Mandurah, 07.10.2009
Preamble
I remember some years ago having a very important revelation – I liked God and he liked me. Sometimes we find it easier to talk about loving God than liking God – this talk is about being more aware of the pleasure of God on our lives.
Introduction
1. To know God’s joy in our hearts is to connect with him as our Father, “because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!”” (Gal 4:6)
2. Knowing God from the heart i.e. our deepest insides (Prov 4:23) brings stability and endurance in the Christian life
3. one of the biggest obstacles to knowing God in this way is the struggle to believe that we can please him e.g. while working on this topic I came across a survey done with American Christians – 5% feel loved by God most of the time, 2% feel God the Father is joyful, 1% feel that the Father is pleased with them most of the time
4. to move beyond this sort of confusion about God we need to and look to Jesus
Jesus as the Joy of God
1. As I was out praying and singing recently I could sense how much joy the Father had in eternity in having Jesus as his Son. Jesus is the joy of the Father.
2. when God created us he did so to share his joy: Proverbs 8:30-31 says, “then I was beside him, like a master workman, and I was daily his delight, rejoicing before him always, 31 rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the children of man.”
3. When Jesus was born the angel said to the shepherds (humble, ordinary folk), “ “Fear not, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy that will be for all the people. 11 For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, who is Christ the Lord.” (Luke 2:10-12)
4. At Jesus’ baptism, “a voice (of the Father) came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased.”” (Luke 3:22)
5. Immediately after this Jesus went into the desert to fight Satan filled with the strength of the joy of the Lord (Neh 8:10), even though he was starving this joy never left him. When the devil “ said to him, “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread.”” (Matt 4:3), Jesus rebuked him Satan easily because he was very aware of the Father’s joy.
6. through his ministry Jesus was filled with joy as he saw people turning to God, “In that same hour he rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children (humble/simple folk); yes, Father, for such was your gracious will.” (Luke 10:21).
7. Jesus promised to share his own with us joy, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” (John 15:11); “So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.” (John 16:22).
8. it is sharing this joy which motivated Jesus to go to the cross for us, “looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God” (Heb 12:2)
9. Sin always involves substituting destructive sources of pleasure for the joy of knowing God. To deal with sin on the cross Jesus had to completely lose the sense of the Father’s pleasure. Praying in the garden of Gethsemane he says, ““My soul is very sorrowful, even to death.” (Mark 14:34); then on the cross he cries out “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34) because he has no awareness of the Father’s satisfaction over his life.
10. The resurrection reverses all of God’s grief and in going back to heaven Jesus has entered into the fullness of joy, “You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions.”” (Heb 1:9); “in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” (Ps 16:11)
11. When Jesus pours out the Holy Spirit he pours out his joy in bringing us to the Father, “And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit,” (1 Thess 1:6)
JY experience of hours of overwhelming flooding joy soon after conversion; “and hope does not put us to shame, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us.” (Rom 5:5) n.b. joy is the opposite of shame.
Knowing and Growing in Joy
1. We bring joy to Jesus by accepting the Father’s love and we bring joy to the Father by accepting Jesus. Remember what Jesus said, “there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance” (Luke 15:7).
2. Spiritual joy is a clear indicator that we have accepted God the Father loves us and is pleased with us through Jesus.
3. Sin is serious mostly because it gets in the way of bringing joy to the Father of Jesus.
4. the key to Christian growth is obeying the command to make Jesus our only ultimate joy, “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.” (Phil 4:4).
5. what the Bible calls the kingdom of God is the rule of God, and God’s intention is to rule our lives through joy, “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” (Rom 14:17)
6. joy is also a fruit of the Holy Spirit, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy….” (Gal 5:22)
7. joy is our eternal destiny; various Old Testament scriptures speak of “everlasting joy” (Isa 35:10; 51:11; 61:7), Jesus told of receiving people into heaven, “His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant….. Enter into the joy of your master.’” (Matt 25:23). Jude pronounces this promise of blessing on believers, “24 Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy” (Jude 24). In eternity God’s joy in us will know no limits: “The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save; he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing.” (Zeph 3:17). One statement of faith asks: Why did God create man? Then answers, “To worship God and enjoy him forever.”
8. If all this is true why do we struggle so much?
Application and Conclusion
1. one of the hardest things to learn in that spiritual joy is deepened through suffering and persecution, Jesus said. ““Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. 12 Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” (Matt 5:11). This is what happened to the apostles, “and when they had called in the apostles, they beat them and charged them not to speak in the name of Jesus, and let them go. 41 Then they left the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer dishonour for the name.” (Acts 5:40-41). The Letter of James says, “Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, 3 for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. 4 And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.” (James 1:2-3)
2. It is a very sad thing that many Christians believe that God is very hard to please. Where does this belief come from? (It reflects the struggles of life, especially with trying to please parents and particularly our fathers – anger.)
3. we all need to turn away from thinking about God as Father in ways other than what we see revealed in Jesus e.g. years ago I was struggling with a sense that God was impossible to please because he was so “perfect”. Praying about this one day I had a very clear sense that it was all about trying to meet the expectations of my own father, when I repented of this idol I had an overwhelming sense of everything filled with the goodness of God.
4. most religious people have a view of God as someone who wants to punish, when the earthquake hit the Indonesian island of Sumatra recently many Muslims there were saying that it was God’s punishment upon them because they are not devout enough. A prominent pastor in Victoria said in response to the bushfire disaster in February: “God’s conditional protection has been removed from the nation of Australia, in particular Victoria, for approving the slaughter of innocent children in the womb.” What sort of image of God and of Jesus does this portray?
5. Only Jesus can give us that lasting joy that keeps us from the many addictions of life and gives us strength to defeat the devil.
6. God is looking for two sorts of people: those who have great pleasure in revealing his heart as Father, and those who want to believe in Jesus in such a way that they are pleased to have him as their Father.