Joy for a Grinch

Can I give, can everybody give me a good Merry Christmas? Just say Merry Christmas. Everybody look to the person next to you say Merry Christmas. Isn't that nice? Isn't that nice?

Doesn't that just fill your heart with joy? All the smiling faces. Christina told me as I was walking in that there's a lot of smiling faces coming in today and that's really what it's all about. The joy that's in the air. You guys who were online today weren't able to make it.

Thank you for being with us today. We got some people already traveling, some of our family. So we hope you're watching and you're with us today. We miss you and we love you. So just a wonderful spirit in the air isn't it right now and awesome to see our kids and things like that.

So don't be a Grinch. Don't be a Grinch. Look at the person next to you say don't be a Grinch. Was that offensive? It's kind of funny that we have that very familiar statement.

But the meaning behind that statement of course is always kind of fun, right? But it wasn't meant to be fun. It wasn't coined until Dr. Seuss in 1957 wrote the famous kids book about the How the Grinch Stole Christmas. And since then we have this phrase Grinch, right?

We're thinking about this green creature that lives up on Mount Crumpet that looks down into the valley and sees the Hoos having a fun time. They're full of joy and they're celebrating all that was going on. He hated joy. Really? He hated joy.

And Christmas, what does Christmas bring? Christmas brings joy. And he especially hated Christmas. And when you think of a Grinch, the first thing you probably say, wow, that's, that's, you laugh, right? I mean, there's Grinches everywhere.

Some of you are wearing Grinch t-shirts. I saw them coming in today. We wear Grinch costumes. We wear Grinch costumes. I was watching a ball game yesterday and on TV.

The Grinch was sitting out in the audience of the game in the crowd. And I was like, man, this Grinch thing is really happening. People have it in their yards. They have Grinch out there. We have a Grinch in our yard, actually, a blow-up Grinch in our yard.

And it's fun. It's fun. But nobody wants to be a Grinch. Most of you probably know somebody that's a Grinch. Some of you, if you're honest with yourself, you probably are a bit of a Grinch.

Maybe just a little bit, you know, just a little bit of that Grinch-y attitude. Or maybe it's really big. Maybe there's something there and you're like, wow, I'm a Grinch. Grinch. When it comes to Christmas, when it comes to anything, I'm a Grinch.

And nobody just gets... It's there overnight. We don't say, hey, you know, I'm going to be as grinchy as I possibly can be today. You didn't wake up this morning and say, I'm going to go to church today and be grinchy. We don't do that, right?

We don't, when we're teenagers, say, you know, I'm going to grow up and be a bitter, angry person. We don't do that, do we? Nobody does that, but for many, it happens to us. Maybe it's a season of life, or maybe it's an attitude altogether. And what we've learned in this series, if you've been with us for the past few weeks, we've been walking through what it means to be a Grinch and how to beat those things.

And we started off by the thing that it stems from, and that's maybe there's a hurt, or maybe there's an offense, or maybe something happened in your life. And it was a small thing, but because it wasn't resolved or you weren't able to get through it, but maybe that manifested into anger and resentfulness. And that resentfulness you held on to until it progressed into this mood of bitterness. Like, just you're bitter all the time. You don't even know why you're bitter, but it's there, and it all anchors back to something maybe in your past.

And if that bitterness isn't handled, what happens? It progresses into something nobody wants to be in. That's cynical. Just nothing's good in life. Nothing will ever work out.

We predict the future based on our past circumstances. We say things that are negative because of things that happened in our past, and it's just going to happen again, and this is just how people are, and this is just the way it is, and that's how we become cynical. And then we have this thing called pride. We talked about that one week, right? That some of this centers on pride.

Everything kind of gathers around this idea of pride, and you can go back and watch those series and learn more about those. But there's a place that I fear that many people have gotten to because of these grinchy attitudes, and that is joy, losing joy. Because if you lose joy, it's hard to believe in anything. It's hard to be kind to people. It's hard to be nice to people.

It's hard to think about others. It really is. And there's a spirit of heaviness, it seems like, in life. There's a gravity that takes place in life, and it steals our joy. And when joy goes away, and in fact, if you go back to the Grinch, what was wrong with the Grinch?

He was so bitter. He was so angry. Really, he just didn't have any joy because he wanted everybody else to experience the bitterness and the anger that he had. He never wanted anybody to be joyful, and his heart was two sizes too small. Our hearts become small when we don't have joy in our lives.

Our hearts become small when we're angry and bitter. It manifests into this personality and this identity that nobody wants to get there and we wonder how we got there. And then you look at the Who's and they're just happy. They're holding hands. Their Christmas gifts were taken away.

Their Christmas trees were taken away. Everything that they enjoyed was taken away. All their food, all those things that you have good times around, they were taken away. And he looked down the mountain. He just could not believe that they still had joy.

They were happy. They held hands. They sang Christmas carols together. They didn't need their circumstances to dictate what joy was. Because joy wasn't the things they had.

Joy was much deeper than that. But for many, maybe it is this gravity that we feel in life. But you know what the opposite of gravity is? Levity. And we here at Salt Church, if you don't notice, I like people to clap.

And I like people to stand. I mean, look, there you go. Yeah. Yeah. And when y'all are down, I try to lift you up because we like to promote an environment of joy and celebration.

And one of the things that God came to do is to bring us joy. And in the passage of Isaiah, Isaiah, the prophet who brought the prophecy of Jesus Christ, that Jesus was going to come into the world. He was the prophet that predicted Christmas would come. That's what we celebrate today. He said this about the Savior who would enter the world.

He said he came to give them beauty for ashes, beauty for ashes, and oil of joy for mourning, that our mourning can be joyful and a garment of what? Praise. Praise for the spirit of heaviness. You know how you can conquer heaviness? Praise.

Praise. And we like to lift people up in our environments. And the planting of the Lord that he may be glorified, right? That they may be called trees of righteousness. The planting of the Lord that he may be glorified.

And then the psalmist goes on and says it like this, but you, O Lord, are my shield. You are a shield for me, my glory, and the one who lifts my head, amen? He lifts our head. That's what joy is. When we praise the Lord, we're inviting an atmosphere of joy.

We praise him regardless of what's going on internally. That's why we meet every week. That's why we come together. Because worship is different than praise. We say praise and worship.

Worship is an intimate connection with God. It's between you and God. But praise is a gathering of people that lift the name of Jesus and bring an atmosphere of joy, an atmosphere of hope, an atmosphere of life. That's where joy comes from. And I want to just declare today that this year is going to be a year of joy.

And we're going to lift the name of Jesus, amen? We're just going to say that. We're going to declare that in the air. And that this... This is going to be a spirit, a place with a spirit of joy.

We're gonna we're gonna love the Lord, praise Him together, and even though our circumstances may not often dictate that, internally we're gonna be joyful people. I take you to the passage in Luke, many of you are familiar with, the shepherds, and there's something interesting about shepherds. A lot of people may not know this, or maybe you do, but shepherds were not people that you wanted to associate with. They were people that were probably in dark, depressed places. They were somebody who weren't even allowed to go into the temple, to the synagogues to worship because they were considered unclean, and they couldn't get clean because they couldn't go into the synagogue.

So there's no hope for them. They were born into it. It wasn't someone you'd want your daughter marrying, okay? They weren't the cleanest people. They were a little rough around the edges.

But what's interesting is that God chose to share the good news of Jesus Christ with them first. Isn't that cool? That shows God's heart for people. And they were dark, they were often in dark places, and I'm sure many of them were depressed and down, and I'm just a shepherd. I'm just this.

This is where I am. This is where I'm stuck. But the angel of the Lord said this, then the angel said to him, do not be afraid for behold, what does he say to them? I bring you good news. I bring you good tidings of great joy that will be to all people.

Great joy. That's what the message was. It was a message of joy that will be to a few people. No, to all people, anywhere in life. Everyone.

It's a message of joy. And it says this, for there is born to you, you, it's about you, it's about me, born to you, shepherds, to you people, this day in the city of David, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord. What is a Savior? A Savior is somebody who comes and steps in all of your mess and cleans it up. He's someone that cures the disease of sin and darkness, those things that we have inside ourselves.

He comes and he saves us. He gave his life. He was our Savior. He came into the darkness and gave us light, because he was the light of life. And he fixes all that mess that's going on.

And it also says that he's Christ the Lord. He was Christ the Lord. What does that mean? It literally means in the original Greek that he is the one who has the power to break all the yoke of bondage off your life. He has the power to break the yoke of bondage off your life.

And that's where joy comes from. He comes in and he saves us from ourselves, right? And then he breaks that yoke off of us. And he makes us new. He makes us clean.

And that's where joy is. That's what's exciting. And God is moving and God is working through us to bring us to a place of joy, but unfortunately for many, and I'm talking to Christians here, if you're not a Christian you probably have an out right now, but for many Christians, they live without joy. We have this good news, He come to give us joy, but we're missing out on these wonderful promises that God has given us in Scripture to give us hope and give us life and give us peace and give us joy. And we miss out on those things.

And many, many are not experienced in joy, but they're saved and they're just living for heaven, but perhaps they're missing out on this joy. And I want to say this message is for you today, if you're missing out on joy. My mother loves Christmas. She loves to decorate. She's an interior decorator.

She's always been. She does wonderful things to her house. If you walk into her house, you'll see Christmas trees everywhere. You'll see lights everywhere. You'll see all kinds of stuff around.

And it's almost walking in, like walking into a Hallmark film, you know, where you have that house that's all decorated up and Santa's over here and the carolers are over here and then Jesus is over here. Whatever's going on, it's just lights, lights, lights everywhere. And every year when I was a kid, it was an early process to start that. We would pull out all these Christmas trees. I want to say the last time I counted, there was over 30 Christmas trees in her house.

I mean, that's how serious she is about decorating for Christmas. If you know my, if you ever meet my mother, you'll know that that's one of her favorite things to do. And every Thanksgiving, we just know that we're going to have to go up in the attic and start pulling down the Christmas trees. It's just a part of Thanksgiving when everybody goes home and the extended family's done after all the people come and eaten. Okay, here is our family.

Let's go upstairs and let's start pulling these Christmas trees and these lights down and these boxes and boxes of lights and these boxes and boxes of Christmas trees. And I'm telling you, it's a mess. It's a mess. It doesn't matter how well you organize your lights. They are always messy.

It's always messy. And I love my dad.