Hope of the Earth: Joy - December 14, 2025

It is my privilege to invite you to today's sermon podcast.

I have made the Apostle Paul's prayer request my own.

When he states in Ephesians 6, 19, pray also for me, that whenever I open my

mouth, the words may be given to me so that I will fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel.

May today's sermon come alive to you and aid you in your understanding of God's

plan for your life. Well, thank you so much for being here today.

Kind of a little off on how we normally do things, but isn't that what kids

do? Don't kids throw you off sometimes?

You've got a great plan in mind,

no matter if it's going on a trip or just going to the grocery store.

And kids like to throw you a little curveball sometime. But for these kids,

we know that we would sacrifice all that we have for them.

And yeah, they're just wonderful. And to give them an opportunity to share this morning.

We've been lighting the Advent candle this season. And.

The first one we lit this year was the candle of hope, and as we lit that,

we talked about the hope that Christ brings to us, and the hope that isn't just

wishful thinking, but it's an expectation that God is in the middle of action,

that we're involved in that action, and that God will continue to move and to do amazing things.

And last week, we lit the candle talking about peace and the peace that God brings,

and we We know that peace isn't always the absence of conflict,

but it's how you are with God in the midst of the conflict, in the midst of

trouble that comes through life.

Today, we're going to light the pink candle. As we light the pink candle,

this is the candle of joy.

And so today, very briefly, I just want to talk to you about the joy that the Lord brings.

I will preface this for those of you that are kind of bent this way,

that you have to have all those blanks filled in. you'll be disappointed because

my sermon is going to last really quickly here, just a short amount of time.

But if you want those blanks, on the back of the bulletin, there's a QR code

you can scan. It'll take you to the place where you can get all the blanks to fill in.

I hate to disappoint you, but some of you are going to be very happy at a short

sermon today. So someone's prayers were answered today. Hallelujah!

I won't ask for a show of hands who it was, but I will ask this morning,

though. So would you stand with me as we read the text for today from Matthew chapter 1?

Matthew 1 · chapter mention

We're going to read verses 18 through 25, or I will read them.

Hear the word of the Lord this morning. This is how the birth of Jesus,

the Messiah, came about.

His mother, Mary, was pledged to be married to Joseph. But before they came

together, she was found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.

Because Joseph, her husband, was faithful to the law and yet did not want to

expose her to a public disgrace.

He had in mind to divorce her quietly. But after he had considered this,

an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, Joseph,

son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife,

because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus,

because he will save his people from their sins.

All this took place to fulfill what the Lord had said through the prophet.

The virgin will conceive and give

birth to a son, and they will call him Emmanuel, which means God with us.

When Joseph woke, he did what the angel of the Lord had commanded and took Mary

home as his wife, but he did not consummate their marriage until she gave birth

to a son, and he gave him the name Jesus.

May God bless the reading of his word to your life today. You can be seated.

We see such a scandal in the birth story of Jesus.

Just what we read from the text today is amazing.

When we think about some of the stories that graced the headlines of major newspapers today,

and as the kids showed in their play today, you know, what would have been the

headline there had they dug deeper into the story? Well, one of the things is clear.

Is that the birth of Christ didn't come as was expected.

It didn't come with a little baby being born in a palace and a clean room everywhere

with, you know, all the dignitaries that you would expect to be present there.

It came in a different way. And as the kids portray today, you know,

it had to do with shepherds, stinky, smelly shepherds, angels appearing to them.

It had to do with farm animals for crying out loud and a stable and all kinds

of things you wouldn't expect in a birth story of the King of kings and the

Lord of lords, but yet there it was.

And we know that as we talk about joy today, that what is joy?

It's not just a happy feeling, but we know that joy is a deep confidence that

God is with us and that He's making all things new.

And when you have that definition of joy, really what that joy is all about,

it does bring those happy feelings.

It does bring that feeling of contentment that lasts and lasts and last.

But I can imagine Joseph, here he was, discovers that Mary is pregnant and that it's not his child.

And the confusion that must erect this man in his brain, his mind,

trying to process this, think about it.

And yet then the angel of the Lord appears to him. This is messy.

You don't understand how messy this was.

Mary could have been taken out and killed because she had broken the marriage

covenant, the promise to be married in that covenant.

And her life was basically over.

Joseph would have been the shame, the laughingstock.

Life was messy for him.

But what does Joseph decide to do? He doesn't blast it all over the internet.

There wasn't one, but he doesn't put it out there, and he doesn't call the local

Bethlehem Times and say, hey, I got a story for you.

What does the scripture say? He said he had it in mind to separate from her, to divorce her quietly.

He didn't want to put Mary to a public shame. He didn't want for her name to

be sullied for the rest of her life. He wanted to do the right thing,

even though I can imagine that Joseph was deeply hurt.

But we see the angel of the Lord appears to Joseph, gives him the heads up as to what's going on.

Says, hey, don't do what you're thinking about doing, but go through this.

Go through what you've committed to do with Mary, and that is to take her as your wife.

And that this baby within her womb is conceived of the Holy Spirit.

There's something special at work here. And I want to tell you today that even

if your life seems messy at times,

even if your life is filled with pain and confusion at times,

I want you to trust that God is even at work in the midst of that confusion,

in the midst of that hurt, in the midst of that pain, which can be so deep.

As a matter of fact, God meets us in that pain. God meets us at the point of that suffering.

God meets us at the point of even the darkness in those hard seasons of our life.

So don't feel like God has abandoned you. He really hasn't.

He's just there. He's working so hard. He might not have time to say,

hey, how you doing? I'm here.

He's there with you, even if it seems that he's not. We know that in the story

here, God meets Joseph and Mary.

He doesn't leave them alone in their confusion, doesn't leave them alone in

their shame, but he joins in working out what's going on with them.

A better way to put it is that Mary and Joseph join with God and what God is unfolding to everyone.

As a matter of fact, because God is at work, Mary and Joseph in the midst of,

boy, this looked really bad, this situation, these circumstances,

God joined them in the midst of that.

And they could have joy in that because they knew the God of heaven was bringing

forth something amazing, was bringing forth the Messiah, the promised one.

And so God met them there and they could rejoice. And no matter what you're

going through, in the middle of a hospital room,

in the middle of a crisis at work, in the middle of some horrific thing that's

going on in your family, you never imagined that this would happen to you.

God can meet you there, and God wants to meet you there, and God wants to bring

joy even to those horrible circumstances.

And God will do that. God did it for Mary and Joseph here.

God brings joy amid all that sorrow, amid all the brokenness. God will bring that.

Again, not a joy of a happy feeling, but the contentment and the commitment

that God is with you there.

You can be confident that God is hanging out with you there.

God's joy, as I says in the bulletin here, does not rest on circumstances,

but on God's character, God's presence, and God's promises.

That's where joy is seated. It's not in what you're going through. It's deeper than that.

And in the midst of horrible things, you can give God praise.

You can rejoice. You can be happy in the Lord.

Joy is resting in the truth that whatever comes, that God, God will redeem us. God is with us.

God has a way of making all things new, does he not, he can take the most horrible

things and turn it around.

And so in short, what I want to tell you this morning is just be a people of joyful hope.

No matter what's going on, let you know God is going to meet you there and that

God is not going to make you go through it alone, but God is going to show up

and that God is going to be right there with you every step of the way.

Think about the text here and what was going on with Joseph and the trip they

had to take to Bethlehem and all the pain and confusion.

Boy, how is God unfolding this? And the scripture says it was at that time that

God had planned for all this to take place.

And as we read through the text together, all this took place in verse 22,

to fulfill what the Lord had said to the prophet.

God had planned for this long ago, that they would endure this for his glory,

that they would endure this for the glory and the benefit of all humankind,

even us today. Hallelujah.

So guys, I want you to be joyful. be joyful that you've got something that has

endured through centuries.

Be joyful, be excited, be confident that God is moving and that this life does

not have the answer, that this is it.

This is all you get because God has promised something else.

And I want to close with this last scripture. You don't have to stand for this one.

But I remember in math class, sometimes you could look to the back of the book

and get some answers, right?

Usually those weren't the ones the teacher graded. It was usually the odds or

the evens, depending on what was written at the back of the book.

But at the back of the Scripture, here's a promise that you can have joy in this morning.

In the book of Revelation, we get a glimpse into the future.

We get a glimpse into what's going to happen.

And it's this kind of glimpse that I want you to take with you.

You see, Advent's about looking back. We look back at the story of Christ, how that unfolded.

We've lit a candle that represented the hope that's found in Christ.

We represented a candle, a light of the candle that represents the peace that God brings.

And today we lit another candle that represents joy. And I want you to have

joy in this as we look back. Let's look forward.

Revelation 21.1, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven

and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea.

Sorry, fishermen, there's no longer any sea. I saw the holy city,

the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride,

beautifully dressed for her husband.

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, look, God's dwelling place

is now among people and he will dwell with them.

They will be his people and God himself will be with them and be their God.

He will wipe away every tear from their eye.

There'll be no more death or mourning or crying or pain for the old order of things has passed away.

He who was seated on the throne said, I am making everything new.

And then he said, write this down for these words are trustworthy and true. He said to me, it is done.

I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end.

To the thirsty, I will give water without cost from the spring of the water of life.

We celebrate the first advent, the first coming of Christ.

As Emmanuel, God with us. And the scripture I just read from the book of Revelation

looks ahead to when that becomes a reality again, when forever we're with Christ,

when forever Christ is among us, God is with us, he dwells with us.

And so that is something to be joyful about, even in the midst of yucky stuff.

Now, it's great when things are going wonderfully, we can't forget God there,

and we can just celebrate his praises and what he's doing in the midst of that.

But when life takes those rocky turns, you've not been abandoned. God is still with you.

And we can look forward and bank on this.

Verse 4 of Revelation 21, he will wipe away every tear from their eyes.

There will be no more death. Hallelujah.

The victory has come. The victory is now we look for that time when that victory

is fully culminated and is the reality for everybody.

So guys, gals, ladies and gentlemen, be people of hope, of joyful hope today.

Let the joy of the Lord just well up in you. Hey, don't let the last minute shopping get you down.

As people are throwing elbows, I guess they don't have Cabbage Patch kids anymore.

That's when I was a kid. That was the big thing, right? Never understood that.

My sisters wanted one, but not me.

Honestly, not me, all right? G.I. Joe is a little bit more my speed.

So don't get discouraged in the midst of the last-minute things that you have to get ready for.

Have joy in the journey, joy in the celebration of Jesus, knowing and being

confident that Christ is coming back and that he's bringing a whole new order of things.

Where the old is gone, behold, the new is here. And you can experience that newness today.

Hey, we're going to be dismissed here. I'm so glad that you've come today.

Thank you for making this a priority to come out to encourage our kids.

You know, I don't know what you saw when you looked up here.

Maybe some humor in some of the sibling rivalries that was going on right on

stage. I always loved that.

Little sister, our big sister hitting her brother, little brother elbowing back.

But you know, the hope that's represented in each one of these kids' spaces,

who are they going to become? What are they going to do? What's God going to use them for?

How are they going to, for an eternity, make a difference in the world?

Maybe you saw up here, you know, future doctors or doctors.

Future farmers, future Sunday school teachers, a future pastor too.

I mean, God's gonna do amazing things and your encouragement helps them in their

journey to grow up into Jesus.

So what we did today is important. What you did today was important in coming here.

And I want you to have the hope that comes from Christ. I want you to have his

peace in your life, but I want you to have that joy as well.

Next week, we're gonna light one of the final candles and we're gonna talk about the love of God.

Expressed in Christ Jesus. I want to thank you for joining today's sermon podcast.

You can find a copy of today's sermon as well as other sermons and the sermon

outline from today on our church's website, www.mvcnaz.org.

It is my prayer also that you will seek out a church home that recognizes the authority of the Bible.