Does dressing up for Halloween give you joy? Will you take your children or grandchildren trick or treating or enjoy giving out candy at home and then more candy? Have you enjoyed all the special spooky or scary stuff on TV over the last month? If ever there is a holiday that exemplifies worldly happiness, it has to be Halloween. And yet, there are many warnings about all that candy. “Wait until children are home to sort and check treats. Though tampering is rare, a responsible adult should closely examine all treats and throw away any of the following: candies that have an unusual appearance or discoloration, tiny pinholes or tears in wrappers, and spoiled or unwrapped items. Homemade items or baked goods should be discarded unless you personally know who gave them. When in doubt, throw it out.” (1) In this world, we can never make assumptions about our safety or about the products we consume. How many times have we heard or said there are no guarantees in this life? But God is unchanging, and his gospel is guaranteed to result in joy, especially when we consider our eternal, heavenly home. But we can have that joy now because of God’s presence with us in good times and trials—with him who is joyful about our salvation. God rejoices over his people with gladness, quietness, and loud singing; we are to rejoice with God for Christ’s righteous, gospel salvation. Knowing that God rejoices over us should make us rejoice greatly as his beloved children who are saved through the gospel.
Old Testament Joy
Does the upcoming US election next week supersede your enjoyment of Halloween? Will you not consider God on the throne, doing his will (“on earth as it is in heaven”) through the offices of our leaders, putting individuals in power for his purposes? “Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion, for behold, I come and I will dwell in your midst, declares the Lord…Sing aloud, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem!…The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; you shall never again fear evil…The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.” (Zechariah 2:10; Zephaniah 3:14-17) “The dramatic return of the Lord to inhabit his rebuilt house is cause for praise for those who have returned to Judah…The defiled city and nation is raised up by being again called the beloved daughter of Zion…Rejoicing is appropriate because of the presence of the real King of Israel, God, among his people. The human kings of Israel and Judah served only as representatives of Israel’s true monarch, who here blesses with his presence those who repent and return to him. He is not powerless, as some had claimed…The previously weakened nation is in the presence of the mighty one, God himself, who, unlike human warriors and heroes, does not lose heart. Instead of fleeing in the face of danger, God can save his people from it…God himself will rejoice over you with gladness, indicating that when God’s people seek him and follow him, and rejoice in him and trust him, then God personally delights in them. This is not an aloof, emotionless contentment, but it bursts forth in joyful divine celebration: he will exult over you with loud singing.” (2)
New Testament Joy
“Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your king is coming to you; righteous and having salvation is he, humble and mounted on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey…And the crowds that went before him and that followed him were shouting, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!’…the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, ‘Hosanna to the Son of David!’…And Jesus said to them, ‘Yes; have you never read, “Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise’?”’” (Zechariah 9:9; Matthew 21:9-11, 15-16; John 12:15) “The church of God, and true believers in Christ, are called upon to ‘rejoice’ and ‘shout’: not merely in an external way, by showing marks of outward joy, but in a spiritual manner, for which there was good reason, as follows: behold, thy King cometh unto thee; ‘behold, one like the Son of man came with the clouds of heaven’, Daniel 7:13 and also what is written, ‘poor, and riding on an ass’; …This is to be understood of Christ’s coming…in the flesh, when he came to Zion, and for her good;…because of the birth of him who is her Saviour; and because of the good things that come by him; and because of his appearing as a King, and her King; for, as he was prophesied of as such, as such he came, though his kingdom was not of this world.” (3) God rejoices over his kingdom’s people with gladness, quietness, and loud singing. As citizens of the Kingdom of God, we have Christ’s righteous, gospel salvation that gives us the greatest joy imaginable.
New Songs
“Let those who delight in my righteousness shout for joy and be glad and say evermore, ‘Great is the Lord, who delights in the welfare of his servant!’ Then my tongue shall tell of your righteousness and of your praise all the day long. …For the Lord takes pleasure in his people; he adorns the humble with salvation. Let the godly exult in glory; let them sing for joy on their beds.” (Psalms 35:27-28; 149:4-5) “When Jesus was born, knowledge of salvation in Christ called for new songs too, beginning with the song of the angels over Bethlehem: ‘Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favor rests’…The Gloria Patri comes from the second century: ‘Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost.’ A fourth-century hymn begins, ‘All glory be to thee, Most High, to thee all adoration; in grace and truth thou drawest nigh to offer us salvation.’ In the same century Ambrose of Milan wrote, ‘O Splendor of God’s glory bright, from light eternal bringing light, O Light of light, light’s living Spring, true Day, all days illumining.’ The recovery of the gospel at the Reformation [after the peasants’ rebellion] led to powerful new songs by the Reformers, especially from Martin Luther, who wrote: ‘A mighty fortress is our God, a bulwark never failing’; ‘All praise to thee, eternal Lord, clothed in a garb of flesh and blood’; and ‘Great God, what do I see and hear! The end of things created! … prepare, my soul, to meet him.’ A few centuries later John and Charles Wesley wrote hundreds of hymns, especially Charles, who has left us ‘O for a thousand tongues to sing,’ ‘Ye servants of God, your Master proclaim,’ ‘Hark! The herald angels sing,’ ‘Jesus Christ is risen today…‘And Can It Be…that I should gain an interest in the Savior’s blood?’ and many more. About the same time, Count Nikolas von Zinzendorf composed, “Jesus, thy blood and righteousness my beauty are, my glorious dress.’ These hymns capture something of the spirit of the revival movements in those days. What of our time? Have experiences of God’s grace led to the writing of good new songs today? I think so! Not all are great songs; some are poorly written and others badly man-centered. Those will fade in time. But there are many good hymns and many good hymn-writers…Margaret Clarkson…wrote, ‘We come, O Christ, to you, true Son of God and man’ and ‘Our God is mighty, worthy of all praising.’ Daniel Iverson, who died in 1977, wrote ‘Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on me’… Do you have a new song to God’s glory? Most of us do not have the ability to write new songs. Don’t be sad, if that is the case. One day you will sing a glorious new song in heaven, one composed especially for the saints: ‘You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, because you were slain, and with your blood you purchased men for God from every tribe and language and people and nation. You have made them to be a kingdom and priests to serve our God,and they will reign on the earth’ (Rev. 5:9–10). I do not think we will ever get tired of singing that.” (4) The world is going to be completely remade one day, and it won’t be fake or pretend, like a Halloween costume—it will be 100% real and permanent—what real joy we can share as we remind each other of God’s promises!
Related Scripture: Psalm 118:25-29; 148:1-14; Proverbs 29:6; Isaiah 48:17-19; 54:1; Jeremiah 50:3-5; Zeph. 3:12–13; Matthew 21:16; Luke 15:21-32; Revelation 18:20.
Notes:
1. Safety Tips for Checking Halloween Candy, California State University Channel Islands, https://www.csuci.edu/publicsafety/police/Halloween_candy.htm
2. English Standard Version Study Bible Notes, Zechariah 2:10-11; Zephaniah 3:14-17, (digital edition), Crossway, 2008.
3. Gill, John, John Gill’s Exposition on the Whole Bible, Zechariah 9:9, https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/eng/geb/zechariah.html
4. Boice, James, Boice Expositional Commentary Series, Psalm 149, Baker Books, Software version, 1998.
October 31, 2024
Divine Wisdom for Daily Living by Joanne Colvin 