A Real Christmas – Results in Great Joy

A Real Christmas – Results in Great Joy is the theme for the third Sunday in Advent. Joy is not the same thing as happiness. It is infinitely better. Happiness is an emotion. Joyfulness is a condition. Happiness comes from your circumstances. Joyfulness comes from Christ assuring you of his abiding love and your glorious future. Therefore, happiness—“holiday cheer”—is fleeting. Joyfulness is enduring.

A Winnowing Fork

Luke 3:17 His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”

A winnowing fork?  What is that?  When wheat is harvested the kernels, the grain, need to be separated from the chaff.  We have machines that do this, but it was a dusty job.  You would whack the wheat on the ground and then throw it in the air.  The heavier grain would fall to the ground and the chaff would be driven away by the wind.  That’s not a very familiar picture to us, but the ancient audience of John knew exactly what it meant to be gathered into the Messiah’s barn and thrown to the unquenchable fire with the chaff, but this is the good news.  Times were bad.  The days are evil.  We want someone to clean it up.  I think – just like the Jews of Jesus day, we can misplace out trust in politicians who might mean well, but who are not interested in a spiritual awakening.  The problem is that This is God’s work.

God Delights In You

Luke 3:18 And with many other words John exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to them.

The Good News is the Gospel of Jesus.  In the first lesson did you hear the remarkable message at the end of the clip from Zephaniah?  God is a Mighty Warrior who saves.  He will take great delight in you.  How can we be both a brood of vipers and the delight of our God?  How can we be both sinner and saint?

The answer is because makes us clean.  Jesus paid for our sins in his death.  There is no chaff left in us to be burned up.  In every holiday symbol that you see this season – if it’s red, it points to the holy precious blood of our Lord shed on the cross.  God delights in you because in Jesus you are washed clean.

Want to hear more?  Watch this week’s message, the third in our Advent series: A Real Christmas – Results in Great Joy.