Setting the Stage

I wasnt sure where I was going with this when I started reading through Luke. We chopped up the first Chapter one night and said, okay, heres your section Dave, and heres your section, Willy and heres your section Adam and kinda started from there. So Im looking at the last half of Luke and all I can think about is Luke the Musical. No really. There are two people who bust out into song in just the little section I am reading. It just reminded me how in a movie someone might say, Boy I'm excited but in a musical they sing a 4-minute song about how excited they were. I have a secret confession that I like musicals, Fiddler on the Roof, Sing in the Rain, ones like that, where the music adds something extra to the story. Not just a statement of facts but rather passion filled verse.

So were going to pick up the story from last time. Gabriel, and angel of the Lord had come to visit Zechariah in the temple with a message from God. Okay, visit might be to tame of a word. This was Zechariahs one time chance to go into the Holy place and offer up the sacrifice of incense/ and the angel appeared and terrified him, just scared him silly. His message was that Zechariahs old wife Elizabeth, not old in the past tense sort of way, but old in the Ive got grey hair and cant have kids sort of way, that his old wife was going to be with child, that is shed would be pregnant, and further more that he would be filled with the Spirit form birth, and would bring the people of Israel back to their God. He would have the spirit of Elijah and would prepare the people for the coming of the Lord, the Savior. Wow, what a message. And Zech gah-faws, he doubts. And the angel makes him unable to speak.

So this is where we pick up the story today, we went from really old couple in the temple in Jerusalem to a place about 120 miles to the north called Galilee which was kinda the border land for the Jewish people. It was the last area still kinda under Jewish control, but it was also filled with Romans soldiers and Greek descendants from the Hellenistic invasions. It was an area of hodgepodge beliefs and cultures and ideas. The Romans were strong but decadent, given over to their passions; the Greeks filled with ideals and philosophies and the pantheon of deities such as Zeus, Hermes, Ares and Artimus. And the Jews, trusting in the one true God, waiting for their Meshia, the Messiah and Savior that was to free them from their bonds.

It was here that God chose to reveal himself. It was in this place that God said, I will send my son. And so He sends his angel to a young unimportant woman, to an unimportant town called Nazareth, in the border region of Galilee.

Luke 1:26
26 In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a village in Galilee, 27 to a virgin named Mary. She was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David. 28 Gabriel appeared to her and said, "Greetings, favored woman! The Lord is with you!*"

29 Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean. 30 "Don't be frightened, Mary," the angel told her, "for God has decided to bless you! 31 You will become pregnant and have a son, and you are to name him Jesus. 32 He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. 33 And he will reign over Israel* forever; his Kingdom will never end!"

34 Mary asked the angel, "But how can I have a baby? I am a virgin."
35 The angel replied, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby born to you will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God. 36 What's more, your relative Elizabeth has become pregnant in her old age! People used to say she was barren, but she's already in her sixth month. 37 For nothing is impossible with God."

38 Mary responded, "I am the Lord's servant, and I am willing to accept whatever he wants. May everything you have said come true." And then the angel left.

Okay so imagine you are in Marys shoes. An angel of the lord comes. Okay freaky right. I've never been visited by an angel that I know of. But every time they appear they do one of two things. Either a lot of people die. (Think Old Testament, angel of the lord comes and ZAP! Bad stuff happens to bad people.) OR the angel starts off my saying, Whoa hey its okay, dont be frightened ey For some reason I always hear angels in my head when I'm reading with Canadian accents, much in the way that peter gets an Italian mob accent, and Jesus talks like an old Jewish man. So I'm strange. So this Canadian angel appears and says, Greetings favored of God and follows that up immediately with Dont be frightened, eh! Why? Cause you are going to give birth to the Son of God. Right
Hes going to be great! We angels are just so excited! Hes going be called Jesus, and-and um hes going to be great and hes going to be called Son of the Most High, and hes going to rule on the throne of David forever and ever. Isnt that great? Um Mary you there, hello. And Marys thinking to herself, musta been something I ate. I thought that gelfetka fish I had for dinner tasted kinda weird. No but she is questioning, How can this be since I'm a virgin. Logical direct, to the point. But if her brain works anything like mine, I get pretty scared when something big comes up and I can only ask the really practical questions and have a hard time forming coherent questions about what I'm really thinking. Ill give an example, a professor of mine liked a paper that I wrote so much, he asked if I would firm it up a bit and come teach it to one of his classes. So the questions I asked him were, Okay what time, what room number, what date, when really all I was thinking was, oh crap are you freaking serious, you must be out of your mind, Even if I read the paper that would only last a half an hour and I would have another sixty minutes to fill up with something. But then my professor encouraged me and said; hey you have your head and your heart around this, dont worry about it, read the paper, share from your heart and field any questions. And so I was like o-okay Ill do it. I was so worried that I didnt even tell a lot of people cause I was afraid they would want to come and watch.

And so this is what we see with the angel and Mary. The angel says this will happen because God is the power behind it, and see here look at Elizabeth, shes pregnant too. Why? Because nothing is impossible with God. And her response was way better that my tentative o-okay- I am the lords servant and I am willing to accept what ever he wants.

Stop and think about that for a sec. I am willing to accept what ever he wants. For the most part I'm pretty accepting of what ever I want. When things go my way, I accept them, duh. I more than accept them, I embrace them, and I chase after them. But what about when I dont get my way. Someone else gets their way instead. I'm I sullen and angry. Do I try to make them trip up and fail? Do I go along, but grumpy and grouchy and complaining? Or do I accept those things. What if that other person is God? Do I accept when he gets things his way, or do I just go along hoping that maybe God will change something about those circumstances that will show to have been what I really wanted all along.

Have you ever though about the plan that God has for your life. When I do, the plan that I think of usually looks very much like the plan I had before I was a Christian. Find a wife, raise a family, do something I love for a living. I wonder what Marys dreams about her life were. The simple things, loving wife, nurturing mother, an ox that plowed well. I dont know. Most of us dont have illusions of grandeur (though there was this period of my life where I though I had super powers.) But I dont think that Mary woke up one morning and started praying, oh God, let me give birth to the Messiah. And yet wasnt that Gods plan? His son would be born of a virgin, born in Bethlehem, born at a specific time for a specific purpose. Yet the joy and stinking amusingness of giving birth to Jesus would lead her though ridicule as her son became a Rabbi in the land, and lead her to grief as he was beaten and executed upon a cross and then to joy as he was resurrected from the grave and given dominion over death, that we might have a part in the resurrection as well.

I once heard somebody say, and I cant remember who, that Mary was the first follower of Jesus; she was the first to accept him as the coming messiah. Was this obligation, the angel of the lord SAID it was Jesus the messiah I was going to be carrying around in my womb for the next nine months so I GUESS I better believe it. Okay Eeore. No she accepted it with joy. Mary went to see her cousin Elizabeth to tell her about the angel and the baby to come but before she could say anything John, who was still in Elizabeths womb, leapt for joy. I'm not sure how a baby leaps in the womb, but hopefully he didnt use the bladder for a springboard. And then Mary speaks these words.

Magnificat anima mea Dominum;
My soul magnifies the Lord,
And my spirit rejoices in God my Savior.
For He has regarded the low estate of His handmaiden,
For behold, henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
For He who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is His name.
And His mercy is on those who fear Him from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with His arm:
He has scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.
He has put down the mighty from their thrones,
And exalted those of low degree.
He has filled the hungry with good things;
and the rich He has sent empty away.
He has helped His servant Israel, in remembrance of His mercy;
As He spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to His posterity forever.

Thats more that just a casual okay I guess I go along, thats Mary being so excited to be part of the plan of God, even if it might cost her something personal and valuable to her, she almost lost her husband, her status in the town, everything because a woman who was pregnant from someone other than her intended husband was thought to be an adulterer and Joseph had every right to put her out of his home or even to put her to death by stoning. Jesus was not going to make Marys life easy. In fact he was going to significantly increase her pain and suffering, as the story will show. Yet, much like those musicals that we talked about something exciting happens and she burst forths into song. She bursts forth into worship.

My soul magnifies the Lord.

I could sit for a week on that. My soul magnifies the Lord.

When you magnify something, say like a distant star, you see that thing more for what it really is, It gets bigger and brighter and closer. One of my favorite things to point out to people is a star cluster called the Squaw and the Papoose by Indians though I have no clue like the scientific name. When you look at it with your naked eyes it kinda looks like a star thats oval instead of round, but its hard to make out much more, but hold a pair of binoculars to your eyes, suddenly the start separates and become two stars orbiting around one another, get a big ole honking telescope and now theres four stars dancing around each other, its actually pretty amazing. Its amazing how our Christian life is like that too. We start maybe with the idea that there is a God and hes out there somewhere. Uh-hu something like that. And the more we start to look at Him and find out what hes like, he becomes magnified, bigger and brighter and more like he truly is. My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my savior.

And then three more months goes by and its time for Elizabeth to have her baby, the forerunner of the Messiah. The man who would prepare the way for Jesus. When Jews celebrate the Passover part of the ritual is to pour a glass of wine for Elijah and then to send the youngest child to check the door to see if he was there. Why, because his spirit was to come back and announce the coming of the savior of the Jews and the world. And so this John who would be called the Baptist was to go out in the Spirit of Elijah was born.

The Birth of John the Baptist
57 Now it was time for Elizabeth's baby to be born, and it was a boy.
58 The word spread quickly to her neighbors and relatives that the Lord had been very kind to her, and everyone rejoiced with her.
59 When the baby was eight days old, all the relatives and friends came for the circumcision ceremony. They wanted to name him Zechariah, after his father.
60 But Elizabeth said, "No! His name is John!"
61 "What?" they exclaimed. "There is no one in all your family by that name."
62 So they asked the baby's father, communicating to him by making gestures.
63 He motioned for a writing tablet, and to everyone's surprise he wrote, "His name is John!"
64 Instantly Zechariah could speak again, and he began praising God.
65 Wonder fell upon the whole neighborhood, and the news of what had happened spread throughout the Judean hills.
66 Everyone who heard about it reflected on these events and asked, "I wonder what this child will turn out to be? For the hand of the Lord is surely upon him in a special way."

Zechariah's Prophecy
67 Then his father, Zechariah, was filled with the Holy Spirit and gave this prophecy:
"Praise the Lord, the God of Israel,
Because he has visited his people and redeemed them.
He has sent us a mighty Savior
From the royal line of his servant David,
Just as he promised
Through his holy prophets long ago.
Now we will be saved from our enemies
And from all who hate us.
He has been merciful to our ancestors
By remembering his sacred covenant with them,
The covenant he gave to our ancestor Abraham.
We have been rescued from our enemies,
So we can serve God without fear,
In holiness and righteousness forever.

"And you, my little son,
Will be called the prophet of the Most High,
Because you will prepare the way for the Lord.
You will tell his people how to find salvation
Through forgiveness of their sins.
Because of God's tender mercy,
The light from heaven is about to break upon us,
To give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death,
And to guide us to the path of peace."

80 John grew up and became strong in spirit. Then he lived out in the wilderness until he began his public ministry to Israel.

Lukes a great story teller because at this point hes got us going, yeah, yeah, whats this great light going to be? The lord is coming and has already visited us? But really Lukes just giving out the story because God has set the stage, god has lined the characters up and God is holding onto the script and hes even the main player. The Jews had been waiting 2000 years since Abraham for the fulfillment of Gods prophecies. 2000 years. I get impatient at waiting for 3 minutes while my top Raman cooks. And God has promised something so much better than microwaved top Raman. The coming of the salvation of the world, Light for people in dark place, hope for the hopeless, and love for the loveless.

But the theme that is repeated over and over in Luke is how Gods plan for good and amazing things comes in when we least expect it, how he was setting the stage all along, for different things in the book of Luke, like the blind man who was blind from birth so that Jesus would have the opportunity to heal him. The stage had been set long before he ever got there so that this man might have a face to face with Jesus. And you know what?

Jesus has been setting the stage in your lives too. In my life too. Because all that unexpected stuff, the news that brought great joy, and the news that brought great sorrow, all of it set in motion to be used by God. A man blind for his whole life, healed in a moment. I wonder what he was thinking about the day before he met Jesus. I mean I wonder if he hated his situation, that he was a beggar and blind. And yet was it not God purposes to heal them for his own honor. And now his story is recorded for us, to learn from and take in. Elizabeth was barren all her life, well into old age. Willy talked about how that was seen as a curse on her for her sins, yet wasnt it a part of Gods plan so that no one would doubt that God did it. And Mary, who had to struggle though societal misgivings of a pregnant engaged woman who said she was to bear the Son of God. And you, what have been your struggles. Where were you taken through the ringer? Where has God set the stage in your life? What part are you to play.

We just watched this video for leadership about this guy who was praying for his daughters headache to go away and while he was praying it did. She died of a brain hemorrhage. Is this right, is this fair, yet the man didnt curse God, he stood afflicted but not destroyed? He knew this was just another chapter and that some of the chapters in the book wouldnt make sense till the last chapter, and that we dont get to see the last chapter in this life. He would know his dad died trying to share his faith with a tribe living in the jungle, but his family was continue on in his vision to reach the tribe with the Gospel.

The stage is set. What part are you going to play? Where has God called you? Maybe you dont know yet. Maybe hes still setting the stage, moving players and scenery into position. Will you be faithful to answer what comes your way like Mary did? I am willing to accept what ever God wants. Luke wrote down everything that God got in place for the coming of Jesus into 1st century Galilee, and tonight, God has gotten everything in place for the coming of Jesus into your hearts.