Road Trippin With Rachael

Christmas and Advent is a wonderful time of year. Yes, presents are fun and I enjoy looking throughout the year to find gifts for my loved ones. However, that is not the purpose. Christmas is the day that we remember the gift God gave of sending His only begotten Son in the form of a tiny, innocent baby. Advent is the time that we remember all that God did leading up to Jesus’ birth. During the Sundays in December we are going to be going through the Gospel of Luke as we go through the Advent Season. Todays post we will be looking at Mary and Elizabeth, with attention to how they reaponded to the arrivals of their children.  You can check out my YouTube Channel to see the lessons if that is your preference.

Mary’s Response

Mary is an interesting character beyond being the mother of Christ. Here she is, this young woman living in a town that has nothing particularly appealing about it, and she is engaged to be married to a man that is well respected. If nothing else, Mary would have come from a good family that obviously took Deuteronomy 6:4-9 seriously and had raised their daughter to follow Torah and to live a life that is pleasing to God.

This last point is what stands out the most when Mary is before the angel Gabriel. Unlike the the other individuals throughout scripture who also had an encounter with am angel, Mary doesn’t panic. In fact, Mary has a completely opposite response from the others. Fear appears to be the standard response. We see this reaction with: Manoah and Gideon (Judges), with Daniel (Daniel 7) and with Zechariah (Luke 1). Mary, at least, is depicted as taking the information in and processing it.

Another facet about Mary’s response is that she asked a reasonable question, “How can this be, since I have not had sexual relations with a man?” (Luke 1: 34). Now, if you remember from last week, Zechariah also asked a question. However, Zechariah eas chastised for not having faith.

What’s the difference?

Precedence.

Zechariah had reason to believe that Elizabeth could conceive and have a baby in her old age. As I stated last week this was the exact situation that Abraham and Sarah found themselves. There was already a track record of God allowing women post-menopause to have children.

Mary on the other had was a young woman about to be married. She was fully aware of how babies were made, and states, clearly, that she hasn’t been having sex with Joseph. Zechariah and Elizabeth had been married for many years and were obviously still sexually active. The activity necessary to have a baby was happening. This wasn’t the case with Mary – no activity taking place.

In otherwords, Mary wanted to know how she was going to have a baby when half of the participating party was missing. Completely reasonable because there was no precedence for it – which is what makes Jesus’ conception so miraculous.

Elizabeth confirms the angel’s words

Mary hears the angel and then goes to see Elizabeth, the wife of Zechariah, who is pregnant in her old age. Elizabeth plays a very encouraging role in Mary’s life. Upon meeting Mary at her arrival Elizabeth proclaims that the baby in her womb leaped with joy to be in the presence of the child Mary carried. This says something, too, about Elizabeth that she recognized what it meant for her to have conceived and for her young, engaged, God-honoring cousin to be with child. Elizabeth’s response to all this was to worship.

Isn’t that beautiful that Elizabeth’s response Mary’s greeting is to worship and praise God and that she would bless Mary? The example that we can take from this!

And in response to Elizabeth’s worship, Mary also worships! Worship begets worship. It is a response to God and a response to what God is doing in others. Mary sings praise bebout the greatness of the Lord; his holiness; how his mercy is from generation to generation; how he has placed the mighty in power and can take that power away; hownGod has consistently remembered his promisebto Abraham(Luke 1:46-55). Mary’s song of praise is known as the Magnificant, and has been a staple example of praise and worship in the Church for the past two millennia.

John the Baptist is Born

After Mary leaves, Elizabeth finishes out her pregnancy and gives birth to a baby boy. Several things happen at John’s birth.

1. He is named John. This isn’t a Hebrew name, so it is odd that he would receive it, especially since he was of the tribe of Aaron and by rights could have become the High Priest. Normally, a name would be from someone in the family.
2. Zechariah supports the naming of John and immediately gets his voice back. Remember that Gabriel had told him that that would be his son’s name, and it was his repentance for not believing that locked his voice away. His obedience to naming John loosed his tongue and like Elizabeth upon meeting Mary, began to praise God for his mighty works.

Thoughts

Our response to God should always be praise and worship. In the hard times and the easy times. I know that is easy to say as I sit here writing this post, and there are hard things that some people are going through. But we are reminded by Mary that we are to remember who God is and what he has done, and what he will do. We remember through Elizabeth that we can rejoice in what God does, and how he hearts us. We remember like Zechariah that there is redemption and forgiveness of sin when we have our times of doubt.

Like with John, we see that God is working and bringing about what he says he will. John was the voice that would cry out in the wilderness, and his appearance meant the Messiah, the Christ, the Savior was coming.