Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] The following is a legacy recording from the archives of the C.S. lewis Institute. While the audio quality of these recordings may vary, the content remains vital to the mission of the institute to develop disciples who can articulate, defend, and live faith in Christ through personal and public life.
[00:00:24] We're looking again this evening at this book of Philippians and seeing the way in which the apostle Paul speaks about the joy of our worship of God. The third chapter begins that way. He says, finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord.
[00:00:45] It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it's a safeguard for you.
[00:00:53] Watch out for those dogs, those men who do evil, those mutilators of the flesh.
[00:01:02] For it is we who are the circumcision, we who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus, and who put no confidence in the flesh.
[00:01:15] Though I myself have reasons for such confidence.
[00:01:20] If anyone else thinks he has reasons to put confidence in the flesh, I have more circumcised on the eighth day of the people of Israel, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Hebrew, of Hebrews, in regard to the law, a Pharisee, as for zeal persecuting the church, as for legalistic righteousness, faultless.
[00:01:46] But whatever was to my profit, I now consider loss for the sake of Christ.
[00:01:54] What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus, my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things, I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God by faith.
[00:02:30] I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so somehow to attain to the resurrection from the dead.
[00:02:51] And then just to skip over to pick up a couple of verses in the fourth chapter, beginning with verse four, rejoice in the Lord always.
[00:03:02] I will say it again, rejoice.
[00:03:05] Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near.
[00:03:11] Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God, and the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
[00:03:33] It's a delightful thing to have a few moments this evening to think about Paul's teaching here and his expressions of joy, and particularly of that phrase, rejoice in the Lord.
[00:03:52] Now we were discussing the other night the matter of the fear of God, the glory and the grandeur and the holiness of God, and the way in which we as sinners cannot help but fear before him.
[00:04:09] But in the wonder of his salvation, in the wonder of his redeeming love.
[00:04:17] The Lord has delivered us from darkness, brought us into light, and he's given to us joy and gladness because of what he has done for us.
[00:04:32] And when we read the Bible, we find that it is full of expressions of joy.
[00:04:38] There are many, many words for joy in the vocabulary of the Old Testament. We read about the joy that comes to the people of God at the fear feasts when they come up to worship God. We read about the joy of celebration at a wedding. We read of the joy of a captive who has been set free, has been liberated.
[00:05:03] And we read of the joy of the victor who's delivered in the day of battle and can emerge victorious as King David did, and rejoice at the victory that God had given him.
[00:05:16] Many forms of joy, many expressions of joy. Shouting and dancing and singing before the Lord. There's plenty of joy in the Bible.
[00:05:28] Now, it's important, of course, to recognize that this joy is put in a context.
[00:05:36] You will remember that Jesus told an interesting story about his critics.
[00:05:45] They had first of all, rejected the ministry of John the Baptist. And John the Baptist had come calling on them to repent and to be sorrowful and to lament their sins and to turn to God.
[00:06:01] But Jesus came turning water to wine at a wedding feast and calling on his disciples to rejoice in the salvation that God had brought.
[00:06:14] The Pharisees rejected both.
[00:06:18] And Jesus likened it to children playing in the marketplace and how there are always some kids that never want to play the game with their breast. And so first the children come and they want to play funeral and be sad.
[00:06:36] But no, that won't do.
[00:06:38] These kids that are hard to please say no. We want to play wedding. We want to play at being glad.
[00:06:46] And so the first group says, all right, now we'll play wedding. Will you play that with us? And they say, oh, no, not now. We want to play funeral.
[00:06:55] And Jesus told that interesting little story to show, of course, how his enemies were rejecting both the call to sorrow and the call to joy.
[00:07:10] And it's interesting, of course, to note that they come in that sequence. We are first called to sorrow over our sins, to repentance for sin. And then we are called to rejoice in the Lord.
[00:07:25] And it's in Jesus Christ, the bridegroom, that we have our joy.
[00:07:32] Well, let's think then for a moment about the wonder of rejoicing and rejoicing in the Lord.
[00:07:40] Before we look right at this verse, let me remind you of one story in the Old Testament that sometimes I think we fail to take account of in seeing the wonder of God's joy.
[00:07:54] You know the story of Abraham and Isaac, who had been Abraham and Sarah, who had been promised a child. Getting ahead of the story, Abraham and Sarah had been promised a child, but Sarah was childless.
[00:08:10] And the Lord kept repeating the promise and Abraham and Sarah kept not having any children.
[00:08:18] And after a while, when the Lord repeated it again, the they were to have the son of the promise, Abraham, the man of faith, the friend of God, fell on his face and laughed.
[00:08:33] He said, lord, this is getting ridiculous. This is too much.
[00:08:38] I'm 100 years old and Sarah is 90 years old and you're still talking about our having a family.
[00:08:47] This is absolutely laughable.
[00:08:50] Actually, Abraham laughed at the promise of God.
[00:08:54] And then a little later, the Lord visits Abraham in the form of an angel and accompanied by two other angels.
[00:09:06] And again the promise is repeated.
[00:09:09] And Sarah, who's back in the tent getting ready to make preparations for dinner for the guests, hears the conversation. And she hears that again, the Lord is promising that she's going to have a son.
[00:09:25] And so she laughs. Back in the tent door, she laughs.
[00:09:30] And remember the Lord says, you laughed.
[00:09:35] And she's very embarrassed. And she said, no, I didn't laugh. You know, not me, impolite, I didn't laugh.
[00:09:43] And the Lord said, no, but you laughed.
[00:09:46] And of course the Lord wanted it on the record that Abraham had laughed and Sarah had laughed.
[00:09:52] And the reason he wanted it on the record was that you'll recall, as the season came around, the season of God's promise, Sarah indeed had a little son. And. And the son was given the name Isaac. And you know, Isaac means laughter.
[00:10:12] So if we read in the Psalms that he that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh, and we know about the laughter of God against the folly of unbelief, then we also have another laughter of God, the laughter of grace.
[00:10:27] We laugh at the things that are absurd. And is there anything more absurd than that the promises of God should prove to be true after all, in spite of all our unbelief.
[00:10:41] And you see, Abraham and Sarah had the little son laughter.
[00:10:47] And when the time came for the feast for the birth of Isaac, Sarah said, God has made me to laugh.
[00:11:00] She was laughing out of the other side of her mouth now. And she said, whoever hears it will laugh with me. And she said, who would have said that Sarah would nurse a little baby? She's saying, at my age, who would believe it?
[00:11:18] But she laughs, laughs with joy at the impossible reality that was fulfilled.
[00:11:25] Now think about that, friends, because you see, the wonder of God's grace is the source of the greatest joy that is conceivable.
[00:11:41] If we laugh at incommensurables, if we laugh at things that are absurd, then what laughter should come to us to realize the absurdity of the grace of God?
[00:11:55] That we who are lost sinners, deserving only his judgment, should be made to be sons and daughters of the Almighty?
[00:12:06] Sarah rejoiced in the Lord.
[00:12:09] But now let's look at the passage here in Philippians 3:1 where Paul says that he rejoices in the Lord.
[00:12:18] And let's think about what it means to rejoice in the Lord.
[00:12:23] First, in the sense of glorying in God, and secondly in the sense of glorifying God.
[00:12:33] We rejoice in the Lord as we glory in Him. We find our joy in him, in what he's done and who he is.
[00:12:45] And then we glorify him that we might give praise to him, that we might give joy to God who receives our praise for what he has done for us.
[00:12:58] So let's think then for a moment about what it means to glory in the Lord.
[00:13:04] Now, as we've already been seeing, Paul glories in the Lord as over against any confidence in the flesh.
[00:13:15] He glories in the Lord because he knows that he is found in the Lord.
[00:13:21] And I read that passage where he says that so eloquently that he says that he might be found in Christ not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness that comes from God by faith.
[00:13:48] Now, that's a wonderful statement, you see, of why there can be joy.
[00:13:56] There can be joy because of the objective work of Jesus Christ for us.
[00:14:05] That we have his righteousness given to us.
[00:14:09] And the assurance of our salvation is not in what we have done, but in what he has done.
[00:14:17] There was a very famous rabbi whose sayings were widely quoted in Judaism, an ancient rabbi.
[00:14:27] And his last words were, bury me in gray.
[00:14:35] You see, he was living by the law, and living by the law.
[00:14:45] Earning our own righteousness, earning our way to heaven, is a gray business.
[00:14:55] As a matter of fact, it's worse than gray, as Paul makes clear to us.
[00:15:02] But it's at best a tedious business.
[00:15:07] You know how Peter said the yoke which Neither we nor our fathers were able to bear.
[00:15:14] It's interesting, you know, that people so generally believe that Christianity is at last a works religion, that at last we're earning our way to heaven, that we either make it or don't make it, depending upon how good we are.
[00:15:33] And people who live that way can never know the kind of joy that the Apostle Paul is describing.
[00:15:43] They can't rejoice in the Lord, their Savior.
[00:15:47] They can't rejoice in his salvation in what he has done.
[00:15:53] You know, if in your Christian life you find yourself muddling along without joy, without gladness, then I have to ask you, do you realize that salvation is by grace?
[00:16:09] Do you realize that you're going to be found in him on that great day, if your trust is in Jesus Christ, and therefore you can have the assurance of his salvation, Christ's righteousness given to you. Remember when Jesus was coming into Jericho on his way to Jerusalem and he stopped under that sycamore fig tree and looked up and saw Zacchaeus the tax collector up there, and he said, zacchaeus, come down for today. I must stay at your house.
[00:16:42] And remember, we're told that Zacchaeus received him with joy.
[00:16:48] Now, not joy because of Zacchaeus past, but joy in the present, the presence of the Lord. When the Lord has come to his house, then there's joy, and Jesus brought joy there.
[00:17:05] Well, it's Christ's righteousness that's the source of our joy. So we are found in him, as Paul says, and then also we delight in him. He becomes our joy. You see, we don't boast in who we are.
[00:17:22] We don't boast in what we have done.
[00:17:25] We don't have confidence in ourselves.
[00:17:29] And the apostle is talking about that. He says we are the circumcision who worship by the spirit of God, glory in Christ, Jesus Christ, and who put no confidence in the flesh.
[00:17:44] You know, it's a strange thing that somehow or other we're always trying to patch it up. You know, we say, well, you know, the Lord has saved me, but now it's still kind of up to me to save myself. And in a way he's done it, but in a way he hasn't. Then we slide back again to where we think that we're somehow doing it in our own strength or doing it because of the virtues that we've developed or because of the self image that we have cultivated.
[00:18:20] And some of us have been taking strong medicine here. Last night with Jim Houston blowing up our past personalities, I'm not sure if anything's left, Jim. But what Jim is telling us is that we should have no confidence in the flesh, you see, that it isn't what we are and what we have done out of our sinful past that gives us our hope. It's who Jesus Christ is and what he has done.
[00:18:55] Now, we don't boast in ourselves, but we do boast in Christ.
[00:19:01] Boast in Him.
[00:19:05] We boast in him because of the daily blessings that we receive from Him.
[00:19:10] You know, in Deuteronomy, in the 12th chapter, we read these words about the feasts of the people of God. And the Lord says through Moses, there, in the presence of the Lord your God, you and your families shall eat and shall rejoice in everything you have put your hand to, because the Lord your God has blessed you.
[00:19:38] You see, that's life in the covenant of God. Life knowing his redemption. Life knowing that you're living under his blessing. And therefore you meet together in his presence, in the presence of the Lord your God, you eat, you see, and therefore you rejoice in everything.
[00:20:00] Because in everything, you're rejoicing in Him.
[00:20:06] You know, if you thank God for the food he's given you at the beginning of a meal, well, don't forget to thank God that He is there.
[00:20:17] Don't just thank him for the food. Thank him for Himself.
[00:20:21] Rejoice in the Lord as you see the blessings that the Lord gives to you.
[00:20:28] We rejoice in our daily blessings. We rejoice in the saving power of the Lord. We rejoice in the way he is able to redeem us, to deliver us. And you know, in Isaiah's prophecy, where he keeps telling us about all the wonderful things that God will do in the latter days, he summons all the nations to rejoice in the great work of God's salvation. The 49th chapter of Isaiah and the 13th verse. Shout for joy, O heavens. Rejoice, O earth.
[00:21:06] Burst into song, O mountains. For the Lord comforts his people and will have compassion on his afflicted ones.
[00:21:18] My friends, what do you celebrate, huh?
[00:21:23] What are times of real celebration here in the United States? We celebrate some interesting things.
[00:21:33] We get apparently more carried away when some ball team wins a championship than in almost any other thing that happens in our lives.
[00:21:43] Seems to come out ahead of weddings even. I don't quite get it, but I'm a bit of a sports fan. But I can't quite get delirious with ecstasy because, well, of course, if Baltimore were to win the championship, then you could Understand, at the Orioles, that would make sense. But that shows there are very few sports fans here, too. So I'll give up on that one.
[00:22:11] But you see, what is that?
[00:22:16] That fills us with joy, that gives us gladness? Well, it's the Lord's victory, isn't it?
[00:22:28] You remember the wild times they had in Times Square, when there was first VE Day and then VJ Day and World War II was over.
[00:22:43] Of course, some of you folks weren't around then, but it was a great time, you know, because of the release of the deliverance of the dreadful scourge of war being removed and wonderful sense of liberation. Well, friends, what does it mean then, if we have been liberated from sin, if the work of salvation has been done by our great God? You see, the prophet sees it, doesn't he? Sing, O earth, rejoice. O mountains, shout. The Lord's done it. He's redeemed us. It's been accomplished.
[00:23:22] You know, when Jesus had been put in the tomb after the crucifixion, and they sealed the tomb and all. And then, you remember on that first Easter morning, the women went out to the tomb and saw that it was empty and met the angels, and they were told that he had risen. But then, as Matthew tells us, as they were going away from the tomb in haste to go and tell the other disciples, Jesus himself met them. You know what he said to them? He said, karate, which is an ordinary Greek greeting. What it means is, rejoice, rejoice.
[00:24:03] But what significance that ordinary greeting carried. Of course, I don't know just what word Jesus used when he spoke to them. It might have been the Greek word. It was in common use in Israel at that time. But that's the word that the inspired author gives to us to communicate to us the sense of that meeting. Jesus greets the disciples, but greets them with the same word that you have here in Philippians 3. 1. Rejoice. Jesus says, Be glad the victory's won. He's alive from the dead. The resurrection is a reality and the new life has begun.
[00:24:48] And then, friends, our joy in what our Lord does, rejoicing in the Lord is not only that he gives us daily blessings, is not only in the saving power by which he's delivered us, but it's also joy in fellowship with him in sufferings. I've mentioned this before, and this appears in this epistle to the Philippians. Also. You know how John Wesley wrote that hymn based upon Peter's experience.
[00:25:19] When Peter had been imprisoned in the early days of the Christian church. And you recall that an angel came to the prison and with blinding light told Peter to get up and get dressed. Interesting that Peter could sleep so soundly when he was supposed to get executed, you know. But the angel woke him up and told him to get dressed. And the doors of the prison opened as Peter went out. And he went a couple blocks down the street before he finally realized he really was out of prison and stood there for a while in the street corner and decided to go where the Christians would probably be praying. A very, very beautiful description of a deliverance by the Lord of the apostle Peter and John.
[00:26:10] Charles Wesley, reflecting on that, wrote that hymn about long, long my imprisoned spirit lay. How does that go? In darkness, in nature's night? Something like that. And then he says, I woke, the dungeon flamed with light, my chains fell off, my heart was free, I rose, went forth and followed thee. Well, it's a beautiful poetic use of that incident.
[00:26:43] And Peter knew what that meant, of course, both spiritually and physically. Paul knew what it meant to be delivered from prison. Remember, he was in prison, his feet in the stocks and his back lacerated by the lash of the Roman magistrate. And you will recall that there at midnight, Paul was singing hymns of praise to God.
[00:27:10] Paul and Silas singing together as their feet were in the stocks in the prison.
[00:27:17] And there was an earthquake, and they were released and the jailer was converted, and it was a wonderful time.
[00:27:24] Well, now you can see that Peter would rejoice as he was delivered from prison and could go knocking at the door.
[00:27:32] Rhoda the servant, couldn't believe that it was really Peter and left him standing there while she went back to tell everybody beautiful story. Beautiful story about the deliverance of Paul. And you see him teaching his jailer.
[00:27:48] But listen, Paul writes this letter, and he's in prison again, right?
[00:27:57] And when he wakes up in the morning, he's still in chains, see? He's still not free.
[00:28:07] There's no earthquake and there's no angel, and Paul isn't delivered.
[00:28:17] And what does he write?
[00:28:20] Lord, you delivered me before. What's the matter this time, Lord? There was an earthquake at Philippi. Why is there no earthquake in Rome, Lord? What's happened to the earthquake delivery in your system?
[00:28:39] What does he write?
[00:28:42] Rejoice in the Lord.
[00:28:47] All right, you can understand joy when he's delivered from prison, but how can he have joy when he's not delivered from prison?
[00:28:58] And of course, he tells us why.
[00:29:02] He says, I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death.
[00:29:18] You see, Paul had learned that when he was weak, then he was strong.
[00:29:25] Paul had learned that when he lost everything, then he had everything.
[00:29:31] He had learned that when he counted everything as rubbish for the sake of Christ, then he had a joy that was absolutely beyond compare.
[00:29:42] All right, friends, it's easy for me to talk about that, isn't it?
[00:29:49] It's not so easy to live it out.
[00:29:53] It's easy for you to hear it and say, yes, I know that's true.
[00:29:58] It's not so easy for you to live it out.
[00:30:02] The times when the deliverance doesn't come.
[00:30:07] The times when the bad situation isn't resolved.
[00:30:11] The times when the illness isn't healed in spite of fervent prayer.
[00:30:17] The times when the impossible situation in home or in business or wherever does not resolve itself in spite of the fact that you've been looking to the Lord to do it.
[00:30:29] You see, Paul says, what's the real goal?
[00:30:35] He says, it's knowing Christ, and if you know him, then you can rejoice in the Lord.
[00:30:44] Now, Paul doesn't rejoice in confinement.
[00:30:48] He doesn't rejoice in the petty ambitions of his rivals who are finding a heyday because he's in prison.
[00:30:56] His Christian rivals, if you please.
[00:30:59] He doesn't rejoice in the lack of like minded ministers to send to Philippi.
[00:31:06] He said, the only one that really cares for your state is Timothy, and I just can't spare him.
[00:31:12] He doesn't rejoice in the fact that so many of the people around him don't care for others because they don't care deeply enough for the things of Christ.
[00:31:25] No, no, Paul can't rejoice in any of those things.
[00:31:29] But he does rejoice in the Lord.
[00:31:34] You know beautifully, when he rejoices in the Lord, then you find that he can rejoice in his Christian brethren too.
[00:31:45] He rejoices in the Philippians, doesn't he? He calls them his joy and his crown. Right there in the fourth chapter. Therefore, my brothers, you whom I love and long for my joy and my crown, that is how you should stand firm in the Lord, dear friends.
[00:32:04] You see, because he rejoices in the Lord, he can reach out in love to his friends and rejoice in them because he rejoices in the Lord, then he can rejoice in the circumstances. And he does. And I want to refer to that again tomorrow morning.
[00:32:24] But you see, he tells us that he's learned in every state to be content.
[00:32:30] And he says, do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests unto God.
[00:32:40] You see, in every situation there can be joy, there can be thankfulness, there can be rejoicing, even in the midst of suffering, because it is rejoicing in the Lord.
[00:32:53] And therefore Paul says that we can be gentle to all men because the Lord is at hand.
[00:33:01] See, we're rejoicing in the coming presence of our Lord, and we know he's going to set everything straight.
[00:33:09] The Lord says, vengeance is mine. I will repay.
[00:33:14] There's not going to be any injustice done. At last, and praise God, there won't be justice done to us because it was done to Jesus Christ in our place. And he became our justice, our righteousness, our deliverance. Rejoice in the Lord.
[00:33:39] You know, we read about how Paul speaks, about how he is sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.
[00:33:48] 2nd Corinthians 6:10.
[00:33:51] How can you be sorrowful yet always rejoicing?
[00:33:56] Why, of course, because there's always a dimension of depth, a dimension of depth where joy is found even in the midst of sorrow. Joy because we know that we are having fellowship with Jesus Christ, his sufferings.
[00:34:17] There was a. You know, in the history of the world, there have been dreadful times of religious war and of religious savagery. There have been times when Christians have disobeyed Christ's commandment and have taken the sword to try to advance his kingdom by the sword, and have.
[00:34:36] Have done dreadful things.
[00:34:40] One of those periods was the period in France that followed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, when the French king wanted to consolidate the French empire by destroying what he regarded as a disruptive minority.
[00:35:05] And he decided he would get rid of all the Protestants, all the Huguenots in his kingdom.
[00:35:12] And he systematically sought to destroy the Protestant faith, the Reformed faith, completely in France.
[00:35:20] He did it by destroying places of worship. He did it by exiling all the pastors.
[00:35:27] He did it by sending the dragoons to find anybody who would be worshipping in a Protestant fashion. And so Protestants could no longer worship in public. They had to go out into the fields to worship. And they devised all sorts of stratagems to try to keep their worship secret, doing their baptisms in secret and doing the worship of God in secret. When men were caught in those places where worship, they were sent off to the galleys.
[00:36:01] And when a man was sent to the galleys, he was simply chained to the bench, the rowing bench in the galley, and he was chained there for the entire season.
[00:36:13] Until the galley was put up for the winter, when his chains would be removed and he'd be put in a prison or put in some other labor. But during the entire season, he simply remained on that seat, chained there, couldn't move for the whole season. Everything he did, eat, drink, sleep, whatever, right there on that bench.
[00:36:37] And, of course, many men died there in the very first season.
[00:36:41] Others survived for two years, I guess, some even for three years, who were very healthy men.
[00:36:50] In southern France, there's a museum.
[00:36:54] It's dedicated to the memory of those who had been martyred during that period of religious persecution.
[00:37:02] And in that museum there hangs under the ceiling a long replica of the rowing oar of a galley. You have some idea of how immense that oar was. It was pulled usually by three men. It was too much for one man to.
[00:37:21] It was a. It's a very solemn thing to see.
[00:37:25] But in that museum, there's a little model of one of these galleys of the King.
[00:37:33] And there's a little sentence that was written by Huguenot, who was a galley slave.
[00:37:41] And the sentence says, the chains that bind me to. To the galley are the chains of Christ's love.
[00:37:55] Think about that.
[00:37:59] There's a very powerful novel that's been written by a man named Chanson, who was a descendant of a man who had died in the galleys. It's called La Soupeul. It's a beautiful novel that describes the experiences of his own ancestor, and it's based on fact. And he tells about how his ancestor had a book of the Psalms with him in the galley and how precious the book of Psalms became.
[00:38:32] Well, friends, you see the picture, don't you? When we talk about rejoicing in the Lord, we're not just talking about partying all the time.
[00:38:45] We're not talking about what the world would regard as joy, perhaps, because what we're talking about is a depth of gladness, a depth of joy that can come because of the delight that we find in the Lord our Savior, and in the joy, the real joy that comes from the realization that we never suffer apart from him, that where we are, there he is, and that we never suffer where he has not gone before, in that he has suffered everything for us, including the judgment due to us for our sins.
[00:39:32] We rejoice in what he does. But, oh, friends, we rejoice above all in who he is, Jesus Christ, our Savior. We rejoice in the knowledge of the Lord. We rejoice in our sufferings, because our sufferings can draw us closer to him so that we know him better because of the suffering through which we have passed.
[00:39:58] In the 61st chapter of Isaiah and the 10th verse, I delight greatly in the Lord. My soul rejoices in my God.
[00:40:10] For he has clothed me with garments of salvation and arrayed me in a robe of righteousness as a bridegroom adorns his head like a priest, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.
[00:40:29] What a beautiful picture of rejoicing in the Lord of a festival celebration in the Lord.
[00:40:36] You see, that passage is found in Isaiah 61, which begins, the Spirit of the Lord is on me because the Lord has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captive released from darkness to the prisoners to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. The passage that Jesus read in the synagogue in his own hometown.
[00:41:06] Jesus is the one who rejoices in the Father.
[00:41:11] And in Luke 10 we're told how Jesus rejoiced in the Father and said, I thank you, I praise you, O Father. You've hidden these things from the wise and prudent and revealed them unto babes.
[00:41:24] Jesus rejoices in the Father, and we share in the joy of Jesus Christ because he has made his Father to be our Father so that we might rejoice in him.
[00:41:36] Well, we delight in the Lord, we glory in the Lord. Our joy is joy in him, knowing him, fellowshipping with him, experiencing the reality of his presence by the power of the Holy Spirit.
[00:41:59] The other side is the joy of boasting in the Lord alone in another way, not glorying in him, but glorifying him, worshiping him in the Spirit, giving praise to God.
[00:42:19] You see, first I'm talking about the joy that God gives to us, but now I'm talking about the joy that we give to God in praise and in thanksgiving.
[00:42:30] And Paul goes on to talk about that, doesn't he? In this same passage, he says that we are the circumcision who worship by the Spirit of God, who glory in Christ Jesus and who put no confidence in the flesh.
[00:42:46] We worship in the Spirit, and we worship God in the Spirit.
[00:42:51] He is the one who gives us life and sonship so that we can offer to God in the joy of life and freedom. And our salvation comes through God. The power of the Spirit overcomes the weakness of the flesh. The reality of the Spirit breaks through the masquerade of what we were told by Jim Houston the other night. You know how the Word Persona comes from the idea of a mask. And how it is that we seek by the artificial externals to create our identity or to form our important.
[00:43:40] And this is glorying in the flesh. And Paul, of course, is thinking here partly of those who glory in the flesh by glorying in the works of the ceremonial law that they so punctiliously fulfill. And he says, this is not the circumcision delighting in the outward ceremonies of a ritualistic system. But the circumcision is the circumcision of the heart. The worship is the worship that is in spirit and in truth.
[00:44:11] The reality is over against the masquerade. And it's the order of the spirit against the frenzy of the flesh. The power of the spirit against the weakness of the flesh. The reality of the spirit against the masquerade, the falsity of the flesh. But the order of the spirit against the frenzy of the flesh.
[00:44:34] Because, you see, one way to glory in the flesh is to seek to work up for ourselves experiences of transformation of consciousness.
[00:44:45] It's to work on ourselves to develop the kind of experience that we find desirable or even delightful. And there are many, many forms of incantation that can be practical practiced. To seek to develop in one way or other, some kind of transformation of consciousness. And Christianity has been influenced by Hindu techniques for transformation of consciousness. Christianity, too, has at times laid hold of mantras to be repeated by which consciousness can be transformed.
[00:45:31] Christianity has laid hold on mandalas, images to concentrate on so as to bring about a transformation of consciousness. And even mudras of sacred dance that would somehow turn us on.
[00:45:48] You see, it isn't the frenzy of the flesh that produces expression. You may be so delighted in the Lord, so glad in the Lord that you can't restrain yourself. And he wanted to cry out in praise to his name. The man who had been lame by the beautiful gate all those years.
[00:46:08] And he was made well again. He went into the temple leaping and dancing and praising God. Because God had set him free and had healed him.
[00:46:19] But remember the other fellow, the gadarene demoniac, who had been prancing and dancing and leaping around for many years in the wild ecstasy of demon possession, beating up everybody that was available. And when nobody else was available, taking stones and chopping himself up.
[00:46:37] He was free Satan style. He could do anything he wanted. And so what he wanted to do was howl all night in the tombs.
[00:46:45] Now there was a man who was also reached by Jesus Christ.
[00:46:49] Jesus Christ restored his identity. He said, who are you? You have a name. You're not Just collection of devils.
[00:46:57] Who are you? And then Jesus cast out the devils. And remember, after Jesus saved that man, how did he appear?
[00:47:07] He looked for all the world like a Presbyterian. He was seated, clothed, and in his right mind there was no evidence of anything charismatic about him. He was just sitting, sitting there. And so my argument is, you see, that the power of the Holy Spirit may carry a person. Either way, that's pretty evident. If he's been lame all those years, he'll probably do some leaping, dancing and praising God. If he's had enough of that running around, he might just have to sit down, clothed in his right mind, and be restored in that way. Now, seriously, friends, the point I'm trying to make, don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to criticize other people, but I'm trying to make this point that it is not in the flesh in any form, whether in the rigidity of fleshly legalism or in the ecstatic movements of fleshly frenzy. It's nothing that's built out of the flesh that gives us joy in the Lord.
[00:48:16] It is the joy that comes in the worship of the Spirit.
[00:48:21] We are the circumcision who worship by the Spirit, who glory in Christ Jesus and who have no confidence in the flesh.
[00:48:33] Well, our glorying then is of God. And our glorying is through God, through the power of the Spirit, and not through the flesh, flesh. And our glorying is to God, that is, we glorify him who takes joy in us.
[00:48:53] How wonderful it is that God is delighted to have fellowship with us.
[00:49:02] You know that beautiful passage in the end of the prophecy of Zephaniah, where again it's a call to joy. Sing, O daughter of Zion. Shout aloud, O Israel, be glad and rejoice with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem. And then we read, what does the Lord say to them? Do not fear, O Zion, do not let your hands hang limp. The Lord your God is with you. He is mighty to save.
[00:49:34] He will take great delight in you. He will, it says here, quiet you with his love. But I think a better translation is, he will be quiet in his love.
[00:49:46] He will be silent in his love.
[00:49:50] He will rejoice over you with singing.
[00:49:54] You see the wonder of rejoicing and joy in the Bible is this pinnacle of Divine grace, not simply that we should rejoice in him, of course we should, but in the amazing truth that he rejoices in us, that he looks upon us and is silent in his love.
[00:50:18] And he breaks forth into singing because we are His Beloved.
[00:50:27] My Friends, we have a singing savior.
[00:50:32] Jesus Christ, our Lord, sings in joy over you. You know, Hebrews 2 says that, quoting from Psalm 22, verse 22, in the midst of the brethren, I will sing thy praise.
[00:50:48] Jesus sings with us, sings among us, sings to the praise of God with us. And he sings also in his love to us, as the prophecy of Zephaniah tells us. How beautiful this is.
[00:51:05] Joy after judgment. God rejoices over his people for good. There is joy in heaven over one sinner that repents.
[00:51:16] Don't forget the name Isaac. Laughter, God's joy of grace as he provides the seed of the promise, the joy of the Son, Jesus Christ, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down now at the right hand of God, Jesus Christ, David's greater son. David was the sweet singer of Israel, but Jesus Christ is the greater singer. He is the heavenly choir master. And even now he leads the choir of heaven in the praise of the Father. And not only so, but he sings in our midst, calling on us all to join with him in the song of praise.
[00:52:02] Let my meditation be sweet unto him. The psalmist says in Psalm 104:31. You know, friends, I had an opportunity several years ago.
[00:52:17] I was staying for. I had a semester's leave from Westminster Seminary, where I was. And I had the opportunity to spend a good part of that semester in France.
[00:52:33] Our son in law is a teacher, Peter Jones, Dr. Peter Jones, new Testament teacher at Aix en Provence in southern France. France. And I had the opportunity of studying in the seminary there. And I was writing a book on Christian meditation. And I was delighted to see that many of the.
[00:52:51] That in that small library there were many books, particularly of Eastern Christian meditation.
[00:53:00] I mentioned this to Jim Houston, and I made the mistake of telling him that I had appreciated very much the writings and of a man called Simeon, the New Theologian.
[00:53:13] He wrote beautiful hymns about how joy and delight in the presence of God was bursting in his heart.
[00:53:21] Wonderful hymns that were very moving.
[00:53:26] But, you know, as I read those hymns and enjoyed them and appreciated them, and dear Christian friends, we must appreciate that, you know, it's a.
[00:53:35] There's no other experience on earth like the experience of fellowship with God, is there? There's no experience like the assurance of his love.
[00:53:44] There's nothing as marvelous.
[00:53:47] Now you may say, well, I've never had the beatific vision. Well, perhaps not, but you have known the testimony of the Holy Spirit, bearing witness with your spirit, that you are a child of God and There is a precious sweetness in that experience that goes beyond any other earthly joy.
[00:54:07] And you read of this, and you read of it eloquently expressed, and your heart's moved with gladness, you know.
[00:54:14] But then as I was reading in that literature, I began to realize that there was a lot of discussion about how you climb Jacob's ladder by a discipline of meditation until you get to the gate of heaven and there you fling yourself down and perhaps the gate opens. You can't open it, but if it opens, then your heart is flooded with light and you have this marvelous experience. Well, that's beautiful. It's a beautiful way of describing the reality of personal fellowship with God.
[00:54:49] But I began to realize that there was a note that seemed missing. Now, I. I don't claim to have read all that widely, but in the reading that I'd done, there was a note that was missing.
[00:55:04] And the note was the realization that through the grace of God, our praise is acceptable to him, that he is delighted with it. Delighted.
[00:55:20] Delighted.
[00:55:23] And just as you parents may be delighted with the offering of a little child, you know, comes in and brings you a squinched up flower from your best flower bed, well, you still are delighted even though you see that the plant got ruined.
[00:55:42] You're delighted with that act of love. But, my dear friends, God in heaven rejoices in your life.
[00:55:55] What is the goal of your worship?
[00:55:59] Is it to gain an experience for yourself?
[00:56:05] Certainly not. Primarily, no. No. In worship you come to bring praise to God.
[00:56:14] You come to offer up the incense of sweet smell of your own devotion.
[00:56:19] You come to anoint God's anointed. You come to pour out the devotion of your heart in his presence.
[00:56:27] Because through Jesus Christ, that offering is acceptable to him.
[00:56:34] Oh, friends, rejoice. Paul says it's a wonderful thing to rejoice.
[00:56:41] But let me tell you what a thing this is that God says that you can bring him to rejoice and you can do it as you praise.
[00:56:59] Have you thought about that?
[00:57:02] Have you realized what that really means?
[00:57:07] You know, we go to services of worship sometime.
[00:57:11] I've heard people say, oh, well, that didn't do anything for me.
[00:57:15] Well, who said it had to?
[00:57:19] What did you do for him? That's the question.
[00:57:23] What did you do for him?
[00:57:25] Did it do anything for God?
[00:57:28] Did it bring to him the tribute that was to his name?
[00:57:32] Did you bring joyful fruitfulness in worship to the praise of God?
[00:57:40] Well, of course, there's always more that we could say about rejoicing in the Lord in the works of our hands in the service of our days. For it isn't just in worship in the congregation that we praise him. It's also in the worship of our daily circus that we praise him. And God is pleased with that as well.
[00:58:02] God is pleased with that as well.
[00:58:11] I hope, friends, that you will come to understand more and more deeply the reality of the joy that the Holy Spirit brings into your heart. The Holy Spirit is not a harbinger of gray.
[00:58:31] The Holy Spirit is in full living color.
[00:58:35] The Holy Spirit brings to you the fullness and the delight of the wonder of God's grace.
[00:58:45] The beautiful prayer of Paul that speaks about how he prays for the Christians at Colossae that they might grow and be filled with the knowledge of God's will through all wisdom and understanding and bearing fruit in every good work. And then he talks about our being pleasing to God.
[00:59:11] Isn't that a beautiful thing, to be pleasing to God?
[00:59:15] I wrote that verse out one time and kept it on my desk for many years at the seminary.
[00:59:22] Somehow I find it hard to believe that the Lord could be pleased with the poor efforts that I make to serve Him.
[00:59:31] And I'm sure you felt the same way.
[00:59:33] My friends. There's joy there. There's joy.
[00:59:38] Joy in realizing that what you may think of as very shabby and imperfect efforts, and they are, are taken by the Lord Jesus Christ, purified and offered up to his Father as incense.
[00:59:56] And God is glorified and takes joy in them.
[01:00:01] Shall we pray, Father? We do. Thank you that we've had this opportunity to than think of how the Apostle Paul, imprisoned for the Gospel, could rejoice in his fellowship with Jesus Christ.
[01:00:13] Oh Lord, how we pray that we may rejoice in you.
[01:00:18] And we pray too, that we may understand this incredible mystery.
[01:00:25] That, Lord, you take joy in us.
[01:00:32] In Jesus name we pray. Amen.
[01:00:37] The proceeding was a presentation of the C.S. lewis Institute. In the legacy of C.S. lewis, the institute endeavors to develop disciples who can articulate, defend and live faith in Christ through personal and public life. For more information, please visit our website at www.cslewisinstitute.org.
[01:00:57] thank you.
