June 30, 2000

• Luke 1:34-35

  

  The Foundations of the Virgin Birth

  Luke 1:34-35

   

  "And the angel said to her...this is the angel Gabriel speaking to Mary...'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 he bondslave of the Lord.  Be it done to me according to Your word.'  And the angel departed from her."

  Obviously from a human perspective, that is not possible.  In verse 34 Mary says, "How can this be since I'm a virgin?"  In verse 37 the angel reminds her, "Nothing will be impossible with God."  What is going to happen is described in verse 35, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you," in place of a man, a husband, "and the power of the Most High will hover around you and because of that you will have a holy child who will be the Son of God."

  Now the conception of Jesus Christ in this manner is unique in all the history of humanity.  This is the only time this has or ever will occur.  This is absolutely critical to the Christian message.  This is critical to the gospel.  This is critical to Christianity, to biblical theology because it protects the nature of Christ as God and Man.  He had to be born of God to be Son of God.  He had to be born of a woman to be Son of Man.  And so in this incredible miracle, Mary who is human and God who is divine are brought together and one is born of God and of woman who is God and Man, the God/Man Jesus Christ. And the nature of Jesus Christ as God and Man is at the heart of the Christian faith.  If anyone denies the deity of Jesus Christ, they have destroyed Christianity.  What you have left is a satanic, deceptive, counterfeit, lying religion invented by men and demons to destroy the truth.

  I have been asked through my years of teaching the Bible whether it's essential to believe that Jesus was conceived in a virgin.  And the answer is yes because it is essential to saving faith to put your trust in the true Christ, you must believe that Jesus is who He is and who He is is God and Man, and that is preserved and launched, if you will, in this very truth of virgin conception.

  History has had some amazing births.  Biblical history has had some amazing births.  The birth of Isaac and actually miraculous.  The father of Isaac was Abraham, he was 100-years- old.  The mother of Isaac was Sarah, she was 90-years-old and barren, unable to have children and at that age God gave Abraham and Sarah a son, Isaac, a real miracle child.  And Isaac then really became the father of the whole redemptive community through whom Messiah finally came...a notable child, a covenant child.

  Isaac miraculously born.  Samson miraculously born.  Samuel miraculously born.  John miraculously born.  And all of them with incredible and astounding lives as God miraculously and supernaturally allowed those children to be conceived and born.  If you look at biblical history there have been some really amazing births, miraculous, supernatural births.  And if you just look at modern history, there have been some amazing non-miraculous, non-supernatural, normal births assisted by science.

  Science has even made some attempt at parthenogenesis.  Parthenos is the Greek word "virgin," and parthenogenesis literally means "virgin generated...virgin conceived."  Science has attempted to allow life to be reproduced without the normal partnership of male and female.  And through lab experiments they have produced parthenogenic life among some lower forms. 

  Even if parthenogenesis of some form could be achieved on a human level, Mary parthenogenetically bearing a son would be impossible.  Geneticists have demonstrated that mammals have two X chromosomes in the females and the males have an X and Y chromosomes.  Most of you remember that from your education.  Thus if you took an unfertilized egg cell, a female egg cell and could somehow create an environment in which it could reproduce itself, two X chromosomes could only reproduce X chromosomes and thus the product of that parthenogenesis could it occur would have to also be female. 

  So even if somehow we could assume that there was some way in which natural parthenogenesis could occur, and we know it can't humanly, but even if it could, Mary would only have been able to produce a daughter, not a son.  When Mary gave birth without a man, without a male sperm as a virgin to a Son, there was then no human explanation.  And that's exactly the way God designed it.  Since the human determines the sex of the child, it is obvious that the sex of Jesus' human nature was determined by God.  God divinely produced a male child.  He produced the male chromosomes and divinely fertilized the egg in Mary's womb.

  There have been some amazing births, some miraculous births, as we just saw.  And even some wonderful achievements in science, the ethics of which are certainly debatable.  But the achievements are amazing.  But none of the supernatural births in the scriptures and none of the scientifically advanced capabilities of our modern time to produce unique births come anywhere close to the virgin conception of Jesus Christ.  There is no scientific, there is no human explanation.

  Jesus was not the miracle child of a barren woman who was made fertile by God.  Jesus was conceived in a virgin.  He could not be parthenogenetically produced.  It wasn't that He was some freak of nature in a pre-sophisticated scientific time, as remote as such a quasi-natural explanation might be, it's impossible to produce a son.  He was born of a woman, conceived in a womb where no male sperm existed and where no female capability to reproduce a man was possible.  He had no earthly father.

  This then is the most amazing birth ever and the only one like it.  Jesus Christ was conceived in a virgin without a male source for a seed, conceived...it says in verse 35...because the Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High, the Creator God Himself will overshadow you, then the holy offspring that is produced will not be the Son of man, but Son of God.

  The Christian faith is predicated on the fact that God was conceived and born in a human womb.  That's the incarnation.  And that is the foundation of Christianity.  If you tamper with that, you tamper with the nature of Jesus Christ and if you come up with any other than the Christ of the New Testament, you have a false religion.  If anybody, Paul said, preaches any other Jesus, let him be accursed.  It is a damnable lie to assault the virgin conception, virgin birth and the nature of Jesus as the God/Man.  And anybody who does it is propagating a damnable lie. 

  Now the Jewish leaders were looking for their deliverer, their Messiah, they believed that when He came He would be a Son of David, that He would come in the royal line, that was pretty obvious.  Going back to 2 Samuel 7 it would be one of David's greater sons who could come to be the King and the Messiah.  They believed that the Messiah would be in the line of David, He would have royal blood.  But it was not a widespread belief, if even a popular belief, that He would be God. 

  In fact, when Jesus said He was Son of David, that wasn't a problem.  But when Jesus said He was Son of God, that was a problem.  Jesus could say He was Son of Man all He wanted.  Jesus could say He was Son of David all He wanted because they could trace His lineage and that's why Matthew chapter 1 gives His lineage as coming from David, and Luke chapter 3 gives the lineage of Mary coming from David.  They didn't argue that He was the Son of Man, human.  They didn't argue that He was a Son of David, royal blood.  But when He said He was the Son of God, they killed Him.  So far from expecting their Messiah to be the Son of God, that disqualified him.

  Now those Jewish leaders who executed Jesus Christ, they actually passed the execution over to the Romans to carry it out, but it was their idea, those leaders that did that are no different than atheists and skeptics and cultists and liberals today who denounce the God/Man, who denounce the incarnation, who denounce the virgin conception, who denounce the virgin birth.

  Luke then wants us to understand the importance of the virgin birth.  As miraculous, as astonishing, as inexplicable as it is on human terms, as beyond our grasp from a scientific viewpoint, because of its supernatural character as this virgin conception is, yet we are called in the simplest of language as was Mary to accept it as reality.  And it is the explanation of the two-fold nature of Christ as God and Man.

  Some might think that this whole idea of the virgin conception just arrived in somebody's imagination.  After all, if all the Jewish leaders didn't believe it and if all of the people didn't believe that Messiah was going to be God, and that there was going to be some kind of miraculous virgin birth take place, if they killed Him for saying He was the Son of God, if this wasn't part of Messianic expectation and all of the...all of the elite students of the Old Testament and so forth didn't really anticipate this reality, shouldn't we believe that this was something concocted by people so as to cause Jesus to somehow rise above the crowd?   And those who wanted to do that on His behalf really invented Him as the God/Man?

  Number one, the Old Testament...the Old Testament.  Go back to Genesis 3 in your Bible.  We mentioned this in a recent message and I want to go back to it because of its foundation character.  You're in the first dawning of redemptive history here, creation in chapter 1, and in chapter 2.  Then in chapter 3 man falls into sin and he's cursed and woman is cursed by having pain in child bearing and having conflict in marriage.  Man is cursed by having to earn his bread by the sweat of his brow and he too has to engage in the conflict that marriage brings. 

  Then God pronounces a curse on the serpent who is Satan.  And part of the curse on Satan in verse 14 is he's going to be cursed more than every other animal.  And then in verse 15, going behind the animal to Satan himself, "I will put enmity between you and the woman."  And then it says this, "And between your seed and her seed.  He shall bruise you on the head and you shall bruise Him on the heel."

  This is a very important prophecy.  This is really the first prophecy next to the one where God said, "In the day you eat of the Tree of Life you'll die," that was a prophecy, too.  But this is the first prophecy that looks forward to redemption.  There's coming someone...this someone is called "her seed," and this one who is her seed will bruise the head of Satan, a crushing deadly blow.  Who is that?  Well only one person could effect the deadly crushing blow on the head of Satan...who was it?  It was Christ. Satan bruised His heel, Satan dealt a blow against Christ obviously in His death on the cross, but it was only a minor wound and out of that wound came redemption.  And the risen Christ came forth out of the grave triumphant to give the fatal blow to Satan.  That will be executed on him.  It was won at the cross, it will be finally executed when he is sentenced and cast into the Lake of Fire forever.<

  Notice that it says "the One who will crush the head of Satan is called her seed."  I just remark, a woman doesn't have a seed.  When God gave a promise to Abraham, God said this, "His seed would bless the families of the earth....In his seed would all the families of the earth be blessed."  The man has the seed.  A woman doesn't have the seed.  Her seed, how could a woman have a seed?  Only one time did a woman ever have a seed of her own and that by the miraculous intervention of God.

  The Jews, if they knew Genesis, should have seen that.  And then there is Isaiah.  Turn to Isaiah 7:14, the Jews, we know, were always looking for a sign, always looking for some supernatural indicator, some supernatural event that would point to God working.  And so in verse 14 of chapter 7, Isaiah says, "The Lord will give you a sign."  You want a sign?  Here it is.  "A virgin will be with child and bear a Son."  Wow!  That will be a sign. That doesn't happen, that can't happen.  That's impossible.  And if that happens, that is a sign.  Furthermore, "When she brings forth that child she will call His name Immanuel, God...el is God, immanu is with us."  When the child is born name Him "God is here."  That's a pretty clear sign.

  Parthenos means one who has had no sexual relationship at all.  Mary was a virgin and that was the intent of Isaiah 7:14, that was a sign.  If a girl got pregnant and had a son, that's not a sign, that happened all the time.  But when a virgin is pregnant and brings into the world a son, that's a sign.

  You know, some of the rabbis, I think, believed that there was going to be something like this.  One rabbi wrote, "Messiah is to have no earthly father."  Humm...one ancient rabbi seemed to get the message.  Another rabbi wrote, "The birth of Messiah alone shall be without defect."  Another rabbi wrote, "His birth shall not be like that of other men."  Another wrote, "The birth of Messiah shall be like the dew of the Lord as drops upon the grass without the action of man."  There were some rabbis, I'm sure there were some faithful believers who understood that Messiah would be born of a virgin.

  That was not the popular view, not at all.  And certainly the Jewish leaders never thought that.  In fact, John 7:27 they're very upset at Jesus and the question comes up, "Is Jesus the Christ?"  And in verse 27 this is the...this is the response, "We know where this man is from, He's from Nazareth.  But we know His family up there.  But whenever the Christ or Messiah may come, no one knows where He is from."  See, they just thought Jesus was just a common Galilean guy born in the town of Nazareth to Joseph and Mary.

  Back in chapter 6 this is further indicated.  They were grumbling at Him, it says in verse 41.  And they were saying, "Is not this Jesus the Son of Joseph whose father and mother we know?  How does He now say, 'I have come down out of heaven?'  We don't get it."  So maybe they did believe that there was some...some unique feature to His birth, but not necessarily a virgin birth.  Maybe if they'd really believe Isaiah 7:14, Genesis 3:15, Jeremiah's prophecy, maybe if they really did believe those things and really understood them under the illumination of the Spirit of God and they had known that Jesus had been born of a virgin, it might have changed how they viewed Him.  They didn't see it.  They may have expected some kind of special birth, apparently not a virgin birth and certainly not somebody born to a common couple in a dumpy place called Nazareth.

  Some rabbis had taught that Messiah was of heavenly origin.  And some rabbis even said that He eternally existed. In 150 B.C., a hundred and fifty years before the birth of Christ, the book of Enoch, not a biblical book, says this, "He appears by the side of the Ancient of Days, His name has been named before God." They were talking of Messiah.  Some of them saw Messiah as pre-existing His birth.

  A second foundation beside the Old Testament is the doctrine of the trinity.  I want you to understand the nature of God.  In Deuteronomy 6:4, here's the distinguishing truth of true religion, the most defining statement in the Old Testament about the nature of God. This was required to be put on the foreheads and on the arms and on the doorposts of the houses of the people of God.  "Hear, O Israel, the Lord is our God, the Lord is one."

  There were all kinds of gods among the nations.  They were polytheistic, they had many gods.  Israel had one God because there is only one true and living God.  And that is supported by verse 5, "And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might."  Now let me give you the point of that.  You can do that because you don't have to reserve any of that love for any other deity because there isn't any other one.  There is one God and you are to love that one God with all your soul, with all your heart, with all your might.  You do not divide that love because there is no other God.  You love Him and Him alone with all your being.  If there were three gods, you could love two of them and not one, or you could love one of them and not two, or you could love three of them with a third of your passion, but you could never love God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind leaving nothing back if there was more than one.

  James 2:19, "You believe there is one God, you do well."  Then he adds, "Even the devils believe that."  Demons have better theology, far better theology than many religious people.  God is one, yet though one in nature and one in essence, He is three persons.  Can I explain it?  No.  Why?  Because I can't understand it.  Do I believe it?  Yes.  Why?  Because it's revealed in Scripture as such.  And the fact that I can't understand it says nothing about God, but an awful lot about me.

  We know there are three persons in the one essential God cause in Genesis 1 when God says He creates, "In the beginning God created," the word "God" is elohim that's a plural...that's a plural word.  In Genesis 1:26 when God says, "Let us make man," He says, "Let us make man in OUR image," He uses a plural personal pronoun...Let us...and our image. 

  In Isaiah 6 when God is speaking, He says, "Whom shall I send...referring to the need for someone to go to the people before judgment comes and Isaiah is listening, "Whom shall I send and who will go for us...us?"  In Isaiah 48:16 Isaiah writes, "Come ye near unto Me, says God, hear this, I have not spoken at secret from the beginning, from the time that it was, there am I and now the Lord God and His Spirit hath sent Me."  There's at least two.

  David said, "The Lord said unto my Lord," there you have the Lord and the Lord.  Here you have the Lord and the Spirit.  There are plenty of references in the Old Testament to the Father God, to the Spirit, and to the Son who very often appears as the angel of the Lord.

  You come in to the New Testament and Jesus is there at His baptism, the Son of God, and the Father is speaking out of heaven.  "This is My beloved Son in whom I am well pleased, and the Spirit is descending like a dove."  You have all three members of the trinity in the same scene at the same time.

  In the fifteenth chapter of John, that wonderful and complete statement is given, I think it's verse 26, "When the Helper comes, the Holy Spirit, Jesus says, whom I will send from the Father."  The Son sends the Spirit from the Father, keeping the distinction.

  At the great commission at the end of Matthew, chapter 28 verse 19, we are to baptize in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.  Second Corinthians, as you will remember, the last verse of 2 Corinthians says the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with you all.  There are numerous references to the fact that God though one God is three persons. 

  That is the first thing that lays the foundation for the virgin birth.  God, listen to me, doesn't have to fully create a Son, one already eternally exists, understood?  The second member of the trinity, eternal God, is literally put into human flesh to be born of a virgin.

  When the virgin conception took place, God and Man came together.  And that was because the only one who has a right to reign and a right to rule is not just Son of David, but Son of God, Psalm 2.

  So you have the Old Testament foundation and you have the foundation in the doctrine of the trinity.  The third foundation comes in the duties of Messiah, or in the work of Messiah, the person and work of Messiah.

  What do I mean by that?  Well, now follow this very carefully, I'm going to show you something that's critical to the Christian faith, absolutely critical.  Turn to Isaiah 43, we're going to hang around Isaiah awhile, so for just the remainder of time this morning, so don't leave it, and bounce back a little bit, but just kind of stay in Isaiah 43 is the main portion.  

   In Isaiah 43 I want you to notice verse 11.  The prophet is quoting God here, "Thus says the Lord," the chapter begins, the Lord is speaking, verse 10, "Declares the Lord."  This is the Lord speaking, first person, verse 11, "I, even I am the Lord," and listen to this, "and there is no Savior besides Me."  No Savior besides Me.  Humm...chapter 45 verse 22, "Turn to Me and be saved all the ends of the earth, for I am God and there is no other."  Everybody on the face of the earth who wants to be saved has to turn to Him, He alone saves...He alone saves.  God, says Titus 1, our Savior.  God, says Titus 2, our Savior.  God, says Titus chapter 3, our Savior.  God is our Savior.  "Who is a pardoning God like You?"  God is a saving God.  He is by nature a Savior.  Paul says to Timothy, "God our Savior, the Savior of all men."

  In Matthew 1:21, Jesus is going to come into the world, verse 21, "You shall call His name Jesus for it is He who will save His people from their sins."  Now let me draw a simple conclusion.  If there is one God and He alone is Savior and Jesus is Savior, then who is Jesus?  He's God unmistakably.

  In Luke chapter 2 the announcement comes in verse 11 to the shepherds, "Today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior who is Messiah the Lord."  God is the only Savior, Jesus is a Savior, therefore Jesus is God.  That is a rational syllogism.  In fact, Acts 4:12 says, "Neither is there salvation in any other, for there's none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved, except the name of Jesus."  And the Samaritans were right when they named Jesus the Savior of the world.

  Back to Isaiah 43 again, and I want you to notice another thing that God says is true only of Himself.  Verse 14, Isaiah 43:14, "Thus says the Lord, your Redeemer...the Lord, your Redeemer, the holy One of Israel."  Verse 14...the Lord identifies Himself not only as your Savior, but as your Redeemer.  There is no other Redeemer. 

  Hosea 13:14, "I will ransom them from the power of Sheol, I will redeem them from death."  In Luke chapter 1 verse 68, that familiar verse we've read a couple of times, Zacharias says, "Blessed be the Lord God of Israel for He has visited us and accomplished redemption for His people."  God is the Redeemer and yet it says in Galatians 3:13 about Jesus, "Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law." 

  If God is the only redeemer and Christ redeemed us, then Christ is God.  It necessitates a virgin conception and virgin birth for God to be born in the world and Jesus is God, therefore it is understandable that He was born this way.  First Peter 1 says, "You were not redeemed with silver or gold, or anything like that, but with the precious blood of Jesus."  He is the Redeemer, since God alone redeems, He is God.  Since He is God, the Son of God, the second member of the trinity, preexisting, coming into human life, it had to be by means of a miraculous coming together of what is divine and what is human and that is the virgin conception and birth.

  Furthermore, back to Isaiah 43 and verse 15, actually verse 14, God defines Himself as the holy One.  Verse 15, "I am the Lord your holy One."  I don't have time to go all through the whole Old Testament and tell you how many, many, many times God called Himself holy.  He refers to His holiness over and over and over again and you have in the text I read you this morning, Luke 1:35 this word from Gabriel to Mary, "The Holy Spirit is going to come upon you, the power of the Most High is going to overshadow you and you're going to bring forth a holy offspring."

  If any man says he has no sin, he's a liar, isn't he?  How can you have a holy offspring?  Only if that child is God in human flesh.  In Isaiah 43:15, "I am the Lord your holy One, further, the creator of Israel...listen to this...your King."  God says I'm your King.  Zechariah 14:9 God says, "I am your King...I'm your King, I'm your only Savior, I'm your only Redeemer, I'm the only holy One, and I am your King and you don't have more than one sovereign, do you?  And yet it is said of Jesus in His conversation with Pilate...Pilate said to Him, "Are you a King?"  And Jesus says back, "Yes, you have so said it." And what kind of King?  Revelation 19:16 says He has a name written on Him and it is King of kings and Lord of lords.  There is no other explanation for Jesus Christ than that He is the Savior God, the Redeemer God, the holy God, and the sovereign God in human flesh and that necessitated a miraculous virgin conception and birth.

  All of that leads to Deuteronomy 6:13 where we were earlier in Deuteronomy.  In Deuteronomy 6 after saying the Lord is our God, the Lord is one, love Him with all your heart, soul and might, it says in verse 13, "Worship the Lord your God and Him only."  And yet Hebrews 1 says, "And when He brought the firstborn into the world, Christ, He said, 'Let all the angels of God worship Him.'"  If God Himself calls the angels and men to worship Christ and worship is reserved only for God, then Christ is God. 

  Isaiah 50...Isaiah 45 again, verse 23, I can't resist these cause they're so foundational, just two more.  Verse 23, "I have sworn by Myself, the word has gone forth from My mouth in righteousness and will not turn back...now listen to this, this is what God says...that to Me, God, every knee will bow, every tongue will swear allegiance and they will say of Me, 'Only in the Lord.'"  I want every knee and I want every tongue, I want every bowed knee and every sworn allegiance to Me and Me alone.  That's God.

  You remember Philippians 2, this is what God says about Christ.  "God has highly exalted Him, given Him a name above every name that at the name of Jesus every knee shall bow."  If God demands that every knee bow and every tongue acknowledge His sovereignty, and swear allegiance to Him, and God calls for that for Christ, then there's only one conclusion, Christ is God.  This is the Christian faith and anything other than this is not.

  Isaiah 42:8 "I am the Lord, that is My name.  I will not give My glory to anybody else....I will not give My glory to anybody else."  That is an absolute unilateral statement, and yet it tells us in John 1, really pretty amazing, in John 1, "That the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory."  And in John 12:41 it says, "Isaiah saw His glory and spoke of Him."  Isaiah saw the Messiah and saw that He would bear the glory of God.

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  Fallacies About the Virgin Birth

  Luke 1:34-35

  In Matthew's gospel, chapter 22 and verse 42, Jesus asked the Pharisees a question that has been voiced in every generation since.  "What do you think about the Christ?  Who's Son is He?"  The Pharisees said to Him, "The Son of David."  The Jewish religious experts recognized and believed that the Messiah would be a human who was a member of the lineage of David, who was a member of the royal family of King David, a descendant of David.  And they were right.  They were right.  And that is certainly affirmed by the angel Gabriel in verse 32 where it says, speaking of Jesus, that the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David.  It was true.  Humanly speaking the Messiah would be a human being born into the family or the line of David.

  But that's as far as they went.  They were right about that.  But they were wrong that He was to be only the Son of David.  You will notice that Gabriel tells Mary that Jesus in verse 32 will be called the Son of the Most High...Most High being the equivalent of the Hebrew el elyon, God Most High.  And verse 5, "The holy offspring shall be called the Son of God." 

  They clearly affirmed that the Messiah would be the Son of David, but they considered any claim to be the Son of God blasphemous.  When Jesus claimed to be the Son of God they therefore accused Him of blasphemy.  And it was their perception of His blasphemy that led them to their rejection and execution of Jesus Christ.  In spite of that rejection, the Son born to Mary in David's line was also God's Son.  He was the God/Man, Son of David through Mary, Son of God through the Holy Spirit.

  John records the coming of Christ with these words, "In the beginning was the Word...meaning Christ...the Word was with God and the Word was God."  He starts with a pre-incarnate identification of the Messiah as the Word who was with God who was God.  He was in the beginning with God, all things came into being by Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being.

  In other words, he sees the Messiah pre-incarnation as God Himself the Creator.  He was the source of life, life which was the light of men.  Verse 14, "When the Word became flesh and dwelt among us," and that's John's perspective on the birth of Christ, it was the Word who was eternal, becoming flesh and dwelling among us, we beheld not His humanity, John says, but His glory which was glory that belonged only to one begotten by God, full of grace and truth.

  John looks at the conception as God coming down and entering human flesh.  Matthew views the same thing, and so does Luke only from the human side, while John looks at it from the divine.  Matthew records very specifically that the child would be God and Man.  In Matthew 1:18-23 Joseph is basically amazed that Mary has become pregnant, he doesn't know why, how this could happen, it's contrary to her character.  And he has never known her and he only can imagine that she is worthy of either death or divorce.  At that point an angel of the Lord appears to him in a dream, tells him that Mary is with child but by the Holy Spirit.  She will bear a Son, and it will be the birth of this Son that will fulfill Isaiah 7:14, the virgin shall be with child, says the angel, shall bear a Son and they shall call His name Immanuel which translated means God with us.  So Joseph was told the child would be conceived by the Holy Spirit and would be God in flesh.

  And that's exactly what Gabriel tells Mary.  Go back to our text, chapter 1 verse 35, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, the power of the Most High will overshadow you, for that reason the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God." 

  It is critical, it is foundational to understanding the Christian faith to understand the incarnation.  A real incarnation of God demands a virgin conception.  If He was just a man, there is no gospel, there is no Savior, there is no salvation and, in fact, the prophets and Jesus lied.

  The question then that Jesus asked, as recorded in Luke 22, or in Matthew chapter 22, as I noted earlier, who's Son is He, is of critical importance.  The New Testament record says He is God's Son and He is Mary's Son and Mary was in the line of David.  A real incarnation demands a virgin conception.  If this is to be the God/Man, then it must be God and Man coming together to produce this life, and that is exactly what the New Testament says.  Who's Son is He?  God's Son and David's Son.  David's Son as to His humanity, and God's Son as to His deity. 

  Let's come to the second point, the fallacies about the virgin birth...the fallacies about the virgin birth.  And I know somebody might wonder, "Well, why are you going to go through all of this?"  Because it's not true, it's error. I want to go through it for two reasons, one...I want you to understand what has been cast at Christianity to attack and assault the virgin birth so you will be ready to deal with it when you see it.  Secondly...I want you to understand how critically important the doctrine of the virgin birth or virgin conception of Jesus is. And one of the ways that demonstrates how important it is, is to understand the massive satanic onslaught and attack against this doctrine.  This is not peripheral.  This is not the fringe of Christianity.  This is not negotiable.  This is the heart and soul of the gospel.  You must have a God/Man, you must have a virgin conception therefore for Him to be Son of David, Son of God.  This then is under attack by Satan because it is the foundation of our gospel and of the Christian faith.

  The virgin conception is assaulted in two ways.  First by outright denial and secondly by subtle counterfeit.  

  We know that all the truth of God is going to be denied.  Satan's strategy is to lie and lie and lie and deceive and undermine the truth.  The apostle Paul writing to Timothy in 1 Timothy 4 says that in the later times, that would be Messianic times and on, and Messiah came and since then these are all the later times, people are going to fall away from the faith because they pay attention to deceitful spirits, doctrines of demons and hypocritical liars.  Those are just ways to describe the process of false teaching.  These lies come from deceitful spirits.  Energized by demons they find their way into the lives of false teachers who teach them and consequently people fall away from the faith into these destructive lies.  They get worse and worse, 2 Timothy 3:13, they get more deceiving and more deceiving, 2 Timothy 3:13 says they are deceiving and increasingly deceiving as time goes on.  Second Peter 2:1 also describes these false teachers.  It says they are destructive in their heresies and they deny the Master who bought them.  Their assault is always on the person of Christ, always on the nature of Christ, the work of Christ.  Jude 4, it says they deny our only Master and Lord Jesus Christ.  All of false teaching really at its core is directed at assaulting Christ.  If He is not born of a virgin, then He is not God.  If He is not God, then the gospel is not true.  And if you're going to destroy the gospel, they have to start with the nature of Jesus Christ.  So they inevitably assault Christ and that assault begins with the idea of the biblical truth that He is virgin conceived.

  For example, Nels Foray, a well-known liberal writer in his notorious volume widely read some years back called The Christian Understanding of God claimed that Jesus was not the natural Son of Joseph, he doesn't even claim that Jesus was the natural Son of Joseph and Mary, but rather he claims that Jesus was the illegitimate child of a Roman soldier.  He explains Joseph's confusion over Mary's pregnancy by the fact that she had been unfaithful to her betrothal vow and gotten pregnant by a passing encounter with a Roman soldier. 

  The rock opera of more modern times, Jesus Christ Superstar, which does everything possible to assault the nature of Jesus Christ states the song of Mary Magdalene and repeatedly in that song, in that rock opera by Andrew Lloyd-Webber, this line goes over and over, "He's a man, just a man...He's a man, just a man."  That is ever and always the message of Satan against the nature of Christ.

  Now it didn't start in modern times, it started long ago.  In John 8 at the beginning of the chapter, the religious leaders, the Pharisees in particular, confront a woman who has been caught in the act of adultery.  Verse 4, they say to Jesus, they drag this woman into the crowd, she's been literally ripped out of a bed of adultery, she's dragged in front of Jesus and the crowd.  This woman has been caught in adultery in the very act, and they ask Jesus, in the law of Moses she should be stoned.  So what do You say?

  They were saying this, testing Him in order that they might have grounds for accusing Him.  He stooped down, you remember, and kind of scrawled around with his finger on the ground and they kept on asking Him.  And finally He said, "He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her."  He stooped down and kind of marked the ground.  "And when they heard that they began to go out one by one, beginning with the older ones."  The older ones went first because they had more adulteries to remember, more sins to remember.  And finally everybody was gone, and He was alone and He said, straightening up to the woman, where are you...where are they, rather, did no one condemn you?  Then neither do I condemn you.

  I'm sure there were people who heard that.  Some people think that might have been setup even, that they were really exposing what they believed to be the truth about Jesus, that He Himself was a child of adultery, that He Himself was a child of sexual sin.  They may well have seen Him being gracious to that woman as reflective of His own necessity, of tolerance for adultery because He Himself was an illegitimate child. 

  You say, "That's pretty vague there."  Well it might be vague there, but go over to verse 41.  As you follow along in what's going on in this chapter, Jesus confronts them directly, verse 41, "You're doing the deeds of your father," and, of course, their father was the devil, as He says down in verse 44.  And then they say this to Him, verse 41, "They said to Him, we were not born of fornication."  Whoa!  What are they saying?  "At least we aren't illegitimate."  This could well be what was in their minds.  At least we aren't illegitimate. 

  Go down to verse 48, and it gets even more direct.  "The Jews answered and said to Him...Do we not say rightly that You are a Samaritan?"  Whoa!  Do you know what a Samaritan was?  A Samaritan was somebody who was half Jewish, half...what?...Gentile.  There's sort of a flow in this chapter that would lead us to indicate that they may well have come to the conclusion that all these supposed stories about Mary not being the mother of...that Joseph rather not being the father while Mary was the mother, all of this certainly had certainly been known and certainly been discussed in the circles around Nazareth and beyond...certainly Mary would have told many people that she conceived Jesus by the Holy Spirit and not by Joseph.  And it all would have come out, of course, because of the betrothal, and she was pregnant before the wedding ever occurred and everybody who was involved at the wedding, and that would be a community event would have known that, so there had to be an explanation for that.  And so this explanation of a virgin birth would have circulated and it would have been for sure along the way that some of the Pharisees would have been exposed to this because they were scattered throughout the land and it would have been their idea that it didn't happen by God's power. 

  Jesus was an illegitimate Son of some Gentile who had cohabitated with an unfaithful Mary.  After all, Nazareth was located just off the main highway between Jerusalem and the Phoenician cities of Tyre and Sidon.  And the highway was traversed all the time by Roman soldiers and they went to Nazareth on occasion.  Nazareth was a city of ill repute, frankly.  It was a place notorious for corruption and vice.  That's why John 1:46 the question is asked, "Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"  It was full of Roman soldiers and Greek merchants and it was known for its vice.

  Maybe that's kind of where this whole thing began to develop to assault the deity of Jesus Christ even then, and mock Him by saying, "Well at least we weren't born out of pornea."  Out of that grew a strange tradition called the Pandera tradition.  Pandera, supposedly being the name of the soldier who lay with Mary and produced the child.  You can read about it in sixth century and eleventh century Jewish writings.  The whole story became very refined in the future as a way to explain away Jesus as a non-Messiah, the Jews having always rejected Him as Messiah.

  There was another explanation that this Pandera name kind of got going and so there was another story that Mary's husband was named Joseph Pandera.  Not everybody wanted to make Mary look really bad, so they did want her to have a husband named Joseph Pandera.  That didn't solve much because that legend says there was a neighbor named Jochenan(?) and he went in and seduced Mary, but here's how he did it.  Wanting to protect Mary because she was Jewish, some of the Jewish writers said, "Well, one night she was sleeping in her bed and Joseph was away in the night and the neighbor seeing Joseph depart in the night crept in when Mary was in bed and she thought it was her husband and she conceived."  Joseph when he found out, according to the legend stayed until the birth and then deserted the family, but Mary always believed that Joseph was the real father.  Well that's another one of those wacky bizarre fabrications.

  The purpose of these, and I could go on and on with others, but the purpose of these blasphemous stories is singular, it is to deny Jesus as God.  You understand that.  It's to deny Jesus as God, to remove His claim to deity, His kingly right, His divine nature.  And, of course, that's all a satanic agenda.

  It wasn't too many years ago, probably 15 or 20 years ago when Hugh Shoenfeld wrote the very widely read book called The Passover Plot.  It was as if people had been waiting for somebody to write a book that they could buy into as an explanation of the New Testament that they could tolerate.  It was as if he served all the unbelievers well, all the critics, all the Christ-haters, all the rejecters of the gospel well by giving them an alternative explanation for what the New Testament said. 

  Hugh Shoenfeld is a Jewish writer. He claimed that Jesus, first of all, was the natural son of Joseph and Mary.  And that Jesus became a master conspirator.  That's the main idea of The Passover Plot.  Jesus was a smart guy and He figured out a plot, a really master conspirator who conspired to fulfill messianic prophecies, to engineer what looked like the fulfillment of messianic prophecies.  And the whole reason that Shoenfeld wrote the book was to exonerate the Jews from deicide.  It has never been a popular idea with Jewish people, and it's understandable, that they wanted their Messiah executed.  It is unthinkable to Jewish people that they would be guilty of killing God.

  It's unthinkable.  It creates tremendous hostility in the minds of many Jewish people that the Jews of the time of Jesus wanted Jesus executed and in pressuring the Romans to execute Him, they actually executed God.  Shoenfeld wants to deliver Jewish people, at that time, from that stigma and so in order to do that he sets about to prove that Jesus was not God.  All they did was kill a false claimant, a conspirator who was attempting by machinations and subtle tricks to convince people that He was the Messiah when in fact He wasn't.

  All the critics that come at Christianity strike Christianity at the point of the deity of Jesus Christ.  And the point where all of that is focused is on who He is, which is established by a virgin conception and virgin birth.  So they start their denial at that point.

  There are others who say that the Bible writers actually did believe in the virgin birth but they were wrong. They just recorded their wrong beliefs. 

  Some say the Bible writers lied.  Shoenfeld says, and I quote, "There was nothing peculiar about the birth of Jesus, He was not God incarnate and no virgin mother bore Him.  The church in its ancient zeal fathered a myth and became bound to it as dogma," end quote.  Now what does he use to support that?  Nothing.

  Another writer, Boslooper(?) wrote, and here's a strange statement, "The virgin birth is a myth in the highest and best sense of the word," end quote.  What is the highest and best sense of a lie?  What is that?  That's a strange phrase.

  When we were in seminary we were always studying this kind of stuff and the key idea that liberal theologians have always used is bound up in a word "demythologizing."  In their academic pride and in their blatant and obstinate unbelief they think they're engaging in a scholarly enterprise called demythologizing the Bible.  And one of the most insidious myths that they have to get out of the Bible is the virgin conception, so they demythologize the Bible by stripping it of the virgin conception which strips Jesus of His deity.

  Shoenfeld says that the virgin birth story takes the reader out of the world of sober reality into the world of fairy tale.  Shoenfeld charges that the evangelical church has applied to its eyes the very dust of faith.

  Well obviously these Christ deniers deny what Scripture says, of course.  And the reason they deny what Scripture says is so that they can deny the deity of Christ and to do that they have to deny the virgin conception.  They say the Bible would be a lot easier to believe without the miracles and Jay Gresham Machon(?) said, "Yeah, but it wouldn't be worth believing."  A Christ without a virgin conception would be no Christ at all.  And Christianity would be another empty philosophy.

  There's a second way in which Satan attacks the virgin conception, that's by counterfeiting it.  These are more subtle and it's kind of interesting how the strategy has worked.  Satan is a very accurate interpreter of Scripture. Satan knows that every word in Scripture is true, he knows that because he knows God is truth and cannot lie because he himself dwelt in the presence of God before his fall.  He knows God very well.  He's been back to heaven on many, many occasions to accuse the brethren and to interface with God as indicated in the book of Job, and other occasions in Scripture.  He knows God very well, he knows the character of God, the truthfulness of God and he knows the Word of God very well.  And he's an outstanding expositor.  He has the right interpretation of Scripture.

  There may be some Bible teachers who don't understand Genesis 3:15, but he does.  Satan definitely understands it.  I believe that Satan knew when God cursed him and cursed the man and cursed the woman, when God cursed Satan He said to him, "The seed of the woman is going to bruise your head."  Satan knew what was going to happen.  The seed of the woman, Genesis 3:15, the first prophecy of the Messiah, that a woman would have a seed...a woman would have a seed.  Women don't have a seed, that's an indication of a virgin birth.  I think Satan understood that.

  You say, "Why do you think that?"  Because he immediately began to proliferate counterfeit virgin births.  Long before Isaiah 7:14 specifically said a virgin shall conceive and bear a Son and His name will be God with us, long before Isaiah said that, long before Jeremiah said a woman would encompass a man, long before any of those specific prophecies Satan began to counterfeit the virgin birth.

  Nimrod is mentioned early in the book of Genesis and Nimrod's wife was Semiramis, the first occult priestess, around the time of the Tower of Babel and all of that.  Well according to the Babylonian legend, Semiramis, wife of Nimrod, conceived a son whose name was Tamuz.  He is mentioned in Ezekiel 8 and Jeremiah 44.  And Semiramis, just make a mental note of this, was identified as the Queen of Heaven, have you heard that? 

  Now what the Babylonian legend said was that Semiramis, wife of Nimrod, conceived a son not by Nimrod but by a sunbeam.  She had a supernatural conception which produced Tamuz, the name also mentioned in those...Ezekiel 8 and Jeremiah 44.  Tamuz then was conceived in her womb by a sunbeam.

  That legend, by the way, has proliferated everywhere.  That's where the "mother cult...mother/child cult" started.  It started with Semiramis.  Here is Semiramis with this child conceived by a sunbeam in her womb. Semiramis and Tamuz.  If you go to Egypt, the same story only it's Isis and Osiris.  If you go to India it's the same story only it's Ecee(?) and Esuara(?).  If you go to China it's the same story only it's Ching, Moo, the holy mother with the child in her arms.  And you see that in Chinese art.  If you go to Phoenicia it's the same story but it's Asteroth and her son Baal.  And we know about Phoenicia because the Phoenicians were the Palestinians, the original occupants of Palestine, and so we know about Asteroth and Baal.  If you go to Greece it's the same story only it's Aphrodite and she's holding Eros.  I mean, that's everywhere so that when Christianity comes and says, "We have a virgin-born Savior."  The world says, "Yeah, we do too."  "Yeah, we have one that was conceived by God in the womb of Mary."  "Yeah, we have one too, conceived by a sunbeam, yeah right out of heaven."  Satan knew what was coming.  All kinds of smoke screens.

  There's an ancient Samarian(?) Acadian(?), those are ancient languages in the Middle East, an ancient Samarian Acadian story inscribed on a building at the time of Tacoulte(?) Orta(?) the Second who was a monarch from 890 to 884 B.C.  And it says about Tacoulte Orta II that he was created by the gods who went into the womb of his mother and created him.  It was even claimed that the goddess of procreation, some supposed deity, superintended the conception in the womb of the mother of King Sennacherib who was a real king, too, who ruled from 705 to 681 B.C.  So Sennacherib was supernaturally conceived in his mother's womb.

  Now if you go from there further east to Buddhism, I've always been fascinated by Buddhism, I did some work on it early in my education because of its fascination.  Here is one, you ask a Buddhist how Buddha was conceived and they've got a story.  Here it is.  Buddha's mother has this dream, a noble elephant white as silver and snow, having six tusks, well proportioned trunk and feet, blood-red veins, adamantine firmness of joints and easy pace has entered my belly.  Now there is an evasion.  I mean, that is just completely unimaginable.  Ten months later Buddha was born.

  When you start going around the world and you start studying all these religions, they've all got some kind of supernatural birth for the main person.

  What about Hinduism?  Hinduism is sometimes hard to figure out because millions and millions of deities.  Hinduism claims that the divine Vishnu, if you know anything about Hinduism you know about the name Vishnu, the divine Vishnu was reincarnated seven times.  The first Vishnu was incarnated as a fish.  Vishnu is divine, he came as a fish, then he came as a tortoise, then he came as a boar, then he came as a lion, finally in his seventh incarnation this Vishnu deity descended into the womb of Divoky(?) and was born in her as the son named Krishna.  Now if there's any name you associate with Hinduism, it's Krishna.  If there's any other name you associate with Hinduism, even with a million gods, it's Vishnu.  And right there you have this mother/child cult which supposes some supernatural conception.

  It's the same story, same story, same story, same story, same source...satanic.  You can study Greco-Roman mythology, the mother of Persius, this is another one of them, the mother of Persius conceived him by the power of the god Jupiter when he visited her in the form of a golden rain shower.  There legend also, and this is maybe familiar to some of you who have studied Greek history, there was a legend that Alexander the Great was born by supernatural conception.  The story was that the serpent, the serpent was Zeus and Zeus when he wanted to could take the form of a serpent.  And so one time he took the form of a serpent at night and he crawled into bed with Olympus, who was the wife of Philip of Macedon, Philip of Macedon was the father of Alexander the Great.  So one night when Philip was away maybe fighting a war or whatever, Zeus got into bed with Olympus as in the form of a snake.  Zeus, by the way, if you study Greek mythology, he is the chief sexual deviate of all mythology...which is a projection of the deviation of the people who invent gods like that.  But anyway, he impregnated as a serpent Olympus so that Alexander was the child of the god Zeus.

  Maybe the wackiest of all of them is the belief that Pallas(?) Athena, this is kind of a reverse twist on it, Pallas Athena was born without a mother.  According to Greek mythology he sprang out of the head of Zeus...full grown in full armor.  Strange and bizarre, aren't they?

  The world has literally been covered with a mother/child cult.  It comes in all forms, in all these great world religions, it's everywhere.  And I say to you, and this is a compelling thing to say, you need to understand it, what Roman Catholicism does with Mary is more of that than it is anything biblical.  That mother/child cult that is a part of the satanic deception found its way into a quasi-Christian environment and got all mixed up with Mary.

  Why am I going through this?  Because I want you to understand that this doctrine of virgin conception is so important that Satan has been doing everything he can possibly do to either deny it or to literally defuse it into a whole world of myths so that it looks like something utterly insignificant and not at all uncommon.  It's just another myth and another legend.  And you can understand how a Hugh Shoenfeld or some other guy who doesn't know the Lord and doesn't believe the Bible starts wandering around and finds this mother/child myth everywhere, he comes in to Christianity and where's he going to go first?  He's going to study Roman Catholicism, he sees the same thing there and his conclusion is just the same old myth that wanders all over the globe and fits in to every different kind of world religious system.  And when we Christians come and say that Jesus Christ was the God/Man born in the womb of Mary without a human father....really, you've got one of those, too.  Satan is very subtle, isn't he?

  You know what is so wonderful to me, the Bible just doesn't bother with all of that.  In Luke 1 verse 35 it just says, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, the power of the Most High will overshadow you, for that reason the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God."  That's the...that's the entire description of the virgin conception right there.  There's no attempt to sort that all out from all of Satan's lies, it's just so pure, so clear, so clean, so precise. 

  And that leads us to the third point.  The first point a week ago was the foundations of the virgin birth.  Then today I've given you the fallacies of the virgin birth.  Now I'm going to give you the fact of the virgin birth...the fact. 

  Now remember, let's go back to how we've outlined this four-part series.  We saw the divine messenger in verse 26, back to verse 26, the divine messenger was Gabriel.  He came to the divine choice, a virgin named Mary who is about a 13- or 14-year-old girl.  He brought a divine blessing, verse 28, you're favored, the Lord's with you, verse 30, you've found favor with God.  The divine messenger came to the divine choice, brought a divine blessing and announced a divine child, verses 31 to 32.  You're going to have a child, the child will be Jesus, that is He'll be the Savior, He'll be great, He'll be the Son of the Most High.  He will be in the line of David, reigning on the throne of David and that will last forever.

  So divine messenger, divine choice, divine blessing, divine child, comes to the fifth point, 34 to 38, divine miracle.  The way to understand this is just let me give you five words as we go through.  Word number one, supplication.  They all start with "s".  Word number one, supplication.

  Verse 34, and we'll just look at this first one.  "Mary said to the angel, 'How can this be since I'm a virgin?'"  She had just been told the most astonishing thing that any woman in history had ever heard.  You're going to have a Son and that Son will be the Savior, will be the Son of the Most High, el elyon, God, and He will be an eternal King.  She seeks to understand this.  She doesn't doubt it.   She's not like Zacharias.  You remember when God said to Zacharias, you and Elizabeth in your old age are going to have a son in verse 18, Zacharias said to the angel, "How shall I know this for certain?"  I'm not sure I believe you.  I'm not sure I believe you for I am an old man and my wife is advanced in years.  He doubted. "The angel said to him, 'I am Gabriel.'"  This isn't some local yokel talking to you, I am Gabriel, I stand in the presence of God and I've been sent by Him to tell you this, what do you mean you don't know whether what I've said is true?  And then Gabriel said to him...Well, there's some consequences for your unbelief, you're going to be...you're going to be deaf and dumb until the child's born.

  That wasn't the case with Mary.  Doubt is unbelief, she didn't have any unbelief, she didn't have any doubt.  She just said, "How can it be?"  She wanted to know the method.  She wasn't questioning the reality of it, the truth of it.  She believed what Gabriel said.  She just said, "How can this be since I am a virgin?"  Literally in the Greek, "I do not know a man."  Knowing a man was a sort of a Hebrew euphemism for having a sexual relationship.  We carry that over into English, we talk about sexual relationships as carnal knowledge.  She didn't question that she was going to have a child, she just said how can it be since I'm a virgin?

  Now some people have said, "Well, the angel was just predicting that when she got married she would have a Son."  Well then why would she ask such a question?  How can this be since I am virgin?  She knew what the angel was saying was this, you're going to have a Son, you're going to have a kind of Son that is going to be the Son of the Most High.  Joseph was never discussed.  She also knew that it was going to be immediate, that it was going to be imminent, that it was going to happen before she married Joseph and before they had any relations.  She knew that.

  She also knew that insemination apart from a man was humanly impossible, yet the angel was declaring an imminent pregnancy before her marriage.  She knew he wasn't talking about...Well, yeah, you're going to get married and then you're going to have a baby...or she wouldn't ask...how can this be since I'm a virgin?  She knew she was to be conceiving while a virgin.  And she said, "How can that happen?" 

  Such an honest question.  There's no rebuke as there was in the case of Zacharias.  The only way her query, or question makes any sense is to accept the fact that she understood it to mean she would have a child while she was still a virgin...otherwise it's a nonsense question.  She asks the question.

  By the way, the Roman Catholic Church jumps in here and teaches the doctrine of perpetual virginity...that not only was she a virgin when she conceived Jesus and up to the time Jesus was born, but she was permanently a virgin or she was always a virgin.  That's not true.  Matthew chapter 1 verse 24, "Joseph arose from his sleep after the angel had announced in his dream that she was going to have a child who would be God.  He did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, took her as his wife, and kept her a virgin."  Forever?  No.  "Until she gave birth to Jesus."  He kept her a virgin until she gave birth to Jesus.  After that she had a lot of children.  Matthew 12 verse 46, "While Jesus was speaking to the multitudes, His mother and brothers were standing outside seeking to speak to Him.  And someone said to Him, 'Behold, Your mother and your brothers are standing outside seeking to speak to You.'"  He had a family of brothers, they were half-brothers in the sense that He Himself was not a son of Joseph, but they were in the same family, they were born to Mary.  They're even identified.  Matthew 13:55, Jesus is teaching in the synagogue and the people say, "Is not this the carpenter's son?"  Isn't this the carpenter's son?  "And is not His mother called Mary and His brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas, and His sisters, are they not all with us?"  We don't know how many children that Mary and Joseph had, but after Jesus was born Mary and Joseph had both boys and girls, a full family.  John 7 verse 3, verse 5, verse 10 talks about Jesus' brothers. 

  That did take place.  She did get married.  They did have children.  But she knew...that's why she asked the question that this was something completely apart from that.

  The angel answered her question.  How is it going to happen?  I love this, verse 35, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you.  The power of the Most High will overshadow you, for that reason the holy offspring shall be called the Son of God," not the son of Joseph.  That verse, verse 35, is so deep and so profound, it's really beyond our comprehension.  It's the description of the miracle of virgin conception by the Holy Spirit.  We're going to look into that, try to see what our minds can understand next time as our time is gone.  And we'll go from the supplication to the strategy which the angel reveals.

    

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