Sermon Tone Analysis

December 11, 2022

Gospel Fellowship Church

Introduction

When you hear the word joy, what do you think of?

I think of Dutch people dancing in the streets when they were liberated after WWII.

I think of sports fans cheering when their team wins the cup.

I think of children dancing around the living room for the sheer enjoyment of it.

I think of parents watching their son or daughter take top honours during grad.

I think of parents holding their newborn child for the very first time.

I think especially of the experience of being forgiven by someone who you’ve sinned against deeply.

I think of freedom, jubilation, celebration, being rescued from disaster, being ecstatic.

Joy can be somewhat faked, but pure joy is hard to fake.

It is infectious.

It lifts the spirits and spreads from one person to another.

Where does true joy come from?

Is it the same as happiness?

Does joy come from inside of us or outside of us?

Most of us long for joy.

We don’t want to live burdened all the time.

Two Sundays ago, we looked at the hopelessness of Zechariah and how he found new hope.

Last Sunday we looked at peace, what it is and how knowing Jesus brings peace in all areas of our lives.

Hope and Peace naturally lead to joy.

Hope creates the space for joy.

When you are hopeless, there isn’t much room for joy, but when you hope for something good to come, you can have joy in spite of the current difficulties.

Peace on the other hand, the Biblical peace we talked about last Sunday, where everything is the way it should be, leads to joy.

When all your family comes home for Christmas and everyone is healthy and the relationships are solid, we tend to be joyful.

The opposite often leads to lack of joy.

Heaven, the new earth, will finally be a place where everything will be the way it should be.

There will be an incredible amount of joy.

Who Do You Tell?

In the story of the birth of Jesus, there is a spot where the joy that Mary, Elizabeth and Zechariah experience is contagious.

Near the end of the angel’s message to Mary, we discover that Mary and Elizabeth are related to each other, Luke 1:36.

After the angel left, it appears that Mary immediately gets ready to go visit Elizabeth.

Do you blame her? She’s in quite a predicament.

She’s got the most incredible news ever, she’s going to bear the son of God, but who can she tell?

She’s not quite married yet, she’s not supposed to be pregnant.

It reminds me of the proverbial story of the preacher playing hooky on Sunday morning to go fishing and catching the biggest fish he’s ever landed.

Who’s he going to tell? Mary has been given the most incredible news of all time; the son of God will be born to her.

There has never been any kind of news in all of history to match that.

If you discovered the absolute, bona fide, cure for cancer, could you keep quiet?

Even a day?

I picture Mary getting up after the angel left and wanting to talk and talk, but if she does, she might be stoned.

Wondering who can she tell, who would be safe?

Then finally thinking of Elizabeth.

After all, the angel mentioned that she’s also having a baby, as an old woman, and it’s also a miracle, so maybe she’d understand.

So off she goes.

V39, Beaming all the way.

People are probably looking at her and wondering what’s going on.

But even then, I imagine there’s that nagging doubt, that even Elizabeth wouldn’t understand.

She knew what they were like.

Righteous, god-fearing.

And she didn’t know that an angel had appeared to them.

She didn’t know their baby boy would be the forerunner of the Messiah.

The angel hadn’t told Mary that part.

She needn’t have worried.

Our God is an amazing God, a gracious God.

He had it all figured out.

(Read Luke 1:40-41) The Holy spirit filled Elizabeth, and her baby gave her a swift kick!! Before Mary arrived, Elizabeth didn’t know anything about Mary’s news.

Mary didn’t even get a chance to tell her.

God told Elizabeth so Mary wouldn’t have to figure out how to.

Once the Holy Spirit filled Elizabeth whatever God wanted her to know she knew.

What did she now know?

(Read Luke 1:42-45).

Elizabeth’s HS revealed knowledge

Blessed are you, blessed is your child.

In our reaction to the Roman Catholic Mary worship we have forgotten that Mary was incredibly blessed.

Blessed, in a sense, above all women.

She had the privilege of bearing the Messiah, the Holy Son of God.

Revelation that the child was her Lord.

What an amazing revelation!!

At that time, Jesus was just a small dot in Mary’s womb.

That small dot was Elizabeth’s Lord.

Elizabeth’s baby recognized the Lord’s presence.

Babies often jump, kick, and move in the womb.

But Elizabeth, with the aid of the HS, recognized that this was no ordinary movement.

Mary is blessed for believing that what God said, would happen.

Mary’s song of joy

Now Mary, with her heart full, is finally able to pull the cork out of her mouth and let loose with the emotions that have been held in.

She erupts with a song of joy.

(Read Luke 1:47-55) This song is in a very traditional Hebrew form.

It is very similar to the prayer that Hannah prayed when she presented Samuel to Eli at the temple.

But for our modern English ears, it doesn’t sound like something we would say.

Here’s Eugene Petersen’s version in The Message (read Luke 1:47-55)

There are four sections to this song – the first two focus on herself and the second two move beyond her.

V46-48a – My soul/spirit glorifies the Lord.

Message – “bursting” This is coming from deep inside of her.

48b-49 – He’s recognized my humble position and now all people will call me blessed because God has done mighty things for me.

Mary was a poor country girl.

Why would God choose her?

She can hardly believe that God would do so and she rightly recognizes that everyone will regard her as blessed.

50-53 – God in his mercy to those who fear him, raises up the lowly and pulls down the proud and arrogant.

This is a section in which she is praising God for the fact that he doesn’t give us what we deserve when we trust in him, and then she goes on to talk about how God is for the lowly people of earth and is against those who are proud, arrogant, and selfish.

54-55 – God has mercifully helped Israel as he said he would.

Here Mary brings to mind the fact that God had promised to redeem his people, to send a Messiah, to be merciful to Abraham’s descendants forever, and now he is doing what he said he would do.

Clearly Mary has been thinking about what this all means.

I’m guessing the whole way from Nazareth to Judea she was meditating on it, and it all comes spilling out.

I also think the Holy Spirit inspired her to sing this song of praise.

Mary is full of joy because of Jesus and what he means to her and to the world.

Our Joy

What about us?