WEBVTT 00:00:00.020 --> 00:00:02.540 Hi, this is Steve Webb, your OG Godcaster. 00:00:02.940 --> 00:00:07.060 You're about to hear the LifeSpring Advent Calendar, which was recorded in 2006. 00:00:07.640 --> 00:00:10.300 It's a daily show which will run right up to Christmas Day, 00:00:10.640 --> 00:00:12.960 so be sure to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. 00:00:13.440 --> 00:00:17.520 Now, the story of Advent and Christmas is a timeless story, so it doesn't age. 00:00:17.620 --> 00:00:22.440 However, the links and the phone numbers mentioned on the podcast have all changed but one. 00:00:22.820 --> 00:00:25.240 WhyChristmas.com is still current and active, 00:00:25.400 --> 00:00:28.300 and it's the best Christmas information website on the Internet. 00:00:28.960 --> 00:00:32.820 LifeSpringPodcast.com now forwards you to LifeSpringMedia.com. 00:00:33.020 --> 00:00:39.320 And the phone number you'll hear on the show is changed to plus 1-951-732-8511. 00:00:56.560 --> 00:01:01.340 Hello and welcome to Day 17 of the LifeSpring Advent Calendar and I'm Steve Webb, your host. 00:01:02.400 --> 00:01:05.019 I wonder what the calendar has in store for us today. 00:01:29.180 --> 00:01:30.940 Today is the third Sunday of Advent 00:01:31.340 --> 00:01:34.740 and on our calendar that represents Mary, the mother of Jesus. 00:01:35.600 --> 00:01:40.520 This Sunday we light three of our Advent candles, so let's do that and find out more about Mary. 00:01:49.960 --> 00:01:53.780 The story today comes from the book of Luke in chapter 1 and says this. 00:01:55.000 --> 00:02:00.180 In the sixth month, God sent the angel Gabriel to Nazareth, a town in Galilee, 00:02:00.280 --> 00:02:04.980 to a virgin pledged to be married to a man named Joseph, a descendant of David. 00:02:05.880 --> 00:02:07.320 The virgin's name was Mary. 00:02:08.020 --> 00:02:09.399 The angel went to her and said, 00:02:09.860 --> 00:02:13.940 Greetings, you who are highly favored. The Lord is with you. 00:02:14.880 --> 00:02:19.380 Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be. 00:02:19.960 --> 00:02:20.940 But the angel said to her, 00:02:21.340 --> 00:02:24.920 Do not be afraid, Mary. You have found favor with God. 00:02:25.540 --> 00:02:28.400 You will be with child and give birth to a son. 00:02:28.460 --> 00:02:30.800 and you are to give him the name Jesus. 00:02:31.820 --> 00:02:35.000 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. 00:02:36.020 --> 00:02:38.840 The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David 00:02:39.340 --> 00:02:42.140 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever. 00:02:42.820 --> 00:02:44.800 His kingdom will never end. 00:02:46.000 --> 00:02:50.240 How will this be? Mary asked the angel, since I am a virgin. 00:02:51.120 --> 00:02:54.400 The angel answered, The Holy Spirit will come upon you 00:02:55.060 --> 00:02:57.739 and the power of the Most High will overshadow you 00:02:58.240 --> 00:03:01.400 so the Holy One to be born will be called the Son of God. 00:03:02.080 --> 00:03:06.420 Even Elizabeth, your relative, is going to have a child in her old age 00:03:07.000 --> 00:03:10.400 and she, who is said to be barren, is in her sixth month 00:03:10.780 --> 00:03:13.740 for nothing is impossible with God. 00:03:14.920 --> 00:03:17.260 I am the Lord's servant, Mary answered. 00:03:17.880 --> 00:03:20.260 May it be to me as you have said. 00:03:21.260 --> 00:03:23.240 Then the angel left her. 00:03:23.420 --> 00:03:25.979 Now that's quite a story, but it's even more amazing 00:03:26.000 --> 00:03:28.240 when you find out about some of the facts behind it. 00:03:29.140 --> 00:03:32.820 Well, how old do you think Mary was when she had this experience and had her baby? 00:03:33.340 --> 00:03:35.640 Her early 30s, mid-20s, something like that? 00:03:36.320 --> 00:03:39.040 Well, no, she was probably only 14 or 16. 00:03:39.860 --> 00:03:42.160 Yes, that's right, Jesus had a teenage mother. 00:03:42.800 --> 00:03:44.420 And that was quite common in biblical times. 00:03:45.440 --> 00:03:47.620 Girls were often engaged and married about this age. 00:03:48.120 --> 00:03:51.440 Joseph, who Mary was engaged to, was probably quite a bit older than her, 00:03:51.750 --> 00:03:53.400 in his 30s or even 40s. 00:03:53.960 --> 00:03:56.460 You know, Joseph and Mary would have been a pretty average couple. 00:03:56.980 --> 00:03:59.920 Both Joseph and Mary were descendants of King David of Israel, 00:04:00.080 --> 00:04:03.100 who ruled Israel about a thousand years before the birth of Jesus. 00:04:03.860 --> 00:04:08.560 Mary was also related to the traditional priest families of Israel through her cousin Elizabeth. 00:04:09.220 --> 00:04:13.220 We don't know what Mary did for a living, if anything, but Joseph was a carpenter. 00:04:14.440 --> 00:04:18.519 This job was seen by some religious leaders as a religious duty rather than as a profession, 00:04:19.040 --> 00:04:22.900 and the job involved being a stonemason as well as working with wood. 00:04:23.540 --> 00:04:29.060 So Mary is a pretty normal young woman and then one day suddenly an angel appears telling her that she's going to have a child. 00:04:29.560 --> 00:04:36.820 I think the sentence, Mary was greatly troubled at his words and wondered what kind of greetings this might be, is rather a big understatement. 00:04:37.580 --> 00:04:44.640 The angel Gabriel, who visited Mary, is God's chief messenger angel and only appeared a few times to very important people in the Bible. 00:04:45.480 --> 00:04:52.320 The first words that Gabriel spoke to Mary, greetings you who are highly favoured, the Lord is with you, have a very important meaning. 00:04:53.200 --> 00:04:58.500 The term highly favored meant God's holy grace is upon you and was a special blessing from God, 00:04:59.180 --> 00:05:02.420 something that would never have normally been said to a peasant girl like Mary. 00:05:03.360 --> 00:05:06.900 You can only imagine that she would have been scared, puzzled and amazed by this. 00:05:07.880 --> 00:05:10.180 So Gabriel says, do not be afraid. 00:05:10.920 --> 00:05:16.700 The name Jesus or Yeshua, as it would have been said then, was a very common name in Israel at that time. 00:05:17.360 --> 00:05:22.140 If you had gone down a normal street and called out Yeshua to a group of children playing, 00:05:22.340 --> 00:05:24.840 it's more than likely that a couple of them would have come running. 00:05:25.480 --> 00:05:29.900 The name Jesus means Savior and has a very important meaning in the Christmas story. 00:05:30.520 --> 00:05:33.880 I don't think it's surprising how Mary asked how she was going to have a child. 00:05:34.380 --> 00:05:36.220 She wasn't married and she was still a virgin. 00:05:37.120 --> 00:05:39.620 And the answer she received would have amazed her even more. 00:05:40.740 --> 00:05:42.360 In the old Jewish religious stories, 00:05:42.620 --> 00:05:45.420 only the very important people, such as prophets and kings, 00:05:45.840 --> 00:05:47.280 had the Holy Spirit come into them. 00:05:48.060 --> 00:05:50.320 She might not have even believed that it was going to happen, 00:05:50.820 --> 00:05:52.140 so she went to see her cousin Elizabeth. 00:05:52.420 --> 00:05:56.020 who Gabriel said would have a baby, to see if it was really true. 00:05:56.480 --> 00:05:59.800 She did this even before she told Joseph about Gabriel and Jesus. 00:06:00.680 --> 00:06:02.640 Mary's visit to Elizabeth is another story, 00:06:02.840 --> 00:06:05.740 and I guess we might find out more about that later on in the calendar. 00:06:06.820 --> 00:06:10.480 The town that Mary and Joseph lived in, Nazareth, was a pretty small hill town, 00:06:10.770 --> 00:06:14.860 but it was on a major caravan route, and lots of people travelled through it, 00:06:15.010 --> 00:06:16.980 and it also had a centre for the temple priests, 00:06:17.640 --> 00:06:20.640 where they came to pray when they were not on duty at the temple. 00:06:21.440 --> 00:06:26.640 In Jewish law, an engagement like Joseph and Mary's was treated almost like a marriage 00:06:26.830 --> 00:06:29.400 and could only be broken by an official divorce. 00:06:30.760 --> 00:06:33.700 Do you remember that Mary hadn't told Joseph about this yet? 00:06:34.400 --> 00:06:38.480 Well, he found out. We can read about it in the book of Matthew, chapter 1. 00:06:39.200 --> 00:06:41.660 This is how the birth of Jesus Christ came about. 00:06:42.360 --> 00:06:44.920 His mother Mary was pledged to be married to Joseph. 00:06:45.620 --> 00:06:49.840 But before they came together, she was found to be with child through the Holy Spirit. 00:06:50.580 --> 00:06:55.820 Because Joseph, her husband, was a righteous man and did not want to expose her to public disgrace, 00:06:56.680 --> 00:06:59.260 he had in mind to divorce her quietly. 00:07:00.060 --> 00:07:04.260 But after he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, 00:07:04.420 --> 00:07:09.640 Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, 00:07:10.200 --> 00:07:13.180 because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 00:07:14.220 --> 00:07:18.500 She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, 00:07:19.140 --> 00:07:22.000 because he will save his people from their sins. 00:07:23.240 --> 00:07:26.920 All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet. 00:07:27.860 --> 00:07:31.100 The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, 00:07:31.760 --> 00:07:36.380 and they will call him Emmanuel, which means God is with us. 00:07:37.520 --> 00:07:41.140 When Joseph woke up, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded him 00:07:41.600 --> 00:07:43.580 and took Mary home as his wife. 00:07:43.970 --> 00:07:47.980 But he had no union with her until she gave birth to a son. 00:07:48.819 --> 00:07:51.580 He gave him the name Jesus. 00:07:52.980 --> 00:07:55.200 It must have been very hard for Mary to tell Joseph 00:07:55.560 --> 00:07:58.200 and to Joseph it must have sounded like an incredible story. 00:07:58.960 --> 00:08:01.340 In fact, he probably thought that she'd been unfaithful to him. 00:08:02.100 --> 00:08:05.320 Even though they were engaged and not yet officially married, 00:08:05.660 --> 00:08:08.880 to break up the relationship, Joseph would have had to divorce Mary. 00:08:09.280 --> 00:08:14.140 In fact, adultery during engagement was even punishable by death in some cases. 00:08:15.040 --> 00:08:19.880 But Joseph was a good man and so decided to divorce her quietly, in private, 00:08:20.460 --> 00:08:23.200 even though this would have really damaged his reputation. 00:08:23.920 --> 00:08:28.000 This type of divorce only needed two witnesses rather than going through the Jewish courts 00:08:28.280 --> 00:08:30.780 and no formal grounds needed to be given for the divorce. 00:08:31.860 --> 00:08:35.560 But in a dream, an angel appeared to Joseph and told him to trust Mary. 00:08:36.280 --> 00:08:39.820 The angel also told Joseph that the child should be called Jesus. 00:08:40.640 --> 00:08:46.800 Having a vision and a dream from God was also very unusual and only happened to a few important people elsewhere in the Bible. 00:08:47.640 --> 00:08:50.780 So this would have made Joseph pay attention and do what the angel had said. 00:08:59.060 --> 00:09:11.900 Mary, did you know that your baby boy will one day walk on water? 00:09:13.980 --> 00:09:25.360 Mary, did you know that your baby boy will save our sons and daughters? 00:09:27.360 --> 00:09:38.360 Did you know that your baby boy has come to make you new? 00:09:39.710 --> 00:09:49.520 This child that you delivered will soon deliver you. 00:09:50.840 --> 00:10:02.160 Mary, did you know that your baby boy will give sight to a blind man? 00:10:03.480 --> 00:10:14.100 Mary, did you know that your baby boy will calm a storm with his hand? 00:10:15.080 --> 00:10:26.560 Did you know that your baby boy has walked where angels trod? 00:10:27.060 --> 00:10:38.200 When you kiss your little baby, you've kissed the face of God. 00:10:39.500 --> 00:10:49.520 The blind will see, the deaf will hear, and the dead will live again. 00:10:50.930 --> 00:11:01.000 The lame will leap, the dumb will speak the praises of the Lamb. 00:11:12.420 --> 00:11:13.820 Mary 00:11:17.820 --> 00:11:18.900 Mary 00:11:18.900 --> 00:11:32.780 Did you know that your baby boy is Lord of all creation? 00:11:36.260 --> 00:11:48.580 Mary, did you know that your baby boy will one day rule the nations? 00:11:50.170 --> 00:12:01.640 Did you know that your baby boy is heaven's perfect lamb? 00:12:03.640 --> 00:12:08.500 This sleeping child you're holding 00:12:10.580 --> 00:12:22.840 Is the great I have 00:12:39.559 --> 00:12:42.360 Thank you. 00:12:54.720 --> 00:12:56.120 Thank you. 00:13:22.860 --> 00:13:28.220 the words for. The name of the song is Mary Did You Know. Mark is a friend of mine and he gave us 00:13:28.540 --> 00:13:33.640 permission to play that song on the show today. Thank you, Mark, so very much. The background 00:13:33.870 --> 00:13:39.980 music today was by Doug Bolt with Hark the Herald Angels Sing with Angels We Have Heard on High. 00:13:40.620 --> 00:13:45.880 The scripture reading today was Ron from Griddle Cakes Radio. That's a podcast I highly recommend. 00:13:46.500 --> 00:13:51.200 Of course, the theme music was Brian Duncan and the Neil Soul Band with This Christmas. 00:13:52.180 --> 00:13:58.060 Please keep on listening to the LifeSpring Advent Calendar to hear more about Christmas and the Christmas story. 00:13:58.360 --> 00:13:59.620 This has been Day No. 17. 00:14:00.180 --> 00:14:02.100 For James Cooper, I'm Steve Webb. 00:14:02.900 --> 00:14:03.460 God bless you. 00:14:03.500 --> 00:14:09.080 Best of all, I know this Christmas brings long after Christmas time.