A Virgin Gives Birth
A Virgin Gives Birth
Genesis 3:15; Isaiah 7:14; Matthew 2:18-23; Luke 1:26-38
We love the stories of Christmas, and we tell them every year. For Christians ... I should say, for most Christians, the Christmas story is precious and beautiful. It is the custom in our family that the reading of the Christmas story comes almost first. We dress, eat breakfast, and then gather around the tree. But before anything under the tree is opened, we read the Scripture. We read of the angelic announcement and of the journey to Bethlehem. We read about the birth and the shepherds’ visit. And we read about the journey of the Magi. “Tell me the story of Jesus; write on my heart every word. Tell me the story most precious, sweetest that ever was heard. Tell how the angels, in chorus, sang as they welcomed His birth: “Glory to God in the highest! Peace and good tidings to earth.”1 We want to tell it until it becomes part of us.
But there are parts of the story that are a bit controversial. Some people find them unbelievable. They will tell us that such things are impossible. No real star moves in such a way that the Magi could follow it to a place where it “rests.” And this one: it is impossible for a virgin to give birth. They want to suggest that Joseph and Mary actually had adulterous relations and concocted the virgin story to cover up their sin. The critics want to dethrone Jesus and make him just another man. And actually, it’s easier for them, then, because they are able to deny all the rest of the miracles and pretend that Jesus was just an enlightened man or some great moral teacher. But it’s more than the miracles they have to dismiss; it’s Jesus’ own words. In fact, to concoct the sort of Jesus they want, they have to essentially dismiss Jesus completely. They want salvation without a Savior; truth without a truth-teller; and law without a judge. The denials of the skeptics don’t just de-fang Jesus, they destroy the very foundation of Christianity itself. It begins with the virgin birth. If they can disprove that, they can take down the rest of the edifice. So that’s fundamental.
We read the account of Luke, but we need to go back to the beginning. Usually, we’d begin with Isaiah 7, but it starts way before that. We need to go all the way back to Genesis, chapter 3, the story of the fall of man.
In the creation account of Genesis 2, God plants a garden and places man in the garden as a caretaker, giving the man charge (dominion) of the garden. Dominion does not mean exploitation; it means custodianship. Man was to care for the garden. In that garden, God places trees for fruit, but two trees, in particular, are of interest. The first, God calls the Tree of Life, which is not mentioned until the last verse of chapter 3. The second, God calls the Tree of Knowledge - the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and commands that man must not eat its fruit on penalty of death. God then, seeing that man needed companionship, created woman, and performed the first marriage.
Notice that the command was given to the man. As custodian of the garden, it would have been his duty, then, to instruct his wife regarding the poison tree, which he does. His wife, Eve, knows the command and repeats it back to the serpent in Genesis 3:3, “God did say, ‘You must not eat fruit from the tree that is in the middle of the garden and you must not touch it, or you will die.’” The serpent causes her to doubt the truth of what she has been taught, and persuaded by the serpent, she takes the fruit and eats it. Now, note the last half of verse 6, She also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate it. Adam taught her. She knew the command. She disobeyed in the presence of her husband and, rather than stopping her, he participated with her in disobeying God’s command. And God pronounces a curse of corruption on the earth, and the curse of death upon mankind.
But, tucked in the middle of the curse is a promise. It’s part of the curse on the tempter (verse 15): “and I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and hers; he will crush your head, and you will strike his heel.” It may not seem like much on first glance, but we must note that it is not the seed of the man, but the seed of the woman. The victorious offspring will be the offspring of a woman, not the offspring of a man. The Greek Septuagint reads, “Between the seed of you and the seed of her.”
Now we must move forward to Isaiah. From Eve in the Garden, through the days of Abraham, through the Egyptian slavery and the Exodus, past the judges and into the age of the kings. In the year that King Uzziah died, Isaiah wrote, “I saw the Lord ...” (Is 6:1). Uzziah, or Ahaziah, was the tenth king of Judah, and the only king Isaiah had known up to this point. Uzziah reigned 52 years and died in the year 740 BC. Isaiah recounts his vision and commission in chapter 6 and then is silent for nearly a decade before he speaks again, this time to Uzziah’s grandson, King Ahaz. It was an emergency. The kings of Aram and Israel marched against Jerusalem, intending to divide Judah between them. God sent Isaiah to Ahaz to encourage him that their plot would fail, but “If you do not stand firm in your faith, you will not stand at all” (Is 7:9). Isaiah tells the king to ask God for a sign as proof of the promise, but Ahaz declines, “I will not ask; I will not put the LORD to the test.”
“You’re trying God’s patience,” Isaiah warned, “but God is going to give you a sign anyway.” And the sign is this: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel.” (Is 7:14-15). I wonder, first of all, if Isaiah knew what he was saying, or if he knew that what he was saying was impossible. The virgin will conceive and give birth. It simply doesn’t happen that way.
But I want you to note a couple things about this strange prophecy. First, it says, the virgin, a specific one. This is to be a miraculous sign from God. But it’s the word virgin that is the real problem. In an attempt to dismiss the miracle here, some critics, skeptics, and theologians have proposed that Isaiah actually said maiden, or young woman. But there are several problems with that. Not least is the laws regarding adultery in Deuteronomy 22. If a man married a woman and suspected that she had not been a virgin at the time of their marriage, there was to be a trial of sorts, and if she were found to have not been a virgin – let me read the penalty: verse 21 - she shall be brought to the door of her father’s house and there the men of her town shall stone her to death. She has done an outrageous thing in Israel by being promiscuous while still in her father’s house. A maiden, young woman, unmarried, was essentially the same as a virgin. Whatever word you choose, if she were not, she would be stoned to death for such a violation.
Add to that, that the Hebrew translators of the Greek Septuagint chose the word parthenos to translate the Hebrew word. They had three words to choose from: koré (kovrh), meaning girl or maiden; νεαρή γυναίκα (neare gunaika), meaning young woman; or παρθένα (parthena), meaning virgin, and they chose the latter. They did not mean maiden or young woman, nor did Isaiah mean those things. He, and they, meant virgin. Isaiah’s strange prophecy was about the seed of a woman where no man was involved.
Now, we move forward in time, again, to the story Luke tells. By the way, when we treat these accounts as mere “story,” we do them incredible disservice. Just by calling them “story,” we almost relegate them to the realm of fiction. They are nice stories but they are just that. No, they are historical accounts; real events that we are relating and remembering. When I tell stories of my childhood, I’m not making things up. I may not always get it right, but I am remembering actual events. This is not mere “story.” This is our history. Luke tells us as much when he begins, Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us by those who were from the first eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account ... This is an account of actual events, gleaned from investigating the memories of eyewitnesses.
We read the text, so I don’t need to go through it all again, but just to focus on what Gabriel said to Mary and then Mary’s response.
Gabriel tells Mary, “You will conceive and give birth to a son, and you are to call him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.” Here is the prediction of her conception and giving birth. So far, not so interesting. God told Sarah the same thing in her old age (not the part about the name and so forth). She was well past child-bearing age when the angel of God told Abraham that she was going to have a child. In Genesis 17:17, we read that Abraham fell face-down and laughed, “Will a son be born to a man a hundred years old? Will Sarah bear a child at the age of ninety?” He didn’t believe such a thing was possible and tried to make Ishmael the fulfillment of the promise. But God had promised and was faithful to his promise, so that we read in Genesis 21:1 that the LORD was gracious to Sarah as he had said, and the LORD did for Sarah what he had promised. Sarah became pregnant and bore a son to Abraham in his old age.
God promised Hannah the same thing. Elkanah had two wives (not a recommendation, just a fact). One, Peninnah, had children. The other, Hannah, was barren, and the object of Peninnah’s ridicule because of it. In her torment, Hannah went to the tabernacle in Shiloh. In her deep anguish Hannah prayed to the LORD, weeping bitterly, asking God for a son. The old priest, Eli, told her that she could “go in peace, and may the God of Israel grant you what you have asked of him” (1 Sam 1:17). Verse 19 tells us that the LORD remembered her. So in the course of time Hannah became pregnant and gave birth to a son.
And, lest Mary doubt any further, the angel told her that her relative Elizabeth, barren and well along in years was pregnant and expecting a son (Lk 1:24). So, what was holding Mary back? And here’s the heart of the issue: Mary’s answer to Gabriel. “How can this be,” Mary asked the angel, “since I am a virgin?” The NIV is interpreting for us here rather than translating. I suppose the translators thought they were being modest or helpful, but they aren’t. Because those who don’t know the Greek start to argue again over that word virgin. But that’s not really what Mary said. She did not say, “I am a virgin” (parthenos). She said ... I’ll read it to you in the Greek and then translate for you so you hear it clearly. Mary said “ἐπεὶ ἄνδρα οὐ γινώσκω.” “Because I have not known a man.” Or, “Since I have never been with a man.” Her question is a fair one, based in reality. Even as a young teenager, Mary knew the facts of life. Pregnancy takes two – a man and a woman, and she was only one. How was she going to conceive and bear a child all by herself?
Remember Genesis 3:16 – the seed of a woman?
Remember Isaiah 7:14 – the strange prediction of a virgin bearing a child?
How? The angel answered, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.”
I love the skeptics’ argument that God can’t. They look at creation and say, “God couldn’t have done all this in six days.” I only wonder why God took so long. Who are we to say “God can’t”? You must have an awfully small, weak God to think that God can’t. The only thing God can’t do is be untrue to himself. Mary must have looked skeptical, because the angel reminded her that no word from God can fail. When Abraham doubted, the angel asked him, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” (Gen 18:14). Jeremiah thought the enemy looked to formidable, but God asked, “I am the Lord, the God of all mankind. Is anything too hard for me?” (Jer 32:27).
The remedy for Adam’s sin was the seed of a woman. That child would crush the serpent’s head and bring healing to the nations. The promise of God’s faithfulness to Ahaz was that a virgin would conceive and bear a son who would judge between right and wrong. The one who would overcome sin and set man on the path to reconciliation with the God he had offended was One born of a teenager who had never been with a man. From the moment man disobeyed, from the moment sin and death entered the world, from the moment of the curse, God promised a redeemer.
As impossible as it sounds, God always keeps his promises. There is a Savior. “You are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins” (Mt 1:21). “And they will call him Immanuel, ‘God with us.’” There is a Savior.
1 Fanny Crosby, 1880 (pd)