J. Douglas Dortch, Jr., Ph.D.
First Baptist Church, Tallahassee, FL
“His Consolation Brings Joy”
From the Series "How Great Our Joy"
Scripture: Psalm 94:16-19
December 16, 2007
You may have heard the story of the man who claims that his wife hasn’t spoken to him since last Christmas. As he explains it, “I asked her what she wanted for Christmas and she said, ‘Oh, just surprise me.’ So at 3:00 on Christmas morning, I leaned over and went, ‘BOO!” Now men, don’t try that trick at home. That would be sure to bring about the bluest of Blue Christmases.
The truth is that many don’t need to be spooked this Christmas season. They’re already anxious enough this time of the year without anyone springing anything on them.
Think about it. There’s the anxiety of buying the perfect gift. There’s the anxiety of having the perfect decorations. There’s the anxiety of getting to all the parties and the anxiety of holding to the Christmas budget. Is it any wonder that so many are in danger of losing their Christmas joy with all of the stress, the worry, and the pressure?
You wouldn’t get an argument from the Psalmist. It’s anxiety that the Psalms portray as being the polar opposite of joy. All along we thought the opposite of joy was sorrow, but it’s not. Sorrow is the opposite of happiness. Anxiety is the opposite of joy, because when we find ourselves in circumstances where we feel threatened or vulnerable and someone comes along to offer us protection, it’s not just happiness that comes over us. It’s something more profound. When we experience a presence that brings deliverance and peace, it’s joy that floods our souls.
“When anxiety was great within me, your consolation brought joy to my soul.”
As you know, tradition has it that David was the person behind the Psalms. Even those Psalms that ascribe their authorship to someone else have David to thank for expressing the type of praise and worship that characterize what became the hymn book of God’s people.
I have always been of the opinion that most of us have learned our theology more from the songs we sing than from the sermons we hear, the books we read, or the lessons we are taught…which makes the book of Psalms even that much more significant. So what is the Psalmist teaching us with this hymn? He’s teaching us that in those moments when life seems to be the most out of our control, life is never out of God’s control. Life is never beyond the pale of God’s redeeming purpose.
You would think that a king like David would never have had anxious moments. Our assumption is that people who have made it to the top of their chosen professions have moved beyond the kinds of threats and insecurities that ordinary, everyday people have to deal with. But if anything, people who have made it to the top have to struggle with those types of challenges even more. That certainly was true with David, who had to fend off challenges to his throne even within his own family. That was also true with another king, a king by the name of Herod, who was king at the time when Jesus was born. History tells us that King Herod was so paranoid and obsessed that he made up threats even when threats didn’t exist.
Let’s compare the two kings for a moment. Take David. David learned to deal with anxieties through accepting what God was seeking to give him. Herod, on the other hand, tried to handle his anxieties in his own power, which only made the situation worse, because he rejected God’s provisions and perceived the infant Jesus to be a threat instead of a gift.
How are you handling life’s anxieties, which clearly all of us have to deal with? If this morning you have yet to experience the joy that trusting Jesus can bring, you are robbing yourself of a blessing that God so deeply desires you to know. You are depriving yourself of that rush of grace that the Psalmist calls God’s “consolation.” “Your consolation brought joy to my soul.”
The word “consolation” is a somewhat ambiguous word in our English language. Technically, it means an attempt to comfort someone who is in sorrow. When it is used with respect to that which people seek to do to encourage those who are in mourning, it’s a good thing. If you send a card or take a meal to someone who has experienced some personal loss, that’s a beautiful thing because you’re seeking to console someone in his or her grief.
But there’s also a sense in which consolation is interpreted as something given that is less than the best, as in “consolation prize.” I remember how the first time I heard that term was watching game shows on television, where people who weren’t winners weren’t made to go home empty-handed. But I always found it funny how the people who got bounced on those game shows got these consolation prizes that weren’t worth very much in the grand scheme of things and because of that, didn’t seem to offer very much comfort to those who had taken an early exit from the contest. It’s prizes like those which give “consolation” a bad name.
When the Bible talks about “God’s consolation,” it’s not talking about some second-rate gift that God offers losers because we didn’t earn anything better. It’s not talking about a “white elephant.” When the Bible talks about God’s consolation, it’s talking about His very best gift. It’s talking about the gift of His Only Begotten Son who came into this world to be the means to our salvation. Even though we didn’t deserve Jesus, God offered him to us as a way of giving us His help and supporting us with His love.
In the gospel of Luke there’s the story of Simeon, whom Luke tells us was a righteous and devout man, who was waiting for what the Bible calls “the Consolation of Israel.” That phrase goes back to the prophet Isaiah, where the Spirit inspired Isaiah to speak words of comfort to the exiles whose lives had been turned upside down and inside out. “God hasn’t forgotten you,” Isaiah was saying. “God will intervene to help you.” The belief was that at some time in the future God would send His Messiah to set things right and usher in God’s joy. It was that consolation that Simeon was waiting on so that when Mary and Joseph brought the child Jesus to the Temple, to be consecrated as the Law required, Simeon took Jesus in his arms and praised God for how God had been faithful to His promise to remember His people. Jesus represented to Simeon God’s very best.
Does Jesus mean that to you? Or do you wonder if maybe there’s a better deal behind another door or with another spin? There isn’t; it doesn’t get any better than Jesus.
This week I came across the story of a mother named Karen and her two preschool children, Laurel and Matthew. Being a good and godly mother, Karen wanted her children to learn the real meaning of Christmas, and not just the marketplace version. So a year ago, early in December, she brought home a small manger scene. All the figures in the scene were made of wood, so they were pretty much indestructible, a good thing as far as having preschoolers in the home was concerned, but also small enough for preschool hands to pick them up and move them around, which wasn’t necessarily a good thing, being that the kids could rearrange them at will.
The children loved the manger scene. They especially enjoyed being able to touch the different characters, holding them in their little hands and rearranging them in amazingly creative ways. As you would imagine, sometimes the figures would even disappear, only to show up later in the most unlikely places around the house.
Interestingly enough, the figure that went missing the most was Jesus. Karen would walk by the manger scene and see that Jesus would be missing again. Once, daughter Laurel had taken the Jesus figure and put him on the window sill in her room. Karen thought it somewhat appropriate since though Jesus had come into the world being born in a stable, he soon moved out from the manger to go with us and watch over us wherever we might go.
Then a few days before Christmas, Jesus disappeared again, and Karen couldn’t find him anywhere. Christmas came and went, and when the time came to put the manger scene away for the next year, Jesus was nowhere to be found. She looked all over the house and couldn’t find him anywhere. Finally, she called the children in to the manger scene, pointed to it, and asked, “Where’s Jesus?” Five-year-old Laurel shrugged her shoulders and stuck out her hands, palms upward, as in “Beats me.”
Karen then turned to two-year-old Matthew. “Matthew, do you know where Jesus is?” Matthew became very animated and began talking a mile a minute, but neither mother nor sister could understand what he was trying to say.
Finally, Matthew went over and took his mother by the hand and led her to his room. Then he pointed to the bed. Karen pulled back the covers and looked everywhere, but no luck. Then Matthew pointed under his pillow. And there Karen found Jesus. There he was under Matthew’s pillow.
Karen understood, as only a mother would. For two-year-olds, bedtime is an awfully scary time. It’s dark; they feel all alone. But not Matthew, not with Jesus; his consolation had brought joy to Matthew’s soul.
There are things in this world that go bump not only in the night but also in the day. There are plenty of things that make us anxious and afraid. Some of the things we bring on ourselves. Other things come to us from beyond.
But none is more than we can handle, not with God’s help and His best gift in Jesus. His consolation is our joy and our assurance that we never will be empty-handed or empty-hearted.