And the question is: Do we, like Mary, believe there will be a fulfillment of what He has said? The parallels would have been very, very wonderful for them to recite. He said to her, "Two nations are in your womb." Enter your email address and we will send you instructions on how to reset your password. And that is good. All of this is about confirmation. Deity is true of Jesus, but it is not confined to Jesus. And that what Gabriel said to Elizabeth came true, therefore what Gabriel said to Mary could be trusted, tremendous confirmation. That little life, that little life of a prophet, the greatest prophet who ever lived, was used by God through the power of the Holy Spirit to indicate delight at the fact that the Messiah had been conceived in Mary. Verse 57: "Now the time had come for Elizabeth to give birth and she brought forth a son." It was not something brief. There are five hymns of praise all around the conception of the Messiah in the womb of Mary, marvelous hymns of praise. A woman's greatness was tied to the greatness of the children she bore. We can assume perhaps somebody went along. That's what Elizabeth confirmed. Either we witness alcohol-powered celebrations, or our to-do list becomes so crowded with writing cards, buying and wrapping presents, getting decorations down from the loft and a hundred other things that the simple joy of Christ’s coming is squeezed out of us. And what is this prophecy that Elizabeth gives? God literally gave physical confirmation to Mary through the movement of that child interpreted by Elizabeth. It just blesses in every direction. Well in the Hebrew culture, in the Jewish world, a woman gained her greatest stature on the basis of her children. Second Samuel 23:2 would be one of many illustrations in the Old Testament. He could only leap. That's a pretty typical Old Testament scenario. And they would have discussed those stories. The second narrative is about a girl, Mary, a virgin, 13 years of age or so, who became pregnant by the power of the Holy Spirit, the power of God creating life in her womb without a man involved at all. Zacharias responded and said to the angel, and later on in verse 24... verse 36, "Behold, your relative Elizabeth has . Now she has personal confirmation that God does conception miracles and that what Gabriel says is true, that through the testimony of Elizabeth. However, when Mary and Elizabeth get together for their first-century NCT ante-natal meeting, the vibes are all positive. So we know that God fills certain people to produce the revelation that He desires to be given. That was a word from God through the physical realm. Mary sets an example for us though. It was just that this was a stretch by all imagination. You tell anybody else and they're going to think Mary's made up this preposterous story about Gabriel and being the mother of the Son of God. To disable, click the icon. And I think, you know, Elizabeth knows that and she may have even been looking at Zacharias when she said this. Therefore she couldn't have wasted any time. But there's an aspect of the filling of the Holy Spirit that's connected to prophecy, and we'll see more about that later. Only one place she could go and tell this tale. He will continue to do great things. Oh – and Johnny Mathis crooning ‘When A Child Is Born’. Put simply, Mary praises God for his works of salvation, and she does so comprehensively. Messiah. Well...Why would God's Holy Spirit fill that little fetus unless God's Holy Spirit wanted to achieve something supernatural through him, right? And “Lord” is used to refer to God twenty-five times in Luke 1 and Luke 2. It's a silent prophecy. Now she has physical confirmation that God can work in the womb because she sees a reaction in the womb that is interpreted to her as the movement of God's Holy Spirit upon that fetus to produce the delight that produced the movement. We are like the man with the one talent who buried, rather than those with more who risked all in the name of serving their master. And they run into a man there named Simeon, verse 25, who is a righteous man. It's translated “the fruit of your womb.” It's actually “the child you will bear.” It's a familiar Old Testament phrase. If he couldn't speak, he just jumped. So she went there when she was six months pregnant. And we trust that we can stand as Mary did, hearing the truth, believing the truth, obeying the truth and worshiping in response to it. Father, thank You for our time this morning again to focus on this great story, this really rich, thrilling account. Verse 39 begins, "Now at this time." And since that which was promised to Elizabeth had come to pass, that which promised...was promised to Mary would also come to pass. You see it again in verse 44, "At the sound of your greeting." But why would you fill him? Now follow this. You know, Mary is a...is a wonderful example for us. If you go back to Genesis 25, do you remember a mother by the name of Rebekah? She goes, I think, within days, eager to respond to the angel's wonderful message. And because she believed that, she pursued that, she went to see Elizabeth and she got all that confirmation. There hasn't been a series of miracles in at least 500 years. In John 3:29 John the Baptist is talking and he's talking about Christ and he says, "He who has the bride is the bridegroom." At that point there's no reason to assume Joseph knew anything because Mary, you remember, had left that with the Lord and it was an angel who later appeared to Joseph in a dream and explained to him what had happened. They act accordingly, and such is Christmas faith. It’s why we rehearse the story of salvation from creation to the Cross and on to the return of Christ when we say the Thanksgiving Prayer in Holy Communion. Elizabeth, who was barren, was somewhere in her 60s or 70s or 80s, had never been able to have children at all, was past child-bearing capability, and yet with her husband Zacharias, who also was past that capability, conceived and carried in her womb the great prophet, John the Baptist, the forerunner of the Messiah. This would happen by the miracle of God. God didn't speak. Did you get that? She celebrates God’s grace and mercy to those who humbly trust him, and his justice against the rich and proud. And it says, "Immediately,” verse 42, “she cried out with a loud voice and said.". The completed registration allows us to send order and donation receipts to the email address you provided. So, today, in the account regarding the visit of Mary to Elizabeth, Luke tells us how God confirms our faith. And Elizabeth is a righteous woman who is equally thrilled at the prospect not only of bearing the forerunner of Messiah, but of the Messiah coming whom she, Elizabeth, acknowledges in verse 43 as "my Lord." She is filled with the Holy Spirit (verse 41) and says, ‘Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb’ (verse 42). We return in our study of God's Word this morning to Luke chapter 1, this great chapter that launches the story of the coming of Christ, the Savior of the world. It's about seventy-five to eighty-five miles, maybe more, from Nazareth to the southern Judea hillside region. So it says in verse 39, she launches in to what really is the pursuit of personal confirmation. If we are down in the dumps, we may not think about praising God. It would take her about three or four days to get there. Just seeing Elizabeth and understanding her condition as an old woman past child-bearing capacity, married to an old man in the same predicament, would be the reality of the fact that God had done a miracle. Then there is the promise of a son. Elizabeth acknowledges the superiority of her young relative's privilege. This is prophetic confirmation.
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