Luke 1:56-66, 2:1-7. He has learned to walk where God has asked him to walk even if no one else gets it.

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1 Luke 1:56-66, 2:1-7 Luke 1: 56-66, 80 Quickly Zechariah was also deaf (vs. 62) So his time over the last 9 months was completely devoid of hearing and speaking. Z grew up here. His reflections are of a mature and pious man who still had a lot to learn He has learned to not coast on past spiritual experiences He has learned to walk where God has asked him to walk even if no one else gets it. Even though he was a priest he still needed to grow. How thrilling it is to know that some see their walk with God as a challenge and that the thrill of divine involvement in life has not waned, even though the years have moved on. 1 Luke 2:1-7 But what does the virgin birth mean? Christ s miraculous birth tells us much about his nature. That He was born of woman demonstrates that He was indeed human and became one of us. Christ s humanity, however, was not precisely the same as our own. We are born with original sin, Christ was not. The Virgin Birth also relates to the deity of Christ. While it is certainly possible for Deity to enter the world in a manner other than a virgin birth, the miracle of his birth points to Christ s divinity. 2 Verses on the virgin birth: Matt 1:18, 20, 24-25, Luke 1:35, Gal. 4:4 (indirectly Genesis 3:15, Isaiah 7:14) Let s break this down: The virgin birth gives us two things 1. Jesus is human 2. Jesus is divine Jesus as human. He had a human body, he had a human mind, had a human soul, human emotions. He was tempted yet sinless Was he fully human? Yes he was our representative (Rom 5:18-19), substitute (Heb 2:16-17), example (1 John 2:6, 1 Cor 15:42-44), sympathetic priest (Heb 2:18), mediator (1 Tim 2:5), human ruler over all creation (Heb 2:8). But if there were a clear verse that said Jesus was fully human.if only.oh wait what about Hebrews 2:17 Therefore he had to be made 1 Bock, Darrell NIV Application Commentary, Luke,

2 like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people He had to be fully human to do all of these things. This was debated in the church and three great heresies came out of this, but all were found to be lacking and answered by a complete understanding of the Bible s doctrine of Christ s humanity. 3 Jesus was divine. Here is where we will be spending most of our time. Jesus divinity. Very few people doubt his humanity, it is the divine part that causes issues with people. Let s look at Jesus before He became a human and see how He is described in the Bible Verses that claim He is God John 1:1, 18, 20:28, Romans 9:5, Titus 2:13, Hebrews 1:18, 2 Peter 1:1. (Lord used for Christ): Luke 1:43, 2:11, Matt. 3:3, 22:44, 1 Cor. 8:6, Heb. 1: (other claims): John 8:57-58, Rev. 22:13, Acts 7:56, Matt. 26:64 Hebrews 1 and 2 give us a good look at this. Son, Heir of all things, radiance of the glory of God, exact imprint of his nature, he upholds the universe by the word of his power, angels worship(literally to fawn over) him, his throne is forever and ever, heavens are the work of your hands, crowned with glory and honor putting everything in subjection under His feet, for whom and by whom all things exist. John 1 also gives us a look too In the beginning was the Word (Jesus), the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was there at the beginning (Genesis 1), with and is God. Trinity, yikes!!! ALL things were made through Him 14 Became flesh (incarnation), He has made God known Why the Word? Why does John call Jesus the Word? Why not the deed, the thought or the feeling? Because he was communicating something to us. God puts a high value on clarity and communication. John Piper says I think John wanted us to conceive of the Son of God as existing both for the sake of communication between him and the Father, and for the sake of appearing in history as God s communication to us. 4 Calling Jesus the Word is John s way of emphasizing that the very existence of the Son of God is for the sake of communication. Jesus is the Communication He is how God communicated with us. Piper 3 The three heresies are: Apollinarianism (human body, divine mind/spirit), Nestorianism (two distinct persons in one body, one human, one divine), and Monophysitism (one nature; human nature absorbed into divine nature, greater than human, less than divine ) 4 2

3 summarizes this by saying calling Jesus the Word implies that he is God-Expressing- Himself. 5 What is He communicating? More on this later. Colossians 1:15-23 Image of the invisible God, firstborn of all creation, by Him all things were created, before all things, all things held together, the head of the body (the church), he is the beginning, reconciler. In their case the god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. 2 Corinthians 4:4 So wait He is fully human we saw that above, but he is also God? How can this be? Well it is. Colossians 2:9 For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily So 50/50 God/man right..nope look at it again Made like us in every respect and the whole fullness of deity So here is how it works 100% man, 100% God. Jesus experienced humanity Jesus our God in heaven has experienced all that we have from birth to death, through tough times and joyful times, from pain to happiness, sorrow, illness, weakness, pain, tears, hunger, thirst. He experienced growing pains, He even experienced distance from God (wrap your head around that one ) He learned things, he grew in wisdom, he was doubted by his family and friends. He was called names, he was put down, he was beaten, spit upon He did not have to do this, but he chose to. He.the God who created everything entered as a child, not just any child, but the child of an illiterate betrothed single mother, in a poor rural town who had to have her baby at a family reunion in a stinky stable and He the God of everything was laid in a feeding trough to sleep. Do you think He can help you were you are at? Do you think He knows what you have gone through? Hebrews 4:15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Jesus is divine But it gets better He is almighty God. He not only knows what we are going through (like all the other religious teachers) but He can actually do something about it. Where gurus, sages 5 Ibid. 3

4 and diviners just point to how they got through it or how they have overcome it. Jesus created it! Jesus holds it together. So we have a man to follow and a God to worship all in one. Jesus divine traits: Stilling the storm (Matt 8:26-27), loaves and fishes (Matt 14:19), water to wine (John 2:1-11), eternity (John 8:58), Alpha/Omega (Rev. 22:13), omniscience (Mark 2:8, John 1:48, 6:64, 2:25, 16:30), omnipresence (Matt. 18:20, 28:20), sovereignty (Mark 2:5-7), immortality (John 2:19, 10:17-18), indestructible life (Heb. 7:16), worthy to be worshipped (Phil 2:9-11), resurrection (Matt, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, etc) Was his deity necessary? Jonah 2:9, 1 Timothy 2;5, John 14:9, 1 John 9. So get this, we can know that God knows what we are going through and that He has gotten through it and that He will get us through it. What an amazing promise.no wonder it is called the Gospel, the good news!!! Jesus is God s communication that this is not the end. That He is going to fix things. Make them right. He is fully God, He is fully man. He is the Godman. He was born without original sin His birth was the announcement to the world that God is here and that everything is going to be all right. Defense of the Virgin Birth Location: probably a cave, tradition supports this. The Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem supports this idea, in that the church is built on a cave that would have been used to store livestock. However, there is some history that points to the fact that inns in those days were houses with two floors, the lower floors stored livestock and the upper floor is where you would rent out rooms. This was because you had money to have a two storied house; the poor people lived with their livestock. I tend to lean towards the cave because of tradition and because it fits the majority of the historical views on the issue. But let s not get too caught up in this because there is a bigger point here. Let s talk the virgin birth. Why does it matter? 4

5 Virgin birth: Asexual reproduction is possible, and it happens in the animal kingdom, but it never, ever produces a male. It is always a female that gets produced. Because a female can only give X chromosomes, no Y or she would be a male. Doubting the virgin birth is a common occurrence What if tomorrow someone digs up definitive proof that Jesus had a real, earthly, biological father named Larry, and archeologists find Larry s tomb and do DNA samples and prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the virgin birth was really just a bit of mythologizing the Gospel writers threw in to appeal to the followers of the Mithra and Dionysian religious cults that were hugely popular at the time of Jesus, whose gods had virgin births? But what if, as you study the origin of the word virgin you discover that the word virgin in the gospel of Matthew actually comes from the book of Isaiah, and then you find out that in the Hebrew language at that time, the word virgin could mean several things. And what if you discover that in the first century being born of a virgin also referred to a child whose mother became pregnant the first time she had intercourse? What if that spring were seriously questioned? Could a person keep on jumping? Could a person still love God? Could you still be a Christian? Is the way of Jesus still the best possible way to live? Or does the whole thing fall apart? If the whole faith falls apart when we reexamine and rethink one spring, then it wasn t that strong in the first place, was it? (Rob Bell, Velvet Elvis 26-27) It is a little disconcerting that it is being done by people claiming the name of Christ. Emerging church gets away with it in their minds in that they are just asking questions..two thoughts: First Socrates used to use questions to convince people to change their minds on issues that they had completely chosen prior to the questions, so this is not innocent questioning, and second didn t a certain serpent ask questions.. Besides the emerging church questioners who else denies the virgin birth? This is hard to detect because so much of the internet sites about the virgin birth are affirming it. But here are a few I could find: Mormon s deny the virgin birth at the same time that they affirm it. Check out these grammatical gymnastics : "Christ was begotten by an immortal Father in the same way that mortal men are begotten by mortal fathers." (Mormon Doctrine, 1966, p. 547) But.. "Our Lord is the only mortal person ever born to a virgin, because he is the only person who ever had an immortal Father." (Mormon Doctrine, 2nd ed., p. 822)

6 This is not to say that we cannot question or doubt what we believe. But to say that key concepts of the Bible are not necessary are incredibly dangerous, especially for a teacher at a Christian church. Still others choose to say it did not happen for a variety of reasons: 1. Physically impossible (naturalist mindset) 2. Mis-reading of Isaiah 3. Paul, Mark and John do not mention it 4. Stolen from other god-worship religions of the time The First: Clearly the first one we can discuss the basics of that if there is a God and He created everything then he could choose to bend the laws of nature to his will. This is a paradigm issue and can be addressed better by a simple apologetics course on the existence of God The Second: What did Bell mean by the word virgin not meaning virgin? Isaiah 7:14 which states "Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel," the word for virgin is the word almah which in Strong s is translated as "virgin, young woman 1a) of marriageable age 1b) maid or newly married." So sometimes it can mean something other than virgin. While this seems to agree with Bell s assertion that maybe the Isaiah passage is not correct in calling Mary a virgin. However, there is in my opinion overwhelming evidence that virgin is how the Jews at this time understood this passage. Around 200 B.C. 70 Jewish scholars translated the Old Testament into Greek, this is called the Septuagint (LXX) and they translated the word almah into the Greek word parthenos which means virgin and has no other established meaning. If the Jews of that time understood that passage to mean a virgin and not a young woman just married, then I would say that is good enough for me. 7 But they get it wrong in that Isaiah was the only OT reference to the virgin birth, because Genesis actually references this in I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring: he shall bruise your head and you shall bruise his heal. Genesis 3:15 (ESV) No one in the ancient society of Israel would have referred to the seed(offspring) of a woman, without getting too technical when referring to the seed it always meant the man, specifically that he fathered the child via sexual intercourse. So the normal way of saying this would be that Adam s seed would be who had enmity, but in fact it was woman s seed(offspring) which is impossible without the virgin birth. The Third: In fact Paul mentions Jesus as being born of a virgin in that he uses a little used Greek word that seems to imply that Jesus did not have a father, now this could support a different conclusion, but it does not support that Paul knew nothing of the virgin birth. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law Galatians 4:4 (ESV) In fact in Galatians 4:23 when talking about Ishmael Paul uses the more common Greek word that roughly means born of woman and her husband. Also Mark mentions in 6:3 that the people in the synagogue Jesus is teaching in call him the son of Mary instead of the son of Joseph. Could be a reference to Joseph being dead at this 7 (see for more information) 6

7 point, but in all actuality it seems to point to the fact that Jesus was known to not be from Joseph. And since Mark is not addressing the birth here he just moves past it as Jesus mentions how a prophet is without honor in his hometown. The Fourth: Another point made by Bell was that these myths were derived from pagan sources. I make my students watch a video called The God Who Wasn t There by a young man who was turned off by his Christian high school and decided to make a movie about how Jesus was not who we believe him to be. One of his key arguments is the idea that the story of Jesus was a myth and that it was myth-copying in its origin. 8 There really is no foundation to these claims, Jesus does not match perfectly (nor really come close to matching) any of the virgin born gods of this period. 9 All of which are usually formed by a god having sex with a woman (not technically a virgin any more, go back to sex ed kids). Here are a few problems with the pagan myth idea: 1. This argument commits the genetic fallacy that the source of an idea poisons the idea, the truth of Christianity is independent of truth or falsity of its alleged parallels. 2. Mithra one of the most popular choices was created after Jesus life and created as a reaction to it, only creative dating of manuscripts from the 4 th century A.D. can at all make this myth a real source for the virgin birth. 3. Almost all of the parallels are not parallels at all Christ was a historical figure clearly placed into historical books, there was never any doubt that the myths of the pagans were religious writings (see footnote 6 for more problems with this theory) Please bring any questions you have. 11 Why does it matter? Mark Driscoll tells us of an interesting story: Now, Larry King was once asked, If you could interview anyone in the history of the world, who would it be? He said, Jesus Christ. Good answer. When they asked Larry, If you could ask him one question, what would that be? Larry said, quote, I would like to ask him if he was indeed virgin born. The answer to that question would define history for me. Larry King is right, not often, but in this occasion. [Laughter] And Larry King says, I want to talk to Jesus and I want to know if his For the writers of the Bible to have put together the story of Jesus from the pagan stories that Jesus life seems to emulate would have required that these men (all of which are humble in origin except Luke) be incredibly well read and know the complete origin stories of over 20 different pagan religions, and to have read their sacred documents that we have access to now. We have to remember that these men were not well-traveled scholars and that they did not have access to Wikipedia on their smart-phones. This really is such a stretch that it is laughable but many people are sucked in by it and believe that Jesus story was concocted from these myths. 10 See this site for a full account of the pagan myths and how they do not match up & 7

8 mom really was a virgin, that would define history. Larry s right. That s the issue. If so, he is unlike anyone and everyone who has or will ever live. 12 This is not a new thing. Introduce J Gresham Machen, late 19 th and early 20 th century professor of NT at Princeton and then at Westminster. Fought this fight about the virgin birth nearly 100 years ago. Wrote the ultimate defense of the virgin birth (which has never been answered adequately). 13 Deny it, and you deny the authority of the Bible, the supernatural aspect of everything about Christ Jesus, including the good news of salvation itself. Machen himself said, If the Bible is regarded as wrong in what it says about the birth of Christ, then obviously the authority of the Bible in any high sense is wrong. 14 Machen rebelled against his school s new statement of faith. Here is what a website says concerning this: On page six of the Auburn Affirmation, after referring to the five points, emphasized by the General Assembly of 1923, it states: "...this opinion of the General Assembly attempts to commit our Church to certain theories concerning the inspiration of the Bible, the Incarnation, the Atonement, the Resurrection--some of us regard the particular theories contained in the deliverance of the General Assembly of 1923 as satisfactory explanations of these facts and doctrines. But we are united in believing that these are not the only theories allowed by the Scriptures and our Standards as explanations of these facts and doctrines of our religion, and that all who hold to these facts and doctrines, whatever theories they may employ to explain them, are worthy of all confidence and fellowship." Now to be concrete, what "theory" other than the historical fact of the Virgin Birth, can you think of to explain the Incarnation? There is one which the anti-christian Celsus used in his effort to defame Christ (which sounds a lot like what Rob Bell wrote). If Christ be not Virgin-Born, and if, as both Joseph and Mary claim, Joseph was not Jesus' father, whose son is he? Does the Auburn Affirmation really mean that one who accepts this view of our Lord's birth is worthy of all confidence and fellowship? That is exactly what the Auburn Affirmation means. It says definitely that ministers are worthy of confidence "whatever theories they may employ to explain" the Incarnation You can read the whole thing here

9 He saw the debate between Liberalism and Christianity as a debate between believers and non-believers. He wrote If, therefore, the virgin birth be rejected, let us cease talking about the authority of the Bible or the infallibility of Scripture or the like. 16 So he fought this battle against the idea that the virgin birth does not matter. In fact he boiled it down this way. There is no other doctrine statement that can cut to the core of what a person believes better than Do you believe that Jesus was conceived by a virgin via the power of the Holy Spirit? You can t ask Is Jesus God? because they may all say we are god. You can t ask Do you believe in the resurrection? It could be they believe in Jesus continued influence or his immortal soul, but you can talk your way through affirming this statement. But you can ask about the virgin birth, and that is where the wheat and the chaff come apart. The virgin birth is important, first because if it is rejected then the authority of the Bible is denied and second because it presents us with an unambiguous question to see where a person is with their walk towards or away from believing in the gospel. Without the story of the virgin birth there would be something seriously lacking in the Christian view of Christ Machen, J Gresham. The Virgin Birth of Christ, Ibid,