Christmas is awesome, and yet it also brings this certain pressure that comes with it. Pressure to do the right things, to say the right things, to buy the right gifts. And with our kids a few years ago, we've got a dog, he's four years old, and four a few years ago, first Christmas with the dog. My kids decided, well, what are we getting the dog for Christmas? I was like, what? What do you mean? What are we getting the dog for Christmas? They're like, well, I mean, we don't wanna feel left out. Everybody else in the family's getting a present. Shouldn't the dog get a present too? And I said, I'm pretty sure he is not gonna feel left out. I I don't think he has any clue what is happening that morning. And yet we started getting a gift for our dog every year for Christmas. He has no clue, but he's excited. Nonetheless. He would also be excited if you just gave him some Skittles, but that's, that's what happens with a dog. But if you go to a pet store, you see all these different Christmas gifts for your pet, and then if you Google it now, that is something you Google pet animal gifts. And it, there's a whole world out there that exists. I, I brought a, a few of my favorites. This one is called goggles. So it's goggles for your dog, which if your dog's into skiing, I'm sure that those goggles would be fantastic. There's also a lady that her whole business idea is sunglasses for dogs. All different shapes, all different sizes. Here's one of 'em right here. Looks very cute. And now, with both of those pictures, here's what I'm thinking. There's zero chance that my dog would either let me put goggles or sunglasses on him, nor would they stay on his face for more than about 3.2 seconds. There's also, if your dog needs some stylist shoes, they make crocs for dogs, right? They're, and Crocs aren't the most attractive thing on humans, but on dogs, they're at least pretty cute. They also have, this one kind of boggles my mind. They, they have a carrier, which they have lots of carriers for small dogs. They also have carriers for big dogs and . And this picture right here, like if you look at the dog's face, I don't know that I've ever seen a dog more miserable than that dog right there. As a matter of fact, the probably the only way to make that dog more miserable would be to give him a pair of sunglasses and some crocs, and then whole nother level. But so you go down the rabbit hole on the internet and you're like, man, pressure for gifts and pressure for dogs. And there's just so much pressure. And he, here's the challenge during the Christmas season, is sometimes all those pressures and anxieties and stresses that they can make us take Christmas for granted. And the profound story of Christmas is incredible. It's God, the creator of the universe becoming human, Emmanuel God with us. I mean, like that, that is just a wild, crazy story. But I think here's the danger Is that if you grew up in the Church or you've gone to church a lot, That you've heard the Story over and over and over again, just like I've Heard the Story over and over and over again. And so it can just become normalized and we can get distracted By all the Pressures, and then the story becomes normalized. And yet, I think when we look back At The Christmas story, there's some profound truth, not only from 2000 years ago, but also some profound truths for What it looks like for our life today. If you've got Your Bible telling me to Luke chapter one, we're gonna pick up in verse 26. Luke's chapter one. This is The story of The angel coming and having a conversation with Mary Mary who had become the mother Of Jesus. And it's a story you've Probably Heard a lot. And yet, let's really dig in line by line and from the perspective of Mary, understand the Christmas story. Here's what it says in Luke one, starting verse 26 and the sixth month of, in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God To a city of Galilee Named Nazareth To A virgin betrothed, to a man whose name was Joseph Of the house of David, And the Virgin's name was married. And now it's two quick sentences. And yet in these sentences, there are some profound truth that we can understand about the context Of How Christmas unfolds, How Jesus Comes onto the scene, and how God Decides And chooses to do it. The first is it tells us that That Mary lives in the town of Nazareth. Nazareth is an interesting city because there was a moment where some historians tried to say, well, Nazareth wasn't real. It wasn't a thing. It It, if it was real, Jesus didn't live there. And yet, here's What archeologists have Discovered in the last about 50 Years, is they've Said, well, no, hey, it definitely Was a real place, And it definitely existed in the time of Jesus. But The reason it was A hard, they had A hard time finding all the Archeological Discoveries is because Nazareth is a small, small Village. It's tiny. It Was probably, scholars would Estimate maybe a hundred, maybe 200 people. It definitely Wasn't a town of any kind of affluence because it didn't have the things that an affluent town would have. There was no, no big theater, nothing grand, nothing amazing about it. We, we know from the rest of the Christmas story that, that Mary and Joseph they were poor. In Luke chapter Two, verse 42, you have Mary and Joseph, they're taking Jesus, who's now a baby. They're taking 'em to the temple to dedicate them. And there's this interesting line where it Says that they brought two turtle doves To the temple to Sacrifice. That's Where the song, two Turtle Doves, That's where it comes from. That's Why they chose Two Turtle Doves. But that Scene is interesting because in Leviticus chapter 12, it gives us some insight. Leviticus chapter 12, It tells us that, that when they're dedicating a child, they should bring a lamb To sacrifice. But if They couldn't afford a lamb, if they were poor, then they could bring two birds instead. And so we know that, that Mary and Joseph, they Were Poor. Mary grows Up in a Poor town. It's a small town. It's a conservative Jewish Town. Now, what You hear a lot of times people say is They say, well, Mary was probably somewhere between 16 and 19 years old. And really, that's just not Historically Accurate. Most likely She was either 12 Or 13 when she got betrothed. Now, we, we try and shy away from that because it feels culturally kinda weird to Talk about a, a 12 Or 13-year-old girl, girl That Gets pregnant. And yet, Culturally, At the time the, the moment that a girl Most likely Would've been betrothed is Either 12, 13 or 14. So she Was A young teenager, most likely 13. Mary's name, we, we use Mary Mary's actually the Latin translation of the name she would've Gone by Miriam. Miriam is Both an, it's A Hebrew name that, that an Aramic would've also been Miriam. Miriam was a Very, Very common Jewish name in the first century. So common in fact, that The Jewish scholars have looked Back at some name registries, and they estimate that one in four women in the first century were named Mary or Miriam. Miriam was the sister of Moses in the Old Testament. It's funny how, how names do that, and they kind of go up and down, up and down. I was talking to Gary Thomas and another Gary Last Week in the, the lobby, and they were talking about how the name Gary is going exist, Like, like It's ceasing to exist. It's going extinct. That Gary Thomas said, I think it was last year, that there was only like five Gary's named in the entire United States. There are only five Gary babies out There right now. But, but if you, if you go talk to 60 year olds, there's a lot of Gary's And every generation kinda has that. Like, like I'm 41, I probably know 50 Joshes, everybody was a Josh or Chris. My wife is Lauren. Lots of Lauren's and Rh demographic. Now, you won't find a whole lot of 10-year-old Josh, Chris Or Lawrence, or apparently Gary's. So you have these seasons where names kinda become really popular and not really popular. And in this Moment, it's Just interesting to me that God chooses this little Girl, this teenage girl That Has the most common name that exists. So here, here's What, what that means. It means that the story of Christmas starts With a teenage girl In the middle of absolutely nowhere town with A Very, very ordinary name. And, and here's what I think that tells us about God, that God over and over and over again comes to very ordinary People In very ordinary places. And he does that in order to do extraordinary things. And I think one of the challenges that, that we face sometimes is, is You hear people say, well, Hey, I am just fill in the blank. Well, Well, God's not gonna do anything extraordinary in my life, or God's not gonna do anything extraordinary through me because I am just, well, I I'm just an engineer, or I'm just a teacher, or I'm just a stay at home mom, or I'm just a student, or I'm just, I'm just me. I'm just very normal. And yet, over and over again, that is who God chooses to do amazing, amazing things. Let's keep going. In verse 28, it says this, and he came to her and said, greetings, O favored one. The Lord is with you. But she was greatly troubled at the saying and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. And the angel said to her, do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God, right? If you ever had a moment in life where just everything gets interrupted, everything gets stopped, everything changes. Like, like Mary, she has expectations. She has dreams. She has this plan in her mind of how she thinks that life is going to go. And all of a sudden in a moment that all changes. If you've got young kids, you get interrupted a lot. Every time you're doing something, you get interrupted. Like you, you sit down to study for a sermon, probably you don't do that as much as I do, but you sit down, study for a sermon, and then you hear dad, dad, like, and, and they never yell. They never come in like quietly and say, Hey, can I have a word? It's always from clear across the other side of that dad, dad or, or you and your spouse. Like the kids are, are in bed. And, and now you get to, to have a conversation and talk like two normal adults. And then Dad, dad, mom, hey, like, you get interrupted a lot. I, I remember that my roommate in college, this is all the way back in 2004, and I remember the year because that year there was this, this amazing just classic baseball playoff series that happened between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees. And growing up in Houston, Texas, I didn't care really about the Boston Red Sox or the New York Yankees. I really didn't like either one because most of the country doesn't like those, except my college roommate loved the Boston Red Sox. He was from Dallas, by the way, which that's called a bandwagon fan. He didn't believe that, but I'll tell you right now, that's a bandwagon fan. And, and he was watching the, the, the playoff game between the, the Red Sox and the Yankees and the, the, the Red Sox had gone down three zero in the series. And so he's watching this game. But we had, there's four of us that lived in a small little tiny apartment complex. We only had one TV in the center room. We had these little small rooms off to the side. And so we come out and we were like, Hey, we don't wanna watch the baseball game. I mean, red Sox are down 3.0, like, it's, it's pretty inevitable that they are going to lose. And he's like, no, no, no, I, I've gotta watch the game. Well, we said, why don't you use TiVo it? Which for some of you in this room, you're like, what, what does that mean? We used to DVR things before streaming. And, and here's the secret to DVRing back in the day, is that you couldn't just DVR the sporting event because if you did that and they went into overtime, it just cut off. And so you had to DVR like the event and then the news right after the event to make sure that you go out the overtime. So, so we convinced him, and we, there's three of us. There was one of him we're like, Hey, we wanna play Halo. Halo won. If you're curious, the og, this is not like Halo 19, like the very first we wanna play Halo. So you gotta turn off the playoff game. So he dvs it. And because he wants to, to protect himself, he dvs not just the game, but but the news right after the game. So we play Halo for, you know, a while 'cause we're college kids. And then eventually afterwards he turns back on the game. He, he did everything he could to not hear what was happening. He turns it back on. He picks up exactly where he left off, he's watching as if it was life. Now, that game in particular went into 14 innings. Amazing. One of the most famous classic baseball games of all time. He got to watch till I think inning 10, maybe inning 11. And that's when the TiVo stopped. And 20 years later, whenever I see Josh, Josh King, he brings up the fact that he missed one of the most classic baseball games of all time because we wanted to play Halo. Like in his mind, that interruption changed the trajectory of his life, which, which is a total overstatement. But it was an interruption. It was inconvenient. It was not what he wanted, and yet we interrupted him. Anyway, if you ever had moments in life where you had this radical interruption, like think right now in your head, what's a moment that you were interrupted? And yet I would bet that interruption in your life pales in comparison to the interruption that Mary faced and Mary's life radically changes. And here's this other interesting truth that, that when we look at biblically, that that sometimes it makes us uncomfortable, but the angel tells Mary that she's favored. And when we think of favored, we think of things like, oh, well, if God favors me, that means that I'm about to become rich. I I'm gonna become a blessed in an earthly standpoint, everything's gonna be awesome and wonderful. And yet God's favor doesn't always feel like favor. That's true throughout the entire Bible. Like, let's just look at Mary, for example. What is favor about to mean for Mary? Well, favor from Mary's perspective is about to mean a pregnancy that nobody's going to believe. I'm just imagining you're 13. You're like, Hey, I'm, I'm pregnant. But it's not what it looks like. It's God. Like no one was believing that at all. She's gonna have whispers behind her back. She's gonna have a fiance that we know that will try to divorce her and would've divorced her if not for an angel of God saying, Hey, it really is from God. Do not divorce her. She's gonna face possible rejection from her family. That, that the first century was an honor shame culture. So if you did things that you weren't supposed to do, you got shamed. And most of the time, shame would just be turning your back on that person. So she would've been shamed. She would ultimately give birth in a barn like not the plan that she probably had. And then 30 plus years later, she'd be confused the whole time. We know that in the story of Jesus, that there's different times where she doesn't understand what's happening during his teachings, and then she's going to be there at the cross and watch as her son dies. Like we wouldn't describe that life, the life that we know, that Mary now lives as this favored and blessed life when it comes to worldly American standards. And yet the angel says that she is favored. God's favor does not necessarily mean an easy life, but it does mean a Lord is with you life. That's what the angel says. The angel says, you are favored and the Lord is with you. And maybe you, you're in a season right now where you feel like your life has been interrupted. And I know that Christmas brings all kinds of different emotions. And maybe you're walking into today and, and Christmas feels like a heavy season because this is your first Christmas without someone who was here last Christmas, and that's just sad and hard. Or maybe you're walking into this Christmas season with a diagnosis or, or a health uncertainty, or maybe you're broken into this walking into this Christmas season with a broken relationship. Or maybe you don't have a job or you're struggling in your career or a job, and maybe you've got these struggles and these challenges and these anxieties, and you say, God, where are you in this? Where is your favor? Where is your blessing? And here's the biblical truth that God's favor. Doesn't mean that all of our problems go away, but it does mean that when we face those problems, that the Lord is with you. Well, let's keep going. In verse 31, verse 31 says this, and behold, you'll conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, and 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 father, David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever and of his kingdom. There will be no end. And Mary said to the angel, how will this be since I am a virgin? Now, I I wanna point out the fact that, that Mary gets this, this crazy life changing news. Now, you, you are going to have a son. He's gonna be the Messiah. And her immediate response is, she's got some doubt, and she's got some questions. And, and I want us to understand that it is okay to have doubt and questions that sometimes I think inside the church, we make it seem like, Hey, if you ever doubt that's a terrible thing, that's an awful thing. And yet doubt and questioning that, that not only is a very natural thing, it can be a healthy thing if We do it the right way. Now. So I want us to understand It's okay to Have questions. Mary has doubts, but here's what happens. She leans into those Doubts. She leans into those questions instead of walking away Like, You are gonna have a moment in your life, and maybe you're in that moment right now where You have doubts about God. You Say, well, hey, I'm, I'm not sure if this is even real. If God really does love me, how could he allow this? And in that moment, in that crossroads, You, you have this choice where either your doubt could drive you away And you walk away from God, walk away from the faith, Or You can allow that doubt To cause You to lean in. Because here's what I know, here's what I promise. Every heavy, deep, hard, difficult Question that you or mine might ever Face about God, there is a logical, good, Intelligent answer for it. Now, sometimes there are uncomfortable answers, But, but there's always An answer. If You're willing to lean in and do the work. You, you've got doubts And you say, well, I I just don't understand how God could exist, or, I don't understand how all these things play out. I promise there is Somebody who's really, Really smart, who is a Christian, who's got lots of Phds, that has a good, Logical, Reasonable answer for The Doubts that you might face If You're willing to dig in and go find it. Mary has doubts, She has Questions, And she doesn't get scolded for Those things. Instead, She actually Gets an answer to those things. Look at what it Says in verse 35. It says, and the angel Answered 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 Called holy, The Son of God. And behold, Your relative, Elizabeth, In her old Age has Also conceived a son. And This is The sixth month of her Who is Called barren. For nothing will Be Impossible With God. And now understand How The angel is explaining to Mary her role Versus God's role. And that Mary's role is not to produce the miracle. The angel says, well, Doesn't say, well, hey, it's up to you. You Gotta figure it out. You gotta make it work. And no, he, The angel says, God's role Is to do the miracle. Your Role is to Receive the miracle and to respond in obedience. How often in life Do we do? We have A hard time understanding the difference between our Role versus God's role. Like There are certain things that are absolutely our Role that God gives us. The responsibility for How, How I spend my time, where, where I put my thoughts, Whether I'm pursuing God, what I do with my time, and my talents and my treasure. Like Those things are all inside of my sphere. But oftentimes the things that I worry about, the things that keep me up at night, the things that I get Frustrated over Are the things that I have zero control over Whatsoever. Those are the things that I can't control, and yet I try to control. And those are The things that I have to release to God. And these are the things over here that I've got to focus on. So What is my lane? That God's lane is the miracle. You, you're in a situation that You Can't get out of. Hey, that's The Miracle. That's God's lane, Your lane, our lane, my lane is obedience. It's trust, it's Surrender. It's saying, God, I, I got lots of questions and I don't understand it, but in the midst of All Of this, I'm going to be obedient to you. I'm gonna surrender to you. I'm gonna put my faith and my trust in you. Faith Is saying yes To God, Even when you don't have all the answers. E even when you've got doubts, even when you've got questions, Mary did not get a line by line, play by play. Hey, here's What the next 30 years Is gonna look like. She got just a little piece of the puzzle. The rest she had to Take on faith. Then look in verse 38, It's Her response. It says, and Mary said, Behold, I am the servant of the Lord. Let It be to me according to your Word. And the angel Departed From her. What what's Powerful about Mary's response is you see Three very Specific things. It's a very Short Line, very short section. And yet in that section, here's What we see that Her identity is in God. And She responds by saying, I am the servant of the Lord. That's Her identity. That this is Who I am. And because she understands who she is, because she understands her Identity, she's Able to surrender, Let it be. How, How often is, is That the struggle with us? Because we Get our identity wrapped up in the wrong things. It makes us really Hard to Surrender and the right Things. But when my identity is aligned, That who I am, and I recognize that comes underneath the umbrella of being a servant of the Lord, it becomes much easier to surrender, to say, Okay, let God let it be. And when I do that, what is she recognizing? She's recognizing that the authority Over her is God, According to your word. Can I just, just encourage you and challenge you at the same time that when we live A life that First and foremost finds I our identity in Christ and then is willing to surrender to that, and then is willing to submit underneath his Authority, That's how we find The favor of God, God being with us, not the favor of God from an earthly Perspective, But from a Spiritual perspective. Then if you skip down to verse 46 We Have this song of Mary, it, It's this really Cool thing, 'cause it interesting, some interesting trivia. The oldest scripture We have in the New Testament would be Mary's song. So The rest of the New Testament won't get written for, for another 50 years, 60 years, some of it even later than that. But Mary is a teenage girl, writes down this song that, that God places on her heart that then Luke would record as scripture. And so, so two powerful things. One is that yes, there is scripture that was written by a woman, Mary. There's also the oldest writing that we have in the New Testament that's recorded is from a 13-year-old girl, most likely. And here's what she says. And Mary said, my soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior. Now here's a really important truth that when we magnify God, it makes our problems small in comparison. We tend to do the opposite. We tend to magnify our problems. And when we magnify our problems, it makes God seem small. But instead, when we magnify God and really understand that perspective in our life, when we put him right in front of us, it makes all of our problems even real challenging, painful, difficult problems. Those problems, no matter how big they are in comparison to our God or small, that if you think from an eternal perspective that, that we're on this earth for a very short amount of time. E even if you have a short life on this earth, may maybe you only live 15 years or a really long life on this Earth, 115 years in comparison, both 15 and 115 years compared to all of eternity. Really, really small that to a God that will have an eternal relationship with us in heaven. Whatever problem I face right now in this moment, although it feels so big and so heavy and so challenging and so difficult that when I magnify God in my life, it doesn't mean that all those problems go away, but it means that in comparison, they aren't as big. And so this Christmas, here's the story that Mary wants us to understand, that the same God who interrupted Mary's life has come to interrupt your life and my life too. That what she thought was gonna happen is not what happened. And she had moments over the course of her life where she had to have faced all kinds of doubts and so many questions and so much pain. And probably when she's, she's there watching her son die on the cross, that she, she probably has these doubts of like, what, what just happened? Was it all? Not what I expected it to be. But then she was also there three days later when he rose from the dead and she saw the church explode. And she had to have had different times where she had these aha moments where she said, man, I didn't understand it when I was going through it, God, but now, wow, because all that hurt and all that pain and all that struggle when she saw God's design, when he was magnified, when she was able to step back and see it in comparison, it was God's masterpiece. And so my challenge for all of us this Christmas season is to don't be so busy that we miss the interruption that God wants in our life. Christmas is an interruption. Jesus divides human history. He, he steps onto the scene and everything changes. And he wants to do the same thing in our life, but sometimes we can miss it when we're too busy. Tom Kreer, Tim Kreider in his book, the Busy Trap, wrote this, busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness. Obviously, your life cannot be possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you're so busy, completely booked in demand every hour of the day. We're busy because of our own ambition or drive or anxiety because we're addicted to busyness and dread what we might have to face in its absence. You know, you talk to anybody and say, how's it going? And Pat responds, oh, it's so busy. I got so much going on. It's just so crazy. May maybe your life is busy and crazy, but during this month, the busiest month of the year, can I just encourage and challenge you to slow down and pray the prayer? Just say, God, I want you to interrupt my life today. Help me not be so busy to miss what you want to do in me and through me. Heavenly Father, Lord, I pray that we could be a people that magnify your name, that so often our natural tendency is to magnify our problems, be overwhelmed by our problems. And God, I, I don't in any way want to belittle the problems that people are facing in this room. 'cause I know there are real heavy, tangible problems that people face or burdens that people are carrying right now, but I just pray the story of Mary would inspire us to see that your favor doesn't mean that our life is easy, but your favor does mean that you are with us. God, that when we magnify you, even though we don't understand what's going on in the moment, that it can give us an eternal perspective that you are good. You loved us so much that you sent Jesus to die for us. That's what Christmas is all about. You wanna empower us through the power of your Holy Spirit. God, I, I pray that that truth would be real this Christmas and that we wouldn't miss it. It's the name of the Lord Jesus we pray. Amen.