Luke 1 26-38 The Virgin Birth impossible? Sunday 21st December 2008
In the sixth month of Elizabeth's pregnancy, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a village in Galilee, to a virgin named Mary. She was engaged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of King David.
Gabriel appeared to her and said, "Greetings, favoured woman! The Lord is with you!"
Confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean.
"Don't be frightened, Mary," the angel told her,
"for God has decided to bless you! You will become pregnant and have a son, and you are to name him Jesus. He will be very great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give him the throne of his ancestor David. And he will reign over Israel forever; his Kingdom will never end!"
Mary asked the angel, "But how can I have a baby? I am a virgin."
The angel replied, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby born to you will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God. What's more, your relative Elizabeth has become pregnant in her old age! People used to say she was barren, but she's already in her sixth month. For nothing is impossible with God."
Mary responded, "I am the Lord's servant, and I am willing to accept whatever he wants. May everything you have said come true." And then the angel left. (Luke 1:26-38 NLT) This is the word of the Lord.
A couple of weeks ago a British Opinion Poll was published. It asked people to say if certain statements were historically accurate.
The first statement was,
"Jesus was born to a virgin called Mary". 34% of all people agreed the statement was historically accurate.
An amazing, 100% of Sikhs replying believed the statement to be historically accurate. Although none agreed with the statement, “The birth of Jesus is significant to me personally.”
Well Sikh’s may believe in the virgin birth but it seems many professing Christians don’t. 24% of Christians polled said it was fictional, 35% said they didn’t know if it is a true story or not. This leaves less than half, about 42% of the Christians polled saying they believe in the virgin birth.
The story of the virgin birth of Jesus can be found in the Koran. Only 5% of Muslims believe the story to be fictional with 57% saying it is a true story.
When considering that this is an account from a completely different source, it does gives more weight to the historical fact of the virgin birth.
Why do so many Christians NOT believe in the virgin birth? Remember 58% of those polled either aren’t sure or don’t believe.
Some would say, “It doesn’t matter if Mary was a virgin or not.” But that would make it very difficult to show that Jesus didn’t have a human father.
Others add it doesn’t matter if Jesus did have a normal, sinful, human father. I just don’t see how that can be.
Christianity teaches Jesus was born human and so had a physical body and emotions and is capable of sin; but it also teaches Jesus is God with an eternal, righteous, sinless nature.
If Jesus had been just human at conception as some suggest, what happened to him? May be some people believe he was taken over. May be as in a science fiction film where a person is possessed by an alien who needs their body.
The teachers of religious law did accuse Jesus of being possessed. Possessed by Satan. They say in Mark’s gospel -
"He's possessed by Satan, the prince of demons. That's where he gets the power to, cast out demons."
Jesus told them they were wrong.
He called them over and said, "How can Satan cast out Satan? A kingdom at war with itself will collapse. (Mark 3:22-24 NLT)
Jesus wasn’t possessed by evil, and he wasn’t controlled by God. He chose to do God’s will.
People who are taken over, lose their free will.
They can’t choose to do anything. Jesus chose not to sin, Jesus chose to die for others. . . . .
Despite what the Bible says it seems that many professing Christians think the Bible is wrong, and believe the virgin birth is impossible.
Actually it’s not!
The National Geographic Journal published a story about a blacktip shark called Tidbit on October 10th 2008.
Picture of shark
The paper says -
“A female blacktip shark in Virginia fertilized her own egg without mating with a male shark,
new DNA evidence shows.
This is the second time scientists have used DNA testing to verify shark parth-eno-genesis —the process that allows females of some species to produce offspring without sperm.”
Parth-eno-genesis is the Greek for "virgin birth". It happens a lot in insects. Examples have been documented in komodo dragons, pythons, rattlesnakes, chickens, and turkeys. So the impossible is possible in some animals.
Usually in mammals, an egg from the female is penetrated by a sperm from the male and an embryo is the result.
In Parth-eno-genesis, two eggs from the female come together and an embryo is formed.
Jesus was not born as a result of this type of virgin birth. . . .
Humans always inherit certain genetic characteristics from their fathers and other genetic characteristics from their mothers.
If a characteristic is always inherited from the father then the corresponding gene from the mother is “switched off”. The mother’s gene exists and will be passed on to the next generation, but it has no influence on the developing embryo.
In other words humans, have to have, both male and female genes, to have the right switched on generic characteristics for an embryo to develop. It is impossible for human embryos to develop without both male and female genetic information.
Even if science found a way of combining two eggs from a women, which we can’t do at the moment, the resulting child would be a girl, because there would be no genetic material from a male.
Jesus wasn’t born a girl.
Women have two X chromosomes and men have one X and one Y chromosome. It is the Y chromosome that makes a male a male. Mary only had X chromosomes.
So Jesus must have had a father. . . . . . . .
May be most people here belong to the 42% of Christians who do believe in the virgin birth. May be you accept it as fact because the Bible says it is so. But the Bible also says -
Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect. (1 Peter 3:15 NIV)
So I am trying to give you some ideas of what to say to those who suggest that the virgin birth of Jesus is unnecessary, impossible, or unreasonable.
Let’s look at something else that seems impossible.
Between 3.8 billion and 2.5 billion years ago we are told by geologist and other scientists that the atmosphere on our planet was toxic. Rocks were beginning to form on the earth’s crust, and at this time life first appeared in the seas.
This life is believed to be bacteria and other similar one celled organisms. Bacteria of 3 billion years ago are apparently basically the same as bacteria of today.
Bacterium, the single of bacteria, are said to be the simplest form of life because they consist of only one cell. The genetic material, DNA, is just floating around in the jelly like substance that fills the cell.
Picture of a Bacterium (plural Bacteria)
Bacteria are not simple. They can reproduce by simply swapping genetic material with each another. Apparently a bacterium can also send messages to change the behaviour of other bacteria in its colony.
Amazing! Miraculous? Such complexity, in what scientist say was the earliest form of life.
Incidentally if thinking of bacteria makes you feel ill, only 1% of bacteria cause disease. Most bacteria are our friends.
Even the proteins that make up the DNA in their cells are really complex. Each part of the protein has to be in just the right place. Just like the letters and words in a sentence have to be in just the right place to make sense.
Our friendly bacteria couldn’t live if its DNA was written like gibberish.
Does that sound impossible to you that such an organism should have been formed in the first place? Let alone been given life. That is, unless there is creator God who can perform amazing miracles.
I’ll give you one more example of the complexity of bacteria.
We congratulate ourselves on our technological advances. But do you know what the most efficient machine in the world is?
It is the flagella of a bacterium. The flagella is the bacterium’s tail. It’s like an outboard motor spinning at 1000 rpm. That is fast. Yet a bacterium can stop exactly where it chooses. Some have multiple flagella. So how do they control which way they go?
As the flagella is the most efficient machine in the world, can you believe bacteria just appeared 3 billion years ago? Or would you say, “It’s impossible without a miracle from God.
Even scientists who are atheists say there must have been some kind of “instruction” given to produce different forms of life. Because the probability of random chance producing sustainable life is negligible, in the time between the creation of the earth, and the first life appearing. How did life start in the first place!
If people can believe in the complexity of life coming from nowhere, then why is the virgin birth of Jesus so difficult to accept?
For nothing is impossible with God. Says (Luke 1:37 NLT today’s passage)
35% of Christians in the survey said they just didn’t know if “Jesus was born to a virgin, called Mary” or not.
One reason for accepting the virgin birth is that it happened to fulfil prophecy as recorded in the Bible.
Before the Jewish exile, when Jerusalem was being attacked, God spoke through the prophet Isaiah to King Ahaz. God said to him, “Ask me for a sign”.
But the king refused. "No," he said, "I wouldn't test the LORD like that."
Then Isaiah said, " . . . . All right then, the Lord himself will choose the sign. Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel--`God is with us.' (Isaiah 7:12-14 NLT)
I’d be surprised if anyone at the time understood this prophecy. But now we can see that the virgin spoken of is Mary; who conceived the child Jesus; so that God is indeed with us. . . .
In the Old Testament the family history, the genealogy, was traced through the male line. Joseph was the son of Jacob, Jacob was the son of Isaac, Isaac was the son of Abraham and so on. Mothers aren’t usually mentioned.
So it is unusual when God suggests to the serpent in Gen 3.15 that a male child will be descended from a woman.
I will put enmity between you and the woman and between your seed and her seed ; it shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel. (Genesis 3:15 NKJ ?)
This verse is seen by many, as a prophecy that the Messiah, Jesus, would be the son of a woman without a man. A son of a woman who would bruise Satan’s heel. . . . .
Another reason for accepting the virgin birth is that sex outside of marriage was universally considered immoral by Jews in Bible times.
Adultery was a crime punishable by death. Joseph knew he wasn’t responsible for Mary’s pregnancy. Had he called off the wedding, Mary may have been stoned to death.
Mary trusted God. She agreed to have the Holy Spirit and the Power of God overshadowing her. She agreed to have God’s child. A child who had Mary as his mother, and God as his father. There was no coercion by the angel. Mary had a choice. She could have said, “No way. I’ll be stoned to death”, but she didn’t.
Later in life, Mary would have been too ashamed and fearful to speak of her pregnancy, let alone allow her friends to write about it in their gospels, unless there was an overriding reason for it to be written.
The writer of today’s gospel who said he had researched the life of Jesus was Luke. Luke, a doctor, of all people would want the correct medical evidence published. Had it not been important, he would not have written about the birth.
Obviously Jesus’ enemies knew he was not Joseph’s son as they used the fact as a taunt to Jesus. Someone says to him from a crowd according to John -
"We were not born out of wedlock! " (John 8:41b NLT)
Obviously an insult insinuating that Jesus was ‘born out of wedlock’.
Why do Christians, especially, find the virgin birth hard to believe? The idea of someone as important as God’s son, coming to earth, via the womb of a virgin; and then being born, not at the Hilton, but placed in a manger. It seems to me, too crazy to be made up.
Jesus being human was tempted to sin, like us, he experienced every human emotion, he knew first hand what it was like to be a human being. But he was also God and had the personality, and nature of God. Jesus didn’t sin, and showed that God loves us so much he will take the punishment for the sin of those who love him.
The virgin birth was necessary in order to provide Jesus with deity and humanity.
Only a person who is both human and God could fulfil that role.
The impossible became the miracle of the virgin birth of the redeemer of mankind, Jesus.
Amen