Prophetic Constraints

Now in the sixth month

the angel Gabriel was sent by God

to a city of Galilee named Nazareth,

to a virgin betrothed to a man

whose name was Joseph, of the house of David.

The virgin's name was Mary.

Luke 1:26-27

As I indicated previously, there was nothing random about this verse and the angelic mission it records. There was something very specific going on here, because the path had already been planned for 4000 years! Centuries-old prophecies had to be fulfilled through the arrival of God's Son. This verse touches just a few of them.

Galilee, the region in which these events took place and in which Jesus would be raised and spend much of His ministry, was the region prophesied in Isaiah 9:1-2. "...Galilee of the Gentiles. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light." There's more to the passage that will be covered when we return to Matthew's gospel, but Galilee was the prophesied region of the Messiah's ministry.

Nazareth was a tiny, insignificant village perched on an out of the way hillside. It's never mentioned in the Old Testament or the writings of the historian Josephus. It's name means shoot or stump, literally something that has been cut off. Matthew refers to a prophecy that the Messiah would be called a Nazarene, although those specific words are not found in our Bible today. No prophet predicted that Jesus would come from Nazareth, but no less than six times Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Zechariah refer to the Messiah as a branch from the stump of Jesse, the Jewish word being the same from which Nazareth and Nazarene are derived.

David had been given a promise by God that his kingdom would have no end, and that he would always have an heir to sit on his throne. 600 years had gone by since a descendant of David had sat on the throne as king, but God's promises are still good. The King of kings was coming, and he would be born into the house of David.

There is no more critical or foundational a doctrine to Christianity to the fourth and final detail of Luke's verse--that the angel came to a virgin named Mary. Isaiah prophesied that the sign God would give would be a virgin-born child called Emmanuel, which means God is with us. Skeptics and critics of the virgin birth have tried to give virgin a new meaning, simply a young girl. But the gospels are very clear on this matter--Mary was a young girl, yes; but she was also a virgin in the strictest sense of the word. She was betrothed (legally married) but the marriage had not been consummated. She will later exclaim, "I have not known a man"--a Biblical euphemism for her intact virginity. Jesus was not conceived in her womb by the first man who broke her virginity; Jesus was conceived in her womb before a man ever broke her virginity, put there by the power of the Creator so that he could be born as the second Adam, the second perfect man because he was not conceived by the flesh but by the Spirit. I could dwell on this for a long time, but there are plenty of other verses to look at.

The Messiah was coming through Galilee, through Nazareth, through the house of David, and through a virgin, and God sent an angel to start the ball rolling! I love this verse!