I would invite you to follow along with me as I read from God's holy word. 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. 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. Then the angel said to her, do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a son. and shall call his name Jesus, he will be great. And he will be called 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. Then Mary said to the angel, How can this be, since I do not know a man? 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. Now indeed, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age, and this is now the sixth month of her who was called barren. For with God, nothing will be impossible. Then Mary said, Behold the maidservant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word. And the angel departed from her. As far as the reading of God's word, let me pray now for the blessing of the preaching of it. We ask even now that you would do no less a miraculous work by your spirit of conforming and shaping us by your glorious revelation. You would draw our attention to this glorious word given to us, laid down that the church in every age might know what to believe concerning you and what you require of us. Lord, that we would not only hear tonight, but that we would live in light of this glorious revelation, that it would be fresh and powerful in our ears so that you might make of us, even as you did of Mary, servants ready and willing to do your will. We pray these things in Jesus' name, amen. Now, this is not The first, though it is by every measure the most miraculous of gifts of life in the history of the people of God. It is a legacy that God has established in the people and among the people of God, even from the very beginning, that in the death, that Adam brought upon this world, it was necessary that another covenant had be sent to mankind that they may not languish in death any longer. It was required then that God, upon the occasion of Adam's sin and the curse that he brought upon not only himself and his spouse and every man, woman, and child that would proceed through natural generation from Adam, even to this day, conceived in iniquity and sin that another would come to bring about the means of our rescue. In fact, this theme is taken up in the book of Ruth, this theme of leveret marriage. The church would need a new husband, one who could bring life from death. And that is why in the very beginning, when Eve conceived, she gave credit not to her husband, but to God. It was not only Eve, but Sarah, Rachel, Rebecca, Ruth herself, Hannah, and others. Here, most gloriously of all, Mary. Mary would be given a son by God through the work of the Holy Spirit, information that she herself was desirous to know and confirmed by Gabriel. That the one who would be born of Mary would not just be a son, of man, but the very Son of God, the One who was as the eternal Logos, eternally begotten, but for the occasion of our redemption, taking upon Himself flesh and blood, conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of Mary, taking upon Himself our flesh so that He might redeem our flesh. It is always a good time to remember this. It is impossible, rightly so, to escape it this time of year. And so it seems fitting that we think about these things and contemplate them and treasure them even in our own hearts. As we look at this one whose name will be called Jesus, I want to do so under three headings. The first, the setting. That is the setting not only of Mary in that immediate context, but the context at large in terms of redemptive history. And so the setting. Secondly, the promise, the promise that Christ is the fulfillment of and the nature in which he would come, and then lastly, thirdly, the response, Mary's response to this strange yet delightful news. The setting, the promise, and the response. Let's take up that first heading this evening, the setting. We find here A couple, a righteous couple in verse 27. We see Mary and we see Joseph. She is betrothed to this man. Both Mary and Joseph were of the royal line of the tribe of Judah, and more on that in a moment. Married though, betrothed, in a sense, this is a more serious kind of engagement that we often engage in when a couple gets together to get married. They are engaged and they express their intent. We want to get married on such and such a date. This betrothal is the first step of marriage vows that would later be taken. The point is that they were betrothed and not married yet. The marriage had not yet been consummated. Mary had not known a man. This was important for the purposes of God to reveal His miraculous power to give a man, a boy, a son, to Mary despite having never known a man. They were both, as I have said already, of royal blood, Joseph in particular, as we see the connection at the beginning of Matthew's gospel and later in Luke's gospel. In verse 42, of chapter 2 in Luke's Gospel in verse 48. We find not only a couple not yet having known one another as it relates to the setting, but we also see parallel circumstances with John, John the baptizer, not yet born to Elizabeth, who was at this time an old woman six months into her carrying of John, him not yet being born. Not only similar context between John and Jesus, Elizabeth and Mary, but also Mary, and as I have said already, the history of God giving miraculous sons to those who expected the Messiah. Now there are not just similarities, John representing the final Old Testament style prophet, that is a pre-incarnate proclaimer of the good news that the kingdom of God is at hand. In fact, of all the pre-incarnate prophets, John is the only one that saw Jesus. And not only that, there was some relation there, John, of course, baptized Jesus later in the Jordan River as an expression of Jesus identifying himself as the one into whom the church would be baptized. It is through Jesus we are baptized into, and it is through Christ that we come up out of the waters and we are consecrated according to his redeeming promises. The biblical theology here is rich, and it is glorious, and it is beautiful, and the way to best understand these things is to know your Old Testament. There are many ways to do this. Really, you ought to begin in the beginning by reading Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy, and seeing just in those five books of the Bible how Jesus fulfills not just explicit promises, later prophecies in the major and minor prophets, but there are themes, there are types, and there are signs, there are shadows and glimpses and glimmers of what Christ would do as the Redeemer throughout the Old Testament. And so we find not only similarities in the immediate context, but we find similarities between Christ and what God has done in the past. In fact, what we can say is that it is Jesus throughout the Old Testament, as we see in the book of Jude, that is with Israel all along. Jesus is the one who is present with his people from the time that they were banished from the garden to the time that they are brought in back to the garden through Jesus' own work, the one who was the way, the truth, and the life, the door in through whom we enter into the kingdom of God. There are similarities. And where there are differences, they lie in the manifold fulfillment of Christ the greater Son. And it makes sense then when we see this announcement Look at verse 29. When she saw him, that is Gabriel the angel, she was troubled at his saying. Now, what is that saying? We find it just earlier in verse 28. Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women. She's troubled. She is, in essence, wrestling with these words. Here is this powerful being, a mighty and glorious vision of a creature that she would not ordinarily see. She is troubled at it and considered what manner of greeting this was. Then the angel said to her, do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor. This is the second time the angel says this, you have found favor with God. Now, where does this favor come from? What was Mary to God? Well, Mary herself was a sinner, conceived like everyone else in the past in sin, not the manner of her conception, but that she was in the line of Adam. She was a weak and helpless individual in need of the redemption that even her own son would bring to the world. And yet she finds favor. Why? Because this is how the favor of God works. It rests upon whom he wills. God had, before the foundations of the world were laid, chosen Mary to be the one who would carry his eternally begotten son, conceived in the womb of Mary, to be the redeemer of the elect. That is the kind of favor that God gives to any and all who find favor. Not anything in them, but solely resting upon His decrees and sovereign purposes. And here is what will happen. Look at verse 31. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a son and shall call his name Jesus or Yeshua or Joshua. Now in Matthew's gospel, we read that Jesus is the one who will deliver his people from their sins. We see that in the beginning, Matthew 1, verse 21. But here, Luke focuses on another aspect of this proclamation. His name will be Jesus, He will be great, He will be called the Son of the Highest, 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 shall be no end. Here there is an aspect of the necessity of Christ's kingly redeeming work. Not only that He will be a deliverer, as Joshua was for Israel in the Old Testament, but he will do so as the royal inheritor of the throne and the crown that was promised to David many centuries before. In fact, if you want to understand that better, how Christ fulfills the role as a royal redeemer, go to 2 Samuel 7. And it is there that we find the terms, if you will, of the Davidic covenant. David having just destroyed and defeated the enemies of God, the Philistines, who were the descendants of the Egyptians, rescuing them from the afflictions of their enemies, having returned the Ark of the Covenant to the tabernacle of God, God honors David by proclaiming and entering into a covenant with him and through David, promising a king will come that will sit upon the throne of the people of God, of the kingdom of God forever, an eternal kingdom. And this is what Christ has come to do. The Messiah will be a royal redeemer. He will be a royal redeemer. And he shall sit on the house of Jacob. Jacob, who is Israel. Jacob, who is the patriarch. Christ is Israel. And he shall bring about through his redeeming work an everlasting kingdom. Go to Isaiah. and read of the one who will be a mighty king, a deliverer, the Prince of Peace. What will he do as Prince of Peace if not unite all things in heaven and on earth together, namely the triune God and men, and not only God with men, but men with men, peace with God and peace with men made possible by this one who is Jesus, and the testimonies of his identity, and because of his identity, all that is captured in this Jesus is the Christ, the work that he has come to do. And so it is not just enough to say that this Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah, there is far more to say about that in terms of the work of the Messiah. He is the fulfillment of all that God has promised. What will he do? Well, he shall deliver his people out of the water in a consecrated fashion, and he shall, like Moses, bring them to the mountain of God for worship. And so in the Psalms, the question is put, who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? Only the one with clean hands and a pure heart. And even as we have just confessed, as it relates to the doctrine of justification, how are our hearts made pure? How are our hands made clean? by the work of this one, Jesus of Nazareth, conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the Virgin Mary. He is the one who not only brings us to the mountain, but brings us up on the mountain. He brings us into the very presence of God. He brings us into greater proximity with the one who is too holy for us to dwell with unless our sins are forgiven. And this is the glory of the setting in which we find ourselves. Building upon that then is the promise. Now I've already jumped ahead, I got a little preachy and jumped into my second heading, but the promise is of a son And if you can enter into, and you ought to be able to do this easily if you know your Bibles, the expectation and the hope of a son. Now we confess that all children are a gift from God. Even to this day, we rejoice in the birth of covenant children. And in the same fashion, every Israelite home rejoiced in the gift of covenant children, for they were the offspring of Abraham. But there was something about a son. because the promise was made to Adam and to his wife clearly that there would come a son, a seed, a Messiah, and he would crush the head of the serpent. And in the same way, even in the gospels, when Jesus asked people, who do you think I am? They struggled with the understanding of their own messianic expectations. Who is Jesus? Is he Moses? Is he Elijah come again? No, Jesus is another man altogether. But for centuries, the question was, to what generation would the Messiah be born? Would it be this generation? It's the same hope and expectation that we have. Will Christ come in our time? Because what is the longing of our hearts? To see Christ. To see him face to face. to have the kingdom promised consummated in our lifetime. And there's nothing wrong with that hope. It is the hope of every heart that is captured by the promises of God not yet fully realized. And in the Old Testament, there was a lot that had not yet been fully realized, namely the one who would bring the kingdom in full. And so for everyone that hoped in the promise, Would my son be the son? Would my son be the serpent crusher? For they did not know in full what that would look like. And so we can understand and relate not only to their expectation, but also in some fashion the darkness of their ignorance that had not yet had its light, God's light fully shined upon it, as Mary sees here. Mary is very much an Old Testament believer. And she, like all who had come before, who believed in the promise of the Messiah, was waiting. And so now the news, and she is wrestling with the reality of these things, coupled with the announcement that you, having never known a man, shall be the one who will give birth to a son. This promise of a son and not only that he will come, that he will exist, that he shall walk among his people, but also what he shall do. In Daniel 2, verse 44, we read, and in the days of those kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed, nor shall the kingdom be left to another people. It shall break in pieces all these kingdoms and bring them to an end, and it shall stand forever. he will be a king. Daniel 7, verse 14, and to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed. Now in the book of Hebrews, chapter 1, We read of the royal throne of God, but having seen already the fulfillment of this in the person and work of Jesus. And the writer of Hebrews in chapter one says in verse eight, But of the son, this son announced to Mary, he says, this is the father speaking of his own eternally begotten son, your throne of God is forever and ever. The scepter of uprightness is the scepter of your kingdom. Not only will it be a messianic fulfillment of all things, it will be a righteous kingdom upon which a righteous king will sit. And then we go to the book of Revelation. Chapter 11, verse 15, then the seventh angel blew his trumpet and there were loud voices in heaven saying, the kingdom of the world, that place that we inhabit, the kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ and he shall reign forever and ever. And so what is even happening in the gospel of Luke is the announcement that the one who once in some fashion ruled this world, Satan himself, All of that power was stripped of him, and it was given to the one who died and was raised in this world. And by right of his death and resurrection, the Father gave to the Son all of it. Which is why we now, as a New Testament church, in the ministry of the gospel, are plundering that house that once belonged to Satan, that belongs to him no more. Which is why Jesus says to the disciples, now that the strong man is bound, go into the house and plunder it. That's what we're doing. We are taking territory for the king and the kingdom. And so all of these covenantal understandings and expectations that lay in some measure of darkness, because God had not yet revealed fully the light, they have been surpassed. They have been surpassed. In this promise, we see all of it. 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 shall be no end. In fact, we see this cosmic battle in the book of Revelation, where there was a woman about to give birth. And she bears a crown of 12 stars that are the 12 tribes of Israel. She is the church. And as she is about to give birth to the Messiah, the terrible dragon, this serpent, the enemy of the church comes to devour the child that she is about to give birth to and they flee. We will see this later in the gospels. When the baby Jesus is born, he flees with his parents for a time to Egypt of all places. And then comes up out of Egypt and goes into Israel. And then in his manhood, performs the ministry of reconciliation. And that glimpse, that apocalyptic vision that John is given is of the triumph of the child who shall rule the nations, as he says, with a rod of iron. But for Mary, this has not yet come to pass. And all of this is being laid before her. Can you imagine? I'm sorry, all of this? And that is why she responds as she does. in light of the setting, in light of the promise, the response. How can it be? Since I do not know a man. Now earlier, when the angel comes to Zacharias, there is doubt. Here there is not doubt. There is, how is that even possible? In what manner shall I bear a son? And the answer is given. She's not rebuked, she's answered. The angel says to her, the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the highest will overshadow you, therefore also that the Holy One who is born will be called the Son of God. It's a question not asked, from a place of unbelief, but of how can it be? Never before has God opened an untouched womb. God has miraculously given life, but through means, through means. Here there is no means, for this child will not be born naturally, He will not have Adam as a covenant head. He will be a new covenant head. You see, what God will do through the Holy Spirit in the body of Mary is recreate that which was fallen. And even in the same way that God made Adam of nothing, God will, through his eternally begotten Son, recreate out of sin and death a new people. You might say that this announcement is an announcement of an even more glorious, more grand miracle than that of creation in the beginning. Christ will be, in this way, the firstborn of all creation. And so we find in Luke 1 something that is not unlike Genesis 1, a new people, a reborn people, a people born not of blood, but of water and the Spirit. And in the same way that Jesus will be conceived in her, you and I shall be born into the kingdom of God by the Holy Spirit. And we shall be identified with Christ in the same way that he identified himself with his people. We shall be washed. We shall be consecrated. We shall be set apart. And Israel shall be redeemed by the one who is not just born of Israel, but is also the fountainhead of the entire people. In every sense, Christ is the bookend. He is the beginning. He is the end. He is the one who gave the promise. He is the promised one. And as proof that God is able to do this in the life of Mary, the angel says, now indeed, verse 36, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age. And this is now the sixth month of her who was called barren. For with God, nothing will be impossible. Now, it is enough to reflect upon the fact that Mary had a son without knowing a man. That is impossible, but the angel is not just talking about the impossibility of conception apart from natural generation. He is talking about what is impossible, that is the redemption of mankind apart from divine help. It is a picture of an even greater miracle that is the lifting up out of darkness and death and sin, a people that God had promised to deliver. That is the impossibility that we celebrate. That Christ has come to help those who could not help themselves. And then Mary responds again. Behold the maidservant of the Lord. What is she saying? I am your servant. I am your servant. Do with me as you will. Let it be done to me as you have promised. And in this, there is some application for us even. Not only to receive God's promise of life from death in a manner that we cannot explain of our own. Parents, even your own covenant children, How is it that they are made alive from death? They are conceived in sin and it is only apart from God's justifying, regenerating grace that we have any hope. Mary believed and she called herself a servant of the Most High. How do we receive God's proclamations of salvation? What stands as the fountainhead of all of our hope? Well, it is to receive from God His words of promise with joy and humility, that He can do that which we could never do. And not just in that initial awakening us from the dead, but think of His extraordinary patience. How many times has God said to you, get up, son, get up, daughter, walk in newness of life. This announcement is the exemplary of God's extraordinary patience with people like ourselves. That we are spiritually speaking, in every way, barren. And as it relates to our own salvation, perhaps a response to the grace of God that ought to be regularly admitted in our lives is, how can this be? because there is no life, there is no potential of life in me. What Christ has done is he has come into the world to lift his people up out of that sorry, miserable, lifeless estate. As the perfect seed, he is the one who is the beginning of a new generation of people. And this is why we call his name Jesus. Joshua was the one who led Israel across the Jordan into the promised land. And that was a glorious act. And not only that, but he led Israel into that land that was theirs by promise. And there he and Israel ransacked the land. We have an even greater deliverer. who has brought us out of the land of sin and death, out of the land of bondage, that place, Egypt, that land of wandering, the wilderness. And by His baptism, having been washed by the Holy Spirit, He has placed us in that land of promise where now we do what? In the name of Christ our King, we conquer in His name. You see, the coming of Christ in the Gospels was not the end, it was also, in a sense, a beginning of something. And so we follow our King Jesus wherever he leads us. And like Mary, we say, we are but servants of the Most High. Let it be to me according to your word. Dear saints, we ought not make too much of the church calendar of these seasons where we overemphasize those things that we oftentimes neglect throughout the year. There's more than one Easter Sunday. Let me put it that way. Every Sunday is Resurrection Sunday. But in the same way, every Sunday is a reflection of the incarnation and the glories that are ours in Christ Jesus. And when you have time, well, make the time, this is what you should talk about. Don't get in trouble going to your relative's house talking about politics. Talk about the politics of the Messiah. talk about Christ as King and seek to serve Him, not only as your Deliverer and your Redeemer, but as your King and Head, and rest upon the glorious promise that what Christ has begun in the Incarnation, in His first coming, He will bring to full in His second.