12/15/2022 - Luke 1:30-33 [NIV]

 


"But the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; you have found favor with God. You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over Jacob’s descendants forever; his kingdom will never end.”

No one in all human history ever received a greater message from God. The Firstborn of all creation who is the visible representation of the unknowable God Almighty and through whom everything was created was to enter the human race and change human history as a baby born to become the Lamb slain before the creation of the world. This message carried Mary through the hardship and dangers ahead of her, and the heartache of the sacrifice of her son as the sacrifice for her sin and for everyone else who became born anew as a child of God through faith in Jesus Christ.

The song “Mary Did You Know?” captures the great gulf between what we know and what God has planned, even when we hear and understand even a little of our great salvation in Christ. In this Christmas season, may we find peace and assurance amid the troubles and insanity going on around us. Though God’s great plan of redemption is not yet complete, He has given us in scripture and through His Holy Spirit at work in us an assurance that we can yet experience the profound joy in his plans that far exceed what we could ever imagine.

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