The Proof and the Praise
Advent 2019 • Sermon • Submitted
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In his commentary on the Gospel of Luke, Bruce Larson shares a story about visiting a large Presbyterian church in Omaha for a renewal conference for ministry leaders.
As everyone entered the huge sanctuary of this church that was built like a Gothic cathedral, each person was given a balloon that was filled with helium, and each person was told to release the balloon at some point during the service when they felt like expressing the joy within their hearts.
There was a conference at this church, and the peop
They could release the balloons during prayer or during the hymns. They could even do so during the sermon if the pastor said something that made them feel like rejoicing.
This was a Presbyterian church, and so the congregants were discouraged from shouting out “Hallelujah!” or “Praise the Lord!” I think we all can probably relate.
Well, throughout the service, the brightly colored balloons floated up to the ceiling one by one and sometimes two or three at a time, giving everyone there visual signs of praise to the Lord.
But at the end of the service, the organizers were surprised to see that about a third of the balloons had never been released. For whatever reason, those who held onto their balloons either felt no joy, or, if they felt it, they could not bring themselves to express it. (Larson, Bruce. Luke. United States: Thomas Nelson, 2003.)
Reading Larson’s account of that service, I began to wonder how many balloons we would have stuck there against the ceiling if we were to conduct an experiment like this here at Liberty Spring Christian Church.
The great evangelist Billy Sunday once said, “If you have no joy in your religion, there’s a leak in your Christianity somewhere.”
I wonder how many of us carry our balloons of religion to church each week without even noticing that the joy that once filled them and stretched the strings tight around our wrists has long since all leaked out.
I wonder how many of us still have that joy inside of our balloons, but we’re afraid to untie the knots that keep the visible evidence of our joy down close to us, where it’s safe from being noticed by everybody else.
Instead of releasing the balloons as praise to the God whose faithfulness gives us reason for the hope that should inspire joy, how many of us hang onto them, unable or unwilling to do what the Apostle Paul said to do:
4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice!
Phil
4 Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice! 5 Let your gentle spirit be known to all men. The Lord is near.
Today is known as Gaudete Sunday in the high-church Advent tradition.
Now, remember that I was raised in a Baptist church, so there is much about the tradition of Advent that I am still learning. So I wonder if there is anybody here among you who have celebrated Advent here for 30, 40 or 50 years or more who knows what the term Gaudete means.
Anybody?
Well, Gaudete is the Latin word for “rejoice,” and Gaudete Sunday gets its name from the short song sung at the beginning of the celebration of mass on the third Sunday of Advent in churches that do that sort of thing.
So, in the Roman Catholic church, a priest would come in for mass today, singing this verse from Philippians, and everybody who speaks Latin would understand and make the connection with Gaudete Sunday.
Now, we’re not Roman Catholic, of course, and I hope that’s the last Latin word I’ll be using today, but I do like the idea of rejoicing while we are gathered together to worship the Lord, and we’re going to take a close look at rejoicing today as we explore joy as the theme for this third week of Advent.
It’s been said that joy is at the very heart of the message of the Bible. In fact, according to one source, “the rejoicing texts” — the ones that say things like “Be glad in the Lord,” or “Rejoice greatly” or “Shout for joy” — appear 800 times in Scripture.
In the New Testament, we see the angels rejoicing over the birth of Jesus Christ, and we see the multitudes of heaven rejoicing before His throne as His church prepares for the marriage supper of the Lamb.
In fact, joy could be considered one of the overarching themes of the New Testament.
That’s appropriate, considering that the story of the New Testament is the story of God reconciling Himself to fallen mankind through the birth, death, and resurrection of His Son, Jesus Christ.
He who was Very God of Very God took on the flesh of mankind, born to a young virgin by the power of the Holy Spirit. He lived a sinless life to show us how we had been created to bring glory to His Father and to be able to give Himself as the perfect sacrifice for our sins. He was raised from the dead to prove that God had accepted that sacrifice as payment for the sins of all who would place their faith in Him. And He ascended into heaven again to prepare a place for those who hold that faith.
We were dead in our trespasses. Because of our sins, we owed the perfect and perfectly holy God a debt that we could never repay. But Jesus paid that debt for us at the cross. And because of His sacrifice, we who have placed our faith in Him as the only one who could atone for our sins now have life — not just the biological activity of our bodies but eternal life as adopted sons and daughters of God, life as those who are being made into the very image of His Son.
We ought to be seeing some balloons being released about now. This is why we can rejoice. This is why we SHOULD rejoice.
We can rejoice, because God is faithful and in His faithfulness, He kept His promise to send a Redeemer to free us from bondage to sin. If you have accepted the gift of salvation offered by that Redeemer at the cross, then you have hope, the certain confidence that He who was raised from the dead will raise His followers from physical death and into eternal life in the Kingdom of Heaven.
And if you have that hope, then you should have joy, as well, a joy that the Apostle Peter describes as “joy inexpressible” in today’s focus passage.
Turn with me, please to 1 Peter, chapter 1, and we’ll walk through the apostle’s argument for joy.
As you’re turning there, I’ll give you a bit of background.
Peter wrote this letter to Christians in churches scattered throughout Eastern Asia, in the area we now know as the nation of Turkey.
He calls them “aliens” in his greeting, and the idea is that, having followed Christ, these people now were citizens of the Kingdom of God.
They were chosen by God, they were justified before Him by the blood that Jesus shed on the cross, and they were being sanctified — made to be more like Jesus — by the Holy Spirit.
Now, let’s pick up in Verse 3, reading through verse 12.
READ
Now, these Christians, living as aliens amidst a pagan culture, were facing various trials because of their faith. Peter wrote this letter to encourage them to stand firm in their faith, to rejoice in their salvation, to be godly in the midst of their suffering, and to serve one another in humility.
Doing these things would prove their faith was genuine, and the joy they demonstrated in the doing would sound as praise to God the Father and to His Son.
Remember what Paul wrote? “Rejoice in the LORD!” If we have joy as Christians, it is only because of the Lord. It is only because, as we see in verse 3 of our passage ...
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His great mercy has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
… “the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to His great mercy, has caused us to be born again...”
“God has given believers a new, spiritual life that enables us to live in an entirely different dimension than the one our physical birth allowed.” (Earl D. Radmacher, Ronald Barclay Allen, and H. Wayne House, Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Commentary [Nashville: T. Nelson Publishers, 1999], 1677.)
In Scripture, and especially in the New Testament, life and death are not simply biological descriptions. Life isn’t about your heart beating and breath in your lungs; rather, life is about becoming the person you were made to be, the person made into the image of God to display His image in His Kingdom.
1 Earl D. Radmacher, Ronald Barclay Allen, and H. Wayne House, Nelson’s New Illustrated Bible Commentary (Nashville: T. Nelson Publishers, 1999), 1677.
And death is not the annihilation of whatever makes you a person. Death is separation from God.
Everyone in this room today is alive in a biological sense and was born through the biological processes we all learned about when we were young. But each of us was born spiritually dead because of the disobedience of Adam in the Garden of Eden.
And then each of us confirms that we carry Adam’s fallen nature by our own sinfulness. Scripture says that we were dead in our trespasses.
But those who believe in Jesus Christ — those who accept that He offered at the cross our only way to be reconciled to God — have been spiritually reborn. We have been born as new creatures in Christ because of His death.
And we have been born again into a living hope through His resurrection. This hope is not wishfulness; instead you can think of it as a dynamic confidence. You see, it’s a LIVING hope, not a dead one. It’s a living hope that we will ...
4 to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, 5 who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
4 to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you,
… obtain an imperishable and undefiled inheritance that is reserved for us in heaven.
… obtain an imperishable and undefiled inheritance that is reserved for us in heaven.
We who follow Jesus Christ in faith have been adopted as sons and daughters in the family of God. We have been made joint heirs with His only begotten Son. We have an inheritance that will never diminish, one that will never disappear, one that awaits the day when we put off this earthly tent.
And the really incredible thing is that, even if we rejoice in our salvation now, we do not fully understand it. We are children of God even now, but the full recognition of what that means will not come until we are in heaven.
So what shall we do?
REJOICE!
6 In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials,
Even when we’re in the midst of suffering. Even when the world beats us down. Even when we’re hurting. Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, rejoice! The trials are only temporary. The reward is forever. So rejoice.
Now, that phrase translated as “if necessary” here is an odd one. The NIV translates it as “had to,” and the idea is that you had to suffer. In other words, the trials we face as Christians walking in faith and obedience are brought to us by God Himself. We’ll see why in a moment.
Meanwhile, though, what should you do?
Rejoice!
Your praise in the midst of hardship, your joy in the midst of suffering is evidence of the genuineness of your faith.
That’s what Peter is saying in verse 7.
7 so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ;
Just as gold is refined by fire, your faith is refined by the trials that God allows in your life. Genuine faith is far more valuable than gold, and genuine faith will not perish. Genuine faith will be richly rewarded in heaven.
Folks, you need to know that we will all be judged one day. Those who have rejected Jesus Christ will be judged at the Great White Throne judgment. We read about this in the Book of Revelation.
11 Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them.
12 And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds.
Note here that John the Revelator describes seeing books and another book. The other book is the Book of Life, the one in which are found all the names of those who follow Jesus Christ in faith. The first books here are the books in which are recorded the deeds of all people.
Those who have rejected Jesus will not be found in the Book of Life, so they will be judged based on their deeds, and no matter how good they might have been here on earth, their own righteousness will not be sufficient to save them from hell.
15 And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire.
But Christians will be judged, too. Paul writes about this judgment in his letters to the church in Corinth.
10 For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad.
Our judgment will be according to our works, too, according to what we have done, whether good or bad.
1 Cor 3:12
14 If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. 15 If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.
12 Now if any man builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, 13 each man’s work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man’s work.
14 If any man’s work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. 15 If any man’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire.
So this judgment will not affect your salvation, but it will affect your rewards.
And, looking back to our passage in 1 Peter, what we see in verse 7 ...
Back in the Book of Revelation, John describes
7 so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ;
… is that the authentic faith that is demonstrated by godliness, humble service, and even joyful suffering will result in praise and glory and honor in that time. The context of these verses from Peter and Paul and John suggests that we will receive those things.
But even more important, our genuine faith — proved through trial and proclaimed in joy — will bring praise and honor and glory to our Savior, who deserves all praise and honor and glory, anyway.
Meanwhile, what should we do?
Rejoice in faith!
Look at verses 8 and 9.
8 and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory,
8 and though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, 9 obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls.
Peter saw Jesus. He had spent three years with Him. He saw Jesus hauled away to be tried and then crucified, and He saw Jesus after the resurrection. He was there when Jesus ascended back into heaven.
But Peter knew that the people in the churches that would receive this letter had not seen Jesus, just as we have not. But they loved Jesus anyway. That’s faith. They did not see Jesus, but they believed in Him. That’s faith.
And because of their faith, they “greatly rejoiced with joy inexpressible and full of glory.”
These people were letting go of their balloons, because they understood what that gift of faith had meant for them. They understood that they were no longer dead in their trespasses. They understood that Jesus had paid the price for their sins. They understood that they would not be among those standing for the Great White Throne judgment.
These people understood that everything had changed that night when Mary had laid her baby in a manger. God had fulfilled His promise to send Immanuel — God With Us.
This child, Jesus, had set aside His rights and privileges as the creator of the universe to become a human being. This God-man would further humble Himself “by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.”
These folks let go of their balloons, because they recognized the depth of love that their Creator had for them.
So they rejoiced. They greatly rejoiced. They greatly rejoiced with joy inexpressible and full of glory.
We are just 10 days out from Christmas, the date the Christian world has chosen to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ. For many of us, these days will be full of parties and dinners and shopping and decorating and lots of other activities that often cause us to lose sight of what it’s all about.
But if you are a follower of Christ, I want to encourage you this week to stop and think about that hillside near Bethlehem, where a bunch of shepherds were struck with awe by the sound of angels rejoicing.
“Glory to God in the highest,” they sang. “And on earth, peace, goodwill toward men.”
I like to think they released a whole bunch of balloons.