Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

Have you ever given or received a puppy for Christmas?

If not you have seen it played out on a TV show

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

Usually comes bouncing 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?

But what about putting it in that 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 bouncing 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.

The word advent means an anticipation or longing

and as we celebrate Christmas it is not only a time of gifts and family

it is also a time that we come together to celebrate the birth if Jesus and look forward in anticipation knowing that one day He is coming back for us

This week we will light the third candle which represents the Joy we experience in Jesus our Lord and Savior

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

Luke 1 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,

now remember Zechariah and Elizabeth were old.

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

Zechariah questioned what he had heard from the angel

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

But today, let’s look a little closer at Elizabeth and the joy she experienced

but first in order To understand Elizabeth’s joy,

we have to understand a little bit about her pain.

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

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

They provided more hands to handle the daily tasks

Children were a gift from God and a sign of His favor.

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

Elizabeth would have experienced all of these emotions .

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.

Friends and family probably offered encouragement and shared in her sorrow.

but gradually, Elizabeth’s hope slowly died as she came to terms with the fact that something was wrong,

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.

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

However even through all of thus she and Zechariah remained faithful to God.

Luke described them like this:

and then 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!

Could she even allow herself to go there?

Could she open her heart to the possibility

From what we can tell from Luke’s account, it seems Elizabeth had an easier time of accepting the miraculous news than her husband.

Elizabeth spent the first five months of her pregnancy in seclusion.

Why

We don’t know

maybe she knew no one would believe her news until she was definitely showing.

Maybe this was her way of sharing her husband’s silence as they lived daily through a miracle unfolding before their eyes

What we do know is that in her sixth month of pregnancy, Elizabeth experienced a deep encounter with joy brought by the coming Messiah, whose human life had just sprung into being in Mary’s womb.

As we discussed last week, young Mary left her home shortly after her own angelic visit and came to stay with her cousin Elizabeth for three months.

As soon as she arrived, Elizabeth’s baby “leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit” (Luke 1:41).

Elizabeth’s joy overflowed, as she greeted Mary

The puppy was out of the box now.

Joy was flowing.

And true to its nature, joy was contagious.

Mary burst into her own song of praise and thanksgiving as she gave words to the miracle happening through her.

these two women shared a joy that could no longer be contained,

And joy began rippling outward.

When Elizabeth gave birth to John three months later, the joy of her miracle spread through her village and family.

They say there is no joy greater than that of a mother holding her newborn child.

For Elizabeth, the joy must have been especially overwhelming.

She was experiencing a miracle, and it was a miracle that healed a lifetime of hurt, pain, disrespect, and shame.

And it was only the beginning of the many miracles she would witness in her lifetime.

Our Source of Joy

What would you and I give to know such joy?

To see the scars and shame of our life washed away so dramatically?

The joy Elizabeth experienced is available to us.

the joy brought into our world by Jesus, God with Us.

The apostle Peter wrote,