The Fullness of Joy: God Cleanses Us of our Fences

 May 5 2024

Luke 14:25-33

         Spring is not only a wonderful time of flowers and trees bursting into life but it is also a time to get at cleaning the house. As I was helping Jennifer clean the house the other day, I had several thoughts. The first is that no matter how often we clean and dust everything the dirt just keeps coming.I consider myself a rather cleanly person so I am baffled at just how much dirt you can find in a house. I mean, it is not like I am intentionally bringing dirt into the house and sprinkling it around. I guess I will just have to blame the dog for the continual flow of dust into our house.The second thought I had as I worked at washing down the entertainment center, is that after you begin cleaning you suddenly see dust and dirt everywhere. It amazes me that I can turn a blind eye to how bad everything has gotten and then when I intentionally look for it, I then can see dust everywhere. And yes, I really am hoping that this ability to see the dust and dirt around me goes away as fast as it came.

         Well, just as our homes always end up getting dusty and dirty, the truth is that our spiritual lives end up just like our homes, a little dusty and dirty as time rolls on. Now it might be a little surprising for us to find out that it is inevitable that our spiritual lives also stand in need of a spring cleaning. But listen to what James tells us at the end of the first chapter where he implores us, “…to keep ourselves unstained, or without pollution by the world.” James is clearly telling us that we have to work at keeping the dirt and dust of this world from settling in so that the ways of the world become a permanent stain on a life that seeks after an unblemished record. What we must also wonder is just how all that the world throws at us impacts the fullness of the joy that Jesus promises to us. This promise of Jesus is found in the fifteenth chapter of John where Jesus says to us, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full to overflowing.” You see, Jesus desires that we have the most amazingly joyful life. He wants us to be certain that we know that the God we worship, is the one who loves us best, the one who wants the very best for all of us. This is what we have been discovering in this series of messages entitled, “The Fullness of Joy.”. Today we are going to consider the importance of allowing God to clean us up. Why we should even care about cleaning up our act? The answer is that we need to keep clean to keep bearing fruit. This is what Jesus teaches us in the fifteenth chapter of John, “Every branch in me that does not bear fruit my Father takes away. Every branch that does bear fruit he cleans so that it might bear more fruit.” Either we allow God to keep us clean and bear more and more fruit or we allow the pollution of the world to slowly but surely keep us from bearing any fruit at all.So, this is why we need to lean in to what Jesus says especially when he gives us a clue as to how God cleanses us. After Jesus speaks of the necessity of being cleansed by God, he tells his disciples, “Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoke to you”. Here, it is important that we understand that what Jesus speaks of is a singular word not the fullness of all that he has taught to us. This clue should make us think back to another important teaching of Jesus that we know as the parable of the sower. As found in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew, Jesus there speaks about the seed of the sower being like the word of the kingdom. This word of the kingdom is what the people of Israel were to hear every morning when they prayed what they called the Shema, which is Hebrew for, “hear”. Every morning the people of Israel were to wake up and hear, and what is it that they were to hear? They were to hear the word spoken by God to, “Love”. They were to love God with all of their heart. They were to love God with all of their soul. They were to love God with everything that he had given to them, what they knew as their power or strength. Every morning God called out, do you hear my word, this word called love?

         This word of God calling us to love, this is the word that the disciples had heard spoken to them from the mouth of Jesus. This, Jesus tells us is how the disciples were now clean. So, when we are told that the Father cleanses the vine so that we might be able to bear more fruit we now know that this happens through this prayer to love God. You see, the Father cleanses us by calling out to us every morning, asking us to hear once again his word, love. We need to allow God to cleanses us daily, I mean it kind of makes sense that we cannot clean ourselves up every spring as we do with our homes. No, every morning we need to hear God whisper to us, to love him with all that we are and all that we have.

We listen because God in his mercy, loved us and gave us life and we, in turn, hear his word, and we love God by taking this life he gave us, and we work with God by offering mercy to others. You see, the way our lives become more and more cleansed of the pollution of this world is by loving God more and more every day. When we do so we should begin to realize that the only power that sin has in our lives is the power that we give to that sin by yielding our lives in service to sin. But as we come every morning to hear the still, small voice of God whisper to us to go out and love and we love as he asks us to, then sin and the influence of this world is scrubbed away.

         What may surprise us is that this cleansing by the word, this is what Jesus is speaking about in todays scripture. What makes this hard for us to see is that Jesus is speaking to the crowds who only desired the power which Jesus seemed to possess to serve their own ends and, I believe, that Jesus was well aware of this. So, to thin the herd, Jesus tells them just what they were in for if they were serious about following him about. What is interesting about what Jesus told the crowd that day was that his teaching followed a a very familiar pattern. This pattern that we need to be aware of is found when Jesus speaks about the need for those who follow him, to pick up and carry their cross. This is often the way Jesus illustrates just what is meant to love God with all of one’s soul or life. When we hear Jesus speak this way then there is a very good chance that he is referring to the Shema, the morning prayer of the people of God.  Knowing that Jesus is using this prayer as his framework for his teaching is so helpful for us in figuring out just what Jesus means when he says in todays scripture that we should just go and hate on everybody that’s important to us. I’m pretty sure this is one of those times that the disciples looked at each other and scratched their heads. I mean, try and hear what Jesus is saying with fresh ears: If anyone comes to me and does not hate themselves, and hates their father, and hates their mother, and hates their wife, and hates their children, and hates their brothers and hates their sisters, yes, and you have to hate even your own life; if you cannot hate every person and every relation you might have and top it off by hating yourself, then don’t even bother trying to be my disciples.” I can imagine that when Jesus begins to tell everybody who wanted to tag along with him that they needed to tell everyone in their family to take a back seat this is when the crowd began to slowly dwindle away. Geez, Jesus don’t you know that haters are just going to hate, hate hate! I also imagine that the disciples, upon hearing this probably looked down at their feet and began kicking the dirt. This following Jesus demands a lot. Yet, just what is it that is really being demanded here by Jesus? You see, when we understand that Jesus is using the Shema, then we can also know that what Jesus is saying when he says go forth and pretty much hate everyone is that this is the flip side to God saying that we are to love him with all of our heart. God demands whole hearted devotion and he rightly deserves to be so loved. So what we must figure out is just what is it about the love of our families which might affect our whole hearted love of God? Well, what we also know is that God desires to give everyone the very best experience of life in the age to come and that this experience is for everyone, as we said earlier, there is no second class with God. So what I believe Jesus wants us to discover today is, just where does our need for a second class come from? The answer that Jesus points us to is that this need for second class begins within our families. It is easy for not just football teams but families as well, to get an, us-against-the-world, mindset. What becomes clear is that what needs cleansed out of our lives are all of the fences that we have built, the ones that mark off who is with us and who is against us, and this usually begins with family. Yet if we want the world to know us as being the people of God then when we give our families a special status above those who have not made it inside our little fences our lives end up telling the world that our God plays favorites, that he is a God who cannot be considered to be a just God, therefore he is a  judge who will not judge fairly and he simply cannot be a God who has any answer to the evil of this world which messes up our lives. Can you understand why God pleads for us to allow him to cleanse us of our fences?

Are you beginning to see, I hope, that we must love God in our hearts before we do anything else. This is the only way that we will have lives that are rightly ordered.What is so fascinating is that those in the crowds were the very people commanded by God to pray the Shema, this call to hear the word, love, spoken by God every morning. Yet, they never considered that when love of family became a fence which kept them from loving the stranger, they ceased to love God by their actions because they had portrayed God in a way that kept that stranger from loving God. This is why when God says to hear his call to love him it means that we love him enough to let him cleanse us of our fences.

What has to be understood is that when love God with all of our heart, this means that God has become for us our greatest treasure. We hear this in the one-hundredth and nineteenth Psalm, where we are told that the psalmist treasured God’s word in his heart do that he would not sin against God.  As we continue to ponder this theme of treasures, how can we not but help hear Jesus say to us the teaching found in the sixth chapter of Matthew, “…lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart is also.” You see, what Jesus instructs us to do is to treasure God and trust his ways. God is worthy to be treasured  because he desires for all of us to experience the very best life.  We can never forget that the very best life is only when no one lives a second class life. Only as our lives proclaim that there is a God who is bringing forth the very best for all people can we know ourselves as being clothed with the righteousness of God. You see, the way we tell this story is not just through words, but it is also told through our bearing fruit for the kingdom, letting our lives be a foretaste of the greater things that are to come. This is why we say that we are to not only desire the very best that is ahead but we also are to inspire others to join us in this very best life by living lives which are filled with the goodness that we long for. As we find in the fifth chapter of Galatians, “…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” When we love God with all of our heart and everyday and we ask him to cleanse us of our fences, God will take those fences and he will build bridges. Do you see why to love God first, means that those we fenced off in second place can now find the God who cleanses us of our fences so that no one ever has to give a second thought to being second class ever again. Only when the fences are cleansed from our lives can we experience the very best life which is always a life together. Our love now compels us to share this heavenly treasure, our God who loves us best, with all we meet. How wonderful to help others to trade in their earthly treasures, this second best experience, for something infinitely greater, the very best experience of life in the age to come.

         When we figure out that Jesus is speaking about what it means to love God, first with our hearts, then it follows that he is going to speak to how we are to love God with our very souls and with all that God has graciously given to us. So when Jesus says, “…therefore, anyone who does not renounce all that they have cannot be my disciple”, we know that Jesus is saying that we can no longer consider that what we have been given is just for us and ours. Now when the love of God cleanses our fences, we cross the bridges that God builds to touch a suffering world with his mercy. So we might say that the way we are to love God with what has been given to us is for us to take those resources and use them in building a joyful house of prayer for all people because this is shape of the future to come. In prayer we hear the wish of our Heavenly Father that all of his creation become a home where all can people can be known by God and know God and there experience endless, unspeakable, joy full of glory. 

         At last we come to loving God with our whole self. When God has cleansed us of our fences, our life becomes about bridges which lead us up to ever greater life, life together with God and one another. This greater life is marked by a greater love which Jesus tells us, moves us to lay down our life for our friends. Cleansed of our fences, we realize that life is not about building a legacy to bring honor to ourselves but instead life is about having a life that God honors. Jesus says in the twelfth chapter of John, “Whoever loves his life loses is. Whoever hates his life in this world keeps it for eternal life. If anyone serves me, he must follow me. Where I am, there my servant will be also. If anyone serves me, the Father will honor him.” When we love God, and we let God cleanse us of our fences, then even our very lives can become a bridge to love others in order to lead others through death to life, just as Jesus did for us upon the cross.So let us the enter into the joy of our Master and hear the words, “Well done good and faithful servant.”  Amen!

Fullness of Joy: Never Give a Second Thought about being Second Class

 April 28 2024

Matthew 21:18-22

         One of the things that you figure out pretty quick is that all of us make a lot of assumptions in life, and can we all admit it, a lot of the time we just get it wrong. Well, one of the assumptions that we often make in a church setting is that everybody who shows up on any given Sunday morning is going to automatically know how to pray. Prayer is just one of those things we do without a whole lot of thought and we never really stop to consider, does everybody here understand what is going on when we come to our time of prayer? What makes this such a big deal is that prayer is nothing less than our lifeline to God, this connection between the heart of God and our hearts, this is what prayer is supposed to be all about. So this very essential part of our relationship with God is kind of left up to each of us to figure out which is strange if you think about it. 

So as we try and figure out what prayer is all about, we quite naturally begin to make assumptions about prayer which we hope are true. One of these assumptions is that prayer is a lot about asking for healing for those who are sick. I mean, honestly isn’t this what we hear the most about when we come to our time of prayer? And while it is true that prayer is about crying out to the Great Physician for healing and wholeness when we, or those we love, are sick, what we cannot forget is that prayer is more than this. Prayer can be shouts of praise, cry’s of thanksgiving, wails of sorrow and  the pleading for wisdom and even so much more than any of these. The thought behind the original Greek phrase for prayer is quite simply an exchange of wishes. So we could say that prayer is sharing our wishes, longings, and desires with God and in return, allowing God to share his wishes, longings and desires with us. This means that as we share our longing for healing for ourselves or someone we love that we, in turn, allow God to share with us his longing for all of his creation to be healed and made whole again.

         While we do make many assumptions as we try and make sense of our prayer life, one aspect of prayer is never based on an assumption and that is the character of our God. You see, what we must be absolutely certain of when we come to God in prayer is that God has a plan to deal with all of the evil in our world and, second, we must know that our God is able to bring this plan to fulfillment. This is why we say that we believe that the best is yet to come. This is our hope of the resurrection becoming for us the reality we can live in, right now. When we come to our time of prayer what we need, more than anything else, is for God to keep our hope alive. This is why we pray for miracles, a work which proves that God’s good power still reigns over the evil of this age. It is in prayer that we abide in the Saviors love so that we can rise and go out to bear fruit for the kingdom. To bear fruit means that we are to have lives which our focused on the very best that is yet to come, so that we no longer desire the second best of this world. And when our lives are tuned toward God’s good future, this is when the Holy Spirit works in and through us so that others will be inspired to put their hopes in the very best that is yet to come. What joy fills our hearts when we come into the assembly of believers and get a taste of the indescribable goodness that God has in store for us. This is the joy that Jesus, in the fifteenth chapter of John, promised would be ours, a joy that fills us to overflowing. In this series of messages call, “The Fullness of Joy” , we are discovering how this promise of Jesus can become a reality for us to live in. 

Well, when we take a look at the last words of Jesus, we find that just before Jesus promises to make us people overflowing with joy he also makes another strange promise in the seventh verse of this same fifteenth chapter of John. There Jesus says, “If you abide in me, and I abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.” When you hear these words of Jesus, I hope it is becoming clearer as to why I thought I should address the assumptions we might have about prayer. Isn’t it tempting to pluck this verse out of its context and treat God like our own personal Amazon. I mean, doesn’t what Jesus says here sound like we have just hit the lottery?It is pretty easy for us to hone in on that phrase, “ask whatever you wish”, and we become quite deaf to the necessity that such a prayer can only be fulfilled if one is abiding in Jesus and if Jesus is abiding in them. This is a pretty important, “if”, don’t you think? You see, to abide in Jesus means that we are resting in the certainty of the God revealed to us by Jesus. What we are certain about our God is that he is a God of justice. What we mean when we say this is that God is going to deal with all of the evil that runs rampant in our world. Our God does not turn a blind eye to all of the brokenness in this evil age. No, our God entered into this evil age and took upon himself all of our brokenness, allowing the brokenness to break him, his body broken, his blood poured out. Yet this was not the end because three days later, our God whose name is Jesus, arose, his body made whole and alive through the Holy Spirit so that united with him, we might be made whole and alive in the Holy Spirit as well. This is what it means for us to go from the second best of this world to live in the very best of the next one. If this is what we are absolutely certain of then this will, no doubt, affect the way that we live, as people who now live to tell the world of the goodness of our God, a God of justice who will one day set everything right. Does this certainty affect how we pray? Absolutely! When we pray from this certainty we have in the goodness of God, what we desire is for God to keep our hope alive, for God to guard our faith in the very best as we live in a world which has accepted second best as the best that its ever going to be.

         There is also something else that must be brought up in time of prayer which is vital to us being people whose lives are to tell the good news that our God is a God of justice who most assuredly is going to deal with evil and death, once for all. The importance of this item that must be on our prayer list is what Jesus teaches us in our scripture for today. It is difficult, I have to admit, to figure out just what this item is from this story which seems to be nothing more than a story of Jesus and his all consuming anger which was taken out on a poor, unsuspecting, fig tree. Yet as so often is the case, things are never quite what they seem because in this story, which seems to be about a fruit bearing tree, we also find that this curious incident is concluded by Jesus telling his disciples that whatever they ask in prayer, they would receive, if they merely had faith. Once again, it sure sounds like a formula for turning us all into spoiled brats who demand to get all that they desire. But, just as when Jesus speaks about prayer when he spoke about he being the vine and we being the branches, we cannot forget that what tempers this teaching on prayer is that Jesus says that to do so requires faith.This means that our prayer depends on the certainty we have that God is going to bring forth the very best for us to one day live in. 

What this means for us is that we cannot take these words of Jesus telling us that if only we had faith, that we can just ask for whatever we wish, and just like Amazon, there comes what we asked for, ready for us to take hold of it. No, when we keep this teaching of Jesus about prayer connected to this story of the cursed fig tree, we must understand that whatever has caused the anger of Jesus, this has a bearing on how we interpret what Jesus meant when he says to pray and ask for whatever we wish. It just makes sense that we should only ask for that which pleases God.

         Fortunately for us, the context of this story of the cursed fig tree helps us in knowing just what it is that upsets Jesus so that we can figure out what it is that pleases him. If we look at what is happening earlier in this chapter of Matthew, we find that the day before Jesus saw the fig tree, he drove the sellers and the money changers out of the Temple. Jesus was angry because the people of Israel had made the house of God into a den for thieves. What a terrible tragedy this was because God’s original intent was that his Temple was to be a house of prayer for all nations. This was the vision which had been foretold by Isaiah. In the fifty-sixth chapter, he says, “…the foreigners who join themselves to the Lord, to minister to him, to love the name of the Lord, and to be his servants, everyone who keeps the Sabbath and does not profane it, and holds fast my covenant, these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer which… is for all people.” You see, what we are to come away from this is that with God no one has to give a second thought about being second class. God is saying that his house is a house for all people, so come on in. Yet, when Jesus entered into the Temple, the court that God had designed to be where foreigners could worship was being used instead as a bank and a livestock yard.  Sounds like an ideal worship space, doesn’t it? Can you imagine how very second class it must have felt like to be anyone who was not one of God’s people?The authorities who allowed such a mess to be in a part of the Temple which pointed to God’s promised fulfillment were refusing to accept this idea that with God no one has to give a second thought about being second class. 

         The story that the people of Israel told themselves was that they were God’s special people to the exclusion of others, and of course, this story affected every aspect of their lives. They did not have to tell their story because the way that they lived their lives, the way they interacted with those around them, the manner in which they worshipped, even, spoke volumes about what they hoped the future was going to look like. When we know that the future will be the very best the world has ever known, it is easy to figure out that for the people of God, the very best was a world was a world without all those they held to be second class. What could possibly be wrong with treating others like second class people just so you can write them off in the end? I mean why does such thinking matter so much to God? It matters because if those called the people of God hold that some people are second class and can be written off in the end, then God can no longer be considered to be a God of justice. You see, the very same blood flows through all people, as Paul puts it in the seventeenth chapter of Acts. This means that what God does for one person he must do for every person, otherwise he no longer can be considered to be a just God. Think about it: Why bother to pray to God if he is a God who picks and chooses just who it is that he will claim as his own? Can you get how profoundly important it is that everyone knows that with our God no one has to give a second thought about being a second class person. Otherwise, if it is alright for us to consider some to be second class citizens then what we are telling the world is that God is alright with a world with second class people in it. But this is not who are God is, no, our God is the one that no one ever has to give a second thought about being second class. If this is not who our God is then he would not be a God who we can believe in let alone pray to.

         When we realize how the people of Israel had told the people of the nations that they were second class by their disrespect of their worship area then the anger of Jesus becomes understandable. You see, what God had expected from his people is found in the tenth verse of the ninth chapter of Hosea. There we hear God say, “Like grapes in the wilderness, I found Israel. Like the first fruit on the fig tree in its first season, I saw the fathers of Israel.”  When God had first begun his relationship with Israel, he enjoyed his life with the people he called his own, just as much as we enjoy that first taste of strawberry shortcake. They had been second class slaves who had been rescued by the God who holds that no one is second class in his sight. God hoped that his people would be those who treated others like he had treated them yet how quickly they forgot where they had come from.They ended up having no trouble putting the people of the nations right where they had come from, in second class. So when Jesus went looking for figs hoping to find the first of those delicious fruits and he came away empty, how could he not think about his experience in the Temple?  Jesus went looking for lives that bore fruit, lives which witnessed to the goodness and justice of God, lives that treated no one as second class but he came up empty, just as he had come up empty with that poor fig tree. You see, Jesus was upset that the reason why God’s own people had not bore fruit was that they could not give up their need for second class. The question this poses to us, then, is this: can we let go of our need for second class? Are we indeed ready to let our lives tell the story of the God who loves us, giving his own Son, the very best, so that we might never give a second thought about being second class? If this is our wish, then our wish, our prayer, must be that God fill us with his love. As Paul teaches us at the beginning of the fifth chapter of Romans, “our hope does not put us to shame because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit.” What if this is what we wished in our time of prayer, that God fill us with his love so that we would never give a second thought about anyone being second class? What joy, to know that we never have to give it a second thought about being second class in the eyes of God! And  what amazing joy that overflows in us when the love of God is alive in us so that we never have to give a second thought about anyone else being second class. In this certainty we can say to the Temple and the mountain it rests upon that we are done with them and the false message they proclaimed. With the Holy Spirit dwelling in us we are the new Temple because here is the house of prayer, the house which is for all people who come and are filled to overflowing with joy! They rejoice because they never have to have a second thought about being second class for here they find that the love of God fills every heart. To his honor and glory! Amen.

 

The Fullness of Joy: Trading Second Best for the Very Best

 April 21 2024

Colossians 1:9-13

         Every day I can be found walking my dog, Mazy, at least two to three times. So to say that I am thrilled with the spring time weather and the blooming flowers which follow, is an understatement. It is amazing how many different plants and trees are showing off right now. We often think of daffodils and hyacinths as being early spring flowers yet there are trees such as the maple trees, that also bloom pretty early. And while we enjoy the living fireworks these spring flowers provide, if all a plant did was bloom it would certainly think itself a terrible failure. No, a flower’s hope is that it might be transformed into a fruit, a carrier of a seed. The red flowers on the maple trees desire only to become those annoying little whirly gigs blowing around in the early summer breezes. Every plant wants to ensure that its life will continue on in the event of its inevitable death. Even in nature, the deeper thoughts about God and life continuing after death, seem to be even found there as well.

         Today as we come to the third part of this series of messages called, “The Fullness of Joy”, we want to consider just what does it mean for us as followers of Jesus to bear fruit. We hear in our scripture for today that Paul says that in addition to living a life in a manner worthy of the Lord, a life that our Lord Jesus would be pleased with, we are to be people who bear fruit in every good work and as we do so, we are to increase in our knowledge of God. The reason why we need to be growing in our knowledge of who God is is that God desires that we yield ourselves to him, to allow him to take hold of our life,  to be our strength when we are weak. Can you see why there is joy in knowing our Heavenly Father? And as we show the Father’s goodness to others, we come to know our Heavenly Father better than before and our joy increases as well. 

         Today we want to make this connection that joy and producing fruit for the kingdom go hand in hand. This is what Paul teaches us in his letter to the Colossians, that we are to depend on God to strengthen us with his power according to his glorious might, a power that enables us to endure with patience whatever we may face. We are also promised that there, as we patiently endure our trials, joy will be present with us.Yet as good as this all sounds what is difficult for us to figure out is just what is meant by this idea of bearing fruit. Perhaps the best place to begin is with the teachings of Jesus from the seventh chapter of Matthew. There Jesus uses this image of bearing fruit in reference to how we are to know who are the false prophets in our midst. Just who are those who are the wolves who are parading around in their best wool coat? The answer Jesus gives is that the way that we can tell just who are the prophets of a false god and those who speak in the power of the one, true, living God is by their fruit. Just as one would not expect to find many grapes on a blackberry bush so too we would not expect a tree that is rotten to the core to produce anything but evil fruit. It just makes sense, Jesus continues, that a tree that is good at its core is going to produce beautiful fruit and a tree that is rotten at its core is going to produce evil fruit. It would be rather odd to think that a good tree would bear evil fruit just as it is rather absurd to think that a tree that is rotten at its core is going to produce beautiful fruit. So, it is the kind of fruit that our lives put forth, this is how we can be certain as to who those are who speak in the power of the Holy Spirit.

         What Jesus teaches us here is rather straight forward yet what causes us to hesitate a bit is just what does Jesus mean when he speaks of the evil and the good. We know, from looking at the story Jesus told about the fishermen and their nets, as recorded in the thirteenth chapter of Matthew, that at the end of this age, the angels will sit down and sort out all the people separating the evil from the good. This tells us that good is what is the age to come is going to be all about. Evil, then, is everything about this world that is less than good, all that God is going to eventually do away with. This is why John tells us in the second chapter of his first letter, that we are to, “not love this world or the things in this world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in them. For all that is in the world-the desires of the flesh, and the desires of the eyes, and the pride in our possessions-is not from the Father but is instead from the world. And this world is passing away, along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.” The trees that are rotten at the core are this way because the life of such a tree is based on a reality which is passing away, most certainly dead. It is this dead and dying way of life which is evil. If we put it in terms of the difference between the happiness we go searching for, and the joy of the Lord which finds us in the most surprising places, then we could say that the evil fruit is a life which believes that their best experiences are behind them. These are people who have had a mountain top experience, one that was pleasing to their base desires, an experience that was attractive to look at, an experience which gave them pride in all of their treasures. For these people, life becomes a continual effort to try and get that same feeling and experience back, to hold so fast to a memory that, in doing so, we let the reality of our moments slip away. Good, on the other hand, is a life founded on joy, the joy of living life in a love relationship with the God who desires to give us the very best. This is the God that we discover is with us even in our afflictions because we have a God who is afflicted when we are afflicted. This knowing that our God is continually with us and that there is nothing that can ever separate us from his love, is the eternal source of our joy, a joy that can be experienced even in the worst of what life throws at us. For those who find delight in the joy of our Heavenly Father who smiles upon us as we work with him, they are always looking forward for they know that the joy that is tasted today is but a small portion of the greater banquet that is to come. This means that they face the future with excitement as the very best is yet to come. 

         The bearing of fruit then is about getting the right bearings for our life. To bear fruit is to be headed in the right direction towards the very best, knowing that ahead of us is when we will experience in full, the joy of the life to come. This focus upon the future that God has in store for us is the basis of the faith that we find in what is often called the Faith Hall of Fame found in the eleventh chapter of the book of Hebrews. As you read this chapter you find that the hero’s of the Old Testament all had one thing in common which was that they believed that the very best is ahead of us. They all knew that God has something greater planned, a great banquet, a cosmic festival gathering, where those of heaven and earth unite in celebration. It is this faith in the future God is making ready, this affected very much, how those hero’s of faith lived in the present. They were willing to give up the chasing after the delights of this world, that which is second best, at best, in order that they might go on to have the very best. To them it just made sense to give up what was second best, at best, in order to wait for what is undeniably the very best. This focus on the very best is what kept these hero’s of the faith from succumbing to the temptation of sin. They were willing to be diligent at dealing with their sin because they never wanted that which is second best, at best, from keeping them from experiencing the very best that God has for all of us.

         So when we desire the very best God has for us, this good future God is preparing, this is what keeps us diligent in letting go of anything that is second best, at best, which might try and take ahold of us here in the present. So to bear fruit, yes, we need to desire the very best but we also must go further and inspire others to join us in this very best future God has for us. Listen to how Paul speaks about bearing fruit in the fifth chapter of Galatians, telling us that the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. What Paul describes sounds very much like the very best life, doesn’t it? I mean, doesn’t a world where people look out for one another, seeking the very best for one another, sound great? A world where people bear with one another, one where they graciously meet the needs of those around them and one where there is moral excellence in the way people interact with each other, doesn’t this sound so much better than the second best existence we know right now? It just makes sense that a world where people know that real power is found when we gently do life with each other, a life where every person is ruled through Jesus being the king of their hearts, this is a world, that when it is experienced, creates a longing in those who have grown tired of second best and are ready to trade in this second best life so that they can receive the very best God has to offer. How can we not be filled with joy as we experience a small taste of the very best God has for us in the age to come, right now, in the midst of this evil age.

         This foretaste of life in the age to come, is how Paul describes our experience with the Holy Spirit. The way that the Spirit gives the world a sampling of what God has planned is through working in us, the church, so that in our lives the white light of God’s faithful love is seen as a rainbow of wonderful experiences that Paul calls the fruits of the Spirit. Jesus also speaks of bearing fruit as we find in the fifteenth chapter of John, where Jesus on the night he was betrayed told his disciples, ‘I am the vine and you are the branches. Whoever abides in me and I in him, he it is that bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.” And further Jesus adds, “By this is my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples. As my Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love.” The way that we can live a life which desires the very best, and inspires others to desire the very best is only by having our life securely anchored by the One who desires the very best for us. As we enter into the open arms of God we come to know the goodness of God, his faithful love. In response to this loyal love of God, we obey what Jesus has taught to us about what pleases and delights our Heavenly Father. As we know the Father and in our obedience, we show the Father, we come to know the Father in a deeper, more meaningful way. In this way, we come to abide in the Father’s love, to find our rest in his comfort so that we, at last, long to remain always with him. But even so, we must not believe that this resting in the Father’s love is all that we are called to do. Our lives are to tell the world that our God has a plan to take this second best experience of life and transform it, in a twinkling of an eye, into a world where we experience the very best God has always desired for us to know. This is what it means for us to bear good fruit, lives that bear the good news that the best is yet to come. So we must always be diligent to refuse to give an audience to the false gods of our day who desire to speak despair into our hearts. We must be careful that we never attempt to make the best of a life in the here and now, which will never be nothing more than second best, at best. You see, this is what evil really is, everything that is less than good, a second best experience, at best. But when we know the Father who wants the very best for us, what we call, “good”, then we must be people who refuse to let go of our belief that the very best is waiting for all of us. This is the importance of our bearing fruit, so that we are known as people who know that our Father desires the very best for us, going so far as to give the very best, his Son for us and in response, we desire the very best, this new age where nothing second best will ever be found. We are to not only desire this very best life but also, we are to inspire others to have the same desire, to have this very best life. This means that this life we live together as the family of God has to give those who wander into our gatherings a sense that this longing all of us have for something better is not just some pipe dream but is rather a reality they can have a taste of and find a hope to anchor their souls.

         And yes, when we have lives which point others to the truth that the very best is waiting for us, we most certainly experience the fullness of joy because by living such a life we are stating that the evil of this world will most assuredly be overcome. As we read in the fifth chapter of John’s first letter, we have a victory which overcomes the world, and this victory is our faith. Our faith is our belief that the very best, the good we all look for, is coming up in the age to come. This is our faith, this is our victory. John asks us in this chapter, who is it that overcomes the world? The answer is that the one who overcomes this world is the one who has placed their faith in the fact that Jesus is the Son of God. We must hang on to this truth that Jesus came from our good, good Father’s side so that he might, through his death and resurrection, make a way for us to live forever in the presence of our good, good, Father which is without a doubt, the very best that life can be. So how can we not rejoice, and jump for joy knowing that our faith is our victory. How can we not find exceeding delight knowing that this world, which bears down on us so hard at times, is still a world that one day will be overcome. So let us just be done with any thoughts of accepting second best. Let us instead, keep our eyes looking forward for, yes indeed, the best is yet to come. Go and bear this fruit for all to see. To the glory of the Father! Amen!

The Fullness of Joy: If you Know, You Show:If You Show, You Know

 April 14 2024

Luke 10:17-24

         I was reading some articles the other day and I remembered something about John Wesley that I had forgotten about, but which goes along with this idea of us being people who are full of joy. Wesley is the founder of the Methodist movement. Wesley believed that God’s salvation through Christ is for all people, and that this salvation is ours through the grace of Jesus when we place our faith in him. It still amazes me that this is not what all Christian’s profess to believe. Yet this is not all of what John Wesley taught because he also believed that holy people are happy people. Let’s just pause here to think about this connection because if your experience is anything like mine, some of the people who profess to be holy, righteous, people are not always the happiest people. To be honest, it seems like the more holy people want to be the more miserable they seem to be which is sad if you agree with what Wesley teaches us. Yet even if there are some very religious people who could be classified as the uptight, upright, people of God, we nonetheless must believe in the truth that Jesus tells us in the fifteenth chapter of John, the eleventh verse, “These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”In these series of messages called appropriately, “The Fullness of Joy”, we are going to discover just how we can experience this joy and happiness that Jesus promises to us. Why this is so important, as we stated last week, is that everyone is really busy pursuing happiness yet even so, there are a lot of miserable people in the world. You see, what happens is that we get into this cycle where we think that if we just had the right experience or the right toy, or the right person in our life we would at last find happiness. But then suffering inevitably comes along and our happiness evaporates because this happiness is just not enough to overcome the pain and hurt that we feel. So we keep looking for that next thing that might be able to be the means to our lasting happiness. I gave the image, last week, that this endless pursuit of happiness is like someone who is trying to light a fire in the rain, this trying to find happiness even though we all know the next hurt, the next bout of sadness, is lurking just around the next corner. Well, into this situation come those who have a kind of happiness that remains with them even in the very midst of their hurt, and their sorrow and their pain. These people have found a way to have a fire that will not and cannot be put out by what life hands us. So this joy that Jesus promises to us not only helps us endure the difficulties of life, it also is a witness which is greater than all our words, to the power and the difference that Jesus makes in our life.

When we know about this joy, then we will want to take another look at just what it was that Jesus teaches us that will lead us to be people of a joy which cannot be defeated. What we find is that Jesus speaks of the importance for us to abide in him. The fifteenth chapter of John opens with Jesus telling us, “Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me.” So we are left wondering, just what does it mean for us to abide in Jesus? Well, we are given an image which helps us visualize what it means for us to abide. This picture is found in the thirteenth chapter of John, where on the night he was betrayed, there in the upper room, we are told in the twenty-third verse, “One of the disciples, whom Jesus loved, was reclining at the table close to Jesus.” When  this disciple asked Jesus a question he leaned back against Jesus so that he rested upon him. So, Jesus invites us to lean back, go ahead, rest upon the very heart of Jesus for this is what it really means to abide.

         Well, the way that God brings us to this place, this resting upon the very heart of Jesus is a very hands-on operation. At least this is what the words about the works of God wish to convey to us. When we pray at the end of the Lord’s Prayer that our Heavenly Father, “deliver us from evil”, what we are asking for is that God drag us from the realm of evil and bring us into his kingdom of good. In much the same manner, when Paul speaks, in the fifth chapter of Second Corinthians, about what effect the love of God has on us he says that it grabs ahold of us and constrains us. And in the eighth chapter of Romans, Paul says that the Holy Spirit aggressively takes a hold of us to support us in our weakness. When we know that this is how God operates then we have to consider just what is happening in the second verse of the sixty-fifth chapter of Isaiah where God tells Isaiah, “all day long I have held out my hands to a rebellious people, who walk in a way that is not good, following their own devices, a people who provoke me to my face continually…”.Here God is desperately trying to save his people, reaching out to them to bring them to his side, to abide with them, yet they would have nothing to do with him because their disobedience had kept them from knowing this God who loved them and wanted the very best for them.They had not considered that when they obeyed God, when they showed God to others that this is when they could have come to know God and so grow with God and trust him more. 

         What the example of the people of Israel teaches us then is how very important it is for us to know the God who seeks to draw us close to him.When we know the goodness of the God who desires to take hold of our lives this is when we will gladly yield ourselves to him. In our scripture for today Luke records this image of Jesus rejoicing in the Holy Spirit because those who had been obedient to him had come back from their mission, ecstatic because they had come to know God as they showed God to others. Actually, to say that Jesus was rejoicing doesn’t quite cut it because what Jesus was really doing was jumping and leaping, and shouting and laughing his head off. We really need more paintings of Jesus being this serious at being silly. If ever their was a genuine picture that holiness and happiness go together here it is, the very Son of God caught up in the Spirit of Holiness, lost in wonder and joy. Jesus was ecstatic because through him, his Heavenly Father had revealed to seventy-two of his friends who he really was. These servants of Jesus had been invited by his Heavenly Father to join him in his work. So, out they went in obedience to the command of Jesus. In every little town which dotted the landscape they not only declared that God’s kingdom had indeed come but they demonstrated to everyone they met just what life would be like under the reign of God.They came to know God by being people who showed God to others along the way. 

         So lets stop and think about how these workers for God had been affected by their obedience to the command of Jesus. First, Jesus had revealed to them who their Heavenly Father really was. By allowing themselves to be taken hold of  this life Jesus spoke of, now they were living a life lived in the continual presence of the Father. Jesus had assured them that their Heavenly Father would provide what they needed, what they needed to eat, what they needed to drink and even what they needed to wear, all they had to do is to be actively pursuing God’s kingdom. Why else would they head out on a journey with no money, no luggage, not even any shoes, unless they were sure that they had a Heavenly Father who would provide what they needed, when they needed it?  Instead of worrying about their basic needs they threw themselves into seeking out where the reign of God might be, so focused in their mission that they refused to stop and chat when they met someone on the road, refusing to care that others might find them to be rude. No, they wanted to experience the blessing Jesus had promised to them that if they kept themselves actively pursuing peace then they should have no doubts that they were the very sons and daughters of Almighty God. So it comes as no surprise that when they entered a town or village, they came stating, “Peace be on this house.” The giving of this greeting was to hopefully receive in response, an offering of peace in return. If the house owner was found to be one who was searching for peace, then these workers of Jesus were to enter in. Jesus also gave his workers strict instructions that they were told to eat and drink whatever they were served as an act of hospitality and love. Jesus had done something very similar when he ate and drank with the sinners and the outcasts. Now as they hung out with the locals, these harvesters of the kingdom were to bring healing to the sick as a sign that the long awaited kingdom of God had arrived in their neighborhood.. Through their words and actions, these workers were telling everyone they met the very truth about God, who in the fifty-seventh chapter of Isaiah says, “I dwell in the high and holy place, and I also am with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to give new life to the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the broken.” This is the God who made himself known to those hurting people found in village after village throughout all of Judaea, a God not just of heaven but also of the lowliest places on Earth. The reason God moves among the crushed and humble is that as we are told in the sixty-third chapter of Isaiah, our God says that in his people’s affliction, he was afflicted. God not only watches over us in love but he goes further, and in our pain, he hurts, in our suffering, God suffers.This is what those seventy-two discovered in a very powerful way that theirs was a God who was found among the afflicted, those who were demon possessed and those wracked by disease. Here, in this less than heavenly place, here is where God, their Savior, met these people of Judaea, right there in their suffering.  Is it any wonder that the seventy two laborers that Jesus had sent out had returned with joy? What they knew about their Father through what Jesus had taught them became for them a lived experience. They learned, out in the harvest field, that they had been working with their Heavenly Father who was always present with them. It is not hard to imagine that as they had taken what they had known from the teachings of Jesus and they went forth and lived in the continual presence of the Father’s joy, that in doing so, they had most assuredly drawn closer to God, abiding with him in a closer and more personal way. 

         You see, it is not difficult to understand why the people of Israel refused to be drawn into the loving presence of God because even though he had revealed himself to them, they simply refused to demonstrate this life to those around them. Perhaps the reason for their unwillingness to be a faithful witness to the God who had revealed himself to them is that they were like many people who believe that the whole reason to place your faith in God is so that they can be successful according to worldly standards. Many look to God for physical blessings and yet what they fail to realize is that the only blessing God promises to us is his presence. God has always been very straight forward about this as we find at the end of the twentieth chapter of Exodus where God tells his people, “In every place where I cause my name to be remembered, I will come to you and I will bless you.” We are to know that we are blessed when God comes close to us. Now, for those who only seek the shallow happiness of this world, those who want God to bless them with prosperity, this does not seem like very good news. Yet, for those who are hurting and suffering, to hear Jesus say to us, “Blessed are those who mourn for they shall be comforted”, these are wonderful words indeed. Jesus rejoiced that the wise and understanding had missed out on what God was up to right in front of them, which seems a little odd, doesn’t it? Yet the reason why Jesus did so is that he knew that those who were wise and understanding are those who are trying to figure out the way that they can manipulate the system for their advantage. How very different from those Jesus calls the, “little children”. A child delights at discovering the face of their Father which had previously been hidden from them. They long to see a smile on this one who loves them and desires the best for them. Those who have not lost their childlike wonder desire to know their Father only so that they might please him more and more, to find their joy basking in the glow of the Fathers joyous face.

         Our knowing more and more of what matters to our Heavenly Father, this should be our life’s desire. This is what Jesus is teaching us in the seventeenth chapter of John, when he says, “…this is eternal life, that we know the only, true God, and that we know Jesus our King, sent to us by God.” The life of the age to come is going to be an endless pursuit of knowing God in an ever deeper measure. So, Jesus might ask us, why not begin right now, today, to know the Father who rejoices over you? Yet we may wonder, just how can we know God? We come to know God when we, like the seventy-two, obey Jesus, and we show God to others. As we show God to others, as we show others that God supplies all we need, as we show others that God is found among the lowly and the afflicted, as we show others that our God always leads with love, what happens is that we know God in a deeper more profound way. It is not much different for us, if you want to know somebody, work with them. So if you want to know God, work with him, show others who God really is. When you know God then you will want to show God and as you show God, this is when you really get to know God on a whole other level.There is no greater truth than to say that if we know God then our lives will show God. When we treat the lowly, those crushed by the weight of life, those who find themselves afflicted with love and dignity, this is our witness that we are people who really do know God. As people who know God then of course, where we will be found is showing God to others, and no doubt, as we show God we can expect to know God in a new and deeper way. Oh, what joy to show others the God they can know for themselves so that there might always be more and more people who find joy in the abiding presence of the God who rejoices over us! Amen!