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Dec 19, 2010

It'll Take A Miracle

Passage: Luke 1:26-38

Preacher: John Repsold

Category: Holiday

Keywords: miracles, christmas, impossibilities

Summary:

How many times have you said, "It'll take a miracle" to something that seems impossible? This message looks at the miracles in the Christmas story and how God still wants to do miracles through the life of Jesus Christ in us today.

Detail:

It’ll Take A Miracle

December 19, 2010 

Let’s Connect Question:  Do you ever remember seeing God do what you would call “a miracle” in your life or the life of someone you know?  If so, tell someone about it right now.

What miracle would you like to see God do this Christmas?

How many times have you heard someone say, “It’s a miracle she/he wasn’t killed”??? 

Just this week, Florida school board members targeted by a vengeance-seeking gunman on Tuesday said it was nothing short of a miracle that they survived the attack.  Standing less than 15 feet away from the people he was trying to shoot, the gunman unloaded most of a magazine of 9-mm bullets and didn’t hit a single person.  Miracle…or really bad shot? 

Just in case you don’t believe in miracles, you might like to reconsider that position after you see a few seconds of this video clip.  (Show YouTube video of near misses.)

O.K.  As amazing as those near misses are, it’s possible that there was nothing actually miraculous about what happened.  The forces of nature (gravity, physics, mass, energy, motion, etc.) and the ever-so-close location of most of those people to near death can conceivably be explained by natural forces…conceivably, though I think I’d be thanking God for a miracle if I was any one of those people in the video. 

Sentimental people all over the world like to talk in glowing terms about Christmas being a time of “miracles.”  What they usually mean is that normally selfish, grumpy people can be sighted actually being thoughtful and pleasant at this time of year…not usually while shopping, mind you. 

That’s not the kind of “miracle” I’m talking about today.  I’m not even talking about all “providential events” that may coincide at a particular time-space point that almost looks miraculous. 

For example, if I have a flat tire on the way to church, am changing it alongside the freeway when I have a heart attack and crumple to the pavement, and the next motorist to see me is a heart doctor who stops and administers CPR in time for the paramedics to arrive and restart my heart with a defibrillator, that would be a “providential” series of circumstances, not necessarily a miracle.

      BUT, if I had a flat tire on the way to church today, got out to change it and fell to the pavement into the path of an oncoming UPS semi, was run over by all 18 wheels, was jolted back to life and stood up without a broken bone in my body, continued to change the tire…and got to church on time, delivered a powerful sermon AND finished on time…that would be a miracle, right! J  

I’m talking today about the biblical sense of a miracle.  I’m talking about what one author defined as “an event in which God temporarily makes an exception to the natural order of things, to show that God is acting.”  [Richard Puritell in In Defense of Miracles, Ed. By Geivett and Habermas, IVP, 1997, pp. 62-63.]

Notice the important components of this definition:

  1.  It is “an event”—something which happens in time and space and is/becomes part of history.
  2. It involves “…God.”  Lots of bizarre things happen in our world, some of them by the powers of evil and darkness.  That’s not God.  It may convince some people to follow the god of this world, the devil, but it’s not a “miracle” in the sense that the Bible talks about divine miracles.  A biblical miracle is something God does and does for a reason.
  3. It is “an exception to the natural order of things….”  Resuscitating a “dead person” after a few minutes of no heart beat is not a miracle; it’s a resuscitation.  But bringing someone back to life after the brain has stopped all functioning for days, the body has begun decaying and the corpse has been cold and in the grave for days, that’s a “resurrection”…and that’s a miracle. 
  4. Finally, it’s a miracle in the biblical sense if it can be understood “to show that God is acting.”  That doesn’t mean everyone who sees it or even experiences will necessarily believe God more.  It simply means that God has “temporarily made an exception to the natural order of things” so that people can see Him acting if they are willing to do so. 

O.K.  So by that definition of “miracle”, what were the true miracles of the Christmas event?  (Invite responses.)

What are the possible MIRACLES in the Christmas event?

  • Virgin conception/birth
  • The incarnation itself
  • The angelic announcements to Zachariah, Mary, Joseph, the Shepherds
  • The guiding star
  • The fulfillment of prophecies about the Messiah
  • Protection through pre-warning to flee to Egypt. 

This event we commonly call “Christmas” didn’t just have one or two miracles associated with it.  There were a whole boatload of miracles!  God wanted to make sure that both the people alive in the world at that time as well as people throughout history since that time would have plenty of evidence to work with when it came to God invading history and human experience. 

      That’s the funny thing about miracles.  God gives them to us just so that we can have even more reason to place our faith in Him.  But miracles and the miraculous, for some people, seem to be yet another reason why they won’t believe in a God who constantly invades life on earth and human experience.  Some people are so bold (arrogant?) as to claim that they know enough about the entire universe, how it operates and everything that happens in it to declare, “There is no such thing as ‘miracles’.”  So they try and rationalize away the notion of miracles by saying all seeming miracles can be explained (if enough facts are known) by the normal laws and operations of our ordered universe. 

But genuine God-given miracles are made of tougher stuff than that.  According to the historical miracles recorded in the Bible, while you can try to explain them away by naturalistic explanations, to do so you must deny the historic description of them.  You must take the historic data, change it, discount it, even deny it and insert in its place your own, non-historic, non-observational, contemporary 21st century rationalized explanation of what happened.     

Let’s look at a few of these miracles the Bible talks about that were integral to the Christmas Story as we know it from the historical documents of the Bible. 

For starters, how about the VIRGIN CONCEPTION/BIRTH?

I say “virgin conception” because that’s really what the Bible calls it.  Let’s read the account of it in Luke 1:26-38.

26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth’s pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 27 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. 28 The angel went to her and said, “Greetings, you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you.”

 29 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 30 But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. 31 You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. 32 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, 33 and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

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

 35 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 the Son of God. 36 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. 37 For no word from God will ever fail.”

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

I have an Emmy Award winning video at home called The Miracle of Life.  It’s put out by NOVA, not exactly your bastion of Christian world-view.  It traces the development of a human being from before conception, during conception and through to the moment of live birth.  It has “the first filmed record of human conception” and the authors of Nova themselves say about human birth that it “is the culmination of one of nature’s most complex, mysterious, and seemingly miraculous processes.”  After watching 60 minutes of the “seemingly miraculous” events of 9 months of a child’s gestation, you’ll be wondering why they don’t just drop the “seemingly” phrase and call it what outright “miraculous.”  (But then, even by our definition of “miraculous”, the conception and birth of a child is not “miraculous” since it happens so often all over the world despite the fact that we still can’t figure out or replicate the process without using what God has already supplied us in human genetic material and the womb’s environment.)

But God wanted to make sure that the entrance of himself into this world was truly miraculous from the very start.  So he said, “I’ll still use a young, fertile woman who contributes half of the genetic material needed for the incarnation. But I’ll do it without the genetic contribution of any man.  In fact, just so people have to really deny the miraculous in it all if they insist, I’ll do it in the womb of a virgin, someone who has never had sex with a man.” 

If you know your Old Testament, you know that this was predicted by the prophet Isaiah some 700 years before in Isaiah 7:14 when he wrote, “Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.” 

      Now, to be fair with the Hebrew language, the term “virgin” used here in the Hebrew can mean either a “young woman/maiden” or a “virgin”—a woman who has never had sexual relations with a man. 

      BUT, when you come to the New Testament, there is absolutely no such ambiguity with the Greek word; it has to be a woman who has never had sexual relations with a man. 

      That is further confirmed by both Mary and Joseph’s reaction to the news that Mary is going to be/is pregnant.  Luke gives us Mary’s reaction.  We just read about how impossible to believe she found the angel’s announcement since she knew she was still a virgin.

      But Matthew records Joseph’s reaction.  Mary and Joseph were both “betrothed” to each other at the time.  In Jewish customs, betrothal was as binding as marriage in our culture.  But the betrothal period did not include sexual relations.  That happened after the wedding and wedding feast at the conclusion of the betrothal period.

      Here is Matthew’s account in Matt. 1:18ff—

18 This is how the birth of Jesus the Messiah came about: His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph, but before they came together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit. 19 Because Joseph her husband was faithful to the law, and yet did not want to expose her to public disgrace, he had in mind to divorce her quietly.

 20 But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, “Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins.”

 22 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet: 23 “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”).

 24 When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him and took Mary home as his wife. 25 But he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth to a son. And he gave him the name Jesus.”

Now, you can choose to outright deny the historical account here and thus deny the miracle of the virgin birth of Jesus.  But when you do that, you do great violence not only to history but also to Christian theology. 

            You see, there was a reason why God took on humanity and human existence through the virgin conception/birth.  Romans 5 teaches that sin and death passes to all humanity through Adam.  Not only is every human being a sinner because we actually sin; we’re born in sin because of the sinful nature we inherit from both our parents. 

            But God interrupted that process at the conception of Jesus.  The angel told Mary in Luke 1:35, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.  So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.” 

God caused Mary to conceive, not by some weird event in which the Spirit of God had sexual relations with Mary.  No, God did a miraculous work in her, the second miraculous creation of a human being by the work of the Holy Spirit.  Adam was created from the dust of the ground; Jesus, the “second Adam” (Rm. 5) had his human body and nature created also by a work of the Holy Spirit but in the virgin’s womb.  Both were created with human natures but without sin because they were the direct work of the Holy Spirit.  The angel, Gabriel, told Mary that the one born from her would be “the holy one.” 

Every other human being ever to live is sinful from the moment of conception as David said in Psalm 51:5—“Surely I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me.”   Without the virgin birth Jesus would have a sinful human nature like us.  That one reality would have disqualified Him becoming our substitute for sin. But conceived in Mary’s womb, as truly human, he could be our representative before God—taking on our punishment, experiencing our humanity but as the only sinless human being to ever live. 

The virgin birth was not only there to fulfill a 700 year old prophecy.  It was not only there to show Jesus’ miraculous nature.  It was there because the perfect wisdom and justice of God demanded it.  Without a sinless, human and divine Savior, there would be no salvation available to every sinful, human being. 

It was certainly going to take a miracle—the virgin birth—to not only bring Christ into this world but to bring salvation from sin into human experience.

How about another miracle it would take for Christmas to become the most important birthday ever celebrated in human history?

ANGELIC APPEARANCES & ANNOUNCEMENTS

ILL:  One day several years ago I came home to find the day’s stack of mail sitting on the kitchen counter.  In that stack was a rather large, white envelope with fancy lettering and embossing on it.  It was big…and extra heavy.  And it said it was from The White House.

            Since it was after the November elections, I hoped it at least was not some fund-raising gimmick. So I carefully sliced it open with the letter opener and began to go through its contents. 

            Inside was a very fancy, official-looking invitation to the George Bush’s 2nd Presidential Inauguration.  (Don’t ask me how I got one unless it was for driving the press corps in the Presidential Motorcade when President Bush visited Spokane earlier that year.  He was probably thanking me for not killing all the presidential journalists, right? J) 

In addition, there was another invitation to attend one of the Inaugural Balls to be held in Washington, D.C., complete with RSVP cards and all.  Made me feel pretty special…but not special enough to pay the thousands of dollars it would have cost to actually go. 

But had I gotten anywhere near the “announcement” that a whole lot of people surrounding the birth of Jesus got, I would definitely have reconsidered.  Whenever an angel shows up in its heavenly glory and makes its presence known, I’d call that miraculous.

  • So did Mary at the annunciation in Luke 1. 
  • So did Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist, in Luke 1 when he was told his wife Elizabeth would have a child in her old age after being barren. 
  • So did Joseph in Matthew 1 when he was told not to divorce Mary because of the pregnancy. 
  • And so did a bunch of very rough and tumble, probably a bit profane and crude, and certainly a bit smelly shepherds in the fields around Bethlehem on the night of Jesus’ birth. 

Wherever an angel miraculously appeared, people responded, usually with fear, frequently with obedience. 

  • Mary accepted God’s choice of her as the earthly mother of Jesus through the virgin conception.
  • Zacharias was left mute, speechless for 9 months until the birth of John the Baptist.
  • Joseph totally changed his thinking and his plans.  He set aside the divorce papers and stepped up to make Mary his wife from that night on.
  • The shepherds decided to leave those very fields where King David had probably herded sheep as a boy and went searching from manger to manger for a child who had been born that night in nothing but a stable. 

Everyone of these people probably needed a miracle to change their plans in a way that would conform with God’s workings.  Their miracle came in the form of an angel.  It really took several miracles to get all these players to the right place on this momentous day. 

These miracles were becoming more public all the time.  From private encounters with individual people, God was widening the audience.  It would take a miracle, a really public miracle, for Jesus’ entrance upon the stage of humanity to be what God wanted it to be—a world-wide, world-shaping event. 

            God could have announced the coming Messiah to the Jewish High Priest when he made his visit that one day of Atonement to the Holy of Holies in the Temple.  He could have announced it to all the priests in one of the many annual gatherings at the Temple. 

            But God wanted the world to know that the Savior of the World had arrived.  So he used another part of his creation…a star…to get the attention of a few Gentile seers, wise men from some distant foreign nation who had neither the word of God or the people of God to give them salvation.  But they were believers enough in the supernatural to recognize when God gave them a miracle in the sky. 

Mt. 2 records what happened.

“1 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem 2 and asked, “Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose and have come to worship him.”

            They probably didn’t come that night…nor that week…nor that month.  Joseph & Mary most likely decided to stay in Bethlehem after the birth of Jesus for a year or two.  And these Magi or wise men arrived in Jerusalem looking for “the one who has been born king of the Jews.” 

            How did they know this?  We’re not told.  Maybe they were told by an angel as well.  Or maybe they knew that the Jews were waiting for a Messiah so that when the star led them to Israel, they figured it must be God’s sign of a very important prophecy. 

            Most of our nativity sets have 2 or 3 royal looking men on camels.  But travel with the kind of wealth they brought would not have been done in those days without a healthy accompaniment of armed servants and body guards.  It is very likely that dozens if not several hundred people made this journey with the Magi.  Men who had no direct stake among the people of God, who were not the ones to receive the Old Testament promises of the Messiah, nonetheless were the ones who spent the most, came the farthest, searched the longest and rejoiced the most (besides the angels; Mt. 2:10) at the birth of God in human flesh. 

Mt. 2:9-12

“…they went on their way, and the star they had seen when it rose went ahead of them until it stopped over the place where the child was. 10 When they saw the star, they were overjoyed. 11 On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. 12 And having been warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their country by another route.”

It took a miracle to catch the attention of some people very far away from the salvation God was providing to the world.  That star was there for all to see. Tens of thousand of people must have viewed it.  Most probably shrugged their shoulders and forgot about it.  A few probably commented on how amazing it was that it had appeared…and then went about their normal routine until it disappeared. 

            But a very few who were far from Israel but near to God’s heart for relationship, were hungry enough and wise enough to recognize a miracle from God in the night sky…night after night, month after month…until they found the “king” they were looking for…and worshipped him. 

Different people…different miracles.  It took a miracle.  In fact, it took several miracles for God to reach into the hearts and lives of people that first Christmas. 

It’ll take a miracle TODAY too.  O, it may not be the blazing presence of angels that it takes.  It may just be your presence with the love of Christ and the words that can lead people to life in Jesus.

It may not take the prolonged light of an unusual star.  But it may take the prolonged witness of a life like yours or mine snatched out of darkness and given new life by Jesus, the Light of the world.

It may not involve the suspension of some physical law or norm that produces a miraculous birth.  But it will require an equally miraculous “second birth” that comes to every person ready to put their faith in Jesus Christ and be “born again.”    

You see, it takes a miracle every time that someone on this earth finds Christ, the Savior of the world.  It takes a miraculous work of the Holy Spirit to be “born again”…made alive spiritually through faith in Jesus Christ.  Just as the Holy Spirit did a miracle in the body of Mary to conceive the human body and nature of Jesus Christ, so it takes the Holy Spirit to do a miracle in the heart of every sinner to bring the life of Christ into our hearts and bring us to life spiritually. 

It takes a miracle for every one of us to become a child of God.  We’re not born children of God; we’re born sinners separated from God.  But because of the miraculous birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God offers to every one of us the miracle of eternal life…life in right relationship with God…through Jesus Christ. 

Will you make that journey to Jesus today?

Will you see God’s mighty hand in the many miracles of the birth of Jesus?

Will you open your heart to God by worshipping God the Son, the incarnation of God Almighty, in Jesus Christ? 

Inviting Jesus into your life and letting God bring you to life spiritually through faith in Jesus IS the most important miracle any of us will ever experience.  The 72 disciples in Luke 10, having just come back from the most amazing experiences of their lives in ministry preaching the gospel, seeing miracles happen and even having demons subject to them, were reminded by Jesus that the casting down of Satan himself from heaven is not to be compared to the joy we can have at knowing that “…our names are written in heaven” (Lk. 10:20).

Is your name written in heaven through faith in Jesus Christ?  (Call to trust Christ by faith and receive the new birth by the Holy Spirit.) 

Once you have experienced life’s greatest miracle—the change of heart and life only Jesus can bring—then the miracles have just begun. 

How about all of us:  What are you thinking…or even saying… “It’ll take a miracle for that to change!”??? 

Our God is in the miracle business.  In fact, he’s the ONLY one who does real miracles in this universe.  He didn’t stop with the birth of Jesus.  He really just got started! 

So what needs a miracle in your life? 

  • Some broken, wounded or even destroyed relationship?
  • Some part of your past that you can’t get over?
  • Some battle you are facing in your body…or your mind… or your heart?
  • Is there a God-given dream that is languishing or broken that needs resurrection?
  • Maybe it’s your relationship with God that’s gone stale, grown cold or slipped into silence?

We all need miracles. That’s why we all need a God of miracles. 

APP:  Take the slip of paper in your bulletin today.  Write down a miracle or two that your heart is longing for.  When we take the offering, make that longing “an offering” to God.  Turn that miracle need into a prayer as you lay it down before God.