So Much to Do To Make This Come True
“And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and 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, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
Luke 1:31–33 ESV Read More
God could have called a prophet to carry His message, or sent angels to preach. He could have created a man out of nothing that would appear and be miraculous. Instead, the Son of God had to also be the Son of Man and be born a helpless child like all of us.
His name was a common Jewish boy name, which reflected the hopes of the Jewish people throughout many parts of history. Jesus is our translation of the same name that is translated “Joshua” and it means “God saves” or another way of putting it: “God brings salvation.” It’s one thing to name your kid “God saves” because you are a revolutionary. It’s an order of magnitude bigger if you name your son “God brings salvation” because an angel told you to!
The news, of course, is all miraculous. The fact that Mary is going to be pregnant but a virgin, the fact that the boy born to her will be called the “Son of the Most High,” and that He is going to reign on the throne of David forever are all some of the most epic things you could ever imagine. A visitor to Mother Teresa in Calcutta once asked her to pray to see what God’s will was for the visitor’s life. Mother Teresa said she wouldn’t do it. When the visitor asked why, Mother Teresa said that if God showed her all that she would have accomplished for God in her life, she would have been overwhelmed and she’s not sure she could do it. It must have been overwhelming for Mary to hear this news.
The miracles stack up here when we consider that Israel hasn’t had a king on David’s throne for hundreds of years at this point. The Gabriel says this to Mary, there is no throne for a son of David in a museum, much less in a government. Rome rules with an iron fist and with a corrupt system of choosing leaders over the regions of the empire. Revolutions have started and have been crushed (even after the miracles of Hanukkah, celebrated this week!) with no new king of Israel on David’s throne.
As God creates a new life in Mary, He is creating a new government in the world and a new people to call His own. The Kingdom of Heaven, ruled by God among His people, is beginning with a simple young woman giving birth to a baby. She doesn’t have to establish a government or lead a revolution. She doesn’t have to clean all of the Romans out of Israel. She just has to do the part God gave to her like Elizabeth and Zechariah have to do the part God gave them. God will connect one obedient person to another until the Kingdom of His Reign and the perfect will of God takes over the world.
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