Date: December 17, 2000
Text: Phil 4:4-7
Topic: Christmas and joy
Title: "All I Want for Christmas"
Theme: The message of Christmas is love, but the surest evidence that this pure love has been received anew (or for the first time) is joy in the receiver's heart.
“Rejoice
in the Lord always...the Lord is near.”
I had an interesting thing happen to me a few weeks ago when I traveled to Mississippi to go hunting (and no, I'm not talking about the gash on my head). One afternoon we were about to start cooking supper and we realized we needed a few items. My cousin was going to be our cook that evening so he tossed me the keys to his truck and asked if I'd drive to town and pick-up the few groceries we needed. The "town" in this case is Bassfield, MS. Bassfield is a tiny, one-stoplight town that looks a lot like the set of "Little House on the Prairie." Not much has changed in Bassfield in the past hundred years or so. There's no Pizza Hut or McDonalds, or Seven-Eleven or even a Wal-Mart. The people in Bassfield live quiet, simple lives and have not succumbed to freeway off ramps, instant teller machines, quarter-pounders with cheese and Web Van.
I started the four or five mile drive to town and found myself remembering days long ago when I used to travel that same road as a kid, riding in the car with my mom or dad, or my grandparents. As I neared the town I remembered there used to be a very old house there that sat beside the road. This house must have been a showcase around the turn of the century (that's the turn of the last century), but by the time I first noticed it back in the early sixties, it had long since been abandoned. Back then it sat there, unpainted, with broken windows, a picket fence rotting and falling in, and porch boards missing. I remember being scared to death to even drive by that house. I chuckled to myself as I remembered my childish fears about the house, which I used to call the "Haunted Mansion." I remembered how I would deliberately look to the other side of the road so I wouldn't actually see the house as we drove by.
The interesting thing that happened to me was that as I drove into town I summoned the courage to look over to the left and there, right across the street from the Piggly-Wiggly (yes, they do have a Piggly-Wiggly now), guess what I saw? The Haunted Mansion. Remarkably, the house looked exactly the same as I remembered it thirty-five years ago. I couldn't believe my eyes. I pulled into the Piggly-Wiggly parking lot, parked and then walked across the street and stood in the yard in front of the house.
As I stood there I thought of all the change and revolution that has occurred during the lifespan of that house - changes in information, transportation, and technology - and yet, there it stood, timeless, and seemingly ageless. I also thought of all the changes that have occurred to me - in my life - since that house first scared me. It hit me about how I've grown up now, and how in so many ways I've become hardened by the world. I remembered the expectations I held about how my life would turn out and about how some of those expectations have been disappointments and how some have been realized beyond my wildest dreams. And then, inexplicably, tears began to fill my eyes and I began to weep. I don't know why, but I found myself standing there, looking at the old house, and crying.
Has anything like that ever happened to you? Yesterday's Atlanta Journal carried an article that reminds us that many people begin feeling this way around the holidays. Experts cited in the article said this happens because Christmas is often a season of unmet expectations. Christmas touches the most idealized memories of our childhood and people get nostalgic and blue over the loss of that time in their lives…over losing the ability to enter innocently into the joy of the season. The parties you thought would be great aren't; you see all sorts of ads on TV about toys and you realize you can't get your kids everything they want. At Christmas dinner mom or dad gets drunk again, a family argument erupts, the car breaks down, a family member gets the flu and you are left with the holiday blues.
In that same article an expert was asked if a person's faith plays a role in the holiday blues and the expert said no. What he was being asked was if a person's faith adds to the blues many get this time of year - but what he wasn't asked is if a person's faith is the answer - if it helps with his or her blues - the answer to that question, I believe, is yes. Your faith can and should make a difference.
We've been talking about the true meaning of Christmas here during Advent. We've talked about how Christmas is all about a promise - the promise of God's presence among us. That's why I chose the song we sang just before the message. Did you catch the words? The song is called, simply, Love Song and it's a love song written from Jesus' perspective to us. The song contrasts God's promises to human promises - promises to climb the highest mountain or to swim the deepest sea to prove our love. The song made me realize that the promise of God's presence has a deeper meaning - that deeper meaning is that God's promise of presence is all about love.
That's the first point that I've written down in your sermon outline. The message of Christmas is LOVE. Pure, unmerited, sacrificial love. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son…” John 3:16.
The evidence that we have received that love for the first time, or received it anew this season, is the presence of JOY in our lives. “I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.” John 15:11.
The motif of joy surrounds the birth of Christ. Remember the words of the angels to the shepherds - "I bring you good news of great joy which shall be for all people" (Luke 2:10). Jesus had joy, read the gospel accounts. The Disciples had joy, Peter writes, "Though we do not see him now, we believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy" (1 Pet. 1:8). The early church had joy and in their accounts that would become the New Testament, joy emerged as a dominant theme. In the New Testament the word for "joy" occurs 60 times. The verb form, which means, "to rejoice" is used 72 times. We do not fully understand the message of the New Testament until we see it as a book of joy.
So, why don’t we have more joy today? Joy is not a prevalent attitude among modern Christians. How often do you hear people associate "joy" or "enjoyment" with their religion? A better term on many counts today would be "solemn."
I believe the main reason joy is in such short supply today can be traced to certain “Joy-Busters.” Jesus’ coming at Christmas took care of these, here’s how:
Joy-Buster #1 - ANXIETY. “Do not be anxious…” YOU ARE KNOWN. I realize it is totally unfair for me to ask any of us (myself included) to "not be anxious" this time of year. As we rush around, ricocheting from place to place trying to get it all done before Christmas, shopping, exams, year-end reports, etc., the demands of life are pressing in on us. When this happens we become fretful, intense, and agitated and fearful. All just the opposite of what God expects of us.
One of the basic fears we have as children, which must be overcome as we grow up or it turns into a serious problem, is a basic fear we are born with - the fear that we won't be known or accepted by at least one other person in the world. Most of us overcome this fear within our own family unit - but some don't.
We have a spiritual fear that is related to this, and that is that we aren't known or valued by God - the being in whom we find our ultimate meaning in life. Jesus' coming at Christmas to be one of us, to walk with us and to show us the "humanity" of God, settled the issue of whether or not we are known by God.
In this race called life, when the pressing demands of time are upon us, if we want to experience the joy of the Lord. We need to stop being anxious. God knows us and we can know Him, Christmas proved that.
Joy-Buster #2 is STRIVING. “...in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.” YOU ARE LOVED
Striving has to do with the fact that God loves each of us. We do not earn joy by striving for it through diligent effort. Nor do we discover it by careful searching. God's joy, is the evidence his love has been received is a gift. Joy is a byproduct of a healthy relationship with God and comes as we focus on knowing and serving Christ, not on being joyful.
That's why Jesus talked about us becoming like little children in order to enter the kingdom of heaven. Children don’t know how to strive and don't care to strive until they become tainted by adult conceptions of reality. Children play, always expecting the best in life. When is the last time you played?
Our striving gets in the way of God's love for us and our experiencing the joy of that love in our lives. That's also one of the reasons Jesus came as a baby. Think about it - of all the ways Christ could have entered our world he chose to enter it as a helpless infant. We need to hear again the words of the Psalmist who said, "Be still and know that I am God." Stop striving and rest in His love. You are loved.
Joy-Buster #3 is GUILT. “And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” YOU ARE FORGIVEN.
I've saved the greatest, or should I say the gravest, for last - guilt. Guilt is a huge joy-robber. I don't do much counseling, just enough to get by I suppose, but of the little I do, I would conservatively estimate that 80% of it has to do with guilt over things people have done. Most have asked forgiveness for what they did but they still feel guilty. Past mistakes seem to be forgotten, but then a TV show, or a song on the radio, or hearing someone else's story reminds that person of a misdeed from their past and wham…they are back in the middle of that guilt.
Your sins, and mine, are inexcusable. We must take full responsibility for our actions, we have caused tremendous pain and suffering by our selfishness. But, if we are truly repentant (that is, sorry and willing to turn from that sin and to make whatever amends we can) and if we've asked God's forgiveness and the forgiveness of any others we have victimized by our sin, then we must move on, trusting in God's forgiveness that was made possible only by his coming to us at Christmas, his living a sinless life and then his dying for us.
Guilt is a tremendous joy-robber. Hear your pastor: You are forgiven.
There's one more part to my story about standing in front of the Haunted Mansion that day. As I stood there and the tears began to flow, I soon realized they were what I call "Holy Spirit" tears - tears of joy. I felt a sudden surge of intense gladness as it dawned on me anew that I am known, loved and forgiven by God. When all is said and done in life, who could ask for more?
I don't know what you're experiencing today in your life, but this I do know because as a believer I know the whole story - you see, it's in this book. The Bible says that despite the great joy that surrounded the birth of Jesus his life would come to a tragic and sudden end on a barren hillside outside the walls of Jerusalem, just when the promise seemed greatest. But then, when all hope seemed lost, Jesus' followers found an empty tomb and were seized "with fear and great joy" (Matt. 28:8). That means that the joy that is in store for God's people is so great it cannot even be described.
An Old Testament prophet, trying to express the inexpressible put it this way: "You shall go out in joy and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you will burst out into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands."
The apostle John who was exiled and lived in a cave far from his home for the last part of his life expressed it this way: He begins his gospel account by announcing that the "The Word became flesh and dwelled among us," speaking about Christ's birth. He then closes the New Testament out by describing in the 21st chapter of Revelation how someday God, "will dwell with them as their God; they will be his peoples, and God himself will be with them; he will wipe every tear from their eyes. Death will be no more; mourning and crying and pain will be no more" (Rev. 21:3). From beginning to end, this is a story of joy.
Isaac Watts, the great English hymn writer was in poor health for most of his life. He lived out the last thirty years of his life as an invalid, living at home. This man, who had much to be bitter about, expressed it the way that is perhaps most familiar to many of us: "Joy to the world, the Lord is come, let earth receive her King."
Let me challenge you before you leave this morning. The first step to receiving joy in your life is simply to begin today. Remember the words of the Psalmist? He says, "This is the day the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it." He doesn't say tomorrow is, or yesterday was, but today is the day. We live with the illusion that joy will someday come when conditions change. This is simply not so. If we wait until conditions are perfect, then we'll be waiting the day we die. This is the day, amid all it shortcomings, Today is the day. Let's begin, shall we?