Everlasting Joy: The True Spirit of Christmas

But the angel reassured them, don't be afraid. He said, I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. The Savior, yes, the Messiah, the Lord has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David. So these angels show up. First, it's just one. Later, it's a host, right? But this angel shows up and says, hey, first of all, you don't have to be afraid. [00:19:29] (30 seconds)


This joy that is talked about is something that is promised throughout the Old Testament. We read about these promises of the Messiah over and over again, and often that they are accompanied by these immeasurables. Images of the nation of Israel being restored. And so I want to look at one of those in Isaiah. This is 700 years before the birth of Jesus, and this is written in Isaiah 51. So those who have been ransomed by the Lord will return. They will enter Jerusalem singing, crowned with everlasting joy. [00:20:34] (41 seconds)


They will experience this everlasting joy. That is a promise to us, that because of what Jesus has done, we can have this everlasting joy. This everlasting joy, that we will be crowned with joy. And I don't know about you, but I look at our world, and I feel like our world could use more joy. That is, I look around at all of the brokenness and the hurt, and I drive on our roads, right? And I go through life, I just look at our world and recognize, man, we need joy. [00:21:38] (39 seconds)


And God does some incredible work through the joy that he provides in our lives, through the joy that he brings to our world. And this joy, it impacts our lives in so many ways, but it also impacts the lives of the people around us. And we read this in Psalm 126. When the Lord brought back his exiles to Jerusalem, it was like a dream. We were filled with laughter. We sang for joy, and the other nations said, what amazing things the Lord has done for them. [00:22:39] (38 seconds)


They are filled with joy in such a way that as people from other nations encounter them, they're like, man, those guys, right? There's something different about them. They have joy in their lives. And the joy of God is something that spreads. It is something that other people notice what the Lord has done. [00:23:37] (24 seconds)


They want to share it as much as they can. And here's the thing, both to the joy that we experience from God, as well as happiness and earthly joy, right? The natural response to joy is to share it. Like, that's a very normal response. That is how God wired us up, right? When we experience something that brings us joy, we want to share that with other people. [00:25:36] (30 seconds)


But we want to share that. That is a very natural response to normal earthly happiness and joy and what we experience from God, the joy of the Lord. This joy that we have experienced because we have received the gospel, this good news for all people, it's so much greater. It's so much greater. In fact, I would say that the joy we receive from God, it's not natural. [00:28:13] (30 seconds)


This is a supernatural joy that we get to experience in our lives because of Him. Because of His goodness and His faithfulness, we have this joy. It goes so far beyond happiness. It's not just happiness. It is joy. Happiness is great, right? I love this quote from Levi Lesko. I've shared it before. I will probably share it again someday, right? Happiness is determined by what is happening. [00:28:42] (29 seconds)


Happiness is great, but it's limited. Joy has staying power. Joy endures. Joy is a little tougher, right? But it is not knocked down the first time we have a bad day. This joy that we experience from the Lord, it is a supernatural gift. And I think in our English language, we miss that sometimes. You guys know that in the dictionary, the word happiness and the word joy, they both use each other to define themselves, right? Like, what's joy? It's happiness. What's happiness? It's joy. [00:29:31] (38 seconds)


And we're missing it because biblically, joy is different. The word joy is different. It's different. It's different. It's different. It's different. It's different. The word happiness or happy would appear in scripture like 19 times total through the whole Bible. Joy or joyful, that shows up around 100 and not around, 197 times, specifically that number. 197 times this idea of joy is presented to us. And that doesn't mean that we don't experience difficult times. It doesn't mean that life never gets hard for us. Joy, it has staying power through that. [00:30:15] (40 seconds)


We talked about this kind of hope last week, right, that is bigger than just wishful hope or expected hope. It is certain hope. It is hope that is built on something that we can be absolutely certain of, that we have total faith of who our God is and what he has done and what he will do. And because of that, we are filled with hope and we are certain in it. And this joy, it's the product of that certain hope. [00:31:27] (27 seconds)