Joy in the Unexpected: Elizabeth

November 29, 2020

Advent: A Joyful Hope

“Elizabeth’s Joy: Found in the Unexpected”

Text: Luke 1

Focus: Elizabeth is surprised 3 times (pregnancy, baby leaps in womb, Mary’s prominence) and in each case, she finds joy in the unexpected.

Hello friends, my name is Wally and I am part of the pastoral leadership team here at Jericho Ridge Community Church.

• And as Pastor Jenna mentioned, I have the privilege of kicking off our Advent sermon series called, A Joyful Hope.
• Yes, there are 4 main themes in Advent: Hope, Peace, Love and Joy … but as part of a 4-season series, this year we are doing a deeper dive into the particular theme of Joy.
• In the 4 weeks of Advent and on Christmas Eve, we will be looking at 5 people and their unique experiences of joy as they took part in the story surrounding Jesus’ birth.
• So let’s begin our time and our series in prayer. Please pray with me…

Friends, God is full of surprises! In fact, God does much of his best work in the unexpected.

• When we call for something fast and external, God often delivers slow and internal.
• When we look for him at the front door, He enters through the back door.
• When we think he’s going to jump into action, He holds back, sometimes excruciatingly so.
• And about the time we lose our joy and start to give up hope, He appears with life in his hands.

God has a history of pulling off surprises… just think about the Old Testament.

• The Red Sea was a dead end for the Israelites … then surprise; God parts the waters.
• The walls of Jericho were an ominous obstacle for Joshua and his army … but surprise; one shout and the walls crumble.
• Goliath towered over an entire Israelite army, let alone a scrawny sheepherder named David … but surprise; a rock and a sling and young David stood victoriously over the giant.

When circumstances count God out, history tells us that God can never be counted out of any situation.

• In fact, the Bible says in Matthew 19:26 that with God all things are possible.
• God is omnipotent, infinite, unrestricted and self-sufficient.
• Those attributes boggle our minds because we are the opposite: we are impotent, finite, limited, needy.
• Unlike us, God feels no hopelessness, faces no barriers, knows no limits, and entertains no fears.
• Our impossible, does not stump God.

Consider a woman in the 1^st century named Elizabeth, the wife of Zechariah, the mother of John the Baptist, the relative of Jesus’ mother, Mary.

• God unveiled his surprise for Elizabeth at a momentous time in history - Jesus, the Son of God, the Messiah was breaking into human history as a baby.
• The story of Jesus’ birth in the New Testament is in itself the most incredible, unexpected surprise.
• As Pastor Jenna mentioned in her Advent piece, God had been silent for 400 years between the Old Testament and the New.
• And then, without the pomp and circumstance that the Israelites were expecting and waiting for, God slips into the world and selects several unexpected people to play significant roles in his plan.
• Nestled in this dramatic time in history is Elizabeth, the aging wife of a priest.

In the Bible, Luke 1:5-6, Luke the author says this about Elizabeth & Zechariah’s character,

• • Zechariah was a member of the priestly order of Abijah, and his wife, Elizabeth, was also from the priestly line of Aaron. ⁶ Zechariah and Elizabeth were righteous in God’s eyes, careful to obey all of the Lord’s commandments and regulations. 
• And yet, this Godly couple,
  • ⁷ had no children because Elizabeth was unable to conceive, and they were both very old.

No little joyful giggles or innocent smiles filled their home.

• No parental pride swelled their hearts with joy.
• Their joy was stained and hope was long diminished by decades of infertility.
• Barrenness is how Elizabeth is immediately described by her contemporaries … they were obedient and they were childless.
• On top of the confusion of being obedient and not being rewarded with their heart’s desire…
• On top of the sadness, emptiness, that any involuntary childless couple can understand today … Elizabeth bore the social and religious stigma attached to infertility in those days.
• Jewish Rabbis in the 1^st century said that seven types of people were cut off from God, and the list began with, “A Jew who has no wife, or a Jew who has a wife but who has no child.”
• Consequently, childlessness in the Jewish 1^st century was valid grounds for divorce… for tossing aside a woman and replacing her with another.
• So shadowing Elizabeth’s personal sorrow and pain, was the communal bleakness of shame that was endured over a lifetime … well into her old age.

Who could ever expect that this aging, heartbroken and shamed woman was even on God’s immediate radar, let alone about to play a part in His plan to redeem humanity?

• But SURPRISE!
• One day, Elizabeth’s husband is performing his annual priestly duties in the temple, as we read in Luke 1,
  • ¹¹Gabriel, an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing to the right of the incense altar. ¹² Zechariah was shaken and overwhelmed with fear when he saw him. ¹³ But the angel said, “Don’t be afraid, Zechariah! God has heard your prayer. Your wife, Elizabeth, will give you a son, and you are to name him John. ¹⁴ You will have great joy and gladness, and many will rejoice at his birth, ¹⁵ for he will be great in the eyes of the Lord. He must never touch wine or other alcoholic drinks. He will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even before his birth. ¹⁶ And he will turn many Israelites to the Lord their God. ¹⁷ He will be a man with the spirit and power of Elijah. He will prepare the people for the coming of the Lord.
• Skipping to vs. 23,

²³ When Zechariah’s week of service in the Temple was over, he returned home. ²⁴ Soon afterward, his wife, Elizabeth, became pregnant and went into seclusion for five months. ²⁵ “How kind the Lord is!” she exclaimed. “He has taken away my disgrace of having no children.”

 

We next encounter Elizabeth, 6 months into her pregnancy, when her relative, Mary, unexpectedly shows up at her door, pregnant with the divine baby Jesus, the Messiah.

• After Mary was visited by Gabriel, the same angel that visited Zechariah, she conceives as a virgin by the Holy Spirit, and we read in Luke 1:39,

³⁹ A few days later Mary hurried to the hill country of Judea, to the town ⁴⁰ where Zechariah lived. She entered the house and greeted Elizabeth. ⁴¹ At the sound of Mary’s greeting, Elizabeth’s child leaped within her, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.

⁴² Elizabeth gave a glad cry and exclaimed to Mary, “God has blessed you above all women, and your child is blessed. ⁴³ Why am I so honored, that the mother of my Lord should visit me? ⁴⁴ When I heard your greeting, the baby in my womb jumped for joy. ⁴⁵ You are blessed because you believed that the Lord would do what he said.”

 

 What incredible joy in the completely unexpected!

• Three times, we see Elizabeth discover joy in the unexpected surprises of this story.

 

First, Elizabeth is surprised by her own unexpected pregnancy!

• Imagine her daily life.
• Her husband is off doing his week of annual priestly duties and when he returns, he can’t speak.
• Obviously, something intense has happened while he was at the Temple and in God’s presence.
• The assumption from Elizabeth’s perspective may have been that whatever happened, if her husband couldn’t speak, it was probably not good … that this was some sort of punishment for something he did wrong.
• So the two of them communicate without speech and Elizabeth hears the words that Zechariah heard from the Angel,

13 God has heard your prayer. Elizabeth, will give birth to a son, and you are to name him John. 

• What? How is that possible?

 

Friends, we live in a time where we assume that we can plan these types of events down to the month.

• But if our personal plans don’t naturally succeed, we then have access to medical science/doctors to assist our plans.
• Trust me, as someone who has gone through the joy-draining realities of infertility, you do everything in your power to plan and accomplish the goal of having children.
• You re-orient your daily routine; you research; you make appointments; you redirect your finances; and ultimately, you wait for test result after test result.
• Everything eventually comes down to a schedule of science.
• And when that doesn’t work and the doctors say it’s not worth spending more resources and money on, you pray harder for a miracle and you continue to wait.
• And eventually time empties your joy reserves and removes the hope of anything biological being possible.

 

Elizabeth was well down that joyless timeline of hopelessness when Zechariah arrived home with unexpected news.

• Imagine the range, the flood, the rollercoaster of emotions.
• “Hurry, let’s go to bed and see if what God said is true?”
• “Wait; let’s not go to bed … what if God didn’t say that, what if you heard wrong, what if…, what if…”
• “But if it is true, how do we care for an infant and raise a child in our old age?”
• Elizabeth’s head must have been spinning with thoughts of, “This is all so fast and unexpected … what do we do?”

 

Luke 1:24 tells us,

²⁴ Soon afterward … Elizabeth, became pregnant and went into seclusion for five months. 

• But before she goes, joy erupts and Elizabeth let’s everyone know!

²⁵ “How kind the Lord is!” she exclaimed. “He has taken away my disgrace of having no children.”

• Elizabeth receives the surprise from God and rejoices in the unexpected!
• Elizabeth’s joy is so deep that the Scriptures say she yelled it out … she couldn’t contain herself any more.
• Decades of shame, guilt, insecurity, questioning … all of it evaporating.
• Her joy was being reconstructed to the point where she couldn’t contain it.
• To the point that when it came time to write his Gospel, Luke, the author, had heard her words loud and clear and needed to record them for generations to hear.
• “How kind the Lord is! He has taken away my disgrace.”

 

For decades, society had shamed Elizabeth and deemed her as someone who should be tossed aside.

• But now, she is shouting out to everyone that God had shown up in a way that none of them would have unexpected!
• This was Elizabeth’s personal moment of joy and it was going to go viral!
• God showed up and delivered in the impossible!
• I’m sure that in her mind, she replayed a personalized version of the Angel’s words to Zechariah in Luke 1:14-17,

You Elizabeth are carrying a son, and you will call him John. You will have great joy and gladness, and many will rejoice. John will be great in the eyes of the Lord, and he will be filled with the Holy Spirit, even before his birth. And he will turn many to the Lord their God. He will prepare the people for the coming Saviour.”

• Elizabeth is shouting to anyone who will listen, “It’s happening, it’s really happening! Completely unexpected, God is on the move and I am a part of his plan!”
• Wow, that joy in the unexpected must have carried her during her 5 months of seclusion.

 

Then, in Elizabeth’s 6^th month, she gets an unexpected knock at the door.

• Mary, a young relative, drops in unannounced … a complete surprise.
• How impolite and inconvenient by today’s standards.
  • We don’t just show up without calling first!
  • We live in a life of planning and individual space.
  • We want to know well in advance who is coming over.
  • We know whom we’ve invited for dinner… let alone to stay for a few days.
  • If someone is staying with us, we expect a phone call to plan it out, an email reminder a few days in advance, and a text when the person is 30 minutes away.
• Not so in Elizabeth and Mary’s world.
• People just showed up, often dusty and dirty after long journeys on foot.
• Knock, knock … surprise!

³⁹ A few days later Mary hurried to the hill country of Judea, to the town ⁴⁰ where Zechariah lived. She entered the house and greeted Elizabeth. ⁴¹ At the sound of Mary’s greeting, Elizabeth’s child leaped within her, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.

 

This was not an inconvenient surprise visit for Elizabeth.

• Yes, it was unexpected, but look at the joy it produced in Elizabeth.
• Her baby, John, the one who would prepare the way for Jesus, the Messiah, leapt within her.
  • Now I am no expert on babies in the womb, but even I can Google what takes place at 6 months and from everything I read, it’s still pretty low-key in the womb at that time:
  • The baby is starting to focus on sounds outside the womb, like parent’s voices.
  • And this is the time that the baby starts to kick, punch and roll…
• But nowhere in my reading did it talk about movement like “leaping” within the womb?
• From what I can gather, that would have been an extreme experience for Elizabeth … an attention getter!
• God was mediating joy and excitement to her unborn child.

 

And then vs. 41 carries on with another extreme movement within Elizabeth, “And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit.”

• Two unexpected and extreme experiences in the matter of a second.
• Was Elizabeth concerned? Nervous? Frightened?
• Was she thinking that something was wrong with her, that something was going wrong with her pregnancy?
• 42 says,

“Elizabeth gave a glad cry … a glad shout of, “Wow!”

 

Friends, remember that at that time, the filling of the Holy Spirit was still a relatively rare experience for Jews.

• The Holy Spirit was not given en-masse to God’s people until some 30 years later, after Jesus’ death, resurrection and his ascension back into heaven.
• John leaping in her womb and the Holy Spirit filling Elizabeth could have easily rattled her, but she doesn’t miss a beat in the unexpected.
• Again, she receives what God has for her and discovers incredible joy in it.

 

And that joy flows into the next unexpected scene, as Elizabeth transfers her joy to young Mary.

• Mary, this relative of Elizabeth’s, is so much younger.
• So young that she’s not even married yet.
• And in a hierarchical society where Elizabeth had practically no status, Mary would have been subservient even to Elizabeth simply by her age and her status as a single teen.
• If Elizabeth, who came from a priestly line and was married to a priest was deemed an outcast, imagine Mary’s status in her society:
  • Young, which meant very little worth.
  • Female, which meant even less worth.
  • And pregnant before marriage, which was a death sentence by stoning!
• Mary was not only a nobody; she was marked for death in that society.
• This was not someone that Elizabeth, the wife of a priest, should be associating with, especially when she had been told by an Angel that her baby was going to play such an important role God’s plans.

 

So how does Elizabeth respond to Mary?

• With a joyful blessing!
• No judgment, no shame, no competition that all of a sudden her miracle pregnancy/baby is being overshadowed by Mary’s miracle baby…
• No self-pity that Mary gets to be pregnant at such a young age, while Elizabeth had to wait for decades…
• No bitterness that Mary has been chosen to carry Jesus, God himself, the Messiah … the one whom Elizabeth’s son will serve.

 

• Elizabeth doesn’t manifest a selfish thought what so ever.
• You would think that a normal first reaction when Mary shows up at the door would be, “Oh Mary, so good to see you. You must have heard about my pregnancy and come to celebrate with me because God has been so good to me!”
• “What? You’re pregnant too? Already, so young? And with a baby that’s even more important than mine!? Hmmm, I’m not so sure I want you staying at my house. Perhaps you should go home.”
• There was none of that!
• Luke 1:42,

⁴² Elizabeth gave a glad cry and exclaimed to Mary, “God has blessed you above all women, and your child is blessed. ⁴³ Why am I so honored, that the mother of my Lord should visit me? ⁴⁴ When I heard your greeting, the baby in my womb jumped for joy. ⁴⁵ You are blessed because you believed that the Lord would do what he said.”

 

The joy of Elizabeth completely overshadows young Mary’s unexpected pregnancy.

• Elizabeth oozes joy and transfers it to a young, inexperienced Mary by speaking blessing over her… so much so that Mary responds with a song of praise that is central to the Christmas story 2000 years later.
• The entire scene was fraught with potential uncertainty and angst because of its surprising, unexpected nature.
• And yet the entire scene between these two women is one of complete joy.
• First Elizabeth and then Mary, find their joy in God who is sending into the world - Jesus, the Messiah.

 

God interrupted, surprised both women with the unexpected!

• In Elizabeth, we see a mature and godly woman whose years of disappointment actually deepened her faith rather than destroyed it.
• Elizabeth maintained a walk with God even though the joy of her heart’s desire was gone from decades of disappointment and unanswered prayer.
• Nevertheless, she was ready for God when he unexpectedly chose to break into her life.
• And her maturity was displayed in her relationship with Mary, her much younger relative.
• When God revealed to Elizabeth the role for which Mary had been chosen, Elizabeth overwhelmingly rejoiced with her, humbled at the privilege of being visited by the mother of the One who would be her Saviour and Lord.
• Elizabeth’s pregnancy, the internal experiences of her baby leaping and her being filled with the Holy Spirit, the joy of Mary’s visit as she carried Jesus…
• Each scenario so surprisingly unexpected and in each, a response of utter joy in what God was doing!
  • All of it signaling the coming of Jesus, the Messiah!

 

Friends, Advent is the time of the year where we enter into the story of the coming of Jesus, the Messiah.

• First, we remember his unexpected coming in the Biblical story, which includes the story of Elizabeth.
  • Elizabeth had so many reasons not to be joyful: barrenness, a mute husband, disgrace, judgment…
  • And yet she finds joy in the promise of God and the coming of Jesus.
• And second, in Advent we look ahead to his unexpected return someday soon as described in the Book of Revelation.
  • Joy is found in the promise that God is still active, that God is for us and with us, and he will fulfill his purposes/plans to send Jesus back as King of Kings.

 

So what will our posture be this Advent as we remember and wait?

• Where will we find our joy this Advent?
  • Friends, our joy comes in realizing that God also calls us to be part of this incredible story as it’s unfolding today.
  • Jesus was and will be sent again to this earth.
  • Our joy is found in accepting the first arrival of Jesus as the Messiah.
  • Our joy is found in our waiting of Jesus’ return as our King.
  • And our joy is found now, in between those two events … in the unexpected places where God is showing up and continuing to unfold his plan of salvation.
  • A plan that always revolves around Jesus, the One who alone is the Messiah, our Savior, our King.

 

If you have lost your joy … or perhaps you’ve never realized that true joy…

• This Advent season, I invite you to find it in Jesus.
• You might expect to find it in family, in decorations and gifts, in food, maybe even in a vaccine…
• But joy is found in the unexpected: God in the form of a baby living to die for you; dying to be resurrected for you.
• It’s so surprising, so unexpected that it’s actually brilliant!
• Holy God entering into our sinful lives, entering into our brokenness and offering us forgiveness and salvation through his Son, Jesus.
• Offering us His presence, so that we could respond similarly to Elizabeth, “Why am I so honored, that my Lord should visit me?”

 

What joy, what incredible joy we find when we realize that Jesus has come to visit me/you.

• That the King of Glory is asking to come and stay with us.
• In a moment, we are going to sing about this with Jared and the worship team.
• As we do, I encourage you to receive your joy in Jesus.
• Whether that’s a renewed joy or something you want to experience the first time, a simple prayer is all it takes:

“God, I didn’t necessarily expect that you would slip into my life like this this morning. But here you are and here I am, and I want to experience the joy of Jesus Christ in my life. Jesus, I welcome you into my life as my Saviour, as my Lord. Would you forgive my sins, heal my brokenness, and fill me with your joy. Amen.

 

Friends, just as Elizabeth did, let’s sing with joy about Jesus!

• And if you are watching via our livestream on Church online, you can click the prayer button right now and one of our pastors is available to pray with you as we worship Jesus together.

 

Sending/Benediction

And now, I send you with a Benediction from Psalm 9:1-2,

I will praise you, Lord, with all my heart; I will tell of all the marvelous things you have done.

And now, pay special attention to where to where our joy comes from …

² I will be filled with joy because of you, Lord. I will sing praises to your name, O Most High.

Friends, may you receive the joy of the Lord this Advent.