Here it comes!  The Christmas rush!  The Holiday season.  Big events.  Big plans.  Plans to make Christmas special for your family.  Plans to celebrate the holidays with your friends, Plans for company.  Plans to getting gifts and making food.  Plans to decorate and celebrate.  Plans, plans, plans.  But honestly, don’t many of our Christmas season plans get messed up every year?  No matter how well you have things planned out, some of your hopes and dreams of having the “perfect Christmas” are going to get derailed.  Christmas is all about messed up plans!

There is a trend that is taking place all over the world.  The birth rate is dropping.  From North America to Europe to Japan, women are having significantly less babies.  Why?  Lots of reasons.  More and more women are waiting until later in life to start having children so they can pursue careers.  The cost of raising children is also going up.  It’s supposed to take $200,000 to raise a child today from birth to 18!  Also, since government takes care of senior citizens with pensions today, people aren’t having children in order to take care of them in their old age.

The fact is that women are having fewer children than ever before.  And so, more and more women have found themselves with unplanned pregnancies – unwanted because it messed up their plans.  It messed up their educational plans, career plans, and financial plans.  But this is nothing new!  Our text takes us back in time 2000 years as a young woman discovers she has an unplanned pregnancy that was about to mess up her plans.   Read Luke 1:26-38.

About nine months before the first Christmas, God intervened in human affairs and radically altered Mary’s plans with an unwanted gift.  She was planning on marrying Joseph, a descendant of David, who was a carpenter in Nazareth.  Matthew tells us he was a righteous man (1:19).  He was not rich, but would be able to take care of her.  Marry planned on getting married, having children, and raising a family.  It was a good plan.  It was a comfortable plan.

But then God came along and messed the whole thing up.  He sent an angel to get her attention and said, “Mary, I know that you have your plans in place and everything is on schedule, but I have a different idea.  Before you and Joseph get married, you are going to become pregnant and, guess what?  Joseph is not going to be the father.  I am.”  Talk about messed up plans!  Imagine that, brides!

Imagine what Mary would now have to go through.  The whisperings behind her back.  The pointed fingers, false accusations.  Raised eyebrows, gossip, criticism.  The family pressures, crude jokes, cruel laughter.  Not to mention the long hard journey given her at a time when an expectant mother shouldn’t have had to travel anywhere but a hospital.  Add to that, the birth in a stable, no doctor, no midwife, no medicine, no anesthetic.  This isn’t how you would plan it!  How would she tell Joseph?  In those days, when you were legally engaged as they were, the only way you could be separated was through divorce.  How would Joseph handle this?

Matthew tells us that when Joseph found out that the good little girl he was planning on marrying was pregnant, “he did not want to expose her to public disgrace, [so] he had in mind to divorce her quietly.” (1:19). Joseph was a great guy to react like this, wasn’t he?  How many guys do you know who would act in the best interests of the woman they believed had cheated on them?  However, God’s angel convinced him that he should go through with the marriage.

But it wasn’t just Mary and Joseph’s plans that were messed up by the birth of Jesus.  It pretty much messed up everybody’s plans.  It messed up the plans of the shepherds who were planning on another peaceful night watching their sheep on the Judean hillside.

It messed up Herod’s plans.  He was planning on being the King of the Jews.  Those plans were messed up when he heard that the Messiah had been born in Bethlehem.  So he sent soldiers to kill all the children in Bethlehem two and under.  The families in Bethlehem had their life plans messed up as they were spending a quiet night at home with the kids.  Herod’s soldiers stormed the village, broke open their doors, and took the lives of their youngest.

It also messed up the plans of the Jews who were planning on a political Messiah to come and lead them into a state of independence from the Romans.  Instead, they got a Messiah who told them to “turn the other cheek” and “love your enemies.”  A Messiah who came not to be served but to serve and give his life as a ransom for many. (Mt.20:28)

God messed everybody’s plans up.  Especially Mary’s.  “Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be.”  Mary kept debating with herself: “What’s going on here?  Why is this angel in my house?  What is God trying to tell me?”

Mary was in a state of shock.  Remember seeing the images of the people who had their lives turned upside down by the Tsunami two years ago, or Katrina and Rita last year?  Footage showed these people walking around looking confused and disturbed as they tried to figure out what had just happened to them.  You would be confused and disturbed, too, if your whole world had just been turned upside down.  And how do people initially respond in such life-altering circumstances?  How would you respond?  How did Mary respond?

She asked God a question:  “How will this be,’ Mary asked the angel, ‘since I am a virgin?’”  When something comes along and drastically messes up our plans, we are often left questioning God.  Why did this happen?  How could this happen?  Mary asked God a similar question.  Notice the angel doesn’t condemn Mary for asking her question.  And Mary’s question wasn’t asked out of unbelief.  I think Mary was saying, “Ok, God, if that is your plan – if I am going to have a son –normally that would involve me doing something.  So is there anything I need to be doing?”  God isn’t offended when we ask Him honest questions.  In fact, Mary’s child would grow up one day and say, “Ask and you will be given.”  God invites us to bring our questions and concerns to Him.  So the next time your world gets turned upside down, don’t be afraid to ask God your tough questions.  God doesn’t want his children to put on fake smiles and just pretend that everything is alright when it isn’t.  He appreciates and respects your honesty.

When Mary asked God her question, He provided an answer.  “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.”  In other words, Mary, there is nothing you need to do.  God will cause you supernaturally to become pregnant.  The child is His.

God answered when Mary asked, and God still answers when we ask.  The answers aren’t always what we want them to be.  They don’t always come when we think they should.  But God will faithfully let you know what He expects of you.  You might ask, “How? I haven’t had an angel visit me!”  OK.  Neither have I.  And I am not going to hold my breath.  But God is always trying to get through to us.  The problem isn’t on God’s end.  It’s on ours.  Maybe we aren’t listening to Him.  Maybe we aren’t hearing Him because we are too busy and distracted with other things.  And isn’t that a problem especially during this season of the year?

The year my son Jonah was born, we traveled at Christmas time to be with our families.  Everyone was there.  A house full of people enjoying the festive occasion.  Dawn had put Jonah to sleep for an afternoon nap in my parents’ bedroom in the back of the house.  We had Christmas dinner, were exchanging gifts, playing games, watching football, singing carols, and making all sorts of commotion.  In the midst of it all, I noticed Dawn slip quietly out of the room to head up and check on Jonah.  Why?  She had heard his quiet crying.  Funny, isn’t it?  In all the commotion, no one else heard the baby.  But she did.  You know why?  Because she was tuned in to hear the baby.  She was listening for him.  Her ears were trained to hear her baby’s cry.  That was her priority.  That’s something you need to ask yourself this Christmas:  Can you hear the baby?  Are you tuned in to hear God?  Is that your priority amidst all the other confusion?

How does God speak?  Through the Bible.  Have you been reading it?  Have you been studying it?  Listening to it regularly at church?  It might be quiet compared to all the other “noise” of the season, but this is where God speaks to us.  The Holy Spirit works through this tool to bring God’s wonderful hope into our hearts and lives.  Listen!

And then submit!  Trust God.  Believe his Words.  Like Mary did.  “I am the Lord’s servant,” Mary answered, “May it be to me as you have said.”  Finally, God doesn’t expect us to know it all or understand it all.  What God wants from us is our willingness to submit to his plans and agenda for our lives.  This is really tough for us to do because we like to be in charge and call the shots.  But being a Christian means:  Trusting in God because of what He has done for us.  Putting it in his hands.  Knowing we no longer live for ourselves, but for Him.  Believing we have an amazing HOPE to look forward to because our heavenly Father really does know best.

Mary submitted herself to God’s Word.  She could not figure out how it was all going to come about, but she allowed faith to rise above her reasoning and she trusted God and his Word.  God fulfilled his Word and accomplished the impossible in Mary’s life.  Friends, do you see what this means for us?  God will do the impossible in our lives too!  As we place our total trust in God and his Word, He will work in our seemingly impossible situations.  “For nothing is impossible with God,” the angel told Mary.  That gives HOPE, doesn’t it?  Will you trust God?  Mary did.  Are you willing to allow God to mess up your plans this holiday season?

In closing, I want you to know that anytime God interrupts your plans, it is only because He has a better plan.  Mary was simply planning on settling down, marrying a carpenter and raising a family.  But God said, “Mary, I don’t want you to just give birth to a kid.  I want you to give birth to a King.  I don’t want you to merely raise a son.  I want you to raise the Saviour.  I want you to give up your good plan for my great plan.”

This Christmas season, let’s be aware that God’s plans often come through unwanted interruptions – through unwanted gifts.  Will you allow yourself to be bothered by God’s interruptions this Christmas?  Will you accept his “unwanted gift”?  If so, you might just find this to be the most interesting, difficult, and yet rewarding Christmas ever!  Just think what loss our world would have suffered if Mary wouldn’t have accepted God’s unwanted gift.  In preparation for the very first Christmas, Mary allowed the Lord Jesus to enter her womb.  In preparation for this Christmas, won’t you allow Him to enter your heart?

The scripture says that Mary was highly favored by God.  In other words, she was someone to whom God showed his amazing grace.  You are also highly favored by God.  So much so that He sent Jesus into this world to die for your sins.  God desires to spend eternity with you and so He made a way for that to happen through his Son.  Christ died for you so you could have life with Him.  May this give you hope in the midst of any messed up plans!   Amen.

Sources: “All I Want for Christmas” James Moore,  “An Unwanted Gift” Steven Dow, “Nothing is Impossible for God” Greg Johnson