Advent Week 3 – The Shepherd’s Candle of Joy: Elizabeth
This week is an exegetical sermon looking at Luke 1:39-45 focusing on the character of Elizabeth. The sermon is titled, “The Mom Whose Baby Knew Jesus and Rejoiced”and how Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit and recognizes God’s hand at work, confesses baby Jesus as her Lord, identifies Jesus as the source of God, and celebrates the promise of God. This sermon was originally preached by Pastor Duane Smets on December 13th, 2009 at The Resolved Church in San Diego, CA.
Listen 
.
The Resolved Church | www.theresolved.com
(619) 393-1990 | contact@theresolved.com
All Rights Reserved © The Resolved Church
Permissions: you are permitted and encouraged to reproduce and distribute this material provided you not alter the wording in any way and you do not charge a fee. For web posting a link to this document is preferred.
The Resolved Church
Pastor Duane Smets
December 13th, 2009
ADVENT | The Christmas Story Descends
Week 3 – The Shepherd’s Candle of Joy: Elizabeth
“The Mom Whose Baby Knew Jesus and Rejoiced”
Luke 1:39-45
I. Elizabeth Recognizes the Hand of God (v.39-42)
II. Elizabeth Confesses Belief in Jesus (v.43)
III. Elizabeth Explains the Joy of Her Baby (v.44)
IV. Elizabeth Celebrates the Promise God (v.45)
Introduction
Good morning. It’s the third week of Advent, the Shepherds Candle which is the week that focuses on the theme of joy. But I didn’t feel like preaching on the shepherds this year since I have every year for like the past three Christmases. So I went with the one other character in the story that uses the word joy. She’s actually basically a pastor’s wife, so I guess she’s sort of connected to shepherds.
It’s actually a great story and it happens probably around 6 months or so before Jesus is actually born…so in reality the joy that’s talked about it is a future looking joy to the joy the angels announce to the shepherds. So we’re sort of quasi legit with looking at Elizabeth today for the Shepherd’s candle.
This is a fascinating story and it usually gets skipped over because it’s just this little side note in the middle of this grand story about how God comes into the world. On just a cursory reading of it, it just sounds like two women getting all giddy together about being pregnant.
But there’s a lot more going on in it than we realize. Not only is Luke, the human author of this passage, bringing the two stories together… the story of Elizabeth’s pregnancy and Mary’s pregnancy. Not only is he bringing these stories together, but he brings them together in such a way to say something amazing about who God is and in his ordering of these events, who his Son Jesus is to be, how Jesus brings joy, and how Jesus is the long awaited fulfillment of the human heart and the Old Testment prophecies. It’s quite phenomenal, all that is packed in these short nine verses.
So let’s re-read the text again and pray over it.
I. Elizabeth Recognizes the Hand of God (v.39-42)
Okay, so again…this story is kind of funny to me. If you’re not a Christian and you don’t buy into all this crazy miracles stuff then the story is kind of comical. It sort of reads like two super emotionally charged pregnant women who see each other, get all happy, one of their babies starts moving and so they read all this super spiritual stuff into it. Right?
That is probably how most people would read this story…unless you have really come to know God and trust that the Bible is his Word and believe that it speaks truthfully we would naturally look for some logical, rational explanation for this story and we try and read through all the “Christian” stuff to find out what really happened.
There’s some interesting things here though that you can’t get from just reading this short little passage kind of ripped not only out of it’s immediate context, but also ripped out of the entire book of Luke and his second volume, Acts which was written to go with it. The book of Luke and the book of Acts in the Bible really go together, they were meant to go together and be read together as one book, Luke-Acts. That’s how Luke wrote them. One is the gospel of Jesus and one is the acts of the Jesus disciples. One tells the story of Jesus, the other tells the story of the church.
Now, if you sit down and you read through then entire book of Luke and Acts together you’ll recognize something…this phrase we read in 41, “filled with the Holy Spirit” is a special favorite phrase of Luke’s. He uses it when God does something in a person so that something supernatural takes place.
And Luke isn’t a guy who is about making stuff up. He’s a medical doctor who cared about truth and accuracy and history. He says in the beginning of his book, right in the first few vereses of each of them that followed things closely and wanted to write an orderly and accurate account of what happened. But when something supernatural is about to take place…he often uses this phrase, “filled with the Holy Spirit” to say God is doing something special here.
One time, it’s when God gives a prophecy to Zechariah (Lk 1:67). One time it’s when God enables Peter to speak in tongues and people heard him speaking in five or six different languages (Acts 2:4-6). One time, it’s when the church gets together for a prayer service and God causes an earthquake to erupt (Acts 4:31). One time, it’s when Paul has been blinded and God enables him to see (Acts 9:17). One time, it’s when God enables Paul to do spiritual warfare with a magician (Acts 13:9).
And one time, it’s when God causes Elizabeth’s baby to jump when he encouters Jesus and God enables Elizabeth’s heart and mind to be opened to recognize that her cousin Mary was more than just a cousin who was pregnant.
So here’s what’s going on. Elizabeth is old. Who knows how old…maybe 50 or 60. Her husband said she was “advanced in years (Lk 1:19),” so whatever that means. Probably gray hair and past menopause. She was barren, couldn’t get pregnant her whole life no matter how hard her and her husband tried. An angel comes to her husband and tells him she is going to get pregnant and that it’s going to be a boy and the boy’s name will be John and John will prepare the way for the messiah who’s going to come right after him, that being Jesus.
So, sure enough Elizabeth gets pregnant and then after her Mary gets pregnant with Jesus. After Mary gets pregnant, somehow she hears about her cousin Elizabeth encountering an angel too and also getting pregant and decides to make a trip and go see her. The moment pregnant Mary with Jesus gets to the house, little baby John the Baptist turbs out and gets all excited in his mom’s belly. When that happens the Holy Spirit fills Elizabeth and she says some radical and awesome things about Jesus.
The first thing is her recognition of God’s hand being at work. By God’s hand, I don’t mean a literal hand I just mean that he is acting and doing something. You have to remember, that nothing spiritual or supernatural or meaningful had happened for over 400 years. It ought to be a good reminder to us who have trouble with believing miracles can and have happened. Sometimes God takes long breaks from doing stuff.
But Aslan is on the move as C.S. Lewis would say. God’s doing stuff. The moment baby John the Baptist jumps Elizabeth essentially starts prophesying…speaking Holy Spirit inspired and illuminated words. Look at what she says first, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb!”
You gotta get a feel for this. If anything is special or a miracle it’s Elizabeth’s womb. She’s the old hag who couldn’t get pregnant and now she is…if anyone’s womb is blessed by God, it’s hers. It’s not hard for a young girl to get pregnant. But she sees Mary and she recognizes the hand of God at work…that God is doing something special with Mary.
Now obviously, this type of “filling of the Holy Spirit” from God is not a common thing. It’s a special thing. So not that God couldn’t or doesn’t sometimes still do things like this…but when he does it’s probably rare. However, there is a principle here for us to learn from.
Whenever you’re reading a story in the Bible, the narrative genre…there is a subtext. A lesson beneath the story, that the author is hoping you’ll pick up. Here, the lesson is do you recognize when God is at work?
Elizabeth here is not so self-involved with what’s going on with her personally to miss what God is doing around her, in other people. I think there is a good lesson in there for us. We need to learn how to be spiritually sensitive to what is going on around us. We need to be looking for where God is working and who he is working in.
It’s so easy just to get wrapped up in our own lives and our own agendas that we become blind to what God is doing around us. Rather than thinking of life as though it were a car that we are driving I think we need to think of it more like a train that is moving and we need to figure out where God is working and get on board with him.
Let me ask you. What do you think God is trying to teach you or show you in your life right now? What does it seem like God may be doing? When you think of your life and your circumstances and your relationships, who and where does it look like God may have something going on?
So often I personally have my own agendas and I try and force fit stuff…and things are so much easier when I just get on board with what God is doing and invest my time and energy there instead of trying to make the things that are not working work. That’s a good lesson we can learn from Elizabeth here.
II. Elizabeth Confesses Belief in Jesus (v.43)
The second thing Elizabeth says just blows me away. She quite literally confesses her belief in Jesus. As we talked about last week, Mary was undoubtedly the first Christian. Here, it looks like Elizabeth very well could have been the second. Let’s check it out, “Elizabeth Confesses Belief in Jesus.”
It’s in verse 43. The next thing she says is in the form of an emphatic rhetorical statement, “Why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?!” Wow! Completely set aside her massive humility…she doesn’t even feel worthy of encountering Mary…her way younger cousin…but she calls Mary’s baby, baby Jesus, “my Lord.”
The text almost seems to go out of it’s way to say this whole interchange happens before Elizabeth and Mary even get to talk. It’s not like Mary came in the house and they sit down for tea and then a couple hours later she says this. It’s right away. The moment she walks in the door.
Now maybe she heard some stuff about the angel that appeared to Mary and Joseph or something. Maybe. But it seems like she didn’t know any of that and God just revealed it to her when he “filled her with the Holy Spirit.” I have know idea what that experience would be like, anything I’ve ever come to know has either been through a lot of hard work and study or a lot of stupid mistakes in life.
But here, it just seems like God drops this mad knowledge bomb into her forehead and she’s knows that the baby that is inside Mary is the divine Son of God who is going to save his people from their sins and so she makes a profession of faith to him.
Get ahold of that. She calls the baby Jesus, still in Mary’s womb, “my Lord.” This is what is printed on the coins at the time, “Lord.” They said, “Ceasar is Lord.” And this is what Elizabeth would say outloud every time she read the name of God in her Bible, she would say, “Lord.” So “Lord” is a loaded word. It means ruler over all and it means God.
I almost wonder if Elizabeth fell down on her knees and clapsed onto Mary’s belly when she did this. I can almost picture that happening. “My Lord.” It’s the same thing Thomas, Jesus’ disciple would say after Jesus died on the cross and rose again. He was skeptical that after being dead for three days that Jesus really came back to life. But when he finally saw Jesus for himself, John looks at him and says, “My Lord and My God (Jn 20:28).”
Elizabeth here recognized that this pregnancy of her cousin was far different than any normal pregnancy. Elizabeth here recognized that this child was far different than any other child. Elizabeth here recognized that this child would be her savior. She knew she needed a savior from her sin and God opened up her eyes to see that baby Jesus would be that for her.
This is what we all need. It’s one of the most challenging things about being a Christian and desiring so much for others to see and know how good Jesus is and how much they need him. But the truth is we can’t make that happen. You can talk with someone until I’m blue in the face about how much of a sinner they really are and how much they really need Jesus what Jesus has done but nothing we ever say has the ability to change a heart.
Like with Elizabeth God has to open up our eyes to be able to see that Jesus is Lord and that we need him and he will save us. We have to see him as more than just a baby. My little daughter Adina right now loves playing with little babies. We’re training her to be a good mommie and she loves it. While we’re trying to potty train her, she’s trying to potty train her dolls.
But I think she’s a little confused because I think she thinks all babies are baby Jesus. Whenever she picks up one of her dolls or see a little baby she calls it Jesus. Our biggest prayer for, every day and every night is that God would help her to see that she needs Jesus and that she would turn to him as her savior.
It’s kind of a good picture of how we are. We need God to open up our eyes to see Jesus as being more than just an imaginary person that we play with like a doll. We need God to help us to see him as our Lord and our God.
Is he yours today? Is Jesus your Lord? Can you say with Elizabeth, “my Lord”? May God help us all see the glory and the wonder of who he is, that we might worship him and be amazed by him like Elizabeth.
III. Elizabeth Explains the Joy of Her Baby (v.44)
Well, the things Elizabeth says seem to get either increasingly more preposterous or increasingly more amazing. Check out verse 44. After saying these two huge things. One that God is at work and has blessed Mary’s womb and two, that Mary’s baby is her Lord. After saying these things she gives reason for why she says them.
Look at it. The beginning of verse 44. She says, “For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.” This is crazy. Any normal person would just think it’s coincidence or maybe gas or something. Just because a baby moves doesn’t mean that it’s a special baby from God who is the Lord and savior.
But remember here, Luke says here, that God filled Elizabeth with the Holy Spirit to be able to recognize this. So you can take it or leave it, but that’s what the text says. And actually it’s not too far off. In fact, throughout the Bible, the Bible’s universal picture of baby’s in the womb is like this.
Baby’s can know God and are spiritual, in the womb, before they are born. Unborn babies are people. Which as a side note ought to make us think twice about ever aborting a child. Aborting is a nice word. Murder is more accurate.
The Bible universally pictures babies in the womb as people who are spiritual beings who are created in God’s image. Here’s some verses listen to them.
Moses says in Genesis 1:27 “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” So we are made in God’s image.
David says to God in Psalm 139:13 “You formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.” So God sovereignly oversees the biological forming process that occurs in the 9 months of a pregnancy.
God says to Jeremiah in Jeremiah 1:5 “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you; I appointed you a prophet to the nations.” So God knows our personality, gifts and talents and has a purpose and design for our lives, even when we’re in the womb.
David also says our inherent sinfulness as human beings go back to the womb. Psalm 51:5 “I was sinful at birth, sinful from the time my mother conceived me (NIV).” So even in the womb we have a moral capacity to be able to relate to God and either glorify him or not.
Then lastly, look back at our text for today, Luke 1:44, the baby “leaped for joy.” What’s that tell us? Babies can have joy! Even in the womb! They are persons who can not only partake and experience sin but can also experience joy and happiness.
Now, that’s some cool stuff about babies in the Bible and there are a ton of lessons to be learned from those texts and doctrines that follow because of them. But what is significant about our text today is why baby John the Baptist gets so happy? What is the reason?
It’s Jesus. It’s the presence of Jesus. Even when he was in still in the womb John the Baptist was pointing to and preparing the way for Jesus. This is essentially the gospel, that Jesus brings joy.
When Jesus is born, a whole host of angels will appear in the night sky before a bunch of shepherds and will say they bring, “Good news of great joy that will be for all the people” because Jesus is born “in the city of David, a Savior, who is Christ the Lord (Lk 2:10-11).” Jesus brings joy. Sin brings sorrow, pain, corruption, destruction and hell. Jesus brings joy, life, freedom and heaven.
The essence and heart of the gospel is that it saves us to joy in God. That we are a people who are made to enjoy life under the rule and reign of God. That God’s glory is meant to make us happy. Because of sin, we corrupt it and make ourselves miserable. Over 12 million Americans are clinically depressed. And we try and try to fix ourselves to no avail.
It’s because we were made for something greater that the world cannot contain and sin seperates us from the greatness and goodness of God. But Jesus has come to make away for us to be forgiven and to be redeemed and to know the true love and goodness of God and experience life in this world and the world to come in the way it was meant to be.
If you’ve thought that Christianity was a religion about guilt and rules you’ve missed the gospel, the Christ in Christianity…Jesus, Jesus who came to bring joy. And when you first realize all of who Jesus is for the first time, like Elizabeth and her baby…it is exuberent joy. That’s what the Greek word here is, exceedingly great joy. Joy of joy!
But maybe joy seems pretty foreign to you right now. Maybe you’re suffering in some way in this season of your life…facing some tough stuff. Let me offer you this. Jesus knows what you’re going through and that’s why he came, to show you his love and to offer up himself on a cross in immense suffering so that you might know love and forgiveness and grace and hope and joy!
The reality of life whether you are a Christian or not is that life is hard. Times get rough. Sometimes especially at Christmas for some reason. Those times teach us that Jesus is our only hope for happiness.
Keith Green is a old music worship leader from the 70′s. Most of his musical style is outdated but there’s one song who’s lyrics I think speak of the piercing joy that he gospel of Jesus Christ brings to us even when we are at our lowest. The song’s title is “My Eyes Are Dry.” It’s really just a prayer put to music. Here’ s the words.
“My eyes are dry. My faith is old. My heart is hard. My prayers are cold. And I know how I ought to be. Alive to you. And dead to me. So what can be done for an old heart like mine? Soften it up. With oil and wine. The oil is you. Your spirit of love. Pease wash me anew. In the wine of your blood.”
It’s a good example of what to pray when we lack joy. I love that there is a whole week of Advent that is focused on the theme of the joy Jesus brings. We need to hear that. Whenever there is a lack of joy in our life, even in the midst of suffering…it is because we have begun to value something or someone else more than Jesus. It happens when overestimate our need for something else and underestimate our need for Jesus. Our identity gets wrapped up in something else that seeking to get joy from that can only come from Jesus.
Our hearts need to leap for joy at Jesus, when we consider all of the goodness of who is is and what he has done. We don’t have a maximum capacity for that. There is always more and an ever-increasing amount of joy to be found in Jesus. When we cease being amazed we begin to tread on dangerous ground.
Sometimes, we do not feel the amazment of Jesus, the joy of Jesus and yes it is a feeling…an emotion, or affection, a subjective experience. And yes, God has to awaken and stir and evoke such affections in us. But he has provided all kind things to help in our pursuit of joy: Scripture, creation, the church, community, communion, obedience, prayer, songs, all kinds of things. We might not be able to make ourselves happy but as Jonathan Edwards we can “to lay ourselves in (its) way” and we can petition God to light the fire of our hearts with affection for him.
The more we realize our need for Jesus the more of his goodness and love and joy we will experience. May we learn the lesson of Elizabeth and baby John here and continually be moved to joy by the presence of Jesus in our lives.
IV. Elizabeth Celebrates the Promise God (v.45)
In the last verse today we see Elizabeth celebrating the promise of God. In verse 45 she says, “And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.”
Apparently here, she knows some things about the promise of the angel to Mary and Elizabeth apparently knows how Mary responded to it. She knew much of the things we talked about last week here when we looked at Mary’s character. How Mary immediately responded in faith and trust to the initial promise of God toher… how Mary was willing to risk such disgrace and even potentially being stoned to death in order to obey…and how Mary humbly loved and worshipped her God and savior.
Elizabeth apparently knew some of those things. And she celebrates them. Elizabeth commends Mary for trusting in the Word of God. The principle here is the same for us. I mean the whole reason that makes what Elizabeth says here significant at all is because she and everyone else recognizes that it wasn’t an easy thing to accept from God and believe.
For us, some things in the Bible are not easy for us to accept from God and believe. But when we do we experience God’s blessing in our lives. The Bible is a good good book given unto us. It’s promises are true. God’s word will not fail us. We can count on it and take hold of it’s promises and know that they will be fufilled.
For Mary the promises she had to believe was: One that she would in fact have a son and two, that he would be the savior. The promise of salvation in Jesus is the same for us.
Here it is in Romans 10:9,11-13 “If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved…Everyone who believes in him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction… the same Lord is Lord of all, bestowing his riches on all who call on him. For “everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.”
That is God’s promise to us. I think we know we need a hero and that we know we ourselves are not that hero. We need Jesus. May he enable us to continue to call on him and call on him and call on him so that we might end up being like Mary, whom Elizabeth commended for “believing that there would be fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord (Lk 1:45).”
Conclusion
In conclusion this morning as we reflect over all the things we can learn from Elizabeth it’s almost as though the goodness of the gospel is woven through each part of this story.
So often we miss the hand of God at work in and around us…but God in his goodness has not allowed his hand pass over us.
So often we make ourselves out to be Lord…but God graciously shows us that we our terrible Lords and helps us that only Jesus is able to able and worthy of be the Lord over our lives.
So often we find ourselves saddened and burdened by sin and we search for joy in all the wrong places, but God has given us Jesus so that we might search know more and have the longing of our hearts met in him.
So often we tend to buy into all kinds of promises whether it be from TV or Time magazine but God has given us the one promise we can truly count on…that he has come into the world for us and no one who ever puts their faith and trust in his Son will ever be put to shame.
Jesus is everything. Jesus is the hand of God at work, Jesus is Lord of all, Jesus is source of joy, and Jesus is the promise of God. Jesus is everything.
Let’s go to him in prayer.
