O Come All Ye Faithful | Joy to the World

The story of the Bible begins in the book of Beginnings, the book of Genesis, and it tells us that we as the human race were initially created in perfect intimacy with God, in a perfect environment where there was no restriction, there was no difficulty, there was no experience of a problem connecting with, being intimate with, having experience with God and with one another. Everything was, if you will, in harmony and peace, both our relationship with our Creator and our relationship with each other and our relationship with creation. [00:02:26] (38 seconds)  #CreatedForIntimacy

The Bible reveals to us that Adam and Eve chose to step into a journey where they ate of a fruit on a tree called the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And God had said to them, do not eat of this tree because when this knowledge comes to you, it doesn't bring divinity and independence and power. It brings something far darker and more terrible. It will bring to you death. I don't even know that they had a concept of what death was because they lived in a place absent of death. [00:03:04] (36 seconds)  #ChoiceBroughtDeath

So it's not that God makes me able to do all the right things, it's that He makes me right or righteous by imputing, branding, His perfection onto me as a nature and taking my nature of sin and imperfection and branding it onto Himself. This is the great exchange that the New Testament describes. And in that exchange, I am utterly transformed. [00:12:17] (31 seconds)  #GreatExchange

And we discover not only am I personally transformed by the work of Jesus, but because I'm transformed and I am made new and I have access to God and because others who know Jesus are transformed, the natural consequence of that is that the hostility between us disappears because now we are simultaneously transformed and in Christ. And so peace develops in the nations. We saw that in that hymn O Holy Night, right? That God now his truth is love and his consequence is peace. [00:13:31] (37 seconds)  #TransformationBringsPeace

The New Testament describes this in a multitude of ways and even says that the great mystery of the gospel, Paul writes this in a book that he wrote called Ephesians where he says the mystery of the gospel wasn't that there would be a Messiah, wasn't that Jesus would come. The people of the Old Testament knew that. There were hundreds of prophecies about that. The mystery was that Jesus was coming to reconcile not just the Jewish people to himself but the Gentiles also. He says in that book the mystery of the gospel is that the Gentiles are included in the inheritance of God and given the Messiah. [00:14:28] (39 seconds)  #GospelForAllNations

And when you consider all of that, it makes sense then that we would find ourselves wanting to shout out of that this kind of just deep sense of joy and what better hymn or Christmas carol that we would grab a hold of to shout joy than one we all know very well, joy to the world. I mean, who doesn't know that one? Joy to the world. The king has come. That's kind of what bubbles up inside of us when we consider all of this. We want to move toward a space. We're considering who Jesus is and what he's done for us and who we are because of that work that we would shout joy to the world. [00:15:54] (39 seconds)  #JoyForTheKing

But it turns out actually that as much as we think this Christmas carol, this Christmas hymn, and joy to the world is about Christmas. It's not about Christmas. Did you know that? It wasn't even written with Christmas in mind. The entire hymn, when you read it and you say, oh my gosh, prepare your hearts for Jesus. It's about the Christmas morning and being ready. It's not. It's actually a hymn written about something utterly different than tomorrow morning. And you say, well, that's crazy. What's it written about? [00:16:33] (31 seconds)  #JoyBeyondChristmas

But the Bible teaches that He not only does that but He's ultimately also going to eliminate the very presence of sin. We can imagine a life where a penalty that is owed is undone. We can imagine a life where something that empowers us is undone. But you and I have no room in our being to imagine a life that sin and death isn't even present. [00:24:53] (27 seconds)  #SinAndDeathAbolished