Great Joy

For the past few weeks I have been talking about the Roman Catholic and liturgical church practice of Advent.

In particular Advent Candles.

I mentioned that the first Advent Candle to be lit on the first Sunday of Advent is the candle that represents Hope.

The second Sunday, the second candle (last week) represents peace — especially the peace with God that Jesus bought on the Cross with His Blood.

This week, the Advent candle that would be lit is the candle of joy.

As we watch and listen to all of the presentations this morning, I know there are those of you who will have trouble embracing joy in a year of loss.

Some have had their spouses, parents or grandparents die.

Some have had financial reverses, like David Thomason who was “let go” from his job on Friday.

For many of you, 2025 has been a tough year.

And yet, I would encourage you to embrace the joy of Jesus and maybe allow Jesus to embrace you with His joy.

When the angel came to the shepherds in Luke 2: 10, He told them...

Luke 2:10 (GNB) … “Don’t be afraid! I am here with good news for you, which will bring great joy to all the people.

Brian Simmons tells us that…

There’s a difference between joy and happiness.

Happiness is often based on situations, people, and things outside ourselves.

Joy is another story: it’s something internal we can possess regardless of external circumstances.

Jesus told us the Holy Spirit fills us with this mystery.

Paul explained that the Holy Spirit produces it within us.

We’re also invited to have it—and we can, because it’s one of the promises of Christmas.

I know there is a sense of loss and grief, but let that loss and grief be replaced by the joy of the Lord.

As Ezra told the people of Israel in Nehemiah 8:10 (AMP)… [do] be not grieved and depressed, for the joy of the Lord is your strength and stronghold.

Prayer for those facing loss ...

Advent Candle: Joy

“Great Joy”

Sermon Map for Week 3 — “Holy Night” Sermon Series

Dominant Thought

We’ve been given a joyful life to live; let’s live it in a joyless world.

Key Passages

· Luke 2:8-15

Introduction

Suggested Approach

The goal of the Introduction is to:

· set up and show a scene from “Holy Night” 

· within the set-up for the scene, read the words of the angels to the shepherds in Luke 2:10-12 and verse 14

· identify the day as the third Sunday of Advent

· briefly remind your listeners what Advent is

· light the Joy candle — the third candle (if you’ve chosen to observe the tradition)

For this sermon, we suggest you show the clip from “Holy Night” virtually right off the bat. A suggested script for setting up the scene is just below. 

Suggested Script for Introducing Scene from "Holy Night"

Throughout this series we’ve been watching scenes from The Chosen’s Christmas episode, called "Holy Night.” And the one we’re about to show expands on a scene we’ve watched before. In fact, we watched it just last week. But I can’t help but think we need to watch it again for purposes of our time together this morning. It imagines what it was like for the shepherds just after the angels had said what they’d said and sung what they’d sung — which was this: <read only the words of the angels in Luke 2:10-12 and verse 14 — and maybe emphasize ‘great joy’ when you do>. What was it like for the shepherds just after that? What were they like when the skies had grown dark again and the only sound was the whistling of the wind or a quick bleat from one of the sheep? Maybe they looked something like this... 

Show Scene from “Holy Night”: The Joy of the Shepherds at Christmas

Just after the scene has been shown, move right into the material listed in the additional bullet points above. It might be tempting to skip them, but remember: people come and go during holiday seasons — many of them new to church (in general) and your church (in particular). It’s worth taking some time to ensure everyone is on the same page. First, take some time to point out that it’s the third Sunday of Advent, and then briefly remind your listeners what Advent is. (For pointers on how to do this clearly and concisely, see the ‘Transition to Section Three’ portion of "Nothing Is Impossible with God” or the ‘Introduction’ of “For All the People [p.1].”) From there you could say something along these lines: “On the first Sunday of Advent, we talked about how the coming of Jesus allows for a turning away from hopelessness and instead toward hope. On the second Sunday of Advent, we talked about how the coming of Jesus allows for a turning away from shame and instead toward peace. Today we want to declare that the coming of Jesus allows for a turning away from sadness and instead toward joy. Because of what happened on one holy night, we can now live a joyful life.”

Note: If you’re taking part in the lighting of candles each week, the Hope and Peace candles should already be burning, and you can point to them as you reference the themes of hope and peace. When you introduce joy, go ahead and light the candle for Joy as you do, if it’s not already been lit at another point in the worship service.  

Transition to Section One

Suggested Approach

We’d say keep this transition short and sweet, because the goal is simple: get right to Section One of the sermon. Just after the Joy candle has been lit, you can say something along these lines, “But what is a joyful life?”    

Section One

Suggested Teaching Point for Section One

The joyful life is the often-cheerful life of contentedness.

Suggested Approach for Establishing Teaching Point

The goal of this section of the sermon is to:

· define ‘joy’ and ‘the joyful life’ (thus establishing the suggested teaching point)

· flesh out the definition  

Many of your listeners probably think ‘a joyful life’ is nothing more than a life of happiness, and you might want to tell them you know that might be their line of thinking on the matter. And while this section of the sermon will take some swings at such thinking, at this point you probably ought to offer a little support to your listeners by admitting that living a joyful life does often entail happiness. Tell them a joyful life willsometimes look like what they just watched in the scene from “Holy Night”: a life with laughter and smiling and even giddiness. Tell them that the joyful life is often marked by warmth and cheer — by happiness. But then go on and tell them that a joyful life is more than that, because ‘joy’ is more than mere cheer. This, then, is where you need to offer a clear definition of ‘joy.’ If you find that it squares with the insights gleaned from your own study of ‘joy,’ feel free to introduce your listeners to the definition of joy we’ve come up with via ours: joy is an often-cheerful contentedness. And once you’ve introduced the definition of ‘joy’ to your listeners, you can immediately offer the related definition of ‘the joyful life’: the joyful life is the often-cheerful life of contentedness. This serves as the suggested teaching point for this section of the sermon.

Now that you’ve stated the definition of the ‘joyful life,’ you’ll want to unpack it for your listeners. How you do so is up to you, of course, but as always, we have some suggestions. The best overall approach might be to unpack the definition by moving backwards through it, making use along the way of the themes of Advent, some of what you’ve covered thus far in the series, the main Scripture for this sermon (and other assorted texts of your choosing), and the scene from “Holy Night.” This approach would have you start with an exploration of what you mean by ‘contentedness.’ While there are a number of ways you could define what ‘contentedness’ is, to keep your listeners within the scope of the sermon series and Advent itself, you could explain that contentedness is ‘a marked calm within a person that’s born out of hope and peace’ — ‘a marked calm born out of the absence of hopelessness and shame.’ Because we far too quickly move along from past teaching points and points of application in a sermon series, this is a wonderful opportunity for a bit of recall from the first two sermons. Remind your listeners of the hope, the confident expectation, that’s born out of the knowledge that nothing is impossible with God — from the first coming of Jesus, which began a work of renewal and restoration for a broken and hurting world, to his second coming, when he will finish his work in full. Remind them, too, of the peace within that comes in knowing a deep grace and mercy has been shown by the Jesus, even to those seemingly unworthy and long forgotten or cast aside. Revisit elements of the spoken and sung words of the angels to Joseph and Mary and the shepherds, too. Revisit some of the Scriptures you’ve drawn from in the previous two sermons. Draw on the themes of Advent, telling your listeners that, “This is part of the beauty of Advent: the themes build atop one another. Hope has come in the One who came — a confident expectation in the Messiah who is renewing and restoring all things. Peace has come in the One who came — a grace and a mercy shown by the Messiah even to those seemingly unworthy and long forgotten or cast aside. And so joy has come in the One who came — a contentedness, a marked calm, that can never be dimmed or toppled by anyone or anything.” And with this you can move further backward in your definition of the joyful life to the second critical element: that the joyful life is often a cheerful one. (“How could we not have moments of laughter and smiling and even giddiness in light of what Jesus has done and is doing and will one day do in full? How could we not at times mirror what we saw in that scene from ‘Holy Night’?”) But then make note of the ‘often’ in ‘often-cheerful.’ Explain to your listeners that because joy is more than happiness — that it is a marked contentedness — a joyful life might look cheerful one day and a little more calm and quiet the next. Sometimes laughter will be on display, and other times there will be more of a set jaw that declares a steely resolve. Sure there will be smiling, but other times? The look of a life that is simply at work. The joyful life might even look like righteous anger at times. It might be worth it to push your listeners to think back to the scene from “Holy Night,” acknowledging that while you can certainly see happiness in the shepherds, a below-the-surface look at the scene shows something deeper: a new-found peace and hope. You spot confidence and resolve in the midst of the laughter and smiling and giddiness. Once again remind the audience of some of what you pointed out in the previous sermon: the social and religious stigmas shepherds faced at that time. And yet despite wide rejection, there the shepherds are, throwing all caution to the wind to find — and then step into the very presence of — the Messiah, the one who supposedly wasn’t coming to earth anytime soon because of people like them. Maybe remind your listeners of the scene they watched in the previous sermon of the shepherds being looked down upon or looked past by all others. And then tell them how next week you’ll watch a scene in which, just after the shepherds meet Joseph, Mary, and the child, they are running through town, and the townspeople are shocked by this suddenly confident and giddy crew. The shepherds are no longer approaching others with fear and trembling or while staring at their sandals in shame. There is a confidence in them — a new self-worth. There’s a resolve. There’s a contentedness. They know hope and peace have come, so there is joy in all its many forms.

Transition to Section Two

Suggested Approach

Here's another transition that can be short and sweet, because the goal is simple: to quickly establish the first part of the next suggested teaching point that will be unpacked in Section Two of the sermon. After you’ve made your way through all that needs exploring in Section One, you can say something along these lines, “So that’s the joyful life. <Pause> And knowing what it looks like forces us to acknowledge that it’s a joyless world we live in.”

Section Two

Suggested Teaching Point for Section Two

It’s a joyless world we live in — and sometimes we play the part.

Suggested Approach for Establishing Teaching Point

How you offer evidence of how joyless the world is, is up to you, of course. As we’ve done throughout these sermon maps, we want to allow plenty of margin for you to be yourself as a preacher and pastor — and for you to communicate in a way that best speaks to your unique congregation. You can simply say something like, “It doesn’t seem like much of anyone in the world thinks everything has changed and is changing for the better. Despite moments of happiness, there’s no resolve born out of any confidence in ultimate goodness. You could not possibly argue that most of the world enjoys deep contentedness. Just look at...” And off you go. It could be that you take a statistical approach. After all, a simple Google search yields plenty of links to studies regarding the current state of our mental and emotional well-being. What might prove even more powerful, though, is an anecdotal approach. Point to the general public’s embrace of cynicism; to the bevy of movies and books that are dark and dystopian; to the prevalent (and jarring) song lyrics that casually sing of depression, anxiety, trauma, and even self-harm; to the deluge of marketing that clearly shows we’re never content with what we have; to the despairing vernacular of our politics; to our hiding away in the virtual; to the anger that so quickly rises up throughout conversation, in social media posts, and even on literal highways; to the constant confessions that are being made about how miserable work is. Maybe you offer a blend of statistical and anecdotal evidence of the world’s joylessness. There’s great freedom in how you do this. Once you’ve offered evidence of just how joyless the world is, it’s time to speak the suggested teaching point in full: it’s a joyless world we live in — and sometimes we play the part.

For this final movement in Section Two, tell your listeners that while it’s important to engage in observation of the world’s joylessness, such observation ought to lead to introspection. Seeing as believers aren’t any more immune to joylessness than unbelievers, there’s surely some joyless living in the Church that needs to be acknowledged. How you offer up evidence of this sad and distressing reality about some of today’s believers is once again up to you. Perhaps you journey back through some of what you anecdotally covered when speaking about the world’s joylessness. (“It’s hard not to see that significant corners of the Church have embraced cynicism — a posture that ‘it just doesn’t seem to matter anymore, who we are and what we’re doing.’ And you can’t miss the despairing vernacular of believers when discussing politics. And isn’t it true that we hide away in the virtual just as much as the next person, trying our best to distract ourselves from the worry, from the pain? It sure seems like anger is making far more cameo appearances in our conversations, in our social media posts, and even out on the literal highways of life. And we’re not always exactly beams of sunshine in the workplace, are we?”) The turn from observation to introspection is a tender one, but it needs to be made. And once it’s been made, restate the full suggested teaching point (It’s a joyless world we live in — and sometimes we play the part) and then it’s time to transition to Section Three of the sermon. 

Transition to Section Three

Suggested Approach

This is yet another transition that can be short and sweet. All you’re looking to do here is establish the final suggested teaching point of the sermon, which happens to be theteaching point (i.e. the dominant thought or thesis). Once you’ve made your way through evidence of joylessness in today’s Church, you can say something along these lines, “But we’ve been given a joyful life to live. So let’s live it in a joyless world.

Section Three

Suggested Teaching Point for Section Two

We’ve been given a joyful life to live; let’s live it in a joyless world.

Suggested Approach for Establishing Teaching Point

There are countless directions you could go in this final main section of the sermon, and you need to chase down the ones that you feel will speak most to (and inspire) your listeners. You might — might — want to (very) quickly restate one final time why we have a joyful life. (“We have been given a joyful life — we have such contentedness and even cheer — because hope has come to us in the One who came, that confident expectation in the Messiah who is renewing and restoring all things for us. We have been given a joyful life — we have such contentedness and even cheer — because peace has come to us in the One who came, a deep grace and mercy shown to us by Jesus.”) And then you could simply say, “So let’s live it. Let’s show cheer. Let’s show contentedness.” From there, paint a picture of what a life of cheer and contentedness might look like. The best way to do this might very well be to revisit the evidence of joylessness in the world and in the church that you listed in the previous section and paint a new picture of what the opposite of all of that looks like in the everyday. For example, to be a joyful people is to be a people marked by an absence of cynicism — that sinister line of thinking that says “nothing really matters or makes a difference” — because the hope and peace of Jesus have replaced it with an insistence that everyone matters and everything matters. That every word spoken or left unspoken — that every good deed done and every bad deed left undone — matters. Have some fun imagining what a people completely caught up in an often-cheerful life of contentedness might look like today in your particular town, inAmerica, in the wider world at large.

Transition to Conclusion

Suggested Approach

Hold on to your hats: this fourth and final transition can yet againbe short and sweet. After you’ve painted all those pictures of what a joyful life might look like, all you really need to do is pause as a sort of ‘hard break.’ 

Conclusion

Suggested Approach

To begin the conclusion, you can probably say something quite simple: “And can I add just one more thought? There’s a missional side to our living the joyful life.” From there, then, you can conclude the sermon by sharing with your listeners how a joyless world is crying out for joy — desperate for a reason to have abiding cheer and deep contentment. Share how our living the joyful life in their midst is one of our greatest witnessing ‘tools.’ Share how when all others are being laid low by hopelessness and shame and we are not, those laid low will wonder what it is that sustains our cheer and contentment. To close, share how living the joyful life is quite the good deed, and as Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, when others see good deeds — when they see our life of cheer and contentedness — they might just "turn and glorify the Father in heaven.“