According To Your Word - Luke 1:26-56

Over in Hays, there was this girl. Believe it or not she was a virgin - named Mary. One day while she was siting in her house. Suddenly this guy with wings - I’m not kidding - walked right in the front door.

Mary was alone in the house and just barely visible in the other room. So the angel - that’s what he was. [No, I’ve never seen one and neither had Mary] . . . Any how, Marry was just barely visible in the other room, so the guy calls out to get her attention, "Hey, you! Get ready to smile. I’ve been sent to tell you that you’ve been pick to receive a free gift! About the biggest gift anyone could have."

It was kind of like the arrival of the Publishers House Giant Sweepstakes guy arriving but he walked in rather than knocked.

Did I tell you that Mary was a virgin because was Christian? This strange guy must have known that because he added, "God is sure with you!"

Now as you can imagine if someone burst through your door telling you how lucky you were for him to be there, and you heard him first, before you even knew he was there or could yet see him, Mary was alarmed! Upset! Even a bit agitated at this stranger who disturbed her.

Dumbfounded, she wondered what he was talking about and what this greeting was and why was this stranger really here!

As he came around the door, his strange appearance only made Mary look even more frightened. So the winged guy quickly said, "Don’t be afraid, Mary!"

How did he know her name? She sure didn’t know his!

"This grace, this very special free gift is from God. He’s been watching your life and loves how you want to and do live right. The kind of right He wills for you, not just some following rules which people have given, which are merely an interpretation of His will, but not an expression of what God really wants."

Whether you have grown up in church or not, especially if you have grown up in church, you can appreciate the difference between rules passed down in the culture and how, the form in which, God wants His will to be live out in the changed world of today.

Anyway, the favor was that May would discover that she was pregnant! That must of caused her to raise an eyebrow at this stranger. Maybe she even have wondered if she was about to be raped.

She would find herself pregnant and the baby would be a boy.

God wanted her to name the baby Joshua, a rather common name, but - - if she had not read the Bible a lot and studied what the name meant, she would have thought this man in wings was really a Looney Tune - - Joshua would become a great man.

Babies conceived out of wedlock, unlike the last few years, were looked down on their whole lives. It used to be a problem in our country, too! Only a few years ago! And did I mention how the mother was treated?

But Joshua, though from an unwed mother, would become really, really great, and instead of being called bad names, he would be called the Son of God Himself.

What’s more this would be the awaited ruler who would reestablish and sit on the parliamentary chair of the hero, his great, great, great - whatever - grandfather David, and become the president of Israel. However, unlike David’s kingdom, Joshua’s kingdom - for he would become king - will never end!

Now that’s a lot to absorb, but Mary was intelligent and wise, not flighty and in your face, so, unconvinced or at least questioning this proclamation, she asked for clarification.

Actually she asked a question to test the veracity of this stranger’s pronouncement. "Hows this going to happen? I’m a virgin and have had sexual contact of any kind, nor will I have sex, until I am married." Of course the idea that she would marry God was biblically impossible and believed only by people who did not know the real God.

The angel knew this was a test of truth, an honest question in response to such a humanly impossible birth. So he answered truthfully though it might have seemed odd. He told Mary something similarly miraculous that she could check out to verify that he was indeed a messenger from God.

"The Spirit of God, the Holy incorruptible spirit of God Himself, will come upon you - though this is unexpected and foreign to the normal course of events for a pregnancy - and His power which is the greatest there is - will envelop you. That’s why your baby will be born holy and be called the Son of God. God - by His power and His spirit will take the place of a sperm in getting you pregnant.

"You think I’m scamming you? Check it out! Your older cousin Betty, who has been unable for decades to get pregnant despite the best efforts of the doctors and her husband, is going to have a child in her old age. In fact she is already six months along.

"For you see, Mary, nothing will be impossible with God which He has spoken."

If God was involved, and He seemed to be, what was Mary to say? Her whole life revolved around learning and living out His will. How could she want anything else now?

"Bring it on," she said. "Look at me. I am the Lord’s servant. "May it be in my life the way you have said!"

However, Mary did not just name it and claim it. Mary put the angel’s message from God to the test. Though it was about a three day trip, Mary went quickly to Betty’s town to verify that her cousin was indeed pregnant.

There Betty’s baby jumped for joy when Mary walked in and Betty asked what brought to her her Lord’s mother and added.. "Blessed is she who has believed that what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished."

And so Mary knew that both words from the Lord were true. Elizabeth was six months pregnant and already Mary herself was also pregnant.

You probably recognized that this story was simply the Announcement of the Angel to Mary only told in a way that placed us within the reality of what was happening - as if we were there rather than merely looking through our colored lenses of tradition and pious interpretation.

The Announcement was dynamic. It was emotional. It was a trial of faith. It was a triumph of belief over our usual human approach which claims the words spoken by God are for heaven or at least later in our life not for right now.

This was not Mary - who by the way had very publicly announced her engagement to Joseph - this was not Mary sitting piously and calmly on a stool while Gabriel gently told her the news which we she accepted passively.

This was a real live woman being told something unbelievable. Something that would automatically change her life, socially for the negative, and which other people would not believe or understand. She could lose her husband over this! Besides, seeing an angel for the first time is never, as recorded in the Bible, a calm experience provoking an immediate faith acceptance. Mary saw and talked to an angel!

But so what! What does this story mean to us? If all scripture is able to make us wise. If all scripture is useful for teaching, rebuking, and training in righteousness. If all scripture stories are recorded not just as history but as an encouragement and examples, and a warning to us . . . Then how does this story apply to me, to you, to us today?

Ponder this:

When you read or hear what God has spoken about us, about our salvation, our being born again, the transformations that happen, the changes He declares happen when He is born again in us and we in Him, does it ever bother you? Does it seem impossible? Does it alarm, upset, disturb you? Does it defy the normal order of life? Even the ‘normal’ in the lives of the church people you know?

Does it make you feel like a failure or has it driven you the ask, "How can this be? How can it happen. I don’t fit that mold. I’m not sure I can handle the social and religious responses of my family, the other church people, the community, if this becomes visible. becomes true of me."

That was Mary’s first response!

Do you need to hear, "Don’t be afraid!" before you can even listen to what God is saying? Before you can even ask and understand what and how? Before your belief becomes more than passive. Most than self declared.

Self declaration is what makes for not understanding, not seeing His declarations come to pass in His declared time frames, not living what scripture declares to be the normal, the overcoming, the visible righteousness from Him. Self declaration is what makes not producing become evidence that what God stated stands as an irrefutable witnesses against us, against what we mentally or even verbally self declare.

Listen again to structure of the message to Mary:

You are seen through eyes of grace - favor by and with God before you get it right. Before you believe what He speaks or are even able to offer yourself for its fulfillment.

What God speaks is possible because the Holy Spirit who dwells in God Himself will come upon you and His power, the power of the most High God will overshadow - envelope - you!

Nothing He has spoken will be or is impossible with God. Whether it seems so within yourself or in your response to what He says. Neither of those responses ever work, ever bring to pass what God declares is to be true of us.

Irregardless of what we feel or see, nothing God has spoken will be or is impossible with -- not alone or apart from, not even for -- but with God involved. That’s what the with means in the "with God."

Think about!

You are seen by God through eyes of the grace.

What God speaks is possible because of the Holy Spirit's and God’s own power.

Nothing He has spoken is impossible "with" God!

Doesn’t that sound like the words of Jesus?

Doesn’t that sound like what Jesus said was true of himself as He lived out an example of human life for us?

Doesn’t that sound like the Book of Acts and like the words of epistle after epistle?

Through Mary’s story God is calling you, me, us, to stop the questioning, stop the delaying and self effort, the agitation, and the fear and say:

"Look at me! Here I am! I am the Lord’s servant. May it be in my life the way You have said!"

God is calling us to become the people "who have believed that what the Lord has said will be accomplished" and find it actually our true reality when we put His word to the test.

"Look at me! Here I am! I am the Lord’s servant. May it be in my life the way You, God, have said!"