Jesus is Joy
Notes
Transcript
CENTRAL TRUTH EXPRESSED (MAIN POINT):
CENTRAL TRUTH EXPRESSED (MAIN POINT):
Jesus is Joy even when circumstances are anything but joyful
GOD'S HEART REVEALED:
GOD'S HEART REVEALED:
God’s desire is for us to find out joy not in circumstances but in Jesus alone!
OUR RIGHT RESPONSE:
OUR RIGHT RESPONSE:
Renew your heart and mind on this beautiful truth
ME:
ME:
We humans gravitate to the dramatic, to the tension.
hence why even GBBS attempts to build drama at the lowest stakes possible.
Nobody ever has written a tv show or movie or book without dramatic tension!
As soon as Endgame ended and Thanos was handled, what did we start speculating about? Not just which new heroes will have a new movie, but who is the new big bad going to be, can he compare with Thanos?
Because our lives are filled with tension, and we are all bouncing from one stressful situation to the next, we continually gravitate towards the drama as stories, in our conversations with coworkers…
YOU:
YOU:
But at the same time, hopefully we aren’t just drawn to the dramatic tension, but we actually are drawn to the resolution of the tension. We don’t want to see the villains win forever, we just want them to be formidable enough that just as it appears like all hope is lost the hero swoops in and takes care of business!
But in the real world, villains do win sometimes. The chaos doesn’t end the way we want. The diagnosis takes a life. The relationship ends. Betrayal happens. The world around us doesn’t appear to gravitate toward resolution just more and more and more tension.
Last week, Renaut unpacked week 1 of Advent… Hope. That Jesus doesn’t just bring hope but he IS hope. When the world around us is telling a story that all hope is lost or we are our own hope, Jesus IS hope.
Tonight we turn our gaze to the concept of JOY.
I don’t really have to tell you how broken our world is, how the real world works…
In a world that has so much chaos, tension, and fear…. Can any talk of genuine unfiltered joy ring as anything but hollow?
GOD:
GOD:
For the remaining three messages of this series, we are going to comb over the story of Jesus birth, but instead of where in years past we focused in on different characters in the story. This time we will focus on the different advent themes. Hope, Joy, Peace, and Love.
You may have some awareness of what the situation was looking like for the people of Israel around the time of Jesus’ birth. Not good.
As the Old Testament of the Bible was written their nation had already been beaten up by the world around them. Invaded. Discarded. Taken off into exile. Enslaved. Past along across three empires as a people in bondage like an inheritance.
To top it off, during all this God has been silent. 600 years of silence. No prophets. No sign that he even cared. They had rebelled and after centuries of the nation of Israel wanting to do things apart from Him, now He was letting them see the natural consequences of that desire.
All it brought was more pain, more tension, more drama, more fear.
There was little reason to hope. No cause for joy.
But yet tonight I wanted to draw you to a familiar christmas passages, but tonight as we read them I want you to not only hear the truth that is being expressed but the passion behind the words In the middle of a world with no cause for joy.
Read Luke 1:30-38
And the angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. And the Lord God will give to him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.”
And Mary said to the angel, “How will this be, since I am a virgin?”
And the angel answered her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; therefore the child to be born will be called holy—the Son of God. And behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her who was called barren. For nothing will be impossible with God.” And Mary said, “Behold, I am the servant of the Lord; let it be to me according to your word.” And the angel departed from her.
If you are Mary, you have every reason to be afraid, you have every reason to feel like you got sucked into the cosmos drama… but yet…
She soon goes off to visit her cousin Elizabeth and sense the Joy of Mary’s words…
Read Luke 1:46-55
And Mary said,
“My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,
for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.
For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed;
for he who is mighty has done great things for me,
and holy is his name.
And his mercy is for those who fear him
from generation to generation.
He has shown strength with his arm;
he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts;
he has brought down the mighty from their thrones
and exalted those of humble estate;
he has filled the hungry with good things,
and the rich he has sent away empty.
He has helped his servant Israel,
in remembrance of his mercy,
as he spoke to our fathers,
to Abraham and to his offspring forever.”
Her circumstances dictate fear and tension… But the truth that the long awaited Messiah is on his way transforms the occasion.
Soon Elizabeth’s husband receives a prophecy from the Holy Spirit after it was revealed that his newborn son would pave the way for the newborn son of Mary, but this prophecy is not one of weeping and gnashing of teeth but…
Read Luke 1:68-75
“Blessed be the Lord God of Israel,
for he has visited and redeemed his people
and has raised up a horn of salvation for us
in the house of his servant David,
as he spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets from of old,
that we should be saved from our enemies
and from the hand of all who hate us;
to show the mercy promised to our fathers
and to remember his holy covenant,
the oath that he swore to our father Abraham, to grant us
that we, being delivered from the hand of our enemies,
might serve him without fear,
in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.
The story now takes us a few months into the future and Mary and Joseph arrive in Bethlehem to honor the census. A glaring reminder of the oppressors they live under.
Mary and Joseph living under the scandal of her pregnancy.
Joseph living with the dishonor that he is not the biological father.
All the reason in the world to be afraid. To live in the tension.
But we don’t get the Snyder Cut of his birth, we get a simple, beautiful and poetic arrival…
Read Luke 2:6-7
And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
The King of the Cosmos born in human form not in an ancient palace nor in a modern state of the art hospital. He was born in humility. Even then humans didn’t have room for him.
Yet this is not a gloomy image. This is the ARRIVAL!!!
“The central miracle asserted by Christians is the Incarnation. They say that God became Man. Every other miracle prepares for this, or exhibits this, or results from this.” — “Miracles”
Everything up to this moment in all of human history was waiting for this moment. Everything since this moment has happened because of that moment!
In the middle of darkness, Jesus is the light.
Wherever the light appears darkness stops existing.
In its void its some light that is merely holy and set apart but boring…
It is more exciting than we could possibly imagine… It is true joy.
A few weeks ago I asked you the question, when was the last time you rejoiced in something? Not because you SHOULD but because you couldn’t help it?
This is the only true reaction to the presence of Jesus! Joy. Unfiltered. Pure. Joy. No preservatives. No GMO. No additives. Joy.
Not joy that things are all together different just yet, but Joy because Jesus is Joy and Joy is Jesus.
It was this joy that the outcast Shepherds were called to come and worship…
Read Luke 2:10-20
And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
“Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”
When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go over to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” And they went with haste and found Mary and Joseph, and the baby lying in a manger. And when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning this child. And all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. And the shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.
Can I be honest in saying I have never found newborn babies very interesting? Even when we had Abi I remember thinking, wow! That’s awesome! Wondering where the button was that would get her to do something interesting… except the only thing that was interesting was also really stinky, and difficult to clean up.
But these guys were REJOICING. Not because they saw a baby. But because they saw the face of God.
They saw in the midst of a dark world, the light of the world!
This could only lead to one thing… genuine joy welling up in their hearts.
Mary. Elizabeth. Zechariah. Joseph. Shepherds. Angels. All rejoicing.
Not because their circumstances all got easier, but because JESUS arrived!
Jesus is true Joy.
I have now been following Jesus for a decade, and let me be both clear and honest. Jesus has not made my life easier or less chaotic. In some ways, it has only become more of it! I have experienced deep hurts from those I respected, I have found myself in positions of faith where if God doesn’t come through then this will get really bad really quick, I remember being given three years ago responsibility to shepherd this campus when I felt completely over my head!
But God continues to reveal to me the beauty that my joy cannot and will never truly be found in my circumstances no matter how much I wish it was true. My life. Your life will never be perfect enough. If you had all the right relationships, right amount of money, right home, right job, right whatever… you would discover some other way the dramatic tension of planet death creeps its head around…
But Jesus.
Wherever Jesus steps into the story we discover not just to one who brings joy but we discover Joy in person.
YOU:
YOU:
The question is will we allow our hearts and minds to be set on genuine Joy?
Will we pray that we would find Jesus more compelling then circumstance?
Will we allow our affections be more captured by Jesus than by the next cool purchase or trip?
Will we desire to believe in the heart and mind that Jesus is enough?
Tonight I wanted to give us five minutes to simply sit quietly and simply give us genuine space to be in front of God, and talk to Him about Joy.
Would you be so bold as to ask him to begin to renew your heart and your mind to see Jesus as true pure unfiltered Joy?
[Take five minutes]
US:
US:
Its been getting dark out so early during this time of year, the day is short.
It is a reminder that this world can moments of light and times of darkness, but the true and lasting light of Joy is not bound to this world.
Instead that light came into this world to reclaim this land from the shadows and usher in a Kingdom where there is no darkness. Just life, light, and freedom..
Would we dare to believe and dare to desire this reality in our lives tonight?