Sermon Tone Analysis

We are talking about what? when?

It’s not that I love Christmas even though I do, but I love people.

We love people.

We commit to loving people as Jesus loves us!

In just 20 days we will be putting up our Christmas Light Display for the 14th year.

We now hear stories of people who come back from states away to see the Christmas display because it is there tradition.

Families that make their treks to get their pictures done here.

We have buses of seniors who will be coming by and last year we began r giving tours of the Christmas story all the way from the angel telling Mary she was going to have a Child to Jesus rising from the dead.

The man most excited by these tours last year was Bobby Luke.

His first ever event he did with us.

At his memorial this past Friday I thought about all the ways Bobby showed us to share Jesus with others.

Bobby was himself and still is as he lives healed with the Lord today!

He was himself in sharing Jesus but one of the things that the way we do our fall holidays like Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas here at New Day is all about us being ourselves, who Jesus created us to be and showing the love of Jesus the way that comes perfectly natural to all of you.

From Stephanie handing out our candy at Halloween to Karen putting up the huge Christmas light tree, and Robin inviting people from there cars to come in to get a picture taken, Deborah organizing so much and this year Arielle’s getting in the action with some art.

Friends we are about to have a whole lot of fun and live out the joy of following Jesus this fall.

But now, we need to study!

We need to know the Christmas story!

Today you might have come expecting a word from God in your life, and even though I’m sharing with you a story you think you might know I am telling you that Jesus wants to show you about your life, what you are going through right now matters.

He shows it to us throughout all of the Bible.

So even though its not the normal time of year this piece of scripture about the birth of Jesus is telling us more than a nice story to warm us when it’s cold outside.

This is the actual living out of faith, the way God works, the principles of hope that help us on Tuesday October 18 too!

Frankly we need to know this story!

We need to have it memorized.

Because it makes a difference to me when bad or hard things start coming my way, when feelings of abandonment and anxiety hit all time highs, when loneliness, insecurities and the feelings of emptiness come my way this truth matters.

When your friends come up to you and share the wildest, scariest things, where only your faith in God can carry you through.

When your friends seems like all of the world is to crazy and insane and no one could have seen what’s coming, you can tell them that God is in control because of what God shows you in this, the Christmas story

We have the awesome opportunity to share about Jesus, to bring Jesus into people’s lives.

Think about what it means for you to have Jesus in your life or maybe your not sure you have Jesus in your life, you can see Christ in the life of one person, what it means to be faithful to God.

Let’s begin the story

Luke 1:26–38 (CSB)

26 In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth,

I am going to break up this story and tell you some facts along the way.

It’s so intense to me how specific this part of the story is, it opens up with a date, but not a normal date.

The sixth month is not a calendar date but the sixth month is based on the pregnancy just mentioned in the Bible before the Christmas story.

Mary’s cousin, Elizabeth is in her six month and just months away from giving birth to John, who would be called John the Baptist.

So Gabriel shows up at that time but there is more!

Why angel Gabriel?

It’s interesting because there are only two named angels in the Bible: Michael and Gabriel.

Gabriel is the messenger of God and reveals to Mary what will happen to her but he also had over 500 years prior revealed truth to Daniel.

Daniel’s prophecy would tell us this

Jesus called himself the Son of Man.

The Christ, another name for the part of God that Jesus is has always existed.

The Son of God is ancient and was never created.

What Gabriel told Daniel 500 years earlier and now Gabriel announces the finishing of the job with Mary

Gabriel developed an extra biblical tradition, outside of the Bible as one of 4 archangels and had showed Daniel of the coming messiah, and here he was announcing it to Mary that it would come through her.

There is a lot of extra stuff that we have from our culture about angels that isn’t biblical like there is a lot of extra stuff about Christmas which is fun and stuff but when you just recognize the truth, that God has angels which have been around for thousands of years and that he can, if he chooses call on them to deliver messages and they even take part in battles we do not see our problems can start to seem not as big.

What is an angry customer to an army of angels.

Even the devil had to admit that Jesus had an army of angels available to him.

Yes, even the devil acknowledges that Gabriel and the other angels have the power to do God’s work.

When we pray we are involving a warfare that most don’t understand and one that really matters.

The archangel Gabriel is proving God is faithful!

God comes through!

His timing is perfect and He answers prayers.

God might use you to answer a commitment He made over 500 years ago.

Even when we are battling the future and our fears God’s angels are available to God.

That’s why I want to be on God’s side and God’s side isn’t always with the famous, the popular, the “important” and just to prove that God doesn’t care about what people think is important we have the last part of this verse .

Think

Luke 1:26 (CSB)

26 In the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a town in Galilee called Nazareth,

This was a location meant to point you towards the northern area, far from Jerusalem to a no-nothing insignificant place.

It really wasn’t important to anyone but God.

In the first century AD, Nazareth occupied only the ridge and did not extend into the Jezreel Valley .

The population might have been able to get to 2,000 or the population roughly of the Parkwoods area.

But most archaeologists believe that at the time of Jesus there was only 200 - 500 people there.

Most of the high schools in Stockton have more kids than the whole town had people.

The village likely grew crops, it could maintain itself but was likely poor.

No special architecture just houses of local stones, mud, and plant thatch roofs.

There has never been discovered any mention of the town other than in the Bible and other Christian documents.

Nobody thought Nazareth was important and that’s where God choose a woman to bear Himself, the Savior of the world.

The world may call you worthless but God can display His glory through you!

I don’t care who you are, Mary didn’t matter.

Yet God made her matter.

Jesus comes to us and does more than just offer us forgiveness, he offers us calling, he offers us gifting, he offers us a role to play in His kingdom.

You can have a roll to play if you follow what Mary did.

27 to a virgin engaged to a man named Joseph, of the house of David.

The virgin’s name was Mary.

In this most unimportant place, is a young woman, not a mom, wife, queen, princess but a young unmarried girl.

In her culture she was the property of her father.

She was learning all the things that currently we have invented lots of machines to do.

She would become the one who purchases for the daily needs of the family, the cook of the family, the one who can make, wash and clean for the family.

Think about it before dishwashers, washers/dryers, mass produced clothing, cook books, education, and so much more there was only one person who would be an expert at doing all of those things and that was the woman.

I’m not being sexist, this was historical fact.

I don’t know how to work a loom but she might have.

I don’t know how to clean fabric by hand but she would have.

Yet her was a girl, in training, almost ready to graduate through marriage to take on the most important role she would have for her life that of being a wife.

She worked hard enough and was ready.

She also was ready to be used by God.

Because she had been obedient to God.

Now God was calling her to separate herself even more.

There is a word called Holy.

Holy means to be set apart, something that is special.

In a house today people might have something very nice, like China ware, the plates and glasses that only come out for a very special dinner.

Sexuality is something by its very nature that is Holy.

Sex is something we give to another .

We tell children as they get older to keep their bodies private, the overwhelming majority of people in the world no matter what they believe, see sex as something where a person should choose specific people they are willing to engage in it.

Sex is Holy.

The whole world believes that sex is something set apart.

God defines what sexual intercourse is to be, it is to be holy and set apart for Him.

Sex is important.

If a person is unable to choose to whom they will give their body the whole world recognizes this as a crime.