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Our Gospel reading this morning and the passage from which our teaching is primarily taken is found in the first chapter of Luke beginning in verse 26. This is God's Word. In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from 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 he came to her and said, Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you. But she was greatly troubled at the saying and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary. For you have found favor with God, and behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son. You shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to 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. And Mary said to the angel, How will this be since I am a virgin? 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 Holy Son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age, you will also conceive of the Son. And this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For nothing will be impossible with God. And Mary said, And behold, I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word, and the angel departed from her. Let's pray. Lord thank you that we can come to you, hear your word, learn of you, and be changed by you. In Jesus name. Both Americans are very difficult to impress. Even by things, most of you aren't old enough. But if you are, you no doubt remember where you were and what you were doing when Apollo 11 landed on the moon. And Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the moon. But I doubt if any of you remember, even if you remember that, if any of you remember where you were or what you were doing when Apollo 12 landed on the moon just five months later. By the time Apollo 13 was launched in the spring of 1970, nobody was watching. Literally. The major networks had decided that it was now too blasé to carry live conversations with astronauts on their way to the moon. And so they continue with their regularly scheduled programming. What they did for the families of the astronauts that were on their way is they invited them to NASA in Houston and they had closed circuit television which made it seem to them like everybody was watching. But nobody was watching except for them. Until something went wrong. And the men of Apollo 13 were at risk. And they might not make it back. When suddenly everyone was riveted. Would they make it? Would they live? Would they burn up in space if the entry was too deep? Would they bounce off the atmosphere and travel forever into space to a cold, dark death if their descent was not steep enough? When there was danger, the world was riveted. Looking on the moon, the incarnation story is like that for many of us. What has been read to you so far this morning is incredibly cataclysmic. The events themselves are stupendous. The implications are as far reaching as anything that has ever happened in the history of the universe. And yet, as the story is read, as familiar the words are again, most of us, if not all of us, are moved. We're not moved. At least not in any way that correlates with the reality of the event. They're intended to be so overused and misused. If you watch any sporting events and somebody makes it. They just saw it. This is pretty much unbelievable. I looked at him and I said, can I help you? He said a glass of water would be nice. So I went to get a glass of water. And I walked back in with the water. He was gone. He didn't look like somebody that could move that fast. So I went outside to look around to see if I could see where he went and I couldn't find him. Then I remembered the passage in Scripture. One a glass of water, a little one a glass of water. This is Gabriel. There are two angels. The highest angels in heaven. One is Michael. The other is Gabriel. So the angel Gabriel comes to visit a woman named Mary. He says, greetings, O favored Lord is with you. And Mary would have understood what this meant. The Lord, Jehovah, God, Almighty, God, the creator of heaven and earth is with you. Don't be afraid Mary. You found favor with God. And he tells her she's going to be with you. And the baby is going to be with you. The son of the Most High. There's so many enormous and amazing things here. First he tells her you're going to have a baby who will be the son of God. And not only this, your cousin Elizabeth, who is too old to have babies, is already with child. One pastor in England named Rico Tice asked us to imagine that story in a more modern setting. Imagine Elizabeth comes to the hospital experiencing labor pains and asks for the labor and delivery department. And the nurse says, oh, you must mean the geriatric wing. She says, no, I want maternity. And the nurse says, oh, did your daughter have a baby? Right this way. She said, no, I'm pregnant. Oh, you need the psychiatric wing. The story is even more incredible when we consider what's happening to Mary. You're going to have a baby who is the son of God. God is going to come to the earth. God is going to come to the earth as a human being. The third thing the angel says is he's going to be the Messiah that God's people have been promised and have been looking for for centuries. All right, now you may be thinking, or at least you know someone who's thinking or has said to you in the past, well, people back then used to believe this sort of thing. I mean, they were pre-modern people. They thought this sort of thing could happen. They might have believed this sort of mythical story, but we're modern educated people. We know better. These things just could not have happened. Let me tell you, nobody would have believed it either back then. The two audience primarily would have been Greek or Jewish. The Greeks believed in a complete separation of God and humanity. Plato called it the world of the forms, the superiority of the gods to humans, the belief that a physical world was evil and that spiritual world was perfect. Plato called the body the prison house of the soul. Now it is not imaginable that the Greeks would readily believe a story wherein the God would take upon human flesh. And the Jews had an even higher view of God. They viewed him as so holy that they wouldn't even speak his name. The thought of him becoming a man was completely foreign to their thinking. So these are not people who would likely believe a story like this. C.S. Lewis calls this kind of thinking chronological snobbery. Because these people lived a long time ago, they were more susceptible to believe unbelievable things. This simply isn't true. I remember talking to a young man, I was at a church planning conference in Boca Raton, Florida years ago, in the 90s I think. And a bunch of us went out, it was playoff time of the year, so we went out to watch a playoff game at a local restaurant slash pub. And I noticed a young man, the New York Rangers were playing. And I noticed a young man wearing a Yankees cap. So I went out and sat down with him and I asked him if he was rooting for the Rangers, he said he was. Then he noticed that there was a bunch of us covering about three or four tables and he asked what we were doing. I told him that we are church planters, they would all come here for a conference. And then I asked him if he'd ever heard the gospel, he said sort of kind of. So I explained it to him. And he said sort of like the same thing, he said well people used to believe that stuff back then, but I don't believe that really happened. I said why don't you believe it happened? He said because it's so long ago, it's 2000 years. I said so what you're saying is because it was a long time ago it couldn't have happened. He said yeah I guess. I said well, and I remember this is America. I said well do you believe George Washington lived and was the first president of the United States? Yes I do. I said well that was 200 years ago, but you still believe it's true. He said yeah I do. I said well do you believe we're having this conversation right now? And he said yeah. I said so in 2000 years this conversation will no longer have happened. He thought for a second. He said I see your point. The fact that it happened a long time ago doesn't diminish its truthfulness. People of the first century were more no more disposed to believe that God became a man and that a virgin gave birth to him than people now. And maybe even less so. And yet throughout the history of the world millions and I dare say over a billion of people have believed that very thing. If you're an educated intelligent person, prides themselves on critical thinking, it simply doesn't pass muster for you to say well people used to believe things like that. No they didn't. So you have to look for another explanation. Look at Jesus, look at who he is, look at who the Bible claims he is. The Bible claims that Jesus is God in the flesh. He will be son of the Most High, his name will be called Jesus which means God saves. Excuse me. Another Christmas passage says she will give birth to a son and you are to give him the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet. The virgin will be with child and will give birth to his son and they will call him Emmanuel which means God with us. God with us. Jesus saved his people from their sins. Forever people have been trying to find out who God is, what he expects of us, is there any purpose or meaning to our existence? And here we have God himself not only communicating with us but becoming one of us. He is God with us, Emmanuel in every sense of the word. But why? Some people say he came to be an example. That doesn't help me at all. Maybe you know a family where one of the kids is great at everything. Most families have a kid that thinks they are great at everything. But I am talking about one who actually is the best athlete, the best student, the most popular, etc., etc. What is it like for the siblings? Sure they may be proud of him or her but can they measure up? For some the pressure of comparison is just too great. So how would it be to have God come and show us how to live as an example? It would be misery because I could never do it and neither could you. But what if the Bible claims he came to live a life for me, a life that counts for me when I stand before God? How is that fair? It isn't, it's grace, it's a gift. But what about my sin? He's not only God with us, he will save his people from their sins. He has not only lived a life for us, he will die and did die a death for us. I've said it for 12 years, numerous times. He lived the life that I should have lived and he died the death that I should have died for the sins that I've committed. It doesn't matter how many examples I have, I can't measure up. Look what else the Bible says about him. He comes to the weak and to the outcast. He came to a teenage Jewish girl in the no account town of Nazareth. Remember Nathaniel said, can anything good come out of Nazareth? His birth is announced to shepherds. You would think his birth would be announced to kings like Herod or somebody like that. Somebody important, somebody regal, somebody in a castle, somebody high up in the government. But no, he comes to shepherds and announces it to shepherds. And shepherds at the time were not reliable witnesses. In fact, if there was a court hearing or procedure, shepherds' testimony could not be relied on. But they announced to shepherds, the angels did. He's born in humble circumstances and all the other religions of the world, God is powerful and demanding and we must meet his standards. He is the only religion where God becomes weak and poor and lonely and suffers. So that even when you experience those things, he really is still. Emmanuel, God with us, God with you in the midst of your pain and frailty. You say, but what if I have doubts? Zechariah was told that his wife, Elizabeth, was going to have a child. He says, how shall I know this? For I am old and my wife has advanced in years. And the angel said, I am Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God and I who was sent to speak to you and to bring you this good news. And behold, you will be silent and unable to speak until the day these things take place because you did not believe my words, which will be fulfilled in their time. And the people were waiting for Zechariah and they were wondering at his delay in the temple. And when he came out, he was unable to speak to them and they realized that he had seen a vision in the temple and he kept making signs to them and remained mute. And when his time of service ended, he went to his home. There are doubts which are a diversion, like the doubt of, well, that happened a long time ago so it can't be true. Are people believe that back then, but they wouldn't now. Diversionary doubts are, I doubt because I don't really want to believe. I don't want to be bothered with reordering my life. Thomas Nagel was a famous atheist and he put it like this. I speak from experience being strongly subject to this fear. I want atheism to be true and made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent, well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and naturally hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God. I don't want there to be a God. I don't want the universe to be like that. Why? Why would he say that? So he can live however he wants to live, so he can be, in essence, his own God and that his life is not accountable to anybody but himself. Mary's doubts are different. It's healthy to have doubts as long as they don't paralyze you. Honest doubts are one thing. Mary has doubts. She has reason to have doubts. She's greatly troubled. She says, how can this be? I'm a virgin. This defies biology in the history of all mankind. It's an honest question. She wants more information. I'm willing to believe, but there's something I need to know. If those are the doubts you have, those are good doubts. She asks the angel, how is this to be? I am a virgin. It's okay to ask questions. They're honest doubts. God will deal gently with you. If they're dishonest doubts, cynical doubts, this cannot be kind of doubts that you may be dealt with more harshly like Zechariah. But you have to be willing to submit to God's word, even if the circumstances do not look favorable. Look at Mary. She's a teenager. Some think she's 14 or 15 years old. Now she's pregnant. She could lose her husband because who knows if he's going to believe this story. I mean, this is unbelievable. There's a word about the prophecy we read in Isaiah that the virgin will be with child and you shall call his name Emmanuel. Some say it simply means a young maiden will be with child. But a young woman having a baby, what kind of sign is that? I mean, even in a church our side, we have lots of those. Young women having babies. Two that we know of right now. But that's not what it says. He says the virgin will be with child. She'll be outcast. She'll always hear the whispers and doubts. Even though Joseph married her, people can add, five months after the wedding she has a baby yet she says, may it be done unto me as you have said. So, she goes to Elizabeth. And although we didn't read it, what happens when she goes to Elizabeth is Elizabeth's baby which is John the Baptist, leapt in her womb at the presence of the Messiah. So Mary then sings the Magnificat it's called. Sharing it with others makes you more certain of the truth and helps you understand and appreciate the full significance of these events. The God of heaven and earth became incarnate, took to himself a body like ours. He then gave his body and blood as a sacrifice for our sins. He gave us his life of righteousness in exchange. It's like 2 Corinthians 5 says he made him who knew no sin to be sin for us so that we might become the righteousness of God in him.