Good morning, y'all.
Good morning.
I'm Jerry.
Hey Jerry.
Neighbor here, right around, right behind the church here.
Yeah.
Today's scripture reading is from
First Thessalonians five, 16 through 18,
page 1017 in the Bibles in the back of your pews.
Rejoice always, pray constantly,
give thanks in everything,
for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.
This is God's word.
Amen.
Thank you, Jerry.
Imagine a world that is enveloped in darkness
from your very infancy.
A world where the sun rise, the colors of fall,
I'm sure you guys have noticed the beautiful colors
of fall changing.
I have an awesome view as I'm heading home
and I'm winding through the world
and I'm winding through the roads heading up to Georgetown,
the many different colors, the oranges, the fire reds.
Imagine though a world where from infancy,
you are wrapped in darkness,
unable to see the colors of the changing season.
Never seeing the faces of your loved ones.
Their eyes are unknown to you.
This was the world of Fanny Crosby,
born in 1820, who lost her sight
when she was just six weeks old due to an illness.
Yet her life was not defined by darkness,
but by an extraordinary light,
the light of joy that was found in Jesus Christ.
At an early age, Fanny embraced her blindness
with a heart full of gratitude.
In fact, she once said, if I could have a choice,
if I could have a choice, I would still choose
to remain blind.
For when I die, the first face I will ever see
will be the face of my blessed Savior.
Despite her inability to see the physical world,
Fanny saw something so much greater.
Her spiritual vision was clear and bright.
She saw the beauty of God's love
and the joy of His grace,
His forgiveness and the unbounded joy
of His presence in her life.
This perspective turned what many would see
as a life of suffering into a life overflowing with joy.
Fanny Crosby went on to write over 8,000 hymns,
such as Blessed Assurance, Jesus is Mine,
or Pass Me Not, O Gentle Savior,
as well as one which we sing today,
To God Be the Glory.
And knowing her story, knowing the backstory
of Fanny Crosby and her life and her life of blindness
from a young age gives such new meaning
to that third verse that we sang just this morning.
Great things He has taught us, great things He has done,
and great our rejoicing through Jesus the Son,
but purer and higher and greater will be
our wonder, our transport, when Jesus we see.
Words of a blind woman whose heart
had great clarity of vision.
These were not mere lyrics from Fanny Crosby.
They were expressions of a soul that found
the greatest joy in the midst of what many would consider
great suffering or even many might consider
a great injustice.
Blindness she deserved to see.
She didn't see it that way.
In her life and lyrics we find a profound example
of the Apostles Paul's words as Jerry read to us.
Rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in everything,
for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.
This morning we are going to look at this text
under two points.
The first one is the life of joy.
Rejoice always, verse 16 says.
And one thing that you cannot escape
as you go through the New Testament,
as you look high and low, is the continual emphasis put
on the Christian life that we live.
On the Christian life of joy.
The Christian life of joy.
Joy is listed what, with the fruit of the Spirit, right?
It's the evidence of the Spirit-filled life of a Christian
as Galatians 5 22 through 25 tells us.
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace,
patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness,
gentleness and self-control.
The law is not against such things.
Now those who belong to Jesus Christ
have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
If we live by the Spirit, let us also keep in step
with the Spirit.
Again, Paul in Romans 14 says that the kingdom of God,
the kingdom of God is righteousness, peace and joy
in the Holy Spirit.
That is what the kingdom of God is.
And Jesus, we were told as we looked in the book of Matthew,
Jesus says the kingdom is ours.
The kingdom is ours.
What is the kingdom?
Well Paul says it's righteousness, it's peace,
and it is joy.
It's yours.
Joy is both our inheritance as kingdom kids
and it's our duty.
Both our inheritance and our duty.
It's ours by the Holy Spirit,
but we must keep in step with the Holy Spirit,
as Paul said in Galatians.
But this command to rejoice always isn't a command
that's somehow detached from our reality.
When that phone call comes that the cancer has returned,
this isn't a call to rejoice in the cancer.
Or in the death of a loved one, or in the loss of a job,
or in a physical persecution, as though those objects
were intrinsically worthy of joy.
For they are not.
These are products of the fall.
They are sin stained realities for all of us.
So what is the command then to rejoice always in?
Well it is a command that Paul continues to flesh out
in the book of Philippians chapter four, verse four.
Philippians four, verse four, many of you know
this scripture says, rejoice in the Lord always.
I will say it again.
I will say it again, rejoice.
Rejoice in the Lord always.
I will say it again, rejoice.
See if joy is a gift, evidence of the Holy Spirit
in our lives, and it is a duty for all those
who are believers to live a life of joy
as we have been called to in the Spirit,
it is to be directed back to the source.
That joy is to be directed back to the source
from which it came, toward the one who gave it
in the first place.
This is not some feature of the Christian life
or some bug of the Christian life.
This is the Christian life.
Remember last week we talked about the one leper.
Remember the 10 lepers that came to Jesus.
Jesus heals them.
They go away and one leper returns.
One leper returns to give worship and glory to God
for that healing.
And that is the essence of worship.
To return with what God has given us in joyful worship
and give God the glory for it and from it.
To return to God with all that he has given us
in joyful worship and sacrifice,
giving God the glory for it and from it and through it.
The essence of irreverence,
the essence of not worship,
is taking what you have received
and spending all that comes from it on yourself.
The Lord is the object of joy.
The unchanging, all powerful, abundant,
or abounding in faithful love for his people.
He is the aim of our joy.
And he is the source of our joy.
Don't you see?
He gives by the Holy Spirit.
In return, he gives.
We were made for and called to this life,
to a life of joyful delight in God.
Some of you may wonder,
where is this life that you speak of?
It is available for all believers.
And it is simple, but it is not necessarily easy.
Is God worthy of our joy and delight
in the midst of suffering?
What if that comes our way?
I suppose it all depends on whether or not
you have adopted, as the late reformer Martin Luther said,
the theology of glory or the theology of the cross.
Martin Luther saw that Christians tended to have
two competing theologies, one unbiblical
and the other one the essence of the gospel.
The theology of glory is one that emphasizes
God's majesty, his power, his glory,
and it values human reason and wisdom,
focusing on what humans can understand and achieve.
See, God is primarily understood through his power
and glory as revealed in miracles and triumphs and successes.
You guys know the movements, you've seen them.
My victory's coming.
Any second now, please, I have to pay the bill.
My victory's coming.
Suffering and weakness are seen as something
to be avoided, overcome, or for some,
as a sign of God's displeasure with them.
This theology tends toward believing
that if a person just lived better
and had more faith, then they would experience
the blessing of God in triumph, overcoming,
in successes and miracles.
Have you guys ever believed that or heard that?
I have, I'm raising my hand.
I've said it.
I've thought it.
Oh, they're going through some tough stuff.
I wonder if there's sin in their life.
I wonder if there's this, I wonder if there's that.
I wonder when God's gonna come through.
You're sick, you're sick.
You're sick, you must be sinning.
Or maybe, this was more from my experience,
I don't know if you have your experience,
maybe there's a generational curse on you.
There's a generational curse on you,
and you need faith to overcome this generational curse.
Or maybe you haven't given enough.
If you just gave more, whatever the reason,
there must be something that can be fixed
in order to release the blessing of God in your life.
Something to be fixed.
Human wisdom, human reasoning, human achievement.
In this belief system, faith is a commodity.
You need to earn it, buy or trade for more of it
so that you can see, achieve the desired result
of favor you want in your life.
And Luther criticized this approach
for placing so much emphasis on human abilities
and for having such a small view
of God's love and sacrifice.
I lived under many years of what felt like teaching
along those lines of the theology of glory.
That felt like it was just a little bit more faith away,
just a little bit more given,
just a little bit more something.
You've gotta figure it out, you gotta crack the code.
If you can crack the code, you'll release God's blessing
in your life, drives you mad.
Drives you mad because you are never enough.
You can't do it.
The theology of glory.
Luther, having criticized it,
also saw how, could not imagine how a God
who would take on the frailty, every frailty of humanity,
condescending down to our level and living as an outcast,
experiencing intense suffering and death even,
how is there any room for Jesus Christ
in the theology of glory?
If you were to evaluate Jesus Christ himself
by those metrics of success, he'd be an absolute failure.
Jesus must be in sin.
Jesus must need more faith.
Jesus must be rejected by God and many thought so.
Many thought so.
He must be despised and rejected.
Isaiah said they would.
He's gotta be rejected by God.
And yet he was the most favored of all of us.
The theology of glory believed that the Son of God
would ride into Jerusalem as a conquering king,
slaying all his enemies,
and establishing his rulership forevermore.
Let's contrast that with what Luther called
the theology of the cross.
An understanding that God is best understood
through the suffering and crucifixion of Jesus Christ.
Whereas the theology of glory talks a lot about faith,
but what it actually does is it thinks of faith
in a wholly unbiblical way.
The theology of the cross recognizes the limitations
of human wisdom and stresses the importance
of real, authentic faith as defined by poverty of spirit.
I can't do it.
As defined by the recognition that we lack
sufficient wisdom or strength due to the presence
of the corrupting sin, and we are totally dependent on God
for both the desired outcome and the actual outcome.
What do I mean by that?
In other words, it doesn't presume,
the theology of the cross doesn't presume
to even know what the outcome ought to be.
I don't know what the outcome ought to be.
I don't know.
I don't know if I should be healed or shouldn't be healed.
I don't know.
It doesn't presume what it wants
or what it needs the outcome to be,
but it trusts that God knows that the outcome
is to be a result of the sacrifice of the sin.
It knows that God is abounding in faithful love
for his children and is working all things
for his ultimate glory and their good.
That's what it trusts.
That's what it believes.
The theology of the cross sees God revealed
through weakness, through suffering,
and through the death of Jesus on the cross.
It's a belief that God is present in human suffering.
It's a belief that salvation and glory
are always through suffering, not in circumventing it.
Always through.
Verse 18 of our text,
the cross is a belief that God is present in human suffering.
Always through.
Verse 18 of our text then tells us
that we are to give thanks in everything.
Give thanks in everything, and this is interesting.
You know that the Greek word used for give thanks
is actually a derivative of the root word for joy.
Give thanks.
Now that one makes sense, right?
So our Thanksgiving is supposed to be grounded in joy,
grounded in the gift of the Holy Spirit,
which gives joy and grounded in our duty to rejoice always,
and therefore giving thanks in every circumstance
becomes possible.
Hebrews 12 tells us that we are to run with endurance
the race that lies before us, keeping our eyes on Jesus,
the pioneer and perfecter of our faith,
for the joy set before him, he endured the cross,
despising the shame, and sat down at the right hand
of the throne of God.
What was the joy set before Jesus?
What was the joy that's allowed him to work
through suffering to ultimate salvation and glory for all?
One pastor says that Jesus,
his joy is in our redemption.
His joy is in our redemption,
which redounds to God's glory.
His joy is in our redemption,
redounding to God's glory.
We share the joy with Christ and God gets all the glory.
That's the joy that was set before Jesus,
that we might be saved,
that we might be reconciled to God.
But that doesn't mean that there isn't an ongoing fight
for joy in your life.
There is, right?
One of the other things that I found fascinating
is the connection with the root,
the derivative of joy, the root word for,
is also found in grace, the word grace.
It's also found in forgiveness.
I think sometimes we can think of grace or forgiveness
as something begrudgingly dispensed on our behalf.
Fine, I guess you need it, I'll give it to you.
At its root is joy.
It was the joy set before Jesus that he could show grace.
It was the joy set before Jesus that he could forgive sins,
and that he could forgive the sins committed against him.
This is his joy.
Paul said to fight the good fight of faith
and to run with endurance,
and that includes for you and I the fight for joy.
The fight for joy.
It's not an easy fight,
but that leads us to the second point,
and that is that the life of prayer
is an essential weapon in our fight for joy.
Always, always pray constantly
and give thanks in everything.
In our fight for joy, we must pray constantly.
I cannot stress that enough, it's in the Bible.
I don't need to stress it enough, read the Bible, it's there.
In our fight for joy, we must pray constantly.
But that cannot mean that we spend day and night,
night and day on our knees in a dark closet
moving our lips, can it?
Because there are so many other commands and duties
that would be neglected if we were to do that.
And so the command to pray constantly cannot mean that.
And I think it's Paul, when he gives this instruction,
he has a much more robust command to pray constantly.
He has a much more robust understanding of what prayer is,
and what we might term the spirit of prayer.
The spirit of prayer.
What is the spirit of prayer?
I think it is at least these three things.
It is number one, conscious of his presence.
The spirit of prayer is conscious of his presence.
It is a daily, hourly, minute by minute awareness of God.
It does not forget God.
As we are so inclined to do,
the spirit of prayer does not forget God.
It does not relegate God to a sacred space
like a church sanctuary and say,
I will meet him there when I want to, if I want to.
But it has an awareness minute by minute of him
throughout all of our life, not relegating him,
but all parts of life,
inviting him in and recognizing his presence.
The conscious of his presence,
the spirit of prayer that is conscious of his presence
begins with our Father in heaven.
Our Father in heaven, we recognize you.
It's not just a knowledge of God,
but a consciousness of his abounding and abiding presence.
He is near, not far.
The spirit of prayer is one of intimate connection
with the Father, through the Son, and by the Holy Spirit.
Brother Lawrence, who wrote a book, very popular book,
on practicing the presence of God was the name of the book,
practicing the presence of God.
And in that book, he wrote,
the most holy and necessary practice in our spiritual life
is the presence of God.
That means finding constant pleasure in his divine company,
speaking humbly and lovingly with him in all seasons,
at every moment, without limiting the conversation
in any way.
Again, the most holy and necessary practice
in our spiritual life is the presence of God,
finding constant pleasure in his divine company,
speaking humbly and lovingly with him in all seasons,
at every moment, without limiting the conversation
in any way.
Number two, three things, at least three things
that the spirit of prayer is,
is dependent on his provision.
It's conscious of his presence
and it's dependent on his provision.
Give us this day our daily life,
and we will be able to live it.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And this includes, but extends so much further
than food and drink.
Where will my provision of strength come from today?
Where will my mental fortitude come from today?
Where will my clothing, my shelter, my joy, forgiveness,
and hope come from today?
I am completely and totally dependent.
I will live in such a way that in order for me
to have any one of these things, God must provide.
Do I go to work?
Yes, if I'm able, but only with the strength
that he provides.
Do I derive hope for the future from my wealth
or my financial wisdom?
No, only from the knowledge that God closed the lilies
of the field and he feeds the bird of the air,
and I am his child and he will therefore provide
whatever he knows I need.
The spirit of prayer is conscious of his presence
and it is dependent on his provision.
And finally, it is aligning with his purpose.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done
as Jesus taught us to pray.
The spirit of prayer is filled with a curiosity
of discovering God's purpose in everything.
It is not preoccupied with simply informing God
what it wants out of the relationship.
Anyone relate to that prayer life?
God, here's what I want, here's what I need.
The spirit of prayer is not preoccupied with that,
just simply informing God, here's what I need,
here's what I want, but is always asking,
what are you doing right now?
Or can I see, can I help if you have young kids?
You know that.
Can I see what you're doing?
Can I know what's going, can I help?
Can I do something?
Is there anything I'm big enough to do?
Curiosity of discovering God's purpose in everything.
The spirit of prayer is offering up our desires to God
in exchange for things that are agreeable
to his will.
It includes the honesty of admitting what we want,
but it extends the open-ended offer that God should do
only what is fitting for him to do
according to his infinite power, knowledge, and goodness.
This is the spirit of prayer.
You can see now how prayer is a weapon in our fight for joy
because if God is our ultimate joy,
prayer is the utmost God-centered activity
we can engage in, and it's not, I need quiet time,
I need a room somewhere, I need some place
to get alone with God, constantly pray, constantly.
Pray with a conscious awareness of his presence.
Pray dependent fully on his provision.
Pray aligning your will with his will,
that his will would be done always.
We treasure his presence, we treasure his provision,
we treasure his purpose.
We are told to rejoice always and pray constantly.
Give thanks in everything, for this is God's will for you
in Christ Jesus.
As we have looked over the last few weeks
at the wisdom of a grateful heart, we come full circle.
Our gratitude in thanksgiving is rooted in who God is,
who he is and what he does, creator and sustainer.
I asked the question at the beginning,
what have we that we did not first receive?
Hopefully you've entertained or contemplated that,
and you've come to the same conclusion I have.
We have nothing.
We have nothing that we did not first receive.
A simpler way to put it is God gives, we receive.
God gives, we receive.
Universal, everything, God gives, we receive.
Our joy is knowing him, our joy is loving who he is,
and our joy is loving what he does.
Our joy is in the salvation that he has won
for each one of us.
Our joy is ultimately in the experience of God
receiving all glory for all things for all time.
There is no higher calling, my friends.
There is no higher calling.
There is nothing in all the world on which you should spend
the rest of your life and your energy
except finding your ultimate joy and satisfaction in God.
Nothing.
You may think that a higher calling is some noble profession
that goes and helps people.
You may think a higher calling is your kids
or your grandkids or your great grandkids.
You may think a higher calling is getting a lot of money
so you can be a blessing to people.
There is nothing higher, no higher calling,
than you finding your joy and your satisfaction
solely and only in God.
No higher calling.
Why? Because you were not made for those things.
You were not made for those things.
They may be good, but they are not ultimate.
You were made for God.
And a life lived for his glory is never wasted.
Whether in sickness or health,
wealth or poverty,
a life lived for God.
A life lived for his glory is never wasted.
Fight the fight for joy.
Would the worship team come and prepare to lead us
in our final song?