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"Joy"

December 13, 2020 Speaker: Pastor Bob Davis

Passage: Isaiah 55:1–13

This is the third Sunday of Advent. Traditionally, the third Sunday of Advent is focused on “joy.” Hope, peace, joy and love are the topics for the four Sundays of Advent. 

Advent is a time for joy. Preaching on joy during a normal Advent is difficult; this year, it seems almost delusional. When I was younger, I can remember listening to sermons on joy during Advent thinking, “Oh, great; I’m supposed to feel joy. All I feel is the pressure of getting everything done – and now you add ‘be joyful’? Thanks a lot.” This year, it is, “look around. Joy? Get real.” I get it. However, Advent is a time for joy; we just have to understand what is the source and foundation of that joy and what it means to be joyful. In an article entitled, “Have Faith in Joy,” James Martin wrote,

Does Christian joy, which flows from believing in the good news, mean that I am supposed to be happy all the time?

Short answer: no. …

Let me distinguish joy from happiness. Unlike happiness, joy is not simply a fleeting feeling or an evernascent emotion, it is a permanent result of one’s connection to God.

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The believer must navigate between grinning, idiotic, false happiness and carping, caterwauling, complaining mopyness. (Notice I am not speaking of clinical depression here, which is more of a psychological issue). Overall, the believer will be happy and sad at different points in his life; but joy is possible in the midst of tragedy, since joy depends on one’s faith and confidence in God.[1]

Advent is a time of remembering and waiting – for God. It is a time when we focus on God’s story, on God’s activity, and on God’s word. The source and foundation of our joy is God – it is not something we do or accomplish. Joy is found in remembering what God has done, what God is doing, and holding onto what God has yet to do.

Our sermon text comes from the book of Isaiah. Isaiah was written over the course of twelve generations that endured incredible suffering. The situation was not good for Israel. Throughout the time covered in Isaiah, the northern kingdom was defeated by Assyria. The people would be taken into exile and never heard from again. The southern kingdom would survive a little longer; however, it, too, was taken into exile into Babylon.

Isaiah 55 was written to the people in exile. They had lost everything. They were prisoners and slaves and refugees. They had been driven from their homes. They were grieving the loss of their relatives who had been killed or left to die. They were despairing over the apparent abandonment by God – if God ever existed at all.  It was a tough time to be talking about joy.

How were they to understand what was happening to them? How were they to understand what had happened to them? Well, in the book of Isaiah, there is a turn at Chapter 40. In the first 39 chapters, the focus was on the curses of breaking the covenant – seen in God’s wrath and judgment executed by the nations that conquered and oppressed Israel. In Chapter 40 and beyond, the focus turns to how God would restore Israel and remember His promises made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to Moses and to David.

What does Isaiah 55 promise?

God called the people to come to Him and be satisfied. Those who are thirsty? Come, find water. Those who are poor and hungry? Come and be filled. Those were promises of a great banquet; a banquet where Yahweh was the host. God made it clear that the way of life was by “inclining our ear” to him; that is, God was inviting them to be restored into a right relationship with him. Inclining their ear to him included remembering God’s covenant promises and call for Israel to be his “priestly kingdom and holy nation.” 

Let me stop here for a moment: while we read Isaiah 55 in the context of the forthcoming Messiah, it is important we remember that it was written hundreds of years before that event and was addressing issues that the people of God had at that time.

How amazing is God? Consider how rich is Scripture: Use our text today as an illustration. Isaiah 55 was a foundation for joy for the people who were in exile. God was promising to restore the people from exile to Jerusalem through the agency of Persian Emperors Darius and Cyrus. Foreign emperors would be servants of Yahweh. Remembering how God had led the people of Israel out of Egypt, defeating Pharaoh; remembering how God had provided for them in the desert; remembering how God had led Joshua in conquering and settling peacefully the Promised land; there was reason for people in exile to have faith and even joy in hearing God’s promise of restoration. 

And it happened. God delivered: the people were restored from exile to Jerusalem through the agency of Persian emperors. As promised, God delivered.

In Jesus’ time, for people who were living under Roman oppression and Pharasaical judgments, this text was talked about and was a foundation for joy for people. Then, in his birth, in his life and obedient walk, in his deeds of power revealing his identity as the anointed son of David and son of God, Jesus gave reason for people living under foreign oppression and cultural legalistic disdain to have faith and even joy in his promise of the kingdom of heaven. It happened. As promised, God delivered.

Then, Jesus declared a new covenant as described in Isaiah 55. He instituted the Lord’s supper, a communion meal marking peace with God, salvation, and eternal life for those who “incline their ear.” It was a foretaste of the banquet where those who have been thirsty will find water, those who have been hungry will be filled.

So today, we return to God’s word in the midst of a world that stands at odds before God. We see nation fighting against nation. We see war and strife – last week Alan Jones held up the multiple sheets listing armed conflicts going on right now. We see our own country ignoring or waging battle against each other and God. In this pandemic we have seen people turn on each other, blame each other, dismiss each other, and despise each other for the hardships we are experiencing? I know there are many people who are frustrated and not hopeful about the future because it seems like things are moving away from – rather than toward – God.

However, in the midst of all these perceived evils, troubles, and hardships, we have reason for joy in God’s promise of Christ’s coming again and the realization of the full kingdom of heaven.

It will happen.  As promised, God will deliver. So: how? How do we have joy, now? See. What was God’s command to the people? See. See.

We often fall from joy because we fail to see. We do not have joy because we do not look with eyes to see what God has done and is doing.

If we listen only to the world and do not spend time in the Word, we get lost in the despair of what is going wrong. If we listen to the world and do not spend time in prayer, we get detatched from God’s promises and perceive only emptiness. If we listen to the world and keep our faith to ourselves, we find that we are devoid of the encouragement we would receive from others (and they from us) and left alone wondering if any of it is real. 

Friends, we have to look. Look at what God has done. Look for what God is doing. Look to see what God has promised  will be done. God declares that his word will not return to him empty. If we imagine the world around us to be fields, God has promised that He will show us that barren land will be transformed into great explosions of fruitfulness and life. He will deliver us from despair, from emptiness, from loneliness, and from sin and death.

The great Christmas carol, “Joy to the World” has it exactly correct:

Joy to the world! The Lord is come: Let earth receive her king; let every heart prepare Him room, and heaven and nature sing.

Joy to the world! The Savior reigns: Let us our songs employ; While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains, repeat the sounding joy.

No more let sins and sorrows grow, nor thorns infest the ground; He comes to make his blessings flow far as the curse is found.

He rules the world with truth and grace, and makes the nations prove The glories of His righteousness and wonders of His love.

Just as the promises in Isaiah 55 were given to the people in exile; just as the promises and the covenant Jesus established in the Lord’s supper came before his crucifixion and resurrection, God  has shown us and promised us the reality of the coming kingdom of heaven. What we see here and now is not eternal; what we see here and now is not controlling; what we see here and now is not how things will be – look with eyes to see what God has done, is doing, and will do. We have to look. See.

Joy

See what? What are we supposed to see?

The Messiah. The Savior.

Joy is the celebration of God’s rescuing us. You see, this is the true joy in Advent – the promise of rescue. It is not a celebration of our abundance. Unlike the advertisements, eternal love is not expressed in a diamond or other material gift. The true Christmas spirit is not holiday spirit; that is, it is not a reverie of friendship for the sake of having a party.

Joy is the hope and realization of rescue. Help has come. Help is on the way. We are not alone. God is with us and we are assured of our hope in him. Imagine being pulled out into the ocean by a riptide. Imagine watching the land recede from your view. Imagine your despair as you watch the waves tower over you. Then, imagine your response to seeing a lifeguard coming in the distance. Joy.

Joy is a response to rescue.  Joy is a response to victory. True joy starts from a place of great need.

Does anyone here need rescue? Does anyone see all around us a people who need rescue? This pandemic has exacerbated all sorts of needs and anxieties: fear about our health; pressure about finances; grieving the loss of fellowship and relationships; or even highlighting our distance from God because of unconfessed sin (that is, something that we have done or failed to do that we hold onto because we believe God could not forgive that).

The darkness of now has been overwhelming; it can seem so heavy and oppressive that there is no way out. “The time for joy is now, when we need it most.” In these circumstances, joy is not a Pollyanna plastic smile pasted over the difficulties, joy is the attitude of determined persistence in the midst of the present suffering – holding fast to the vision of a savior, of redemption, of restoration, of rescue. This is the joy of Advent.

In the time leading up to Christmas, children often act as they do waiting in line to enter an amusement park for the first time. There is wonder at the sights and the sounds. There is excitement at they marvel at the mystery and the potential. There is hopeful expectation for the emotional feelings they anticipate having. Joy is the anticipation of things to come. This is the joy of living in the already/not yet time; the Messiah has come, the Messiah will come again. It is the joy of looking forward.

How are you living and looking these days? Are you living with the hope, expectation, and excitement of rescue? Are you anticipating what God will do?

Joy means seeing things with God’s eyes; trusting his promises, living into the reality He has revealed – even when it does not seem like it is happening. Joy means reaching out and sharing with others the good news so that they, too, might have hope and expectation and share in the joy of what God is doing.

Conclusion

Friends, in the midst of everything we perceive in the world around us, look and see: God has not abandoned us. God has not given up on us. God has not walked away from us. He has given us hope, he has given us peace, he has given us joy. He has given us Jesus.

“For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.” (Isaiah 55:12)

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen.

 

[1]  https://www.americamagazine.org/faith/2013/12/12/have-faith-joy-ultimate-response-good-news