When someone bursts out with “Let’s celebrate!”, it’s hard not to get excited. Who doesn’t like celebrating? And there all kinds of ways to do it. It could mean planning a big party. It might mean booking a vacation. It might also be a very nice dinner out or a special, home-cooked favorite and a movie. No matter what it looks like, everyone likes to celebrate.
But long before you start cranking out celebration plans, a natural question arises: What are we celebrating? The answer to that question matters, because the cause for celebration determines the scale of celebration. Going out for ice cream might be an appropriate celebration for a Third Grade daughter’s good grade on a quiz, but it falls short as a celebration for that daughter’s college graduation. A special getaway could be an appropriate way for a couple to celebrate a 25th Anniversary, but it would be overkill as a celebratory reward for the husband actually remembering to stop and get milk on his way home from work. The cause for celebration determines the scale of the celebration.
So when we have a celebration on a scale like the one Zephaniah describes, “Sing, Daughter Zion; shout aloud, Israel! Be glad and rejoice with all your heart, Daughter Jerusalem!” (v.14), we want to know: what is the cause of the celebration? Singing, shouting, and glad rejoicing – it sounds like something pretty significant is the cause of celebration!
Zephaniah, who served during the reign of Josiah, one of Israel’s few respectable kings, explains why such a celebration is justified. “The Lord has taken away your punishment, he has turned back your enemy. The Lord, the King of Israel, is with you; never again will you fear any harm” (v.15). We might assume he was referring to some pretty awful times that Israel was going through. He was… only they hadn’t happened yet. In the first two chapters of Zephaniah, he prophesied the judgment that would be coming on not only Israel, but the surrounding enemy nations who had opposed Israel. Their downfall was coming. For Israel, that would be fulfilled through their Babylonian Captivity. Yes, they would be taken captive, displaced from their homes, and relocated to a foreign land.
But on the other side of that captivity would be reason to rejoice and be glad; to sing and shout: the Lord would end that punishment, overcome the Babylonians, and allow them to return to their homeland with the assurance that the Lord – the true “King of Israel” – would be with them. Zephaniah further cements that certainty. “On that day they will say to Jerusalem, “Do not fear, Zion; do not let your hands hang limp. The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves” (v.16-17a). While it would be understandable for them to question if God had deserted them while in Babylon, let there be no doubt that he would be among his people once again as a Mighty Warrior to save them. Their gracious God, who had warned of their judgment if they continued to turn from him, is also concerned about making sure they know he would be with them and accept them again.
We may not be all that open about our need for it, but we also crave acceptance. It may be more important coming from certain people than others, but deep down, we want to be accepted. When therapists talk about working through a person’s “father wound(s),” they are referring to the lack of acceptance a child felt coming from their father. Maybe dad was never in the picture, leading the child to feel abandoned because dad didn’t care enough to be a part of their life. Perhaps dad put work over family and/or kids. Sadly, emotionally and physically abusive dads compound the problem by replacing that desired acceptance with harmful rejection. Children in those settings tend to seek out acceptance from other outlets, and those often less desirable outlets snowball into bigger problems down the road.
The father-child relationship isn’t the only one that craves acceptance. We want our boss to appreciate and accept us for the hard work we do. We want our spouse to accept us for the effort we put into marriage. We want our friends to want to hang out with us as a sign of acceptance. We want our kids and grandchildren to accept us. At times, the acceptance we crave in any one of these relationships can even cause us to go to extreme and even unhealthy lengths to earn it.
Sadly, some of us never feel like we have it. No matter how hard we try, it never seems to be good enough. We lack this or that. We fall short. We don’t measure up. This time of year can also easily amplify the lack of acceptance we feel.
Take heart, Christian. God has a word for you this morning. He accepts you. More than that: he is delighted in you, even breaking out into song over you! “He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing” (v.17). The Lord delights in you. The very acceptance you crave from others is already yours in the Lord.
While this Sunday has been traditionally labeled “Guadete” Sunday (Latin for “rejoice”), in reference to our rejoicing, here it is the Lord who is doing the rejoicing over us! He doesn’t just delight in us, but takes great delight in us, AND rejoices over us in song!
Here’s why being the Lord’s delight actually surpasses the acceptance you might otherwise desire from others: you weren’t required to earn it. You did nothing to be deserving of it. But it’s yours nonetheless!
Contrast that with the acceptance you crave from others. Suppose you get it. Suppose you finally receive the acceptance you crave, whatever that looks like for you. Your next natural step is to assess what you did right to finally receive that acceptance. When you pinpoint whatever it is you think you did (cooked your spouse the perfect meal, over performed for your boss, etc.), now what? Do you have to maintain that same standard indefinitely? What happens when you fail to hit that mark in the future (you will at some point!)? When you miss the mark in the future, do you miss out on that acceptance as well? Is it conditional, entirely dependent upon something you did or didn’t do? Then what happens when that falls short in the future?
Poof! There goes your acceptance.
But not with God. The Lord delights in you because he’s already done all the work to make you delightful! He carried out what was necessary to delight in you. You can’t undo it. You can’t improve on it. The Lord delights in you because he’s the one who made you delightful.
Imagine how these words must have hit the ears of God’s people when they came from Zephaniah. Zephaniah, along with his contemporaries, prophesied the imminent judgment that was going to be carried out against Israel. Remember, they were going to be picked apart by the Babylonians and taken into exile to live in a foreign land. Worse than refugees, they would be conquered captives, forced to adapt to new customs and a new language and the list goes on. This was going to be the consequence of their repeated unfaithfulness to God.
Do you imagine this reality would lead to doubts about where they stood with God? Do you suppose they second-guessed their status as his special, chosen people? Wouldn’t rejection – not affection – better describe what they were going to be experiencing? And they knew there was no negotiating with God. They had repeatedly cheated on him. They ignored him. He was an afterthought in their minds. He was far from first in their hearts, and they had no one to blame but themselves.
Sound familiar? “And they knew there was no negotiating with God. They had repeatedly cheated on him. They ignored him. He was an afterthought in their minds. He was far from first in their hearts, and they had no one to blame but themselves.” That’s not just idolatrous Israel. That’s me! That’s you! We have no wiggle room to negotiate with God, and we know it.
So, let the words sink in again. “He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing” (v.17). But why? How? How can we be sure that this is true and that he won’t change his mind???
As we draw closer to our celebration of Christmas, it is time. Time to shift your gaze from the clouds, where we await Jesus’ return, to the manger in Bethlehem, where we celebrate his arrival. This is true: if God did not delight in us, in you, there would be no celebration at Christmas, because he wouldn’t have given us Christ. But he did! The gift in the manger seals the deal. The gift of Jesus Christ our Savior is the proof. God does delight in us!
We don’t often focus on feelings as they relate to our faith. There’s a reason for that: we want to guard against our feelings about God overshadowing (or ignoring!) what the Bible says about God. But as we consider the words from Zephaniah this morning, and as we apply them to our Christmas celebration, you have permission to bask in the feelings associated with knowing that God takes great delight in you. How can we not?!?
Your feelings do matter, because the more Christmases we celebrate, the more we realize that the most likely indicators of memorable or forgettable Christmases are not really the gifts given or received, but how we felt. Gifts are quickly forgotten, but how we felt is not, and the strongest feelings we experience are often those that involve our relationships with others. The Christmas spent estranged from an otherwise close family member is one you’d like to forget because you didn’t enjoy feeling that way. Ask the military wife which Christmas stands out to her and she’ll tell you the one when her deployed spouse surprised her and the kids with an early return at Christmas time. The Christmas engagement is going to stand out in memory over the year you didn’t get that gift you really wanted.
So how will you feel this Christmas? It depends on where you focus. Will everything get done? Nope. Will everyone be thrilled with their gifts? Nope. Will everyone get along peacefully without anyone losing it? Nope.
Does God take great delight in you? Absolutely. Always. May that fill you with feelings of joy for A Real Christmas.
And, if the cause for celebration determines the scale of the celebration, you have all that you need for an incredible celebration this Christmas: you have Jesus, and all the divine delight that he brings with him.