Advent Meditation

Mary’s Reception of God’s Gift

Taken from Dallas's handwritten sermon notes from 1964, this an advent meditation based on Luke 1:26-38.

In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will 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.”

“How will this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?”

The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come on you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called[a] the Son of God. Even Elizabeth your relative is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be unable to conceive is in her sixth month. For no word from God will ever fail.”

“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May your word to me be fulfilled.” Then the angel left her.

Luke 1:26-38

How would you like to have been Mary?  Have you thought about that?  Now we look back upon her and what happened to her and think it would be a wonderful thing.  But how did it look from her point of view? She didn’t know what would become of it all, as we do now.  She only knew of the certain dangers and the disgrace of her position.  Oh, she wanted to be the mother of the Messiah.

Every daughter of Israel wanted that.  But none of them expected that he would come in this way!  That in the eyes of men he would be an illegitimate child.  And that is what Jesus was in the eyes of men.  We even have it recorded how his contemporaries jibed at him about being born out of wedlock.  Poor Mary!  She had not thought that being Messiah’s mother would be anything like this.  And no one else had thought so either.  This gift of God which Mary consented to receive came in a quite unexpected way and caused her many problems.

Do you know the penalty in Israel for fornication?  Death by stoning (women taken in adultery).

Would people accept the explanation that this child’s father was God?  Would I?  Would you?  

Then there was Joseph, and Mary’s family.  What were they to think; what could Mary tell them and what could they tell the neighbors?  We know that Joseph intended to quietly break off with Mary and not come to see her any more.  Only a vision of God’s purpose stopped him.  What if you had to face your fiancé with the news that you were with child?  That’s what Mary had to do.  It was not easy to stay at home and face her folks; it wasn’t easy to go out and face her neighbors.  No human being could understand.  She could turn to God alone.

My friends, I hope this will help you to see that Mary was in an extremely difficult position.  Now, she knew that it would be difficult.  She knew that the angel Gabriel was proposing to her that she have a fatherless child, and she understood all of the implications of that.  Yet she said to Gabriel, “Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to Thy Word.” (Luke 1:38)  What did it mean in language which we can better understand?  It means this: Mary was saying, “Look, Gabriel, this is a very difficult decision to face; but my only business in this world is to do what God wants (a handmaid is that way to her Lord); so what ever God wants I will do.  Even though it may destroy my dreams of marriage and happiness, and will certainly ruin my reputation amongst my neighbors, yet I will do as God asks.  Better to have God’s blessing and be husbandless and of no reputation, than to have husband and reputation without God.”

When the Lord comes to us, we should take the shoes off our feet in response to His holiness.

Mary’s story is so helpful because she reminds us:

1. Of the condition which every soul must meet if God is to enter the world through it.  
        We here are all faced with Mary’s choice.  Here is the world, dark with the forces of evil.  Here I am, just in my peculiar part of this dark world.  Then God comes and says:  “Dallas [or Harold, Marvin, Morton, etc.] will you let me enter this world and transform it through you?”
        And to this question, my friend, the only response which amounts to a yes is:  “Behold, the manservant of the Lord, the handmaid of the Lord.  Be it unto me according to Thy Word.”
    
2. Of the difficulties, misunderstandings, and reproaches which will come to those who stand for God.
        Many people are just about as embarrassed to stand for God in all circumstances as Mary must have been to go out into the neighborhood after people knew she was with child.  This is not without its reason. For as the old hymn says, “Is this vile world a friend to grace to help me on to God?”  And of course it is not.
   1. They misunderstand.  They will say in their hearts that you are a hypocrite, because they find in themselves nothing which would make them do what you do, and they think that therefore you must have ulterior motives.
   2. They are uncomfortable because you condemn them by your attitudes and behavior.  If you are right, then they are wrong.
       
   3. Of the blessed results of serving God.
      1. We make it easier for others to accept the Gift of God.
      2. We enter into an eternal work, not a transient one.