Nehemiah 8:1-3, 9-10

1 “all the people assembled with a unified purpose at the square just inside the Water Gate. They asked Ezra the scribe to bring out the Book of the Law of Moses, which the Lord had given for Israel to obey. 2 So on October 8[a] Ezra the priest brought the Book of the Law before the assembly, which included the men and women and all the children old enough to understand. 3 He faced the square just inside the Water Gate from early morning until noon and read aloud to everyone who could understand. All the people listened closely to the Book of the Law. 9 Then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who were interpreting for the people said to them, “Don’t mourn or weep on such a day as this! For today is a sacred day before the Lord your God.” For the people had all been weeping as they listened to the words of the Law. 10 And Nehemiah[b] continued, “Go and celebrate with a feast of rich foods and sweet drinks, and share gifts of food with people who have nothing prepared. This is a sacred day before our Lord. Don’t be dejected and sad, for the joy of the Lord is your strength!”

The word Watergate holds a prominent place in both biblical history as well as American politics, yet they couldn’t be more contrasting, one involved a cover up the other confession.  The first Watergate is found in the bible, in book of Nehemiah, a place of repentance and honesty. God’s people had returned from 70 years of foreign captivity in Babylon. They had been separated from the Law of God and what they knew of their Faith came from the memories of others. So after having rebuilt the Temple and the wall around Jerusalem, that had been destroyed, Ezra the priest preached the Word of God to them. Their response was one of remorse, they were grieved, convicted by their careless lives. Great waves of guilt began to roll over them and they began to weep before God. They realized that they and their father’s had strayed and sinned bringing about the consequences of captivity. They had neglected the Word of God, yet when they heard the truth, with tears they turned from their ways and back to the Word. In our spiritual lives, sorrow over sin can result in repentance. Paul speaks of its benefit in 2 Corinthians 7:10, “For the sorrow that is according to the will of God produces a repentance without regret, leading to salvation.” When we realize how we have fallen short of the holy standard of God, spurning His Will and rebelling against His righteousness, the result should be more than remorse within our hearts it should lead to repentance. Sin leads to shame, and sorrow and such sorrow is good only if it brings us to repentance. This is not just feeling sorry for our consequences this is confession. When we humble ourselves before His holiness and seek His face of forgiveness.  To their response of repentance Nehemiah responded with these words: ”Go and celebrate with a feast of rich foods and sweet drinks, and share gifts of food with people who have nothing prepared. This is a sacred day before our Lord. Don’t be dejected and sad, for the joy of the Lord is your strength!” It is out of the sorrow that they saw the strength, not theirs but His. Nehemiah shared one of the greatest truths, we don’t have to be stuck in sin, forgiveness frees. The sorrow of repentance is replaced by strength because forgiveness does not focus on the failure it focuses on the Father. This was a sacred day, one that was to be filled with joy, because repentance leads to rejoicing. Today we so often confuse sacred with silence, we see it as solemn, and somber, but in contrast Nehemiah’s called for serious celebration. Some of the most sacred moments in my life have been the ones most filled with joy, my wedding, the birth of my children, Christmas and Easter. The joy of the Lord is our strength, it is our reservoir of rejoicing because:

• Joy is the result of knowing who you are and whose you are.

What did the people hear from the Word of the Law? The words: “For I, the Lord, am the one who brought you up from the land of Egypt, that I might be your God. Therefore, you must be holy because I am holy.” Leviticus 11:45. They heard how God had chosen them, loved them, rescuing and redeeming them from slavery. They heard about His provision of the Promised Land, and their purpose as His people. They heard that they were a product of His creation not a byproduct of chance. That they had been redeemed to be responsible, and that they were accountable for their actions. They knew they were wanted and loved; they had a sense of being and belonging. Their lives took on meaning and direction as they understood that they had been created with purpose, to lead lives that pleased God. That they were not to live however they wanted but according to His Word. But how many have missed this message today?  Is it any wonder that we are surrounded by self-esteem struggles and suicide, when we teach our children that they are the result of chance, a coincidence of the cosmos, not Christ’s creation. Today our children are bombarded with the message that they are the result of the random, an accident instead of the work and wonder of the Almighty.  No wonder we have trouble teaching morals when we teach that we are merely animals evolved over millions of years.  No wonder we are moving toward moral decay when we have bought into the belief that it’s all just a result of biology, the result of fate not the Father. We have reduced life to a primordial soup, in which primitive life forms once swam, only to crawl out and evolved into us. Then we expect people to place value on themselves and have a sense of purpose! No this is not a message that beings meaning, it’s a mess. We have opened the door to despair and depression, creating a culture of spiritual drifters who stumble about aimlessly, whose only purpose is the pursuit of pleasure.  What if we stopped listening to the world and replaced it with the Word. When we replace the trash with the truth we hear the message that we were created in the image of the Almighty not some accident. We were created with a point and a purpose, we have meaning and value. When we listen to the lies we are lost, but when we listen to the Lord we live in love. It is here in Jesus that we find joy, in the one who replaces sorrow with strength.  There is no joy in the junk of evolution, where only random chance can lead to change. But the message of the Word involves coming to the cross and cleansing change. So who are you, are you are a child of God? Whose are you, do you belong to God? Ephesians 1:3-6 says:  3 All praise to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms because we are united with Christ. 4 Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. 5 God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure. 6 So we praise God for the glorious grace he has poured out on us who belong to his dear Son.”  God knew you and loved you before the world ever began, and when does life begin? According to the Bible your life began in the heart of God before the world was ever created. He loved you into existence and will pursue you until you responded to His peace, so that when you die your life will continue with Him into an eternity that he has prepared for you. What greater sense of self-esteem, what better sense of identity could we have? What greater joy is there than understanding that your life is connected to Christ? Would you make today a sacred day, a sacrifice of praise to our God, a day to shout out that the joy of the Lord is your strength?

Isaiah 9:2-3 “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned. 3 You have enlarged the nation and increased their joy; they rejoice before you as people rejoice at the harvest, as warriors rejoice when dividing the plunder.”

We often focus on this scripture at Christmas but this is more than just a Christmas passage this is about change for a culture caught in darkness. Here in the depressing land of deep darkness we see the hope of increasing joy.  It is likened to the rejoicing over the ripe harvest, when the fruit is full, and the waiting is over, or when the battle is over and the war is won. Joy is the fruit of the Spirit, the plunder of a battle waged and won. This is the call to change our focus from our circumstances to Christ. Here Isaiah prophesies about the coming change, the contrast between dark and light, and how the people will no longer go on living dark joyless lives. That because of the transforming truth of the dawning light the people will no longer be stuck living in deep darkness. Today our culture teaches us that joy results simply from a change in circumstances, yet Isaiah prophesied that the people needed more than a change in circumstances they needed Christ. Change that results in joy always rests in Jesus. The people that Isaiah prophesied about were chained by the darkness of their circumstances, instead of thriving they were barely surviving. They were bound and blinded by the blackness, but what they needed most wasn’t less darkness but more light. The same is true for us today, we don’t need less problems we need more peace, and that is only found through the Prince of peace, Jesus Christ. At the center of change there is Christ, and today what we need most isn’t a situational change it’s a Savior. Today instead of craving Christ chase after a change in circumstance, but there will never be change without Christ.  As long as we focus more on our circumstances than Christ we will always chase false change. We don’t need the lottery we need the Lord. Why waste our lives on a gamble when God has given His Son. When we chase circumstantial change we trade one form of darkness for another, living with a counterfeit instead of true contrasting change.  Today we are surviving with a substitute instead of thriving with the Savior. We have substituted happiness for the holiness of God’s light, a holiness that can heal the disease of our darkness by piercing our problems and revealing our rottenness. Happiness hinges on circumstances, but joy results in Jesus. As we chase the happiness we replace the Savior with the substitute of stuff. Today instead of turning to the truth we are trusting in our technology. With every substitute comes a new set of problems, like our technology and our toys to time dilemma. The time and money we spend accumulating the stuff verses the time we have to enjoy it. Today many families let their financial decisions revolve more around feel goods and happiness than godliness and holiness. In our pursuit of pleasure we have fallen prey to fast paced lives, blindly buying into the belief that busy is better. Today we are a culture caught up in a flurry of activity and false affluence, a fast paced frantic financial farce, believing we can charge our change. In our false affluence we have become infected by the deadly disease of affluenza, where the driving force of our lives revolves around accumulating more and more stuff while we suffer from less and less time. We are a sold out society, foolishly financing the fun, borrowing till we are bankrupt, so we can pay the debt of our past pleasure. Our god of more is providing less, leaving our lives in a mess, instead of peace we chase pleasure that leads to pain, instead of Christ change we have chaos. Our craving for comfort comes early, shortly after being born babies discover that when they are uncomfortable and cry someone comes to take care of them. This care comes from outside so they learn to look and lean on external sources for satisfaction and fulfillment. This could be good if we would stick to resting in relationship and not riches. But as we become children and earn an allowance, we meet money, discovering its power to purchase pleasure.  Remember the excitement when you bought your first ________.  In that moment money gave us the power to purchase happiness ourselves. Yet over time our purchases had to become bigger and better for us to feel the same wave of warmth. And so it went, with each new acquisition having to be a more costly thrill, yet a high that didn’t hold us in happiness as long. Until we finally find ourselves with more and the best that money can buy, but with less happiness than when we got our first bicycle as a kid. What started out as pleasure has now become a problem, and the hope of happiness is replaced with more responsibilities, more worries, more commitments, more to lose if robbed, and more taxes. Yet even as we see the dream of happiness dying in the debt, we still stubbornly stick to the stuff. In the addiction of accumulation we have become the silly society, where our second hand stuff is spilling over into our garages and displacing our much more valuable vehicles. Yet the slow downward spiral of dwindling pleasure and increasing problems doesn’t seem to stop us. We watch shows like hoarders in horror, failing to see the hoarder hiding in our own hearts. We have become the happiness hoarders, homeless and displaced by the unquenchable desire for more.  At some point we all hit the fulfillment ceiling, but most of us never recognize when the formula of money fulfillment not only stopped working, but started to work against us. Caught in the darkness of desiring and the blackness of buying more we fail to see that we don’t need more money we need more of the Master. Isaiah tells us that Christ was coming to crash into the blinding blackness of our culture with the light of love. That joy is found not in our cash, but in the cross. That is why Paul preaches in 1 Corinthians 1:18, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.” The challenge for us is to change our focus from cash, from circumstances, from comfort, from convenience and anything else that replaces Christ. So where do you need to change your focus? What’s keeping your eyes from Christ? Do you have a father focus or a feel good focus? What’s the secret to increasing joy? Jesus. Paul in Philippians 4:4, as he preaches from prison reminds us to “rejoice in the Lord always.” He doesn’t say, “Rejoice in your possessions, paycheck or the place where you live, he says, “rejoice in the Lord” This is about returning to the source of our joy, Jesus not the rust of our riches. Christ not your circumstances is the true source of your daily joy.