Advent 2014 Third Advent Joy Sunday December 14

Advent 2014 Third Advent: Joy Sunday December 14, 2014

Where do we see joy and how might we have it – so that we might share it with others?

Big Idea for this morning. JOY: SEE IT. HAVE IT. SHARE IT.

“Students of first-century literature need not be told that this distinctively Christian gladness, or glad fearfulness, which breaks across life like a flushing dawn, was a strange new thing. Such joy unspeakable and full of glory is not found in other faiths.

Jesus somehow was able to give men the courage to believe themselves redeemed… not merely by speaking to them about the Father but by revealing in his own life the security and gladness which flow from trustful obedience to the Father’s love. ”

“Alone in the religions of the world, it dared to say, ‘Rejoice evermore. ’ This is a fact so distinctive that some thinkers have actually defined the method of Christianity as ‘salvation by joy’ …

… The joy in God generated by the fact of Christ was a new phenomenon in religious history…” H. R. Mackintosh, The Originality of the Christian Message

How might the joy in God be ours?

The joy of Christ’s birth.

The joy of overcoming sin and death.

When Christ came into the world, he said … “Sacrifices and offerings, burnt offerings and sin offerings you did not desire, nor were you pleased with them” (although the law required them to be made).

Then he said, “Here I am, I have come to do your will. ” He sets aside the first to establish the second. And by that will, we have been made holy through the sacrifice of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.

Day after day every priest stands and performs his religious duties; again and again he offers the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when this priest had offered for all time one sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God.

For Christ did not enter a manmade sanctuary … he entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence. Nor did he enter heaven to offer himself again and again, the way the high priest enters the Most Holy Place every year with the blood that is not his own.

Then Christ would have had to suffer many times since the creation of the world. But now he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to do away with sin by the sacrifice of himself (Heb. 10: 5 -12; 9: 24 -26).

There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set you free from the law of death … to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace (Ro. 8: 1 -4).

The joy of Christian community.