Gaudete – Sunday 17 December A✠D 2023
✠ Psalmody: Philippians 4:4-5;Psalm 85:1, 2, 6, 8;80:1–2;80:2b
✠ Lection: Isaiah 40:1-8;1 Corinthians 4:1-5;St. Matthew 11:2-10
In the Name of the Father and of the ✠ Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Do you rejoice in the Lord always? It’s quite a steep and startling admonition by St. Paul, is it not? Always is as often as often can get. So, how about ever? Do you ever rejoice in the Lord? Do you ever find yourself optimistic about what He has done in you and has in store for you ahead? Do you see your remaining time in this life as one that will full of great things that the Lord does for you or do you even struggle to muster up any hope? It may help to consider what it even means to rejoice. Indeed, it has to do with happiness, but it doesn’t mean that you just live this life in an endless state of happy all the time that would make even Pollyanna jealous. Not even Christians, especially not Christians, deny the reality of this life that there is time to mourn, there is time to cry, for this life is very harsh. But that’s not all that it is and most certainly its harshness isn’t our god.
Simply put, to rejoice is nothing other than to be gladdened in heart, to be made happy, to respond with joy to a reason that brings it. By this, we can understand then how we are able to rejoice in the Lord always, for there is no better reason than Him, and what He does and what He says, to bring about rejoicing within us.
Compare the amount of how much you rejoice, even in general and overall, to how much you instead complain about your life, either quietly in your hidden thoughts, or verbally to anyone willing to listen, or even directly to God. If you’re too focused on the world and this life, you’re likely to do much more complaining than you are rejoicing. But isn’t that kind of life burdensome? Isn’t it unnecessarily gloomy and negligent of the eternal reality in which you live and exist in the kingdom of heaven, yes even now in this wilderness? Do you believe that life of complaint is what the Lord desires for you, for you to simply endure, barely squeaking by into the everlasting bliss that awaits you?
Why is it then that you think like this, regardless of often or rarely? Why don’t you rejoice, whether in the Lord or at all? I will say it again that much of how you view life and respond to it is a direct result of the voices you allow to speak to you. That’s the fundamental problem that even began all our woes in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were in paradise, spoken to directly by God, their Creator, given joyful tasks to go about such as tending to the creation and enjoying the blessed gifts of one another as husband and wife. They rejoiced in God-given life together. They lived in truth. They heard it from the mouth of the Lord, but they came to listen to another sinister mouth and they believed his words over God’s.
Consider how the life rooms, the living rooms in our homes have now a focus not on the true life and reality of the persons around us, but are arranged and focused toward generated images of people and places from far, far away. Are TVs, smartphones, and computer screens evil? In and of themselves, they are not, but they are portals that demons make steady use of that give them easy, even willing, avenues straight to your very soul. I do not condemn you for using screens in your homes. I simply ask that you take a moment to step back and honestly consider what they are to you, how they and their teachings affect your real life, because the most destructive of evils have the easiest access to you by them, ones that the world and all of history, even from the Garden, has ever seen, and you even pay them money for them. Might that big screen be a big trojan horse? Just because a new technology comes about and is quite inventive, stunning, amusing, entertaining, amazing or seemingly useful, it is dangerous and possibly perilous to assume that it is harmless and should be taken up or that incorporating it into our lives will have no effect upon us. Do not think that only the weak aren’t able to keep themselves from the evil influence of what we spend hours every day sitting in front of as if it is the altar about which we care the most. What comes through our screens does indoctrinate us. Every second of it. Every image that you see, every word that you hear teaches you something.
If you find yourself struggling to rejoice, could the reason be how much you give of yourself to following the images of overpaid grown men, who know nothing of your existence, inflicting pain on one another in an open field based on where a piece of animal flesh is tossed about among them? What do they teach you? What do the commercials teach you? What do you now accept in those images that the modesty of earlier generations would rightfully gasp at? Could the reason you don’t rejoice be war in Ukraine, war in Israel, the boogeyman in the White House, or the latest ID10T variant of a virus? More than likely, the reason you neither rejoice nor desire to do so is because the voices that you listen to, that you willingly give yourself over to, are telling you that the things you dedicatedly feed upon with eyes and ears are the things you should be concerned about. Have you ever noticed how far away most of it is that you are told to be worried about, concerned about, upset about, offended about, or scared of? Who would rejoice under such psychological abuse? Hardly anyone. And here we are. If you got rid of the screens, would you even know that you’re supposed to be worried, offended, or scared? And how many of the things that you do hear actually uplift and encourage you to rejoice? How many of them cause you to rejoice in the Lord your God? The plots against you are deeply covert and sinister.
What they do cause you to do is to hand over your demeanor, your mindset, even your own spiritual well-being to the false gods of the screen, which is why it is so easy to worry, despair, grow more and more pessimistic and depressed, because if your gods tell you to get excited over this and anxious over that, then the mind surrendered to them, the ears that listen to them, will do as they’re told. You instead need voices that speak unshakeable words to you.
Even without screens, as we were just a century ago, man still possesses plenty of internal corruption to deter ourselves from a life of rejoicing. Anxiety, worry, pain in our bodies, depression, sickness, even without external voices feeding our distrust of God, we still face much temptation within to listen to our own thoughts above His. Such a spiritual problem is reflected in the history of the people of Israel in Isaiah’s day and in our Old Testament text this morning, just in the first two verses, we have the true Voice that brings about rejoicing regardless of our circumstance. We find ourselves in Israel’s story, in their very history. Instead of fearing, loving, and trusting in God above all things, they trusted the false gods of their day for their good, even the internal ones of their own making, differing voices, constant whispers of lies and deceit. For that, the Lord their God judged them and sent them into exile, a picture of what we are like as we enter this world; distanced, far off from the Lord by the original sin in which we were conceived and by the daily practice of its ungodly desires.
Behold our conundrum. If none of us are righteous, no not one, if none of us seeks good, if we have all like sheep gone astray, how then do we rejoice if the ability or desire doesn’t even reside in us? Step that up to our ultimate problem: how then can one be saved, much less rejoice? The answer from Isaiah is the same answer that we hear later from Jesus, and from the rest of Scripture. The answer does not, it cannot come from within us. Our sinful flesh is more than content to remain in despair, complaint, and despondency. The answer to our salvation, the answer to how it is that we can rejoice, even just a little if not always, is that the desire, motivation, reason, and salvation Himself is all from outside of us. By this, you can see how corrupt words from outside of us can have so much influence. God built us to respond to words, namely His. The solution to the ungodly external and internal voices that tend to drive us to despair is the external Voice of God, the Word by which reality was created and to which He calls you back and to live in.
Isaiah chapter 40 begins with God’s words to a people that dwelt in darkness, exiled in a foreign land, buried in their own inward focus, surrounded by much ungodliness and cause for despair, and very little about which to rejoice. Is that where you are? Their sin had wrought their just judgment and distance from God, which, for them, also meant a literal, physical distance by removal from His Promised Land and Holy City. Because of the other gods to whom they had listened, God handed them over to them and also, because of such, early in Isaiah, He refers to the people, not as His own, but deridingly as “this people”. That echoes the distance that our love of other false gods brings. It’s hard to rejoice when we make ourselves “this people”. Such were some of you, but you were washed from outside of you, you were sanctified from outside of you, you were justified by means outside of yourself. Salvation hasn’t happened in your heart but to it, for all source of salvation begins outside of you, just as does all reason to rejoice. Oh, what a restful, burden-lifting truth that is!
In chapter 40, things take the turn in this direction. They change by the Way that is necessary. They change not by a great awakening or revival initiated by the people. The Lord’s words change here not by the people meriting His mercy, but they change because He gives reason to rejoice in showing, in saying that He is the merciful One, the very Head and Source of all true mercy. It is by His word that stands forever that we can live in certainty each day that we have received His mercy. If you want a steady, unchanging, unchangeable reason to rejoice, listen to this voice and these words, because it is coming to you. God has turned from His anger upon you, brought you back from the desolation of your sin, and sends to you a voice bidden to Comfort, yes, comfort MY people! If you want to truly rejoice, hear what the Lord your God says. He speaks comfort to His people, people made to be His by His doing alone; no longer distant ones, but now brought near by His drawing near; no longer far off, but His again, reconciled and belonging to Him at great price. His just anger about your sins went somewhere.
He says to His messengers in Isaiah, Speak comfort to Jerusalem. Yes, this is you, because in their sin were the people of Jerusalem and Judea sent away into exile, but the Lord has a new Jerusalem in store for you, His eternal Israel, those with faith in Jesus Christ, His only-begotten Son. He has established the new, eternal Jerusalem and has prepared it for you, thus the words of His comfort are for you. This Word that endures forever, unlike the worldly noise surrounding you. This divine comfort that it brings, comfort that is reason to rejoice always, takes place through your redemption accomplished in the fullness of time by the Advent of Jesus Christ, the Lord Himself incarnate.
Speak comfort to Jerusalem, and cry out to her. Beloved, hear this with God’s sincere voice. Hear your own Lord’s words spoken for you in this desolate place, because He has not forsaken you here. Cry out to her, that her warfare is ended. This has nothing to do with wars of billion-dollar-money-pits or laundering schemes in Ukraine and Israel, but with the much closer, much more dire warfare with God: yours. By your sins, you declared God as enemy, yet He makes you friend. He makes you a son. He make you heir with His only-begotten, eternal Son. He has ended your warfare by winning the eternal war against your sin on the cross. Rejoice. [Cry out to her…] That her iniquity is pardoned. Your offenses against God are forgiven. They are real and numerous, but His forgiveness is more. He has done this. [Cry out to her…that] she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. In Exodus and Jeremiah, there are certain instances in which God demands double repayment for our offenses. In this case, in the good news of your comforting that brings about rejoicing, He repays you double grace, specifically in the Advent of Christ. His double grace is that not only has Jesus taken the payment of all your sins upon Himself, but He has also bestowed His own brilliant righteousness upon you. In Him, you have received from the Lord’s nail-pierced hand double for all your sins, about which Isaiah says further in chapter 61, Instead of your shame you shall have double honor, And instead of confusion they shall rejoice in their portion. Therefore in their land they shall possess double; Everlasting joy shall be theirs.
Therefore, Redeemed in Christ, hear the words Rejoice in the Lord always, not as law, you best get to rejoicing, but as gospel, as good news, because the words aren’t commanding that you muster up some fake rejoicing in order to appease an angry god, but are encouraging words proclaimed to you so that you live and enjoy now the external Reason that will always be there that recalls to your mind, the Reason that keeps in your heart, cause to respond to it with rejoicing always, in all places and at all times, regardless of how the winds of this world hope and try to sway you. Rejoice, because you have reason to! When you think upon the Lord and your salvation in Him Who has come for you, your once dead heart wants to respond the only way that it can to the eternal word that will not pass away like all the things and people on our screens. Your heart rests in His words. Rest in Him. Rejoice in the Lord. Replace the other voices with His, with the holy words telling you what He has done, telling you what He has said to you even while you were far off in your sins. Hear Him. Trust Him and you will grow to discover that you need not force yourself to rejoice, for it is actually what your new heart wants to do all the time, yes always, for His mercy is forever upon you. We even rejoice in our standing, sitting, and kneeling in Divine Service, because they are physical acts of us rejoicing in the Lord, our great God Who gives us great reason, the only enduring reason, to rejoice, always.
In ✠ Jesus’ Name. Amen.
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