Shepherds: Hope and Joy
2019 Christmas Advent Series • Sermon • Submitted
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· 198 viewsHope and Joy is not just reserved for Christmas.
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Shepherds: Hope and Joy
Desperate for Joy.
People are desperate for joy in our world. That desperation takes on different forms depending on where you live. For much of America, if we are not careful that desperation for joy is displayed in a desire for possessions. We convince ourselves that if we just get this one particular item, we will experience joy, and not just joy, joy that will last! All you have to do is turn on the TV and every 5-7 minutes you get to watch 2-3 minutes worth of commercials geared towards removing any joy you may have by showing you what specific item or items you absolutely have to have if you really want to be joyful. Here’s one that most of us have seen many times the past 2 years:
GMC Commercial
Now there are several things I picked up while watching this commercial. First off, I am guessing the age of the couple to be late 20’s to early 30’s. It appears to be a major city, which would mean the value of their home is likely between $500-750,000. In his hand is a phone that is probably worth $500 or more. His wife buys presents for each that probably cost $3-500. Not to be outdone, he has purchased two brand new vehicles with a combined cost of over $100,000 and it’s not even Christmas yet! While this couple may have a joyous Christmas, somewhere around January 15th, when the bills start to piling up, all joy is out the window!
The point is, when our joy is tied to possessions, or our friendships, or jobs, or families of just about anything, the joy will likely be short lived. That is not to say that these things are not important. I mean, friendships, jobs, families and even to a certain degree possessions can all be important things, but each one is temporal. Which means that if our joy is tied to them, when they disappear, so does our joy.
This morning as we continue our “Cast of Christmas” Advent Series, we are going to look at the joy that was being proclaimed to the shepherds that first Christmas night. We will be looking at several passages, but to begin with we will be looking at some verses in Luke 2, please turn in your copies of God’s Word to Luke 2. Next Slide
Luke 2-Page 1090 in the Pew Bibles.
As you are turning there, let me continue, because there may be some of you, particularly parents, who may be thinking, “Phew, I’m in luck! My joy isn’t tied to personal possessions or my job or friends. Truthfully, if my kids are happy, I am joyful. In fact my greatest joy on Christmas morning is watching the glee on my children’s face when they open their presents!” Well, perhaps that type of joy may be somewhat unselfish, although honestly the jury is still out on that being unselfish, but that is a discussion for another time. The problem with our joy being tied to what we get others is, so much of the time many of those “must haves” we went to great lengths to get our kids for Christmas morning end up in the back of their closest before the end of the school year.
For example, if you had children in the ’90s, you might remember Tickle Me Elmo, I kid you not some parents payed thousands of dollars on the black market for a Sesame Street character whose allure came from the fact that he went into seizures and fits of giggling if you squeezed him. I watched one news clip where a Walmart clerk was literally trampled by parents trying to get to the furry red stuffed animal. Chances are no one here knows of anyone who still has a Tickle Me Elmo, and if you do, can I recommend a good councelor!
If we go way back, we must face one of the strangest toys of any Christmas past. I know our younger members won’t believe it, but children of the ’70s were clamoring for Pet Rocks. The pet box included breathing holes all around it, and inside you would find . . . a rock. That’s it. I guess it became your pet. The downside was it wasn’t very fun to watch. The upside was you never you never had to walk around the yard with a pooper scooper!.
So, what will it be this year? Millions of parents are desperately hoping that this year they’ll find the right toy. A toy that will both light up Christmas morning and not end up stuffed in the back of the closet three weeks from now. I don’t even want to think about all the gifts I’ve bought over the years that scarcely held my family’s interest for Christmas Day, much less for months or years to come. But we keep buying and keep hoping this time it will be different.
That brings us to our topic this morning and the shepherds in Luke 2 who received Hope and Joy.
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The Reason for Hope, The Foundation for Joy.
The first Christmas present was significantly different from those that we have already discussed this morning. The Bible tells us in Luke 2:8-12,
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Luke 2:8-12
8 And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.
9 And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear.
10 And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people.
11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.
12 And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”
Luke continues the story: Next Slide
Luke 2:16-18
16 And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger.
17 And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child.
18 And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them.
This Christmas present was so different anything we have looked at this morning.
The problem with toys and most things we look to for hope and joy is a case of diminishing returns. They quickly loose their value. Those 2 vehicles in the GMC commercial drop in value by about $6,000 each before the first payment is cashed!
But the first Christmas gift is a different sort of gift altogether. The shepherds show us that encountering Jesus is a different sort of experience. It had such an impact on the shepherds that they had to spread the word after they had seen Him. This was a lasting hope and joy that they could not contain. Three decades after that encounter, Jesus gave us insight on this sort of hope and joy for our lives: Next Slide
John 15:11
11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.
We all taste hope. We experience joy. How many of us would say our joy is full? There are about 250 passages in the Bible that deal with joy. If you read them, you’ll find the Bible doesn’t just encourage joy, it commands us to have it. In fact, the Bible commands us to rejoice twice as many times as it commands us to repent. We aren’t just given permission to laugh or to have some fun times; God wants your life to be constantly overflowing and filled with joy. Is that how you would describe your life?
The shepherds’ joy was a result of what God had done. Watching sheep at night has its merits. But the hope, wonder, and life-changing joy for them began when they first heard of Jesus. And the joy grew as they met Jesus. Joy begins for us in the same way it began for the shepherds. It begins with meeting Jesus. Without that foundation, how can we hope to have lasting joy? Very few things last forever. A real life-changing encounter with Jesus, however, remains and grows through all eternity. Meeting Jesus never stops impacting, shaping, and transforming our lives! It never stops giving us hope and opportunities for joy.
With that foundation in mind, let’s zero in on a few basic themes that recur numerous times in those 250 passages on joy. If we are going to walk in the joy God has for us, it seems we should pay attention to what the Bible not only says but repeats numerous times. While our foundation for joy comes as a result of what Jesus did for us, we find that embracing daily joy has little to do with what happens every day. In fact, according to many passages in the Bible, hope and joy are more of a mind-set or posture for living that comes from what Jesus did at Christmas than simply a result or feeling. It’s an undeniable theme concerning joy in the Bible.
We start by:
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Embracing the Hope and Joy That Have Been Given.
The apostle Paul clearly demonstrates this truth in Next Slide
Philippians 4:4-5
4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.
5 Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand;
One important part of walking in hope and joy is simply to choose to rejoice in everything! Much of the hope, joy, and rejoicing in the Bible isn’t really connected with circumstances. It’s connected with a decision. In fact, one of the keys to a life of joy is to rejoice even when the circumstances are disappointing or even painful.
Take, for example, the amazing prayer of the prophet Habakkuk. The prophet prays to God when Israel is in a state of terrible disarray. Wickedness and idolatry ruled the land, and the Assyrians were threatening to overwhelm Israel. As I read his prayer from Habakkuk 3:17–18, pay attention to both the circumstances the prophet is facing as well as Habakkuk’s response: Next Slide
Habakkuk 3:17-18
“Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.” Habakkuk 3:17-18
There’s not much more that could be going wrong in Israel. Yet Habakkuk’s response is to rejoice. Not just to rejoice, but to be joyful. That’s amazing!
Normally, good things happen, and then we feel happy.
We feel joy, and then we rejoice.
Our prospects look good, and hope fills our hearts.
The Bible says, “That’s fine, but actually it works the other way around. You start with rejoicing, and then you feel joy.”
I have mentioned a number of times that Pam and I lost a 5 month old baby. As the Sovereign God would have it, at the time we lost Daniel, our Pastor Jake was taking us through the book of Habakkuk. One of the things he challenged us as a church to do was to memorize Habakkuk 3:17-19. I think I may have shared this with you in the past, but I am going to do so again this morning. When Pam and I memorized these verses, we decided to personalize them to what we were going through at the time. Here is how we memorized these verses: Next Slide
“Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food, though there are no sheep in the pen and no baby in the crib, yet I will rejoice in the Lord, I will be joyful in God my Savior.” Habakkuk 3:17-18
Can I be honest with you for a moment. In the months and years that followed loosing Daniel, joy was not a feeling we experienced much. We wept at the foot of that empty crib more times than I can count. Joy for us was a choice, not an emotion. Joy for us was not tied to circumstances, it wasn’t tied to a baby in the crib. Over time we learned what the Apostle Paul learned and recorded in Philippians 4:11 “for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.” He recorded this despite what we read in 2 Corinthians 11:24-27 “24 Five times I received at the hands of the Jews the forty lashes less one. 25 Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; 26 on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; 27 in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. 28 And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on”
You see the Apostle Paul had learned something so very important, that for the fully surrendered believer, there is a:
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Hope and Joy That Can’t Be Taken Away.
Do you remember this famous passage from Romans 8:28? Next Slides
Romans 8:28
28 And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to his purpose.
“All things” is not some things. “All things” is not most things. “All things” is all things.
So, no matter what you go through, you can be absolutely certain that one of two things is happening. Either God sent it or God is going to use it. I think God sends things that aren’t quite what we ask for. I also think there are tragedies and pain that God doesn’t send. But if you love Him, you can be sure that He is using it somehow and someway for your good because He is mindful of you and watchful over you. In that, we can always have hope. We can always rejoice. And one of the eventual outflows of rejoicing is joy.
Recently I have been working on memorizing a set of verses, the verses are Romans 5:1-5(page 1198 in the Pew Bibles): Next Slides
Romans 5:1-5 (page 1198 in the Pew Bibles)
1 Therefore, since we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.
2 Through him we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.
3 Not only that, but we rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance,
4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,
5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.
Did you happen to pick up the two things that the Apostle Paul mentions that are to bring us joy? Next Slides
1. We are to “rejoice in hope of the glory of God”.
What Paul is saying here is that “The Christian has no reason to fear the future and every reason to rejoice in it, because he has the divinely-secured hope that his ultimate destiny is to share in the very glory of God. Jesus Christ guarantees the believer’s hope because He Himself is our hope.” MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1991). Romans (Vol. 1, p. 279). Chicago: Moody Press.
The second thing that is to bring us joy is: Next Slides
2. We rejoice in our sufferings.
Now admittedly this one is a tough pill to swallow. Believe me, God understood this would be tough pill to swallow, as a result he directed Paul to write of the progression that takes place in the life of the believer who is fully surrendered to the work of God in his life. Did you pick up the progression?
“knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not put to shame, because the love of God has been poured into our hearts”
I was trying to come up with a way to illustrate how God’s love is poured into our hearts. Picture it in your minds as working something like this: (Use large pitcher/small glass in large glass bowl or glass cake pan with small things that are directly affected by the overflow).
Now to be honest with you, a pitcher was the best thing I had available to me here at church, but truthfully, it would have been more accurate if I could have used a fire hose connected to a fire hydrant with an endless supply of water, because that is what we are talking about when we talk about the power of the love of God that is poured into our lives as believers.
Did you notice the Christmas bulbs in the glass bowl? What happened to them when the water was poured to overflowing into the small glass? (That’s right, the flow of water had a direct affect on them).
That is what is to happen to us when God’s love is poured into our lives, and this is especially true when others see God’s love flow through us even in the midst of our suffering, it should have a direct affect on those around us.
And that brings us to our last point this morning:
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Don’t Settle for Anything Less.
Seriously, we should not settle for anything less. The joy of God that we have as a result of the Divinely secured hope we have in Him, and the joy of God we have even in the midst of our suffering, should overflow in our lives in such a way that it has a beautiful impact on those around us.
That is a big part of the message of Christmas.
14 “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”
Life can be hard, but we know the secret the shepherds held. The Savior has come! In Him, we are saved. In Him, we win. The amazing thing is, no matter what happens, that can never be taken away from us.
Would you please pray with me?
Father, thank You for this gift that is unlike any other gift that has ever been given. Thank You for sending Your Son to save us from our sins. We forget what a wonderful and amazing gift our salvation really is. Fill us with your hope and joy—a joy so complete and overwhelming that we, like the shepherds, are compelled to share it with others. We are thankful for the certainty of heaven in Jesus. But until that day, we, like the shepherds, will choose to glorify and praise You. We will continue to rejoice in who You are and all that You’ve done. We thank You and praise You. And it is in Jesus’s name that we pray, amen.