Christmas 2020 3: The Gift of Joy
Notes
Transcript
Bookmarks & Needs:
Bookmarks & Needs:
B: Matthew 2:9-12
N: Make sure you light candles 1 and 2 before service.
Opening
Opening
DON’T FORGET THE BUMPER VIDEO THIS WEEK!
Good morning, and whether you are here in person or online, I’d like to welcome you to our Family Worship service at Eastern Hills. My name is Bill Connors, and I am the senior pastor here, and it’s great to be able to worship together with you this morning. Thank you, praise band, for leading us in praise and worship with those great Christmas songs, reflecting on the joy that came with the birth of our Savior and continues today.
We are in our third week of our Christmas series that we’re calling “The Gifts of Christmas,” and I’m already looking forward to our Christmas Eve Candlelight service. That night, we’re going to bring all of the Gifts of Christmas that we’ve been thinking about together as we reflect on the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. It’s going to be a blessing, so I hope you’ll plan to be here either in person or online on Christmas Eve at 6PM. For this morning, however, our focal passage is going to be from the gospel of Matthew, chapter 2, verses 1-12. While I understand that the magi were almost certainly not at the first nativity, they’re still a part of the whole “Christmas story,” and we’re going to use a little of their part in it to reflect on this morning. Let’s stand in honor of God’s Word as we read this passage together:
1 After Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of King Herod, wise men from the east arrived in Jerusalem, 2 saying, “Where is he who has been born king of the Jews? For we saw his star at its rising and have come to worship him.” 3 When King Herod heard this, he was deeply disturbed, and all Jerusalem with him. 4 So he assembled all the chief priests and scribes of the people and asked them where the Messiah would be born. 5 “In Bethlehem of Judea,” they told him, “because this is what was written by the prophet: 6 And you, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means least among the rulers of Judah: Because out of you will come a ruler who will shepherd my people Israel.” 7 Then Herod secretly summoned the wise men and asked them the exact time the star appeared. 8 He sent them to Bethlehem and said, “Go and search carefully for the child. When you find him, report back to me so that I too can go and worship him.” 9 After hearing the king, they went on their way. And there it was—the star they had seen at its rising. It led them until it came and stopped above the place where the child was. 10 When they saw the star, they were overwhelmed with joy. 11 Entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and falling to their knees, they worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. 12 And being warned in a dream not to go back to Herod, they returned to their own country by another route.
PRAY
Today as we get started talking about the next gift of Christmas in our Advent series, I want us to sing together that wonderful Christmas hymn “Hakuna Matata.” What? You don’t know that one? You know, “Hakuna matata, the Lord is come. Let earth receive her king.”
Okay, before you decide that I’ve gone completely off my rocker, I know it’s “Joy to the World” not “Hakuna Matata.” But that Swahili phrase made famous in the 1994 movie The Lion King sometimes seems to be the way we approach joy, especially at this time of year. The phrase means “no worries.” And in the movie the song is sung by a meerkat named Timon and a warthog named Pumbaa, who are trying to convince the young lion, Simba, to forget about his troubles and just live for the moment. It’s their “problem-free philosophy,” and it’s an appealing one. But “no worries” is not what the angels proclaimed that first Christmas. Instead, they proclaimed good news of great joy for all people.
As we just sang a minute ago: Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
As we approach Christmas, we often hear about joy and what a joyful season it is, so we try to cram all the other feelings of life down inside. If we don’t “feel” particularly joyful, we sort of think that we can try hard and create joy by tossing our troubles aside, ignoring our deepest struggles, and just living for the moment. Kind of like “Hakuna matata.” But that’s not what the joy of Christmas is all about. And while it may work for a moment, this “manufactured joy” is shallow and short lived.
The gift of joy offered to us in Jesus this Advent season is a gift of deep and abiding joy. It is a joy so powerful it can hold its own in a dark and hurting world—even a COVID world—and in the midst of all our troubles and struggles. We will talk a little bit later about how we experience joy through the Advent season, but for now I encourage you to come in a spirit of honesty. We’re all here this morning with our own hurts and pains and struggles—every one of us. You don’t have to just stuff down your griefs and worries in order to unwrap this gift of joy, which Peter called inexpressible and glorious:
6 You rejoice in this, even though now for a short time, if necessary, you suffer grief in various trials 7 so that the proven character of your faith—more valuable than gold which, though perishable, is refined by fire—may result in praise, glory, and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. 8 Though you have not seen him, you love him; though not seeing him now, you believe in him, and you rejoice with inexpressible and glorious joy, 9 because you are receiving the goal of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
If you have been able to join us the past two weeks, you know that we began a journey through the season of Advent by unwrapping the gifts of hope and love. The word Advent means “coming” or “arrival,” and the season is marked by expectation, waiting, anticipation, and longing. Advent is not just an extension of Christmas. It is a season that links the past, the present, and the future. Advent offers us the opportunity to share in the ancient longing for the coming of the Messiah, to celebrate His birth, and to be alert for His second coming.
During Advent we are lighting candles, which represent aspects of Jesus’s coming to a world lost in darkness. As we celebrate this season, we will light an additional candle each week and on Christmas Eve. Each flame brings us closer to the arrival of the true Light of the world, born in Bethlehem.
The first week in Advent we lit the candle of hope. We talked about hope past, present, and future as we looked at a few of the prophecies about Jesus’s coming, were challenged to place our hope in Him amid the trials of life, and were reminded of the hope still to be fulfilled when He comes again. Then last week we lit the candle of love and talked about how we accept, experience, and share the gift of God’s love as we discover how wide and long and high and deep His love is for us.
Today we light the candle of joy. Advent is a season to experience the joy of the coming of the Savior of the world. It’s more than just a feeling; it is a joy that causes all of creation to celebrate. It’s deep and powerful, the kind of reJOYcing—see where that word comes from?—talked about in the Psalms, such as Psalm 96:11–13:
11 Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice; let the sea and all that fills it resound. 12 Let the fields and everything in them celebrate. Then all the trees of the forest will shout for joy 13 before the Lord, for he is coming— for he is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness and the peoples with his faithfulness.
In Advent, we are preparing and expecting. Jesus is coming! Let us rejoice! This is the gift we unwrap today.
But the question that nags at many of us so often is: What if you just don’t feel joy this season? This question shouldn’t scandalize us… we’re in the middle of a pandemic, and fear and tension are high. We’ve had one of the craziest years that I can recall. People are wrestling with quarantine and unemployment and illness and worry. So the question is absolutely real. How can we receive this gift of joy even in the midst of suffering, loneliness, pain, grief, busyness, stress, fear, or boredom? Let’s look together at how we can anticipate, recognize, and choose joy.
1. Anticipate Joy
1. Anticipate Joy
If there is one thing that we are doing a lot of right now, it’s waiting. We’re waiting for things with the pandemic to be resolved. And while we wait for that, we wait for the next change in hospital numbers or daily cases or restrictions. Maybe you’ve had to self-isolate for a couple of weeks, or you’ve even had COVID, and so there was a lot of extra waiting that you had to do. But what about waiting for something not quite as serious? Have you ever ordered something and then had to wait for so long that you gave up hope it would ever arrive? Or even just forgotten that it’s on the way? Or maybe even... not known that something good was coming?
You’ve probably heard stories of postal service mistakes and letters delivered years after they were sent. There are some great stories. In 2015, a woman in her eighties in France received a letter in the mail that had been sent to her great-grandfather . . . in 1877 . . . 138 years earlier! It was about an order of yarn for her great-grandfather’s spinning mill.
But an even more poignant delivery written about in the Washington Post also in 2015 reached its intended recipient nearly fourteen years after it was sent. The letter was written from a father in India to his son, who lived in New York City. It was handwritten a few short weeks after 9/11, but was a bit confusing when it showed up in 2014. The man’s father had died years earlier. As he described in the newspaper essay, the man was flooded with a deep reminder and sense of connection to his late father. Tears flooded his eyes as he held a physical object created by his father, expressing concerns about his son’s and grandchildren’s safety and about the events of the world in that tragic time. In the article, the son wrote, “Fourteen years is a long time to wait for a letter, but rarely has one been more welcome. The expression of concern in the letter is sadly still relevant today. But the physical letter itself was a real joy.”
Certainly an unexpected joy. One that was on its way the whole time. The letter would have been meaningful had it arrived on time, but it took on even deeper emotions over time.
Joy can be that way, whether we know it’s coming or not, whether we’ve given hope for its arrival or not.
When we started Advent talking about hope, we looked at the history of the people of Israel who were waiting for a Messiah for thousands of years. That’s a tough wait! Certainly some of those Israelites gave up hope that a Messiah would ever come. Some probably just carried on, distracted with life, not thinking they would ever see the coming of the Messiah. But others held out hope. Their waiting was active. And when we engage in an active waiting, anticipating what is to come and watching for it, the waiting has purpose. Hope stays alive.
Joy is similar. Even if we don’t “feel” joy right now, we can anticipate the coming of joy to the world in the gift of Jesus. We can prepare to move from our state of discouragement or frustration into an experience of life-giving joy.
The shepherds in the Christmas story are a good example. When the angels showed up and delivered a message to the shepherds on a hillside outside Bethlehem, the shepherds didn’t immediately feel joy—they felt scared! Luke told us:
9 Then an angel of the Lord stood before them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified. 10 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: 11 Today in the city of David a Savior was born for you, who is the Messiah, the Lord.
The angel first addressed their fear, then helped them move beyond it to receive the message of joy that the Savior, the Messiah, the one Israel had anticipated and waited for so long, had been born. By the end of the night, those shepherds got it.
20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had seen and heard, which were just as they had been told.
Then, 30 years later, as Jesus was talking with His disciples about His coming crucifixion, He gave them a reason to anticipate joy as well, even though the sorrow of His death was coming:
20 Truly I tell you, you will weep and mourn, but the world will rejoice. You will become sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn to joy. 21 When a woman is in labor, she has pain because her time has come. But when she has given birth to a child, she no longer remembers the suffering because of the joy that a person has been born into the world. 22 So you also have sorrow now. But I will see you again. Your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy from you.
As we walk through Advent, we have the advantage of being able to look back—we know what’s coming! We know that Christ, the Messiah, has come. This we can celebrate and rejoice over. We can read our Scriptures and know what He has done for us: how He went to the cross and died in our place so that we could be forgiven of our sin, and how He defeated death and rose again so that we could have eternal life if we trust in Him for our salvation through faith. So we can have joy in knowing that we have peace with God through Jesus Christ. And we can read and know that there is more to come with His eventual return. This is a joy that we still must anticipate. But let’s experience Advent as a season when we anticipate the arrival of joy, even when we struggle with the realities of today.
2. Recognize Joy
2. Recognize Joy
Do you ever wonder why, out of all the people in the world, the wise men were the only ones who recognized and followed the star of Bethlehem? It was a star—it was there in the sky for the whole world to see. But most people, Jews and Gentiles alike, didn’t recognize its meaning. For these men who did, it caused great joy. Matthew 2:10–11 says,
10 When they saw the star, they were overwhelmed with joy. 11 Entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother, and falling to their knees, they worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts: gold, frankincense, and myrrh.
The Magi traveled a long way to find the one whose birth was announced by the star. They encountered hardships along the way. They had to deal with the deceptive tyrant King Herod. They even lost sight of the star for some time. But they knew what they were looking for, and they kept seeking even when things went wrong. They recognized the arrival of joy in the world, and they were filled with joy as they responded to it, bringing their gifts in worship to the Christ child, Jesus.
It can be hard to recognize joy in our lives sometimes, especially because it doesn’t always look the way we expect it to. We expect joy to be free of worry and hardship, but the Bible tells us that joy is found in the midst of, and sometimes even because of, hard things.
2 Consider it a great joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you experience various trials, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance. 4 And let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.
There most definitely is nothing “hakuna matata” about that brand of joy. But how much richer and deeper is the experience of joy when it glows bright, illuminating our path in the midst of darkness. When we recognize that joy comes from trials—because they produce perseverance that works in us to mold us and shape us and form us more completely into the image of Christ—then we can experience joy even in the midst of hard times. Which takes us to our third point.
3. Choose Joy
3. Choose Joy
That passage we just read in James gives us a command: that we are to “consider it a great joy” when we experience these various trials. When we find commands in Scripture, there’s always the idea of a choice implied. Clinging to joy in the midst of trials is something that we choose. But to be fair, the idea that we can “choose” joy is a little deceiving. We can’t just close our eyes and focus really hard and somehow conjure up or manufacture real joy. In fact, that often leads us away from joy, because we get stressed out or worried that we aren’t manufacturing joy successfully. Joy is a gift. Joy is a fruit of the Spirit according to Galatians 5. So we can’t just create it by trying harder—but we can choose to trust in the Lord’s promises, and to live in the ways that God says bring joy, and we can choose to focus on the joy of God’s love for us in Christ, and His presence and work in our lives by His Holy Spirit, even in the midst of difficult circumstances.
The concept is similar to physical health. We can’t get stronger by thinking about and mentally choosing to be stronger. We have to exercise and build the muscles that make us stronger. While we can’t just concentrate hard and choose joy, we can choose to give thanks. We can choose to obey. And we can choose to abide. When we do these things, we open ourselves to the gift of joy.
Let’s look a little closer at those practices.
Choose Gratitude:
Choose Gratitude:
Try it. When you don’t feel joyful, give thanks. Try it out loud, naming three reasons you have to be thankful—or five or ten. Or write them all down. You’ll be surprised how long your list actually gets pretty quickly. Just a couple of weeks ago for school, Abbie had to write down ten things a day that she was thankful for for four straight days… she wrote down 40 things to be grateful for, and each day’s work never took her very long. There’s so much to be grateful for!
This might seem a little counterintuitive—when we don’t feel joyful, we would rather gripe and complain, but giving thanks opens our hearts to joy. That’s why Paul instructed the Thessalonians,
16 Rejoice always, 17 pray constantly, 18 give thanks in everything; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.
These things go together, and Paul clearly says that rejoicing, praying, and giving thanks are specifically “God’s will” for us. Gratitude goes a long way, and it leads us toward joy. When you don’t know what to do, when you feel overwhelmed by the season or by the trials that you find yourself in, when you feel anything but joy, give thanks.
Choose to Obey:
Choose to Obey:
In John 15:11 Jesus said,
11 “I have told you these things so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.
So what did He tell His disciples? What was that secret to joy? Obedience. In the verse before, John 15:10, He told His followers to obey His commands:
10 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.
We often want joy to just appear from out of nowhere, but Jesus said it often flows out of obedience.
Like gratitude, obedience is a practice. It’s a process of seeking to follow God’s ways and to put them into action. We don’t always get them right. But the more we align ourselves with God’s Word to understand His ways and then choose actions that align with His Word and His wisdom, the more we open ourselves to experience the good fruit of those choices—and the more we prepare ourselves to encounter and receive His joy.
Choose to Abide:
Choose to Abide:
John 15 also tells us the second part to the secret of joy—and it’s a love triangle! Jesus said that just as He remains in His Father’s love, we remain in His love, and our joy is complete. This is not an immediate, quick-satisfaction concept. It’s the idea of continual love and relationship with Jesus that brings the gift of joy into our lives. Jesus used the metaphor of a vine in John 15 because He was describing a process of ongoing growth and nourishment that produces good fruit. Look:
4 Remain in me, and I in you. Just as a branch is unable to produce fruit by itself unless it remains on the vine, neither can you unless you remain in me. 5 I am the vine; you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit, because you can do nothing without me.
The same is true in our relationship with Him, and our joy is made complete by imitating Christ’s love and obedience. Let this season of Advent be a time of gratitude, obedience, and abiding in His love as we anticipate the joy He brings this Christmas.
Closing
Closing
So we’re back to the waiting. As we walk through Advent, we actively wait for the gift of joy. The gift is coming, so we can wait in anticipation it. Recognizing joy might be difficult sometimes, but we can choose to focus on those things that God has done and is doing in our lives as we walk with Him in faith.
But for some of you here or online, you might not be actively waiting. You might just be wishing that joy would find you and fill you, but you don’t know where that joy might come from. In my first point, I explained that those who believe in Jesus know where true joy comes from: It comes from being in a relationship of peace with God through faith in Jesus. He paid the penalty that our sins deserve, and He rose from the grave, completely defeating death. And if we trust in Jesus alone for our salvation, not trying to save ourselves or to earn God’s grace, then we are forgiven and we receive the gift of eternal life. And there is going to come a day when Jesus returns, and those who belong to Him will be forever saved, and those who do not will be forever lost. God loves you and gave Jesus so you could be rescued from your sin. Surrender your life to His lordship this Advent, and experience that joy that you’re looking for.
If that’s you, or if you have questions about Jesus or about salvation, we want to know that so we can help you as you start this faith journey, or so that we can answer whatever questions you have. It would honestly be our joy to do so. So please, reach out to me by email to bill@ehbc.org if you’re online, or if you’re here in the room, just stay in your seat as everyone is dismissed, and I will come and find you when service is over.
And if you are already a follower of Jesus, and you believe that God is prompting you to join with this church family through formal membership, I would like to sit down with you to get to know you, to go over our Statement of Faith with you, and answer any questions you might have about Eastern Hills. Shoot me an email if you’re online, or stay in your seat when we dismiss, and I’ll come and find you after most have left the room.
And as Donna comes for our time of reflection, use the time to consider where your joy comes from this season. Also, feel free to use this time to give online as God leads, or if you’re in the room, you can give in person by placing your offerings in the plates on the way out of the sanctuary when we dismiss.
PRAY
Closing Remarks
Closing Remarks
I wanted to give everyone an update on our Lottie Moon Christmas Offering goal. To this point in our offering focus, we’ve received $21,284! That’s less than $5,000 away from our $26,000 goal! Thank you so much for your generosity and your support of our missionaries as they serve to share the message of the hope of Jesus Christ throughout the world!
This morning is the last Sunday for a couple who has served faithfully here at Eastern Hills for ten years. Ken and Vicki DeVries are moving to Arizona, and I wanted to say thank you on behalf of the entire church for your service here in so many ways: Ken as a deacon and lately as chairperson of the audio-visual ministry, and Vicki as the church hostess, and so many other ways that you both served in the church. The AV guys wanted me to present you with this certificate of thanks, Ken. May God bless both of your continued ministries as you you continue to follow Him in Arizona! Let’s give them a hand of thanks.
If you are following along in our church-wide Bible reading plan, we are in the book of Genesis, with our reading today being Genesis 17. You can download a calendar for the month of December from the What’s Happening page at ehbc.org.
Instructions on leaving.
Benediction: “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4)