Gabriel and Mary

In this study on angels, the speaker discusses the occasions when angels appear in the Christmas story. Angels are God's spiritual creation and serve as messengers, encouragers, guardians, worshipers, and warriors. The focus then shifts to the encounter between the angel Gabriel and Mary in Luke chapter 1. Mary is a young girl from Nazareth who is pledged to be married to Joseph. Gabriel tells her she is highly favored and that she will conceive and give birth to a son named Jesus. This moment is both an announcement and an invitation for Mary to accept God's plan. The speaker shares a personal story of how they responded to God's call in their own life. Mary's struggle with this invitation is acknowledged. Hi there Reunion friends, welcome back to our angels study. This is our second study out of four. We're looking at the occasions when angels appear in the Christmas story, the time of Jesus' birth. And as I mentioned in our first study, I'm really fascinated by this. This is a new area of study for me, and I'm learning more about who angels are, what they do. And I hope our study is causing you to wonder a little bit whether there have been occasions in your own life if you've been touched by an angel, if you've been influenced, experienced something angelic in your own life. The Bible says that, at least in one English translation, that we'll mention angels about 200 times. And interestingly enough, it's evenly divided between the Old Testament and the New Testament about 100 times in each. And so what are angels? We've talked a little bit about it. Let this serve as a brief definition. Remember that angels are God's spiritual creation. He made them, just like he made all of creation. But they're spiritual beings. And that means that we don't become angels when we die, as is often popularly depicted. But angels are their own species, their own creation. And God uses them on the front lines of his great purpose. One way to think about that is that angels, the word angel literally means messenger. What kind of messengers are these angels? Well, they do at least four things, as depicted in the Bible. Angels are messengers of encouragement. So when we read that early story about Jacob in the book of Genesis, his father, Isaac, is on his last leg, and Jacob does something horribly deceptive and manipulative to his older brother, so bad that it caused him to be literally thrown out of his family. And when Jacob finds himself in a wild, empty place all alone at night, there's nothing left for him to do but lie down in the middle of nowhere with just a rock for a pillow. And you'll remember that as he slept, he also dreamed, and he dreamed of a ladder that stretched from earth to heaven, and up and down this ladder, angels are going and coming. Well, when Jacob wakes up, he's enormously inspired and encouraged. He names the place Bethel, which means the house of God, because he says, even here, God is present, and I'm being protected in the company of these angels. And so often angels will say in their encounters with humans, they'll often begin their message by saying, fear not. And that really is the core message that they bring to us. They bring good news. So they're messengers of encouragement. They're also guardians and protectors. There's that wonderful Psalm, Psalm 91, where it's written that God has commanded His angels concerning all of us to guard us in all our ways. Jesus says in Matthew 18.10 that those who follow Him and know Him, that their angels are always in the company of God, and it's His way of saying that you're being looked at and looked over by these angelic beings. So they're encouragers. They're guardians and protectors. They're also worshipers, and they teach us how to worship God. In Isaiah 6, we see the seraphim and cherubim proclaiming God's praise. We'll look at, in a couple of weeks, as we get closer to Christmas, when the angels appear to the shepherds, and there they praise God using these wonderful words that we put on Christmas cards. Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill towards men. It teaches to worship. And finally, they're also warriors. When we hear that phrase, heavenly host, I don't know what picture comes to mind, but that's really a military term. And so in the Old Testament and the New Testament, we'll see angels in fierce battle with evil, protecting those who follow God, and engaging God's enemies in the world. That's often why we'll see an angel with a sword in hand, depicting that part of their mission and their character. So these fascinating creatures are meant to encourage, guard, model worship for us, and remind us that they're engaged on our behalf against the powers that would undo us and bring about great evil in our world. And so what we're doing is we're taking that knowledge and paying attention to how angels appear in the Christmas story, and today we'll be looking at Luke chapter 1, that famous encounter between Gabriel and Mary. When it comes to Mary, it's hard to give her an opportunity to see her as she really was in this encounter with Gabriel, because we tend to have very fixed ideas and pictures in our mind about who she was. We either leave her camped out at the manger, and maybe you've put up a front yard scene with Joseph and Mary in the manger, and of course we think of her there, or sometimes we think of her only, in addition, just crumpled at the cross at the death of her own son, and kind of lock her into those events. But we rarely have a full and rich picture of who this extraordinary person was. And so who is she in Luke chapter 1? Well, she's young. Some have said that she could be as young as 13 or 14 years old, maybe as old as 17. She's a young girl who lives in Nazareth, an obscure village, a small, out-of-the-way place of very little importance. We learn also that she's pledged to be married to Joseph, and pledging is a little bit more than engagement. It's the first stage of marriage, but there are significant legal commitments. She's really married. They're just waiting on the event of the actual marriage celebration. And of course she lives in a time and in a culture where there's a high expectation for women to care for their reputation and conduct among men. And if you fail to do so, there could be some terrible consequences. So we think about this young girl setting out to start her family from a small village. And the Bible says that God sent the angel Gabriel to her town to find her. And when he found her, the angel went to her and said, Greetings, you who are highly favored. The Lord is with you. But Mary was greatly troubled at the words, and she wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, Don't be afraid, Mary. You have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you're to call him Jesus. He'll be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. 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. We call this moment in the church the Annunciation, the Announcement. The Announcement of Jesus' birth certainly is an announcement. But if we listen to it, it's also an invitation. Gabriel isn't showing up to Mary and saying, Um, this is about to happen. So I just wanted to give you a heads up. She's being really presented with an opportunity. Gabriel is saying, God knows you, Mary. He thinks that you're very gifted. That's what highly favored means. You're highly graced. God has chosen you for something extraordinary. He doesn't say it in so many words, but he's almost saying, do you accept this invitation for God to do this great work in you and through you? It sounds like a command when we read it out of scripture, but it really is waiting upon Mary's willingness. And Gabriel waits for her to respond. We know and believe that God can do things that we think are impossible, but it's also true that he will not do them if we don't give him permission in our life. I remember when I was 16, I was looking out of my bedroom window on the second floor of our home in the afternoon there in Lafayette, Louisiana, and off in the distance was a giant billowy cloud. There was a coming thunderstorm, and I could see flashes of lightning in the cloud, even though the sun was shining. Something about that moment just got me thinking about God, and I used it as an occasion to ask God about my future. I was serious and pretty religious as a teenager, and I took my Bible and I said, God, I want you to know what you want me to do with my life, and so what I'm going to do is I'm going to throw this Bible up in the air, and when it lands on my bed, wherever it opens, I'm going to put my finger on the page and trust that you're going to tell me what you want me to do with my life. I know, it sounds ridiculous when I say it that way, but it felt like the right thing to do at the moment. And so I closed my eyes and I tossed the Bible up, and it did land open, and I reached down and put my finger on a spot at random, and I read this in 2 Timothy 4.2, Preach the word, be prepared in season and out of season, correct, rebuke, and encourage with great patience and careful instruction. And I gulped. I thought, is God really telling me that I should pursue being a preacher, a minister? And I knew even then that I really had two options here. I could just kind of laugh this off and never tell another soul that I had done this and think to myself, what a strange coincidence this was, because really in that time in my life I was shy, I was anxious in front of a crowd, I preferred a quiet corner with a book rather than center stage with the microphone, what would I say to people anyway if I really took this seriously? How do you even become a preacher? It was a ridiculous idea certainly at 16. Or I thought, I can take this seriously, maybe God does know something about me that I don't know, maybe he does guide in ways like this. Well, I didn't go sign up for seminary that day, but I did take it seriously, I got curious and I started walking in the direction of what I thought could be God's invitation. Well, I'm glad I did. At the great intersections of my life, I always had the choice. I could either shrug my shoulders and ignore what I thought God could be inviting me to, blow it off, or I could stay open to the possibility that, you know, God does call and go see where this invitation could lead. My best decisions are those where I took God's callings seriously. And in this passage, I think that's what's happening to Mary. I appreciate the honesty of Luke because he says that she struggled with this invitation. When she saw Gabriel, and when Gabriel described her as highly favored and that the Lord is with you, it's almost as if she looks behind herself to see if anybody else is there. It doesn't seem to fit with how she thinks of herself. She's troubled by the greeting, the Bible says. And then Gabriel starts talking about palaces and thrones and a son who would be king to a young girl who lives in an out-of-the-way village. And besides, her life is already on course in a different direction with Joseph. She's got honest questions about how this could ever be. Her questions are good questions. She must have been thinking the countless ways that if she accepts this invitation, this is going to complicate her life, as well as Joseph's, as well as her mom and dad. Even this new baby could live under the shadow of rumor and scandal if people thought that she became pregnant before she was actually officially married. And these are the kinds of questions that keep us from letting God do a work in us in new ways. Not those exact questions, but we wonder things like, well, how could this be me? It's just me. I'm not meant for something extraordinary in God's plans. Or either I don't need it, or I'm not worthy of it. And we say, this is not for me, I don't think, and so I'll pass. Or we just don't see how it can happen. It seems to be too good to be true. Maybe one thing to imagine these things in church, but in real life, these things just don't happen. But Gabriel reminds Mary, and it's a good reminder to us, that he's not asking Mary to make something happen in her life, the way all new growth with God happens, is that the Holy Spirit comes and does the work. All that's required is that we say, yes, yes, I want that to happen. Maybe part of the miracle here in this passage is that Mary does say, yes, despite all of her misgivings, despite all of her good questions, and despite all that's at risk, and she gave us words for all followers of God to say at the beginning when God is inviting us to trust him in new ways. She said, may it be to me just as you have said. Try that statement on for a second. Say it with me. May it be to me just as you have said. Those are great words of faith to say in the face of an invitation from God that he wants to do something new in our life. Over the years, the church has given a lot of honorary titles to Mary, and you've heard lots of them. She's referred by some as the Mother of God. Sometimes she's called the Queen of Heaven. Certainly you've heard her referred to as the Blessed Virgin. But I prefer this title for her. Blessed Disciple. Because she is the first who accepts the invitation for Jesus to literally come into her life and then bring life to the world through her. That's what it means to be a disciple or a follower of Jesus or a Christian in the fullest sense of the word. It means that we're inviting the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit to make us like Jesus and then to share his life and love with the world where we find ourselves. There's a saying in the Talmud, that's a central book, that is the collected wisdom and writings of Jewish rabbis which lays out Jewish thinking and practice. In the Talmud it says, Every blade of grass has its angel that bends over it and whispers, Grow. Grow. I'm not sure about the grass, but I'm becoming much more convinced that every person has such a voice in their spiritual ear offering them that same invitation with God. Grow. Grow. There's more that God wants to do in us and through us. Will you say yes? So, we're in the middle of Advent. And God, we believe, not only came dramatically in Bethlehem, but he's always coming in new ways. Have you heard his invitation to grow? To let him into a new part of your life? To transform you in ways maybe beyond your imagination? Or to heal you in places that you thought were beyond God's reach? Grow. Grow. It was just a few years after the Civil War had come to a close. And an American pastor by the name of Philip Brooks was spending Christmas in Israel. And on Christmas Eve, he was on horseback overlooking Bethlehem at night. And as his imagination ran with him, he was inspired to write a poem that he thought could be useful to his Sunday school back home. But that poem became much more popular than just something used by a Sunday school. And it's one of our favorite Christmas carols. And so let the last verse of that Christmas carol be a prayer for us as we conclude our time in Luke chapter 1. O holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us, we pray. Cast out our sin and enter in. Be born in us today. We hear the Christmas angels, the great glad tidings tell. O come to us, abide with us, our Lord Emmanuel. Now may it be to you, just as God wishes. Amen.