Joy to the World and What it Means

No more let sins and sorrows grow.  Nor thorns infest the ground:

He comes to make His blessings flow

Far as the curse is found, far as the curse is found,

far as the curse is found.

These words were written by Isaac Watts, the famous English hymn writer and composed by George Frederick Handel.  The first two stanzas lead us into joyful, thankful worship.  This third stanza speaks to the purpose of the Savior's coming.  It takes us back to the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve's disobedience separated them and us from all the blessings of fellowship with God.  It speaks of the growth of sins and sorrows.  The thorns infesting the ground must be speaking of how man's work would be made more difficult because of Adam and Eve's sin.  So our world both then and today, apart from the Savior's coming, is afflicted with the growth of sins and sorrows, and our work is made more difficult by sin's grip.  Even nature is engulfed in sin's grip.  This certainly describes the world we live in today.  Sin's curse is spread thick over all humanity and even of nature.  Although the great work of tracking down and destroying the curse actually ends at the cross, the Savior's coming begins at Bethlehem, where Jesus is born into the world.

The Savior's coming changes the game.  He comes to make his blessings flow in no limited fashion but to everywhere the curse is found.  The blessings that come with the Savior's birth are meant to chase down and overtake the sins and sorrows of this world in as powerful a manner as those sins and sorrows were first released into this world.  So the questions for me are will I believe that the blessings of God's coming are big enough to replace the evidences of the curse in my own life, and the lives of all the people I know no matter what the evidences of that curse are in their lives?  

No One is Beyond the Redemptive Reach of Jesus

My wife and I were inspired by many scenes from the Sight & Sound Theater https:www.sight-sound.com production of Jesus in Lancaster, PA in summer 2018.  However, the scene I most remember was Jesus' encounter with the Demoniac covered in Luke 8:26-39.  This occurred right after Jesus demonstrated his authority over the potentially destructive effects of the nature, calming the storm on the Sea of Galilee.  In the production he and the disciples were sailing through a dismal fog when they approach the shore of the Geresenes.  The story of this troubled man was remarkably displayed on stage and his pain and suffering were obvious.  Jesus is not at all intimidated by the man, his condition, or by the demons that possessed him.  By the end of the story he's entirely transformed by Jesus' redemptive work, such that he was found to be clothed and in his right mind.  Although the man begs Jesus to leave with him and his disciples on the boat, Jesus instead commands him to return home and tell his family what God had done for him.  How would I have reacted to the demoniac in this story?  How do I react to people I come into contact with who are not entirely well mentally?  Answer: not well.  This story reminds us to put before Jesus the very people who we would rule out as being beyond the reach of anyone's help, and not just those with mental illness.  But that is not the case with Jesus.  There's no situation that's daunting to him.  So let's take that most troubled person we can think of, or that person who's in a situation that appears to be the most hopeless, and place them in the hands of Jesus to seek healing for them.     

There's a sad subplot to this story involving the residents of this community.  They were so troubled by the upset caused by the healing of this troubled man that they asked Jesus to leave!  So the Savior, who heals and restores the most troubled person in their little village upsets them so much that they ask him to leave.  They are so used to the troubled condition of this man, so resigned to the permanency of his condition, so stuck in their own ongoing lack of compassion and faith that he could be healed that their little world is tipped upside down and they can't take the healing Jesus brought.  My hope is that we would never be satisfied with the things that are plainly out of kilter.  Sadly, apart from the hope we have in Jesus we become far too apathetic.  So let's remember to place our hope in the redemptive hands of Jesus.

The Self-Made End up Broken But Jesus Saves

My people have committed two sins:

They have forsaken me,

the spring of living water,

and have dug their own cisterns, 

broken cisterns that cannot hold water.

Jer. 2:13

Early in Jeremiah's message to Judah, he speaks these words, on behalf of God to God's  wayward people.  These words speak to mankind's nature, because the people of Judah, like us, were decendants of Adam and Eve.  People need water, for sure, but so many questions follow from this verse.  Why would people who could partake of a spring of living water choose to forsake such a gift?  Why would someone prefer stagnant water over flowing water?  Why would someone take the time to build a cistern and then improperly build it properly so it fails to hold water?

Sadly there must be something about the human condition that causes us to turn our backs on the spring of living water, which comes from God the Father and his son Jesus.   But we cannot leave it at that because whatever the living water represents, we seek that water to survive.  So then we attempt to meet those basic needs with our own ability, with disastrous consequences.

The story doesn't end there, however, because Jesus, by giving believers the Holy Spirit causes them to become vessels of living water.  Through Jesus' work and his gift of the Holy Spirit, we are delivered from digging out our own failing cisterns to holding the living water we crave, to becoming vessels from which living water flows.

On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, "Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink.  Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.

John 4:37 - 38