Anticipation: Joy

Good morning family, it's week three, just so you know. My wife is the best, I'm going to get her number. Before we get started this morning, I got to tell you something that happened. I was so proud of our audio visual team, which oftentimes they're the team that nobody notices unless something goes wrong. Right? So our first service starts at 8:30. For real. This is not an exaggeration. At 8:00 AM we did not have a sound system. It was broken. Here's the funny part, Tuesday night, our elders met and we made a decision to do some updating on our sound system, a little too late. So, our AV team scrambled and rewired, and as a leader, one of the things that I enjoy doing is problem solving. So, I went back there to help and I stood back there for a minute and I watched all those wires come out and I was like, you know how I would be most helpful is to go ahead and not say anything right now and just stretch out my hands and pray?

So, that's all I had to offer. Unbelievable work that they did this morning, Eric and the team back there just crushed it. And nobody swore that I heard. I'm sure there was some internal dialogue going on, but it was, I mean, everybody maintained their cool. It was great. It was great. So, I was really proud of them and turns out we get to have service after all. So, that's exciting. We're in week three and we're going to jump into joy. We've been talking about, first week was hope. And we talked about how hope is the belief that tomorrow can be better than today. And then we talked about peace and we talked about how peace isn't rooted in our circumstances. And it's not rooted in our grit or our fortitude, even though that's important. I'm an advocate of grit. I'm an advocate of developing fortitude, but that's not where peace comes from. Peace is rooted in the character of God. We can have peace because God doesn't change. Okay?

I'm going to offer that joy is also rooted in the character of God, but a different piece of the character of God. And so we're going to talk about that this morning, but we're going to begin with the story in Luke chapter two. So, we've already read the first two verses in the days of Caesar Augustus, a decree went out that a census should be taken of all the world. So, we're going to pick it up in verse three and go from there. We're going to read a long passage all the way down to verse 38. So sorry, not sorry. It's the Bible. So it'll probably be your favorite part of the whole sermon. It's way cooler than anything I'm going to say. This is in the same region, there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And the angel of the Lord appeared to them and the glory of the Lord shown around and they were filled with great fear.

And the angels said to them, "Fear not." To which they were like, "Oh, okay, we're good. We thought we were afraid, but then we weren't." Fear not. I'm already afraid. It's too late. For behold, I bring you good news of great joy. That will be for all the people. Now here's an interesting thing. If you take that phrase, all the people in the Greek and you go deep, deep, deep, deep, deep, all the way down, as far as you can go understanding and dissecting the words, you know what it means? All the people. Which is like that was dumb. Actually it's really super profound because the gospel isn't good news for just some people. It's good news of great joy for everybody. Everybody. 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'll find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger. And suddenly there was with the angel, a multitude of heavenly hosts, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in the highest. And on earth, peace among those with whom He is pleased." Now that doesn't mean that he's only pleased with some. What that phrase is, another translation says peace towards men on whom his favor rests. All men like his favorite rests on you. And I know that sometimes we go, well, I don't feel like that. I don't feel like I have God's favor. We don't talk about that. Let's talk about it.

When the angels went away from them into heaven, the shepherd 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. Why? Because an encounter with Jesus always inspires worship. Now we've mentioned this before, but I'm going to continue to mention that, one of the ways that you can tell a genuine encounter with God from just an emotional thing, is that an encounter with Jesus inspires worship.

So this thing that you experienced, this spiritual experience, was it squishy gushy made me feel good or did it inspire worship? Was it boundary rigid cold rule following or did it inspire worship? What was it? Because an encounter with Jesus inspires worship. As it had been told to them, and at the end of the night, eight days when he was circumcised, he was called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb. And when the time came for their purification, according to the law of Moses, which by the way, I would love to talk to you, I don't have time to do this today. Maybe next to advent, we'll talk about Jesus' desire to uphold the law. He's not trying to get rid of the law. He's not trying to get rid of the law, not anywhere or any way, any shape, any form. So, what does that mean? But he's upholding it. His parents are upholding it. They're not like, "We don't need the law anymore. We have Jesus."

When the time came for their purification according to the law of Moses, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord, as it is written in the law of the Lord, every male who first opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord. By the way, this is a big deal because all firsts belong to God. All firsts belong to God. And you talk about tithing. You're like, "Well, I have to give 10%." No, you don't just have to give 10%. You have to give you first 10%. That's what belongs to the Lord. Right? And I know a lot of people that you even give 10%, but they're not experiencing the blessing of God and their finances the way they could, because it's not the first 10th. They're giving of their leftovers rather than right off the, but you say, "Well, that's terrible. I don't like that." It's not just your money. All the firsts belong to God. All of them. First cow, your first donkey, all of it.

Your first home, your first child, they all belong to the Lord. Why? Because it tells me that he's God and I'm not. And that's actually a really important lesson to learn. It reminds me of who he is and who I am. And that's super significant. And to offer a sacrifice, according to what is said in the law of the Lord, a pair of turtle doves, or two young pigeons. Now there was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon. And this man was righteous and devout waiting for the consolation of Israel, and the holy spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the holy spirit that he would not see death before had seen the Lord's Christ. And he came in the spirit to the temple. And when the parents brought the child Jesus to him to do for him according to the custom of the law, here we go again, we're upholding the law. He took him up in his arms and blessed God. By the way, those of you who have been parents, do you remember you first born and how you treated them?

When our oldest child was born, our daughter, we came out of the hospital and I was like, I'm going to have to ask everyone to social, social distancing before social distancing was cool. Please clear a swath from holding my fragile child and placed her in the car seat so carefully. And then when we were driving home, every bump, right? We drove five miles an hour. Why? She's so fragile. And when people walk by, Simeon just walks up and takes him. Mary's like, "I don't know what just happened." I'm sure Joseph wasn't too worried because he's like, "Hey, he's old. I got this. Push comes to shove, I can outrun him." So Simeon just runs up, took him in his arms, blessed God and said, "Lord, now you're letting your servant depart in peace." How are characters introduced initially when you see him for the first time in the Bible is actually really important. Because it's kind of the thing that's going to govern everything else that we need to know about him.

Simeon longs to go home. Lord, now you're letting your servant depart in peace. According to your word, for my eyes have seen your salvation that you have prepared in the presence of all peoples. A light for a revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people, Israel. And his father and his mother marveled at what was said about him. And Simeon blessed them and said to marry his mother, "Behold, this child is appointed for the fall and rising of many in Israel." And for a sign that is opposed and as sort of put your own soul through, also I don't know how this is a blessing, so that the thoughts from many hearts may be revealed. And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel of the tribe of Asher. And she was advanced in years, having lived with her husband seven years from when she was a virgin and then as a widow until she was 84.

Now some rough math on that, just so that you get a picture. Let's say she's 12 ish when she flowers into womanhood, I don't know how else to say that. Then she is immediately going to be eligible to be married at that point. So, let's say she's married at 13. She lives with her husband for seven years, so she's 20 and then he dies. And she's now at 84, so she's been a widow for 64 years. By the way, it's not easy to be a single female in the first century. It's even worse to be a single widow. This isn't just, hey I'm going to run down and get a job and make a living for myself. She did not depart from the temple, worshiping and fasting and prayer, night and day. By the way, I do think she didn't fast all of those 64 years, she probably ate at some point. 64 years is a stellar fast. That's a long one. Intermittent fasting, take that. And coming up at that very hour, she began to give thanks to God and speak of him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Jerusalem.

Now, there's some characters in this story, the coming of the Messiah is good of great joy, but there's some characters in this story have no business being joyful. If there was ever people who felt a loss of joy in their life and maybe you and I can relate to them on one level or another, but there's multiple characters in the story here that are, if I'm sitting in their position I'm not so sure that I would be joyful about it. The first one is the shepherds. There's a historian by the name of Ferrar, last name Ferrar, who wrote around 1893. So this is a couple hundred years ago. He wrote this, shepherds at this time were a despised class. In 1924, Strack and Billerbeck said the shepherds were despised people. Stein in 1992 said this in general, "Shepherds were dishonest and unclean, according to the standards of the law. They represent the outcast and sinners for whom Jesus came."

Butler in 2000 said this, "Shepherding had changed from a family business in David's time into a despised occupation." In 2004, Utley says this, "The rabbis considered them to be religious outcasts and their testimony was not admissible in court." Now all of this is excerpted out of a book called Urban Legends of The New Testament: 40 Common Misconceptions. Written by a guy by the name of David Croteau. And he is trying to prove that all of these historians are wrong. Big task, but the general consensus among biblical historians is that shepherds weren't, they were so low that they weren't even allowed to hold testimony in court. They weren't allowed, their word meant nothing. They were despised. People turned their nose up at them. And so here's what Croteau says. He says many scholars have taught that shepherds were societal outcast in first century Israel. Their sources are generally many years after the New Testament time period plus Aristotle who was from a different culture and 300 years before Jesus.

Now that being said, one of the things that spending a lot of time in the Middle East has done for me, is I've been able to observe shepherding culture in multiple contexts. It's always the same. Shepherding culture is always the same, first of all. Secondly, if the culture treat shepherds 300 years before the time of Jesus, one kind of way, and then 100 to 200 years after the time of Christ in the same kind of way, there's no reason to assume that the in between was any different. Does that make sense? So I think Croteau is wrong, but let's say that at some level he's right. They weren't really totally societal misfits. At a minimum, the shepherds were people who were not desired in your social circles. These are not Facebook friends. These are not Instagram handles that you would follow. These are people who are rejected. Simply by virtue of their vocation, they're rejected. And I think if there was ever a group of people in this story that are like, Hey, take your joy and stick it in your ear.

Do do you know what I go through every day? Do you know what it's like for me to not be able to even walk in town because people look down on us and we feel bad about ourselves? We have to skirt town so that we don't have to interact with people. Why? Because of my vocation, where I'm actually working an honest job, I'm not stealing from anybody. I'm not trying to take advantage of anything, but it doesn't matter. People just look down on me. Maybe for some of us, our struggle with joy is rooted in feeling like we got a raw deal in life. Maybe. Think about Simeon. What we see in Simeon in the beginning, in his introduction is that his most excited, he sees Jesus. He's not most excited about Jesus. He's most excited that he's like I saw him, and so now I can go home. That's what he's excited about. He's like, "This guy's going to be a good thing for some and a bad thing for other people I'm out. Cannot wait to get out of here." Okay. Why?

Listen to this. According to a tradition in the Oriental Orthodox and the Eastern Orthodox churches, Simeon had been one of the 72 translators of The Septuagint. And you're like, what's the big deal with that? The Septuagint was translated between 200 and 250 BC. Jesus is born at 4 BC, do the math. He's been around for a minute. Now, I don't know if this is true or not, but here's what it says. As he hesitated on the translation of Isaiah 7:14, behold, a Virgin shall conceive and contemplated, correcting it to Gune, which means woman and not virgin. An angel appeared to him and told him that he would not die until he had seen the Christ born of a virgin. This would render him well over 200 years old at the time of the meeting described in Luke and therefore miraculously long lived. Now, I don't know if this is true or not, but here's what I do know.

He's old. Old people look at him and go, you've lived a long time. I don't know if you call yourself old or not. Doesn't matter. He's old. And he feels old. Here's what I know to be true. As people age, those who walk with the Lord, they feel a part of this world less and less and less. It's a weird, I don't belong here anymore. He just has this longing to go home. This world is not my home, I'm just a passer through. Right? My treasures are laid up somewhere beyond the blue because apparently that's where heaven is. The angels beckon me from heaven's open door, and I can't feel at home in this world anymore. That's where Simeon's at. I just don't feel that. I just want to go home. God, why are you keeping me here? Maybe. Maybe Simeon struggling with this joy like maybe many of us would in that I don't want to be in this mess anymore. I just want out. I just want out.

And then there's Anna. It says there's a prophetess Anna, the daughter of Phanuel of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years, having lived with her husband seven years and from when she was a virgin and then as a widow until she was 84. She did not depart from the temple, worshiping and fasting, with fasting and prayer night and day. And coming up at that very hour, she began to give thanks to God and to speak of him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Israel. Think about Anna. Her life has not been easy. This is somebody who has had to beg, even if she was dedicated to the temple service, which she could have done for herself, but the longing and loneliness of wanting someone to connect with. Of wanting that intimacy that we're created for, and God, why'd you take the person who was most important in my life? Why'd you take them? Death is this painful space. Even in the best of contexts, we grieve death because death is not how this was supposed to be.

It's not how things were supposed to go. Death. So even when somebody has AIDS and in my position, in my job, I have the incredibly sacred privilege to be with families in this space where someone breathes their last. And I've been in those rooms where the dad is struggling to stay alive. And the family is around him, singing hymns and worshiping the Lord. And the dad looks up and says, "I see Jesus." And then he's gone and it's beautiful and it's wrong. And everybody's says, "Oh, what I wouldn't give for more, more time." Anna experienced that. And then the longing to be soulmate to someone else. The longing to be connected like that. To love and be loved. To know and be known by someone else. It never happens again. I could see her struggling with her joy. There's some reasons why these people would be so sad. And yet what we see in all of them is a bounding joy. How? How do they have the joy to go on?

I have thought, and I'm sure that it's a lot more complicated than this. I think it's bigger than this, but I think this is a piece, at its foundation, joy is built upon one singular building block and it's found in Genesis chapter three. By the way, the rabbis teach that everything important in the whole Bible happened in the first four chapters of Genesis. I have a tendency to disagree with them, because I think that Jesus is kind of important. But that ought to give you a perspective on the depth and layers of the stuff that's going on in Genesis one through four. It's not just the surface. There's just so much, there's so much there. Starting in verse one of Genesis three. Here's what it says, that the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. And I would love to pull this apart, but it's not on point. The word crafty, we get this idea that the snake was devious. That's not really what the word implies. What's going on here is that he's the most human like of all the animals.

Which raises a billion questions, but that's another sermon for another day. Again, it's so many important layers. He said to the woman, "Did God actually say you shall not eat of any tree in the garden?" Now, by the way, did God say that? No, it's not what God said. It's not what God said. And the woman said to the serpent, we may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said you shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden. Neither shall you touch lest you die. Now, question. Is that what God said? No, that's not what God said. And the question is where did she get such a nonsensical statement? God didn't say you couldn't touch it. You could do whatever you want to with it. You could play baseball with it. Wouldn't that be fun? Just go Gallagher on it. So you guys are like, that was a deep cut. Anybody that's 30 or younger is like who's Gallagher? I get you. Netflix, go to Netflix and search Gallagher.

You can make beautiful, it's beautiful fruit. We're going to find out. It's a beautiful fruit. You know those bowls of fruit arrangements that people make and they put on their table or their counter as a decoration? You can do that with it. Who even knows if the fruit would go rotten. Maybe it would last like plastic fruit. Who knows? I don't know. I don't know. I wasn't there. There's all kinds of things you could do with it. You could shoot at it. You could kick it. You could take pictures with it. You could paint little smiley faces on it. Call it your pet fruit from the forbidden tree. The only thing you can't do is eat it. What's also interesting to me is that when God gives the command, what he begins with is, you're free to eat from any tree of the garden except for this one. When the snake comes into distorted, he begins with didn't God say that you can't? God's laws always begin with freedom, and the boundaries are there for our protection.

The serpent immediately comes in and makes it really, really narrow. Well, as soon as you put me in a narrow box, I got to break out. This is one of the dangers of religiosity and why we have to be so careful making sure that the burdens that we put on people are biblical and not just religious or manmade. But the serpent said to the woman, you will not surely die. That's how I imagine it being said. Die like a snake. It's a snake. For God knows that when you eat of it, you're eyes will be opened and you will be like God, knowing good from evil. Now let me ask you a question, is the serpent accurate? Yes. Except there's one small problem. You'll be like God in knowing good from evil, but here's a question. Will you be like God and knowing how to steward it? Will you be like God in all of the other pieces of his character that help him understand how to manage good and evil? No, you'll just know it.

I don't want to know it. I don't want to know evil. I've experienced enough evil in my life to know that I don't want to know it. Guys have ever seen the series Band of Brothers? It's a 10 part mini series on easy company from the hundred first airborne during World War II. And in my opinion, it is the greatest wartime movie ever made. And I watch it and watch it and watch it and watch it and watch it. I just love it. I love there's so many lessons in it. So, a group of them went through the battle of the bulge at Baston and it was in the winter and it was terror. And I watched those episodes and I'm like, how in the world did any of them ever survive? Right. It was rough. And many of them died and the ones that lived, it changed them. There's a part of knowing the evils of war that you can't go back from. It changed who they are.

And then in a later episode, it's springtime and they're doing security detail at a place and they're not on the front lines. They're not in active combat. And they get a bunch of replacements that come in and the replacements are all starry-eyed and idealized and all that stuff. And they're like, when can we go to war? When can we go get combat? Da, da, da. And the original guys that had been through Baston are like, "Are you kidding me? This is the best part of war that I've seen." There's a part of knowing evil that you can't un-know. And that's the problem with knowing evil. God wasn't holding out on them. He was protecting them. Well, I got to know. When I was in high school, that's how I justified my own sin. I was a preacher's kid. Everything was spiritual, right? I got to know what sin is like. I can't have a testimony without a test. Right? Got to make a mess into a message. You know what my testimony is? I tried to be rebellious. I just was no good at it.

Here's my testimony. I was raised by two parents who have been married for almost 60 years. For better or for worse, they love each other. They raised us as best as they could. It was kind of broken, but it was as best as they could. I've never known my life without God in it. Even when I tried to run, he kept showing up. He was everywhere. And so when I graduated high school, I went to Bible college and went into ministry and never looked back. Boring. You remember testimony night, right? Testimony night was, and then I shot 45 people. And then I did hard time and I was on hardcore drugs and then Jesus rescued me. And we're all like, "That's amazing." If I got up and told my story, they'd be like. Now here's the thing. My testimony is the testimony everybody wants their kids to have, but we act like it's not. Listen, you don't need to know evil. You don't need to know it. In fact, I would suggest that the more you know evil, the harder it is to let go of that and experience real joy.

So, when the women saw that the tree was good for food and it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was desired to make one wise, she took fruit and ate. And she also gave some to her husband who was with her and he ate, which we will. How in the world did Adam eat and he's the one that got the command from God? Okay. Husbands back me up on this. I don't have to say anything else. You know why he ate the fruit. Their couch was way less comfortable than mine is, that's why. That's funny. So they eat the fruit and then the eyes of both of them were opened and they knew that they were naked and they sewed fig leafs together and made themselves one class. See, here's the thing. The key to joy is to live in this world as God offers it to you, believing that he's not holding out on you. So, the things that you get are a gift from God that God is not holding out on. He's giving you everything that you need to succeed. That's rooted in his character.

Our God is a God of abundance, not scarcity. God doesn't have fixed some mindset. His streets are gold. Our streets are asphalt. His are gold. God is a God of abundance. He's not holding out on us. And what we really believe about that. Is God holding out on me or has he given me everything that I need to succeed is at the root of my capacity to have joy? Why can Simeon and Anna and the shepherds have joy, even in the mess of their individual lives, as well as the larger cultural context that they're sitting in. Why? Because they understand God's character. That he's not holding out on them. And Jesus is just one more evidence that proves that. He's not holding out. God isn't holding back. He gives us everything that we need to succeed. Have some implications for us this morning. Number one is this, God is not holding out on us. He's given us everything that we need to succeed. Do you really believe that? Because if you do, then you're free to have joy in the midst of circumstances that aren't exactly what I would've chosen.

Number two, joy comes from trusting in the character of God. That our God is a God of abundance, he's not a God of scarcity. Our God is not a God who is constantly waiting for the other shoe to drop. He's not a God of panics and being frightened of zombie apocalypses. Right? That's not our God. Number three, we will all face circumstances that will cause us to wonder about God's faithfulness. And here's why, because his ways, aren't our ways. We talked about that a little bit, Isaiah 55 last week. Why are you going to wonder about God's faithfulness? Because he's going to do things that you go, I wouldn't do it that way. And he's going to go, no, your thoughts aren't even my thoughts. And in fact, even if you thought the same thing, you wouldn't act on it the same way. Why? Because his ways are not your ways. His ways are not my ways. So of course we're going to face circumstances that'll cause us to wonder about God's faithfulness. But here's one of the reasons why we have the Bible.

The Bible is a God highlight reel. We see these moments where God moves in these profound ways and upends nations and turns every thing around and does these incredible miracles. We know that God has the power to do that. And he does that out of his infinite goodness. So when he doesn't do that, he also is acting out of his infinite goodness. His character doesn't change. Now, I don't know why he doesn't give me millions of dollars that I've been praying for. I think I would enjoy it. But what I know is, God is not holding out on me. He's given me everything that I need to succeed. And because of that, I have the freedom to have joy. The freedom to be generous. I have the freedom to let go and not try to angle and manipulate. Number four when we're in our toughest places in life, God shows up. In fact, God is most intimately connected with us when we're at our lowest. And I think sometimes we often think that our low places are evidence that were far from God.

And I would invite us to consider the possibility that your low place is not evidence that you're far from God. Your low place is a place where you're about to draw near to God's presence in a whole new way, in a whole new way. Now do you trust in the character of God? And this is what having faith is, right? Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God? Have you accepted him as your Lord and your savior? If he's the boss, then my faith says that I can rest in his character. Circumstances are going to try to make sure that you can't see that, but that doesn't change anything. Every week we take communion together as a church family and this is an opportunity for those of us that have called Jesus Lord to say, God, I haven't forgotten. The week has gotten distracted. Sometimes I didn't live in the space that I should live in, but this communion time is a time that draws us back to center.

It's a time that creates space for us, to be reminded of the character of God. That God will give up everything, including his own son so that you can spend eternity with him. Where have we gotten distracted? What circumstances are robbing you of your faith in the character of God? Maybe spend some time talking with the Lord about that as we prepare hearts for communion. On the night Jesus was betrayed, he took bread and he broke it. And he said, "This is my body, which is given for you. So whenever you eat this bread, do it in remembrance of me." Let's remember him. And then after the dinner he took a cup and he said, "This cup, this is the blood of the covenant which is shed for you. So whenever you drink this cup, do it in remembrance of me."

Let's pray. Lord, we love you. Thank you for providing a way. Thank you for the fact that your character is constant. Thank you that you are good. And because of those things, we can rest in the confidence that you are working for our best interest and the best interest of everyone around us. And so we can have joy knowing that you're not holding out on anyone. You've given us everything that we need to succeed. Thank you Lord, for your provision in Jesus name. Amen.