Luke 1:26-38 "Portraits of Faithfulness: Mary"

1:17You know, in the movies, when they do that time-lapse thing, and you see the character in different positions all in a row? If they had done that with me in my bathroom remodel, you would have seen me in the first scene, like smiling. And measuring something, and then in the next scene, like looking absolutely befuddled, and then in the next scene, looking like, why did they build the wall that way? And then the fourth one, I'd be just kind of laying on the unfinished tile in the fetal position, sobbing softly.

1:51Well, after six weeks, everything was done except my cabinets. And four months later, I thought to myself, you know, cabinets are overrated. It's just so much easier when you can just reach in and grab the things that you want. But by God's grace, in August, I put those cabinet doors on. I persevered to the end. And I finished that bathroom remodel. Thank you. You know, that whole time I was thinking to myself, I know there's a sermon in here. And you're getting it tonight.

2:33It's the most expensive sermon I've ever preached. If you're a follower of Jesus, the concepts of faith and doubt and perseverance aren't new to you. Those are found all over the Bible, from Genesis to Revelation. We read about men and women who exercised great faith in God and did amazing things. If you've ever read Hebrews 11, you know this. It lists some of those things as conquering. Kingdoms and enforcing justice and obtaining promises and stopping the mouths of lions and quenching the power of fire, putting armies to flight and receiving dead people back to life.

3:15But you know, in the Bible, we also read about men and women who struggled with serious doubt, who wondered whether God would keep his promises, who wondered whether God could really be trusted in the lowest and most difficult moments of their lives. And you know what's comforting to me as a Christian? It's the fact that the men and women who exercised great faith in the Bible are very often the same men and women who struggle with the most serious doubts. People like Abraham and Moses, David and Elijah, John the Baptist, and even Mary, the mother of Jesus. Did you know that? Did you know that even Mary, the mother of Jesus, struggled with doubt about her son?

4:07That may seem crazy, but I bet if you've lived enough years on this earth, if you've been following Jesus for any length of time, that probably doesn't seem crazy at all to you. In fact, I bet that, as it does for me, it actually comforts you to know that. Here's the thing: all the people that I've mentioned, they all exercised great faith. They all struggled with doubt, but they also all persevered to the end. They persevered in faith. For the past month, our church has been in a series called Portraits of Faithfulness, where we have been looking at some of the most faithful men and women in the Bible to learn from them and to be encouraged by them. And tonight, on Christmas Eve, we're going to be looking at one of the most faithful people in the Bible, Mary, the mother of Jesus. And tonight, I'm going to highlight three snapshots from Mary's life. Pastor Joshua just read the first one from the Gospel of Luke. The other two come from the Gospel of Mark and from the book of Acts. And so we're going to see tonight that, like Mary, we must believe God's word, confront our doubts, and persevere to the end.

5:31In Luke chapter 1, we meet Mary, who is this young woman engaged to a young man named Joseph. And God sends the angel Gabriel to her to let her know some big news. God has chosen Mary to bear a son who's going to sit on David's throne and reign forever. In other words, Mary is going to give birth to the Messiah, the Christ, the one who has been promised by the prophets for over 2,000 years. Who knows all of the questions that were racing through Mary's mind in that moment? Why me? I'm just an ordinary woman. I'm not the daughter of a king. I'm not the daughter of a priest. I'm nobody special. Why me?

6:19Why now? I'm engaged and looking forward to my wedding, looking forward to starting a family with my new husband. But most of all, Mary wants to know how. How is this going to happen? How could she, a virgin, give birth to any baby, much less to the Son of God? Modern people tend to think that ancient people were ignorant and superstitious, but they weren't any more ignorant or superstitious than we are. Mary knows how babies are made. She asks the obvious question in Luke 1: How can this be? And the angel Gabriel responds, The Holy Spirit is going to 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, for nothing will be impossible with God. And Mary responds, Behold, I am the servant of the Lord. May it be to me as you have said. Mary believed God's word.

7:27But why? Why? Why would Mary believe God's word, especially this word that meant a lifetime of questions and gossip and hardship? Friends, ultimately Mary believed God's word because she trusted God's character. In her prayer, which you can read later in the chapter in Luke 1, verses 46 through 55, we find Mary praising God in this prayer for choosing her to bring his Son into the world. And she concludes the prayer with these words. She prays, God has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy, according to all that he has spoken to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring forever.

8:16Mary believed God's word because she trusted God's character. She knew that God had proven himself faithful to his people, showing them mercy when they did not deserve it and keeping every promise that he had ever made to them. And friends, God has been faithful to us, to you and me, even when we've been faithless, even when we did not deserve mercy. Mary believed God's word because she trusted God's character. And we can trust God's character. So we can believe God's word when he says that he will save us through faith in Jesus' sinless life and death and resurrection, which Was only possible because Jesus was born of Mary.

9:07I want you to look on the screen now at Mark chapter 3, where we're going to see that we can confront our doubts like Mary did. Mark chapter 3, starting in verse 20. Then Jesus went home, and the crowd gathered again, so that the disciples could not even eat. And when Jesus' family heard it, they went out to seize him, for they were saying, he is out of his mind. Going down to verse 31, Mark records, And his mother, Jesus' mother and his brothers, came, and standing outside, they sent to him and called him. And a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, Your mother and your brothers are outside seeking you. And he answered them, Who are my mother and my brothers? And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, Here are my mother and my brothers. For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.

10:08Now, if you're familiar with the Christmas story, you know that in addition to getting that angelic visit from Gabriel, God's word was also confirmed to Joseph through the visit of an angel in a dream. God's word was further confirmed to Elizabeth, Mary's cousin, who would give birth to John the Baptist. Then the word was confirmed by Shechem. Shepherds and wise men who visited Jesus after he was born. And then Simeon and Anna, prophets in God's temple. So Mary had lots of confirmation from angels and from people of all walks of life, even from people who came from different countries, that her son was in fact the Son of God.

10:53And I remind you of that because it would be one thing if the angel Gabriel only appeared to Mary, and everybody else in her life, everybody else in the history of the world, just had to take it on faith that an angel appeared to her and that what was conceived and ultimately born of her was from God. But it's another thing when the message from God is confirmed by her fiancé, her cousin, random shepherds and wise men, and some prophets in the temple. Later on, the message is confirmed by John the Baptist in his preaching and pointing to Jesus. It's confirmed by God the Father as he speaks from heaven at Jesus' baptism. And then it's confirmed by Jesus Himself as he claims over and over again to be the Son of God and proves it through his miraculous life. Now, by this point in Mark's gospel, Mark chapter 3, Jesus has driven out demons, he's healed innumerable people, and he's preached with a supernatural authority. And yet, we read in Mark. Chapter 3: That his family, his mother and his brothers, concluded that he was out of his mind.

12:10It's not just his brothers. We know from a lot of different places in the New Testament that Jesus' brothers didn't believe that their older half-brother was the Son of God until after he rose from the dead. But Mark makes it clear: it's not just the brothers, it's Mary too. The one who received an angelic vision, a visitation, had that word confirmed by at least a dozen other people. The one who had watched her infant son grow into a boy and from a boy to a man and yet never once heard him sin or saw him sin.

12:48The one who heard him teach the most respected religious leaders in Israel to their great amazement when he was just 12 years old. And the one who now saw and heard all of Jesus' miracles and the wondrous things that he was doing. After all of that, at some point in her life, Mary concluded that Jesus, her son, had to be crazy. What does that tell us? Mary, the earthly mother of Jesus, the woman of incredible faith and courage. Struggled with doubt. Now, listen, for all we know, this is the one and only time in her life that she struggled with doubt. But her doubt, at least in this moment, was so strong that she concluded, along with her other children, that they had to go get Jesus and bring him home because surely he was crazy.

13:51Friends, every single person exercises faith in someone or something. It is not possible to live without faith because there are plenty of things that cannot be proven. They are believed. And because that is true, doubt is a part of the equation for every single person. We cannot prove that God exists, and no one else can prove that he does not exist. That means all people exercise faith, and all people at some level struggle with doubt. So the question is not, will I experience doubt in my life? The question is, what will I do when I experience those doubts? Now, the Bible doesn't tell us what Mary did when she confronted her doubts. But based on her prayer in Luke chapter 1, we can assume that she did what all of the faithful men and women did in Scripture when they were confronted with their own doubt. And that is, they went back to God's. Character and God's promises, the things that Mary prayed about at the end of Luke chapter 1. This is what David does in Psalm 13 when he is weighed down and struggling with doubt. He concludes that psalm by reminding himself of God's character and God's promises and choosing to believe in those things.

15:21But you see, ultimately, we know that Mary did confront her doubts because she persevered to the end. I want you to look now on the screen at Acts chapter 1, where we'll see that we too must persevere to the end. Acts chapter 1, verse 12. Then the disciples returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day's journey away. And when they had entered, they went up to the upper room where they were staying. Peter and John and James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas the son of James. All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus and his brothers.

16:16Luke was a doctor and Luke was a very serious historian. He tells us at the beginning of his gospel, the Gospel of Luke, that he interviewed many, many different eyewitnesses and then wrote the account of Jesus' Life. And then he wrote the follow-up, the Acts of the Apostles. It picks up right where Luke's gospel left off with the resurrection of Jesus. And Luke notes that Jesus, after he was raised from the dead, spends the next 40 days teaching his disciples about the kingdom of God. And then he descended, or rather, he ascended into heaven, leaving the disciples, the apostles, and all the other believers behind. And Luke notes here in chapter 1 that there are about 120 believers at this point. And here in Acts chapter 1, we see Mary, the mother of Jesus, is numbered among these 120 believers who are devoting themselves to prayer.

17:13Mary, the one who believed God's word so many years before, the one who had to confront her doubts about whether her son was in fact out of his mind and whether she was wrong all along, had in fact persevered to the end. Here she is, standing firm in faith after watching her son get betrayed by a close friend, after watching him get arrested and condemned and flogged and crucified, after watching him get buried in a borrowed tomb. Here she is standing firm in faith because Mary always knew who her son really was: the Christ, the Messiah.

18:00The one and only begotten Son of God. That faith helped her to persevere through the endless questions that she was asked and her own questions as well. That faith helped her to persevere through the doubts of others and her own doubts that she battled in her darkest moments. That faith helped her to persevere through what can only be described as a mother's worst nightmare: watching your son be arrested and executed. Friends, that's the kind of faith that you and I need if we're going to persevere like Mary did. If, at the end of our lives, after all of the suffering and heartache, the tragedy that we experience, if we're going to be found praying in faith with other Christians, we need a faith like Mary's. We need Mary's kind of faith if we're going to persevere. So, this Christmas, the invitation is simple: it is to believe God's word, to confront your doubts, and to persevere to the end. It is an invitation to imitate Mary, a faithful but flawed young woman that God used to bring Jesus into the world so that he could live a sinless life, die on the cross. In our place for our sins, and rise from the dead to defeat sin's power and penalty over us.

19:40Mary believed God's word, she confronted her doubts, and she persevered to the end. And if, like Mary, you believe the good news about Jesus, God promises to save us, to hold us in his hand, and to never let us go, and to help you persevere to the end, even through some of the darkest and most troubling times of your life. Thank God for the good news of the gospel. Thank God for Jesus. And thank God for Christmas. Let's pray.

20:34Father, what a comfort it is for us to come to your word and to see that some of the most faithful people in history, including Jesus' own mother, struggled with doubt. God, I pray that like Mary, we would believe your word. That when we face our doubts, whether those are big doubts or small doubts, whether they come just a few times in our life or we feel them all the time, that we would, like Mary probably did and like David certainly did, and so many other people in Scripture, that we would go back to your word so that we can see your character and be reminded of your promises and have our faith strengthened and renewed so that we can persevere to the end.

21:34Father, the Christmas story is great news. But the Christmas story was just the beginning for Jesus. And for us, putting our faith in Christ is just the beginning. You say that all who persevere to the end will be saved, and we want to be among those who persevere to the end. So help us not just to be Christmas people, not just to be Easter people, but to be people who persevere to the end, to the day we die or to the day that you return, Jesus. And we pray that you would come again soon so that we could celebrate not just your first coming, but your second.

22:22Come quickly, Lord Jesus. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. Thank you for listening to the sermon audio from New Life Baptist Church in College Station, Texas. For more information or to support our ministry, visit us online at newlifecs.net.