The Messages of God to Save Sinners
Text: Luke 1:26-38
In the name of Jesus, Amen!
Earlier this month when I was visiting a church in Illinois, I met a young man named Nick, who was baptized just 4 months ago. He told me how he became a Christian. To make the story short, basically, he had been living a degenerate and addicted life using drugs, etc. It went from bad to worse, and to the point of despair. One day when he was contemplating how to kill himself, all of a sudden, Gospel music played from his computer. He was shocked. He said he had never visited a Christian website, and never heard any Gospel song from those websites that he normally visited. He then realized that it was God who was calling him, and he came to church ever since. Do you believe in coincidence? For Nick, it’s certainly NOT a coincidence. People have difficulties receiving messages from God. For most of the people they tend to dismiss those messages and go on about their life as if there is no God. But for those who do pay attention, their initial reactions usually are shocks, disturbances, and not knowing what to do. When the angel Gabriel was sent from God to the virgin Mary, our text tells us that she was greatly troubled. As she was trying to discern what sort of greeting this might be, the angel clarified the message. It turned out that it was a message from God about His mission to save sinners, and that she would conceive in her womb and bear a son, named Jesus, who would be called the Son of the Most High, and of whose Kingdom there would be no end. Through the flesh of Mary, Jesus would be sent in a mission to save God’s people from their sins.
For most unbelievers, life is random and hopeless or in the opposite can be manipulated by themselves or by others. They tend to dismiss any kind of miracles or warnings as pure coincidences. They regard any message that comes from God as pure cliches of Christianity. Therefore, they live under the wrath of God without knowing it or intentionally ignoring it. Lacking God’s wisdom and ignoring God’s messages that could lead them to abundant life in Christ Jesus, they live in hopelessness, fear and despair instead, dying in pure stupidity or evil. But thanks be to God! For Nick, he did not remain in the stage of dismissal, nor in the state of shock and confusion, like Mary he was trying to discern the meaning of the message and what it meant for him and for his life. Later he found out from the pastor that it was a message of salvation for him not only to save him from the desperation of drugs and suicidal thoughts, but also from the eternal damnation of hell. Many people ask me how God the Holy Spirit leads people in their lives, and how we can know a certain message is from God. First of all, you need to pay attention to the voice of God, don’t dismiss it, ask questions if you have one like Mary did here in our text, and later like Mary described in chapter 2 of Luke, treasure up all these things, ponder them in your heart. Second, if it is a message from God, it will agree to His Word and align with God’s character. If the message has anything to do with the mission of God to save sinners in Jesus Christ, you can be 100 percent sure it comes from God the Holy Spirit.
As my wife and I are traveling from place to place in the United States to visit congregations, I have been preaching in a series of sermons about the Mission of God, because Christian Mission is God’s Mission to save sinners. The Mission of God comes from the loving heart of God, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life”. We talked about God’s salvation history and the overall picture of how God carries out His mission by His Son and through His people. We talked about why Jesus’ overcoming temptations is an important part of the mission of God. We talked about how granting us new life and declaring sinners righteous are the work of God, not the work of man, nor work of the Law, and therefore are the core of His mission to save sinners through Jesus Christ. As we are celebrating Annunciation today, we are wondering how the Annunciation of the Lord by the archangel Gabriel to Mary has anything to do with the Mission of God. From the angel’s answer, we see the greatness of God becoming the humbleness of men in the form of a little baby for the salvation of humanity. By reigning over the house of Jacob forever Jesus offers the citizenship of His everlasting kingdom to anyone who should believe. Throughout the Bible, we see God carries out His mission in both words and actions. God through His miraculous actions of the angel told Virgin Mary the message of Jesus’ birth for the world. Later, we know that God did come into the world through a virgin according to His faithful promise that was foretold by the prophets in the OT time and through an angel.
Now what about us? God continues His mission and sends His messages even now. As we do not dismiss, but instead heed and receive His message of salvation in Christ Jesus, we treasure up all these things in His Word and Sacraments and ponder them in our heart. As God’s people, we continue to carry out the Mission of God to save sinners by announcing His Good News of salvation and magnifying the Lord like the Angel and Mary through our lips and actions. In fact, God’s messages are not that hard to discern. They are always related to the saving grace of God in Christ Jesus, either in terms of the Law that show the people their sins in need of forgiveness, or in terms of the Gospel that we are freely justified by the blood of Christ through faith. And we trust that God will work through His messages in people’s lives mightily like he did in Nick’s life for His good and gracious purposes because “nothing will be impossible with God.”
In the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen!
