Conception
Announcement from God
Birth announcements are common in our day and
age. However, I am not aware of anyone
ever sending forth a conception announcement, especially before that
conception has happened. God does not do things the way humans
do things. This conception announcement of Luke
1:26-38 is unique. It is unique because
it gives details of the baby to be conceived that go far beyond anything any
person might be able to imagine regarding a future child and that child’s
future. Every aspect of this conception
announcement is connected to fulfilments of prophecies both in the birth of
Jesus and His future accomplishments extending into the New Heaven/Earth.
Nine different specific prophesies
are to be fulfilled in the conception and life of Jesus as announced by the
angel Gabriel to Mary in Luke 1:26-38. There were many other prophesies
fulfilled by Jesus, but these nine encompass all of the others. The
Jesus in which you rest your faith MUST BE the Jesus of the Bible.
“26 And in the sixth month {Hebrew calendar month
Elul: sometime in August/September; if this was the time of conception, Jesus
would have been born nine months later in April/May closer to time of Passover}
the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, 27
To a virgin1 espoused {perfect, passive, participle} to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David2; and the virgin’s
name was Mary. 28 And the angel came in unto her, and said,
Hail, thou that art highly favoured, the Lord is with thee: blessed
art thou among women. 29 And when she saw him, she was
troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this
should be. 30 And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou
hast found favour with God. 31 And, behold, thou shalt conceive in
thy womb, and bring forth a
son3, and shalt call his name JESUS4. 32 He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest5: and the Lord
God shall give unto him the throne of his father David6: 33 And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever7; and of his
kingdom there shall be no end8. 34 Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing
I know not a man? 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 God9. 36 And, behold, thy cousin Elisabeth, she
hath also conceived a son in her old age: and this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren. 37
For with God nothing shall be
impossible {which extends far
beyond two miraculous pregnancies}. 38 And Mary said, Behold the
handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel
departed from her” (Luke 1:26-38).
Why is
there such animosity, mockery, and ridicule about the teaching of a virgin
conceiving a child? There is a subtle
undermining of “the faith” in all of this called Religious Humanism. Religious Humanism is a non-theistic ethical
cultural development which evolved into what today is called Political Correctness. Religious Humanism is a non-theistic religion demanding
a moral ethical code apart from any absolutes established by God in His inspired
Word (Relativism). Religious Humanism
would then develop into Secular Humanism as an ever-changing fluid view
of a constantly evolving cultural moral ethic. This eventually must develop into pure Amoralism,
i.e. nothing can be said to be right or wrong according to any theistic
absolutes. The foundation of Religious
Humanism began within professing Christianity with the questioning
of the verbal, plenary inspiration of the Word of God. This would evolve into Secular Humanism moving
many people into Atheism and the theory of Evolution abandoning the Bible as
little more than religious mythology.
Part of the evolution of Religious Humanism
was the attempt to explain the Bible in non-miraculous terms, which came to be
known as Naturalism. All the miraculous events of the
Bible had to be explained through natural means or be relegated to being just stories
that were mere myths or exaggerations. One
of these first denials was the denial of the miraculous virgin conception of
Jesus. Naturalism and Religious
Humanism were originally the outgrowths of varying degrees of theological liberalism,
which began with Higher Criticism and Lower Criticism.
Higher Criticism began to approach
the Bible as just another book written by human authors and inculcated with
human motives of the control of the masses of people by imposing the absolute
will of a god upon society. Although Higher
Criticism was presented to the world as merely a new scholarly and philosophical
approach to establishing the validity and trustworthiness of the Bible, its
covert agenda was intent upon undermining the authority of the Bible and
destroy any foundations for moral and doctrinal absolutism. Therefore, the foundation of Higher Criticism
is predominantly UNBELIEF. As corruption
always does, this came forth into professing Christianity at thousands of
levels and constant waves of new questions bringing ever increasing doubts
about the trustworthiness of the Scriptures.
Lower Criticism was presented as
the attempt to rediscover the original wording of the Bible texts.
Therefore, there is an undercurrent of unbelief in Lower Criticism in the
preservation of the inspired Words of God by God. This led to Textual Reconstructionism
through a system of subjective rules called Eclectic Textual Criticism. How do you spell Eclectic Textual Criticism? B O G U S!
Almost every new translation of the Bible into English since the
translation of King James Version has been translated from a corruption of the
Bible from one of the many variations of reconstructed texts through Eclectic
Textual Criticism done by people who do not even believe the Bible is the
inspired Words of God (latest Eclectic Text is NA25 UBS3
and they are still working on more revisions).
One of Liberalism’s first questions of doubt was aimed
at the validity of the Bible’s claim of a virgin conceiving a child from God
without a human father. This attacked Christianity at the
foundational level of the birth of a sinless Redeemer and salvation as a gift
from God received through faith in the finished propitiation of God’s wrath.
A Virgin (Luke 1:27)
“Therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign;
Behold, a {the} virgin shall conceive {while remaining a virgin},
and bear a son, and {the virgin; i.e., while still being a virgin; Matthew
1:25, ‘knew her not till she had brought forth her firstborn son’} shall
call his name Immanuel {Theanthropic
union}” (Isaiah 7:14).
The reason that the first line of
attack against the absolutes of the Bible was against the virgin
conception of Jesus is because the virgin conception of Jesus is an incredibly
important truth. However, without an
understanding of the spiritual significance of the purposes of God in
redemption of lost sinners spiritually blinded and living in the darkness of
spiritual ignorance, we could never grasp the necessity of a sinless Saviour
born into lost humanity. The spiritual
ramifications of the virgin conception of Jesus are incredibly simple. They are only complex because understanding
them is like describing a rainbow to a blind person who has no point of
reference as to what you describe. A
person living in the total absence of light with no knowledge of even the
concept of what light is certainly cannot grasp the concept of beauty in the
multiplicity of colors and shades of light.
This is the complexity involved in explaining the Gospel to lost people
spiritually blinded by sin. Blind people
are naturally skeptical about things intangible to their functioning
senses.
“1 Therefore seeing we
have this ministry, as we have received mercy, we faint not; 2 But
have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor
handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth
commending ourselves to every man’s conscience in the sight of God. 3 But
if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: 4 In whom the
god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest
the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should
shine unto them” (II Corinthians 4:1-4).
Why did Jesus need to be born into
humanity rather than merely appear as a thirty-year-old man in human form?
Jesus needed to be conceived and born into the humanity of the first
cursed creation to blast open a spiritual door of opportunity for
sinners to be “born again” out of this fallen genesis and into the New
Genesis. In this understanding, His
sinless life is as equally important as His substitutionary death for sinners. Jesus was “made {became}. . . to be
sin for us” (II Corinthians 5:21).
What this means is that Jesus took on a human sinless
body (union), lived a life of righteousness in that body, and then went
to the Cross of Calvary where God poured out all His wrath upon the sins of humanity
upon the body of Jesus. In the single once-for-all act
of His substitutionary crucifixion, the sinless One became “sin for us”
(II Corinthians 5:21) In doing this solely
by the grace of God, Jesus bore the full wrath of God on our sin in His body on
the tree (“propitiation”) so sinners could be provided a doorway out of this
cursed creation into the New Creation through “faith in His Blood”.
In the virgin conception of Jesus, His sinless life,
His vicarious death for sinners, and His resurrection from out of the dead, Jesus
literally blasted a spiritual door out of the condemnation of God’s cursed
first creation into the light of the glory of God’s New Creation. That doorway
of escape is also a doorway of entrance. A sinner enters through that doorway by
repenting of sin and “dead works,” and then resting in the accomplishments of
the death, burial, and resurrection of a sinless Saviour. This is the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Explaining this Gospel is the “ministry of
reconciliation” to which Paul speaks in II Corinthians 5:17-21. “To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the
world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath committed
unto us the word of reconciliation {the way out and the way in}”
(II Corinthians 5:19).
“1
Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me. 2 In my Father’s house are many mansions:
if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place
for you. 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come
again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be
also. 4 And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know. 5
Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we
know the way? 6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth,
and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me” (John 14:1-6).
The virgin conception of Jesus is as equally important
as the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus if we are to understand the
propitiation of God’s wrath upon sin “by grace” and the justification of sinners
“through faith.” Leading a sinner to the understanding of all of this
is what it means to lead a soul to Christ. Sinners must be led to the understanding of
this “light” because they are still spiritually blind to the light of the
Gospel. Therefore, even though the
spiritual light of the New Genesis is shining brightly through the door which is
Christ, sinners must be guided to the understanding of the existence of that
door and lead through that door by faith; repentance, belief, confession that
Jesus is LORD, calling on His Name to be “born again,” and receiving Jesus as
Lord in His indwelling Holy Spirit.
Without the virgin conception of Jesus, a sinless Savior
does not exist. If Jesus had an earthly father, He than would
also possess an inherent sin nature as all other mere humans (Romans 5:12). If Jesus is not sinless, He cannot
vicariously bear the sins of the world in His body because His death would simply
pay Hs own sin penalty (Romans 6:23) and God could not be vicariously
propitiated (I John 2:2). If Jesus did
not possess God-kind righteousness, He could not gift (impart; II Peter 1:4) God-kind
righteousness to the believing sinner in justification upon His death, burial, resurrection,
and glorification. Jesus was virgin born
into this cursed Genesis so that “by grace . . . through faith” in His life,
death, burial, and resurrection you can be “born again” into the New
Genesis.
“14 And the LORD God
said unto the {Satan in the} serpent, Because thou hast
done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of
the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days
of thy life: 15 And I will put enmity {hostility or warfare;
the ‘mystery of inequity’} between thee {Satan in the serpent and
his spiritual corruption of Adam’s seed by infecting Adam with a sin nature,
which Adam would pass on to every one of his descendants} and the woman,
and between thy seed {the corrupted nature/spirit of Adam of which Satan
and his emissaries seek to destroy with constant evil temptations contrary to
the righteousness of God thereby creating enmity and hostility between God and
humans} and her seed {the egg of the woman that does not pass the
sin nature forward, of which enmity is constantly mitigated and softened by God’s
redemptive love for humanity}; it {the seed of the woman and the
first promise of the sinless Messiah born without the ‘seed’ of man} shall bruise
{completely crush} thy head {satanic dominion over humanity in
that humanity has been infected seminally with the satanic nature of rebellion,
pride, which are the roots of all sin; the crushing of the satanic dominion of
the seminal passing of the sin nature would end in the progeny of the Messiah
born without the ‘seed’ of a fallen man providing an avenue for a new
primogeniture through the New Birth into ‘the regeneration’} and thou
{the serpent’s infective venom of a sin nature that insures all infected by
it with ultimate and painful death} shalt bruise his {the
seed of the woman, who is Messiah, born without the corrupted seed of a man}
heel {wound; refers to the crucifixion of Messiah, which is simply viewed
as the viper biting the heel of the person stepping on the serpent’s head to
destroy the serpent and end his threat to humanity. The resurrection of Jesus from the serpent’s
bite brought victory over the poison of the sin nature that infected all
humanity unto death. The FACT of Jesus
having been resurrection out from the dead is the declaration of victory over
Satan’s death-hold upon humanity offering every ‘born again’ person the blessed
hope of the surety of being resurrected out from the dead and glorified as was
Jesus glorified as the ‘firstborn’ into the New Genesis}” (Genesis 3:14-15).
Understanding
that Genesis 3:15 is referring to the “seed” of the woman without the corrupted
“seed” of fallen man to be the promised Messiah/Redeemer is certainly the
meaning of “the virgin” in Isaiah 7:14. Isaiah 7:14 is the explanation of Genesis
3:15. The historical context is a
warning to unbelieving king Ahaz.
“Therefore the Lord himself shall
give you a sign; Behold, a {the} virgin shall conceive {while
remaining a virgin}, and bear a son, and {the virgin; i.e., while still
being a virgin; Matthew 1:25, ‘knew her not till she had brought forth her
firstborn son’} shall call his name Immanuel {Theanthropic union}”
(Isaiah 7:14).
The historical context of Isaiah’s “sign”
of “the virgin” giving birth to a child that has no earthly father is said to
the wicked king Ahaz. Ahaz’s genealogical
future was rapidly being decimated and eradicated. It appeared as if the hope of the
continuation of the Davidic line reigning over Judah would end with Ahaz.
“Pekah slew 120,000 valiant men of Judah in one day, ‘because
they had forsaken the Lord God of their fathers,’ Zichri of Ephraim slew the
king’s son Maaseiah, and Azrikim the governor of his house, and Elkanah next to
the king. Israel carried captive 200,000, and much spoil, to Samaria.” [1]
Isaiah’s prophetic statement to Ahaz
was simply that God’s promise of the continuation of the Davidic throne would
not be through the “seed” of Ahaz, or through the “seed” of any other man for
that matter. The fulfilment of the Davidic
throne promise would be through the Messiah being born through the “seed” of “the
virgin.” No male descendant of
David would be required in the conception and birth of the promised Messiah!
How important then is belief in the
virgin conception to the Gospel of Christ?
The answer is unequivocal that without the virgin conception of Jesus
there can be no Gospel because without the virgin conception of Jesus we have
no Saviour. It is not enough that Jesus
was a good person. It is not even enough
that Jesus lived without sin all of His life.
If Jesus had an earthly father, Jesus received a sin nature from that
earthly father no matter who that earthly father might have been or from what genealogical
line that earthly father was descendant (Romans 5:12). Any compromise of the virgin conception of
Jesus is an attack at the foundation of the Gospel of Jesus Christ in that the
Gospel of Jesus Christ DEMANDS a sinless Saviour BOTH in the absence of acts of
sins and the absence of a sin nature. Christ
Jesus had to be a NEW KIND of man to become the primogeniture of a New Creation
of which He became the “firstborn” of this New Genesis.
“17 Therefore if any man
be {‘born again’} in Christ, he is a new creature:
old things are passed away; behold, all things are become {perfect –
once for all forever, active, indicative – a matter of fact} new {new
of a different kind}. 18 And all things are of God, who
hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the
ministry of reconciliation; 19 To wit, that God was in Christ,
reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them;
and hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation. 20 Now then
we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we
pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. 21 For
he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be
made the righteousness of God in him” (II Corinthians 5:17-21).
There can be no “new creation” or “new
creature” without a new, sinless “last Adam” (I Corinthians 15:45). The union of God and man must be restored in
true redemption and the ONLY way that can ever happen is for sinners to be “born
again” out of the cursed creation and into the New Creation “in Christ.” This is the indwelling of the Spirit of
Christ upon the event of being “born again” as a gift of grace received through
faith. The indwelling Holy Spirit is
the “seed” of the New Genesis “in Christ” that destines every “born again”
believer for a new body in the New Genesis.
All of this emphatically connects to the virgin conception of Jesus
and the birth of a new kind of human being where the union of God and man once
again becomes possible through the New Birth.
“35 But some man
will say, How are the dead raised up? and with what body do they come? 36
Thou fool, that which thou sowest is not quickened, except it die: 37
And that which thou sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall
be, but bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other grain: 38
But God giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, and to every seed his own
body. 39 All flesh is not the same flesh: but there is
one kind of flesh of men, another flesh of beasts, another of fishes, and
another of birds. 40 There are also celestial bodies, and
bodies terrestrial: but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory
of the terrestrial is another. 41 There is one
glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the
stars: for one star differeth from another star in glory. 42
So also is the resurrection of the dead. It is sown in corruption; it is
raised in incorruption: 43 It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in
glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power: 44 It is sown
a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body. There is a natural body, and
there is a spiritual body. 45 And so it is written, The first man
Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening
spirit. 46 Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual,
but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. 47
The first man is of the earth, earthy: the second man is the Lord
from heaven. 48 As is the earthy, such are they also
that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also
that are heavenly. 49 And as we have borne the image of the
earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly. 50 Now
this I say, brethren, that flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God;
neither doth corruption inherit incorruption” (I Corinthians 15:35-50).
[1] Fausset, Andrew Robert; Fausset’s
Bible Dictionary, SwordSearcher\Modules\Fausset.ss5book, Module
file time: 7/31/2011 7:15:26 PM UTC.
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Numerous studies and series are available free of charge for local churches at: http://www.disciplemakerministries.org/
Dr. Lance Ketchum serves the Lord as a Church Planter, Evangelist/Revivalist.
He has served the Lord for over 50 years.
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