Joy

Marc Jolicoeur · Tidal Church Moncton · December 15, 2024 · The Advent of Jesus series

Marc Jolicoeur looks at Psalm 5 and the shepherds in Luke 2 to show that joy is a promise, a gift from the Holy Spirit, and a choice to receive by following Jesus as Savior and Lord.

More from Marc Jolicoeur · The The Advent of Jesus series

Topics: Joy, Discipleship, Christmas

Transcript

[0:00] What's your favorite Christmas song that has the word joy featured prominently in it? "Joy to the World." Okay. They fed you that one earlier, so it doesn't count, anybody else. "Joyful, Joyful." They also gave you that one. They didn't give you the, like, Sister Act version of it though, right? Where they're kind of like bopping back and forth. Maybe they'll save that for the second service. I don't know. At least Neda, yeah, that's a joyful song. So, yeah, this is the thing. So there's not a, in my experience, I mean, "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring," did that make anybody's top 10 list for Christmas listening? This December so far? No. I don't find that there's like a lot that actually has the word joy in it. However, yeah, the vibe, right? The feeling of joy certainly permeates a lot of, if not most, Christmas songs.

[0:50] If you think of, like, I think "Deck the Halls with Boughs of Holly," it's kind of tough to sing "Fa la la la la" mournfully. You'd have a tough job to kind of draw that out, right? So certainly we know that the feeling of joy is inherent to Christmas when we think about Christmas. Now, the people who, the Mojabe family, as they read that opening scripture for us. Do you know that last little bit that they read, Psalm 5, do you know that that is a song? Psalms are usually, not always, but usually, songs. And so I guess you could think that that was a Christmas song. So, if you'll allow me, I'd like to be able to read the entirety of the lyrics to that particular song, just so that you can get a bit of a vibe and see, maybe you'll think of this now as one of your favorite Christmas songs.

[1:37] Psalm 5, starting at verse 1 from the New Living Translation. Oh Lord, hear me as I pray. Pay attention to my groaning. Listen to my cry for help, my King and my God, for I pray to no one but You. Listen to my voice in the morning, Lord. Each morning I bring my requests to You and wait expectantly. Oh God, You take no pleasure in wickedness. You cannot tolerate the sins of the wicked. Therefore, the proud may not stand in Your presence, for You hate all who do evil. You will destroy those who tell lies. The Lord detests murderers and deceivers. Because of Your unfailing love, I can enter Your house. I will worship at Your temple with deepest awe.

[2:23] Lead me in the right path, oh Lord, or my enemies will conquer me. Make Your way plain for me to follow. My enemies cannot speak a truthful word. Their deepest desire is to destroy others. Their talk is foul, like the stench from an open grave. Their tongues are filled with flattery. Oh God, declare them guilty. Let them be caught in their own traps. Drive them away because of their many sins, for they have rebelled against You. But, and here's the part we heard earlier, let all who take refuge in You rejoice. Let them sing joyful praises forever. Spread Your protection over them, that all who love Your name may be filled with joy for You.

[3:09] Bless the godly, oh Lord. You surround them with Your shield of love. So how many of you would like to sing that song at your Christmas Eve service this year? That's not much of a festive kind of a vibe, right? A lot of smiting of enemies, a lot of declaring people guilty. I don't know. I don't think it's gonna crack the nut on Spotify this year. I don't think so. Who do you think would actually like to sing a Christmas song like that? I'm gonna suggest that maybe shepherds would like to sing a Christmas song like that. In fact, if you look at the superscription, so the very first thing under the line of, most of the time when you look at Psalm 5, it will say, "For the choir director, a Psalm of David."

[3:57] And David, if we know much about his kind of story in the Old Testament, he was, before he became a king, very hoity-toity. He was a shepherd. Now actually, Pastor Jeremy last week in his message mentioned shepherds, and he read a little bit from a passage of scripture that also the Hijabis read from this morning. I'm gonna read that passage again, but before I do, I want to kind of drill home a little bit of who these shepherds would be. Now, shepherds are, I believe that Pastor Jeremy referred to them as blue collar workers, right? So we know that there's white collar workers, right? People who sit there behind a computer all day and they write and they type, and their hands are very, very clean. And then you have blue collar workers who actually do work, like actually work, right? Produce the kinds of things that we need in the world. Then, I've heard some people describe some jobs as brown collar workers.

[4:45] These are the people whose hands aren't just dirty, their face is dirty, they are doing dirty work. And shepherds might be sometimes over in this category, right? They are doing the kind of job that, frankly, not a lot of people want to do. Now, this could be overstated a little bit because in the ancient world with shepherds, they could be, not just hired hands, they could be owner operators, right? So they could not just be the truck driver. They could be the person who owns the truck. They could be entrepreneurs, they could own the sheep, but the people that we're gonna be looking at, I think in this particular story, are more likely to not be those people. They're more likely to be the people who are working the night shift and the kind of people who maybe could use a little bit of hope.

[5:32] And so we're actually gonna pick up from the New Testament. Now, again, the passage has been, it's very familiar, but we're gonna listen to it, hopefully, with some fresh ears this morning. This is from Luke chapter 2, and we're picking up at verse 8. That night there were shepherds staying in the fields nearby. Remember, shepherds at night, they were guarding their flocks of sheep, and suddenly an angel of the Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord's glory surrounded them. They were terrified, but the angel reassured them, "Don't be afraid." He said, "I bring you good news that will bring you great joy to all people. The Savior, yes, the Messiah, the Lord, has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David.

[6:18] And you'll find, you'll recognize Him by this sign. You'll find a baby wrapped snugly in strips of cloth and lying in a manger." Suddenly the angel was joined by a vast host of others, the armies of heaven, praising God and saying, "Glory to God in highest heaven, and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased." When the angels had returned to heaven, the shepherds said to each other, "Let's go to Bethlehem." Let's see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about. So they hurried to the village and they found Mary and Joseph, and there was the baby lying in the manger after seeing Him. The shepherds told everyone what had happened and what the angel had said to them about this child.

[7:05] And all who heard the shepherd's story were astonished. But Mary kept all these things in her heart and thought about them often, and shepherds went back to their flocks, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen. It was just as the angel had told them. So again, my question to you, similar to who would wanna sing this song from Psalm 5, who needs the good news that the angel declared to them? Who needs this news about a great joy? It's not necessarily rhetorical. I'd say the shepherds need this news, and I'm gonna go out on a limb and say, I need this news.

[7:53] And if you feel like you need this news today, good news, we're gonna hear a little bit more about it. Now, this is Advent, right? This is why we're lighting these candles, and I'm pretty sure this has been said already, but Advent comes from the Latin word adventus, which means coming. So today we're gonna take a look at the word joy, the gift of joy, but we're gonna look at it kind of between the testaments, right? So not in the "will come one day" and not in the "has already come," but in the coming. So as we kind of bounce back and forth between the Old Testament and the New Testament, between the Psalm and the Song of the Angels, it's my hope and prayer that the truth of the gospel, that the good news and the great tidings will be fresh for you today.

[8:47] So it's gonna be quite simple. We're gonna say there's three different things about joy that are gonna be worthwhile for us to notice. And the first one is that joy is a promise. Joy is a promise. Before we really look at that very much, I want to acknowledge the fact that there's multiple types of people in the room. Some people who are not feeling very joyful at the moment, for example. And then also some people who walked in here and you were like, "Hey, you know what, Mark, I don't know you and I don't really know a whole lot about Jesus, and just to be honest, I'm okay. Like, I don't feel like depressed. I don't feel like my life is off the rails. Things are pretty good." I think it's this kind of revolutionary for some people to think for, especially for people who've grown up in the church and have been believers their whole lives.

[9:34] There's a lot of people who don't think about Jesus and they're not sad about it. And so I acknowledge that you are in the room today, and that's okay. We can kind of think about that. You are very, very welcome. Here's the more awkward part. Is there people who have grown up in the church? There's people who've known Jesus for a really long time, and they're looking at me and saying, "You're talking about joy. To be honest with you, Mark, I do not feel joy today." And it's worthwhile noting that you're in the room, that you are seen, and that we know that this is a reality. The thing with joy being a promise is that what makes something a promise, what makes something a promise is, frankly, sometimes the fact that it has not yet come. Similar to faith, right?

[10:26] If you give something to someone, you no longer need to promise it to them. We have to acknowledge the fact that if joy is a promise, sometimes just like the time between the old and the new, between the "will come" and "has come," there is this gap in this space where we live between these times. Another psalm from the Old Testament, Psalm 30:5 rather, says this, speaking of the Lord's anger, it says, "The Lord's anger lasts only a moment, but His favor, it lasts a lifetime. Weeping may last through the night, but joy comes with the morning." So we have to live in some respects, acknowledging the fact that there is this distance sometimes between this gap, right?

[11:15] There's a difference that's a distance between sometimes what we know we will experience and what we're currently experiencing. But joy is a promise. We also should probably talk about the difference between happiness and joy. Thankfully, our worship leader, excellent worship leader, Charlene, gave us a little bit of theological insight. And so I should go to Kids Connect on Thursday evenings so that I can get this kind of deep theological instructions myself. I mean, I also could have asked my daughter, I suppose, but when I was thinking through the difference between kind of happiness and joy, I was like, I know there's a difference, but I don't have like a Bible verse that kind of gives me the difference between the two. So I'm gonna admit to you, this is not a Bible verse, this is just an analogy, but I used to do a lot of camping.

[12:02] And so when you're camping, especially anytime other than the dead of summer, your fire is very, very crucial, right? Your fire is not only what could cook your food, it's not only what could potentially ward off, you know, any sort of animals that may be lurking out in the bushes, but it's also what keeps you warm at night. So fire is very, very important. Plus it's literally the only entertainment you have. So it's kind of like, it's the kit, it's the caboodle, it's the whole ball game. So you know what it's like if any of you have played with fire, and if your kids, you can kind of cover yours right now, if your parents don't want you to know if you ever played with fire, it's actually really, really easy to light a fire. You have paper, you have birch bark, you have old man's beard. That's stuff that moros. You have dry little kindling.

[12:48] You put a match to that thing, that sucker goes up, boom, you could have a fire. It's very exciting and I think that's happiness. And so it will light up, it'll look flashy, very impressive. And in moments it will be gone. It just doesn't last. That kind of fire by itself doesn't have any power to sustain. But when a fire is truly stoked, when you get those larger logs, and over time they become, you know, yeah, obviously you do have a big fire, but then eventually they become what they become, kind of coals, these red-hot coals. I remember one time I went to bed at, I don't know what time it was, maybe 10 o'clock at night, the fire was dying off. And then I got up. You know, when you're camping, you get up at ungodly hours.

[13:34] But say, let's say it was five or six in the morning, I got up and I was able to light the fire again, not with a match and not with a lighter, but by merely kind of blowing on those coals that had been sustained all night, even underground, right? That's the kind of fire that would really last. I think that when I think of the difference between happiness and joy, that's what kind of comes to mind for me. It's not like their difference in kind, necessarily, but just in quality, in how it's experienced. So joy, that kind of joy is what is promised. And just because you don't see it doesn't mean that isn't real. And just because you don't feel it now doesn't mean that you won't ever feel it or won't feel it again. Joy in the believer's life is a promise, but joy is not only a promise, joy is a gift.

[14:36] Joy is not only a promise, joy is a gift. I think we heard this a few weeks ago actually when Pastor Liz was speaking, and I think that even Jeremy alluded to it. Hey, it's the season, it's Christmas time, right? We have this, gifts are top of mind, but joy is almost certainly a gift. And we can see it again in both of our passages of Scripture. If we look at Psalm 5:11-12, it says, "But let all who take refuge in You rejoice. Let them sing joyful praises forever, spread Your protection over them, that all who love Your name may be filled with joy for You. Bless the godly, O Lord. You surround them with Your shield of love."

[15:22] Or as it says in Luke 2, "Don't be afraid." The angel said, "I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people." Right? Joy is not only a promise, but joy is a gift. Oh, hey, look, here's a gift here. Look at that. I stole this from the atrium earlier. This is a gift. What makes something a gift? Well, let's just say, if Pastor Jim was to come and take this present right now off the corner of the platform, that would not be a gift. That would be a theft. He'd be stealing this gift like I stole it from the atrium. Okay? So let's just not, the analogy will break down.

[16:07] A gift is only a gift if it is given, right? If you try to take it, it's no longer a gift. And if you try to make it or buy it, all of a sudden it's not a gift, right? Joy for the believer in Jesus is a gift, as it says in the letter to the Galatians, chapter 5, verses 22 and 23. This is when Paul is writing to the church there. He's talking about the Holy Spirit. He says, the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives. He produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

[16:52] The Holy Spirit produces. It is a gift of God's presence in the believer. That is what joy is. So joy is a promise. Joy is a gift, but here's where it will get a little bit twisty. Maybe for some people, joy is also a choice. Joy is also a choice. You know, before I read this, Psalm 5, I wanna say, when I say joy is a choice, all of a sudden, to be honest with you, the hairs in the back of my neck stand up. 'Cause I feel like there's a real tension in this, and there's a tension in a number of ways. I just said it was a gift. Now I'm saying it's a choice, but we'll deal with that in a moment.

[17:39] Really, the first thing that I think of is I hope that they're not gonna misunderstand what I'm gonna say. And so here's what I wanna say about how this could potentially be a problem. Has anybody ever heard of the word, the term embodied cognition? Any psychologists in the room, any psychologists in the room? I don't, you don't have to show your hands. You might be, people might be asking you for help after. Embodied cognition, embodied, okay? So you can look at this up later if you want, embodied cognition. So here's what I want you to know. What I'm about to tell you is exactly not what I mean when I say joy is a choice. Embodied cognition. I'll give you an example of it. If anybody has any job interviews coming up, this could be helpful. So you're getting ready to go and do a job interview, and you want to be, you know, be confident. You wanna walk in there like, you know what's up.

[18:25] You know who you are. So what you do is you find a room somewhere, ideally far away from where your actual interview is, where you go, maybe it's the bathroom. If there's nobody in there, and you puff up your chest and you put your hands out like this, and you make yourself as big as you can possibly make yourself, and you scream and you say, "I am confident. I am good enough. I am strong enough, I am the best." I know it's crazy, right? And then what you do is you walk into that room and all of a sudden you are a little bit more confident than you were before you went in. There you are, maybe not the best, but you maybe feel like you're the best, and you're like, "Whoa, look at that. Just by making myself physically large, and by saying things out loud, I presented myself as though I was that person."

[19:11] So a simpler way that you could actually participate with me, if you wanted to experiment with it right now, is, just smile. Just take the next eight seconds and just smile. Now, if you're honest with yourself and you participated, I bet you you feel a little bit happier now that you spent the last eight seconds smiling, right? So here's the thing. So we used to think that the way that it worked was the mind told the body what to do, and there's a degree of truth to that. But what turns out is actually this is a two way street, not a one way street. So sometimes your body can tell your mind what to do, right? So this is embodied cognition. So if you act in a certain way, you can feel a certain way.

[19:59] Now, what did I say? That is not what I mean when I say joy is a choice. I'm not just saying you can wake up tomorrow, smile in the mirror for eight seconds, say, "I am happy, I am happy," and then walk out there and actually experience joy. Maybe you can experience some of this flame that we talked about, but that's certainly not the deep lasting joy we're talking about. And also, it won't make it a gift because that in some respects is manufacturing it, right? That's like taking, you know, when I think about the fruit of the Spirit, people say, "Goodness, I wanna be more joyful. I wanna be more patient. I wanna be more kind. I'm gonna just start to practice those things." I always think it's like going to the grocery store, grabbing some apples, walking out in your backyard and, like, hammering the apple to your tree and saying, "Look, I have an apple tree."

[20:49] Like, that's not how this works. These things need to grow from the Holy Spirit's presence in our lives. If it's a gift, it's not something that we can just take. So Psalm 5:1-3, "Oh, Lord, hear me as I pray. Pay attention to my groaning. Listen to my cry for help, my King and my God, for I pray to no one but You. Listen to my voice in the morning, Lord, each morning I bring requests to You, and I wait expectantly." Or in Luke chapter 2, what it says, it says, The angels had returned to heaven. And the shepherds said to each other, "Hey, let's go to Bethlehem.

[21:39] Let's see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about." Joy is a choice, not because we can just make it for ourselves, but because we can choose to respond to the gift that is given. If joy sits in a box under your tree or on a shelf, it remains boxed in. And it's not until it gets unwrapped or unboxed that we actually have access to that gift. This little bundle of joy that the shepherds discovered 2000 years ago, this little child, He grew up, He didn't just stay a baby, right? And as He grew, He developed into a young man who was able to do some pretty miraculous things.

[22:27] And not only was He able to do miraculous things, He spoke in a way that was just magnetic. People were drawn to Him. They were also confused by Him, but He started to attract crowds, and He taught those people about how to live. And then He said enough things that irked the wrong people. And one day they eventually ended up crucifying Him, but that wasn't the end. Three days later, He rose to new life and He appeared to a bunch of these people. They had dinner together. It was bananas. They were able to touch Him. And then one day He ascended to heaven. But before all that, when He was just having a long conversation with His followers, or what we call His disciples, people who didn't only believe in Him, but who literally were like walking around after Him, they were His actual followers, He shared with them this truth.

[23:27] And when I say that joy is a choice, this, my friends, is exactly what I'm pointing to: Jesus' own discourse to His disciples. In John chapter 15, He says, "When you obey My commandments, you remain in My love. Just as I obey My Father's commandments and remain in His love, I have told you these things so that you will be filled with My joy. Yes, your joy will overflow." This, my friends, is how we access joy. This is how we unwrap the gift. Joy is a promise. It has always been a promise to His people.

[24:13] It is a gift that He offers, but it is our choice to then obey and live into His commandments. But why would anyone want to obey Jesus's commandments? He's our Savior, right? He's just supposed to do good things for us. Well, what did it say in Luke chapter 2? Let's pay attention particularly to what it said. It said the Savior. Yes, the Messiah. The Lord has been born today in Bethlehem, in the city of David. Jesus is not only our Savior, He's the Messiah, He's the Lord. He's the King of kings.

[24:58] If He is our Savior, He's also our Lord. Every time someone gets baptized up in that tank, we ask, has Jesus become, for you, your Lord and your Savior? For Him to be one, He is necessarily the other. Joy comes in not only accepting the gift that He's offered to us, but living into it by following and obeying His commands. And this is not a brand new concept that happened 2000 years ago, a thousand years before that when this Psalm was written. In Psalm 5, pay attention to what it says: You, O Lord, bless the godly. You surround them with Your shield of love. Joy is a promise. It's a bankable promise.

[25:48] Joy is a gift, but joy is also a choice. And so today, there are three different promises, three different ways that we can think this through. And I think there's probably three different groups of people who may need to hear these words. So for you, it's possible. I mean, I even alluded to this in the beginning of the time together. There's some people who were like, "Marc, I get it. You know, I'm down with Jesus. And I've been trying to follow Him for a long time, but today I particularly do not feel that joy." If it's cold, it's cold for you.

[26:34] In a few moments, as we pray, I would just encourage you to ask God to reveal to you how He has been with you all along, and how He is promising to be there with you in the season ahead. Joy is a promise, but you may need to believe that promise. For others, it might be interesting to know that joy is a choice. Maybe you are a brand new believer in Jesus, or maybe you're not actually yet somebody who does believe in Jesus, and you're not even sure when He says follow His commandments. What do you even mean by that? If you've been on the Tidal newsletter for the last few weeks, you've seen that in January we're actually launching a simple class.

[27:24] It's called 3-2-1, and it's a very basic introduction to Christianity. It's for brand new or not yet believers in Jesus Christ. So if that's you, you can actually head to tidal.church. In fact, I would encourage you maybe to consider doing that right now. If you want to go to Tidal Church, you can just hit that link that says 3-2-1. Those of you who are online as well can do this, and you can sign up and take just four weeks to walk through some basic teaching about who is the God of the Bible. I mean, we can't actually follow His commandments if we, don't even know what they are. So again, that's a brand new class for those of you who are brand new believers or not yet believers, 3-2-1. But there's also, I think, a section of people who are hanging out somewhere over here where they may or may not understand the joy as a promise.

[28:10] And they have not even yet gotten to the idea that it's a choice, but they themselves, you yourself, haven't received it as a gift. Maybe you've been trying to manufacture joy for yourself, you know, just trying to make it happen. If I buy the right gift, if I drink the right coffee, if I get the perfect playlist on Spotify, but joy is not any of those things. Joy is much, much deeper, and it can only come by accepting the work of Jesus Christ and His love for you. So as this song plays with the next few minutes, after the song, the Prayer Team is gonna come forward. I would encourage you, if today's the day where you want to accept this gift for the first time, I encourage you to come down after the song is done, pray with one of the prayer team members.

[29:02] But for all of us, in fact, I'll ask you to stand right now, and for all of us, whether it's understanding for the first time that joy's a promise, or whether it's reaching for it as a choice, I pray that all of us will be able to sing this song together and understand that the joy is truly for Him to increase in our lives and for us to decrease.