Luke 1:30-38 – And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. 32 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, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.” 34 And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” 35 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. 36 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. 37 For nothing will be impossible with God.” 38 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.”
THEME OF THE DAY. JUST LET IT BE. There are times and things that come in our walks with the Lord that make us Mary-like with the same question she asked of the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?” From a human point of view, this made no sense. We may peek into the heart of Mary and listen to her inward struggle, “Me? Have a baby? I have never been with a man. That isn’t how it works.” She battled with being told a promise of something that was impossible, illogical, and baffled the human mind. And we, too, encounter things about the Lord and in His Word that make no sense, seem contradictory, even confusing, to the human mind. It must be this way. If we could fully and absolutely know the mind of God, the workings of God, and the Word of God, two things would be true; one, He would not be God. He would be like us. We need a God who is transcendent which means not like us, separate from us, and completely outside of the realm of total understanding.
The next thing that would be true if we could know God’s Word completely and absolutely is it would not be the Word of God. It would be just another religious book able to be grasped by human effort and intellect. That is not our Bible or our God. His ways are not our ways; His thoughts are not our thoughts; His Word contains apparent contradictions and incompatibilities that exist in the human mind, not the Divine mind (Isaiah 55:8-9). Let me offer one area which causes believers inward turmoil, sleepless nights of trying to figure it out, creates emotionally charged debates with other Christians that never edify, and even builds a little inward resistance because it doesn’t line up with our preconceived understandings or desires. Here it is . . .
The tension of God’s sovereign election in predestinating a people to salvation and the universal responsibility of every person to respond to the Gospel. I struggled with this because I tried to reconcile the two in my human and sinful mind. And that cannot be done. Humanly, it doesn’t make sense that God chooses a people who will be saved but then everyone is responsible to heed the Gospel. However, God has declared both are true and not contradictions (John 3:16-18; Romans 10:13; Ephesians 1:3-14). And here is a serious caution to all of us . . . we must not call God “unfair” with the doctrine of sovereign election and predestination of people into His family. That is the clay questioning the potter and attacks His being and character (Romans 9:6-26).
When it comes to these “tension spots” in understanding the Lord and His Word, we must be “Mary-like”. Look how she responded to her tension of the impossible – “Let it be to me according to your Word.” Friends, there are things we simply must let go and let God’s Word be the final word. He doesn’t tell us to figure out and understand His ways. He commands us to trust and rest in His ways, even if we don’t get it. And that is what child-like faith will do.
PRAYER: “Father, help me to rest and trust in Your Word even when I cannot fully understand Your Word.”
QUOTE: “If we understood everything about God and His Word, He would not be God or the Bible, His Word”
Because of Him,
Pastor Jim