Summary
Promise Focus
When trouble looms larger than our ability to manage it, the question is not whether God can be trusted but where our eyes will rest. The opening chapter of Luke sets two reactions side by side, and in doing so teaches us how faith actually works when life confronts us with the impossible.
Zechariah and Mary both receive angelic announcements of an unexpected birth. Zechariah, told that his aged wife Elizabeth will bear a son, asks, "How will I know that this is so?" Luke 1:18. The angel's response—striking him mute until the child is born—reveals the heart of the question: it was unbelief. Mary, by contrast, asks, "How can this be, since I am a virgin?" Luke 1:34. On the surface the two questions sound similar, but no reproof falls on Mary. Hers is not the doubt of a closed heart but the wonderment of faith reaching for understanding. She does not yet see how, but she trusts the One who promised.
The difference is what we might call promise focus. Mary looks not to the problem but to the promise. The problem—a virgin conceiving—is genuinely impossible by every natural measure. But faith does not first measure the obstacle; it measures the One who has spoken. This is precisely the pattern Hebrews 11 traces through Abraham, Moses, and Israel at the Red Sea: "Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen" Hebrews 11:1. Joshua and Caleb saw the same giants the other ten spies saw; they simply refused to let the giants eclipse the promise of the land.
Our temptation runs the other direction. Like Moses asking, "Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh?" Exodus 3:11, like Thomas demanding to see the nail marks, like Sarah laughing at the absurdity of bearing a child in old age—we let the size of the problem define the limits of God. Mary's "Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word" Luke 1:38 is faith born of promise, anchored to the angel's assurance that "nothing will be impossible with God" Luke 1:37.
Notice how God himself does the lifting. He does not scold Mary into faith; he gives her a promise large enough to hold her. The Holy Spirit will overshadow her, the child will be holy, the Son of God, heir to David's throne, of a kingdom without end. And as confirmation, Elizabeth—barren and old—is already six months along. God lifts our eyes off the problem by placing his Word in front of them. He keeps doing this throughout Scripture: "It is the LORD who goes before you. He will be with you; he will not leave you or forsake you" Deuteronomy 31:8. "The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end" Lamentations 3:22-23. "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble" Psalm 46:1. Nothing "will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord" Romans 8:38-39.
Most importantly, the One Mary bore is himself the great promise kept. The child in her womb is true God and true man, the second Person of the Trinity in the flesh, "the reflection of God's glory and the exact imprint of his very being" Hebrews 1:3. He went to the cross to bear all our sin—including the sin of not trusting his promises. The blood of the spotless Lamb has reconciled us to God, and the risen Christ keeps coming to us with his Word, lifting our eyes again and again away from what threatens and toward what he has pledged. That is how faith faces problems: not by denying them, but by looking past them to the promise that is greater still.
Video citations
- Facing Problems: “Promise Focus” 12-1-24 — You open your Bible's please with me to the first chapter of the Gospel of Luke. If you're using a Pew edition this morning, you're going to find that in the New Testament page 49. Luke the first…