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May 14, 2023

The Wonder Years

The Wonder Years

Speaker: Patrick Lafferty

Series: That’s the Spirit: Learning to keep in step with Him who indwells

Keywords: father, holy spirit, favor, son, house

You can learn a lot about a person in how they treat someone else. You can learn about what it means to relate to the Holy Spirit from how the Spirit participates in the life of Jesus and His mother. What do we learn about the Spirit here? Why does it matter?

Readings & Scripture

PREPARATION: Psalm 139:7-16
LEADER: Where shall I go from your Spirit?
Or where shall I flee from your presence?
If I ascend to heaven, you are there!
If I make my bed in Sheol, you are there!

PEOPLE: If I take the wings of the morning
and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
even there your hand shall lead me,
and your right hand shall hold me.

LEADER: If I say, “Surely the darkness shall cover me,
and the light about me be night,”
even the darkness is not dark to you;
the night is bright as the day,
for darkness is as light with you.

PEOPLE: For you formed my inward parts;
you knitted me together in my mother’s womb.
I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your works;
my soul knows it very well.

LEADER: My frame was not hidden from you,
when I was being made in secret,
intricately woven in the depths of the earth.

ALL: Your eyes saw my unformed substance;
in your book were written, every one of them,
the days that were formed for me,
when as yet there was none of them.

AFFIRMATION OF FAITH/SCRIPTURE READING/CORPORATE PRAYER: John 1:1-5, 9-13
LEADER: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. 4 In him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. . . .9 The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him. 12 But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

CENTRAL TEXT: Luke 1:26-38, 2:40-52
Luke 1:26 In the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth, 27 to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph, of the house of David. And the virgin’s name was Mary. 28 And he came to her and said, “Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you!” 29 But she was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be. 30 And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. 31 And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, 33 and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”

Luke 1:34 And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”

Luke 1:35 And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God. 36 And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. 37 For nothing will be impossible with God.” 38 And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.

Luke 1:39 In those days Mary arose and went with haste into the hill country, to a town in Judah, 40 and she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth.

Luke 2:40 And the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom. And the favor of God was upon him.

Luke 2:41 Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. 42 And when he was twelve years old, they went up according to custom. 43 And when the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents did not know it, 44 but supposing him to be in the group they went a day’s journey, but then they began to search for him among their relatives and acquaintances, 45 and when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem, searching for him. 46 After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. 47 And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. 48 And when his parents saw him, they were astonished. And his mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.” 49 And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” 50 And they did not understand the saying that he spoke to them. 51 And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them. And his mother treasured up all these things in her heart.

Luke 2:52 And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.

BENEDICTION: Jude 20, 21
LEADER: But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.

RELATED SCRIPTURES:
Genesis 6:8; 18:3; 43:14; 2 Samuel 15:25
Daniel. 2:44; 7:14, 18, 27; Hebrews 1:8
Exodus 40:34-35; Psalm 91:4

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

  1. Did you have a chance to know your spouse’s relationship with their mother before you married? If so, what insight into them did it offer?
  2. To refresh your memory from the sermon: in what way did the Spirit act in the life of Mary? Though it’s more implicit, how so the same in the unique passage of an account from Jesus’s earlier days?
  3. [Trivia question: Why do many of our Muslim friends find this passage in Luke 1 blasphemous? And therefore cause for Christian friends in those contexts to sort through both biblical and contextual issues?)
  4. Both Mary and Jesus both exhibit a willing submission to their moment and station in our text–both out of a growing sense of God’s grace and favor. What’s the next right thing you need to do as an act of obedience with the help of the Spirit on the basis of His grace and favor? (Would you be willing to share?)

ILLUSTRATIONS:

QUOTES: 

  • Be half a Christian and you shall have enough religion to make you miserable. Charles Spurgeon
  • They say they want the kingdom–but they don’t want God in it. Johnny Cash, “The Wanderer”
  • I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. C.S. Lewis
  • As one of the consequences of the death of God, Friedrich Nietzsche foresaw that people could find themselves stuck in cycles of Christian theology with no way out. Specifically that people would inherit the concepts of guilt, sin and shame but would be without the means of redemption which the Christian religion also offered. Today we do seem to live in a world . . .where guilt and shame are more at hand than ever, and where we have no means whatsoever of redemption. Douglas Murray, The Madness of Crowds (cited in Glen Scrivener’s The Air We Breathe)

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