Have you ever asked yourself why joy
is missing in your life? Have you considered it might be missing
because you’ve hung up your treasure map and stopped searching for it? Join me
today as we continue our look at joy this week in the New Testament.
Since we’re nearing the Christmas
season, I thought this passage in Matthew an appropriate one to begin this
week’s look at joy.
“When they saw the star, they
rejoiced with exceedingly great joy.” (Matthew 2:10)
Joy.
Cheerfulness. As in delight and gladness. And not just a run-of-the-mill cheerfulness.
They had exceeding joy. And they weren’t silent about it.
But just who is “they”?
“They” are the wise men from the
East who arrived in Jerusalem specifically to find the King of the Jews and pay
homage to Him. They’d been following a star.
Strangers from a foreign land. First
Century astronomers and prophet-readers who recognized the sign of the times,
(they seem to have been looking for it), found it, promptly packed their bags
and precious gifts to deliver, gathered their entourage and set off on a likely
two-year cross-desert trek to worship The King.
When they saw the star again,
and it pointed out the location of this young King, they erupted with joy! And
then they did what they had traveled so far to do: they bowed down and
worshipped Him. They were overjoyed they had found what they had been searching for so diligently.
Several take-away points stand out
to me as I read this section of Scripture, as it pertains specifically to joy.
First, these wise men seemed to be
looking for this special event. At the very least, they had probably studied
the ancient writings and prophetic verses enough to know that the star was important.
They were sensitive and alert to the signs of the times.
Second, they seemed to be expecting
a great thing to occur.
They didn’t waste any time in
following the star and going in search of the King.
They rejoiced with unbridled joy when they found that King.
The final outcome, as the Wise Men
learned, is that finding Christ brings exceeding joy!
Yet, for some reason, even after
we’ve found Him, we “lose” our joy. Heartache, world-weariness and pain can
suck it out of our hearts like an industrial-strength vacuum.
Maybe, in order to recover our joy,
we need to carefully search the Sacred writings, and go on a serious hunt to
find and reclaim it. To be led by the Spirit to a point where our joy can be
refilled. Where we can reclaim it.
In Matthew 13:44, we find a man who
has located a treasure in a field. Eureka! What luck! He’s found
once-in-a-lifetime treasure! Once he finds it, he hides it well on the
property, (or tucks it back where he found it), and with delight over his find,
gathers all that he owns and sells it, and then buys the property from the
unsuspecting landowner. That all sounds a little unfair to our modern ears, but
listen to what Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers has to say about the
parable Jesus told.
“Probably no parable in the whole
series came more home to the imagination of [Jesus’] disciples than this. Every
village had its story of men who had become suddenly rich by finding some
hidden hoard that had been hastily concealed in time of war or tumult. Then, as
now, there were men who lived in the expectation of finding such treasures, and
every traveller who was seen searching in the ruins of an ancient town was
supposed to be hunting after them. As far back as the days of Solomon such a
search had become a parable for the eager pursuit of wisdom (Proverbs 2:4). Now
they were told to find that which answered to it in their own experience. The
conduct of the man who finds the treasure in concealing the fact of his
discovery from the owner of the field, hardly corresponds with our notions of
integrity, but parables—as in the case of the Unjust Steward (Luke 16:1) and
the Unjust Judge (Luke 18:2)—do not concern themselves with these questions,
and it’s enough if they bring out the salient points—in this case, the eagerness
of the man to obtain the treasure, and the sacrifice he is ready to make for
it. Jewish casuistry, in such matters, applied the maximum caveat emptor, to the seller rather than the buyer, and the minds
of the disciples would hardly be shocked at what would seem to them a natural
stroke of sharpness.”
So, like the wise men, this treasure
finder was actually a treasure hunter. He searched and found. Evidently he
searched diligently. Mabye plotted out a field, surveyed the area and looked.
Hard. Dropped down on his hands and knees in some parts of the land and
scraped. Got permanent dirt under his broken, split fingernails. And repeated
that day after day after day. This was no lucky find; it was a purposeful hunt
and locate. Like a modern day treasure hunt for sunken treasure.
Like the wise men, this
treasure-hunting man is searching, and the possession that made all of them
rich and joyful was God Himself. The wise men sought the King and experienced
great joy when they found Him. The treasure hunter found God (which the
treasure represents) and experiences great joy in His find. He’s so joyful,
he’s willing to sell all of his material goods to buy, claim and possess it.
Is your life missing or lacking joy?
Maybe we don’t have joy—the
delightful treasure that can only come from knowing and having Jesus—because we
really don’t want that treasure of joy enough; we aren’t searching or hunting
for it enough. We talk the talk, but we’re not walking the passionate,
searching walk. We lament not having joy, but we don’t lift a finger (or our
eyeballs to the pages of Scripture) to go in search of it. Worse yet, even
though Jesus promised us that we would find and have it if we have Him, down in
the deepest recesses of our souls and hearts, we don’t really believe we’ll
ever attain it.
Like the people who tell us that God
doesn’t really want us to be happy, we’ve become ambivalent and satisfied with
the sorry, despondent status quo of our souls; never expecting it to get
better. And then, since it seems so elusive, we decide that we weren’t really meant to have it anyway and must
have misunderstood what Jesus meant. We must have been all wrong about His
promises. So now we don’t expect to possess that delightedness Jesus talks
about. And we reason it away by thinking it gets doled out to others, just not
to us. And since that’s just the way it is, why expend the energy to look
diligently for it?
My challenge to you this week is to
go on a treasure hunt. Start looking for joy, and expect to find it. Ask God to
point you in the right direction; to provide you a locator “star.”
And then let me know what delighted
you!
Until next week
(and more joy!),
Thanks for
joining me!
Blessings,
photo credit: <a
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au Trésor</a> via <a
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