You will say in that day: I will give thanks to you, O Lord, for though you were angry with me, your anger turned away, and you comforted me. Surely God is my salvation; I will trust, and will not be afraid, for the Lord God is my strength and my might; he has become my salvation. With joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation. And you will say in that day: Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name; make known his deeds among the nations; proclaim that his name is exalted. Sing praises to the Lord, for he has done gloriously; let this be known in all the earth. Shout aloud and sing for joy, O royal Zion, for great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel.
(Isaiah 12:2-6)
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It was almost three thousand years ago, and for the Jewish people it was not a time of joy. Strange then that this prophecy appears as a reading for the Third Sunday of Advent - which is the Sunday of Joy. There was nothing joyous about the context in which Isaiah wrote. Israel had been conquered years before. The Kingdom of Judah remained, but even as Isaiah wrote, it, too, was under threat. The bleak reality was that the darkness was closing in on God's people. It was a frightening time; a bewildering time; a chaotic time. Our passage from Isaiah was written probably as Judah was about to fall to the Babylonians. As their lives crashed around them and their fear mounted, the people fell into despair. Hope was gone. It seemed that everything they knew was about to be wiped off the face of the earth at the hands of a fearsome enemy. The Babylonian armies were virtually at the gates. And so Isaiah wrote, and he spoke of a better day to come. “You will say in that day: ‘I will give thanks to you, O Lord.’”
I’m all in favour of approaching even the bleakest of times by looking ahead to something better, so I understand the prophet’s desire to comfort the people with the promise of a better future. We today may not be facing exile, but still Isaiah’s words resonate during the Season of Advent, which forces us to wait - and patience is, of course, a virtue. But on the other hand, there’s also a principle that asks why we should wait until tomorrow for something we can have now, and by that principle the prophet’s words “in that day” grate on me a bit. Why “that day”? Why not today? As Christians, we live in the light which is Jesus - the light who cannot be extinguished by the darkness. As Christians, we have reason to be joyful today, and not just in some future “that day.” Even Isaiah, I think - while looking ahead - gives us reason to be joyful today. If, as the prophet says, “God is my salvation,” then as disciples of Jesus we’re able to see that salvation which first appeared in a manger in Bethlehem two thousand years ago. We can get into a lot of debates about what “salvation” actually is - put three Christians together and you’ll probably come up with about five different ideas on the subject - but we can all agree, I think, that salvation means being saved from that which in some ways destroys us - in body, mind and soul - and being brought into a new reality, a new way of life, a new way of seeing the world; one that tells us not to fear, not to worry, not to fret, not to be bothered, but to live life abundantly - and with joy.
I suspect that we would normally think of sadness as the opposite of joy, but I’m not sure about that. Perhaps more than anything the opposite of joy is fear. Fear is what saps joy out of our life - and we seem to be fearing a lot of things in today’s world. If God is truly our salvation, then at least one of the things God must be saving us from is fear - and one of the things that God must be saving us for is joy. During Advent, we look ahead to the coming of God’s reign on earth. For Isaiah, this was a future promise, so “in that day” made sense. But for us, while it’s still something we look ahead to, we’ve also seen it and experienced it. As John wrote in his Gospel, “the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” I might also add - full of joy. For Isaiah, living in a bleak time, this was something only to look ahead to hopefully. For us, in times that sometimes also seem bleak, things are also different - because for us: today is the day. For us, today is always the day! Paul wrote, “now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!” We’re joyful now because in Jesus God has come to us, to be with us; to be one of us! He is light and life and truth to us. This salvation that Isaiah spoke of is what Jesus brought to us in the flesh. While Isaiah said that “in that day … I will trust, and will not be afraid,” we can say that today we will trust and not be afraid. What are we trusting in? Obviously, we’re trusting in Jesus, and in the impact Jesus has on our lives. The great Bible commentator Matthew Henry wrote that “I will trust him to prepare me for his salvation, and preserve me to it. I will trust him with all my concerns, not doubting but he will make all to work for good. Faith in God is a sovereign remedy against tormenting fears.” Or, in the word of Isaiah, “I will trust, and will not be afraid.”
This absence of fear is a hallmark of a life of faith. “Do not be afraid.” Over and over and over again, Jesus said those words. “Do not be afraid.” He wasn’t talking about normal fear. Normal fear is a good thing. It’s called the “flight or fight mechanism.” There are times when logical fear takes over. I don’t go into the woods across the street from my house because neighbours have told me that people have seen bears and wolves in there. I’m kind of scared of bears and wolves! But when Jesus and Isaiah speak about not being afraid, they’re speaking of fear as a spiritual problem. They’re speaking of being afraid that just maybe God isn’t in control; that just maybe our faith isn’t real; that just maybe eternity isn’t a certainty; that just maybe my salvation isn’t secure; that just maybe I haven’t done enough to make God happy. This is the kind of fear that saps joy from us - and that fear gets taken away by faith. Faith tells us that God is always with us and will never abandon us. Jesus came as Emmanuel; his birth represents the sign that God is here. We do not fear, because we have faith in Jesus, whom God sent. We live in joy, because we have faith in Jesus, whom God sent.
Earlier in our service we sang “Joy To The World.” In spite of the fact that it’s in the “Christmas” section of the hymn book, it’s not a Christmas carol. Isaac Watts wrote it as an Advent hymn. It speaks not of the birth of Jesus, whose life offered us only a glimpse - albeit a glorious one - of what God’s reign would look like, but rather of his final victory. The victory isn’t here yet - but we’ve seen what it will look like through the life of Jesus, which is why we don’t have to wait for what Isaiah called “that day” - we can sing today, in the perhaps prophetic words of Isaac Watts:
Joy to the world! the Lord is come;
…
Repeat the sounding joy,
Repeat the sound joy,
Repeat, repeat the sounding joy!
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