Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / December 12, 2021 | Hark - Mary

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December 12, 2021 | Hark - Mary · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Hey TBC family.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm here with Craig Congden, director of the One Body Project with Haiti Lifeline.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: You might have heard us talking about the churches that are going to be built through our Christmas project this year.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: The project, if you haven't had a chance to see it, is Work, Water, and the Word.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: And we've talked a little bit about the work, the churches that are going to be built, but now we're going to talk about the water.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: One of the big things that the One Body Project does is putting these wells and cisterns into these communities.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: Craig, can you just tell us a little bit about why that's so important?
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I know water is important, right?
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: But how does it change the life of a community?
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it really truly does change.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_02: It transforms communities just to have a source of clean water right there in their own community.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_02: So we were astounded when we started talking to some of these pastors about their villages and tell us about your people and uh and they talk about being farmers and they talk about what life was like, and then it occurred to us we should ask, what do you guys do for water?
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_02: And we found some of these pastors would say, Well, you know, there's a stream that's about a 45-minute walk.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_02: And if we walk 45 minutes there with our buckets, then we fill it up and we and we're just amazed that we're thinking, wait, so you spend an hour and a half a day going and getting clean water, and then what do you do with it?
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_02: Well, since it's a lot of work to get the water there, then you use the same water for drinking, but then you have to use it to wash a dish, or then we have to use it for bathing.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so um we said, wow, is there a way in which we can help you get just ready, immediate access to clean water?
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_02: And they said, Yes.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_02: Um, in some locations we can build a well and they drill down and put a well in it and a pump at the top so they can pump water out.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and then in other locations where they can't have a well, they get a cistern that collects the rainwater over the year, fills it up, uh, and then again they have a pump so they can pump it out.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_02: And we really have found and heard from these pastors that it just changes their lives.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_02: Um when we're when we do some medical clinics in some of these areas, one of the most common problems in the past has simply been dehydration.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_02: A really simple thing uh to fix if you just have water at your hands.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_02: Um and so one of our goals then was not only are we gonna build churches in these communities, but we need to help transform them and give them the ability just to have clean water at any time.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_02: So we've already started putting wells and cisterns in, and um, and you know, we have gotten to go back to some of those locations, and it's amazing.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_02: You see, you see uh women with these big tubs going to the well and they pump it, and you see them walking down the street and putting it in their house, and then they can do that several times a day, and so hopefully it's just creating um healthier, cleaner water that they're drinking overall.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 2:40
  SPEAKER_00: And what I love is is that, you know, this project, our Christmas project this year, it's not just one thing, but it's when all of these things are together.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: The churches, uh, these wells, and then equipping the pastors, when they're all able to work together, it makes an even bigger impact.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, something that you had told me previously, that if you could just share for a second about the impact that a well makes um on a location where you're going to put a church in the future.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_02: Can you talk about that?
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so we um we typically put a well wherever we're gonna put a church.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_02: And in the past, we've built the church first and sort of prioritize that, and then we go in and we put the well.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_02: Well, what we found with a couple of these locations is for them to build a church, they're mixing the cement and the concrete by hand on location.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_02: Well, in order to do that, you need water and you need a lot of it.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_02: And so um, I was at a church location two years ago, and they said, yeah, one of the problems and the reasons it took so long is not only do we have to bring the sand and we have to bring the rocks, but we have to go gather the water, which is at a river that's about two hours away.
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_02: We have to go gather the water in truck, or they would actually bring it by mule, put it on the back of a mule and walk it all the way back and mix it.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: That was your job, right?
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, absolutely, yeah, yeah.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_02: That's why I'm so strong.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so we would actually say, Hey, what if we put a well or a cistern there beforehand?
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: And they'd say, Yes, that would be great.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_02: Not only do we have clean water now to drink, but when they go to build the foundation for the building, they have water right there and it speeds up the process and they're able to build it much quicker and with a lot less work, which is great.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, putting these wells and cisterns into these towns, it really changes them.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, it changes their community, and these wells are actually on the church property too.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_02: So it's right there.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_02: So if you want, if people in the community want water, it's not kept from anyone, but they just they come to where the church is, and that's where the water is.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_02: And it's a great image for the water of life being here as well.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and so uh it's wonderful for the pastors then to say, yes, come, we're here to meet your needs.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, and hey, on Sunday, come back for church.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I I love that the One Body Project is not just the spiritual needs of people, but the physical needs as well.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: And that's again why we wanted to combine all of these things together, is because when they're done um in unity the biggest and greatest impact is made.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you, Craig, for telling us about that and looking forward to talking with you about how we can equip the people next time.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: Well, good morning, everybody.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: So many of you were generous in the past week in giving to our Christmas project here.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I would love to see every person get to be a part of what I think is an eternal impact that we can make in the nation of Haiti.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um I won't belabor the point because we you've watched the video now, but just we are trying to combine everything so that when we go into a community, that we can change it spiritually, we can help everyone physically, and we can equip the people so that moving forward they will be able to just develop these deep spiritual ties uh from the pastors and the churches to everyone who's there.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um we do have a question that some people have asked, we do have specific locations that we're looking at for these churches in these wells, out of sort of a deference for um or to be careful uh uh for the pastors who are in those areas that might be targeted for that.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_00: We're just not giving you the locations and also you can't find them on Google Maps anyway.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: So um, but just so you know that we have I've got it on my desk, we've got specific uh locations where we know where, if we can raise the money, uh where these churches are gonna go, where these wells are gonna go.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_00: But um we're also working through this uh in our Christmas series, and uh in our series called Hark, we are looking at four different examples, perspectives of the incarnation event.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: There was a story of uh Zolt and Giza Pilotti.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: I've looked at that name for like six days, and I still have to.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Zolt and Giza Pilati, there were two brothers um homeless in Budapest about 10 years ago, living in a cave, and they had been scavenging the streets uh for trash that they could sell to make their living.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_00: They were tracked down by a lawyer who had it had taken him a long time to find them, and were told that their grandmother had passed away, and she had left them an inheritance of six billion dollars.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: Their lives, as you can probably imagine, were changed, um, and they no longer had to live in that cave.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: It's a really great sort of party question, icebreaker.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_00: What would you do if you won the lottery?
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: What would you do if money was no longer a concern?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: The Bible is filled with these kind of examples, not necessarily of material wealth that has changed lives, but of lives that are changed because of the good, gracious gift of God.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: And we're sort of fascinated by that idea that in just a split second something can change, and everything else, it's sort of a watershed moment, that from that point on, nothing else is the same.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: In our story this morning, we're going to be looking at uh the story of Mary.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Mary, the mother of Jesus.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the most common accounts in the Bible of Mary is basically just her interaction with the angel and how it is similar and different to Zechariah last week.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: If you weren't with us last week, we looked at Zechariah and Elizabeth and the angel Gabriel that came to visit him because they were going to have John the Baptist, the one who was going to prepare the way for Jesus, um, sort of as a new Elijah, and was going to tell everyone about the good news.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_00: So this morning, if you can get this thing working, that would be great.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_00: Uh this morning we are looking at Mary, and Mary has inspired a lot of um interest over the years.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: Outside of Jesus, she's one of the most popular figures depicted in art.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: This is um what we think is about the earliest image of Mary.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: If you can sort of see, this is one where you kind of have to squint and turn your head.
• 8:53
  SPEAKER_00: But this would be Mary, and she's nursing Jesus here.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's a fresco in a place called the Priscilla Catacomb in Rome.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: It's a place where uh early Christians were buried, and this dates to about 250 A.D., and it's filled with all this Christian iconography.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: And so we've got this image of Mary.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, this one is a uh a chalk sketch by Leonardo da Vinci of Mary sort of looking with tender affection um towards something off-portrait.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_00: So we've got these images of Mary.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: We we know that she has inspired a lot of artistic expression, but it does not compare to my favorite image of Mary and Jesus.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: He's a chunk, and I love it.
• 9:37
  SPEAKER_00: You've got Jesus here, he is wearing nothing but a necklace, and Mary is just like, yeah, whatever.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um there is no significance to this other than I can't not laugh when I see it, and I wanted to share that with you.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but Mary's a really popular figure, and this morning, uh, one of the things that we're gonna do as we walk through the passage is that we're also going to look at um the Catholic dogma of Mary.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_00: There are four Marian dogmas that they have of her, beliefs they have about her.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm not gonna spend a lot of time, the focus is not that you get an in-depth understanding of that, but I do just want to sort of spar with some of the more popular uh maybe understandings that you have heard about Mary.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um we'll be going through that kind of throughout this morning.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_00: But our our main text is going to be in Luke 1, 26 through 38.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_00: And it's an unfortunate uh sort of happenstance that we don't have enough time to get through Mary's entire account in the book of Luke, specifically Luke 1.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_00: Luke 1, beyond what we're looking at this morning, we're finishing it when her exchange with the angel is done.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: But then there's another amazing section where she goes to visit Elizabeth, her relative.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like last week, Zechariah and Elizabeth.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_00: Mary and Elizabeth are related.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_00: So she goes to visit her.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then after that, we get this beautiful expression of uh Mary, sort of this poetic dedication to God called the magnificat.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's, I think, like verses 46 through 56 in Luke 1, where Mary reflecting, which seems to be a character trait of hers, on the magnificence of God and sort of choosing her, bestowing grace upon her, being the mother of Jesus, she just reflects on it and gives her devotion to the Lord.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: But our uh our section this morning is going to be in verses 26 through 38, and I will have them up here on the screen as we work through it.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: So, uh, as we start off in verses 26 through 28, 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, as the of the house of David.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: And the virgin's name was Mary, and he came to her and said, Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Gabriel is racking up his frequent flyer miles, okay?
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: He he was with Zechariah and Elizabeth six months prior, and now six months later, he goes to visit Mary.
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um, Gabriel, the same one uh from last week, is an angel, an emissary from God, giving this very specific message from God.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_00: He's this is not sort of like God delegating things because he doesn't have time to visit Mary.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: No, this is a messenger, a herald from God's presence.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_00: And so Gabriel was sent from God.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: And we go to a city of Galilee named Nazareth.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: Nazareth, this is where it's at on a map.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's up here near the Sea of Galilee, right?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: And most of Jesus' ministry happened up here.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: He grew up in Nazareth.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_00: They had to leave for a time to go to Egypt, but then they came back.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: And Nazareth, listen, it's like the backwaters, okay, of Galilee here.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_00: Like it is, it's a tiny town.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: To calling it a town is being charitable.
• 13:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's like the one-stop light kind of village that we have.
• 13:08
  SPEAKER_00: And Mary is hailing from Nazareth.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so even Luke, as he's describing this to people who are familiar with Jesus, he's like, just so you know, it was Nazareth from the region of Galilee.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: He needs to sort of define it for people who might not be familiar.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: And we get our first glimpse here in learning about Mary, of her humble beginnings.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Mary, who is a poor young girl, is coming from this tiny, sleepy village.
• 13:41
  SPEAKER_00: And later on, when her and Joseph go to the temple to give their sacrifice after the birth of Jesus, we know that they weren't flushed with cash because they give a sacrifice that was denoted for those who could not afford the normal one.
• 13:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so Mary is here in Nazareth.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: It strikes a great contrast to last week where the angel came to the temple in Jerusalem, and now we are in one of the smallest cities in Galilee, and that is where the king is going to be coming from.
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's where he's going to be raised.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: But as we are being introduced to Mary, you might notice that Luke refers to her just as a virgin, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph.
• 14:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then later on he says, and the virgin's name was Mary.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now, why would he be emphasizing something like this?
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: Why would he make sure that the audience understood her status?
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, there are probably two reasons.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the first one is a possibility, which is that Luke, who probably had Mary as the individual who was giving him this information, uh, wanted to fight against some of the criticisms that people had leveled at Jesus during his ministry, because they uh the idea of a virgin birth and the miraculous nature of that was certainly not lost on Jesus' critics.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_00: And they would taunt him and Mary and Joseph as ones who, you know, had had a baby, a child out of wedlock.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so it could be that Luke is combating sort of this narrative, this rumor about Mary, and he wants to make sure we understand.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: However, I think a better reason for why he is emphasizing her virginity is because he is referencing, as is kind of the case in all of this incarnation, Old Testament prophecy.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_00: And so we see in Isaiah 7.14, therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign, behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Emmanuel.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: Next week, when we talk about Joseph, we'll discuss more of Emmanuel.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: But when we're talking about the Messiah, one of the signs that would bring, that would designate this Messiah's arrival was the virgin birth.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: And so I believe Luke was emphasizing this, not because he overly cared that that was Mary's status or was trying to combat a rumor, but because he wanted to, as he does throughout his message and we'll look at, drop these, they're not so much hints as like, you know, flashing lights, that Jesus was the Messiah and was fulfilling all of this prophecy, that he was coming from a virgin's womb, which is how it should happen.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: So now we get to our first of the Catholic dogmas here.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_00: And uh this one is I'll have kind of the belief here.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know why I needed to make a chart, but I did.
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, whether or not we agree with it, and then sort of a brief reason.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: So the Catholic dogma of the perpetual virginity of Mary states that um she was a virgin both before the um uh the conception of Jesus and then after that as well, that her and Joseph never had any relations, and that for her entire life she remained a virgin.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: That in Matthew 1.25, when it says that uh Joseph and her did not lay together until after the birth of Jesus, they just kind of skip over that.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then in 1355, where it says that Jesus had four brothers and he had sisters, right?
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_00: That Jesus had all these siblings from Mary and Joseph, they just say that they were close relatives or somebody from a previous marriage.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: We disagree with this.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_00: First of all, there's nothing that is unholy or wrong about Mary not continuing to be a virgin.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, there's nothing that is added to her reputation by her continuing to maintain that state.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: And beyond that, we just side with Scripture here.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a heresy of the Catholic Church if you reject it.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: So we are heretics, but um, we don't believe in the perpetual virginity of Mary.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um as we move forward in the account, verses 29 through 31, but she was greatly troubled at the saying, right?
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because the angel had just come to her, like sort of appeared and said, Greetings, Mary, you are favored by God.
• 18:12
  SPEAKER_00: And she was troubled at the saying.
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_00: Another translation would say that she's sort of anxious by this, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why has an angel just appeared to me and said, Greetings, Mary?
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: And the angel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: Now, for you have found favor with God.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: Boy, that has caused a lot of controversy.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: Why was Mary favored by God?
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: Why did the angel come and say, Mary, God has favored you?
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: Is it something that Mary did, or was it something else?
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, here again we would disagree with the Catholic Church, but when it says that she has found favor, a translation would be that she has received much grace.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_00: And grace, as we know, is something that we receive from God.
• 19:07
  SPEAKER_00: It's unmerited favor, it's something we don't deserve.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: It's the same way we describe Jesus and his sacrifice that is given to us as an atonement for our sins.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_00: We have been given grace by God, something we do not deserve, the freedom from sin if we trust in Jesus, and that is grace.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: We have done nothing to deserve it.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: So when the angel comes, he says, Don't be afraid, Mary, for basically you have been given much grace from God.
• 19:37
  SPEAKER_00: What was she given grace for?
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, grace is unmerited favor, and she was about to become the mother of God.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's a pretty significant gift.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: She, throughout history, is going to be known as the one who raised Jesus, got to spend more time on earth with Jesus than any other human being.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: She was going to be favored because of that.
• 20:03
  SPEAKER_00: And though her heart would later break, something that comes up later in Luke's gospel, that she is going to be pierced because of her connection with Jesus, and she's ultimately going to be standing at the foot of the cross when he is crucified, she's still favored because she has birthed Jesus.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_00: And his name shall be Jesus.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: In Hebrew it's Yeshua, in Greek it's Jesus, in English it's Jesus.
• 20:30
  SPEAKER_00: In all the languages, it means God saves.
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is the seventh time in the Bible that a baby has been given a specific name by God.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: We've got Isaac, Ishmael, Moses, Solomon, Josiah, and then last week's John the Baptist.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: Each one of those had a specific message, and here the angel was letting Mary know that the child that she would bear would save the world.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now, here we come to our second problem with the Catholic dogma, and this is the Immaculate Conception, not the Immaculate Reception, but the Immaculate Conception.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_00: The Immaculate Conception actually, you might be surprised to know, doesn't have to do with how Jesus was conceived, but the fact that Mary was born without original sin, and that Mary never sinned.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_00: That the reason that she was favored by God was because of something she did, not because of God's grace.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so that Mary sort of like had earned, she racked up enough points to sort of become the mother of the Savior.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now we would reject this because just later on in Luke 147, Mary calls God her Savior.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: She knows the need that she has, the need that all of us have for a savior, how we've all fallen short of God's standards and desperately need Him.
• 21:54
  SPEAKER_00: Mary recognized that too.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: So we would reject the uh the dogma of the immaculate.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Conception.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Mary certainly was born with sin.
• 22:03
  SPEAKER_00: She had fallen short of God's standards, just as we all have, and she also believed in Jesus as the Savior of mankind for the forgiveness of her sins.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in verses 32 through 33, says, He will be great.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: Gabriel's doubling down here.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: He's like, not only is he named God saves, but he will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_00: 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 his kingdom there will be no end.
• 22:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure as Mary is writing notes, she's going, Hold on, wait, like I need to give me a second.
• 22:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's just sort of coming one after the other here.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_00: There are all these amazing things, and three in particular, that the angel is referencing once again prophecy from the Old Testament, individuals who hundreds of years previously said, This will be a sign so that you know the Messiah is here.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: And Gabriel is saying, all of these things come together and find their place in this individual.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_00: That he will be the son of the Most High, that he will have the throne of his father David, and that his kingdom will be unending.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: It is looking at three separate passages.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: The first one from Psalm 2, a Messianic Psalm, I will tell of the decree.
• 23:21
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord said to me, You are my son, today I have begotten you.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: Ask of me, and I will make the nations your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: You shall break them with a rod of iron and dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_00: This, recognized for hundreds of years as a sort of hark towards the coming king, the son of the Most High, the Messiah, Gabriel is saying, hey, when I say this phrase, I'm referencing this.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_00: There are other passages we could go to as well that sort of are meaning the same thing, but this one is the most clear.
• 23:58
  SPEAKER_00: When he talks about David's throne, we're talking about the fulfillment of the Davidic covenant.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: Speaking to David, God tells him, When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body and I will establish his kingdom.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: King David, the greatest king in Israel's history, the one who was a man after God's own heart and has established his relationship with God, and was faithful to him, so that God had made this agreement, a covenant, saying, David, you have been faithful, you have dedicated yourself to me, and forever and always there will be somebody from your line, from your descendants, who will sit on the throne.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_00: And ultimately, this is fulfilled in Jesus.
• 24:49
  SPEAKER_00: Later on in the other gospels, we get the genealogy of Jesus and how Joseph hails from the line of David.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's pretty amazing.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus is going to be the one who is sitting on David's throne.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: But not just now, and he's not going to be like a normal king.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: No, he is going to have an eternal kingdom.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_00: This is from Daniel.
• 25:13
  SPEAKER_00: I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came like one a son of man, and he came to the ancient of days and was presented before him.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_00: And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: His dominion is an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so you're Mary, right?
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: And though she is not in the same sort of role that Zechariah was, she's not an elderly priest.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: Mary is still one, though, who would understand these sorts of things.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: These are like the high watermarks of Israelite understanding that young women in the culture would be praying that they would be like Mary, who would be ones who would bear the Messiah.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's hitting her all of a sudden, and she has such a human reaction, and I find myself being endeared towards Mary because her question to the angel is then, how will this be since I am a virgin?
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the same sort of question that Zechariah asked, where he's like, Yeah, but how can I trust you?
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: Mary's one is more of procedure.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: She's saying, Okay, if I underst if I'm following, if I'm tracking with you, Gabriel, I'm about to have a kid, and it's my understanding that I haven't had reason to have a kid yet.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the angel answered her, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_00: And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren, for nothing will be impossible with God.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_00: Packed with stuff here.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: First, uh the angel answers Mary.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh uh again, the sort of the framing of her question was not a lack of trust or faith in God, but one of how is this going to happen?
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: And the angel gives her two helpful sort of hints, if you will.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um, it is a mysterious interaction.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: But first of all, it says the Holy Spirit will come upon you.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_00: This is the same language that Luke uses later on in Acts, right?
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: We're in the Gospel of Luke.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: Luke also wrote the book of Acts about the early church.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: And in that account, in Acts, we see what happens when the Holy Spirit comes upon all believers after Pentecost.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so this indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the same word for that, is the word that Luke is using here to describe how Mary will conceive of this child, the indwelling of the Spirit.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: And beyond that, um, he says, the power of the Most High will overshadow you.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: This is different, and it's also interesting because it is the same sort of reference to when, um, as probably Mary would understand it previous to her, in going through the desert when God's cloud would descend on his tabernacle, it was overshadowed.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: Later on, something that Mary had not understood yet, but would later come during the transfiguration of Jesus when he reveals his true nature to some of his disciples.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: A cloud comes around them, and it says that they are overshadowed by the presence of God.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: In summary, the idea here that the angel is communicating is Mary, God will be with you.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: You're not going to go through this process alone.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: How will this happen?
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: It will be done by God, and he will be with you.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: You can have comfort in that.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: Though even still today, we don't fully understand the process of the virgin birth.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_00: We understand its importance, we understand that it's by God.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: And for one who says that nothing is impossible, we just believe and trust that this had happened.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: So though Mary wasn't given all the details, she was given hope.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: And the hope was that she was going to bear the Son of God.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: She was given a sign that this was going to happen, and they said the sign is that your relative Elizabeth is going through the same kind of stuff right now.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: You guys both can sort of hang out together, which they later do and probably talk about.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: What did you think Gabriel was like?
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: What did you think Gabriel was like?
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: So we come to uh the third point of the Catholic dogma of Mary, which is her divine motherhood.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: And in this one, we're kind of like both sides.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: So the divine motherhood of Mary, on a foundational level, the fact that she is the mother of God, we agree with that.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus Christ is God.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_00: He is God in flesh.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_00: And so, to that extent, the Theatokos, that she is the God-bearer, as the Council of Ephesus said in 431, we're down.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: Um, as far as like what that means, and then how we refer to Mary and sort of the veneration of Mary, and how um uh and the Catholic doctrine that now that she is in heaven as the mother of Jesus, and Jesus is the head of the church, she's sort of the head the mother of the church.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_00: We're not down with that.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um a simple refutation is in Luke 11, 27 through 28.
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody is meeting Jesus in a crowd, and they basically say, Hey, how awesome is it for your mom that she made you, that she birthed you and she nursed you?
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like, blessed is that woman.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says, actually, blessed are those who hear the word of God and obey it.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_00: If there was ever a time to sort of like give props to Mary, it would have been then.
• 30:51
  SPEAKER_00: And Jesus says that what is far better and worthy of our attention is God's word.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the other one, we're just gonna go ahead and knock it out here because it doesn't uh land within the purview of our passage this morning, but it's the assumption of Mary.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_00: The assumption of Mary is basically um that they don't define how she died, they basically say uh at the end of her earthly journey, because they don't want to say whether she ascended to heaven without dying, like um like Elijah or something, or whether she did die.
• 31:21
  SPEAKER_00: But the assumption of Mary has a whole lot to do with um her status now in heaven, uh, the praise and honor that she is deserving, and even sort of her eschatological or end times role, continuing to be one who is uh taking part in the role of salvation.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: So we disagree with that, um, which is fine.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: We are heretics in the Catholic Church anyway, we've known it for hundreds of years.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um the reason why is because there's no record of her death nor deserving of adoration.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: Simply, if it was important to lift up Mary and worship her, then we think the Bible would have told us to do it, and it doesn't.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: But now, we come to the last verse in our section, and one which I think is deserving of the most attention, frankly.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um verse 38.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: And Mary said, Behold, I am the servant of the Lord.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_00: Let it be to me according to your word.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_00: And the angel departed from her.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_00: Let's recap for a second.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_00: All the stuff that has happened to Mary.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: An angel appears and says, Hey Mary, you are favored by God.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_00: You are going to have the Messiah.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: The Messiah that is the Son of God, Son of the Most High, the fulfillment of the Davidic throne, um, and his kingdom shall never end.
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: You're gonna be his mom.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be your job to raise up the son of God.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: How will this happen?
• 32:55
  SPEAKER_00: God will be with you.
• 32:57
  SPEAKER_00: He will be with you through this process.
• 32:59
  SPEAKER_00: Specifically, how?
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe later.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_00: As they keep going, he tells her, nothing is impossible with God, Mary.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: And you can imagine later on, years later, as she is then seeing her child, who is perfect, raising up, learning from his father Joseph his trade, wondering, pondering at all of the amazing things that have happened during his early life, when, like at the age of 12, he goes to the temple and instructs the teachers of the temple how to better understand the word of God as a sixth grader.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_00: And she's treasuring up all these things within her heart.
• 33:39
  SPEAKER_00: And then later on, when she is present for his ministry, the few years where he is sharing the good news of the gospel with the world, culminating in his crucifixion and death for all mankind, that she would remember these words that the angel had spoken to her.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: Mary, nothing is impossible with God.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: And so perhaps, and by the power of the Spirit and understanding her role within this, she has one of the greatest statements of fidelity that we can find in the Bible.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: Behold, I am the servant of the Lord.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_00: Let it be to me according to your word.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: And with that, the angel was like, I couldn't have said it better myself and got out of there.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: Listen, there's there's a lot of heavy things that we experience.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_00: And I know that's a generic statement, but it is not, no, nobody that is sitting here or watching online is immune to the pain of this world.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: And nobody here is immune to the idea that we would love to sometimes know and understand God's plan more than he reveals.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_00: I get that.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: I felt that.
• 34:57
  SPEAKER_00: I feel it now.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_00: But there's also sort of a role that we play.
• 35:04
  SPEAKER_00: And Mary takes the greatest response possible, which is one of submission, saying, God, I don't understand what's going on.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I don't know how this is going to happen, but I trust in you.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_00: I know that you're faithful.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: I know that you can do the impossible.
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: I know that you are the one who is not only fulfilling all of these promises, but who is going to carry me through it, who is going to be with me as I endure ridicule because everyone is going to think that Joseph and I have broken our vow of betrothal, that we've had a child outside of marriage, that I'm going to be shunned by society.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: God, I know that you are doing greater things.
• 35:52
  SPEAKER_00: And this same attitude is one which persists both here and then 30 years later, as she's experiencing all the pain, another fulfillment of prophecy that she received, that her heart would be pierced because her child was going to die.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_00: That this same attitude of being the servant of the Lord was important because what was paramount was that God's word would be fulfilled through her.
• 36:19
  SPEAKER_00: Mary had no delusions that she was going to be queen, that she was going to be more special than anybody else because Jesus was her kid, that she was going to be, you know, somehow receiving this special place of honor.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: No, she recognized I am favored by God, not because of something that I have done, but because he is gracious.
• 36:41
  SPEAKER_00: And through that I recognize my role and thank the Lord.
• 36:47
  SPEAKER_00: There are two things that I want us to take away from the message this morning, things I've already sort of hit on, but hopefully can kind of clarify what I think God wants us to know from this passage about Mary.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_00: And not just the textual part of it, not just the fulfillment of prophecy.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think those are really interesting.
• 37:08
  SPEAKER_00: I get down with that stuff, but uh actually how this applies to us because we can't forget Mary was just visited by an angel in a sleepy backwater town of Nazareth, knowing that her life was going to be changed forever.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: The first one is that God's plan brings hope, but not details.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: It is rare that somebody in the Bible gets a specific answer to how.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: It is exceedingly rare.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_00: More often, what they're told is that God is going to do something and he's going to use them, that they are going to be a part of what he's doing, that they get to be included in God's plan, but they don't get to know every single part of it.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: And so what we find here is both a kind of a refutation of our inner desire to know every single detail about every single thing that could happen, and also a promise of hope.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: That God's plan has never not been fulfilled.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_00: That though it might take time, like it did in the case of the coming Messiah, God ultimately brought it about in his perfect timing.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: And so there are a lot of us who are sometimes stuck in the middle here, and we deeply desire for God, like, hey God, can we play 20 questions?
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'll even take like five.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_00: Can you just tell me what is going on, why this is happening?
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why is it me?
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_00: Why am I the one who has to go through this?
• 38:37
  SPEAKER_00: I understand your plan is good, but why can't you tell me what's going on?
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's developing trust, and it's developing faith.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: And if you lean into that, you can also develop your trust and faith in God, understanding that it is good enough to know the hope that his plan brings, even if we don't know the details.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: We can trust as Mary did in the submission of our souls to God's plan, because like Mary did, we know that even though this whole being the mother of Jesus was not ultimately clear to her, it came about in the saving of mankind.
• 39:19
  SPEAKER_00: That was the trajectory that God had her on.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: She was going to bring about the Savior.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_00: God's plan brings hope and not details.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: Second and finally, is just I I worked for like an hour trying to figure out how to better phrase this, and I'm just quoting Mary.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: Behold, I am the servant of the Lord.
• 39:41
  SPEAKER_00: What an attitude.
• 39:42
  SPEAKER_00: What a perspective.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: What a thought.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: That when we are faced with this uncertainty, when we understand that God is drawing us towards something greater through his plan, that we can say, God, I don't know all the answers, but I'm your servant.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: She uses this word a couple times in Luke 1.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: Later on during the Magnificat that we had talked about, she says it again.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_00: It's very clear.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_00: Mary understood.
• 40:09
  SPEAKER_00: She says, God, I've got a role to play here.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because what's most important is not what I want, but what you're doing.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_00: And when we get the opportunity to be a part of that, in particular for all of us, we've been invited to be a part of God's plan in the Great Commission.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: But even just as Christians who have trusted in Jesus, we understand that the greatest role that we can play in our life, the purpose of our lives, is to fulfill his plan and not to achieve whatever goals we're setting for ourselves.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: If we can say, God, I am your humble servant, it's going to pave the way for a lot of peace and joy as we then experience the blessing of God that he brings to us from his grace, not because we have done something good, but because he wants to continue to see us walk as Mary did forward in his plan.
• 41:02
  SPEAKER_00: So this morning, as we look at the story of Mary, we see somebody who saw her role.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: She was going to be the virgin that Isaiah spoke about.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_00: She was going to endure ridicule, but she was also going to be the mother of God.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: And though she is not maybe as deserving of worship as the Catholic Church would lead us to believe, we do believe that she is worthy to be respected as a great example of somebody whose faith is to be admired and emulated.
• 41:33
  SPEAKER_00: She was a servant of the Lord, and so should we be.
• 41:36
  SPEAKER_00: Let's pray.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, we thank you for today.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you, God, for your mercy and your grace, which comes to us just as an unending wave upon wave.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_00: God, we ask that you would give us uh uh sort of the faith of Mary, that we understand that you don't always give the details, but God, your plan is always true and it is brings us hope and joy.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, most of all, we know we're heading towards a time where there will be no more pain and no more suffering for those who know Christ.
• 42:09
  SPEAKER_00: Christ who was raised by Mary.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: And so, God, we ask that you would help us uh this week and and beyond to trust more deeply in you, Lord, to believe in the hope and to sometimes set aside our need for details, but to just recognize our submission to you and to your plan.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_00: Lord, we know you are bringing about great things, and we're excited to see it.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's in Jesus' name we pray.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_00: Before we go today, um I wanted to uh Jeremiah is going to lead us in a song that many of you are familiar with, um, that I think is very apropos to our discussion about Mary this morning.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I hope as we sing it together, you'll be able to reflect a little bit more on what it might have been like to be Mary in the moment when she was speaking with Gabriel.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_01: Mary, did you know that your baby boy would one day walk on water?
• 43:14
  SPEAKER_01: Mary did you know that your baby boy would save our sons and daughters.
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_01: D you know that your baby boy has come to baby this child that you deliver will soon ever you Mary did you know that you're baby boy What do you give sight to a man?
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: Mary did you know the baby boy storm The Hugh Boy Sword And when you kiss your little baby you kiss the face of Mary, did you know did you know that your baby boy is a word of Christian, Mary.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_01: Did you know that your baby boy was very sharps?
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_01: Did you know that your baby boy is perfect and the sleeping child your holy is the great Thanks for coming.
• 46:12
  SPEAKER_02: We'll see you next week.