Reformed Baptist Church in O'Fallon, Missouri
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Do You Believe in Miracles?

Sermon Transcript

The following is a lightly edited transcript generated from the audio; it may contain small errors.

Luke 1:26–38

Good morning. How are you? Good to see you this morning. So we’re having two services on Christmas Eve. Whoever comes to both gets a gold star. Some of you will come in the morning and some will come in the evening, right? All right. So just FYI, the kids will be in the service. So no catechism that day. Got it. Got it? All right, so those of you that were scheduled, you get a day off. Praise the Lord. Open your Bibles if you would to Luke chapter 1. Luke 1. Where do we want to start? We’ll just start in verse 26. You all there? It says, “Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And having come in, the angel said to her, ‘Rejoice, highly favored one, the Lord is with you; blessed are you among women!’ But when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and considered what manner of greeting this was. Then the angel said to her, ‘Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a Son, and shall call His name Jesus. He will be great, and will be called the Son of the Highest; and the Lord God will give 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.’” Amen.

Then Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I do not know a man?” And the angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you; therefore, also, that Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God. Now indeed, Elizabeth your relative has also conceived a son in her old age; and this is now the sixth month for her who was called barren. For with God nothing will be impossible.” Then Mary said, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her. Let’s pray. Father, we thank You for Your Word. We ask that Your Holy Spirit would enlighten our minds, soften our hearts. I pray, Lord, that what I share today would be according to Your mind and Your will and according to Your Word. Help us to believe and trust and walk in faith in our relationship with You. And we pray this in Jesus’ holy name, amen.

The Virgin Birth Was a Miracle

Today I want to talk about the virgin birth. Now last week we talked about the incarnation. You remember that sermon? Probably forgot it already. But I mentioned in that sermon that there was a distinction between the virgin birth and the incarnation. And we’re going to talk a little bit more about that in a few minutes. But the first thing I want to point out about the virgin birth is that it was a miracle. It was a miracle. Now, anybody here ever read C. S. Lewis? Yeah. Well, if you’ve read Lewis, you see how often C. S. Lewis talks about the miraculous or the supernatural. He’s constantly referring to it in his writings. As a matter of fact, he wrote a whole book called Miracles. Now he died in 1963, the same day as JFK, did you know that? You know who else died that day? A. W. Tozer. Amazing, huh? Two saints in the cemetery, no just kidding. That was a joke, it was a joke. Okay, so Lewis, early in the 20th century, the 20th century, the whole idea of the miraculous or the supernatural was under attack, even within the church. And so Lewis was combating that idea in his writings. And so at that time we had theologians who would say they’re Christian, but the way they expounded the Bible was such that they basically eliminated the miraculous elements. So this story about Jesus being born of a virgin, well, that was kind of a mythological thing. This idea grew later in church history, and they came up with these different theories to explain away the miraculous. Now today, today, we still have that mindset in certain places. And even in what’s called the liberal branches of the church, you still have people who, even many pastors, who would say they believe in the Bible, but they really don’t believe in the miraculous. I remember meeting a pastor who was in a Presbyterian church, one of the liberal branches, and he clearly said that Jesus did not rise from the dead. Just didn’t believe it because it was a miracle. Now when you look at the virgin birth, or as I pointed out last week, when you look at the accounts in the New Testament, there’s miracles everywhere. Not only is the birth miraculous, but then we have angels appearing, we have prophecies being fulfilled, we have a star guiding Magi, all kinds of miraculous things. So we only have two alternatives. We either believe in the miraculous or we don’t. There’s really not a middle road. And the reason I want to point that out is sometimes I think we try to find a middle road, but there really isn’t a middle road. And a lot of Christians are embarrassed by different parts of the Bible. They’ll believe that Jesus was the Son of God, and they’ll believe that He died for their sins, and they might even believe that He rose from the dead physically. But, you know, some of that other stuff, I mean, a flood, I mean, you know, Israel going through the Red Sea, I mean, Jonah, ha, ha, ha, you know. But if you admit one miracle, guess what? Pandora’s box is wide open now. If you admit one, you have admitted the possibility of any or all, if you will. And so in Scripture, we don’t get to pick and choose.

Now, well, I won’t go down that road. Okay. So the biblical view of the world, if you would imagine, you know, we get to see the earth from space, right? Imagine a picture of the earth and around the earth is a circle. Just a line, it’s a circle. Now, in the unbiblical view of the world, that is a solid circle, which means we live in a closed universe. Nothing gets in from the outside. As a matter of fact, those who believe in a closed universe don’t believe there is anything on the outside. But it is possible to believe in things on the outside, but to believe they never get inside. Deism is a great example. Deists believed many things Christians believe. They believed in God, believed He was a creator, they believed in sin, they believed in heaven and hell and a final judgment, they believed all that. But they believed the circle was solid and so God didn’t get in. In other words, everything inside the circle ran according to natural laws and God never interfered inside that circle. Well, that’s not the biblical view of the world. The biblical view of the world is there’s a circle but it’s like dots, if you will. There is what we call the supernatural and then we have what’s called the natural. But the supernatural permeates the natural. And we see this, I mean, when you read the accounts of the birth of Jesus you see all this miraculous stuff happening. But in fact if you read in the Old Testament, there’s miraculous stuff happening there. Then there’s miracles in the life of Jesus, and miracles in the book of Acts. I mean, God is alive, amen. God is real, but God isn’t way out there. God is present. He is a present God. He is ubiquitous, I love that word. I love that word. Means He is omnipresent. He’s everywhere. And so God isn’t outside the circle. He’s inside the circle. So we live in an enchanted world, if you will, permeated by the spiritual and the supernatural. So Lewis was combating the mentality that there are no miracles at all. It’s a closed universe. Today, we think we still have this attitude in certain circles, right? It’s called secular humanism. Secular literally comes from the Latin word which means mundane or earthly, the earth. In other words, everything is focused on the earth, not the supernatural. But in our day, compared to Lewis’s day, the problem isn’t that people, the problem today, in his day, he was combating people that tried to argue against miracles based upon a logic, firm logic. Well, today the problem isn’t logic. Today the problem is just the opposite. Because we’ve gone from being rational to being irrational. And by irrational, I mean purely subjective. So I’m watching the news the other day. There’s a guy, a male, being interviewed, and he says, I am a female, now he’s a male Caucasian. White guy. He says, I’m a female Polynesian. Is that logical to anybody in the room? But you see, that kind of thinking is becoming socially acceptable. That’s not reason, that’s not rationality, that’s not logic, that’s subjectivism. So we’ve got a weird situation where in some circles you have this rigid secularism, but in other circles you have this, in a way, a rigid subjectivism. So when somebody, when he says I’m a female Polynesian, I’m supposed to say, okay, that’s what our society is telling me to do. It’s telling me to affirm that. Why? Because he thinks that. So if I walked up to him and I’d say, today, I’m a little pig. Are you supposed to say okay and then fry me after church? I mean, my assertion of something doesn’t make it true. It doesn’t make it true. It doesn’t make it true. Well, that’s a whole other story. Okay, so when you talk to people about the gospel and about the Lord and the Scriptures, you may meet a secularist or you may meet an intense subjectivist or somebody might be a weird mix of both. The point that I’m making here is that when we talk about the birth of Jesus, we’re talking about something that was miraculous, and we should not be ashamed of miracles. I would assert that you can’t actually be a Christian without believing in miracles because everything miraculous about the life of Jesus is miraculous, from His birth to His ministry to His death and to His resurrection. We can’t pick things and say, okay, I believe He rose from the dead, but, you know, that angel showing up is kind of weird, the star that’s kind of weird. If one is possible, they are all possible. And I don’t believe that believing in the miraculous is anti-rational. It doesn’t follow. Logic does not tell us that nature is a closed system. That is a philosophical presupposition. Nature doesn’t tell us that. Nature is full of all kinds of weird things that we don’t understand. So the virgin birth was a miracle in the true sense of the word. And of course miracles lead us into the realm of mystery. We don’t understand how God can do things. So but that doesn’t mean He didn’t do them or it doesn’t mean He cannot do them. It just means we don’t understand how He did them. As I pointed out last week, the measure of God and God’s ability is not my reason. A God we can understand is a God that’s way too small. Amen? So there is a mystery involved in the birth of Jesus because it is miraculous. The lesson we have to learn from that I will mention at the end.

The Faith of the Church

The second point I want to make is in addition to the fact that the Scripture teaches the virgin birth, this has always been the faith of the church until really, very historically speaking, recently. For example, in the Apostles’ Creed, it says, I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only begotten Son, our Lord, who was born of the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. The Nicene Creed says this, I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ. For us men and for our salvation came down from heaven and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary. The Council of Chalcedon: we consent that our Lord Jesus Christ was for us and our salvation born of the Virgin Mary, and on and on and on and on. This has always been the faith of the professing church because they understood it was the teaching of the Bible.

Incarnation and Virgin Birth

Thirdly, let me clarify again in a little more detail the distinction between the incarnation and the virgin birth. As you learned last week, the incarnation references who this person was that was born. Who was this special child, this holy one that was born? Well, the Christ that was born was preexistent as God, the second person of the Trinity. Now, there’s a sense in which we can say Jesus didn’t. [audio unclear] Before the incarnation, Jesus was not His name. His name was Logos, the Word. In the beginning was the Word, and then in verse 14 of John 1, and the Word was made flesh. The making flesh, the incarnation of the second person of the Trinity, produced this divine-human person. Theologians call it the theanthropic person of Jesus. He has a divine nature which means that Jesus was 100% God, but He also had a human nature meaning He was 100% man, not just the body but the soul, both flesh and blood, both spiritual or immaterial and material. So Jesus was also a true human being in every sense of the word except for sin, except for sin. So this Jesus Christ, who’s also true God, not simply a god, with a small g, but the one true God, the one and only God in the Old Testament called Yahweh or Jehovah. In other words, Jesus was, when we say He was divine, we’re not saying He was a minor deity, a lesser god, or simply had the divine nature in some sense, but that in fact, in His deity, in His divine nature, He was one with Jehovah in His nature, in His divine essence, that means that this Jesus was the Creator God, the sustainer and the governor of the universe. So Jesus of Nazareth, who actually walked on the earth 2,000 years ago, was both totally man and truly God, one person with two natures. This also is a mystery. We do not understand, but we believe. The virgin birth, on the other hand, tells us how God did this miracle of the incarnation, or through whom He did it, God became a man. It means that the conception within Mary’s womb was not the product of natural generation. There was no earthly father. There was no earthly intercourse, if you will. Rather, we have a supernatural generation wherein the Holy Spirit generates divine life within Mary’s womb, and the person thus conceived is the second person of the blessed Trinity. Miraculous, amen. Mysterious, amen. True, nonetheless.

What is the alternative? If the virgin birth and the incarnation are not true, what’s the alternative? Well, here’s what he says. He says, let us consider the alternatives which face us. If the virgin birth of Christ is a fiction and not a fact, then the New Testament narratives are proved untrue and the book is robbed of its authority. Good point. And it’s amazing to me, the theologians in the early 20th century thought that somehow they could preserve the integrity of the Bible and yet eliminate the miraculous. You can’t. And so as they began to chip away at the miraculous element in Scripture, what happened is they ultimately ended up undermining the authority of the Bible and people’s confidence in the Scripture. So now if you go to a liberal church, they don’t really believe the Bible is inspired in any sense of the word other than it’s some kind of high-level religious literature, like Shakespeare was inspired. You hear what I’m saying? It’s a purely human product. So we should expect silly things because humans are silly. So you have this mix, but a lot of it’s really good and edifying. And it somehow inspires us. But it ends up being a human book. So if you look at the liberal branch of evangelicalism, they have a very low view of Scripture. It’s not really a divine book. Because you see, if you start denying miracles, you have to deny the Bible, not only because it has miracles, but because the book itself is a miracle. The very notion of inspiration, the idea that somehow God guides people to speak and write in such a way that what they’re saying are really His words, that’s a miracle. So by denying miracles, they denied the miracle even of the Bible. So now they’re left without a book, without a word from heaven. Another result is that Mary, instead of being blessed among women, of course, she’s branded as unchaste. For Joseph asserted that Jesus was not his son. As a matter of fact, until the angel appeared to Joseph, Joseph believed that Mary had been fornicating. That’s why he thought, oh gosh, I got to put her away. That was his word for divorce. I need to even, well, I won’t go into the customs. They were betrothed, but not officially, but they were not fully married. But in this time to be betrothed was basically legally to be married. And if someone fornicated while they were betrothed, that was considered adultery. And they would be put away or divorced. That’s what Joseph believed until the angel came and told him. Why? Because common sense says if someone’s pregnant, probably because, you know, something’s going on, right? Even Joseph had to be told in a divine manner that what was going on here was miraculous. Another result is that Jesus becomes a natural child of sinful parents, which means not only that He was not preexistent, and therefore there is no real incarnation. So we are left with no adequate explanation of His character and sinless life. If He was begotten of a human father, the only alternative to the virgin birth, He was not the second person of the Trinity, as He claimed, with the result that He has no power to forgive sin. So if the virgin birth and the incarnation are unbelievable because they’re miraculous, then we really have no salvation. Yes. No salvation. The reason we celebrate the birth of Jesus so much is because we understand that the shadow of the cross was over the manger. And even when His birth was announced, He was announced as Jesus because He will save His people from their sins. How did He do that? He did that through His passion on the cross, through His death and through His resurrection. He was born to die. He was born to be an atonement. And lastly, he says, if this miracle is denied, where are we to stop? Why not deny all miracles? And I would argue that if you deny this miracle, you will end up denying all miracles. Because they’re all of a thread. They’re all of a thread. So the question is, do you believe in miracles or not? Well, do you?

Lessons: God Fulfills His Word, All Things Are Possible

Let me conclude with a couple of lessons. One is this, God keeps and fulfills His Word. You’re thinking, how is that a lesson from this? Because the virgin birth had been prophesied and promised hundreds and thousands of years before Jesus was actually born. You see, when we do this Christmas thing we do, we’re looking backward. We’re looking backward in time to an event that already happened. But before the virgin birth of Jesus, God’s people were looking forward to the fulfillment of a promise. So generation after generation after generation, the Messiah did not come. And He did not come, and He did not come, and He did not come. You can see how God’s people could have easily fallen into unbelief, right? Waiting so long, so many years for God to fulfill His Word. And yet lo and behold, God did fulfill His Word, thousands of years after the initial promise even to Eve that her seed would bruise the head of the serpent. That was a promise of the birth of the Messiah and His victory over Satan and evil. If God makes a promise He will fulfill it. He will fulfill it. Every promise in God’s Word will be fulfilled because of the nature of who God is. When we say that God is faithful we are saying that God is truthful. To make a promise and to break it means one of two things. Either you didn’t mean it and you’re not being honest or the situation changed and you’re not able to do it, right? Well, God does not lie, amen? We’re told this explicitly in Scripture, God does not lie. So if God makes a promise, He will fulfill that promise. But not only does He make the promises in His Word, but God is able to fulfill them. He is able to fulfill them. And that leads to my second lesson, is that not only does God fulfill His Word, but with God, all things are possible. With God, all things are possible. Here in our text in Luke, Mary responds the way any of us would have responded to this, right? What this angel is telling her is crazy. It is crazy. The Son of God is going to be conceived in you. That’s not normal news. Right? It’s a little bit out of the ordinary. And so Mary says in verse 34, how can this be since I do not know a man? How can someone be conceived and born without natural relations? This is not, basically she’s saying this really isn’t possible. Well, she’s right, it’s not naturally possible. But that’s the whole point of a miracle. The whole point of a miracle is that God’s going to do something that isn’t natural. It’s supernatural. That’s why it’s a miracle, and so after explaining to her how this will happen, that the Holy Spirit is going to do this in verse 35, then he concludes with verse 37, saying, for with God, nothing will be impossible. Or to put it in the affirmative, [audio unclear] What can He not do? What can He not do? What can He not do? If God can be born of a virgin without natural relations, what can He not do? What is God not able to do if He can do this? I mean, we think about all the miracles of the Bible, you know, the parting of the Red Sea, or Jesus raising somebody from the dead, or even Jesus coming back. This kind of ranks way up there in like, top couple miracles, you think? Maybe even number one. Somehow God becomes united with humanity, and there’s this divine-human person. How can this be? How can this be? Well, here’s the answer. For with God, nothing will be impossible. In other words, with God, all things are possible. The virgin birth of Jesus and the incarnation that resulted, the divine-human Savior that resulted, calls us to faith. It calls us to believe. And if the universe is not closed, that means not only that God did work miracles, but God does work miracles. We need more amens than that. If the universe is open and the same God is alive, the same God that worked these miracles, that same God can work miracles in our lives.

I remember talking, I probably told you this story, but I’m just going to repeat myself. I was talking to a couple, a number of years ago, who were struggling financially, and I wanted to encourage them. I said, you know, we need to pray, we need to pray that God, that God will give you, she worked at home so she wasn’t bringing income in. So I said, we need to pray that God gives your husband a raise. And before the words were barely out of my mouth, she said, that will never happen. And I thought to myself, with that attitude, that will never happen. But how many times have we done that? Well, that will never happen. Matter of fact, that’s so ingrained in us that a lot of times we don’t even ask. It never occurred to her to even pray that prayer. Why? Because in her heart, that will never happen. Now, I just want to tell you something, guys. Jesus Christ is the Lord. As a matter of fact, I almost preached on the lordship of Jesus today. Maybe next week we’ll see. I’ll pray about it. But when Jesus is born, we’re told in two different accounts, but mainly here in Luke in a different text, that the government will be on His shoulders, that He will sit on the throne of His father David. And when we read the book of Acts, we find out the throne of David isn’t just the throne over Israel, but it’s a universal throne, that there’s a kingdom that Jesus reigns over and it’s called the world. Jesus said after His resurrection before He sent the church out, because when we go, people are going to say, who are you and by what authority do you speak? Who are you to tell me how to be saved? I say, I come in the name of Jesus who has all authority in heaven and earth. That’s what it means to be a Christian. When you use the name of Christ to apply to yourself and say, I am a Christian, I am a Christ follower, you’re saying I’m acting by His authority. Jesus has authority over heaven and earth. The Bible tells us, well, just go to Philippians chapter 2. Real quick, Philippians chapter 2 is one of many, many, many, many texts. Philippians 2 talks about the incarnation. It says in verse 5, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God,” in other words, Jesus understood His equality with the Father, “but made Himself of no reputation.” Your version might say He emptied Himself. “Taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. Therefore God also has highly exalted Him and given Him the name which is above every name.” Notice Paul does not say God will highly exalt Him, but God has highly exalted Him. He is highly exalted now because after He resurrected, He ascended into heaven and was seated at the right hand of the Father, the place of government and ruling. Amen? Amen. He now has the name above every name. That’s why we read in Scripture that Jesus is called not just the Lord, but He’s called the Lord of lords and the King of kings. “That at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Amen? There is no inch in this world where Christ is not the Lord. Well, what does that have to do with miracles? There is no place where Jesus is not present to work. You hearing me? There is no place where we can say, oh well, that can’t happen here. Why? God can’t change a family. God can’t change a church. God can’t change your company. Is it somehow God’s Lord, Jesus is Lord over here but not over here? Can you tell me anywhere where Jesus is not Lord? Now I’m not saying His lordship is acknowledged. I’m saying His lordship is a reality. Jesus is the ascended Lord, this baby who was born of the Virgin Mary who died for sins was buried, resurrected, ascended to heaven is now the Lord. And with God all things were possible in His birth, but now all things are possible because He governs all things. He governs all things. Don’t ever say that will never happen. Don’t ever say that because that is a sign of such profound unbelief. Profound unbelief. As you think about the birth of Jesus and what a miracle it was, be reminded that God still works miracles and God can work a miracle in your life. I don’t know your situation and your particular need. Maybe you need wisdom, maybe you need finances, maybe you need physical healing, maybe I don’t know what you need. But the Scripture tells us with God all things are possible. We should be telling ourselves this every day, with God all things are possible. And what we need to do is we need to stop pushing God out of our universe. We need to stop pushing Him out of our lives, out of our work, out of our family, out of our church. Well, God doesn’t do that anymore. Says who? Says who? The God of the Bible is a very present help in time of need, a present help. So the real lesson of the virgin birth and the incarnation, the real lesson is faith. Believe that God fulfills His Word and believe that God is able because all things are possible to Him.

And lastly, the third thing to believe is believe in the salvation that Jesus wrought through His birth, incarnation, and through His death and resurrection. We often say Jesus came to be a Savior and He did. But He actually came for many reasons. But this one is foundational. Because if you don’t know Christ as Savior, you will not know Christ as High Priest, or Christ as Lord. You must come to Christ as Savior. So the angel said, to call His name Jesus because He will save His people from their sins. And the word Jesus means Yahweh saves, or Yahweh is salvation, [audio unclear] because in God’s foreordination, God had designed that He would die and bear the wrath for sin. And as He hung on the cross, God was in a way, again, talk about miracles, we don’t understand, but Jesus, the Scripture says He became sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him. There’s an exchange that takes place. He takes our sin, we receive His righteousness. But the condition for that salvation is faith. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word says. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved. Or as it says in Ephesians 2, for by grace you are saved through faith, not of works, lest anyone should boast. Now I hope you all get some nice presents this Christmas. You’re looking forward to that? You want to get something? But when you receive a present and you open it up, you don’t start bragging about how cool you are because you got a present. Right? Well you don’t. So we’re not going to get to heaven and brag, hey I got here because I’m so holy. I got here because I served the Lord. I got here because I witnessed to a bunch of people. No, no boasting in heaven. Amen? None whatsoever. Why? Because the salvation in Christ is a gift given freely. It’s a gift. And that’s what’s so glorious about sharing the gospel this time of year because everybody’s thinking about gifts. They’re thinking about giving. They’re thinking about receiving. This whole idea of giving and receiving is inherent in the gospel message and this time of year we celebrate the birth of the Savior. So we share the gospel at this time and we talk about the gift that God gives and that gift is ultimately His Son, Jesus, that He gives us. The real lesson of Christmas, of course, is that Christ came incarnate to save us from our sins. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved.

Let’s stand and pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You for the gift of Your Son Jesus. We thank You that even though we may not understand how You work, how You can do these things, we know, Lord, not only from Scripture, but many of us from our own experience, the miraculous, Your miraculous ability. And as Your Word says, Lord, that You are able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we think or ask, that with You, all things are possible. And I pray, Lord, for myself and all of us here that know You, I pray that we would be a people of faith. I pray that we would not be one of those negative Christians who doesn’t believe that You can change things, that doesn’t believe that You can work, that doesn’t believe You can save, that doesn’t believe You can heal, that doesn’t believe You can provide. Lord, with You all things are possible. All things. I pray, Lord, that we would be people of faith in the here and now, realizing that You are present, a very present help in time of need. And I ask, Lord, finally as we close, that if there’s anyone who came in here today not knowing You, I ask, Lord, that they would understand that this virgin birth and this incarnation occurred because of Your great love. For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son that whoever believes in Him would not perish but have everlasting life. And I pray that they might open their hearts today to calling upon the name of Jesus as their Savior. And we know that if they do, they shall be saved. Father, we pray that Your Word would just be buried deep in our hearts. I pray that we would celebrate this Christmas season with abandon because we know the true reason of the season. And that’s Jesus. And we pray all this in His name. God’s people said, amen.