This sermon is from the Rev. Charles G. Dennison sermon archive, part of the “Luke’s Christmas Story” series, and was preached at Grace Orthodox Presbyterian Church in Sewickley, PA, during a worship service on Sunday, December 7, 1997.
About this sermon
Throughout Luke, Christ blesses women with a new liberty and dignity. The New Testament uses women to teach about Christ, and Elizabeth and Mary show how. When Mary greets her, the child in Elizabeth’s womb leaps for joy.
Sermon transcript
I’d like to offer a disclaimer to all who are listening to this tape. I offer this at the beginning so you will know that I’m aware of my own mistakes. During the course of this sermon I stated that Luke’s gospel is the only gospel to contain the story of the poor widow at the treasury of the temple in Luke 21. I have been corrected and am acknowledging that to you presently that of course there is a parallel text at the end of Mark 12. Take this in consideration as you listen to this message.
Thank you. The name was Joseph of the house of David, and the virgin’s name was Mary. And the angel came in unto her and said, Hail, thou that art highly favored. The Lord is with thee. Blessed art thou among women. And when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and cast in her mind what manner of salutation this should be. And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary, for thou hast found favour with God.
And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the Son of the Highest, and the Lord God shall give unto him the throne of his father David. And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever, and of his kingdom there shall be no end. Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be, seeing I know not a man? And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of Baha’is shall overshadow thee. Therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God. And behold, thy cousin Elizabeth, she hath also conceived a son in her old age, and this is the sixth month with her. who was called barren, for with God nothing shall be impossible.
And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be it unto me according to thy word. And the angel departed from her. And Mary arose in those days and went into the hill country with haste to a city of Judah, and entered into the house of Zacharias and saluted Elizabeth.
And it came to pass that when Elizabeth heard the salutation of Mary, the babe leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Ghost. And she spake out with a loud voice and said, Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb. And whence is this to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For lo, as soon as the voice of thy salutation sounded in mine ears, the babe leaped in my womb for joy. And blessed is she that believed, for there shall be a performance of those things which were told her from the Lord.”
Luke, the writer of this Gospel and also of the Book of the Acts, could very well be called the Lord’s friend to women. I might say this about Luke not simply because of his approach to women in his writings generally, but because of his broader concern for those marginalized people in the first century A.D., among whom were the women. These marginalized people, appropriate vehicles then through whom we might observe the wondrous workings of redemption.
For example, more than the other gospel writers, Luke commits space to the poor and their true concerns. At the same time, more than the other gospel writers, Luke devotes space to women, often combining them with the poor. For instance, only Luke records Jesus’ parable about the widow who pleads her case to the annoyed judge, Luke 18, verses 1-8. And only Luke tells the story about the poor widow who, while Jesus watched her, gave her all by depositing her last two copper coins in the temple treasury, Luke 21, verses 1-4. To be sure, Luke will end His Gospels, as others do, with women prominent at the cross and at the empty tomb. At the same time, Luke, throughout his Gospel, outdistances the other Gospels in the frequency with which he mentions women.
He even makes a point to include them in his description of Jesus’ entourage in Luke chapter 8. Here in this account, verse 1, we have mention made, of course, of the twelve disciples, but there are also some women, Luke tells us, who have been healed of evil spirits and sicknesses. Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna, and many others who were contributing out of their own private resources to the support of Jesus and the disciples, verses 2 and 3. Luke, therefore, could well be called the Lord’s friend of women.
But this very fact occurs to us while reading Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth. Luke is not, as you know, the only gospel writer to provide us the story about Jesus’ birth. we also have the account of it in Matthew’s Gospel. But Luke’s story is much more extensive. In fact, it is more than three times the length.
Further, Luke isn’t content to tell us merely about Mary as Matthew is he tells us about two women. He tells us about Elizabeth and Mary. In these two women, Luke, at the outset of his Spirit-inspired message, if by no other means than the amount of space given to these women, he will accent and highlight the gospel’s intention concerning women. Without a doubt, that intention, that purpose involved, it sets before us the new dignity, the new dignity mediated to women through Jesus Christ’s incomparable person and Now, you must not misunderstand Luke’s or the Gospel’s intention at this point. It is not to suggest that women in the biblical Old Testament religion hadn’t had a dignity all along, particularly that dignity is observed in the fact that the woman also is created in the image of God, but especially that she was privileged now that sin has come upon this creation, to bear in her body the promise of salvation. And although this privilege may be conferred upon a select few women throughout the history of salvation, as it is recorded in the Old Testament, Still, all the women of the covenant are seen as typically participating in the actual process by which salvation comes. Women, generically.
Rightly, the Apostle Paul then says in 1 Timothy 2.15, women shall be saved through childbirth. By even granting a constant dignity to women in Biblical Old Testament religion, the gospel itself brings a new dignity for women.
By that gospel, the woman is set free. Here is liberation. The woman is set free from the ancient strictures of the law. those strictures which preached to her her own uncleanness, yet strictures which were unable to remove that uncleanness from her.
Under the law, she couldn’t as much as approach the temple, enter into it. and she was bound by a mandatory testimony and an inheritance to which she was only indirectly connected under a male family heir. But because of the gospel, and by the familiarity and the sufficiency of Jesus Christ’s blood Her own blood no longer enhances her sinfulness and the judgment of death that she carries in her own body. Because of the gospel, and by way of the power of Jesus Christ’s resurrection, she is no longer denied the exalted status, Son of God, and I say that with all seriousness. In her own person, not as an extension of the person of her father, or her brother, or her husband, or her son, that is, not as an extension of any male to whom she may be related in this world.
In her own person, she now participates directly in the promised inheritance, belonging to all of the children of God in Christ, male and female alike. Nor is she denied access because of her gender to the courts of the Lord that she walks right into the assembly, being sacramentally sanctified for just such access.
Luke, the friend of women, provides a powerful picture of this sacramental consecration and access in the book of Acts. In the most deliberate fashion, in Acts chapter 8, Luke tells us about Philip preaching among the Samaritans. When the Samaritans believed, they were baptized, and then Luke adds in verse 12, men and women alike. Here, not just a Samaritan, but a Samaritan woman is recognized as heir to the glorious inheritance. She is sacramentally sealed in an act that clearly moves her beyond the sacramental provisions of the Old Testament.
But again, it is important that we not misunderstand Luke’s or the gospel’s intention. While Luke and the New Testament invests the woman with a new dignity and even exalts her, it does not intend to destroy the difference between her and the male. It does not intend to destroy the difference between females and males, or the roles appropriate to both. Earlier this year, at the Reformation season, we heard a powerful message from Dr. Nelson Klosterman, in which he contended that our roles, respective to each other, male and female, are an extension of office.
We have an office in God’s economy to fill. and we live in keeping with God’s order as we are conscious of that office and fill it appropriately. But much less does the New Testament’s intention to elevate set the female above the male. However, at the same time, the New Testament does find in the woman that proper vehicle in whom we observe God’s dealings with his people in a most unique fashion. The New Testament does this in two ways. First, the woman is that proper vehicle in whom we are able to see the general pattern of salvation. in whom we are able to see the general pattern of salvation.
God takes her without strength and without status. She has no inheritance in her own right. He takes her without strength, now epitomized, in a barren woman and in a virgin, obviously without strength even to conceive, he takes her who is without strength and without status, and by his saving work in Jesus Christ, he gives to her both, both strength and status. And what God has bestowed by grace, not by right, hear me in that, by grace, not by right, to the woman he bestows on all of his people in saving them. All of us in our powerlessness, all of us rendered without status. apart from the ministry and the work of Jesus Christ on our behalf.
So the woman becomes a proper vehicle, an appropriate vehicle, in whom we are able to see the general pattern of salvation. But secondly, and more profound still, women in the New Testament become those proper vehicles in whom we are able better to see the particular movement for the history of redemption as we observe the progress from the old administration into the new, from the old order into the new.
And here is the significance of the two women. for the story we read this morning. These two women, Elizabeth and Mary, will tell you the whole story of the Bible. They will present to you, in fact, something of the entire essential history of the world. These two women, if you have not thought of it already, these two women are the two Testaments, the Old and the New Testaments.
And in their interaction with one another, we will witness them as servants of things greater than themselves. their interest being those greater things. In them, and in their interaction with one another, we will witness the operation of things greater than themselves, and we will observe the transformation of the old by the new. you will see, in what happens between them, the transformation of the old by the new.
Elizabeth is the old testament. May be underscored by her age. She is the Old Testament. She embodies the Old Testament. She and her husband, for that matter, Zacharias, are the law. They are the Levitical order. They are Israel ensconced in Judah, performing service in Jerusalem, yet crippled and made fatally weak by faltering faith and bitter complaint. and her husband for that matter, all the law, the rabbinical order, they all, Israel, ensconced in Judah, performing service in Jerusalem, yet crippled and made fatally weak by faltering faith and bitter complaint.” You know the story of Zacharias, which is preceding the one that we’ve read this morning. Hell, he was struck dumb by the angel Gabriel for not believing the message about the coming birth of John the Baptist to his then and aged wife. Elizabeth, however, even more significantly than her husband, captures the heart of Israel.
You may not have seen, you might not have understood her actions recorded in verse 24, or caught the tone of her reply in verse 25. In verse 24, she secludes herself in shame. This is not the action of a woman filled with praise and thanksgiving. She secludes herself in shame, and in verse 25, her words are a bitter, sarcastic, and faithless exclamation. The New American Standard Version may have inadvertently caught this in the way in which it has translated that twenty-fifth verse.
This is the way the Lord has dealt with me in the days when he looked with favor upon me, to take away my disgrace among men?” Well, you can almost hear the intonations of a New Jersey or New York Jewish woman. This is the way the Lord has dealt with me.
That’s Elizabeth’s response. But this is more than a bitter and thankless remark from an embarrassed and shamed woman. In it we are to hear all Israel, in her bitterness, constantly thankless and dissatisfied with the Lord’s dealings. despite the corrupt heart, the obvious unworthiness.
Elizabeth carries within her, as does Israel whom she represents, a seed, a child, the remarkable remnant, true to God’s purposes in his covenant, and this one, John the Baptist, will direct even her, his mother, to her Savior. You are going to watch a conversion. You are now to witness the conversion of Israel into the church. This takes place when Mary visits. the other woman in the story. So she stands over against Elizabeth.
She does not reside in Judah, even though she is of Judah. She does not reside in Judah, or in territory proximate to the temple. But like the very child she carries, she comes from an alien territory. into her own territory. For she is of Judah’s line, and she belongs in the territory of Judah, but she presently lives in Galilee, and now must journey to Judah to meet those who are related to her. But as with Mary, so with the child in her Jesus comes from the alien territory, the alien territory of heaven. He journeys to Judah and Jerusalem by way of Galilee in order to meet with his relatives who should be prepared to greet him.
Later on, it will be by way of the ministry of John the Baptist that the path is prepared for Jesus in his ministry, but here John in the room leaps in anticipation of the latter recognition of Jesus the Messiah at the Jordan. in Mary, for that is what she represents.
The New Testament has greeted the old, acknowledged the old upon entering the house, even as John in the Old Testament, Elizabeth, has rejoiced at the salutation of the new. But now, through this affirmation from the womb, John, even before he is born, leads Elizabeth, Israel of old, into the blessings of the new. Verse 41, she is filled with the Holy Spirit. you will notice that he is not without repentance the very substance of the ministry of John the Baptist, for he preaches repentance, does he not? And this repentance comes to expression in Elizabeth as she confesses that Mary, unlike herself, believed that there would be a fulfillment of what had been spoken to her by the Lord. Mary had said, you will remember, to Gabriel the angel, verse 38, Behold the handmaid of the Lord, be of them to me according to thy word. Here then in Mary is the new Israel into which now the old is brought by the grace of God, by the testimony of the prophet, by the last prophet, John the Baptist, and by the miracle of repentance and faith.
But it is in the company of these two gentle women that you sit this morning, even as by faith you are bound to them both. And even more importantly, this morning you sit, do you not, in the company of Jesus Christ, the very one into whose service these two gentle women were enlisted, the very one in whom and through whom the ages of the world.
Do you believe God? Have you received his salvation? Have you repented and expressed your own faith? Luke may well be the Lord’s friend to women, but only in order that women and all of us might be the friends of the Lord. You are a friend, are you not? Male or female?
Our God, what a work how your kindness is manifest in the old and your mercy as you bring the old to the point where it will embrace the new and even be transformed by it. O Father, we are the beneficiaries of your mighty and glorious work. And Father, may we, your children, male and female alike, understand the service into which Elizabeth and Mary were enlisted. And may we also comprehend our position that we in fact sit with them if we have confessed like faith and expressed a repentance that is necessary even unto salvation. Lord, be merciful to us that the strength of all that you have done would be obvious to us even as we see our Savior by faith. And may we know the extent of his love and the greatness of his ministry for us even as we approach this table.
The sermon text provided above is derived from the sermon audio recording making use of generative tools. It has not been manually edited. While transcription tools have a high degree of accuracy, the output may include generative textual, punctuation, and/or formatting errors.