SPEAKER_01: I've been coming to these services for over thirty years now.
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm over thirty years old.
SPEAKER_01: And I never get tired of hearing you sing.
SPEAKER_01: It's a joy.
SPEAKER_01: Thank you for singing.
SPEAKER_01: It's a strange year to say Merry Christmas, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01: To say Merry Christmas through a mask.
SPEAKER_01: Say Merry Christmas when you have to say it through FaceTime because your family won't be with you this year because they can't travel.
SPEAKER_01: Say Merry Christmas because Starbucks has limited their hours.
SPEAKER_01: I know, I know.
SPEAKER_01: It's a strange year to say Merry Christmas.
SPEAKER_01: As a church, we've done a lot of funerals this year.
SPEAKER_01: Not because of COVID, but just a lot of funerals.
SPEAKER_01: There's gonna be a lot of empty seats around the dinner table tomorrow.
SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be hard to say Merry Christmas.
SPEAKER_01: And I think if we're being honest with each other for a second, we haven't been the kindest to each other this year, have we?
SPEAKER_01: We may have said some things we didn't mean.
SPEAKER_01: Heard some feelings, been judgmental.
SPEAKER_01: It's a strange year to say Merry Christmas.
SPEAKER_01: What's so merry about it?
SPEAKER_01: Why do we even say Merry Christmas?
SPEAKER_01: Well, I have an answer for you.
SPEAKER_01: 1500s, there was a Christmas carol in England that you all actually still sing.
SPEAKER_01: And no, you can finish this line.
SPEAKER_01: We wish you a Merry Christmas, and uh That's right.
SPEAKER_01: So what does it mean to say Merry Christmas?
SPEAKER_01: It means happy.
SPEAKER_01: Uh that's in fact what the Queen herself says.
SPEAKER_01: It's happy Christmas.
SPEAKER_01: It means happy, exuberant, joyful, satisfied, festive, celebratory, light, bright, brimming, joyful.
SPEAKER_01: But joyful in 2020.
SPEAKER_01: Really?
SPEAKER_01: If we're being realistic, if we look at the world around us, we look at the confusion in our own hearts, is there really a reason to be joyful?
SPEAKER_01: To be merry this Christmas?
SPEAKER_01: Yes.
SPEAKER_01: Yes, there's one reason.
SPEAKER_01: But it is not just that Jesus came.
SPEAKER_01: You'll find this reason on page 856 in the Pew Bibles and Luke chapter 1.
SPEAKER_01: Luke chapter 1.
SPEAKER_01: Please turn with me there.
SPEAKER_01: Luke chapter 1, verses 39 to 45.
SPEAKER_01: The reason that you can actually be merry and joyful this Christmas falls on the lips of an old pregnant woman speaking to her young teenage relative.
SPEAKER_01: In a story that has historically been called the Visitation, one that we often skip over in thinking about Christmas, but one that holds such a precious truth for us this evening.
SPEAKER_01: Let me read it for us.
SPEAKER_01: Luke chapter 1, verse 39.
SPEAKER_01: In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country to a town in Judah.
SPEAKER_01: And she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.
SPEAKER_01: And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leapt in her womb.
SPEAKER_01: And Elizabeth was 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.
SPEAKER_01: And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
SPEAKER_01: For behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leapt for joy.
SPEAKER_01: And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: So reads the word of the living God.
SPEAKER_01: This is the first recorded event in the incarnate life of Christ.
SPEAKER_01: This is the first prenatal prophetic announcement.
SPEAKER_01: This is the first recorded recognition of Jesus during his lifetime.
SPEAKER_01: The first meeting of Jesus and John the Baptist, intrauterine though it may be.
SPEAKER_01: This is the first beatitude in the New Testament, and that's where we're headed.
SPEAKER_01: To understand this text, we need to get a little bit of context.
SPEAKER_01: What's happening here?
SPEAKER_01: Well, Mary, you know, is a young teenage girl from Nazareth who's engaged to a carpenter named Joseph.
SPEAKER_01: And she gets an announcement a few verses earlier from an angel, a special angel named Gabriel, who tells her that to sum it up, she is going to be the mother of the Messiah, the Christ, the one who will be the hope and the salvation of the world.
SPEAKER_01: And she's confused, but she's also submissive.
SPEAKER_01: And at the end of this earth-shaking news, the angel gives her kind of an interesting little tidbit of information.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 36.
SPEAKER_01: He says, And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son.
SPEAKER_01: And this is the sixth month with her, who was called barren, for nothing will be impossible with God.
SPEAKER_01: Mary's told that not only is she going to have a miraculous conception, that her relative, maybe her cousin, maybe her aunt, we don't know, that her relative has also already had a miraculous conception.
SPEAKER_01: This child, we're already told in Luke, is the forerunner of the Messiah, John the Baptist, the one who would prepare God's people to meet God in the flesh.
SPEAKER_01: And then just like that, the angel's gone.
SPEAKER_01: Mary is there by herself, left to ponder this.
SPEAKER_01: Now, if you're Mary in this situation, what do you do?
SPEAKER_01: Answer, take a pregnancy test.
SPEAKER_01: But they haven't been invented yet, or at least not reliable ones.
SPEAKER_01: So, what do you do?
SPEAKER_01: Next best thing, you go visit Elizabeth.
SPEAKER_01: She is the pregnancy test.
SPEAKER_01: If what is true about Mary is true about her, then she gets that thing confirmed.
SPEAKER_01: The lines are crossed, it's blue or whatever it is, right?
SPEAKER_01: She is her confirmation.
SPEAKER_01: If she walks into that room in Zechariah and Elizabeth's house and Granny is rocking a baby bump, she knows that she for sure is the mother of the Messiah.
SPEAKER_01: Now, of course, she believed already, but certainly she may have had her doubts.
SPEAKER_01: And so, verse 39, she heads off, it says with haste.
SPEAKER_01: Of course she would, wouldn't you want to know?
SPEAKER_01: Confirming this as soon as possible.
SPEAKER_01: And it's a three or four-day journey, maybe 70, 80 miles, to some kind of no-name town in the hills around Jerusalem where Zechariah the priest and his wife Elizabeth live.
SPEAKER_01: We don't know if Mary went on her own, if she had a crew rolling with her, we don't know.
SPEAKER_01: Probably Joseph did not go.
SPEAKER_01: That would have been strange for the customs of the time.
SPEAKER_01: But anyway, she arrives at the house of Zechariah, and she's probably unexpected.
SPEAKER_01: She didn't text them ahead of time.
SPEAKER_01: Zechariah, maybe sitting over in the corner, silent, you remember.
SPEAKER_01: He'd been stricken mute by the angel Gabriel six months earlier because he didn't believe about the promise about his son.
SPEAKER_01: And who knows what he thought when he saw Mary walk in.
SPEAKER_01: Maybe she's come for a celebration about her betrothal, who knows?
SPEAKER_01: What would have been potentially a bridal shower has now turned into a baby shower.
SPEAKER_01: As Elizabeth steps into the room, and just imagine for a second just the joy of that moment for both of them.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, here's Elizabeth.
SPEAKER_01: Her whole life, her whole marriage, barren, no kids.
SPEAKER_01: She'd gotten uncomfortably comfortable with a quiet house.
SPEAKER_01: And here she is holding her stomach.
SPEAKER_01: And she looks and she sees her relative, Mary, a smile across her face.
SPEAKER_01: In that instant, Mary sees in Elizabeth's pregnancy the confirmation that she indeed will be the mother of the Messiah.
SPEAKER_01: I remember when my wife and I were uh took our first pregnancy test.
SPEAKER_01: She took it, not me.
SPEAKER_01: It was the one with the two lines where you have the one line and then the other one like fades in if you're pregnant.
SPEAKER_01: So we took the test, like we look there, we wait for a second, and the second line was like kind of there.
SPEAKER_01: Like it's fuzzy, not really, couldn't tell, like a little bit.
SPEAKER_01: So what do we do?
SPEAKER_01: I mean, we're pumped, kind of.
SPEAKER_01: We drove to the store, we got another one, we took another test, it was one of those digital ones.
SPEAKER_01: It came, yes.
SPEAKER_01: Okay, cool.
SPEAKER_01: That's what Elizabeth is here.
SPEAKER_01: She's the yes, the emphatic yes, Mary.
SPEAKER_01: It is true.
SPEAKER_01: You're going to be, you maybe didn't fully grasp this, but you are the mother of the Messiah.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, oh, the joy and the tears, probably they're hugging and weeping and hugging and weeping, so much joy in that moment.
SPEAKER_01: Look what God had done for them.
SPEAKER_01: That's confirmation number one that Mary gets in this scene.
SPEAKER_01: Elizabeth's pregnancy.
SPEAKER_01: But then something really strange and unexpected happens.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 41.
SPEAKER_01: And when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leapt in her womb.
SPEAKER_01: Now, this word for leap isn't like the normal kicks of a six-month-old baby.
SPEAKER_01: This is normally used in Greek literature and in the New Testament to talk about a calf leaping out of a stall.
SPEAKER_01: This is like an epic, prophetic, fetal lunge.
SPEAKER_01: This isn't a normal kick.
SPEAKER_01: Gabriel had told Zechariah that their child would be filled with the Holy Spirit even from the womb.
SPEAKER_01: What a strange thing.
SPEAKER_01: Why?
SPEAKER_01: Who cares?
SPEAKER_01: This is why.
SPEAKER_01: Because even from the womb, John the Baptist is preaching.
SPEAKER_01: Twelve inches tall, two pounds.
SPEAKER_01: Littlest prophet ever.
SPEAKER_01: The church fathers used to say, John was the only baby who turned his mother's womb into a pulpit.
SPEAKER_01: And he did.
SPEAKER_01: He preached Christ even as an fetus.
SPEAKER_01: And listen, I'm as pro-life as the day is long.
SPEAKER_01: That's a baby in that womb.
SPEAKER_01: But he probably didn't understand what was happening, right?
SPEAKER_01: This is the work of the Holy Spirit doing something miraculous in the womb of Elizabeth, causing this recognition of who has just stepped into the room, and the important person is not Mary.
SPEAKER_01: It's the one who must increase.
SPEAKER_01: Well, that baby must decrease.
SPEAKER_01: It's the one who will come with a winnowing fork in his hand.
SPEAKER_01: It's the Lamb of God who will take away the sin of the world, has just been ushered into that room.
SPEAKER_01: And John knows it.
SPEAKER_01: And so John's mother Elizabeth kind of interprets this for us in verse 42.
SPEAKER_01: She exclaims with a loud cry, Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb.
SPEAKER_01: Now, if you grew up Roman Catholic, you're very familiar with this passage because you've said it a number of times.
SPEAKER_01: It's in the Hail Mary, the prayer.
SPEAKER_01: And many have taken this phrase, especially the Roman Catholic tradition, to mean that Mary is exalted above all women.
SPEAKER_01: That she has this high status that's above every other woman who has ever been born.
SPEAKER_01: But friends, that's actually not what this means.
SPEAKER_01: This is really a fairly common ancient Near Eastern celebratory phrase for a woman who has just become pregnant in the Jewish culture or in the Greek culture to say she's blessed among women.
SPEAKER_01: God has shown her favor.
SPEAKER_01: This phrase is used all over the place in the ancient Near East.
SPEAKER_01: It's not just for Mary.
SPEAKER_01: It's used even in Judges chapter 5 to talk about Jael.
SPEAKER_01: If you remember, she took a tent peg and jammed it through a dude's skull.
SPEAKER_01: Blessed are you among women.
SPEAKER_01: So it's not all it's cracked up to be by some.
SPEAKER_01: Furthermore, this word for blessed in this verse generally means to speak well of or to deal kindly with.
SPEAKER_01: It's an acknowledgement that God has been kind to Mary to give her a child, and especially so because the fruit of her womb is the Lord, which is exactly where Elizabeth goes next.
SPEAKER_01: But before we go there, I just want to, as an aside, if you grew up praying the Hail Mary to Mary, or maybe you're here tonight, and that's something you still do, I want to say with all the love in my heart, Mary cannot hear your prayers.
SPEAKER_01: And if she could, she would be very sad that you're praying to her.
SPEAKER_01: She wants you to pray to her son.
SPEAKER_01: She wants you to pray to her Father, Jesus, her father, God.
SPEAKER_01: She would want you to not think of her as interceding for anyone, not forgiving someone's sins or something like that.
SPEAKER_01: She can't do that.
SPEAKER_01: She's a receiver of grace, not a dispenser of grace.
SPEAKER_01: Mary would want you to look to Jesus, not her.
SPEAKER_01: And that's exactly what Elizabeth does in this next verse.
SPEAKER_01: Look at 43.
SPEAKER_01: And why is this granted to me that the mother of my Lord should come to me?
SPEAKER_01: Well, first of all, Elizabeth is certainly acknowledging here that Mary is now the mother of the Messiah, the Lord, the master, the savior, the divine one.
SPEAKER_01: But secondly, what's going on in this verse is that Elizabeth is pointing out kind of an odd reversal of roles.
SPEAKER_01: In the ancient Near East, it was very common for an older woman to receive the honor from the younger.
SPEAKER_01: And Mary is certainly much, much younger than Elizabeth, who's probably in her 60s, 70s, or 80s.
SPEAKER_01: And so it would be more normal for Mary to say how blessed she is to be in her presence, not the other way around.
SPEAKER_01: So why is it?
SPEAKER_01: Why is it that Elizabeth says, Oh, I'm so blessed to be in your presence?
SPEAKER_01: Because she knows who's in that womb.
SPEAKER_01: It's the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Mary's unborn kid outranks Elizabeth's unborn kid.
SPEAKER_01: And she knows it.
SPEAKER_01: And so verse 44, she just kind of explains what we've already seen.
SPEAKER_01: Behold, when the sound of your greeting came to my ears, the baby in my womb leapt for joy.
SPEAKER_01: She lets Mary in on this prenatal prophetic pronouncement.
SPEAKER_01: And there it is.
SPEAKER_01: Confirmation number two.
SPEAKER_01: Both Jay the B and his mom to be have confirmed, filled with the Spirit, that Mary's special role is to be the mother of the Messiah.
SPEAKER_01: So at this point, whatever doubt Mary might have had has obviously vanished.
SPEAKER_01: She's gotten confirmation after confirmation that she is pregnant with the Savior of the world.
SPEAKER_01: And so you might be tempted to think then, what higher joy could there possibly be than what Mary got to experience?
SPEAKER_01: That she got to physically hold God in flesh.
SPEAKER_01: She got to literally nourish him with her own flesh.
SPEAKER_01: What an astounding, joyful, honorable, unspeakable privilege.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, nobody is closer to Jesus than Mary.
SPEAKER_01: What joy.
SPEAKER_01: But interestingly, that's not what Elizabeth says is the source of her joy.
SPEAKER_01: Elizabeth points in verse 45 to the real source of Mary's joy, the fount of true blessedness.
SPEAKER_01: The reason that, so to speak, Mary is so merry.
SPEAKER_01: The very reason that you and I can be joyful too.
SPEAKER_01: And let me first point out what it's not.
SPEAKER_01: It is not that she surrounds the Christ child.
SPEAKER_01: It's not that she gets to hold her in her arms in a stable with the oxen watching.
SPEAKER_01: It's not even that she gets to watch him go to the temple and teach the rabbis.
SPEAKER_01: That she gets to see him raise the dead, that she sees him die and then raise.
SPEAKER_01: It's not that.
SPEAKER_01: So what is it?
SPEAKER_01: What's the source of Mary's blessedness where her joy springs from?
SPEAKER_01: It's this.
SPEAKER_01: Look at verse 45.
SPEAKER_01: And blessed is she who believed.
SPEAKER_01: This word for blessed in the text is different from the word for blessed earlier.
SPEAKER_01: It's not so much an external from God kind of blessing.
SPEAKER_01: This is the blessed of the Beatitudes.
SPEAKER_01: This is an internal, a deeper blessedness, an exuberance, happiness, contentment, joy untouchable, a rock solid satisfaction, an unbreakable confidence, an ecstatic emotional bliss.
SPEAKER_01: This is true merriment.
SPEAKER_01: And Elizabeth says that deep down, this joy in Mary's heart does not come from her being the mother of Jesus, but from her faith in Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Because she believes.
SPEAKER_01: And you see it if you read through the text.
SPEAKER_01: He's setting up a contrast between Zechariah and Mary.
SPEAKER_01: It's very apparent.
SPEAKER_01: That Zechariah did not believe the message when it was preached to him.
SPEAKER_01: He was the priest.
SPEAKER_01: He went into the temple.
SPEAKER_01: He served in the temple.
SPEAKER_01: He was at the altar of incense, right next to the Holy of Holies, and he did not believe.
SPEAKER_01: And then here's this teenager.
SPEAKER_01: This humble little girl who, for nothing in herself, says, Yes, I believe what you say.
SPEAKER_01: I believe the word from the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: And appreciate that this is not an abstract reality for Elizabeth to say, blessed is she who believes.
SPEAKER_01: Her husband's over in the corner, mute.
SPEAKER_01: Because he did not believe.
SPEAKER_01: She knows the pain of unbelief.
SPEAKER_01: And yet here's this young maiden from Nowheresville, Nazareth, who, in simple, humble faith believes, and in believing is truly blessed.
SPEAKER_01: And it's because of Mary's response that follows in her prayer that we know her belief here was not just, oh, I believe that I'm going to get pregnant.
SPEAKER_01: It's a belief in everything the angel said.
SPEAKER_01: She doesn't just believe that Jesus will be born to her, she believes in Jesus as her savior.
SPEAKER_01: That's what she says.
SPEAKER_01: Verse 46 My soul magnifies the Lord, my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior.
SPEAKER_01: Friends, Mary knows that she's a desperate sinner.
SPEAKER_01: She knows that her sin has risen up to the courts of heaven, and God, a holy and a just God, must rightly condemn her and send her to hell for an infinite punishment of her sin.
SPEAKER_01: That would be just.
SPEAKER_01: She knows that that's true, and she knows that she needs a Savior, and that Savior has been planted inside of her.
SPEAKER_01: And that Savior, she knows and believes, will grow up to be a man who will live a perfect, righteous life.
SPEAKER_01: He will die on a cross for sinners just like Mary, and he will be raised from the grave to eternal life so that he can call sinners like Mary to himself by faith.
SPEAKER_01: And Elizabeth is saying that the source of Mary's joy is that faith, which is in her little baby, and his power to save her from her sins.
SPEAKER_01: Most people, when they talk about Mary, say that she was blessed because she had this kind of special access to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: And certainly there is a way in which that was an extraordinary blessing.
SPEAKER_01: But that's not why she had joy.
SPEAKER_01: Her joy came from.
SPEAKER_01: That's not where her rest came from.
SPEAKER_01: That's not what brought her peace.
SPEAKER_01: Being around Jesus, literally, doesn't do anyone any good if they don't believe in him.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus himself would go to a number of towns around the Sea of Galilee, and they wouldn't believe in him, and he would say it was going to be worse for them than the sin city Sodom.
SPEAKER_01: Judas spent three years with Jesus, camping with him, spending time with him, eating with him.
SPEAKER_01: And he betrayed him and faced his own condemnation.
SPEAKER_01: Friends, do you see that without faith, without believing, Mary's privilege to hold the Christ child in her womb would only be to her greater woe and damnation because too much, to whom much is given, much is required.
SPEAKER_01: The only reason that she could count those external privileges as a blessing is because she had been given the internal gift of faith.
SPEAKER_01: John Flavell says it this way: quote, all other graces, like birds in the nest, depend upon what faith brings to them.
SPEAKER_01: Another way to say it is that Mary's joy came not from holding her baby, but being held by him.
SPEAKER_01: Through faith.
SPEAKER_01: And I can confirm this.
SPEAKER_01: Luke chapter 11, 27 and 28, a woman interrupts Jesus' preaching and says, Blessed is the womb that bore you, and the breasts at which you fed.
SPEAKER_01: And do you remember Jesus' response?
SPEAKER_01: No, no, no.
SPEAKER_01: Rather, blessed is the one who hears the word of God and obeys it.
SPEAKER_01: Mary's not blessed because she got to birth Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: That's not why she has this internal joy springing up for eternity.
SPEAKER_01: That's not where that comes from.
SPEAKER_01: It comes from hearing the word of God, hearing God's promise with faith and responding with obedience.
SPEAKER_01: We sing so much with this exalted language about Mary, round yon virgin, mother and child.
SPEAKER_01: Holy Mary, mother mild.
SPEAKER_01: Roman Catholic tradition goes even further.
SPEAKER_01: Mother of God, Queen of Heaven.
SPEAKER_01: Friends, Mary would hate those titles.
SPEAKER_01: You know what she would like?
SPEAKER_01: She tells us, verse 50, one who fears God.
SPEAKER_01: Someone who believes in Jesus, a believer.
SPEAKER_01: That's what she would want to be called.
SPEAKER_01: Her joy does not spring from her exalted proximity to Jesus, but her trusting relationship with Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Jonathan Edwards says it this way.
SPEAKER_01: Friends, I don't want you to just be close to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: I want you to be united to him.
SPEAKER_01: Forever.
SPEAKER_01: And you may say, I've been around church for a while.
SPEAKER_01: I've kind of grown up in this stuff.
SPEAKER_01: I've been in proximity to Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: But it's not a blessing to be close to God unless you trust in him.
SPEAKER_01: Only repentant faith can bring us closer to Jesus than even an umbilical cord.
SPEAKER_01: You may say, oh, but I'm a good person.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus understands.
SPEAKER_01: He lets me close because I do right things.
SPEAKER_01: Thomas Brooks says, quote, Till men have faith in Christ, their best services are but glorious sins.
SPEAKER_01: Rather, Psalm 32, 1, blessed is he whose sin is forgiven, whose sin is covered.
SPEAKER_01: But you may say, well, that's easy for Mary.
SPEAKER_01: She literally got to see Jesus and hold him and touch him.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus says, John chapter 20, have you believed because you have seen me?
SPEAKER_01: Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believed.
SPEAKER_01: Listen, Christmas is a time where we're all surrounded by Jesus stuff, right?
SPEAKER_01: We talk about him, we sing the songs, maybe even watch a movie about him.
SPEAKER_01: But Jesus coming to earth is not good news for you if you don't believe in him.
SPEAKER_01: Because he's coming back.
SPEAKER_01: And when he comes, like John the Baptist said, he will come to divide.
SPEAKER_01: He'll come to judge.
SPEAKER_01: He'll take those who are his by faith, and the rest will face the just judgment of a holy and righteous God.
SPEAKER_01: So if you're here this evening and you've never trusted Jesus, you've never put your faith in the one that Mary put her faith in, I am begging you.
SPEAKER_01: Tonight's the night.
SPEAKER_01: This is the year.
SPEAKER_01: Don't wait.
SPEAKER_01: Throw yourself at the mercy of this little baby born in a manger, who would grow up to be a man who would die on a cross to offer you salvation.
SPEAKER_01: Would you put your faith in him right now?
SPEAKER_01: Tonight.
SPEAKER_01: If you came with someone, would you talk to them, please?
SPEAKER_01: Ask them what it means to have faith in Jesus.
SPEAKER_01: Give yourself to the one who has given himself for you.
SPEAKER_01: As he gave himself for his own mother.
SPEAKER_01: And she believed in him and was saved.
SPEAKER_01: For us, Emmanuel, this has been a hard year.
SPEAKER_01: Your pastors feel it.
SPEAKER_01: We know it.
SPEAKER_01: Where do you look for joy in the midst of dark season?
SPEAKER_01: Well, things might get back to normal soon.
SPEAKER_01: Honestly, they might not.
SPEAKER_01: Well, at least my family's coming into town.
SPEAKER_01: I mean, for a little while, yeah.
SPEAKER_01: Oh, people generally agree with me, so that's where I get my joy from.
SPEAKER_01: Hey, let me introduce you to this thing called the internet.
SPEAKER_01: Brothers and sisters, our our Merry Christmas, our joy this year is so much stronger than that.
SPEAKER_01: When the biopsy results come, when the marriage is crumbling, when you say goodbye to another friend, where does your joy come from?
SPEAKER_01: Your joy comes from your faith in this.
SPEAKER_01: Jesus loves me.
SPEAKER_01: This I know.
SPEAKER_01: For the Bible tells me so.
SPEAKER_01: And we rest in the promise that one day this little baby, become a man, resurrected, will return.
SPEAKER_01: And the straining eyes of faith will be blessedly unnecessary.
SPEAKER_01: As we get to see our Savior face to face and live with him forever.
SPEAKER_01: So fear not.
SPEAKER_01: For behold, I bring you good news of great joy.
SPEAKER_01: It will be for all the people.
SPEAKER_01: Today in the town of David, a savior has been born to you, who is Christ the Lord.
SPEAKER_01: Merry Christmas, Emmanuel.
SPEAKER_01: Let's pray.
SPEAKER_01: Oh God, give the eyes of faith, we pray.
SPEAKER_01: Enlighten our eyes to see the beauty and the glory and the wonder of Jesus, like Mary did.
SPEAKER_01: May we not look to external privileges or proximity to religion for our joy.
SPEAKER_01: But may it be rooted rather in a humble child born to us, crucified for us, risen for us, and even now reigning until he brings us back with him.
SPEAKER_01: God, would you bind up the brokenhearted in our church this season?
SPEAKER_01: Would you cause our church to be the church, to present Christ with boldness and joy?
SPEAKER_01: And may we ever worship Mary's precious son and Mary's glorious Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.
SPEAKER_01: We pray this in his name.
unknown: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for joining us today.
SPEAKER_00: If you're in the Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: area, I would love to meet you personally at Emmanuel Bible Church.
SPEAKER_00: Our service times and other church information is on our website at ibc.church.
SPEAKER_00: If you want information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.
SPEAKER_00: location, go to tms.edu.
SPEAKER_00: I hope this resource has been an encouragement to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel of Jesus Christ with boldness.
SPEAKER_00: May the Lord bless you.