As school wraps up and summer draws near, vacations are just around the corner. A family vacation can be a great gift,or feel like a painful calamity. Pastor Mark shares some practical examples from the Driscoll family’s experience, including some of the successes and failures.
If you could have anyone’s car, home, abilities, physical appearance, spouse, or life, whose would you have? If you answered, what was just awakened in you is coveting—an ungodly, discontented desire for what’s not ours. If you answered, you’re a coveter; if you didn’t, you’re a liar. How do we come to want what God wants for us?
Besides Jesus, John the Baptizer was the greatest man to ever live. We can learn from seven aspects of his greatness—including that he was a Spirit-filled evangelist who humbly prepared the way for Jesus. He avoided adolescence and thus is a great example of what it means to be a real man. Real men are creators and cultivators, not childish consumers, cowards, or complainers.
Mary is a chief example for us of faith and worship in response to God. She sings a song of praise to God, and in it lists at least 17 attributes of God and echoes a multitude of Old Testament Scriptures—even though she was likely illiterate. From her song, we are encouraged to replace worrying with worshiping, replace coveting with worshiping, and replace anxiety with history. Even though Mary has plenty to worry about, she worships God and is a happy worshiper. She knows that God has “done great things for [her],” and one practical way we can worship is by recording and remembering evidences of God’s grace—how he has done great things for us personally and for others we know.
Pregnant Mary walks many miles to visit pregnant Elizabeth so they can share in each other’s joy and be in community together. The baby in Elizabeth’s womb, John the Baptizer, leaps for joy when he hears Mary’s greeting, and Elizabeth prophesies that Mary is blessed. Thus, we see that a baby in the womb is indeed a baby, that children are a blessing from God, and that abortion is murder. We all, through sin, have bloody hands as murderers of Jesus, but he offers his nail-scarred hands—life for life—to save us. He died in our place for our sin, and the proper response is faith and worship, as exemplified by Mary, Elizabeth, and John.
John the Baptizer’s birth was prophesied in Malachi 3:1; 4:5–6. Then, after 400 years of silence, during the time of Herod “the great,” in the city of Jerusalem, at the Temple, we meet Zechariah, a priest, and his wife, Elizabeth. They were old, barren, poor, and righteous. Zechariah wasn’t a big deal; he was no one from nowhere doing, in the sight of the world, nothing. He was finally picked to go inside the Temple and burn incense, representing our prayers to God. While inside, the angel Gabriel appeared to Zechariah and told him that his prayer was answered and he would have a son who would be great. The baby, John (meaning “God is gracious”), is named by God and filled with the Spirit from his mother’s womb. But Zechariah did not believe the angel, so he was made mute. The couple returned home, Elizabeth conceived, and for five months she stayed home, praising God for taking away her reproach, or shame and disgrace, among the people.