A Woman Overwhelmed - Women's Bible Study Participant Workbook: A Bible Study on the Life of Mary, the Mother of Jesus

Week 1

OVERWHELMED WITH IMPOSSIBILITY

Finding Freedom in Belief

Luke 1:26-38

DAY 1: AN IMPOSSIBLE ENCOUNTER

I’m good at being alone. As an only child, I played alone. I entertained myself alone. I figured stuff out alone. And that makes for an independent, if not opinionated, child. But even bossy onlys eventually want to find someone special to spend their days with. So I soon became a serial dater, going from boyfriend to boyfriend—an arrangement that allowed me to never have to be alone yet never have to share (because long-term boyfriends want you to share your stuff, and I just wasn’t into that).

Unfortunately, moving from one relationship to the next kept me single until my late thirties, when I finally decided Enough is enough! and grabbed my laptop in search of a more grown-up solution: a dating website husband search!

As I paged through the profiles, one in particular caught my eye. Making a monkey face as he stood next to Rafiki from the Lion King at Disney World, Michael DiMarco looked like the perfect man for me. Youngest of six kids? Great, instant family! Who cared if he lived two thousand miles away; we’d make it work!

And so we started the easy process of getting to know each other long distance. Digitally, he was dreamy! He was everything that I wanted, and I was ready to commit; but, of course, we had to meet. Unfortunately, our first date was nothing to text home about. Michael spent the entire time telling me everything that was wrong with himself, and I spent the entire time wondering when he was going to let me talk!

Later I called my friend and said, I don’t think he likes me, because he didn’t let me say a word. I wasn’t overwhelmed by what he said as much as by the fact that he hogged the conversation. This social catastrophe took the wind out of my overwhelming sails of infatuation. But when we met again a month later at a book conference, things took a turn for the better, and the rest is marital history.

In the span of just a few crazy encounters with Michael, I went from overwhelming loneliness, to overwhelming infatuation, to overwhelming failure, and then to overwhelming love. Phew! It was exciting and exhausting all at once, but worth every minute.

Whether single or married, thank God that He doesn’t leave us alone but brings a variety of people and relationships into our lives to remind us that we are loved. This week we will look first at an impossible encounter between a little girl from Nazareth and an angel who would bring her news of an even more impossible relationship with her Savior. Then you will have the opportunity to examine your own impossibilities, considering both your doubts and your belief and trust in the God who can do impossible things. Let’s dive into Mary’s story.

As you read the Scripture below, underline the words or phrases you would like to learn more about, including those words or concepts that you don’t know or that could give you further insights into the passage if you explored them.

²⁶In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, ²⁷ to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. ²⁸And he came to her and said, Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you! ²⁹But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. ³⁰And the angel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God.

(Luke 1:26-30)

I’ve pulled out a few words and phrases that I think would be helpful to explore and listed them below on the left. If you don’t see a particular word or phrase that you underlined above, then write it in the column on the right.

Let’s consider each of the words or phrases in my list, and we’ll come back to the other words you listed at the end of today’s lesson.

Angel Gabriel

Let’s talk about angels. Meeting a real, live angel has to be one of the most emotionally overwhelming things that could happen to a person. Angels are all the rage. We have figurines of sweet little baby angels. We have paintings of beautiful women angels and tall, handsome, muscular male angels; but whatever people may imagine about angels, the Scriptures tell us that they are real and they are God’s messengers, created specifically to serve Him.

Though there are many references to angels in the Bible, human encounters with angels in Scripture are kind of rare. It should go without saying that an angel visit would be a very amazing thing for a little girl. So, let’s find out more about the angel Gabriel, who visited Mary.

First, here’s the quick 411 on Gabriel. Gabriel, whose name means God is great, is an angel (some sources say archangel) who acts as a messenger of God (see Daniel 8:16; Luke 1:19, 26-38).¹ In the celestial hierarchy, an archangel is said to be a spiritual being next in rank above an angel.² So you could say that Gabe had some clout! We find him mentioned four times in Scripture: Daniel 8:16 and 9:21, and Luke 1:19 and 26.³

Let’s look at Gabriel’s first appearance in Daniel 8. Now, there is a lot here that will not make any sense to you, which is to be expected, since it didn’t make any sense to Daniel either. So for our study, you can just concentrate on verses 15, 17, and 27.

In verse 15, who did Gabriel visit, and how is Gabriel described?

What was the purpose of Gabriel’s visit? (vv. 17, 19)

How did Daniel react upon seeing an angel? (vv. 17 and 27)

Now let’s investigate Gabriel’s second appearance in Daniel 9. Who did Gabriel visit in this passage? (vv. 2, 20)

How is Gabriel described? (v. 21)

Why did Gabriel come? (vv. 22-23)

Who was he foretelling? (v. 25)

The Nitty-Gritty

In Daniel 9:25, "’Anointed One’ is a translation of the Hebrew māšîah, also rendered ‘Messiah’ (KJV, NASB). Māšîah was a term that could designate kings and priests. Thus it seems that this ‘Anointed One’ must be either a priest, a king, or someone who is both."⁴

So, the Book of Daniel is the first time in Scripture that we see Gabriel named. He appeared to Daniel two times, first to interpret a vision and then to foretell the coming of an anointed one. The next time he is mentioned is four hundred years later in the time of the New Testament. Let’s look at that encounter together.

Read Luke 1:5-25. How did Zechariah react when Gabriel paid him a visit? (v. 12)

What three things did Gabriel announce in verse 19?

I won’t even ask how overwhelmed the mere presence of an angel of God would make you feel; it seems an obvious stunner! It sure was for the first guy to see him in four hundred years. Whether or not Mary was psychologically prepared for her angelic encounter, we can certainly say that anyone receiving a message directly from one who stands in the presence of God would begin to feel a bit overwhelmed!

Betrothed

Another word worth our investigation has to do with Mary’s marital status. She is described as being betrothed. Betrothed isn’t a word a girl uses anymore when Mr. McDreamy makes his intentions known, so I think this word is an important one to explore. If you were a young girl living in the first century, being betrothed meant your family had promised another family that you would marry their son either when you reached the age of twelve or started your first period, whichever came first. At the moment you were betrothed you were, in essence, legally married but not living with your future spouse. That meant that in order to call the whole thing off, a bill of divorce had to be drawn up and signed, just as in a modern-day marriage.⁵ Betrothal was legal and binding, nothing like engagements of our time. In fact, according to Jewish law, if a girl became pregnant from a man who was not her fiancé while she was betrothed, the penalty wasn’t just a scarlet letter but death (see Deuteronomy 22:20-21). We will see the significance of that in our Scripture reading tomorrow.

Greetings

If the angel’s appearance wasn’t overwhelming enough, what came next would have been. Gabriel speaking to Mary is as weird as the woman in the bathroom stall next to you asking about your day. Think about that for a minute. Most of us don’t do that, right? It’s not customary to make small talk with the girl you can only see from the ankles down. Similarly, it wasn’t Jewish custom for a man to greet a woman—much less an angel appearing in the form of a man. So can you imagine Mary’s discomfort at this extraordinary event?

Can you remember a time when someone broke an accepted custom with you? If so, what went through your mind in that moment?

Favored

Next, Gabriel called Mary O favored one (Luke 1:28). We could make up all kinds of things about Mary’s status as favored. We could say she was God’s favorite, or that she had lived such a holy life that she was perfect; but before we make stuff up, let’s take a look at the Greek word that favored comes from.

Read the definition in the margin. What does this definition tell you about the favor that was on Mary?

Based on this, can we call Mary perfect?

The Nitty-Gritty

The Enhanced Strong’s Lexicon tells us that favored is the translation of the Greek word charitoo. It is a verb that means ‘to make graceful or gracious,’ and came to denote . . . ‘to cause to find favor,’ Luke 1:28. It is used one other time in Ephesians 1:6 where it is translated as ‘made . . . accepted,’ KJV, ‘freely bestowed,’ RV.⁶

Mary wasn’t chosen because she was favored; she was favored because she was chosen. In other words, she didn’t deserve the honor of carrying the child of God; it was a grace to her, just as his birth was a grace to us.

Why is it important for us to understand the idea that grace is the reason Mary was a favored woman? Before answering that, perhaps we should explore the depths of God’s glorious grace a little more.

Write Ephesians 2:8-9 below:

According to these verses, how have we been saved?

What did we have to do with it?

How would you define grace?

Why must we see that this gift of God is not a result of works?

How does understanding the meaning of favored affect the way we think and talk about the mother of Jesus?

It’s inspiring to think that Mary benefited just as much from the Savior she gave birth to as we do. She needed Him the same way every one of us needs Him, yet God gave her the gift of experiencing His presence from the day He was conceived.

Do you think that this bestowal of grace would have added to Mary’s sense of overwhelmedness? Why or why not?

The Lord Is with You

Gabriel then told Mary, The Lord is with you. Now, let’s think about what this saying would have meant to her. The Holy Spirit was not given to all believers until the Day of Pentecost, which took place fifty days after Jesus’ resurrection (see Acts 2). So although we are very comfortable with the idea of the Lord being with us, Mary would not have been. In the Hebrew Scriptures that she would have heard, she learned the Lord was with those in whom He took a special interest.

Look up a few of the verses in the margin and list below the people who had the Lord with them.

Genesis 41:38

Numbers 27:18

Numbers 24:2

Judges 3:9-10

1 Samuel 10:9-10

2 Chronicles 15:1

Exodus 31:3

As we see from these Scriptures, the Lord was with those He had chosen to fulfill His purpose. So for Mary, the greeting The Lord is with you would have been like hearing God would like to see you now.

Why would this greeting be overwhelming for our girl?

After Mary heard these words, she had to know that something very big was up—that God had plans for her!

She Was Greatly Troubled

We do not have to wonder how the angel’s appearance and greeting affected Mary. The text tells us that she was greatly troubled (Luke 1:29).

Reread verse 29 (page 10). What was Mary troubled about, and what did she do?

In this split second from greeting to trouble, what do you think she was trying to discern?

Do Not Be Afraid

We can’t see the look on Mary’s face or feel the electricity in the air, but Scripture does reveal what Gabriel said next to Mary, and his words tell us plenty about her feelings. Do not be afraid isn’t something you need to say to a person when she’s reading junk mail. It’s something you say to someone when she’s about to get her lab results.

Look again at Luke 1:13. Do you notice any similarity between Zechariah’s story and Mary’s story?

Have you ever experienced fear and awe at the same time? If so, which emotion would you say is more overwhelming? Why?

Life can shift our focus from God’s majesty to our mess.

Up to this point we can safely assume that nothing else in Mary’s life had been as overwhelming or awe-inspiring as talking to an angel of God. In one split second she went from being ordinary to someone the world would never forget. She didn’t know just yet what the future would hold, but within the first few seconds of this encounter she knew that her life would never be the same again.

We may not have had an encounter with God as profound as this one, but thanks to His Holy Spirit who now lives in us and communes with us, we can find ourselves face-to-face in the spiritual realm with our Abba, Father.

Do you remember a time when God revealed Himself to you? In what ways did it overwhelm you?

It can be easy to forget those moments of mystery when God shows up and touches our hearts. Life can shift our focus from God’s majesty to our mess.

Would you describe yourself as a woman overwhelmed right now? If so, what is overwhelming you?

In this study we are going to look at the life of Mary and see a girl overwhelmed with impossibilities yet certain that God can be trusted. We are going to see that life doesn’t always go the way we want but God always has a plan.

The rest of this week we will take a look at the impossible as we see what God had planned for Mary and how He was able to make it happen. And we will look at our lives and the things that so easily overwhelm us. But mostly we will look at our amazing God who overwhelms it all.

Dear God, I am in awe of who You are, but I want more awe for You. Help me today to see You in the things around me—in the things I see, smell, and taste. Give me eyes to see and ears to hear You (Matthew 13:16). May I be overwhelmed by Your beauty and presence, Lord. Thank You for not leaving me where I am but taking me on a journey to freedom. I love You, Father. Amen.

Dive Deeper

If you’d like to dive deeper into Luke 1:26-30, look up the words or phrases you listed on page 10 in a concordance or Bible dictionary (on the shelf or online), digging into their meaning and context. You may want to write your findings in a journal or notebook.

DAY 2: WHEN GOD ASKS THE IMPOSSIBLE

Getting engaged later in life is like going for a walk in quick-drying cement; the farther along you go, the more you realize you are set—set in your ways, set in your comfort, set. And when your fiancé gingerly takes your hand and asks you to talk about the passages on love and mutual submission in marriage in your premarital counseling book (Ephesians 5:21-33), you feel like he’s asking you to cut your feet off at the ankles so you can make more forward progress when all you want to do is dig your feet in and stay put. At the ripe old age of thirty-seven, I wanted nothing whatsoever to do with submission, mutual or otherwise; I wanted total independence, even if I did have a husband who would love me the way Christ loves the church (v. 25). So, as he read the words, Wives, submit yourselves to your own husbands as you do to the Lord (v. 22 NIV 2011), I cringed and searched for a better translation. I knew there must be one that said, The husband should give his wife everything she wants, and likewise the wife should let him. For the wife knows what she needs and how to get it better than anyone else. Likewise the wife need not be subject to the husband in any way; she is as free as she was when she was unwed. That’s what I wanted, but knowing that I would have to do the hard work of understanding the verses referring to one another in Scripture, I stuck out my lower lip, which began to tremble, and I literally cried as I said, No, there is no way; that cannot be right. It’s not happening!

If I hadn’t been before, at that point I became completely overwhelmed with the idea of marrying a man. Don’t get me wrong; I desperately wanted to marry him. I loved the idea of waking up to his beautiful face every day, but the stuff that would have to come along with that made me doubt my ability to say I do—because I didn’t. This crazy idea of submitting to another was a battlefield I was willing to die on before I’d let him take me.

When you determine to do something as impossible as surrendering your dreams to your Savior, life can be overwhelming. So I can only imagine how overwhelming life would be for a little girl who surrendered her plans of marrying the carpenter next door and living a quiet Galilean life!

Mary wouldn’t have planned to walk the road she would walk; she couldn’t have even conceived it. But as Gabriel laid out her future, she didn’t complain about her new to-do list. Let’s take a look at the impossible things that would change her life.

The Nitty-Gritty

In the Jewish law, adultery before marriage was punishable by death; however, by the time of Mary and Joseph and Roman rule, divorce had become the accepted alternative.⁷ Even so, knowing that the traditional punishment for premarital relations was death, Mary’s perception of the ramifications of what the angel was telling her would most certainly have been overwhelming-worthy.

As you read the Scripture below, underline everything that Gabriel told Mary about her child, and circle one thing he told her about how it would happen.

³¹"And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. ³²He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, ³³and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end."

³⁴And Mary said to the angel, How will this be, since I am a virgin?

³⁵And the angel answered her, "The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God. ³⁶And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. ³⁷For nothing will be impossible with God."

(Luke 1:31-37)

Can you imagine being a young girl and hearing the incredulous news that you were going to have a child? Talk about being overwhelmed by what seemed impossible! Gabriel not only told her the sex of the child—a boy—but also what to name him: Jesus, which in Hebrew is Yehoshua or Joshua, meaning salvation.⁸ If that news wasn’t overwhelming enough, Gabe went on to announce some amazing things about this son who would save and how it all would be