The announcement of the arrival of Jesus as Messiah calls us to place our confident trust in God’s plan instead of our plan...

This week, we have been looking at a section of an account of Jesus life in the Bible caalled the gospel of Luke. Wednesday, we looked on as the Angel Gabriel announced to a teenage girl named Mary that God was going to reveal His transformational intervention and activity in your life in a miraculous way by supernaturally enabling her to become pregnant and give birth to Jesus as God in a bod.

We looked on as Mary is asked “how is this possible?” since she had not had sex and was not married. We looked on as the Angel Gabriel explained that Mary would become pregnant as a result of the supernatural power of God as displayed through the Holy Spirit, who would creatively and supernaturally bring about the physical conception of Jesus. In church mumbo jumbo talk, this is referred to as the Immaculate Conception and the virgin birth.

As the Holy Child, as God in a bod, Jesus would be set apart as distinct and different from any other human child. Jesus was fully God and fully man. And Jesus was set apart and sent to earth with a specific mission, which was to give His life to provide humanity an opportunity to be rescued from the selfishness and rebellion that separated humanity from God so that they could receive forgiveness and experience the relationship with God that they were created for.

Just as God can bring forth life from that which had been unable to bring forth life, God can bring forth life from what had previously never attempted to bring forth life. Today, we see Luke records Mary’s response in verse in Luke 1:38: 

And Mary said, "Behold, the bondslave of the Lord; may it be done to me according to your word." And the angel departed from her.

Now when Mary uses the word bondslave, this word was used to refer to a female slave. Mary is saying “the Lord is large and in charge, I am willing to do whatever God desires me to do and go through. I place my trust in God and embrace the role that He has given me”. 

Now, when we read Mary’s words here, a natural reaction is to say “well of course she would say that. I mean what a privilege. Look at the blessings that she is going to experience to be the mother of Jesus”. So I want to take a minute to look at all the blessings that Mary would have been thinking about and would have experienced as a result of being the mother of Jesus.

First off, let’s imagine the blessings that Mary experienced as she explained to those in the small rural town that she lived in how she became pregnant. Imagine yourself as Mary attempting to explain your pregnancy as a 12-13 year old Jr. High girl:  “How did I become pregnant? Oh, you would not believe what happened. An angel named Gabriel showed up one night and explained that I was pregnant by the Holy Spirit and that I was going to deliver the Messiah”. Can you imagine the response she received: “Yah, sure, isn’t that great. Holy Spirit, Messiah”. “Sinner, Scarlet Letter”.

Second, imagine the blessings that Mary experienced as she explained her pregnancy to Joseph. In another account of Jesus life that is recorded in the Bible called the book of Matthew, we discover that Joseph, being a righteous man, was just going to divorce her quietly instead of having her stoned to death, as the Law allowed. That is until he had his own encounter with the angel of the Lord.

Third, imagine all the blessings that come from living a life that will be stigmatized and dramatically altered forever as a result of this pregnancy. Imagine trying to have a marriage that is surrounded by the gossip, slander, and rejection. We know that to be the case because later in life, self righteous religious people actually confronted Jesus by stating “we were not born of fornication”. In other words they were saying “at least we know who our dad is; at least we are not a bastard child”.

And fourth, imagine the blessings that Mary experienced as she watched her first born son grow up to be rejected, despised, and suffer the most humiliating and painful death possible, which was crucifixion. So do we really think that Mary was counting all her blessings as she received this message from God? Yet Mary’s response was to say “Lord, you are large and in charge, I am willing to do whatever You desire me to do and go through.”

And it is here, from this event from history involving an angel and a teenage girl, that we discover a timeless truth as we approach the arrival of Christmas in that the announcement of the arrival of Jesus as Messiah calls us to place our confident trust in God’s plan instead of our plan. Just as it was for Mary, the announcement of the arrival of Jesus as Messiah calls us to place our confident trust in God’s plan instead of our plan.

Just like Mary, we can find ourselves at a place in our lives where Jesus arrives in our lives and calls us to suddenly and radically change all of the plans that we have when it came to how we are going to live our lives. Instead of living a life that is in rebellion to Jesus, Jesus arrives and calls us to live in relationship with Him. Instead of living a life that is selfishly focused on fulfilling our desires, even at the expense of others, Jesus arrives and calls us to live a life that selflessly focuses on others at the expense of us.

Instead of spending our time following our plan to live life for our mission, Jesus arrives and calls us to spend our time following His plan for the advancement of His mission. Instead of living a life that is separated from God as a result of our selfishness and rebellion against God, Jesus arrives and calls us to place our confident trust in God’s plan to provide us an opportunity to experience forgiveness and the relationship with God that we were created for by believing, trusting, and following Jesus as Lord and Leader.

So here is a question to consider: How are you responding to the announcement of the arrival of Jesus when it comes to your plans for your life? Are you responding to the announcement of the arrival of Jesus by still placing your confident trust in your plans of how you are going to deal with the selfish and rebellious things that you have done that have hurt God and others? Are you responding to the announcement of the arrival of Jesus by still placing your confident trust in your performance for God to get to the place where you are right with God?

Or are you responding to the announcement of the arrival of Jesus by placing your confident trust in Gods’ plan to send Jesus to earth as God in a bod to live the life that we were created to live but refused to live, and then willingly allowed Himself to be treated as though He had lived our selfish and sinful life, so that God the Father could treat us as though we lived Jesus perfect life?

Because, just as it was for Mary, the timeless reality is the announcement of the arrival of Jesus as Messiah calls us to place our confident trust in God’s plan instead of our plan.