The Secular Shift of Christmas
Well, it is hard to believe that Christmas is upon us, that here we are on Christmas Sunday, just days before this annual event that we mark in our culture to honor the birth of Christ. And yet, so many people in our culture are getting farther and farther away from Christ and anything having to do with him in Christmas.
Think of it just in the past 15 or so years. I've not done a deep study of this, but the Christmas songs that are played on the radio are less Christian and more secular. In fact, even as you look at Christmas and the movies and the things that we mark in our culture, they're getting farther and farther away from the meaning of Christmas and more wrapped up in stories like the Grinch.
So, no hate on the Grinch, but it's interesting that even Santa Claus is falling in disfavor, and I'm no champion of Santa Claus. But the point in all of this is to say that the farther our culture gets away from Jesus Christ and belief in his gospel, the farther Christmas drifts away from him as well.
Holding High the Standard of Christ
So we as Christians, those who believe in Jesus Christ, ought to hold high the standard of Christmas, reminding our families and encouraging our friends with the hope that we have in Christ.
I'm not suggesting that you need to show up at a Christmas event with your family with the largest Bible you can summon and thump it down on the table so that you can tell everyone you're going to be reading from Luke's gospel. But I am encouraging you to speak the hope of Christ. I am encouraging you to remind people of the origin story of Christmas and that it is really about our Savior appearing in this world.
Birth stories are interesting. They say something of the person who was born. In our American culture of success, we often tell birth stories of people from single moms or people with silver spoons in their mouths. And that story seems to say something about the person they were and the person that they have become. And those stories get repeated, sometimes even exaggerated, in order to make someone into a hero.
The True Birth Story of Jesus
Well, as we look this morning in Luke's Gospel, we're going to see what is foretold of the birth story of Jesus. It's how Jesus came to be God incarnate. And this story is not a legend. It's not a myth, and it is the truth. It is told to us so that we can understand the significance of Christ and we can believe him to be our savior.
As Luke begins his gospel account, he starts with two very unusual pregnancies. Last week, in the first verses, we saw Elizabeth, a woman who was well past her childbearing years, and she was able to conceive a child with her husband Zachariah after the angel Gabriel appeared to Zachariah. She carried in her womb John the Baptist, and John would be the anticipated forerunner of the Messiah, Jesus Christ. After this news, Elizabeth becomes pregnant and she secluded herself, Luke says, living apart from others, and her husband Zachariah was not able to speak. He had to hold his tongue till the birth of their son.
But now, beginning in verse 26, Luke tells a second birth story. And this will be a birth story about Mary, a young virgin who had not had sexual relations, and she would conceive a child after the angel Gabriel appeared to her. Mary would carry in her womb Jesus Christ, the Son of the living God. And she would become pregnant not through sexual intimacy with Joseph or any other man, but through the supernatural power of the most high God.
Jesus was the promised Messiah of Israel. He was born in the line of David and he would be the king over Israel. God chose both Elizabeth and Mary to receive his sovereign grace and to reveal his divine glory. God overcame Elizabeth's barrenness and he overshadowed Mary's virginity after the angel Gabriel announced each woman's pregnancy.
Zachariah responded with unbelief, saying, "Give me proof that this is going to happen." Whereas Mary will express some confusion, but she'll simply say, "How is this going to happen?" And to Gabriel, he responded to them both, "God's words will never fail." In other words, what God says will always come true.
As we look this morning in verses 26 through 45, we're going to see that we can receive the grace of God based on his promises. So join me as I read beginning in verse 26.
The Angelic Announcement of Grace
In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin's name was Mary. And the angel went to her and said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored. The Lord is with you."
Mary was greatly troubled at his words, and she wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid. Mary, you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the son of the most high God. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob's descendants forever. His kingdom will never end."
"How will this be?" Mary asked the angel, "since I am a virgin?" And the angel answered, "The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you, so that the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God. Even Elizabeth, your relative, is going to have a child in her old age. And she, who said was unable to conceive, is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail."
"I am the Lord's servant," Mary answered. "May your word to me be fulfilled." Then the angel left her. At that time, Mary got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea, where she entered Zachariah's home and greeted Elizabeth. When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leapt in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice, she exclaimed, "Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear. But why am I so favored that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leapt for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her. Amen."
Well, as we look into this passage, we see very clearly the sovereign hand of God the Father as he brings about the birth of his son, Jesus Christ. And in this passage, we see very clearly that God extends his grace to his people based on his promises. His word never fails. Elizabeth received God's incredible grace when she and Zachariah had conceived the baby John in their old age. We don't think about the significance of this because we can't imagine how old they actually were and how important childbirth was in their culture. Yet this couple was desperate to have a child. And Gabriel came and said, "God has heard your prayers." And now they would have John in the spirit of Elijah who would come to proclaim the arrival of Israel's long-anticipated Messiah.
John would fulfill God's promises, but he would point to an even greater fulfillment. God was going to bestow his incredible grace on a young virgin named Mary. This virgin would be visited by the Holy Spirit of God, who would conceive in her Jesus Christ, the eternal Son of God. Without the aid of Joseph or any other man, the Spirit of God would fill Mary's womb with a baby who is destined to save the world from the curse of sin. Jesus' birth fulfilled over 350 promises foretold in the Old Testament, and he gave us God's grace in human form so that we could see and hear and understand the grace of God.
Now, nearly 2,000 years after the advent of our Savior Jesus, people continue to debate the significance of the virgin birth. Some say, as they did then, that it is impossible for a virgin to conceive a child. And on the face of it, they're not wrong. But Jesus was given a virgin birth because he had a heavenly father. If God was able to create all things external to himself, then certainly he had the supernatural power to impregnate a virgin.
Others push back and say, "Well, the virgin birth is complicated. And it really doesn't matter. I mean, let's just let it rest. It's hard for people to wrap their minds around. And after all, it's only the life of Jesus that makes a difference." Yet even that kind of approach makes Jesus less than the Son of God. Because if Jesus was not born of a virgin, he would not have been God's son. He would have been Joseph's son and just another human.
But the virgin birth of Jesus Christ was foretold in the Old Testament. There are multiple places from Genesis chapter 3 to Isaiah 7, Isaiah 9, and others. And all of these and more are documented in the Bible to prove that Jesus is fully God. For Jesus to be the Son of God, he had to be born of God. Joseph and Mary could not produce him. The virgin conception that's recorded in Gabriel's visit to Mary assures us of Jesus' deity and his perfect sinless life. In fact, we can say Jesus fulfills all the promises God made in the Old Testament.
And we can receive God's grace because he keeps his promises. God is not like us, who forgets our promises or who breaks our promises, but God keeps his promises.
And that brings us to the first major theme I want you to see this morning from this passage.
Grace Fulfills God's Promises
And that is that the grace of God fulfills his promises. The grace of God fulfills his promises. According to Luke, the angel Gabriel revealed God's grace to Mary. It says in verse number 26 that in the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent Gabriel to Nazareth, a small town in Galilee in Israel's northern kingdom. And he spoke to young Mary. Mary was a virgin who was pledged to marry Joseph, who was a descendant of David. And Mary and Joseph had not yet had their wedding ceremony, nor had they consummated their marriage. They were simply betrothed or pledged to marry one another.
Luke, who we noted last week was a medical physician, points out three times in our passage this morning Mary's sexual purity and her status as a virgin in verse 27 and verse 34. Mary was a young woman who had not experienced sexual intercourse, and she was pledged to be married, meaning she was promised to wed Joseph, and she had an exclusive relationship with Joseph, but they had not exchanged their vows or entered into a physical union.
Now, six months after Gabriel appeared to Zachariah, God sent this same angelic messenger to Mary. And his words were just as startling to Mary as they had been to Zachariah. He said, "Greetings, you who are highly favored. The Lord is with you." Mary was confused. She was obviously startled to see an angel, as anyone would be, but she also didn't understand. Was this a messenger of God's wrath and judgment? Or was this a messenger of God's grace and mercy? She responded just like Zachariah in verse 29. It says, she was greatly troubled at his words, and she wondered what kind of greeting this might be.
So Gabriel continued his greeting and he emphasized the grace of God rather than divine judgment. He said, "You are highly favored," affirming that Mary has received God's grace. This idea of favor is that God has been generous to Mary. It's the same favor that God showed Noah when he delivered him from the flood. It's the same favor that he showed Abraham and counted it unto him as righteousness. This favor was God's grace that showed Mary's position as one of God's children.
God did not appear to Mary because of an inherent sinlessness. In other words, he didn't come to her because she was a perfect woman. There was no moral state of righteousness in her. Gabriel spoke to Mary and God sent him to Mary because God graced her with his righteousness and his presence. Thus he said, "The Lord is with you." God did not come to confirm a righteous woman. God came because of his righteousness to deliver this woman.
According to Luke's authoritative record of events, Mary received God's unexpected, undeserved, and irresistible grace. Therefore, we should not conclude that Mary was sinless, immaculate, or divine. The text indicates Mary was not the mother of grace, as one scholar has said, but she is the daughter of grace. That is, God chose Mary to give birth to the Son of God as a display of his glorious grace, not an immaculate conception.
This is why as Protestants, we do not worship Mary. We should give honor to Mary and we should recognize Mary as the mother of Jesus. But we do not worship Mary as a co-redemptrix or someone who has provided salvation through herself because of some sinless state. No, Mary was a woman of flesh, just as we are people of flesh, and she was a sinner as we are. And yet, God and His grace chose to work in her in a miraculous way to impregnate her with the Son of God so that he could save Mary and save all of us.
God's plan of salvation reveals his sovereign electing grace. From the first people in the Bible, Adam and Eve, until the last believer confesses Jesus as Lord, God takes the divine initiative to move towards sinners and offer salvation. God chose an unknown teenager in Nazareth to reveal his glorious saving grace. And God chose Mary to reveal his favor. God reveals his grace to us so that we might be saved.
And why is this? Because we need God's grace to understand that we are sinners who have broken God's law. The Bible says in Romans, "For all have sinned. None is righteous." No, not one. That's a message that's not well received. People cringe at the word sin in our culture. And how dare you say that someone specifically is a sinner? They feel the guilt of their sin. They experience the shame of their sin. And for you to call them out as a sinner makes their backs bow up in self-righteousness. Who do you think you are?
It is only by a work of grace that anyone can admit their sinfulness. Because apart from God's grace, we resist that sinfulness and we only continue to sin more. But God's grace also enables us to believe the gospel. It's not enough to recognize that we're sinners, but we must also repent and turn to the Lord so that we can be saved. John says it this way: "Not that we loved God, but that he loved us."
And he sent his son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. God understood that in our sins we were separated from him, we were alienated from him, and we hated him. So he sent Jesus through the Virgin Mary so that he could demonstrate his love to us in a way that we would understand and believe.
The angel Gabriel revealed God's grace to Mary through the child that would be born to her named Jesus. But he also went on to explain how God's grace would fulfill all of God's promises. The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, because you have found favor with God." He's repeating this idea that Mary was a recipient of grace. She was highly favored because she had been given God's grace, but now God was going to give her grace upon grace. He was assuring her that there was no reason for panic or fear, that the angel was not there to deliver a death sentence, but the angel was there to deliver God's grace and promise of eternal life.
The Virgin Mary would soon conceive and give birth to a son, Gabriel said. Six months prior to this, Gabriel had told Zachariah that his wife Elizabeth would bear him a son, and he was to name this son John. Now, the same angel was telling Mary that she would conceive and give birth to a son, but there's no mention of a human father. Gabriel is not here appearing to Joseph and encouraging him to go and have relations with Mary. Instead, he's flipping the script. He's appearing to Mary and saying that she will conceive a son.
This message perplexed her. She didn't understand how this would happen. But Gabriel went on before addressing her inevitable question. He told Mary that this son would be called Jesus in verse 31. Contrary to Jewish custom, whereby the father would name his children, the angel said Mary would give Jesus his name. His name came from the Hebrew word Yeshua, which means Jehovah saves. After hundreds of years of silence since the prophet Malachi, God was sending his son Jesus to fulfill God's promises and remind God's people that his grace was still at work.
And Gabriel continued saying Jesus would be great in verse 32. This means that he would display the glory of God in human flesh. He would not simply be an incredible man or a man above other men because he distinguished himself humanly, but he would be exceptional. He would be extraordinary, powerful, and one of a kind because he would be God himself in the flesh. Furthermore, the angels said that Jesus would be the son of the most high. This is why I said that he was the son of God in the flesh. There was none higher than God the Father. And Jesus would be his son rather than Joseph's son.
But Gabriel also declared Jesus' authority. He says the Lord will give him the throne of his father David, verse 32. Mary's child, the son of God, Jesus, would rule from the throne of David forever and ever. God was sending this savior to rule his people. And it says he will reign over Jacob's descendants forever and his kingdom will never end. As the Hallelujah Chorus captures it, Jesus would be the king of kings and the lord of lords forever and ever. Amen.
That what God had told him would be difficult. So he asked Gabriel a question. He said, "How can I be sure of what you are telling me is true?" Zachariah wanted proof of Gabriel's promise. He didn't wonder how this might happen, but he wondered if it was going to happen. Mary, for her part, hearing all these incredible appellations dedicated to God who was in her womb, marveled at this. And she wondered not so much if it would happen, but how it would happen.
While Zachariah expressed unbelief in the presence of this angelic messenger, Mary demonstrated childlike faith. She heard Gabriel's incredible promises and she wondered how she would conceive this extraordinary human being without having had sexual relations. So Gabriel answered her question. The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you so that the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God. The Spirit of God and the power of God the Father Most High moved upon Mary. And his presence was with this young virgin and his supernatural power enabled her to conceive a child, all without a human father.
So when we think of the incarnate Son of God, we realize that without this human father, He was not given the sin nature of other human beings. He would be the Holy One, Gabriel says in verse 35, without sin or even the capacity to sin. Though he would be born through a sinful woman, He himself would be sinless. That is, Jesus would be fully God and fully human. He had these two natures completely undivided in one person. This is called the hypostatic union. Jesus' two natures, his human and his divine, are inseparable. He's fully God and fully man through all of eternity. During his incarnation, Jesus sometimes operated with human limitations.
And at other times, he demonstrated his deity. But Jesus is both God and man. And he is completely without sin. He does not have a sin nature. He cannot sin. His name means Jehovah saves. He came from a human being because God the Father made him a human being, made him incarnate. He was able to identify with our suffering, though remain without sin. He faced temptation just as we do, and yet did not sin. And ultimately, Jesus would come and live his life completely free of sin. And he would give his life as a sacrifice to pay the penalty that we deserve for our sins, because our sins are many, but his mercy is more. Joseph did not hear about any of this until Gabriel appeared to him after the third month of Mary's pregnancy. Again, it's noteworthy that Gabriel appeared to Zachariah and not Elizabeth, and now he appears to Mary and not Joseph. But God did not leave Mary alone with Gabriel's declaration. The angel directed Mary to her elderly relative Elizabeth, who was already six months pregnant with John. It says in verse number 36. If God had given Baron Elizabeth a child, then Mary could definitely expect Jesus to arrive just as Gabriel foretold. So Gabriel concluded his visit with a simple promise, for no word of God will ever fail. While it may have seemed absolutely humanly impossible for an elderly woman to be six months pregnant, and while it certainly seemed impossible for a young virgin to conceive a child, Gabriel declares with God everything is possible. Gabriel assured Mary that God would fulfill every word of his promises according to his divine grace, that there was nothing that would be left undone, nothing that he was incapable of because he is the sovereign God of Israel and the sovereign God over his creation. Mary responded to Gabriel with simple faith. She said, verse 38, I am the Lord's servant. And this word translated servant actually means slave. Mary was submitting herself to her master's will. May your word to me be fulfilled. May these promises that never fail come to be. And Mary desired for God's will to be done in her life. And her response illustrates her faith in the absolute sovereignty of God. Mary wanted God's word to direct her life, and she trusted his promises. Gabriel's announcement of Mary's divine conception and Jesus' virgin birth, sometimes called the Annunciation, ultimately point us to the grace of God. God the Father, in his amazing grace for human beings, kept every promise that he made to his people, and he fulfilled his covenant in the person and work of his son, Jesus. Jesus is our promised savior and Lord. And the Apostle Paul captures it like this in Ephesians chapter 4. But because of his, it's actually Ephesians chapter 2, but because of his great love for us, God who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our transgressions. It is by grace you have been saved and God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. The grace of God reminds us that God fulfills all of his promises. We can believe Jesus Christ and we can share the good news of Jesus Christ. As we gather with family and friends at Christmas, there will be some who have rejected Jesus. Perhaps they were raised alongside you and they were raised in a Christian home. But in their adult years, they've drifted and walked away from Christ and his church. Perhaps others have not only drifted, but they've denied and rejected Jesus and the faith of their youth. And that no doubt brings heartache and pain to us as we think about our loved ones. But I want to encourage you again that as you go into the Christmas season, you can speak the hope of Christ without a huge Bible and without having to go through a 10-point outline of the gospel. But you can speak it by your countenance and the words you say about Christ. You can speak it in the way you live your life and base your life on God's promises and the way that you trust Jesus with all the difficulties and all the hardships. And ultimately, you can bear witness to the gospel of Jesus Christ because you can show that you are forgiven of your sin, that you no longer live in guilt or shame or fear, but you now live in the freedom found in forgiveness. I want to encourage you to offer that same forgiveness to loved ones who've heard it a million times or people who are hearing it for the first time. And in either case, God will work according to his sovereign grace to open the eyes and the ears of some so that they will see and hear the gospel and believe Jesus to be their savior. We can receive the grace of God based on his promises because God fulfills all of his promises.
Promises Fill Us With Grace
And the second theme that I want you to see in this passage this morning is that God's promises fill us with his grace. God's promises fill us with his grace. So, in other words, God acts graciously on us and then he makes us gracious.
In the aftermath of Gabriel's sudden and abrupt visit to Mary, she immediately picked up and got ready to go visit her cousin Elizabeth. It says in verse number 39, she got ready and hurried to a town in the hill country of Judea. Mary wanted to see Elizabeth and share what Gabriel had told her. She had to tell someone. This was incredible news. Who could she trust with this message? Who would listen and not question? Who would understand and not think she was crazy?
So Mary went to Elizabeth because Gabriel had told her about Elizabeth. And this was no small undertaking in that time. Mary lived well north of Jerusalem in the remnants of the northern kingdom of Israel. And Elizabeth lived south of Jerusalem in the hill country of Judea. And Mary would have to travel several days in order to cover the ground necessary to connect with Elizabeth. And apparently, she traveled without Joseph. But she probably went with some relatives or others rather than traveling alone as a female in this culture.
But when she finally reached the destination, it says in verse 56, she stayed with Elizabeth for three months. Before she would return home, it's likely that she was there at the birth of John the Baptist and then she went back to Joseph. Mary's itinerary and her intentions here show her faith in God. She allowed God's promises to fill her with grace and to shape her decisions. Rather than go to Joseph and initiate sexual relations, like Zachariah must have done with Elizabeth, Mary traveled over 80 miles away from home and spent nearly three months away from her close relatives, including her future husband. It would have been physically impossible for Mary to become pregnant by Joseph on this timeline.
When we believe God's promises like Mary, God enables us to live contrary to our natural tendency to manipulate circumstances and manipulate people. God gives us supernatural grace to trust him, even when our circumstances may not make sense to us and when people around us question us or doubt us. But unlike Abraham, who took God's promises into his own hands and impregnated his wife's handmaid, Mary waited for God to intervene. Mary trusted that God would somehow impregnate her in a way that fulfilled Gabriel's promises.
And as Mary traveled, I'm sure she pondered the words that had been spoken to her. And she anticipated how she would share this with Elizabeth and Zachariah and what she might learn from them, not yet knowing all that they had experienced with Gabriel. And as Mary walked across the threshold of Elizabeth and Zachariah's house, she must have been not only excited to see them and relieved that the journey was over, but then she was amazed at something incredible that happened. The baby boy that was inside Elizabeth's womb leapt for joy. And Elizabeth herself was filled with the Holy Spirit.
Apparently, John's in Utoro movement coincided with Mary's arrival in their household. And she served as the first, or John served as the first witness of Christ's coming, the first announcer that the Messiah was here. John's physical reaction inside the womb fulfilled what Gabriel had told his father, Zachariah. Remember verse 15, he said, he, John, will be filled with the Holy Spirit even before he's born. The Spirit of God prompted John to recognize the presence of Jesus and affirm Mary's supernatural pregnancy. In other words, John was announcing Mary is currently pregnant, that she has arrived with the Messiah in her womb.
And God would fill Elizabeth with his Spirit so that she could affirm Jesus' work in Mary. Elizabeth, whose husband was unable to speak until the birth of their son, was now speaking for the whole family. And she spoke in a loud voice, it says. She was excited, exuberant, talking fast and talking with passion so that everyone would hear what she had to say. And again, this was unusual because this would have been something that the man of the house was supposed to do. But here under the Spirit's leading, Elizabeth was doing it. And she was announcing that the Messiah of Israel, the Son of God and her Lord, was here.
As she declared these things, she at least highlighted four things. She first blessed Mary, saying, blessed are you among women. She was telling Mary that she was blessed because she would give birth to the Son of God. And then she blessed Jesus. She said, blessed is the child that you will bear. The Spirit of God had revealed to Elizabeth that Mary's baby was the promised Messiah. Jesus was going to be a blessing to all other people. And third, Elizabeth blessed herself or recognized her own blessing by saying, why am I so favored that the mother of my Lord should visit me? Elizabeth recognized the significance of Mary's visit. She was in the presence of the promised Son of God, even though he was still in the womb of his mother.
And fourth, Elizabeth blessed Mary's faith. She said, blessed is the one who believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her. Elizabeth blessed Mary for believing God's promises. This is why she acted in the way that she did. And by implication, Elizabeth is blessing everyone thereafter who believes in Jesus.
Mary's belief in the promises of God filled her with his grace. She believed Gabriel's divine message to her would be fulfilled, even when she didn't understand exactly how it was going to happen. And she put her faith into immediate action, going to Elizabeth to spend time with her. She left Joseph in Galilee, demonstrated that she trusted God's incredible promises. And that comes out crystal clear in the song that she sings next. And we'll be covering that in the Christmas Eve service.
But for the next three months, Mary stayed with Elizabeth in Judea. And both women watched their bodies change through the different stages of pregnancy. They probably discussed Gabriel's promises and they repeated them to one another and discerned them and dissected them. And they anticipated what their boys would be like, what John would do, and how Jesus would be. And they rejoiced in the coming Savior. They praised God for his mighty deeds and they let God's promises fill them with his grace.
The promises of God always produce grace in our lives. Elizabeth could have found multiple reasons to be jealous against Mary. Why would this teenager show up at her house with exciting news about her mysterious pregnancy when Elizabeth was the one who had suffered for years unable to have children? Why would God give this teenager the son of God, the promised Messiah, instead of an elderly woman with more experience serving God? There were so many angles that Elizabeth could have doubted, questioned, or even just been petty.
But that was not her response. Instead of jealousy or resentment, Elizabeth expressed genuine joy for Mary and her baby Jesus. How do you respond when God sends his blessing on someone else? When God fills us with his grace and we grasp all that he has done for us, we can rejoice with other people when they receive God's blessings. If your life is consistently marked by envy, jealousy, or a critical spirit, then you probably have not received the grace of God for salvation. Because the promises of God give us joy, give us contentment, and give us the ability to celebrate God's work in the life of others.
Have you ever been in a situation where you thought, "Boy, that person is crazy. I don't know if God could possibly save them"? All of us know somebody, whether they're in our family or whether there's somebody that we've worked with or somebody that's just an acquaintance or someone we have passed by, that we've said, "That person seems past the point of being possible for God to save." And yet God can save them. And that is the point of the gospel, is that we were the people that were beyond saving. And yet God chose to save us.
When we receive the gospel and believe the promises that Gabriel said about Jesus, then we become filled with the grace of God and we become imminently gracious. Paul says it this way in Philippians 2: "Therefore, if you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any common sharing in the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and one mind. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility, value others above yourselves, not looking to your own interest, but each of you to the interest of others."
The stories of Elizabeth and Mary illustrate what Paul wrote here. Their grace-given selflessness demonstrated their firm belief in God and their hope in God's promises. God chose both of these women and he filled them with his glorious grace. And the promises of God made Elizabeth and Mary gracious toward one another, gracious toward their husbands, and grace-giving to the world.
The promises of God fill us with his grace and make us gracious. I pray that we are a church that is increasingly marked by this kind of graciousness, that we would believe the gospel of Jesus Christ. That we would cling to the grace of the gospel and that we would become a gracious people that warmly and urgently invite other people to believe Jesus. What we would never want to be is a church that is critical, self-righteous, or condescending. That is not a church that honors God. I don't believe we are that, but I want us to be a church that shows forth the grace of God more and more because that is what attracts people to the gospel.
It's not our presentation or our winning personalities, it's the power of God revealed through broken sinners like us, people that are not worthy of being saved. That God, for the mystery of his providence, has chosen to save people who were condemned in their sin who have now been rescued so that we can have eternity in heaven.
Receiving Grace Through Promises
If we believe the gospel of Jesus Christ, then we ought to be the most gracious people of all and passionately invite others to believe him with us. As we conclude this passage this morning, I want us to be reminded that we can receive the grace of God because God keeps his promises, and you can stake your life on it.
Let's pray. God, we come to you this morning mindful of your incredible grace. Thank you for being a covenant-keeping God who fulfilled all your promises in Jesus.
And Father, we're grateful that the virgin birth assures us of Jesus' deity and his sinlessness so that we can have hope in the Son of God who is our deliverer. And Father, if there are any here this morning that have not believed this gospel, I pray that by your grace you would grant them the eyes to see their sin and help them to be given the grace of repentance and faith so they can turn from their sin and trust you.
And God, for those of us here who have been saved, help us to never lose sight of the wonder of the gospel. Help us to become more and more full, filled by your grace, and more and more gracious in the way we live our lives so that we can be a compelling witness to the transforming power of the gospel. And we pray all this in Jesus' mighty name. Amen.