Dance for Joy

Joy is one of the Fruit of the Spirit. It is something that the Holy Spirit brings into our lives along with love, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. This is part of the transformational work that the Holy Spirit does within us.

As I was thinking about joy this week I came to the conclusion that there are a lot of people in churches today that need a healthy dose of joy in their lives. You know them, they are the ones that go through life looking like they’ve been sucking on lemons. They are like my favorite Winnie the Pooh characters, Eeyore. He can never see the positive in anything, only the negative.

I read an interesting story this week:

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., was a member of the U.S. Supreme Court for 30 years. His mind, wit and work earned him the unofficial title of “the greatest justice since John Marshall.” At one point in his life, Justice Holmes explained his choice of a career by saying: “I might have entered the ministry if certain clergymen I knew had not looked and acted so much like undertakers.”

Moody Bible Institute’s Today In The Word, June, 1988, p. 13.

I hope I don’t look and act like an undertaker!

Here we are on the last Sunday of Christmas and the first Sunday of a brand new year. A new year is a new opportunity. Yesterday is all done, there is nothing that we can do to undo anything. We are looking ahead to what God has in store for us.

Are you facing this new year with a sense of dread or a sense of Joy?

No matter how many challenges, how many difficulties, how many illnesses, how many bad things that came your way in 2019, they are all history. I like to view a new year like a blank notebook. It is something that is filled with blank paper, nothing has been written in it yet. What will it look like at the end of the year is yet to be known.

One thing that we’ve told the boys that have lived with us is that each day is a brand new day. We cannot change what happened yesterday. What is important is what we do with today. Each day is a new beginning.

Do you need a new beginning?

Verse 13 of our text tells us:

Common English Bible Chapter 31

Then the young women

will dance for joy;

the young and old men will join in.

I will turn their mourning into laughter

and their sadness into joy;

I will comfort them.

The Jews are being given a new beginning as they return to their homeland. There is the theme of joy that runs throughout our scripture text. The text even tells us that they will dance for joy because of what God is about to do for them.

I am friends with a Nazarene pastor in India. He pastors a small church with a bunch of kids and teenagers. He posts their worship services and I see the kids as they help lead the worship. On New Years day they had a special worship time and the kids and teens were leading the service. He posted a number of videos of the kids and teens dancing to the worship music. It was beautiful to watch them in their joy worship through dance. I couldn’t understand the words because they were sung in Hindi, but I recognized the tune of at least one of the songs.

This is a poor church in a very poor part of the country and yet they were dancing in joy for the blessings of God on their lives.

Israel is still in captivity in a foreign nation but Jeremiah writes about the new beginning that is about to happen for them. In spite of the fact that Israel has been unfaithful to God, God is still faithful to them. Every time Israel has turned their backs on God, God has been there ready to restore them. Despite their sin and their rebellion, God is ready to restore them and there will be great joy.

What an amazing God!

What an amazing God we serve that in spite of our unfaithfulness that He is faithful. Every time we turn our backs on God, He is there ready to welcome us back.

Could you use a new beginning with God this morning just like Israel? God is ready and willing to give you a new beginning.

What does this new beginning for Israel look like?

A New Beginning Produces Praise

Look there at verses 7 through 9

7 The LORD proclaims: Sing joyfully for the people of Jacob; shout for the leading nation. Raise your voices with praise and call out: "The LORD has saved his people,the remaining few in Israel!" 8 I'm going to bring them back from the north; I will gather them from the ends of the earth. Among them will be the blind and the disabled, expectant mothers and those in labor; a great throng will return here. 9 With tears of joy they will come; while they pray, I will bring them back. I will lead them by quiet streams and on smooth paths so they don't stumble. I will be Israel's father, Ephraim will be my oldest child.

What a picture is being painted by these verses. Let me just back up a moment to verse six that says:

Common English Bible Chapter 31

Get ready! We’re going up to Zion

to the LORD our God!

God is preparing the people. Get ready! When we tell someone to get ready we are telling them to prepare. Every morning during the week I tell the boys to get ready for school because the bus will be there soon to pick them up. They know that there are consequences if they miss the bus. God is saying “Get Ready” because he is about to do something truly awesome and he does not want them to miss out.

In these verse there are four imperatives that Jeremiah uses. Sing joyfully, shout, raise your voices with praise, call out. I am old enough to remember services where there was singing that the neighbors heard, there was shouting and raising of voices and call out. We don’t seem to do that any more. In the church I attended as a teen we often on a Sunday night would have a praise service in the summer months that the neighbors of the church heard our voices. Voices were raised in praise and worship to God.

I remember attending camp with my one aunt. She was a Free Methodist and the people that attended that camp knew how to praise God. I remember one guy that would get so blessed that he would start running the isles of that old tabernacle. He’d jump up from where he was sitting and starting running around that tabernacle. He’d go all the way around and then he would start running the benches. He’d get up on the bench in the back and start jumping from one to the next to the next until he made it to the front. He never did fall.

There was such joy and freedom in worship in that old tabernacle. Now we’re afraid to say Amen or raise our hands in worship.

I was watching a Christian comedian and he demonstrated a variety of things that people do with their hands in worship. He started out with hands in our pockets and went from their.

Are we afraid to praise God? What is that person beside me going to think if I say Amen and lift my hands in worship? If they are sitting beside you then they are probably related to you and they know all the odd and weird things that you do at home. They know that you yell at your TV when the Steelers are playing and losing. If we can yell at an inanimate object like a TV, then why can we not lift our voices in praise and worship to the God and Father who created all that has been created?

In the passage that was read to us from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians we heard the words:

Ephesians 1:3 CEB

3 Bless the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! He has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing that comes from heaven.

Look at that amazing passage. He has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing that comes from heaven!

Wow! God has blessed us with every, every, meaning we lack nothing, every spiritual blessing!

God tells Israel get Ready. Something really awesome is about to happen.

Back just a few chapters Jeremiah addresses Israel about their situation in Babylon. Even though they had ended up there because of their sin God was still looking out for them and he said to them in chapter 29 verse 6

Jeremiah 29:6 CEB

6 Get married and have children; then help your sons find wives and your daughters find husbands in order that they too may have children. Increase in number there so that you don’t dwindle away.

From there God says in verse 8 that he is going to bring them back, from the north, from the ends of the earth. This was not going to be just a small remnant, but rather a great throng will return. That word throng means “a large, densely packed crowd of people.” One author put it this way in his description:

The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Volume 19: Jeremiah / Lamentations Oh Love that Will Not Let Me Go

This was a class act, a cast-of-thousands production because the producer and director is an extravagant God. Jews will return not just from one direction but from every direction.

Look there at verse 9

Common English Bible Chapter 31

With tears of joy they will come;

while they pray, I will bring them back.

jere

What is happening here? There is repentance happening. There cannot be true joy without repentance. With tears of joy they will come. Those tears of joy come through repentance because in the next phrase of that verse it says “while they pray, I will bring them back.”

If we want to experience a new beginning with God it must begin with godly sorrow and repentance for our sin. God is ready to restore us and it begins with repentance. There has to be a turning from how we were living to the way of life that God is calling us. Paul wrote in Ephesians:

Ephesians 1:4 CEB

4 God chose us in Christ to be holy and blameless in God’s presence before the creation of the world.

Holy and blameless, that is without sin. To be holy, to be blameless begins with repentance and turning away from sin and turning towards God.

The second thing about a new beginning with God is:

A New Beginning Is Based on Grace

This entire passage reads of God’s grace. Stop and count how many times God says “I will” in this chapter. 17 times in the 40 verses of this chapter God says “I will.” That is grace.

John wrote in his Gospel that was read to us earlier:

John 1:18 CEB

18 No one has ever seen God. God the only Son, who is at the Father’s side, has made God known.

John 1:17 CEB

17 as the Law was given through Moses, so grace and truth came into being through Jesus Christ.

John 1:14 CEB

14 The Word became flesh and made his home among us. We have seen his glory, glory like that of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

John 1:14 The Message

14 The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood. We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, like Father, like Son, Generous inside and out, true from start to finish.

God came to us, he moved into the neighborhood. That is grace! One author put it this way about this return to God:

The Preacher’s Commentary Series, Volume 19: Jeremiah / Lamentations Oh Love that Will Not Let Me Go

It would not just be the strong members of their lot but “the blind and the lame, the woman with child and the one who labors with child” (v. 8). They would not come limping as if they were barely making it. Heavens no! “Their souls shall be like a well-watered garden” (v. 12). Remember the priests who caused Jeremiah such grief? Look at them now. “I will satiate the soul of the priests with abundance” (v. 14). To the derelict and restless people who could never find contentment He says, “and My people shall be satisfied with My goodness” (v. 14).

There are 2 important words there in verse 11, they are rescue and deliver. That is what God is going to do for Israel. He is going to do for them what they cannot do for themselves. He is first going to rescue them. They are captives, they cannot return to their homeland. God is going to rescue them. God has always been about a rescue mission to redeem his creation. The second word is deliver or redeem. God is going to pay the price.

When God became man and moved into the neighborhood, he was on a rescue mission to redeem us. Jesus paid the price that we could not pay so that we might be redeemed. What should our response be to that act by God? There is an old Gospel hymn that has these words:

1 I have a song I love to sing, Since I have been redeemed, Of my Redeemer, Savior, King, Since I have been redeemed. Chorus: Since I have been redeemed, Since I have been redeemed, I will glory in His name; Since I have been redeemed, I will glory in my Savior's name.

Chorus: Since I have been redeemed, Since I have been redeemed, I will glory in His name; Since I have been redeemed, I will glory in my Savior's name.

There should be joy in our lives because of this grace that was freely given to us.

Just as God was ready to deliver and redeem Israel, he is ready to ready us today! To experience a new beginning with Christ begins with repentance, turning around and heading back towards God. To experience a new beginning means to accept the free gift of grace that is ours through Christ Jesus.

Look at what Paul wrote in his letter.

Ephesians 1:13–14 CEB

13 You too heard the word of truth in Christ, which is the good news of your salvation. You were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit because you believed in Christ. 14 The Holy Spirit is the down payment on our inheritance, which is applied toward our redemption as God’s own people, resulting in the honor of God’s glory.

We have a glorious inheritance awaiting us. God the Holy Spirit is just a down payment on that inheiritance.

The third thing that we learn about this new beginning is

A New Beginning Results in Joy

Another old Gospel song has these words:

4 I have found the joy no tongue can tell, How its waves of glory roll; It is like a great o’erflowing well, Springing up within my soul.

Refrain: It is joy unspeakable and full of glory, Full of glory, full of glory; It is joy unspeakable and full of glory, Oh, the half has never yet been told.

A new beginning with God always results in joy. Look at what Jesus said:

John 10:10 The Message

10 A thief is only there to steal and kill and destroy. I came so they can have real and eternal life, more and better life than they ever dreamed of.

If you want to experience life as you were designed, it begins with a relationship with Jesus. He came so that you can have real and eternal life, more and better life than you ever dreamed of.

Do you want to experience that life? Do you want to experience joy that will get your feet moving in dance? It is only God that can produce that joy.

Are you ready for that joy in your life? Are you ready for a new beginning?