Sermon Tone Analysis

I’ve enjoyed studying for these Advent sermons this year.

We have been working diligently through Matthew verse by verse, and we will continue to do so in the new year, so it has been good to take a short break and do some more topical study.

Our Advent themes, of course, are hope, love, joy, peace, and Christ.

Christ is at the center of all these, of course, and our experience of all these good things come to us because of Christ’s advent.

We have seen hope, the hope of expectation and waiting.

Waiting for the promised Messiah, waiting for the curse to be eradicated, waiting for deliverance.

Christ brought great hope to the people who believed on Him in His day, and He does just the same now.

Love, we saw last week, is from God, and God is love.

The greatest demonstration of God’s faithful, benevolent love is in the coming of His Son, Jesus Christ.

Love gives us life, and gives us cleansing from our sin - the very sin that caused the rift and separation between us and God in the first place.

That very rift is bridged and healed by the Advent of Christ.

Advent brings Jesus, so advent brings love, because God is love, and Jesus is God.

That brings us, of course, to Joy.

Joy is a great Christmas theme.

We have sung this morning “Joy To The World.”

We have sung “Praise the Lord, Praise The Lord, let the people rejoice.”

We have read, from Luke 2 already, with the announcement of Jesus’ birth to the Shepherds.

An announcement, that would have started as fearful - seeing an angel of God and the glory which accompanied him would startle anyone, especially lowly and unassuming shepherds simply doing their nights work.

The reason, of course, that it was good news of great joy, is this: unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.

The Messiah and Lord - redeemer and ruler - king and deliverer - God and the God-Man - was born that day in Bethlehem.

That is what brought good news of great joy.

Good News of Great Joy, and why?

Because A Savior, Christ the Lord, was born that day.

That news brought joy then, and that new brings us joy now as well!

Joy in deliverance, joy in salvation, joy peace, joy in comfort, joy in redemption, joy in righteousness.

Everything that Christ brought was with joy, and for joy.

So what is joy?

Well, simply put, joy is the experience of great delight, or happiness.

Now there are a lot of ways to think about joy.

The long used J.O.Y.

Jesus, Others, Yourself, is a good pattern for how to think about life, but it doesn’t really define joy.

We can try to compare and contrast joy and happiness, maybe we say happiness is an emotion while joy is above the emotions.

But often we get into semantics when we talk about these things.

Our definition of joy might be the same as someone else’s definition of happiness, so we may just talk past one another.

When the Bible speaks of joy, it seems to refer to experience and action more than just feeling.

For instance, we are told to “rejoice.”

There is a sense in which we can choose joy, live out joy.

In my study this week, I read one language tool which said many languages don’t have a word for joy that is different than happiness, but in stead they express the idea of joy in idioms - “my heart is dancing” or “my heart shouts.”

And maybe that is a good way to look at it.

The kind of joy and rejoicing that comes with Advent is more than just a little shot in the arm of emotion, more than just a state of mind - it is also a state of being and an action.

We are joyful, and we can and do rejoice because of what Christ has done!

Because of Christ, Because of Advent, my heart can sing and shout!

My heart can dance within me.

He has brought, secured, and promised true joy!

We will look at joy in three different little facets for a few minutes this morning.

We will see joy as an inner experience, we will see joy as a pursuit, and we will see joy as an action and a response.

We will see joy as enduring, we will see it as present, and we will see it as future.

We will see joy being brought to us, being modeled for us, and promised to us.

The coming of Jesus brought good news of great Joy.

Joy is to know and experience pure delight; and full, enduring, and eternal joy can be had because of Jesus Christ.

1. Jesus Brings Fullness of Joy

When I picture Christ from the scriptures, I picture, of course, a righteous man, but I picture a man with a lot of joy.

A man whose heart was full, who was continually satisfied and delighting in His Father and the work His Father sent Him to do.

That is not to say Jesus’ never experienced times where, emotionally, he was downtrodden or less-than-joyful.

Certainly, he wept when Lazarus died.

He mourned for the wayward children of Jerusalem.

He grieved to the point of sweating out great drops of blood in the garden before his arrest.

Isaiah 53 says he is a “man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, and “surely he has born our grief.”

Yet, at the end of that great prophetic chapter, it also says of Him that “out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied.”

That is, Jesus always had a joy and satisfaction in looking to the purpose of His coming.

There was a true joy, a full joy, and that is the kind of joy that He desired and desires His followers to carry with them also.

That is great statement - he has spoken these things so that his joy might be in us, and that our joy might be full.

So we can say, Jesus desires that we would have full joy, the kind of joy that He has.

But what exactly is he speaking about here?

When he says, “these things have I spoken so that my joy might be in you...” what are “these things?”

Well, if you know John 15, you know that the first section, the first 11 verses, are all about abiding in Christ, or remaining in Christ.

He uses analogy from the world of agriculture, the prevailing agriculture of that place and time being grapes and vineyards.

This past fall, for the first time I got to go and help Denis and Liz with their grape harvest.

That was the first time I had been around grape vines at all, but Jesus’ disciples would have seen them constantly as they traveled the countryside.

The imagery of a grape remaining on the vine, drawing moisture and nutrients from that vine, surviving and living and growing on that vine, as long as that relationship lasted, the branches and grapes thrived.

Well this is what Jesus tells his disciples - abiding in Him is the key to life, it is the key to bearing fruit, it is the key to a relationship with the Father as well.

And then He says, these things have I spoken so that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy may be full.

Whatever is wrapped up in Abiding in Christ, which includes following Him, obeying Him, loving Him, and loving others with that love, Jesus tells us that produces “fulness of joy.”

We’ve seen this word filling before, we’ve seen it a lot in Matthew.

It is the same word that is often translated as “fulfill.”

That means, make complete, bring to fruition, bring to its expected and intended purpose.

In this case, it isn’t speaking of a fulfilling of prophecy like Matthew uses it for so many times, but simply of our joy.

That is, when we abide in Jesus Christ like the branch remains on the vine, that is when our Joy is filled up, complete, and brought to its intended purpose.

Which leads us to make one major observation - God desires for us to have joy.

He wants us to have joy.

I believe God gets great glory when His people are satisfied and joyful in what He has given us, and given us to do.

I think that is just what Jesus is speaking about there in John 15, and he also goes on to speak about it again in John 17.

John 17 is Jesus great prayer to the Father.

We get a glimpse into the relationship between the Father and the Son - something remarkable, because this relationship has existed from eternity past.

And here, there is communication from Jesus to His Father, and he is praying about his Disciples - his followers.

Jesus had just prayed, “while I was with them, I kept them… but now I am coming to you.”

He is praying concerning his departure, and one of Jesus’ main desires in his departure is this - that His disciples continue to have his joy - the kind of joy Jesus has - fulfilled in themselves.

There he uses that exact word again, for filling.

Fullness.

Bringing to its intended purpose.

Jesus prayed for his disciples to have true, full, Christ-like joy.

Think of all the emptiness in the world.

There is emptiness everywhere we look, and certainly there is emptiness when it comes to Joy.

But this is Jesus’ prayer and His desire.

Fullness of joy.

Lasting joy.

If you ever get the false Idea that God intends for your life to be morose, melancholy, depressed, anxious, nervous, paranoid, or just sad, look at Jesus!

He probably was the most joyful man who ever lived, and as God, the Son of God, He expressed the Divine desire that His followers have his joy.

Jesus’ coming brings joy, because Jesus has and desires that we have this fulness of joy.

2. Jesus Models Enduring Joy