When God Does the Impossible: Mary's Bold 'Yes'

Merry Christmas! Welcome to the Radio Ministry of Dillingham Moravian Church.

My name is Pastor Simon and we are so thankful that God has led us to worship

the King of Kings together this morning.

Over the years of our marriage, Abigail and I have had surgeries where the surgeon

in the hospital or clinic staff used anesthesia to put us out.

We've even had our children put under for teeth surgery.

When patients like us go through these surgeries and they knock us unconscious

using drugs, there is a lot of trust that the patient has to have in the doctor,

in the anesthesiologist, and in the surgery staff.

Literally, we put our lives in their hands.

We are trusting them to do their absolute best to make sure that we wake up

alive and to take care of us the best of their ability to do so.

The heart of a Christian life is faith in God.

As Christians, we belong entirely to God, and we trust Him to look after us

as we surrender to the will of God, no matter the circumstances we are in.

Let's pray. O Heavenly Father, we thank You for Your Word, Your truth to us.

Thank You that we get the privilege and honor it is to study what You have communicated to us.

Teach us today. Open up our hearts and minds through your spirit to be able

to know and understand you,

be able to have an intimate relationship with you, and to grow in oneness with you.

In your precious Son's name, Jesus Christ, I pray. Amen.

Last week, in Luke 1, verse 26-33, we learned that God, through the angel Gabriel,

Luke 1:26–33

gave His heavenly ultrasound announcement and decreed that the baby that would

be born from Mary will be God,

the prophesied Savior, and the baby will also be great and the Son of the Most High.

Mary's baby will also be a human from the line of David, so that Jesus would

be the anointed king over Israel whose reign will never end.

Let's continue studying this passage to find out further what God through the

angel announced and what Mary's response was.

Turn with me today to Luke 1, verse 34 to 38. Luke 1, verse 34 to 38.

Luke 1:34–38 Luke 1:34–38

Mary said to the angel, How can this be, since I am a virgin?

The angel answered and said, the Holy Spirit will come upon you,

and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.

And for that reason the Holy Child shall be called the Son of God.

And behold, even your relative Elizabeth has also conceived a son in her old

age, and she who is called barren is now in her sixth month.

For nothing will be impossible with God.

And Mary said, Behold, the bond-slave of the Lord, may it be done to me according to your word.

The angel departed from her.

I see three overarching truths that are absolutely crucial to our faith in Christ.

The first truth is that the Trinity worked together to conceive the Son of God in Mary.

For those living in the Bristol Bay area or on the coast of Alaska,

we know the importance of commercial fishing to our economy and our way of life.

On a drift boat or at a set net site, every member of the crew is important and valuable.

Each crew member, including the captain, works hard at their assigned roles

in order to bring in and deliver the catch of fish to be processed.

The value of every crew member is seen when one isn't available or isn't working,

then the whole crew isn't nearly as effective as they would be with a full operating crew.

Granted, this is not a perfect illustration since we're dealing with God,

however, it gives us an idea of how the Holy Trinity works together to accomplish

their goals, of course, of infinitely more importance.

In Luke 1, verse 34-35, Luke recorded, in verse 34, Mary said to the angel,

Luke 1:34–35

How can this be, since I am a virgin?

The angel answered and said to her, The Holy Spirit will come upon you,

and the power of the Most High will overshadow you, and for that reason the

Holy Child shall be called the Son of God.

The angel promised Mary that in order to conceive in her womb and bear a son,

the Holy Spirit will come upon her and that the power of the Most High will

overshadow her. What was the angel saying?

First of all, the angel was telling Mary that in order to conceive a son without

a man, the Lord Himself will put the child within your womb and it will be His

power that will accomplish this impossible thing.

Also, both the Holy Spirit and the Father, the Most High, are present in this action.

The question is, where then is the Son in this act of God? The Son of God is the baby Jesus.

All three persons of the Trinity are at work here.

One should also notice that the child to be born would be called holy.

The word used for holy meant set apart, consecrated, dedicated.

It refers to the quality of God who is transcendentally distinct.

He is unique. He is majestic, perfect, and pure.

Meaning that the child to be born is set apart from all creation like God is,

who is transcendently distinct or completely unique in His majesty and His perfection

and purity from sin, over and above all life everywhere in every time period.

No one else in all creation is holy like the angel described the child to be, except God.

The psalmist, in Psalm 99, verse 9, sang, Exalt the Lord our God,

Psalms 99:9

and worship at His holy hill, for holy is the Lord our God.

What the angel was prophesying was that the child to be born to Mary is God

Himself, and yet also the child would be God's Son, because the Lord Most High

would impregnate her with an immaculate conception.

There has been and never will be anything like this in human existence.

This was no story of a human like God having relations with a human woman and producing a demigod.

Mary offered no biological material to Jesus. She bore Jesus.

Jesus was completely God. And yet, he also was completely man as well.

This is quite the mystery.

Jesus, in John 3, verse 16, commented on this concept when he wrote,

John 3:16

For God so loved the world that he gave his, and here it is, his only begotten Son,

that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

Jesus used the word only begotten, or one and only, which meant unique,

referring to being radically distinctive and without equal, meaning that there

is no one in all of creation who was and is and will be like Jesus.

Jesus is completely unique, and the reason why Jesus is so unique is because

he is unique in relation to God.

Jesus, the Son of God, is the same in nature and relationship as the Father.

Thus, Jesus is God, come to earth and made human flesh.

How do we as Christians respond to the angel's announcement of Jesus' birth

and identity as God being born in the flesh?

Psalm 99, verse 9 says it correctly, Exalt the Lord our God and worship at His

Psalms 99:9

holy hill, for holy is the Lord our God.

The word used for exalt meant to consider as high above ourselves,

and thus you and I are called to view God in Jesus as always,

the highest above ourselves, and to worship Him alone.

In a world that teaches us to exalt ourselves and to follow our own truths,

and where the individual and whatever we desire is worshipped,

this is a crucial message for us.

To worship God, we must view God as the highest above ourselves.

So far, we were taught that the angel pronounced to Mary that the identity of

the baby to be conceived in her womb would be the Son of God.

I also want you to see that the angel's pronouncement of Elizabeth giving birth

in her old age was the proof that the impossible is true.

As I was researching for this sermon, I came across an article for BBC's Science

Focus magazine recounting 121 impossible facts that are true.

Now I'm going to give you five.

The first fact is that a cloud weighs around a million tons.

A cloud typically has a volume of around

1 kilometer to the

power of 3 And a density of 1.003 kilograms

per meter to the

power of 3 And that's a density that's around

0.4% lower than

the air surrounding it And this is how they are able to float But

these clouds weigh so much A million

tons I never thought that possible The

second crazy fact that is true Is that your brain is constantly eating itself

This process is called phagocytosis Where cells envelop and consume smaller

cells or molecules To remove them from the system And don't worry.

Phagocytosis isn't harmful but it actually helps preserve your gray matter.

And did you know that animals can experience time differently from humans?

To the smaller animals, the world around them moves more slowly compared to humans.

Salamanders and lizards, for example, experience time more slowly than cats and dogs.

This is because the perception of time depends on how quickly the brain can

process incoming information.

The fourth crazy fact is that water might not be wet.

This is because most scientists define wetness as a liquid's ability to maintain

contact with a solid surface, meaning that water itself is not wet,

but can make other objects wet.

The last one, I had trouble believing, but it is true.

Chainsaws were invented for childbirth. It was developed in Scotland in the

late 18th century to help aid and speed up the process of symphysiotomy.

Probably got that wrong. Means the whiting of the pubic cartilage and the removal

of disease-laden bone during childbirth. It wasn't until the start of the 20th

century that we started using chainsaws for wood chopping.

My point is that these facts that I thought were not true actually are true.

They've been proven true through records and scientific processes.

For Mary, the proof that what the angel was saying about baby Jesus,

which is absolutely humanly impossible, was true.

And Elizabeth giving birth in her old age was the proof of that.

The angel continued with his announcements to Mary in Luke 1, verse 36-37.

Luke 1:36–37

And behold, even your relative Elizabeth has also conceived a son in her old

age, and she who is called barren is now in her sixth month.

For nothing would be impossible with God.

From a human perspective, it would be very hard to understand that God Almighty

Almighty could be conceived and born as a human baby from a woman who had never been with a man.

God knew of the difficulty that Mary would have in understanding what God was going to do in her.

So the Lord had the angel Gabriel give Mary proof that God can do the impossible.

The angel foretold that Mary's cousins, Elizabeth, who was normally too old

to have children, had conceived a child and the baby was in his sixth month in Elizabeth's womb.

What can we learn from this truth as Christians?

We can believe that God can do the impossible.

In our modern era of advanced technology and instant information around the

world, we see the impossible being done in movies and TV.

With AI technology all over social media now, I myself have been skeptical about

whether the amazing images that I've watched or seen are actually real.

Problem is, and I believe this is one of Satan's goal, is that the more we are

inundated with the impossible becoming real, the more we're tempted to stop

believing that God can do the impossible.

And yet God Almighty, the great I am, the Lord of this and every other universe,

came down to earth as a human baby,

as the Emmanuel to live amongst us, to be sacrificially killed,

murdered.

For us and rise from the dead so that our blood debt could be paid in order

that we can live together in peace with God?

Do we truly believe and trust that God can do all that that He wants us to do?

Do we believe that God can do the impossible in us and in others?

Mary should rid. This leads us to the second truth that I want to show you in

this passage, that just as Mary did, we are called to believe and surrender

to His will for our lives.

This reminds me of when my boys were toddlers, when they would look up to me

and motion to be picked up.

There was a complete trust in their eyes, that I was their father and I would not drop them.

During that stage, my boys believed that I could do anything.

Now, not so much, but they still trust me.

I'm sharing this illustration because as believers in Christ,

we are called to trust God like a child trusts his father. We are to believe God like Mary did.

In Luke 1, verse 38, Luke recorded, And Mary said, Behold, the slave of the

Luke 1:38

Lord, may it be done to me according to your word.

And the angel departed from her.

I want you to see that Mary responded to the angel's announcement in two ways.

First off, Mary's first response was that she believed and trusted God.

Mary 100% believed God. God told her that she would be the mother of God,

with God as the father, and that child would be the Messiah.

She believed that it would happen regardless of how ridiculous it sounded and

how drastically the consequences of bearing and giving birth to the Son of God would change her life.

Mary had a real but simple faith. In her belief, Mary trusted that God would

take care of her through all the consequences of bearing a seemingly illegitimate

child into the world in a Jewish village,

being shunned by her society, and even possibly stoned for unfaithfulness.

Mary trusted God for all her future with the Son of God.

Secondly, Mary surrendered to God's authority and will over her life.

I want you to see that Mary declared herself to be a bondslave of the Lord.

A bondslave was someone who once was a slave and then was offered freedom,

and then willingly and joyfully committed to be a slave for life to his or her

master out of love for their master.

By declaring herself the Lord's bond slave, Mary was joyfully giving up her

rights over herself and her baby.

In our day, we believe we have our own personal rights in basically everything.

But Mary understood, rightly, that she belonged to God, and that included her

body and all that she was.

Her identity, everything about her, wasn't hers. It was God's.

Let me show you something else. God did not ask Mary for her permission,

and Mary accepted that completely.

Lastly, Mary made herself available to God.

By believing God and accepting and surrendering to God's will for her life,

she was making herself available to the Most High.

There are three truths that we can apply to us as Christ followers.

The first application is that we can believe God in Christ and trust Him with our lives.

I want to impress upon us that salvation from the beginning to end involves faith.

Faith in responding to the grace of Christ, believing in Christ as God and Savior.

Faith in surrendering to Christ, working and ministering in and through us as

we live by faith as a disciple of Christ in the midst of all circumstances.

We believe and trust God's promises in the midst of the challenges that our

families and communities face.

We believe and trust that God has sent His one and only Son to be born,

to live, to be murdered on the cross, and rise again so that we can have true

and everlasting life in Him.

That our blood debt that we owed was paid to the full.

We believe that we are now children of the Most High God.

God has promised that Christ will return and finally save us from His coming

wrath and will make all things new again.

We, you and I, are called to live by faith in these promises of God's Word,

and so many more as we eagerly wait together for Christ's return.

Secondly, we're to remember that regardless of gifts or talents or money,

position, possessions that we have, all that we have and are belongs to God.

We are a bond slave of the Lord.

First of all, because we've been created, and God is the one who really provides

us with our gifts, our talents, and possessions.

But also in Christ's sacrifice of His shed blood for us, Christ bought us body, mind, and soul.

Paul taught the church at Corinth in 1 Corinthians 6, verse 20,

1 Corinthians 6:20

For you have been bought with a price, therefore glorify God in your body.

Even though Christ has freed us from the control of sin, God does not force us to obey his will.

Yet for those who truly love and trust God, we willingly and joyfully embrace

the reality that we are slaves of our wonderful master, Jesus Christ. And he is a good master.

And this means that we listen and obey and accomplish Christ's will,

not just because we were commanded, but because it's our wonderful privilege

to please our gracious Lord.

However, in order to trust and obey the Lord, we have to make ourselves available

to Him, and this availability is surrender.

The lesson we can learn from Mary here is that we do not need to be perfect

or good at everything or have a lot of talent to do God's work.

We only need to be available to surrender to God, and God Almighty will do His

work in us and through us.

What then have we learned today from God? Mary believed the Lord her master

and obeyed the Lord's will, even when the angel's announcement seemed impossible.

Mary believed that she would conceive and give birth to the Son of God.

Even though everything was in the way of belief and the impossible was asked

of her, Mary had faith that God would do what He promised He would do,

and Mary accepted God's mastery over her and trusted Him to take care of her.

I think this is a very powerful message for us here in Bristol Bay as we deal

with death, lives torn apart by addictions, broken relationships,

sickness, the political uncertainty of our country and other nations.

No matter how uncertain, how chaotic or broken life feels, one truth remains the same and is solid.

Jesus Christ is God-made flesh, and He has never failed to accomplish His promises.

Nor will God ever fail to do what He said He will do.

Why can we be completely certain of this truth? Because He has fulfilled all

His promises to this point.

Every one of God's promises was fulfilled, and we can believe Him and do what He asked us to do.

As disciples of Christ, we serve the Almighty and living and true God who spoke and the world began.

The problems, the trials that we are going through now or will go through are

all under the Lord's control.

Can we believe the Lord and do what He asks like Mary did? Let's pray.

Oh, Heavenly Father, we are so grateful for You. Work in us, Lord.

Use us for your ministry, your life here.

May we live incarnationally like your son Jesus did.

Instead of staying where we are comfortable, but may we go out into our community,

into the lives of others, just as Jesus came into our lives and entered into our world.

May we enter into the world of others so that we can share Christ and be an

example of you there, wherever we are. Thank you, Lord.

Help us to trust you and believe in you and surrender to your will in our lives.

In your precious Son's name, Jesus Christ, I pray. Amen.

I'll leave you with a blessing from Romans 15, verse 13.

Romans 15:13

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing so that by

the power of the Holy Spirit, you may abound in hope.

Have a wonderful Sunday. May the Lord bless you.