Well, good morning. I guess we should start saying Merry Christmas. It’s past Thanksgiving. So Merry Christmas to you. I wasn’t supposed to sing and play this morning, but Jessica spent the whole night at the ER with Josie. She’s got RSV real bad, like a chest virus thing, and so she just couldn’t make it this morning. They didn’t get home until not too long before I left, so it was a long night for them. So I’ll be praying for them, and I know we have other folks out sick as well. Well, so sick, sick, sick, but God is still good. This morning I want to be in Psalm chapter 33 with you. Psalm chapter 33, verses 1 through 4.

Psalm chapter 33, verses 1 through 4.

The psalmist says,

Shout. For joy in the Lord, O you righteous.

Praise befits the upright. Give thanks to the Lord with the lyre. Make melody to Him with the harp of ten strings. Sing to Him a new song. Play skillfully on the strings with loud shouts. For the word of the Lord is upright, and all His work is done in faithfulness.

You know, think about it. Think about Christmas songs, at least Christmas hymns. Now, secular Christmas songs, I think they get really old. There’s some we should just throw out and never bring back, like Santa Baby. I don’t need to hear that ever again, you know. There’s just certain ones I don’t want to hear. But Christmas hymns, I think they don’t get old because there’s just a special, unique quality about them. They capture, I think, so much of what we as believers look forward to in the Christmas season. And a couple different songs that came to mind this week. In the song, O Holy Night, the writer says, A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoices. And in the song, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel, the writer says, Rejoice, rejoice. Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel. So there’s something about Christmas that should make us, as followers of Jesus, rejoice. You and I. You and I have a special privilege. We have a special thing about which you and I are to rejoice. And it’s not something that everyone everywhere can do. It is a very specific thing for Christians to rejoice in the Christmas season. Rejoice.

And the psalmist gives that very command in verse 1.

He says, Shout for joy. And I think often we read these things in the Bible, like these really hearty, happy suggestions. We like see a mental picture of a bunch of people in ancient, you know, Israel, singing and dancing, and it seems like a very nice biblical picture. But we can’t simply be disconnected and look at the Bible like a story if we’re to have a meaningful relationship with Jesus in the Old and New Testament. It’s no good to be a follower of Jesus by association. It’s no good to carry the label. It’s not helpful. So if you and I are truly Christ’s, when Christ’s Word says something to us, we must obey it and desire to obey it in our life. We must desire to have a meaningful encounter with Jesus in the Old and New Testament because the whole thing is His Word. So when the psalmist says, Shout for joy, don’t let it be a pleasing thought in your mind. Let it be an expectation and a reality in your life. You must do this.

He says, Shout for joy. You can translate it, Sing for joy or rejoice. And it’s not a force command. You know, like if you’re a kid and your parents tell you, you know, go rake up the leaves, or if a servant gets some wearisome task from their master, that’s not what this kind of command is. This kind of command is only seeking to draw out from the Christian, from the saint, something, something that’s already by grace been put there. Joy. So God’s not calling us to act on something other than what He has made us to be.

Joy is a very different experience from anything a non-believer could have. The best that a person can know in this life apart from God is simply happiness.

Some great possession that gives you elation and thrill for the moment. A person who brings maybe some excitement, or you think, a purpose to your life, accomplishments before other people that leave you self-satisfied, sums of money that keep you comfortable for the future, health for your body.

All these things I want you to consider are nothing more than branches on a tree called happiness. Each of these things, as precious as they may seem in the moment, they wither, they die, they have a way of escaping us. And you may run to find the shade under one leaf or the other, but sure enough in the end the leaf falls and in that tree it withers up.

Possessions degrade. They get stolen. They get broken. We lose interest in them. Significant others let us down. They pass away.

They part us and go and go on.

Great accomplishments fade. And with passing time men find other people more impressive than you and you become a has-been. Money, money doesn’t buy happiness and health is certainly momentary. That tree friends, it withers, and it dies. But but I want to say to you this morning that that joy Christian Joy call it Christmas Joy. It finds us in a very different way. It finds us in a very different way because it’s not attached to what is earthly or that is to say temporal, Christian joy is anchored in what is eternal. Christian joy is anchored in what is unchanging, what is indestructible, what is infinitely satisfying. Joy is known then only by knowing God. Joy is a happiness that cannot be taken away or changed because hear me say it to you, God in heaven cannot be taken away from us or changed. He is eternal in the heavenly places. The possession of your joy in Christ is permanent. It’s permanent.

And the joy that the psalmist talks about here is his basis of appeal for this singing, shouting, rejoicing. And notice what he says, you ought to sing, you ought to shout, you ought to rejoice if you’re in the Lord. And it cannot be a thing that you can have apart from the Lord. Imagine a wedding celebration,

highly embellished and ornamental and it’s beautiful and it’s luxurious, luxurious and lavish, this wedding hall, decorations and food, yet there’s no bride and groom to speak of. That would be silly to have a wedding celebration. It would be impossible to have it. So friends, also, he’s appealing to them because they alone possess what it takes to worship and praise God. They can give the worship, they can give the praise because they are those who are in the Lord.

We cannot know true happiness apart from Christ. It’s a Christian thing. And I think at Christmas, we’re kind of encouraged to think about those things we should be thinking about year-round, but that’s fine. I think God builds those little annual things in our lives to help us kind of realign. And this joy in the Lord is one of them. So he says, hey, you righteous people, you know what you should be doing? You should be outwardly celebrating, the thing that God has uniquely put inside of you, and that is Christian joy. He says it befits you. That’s not like a word you and I would use on a regular basis, befit, but it means it’s what’s highly appropriate for you. It’s what’s beautiful for you. So it’s not even that he just says you can’t do it if you don’t have joy. He says if you have joy, if you are a righteous person, it’s really just what you’re supposed to do. You do it. This is deep because it’s who you are. It’s what you do. It just is you. You know, you don’t have to talk someone into being who they are. And that’s what he’s saying to them. He’s saying it’s beautiful for you to do it. It’s befitting for you to do it. It’s good that you do it. Because you’re the kind of people that love God. You’re the kind of people that love his morals. You’re the kind of people that love his character. You’re the ones who are trying in all things to be full of his commandments. And for us on this side of the cross, that means for the fullness of Jesus to be inside of us. You’re the ones who seek by way of desire. You’re not by way of force to obey God. He says it befits you. It befits you.

Proverbs 15.8 says,

The wicked, they offer up a sacrifice, but it’s an abomination. But the prayer of the upright is acceptable.

You see, God has made us righteous. He’s given us joy in himself so that we worship, worship, and praise him. And what we have cannot change. What we have is eternal. The God that is, is our God forever and ever. Charles Spurgeon said, To rejoice in temporal comfort is dangerous. To rejoice in self is foolish. To rejoice in sin is fatal. But to rejoice in God is heavenly.

So what must rejoicing do? It must not be, because this is not a Christmas psalm. There are no Christmas, I mean there are, but at the same time this wasn’t written for the birth of Christ because he didn’t know when that was going to be. This is a commandment for all of life. But what does Christmas do when we think about the joy of what Jesus did? It fills us with that joy. It reminds us of what we have. It’s who we are. It should be habit. Joy by habit is what the psalmist is arguing for. If you’re shall, sounds like a whisper, you’re probably not mindful of God who is yours, who has given you joy like you ought to be. To know and to have this God is to live to rejoice. It is to live to sing about him. It’s a blessed reality. I am in the Lord and the Lord is in me. Is the season a calm season? Is the season a stormy, rough season with spiritual plagues on every side? Joy is the expectation, not happiness. I didn’t say that. Joy is the expectation. Why? Because our joy is not dependent on external affairs. It’s dependent on God who is in the heavenly places. So life could buffet you with a thousand different things in a thousand different ways. But at the same time, you have, we have as Christians, a happiness that cannot be taken away. Cannot even a little dim that burning lamp of joy. So Paul can say in Philippians to those who are suffering, Rejoice always, I say to you. Rejoice. Rejoice. A somber, tepid Christian reserved in outward joy is a Christian with clouded vision. We get that way sometimes, don’t we? We get nearsighted by trial. We get nearsighted by some other thing that catches our eye. And what we do is we lose our happiness eventually, but we allow this world and we allow the enemy to rob us of our joy. But you’ve got to take it back. Because it cannot hold the joy that belongs to you. You are God’s. In no scheme of Satan, no worldly power can really take away your joy. It’s safe in the heavenly places. The happiness of God, which is joy, is yours. Do you believe that?

But I want you to see also, we lose that joy because we often give it up to lesser satisfaction. As you think about that very famous hymn, and I think it’s such a good line, it pens every human heart. Prone to wonder, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. How true that is. God is good then, you see, to keep us in joy, to draw us back to joy, even when we try to foil our own joy. We do that all the time, don’t we? Maybe it’s good things that could be enjoyed in moderation or sinful things from money to adultery. We find ways to look for things that can give us joy. That can give us a lasting happiness that only is in God, only in Jesus.

But friends, if God has marked us out for Himself, friends, we cannot lose that joy. And God is good to constantly draw us back. You know, if you read the Old Testament, you read of an unfaithful Israel. Oh, how unfaithful Israel was. Yet God says to them, I have loved you with an everlasting love. I have covenanted myself. To you. So you see, it doesn’t depend on you. It doesn’t depend on me. Our joy is dependent on God and what He has done for us in Jesus.

Augustine said, There is a joy which is not given to the ungodly, but to those who love thee for thine own sake, whose joy thou thyself are. And this is the happy life, to rejoice to thee, of thee, for thee. This it is, and there is no other.

So I want to encourage you, be a joyful person. Be a joyful person. I say be happy. Now there’s a huge difference, isn’t there, between happiness. Happiness is this fluctuating roller coaster thing and everybody rides it. Joy, though, is a special thing that Christians have. Now I think it’s your choice whether or not you live in that joy on a day-to-day basis. It’s your choice if you let earthly affairs, if you let schemes of Satan, if you let even your own flesh and its givings to sin, you know, squelch it out and keep it down. But the reality is nothing can take your joy from you. And the psalmist’s declaration is be the kind of saint, be the Christian, we should be the church that you’re daily living to shout it. You’re daily living to sing it. Sing it. Sing it in the car. If you have a horrible singing voice, the Bible’s encouraging you. Yes, you. Sing loud. Shout loud. Remind yourself of who God is, that He doesn’t change and He has drawn you to Himself and you are forever His. You are in the Lord.

Verse 2, he goes on to say, Give thanks to the Lord with the lyre. Make melody to Him with the harp. Make the harp of ten strings. Sing to Him a new song. Play skillfully on the strings with loud shouts. For the word of the Lord is upright and all His work is done in faithfulness.

It’s really kind of a unique thing because the psalmist is reminding us the power and the gift of music.

Everyone loves music. I don’t know if I’ve ever met anyone that says they hate music. But we all do. We all love music because music has a way of, I think, focusing our thoughts. It has a way of drawing out our emotions for that which we adore and love.

And in music, then the psalmist says this is its highest and greatest purpose right here. This is what it’s for. He says you should sing songs that are fresh. Sing songs that are new. Sing good songs to God about His mercies. And he says if you’re an instrumentalist, pray, play, with it can mean great merriment. Play well. Play excited. God doesn’t want to hear, you know, just mumbling words from a heart that’s half engaged. God doesn’t want to hear instrumentalists who are just going through the motions, you know, like some really, really old shirt that’s worn, but it’s clean and I’ll throw it on. I think a lot of times our worship looks like that. You know? I think our singing on Sunday morning, it should be so loud. I would hope that people could hear us outside singing. It’s not about coming in here and watching, you know, anyone play or anyone sing. It’s about being led to do what we should be doing together and that is exclaiming in a new song, playing skillfully, how great and wonderful God is. We sing those blessed truths of the gospel.

Music, think about in our culture, music is abused, isn’t it, to glorify, deify self. Music’s used to celebrate money, the good life, romantic relationships, relationships, but again, to us who have this joy in God, the psalmist says, your business with music is to live to high the name of God. It’s to worship God. It’s to praise Him. It’s to make His name very great. Remind yourself of this joy. Do it full of joy. And he gives us the very pointed reason

here in verse 4. He says, verse 4, why should you do this? Why should you sing this way? Why should you play with excellence? He says, because the word of the Lord is upright and all His work is done in faithfulness.

Whatever God says is good. Whatever God says is pure. Whatever God says is excellent. And whatever God does is good. And pure and excellent and faithful and trustworthy. So if God says a thing, it’s a good thing. But then if God does a thing, it’s a good thing. Whatever God purposes in His heart will be brought to pass and nothing and no one can change that thing. It’s good. So it really begs the question, doesn’t it? What has God done? If God deserves that kind of that kind of soul focused worship, worship, where my best words, my best melodies, my best skills with God’s people and it’s just this elation of joy coming out and rejoicing, what is it so great that God has done?

Well, this psalm tells us as does many other parts of the Bible in Hebrews 11.3 what God has done by His Word is He has created the universe out of nothing. Ex nihilo. God has created the universe out of nothing. God said it. That was His Word. And then God did it. And that was His work. He said it and it came to pass. It was a good thing He said and it was a good thing He did. And what does He say in Genesis after every day? He says, and it was very good. It was very good. The universe and every burning star, every swaying palm tree, every orchard, autumn leaf, all creatures show how great and glorious this God is who says good things and does good things. His Word and His work are faithful and true. If He says a thing, it’s good and it will come to pass without question. In Acts chapter 14, when Paul’s talking to these people in Lystra, it says, but when the Apostle Barnabas and Paul heard of it, they tore their garments and they rushed out into the crowd crying, Men, why are you doing these things? We also are men. They’re trying to worship Paul and Barnabas. We are men of like nature with you and we bring you good news that you should turn from these vain things to a living God who made the heavens and the earth and the sea and all that is in them. In past generations, He allowed all the nations to walk in their own ways, yet He did not leave Himself without witness for He did good by giving you rains from heaven and fruit from heaven.

So see how encompassing them God’s reign, God’s rule is. Paul said to them, you don’t even know about God until I showed up. Yet for every generation past, since the beginning of time, the goodness and the provision and the will of God has even put food on the plate of an unregenerate sinner. Why can you go out into the fields and have daily bread? It’s because God allowed that thing to happen. God is over every little thing and He’s good in every little thing He does. Down to the food you eat. That’s how encompassing and good God is to take care of you, to take care of people who do not love Him. That’s how good God is.

God is good then. God deserves to be worshipped and praised because of what He has done in creation. But the second thing is this, He’s good because of His word spoken in salvation. He deserves to be praised because of His word spoken in creation. But greater than that, God is to be worshipped because of His word spoken in salvation.

Does God deserve all the praises and all the singing voices? 10,000 examples for us to sing about endlessly of how good He is? Yes, absolutely. He’s unutterably good. So full of goodness. Matthew, Henry, says what a pity it is that this earth, which is so full of God’s goodness, should be so empty of His praises. And that of the multitudes that live upon His bounty, there are so few that live to His glory.

You see, God could have spoken a word of judgment over us. And if God spoke that word, it means it’s a good thing He would have done in judging us because we deserved it. And if He spoke the word, that means it would have come out in His works. And we deserved it. But this is how good God is. This is how kind He is. This is how gracious He is that He did not speak that irrevocable word of judgment over you and I. You and I have cause for joy because He has spoken a word of salvation over us. And if salvation is His word, salvation is His work.

Joy is ours, church, this Christmas season because God in His limitless purity and power is just as limitless in His grace and mercy.

John 1.14 We’re told about Jesus who is the Word. And what did that Word do? He came and He assumed a human flesh. Jesus came as the great light from heaven. Jesus came and He was incarnated. He became a full human. He came to fulfill the decree of God that sinners should be saved by His life, by His death, by His resurrection. The living Word of God, the Son of God, became for us salvation.

And if that’s God’s eternal decree, as Chase read that in Ephesians earlier, if that’s God’s eternal decree, friends, it’s His eternal work. Jesus in tune with the heart of the Father saves us. And it’s your joy, and my joy.

Jesus’ goodness is so apparent. How He loves the outcast. He draws near to the disreputable, the diseased. Rather than to judge, He came to bless. Rather than to push out, what does Jesus do? He draws us in. He doesn’t condemn. He saves in this by the power of His cross. But I want you to understand this. It’s not, it’s not like, oh, God is so full of love that He just dismissed your sentence and mine. This Christmas, be happy to know that God said, well, here’s what you deserve, but no, you don’t have to have it. I’m just going to let you go free. Friends, that’s not the Gospel. And if that was God, then God wouldn’t be just. The wonder and beauty of the Gospel is that Jesus Christ, He took your judgment, that was a word of judgment that the Father spoke over the pure, perfect Son so that God could speak a word of salvation, redemption over you. So the incarnation cannot be understated. The incarnation cannot be understated without Jesus clothing Himself in a full and real humanity. The work of salvation cannot accomplish the word of salvation.

But what do we see? We see the living Word of God hanging on the cross doing the work of God. And in that is your redemption. Christ in that moment found guilty and you and I considered righteous.

So who is it that the psalmist stirs up to sing and to shout, yes, at Christmas, but all the year long? It’s the righteous. It’s those who come and say, I am not right because of who I am or what I’ve done. I don’t have joy because of some merit, some measure of goodness in me. I have a joy that can’t be taken away from me because Jesus did a thing according to the Word of God and that cannot be changed. He did live. He did die. He was resurrected. He did fill me with His Spirit and that is mine and it’s in the heavenly places. Friends, that’s joy. That’s joy.

Sing. Shout. Worship. Be a living sacrifice of worship, Paul says in Romans 12.

When I go to bed at night, I check the doors like ten times sometimes. I don’t know if you do this, but I’ll do it kind of subconsciously and I’ll lay in the bed and think, oh, I locked the one, did I lock the other? And then I’ll start, I’ll start thinking about something different and I’ll go check them all again and I’ll lay down like, wait, I don’t actually remember seeing that door locked. So I’ll get back up and do it again. You know, I’ll drive myself crazy. I feel like this is the front door and I see it locked. I just say it to myself. You know, and we do the same thing, don’t we, with that eternal joy.

We play the what ifs. What, I don’t know, what is it sure? I don’t know. I mean, and we don’t, we don’t just hear the Word of God that we’re saved and believe He said it is so because Jesus did the work. Period. Stop wondering. Stop questioning. Stop waffling with your joy. Friends, have joy because Jesus did the work. The Word of God accomplished the work.

I want to say, lastly, joy. What a motivator for evangelism. You know, I’m very grateful because I feel like for many months, we’ve been talking about evangelism. The Lord’s been opening doors locally and around the world for evangelism and it’s such a, it’s such a meaningful, necessary part of what it means to know Christ. But you really can’t do evangelism, you really can’t make Christ known if you don’t have joy, right? Because if you didn’t have joy, you’d be back to forced obedience. Like, I don’t want to do this. But joy says, man, I want to do this because Jesus, Jesus has done a thing for me I didn’t deserve. Jesus has made me brand new. Jesus has given me new desires. God the Father loves me and He’ll forever own me and the Spirit seals me and my spirit cries out, Abba, Father, because of who Jesus is and what Jesus did. And friends, if you’re still waiting like for this feeling, what you’re doing, you’re trying to start up in yourself. Stop trying to start up in yourself and just look at the work of cross and believe it’s true and rest in joy. You cannot lose.

So I say to you this morning, rejoice for all that God has said and done. He has spoken salvation over you. He has given you eternal joy in Jesus. He has made you righteous. Rejoice. He’s given you eternal joy. Rejoice. The weary world can rejoice. Emmanuel has come. Amen. Amen. Let’s pray together.

Lord, this morning,

we just want to slow down greatly.

Lord, we don’t want to just pass by another sermon. We don’t just want to pass by another psalm. We don’t want to just pass by, Lord, another just text of Scripture. Lord, we want to just sit here and we want to be rejoicing. We want to be refocused. We want to be realigned

with Your Son, Jesus. We want to know

what He has done. We want to relish in it. We want to be shaped by it. We want it to be the lens through which we see trial and suffering and through which we see, Lord, all things that we would in nothing disobey. We would in nothing, Lord, fret. But have joy because You spoke salvation over us. Lord, as much as that’s our joy that works like a supernatural healing balm for every suffering, every sadness, Lord, let it also be medicine that we share with those. Let us, Lord, be those who love God enough to share eternal joy with others through the preaching of the Gospel.

So, Lord, let us be those who love God enough to share eternal joy with others. Lord, stir us up for this great work. Give us joy that we would obey.