Finding Joy in the Waiting - December 15, 2024

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, I don't know if you noticed, but we extinguished the candles.

During the kids' performance, we didn't want anything too flashy happening.

But we did relight them again because this is, of course, the season of Advent.

So we started out this season with the candle that represents the candle of

hope, the hope that we have in God.

Last week, we talked about lighting the candle that has to do with representing the love of God.

This week, of course, is joy.

It's a little difficult to talk about joy when part of your church family is

hurting today, but I think you can still experience joy even in the midst of

tragedy, and I hope that you catch that this morning.

It's funny, as I was looking back on the sermons I've already preached during

this Advent season, they all deal with some kind of song.

First of all, we looked in the Psalms, then we looked at Zechariah's song last week,

and this week is kind of a song, but it comes from the book of Isaiah,

and it's a song of Isaiah giving praise to the Lord for what he was going to do,

what he was in the midst of doing, even if it had not quite.

Been experienced yet.

And next week, we'll talk about peace and the peace that we can have in Jesus,

and we're really going to see that come through when we talk about Mary's song, the Magnificent.

And so, of course, Christmas Eve, we will light the Christ candle,

and we'll all sing some great songs rejoicing about Jesus and that he has come.

But it's Christmas season. Are you done with your Christmas shopping?

Praise the Lord. Well done. I don't know if I am or not, so whatever I got and

whatever's under the tree is what we're going to have.

And so I guess, sorry, family.

It's this time of year, it seems like there's all this busyness scurrying around.

There's going to the stores and there's looking online.

And there was, of course, Black Friday several weeks ago, which I didn't really

notice any big Black Friday deals like they used to have.

You remember that back in the 80s and the 90s, man? People were going to stores

and bursting down the doors just to get in and get their Cabbage Patch kit or

their big giant screen TV for like 20 bucks or something like that.

But I mean, it was those crazy deals that just got people stirred up.

And I think the busyness has continued to survive the Christmas season.

But we're all running here and we're running there.

And last week, I think I was only home one day, one evening,

because there was all kinds of things going on that, you know,

these parties that you go to and these times that we come together and we celebrate Jesus.

And so there's all this busyness around. And, you know, growing up as a kid,

I didn't celebrate Advent.

We didn't have candles in our church. And I didn't really celebrate this,

but I found as I've become a pastor and as I've ministered for over 30 years that,

boy, the candles in this season is great because it gives us an opportunity,

gives us an excuse even to slow down.

Let's slow down a little bit and really prepare our hearts for what Jesus wants to do.

Instead of just celebrating one day out of the year, we get to celebrate a whole

month of us looking and considering what the hope of God means for us.

Considering what the love of God means for us.

Today, considering what joy that we can have because of Jesus Christ.

And in the busyness of presents, in the busyness of parties,

in the busyness of plans to have the perfect Christmas meal and getting everyone

there that you can, in all those, it's okay to take a time out,

to take a time out and just worship God.

These kids today have helped us to do that. These children, these youth have

helped us to take a time out.

And yeah, we can laugh at sheep running astray.

And we could realize that, man, that's like me sometimes.

God says, go here and I run astray and maybe I finally get around to it.

And we just get a chance to pause, to consider that all these kids have taken

all this time just to prepare a simple message that God loves you so much.

He sent Jesus to die on a cross to take your place in the punishment for sin

that all of us are guilty of And that we have this Jesus and come back Easter

I'm sure they'll have another play ready for you That says why Jesus came in

and what he will do for you,

This morning i'm going to give

you the short version of the sermon someone can say hallelujah to that.

Because I was wondering if i'd have five minutes, but I have maybe seven minutes. So praise the lord.

You know, in all of the things that we do, and I don't mean to joke so much

this morning because when we talk about joy, there's a whole bunch of different

emotions we experience. There's some loneliness that happens.

We miss someone that is not with us this year, whether they're across the sea,

engaged in different things for the Army, for the Navy, for the Air Force,

whether they passed on to be with Jesus and celebrate with Him, or whether they're just,

people that aren't with us for family angst, for some strife.

There's all these feelings that are mixed up, and there's something that I want

to just share with you, and that's this joy.

You know, we consider joy to be an emotion. There was some joy experienced up here from these kids.

Well, they got to be, and you got to applaud, and you got to see them,

and they were proud. they were on cloud nine.

I don't know, Harrison, your kids were so excited to be camels, brother.

I mean, that's all I heard for the last three weeks. Every time I saw them,

hey, Pastor Mike, I get to be a camel. And they had cool costumes.

You know, we had the sheep walking around and I got to hear,

Pastor, I'm a sheep or I'm a wise man.

And, you know, all the joy that they had to be part of something great,

to be part of something big and.

For you to be here and experience that. We give great praise and honor and glory

to God, but it's this idea of joy that I want to help you understand this morning,

and I know I preached on this back in November a little bit,

but that joy is not just an emotion.

It's tied to your emotions, but even when you're feeling down,

even when you're feeling blue, that you can still experience joy,

and those down times, those low times don't have to be so down or don't have to be so low.

Back in November when I preached, and you can go on the church app and you can

look at the sermon there and see back in November, I talked about gratitude

and that we need to rejoice.

That's part of God's will for us to rejoice always.

And I define joy like this.

Joy is a feeling of good pleasure and happiness, but it's dependent on who Jesus

is rather than on who we are or for what is happening around us, our circumstances.

It's in a positional relationship with Jesus.

I can have joy because I got a relationship with Jesus. So that means,

yeah, I'm going to go through yucky times.

I'm going to go through hard times. But even in the midst of those, I know God is with me.

In the midst of the yuckiness of life, I don't have to feel like I'm alone because really I'm not.

Because of my relationship with Jesus. I know Jesus is right there with me.

It doesn't always spare me from the consequences of my stupid actions that get

me in a place to where, boy, I sure made a dumb choice there,

and now I got to deal with the consequences, or whether I caused it or not.

Even if I'm in the midst of something and, boy, I don't deserve to be here.

Why am I going through this? This is not my fault. I didn't do anything to deserve this.

Even in the midst of that, Jesus is there with us to go through it.

I think we can trust God because God sent his son Jesus to be born as a baby,

to grow up as a man, to live a life without sin, and then to willingly give

his life up for all of us who ever sinned.

And it's the amazing love of Jesus that he has for us that we can say,

thank you, God, that gives us joy,

that in Christ my sins are forgiven, that in Christ the penalty for sin has

been wiped away, and that can bring me happiness, that can bring me great pleasure

in knowing that my debt is paid. Hallelujah.

Boy, not too long ago there were people, and they might still do it,

I just don't hear about it on the news very much anymore, but there were people

that would put stuff on layaway, like at Walmart, used to be Kmart that we would

go to. We didn't have Walmart around.

They'd put stuff on layaway, and then someone would come along and pay their

balance without telling anybody except the clerk.

And then the family would come, and they would come to collect their things.

They finally saved enough money to pay for the Christmas presents they got all

their kids and their family.

They would go up to pay the bill, and the clerk would say, you don't owe us

any money. It has been paid for.

And the joy that these people experienced because their debt had been totally wiped out.

They were able to freely give of the gifts that they searched so hard and long

and put on layaway and saved up for.

Folks, we have a debt that has been paid for all of us, and we can praise God for that.

Let me get to the scripture this morning, Isaiah chapter 12.

Isaiah 12 · chapter mention

Hear the word of the Lord this morning. In that day, you will say, I will praise you, Lord.

Although you are angry with me, your anger has turned away and you have comforted me.

Surely God is my salvation. I will trust and not be afraid. The Lord himself

is my strength and my defense.

He has become my salvation. With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation.

And in that day you will say, give praise to the Lord, proclaim his name,

make known among the nations what he has done, and proclaim that his name is exalted.

Sing to the Lord, for he has done glorious things. Let this be known to all the world.

Shout aloud and sing for joy, people of Zion, for great is the Holy One of Israel among you.

May God bless the reading of his

word to your life today. Thank you for honoring that. You can be seated.

We think about Isaiah's writing here, and it's always weird at Advent.

We have all these passages, and none of them are talking about wise men or angels

or the holy family and all the elements, but we think about taking a time out

and saying, okay, let's consider the joy that we have.

Isaiah was writing this at a bleak time in the history of Israel and Judah.

As a matter of fact, it was so bleak and so ugly that they had a king named

Ahaz, and King Ahaz was one of those evil kings that are talked about,

one of those ones you do not want to be a subject of.

And he was so evil that he had reached out to one of their enemies,

the Assyrians, and had asked them to come and to help us, because he was in

Judah, and Israel was coming against him, and another nation was coming against him.

And he, instead of listening to the preacher, instead of listening to the prophet

Isaiah, he said, well, I'm going to take matters into my own hand.

Yeah, that always works out well, doesn't it?

I'm going to take matters in my own hand and just do what I think is right.

I'm going to have Assyria come help me.

And well, he did, and things blew up. And Isaiah in chapter 12 here is talking

about a time looking ahead when God's anger will be stopped,

when God's grace will be poured out on the people that he loves.

And like I said in verse 1, I will praise you, Lord, although you are angry

with me, your anger has turned away and you have comforted me.

Boy, the scripture says that before we knew Christ, before we have a relationship

with Christ, says we are at odds with God.

We are at enmity with God. We're God's enemies. We're against him.

We're talking about experiencing the anger of God. Those without God will experience that one day.

But God is waiting to comfort. He's waiting to turn that anger away.

He's waiting to forgive.

And it goes on to express, and Isaiah's telling King Ahaz, this can be you.

You could be the one that says, hey, God was angry at me, but he's comforting you now.

He stayed that anger. That anger is gone because he's given me grace,

and I'm going to find salvation in him.

And so this idea of joy that Isaiah is saying here is a future look at when

Jesus would come, when Jesus would

come and would save all of human beings everywhere for time and eternity.

And so he talks about joy. And I'll just really quickly give you three points.

First of all, there's joy in salvation.

When God saves you, there's a joy there. Have you ever been watching a baseball

game and your team is ahead,

but they're only ahead by one run and it's the bottom of the ninth and the other

team is up to bat and there they go. Their best hitter comes up.

He loads up the bases or the bases are loaded and he gives up and you know he's

just going to smack that home run.

And so he gets ready. He gets in his stance and there he is.

He's ready. And the first pitch that come, he swings that.

And boy, that thing, it goes off, goes off, but it's foul. And you're like,

whew, okay, there's one strike.

Now there's two outs already, but you're sweating it.

And you're sweating so bad because this could be the game. This could end your

chance, your hope of even getting to the playoffs. And here you are sweating it out.

And the next one's a ball. He doesn't swing.

Matter of fact, the next two are balls. So now it's three and one.

The next pitch that comes, man, he swings at it and it's foul again.

So a three and two, one more pitch.

You're only down by, or you're only ahead by one run. This could tie the game

or he could hit it, knock it out of the park.

And man, then your season's over.

But do you understand the relief when that guy gets up? The pitcher throws a

fastball outside in the outside corner.

The dude swings on it and misses, and that's the third out, and your season is saved.

The salvation that comes, the joy, the elation that you feel.

But Isaiah was talking about that kind of feeling, that kind of excitement,

that kind of understanding that, oh, we're saved. Our season is saved.

When we think about the Scripture, the joy that we have in salvation,

all along, Isaiah is proclaiming, the Lord, the Lord himself is my strength.

It's the Lord that saves. It's God. He's a personal God that comes along,

that is your defense, that stands up for you, that has become my salvation.

And verse 3, with joy, you will draw water from the wells of salvation.

This church knows a little bit of something about wells. I know we had a well

pump go out with one of our families. We're praying for you guys.

But we know about going to other countries and the joy that it brings those

people that don't have a water system, that when a well is dug,

it's life-changing for them, whether that's over in Thailand and Myanmar,

whether that is in Africa.

I mean, it changes the dynamic of the people in that village to have that life-sustaining water.

This was known, of course, in the Middle East as well. If you had a well,

that meant, boy, God was going to bless you there.

You're going to be able to survive the dry tines.

And that imagery comes out in verse 3, you will draw water from the wells of

salvation. You're never going to have to worry about that.

God has taken care of you. So there's great joy in salvation.

There's also joy in the uncertainty, though.

There's joy in those moments where you don't know what's going to happen.

There's joy in those moments where you just have to trust and have faith,

even though you can't calculate what the end will be like.

You're just trusting God minute by minute, day by day, going through it.

There's joy in that because you can trust God that God's going to bring it about.

I remember in my son's treatment for leukemia and then lymphoma,

the day-by-day nature, some days were horrible.

Some days were just stinky days.

He didn't feel well. Melanie and I didn't feel well. And even the hospital staff was grumpy that day.

And you're like, how are we going to make it through? And it's day-by-day.

It's minute-by-minute just to trust God with the outcome that we couldn't change.

We weren't doctors. We didn't know what medicines to give. They did,

but sometimes the medication wasn't effective, but just trusting day by day.

And that brought this sense of peace and joy that, God, you're going to get

him through this, that there is going to be a celebration day.

We think about joy. There's joy in God's presence.

The Scripture all talks about give praise to the Lord, proclaim his name,

and make known among the nations what he has done.

God is with us. There's joy in God's presence, folks.

When you're with God, it doesn't mean everything's going to be good,

but you know he's with you.

We know that when life is down and you're in that valley of the shadow of death,

that you don't have to fear evil, as Psalm 23 says, as the psalmist proclaims.

God is with you going through it. He doesn't abandon you. He might be silent.

You might not be hearing a lot of things. Hopefully you're reading the word,

and I know he speaks through his word.

But you know what I found when God's silent, that means he's working a lot.

You know, when I'm out trying to fix something on the car and Noah comes up

to me, he starts wanting to have a conversation about who knows what.

I'm like, son, I don't have time. Well, dad, how about this?

I'm too busy working to answer him because I want to get this thing on the truck

fixed or the old car that I have.

And it's like, God's sometimes just working overtime on our behalf,

being present with us, but trying to bring about the good things that He wants

accomplished in your life.

Folks, what do we do with all this? We've got some of our church family not

going through very good stuff right now.

The joy that we're going to discover is not in the circumstances,

not in the ugliness of that, but the joy comes when God opens up an opportunity

for us to step in to be His hands, for us to step in to give those that are

down a hug, to give of our own resources to help.

That's when joy comes. That's when we're going to experience the joy,

the feeling, if you will, is when God is able to use us to bless others.

I don't know what that looks like in your life. I'm looking forward to some Christmas joy.

I find that as I'm getting older, there's a great joy in seeing people open

the presents that I was able to make or give rather than just in getting.

So there's going to be a lot of joy. How do we celebrate that joy during this

Advent and Christmas season? I just give you three points there to think about.

First of all, sing and share the joy of salvation. That's what we do when we

come together every Sunday morning.

We sing and we share about what God's doing in our lives.

In Sunday school class, when you are able to give a prayer request or a praise,

we're sharing about the salvation of God, that He cares about us, that He loves us.

Second, trust God in times of uncertainty. Though you might not understand what

He's doing, just know that He's with you.

Boy, and that's elevated even more so when you know things are certain,

when God's doing some great things.

You can't help but be like Isaiah here and sing a song of praise.

Offer that praise to God. And third, of course, is just enjoy the presence of God.

You know, God's not with you just in here.

He'll be with you wherever you go, whatever you're doing. God's with you.

You can enjoy his presence. This morning, driving to church and taking the back

roads to here, seeing that sunset come up.

Praise the Lord, I haven't seen the sun in like over a week,

I think. So it's hallelujah.

You know, just those little things to understand and enjoy the presence of God

and just to relish in that. Folks, we're called to be joyful.

Philippians 4.4 says, Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I will say rejoice.

The interesting thing about that is that comes from the book of Philippians

Philippians 4:4

chapter 4, verse 4, I believe.

And it's the apostle Paul that wrote that while he was sitting in a jail cell.

Not the kind of jail cells that we have today, but I mean, just like a pit,

man, just an awful place.

The Apostle Paul in prison for just doing nothing other than preaching the word,

preaching the truth of God, can have joy, we can have joy, I think,

in our circumstances as well.

And I pray that you will have joy this Christmas season, no matter what you're

going through, as you trust God,

as you celebrate Him, and as you just celebrate His presence with you.

After all, what is another name for Jesus is Emmanuel, which means God with us.

God is with us. Let's pray together. I think we're going to sing a doxology,

and then we'll have the Lord's Prayer and be dismissed.

We do have a goodie bag for everyone today.

And like Pastor Quincy said, she's got a special popcorn ball back there if

you don't like the ones that are in there because of red dye or whatever.

So let's pray together. Father, thank you for this day that we've had.

Lord, thank you for the opportunity we have to come together to worship you.

Thank you for the children and our youth, Lord, and the adults that helped so

much to bring this about today.

God, we just pray that you'll be glorified. Lord, I pray this morning that you'll

help us to draw closer and closer to your son, Jesus, at this time.

Lord, that we see him not just as a little baby that was born,

but, Father, that we recognize that he's the baby that grew up to be a man that

became the Savior of the world, that laid down his life for all of us.

And, Lord, let us just relish in that during this Christmas season.

Be with us, Lord, as we go out here in a few minutes. And, Father,

we just pray you'll be glorified in Jesus' name. Amen.

Amen. 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.