June 30, 2000
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Luke 1:26-33
The Divine Announcement to Mary, Part 1
Luke 1:26-31
Surely the most widely shared commemoration across the world, involving more people and more nations than any other holiday celebration is Christmas. It commemorates a divine person and a divine event. We're not here to remember what a man has done or what men have done, but what God has done. This is not a celebration of human history or human achievement. It is a recognition of a marvelous, miraculous, divine accomplishment. Christmas celebrates the most monumental event and the most monumental person in the history of the world. Christmas is all about the eternal, sovereign creator God of the universe coming to earth, coming into the earth of His creation as a human being to live among His creation as one of them.
"Now in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the descendants of David and the virgin's name was Mary. And coming in, he said to her, 'Hail, favored one, the Lord is with you.' She was greatly troubled at the statement and kept pondering what kind of salutation this might be. And the angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God and behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a Son and you shall name Him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His Kingdom will have no end. And Mary said to the angel, 'How can this be, since I am a virgin?' And the angel answered and said to her, 'The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you and for that reason the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God. And behold, even your relative Elizabeth has also conceived a son in her old age, and she who was called barren is now in her sixth month. For nothing will be impossible with God.' And Mary said, 'Behold, the bondslave of the Lord, be it done to me according to your word.' And the angel departed from her."
There with those simple straightforward, unmistakably clear words is the beginning of the glorious, beautiful, true account of God becoming flesh, the incarnation. The simple, lovely narrative clearly designed to feature the divine character of the event. There's nothing man-made about this. There's nothing human about this. There is no more wonderful, no more marvelous, no more compelling, no more miraculous story in all of history than this one as God begins to tell the drama of salvation in the birth of the God/Man.
And though this is how the story begins in the New Testament account, it's not the first mention of the coming Savior, the child that would be born. Not at all, in fact you can go all the way back to the third chapter of Genesis where the Fall of man is recorded, living in the garden in the paradise of God, Adam and Eve enjoying the full blessing of God in holy innocence, fell into sin and immediately upon that sin they were cursed as was the whole human race.
Genesis chapter 3 verse 15 comes a promise that there will come a seed of the woman. A woman has no seed, man has a seed. But there will be a woman who will have a seed. She will bear a child who will bruise the serpent's head. There's the first prophecy that the Messiah would come, that the seed of the woman would destroy the one who had destroyed the human race, bruise his head, a human offspring of Eve would be born of a seed in a woman and some day deliver the fatal blow to Satan.
Isaiah the prophet said in chapter 9 that a child would be born, a Son would be given and the government of the world would be upon His shoulders and His name would be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Father of eternity, the Prince of peace, the increase of His government as King and there would be no end upon His scepter would come all authority and He would rule forever.(see also Daniel 2:45, 9:26) Isaiah the prophet also in chapter 53 of that great prophecy saw the coming child as one who would be a suffering servant. He said, "On Him would be laid the iniquity of us all." He would bear the sins of all of us. He would be bruised for our iniquities, chastised for our peace with God.
The Old Testament is filled with so many prophecy and promises that in Luke 24 when Jesus after His resurrection was walking with His disciples, it says that He spoke to them and said, "These are My words which I spoke to you while I was still with you that all things which are written about Me in the law of Moses and the prophets and all the holy writings must be fulfilled. And He opened their minds to understand the scriptures," talking about the Old Testament. And He showed them Himself in the Old Testament, in the law, in the prophets, in all the holy writings. Every book of the Old Testament anticipates the coming of the Savior, every book. All throughout the Psalms, all throughout the prophets, all throughout the law He is seen as the ultimate and final sacrifice. The general prophecies of His great Kingdom, the specific prophecies such as Micah's statement that He would be born in the town of Bethlehem, 350 predictions concerning this child who would be born are given in the Old Testament, at least.
So this is the story of God coming into the world but it's not the first time we've heard about it. It's been promised. This is the story of its fulfillment. God coming into the world as a man breaks with supernatural surprise on the unmiraculous tedium of human history. It was planned before creation. It was predicted from the beginning of human history. The hope originally awakened in that first promise in Genesis 3:15 and kept alive for millennia in the hearts of God's faithful people is about to be realized.
"Now in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee called Nazareth." This is the second time in this chapter a holy angel appears. It's the second time that holy angel, of course, has been Gabriel. A monumental reality, I've been telling you, nobody had seen an angel in over 400 years and even then it was only one person apparently who saw him. Nobody had heard a word from God in over 400 years, and there hadn't been a miracle in over 400 years and there hadn't been a sequence of miracles in over 500 years. That was the unmiraculous tedium that was broken by this supernatural event. God hasn't sent an angel. God hasn't done a miracle and God hasn't said a word for centuries.
Then an angel appeared to a man named Zacharias, and he was just a humble priest from the hill country of Judea doing his duty down in the temple a couple of weeks a year. An angel appeared to him and launched the great saga of redemption in the Messiah, announcing to him that he would go home and have a son with his wife. And both of them were either in their seventies or eighties, they were old, she was barren. A miracle would happen. They would be given a son, that son would be born to be the forerunner of the Messiah, the announcer, the herald of the Messiah. And God broke in to that unmiraculous tedium with the first great miracle, a miracle birth in a couple that couldn't have a child. Not just any child would be born, a child chosen by God to be the forerunner of the Messiah.
Here's the beginning of the greatest moment in human history, a moment all generations in Israel and the world have awaited. Gabriel comes with the most astounding and significant birth announcement ever made. Amazingly Gabriel comes right from God. Back in verse 19 it says, "I am Gabriel who stands in the presence of God." That's where Gabriel stands, to be dispatched by God Himself to this duty. He comes down out of heaven to a city in Galilee called Nazareth.
Nazareth, wasn't an important place at all. All the main roads missed Nazareth. It was about 60 to 75 miles north of Jerusalem somewhere in the middle between the tip of the Sea of Galilee and the Mediterranean. It's remarkable for its plainness. The angel comes down from the presence of God, comes down to the region of Galilee to the little town of Nazareth to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph of the descendants of David. And the virgin's name was Mary. The angel comes down and goes to one house. God has chosen one person.
This is a most astonishing thing. Out of all the purposes and plans of God that could have been, this is the one He chose. He came down to a virgin. In contrast to Gabriel's first trip earlier in the chapter, when he went to bring God's message of a miracle birth to an old man, this time he comes to bring God's message of a miracle birth to a young girl.
Virgin is the word parthenos, it means "one who has had no sexual relation." This word is never used of a married woman. According to Roman law, listen to this, the minimum age for girls to be engaged and married was twelve. That's right, twelve. For boys, whom we all know develop slower, it was fourteen. Augustus, the emperor, had set the minimum age at ten, that would be the age for engagement. And Jewish practice basically followed that. Girls were usually engaged around twelve or thirteen and married after the engagement or the betrothal was over. And the reason they did that was because they therefore would guarantee their virginity. As soon as they had reached puberty they would be engaged and then soon married. In that way they didn't have to live five, ten, who knows how many years, trying to restrain their normal adult passions.
So, here was a girl twelve or thirteen, engaged to a man. Literally the word engaged is betrothed, it's more than engagement. It's not the same as our engagement. Betrothal was a binding, legal relationship and it was arranged by parents. If the man died, the betrothed girl would be considered a widow. Betrothal lasted about a year. During that year the girl would prove her faithfulness and her purity by not giving herself to anyone else. And during that same year the boy would prepare a home a for her, a place for her, usually with an addition to his father's house.
Mary was betrothed. Her husband had paid a dowry, a price to her father, and the actual wedding was still in the future. The young man to whom she was betrothed is named Joseph, which means "may he have many sons." Very importantly he was of the descendants of David. He really was in the kingly line, the royal line, the great king of Israel from whose loins the Messiah, Savior, King would come, David. If Jesus was a Son of David bearing the line of David so His father had to be as well. And even though Joseph was not His father by blood, he wasn't His natural father, he was of the line of David and passed that on to Jesus because Jesus was his Son, if not by birth, by adoption...which was legally binding. So Jesus was born of a father who was royalty. Though he was not His father physically, he was His father legally. A humble Galilean carpenter, interestingly enough, in an obscure town called Nazareth with royal blood.
The virgin's name was Mary. This is interesting, that's the Greek word for Miriam, the Hebrew is Miriam, the Greek is Mary. And she was named well, I don't think her parents had any idea how well, Mary means "exalted one." Nothing describes her as note worthy, look at that. It's likely that she also was from David's line. There's a genealogy in Luke 3, and if you match the genealogy in Luke 3 with the genealogy in Matthew 1, they're different. We know the genealogy in Matthew 1 is Joseph, therefore the genealogy in Luke 3 must be Mary. Even though she's not named in that genealogy because only the men are named, that would be the line that led to Mary so that Jesus would have royal right passed down to Him by His legal father, Joseph, He would have royal blood passed down to Him through His mother Mary. In every sense then He was royalty.
Joseph was David's descendant, and Mary was David's descendant. Both of them gave to Jesus' royal heritage. Mary gave it to Him through blood by birth. Joseph gave it through the right to rule by adoption.
Here comes the devine message from God. "And coming in," obviously she was in the house doing what a twelve- or thirteen-year-old girl would do, domestic duties, probably dominated by preparing food. She may have been in the house preparing food at the time. Apparently no one was there with her. And the angel Gabriel entered the house, I like this, he said to her, "Hello," that's what "hail" means, it's benign really, chairo, hello. I mean, if an angel Gabriel out of the presence of God showed up in your house and just said, "Hello," it would seem like somewhat of an understatement, wouldn't it? Where is the fanfare again? I love the simplicity of this. "Hello." And I think maybe the simplicity of that introduction was designed to prevent panic. "Hello, favored one, the Lord is with you."
I'm sure Mary knew this wasn't a human being. He's not like any human being she ever saw. This young girl who wouldn't have had adult experiences to galvanize her, who...in the tenderness of her youth could be frightened by perhaps lots of things, hears from this supernatural being whom she can see and who speaks in a human voice, an audible voice, "Hello charitoo, favored one, blessed one, the Lord is with you."
Mary was not the source of grace, Mary was the recipient of grace. What the angel said was that Mary was going to receive God's grace which He would freely give her. She was highly graced. She was to be receiving the grace that God alone could give. This grace would come because he said, "The Lord's with you...the Lord's with you." Now that's similar to what was said to Gideon, "The Lord is with you, O valiant warrior." The Lord is with you, Mary, you're going to receive grace, divine grace.
And that's what shook her to the core, "She was greatly troubled at this statement." It was what he said that just shook her. She kept pondering what kind of salutation this might be, what in the world...it's just a little girl in a little obscure town, maybe preparing a little meal, all alone in a house. And here comes a messenger from God saying God has graced her and she is shaken by this. Back in verse 12, Zacharias when the angel came to him was also troubled and fear gripped him. But here it's not so much the appearance of Gabriel that strikes her, although she does have fear as we will find out in verse 30, but it's what he said that shook her. She is diatarasso, she's disturbed, she's perplexed, she's confused. It's talking about a mental state, perplexed by what he said. I mean, what troubled her was, "What do you mean God has graced me, the Lord is with me?" Why would she be so perplexed by that? Because she knew she was a sinner.
It might have been earlier in that day when she had an unholy impure thought about Joseph who was to be her husband. It might have been earlier in that same day that she had spoken an unkind word to someone. It might have been earlier in the same day when she had failed to acknowledge the Lord from the heart for some blessing. She knew her sin. She knew who she was just like you know who you are. Mary is one of us, folks, she's not some quasi-supernatural being, she's one of us. She knew she was a sinner. That's why in Luke1:47 when she praises God, she says, "God, my Savior." She knew she needed a Savior. She knew what all righteous people knew.
This is the only little indication we have that she was a righteous lady, that she really knew God, that she was a true believer. And the reason I say that is because she was struck with the fact that she didn't deserve anything from God. It's that kind of humility that demonstrates true righteousness. All genuinely righteous people are distressed when they come before God because they know they're sinners. "What would God ever have in mind in choosing to favor me with grace?" She might have been less surprised if the angel had showed up and said, "Mary, God's going to judge you. Mary, God knows your heart, He knows your sin and He hears what you say and He reads what you think and I'm here to tell you you're going to be judged." It might have been that she would have reacted like Isaiah when he saw God, "Woe is me, for I am done." But to be told you're going to be graced by God, you're going to be the recipient of His grace and to know you're just a humble, sinful, lowly girl engaged to a common carpenter with all the struggles of the heart of a young person? How is it that she could be the object of anything but God's judgment? How could she be singled out for special privileges?
Continuing the conversation, breaking in to Mary's preoccupation, "The angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God." This indicates that her confusion and perplexity also had a measure of fear. Appearances of divine persons always elicited and generated fear and called for this assurance. Chapter 13, the angel, same angel Gabriel...chapter 1 verse 13, chapter 1:13, Gabriel says to Zacharias, "Do not be afraid." Chapter 2 verse 10 when the angels appeared to the shepherds in the field, they say, "Do not be afraid." Seeing a holy angel out of the presence of God is a frightening thing.
Nothing for Mary to fear. This isn't judgment. The angel affirmingly says, "For you have found favor with God." In other words, God has graced you. Why? Divine choice, it doesn't say anything she did, it purposely leaves out any commendation of this girl. Mary was not and is not a source of grace. She is like all the rest of us, a recipient of it. Mary is one of us.
The issue here is not Mary's worthiness, the issue here is God's choice. The issue here is not Mary's merit, the issue here is God's sovereignty. God graciously chose Mary. She didn't deserve it. She wasn't worthy of it. She was just a young girl, just a sinner like everybody else. God wants us to know that this grace from God came to one of whom nothing could be said to make her worthy. Mary knew it.
Later on this 13-year-old girl, or so, praised God, in Luke 1:46. Mary said, "My soul exalts the Lord, my spirit has rejoiced in God, my Savior, for He has regard for the humble state of His bondslave. For behold, from this time on all generations will count me blessed." Not the blesser, she's the blessed. "For the mighty One has done great things for me." And what is amazing about it is, "Holy is His name." How can a holy God do such great things for such a sinner as me? She knew. She was humble. She had a beatitude mentality.
So the divine messenger, Gabriel, comes to the divine choice, Mary, with a divine blessing, grace...announcing the fourth point, the divine child. To this point she doesn't even know what the message is, all she knows is that God has chosen her to be gracious to her. By the way, as a footnote, God is only gracious to those who believe in Him. He gives no grace to those who refuse Him, He gives no grace to those who do not know Him. The Lord was with her and the Lord was gracious to her in a special and unique way, but that because she did belong to Him.
Then comes the announcement of the divine child. "And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a Son and you shall name Him Jesus." With that, we arrive at the high point of the meeting between Gabriel and Mary, and the amazing promise that God would be born through her.
The Divine Announcement to Mary, Part 2
Luke 1:31-33
"Now in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph of the descendants of David, and the virgin's name was Mary. And coming in he said to her, 'Hail, favored one, the Lord is with you.' She was greatly troubled at this statement, kept pondering, 'What kind of salutation this might be.' And the angel said to her, 'Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God, and behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a Son and you shall name Him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His Kingdom will have no end.'"
The record of God sending His Son into the world is the most marvelous, miraculous and impactful account in all literature and history. Its implications are massive and eternal because by the birth of Jesus Christ, God the Son entered the world to provide salvation for all who believe. Apart from Him there would be no salvation and all would be damned to eternal hell. This is the high point of God's redemptive plan, as Paul stated it in Galatians 4:4, "In the fullness of time God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law to redeem those who were under the law." God sent forth His Son at the very most crucial moment when all of the issues were in perfect confluence for the arrival of Messiah, He came. He came for the purpose of redeeming sinners from the condemnation of the law and the just punishment of eternal hell.
The divine messenger was Gabriel, the divine choice was Mary, the divine blessing was grace, "Hail, graced one...Hail, favored one," says the angel, "the Lord is with you." God the Almighty, eternal creator of the universe has come down with a message through this angel to be with this girl, to bestow upon her a grace the likes of which no other human being in the history of the world will ever experience, a grace that is beyond comprehension. The issue here, of course, is God's choice. You'll notice it says nothing about Mary, nothing at all except she was a virgin, that's all. She was just a young girl, as I said, maybe 13-years-old who had just reached puberty. She had never known a man. Betrothed to her husband she was to prove her purity during that time of betrothal and to be pure was essential. If she committed adultery she would fall under condemnation given in the law of God back in Deuteronomy. She was just a simple, humble girl. It was to her that this immense grace was to be given.
She didn't understand what it meant but she was startled by it all. "She was greatly troubled at this statement, to say nothing of the frightening appearance of the angel and she kept pondering...What kind of salutation this might be." Why in the world would an angel from the presence of God, a glorious angel come down to tell her that special grace was given to her and the Lord would be with her, indicative of the fact that she knew her own sinful heart, she knew her own unworthiness.
The angel said to her in verse 30, "Don't be afraid, Mary, there's nothing to fear, for you have found grace with God." Up to this point she doesn't know what this grace is. She doesn't know what's going to happen. Remember now, there's no verse to commend her. It doesn't say about her what it said about Zacharias and Elizabeth back in verse 6 where it is recorded that they were both righteous in the sight of God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments, requirements of the Lord. It doesn't say that about Mary. That's because we want to be sure, God wants us to be sure that we don't believe that what happened to Mary had anything to do with her merit or her worthiness.
So down comes the divine messenger to the divine choice, bringing divine blessing and announcing in verses 31 to 33 the divine child. The fourth point, the divine child and here for the first time she finds out what this work of God, this gracious work of God in her life is going to be. And believe me, for God to plant a seed in her and for her to carry the Son of God in her womb is a great grace, isn't it? Never forget it, Mary was a sinner. Albeit a believing sinner who believed in God, as indicated by her praise over in verse 46, "Her soul exalted the Lord, but she also rejoiced in God as her Savior," it says. God formed in the womb of a sinner, what grace.
The announcement comes, "Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a Son and you shall name Him Jesus." Finally the statement comes, if she was shocked at his initial statement, "Hail, favored one, the Lord is with you," if that was hard for her to grasp and if she was greatly troubled at that and kept pondering what THAT meant, what in the world was her reaction when the angel said to her you're going to conceive in your womb?
She only knew one way to conceive and that was to have a relationship with a man. She had never had a relationship with a man, she was a virgin. She affirms her virginity in verse 34, "How can this be since I am a virgin?" Everywhere in the record it indicates that she was a virgin, she had never known a man. "The Holy Spirit will come upon you," not of man, the Holy Spirit will come, a miracle will happen, "The power of the Most High will overshadow you and for that reason the holy offspring shall be called, not the Son of Joseph, the Son of God." A pregnant virgin, utterly unimaginable, utterly impossible.
"Nothing will be impossible with God." This had never happened, never. It had been prophesied. Isaiah 7:14 , "A virgin shall conceive and bear a Son and you shall call His name Immanuel, God with us." A virgin will conceive and have a Son who is God with us.
Luke does not specifically refer back to the Isaiah prophecy, but Matthew does in his account. In Matthew 1 Joseph found out about this. Joseph found out Mary was pregnant. His initial reaction was devastation. "And we have been betrothed and it's not consistent with what I know about Mary, it's not consistent with her love for God, it's not consistent with her character. How can this be?" Matthew 1:19, "Joseph, her husband, being a righteous man..he too, was one who loved God, didn't want to disgrace her...desired to put her away secretly." Desired to divorce her. Remember, I told you that once they were betrothed it was a legally binding agreement, and if it was violated or broken, it was considered a divorce. But when he was thinking about how he was going to do this, and in the grief and anguish and confusion of his mind, asking himself...how in the world she became pregnant?..."An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, 'Joseph, the son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for that which has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit and she will bear a Son and you shall call His name Jesus for it's He who will save His people from their sins." And the angel had to give Joseph essentially the same message.
This was a fulfillment of Isaiah. It says in verse 23, "Behold, the virgin shall be with child and bear a Son and call His name Immanuel, which means God with us." And so he says to this young girl, does the angel, you're going to become pregnant and you're going to have a Son and you're going to name Him Jesus.
To be pregnant out of wedlock, to violate a betrothal covenant to commit what would constitute adultery was punishable by death, and according to Deuteronomy 22, she could have been stoned to death. And had the theocracy still been operating on God's terms, that would have been the sentence, stone the adulteress to death.
For many years though, the nation of Israel had moved away from upholding the law of God. God originally desired that death take place, severe consequence for this kind of iniquity so that men and women would be moved away from doing it because of those consequences, but long ago that nation had apostatized and no longer did they enforce the law of God. What had grown up was the custom of divorcing an adulterous wife, and Joseph chose to do that probably because of his love for her and his desire not to see her die. But the fact was Mary was guilty of no sin whatsoever...no sin whatsoever. This was to be the work of God.
"You will conceive...you will conceive by the instrumentality of the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit will create a seed in you, it doesn't need to be placed there by a man, and you will nine months later bear a Son." Staggering promise. I can't even imagine what this girl must have thought...just never ever would have occurred to anyone that such a possibility could occur.
"When the Son is born you shall name Him Jesus." That's exactly what she did. Chapter 2 verse 21, "And when eight days were completed before His circumcision, His name was then called Jesus, the name given by the angel before He was conceived in the womb."
In this statement which seems on the surface to be a rather simple statement, "You shall name Him Jesus, He will be great, called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever and His Kingdom will have no end." You have a summation of the entire work of Jesus Christ. You have His saving work in the name Jesus. You have His perfect righteous life in the term "great." You have His deity in the title "Son of the Most High." And you have His resurrection, His ascension and His glorious return all bound up in the promise that the Lord would give Him the throne of His father David.
In what the angel says you have a summation of the righteous life, saving death and glorious reign of Jesus Christ all summed up. First of all, the angel introduces something of His saving death in the name Jesus, Jeshua, a familiar Hebrew name in Old Testament times, a common one. It means "Jehovah saves." The God of the Old Testament was a God of salvation and the people knew it. God is a saving God. He saves sinners. That's exactly why Jesus came. Luke 19:10, "The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost." Matthew 1:21, "You shall call His name Jesus, for it is He who will save His people from their sins." Luke chapter 2 verse 11, "Today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior who is Christ the Lord." Chapter 2 of Luke over in verse 30 where Simeon is praising God, holding the child, he says, "Mine eyes have seen Thy salvation." And verse 38, at that very moment, that widow, 84-year-old widow came up and began giving thanks to God, continued to speak of Him to all those who were looking for the salvation or redemption of Jerusalem. "Jesus Christ has come into the world...Paul said to Timothy...to save sinners of whom I am chief."
"He will be great." You could translate that extraordinary, magnificent, noble, distinguished, powerful, eminent, all of those could be substituted for great. But they still leave us fall short of what should be said about Him, and this is looking at His...His righteous life...His life. Jesus, the name, looks at His death, great looks at his life. It speaks of His extraordinary life.
How are we to understand what it means because it says back in verse 15 that John the Baptist will be great? Is this the same greatness? Well, verse 15 says John will be great in the sight of the Lord. John will be great, however, with a sort of imputed greatness. God will give to Him a greatness that really isn't His own, it's something God gives to Him, grants to Him. But Jesus' greatness is something not granted to Him but possessed by Him. It is an unqualified greatness. It doesn't say He'll be great in the sight of the Lord, it says He'll be great.
John tells us that Isaiah 6 saw the glory of the One he spoke about. Who did he speak about? He spoke about Christ, the One who would be Immanuel, God with us, born of a virgin. Isaiah said that in Isaiah 7:14. In Isaiah 9:6. Isaiah said, "A Son will be born, a child will come, the government will be upon His shoulders, His name will be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Father of eternity, the Prince of peace," and so forth. Isaiah saw that coming Messiah. He saw that coming Messiah.
But notice, he not only spoke of Him, he saw His glory. In Isaiah 6 when he saw the glory of God, it's the same glory. You remember that Isaiah chapter 6 indicates that Isaiah went into the temple and when he was there he received a vision, he saw the Lord high and lifted up and His glory filled the temple, remember, and the angels began to shout, "Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory," and he was caught up in the momentous, magnificence and terror of that revelation of God's glory. Listen, when Isaiah saw the glory of God, he saw the glory of Christ because the glory of Christ is the same as the glory of God. That's why John 1:14 says, "And we beheld..." it says, "The Word became flesh and we beheld His glory and it was the glory as of the only begotten of the Father." It was the same glory that Isaiah saw, the same glory the apostles saw, Matthew 17, on a Mount of Transfiguration when they saw Christ's glory shining through His humanity and they fell like dead men to the ground in terror.
Whatt is the glory of God? The glory of God is the manifestation of His attributes. In the book of Exodus where Moses wants to see God, God says, "I'll show you My glory," and He let His mercy and His goodness and His lovingkindness pass before him. God's glory is the manifestation of His attributes. God's glory is the manifestation of His attributes, that's why it says of Christ, "And we beheld His glory and He was full of grace and truth." Glory is the manifestation of divine attributes. When it says in verse 32 He will be great, it means He will manifest glory, He will manifest the very glory of God. That is to say you will see the attributes of God through His perfectly righteous life. You will see God displayed. He will talk like God, He will act like God, He will think like God, He will be great like God is great. He will be glorious.
And as you study the four gospels and we do that as we go through Luke, we're going to see God in every picture of Christ. God's thoughts, God's words, God's actions, God's responses, God's goodness, God's wisdom, God's omnipotence, omniscience. We're going to see it all, revealed in this child.
"The Most High..." The Most High means there's nobody higher. That was a title for God. It was a familiar Jewish title for God, it's used all over the Old Testament. In fact, the Hebrew equivalent of this Greek term hupsistos, the Hebrew equivalent is El Elyon, God Most High. It is a name for God that refers to sovereignty. No one is higher. No one is more exalted. No one is more powerful. No one is as sovereign, God Most High.
The Jews often referred to Him that way. Not wanting to say His name, not wanting to use the tetragrammaton, Yahweh, they would say El Shaddai, El Elyon, or some other description of His attributes. They knew Him often as the Most High God. "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, this is how it's going to happen, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you." He was known to the Jews as the Most High. Over in verse 76 as Zacharias blesses God for the birth of his son, John the Baptist, he's saying, "The child will be called the prophet of the Most High," again a reference to God.
Luke 6:35 "Love your enemies, do good...Jesus said...lend, expect nothing in return, your reward will be great and you'll be sons of the Most High." Even Jesus referred to His Father as the Most High. When Stephen was preaching his great sermon in the seventh chapter of Acts, he referred to God as the Most High, a very familiar term for God, used all through the Old Testament, in the Pentateuch, as well as in the historical writings, as well as in the Psalms, as well as in the prophets. It's everywhere, God Most High. To identify Jesus, back to our text, as the Son of the Most High is to indicate that He has the same essence as the Most High. When you are the son of someone you bear their same essence. He is the Son of the Most High, He is one in essence with the Most High God. Hebrews 1:3 says that He, being Christ, is the exact reproduction of God...the exact reproduction of God. He is the Son of the Most High. Jesus said, "If you've seen Me, you've seen the Father." Jesus said, "I and the Father are one."
So, what can be said about the child? His saving death is bound up in the name Jesus. His perfectly righteous life is bound up in the reference to His greatness. His essential nature is bound up in the title "Son of the Most High." But that doesn't tell the whole story. Son of God, yes. Born a man, yes. Lived a righteous life, yes. Died the sacrificial atoning death to save us from our sins, yes. But that is not the end of the story.
For many Christians it is. I remember as a little kid growing up I used to wonder why the Roman Catholics couldn't get Jesus off the cross. As evangelicals we've done a pretty good job at getting Him off the cross. The story doesn't end with the death of Christ, the resurrection of Christ and then our personal salvation, that's not the end of the story. The end of the story is the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever and His Kingdom will have no end. That's the end of the story. Don't you leave the story until it ends and it ends with a glorious Kingdom and Christ reigning on the throne of David over the nation Israel and establishing at that point what turns out to be an eternal sovereignty.
The Lord didn't have any Kingdom when He was on earth. They killed Him and He left, He went back to heaven. But the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David, there will be a real Kingdom. All of that genealogy in Matthew chapter 1, the whole genealogy in the first seventeen verses is to identify the Messiah as the seed of David because it is the line of David that has the royal right. And Joseph, His earthly father, was of the seed of David. And Mary His mother was of the seed of David as her genealogy in Luke 3 will show so that He received His royal blood from His mother and His royal authority from His father, and by both He was therefore in the line to be King. He had a right to the throne.
He came to reign. He came into the world, He offered His Kingdom. What did men do? They spurned His Kingdom, rejected Him and executed Him. But He'll be back...He'll be back to establish His Kingdom.
When you read in the Old Testament, you read in Psalm 2, for example, that His Father will give Him the nations as His inheritance and He will reign with a rod of iron...you read in Isaiah 9 as we quoted earlier that He's going to be King, sovereign, the government will be upon His shoulders. His Kingdom is described all throughout the Old Testament. It's repeatedly described again and again and again. Second Samuel chapter 7 God said to David that he would have a Son and that that Son would be a king who would reign forever, 2 Samuel 7 verses 12 to 16. It wasn't talking about Solomon, Solomon didn't have an eternal reign, in fact Solomon basically destroyed the kingdom, split the kingdom. But that Son who would have an eternal Kingdom was going to come out of the seed of David and Messiah was of the line of David. You follow His genealogy, He came from David, He's going to have a Kingdom.
We're not talking about His spiritual rule. Of course that's true. He rules as our King personally, that's not what it says here. That's not the issue here. Of course His spiritual rule will go on forever because salvation is forever. But the Kingdom, the rule from the line of David on the earth over Israel and extended across the world will take place. And once it's established it will never end. The form of it will end, the millennial years will end. This universe as we know it will be uncreated and the creation of a new heaven and a new earth will take place. But once He establishes His rule, that rule will transcend those changes and never end. There will only be one King from the time He establishes His Kingdom forever. This is the sum of all redemptive history, monumental.
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