Joy for today part 2

If you missed last week’s Bible Time with Josh I started by asking the question: “Can we find joy today?”  I started answering the question by asking another question, “where does joy come from anyway?”  Today I want to continue my thought on finding joy today.  There is a passage in the book of Philippians that frustrates people often when they read it.  I want to look at that passage to see if we can find some help finding joy.

Background:

The apostle Paul wrote the book of Philippians and Paul was very acquainted with suffering and pain.  He had been beaten, thrown in prison, abused, left for dead, etc.  One of the themes of the book of Philippians is suffering and pain.  Why reference a book on suffering when trying to find joy?  Well, Paul throws this crazy verse at us…

Philippians 4:4

            “Rejoice in the Lord always, again, I will say, rejoice.”

Here is where it gets frustrating.  It almost sounds as if Paul is walking by a person lying on their deathbed and ordering them to be happy about it.  “Oh, you have cancer – well put a smile on and sing a happy song…”  Is this what he means?  If not, then what does it mean to rejoice always?  How do I rejoice in the midst of a trial?  How do I rejoice when tragedy strikes?  How do I rejoice when I feel like weeping?  I think Paul helps us out with the next few verses, let’s take a look.

Philippians 4:5-13

⁵ Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; ⁶ do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. ⁷ And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

⁸ Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. ⁹ What you have learned and received and heard and seen in me—practice these things, and the God of peace will be with you.

¹⁰ I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at length you have revived your concern for me. You were indeed concerned for me, but you had no opportunity. ¹¹ Not that I am speaking of being in need, for I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.¹² I know how to be brought low, and I know how to abound. In any and every circumstance, I have learned the secret of facing plenty and hunger, abundance and need. ¹³ I can do all things through him who strengthens me.

Things to think about:

Notice the theme that Paul develops in the next few verses.  God is with you!  God…the same awesome God that can do absolutely anything and has done everything necessary for you to be saved is with you.  The Lord is at hand!  He knows what you are going through, he knows what is happening, and he knows what to do.  I know your question, “why doesn’t he do something then?”  I will give you the answer that Jubilee gave over breakfast this morning when we were talking about Jesus as our shepherd.  (loose paraphrase) “Jesus is our shepherd that keeps us safe.  When we get too close to the cliff he saves us…but, not always.  He protects us from something worse than falling because he died on the cross for our sins.  He protects us from sin and death…”  YES!  It is in the midst of my suffering and pain that I am reminded of Jesus Christ’s ultimate gift of salvation and I can find peace in the midst of difficulty.  Paul doesn’t say God will fix everything the way you want him to when you want him to.  Paul says God will give you peace.  A kind of peace that can not be explained or understood.  Peace! 

In that peace I rejoice and find joy. The situation is still horrible, the events surrounding me are painful, the tragedy is still real and it hurts, but I find peace because God is with me and I trust in Him!  My hope in Christ gives me peace today and in that I rejoice.  Is there joy today?  Yes.  Let me close by praying a prayer that Paul prayed for the church in Rome at the end of his letter to that church.

Romans 15:13

May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.

Joy for Today

       For some of us it has been a while since we would say we experienced joy.  I know some of you and the struggles in life that you face, and others who face silent tragedies would admit it has been a long time since you have felt joy.  I am not talking about laughing at a funny joke or having a good day every now and then, but real joy.  In those times of joylessness many friends and fellow Christians may say things like, “Be encouraged, all the pain will be gone in Heaven” or “think about the future because God will get you through this and in the end we get to be with Him…” etc.  it isn’t that those statements are wrong or that they are totally unhelpful.  But, some might respond – “that is great for tomorrow, but what about today?”  Is there joy today?  What a question?!?  I think it would take more than one Bible Time to deal with this one, so here is part 1 of this thought – can you find joy today?

Background:

The Israelite people had been living an up and down relationship with God for literally centuries.  Good kings would come and lead them back to God, bad kings would come and encourage idolatry and sin.  There are stories throughout the Old Testament containing times of faith and times of failure.  After God had almost completely destroyed the people using the Babylonians he saved a few (a remnant) and started to rebuild his people.  The temple, the city, and the city wall, all were destroyed by the Babylonians.  70 years later God brought his people back to Jerusalem and they rebuilt the city, the temple, and the wall.  Once they completed these tasks (after many years) they took a self assessment and discovered they were still a sinful people that broke God’s laws every day.  They had a public reading of the law and here is what happened…

Nehemiah 8:9-12

⁹ And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, “This day is holy to the Lord your God; do not mourn or weep.” For all the people wept as they heard the words of the Law.¹⁰ Then he said to them, “Go your way. Eat the fat and drink sweet wine and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready, for this day is holy to our Lord. And do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” ¹¹ So the Levites calmed all the people, saying, “Be quiet, for this day is holy; do not be grieved.” ¹² And 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.

Why did the people want to weep?  Because, they saw their sinfulness and shame. 

Why were they told to stop crying and rejoice?  Because, the day was Holy.  God was doing something in their midst.  God was working.  God was forgiving.  God was showing them grace and mercy.

Later in Nehemiah we read about this rejoicing and celebrating. 

Nehemiah 12:43

“And they offered great sacrifices that day and rejoiced, for God had made them rejoice with great joy; the women and children also rejoiced.  And the joy of Jerusalem was heard far away.”

Things to think about:

Do you find it encouraging that there was a time when people wanted to weep and God wanted to party?  (Holy partying of course)

Have you ever thought about joy as a gift?  Maybe it isn’t something that the situation forces on you, or something that you have to come up with on your own…maybe it is something that God gives you? 

My first point in answering the question – “Is there joy today?” would be that we need to see joy as something that can happen no matter what is going on, no matter how we may “feel” naturally about something, but that joy is a gift of God that he wants to give to his children.  May God give you joy today.  

By Any Means

I think that today we overuse particular words, which then makes those words less effective and meaningful.  One word that I think is overused is the word, “desperate” or “desperation.”  Are we really “desperate” for ice cream?  And, did we really see “desperation” on his face when he wanted to be on our team?  I don’t think so.  Desperate is the extreme where nothing else in this moment seems to matter; there must be a way; if this doesn't happen all is lost.  It is the woman desperate to save her baby from a burning building, a soldier desperately fighting in a war, and slaves desperately crying out for freedom.  Those extreme life situations where all is on the line justify the use of the word “desperation.”  Today, in our Bible Time I want you to know that in the true sense of the word I am desperately crying out for you to know Jesus and His free gift of salvation that you can enjoy!  Listen to the desperation in a quote from Paul in the Bible and a quote from a great evangelist preacher named George Whitefield.

Romans 9:1-3

“I am speaking the truth in Christ – I am not lying; my conscience bears me witness in the Holy Spirit – that I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart.  For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my kinsmen according to the flesh.”

Romans 10:1

“Brothers, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved.”

Romans 10:13-14

“Now I am speaking to you Gentiles.  Inasmuch then as I am an apostle to the Gentiles, I magnify my ministry in order somehow to make my fellow Jews jealous, and thus save some of them.”

George Whitefield

Our mountains of sins must all fall before this great Zerubbabel.  On Him God the Father has laid the iniquities of all that shall believe on Him; and in His own body He bare them on the tree.  There, there, by faith, O mourners in Zion, may you see your Savior hanging with arms stretched out, and hear Him, as it were, thus speaking to your souls:  “Behold how I have loved you!  Behold My hands and My feet!  Look, look into My wounded side, and see a heart fling with love: love stronger than death.  Come into My arms, O sinners, come wash your spotted souls in My heart’s blood.  See here is a fountain opened for all sin and all uncleanness!  See, O guilty souls, how the wrath of God is now abiding upon you: come, haste away, and hide yourselves in the clefts of My wounds; for I am wounded for your transgressions; I am dying that you may live forevermore.  Behold, as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so am I here lifted up upon a tree.  See how I am become a curse for you: the chastisement of your peace is upon Me.  I am thus scourged, thus wounded, thus crucified, that you by My stripes may be healed.  Oh, look unto Me, all you trembling sinners, even to the ends of the earth!  Look unto Me by faith, and you shall be saved…

Make haste then, O sinners, make haste, and come by faith to Christ.  Then this day, even this hour, nay, this moment, if you believe, Jesus Christ shall come and make His eternal abode in your hearts…Alas!  Why do you stand still?...Would weeping, would tears, prevail on you, I could wish my head were waters, and my eyes fountains of tears, that I might weep out every argument and melt you into love.  Would anything I could do, or suffer, influence your hearts, I think I could bear to pluck out my eyes, or even to lay down my life, for your sakes.”

Things to think about:

Do you believe in Jesus?  Do you believe he suffered and died for your sins and now calls you to love and follow Him?  If not, why not?  Now is the time – come unto Him and be saved!  I desperately want you to know my Savior and my Lord!

In Romans Paul is desperate for the salvation of his fellow Jews.  He would be willing to take their place in Hell if it meant saving them!  That is desperation.  Paul even said that part of his motivation for reaching so many Gentiles (non-Jews) was to make Jewish people jealous of the awesome savior Jesus and then they would believe themselves.  Amazing!  Do we have a similar desperation for the people we love?

When George Whitefield quoted Zerubbabel that was a king/governor in Judah and part of an Old Testament prophecy from Haggai…There is a link between the actual guy in the Bible and the promised Messiah – cool lesson for another day, but the easy answer is Whitefield was just using a clever name for Jesus.  The Christ, the Messiah, our promised one…etc.

Notice the desperation in the voice of Paul and in the voice of Whitefield.  To all un-believers Jesus Christ is calling you – hear his voice call you home today.  For all believers – one final question: Are we that desperate for the salvation of people we know and love?

Drop your bucket

Today I want to look at a familiar story, but I want to think about it in a slightly different way.  Most of us know the story of the Samaritan woman at the well that Jesus has a conversation with in John chapter four.  We often look to this story to teach how Jesus was welcoming of all people regardless of background or heritage.  (This woman had led a sketchy past and was ostracized in her own community, and she was a Samaritan.  Samaritans were considered a dirty race to the Jews and were often ridiculed and ignored in Jesus’ day.)  That is not where I want to go today.  Today, I want you to read this story afresh and “drop your bucket.”  Read the passage and I will tell you what I mean after…

John 4:1-42

Now when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John ² (although Jesus himself did not baptize, but only his disciples), ³ he left Judea and departed again for Galilee. ⁴ And he had to pass through Samaria. ⁵ So he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar, near the field that Jacob had given to his son Joseph. ⁶ Jacob's well was there; so Jesus, wearied as he was from his journey, was sitting beside the well. It was about the sixth hour.

⁷ A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.” ⁸ (For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.) ⁹ The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.) ¹⁰ Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.” ¹¹ The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw water with, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water? ¹² Are you greater than our father Jacob? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and his livestock.” ¹³ Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again, ¹⁴ but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” ¹⁵ The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”

¹⁶ Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” ¹⁷ The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; ¹⁸ for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” ¹⁹ The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. ²⁰ Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” ²¹ Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. ²² You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³ But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. ²⁴ God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” ²⁵ The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” ²⁶ Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”

²⁷ Just then his disciples came back. They marveled that he was talking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you seek?” or, “Why are you talking with her?” ²⁸ So the woman left her water jar and went away into town and said to the people, ²⁹ “Come, see a man who told me all that I ever did. Can this be the Christ?” ³⁰ They went out of the town and were coming to him.

³¹ Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” ³² But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.” ³³ So the disciples said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?” ³⁴ Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work. ³⁵ Do you not say, ‘There are yet four months, then comes the harvest’? Look, I tell you, lift up your eyes, and see that the fields are white for harvest. ³⁶ Already the one who reaps is receiving wages and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together. ³⁷ For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’ ³⁸ I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”

³⁹ Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman's testimony, “He told me all that I ever did.” ⁴⁰ So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. ⁴¹ And many more believed because of his word. ⁴² They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is indeed the Savior of the world.”

Things to think about:

Notice that Jesus stopped because he was thirsty and the disciples left him to go find food because he was hungry.  Jesus wanted water and he wanted food.  When the Samaritan woman showed up to draw water for herself Jesus asked her to get some for him.  The conversation is started by Jesus. 

But, who has the bucket?  Who has the ability to draw water?  The woman, right? 

When Jesus tells the woman, “do you know who you are talking to?  Don’t you know I have water of eternal life?”  in my mind I often think that Jesus could have had a little fun.  Jesus could have said, “you are offering me water?  Don’t you know I created all the water on the planet?  Don’t you know that with a thought I could create so much water I could put out the sun?  Don’t you know that I could make a lake so large it wouldn’t fit in this universe?  I don’t need your little bucket of water.”   That is my point for today.  Jesus does not need your bucket of water!  He also did not need the food the disciples went off to buy.  He may want water and food, but really he wanted those things so that he could teach and change people’s lives.  He used them for his purposes.  But, he didn’t need them. 

How often do we feel like God needs us?  He needs me to say this…He needs me to go here or there….He needs me and if I fail, then all of his plans will be ruined…no, God may want you to do lots of things and he desires for you to do them so that you and others will be changed, but He does not NEED you.  God is a giver not a receiver.  Let’s put down our buckets and stop offering God all that we think we can give him, and instead let’s open our hearts, our eyes, and our ears and receive the gift of life that he freely gives to us!