I head a story about a woman who was doing her last-minute Christmas shopping at a crowded mall. She was tired of standing in lines. She was tired of fighting her way down long aisles looking for a gift … only to find out that it had sold out days before. Her arms were full of bulky packages when the elevator door opened. Of course, it was full!
The occupants of the elevator grudgingly tightened ranks to make a small space for her and her load. As the door closed, she blurted out: “Whoever is responsible for this whole Christmas thing ought to be arrested, strung up, and die a slow and painful death.” A few occupants of the elevator nodded their heads or grunted in agreement. Then someone from the back of the elevator piped up: “They already did.”
This Advent we’ve been taking a close look at the carols that we usually sing every year at Christmas. So far, we’ve looked at: “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” … “O Little Town of Bethlehem” … “O Come, All Ye Faithful” … and “Hark! the Herald Angels Sing.” Tonight we’re going to look at a song that Isaac Watts wrote almost 300 years ago: “Joy to the World.”
We think of this as a Christmas carol, but if you look at the lyrics, it only hints at Jesus’ birth. We could easily use it as a general-purpose song of praise. The words were inspired by Psalm 98. If you look at the bottom of the page, it says that Watts based this carol on Psalm 98:4-9 specifically.
Let’s face it … Christmas is a stressful time for most adults. For some, it’s a time of intense loneliness or crushing grief because of a loved one who is gone. Even at its best, Christmas means parties to plan … parties to attend … gifts to buy … elaborate meals to cook … goodies to bake … long trips to take … or out-of-town guests to host. Instead of bringing joy to our world it can bring a lot of stress and frustration.
We need to remember who is responsible for this “whole Christmas thing.” It’s all about how God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son so that whoever believes in Him might have eternal life (John 3:16). Unfortunately, many people leave the reason … Christ … out of the season. Instead of looking TO Jesus, they are looking FOR joy … anywhere and everywhere else. An interviewer once asked the entertainer, Madonna, this basic question: “Are you a happy person?” She replied: “I am a tormented person. I’m wrestling a lot of demons. But I want to be happy. I have moments of happiness. I am working towards knowing myself … and I assume that will bring me happiness.” And we all know what happens when we “assume” don’t we?
Pretty much everybody wants happiness, amen? In fact, most of what people do is for the purpose of “finding” happiness. People work hard so they can buy the possession that they think will make them happy. They look for happiness in entertainment, hobbies, sports, various addictions. Or … like Madonna … they look deep, deep, deep within … thinking that maybe that’s where they’ll find this elusive happiness hiding.
Unfortunately, most people don’t realize that there is a big, big difference between “happiness” and “joy.” The root of the word “happiness” is what? You naturally think “happy” but “happiness” and “happy” share the same root or concept as the meaning of the word “happen.” So … “happiness” and “happy” are based on what’s “happening.” Happiness depends on our circumstances and our circumstances are constantly changing. For most people, happiness is nothing more than a temporary interruption to boredom.
Interestingly enough, the Bible doesn’t speak much about “happiness” … but it does speak a whole lot about “joy.” The kind of joy that the Bible speaks about goes much deeper than mere happiness. Genuine joy … the kind the Bible speaks about … does not depend on our circumstances. Joy is an inner sense of well-being that has nothing to do with what’s happening or what’s going on in our lives. The kind of joy the Bible describes can’t be found in our possession or entertainment. You won’t find it by looking deeply into your inner self because the kind of joy the Bible speaks about doesn’t come from you. Care to guess where it can be found and who it comes from?
Isaac Watts goes straight to our only source of true joy. There is one reason … and one reason only … there is joy in the world. There is joy in the world because “the Lord has come!” (stanza 1a).
If you receive Christ as King of your life, He provides joy … He is and will be your source of joy. In the same way that your body craves food, exercise, and rest, so you spirit, your soul, craves a relationship with God. Without that relationship, your soul will become famished and restless. You can try to fill that hole with anything and everything and I promise you, you won’t find happiness … not for long. Trust me. I’ve been there and I’ve tried. But if you fill it with God, you’ll experience joy because you will be giving your spirit, your soul, what it needs, what it craves. Again, trust me. I’m speaking from personal experience. And those of you who have tried to find happiness by trying to fill that hole but found God and now have joy in your life, you know what I’m talking about, amen?
Isaac Watt’s carol, “Joy to the World,” explains exactly how you find that joy. The first stanza teaches us that we will experience joy when we accept Jesus as our King: “Joy to the world, the Lord is come! Let earth receive her king; let every heart prepare Him room, and Heaven and nature sing” (stanza 1).
Historically, we know that not everyone was happy or joyful when Jesus was born. King Herod was anything but joyful when the magoi from the east enquired about the birthplace of a new know. To Herod, Jesus was a threat. Herod was already so paranoid about someone trying to usurp his throne that he had three of his own sons assassinated. He was not about tolerate a rival king … even an infant king.
In a similar way, a lot of people today reject Jesus as king. To them, Jesus is a threat to their plans. They see Jesus as a threat to their individual freedom … their passions … their greed … their pride. Think of how different Herod was from the wise men. Rejecting Jesus as your king is rejecting the joy that the world is searching for. While Herod saw Jesus as a threat, the wisemen saw Jesus as a gift and they came to worship Him.
In Stanza 2, Watts lets us know that we must not only recognize Jesus as king … King of the world … King of our lives … King of our hearts … but we must also let Him reign over our lives and our hearts. “Joy to the world, the Savior reigns! Let all their songs employ; while fields and floods, rocks, hills, and plains repeat the sounding joy” (stanza 2).
Receiving Jesus as our lord and king is an important first step, but we must go further and let Him “reign” over our lives. While He was living on earth, Jesus encountered large crowds who were ready and willing to receive Him as king … but they were not ready to let Him take charge. They wanted Him to do things their way … not the other way around.
There are a lot of people today who are more than willing to receive all the good things that Christ wants to offer them, but they don’t want Him to try and take care of their business ethic, their entertainment, the language they use then they’re under pressure, or their public image. They don’t want Jesus to be in charge of where they live, who they date, who they marry, or what kind of career they choose.
If you try to receive Christ without letting Him reign in your life, guess what? You will miss out on the joy that comes from accepting and allowing Jesus to be the king of your world. You see, indecisiveness and hypocrisy can actually zap the joy out of life. There will come a time when you’ll realize that you may be fooling everyone else but you’re not fooling yourself … and you’re not fooling Jesus. Jesus knows if He’s king of your world or not.
Besides that, most of us do a pretty lousy job of running our lives on our own, amen? I’ll speak for myself … I sure have. Jesus knows what will give you joy. Do you know that? The big questions is … do you believe that? Jesus knows the person who will suit you best in marriage. He knows the kind of work that He made for you. It is said that joy is the by-product of obedience … that sums it up pretty well.
When we receive Jesus as our Lord and King … when we let Him reign over our hearts and our lives … then we “repent.” We begin to act and to live differently. “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” (stanza 3).
Sin promises “happiness.” But sin delivers sorrow. Satan promised Adam and Eve that eating the forbidden fruit would make them wise. Instead, sin brought a horrible curse and unending regret. And that’s the way it’s been ever since. That’s what Watts means when he says “far as the curse is found.” Sin has brought a bitter curse. That’s how it’s always been and that is how it will always be.
But repentance … that will always bring joy. Don’t let the words “repent” or “repentance” put you off. The original Greek word, “metanoias,” simply means “a changed mind.” When you “repent,” you agree with God that what you are doing is, indeed, wrong. As long as you try to rationalize that there is nothing wrong with what you are doing, you won’t repent. And if you won’t repent, you won’t find real joy. Repentance brings joy in amazing ways.
There is a famous story of a believer in Zimbabwe who tried to give a New Testament to a very disgruntled man. The disgruntled man insisted that he would tear out the pages and use them to roll his cigarettes. The believer replied: “I understand … but at least promise to read each page before you smoke it.” The disgruntled man agreed and the two went their separate ways.
Fifteen years later, the two men met at a Christian convention in Zimbabwe. The “disgruntled” man had found Christ and was now a full-time evangelist and guest speaker at the convention. He told the audience: “I smoked Matthew and I smoked Mark but when I got to John 3:16, I couldn’t smoke no more. My life changed from that moment.”
When we receive Jesus as our Lord and King … when we let Him reign over our hearts and our lives … we repent. Then we experience true joy as Jesus rules over our hearts and lives with truth and grace. I want you to hear what Watt’s is saying. We experience joy when Jesus rules over our hearts and our lives … not with truth AND grace but with truth with grace. “He rules the world with truth and grace; and makes the nations prove, the glories of His righteousness, and wonders of His love” (stanza 4).
The last verse tells us how Jesus brings us joy. Joy comes because Jesus rules with a perfect balance of truth and grace. You see … sometimes truth is not very gracious. When I hear someone say, “Well, I just told it like it was,” I know they probably offended someone by going heavy on the truth and light on the grace. Perhaps you’ve heard this before:
Truth without love is dogmatism
Love without truth is sentimentality
But truth with love is true Christianity
Jesus brings joy because He is the perfect balance of truth and grace. He is the Way … the Truth … the Life, amen?
I want to close with a story that I think illustrates the heart of Watt’s carol. An author named Bret Harte wrote a story about the wild West called “The Luck of Roaring Camp.”
Roaring Camp was the meanest, toughest mining town in all the west. There were more murders and thefts there than anywhere else around. Roaring Camp was inhibited entirely by men … except for one woman who made her living in the only way she knew how. Her name was Cherokee Sal.
Eventually Cherokee Sal became pregnant and gave birth to a baby. She died in childbirth … no one knew who the father might be. The men put the baby girl in a box with some old rags under her. Somehow that just didn’t sit right … so one of the men rode 80 miles to buy a rosewood cradle. When they put the rags and the baby in the beautiful new cradle, the rags just didn’t look right … so another man rode to Sacramento and purchased some silk and lacy blankets. The men lined the rosewood cradle with silk and tucked the new blanket around the little girl ... but then they all noticed that the floor under the cradle looked dirty. The next thing you knew, a few of those big, rough men got down on their hands and knees and scrubbed the floor until it was spotless. Of course, that made the walls and the ceiling and the dirty windows look awful … so they washed down the walls and the ceilings, cleaned the windows, and hung white curtains in them.
Things were beginning to look a lot better … but they soon realized that they had to give up their carousing and fighting. After all, the baby needed a lot of sleep and babies can’t sleep during a brawl. Besides all that, the baby didn’t like angry voices and mean, frowning faces … so the men started smiling and talking in pleasant, cheerful tones. And, since babies shouldn’t be left alone, they set the cradle by the entrance of the mine. One of the men would stay next to her will the others worked. That’s when somebody noticed how ugly the mine entrance was, so they planted some flowers in front of it and planted a small garden near the cradle. And as they worked, the men looked for shiny little stones that they could show to the baby to make her gurgle and coo … but when they held the stones down near her, they saw that their hands looked black and dirty. And, not wanting to scare the little baby with their scraggly hair and wild bears, the general store soon sold out of soup and shaving gear.
The baby changed everything. And that story gives us a small picture of the way that the Son of God can transform our lives. Is the Bethlehem child your Lord and King? Does He reign over your heart? Your soul? Your world? Has the Bethlehem child changed your life? If He is your Lord and King … if He reigns over your heart and soul … if He has changed your life … then He rules over your heart and soul and life with perfect truth and grace then you can’t help but sing: Joy to the world!
[Sing “Joy to the World”]
