The Joy Of Salvation

…And it was right about here in my sermonizing this week that I began to notice the manure trucks out in full force. I could hear them as they went past and would look up to see them getting dirtier and dirtier with every load.

Slide: Manure truck pic

And I understand that it’s not a polite thing to talk about as we’re all here in our nice clean clothes in our nice clean church. In fact, some of you have probably just gotten a little sermon whiplash in that transition, but stay with me. As load after load went by, I was sort of forced to think about it. Of course, manure happens. All those cows that produce the milk for Continental Diary also produce another - product. And you can’t just leave it piled up in one place. It gets too dangerous to do that. Fortunately, when the weather is right they can spread it out on the fields and plow it in – and everybody wins – well, except those of us who get to smell it for the next few days. But honestly, I have never seen that many tanks of the stuff go by – it was pretty awesome – and here’s the transition: I got to comparing our sins with that – manure, and I can only say this: that if those tanks were loaded instead with our sins in thought, word or deed, they’d still be going by and there wouldn’t be tanks enough in all the country to carry them. And it is disgusting to think about that way. It’s an offense. And yet such is the love of God for us, that He directed all of it, the most disgusting details of our lives to one place, the cross.

Slide: cross piece in pic on telephone pole

And Jesus Christ was covered with the offense of our sins and gladly bore them all for us so that our sins would be judged and punished completely in Him - so that the justice of God would be completely satisfied and we could be completely forgiven and the joy of our salvation restored.

You know, people today are mixed up about joy. They’ve confused it with happiness. The founders of our country declared that we should all have the right to pursue happiness as we see fit. But that didn’t mean the “pursuit of happiness” should be our goal in life. “Happiness” is on the outside. To be happy you need a bigger salary, a bigger house, a bigger drink, a bigger chest, a bigger and better toy and so on. But joy is different. Joy is bigger and better. Joy is on the inside. It’s a satisfaction and a peace that you can have regardless of what’s happening to you on the outside. I guarantee you, if you try to pursue fulfillment in life by being happy, you will never be satisfied. You’ll always be pursuing the next thrill and it will never be enough.

If King David was here that’s exactly what he would tell you. Folks, he literally had it all: power and prosperity, popularity and a nice palace. And by the way, he had three wives at the time he started looking for more on his palace roof. He had everything that people think they want in order to be happy in life. And it wasn’t enough. So, he took somebody else’s wife, and he took that guy’s life and he thought he had covered it all up, but of course he was wrong. And when the Prophet Nathan woke him up to his sin he was devastated. And he realized he had lost his joy. Of course he had. When you’re burning up time and energy trying to cover up sin, you lose the joy of being one with God. He had it when he was just a shepherd boy and a hymn writer and a harp player. He had it when he stood for God and God’s people against the giant Goliath. He had it when he conquered the Philistines and fought for the promised land. But he lost it in his pursuit of happiness. So, in the midst of his prayer of repentance he asked God: