Sermon Tone Analysis

Pre-Introduction:

For those joining us online, you’re listening to the Services of the Broomfield Baptist Church.

This is the Pastor bringing the Sunday Morning message entitled “Hope for the Holidays.”

We invite you to follow along with us in your Bible in the Book of Luke, chapter one, and verses thirty-nine to forty-five.

Prior to the Message:

In about 35mins or so, I’m going to ask you to do something unusual.

I’ll be asking you to make a decision based on the information in today’s sermon.

At the end of the service, I’ll invite you to come and kneel front as a sign of God working in your life.

Introduction:

[Start Low]

Quote: John Lennon is quoted as saying, “Jesus was alright, but his disciples were thick and ordinary.

It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”

Point out that Mr. Lennon is fundamentally misunderstanding the fact that God intentionally chooses thick, ordinary disciples like Zechariah, Mary, Elizabeth, Peter, and all of us to reveal his amazing grace and power.

Far from twisting the intent of Jesus’s gospel, this undeserved sanctifying and deploying of regular, unremarkable people into amazing ministry proves the power of God and ensures a grateful, humble people of God.

[TTC Lu]

Faith is the essence of the Christian life.

At the outset, believers are “justified by faith without the deeds of the Law” (Rom.

3:28; cf.

5:1; Gal.

2:16) and thus are “children of God by faith in Christ Jesus” (Gal.

3:26).

Paul wrote of living the Christian life, “the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God” (Gal.

2:20).

In John 20:29 Jesus said to Thomas, “Because thou hast seen Me, thou hast believed?

Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed” (cf. 1 Peter 1:8).

“Faith,” notes the writer of Hebrews, “is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Heb.

11:1; cf. 2 Cor.

4:18; Rom.

8:25), apart from which it is impossible to please God (v. 6).

But as still fallen people, though “we walk by faith, and not by sight” (2 Cor.

5:7), even those whose faith is strongest experience doubts and discouragement.

The Bible makes it clear that all through redemptive history God has been the encourager of His people, confirming and strengthening their faith.

[MNTC Lk 1-5]

Main Thought: Faith in God's Word is deepened when lived out in the fullness of the Holy Spirit.

Body:

I. Mary’s Hasty Visit (Lk.

1:39-40)

[Go Slow]

A. Mary’s Departure (Lk.

1:39)

Note - “in those days” = when Gabriel visited her.

Note - There might be a comparison by Luke to Samuel’s miraculous birth in the wording of this verse (cf. 1 Sam.

1:1).

Note - John Phillips points out the “polysyndeton” in Luke’s narrative… “And… and… and...”

Note - Possible motives for Mary’s haste: Social Pressure regarding the Law (see Deut. 22:24); heading to Zacharias’ house (an ordained priest) might be much like fleeing to a “city of refuge” to wait out the justice of the Law.

While that may be in the backdrop, the more contextual reason is that Mary wanted to go because of Gabriel’s words to her concerning Elisabeth’s pregnancy (which was still to this point hidden; Mary knew about Elisabeth’s, but not vice versa yet).

Note - Greene points out that the trip may have been “theologically motivated” by the word “went” or journey which can connote a going related to the fulfillment the divine purpose (see Lk. 9:51).

If so, Luke thus describes Mary’s journey as consequential in redemption history, relating her journey to her primary identification as servant of the Lord (1:38) and to the narrative need to identify Gabriel’s “sign.”

[NICNT Lk]

Note - Grant points out that this would have been an eighty to a hundred miles (three-to-four-day journey) [Luke: Verse by Verse]

Quote -

“God never does anything to you that isn’t for you.”

~ Elizabeth Eliot [Craig Brian Larson and Brian Lowery, 1001 Quotations That Connect: Timeless Wisdom for Preaching, Teaching, and Writing (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 2009), 16.]

B. Mary’s Greeting (Lk.

1:40)

Note - Cf. Ex. 18:7 for a similar Hebrew greeting [NICNT Lk]

Note - Zachariah remains mute in the background [ZECNT Lu]

Note - Luke draws emphasis to this salutation by a three-fold reference to it in these verses [ZECNT Lu]

Illustration: An Ancient Greeting

The Italian architect-believer, Fra Giovanni, wrote in 1513:

I salute you.

There is nothing I can give you which you have not;

but there is much that, while I cannot give you, you can take.

No heaven can come to us unless our hearts find rest in it today.

Take heaven …

No peace lies in the future which is not hidden in the present.

Take peace …

The gloom of the world is but a shadow; behind it, yet within our

reach is joy.

Take joy …

And so at this Christmas time I greet you with the prayer that for

you, now and forever, the day breaks and the shadows flee away.[1]

[1 Christian Century Pulpit, December, 1957, “Greeting at Christmas,” by Fra Giovanni, AD 1513, p. 22. Permission requested.]

[G.

Curtis Jones, 1000 Illustrations for Preaching and Teaching (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 1986), 56–57.]

Application: Making Haste

How long do you think it would take you to drive from the northernmost point in Alaska to the southernmost tip of Florida?

Here’s a hint: the distance from Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, to Key West, Florida, exceeds 5,400 miles.

In 2004, it took Gary Eagan of Salt Lake City only 100 hours to make the trip on a motorcycle.

Also imagine riding a motorcycle some 2,900 miles from New York City to San Francisco in 47 hours and 41 minutes.

Michael Kneebone did just that, in the process setting a 24-hour endurance record of 1,704 miles.

One might imagine that the speed limit was broken along the way!

Mary and Elisabeth lived in slower-moving times, making their world a much smaller place than ours, figuratively speaking.

They would have been surprised at the distance we can travel in a single hour.

Haste is a relative idea.

Mary’s journey “in haste” would be agonizingly slow to us today.

Yet its purpose was certainly nobler than either of the two time-and-distance achievements noted above!

Do we have the perspective to acknowledge this fact?

[KJV SLC 2008-2009]

Mary was making tracks to confirm the Word of the Lord given to her.

Are you making tracks to the Word of God that has been given to you?

How long has it been?

Friend, you’ve not missed the bus yet if you’re still breathing!

It’s time to board the Bible Bus, and make tracks in the Word of God!

Transition: We’ve seen Mary’s haste, now let’s look at what occurred more deeply when she arrived.

II.

The Spirit’s Signs & Wonders (Lk.

1:41)

[Climb Higher]

A. The Leaping Baby Baptist (Lk.

1:41a)

Note - Mary’s Greeting plus the Baby’s Leaping form an inclusio around Elisabeth’s humility.

Note - On the Sanctity of the Life, namely in those Unborn:

BREPHOS - Further let it be noted that the word Brephos used of the “babe” lying in the manger in Luke 2:16 is the same word used of the “babe” in the womb in Luke 1:44.

[John Clark, “Disregard for Human Life: A Study of Abortion,” in The Godly Family in a Sick Society, ed.

Melvin D. Curry, Florida College Annual Lectures (Temple Terrace, FL: Florida College Bookstore, 1979), 251.]

Note - WBC Vol.