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Joy to the World!
Songs of the Season, Part 2
Psalm 98:6-9
December 10, 2006 – Second Sunday in Advent
Pastor Graig Flach
INTRODUCTION and SCRIPTURE
“Joy is prayer – Joy is strength – Joy is love – Joy is a net of love by which you can catch souls.”
Mother Teresa
There is so much that could be said about joy. We all experience it differently, and we all have different ways of seeking it or receiving it. Today we’ll look at what the Scripture says about “joy,” guided by the great carol, “Joy to the World!”… Because we are letting the carols of Christmas inspire us during Advent 2006. We have a great one today, Joy to the World!, which, as the quote on the front of your worship guide indicates, may not have been intended specifically for Christmas, since it is based on Psalm 98 from the Hebrew Scriptures. But it certainly fits the time of the Lord’s coming, doesn’t it? And it’s a great hymn for expressing our own joy about Jesus being Lord of our lives and of all creation. Technically, it is not an Advent hymn; clearly it’s to be sung AFTER the Lord’s advent. But on this 2nd Sunday of this Advent season, allow me to remind us all that there will also be a second Advent, when the Lord returns. So we can sing it in celebration of the first Advent of Christ, and in anticipation of His next Advent.
Let’s turn to the Scripture that provided poet Isaac Watts with the inspiration for Joy to the World, Psalm 98. It is not considered a Psalm about the Messiah, it is a psalm of praise and celebration to our gracious, righteous and saving Yahweh of the Old Testament. But we know that Yahweh and Yeshuah/Jesus are one, and so did Isaac Watts.
Receive God’s Word as He comes to you in verses 4 through 9:
Psalm 98:4-9
4 Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth; break forth into joyous song and sing praises. 5 Sing praises to the LORD with the lyre, with the lyre and the sound of melody. 6 With trumpets and the sound of the horn make a joyful noise before the King, the LORD. 7 Let the sea roar, and all that fills it; the world and those who live in it. 8 Let the floods clap their hands; let the hills sing together for joy 9 at the presence of the LORD, for he is coming to judge the earth. He will judge the world with righteousness, and the peoples with equity.
We’ll cover a couple things as we think about Joy to the World: First we will get behind the hymn history a bit, as Bob indicated last week. Then we will survey the Scriptures to consider the biblical idea of Joy as it is rooted in our belief that God came to the world in Jesus and our hope that He will return again to complete the redemption and re-creation of heaven and earth.
HYMN BACKGROUND
Those who have researched the history of Joy to the World are fond of saying that this popular Christmas carol is the product of international collaboration: the text was written by an Englishman, and the tune was a joint effort by an American and a German. I’ll explain that in a moment. Please open your hymnals to number 40. You’ll notice first that the Hymn is toward the beginning of the hymnal, and that’s because Advent is the beginning of the church year. In the upper left-hand corner is a word indicating the church season. Since the “joy” in our carol is about the Lord having come, it is not strictly an advent hymn, since it is not about anticipation but about acceptance and celebration of what had been anticipated. That’s why this carol is in the “Christmas” section of the hymnal.
Now, above the musical notes you see names on the left and the right. The left side is for the author of the text, and the right side is for the composer of the music. You’ll notice that they also provide the date of when the text and tune were composed. One more thing in this brief hymnal primer: Since hymn tunes are often used with more than one text, they are assigned a tune name that is usually different than the popular title. The tune name for Joy to the World is “Antioch.” I notice that our worship service ends with Mitch playing variations on the “Antioch” tune; why not stay and listen, and extend your Advent worship just a bit before rushing off?
Fine. Let’s get back to those three guys who get credit for this hymn. We’ll start with the most recent and go back in time, ending with the most important figure for today’s message. On the right you’ve got the American Lowell Mason, who in the mid-1800s seems to have taken musical phrases from his favorite composer, the German George Frederick Handel (from the mid-1700s) and woven them together in an arrangement to fit Isaac Watts’ text from the early 1700s.
Mason was an American teacher and choir director who wrote a number of hymns, the greatest of which – next to this one – is When I Survey the Wondrous Cross. He may have used themes from Handel’s Messiah to create this hymn tune.
Handel is probably the best-known of our 3 guys, because of Messiah, and today we needn’t say more about this transplanted German who lived in England.
But let’s do take a moment to appreciate Isaac Watts. This “renaissance man,” whose dates are 1674-1748, is one of the bright stars on the firmament of Christian worship and music history. The “father of English hymnody,” he knew Latin, Greek, Hebrew and French by the time he was thirteen. Born on the south coast of England, he spent most of his life in or around London, first as a tutor, then as a pastor, although he had very poor health as an adult and had to cut back on his pastoral duties after only a year or two. The church brought in an assistant, with whom Watts shared the pastoral duties. Confined to his residence much of the time, Watts became a prolific writer not only of poetry, which he did from his teen years, but in academic works on theology and philosophy, as well as education.
Watts “revolutionized” English hymns. His contribution grew out of the fact that, as a young man he was bored with the music sung in church. As a teenager he complained to his father about this, who suggested he try to change things. And Isaac did.
As a Christian, Isaac was frustrated by the fact that most of the hymns sung in church were Old Testament Psalms, which had little to do with his beloved Savior. You must understand that church music in those days did not have the breadth we are used to today. They sang mostly the Psalms. Isaac felt that if worship was partly about the human response to God, it ought to include human words to express human thoughts and emotions to God, rather than purely God’s words to us from the Bible. Further, Watts wanted more Jesus in Christian worship (makes sense!), so he suggested that the Psalms be re-imagined in the light of Christ. These were two major contributions to the worship experience: an enhanced focus on Christ in the hymns, plus an expanded horizon of the content of hymns; they could now include the thoughts and feelings of worshipers: our words to God as well as God’s words to us. It is clear to me that Isaac Watts sees Psalm 98’s reference to “the Lord” as including Christ, which makes the hymn very appropriate for Christmas.
“JOY” in the BIBLE
That’s some background about writing of the hymns. Now how does it relate to Scripture? Psalm 98 urges everyone and everything to make a joyful noise, and as soon as I’m done here, that’s what we are going to do, I hope. But first let’s think about “joy” in Scripture: This psalm says “break forth into joyful singing” (v.4), it says to use musical instruments (5, 6), and “let heaven and nature sing” – the waters, the creatures, and the hills (7, 8). Why? Because the Lord is coming, and that’s not all: He is coming to “judge the world with righteousness” (9).
Oooh – JUDGMENT. Sounds scary! Some of us have anxiety about the idea of God’s judgment. And if the truth is told, too often the Church has used that anxiety as a tactic to manipulate people toward faith. “You’d better shape up or you will end up in Hell. The day of reckoning is coming and you had better have your house in order by then.” We like the first Advent with its cute little baby, “tender Jesus, meek and mild”, better than the second Advent with the King of Kings arriving with blood on His robes (Rev. 19:11-13).
But what does the psalm actually say about judgment, and what does it mean? Verse 9: He’ll judge the world with righteousness, and the people with equity. That means, for one thing, that the judgment will be fair. We can trust the omniscient, righteous, loving Creator to give everyone a fair shake. Because what is His aim? To destroy the wicked? To punish the guilty? No! While it is true that God will do those things, but they are secondary to the main goal, which is… TO SET THINGS RIGHT. God’s ultimate goal is REDEMPTION, or renovation of the broken creation into a new heaven and a new earth. And to achieve health and holiness, the bad stuff has to be eliminated. God’s judgment is a good thing. It brings blessings!
“No more let sins and sorrows grow,
nor thorns infest the ground;
he comes to make his blessings flow
far as the curse is found.”
And He is going to undo that curse. Our hope in the coming of Christ is a main ingredient for true joy. The psalmist looked forward to the coming of the Messiah. And the Messiah came and proved that He is more powerful than sin or death. And He said He would return – a second Advent that is just as relevant for us 21st century Christians as was the first Advent. The Advent season we celebrate every year before Christmas is a celebration of that first Advent when God became human and dwelt on earth as Jesus Christ, Emmanuel, “God with us”. It’s largely a re-enactment and celebration of the most important event in human history… so far. But our current Advent is not complete unless it points, at least subtly, somewhere, to the other Advent still in the future, when the King of Kings and Lord of Lords will return again in power to finish the job, to “rule the world with truth and grace”. And all nations will test His righteousness and His love, and He will pass the test: He “makes the nations prove the glories of His righteousness and the wonders of His love”. That’s how the carol closes.
Believing in the second coming of Christ can have a profound impact on your life. If you know where creation and human history are headed, and where YOU are headed, you have a bottom-line hope that makes true joy possible. It gives you a direction, and it anchors your joy. The book of Revelation is largely about that “blessed hope” (Titus 2:13) in the return of the King to eradicate evil and establish His eternal kingdom, where we have a home. You heard it in the passage from Revelation earlier: “I am the Alpha and the Omega who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty” (v. 1:8). He will come and set things right. Our hope in that coming is part of what makes godly joy possible.
There is an interesting verse in Hebrews in which the writer shows how Jesus models this for us: “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross…” (Hebrews 12:2). So Jesus knew what was beyond the cross, and because of that joyful hope, He was able to endure the ups and downs of His life, including the cross. Take that one home with you. That’s what Revelation is all about: God gave it to John for persecuted Christians of that time and it applies to our time, too, or any time: When times get rough, you can hang on and press on because even if you (or a loved one) should DIE, it’s not the end of the story. Jesus is going to set things right and restore you.
“THAT YOUR JOY MAY BE COMPLETE”
“That sounds great, Pastor Graig, and I believe that, at least in theory or with my faith. But I don’t feel joyful as often as I’d like. How can I achieve that joy?” Well, what is joy, anyway? Is it happiness? No, it’s more than that. Is it the satisfaction we feel when we are successful? No. It’s not about feeling good when everything goes according to plan. And many of us know it is often does not come with professional or even domestic success. That’s exactly where the dictionary leaves it, though: Joy is “an emotion evoked by well-being, success or good fortune or by possessing what one desires.”
I am here to tell you that God has a deeper joy for us than that. It’s a deeper joy because it is tied not just to what happens, but why it happens and Who allows it to happen. One added dimension to God-given joy is this: It has a sense of justice and righteousness. Our joy about things that happen is deeper and more complete when we know that they were achieved fairly, through righteous means, right? Our joy about things in our own lives is also deeper when we know that we are in tune with God’s purposes for us.
The secular world may scoff at the notion that true joy is tied to God, but the Bible is pretty clear about it. Jesus said it flat out: “I have been teaching you these things so that my joy is in you and so that your joy may be complete” (Jn 15:11). Ultimately joy comes from God. It is a kind of gift. In fact, the New Testament word for “joy” shares the same root as “grace” and “gift.” Even though our joy may be a gift, the Bible gives us plenty of clues that there are things we can do to enhance the likelihood that we’ll get the gift of joy. Here are some of the obvious ones:
- Joy comes from being with God: “You will fill me with joy in your presence” (Ps 16:11).
Being with God can come in many forms, but a couple of crucial ones are these
- We are with God when we are in His Word: the Lord’s teaching is right, and gives joy to the heart (Ps 19:8).
- We are with God when we pray. Jesus tells us, “As and you will receive, and your joy will be made full” (Jn 1624). We can’t express our needs to Jesus unless we are in prayer.
So joy comes from being with the Lord, tending to our “vertical” life. God also provides us with joy in our “horizontal” relationships, the way we treat others:
- Joy comes from walking in the way of the Lord, responding to His call in service.
It’s about obeying the call. Yes, I’m not afraid to say the word obedience. Most of us don’t like the idea of having to obey anyone. But let me tell you that when you are dealing with the One who created you and the whole universe, it is OK to follow instructions. It is OK to be under God’s authority, and in fact it is liberating. When you Understand your place and your identity as a creature of God, where you fit and what God created you for… if you understand and accept these things, you have a key ingredient to joy. And as you walk the road God has for you and get to the Lord better, you increasingly experience the “wonders of his love” that lead to joy.
This joy in obedience is illustrated by the parable of the talents. Remember what happens at the end? The master had left his servants with instructions to invest his resources in some effective way. When he returned, those who had done what he said to do – those who obeyed -- heard these words: “Well done, good and faithful servant. You did well with what I gave you. Now you get a share of your master’s joy ” (Mt 25:23).
Finally, Jesus told His disciples about the “completion” of their joy in John 16, which comes on the heels of the teaching on the vine and the branches in chapter 15. It’s as if He’s saying, “Stay connected to me, live out what I’ve taught you by loving one another, and you will not only bear fruit like I’ve designed you to do, you’ll also have the best joy possible.” Then a little later (ch. 16), He adds some nuance to this: “Now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy” (John 16:22). Jesus is realistic. He says, “Look, I know that life is not perfect now, that you face challenges and hardships. And I know you are not always joyful. But when I return and set things right, you will joyful in a way that nothing can take it away.”
Who says this? None other than Jesus Christ, the Lord, the Alpha and Omega, who was is, and is to come. The eternal Redeemer Who has already saved the world and will reign in perfect justice and love after He comes to “judge” the world with truth and grace. I want to testify to you that this all “works” for me; it makes sense. And my assurance of this biblical truth allows me to keep pressing forward even when I am struggling. It is part of my spiritual north star. I know where God is leading me. I trust Him. And I rejoice with heaven and nature when they sing.
“I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete” (Luke 15:11). That’s why our Lord came: to bring His joy to the world. And that is why He will return to complete the job: so that the intermittent, rather shallow joy we experience now may become deep and permanent… complete.
Let us now stand and sing as if our joy were already complete.
Sing to glorify God. Sing to express your trust. Sing to testify. Practice the joy. For the Lord of the universe has come, will come again, and is here right now.
Let’s sing out to Him!!
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