Do Miracles Occur? One Woman’s Remarkable Experience | Ep. 204

This is the Christmas episode of the Construction Genius Podcast. Eric takes his annual detour to consider the Christmas story from Luke’s gospel.

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Do Miracles Occur? One Woman’s Remarkable Experience

It’s that time of the year. We’re close to the holiday season here in the United States, and it’s my favorite episode, the Christmas episode. We’re not going to be talking about the construction industry and leadership topics. We’re going to take our annual detour to consider the Christmas story from the perspective of the New Testament.

In 2022, we’re going to be looking at the Gospel of Luke, Luke chapter one. I’m going to read here from verses 26 through 38. “In the six months of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel, Gabriel, to Nazareth, a village in Galilee, to a virgin named Mary. She was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David. Gabriel appeared to her and said, ‘Greetings, favored woman, the Lord is with you.’“

Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean. “Don’t be afraid, Mary,” the angel told her, “For you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be very great and will be called the Son of The Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor, David, and he will reign over Israel forever. His kingdom will never end.” Mary asked the angel, “How can this happen? I am a virgin.”

The Power

The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of The Most High will overshadow you, so the baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God. What’s more, your relative, Elizabeth, has become pregnant in her old age. People used to say she was barren, but she has conceived a son and is now in her sixth month, for the word of God will never fail.” Mary responded, “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true,” and then the angel left her.

The Promise

There are three things in this passage that we’re going to consider. The 1st one is the promise, the 2nd one is the power, and the 3rd one is the trust. Let’s take a look at it here. You’ll see the promise in verse 26, and it’s a remarkable thing that happens here. The angel, Gabriel, comes to Nazareth, a village in Galilee. To this obscure town, this rough and ready town of Nazareth, in a region that’s a little bit obscure as well, an angel from God appears to a young woman. Her name is Mary, and she is a virgin.

In verse 28, it says, “Gabriel appeared to her and said, ‘Greetings, favored woman. The Lord is with you.’“ I find this deeply encouraging. Who is God with? We see here in this passage that he is not with the famous, the rich, the prominent, the sophisticated, or the intellectual necessarily, but he is with this young woman, this obscure woman, this unapparent woman.

It’s something for you to consider God’s attitude towards you. God’s great desire for each and every one of us is for fellowship and relationship. He wants to be with you. If you cast your mind back to the very beginning of the scriptures in Genesis chapters 1, 2, and 3, God created this universe and this world with an intention. That intention was seen in that he created man and woman in his image, placed them in a garden, and wanted a relationship with them in that garden. If you follow the story of Genesis, you know that that relationship was broken because of the choices that the man and the woman made to sin against the commandment of God.

As a result of those choices, man and woman were driven out of the garden and separated from that relationship with God. The whole story of the Bible is about how God, in spite of humanity’s rejection of him, is constantly going out to humanity, seeking a relationship. This angel appears to this young woman, and as you might imagine, the young woman has a response. It says in verse 29, “Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean. ‘Don’t be afraid, Mary,’ the angel told her, ‘For you have found favor with God.’“

It’s a tremendous thing to have a sense that God is going out to you and that you have an opportunity to respond to him. The angel goes on and says, “You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be very great and will be called the Son of The Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor, David, and he will reign over Israel forever. His kingdom will never end.”

I want to go slowly through these couple of verses because what you see in this passage is, who is this person that Mary is going to conceive and bring forth? The scriptures here are very explicit. What I’d like you to think about is that just as God was going to bring birth to Jesus through Mary, so too God wants to get a birth in your life of his son. You may have heard the famous passage from the Gospel of John, “Unless someone is born again, they can’t even see the kingdom of heaven.”

You and I have both been born physically, but what the scriptures tell us is that there is a spiritual birth that God wants to get in your life, and it’s similar to the physical birth that God got in Mary’s life. Just as this baby was conceived in the womb of this virgin, there is a life that God wants to get in you, a spiritual life, and it’s the life of his son. Let’s think about how that life is described in this passage. You’ll notice first that the angel says, “You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you will name him Jesus.”

The Hebrew translation for Jesus is Joshua. Jesus is the Greek. Joshua is the Hebrew. What Joshua means is that Jehovah or the Lord brings salvation. If you look at other passages in the gospels, the salvation that God wants to bring is a very specific one. It is salvation from sin. The first thing that God wants to do in your life, in my life, and then in the lives of all of us is to save us from our sins. What is sin? Sin is the things that we know to do and we do not do or the things that we know are wrong, and yet we do them anyway.

We have all sinned and fallen short of God’s standard of behavior for humanity, yet God wants to save us from our sin because the ultimate consequence of sin in each one of our lives is death and not just physical death, but spiritual death. Just like Adam and Eve experienced death when they took the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, that death they experienced was not a physical one on that day. It was a separation from God, and so to each one of us because of our sin.

We are separated from God and will be eternally separated from God, yet God wants to save us from that separation. That’s why he sent his son. He sent his son Jesus ultimately to die on the cross for our sins in place of us taking the judgment of God upon himself so that by trusting in him, we ourselves could be saved from our sins. God wants to do much more than just save us from our sins. Remember, he is with us. He wants a relationship with us, but what type of relationship? Let’s look further at how this one is described to Mary, the one whom she will conceive.

It says here in verse 32, “He will be very great and will be called the Son of The Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David, and he will reign over Israel forever. His kingdom will never end.” There are two aspects to this individual. Number one, he is called the Son of The Most High. Later on in the passage, he is called the Son of God. It’s very interesting to think about the nature of God. Who is God? What the scriptures tell us is that God is Father and Son and Holy Spirit. This is a very important point. In God, there is a relationship that exists between Father and Son.

God is relationship. What’s God’s desire is to bring you into that loving relationship of God the Father and God the Son. God wants you to participate in that relationship. That’s why he wants to bring to birth this Jesus in your life so that through that birth, you might be able to experience that relationship of the Father and the Son. Not only that relationship of sonship with God, which is all about privilege, intimacy, fellowship, and relationship, but you notice here how also he is described.

It says here, “The Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David, and he will reign over Israel forever. His kingdom will never end.” If you understand the language here, what the angel is promising Mary is that she will bring forth the longed-for and long-looked-for Messiah who will rule over the people of Israel. If you take a further reading into the New Testament, you’ll understand that this Messiah that was promised to Israel is not only promised to Israel, but this king or ruler is promised to the entire world.

This is one thing that God wants in your life. He not only wants Jesus to be your savior or to bring you into that relationship of the Father and the Son, but he also wants to rule over your life. He wants to be your king. That’s a very interesting question. Who is your king? Who is your ruler? Many of us are ruled by ourselves, our appetites, desires, and own wills. We are created and made to be ruled by God. This birth that God wants to get in your life of his son is there not only to save you from your sin and bring you into the relationship of the Father and the Son, but it is also to establish in your life his rulership.

Mary responds to all of this in verse 34. She asks the angel, “How can this happen? I am a virgin.” You’ll notice the tone of the Book of Luke here. Luke is very comfortable with the natural, the fact that this is a virgin and a young woman. She lives in Nazareth, in the region of Galilee, at a particular point in time, and yet he’s also comfortable with the supernatural. That which is outside of our realm of understanding and grasp. It is the supernatural.

He states it in a very matter-of-fact way. We are all familiar with the natural and the material, which we can see, touch, taste, and feel, yet there is a realm beyond the natural. It is the supernatural or the spiritual. In that realm, God is working and bursting into the realm of nature. In response to Mary’s question about how this can happen because she is a virgin, the angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you.”

That’s the second main part of this passage here. We’ve looked at the promise that she was going to have this child, and now we’re going to look at the power. The angel replied, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of The Most High will overshadow you. The baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God.” If you think about everything we’ve been talking about so far, you see here that the way that God was going to accomplish this miraculous birth and the life of this virgin was through the power of the Holy Spirit.

God’s Holy Spirit can work in your life in a remarkable way. Think back to what we were talking about earlier of how God wants to forgive your sins, bring you into the relationship of the Father and the Son, and rule over your life as a king. Those things may seem impossible to you, but God is incredibly gracious and drawing near to you. By the power of the Holy Spirit, he is able to work in your life. You’ll notice here how the Holy Spirit works. The Holy Spirit is going to overshadow Mary. This is not like a story from Greek mythology where one of the Greek gods descends, couples with a human being, and brings forth a demigod. There is something a little different going on here.

There is an overshadowing of The Most High, and you’re going to see why that’s important here in a moment. The angel again replies, “The power of the Most High will overshadow you, so the baby to be born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God.” What the angel seeks to do is give Mary a little bit of proof. It’s interesting proof because it’s one that perhaps some of us are familiar with. Verse 36 says, “What’s more, your relative, Elizabeth, has become pregnant in her old age.”

We’re all familiar with people who are past childbearing age, and all of a sudden, they become pregnant. That happens. That’s not completely out of the realm of possibility, though it is unusual. It’s interesting how the angel parallels this virgin conception of Mary with the conception of her relative, Elizabeth, who, in her old age, has become pregnant. That was with, by the way, John the Baptist, the cousin of Jesus.

I’ll read this verse again, “What’s more, your relative, Elizabeth, has become pregnant in her old age. People used to say she was barren, but she has conceived a son and is now in her sixth month, for the Word of God will never fail.” God has the power to work in your life. He has the power to overshadow you and bring to birth in your life the life of his son, just like he did in the life of this virgin, Mary. It’s not a physical birth he’s looking to get in your life. It’s a spiritual birth of Christ in you.

The Trust

That is what it means to be born again. That is God’s desire for you. That is his great gift to you that he is offering you. It’s very interesting. The last thing I want to talk about here is the trust. This is how Mary responded in verse 38, “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.” The question I’d like to ask you is, how will you respond to God? You must respond in the same way that Mary responded, hearing the word of the angel and then believing it.

Will you hear the word being shared with you about God’s plan and purpose for your life and how he wants to bring to birth Jesus in your life? He wants to forgive your sins, bring you into the relationship of the Father and the Son, and establish his Lordship in your life. How will you respond to that message? God is drawing near to you. God is offering you a relationship with him. His love for you is so great that he desires you to respond to him in faith. Like Mary, say this, “I am the Lord’s servant. May everything you have said about me come true.”

I hope you’ve enjoyed this reading from the Gospel of Luke. I really appreciate you taking the time to read. I encourage you to read the Gospel of Luke. Thank you so much for reading. If you have any questions about anything that I’ve shared in this episode, please reach out to me, [email protected].

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