Someone once said “The secret to happiness is in …..keeping your expectations very low.”

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  Today's first lesson, from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, is an example of the great expectations that God's people had for the future time, when their Savior, the Messiah, would come.

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 We know that this great expectation was fulfilled in Jesus Christ.

 

Isaiah 12:1 “And in that day thou shalt say, O Lord, I will praise thee: though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortedst me.”

   Isaiah's prophecy of the great joy that God's children of the New Testament would experience, came some 750 years before Christ's birth.

 

   I'd like us to consider just why all Christians should feel this great joy and how that joy should be manifested in our lives as Christians.

   

  We should feel great joy over our salvation from God's wrath.

  

  God had, (and has),good reason to be angry with mankind.

  

  He created us in holiness and righteousness, in His own image, but we fell away from Him and into sin.

  

  We deserved punishment, but now through the saving blood of Jesus we are reconciled to God.

  This wonderful salvation was not accomplished by men, but by God.

 

   He sent His Son, our Savior Jesus Christ. (as Saint Paul tells us), 

“into the world to save sinners”

 

  Isaiah tells us “with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation”.

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  These wells of salvation for the New Testament Church are the Word and the Sacraments.

  God's Word, the Bible, with its message of forgiveness and salvation through Christ, and the Holy Sacraments with the comforting knowledge that Christ is with us in them, should fill all Christians with joy.

 

  This great joy should be shown forth in us in three ways.

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  First, by praising God, by worshiping Him not only every Sunday in His Church, but also by our daily private devotions.

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  Our thankfulness for our redemption should cause us to be always praising our God for his great mercy toward us.

 

  Secondly we should always be trying to glorify God through living our lives according to His will.

 

  As it says in the Baptismal Office we are to be “fighting under His banner, against sin, the world, and the devil” and “continue Christ's faithful soldier and servant” unto our life's end.

 

  Thirdly our joy should be manifested in a real devotion to spreading the 

“Good News” of this great message of salvation to others.

 

  We each have talents, given to us by our Heavenly Father, that we can use to, in some way, help build his Church.

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  We should always be happy to use them to bring others to the knowledge of Christ's love for us.

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   God has indeed met those great expectations that Isaiah told of, by Christ's sacrifice on the cross for us, and all Christians should feel great joy. as well as thankfulness, all of our time here on earth!

Let us pray

O GOD, our heavenly Father, we yield thee unfeigned thanks and praise for all the blessings of thy merciful providence bestowed upon our nation and people. And, we beseech thee, give us a due sense of these great mercies; such as may appear in our lives by an humble, holy, and obedient walking before thee all our days; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with thee and the Holy Ghost, be all honour and glory, world without end. Amen