Elizabeth & Mary

Absolutely beautiful, isn’t it? And if you haven’t figured out the theme for this Sunday is to pause. Take a deep breath. Remember what we actually celebrate this month? So let’s do a check up. Does that sound good? Yeah. How are you doing? Are you stressed out? Are you worried? Are you sleeping at night, or are you just anxious about all of the gifts that you have to buy and the food that you have to cook and presents to wrap, and all of the different places that you have to go within a short period of time. You know, about five years ago, I looked in the mirror and I just said to myself, I’m not going to get stressed out anymore. In the month of December. Anybody else do this? And here’s why. I looked myself in the mirror and said that because December comes around every single year. It’s not like it’s December 1st and it’s like, oh, surprise, everyone become a maniac and go crazy and get stressed out and have all this worry about this time of the year.

And as I said, I love Sunday because I believe that Sunday is the greatest day of the year. It’s an opportunity for us to really just come in and to refocus our mind and to refocus our souls even more, and why we make such a big deal about this month, every single year. So our hearts desire today as we continue in the service and as we open God’s word, is for you to see that in the pages that he has given us through some of the unlikely characters that so often get passed over when we hear the Christmas story, or we watch the Christmas movies, or we recount maybe even moments from our childhood. And so this year we’ve been calling this sermon series longing to see all of these different people that have been longing to see one thing the Messiah, the promised Savior. Now, today, as you see, I have my work cut out for me, don’t I? This is two women, so this one man has to talk and get into the life of these two women.

So I want you to I wanted to let you know I did extra research this week with my wife, and I asked her to help me navigate and understand some of the complexities of this text. And I also want to let you know, she gave me permission to share all of the stories that I’m going to share with you this morning. Okay. you know me. You know, I love being transparent and sharing even the the struggles that I have in my life, as well as the struggles that we have as a family, to help us, to guide us, to show us. At the end of the day, even though life is tough, that God somehow is faithful, he’s always faithful and he’s always true, and he’s the one that carries us through. Amen. Here’s something else I always do this time of the year. I’ve been doing this, for many, many years is encouraging you to read the actual real Christmas accounts. It’s found in two of the Gospels, Matthew and Luke. And combined. It’s only 80 verses. I mean, there isn’t really a lot of scriptures in the New Testament. Believe it or not, that give us any details of the Christmas account.

And part of the reason that we preach the way that we do here at shepherds is because we want to stir a hunger inside of you for the Word of God. We actually want you to leave here and to go home, and to open your Bible, and to read the pages of Scripture, and to see how the Holy Spirit stirs you and moves you and brings you closer to understanding who God is as we know, understand who he is, and the insane amount of love that he has for each and every one of us. So it’s really easy. You just go to the beginning of both of these books and read that together. How many think you could do that over the next couple of weeks? How many you think you’re up for that challenge? Good. Praise God. So this is where we left off last week. We were introduced to Zechariah and Elizabeth. Zechariah is a priest. these are good followers of Jesus. They’re both righteous before God, and they follow all the commandments. They check all the boxes. I mean, these people are like the model citizens of what you do as a follower of God. There’s just this one area of their life that that they struggled with, this one area that they struggle with for a very long time.

They couldn’t have children. And you’ll see there in the last line of the verse, Elizabeth, she’s barren. And both were advanced in years. And when the Bible says you’re advanced in years, that’s just a very polite way of saying what? How old do you think they are? And we don’t know for sure. But if they’re if the scriptures are saying this, does this mean she’s already gone through menopause? Like if she already passed the physical? What we see in the natural, the ability to actually produce children, I would say yes, but what’s so incredible is, as we learned last week, an angel comes to Zechariah while he’s doing his priestly job and says, hey, by the way, God’s going to do something incredible through you and your wife. She’s going to have a baby. It’s going to be a son. And you are to name him John. And that’s exactly what happened. She conceives and it says for five months she kept herself what? Why is she hiding decades of her life? And in this culture, in this time, women put their value and their ability to produce children.

And so if you couldn’t produce a child, you were Shonda. You were looked down on. And you can imagine the decades that this woman must have endured and also her husband. And here you are. You follow all the commandments. You’re righteous before God. What did you do to God? Why is God punishing you? Why doesn’t he just give you a child? And so as she finds out this news is she realizes that she’s pregnant. She goes into hiding and she says these words thus the Lord has done for me in the days when he looked on me to take away my reproach among people, how other people looked at her and talked about her mattered to her. And we all know that women start showing a baby right around what month? 4 or 5 months. Well, this isn’t the only miracle that’s taking place, because in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel, after he showed up to Zacharias, shows up in a city of Galilee and Nazareth to a virgin who is engaged to a man named Joseph. And the virgin’s name is Mary. And he says to Mary, guess what? You’re going to have a baby, and it’s also going to be a boy, and you are to name him Jesus.

And of course, as she’s processing all of this, she’s taking it all in. She says back, well, how is this going to be since I’m a virgin? And here’s the Christmas account that we know so well, the Holy Spirit or the angel says, The Holy Spirit’s going to come upon you. The power of Almighty God is going to overshadow you, just as God did that when he formed the world in Genesis. And this child to be born, make no mistake, this will be the Son of God. What incredible news! And we’re going to be digging more into this text for our Christmas Eve services. But look at the promise he also gives her. This is part of the Christmas account that we don’t always dig into. It says, and behold, guess what Mary, your relative Elizabeth is old. I just want the transparency of Scripture. Right? There’s a theme here that they’re old. Like if you didn’t know they’re old, it says like 100 times. She’s old and she’s also conceived a son. And this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. Everybody knows that’s her nickname. Barren, for nothing will be impossible with God. And what does Mary do when she hears first that she is going to have this child? That this really is the promised Messiah. And oh, by the way, your relative Elizabeth is also going to have a child. What’s the very next thing that she does? This is why you have to read the tax folks. She runs. She doesn’t walk. She’s so excited that she rises and she runs into the hill country to a town in Judah, and she enters the house of Zechariah and Elizabeth.

Now, don’t forget that, because Zechariah questioned the angel that he had actually took in his ability away to speak. So here Zechariah has been living with his pregnant wife for six months, and the only one doing all the talking is. Now all of a sudden, another pregnant lady shows up on his doorstep. And what’s better than one pregnant woman? Two and this was one of the things that I love about my wife in her heart, because whenever one of her friends becomes pregnant and she tells me and comes to me and says, hey, you’re not going to believe this, you’re not going to believe who is with child. I think we should have another kid. And I have to remind her each and every time in those moments, I am an old man. I am season in years. My ability, my age for having children has completely gone right. I am not going to. I’m going to be able to do this. It’s just incredible. Two pregnant ladies and just this last week is one of my wife’s closest friends had her baby, and I can’t tell you who it is because they haven’t made it Facebook official yet.

And as we got the text message early in the morning and my wife is just tears coming down her cheeks, I’m like, why are you crying, woman? She’s like, I’m just so excited. The only thing that would make this better is if we were having a baby with them. And I kid you not, we just found out that other good friends of ours, they don’t go to church here. But we were so close with them. We vacation with them. They have three teenagers and they just found out that she is pregnant and with child. And I said, good for them, God bless them. How can we encourage and support them? But what happens? This is so uncool. She goes through the house, she makes this huge announcement. She’s like, Elizabeth, you’re not going to believe this. You’re not going to believe what the angel told me. And as she’s giving this news to Elizabeth, the baby inside, Elizabeth leaps in her womb and Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit. Amen.

That incredible. That God can actually reach into a womb. That God can touch. A child that hasn’t even been born yet, that the Holy Spirit can come on Elizabeth, as well as this child. In fact, if you go back and look at the text from last week, that’s exactly what the angel told Zechariah, that this child will be full of the Holy Spirit before it’s even born. See, this is one of the texts that we use as we explain why we baptize infants here at Shepherds Key. We believe that it’s a gift that God gives to us. He comes to us, he rescues us. He gives us His Holy Spirit. It’s why Paul tells us that we are dead in our sins, and while we’re dead in our sins, Christ died for us. It’s also why, when Jesus was hanging on the cross and he’s in, he’s barely able to grasp his breath. And he’s in. He’s there and he’s looking at people spitting on him and mocking him. He’s the one that looks up toward heaven. He says, father, forgive them. Why? They don’t even realize what they’re doing. The miracle, but the incredible gift that God gives us through faith that he plants in our hearts and in our lives.

I mean, look at she tells Mary. This isn’t like some soft whisper that she gives her. It says that, she exclaimed with a loud cry. She probably woke her husband up from his nap. Right? Here he is loud cry. Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me? I mean, not only is he giving me my heart’s desire and perform a miracle for me, now I get to be a witness. I get to be part of hearing that the promised Messiah is now living in my relative Mary. For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Now this word joy in the text, it’s a very specific word that is used, and it’s all over Scripture. And this joy is not a joy that comes when you watch a hallmark movie, okay? It’s not a joy that comes when you put on your favorite Christmas movie. It’s not a joy that comes when you just turn off all the lights, and you sit in your living room and you stare at your Christmas tree.

Anybody else do that? Just me. Okay. Ten friends. Great. This is a joy that’s actually repeated in the New Testament when the church was under persecution and they were advancing the gospel and they were boldly proclaiming their faith, and not everyone wanted to hear the good news that Jesus is the Messiah. And so they were getting dragged off to jail, some of them beaten, some of them even putting to death. But over and over again, what God gave them was joy. He gave them joy to persevere in what he was doing in and through them. It ends with, and blessed is he who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord. Merry, that you took into account what it was that the angel said, and now your life is going to completely shift in change. Think of this. It’s two miracle conceptions, one old and one young, one barren and one a virgin, one human conception and one divine conception.

And as we look at this text, as we look at these few verses and we see the interaction between these two women and, and just the love and the grace and mercy that God has for them. I have some takeaways for you this morning. The first one is this is that God always patiently carries us along even when we question him. Amen. Let me say it again because Albrecht was the only Amen this morning, okay? God always patiently carries us along even when we question him. How’s your 2024 been? As you look back at the last 11 months, is anybody ready to say goodbye to 2024? Because it hasn’t been that great? My wife and I were talking a few weeks ago and I said to her, he said, honey, if you really think about this last year, this has been one of the worst years of our lives. We have had so many things thrown at us, so many things on a personal level that we have struggled with. It actually started back earlier in the year when we went to do our taxes. Do you guys remember the story I shared about my tax preparer about six weeks ago? So many of you remember that story. Hold on to that.

And as we were there and as we were going through, and I was sitting with my tax preparer and he said, Tim, I don’t know how to tell you this, but you owe the government more money, which is what everyone wants to hear. Right? And, you know, and I said, do it again. Figured, you know, like you must have hit a button wrong or add some zeros somewhere. There’s got to be a there’s got to be another way to do it now. And as many of you know, as our kids went into the hospital, both, you know, ten days apart and, you know, the surgeries that they had and just how non-normal that was. And still to this day, we don’t know another family where both of their kids had the same exact procedure within a short period of time into walking through the summer months and having to make some cuts and adjustments based on medical bills and, and, you know, having to square up things with our taxes and just all that was going on. And we were just like going, okay, God help us in this. And how do we navigate this? And even as we entered this fall. Henry had to go back into the hospital for another surgery and procedure. And my wife, who has been struggling with her health pretty much the entire year. Now, I know some of you follow us on social media, and you probably saw those pictures that we took at Stony Creek.

Weren’t they so cool? You know how when you take pictures with photographers, now you get to do cool stuff with your kids, and you always get to hold hands and you walk away, and so you guys all get to see a picture of our backsides. You know what I’m talking about. And I know what you were thinking, man. Lisa is so lucky. He is so handsome. They have the perfect family. Look at that. Slap it on a Christmas card. And sometimes we think that we look at a picture, or we follow somebody else’s social media feed, and we think that they have it all together. So here’s the here’s the reality. God hasn’t promised to be easy for anyone in this life. Did you know that? And even though I said, man, I can’t wait for 2024 to be over, I want to be done with this because I just hope 2025 is going to be an even better year for our family. How many of you that’s what you want for 2025? Here’s the difficulty. It could be worse. We don’t know.

Sometimes life just stinks. Sometimes we just get thrown things and it does force us to ask God why? Where are you? Did you forget about us? Then we upset you. Help! And yeah. Is it interesting that when the days and the weeks and months go by and we pause long enough to look back every single time we look back, we can always see the faithfulness of God. We can always see that maybe even things didn’t work out the way that we wanted. Or maybe there’s some obstacles that we had to overcome that somehow his grace and his mercy continued to carry us along. Mary. And part of her response of receiving this incredible news and going and living with Elizabeth, wrote a song. And part of the song that she wrote said, these words. His mercy extends to those who fear him, that you understand who God is and the relationship that you have. And ultimately, God is sovereign and he will work out his plan in his time in our lives. And this is going to happen from generation to generation. Right now. I know we’re still a few weeks away from our Christmas services, and as you heard a few moments ago, we’re going to go from having two services to having five services.

Where are all these people coming from, by the way? Why are all these people deciding that they’re just going to come worship with us? And this happens every single year. We know that people are going to come out of the woodwork, a lot of it, let’s be honest, that your kids and your grandkids or its people that this is the church that they call home on Christmas and Easter, and some of you are praying for your kids and you’re praying for your grandkids because you want nothing more for them to understand who God is and the relationship he desperately wants to have in their lives. And you also see how the world continues to infect them and inflict the lies that it does, that somehow they should go it alone in this life, that they should just figure out how to how to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. And they should do everything for themselves, and they should have their own thoughts and church.

It’s just kind of this antiquated thing that you don’t really need anymore. This idea of gathering weekly for worship, which sometimes, let’s be honest, we’re in here for an hour, sometimes an hour and ten minutes, sometimes an hour and 15 minutes, which is when the watches come out right? And yet, in the grand scheme of things, it’s such a small percentage of your entire week. This idea of coming together, this idea of being together so that we can sing and we can pray and we can open God’s Word, we can be convicted by His word, but then also simultaneously be reminded of the forgiveness and the grace and the mercy that he extends to us and to every generation that comes after us. Amen. Because the second point I’ll make this morning is this God always brings people in our lives to help us. See it again. God always brings people into our lives to help us look through the scriptures. You will not find anybody that God ever told to go alone other than Jesus on the night he was betrayed. All throughout scriptures, he always brought somebody else along to encourage the person to stand by the person to be a help and support to the person.

This is why I believe so strongly in the local church. I just believe that this whole gathering of God’s people isn’t just what we do here on Sunday mornings, that it transcends that. That he puts us in small groups, said that he allows us to serve together. That’s some of the greatest interaction that we have with one another is after the service in our in our west lobby here, where we check in on each other. How are you doing? Are you facing a hardship? Is there something that you need prayer for? Do you have my number? Here’s my number. Call me. I’ll listen. You want to meet up for coffee? I’ll make sure that I make time to meet up with you. I care about you. I want to know what’s going on in your life. And as we do that, as we realize our society continually pulls us away from relationships and the power and the connection that happens when we live in relationship with one another. Amen. Now, does that mean it’s always easy? Does that mean everybody in a church behaves? Does that mean sometimes we ruffle each other’s feathers or say things that we shouldn’t, or fill in the blank?

Yet we hold on to forgiveness. We hold on to what God has given us, that it’s actually better for us to be in community than if we remain alone again. Two pregnant ladies opposite ends of the age spectrum. But yet having this opportunity to invest in each other. My third point is this is God always fulfills his purposes in our life. And I did this God on purpose in his time. Amen. It’s probably the hardest one, isn’t it? When I read scripture, I oftentimes have a lot of why questions like why God, didn’t you just have the angel Gabriel go to Zachariah when he first got married and say, listen, just, you know, you’re not going to have a kid for like decades. In fact, your wife’s going to get past the age of being able to have kids.

But don’t worry, I have this incredible future and purpose for her. And when she’s really old, she’s going to have this kid whose name going to be John the Baptist, and he’s going to be the forerunner for Jesus is going to change the world. Why did he make him go through those decades? How about this? Mary’s fiancé, Joseph. Mary gets to have an angel show up and tell her the incredible news. And not only the incredible news, but as we just read, your relative also receiving a miracle. She goes and tells Joseph. And what’s Joseph’s response? Fear and doubt. He doesn’t know if he can believe her and he’s struggling. And we don’t know how many days and weeks, maybe even months went by until finally an angel appears to him in a dream and confirms what it was that Mary told her. Why? Why couldn’t the angel just show up to both of them together? They’re out having a romantic dinner. They’re working on their registry together.

What is it that the Holy Spirit is cultivating in their life? Which means what is the Holy Spirit cultivating in our lives if we’re in that daytime, if we’re in the waiting and the wondering. It’s kind of incredible because it says in the text that Mary remained with Elizabeth three months. So anybody else freaked out by that? Three months? Can you imagine living with a relative for three months? Some of you were having heart palpitations because you have relatives coming in town for a couple days. Some of us, let’s be honest, we can’t even make it three hours with some of the people that God has blessed us with in our families. This isn’t a negative. This is actually a positive that God would give them this gift to support and encourage each other. And what’s so interesting about Elizabeth’s journey and all of this is that eventually, yes, the time comes and she gives birth, and of course it’s a son. And look at how it ends. Her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown her mercy, and this is so cruel.

They rejoiced with her. But the years of pain and suffering came to an end. And now everyone is just amazed at what God has done in her life. Maybe you’re here this morning and you’re struggling with infertility. Maybe life has thrown you some crazy curveballs this year. Maybe it’s health related or financial, or you’ve lost a loved one or something has come into your life and it has rocked you to the core. Here me this morning. God sees you. He knows you. He grieves with you, and he loves you. And I can tell you this about this church, that if you’re going through a circumstance and you’re going it alone, there is someone here at Shepherd’s Gate that would walk that journey with you. I guarantee you, whatever you’re going through, there is somebody else, if not multiple people here at this church that have faced those same difficulties, and they would want nothing more than to sit with you and to listen to you and allow the Holy Spirit to work through them, to minister to you.

Because here’s what it comes down to you. The real meaning of all of this Christmas is actually quite simple. Everyone loves baby Jesus. How can you not love a baby? It’s from God to us. And recognizing that we’re children of God as well, that God wants us to stop long enough to hear those words. You are precious in his sight, that it’s his kindness that leads us to repentance, that it’s his mercy and grace that continues to carry us along our life and the journey that he has us on. And we recognize what it is that God has done in our hearts, in our lives. Now we have this incredible opportunity to then come alongside others and to share that good news with others. So let me end by giving you a couple questions this morning. I want you to think about this. Who is God brought into your life to encourage you? Because I was thinking about this this week. So often the people that we focus on are when the relationships get broken.

Or something happens that just rattles us to our core. And so we focus and we replay every conversation that maybe we had with that person. We blame that person. We lose sleep because of that person. And yet so often we take for granted the people that have come into our life that God has surrounded us with to encourage us and to bless us, and maybe will the course of this next week. Maybe we should send a text or pick up the phone, or just tell someone, thank you. You changed my life. Now how many? You remember the story I told a few weeks ago about my tax preparer? How many of you remember that? A couple of you good. Here’s the crazy part. He’s in church today. If you weren’t here, what I told you was this. I was at a crucial time in my life when I was going to walk away from Bible college.

I wanted nothing to do with going into ministry. And I came home and I did my taxes just the way I do every single year I’ve done since I was 18 years old. And I told this guy, you remember this? I’m moving to California. Marriott’s offered me the sweetheart deal. I’m going to make all this money. And I really feel that this is the direction that God has for me. And he patiently listened to me. And you remember what he said at the end of that conversation after he gave me my taxes back, which thankfully that year I didn’t own any money. All he said were these simple words. Is that why you went to school in Minneapolis? And that one phrase, that one moment, completely changed the directory of my life as I went back to school. And I re-enrolled and I canceled all the plans that I had with Marriott Hotel. Here’s the crazy part. He’s here today because his son was the one who had his kids baptized. So thank you for encouraging me.

I know I didn’t tell you I was going to stay that so hopefully you’re okay that I share that. But then flip it. Who is God brought into your life for you to encourage? I mean, again, it’s so easy to make this time of the year about us and our crazy chaotic schedules and trying to keep everybody else happy. To do this, you have to stop long enough. Breathe long enough to ask the Holy Spirit man put on my heart. Maybe I don’t need to race through the grocery store. Maybe there’s somebody in the grocery store that God has a divine appointment for me. And maybe it’s just a gentle word to somebody that’s in an aisle that seems stressed out. Maybe it is my doctor, or my dentist, or someone at my office. Maybe it’s that neighbor that I’ve always wanted to engage with. And now the Holy Spirit is stirring me to go and just say a word of encouragement to them. What is it for you and what will you respond to the Holy Spirit as he leads and guides us, that we can be a blessing to others?

Amen. We’re going to close with this really powerful song. Many of you know what it’s called. Goodness of God, and I want this song this morning to be a response to God as we’ve opened His word, as we received from him. And part of the lyrics say this all my life you have been faithful. All my life you have been what? You know the song. Isn’t it cool? It doesn’t say. All my life you have been good. I kind of like that. So it’s not in there once, but twice. You have been so, so good. Have we gotten everything we’ve wanted in life now? But man, has he given us everything we need through His Son Jesus Christ, who is our risen Savior and Lord, and he is coming again. But until that time comes, we will put our faith and our hope and our trust in him. Amen.