Advent Week 4-Joy
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Advent Week 4-Joy
Luke 2:8-20
News You Can’t Keep to Yourself
Use Isaiah 35 for Call to Worship
Intro: Dr. Jacob Chamberlain lived from 1835-1908. He was a Missionary to India from the (Dutch) Reformed Church in America. Born in Sharon, Connecticut, he studied both theology and medicine and in 1859 joined the Arcot Mission in South India. As a doctor he began two hospitals and conducted several dispensaries. But perhaps his most enduring work was literary. From 1873 to 1894 he chaired a committee to revise the Telugu Bible. He prepared a popular Telugu hymnbook and completed the first volume of a Bible dictionary.
We are going to hear a story of how the gospel affected some of the Telugu people that Dr Chamberlain worked with.
It was one man rendering medical aid to two people and the effects of Chamberlain’s Gospel teaching.
Likewise, we see how the story has not changed from Angel’s first joyous announcement of the Good news of Jesus Christ to the shepherds.
Read Verses: Luke 2:8-20
Main Idea: The Good News of Jesus is something that we should hear for ourselves and then tell others so they can know it too.
I. Hear the News (8-14)
We start with the scene 8 In the same region, shepherds were staying out in the fields and keeping watch at night over their flock. 9 Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.[e] 10 But the angel said to them, “Don’t be afraid, for look, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people:
This is the set up. The news of the Messiah is something the angel even says it is cause for Great Joy. The Messiah is here. Lying in a feed trough in Bethlehem is the savior of the world.
Why is this good news? Because as the Angels Tell us, Glory to God In the highest and peace on earth to the people he favors.
The envoy for peace has arrived in the world and he is making the final preparations for that peace treaty to be signed in roughly 35 years if this is 4 BC. People had been living in the dark and waiting for the messiah to arrive.
India is made up of many people groups and It is said that the Apostle Thomas brought the Gospel of Christ to the land and died in 72 AD.
But in the late 1800s with England colonizing India and much of Asia, Christians started to send missionaries out and one missionary that ended up in India was Dr. Chamberlain.
Dr Chamberlain was a medical doctor as well as a preacher or theologian. One ring just before breakfast, he heard chanting that the locals used when they were carrying a heavy load coming up the road. He saw a picture of four men, two in the front and two in the back carrying a long bamboo pole with. A blanket hammock. Inside the hammock was a sick person. And then behind them were two more men, one helping the other walk up the road. These men had travelled a two day journey because they heard of a foreign doctor tat could work wonderful cures.
The younger man in the blanket or hammock was the nephew and the older man was his uncle who has recently lost his sight. The doctor assesses the younger man and sees he is in a bad way, but performs a surgery where he eventually recovers. He also performs a surgery to restore the uncle’s sight. And they stayed at the hospital recovering for two weeks, each morning the patients heard the doctor reading and explaining a chapter of the Gospel. The story goes that they begged for a copy of Yesu Kristu the divine guru so that they might tell their neighbors of the gold news they heard.
Dr Chamberlain went to India so that people could hear the Good news.
The shepherds are terrified by the angel, but they get over it to hear the good news and they get up and go into
II. Confirm the News (15-19)
The shepherds went into Bethlehem to see just as the angels had said that here was the child and they told Mary what they had been told and she treasured it. She was creating a mental scrapbook of how wonderous all of this news has been. The angels didn’t just come to her. But they also came to random starters who just came in and confirmed a lot of things.
The people who did the Chosen started for a Christmas special of this story. And the shepherds run into town to find the Christ, they are so overjoyed.
So the Tegulu men who were healed took a bible back to their village, and they couldn't read. But they had a plan. When the cloth merchants come to look at their wares, they would give him the book and have them read it and then talk business. If the tax collector came to collect, they would. Make him read the Gospels and then settle up their taxes. They told Dr. Chamberlain, let us have the book because we want all our village to know about the Divine guru, Yesu Kristu.
How is that for spreading the gospel. These guys were so convinced of the Good news, they wanted others to know Him.
Because it is not just about the stories, but it is about Who the stories or Good news is about.
The Shepherds wanted to see the messiah and so did the weavers. And they wanted their whole village and anyone they came in contact with to see Him too.
That is what we have in the church that's what the church is open,not to just come and hear the stories, but to see God to share what God has done for each of us and share Him with others.
III. Marvel at the News (20)
Luke tells us in Verse 20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had seen and heard, which were just as they had been told. Think about the joy these guys had that they were up all night, after working all day and they have walked back and forth and yet they are glorifying and praising God.
This is like winning the super bowl,where you are so tired, but you’re so happy, that you don't care if you are tired. You are just marveling at the news or the event that just happened. That you experienced.
This is the history making event. We count time by the arrival of jesus. The incarnation is the turning point in the war.
So what about the uncle and nephew that took the Bible and went back to their village. Well three years had passed before Dr. Chamberlain heard from them but he was on a preaching tour of the area and he met them again. And while sitting under the village’s counsel tree, the uncle and nephew told the doctor that after hearing the Gospel, that everyone agreed to give up his idols if the doctor padre would send someone to teach them more about Jesus.
The doctor said he would but as he was leaving town, he noticed the village temple with all kinds of idols in and around the building.He asked a few people out the idols and they said, they mean nothing to us now. And he asked what are you going to do with them. The people weren’t really down with destroying the statues so they would have jut sat there but the Uncle walked up and said he would bring out the chief swami.
So he removed the biggest statue and as he handed over the statue he said, “Well old fellow, be off with you. We and our ancestors have worshipped and eared you for thousands of years, but we have found a better God and are done with you. Jesus is now our God.”
Look at how God worked through the doctor and then through two men who were so taken by the Holy Spirit that they wanted everyone else to know Jesus is the Savior.
Psalm 16:11
You make known to me the path of life;
in your presence there is fullness of joy;
at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.
Habakkuk 3:17–18
Though the fig tree should not blossom,
nor fruit be on the vines,
the produce of the olive fail
and the fields yield no food,
the flock be cut off from the fold
and there be no herd in the stalls,
yet I will rejoice in the LORD;
I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
Galatians 5:22–23
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law.
Conclusion:
That story could not have been better if it was made up.
And your life is probably like that. So as disciples of Christ, we do not need to save people. We are to hear the Good news and make sure everyone else hears the good news and then we just have to watch God work everything else out for His Glory.
And then we can Joy in our lives that we are doing as we are commanded and we are also watching God work His power into people’s lives.
We need to be like Dr. Chamberlain and just Keep doing the work God Called us to and we can have the Joy of our salvation from our Lord. THE Lord.
And the Telugu people are still Christians and they are producing quite a bit of media including movies, which this is a poster or ad for a Movie about Jesus.
No matter what happens, good bad or indifferent, everything should be counted as Joy because it is for our training and teaching.
Let us Go out this week, the week of Jesus Birth celebration, Christ’s mass, that we can Spread joy to all who will listen to the Gospel story that the savior was born in Bethlehem to bring Peace to those whom he favors.