Advent — Joy · Luke 1:39–49
The sermon text. A pregnant teenager travels to a pregnant old woman, and the first person to recognize Jesus is a baby who has not been born yet.
Who rejoices first in this passage, and what had he been told beforehand? The answer is stranger than you expect.
Hannah's song, sung a thousand years earlier by another woman nobody expected God to use. Mary clearly knew it by heart.
Lay Hannah's song beside Mary's. What lines repeat, and what does that tell you about how Mary learned to pray?
He will rejoice over you with singing. Read that again slowly. The joy in this verse is God's, not ours.
Who is rejoicing in verse 17? Read it twice if you got it wrong the first time.
He raises the poor from the dust and settles the childless woman as a joyful mother. Both women in Monday's reading are standing in this psalm.
Which verse describes Elizabeth, and which describes Mary?
Mary calls God her Savior before anything visibly changes. Paul writes rejoice always from a jail cell. Neither one is describing a mood.
Rejoice out loud today, in actual words, where somebody can hear you.
What are the Marks and the 3 Circles?
The Marks of a Disciple
Each week names one of these — the practices we are cultivating in each other.
- Daily Devotion
- Time with God every day, in the Bible and in prayer.
- Prayer
- Not only a set appointment, but a life of prayer at any hour, for anything.
- Generosity
- Giving your effort and your resources to this church and to God’s kingdom.
- Service
- Giving your time and talent to the church and its mission in the community.
- Witness
- Seeking people far from God and telling them about Jesus and about your own finding of him.
- Worship
- Weekly praise together, and a life presented daily to God’s service.
- Spiritual Disciplines
- Fasting, solitude, study, sabbath — the old practices of the faith.
The 3 Circles
How we tell someone about Jesus — simple enough to draw on a napkin. Each week names the part of it that week’s reading sits in.
- God’s Design
- The world and your life as God made them to be.
- Sin
- The arrow out. We each go our own way instead.
- Brokenness
- Where that leaves us. Ecclesiastes spends most of twelve chapters here.
- Repent & Believe
- Turning from our own way and trusting what Jesus did.
- Gospel
- Jesus lived the life we could not and died the death we deserved.
- Recover & Pursue
- The way back toward the life God designed.