Christmas Means – God Deals with Your Impossibilities

READING FOR STUDY GUIDE: Luke 1: 26-37

Text: Luke 1: 1-38

Thesis: Christmas is the time of celebrating Christ coming into this world to save us from sin and to put us into right relationship with God the Father.  Let’s keep Christ in Christmas, so we can experience the full blessing of what God really has for us.  God has so much more for us than this world would have us to believe.  The Christmas story as conveyed through the Biblical record is not only the story of what God did in the lives of Elizabeth, Zechariah, Mary and Joseph, it is the story of what God desires to do in your life today!

ASK BIG!

1. Luke 1: 18 & 34 – “How can I be sure of this?  I am an old man and my wife is well along in years…How will this be… since I am a virgin?”
   1. As was the case with both Zechariah and Mary, the mother of Jesus, we often expect too little of the eternal, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God who loves us so much He sent His only Son to pay the price that we could be in His eternal presence.
   2. What do you want for Christmas this year?  The commercial nature of Christmas in today’s society has caused us to lose track of what is really available to us when we keep Christ in Christmas.
   3. What do you want for Christmas?  Ask for things this Christmas that only God can bring to pass.  Remember our God is forever, all powerful, all places, and all knowing.  Don’t limit God in your asking.

Christmas Means

Christmas means God does (among many things) the following:

1. God deals with your impossibilities!
2. God works in the shallows of your life!
3. God directs your life!
4. God cares for you!

God Deals With Your Impossibilities!

1. NO MATTER YOUR CIRCUMSTANCES!
   1. Luke 1: 28-29 – “…Nazareth… to a virgin pledged to be married…greatly troubled…and wondering”
   2. No matter the circumstances that exist, God can save, sanctify, anoint and abundantly bless anybody and everybody.
   3. What are you believing God for?  What circumstances are there indicating what you’re hoping for will not come to pass?
   4. DON’T GIVE UP ON GOD, ‘CAUSE HE WON’T GIVE UP ON YOU!  GOD DOESN’T GIVE UP ON US
   5. NO MATTER HOW MANY CHANCES YOU’VE HAD!
      1. Luke 1: 20 – “…you will be silent…because you did not believe my words…” 
      2. Zechariah had waited his turn to serve in the Holy of Holies and when blessed with the encounter with Gabriel he BLEW IT!
      3. Zechariah surely would have liked to have a “DO OVER.”  Just one more chance to get it right in view of the opportunity that had been blown.
      4. We sometime see things as impossible because we believe we’ve blown too many opportunities or because we believe we “You only get one shot in life.  It’s you chance to blow. Opportunitycomes once in a lifetime!” (Eminem)
         1. Nothing is further from the truth.
2. Luke 1: 20c – “…because you did not believe my words which will come true at their proper time.”
   1. We’ve all made mistakes and blown opportunities.  The same opportunity may not come around and we may experience consequences for our actions or inaction.  But, GOD!
   2. Remember the times “you blew it but God brought you through it!”
   3. God fulfilled God’s promise to Zechariah even though he blew what he believed to be his one opportunity.
   4. GOD’S PURPOSES AND PROMISES FOR YOUR LIFE
   5. IT’S NEVER TOO LATE!
      1. Luke 1: 20d & 36 – “…my words, which will come true at their proper time…Even Elizabeth…is going to have a child in her old age, and she who was said to be barren is in her sixth month.”
      2. We limit the possibility of a thing happening in light of the infinite onward flow of time (“chronos”)
      3. No matter how long it has taken, God makes the impossible happen because God’s will is fulfilled at the proper or opportune moment as planned by an Almighty God.
      4.  God aligns places, people and events without limitations on His power to bring us into His perfect will.
      5. Romans 5: 6-8 – “…at just the right time…Christ died for the ungodly.”
      6. IT’S NEVER TOO LATE!