Conceiving a Miracle - The Miracle of Christmas

Hey, I'm Pastor Steve Hole.

I want to empower you today to walk in your true identity as a worshiper and warrior.

Today, embrace the power of God's Word and the Holy Spirit.

Welcome to the Born for War podcast.

You know, in thinking about Christmas, this idea of Mary conceiving a Messiah has always struck me as a beautiful metaphor of God conceiving miracles in our lives.

That you may not think about this, but you could be pregnant with a miracle.

You're not supposed to say pregnant from the pulpit, okay?

But conceiving, conceiving a miracle is how God works.

In other words, it's pretty, pretty rare that you just walk into a situation and a miracle happens randomly.

That's, I mean, it's great when it happens, but that's so rare.

What the way the MO of God seems to be that he conceives something in you.

He puts something in you where you begin to pray or you begin to seek the Lord, and then there's usually a period of time of no results, nothing happening.

But you keep believing, and then God shows up.

It seems to be his way of work.

And the Jesus story of his birth is not altogether different than how God conceives miracles in our lives.

And we kind of have a fourth quarter God.

Have you ever thought about that?

That we have a fourth quarter God.

You know, on Friday.

But but we sort of have a fourth quarter God.

I just wrote down a few real quick ones here.

The Exodus from Egypt.

An amazing fourth quarter escape.

The Red Sea crossing, last-minute miracle, man, came out of nowhere.

The seventh time marching around Jericho.

David and Goliath in the Valley of Elah.

Elijah against the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel.

Fourth quarter, man.

Fourth quarter.

Hezekiah cries out for deliverance against the Assyrians, and they come out and they've all been wiped out in the fourth quarter.

Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace.

Daniel in the lion's den.

So we have a fourth quarter God.

The problem is that a lot of us we quit in the second or third quarter.

We just give up, it'll never happen.

Because you've never experienced a miracle or you've experienced so few in your life, you don't have the faith to keep pressing in and pushing through.

I'm hoping that this Christmas season, by the time we get to Christmas Eve, you've heard enough sermons by me about the miraculous.

That you're ready in the coming year, 2025, to believe God for some things that are in your heart that God wants to do.

That word by the angel to Mary, by which the angel says, okay, with God all things are possible, you would start to believe that.

Now I know probably nine out of ten of you in this room already believe that, but I hope I can make it even more personal to you that some of the things you may have given up on might be resurrected to believe God in 2025 for him to show up and do a miraculous work.

And you know, the greatest story, the greatest story of all time, as far as a fourth quarter God, is um the cross.

So you've got the number one dark cheerleader, Satan, rejoicing at Calvary, pumped up, excited, took God out, had him crucified, and then the resurrection, what we call Easter, fourth quarter, the Father resurrects the Son, and the revolution begins.

The great kingdom of God revolution begins.

So I want us to stand right now, and I have kind of a fourth quarter saying or motto or declaration that we use here, and we call it the Road Declaration, if that could come up.

There it is.

Wholeheart Declaration.

We haven't done this in about a month or two.

Would you hold up your Bibles?

If you have your Bibles with you, would you hold those up?

And if you believe what it says, then say it with us.

Let's say it with gusto together.

This is a declaration of wholehearted devotion to Christ.

I'm growing to love Jesus with all of my heart.

I'm building my life on the Word of God.

I am building in the life of the Word of God.

I'm trusting in the power of the Holy Spirit.

I am trusting in the power of the Holy Spirit.

I'm learning to live a courageous life.

And I will shine the light of Christ in my family and in my community.

I will shine the light of Christ.

Alright.

Amen.

You can be seated.

So let's pick up our story, the great Jesus story, fourth quarter in Israel's history.

So just 2,000 years ago, the iron rule of Rome is over.

Palestine.

God's going to choose a virgin girl from an obscure village and an obscure country, an obscure family to birth a miracle.

You might jot this down.

God always uses obscure people from obscure backgrounds to birth amazing miracles.

God always uses obscure people from obscure backgrounds to birth amazing miracles.

So God is still in the business, I think it's his MO, of taking regular people, ordinary people, common people, who don't have great pedigree, maybe have no phenomenal educational background.

He uses those who do too, but I'd say for most of the time, those with the most to boast about are not willing to humble themselves under the God of the universe.

So God's not really interested in our pedigree because those people who have pedigree aren't interested in him.

But God's interested in people who will seek him, people who have faith to trust him, and that's usually people like you guys.

It's like us.

We're just regular folks that need a transformation.

Have enough faith, even if it's just a mustard seed level of faith.

We have enough faith to say, God, would you show up in this because I know I don't have what it takes.

So there's a certain level of humility.

And so the so the Christmas story is like that.

So turn in your Bibles to Luke chapter 1.

Luke 1 · chapter mention

And over the month, we're going to go through the entire, well, most of.

Probably the Luke account is the one I'll use the most, but the Lucan account is the most specific on some of the details of the what we now call the Christmas story.

But look at Luke 1.

Just look at verse 26.

Luke 1, 26.

Now in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth.

So Galilee is in the northern part of Israel.

Even today you have Galilee.

And Nazareth is kind of forgotten in the Christmas story, and there's a reason why.

It was probably just a couple hundred people that lived there.

There's only 57,000 people that live there today.

It's a pretty small town in the hills there of Judea.

I mean in Galilee, near the Sea of Galilee, in that area.

Kind of a forgettable town, still is.

I've been there many times, and it's pretty insignificant.

But this is where it all starts, and that's why I said it's an obscure village, an obscure town, in an obscure country.

Israel's so small, and it's just as small as it was.

The only time it was actually of any significant size, and that would still be considered small by world standards, was under the kingship of David when he grew the kingdom.

But it's pretty small there, and it's under the rule of Rome.

Nazareth was so small at the time that Joseph, who is a carpenter, would have not been able to get his tools in Nazareth.

He would have had to go four miles north to Sephorus to even get tools for his trade.

So very insignificant town.

Everybody's there, pretty poor in that village at that time.

It's 70 miles north of Jerusalem.

So that's Nazareth.

Verse 27.

To a virgin, and by the way, virgin in our understanding of the Greek is virgin.

So the reason I say that is because my dad and I, my dad coming a neo-orthodox, kind of a liberal Lutheran background as a pastor, we got into it one time around Christmas.

And he said, virgin means a young girl.

And it can.

It can mean a young girl.

But these are the kind of things that the liberal theological community love to play with your head with.

Okay.

It doesn't, the the the commentators, the the translators could have said to a young girl, but for some reason they said virgin.

And the reason they said virgin is because he's talking about a virgin.

Okay?

And the reason that we got into it is because this is a huge theological point.

You don't even know that one word is a huge theological point.

Nothing else about Christmas.

Nothing about the cross, what happened at the cross, can we get away from the fact that it was a virgin birth.

Now I'm not going to go into it here.

It's not even in my notes.

I don't even know why I'm talking about it here.

But I was looking at it just now.

Because think about this.

This is really the first supernatural act that's about to happen that's going to birth Jesus, that's going to lead to Calvary.

So this is huge right here.

If this didn't happen, if Jesus is just born the regular way, the normal way, then he's not divine.

Think about this for a second.

So he's born of a virgin.

So God chose the human, the humanity side of Jesus comes from the fact that he was birthed in a human way.

But the seed came from the Holy Spirit.

So he's fully God and fully divine.

You realize how important that is?

This is a huge point theologically.

If I was asked to do a debate with a liberal theologian, this is where I would go.

I would camp here.

I wouldn't camp on the resurrection.

I wouldn't camp on the cross.

I wouldn't camp on the miracles that Jesus did or divine healing or any of that.

I would camp right here.

Because this is the defining.

If he's born of a virgin, which is prophesied a thousand years before, in Micah, in Isaiah, then it's already a deal breaker, folks.

It's already a deal breaker that Jesus was who he said he was.

Again, I wasn't even going to go into that, but I just felt like I needed to.

And I won't even do it in the second and third service.

I'm just going to do it with you guys.

Okay, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph.

So his name in the village would have not been Joseph, but Yosef of the house of David, the virgin's name was Mary.

So her name is Miriam.

So she's Miriam.

So these are just regular people.

That's my point here.

These are regular people with regular jobs in a regular village.

The word we might use is ordinary.

If there was a Miss Ordinary at Nazareth High School, Yosef and Miriam would have won.

And they're betrothed to be married, that means they're going to be engaged to be married, and this would be a time where love and romance were not a part of the relationship.

And having lived for as long as they did in Japan, that's still true in many parts of the world.

It's called an arranged marriage.

But just like Japan in modern times, back in more ancient times, 2,000 years ago, they the parents cared about their kids, right?

So they wanted a happy marriage because a happy marriage makes a happy family, which means that you're happy.

So they knew what was going on.

They were watching the eye contact at the well.

They were watching at the festivals and the family unions because we believed that Yosef and Miriam were distant relatives.

And you can imagine a small village like Nazareth with as few people as I've mentioned, a few hundred, a lot of people related to each other.

But I think they the the history we know of arranged marriages at that time in Israel was that they noticed that there was a love or there was an affection or there was a friendship that was being developed.

And so when Yosef went to his parents, he's probably 25 years old.

He has worked a job as a carpenter.

Probably his dad was a carpenter.

He was apprenticing with his dad.

And he had built up enough finances to have a house, probably connected to his family, we believe.

A lot of connections that houses were built right, you know, in sort of contiguous with each other.

And he was raised.

So he's probably 25 years old, and Miriam is about 15.

He's 15 or 16 years old.

And the way it worked was Joseph, uh Joseph would have gone to his dad, told him his dad, then communicated with Miriam's dad, and they began to develop what we call the arrangement.

So the arrangement for the betrothal began that way.

So ordinary.

Everything so far is really, really ordinary, folks.

Okay.

You may not think you're ordinary, but you are.

Okay?

You just are.

Sorry.

You're not ordinary to me.

I think you're wonderful.

I think you're awesome.

But in the vast spectrum of things, I don't think we have any kings or queens or presidents here.

Praise God.

And having come in, the angel said to her, So an angel shows up.

I'm not going to deal with angels today.

That's a whole nother topic, but rejoice, highly favored one.

The Lord is with you.

Now, underlying this line, this is the big divisive theological denominational line.

Blessed are you among women.

Uh-oh.

That's a big, big phrase right there.

Did this angel have any idea what he was saying?

Blessed are you among women, because this has been the big divider.

But when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying and considered what manner of reading this was.

Then the angel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.

So obviously Mary's afraid.

Everybody who meets an angel in the Bible is afraid.

So any of you that have said, if I could only meet an angel, you're a nut.

You don't even know what you're talking about.

Angels freak people out.

Angels are are, by the way, there's no female angels in the Bible.

Okay.

So an angel is male always, and they're and they're evidently massive.

There's something about them that is almost frightening.

Now, some of you, like many of you at the road, have seen angels during worship.

You've seen them up in our rafters and stuff.

And that's um, I've never done, I've never seen them, but you have, and you've told me I saw angels.

It's like, that's great.

But I'm telling you, when you actually meet an angel face to face, it seems in Scripture to be a very fearful, frightening thing.

They're massive.

There's something supernatural, fourth-dimensional about them that is so different that it creates fear.

You see that with Mary, but it's this phrase blessed are you among women.

Now, over the years, strained meanings of the phrase, blessed are you among women, have divided denominations, have divided church movements.

In some church groups, it's like the veneration of Mary is on the level of worship.

In other traditions, more the tradition of maybe your non-denominational churches, evangelical churches, like my background after leaving more of the Lutheran-y background, was we don't even talk about Mary.

And both are too extreme for me.

I think we should honor Mary.

I mean, she was the mother of our Lord.

So she is blessed.

The word is eulogio.

Eulogio is actually the word in the Greek.

And it's a simple, forthright prophecy that Mary will be well spoken of in generations to come.

It's not worship, it's not an over-veneration, but be well spoken of in the generations to come.

That's what the angel is saying.

So she's been identified by God to carry out an assignment.

Now just stop for a moment because all of you in this room have an assignment.

You're gonna have, I'm old enough now to say you'll have many assignments in your life.

You'll not have one.

It's pretty rare if you have one, except for seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be added unto you.

That's an assignment for every believer.

But in the rubric of that calling, there's individual assignments that God has for you.

And in this case, Mary's been giving the assignment that she's going to carry Jesus in her womb.

Now the word eulogio is also found in Ephesians 1:3.

Ephesians 1:3

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us, blessed us, meaning you and me, with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.

So Mary, interesting, Mary is a type of all of us.

All of us are blessed.

Eulogio, where we get the word eulogy.

Usually, like at a memorial service, we say a few good words about someone.

I remember one time I did a, I was asked to come in and do a funeral at a funeral home.

I didn't know this person from anything, but they needed a pastor to do it.

I've never said yes to this again.

This was early on in my career, but I I went in and I mean I walked in and it the the atmosphere was demonic.

I mean, it was just unbelievably dark.

I've never been a And I'm supposed to say something.

And I'm like, I don't.

So I'm asking people, and nobody could say anything good about this guy.

So I just preached the gospel.

And when I preached the gospel, it was the worst experience.

It ranks up there in the top 10.

I mean, everybody's like, You could tell everybody wished they were somewhere else.

I should have said, hey, let's bring in some KFC and feed you guys, you know.

Obviously, you don't want to be here.

But all of you who have a relation with God, God speaks well of you.

He says, Blessed are you by the Lord, God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

He's blessed us, all of us in this room, with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.

That's crazy.

And if you read the rest of Ephesians 1, he lists what those spiritual blessings are.

In other words, if you want it, you can get it.

It's there, it's available.

God blesses all of us.

Same word for Mary.

He would say over you and I in this room, all of us have been blessed.

All of us are highly favored.

All of us have the opportunity, you're going to leave behind it a legacy.

Everybody here is going to leave behind a legacy.

Either it's going to be a really good legacy or a moderate one or a horrible one.

But everybody leaves a legacy.

So when I hear people say, leave a legacy, I'm like, well, what kind?

So I want to leave a good legacy.

I'm hoping and praying that when my days are over and it's a memorial service, that my kids and others will have something good to say.

Not that I, you know, I was always, Dad was always right.

I just want to say he was wrong most of the time, but he always thought he was right.

Thank you, you know.

Or, you know, that that I listened, that I cared about people and I loved them and gave my heart to them.

So we're all going to leave a legacy because you're highly favored.

Everybody say that.

I am highly favored.

That's what Ephesians says.

You're highly favored, men and women.

The miracle of Mary is possible with everybody in this room.

You can see, you can conceive a miracle in your life if you respond as Mary did.

So look at verse 31.

And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a son, and shall call his name Jesus.

Yesus.

He will be great and will be called the Son of the Highest, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David.

He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.

So Mary's conceiving the greatest miracle of all time.

She didn't expect it.

She wasn't looking for it, but it was a supernatural work of God.

And she is Miss Ordinary.

So God wants to make every one of us in this room pregnant with a miraculous.

God wants you pregnant with a miraculous.

What's on your heart?

What is it that you long for?

What is it that you're crying out to God about?

Maybe nobody knows except you.

Well, I want to challenge you to hold on to that prayer as we go into the new year.

And some of you are going to be into some big, big, big changes in the new year.

Some expected, some unexpected.

But God is in the business of reclaiming the lost, forgiving the sinful, setting the captives free.

He has a kingdom.

What does it say?

Without end.

It goes on from generation to generation.

All the miracles in the Bible point to Christ, the Redeemer, in our lives.

Verse 34.

Then Mary said to the angel, and this is operable for us, how can this be since I don't know a man?

So she looks at it and goes, I don't see how this is going to happen.

But remember, she's just a young girl.

This is where hey Dad.

Let's read on in the passage.

Because Mary says, How can this be since I do not know a man?

And Dad had some funny excuse for that.

And I said, Dad, these liberal theologians are messing with your head, man.

And it's it's hurting your faith.

And I think he's changed a lot because of some of these conversations we've had through the years.

And the angel uh answered and said to her, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the highest will overshadow you.

Therefore also the Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God.

Verse 36.

Now indeed, Elizabeth, your relative, has also conceived a son in her old age, and this is now the sixth month for her who is called barren.

For with God nothing will be impossible.

Circle that, underline that, highlight that.

That's the key word of the month of December here at the row.

For with God nothing will be impossible.

Then Mary said, Behold the maidservant of the Lord, let it be according to your word.

And the angel departed from her.

So, so Mary makes a choice to trust God in his miraculous plan, this virgin who's never been with a man, that God's going to do something that's never been done in history before or since.

Could it be that what God wants to do in our lives has never been done before like God wants to do it in your life?

Because you're unique.

We're all unique.

God wants to do a unique set, not one, but I think a set of miracles in the new year in your life.

God's way of the miraculous is this.

God speaks, it's conceived by the Holy Spirit, you become pregnant with a miracle.

God's way of the miraculous is this.

God's MO is God speaks, it's conceived by the Holy Spirit, and you become pregnant with a miracle.

So, conception of a miracle in 2025.

Can I give you three quick thoughts and then we're done?

Number one, seek God and hear the right voice.

Seek God and hear the right voice.

Seek God and hear the right voice.

Seek God.

That means with effort.

Guess what?

That means a change in your schedule.

That means that you make time to seek God, I think, every day.

You make time to seek God every day.

I think early morning's the best.

I actually think early morning is the best time to drink water.

It's the best time to work out.

It's the best time to seek God.

Then you're done.

See, at the core of Steve Holt is I'm lazy.

And so I figured out that white, and I my mom used to say, you're amazing, because we I told she she told me, eat your greens.

Things like asparagus and broccoli, first thing.

I figured out I'm gonna eat that the first thing.

And one time I remember we were at we were at these people's house.

Mom tells the story back when she was alive that I ate up these green beans, and the people we were eating with thought I must love green beans.

So they kept saying, Oh, you'd like some more green beans, and then mom had to intervene and go, no, he just does that.

It's just a thing that he does.

But to seek God first thing in the morning, to start your day seeking God, sets your whole day.

I think it sets the template.

So I'd encourage you to open your word, maybe even put on some music, but seek God, seek him, and then hear the right voice.

There's demonic voices.

I've been a pastor now for 30 years, a missionary for 10, so I guess it's 40 years in my career, and I've heard some really weird stuff about what God has told people to do.

I said to so many people, bro, sorry, but you're not hearing the right voice.

What?

I know, I mean, I I knew that was from God.

I said, that is so unbiblical, that is so incorrect, that's a demonic voice, or it's your voice.

It's amazing what your desires can do to cloud the true voice of God.

So first, seek God, listen for the right voices.

Well, how do I know the right voice?

Well, talk to godly people.

Tell them, you know, talk to them about it.

Ask godly people, be in the church, ask people in the church that you trust, mature people.

Ask me, ask Liz, ask any of our staff, you know, about some things.

We'll give you wisdom on that.

Number two, look at verse 35.

The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the highest will overshadow.

Number two, to the miraculous is be baptized and filled with the Holy Spirit.

Be baptized in and baptized by the Holy Spirit.

The miracle is not you through the power of positive men all thinking.

The miracle is the Holy Spirit working in you.

It's a partnership.

It's a partnership.

And so are you filled and are you baptized in the power of the Holy Spirit?

And then thirdly and lastly, I love verse 37.

My favorite verse at Christmas is far with God, nothing will be impossible.

I want to, I was telling the team here before in prayer that this is gonna be my theme next week.

With God, nothing will be impossible.

So thirdly and lastly, expect a miracle.

Expect it.

It's interesting in verse 38.

Look at verse 38, and I want you to get your pen out, and I want you to circle this word.

Mary said, Behold, the maid servant of the Lord, let it be to me according to your word.

So circle word there or underline it, and then right on the side, which I have in my Bible, Rhema.

Rhema.

That's the word Rhema for word.

It means revelation or the speaking word.

So logos, and there's some debate on this, but I'm gonna tell you my thoughts on it.

Logos is the spoken written word.

But when the scriptures come alive to you and give you revelation about something in your heart, it becomes rhema.

And in this case, Mary, or I should say Luke, who wrote about Mary's experience, you chose the word not logos, but chose the word rhema, this revelation.

She got a revelation from God that he was going to do that.

Isn't that amazing?

So expect a miracle.

Expect that God will do it.

That's that revelatory, insightful trust in God that you say, well, I don't have that.

Well, I'm telling you, if you seek God, you're asking him for a miracle, you're spending time with him, God will give you.

God will give you that revelation, God will give you that expectation in your life.

Thank you for listening to the Foreign for War podcast.

We hope today's message has empowered you to make a difference in your world.

To connect with Pastor Steve's sermons, books, and blog, visit Steve Holtonline.org.

God bless.