Advent - Joy

Good morning, if you would, open your Bibles to Isaiah 35

[something about Christmas/Advent]

I’m going to be super honest: my goal for today is for you to leave with happier than you came. I want you to walk out with more joy than you walked in with. Full disclosure: that’s not a great intent for a sermon. Seminary preaching professors are probably shaking their heads because that’s the wrong focus. Don’t get me wrong, I want Scripture to be revealed today. I want Christ to magnified and made supreme. I want us to love God more through the teaching of his word, but man, I want there to be joy in the house of the Lord today.

Sometimes as Christians, we struggle with joy. Joy is hard. Have you ever thought about that? Like, Christians can be some of the most sour, cynical, and unfair people. But we have more hope and reason for rejoicing than any other person on the planet!

Think about it, when people describe you, is it joy that they are describing? When you leave your table at the restaurant each Sunday, does your server think, “man what a joyful person”. What about your social media? Does it describe the joy you have in Christ?

Sometimes I think it’s hard for us to truly understand the amazing joy of the Lord because we’re stuck thinking about the wrong thing. Even during Advent. We celebrate Christ coming over 2000 years ago, and this is right and good, but we look around at the chaos and corruption and we can’t find joy anywhere because we’re still living in the tension of the curse. Friends, our joy must come from not what we see and experience, but from something greater, and something that is yet to come.

Based on some of the texts i’ve gotten this week, conversations I’ve had, and what I’ve experienced, joy and peace and all these good things are hard to come by. We need some joy. We will rejoice in the house of the Lord this morning, that is my prayer.

I want there to be no excuse. It’s supposed to be the hap-happiest time of the year, but it doesn’t seem like it sometimes. I want every single one of us to walk out of here in about 30—okay maybe 45 minutes—just the jolliest lil elves you’ve ever seen. Can we do that?

Let’s read the Word.

Isaiah 35:1-4 (CSB)

The wilderness and the dry land will be glad; the desert will rejoice and blossom like a wildflower. 2 It will blossom abundantly and will also rejoice with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon will be given to it, the splendor of Carmel and Sharon. They will see the glory of the LORD, the splendor of our God. 3 Strengthen the weak hands, steady the shaking knees! 4 Say to the cowardly: “Be strong; do not fear! Here is your God; vengeance is coming. God’s retribution is coming; he will save you.”

[pray?]

Some of you are like “what does that have to do with Christmas?”

And I’ll tell you in a bit. Spoiler alert: everything.

But to fully grasp why that’s significant, we have to go back. Like way back. Like take your Bible and go to the table of contents, and then go to the right a page or two.

I’ll help connect the dots. When God created everything, he created a perfect, abundant, vibrant, verdant, and all kinds of other good adjectives garden of Eden and placed man inside. Things were amazing for about 10 minutes, and then sin entered the world. Do you remember what part of the curse was? Genesis 3:18 says that “The ground is cursed because of you” and that it would take much toil, pain, and hardship to make it bring forth life once more.

Fast forward a good long while and you have the Israelites marching toward the Promised Land. Do you remember how the spies described it? Lush and vibrant. A land flowing with milk and honey. This was the inheritance of a faithful Israel. A curse partially reversed.

But there is a warning in the blessing (there usually is): in Deuteronomy 28:23-24 (CSB) God warns Israel about what should happen if they walk in disobedience to him:

The sky above you will be bronze, and the earth beneath you iron. The Lord will turn the rain of your land into falling dust; it will descend on you from the sky until you are destroyed. Deut 28:23-24 (CSB)

So within the blessing, we see God’s terms: sin against Him, and he will remove the blessing. The partial reversal to a state of Eden is taken away in Israel’s disobedience. So that’s where Israel finds themselves potentially facing in Isaiah’s time. Far from the abundance promised, it’s the language of the desert that would’ve been far more familiar to Isaiah’s contemporaries, and especially those in the generations after.

And we are still in this tension today. Not just the promised land, but worldwide. All of creation is groaning for restoration to Eden. Romans 8:19-23 reminds us that all of creation is longing to break free from the bondage of decay.

Even more than creation longing for healing and restoration, the curse is still very much against us, personally. We are all experiencing the pains of a cursed creation, from illness to loss to hunger to the consequences of sin in our lives.

The curse affects the heart as well. We are corrupted with sinful thoughts and desires that assault us constantly. Our heart’s desire is for evil.

This is the effect of sin. And so to truly understand and reshape how we experience the joy of the Lord, we have to take notice of a few things. First of all:

1. Without Christ, we are lifeless

We see the contrast here in verse 1:

The wilderness and the dry land will be glad; the desert will rejoice and blossom like a wildflower Isaiah 35:1 (CSB)

This is a prophecy about what will come to the redeemed of the Lord. So in this, we see a glimpse of a world without Jesus. The wilderness… the dry land… the desert. Without Jesus, we are in a state of eternal drought.

I grew up largely in West Texas, and we know all about droughts. Just arid, dry, cracked Earth. It’s like a Mad Max movie out there. Then the wind kicks up and you get just completely sandblasted. I remember times growing up it would feel like having thousands of needles pelt you at 60 miles an hour because it’s so dry and there’s not much to keep the dirt in the ground. It’s really kind of like the movie Interstellar, if you’ve seen that. It’s not awesome.

But that’s the picture really given with our disobedience and distance from God. Just a punishing lack of anything that resembles blossoming life.

And here’s the thing: God is right and just to let us rot in our disobedience. Does he love us? Absolutely. Does he continue to pursue us? 100%. But he also told us what we need to do in order to hold up our side of the covenant, and spoiler alert: we’ve never been really great at that.

Flip back one chapter to Isaiah 34, this is the first half of the prophecy we’re reading today.

You nations, come here and listen; you peoples, pay attention! Let the earth and all that fills it hear, the world and all that comes from it. 2 The Lord is angry with all the nations, furious with all their armies. He will set them apart for destruction, giving them over to slaughter. 3 Their slain will be thrown out, and the stench of their corpses will rise; the mountains will flow with their blood. 4 All the stars in the sky will dissolve. The sky will roll up like a scroll, and its stars will all wither as leaves wither on the vine, and foliage on the fig tree.

Isaiah 34:1-4 (CSB)

Here we see God’s righteous rebuke. First and foremost, this is a rebuke of Israel’s enemies, but it also said that God is displeased with ALL people. So this is, in part, the story of a nation who wore the unique title as God’s chosen people, and yet they didn’t act like it. They worshiped other gods, they gave themselves up to debauchery, and they fled what they knew to be true.

Could you imagine your own children simply deciding one day to stop calling you mom or dad? They decided they found some better parents, and they want to be with them. And these new parents make them do all kinds of terrible things that are so far outside the good you planned for you children, and yet your children choose the darkness every time.

This is what it must have been like for God every time Israel rebelled.

But can I tell you something today? It’s the same when we rebel. When we are in Christ, we are grafted in as his heirs and adopted as his children. And yet we constantly chase other things in order to make them lords over us and we serve them with our whole heart. Time, money, sex, out families, our jobs, you name it.

We reject the God who loves us for the sin that controls us.(Some of you are like “I thought I was supposed to feel the joy of Christmas). We’re getting there.

We simply need to understand that God is so is completely justified in leaving us to the wastelands of our own decisions.

But…

God’s intent is for life.

2. With Christ, we have vibrant life

See this promise that began so long ago that God would restore the state of the garden is reinforced right here in Isaiah 35. And Jesus being born 2000 years ago is an integral part of that promise.

When he stepped into the world, the Israelite people who knew their OT prophets were expecting the miraculous fulfillment of prophecies just like this. Isaiah 34 and 35 are really one prophecy about God’s future judgement and the final restoration of his people. over a hundred years after this, Israel would exiled from their promised land. And so A couple hundred years after Isaiah, when the people of Israel were allowed to return to their promised land and rebuild the temple, many expected the fulfillment of prophecies just like this.

But in the narratives of Ezra, Nehemiah, and the prophet Haggai, we see that event couldn’t have been the fulfillment of this prophecy, as it was lacking all of this promised restoration. Fast forward another couple of years to the birth of Christ—many expected to see this prophecy undeniably fulfilled. And truly, the fact that these didn’t immediately manifest surely played a large role in the doubt surrounding Jesus as the Messiah.

But Christ gave us a new promise, an ultimate reversal of the curse. Every time that Jesus restored the sight of the blind, made the lame to walk, healed the sick, and brought the dead to life he was reinforcing his power to keep this promise.

What we deserve is desolation and death, but in Christ, we have life. He told us as much. Remember when He meets the woman at the well in John 4? He told her that he is the living water, and whoever drinks from the water will never go thirsty, but will inherit eternal life. Does that sound more like a reversal of the desert curse?

He told the sadducees in Mark 12 that God is the God of the living, not the dead. Jesus is in the business of restoring life. So we see that God’s design is not for desolation but for abundance. I’m not talking about money or things or whatever carnal indulgences we desire. I’m talking about life for our very soul.

Christ began this great work, and that’s part what we can celebrate at Christmas. But he’s not done yet. This promise and his promise will still yet be fulfilled.

How do we know we’re still waiting? For one, look at each life he touched in his earthly ministry. Every eye that he gave sight to became blind in eventual death. Every limb he gave strength to succumbed to the decay of temporal life. Each of these signs of his power still resonate today as the reminder of his promise and that he has the power to make it happen, but then it was temporary.

And just look around us. We still deal with the pain, the sorrow, and imperfection of life. It seems like everyone I talk to right now is dealing with something. Because we all are. Just like the Israelites when this prophecy is given, we are in the season of waiting. We’re not waiting for something that already happened, with Christ’s first advent. We’re waiting for him to come again, and our joy comes from knowing that he will!

And it’s so crucial that we remind one another of the hope and expectation we have for the coming Christ. Look at verses 3 and 4:

Strengthen the weak hands, steady the shaking knees! 4 Say to the cowardly: “Be strong; do not fear! Here is your God… he will save you.

Isaiah 35:3-4 (CSB)

We are meant to share in the joy of the Lord and lift one another up in the joy of the Lord.

But notice something else here. In God’s perfect Kingdom, there is only room for life. So as much as we hate this aspect, we must recognize that there is retribution for those who are spiritually dead. Not everyone will get to experience this transformation from desert to abundance.

This should only serve to increase our urgency. We must hope with urgency, we must seek peace with urgency, we must rejoice with urgency, and we must love with urgency and seek the lost to share with them the life that is in Christ. Find those who have yet to experience the joy of knowing Christ will make things right and share it with them.

How do we rejoice with urgency? We must remember this, here is the third takeaway for today:

3. Our joy comes from the contrast of what we deserve and God’s grace

What we deserve is lifeless desolation. What we are given is abundant life.

In Luke 7, Jesus is eating at a Pharisee’s house. A woman who is only described as a sinner comes and weeps at Jesus’ feet to the astonishment of everyone watching. In response to their judgmental attitude, Jesus tells a parable, as is his custom. We see his story starting in verse 41

A creditor had two debtors. One owed five hundred denarii,, and the other fifty. 42 Since they could not pay it back, he graciously forgave them both. So, which of them will love him more?” 43 Simon answered, “I suppose the one he forgave more.” “You have judged correctly,” he told him. 44 Turning to the woman, he said to Simon, “Do you see this woman? I entered your house; you gave me no water for my feet, but she, with her tears, has washed my feet and wiped them with her hair. 45 You gave me no kiss, but she hasn’t stopped kissing my feet since I came in. 46 You didn’t anoint my head with olive oil, but she has anointed my feet with perfume. 47 Therefore I tell you, her many sins have been forgiven; that’s why she loved much. But the one who is forgiven little, loves little.” Luke 7:41-47 (CSB)

It is those who have been forgiven much who often have the most joy. It is those who had the most to gain and least to lose who love much. But I don’t want you to be mistaken: we have all been forgiven much.

It doesn’t matter your background, your history, whether you grew up in church or in the streets,

we too were once foolish, disobedient, deceived, enslaved by various passions and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, detesting one another. 4 But when the kindness of God our Savior and his love for mankind appeared, 5 he saved us—not by works of righteousness that we had done, but according to his mercy—through the washing of regeneration and renewal by the Holy Spirit. Titus 3:3-5 (CSB)

So we must all understand the contrast between what we deserve and what we are given. This understanding is how David could say in Psalm 32:

How joyful is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered! 2 How joyful is a person whom the Lord does not charge with iniquity and in whose spirit is no deceit! Psalm 32:1-2 (CSB)

Do you have a joy like that?

I don’t want us to leave this place with any excuse for not experiencing the joy of the Lord.

Can I read some Scripture over you?

I want to help us remember that the Christmas story isn’t just Luke 2. It’s not just about a Charlie Brown Christmas. Of course, that’s where it begins, but there’s so much more than that.

It’s about a hope dreamed of for generations. It’s about a fractured relationship that could never be restored by us, but only by God in his matchless grace. Don’t ignore the significance of the joy that we have in Christ.

We should celebrate! Not because of gifts or Christmas music (what a blessing) or community, though those can all be good things, but oh man we have much to celebrate today. This room should be the happiest place on planet earth. Because we have been redeemed from death to life. We’ve read all about what we deserve this morning. We know what we should receive as a gift.

But here’s the truth. Here’s what God accomplished and what we celebrate at Christmas.

→ Romans 5:8 and gospel message

But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Ro 5:8 (ESV)

Where there was a desert, God saw life

Where there was sin, God saw forgiveness

if you don’t have this hope, peace, and joy, don’t wait any longer!

next step of salvation?

If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. Romans 10:9 (ESV)

This is the hope for us.

Take a few moments to think about what God has saved you from. I mean really think about it. We have all been forgiven much! Seriously, take like ten seconds to think about what God has saved you from… and then thank him for what he’s done for you. Thank him for how far he’s brought you.

I’m going to read some Scripture over you—remember that this, these promises are where your joy comes from.

And I will betroth you to me forever. I will betroth you to me in righteousness and in justice, in steadfast love and in mercy. 20 I will betroth you to me in faithfulness. And you shall know the Lord…23… And I will have mercy on No Mercy, and I will say to Not My People, ‘You are my people’; and he shall say, ‘You are my God.’ ” Hosea 2:19-20; 23b (ESV)

Look, the days are coming”—this is the Lord’s declaration—“when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. 32 This one will not be like the covenant I made with their ancestors on the day I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt—my covenant that they broke even though I am their master”… 33 “Instead, this is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after those days”… “I will put my teaching within them and write it on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. 34 No longer will one teach his neighbor or his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for they will all know me, from the least to the greatest of them”—this is the Lord’s declaration. “For I will forgive their iniquity and never again remember their sin. Jeremiah 31:31-34 (CSB)

28 After this I will pour out my Spirit on all humanity; then your sons and your daughters will prophesy, your old men will have dreams, and your young men will see visions… 32 Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved, for there will be an escape for those on Mount Zion and in Jerusalem, as the Lord promised, among the survivors the Lord calls. Joel 2:28; 32 (CSB)

How joyful is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered! 2 How joyful is a person whom the Lord does not charge with iniquity and in whose spirit is no deceit! 3 When I kept silent, my bones became brittle from my groaning all day long. 4 For day and night your hand was heavy on me; my strength was drained as in the summer’s heat. Selah 5 Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not conceal my iniquity. I said, “I will confess my transgressions to the Lord,” and you forgave the guilt of my sin. Selah 6 Therefore let everyone who is faithful pray to you immediately., When great floodwaters come, they will not reach him. 7 You are my hiding place; you protect me from trouble. You surround me with joyful shouts of deliverance. Psalm 32:1-7 (CSB)

And I want to read the second half of the prophecy that we started with this morning, oh this is good.

Stand with me as we read the hope we have in Jesus.

This is the hope that we have to look forward to, and the powerful truth that we can celebrate today because Christ has come And he will come again!

the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped. 6 Then the lame will leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute will sing for joy, for water will gush in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; 7 the parched ground will become a pool, and the thirsty land, springs. In the haunt of jackals, in their lairs, there will be grass, reeds, and papyrus. 8 A road will be there and a way; it will be called the Holy Way. The unclean will not travel on it, but it will be for the one who walks the path. Fools will not wander on it. 9 There will be no lion there, and no vicious beast will go up on it; they will not be found there. But the redeemed will walk on it, 10 and the ransomed of the Lord will return and come to Zion with singing, crowned with unending joy. Joy and gladness will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee. Isaiah 35:5-10 (CSB)