Sermon Tone Analysis

Have you ever given or received a puppy for Christmas?

You’ve seen it on the TV commercials for sure.

A super-cute, tiny, cuddly fuzz ball is usually wearing a bright red bow around its neck.

It usually either comes bounding around the corner or peeks its head out of a box as soon as the kids or special someone lifts the loosely fitting lid.

It’s always adorable, and it starts giving kisses or tumbling out over its clumsy, oversized paws.

God with Us Brings Joy

Have you ever given or received a puppy for Christmas?

You’ve seen it on the TV commercials for sure.

A super-cute, tiny, cuddly fuzz ball is usually wearing a bright red bow around its neck.

It usually either comes bounding around the corner or peeks its head out of a box as soon as the kids or special someone lifts the loosely fitting lid.

It’s always adorable, and it starts giving kisses or tumbling out over its clumsy, oversized paws.

You can probably feel the warm fuzzies even now as we talk about it, right?

So if you’ve ever actually been involved in one of these Christmas-morning puppy gifts, you know what it’s like to try to put a puppy in a box.

That little bundle of love and joy—we won’t mention the dog hair and, um, accidents—just does not want to be contained inside a box.

You certainly can’t wrap him up the week before and stick his box under the Christmas tree.

You have to work to keep him hidden—probably somewhere outside the house.

Then you have to wait until exactly one minute before the kids come down the stairs to drop that doggie into the box and probably bribe him with a treat or a toy that just might occupy him for 38.6 seconds, so you can pop on the lid and rush him into the hands of his new best friend.

Some people just skip the box altogether, hide out in the next room, then put the puppy on the floor and let him come bounding into the room to the accompaniment of squeals of delight.

You see, a dog is just plain uncontainable in a box.

It comes spilling out to love and lick everyone that’s around.

And it doesn’t stop there.

The people who receive a puppy for Christmas just can’t keep it to themselves.

They pass that little pup around to everyone in the house, and they don’t stop there.

They carry it or lead it around to the neighbors.

They drive with it to the relatives or friends—or to the store or salon or dentist.

(OK, maybe not the dentist.)

But they want to show and share this adorable little ball of fur with everyone they can.

And then those people want to go grab their kids, husband, girlfriend, or whomever to share the cuteness and happiness that this little puppy exudes.

Joy is a lot like puppies.

Fortunately, it’s not as hairy and doesn’t make a mess, but joy is boundless and uncontainable.

Joy overflows, and when you’ve experienced joy, you want to share it with someone else—or as many people as you can.

Joy bubbles over and touches everyone it comes in contact with.

Joy is what we are celebrating on this third Sunday of Advent.

If you’ve been journeying with us the past two weeks toward Christmas, you know that we have been celebrating Advent.

As a quick recap, the word advent means “coming” or “arrival,” and the season is marked by expectation, waiting, anticipation, and longing.

Advent is not just an extension of Christmas—it is a season that links the past, present, and future.

Advent offers us the opportunity to share in the ancient longing for the coming of the Messiah, to celebrate His birth, and to be alert for His second coming.

Advent looks back in celebration at the hope fulfilled in Jesus Christ’s coming, while at the same time looking forward in hopeful and eager anticipation to the coming of Christ’s kingdom when He returns for His people.

During Advent we wait for both—it’s an active, assured, and hopeful waiting.

And each week, we focus on a different attribute of God represented in the coming of Jesus: hope, love, joy, and peace.

Because Jesus is Immanuel, “God with Us,” He is the embodiment of these traits, who has entered our world and who fills us with them all.

Elizabeth: Joy Overcomes Shame

If you were here with us on the first Sunday of Advent, you remember we talked about Zechariah.

tells the story of Zechariah and his wife, Elizabeth.

They were the parents of John the Baptist, who was sent to prepare the way for Jesus, the Messiah.

Zechariah was a priest who received a visit from an angel that told him, “Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard.

Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him John.

He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth, for he will be great in the sight of the Lord” ().

The catch was that Zechariah and Elizabeth were old.

Elizabeth was beyond childbearing years, and the couple had never been able to have kids.

So besides the shock from talking to an angel, Zechariah couldn’t get over the fact that it was possible for his wife to have a baby.

And as a result, his voice was taken away until the baby was born.

But today, let’s look a little closer at Elizabeth, because in the story of God with Us, she deeply experienced joy in the midst of the miraculous events she found herself suddenly in the middle of.

To understand Elizabeth’s joy, however, we have to understand a little bit about her pain.

You see, for the ancient Jews, children were a tremendous blessing.

tells us, “Children are a heritage from the Lord, offspring a reward from him.

Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are children born in one’s youth.

Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them.

They will not be put to shame when they contend with their opponents in court” ().

Children allowed a family to pass on its name and heritage.

They provided more hands to handle the daily tasks of life or to expand their ability to forge a livelihood through their trade or craft.

Most importantly, children were viewed as a gift from God and a sign of God’s favor.

To be childless, then, was a source of great frustration, sorrow, and shame.

And Elizabeth would have known this despair for years.

She most likely would have married Zechariah when she was a young teenager, and the couple would have hoped right away to have children.

Elizabeth probably would have imagined what it would be like to have a home filled with kids.

She would have dreamed of holding her own babies.

She might have made lists of names in her mind, drawing from the family names that would be passed traditionally down the family lines.

At first, Elizabeth might have dismissed the lack of a pregnancy.

Maybe the timing just wasn’t right to conceive.

Or maybe, like many of you in this room have probably experienced, there was a pregnancy.

Joy and hope would have leaped in Elizabeth’s heart when she realized that a new embryo had sprung to life in her womb.

Maybe she even told people she was pregnant.

But then—something happened, and there was a miscarriage.

While physically hard and emotionally painful, Elizabeth might have dismissed the first one or two as a fluke.

But as many times as a pregnancy began, it came to an end prematurely.

Friends and family probably offered encouragement and shared her sorrow.

They might have offered advice that while well intentioned was just plain hurtful: “Maybe there is some sin in your life you need to confess,” they might have said.

“When we tried this, it helped us get pregnant.

Maybe something’s just wrong with you.”

Who knows how long it took, but gradually, year after year, Elizabeth’s hope would have slowly died as she came to terms with the fact that something was wrong, that she could not have a child.

At some point, the social stigma would have stuck.

“Barren,” they called her.

It became a shameful and permanent mark.

Elizabeth would have grieved over the loss of ever being a mother.

She would have accepted the loss of the status that came in her culture from bearing children.

She would never be considered as worthy or esteemed as other women.

She accepted her fate as a failure in the eyes of her society.

Still, Elizabeth must have known some happiness as well and would have been deeply involved in community life, especially since Zechariah was a priest.

And though she carried her emotional burden beneath the surface, she and Zechariah remained faithful to God.

Luke described them like this: “Both of them were righteous in the sight of God, observing all the Lord’s commands and decrees blamelessly” ().

This is how they planned to live out the rest of their old age, serving God and the people around them.

And then God came.

On an ordinary day with Zechariah at work in the temple, the angel Gabriel showed up out of the blue with that miraculous message.

Zechariah couldn’t even tell his wife what the angel had said.

He would have had to either write it out, if Elizabeth could read, or use signs and gestures to give his wife the news.

Elizabeth must have thought she was getting the wrong message at first.

It seemed too good to be true!

Hope must have kicked in her heart like the thump of a baby in the womb.

Could she even allow herself to go there?