Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

As I have told you many times before, I have developed a process to select sermon speaking passages and themes.

I often spend time in prayer and begin to develop a framework for the messages.

This Advent season has been like many others in my planning, but this season has been much different in the delivery.

I guess, God was preaching directly to me and you are coming along to hear the messages.

In my journey through the flood situation, I have been learning first Hope, last week Peace, and this week was to be on the topic of Joy.

God News of Great Joy,

has not been my first thought of my personal situation, yet I began this week to sit down and write this sermon.

So I turned to my notes, jots of notes I had developed over a month ago.

This was written in my notes,

Joy in the midst of Pain, suffering or grief.

This was written before I knew what was coming, but God did.

So we ask ourselves the question

Can we experience Joy in the midst of Pain.

and if we can, how is that even possible?

Full Disclosure, much of this material and research I found lies in the hands of John Piper.

If you would permit me to give some reflections on this topic from what I learned from him.

You now may be wondering Why Joy and suffering.

What part of the Christmas story does this happen.

Let’s turn to today’s text as we study for the preparation for the Christmas Story

Matthew 2:13-18 2:13-18

Joy in the midst of Grief.

John Piper wrote,

One of the most natural questions in the world is to ask how joy relates to sorrow in our lives.

On Thursday, I had the pleasure of leading a team with Samaritan's Purse.

I have been giving a few days of my week to lead a team so that the SP team leader’s can go and do assessments of the homes to determine in what order we serve the people.

It has allowed more homes begin reached.

Joy in the midst of Grief.

Our team spent the entire day, walking through a foot of mud in this families basement suite pulling out their mud soaked ruined belongings.

Standing beside this women as she was deciding what was ruined and what could maybe kept and restored.

We had asked her is there anything specific we could find.

Yes, she said, a box of jewelry that was a family heirloom.

I was praying, Lord, help us find this box.

The team was searching as well.

around 3:00 out came another pail of stuff.

Dumping the contents in the wheelbarrow, I began pulling up mud things.

There was a small bag that looked like it should be thrown out and we opened it up.

There inside was the box,

Joy in the midst of grief.

For that one moment, her face lit up.

We shouted, we found it and there in the middle of the mud, with devastation all around us, there was a loud shout of Praise God.

So today’s text tells us that in midst of the wonderful story of the Christ Child being born, where there is much praising and joy, there were many who were experiencing a different life.

Grief.

The loss of their child.

I’m going to take a few moments to explore the theme of Joy and Grief and how they exist in our lives.

John wrote:

The Bible reframes happiness for us by [making it more complex].

We tend to think of being happy or sad, but Scripture depicts a sort of happiness in the midst of sadness.

In this life we will have trouble, but in this life we will have happiness.

And this doesn’t mean being on an emotional yo-yo (even though it will sometimes feel that way), but rather experiencing two things at once: one being the damage caused by sin and the other being the happiness given by God.

(emphasis added)

To understand this, scripture puts two different perspectives on the idea.

The first would be that there is a progression for Grief then joy.

The second found in scripture is that Joy & Grief are together at the same time in our lives.

To understand this fully, scripture needs to be looked upon as a whole.

And the two different ways are in tension with one another

Why,

you see,

When we are walking down the road of grief, there are many comments given to people.

The first often is, “This time will pass”

Does the Joy follow suffering and grief.

Do we need to experience or go through this time so that Joy will come?

For those Biblical Scholars out there, you may be thinking that this Psalm was written before the NT and therefore was looking for a time this side of the cross and it doesn’t apply.

In other words, do Christians have a new kind of experience on this side of the cross, which the psalmists did not have on that side of the cross?

What it really boils down to is our theology on this topic.

Can we truly hold to one way or another.

Does Joy and grief come at different times or at the same time.

Strategy for Theology

So what is our strategy for our thinking our theology and understand of how we are to live in the midst of our grief.

As John P puts it,

So many times, we make mistakes in biblical thinking because we focus entirely on one group of passages that support something we like, or condemn something we don’t like, and ignore the other passages that seem to say something different.

What I have found over decades is that, because the Bible is God’s word, and therefore is consistent and doesn’t contradict itself, there are deeper things to be seen when both groups of texts are put together than if we only focused on one group or the other.

The upshot of this approach is that we not only see the deeper unity between the texts, but we see with greater clarity what each group itself means.

So I want to spend the remaining time looking at the two ways scripture address this theme and then draw a few conclusions.

Passages on Joy following Grief

The first set of passages are ones that show a process or step by step working in our lives.

In some sense, the joy that comes in the morning wasn’t there in the evening of weeping.

And presumably the weeping that was there in the evening went away in the morning.

That’s a real sequence.

And a real experience.

Another Psalm states this

The picture is that the farmer is weeping while he sows his seed, and then at the harvest, there are shouts of joy.

That’s a real sequence: first one, then the other.

This was one of my thoughts about the Christmas story.

We all focus on the Joy of the child being born and forget the pain that Mary would have gone through in delivery.

Jesus was also telling His Disciples that the pain and suffering they experience will bring about Joy in the end.

It’s a sequence

Look at Paul’s thoughts,

This is a simple command from the apostle Paul:

“Tearful joy in God will be replaced with tearless joy in God.

Painful joy in God will be replaced with painless joy in God.”

In other words, just because Paul says in another place, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice” (Philippians 4:4), don’t plan the funeral as though it were a festive wedding.

And just because Ecclesiastes 7:2 says, “It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting,” don’t throw a blanket of gloom on the bride’s joy by bringing your weeping to the wedding celebration.

“For everything there is a season . . .

a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance” (Ecclesiastes 3:1, 4).

In these verses we see them at different times.

The Final verse on the theme of Joy and grief are come at different times is found in John’s word of future events.

I am looking forward to this time.

No more sorrow, no more pain, no more suffering.

No more mud.