Conceived by the Holy Spirit and Born of the virgin Mary
We Believe: The Apostles Creed • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Luke 1:26-45
11/19/2023
Good morning. Luke 1 Page 1016
Incarnation
Brothers and sisters in Christ,
in 2020 30% of self-professed Evangelical Christians agreed with the statement, “Jesus was a great teacher, but he was not God.”
30% agreed that Jesus is not God.
And last year that percentage increased to 43%.
43%…of Evangelicals…do not believe…that Jesus is God.
Church, this represents a staggering failure on the part of the church to teach theology and to teach theological teaching.
This is why something like the Apostles’ Creed is so important,
especially insofar as it prompts us
to dive deeper into the doctrinal realities of our faith.
Jesus is fully man and fully God = Hypostatic Union
Jesus is fully man and fully God = Hypostatic Union
is a reference to Jesus Christ as both God and man,
fully divine and fully human.
The hypostatic union, therefore,
is the technical term for the unipersonality of Christ,
whereby in the incarnation the Son of God was constituted a complex person with both a human and a divine nature.
Without confusion:
The Lord Jesus Christ is not what you get when you mix blue and yellow together and end up with green.
He’s not the result of mixing a divine and human nature.
Without change:
In assuming human flesh,
the Logos did not cease to be what he had always been.
The incarnation affected no substantial change in the divine Son.
Without division:
The two natures of Christ do not represent a split in the divine Person.
Jesus Christ is not half God and half man.
He is not like Hercules or a demigod
Lines 4 and 5 of the Creed are especially important here. Let us listen again:
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary
These two lines of the creed will help us establish two important biblical truths that will then lead us to our doctrinal understanding of who Jesus is.
The First truth about the Incarnation is....
That Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary establishes His full humanity.
That Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary establishes His full humanity.
The scriptures tell us that Jesus was born of the Virgin Mary.
Matthew and Luke highlight this,
but we will focus particularly on Luke’s account in Luke 1 at this point.
Luke 1:26–33 “26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, 27 to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” 29 But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. 30 And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.””
You will notice Luke’s emphasis on Mary and the very many human and earthy elements in his account. For instance:
Gabriel comes to a city with a specific name (Nazareth). 26
That city is in a specific region (Galilee). 26
He came to a virgin (Mary). 27
She was betrothed to a man with a name (Joseph). 27
Mary found the angel’s announcement emotionally troubling. 29
Gabriel has to comfort Mary. 30
He tells Mary she will be pregnant. 31
This baby will be given the name Jesus. 31
He will fulfill the line of a very human king, David. 32
He will reign over the house of a very human patriarch, Jacob. 33
In other words, Luke’s account emphasizes the human element
while moving on to the miraculous and divine element.
A great scholar of Luke’s gospel, Darrell Bock, writes:
Luke chooses to present Jesus from the “earth up”—that is, showing how, one step at a time, people came to see who Jesus really was. He starts with Jesus as the promised king and teacher who reveals himself as Lord in the context of his ministry. Only slowly do people grasp all of what is promised.
Bock, Darrell L. Luke. The IVP New Testament Commentary Series. Series editor Grant R. Osborne. Vol. 3 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1994), p.43.
In other words, Jesus was fully human.
He was a man.
He did not merely possess a human appearance like a façade.
No, he was human with a human mother.
He grew in the womb of Mary before He was born!
He walked and talked and ate and slept and sneezed and got headaches and
His back hurt sometimes and He got up and stretched in the morning and
He opened His mouth wide and yawned at night and
He told jokes and He laughed and He cried and He could get angry.
Born of the virgin Mary.
So why does it Matter????
Jesus never ceased being fully human
Jesus never ceased being fully human
He did not only take the appearance of a man.
Jesus really became human;
John makes that absolutely clear to us as he begins his Gospel, and the rest of the Gospel writers and the New Testament apostles make it clear as well.
Jesus was born to Mary—a real human woman who was a sinner and needed God’s salvation just like the rest of us.
Not only was Jesus human;
he is human, and will be human forever.
When he rose from the dead,
He rose with a glorified and perfected resurrection body—
He first of the resurrected bodies that all of God’s people will receive one day.
Jesus reigns—even now—in his resurrected and perfected human body, and he will reign so forever!
His humanity allows Him to sympathise with us.
His humanity allows Him to sympathise with us.
What does it mean that Jesus was and is fully human?
One important truth that the Bible teaches us is that,
because of Jesus’s humanity, he can sympathize with us.
He is able to help us when we are tempted, writes the author of Hebrews,
Hebrews 2:18 “18 For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted.”
He is able to sympathize with the weaknesses of human beings because he became a human being.
What an amazing truth this is;
Jesus really knows what we are going through.
He knows our pain, our struggles, and our temptations.
Secondly....
His humanity allowed Him to save us
His humanity allowed Him to save us
Jesus’s humanity means that he really can save us.
You see, if Jesus had not really become human, the sacrifice that he made would not really have been for human sin.
He had to identify himself fully with the people that he came to save by truly becoming human.
Hebrews 2:14 (ESV)
14 Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil,
He became “flesh and blood,” according to Hebrews,
so that “through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil”
Jesus’s incarnation—his taking on of human flesh—
made him able to identify with sinful human beings
and thus to be the final sacrifice for human sin.
Thirdly...
His humanity allowed Him to succeed where we failed
His humanity allowed Him to succeed where we failed
There was, of course, one way in which Jesus differed from every other human being who has ever lived: he was perfect.
Jesus did not sin.
As theologian Herman Bavinck says, Jesus’ “entire life and work, from his conception to his death, was substitutionary in nature.”
Jesus was our representative and obeyed for us where Adam had failed and disobeyed.
Adam is created in relationship to God as he mediates God’s rule to the world.
Yet, God demands perfect obedience from his covenant partner, which, sadly, Adam fails to render.
Christ is the promised seed that undoes Adam’s disobedience and reverses the effects of sin and death. Instead,
It is only in Christ,
the true seed of the woman,
the last Adam,
the divine Son who assumes our humanity
in order to render perfect covenant obedience for us
that our sins are paid for,
and that we stand before God
justified,
reconciled, and restored to the purpose of our creation as God’s covenant people.
We see this in the parallels between Jesus’ temptation (Luke 4:1–13) and the time of testing for Adam and Eve in the garden (Gen. 2:15–3:7).
It is also clearly reflected in Paul’s discussion of the parallels between Adam and Christ, in Adam’s disobedience and Christ’s obedience:
Romans 5:18–19 “18 Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. 19 For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.”
This is why Paul can call Christ “the last Adam” (1 Cor. 15:45)
and can call Adam the “first man” and Christ the “second man” (1 Cor. 15:47).
Because of Jesus’s sinless life,
he is truly able to represent sinful humanity as our perfectly righteous advocate.
He was faithful where we were not.
We lose much if we lose the humanity of Jesus.
That Jesus’ conception was of the Holy Spirit establishes His full deity.
That Jesus’ conception was of the Holy Spirit establishes His full deity.
He was born of the Virgin Mary, but He was conceived by the Holy Spirit!
If His being born of Mary establishes His full humanity,
His conception by the Holy Spirit establishes His full deity.
How did it happen? We do not know ??
What exactly took place when the Holy Spirit conceived the human life of Jesus Christ within Mary’s womb?
How could the God who is without limits somehow “shrink himself” to become a microscopic speck inside Mary’s womb?
Luke 1:35 offers a hint of what happened when the angel says
Luke 1:35 “35 And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.”
That same verb was used in the Greek translation of
Exodus 40:35 “35 And Moses was not able to enter the tent of meeting because the cloud settled on it, and the glory of the Lord filled the tabernacle.”
Psalm 91:4 “4 uses the same word in a poetic image to describe God “covering” his people:
He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.””
These images give us some idea of what happened.
God “overshadowed” Mary with his personal, intimate presence that completely surrounded her
just as the cloud surrounded, covered and filled the tabernacle.
And this “overshadowing” protected her from all harm.
She was a virgin before her conception and after her conception.
Only God could have done this.
What happened was a pure miracle.
By “pure miracle,” I mean it was a miracle of the highest order,
to be compared with God saying, “Let there be light,” and light appearing out of the darkness.
The virginal conception of Jesus was a direct creative miracle of God.
That also means it is a mystery we will never fully understand.
Why does it Matter???
Jesus never ceased being fully God
Jesus never ceased being fully God
Luke 1:35 “35 And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.”
Jesus will be Holy even after he was born and called the Son of God, not just before but after as well
Christ, when he became man, did not cease to be what he formerly was, and that no change took place in that eternal essence of God which was clothed with flesh. In short, the Son of God began to be man in such a manner that he still continues to be that eternal Word who had no beginning of time.”
(Calvin’s New Testament Commentaries, Vol. 1, pages 20–21)
Throughout His life he continued to act as one who has the same attributes if God.
Jesus demonstrated his omnipotence when he
stilled the storm at sea with a word (Matt. 8:26–27),
multiplied the loaves and fish (Matt. 14:19),
and changed water into wine (John 2:1–11)
The omniscience of Jesus is demonstrated in his knowing people’s thoughts (Mark 2:8)
Jesus possessed divine sovereignty a kind of authority possessed by God alone,
is seen in the fact that he could forgive sins (Mark 2:5–7).
Unlike the Old Testament prophets who declared, “Thus says the Lord,”
he could preface his statements with the phrase, “But I say to you” (Matt. 5:22, 28, 32, 34, 39, 44)—
an amazing claim to his own authority.
He could speak with the authority of God himself because he was himself fully God.
Jesus Did not cease to give up his deity when he became a man,
I took off my suit coat and laid it on the choir rail.
I told the people that my white shirt represented the deity of Jesus Christ. Then I asked the congregation:
Do I have to wear my jacket in order to wear my shirt?
The obvious answer is no.
My shirt goes under my coat,
but I can wear it with or without my coat.
I then put my coat back on
and told the people that it represented the human nature Christ assumed when he came to the earth.
Then I asked, “Am I still wearing my white shirt?” Answer: Yes
But (and this is a crucial point) you can’t see the white shirt very easily because it is mostly covered by my coat.
It’s still there—I never took it off—but when I wear my coat,
it’s easy to miss.
That explains why many people didn’t know who Jesus was.
His humanity “obscured” his deity.
They saw him wearing his “coat” of humanity and assumed that was all there was.
Hark! the Herald Angels sing”
in verse 2:
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see
Hail the incarnate Deity
Pleased as man with man to dwell
Jesus, our Emmanuel
The lyric reminds us of biblical truths like
Colossians 2:9: “9 For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily,”
Christ, the living Word, “put on” humanity the same way I put on my coat before I came to church on Sunday morning.
He was always God but he “added” humanity through the Virgin Birth.
He was and is and always will be the Son of God.
His deity was necessary for our salvation
His deity was necessary for our salvation
Luke 1:31 “31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.”
The name Jesus means “the Lord is salvation” same as Joshua
His full divinity is necessary if we are to have any hope that he can save us from our sins.
If Jesus were not fully God, he could never have actually paid the infinite and eternal price for sin that human beings deserve.
Remember, because God is infinitely holy,
the sin human beings commit against him is infinitely weighty.
This is important: only God himself could actually pay an infinite and complete price for sin.
Jesus did this on the cross; he was able to do it because he is God
Jesus is one person with two natures: divine and human
Jesus is one person with two natures: divine and human
Here are two building blocks once again:
God sent forth His Son.Born of woman.
Fully God. Fully man. We dare not lose either of these.
Orthodoxy
Orthodoxy
Place your trust in God’s Word
Place your trust in God’s Word
GOD MAY TAKE HIS TIME, BUT HE KEEPS HIS WORD
Luke 1:54–55 “54 He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, 55 as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever.””
Jesus was “the son of Abraham.”
God said to Abraham that all the peoples of the earth would be blessed through his descendants (Genesis 12:3).
Actually, it was even before that, in Genesis 3:15,
that God himself prophesied that one would come who would “crush [the] head” of Satan and defeat evil.
But it was centuries, millennia, before the angel came to Mary and told her about the child she was to bear.
The promise was a long time in coming!
In fact, in the four hundred years before Christ was born no prophets were sent to the people,
let alone a messiah.
It looked like God had forgotten them.
No one was coming, it seemed.
But then he came.
You cannot judge God by your calendar.
God may appear to be slow, but he never forgets his promises.
He may seem to be working very slowly or even to be forgetting his promises,
but when his promises come true (and they will come true),
they always burst the banks of what you imagined.
God’s grace virtually never operates on our time frame,
on a schedule we consider reasonable.
He does not follow our agendas or schedules.
God seems to forget his promises, but he comes through in ways we can’t imagine before it happens.
Think of the coming of the promised Messiah.
This divine King was born not in a castle but in a feed trough, a manger.
He confounded all expectations,
but it was only by coming in weakness and dying on the cross
that he could save us.
God kept his promise.
So the incarnation means that, “though the mills of God grind slowly …
they grind exceedingly fine.”
God may seem to have forgotten,
but right now he is in the process of arranging all that will fulfill his great promises.
Ephesians 3:20 “20 Now to him who is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, according to the power at work within us,”
Read the Bible and see the promises to those who believe.
He is able to give us more than we dare ask or think
He is a promise keep and we can trust Him.
2 Promises out of many.
He will never leave us
John 14:18 “18 “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you.”
As Jesus was preparing His disciples for His Ascension and exit form this world
He promised them that he would not leave them to be alone.
He would not forget them.
He would send His spirit as His presence once he left.
This spirit came to God’s children during Pentacost.
Since then,every child of God is indwelled with Christ’s Spirit at salvation.
Jesus lives in us—those who are the children of God—through the person and power of the Holy Spirit.
Moreover, this indwelling of the Holy Spirit is without end.
The Helper, Advocate, Counselor, and Comforter (all names for the Holy Spirit)
will be with us and in us forever.
As members of God’s family, we have this hope:
our Father will not leave us as orphans!
The Lord will never abandon us (Philippians 1:3–6; Hebrews 13:5).
Nor will He leave us unprotected to face the struggles and evils in this world.
He sends us a Helper to fill and equip us.
God’s Holy Spirit dwells in us as the constant, reassuring presence of Jesus from the moment of our salvation,
throughout our whole lives, and for all eternity.
We can count on His promised presence
at all times and all places, without end.
God promises to work everything out for your good.
Romans 8:28 “28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.”
We can be sure that despite what you are experiencing, good or bad,
God has the best for His children.
It may not seem like it during the trial or tribulation,
But God is using your experiences to prune you, to prepare you, to pattern you for His will and His work.
We know God keeps His word and we can trust Him and we can also follow Him.
Pattern your life after Christ.
Pattern your life after Christ.
Jesus became man
in order to go through all sorts of situations
with all sorts of people
in order that we might be provided with a pattern
upon which our Christian life can be constructed.
I find it interesting that Peter uses the word for “exampler” or “copybook” when he says,
1 Peter 2:19–22 (ESV)
19 For this is a gracious thing, when, mindful of God, one endures sorrows while suffering unjustly. 20 For what credit is it if, when you sin and are beaten for it, you endure? But if when you do good and suffer for it you endure, this is a gracious thing in the sight of God. 21 For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you might follow in his steps. 22 He committed no sin, neither was deceit found in his mouth.
That word example means copy...
The word “example” is a word that refers to the letters children would trace in order to learn how to write.
As Christians, we are called to “trace” Jesus’ footsteps.
Where Jesus stepped, we step,
and his steps will take us to many places
take us through the path of unjust suffering
In other words,
by means of Jesus Christ’s becoming man
God wrote the characters of love, righteousness, and holiness large
He wrote them in a picture we could see
A person we could follow and pattern our life after.
so that we by his grace might copy the Son and obey the Father..
Trust and obey for there is no other way to be happy in Jesus.