Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript – Reformation Covenant Church

Uh sermon text for today is Luke 1:26-38. Luke 1:26-38 and the sermon topic will be the reversal of barrenness. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Luke 1 beginning at verse 26. Now in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent by God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David. The virgin’s name was Mary. And having come in, the angel said to her, “Rejoice, highly favored one. The Lord is with you. Blessed are you among women.”

But when she saw him, she was troubled at his saying, and considered what manner of greeting this was. Then the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bring forth a son, and shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Highest. And the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David. And he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.

Then Mary said to the angel, “How can this be since I do not know a man?” And the angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Highest will overshadow you. Therefore also, the Holy One who is to be born will be called the Son of God. Now indeed Elizabeth your relative has also conceived a son in her old age and this is now the sixth month for her who was called barren for with God nothing will be impossible.

Then Mary said, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord let it be to me according to your word” and the angel departed from her.

Let’s pray. Almighty God, we thank you and delight in your scriptures in this particular text. Thank you Father for this wonderful season. Thank you for bringing us to this announcement to Mary by the angel Gabriel. Now help us Lord God to hear in this text great news, gospel news about our Savior and good news for us as well that we may be fruitful and not barren. In Jesus’ name we ask it. Amen.

Please be seated.

Every year we—one thing I guess one way you could put what we do every year in this country is we invite Christmas into our home. Here at the church we invite signs of the Christmas season into our midst. In our homes we invite Christmas in. And while you may or may not think about it self-consciously, these emblems of Christmas that we have in our homes is really inviting in many different truths that are reflected in them.

We could talk about light for instance. We invite light into our houses. We were talking in the Sunday school class this morning about John chapter nine and the healing of the blind man. And this is in the context of Jesus says he’s the light that comes into the world and he enters the world of the blind man who is in darkness and he opens his eyes and light floods him. And then he commissions him at the pool of Siloam which means sent. And he is sent then to be a light-bearer as well to places of darkness. And certainly when we invite Christmas into our homes we invite light in the midst of a dark season, and that’s one element of things that we do.

We invite fruitfulness though. This is what I want to focus on this particular Christmas message. We have elements of fruitfulness. We have gift giving, right? These are giving great fruits to one another. They’re a result of the fruit of our labor and they’re kind of, you know, things magnified in our home of things that are pleasurable and delightful and that are the signs of productivity in our lives.

Our Christmas trees frequently are bedecked with fruit whether we know it or not. The round balls are stylized fruit. It’s really an image of the tree of life that bears all these fruits that’s talked about in the book of Revelation. Fruitfulness is frequently what the trees represent to us as well as light. We give holiday fruit cakes. You know, we actually give fruit baskets. We give literal fruit to one another. We have wonderful food, tasty fruit of the field, so to speak. Some of us imbibe in the fruit of the vine at Christmas time. We were encouraged to bring a bottle of wine to our Christmas agape today. Fruit, fruit, fruit, fruitfulness all around.

And this is a good thing. I think that the coming of fruitfulness is one way to think about Christmas and that’s what I want to talk about this year from our text. Mary has a fruitful event announced to her and that then happens. Now and when we invite in light it’s because we want more light and when we invite in fruit it’s because we want more fruit in our lives.

And Christmas comes to us frequently in the context of problems. You know there’s a lot of depression at Christmas time. Uh there’s a lot of analysis of the past year and you know there is a lot sometimes of aspects of barrenness to our lives that come out more then as we meditate on these things. In the last couple of years in this country you know there’s been more barrenness than fruitfulness with the economy specifically is what I’m referring to and it’s it can be a hard time for people entering into the gift-giving season when finances are reduced.

Our lives generally though have elements of darkness in them. At times they have elements of barrenness in them. And from a certain perspective as long as we live in this world and until Jesus returns our lives are always going to be marked to a certain degree with barrenness. And so we can identify with Elizabeth, barren Elizabeth who bears a child. We can identify with Mary who while not barren in the sense that Elizabeth was has a closed womb just like the barren women of old had.

And yet in the context of this, the Christmas story is the story of the coming of fruitfulness in the context of barrenness.

When you get older, there are some barrenness things, aspects, and themes that enter into your life. I think I’ve quoted this song before, but I have a playlist on Raps City called Old Men, and it’s about old guys and you know, Ecclesiastes state of mind, that kind of thing. And there’s a song on it called Cold Irons Bound by Bob Dylan. And he says, “I’m beginning to hear voices and there’s no one around. I’m all used up. My fields have turned brown.”

Well, I feel like that a lot, you know, because of age, because of my body doing whatever old people’s bodies do as we get older. And I have particular health things. It feels like my fields are turning brown, you know. And the song is about that’s a imagery, a nice poetic imagery of barrenness in the context in life.

The next verse he says, “I’m waist deep in the mist. It’s almost like I don’t even exist. Twenty miles out of town, cold irons bound.” Pictures of barrenness and darkness and despair. We can despair over our fields. Our fields can be barren. We’re not producing like we thought we could. Our vocations aren’t doing just what we hoped they would financially or maybe in terms of just job satisfaction. That’s our fields that we’re working and we can have some degree of barrenness there.

A knowledge of the world, you know, we can sort of not figure out what’s going on right now. What’s happening in the country and our lives? What’s happening with our families? Our families are pictures of fruitfulness, but they’re also pictures of barrenness. As you know, our children experience loss or inability to achieve just what they’d like to in terms of fruit.

Dylan also has another line about friends. He says, “There’s too many people, too many to recall. I thought some of them were friends of mine. I was wrong about them all.” And there are at times in life and for some of us more than others. And with age, you know, it comes or it goes, but there are times in which you are barren of friends and can feel sort of friendless even though you might have a lot of acquaintances.

These are real aspects of barrenness that inhabit our lives and there’s no point whistling past the graveyard. These things exist. Not a very cheerful topic for Christmas maybe, but the point is they exist, but they’ve been dealt a definitive death blow. Barrenness has by the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Even that though can feel barren to us at times. Another line from Dylan’s song, I found my world in you, but your love just hasn’t proved true. There’s a book I bought recently by Ravi Zacharias, Has Christianity Failed You? And even in our Christian relationship, it can feel barren that somehow it just hasn’t worked. It doesn’t work for me. I’m not feeling you know what I think I should be feeling in terms of the Christian life, my relationship with Jesus and his people. Barrenness.

And Dylan’s song kind of touches on various aspects of barrenness in our lives. And it’s a real deal. It’s really interesting to me, you know, we have the patriarchs, right? We got Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Those are the patriarchs identified in the Old Testament. And the funny thing about the patriarchs is they all had barren wives. You know, patriarch means father, right? But their wives can’t have any kids. So it’s a funny thing God does here in the context of Genesis.

Genesis 11:30, Sarah was barren. She had no child. Genesis 25:21, Isaac pleaded with the Lord for his wife because she was barren. And the Lord granted his plea and Rebecca, his wife, conceived. She finally conceives, but she’s a barren woman. Sarah conceives, but she’s barren. That’s the whole point. Genesis 29:31, when the Lord saw that Leah was unloved, he opened her womb, but Rachel was barren. Rachel’s womb was closed.

All three of the wives of the patriarchs, barren women. There’s a lot of barrenness in the scriptures. 1 Samuel 1, Hannah, of course, Mary’s Magnificat that we just recited and sang is based upon Hannah’s song, but Hannah was another barren woman.

Now, each of these are going to have sons that are images of Jesus. So, you know, Abraham has Isaac, for instance, and he’s a definite type of Christ as he’s offered up on the mountain, and God doesn’t cause Abraham to kill him, but he’s clearly a picture of Jesus. And Jacob is a perfect man, right?

So as these barren wombs are opened, they’re opened to fruitfulness and the extreme sort of fruitfulness images types of the Lord Jesus Christ and Samuel is one of those kind of types. So Hannah’s barrenness is overturned by God. It’s dealt with and it’s dealt with as with these other women in a way that is very demonstrable of what’s going to happen in the future when barrenness is rolled back definitively with the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and the announcement that we just read in the Gospels.

You know, in barrenness, by the way, these stories tell us that they’re really tough. It’s tough. Barrenness is tough. It’s not an intellectual deal. It’s a real deal in your life that’s very difficult. You know, Rachel, all these women are just grieved because they’re barren. In Hannah’s case, in 1 Samuel chapter 1 verse 8, Elkanah, her husband says to her, “Hannah, why do you weep? Why do you not eat? And why is your heart grieved? Am I not better to you than ten sons?”

Well, not really. I mean, husbands are okay. They’re wonderful, but there’s something about children, you know, barrenness for in particular areas really can’t be filled by other things. And so barrenness is a real problem. It’s prevalent in these wonderful great women and saints of the past, but it’s a difficult thing.

Samson comes as the type of Jesus Christ, but his mother is also barren. Uh the text tells us that explicitly in Judges 13. So barrenness in the Old Testament is not the norm, but it is the norm in terms of the literary devices and structures and stories that God gives to us that point forward to the coming of the one who will reverse barrenness, who will bring forth fruitfulness. That’s Mary with Jesus.

It’s interesting. Barrenness is difficult. Proverbs 30:16 says, “The grave, the barren womb, the earth that is not satisfied with water, and the fire never says enough. Four things that are never satisfied. And one of them is the barren womb. It’s a real deal. And that’s true. We can take that in terms of children, but we can take that in terms of any of these areas I’ve talked about.

If you have barrenness in your workplace, you’re not feeling fulfilled. You’re not feeling appreciated. It’s a constant grief. People that want to have children badly, you know, it’s a it you never are okay with that. Ultimately, you hope continue to hope for children. If you don’t have friends, it’s kind of a constant ache, you know, that you don’t have the kind of friends. I thought some of them were friends of mine. I was wrong about them all, Dylan says. Overstatement, of course, but that’s the way it feels sometimes.

The barren womb is never satisfied. And it’s interesting because it puts it in connection to the grave. The grave is the other thing that’s not satisfied. The earth that’s not satisfied with water. You got earth, you got water, and you need the two to come together to make fruitfulness, right? And so man and wife, same kind of thing. And barrenness is like an earth that doesn’t bring forth crops. It’s not fruitful the womb. And the grave is similar to it.

It’s interesting that you know Jesus is born from a closed womb, right? Barrenness, it’s described this way. Sometimes God closes the womb of some of these women. And Mary’s womb hasn’t been closed in the sense these other women have. But she’s a virgin. And so the text wants us to think of her womb and the womb is actually drawn attention to in the text we just read in your womb. That womb is closed up and Jesus comes forth and brings fruitfulness.

Now, that’s an image of what’s going to happen at the end of his ministry as well. He’s going to be put in a sealed tomb and he will burst forth from that tomb and bring fruitfulness to all the world. So barrenness is this prevalent thing in the Old Testament and it’s a deal that is quite difficult.

Another form of barrenness is to be robbed of one’s children. This Hebrew word that’s used for barren in the text that I’ve just read. It’s also used about losing children to other things by the analogy, for instance, of a bear robbed of welps in 2 Samuel 17:8. And there’s a barrenness there. If you have children, but they’re not really doing what you would hope they would do, and somehow they’ve been spirited off by whatever it is, that is equated by way of analogy in the scriptures to barrenness.

And so these things are all around. Animals are a big deal in the Old Testament, animals are talked about as being barren as well. In the for instance in Deuteronomy 7:14, the blessings that God brings to his people is there shall not be a male or a female barren among you or among your livestock. So a connection between people and animals and animals are kind of a barren you know when things aren’t good a livestock are barren as well.

The land can be barren and it’s described this way to us for instance in Malachi 3 the result of not tithing brings barrenness to the land. Bring all the tithes into the storehouse that there may be food in my house and try me now in this says the Lord of hosts if I will not open for you the windows of heaven pour out for you such blessing that there will not be enough room to receive it and I rebuke the devourer for your sake, so that he will not destroy the fruit of your ground. Nor shall the vine fail to bear fruit for you in the field, says the Lord of hosts, and all nations will call you blessed, for you will be a delightful land.

So one of the curses that come upon us for disobedience is barren land that won’t bring forth fruit.

This same thing is talked about in 2 Kings chapter 2. The sons of the prophets come to Elisha and this the or rather the men of a particular city they say please notice the situation of this city is pleasant as my lord sees but the water is bad and the ground is barren and Elisha has the fix for that he brings some salt puts it in the water and the land becomes unbarren now and fruitful the text goes on to tell us that he says I’ve healed this water u from it there shall be no more death or barrenness.

So the land itself is described as barren until the salt. Salt’s an image of the covenant. The salt of the covenant is described. And so the salt ultimately represents us. We’re the salt, right, of the world. It represents Jesus because we’re connected to him. That’s why we’re this life-giving thing. And so we have this image of Jesus again coming to a barren now, not to a barren woman, but to barren land and makes it fruitful again.

So from one perspective, the whole gospel message is that the curse of barrenness has been reversed and fruitfulness now fills the land.

You know, Mary is called most blessed of women by the angel in this enunciation. And that takes us back to and her song then takes us back to Hannah’s prayer. Hannah’s song. But it also takes us back to another woman who is referred to as the most blessed of women. And that was Jael. In Deborah’s song, she’s referred to as the most blessed of women. And why? Because she took a tent peg and nailed it through Sisera’s head. She’s the most blessed of women.

The blessed of women is the one who brings defeat to the typological enemy, the representation of Satan. This takes us back to the garden, right? And God’s judgment. And his judgment upon the serpent is the seed of the woman will crush your head. It will kill you. The most blessed of women is the one who brings forth fruitful seed and by that seed crushes the head of the serpent.

And so the woman is promised, you know, pain and childbearing, but childbearing is the gift. Now the man is promised as his curse barren ground. Ground that bears forth thorns and thistles rather than fruit. And now you can get fruit out of the ground. Your vocation is affected though by this. Your vocation tends to be more barren than it would have been had you not fallen if man had not fallen into sin.

But the imagery here is then that the reversal of barrenness means the woman will ultimately bring forth a seed. That seed will crush the head of the serpent. And that’s what’s going on with Mary and the illusion back to the most blessed of women back to Jael crushing the head of the serpent Sisera going back to Genesis tells us that really the fall and its reversal comes about as a result of what’s happening in this great enunciation scene the enunciation to Mary that she will be fruitful though having a closed womb.

So the gospel is this reversal of the barrenness that results from sin okay it’s an interesting picture in Psalm 65.

I love this imagery. Psalm 65 and we sing this psalm at the end of every year, various versions of it. Verse 9 of Psalm 65, you visit the earth. So God is visiting the earth and you water it. You gently or you greatly rather enrich it. You enrich the world, the earth. The river of God is full of water. You provided their grain for so you have prepared it. You water its riches abundantly. You settle its furrows. You make it soft with showers. You bless its growth. You crown the year with your goodness. Your paths drip with abundance. They drop on the pastures of the wilderness. And all the little hills rejoice on every side. The pastures are clothed with flocks. The valleys also are covered with grain. They shout for joy. They also sing.

Now, that’s an image of what happens with the advent event of God when God comes to the earth. It’s, you know, I’m sure I’ve seen cartoons like this or, you know, cartoons on the television. But, you know, it’s he comes to the earth and with his advent where he goes, life springs up. It’s sort of like the end of Beauty and the Beast. Yes, I did cry at the end because it’s the same thing. All these problems, all this barrenness represented in that in that Disney cartoon and all of a sudden when the covenant is or the curse is broken and blessings come the whole world starts to grow and there’s wonderful flowers and vegetation and things burst forth.

That’s the image here in this psalm when God visits the earth. It all of a sudden springs to life and the animals spring to life and now we got lots of sheep. No miscarrying sheep anymore. We got lots of plants growing. His very paths drip with abundance. That’s a picture of the great reversal of barrenness that happens, it’s announced rather in our text today and that happens with the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Now, this is important. This is really what what I think is an important thing for us to remember. We invite Christmas into our homes because we sense aspects of our barrenness and we want to remember that this is not wishful thinking. This is preaching the gospel to ourselves by bringing Christmas into our homes. It’s preaching the good news that Jesus Christ has come to reverse barrenness.

You know, the text you say, well, Mary wasn’t really barren. Well, the text really I draws it pretty close to this, right? It says, you know, in the sixth month, the angel visits her and she’s a virgin. And then it says after they have their conversation about what’s going to happen, you know, it says, it says that your relative Elizabeth six months ago, she’s been carrying a child for six months and she was barren. And the point of the illustration is the angel is comparing what’s happening with Mary to Elizabeth. He says, you know, with God everything is possible. God will change the course of humanity.

Now, there’s lots of things involved in the virgin birth apart from the reversal of barrenness and the coming of fruitfulness. But the imagery is absolutely there in our text. Absolutely there in the text and it’s an important one for us because it reminds us of the hope that the light and fruitfulness of Christmas is to us and it’s not a Jiminy Cricket sort of wishful thinking hope it is the entire message of the scriptures I think from the beginning chapters of Genesis through to Mary being announced as the most blessed of women.

It probably was a little troubling to her. She probably knew her Old Testament and knew that wait a minute that last woman that got that had to drive a tent peg through somebody’s head. What’s going to happen here? So, you know, she if she knew her Bible, and she I think she did. That’s probably what she was thinking of. And of course, she doesn’t do it, but Jesus will. He crushes the head of the serpent. He gains total victory. And the serpent is the one who has brought all this barrenness and all this trouble into the context of the world.

So fruitfulness. And this is the history of the world, right? This is the history of Christianity. We live in incredibly fruitful times. I came across a quote this week from a book by a guy named Rodney Stark the Rise of Christianity. This book was written in the ’90s and he’s talking about the impact of Christianity on cities and you know from the perspective of our text what he’s talking about is the coming of fruitfulness in the form of the Christianization and its impact upon cities in the early in the this side of the coming of Christ in the early in the first few centuries of the Christian church.

He says this. He says to cities filled with homeless and the impoverished, Christianity offered charity as well as hope. To cities filled with newcomers and strangers, Christianity offered an immediate basis for attachments. Immediate basis for attachments. To cities filled with orphans and widows, Christianity provided a new and expanded sense of family. Again, the family at this table, the orphans and widows were brought into the families. To cities torn by violent ethnic strife, Christianity offered a new basis for social solidarity. And to cities faced with epidemics, fires, and earthquakes, Christianity offered effective nursing services.

Can it be that the very fact that any of our cities are livable today is due in large part not to technological progress, that’s certainly part of it, but rather to the Christian virtues and ideals lived by their inhabitants. And that the answer for those cities is afflicted by the same ills as ancient Antioch is simply more lived out Christianity. I see that’s really great.

Now I would want to hasten to say that the virtues of Christianity in that lifestyle is what produces technological progress. That’s a whole another topic. But the image he gives us of cities becoming places where barrenness is being reversed and where death is being rolled back and where isolation is being fixed. You know where you’re brought into a context of a whole community of friends. Again, you see, this is the result of the enunciation that we read about in today’s text. This is the coming of fruitfulness to a barren womb of a city.

You see, and the advent of Jesus Christ is what turns this. God visits the earth, his paths dripped with abundance and fatness. And we come to the cities and we bring that same abundance and fatness as we come in the same manner of Jesus Christ as we come as those who are fruitfully displaying the Christian virtues and bring blessing to the city.

You know, I know that we live in Euro-socialism. I know that there’s a tremendous loss of freedom that bothers me immensely. The thing that bothers me most is I’m not sure young people even care as long as they have leisure time. But but let’s not forget that the reason we have some of these things is really the message of today. Also, there was another announcement last week. They’re going to make it illegal to sell those drop-down cribs, I guess, because certain a few babies have been hurt in the millions of these cribs sold.

And you look at you think, well, that’s just absolutely ridiculous how much the state runs our lives. Well, that’s true. I don’t think there should be those kind of laws necessarily, but understand that, you know, the idea here is they’re trying to increase fruitfulness. They’re trying to avoid accidental death, right? It’s an attempt to bring abundance of life. It’s a Christian goal that’s being trying to be achieved through these status purposes.

So, you know, let’s let’s be careful to be very thankful that we are still operating in the context of wanting our cities to be places of life and abundance. There’s still a Christian kind of model to this thing that we’re kind of losing. I understand that. But that’s what it’s all about. We should rejoice that people still care about little children getting hurt by cribs. Because that kind of accidental death and destruction, you know, that’s what the sixth commandment tells us to be careful about.

And it should be our desire to see more fruitfulness and less barrenness. And when that’s applied, what we have in this country is a tremendous rolling back of infant mortality. That’s Christian. That’s this blessing of the reversal of barrenness being worked out in the context of the world.

Listen, listen to what Hannah’s song is listen to Hannah’s song. Now, this is really the basis for Mary’s Magnificat. Clearly, she’s informed by Hannah’s song. And Hannah is the barren wife of Elkanah, mother eventually of Samuel as God opens her womb. Listen to what she says in response to this.

Hannah prayed and said, “My heart rejoices in the Lord. My horn is exalted in the Lord. I smile at my enemies because I rejoice in your salvation. No one is holy like the Lord, for there is none beside you, nor is there any rock like our God. Talk no more so very proudly. Let no arrogance come from your mouth. For the Lord is the God of knowledge, and by him actions are weighed. The bows of the mighty men are broken. Those who stumbled are girded with strength. Those who were full have hired themselves out for bread, and the hungry have ceased to hunger. Even the barren has borne seven, and she who has many children has become feeble.

The Lord kills and makes alive. He brings down to the grave and brings up wonderful imagery of the fruitfulness of that tomb following her imagery of the fruitfulness of the womb where he brings forth from the barren woman seven children and he brings up out of the grave the one who will affect all of us.

I could go on but Hannah’s song that continues on is a treasure. You’d think you’d think that you know Jesus had come and the millennium had arrived at the time when Hannah prayed this prayer and what is she praying it for? What’s the immediate thing that’s going on? She gets to have a baby. Barrenness becomes fruitfulness. And she sees that as the reversal of everything. And she’s right.

I mean, she’s right. Ultimately, we can look at the typological stuff going on. Yes, Samuel’s a type of Christ. She’s a type of Mary, and Mary will bring the Savior, and he will actually accomplish all these reversals that’s sung about by Hannah and Mary. But don’t miss the initial application. The initial literal truth. She is rejoicing in fruitfulness. She is rejoicing as loud as she can in the reversal of barrenness and understands the implications of that, you know, across the globe.

May God give us that same sense to recognize what Jesus has done in reversing barrenness.

So, this is what the great message of this enunciation to Mary is all about. You’re going to become fruitful. And the great blessings promised in Genesis 3 are now coming to pass and it’s coming about as the result of the reversal of barrenness and the coming of fruitfulness. So this Christmas when you go home today or when you look around the church and when we look at the places and our shopping centers and our cities that have invited Christmas in for a while, what we’re inviting in is this message of fruitfulness.

And it’s not a wish. It’s not a hope. It is a statement of reality that what the angel promised to Mary happened and the world will never be the same again and it hasn’t been the same. That’s why we have the kind of fruitful transformations of the cities that began two thousand years ago and continues to this day.

Now, you still feel barren. You still got your problems. You still don’t have enough friends or you don’t have a good relationship with your family members or you don’t have you’re going to go to that same job tomorrow that’s kind of a place of barrenness and loss of productivity. Well, understand that is going away. Barrenness is going away little by little in the history of the world. And understand that when we come to fruitfulness, the New Testament places a little different spin on this thing that really is quite important for us to see.

And I’m referring here to what the New Testament says produces good things. Now that’s fruitfulness, right? For instance, Paul in Romans 5, he says, “We glory in tribulations.” Tribulations, the tough job, the tough relationship with family members, the tough relationship with friends or not, the tough emotional state, has Christianity failed, whatever it is, we actually glory in tribulations knowing that tribulations produces it brings forth fruit. It’s fruitful. It produces perseverance. Perseverance produces character. Character produces hope. Hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us.

For when we were still without strength, in due time, Christ died for the ungodly. Paul saw a specific moment in time, the coming of the fruitfulness of Christ, dying for the ungodly, which changed and transformed what was happening with God’s people. And now the Holy Spirit is shed abroad in some sense that it wasn’t exactly before. Now things are changing. Now the difficulties we have dealing with character issues somehow is transformed through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and the shedding abroad in our hearts of God’s love. And he’s poured this into our hearts. And as a result of this, the most difficult things in our lives are actually now being used by God to cause us to be fruitful.

To be fruitful with, you know, not literal fruit hanging on trees. We have these balls on trees that represent fruit. And the fruit that’s represented on those trees isn’t ultimately literal fruit only. It’s the fruit of the spirit. And the fruit of the spirit is produced by ways of these tribulations. The very difficulties that feel like barrenness, God does jitsu on it. And in those elements that could start with barrenness and feelings of tribulation. God says, “Be thankful. Look for the development of Christian character, perseverance, and patience and actually hope then and this will be the fruitfulness that God is bringing into your life through even an element of barrenness.”

Now, the same things said in various other places of scripture. In Galatians 5:19, he says, “Now the works of the flesh are evident.” And he names those works off. But he says, “The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, suffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. And those who are Christ have crucified the flesh with its passions.”

Again, he talks about the change that’s happened with the coming of the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ. And as a result of that, fruitfulness for the Christian is reflected in the fruit of the spirit in the context of our lives. Notice, by the way, that it’s the works of the flesh as opposed to the fruit of the spirit, you know, works of the flesh. I mean, I kind of image with that the kind of sweaty work that Adam is doing, right?

But the fruit of the spirit are all these great things that happen. So when we talk about the reversal of barrenness, there is an absolute sense in which the world has been moved physically, culturally, in our cities, in our lives, into the reduction of infant mortality, into fewer and fewer women actually being literally barren right? All that’s happening. But understand that behind all of this, there are these great this greater truth being spoken of.

That our lives can be places of fruitfulness by responding correctly to the tribulations and difficulties that God and his providence have brought into our lives for the very purpose of making us fruitful.

Ephesians 5, let no one deceive you with empty words. For because of these things, the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore, do not be partakers with them. For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of the light, for the fruit of the spirit is in all goodness, righteousness and truth, finding out what is acceptable to the Lord and have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness.

Again, works of darkness contrasted with the fruit of the spirit. And the fruit of the spirit happens as we walk in the light. Another image of Christmas, the advent of the light. So, so fruitfulness, the removal of a sense of overwhelming barrenness happens as we respond to the situations that God sovereignly places in our lives by walking in the light, by not partaking in the works of ungodliness or darkness, by getting our act together. In other words, by in terms of obedience, not grieving the Holy Spirit, then God says that if you do that, fruitfulness is the result.

And so sometimes not always, but sometimes the barrenness that we struggle with begins with our grieving of the Holy Spirit, with our not doing things that are pleasing to God. And other times, the barrenness maybe didn’t start there, but the reason why it grows in your life is because you’re not using the secondary means of walking in the light and being thankful even in the in the times of tribulation that God has brought into your life not recognizing that the very sense of barrenness is what God is reversing through bringing the difficulties upon you.

He’s bringing the sort of fruit that you can’t buy at Fred Meyer and you can’t give to somebody in the gift today. The kind of fruit that is eternal and everlasting and the kind of fruit that only the spirit of God only the love of God dwelling in your hearts can produce that kind of fruitfulness. And the love of God dwelling in your hearts will always produce that kind of fruitfulness because the Lord Jesus Christ has come and he’s reversed the curse.

You know, it’s interesting in Matthew 19, our Savior himself is a picture of barrenness, right? I don’t know if you’ve thought about that ever, but in Matthew 19, Jesus says, he says, “There are eunuchs who were born thus from their mother’s womb, and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He is able to accept it. Let him accept it.”

Jesus, I think we have to see in that third category, Jesus making himself a eunuch for the kingdom’s sake. He decides not to marry. He’s not going to bear, he’s not going to have children. He’s going to be barren in that sense. Now, it’s interesting because the very next verse, verse 13 of Matthew 19 says, “Then little children were brought to him that he might put his hands on them and pray. But the disciples rebuked them.”

It’s interesting, isn’t it? I think he’s alluding to himself. Look, I’m not going to get married. I’m not going to do the things that, you know, men are able and willing and the good thing for the most to do. I’m going to be a eunuch for the kingdom of heaven. I’ve got ministry work to do, but that doesn’t mean I’m unfruitful. And the very next scene, he’s surrounded by children. Not as a result of his progeny, of course, but he’s surrounded by children.

Psalm 110:3 says the same thing. Your people shall be volunteers in the day of your power. In the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning, you have the dew of your youth. In other words, you have children that are as innumerable as the dew from the womb of the morning. This is speaking of Jesus. It’s the most quoted and alluded to psalm in the New Testament 110. Jesus while a eunuch for the kingdom’s sake, we can say while not entering into a procreative life that God calls most men to and being fathers of children.

Jesus nevertheless has an innumerable number of youth who serve him as he marches on from the womb of the morning itself.

Isaiah 56:4 and 5 alludes to this in terms of what’s going to happen in the future. For thus says the Lord, to the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths and choose what pleases me and hold fast my covenant, even to them I will give in my house and within my walls a place and a name better than that of sons and daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.

Well, that’s obviously first and foremost a reference to our Savior. Who else keeps the Sabbath the way Jesus did? Who else chose what pleased the Father? Who else held as fast to the covenant as our Savior? And who else does God give a better name, a better place than children, sons and daughters? Jesus is the great blessed one, the great one that God has blessed with fruitfulness in seed even though it’s not the sort of fruit that we think of and the same thing’s true of us.

The same thing’s true of us now when we accept the kind of barrenness that you know we can’t reverse in and of ourselves. When we look at that and when we start to give God thanks for the surroundings that he’s placed in us when we focus more on keeping the Lord’s time on being faithful to his covenant, on doing what’s pleasing to the Father, then we’ll have the same sort of unnatural fruitfulness in our lives that our Savior has because we’re united to him.

His life is our life. His life is the great picture of the reversal of barrenness and the coming of fruitfulness. Although in ways that are not anticipated, children gathered around that aren’t physical descendants of him and yet are his children. And he places his hand upon those children. He is fruitful. And the Lord God grants the same thing to us.

Mary has this great message. Fruitfulness, the reversal of barrenness. And you know what’s going to happen to Mary? Oh, she’s going to have the great life. Most blessed of all women. She’s going to have a lot of money. She’s going to have a lot of friends. She’s going to have a lot of, you know, great times with her son growing up and watch his successes. No. A sword will pierce her heart. She will be a woman of sorrows. In much the same way that Jesus was a man of sorrows. She’ll have the same sort of internal problems, family problems that the patriarchs have.

That’d be funny. You know, patriarch movement stressing patriarchs and all the patriarchs wives are barren and the patriarch’s families are some of the most dysfunctional families you’d ever want to read about, aren’t they? Yeah, they are. You know, they’re faithful men and women, but you know, life is difficult. And so Mary’s life will be difficult as well. She won’t feel real fruitful. I mean, she’s going to bear the Savior of our race, of course, but in terms of how it feels to her and her experiences, you know, if they hate him, they’ll hate her, the mother.

And she’s abandoned as well. And she has to watch her son, you know, being scourged and persecuted and mocked in the context of his ministry. And yet, she’s the most blessed of women. You know why? Because she says at the end, she gives a response to this wonderful message of the reversal of barrenness. Mary said, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord. Let it be to me according to your word.”

She was troubled. She had foreshadowings of the difficulties, but she said, “Let it be to me according to your word.” May the Lord God grant each of us this Christmas season as we look at the ways we’ve invited fruitfulness and light into our lives at Christmas time. May we say with Mary, even in the context of difficult barrenness, may the Lord, you know, I’m the Lord’s servant, be it done to me as you will. May we be thankful Christians, rejoicing in this season, not because of the blessings we have yet to see, but rather for having the hope of the blessings of the fruit of the spirit that we shall see in the future.

May the Lord God grant us to be fruitful men and women who are committed and dedicated to the purposes of the Lord Jesus Christ. May he grant us to say, “Here we are. Your servants, Lord Jesus, make us fruitful in whatever way that looks.”

Let’s pray. Father, we bless your holy name for the tremendous event that we celebrate this week, the reversal of barrenness, the coming of the one who would bring fruitfulness, abundance back to your world. We thank you for that. And we thank you, Lord God, that even when things are difficult and when we have troubles of our own making or not, even in those very circumstances, you are at work producing a kind of fruit that is delicious and tasty and wonderful and eternal, the manifestation of the Holy Spirit in our lives, even through barrenness.

Bless us, Lord God. Forgive us for being unthankful this week for the settings in which you’ve placed us. Help us to look forward with hope, sure hope that’s based upon the reality of the reversal of barrenness by the coming of our Lord and Savior. In his name we pray. Amen.