The Fourth Sunday of Advent is December 24 — Christmas Eve — 2023.

Readings for Year B can be found here.

The Gospel is as follows (emphases mine):

Luke 1:26-38

1:26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth,

1:27 to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary.

1:28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.”

1:29 But she was much perplexed by his words and pondered what sort of greeting this might be.

1:30 The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.

1:31 And now, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus.

1:32 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 ancestor David.

1:33 He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

1:34 Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?”

1:35 The angel said to 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 holy; he will be called Son of God.

1:36 And now, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son; and this is the sixth month for her who was said to be barren.

1:37 For nothing will be impossible with God.”

1:38 Then Mary said, “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.” Then the angel departed from her.

Commentary comes from Matthew Henry and John MacArthur (as specified below).

Part 1 covers verses 26 to 30.

The Archangel Gabriel told Mary that she would conceive in her womb and bear a son; he told her that she would name him Jesus (verse 31).

Matthew Henry’s commentary contrasts Mary with Eve and our Lord’s heavenly objectives as Saviour with the Jewish expectations of a temporally powerful Messiah:

1. Though she is a virgin, she shall have the honour of being a mother: “Thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and thou shalt have the naming of him; thou shalt call his name Jesus,” v. 31. It was the sentence upon Eve, that, though she should have the honour to be the mother of all living, yet this mortification shall be an allay to that honour, that her desire shall be to her husband, and he shall rule over her, Gen 3 16. But Mary has the honour without the allay.

2. Though she lives in poverty and obscurity, yet she shall have the honour to be the mother of the Messiah; her son shall be named Jesus—a Saviour, such a one as the world needs, rather than such one as the Jews expect.

John MacArthur introduces us to verses 31 through 33:

So down comes the divine messenger to the divine choice, bringing divine blessing, and announcing in verses 31 to 33 the divine child.  The fourth point, the divine child, and here for the first time she finds out what this work of God, this gracious work of God in her life is going to be …

The announcement comes, “Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a Son and you shall name Him Jesus.”  Finally the statement comes. If she was shocked at his initial statement, “Hail, favored one, the Lord is with you,” if that was hard for her to grasp and if she was greatly troubled at that and kept pondering what that meant, what in the world was her reaction when the angel said to her you’re going to conceive in your womb? …

In what the angel says you have a summation of the righteous life, saving death, and glorious reign of Jesus Christ all summed up.  There is so much that can be said about each of those that it’s very hard to just leave anything out. That is, however, my assignment. I’ll make an effort at it.

First of all, the angel introduces something of His saving death in the name Jesus, Yeshua [also Joshua], a familiar Hebrew name in Old Testament times, a common one.  It means “Jehovah saves.”  The God of the Old Testament was a God of salvation and the people knew it.  God is a saving God.  He saves sinners.  That’s exactly why Jesus came.  Luke 19:10, “The Son of Man has come to seek and to save that which was lost.”  Matthew 1:21, “You shall call His name Jesus, for it is He who will save His people from their sins.”  Luke chapter 2 verse 11, “Today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior who is Christ the Lord.”  Chapter 2 of Luke over in verse 30 where Simeon is praising God, holding the child, he says, “Mine eyes have seen Thy salvation.”  And verse 38, at that very moment, that widow, 84-year-old widow came up and began giving thanks to God, continued to speak of Him to all those who were looking for the salvation or redemption of Jerusalem.  “Jesus Christ has come into the world,” Paul said to Timothy, “to save sinners of whom I am chief.”

As you read the New Testament, you read through the four gospels, read through the book of Acts, read through the epistles of Paul and Peter and James and John and Jude, read the great epistle to the Hebrews and finish with the book of Revelation, as you go through all of that, the theme is the saving work of Jesus Christ. The dominant theme is that He came to save sinners, to save sinners.  Jesus means “the Lord is salvation.”  Salvation is not a foreign thing to God.  It is not a reluctant work.  It is an expression of His very essence.  Mary’s Son would be the Savior and the only way He could save us from our sins was to die in our place.  So bound up in the word “Jesus” is His saving death.

Gabriel said that Jesus would be great, He would be called Son of the Most High and that the Lord God would give Him the throne of His ancestor David (verse 32).

Gabriel said that He would reign over the house of Jacob forever and of His kingdom there would be no end (verse 33).

Henry says:

(1.) He will be very nearly allied to the upper world. He shall be great, truly great, incontestably great; for he shall be called the Son of the Highest, the Son of God who is the Highest; of the same nature, as the son is of the same nature with the father; and very dear to him, as the son is to the father …

(2.) He will be very highly preferred in the lower world; for, though born under the most disadvantageous circumstances possible, and appearing in the form of a servant, yet the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David, v. 32. He puts her in mind that she was of the house of David; and that therefore, since neither the Salique law, nor the right of primogeniture, took place in the entail of his throne, it was not impossible but that she might bring forth an heir to it, and therefore might the more easily believe it when she was told by an angel from heaven that she should do so, that after the sceptre had been long departed from that ancient and honourable family it should now at length return to it again, to remain in it, not by succession, but in the same hand to eternity. His people will not give him that throne, will not acknowledge his right to rule them; but the Lord God shall give him a right to rule them, and set him as his king upon the holy hill of Zion. He assures her, [1.] That his kingdom shall be spiritual: he shall reign over the house of Jacob, not Israel according to the flesh, for they neither came into his interests nor did they continue long a people; it must therefore be a spiritual kingdom, the house of Israel according to the promise, that he must rule over. [2.] That it shall be eternal: he shall reign for ever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end, as there had been long since of the temporal reign of David’s house, and would shortly be of the state of Israel. Other crowns endure not to every generation, but Christ’s doth, Prov 27 24. The gospel is the last dispensation, we are to look for no other.

Henry mentions Salique — Salic — law in his second point. Salic Law prohibited women from inheriting a throne, a title or land. This, Henry says, was not part of our Lord’s conception. Mary would bear that privilege and honour.

MacArthur focusses on the accolades that the Christ Child would receive in His maturity:

… the angel says in verse 32, “He will be great.”  I…again I’m amazed at the understatement of that.  You know, we say that about all kinds of things.  We say to people, “Have a great day. Boy! That was a great sandwich.”  You know, we tend to trivialize all the…all the language, don’t we, and then we’ve got to stack on endless adjectives to make anything sort of rise above the mundane.

The angel says He will be great and that’s all it says.  Now, you could translate that extraordinary, might be a little better, splendid, that might be a little better, magnificent, noble, distinguished, powerful, eminent, all of those could be substituted for great.  But they still leave us far short of what should be said about Him, and this is looking at His…His righteous life, His life.  Jesus, the name, looks at His death, “great” looks at his life.  It speaks of His extraordinary life.

How are we to understand what it means because it says back in verse 15 that John the Baptist will be great?  Is this the same greatness?  Well, verse 15 says John will be great in the sight of the Lord.  John will be great, however, with a sort of imputed greatness.  God will give to Him a greatness that really isn’t His own, it’s something God gives to Him, grants to Him.  But Jesus’ greatness is something not granted to Him but possessed by Him.  It is an unqualified greatness.  It doesn’t say He’ll be great in the sight of the Lord, it says He’ll be great.

His greatness is best understood if we look at John 12:41, I think this will give you a clear indication of what it really means.  It’s synonymous with this, in John 12:41 John is writing and he writes about Christ as fulfilling a prophecy in Isaiah from Isaiah 6. And then in verse 41 he says, “These things Isaiah said because he saw His glory and he spoke of Him.”  Boy, what a statement.

John tells us that Isaiah saw the glory of the One he spoke about.  Who did he speak about?  He spoke about Christ, the One who would be Immanuel, God with us, born of a virgin.  Isaiah said that in Isaiah 7:14.  In Isaiah 9:6 and 7 Isaiah said, “A Son will be born, a child will come, the government will be upon His shoulders, His name will be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Father of eternity, the Prince of peace,” and so forth.  Isaiah saw that coming Messiah.  He saw that coming Messiah.

But notice, he not only spoke of Him, he saw His glory.  When did Isaiah see the glory of Messiah?  I’ll tell you when, in Isaiah 6 when he saw the glory of God, it’s the same glory.  You remember that Isaiah chapter 6 indicates that Isaiah went into the temple and when he was there he received a vision, he saw the Lord high and lifted up and His glory filled the temple, remember, and the angels began to shout, “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts, the whole earth is full of His glory,” and he was caught up in the momentous, magnificence, and terror of that revelation of God’s glory.  Listen, when Isaiah saw the glory of God, he saw the glory of Christ because the glory of Christ is the same as the glory of God.  That’s why John 1:14 says, “And we beheld. . .” It says, “The Word became flesh and we beheld (His what?) His glory and it was the glory as of the only begotten of the Father.”  It was the same glory that Isaiah saw, the same glory the apostles saw, Matthew 17, on the Mount of Transfiguration when they saw Christ’s glory shining through His humanity and they fell like dead men to the ground in terror.

Unbelievers laugh, but one day they will come face to face with the living Christ. It won’t be a laughing matter then.

MacArthur continues:

Glory is the manifestation of divine attributes.  When it says in verse 32 He will be great, it means He will manifest glory, He will manifest the very glory of God.  That is to say you will see the attributes of God through His perfectly righteous life.  You will see God displayed.  He will talk like God, He will act like God. He will think like God, He will be great like God is great.  He will be glorious.

... We’re going to see it all, revealed in this child.

… His essential nature is further described in verse 32, “He’ll be called the Son of the Most High.”  Now we could… We could do a whole Bible study on “the Most High.”

You say, “What does that mean?”  Not that tough, is it?  The Most High means there’s nobody higher.  That was a title for God.  It was a familiar Jewish title for God; it’s used all over the Old Testament.  In fact, the Hebrew equivalent of this Greek term hupsistos, the Hebrew equivalent is El Elyon, God Most High.  It is a name for God that refers to sovereignty.  No one is higher.  No one is more exalted.  No one is more powerful.  No one is as sovereign, God Most High.

The Jews often referred to Him that way.  Not wanting to say His name, not wanting to use the tetragrammaton, Yahweh, they would say El Shaddai, El Elyon, El Makadeshkim, or some other description of His attributes.  They knew Him often as the Most High God.  

… Even Jesus referred to His Father as the Most High.  When Stephen was preaching his great sermon in the 7^th chapter of Acts, he referred to God as the Most High, a very familiar term for God, used all through the Old Testament, in the Pentateuch, as well as in the historical writings, as well as in the Psalms, as well as in the prophets.  It’s everywhere, God Most High.

To identify Jesus, back to our text, as the Son of the Most High is to indicate that He has the same essence as the Most High.  When you are the son of someone you bear their same essence.  He is the Son of the Most High. He is one in essence with the Most High God.  Hebrews 1:3 says that He, being Christ, is the exact reproduction of God, the exact reproduction of God.  He is the Son of the Most High.  Jesus said, “If you’ve seen Me you’ve seen the Father.”  Jesus said, “I and the Father are one.”

Beloved, that is a statement that is without possibility of misunderstanding to anyone who reads the New Testament with an open mind.

Mary, understandably perplexed, asked how any of this could be since she was a virgin (verse 34).

Henry explains:

It is a just enquiry which she makes: “How shall this be? v. 34. How can I now presently conceive a child” (for so the angel meant) “when I know not a man; must it therefore be otherwise than by ordinary generation? If so, let me now how?” She knew that the Messiah must be born of a virgin; and, if she must be his mother, she desires to know how. This was not the language of her distrust, or any doubt of what the angel said, but of a desire to be further instructed.

MacArthur puts himself into Mary’s frame of mind:

I can’t know for sure what her thoughts were but maybe she thought, “Well, maybe this is going to happen after we’re married, after Joseph and I are finally married, after the marriage feast is over and the marriage is consummated, maybe it’s going to happen then.”  Surely it couldn’t be that there’s some other man, she couldn’t think like that.  But never would the thought initially have entered her mind that she was going to have a child in her womb without a man involved.  You will conceive in your womb and bear a Son.  That is amazing.

Gabriel replied, saying that the Holy Spirit would come upon her, that the power of the Most High would overshadow her, therefore, the child to be born will be holy; He will be called the Son of God (verse 35).

Henry’s Bible has the verse as follows:

35 And the angel answered and said unto her, 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.

Henry explains:

It is a satisfactory answer that is given to it, v. 35. (1.) She shall conceive by the power of the Holy Ghost, whose proper work and office is to sanctify, and therefore to sanctify the virgin for this purpose. The Holy Ghost is called the power of the Highest. Doth she ask how this shall be? This is enough to help her over all the difficulty there appears in it; a divine power will undertake it, not the power of an angel employed in it, as in other works of wonder, but the power of the Holy Ghost himself.

(2.) She must ask no questions concerning the way and manner how it shall be wrought; for the Holy Ghost, as the power of the Highest, shall overshadow her, as the cloud covered the tabernacle when the glory of God took possession of it, to conceal it from those that would too curiously observe the motions of it, and pry into the mystery of it. The formation of every babe in the womb, and the entrance of the spirit of life into it, is a mystery in nature; none knows the way of the spirit, nor how the bones are formed in the womb of her that is with child, Eccl 11 5. We were made in secret, Ps 139 15, 16. Much more was the formation of the child Jesus a mystery; without controversy, great was the mystery of godliness, God manifest in the flesh, 1 Tim 3 16. It is a new thing created in the earth (Jer 31 22), concerning which we must not covet to be wise above what is written.

(3.) The child she shall conceive is a holy thing, and therefore must not be conceived by ordinary generation, because he must not share in the common corruption and pollution of the human nature. He is spoken of emphatically, That Holy Thing, such as never was; and he shall be called the Son of God, as the Son of the Father by eternal generation, as an indication of which he shall now be formed by the Holy Ghost in the present conception. His human nature must be so produced, as it was fit that should be which was to be taken into union with the divine nature.

MacArthur brings us back to Isaiah:

It had been prophesied.  Isaiah 7:14, “A virgin shall conceive and bear a Son and you shall call His name Immanuel, God with us.”  A virgin will conceive and have a Son who is God with us.  Boy, that’s pretty explicit.

And the words of the angel in verse 31 are a direct quote from the Greek translation of Isaiah 7:14.  The prophet said there will come a day when God will be born in a virgin.

Luke does not specifically refer back to the Isaiah prophecy, but Matthew does in his account.  In Matthew chapter 1 Joseph found out about this.  Joseph found out Mary was pregnant.  His initial reaction was devastation, devastation. How could she do this? How could this young 13-year-old or so, how could she do this?  Joseph himself may be the same age, or 14.  How could she do this?  And we have been betrothed and it’s not consistent with what I know about Mary, it’s not consistent with her love for God, it’s not consistent with her character.  How can this be?  In verse 19 of Matthew 1, “Joseph, her husband, being a righteous man,” hmm, he, too, was one who loved God, didn’t want to disgrace her, “desired to put her away secretly,” desired to divorce her.  Remember, I told you that once they were betrothed it was a legally binding agreement, and if it was violated or broken, it was considered a divorce.  But when he was thinking about how he was going to do this, and in the grief and anguish and confusion of his mind, asking himself, how in the world she became pregnant?…“An angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, the son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for that which has been conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit and she will bear a Son and you shall call His name Jesus for it’s He who will save His people from their sins.”  And the angel had to give Joseph essentially the same message.

This was a fulfillment of Isaiah.  

In his next sermon on this passage, MacArthur looks at what the Jews of that era envisaged of the Messiah:

Now the Jewish leaders believed that the Messiah, when He came — they were looking for their deliverer, their Messiah — they believed that when He came He would be a Son of David, that He would come in the royal line, that was pretty obvious.  Going back to 2 Samuel 7 it would be one of David’s greater sons who could come to be the King and the Messiah.  They believed that the Messiah would be in the line of David, He would have royal blood.  But it was not a widespread belief, if even a popular belief, that He would be God.

In fact, when Jesus said He was Son of David, that wasn’t a problem.  But when Jesus said He was Son of God that was a problem.  Jesus could say He was Son of Man all He wanted.  Jesus could say He was Son of David all He wanted because they could trace His lineage and that’s why Matthew chapter 1 gives His lineage as coming from David, and Luke chapter 3 gives the lineage of Mary coming from David.  They didn’t argue that He was a Son of Man, human.  They didn’t argue that He was a Son of David, royal blood.  But when He said He was the Son of God, they killed Him.  So, far from expecting their Messiah to be the Son of God, that disqualified him.

MacArthur then looks at what today’s clergy believe — or not — about the virgin birth. He delivered this sermon in 1999, but the rot had already started in the 1980s with an Anglican bishop proclaiming at the time that there was no such thing:

Let me tell you something about the Christian faith.  It is predicated on the fact that God was conceived and born in a human womb.  That’s the incarnation.  And that is the foundation of Christianity.  If you tamper with that, you tamper with the nature of Jesus Christ and if you come up with any other than the Christ of the New Testament, you have a false religion.  If anybody, Paul said, preaches any other Jesus, let him be accursed.  It is a damnable lie to assault the virgin conception, virgin birth and the nature of Jesus as the God-Man.  And anybody who does it is propagating a damnable lie.

If you say that Jesus is a man and only a man, if you say that He is a good man, a noble man, a religious leader, a prophet, if you say that Jesus is a created angel, if you say He was molded and shaped by God in the sense that He was an angelic spirit, if you say anything other than that He was the God-Man, you have pronounced upon yourself a curse.  All of the Christian faith is built upon the nature of Jesus as the God-Man which is defined from this conception.  In order to be the Son of God, He had to be born of God.  In order to be the Son of Man, He had to be born of a woman.  And that’s precisely what happened.  God came in human flesh …

The last survey that I saw of seminaries in America and it’s probably better than in Europe where almost all those schools, well, I suppose nearly all of them are liberal, but the last survey I saw in America indicated that something around 50 percent of students in Protestant seminaries in America believe in the virgin conception and birth of Jesus Christ.  These are men, supposedly, in training for Christian ministry.  But if you deny the virgin conception of Jesus Christ, you’re not a Christian and that’s not Christianity.

We know that something around 50 percent of the people in the major Christian denominations affirm belief in the virgin birth, the rest do not.

MacArthur cites a lengthy selection of Bible verses to support the Immaculate Conception and virgin birth, ending with John 1:

… John 1, that “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory.”  And in John 12:41 it says, “Isaiah saw His glory and spoke of Him.”  Isaiah saw the Messiah and saw that He would bear the glory of God.

So, if you think that somebody just invented the virgin birth, if you think that some people just trumped it up to sort of elevate Jesus above the hoi polloi, guess again.  The Old Testament said it would come, the Trinity makes it a reality, and the very nature and work of Jesus Christ demands it.  This is the foundation of the virgin birth.

After Mary and Joseph married, MacArthur points out New Testament references to their own children:

Matthew chapter 1 verse 24, “Joseph arose from his sleep after the angel had announced in his dream that she was going to have a child who would be God.  He did as the angel of the Lord commanded him, took her as his wife, and kept her a virgin.”  Forever?  No.  “Until she gave birth to Jesus.”  He kept her a virgin until she gave birth to Jesus.  After that she had a lot of children.  Matthew 12 verse 46, “While Jesus was speaking to the multitudes, His mother and brothers were standing outside seeking to speak to Him.  And someone said to Him, ‘Behold, Your mother and your brothers are standing outside seeking to speak to You.'”  He had a family of brothers. They were half-brothers in the sense that He Himself was not a son of Joseph, but they were in the same family, they were born to Mary.  They’re even identified.  Matthew 13:55, Jesus is teaching in the synagogue and the people say, “Is not this the carpenter’s son?”  Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?  “And is not His mother called Mary and His brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas, and His sisters, are they not all with us?”  We don’t know how many children that Mary and Joseph had, but after Jesus was born Mary and Joseph had both boys and girls, a full family.  John 7 verse 3, verse 5, verse 10 talks about Jesus’ brothers.

That did take place.  She did get married.  They did have children. 

Returning to today’s Gospel, Gabriel told Mary of her ageing relative Elizabeth who had also conceived a son; she, who had been barren, was in her sixth month (verse 36).

Henry tells us that this and the Old Testament instances of barren women bearing children points to the expecation of the virgin birth of Christ:

Here is an age of wonders beginning, and therefore be not surprised: here is one among thy own relations truly great, though not altogether so great as this; it is usual with God to advance in working wonders. Greater works than these shall ye do. Though Elisabeth was, on the father’s side, of the daughters of Aaron (v. 5), yet on the mother’s side she might be of the house of David, for those two families often intermarried, as an earnest of the uniting of the royalty and the priesthood of the Messiah. This is the sixth month with her that was called barren. This intimates, as Dr. Lightfoot thinks, that all the instances in the Old Testament of those having children that had been long barren, which was above nature, were designed to prepare the world for the belief of a virgin’s bearing a son, which was against nature. And therefore, even in the birth of Isaac, Abraham saw Christ’s day, foresaw such a miracle in the birth of Christ.

MacArthur says that Mary probably found out about Elizabeth’s pregnancy for the first time via Gabriel. This was probably meant to indicate to her that these miracles happened in the distant past and were now happening with her and a family member, too:

Now this probably came to Mary for the first time.  She has a relative. Some translations say…use the word “cousin” but really you can’t be that specific with the Greek term.  She was a relative.  She had a relative, an old relative.  Now remember, this is a 13-year-old girl or so and she’s got an old relative who’s in her 70s or so and she knows Elizabeth and her husband Zacharias and she knows that she has been barren, which is the greatest stigma a Jewish woman could have, never to have had a child.  And Elizabeth has conceived a son in her old age …

But the angel says, “Behold!” explanation point, “your relative Elizabeth.”  Just a little footnote on that.  Elizabeth, according to verse 5 of chapter 1, was a daughter of Aaron, so she came through Aaron’s line, the priestly line.  Mary was a descendant of David as the genealogy in chapter 3 will demonstrate.  So Mary would have been related to Elizabeth through her mother, who would have been in Aaron’s line and she would have been a descendant of David through her father.  So this was a relative on her mother’s side, the Aaron side.  As the genealogy will show, her father’s side was the side of David’s line.

So this relative becomes a sign for her.  The miracle was a miracle of conception.  It wasn’t a virgin conception, it was just that God allowed two old people who had been married all those years and now were not only barren but beyond the capability of having children, to conceive and have a child.  And remember, miracles didn’t happen, but Elizabeth is now … six months pregnant.  She hid herself for the first five months.  Back in verse 24 it says that she hid herself, kept herself in seclusion for five months after she became pregnant.  Zacharias, you remember, came home from his priestly duty and they got together and she became pregnant and she stayed in seclusion for five months because if she had come out and wasn’t in evidence, they wore those kind of drapy things, and if she went around saying, “I’m pregnant,” they would have put her in an asylum.  But when she showed up six months pregnant, there wasn’t much to argue with.

She’s in her six months, pregnancy, wonderful, affirming miracle has already been done by God.  You don’t need to wonder about it, you can go and visit your relative.  And verse 39 says she did immediately, she went with haste.  I mean, this was overwhelming to her and she would…she wanted to know what it was like to be pregnant under miraculous conditions. And so she entered the house of Zacharias, verse 40 says, and greeted Elizabeth. 

Gabriel concluded by saying that nothing will be impossible with God (verse 37).

Henry says:

The angel assures Mary of this, to encourage her faith, and concludes with that great truth, of undoubted certainty and universal use, For with God nothing shall be impossible (v. 37), and, if nothing, then not this. Abraham therefore staggered not at the belief of the divine promise, because he was strong in his belief of the divine power, Rom 4 20, 21. No word of God must be incredible to us, as long as no work of God is impossible to him.

MacArthur says that Gabriel was quoting Genesis 18:

She had the faith. She wasn’t doubting. But this was just an anchor for her faith.

So the supplication, the strategy, the sign, and then a comment on the sovereignty.  It’s one thing to say it’s going to happen, and something else to be able to do it.  And wonderfully verse 37 is just dropped in there, “For nothing will be impossible with God.”  And, you know, in Mary’s mind what’s going around in there, this is impossible, this is…this is not possible, this is…how can this be, and she is reminded that nothing is impossible with God.  And Elizabeth’s pregnancy proves it and Mary’s conception proves it.  This is God’s great, limitless power at work.

By the way, Luke is just such a wonderful historian.  Sometimes he’s rather blatant, and sometimes he’s rather subtle.  This time he’s pretty subtle here because verse 37 is actually borrowed from Genesis 18.  It’s really… It’s really taken out of that verse.  And the story in Genesis 18 is the story, you remember, of the birth of Isaac, similar situation, a miracle birth.

Luke has a wonderful way of weaving these in.  And this case, of course, Gabriel also is a part of all of this and the whole of redemptive history just kind of flows together wonderfully.  And Gabriel takes Mary back to Genesis 18, back to Abraham and Sarah.  You remember they were old and they were beyond child-bearing years, and Abraham is 100 and she’s 90 and they’ve never been able to have children.  And God says you’re going to have a son and Sarah laughs.  It’s…Abraham and Sarah, it’s impossible, it can’t happen and she laughs.  Verse 12, “She laughed to herself saying, ‘I’ve become so old, shall I have pleasure, my lord being old also?”  I mean, this isn’t going to happen.  I’m beyond all this.  “Shall I indeed,” verse 13, “bear a child when I’m so old?”  Verse 14, then comes the question,