In this
season of Advent, we’re looking at Old Testament prophecies that told about the
coming of the Savior. Those prophecies did not just say that a Savior was
coming. They were very specific about how the Savior was coming.
These prophecies said, in effect, “Here’s how you’re going to be able to
tell if the person you’re looking at really is the Savior.” Today we look
at one of the big ones, the virgin birth.
When we’ve grown up in the church,
or when we’ve heard the Christmas story lots of times, we sometimes take the
virgin birth for granted. We use the term “Virgin Mary” so often it’s
like the word “virgin” was part of her name. We forget what an
incredible, unbelievable thing the birth of Jesus Christ to a virgin truly was.
I mean, think about this.
Imagine that you were Mary. Not “The Virgin Mary”, just Mary.
You’re not a famous person. You don’t come from a wealthy family.
You’re nobody special or important. Except, of course, to Joseph.
You’re very special and important to him. He loves you and he’s
going to marry you. But he’s just a common, ordinary person, too.
Just like you are. Two common, ordinary people who plan to live a
common, ordinary life together. Joseph will make an ordinary living as a
carpenter. You’ll have some kids. Raise a family. Hopefully,
grow old together. Two common, ordinary people living common, ordinary
lives, just like any number of other people do and have for thousands of years.
And then, one day, this angel,
Gabriel, comes to you. That, in and of itself, would be shocking.
An angel, coming to see you? Common, ordinary Mary? And then,
this angel tells you that you’re going to have a baby. I mean, not a baby
with Joseph, someday, after you’re married. You’re going to have a baby
now. And Joseph’s not really going to have anything to do with it.
This baby is going to be conceived with the Holy Spirit. This baby
is going to be the Son of God.
What would you think, if you were
Mary? Would you believe it? It’d be pretty hard to, right?
Even having an angel come and tell you this, it still would be hard to
believe. In fact, you might wonder if you were seeing things, even
hearing things. You might wonder if you were dreaming or if this was an
hallucination. You might wonder if you were going crazy. It would
be really hard to believe.
It would’ve been hard for anyone else to believe, too. Even
Joseph had a hard time with it. That’s why the prophecy from Isaiah was
so important. “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will
call him Immanuel”. Immanuel. A name that means “God with us”.
And that’s who Jesus was: God with us. And suddenly, Mary
realized that she had been chosen to fulfill that prophecy from Isaiah.
She was the virgin Isaiah was talking about. She was going to give
birth to the Son of God.
But then we think, “Well, so what,
really? Why is this virgin birth so important? I mean, yes, it was
really something for Mary to be the fulfillment of this prophecy made hundreds
of years earlier, but how does it affect our lives now? What do we make
so much of a deal about the virgin birth? What difference does it make to
our faith today?”
It makes all the difference in the
world. If Jesus was not born of a virgin, if Jesus was just a baby born
from a human mother and a human father, the way every other human baby is, then
Jesus is simply a human being. He might be a good human being. He
might be a wise human being. He might be a very kind, very loving human
being. But still, he’s just a human being. Not the Savior.
Not the divine Son of God. Just another human being. Someone
who lived and someone who died. Someone who had interesting story, but
just another human being. Someone to admire, maybe. Someone even to
try to be like. But still, not the Son of God. Not the Savior.
Just another human being.
A virgin birth is hard to believe.
It was hard to believe two thousand years ago. It’s hard to believe
now. There are a lot of people who don’t believe it. There are even
some people who call themselves Christians who don’t believe it. So, the
question is: do you?
I hope you do. If you don’t,
I’m not sure what to tell you. I can point you to the passage from Luke
that we read. I can point you to a similar passage in Matthew that tells
the story from Joseph’s point of view. But if you don’t accept that, I’m
not sure what else I can tell you.
Except for this. This prophecy
from Isaiah. This prophecy that came about seven hundred years earlier.
And you know, when you read that
prophecy from Isaiah, it really is striking. Isaiah has told Ahaz, the
king of Israel, to ask God for a sign that will prove that God is faithful.
And Ahaz refuses to ask for one. And God, speaking through Isaiah,
says okay, I’m going to give you a sign anyway. At some point in the
future, a virgin is going to give birth to a son. And that son is going
to be called Immanuel, God with us. Because that son, in a very real way,
is going to be me, with you. God, living with human beings.
God went out of God’s way to make
this prophecy through Isaiah. And then, the prophecy was handed down.
It was carefully preserved in scrolls. Carefully copied into new
scrolls when the old ones got worn. Handed down orally, from one
generation to the next to the next. For roughly seven hundred years.
We gloss over that, too. Seven
hundred years. Think about how long seven hundred years is. Seven
hundred years ago it was the year 1316. There was no such thing as the
United States of America. Not only had Christopher Columbus not reached
America yet, he had not even been born yet. There was no such thing as
the Methodist church. There was not even such a thing as the Lutheran
church. There were no protestant churches at all, in fact. There
was the Roman Catholic church and the Eastern Orthodox church, and that was it
as far as Christian churches. In fact, the English language did not even
exist in a form that you’d recognize it in today. If you don’t believe
me, try reading Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in the original. And in fact,
Chaucer had not yet been born in 1316, either.
The point is that seven hundred
years is a long time. And that’s how long before Jesus this prophecy of
the virgin birth was made. And it was preserved, handed down from
generation to generation, for all that time. There would, at some point,
be a child born of a virgin, and that child would be God, come to live with
human beings. Immanuel. God with us.
The people of Israel had waited seven
hundred years for this prophecy to come true. As long a time as that is,
they did not give up. They kept believing. They kept teaching it to
their children. Mary’s parents believed it. They taught it to her.
Mary believed it. I’m sure it never in her wildest dreams occurred
to her that she was going to be the virgin in the prophecy, but she believed
it. Joseph believed it, too. And it was their belief that helped
them be able to accept that this prophecy was going to come true through them.
We talked last week about how God
has a plan for the salvation of the world. The thing is, God’s plans are
rarely short-term plans. They can be, and sometimes they are, but a lot
of times they’re not. After all, we’re talking about the eternal God
here. We’re talking about a God for whom we’re told a thousand years are
like a day. Seven hundred years is a long time for human beings, but it’s
less than a day to God.
God’s plan for the salvation of the
world is a long-term plan. We don’t know how long it’s going to take.
But God has given us some sign posts along the way. One of them was
the prophecy, seven hundred years before the fact, of a child born of a virgin
who would be God in human form, God with us. And another one was the fulfillment
of that prophecy through the birth of Jesus Christ to a virgin.
Mary.
The fulfillment of a prophecy from
seven hundred years earlier is an incredible thing. But then, the virgin
birth of Christ was an even more incredible thing. It was a miracle.
It’s something that could only happen through the divine power of God.
If Jesus had been born with a human
mother and human father, he would’ve just been another human being. But
he was not. He was born of a virgin through the power of the Holy Spirit.
He truly was Immanuel. God with us. He truly was the divine
Son of God, born to save us all.
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