We continue our advent series with the Prophet Isaiah looking at chapters 11 and 12. Last week, we looked at the first two verses, and we’re going to finish out the chapter as we look to the reading of God’s word. If you would please join with me in prayer. Oh God, we do ask that you would guide us by your word and spirit that in your light we might see the light of your truth and there find freedom. Lord, in your will, discover your peace that you have for us. And this we would pray and ask all through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. Continuing in verse one, You will say in that day, ‘I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away that you might comfort me. Behold, God is my salvation. I will trust and will not be afraid, for the Lord God is my strength and my song. He has become my salvation. With joy, you will draw water from the well of salvation. And you’ll in that day, give thanks to the Lord. Call on his name. Make known his deeds among the peoples.
Proclaim that his name is exaltet. Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously. Let this be made known in all the earth. Shout and sing for joy, O inhabitants of Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy one of Israel. The word of the Lord. Thank you. Without scripture, we see the Lord painting with shadows. The wonder and the beauty of his grace is accented or highlighted by contrasting dark tones. With the Psalm, we understand that weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning. Living in those moments of dark nights, trials of the soul, it can make us question whether or not the morning will indeed come. Joy can seem an unfulfilled desire of fool’s hope. There are some 600 times words of joy, gladness or rejoicing, are used in the Bible. Now, not all these refer back to God, but certainly most do. There are many other types of expressions besides these words which we can give this idea of joy with. We’re told to lift up our hands, to magnify the Lord, to glorify him, to exalt, to exalt, praise. We’re simply overrun with expressions of joy in, joy from, and a yearning for God’s joy throughout us.
How pervasive that joy is. And the Bible, it repeatedly speaks of these themes of joy, desires, pleasure, the yearning of God, the enjoyment of having him. But why? Why joy? One writer answered this way. He said, God’s glory is his overflowing self-communicating joy. Think of the first question of our catech Our primary, our chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever. God’s glory is his overflowing self-communicating joy. The very nature of God revealing himself to us is that which gives joy. Think about this. You think most people think that when they think about God, that they think joy? And yet this is precisely what most people long for, to be truly happy, to be truly satisfied. But we all know that the delight of that new car, it fades. The excitement of the first date can’t be maintained. All the temporary happiness tells us that we have a hunger and a thirst for a joy that will not dissipate, dissolve, or disappear. We have a capacity for true joy that can only find its fulfillment in God himself. And because we’ve been made to rejoice in the Lord, we must find our joy in him.
Isaiah 12 is the culmination of these first 11 chapters, and most of it has been bad news. And more of the message to come is judgment. Dark shadows coming from Israel’s sin and rebellion against the Lord. But as we saw last week, judgment is not the last word. Isaiah points to the triumph of God’s grace, the coming of the suffering servant, the Messiah. Here we find a shared joy and a transformed dread. Well, looking first then at this shared joy, as we noted last week in the first two verses, repentance is the foundation of our joy. We We turn away from ourselves, we turn away from our sin, and we turn towards the Lord, towards salvation, towards joy. Repentance fuels our hearts with praise. Now here in verse 3, Isaiah goes on. He says, With joy, you will draw water from the wells of salvation. A beautiful image. It certainly invokes God’s people in the wilderness after the Exodus. They’re in a dry and a parched waterless land. God brings forth water gushing out of a rock. A rock that the apostle Paul tells us is Christ himself. Jesus is the one who said, Let anyone who is thirsty come to me.
Whoever believes in me, as scripture has said, Rivers of living water will flow from within them. Joy from within because of his spirit in us. And Isaiah continues, And you will say in that day, Give thanks to the Lord. Call upon his name. Make known his deeds among the people. Proclaim that his name is exalted. Almost identical to the beginning of Psalm 105. And what we see here is that evangelism is the result of salvation because you must share good news. We share our joy. Like a holiday meal, it is best enjoyed with many people around the table. The gospel is good news. The good news of Jesus Christ, and we are to make those deeds of Christ known to the world, to the nations. The part of our joy is in sharing that. Isaiah goes on, Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done glories seriously. Let us be made known in all the earth. This is some serious merry-making. Again, when you think of God, you think of this joy. But This joy is only possible in Christ, in Christianity. You see, God is not like a lot of people imagine. It’s this giant thought thinking itself.
This cosmic brain floating around just contemplating big ideas, E equals MC², and just thinks about that for eternity. No, that’s not the God that the Bible has revealed to us. God radiates joy because in him is an endless giving of love and joy from Father to Son, Son to Father, and the spirit is that bond of love and joy ever moving between them. God’s Love is a triune love, the triune joy, the love that comes to us in the shape of the incarnate Son, taking upon himself on his cross our ultimate failure, taking upon himself Our loss of joy. Jesus took upon himself our loss of joy on the cross. And in Jesus, he transforms our feeble attempts at joy, and he takes us beyond ourselves into a new joy that hope does not deceive. A real hope, a real joy that’s found only in him. In this joy that finally triumphs over every Everything in the world that opposes the Lord over all who would rebel against him. And that rebellion includes every attempt to find joy, to find salvation outside of God himself. Think about it. Adam and Eve eating the forbidden fruit.
That was the first meal without communion with God, without blessing, without consecration. And it brought death. That’s the nature of life Death disconnected from God. It’s death. Our joys disconnected from God are not joys. They’re feeding, fleeting, and ephemeral. You take something in the same way that sex without the loving bonds and commitment of marriage, and you could include pornography here, it’s disconnected, it’s unconsecrated. It’s sex simply for sex itself without blessing, and it brings death. Why? Paul tells us in Ephesians 5 that marriage is a symbol, as it were, of Christ’s relationship to his bride, the church. And that means a committed, bonded, consecrated love. And that is true of all desires and passions apart from God. All of them. When they’re done by themselves without connection to his blessing and consecration, they’re hollow. All of our hungers of life, all of our desires, finally is a desire for him. All that God has made us for hunger three people is that we would hunger for God. One writer, he says, Through the cross, joy came into the world. Joy, not just for individuals, but joy for the church for the world. The gift of joy does not depend on anything in this world.
It’s not the reward of anything that we have done or anything in us. It’s totally, absolutely a gift. That Greek word that captures this is kairos. It means gift, it means grace. At times, well, which is it? Gift or grace? Yes. God’s gift, God’s grace to us, given unmerited by us of anything in us, it comes from him. And Being pure gift, this joy has transforming power. For he who offers us this is also the one who is offered. And coming to him, we also must offer ourselves to him. We enter into the space that God has made for us in his son. This love and joy celebrated in this trying relationship God has made for us to enter into. That’s why G. K. Chester, and he can say that for the Christian, joy is the central thing in life. Sorrow is peripheral. The great power of our joy in Christ is most clearly seen, though, in our suffering. It doesn’t mean we put on a fake smile, pretend that everything is all right in our lives when it’s not. We don’t pretend that things are okay like, I am happy and joyful. I lost my job today.
My marriage is tanking. Praise Jesus. Oh, I’m going to the doctor again. Thanks be to God. Who are you kidding? Those are not joyful moments, and you don’t have to call them joyful. We grieve. We experience hurt. And joy, though, is not just a happy emotion, though. It’s something far deeper, something structural, fundamental, deep, a bedrock foundation for us because it comes from the greater narrative of Christ’s triumph over sin and death. As real as our hurts are, our losses, our griefs, we know that that is not the final word. You don’t have to tell yourself you’re happy when you’re not. But in the midst of those sad and terrible moments, you can go, This is not the only part of this story. I am connected to what Jesus has done from start to finish, and it ends really well. I may not know it now. Weeping may come for the night, but joy is going to come in the morning. I am guaranteed the morning because that guarantee is in the personal work of Jesus. How else do we say with Isaiah, I will give thanks to you, O Lord. Give thanks to the Lord.
Call upon his name. Make known ‘Claim his deeds among the peoples. Proclaim his name. Sing praises to the Lord. Shout and sing praises to the Lord, shout and sing for joy. ‘ Terrible things were ahead for Israel when Isaiah is saying this, but it’s not the final word. Faith in Christ, it looks forward based on what he has already done. It’s a future hope based on a present reality. It says that, though my circumstances do not change, my God is worthy of my praise, of my joy, because his spirit dwells in me. How else would we understand Paul when he says in 2 Corinthians, In our affliction, I am overflowing with joy. Or 1 Thessalonians, For you receive the word in much affliction with the joy of the Holy spirit. Turning to the Lord’s salvation, we turn to joy, and the joy’s triumph is the triumph ultimately of Jesus redeeming us through the cross. So what the author of Hebrews says, For the joy set before him, he endured the cross, despising its shame, and set down at the right-hand of the throne of God. And it is in that joy that we are to share to the world that motivates us in telling the good news.
We see that that’s not only a shared joy, it also is one that transforms us. It transforms even our dread. Look again at verse 6. At the very end, he says, To inhabit a Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy one of Israel. That phrase, the Holy one of Israel, is used 29 times in the Bible. 26 of them are in the prophet Isaiah. It’s amazing themes of God’s Holiness and God’s joy and God’s salvation. God is revealed as a Holy God. Isaiah brings that out time and time again, the Holiness, the Majesty of God. In that dramatic vision in chapter 6, Isaiah is transported, as it were, to the very throne room of heaven, and he sees the Lord, and he sees these angelic seraphims crying out, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. And confronted with this awesome wholeness and Majesty of God, Isaiah is undone. Woe is me, for I’m a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. The wholeness of God brings to highlight Isaiah’s own sin and wretchedness. God’s glory, it produces in us joy, along with fear and dread.
Because of the sheer awe of who he is. Like a bright light blinds eyes that are unaccustmed to it. So we, too, when we’re in the presence of God, are unaccustmed to the brightness and the radiance of his being, blinding to us. But even as it was for Isaiah, that dread does not last in its final state for him. We see there in the midst of that, this angelic being, the seraphon goes to the altar and this burning hot coal comes to Isaiah and it touched his mouth. And there at the angel said, Behold, he has touched your lips. Your guilt has taken away. Your sin is atoned for. And then I heard a voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send? Who will go for us? ‘ And immediately, Isaiah says, ‘Here am I. Send me. ‘ The dread and the terror is transformed by the Lord himself. And Isaiah is now volunteering to be God’s messenger, to share what he has received. In the midst of this, we know that joy is more than human happiness. It can be found in our deepest suffering. There’s a paradox of Christian joy. It’s found in the midst of sadness and affliction, and it’s in these very places that it gives proof of its power.
How do we know its power? Because it’s not overcome in the places where we’d expect it to be overcome. I read somewhere, someone said, Joy comes easier the more often you are joyous. Comes easier the more often that you’re joyous. And then I put it in your bulletin as well from Julianna Schmemen. She said this. She said, Joy is not light-hearted laughter. It’s an effort, a daily exercise of seeing the beauty of one’s life through thick and thin, of singing Alleluia on a happy day as well as on one’s dying day. It’s not happy-clappy, not just a fleeting emotion, it’s an effort. We’re taking the truth, the transformative truth of the message of the salvation of Christ, and it’s changing us. From the inside out. Our joy is the simplest form of gratitude. Joy is the simplest form of our gratitude, the expression of it. And this joy, it comes from the Lord. It transforms us into messengers. We must tell who Jesus is and what he has done. When the angels came through the shepherds and declared in Luke 2, Fear not for behold, I bring you good news of great joy. Joy. That will be for all the people.
Then when the shepherds heard this, what did they do? They turned around, they went and told everybody what they had seen and heard because it was great joy. They shared it. But a question is still there. Why the shadows in this message of joy? The bright coming of Jesus, even at his birth, came with the shadows of King Herod putting to death the baby boys in the region of Bethlehem. We see these shadows, they point to the reality of a cost payment for that joy. That the man of sorrows, acquainted with grief, would come into our darkest moments, our God forsakenness, even as Isaiah had promised. Problem is that we want a joy without the cross. We want a ransom from sin and death with no penalty. We want a redemption with no sting. But there is no joy without the cross. There’s no joy without the agnesities of Golgotha. Why? Because our sin is real. Our emity towards God is real and it must be dealt with. And what we have now is a down payment of what is yet to be. We are then to live by faith, knowing that the narrative of Christ stands against our present narrative, and it must win out in the end.
So whether you are experiencing moments of great joy, moments of great sadness, and you know those fluctuate. And if you’re in the midst of it, you’re in moments of terrible grief and loss, by faith, you hold to the reality that this is not the end of the story. There is resurrection at the end. There is the second coming of Jesus to make all things right. And that reality, based upon what Jesus has done, the incarnate, when coming into the world, is what anchors the soul. It tells us that in those shadowed moments, this shadow, this darkness, is not going to overcome me. Because there is one in me greater than in the world in these moments. And that allows us then, as we’re told in scripture, to weep with those who weep, to rejoice with those who rejoice, and not being phony about it. We can enter into either one of those with the most genuine authenticity of our faith because it is founded and grounded upon the person and work of Christ Jesus. It’s an indestructible, indomitable joy. When Jesus was with his disciples at the end in the last supper, he told them, he said, I’ve spoken all these things to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full.
And he’s talking about the suffering infirm. He’s talking about the dark night of the soul for all the disciples and everything and every hope and promise they had is going to come crashing to the ground in a moment. And Jesus is telling them the truth of that’s not the final word. My joy will make you full because of what is coming. That’s the good news that we have. Not about an emotional state or some people a little more melancholic, some a little more happy. No, we’re talking about the very foundation of our being in God. God has made us for joy. He has made us hungry beings that we would desire him above all things. That is the good news that we have that we go into the world with. Christmas is before us. I know for some people there is a real dread there. Like, Oh, my goodness, can it just be over? The thought of coming together with some family and the problems that are there and the difficulties, or it highlights the estrangements. That’s not the end. You are part of a greater story. And you can take that into the midst of those moments, the truth and the reality of that.
That fuels then your responses. That fuels how you interact with people who maybe aren’t kind and charitable and loving as you would like them to be. But not so for you. Yours is a different spirit. Because the spirit of the living Christ dwells in you. The salvation that you have received is the wellespring of your praise and your worship and your delight. And it is that strength that we take into those moments. Again, not trying to tell yourself a bad thing is not a bad thing, a terrible thing is not. No, you’re not trying to one up your head on falseness. You’re coming in the middle of that saying, This is not going to rule me. This is not going to have the last say Jesus is. It is his joy given to me, to the life of the church, the people of God that we are to take out into the world. That is the good news that people so desperately need to hear because they have been made as hungry beings whose hunger and thirst is only going to be satisfied in God himself. And everybody apart from Christ is looking to the wrong things, to that which is a hollow echo.
It is just a façade of what was meant to be real and lasting and substantive in their life. And you and I then, if you go in living out that reality of being able to say, this is what is true, This is what is real. Yes, your circumstances may be terrible, true enough, but that is not the final say if you are in Christ. The final say in Jesus is a yes and an amen. It is whatever is bad, whatever is destructive, whatever is turned upside down will be write-ed by the Lord of glory, and I fit into his story. He is rewriting my pages with his redemptive ink. This new story that you and I are a part of comes out of everything Isaiah is speaking to. And as we worship together, we are showing in our gratitude of everything God has done. Our joy is the expression of that gratitude. Our joy in Jesus is transforming us as well into joyful people, responding to the love and the joy of Father to Son, Son to Father in the bond of the spirit that we have now entered into by grace. Pray with me.
Father Almighty, we do thank you and praise you for your goodness, your glory. Father, for your self-communicating joy to us in your son. And Father, I would pray and ask. I know, Lord, everybody here is in different spots. Lord, I pray that you would take those who are struggling in the midst of real sorrows and affliction. Lord God, that you would not only uphold them, strengthen them, but Lord, that you would continue to show them the end of the story. Father, that the truth of Jesus would be an anchoring reality in those dark moments. And Father, for those who are here and life has been good and they still know this is the blessing of your presence. Lord, I pray that you would continue, Father, showing them that these desires are desires for you in the end. Make us hungry, make us thirsty people for you, oh God. We pray and ask this through Christ our Lord. Amen.
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