MARY BELIEVED: LESSON 1
By: Frank Tunstall, D. Min.
Lesson 1 (For Lesson 2, click here)
Elizabeth said to Mary, “Blessed is she who has believed what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished” (John 1:42).
Mary the mother of Jesus lived with broad mood swings, experiences that lifted her to the highest peaks of joy, and some that plunged her into the deepest pits of agony. To manage it all she had to have been a strong lady, a tough lady.
- The first swing came when the angel Gabriel visited Mary, perhaps a sixteen-year-old. What she heard surely was loaded with powerful and very positive emotions. The angel Gabriel told her she was “highly favored,” and added, “The Lord is with you” and “you are blessed among women.”
It is interesting that Gabriel recognized this teenager as a ‘woman,’ [Girls did mature much faster in first century Israel when the average lifespan was about forty years.]
Talk about a swing of emotions: “You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever; his kingdom will never end.”
“How will this be since I am a virgin,” Mary asked Gabriel?
“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…. For nothing is impossible with God.’”
“I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered. “May it be to me as you have said.” Then the angel left her. (Luke 1:26-38).
Mary believed.
Her heart must have been pounding as she tried to process everything she was hearing. How does a sixteen-year-old handle that kind of message? The answer surely depends on how much Scripture she had learned, and Mary probably had memorized most if not all the Old Testament. It was common for many of Abraham’s descendants to memorize the whole Old Testament in a culture where writing was limited.
- A negative, wide swing in her emotional pendulum occurred when she realized with heartbreaking sorrow Joseph was seriously thinking about putting her away privately because he knew the baby she was carrying was not his child. Did she cry a bucket of tears?
- Her emotions swung again, this time to positive joy, when Joseph shared with Mary an angel had appeared to him in a dream and told him not to be afraid to take Mary as his wife, because her baby was “of the Holy Ghost.” And the angel added, “she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:20-21, KJV).
- Joseph believed too after that revelation, but we can be sure the villagers in Nazareth did not. Mary had to live with their snickers and jokes. ‘An angel got her pregnant – yea, sure; Joseph was her angel!’
Mary’s emotions must have been off the charts when she as a very brave young woman in the sixth month of her pregnancy started out, obviously alone, on the ninety-mile trip to the Judean Hills southwest of Jerusalem. Why did she go to visit Elizabeth? Probably she needed confirmation of what Gabriel said to her when the angel told her about barren grandma Elizabeth’s miracle pregnancy. Another reason surely was to get away from the wagging tongues of Nazareth who kept spreading the word Mary’s baby in her womb was illegitimate. She probably made the trip in a caravan, but we can be sure that did not stop the wagging tongues of the young men working on the caravan who crafted their jokes. Everywhere Mary went, it seems, she lived surrounded by a cloud of doubt.
But Mary believed.
All of those negatives would change when Mary reached Elizabeth’s home.
- Think about who was in the room when Mary stepped over Elizabeth’s threshold: the Holy Spirit, a three months’ pregnant teenager, and a six-months-pregnant woman old enough to be Mary’s grandmother. I’ve wished many times I could have been over in a corner watching and listening.
It had to be a huge confirmation to Mary when Elizabeth heard Mary’s voice because in the moment she was filled with the Holy Spirit. At that same time, Baby John leaped in Elizabeth’s womb for joy. Elizabeth immediately recognized Mary as the “mother of my Lord.” The Greek suggests Elizabeth began to jump and shout, even dance: “Blessed is she who has believed what the Lord has said to her will be accomplished” (John 1:42). Elizabeth had it right.
Mary believed.
In those same minutes Mary began to compose a song too. We know it today as the Magnificat, meaning to glorify the Lord, and it has lived for 2,000 years as a masterpiece of God-honoring Hebrew poetry. It begins like this:
My soul doth magnify the Lord,
And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior.
For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden:
For, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed.
For he that is mighty hath done to me great things.
Holy is His name.
Mary also had to make the ninety-mile trip back to Nazareth – alone. Wow! What a strong young woman.
Lesson two will follow tomorrow.
