Sovereignty – The Twelve Days of Advent

And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

Luke 2:6-7

This advent season we focused on the key characters and events identified in the birth of Christ at his first advent. We have stood with Zechariah and watched the smoke rise off the altar of incense in the Temple. We walked alongside the righteous Elizabeth as she strove to honor God in her bareness. We’ve stood as a shadow near the throne of King Herod and examined how even a wicked king points us to the hope found in Jesus. Perhaps you can still hear the echoes of John the Baptist from the corners of the wilderness heralding the message of repentance and the news of the kingdom’s arrival. And let us not forget the lessons of both manhood and betrothal we gleaned from our time traveling from Judea to Egypt and back with Mary and Joseph. From the angels to the elderly, each person who appears at the first advent of Christ has a unique story that points us to the second advent of the Savior. And although these blessed saints have their proper place in the first advent story, it is all too easy to focus on the people in the story and miss the One whom the people and the story are meant to glorify: God.

When we come to the Bible, we must not merely think of the Scriptures as individual segments of history placed alongside one another to make a nice, cozy compendium consisting of isolated stories and events. No, to do that would be to miss the grander story that the individual stories mean to tell, for the Bible has one central plot, one central narrative. And that narrative, which works as God’s revelation of himself to man, is a storyline of God’s sovereignty over all things, particularly the redemption of man. Now, by saying God is sovereign, we mean that he has “absolute rule and authority over all things.”[1]

This attribute of God, his sovereignty, can be seen by the unfolding of events in the first advent of Christ. The timeline of these events does not begin in Luke 1, or even in Genesis 1; but rather, as the Apostle Paul teaches in 2 Timothy 1:9, “salvation is the result of a purpose given in Christ Jesus ‘before the ages began.’”[2] Yes, the Bible teaches that before God ever said, “Let there be light,” He promised eternal life. Titus 1:1-2 testifies of this truth, saying, “Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ . . . in hope of eternal life, which God, who never lies, promised before the ages began.” These works of the Apostle Paul show us that the redemptive storyline of the Bible began, not when Adam and Eve sinned, but before Adam and Eve were ever created. Based upon his promise of eternal life for his people, it was, as far as we know time, always God’s purpose to reconcile people to himself through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. From before time began, God’s sovereign plan for redemption was always Jesus and the story of the first advent is the capstone of God sovereignly working out the details of this magnificent plan.

Now, to be sure, we do not merely have to infer God’s sovereignty from the Bible, but rather we can learn this attribute of God from such explicit passages as Psalm 115:3, which says, “Our God is in the heavens; he does all that he pleases.” And Ephesians 1:11, which says that God, “works all things according to the counsel of his will.” And, as suggested previously, when we look at the story of the first advent, this is what we see God doing: working out the details of His plan of salvation that he promised before the ages (Titus 1:2) “according to the counsel of his will” (Ephesians 1:11).

If you happen to doubt this, think about some of these events for a moment: From the testimony of Gabriel, we see God’s intimate involvement in the first advent. It was God who sent Gabriel to Zechariah and Mary to tell of the conception and birth of both John the Baptist and Jesus (Luke 1:19, 26). It was God who made it possible for Elizabeth to have a son in her old, barren age (Luke 1:37). It was even God who revealed to the prophet Micah that the Savior would be born in Bethlehem, and some eight centuries later it was the same promise-fulfilling, sovereign God who ordered the census via Caesar which would require Mary and Joseph to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem while she was pregnant and close to birthing Jesus (Micah 5:2; Luke 2:1-5). Coincidence? No. God’s sovereignty on display. Yes!

And lest we think that God quit and then restarted working out his plan of redemption somewhere between Malachi and Matthew, how about the genealogy of Christ listed in Luke 3? Here is a list of names, highlighted by Adam, Abraham, and David, which takes us but 90 fleeting seconds to read is, in reality, a detailed record of thousands of years of God’s sovereignty in ensuring that Jesus would be born in the appointed place, at the appointed time, to the appointed person, and for the appointed purpose of accomplishing God’s sovereign plan: saving “his people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21).

It is the first advent of Christ that functions as the marquee event in scripture displaying God’s sovereignty over all people and all events for all time. And to display this even further, we will visit the Garden of Eden this advent season one last time. Recall that God placed Adam and Eve in the garden and in an expression of his wisdom and his will, he forbids them to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:16-17). Upon Adam and Eve’s temptation and Fall, the Lord pronounced curses upon the couple, first to the woman and then to the man. The Lord said to Eve, “I will surely multiply your pain in childbearing; in pain you shall bring forth children” (Genesis 3:16). And to Adam, God said, “By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust and to dust you shall return” (Genesis 3:19). Here is arguably the most somber moment in all of Scripture, save the cross, as God pronounces the curses of painful childbearing and death upon two sinners. Now, think about the first advent of Jesus. Is it not the curse of childbirth given to Eve that brought the Savior into the world when Mary conceived? Is it not the curse of death given to Adam that saw Jesus cancel the debt of sin when he was executed in his own death on the cross? Is there a greater display of God’s sovereignty? What God dealt to Adam and Eve as curses in Genesis 3, he sovereignly used thousands of years and many generations later to save his people from their sins through the birth and death of Jesus at the first advent.

In his sermon titled The Crux of Christmas, Pastor Alistair Begg concisely connects the dots between God’s sovereignty, the first advent of Christ, and the redemption of man, saying,

Here’s the point, though: the storyline of the Bible . . . is not of a plan that God instituted but which went wrong and then had to be, if you like, reconfigured and reinvented. No, not for a moment! If you read your Bible from the back to the front or from the front to the back as well, you will discover . . . that God’s purpose from all of eternity was not Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden but was Christ in the garden of Gethsemane. It was Christ on the cross that from the very beginning of the work of God in his kingdom—it was to establish that people that are his very own . . . You see, the great mystery of it is that when you look into the cradle in Bethlehem, you gaze into the face of “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world.” I suggest to you, that really is the crux of Christmas.[3]

If the unchanging God sovereignly worked out all things to accomplish the first advent of Christ, we joyfully expect him to sovereignly work out all things to accomplish the events of the second advent of Christ. God’s sovereignty is where our hope rests and where our worship finds direction; and this is true, not just this advent season, but in every day between now and the second advent of the Savior.

[1] John MacArthur and Richard Mayhue, eds., Biblical Doctrine: A Systematic Summary of Biblical Truth (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2017), 937.

[2] Samuel Renihan, The Mystery of Christ: His Covenant & His Kingdom (Cape Coral, FL: Founders Press, 2020), 152.

[3] Alistair Begg, “The Crux of Christmas,” Truth for Life, Parkside Church, December 2, 2018, https://www.truthforlife.org/resources/sermon/crux-christmas/.

And they were both righteous before God, walking blamelessly in all the commandments and statutes of the Lord. But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years.

Luke 1:6-7

The story of the first advent revolves around the scene of a mother and her baby. For some, this sight, majestic and wonderful as it is, produces a prick in the heart. Those who are barren, have miscarried, or experienced the loss of a child may feel less joyful than others at the reminder of a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger. For these precious people with heavy hearts, we turn to Elizabeth, who Luke describes as: righteous, blameless, barren, and advanced in years (Luke 1:6-7).

Elizabeth and her husband were “righteous before God” (Luke 1:6). The term righteous in both the Old Testament and New Testament carries the sense of conformity to a standard.[1] Their conformity manifested itself as the couple went about “walking blamelessly,” a phrase Luke used to display Zechariah and Elizabeth’s obedience to God’s law, or standard. In Romans 6, Paul captures the very essence of Zechariah and Elizabeth’s lives: obedience leads to righteousness and righteousness leads to sanctification (vv. 17-19). They conformed to God’s standard of holiness through obedience.

In Luke 1:5, just before he called Elizabeth righteous, Luke provided a detail about her ancestry that highlighted the distress of her childlessness. She was “from the daughters of Aaron” (Luke 1:5), which meant she descended from a long line of devout Jewish priests (Lev. 8-9), who were experts in the Levitical Law. “Leviticus 20:20-21 shows that the Hebrews thought childlessness was a sign of divine punishment.”[2] In the eyes of Elizabeth’s family and the society she lived in, her barrenness must have been divine punishment because they thought one could not simultaneously be blameless and barren.

Luke also revealed that Elizabeth was “advanced in years” (Luke 1:7). Her age added hopelessness to her plight. She referred to her state of elderly barrenness as “my reproach[3] among the people” (Luke 1:25).

Luke’s four descriptions of Elizabeth were: righteous, blameless, barren, and advanced in years (Luke 1:6-7). This description brings into focus the picture of a woman who was deeply aware of her barrenness and society’s view of her state (Luke 1:25), yet never allowed the circumstance to compromise her love and devotion to God or her husband. There is no biblical indication that she blamed, cursed, or disobeyed God because of her barrenness. She was simultaneously blameless and barren. She was not at fault for her infertility despite a historic notion to the contrary. God was not punishing Elizabeth, but rather he was executing his plan in her life.

Even though Elizabeth and Zechariah were blameless, they were not painless. They were image-bearers of God with real feelings and emotions. It is likely that they felt sorrow and sadness. They may have even perceived a sense of emptiness and loss. Despite anything hurtful that they felt, it is evident that the pain of childlessness brought the couple closer to God. In their pursuit of righteousness, they certainly prayed for a child (Luke 1:13). They did not allow their emotions to become their God. They did not let childlessness dictate their treatment of God, themselves, or others. They took their pain, displeasure, distress, emptiness, sorrow, and hurt to the throne of grace for help in a time of need (Heb. 4:15-16). They were without a child, but they were not without a God.

Miraculously, Elizabeth went on to conceive at her advanced age. While pregnant, she became the first person to ever publicly declare that Jesus is Lord (Luke 1:39-45). She did not make this insightful proclamation because she was pregnant, but because she was “filled with the Holy Spirit” (Luke 1:41; cf. Matt. 16:16-17). Even though her dreams of being a mother were finally becoming a reality, the joy of her salvation was in her Lord, not her child. Her hope was in a baby boy, just not her baby boy. Read Luke 1:39-45 and pay particular attention to Elizabeth’s source of joy, the arrival of her Lord:

In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit, and she exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”

The transcending lessons of Elizabeth’s story encourages all believers to:

endure affliction righteously (2 Timothy 2:12-13)
pray and seek God in the midst of difficulty and trials (Philippians 4:4-9)
use reproach as an opportunity to grow closer to God and our spouses/family instead of a reason for isolation and abandonment (2 Corinthians 12:7-10)
realize that nothing is too hard for God (Jeremiah 32:27)
recognize that God’s goodness is still present in affliction (Psalm 119:67-68)
determine that your source of joy is rooted in the coming of our Lord Jesus and look for that second coming often (Luke 2:10)

[1] John MacArthur and Richard Mayhue, eds., Biblical Doctrine: A Systematic Summary of Biblical Truth (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2017), 184.

[2] Trent C. Butler Holman New Testament Commentary: Luke,ed. Max Anders(Nashville, TN, B&H Publishing: 2000), 7.

[3] Another appropriate word for reproach is the term “disgrace.” Elizabeth’s situation was seen as more than an unfortunate occurrence, but rather a disgraceful one.