Joy at His Coming

Sermon for the Third Sunday of Advent.

“Rejoice in the Lord always,” Paul says (Philippians 4:4).

“Always,” Paul?  Always?  Rejoice when my mother dies, and when my husband’s playing around, and when we don’t know where the next paycheck is coming from, and when I won’t make the deadline on the project I’m working on?  Rejoice when I stub my toe in the dark, and when I fail a test, and when my roommate’s gossiping about me and turning other friends against me?  Rejoice always, even when bad things are happening to me? Rejoice always, even when my life is coming apart at the seams?  Always, Paul? Always?  Rejoice when you know there are thousands of children around the world who don’t have enough to eat, when many thousands more live in war zones, when we daily read about acts of horrific cruelty in the newspaper?  Rejoice when the church is in disarray, when Christians can’t make up their minds about simple ethical issues, when the church has cozied up to oppressors?  Rejoice always?  Even when the church and the world are in misery?

Paul’s exhortation sounds impossible, inhuman, nonsensical.  Worse, it sounds unbiblical and unchristian.

Didn’t Paul pay attention to the Psalms that he learned in the synagogue and the temple?  When David said, “Do not hide Your face from me in the day of my distress; incline your ear to me”; when he said, “my days are consumed in smoke, and my bones scorched like a hearth”; when he said “my bones cling to my flesh” and “I am a pelican of the wilderness” and “an owl of the waste places”; when he said those things, was he rejoicing? (Psalm 102).  When Heman the Ezrahite said “I have cried out for help, and in the morning my prayer comes before You.  O Lord, why do You reject My soul?  Why do You hide Your face from me? . . . I suffer Your terrors; I am overcome.  Your burning anger has passed over me; Your terrors have destroyed me. They have surrounded me like water all the day long; they have encompassed me altogether.  You have removed lover and friend far from me; my acquaintances are in darkness” (Psalm 88): When he said all that, was he rejoicing?

Did Jesus rejoice in everything?  Did Jesus rejoice at the grave of Lazarus?  Did he rejoice when His disciples couldn’t cast out the demon at the foot of the Mount of Transfiguration?  Did he rejoice when His disciples competed with one another for honors instead of taking up the cross and following Him?  Did He rejoice in Gethesemane?  Did he rejoice when His disciples forsook Him and fled, and when Peter denied Him?  Did He rejoice in the false accusations that were brought against Him?  Did He rejoice when soldiers mocked and beat Him, when they spat at Him, when the Jews mocked Him? Was he rejoicing on the cross?  Can we do better than Jesus?

-Can Paul mean what he says here? Isn’t he exaggerating just for effect?  The short answer is, Yes he means what he says; and no, he is not exaggerating for effect.  Paul, after all, had shared in the sufferings of Christ.  Paul knew what it was like to take the cross and follow Jesus.  The Paul who exhorts us to “rejoice always” knew far more hardship than any of us would in ten lifetimes: prisons, beatings beyond counting, whipped by the Jews five times, beaten with rods three times, stoned three times, shipwrecked, threatened by the sea, by highway robbers, by hypocritical Christians, and always anxious about the state of the churches he had planted.  When he wrote Philippians, we all know, he was in prison, waiting for who knows what.  In this very context, he enumerates some of the circumstances in which he rejoices.  He knows what it means to get by on nothing; he knows hunger and need.  He knows what it means to be without basic necessities.  He knew what it was to be in want, to be without.  Yet, the same Paul who experiences hunger and need is the Paul who exhorts the Philippians, “Rejoice always.”

But how?  How are we supposed to rejoice when we’re being beaten, when we’re being slandered, when we’re sharing in the sufferings of Christ. Paul points to the “how” in the next verse of Philippians 4: Rejoice always, he says.  Then he notes the connection between joy and forbearance.  Rejoice always, and let your patience be known to all.  Continual rejoicing makes us patient. Then he gives the basis for the exhortation: “The Lord is at hand.”  Paul rejoices because of the coming promise of the Lord’s presence.  Paul can rejoice in all circumstances because he knows that the Lord is near.

-Throughout Scripture, joy is an effect of being in the presence of God. The sanctuary was the place of God’s presence, and before His face Israel was to gather to eat and drink and rejoice before Him. “In Your presence is fullness of joy,” Psalm 16:11. “You make the king blessed forever; you make him joyful with gladness in Your presence” (Psalm 21:6).  “Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving, Let us shout joyfully to Him with Psalms” (Psalm 95:2).  Jude concludes his epistle commending the people of God to the one who “is able to keep you from stumbling, and to make you stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy” (Jude 24).

Joy is an effect of being before the face of God because, according to the prophet Zephaniah, the Lord Himself is full of all the fullness of joy.  Zephaniah’s prophecy doesn’t begin with a call to joy, but with the opposite.  Though prophesying during the reign of the faithful king Josiah, Zephaniah begins his prophecy with a terrifying description of judgment.  Things are falling apart.  Creation – sky, land, sea – is unraveling (1:2-3). Yahweh threatens to remove all things from the earth – man and beast from the earth, birds from the sky, fish from the sea, man from the land.  Creation is being reversed.  And so is the exodus.  Once Yahweh stretched out His hand against Egypt.  He bared His arm and stretched it out against Pharaoh.  But now, he says, He is going to stretch out His hand against Judah, and cut off Jerusalem.  Once he toppled and humiliated the gods of Egypt; now, He is going to humble and shame the gods of Judah, that is, Baal and all his idolatrous priests, Milcom and those who swear by Him.

Judah has been under threat, in darkness.  And they are crying out for deliverance.  They are hoping in the day of Yahweh, but Zephaniah says that the day of Yahweh is not going to be the kind of day that they are hoping for: Not a day of light and hope and deliverance, but a day of wrath, trouble, distress, clouds, and darkness for His people (1:14-15).  Zephaniah calls Judah to humble themselves to escape Yahweh’s wrath (2:3).  By the end of this short prophecy, another “day” has dawned (3:16).  Through the refining fire of Yahweh’s judgment, He purifies His people.  A humble remnant remains, full of faith (3:12).  Yahweh chases away the enemies of Jerusalem (3:13, 19) and He rescues the lame and outcasts (3:19). All the evils that Judah has suffered are going to be reversed.  There will be a new creation, a new exodus as Yahweh gathers the people He had scattered.

More importantly of all, Israel’s day of gloom turns to a day of light and joy because Yahweh Himself comes to be in the midst of His people, and in the midst of His people He will be a victorious warrior.  Yahweh Himself will rejoice and shout over His bride (3:17), and Zion and Israel are caught up in His exultation.  Noti
ce the connections between verses 14 and 17.  Daughter Zion is supposed to shout for joy.  Why?  Because Yahweh is in her midst, “rejoicing with shouts of joy.”  Israel is to rejoice and exalt with all her heart?  Why?  Because Yahweh her lover has returned, and exults over her with joy.

This is not merely a matter of Israel responding to the joy of Yahweh’s presence.  It’s about Israel being caught up into the joy of Yahweh Himself.  Yahweh comes rejoicing to His people; He comes dancing and singing and exulting; He comes in triumph, and daughter Zion and daughter Jerusalem join in with the Song.

That is the joy that breaks out at the coming of Jesus.  Luke’s gospel especially captures this.  As soon as the announcement is made, song begins to break out everywhere.  Mary sings when she visits Elizabeth.  Filled with the Spirit, Zecharias sings when John is named.  Angels sing to the shepherds, and Simeon sings when he sees the infant Jesus in the temple.  Everywhere the news comes, song breaks out.  The Spirit brings joy.

This is the joy that Jesus speaks of in our gospel lesson, the joy that should greet His coming.  According to Jesus, this same movement from mourning to dancing that Zephaniah describes takes place at His coming.  When asked by John’s disciples whether He is the “Coming One” (Matthew 11:3), Jesus quotes Isaiah (v. 5; cf. Isaiah 61:1).  He could just as well have quoted Zephaniah 3:19, with its promise of mercy to the lame.  Jesus’ works and His ministry are evidence that the time has come, the day of light and joy that Zephaniah spoke about.  Jesus’ works show that the Lord is in the midst of Israel, exulting in joy and singing over His bride like a victorious warrior.

John’s ministry, Jesus goes on to say, was a ministry of preparation, the ministry of the Lord’s “angel” sent ahead to prepare for the Lord’s coming.  Jesus quotes Malachi 3:1, but behind this is Exodus 23:20-33, which promises that Yahweh’s angel will be an advance guard to disrupt the Canaanites before Israel moves in to conquer.  That’s John’s ministry: He sings a dirge to get people ready for the coming of the King.  He warns the people as the angel that the King is coming.

But when the Son of Man comes, mourning ends and yields to joy (Matthew 11:16-19).  That generation misses both tunes.  The Jews don’t mourn with John, and don’t rejoice with Jesus.  They are thus cut out of the joy of the Lord, the joy at His coming.  The Pharisees are in the presence of the Lord.  Yahweh has come in triumph.  Angels are singing, and the heavenly Song of the angels has come to earth.  Jesus comes as Yahweh incarnate, singing His song of triumph, rejoicing in His bride, rejoicing over her with love.  His joy overflows and gives new life to the lame and brings the outcasts near.  The Pharisees are in the presence of joy because they are in the presence of the Lord, but they grit their teeth and refuse to join in.  Advent is about the Lord’s arrival.  Advent says that the Lord is near, just at the door.  For that reason, Advent is about joy, the joy of heaven come to earth, and the joy of God shared with men.  In the Lord’s coming, he catches us up in His joy.

And so we return to Paul.  Paul tells us to rejoice always, because the Lord is near. Because of the Lord’s arrival and presence, we can rejoice in every circumstance.  God is omnipresent; He is never distant; He is nearer to us than anyone else, and even nearer than we are to ourselves.  When we suffer hardships and needs, we should remind ourselves that God is still there, that we are still in the presence of God, and so we can rejoice.  That’s true.  If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.

But that doesn’t always meet our questions, complaints, and anguish.  God is always there, but we don’t always know He’s there.  God is always there, but sometimes we cry out and He doesn’t seem to hear us; sometimes we are on the cross, and cry out with Jesus, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?”  What happens when He doesn’t seem to be coming?  What happens when we desperately want God to close the mouth of that friend who’s been lying, and God doesn’t do that?  What happens when Jesus doesn’t descend with angels to break up the firing squad or disperse the lynch mob?  What’s going on when He isn’t there, and there’s no sign of His coming?  How can we rejoice in that?

Paul has something more dramatic and dynamic in mind.  For Paul, we rejoice always not so much because God is always there, but because the Lord is always coming.  He is “at hand,” near in time and not only in space.  No matter what circumstance we find ourselves in, no matter what hardship or suffering we’re enduring, we can be sure that the Lord will come to our rescue.  He’ll come to help us.

And that’s why we can rejoice even in hardship and tribulation.  We rejoice in the presence of the Lord, sharing in His joy.  But sometimes His presence and His joy is more hoped-for than known.  This is why Paul elsewhere talks about joy in hope (Romans 5).  We rejoice in tribulations not because we are ignoring the pain or because the pain isn’t real.  We rejoice in tribulations because we know that tribulation will bear the fruit of perseverance, character, hope.  And so we rejoice in the midst of tribulations because we are looking forward to sharing in the glory of the Lord; we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God, not because that joy is fully realized here and now, but because it is being realized, and will be realized in the future.  In this we are following Jesus, for Jesus went to the cross out of the “joy that was set before Him.”

Even then, even when everything in the present stands against joy; even when the Lord has hidden His face, and doesn’t appear to have any intention of showing it again; even when you are in the midst of painful tribulations and afflictions, even then you can rejoice, because you can rejoice in hope.

And you can rejoice in hope because of the Advent of the Lord.  The Lord has so loved you that He gave His only Son.  He became flesh for you, He suffered all the limits and frustrations of life for you, he was hated and opposed for you, He was arrested and tried for you, He was mocked and scourged and spat upon for you, He was sent to the cross for you.

He has come, and He came for you.  And He won’t leave you.  Rejoice in the Lord, rejoice always in the Lord of Advent, because the Lord who came will come again and again and again.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.