Embracing Humility: The Miraculous Birth of Jesus

But that's not how God did it, and there's a reason why God didn't do it that way, as we saw with the concern of John the Baptist, and in the baptism of Jesus -- that Jesus came not only to die but to live, that He came to be the Second Adam, the New Adam, to do for us what Adam failed to do the first time around. [00:01:05]

And so His mission was to be in submission to all of the requirements of God, to take upon Himself as the eternal logos and the second person of the Trinity a human nature, and to be born of a woman, and to be born of the seed of David. And so for the New Testament, the birth of Jesus is of profound significance because it is the advent of Immanuel, the one who comes as our mediator and who grows up in the nurture of the Lord, who has to learn obedience, not from disobedience, but in terms of an expanding understanding and awareness of all of the implications of His mission. [00:01:39]

But the birth of Jesus begins the humiliation of Christ -- that this indicates the willingness of the one who from all eternity was equal with God, who counted his equality with God not as something to be jealously guarded, but He was willing to empty Himself of His glory and to assume the posture, the rank, and the status of a servant. [00:02:37]

So as we look now at the birth of Jesus, let us not underestimate the significance of this descension, descension -- not d-i-s-s-e-n, but d-e-c-e-n-s-i-o-n -- because one of the climactic moments in the life of Jesus is His ascension. But before He ascends into heaven, He frequently remarks that no one ascends into heaven except the One who has first descended from heaven, and so when the Son of Man comes, He comes to us from glory to humiliation, from heaven to earth. [00:03:10]

Now imagine this. Here's this teenage girl, unsophisticated, poor, and all of a sudden, as she's minding her business, an angel appears to her, and the angel appears with a command to rejoice, and the cause for her rejoicing is to be that she has found favor with God and she has been chosen of God for a profound and special blessing. [00:05:17]

Now we wonder how much of this announcement Mary understood. If we look a little bit later at the song that she sings under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, The Magnificat, "My soul doth magnify the Lord," and we see the content of that song, which reveals a profound understanding of the Old Testament Scriptures and prophecies, if we assume that the content was not something simply delivered to her by divine inspiration, but that God, under the inspiration of the Spirit, caused her to sing about things she already understood to some degree, then we could only conclude that this announcement would not be completely arcane to Mary. [00:07:31]

Now Joseph has to deal with this announcement as well. Mary, at some point, has to communicate to her betrothed, "I am with child." Now what does that automatically mean to Joseph? It means that his bride-to-be has been unfaithful. Now if I could read between the lines, I feel certain that Mary would have tried to explain this situation to Joseph, and yet he would have had a hard time, an extremely hard time being convinced of the veracity of what actually took place. [00:11:09]

And yet he has compassion; he cares for her. He wants to stop the marriage from being finalized, but at the same time he doesn't want to make a public disgrace or scandal of her situation, and he resolves to put her away quietly until there is more intervention. [00:11:57]

So in both accounts -- in Matthew's record and in Luke's record -- the astonishing proclamation is set before the church that the circumstances of the birth of Jesus were extraordinary and miraculous, that Jesus' birth was a virgin birth, a point that for some reason has been highly disputed in the last century or two in a somewhat unusual manner. [00:12:57]

We have to understand that the biblical account of the portrait of Jesus, the Jesus that is presented in the pages of the New Testament is the Jesus whose life is ablaze with miracle. His life begins with a miracle and it ends -- or begins again -- with a miracle, and in between, the power of the living God is displayed in and through Him constantly. [00:14:03]

Now the language that is used here is significant because it is reminiscent of the same language that is found in the first chapter of the Bible. How did creation take place initially? After we recall the description of the unordered universe of being without form and empty, and darkness was upon the face of the deep, then it was that the Spirit of God moved upon the water. [00:17:14]

And the image that is used there in the language is that that is suggestive of a bird hovering over the water, casting its shadow. And it's the same concept that is used here in Luke's gospel; just as the Holy Spirit came upon the primordial waters and brought life in the initial creation, so the same power of God, the same Spirit of holiness is going to be upon this virgin and overshadow her so that a child will be conceived in her womb. [00:17:38]