The Spirit’s Most Significant Mission, Part 2

Chuck Swindoll: Today from Chuck Swindoll on Insight for Living. God can do anything. God can change anyone. If I want you to remember anything as a result of this time together, it's that statement. For nothing will be impossible with God.
Chuck Swindoll: There are moments in life when God's direction makes absolutely no sense. The path forward seems unclear. The obstacles feel insurmountable, and the only thing you know for certain is that you can't pull this off on your own. Sound familiar? Well, today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll describes one of the most breathtaking miracles in all of scripture.
Chuck Swindoll: An inflection point when the humanly impossible became divinely certain. If you're facing something right now that feels completely beyond you, Chuck invites you to examine the spirit's most significant mission.
Chuck Swindoll: Our Father, we thank you for the firsts in our lives. That first person who had the courage to look at us and ask us about things eternal and to make us aware that things were not well.
Chuck Swindoll: And we had to face that. We had to come to terms with that, and we we look back on that realizing at that time it seemed fearful and confusing and maybe even for some, a struggle. But we look back and thank you for sending that person to be like Gabriel was for Mary, the messenger of good news.
Chuck Swindoll: Thank you for reminding us again and for many, the very first time that with you, nothing is impossible. No friend without Christ is impossibly lost. It may very well be you would have us speak to him or her this week.
Chuck Swindoll: Thank you for the first time, our Father, when we realized the meaning and significance of deep and abiding worship. When we were delivered from the feeling that we needed to be entertained. But we were really to come before the Holy God to hear his truth, to sing his songs, to pause in quietness and let the wonder in.
Chuck Swindoll: And this season of the year, our Father, we thank you for that first light on that dark night. When all else was wrong in the world, you gave us that son of yours.
Chuck Swindoll: And we thank you for him. May we worship him today as if for the first time, with a fresh as if first-time joy, that we are participating in your work for your glory. In the name of Jesus, our first and only savior, we pray.
Chuck Swindoll: Everyone said, amen.
Bill Myers: You're listening to Insight for Living. To dig deeper into today's topic on your own, be sure to purchase our Searching the Scriptures Bible study workbook by going to insight.org/offer. Chuck titled today's message, The Spirit's Most Significant Mission.
Chuck Swindoll: It's easy to forget the kind of times into which Jesus was born. And what makes his birth all the more amazing is that it was, in God's estimation, the right moment.
Chuck Swindoll: Though in the world's eyes, there would have been a hundred reasons to choose another time, either before then or after the fact. But those prophecies waited to be fulfilled. And that is what was accomplished according to God's promise. Just as he planned.
Chuck Swindoll: If God were to wait until time was just right, there would never have been a son sent. But against all the odds and in spite of the threatening situation that even this young couple faced after the birth, God brought forth his son.
Chuck Swindoll: And by the way, he had all of the arrangements put together before time ever began. The account is in Luke chapter 1 and the main part we're considering is verses 26 to 38, which really identifies two people and focuses on them. One is an angel named Gabriel, and one is a young woman who is a virgin named Mary.
Chuck Swindoll: The angel, we read in verse 26, is sent from God to a city in Galilee called Nazareth.
Chuck Swindoll: In the counsel of divine decrees, before there was ever time on earth, before there was ever matter, before there was a sun, moon or stars. The Godhead together planned salvation. And in the plan of salvation, it was ordained that this angel be sent on this particular day to this particular woman living in this particular place.
Chuck Swindoll: Planning our salvation, knowing our need for the Savior, our God already has put together the plan that on this very day, at this particular time, this angel, the messenger angel would leave the throne room of the Father and come to this earth, and we read he would come to the city in Galilee called Nazareth.
Chuck Swindoll: The reason Luke writes it like that is because there were people reading it for the first time who would not know where Nazareth was. His gospel would spread across the the whole known world, but who ever heard of Nazareth? It's a tiny place. And if you think Nazareth is small, Bethlehem is even smaller.
Chuck Swindoll: But never doubt it, the destination is determined, the person is selected, the situation is complicated, and the mission is humanly impossible. All four are true. Let me unpack them.
Chuck Swindoll: First, the destination. The angel was to go to the city called, really we would call it a village called Nazareth. Nazareth is where Mary lived, it's where Joseph lived, it's where they have been betrothed.
Chuck Swindoll: Unlike today, in those days, in a Jewish marriage, there was the commitment to one another, followed by the signing of a betrothal covenant, which lasted usually about a year. During that year, they were known as husband and wife. Though they didn't live together, they were not intimate with one another. They were seen as husband and wife, which explains why he is called her husband on occasion, though they've not actually been married.
Chuck Swindoll: They are committed to one another in this betrothal, and the angel is to find her in the city of Nazareth, and he does so. So the person is selected. She is a virgin, never knew a man. Now the situation is complicated, complicated.
Chuck Swindoll: Why? Because the plan of God required depositing on this earth a sinless, but very human individual.
Chuck Swindoll: How do you get a child born without sin, who comes from the womb of his mother or her mother? How do you do that? The possibilities get a little bit complicated. I took my time this week to think through what those possibilities were. Listen to them.
Chuck Swindoll: First, God could have chosen a human mother and a human father and then put the baby there and have them have the child. The problem is you've got a sinful product. Can't come from just an average man and woman that's the result of intercourse and then the the baby nine months later is born. You'd have a sinful child.
Chuck Swindoll: Well, the second possibility is neither one. Just leave a divinely given gift on a doorstep. Mary finds the baby and claims it. The problem there is not truly human. Hasn't had a birth. So that won't work.
Chuck Swindoll: The third possibility is to send a soul and spirit to live in a person already on earth. The problem is it would not be his own body, nor could it be said that he is truly human, but has in fact been brought into a life.
Chuck Swindoll: And so this leaves only the option number four: the supernatural conception. The womb of Mary would be that earthly vehicle. However, the embryo would bypass the contamination with sin, since the tiny speck of life within Mary's womb would have been made possible, as we're going to read, by the Holy Spirit.
Chuck Swindoll: The miracle is often called a virgin birth miracle. It's the virgin conception that is miraculous. Never before, never since, has this ever occurred.
Chuck Swindoll: G. Campbell Morgan writes this: "He was the God-man, not God indwelling a man, of such there had been many. Not a man deified, of such there have been none, save in the myths of the pagan systems of thought, but God and man combining in one personality, the two natures, a perpetual enigma and mystery baffling the possibility of explanation."
Chuck Swindoll: Having read that, I'm now going to explain what baffles the possibility of explanation. Always makes me smile when I think about that. Like the statement, "Thanks be to God for his his gift too wonderful for words." And then I speak on it for 30 minutes to give you the words that are too wonderful for us to grasp.
Chuck Swindoll: How do we really put it all together? How do we make sense out of what is absolutely impossible? You just keep reading the text. You keep reading the holy word of God.
Chuck Swindoll: He comes to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph. Of the descendants of David, and the virgin's name was Mary. Remember, she wasn't expecting it.
Chuck Swindoll: It was an absolute sudden surprise to her. She looks up and she sees the the the visible manifestation of an angelic being. Coming in, he said to her, "Hail, favored one. The Lord is with you."
Chuck Swindoll: Look at the words. She's the favored one. For centuries, the church taught that she bestows favor, that she bestows grace, which has led to mariolatry, the worship of Mary, the mother of God. By the way, she's never in the scriptures called the mother of God.
Chuck Swindoll: She's the one who has been given grace. She's the one who is favored, favored by God. She's the recipient of God's favor and grace. And he says, "The Lord is with you." And she's standing there hearing it, wondering, "Who is this visitor? Why is he calling me a favored one?"
Chuck Swindoll: And how is it that the Lord is going to be with me? I believe in my Lord, but why the need for his presence with me, delivered to me in the message from the messenger himself, Gabriel?
Chuck Swindoll: We're not surprised to read that she was very perplexed. Verse 29. The tense of this particular Greek term suggests ongoing. She continues to mull it over.
Chuck Swindoll: She's not questioning it. In fact, she's not disagreeing with it. She's just puzzled by it. She's just puzzled by it. It it's it's like I would feel if Cynthia said to me tomorrow morning, "Hey, honey, I forgot to tell you. We're going to have a fifth child."
Chuck Swindoll: I would be perplexed to hear that. We would name the baby a miracle, but that's as far as I'm going with that. It's just not going to happen.
Chuck Swindoll: Mary's thinking, it can't happen. In her case, she's got the right age going for her, but she doesn't have the right intimate experience. So she's perplexed.
Chuck Swindoll: The word means to be caught up in intense curiosity. "How could this be? Because a man I do not know," literally the statement reads. Remember, it has to be a man and I I'm in love with Joseph, but I've never been intimate with Joseph. I do not know a man.
Chuck Swindoll: David adds a curious statement here. Jesus' divine human nature is a physical as well as a theological fact. Luke the physician set up the paradox when he announced that Jesus was conceived by the Holy Ghost in the womb of Mary without human agency.
Chuck Swindoll: The genetic puzzle has never been unraveled. Did God select certain qualities in genetic structure, chromosome mix, and the DNA code? If so, what are the personality features of the word made flesh?
Chuck Swindoll: Some might contend that the case for the humanity of Jesus is already refuted. Others have chosen to deny the virgin birth in order to make Jesus fully human. Logically, the genetic mystery is no greater than the incarnation itself.
Chuck Swindoll: Like geneticists who have not unlocked the secret of conception, we must rely upon information about Jesus' birth and development to find out if he was fully human. And he goes on to describe those characteristics of humanity. You can't unravel it.
Chuck Swindoll: If you're waiting for scientific proof of this, you'll you'll wait in vain. It's a miracle. Miracles lack proof of this nature.
Chuck Swindoll: She's told you will have the baby. She's asking how can it be? And now he explains. It doesn't help her with all the answers, but it at least describes the supernatural nature of the conception.
Chuck Swindoll: The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. Behold, you will conceive in your womb, verse 31, and bear a son. You shall name him Jesus. He will be great. He will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David. He will reign over the house of Jacob, and his kingdom will have no end."
Chuck Swindoll: How can that be? I understand you're talking Messiah here. But what I don't get is how this will occur. I can't figure it out.
Chuck Swindoll: Verse 35 is crucial because it represents the Holy Spirit's most significant mission.
Chuck Swindoll: The angel answered and said to her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you. The power of the Most High will overshadow you." These are all human terms, accommodating human ignorance and an inability to grasp the truth.
Chuck Swindoll: "The Holy Spirit will come upon you. The power of the Most High will overshadow you." For this reason, "the holy child shall be called the son of God."
Chuck Swindoll: What you must understand, even the most intense skeptic listening right now, is that you will never ever unravel the puzzle. You can't because it's a miracle.
Chuck Swindoll: God comes, God makes the announcement. God leaves Mary in her puzzlement wondering what it's all about, just as any one of you ladies in these teenage years in which Mary was would find yourself absolutely shocked.
Chuck Swindoll: But God doesn't back off. He says, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you and will overshadow you." Somewhere between this announcement and Mary's arrival at Elizabeth's place of residence, a conception took place.
Chuck Swindoll: The details of that are left for our imagination. Nothing in scripture covers that epical moment of the spirit's most significant mission.
Chuck Swindoll: Now please observe what sealed it for Mary. I think it's a turning point in the narrative when she asks, "How can it be? I know not a man," on and on.
Chuck Swindoll: Now, the thing I love about Mary's response is what follows in this passage of scripture. Before I get there, I just want you to look at verse 37 and let it sink in. He says, "For nothing will be impossible with God."
Chuck Swindoll: If I want you to remember anything as a result of this time together, it's that statement. Because there isn't a person sitting here today who doesn't have something impossible that you're facing. Something. Something you cannot fix, you cannot change, you cannot alter, you cannot start or stop. It's impossible for you.
Chuck Swindoll: I spoke to our staff on, what was it, on Wednesday morning. We we had a gathering here of the Insight for Living staff along with our pastoral and and all of our staff here at the church. We we met in a former worship gathering place. It was a great time of singing.
Chuck Swindoll: We were reflecting on this story. I took another tack at it that morning. But I concluded by reminding all of us that God can do anything. God can change anyone. And I said to them, "I want all of you to remember that because it's going to be easily forgotten."
Chuck Swindoll: Are you ready? I was dealing with a difficult individual by Thursday. It hadn't even been 24 hours since I spoke. And I remember saying to someone who had been in that meeting, "This person is impossible."
Guest (Female): And she said to me, "As I recall, God can do anything, God can change anyone."
Chuck Swindoll: Isn't that. Already, in less than 24 hours I'd forgotten that nothing will be impossible with God. That statement can transform your thinking. It can change your whole attitude. Because there's not a person hearing right now who is not facing something that isn't humanly impossible.
Chuck Swindoll: By that I mean, you can't pull it off. You can't make it happen. I think it's that statement that causes Mary finally to rest her case. She doesn't have to know all the details. She simply must understand that the God who is revealing this message is the God of impossibilities.
Chuck Swindoll: By the way, in various wording, that statement is found four times in the scriptures. Twice in Jeremiah and twice in Luke's gospel. Because God knew if we just read it once, we wouldn't remember it. Remember it this week. Say it to your friend, say it to your spouse.
Chuck Swindoll: Remind your child or your parent that with God nothing is impossible. Let it sink in. Because you see, the enemy hears what you're hearing and wants you to forget it. Because a whole week is going to unfold before we gather together again like this for teaching. And if you're not careful, you're going to be lost in doubt and dismay if you let the statement of verse 37 slide by.
Chuck Swindoll: Mary, Mary, nothing will be impossible with God. You know what? That's the turning point in the whole narrative. She hears that statement, "Nothing will be impossible with God." And that settled it.
Chuck Swindoll: The next two verses are wonderful verses. Mary said, "Behold the bond slave of the Lord. May it be done to me according to your word." And the angel departed.
Chuck Swindoll: First, what she calls herself, I think is significant. I'm a bond servant. In other words, I'm not running my own life. I'm not in charge of the events of my life, and even though I have no idea how God is going to pull this off, I I want it known right now that I see myself as a humble servant of the living God. I am available to him to do with me whatever he may wish.
Chuck Swindoll: There's something wonderful about that kind of spirit of humility. That kind of submission makes life move so much smoother.
Chuck Swindoll: Daryl Bock says, "The word describes one of humble station who addresses a superior in recognition of their position." As God's handmaid, Mary accepts openly what God asks of her.
Chuck Swindoll: Mary, the woman of strength and character, says immediately, "I'm the Lord's bond servant." It's a statement of humility. While we're on that, would you hold your place here and look at 1st Peter chapter 5?
Chuck Swindoll: I want to point out three benefits of true humility right here from 1st Peter 5. Verse 5 concludes with, "With humility toward one another, for God is opposed to the proud but gives grace to the humble. Therefore, stay with the word, humble yourself under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you at the proper time, casting all your anxiety on him because he cares for you."
Chuck Swindoll: Go back to verse 5. The first benefit of humility is that we're given grace to accept whatever. The second thing is that it comes with a promise.
Chuck Swindoll: "Humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God that he may exalt you at the proper time." We rest in his promise when we humble ourselves. Third, we are relieved of anxiety. And who doesn't want that? "Casting all your anxiety on him because literally it matters to him concerning you," the verse literally reads.
Chuck Swindoll: Today, Chuck Swindoll unpacked three remarkable gifts available to anyone willing to humble themselves before God. Grace to accept what you cannot change, a promise that God will lift you up at exactly the right time, and relief from the anxiety that's been stealing your peace. He titled this message, The Spirit's Most Significant Mission.
Chuck Swindoll: Next time on Insight for Living, the application becomes intensely personal. So keep listening. In the meantime, when you're ready to fully explore what it means to walk in the spirit, remember that helpful resources are waiting for you here at Insight for Living. Chuck Swindoll's 12 sermons for this series are available on CD or MP3. Plus, there's a spiral-bound Bible study workbook from our popular Searching the Scriptures studies. The title of this 12-part series is How Great Is Our God.
Chuck Swindoll: You can ask for it when you call us at 800-772-8888 or go online to insight.org/offer. Does someone in your life have questions about heaven? Maybe it's a friend wrestling with grief, a family member who lost a child, or someone asking whether a loved one who died could possibly be with the Lord. These are tender, urgent questions, and they deserve thoughtful, biblical answers.
Chuck Swindoll: Insight for Living's Understanding Heaven passport was designed with those conversations in mind. Each section explains what scripture teaches, and it also equips you to speak confidently and compassionately to the people in your circle who may not know the Lord or who simply need the comfort that only God's truth can provide.
Chuck Swindoll: Don't let these conversations catch you unprepared. This beautiful resource is available to you right now, absolutely free when you visit insight.org/heaven. Download your copy of Insight for Living's Understanding Heaven passport when you go to insight.org/heaven.
Bill Myers: I'm Bill Myers, inviting you to join us when Chuck Swindoll concludes his 12-part series called How Great Is Our God. Friday on Insight for Living.
Bill Myers: The preceding message, The Spirit's Most Significant Mission, was copyrighted in 2008, 2009, 2016, 2019, and 2026. And the sound recording was copyrighted in 2026 by Charles R. Swindoll, Incorporated. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.