Well, if you were here last week, you had the opportunity to hear Brad O'Kelly wonderfully open up our July series.
I don't I don't know if he's here, so maybe I won't compliment him too much because he didn't show up the church today.
But he he opened up our uh series that we're going through the life of Mary together through through July, and he he helped us understand something about how we're gonna study Mary together.
You know, he recognized and we recognize that Mary is an extremely important figure in in the history of the church and in the Bible and in the history of mankind, really, but she's also just a woman.
A human created in the image of God, like you and like me, and she she was not perfect.
She's not sinless, she's not someone we worship, but but she was faithful and she was willing.
And we can honor Mary as faithful and a humble saint while also learning from her because she is like us.
There's nothing different about her.
She did not have it all together, she didn't know exactly what the future held for her.
All she had was the word of God and his promises to the people of God.
So our scripture this morning comes from the Gospel of Luke.
And unlike Matthew or John, Luke lived after the days of Jesus, likely writing this book 20 or 30 years after his death.
And so, unlike those Gospels, Matthew and John, written by Jesus' actual disciples who lived and walked with him, Luke had to gather and rely on other eyewitness accounts.
Gather these other stories from people who actually did live with Jesus and who did know Jesus.
And so we learn from Acts chapter 21 that Luke had accompanied the Apostle Paul to Jerusalem on Paul's missionary journey.
And after Paul sailed to Italy on his journey to Rome, Luke hung around and hung out in Jerusalem and without a doubt used this opportunity to gather stories and materials for his gospel, because Jerusalem was a very important place in the life of Jesus.
And as a commentary I read this week put it, behind chapters one and two in particular of Luke, there must surely lie long conversations between him and Mary.
You know, as memories fade and as time goes on, we we can't recall things maybe as clearly as we wish, or maybe as many things as we wish we could remember.
But I do know that the strongest memories we have are typically not the ones you would maybe think they would be.
Maybe not the noisiest or biggest events in our lives, but way more often our strongest memories are the simple, personal, and sweet moments with people we love.
I'm sure y'all have experienced that in your lives.
And likewise here, we get this very sweet image of Luke, a dedicated disciple and follower of Jesus, probably sitting at a dinner table in the home of Mary, the woman who raised our Savior, who gave birth to him, who watched him from his first breath to his last.
Just sharing stories.
And I say all this and I give this context because I think it shows how personal and intimate the words and our passage are, the words of the Bible are.
Luke chapter 2 is not a distant account of history or just facts, but it's a rich interpersonal story of a mother reminiscing on the life of her son.
I think that paints a very rich backdrop in which we ought to read these words from Luke.
So let's read the first five verses again.
In those days the decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered.
This was the first registration when Corinnearus went the governor of Syria, and all went to be registered, each to his own town.
And Joseph also went up from Galilee from the town of Nazareth to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.
Luke tells us that this decree from Augustus, and because of this decree, Mary and Joseph had to return to their own town, their ancestral town, where their family was from.
So they journeyed from Nazareth to Bethlehem.
So here's here's a quick map.
I know Brad said he didn't like maps, but I'm going to show you one.
So this is like modern day, almost the full length of modern day Israel.
And note, Mary was pretty pregnant when they made this walk.
Walking 70 to 100 miles, probably over the course of a week.
This is what they did to go back to Joseph's hometown, to Bethlehem, because he was of the lineage of David.
And this kind of lets us in on this idea that Mary's life and story did not happen outside of God's redemptive plan.
But rather it happened right in the middle of it.
Mary's deeply personal and real story of mothering Jesus from his first breath to his last is deeply connected and vital to God's story of redemption for his people, for his church, and for his kingdom.
So therefore, this moment in Luke 2, the birth of Jesus is not coincidental.
It's not random that it happened here, but it's perfectly providential in God's plan.
From the beginning of time, God has been intimately orchestrating everything throughout history to get here.
Everything we read in the Old Testament, all the laws and the prophets, they have an overwhelming spirit of anticipation waiting for this day when the Messiah would come to earth.
God's hand has been over every detail that's led to this, and Mary's very obedience and trust has been in the Lord to fulfill what he had promised.
What he promised to the prophet Micah hundreds of years before, that we read in Micah 5, too.
But you, O Bethlehem, Ephra, who were too little to be among the clans of Judah, from you shall come forth from me one who is to be ruler in Israel, who is coming forth, who is from old, from ancient days.
To this intimate moment between Mary and Joseph, the birth of their son, the birth of Jesus, the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity.
It's a climactic moment in God's story and plan for his church.
And I don't know about you, but with all of this in mind, all of this buildup and anticipation and this huge moment, it seems a little odd that Luke just kind of writes it down as if it's a throwaway fact.
I mean, wouldn't we expect the birth of the promised descendant of King David, the ancient of days, God in human form, to be announced with just a little excitement?
Further, shouldn't this birth be like the most important thing that is happening in the world?
Shouldn't it be accompanied with this royal procession or a national celebration, everybody gathering to wait and celebrate?
Get all we get in verse 6 and 7.
And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth.
And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swallowing cloths and laid him in a manger because there's no place for them in the inn.
So you probably noticed our series this summer has a flavor of Christmas in July.
My mom actually let me in on a new trend that's brewing.
That's right.
She my mom let me in on a new trend.
You heard that correctly.
Called Summer Ween.
I don't know if you've heard of this.
Have y'all?
No?
It's news to me.
Halloween in the summer, because why not?
Because we can, I guess, right?
But man, the marketing team down at Big Holiday, they they have it down.
Like they have this thing figured out.
They already have the core in the stores.
They have these jack o' melons in the stores that you can go see.
Look, it's okay if you have one.
It's fine.
I'm not gonna judge you out loud, just in my heart, if you have one of these in your home.
And I've noticed this pattern, too, I'm sure you have of holiday celebrations expanding their shelf life.
Right?
You felt it.
Christmas decorations out in stores before October.
Easter eggs and candy for sale right after the New Year's over.
Halloween the second that summer ends, right when the fall kicks in.
And maybe I'm crazy or maybe I've just kind of grown grumpy beyond my years, but like this kind of bothers me.
There's something in me that feels like this just isn't right.
I don't know.
Do y'all feel that way?
Is it just me?
Okay, cool.
Well, I'll I'll digress a little bit, but I think what I'm getting at is that I can feel so bombarded and overwhelmed with new trends, and especially ones that are accompanied by huge product rollouts and huge promotions and advertising.
It just seems like there's a never-ending bidding war for our attention.
And in a way, a bidding war for our affections.
Celebrate this, celebrate that.
This thing is now the most important thing that you should be doing and caring about.
And what's really happening at the core of these is a plea to be marked and deemed as desirable.
If a company can convince you that a product, a service, or a holiday is desirable and something worth celebrating, then they have something good.
They have something profitable.
They accomplished their goal.
But the remarkable thing is that this account in Luke 2 is the opposite.
There are actually a few moments, other moments in the Gospels, that lack that detail and lack that excitement that we might expect to see when explaining these massive events.
It seems odd.
So why is that?
See, the authors of the Gospels, Luke in this case, they knew what they were doing.
They were writers, they were people, they had creativity, and they had a goal in mind, so we can be confident that all of these decisions were intentional.
And whether they knew its full intention or not, the Spirit definitely did.
So what is Luke showing us by describing the birth of Jesus as so matter-of-fact?
They had a baby and then they sat in a manger.
You know, like why did they do that?
Well, if you've read the book, the wonderful book, Gentle and Lowly by Dane Ortlands, I can't recommend it high enough.
If you haven't, they don't know that there's only one moment in all of the recording teachings, all of the recorded works of Jesus, where he talks about his heart.
Only one time in all four gospel accounts.
In Matthew 11, verse 29, a verse that has become a seminal one for me and many others, Jesus shares that I am gentle and lowly in heart.
It's the only thing he says to describe his heart.
According to Jesus, this is who he is at his core.
That is his deepest and most natural posture, is gentle and lowly.
And in this book, the author Dane Ortland further explains the point in saying that Jesus is lowly is that he is accessible.
For all his resplendent glory and dazzling holiness, his supreme uniqueness and otherness, no one in human history has ever been more approachable than Jesus Christ.
And what more lowly way for Jesus to descend from his throne in heaven into our broken world than to awake as a newborn wrapped in swaddling cloths and laid in a manger.
Luke is showing us that even at his own birth, at his very first breath as a man, as a human, the posture of Christ is not boisterous or self-important, but it's a perfect and holy marriage of glory and humility, gentle and lowly.
Jesus did not need a royal precision or a rolling of the red carpet at his birth because that would have missed the whole point.
The birth and life of Jesus did not happen for God to correct and prove everybody wrong and to show his dominance over everybody as if he was trying to gain attention.
Rather, the life of Jesus is reflected in his heart.
Gentle, lowly, and loving.
And I don't want to step on any toes here, so I apologize in advance, but I want to confess that I have a complicated relationship with the song Mary Did You Know.
Look, I'm not saying the song doesn't have its merits.
It's written beautifully.
I'm not saying you can't enjoy it.
Please do not hear that from me.
I'm just saying that every time I hear the song, I can't help but kind of be the grumpy reformed sky in seminary sitting in the back, going under my breath, like, yeah, she knew.
She knew.
Right?
Maybe that's the point of the song, and I'm kind of missing the intention, but as Brad helpfully mentioned last week, I'm gonna bring Brad down with me, right?
He's going down with me.
That that Mary knew her Bible.
We have good reason to believe that when the angel Gabriel came down to Mary and told her that she would give birth to the Messiah, she understood what was happening.
Sure, she was scared, she felt insecure, unworthy, asking, how will this be?
But she never doubted the Lord's faithfulness, never doubted the Lord's ability.
And later in chapter 1, right before this passage we're in this morning, we read Mary's Song of Praise.
A beautiful passage where she sings in praise of what the Lord is doing in her life and through her.
And this song is rich and dense with prophetic language from the Old Testament, revealing the ways the Lord has proven himself in the past and promised to prove himself again.
Mary knew the ancient promise and knew that God had been faithful before and he would be faithful now.
So now, in this moment, when the promises reach their consummation and the birth of Jesus, Mary knows the significance.
As the lyrics of the song go in its last verse, Mary, did you know that your baby boy is Lord of all creation?
Mary, did you know that your baby boy will one day rule the nations?
Did you know that your baby boy is heaven's perfect lamb?
This sleeping child you're holding is the great I am.
The answer is an overwhelming yes.
But that is what makes this passage and this moment so beautiful.
She knew.
Yet she did not need an extravagant celebration or noisy commotion to draw attention to it or to make it worthy of celebration because it already was.
Mary knew and knows in her heart that her newborn baby is who the scriptures anticipated.
She knew that who her baby boy is is who God promised in the Garden of Eden.
The Christ, the Messiah.
And this is the overarching heartbeats of our passage this morning.
That in the birth of Jesus we see God's glory and dazzling holiness shine brightest in the lowly and ordinary.
This is made even more clear in the rest of our passage.
Let's read in verse eight together.
And in the same region where there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by nights, an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear.
And the angel said to them, Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.
For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.
And this will be a sign for you.
You will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.
And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly hosts praising God and saying, Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those whom which He has pleased.
I saw the new F1 movie this past Thursday.
I saw it again last night, also.
I kind of feel it can feel the judgment from that.
I reject that judgment.
It's who I am.
And it's one of those movies where like you know what you're gonna get, right?
It's Top Gun on cars but cars.
It's it's the natural, but it's like spaceships on the ground, right?
It's it's predictable.
It's but it works, right?
It's one of those movies that works.
Like, man, I left the theater both times, both times so fired up.
Like, I left wanting to be great.
Like, I'm gonna be great, you know?
Wanting to go accomplish the impossible, I'm gonna go prove all of you wrong.
I'm gonna step over and crush whoever I need to to do it.
Like I like I want the glory.
Like that's what it made me feel when I left that theater.
If I was a police officer, I 100% would look up the show times for F1 and park right outside the parking lot.
Because man, there's a lot of people, a lot of guys like me leaving that theater doing the same thing.
And it's a little ridiculous for a movie to make me feel that way, but you guys get it.
You guys get it.
Maybe you find it somewhere else.
But more than anything, what that kind of stuff does is it stirs up and unsettles those broken pieces of me that want so deeply to be relevant, want so deeply to be important, to be celebrated.
Like I want to be worthy of celebration.
Yet, so far in the story of God coming to earth, we have Mary, a teenage virgin with an unremarkable background, who is engaged to Joseph, a simple, obedient carpenter from Bethlehem.
And now, to throw the greatest baby shower of all time, we have some night guard shepherds.
Although some of the Bible's greatest figures and our fathers of faith were shepherds, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, were shepherds, this was not necessarily a respected job.
I might even say a lowly one if I want to show my cards a little bit.
And in these shepherds in Luke 2, these are night shift shepherds, the bottom of the totem pole.
They were unreliable, unremarkable, overlooked, and even outcasted men left to tend the sheep in hours with the least amount of risk and the least amount of responsibility needed.
Yet, who is called to rise and be the very first people to meet the incarnate Christ but these very men?
The lowliest of society sit and witness a glimpse of heaven as heaven opens up and they see a multitude of voices singing.
These lowly shepherds going to meet lowly Mary and Joseph.
So the story continues, verse 15.
When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.
And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph and the baby lying in a manger.
When they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told to them concerning this child, and all who heard it wondered what the shepherds told them.
But Mary treasured up these things, pondering them in her hearts.
And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
I love that there's no hesitation from these men to do what the angel of the Lord said.
Certainly I'd have to imagine what what they saw was pretty convincing, but there's no hesitation.
They go right away, and our passage ends with another precious and intimate moment.
Of all the things, of all the stories that Mary told Luke, of all the details she may or may not have remembered, the picture painted here is a new mother holding her newborn baby in a small and lowly manger, being greeted by lowly shepherds who have been given the wonderful revelation of what actually has just happened.
And I can't imagine the whirlwind of emotions that Mary had felt over the past year leading up to this.
But now that the time has come, Jesus is born, the Christ is born.
She doesn't take the time to look around and say, I told you so.
Or to go off showing the Son of God.
But Mary just sits there, soaking up every moment, every detail I imagine, with a smile on her face.
As verse 19 says, But Mary treasured up these things, treasured them up, pondering them in her heart.
And now giving Luke and now giving us the treasure of what she may have thought.
Orchestra of God.
See, we've seen that this whole story is a beautiful orchestra of God, our Father, displaying his glory right in the middle of ordinary, even underwhelming life circumstances.
God descended from heaven, the ancient of days, and met Mary right where she was.
He did not require a remarkable talent, a redeemable quality, even, but only a willing spirit.
And it's the same for us.
God is not calling you, he is not calling me to get our lives together so that he can use you.
He's not waiting for you to fix that insecurity, to conquer that fear, to solve and fix that addiction in order to make his glory known through your life.
Remember that quote from earlier?
No one in human history has ever been more approachable than Jesus Christ.
He comes right in the middle of our mess.
I think the great Henry Nowen sums up what this passage is getting at.
He writes, the question is not how many people take you seriously.
How much are you going to accomplish?
Can you show me some results?
But are you in love with Jesus?
Perhaps another way of putting this question would be: do you know the incarnate God?
Church, your lives do not have to be impressive for them to be faithful.
Your resume does not have to be remarkable or extraordinary or to stand out in order for God's glory to be made known through you.
As we see in the manger, did Mary know the incarnate God?
And the answer is yes, she did.
And that same intimacy is also open for us this morning.
Do you know the incarnate God and his love for you?
Mary did.
And the good news is that Christ is just as accessible as he was then.
He's just as accessible to us this morning as he's ever been.
Do you know the incarnate God and his love for you?
If you have any questions about anything from this morning or want to talk, there'll be a pastor down front.
Let's pray together.
Father, we thank you that your kingdom is not one of accomplishments.
Or that your grace is not one that we have to earn.
Lord, we thank you for this very sweet image we have here in Luke chapter 2.
The memories of Mary passed down to Luke of the sweet moments she had with her newborn son.
And Father, we recognize and glorify and worship you for being that newborn baby, humiliating yourself enough to take on our form to die for us, a death that we deserved.
Lord, and assuming all the brokenness that we cannot solve.
Amen.