Joy At Christmas

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Summary

Pastor Safrit walks through Luke 1:11-20, highlighting the joy that comes from God's presence, comfort, and provision, even in difficult circumstances. He emphasizes that true joy is found in embracing God's grace and trusting His plan, as exemplified by Zechariah and Elizabeth. The sermon encourages believers to cultivate joy through gratitude, worship, and community, reminding them that joy can flourish regardless of life's challenges.

Welcome and Housekeeping
Thank you for listening to Pleasant Grove Baptist Church Sermon Audio. For more information, please visit our website, pgbcronda.com, or visit on all social media platforms. And thank you, Cade.
If you have your Bibles, we'll be in Luke chapter 1. I'm always jealous of people who can play instruments really well, and I'm even more jealous that he can play that well and sing that well. And so, I'm having to humble myself this morning to my jealousy.
But Luke chapter 1 is where we'll be at 11 through 20 this morning. And if you want to send your children to children's church, you can send them now. That'd be great. But we'll stand.
You've been sitting for a while, and we'll read these verses and jump right into the message this morning. Thank you again, Cade, for that.
The Bible says, And there appeared unto him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense.
When Zechariah saw him, he was troubled, and fear fell upon him. And the angel said unto him, Fear not, Zechariah, for thy prayer has been heard. And thy wife Elizabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John. Thou shalt have joy and gladness.
And many shall rejoice at his birth, for he shall be great in the sight of the Lord. And he shall drink neither wine nor strong drink, and be filled with the Holy Spirit, even from his mother womb. And many of the children of Israel shall turn to the Lord their God.
And he shall go before them in the spirit and power of Elijah,
and to turn the hearts of the fathers of the children of disobedience, to the wisdom of the just, to make ready the people prepared for the Lord. And Zechariah said unto the angel, Whereby shall I know this?
For I am an old man, and my wife is well stricken in years.
And the angel answered and said unto him, I am Gabriel, that stands in the presence of God, and I am sent to speak unto you, and to show you these glad tidings. And behold, thou shalt be dumb, and not be able to speak, until the day which these things shall be performed.
Because you did not believe, or thou dost not believest my words, which shall be fulfilled in their season. Father, we love you.
We thank you for your blessings. I pray, God, that your hands of blessing will be upon this service, and the message as we preach. In your name we pray. Amen. I've been titled this next couple of weeks,
Filling Up at Christmas. Oftentimes, in our Thanksgiving season, we begin to fill up at the Thanksgiving table.
I found one statistic that said that 22 million turkeys were sold in the month of November in preparation for Thanksgiving.
Reflections on Family Traditions
22 million turkeys. I've often remembered and reminded in my younger years, I don't eat as much as I do than I did when I was a kid, but my mom, when we would go to my grandma's house, she would have this massive spread of food, and I would just eat, and eat, and eat,
and eat some more, until I could not eat anymore, and I would push back from the table, and I would be so completely full. Has that ever happened to anyone in here? You're like full until you're miserable.
And as we think of filling up like that, so oftentimes, people will push away from that Thanksgiving table, and they will not be full spiritually. Physically, they're full,
but spiritually, they are missing in the greatest thing that's ever happened in the history of the world. And we need to start by filling up on what God has given us this Christmas.
And over the next couple weeks, we'll be looking at that. I came across, as Stephen has been doing the Christmas hymns, and talking through that on Wednesday night, my mind began to think about some songs that,
old hymns that just mean so much to us. And as Cade sang some of those awesome songs as well, my mind was even thinking about some of those. But I came across the story here of a song that was written back in the 1800s. It's in our hymn books.
We've sang it many times. But the guy's name is Horatio Spafford.
Horatio Spafford was a successful lawyer and businessman. And as he began to see the climax of his business, there was a massive fire in 1871.
In 1871, his building burned down, and he was on the brink of having to shut his business down, but through God's providence, allowed him to restore that.
And that same year, his son, he had five kids, his son died from pneumonia. And so a couple years later in 1820,
I'm sorry, 1873, his wife and children and him were going to go on a business trip to Europe. And as they began to go to this business trip, some family emergency, business emergency happened, and he could not go.
And so he told his wife and his four daughters, get on the boat, head to Europe, and I'll be on the next ship coming that way. Four days into the journey, they were on a small passenger boat, about 300 people on it, and a massive cruise liner ran into their boat.
229 of the passengers, 226 of the passengers, including the four daughters, died in that accident. One little boat, rowboat, had saw that the accident happened and began to row over to where this was at, and he saw Miss Spafford on a piece of salvaged wood trying to sustain her life.
And he rowed over and he picked her up and he put her in the boat and they sailed for nine days in this little rowboat until they got to Carford Wells. When she arrived there, she sent a message to her husband and she said this, simple words, saved alone, what shall I do?
Later, Mr. Spafford framed this statement, this telegraph in his office to remind him of what had happened. And the very next day, he got on the very next ship to go to find his wife. One reporter later asked his wife here,
asked her what was she thinking in this moment. And she said this, God gave me four daughters and now they've been taken from me. Someday I'll understand why.
Mr. Spafford got on that next ship and four days into the journey, the captain called him and said, Mr. Spafford, I need you to come to my chambers.
This is roughly the spot where your four children passed away a couple of weeks ago.
He went down to the brink of the ship and began to cry and began to weep. And as you can imagine, the overwhelming amount of emotion that was there. And in this moment, he wrote this song, When peace like a river attendeth my soul. When sorrow like sea billows roll, whatever my lot,
thou hast taught me to say, it is well with my soul. We know it. Sing it with me. It is well with my soul. It is well. It is well with my soul.
In that moment where he was sitting there, where his four daughters had just died, he wrote those words.
How can someone have joy in that moment? How can someone write down, it is well with my soul? In that emotional amount of mess.
Later in life, his wife gave birth to three more children, one of which at age four died of pneumonia again.
And in August of 1881, the Spaffords moved to Jerusalem. Mr. Spafford passed away in that city. And on his tombstone, this is what it says, The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds with Christ Jesus. Someone who had experienced six children passing away in his lifetime,
burying them and having to go through those things. How can someone have joy in those moments?
You see, in this story, it's not a lot different. You see, it starts out in verse five. I didn't read this, but I want you to think about it. It says, In the days of Herod.
This is not just a statement of saying, in the days of Joe Biden, in the days of whatever president was there, in the days of Abraham Lincoln, this was telling the Jewish nation the horrendous acts of what was going on in King Herod days.
The Reign of King Herod
King Herod, the most violent king that had ever lived in Jerusalem's history, up until this moment. King Herod, who,
at one moment in time, he said, The kingdom is not going to exist anymore, and so I'm going to bring in all the most wealthiest families in Jerusalem, and I'm going to execute them all, and I'm going to take their wealth so that this kingdom can continue.
This was in the days of King Herod. The days of King Herod, where when Jesus was born and the wise men never came back to him, said, You know what? I'm going to go ahead and solve this problem, and every male child under the age of two is going to be executed.
And so every male child under the age of two went out, and they began to find them, and they began to kill them. This was the days of Herod.
The days of Herod, where Herod, which was so petrified and so scared of his kingdom, that in the days of Herod, when I was just there, our guide told us, we went up to the place called Masada in Israel, and this massive lookout, and he said, This is the getaway kingdom of Herod.
He built this and spent millions and millions of our dollars, that we would equate it to, to build this massive getaway place that he went one time.
And he went because he was afraid of his own people, because he was a Jew. He was afraid of his own people rebelling against him, and he wanted to have an escape place. So he built this massive fortress that was fortified, that could not be broken into.
It took Rome over a month to break into the kingdom of Masada, which he had built for himself to get away.
And it also goes on to say that Herod was so afraid that his own sons were going to take his kingdom from him, that he executed his own sons, and even executed one of his wives. This is the days of Herod. It wasn't a brilliant time.
It wasn't a time where everyone was like, Yes, we need to live in the days of Herod. It was saying, Hey, look, this is a hard time.
And this is the story where we get to this point where, in the days of Herod, in King Judah,
a certain priest named Zechariah was there. And the Bible says in verse 6 that he was righteous before God. He walked in the commandments and the ordinances. In verse 7, but they had no child. They were well stricken in age, and they began to ask God, God, why is this? We've served you.
Finding Joy in Difficult Times
We've loved you. But you know what? We're going to accept what it is in our life.
And we're going to look at the next couple of minutes very quickly how we can fill up in joy by looking at these two people, Zechariah and his wife, as they begin to go through this time and God begins to experience some things with them.
The first one is this. How can we fill up with God's joy? It's by having God's presence revealed in our life.
Verse 11 and 12, And there appeared unto them an angel of the Lord standing there with them. An angel of the Lord and Zechariah was troubled and fear fell upon them. But God's presence was revealed.
We're talking about this morning about how we can begin to worship in Sunday school and how we can know that God is with us, how we can know that God is surrounding us.
And one of the things that I said was just worship music, just riding down the road and turning either the radio or putting my worship station on to my phone or even I'll be in the office and I'll just say, Hey Alexa, play your worship music.
Hope no one here has an Alexa phone because that may start happening. But all of a sudden that'll begin to play and I'll just begin to break down in tears worshiping God because God's presence fills the office. God's presence fills the area. And this is what's happening.
God's presence is filled and is revealed around them. Psalm 1611 says this,
You make known to me the paths of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy.
And at your right hand there are pleasures forevermore. Man, when we begin to go through our life, when we begin to experience God's presence in our life, we begin to experience the joy that only comes from God.
It doesn't matter the circumstances as Cade's saying, this joy comes from God that can't be taken away because it's from God. We begin to experience the fullness of joy that is God's presence in our life.
Begin to just write down some things in my own personal life of when I've experienced joy. And as a good Baptist preacher, I just wrote down three. Okay. And the first one is this. I experience God's joy when I see God working in my life.
You ever just begin to pray and I'm going to talk about some practical things at the very end, but just maybe journal a little bit and write down some things and you begin to see one after one God's working in your life.
God's working in your prayers. God's working in the situations that are around you. That's when I'm full of joy. It happens.
Experiencing God's Presence
Second thing I wrote down is, I'm full of joy when I begin to see God working in my family.
One of the greatest things for me as a dad of some young kids is, we'll sit down and we'll have dinner time and we'll say, okay, we're going to pray. And I'll say, who wants to pray tonight? And it blesses my heart to see my kids argue over who's going to pray. Right?
Like, if that's what they're arguing about, that's pretty good. And they're like, no, no, I want to pray tonight. No, no, you prayed last night. I want to pray tonight. Oh, okay, okay. Let me just settle it. Paper, rock, scissors,
whoever wins gets to pray. Okay, they didn't like that when I did that. When I introduced that, they're like, Dad, this is not right. And so we just sort of, I just, I don't even ask them.
I just say, okay, Brody, you're going to pray. Jade, you're going to pray. Hudson, do you want to pray? Yeah.
And so Hudson just looks at us after he prayed. He doesn't say anything. He just looks at us and says, amen. Okay?
And so it's great to be able to see that. But when God begins to work in my kid's life,
man, as a parent, my joy begins to get full. I've had the privilege of leading both of my children, Brody and Jade Hudson. And of course, he's too young to the Lord and baptizing them. And to see God work in their life brings joy to my heart.
The third thing that brings joy to my life is seeing God work in our church.
Man, when I get a text message or a phone call and someone just says, hey, Pastor James, these are some things that are going on.
Pray for me. Or these are some things we've prayed about and God's working in it. It just brings joy to my heart because I know God's presence is revealed in our situations.
But not only there, it continues on in verse 13. And we see here the thing that brings so much joy to our life that we often overlook is this. God's comfort is experience. Look at verse 13. It says, As Ben pastor of churches,
there are three churches now. I'm a youth pastor for two churches and a senior pastor here. I have been able to see time after time after time where I'll get a text message. They're not glorious text messages. They're not glorious phone calls where, Hey, Pastor, I've been diagnosed with cancer.
Hey, Pastor, my son's been in a car accident. Hey, Pastor, my dad's in the hospital. They're saying he's not going to make it.
And I show up and we're there and we pray together. And I cannot explain it.
Cannot give into words what it is. But I can only say that God shows up in those situations. And God's comfort is revealed and God's comfort is experienced beyond our explanation
of how good God is in those situations. And I just get to sit there and share scripture and pray with them. And I get to see God working. In a miraculous way.
Where I will never be able to explain it. I'll never be able to tell my kids sort of how it works. Because it's not me. It's not what I'm doing. It's simply God's word working in people's life. And God's word impacting people's life. And God's comfort working around us.
God's comfort is experienced in those moments. Just as Zachariah and Elizabeth said here. He said, do not be afraid because oftentimes we are afraid.
The Assurance of Answered Prayers
But then he comforts them by saying your prayers have been heard. Church, we can be comforted in knowing our prayers are not in vain. Our prayers are heard if we simply go before the Lord and say, God, I need you. God, I need your help today.
God's presence is revealed. We see God's comfort is experienced. And number three here, we see God's provision is detailed. Verses 14 and 15.
Oftentimes when we go on trips, we're going to be going to the beach in a couple weeks. And my kids, maybe not much as now, but when they were a little younger, they would say, Dad, how are we going to get there? And I'm like, why does it matter?
If I say we're going to take I-85 to I-95 to I-9, they're like, you don't know those roads. Why does it matter? And I'll tell them those roads.
All right, cool. What? How does that help you? How does that help you by me telling you which roads we're going to be on? But it's just them knowing the details.
It's just them knowing what is going on and where they're going brings comfort and joy in their life. So it continues on here in verses 14 and 15. It says, and you're going to call his name John. He gives some details.
And then he says there, this is the text of the whole verse, and you will have joy and gladness.
Joy and gladness. Joy is what happens on the inside. No one sees it. You can be joyful, and the outside is the gladness.
The outside is the outward expression of that inward joy. You could say it like that. And so all of a sudden, when this joy happens on the inside, and it begins to come out through a tear,
begins to come out through the works of what we do, and it begins to come out and make itself known, it could look sometimes hard.
It can look depressed sometimes. But on the inside, you know that you're experiencing joy. Joy. This is the joy and the gladness.
It says this, and many will rejoice in his birth, and he will be great before the Lord. In a day and age where we can find any answer we want on Google, right? Like if someone asks me a question,
I can in moments, especially if we have really good internet, you can find any answer at any given time by simply just Googling it. And in this day and age, they didn't have that.
They didn't have the ability to say, well, you know, let me find out what that president did, or what my daughter's doing a presidency project.
That's why presidents are on my mind right now, because I've been thinking about that. But as we go through this, we begin to find answers, and people got frustrated because they couldn't figure out what God was doing. God began to lay out, and he says, your son will be great before the Lord.
Well, I didn't put this in my notes, but Romans 12, 1 and 2.
Romans 12, 1 and 2 lays out how we can know God's details. Look at this. It says, I beseech you, I urge you, I'm begging you, brothers, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service of worship.
Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove that which is good, acceptable, and perfect will of God.
Living Sacrificially for God
People ask me all the time, Pastor James, how do I know God's will? Well, present your bodies a living sacrifice and say, God, I'm going to sacrifice my body in service of you, and whatever you want me to do, that's what I'm going to do. Looks different for every single one of us,
but that's God's will in our life. And as I began looking through this,
God laid out sort of five reasons or characteristics of greatness, and I'm going to quickly hit them and move on, but the first one is this, sanctification or sanctified. Luke 1, 15, and he will be great before the Lord, and he must not drink wine or strong drink.
You see, wine was an acceptable drink in that day. It was more pure than water. Okay, water could be tainted or poisoned, and so wine was very pure, and he was saying here,
he's not going to have that. He's going to abstain from it. Greatness in our life includes setting aside things that are not necessarily wrong, but are not helpful in our life.
And we've got to ask ourselves, what is not helpful in my life, and how am I going to set it aside? In the thought of drink here, this is how it would be. You're no longer going to drink Roy's sweet tea. Right?
We've all, I heard most of you have had your gobbliders taken out because of Roy's sweet tea, and so from here on out, we're going to abstain from drinking the sweet tea. This is what it would be like in this context. Okay?
Hey, soda, we're not going to drink it anymore. Hey, it's abstaining from something. You're setting something aside that's not helpful for you to be sanctified or closer to Christ.
Another characteristic of greatness is that continues on in verse 15, spirit-filled life.
He'll not drink a strong drink, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit. He will be living in the Spirit every day of his life. The challenge question for us is this, are we living and truly living in the Spirit,
and truly living in what God has for us? Number three, he'll be a soul winner.
Look at verse 16, and he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. He will be a soul winner.
When's the last time you had the opportunity to share the good news of Jesus with someone? It was a blessing for me this past week. I got to go Thursday.
My plan was to go Thursday and Friday to the toy store, and just got to share time and time again with four or five families the gospel.
Just got to tell them the good news of Jesus, and I got to ask them, what's your relationship with Jesus? What is Jesus in your life? Who is he?
And I began to just share the gospel with them. Don't necessarily lead them to the Lord. I didn't lead any of them to the Lord, but I just shared, and I was a part of planting some seeds.
When's the last time we were a soul winner, and we just began to share with others what God's doing in our life? Number four, the service of God. Look at verse 17, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah.
He'll have the power of God on his life. He'll be in the service of God, and it says here that he is going to experience this unforeseen power that Elijah had. Are we experiencing that same power in our life?
Characteristics of Greatness
And then fifth here, if we want to be great, if we want to have greatness in our life, and we use this as a characteristic here, he will show people love.
Verse 17, and he'll turn the hearts of the fathers to the children of disobedience and wisdom of just to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.
Luke 1.14, a little earlier, it says, and you'll have great joy and gladness, and many will rejoice because people are excited to be around him.
He begins to show people love by touching their hearts, by touching what's going on in their life, and by preaching hard, it began to show that he cared for them, and he loved them. Began to see some greatness in his life and detailed in his life. And number four,
God's grace is embraced. Look at verses 16 and 20 here again. Begin to lay out here, and many children, and they shall go before him in the spirit of Elijah.
Verse 17, 18, we begin to look through this, and we see that his name will be John, and they embraced it. But we see here Zachariah as a righteous man, abandoned God's command.
He began to say, well, I don't know if I'm going to name his name John. He said, I know you're sending me good news, but I don't know if I can do this. And he says this in verse 20, because you did not believe my words, because you did not embrace my grace,
now there's going to be a punishment. You're not going to be able to speak. You're not going to be able to have a moment of time where you began to experience this joy. You're because you are not embracing God's grace. You are resisting God's grace. He said, I'm bringing you good news.
But because you don't embrace the good news, God says, I can't bless you until you get to this point where you are willing to accept what God is doing in our life.
As Terry comes, I'm going to give some concluding thoughts, and on the back of your program, there are bullets in there. I've laid out some things I'm going to hit as well if you want to turn there. But as Terry comes and plays, your capacity to be blessed this Christmas
is directly related to your willingness to embrace the message that God has been gracious to you. God has been gracious to each and every one of us, church. Beyond our explanation, beyond our understanding, God has been gracious to us.
And in order for us to experience this blessing that God has for us, it's directly related to, are we willing to embrace the message that God has given us? You see, because this story concludes in verses 57 and 63, and the Bible says, and the time came for Elizabeth to give birth.
She bore a son, and her neighbors and relatives heard that the Lord had shown great mercy to her, and they rejoiced with her.
There was a blessing. There was rejoicing. And on the eighth day of the day of circumcision, they said they're going to name the child Zachariah after his father because that was tradition. And his mother answered, no, he will be called John. And they said to her, none of your relatives have this name.
None of you, this is odd. Why would you name him John? There's no one in your lineage that's named John. There's no one in your family that's named John.
They said, well, let's make a sign for his father and inquire of his father what they wanted him to be called. And they asked for a writing tablet, and he wrote on the tablet, his name is John. Because he embraced what God's plan was for his life.
See, the fountain of joy will flow freely when we can say from our heart, the Lord has been good.
The circumstances don't matter. They matter in the sense of we have emotions tied to them.
But the circumstances don't matter because we have God's joy in our life. And no matter what happens in our life, as a six-year-old boy, my father getting diagnosed with cancer, and getting the news that he was not going to be there that last Christmas. That was going to be his last Christmas.
To the news of me as a junior, going into my junior year of high school, of me coming in and getting the note off my dad's dresser that my mom was leaving my dad. As hard as those circumstances were,
the joy was still in my heart. The joy was still there for me to turn to God and say, God, you're good. I don't understand why you're doing this. I don't understand why you're doing this in my life.
But God, I'm just going to trust you. In the back of your notes there, I got this.
It's not original to me. I found it from a friend of mine. Short down seven ways to cultivate joy. How can we have joy in our life? Rehearse with God the reasons you trust him.
Just begin to say, God, I trust you for these reasons. They're going to be different for all of us. Keep a joy journal.
Write down all the times that God's been good and document them so you can go back to them. Say, God, I remember when you were good here. I'm going to trust you now. Surround yourself with joyful people. Joy is contagious.
I've learned this. As much as the flu is contagious, joy is so much more contagious. Because when you're excited and you're fired up and you're excited about what God's doing in your life, people are going to ask questions and people are going to say, what's going on with you?
Are you just some crazy nut? And you can say, no, I'm just a crazy nut. Screw it onto the right bolt. And that bolt is Jesus.
Approach life's challenges and trials redemptively. Say, God, how can I give you glory in this trial? Make praise and gratitude a habit. Fill your mind with music that draws your heart near to God as we talked about this morning. And then have an eternal perspective on what's going on in our life.
As we conclude our thoughts, just two simple questions. Are you living in joy today?
Maybe you're sitting here and you're saying, you know, I've never experienced that joy of Jesus. That's where it begins. By changing us on the inside. The Bible says here, it starts in the hearts of the people. It starts in our heart this morning.
And if we have accepted Jesus, the follow-up question for you is this.
What's hindering you from living in that joy? And then are we living in the spirit of God? Are we truly saying, God, I don't care about what people say. I don't care about what's going on around me. I'm just gonna live in your spirit and live in your joy. As we stand,
as the music plays, the altars are open. Lord, we love you. We thank you for what you've done. In your name we pray. Amen.
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