Sermon Tone Analysis
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Joy is one of the Fruit of the Spirit.
It is something that the Holy Spirit brings into our lives along with love, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
This is part of the transformational work that the Holy Spirit does within us.
As I was thinking about joy this week I came to the conclusion that there are a lot of people in churches today that need a healthy dose of joy in their lives.
You know them, they are the ones that go through life looking like they’ve been sucking on lemons.
They are like my favorite Winnie the Pooh characters, Eeyore.
He can never see the positive in anything, only the negative.
I read an interesting story this week:
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., was a member of the U.S. Supreme Court for 30 years.
His mind, wit and work earned him the unofficial title of “the greatest justice since John Marshall.”
At one point in his life, Justice Holmes explained his choice of a career by saying: “I might have entered the ministry if certain clergymen I knew had not looked and acted so much like undertakers.”
Moody Bible Institute’s Today In The Word, June, 1988, p. 13.
I hope I don’t look and act like an undertaker!
Here we are on the last Sunday of Christmas and the first Sunday of a brand new year.
A new year is a new opportunity.
Yesterday is all done, there is nothing that we can do to undo anything.
We are looking ahead to what God has in store for us.
Are you facing this new year with a sense of dread or a sense of Joy?
No matter how many challenges, how many difficulties, how many illnesses, how many bad things that came your way in 2019, they are all history.
I like to view a new year like a blank notebook.
It is something that is filled with blank paper, nothing has been written in it yet.
What will it look like at the end of the year is yet to be known.
One thing that we’ve told the boys that have lived with us is that each day is a brand new day.
We cannot change what happened yesterday.
What is important is what we do with today.
Each day is a new beginning.
Do you need a new beginning?
Verse 13 of our text tells us:
Then the young women
will dance for joy;
the young and old men will join in.
I will turn their mourning into laughter
and their sadness into joy;
I will comfort them.
The Jews are being given a new beginning as they return to their homeland.
There is the theme of joy that runs throughout our scripture text.
The text even tells us that they will dance for joy because of what God is about to do for them.
I am friends with a Nazarene pastor in India.
He pastors a small church with a bunch of kids and teenagers.
He posts their worship services and I see the kids as they help lead the worship.
On New Years day they had a special worship time and the kids and teens were leading the service.
He posted a number of videos of the kids and teens dancing to the worship music.
It was beautiful to watch them in their joy worship through dance.
I couldn’t understand the words because they were sung in Hindi, but I recognized the tune of at least one of the songs.
This is a poor church in a very poor part of the country and yet they were dancing in joy for the blessings of God on their lives.
Israel is still in captivity in a foreign nation but Jeremiah writes about the new beginning that is about to happen for them.
In spite of the fact that Israel has been unfaithful to God, God is still faithful to them.
Every time Israel has turned their backs on God, God has been there ready to restore them.
Despite their sin and their rebellion, God is ready to restore them and there will be great joy.
What an amazing God!
What an amazing God we serve that in spite of our unfaithfulness that He is faithful.
Every time we turn our backs on God, He is there ready to welcome us back.
Could you use a new beginning with God this morning just like Israel?
God is ready and willing to give you a new beginning.
What does this new beginning for Israel look like?
A New Beginning Produces Praise
Look there at verses 7 through 9
7 The LORD proclaims: Sing joyfully for the people of Jacob; shout for the leading nation.
Raise your voices with praise and call out: "The LORD has saved his people,the remaining few in Israel!" 8 I'm going to bring them back from the north; I will gather them from the ends of the earth.
Among them will be the blind and the disabled, expectant mothers and those in labor; a great throng will return here.
9 With tears of joy they will come; while they pray, I will bring them back.
I will lead them by quiet streams and on smooth paths so they don't stumble.
I will be Israel's father, Ephraim will be my oldest child.
What a picture is being painted by these verses.
Let me just back up a moment to verse six that says:
Get ready!
We’re going up to Zion
to the LORD our God!
God is preparing the people.
Get ready!
When we tell someone to get ready we are telling them to prepare.
Every morning during the week I tell the boys to get ready for school because the bus will be there soon to pick them up.
They know that there are consequences if they miss the bus.
God is saying “Get Ready” because he is about to do something truly awesome and he does not want them to miss out.
In these verse there are four imperatives that Jeremiah uses.
Sing joyfully, shout, raise your voices with praise, call out.
I am old enough to remember services where there was singing that the neighbors heard, there was shouting and raising of voices and call out.
We don’t seem to do that any more.
In the church I attended as a teen we often on a Sunday night would have a praise service in the summer months that the neighbors of the church heard our voices.
Voices were raised in praise and worship to God.
I remember attending camp with my one aunt.
She was a Free Methodist and the people that attended that camp knew how to praise God.
I remember one guy that would get so blessed that he would start running the isles of that old tabernacle.
He’d jump up from where he was sitting and starting running around that tabernacle.
He’d go all the way around and then he would start running the benches.
He’d get up on the bench in the back and start jumping from one to the next to the next until he made it to the front.
He never did fall.
There was such joy and freedom in worship in that old tabernacle.
Now we’re afraid to say Amen or raise our hands in worship.
I was watching a Christian comedian and he demonstrated a variety of things that people do with their hands in worship.
He started out with hands in our pockets and went from their.
Are we afraid to praise God?
What is that person beside me going to think if I say Amen and lift my hands in worship?
If they are sitting beside you then they are probably related to you and they know all the odd and weird things that you do at home.
They know that you yell at your TV when the Steelers are playing and losing.
If we can yell at an inanimate object like a TV, then why can we not lift our voices in praise and worship to the God and Father who created all that has been created?
In the passage that was read to us from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians we heard the words:
Look at that amazing passage.
He has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing that comes from heaven!
Wow! God has blessed us with every, every, meaning we lack nothing, every spiritual blessing!
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