Sermon for CATM – June 1, 2014 – Living in the Joy of the Lord - Nehemiah 8:1-10
Robert Louis Stevenson once entered in his diary what he considered to be an extraordinary thing. He said, "I have been to Church today, and (Surprisingly) I am not depressed."
I hope that your experience of coming to church at Church at the Mission leans more to the side of joy than of sorrow, of enjoyment more than drudgery.
If the recent feedback we've received from the congregation in the annual survey we do is any indication, the majority of those of us who come to this church find that doing so truly lifts us - it lifts our spirits.
I think for most of us, worshipping in this place is a very positive experience. That's God's work, the work of God's Holy Spirit among us.
But how do we do the rest of the week? It's not a bad thing that church is a good thing...for as long as I've been a Christian, Sundays and worship has been a major highlight of my life. But that's just 1/7th of the week.
What else is going on in our lives the rest of the week? What is our experience of life like? What is our experience of JOY?
G.K Chesterton was a famous Christian writer. He said this at the end of his book, “Orthodoxy": “Joy, which was the small publicity of the Pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian”.
By this he meant that the one big distinction between the believer and the non-believer is this underlying reason that we have for being incredibly joyful people.
Do we always express this gigantic secret? No; otherwise it wouldn’t be, as Chesterton says, a secret.
But we have in our lives, as Christ-followers, this reality that hides just beneath the surface. The reality that no matter how frustrating life gets, no matter how many face palms we may do in a day, no matter how much life seems to be or is out of control, Jesus is real.
Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. He will never leave us or forsake us. We know that all this, this life, is not all there is. And we know that we are not alone. No matter what we do or where we go, God is with us.
Now in our reading today we go back in history to a very important moment in the journey of the people of Isreal, the Jewish people.
The book of Nehemiah records a time when Israel is coming back into their homeland after spending 70 years in exile. They began to rebuild their home in the ‘land of promise’. Israel is regaining her homeland and returning to faith.
The book of the law had been discovered and Nehemiah calls together the people and has Ezra conduct a public reading of God’s law.
The Israelites had different stages of reaction to the law: First, they fell into repentant sorrow. Second, they began to praise and worship the Lord.
Third, they celebrated the “Feast of Booths” as the law commanded. The result was great joy! Nehemiah told them, “The Joy of the Lord is your strength.”
I've noticed that in life, as a follower of Christ, there are avenues to joy, and there are barriers to joy.
There are routes, pathways, decisions and attitudes and actions that lead to joy, or that will lead away from joy.
I want to suggest that all of the challenges related to having real joy or not having real joy can be whittled down or synthesized down to one main question.
That question is: “What is settled in your mind and your heart and your soul?”. We’re going to keep coming back to that question.
Now when we talk about joy, we’re not talking about happiness. One of the huge problems in the western world is that we almost consider ‘happiness’ a right, something due to us, something owed to us.
But in talking about joy, we’re not talking about happiness. Happiness can be described as a sense of contentment that we have because things in our lives are as we wish them to be.
There’s an absence of struggle. There’s an abundance of fun things to do. There are good and healthy relationships that make us happy.
If there’s a big difference between happiness and joy it might be that all of the things that can lead to happiness are actually quite volatile.
Good relationships can turn bad. Hardship and suffering, illness and death can impact our worlds. Material abundance, having lots of stuff, can turn into material lack.
As recently as 2008 when the recession hit and millions lost billions of dollars in investments, it was pretty clear that financial well-being isn’t the solid footing to happiness that a lot of people thought it was.
In 2009 there were 5000 more suicides than would normally have been expected (yes, they actually track these things), and that’s considered one of the many difficult impacts on people’s lives from the recession.
So the things that we can count on to be happy, externals that impact our world, are pretty unreliable.
Joy, on the other hand, is a deeply rooted thing, grounded not in things outside of us that can quickly shift against us, but in, for Christians, our commitment to Jesus and our conviction that He is all that He said He was.
So, what is settled in your mind and your heart and your soul? There are two key areas that lead to a real, consistent experience of the joy of the Lord.
Number One
The first thing that leads to deep joy is knowing God through Jesus Christ, it is in believing the gospel of God’s grace. If you believe the gospel, you KNOW that you are forgiven.
You know that the wall that once separated you from God, the great chasm that stood between you and a relationship with God is no longer there.
Jesus has made a way for you to live – not in fear of God’s judgment, not estranged or a stranger to God, but as a friend of God, as a person whose first and foremost relationship is with a person who NEVER changes. That’s God.
When the gospel is settled in your mind – you understand what Jesus did and that what He did He did for you;
when the gospel is settled in your heart – you know that you know that you know that God is for you and not against you, that God loved you enough, valued you enough to send His only Son to lay down His life for you;
and when the gospel is settled in your soul – you know that as a result of what Jesus did, it is well with your soul…when the gospel is settled in you, heart, mind and soul…that can only lead to joy.
When the gospel is not settled in you, you’re not going to experience much real joy.
When we sort of believe, sort of trust, sort of maybe kinda prob’ly think we believe – we still get benefits.
Doubting the gospel, we can still get occasional glimpses into real joy. We can still observe the joy of others. We may even leave church encouraged if we’ve heard a good practical message of how to live more abundantly.
But when the gospel is not settled in us, we will not know genuine joy that defies our circumstances, the losses we experience in life, the hardships of life.
Number Two
The second thing that leads to true joy is when we live at peace with God in our thoughts and actions, when right and wrong is established in our lives.
One of the things that we need to do in order to experience God’s joy is to leave behind forever any notion that we are better judges of right and wrong than God is.
That tendency to assert that our own moral choices are better than God’s, something that’s as prevalent in this generation as any other, has a long history.
The book of beginnings, the Book of Genesis talks about the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.
15 The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it. 16 And the Lord God commanded the man, “You are free to eat from any tree in the garden; 17 but you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for when you eat from it you will certainly die.” Genesis 2:15-16
Long story short, the first man, Adam, and the first woman, Eve, ignored what God said. Consuming the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was the original sin committed by Adam and Eve that subsequently became known as the Fall of man in Genesis 2-3. It was a big deal.
And we can still behave in sync with Adam if we’re not careful. We can still ignore God’s commands, to our harm, if we’re not cautious.
God’s way of living is the way of freedom, it’s the way of generosity, it’s the way of relationship and love. That’s really what the law of God is all about. It’s to help us know right from wrong.
Paul said: ‘I would not have known what sin was had it not been for the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, "You shall not covet." Romans 7:7
And here’s the deal, when right and wrong is not settled in us, whenever we face a moral choice or an ethical choice, we will face a dilemma that will compromise our joy – even if we do trust in Jesus and trust the gospel.
If I’m not settled that stealing is wrong and that I will never, ever steal, every chance I get to ‘improve’ my life by stealing will be a dilemma.
“Should I or shouldn’t I? Well, I don’t really know if it’s really wrong to steal, so…maybe I will. Or maybe I shouldn’t. Aack! And my joy is compromised. If I sin and DO steal, my peace is blown too.
If I’m not settled that lusting is wrong, that it offends God, and that I will not let my eye wander or my imagination get the better of me, then every opportunity to lust becomes a dilemma.
And if I do lust in my heart, not only is my joy compromised, but, again, my peace is wrecked.
If I’m not settled that gossiping is wrong, that it offends God and that I will not gossip, period, then EVERY TIME I HEAR SOMETHING JUICY it will be a dilemma. Should I or shouldn’t I. Well, maybe…or maybe not. It’s not settled, so it’s a hung jury.
A hung jury in court case is a jury that can’t decide on the guilt or innocence of the accused.
But…if I connect the dots between being a follower of Jesus, being a believer of the gospel, and being someone who out of gratitude for all that God has done for me has chosen to live in the freedom of obedience to God and God’s way of living,
then doing right, making the tough choices in moral and ethical situations isn’t difficult at all.
There is no dilemma. If there’s a chance to steal, I say to myself, “Of course not!” No dilemma. And so I don’t compromise my peace, I don’t threaten my experience of the joy of the Lord. And I move on to other things.
If there’s an opportunity to lust by taking a second look at an attractive woman, I say to myself: “Of course not.
Let your eyes bounce and don’t look again”. No dilemma. No wrecked peace. And I move on to other things.
If there’s a chance to gossip, the gossip is dead as soon as I hear it, because I’ve settled in my heart that gossip always offends God. No struggle. Zero dilemma.
BUT… if some or any of those things, among many other issues, are not settled in me, whenever I face them I will be in a predicament. I’ll be in a quandary. My peace will be threatened by the opportunity and the difficulty of having to make a decision in each instance.
You know what? God doesn’t want us to be unsettled. He doesn’t want us to get stuck in each instance of moral decision making. And He definitely doesn’t want us to commit the sin.
A, it’s an offense against Him. B, it robs our joy. C, if we DO sin, it robs us of our freedom to live in good conscience toward God and others.
And D, it makes it really hard to truly move on because our conscience, if it’s working at all, will keep going back to the moment we made the choice to sin, and we will live in regret. Living in regret is living in the past. It’s NOT moving on.
Psalm 119 describes the joy, the blessing of living our lives with loving God by obeying God and this having the issue of right and wrong settled in us. Let’s read together:
1 Blessed are those whose ways are blameless,
who walk according to the law of the LORD.
2 Blessed are those who keep his statutes
and seek him with all their heart—
3 they do no wrong
but follow his ways.
4 You have laid down precepts
that are to be fully obeyed.
5 Oh, that my ways were steadfast
in obeying your decrees!
6 Then I would not be put to shame
when I consider all your commands.
7 I will praise you with an upright heart
as I learn your righteous laws.
8 I will obey your decrees;
do not utterly forsake me.
ב Beth
9 How can a young person stay on the path of purity?
By living according to your word.
10 I seek you with all my heart;
do not let me stray from your commands.
11 I have hidden your word in my heart
that I might not sin against you.
12 Praise be to you, LORD;
teach me your decrees.
13 With my lips I recount
all the laws that come from your mouth.
14 I rejoice in following your statutes
as one rejoices in great riches.
15 I meditate on your precepts
and consider your ways.
16 I delight in your decrees;
I will not neglect your word.
Psalm 119:1-16
The cool thing is that when we go from experiencing that dilemma, that inner tension every time we have to make a moral choice, to NOT experiencing that dilemma BECAUSE it’s settled in us, because we’ve ALREADY MADE THE DECISION, there’s even joy in that. Pure joy.
James says: 2 Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, 3 because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. 4 Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. James 1:2-3
So the joy of the Lord is our strength. It was for the people back in Nehemiah’s day.
It is still true to this very day. When we have settled in our hearts, our minds and our souls that we believe the gospel, that Jesus is Lord to the glory of God the Father, we have joy.
When we live our lives consistent with that first joy, when we live in obedience to Jesus by living with a clear conscience, then that joy has the opportunity to burrow down deep in our lives.
We live with a deep harmony. We will know that we know that we know that we are loving Jesus as He wants us to love Him. How does He want us to love Him? Pretty simple actually.
He said: 15 “If you love Me, you will keep My commandments”. John 14:15
Of course, we sometimes fail. Sometimes in my life it has seemed that I failed much more than I did right. Like all of us, I know the pinch of a bad conscience toward God.
Like all of us I’ve been forgiven through the blood of Jesus Christ. Like all of us, I’ve known the sweet release of Jesus’ forgiveness of sin. We all sin. A lot. That’s the problem. The solution is loving Jesus.
May we live in freedom. Family of God, may we live in God’s freedom. May we settle on the truth of the gospel, never again being double-minded about it. May we settle on doing what is right and good in every situation.And may the joy of the Lord be our strength. Amen.
