THE REFORMED WITNESS HOUR
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Dear radio friends,
We read the Word of God in Luke
2:19, “But Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her
heart.”
Let us join the
virgin Mary today and ponder in our hearts the marvel and the mystery of
Christ’s birth. We could ponder, that
is, think deep and hard on the birth of any child, for it is a great mystery
and marvel. Ecclesiastes
11:5: “Thou knowest not…how the
bones do grow in the womb of her that is with child: even so thou knowest not the works of God who
maketh all.” The delicate and awesome
work of God in secret in the womb of her that is expecting a child! Now special photography is able to show us
that amazing development.
And then, to think
that at the moment of conception a soul is imparted by God—a never-ending life,
either to the justice of God in hell or to the glory of God in heaven. Pondering such things, we respond with the
psalmist in Psalm
139:14, “Marvellous are thy works; and that my soul knoweth right
well.”
But Mary’s child is
like no other child. The child that Mary
held in her arms is the child that is incomprehensible. He is the marvel and the mystery of eternal
God in the flesh. I
Timothy 3:16: “And without
controversy great is the mystery of godliness:
God was manifest in the flesh.”
The familiar hymn: “Veiled in
flesh the Godhead see; hail th’ incarnate Deity.” God of gods, now in flesh. A newborn in Mary’s arms.
Why? Now we get to the heart of the mystery. Because God loved us (John
3:16): “God so loved the world,
that he gave his only begotten Son.”
Let us ponder for a
while, let us marvel over the mystery of God’s love for us in the gift of His
Son in our flesh.
But we might say
that we cannot unlock all that was going on in the virgin Mary’s heart that
night in which she held her son in the cattle shed. She was the woman whom Gabriel had said was
highly favored of the Lord. And we
cannot possibly, you say, understand everything that was going on in her mind
and heart and soul. True. But, remember that Mary was a believer. Some may fault her, that, throughout the
Lord’s life she showed an inadequate conception of her Son’s work and
kingdom. Be that as it may, from the
very beginning, when Mary was told by the angel Gabriel that she would be the
mother of the Lord, even unto the end when Jesus Christ ascended up into
heaven, Mary stands on the pages of Scripture as a believer. Mary believed that night that the little boy
to whom she had just given birth was the long-hoped-for Messiah.
We might say, Yes,
Mary understood that. And we understand
that now. And it is true that we share
Mary’s faith. But we cannot actually
relive everything she was experiencing.
Our pondering this marvel, you say, is at a great distance from the
virgin Mary. But then, you see, we miss
the point. For our text tells us that
the things that caused Mary to marvel are the things that are available to
us. We read in Luke
2:19, “But Mary kept [or treasured] all these things [better
translated: all these words], and
pondered them in her heart.” The Holy
Spirit, beginning in verse 15 of Luke 2,
has been emphasizing that it was all on the words. It was the words concerning this child
that were creating all the stir. The
shepherds had said in verse 15, “Let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see
this thing [no, this word] which is come to pass.” Then again, in verse 18: “And all they that heard it wondered at those
things [words] which were told them.” It
was the Word of God concerning the child that Mary pondered in her heart. So we may ponder with her the same marvel and
mystery.
Ponder this: The Baby in the manger, maybe nursing at the
breast of the virgin Mary as she is pondering, is the eternal Son of God, who
spoke worlds into existence; who, according to Hebrews
1, upholds all things by the word of His power; who is in the bosom of the
Father (John
1:18); who is the Son of the blessed before whom angels veiled their
faces. Now this One, the eternal Son of God,
is united with flesh and blood and is an infant, a little baby. The infinite, the glorious, the eternal God,
who made all, has now taken on the finite.
The eternal is in time.
But Mary kept
[treasured] all these things in her heart.
The word “but” there is in contrast to the many in
Is that the way you
wonder about the Christ-Child? It cannot
be really about any sin in me that needs atonement. Do you think about the fact that you
stand accountable before the eternal God?
Or do you simply say, “Oh, it’s the holiday season. Let’s have some warm, fuzzy feelings.”
But Mary, in
contrast to superficiality, pondered.
She turned it over in her soul.
She mused over it. She heard the
voice of her conscience activated by the spirit of her sin, of her mortality,
of God’s grace, of His promise, of her baby.
She knew who this baby was. She knew
that He was the eternal Son of God in her flesh. She knew God was the father of this
child. Others might have wondered about
that. Many, even Joseph for a time,
believed what human reason dictated, that Mary’s son had been conceived in
adultery and was illegitimate. The looks
of everyone said, “We believe that child is like any other child.” But Mary knew. This seventeen-or-eighteen year-old
mother—she knew. No man was His
father. She knew that the word spoken by
the angel Gabriel had come to pass. Luke
1:31-33: “And, behold, thou shalt
conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name
JESUS. He shall be great, and shall be
called the Son of the Highest:…he shall reign…for ever; and of his kingdom
there shall be no end.” And when she had
asked Gabriel, “How can this possibly be?
I know not a man, I’m not married,” the angel had responded: “The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the
power of the Highest shall overshadow thee:
therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be
called the Son of God.” She
pondered.
Ponder with
her. He who is nursed by a Hebrew maid
is Lord of all. Does she open His hand
and pry His little fingers? Yet, in His
hands are earth and sea and all deep places.
His the strength of all the hills.
Now is come Immanuel, God with us, not ceasing to be what He
is—God. He has become what He was
not—man, so that we might become what we are not—pardoned and righteous in
God’s sight. Ponder.
So heavy, so hot,
so dreadful the load of sin and grief is ours that only eternal God come in the
flesh can lift and bear and take it all away.
Could such thoughts have been hers, you say? Well, they can be and they must be ours.
But Mary treasured
all these words and pondered them in her heart, says our text. What words?
Well, the words of the shepherds.
The shepherds told Mary and Joseph what the angel had told them. Mary mused on the words that she had received
second-hand from the shepherds. Shepherd
boys in poverty-shred clothes had come excitedly to the manger. Maybe they were all talking at once. They told Joseph and Mary: “An angel of the Lord appeared to us. And then all the host of heaven erupted
around us in glorious anthems of praise.
The angel before that had said that there were good tidings and great
joy unto all of God’s people, for unto us is born this day a Savior, which is
Christ the Lord! And this, he said,
shall be a sign unto us, that we would find your baby wrapped in these
swaddling clothes and laid in a manger.”
The shepherds had
used the words for her son, “Savior”—Rescuer from sin and death. They had used the word “Christ,” or
“Messiah”—the long-awaited Servant of God entrusted with all the work of
God. They had used the word “Lord”—Royal
one, power and majesty. She
pondered. The child is the fulfillment
of the promise that came from the heart of God—the promise to which Adam and
Eve had clung; the promise that Abraham held fast in his heart; the promise for
which Moses endured all things; and the promise of which David, the sweet
psalmist, sang. Now Immanuel
arises. Light of light. God of God.
The Redeemer is come into the world.
Mary began that night the pondering that the church has engaged in ever
since and will engage in to eternity.
The Creator, the living God, to whom nothing can be added, has humbled
Himself and come in the form of a servant to redeem those who have sinned
against Him.
Mary pondered what
He came to do. It all makes no sense
unless you see why He has come and what He has come to do. Mary pondered. That word “ponder” does not mean perplexed,
in a quandary, befuddled. But that word
means to sense the depth of something but be unable to see to the bottom of
it. All these things, these words, these
events moved across her soul and her mind.
She sensed that something vast, something marvelous, something as vast as
the heart of God was taking place through her.
There was something about God’s Son born in the flesh that stirred the
host of heaven. Angels saw into the
reason. Angels that night saw not just
the fact that their darling, God’s Son, had covered His glory and was wrapped
in rags resting on straw. But they saw
also the reason for all of this, and it awed them. This moved them to come down to Bethlehem to
sing their Hosannas: Glory to God in the
highest.
And now Mary
ponders the same thing. It was the
reason, it was the marvel of the love of God for unworthy sinners like you and
me and Mary. She knew that the reason
for the birth was not an earthly kingdom, though she struggled with that as any
other mother would. As a mother, she
wanted earth’s best for her son—honor and power, ease and happiness. But none of that was to be. And she sensed it. Oh, yes, she sensed that. She gave birth while lying on straw and
smelling manure. She gave birth to this
boy after rich men had said, “No room for him.”
She sensed the rejection this world held for her son. This was somehow, she understood, the place
for the Father’s Child to be born, for it spoke of what He had come to do. He had not come to lead armies. He had not come to marry well and have children. He had not come to bring about a peaceable
understanding among nations and to eradicate poverty and make the world a
better place for His passing through the world.
No! He had come to be rejected,
to be despised as no other man, to be hated without a cause, to be cast
out. He had come for a cross. He had come to suffer hell for her and earn
for her a garment of a queen and of everlasting life.
You see, we ponder
the birth of Jesus Christ but we ponder that which we cannot comprehend. We ponder what we know is a fact. But we cannot fathom it. We consider today something that is deeper
than the universe and heavier than the oceans—the great, great, great love of
God. Why was He born? Why did God’s eternal Son come into our
flesh, born in such poverty in a manger and then make His way to a cross to
suffer and die? Children! Why did He do that? You say, “Well, He came to save us from our
sins.” Yes. You say, “He came to save surely all the
elect given to Him of the Father.”
Yes. But, you see, although both
of those statements are true, absolutely true, nevertheless, it still puts the
matter outside of you, it sets it outside of the personal question, why did He
do this? Because He loved me. That is the answer of a child of God. Galatians
2:20: “I live; yet not I, but
Christ liveth in me: and the life which
I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me,
and gave himself for me.” Only by His
coming, only by His death, can my sins be forgiven. There is no other way. Only by His appearing now on earth, in Mary’s
arms, as her son in the flesh. Only in
that way can the burden of my guilt be lifted from me and eternity be earned
for me. Ponder.
Ponder this. At that moment, the uncountable and immeasurable
load of your sin was placed on this child, so that you would never have to bear
it. And this child must carry this load
of sin to the cross and suffer for it all.
Why would He do that? Could He
gain something by doing this? Did He
become something He was not before? Did
He earn something that He did not have?
What one thing could come to Him that was not His? He is God’s Son. He did this because He loved me. He loved freely and graciously all the elect
of the Father. Why?
I do not know. Except He willed to do so out of His own
eternal heart for the glory of His name.
Figure that out, if you can.
Ponder it and be
lost in the depths of the love of God.
Ponder this: Never did God appear
so beautiful as when Mary held Him as Babe and pondered the mystery of
God. Out of Him, out of her Babe, shone
the mercy, grace, and love of God.
Angels worshiped. Heaven sang. Mary pondered in her heart. And we, now, ponder and bow and worship.
Mary, on the night
that our Savior Jesus Christ was born in Bethlehem, pondered all of these
things as she was in a stable—a lowly place.
It was a dark night. Joseph was
there. And He had probably tried to make
the place as comfortable as he could.
The stars the Creator had made shone forth in their brilliancy. Perhaps some of the animals that He had made
were near by. And God, in flesh, had
been born through childbirth, out of her womb.
He had been born to set His people free.
The promise had been fulfilled.
And the promise she held in her arms.
And Joseph and Mary, pondering these things, lost in thought that night,
no doubt bowed down and worshiped and said, “My God, how great Thou art,” and
sang: “His grace abideth ever!”
You do not need to
go to Bethlehem or find that manger to join in this pondering, in this
wonderful treasuring of the love and grace of God. You have before you the very things that were
available to her and to Joseph. In fact,
you and I have more. We have the entire
Word of God—the Word of the living God—to treasure. And that Word, in the birth of Jesus Christ,
is the Word that declares to us that He took to Himself our flesh and blood and
came among us, Lord of all—that He did not despise the shame of our sin but
took it upon Himself. That birth of
Jesus Christ declares that He came to be crucified, to take our sins to the
only place where they could be destroyed—upon the cross. That birth declares the truth that He is the
One who has risen from the dead, ascended to the Father, and now dwells within
us by His Holy Spirit to assure us of our pardon and to preserve us unto
eternal glory.
We have so much to
ponder—so, so much. And in our pondering
we ask, “Why, Lord? Why was this done
for me?” And we hear the answer that cannot
be fathomed, an answer so rich, so clear, and so free: “The Son of God loved me and gave Himself for
me.”
Let us pray.
Our Father who art
in heaven, as we bow before Thee we pray that our minds may be filled with awe
and reverence and love for Thee. How
wonderful Thou art. How great Thy grace. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Last modified: Jan. 11,
2008