Sermon Tone Analysis

Peace

When you hear the words peace, what comes to mind?

Does the Christmas season come to mind?

This past week has been really busy, rushing from one event to another, attending job parties, church socials, family functions and we can’t forget the plans and preparations for the season.

Are you at peace or is your anxiety level at an all time high?

If you have a pencil handy I want you to take out a paper, you phone or just keep it in your head.

Write down a number from 1 being low to 10 being high.

What is your current level of peace?

Pause

Do you have a number?

Did you write it down?

Be honest, did you peak at your neighbors number to see how you measure up?

If this was a smaller group, I would ask you to move with the higher number people move to the front and the lower number at the back in case you need to run out.

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Don’t worry, stay right where you are.

What drives our peace?

What give you peace.

I went to the authority on Peace, you guessed it Wikipedia

Peace is a concept of societal friendship and harmony in the absence of hostility and violence.

In a social sense, peace is commonly used to mean a lack of conflict (such as war) and freedom from fear of violence between individuals or groups.

Peace is not a concept but a reality.

The angels were part of the advent of the messiah because they were the agents God used to usher in His Peace.

His Son.

We can only truly find Peace in God.

With that in mind, let’s look through this morning two passages of Scripture that describe the Advent of the Messiah, The Peace that the messaih will usher into our lives.

Setting the stage

Matthew begins to set the stage of the ushering in of peace, the Advent of the peace, beginning with where he came from.

The Genealogy.

Let’s be honest, how many of us skim over the reading of the genealogy if we are systematically reading through God’s word?

What does this have to do with the story of Christ?

Matthew’s Audience

The first reason is that The audience of the book was primarily Jews.

Matthew as a lad raised as a good jewish boy and understood the importance of family upbringing.

Where are you from?

Who is your tribe?

These were important in the life of a Jewish people.

Where you sat in the order of lineage became an important part of Jesus’ life as we could explore later.

Jesus’ Lineage

The second reason is his lineage.

Prophecy spoke of the Messiah would come from the line and house of David.

It’s important to list that lineage as we set the stage for he Angels, the main characters or focus point this morning.

Remember the audience was primarily Jewish.

They were particularly patriarchal.

The family line traveled through the father and the father, and so on.

As I was reflecting on this passage this week, a relative posted an article from a Advent journal reading she was working through.

The writer of this article, made a remarkable comment, and I thought I would share this with you this morning.

This morning if you are wondering where God’s peace is in your life, if you are wondering if it can ever be real in your life, let me read to you a small quote that I read this week from Ann Voskamp.

The family tree of Christ startlingly notes not one woman but four.

Four broken women — women who felt like outsiders, like has-beens, like never-beens.

Women who were weary of being taken advantage of, of being unnoticed, and uncherished and unappreciated; women who didn’t fit in, who didn’t know how to keep going, what to believe, where to go — women who had thought about giving up.

And Jesus claims exactly these who are

Wandering

And wondering

And wounded

And worn out

As his.

He grafts you into his line and his story and his heart, and he gives you his Name, his lineage, his righteousness.

-Advent Devotional by Ann.

Voskamp

The Advent of the messiah, the coming of the messiah, the coming of the savior was for all of us.

Through Him we will have peace.

Matthew after outlining the genealogy of the messiah, he begins his passage as a story.

Now the birth took place in this way.

If you look on the surface of the text you will see that Matthew begins to highlight the couple.

Remember he is writing this in a past tense.

This has taken place.

Matthew points out that they were engaged.

A social engagement that was different than we know of engagement today.

They were in the Jewish culture a couple.

But wait she was with child.

A quick simple statement that asks the readers many questions.

Why didn’t he go into details.

A good story requires details.

Before we look at the Angel in this story, we are going to jump passages.

Angels involved in the Advent of the Messiah

Turn with me to the book of Luke and we are going to walk through three Angels and their presence and significance in the Advent of the Messiah that brought peace.

The First Angel

The first angel found in the story of the birth of Christ did not come to Joseph first, but to Mary.

The Pronouncement

As I was putting this sermon together and doing research, I never once found that when an angel appeared that there was a sense of peace.

An Angel’s pronouncement

Think about that.

How peaceful would you be if you come face to face with an angel.

I would think, started is a better term.

I thought about all the TV shows that depicted Angels.

Touched by an Angel, Highway to Heaven, now a good place, and don’t forget my favourite, Christmas Angel Show, “Angels and Ornaments”.

All of those angels when exposed for their role as celestial beings bringing words from God, are treated with wonder, fear and astonishment.

Let’s look at what the text states.

Gabriel,

Mentioned only a few times in the Bible, here in the story of the birth of Christ and in Daniel’s book about prophecy.

Angels are often referred as God’s messengers.

or Angel of the Lord, but not often are they given a name like in this passage.

Luke sets the stage for this dialogue.

Here is a description of who Mary was, her condition before the Christ child, and now the angel speaks.

Greeting, o favored one.

God is with you.

How would this make you feel if and angel appears to you and says Greeting.

Are you peaceful?

Hardly,

Let’s look at Mary’s response

She wasn’t just troubled but greatly troubled.