"Spirit Invading Flesh"

Luke 1-2

1. All of us live a storied life. We live in stories. I live in my story. The story of Tim, Heather, Hannah, Elizabeth. The story of my parents & my brothers & sister. The story of Canby Alliance Church. I live in your stories. And on & on it goes.

2. I also live in God’s story, just like all of you. The God-story that we live in began before creation in the eternal being of God. Part of God’s story is captured in the Bible.

Bible story in 5 acts
1. more than anything else the Bible is a story book. The majority of its pages are narrative. And this story has 5 chapters:

1 – Creation – Genesis 1-2:
2. God creates the heavens & the earth & everything in them & pronounces creation good, very good.

2 – Fall – Genesis 3-11:
3. Adam & Eve sin. They spoil God’s perfect creation. All creation is now stained by sin. We are born into a fallen world with a fallen, self-bent rather than God-bent, human nature.

3 – Israel – Abraham to Jesus:
4. God begins his rescue operation of the world. He forms the people through whom his Savior Son will be born. To this people God reveals his character & uncovers his holiness & power.

4 – Jesus – gospels:
5. Jesus is the decisive & pinnacle act of the 4th chapter. Jesus’ story is the climax of Israel’s story. Jesus’ story is the focal point of God’s redemptive drama.

5 - church – Acts-Revelation:
6. Jesus launches his ‘new’ people, the church, to take his story to the nations. Jesus’ story goes forth in the church. And is meant to bust down the doors of the church & permeate non-Christian culture. This Jesus story moves forward in my story & your story.

7. creation – fall – Israel – Jesus – the church.

8. according to N. T. Wright, these 5 chapters in God’s grand story offer a picture of God’s sovereign and saving plan for the entire cosmos, dramatically inaugurated by Jesus himself, and now implemented through the Spirit-led life of the church (The Last Word). This grand story calls every child, woman and man to submit in faith to the Lordship of the crucified and risen Jesus.

9. we live in the still open-ended 5th chapter. The 5th chapter goes on toward its final destination – the new heaven & the new earth of Revelation 21-22.

Transition
1. advent & Christmas compose the hinge point between the 3rd & 4th chapters, between Israel & Jesus. The story of God’s presence in Israel comes to a close. The story of God’s presence in Jesus begins to open up.

2. Jesus is the main figure in the story. The plot revolves around him. The sub-themes & sub-sub-themes of this story are saturated with the Jesus story, either overtly or covertly.

Spirit invading flesh
1. the Holy Spirit is mentioned 7xs in Luke’s account of Jesus’ conception & birth. Only in Luke do we find the Spirit so mentioned.

2. the cast of characters are an odd bunch. Jesus’ conception is paired with the prior conception of his cousin John. John is filled with the Holy Spirit in the womb of his mother Elizabeth, who by this time is a senior citizen. 6 months later Jesus is conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of Mary. A virgin with no sexual experience.

3. these 2 women stand at the extremes of impossibility regarding having a baby. Elizabeth is a barren post-menopausal old woman and Mary a young virgin.

4. I want you to catch these Holy Spirit references:
1:15 – he (John the Baptist) will be filled with the Holy Spirit even from his birth…this is told to Zechariah by an angel who appeared to him during his priestly duty – he’s going to have a son.

1:35 – the Holy Spirit will come upon you…this is told by the angel Gabriel to Mary when she asks how she is going to have a baby when she is a virgin.

1:41 – Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit…when the Mary came to visit her. Elizabeth & Mary were relatives (1:36).

1:67 – Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit…at the birth of his son & prophesied about Jesus the coming Savior.

2:25 – the Holy Spirit was upon him…speaking of Simeon.

2:26 – it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit…that Simeon would see the Messiah before he died

2:27 – moved by the Spirit he went into the temple courts…the Spirit led Simeon to Joseph, Mary & Jesus at his dedication in the temple.

5. Luke wants us to understand that God is actively creating & confirming life in this setting of sheer impossibility! The Holy Spirit moves in the lives of – the embryonic John, the virginal Mary, the great-with-child Elizabeth, the old priest Zechariah & the devout Simeon.

6. these were Divine days for the people of Israel. God was keeping his word. The Messiah was coming. The kingdom of God was entering the world in a manner never before seen, experienced, or imagined. The Holy Spirit was on the move.

7. but notice something else. The ordinary dimension. These 2 births are completely normal. Elizabeth & Mary carried their babies for 9 months. The babies born from these unlikely wombs (barren & virgin) had normal infancies. They were weaned from the breast. They gradually acquired the ability to eat solid food. One day they rolled over & started to crawl. Soon they began to walk. Then run. They made nonsense babbling sounds that turned into words. And then into sentences.

8. Eugene Peterson, The Holy Spirit, however miraculous in the conception of life itself, doesn’t seem to shortcut or skip anything that is human. There is nothing in a Holy Spirit-conceived life that exempts that life from the common lot of humanity. There is absolutely nothing in us that is inaccessible to or incapable of holiness.
9. nothing was missed. Nothing was bypassed. Even though the Holy Spirit is running the story. It’s a beautiful picture of the Divine-human dance that is ours as Christ-followers.

When the Spirit invades my life
1. the majority of the time the Holy Spirit shows up in our lives when things are at their normal-most. The Divine does not cancel out the human.

2. so often we want to be delivered from our hard circumstances. We want to be spared the agony of our fallen humanity. We want the unbearable made instantly bearable by the Divine supernatural intervention of God. And sometimes this happens, yes, sometimes this happens.

3. but as Peterson writes the Divine work of the Holy Spirit comes in the midst of the ordinary, the human.

4. I have 1 point I want to make as I draw this to a close. It has to do with Elizabeth’s barrenness. She was not able to conceive and bear a child. She was childless. Until the Holy Spirit changed all that.

5. we are barren as a church. The 5 chapters of the Grand Story tell us that we are to be a people who reproduce ourselves. We are to be witnesses of Christ’s love to others. We are to partner with God in bringing people into the kingdom of light.

6. we are barren. Our wombs are empty. Our arms are empty. Our nursery lies unused. Where are the new baby Christ-followers? Where the joyful chatter of new believers?

7. Divine-wise, we are totally dependent upon the Holy Spirit to draw people to Christ in salvation. Human-wise God stoops to depend upon us to witness with our lives & our words. Lost people matter to God. Lost people matter big-time in this Grand Story. Do they matter to us? it’s time our hearts were broken before God for not caring about the people he created, loves & died for.

8. the Holy Spirit is the only One who can change our barrenness. The power of the Holy Spirit is released in our lives through repentance, humility & surrender. We must turn from our sins. Humble ourselves before God. Surrender our all to him.

9. Christ comes to be born in our lives – the fullness of Christ – and to flow out of our lives into others to be born in them as well!