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Friday, December 17, 2004
After 400 years of prophetic silence from God, now, history is cranking back up. There have been two angelic visits over a six month span, announcing that the forerunner to the Messiah will be born to Zacharias and Elizabeth as well as the Messiah will be born, and Mary will be His mother.
It's usually at this point we forget that there are real people in real history with real life staring them in the face. I mean, we have a peasant girl with a story that, if she told it, the hearers would view her as a lunatic. Maybe a heretic. Possibly a blasphemer. She might be branded a liar. Or as a loose woman. She could've been put to death for this. It was a scandal.
We had a "scandal" at my high school when I was a kid. It was a small community, really, and one girl had parents who were out of town for the weekend. She threw a party, and it was going to be the social event of the year as far as I was concerned. I couldn't wait. As fate would have it, my mom and a couple of her friends got wind of the reality, and me and a few of my friends were forbidden to go.
Well, a whole lot of kids whose parents weren't as astute showed up at the party. There was a keg of beer on the deck. The majority of those kids went out on the raised deck...the 2nd floor kitchen door opened out on the deck, which was easily 15 feet in the air. Anyway, the weight of so many kids on the deck pulled the deck away from the house and it collapsed. There were no huge injuries. A broken arm here. A severely sprained ankle there. Cuts and scrapes. It could've been much worse.
The event made the paper. Our school was abuzz of stories about the girl who had the party. Was she going to jail? Was her older brother who purchased the keg? Weren't that guy's parents going to sue her parents? Was the contstruction company at fault? Was it true her parents were kicking her out? You can imagine. It was a scandal in a small community.
And it didn't even involve tales of pre-marital pregnancy from God.
So, it was certainly in Mary's interest to skip town for a while and maybe avoid the inevitable scuttlebutt that was likely to ensue. So, she heads to visit her relative Elizabeth, who lived a bit closer to the big city, in the hill country (verse 39).
She comes into Elizabeth's house (with the six-month mute Zacharias hanging out) and greets her. When the baby in her womb heard the voice of Mary, he "leaped in her womb." Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. The Spirit-led Elizabeth then speaks. She refers to how blessed Mary is. How blessed her baby is. Both of which are staggering in light of the reality that I would imagine that Elizabeth would've felt that she was pretty blessed herself...and her baby was going to be pretty darn blessed on his own accord. But she understands and is very excited about everything...God at work in history and all.
I love her statement in verse 43: "And how has it happened to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?" She can't believe that history is unfolding right then and there in her living room. Her Lord is going to be born in about 9 months or so. The mother of the Messiah is standing right in front of her. What did she do to deserve all of this? Again, real people. Real reactions.
She also mentioned that Mary was blessed because she believed the angel. That's pretty funny in light of her mute husband sitting in the room as a living example of what happens when you kinda question what God is up to.
Mary's response is beautiful in verses 46--55. It's often referred to as "The Magnificat" because of the first word in the Latin translation of it, and it's a poem or song...which is why it's usually set apart in different type in your Bible.
She exalts in the Lord.
Her spirit rejoiced in God...who she refers to as her savior.
He regards the humble, and she understands her place in history (generations will count me blessed, in verse 48).
God has done great things and He is holy.
She then goes into a series of references from the Old Testament. There are some 15 allusions and/or quotes regarding the Old Testament and the Messiah in this section...considering it's only 10 verses that's pretty significant. This is the kind of home Jesus would be reared in...the kind of home where the mom rattles off verses like nobody's business as well as the stark reality that she can apply them to life situations. I'd imagine she's had quite a bit of time in the Word at this point, too. Wouldn't you start looking stuff up you were a little fuzzy on if you got a visit from an angel telling you about the Messiah in your stomach? I think she did.
And..she stayed there nearly three months. Do you think over that time she and Elizabeth traded a few stories about what they'd experienced? Do you think they, along with neighbors and friends got excited about the work of God in their midst? About the coming forerunner? About the coming Messiah?
We haven't even talked about Joseph's visit from an angel yet, either. We'll do that tomorrow.
So, today, think about the influence of the Word in your life. Think through how God's Word influences the way you look at your day-in, day-out life. How can we each take God's word and make it a filter for how we interpret the world around us?
Brent 4:50 AM
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