2025-12-21 When Understanding Falls Short

The Point: God can do things through you

The Passage: Luke 1:26-38

By Jeff Ward

God will use anyone who surrenders to Him

Page 39 starts with an inspirational story of Oseola McCarty who lived a life in servitude to others, only to leave the entirety of her worldly accumulation to help others. Indeed, her story illustrates the main point of the lesson. Truly inspirational.

Appearance by an angel

The Luke 1:26-30 passage on page 40 tells the Luke version of the birth narrative. Unfortunately, the author makes an observation that is not implied in the text:

Both Joseph and Mary…were from the royal bloodline of David according to the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.

The underlying text does document that Joseph, her fiance is from the house of David. As we find out later in the lesson, the family of Mary were not of the tribe of Judah and the lineage of David. She was from the tribe of Levi. Her cousin was a priest. The line of David were not allowed to be priests. Only sons of Aaron were permitted by Yehovah to be priests. The sons of Aaron were descendants of the tribe of Levi. Levi and Judah were brothers. You cannot be simultaneously the seed of two brothers at the same time.

Concept spread throughout the New Testament

The author identifies accurately on page 41 certain concepts that are elsewhere in the New Testament. Unfortunately, they are riddled with problems.

  • The “spirit of adoption” passage in Romans 8:14-15 is part of a narrative that supposes the law of Yehovah was inadequate as evidenced by Romans 8:3. This is an abomination that makes. Yehovah sound like a fool that didn’t understand human nature.
  • Like the gnostics and other Greek philosophers, Paul supposes the answer to life’s problems are in distancing from “fleshly” things like simple obedience, and lifting your mentality into the “things of the Spirit”. Romans 8:1-8. Deuteronomy 30 makes it abundantly clear his laws are to be obeyed in the simple sense, and are something that CAN be obeyed.
  • In the passage cited in Galatians 4:4-5, Paul speaks of the law as something you had the misfortune of being “born under”, and something you need to be “redeemed from”. The entirety of Psalm 119 disputes his notion. It’s something we should embrace as also declared by Proverbs 3:1 and Proverbs 28:7.
  • The Ephesus 1:5 passage claims he predestined certain people, outside their own control to be “adopted”. This is hogwash. Isaiah 56 is entirely about even those that were sexually mutilated under other religions are offered a relationship with Yehovah.
    • They are promised “salvation” and expected to do WORKS, a personal responsibility Paul hated. It includes embracing the Sabbaths which Paul embraced but Christianity does not. Isaiah 56:1-3
    • They are promised a destination “better than sons and daughters”. Isaiah 56:4-7.
    • Yehovah did not need Paul to invent a way for him to have a relationship with non-Jews.
  • John 1:12 is cited as proof that having the right opinion about Jesus makes people the “children of God”. We know from Hosea 1:10 this is something that in truth happens in a future time and specific place. The place is the same place from which we were scattered, in the “valley of Jezreel”. Hosea 1:5-6.

The angel continues

Page 42 contains Luke 1:31-34. Comments:

  • Luke 1:31 says his name will be “Jesus”. His name wasn’t Jesus. It was Yeshua. Yeshua is derived from the Hebrew word for salvation. The letter “J” wasn’t associated with Jesus until the Sixteenth century. Matthew 1:21 makes it very clear there is a connection between his real name and “will save”, but the connection only makes sense in Hebrew.
  • The pattern of a “God” who “will save” seems to come from Isaiah 25:9, but it’s not “seed of David” that does this. It’s Yehovah himself. The word interpreted “our God” in the English is “Elohim”, a Hebrew title for divinity. The proper name for Yehovah is translated “the Lord”. The passage makes it clear that Yehovah is Elohim. Because his name was not correctly translated, Christians see this as a placeholder where they can just snap-in “Jesus” instead, but that is not consistent with the meaning of the original text.
  • Luke 1:33 says he will “rein over the house of Jacob forever”. He obviously didn’t rule over that house during his life. He doesn’t rule over anyone in Judaism today. The person who someday begins to rule over the house of Jacob does not rule over the entire world. Only the regathered house of Israel. He has a name. “my servant, David”. Ezekiel 34:24-28. Verse 28 makes it clear the “heathen” exist, but will not be a threat.

Overshadowed by the Holy Spirit

On page 44, we find Luke 1:35-38. Comments:

  • If I remarked that I “overshadowed my wife and she got pregnant”, this would be perceived as a polite way of saying I procreated in the usual way. In this case, we allegedly have Yehovah doing the overshadowing. It’s unapparent just how literal or metaphorical this is to be taken.
  • Mary was espoused to Joseph. To impregnate a woman that is engaged to another man is a violation of God’s law in Deuteronomy 22:23-24. Christians sometimes claim, “well God can do anything. He can break his own law if he wants to!” This is not an assertion I am comfortable with.
  • The author acknowledges that Zechariah “was a priest” and the included text says Elizabeth was a “relative”. The Greek source text uses G4773 syngenēs which is a “relative by blood”. It would appear the author is a bit self-conflicted on the lineage of Mary, which was divided from the that of her intended husband some 2000 years earlier.

Where my “understanding falls short”

Swerving back into the theme of the lesson, I’ll just say that my understanding falls short of believing the virgin birth narrative. In addition to the problems already expressed, there are others.

  • Only two of 8 or more NT authors show evidence of being aware of a virgin birth.
  • There is no messianic prophecy that suggests the “anointed” would be a deity.
  • Matthew 1:6 claims Jesus descended from David’s son Solomon while Luke 3:31 has him descending through David’s other son Nathan. It’s biologically impossible for one human to descend from two brothers simultaneously unless there’s incest involved.
  • It’s hard to believe an account that establishes Jesus as the physical seed of Yehovah according to the literal flesh when Paul very plainly disputes it in Romans 1:3 and 2 Timothy 2:8 saying he was “seed of David” “according to the flesh”.
  • The infancy narratives in Matthew and Luke are entirely differing stories with different players, different locations, different lessons.
  • The brothers and sisters of Jesus who would presumably know if they were only half-brothers and half-sisters had no clue that Jesus was a God/man hybrid in Matthew 13:53-58.
  • Isaiah 7:14 only says “a virgin shall conceive” because translators changed the wording and ignored the context. There was no suggestion in the original text of Isaiah of a child being born to a virgin.
  • John 7:42 acknowledges the requirement for Jesus to be “seed of David”.
  • In all cases, the Greek word translated “seed” is G4690 sperma which refers to the male biological component and from which the English word “sperm” apparently derives. It would be highly unlikely Mary would be seen as the contributor of the sperma that establishes lineage in the eyes of Paul and the writer of John.
  • The worldwide tax in Luke is not even mentioned by Matthew, and for a number of reasons, improbable.
  • The “slaughter of the innocents” in Matthew is unknown by Luke. It’s is also improbable.