An Ordinary Woman

Luke 1 from verse 26. The birth of Jesus foretold. In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David, and the virgin's name was Mary. And he came to her and said, "Greetings, O favoured one. The Lord is with you."

But she was greatly troubled at the saying and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God. And behold, you will conceive in the 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 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."

And Mary said to the angel, "How will this be since I am a virgin?" And the angel answered her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. Therefore, the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son. This is the sixth month with her who was called barren."

"For nothing will be impossible with God." And Mary said, "Behold, I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word," and the angel departed from her. A few years ago, I did a sermon on Hebrews 11 called Heroes of the Faith. We looked at the characters in the Bible and the extraordinary things that they did, and it sort of feels like they're in a class of their own.

They are heroes of the faith, and we're just ordinary Christians. For example, Noah built the ark with no evidence that the world was gonna flood except God's word. Abraham left everything he knew based only on God's promises. Joseph never lost his faith despite being sold as a slave and thrown into prison. Moses led God's people for forty years through the wilderness.

Joshua conquered the land of Canaan. David killed a giant. Elijah called down fire from heaven. Mary became the mother of the Messiah. Paul planted churches despite intense opposition.

Those are extraordinary people. Or are they? This morning, we're gonna see how God uses ordinary people in extraordinary ways. You might feel like an ordinary person with ordinary issues, but I want you to believe that in Jesus, you are extraordinary. This morning, we're going to look at Mary, who's just an ordinary woman.

So let's start with the ordinariness of Mary. How ordinary is Mary? Well, in our text, we learn five ordinary things about this woman. Firstly, she comes from an ordinary town. Luke tells us she comes from the city of Nazareth.

He calls it a city, but that's stretching it a bit. It's probably stretching it a bit to even call it a town. It was more like a village, probably about a population of 300 people. It was tiny. It was in the middle of nowhere.

It's never mentioned in the Old Testament. It's rarely mentioned at all. If it wasn't for the New Testament, only archaeologists would know about this place. It's like saying you come from Blackmans Bay. You probably don't even know where that is, but that's where I lived my first ten years of life.

It's a tiny coastal town about thirty minutes south of Hobart in Tasmania. It's nowhere. And Mary's pretty much from nowhere, like me. Secondly, we're told that Mary's young. Luke calls her a virgin, which pretty much means what it meant today.

But it's also just a reference to a young woman, a woman who wasn't married yet. She's just an ordinary young woman. Thirdly, she has an ordinary name. She's called Mary. Historians suggest that almost one in four women were named Mary in the first century.

That's crazy when you think about it. There's actually six, maybe seven Marys mentioned in the New Testament. This Mary was just one of many girls called Mary. Her name is as ordinary as you can get. But we're also told that Mary has ordinary fears.

When confronted by an angel, Luke says she was greatly troubled. In fact, the angel tells her, "Do not be afraid." When confronted with the unknown and the unexpected, like the rest of us, Mary experiences anxiety and fear. Like Paul, she experienced fears within. Mary wasn't above ordinary fears.

And finally, Mary has ordinary questions. The angel tells her that she's gonna conceive and give birth to a son, and Mary naturally asks, "How will this be since I'm a virgin?" It's okay to ask questions. Thirteen years after these events, Luke tells the story of a 12-year-old Jesus, and He's in the temple sitting among the teachers, listening to them, and asking them questions. We ask questions because we don't know the answers.

We ask questions because we wanna understand. The Bible is full of questions of God. Questions like, "Why do You hide Yourself in times of trouble?" And, "Will You forget me forever?" And, "Why have You forsaken me?"

And, "Why does the way of the wicked prosper?" And, "Why do You idly look at wrong?" Those questions aren't asked out of disrespect for God, but to seek understanding. In the same way, Mary isn't above questioning God. Mary is just an ordinary woman.

She's an ordinary human being like you and me. But on the other hand, Mary is extraordinary. So let's take a moment to look at the extraordinariness of Mary. And again, there's five ways that she's extraordinary. Firstly, she's visited by an angel.

Last month, I did some devotions from the first two chapters of Matthew, just trying to get my head and my heart ready for Christmas. And I did some research on angels, and I was surprised to discover that in the two thousand years of what the Bible was written in, angels only visited about 27 people. To be visited by an angel is quite rare. Angels are generally messengers from God. Actually, that's what the name angel means: messenger.

In fact, Luke says the angel Gabriel was sent from God. Angels don't just turn up. You don't bump into them by accident. They are sent by God for a specific reason. Mary was one of the few people in the Bible to be visited by an angel. The second way Mary is extraordinary is that she is favoured by God. The angel greets Mary with the words, "Greetings, O favoured one."

And when Mary seems troubled by that, he adds, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God." What does it mean that Mary has found favour with God? Well, on the one hand, it means that God has chosen her for a specific purpose, for a specific mission. She was special because God had a special plan for her. But on the other hand, Mary was special just because God had chosen her.

The word favoured is the same word that we get the word grace from. God's undeserved love for us in Christ. The Good News Bible has, "God has been gracious to you." God chooses Mary not because she was special, but because He is gracious, and His grace makes people special. What makes Mary extraordinary is because she was chosen by God to accomplish His purposes.

Mary is extraordinary because she's favoured by God. Thirdly, Mary is extraordinary because God is with her. Again, that's what Gabriel tells her in his greeting: "The Lord is with you." When Gabriel uses the word Lord, he means Yahweh, the Lord God Almighty, the maker of the heavens and the earth. Now Mary may seem like an ordinary woman, but God who holds the universe in His hands is with her.

She doesn't need to be afraid because God is not only on her side, He's at her side. In fact, this is what sets apart those who we consider heroes of the faith. The fact that God was with them. God was with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. God was with Moses and Joshua and Samson and Gideon.

God was with David and many of the other kings. God was with the prophets. God was with His people. What makes God's Old Testament people extraordinary was that God was with them. And what makes Mary extraordinary is that God was with her.

Fourthly, Mary is extraordinary because she conceived Jesus. And that's extraordinary for two reasons. Firstly, because Mary was a virgin. The ordinary way women conceive is by losing their virginity, and so Mary asks Gabriel how she could possibly conceive as a virgin. And Gabriel tells her in verse 35, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you and the power of the Most High will overshadow you."

Mary conceived by the mighty power of God. What made Mary extraordinary was the miraculous conception of Jesus. Gabriel reminds Mary, "For nothing will be impossible with God." And when he says nothing is impossible for God, he means nothing, even conceiving a baby as a virgin. And if that's not extraordinary enough, what's even more extraordinary about the birth of Jesus is Jesus Himself.

Jesus is extraordinary. Gabriel tells Mary, "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." Firstly, Jesus will be great because Jesus is great. But here, Jesus is great because He is God's Son.

In verse 32, Gabriel says, "He will be called the Son of the Most High." And then in verse 35, he adds, "The child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God." The Son of God is what the Roman emperors were calling themselves. They believed that they had been made sons of God. When they put that crown on, they became divine.

But Jesus is God's Son. Jesus is divine. As God's Son, Jesus is the exact imprint of God's nature. As God's Son, Jesus is the image of the invisible God. As God's Son, Jesus is God with us, Emmanuel.

Jesus is extraordinary because unlike anyone else who's ever existed, He is the God-man. He's God in the flesh. He wasn't just extraordinary, He's uniquely God's Son. Next, Jesus is extraordinary because He's the Messiah. When Gabriel tells Mary, "The Lord God will give to Him the throne of His father David," he's basically telling her that her son Jesus is the Messiah, the King in the line of David who was promised one thousand years earlier in 2 Samuel 7.

There's been plenty of anointed kings since David, but Jesus was the anointed King. He was the Messiah, the Christ. Jesus isn't just extraordinary, He's uniquely the Messiah. Finally, Gabriel tells Mary her son would reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of His kingdom there will be no end. Unlike every other king who'd only reigned a few short years, Jesus will reign forever.

Jesus' kingdom is an eternal kingdom because He is the eternal King. Jesus is extraordinary in every sense of the word. And what makes Mary so extraordinary is that she becomes the mother of Jesus. But I think the most extraordinary thing about Mary is that she submitted herself to God's plan. Despite all the questions and the anxiety and the uncertainty, she tells Gabriel, "Behold, I am the servant of the Lord.

Let it be to me according to your word." Mary sees herself as God's servant, and she submits herself to God's will. It's extraordinary. Her humility is astounding. Her obedience is exemplary.

Her willingness to do God's will is astonishing. The only example of humble obedience that trumps this is the obedience of Jesus Himself in the Garden of Gethsemane. He says to God on the night before He's about to be crucified, "Father, if You are willing, remove this cup from Me. Nevertheless, not My will, but Yours be done." Basically, He echoes His mother Mary.

"I am Your servant. Let it be to me according to Your word." Mary was just an ordinary woman, and yet in so many ways she was extraordinary. So I wanna finish by looking at how God makes ordinary people like you and me extraordinary. But firstly, I wanna be clear, there are ways that you and I aren't like Mary.

Obviously, we don't live in the first century. We don't live in Israel. Half of us aren't women, and many of us aren't young. And probably not many of us are called Mary. I don't know if there are any Marys here.

Are there? No Marys. So we're automatically different on many counts. And unlike Mary, most of us will probably never meet an angel. We won't be visited by an angel.

But even more importantly, you and I will never be the mothers of the Messiah. In that sense, Mary is unique in God's plans. But in most other ways, we are just ordinary people like Mary was. Paul makes a point of that fact to the Christians in Corinth. He says, "Brothers and sisters, think of what you were when you were called.

Not many of you were wise by human standards. Not many were influential. Not many were of noble birth." By the world's standards, we're not considered the most intelligent. We're not the most powerful.

We're not those with prestige or influence. The church is generally just full of normal everyday people. And that's okay because God uses ordinary people. In fact, God seems to love ordinary people. It was ordinary people who seemed to be drawn to Jesus and to whom Jesus was particularly drawn.

Jesus came for ordinary people like you and me. It's okay to be ordinary. And like Mary, we're often troubled by our circumstances. I meet with a professional supervisor every month to talk about the stuff in life and ministry that troubles me, that I struggle with. We often have this mistaken belief that now that we're Christians, life will be easy. That we won't be troubled by the things of other mortals.

But Jesus nowhere tells us that life is gonna be easy. In fact, He warns us, "In the world you will have tribulation." Paul talks about his anxiety for his brothers and sisters in Christ. Jesus Himself was greatly troubled, and He often weeps. You see those stickers on the back of cars?

It's okay not to be okay. If you're feeling troubled by whatever is going on in your life, you're not a spiritual failure, you're just an ordinary person. Being troubled by life is an ordinary human experience. And like Mary, we often question God's purposes. Like Mary, we don't always understand how this will be or why things are the way they are.

And again, that's just being honest about our human limitations. God might see the end from the beginning, but we can't. When God says, "As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways," He implies that not only will we not always understand His ways, but that we can't. They are higher than we can understand.

The truth is we're ordinary people and God is God. We are limited and weak, and God is unlimited and all powerful. Sometimes all that we can do is trust that God knows what He's doing. Like Mary, we are ordinary people with ordinary troubles and ordinary questions. But I wanna look at three ways that you are or can be extraordinary like Mary.

Firstly, if you believe in Jesus, like Mary, you are favoured by God. The first thing to note about God's favour is that it can't be earned. The Bible says, "For by grace you've been saved through faith, and this is not your own doing, it is a gift from God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast." God looks upon us with favour, not because we are so good and deserving, but because He has graciously saved us through faith in His Son, Jesus Christ. God's favour is a gift.

If we could earn God's favour, we could boast about it. "Look how good I am. Look how much God loves me." But God's favour isn't the result of our efforts, but of God's grace. The good news is that through faith in Jesus, you receive God's favour.

In Jesus, you are no longer just an ordinary person. God loves you. In Jesus, God adopts you as His son or His daughter. In Jesus, you have been redeemed and forgiven. In Jesus, you've been given the promise of eternal life.

In Jesus, you are special. You are favoured by God. And if you don't know that, I invite you to put your faith in Jesus, and all of those things will be true for you. Secondly, in Jesus, God is with you. Like God was with Mary, so in Jesus, God is with you and me.

Like God was with the heroes from the Old Testament, so God is with every single person who puts their faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus' promise to His disciples is, "I am with you always, to the end of the age." Like the Holy Spirit came upon Mary, and the power of the Most High overshadowed her, so as people who believe in Jesus, the Holy Spirit has been given to us, and God's power overshadows you and I. The Bible says, "God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us." In Jesus, you are not just an ordinary person.

You are someone who is indwelt by the Holy Spirit, by God Himself. You don't have to be afraid because God is with you by His Spirit. The apostle John writes, "He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world." It's so easy to forget that God is with us. Paul actually prays that according to the riches of God's glory, He may grant you to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.

This Christmas, may you remember that in Jesus, God is with you. This Christmas, may God strengthen you through His Spirit. This Christmas, may Christ dwell in your hearts through faith. You might feel ordinary, but the extraordinary promise of God is that in Jesus He is with you. Like Paul says, we have this treasure in jars of clay.

On the outside, we seem so ordinary like jars of clay, ordinary pots, but within, we have the greatest treasure ever, God Himself. We may just be ordinary people, but in Christ you are favoured by God and God is with you. But this Christmas you are faced with the same choice that faced Mary. Will you submit to God? What made Mary extraordinary was her humble obedience to God's will.

What will make you extraordinary is your humble obedience to God as well. You don't earn God's favour by your obedience, but the most extraordinary people are those who instead of putting themselves first, put God's kingdom first. Extraordinary people store up treasures not on earth, but treasures in heaven. Extraordinary people aren't those who achieve worldly success, but those who reflect the character of Christ. Extraordinary people aren't those with power and influence, but those who serve the poor and the needy.

Extraordinary people are those who say, "I am the servant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to Your word." So what is God's word for you and me today? Well, of course, there's the whole Bible. You can just go there and pick some words.

There's plenty of them in it. But the ones I've always loved are Micah 6:8. "He has told you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?" Maybe as a disciple of Jesus this Christmas, you can start with those three things.

Will you say along with Mary, "I am the servant of the Lord, and according to Your word, I will do justice. I will do what is right. I will love kindness. I will be gentle with others and put their needs before my own, and I'll walk humbly with You. I will start each day on my knees before You and invite You into every moment throughout my day that everything I do might be for Your honour and glory."

What will make you extraordinary is walking humbly with God and submitting yourself to Him. Brothers and sisters, we are so ordinary and yet in Christ we are also extraordinary. We are clay jars in which a great treasure has been hidden. We are sinners, and yet in Christ we're favoured by God. We are weak and frail, and yet God is with us.

We are normal everyday people, and yet we have humbly submitted ourselves to walking with God and doing His will instead of our own. What makes a woman extraordinary is the favour and presence of God in their lives. What makes a man extraordinary is the grace of Christ and the Holy Spirit living in him. Paul says, "God chose what was foolish in the world to shame the wise. God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong.

God chose what is low and despised in the world, even things that are not, to bring to nothing things that are." God chooses ordinary people like you and me, and He uses us in extraordinary ways. Brothers and sisters, if you walk humbly with Jesus, you will be extraordinary. Let's pray. Dear Heavenly Father, we thank You for this story of Christmas, this story of this ordinary woman Mary, to whom You sent an angel Gabriel with the news that she would conceive a son who would be the Saviour of the world.

Lord, You took an ordinary young woman and You used her in extraordinary ways. And Lord, the very fact that You chose her makes her extraordinary. And Lord, in the same way, we are the same. Lord, we're just ordinary people, and yet You favoured us. You sent Your Son Jesus to die on the cross for our sins that we might be forgiven and adopted as Your children.

Lord, like You were with Mary, so You are with us through Your Holy Spirit. Lord, we thank You that You take ordinary people and in Christ we become extraordinary. We become Your children. We receive Your favour and we receive eternal life. And Lord, I pray this Christmas and for the rest of our lives that we would humbly submit to Your will.

Lord, that we would do Your word, not to get Your favour because in Christ we have it. Lord, may we be extraordinary in the eyes of the world as we live like Jesus, as we reflect His character, and as we do His work in this world. Lord, use us, we pray, for Your honour and glory. In the name of Jesus. Amen.