Mary called by God

MARY  CALLED BY GOD

 The visit of the angel Gabriel to Mary to announce the birth of Jesus.  We have grown so use to hearing the account that our senses have been dulled to the wonder of the occasion and to the enormity of what Mary was called to by God.  I want to take a few moments and to look again at the call of Mary.  First let me set the context for you.  Luke is a doctor and he weaves deep theological meaning into simple stories.  Here for example he tells how the God the Son came to this world to be born Son of God.  The pagan religions of the days had endless stories of the carnal knowledge of gods and woman producing a semi-divine offspring.  No such story is told by Luke.  As a doctor he would have understood as well as any of his contemporaries the biological steps of conception and birth.  So let us look closely at the passage and see what we learn.

The Surprise of Mary

The Surrender of Mary

The Surprise of Mary.

Here is a little girl, really a young woman of somewhere between 14 and 17.  She is engaged to be married to Joseph a carpenter.  Now betrothals were formal, legal contracts  much more binding than our engagements today.  Only divorce or death could end such a betrothal.  Any one betrothed was not allowed sexual relationship with their espoused until they were married.  No doubt she was busy making her wedding garment.  No doubt she is all exited about the coming wedding.  Into this situation God sends Gabriel with a message which will completely transform and revolutionise the whole situation.  Gabriel come to Mary and tells her that she has found favour before God and that she has been chosen to bring the Son of God into the world.

From the passage we can see that initially she is fearful of the angelic appearance.  That is why the Gabriel tells her not to be afraid.  Interesting every time an angel appears in the Christmas narrative the first thing they say is fear not.  Mary is taken totally by surprise at the news and at the fact that God has chosen her.  Why was she highly favoured?  Why did the angel come to her?  I think it is important at this point that we actually listen to what the text says.  Look at verse 28.  The text says greetings, you who are highly favoured. The Lord is with you. The phrase highly favoured is found only one other place in the NT  Ephesians 1 v6 and there it is translated His glorious grace Mary is the recipient of Gods grace and therefore she can say in verse 47 my spirit rejoices in God my saviour Gabriel assures her that 

The Lord is with you because only the assurance of the presence of the Lord will sustain her through what is to come.

I think we should note that in verse 12 the very appearance of the angel was enough to grip Zechariah with fear but here in verses 29-30 it is the word, the message, of Gabriel which troubles Mary.  Hence the assurance that she has found favour with God.  Gods grace, like His love, banishes fear from the hearts of His children. I want us to note that when the Word of God comes to us it is not always to bring comfort, it may in fact trouble us, discomfort us but the knowledge of His grace and the assurance of His presence are enough to enable us to surrender our wills to His.

The Surrender of Mary.

In verse 31 Gabriel reveals to Mary the message of the Incarnation.  He tells her of the significance, not just for her but for all mankind, of her having found favour before God.  The announcement that the time for the birth of the messiah has come is given first to a teenage girl in a despised village in Galilee (see John 2.5).  In verses 32-33 Gabriel affirms that the child to be born to Mary will be the Messiah by giving Him the messianic titles of the OT.

Look at Mary's response to the news which Gabriel brings, read verse 34.  She does not ask Why? but How?  You know when I read that it stopped me dead in my tracks.  It was like scales fell from my eyes and I was left with the question in my own heart: How often do you ask God why?  When you should be asking How?  Think for a moment. Is that not what you and I do all the time?  God speaks to us from His word and the first question on our lips  Why? Why me?  Why now?  Why that?  Mary did not ask Why but How?  She knows of her moral purity in this area of her life.  She knows that she has been faithful to the Word of God that sexual intercourse is for marriage and outside of that it is sinful and condemned by God. So she asks Gabriel how as a virgin she could possibly be pregnant?  Gabriel explains in verse 35 that the Holy Spirit will overshadow her and she will conceive.  This term overshadow is the one used in the OT to speak of the presence of God in the Tabernacle, in the Temple and on Mount Sinai when the Law is given.  It speaks of the holy and powerful presence of God.  Gabriel also speaks of the baby expected by Elizabeth, Mary's cousin, as a way to show Mary that what is deemed impossible by man is possible with God.  It is a means of assuring Mary of the power of God to bring this about. It is a means of showing how God can bring blessedness out of barrenness.

Now we see the servant heart and attitude of Mary.  Read it for yourself in verse 38.  She humbly and obediently accepts Gods will for her life.  She trusts God to do what is right and to fulfil His promise.  Now we might say so what.  But that would be to completely miss the enormity of her answer here.  On the surface it seems a straight forward answer Yes.  But let us look at the scene a little more closely.

Now here is the real danger for her.  To be pregnant outside of marriage in Judaism is not merely a scandal but is actually to place yourself in a position where you can be stoned to death.  Mary by accepting the will of God for her own life was actually putting her own life at risk.  Now once again we can see the gracious hand of God and the protective hand of God.  Basic biology tells us that if anything happens to Mary then the baby, the Christ, whom she is carrying will also suffer.  So God actually protects her from all danger here. 

Not only is she in danger of being stoned to death but Joseph , when he hears of here pregnancy, is mindful not to shame her but never-the-less not to marry her.  Once again God steps in and insures the marriage.  Can I say to you when you obey the will of God you are never at a loss. 

So Mary by accepting the will of God, this call of God to bear His Son, puts herself in a position where she will be the talk of the town, a social outcast, a scandal to her family, open to ridicule and rejection by Joseph and even death.  Yet look at her answer to this call in verse 38  humble obedient acceptance.  There is no question of her asking Gabriel, and therefore God, What do I get out of this?  What is there in this for me?  No we do not read of that on her lips.  We do not read that she started negotiations for better terms and conditions in this call.  That is why God called her.  He knew that in Mary he had a humble servant.  One willing to obey the call of God come what may.  One who was not preoccupied with the cost of the service but actually concerned about doing the service.

Mary accepted the call and she responded by believing and trusting God for the future.  This was a call to danger, to isolation, to rejection, to ruining of her reputation and possibly her happiness with Joseph.  But God came first and because of that she was greatly blessed by God and became the mother of Jesus.

Application.

We are often reluctant to learn from the life of Mary in case we are accused of Mariolatry.  We have no grounds in Scripture to worship anyone but Christ Jesus.  There is no other mediator, or saviour except Jesus Christ.  However we can and we should learn from the life of Mary.  We can learn some valuable lessons from this episode in her life.

1.       The call in the life of Mary is initiated by God. Her response is a humble obedience to the call of God. It all started with Gods vision for Mary's life.  Often when God calls us to do something we begin to count the cost.  We begin to put up all the excuses of why we could not answer or do that.  The first call of God in all our lives is to come to faith in Jesus.  I often hear all sorts of excuses for people not coming to Christ Jesus.  We should learn from Mary who answered a call that placed her in all sorts of dangers and the result was that God greatly blessed her.

2.       We should learn from her that it is not the people who have power or wealth or great intelligence who are necessarily called by God.  It is those whom God knows whose hearts are His.  Whose desire is to be a faithful servant for Him.  Mary was no one special before this call of God.  She was a simple peasant girl betrothed to a carpenter.  She had no great wealth, no great education, no great status and yet she became the mother of Jesus.  So do not say God could not use me.  I have nothing to offer.  When God calls He also provides what is necessary to fulfil that call.  He also assured Mary, through Gabriel that His presence was with her for the future. 

3.       Mary needed Jesus to die for her sins.  We read three times in the gospels that Mary did not understand why Jesus had come.  When Jesus gets left behind in Jerusalem as a boy Mary fails to understand why He was in the Temple.  She fails to understand when Jesus says I was about my fathers business.  Again at the wedding at Cana she asks for a sign  Jesus gently rebukes her.  He gently points out that signs and wonders are not what His ministry is about.  Mark, in his gospel, records for us an occasion when Mary, along with Jesus brothers, come to take Him home because they think Jesus is mad.  Here again we see that she did not understand His purpose in coming.  Finally she comes in from the cold at the foot of the cross.  We read that she was there along with others as her Son died.  She too, like you and I, needed to come to the cross of Christ for forgiveness.  We know that after that she saw the risen Lord Jesus and we can assume that she then understood His purpose in coming.

Mary is often neglected and forgotten in Protestant churches.  We have gone to the other extreme because some have raised her to a position that is not biblical.  However, she was the mother of Jesus.  She was chosen by God to bring His Son into the world and to raise Him to manhood.  For that she is to be respected as we respect any other biblical person called by God.  We are not to worship her but we can learn from her obedience and trust in God.  We can follow her example in accepting, whatever the personal cost, surrender to Gods will for her life, and ours.  God accomplishes His will through the obedience of Mary.  Amen.