Advent Week 3: Jesus our Joy

Well, we are going to continue our / / The Reason series, where we are looking at the true meaning of Christmas. The real reason we celebrate, what this is all about. Because it is truly about Jesus, and the more busy we get, the more things we do, the more we make Christmas about all the fun that Christmas is, the easier it can be to forget the true meaning. We are eagerly anticipating the arrival of our savior.

So, last Sunday we went to see The Chosen Christmas Special - thank you everyone who came with us. I so enjoyed it! If you did not get to go, there is a live stream of it tonight at 8pm. Go to thechosen.tv and in the menu at the top click on “livestream”.

But in the movie, as you saw, or will see, one of the great things they talked about was what is called the / / 400 years of silence. Which is the period of time between the end of the Old Testament and the beginning of the New Testament.

And I was thinking this past week, ya know, sometimes we read the bible and don’t really put a time to things. I have this great bible, it’s printed in Chronological order, which means, as the events happened, rather than in the books they were written in. Which is a great resource. If you’ve been following along in our daily bible reading, we just finished the book of Ezekiel and keeping track of all the different times can be a bit confusing.

Is Israel in exile, is Judah in exile, is Jerusalem still a city, is the temple still there, where are the people, and who is he talking to and when is this stuff supposed to happen and has it happened already? We can easily walk away with a good number of questions.

So, as you were watching that movie last week and they start talking about these 400 years of silence, I thought, how often do we actually take time to think about how long 400 years actually is? America just celebrated its 245th birthday this year. So imagine God being silent for all of that time, not a single prophet has appeared, not a single person is saying, “This is what God is telling us to do...” and not only that, but we have another 155 years to go! My great great great grandkids will experience what we are hoping for today.

Imagine what happens in the world in 400 years.

Jamestown was settled in the early 1600s.

John Rolfe married Pocahontas in 1614.

The longest standing national constitution is only just 421 years old.... and that’s San Marino, which is in the middle of Europe and only has a population of 34,000 people. The US is the second longest standing and still used constitution and it’s 233 years old, and we’ve amended it 27 times! That’s pretty significant. That’s a major change every 8 and a half years. And they are some pretty important changes, aren’t they? How often do we hear the amendments quoted. “Well, that’s my first amendment right.” “Don’t infringe on my second amendment”, or maybe, sometimes you’d just like to say “I think I’ll plead the 5th....”

Time… we think of time in our own little time and space, how it effects us, how it effects our lives.

But let’s just think for a moment the events leading up to Jesus birth.

So, at the end of the Old Testament we have Malachi, the book named after the man who wrote it. He was a prophet, meaning he heard from God and gave what he heard as a message to the people of Israel. He starts doing this about 430 BC, and remember, time is counting down. So he starts giving prophetic words from God to the people of Israel roughly 430 years before the birth of Jesus. At this time many of the Jews who were in captivity have returned from Babylon and the temple has been rebuilt somewhere around 525 BC.

The last thing Malachi writes is, / / “Look, I am sending you the prophet Elijah before the great and dreadful day of the Lord arrives. His preaching will turn the hearts of children to their fathers. Otherwise I will come and strike the land with a curse.”

I feel like something more like, “Hey guys, it’s gonna get quiet around here for a bit, but just hold on, what’s coming is going to be amazing...”

But that’s not what we get here. That’s not what Israel got. No indication that things were going to be silent. Just boom. it happens. And after a while you start to realize, and gotta be sitting there saying, “Wait a second, has anyone noticed that there doesn’t seem to be any prophets telling us what God is saying? I mean, they were mostly telling us how bad we were doing, but there was some good in there too. They would tell us that God loved us, and had promises for us, and would talk about our coming Messiah who would deliver us… Do you think that means it’s happening soon?”

For 400 years!

AT the time that Malachi was writing this, the region was under what’s called the Medo-Persian Empire, and had been for quite some time. That too had been prophesied. Isaiah, Jeremiah and Daniel all said that the Medes and Persians would overtake the Babylonian Empire. Isaiah had prophesied in Isaiah 13:17-19, / / “Look, I will stir up the Medes against Babylon. They cannot be tempted by silver or bribed with gold. The attacking armies will shoot down the young men with arrows. They will have no mercy on helpless babies and will show no compassion for children.” Babylon, the most glorious of kingdoms, the flower of Chaldean pride, will be devastated...

These prophets were kinda right on and worth listening to. This is why the people were expecting a Messiah. I mentioned that last week, that the prophets in the Old Testament had been talking about this coming Messiah - so let’s look at it quickly.

In the Old Testament there are over 300 prophecies or references about a coming Messiah, a savior anointed by God to deliver His people from oppression. And the New Testament delivers by sharing with us the fulfillment of these prophecies through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. Not going to get into all 300+ references here of course, but just a few of note.

/ / Birthplace of Jesus

Micah, a prophet in the Old Testament says in Micah 5:2, speaking a prophetic word, / / But you, O Bethlehem Ephratha, are only a small village among all the people of Judah. Yet a ruler of Israel whose origins are in the distant past, will come from you on my behalf.

He said that 700 years before Jesus was born. Bethlehem… There’s no guarantee the place even exists 700 years from when he said that. Hundreds and hundreds of cities in how many nations, but he picks the one that Jesus is actually born in.

Matthew 2:1, / / Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the reign of King Herod

So, there ya go...

/ / The Virgin Birth

Around the same time Micah is telling us where Jesus will be born, Isaiah is telling us who the mom is gonna be. This is probably one of the most if not the most well known prophecies about Jesus in the Old Testament...

Isaiah 7:14, / / All right then, the Lord himself will give you the sign. Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel [which means ‘God is with us’].

So, that’s the Old Testament, and then we read Luke 1:34 last week, the angel Gabriel comes to Mary and says God wants her to be the mother of Jesus and she says, / / “But how can this happen? I am a virgin.” and Gabriel responds, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the baby born will be holy, and he will be called the Son of God.

/ / Death of Jesus

This goes to the end of Jesus life and what he endures as he is crucified. More than 1000 years before it even happened and even 800 years before the Romans ever even started using crucifixion as a form of capital punishment...

David says in Psalm 22:16, / / My enemies surround me like a pack of dogs; an evil gang closes in on me. They have pierced my hands and feet.

We could go on and on, and that’s just 3 of what are considered 60 MAJOR and as I said, over 300 ramifications, or fulfillments of Jesus life from what the OT describes, but these are some important things written by the prophets in the Old Testament hundreds of years before Jesus is born that show us that we can trust He truly is the Messiah.

Now, here’s where it gets super interesting. Anyone can make predictions, and maybe even get a few right. We have polsters for everything these days it seems. Everyone is making predictions. But prophecy is saying that God said it, through a human life. And the more statements made, through more different people, and the more detail these statements make, the more difficult, or less likely the precise fulfillment will be. And that’s just statistically speaking.

The first prophecy we looked at, Jesus being born in Bethlehem. What’s the statistical probability of a person predicting today the exact city in which the birth of a future leader would take place 700 years from NOW? We’ve just been defining how long 400 years is, let alone 700!

What is the likelihood of predicting the exact manner of death that a new and unknown religious leader would experience 1000 years from now, by a method that doesn’t even exist today. It hasn’t even been thought up in the sick and twisted mind of some ruthless dictator sometime in the future.

This is called the science of probability and it tries to determine the chance that a given event will occur.

A professor at Westmont College calculated the probability of just ONE man fulfilling the Major prophecies made concerning the Messiah. He had 12 of his classes, which was about 600 university students working on this. They weighed out all the factors, discussed every single prophecy at length and examined every circumstance that could indicate that maybe somehow there was a conspiracy going on to show that Jesus fulfilled these prophecies - Maybe the disciples made this stuff up, maybe it’s just a big conspiracy and Jesus isn’t the Messiah and He’s not real or important.

So, they made all of their estimates as conservative as possible so that there ended up being a final unanimous agreement even among the most skeptical of students. THEN the professor took their estimates and made them even MORE conservative making things as fair as he possibly could.

He took their figures and submitted it for review to a committee of the American Scientific Affiliation, who determined that the calculations were both dependable and accurate.

Alright, so, just for / / where Jesus was born. They took the average population of Bethlehem from the time of Micah, when the prophecy was given, all the way to the present; then they divided it by the average population of the earth during the same time period. They concluded that the chance of one man being born in Bethlehem was / / 1:300,000.

Now, here’s where it gets really interesting. I mentioned there’s 60 Major prophecies, right?

After examining only / / 8 of them, they conservatively estimated that the chance of ONE man fulfilling all eight prophecies was / / 1:10^17.

That’s / / 1:100,000,000,000,000,000 [100 Quadrillion]

I know, that doesn’t mean much, it’s just a number that hardly exists. Here it is in simpler terms. It’s like taking that number of silver dollar coins and laying them over the surface of Texas. The pile would be two feet deep, over the entire state. Now, we marked just one of those coins with an “X”, mixed them all up and told a blindfolded person they can walk as far as they want as long as they want and they have just ONE chance, they need to pick up that coin with the “X”.

That’s the probability that 1 person fulfills just 8 of the major old testament prophecies about the messiah.

They didn’t stop there, they went a bit further. Because there aren’t just 8 prophecies that Jesus fulfills, there are many many more. And so they did the calculation based on 48. Could one person fulfill 48 prophecies? And again, using extremely conservative estimates, they found the probability of one person fulfilling 48 prophecies was / / 1:10^157

There’s no using coins and Texas to illustrate that one. Basically, if we counted 250 every minute and counted day and night, 24 hours a day, without stopping, it would take 19 million years to count to that number.

And Jesus fulfilled them all.

All of that brought this professor who conducted this process to say, / / “Any man who rejects Christ as the Son of God is rejecting a fact, proved perhaps more absolutely than any other fact in the world.”

So, not only is that absolutely incredible, but it’s to make the point that the prophets of the Old Testament were definitely hearing God, and worth listening to.

But all that promise, and suddenly there are no prophets, for 400 years.

Israel is under Medo-Persian rule, and then in 333 BC the Greek Empire comes in and takes over. 10 years later the Egyptians take over. A hundred years after that the Syrians take over all the way up until 63 BC when Pompey of Rome walks in and for nearly 400 years the Roman Empire ruled the region.

Absolute chaos with no direction from God but what had already been given. And so there is this expectation of a Messiah, and of course the hope was that he was going to free them from these rulers who continued to dominate over them.

And over these 400 years, the Jewish Religion got shaped and molded, pushed and torn, pulled and even at one point one leader, Antiochus, on December 25th, of the year 167 BC went as far as dedicating the temple of Yaweh in Jerusalem to the Olympian god Zeus! Then he built a statue to himself and demanded sacrifice be made before that statue. The practice of Jewish religion was forbidden even to the point of death.

With all this turmoil by the time of Jesus birth there these factions of the Jewish religion. This is why when we read the gospels we have these different factions coming up: the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes & Zealots… And in time those who follow Jesus would become a new vein. All with 400 years of no prophetic direction.

Proverbs 29:18 says this, / / When people do not accept divine guidance [where there is no prophetic vision], they run wild. But whoever obeys the law is joyful.

Now, where the Jewish people went wrong, and where all of humanity ends up going wrong, is that in the silence they didn’t just stick to what they knew, they created these groups which were more like political parties to follow. The Sadducees focused only on the Torah, the written law, which is the first 5 books of our bible. The Pharisees believed that the law meant to also include all of what was written in the prophets as well as traditions handed down verbally. By the time of Jesus the Pharisees had a list of 613 laws people had to follow.

The Essenes were a sort of fringe group, living very strict self-denial focused lives and living in secluded areas and sharing their land and possessions.

And the Zealots were this aggressive party who were strictly against Rome and it’s leadership to the point that any Jewish people who sought peace with roman authorities was seen as the opposition.

400 years can do real damage on a religion with no real leadership, and by the time Jesus was born the people wanted the God of Angel Armies, they had no real concept for a humble Messiah, a savior who was servant to all. They wanted a king....and he came as a baby! They wanted a conqueror, and they got the Prince of Peace!

Remember, these last two weeks we’ve looked at what it means to put ourselves under the leadership and authority of Jesus Christ. When we humble ourselves, recognize we don’t have it all together, or get it all right, and accept Him as our ruler, our king, we are putting ourselves UNDER His authority, and as the Prince of Peace, we then receive His peace.

Philippians 4:6-7, / / Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. This is the process of humbling ourselves and recognizing that He is God, making Him our King. Then you will experienced God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus.

Or as Jesus says in Matthew 6:33, don’t worry, but instead, / / seek first the Kingdom of God, or put in place over your life, the authority and rule of God.

So, we are learning what it’s like to not only celebrate WHO Jesus is, our Hope, our Peace, but also receive who He is in our lives.

This week we are looking at the third week of Advent: / / Jesus our Joy!

Last week we read in Luke 1 that the angel Gabriel came to Mary, and this week we are going to read a bit more of the Christmas Story:

We are in Luke 2 this morning, starting in vs 1. / / At that time the Roman emperor, Augustus, decreed that a census should be taken throughout the Roman Empire. (This was the first census taken when Quirinius was governor of Syria.) All returned to their own ancestral towns to register for the census. And because Joseph was a descendant of King David, he had to go to Bethlehem in Judea (1:300,000 chance of that happening), David’s ancient home. He traveled there from the village of Nazareth in Galilee. He took with him Mary, to whom he was engaged, who was now expecting a child.

And while they were there, the time came for her baby to be born. She gave birth to her firstborn son. She wrapped him snugly in strips of cloth and laid him in a manger, because there was no lodging available for them.

That night there were shepherds staying in the fields nearby, guarding their flocks of sheep. Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord’s glory surrounded them. They were terrified, but the angel reassured them, “Don’t be afraid!” he said. “I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people...

/ / I bring you GOOD NEWS that will bring GREAT JOY to ALL PEOPLE!

This is our focus today, Jesus our Joy!

/ / 1. GOOD NEWS

Christmas is Good News!

Advent is Good News!

The birth of Jesus is GOOD NEWS!

The angel continued to explain what this good news was. He said, / / “The Savior - yes, the Messiah, the Lord - has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David!”

This word, Savior, is deliverer. It’s the name given to princes and kings who came to rescue a people and grant the great benefits of living under the rule of that king. Remember last week we talked about the word Epithet, when it comes to Jesus being called the Prince of Peace, it’s an epithet, a title used to mark, or explain the ruling nature, the character of that person.

The word Savior was used commonly in Greek culture as an epithet for their gods - Zeus, Apollo & Hermes…that kind of word. The angels are saying that through these three titles about who was just born:

The / / Savior - Your Deliverer, the one you’ve been waiting for THE GOD, Immanuel has come to you.

/ / Messiah - or some translations use Christ, which means Messiah. He is the one the prophets spoke of

/ / Lord - God, the one who is supreme in all authority

This is GOOD NEWS, because Israel has been waiting for the Messiah. And after 400 years of silence I can only imagine how that would have effected the anticipation. To be honest, I would think not many are really looking for the Messiah at the moment. And there had been others who claimed to be the messiah, but clearly were not.

This Good News is what we’ve been talking about in this Advent season, that those who believe in Jesus Christ now have a HOPE of salvation, a confident expectation of the salvation we receive through Jesus Christ. The good News is the peace that Jesus came to bring us, that as we allow the rule of the Prince of Peace in our lives, we experience his good character. / / The good news, as we will see today, is that Jesus Christ is our JOY.

A lot of people have misrepresented God by presenting him as a God of judgement rather than a God of mercy. Judgement and punishment are certainly not good news, are they? And when we talk about repentance, we can sometimes confuse that with a sorrowful thing, but the reality is, when Jesus told us to repent, remember, that word repent means / / to change your mind, to think differently.

This is the good news. The Good News shows us something new, something different, and it gives us a reason to change our minds. Suddenly, instead of thinking that God is a God of judgment, and someone who has been silent for 400 years, looking to punish us for our sins, we realize he’s a loving Father who GAVE us a way that is actually easy and simple, that we just believe in Jesus…

We read this last week, from 1 Timothy 2:3-7, / / …God our savior wants EVERYONE to be saved and to understand the truth. For, There is one God and one Mediator who can reconcile God and humanity - the man Christ Jesus. He gave his life to purchase freedom for EVERYONE. This is the message God gave to the world at just the right time… I’m not exaggerating - just telling the truth!

The Good News shows us the Kindness of God, not the judgement of God. Romans 2:4 actually says, / / Don’t you see how wonderfully kind, tolerant, and patient God is with you? Does this mean nothing to you? Can’t you see that his kindness is intended to turn you from your sin?

Sin will be judged, but you don’t have to be connected to your sin when that happens! No matter who you are. The angel said to the shepherds:

/ / 2. This GOOD NEWS is for ALL PEOPLE

I bring you GOOD NEWS that will bring GREAT JOY to ALL PEOPLE!

If you ever come across someone that tells you that God selects who he wants to save, I give you permission to politely tell them that God is not like that. Even after telling Mary that Jesus will sit on His ancestor David’s throne, meaning, he’d be the King of Israel, and that He is the Messiah that the nation of Israel has been waiting for, even still, the angels tell the shepherds that this good news is for ALL PEOPLE.

So, after we understand that Jesus Christ is GOOD NEWS, the second thing we need to understand is that God intends that the gift of Jesus is a gift that ANYONE can unwrap. Advent is not for the select few, for the chosen, but for the many.

2 Peter 3:9 says, / / The Lord isn’t really being slow about his promise, as some people think. No, he is being patient for your sake. He does not want anyone to be destroyed, but wants everyone to repent.

There is no one too far gone.

There is no one too messed up.

There is no one too sinful, too prideful, too broken, too hurting that they can not be completely transformed by the love of God. The Good News is precisely for them!

/ / 3. GOOD NEWS that will bring GREAT JOY

Two words that should have more impact in our lives than they do… GREAT....JOY:

/ / GREAT - The word megas, meaning big, exceedingly great, loud

/ / JOY - the word is chara, meaning calm delight, gladness, joy, joyful, joyous

That’s an interesting definition, and especially when you put them together. calm delight + big, exceedingly great and loud… Yes, Joy can be an exuberant, loud, happy thing. I mean, we’re talking about GREAT joy, right? But Joy isn’t having to feel crazy excited all the time. It’s not having to feel over the top, sometimes the Joy of the Lord is being content with where we are at. Content with His goodness. Content in His love. It’s finding that place of calm delight.

So, this Joy that Jesus embodies, but also offers, is this abundant, exceedingly great, calm delight, that sometimes just spills over in joyful, great, loud praise!

Sometimes I look at Kaylee and say, “Do you know daddy loves you?” and I hug her and hold her close and gith and I’m calm, and sweet, and gentle.

And then when I drop her off at school I roll down the windows and yell, “I LOVE YOU!!” it’s my exuberant joy towards her!

What does it look like to experience and to receive the Joy of Jesus?

Nehemiah 8:10 says, / / …the joy of the Lord is your strength!

Psalm 16:11 says, / / You will show me the way of life, granting me the joy of your presence and the pleasures of living with you forever. the ESV says, in your presence there is fullness of joy...

There is a connectedness that God is looking for with us that in His presence, in His relationship we find this joy. He’s not looking to just give us joy and walk away, but it’s as we find him that we experience Joy. It’s His Joy. The Joy of the Lord is my strength, it’s the Joy of HIS presence.

We’ve seen this when we look at how Paul talks about the strength he finds in the grace of God, right? My grace is sufficient, in my weakness I find your strength. I’m not suddenly made strong and no longer need you, no, I’m sustained by your strength IN my weakness.

/ / The JOY of the LORD is to be CONNECTED to Him!

This is the GOOD NEWS! We’ve read from Isaiah 7:14, / / …the Lord himself will give you the sign. Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel (which means ‘God is with us’).

Jesus, born into this world became God with us. That just might be the greatest expression of Joy you will find. That God is always with you! Paul says in Philippians 4 that he had found the key to being content, and that it was found in this truth: For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength.

/ / So, how do we find, obtain and maintain this Joy?

Jesus actually teaches us this in John 15:5, 9-11, / / Yes, I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who remain in me, and I in them, will produce much fruit. For apart from me you can do nothing. I have loved you even as the Father has loved me. Remain in my love. When you obey my commandments, you remain in my love, just as I obey my Father’s commandments and remain in his love. I have told you these things so that you will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow!

How do we remain in Christ, or abide in him? It’s believing in him, receiving what he’s done for us in our soul, welcoming him, trusting him. It’s what we’ve been talking about, seek first the kingdom, continually placing yourself UNDER His authority, His rule.

We’ve looked at how Jesus handled himself as well, what was it for him to abide, or to submit to His father? In the garden before he was arrested it says he prayed, Not my will, or not my desire, but YOURS be done.

Abiding in Christ is following His way, and forsaking ours. Willful self-denial!

It’s saying, “I trust you and your ways for my life. I believe IN you and I believe in what you have said. Lead me, guide me and show me the way...”

James 1:22 says it’s not good enough to just read the word of God, or hear it, but you have to do what it says! It’s not good enough to just listen to how Jesus tells us to live, but we have to actually follow through! And in that is joy! that’s the promise, right? Jesus said, / / I have told you these things so that you will be filled with my joy! Yes, your joy will OVERFLOW!

When we choose to follow Him we find ourselves in a place of Calm delight, of joy, of gladness… I can tell you from experience, life is better when I’m following after God and His ways, because I find myself in HIS joy. I can’t explain it. Where situations should have me completely rattled and bent out of shape, when I focus on him, I find that calm delight.

It doesn’t mean I always get it right. It means that in the moment I make a choice.

I had a situation this week that involved the previous tenant we had in our school building. As you know we were in a lawsuit with them for close to a year and a half, and it was long, expensive journey. And I thought it was all done. And then this past week, a year after we have new tenants, and all this should be done and over with, I get a financial fallout of nearly $13,000 from them. And the nature of this situation is that if we don’t take care of it we can have serious repercussions with the county.

Like I said, I don’t handle everything the greatest. I was caught between anger & faith. I was struggling with keeping peace, hope & joy alive. And then in the moment I felt like the grace of God was expressed to me and in His mercy God reminded me that whatever comes against us, I am more than a conqueror through Christ. And I had this thought. As tough, as hard, as difficult as this is, if God is for us, WHO could be against us? And if God can lead us through this, and show us how to not just survive, but thrive and continue doing what He’s called us to do, then who could ever say He’s not with us?

He is. / / He’s Immanuel, God with us! He is the God who saves. He is the God who sets free. He is the God who delivers. Doesn’t mean I don’t face hardship or struggle, in fact, Jesus said very clearly, in this life you will experience trials and sorrow, but don’t worry, for I have over come the world.

It’s HIS overcoming. It’s HIS strength. It’s HIS joy! Could anyone steal Jesus’ Joy? Of course not, so if my joy is found in Him then there will ALWAYS be joy for me to experience. So I set my face toward His word, I set my resolve toward His call and His direction, knowing that as I follow him, and abide in Him, seek His presence his joy is made FULL in me!

As we walk through this season of Advent, let’s learn that the gift of Jesus is a gift of joy and that joy is not our own but HIS, which means no man, woman, child, situation, trial or sorrow can take it away, because our Joy is found in the one who is JOY himself!

Romans 15:13 is perfect for these three weeks of Advent so far, and I’ve prayed them the last two weeks, and I’m going to pray it again, as Paul prayed over the church in Rome, I pray that God, the source of HOPE, will fill you completely with JOY and PEACE because you trust in him. Then you will overflow with confident hope through the power of the Holy Spirit!