Joy
Notes
Transcript
Introduction
Introduction
“Have you ever noticed how everything seems wonderful at Christmas?”
That’s a quote from a personal hero of mine, the ghost of Christmas Present from what is objectively the best Christmas movie of all time, “The Muppet Christmas Carol.” Let’s watch the moment when Ebenezer Scrooge meets him for the first time.
I love that clip. I also love the song that the Ghost of Christmas present sings after this, “It Feels Like Christmas,” where he explains to Scrooge why everything is wonderful at Christmas time. The lyrics include gems like this:
A part of childhood we'll always remember
It is the summer of the soul in December
Yes, when you do your best for love
It feels like Christmas
It is the season of the heart
A special time of caring
The ways of love made clear
It is the season of the spirit
The message, if we hear it
Is make it last all year
So I’ll ask the question again, have you ever noticed that everything seems wonderful at Christmas? Or in other words, do you feel the joy at Christmas time? Week three of Advent is all about joy. That’s the reason why we sing Joy to the World, the reason why Christmas is a season of celebration, of feasting and partying and giving gifts to one another.
Why do we celebrate? Why should Christmas be a joyful season at all? Because at Christmas we celebrate the birth of Jesus. Remember, the world had been waiting for Jesus for thousands of years. Ever since Adam and Eve brought sin and death into the world, we had been waiting for a savior. Ever since Abraham had been promised that his offspring would be a blessing to the nations we have been eagerly awaiting God’s blessing. Ever since the prophets had declared God’s chosen one would bring peace to the earth we have been longing for our King.
Then Jesus was born! This is what the angels said to the shepherds about the birth of Jesus in Luke 2:8-11
In the same region, shepherds were staying out in the fields and keeping watch at night over their flock. Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 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: Today in the city of David a Savior was born for you, who is the Messiah, the Lord.
They brought good news of great joy for all people! A savior was born for us. That means that all those terrible dark things that the world has been suffering since the fall have finally been addressed. They call him a savior, which means someone who saves. What does He save us from? His death on our behalf saves us from death, saves us from eternal fire, saves us from hopelessness, saves us from our own hateful and broken hearts. That is certainly some good news!
So we know that God has given the greatest gift possible to mankind out of His great love for us. What do we do with this gift? What do we do with this good news of great joy? What does the Bible teach us about how disciples of Jesus should interact with Joy? Well I’d like to talk about three aspects of Joy today.
Joy Has A Season
God Wants Us to be Joyful
The Greatest Joy Will Be In The New Heavens And New Earth
Joy Has A Season
Joy Has A Season
When I was in university there was a certain student, whom I share a brotherly love for, but that honestly was too joyful. You know the kind of person I mean, always bubbly and cheerful, going and ruining your day by reminding you how unnecessarily grumpy you are. Well I was one of the few students who would go to breakfast every morning at Kingswood. It was served quite early, so most people chose to sleep in, but I had paid for three meals a day and I was going to be sure I got those three meals.
Those of us who ate breakfast usually all sat at one table, and we would keep the lights in the cafeteria at a fairly dim level and just sort of enjoy a nice quiet meal together. Not this guy. The moment he walked into the cafeteria he would flip the lights up to full blast and loudly declare, “good morning everyone!” Which is why I was so happy to discover the perfect verse to quote at him when he did, which is Proverbs 27:14
If one blesses his neighbor
with a loud voice early in the morning,
it will be counted as a curse to him.
Why were we so grumpy with our fellow student? Why does proverbs say what it does about the folly of blessings someone loudly in the morning? It’s a timing thing. There’s nothing wrong with being cheerful and giving a loud happy greeting if you do it at the right time.
Ecclesiastes captures this well in perhaps the most famous section of the book in chapter 3, where the teacher says Ecclesiastes 3:1
There is an occasion for everything,
and a time for every activity under heaven:
Then he procedes to list a bunch of contrasts that have their own time and place. One in particular is of relevance to our discussion on joy today, which is
a time to weep and a time to laugh;
a time to mourn and a time to dance;
So God isn’t expecting us to walk around all the time with big goofy smiles being obnoxiously happy. God does want us to be joyful, I’ll be talking about that next, but some of us have seen first hand how it can feel annoying when someone is cheerful all the time. Plus more importantly if we want to be kind and considerate of other people than we cannot be cheerful while our brothers and sisters are suffering. This is why Paul says in Romans 12:15,
Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep.
Because we are to have solidarity with our Christian brothers and sisters who are mourning and mourn with them. At the same time when our brothers and sisters in Christ have something to celebrate than we should celebrate with them. So I guess the point is to be sensitive and keep your ears and eyes open to know when your spiritual siblings need your sympathy and when they need your enthusiasm.
God Wants us to be Joyful
God Wants us to be Joyful
With that being said, what is your default mood? When you don’t have something specific to mourn or someone to mourn with, what is your normal Christian attitude? Does the Bible tell us that we should be sad most of the time? Or that we should be even keeled all the time? Nope. It says in 1 Thessalonians 5:16 that we should
Rejoice always,
A short but meaninful verse. The context doesn’t save us here, because it’s in a list of final bits of advice Paul has for the Church in Thessalonica. So keeping in mind that there is a time to mourn and a time to share in the mourning of others, God expects our usual attitude to be a joyful one. In fact James even tells us to be joyful during our sufferings in James 1:2-4
Consider it a great joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. And let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.
Not only that but in the Gospel According to John when Jesus is explaining to the disciples the nature of the Gospel and the Love of the Father and son He says that He’s telling them all these things for the intended purpose that they would have joy:
“As the Father has loved me, I have also loved you. Remain in my love. If you keep my commands you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.
“I have told you these things so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.
So not only are we to share in Christ’s joy, but we are to have complete joy. The word complete there in Greek, the original language of this gospel can mean perfect, complete or full. So we should literally be joyFULL.
Jesus is saying that the gospel is at least in part intended to bring us joy. The author of Hebrews tells us that Joy is actually what motivated Jesus to die for our sins in the first place.
keeping our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. For the joy that lay before him, he endured the cross, despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
It seems clear to me then that joy is what God expects us to have when we are saved by His son. The question is, what do you do if you aren’t feeling joyful? Do you try and force yourself to feel joy? Do you do the old “fake it ‘till you make it” thing? Do you focus on your own desires to make yourself feel joy?
Recently Katie and I got our wood stove up and running in the house for the first time. Now I’m no stranger to fire, so I have little trouble starting a fire in the stove but maintaining one is a different story. See there’s an art to keeping the fire going without making the livingroom a sauna. Something I remember from my childhood that my Uncle never mastered. It was always sweltering in His place when he had a fire going.
I think in some ways that joy is like a fire. How do you keep a fire going? You need to make sure it has fuel and oxygen. If I shut out all the oxygen the flame dies, if I don’t keep giving it wood the fire burns up all the wood and the fire dies. So in my metaphor, what is the oxygen and the wood that we need to keep the fire of joy burning in our lives?
I believe that the oxygen is the Holy Spirit and the fuel is thankfulness.
The oxygen is the Holy Spirit because giving the fire oxygen is passive. I don’t force air in I let it in. In the same way the Holy Spirit we believe is a person who works in our lives, and we are told in the Scriptures not to “stifle” the Holy Spirit, in fact three verses away from Paul saying that we should rejoice always. Interesting that stifling or quenching a fire is the visual we’re given, works well for my purposes today. In any case it’s the Spirit’s job to be the oxygen in our fire of Joy. Hence why Joy is one aspect of the fruit of the spirit in galatians. The fruit of the spirit is not something we produce but the Spirit produces.
The role that we play in keeping the fire of joy burning in our lives is putting in the fuel, which is giving thanks. Coincidentally, only two verses away from the call to rejoice always is the call to give thanks in everything. What is joy besides the reaction to good things in our lives? So in order to cultivate joy we need to remind ourselves of all the good things we have to be joyful about. That’s why we celebrate Christmas every year, as an annual reminder of the birth of Jesus that inspires us to be joyful for what we have. So if you count your many blessings like the old spiritual says, than you will feed your joy.
It’s not hard to find things to be joyful about really. James tells us that every good gift comes from the Father, so everything that is good in your life is something you can give thanks to God for and build your joy upon. Even if you were homeless, had no food, and suffered intense pain every day you still have no excuse to be thankless, because Jesus is still your savior. We all have something to be happy about that God has already done. That and our faith in God to keep His word means we can already celebrate what we know God is going to do in the future, which brings me to my final point.
The Greatest Joy is in the New Heavens and New Earth
The Greatest Joy is in the New Heavens and New Earth
One of the many reasons why Christmas is so fun is because of the anticipation of it. Now I’m a good cynical adult like I’m supposed to be, so for many years it lost this luster, but then I had kids. Owen isn’t quite at the age where he’s counting down the days until Christmas, but he is at the age where he lights up watching the Christmas parade. His joy is contagious. I found myself very much enjoying a Christmas parade for the first time in years last year when we brought him to one. Give it another year or two and he will be like other children, eagerly awaiting Christmas day and getting more excited every day.
Well brothers and sisters we have something to await eagerly as well. Now it’s a bit different because no one knows the day or the hour when it will come, but we can know for certain that it will come. God always keeps His promises. We’ve seen that very clearly in our sermon series on finding Jesus in the Old Testament. That means that when He promises that He will make a New Heavens and a New Earth where there will be no sadness and all will be good and beautiful, we can trust that it will happen.
So we should be getting excited even now. Of course we shouldn’t be obsessed with trying to figure out when it’s going to happen, or neglect the present to hope for a future, but we can anticipate with gladness that a perfect future is waiting for those of us who are in Christ. So why don’t we today talk about the kind of future that we can look forward to in order to help fuel the fire of our joy?
First of all Jesus often talks about the future resurrection as a wedding feast. Now in the days of Jesus weddings were weeklong events where you feasted and drank wine together with your friends and family. That’s a beautiful picture of what our future looks like. We will be sitting at a huge feast with all our Christian brothers and sisters.
I think about Christmas dinner when I was a kid, when my Grandmother Carol Marr would gather up her family for Christmas dinner. Her little two bedroom home would be stuffed to bursting with my mother, father, siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles. The kitchen table would be full, the dining room table would be full, the couch in the livingroom would be full and a couple people would be eating their turkey dinner sitting on the stairs. I believe that’s the kind of atmosphere we can expect in eternity, except that the table will have plenty of room.
Beyond the picture of the wedding feast a lot about the end times is kept mysterious now, but there are a couple beautiful passages about the New Heavens and the New Earth that bring me joy, so I thought I would read them to you now. I want you to close your eyes, unless you’re worried you might fall asleep, and picture this in your mind with me:
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. I also saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared like a bride adorned for her husband.
Then I heard a loud voice from the throne: Look, God’s dwelling is with humanity, and he will live with them. They will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them and will be their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; grief, crying, and pain will be no more, because the previous things have passed away.
I did not see a temple in it, because the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, because the glory of God illuminates it, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never close by day because it will never be night there. They will bring the glory and honor of the nations into it. Nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those written in the Lamb’s book of life.
Then he showed me the river of the water of life, clear as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb down the middle of the city’s main street. The tree of life was on each side of the river, bearing twelve kinds of fruit, producing its fruit every month. The leaves of the tree are for healing the nations, and there will no longer be any curse. The throne of God and of the Lamb will be in the city, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. Night will be no more; people will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, because the Lord God will give them light, and they will reign forever and ever.
“For I will create new heavens and a new earth;
the past events will not be remembered or come to mind.
Then be glad and rejoice forever
in what I am creating;
for I will create Jerusalem to be a joy
and its people to be a delight.
I will rejoice in Jerusalem
and be glad in my people.
The sound of weeping and crying
will no longer be heard in her.
In her, a nursing infant will no longer live
only a few days,
or an old man not live out his days.
Indeed, the one who dies at a hundred years old will be mourned as a young man,
and the one who misses a hundred years will be considered cursed.
People will build houses and live in them;
they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
They will not build and others live in them;
they will not plant and others eat.
For my people’s lives will be
like the lifetime of a tree.
My chosen ones will fully enjoy
the work of their hands.
They will not labor without success
or bear children destined for disaster,
for they will be a people blessed by the Lord
along with their descendants.
Even before they call, I will answer;
while they are still speaking, I will hear.
The wolf and the lamb will feed together,
and the lion will eat straw like cattle,
but the serpent’s food will be dust!
They will not do what is evil or destroy
on my entire holy mountain,”
says the Lord.
Conclusion
Conclusion
So do you feel the joy yet? That’s the whole purpose of this sermon. I want us to leave this place with a smile on our faces knowing that we have so much to be thankful for.
But I also want us to remember how many people out there don’t have joy this Christmas season. Who can we bring joy to even now? Who can we introduce to the source of our joy, Jesus Christ the saviour of the world? Who can we invite to the wedding banquet to share in eternal peace and joy with us? I challenge all of us to pray for God to show us who He has in our paths for us to reach out to this Christmas and share with them the reason for this season.
Let’s pray.