Zephaniah 3:14-20; Philippians 4:4-7
Today, the third Sunday of Advent is known as Gaudette, or Rose, Sunday. Gaudette is the Latin word for ‘rejoice,’ and today we look again at that precious little sapphire; joy.
So far, during this period of watching and waiting in Advent, we have spoken about the certainty of our hope in the coming of Jesus and its bringing of peace. The consequence of these fruits of hope and peace is that hard to find thing. Joy.
As we’ve spoken about before, joy is as profoundly different to happiness as hope is different to optimism. They use a different part of our mind, heart and soul.
The focus of both our Old Testament and New Testament reading today is joy, so these are the texts we will be looking at today.
Zephaniah was a prophet in the reign of King Josiah, the last good king of Judah, in the early 600s BC, about thirty to forty years before Judah was finally invaded by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar and when most were exiled to Babylon.
His message was a persevering trust in God through waiting on the Lord. Just as we are in a period of waiting.
Our reading today says this will save us from any sort of judgement and fill us with a consuming joy whilst we wait. He says
“Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter Jerusalem! The Lord has taken away the judgements against you, … The king of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst” (3:14-15).
Be filled with joy, God is right with you, in your midst, as close as your breath and he will find you blameless on the day of his coming. Rejoice!
Now Zephaniah’s prophesy was utterly fulfilled in the coming of Jesus. Jesus is the God in our midst mentioned by all the prophets bar none. This God in our midst Isaiah called Immanuel, which means ‘God with us’.
God clothed with the fullness of humanity. The God who Zephaniah says, (v.17), is the “warrior who gives victory.” So it is Christ who does the overcoming and gives the victory over all things that take us away from God. That take us into our own exile from him.
Why? Because he delights in us. Zephaniah continues “he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.”
Wow! We rejoice (i.e., filled with joy) because we are truly loved. At its deepest level, this is why we are joyous, because we know we are loved.
We are filled with joy in our waiting because Jesus himself is filled with joy over us. Isn’t that beautiful. All of these fruits of grace and repentance are actually part of the nature of God himself!
Which is why, when we are in Christ through faith in him, we are gradually filled with all the attributes of God himself. We become more and more partakers of the nature of Jesus, which is to be filled with joy.
This is why Paul writes as he does to the Philippians. Now Philippi is in Northeast Greece, about 100 kms south of the Bulgarian border and just up the road from Thessalonica to whose church Paul also wrote.
As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, both the churches in Philippi and Thessalonica supported and loved the apostle Paul, which is why these letters are filled with an affectionate warmth and love.
Today’s short passage from Philippians, written in a foul Roman jail, is simply one of the most beautiful texts in all of Scripture. It makes me feel like, oh, I don’t know … like God being so excited to see me he won’t stop hugging me.
So it’s no surprise that our reading opens with, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice! Let your gentleness be known to all (4:4-5a).” The reason for Paul’s urging is not difficult to find, be filled with joy for, "The Lord is near" (v.5b).
At the heart of the good news of Jesus is the announcement that God is near. God is not a distant and aloof deity, requiring sacrifice before he draws close to sinful humanity. In Christ Jesus God has come close.
Whatever we experience in our lives, relationships, workplace, “the Lord is near.” Whatever we go through in the struggle to follow Christ Jesus and to try and be faithful witnesses to him, “the Lord is near.”
This statement is intended to bring comfort and joy to us, not feel threatened by it. It is why Jesus came. So God could be with us.
Just like us, Paul is waiting for Jesus to come again and who will put all things right. But not only that. Paul even in his squalid captivity experienced the joy of the nearness of God in Christ Jesus.
As believers and partakers in the very nature of Jesus, we too can experience this joy is the here and now that overflows into gentleness.
Gentleness is not a fashionable thing to talk about, so I do whenever it comes up in Scripture. It, along with meekness, piety and humility, is easily misunderstood.
Because we wait in joy, we can now rejoice in a way that shows everyone the amazing gentleness of God in Jesus Christ. When we rejoice, we do so in a way where our rejoicing doesn’t become an exuberance that turns into a sort of false extroverted enthusiasm.
That is a mere misplaced sort of excitement. Joy is not that – it’s the source of gentleness which flows a bit like a river I think.
Real joy wells up within us as living water as promised by Jesus in John’s gospel and is always gentle (John 4:13). Gentleness, humility, and meekness are hallmarks of true joy.
Paul is saying be gentle as God is gentle with you. Don’t crush the Lily in souls more sensitive than ours.
Now joy can appear to be a very fragile and delicate thing that can disappear as quickly as it came, but it needn’t be and shouldn’t be. The easiest way to crush this beautiful Lilly of joy in our own soul is to be beset with anxiety.
Paul urges us not to be anxious in anything but tells us to bring everything, no matter how trivial or how seemingly insurmountable, to the God who cherishes us.
We cannot generate freedom from anxiety by our own efforts; the attempt to do so only pushes the anxiety underground, where it festers and leads to secret despair.
But Jesus will meet us at the place of worry, because Christ has descended to the depths of human despair. Therefore, Paul writes, God has become for us the God whose peace "guards" our minds and hearts (v.7).
So this joy is guarded and protected by Jesus the Prince of Peace himself, by ridding us of anxiety, the destroyer of joy.
So both the Old Testament prophet Zephaniah and the New Testament apostle Paul show us that the Lord himself promises to be with us always. God is always faithful and never breaks a promise.
And God helps us to turn our worries into prayers, and helps us to be gentle with everyone, knowing and believing that the Lord is always near. So how can we help but rejoice in the Lord always?
Again I say, rejoice. Rejoice in the Lord always, to the glory of God. Let me pray …
Father of peace, hope and joy – fill us this day more and more with the nature of your Son, our God, King, Lord and friend, Jesus. Amen.