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All right, well, beautiful singing and welcome to Red Village Church. If I’ve not met you, my name is Aaron and I’m the preacher pastor here. And we are glad you’re with us today. So if you have a Bible with you, open up to the Gospel of Luke.
Today our texture study is going to come from Luke 1, verses 39 through 45. If you don’t have a Bible with you, if you’re not, there are a few Bibles kind of scattered throughout. If you can find your way to Luke, I think it’s on 499. I think. I think that’s what I read this morning.
499 on the blue pew Bibles. And then as you open up your Bible, if you’re visiting, please keep them open. So we do a style of preaching here called expository preaching. And so I’m going to be reading the text for us. I’m going to pray, and then as we get to work through a passage, I’m just going to work us right back through the text.
And so our hope this morning and every morning as we gather together is to hear from God’s word. And we want to keep our noses in Scripture. Okay, so if you want to follow along Luke 1, starting verse 39 through 45 this morning I’m reading out of the English Standard Version esv. So please hear the words of our God. In those days, Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country to a town of Judah.
And she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. And when Elizabeth heard the greetings of Mary, the baby left in her womb, Elizabeth filled with the Holy Spirit. And she exclaimed with a 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? For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy.
And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what is spoken to her from the Lord. That’s God’s word for us this morning. Would you please pray with me?
Thank you for your word and Lord, that’s why we’re here. As much as we love singing and fellowshipping and praying, ultimately we’re here because we want to hear from you, from your word. So, Lord, I do pray that through the power of your spirit that you would speak even through the folly of my preaching. Pray so in Jesus name, amen. Amen.
So this morning I want to start out just by A little bit of systematic theology for you from the Old Testament. And so let me read for you just a handful of Old Testament verses. And as I read these verses, try to pick out the theme of these verses. So there’s a bunch of these. And as I give you these, this is like nowhere near and exhaustive list of this theme.
There’s so many more verses I could give to you. So Deuteronomy 26. You shall rejoice in all the good that the Lord your God has given to you. From Psalm 4. You have put more joy in my heart than when the grain and wine abound.
Psalm 16. You make known to me the path of life in your presence is fullness of joy. Psalm 51 Restore to me the joy of your salvation. Proverbs 17. A joyful heart is good medicine, but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.
From Nehemiah 8. Then he said to them, go your way, eat the fat to drink the sweet wine, and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready for this day is holy to the Lord. And do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. From 1st Chronicles 16. Splendor and majesty are before him strength and joy are in his place.
From Isaiah 12. Shout and sing for joy, O inhabitants of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel. From Isaiah 35 and the ransom of the Lord shall return and come to Zion with singing. Everlasting joy shall be upon their heads. They shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
One more. This is from Habakkuk 3. Though the fig tree shall not blossom, nor the fruit be with fruit beyond the vines, the produce of the olives fail, and the fields find no food. The flock should be cut off from their folds, and there be no herd in the stalls. Yet I’ll rejoice in the Lord.
I’ll take joy in the God of my salvation. Okay, so now what’s the theme? Joy. So even in the midst of all the ups and downs throughout the Old Testament, joy is a strong theme. It’s part of the real theology of the Old Testament that really runs throughout and throughout the Old Testament.
Joy is something that God not only gives to his people, but it’s something that God desires for his people to be filled with joy. Now, I mentioned this to you this morning, just helped set us up for our text today, which is a text that carries this Old Testament theme of joy forward. But it carries it forward in even like fuller way where joy becomes even more prominent. With the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. Where we see in our text today, Jesus and his joy were present even when he was still in his mother’s womb.
Where even from the womb we see Jesus like Usher in this stronger theme, the stronger theology of joy as the New Testament age begins. Now, before we work through the text, just quick reminders where we’ve been in our study of Luke that we started just a few weeks back. So Luke, the Gospel of Luke, is a historical book written by a man named Luke to a man named Theophilus, where Luke sought to give to Theophilus an orderly account from eyewitnesses on things related to the life, the ministry, the death, the resurrection and the ascension of Jesus Christ. As Luke sought to give this orderly account, he did so with hope that through this account, this would give Theophilus like a deeper confidence, a deeper assurance on the things concerning Jesus Christ and the Christian faith. Some passages that we studied the last two weeks in this orderly account, you may remember, we read about two miraculous pregnancies where the first pregnancy was of an older woman who for her entire life was barren, a woman named Elizabeth, who was married to a priest named Zechariah.
We read that the child that Elizabeth was going to give birth to, the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth, was a son that they were to name John. And this John would actually be the promised prophet, the one who would come to prepare the way of the Lord, the promised Messiah, who was the great anticipation of the Old Testament. So from our text last week, then we got to another miraculous pregnancy. There’s actually an even greater miracle as a virgin named Mary became pregnant through the power of the spirit of God, where her child, the son of Mary, would be named Jesus, and he would be even greater than Elizabeth’s child, John. As a child of Mary, Jesus would indeed be the promised Messiah, the one who would come to be the Savior of his people through the forgiveness of his sin.
The very one who came to fill his people with his joy. Today, as we work through our text today, we see these two unexpected moms meet up. We also see the sons also meet up, even though they are both still in the womb at the time of our text, where in this text, we see joy on the forefront. Okay, so that is an introduction. If you please look back with me in our text, Starting at verse 39, it’s mentioned we’re just going to walk ourselves right back through that.
So please keep your noses in your bibles. So verse 39, so we read in those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country to a town in Judah. Okay, now, just a few things here already. So first, yet again, the start of our passage, we see Luke, the author, ground this story we’re working through today. He grounds it in history.
Where in the time this event took place was in those days, which refers back to our text from last week and the pregnancy of Elizabeth. Where we finish off in our text, last week, Elizabeth was at the start of her third trimester. So in those days, this is when this occurred. We also see the place where this event took place. What you see in the passage was in the hill country, a town inside the region of Judah.
For us, these historical details, yet again, this is all part of Luke’s orderly account of events that took place where over and over again, Luke is grounding this in quarterly account, in history, in time and space. Second, let me just address the town in Judah which was in the hill country, which our text tells us now. Here, Luke doesn’t share the exact town where this meeting took place like he did in the previous passage. Remember, the angel Gabriel came to Mary in a small, insignificant town called Nazareth, which was located in a very unpopular, in fact, despised region among the Jewish elites, a region called Galilee. In our text today, we don’t know the town where this event took place.
We get just the region, Judah, somewhere in the hill country. And so while we don’t know the exact town because we know this took place in the region of Judah, it seems very likely this took place in some small town near the holy city of Jerusalem, which is located in this region. Historical tradition tells us there’s a little town called Ankaram, which is a few miles outside of Jerusalem. Now, wherever this town was, the reason why it seems likely that this was near Jerusalem is because it’s mentioned Zechariah was a priest. This is something that we learned in the beginning chapter or beginning of chapter one.
And as a priest, the priestly duties often took place at the temple located in Jerusalem. And so it seems likely that Zechariah would have lived like a short commute to work close to Jerusalem. Third, while it seems likely Zechariah would have lived somewhere close to Jerusalem to have this short commute to get to work, in the text, we see that Mary did not have a short commute to go visit Elizabeth as she came to the town of Judah. So as mentioned last week, Mary is from Nazareth in a town in the region of Galilee. And this is about 70 miles, maybe even more, to the hill country of Judah.
So by foot, this would have been like a really good three to four day journey. So this trip for Mary, this is a significant trip that she was about to take. This is a significant commitment as she arose to head to the hill country of Judah, particularly when we remember that she was pregnant as she was conceived. The child inside was conceived by the Holy Spirit, where most likely Mary was like in her first trimester of her pregnancy at the time of this passage, which for the women who have been pregnant, I understand that the first trimester can be pretty taxing with things like, with like morning sickness. Now, we obviously don’t know what that have been like for Mary in terms of morning sickness, but no doubt she would have endured many of the common challenges that first trimester can bring to women as she made this journey for women.
Also remember what you learned last week in the text. So Mary, as she makes this journey, the text tells us she was a virgin, betrothed, to be married, and based on cultural norms. So Mary would have been very young, somewhere between 12 and 15 years old as she makes this significant journey. And also just mentioned that this journey that she was about to embark on, this potentially could have been a really dangerous journey for her. We’re seeing different parts of scripture that there be thieves and robbers present along different routes to Jerusalem.
Now, I kind of assume Mary probably made this trip with others, but the text doesn’t give us that information. And perhaps the haste that she makes this trip with maybe, maybe subtly points out that she’s making this dangerous trip alone. Now, once again, we don’t know what to be true on that, but for us, we can feel confident in the text. This is potentially a dangerous commitment for her to make. This is a journey as a young pregnant woman.
It would come with real challenges, real difficulty. This wasn’t like for us as easy like hopping in a car and going from Madison and making a 70 to 80 mile trip to Milwaukee to catch a Brewers game. This is much more difficult. Fourth, let me also mention, even though this journey came with challenges, real challenges, in the text we see that Mary did this with haste. She made this trip with urgency, with eagerness, without trying to read more in the text than I should.
But I think we get the sense that she went on this trip with joy to go visit Elizabeth. Now, why the haste? Why the urgency? Why the excitement? Why the joy for Mary to go see Elizabeth, Even though this would have been a significant trip for her to make, a difficult trip to make, and perhaps she’s just really excited to see Elizabeth who we learned last week was actually her aunt.
So in her haste she went to go to Elizabeth to share the excitement. The joy of both being with child through miraculous means maybe tied to that, maybe Mary was so excited to go with haste to visit Elizabeth because she wanted to process all the things that she just heard from the angel, both her own pregnancy which came through the power of the Holy Spirit. So maybe she needed like some, just some fellowship with her godly aunt and uncle, just a better process understand that was taking place. And for me this week I also wondered how much of Mary going with haste to Elizabeth was actually to like to learn from Elizabeth, particularly how to learn from like social shame that is about to come Mary’s way. So for Elizabeth, mentioned previously in previous passages that we studied, it was a real cultural shame for Elizabeth to be barren without child for her entire life.
Which is why when she learned she was expecting, she testified in verse 25 of chapter 1 how the Lord took like her approach away from her. However, as Elizabeth’s reproach was being lifted for Mary, the cultural approach was just about to begin. There’s a lot of cultural shame. It’s about to ready to calm her way as others would find out that she was pregnant, like out of wedlock during the time that she was betrothed to Joseph. So for me I just kind of wonder, maybe Mary went with haste, but she wanted to talk to Elizabeth to humbly learn how to trust in God while being reproached.
Whatever the motivation behind the journey, the text, say it again, Mary did this journey with haste, with excitement, with urgency, where it seems pretty clear in the text, Mary was very much looking forward to being able to connect with Elizabeth. This is a joy for her to go see her aunt. By the way, that joy no doubt was the motivation for her to do all the different things, all the different challenges to go through on this trip. This joy of fellowship was worth the cost, the sacrifice, the challenges keep going. Verse 40.
So after a long, fairly dangerous, multiple day journey, we see that Mary arrived in the town of Judah and she found the house of Zechariah. And as she found the house, Mary went to knock on the door where she like enters in to greet her auntie Elizabeth. And this here, Mary coming to see Elizabeth. This seems likely, this must have been like a real surprise to Elizabeth to go to the door and to find her niece Mary standing there. So obviously during this time period Mary couldn’t like call Elizabeth, couldn’t send her a text or even like an email to let her know she was coming.
So rather than haste Mary just like she just shows up. And I’m guessing Mary came with such haste there probably wasn’t even enough time. From the scene last week to our scene today that the news of Mary expecting probably didn’t get to the ears of Elizabeth quite yet. Verse 41, as Mary knocked on the door, as Elizabeth see who it was. As Mary greets her aunt, we see that the baby inside Elizabeth, John like leaps inside his mother’s womb and we see that Elizabeth is like filled with the Holy Spirit.
Now just a few things here. So many scholars agree that this leaping of the baby inside the womb of Elizabeth, John leaping so not only signify like the significance of the baby inside of Mary, Jesus, the one who made John leap, but many scholars agree that the significance of this action here, of John leaping the womb, this is the indication of this arrival of a new age, a new era, a new eschaton in scripture. Where yes, as mentioned at the start throughout the Old Testament, the theme of joy is running throughout and it’s running strong throughout the Old Testament. But now here with this coming of Jesus, there’s an even greater, even fuller era of joy that he is now ushering in. Which we’ll talk about more when we get to verse 44.
Second, let me just briefly address the filling of the Spirit in Elizabeth. Now just be clear. For all who have faith, Scripture tells us that they have the spirit of God living inside our hearts. But here, this feeling here seems to relate to what scripture talks about. Maybe like a unique feeling that made John leap.
Where times in scripture some are like uniquely filled the Spirit to testify in powerful ways that which was true. So one of the commentaries I read this week pointed out how the writer Luke, as mentioned a few times, also wrote the book of Acts. Often in his writings wrote about this unique feeling of the Spirit in ways that God’s word was spoken through his people. So to start, we already looked at as Zechariah learned that he would have a son named John, we also learned that this son John in verse 15 of chapter one would be like filled with the Holy Spirit. A few weeks to come, we get the end of chapter one.
We see a prophetic song that Zachariah wrote after John was born. And we read that as Zechariah gave this prophetic song in verse 67 of chapter one, he does so being filled with the Spirit. And then in volume two, the book of Acts, Luke wrote these things. It’s in Acts 2 and they’re all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues. And the Spirit gave them utterance.
Then Acts 4, then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, Acts 4 again. And when they had prayed, the place where they had gathered together was shaken. And they’re all filled with the Holy Spirit and continued to speak the word of God with boldness. Acts 13 But Saul, who was called Paul, filled with the Holy Spirit, looked at him intently and said, so this here seems to be like a unique of the spirit of God on Elizabeth. And as she greeted Mary, she came in contact with Jesus, even though he was still in the womb.
And so here she is, she’s filled with the spirit, uniquely verse 42, as she’s filled with the spirit, we read how she. Elizabeth exclaimed with a loud cry, a cry based on the context, filled with excitement, a cry filled with like energy, a cry filled with joy. In the text, blessed are you, Mary among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. Now let me mention a few things here. So first, this blessedness of Mary, scholars point out this is not Elizabeth like praying a blessing over Mary and her child.
Rather, this is actually an announcement, announcement of a state of being blessed. And this state of being blessed for Mary was not because she was like above other women, rather than the text, she is blessed like among women, which is putting Mary on like an equal footing to like all other women, which by the way included like Jewish women who like, knew the promises, who knew the Old Testament anticipation of this Messiah to come, one who would be born of a woman where no doubt most if not all Jewish women throughout the history of Israel as became pregnant would be maybe wonderful, maybe their child would be the Messiah. However, among all women, including all Jewish women, Mary, young virgin Mary, who’s a common ordinary woman, most likely a poor peasant, she’s the one who in the grace of God was like chosen, blessed by God to be the mother of Christ. Secondly also point out, so in literature during that time, this like twofold blessedness, you see it in the text, it was mentioned twice. This first starts with Mary being blessed among women, and then blessed was the fruit of her womb.
So there’s like two consecutive proclamations of blessedness. So in this type of literature communicates like a step of importance or a tier of importance with the second blessedness was like greater, the more important of the two, making the child in the womb Jesus greater, more important. The reason why in scripture we see that Jesus is the greater of the blessed one, is that through Jesus, God’s eternal Son, through Jesus Christ, in him alone, God’s saving grace, his blessedness would extend to all who by faith come to him. All who come to Jesus are eternally in a state of blessedness, which by the way, included Mary. Her blessedness in the end came through Jesus Christ, right?
Not her own. In fact, we’ll see that more next week when we get to the Song of Mary. There’s one more thing I just want to mention here with the word blessed. So in scripture, this word is associated with like, happy or joyful. So Psalm 1, some of you might be familiar with that starts out with like, blessed is the man.
It also translated happy or joyful is the man. So for us this morning, friends, this is a joyful, like a joy packed scene. So Mary was blessed, joyful. That was like her state of being. John in the womb was blessed, joyful.
Elizabeth, who was filled with spirit, was blessed, joyful. And this blessedness, this joy that he had was all connected to the blessedness, the joy of being in the presence of Jesus Christ. Just something. We’ll circle back more at the end of the sermon as well. But for now, just take note, right?
Jesus, as he comes to his people, he comes in ways that he brings his blessings and his joy on them, which for us, just take note. The Lord is not against joy, happiness, rather he is joy. He is happiness. That’s what he brings to his people. Keep going.
Verse 43 with continued exclamation and excitement and joy, we read Elizabeth go on to say, and why is this granted to me of all people, to me, that the Mother of the Lord shall come even to me? Meaning for Elizabeth, this is like an act of honor and grace. There’s almost like too much for her to like, grasp to compute that the Mother of the Lord would make haste to go on this day’s journey to come find her, to come celebrate and fellowship with her so that she might be in the presence of the fruit of her womb. And for us, I do think we need to just see this humility here of Elizabeth. She doesn’t feel entitled to this blessing, this act of favor and grace upon her to come to the presence of Jesus.
Rather, she could not believe what an incredible grace that she was receiving. Those of you guys are also thinking about this, I also thought it’s kind of interesting, you know, Elizabeth doesn’t use this as an opportunity for some of the humble bragging, you know, to try to maybe flip this around, to kind of, kind of make this about her. We’re like, yeah, Mary, it’s so awesome. Hear the news about you bringing the mother of Christ. But did you know I’m also kind of special and, you know, I’m also giving birth to, you know, quite the guy myself.
Known for Elizabeth, even her own amazing story. In the end, this is all about Jesus, all about his joy that fills others with joy. So in the text, an incredible amazement in wonder for Elizabeth. Who am I?
Who am I that this is granted to me, that my Lord would come to me? Verse 44.
For behold Mary, I have to tell you, you know, the sound of your greeting landed my ears. That sound made its way down to my womb. My son John heard the sound and he leaped for joy in my womb. Now here, this leaping for joy, this is not presented as, like John, like kind of kicking around in the womb the way babies in the third trimester commonly do. Rather, here this term that’s being used for leaping, this is a term used in other, like, literature at this time.
Describe, like, young animals who are, like, skipping and like, frolicking along, frolicking around the field where like, they’re just like, kind of overcome, overwhelmed with, like, happiness and joy. That’s baby John here. Like, he’s so filled up with joy, he’s, like, leaping, he’s skipping around the room. There’s so much happiness as he came in contact with the Lord. I’ll just say it again.
This is Jesus ushering in an even greater, an even fuller area, era of joy. And finally, we’re going to end this morning. Take your eyes to verse 45 with Elizabeth. Continue to testify to that which is true. She said, blessed or happy or joyful is she who believed that there would be fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the word of the Lord.
She here. This is obviously referring to Mary, one who believed the word of the Lord that was spoken to her through the prophet Gabriel in the previous passage, as Gabriel told Mary that was going to take place, that she would give birth to the Messiah. So for us, just notice Mary’s blessedness. It’s connected to her belief. I also mentioned here that this blessedness, this happiness, this joyfulness of Mary, who believed the word of the Lord, I think here in the text is actually standing in contrast to her uncle Zechariah the priest.
Remember when we went through this a couple weeks back when he received a similar word through the Lord or from the Lord through Gabriel, that his barren wife Elizabeth, who was advanced in age, would bear a son, were unlike Mary, who believed and was happy in her belief. Remember how Zechariah doubted the Word because that he was like disciplined by God, where he became mute until the birth of his son John, and he be mute all the way until verse 67 of chapter one. We see that when John is born, Zechariah finally does believe, where he becomes filled with the Spirit. And as Zechariah finally believes the word of the Lord in the text we see he too becomes blessed, filled with joy, filled with happiness, belief, blessedness, joy, always connected. And for us, that’s we’re going to end in our text today.
But before I close sermon, there’s a few things I wanted to do concerning our joy, followed by three things on how we walk in that joy. So first, I do want to recognize that, that in this life not everything is a joy, where in fact so many things in this life that we can go through can feel like on the opposite end of joy. And so I don’t want this sermon or these thoughts to trivialize any of the less than joyful experiences that any of you this morning are going through. However, that being said, I do want to give you hope that the joy of Jesus is greater than even the most difficult, painful situations that we can go through in this life. Where even in our less than joyful experiences, even then we can still find joy in the Lord Jesus Christ.
Second, let me also mention in this life, friends, we actually all do want to be happy. We all want to be joyful. And because this is a universal desire we have, I think we feel confident this is actually a God given desire that he’s put into us. In fact being filled with joy, the desires for joy, I think this is part of the design that we have being created in the image of God. So the problem is not with our desire for joy, our desire to be happy, but the problem is where we are looking to find happiness and joy, where we can look in so many places to try to fill those desires.
Even at times we can in a sense like look to good places, like maybe good things with hopes of like finding that joy we’re longing for. But in the end, this joy that we have or long for, this joy that we desire, this joy that God has actually designed us to have, joy that he actually wants us to pursue. Friends, it’s only fulfilled in Jesus Christ. He’s the only one that can fill our desires for joy. So this morning, if you’re on a quest for joy, enjoying your own life, but you keep finding like dead ends, or maybe for like a moment or two, you find some like fleety happiness.
But as the Happiness fleets or flees from you. You just find yourself even like more frustrated, maybe more depressed, maybe more miserable. Please let me plead with you to journey to Jesus Christ. Because Jesus Christ is the one who not only came to die for us to take on the punishment of our sin, which includes the sin of trying to find our joy in things other than him, but for the joy set before him. Jesus our Lord, endured the cross taken on shame.
Why? So that his joy might be our joy, which is a joy that he offers to all who by faith turn from sin and come to him, including all here this morning. That being said, just a few things on this end in terms of like experiencing this joy of Jesus that we can have as we turn to him by faith. So first, these are some things from the text, friends, we can experience the joy of Jesus through connecting with others so that our collective joy may be complete. And this joy through connecting, this is really something I think we see in our text today as these two women, one young, one old, connect with each other in ways that the joy of Jesus was like at the center of their connecting.
Not just a few things on this joy of connecting. So for us, first, this is something we should have urgency, like haste to do with others. There’s always gonna be reasons why we can’t connect. And let me mention, sometimes those reasons are legitimate. But we know what can easily happen is that we can start to give into the reasons in such a way that we end up always giving into those reasons and then we end up like never connecting.
So for us there should be some urgency, some haste to connect with other people. Which leads to the second thing I want to mention here. So this connecting at times does require sacrifices. It does require maybe overcoming challenges in order for us to do so. Go back to text.
Think for young Mary. Think of all the reasons, all the challenges that are in front of her, just to stay isolated. She had to take a long three to four day journey in her first trimester to go on this, like probably a dangerous journey. Just to be able to connect with Elizabeth, just to be able to share an excitement, just to be able to process with her, perhaps learn from her. Now once again, sometimes there are legitimate reasons why connecting can be hard.
So I don’t want this to be like a shame or guilt on any of us. With that being said, sometimes by faith, we just have to do hard things. We just have to overcome challenges to connect. Knowing that doing the hard things, overcoming the challenges to connect, it’s there for our joy, friends, it can be such a Joy. It can be such a joy to connect and have fellowship with other believers, starting with others in our church family.
We were to come together to mutually build each other up in the joy of the Lord Jesus Christ. Friends on this, I think far too often the sacrifice that we’re willing to make is actually a sacrifice here. Sacrificing our joy by giving into the challenges to remain isolated. And for us as a church, there’s real reasons why we talk often about like staying connected with each other, whether it be like, organically, just by like getting together with other people in the church over a meal or a cup of coffee, or maybe connecting others in the structure of the church, like being one of our small groups. For us, our desire is for all is to be connected.
Why? To experience the joy of the Lord where we have him at the center of our relationships. Second, we experience joy in Jesus. We walk in humility. God opposes the proud, but he gives grace to the humble.
In our text, we see so much humility in both these women. Where humble Mary came to see her aunt to be able to celebrate with her. We get to our text next week. We just see further humility of Mary in this song that she wrote in our text today, we also see such humility in Elizabeth. She didn’t take any of this for granted.
She felt no entitlement to this grace in her life. She was humbled to be on the receiving end of the blessings of the Lord and friends. May that be true of us, that God would make us just like a humble people. We’re humbling, seeking the welfare of others where we humbly don’t feel entitled to anything. Where like rather with anything that good might come our way, we just humbly see it as like a blessing from the Lord.
And for us, let’s just be honest here, probably far too often than being humble and joyfully receiving things that we just really don’t deserve, far too often we’re probably just like a little too feisty and angsty and complaining or complain about like not getting things that we feel we deserve or entitled to. And those type attitudes not only are sinful, but those type of feelings, they actually attack our joy and we become overcome with like misery and bitterness. So let us be humble. Third, we experience the joy in Jesus as we trust in His Word once again, verse 45 and blessed is she Mary, who believed that there would be fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord. And let’s just remind ourselves yet again this word was spoken to her.
She was going to give Birth to the Messiah, even though she was a virgin. That’s a pretty incredible message. This is not one that made much of any sense to her. This would have been a message pretty hard to believe. Yet by faith, Mary trusted the word spoken to her.
She believed and she was blessed with joy in that belief in God’s Word. We know this. The reality is in God’s word. There are plenty of things that God tells us to trust him with, that if we’re a little vulnerable with each other, it can be a little hard to believe. That might not make a lot of sense to us, including even things like connecting with each other, even in the face of challenges and sacrifice, or to be humble, not feeling entitled, even those things can be kind of hard for us to believe.
But friends, that’s where we find such joy. We’re by faith, we trust what God has said, where we follow and we obey his word and all that it tells us to do or not do. That’s where happiness is found. Me one more. We experience the joy of Jesus as we testify about him, which is the model of Elizabeth in her text.
She’s filled with spirit and she exclaims with excitement, with joy, with a loud, passionate voice, that which is true of the blessedness found in the Lord Jesus Christ. Once again, friends, may that be true of us as well. That for our joy, for the joy of others, may we boldly tell others with a loud, passionate, excited voice about Jesus with the hopes that they might believe in him as well. For me, I do think those who experience the greatest amounts of joy in Jesus are those who pour out their lives, testifying to him, to the world around us. So, yes, Church a real theme, a real part of the theology, Old Testament is found in the joy of the Lord, the joy that he gives to his people.
But this morning may be reminded that the coming of Jesus Christ to usher in this present era that we now live in, even greater, even fuller joy has come, a joy that ultimately will lead us to the perfect and eternal joy in heavenly places where we’ll be with Jesus. So to close, it’s appropriate for me to end this time with just a quote from the great John Piper dedicated so much of his ministry pointing us to the joy in Jesus. Let me just give you one, it’s a shorter one. So Piper said this, and I think this is really important for us to understand this. So God is not a killjoy.
He just opposes that which kills joy. Church, may we understand just how true that is. God is not against our joy. He is for our joy. In the end, the only way we can have desire met is by trusting in him, believing in Jesus Christ, obeying him, following him.
That is where joy is found. So this week, as you go about your week, do so in ways in which you’re desiring God, your desire and his joy above all things Church. Don’t settle for anything less. Let’s pray.
Lord, thank you for the joy that is in Jesus Christ.
And Lord, I do pray that through the power of your spirit, you would fill us with your joy even in this moment.
And Lord, thank you for not only sending the Lord Jesus to die on the cross, to take on the punishment of our sin, but also to send him that we might be filled with his joy both now and throughout all eternity. And Lord, I pray for my brothers and sisters here who are weary this morning with all the different hard, difficult things in life that continue to come their way. Pray that in this moment that your joy would prove to be even greater than the difficulty. Pray this on Jesus name, Amen.