Joy to the World!
Christmas Carol Series #2
(adapted from Michael Luke and Bob Russell)
SCRIPTURE READING: Psalm 98:2-9
INTRODUCTION:
This December we’re talking about some of the Carols we sing every year at Christmas. Today we’ll take a look at a song Isaac Watts wrote almost 300 years ago: “Joy to the World.” We think of this as a Christmas song, 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, which we just read.
Let’s face it; Christmas is a stressful time for most adults. For some it is a time of intense loneliness or crushing grief because of a loved one who is gone. Evan at its best, Christmas means parties to plan, gifts to buy, elaborate meals to cook, long trips to take, or out-of-town guests to host. Instead of bringing JOY, Christmas can bring frustration.
I heard a story about a woman who was doing her last-minute Christmas shopping at a crowded mall. She was tired of fighting the crowds. She was tired of standing in lines. She was tired of fighting her way down long aisles looking for a gift that had sold out days before. Her arms were full of bulky packages when the Elevator door opened. It was full.
The occupants of the Elevator grudgingly tightened ranks to allow a small space for her and her load. As the doors closed she blurted out, “Whoever is responsible for this whole Christmas thing ought to be arrested, strung up, and shot!” A few others nodded their heads or grunted in agreement. Then, from somewhere in the back of the elevator came a single voice that said, “Don’t worry. They already crucified him.”
We need to remember who is responsible for the whole Christmas thing. It is all about how God so loved the world that He gave his one and only Son so that who ever believes in Him might have eternal life. John 3:16
Unfortunately, many people leave Christ out of Christmas. Instead of looking to Jesus, people look 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."
Pretty much everybody wants happiness. In fact, people do what they do for the purpose of “finding happiness.” People work hard to buy possessions that can make them happy. They look for happiness in entertainment, hobbies, sports, passions and various addictions. Or … like Madonna … they look deep, deep, deep within … thinking maybe that’s where that elusive happiness is hiding.
When you consider that happiness seems to be the main goal, it seems surprising that the Bible doesn’t talk much about happiness. But the Bible says a lot about something that is often confused with happiness. The Bible says a lot about JOY. The kind of JOY the Bible talks about goes much deeper than mere happiness.
You see, happiness deals with what is happening. Happiness depends on circumstance. In fact, for most people happiness is nothing more than a temporary interruption to boredom. We’ve all heard kids complain, “I’m bored.” That means, “I want some happiness, and I’m NOT finding it!”
Genuine joy, on the other hand does not depend on what’s happening. Joy is an inner sense of well-being that has nothing to do with circumstance. The kind of JOY the Bible describes can’t be found in possessions or entertainments or even in looking deeply into your inner self. The first line of “Joy to the World” sums it up. There is one reason --- and only one --- that we can find JOY in this world. As the song says, we can have joy because The Lord has come!
If you receive Christ as King of your life, He provides Joy. In the same way that your body craves food, exercise and rest, so your Spirit craves a relationship with God. Without that relationship, your soul will become famished and restless. I believe that there is indeed a God-shaped hole in every life. If we look deeply within ourselves, we will not find happiness, but we will find that space that only God can fill.
If we try to fill it with anything besides God, we will be forever unsatisfied. That’s why the 1st stanza of JOY TO THE WORLD teaches:
1. The first stanza teaches: THERE IS JOY WHEN THE KING IS RECEIVED
--"Joy to the world! The Lord is come! Let earth receive her king;
let every heart prepare Him room, and heaven and nature sing."
Historically, we know that not everyone was joyful when Jesus was born. King Herod was anything but joyful when the Magi from the East inquired about the birthplace of a new King. To Herod, Jesus was a threat. Herod was already so paranoid about someone trying to usurp his throne that he had murdered three of his own sons. He was not about to tolerate a rival king … even if he was an infant.
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 or greed or pride. Think of how different Herod was from the Wise Men.
• First of all, Who were they? The Wise Men came from regions around Babylon (modern day Iraq). It is likely that they dabbled in astronomy, sorcery, and magic arts … which is why they were called Magi (magicians).
• How many were there? No one knows. But it is true that 3 kinds of gifts are mentioned. They brought Gold, Frankincense, and Myrrh as homage to the infant King. Three Wise Men fit nicely in a nativity scene…
• …But, were they at the Manger when Christ was born? That is very unlikely because they probably arrived in Bethlehem about a year after Jesus was born. By that time Mary and Joseph had probably moved out of the barn and into a house somewhere in Bethlehem.
• What made these Wise Men travel to Israel? After all, they were not Jews. They were Gentiles. But they had read the writings of a Jewish prophet named Daniel. While in Babylon, Daniel wrote predictions about the coming Messiah. And these Wise Men believed the prophecies.
While Herod saw Jesus as a Threat, the Wise Men saw Jesus as a Gift, and they came to worship Him.
2. The second stanza teaches: THERE IS JOY WHEN THE SAVIOR REIGNS
--"Joy to the earth! The Savior reigns! Let men their songs employ;
while fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains, repeat the sounding Joy."
Receiving Christ is the important first step. But then we must go on to let him Reign in our lives. While he was living here on earth, Jesus encountered large crowds who were ready and willing to receive him. But they were not at all 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 Christ wants to offer them. But they don’t want Him to try to take charge of their business ethics, their entertainments, the language they use when under pressure, or their public image. They don’t want Jesus to be in charge of where they live, or who they date, or who they marry, or what kind of career they choose.
If you try to RECEIVE Christ without letting Him REIGN in your life, you will miss out on one thing: JOY. You see, indecisiveness and hypocrisy can actually zap the JOY out of life. There comes a time when you have to admit that you are not fooling anybody.
Besides that, most of us do a pretty lousy job of running our lives on our own. Jesus knows what will give you JOY. He knows the person who will suit you best in marriage. He knows the kind of work that is made for you. It has been said that Joy is the by-product of obedience. That sums it up pretty well.
3. The third stanza teaches: THERE IS JOY WHEN THE SINNER REPENTS
--"No more let sins and sorrow grow. Nor thorns infest the ground;
He comes to make His blessings flow, Far as the curse is found."
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.
That’s what the song talks about when it says, far as the curse is found. Sin always brings a bitter curse. But there is JOY when a sinner repents. Don’t let that word “repent” put you off. The original Greek word “meta noeo” 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 really wrong with what you are doing, you can’t repent … and you can’t find real JOY. Repentance brings JOY in amazing ways.
I heard a story that illustrates this point in an interesting way. 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 than any other place around. Roaring Camp was inhabited 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 baby. She died in childbirth, and 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 seem 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. They men lined the Rosewood Cradle with silk and tucked the new blanket around the little baby girl. But then someone noticed that the floor under the cradle looked dirty.
The next thing you knew, a few of those big, tough men got down on their hands and knees and scrubbed the floor until it was spotless. Of course, then the walls and the ceiling … and the dirty windows looked awful. So they washed down the walls and the ceiling, and they even hung some clean white curtains on the windows.
Things were beginning to look a lot better. But they soon realized 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 or 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 and one of the men stayed next to her while the others worked.
Then somebody noticed how ugly the mine entrance was. So they planted some flowers and made a small garden near the cradle. And as they worked, the men looked for shiny little stones that they could show to the baby and watch her gurgle and coo. But when they held the stones down near her, they saw that their hands looked black and dirty. And they didn’t want to scare the little baby with their scraggly hair and wild beards. Pretty soon the general store sold out of soap and shaving gear.
The baby changed everything. And that story gives a small picture of the way the Son of God can transform our lives. Has the Bethlehem Baby changed your life?
4. The last stanza teaches: THERE IS JOY WHEN THE TRUTH RULES 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."
This last verse tells why Jesus brings JOY. JOY comes because He 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 just offended someone by going heavy on the TRUTH and light on the GRACE. I like this old saying:
“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 truth, the life, and the way.
I heard a story about a dad who found a way to mix truth and grace one year at Christmas. He and his family were putting up a big Nativity scene in their front yard. Finally all the little statues were in place: Mary, Joseph, the Baby in the manger, the Angels, the Shepherds, and various barnyard animals. Then little Scott came out carrying one of his favorite toys: a fierce Tyrannosaurus Rex, King of the dinosaurs. It was one of those plastic figures that you inflate. It towered over the Nativity Scene, looking fierce, big, green … and certainly out of place.
The dad tried to explain to Scott that Dinosaurs existed thousands of years before the baby Jesus was born. He told him that Prehistoric beasts just don’t belong in a Nativity Scene. But the little boy looked so heartbroken that the dad mixed grace with the truth. The truth was, a Dinosaur didn’t belong there, but out of grace, the dad put the beloved toy behind the scene. So, the fierce Tyrannosaurus Rex hovered over the Manger and everyone else.
Actually, that Menacing Beast hovering over the manger may not have been as out of place as you would think. There is a Nativity Account that very few people think of at Christmas time. Revelation 12 describes the birth of Christ this way: “A great and wondrous sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head. She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she was about to give birth. Then another sign appeared in heaven: an enormous red dragon with seven heads and ten horns and seven crowns on his heads. His tail swept a third of the stars out of the sky and flung them to the earth.
The dragon stood in front of the woman who was about to give birth, so that he might devour her child the moment it was born. She gave birth to a son, a male child, who will rule all the nations with an iron scepter. And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne.” Revelation 12:1-5
Conclusion:
The truth is that a dinosaur hovering over the manger is more appropriate than we might realize. For each of us there is a menacing character that threatens to rob us of all our JOY. But at Christmas we can remember that the tiny Baby in the manger is stronger than all the “Dinosaurs” or “Dragons” in your life or mine. God has given us the Victory through the Gift of his Son. And that is why we can sing: JOY TO THE WORLD!
True JOY will be yours this Christmas if you will RECEIVE Christ, REPENT of your sins, and let Jesus REIGN in your life with Truth and Grace. We need to look beyond the tinsel and lights and see the real cause of JOY. Joy to the World! The Lord is Come! (praye
