Sermon Tone Analysis
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By Pastor Glenn Pease
Approaching the Christmas season in 1972, Fred Putman decided to have a evening in front of a cozy fire.
He used two boxes of matches, one pint of started fluid, and the Sunday addition of the New York Times, and still could not get the fireplace burning.
Bent on romance by fire-light, he decided to drive to the Hideaway Lodge in the nearby mountains.
As they approached this fireplace equipped paradise, he through his lit cigarette out the car window and started a forest fire.
It devastated 382 acres of timber, and burned the Hideaway Lodge to cinders.
Thus he demonstrated one of the finer points of Murphy's Law, which is, if several things can go wrong the one that will go wrong is the one that will do the most damage.
I am sure that Joseph and Mary felt their lives were being controlled at times by Murphy's Law.
They had a series of things go wrong and it seemed like there was no end to their bad luck.
First of all, Mary was pregnant out of wedlock.
Today this is still high on the stress list, but back then it was high on the death list.
You could be stoned for this back then.
The Angel of the Lord helped them get through this crisis, but then they got hit with government red tape and had to go to Bethlehem just as Mary was due to deliver her child.
But this was not the last straw.
When they got there the town was so crowded there was no room in the inn.
Joseph didn't burn it down, but the end result was the same.
They had no place to stay, and were forced to camp out with the animals in a stable.
Life had dealt them with one major inconvenience after another, and they must have wondered if God had made another deal with Satan, like the one he made concerning Job.
They must have felt like they were on Lucifer lane.
This would be an especially tempting conclusion when they heard Herod was out to kill their baby, and they had to flee to Egypt to save him.
When the Savior of the world has to be saved, and his parents have to be uprooted and live like exiled criminals, then you begin to see what Murphy's Law is all about.
It is about a fallen world where nothing is guaranteed to go smooth.
Even the plan of God to save the world has to work it's way through the maze where Murphy's Law can strike at any time.
If you long for a trouble free life, you are in the wrong world-that is the next time around with a new heaven and a new earth.
But the only way to get to that one is to get through this one.
Even God's own Son could not escape the reality of a fallen world.
The point is, nobody is picking on you when-
1.
Your leak proof seals leak.
2.
You need tools to get a child proof cap off your medicine bottle.
3. The day after your warranty runs out, your appliance ceases to work.
4. The tool you drop while working on your car rolls under the car to the exact center.
5.
The repairman will never have seen a model quite like yours before.
6.
If you keep something because you may need it, you never need it.
7. If you throw it away you will soon need it.
8.
Your best made Christmas plans can fall apart and your dream gift become a nightmare.
The bright and shiny and fully assembled toy you see on display in the store is an illusion.
What you actually buy is a box of parts, some of which are already pre-broken.
Tom Mullen, in his book Birthdays, Holidays And Other Disasters, gives us one man's perspective on Christmas toys-
The box will come equipped with a complete set of direc-
tions so simple that any Ph.D. from the Massachusetts In-
stitute of Technology could follow them in a year-if he had
a crew of men to help and a psychiatrist standing by.
In short, for those gifted few who, as the saying goes, are
"handy about the house," putting things together under
the pressure of Christmas expectation is less than a
traumatic experience.
To many of us, however, who cannot
hang pictures straight or dismantle an electric razor for
cleaning,the entire situation breeds inferiority feelings
that make Charlie Brown seem like an egomaniac.
Thus, our children feel neglected because they have a
wagon which has one wheel that refuses to turn.
We broil
our hamburgers on a grill so wobbly that burning coals roll
from side to side.
Our sons end up playing with dolls
because the jungle gym we purchased is lopsided,
undoubtedly due to the fact that we used a hammer to pound
the "short uprights" over the "long uprights" when,
according to the directions, one was to "slip easily over
the other"!
He goes on to deal with batteries not included, toys that won't work, stores that are closed and other tales of woe that are nearly endless.
The measure of misery around a Merry Christmas because of things that go wrong is vast.
The more complex our world gets the more things there are to go wrong.
The complexity of Christmas is the result of the complexity of life.
It is not just Christmas, but all of life that is complex.
Joseph and Mary had a lot of complexity surrounding the birth of Jesus.
They had to flee to Egypt for several years.
How they paid their taxes is beyond me.
How they left a forwarding address which Herod could not trace is beyond me.
Maybe they didn't pay their taxes and had an awful debt when they returned.
Nobody knows about the hardships and burdens they carried.
All we know for sure is life was hard for them.
They were exiled and away from all their family and friends.
The first birthday of Jesus was in Egypt with none of their family to celebrate with them.
They were not at home for Christmas which has become a major objective in our culture.
One of the secular songs popular at this season says,
Oh, there's no place like home for the holidays,
For no matter how far away you roam,
If you want to be happy in a million ways,
For the holidays you can't beat home sweet home.
The paradox is that the birth of the one who made this universal family tradition so precious was born away from home, and His birth forced His parents to be away from home for several years.
We often see the first Christmas though rose colored glasses tinted by centuries of tradition.
But the plain facts are that Mary and Joseph had a very difficult time with all the events surrounding that first Christmas.
The goal of all this complexity is to make it possible for all men to get home to God where they can dwell forever in the Father's house.
But meanwhile, to get to that end, everyone involved had to leave home.
1. Jesus had to leave His Father's throne and kingly crown.
He did not get back home for 33 years.
2. Joseph and Mary left Nazareth and did not get back for several years.
3. The wise men left home in response to the star and did not get back for many months.
Their was complexity in many lives that first Christmas, but lets focus in on that which Mary had to endure.
First lets just note-
I. HER COMPLEXITY
When the angel Gabriel came to her it says in verse 29 that she was greatly troubled.
This is the only place this Greek word is used in the New Testament.
It means to trouble thoroughly.
Many people are troubled, but only Mary is said to be troubled from her head to her toes.
The angel responded to her by telling her not to be afraid for she had found favor with God.
He knew she would be afraid, and needed assurance that he was there with good news.
When he told her she was to have a child she was confused and asked how it was possible since she was a virgin.
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