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!
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