Mark Clark [00:00:00]:
Hey, everyone. Mark here. Welcome to the Mark Clark Podcast. Hopefully your Christmas season is going really well. This week we're continuing the Magic of Christmas series by exploring the incredible stories of Mary and Elizabeth. And actually, we're giving you two episodes this week so we can get all four sermons of this series in before Christmas. The last one will actually drop on Christmas Eve, so make sure you watch it for that. But what does Mary and Elizabeth's humility, faith, and the Holy Spirit's role in their lives teach us about God's power and grace in our lives? So this is what this sermon is about.
Mark Clark [00:00:31]:
Hopefully you enjoy it. It's a story of transformation, hope, and the supernatural reality of Christmas. Let's go in the story that we're.
Mark Clark [00:00:41]:
Talking about today, the background of it.
Mark Clark [00:00:43]:
That Mary, of course, got visited by this angel, and now there's this relative Elizabeth, and she gets visited by Gabriel. And Gabriel says these things, but the backstory is that Elizabeth and Zachariah, who is this priest in the temple, they'd been visited earlier by Gabriel. And Gabriel said, I know you're advanced.
Mark Clark [00:01:03]:
In years, but I'm going to give you a baby anyway.
Mark Clark [00:01:06]:
And her husband responds and says, I don't believe in any of this. I can't believe it. And so literally what happens is the angel just shuts him up. He just like, hey, I don't want to hear you talking anymore. You're yapping, yapping, yapping. I want to shut you up. You don't get to. That's literally how that story ended.
Mark Clark [00:01:21]:
And so now it picks up in verse 39, Mary's just been talked to by the angel. Now both of these stories come together. So verse 39 says this. In those days, Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country to a town in Judah. So remember, Elizabeth and Zachariah had been spoken to an angel. Then the scene flipped. Mary gets spoken to by an angel, and now she arises and she runs to these people that we were introduced to at an earlier time. And she goes and she enters the house.
Mark Clark [00:01:50]:
It says in verse 39 of Zachariah, and greeted Elizabeth. So this couple who'd also been visited. So Zachariah hadn't spoken to him. He said, I don't want to hear any of this. And so the angel shuts him up. So the angel shut him up. So he's quiet, so now he's mute. And that God made this guy mute.
Mark Clark [00:02:05]:
And his wife is enjoying these months of him being mute. Right. I'm not saying that that's, you know, that's all the. But I'm just saying there comes moments in life, I'm not saying forever mute, but seasons where probably most of us.
Mark Clark [00:02:17]:
Can be like, hey, can you just.
Mark Clark [00:02:18]:
Shut up for a while?
Mark Clark [00:02:19]:
Most wives could probably identify with this.
Mark Clark [00:02:20]:
So there's Zachariah, and he's there, and he's mute and he can't talk. And she's greeted and enters the house of Zachariah and Elizabeth. And what few commentators seem to realize is that Mary's visit to Elizabeth is about 100 miles away in Judah. But it may have been a desperate attempt by her family to save her from the fate of a righteous killing of girls who got pregnant out of wedlock. Right? That's why With Haste is in the text, maybe like, to get her out of the way until some solution had been worked out. Right? So this is starting to heat up in that culture. There were people who'd kill you if you had done this, if you had had a baby out of wedlock, if you been unrighteous and disobeyed God. So this isn't a nice, cute little Christmas story.
Mark Clark [00:03:06]:
This is life and death, right? We sanitize all this with little people, you know, wrestling on the ground and sending each other cards. Merry Christmas. And we got like a snowman, and everyone's eating around the table. And this is like fear, sadness, unknowing, all the stuff some of us. And listen, this is the point feel in this moment, maybe this time of year, the fear, the sadness, the doubt. And so we're. We enter into this story in such.
Mark Clark [00:03:35]:
A beautiful way and such an encouraging way of what Christmas actually says.
Mark Clark [00:03:38]:
So it says, leaving Galilee, traveling south. Mary arrived at Elizabeth House after a journey of about three or four days.
Mark Clark [00:03:45]:
That's how long it takes her to get there.
Mark Clark [00:03:46]:
And then it says, and when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leapt in her womb and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. So here you've got this baby that Elizabeth has, goes on to be John the Baptist. And he's leaping in the womb of Elizabeth as Mary, who's pregnant with Jesus, walks into the room. So Luke tells us Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. And here's what we got to understand. This would have been a really big deal because all the people in the Old Testament were waiting the time when the rules would stop, when the law would stop, when going to temple and sacrificing would stop, when religion would stop. A time in which they called it the eschaton. It's like it's like the Greek word for the end times, the last days, the last thing is ever going to happen.
Mark Clark [00:04:33]:
God himself would show up in his Spirit and come and live in the hearts and in the beings of people. So this was an expectation for thousands of years. Years a year. People had said, maybe one day, maybe one day. So when Luke says that the Holy Spirit is in Elizabeth, it's this hope that Israel had been waiting for for a thousand years. Not just a throwaway line. The Spirit of God is actually now present in the world. And many of us, we live in a way where we're not really all that focused on the Holy Spirit.
Mark Clark [00:05:00]:
So we.
Mark Clark [00:05:00]:
So we gotta understand what Luke's trying to do. Luke mentions and talks about the Holy Spirit more than any of the gospel writers. Between the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts, he talks about the Holy Spirit all the time.
Mark Clark [00:05:12]:
And there's a reason for that.
Mark Clark [00:05:13]:
Because many of us, we might have become Christians in our lives, but I don't know what it feels like to be walking in the Holy Spirit.
Mark Clark [00:05:20]:
Some of you might be saying, we.
Mark Clark [00:05:21]:
Have these lives, we have sin that we're trying to defeat. We have temptations, we have emotional disconnect from God and we don't know why. And we try to figure out how to live the Christian life. And then we're frustrated. We're like, where's the power? Right? And one of the reasons we're frustrated because I would argue that you're not living in the fullness of the Spirit. That's what Luke is constantly talking about. She was filled with the Spirit, which means there are measures that all of us are living at, different measures of the Spirit at different times in our lives. And so some of you are like, I just can't defeat this sin.
Mark Clark [00:05:57]:
I can't walk with God. I'm not walking in power. I'm not walking in victory.
Mark Clark [00:06:01]:
And.
Mark Clark [00:06:01]:
And we look to every other reason under the sun and we try to fix it, except the fact that maybe it's that we're not filled with the Spirit and we can't really accomplish these things. We got our lives, we're in a mess financially. Our marriage is a mess, our relationship's in a mess, and it's because you're not filled with the Spirit. It's like an amazing thing that Jesus and his ministry actually look to his disciples and says, you're going to be better off when the Holy Spirit comes and I leave. And the reason you're going to be better off when I leave is because if I don't leave, the Holy Spirit's not going to come and fill you with power in the very practical ways of life. Now, there's a bunch of things the Holy Spirit does through Scripture. I'll name a couple of them.
Mark Clark [00:06:42]:
We could spend weeks and weeks on this.
Mark Clark [00:06:45]:
First, the doctrine of what theologians call the doctrine of regeneration. Right. Basically, what that means is the Holy Spirit, it's very important, is the person of God who regenerates us. The word generate or genesis means origin or beginning. And then re is to go back. So it's a rewinding, it's a restart of something from the beginning. And so the regeneration is a restarting for us. It's a rebirth.
Mark Clark [00:07:11]:
It's the second birth. And that's the only thing that saves us. And that happens through the Holy Spirit. It's not you, right? The reason you need a second birth. Remember, Jesus says to Nicodemus, you must be born again. Why? Because being born naturally, you cannot enter the kingdom of God because you're born into sin. You have a sinful nature. You cannot come into the presence of God if you're only born once.
Mark Clark [00:07:37]:
So now some of you are like, well, I don't like the idea of we're born as sinful natures. You know, I'm born as a baby and babies are cute. And listen, if you doubt whether there is natural sin in the world in a baby, just look around at kids, all right? My friend's little guy is just 5. And if you doubt, just watch a 5 year old, all right? These kids are violent. They steal, they connive, they lie. My daughters, a few years ago, I remember this one birthday party they had. Of course, all of them get. But it was when a couple of them were younger, they did a frozen birthday party.
Mark Clark [00:08:13]:
So there was the snowman and there was Elsa.
Mark Clark [00:08:16]:
Do you wanna build a snowman.
Mark Clark [00:08:20]:
Play? So it was like all of that going on constantly on repeat and people were singing. It was all these little girls running around. It was crazy. But people, as I watched them, they were stealing things from my house, all right? They were like hawking stuff. They were fighting. The girls were like, man pulling hair. And there was cheesies everywhere. It was a den of iniquity.
Mark Clark [00:08:43]:
All right? According to the Bible, if you doubt, then there's this great moment actually at the birthday party when my daughter decided to pray. So all the girls are there and they're partying, and then they stop and they pray. And Hayden prayed. She's like, I wanna pray, daddy. And she's like, thank You God for me. All right. Thank you for who I am. Thank you for the gift that I am to the world.
Mark Clark [00:09:06]:
Just a little narcissist.
Mark Clark [00:09:07]:
All right?
Mark Clark [00:09:08]:
Just a sinful. It was beautiful, but it's like you need regeneration. This ain't gonna get you in. All right? You need to actually. And so here's the thing.
Mark Clark [00:09:18]:
This moment of grace descends on our lives where we begin to realize that we're not good enough in our natural state, and we actually need to be born again. How does that new birth come about? The Holy Spirit?
Mark Clark [00:09:31]:
Does it? John, chapter one.
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John pulls the veil back and says, there's something that we see on our level.
Mark Clark [00:09:36]:
And then there's the reality of what's.
Mark Clark [00:09:38]:
Behind the veil, of what's actually happening in our lives.
Mark Clark [00:09:41]:
And so on our level, some of you are sitting here right now and you're, like, skeptical maybe, or you're not Christians, and you're here, you're exploring.
Mark Clark [00:09:47]:
Awesome.
Mark Clark [00:09:47]:
We're so glad that you're here. You need to hear verse 12 of John, chapter one, because this is a great challenge. Verse 12 of John chapter one says this. But to all who did receive Jesus, receive him who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God. And then he says, so how does that happen? Verse 13. Who were born not of blood, nor of the will of man, but of God. So what he just said is, when you regenerate by the Holy Spirit, that's like God did that. That's not what looks like you.
Mark Clark [00:10:20]:
It looks like you receiving Jesus. Making a decision when you pull the veil back is actually God birthing you, which means you have about as much.
Mark Clark [00:10:29]:
To do with your second birth as you did with your first one.
Mark Clark [00:10:32]:
And this is what Christmas is. On this level. It looks like you're receiving Jesus and you're believing in Jesus. And yes, you are. But what's really happening is God is birthing new life in you, which is amazing because it means that you don't get the credit or the glory. That's what John's trying to say. And this is what the Holy Spirit does. He takes you from a sinful natural person and births in you new life, which is a beautiful thing.
Mark Clark [00:10:54]:
Here's what C.S.
Mark Clark [00:10:54]:
Lewis says about this in his last novel called Till we have Faces Rewrites the myth of Cupid and Psyche. It's this Greek mythology, and at this one particular moment, he talks about what.
Mark Clark [00:11:06]:
It'S like to relate to the gods.
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And he has this great line.
Mark Clark [00:11:09]:
He says, when the last time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech.
Mark Clark [00:11:16]:
Which has lain at the center of.
Mark Clark [00:11:18]:
Your soul for years, which you have all that time, idiot like, been saying over and over, you'll not look about the joy of words. I saw well why the gods do.
Mark Clark [00:11:29]:
Not speak to us openly, nor let.
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Us answer till that word can be dug out of us. Why should they hear the babble that.
Mark Clark [00:11:36]:
We think we mean? And then he says this line, how.
Mark Clark [00:11:40]:
Can they, meaning the gods, meet us.
Mark Clark [00:11:42]:
Face to face till we have faces?
Mark Clark [00:11:48]:
How can we have an identity? Lewis is saying, that is worthy of being in the presence of them until this new birth happens. That's Christianity's point. You can't meet God face to face till you have faces, meaning to you have an identity that is renewed in Christ and you have this second birth which is brought about by the Holy Spirit. It can't be just in your natural self.
Mark Clark [00:12:12]:
You don't even have a face yet. You don't even have an identity yet.
Mark Clark [00:12:16]:
In the parable of Jesus and the.
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Older and younger sons, you're still out.
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There lost, spending the father's money, living.
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As if God doesn't exist. The Holy Spirit's the thing that makes it viable for you to have new birth and be in the presence of God. In the end.
Mark Clark [00:12:35]:
Here's the second thing that the Holy.
Mark Clark [00:12:36]:
Spirit does when we're walking and we're filled with the Spirit.
Mark Clark [00:12:39]:
And my vision for you as your.
Mark Clark [00:12:41]:
Pastor is that you don't walk just in the Spirit, that you don't just.
Mark Clark [00:12:44]:
Have the Holy Spirit, but that you are filled with the Holy Spirit in your own godliness and in your own mission. This is the way we're going to actually affect our world, our city, right? So filled with the Spirit. Filled, filled needs to be your prayer rather than just, hey, I said a prayer at summer camp. I got justified before God. I have fire insurance. I'm not going to hell. And now I'm going to move on with my life. That is not the biblical picture of the Christian life.
Mark Clark [00:13:13]:
That is not the story of the Bible. It's not the gospel filled with the Spirit. The Spirit does beyond regeneration in this very practical empowerment of people in life. There's a powerful verse I was reading the other day in my devotions. First Thessalonians, chapter one, verse five.
Mark Clark [00:13:32]:
It says this.
Mark Clark [00:13:33]:
The gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. Like my prayer for our church is that the gospel would be the center of your Life in that exact way, not just in words or ideas and hopes and dreams, but in real, real practical power. Like it's there. Let's tap into it and see what God does in and around us. A bit ago, I remember talking to.
Mark Clark [00:13:58]:
One of the police officers who's part of our church, and he came to.
Mark Clark [00:14:01]:
Me and he just said, mark, I saw some things this week. I saw some files, some pictures of a file of just a terrible case. And he went on to describe them.
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To me and in the seriousness of the case and the specifics. And I won't tell you because they're all awful.
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And he said, I've been able to deal with everything else that I've seen being a police officer, but I saw.
Mark Clark [00:14:23]:
Something this week and I haven't been able to sleep in three days, and I don't know what to do.
Mark Clark [00:14:27]:
And so I want to come and just talk about it. I just need prayer.
Mark Clark [00:14:30]:
And so we prayed for a while. And at that moment, he's like, man, what. What am I doing? I'm not.
Mark Clark [00:14:36]:
Here's the problem. I'm calling on my own power to solve my problem, right? I'm not calling on his power to solve my own problem. I just keep trying to figure it out myself. See, you can't create a reality in yourself that you can't unsee certain things in your life. You don't have the power, you don't have the magic. You don't have the supernatural ability to change these things about you. So at that point, we got to.
Mark Clark [00:15:03]:
Start depending and leaning on the spirit and saying, holy Spirit. And this is what I started to pray.
Mark Clark [00:15:07]:
This man needs to be filled. He needs to see this, needs to be erased from his brain. You need to, Lord, please allow him to sleep. Give him a supernatural peace. And some of you, right now, you're living in such anxiety. It's because you're trying to walk this life on your own. You're not willing to receive the supernatural, the thing that transcends the natural peace from God. Think about that series we did, the Night nine, Keys to happiness, Love, joy, peace.
Mark Clark [00:15:36]:
Some of you, right in this moment, you need peace. You're stressed out, you're anxious. You're looking at the things of the world. You're not really sure what to do about your family and your finances and addictions, all the things that you're dealing with. And the spirit is the supernatural answer.
Mark Clark [00:15:53]:
And that's why he's all through this story. You got to stop looking to you.
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That night, that police officer Texted me.
Mark Clark [00:16:00]:
A couple nights later, and he said, oh, my goodness, I've slept like a baby the last two or three nights since we came together and prayed that I'd be filled with the Spirit.
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See, that's the Holy Spirit is able to do.
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And this is what I love about.
Mark Clark [00:16:11]:
Why I've spent the last 10 minutes talking about it. The Holy Spirit is doing the things that are super practical in your life. So don't just keep the spirit in some vague religious world. It's an everyday experience when you're filled with the spirit and able to actually function in power. Right this week, this moment, today as you leave this space.
Mark Clark [00:16:33]:
There was a woman at our church a little bit ago. We talked on the phone.
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She called me up.
Mark Clark [00:16:39]:
She was in the hospital. She was struggling with cancer. And she said, I'm really wrestling right now. And we talked a little bit, and I was like, I'm not sure she's actually even going to come out of the hospital and just facing that reality. She had young kids and newly married and just facing the reality of her own death. And there was this moment, like I told her on the phone, there was like this supernatural peace that came over her, and she was just.
Mark Clark [00:17:04]:
Her whole voice, everything.
Mark Clark [00:17:05]:
She's like, you know what? I'm not. I'm not afraid of any of this. I just want to make sure my kids are taken care of.
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And I'm like, man, she should be. Why isn't she going? Why did God allow this to happen to me? I got young kids. I've been a good person. She should be doubting God. She should be saying, why me? She should be saying, I don't understand this. Fighting everything she didn't see. Evolution, if we're just born of natural.
Mark Clark [00:17:30]:
Processes doesn't explain why someone wouldn't be doing that.
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Fighting for every last breath should be wired into us.
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But there was an absolute peace. And I said, it's like, this is, like, supernatural. And she goes, yeah, that's what people are telling me. That's what I feel. They're looking into my life and they're going, this doesn't even make sense logically, because there's something happening in that moment.
Mark Clark [00:17:51]:
She's tapping into something transcendent. She's tapping into something that's not natural. And some of you are here, and you need to understand the Holy Spirit is the one who can bring that transformation in your life, Create a person who's facing uncertainty in their life and can stand up and has steel in their spine and walks through it. Who's no longer afraid. It's mind boggling. So when we pass over this text and it goes, they're filled with the spirit, we just kind of, we gotta understand what they're talking about. It's the spirit that creates regeneration.
Mark Clark [00:18:22]:
And he gives you practical power in your life.
Mark Clark [00:18:24]:
Okay, one last thing.
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I'll talk about this spirit does. We oftentimes think that Christianity is just about getting justified before God.
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Like, I'm justified by faith in the law court of God. But when you read the New Testament.
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Which you see over and over again, it's not just about justification. It's about what the Bible calls sanctification. Sanctification is like this technical word for.
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Becoming more like Jesus. And that's God's vision for your life.
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Y'all like.
Mark Clark [00:18:50]:
Like when we talk about what's the will of God for my life, and we're constantly trying to find, who does he want me to date, who does he want me to marry, what city does he want me to live in. We come to him with all these things and we wonder what the will of God is for our life. Romans 8 comes out of the gate and says, I tell you what the will of God is for your life, that you be conformed to the image of his son. No matter where you live, who you marry, who you date, that you be conformed to the image of Jesus. That's God's vision for your life. Not simply that you get justified before him, but that you become more like him. So it means more than what we sometimes think it is. Many of us stop way too early and too short and have kind of shriveled down the vision of what sanctification is, where it's, hey, I stopped doing certain sins and now I'm good.
Mark Clark [00:19:39]:
That's never the picture in the Bible.
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Of what sanctification is.
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You stop doing certain sins is only half of what it means to become like Jesus. I was reading a book this week by John Owen, who is a great theologian, lived in the 1600s, was a Puritan thinker. John Owen, listen, he had 11 children, all of whom died.
Mark Clark [00:19:59]:
Think about that.
Mark Clark [00:19:59]:
One of the greatest theologians of all time, one of the greatest preachers and pastors and thinkers. People, God is just going to bring blessing into his life. He's going to live well and make the money, make the dough, live a healthy life, be successful, had 11 kids and they all, can you imagine what it'd be like to be a father of 11 children and all of them die? And John Owen wrote one of his Famous books. It's called the Mortification of Sin. It's basically a book all about how we kill sin and how killing that then frees us up to become like Jesus. And in the preface, the modern writer explains two things that I think are.
Mark Clark [00:20:37]:
Super helpful in this conversation.
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The preface to the latest version of.
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This John Owen book.
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He says, let's picture lust, okay? The sin of lust. He says, guys, there's this woman at the gym, right? And you think she's attractive and you lust after her. And many of us have been pitched a version of sanctification that says the goal is simply that I stop lusting after her. But John Owens says, no, no, no, that's not the goal because that's a negative. That's the first half. The goal is that you actually begin to, in a positive way, view her as something more than the way that you viewed her. If you're getting conformed to the image of Christ. Jesus doesn't just look down at the floor when a woman approaches.
Mark Clark [00:21:20]:
I don't want to lust after. I better look down. That's not what Jesus does. He says, let me affirm who she is in a positive way. Let me understand. Let me move toward her because she's somebody who's made in the image of God. She's not there for me and my appetite as I'm a taker. Take another example.
Mark Clark [00:21:41]:
Gossip, right? The one view of sanctification that most of us live in is man. It'd be good if I just stopped talking negatively about people. Then I've defeated the sin. I've killed the sin of gossip.
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No sanctification.
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Owen says, it's not that you just.
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Stop talking negatively about people.
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It's that you create a positive environment where you speak life about people. It's not only that you stop doing bad things, but that you begin to do Christlike things. That sanctification, that needs to be the goal and the vision of our life. You know, in. In Alcoholics Anonymous in aa, there's something really important I think is super helpful for us as we try to not only defeat sin, but become more like Jesus, super practical for those of us.
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Thinking about that sin.
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Or that's two or three sins in our life right now that we just can't defeat and then walk in a.
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Kind of righteousness and holiness.
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It's called halt, H A L T. And what AA basically says is, don't let yourself get hungry, angry, lonely or tired, or you're going to be very vulnerable.
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Halt, halt, hungry, angry, lonely or tired. In Those moments we got to understand ourself and our own weakness.
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We got to walk through life going, if I'm going to become a positive.
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Influence on the world, if I'm going.
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To become righteous and not just not sinful, I gotta examine myself. Augustine talked about this. He talked about know God and know thyself. Calvin talked about it, Aquinas talked about it, the great thinkers throughout history. You got to know God, you got to know yourself. You got to exegete your own, when am I? When do I sin? Is it when I'm tired and angry or lonely or hungry? Well, I got to figure these things out. So I don't actually function like this. This is my vision for you, is this that we be a group of people, a church that doesn't just stop doing things.
Mark Clark [00:23:37]:
Listen, you're not going to get credit for stopping doing stuff that God never expected you to do, right? Hey, God, I didn't murder people. Great. That's the expectation. You did the bare minimum. Congratulations. You didn't do stuff I never expected you to do. That's not how sanctification works. It's when the supernatural pluses happen in our life that we were never expected to do the graces.
Mark Clark [00:24:07]:
Jesus wasn't expected to do miracles when he showed up, but he did it in such a fascinating way that it said, man, this guy's not just going to not sin. He's going to change the world. That's. See, not only did I not do something, I actually did things the way that Jesus would have done, done them. Because Romans 8 says, that's the will of God for our life.
Mark Clark [00:24:27]:
So that's what Luke means when he says, she's filled with the Holy Spirit. She has. She has this new birth, she's walking in sanctification, and has this practical power in her life. Those are the things that are going on, and those are the things I want for you. And then verse 40 to 41 says this. 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. This is crazy.
Mark Clark [00:24:52]:
There's like 23 times in Luke 1 and 2 where the Lord, the Lord means God. So Elizabeth knows what she's saying. She's saying that the Mother of God should come to me, right? Elizabeth is blown away by that, that the. That the Mother of God would come to me. And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her from the Lord. That's what she says. Here's what I love about this. We need to grab a hold of this.
Mark Clark [00:25:16]:
The absolute absence of jealousy that Elizabeth has toward Mary, who's going to accomplish and be way more than she is. Notice she like the way that she functions. See, we have an obsession with comparing ourselves to everybody. And when we compare ourselves to other people or other marriages or other. It's like super difficult to get excited for people because we're jealous of them. We're jealous of their money, we're jealous of their beauty. We're jealous how they look or the job that they have or whatever. And we're probably going.
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They're going to probably accomplish way more in their life than I am. And we compare and we can't celebrate.
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And it spins us out of control.
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And puts us into depression. If they make more money than you, if they're more successful than you. Here we see Elizabeth has such a crucial identity in Jesus.
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She knows who she is, she knows who she isn't.
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She knows what God has called her to do. Specific in her role, her place in the world instead of being Mary's. She's like, I'm so comfortable with my place as the mother of John, the one who's going to actually just set the way up for Jesus. I'm not comparing myself to you. And because of that, I can be happy. Because of that, I can flourish.
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This woman who's advancing in years has been visited by an angel who said.
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This barren woman womb that you tried for years and years and years to have a baby.
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I'm giving you a baby.
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So she's had her own miraculous angel story. She's having a baby. Right. She's been pregnant for age. She's had this baby, but she's like, am I the life of the party?
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No. There's a person who's got a story like mine that's even better. See, I didn't get this baby by being a virgin. I have a husband, he's quiet right now. He's not talking, but that's good. But now there's this woman, she's a virgin. An angel came to her and what uped me. And she's having a baby.
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She never slept with anyone. And by the way, the baby in your womb is going to serve the.
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Baby in my womb.
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That's what Mary just told her.
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Looked her right in the face.
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Your baby's going to serve my baby.
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This is crazy. I was the only one Elizabeth could have gone.
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I was the only one with some.
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Magical story about a baby. And then this one comes in here with a friend, 15 year old virgin baby. And now I don't know what to do. She could have done all that. Compare, compare, compare. But Elizabeth owns her own life.
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I know my limitation. I know I'll never be the mother of God. And I cannot be happier for you because I know who I am.
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Do you know what gets her there in her life? Here's the greatest thing, God. Here's the thing God hates about humankind. And I know it. Because the Bible tells us that he's.
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More jacked up and angry about one sin than any other sin. The sin of pride, yours, mine, the ego inside that makes the world about you.
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See, Proverbs, chapter six says this.
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There are six things that God hates.
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The first one out of the gate, pride.
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Arrogance. He hates it.
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Now here's what we do. We think far too simplistically about all.
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Of this and we go, okay, pride.
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So that we think loud people. That equals arrogance. And quiet people means humble. So I'll be quiet and I'll keep to myself. No, no, that can be false. Because the quietest person in the room.
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Could be the most arrogant person in the room.
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Some of you sitting here right now, you're like, well, I'm not always the center of the story. I'm nice and quiet. I don't. Arrogance is about having a heart that has a disposition that will not allow God or anyone else to shape and.
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Speak and adjust at all.
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You start, you start, you have this swagger in yourself. You begin to act as if you're the center of the story and that's your life and no one can tell you any different. So sometimes the quietest person in the room who doesn't allow that to happen are the least humble.
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It's the quietest person in the room sometimes who's been sick for a year or two, but has never come for prayer. Even though people have the gift of healing and can pray for you. The Bible says if you're sick, go to the elders. They'll anoint you with oil to pray for you. You never come. Why? Because you never have a disposition, humble enough to say, you know what? Maybe I don't know stuff, maybe I need other people. So I'm going to go and be humble and actually get prayed for. There's a million examples of how this plays out in our life.
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Pride affects. Pride affects our calling. We're not able to hear from people what our actual role is in the world. So we begin to think things about ourselves. I see it in people in ministry. All the Time, right? They're not content being an arm or a foot or whatever. They all want a big church, and they all want to be the guy and the preacher. And so I had a guy come to my office recently.
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He's like, I'm a church planter. I'm going to go plant a church. I want it to be just like village, and I'm going to do this crazy stuff. And I'm like, okay, cool. Like, how many times have you preached? And he's like, well, I've preached five times. And I'm like, oh, five times. Okay. So you understand, before I planted village, I had preached every week for five years.
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No, no, no. I don't have any time for that. I just want to jump right to the results. I want to do this thing and see, this is the problem, right? We don't have the ability to go. I have to put in the hard work. I'm going to be humble enough to allow God to move in my life.
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We just want to be the center of attention. We want to be the center of all things.
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And this is kind of the height of arrogance, right? A few people told you you were good at something, and then it goes to your head and you become, you know, whatever in life and ministry, whatever. And you just think, okay, Or American Idol, right? You got your parents around you telling you that you're a good singer. And then you watch American Idol and they're singing songs, and you're like, oh, my gosh, this sounds like a cat is drowning in death and strangulation. Who told these people they could sing? How do they get on that stage?
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Because mommy and Daddy said, oh, my.
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Goodness, Timmy, your voice is the greatest voice I've ever heard in my life.
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And their whole life, no one went, it's terrible. Timmy, you need to stop now. See, few people tell you you're great, and we begin to just walk in it. And here's Elizabeth, and she goes, I know my role in the world.
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See, pride can affect your call.
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It can affect your marriage.
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Some of you are here and your spouse. Many of you are married or going to be.
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Statistically, right, but 96%, 97% of people marry in their life.
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And maybe your wife has said to you, I would like to go to village for marriage counseling or somewhere else for marriage counseling or to see a pastor or to get a mentor in our life. I want to talk to somebody about our stuff. And you as a man, maybe have gone, no, no, no, I don't want to do that. You've Neglected to go with her or vice versa and to serve her in that way. You know what that is? It's pride. It's arrogance. And so here's what Mary One of the scariest verses in the Bible is part of Mary's song.
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So now Mary's about to sing.
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Look at it.
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Look at verse 50.
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He has shown strength with his arm. He has scattered the proud in the.
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Thoughts of their hearts. He has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted them of humble estate. Just picture this big muscle, and he scatters. And if you're a man who refuses.
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To go to marriage counseling with your wife or a wife who refuses to go, God is against you and will scatter you with the strength of his arm. That's what she just said. He's against you because of your pride.
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So what do you do? You humble yourself. Because when you're humble, you're yourself. God stops trying to scatter you, and you receive what Mary goes on to say in verse 54.
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She goes, he has helped to serve in Israel in remembrance of his mercy.
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You know how you get mercy from God? You become humble. There's this great story in the Gospels which rocks us a little bit, where Jesus is walking along, and a woman walks up to Jesus and says to him, hey, can you heal my son? And you know, you know. And she's a Gentile. It's a crazy story. So she's just Gentile, not part of Israel.
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So Jesus says to her, I'm here for the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
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This is in the Gospel of Matthew.
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I will not heal your son because you're a Gentile. And then he says this. And dogs should not eat what's being fed at the master's table. That's Jesus, all right. None of us put that on our fridge, by the way. Jesus talking, you know, dogs aren't supposed to. But she. What are you talking about?
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But then we see why Jesus talked to her like that. She goes, her response is, but don't the dogs get the crumbs from the master's table? And then Jesus goes, I have never seen faith like this in Israel. Your son is healed.
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Why? Because she had to come to a.
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Place where she saw herself. And don't take this the wrong way, because it's all worse. Word pictures where she saw herself as a dog, that that's the prerequisite for healing and to have mercy put upon you by God himself.
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Where she stopped viewing herself as worthy of mercy and viewed herself humbly of poverty, of spirit is the beginning of the Beatitudes. Lowly in spirit. And then Jesus goes, I've never seen faith like. Like this healed mercy. It can mess with your calling. It can mess with your marriage. It can mess with your faith. See, many of us have a faith, and I tend to go toward this faith, which is based on logic.
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Some of you are rational, reasonable, philosophy, science. So what happens is my faith becomes the product of logic, where I begin to believe it because it's true. But the Bible's going, hold on a sec. You should believe it also. Because you need. Not just because it's true. You actually need be like. Meaning you're so humble, you actually need this.
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This isn't just something you poke and prod, like forensically and go, I guess this historically happened. I'll believe it. It's like, if it's true, it's logical, yes, but you needed it to be true because you couldn't be saved without it.
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And you're going, how do I benefit from it? Am I humble enough to realize that I needed it to be true? That's what Mary's talking about. She says in verse 52, he's brought.
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Down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate. Remember that scene at the end of.
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Return of the King in Tolkien's stories where they're all singing at the end of Aragorn, he's this king, and he's.
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Being, you know, coronated as the king of Gondor. And I was like, and the whole kingdom's out, and there's the four little hobbits, and everyone bow. The whole kingdom bows down. But they don't bow down to Aragorn. They bow down in front of the four hobbits. And every time it happens and the music's going and Howard Shore is on the dee dee dee, all this beautiful thing, I'm thinking to myself, man, this is that verse. It's like that. The humble will be exalted and the exalted will be humbled.
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They'll be put down.
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Now, here's the danger.
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Every single one of you right now.
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Is thinking about a person who should be listening to this. That proud, arrogant person who's not humble enough. And I want to say to you dummies, this is about you. It's not about your grandkid. It's not about your neighbor or your friend or your wife or your. It's about that arrogant jerk that needs to hear this. It's not about any of those people. You're going to send them the video later.
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It's not about them.
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It's about you. You're the proud one. All of us are.
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Your heart is hard toward whatever God's.
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Doing in your life, and you need to receive it to receive mercy. And then verse 46 says, Mary said.
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My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior. Here's what is called. Historians have classically called the Magnificat.
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It's called. It's the Latin word for the first word in her song, which is magnifies. In Latin, in the Screwtape letters. There's this uncle demon, and he's writing to this younger demon who. Who's been assigned to this new Christian, and he's wanting to destroy him. And the uncle demon writes to the younger demon, he says this.
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In heaven, all that is not music is silence.
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Now think about that. For that comes from these images in the Bible where there's these pictures of heaven and there's always these songs being sung about the Lamb who was slain.
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Holy, holy, holy. And of course, it's symbolic.
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It's not that eternity is going to be literally singing. It's like everything in the book of Revelation. It's a symbol of being overwhelmed with joy and happiness and worship and contentment.
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And I love this quote because it.
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Feels so applicable to our modern world.
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The quote comes from a section in the novel later where Screwtape is explaining.
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To his nephew the importance of filling the world with noise. And he says it to his nephew to say, music is the thing that gets through. That's why Mary's singing. It's the importance of filling the world. The world's just so filled with noise, meaningless noise. But there's another kind of noise we can make.
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See, noise is everywhere these days. It's found in the honking of horns and the squealing of tires, the buzz of meaningless conversation, the endless binging of Netflix shows and the hours we spend on Facebook and scrolling Instagram or whatever. See, noise doesn't have to be merely auditory. In this context, noise is whatever distracts.
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Us from the most important things in life and draws us away from God. And yet we sing in the face of it, to make noise that matters. To make noise that changes our very construction of our wants, of our affections, of our desires, of the things we take pleasure in. So she sings, okay, let me. Let me end this way. Verse 38 said this thing, and I mentioned this at the beginning, and I don't want to pass over it, because I think it's so crucial. It says, and the angel departed from her. And we might just kind of go, okay, but here's the thing.
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I bet for you this week might have been a heavy week, right? This week's been a heavy week for me. I mean, I've had weeks in my life that have been very heavy. The woman I mentioned earlier who was on the phone, she was in palliative care for a while. She'd been married, she had kids. She had been through divorces, abuses, pain. She got a diagnosis. She went through mental challenges. All the kinds of things that life throws at us.
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These are dark days. These are days where we don't know what the next rule is going to be.
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We don't know why these relationships are spinning out of control.
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We don't know the diagnosis for our own self. We don't know where our kids are going and where money is going.
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You know, all these things that come.
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Up in our life. We live in a dark, messed up world that's full of ugliness and sin and awfulness. And the secular version of reality will tell you, yeah, we live in that world. We live in a world of cancer.
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And an awful world, but that's life. And there's nothing but dark and cold.
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To look forward to. And that verse, in one fell swoop just blew all that away. It said, guys, there are angels. What? The angel departed that.
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This veil that's been pulled over your eyes, once in a while it gets pulled back and the Bible goes, things.
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Are not as they seem, guys. There is a God, there are angels.
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There'S a place, a spiritual realm, there's a heaven. And that changes everything. That's the magic, that's the supernatural peace that your experience and circumstances won't reveal to you. And it brings into context then how you suffer, how you face the ugliness and the mess and the pain. Because it might not be you right now in the hospital alone, trying to figure out whether this is the last month you're going to be alive. But listen to me, one day it will be.
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And so I reflect on this. The angel departs from her by asking you, I want to. I want to read to you a little quick thing. And you can close your eyes if you want to close your eyes if you're watching this. Tim Keller, on his book on suffering, tells a story about Joni Eareckson Tada. She's a Christian who definitely knows the path of suffering. As a teenager, she was injured in a diving accident that left her as A quadriplegic. So she's written extensively on the nature of suffering and its relationship to our spiritual lives.
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And in one of her books, she tells the story of a young man, a young woman named Denise Walters.
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And when Joni Eareckson Tada was admitted.
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To hospital after her diving accident, one of the other patients in the ward was Denise.
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Denise.
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And she was an active teenager before rapid progressive multiple sclerosis took away her ability to move, to see and to even talk.
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And for eight years she laid in her bed and her mother was her only visitor.
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And Denise and her mom were Christians.
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And every night her mom would come to read the Bible and pray with her.
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And then one day, Denise died. Denise Walters life was deeply troubled. And Joni Eareckson Tada said, I, in.
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My suffering, even though I was a quadriplegic, could still communicate with those around me, right? And so my faith kind of went out to the world and had like a purpose. Like people would come to me and I'd say, oh, don't worry, I still treasure. But this girl in all of her mess, couldn't even like, what value is there in Denise's suffering? She was a person who loved Jesus, never complained, but whose suffering seemed entirely pointless. Nobody saw her. No one ever came to visit her. No one said, I want the kind of life to you, you know, how do I get it?
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Her suffering seemed for nothing.
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And when Denise died, Tada shared her.
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Struggle to come to grips with uselessness and suffering with her friends. And one of them, as they're sitting around her bed, turned in the bible to Luke 15 verse, verse 10, where it talks about the angels in heaven rejoicing over one sinner who repents.
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And then a friend turn to Ephesians.
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Chapter 3, verse 10, where it says that the mighty beings in the heavenly.
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Realms are watching what happens in the church.
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And they said Denise suffered in the presence of a council of angels, not alone, where no one could see. And then Tata blurted out, I get it. So her life wasn't a waste. Someone was watching her in that lonely hospital room, a great many someones. That was her ministry. See, everything you do is done in front of billions of beings, and God sees it too.
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And as Tatta wrote about her friend.
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Denise, angels and demons stood amazed as they watched her uncomplaining and patient spirit rising as a sweet smelling savor to her God. Angels exist, guys. The magic, the supernatural, the natural is not all that is. God himself is living, active, moving, loving, saving. It's why he came and entered the story as a person. That's what Christmas is. In order to save the humble, the ones humble enough to say, this ain't just a story, this needs to be my reality now. Jesus came to save me.
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Not just something 2000 years ago where now we just come around and do traditions. This is earth shattering at every level. I pray, oh God, in this moment, that we'd have the kind of humility that Mary sings about in this song. The kind of humility that saves because we look to you. And that in that humility, that, as the song says, we will one day then be exalted, that all the pain and the suffering and the stuff we face in this life will be reversed. There'll be no more tears, there'll be no more pain, there'll be no more tragedy or shame. Only goodness and delight in you. What a picture.
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Christmas gives us of a little moment that kind of crept. Crept up through the concrete and gave us a flash of what that reality will be. And we see the beauty of it. And as Augustine talked about, we see the beauty and we pine for God. I pray that's true as we look into the face of Jesus this time of year. And that those who don't know you would let their guard down and humbly submit themselves to you. In your name we pray. Amen.