Ten Minute Bible Talks Devotional Bible Study - Is the Virgin Birth Real? | Advent | Luke 1:26-38

Episode Date: December 14, 2022

Does the reality of Jesus's virgin birth matter? Was Mary actually a virgin? Can Jesus be God without a virgin birth? What's the purpose of it? In today's episode, Jensen looks at Luke 1:26-38 to discuss the theological explanation of the virgin birth. Like this content? Make sure to leave us a rating and share it with others, so others can find it too. Use #asktmbt to connect with us, ask questions, and suggest topics. We'd love to hear from you! To learn more, visit our website and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter@TenMinuteBibleTalks. Don't forget to subscribe to the TMBT Newsletter here. Passages: Luke 1:26-38 Your support makes TMBT possible. Ten Minute Bible Talks is a crowd-funded project. Join the TMBTeam to reach more people with the Bible. Give now.

Welcome to 10-minute Bible Talks, where we connect the Bible to your life and the time it takes to get to work. I'm Jensen Holt McNair. Many of us have uncomfortable stories of how our parents chose to explain to us the birds and the bees. My husband was taken on a hunting trip to Idaho, where he had his explanation of how life comes about. I mostly picked it up from my classmates, sparing my mom that conversation. No matter how you found out, by the time you reach high school, most people know the stork doesn't really drop. off babies on your doorstep. A man and a woman have sex, conceive a child, and nine to ten months later, a baby is born from the mother. That's scientific fact. It's how it always works and

always has worked. And yet, a large majority of the world's population who consider themselves Christians casually sing songs around this time about a virgin mother and her new baby boy. We just know that Mary was a virgin. If you've been in the church since childhood, you've literally grown up hearing about the Virgin Mary's since you were conceived. It's just a tidbit of scripture we accept and move on from, but maybe don't often consider that often. It's also a fact of scripture that a lot of people outside the church find hard to swallow. How could you possibly believe in a virgin birth? Even some within the church try to explain their way out of a literal virgin birth to reconcile that tension they feel with modern scientific fact. Is that okay? Does it really matter if

Mary was a virgin or not? Can Jesus still be Jesus without a virgin birth? Well, today in the first chapter of Luke, we are confronted with a section of scripture that explicitly lays out the virgin conception. And so I want to take the little time that we have today to talk about why the virgin birth matters. Hopefully, when we talk about the virgin Mary, it will be less of a secondhand statement to us and more of a theologically rich and gospel-centered truth. So let's start by reading today's scripture. Luke 1, verse 26. In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, to a virgin patroath 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, oh, favored 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 favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your 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 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. 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 will be born, will be called holy, the son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son. And 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. So first, it's hard not to read this section of scripture and marvel at the faith and trust of Mary. A virgin girl being told she's going to have a son by the Holy Spirit's power. And in faith, she accepts the truth of what the angel says and gives her life over to the will of God. And while today, we are going to talk about the theological necessity of the virgin birth, I'm not going to try to scientifically convince you of the virgin birth. I don't think I can't. But throughout Scripture, we see this same God parting the Red Sea, making donkeys speak, healing lifelong illnesses, and resurrecting from the dead. The Bible isn't a scientific textbook, and we don't follow a God who plays by our rules. We follow the one who created those rules and who has the infinite power to work outside of what we could ever imagine.

Following a supernatural God, it means at times our modern scientific brains are going to have to suspend what we know to be true and believe in the miracles of our God. And so, at the end of the day, we like Mary have to acknowledge our inability to fully understand and trust that we follow us. an infinite God who created the universe and works in mysterious and incomprehensible ways sometimes. And so with that mindset, we ask the question, why does the virgin birth even matter? Obviously, Luke thought that this was important. He includes not only Gabriel's description of the virgin conception by the Holy Spirit, but also a confirmation in Mary's question of her virginity. How will she have a baby if she has never been with a man? Now Gabriel tells us that this baby that Mary will give birth to is to be named Jesus,

which means Yahweh saves. He also tells us that he will be the son of the most high, that being God. This child will sit on the throne of David and reign forever. He also tells Mary that this child will be holy. All of these things are central to the gospel truth of who Jesus is. Jesus is Yahweh, the God of the Old Testament, come down to live on earth as a human. Fully God, fully man. He lived a perfectly holy life.

And through his death, he conquers death and evil forever. And takes on the punishment for mankind's sin. And in his resurrection, he is crowned as king over the everlasting perfect kingdom he is building. That is the good news of the gospel, the good news of the birth and life of Jesus. The problem is that if you don't believe the virgin birth, none of that can possibly be true. First, if Jesus just came down to earth as a fully formed adult and bypassed the virgin birth thing, then he could not be fully human like you and I, and he could not take our place on the cross for the punishment of our sins. As a fully Israelite man from the line of David, Jesus is the perfect sacrifice and holy fulfillment of the covenant God made with man.

He, as a human, does what no one else before him could do and lives a life holy and perfectly obedient to God's law. And secondly, if Jesus was born of a man and a woman, fully and only human, he could not possibly be holy. all the way back in Genesis when Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit from the tree of life, sin entered the world and it entered the heart of all men. Roman 5 tells us, therefore just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses,

even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who is the type of the one who was to come. So I know that can be confusing, but Paul is explaining a crucial part of biblical theology to us. When God created humanity, he started with Adam. And when Adam rebelled against God, every man and woman after him was infected with the same disease of sin and death. Throughout scripture, Adam is used as an archetype. Adam was living with God in a garden of life, and he broke that unity when he sinned. And then we see God make a covenant with Abraham to be his God and to dwell with him and bring him into a promised land. But Abraham, Moses, and David are all archetypes of the first Adam,

with the hope of saving God's people, but ultimately, marred with the same disease as Adam. Again and again, those from the line of Adam fail to live obediently to Yahweh and find themselves at odds with the God who created them. But Paul tells us later in Romans 5 that there is hope. For if, because of one man's trespasses, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to the condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. So here, Paul is telling us that just like one man, Adam's sin, can condemn all of us to the disease of death,

so too can one man's holy life of righteousness free all men from death to life. Both Adam and Jesus are covenant representatives of God's people. And Adam, in his rebellion, cast all of us into a life of disobedience and breaking of our covenant with God. God. But in Jesus, the second and true Adam, a new line of creation begins, and humanity has hope to stand righteous in their covenant with God once again. If the virgin birth didn't happen, if Jesus isn't really the son of God, then he too comes from the line of Adam and had no hope for righteousness. Plain and simple. No virgin birth. no ability to fulfill the covenant faithfully. But because of the virgin birth, humanity has the hope

of a new representative whose righteousness will bring us life, whose obedience can become our own righteousness. Without the virgin birth, we are under the curse of Adam. And so this Christmas season, as you sing of the virgin birth and you talk about the Virgin Mary and the coming of Jesus to this world, Remember the deep theological significance that that truth holds. Let your belief in a virgin birth of a child to a young girl from Nazareth 2,000 years ago bring deeply seated hope and joy that you can be found righteous through the holy life that Jesus lived, fully human and fully God. Before you forget, sign up for the 10-minute Bible Talks newsletter.

Hit the link in the show notes and you'll get an email every Wednesday. that will help encourage you in the middle of the work week and bring you deeper in your walk with Jesus. Thanks for listening.