Uh thank you all for being here.
My name is Brad O'Kelly.
Uh I'm filling in.
Russ is on sabbatical for a couple weeks.
You're going to get the best that we have to offer, uh, preaching-wise, after today.
Uh, it's gonna be great.
You're gonna love it.
He will come back.
I, like Matt, uh, did not expect any of you to be here today.
Like, it's making me a little nervous right now, to be honest with you, that there are so many of you that showed up.
Uh, but I really appreciate it.
Glad you're here.
We're gonna walk through some stuff today.
I'm gonna read a passage of scripture, pray for us one more time, and then uh we'll get rolling.
Our scripture today is Luke chapter 1.
Luke chapter 1, we're gonna start in verse 26.
You're gonna hear this, you're gonna think, what in the world is going on?
I'll explain it in just a minute.
Okay?
So here we go.
Luke chapter 1, verse 26.
It says, In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, and of the house of David.
And the virgin's name was Mary.
And he came to her and said, Greetings, O favor one, the Lord is with you.
But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be.
And the angel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.
And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.
He will be great, he will be called the Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him to the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom there will be no end.
And Mary said to the angel, How will this be, since I am a virgin?
And the angel answered her, The Holy Spirit will come upon you, the power of the Most High will overshadow you.
Therefore, the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.
And behold, your relative Elizabeth is in her old age and also conceived a son, and this is a sixth month with her who was called barren.
For nothing is impossible with God.
And Mary said, Behold, I am the servant of the Lord.
Let it be to me according to your word.
And the angel departed from her.
Let me pray for us.
Father, thanks for today.
Thanks for an opportunity to share your word.
Be with us as we open it up, as we receive it, Father.
I just pray that uh your word would ring loud and true in each of our hearts.
Uh Father, that it would be nothing to do with any of the words that I have to say, but the power of your Holy Spirit filling this place this morning.
We love you, and we ask all this in Jesus' name.
Amen.
So, what we're gonna do, okay, everybody, I know you got like a little Christmas in July kind of feel right there, but um what we're actually doing, what I was told we were doing, I get uh the notes that says, here's what you're gonna do.
We sometimes when Russ is out and we know he's gonna be out for several weeks, like it's kind of hard to piece together.
First of all, they know for a fact they can't just look at me and be like, hey, get up there and talk about whatever you want to.
That would be a complete disaster.
Uh so they're like, we've got to rein this in, we've got to give him a topic here to make do.
And so what they did is they sat down, they had this meeting, and Matt and uh Sam and Keel and several of the other staff members came to me and they said, Hey, what we're gonna do while Russ is gone is we want to do kind of a biblical profile on a person in the Bible.
We want to take a few weeks, and we want to profile a person in the Bible, and that's what we're gonna teach the congregation over time.
I said, that's great.
And they said, we're gonna do Mary.
And I was like, okay, like I didn't see that one coming.
Like that, that kind of, you know, who are we gonna go after here?
We got some big names, you know, to deal with, and obviously Mary being one of them.
I'm not I'm not playing that down at all, but I was like, okay, Mary it is.
And then they gave me this passage of scripture, and I'm like, man, this is uh we're gonna have a little Christmas story here, okay?
So I don't really know what to do with this.
So as I'm looking through it, we look at this passage with a Christmas lens, right?
And we see that through this Christmas lens, but there's actually a person involved here in Mary, and that's what we want to look at today.
And the reason I say all of that is because I am going, I've told many of you this before, I'm going to preach here every time they ask me to preach.
Like, some of you hate it, it's written all over your faces.
I get it, it's okay, it's perfectly fine.
You come back the next week, everything's back to normal.
Some of you love it, some of you don't.
That's fine.
I just want you to know, I'm gonna preach here every single time they ask me to preach.
And the reason is because I have preached in some terrible churches.
And this one is great.
I love preaching here.
I absolutely love it.
I was asked to preach one time by a buddy of mine in seminary.
He called me.
He goes, hey man, I need you to come fill in for me to preach.
This guy was a bivocational pastor in the middle of the smallest town in East Georgia.
Bivocational pastor means he had a full-time job.
He pastored his church for free.
All right, so think about that.
Didn't get paid, pastored to church while working a full-time job.
He was also a volunteer firefighter.
Like, this guy did it all.
I mean, he was the most amazing guy I ever knew.
He calls me one time, he goes, Can you come preach for me?
I have finally, his oldest daughter was eight years old.
He said, It's taken me eight years.
I have finally saved up enough money, I can take my family to Disney World, and I want to take them to Disney.
Can you come preach for me?
I was like, brother, say no more.
I am there.
Like, I'm there.
I'll be there.
He sends me the address in the middle of nowhere.
I drive out on a Sunday morning, I get to this tiny little Baptist church in the middle of nowhere.
I walk in, there's 10 people inside.
All right?
Ten people inside, that's fine by me.
It doesn't bother me at all.
I'm like, that's great.
Well, I realized Sunday school hadn't let out yet.
So in a minute, the room was full with 15 people.
So now we have 15 people in this room, right?
And so these two ladies walk out, one of them goes to a piano on one side, one of them goes to the organ, and they start banging out these old Baptist hymns, you know, and it's like everything's going.
I'm like, all right, I get I get what's happening.
Well, finally I look up, and the lady playing the piano is like mean mugging me, like, and she's going, like, get like get up there, and I'm like, oh.
So I kind of walk over and I'm like, what am I supposed to do?
She goes, You gotta do the announcements.
And I'm like, and the welcome.
I was like, oh, okay.
So I walk up, I welcome everybody.
And in the Baptist world, you have to let everybody shake hands.
I don't know if y'all knew that, but in the Baptist world, they're like they really want to shake hands in the morning.
So like you have to shake, let them shake hands.
So while they're shaking hands, I walk back over to her and I'm like, hey, sorry, I didn't know I was supposed to do the welcome.
Is there anything else I'm supposed to do?
And she goes, Well, you did the welcome.
And I was like, Yeah, I took care of that.
She goes, You're gonna preach, right?
I said, Yeah, I'd planned on it.
Um and then she goes, she goes, All right, well, you'll have to pray for the offering.
I said, Okay, cool.
When is the offering?
She goes, it'll be after the second song.
I was like, all right, what's the second song?
And she lays a hymnal up on the piano and she goes, you tell me.
And I said, I was like, uh, what is it like just pick one?
Like, do I just like put it?
She goes, I know every song in that book.
She goes, you pick it, I'll play it.
And I was like, oh, okay.
And I'm thinking, this is weird, like, this is really strange.
And so I'm thought, and she goes, she goes, just pick the one that you know the best.
And I'm like, well, why would it matter if I know it the best?
And she goes, Well, you're leading the music.
And I'm like, Well, like at that point, I'm having a panic.
Let me just tell y'all something.
I, if you can tell me right now, there's five million people outside the doors, and somebody, I know some of you in this room, your worst spirit would be doing this right now.
Let me tell you something.
I am fine.
There could be five million people outside, and you say, somebody's got to go talk to him, I'll be glad to do it.
But you look at me and go, you need to stand up and sing in front of people.
I am dead, man.
Like, I'm dead.
And so I look at this lady and I'm like, I'm I'm sorry.
I'm leading the music.
And she goes, Well, our pastor's wife leads the music here, and she's gone with him.
And you're the only one that showed up.
So she goes, I assume you're leading the music.
Y'all, I had to, I kid you not, I had to lead music in this church of 15 people.
We said I didn't know any.
We sang Amazing Grace, we sang Blessed Assurance, and we were getting ready to have Christmas in July because I was going to do a little town of Bethlehem or something, because that's the only thing I knew.
And she was like, just wave your arm around, they'll sing with you, you know?
And so I'm up here doing all this stuff.
I get done, I call my buddy, and I go, hey man, you left out a few details about preaching at your church, and he starts dying laughing.
He goes, What songs did you sing?
And I was like, Oh my gosh.
He goes, I thought maybe you wouldn't come if I told you you're gonna have to do that.
And I said, I said, okay, well, you got me on that one.
He goes, Well, let me ask you this, did they at least pay you?
And I said, No, like nobody gave me anything.
He goes, Good, they weren't supposed to do that either.
And he hung up the phone.
Those are the churches that I get asked to preach, and so when I come here, I'm like, this is the best, you know?
This is great.
But I have you have this moment, right?
This moment, in that moment where I'm standing there trying to pretend like I know how to lead music, thank God for Sam Heilig and all the people that do it here, where I'm trying to stand there and pretend music, and I'm going, how did I get here?
How did this happen?
Why me?
Why am I doing this?
And I see all of those things, and when we take this passage of scripture in Luke that we're looking at today, and we look through the lens of Mary, not through the lens of Christmas.
Remember that.
When we look through the lens of Mary, think about what's happening in Mary's life in this moment.
The first thing that happens in verse 26 is look what goes on.
It says, in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel.
Now we've got to stop right there.
Sixth month is referring to Elizabeth's pregnancy.
Elizabeth is pregnant with John the Baptist at the same time.
So when it says in the sixth month, it's talking about in the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy.
And it says the angel Gabriel.
Now, this name Gabriel, it appears four times in the Bible.
Twice in Daniel and twice in Luke.
And in both of those instances, so we have an Old Testament instance, New Testament instance, right?
In all of those instances, what Gabriel comes to do is to come to proclaim to someone else what God's will is going to be.
He shows up and he goes to proclaim to these people, this is what's going to happen.
In Daniel's case, it was the interpretation of a vision that Daniel had.
Gabriel had to come and explain what that vision meant.
In this case, the angel had to show up and first tell Elizabeth and Zacharias, you're going to get pregnant in your old age and have John the Baptist.
Then he shows up to Mary and says, You're going to conceive Jesus.
That's Gabriel's job.
He says he was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth.
So he shows up to Nazareth.
And if you know anything about biblical maps, then good job.
Because I don't.
So I would love to tell you exactly where Nazareth is on a map.
I'd love to tell you that I've been there and walked that.
I've never been there.
I don't know.
I couldn't point to Nazareth on a map if you try it.
I have no idea.
Here's what I do know, though.
I know that if we jumped over to the first chapter of John, in John chapter 46, there are two, or in John chapter 1, verse 46, there are two disciples that Jesus is calling.
And they go to a friend and they say, We have found the Messiah of the Old Testament prophecies.
And this guy, Nathaniel, looks up and they go, He is Jesus of Nazareth.
And Nathaniel goes, There has never been a good thing come out of Nazareth.
That's the thought of Nazareth.
So I need you to put yourself in that place.
I need you to understand that this angel is showing up not only to a person that doesn't expect it, not only to proclaim something that no one knows is going to happen, but he shows up to the worst part of town to do it.
This is not something where there's this big, grand, incredible thing that's going to take place in this massive major city and all of this stuff is going to happen.
This is literally an angel of the Lord showing up to an undeserving, unexpecting person in a bad part of town and going, You are going to complete God's perfect will.
Man, how in the world could that possibly take place?
So what do we know about Mary?
In verse 27.
So he shows up to a virgin, betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary.
And he came to her and said in verse 28, greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you.
Now, I have to stop right there because here's what happens when we do biblical profiles on people.
I need you to understand that.
We walk a fine line.
The fine line is this.
We can take a biblical profile of a person, whether it be Mary, whether it be Paul, whether it be Moses, pick whichever one you want to.
And what we can make a mistake in doing is we can elevate that person to a status above that of Jesus and give them the qualities and the salvation that only Jesus can offer.
We can elevate that person and say, that's who we need to emulate.
Or we can swing the pendulum the complete opposite way, and we don't give them enough credit for what God has done through them through the pages of Scripture.
So where we want to land as a church is somewhere in the middle where we are not placing a person above that of Jesus, but we're also not going, ah, there's really not much to look at there.
There's always something that God's going to try to accomplish in his word that we need to understand, and it's no different through Mary, because look at what he says in verse 28.
Greetings, O favored One, the Lord is with you.
Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you.
Now, here's what you have to understand about that.
I'm going to be smart for a minute.
You ready?
Don't be shocked.
That is a Greek word, O favored one, called Harataho.
Okay?
Yes, I said it right.
You can check it later on, okay?
Somebody enters here and go, nope, I still got it wrong.
That's fine.
That's okay.
Harataho.
Guess how many times I should use it in the Bible?
Twice.
Two times.
Once right here.
The second one is Paul uses it in Ephesians chapter 1.
And Paul uses it to refer to every single believer that believes in Jesus.
Why?
Because it has a connotation of betrothed grace, given grace, is what that word means.
To have grace heaped upon you.
Paul uses it for all believers in Ephesians chapter 1 because it's literally what Jesus does for us.
Luke uses it here to show that what was going on with Mary was not anything to do with her own nature.
It was nothing to do with anything she had done herself.
What it was was it was literally a gift, a heaping of grace of an Almighty God onto her.
She would become the person to literally give birth to the Savior of the world, and it was a gift of God bestowed upon her.
No expectation, no, well, you pick the right person, nothing.
Mary was given this opportunity out of an abundance of grace from an Almighty God.
Look at how she handles that grace in the next verse.
Verse 29.
But she was greatly troubled at the saying and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be.
Now there are plenty of New Testament people that are way, way smarter than I am.
Way smarter than I am.
And there are some out there that get a little bit out on the fringes and they say, no, no, no.
Mary is so important, so elevated, that she actually knew from her birth that she was going to be the mother of Jesus, and she lived a life according to that, so that, which is why we place her on this high pedestal in some circles.
You see what I'm saying?
That's what was going on there.
Why in the world then would you have a verse like verse 29 where an angel of the Lord shows up to her and her first reaction is, she is greatly troubled and trying to discern what this means.
This is a person that has no idea this is coming, no idea what's gonna happen.
Regardless of the life that she's lived, it is a gift of God that's been bestowed upon her.
She did not see this coming.
Now that I can understand.
My mother is here today.
Annette.
She's right over there.
Hey Annette.
Look at her.
My mom's here today.
If you know anything about my story, anything about my life, my dad passed away when I was three years old.
I was raised by that lady right over there my entire life.
Is it you already know she's amazing, right?
Like, look, you're like, whoa.
Whoa.
Look at the job she did.
I was raised by that lady my entire life.
That is the, and listen, let me tell you something.
If you talk to her afterwards, if you want to come say hello afterwards, say hello.
You just don't say anything bad about Mandy.
Don't say anything bad about her grandchildren.
Me, you can say anything you want to about.
At this point, she's done with me.
She's like, whatever.
Uh, but she has a daughter-in-law and grandchildren, that's really all she cares about at this point.
So um, she's anything you want to.
My dad passed away when I was three years old.
I was raised by this lady over here.
This is to me, and and I need y'all to understand this I love all of you.
That's the finest Christian woman that's ever lived on the face of the planet.
Never done anything wrong, ever.
She's never done a thing wrong in her entire life.
Except one.
I need y'all to know something.
Annette.
Sweet little Annette.
I said a cuss word one time.
She's gonna be so mad.
So funny.
You know when she said it?
I won't tell you what she said because this is a church.
You can't say it.
Um she said it at Christmas.
That's right.
At Jesus' birth, the greatest Christian woman on earth cussed.
You know why?
Because she was putting up our fake Christmas tree in our house and she hit her head on a mantle on the uh fireplace when she was putting it up.
So she's like, she about knocks herself out putting up our Christmas tree, right?
She says a cuss word.
I'm in my brother, who's three years older than I am, he's sprinting around the house yelling the cuss word because that meant that this was a license now.
We all had a license to cuss whenever we wanted to.
I'm, you know, me, I'm in the corner praying for our family that's obviously falling apart.
And, you know, all of these things, like, that's that was the kid I was, you know, that like all of this is happening, but I just remember in that moment I'm thinking, I'm thinking, like, this is it, it's just it's amazing, but I don't understand it.
You know, like I don't get it.
I see all of that stuff, but here's this woman, and we've always joked about that one time because I'm telling you right now, if you know my mother, you would never, ever, ever think that she has ever done anything like that.
And so I like to remind people sometimes.
Yes, she has.
You know, like guess what?
You have too.
We've all been in that situation where there's things that go on that we don't understand, we don't get it, it happens, we we just can't figure out how it all comes together.
But for me, when I look in on this profile of Mary and I see this woman who's standing here in the midst of this angel, going, I don't understand why this is happening to me.
I think about my mother who, in a time in her life, even as much as she loved the Lord, even in as much as she was so uh tied to his word, so tied to what he was doing in her life, my father passes away.
She has this opportunity to go, that's it, forget it, cut it off, I'm done with all of it.
But instead, all she had to say was, I don't understand why this is happening, but there's something going on here.
And Mary goes on and goes, I don't understand this.
And in verse 30, the angel says to her, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God, and behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son.
You shall call his name Jesus.
He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Most High.
And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.
In all of these things, as Mary is sitting there in her misunderstanding of what's going on, and her misunderstanding of how could this possibly happen to me, it doesn't make any sense.
What the angel does is he lays out a lot of stuff for her.
And what it is is it's a full section of theology that we call the doctrine of incarnation.
And the doctrine of incarnation hangs a lot of important theology, and the reason is because Jesus, in order to be fully God, fully man, had to be born according to a prophecy in Isaiah chapter 7, and the only way that it would be fulfilled is exactly the way that the angel just laid this out to Mary.
It is all connected.
None of it is truly by surprise, except when you look through the lens of Mary.
Because she never thought that she would be the one.
And the angel lays out all of this important things that are gonna happen right here, all of these things that are gonna take place, all of this is gonna go on, how she is literally gonna give birth to the Savior of the world, and in verse 34, Mary looks at this angel, and you would think, okay, he's laid it all out perfectly clear, and this is what she said.
How will this be?
Since I'm a virgin.
Her misunderstanding doesn't just lead to, I don't get why this is happening to me.
All of a sudden it brings up questions in her life of, what am I supposed to do with this?
How can this even be possible?
How is it even possible that this can take place?
And the angel continues in verse 35 and says, The angel answered her, The Holy Spirit will come upon you.
The power of the Most High will overshadow you.
Therefore, the child will be born, will be called holy, the Son of God.
And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age is also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren.
The angel starts to lay out this life progress in Mary and go, Oh, it's not only that I'm at work in you, I'm also at work in a ton of other things.
He says, God's working in all of these ways so that his will will be accomplished.
And he goes through her and he says, Look at your, look at Elizabeth.
She was barren and now she's going to give birth to a son.
And look at what in verse 37 the angel tells her for the final time, he says, For nothing will be impossible with God.
Nothing will be impossible with God.
Now, I would love to plant the flag right there today and go, that's all you need to know.
Thanks for coming, everybody.
Nothing will be impossible with God.
That would not be a profile of Mary, though.
Because what we have to understand about Mary is the very next verse in verse 38.
She has so far to this point questioned, how can this happen?
Questioned, how will it even happen?
And then she gets to verse 38, and look at what it says.
It says, And Mary said, Behold, I am the servant of the Lord.
Let it be to me according to your word.
And the angel departed from her.
Now I need y'all to understand something.
This right here, this verse of Mary, this is Mary's first enunciation to the angel where she says, I accept what you have told me.
And look at what she says.
Let it be to me according to your word.
You say, Brad, this is all well and good.
What in the world are we as a church supposed to do with this?
What are we supposed to do with this?
Well, it's real simple.
You see, God, in his glory, in his timing, in his way, calls each of us to something.
Now you may say, I'm not important enough.
I'm not important enough for God to call me.
And the reason you say that is because we have kind of misrepresented what a calling is, right?
You hear the word calling and you think of people standing up here working for the church, think of a missionary across seas, you think about all of these other things that are going on.
You have to be called to do those things.
And we place this heavy, heavy burden on the calling and say, in order for this to happen, you have to be called to do this.
And then it's going to completely change your life, and all of these things are going to happen.
But what's really going on here is this is Mary sums it up so well where she says, Let it be to me according to your word.
What Mary is doing is she is laying out a framework for us to go.
I may not understand it, and I may even question it.
But if it's supposed to be from an Almighty, holy God, then whatever it is, let it be.
The lesson for you and I today is that we rarely in the world that we live in today get to that place.
We say it can't be me.
We say I'm not this.
I'm not that.
I may not be good enough.
You don't know what's going on.
You don't know how hard that would be.
You don't understand what it would take for me to do that.
You don't understand that the Lord possibly couldn't be calling me to that because that sounds absolutely crazy.
But in all of that, in every single bit of it, what Mary says, her response to the angel of the Lord is, let it be to me according to your word.
Church, our response to the things that God is calling us to every single day, whether they are gigantic or whether they are small, should be, Lord, let it be according to your word.
Our lives should be a picture of God working in us and through us because of his grace and mercy bestowed upon us to go out and live his will and his calling for our lives.
If there's anything that we take from the beginning of this profile of Mary right here, it is this.
God is at work.
He is active at work in you, through you, in all things.
What is your response?
My prayer is that it would be exactly like Mary's.
Let it be to me according to your word.
Let me pray for us this morning.
Father, we love you.
We thank you for this opportunity to come and to worship you.
And Father, that you would be made known to each and every one of us in this room, Father.
I pray that today there's one here that doesn't know you, that doesn't understand your grace, your mercy, your power.
Father, that today would be the day of their salvation.
And we pray all this in Jesus' name.
Amen.