Sermon Tone Analysis

Bookmarks & Needs:

B: Luke 1:5-20

N:

Welcome

Good morning, church!

Welcome to the last Sunday before Christmas!

I’m Bill Connors, and I’m excited to be here together this morning.

I think it’s so great to have a church family at Christmas.

Each Sunday is like a holiday family gathering, and what a blessing that is!

If you’re a guest of the church family this morning, I pray that being with Eastern Hills this morning is a blessing to you as well.

We’d like the opportunity to say thanks for being here.

So in the back of the pew in front of you is a card that says “WELCOME” on it.

If you wouldn’t mind, could you take just a moment during the service this morning and fill that card out?

Then you can just drop it in the offering plates by the doors at the close of service as we leave the sanctuary.

If you’d rather complete an online communication card, you can text the word WELCOME to 505-339-2004, and you’ll get a link back to our digital card.

Either way, whether you fill out the physical card or the digital card, I’d love to have the opportunity to meet you myself this morning, and to give you a thank you gift.

So after service is over, if you could meet me down here at the front while everyone is leaving, I’d appreciate that chance to thank you for being here.

If you’re joining us online this morning, that same digital communication card will work for you as well.

Again, just text WELCOME to 505-339-2004 and follow the link that you get back.

Thanks for that!

Announcements

Tonight at 5:30, we’ll meet here in the sanctuary for our annual Cocoa and Caroling outreach to our neighborhood.

We’ll warm our voices up here with a couple of carols, and then head out into the neighborhood in teams to share the joy of Christmas and the hope of the Gospel.

We have gift bags to give to the homes we visit which will include a Gospel tract and invitations to our Christmas Eve and morning services.

We’ll return here at 6:30 to warm our bodies back up with some cocoa and cookies.

Even if you don’t think you can sing, bundle up and come worship and minister with the church family tonight.

I’d like to invite all of you to plan on being here for our special Christmas Eve service this Saturday, 12/24, at 6:00 pm.

It will be a beautiful time together as a church family.

We will have a special time of worship on Christmas Day at 10:30 am, since it falls on a Sunday this year.

We won’t hold Bible study classes or Pastor’s Study on Christmas Day.

We’re three weeks into taking up our Lottie Moon Christmas Offering for International Missions this year.

This offering is named for Charlotte Digges “Lottie” Moon, who served as a missionary with the International Mission Board of the SBC (called the Foreign Mission Board at the time), ministering to the people of China for nearly 40 years, from 1873 to 1912.

She is credited as being instrumental in starting an annual Christmas offering for international missions in the SBC, which began in 1888.

She served in China during a time of severe famine, and gave all that she had to the people of China.

Ill and malnourished, she was instructed to return home, but died while in route while in Kobe, Japan, on December 24, 1912, and the age of 72.

In 1918, the SBC Woman’s Missionary Union (WMU) named the annual Christmas offering for international missions in memory of Lottie’s passion, dedication, and sacrifice.

Over 50% of the financial support that our missionaries receive comes from this annual offering, and 100% of what you give to the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering goes to the mission field.

We don’t keep any of it, the IMB doesn’t keep any of it.

So each December and January, we set a goal for our church to strive for as we take up this important offering.

Our goal as a church this year is $35K, and through last Sunday, we’ve received $17,881.

We will take this offering up through the end of January, so please pray about what God would lead you to give to support SBC missionaries throughout the world.

Opening

We are in the middle of a sermon series called The Promise.

We have been discovering the many promises of God that are fulfilled in the birth of Jesus Christ.

The Christmas season is when we celebrate all that is available to us through Jesus.

These are the themes of Advent, which are hope, peace, joy, and love.

The first week, we discovered that God’s promised hope came in the form of a person.

Jesus meets our deepest longings and is the hope for our present and our future.

The second week we looked at the promise of peace that was given to the lowly shepherds.

There would be a new government that would come, and it would bring peace to the world, because that new government’s ruler would be the Prince of Peace.

Last Sunday, we saw the promise of one small child, who would be born in Bethlehem, and who would change the world.

Today we are taking a look at the third theme of Advent: joy.

We will be looking at what is perhaps an unlikely or at least unusual “Christmas” passage this morning in Luke 1. Let’s stand as we are able in honor of the Word of God as we read verses 5-20 together:

PRAYER (Focus Church, Pastor Dave Megill) Also, pray for Richard Stone and his family in the loss of his daughter Katherine this week.

Christmas is truly the most wonderful time of the year.

But I didn’t used to think so, even after I came to faith in Christ.

Ask Mel: I had a certain level of “grinchiness” or “bah-hum-bug” that went with the busyness, stress, and chaos of the season.

I guess I was always so focused on myself that I missed the joy of the season.

But then one year (I’m not even sure when it happened), it was as if God poked me and said, “You know, this season really isn’t about you.”

Talk about conviction.

It radically altered my entire perspective.

And now...

I love (just about) everything about Christmastime.

I love gathering with friends and family to celebrate.

I love eating together, especially the Christmas desserts.

I love the Christmas lights and festivities.

But what I love most is giving gifts to others.

I know many people look forward to opening presents and seeing what is under the tree for them, but it truly brings me more joy to see others open gifts that I have picked out, wrapped up, and laid under the tree.

The problem is that I have sometimes struggled with being patient.

I can’t tell you how many times I have bought a gift for Mel and either told her about it or actually gave it to her before Christmas Day.

The reason is that I get so excited to share what I picked out for her.

So, it takes everything within me to remain patient to make it to the proper time.

Can anyone relate?

You see, when someone finds joy in something, it is hard to hide it.

The things that bring you joy are the things that you want to share with the world.

It is just in our nature to want others to share our happiness with us.

It’s no wonder then that we find that in Scripture, God is eager to share the joy of Christ’s birth, even before it was time for Him to arrive.

The incarnation, which is Jesus’s birth or God coming to the earth as a human, is the greatest gift that has ever been given.

You can almost sense God’s excitement for the hope, peace, joy, and love that would come through His arrival as we look at the prophecies of His coming.

This is because Jesus’ birth is the source of true joy.

1: Jesus’ birth is the source of true joy.

In the past two messages, we’ve seen that the book of Isaiah speaks to this coming gift of the arrival of Jesus.

But there was also a prophetic word given through Isaiah about someone who would come to prepare the world for the arrival of Jesus.

This passage was written hundreds of years before its fulfillment, and it is one of God’s joyful promises about the future:

God promises that there will be a time of preparation before Christ’s birth.

There will be a straightening and a leveling that will take place, ensuring that the glory of God in Jesus would be made available to all people.

When I read these verses, I can sense the joy that God has to share with the world that what was once broken by sin will be made right.

The truth is that preparation is usually key to fully enjoying any great event.

My family decorates our house for Christmas each year sometime during the week of Thanksgiving.

We don’t go over the top or anything like that.

Here’s a picture of most of our decorations this Christmas.

But before all of the decorating takes place, there’s some prep work that has to happen.

We have to move furniture (my recliner normally sits where the tree is).

We have to clear away some of the knick-knacks and bric-a-brac that live on our end tables and such, and I have to climb up into the attic to bring down our Christmas decoration rubbermaid containers, which were all lovingly packed and put up there in January.

We turn on Christmas music, make some hot drinks, and slowly go through all of our ornaments, many of which never even make it on the tree, but they are each special to us in some way.

But not only does decorating prepare our house for Christmas Day, but it starts to prepare our hearts as well, as we get everything ready to celebrate the birth of Jesus.

The promise in the Old Testament is that the people of God will see this preparation take place.

God does not want them to miss it because it is the signpost for what is to come.

Any barriers that are in the way to experiencing the joy of the miraculous birth are removed.

There is no desert, no mountain, no valley, no rugged place that will stand in the way of the revelation of Christ.