Joy to the World

Carols of Christmas - Advent 2018  •  Sermon  •  Submitted   •  Presented   •  26:55
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Join us this Advent as we take a look at some of the famous carols of Christmas and think more deeply about what deep truths these words actually reveal about God this Christmas.

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Joy

Cambridge English Dictionary
B2 [ U ] great happiness:
They were filled with joy when their first child was born.She wept for joy when she was told that her husband was still alive.​
B2 [ C ] a person or thing that causes happiness:
Listening to music is one of his greatest joys.the joys of parenthood[ + to infinitive ] Her singing is a joy to listen to.
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John Piper - Christian joy is a good feeling in the soul, produced by the Holy Spirit, as he causes us to see the beauty of Christ in the word and in the world.
When God gives us the Holy Spirit, He works in our souls and opens our eyes to see the beauty and majesty of what Jesus has done and is doing.
Christian joy comes not from our experiences, but inspite of them. It comes from God as he gives us the power to see Jesus in everything.
This deep Christian joy is the joy we sing about in a carol today.
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Joy to the World

Written by Isaac Watts who wrote around 750 hymns.
Watts was a revolutionary in his day.
Prior to his work of Hymn writing in the late 17th and early 18th century Christians more or less only sang Psalms.
That is the tradition of the church for some 1600+ years was the singing of the Biblical psalms. Hymns are only a 400 year old innovation! If you like hymns you’re actually in favour of fairly new and radical change in the grand scheme of things!
Anyhow, Joy to the Wolrd was published in 1719 in Watts work - Psalms of David: Imitated in the Language of the New Testament, and applied to the Christian state and worship.
Isaac Watts takes the Psalms and then writes a his own Psalms/Songs about how the Psalms point us to Jesus. RADICAL!
Carol is supposed to have 4 verses. But our Hymn book has dropped verse 3. Which is a real shame as we’ll see.
The tune for the carol has changed over the years with the tune we know and love today coming to us from Mr Lowell Mason in 1848. It’s believed by some he took some inspiration from Handel’s messiah with some similarities to some tunes from that which can be heard in this carol.
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Verse 1 - Jesus brings Joy!

Joy to the world! the Lord is come! Let earth receive her King; let ev’ry heart prepare Him room, and heav’n and nature sing.

Remember Watts is rewriting Psalms and showing us how they are fulfilled in Jesus. And this carol was inspired by Psalm 98. Let me read from v 2,4 and 6.
Psalm 98:2 NIV (Anglicised, 2011)
The Lord has made his salvation known and revealed his righteousness to the nations.
Psalm 98:4–6 NIV (Anglicised, 2011)
Shout for joy to the Lord, all the earth, burst into jubilant song with music; make music to the Lord with the harp, with the harp and the sound of singing, with trumpets and the blast of the ram’s horn— shout for joy before the Lord, the King.
Here we have heaven and nature singing with joy because the Lord has made his salvation known through sending Jesus into the world. Jesus is the fulfilment of so many promises from the Old Testament that a saviour would be born.
And with the revelation of the saviour Jesus, Watts adds the response we should have as we become aware of this joyful coming of Jesus. “Let every heart prepare him room”. We must make ourselves ready. We must turn away from distraction, sin, selfishness, and all that fills our hearts and crowds out space for God.
And in fact when we fill our hearts with things other than God we see actually that they rob us of joy.
It’s no surprise to me that in the West, we are seeing belief in God plummet and rates of suicide skyrocket. It’s not surprise to me that the people who we believe have got it all, the rich and the famous, are some of the most depressed people going round. Many of us spend our lives filling our hearts with money, family, sex, alcohol, drugs, hobbies, politics, social justice, environmentalism thinking that these things will bring us joy. But in fact if they are taking the place of God, who should be first and foremost in our hearts, then though they may satisfy for a time, ultimately they will be joy killers, not joy givers.
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Verse 2 - Jesus brings Salvation

Joy to the earth the Savior reigns. Let men their songs employ, while fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains repeat the sounding joy.

And so we have joy because Jesus is our saviour, v2 reminds us. Jesus comes to save us from ourselves, our selfish ways of life. And when we experience the beauty of salvation in Christ we can’t help but join with creation, wit the fields and floods, rocks hills and plains, in singing songs of joy.
This brings to mind Psalm 96:
Psalm 96:11–12 NIV (Anglicised, 2011)
Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad; let the sea resound, and all that is in it. Let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them; let all the trees of the forest sing for joy.
It’s a Psalm about how all creation is singing joyfully because God has come to save and judge the world. He comes to make things right. When we understand how good it is for God to fix our broken world, how can we not praise him and rejoice.
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And of course this leads nicely into verse 3.

Verse 3 (often omitted) - Jesus reverses the curse

of Adam.

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.

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.
You might remember the story from Genesis 3:
Genesis 3:17–18 NIV (Anglicised, 2011)
To Adam he said, ‘Because you listened to your wife and ate fruit from the tree about which I commanded you, “You must not eat from it,” ‘Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat food from it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field.
When sin entered the world, humanity and the world was cursed by God. We reap the fruit of sin every day. We were created to work in Genesis 2. And yet now our work will be hard. The ground will required painful toil, and it will produce thistles rather than simply providing good produce.
We experience that today don’t we. Our work is not easy. There are hard relationships to manage, bosses who do wrong by us, colleagues who work against us or take credit for our work, 21st century thistles. The curse of sin.
And Jesus comes to reverse the curse. To bring peace to human relationships with each other and with creation. We have a taste of that now, in the church, and we will see it fully realised when Jesus returns.
Jesus reverse the curse of sin and brings many blessings to the whole world. Why would you leave this out?

Verse 4 - Jesus rules the world.

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

The final verse reminds us of the reality this Christmas. Jesus is no longer a cute little baby, lying in a manger. He is the ascended king who rules the world. This is a source of great joy at Christmas time.
We see too that the carol holds together the ideas of Jesus’ righteousness and love together.
We have can have such an impoverished view of love where we think it means I love you if I let you get whatever you want.
And normally I’d use parenting as an example of why this is foolish. Once upon a time I could’ve said, we don’t let children do whatever they want because we love them. That’s why we parent them and help them learn and know right from wrong. But sadly, I can’t even use that example today. Even many parents think love is letting your children do what the want.
But Jesus love is intimately connected to his righteousness. They go together. He loves us so much that he wants us to actually die to ourselves and do not what we want but what He wants. And what he wants is far greater and grander than anything we could ever dream of on our own. He wants us to live according to his rules, and in doing so we find a life of not of rule keeping drudgery, but deep and lasting joy!
How wonderful God’s loving rule in our lives is!

Deep Joy this Christmas

Jesus brings joy. He brings salvation. He reverses the curse of Adam. He rules the world in love,.
When the holy Spirit helps us to comprehend these deep truths, our souls are moved to that place of deep joy.
Now for many people Christmas can be a time of great sadness can’t it?
It reminds us of loved ones no longer with us.
It brings back painful childhood memories of dysfunctional families
It drives home our lack of family
It overwhelmes us in it’s busyness.
And for many more reasons no doubt joy can be the farthest thing from our minds.
And if you are in a truly deep and dark place, let me encourage you to seek help. To talk to someone about it and even to consider getting professional mental health help.
But just as Christmas can be full of great sadness it can also be full of superficial joy too can’t it?
The fun of family
Presents
Christmas lights and carols
Food
Extra church services and community events
Summer weather
All of those things are wonderful but they are momentary. Families disperse, presents break, christmas ends, our pantry empties, the weather cools.
However we’re feeling this Christmas, this carol invites us to come to God and ask him to transform us so we might have deep joy.
John Piper - Christian joy is a good feeling in the soul, produced by the Holy Spirit, as he causes us to see the beauty of Christ in the word and in the world.
The carol invites us to see the beauty of Christ in the word, that is the bible, and in the world and to have Holy Spirit inspired joy because of Him!
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May you be so captivated by the love of Jesus this Christmas that you would find deep and lasting joy this Christmas.
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