Sermon Tone Analysis
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Intro:
For the next three weeks I want to preach on [The God of the Impossible].
The title of my message is [Woulda, Coulda, Shoulda].
Who has ever been in an impossible situation?
For some reason, when I thought of impossible situations, I thought of my grandma.
She was fun, thoughtful, helpful, but most of all, she was impossible.
It was next to impossible to please grandma and because of this she placed all of her family in impossible situations.
She was also very stern, with strict rules that no one dared break.
One of those was that you HAD to be twelve-years-old before you could sit in the front seat of her van.
Once, my aunt and uncle were in the middle row and I was in the back row.
My aunt said, Daniel, you can sit in the front.
I told her grandma’s rule and she assured me that it was okay.
Being the dutiful and obedient child I was, I promptly planted myself in the front passenger seat.
Grandma came out of the house got in the driver’s seat, looked at me and I got the chewing of my life.
DANIEL, YOU KNOW BETTER THAN THIS.
WHAT ARE THE RULES.
YOU ARE TO NEVER SIT IN THE FRONT.
WHY WOULD YOU DO THIS?
I looked to my aunt, hoping for reinforcement, and she shrugged her shoulders and didn’t say a word.
I was in an impossible situation with no way out except to go to the back row and silently weep for my life.
Looking back, it was not a huge deal, but it felt impossible.
All of us have been there at one time or another.
I have heard people speak about impossible situations with regret, then shake their head and remark, woulda, coulda, should.
I would have done that different
I could have done that different
I should have done that different
In life, we face situations that seem impossible, meaning, not able to be done or to happen
not possible
out of the question
impracticable
unfeasible
beyond the bounds of possibility
Often, when the impossibility is complete, we might look back with regret and think of how we wish we would have handled the situation.
I feel strong in my spirit that the Lord wants to increase our faith.
We’ve discussed [People God Trust].
We want to live in such a way God can trust us.
But, we can and should TRUST Him.
There is nothing too difficult for Him.
Nothing is impossible with Him.
The word impossible is found four times in Scripture,
The word possible is found fifteen times in Scripture,
And all of the references are found in the New Testament.
What should this tell us?
God can do anything.
We should never limit God by our situations that we deem impossible.
To see this truth, I want to look at two situations where the God of the impossible worked on the behalf of His people.
We will look at the angelic visit with Zacharias and Mary and see how we can trust in the God of the impossible.
When we do, we will not have to live life with regrets.
We will not have to rehearse the woulda, coulda, shoulda.
I have three points, [We See What Wouldn’t Happen], [We Wonder What Could Happen], but [God Knows what Should Happen]
1.
We See What Wouldn’t Happen
Before Luke writes about the life of Jesus, for some reason he begins telling about a priest named Zechariah.
He had an interesting background and a unique position.
He was Jewish priest married to a woman, Elizabeth, who was a direct descendant of Aaron, Israel’s first high priest.
From his childhood, he would have known his responsibility as a future Jewish priest.
He was responsible to work in the Temple:
managing the upkeep
teaching Scripture
leading people in worship
At this point in Jerusalem, there were 20,000 priests throughout the country.
They were divided into groups of about 1,000 and the priests would serve one week in the Temple two times each year.
That was his position, a priest who would work in the Temple twice a year.
In addition to his unique background and position, he also had a sad circumstance, he and his wife had no children.
What makes it worse, is that he and his wife were faithful to God.
They lived righteously, carefully obeying all of the Lord’s commandments, but they still did not enjoy the blessings of having children.
At a certain point, it was Zechariah’s week to serve in the Temple with about 1,000 other priests.
Two times a day a different priest would enter the Holy Place and burn incense before the Lord as a sign of worship.
With 1,000 priests, how would they decide which of the fourteen priests would get such an honor?
They cast lots, or we could say that they drew names out of a hat.
A priest could only do this ONCE in their lifetime and many priests never got the chance.
It just so “happened” that on this particular day, Zechariah’s name was drawn and he went into the Holy Place.
As he is burning incense an angel from God came to him.
Terrified, the angel began to speak with an amazing message from God:
you will have a son
you will name him John, which means the Lord is gracious
you will raise him as a Nazarite
he will live set apart, never drinking alcohal
he will be filled with the Holy Spirit in the womb
he will live in the spirit and the power of Elijah
There is a lot packed into this promise.
In essence, the angel told Zechariah that John will become a prophet.
It had been 400 years since the Holy Spirit had anointed a prophet to speak for God.
How did Zechariah see this?
How would this every happen to me?
I am old, my wife is old, we have prayed for decades for this to happen and now all of a sudden you promise that God will give us a son?
In other words Zechariah thinks it is too impossible.
The angel’s answer?
I AM GABRIEL.
I stand before the Lord who sent me to speak to you.
I imagine Zachariah felt really small now.
This was the same angel who spoke to the Prophet Daniel.
And he came to Zechariah on the day he just so happened to stand in the Holy Place?
He should have believed, for he was struck mute, unable to speak until after John was born.
If only he would have believed in the God of the impossible!
2. We Wonder What Could Happen
As Luke wrote the narrative of Jesus’s life, he opted to interject in this part of the story to tell about the next assignment of Gabriel.
He went to Nazareth to speak to a young lady named Mary.
Right here we see some differences between the two impossible situations:
Zechariah was a priest with a prestigious position
Mary was a lowly girl
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