Joy to the World Week 1: Because He Came, We Have a Message | 2 Corinthians 5:17-21
The following is a manuscript of the sermon presented by Senior Pastor Dr. Roger Patterson on Sunday, December 10, 2023 at our West U Baptist campus.
The Holiday season is a season of messaging… everyone has a message to share.
Marketers have a message….
Employers have a message…
Schools have a message…
Politicians have a message…
As followers of Christ, we don’t just have A message, we have THE message.
Our message is, “Joy to the World, the Lord is come!”
Did you know that song, that we sing so wonderfully at Christmas, is primarily about the second coming of Jesus Christ?
Note the words:
Joy to the World Verse 1
Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room
And heaven and nature sing
And heaven and nature sing
And heaven, and heaven, and nature sing
Joy to the World Verse 2
Joy to the world, the Savior reigns!
Let men their songs employ;
While fields and floods, rocks, hills and plains
Repeat the sounding joy
Repeat the sounding joy
Repeat, repeat, the sounding joy
Joy to the World Verse 3
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, far as the curse is found
Joy to the World Verse 4
He rules the world with truth and grace
And makes the nations prove
The glories of His righteousness
And wonders of His love
And wonders of His love
And wonders, wonders, of His love
Now, what’s important to note here is that all of this that we sign about in this song, has to do with what is currently happening or what will happen.
Most Christmas songs sing about what happened…
- It Came Upon A Midnight Clear…
- Away in a Manger
- Silent Night
- Go Tell it on the Mountain…that Jesus Christ is born.
Joy to the world proclaims a number of critical themes.
In essence it is saying…
Because He Came…
- We have a message!
- We have forgiveness!
- We have a Promise!
- We have a coming kingdom!
These line up with the four verses in Joy to the World.
Today, we look at the first one of these…
Because He Came…
- We have a message!
Joy to the World Verse 1
Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
Let earth receive her King;
Let every heart prepare Him room
And heaven and nature sing
And heaven and nature sing
And heaven, and heaven, and nature sing
This first verse of Joy to the World says, “Jesus has arrived…receive the king…prepare your heart now.”
You see, we live in the season of Grace…the time from when Jesus Christ was crucified and rose from the dead, ascended to heaven, and will return again.
We, in the church, live between his ascension and his return. And we in the church don’t just have a message…we have THE MESSAGE!
Look at 2 Corinthians 5:17-21 with me this morning.
2 Corinthians 5:17-21
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come. 18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation. 20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Context… Much of 2 Corinthians is written by Paul to defend his Gospel ministry to some people in Corinth who doubted the legitimacy of his apostleship. So, this is basically Paul saying, “Let me make sure you guys understand what I am all about.”
So, Paul chooses his words carefully to articulate with clarity the message of the Gospel. Our text today is a powerful and succinct synopsis of the Gospel message!
But. Where do we see Christmas in this text? Look closely again at vs. 19.
2 Corinthians 5:19
that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself…
In other words, in the person of the Messiah…the anointed…the Christ, God was reconciling the world to himself.
The New Living Translation says, “God was in Christ…”
There is the doctrine of the incarnation! God took on flesh! He came! And He Came with a Message that has penetrated and permeated the world and is still going out to this day to those who have never heard.
My friends, because He came, we have a message.
We have a message of….
- New Beginnings
I. We have a Message of New Beginnings
I don’t know how many of you know who Judge Frank Caprio is, but he has a social media account on called Captured In Providence.
In this social media account, people appear before him for traffic violations. And these interactions with Judge Caprio are classic. There are all sorts of excuses and stories. He is a fair and just man, but don’t mess with him!
But I recently saw on his account that a woman appeared before him and began to tell her story. She started off by saying, “You are my hero…you see, I was raised in the foster care system, and you are one of the ones responsible for making sure I had food and clothes and the opportunity for a future.”
In tears she detailed how she wasn’t wanted. She noted how she was kept in a dog cage and how, when she grew up in a group home after being taken out of that situation. She said, that when she was in a dog cage, Jesus would sit in there with her.
The judge was very moved by her story. And in the course of the conversation, this woman mentioned that her social worker placed her with her own parents, and that she finally went to a home where she was loved. She had a new beginning.
That’s the picture of the gospel of Jesus right there.
When we are in Christ, we have a new beginning. We are a new creation…the old is gone and the new has come.
Look at verse 17.
2 Corinthians 5:17
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.
Being a new creation begins with a new reality––being “in Christ.” For Paul, Christ is not just a spiritual reality. The spiritual reality of Christ is real because the earthly Christ is real. Remember how Paul defined the gospel in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8:
1 Corinthians 15:3-8
3 I passed on to you right from the first what had been told to me, that Christ died for our sins just as the Scriptures said he would, 4 and that he was buried, and that three days afterwards he arose from the grave just as the prophets foretold. 5 He was seen by Peter and later by the rest of “the Twelve.” 6 After that he was seen by more than five hundred Christian brothers at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died by now. 7 Then James saw him, and later all the apostles. 8 Last of all I saw him too, long after the others, as though I had been born almost too late for this.
Jesus really did live. How do we know this?
He died, was buried, rose from the grave, and was seen by countless individuals. This cannot be overstated. In fact, these truths were so important to the early church, Christians believed they should be confessed by all Christians:
Notice these words from the Nicene Creed:
The Nicene Creed
For us and for our salvation
he came down from heaven;
he became incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary,
and was made human.
He was crucified for us under Pontius Pilate;
he suffered and was buried.
As we reflect on Christmas, we are reminded of the importance of the incarnation. Without the incarnation, there is no human Jesus living, dying and rising.
As Eugene Peterson paraphrased, “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood” (John 1:14, The Message).
Because of the incarnation, the spiritual reality of being “in Christ” can be a reality for any person.
We also have a message of…
- New Beginnings
- Reconciliation
II. We have a message of reconciliation. (vs. 18,19)
Look at 2 Corinthians 5:18-19.
2 Corinthians 5:18-19
18 All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation; 19 that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting to us the message of reconciliation.
Do you see that word, “reconciliation”? Christ reconciled us and gave us the message of reconciliation.
George Guthrie says…“Reconciliation has to do with ‘reestablishment of an interrupted or broken relationship,’ or the ‘exchange of hostility for a friendly relationship.’”
James Garland says, “Reconciliation assumes broken relationships, alienation, and disaffection.”
If reconciliation is about the exchange of hostility, what is God replacing it with?
According to Graham Cole, the answer is peace––shalom.
Cole writes…“The cross makes peace.” He goes on to say “Atonement brings shalom by defeating the enemies of peace, overcoming the barriers both to reconciliation and to the restoration of creation. . . . There is no shalom, however, without sacrifice. Peace is made through the blood of the cross. The atoning life, death and vindication of the faithful Son bring shalom by addressing the problem of sin, death, the devil, and wrath definitively.”
Do you remember the angels’ announcement to the shepherds?
Luke 2:8-14
8 And in the same region there were shepherds out in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. 9 And an angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were filled with great fear. 10 And the angel said to them, “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. 12 And this will be a sign for you: you will find a baby wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.” 13 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying,
14 “Glory to God in the highest,
and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased!”
What’s the announcement? The Christ has come…the baby wrapped in swaddling cloths has come! And the result is PEACE on earth…good will toward men.
Now, notice this second part of reconciliation. We are reconciled to God not because of our own doing. In Christ, God did “not count their trespasses against them.”
Trespasses “are not simply sins one might commit in ignorance. By transgressing we deliberately do what we know to be disobedience to God. This defiant mutiny is far more serious and created what seemed to be an unbridgeable gulf between us and God.”
According to Paul, God did not count our trespasses against us. The word “Count” is an accounting word.
Linda Belleville, in her commentary on the book of 2 Corinthians says,
“‘To count against them’ in the world of commerce referred to calculating the amount of a debt. Today we may think of charges on a credit card for which we are held legally responsible. Here it means not posting debts to our account that should rightfully be ours.”
Linda Belleville, 2 Corinthians, The IVP New Testament Commentary Series (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1996), 156.
We have a message of….
- New Beginnings
- Reconciliation
- Real Consequence
III. We have a message of real consequence that we are to share with the world. (vs. 20)
2 Corinthians 5:20-21
20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us. We implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God. 21 For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
Stop and think about this with me for a moment. We have the message of new beginnings… moving from death to life, from darkness to light…
And we have the message that we were God’s enemies, but God, in his love sent his son to reconcile us to himself.
As a result, if this is true…if this is right…if this is the message we have heard, and believed, then isn’t it also true, that we have a message of real consequence to share with others?
James Garland, in looking at this passage says of having this message as God’s ambassadors…“God continues to act through those who have been reconciled. They have the privilege and responsibility to share in this great divine enterprise and are to call others to be reconciled to God.”
And the message we have is abundantly clear and profoundly simple.
2 Corinthians 5:21
For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
For us…for our sake…
God gave his one and only Son…the one who knew no sin, the one with whom there was no offense found on his lips…and made him sin…
Isaiah 53 says…
Isaiah 53:9-11
9 And they made his grave with the wicked
and with a rich man in his death,
although he had done no violence,
and there was no deceit in his mouth.
10 Yet it was the will of the Lord to crush him;
he has put him to grief;
when his soul makes an offering for guilt,
he shall see his offspring; he shall prolong his days;
the will of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.
11 Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied;
by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant,
make many to be accounted righteous,
and he shall bear their iniquities.
God crushed Christ…God made him sin, so that in him…by being united with Christ, by being found in him…by putting our faith in Him, we might become the righteousness of God.
It’s the beautiful, clear, good news of Jesus Christ.
And it is this message we are to proclaim and propel. It is this message we are to share. We have been authorized and commission to sing it out at the top of our lungs…
Joy to the World…the Lord is come…let earth receive her king…
Let every heart, prepare him room….
And my friend, when you do, you will sing!!!!
Have you prepared room in your heart for Jesus?
Have you made room for him?