for. Had Jesus been born to Mary and Joseph, even though He may have been a great prophet, He could not have been the predicted Messiah of Israel and the Savior of mankind.
Its denial casts serious aspersions upon Jesus and His parents. Consider John 8:41, where well into His earthly ministry Jesus confronted the Jewish religious leaders with the fact that they were doing the deeds of their father, the Devil. To that accusation they retorted, “We are not illegitimate children.” They were clearly implying that Jesus was born out of wedlock.
Now it is no sin to be an illegitimate child (in fact, the very phrase is a poor one; there are no illegitimate children, only illegitimate parents!), but there is sin in producing a child out of wedlock. If there was no virgin birth, then Mary and Joseph committed an immoral act by God’s standards, or Mary and somebody did. God isn’t above using immoral people to accomplish his purposes (we should all be grateful for that!), but God specifically states that Joseph was a righteous man, and that Mary was highly favored of God. So, if one denies the virgin birth he also must deny God’s affirmation of Joseph’s and Mary’s character and must agree with Jesus’ enemies on this matter.
It alone adequately explains the incarnation. The incarnation is the foundational doctrine of the Christian faith. It affirms that God came to us in human flesh in the person of Jesus. John 1:14 reads, “And the Word became flesh …” So critical is the incarnation to Christianity that 1 John 4:2 says,
“Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world.”
I believe the only way we can adequately explain the incarnation is via a virgin birth. Here’s why: in the process of ordinary human conception a new person is formed—not just a body, but a total personality. Were God to have used a natural human process to bring His eternal Son into the world, then at some time between conception and birth, He would have had to replace that personality being formed by the parents with the personality of His Son, and that introduces some monumental metaphysical problems. However, if Jesus were virgin born, He could get His human body and human nature from His mother while maintaining the divine nature and personality He had from all eternity.
Conclusion. We have seen the evidence for the virgin birth, and we have examined its paramount importance. I would like to note for you, in conclusion, that there is a significant parallel between the origin of the Living Word and the origin of the Written Word. When God decided to give us the living word, Jesus Christ, He gave the Holy Spirit a unique ministry in the life of a human being, enabling her to produce a perfect child. When God decided to give us the written word, the Bible, he gave the Holy Spirit a unique ministry in the lives of human beings, namely the authors of the Scriptures, enabling them to produce a perfect book.
If (as is often alleged) the Bible cannot be without error because human beings were involved in its development, then Jesus Christ cannot be without sin because a human being was also involved in His conception, birth, and development. But the fact is that both the written word and the living word are perfect, despite the human element, because the Holy Spirit overshadowed everything.
I would like to note for you, finally, that there is an intriguing relationship between the virgin birth of Jesus and the new birth of the believer. Jesus did not need to be “born again” because His only birth was “of the Spirit.” We, however, are born naturally and physically into this world and we must experience a miraculous rebirth if we would spend eternity with God. That’s what Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3:6: “Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’”
The fact is, if we are only born once we have to die twice, but if we’re born twice we only have to die once. By that I mean the person who is only born physically must die both physically and spiritually (spiritual death is separation from God for all eternity). But the person who is born physically andspiritually will never have to face spiritual death.
The virgin birth was a great miracle, but it is no more miraculous than the miracle of new birth which takes place every time a sinful human being receives by faith the free gift of salvation and becomes a child of God. Won’t you accept the miracle of the new birth today?
Tags:
Gabriel
Virgin birth
Mary
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Incarnation
[i] Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew, p. 32.