Sermon Tone Analysis
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Introduction
About four days ago I was listening to my 10-15 devotional app and instead of going into scripture right away, it began with reflection on a poem called A Cup of Christmas Tea.
Now I have never heard of this poem, but apparently it was regularly spoke of and a best seller and still can be found in amazon or a local bookstore.
It was written in 1982 and spoke of a visit with an aging grandaunt and the meaning of Christmas and the memories they create.
Written by Tom Hegg, I was more echoing with the beginning lines to the poem:
The log was in the fireplace,
all spiced and set to burn.
At last the yearly Christmas race
was in the clubhouse turn.
The cards were in the mail,
all the gifts beneath the tree.
And 30 days reprieve till VISA
could catch up with me.
I was especially caught by the words “the yearly Christmas race,” seems like that doesn’t it?
The busyness is real, and the malls are packed.
Mailing cards to loved ones, making sure everyone will have a gift underneath the tree, and all of that on credit.
In fact, I didn’t know until I searched it up, PwC, or Price Waterhouse Cooper, forecasts 24% of us will be spending more, and 59% will spend about the same upwards of $1,593 in 2019 for Christmas, which is up by almost 2%.
Although online shopping is become more prominent, many people still go to a traditional mall or do both online and in-store shopping for their Christmas gifts.
Just yesterday, I don’t know if it’s just me I feel lots of people are driving faster, maybe less patience.
There is an urgency to Christmas isn’t it?
It doesn’t help the fact you are bombarded with flyers or if you shopped online, how stores, Christians and non-, just ramped up the amount of emails they sent to you.
It’s urgent, don’t miss out this last deal!
Absolutely boxing week prices.
Boxing week it’s now called, not even boxing day.
If you let it get to you, it can be an overwhelminge experience.
Statistics on Christmas spending
Statistics on Christmas spending
Tension
Urgency of Christmas
Not only is there an urgency of Christmas, There is the Spectacular of Christmas.
Who hasn’t already bought a traditional turkey and all the ingredients to make an amazing stuffing.
Who hasn’t decorated their house with red and green lights, tinsel wrapped the old Christmas tree dragged out of the garage or storage, and hung the ornaments dangling and glistening under the lights.
The whole family is sent to work, to clean the house to a spotless, dustless existence like we haven’t actually lived there so families and friends and guests feel honoured when they come for that once in a year visit.
The plates and utensils, the best china have to be set out just right.
That can be a lot of pressure.
But as we make the whole experience of Christmas as error-free and perfect as we can, let’s not forget what the first Christmas is like.
There is a sense of urgency, but not how we experienced it.
There is a sense of the spectacular, but not how we would imagine it.
Primacy of Christmas
It’s recorded in the Gospel of Luke.
GOD
Luke was a historian who wrote the Gospel of Luke to a man named Theophilus, a Gentile Christian (a Gentile is anyone who is not of Jewish descent).
The main reason Luke was writing was to tell about God’s role in salvation to his new community, the church.
For those of you who are visiting church for the very first time, besides welcoming you once again, the reason you are here and why you just witnessed four believers of Jesus get baptized is the whole point of salvation.
Salvation is God’s plan to restore a people who has rebelled against their Creator to be a people who will represent him as God’s people together in a community called the church.
The central point of how this restoration of their relationship with God is going to take place is through this baby in the story.
This baby will grow up to be Jesus Christ, or Jesus the Messiah, and will take upon him our sins (things we do wrong, say wrong, and think wrong, which hurt ourselves and others and break God’s heart).
He will take our punishment of that sin on the cross so we can, like our four baptized Christians, have newness of life, if we put our trust in him.
This is the third announcement story, and an announcement story is simply God using supernatural means to declare salvation, God’s saving plan, is about to take place.
Through this story of the birth of Jesus, the angels visiting the shepherds, and the shepherds looking for the baby who would be king, we can learn three truths this Christmas from the First Christmas.
Here’s truth number one:
Why was it written?
him our sins (things we do wrong, say wrong, and thinkg wrong, which hurt ourselves and others and break God’s heart)
Announcement story #3
I. Everyone is running around for the right reason (2:3-8, 15-16)
You notice the story began with Joseph needing to go from the district of Galilee, in the city of Nazareth southwards, but upwards to the small town of Bethlehem, in the district of Judaea.
The reason for this journey was clearly written, and it is historically accounted for.
The Emperor Caesar Augustus, for taxation purposes, wanted to register every citizen who was part of the Roman Empire, not according to where they currently lived, but where their ancestors came from.
Quirinius, governor of Syria, was overseeing the operation at the time, and Joseph, we discover, is from the city of David.
David, who represented the Israeli people’s glory days, before they became conquered by a series of foreign powers.
This David was the King who ruled beyond the district of Judaea and Galilee, now occupied by the Romans.
His empire was vast, but now just a distant memory.
Joseph is related to the king, though he is anything but royalty anymore.
But amazingly, because of this long and almost forgotten lineage, he had to go with his betrothed wife, Mary.
Betrothal, at the time, was a commitment somewhere between the engagement and marriage commitments that we have today.
Mary, essentially, was arranged to be married to Joseph.
And she was due any moment with the expectation of the firstborn son.
So they travelled, and although scripture doesn’t record the exact due date, verse 6 gives some telling words:
6 And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth.
Now I have only been married for a little over 8 months and we don’t have a child yet, but I have heard stories of my colleagues, or family members about the urgency of childbirth.
When the baby’s coming, when he or she is due, they’re due.
You drop everything you are doing and rush to the hospital.
There is a hurried sense which probably encapsulates verse 6. Lest we be told in a famous hymn it’s a silent night, holy night, it is ANYTHING BUT silent as the mom contracts and cries out in agony.
But Joseph was determined to take his wife on this long journey, probably so as not to abandon her while their first child is born.
Did I by the way mention the child is not Joseph’s, as in Joseph is not the father?
Long story short, the father is God, as this earlier exchange took place between an angel and Mary:
34 And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”
35 And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God.
This child is no ordinary child, yet in the haste of things, when he is due, they were not able to find a guest room.
Bethlehem was a small town and possibly all other guests have already taken other lodgings, so by the time Joseph and Mary arrive all that is left is the first floor where animals live, or some believe he was in a cave.
So they found a manger, that is a feeding trough for animals and laid him in there, not knowing this was exactly how God wanted baby Jesus to be.
The other moment of haste is with the Shepherds later in verse 16:
16 And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger.
We will talk more about these shepherds later.
But the point is this: in all of the running arounds and busyness, both Mary and Joseph as well as the Shepherds are focused on one thing: the baby.
Not just any baby, but what this baby represents.
For us who are caught in the whirlwind that is Christmas, how might we hurry for the true reason for Christmas?
But the irony is often the Christmas child is not found in our hurriedness, but in quietness and trust.
Perhaps this is what the hymn writer wants to convey lyrically when they wrote silent night, holy night, all is calm, and all is bright.
It is not so much what happened that night because as we see in just a second, there’s anothe reason why it cannot be a silent night.
But it is the heart posture we should have as we enter into the last two or three days of Christmas.
Don’t let the hustle bother you.
Focus on the one you are truly hustling for, and He will give you peace in this busy season.
II.
All is plain without the angelic hosts (2:6-8 cf.
2:9-10, 13-14)
The other amazing thing about this story, if you read Chapter 2 from verses 1-7, is just how ordinary the story sounds, how plain.
What do I mean by that?
Luke seems to be listing out one fact after another, the setting and context of “those days,” the travel to the ancestral town for Joseph and Mary to be registered.
Even the giving birth scene sounds ordinary and plain.
One reason of course is to highlight what lowly and humble estate this boy Jesus was born into.
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