Well, good morning. On that Gloria chorus, I run out of breath. You know, you just keep going. It’s like, I don’t have a big enough diaphragm for that. But no, it’s a good Christmas song. Hey, good morning. It’s good to be with you. And Merry Christmas to you. We’re going to be in Psalm 126. If you turn there with me in your Bible, Psalm 126.
Last week for Advent season, we talked about it. We talked about the Advent means the coming. It’s the coming of Christ into the world. And because Christ came into the world, we learned last week that Jesus is our living hope. It’s a hope that’s real and it’s a hope that’s alive. And this week, I want us to turn our attention to joy. We have joy because of the Advent season. If you look with me in Psalm 126,
the psalmist says, When the Lord restored the faithful, the fortunes of Zion,
we were like those who dream.
Then our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue with shouts of joy.
Then they said among the nations, The Lord has done great things for them. The Lord has done great things for us. We are glad.
Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the Negev. Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy. He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing,
shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him. I remember when I was 15 years old, I was really into the guitar. I was into sports in high school. You know, like the Iron Bowl. I didn’t even know what that was for the longest time. I don’t keep up with sports at all, but I love music. And so I really, really played guitar in middle school, high school. It’s just what I did when I was 15.
And as a 15-year-old, like the greatest, the greatest guitar I could ever have was a Taylor guitar. If you don’t know anything about guitars, it’s just a top-of-the-line guitar. And why I thought my parents would, I don’t know, but I thought they would buy me a Taylor guitar for Christmas. And so I’m 15 years old, and I’m asking them, and I’m begging them. And I know it’s not going to happen, but I’m just like, maybe it’ll happen, you know? And so it’s Christmas, and we’re sitting around, and we do all the gifts, you know? No Taylor guitar, and I’m kind of bummed out. Like, man, that’s no good. My sister walked off for a second, and she came back carrying this guitar. And I didn’t want to get excited too quick. So, you know, I just was like looking. I was waiting, and sure enough, on that guitar case, etched was Taylor guitars on it. And I opened it up, and there was a Taylor 414, the ideal guitar. And I didn’t have words. I remember, like, freaking out. I didn’t know what to say. I just grabbed the thing and just started playing on it. It was like nothing else, you know, I’d ever had before. There weren’t words for it.
Christmas season, I believe if we see Christmas, all right, there’s not words for it.
I think Christmas season, we’re often underwhelmed, and we settle for happiness,
all the while the Lord has offered to us joy. I want us to reclaim what it means to have joy, certainly in light of the Christmas season. So again, at verse 1, the psalmist says, when the Lord restored the fortunes of Zion,
we were like those who dream that our master, our mouth was filled with laughter and our tongue with shouts of joy. Look with me at Jeremiah chapter 25, verse 10.
Because Israel had sinned, they disobeyed God. Here’s what God said through the prophet Jeremiah. Moreover, I will banish from them the voice of mirth, happiness, and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom, the voice of the bride, the grinding of the millstones and the light of the lamp. This whole land, shall become a ruin and a waste. And these nations shall serve the king of Babylon 70 years. So God’s saying, because of your great sin, you’re going into Babylonian captivity for 70 years. God’s people, especially the southern kingdom of Judah, they had long put off repentance. God had given them ample chances time and time again through generations. He encouraged them to do it. He waited for them to do it. He sent many, many prophets to tell them, hey, repent, repent. Repent, repent. But the repentance was always half-hearted. And the repentance was always short-lived. So I think it can really be true in saying this. God didn’t so much take away from His people as much as it’s true they willingly gave up what they had.
And what did they have? Well, they had mirth. It’s not a word we use much, but they had mirth. It’s just this incredible amount of happiness. More pointedly, what they had uniquely was joy. And joy, it’s a word you see thrown around at Christmas time. It’s in commercials. It’s written on everything. Joy, joy, joy. But what is joy really? Well, here’s what joy is. Joy is intense pleasure in God that can’t be taken away and can never change. That’s what joy is. It’s intense pleasure in God that it can’t be taken away. It’s only, found in God alone. That’s what it is. It’s a happiness that’s unbreakable. Happiness by itself, by its nature, it changes. You’re happy. You’re having a good day. Got a bill you didn’t see coming. Not happy anymore, right? Happiness rises and falls. And we all fight to be happy. The problem with happiness by its nature is it just comes and it goes. But joy, if you can get a hold of it, it’s an intense pleasure that will be with you always.
It’s absolute.
And they had it for so long,
but they gave it up. They gave up what God freely gave to them.
God defied Egypt to save them out of slavery. God gave them food and water in the wilderness. God made it so that their clothes wouldn’t wear out though they were in the wilderness for 40 years. Their clothes never wore. Then God gave them power to defeat all the pagan nations. God made them an undefeatable world power. God gave them immeasurable riches. God gave them His law so that they could know and obey Him. God gave them the temple so they could draw near to Him. God had given them everything so that it can be said God Himself was the source of their joy. Everything they had in life, it was just like leaves coming off of the tree of God’s joy. It was irrevocably theirs.
But now they’re in Babylonian captivity for their sin. And they’re not filled with intense pleasure anymore.
They’re filled with intense joy. They’re filled with sorrow.
They’re not laughing. They’re weeping. They had shouts of joy, but those are silent. But here’s what God does because God’s merciful. Look at what God says in Jeremiah chapter 31. He says, Hear the word of the Lord, O nations, and declare it to the coastlands far away. Say,
He who scattered Israel will gather him and will keep him as shepherds keep his flock. For the Lord has ransomed Jacob and has redeemed him from the hands too strong for him. They shall come and sing aloud on the height of Zion. They shall be radiant over the goodness of the Lord, over the grain, the wine, the oil, over the young of the flock and the herd. Their life shall be like a watered garden and they shall languish no more. Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance and the young men and the old shall be merry. I will turn their mourning into joy. I will comfort them. And give them gladness for sorrow.
Great was their fall, but how amazing was their restoration they didn’t deserve. They had fallen from God. They had fallen from their joy, but wonders of wonders, God gave it back to them. And the psalmist says, when God restored us from Babylonian captivity, we didn’t have words for it. We didn’t have songs for it. It was just these shouts of joy. We just had this intense pleasure because God chose to love us. God chose to draw us back to Himself again. The psalmist says it was like a dream. You know, it was too good to be true. It was too good to be real. But wonder of wonders, the psalmist says it was real. It was like living a dream.
And friends, here’s what you and I have to get and grasp as followers of Jesus.
Grasp Christmas different from the way the world grasps it is this. As great as that restoration God gave Israel, our restoration, our salvation, and consequently our joy in Jesus is far greater. We’ve talked about types. Things in the Old Testament, they’re types. They’re symbols of something far better coming. And what’s far better than being saved out of geographical Babylon to geographical Israel is being saved to God for an eternity. This psalm, Psalm 126, it’s one of 15 psalms, and they’re called the Songs of Ascent or Songs of the Pilgrim. And in all these psalms, it’s, this song of this pilgrim who’s traveling to the city of God and he’s looking up. He’s looking up to where God is because he knows God dwells in Zion from Zion alone. His hope will come, his life will come, and his joy will come. And friends, Zion does not just mean anymore the geographical city of Jerusalem. It means, the Hebrew writer tells us, the heavenly Jerusalem, that new place where God’s people dwell with their God again in all gladness and joy. That’s why, that’s why Christmas is so great for us. We celebrate with shouts of joy because God made a dream a reality. He brought us back to fellowship with him through his son, Jesus.
Jesus, as a babe in a manger, it’s not a generic symbol of Christmas. My dad has it, and honestly, I hate it. He’s had them since we were kids, but he puts them out every Christmas. It’s like his, you know, it’s not going to be about presents. It’s going to be about Jesus. So it’s these giant plastic wise men, you know, like this giant Jesus in like this baby manger, like all the, all the paints faded off. It’s got the lights inside of it, right? So you just see that everywhere. But really, it’s not silent night. I love the song, but it’s not calls for a silent night. I think Jesus, as a babe in a manger, it’s calls for shouts of inexpressible joy because it’s a reminder that God brought you in our restoration of something we lost. And what did we lose? We lost knowing
and being known by God. What you know we’re created for. That’s what, that’s what Christmas is. God breaking his way into the Babylon of our world. Babylon in the scriptures, it’s just the antithesis of God. Christ came into the Babylon of our world of momentary happiness and he called us out instead to eternal, unbreakable, forever intense joy. The infant Jesus became the boy Jesus who became the man Jesus and the man Jesus died on a cross and was raised to new life that you and I could have a life and have joy with him. And his father in heaven forever. We were in the bonds of sin and shame. We were condemned to exile away from God forever. But Jesus himself became the living way to fullness of life and fullness of joy.
Sin promises life, doesn’t it? Sin promises joy, but it never delivers at all. What it produces is sorrow. It produces death.
But the prophet Isaiah tells us, Christ is the one who gives us death. Christ became for us the man of sorrows. Christ became for us one who was crushed for our sins. Jesus died in our place. So you know what’s so good about Christmas?
Easter. The great news about Christmas is that Easter is coming. Without Easter, Christmas doesn’t mean so much, does it? Jesus wasn’t just here, but he paid our debt and he made a way to have joy in God again. I want you to see what Jesus says in John 6. John 6, verse 19.
It says, Jesus knew that they wanted to ask him. So he said to them, Is this what you were asking yourselves, what I meant by saying a little while and you will not see me and again a little while and you will see me? Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because of, because her hour has come. But when she’s delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish for joy that a human being has been born into the world. So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice and grab this and no one will take your joy from you. Jesus is saying, I’m going to die and in that grave three days it’s going to look like all is lost. It’s going to look like your sorrow is eternal. But it’s temporary. You’re going to see me again. When you see my resurrected life again, a life indestructible, Paul says, a life that defeated sin, that defeated death, that carried our shame, a life through which by faith we can go back to God. Jesus says, when you see me again, you’re going to have an intense pleasure in me that cannot be taken away. The spiritual resurrection that you and I have received in Jesus, it’s forever and intensely wonderful because the resurrected life, the life of Jesus is forever and intensely wonderful.
Hard was our fall,
but great and beyond description is our resurrection in the man, Jesus Christ, to know Him, to know the Father, to be full of the Spirit.
The Apostle Peter says, you don’t see Him now, but you love Him. You don’t see Him now, but you believe in Him and you have joy that’s inexpressible. And let me say to you this this morning, I think if we truly understand Christmas, truly get it, sometimes you ought to say to yourself, is this a dream? Is it real? The gospel’s that good, we are that low and undeserving, Christmas seen aright will always drive us to our knees in humility with shouts of inexpressible joy. Charles Spurgeon said he takes our exile and turns it into ecstasy and he takes our banishment and he turns it into bliss. And I think if we’re hearing all this, it’s like, I think you’re too excited about Christmas. And we’re just quite underwhelmed by it all. Let me say it’s not because the gospel is underwhelming. It’s because you and I, too long, we find our satisfaction in the lesser things of this world. I think we’re really good, aren’t we, at getting amused with stuff, even with people, self-idolatry, the pleasure of sin. We’ve learned how to satisfy our souls on the staleness of bread. When Jesus offers before us a banquet, a feast of joy, to truly be satisfied.
The advent and the cross, seen against the backdrop of sin, seen against the paleness, the silliness of this world. Friend, it’ll make us say, that’s like a dream that God would love me like that, that God would send His Son, that God desires I be intensely satisfied in Him for an eternity. There’s nothing like it.
The gospel, I think, is the dream from which you never must wake and the nightmare of the fall of man, mankind is something Christ undid and made it untrue. I heard it in a song recently and I thought it was a great way to say it. The song says, it may be too good to be understood, but it’s not too good to be true. It may be too good to be understood, but it’s not too good to be true. I think when we can slow down and really just meditate and dream a little bit about the gospel, I think we’re left with that same kind of humble thought. It seems too good to be true, but wonder of wonders, it’s real. It’s real. God loves us that much.
Maybe you haven’t. I’ve been contacted multiple times through email by a certain Nigerian prince promising me if I would just send him a little bit of money, he would send me a whole bunch of money.
Now, obviously, I’ve never fallen for that, but people fall for it. Jessica used to be a banker and she would have, she would have people come in who emptied their bank accounts believing it and she would have to sit there and tell them, like, that’s not real, you know? So we’re constantly hearing and seeing things in this life that they say they’re so good, but they are too good to be true, you know? Even I think the things we get our hands on, whether it’s something we just really think is going to bring us happiness, whether it’s, you know, the next best piece of technology or the nicest clothes that we want or this position and status in life or if I just have this amount of money, maybe then just then I’ll have this happiness, but it never delivers, does it? It’s because you weren’t designed to truly be intensely satisfied in anything other than knowing Jesus.
Stop looking for joy in this life. I promise you, you’ll never find it.
And let me say to you again, and I say it in different ways, I’ll say it like this this morning, dream a little more. Waste a little more time dreaming and cherishing and just savoring the truth of the gospel because that, friends, if you place faith in Jesus, that’s your true fortune. And I say, look up, pilgrim. Keep looking up to God, reminding from where your help comes. It comes from Zion.
Go back to verse 2 with me.
In the second part of verse 2, it says, Then they said among the nations, the Lord has done great things for them. The Lord has done great things for them. The Lord has done great things for us. We are glad. In Nehemiah chapter 6, verse 15, it says, So the wall was finished on the 25th day of the month of Elul in 52 days. And when all our enemies heard of it, all the nations around us were afraid and fell greatly in their own esteem for they perceived that this work had been accomplished with the help of our God. So King Cyrus of Persia, Persia has since defeated Babylon. Okay? And God moves in King Cyrus to send the Jews back to Jerusalem so they can rebuild the city. But it was not without trial. The nations that had been forced to live there because they’d been defeated as well, they were not happy the Jews were coming back to rebuild their city. And if you ever read through Ezra and Nehemiah, you’ll see what incredible opposition they faced when Zerubbabel rebuilt the temple and when Nehemiah rebuilt the wall. The opposition, though, was so great that when they finally rebuilt the wall, it says all the people were afraid because it left them thinking with all this opposition they had and they were still able to build the wall, it must mean their God is real. It must mean their God did this. But it’s not the first time that it happened. When God saved the people out of Exodus, God says, Pharaoh, I raised you up to destroy you so that the whole world will know that I’m powerful. And way before that, way back in Genesis, chapter 21, before the nation of Israel’s Israel, and it’s just one man, Abraham,
Abimelech and his commander, they come to him, they say, Abraham, we’re afraid of you. We know that everything you do, God touches, and we just want you to make a peace treaty with us. So here you’ve got one man in the midst of many nations saying, make peace with us because we recognize your God is so big and we recognize your God is so real. And you get so many examples of that in the Old Testament. And what does it say to us? It says this, that God does mighty things to bless and make His people glad, but also so that many more people will be made glad through seeing the one true God.
Israel’s return to the land was about more than just them being restored. It was about the nations being made glad to see how good this one true God was. And as much as that’s true in the Old Testament, we get a window into how God loves the nations and wants all the nations to come to Him and have joy. Friends, it’s that much more realized, it’s that much more amplified when we get to the New Testament. Paul says in Romans 10, verse 12,
So God has this heart not to say, hey, just y’all can be full of joy, just you. No, God’s heart before the beginning of time was that all people, and all places of all skin color, all background, whatever your education says, whatever how much money you have, whatever personality you have, God is trying to say, I have loved you through my son Jesus. And you get this beautiful picture of it in John’s revelation. John 7, it says, After this I looked and behold a great multitude that no one could number from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing for the throne before the Lamb, clothed in white, in white robes with palm branches in their hands, crying out with a loud voice, Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.
So let me ask you again this Christmas season, if you’re a Christian, if you’re a follower of Christ, is Christmas a time for you to be happy? Or is it especially a time for us to remember our joy in the Lord is going to be visible to the world or else it doesn’t have joy. And if our joy is dim and our joy is not visible, what’s the world going to see? If my Christian life or your Christian life, it’s like my forced religion that I have to be associated with, it’s what I grew up with, or really it’s this burdensome life that’s keeping me from what I really want to do, you know, what the world’s doing. You know, I do this because I have to do it. Who wants that? I don’t want that. If you can’t supremely be satisfied in Jesus, He’s not forcing you to keep pretending. You know, and I don’t think the word, you know, pleasure is a dirty word. I think it’s become a dirty word. Because of the things we find pleasure in. But remember this always, God created you to be fulfilled and to be satisfied and to have maximum pleasure in your head and in your heart. But it’s only found in knowing Him alone and in nothing else.
Religion, in and of itself, it says this to you, try your hardest to not do the stuff you really want to do. And if you don’t do the stuff you really want to do, maybe if you do it well enough, you’ll get something better someday when you die. That’s the message of religion. Just keep the rules that you don’t want to keep. But Christianity is different. Christianity is a living out of something we’ve already been given. I don’t have to just fight to abstain from sin. The Spirit is actually changing me. He’s growing me in my joy so that I don’t desire the things of this world. Like I desire, what’s wrong? I desire heaven. I desire to live like a citizen of heaven. So my desires are actually being reshaped because of the joy that I have. And the Spirit at the same time is giving me power to actually act on and live out those desires. So joy is very much so the fuel and it’s the lifeblood of the Christ that’s in me for all of life for following Him. So I say to you, no, Christianity, yes, it’s religion in a sense, but more than that, it’s being full of the person of Jesus. And we’re full of Christ. We burn with joy and we burn with joy. We look different to the world and we look different. We can tell them, let me tell you about the gospel of Jesus. Let me tell you about what God did to bring all people from all places to Himself to have eternal joy. If you have joy, it will be contagious. You can’t keep it to yourself. It’s like a bad cold, but a good one. That doesn’t make any sense.
If you have it, it’ll spread. To whom? God knows.
When? God knows. Friends, we’ve got to be faithful to fan the flame of joy within us that’s radiating when God desires to use us.
I send you emails sometimes about the persecuted church in India, the persecuted church in China. I don’t know if you saw the one I sent. I think it was last week about the pastor who was sentenced four years to prison for essentially just passing out gospel tracts. So that’s four years in prison for just passing out gospel tracts. You think, well, that’s an incredible sacrifice, but why? Why is that so different from any given terrorist that blows up a bunch of people or is willing to commit suicide to do that? Isn’t it just zeal? One’s got zeal in one direction. One has zeal in another direction. Not at all. I would say to you this, the man who’s willing to be in prison four years apart from his family, he’s doing it because of something he’s already been given. Where any other religion is clawing and fighting to maybe just do it good enough and maybe it’s not good enough, maybe I can find something better. Friends, we already have everything in Jesus. We already lay claim to the riches in the heavenly places the Apostle Paul tells us. It’s why, like yesterday, we go to Brink Park and we walk around and we say, hey, we’re from Providence Fellowship and we just want to ask you, do you know what the meaning of Christmas is and who Jesus is? That’s why we do it. It’s why you should not turn a blind eye to all your co-workers, but you should prayerfully consider, Lord, how can I speak? How can I speak? How can I speak? How can I speak gospel into their life? How can I meaningfully get to know this person because they don’t have joy? Or instead of driving into your garage and closing the door and you’re in your little kingdom, I’m going to walk across the street and invite my neighbor over to dinner because I know they need love and they don’t have any joy. So when you have joy, it reshapes, doesn’t it, what you’re willing to give up and what you want to live for. And I think the selfishness of constantly living for me and I’m just turning the wheels in my own life, I’m trying to just, I’m just trying to get through the day that looks like a life without joy. But Christian joy, it turns it all on its head. So friends, I say to you again this Christmas season, do you need a wake-up call to remember the joy you have in Jesus and how God desires to use that joy to make others glad in His Son?
Back to verse 4 with me, Psalm 126.
The psalmist says, Restore our fortunes, O Lord, like streams in the Negev.
Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy. He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him. The Negev is the southernmost part of Palestine’s below Judah and it was a wasteland. And it has been very rare still, I guess is the case. It’s rare for water to fall there. It wasn’t inhabitable, so you didn’t want to be there. It was essentially a desert place.
And so the psalmist says, Lord, we’re like the desert place if You don’t refresh us, if You don’t renew us. It’s something that only God can do in them, through them, and for them. But you’ve got to kind of ask yourself the question, why is the psalmist asking for restoration? Because he just said, the Lord restored us. So the Lord, how is it that He’s saying, restored us, but now He’s asking for restoration again?
Well, it’s true that God saved them out of Babylonian captivity, but they needed much more reform in their hearts. They rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem, but what they needed were the walls of their heart to be remade.
Nehemiah and Ezra, they had their work cut out for them not long after they returned from exile. It says the people started intermarrying and mixing with the pagan nations. And it says that Ezra, he pulled his hand, he pulled his hair out, and he pulled his beard out, and he ripped his garment. He was so angry that people were already turning back again to paganism. So yes, God restored them, but so it is the case for us in this life too. I constantly need the Lord to be doing a restoring work in me. I always need, I’m not done now. Like, thanks Lord, I’m saved. I’m a Christian. I can go off and do my own thing. Not true.
I need an ever-growing dependence and realization that I have nothing and I have no one outside of Jesus alone. And because that’s true, friends, there’s going to be times of sorrow. There’s going to be times of poverty in this life. That’s just the case for the Christian. And I’ve said this before. If you’re a Christian and you don’t have a theology of suffering, watch out because you’re not going to know what to do with suffering that’s going to certainly come your way. We mourn and we suffer and we’re in poverty. We’re impoverished as Christians in this life. Why? Because the world on the outside and the sin on the inside, it’s constantly trying to drag us back to momentary happiness. It’s constantly saying, hey, eternal joy, it’s too hard to fight for. Eternal joy, it costs too much. Just have the happiness of the moment. Remember what Jesus said in His Beatitudes in Matthew chapter 5.
He said, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is what? The kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
So you and I, we’re poor in spirit now because we recognize, I don’t have anything in me that looks like God, that looks like His city. I don’t desire as I should desire. I don’t love as I should love. I’m immoral as I shouldn’t be. And so it’s a great poverty in me that I need Jesus to fill me up. And until I recognize that poverty of spirit, I’ve got nothing. And on the same token, I wish, and I’m mourning because I don’t want to look like it if I really have joy in the Lord. My joy is for the heavenly city of Jerusalem. I don’t want to live like the people living here. But it’s difficult. And it’s hard. And it’s not just me. I think when we’re in church, I see my brothers and I see my sisters and I see how the enemy is pulling and scrapping at everyone to keep us away and to go back to the way we were before. And I see how sin has infected the whole world. I see brokenness and I see suffering. And if we have joy, we weep it and we mourn it because we’re looking for that day when God comes back and He makes all things right and He makes all things new. The little bit of joy that I have, I’m waiting for God to blow it up.
So the psalmist says, it’s like this farmer in abject poverty. And he’s weeping as he goes.
But as he weeps, he’s just throwing out those seeds. He’s throwing out those seeds. It’s hard. And he’s hurting. And he’s lonely. And he wants to give up. But he keeps sowing the seed. And he keeps sowing the seed because he knows that one day he’s going to have a harvest that doesn’t, it’s not just like comparable to his suffering. It far outweighs his suffering. And friends, that’s the same promise for you and I. When we mourn and when we suffer the loss of this world, when we mourn and suffer the loss of ourselves, and it can be said, all we have is Christ. We can push through the hardest of times and know that someday, what little bit of joy we have now, God’s going to turn it into a harvest of righteousness. He’s going to, He’s going to turn it into a harvest of laughter. And we’re not even going to have words to celebrate what God did in His Son Jesus to bring us all the way home. It’s going to be like sheaves, like these giant things of grain just wrapped up on our shoulders. And we’re going to have so much of God, so much intense pleasure, we’re not going to know what to do with it all.
So the encouragement in Christmas is this. Though it be difficult now, though we weep and suffer now, God promises a harvest of righteousness, a harvest of joy, though we weep now, we’re going to go out laughing. We’re going to go out with songs of joy.
My microwave in my house, a few weeks ago, I opened it and it cracked off completely. And so I used super glue to get it back on there. And last night, I heard Jessica say from the other room, uh-oh, and I heard it crack off and it made a brand new crack in a new place. And it’s like, well, we’ve got to get a new microwave or fix this thing. Never would it cross my mind to not have a microwave, right? Because so much of our food and so much of the food we make for our kids, like, we microwave it, right? We want it fast. And that’s very indicative of our society. Like, I want results now, right? But that microwave mentality, it works against the principles of the kingdom. It works against what it means to be a follower of Jesus because the kingdom of God doesn’t sprout up overnight.
Like Jesus, it’s a long, long haul in the same direction where I’m just throwing out seed and it feels fruitless and it feels weak and it feels like it’s going to bear no return. But if I can have faith in Christ and I believe God’s Word, I can know that someday it’s going to be a harvest. It’s going to be so much more than what was temporary here.
So let me say to you this morning, nothing in your life, none of your suffering is a waste. Suffer well because God is using that to sow seeds, that will bear great fruit in the kingdom.
And it will all come to laughter and it will all come to joy at Christ’s second coming. So we have a living hope in Christ, but we also have
shouts of joy as well.
Let’s pray together.
Father, we just pray.
Lord, that You would constantly be leading us in Your Spirit just to turn us from
Lord, just making it, just living day by day. We don’t want to just exist. We want to thrive in the truth of who You are, thrive in what it means to know and be changed into the image of Jesus. We, Lord, want to rejoice and shout because Christmas means You have loved us and You have made a way for us to be with You forever. So we just pray You would just lead us into repentance, Lord, where we’re lazy with that, where we don’t love that as we should. And just stir us up, God, to worship.
And Lord, stir us up to worship You, Lord. Send us out to be Your messengers and to faithfully proclaim that gospel, that message of joy that can go out to all.
So we love You. And we just pray that in Jesus’ name.
Amen. Amen.