The following is the text of a sermon preached at the evening service on Easter Day, Sunday 8th April 2007.
The Scripture reading was Luke 24:13-35.
One of my favourite poems is “The Road Not Taken” by the American poet, Robert Frost. It goes like this:
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.
Our reading in Luke 24 is about another journey on a road that made all the difference. Certainly it made all the difference to the two disciples who met Jesus on that road, and I believe it can make all the difference to us in our lives too.
It would be good if you have your bibles open at our passage to follow what I’m saying.
The title of our service tonight is “He is with us.” Now that might seem a rather strange title to some of us. “He is with us? Where is he then?” someone might be thinking. Tonight, we’ll see four ways in which Christ is with us here today.
At the beginning of the reading, in verse 13, two of Jesus’ followers – one called Cleopas and one who is un-named – are walking from Jerusalem on seven mile journey to a village called Emmaus. This happened on the first Easter Sunday, the same day as the disciples discovered the empty tomb and heard that Jesus was risen, early on in the morning. From the passage we get a few clues that this journey may be taking place in the late afternoon, but we don’t know the exact time. We can’t be sure why they are making this journey either, though the most likely explanation is that they are probably on their way home to the village where they live. And this is the scene for a truly amazing meeting with Jesus after his resurrection. This is the first time in Luke’s gospel that the risen Jesus actually appears in person to any of his followers.
Like most people when they’re out walking, the two mean are chatting to each other. And then a stranger approaches them, presumably from behind, walking in the same direction as the two men are heading, and he joins them on the journey.
Much has been made of the fact that the two disciples don’t recognise who Jesus is when he starts walking and talking with them. All kinds of explanations have been offered for this: Jesus had the hood of his cloak up and they couldn’t see his face; the low afternoon sun was in the disciples’ eyes and they couldn’t see Jesus’ face in shadow properly. None of these explanations is particularly convincing. It is a mystery. But it would seem that after the resurrection, Christ’s physical appearance could alter, so that his features were not recognised at times, even by those who knew him very well. Before the resurrection Christ just looked outwardly like an ordinary man; indeed, he was an ordinary man. After the resurrection he is revealed as the majestic Son of God, risen and triumphant, the King of kings and Lord of lords, in all his glory. And it seems to me that his outward appearance after the resurrection was capable of displaying his glory.
Something similar happened at the time of Christ’s transfiguration, where Christ’s glory as God the Son is briefly revealed. Luke 9:29 says of Christ at the transfiguration, “While he was praying his face changed its appearance, and his clothes became dazzling white.”
Once Jesus meets with the disciples on the road, a wonderful transformation takes place in these men’s lives, as in turn the disciples talk with Jesus about what's been happening, then Jesus talks with the disciples about what the Scriptures say about himself as God’s Messiah, and finally the disciples and the risen Jesus share in the fellowship of a meal, during which they finally recognise who he is when he breaks bread with them. Jesus then leaves them as suddenly as he came, but with their lives forever changed.
When Jesus first came to them, these men were filled with sadness. Verse 17 says, “They stood still, with sad faces.” The word translated “sad faces” is found only here in the whole New Testament. It means “looking sad”, “gloomy faced”. These men had been devastated by what’s happened. They’ve seen not only their teacher and friend murdered in the most barbaric way possible, but they’ve also seen their hopes and dreams dashed as the one they thought was going to “redeem Israel” or “set Israel free” (verse 21) from the Romans, apparently fail in his mission and leave his followers disorganised, disappointed and despondent.
By the end of this passage the two men are energised with the fire of God’s Word burning inside them, with the joy of knowing that “The Lord is risen indeed!” and with a new-found zeal that took them out of their village in the middle of the night, back on the road to Jerusalem, so they can tell the others the truth about the resurrection without any delay.
How come? What changed these men? Well, it was meeting the risen Lord Jesus Christ and spending time with him that day that made the difference. But what about us?
Well there’s one way we don’t have Jesus with us in the same way as the two disciples had him with them. On the Emmaus road they had the risen Jesus with them in body. He was right there with them physically. Never forget that the resurrection of Jesus Christ is the rising to life of his physical body, not just his spirit. The tomb was empty – the body was gone – and the risen Christ is not a spirit, he is flesh and blood. He still bears the marks of the nails on his hands. He ate meals with many of those he met after he rose from the dead. Spirits can’t eat food.
Forty days after the resurrection, the Bible tells us that Christ ascended into heaven. So his body is no longer on the earth. We no longer see him. We no longer have Christ with us in that sense – with us physically I mean.
Perhaps that’s something we regret about living in this period in history: we don’t get to be with Christ physically, to see him face-to-face. Perhaps it’s one of the many things we look forward to heaven for – that then we will finally get to stand face-to-face with our Saviour and look into his eyes? Probably with tears of thankfulness in our eyes. But there’s two things we should remember if we think we’re in a more impoverished position now compared with the people who we read about in Scripture who actually saw Jesus and spent time with him. First, remember that it was quite possible to have Jesus with you physically and yet not see who he was. Not only was this true of the two disciples for most of the time Jesus was actually with them in the passage, it was true of many if not most of the people Jesus spent time with during his life. The Roman soldiers, the Pharisees, the chief priests, whole towns and villages failed to recognise who he was even though he was with them physically. So just being with him face-to-face doesn’t guarantee that anyone would believe in him or accept him as Lord. The second reason we shouldn’t feel automatically impoverished because we don’t have Jesus with us in body is because of what Jesus himself said. When the risen Jesus met with Thomas in John chapter 20, he says to him: “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
There is a blessing from Christ himself on all those who believe in him without having seen him in the flesh, a special blessing for people like us.
Now, even though there is this difference between us and the circumstances of the two disciples, there are three ways in which Christ is with us in ways that are like the ways he was with the disciples in our passage. Let’s look at these three ways because they are each vital to our lives as Christians. Based on this passage I would say that Christ is with us as we speak with him in prayer, he is with us as we read the Bible, and he is with us as we have communion with him and fellowship with each other as his people, the church.
In the first section of the passage from verse 13 to verse 24 we have a conversation between the disciples and Christ, with the disciples doing most of the talking, telling him about what had been happening in Jerusalem. In the passage Jesus shows that he’s interested in what his disciples think and in hearing what they have to say; he’s interested in what makes them sad, or worries them, and what makes them tick; he’s interested in knowing the things that they don’t yet understand about him or the Christian faith. The disciples on the Emmaus road talked to Jesus about all these things and Jesus took the time to listen to everything they had to say, even though he already knew the whole story they were telling him. He took the time to listen to them – he didn’t jump in right away and reveal who he was.
I think Jesus is still the same today. We don’t speak with him face-to-face, but we do speak to him when we pray. For us, when we pray, we can address any of the three persons in the Trinity – probably mostly the Father, but sometimes the Son, Jesus, and sometimes the Holy Spirit – but all three hear our prayers.
And I believe Jesus is with us when we pray. He’s still interested in what’s on our minds, how we’re feeling, what’s happening in our lives, what’s worrying us, what’s bugging us, what we’re happy about, what we understand about him and what we don’t understand yet. So often we tend to think of prayer as being about asking God for things. And of course that is an important part of prayer, as is praising God, confessing our sins, and giving God thanks for what he’s done for us. But I believe prayer is even more than this. Prayer is an ongoing conversation, a relationship of communication between us and the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. It is in this sense that we can and should “pray without ceasing” as Paul writes in 1 Thessalonians 5:17. As we pray, sharing our thoughts, our doubts, our fears, sharing our lives with God as we would with our closest friends, completely openly and honestly, not only does God delight to hear us as his children, but I think it is very good for us to get things off our chests, not keeping anything bottled up inside us. Even things we can say to no-one else, we can always say to him.
And when we do that, Christ is certainly with us, just as surely as he listened carefully and patiently to Cleopas on the Emmaus road.
The second way Christ is with us is in the words of Scripture. In the passage, once Jesus hears everything Cleopas has to say, he then leads both disciples to consider what the Scriptures say about the Messiah: not only that he would suffer but also that he would then enter into his glory. In other words, he’s starting to prepare them for the fact that not only was the Messiah to die, but he was also to rise again. Verse 27 says:
“Jesus explained to them what was said about himself in all the Scriptures, beginning with the books of Moses and the writings of all the prophets.”
So Jesus went through the Old Testament (remember this was before the New Testament was written) and explained to the disciples what the Bible is all about: it’s all about Jesus Christ. He is the theme of the Bible, the hero of the Bible, and he is in every part of the Bible. Indirectly or directly, it’s all about him. We don’t know exactly what passages Christ focused on as he explained the Bible to the two disciples. Maybe he went right back to the first chapter of Genesis and explained how it was by the Word – by Christ himself who is the Word of God – that the heavens and earth were made. Maybe he took them to Genesis 3:15 to show how even from the time Adam and Eve sinned, God had promised to send the Messiah, the Seed of the woman who would crush Satan’s head. Maybe he explained to them how the system of sacrifices laid down in Leviticus were symbols and types of the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. Maybe he explained to them how King David stands as a type of the Messiah’s kingship over his people. Maybe he explained to them the prophets who foretold where Jesus would be born, what his kingship would be like, and even how he would suffer and die for his people (as described in Isaiah chapter 53 for example). It doesn’t matter what passages Christ focused on, or whether he spoke more generally, not even looking at specific passages, because Christ is in all the Scriptures. They are all about him, in one way or another.
He is the great theme of Scripture and he is the key for correctly understanding Scripture. It’s probably not going too far to say that you won’t go too far wrong in interpreting the Bible if you remember this simple fact: Christ is in all the Scriptures.
This has tremendous implications for us and for what we believe. To give just one example – you sometimes hear people painting a false picture of Jesus as this lovey-dovey, rather effeminate, do-gooder, who is so easy going that you can treat him any way you like, and live any way you like because he approves of everything and can’t do anything but love everyone. But Christ is in all the Scriptures. In the Old Testament he often appeared as the angel of the Lord – the same Lord who went through Egypt on the night of the Passover killing the firstborn of the Egyptians, the same Lord who stood shoulder to shoulder with the three men in the fiery furnace in Daniel chapter 3, the same Lord who went into battle for Israel and slew 185,000 Assyrians in one night in 2 Kings chapter 19.
Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. He is the “I AM” who existed before Abraham (John 8:58). And so if our view of Jesus is radically different from the God of the Old Testament, we know we’ve got it wrong, because Christ is in all the Scriptures.
The Scriptures are all about Jesus, so it follows that whenever we read the Scriptures, whether at our services, or at our Bible study, or at home on our own, so long as we read them with a genuine desire to learn about God and learn from God, He is with us as we read.
Of course it is possible to read the Scriptures in the wrong way. It is possible to read them while sitting in judgment on them, accepting or rejecting them as we go. If we read the Bible that way, we will still read about Jesus but he will not be with us as we read.
But if we read the Scriptures in faith, looking for Christ, and accepting that what we read is not the word of man but God’s Word, then Christ will be with us and, like the disciples on the Emmaus road, reading them will be like a fire that burns within us, refining us and purifying us, energising us to live for him, and warming our hearts as we think on God’s love and grace shown towards us.
The third way in which the passage shows Christ is with us, is when we are in fellowship with other believers. In the passage Christ is with the two disciples when he goes into the house and eats a meal with them. And it’s interesting that it was when he broke the bread that the disciples then recognised him for who he really was. We don’t exactly know why this was the case. Various commentators speculate on this. Was it because as he broke the bread they could see the nail marks in his hands for the first time? Was it the way he broke the bread that reminded them of the way he did it before? Was it his tone of voice as he said the blessing or the words he used? We can’t be sure if it was any of these or something else, or if it was because the supernatural change in Christ’s appearance was lifted and they could now recognise him. Yet the fact is that it wasn’t as they spoke to him, or as he explained to them about the Scriptures, but in the simple act of sharing in the fellowship of a meal that the disciples recognised him.
What does that mean for us today? It’s tempting to see this breaking of the bread in terms of the Lord’s Supper, holy communion. Certainly I think that’s partly what we can draw from this passage. Christ is with us as we share in the Lord’ Supper. Of course this doesn’t mean the bread and wine at communion turn into Christ’s body and blood, the blasphemy that Roman Catholicism teaches. But in a spiritual sense, Christ is with us as we eat and drink the bread and wine at communion. In a special way, at the same time as we physically eat the bread and drink the wine, looking to Christ in faith, we feed on him spiritually, nourishing our souls as we consider the new covenant sealed with his blood, as his body was broken for us on the cross.
But I don’t think that’s all this passage means. I don’t think we should restrict Christ’s presence being with us when we gather to celebrate communion. After all, there’s nothing in the passage that says the meal the disciples shared with Jesus was the sacrament of communion. It was just an ordinary meal two hungry travellers might have at the end of any day.
No, I think this passage teaches us that Christ is with us every time we come together for fellowship. This is of course what Jesus himself said in Matthew 18:20: “For where two or three come together in my name, I am there with them.” And here we see that happening. When we come together in his name – as his people gathering together – he is with us. It doesn’t matter whether that’s for a service of worship like this, or in our Bible and prayer meeting, or for the Kirk Session or Congregational Board, or for a social event. When we gather for Christian fellowship, Christ is with us in the midst.
What a great privilege and responsibility that is! But what about when we’re not gathered together. What about when we all go our different ways? What about when we aren’t reading our Bibles, or spending time with God in prayer? Are we on our own then? Is Christ not with us then?
Well there’s a way that Christ is with us that’s not mentioned in our passage. There’s a way in which we are in a better position than the disciples in the passage. Although they spent time in the physical presence of Christ and although he stayed with them for a while that day, at the end of the day they were left by themselves. Just after they recognised who he was, verse 31 says, “He disappeared from their sight.” He left them at the end of his time with them.
We’re in a better position than this. Christ is with us all the time through the Holy Spirit, the spirit of Christ, living inside us. This is what Paul says in Romans 8:9-11, writing to Christians:
“But you do not live as your human nature tells you to; instead, you live as the Spirit tells you to – if, in fact, God's Spirit lives in you. Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. But if Christ lives in you, the Spirit is life for you because you have been put right with God, even though your bodies are going to die because of sin. If the Spirit of God, who raised Jesus from death, lives in you, then he who raised Christ from death will also give life to your mortal bodies by the presence of his Spirit in you.”
We must remember that the events in our passage took place before the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost, which was fifty days after Easter day. The disciples on the Emmaus road met the risen Jesus, but we who live not only after that first Easter but after Pentecost actually have the spirit of the risen Jesus living inside us, not for a few hours, or a day, but with us forever. That’s what Jesus promised just before he ascended into heaven, in Matthew 28:20: “I am with you always, even to the end of the age,” he said.
This is what Jesus also promised us in Revelation 3:20: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him, and he with me.”
He was with the disciples during that wonderful day; he is with us all the time during all our days. This is the truth for every Christian believer. He is with us.
He is with his people as they pray, as they read the Bible, as they have communion with him and with each other. But the question everyone has to think about sooner or later in their lives is this: Am I with him? In other words, have I really met with the risen Jesus and decided to follow him?
Yes, he’s with his people in all these wonderful ways, but are you one of his people? We need to ask ourselves, “Have I believed in him? Have I trusted in him and committed my life to him, accepting him as my Saviour and Lord?”
If you have, then he is with you in everything you do. If you haven’t yet trusted in him and accepted him, then he is calling you to himself tonight, with the promise that he will never turn away anyone who comes to him. “Everyone who calls out to the Lord for help will be saved,” as Romans 10:13 says.
John 3:18 says: “Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.”
There is a choice before each one of us tonight. It is to travel on life’s road with Christ as our companion, our guide, our Saviour and our Lord, or to travel on life’s road without him. “Two roads diverged in a wood and I, I took the one less travelled by. And that has made all the difference.”
Thursday, 12 April 2007
Sunday, 1 April 2007
Loyalty to Christ
This is an edited version of a sermon preached at a Guild meeting on 13th March 2007.
Loyalty is sometimes harder to define than it is to recognise. It can be hard to put into words, but we know when someone has been loyal to us and we feel it when someone has betrayed us and been disloyal. If I was going to take a picture of “loyalty” and show it to you tonight, I would take a picture of my dog. A good dog’s relationship with its human masters is about as good a picture of loyalty as you can get. Loyalty of course is the state of being loyal, and in Chambers Dictionary, loyal is defined like this: “faithful, true, firm in allegiance, personally devoted to a sovereign.” And to this I would add another factor: that loyalty involves some degree of obedience whether out of duty or out of love. In each of these things my dog is loyal. She is devoted to me. Every time I walk in the door she greets me with affection as if she hasn’t seen me in months. She is firm in allegiance – she is on my side against any dog or any person outside the family pack who stands against us or is a danger to us. She is obedient – if I tell her to come she comes, if I tell her to sit, she sits – and not because she’s afraid of me, but because she enjoys obeying my commands.
The blue and gold border on the badge of the Guild is about another kind of loyalty: Our loyalty to Christ as our Lord and Saviour, and to God our Father as our Creator and Provider. When I was thinking about a Bible passage that would have something to say to us about loyalty, I decided on this passage near the end of the Book of Joshua, in Joshua chapter 24. It would be good if you had the passage open in your bibles as we look at some of the things this passage teaches us about our loyalty to God.
In the chapter just before this, Joshua delivers his farewell address to the nation as he nears the end of his life. And now in chapter 24 he gathers the people together at a place called Shechem, to establish anew under a covenant whether they are indeed going to be loyal to the LORD, the God of Israel, or not.
In this passage in Joshua chapter 24 we see a number of aspects of loyalty very clearly outlined for us and there are four I want to look at this evening, which I’ve labelled appreciation, allegiance, service and obedience. And each of these four things together, make up the character and attitude of a loyal Christian today, just as much as they made up the attitude of a faithful Israelite in Joshua’s day.
The first thing for us to notice is that loyalty involves appreciation of what our God and King has done for us in the past and will do for us in the future. In order to be loyal to God, we need to recognise who God is, what he has already done for us in our lives and especially in our salvation, and then grasp his promises for what he has in store for us in the future as his covenant people. We see this in verses 1-13 of our passage. Here Joshua gives a brief summary of one of the most exciting periods of history for God’s people in the Old Testament, to remind the people what the God who demands their loyalty now, has done for them and their forefathers in the past.
I don’t know about you, but I’m a big fan of those American television shows like “24” and “Prison Break” that run for half a year on the TV (though I usually cheat and watch them on DVD much quicker than one episode per week!). At the start of those shows there’s always a brief segment with “the story so far” to remind viewers what’s already happened before the next episode starts.
The first thirteen verses of Joshua 24 are a bit like one of those brief segments reminding us of the story so far. It takes us from before the time when Israel as a nation even existed, up to the then present day, with the nation having its own homeland in Canaan.
Joshua goes away back to the very first glimmerings of Israel as a people – to the father of the nation, Abraham, and even further back to his father, Terah. He looks back into antiquity to a point where the ancestors of the Israelites did not even worship the Lord, but other false gods.
But Joshua explains how God raised up Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to establish the nation of Israel, through their sons and other descendants. You’ll remember at the very end of the book of Genesis Jacob and his Sons settled in Egypt where Joseph was established as one of the national leaders. The Israelites prospered in Egypt until a new Pharaoh came to power who did not know Joseph. He feared that Egypt was going to be taken over by Israelites and so he put the Israelites into the hard bondage of slavery. Later, as verse five says, God sent Moses and Aaron to deliver the people from slavery.
And so the story continues, with the people’s time in the wilderness of the desert, until Moses died and Joshua became the leader of the people. They crossed over the Jordan and entered into the promised land of Canaan. They have fought battles at Jericho and Ai and established a new nation under God in the land of Israel after defeating the Canaanites who used to live there.
Hopefully you can grasp the point Joshua is making here. Before he goes on to question the people about their loyalty and faithfulness to God, he deliberately highlights what God has done for them; how faithful and loyal God has been to Israel. The reason for this is very simple. If we stop to consider what God has done for us, we are much more likely to want to be his loyal and faithful people, because he has done so much for us.
Appreciating God for what he is and what he has done is a very important step in establishing a relationship of trust and loyalty with him. Joshua pointed out to the people that they owed their freedom, their land and even their very existence solely to God’s goodness and mercy.
What about us, God’s people in the 21st century? Do we take the time to consider what God has done for us and our nation? Do we appreciate him for who he is and where we would be without him?
Joshua took the Israelites through a quick tour of their history to make his point. Couldn’t we do the same? Where would we be if God had not worked in the lives of Celtic missionaries like Columba, Cuthbert and Ninian who came to a harsh and violent land further north than civilisation stretched in those days, to bring the gospel to the “barbarians” who lived there? Where would we be had God later not sent Protestant Reformers who rediscovered the message of the gospel, the message of salvation by grace alone through faith, buried under layers of false Catholic teachings and medieval superstitions? But God raised up the likes of Patrick Hamilton, George Wishart, John Knox and Andrew Melville to reform the Church in Scotland and bring it back to the truths of God’s Word, to be the brightest light of the Reformation, known as “the land of the book” – the land where the purity of doctrine and worship according to the Bible was unsurpassed in the world.
And the list could go on and on. From the big national picture to our own local parish and church. Where would we be without the likes of Sidney Warnes who came to this building with only a handful of members left and renewed the building and the congregation leaving it strong and thriving for future ministers to take up the torch and keep a light in Bridgeton. Where would we be without the ordinary men and women who went before us in the race and worked to keep this church alive when others wanted it dead.
Above even these great things God has done for us in the ordinary course of history stands those amazing things God has done for us in the pages of Scripture. He created the world for us and sustains it by his mighty hand for us. He planned our salvation for us and in his eternal decree, settled before the world was made, he purposed that we should be brought to salvation. He sent his Son, Jesus Christ, into this world to save us, to die for us on the cross and rise again from the dead so that we might have eternal life. And he sent his Holy Spirit into each of our lives so that at the right time, in the right way, one day we heard the gospel and actually came to faith in Christ for ourselves.
God has done all these things for us. If we come to the point where we acknowledge this and appreciate the magnitude of what God has done for us, how can we not then feel not just a duty to be loyal and faithful to him in return, but a delight and passion to recognise him and stay loyal to him out of love? We owe him at least that, and many times that.
So loyalty first and foremost consists of appreciating what God has done for us. Secondly, loyalty involves allegiance. It means lining up in public, with determination and courage, on God’s side. You see Joshua it in verse 15: “Decide today whom you will serve...As for my family and me, we will serve the LORD.” Then in verse 23: “Pledge your loyalty to the LORD, the God of Israel.”
There is a diving line that runs through life – and it’s between those who are on the Lord’s side, and those who are against him. As Jesus says in Luke 11:23: “Anyone who is not for me is really against me; anyone who does not help me gather is really scattering.”
At another place, in Matthew’s Gospel (25:31-33), Christ says: “When the Son of Man comes as King and all the angels with him, he will sit on his royal throne, and the people of all the nations will be gathered before him. Then he will divide them into two groups, just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the righteous people at his right and the others at his left.”
In Ephesians 6, Paul paints a picture of the universe as a battle between the forces of God and the forces of Satan. “For we are not fighting human beings but against the wicked spiritual forces in the heavenly world, the rulers, authorities, and cosmic powers of this dark age. So put on God’s armour now!”
Loyalty involves allegiance. It involves taking sides and being willing to show which side you are on. You cannot sit on the fence where Jesus is concerned. You can’t be for him a little bit. You can’t be a Christian up to a point. As one saying puts it, if he isn’t Lord of all, he isn’t Lord at all. Meaning, if you won’t have him as your King ruling every part of your life, then you have a problem, and need to examine your attitudes and your faith.
And why wouldn’t you want him to be Lord of your whole life? The only reason is sin. There’s no good reason why he shouldn’t be Lord of all your life. His yoke is easy and his burden is light. You see the choice isn’t really between being ruled by Christ or remaining free. The choice is between being ruled by Christ and being free, or being a slave of sin, in bondage to evil and ruled by Satan.
Paul wrote in Romans 10:9: “If you confess that Jesus is Lord and believe that God raised him from death, you will be saved.”
Jesus said in Luke 12:8-9, “I assure you that those who declare publicly that they belong to me, the Son of Man will do the same for them before the angels of God. But those who reject me publicly, the Son of Man will also reject them before the angels of God.”
The question each of us faces is this: are we really prepared to stand up for Jesus when it comes to the crunch? Not in church where to stand up for Jesus is the norm, but out there in the world, where standing up for Jesus will lose us friends, cost us dearly, leave us misunderstood, hated, persecuted, sometimes imprisoned, or maybe even martyred?
What a question! How can any of us answer it truly until we are in that kind of situation? But leaving aside the big life and death situations, how many of us aren’t even prepared to stand up for Jesus in the little things of life. How many of keep silent when God or Jesus are dismissed as a joke? How many of us pretend it’s okay what someone is saying in mixed company when we know deep down it isn’t okay? How many of us would be embarrassed if acquaintances or friends knew we were Christians who actually believe what the Bible teaches. How many of us are willing to stand up and say that’s wrong, or you shouldn’t be living that way?
But God demands more than that from us. He wants us to show our true colours all the time, and line up on the battlefield under God’s standard, as loyal soldiers, committed to his cause and willing to be attacked in defence of God’s truth and God’s way.
That’s what true allegiance is. That’s the mindset of these Israelites in Joshua 24. They are for God all the way here.
The third aspect of loyalty that the passage brings out clearly for us is that loyalty involves service. If we are to be loyal to God, we must be willing to serve God. The theme of serving God runs throughout our passage in Joshua 24 like a refrain. In verse 14 Joshua says, “Now then, honour the LORD and serve him sincerely and faithfully.”
In verse 21 the people are adamant, “We will serve the LORD,” they cry.
Service is not a popular concept in our day. Everyone’s supposed to look after number one. Life is a rat race to get to the top of the tree, to be rich and famous so that you can have people to serve you, not so you can be someone else’s servant. But God calls his people to serve him. Part of our being loyal to God is being willing to serve God. If you look back to the very beginning of Exodus when God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, the main reason God decided to free his people from bondage in Egypt was so that they could come and serve God by worshipping him on the sacred mountain of Sinai.
Later, in the desert, Moses says to the Israelites: “"Now, people of Israel, listen to what the LORD your God demands of you: Worship the LORD and do all that he commands. Love him, serve him with all your heart, and obey all his laws. I am giving them to you today for your benefit.”
The heart of serving God is worship. In the Old Testament the tribe of Israelites who had responsibility for serving God as priests were the Levites (Moses and Aaron were Levites). But in the New Testament, every believer is a priest to God. In the sense of offering up sacrifices of atonement there is of course only one priest we recognise – Christ who sacrificed himself on the cross. But in the sense of giving God worship, and living a life of service to him, all God’s people are priests.
As Paul wrote in Romans 12:1: “So then, my brothers and sisters, because of God’s great mercy to us I appeal to you: Offer yourselves as a living sacrifice to God, dedicated to his service and pleasing to him. This is the true worship you should offer.”
Everything we do should be done to give God glory – and everything we do does give God glory if it is done with the right attitude and for the right reasons. Baking a cake, or mowing the lawn glorifies God if done with the right heart – it’s not just “religious” things. As we saw last time when we looked at holiness – in God’s eyes there are no sacred and secular areas of life. Everything we do is to be holy. In the same way, everything we do should be to serve God, and that includes all the acts of love, kindness or goodness we show to other people. For as we serve other people we are serving God too, for we know that the greatest commandment is both to love God with all our heart and to love our neighbour as ourselves. We can’t truly do the first unless we also do the second, and likewise we can’t truly do the second without doing the first. Both love to God and our neighbour go hand-in-hand.
Paul sums this up in 1 Corinthians 10:31 by saying, “Whatever you do...do it all for God’s glory.”
Jesus said that we are to worship the Lord and “serve only him.” So, not only are we to serve God, we are to serve only God. We are to be single-minded in our devotion to God and in our worship of him. Nothing else is to be worshipped. Not Mary, not the saints, not statues or relics, not money or fame, not our careers, or our health, our bodies or anyone else’s body. Only God deserves our worship, and our exclusive service in this world. And part of being loyal to God is to keep ourselves free from idols. That’s very clear in our passage, where several times, Joshua brings the people back to a sharp reality. If you are God’s people – if you really want to serve him, then get rid of the idols.
As one old hymn puts it: “The dearest idol I have known, whate’er that idol be; help me to tear it from thy throne and worship only thee.”
If we are truly to be devoted to God’s service and worship, what sort of things do we need to think about in our lives? Well one obvious thing is that we should be committed to coming to church every Sunday to worship God. Hebrews 10:25 says: “Let us not give up the habit of meeting together, as some are doing. Instead, let us encourage one another all the more, since you see that the Day of the Lord is coming nearer.” Coming to church can be a habit – but let’s make sure it is a good habit, not done just out of habit, but because we really want to gather to worship God, praising him from the heart, and eagerly expecting to learn about him as his word is read and preached.
But there are aspects of service maybe we need to think about. Maybe we need to think about how little time we spend in prayer or in reading the Scriptures? Or maybe we need to think about how much time we spend doing certain things so that we end up not having enough time to go to church and meet our responsibilities to the church. Perhaps we need to think again about how we use our money and see if we are giving to God’s work sacrificially and generously. At this time, during a Stewardship campaign, we have the perfect opportunity to look again at ourselves, to see if we are serving God as we should with our time, our skills and abilities, and yes our money, but most of all – are we loving and serving God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength?
So far we’ve seen that loyalty to God involves appreciating who God is and what he has done, having a true allegiance to him and showing it, and being single-minded in serving him as our God. The last aspect of loyalty we’re going to look at tonight is in some respects the most straightforward, and yet it can be the hardest of all. If we are loyal to Christ the king, we should live in obedience to Christ the king. Being loyal to God, means obeying God. Loyalty involves obedience.
Once again we see this in our passage. The Israelites realised that it was impossible to be loyal to God or to serve God unless they obeyed God. In verse 24 they say: “We will serve the Lord our God. We will obey his commands.”
If serving someone is an unpopular concept, the idea of obeying someone else in authority over us is even more unpopular! Everyone wants to be his or her own boss. The idea that God isn’t just a big teddy bear who will give us a cuddle when we’re feeling sad, or who will slip us a bar of chocolate when we’ve done something good, is shocking to some people today, sadly even some people in the church. Sadly some people take something that’s true, like God is love, and twist it with their definition of what love is, to the point where this god of love (and now I’m using a small “g” for god by the way), where this god of theirs wouldn’t possible punish anyone, or even have the cheek to tell someone how they should live. The idea that there’s a problem in living in a way which God says is wrong is shocking to these people.
But our God is not an idol invented in the mind of sinful men. He is the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth, the Creator of the universe. The earth and everyone in it belong to him and he has the sovereign right to command his creatures to obey him. His commandments are not voluntary guides that we can choose to obey or disregard as we see fit. No, they are eternal laws that every human being is bound to obey or face punishment for disobedience.
But as God’s own people, loyal to him as our king, these laws are not to be obeyed by us out of cold duty or fear, but out of love and thankfulness for all he has done for us. And we are not left on our own to sink or swim. God has given us his Holy Spirit to empower us and help us to live in obedience to his will.
Joshua challenged the people of Israel gathered at Shechem. “Pledge your loyalty to the LORD, the God of Israel,” he said to them. What about us today? Knowing that being loyal to Christ Jesus involves recognition of what he has done for us and will do for us; making our allegiance with him, being on his side even when that’s unpopular, even when that’s misunderstood, even when that’s hard; serving him in our acts of worship and in our acts of charity and mercy for other people; and obeying his will even when we cannot see why we should or why he wants us to do certain things or stop doing certain things. Knowing all that, are we prepared to stand up and pledge our loyalty to the Lord? Are we prepared to take a stand and say, with Joshua, “As for my family and me, we will serve the LORD”? Are we loyal to the King of Kings, or are we part-time Christians, half for him, half against him, or are we traitors to his cause, spies in the camp, whose hearts are not faithful and true to him, but serve another master? That’s a very important question for us. In our own strength, we cannot stay loyal to him; but by his grace, we can. By grace we are more than conquerors through him who loves us. May we all live by grace, live by faith, in the shadow of the cross, in the light of God’s purity and holiness, bound by loyalty to the King of Kings.
Loyalty is sometimes harder to define than it is to recognise. It can be hard to put into words, but we know when someone has been loyal to us and we feel it when someone has betrayed us and been disloyal. If I was going to take a picture of “loyalty” and show it to you tonight, I would take a picture of my dog. A good dog’s relationship with its human masters is about as good a picture of loyalty as you can get. Loyalty of course is the state of being loyal, and in Chambers Dictionary, loyal is defined like this: “faithful, true, firm in allegiance, personally devoted to a sovereign.” And to this I would add another factor: that loyalty involves some degree of obedience whether out of duty or out of love. In each of these things my dog is loyal. She is devoted to me. Every time I walk in the door she greets me with affection as if she hasn’t seen me in months. She is firm in allegiance – she is on my side against any dog or any person outside the family pack who stands against us or is a danger to us. She is obedient – if I tell her to come she comes, if I tell her to sit, she sits – and not because she’s afraid of me, but because she enjoys obeying my commands.
The blue and gold border on the badge of the Guild is about another kind of loyalty: Our loyalty to Christ as our Lord and Saviour, and to God our Father as our Creator and Provider. When I was thinking about a Bible passage that would have something to say to us about loyalty, I decided on this passage near the end of the Book of Joshua, in Joshua chapter 24. It would be good if you had the passage open in your bibles as we look at some of the things this passage teaches us about our loyalty to God.
In the chapter just before this, Joshua delivers his farewell address to the nation as he nears the end of his life. And now in chapter 24 he gathers the people together at a place called Shechem, to establish anew under a covenant whether they are indeed going to be loyal to the LORD, the God of Israel, or not.
In this passage in Joshua chapter 24 we see a number of aspects of loyalty very clearly outlined for us and there are four I want to look at this evening, which I’ve labelled appreciation, allegiance, service and obedience. And each of these four things together, make up the character and attitude of a loyal Christian today, just as much as they made up the attitude of a faithful Israelite in Joshua’s day.
The first thing for us to notice is that loyalty involves appreciation of what our God and King has done for us in the past and will do for us in the future. In order to be loyal to God, we need to recognise who God is, what he has already done for us in our lives and especially in our salvation, and then grasp his promises for what he has in store for us in the future as his covenant people. We see this in verses 1-13 of our passage. Here Joshua gives a brief summary of one of the most exciting periods of history for God’s people in the Old Testament, to remind the people what the God who demands their loyalty now, has done for them and their forefathers in the past.
I don’t know about you, but I’m a big fan of those American television shows like “24” and “Prison Break” that run for half a year on the TV (though I usually cheat and watch them on DVD much quicker than one episode per week!). At the start of those shows there’s always a brief segment with “the story so far” to remind viewers what’s already happened before the next episode starts.
The first thirteen verses of Joshua 24 are a bit like one of those brief segments reminding us of the story so far. It takes us from before the time when Israel as a nation even existed, up to the then present day, with the nation having its own homeland in Canaan.
Joshua goes away back to the very first glimmerings of Israel as a people – to the father of the nation, Abraham, and even further back to his father, Terah. He looks back into antiquity to a point where the ancestors of the Israelites did not even worship the Lord, but other false gods.
But Joshua explains how God raised up Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to establish the nation of Israel, through their sons and other descendants. You’ll remember at the very end of the book of Genesis Jacob and his Sons settled in Egypt where Joseph was established as one of the national leaders. The Israelites prospered in Egypt until a new Pharaoh came to power who did not know Joseph. He feared that Egypt was going to be taken over by Israelites and so he put the Israelites into the hard bondage of slavery. Later, as verse five says, God sent Moses and Aaron to deliver the people from slavery.
And so the story continues, with the people’s time in the wilderness of the desert, until Moses died and Joshua became the leader of the people. They crossed over the Jordan and entered into the promised land of Canaan. They have fought battles at Jericho and Ai and established a new nation under God in the land of Israel after defeating the Canaanites who used to live there.
Hopefully you can grasp the point Joshua is making here. Before he goes on to question the people about their loyalty and faithfulness to God, he deliberately highlights what God has done for them; how faithful and loyal God has been to Israel. The reason for this is very simple. If we stop to consider what God has done for us, we are much more likely to want to be his loyal and faithful people, because he has done so much for us.
Appreciating God for what he is and what he has done is a very important step in establishing a relationship of trust and loyalty with him. Joshua pointed out to the people that they owed their freedom, their land and even their very existence solely to God’s goodness and mercy.
What about us, God’s people in the 21st century? Do we take the time to consider what God has done for us and our nation? Do we appreciate him for who he is and where we would be without him?
Joshua took the Israelites through a quick tour of their history to make his point. Couldn’t we do the same? Where would we be if God had not worked in the lives of Celtic missionaries like Columba, Cuthbert and Ninian who came to a harsh and violent land further north than civilisation stretched in those days, to bring the gospel to the “barbarians” who lived there? Where would we be had God later not sent Protestant Reformers who rediscovered the message of the gospel, the message of salvation by grace alone through faith, buried under layers of false Catholic teachings and medieval superstitions? But God raised up the likes of Patrick Hamilton, George Wishart, John Knox and Andrew Melville to reform the Church in Scotland and bring it back to the truths of God’s Word, to be the brightest light of the Reformation, known as “the land of the book” – the land where the purity of doctrine and worship according to the Bible was unsurpassed in the world.
And the list could go on and on. From the big national picture to our own local parish and church. Where would we be without the likes of Sidney Warnes who came to this building with only a handful of members left and renewed the building and the congregation leaving it strong and thriving for future ministers to take up the torch and keep a light in Bridgeton. Where would we be without the ordinary men and women who went before us in the race and worked to keep this church alive when others wanted it dead.
Above even these great things God has done for us in the ordinary course of history stands those amazing things God has done for us in the pages of Scripture. He created the world for us and sustains it by his mighty hand for us. He planned our salvation for us and in his eternal decree, settled before the world was made, he purposed that we should be brought to salvation. He sent his Son, Jesus Christ, into this world to save us, to die for us on the cross and rise again from the dead so that we might have eternal life. And he sent his Holy Spirit into each of our lives so that at the right time, in the right way, one day we heard the gospel and actually came to faith in Christ for ourselves.
God has done all these things for us. If we come to the point where we acknowledge this and appreciate the magnitude of what God has done for us, how can we not then feel not just a duty to be loyal and faithful to him in return, but a delight and passion to recognise him and stay loyal to him out of love? We owe him at least that, and many times that.
So loyalty first and foremost consists of appreciating what God has done for us. Secondly, loyalty involves allegiance. It means lining up in public, with determination and courage, on God’s side. You see Joshua it in verse 15: “Decide today whom you will serve...As for my family and me, we will serve the LORD.” Then in verse 23: “Pledge your loyalty to the LORD, the God of Israel.”
There is a diving line that runs through life – and it’s between those who are on the Lord’s side, and those who are against him. As Jesus says in Luke 11:23: “Anyone who is not for me is really against me; anyone who does not help me gather is really scattering.”
At another place, in Matthew’s Gospel (25:31-33), Christ says: “When the Son of Man comes as King and all the angels with him, he will sit on his royal throne, and the people of all the nations will be gathered before him. Then he will divide them into two groups, just as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the righteous people at his right and the others at his left.”
In Ephesians 6, Paul paints a picture of the universe as a battle between the forces of God and the forces of Satan. “For we are not fighting human beings but against the wicked spiritual forces in the heavenly world, the rulers, authorities, and cosmic powers of this dark age. So put on God’s armour now!”
Loyalty involves allegiance. It involves taking sides and being willing to show which side you are on. You cannot sit on the fence where Jesus is concerned. You can’t be for him a little bit. You can’t be a Christian up to a point. As one saying puts it, if he isn’t Lord of all, he isn’t Lord at all. Meaning, if you won’t have him as your King ruling every part of your life, then you have a problem, and need to examine your attitudes and your faith.
And why wouldn’t you want him to be Lord of your whole life? The only reason is sin. There’s no good reason why he shouldn’t be Lord of all your life. His yoke is easy and his burden is light. You see the choice isn’t really between being ruled by Christ or remaining free. The choice is between being ruled by Christ and being free, or being a slave of sin, in bondage to evil and ruled by Satan.
Paul wrote in Romans 10:9: “If you confess that Jesus is Lord and believe that God raised him from death, you will be saved.”
Jesus said in Luke 12:8-9, “I assure you that those who declare publicly that they belong to me, the Son of Man will do the same for them before the angels of God. But those who reject me publicly, the Son of Man will also reject them before the angels of God.”
The question each of us faces is this: are we really prepared to stand up for Jesus when it comes to the crunch? Not in church where to stand up for Jesus is the norm, but out there in the world, where standing up for Jesus will lose us friends, cost us dearly, leave us misunderstood, hated, persecuted, sometimes imprisoned, or maybe even martyred?
What a question! How can any of us answer it truly until we are in that kind of situation? But leaving aside the big life and death situations, how many of us aren’t even prepared to stand up for Jesus in the little things of life. How many of keep silent when God or Jesus are dismissed as a joke? How many of us pretend it’s okay what someone is saying in mixed company when we know deep down it isn’t okay? How many of us would be embarrassed if acquaintances or friends knew we were Christians who actually believe what the Bible teaches. How many of us are willing to stand up and say that’s wrong, or you shouldn’t be living that way?
But God demands more than that from us. He wants us to show our true colours all the time, and line up on the battlefield under God’s standard, as loyal soldiers, committed to his cause and willing to be attacked in defence of God’s truth and God’s way.
That’s what true allegiance is. That’s the mindset of these Israelites in Joshua 24. They are for God all the way here.
The third aspect of loyalty that the passage brings out clearly for us is that loyalty involves service. If we are to be loyal to God, we must be willing to serve God. The theme of serving God runs throughout our passage in Joshua 24 like a refrain. In verse 14 Joshua says, “Now then, honour the LORD and serve him sincerely and faithfully.”
In verse 21 the people are adamant, “We will serve the LORD,” they cry.
Service is not a popular concept in our day. Everyone’s supposed to look after number one. Life is a rat race to get to the top of the tree, to be rich and famous so that you can have people to serve you, not so you can be someone else’s servant. But God calls his people to serve him. Part of our being loyal to God is being willing to serve God. If you look back to the very beginning of Exodus when God appeared to Moses in the burning bush, the main reason God decided to free his people from bondage in Egypt was so that they could come and serve God by worshipping him on the sacred mountain of Sinai.
Later, in the desert, Moses says to the Israelites: “"Now, people of Israel, listen to what the LORD your God demands of you: Worship the LORD and do all that he commands. Love him, serve him with all your heart, and obey all his laws. I am giving them to you today for your benefit.”
The heart of serving God is worship. In the Old Testament the tribe of Israelites who had responsibility for serving God as priests were the Levites (Moses and Aaron were Levites). But in the New Testament, every believer is a priest to God. In the sense of offering up sacrifices of atonement there is of course only one priest we recognise – Christ who sacrificed himself on the cross. But in the sense of giving God worship, and living a life of service to him, all God’s people are priests.
As Paul wrote in Romans 12:1: “So then, my brothers and sisters, because of God’s great mercy to us I appeal to you: Offer yourselves as a living sacrifice to God, dedicated to his service and pleasing to him. This is the true worship you should offer.”
Everything we do should be done to give God glory – and everything we do does give God glory if it is done with the right attitude and for the right reasons. Baking a cake, or mowing the lawn glorifies God if done with the right heart – it’s not just “religious” things. As we saw last time when we looked at holiness – in God’s eyes there are no sacred and secular areas of life. Everything we do is to be holy. In the same way, everything we do should be to serve God, and that includes all the acts of love, kindness or goodness we show to other people. For as we serve other people we are serving God too, for we know that the greatest commandment is both to love God with all our heart and to love our neighbour as ourselves. We can’t truly do the first unless we also do the second, and likewise we can’t truly do the second without doing the first. Both love to God and our neighbour go hand-in-hand.
Paul sums this up in 1 Corinthians 10:31 by saying, “Whatever you do...do it all for God’s glory.”
Jesus said that we are to worship the Lord and “serve only him.” So, not only are we to serve God, we are to serve only God. We are to be single-minded in our devotion to God and in our worship of him. Nothing else is to be worshipped. Not Mary, not the saints, not statues or relics, not money or fame, not our careers, or our health, our bodies or anyone else’s body. Only God deserves our worship, and our exclusive service in this world. And part of being loyal to God is to keep ourselves free from idols. That’s very clear in our passage, where several times, Joshua brings the people back to a sharp reality. If you are God’s people – if you really want to serve him, then get rid of the idols.
As one old hymn puts it: “The dearest idol I have known, whate’er that idol be; help me to tear it from thy throne and worship only thee.”
If we are truly to be devoted to God’s service and worship, what sort of things do we need to think about in our lives? Well one obvious thing is that we should be committed to coming to church every Sunday to worship God. Hebrews 10:25 says: “Let us not give up the habit of meeting together, as some are doing. Instead, let us encourage one another all the more, since you see that the Day of the Lord is coming nearer.” Coming to church can be a habit – but let’s make sure it is a good habit, not done just out of habit, but because we really want to gather to worship God, praising him from the heart, and eagerly expecting to learn about him as his word is read and preached.
But there are aspects of service maybe we need to think about. Maybe we need to think about how little time we spend in prayer or in reading the Scriptures? Or maybe we need to think about how much time we spend doing certain things so that we end up not having enough time to go to church and meet our responsibilities to the church. Perhaps we need to think again about how we use our money and see if we are giving to God’s work sacrificially and generously. At this time, during a Stewardship campaign, we have the perfect opportunity to look again at ourselves, to see if we are serving God as we should with our time, our skills and abilities, and yes our money, but most of all – are we loving and serving God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength?
So far we’ve seen that loyalty to God involves appreciating who God is and what he has done, having a true allegiance to him and showing it, and being single-minded in serving him as our God. The last aspect of loyalty we’re going to look at tonight is in some respects the most straightforward, and yet it can be the hardest of all. If we are loyal to Christ the king, we should live in obedience to Christ the king. Being loyal to God, means obeying God. Loyalty involves obedience.
Once again we see this in our passage. The Israelites realised that it was impossible to be loyal to God or to serve God unless they obeyed God. In verse 24 they say: “We will serve the Lord our God. We will obey his commands.”
If serving someone is an unpopular concept, the idea of obeying someone else in authority over us is even more unpopular! Everyone wants to be his or her own boss. The idea that God isn’t just a big teddy bear who will give us a cuddle when we’re feeling sad, or who will slip us a bar of chocolate when we’ve done something good, is shocking to some people today, sadly even some people in the church. Sadly some people take something that’s true, like God is love, and twist it with their definition of what love is, to the point where this god of love (and now I’m using a small “g” for god by the way), where this god of theirs wouldn’t possible punish anyone, or even have the cheek to tell someone how they should live. The idea that there’s a problem in living in a way which God says is wrong is shocking to these people.
But our God is not an idol invented in the mind of sinful men. He is the sovereign Lord of heaven and earth, the Creator of the universe. The earth and everyone in it belong to him and he has the sovereign right to command his creatures to obey him. His commandments are not voluntary guides that we can choose to obey or disregard as we see fit. No, they are eternal laws that every human being is bound to obey or face punishment for disobedience.
But as God’s own people, loyal to him as our king, these laws are not to be obeyed by us out of cold duty or fear, but out of love and thankfulness for all he has done for us. And we are not left on our own to sink or swim. God has given us his Holy Spirit to empower us and help us to live in obedience to his will.
Joshua challenged the people of Israel gathered at Shechem. “Pledge your loyalty to the LORD, the God of Israel,” he said to them. What about us today? Knowing that being loyal to Christ Jesus involves recognition of what he has done for us and will do for us; making our allegiance with him, being on his side even when that’s unpopular, even when that’s misunderstood, even when that’s hard; serving him in our acts of worship and in our acts of charity and mercy for other people; and obeying his will even when we cannot see why we should or why he wants us to do certain things or stop doing certain things. Knowing all that, are we prepared to stand up and pledge our loyalty to the Lord? Are we prepared to take a stand and say, with Joshua, “As for my family and me, we will serve the LORD”? Are we loyal to the King of Kings, or are we part-time Christians, half for him, half against him, or are we traitors to his cause, spies in the camp, whose hearts are not faithful and true to him, but serve another master? That’s a very important question for us. In our own strength, we cannot stay loyal to him; but by his grace, we can. By grace we are more than conquerors through him who loves us. May we all live by grace, live by faith, in the shadow of the cross, in the light of God’s purity and holiness, bound by loyalty to the King of Kings.
Wednesday, 14 February 2007
God's Holy People
This is the text of a sermon preached to a Guild meeting on 13th February 2007
It’s funny how we can fail to realise things about ourselves because we don’t perceive it to be the case. There’s probably no subject in our Christian lives that demonstrates this better than our holiness. Ask almost any Christian "Are you a holy person?" and they’ll say "No, I’m just an ordinary Christian." They know that they still sin every day, and imagine that holy people never sin, or only sin once in a blue moon. The same thing is true with the word "saint." I’ve heard loads of people use the expression, "I’m no saint – I’m just an ordinary Christian."
Well, just because we don’t feel we match up to our stained glass image of what a "saint" is or what a "holy person" is, doesn’t mean we aren’t saints or holy people.
I want to cover quite a lot of ground tonight, so we won’t be going into a lot of detail on some of the areas we’re going to touch on. And although I’ll be referring to this passage we’ve read in 1 Peter chapter 1, I’ll also be jumping about to quite a few passages in Scripture that have a bearing on our theme tonight. Basically, there are four things I want to look at.
First, we are saints, God’s holy people, because the Bible tells us we are.
Second, our holiness does not depend on our works, but on our status before God because of what Christ has done for us.
Third, it is because we are God’s holy people that we should live as God’s holy people. It is not by living holy lives that we become God’s holy people.
And fourth, the Bible gives us plenty of practical guidance on what it means to live a holy life.
So let’s look at each of these four truths in turn.
First, we are saints, we are God’s holy people, because the Bible tells us we are.
If you look at the page opposite the page where our reading is, see what 1 Peter 2:9-10 says, addressing ordinary folks in the churches of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia?
"But you are the chosen race, the King’s priests, the holy nation, God’s own people, chosen to proclaim the wonderful acts of God, who called you out of darkness into his own marvellous light. At one time you were not God’s people, but now you are his people; at one time you did not know God’s mercy, but now you have received his mercy."
You see? We are the holy nation, God’s own people. Then look at how almost every New Testament letter begins. They are addressed to different churches. But how are the people in those churches referred to? Let’s just look at three examples – there are plenty of others.
Romans 1:7 "To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."
1 Corinthians 1:2 "To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours."
Ephesians 1:1 "Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus."
We are God’s holy people. We are God’s saints. In the Bible "saint" is the word used to describe every Christian believer – not a title like a knighthood bestowed by the Pope on some kind of breed of "superhero believers." Unless we get away from the Catholic idea of "being a saint" we will never come to true understanding of holiness according to the New Testament.
The true meaning of "saint" is a "holy one" and its primary reference is NOT to the character of the person, but to the relationship of being set apart for and dedicated to God. In other words, being a saint, in the biblical sense, is not really about how much good we do, how devout we are, how much time we spend serving God, it is about how good God is choosing us to be his. It is because of our relationship with God – as his chosen ones, as the ones he has set apart – that our worship and service flows. Holiness is about setting apart our minds to see things God’s way and not how the world sees things; holiness is setting apart our hearts to love God and our neighbour and not loving only ourselves selfishly; holiness is setting apart our actions on loving God and our neighbours, and setting apart our actions to do good and refrain from doing evil. But – and this is the important bit – we can only think holy thoughts, feel holy love and do holy works if we are first holy people. In other words, if we are set apart by God as his saved ones – people saved by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. There’s no other way to be holy than to be a Christian believer.
If we don’t begin at the correct starting place, our understanding of being God’s holy people, will always be compromised. This leads us on to our second point.
Second, our holiness does not depend on our works, but on our status before God because of what Christ has done for us.
It is Christ who makes us holy. We cannot make ourselves holy. If we ever forget this truth, and start to think that there is something in us that makes us better than other people – or that our being holy is something we can be proud of, there is no end to the problems we will have. The biggest problem will be that we start to think we contribute in some way to our salvation.
Instead of acknowledging that we are saved by grace and not because of our own efforts, we’ll start to think that our holiness is somehow increased by the more good works we do. This is totally wrong. We will also become puffed up with pride. We will start to look down on other people who don’t appear to be "as holy" as us. We will turn into Pharisees.
How do we avoid this? By remembering that we are holy because of what Christ does and not because of we do and by remembering that our good works don’t make us any more holy, they only mean that we are living out our holiness better, that we are being true to our holy status. Let me give you an analogy to help explain what I’m saying here. Take this candle that’s burning on the table here. It has the status of being a candle whether it’s not lit at all, or whether it’s wick is glowing and there’s smoke, or whether it’s burning brightly with a flame like it is now. It’s not by the size of the flame or even the existence of the flame at all that it becomes a candle. It already is a candle. But it’s doing what it was created for when it’s burning brightly. It’s fulfilling it’s potential, it’s at it’s most pleasing to us, when it’s burning brightly. Well, we as God’s holy people – as individuals and as a group – are a bit like a candle. Our good works as God’s holy people are like the flame on a candle. It’s not by our good works that we become God’s holy people. But when our holiness is expressed in good works, we are fulfilling our potential, we are at our most pleasing to God. But we don’t stop being God’s holy people, even when we go through dark periods in our lives, when we commit sins, when we fail to love God as we should, when our hearts are cold towards others. We don’t stop being saints on our dark days any more than this stops being a candle if I snuff out its flame.
The reason for this is because our being holy is a result of what Christ has done for us, not what we do for ourselves. It is a status that God gives us, rather than a title we win for ourselves. It is God who makes us holy, and not we ourselves. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit does it, not us. The Bible is very clear on this point.
Consider the verses we read as our call to worship (Ephesians 1:4):
"Even before the world was made, God had already chosen us to be his through our union with Christ, so that we would be holy and without fault before him."
Hebrews 10:10
"Because Jesus Christ did what God wanted him to do, we are all purified from sin by the offering that he made of his own body once and for all."
Hebrews 13:12:
"Jesus...died outside the city, in order to purify the people [in other words "make the people holy"] from sin with his own blood."
It’s part of the meaning of the passage we read in 1 Peter 1 in verses 18 to 19:
"For you know what was paid to set you free from the worthless manner of life handed down by your ancestors. It was not something that can be destroyed, such as silver or gold; it was the costly sacrifice of Christ, who was like a lamb without defect or flaw."
So, to sum up so far, we’ve seen that we are God’s holy people because the Bible tells us that’s what we are. And we’ve seen that the reason we are holy even though far from perfect, is because we have the status of "holy ones" or "saints" before God because of what Christ has done for us, and not because of anything we have done or can do to win God’s favour.
Third, it is because we are God’s holy people that we should live as God’s holy people. It is not by living holy lives that we become God’s holy people.
If I can deal with negative point first: it is not by living holy lives that we become God’s holy people. I’m sure we’ve all heard it enough times that we know this already in our hearts. We cannot save ourselves. The whole New Testament teaches us that it is impossible for sinful human beings to earn their salvation by their works. It is futile to even try.
Look at Ephesians 2:8-9:
"For it is by God’s grace that you have been saved through faith. It is not the result of your own efforts, but God’s gift, so that no one can boast about it."
This key doctrine of salvation by grace through faith is probably best laid out in a passage from Romans 3 that I want to read to you. I’m reading Romans 3:21-28 from the New Living Translation:
"But now God has shown us a different way of being right in his sight, not by obeying the law but by the way promised in the Scriptures long ago. We are made right in God's sight when we trust in Jesus Christ to take away our sins. And we all can be saved in this same way, no matter who we are or what we have done. For all have sinned; all fall short of God's glorious standard. Yet now God in his gracious kindness declares us not guilty. He has done this through Christ Jesus, who has freed us by taking away our sins. For God sent Jesus to take the punishment for our sins and to satisfy God's anger against us. We are made right with God when we believe that Jesus shed his blood, sacrificing his life for us. God was being entirely fair and just when he did not punish those who sinned in former times. And he is entirely fair and just in this present time when he declares sinners to be right in his sight because they believe in Jesus. Can we boast, then, that we have done anything to be accepted by God? No, because our acquittal is not based on our good deeds. It is based on our faith. So we are made right with God through faith and not by obeying the law."
So, we are saved by grace, through faith alone – not through our works. But does this then mean we can live any way we like? As the question Paul had to deal with in Romans 6 puts it: Shall we sin that grace may abound?
Well the answer of the New Testament is an emphatic "No." We are saved by Christ alone, by grace alone and through faith alone, but our salvation is not to be without good works. Good works are the fruit that begin to be produced in a life united to Christ, the vine. We must remember that at the same time as we are given a new status before God – a status forgiven for our sins, with Christ’s righteousness reckoned to our account so that we are holy saints – we are also given a new nature, a new heart, and a new Spirit within us. Our attitude to sin changes, so that where before it didn’t bother us, now it does bother us. And rather than live lives contended to be sinners, the sinful things we do – and we do sin after we are Christians – annoy us, make us feel guilty and ashamed, make us feel sad. Paul calls this being "dead to sin". John describes the process of getting this new nature from God as being "born again". One of the clearest explanation of what happens when we get this new nature is described by the prophet Ezekiel in Ezekiel 36:25-27:
"I will sprinkle clean water on you and make you clean from all your idols and everything else that has defiled you. I will give you a new heart and a new mind. I will take away your stubborn heart of stone and give you an obedient heart. I will put my spirit in you and I will see to it that you follow my laws and keep all the commands I have given you."
So hopefully we’ve cleared up one thing: we are what we are because of what God has done for us in Christ Jesus, and not what we have done, are doing, or will do in the future, for ourselves. But at the same time, the Bible teaches that because God has set us apart as his holy ones, we should live out our lives as his holy ones.
Look at verses 14 and 15 in our passage in 1 Peter:
"Be obedient to God, and do not allow your lives to be shaped by those desires you had when you were still ignorant. Instead, be holy in all you do, just as God who called you is holy. The scripture says, ‘Be holy because I am holy’."
Here Peter is quoting from a command that God issues to his Old Testament people Israel several times in the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch. Back in Leviticus 11:44-45, we find these words:
"I am the LORD your God, and you must keep yourselves holy, because I am holy. I am the LORD who brought you out of Egypt so that I could be your God. You must be holy, because I am holy."
Notice, in passing, that even here in the Old Testament the same principle stands – God first saves his people – in this case by delivering them from captivity in Egypt – and then he calls those who are already his chosen ones to live out their lives in a way that matches their new status and calling as the covenant people of the LORD. They are not to be holy in order to become his people – they are his people delivered from slavery in Egypt and now they are to live holy lives as a result of their deliverance, not to achieve it.
The message of our passage is essentially this: live out your lives in the way that matches what you are. You are saints: live as saints. You are God’s people: live as God’s people. God is holy – you should be holy too, to show you are his.
At its most general, living a holy life means living every part of your life with reference to God. It means there are no sacred parts of life – like going to church, praying, reading the Bible – which are in contrast to secular parts of life – like going to work, socialising with friends and family, or watching the telly. Every part of our lives is to be holy. And please note this doesn’t mean all of our lives need to be spent in church or in church-related activities. That’s not what I mean. No, all of our lives are to be holy – and that means that the way we do our job is to be holy – set apart for God’s glory and in accordance with his will. It means the way we socialise is to be holy – we’re to socialise with our friends to the glory of God. What we watch on telly is to be sanctified – so we watch programmes we enjoy while giving thanks to God for them. God is to be such an integral part of life that he’s almost like a friend or family member who goes through all of life with you like a constant companion. Someone you share things with, who you talk about your problems with, who you have a laugh with, who you ask for advice about things, whose opinion you value and act upon. And yes who you spend special time with, but also someone who you are conscious of being with you in everything you do. That is a holy life.
And that leads us nicely on to our fourth point.
Fourth, the Bible gives us plenty of practical guidance on what it means to live a holy life.
With everything we’ve already looked at, its been the theory of holy living. Now we come to the nitty gritty. The practice of holy living. And here our passage in 1 Peter gives us some very useful principles to follow in our lives.
Verse 13 tells us that if we are to live holy lives – lives that keep God at the centre of things – we need to concentrate and focus to make sure it happens. If we live carelessly, thoughtlessly, it’s hard to live a holy life. It says:
"So then, have your minds ready for action. Keep alert and set your hope completely on the blessing which will be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed."
It’s like we’re in an army at war. Carelessness has no place in the Christian life. We have to keep on the ball, with our minds ready for action. We need to stay alert – to be aware of what’s happening around us – to take opportunities to do good as God leads us, and to see danger coming before we get caught up in it.
Verses 14 and 15 we’ve already looked at. We are to make a conscious effort not to be let our lives be shaped by those desires we had before we were Christians. We need to be aware when we are being tempted by pride, or greed for riches, or jealousy, or revenge, or whatever desires play a part in our particular character – and refuse to let them dominate us or shape our thinking. With God’s help, we need to say to ourselves "no" at times. "No" I won’t do that, even though I want to, because it’s not right. Now that’s not easy. No one is pretending it’s easy. But it is what we are called to do. And let’s be honest, how many of us fall into things simply because we hadn’t been keeping our minds ready and alert. How many of us sin thoughtlessly more often than deliberately having considered it’s wrong and still chose to do it. I think most of us sin before we’ve thought much about it. That’s why this advice from Peter is so practical. Think about it and you’re less likely to do it if it’s wrong.
Then in verse 17 we see that the holy life cannot be lived without what we usually think of as the "holy bits". They are not the only bits that are to be holy, but they are to be things we include in our lives as well as all the ordinary bits. Verse 17 mentions prayer, and having reverence for God. Our lives are to be lives of prayer. How can we keep God close and part of everything we do, unless we talk to him about things? Paul says somewhere we are to "pray without ceasing". And by that he didn’t mean we are to spend all our time praying as such, but that in all we do, we are to have communication channels open to God. Throughout the day we are to have little chats with God. It might only be a few words at a time. The mini prayers might be for help, for guidance, for forgiveness, for strength, for others we meet or think about – all sorts of things. Just take a second. A silent word of prayer to God is sent, and on we go with whatever we’re doing. It makes God much closer to us, and makes us really feel he is part of our everyday lives. Why don’t you try it tomorrow and see how it goes?
The reverence for God should express itself in our desire to worship him. Again that might be something we take some time to do every day, and especially on Sundays when we come to church to worship together as God’s people.
And that leads us to another piece of guidance – a holy life is one with "sincere love for your fellow-believers" as verse 22 says. We care for each other, help each other, show concern for each other. We are sad when our fellow-believers grieve or go through hard times. We rejoice with them when good things happen to them or they celebrate an achievement or milestone in their lives.
And lastly, one of the keys to living a holy life is to make it a life shaped and guided by Scripture. The Scripture is the Christian’s food – it is our spiritual milk as Peter says in chapter 2, verse 2. It is the living and eternal word of God – it is what the God who we are to keep as our close companion through life wants to say to us. How can we be holy as he is holy and not be interested in what he has to say to us? It is the only thing that endures – men and women fade and die – they cannot accompany us through our whole life. The things this earth afford wither and wear out. But the word of the Lord remains for ever. It never changes. It never leaves us. It never goes out of date, because it is God’s truth, God’s holy Word.
And as we try to live our lives in ways that match up with the holy status God has given us, it is the supreme rule of faith and life for us. By it we know true doctrine from false. By it we know good from evil. By it we know God’s promises to encourage us forward, and God’s warnings to save us from harming ourselves in sin.
During the Coronation service for a British monarch, the Moderator of the General Assembly hands the monarch a bible and says these words: "This book is the most valuable thing that this world affords. Here is Wisdom; this is the royal Law; these are the lively Oracles of God."
And so let us grasp the truths that the Bible has taught us tonight. We are God’s holy people because he says we are, not because of how we feel about it. And we are God’s holy people because of what Christ has done for us, not because of what we can do for ourselves. But as Christ has made us God’s holy people, so we are to live as God’s holy people should live. And the way we find out how we should live, is through the Bible.
May we truly see this book – the holy Word of the living God – as the most valuable thing this world affords, believing its teachings and following its commandments throughout our lives.
It’s funny how we can fail to realise things about ourselves because we don’t perceive it to be the case. There’s probably no subject in our Christian lives that demonstrates this better than our holiness. Ask almost any Christian "Are you a holy person?" and they’ll say "No, I’m just an ordinary Christian." They know that they still sin every day, and imagine that holy people never sin, or only sin once in a blue moon. The same thing is true with the word "saint." I’ve heard loads of people use the expression, "I’m no saint – I’m just an ordinary Christian."
Well, just because we don’t feel we match up to our stained glass image of what a "saint" is or what a "holy person" is, doesn’t mean we aren’t saints or holy people.
I want to cover quite a lot of ground tonight, so we won’t be going into a lot of detail on some of the areas we’re going to touch on. And although I’ll be referring to this passage we’ve read in 1 Peter chapter 1, I’ll also be jumping about to quite a few passages in Scripture that have a bearing on our theme tonight. Basically, there are four things I want to look at.
First, we are saints, God’s holy people, because the Bible tells us we are.
Second, our holiness does not depend on our works, but on our status before God because of what Christ has done for us.
Third, it is because we are God’s holy people that we should live as God’s holy people. It is not by living holy lives that we become God’s holy people.
And fourth, the Bible gives us plenty of practical guidance on what it means to live a holy life.
So let’s look at each of these four truths in turn.
First, we are saints, we are God’s holy people, because the Bible tells us we are.
If you look at the page opposite the page where our reading is, see what 1 Peter 2:9-10 says, addressing ordinary folks in the churches of Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia?
"But you are the chosen race, the King’s priests, the holy nation, God’s own people, chosen to proclaim the wonderful acts of God, who called you out of darkness into his own marvellous light. At one time you were not God’s people, but now you are his people; at one time you did not know God’s mercy, but now you have received his mercy."
You see? We are the holy nation, God’s own people. Then look at how almost every New Testament letter begins. They are addressed to different churches. But how are the people in those churches referred to? Let’s just look at three examples – there are plenty of others.
Romans 1:7 "To all those in Rome who are loved by God and called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ."
1 Corinthians 1:2 "To the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours."
Ephesians 1:1 "Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God. To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful in Christ Jesus."
We are God’s holy people. We are God’s saints. In the Bible "saint" is the word used to describe every Christian believer – not a title like a knighthood bestowed by the Pope on some kind of breed of "superhero believers." Unless we get away from the Catholic idea of "being a saint" we will never come to true understanding of holiness according to the New Testament.
The true meaning of "saint" is a "holy one" and its primary reference is NOT to the character of the person, but to the relationship of being set apart for and dedicated to God. In other words, being a saint, in the biblical sense, is not really about how much good we do, how devout we are, how much time we spend serving God, it is about how good God is choosing us to be his. It is because of our relationship with God – as his chosen ones, as the ones he has set apart – that our worship and service flows. Holiness is about setting apart our minds to see things God’s way and not how the world sees things; holiness is setting apart our hearts to love God and our neighbour and not loving only ourselves selfishly; holiness is setting apart our actions on loving God and our neighbours, and setting apart our actions to do good and refrain from doing evil. But – and this is the important bit – we can only think holy thoughts, feel holy love and do holy works if we are first holy people. In other words, if we are set apart by God as his saved ones – people saved by faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. There’s no other way to be holy than to be a Christian believer.
If we don’t begin at the correct starting place, our understanding of being God’s holy people, will always be compromised. This leads us on to our second point.
Second, our holiness does not depend on our works, but on our status before God because of what Christ has done for us.
It is Christ who makes us holy. We cannot make ourselves holy. If we ever forget this truth, and start to think that there is something in us that makes us better than other people – or that our being holy is something we can be proud of, there is no end to the problems we will have. The biggest problem will be that we start to think we contribute in some way to our salvation.
Instead of acknowledging that we are saved by grace and not because of our own efforts, we’ll start to think that our holiness is somehow increased by the more good works we do. This is totally wrong. We will also become puffed up with pride. We will start to look down on other people who don’t appear to be "as holy" as us. We will turn into Pharisees.
How do we avoid this? By remembering that we are holy because of what Christ does and not because of we do and by remembering that our good works don’t make us any more holy, they only mean that we are living out our holiness better, that we are being true to our holy status. Let me give you an analogy to help explain what I’m saying here. Take this candle that’s burning on the table here. It has the status of being a candle whether it’s not lit at all, or whether it’s wick is glowing and there’s smoke, or whether it’s burning brightly with a flame like it is now. It’s not by the size of the flame or even the existence of the flame at all that it becomes a candle. It already is a candle. But it’s doing what it was created for when it’s burning brightly. It’s fulfilling it’s potential, it’s at it’s most pleasing to us, when it’s burning brightly. Well, we as God’s holy people – as individuals and as a group – are a bit like a candle. Our good works as God’s holy people are like the flame on a candle. It’s not by our good works that we become God’s holy people. But when our holiness is expressed in good works, we are fulfilling our potential, we are at our most pleasing to God. But we don’t stop being God’s holy people, even when we go through dark periods in our lives, when we commit sins, when we fail to love God as we should, when our hearts are cold towards others. We don’t stop being saints on our dark days any more than this stops being a candle if I snuff out its flame.
The reason for this is because our being holy is a result of what Christ has done for us, not what we do for ourselves. It is a status that God gives us, rather than a title we win for ourselves. It is God who makes us holy, and not we ourselves. God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit does it, not us. The Bible is very clear on this point.
Consider the verses we read as our call to worship (Ephesians 1:4):
"Even before the world was made, God had already chosen us to be his through our union with Christ, so that we would be holy and without fault before him."
Hebrews 10:10
"Because Jesus Christ did what God wanted him to do, we are all purified from sin by the offering that he made of his own body once and for all."
Hebrews 13:12:
"Jesus...died outside the city, in order to purify the people [in other words "make the people holy"] from sin with his own blood."
It’s part of the meaning of the passage we read in 1 Peter 1 in verses 18 to 19:
"For you know what was paid to set you free from the worthless manner of life handed down by your ancestors. It was not something that can be destroyed, such as silver or gold; it was the costly sacrifice of Christ, who was like a lamb without defect or flaw."
So, to sum up so far, we’ve seen that we are God’s holy people because the Bible tells us that’s what we are. And we’ve seen that the reason we are holy even though far from perfect, is because we have the status of "holy ones" or "saints" before God because of what Christ has done for us, and not because of anything we have done or can do to win God’s favour.
Third, it is because we are God’s holy people that we should live as God’s holy people. It is not by living holy lives that we become God’s holy people.
If I can deal with negative point first: it is not by living holy lives that we become God’s holy people. I’m sure we’ve all heard it enough times that we know this already in our hearts. We cannot save ourselves. The whole New Testament teaches us that it is impossible for sinful human beings to earn their salvation by their works. It is futile to even try.
Look at Ephesians 2:8-9:
"For it is by God’s grace that you have been saved through faith. It is not the result of your own efforts, but God’s gift, so that no one can boast about it."
This key doctrine of salvation by grace through faith is probably best laid out in a passage from Romans 3 that I want to read to you. I’m reading Romans 3:21-28 from the New Living Translation:
"But now God has shown us a different way of being right in his sight, not by obeying the law but by the way promised in the Scriptures long ago. We are made right in God's sight when we trust in Jesus Christ to take away our sins. And we all can be saved in this same way, no matter who we are or what we have done. For all have sinned; all fall short of God's glorious standard. Yet now God in his gracious kindness declares us not guilty. He has done this through Christ Jesus, who has freed us by taking away our sins. For God sent Jesus to take the punishment for our sins and to satisfy God's anger against us. We are made right with God when we believe that Jesus shed his blood, sacrificing his life for us. God was being entirely fair and just when he did not punish those who sinned in former times. And he is entirely fair and just in this present time when he declares sinners to be right in his sight because they believe in Jesus. Can we boast, then, that we have done anything to be accepted by God? No, because our acquittal is not based on our good deeds. It is based on our faith. So we are made right with God through faith and not by obeying the law."
So, we are saved by grace, through faith alone – not through our works. But does this then mean we can live any way we like? As the question Paul had to deal with in Romans 6 puts it: Shall we sin that grace may abound?
Well the answer of the New Testament is an emphatic "No." We are saved by Christ alone, by grace alone and through faith alone, but our salvation is not to be without good works. Good works are the fruit that begin to be produced in a life united to Christ, the vine. We must remember that at the same time as we are given a new status before God – a status forgiven for our sins, with Christ’s righteousness reckoned to our account so that we are holy saints – we are also given a new nature, a new heart, and a new Spirit within us. Our attitude to sin changes, so that where before it didn’t bother us, now it does bother us. And rather than live lives contended to be sinners, the sinful things we do – and we do sin after we are Christians – annoy us, make us feel guilty and ashamed, make us feel sad. Paul calls this being "dead to sin". John describes the process of getting this new nature from God as being "born again". One of the clearest explanation of what happens when we get this new nature is described by the prophet Ezekiel in Ezekiel 36:25-27:
"I will sprinkle clean water on you and make you clean from all your idols and everything else that has defiled you. I will give you a new heart and a new mind. I will take away your stubborn heart of stone and give you an obedient heart. I will put my spirit in you and I will see to it that you follow my laws and keep all the commands I have given you."
So hopefully we’ve cleared up one thing: we are what we are because of what God has done for us in Christ Jesus, and not what we have done, are doing, or will do in the future, for ourselves. But at the same time, the Bible teaches that because God has set us apart as his holy ones, we should live out our lives as his holy ones.
Look at verses 14 and 15 in our passage in 1 Peter:
"Be obedient to God, and do not allow your lives to be shaped by those desires you had when you were still ignorant. Instead, be holy in all you do, just as God who called you is holy. The scripture says, ‘Be holy because I am holy’."
Here Peter is quoting from a command that God issues to his Old Testament people Israel several times in the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch. Back in Leviticus 11:44-45, we find these words:
"I am the LORD your God, and you must keep yourselves holy, because I am holy. I am the LORD who brought you out of Egypt so that I could be your God. You must be holy, because I am holy."
Notice, in passing, that even here in the Old Testament the same principle stands – God first saves his people – in this case by delivering them from captivity in Egypt – and then he calls those who are already his chosen ones to live out their lives in a way that matches their new status and calling as the covenant people of the LORD. They are not to be holy in order to become his people – they are his people delivered from slavery in Egypt and now they are to live holy lives as a result of their deliverance, not to achieve it.
The message of our passage is essentially this: live out your lives in the way that matches what you are. You are saints: live as saints. You are God’s people: live as God’s people. God is holy – you should be holy too, to show you are his.
At its most general, living a holy life means living every part of your life with reference to God. It means there are no sacred parts of life – like going to church, praying, reading the Bible – which are in contrast to secular parts of life – like going to work, socialising with friends and family, or watching the telly. Every part of our lives is to be holy. And please note this doesn’t mean all of our lives need to be spent in church or in church-related activities. That’s not what I mean. No, all of our lives are to be holy – and that means that the way we do our job is to be holy – set apart for God’s glory and in accordance with his will. It means the way we socialise is to be holy – we’re to socialise with our friends to the glory of God. What we watch on telly is to be sanctified – so we watch programmes we enjoy while giving thanks to God for them. God is to be such an integral part of life that he’s almost like a friend or family member who goes through all of life with you like a constant companion. Someone you share things with, who you talk about your problems with, who you have a laugh with, who you ask for advice about things, whose opinion you value and act upon. And yes who you spend special time with, but also someone who you are conscious of being with you in everything you do. That is a holy life.
And that leads us nicely on to our fourth point.
Fourth, the Bible gives us plenty of practical guidance on what it means to live a holy life.
With everything we’ve already looked at, its been the theory of holy living. Now we come to the nitty gritty. The practice of holy living. And here our passage in 1 Peter gives us some very useful principles to follow in our lives.
Verse 13 tells us that if we are to live holy lives – lives that keep God at the centre of things – we need to concentrate and focus to make sure it happens. If we live carelessly, thoughtlessly, it’s hard to live a holy life. It says:
"So then, have your minds ready for action. Keep alert and set your hope completely on the blessing which will be given you when Jesus Christ is revealed."
It’s like we’re in an army at war. Carelessness has no place in the Christian life. We have to keep on the ball, with our minds ready for action. We need to stay alert – to be aware of what’s happening around us – to take opportunities to do good as God leads us, and to see danger coming before we get caught up in it.
Verses 14 and 15 we’ve already looked at. We are to make a conscious effort not to be let our lives be shaped by those desires we had before we were Christians. We need to be aware when we are being tempted by pride, or greed for riches, or jealousy, or revenge, or whatever desires play a part in our particular character – and refuse to let them dominate us or shape our thinking. With God’s help, we need to say to ourselves "no" at times. "No" I won’t do that, even though I want to, because it’s not right. Now that’s not easy. No one is pretending it’s easy. But it is what we are called to do. And let’s be honest, how many of us fall into things simply because we hadn’t been keeping our minds ready and alert. How many of us sin thoughtlessly more often than deliberately having considered it’s wrong and still chose to do it. I think most of us sin before we’ve thought much about it. That’s why this advice from Peter is so practical. Think about it and you’re less likely to do it if it’s wrong.
Then in verse 17 we see that the holy life cannot be lived without what we usually think of as the "holy bits". They are not the only bits that are to be holy, but they are to be things we include in our lives as well as all the ordinary bits. Verse 17 mentions prayer, and having reverence for God. Our lives are to be lives of prayer. How can we keep God close and part of everything we do, unless we talk to him about things? Paul says somewhere we are to "pray without ceasing". And by that he didn’t mean we are to spend all our time praying as such, but that in all we do, we are to have communication channels open to God. Throughout the day we are to have little chats with God. It might only be a few words at a time. The mini prayers might be for help, for guidance, for forgiveness, for strength, for others we meet or think about – all sorts of things. Just take a second. A silent word of prayer to God is sent, and on we go with whatever we’re doing. It makes God much closer to us, and makes us really feel he is part of our everyday lives. Why don’t you try it tomorrow and see how it goes?
The reverence for God should express itself in our desire to worship him. Again that might be something we take some time to do every day, and especially on Sundays when we come to church to worship together as God’s people.
And that leads us to another piece of guidance – a holy life is one with "sincere love for your fellow-believers" as verse 22 says. We care for each other, help each other, show concern for each other. We are sad when our fellow-believers grieve or go through hard times. We rejoice with them when good things happen to them or they celebrate an achievement or milestone in their lives.
And lastly, one of the keys to living a holy life is to make it a life shaped and guided by Scripture. The Scripture is the Christian’s food – it is our spiritual milk as Peter says in chapter 2, verse 2. It is the living and eternal word of God – it is what the God who we are to keep as our close companion through life wants to say to us. How can we be holy as he is holy and not be interested in what he has to say to us? It is the only thing that endures – men and women fade and die – they cannot accompany us through our whole life. The things this earth afford wither and wear out. But the word of the Lord remains for ever. It never changes. It never leaves us. It never goes out of date, because it is God’s truth, God’s holy Word.
And as we try to live our lives in ways that match up with the holy status God has given us, it is the supreme rule of faith and life for us. By it we know true doctrine from false. By it we know good from evil. By it we know God’s promises to encourage us forward, and God’s warnings to save us from harming ourselves in sin.
During the Coronation service for a British monarch, the Moderator of the General Assembly hands the monarch a bible and says these words: "This book is the most valuable thing that this world affords. Here is Wisdom; this is the royal Law; these are the lively Oracles of God."
And so let us grasp the truths that the Bible has taught us tonight. We are God’s holy people because he says we are, not because of how we feel about it. And we are God’s holy people because of what Christ has done for us, not because of what we can do for ourselves. But as Christ has made us God’s holy people, so we are to live as God’s holy people should live. And the way we find out how we should live, is through the Bible.
May we truly see this book – the holy Word of the living God – as the most valuable thing this world affords, believing its teachings and following its commandments throughout our lives.
Monday, 22 January 2007
The Centrality of the Cross
This is the text of a sermon preached to a Guild meeting on 16th January 2007.
The most famous skyscraper in New York City is probably the Empire State Building, which stands in the heart of midtown Manhattan, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 34th Street. It was designed by an architect called William Lamb and was built during a single year during the Great Depression, giving work to a great many hard-pressed New Yorkers. The excavation of the foundations started on 22nd January 1930 and the building rose at an average rate of four and half stories each week until it was finished on 13 November 1930. The building stands 1454 feet high. When it was finished, it was the tallest building in the world, and it remained the tallest building until 1974 when the Sears Tower in Chicago was built. In November 1932, a searchlight shining from the top of the Empire State Building was used to signal that Franklin D Roosevelt had won the Presidential election. It could be seen by people up to fifty miles away. Even today, the Empire State Building is still the 9th tallest building in the World, and only the Sears Tower has more than the Empire State Building’s 102 stories.
The building dominates the city skyline. People can see it from all over New York City. It’s so big and so famous, so quintessentially New York that it would be hard to imagine the city without the Empire State Building.
That’s what the cross should be like in our lives. It should be something that so much part of who we are, what we are and what we do. It should be harder for us to imagine life without the cross being part of it than it is for New Yorkers to imagine their city without the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty.
The cross is absolutely central to everything we do, from when we first became Christians, right through our lives – our Christian lives and our daily lives, and all the way through to when we end our days. In heaven we will see Jesus Christ and he will still have the nail prints in the palms of his hands.
Our passage tells us why the cross is so important. If you have your bible’s open at the passage in Colossians chapter 1 you can see how the passage can be divided into three distinct sections.
The first section tell us, in verses 15 to 19, that the cross is central to our faith and our life because of who the man who died on the cross really was.
The second section tells us, in verses 20 to 22, that the cross is central to our faith and our life because of what Christ’s death on the cross achieved and for whom it was achieved.
The third section, in verse 23, tells us that the cross is central because of the place it should have in our lives, in our thoughts, our actions, our hearts and minds, especially in the light of the first two sections about who He was and what He’s done for us.
I just want to take a bit of time looking at these three sections and trying to bring out what they mean for us as Christians.
We start with the clear teaching of the first section in verses 15 to 19: one of the reasons the cross is of such significance to us is that the person who died on the cross, Jesus Christ, is none other than the Son of God.
If we truly grasp what this passage says about Jesus Christ, never again will we be satisfied with seeing him as just a great teacher, or a prophet, or a brave martyr for a cause, or a revolutionary, or a tragic failure of history who was so misunderstood he paid for it with his life. All of these man-made idols of Christ are shattered by what Paul says here. This passage in Colossians is Paul’s equivalent of John’s great testimony to the deity of Christ at the start of his Gospel. There John writes:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through him and without him nothing was made that has been made." And of course later John makes it very clear the "Word" he talks about is Jesus. "The Word became a human being and, full of grace and truth, lived among us. We saw his glory, the glory which he received as the Father’s only Son."
Although there are different emphases and ways of putting things between the different New Testament writers (for example Paul in talking about the Gospel loved to use the picture of a law court and believers being found "Not guilty" – which we call justification; whereas John liked to use the picture of being born again to describe the change in people’s lives when they become Christians), in fact in all the essential things the New Testament writers like Paul and John are absolutely in agreement.
In Colossians 1, Paul’s words echo those of John. "Christ is the visible likeness of the invisible God. He is the first-born Son. superior to all created things [notice not superior to all other created things – he is an uncreated being, as eternal as God the Father]. For through him God created everything...God created the whole universe through him and for him."
Let’s look at what is said here in a little more detail.
Verse 15 puts is in no uncertain terms: "Christ is the visible likeness of the invisible God."
Do you know that saying "Oh, he’s his father’s son all right". I’m usually on the receiving end when I do something my mother doesn’t approve of. But basically it means that there’s no doubt that the two men are father and son because the son thinks and acts just like his dad. That’s really the same thing that’s being said here between God and Jesus. "Christ is the visible likeness of the invisible God." And of course this is not just Paul’s view, this was Jesus’ own view as well. In John 14. Jesus makes the amazing claim: "I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to Father except by me. Now that you have known me, he said to them, you will know my Father also, and from now on you do know him and you have seen him." At which point the apostle Philip pipes up with what he must think is a helpful comment: "Lord, show us the Father; that is all we need," he says.
And then Jesus tells him of before continuing with these amazing words: "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father...I am in the Father and the Father is in me."
You see the holy Trinity consists of three persons in one essential unity. They always act together and in agreement with each other, even though they don’t exactly do the same things. There’s a tremendous mystery here. From eternity God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit existed together, but they were invisible. God is a Spirit. That was, until Jesus Christ came to earth that first Christmas, to show us God in a visible form, in the presence of a human body and with a human as well as a divine nature.
And because Christ is God and not a creature of God, he is superior to all created things as verse 15 says.
In the light of the cross especially, how amazing are those words in verses 16 to 19? This Christ is God. He is the creator of all things. God the Father planned the universe, but the Son built it. "God created the whole universe through him" verse 16 says. This ties in with what the Psalms teach. Psalm 33 says that God created the heavens and earth by his Word. Genesis 1 tells us that too. Each time something was created, it happened as soon as God said it. "Let there be light" and there was light and so on. And from John’s Gospel we know that Jesus is the Word of God. So through Jesus, God created everything, by the power of his Word, his Son. But the bit of this verse that really blows my mind is the last three words of verse 16. Not only did God created the whole universe – everything that exists or ever existed outside of God – not only did God create that through Christ, he created it for Christ.
It really is amazing to think about that. Things don’t just exist for no reason. There’s nothing chance about anything in our universe. It’s all here for a reason – and here the Scriptures actually say what the reason is: it all exists because Jesus built it and it all exists for Jesus’ pleasure and purposes. It’s not here primarily for us, although in his grace, God does give us the use of the world and its resources for our pleasure and enjoyment. But it’s really for him.
This is why in verse 17, Paul can make a claim that is either supremely profound or completely outrageous. He says that everything in the universe can only be seen in its true perspective and in its proper place to the extent that we grasp its relationship with Jesus Christ. The example he gives is the church in verse 18. Jesus is the head of the church, not any human leader or any church office, such as popes, archbishops or even earthly monarchs.
Okay, now let’s come back to our focus this evening: the cross. The first reason the cross should be of profound interest to us, and why it should influence every part of our life, is because it was on the cross that this Christ – the true Christ of the Bible, the visible image of God, God himself become a human being, the Creator of the world and the one for whom the world was made – this Christ, died on the cross.
Imagine it. The one for whom the world was made. The one who fashioned the blueprints of the very trees themselves finds himself nailed to a wooden cross and left to die by the creatures he made. It is like a horror story. Frankenstein maybe. The creatures turns against their creator and kills him. It also says a lot about human nature and human sin, that we could turn against our maker and slay him. It is hard to imagine anything more ungrateful, more perverse than that.
But of course, unlike any human equivalents, the events of the cross came as no surprise to God. He knew that it would be necessary for Christ to die in order to accomplish his plans for the world.
It would have done us no good had Peter or John or Paul been crucified rather than Christ. It was precisely because Christ is God, a being of infinite value and worth, and a being without sin himself, that his death can save a multitude of sinners, people like you and I.
And this brings us on to the second part of the reading. The cross of Christ is central to our lives because of what Christ achieved for us on the cross.
In verse 20, "Through the Son, God decided to bring the whole universe back to himself."
After Adam and Eve sinned, the universe started to go wrong. Not just human beings, although it is true that we do "go wrong" from birth. It’s what the Bible calls sin. It’s because we are sinners – because there’s something bad inside us – that we do the things we call sins. This is what Paul is talking about in verse 21: "At one time you were far away from God, and were his enemies because of the evil things you did and thought."
But the entrance of sin into God’s perfect creation, had other knock-on effects. Death entered the world. The physical world began to go wrong causing everything from disease and disabilities, to the extinction of many animals and plants, natural disasters like earthquakes and volcanoes, and a hundred other things. From Eden onwards, the whole universe has been going off the rails.
But God has decided it won’t always be this way. Through his Son, he’s going to undo all the wrong things and restore the universe to its original condition.
I don’t know if any of you are familiar with computers. When a computer is brand new, just out the box, it works perfectly. But as time passes, it begins to go wrong. As more information is added to it, files start to corrupt. Maybe it picks up viruses from the Internet. Eventually it wears out. Well what God’s going to do with the universe is like a computer engineer taking an old computer full of bad memory space, corrupt files, viruses and all the other junk programs running on the computer and completely cleaning out the hard drive, resetting the computer back to it was when it was new. That’s God’s purpose for the universe.
And the way he’s going to do it is through the cross. Verse 20: "God made peace through his Son’s physical death on the cross and so brought back to himself all things, both on earth and in heaven."
In other words, although the greatest thing the cross achieved is the salvation of God’s people, this is not the only thing it achieves. Now, we mustn’t take a verse like this out of context and try to claim that this means that God won’t condemn anyone to hell. The Bible says very clearly on dozens of occasions that those who do not accept Christ will go to hell.
So here, when Paul talks about God bringing all things to himself, he means the whole universe – the physical and spiritual realms, the animals and plants, the planets and stars, and of course humanity. All of it can only be renewed and will be renewed in the new heavens and new earth because of the cross. Without the cross, the only thing God could do with the universe and still be true to his own holy and just nature, would be to condemn it to hell. Because of the cross, God can not only redeem people to populate the new heaven and earth for all eternity, he can actually bring the whole of creation back together in peace and harmony with Christ as its head, and restore creation to the way it was in the beginning.
Christ’s achievement on the cross is central to our lives because it was there, on the cross, that he dealt with sin once and for all. He took the punishment that sin deserves from a just God upon his own shoulders. That was why on the cross he cried out before he died, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Because he felt cut off from God by the weight of human sin.
Like a sacrificial lamb, he took our sins away. He died that we might have eternal life, and where once we were God’s enemies, by taking sin away, the relationship between God and human beings can be restored and renewed, and we can be God’s friends. Verse 22: "But now, by means of the physical death of his Son, God has made you his friends, in order to bring you, holy, pure, and faultless, into his presence."
We can never let the cross drift towards the edges of our life if we remember this one simple fact. It is only because of the cross that we can actually be friends with the almighty God! And if we have come to Christ by way of the cross, then he is our God and we are his in the eternal covenant of grace. Psalm 25:14 says: "The friendship of the LORD is for those who fear him, and he makes known to them his covenant." God’s covenant with his people is essentially a bond of love and friendship with them. That bond cannot exist between a holy God and a sinful people. It can exist, even for a God of love and grace, only where the problem of sin has been dealt with. It can exist and thank God it does exist between a holy God and a redeemed people (in other words a sinful people who have had their sins paid for by the blood of Christ). And the only way sin can be dealt with is through the cross. There is no other way. You cannot sort out the problem of sin for yourself. You don’t have the right to say your sins don’t matter. That’s God’s place. And God says sin does matter. It matters so much that only by sending his own Son to die for sinners, could the problem be sorted out. Think of it for a second. If there was another way to save us, why did Christ have to die? Why did God not just tell us the other way and not allow his beloved Son to suffer? There was no other way: only the way of the cross. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life."
And so we come to the third section of this passage in verse 23. And the point being made here by Paul is the main one I wanted to focus on tonight. The cross matters supremely because of who died on it, and what that death achieved, and the cross must remain the supremely important thing in our Christian lives always. In other words, we must never make the mistake of thinking that we need the cross to become Christians, or even that we need the cross to get to heaven, but in between those two events, we can forget the cross and get on with living some other way. It doesn’t matter what that other way is. For some people, it might be a way doesn’t pay much attention to what we do is right or wrong. It might be the free-and-easy life whereby we tell ourselves that anything goes because we’ll be all right in the end. At the other extreme, the way we want to go might be to live by exact conformity to certain moral laws or standards. That everything we do must be right and correct. That although we might need the cross to become a Christian and once we’re trying to get into heaven, for the rest of the time, I’ll please and win his approval by good works and all my outward show of being a "good person". Yet another, unfortunately a way that many Christians in pentecostal and charismatic churches go, is to seek to go beyond the experience of the cross to some deeper, more "spiritual", more exciting, more dramatic experience of the Holy Spirit.
I’d just like to say one thing about all of these positions – they’re all equally and totally wrong. The Christian life is neither a licence to sin, nor is it living under the burden of laws in fear that if we don’t do enough good, God will stop loving us, and nor is it a quest to seek one mystical experience after another. The cross of Christ – the gospel of Christ and him crucified - remains at the heart of the Christian life throughout all our time on this earth. This is surely what Paul is referring to in verse 23 when he writes: "You must of course continue faithful on a firm and sure foundation, and must not be shaken from the hope you gained when you heard the gospel." And what is this firm and sure foundation? What are they to continue faithful in? It can only be the magnificent truth laid out in the previous verse, where the cross of Christ is lifted high as the one and only way of salvation, the way whereby God’s enemies are changed into his friends and made pure and holy to live forever in God’s presence.
The cross remains the focal point of our lives, and must remain so if we are not to go astray. It was because many in the Galatian church turning aside from the gospel of the cross to other teachings that the apostle Paul came down harder on them in Galatians chapter 1 than he does at any other point in his letters. Listen to Paul’s words in that chapter: "I am surprised at you! In no time at all you are deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are accepting another gospel. Actually, there is no other gospel, but I say this because there are some people who are upsetting you and trying to change the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel that is different from the one we preached to you, may he be condemned to hell."
And what is this gospel that Paul wants to protect so fiercely? He tells us: "In order to set us free from this present evil age, Christ gave himself for our sins, in obedience to the will of our God and Father. To God be the glory for ever and ever!"
So instead of thinking it doesn’t matter how we live, the cross stands to tell us that sin is very real and very costly. Rather than thinking it doesn’t matter if we sin, the cross tells us the price that was paid for our sins, our past sins, our present sins and our future sins. And when we stand in its shadow, and see how much sin does matter, surely we are less inclined to take a cavalier attitude to how we live.
Or maybe at the other extreme, we’re caught up in thinking we have to obey perfectly every law and commandment otherwise God won’t accept us. This time the cross stands as an emblem of God’s grace and God’s love. It was not because of our own efforts that we were first saved, and it is not because of anything we do that we will end up in heaven, so our lives here on earth need not be burdened down by guilt and the hard effort of trying to be perfect and failing all the time. We need to look at the cross here and remember that when Christ said "It is finished!" on the cross, everything that would contribute one iota to our salvation was already right then and there complete and perfect. Paradoxically, we can actually do more for God, and live better lives, when we stop trying to be good in our own strength, acknowledge we are sinners saved only by grace, and then live in thankfulness for what God has done for us, rather than fear of what God will do to us, if we aren’t obedient enough.
And to those who want to go beyond the cross to something more exciting and dramatic, the warning to the Galatians comes most strongly of all. To think that there’s something better than the cross out there to discover or experience only shows you haven’t understood the wonder of the cross properly at all.
That’s why the cross, rather than the manger, or the empty tomb, became the universal symbol of Christianity. Because it is the most important thing that ever happened. And it’s entirely right that the cross should be at the heart of the Guild badge. But much more than that, it must be at the very heart of our lives, at that secret place deep inside where we treasure what is dearest and closest to our hearts.
If the cross isn’t there for you tonight – perhaps because you’ve never come to Christ at the foot of the cross and looked up and saw the Son of God crucified for you, then that same Christ, now risen to glory and with all authority in heaven and on earth is saying to you right now, "Come to me, believe in me, trust in me and I will save you. I can do it because I died on the cross."
And if you have already come to Christ, but have maybe been stuck in a rut in your faith, or if you’ve got caught up in other things and put the cross to one side, then now’s the time to come back to the very heart of the faith, and acknowledge again the central and abiding place the cross deserves in your life.
In another letter, Paul put it this way: "As for me, however, I will boast only about the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."
Later in Colossians he writes: "God has now brought you to life with Christ. God forgave us all our sins; he crucified the unfavourable record of our debts with its binding rules and did away with it completely by nailing it to the cross."
And in this passage, Paul ends up with this simple confession: "It is of this gospel that I, Paul, became a servant – this gospel which has been preached to everybody in the world." May we all be servants of this gospel, and keep the cross of Christ central to everything we do.
The most famous skyscraper in New York City is probably the Empire State Building, which stands in the heart of midtown Manhattan, on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 34th Street. It was designed by an architect called William Lamb and was built during a single year during the Great Depression, giving work to a great many hard-pressed New Yorkers. The excavation of the foundations started on 22nd January 1930 and the building rose at an average rate of four and half stories each week until it was finished on 13 November 1930. The building stands 1454 feet high. When it was finished, it was the tallest building in the world, and it remained the tallest building until 1974 when the Sears Tower in Chicago was built. In November 1932, a searchlight shining from the top of the Empire State Building was used to signal that Franklin D Roosevelt had won the Presidential election. It could be seen by people up to fifty miles away. Even today, the Empire State Building is still the 9th tallest building in the World, and only the Sears Tower has more than the Empire State Building’s 102 stories.
The building dominates the city skyline. People can see it from all over New York City. It’s so big and so famous, so quintessentially New York that it would be hard to imagine the city without the Empire State Building.
That’s what the cross should be like in our lives. It should be something that so much part of who we are, what we are and what we do. It should be harder for us to imagine life without the cross being part of it than it is for New Yorkers to imagine their city without the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty.
The cross is absolutely central to everything we do, from when we first became Christians, right through our lives – our Christian lives and our daily lives, and all the way through to when we end our days. In heaven we will see Jesus Christ and he will still have the nail prints in the palms of his hands.
Our passage tells us why the cross is so important. If you have your bible’s open at the passage in Colossians chapter 1 you can see how the passage can be divided into three distinct sections.
The first section tell us, in verses 15 to 19, that the cross is central to our faith and our life because of who the man who died on the cross really was.
The second section tells us, in verses 20 to 22, that the cross is central to our faith and our life because of what Christ’s death on the cross achieved and for whom it was achieved.
The third section, in verse 23, tells us that the cross is central because of the place it should have in our lives, in our thoughts, our actions, our hearts and minds, especially in the light of the first two sections about who He was and what He’s done for us.
I just want to take a bit of time looking at these three sections and trying to bring out what they mean for us as Christians.
We start with the clear teaching of the first section in verses 15 to 19: one of the reasons the cross is of such significance to us is that the person who died on the cross, Jesus Christ, is none other than the Son of God.
If we truly grasp what this passage says about Jesus Christ, never again will we be satisfied with seeing him as just a great teacher, or a prophet, or a brave martyr for a cause, or a revolutionary, or a tragic failure of history who was so misunderstood he paid for it with his life. All of these man-made idols of Christ are shattered by what Paul says here. This passage in Colossians is Paul’s equivalent of John’s great testimony to the deity of Christ at the start of his Gospel. There John writes:
"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through him and without him nothing was made that has been made." And of course later John makes it very clear the "Word" he talks about is Jesus. "The Word became a human being and, full of grace and truth, lived among us. We saw his glory, the glory which he received as the Father’s only Son."
Although there are different emphases and ways of putting things between the different New Testament writers (for example Paul in talking about the Gospel loved to use the picture of a law court and believers being found "Not guilty" – which we call justification; whereas John liked to use the picture of being born again to describe the change in people’s lives when they become Christians), in fact in all the essential things the New Testament writers like Paul and John are absolutely in agreement.
In Colossians 1, Paul’s words echo those of John. "Christ is the visible likeness of the invisible God. He is the first-born Son. superior to all created things [notice not superior to all other created things – he is an uncreated being, as eternal as God the Father]. For through him God created everything...God created the whole universe through him and for him."
Let’s look at what is said here in a little more detail.
Verse 15 puts is in no uncertain terms: "Christ is the visible likeness of the invisible God."
Do you know that saying "Oh, he’s his father’s son all right". I’m usually on the receiving end when I do something my mother doesn’t approve of. But basically it means that there’s no doubt that the two men are father and son because the son thinks and acts just like his dad. That’s really the same thing that’s being said here between God and Jesus. "Christ is the visible likeness of the invisible God." And of course this is not just Paul’s view, this was Jesus’ own view as well. In John 14. Jesus makes the amazing claim: "I am the way, the truth and the life; no one comes to Father except by me. Now that you have known me, he said to them, you will know my Father also, and from now on you do know him and you have seen him." At which point the apostle Philip pipes up with what he must think is a helpful comment: "Lord, show us the Father; that is all we need," he says.
And then Jesus tells him of before continuing with these amazing words: "Whoever has seen me has seen the Father...I am in the Father and the Father is in me."
You see the holy Trinity consists of three persons in one essential unity. They always act together and in agreement with each other, even though they don’t exactly do the same things. There’s a tremendous mystery here. From eternity God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit existed together, but they were invisible. God is a Spirit. That was, until Jesus Christ came to earth that first Christmas, to show us God in a visible form, in the presence of a human body and with a human as well as a divine nature.
And because Christ is God and not a creature of God, he is superior to all created things as verse 15 says.
In the light of the cross especially, how amazing are those words in verses 16 to 19? This Christ is God. He is the creator of all things. God the Father planned the universe, but the Son built it. "God created the whole universe through him" verse 16 says. This ties in with what the Psalms teach. Psalm 33 says that God created the heavens and earth by his Word. Genesis 1 tells us that too. Each time something was created, it happened as soon as God said it. "Let there be light" and there was light and so on. And from John’s Gospel we know that Jesus is the Word of God. So through Jesus, God created everything, by the power of his Word, his Son. But the bit of this verse that really blows my mind is the last three words of verse 16. Not only did God created the whole universe – everything that exists or ever existed outside of God – not only did God create that through Christ, he created it for Christ.
It really is amazing to think about that. Things don’t just exist for no reason. There’s nothing chance about anything in our universe. It’s all here for a reason – and here the Scriptures actually say what the reason is: it all exists because Jesus built it and it all exists for Jesus’ pleasure and purposes. It’s not here primarily for us, although in his grace, God does give us the use of the world and its resources for our pleasure and enjoyment. But it’s really for him.
This is why in verse 17, Paul can make a claim that is either supremely profound or completely outrageous. He says that everything in the universe can only be seen in its true perspective and in its proper place to the extent that we grasp its relationship with Jesus Christ. The example he gives is the church in verse 18. Jesus is the head of the church, not any human leader or any church office, such as popes, archbishops or even earthly monarchs.
Okay, now let’s come back to our focus this evening: the cross. The first reason the cross should be of profound interest to us, and why it should influence every part of our life, is because it was on the cross that this Christ – the true Christ of the Bible, the visible image of God, God himself become a human being, the Creator of the world and the one for whom the world was made – this Christ, died on the cross.
Imagine it. The one for whom the world was made. The one who fashioned the blueprints of the very trees themselves finds himself nailed to a wooden cross and left to die by the creatures he made. It is like a horror story. Frankenstein maybe. The creatures turns against their creator and kills him. It also says a lot about human nature and human sin, that we could turn against our maker and slay him. It is hard to imagine anything more ungrateful, more perverse than that.
But of course, unlike any human equivalents, the events of the cross came as no surprise to God. He knew that it would be necessary for Christ to die in order to accomplish his plans for the world.
It would have done us no good had Peter or John or Paul been crucified rather than Christ. It was precisely because Christ is God, a being of infinite value and worth, and a being without sin himself, that his death can save a multitude of sinners, people like you and I.
And this brings us on to the second part of the reading. The cross of Christ is central to our lives because of what Christ achieved for us on the cross.
In verse 20, "Through the Son, God decided to bring the whole universe back to himself."
After Adam and Eve sinned, the universe started to go wrong. Not just human beings, although it is true that we do "go wrong" from birth. It’s what the Bible calls sin. It’s because we are sinners – because there’s something bad inside us – that we do the things we call sins. This is what Paul is talking about in verse 21: "At one time you were far away from God, and were his enemies because of the evil things you did and thought."
But the entrance of sin into God’s perfect creation, had other knock-on effects. Death entered the world. The physical world began to go wrong causing everything from disease and disabilities, to the extinction of many animals and plants, natural disasters like earthquakes and volcanoes, and a hundred other things. From Eden onwards, the whole universe has been going off the rails.
But God has decided it won’t always be this way. Through his Son, he’s going to undo all the wrong things and restore the universe to its original condition.
I don’t know if any of you are familiar with computers. When a computer is brand new, just out the box, it works perfectly. But as time passes, it begins to go wrong. As more information is added to it, files start to corrupt. Maybe it picks up viruses from the Internet. Eventually it wears out. Well what God’s going to do with the universe is like a computer engineer taking an old computer full of bad memory space, corrupt files, viruses and all the other junk programs running on the computer and completely cleaning out the hard drive, resetting the computer back to it was when it was new. That’s God’s purpose for the universe.
And the way he’s going to do it is through the cross. Verse 20: "God made peace through his Son’s physical death on the cross and so brought back to himself all things, both on earth and in heaven."
In other words, although the greatest thing the cross achieved is the salvation of God’s people, this is not the only thing it achieves. Now, we mustn’t take a verse like this out of context and try to claim that this means that God won’t condemn anyone to hell. The Bible says very clearly on dozens of occasions that those who do not accept Christ will go to hell.
So here, when Paul talks about God bringing all things to himself, he means the whole universe – the physical and spiritual realms, the animals and plants, the planets and stars, and of course humanity. All of it can only be renewed and will be renewed in the new heavens and new earth because of the cross. Without the cross, the only thing God could do with the universe and still be true to his own holy and just nature, would be to condemn it to hell. Because of the cross, God can not only redeem people to populate the new heaven and earth for all eternity, he can actually bring the whole of creation back together in peace and harmony with Christ as its head, and restore creation to the way it was in the beginning.
Christ’s achievement on the cross is central to our lives because it was there, on the cross, that he dealt with sin once and for all. He took the punishment that sin deserves from a just God upon his own shoulders. That was why on the cross he cried out before he died, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Because he felt cut off from God by the weight of human sin.
Like a sacrificial lamb, he took our sins away. He died that we might have eternal life, and where once we were God’s enemies, by taking sin away, the relationship between God and human beings can be restored and renewed, and we can be God’s friends. Verse 22: "But now, by means of the physical death of his Son, God has made you his friends, in order to bring you, holy, pure, and faultless, into his presence."
We can never let the cross drift towards the edges of our life if we remember this one simple fact. It is only because of the cross that we can actually be friends with the almighty God! And if we have come to Christ by way of the cross, then he is our God and we are his in the eternal covenant of grace. Psalm 25:14 says: "The friendship of the LORD is for those who fear him, and he makes known to them his covenant." God’s covenant with his people is essentially a bond of love and friendship with them. That bond cannot exist between a holy God and a sinful people. It can exist, even for a God of love and grace, only where the problem of sin has been dealt with. It can exist and thank God it does exist between a holy God and a redeemed people (in other words a sinful people who have had their sins paid for by the blood of Christ). And the only way sin can be dealt with is through the cross. There is no other way. You cannot sort out the problem of sin for yourself. You don’t have the right to say your sins don’t matter. That’s God’s place. And God says sin does matter. It matters so much that only by sending his own Son to die for sinners, could the problem be sorted out. Think of it for a second. If there was another way to save us, why did Christ have to die? Why did God not just tell us the other way and not allow his beloved Son to suffer? There was no other way: only the way of the cross. "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life."
And so we come to the third section of this passage in verse 23. And the point being made here by Paul is the main one I wanted to focus on tonight. The cross matters supremely because of who died on it, and what that death achieved, and the cross must remain the supremely important thing in our Christian lives always. In other words, we must never make the mistake of thinking that we need the cross to become Christians, or even that we need the cross to get to heaven, but in between those two events, we can forget the cross and get on with living some other way. It doesn’t matter what that other way is. For some people, it might be a way doesn’t pay much attention to what we do is right or wrong. It might be the free-and-easy life whereby we tell ourselves that anything goes because we’ll be all right in the end. At the other extreme, the way we want to go might be to live by exact conformity to certain moral laws or standards. That everything we do must be right and correct. That although we might need the cross to become a Christian and once we’re trying to get into heaven, for the rest of the time, I’ll please and win his approval by good works and all my outward show of being a "good person". Yet another, unfortunately a way that many Christians in pentecostal and charismatic churches go, is to seek to go beyond the experience of the cross to some deeper, more "spiritual", more exciting, more dramatic experience of the Holy Spirit.
I’d just like to say one thing about all of these positions – they’re all equally and totally wrong. The Christian life is neither a licence to sin, nor is it living under the burden of laws in fear that if we don’t do enough good, God will stop loving us, and nor is it a quest to seek one mystical experience after another. The cross of Christ – the gospel of Christ and him crucified - remains at the heart of the Christian life throughout all our time on this earth. This is surely what Paul is referring to in verse 23 when he writes: "You must of course continue faithful on a firm and sure foundation, and must not be shaken from the hope you gained when you heard the gospel." And what is this firm and sure foundation? What are they to continue faithful in? It can only be the magnificent truth laid out in the previous verse, where the cross of Christ is lifted high as the one and only way of salvation, the way whereby God’s enemies are changed into his friends and made pure and holy to live forever in God’s presence.
The cross remains the focal point of our lives, and must remain so if we are not to go astray. It was because many in the Galatian church turning aside from the gospel of the cross to other teachings that the apostle Paul came down harder on them in Galatians chapter 1 than he does at any other point in his letters. Listen to Paul’s words in that chapter: "I am surprised at you! In no time at all you are deserting the one who called you by the grace of Christ and are accepting another gospel. Actually, there is no other gospel, but I say this because there are some people who are upsetting you and trying to change the gospel of Christ. But even if we, or an angel from heaven should preach to you a gospel that is different from the one we preached to you, may he be condemned to hell."
And what is this gospel that Paul wants to protect so fiercely? He tells us: "In order to set us free from this present evil age, Christ gave himself for our sins, in obedience to the will of our God and Father. To God be the glory for ever and ever!"
So instead of thinking it doesn’t matter how we live, the cross stands to tell us that sin is very real and very costly. Rather than thinking it doesn’t matter if we sin, the cross tells us the price that was paid for our sins, our past sins, our present sins and our future sins. And when we stand in its shadow, and see how much sin does matter, surely we are less inclined to take a cavalier attitude to how we live.
Or maybe at the other extreme, we’re caught up in thinking we have to obey perfectly every law and commandment otherwise God won’t accept us. This time the cross stands as an emblem of God’s grace and God’s love. It was not because of our own efforts that we were first saved, and it is not because of anything we do that we will end up in heaven, so our lives here on earth need not be burdened down by guilt and the hard effort of trying to be perfect and failing all the time. We need to look at the cross here and remember that when Christ said "It is finished!" on the cross, everything that would contribute one iota to our salvation was already right then and there complete and perfect. Paradoxically, we can actually do more for God, and live better lives, when we stop trying to be good in our own strength, acknowledge we are sinners saved only by grace, and then live in thankfulness for what God has done for us, rather than fear of what God will do to us, if we aren’t obedient enough.
And to those who want to go beyond the cross to something more exciting and dramatic, the warning to the Galatians comes most strongly of all. To think that there’s something better than the cross out there to discover or experience only shows you haven’t understood the wonder of the cross properly at all.
That’s why the cross, rather than the manger, or the empty tomb, became the universal symbol of Christianity. Because it is the most important thing that ever happened. And it’s entirely right that the cross should be at the heart of the Guild badge. But much more than that, it must be at the very heart of our lives, at that secret place deep inside where we treasure what is dearest and closest to our hearts.
If the cross isn’t there for you tonight – perhaps because you’ve never come to Christ at the foot of the cross and looked up and saw the Son of God crucified for you, then that same Christ, now risen to glory and with all authority in heaven and on earth is saying to you right now, "Come to me, believe in me, trust in me and I will save you. I can do it because I died on the cross."
And if you have already come to Christ, but have maybe been stuck in a rut in your faith, or if you’ve got caught up in other things and put the cross to one side, then now’s the time to come back to the very heart of the faith, and acknowledge again the central and abiding place the cross deserves in your life.
In another letter, Paul put it this way: "As for me, however, I will boast only about the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ."
Later in Colossians he writes: "God has now brought you to life with Christ. God forgave us all our sins; he crucified the unfavourable record of our debts with its binding rules and did away with it completely by nailing it to the cross."
And in this passage, Paul ends up with this simple confession: "It is of this gospel that I, Paul, became a servant – this gospel which has been preached to everybody in the world." May we all be servants of this gospel, and keep the cross of Christ central to everything we do.
Sunday, 10 December 2006
The Joy of the Lord
This is the text of a sermon preached on Nehemiah 8:1-12.
A survey asked people how they felt about eight different aspects of modern life including their marriages and other family relationships, their children, their work, their health, their neighbourhood, their finances, and so on. In every category, those who felt pessimistic, worried or fearful for the future were in the majority.
It’s a sad fact that the more advanced and sophisticated our world seems to get, the less happy we seem to get. Joy is a pretty rare commodity in the modern world.
That’s not the way life is supposed to be. Our Bible reading tonight culminates in a great affirmation that the lives of God’s people are to be filled with a special kind of joy that strengthens and protects us as we make our way through life. One of the most distinctive things about the life of the Christian when compared to the lives of those who don’t know Christ and the good news of salvation, is that our lives should be full of joy, where theirs is so often filled with misery, guilt, dissatisfaction, pointlessness, worry and fear in between periodic spells of empty happiness.
So how do we receive this “joy of the Lord” that Nehemiah mentions in verse 10? How do we come to have it in our hearts? Well, the whole of this passage from verse 1 onwards describes a spiritual journey that any person has to make to find the joy of the Lord. There are three stages on this journey, described in this passage. They are:
Discovering the Word of the Lord
Leading to a period of spiritual grief
Finding the joy of the Lord
In one sense this is a journey that we only make once, when we first put our faith in Christ and accept him as our Saviour and Lord. And since that becoming a Christian can never be undone, the joy of the Lord in being saved can never totally be lost. But in another sense, the three stages of this spiritual journey are repeated over and over again in the Christian life as we discover or remember again that something we’ve been doing is wrong in God’s eyes, and then we feel bad inside that we’ve failed and haven’t lived in a way that pleases God, and then as we come back to God sorry for what we’ve done or not done, we receive fresh assurance of God’s love and forgiveness as a son or daughter, and the experience of joy returns again.
We’ll explore each of these stages in turn as we make our way through this passage. It would be useful for you to have the order of service open at the Bible reading so you can follow me as we go.
We begin with: Discovering the Word of the Lord
This passage in Nehemiah chapter 8 gives a remarkable picture of what happens when people take God’s Word seriously and gather to learn from it. It is no accident that having completed the rebuilding of the city’s infrastructure, the people are now led to the even more important work of spiritual renewal. Discovering or rediscovering God’s Word is usually the first step when God’s brings about a reformation or sends a revival to his people. The first step in our spiritual journey from sin to salvation, from death to life, from misery to joy, is to discover or rediscover the Word of God.
In the first seven verses of the passage we see the people in Jerusalem gathering to hear the Word of the Lord. And in these verses there are a number of aspects to their rediscovery of God’s Word that should resonate with us. In these verses, the people give us a number of useful lessons about how we can know God’s Word better as individuals and especially as a church.
The people were already in the city to celebrate the Feast of Trumpets, a festival that the people of Israel were commanded to keep on the first day of the seventh month of the year. But in verse 1 the people ask for something different from the normal festival observance to be done. They tell Ezra to read them the Book of the Law of Moses. The meeting was not held because the leaders demanded that the people listen to God’s Word; it was held because the people demanded that the leaders read them God’s Word. There’s no surer sign that God is at work to bring people to faith and salvation than when there is a spontaneous renewed interest in and demand for the Bible and sound biblical teaching. Many things the church does can be popular with people – things like social events, entertainment, all kinds of meetings and forums and so forth – and though all of these kinds of things have a place, it’s quite possible for people to want to come along to them for reasons that have nothing to do with an interest in God. But when people have a desire to hear the Bible preached, when people are crowding in to a Bible study or prayer meeting, that’s a much better indication that they are open to the things of God, because by nature, people would rather do anything other than gather round God’s Word to learn from it.
The next thing to notice about the people’s eagerness to discover God’s Word is that they are of one mind in this matter. The people of Israel were just as diverse, just as different from each other as people are in Scotland today. They would have been just as likely to be interested in different things in life, to be different kinds of characters, to be unable to agree about everything, but in at least one thing they are agreed: they all wanted to hear God’s Word. Verse 1 says that “all the people gathered as one man.” That’s very important for us today too. Are we single-minded in our desire to hear God’s Word and learn from it? Any kind of genuine Christian unity must draw its fuel from this common desire to know God, to learn his Word, and live as God’s Word commands. Otherwise it’s doomed to failure, because those who love God’s Word could never have unity with others calling themselves Christians who don’t care if God’s Word condemns what they believe or what they do in their churches.
The third aspect of the people’s rediscovery of God’s Word is to note who was in the gathered assembly. Verse 2 says the assembly included men, women and children. The phrase “all who could understand what they heard” refers to children old enough to grasp what was going on. Personally, I always been in favour of children over the age of about 12 staying in for the whole of our services. I think one reason why we lose so many young people in their teenage years is the fact that they are not used to being in church to hear a sermon during the whole of their childhood. They go out to Sunday school or the youth church, in theory right up to the age of 16. At which point we then expect them to suddenly stay in for the whole service, which they haven’t got used to doing. And by that point it’s too late. The good habit of listening to a sermon has not been formed.
The assembly in our passage does things better. If the children were old enough to understand what was going on, they were old enough to listen to God’s Word being read and expounded for three hours! From early morning to midday according to verse 3. Surely our children above the age of twelve can sit through a 20 or 30 minute sermon? They have no problem concentrating for that amount of time watching television or films, or listening to their favourite music!
The fourth thing to note is that the people wanted to be taught. Verse 3 says that the people were “attentive” during the reading of God’s Word. Verse 4 says that they made a wooden platform, or more literally, a tower, for Ezra to stand on as he read from the scrolls. It’s easy to overlook this aspect. But unless we as members of the congregation expect to hear God’s truth proclaimed and eager to receive it, it doesn’t really matter how good the quality of the preaching we “aren’t really listening to” is. If we as hearers don’t “have ears to hear” as Jesus liked to put it, God’s Word can never make a home in our hearts. We need to be enthusiastic and attentive hearers, listening actively and looking for God’s Word to affect us and change us as we listen. It’s a great mistake to think of listening to God’s Word being read and preached as something we passively listen to. We should be listening actively and feel as if we’re involved in the preaching, not just an audience.
The people in the crowd have the right attitudes and are examples to us all. Notice in verse 5, the reverence the people show to God’s Word – they stand as a mark of respect as Ezra opens the scrolls. In our church we stand as the Bible is brought in at the start of the service. We should remember we are not standing as a mark of respect to the minister or preacher, but out of reverence for God’s Word.
And in case anyone is thinking that showing reverence to God’s Word is a form of idolatry, verse 6 makes it clear the reverential attitude of the people wasn’t towards the sacred scrolls, as if they were relics due veneration. No, the reverence comes from knowing whose Word the Bible is. “Ezra blessed the LORD, the great God, and all the people answered, Amen, Amen.”
They realised that hearing the Bible taught was not an add-on extra to the worship of God – it is at the heart of the worship of God! It is where God speaks to us most clearly in this gospel age. It is an indispensable part of the true worship of God. Our forefathers knew this. That’s why unadorned by gold and fancy works of art, Presbyterian churches tend to be kept simple and plain – because the focal point of worship is not on the building, or even on the communion table, but on the Word of God, heard and preached from the pulpit.
Finally we should briefly look at verse 8. It is a remarkably clear statement of what a Bible-based teaching ministry is all about. It’s in three distinct parts. The first thing is to make sure the we “read from the book…clearly.” Our services are not be built around the latest news headlines, or a few funny stories, or beautiful poems, but around the book, the Bible. In every service, God’s Word should be read, and it should be read loud and clear for everyone to hear. One aspect of this is that it should be read in a language that the people understand. Secondly, it is the preacher’s job to “give the sense” or in other words to explain the reading to his hearers. Whatever else a sermon is, at its most basic, it should explain and make it easier to understand God’s Word. If it fails in that, it’s failed as a sermon, no matter how good it is otherwise. Thirdly, it is the congregation’s job to understand the reading. It’s no good if the Bible is clearly read, and clearly explained, if the people refuse to pay heed to it, or don’t make any effort to understand and remember what they were taught. When these three things happen together then remarkable things can happen.
In our passage something remarkable does begin to happen, but the middle step is the most difficult to go through. Though it will not always be to the same degree for everyone, or be manifested in the same way in everyone, there is a process of going through spiritual grief. We see this in our passage in verse 9. “All the people wept as they heard the words of the Law.”
The grief and sadness that wells up in us as God’s Word is understood in a deep, personal way - expressed by the people in our passage as weeping, perhaps by us in ways we keep hidden inside - is the first reaction that people often have and it’s actually a good sign when people feel that way! It’s a sure sign that people’s consciences have been touched. Theologians tend to call it being “convicted of sin.”
By nature, the Bible tells us in Ephesians 2:1, we are dead in sin. One aspect of that is that before we are Christians, when we sin, we are a bit like a patient under a deep anaesthetic on an operating table – we don’t feel the pain of what we’re doing. When we come to understand the Word of God in a deep personal way, it’s as if the anaesthetic wears off and we see ourselves and our actions as they really are, and it hurts. We become conscious of how different our lives are to how they should be. We see our failures and some people can find that deeply upsetting.
Looking in God’s Word is like looking in a mirror, the Letter to James tells us. Firstly we see the mirror itself dazzling with light and brilliance, then we see the world around us reflected in its light, then if we look closely, we see ourselves as we really are. When we read or hear God’s Word, we see what God is like, in all his glory, his love and mercy, his justice and holiness and we recoil because he is so different, so much better than us in every way. Then we see the world around us and how far removed it is from how God wants it to be. We see how bad it is. And finally, we see ourselves and see how far removed we are from how God wants us to be, and how sinful we are.
It is this revelation of human sin and failure that moved the people in Jerusalem to tears as they heard Law of God read out, revealing his character, his commandments and showing up their utter failure to live as God’s people should live.
But thanks be to God, for when he brings people to that dark place of realising our sinfulness, our guilt and our helplessness before a holy God, he then floods that place with light and love, peace and joy, for the same Word which condemns us as sinners also reveals to us the good news, the gospel, that sinners can be saved through trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ.
God’s Word diagnoses the heart disease at the core of the human condition, which is sin; but it then prescribes the remedy for that disease, which is to come to Jesus, and trust in him to save you. Jesus said, “If anyone comes to me I will never cast him out.”
And when we come to Christ, and know that we have been forgiven by God, the darkness lifts and the weight of sin and shame falls away, and we begin a new life in the light, a life that is everlasting.
Our passage in Nehemiah takes place at a time before Jesus Christ came to the earth. But the same process occurs. When the Levites say to the people in verse 9 “This day is holy to the Lord your God, do not mourn or weep,” they’re saying far more than just that as it’s a special day the people should “put on a happy face” and forget the mournful feelings they had. Some commentators say that’s all the priests were doing, but that doesn’t ring true to me. No, what they are doing is reminding the people of who God is – he is the LORD – the covenant God who chose them and will always remain faithful to his people. They’re reminding them that he is not just God, he is their God.
And in verse 10, when they tell the people to go ahead and have a celebration feast – “eat the fat, and drink sweet wine…” – they are telling the people they can celebrate because God has forgiven them and they are still His covenant people.
Having come through the darkness of being convicted of our sins, and having trusted in God for deliverance, and found his forgiveness, we can then rejoice and celebrate. Surely one of the most beautiful verses in the Psalms is Psalm 30:5:
“For his anger is but for a moment, and his favour is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”
And that brings us to the third step in our spiritual journey:
Finding the joy of the Lord
Verse 10 is one of my favourite verses in the Bible. I come back to it time and time again. “Do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.”
Let me just say in passing that the grief being talked of here is the grief for sin that has been forgiven. It is not a blanket command that Christians should never grieve about anything. Most especially, this verse does not teach that Christians shouldn’t grieve for the death of their loved ones. The Bible is very clear that it is right and entirely understandable for Christians to grieve at certain times. Ecclesiastes 3:4 says there is “a time to weep.” In Romans 12:15, far from condemning those who mourn, Paul exhorts Christians to get alongside those who mourn – “weep with those who weep,” he says.
No, the “do not be grieved” in verse 10 is not a general command covering all situations. It is a particular command to those who have grieved for their sins but received God’s forgiveness. Do not grieve over sins that God has forgiven, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.
This joy that is mentioned is a very special thing as we’ll see as we consider where it comes from, what it is and what it does in the life of the Christian believer.
Since it is the joy of the Lord, we know it is a joy that comes from God. It is not something that we can manufacture in our own lives. It is a gift. And it is not something that any other source can provide. It cannot be found in money, or possessions, or in sex, or in drink and drugs, or in success, or fame. It is the joy of the Lord, and is only given to those who know the Lord. In Jeremiah 31:13, the LORD says:
“Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old shall be merry. I will turn their mourning into joy; I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow.
In Galatians 5:22-23, Paul writes:
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”
The Spirit only produces such fruit in those who belong to Christ Jesus.
So what is the joy of the Lord? We know it comes from God, but what is it? Well, since this joy comes from God, it is to be distinguished from mere human happiness. Happiness comes from the same root as the word “happen.” Happiness is feeling good when good things happen. It disappears when bad or sad things happen to us. Joy is a different. It is a much deeper, stronger, more robust, more steady feeling of pleasure, gladness and contentment that nothing can take away from us. It persists within us even through times of pain, suffering, loss and mourning. It persists through all these things precisely because it is not only an emotion, a feeling generated solely within us, but because it comes from God, outside of us, as a divine blessing and gift. This is why God’s Word can command us to always be joyful:
Philippians 4:4 says: “Rejoice in the Lord, always; and again I say, rejoice!”
Other verses tells us that going through troubles, cannot affect our joy. Look at what the prophet says in Habakkuk 3:17:
“Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.”
Or what Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 7:4:
“In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy.”
Even if it "all goes pear-shaped," we can still rejoice in God and know the joy of the Lord, is the promise of the Bible.
We may not feel as if the joy of the Lord is still there in hard times, but even in hard times it is there, like the faint glow of embers in a fire that looks as if it’s about to go out. And like embers it is always ready to be fanned into full flame again if we kindle it by keeping on trusting in the Lord and waiting for the wind of God’s spirit to blow through us again.
The second thing to remember is that the joy of the Lord not only comes from the Lord, it is a joy found in the Lord.
It is a joy that increases the more we come to know about who God is and what he has done. In other words, it is a joy that is increased as we learn about God from his Word. Psalm 119 is the longest in the Bible and its all about God’s Word. Verse 111 of that Psalm says this:
“Your testimonies are my heritage forever, for they are the joy of my heart.”
God’s Word is what gives the Psalmist joy in his heart. Why?
Joy wells up in us as we consider what God is like. As we think about his character – his love, his grace, his faithfulness, his truthfulness, his kindness, his compassion and all his other attributes.
It is a joy that wells up in us as we consider what God has done: when we think about the grandeur and beauty. Or maybe when we consider the intricate order and total control God holds over all things by his sovereign power. And yet he tells us that all of that power, all his sovereign will, works all things for our good.
Most of all, this joy wells up inside us when we consider God’s salvation. As Isaiah 12:3 promises us:
“With joy you will draw waters from the wells of salvation.”
If we know Jesus Christ as our Saviour and Lord, how can we think about the cross and the resurrection without joy flooding into our hearts? When we know that when we stand before God in heaven, he will look upon the righteousness of Christ, which is ours through faith, and we will hear the words, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world,” how can we not rejoice in what he has done for us?
The third aspect of this verse is the realisation and experience that this joy that comes from God and is found in God “is our strength” as we go through life.
Partly that means that the joy of the Lord gives us strength to do what God calls us to do. In our passage as the people are filled with joy and begin to celebrate, they then begin to share the food and wine of their feast with others who don’t have these things. Verse 12: “All the people went their way to eat and drink and to send portions and to make great rejoicing, because they had understood the words that were declared to them.”
But when you consider that the word translated “strength” in v.10 has its root meaning in the Hebrew word for a stronghold or fortress, I think the main point is that the joy of the Lord is our defence against the hard and painful things that life throws at us. The joy we carry around with us, deep inside, is like a shield that protects us and enables us to do things we otherwise couldn’t do.
I’m wondering if anyone is sitting here tonight and is saying to themselves, “What is he talking about? I don’t know this joy of the Lord.” Well the thing is this. You can’t know the joy of the Lord until you know the Lord himself. Jesus said in a prayer to his Father:
“This is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” (John 17:3)
The question is, do you know Jesus Christ? Not as a figure in history, not as a great moral teacher, not even as the man that other people believe in. The question is, do you know Christ? Have you met him for yourself? Have you trusted in him as your Saviour and Lord? Can you truthfully say what the apostle Paul wrote in Philippians 3:8
“I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”
If not, God is calling you to himself tonight. He wants you to know Christ and know the joy of the Lord. Don’t miss out on it. Because as the chorus of our closing hymn puts it:
Knowing you, Jesus, knowing you,
There is no greater thing.
You’re my all, you’re the best,
You’re my joy, my righteousness,
And I love you Lord.
“The people went their way to eat and drink and to send portions and to make great rejoicing, because they had understood the words that were declared to them.”
May that be as true for us tonight, as it was for the crowd in Nehemiah’s day, for the joy of the Lord is our strength, this night and forever.
A survey asked people how they felt about eight different aspects of modern life including their marriages and other family relationships, their children, their work, their health, their neighbourhood, their finances, and so on. In every category, those who felt pessimistic, worried or fearful for the future were in the majority.
It’s a sad fact that the more advanced and sophisticated our world seems to get, the less happy we seem to get. Joy is a pretty rare commodity in the modern world.
That’s not the way life is supposed to be. Our Bible reading tonight culminates in a great affirmation that the lives of God’s people are to be filled with a special kind of joy that strengthens and protects us as we make our way through life. One of the most distinctive things about the life of the Christian when compared to the lives of those who don’t know Christ and the good news of salvation, is that our lives should be full of joy, where theirs is so often filled with misery, guilt, dissatisfaction, pointlessness, worry and fear in between periodic spells of empty happiness.
So how do we receive this “joy of the Lord” that Nehemiah mentions in verse 10? How do we come to have it in our hearts? Well, the whole of this passage from verse 1 onwards describes a spiritual journey that any person has to make to find the joy of the Lord. There are three stages on this journey, described in this passage. They are:
Discovering the Word of the Lord
Leading to a period of spiritual grief
Finding the joy of the Lord
In one sense this is a journey that we only make once, when we first put our faith in Christ and accept him as our Saviour and Lord. And since that becoming a Christian can never be undone, the joy of the Lord in being saved can never totally be lost. But in another sense, the three stages of this spiritual journey are repeated over and over again in the Christian life as we discover or remember again that something we’ve been doing is wrong in God’s eyes, and then we feel bad inside that we’ve failed and haven’t lived in a way that pleases God, and then as we come back to God sorry for what we’ve done or not done, we receive fresh assurance of God’s love and forgiveness as a son or daughter, and the experience of joy returns again.
We’ll explore each of these stages in turn as we make our way through this passage. It would be useful for you to have the order of service open at the Bible reading so you can follow me as we go.
We begin with: Discovering the Word of the Lord
This passage in Nehemiah chapter 8 gives a remarkable picture of what happens when people take God’s Word seriously and gather to learn from it. It is no accident that having completed the rebuilding of the city’s infrastructure, the people are now led to the even more important work of spiritual renewal. Discovering or rediscovering God’s Word is usually the first step when God’s brings about a reformation or sends a revival to his people. The first step in our spiritual journey from sin to salvation, from death to life, from misery to joy, is to discover or rediscover the Word of God.
In the first seven verses of the passage we see the people in Jerusalem gathering to hear the Word of the Lord. And in these verses there are a number of aspects to their rediscovery of God’s Word that should resonate with us. In these verses, the people give us a number of useful lessons about how we can know God’s Word better as individuals and especially as a church.
The people were already in the city to celebrate the Feast of Trumpets, a festival that the people of Israel were commanded to keep on the first day of the seventh month of the year. But in verse 1 the people ask for something different from the normal festival observance to be done. They tell Ezra to read them the Book of the Law of Moses. The meeting was not held because the leaders demanded that the people listen to God’s Word; it was held because the people demanded that the leaders read them God’s Word. There’s no surer sign that God is at work to bring people to faith and salvation than when there is a spontaneous renewed interest in and demand for the Bible and sound biblical teaching. Many things the church does can be popular with people – things like social events, entertainment, all kinds of meetings and forums and so forth – and though all of these kinds of things have a place, it’s quite possible for people to want to come along to them for reasons that have nothing to do with an interest in God. But when people have a desire to hear the Bible preached, when people are crowding in to a Bible study or prayer meeting, that’s a much better indication that they are open to the things of God, because by nature, people would rather do anything other than gather round God’s Word to learn from it.
The next thing to notice about the people’s eagerness to discover God’s Word is that they are of one mind in this matter. The people of Israel were just as diverse, just as different from each other as people are in Scotland today. They would have been just as likely to be interested in different things in life, to be different kinds of characters, to be unable to agree about everything, but in at least one thing they are agreed: they all wanted to hear God’s Word. Verse 1 says that “all the people gathered as one man.” That’s very important for us today too. Are we single-minded in our desire to hear God’s Word and learn from it? Any kind of genuine Christian unity must draw its fuel from this common desire to know God, to learn his Word, and live as God’s Word commands. Otherwise it’s doomed to failure, because those who love God’s Word could never have unity with others calling themselves Christians who don’t care if God’s Word condemns what they believe or what they do in their churches.
The third aspect of the people’s rediscovery of God’s Word is to note who was in the gathered assembly. Verse 2 says the assembly included men, women and children. The phrase “all who could understand what they heard” refers to children old enough to grasp what was going on. Personally, I always been in favour of children over the age of about 12 staying in for the whole of our services. I think one reason why we lose so many young people in their teenage years is the fact that they are not used to being in church to hear a sermon during the whole of their childhood. They go out to Sunday school or the youth church, in theory right up to the age of 16. At which point we then expect them to suddenly stay in for the whole service, which they haven’t got used to doing. And by that point it’s too late. The good habit of listening to a sermon has not been formed.
The assembly in our passage does things better. If the children were old enough to understand what was going on, they were old enough to listen to God’s Word being read and expounded for three hours! From early morning to midday according to verse 3. Surely our children above the age of twelve can sit through a 20 or 30 minute sermon? They have no problem concentrating for that amount of time watching television or films, or listening to their favourite music!
The fourth thing to note is that the people wanted to be taught. Verse 3 says that the people were “attentive” during the reading of God’s Word. Verse 4 says that they made a wooden platform, or more literally, a tower, for Ezra to stand on as he read from the scrolls. It’s easy to overlook this aspect. But unless we as members of the congregation expect to hear God’s truth proclaimed and eager to receive it, it doesn’t really matter how good the quality of the preaching we “aren’t really listening to” is. If we as hearers don’t “have ears to hear” as Jesus liked to put it, God’s Word can never make a home in our hearts. We need to be enthusiastic and attentive hearers, listening actively and looking for God’s Word to affect us and change us as we listen. It’s a great mistake to think of listening to God’s Word being read and preached as something we passively listen to. We should be listening actively and feel as if we’re involved in the preaching, not just an audience.
The people in the crowd have the right attitudes and are examples to us all. Notice in verse 5, the reverence the people show to God’s Word – they stand as a mark of respect as Ezra opens the scrolls. In our church we stand as the Bible is brought in at the start of the service. We should remember we are not standing as a mark of respect to the minister or preacher, but out of reverence for God’s Word.
And in case anyone is thinking that showing reverence to God’s Word is a form of idolatry, verse 6 makes it clear the reverential attitude of the people wasn’t towards the sacred scrolls, as if they were relics due veneration. No, the reverence comes from knowing whose Word the Bible is. “Ezra blessed the LORD, the great God, and all the people answered, Amen, Amen.”
They realised that hearing the Bible taught was not an add-on extra to the worship of God – it is at the heart of the worship of God! It is where God speaks to us most clearly in this gospel age. It is an indispensable part of the true worship of God. Our forefathers knew this. That’s why unadorned by gold and fancy works of art, Presbyterian churches tend to be kept simple and plain – because the focal point of worship is not on the building, or even on the communion table, but on the Word of God, heard and preached from the pulpit.
Finally we should briefly look at verse 8. It is a remarkably clear statement of what a Bible-based teaching ministry is all about. It’s in three distinct parts. The first thing is to make sure the we “read from the book…clearly.” Our services are not be built around the latest news headlines, or a few funny stories, or beautiful poems, but around the book, the Bible. In every service, God’s Word should be read, and it should be read loud and clear for everyone to hear. One aspect of this is that it should be read in a language that the people understand. Secondly, it is the preacher’s job to “give the sense” or in other words to explain the reading to his hearers. Whatever else a sermon is, at its most basic, it should explain and make it easier to understand God’s Word. If it fails in that, it’s failed as a sermon, no matter how good it is otherwise. Thirdly, it is the congregation’s job to understand the reading. It’s no good if the Bible is clearly read, and clearly explained, if the people refuse to pay heed to it, or don’t make any effort to understand and remember what they were taught. When these three things happen together then remarkable things can happen.
In our passage something remarkable does begin to happen, but the middle step is the most difficult to go through. Though it will not always be to the same degree for everyone, or be manifested in the same way in everyone, there is a process of going through spiritual grief. We see this in our passage in verse 9. “All the people wept as they heard the words of the Law.”
The grief and sadness that wells up in us as God’s Word is understood in a deep, personal way - expressed by the people in our passage as weeping, perhaps by us in ways we keep hidden inside - is the first reaction that people often have and it’s actually a good sign when people feel that way! It’s a sure sign that people’s consciences have been touched. Theologians tend to call it being “convicted of sin.”
By nature, the Bible tells us in Ephesians 2:1, we are dead in sin. One aspect of that is that before we are Christians, when we sin, we are a bit like a patient under a deep anaesthetic on an operating table – we don’t feel the pain of what we’re doing. When we come to understand the Word of God in a deep personal way, it’s as if the anaesthetic wears off and we see ourselves and our actions as they really are, and it hurts. We become conscious of how different our lives are to how they should be. We see our failures and some people can find that deeply upsetting.
Looking in God’s Word is like looking in a mirror, the Letter to James tells us. Firstly we see the mirror itself dazzling with light and brilliance, then we see the world around us reflected in its light, then if we look closely, we see ourselves as we really are. When we read or hear God’s Word, we see what God is like, in all his glory, his love and mercy, his justice and holiness and we recoil because he is so different, so much better than us in every way. Then we see the world around us and how far removed it is from how God wants it to be. We see how bad it is. And finally, we see ourselves and see how far removed we are from how God wants us to be, and how sinful we are.
It is this revelation of human sin and failure that moved the people in Jerusalem to tears as they heard Law of God read out, revealing his character, his commandments and showing up their utter failure to live as God’s people should live.
But thanks be to God, for when he brings people to that dark place of realising our sinfulness, our guilt and our helplessness before a holy God, he then floods that place with light and love, peace and joy, for the same Word which condemns us as sinners also reveals to us the good news, the gospel, that sinners can be saved through trusting in the Lord Jesus Christ.
God’s Word diagnoses the heart disease at the core of the human condition, which is sin; but it then prescribes the remedy for that disease, which is to come to Jesus, and trust in him to save you. Jesus said, “If anyone comes to me I will never cast him out.”
And when we come to Christ, and know that we have been forgiven by God, the darkness lifts and the weight of sin and shame falls away, and we begin a new life in the light, a life that is everlasting.
Our passage in Nehemiah takes place at a time before Jesus Christ came to the earth. But the same process occurs. When the Levites say to the people in verse 9 “This day is holy to the Lord your God, do not mourn or weep,” they’re saying far more than just that as it’s a special day the people should “put on a happy face” and forget the mournful feelings they had. Some commentators say that’s all the priests were doing, but that doesn’t ring true to me. No, what they are doing is reminding the people of who God is – he is the LORD – the covenant God who chose them and will always remain faithful to his people. They’re reminding them that he is not just God, he is their God.
And in verse 10, when they tell the people to go ahead and have a celebration feast – “eat the fat, and drink sweet wine…” – they are telling the people they can celebrate because God has forgiven them and they are still His covenant people.
Having come through the darkness of being convicted of our sins, and having trusted in God for deliverance, and found his forgiveness, we can then rejoice and celebrate. Surely one of the most beautiful verses in the Psalms is Psalm 30:5:
“For his anger is but for a moment, and his favour is for a lifetime. Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.”
And that brings us to the third step in our spiritual journey:
Finding the joy of the Lord
Verse 10 is one of my favourite verses in the Bible. I come back to it time and time again. “Do not be grieved, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.”
Let me just say in passing that the grief being talked of here is the grief for sin that has been forgiven. It is not a blanket command that Christians should never grieve about anything. Most especially, this verse does not teach that Christians shouldn’t grieve for the death of their loved ones. The Bible is very clear that it is right and entirely understandable for Christians to grieve at certain times. Ecclesiastes 3:4 says there is “a time to weep.” In Romans 12:15, far from condemning those who mourn, Paul exhorts Christians to get alongside those who mourn – “weep with those who weep,” he says.
No, the “do not be grieved” in verse 10 is not a general command covering all situations. It is a particular command to those who have grieved for their sins but received God’s forgiveness. Do not grieve over sins that God has forgiven, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.
This joy that is mentioned is a very special thing as we’ll see as we consider where it comes from, what it is and what it does in the life of the Christian believer.
Since it is the joy of the Lord, we know it is a joy that comes from God. It is not something that we can manufacture in our own lives. It is a gift. And it is not something that any other source can provide. It cannot be found in money, or possessions, or in sex, or in drink and drugs, or in success, or fame. It is the joy of the Lord, and is only given to those who know the Lord. In Jeremiah 31:13, the LORD says:
“Then shall the young women rejoice in the dance, and the young men and the old shall be merry. I will turn their mourning into joy; I will comfort them, and give them gladness for sorrow.
In Galatians 5:22-23, Paul writes:
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.”
The Spirit only produces such fruit in those who belong to Christ Jesus.
So what is the joy of the Lord? We know it comes from God, but what is it? Well, since this joy comes from God, it is to be distinguished from mere human happiness. Happiness comes from the same root as the word “happen.” Happiness is feeling good when good things happen. It disappears when bad or sad things happen to us. Joy is a different. It is a much deeper, stronger, more robust, more steady feeling of pleasure, gladness and contentment that nothing can take away from us. It persists within us even through times of pain, suffering, loss and mourning. It persists through all these things precisely because it is not only an emotion, a feeling generated solely within us, but because it comes from God, outside of us, as a divine blessing and gift. This is why God’s Word can command us to always be joyful:
Philippians 4:4 says: “Rejoice in the Lord, always; and again I say, rejoice!”
Other verses tells us that going through troubles, cannot affect our joy. Look at what the prophet says in Habakkuk 3:17:
“Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines, the produce of the olive fail and the fields yield no food, the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stalls, yet I will rejoice in the LORD; I will take joy in the God of my salvation.”
Or what Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 7:4:
“In all our affliction, I am overflowing with joy.”
Even if it "all goes pear-shaped," we can still rejoice in God and know the joy of the Lord, is the promise of the Bible.
We may not feel as if the joy of the Lord is still there in hard times, but even in hard times it is there, like the faint glow of embers in a fire that looks as if it’s about to go out. And like embers it is always ready to be fanned into full flame again if we kindle it by keeping on trusting in the Lord and waiting for the wind of God’s spirit to blow through us again.
The second thing to remember is that the joy of the Lord not only comes from the Lord, it is a joy found in the Lord.
It is a joy that increases the more we come to know about who God is and what he has done. In other words, it is a joy that is increased as we learn about God from his Word. Psalm 119 is the longest in the Bible and its all about God’s Word. Verse 111 of that Psalm says this:
“Your testimonies are my heritage forever, for they are the joy of my heart.”
God’s Word is what gives the Psalmist joy in his heart. Why?
Joy wells up in us as we consider what God is like. As we think about his character – his love, his grace, his faithfulness, his truthfulness, his kindness, his compassion and all his other attributes.
It is a joy that wells up in us as we consider what God has done: when we think about the grandeur and beauty. Or maybe when we consider the intricate order and total control God holds over all things by his sovereign power. And yet he tells us that all of that power, all his sovereign will, works all things for our good.
Most of all, this joy wells up inside us when we consider God’s salvation. As Isaiah 12:3 promises us:
“With joy you will draw waters from the wells of salvation.”
If we know Jesus Christ as our Saviour and Lord, how can we think about the cross and the resurrection without joy flooding into our hearts? When we know that when we stand before God in heaven, he will look upon the righteousness of Christ, which is ours through faith, and we will hear the words, “Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world,” how can we not rejoice in what he has done for us?
The third aspect of this verse is the realisation and experience that this joy that comes from God and is found in God “is our strength” as we go through life.
Partly that means that the joy of the Lord gives us strength to do what God calls us to do. In our passage as the people are filled with joy and begin to celebrate, they then begin to share the food and wine of their feast with others who don’t have these things. Verse 12: “All the people went their way to eat and drink and to send portions and to make great rejoicing, because they had understood the words that were declared to them.”
But when you consider that the word translated “strength” in v.10 has its root meaning in the Hebrew word for a stronghold or fortress, I think the main point is that the joy of the Lord is our defence against the hard and painful things that life throws at us. The joy we carry around with us, deep inside, is like a shield that protects us and enables us to do things we otherwise couldn’t do.
I’m wondering if anyone is sitting here tonight and is saying to themselves, “What is he talking about? I don’t know this joy of the Lord.” Well the thing is this. You can’t know the joy of the Lord until you know the Lord himself. Jesus said in a prayer to his Father:
“This is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent.” (John 17:3)
The question is, do you know Jesus Christ? Not as a figure in history, not as a great moral teacher, not even as the man that other people believe in. The question is, do you know Christ? Have you met him for yourself? Have you trusted in him as your Saviour and Lord? Can you truthfully say what the apostle Paul wrote in Philippians 3:8
“I count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”
If not, God is calling you to himself tonight. He wants you to know Christ and know the joy of the Lord. Don’t miss out on it. Because as the chorus of our closing hymn puts it:
Knowing you, Jesus, knowing you,
There is no greater thing.
You’re my all, you’re the best,
You’re my joy, my righteousness,
And I love you Lord.
“The people went their way to eat and drink and to send portions and to make great rejoicing, because they had understood the words that were declared to them.”
May that be as true for us tonight, as it was for the crowd in Nehemiah’s day, for the joy of the Lord is our strength, this night and forever.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)