June 22 2025
Matthew 5:4, Philippians 2:12-18
I always love to hear people tell me that they have decided to read the Bible. Yet, upon hearing about their interest in reading the Bible, I tell people to begin with the gospel accounts so that they can get acquainted with Jesus first, instead of beginning at the beginning and reading Genesis as one would normally do with a book. The reason for such advice is that the first five books of the Bible contain a number of strange rules, and laws and sacrifices that may cause some people to give up reading the Bible altogether. If nothing else, these books at least make us grateful for Jesus. I mean before Jesus the law was clear that milk and meat could not share the same dish which means no cheeseburgers. Can you imagine the sadness of never tasting a cheeseburger? And how about no pulled pork or ham sandwiches because the Jewish food laws prohibit eating pork. Such laws and rules fill the pages of books like Leviticus and Deuteronomy.
It was when I was plodding through Deuteronomy one time that I was struck by what God demanded of every single person in the nation. There in the sixteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, God commands his people that when they celebrate the two harvest festivals called the Feast of Weeks and the Feast of Tabernacles, there was to be non-stop rejoicing from everybody. Listen to how clear God makes his expectations: “You shall be joyful at your festivals, you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, the Levite priests, the strangers among you, the fatherless and the widows. For seven days you shall rejoice and celebrate the festival. For the Lord will bless you in your harvest, in all the works of your hands and your joy will be complete.” Now, there were several things that made me scratch my head when I read this. The first question is just how do you command someone to enjoy themselves? I mean, I have been a Dad long enough that trying to tell another, smaller human being that they should stop their crying and put a smile on their face is an exercise in futility. God must obviously know the very same thing so we must understand that this command from God is to be seen as an expectation, something that should be the right response for everyone concerned. In other words, if you are not full of joy during this festival you have seriously missed the point. So God expects much joy, the shouting and jumping kind of joy and God expects such a response from everyone, no one, it seems is excluded. You would think that the poor stranger who found himself in the territory during this time would be one to left off the hook, or the poor child with no father or a widow struggling to make ends meet would be told that no joy was expected from them. But no, this is not the case; all have to be ready to rejoice. And not just to have joy for a moment or an hour; no, there shall be rejoicing from everyone for seven days. Have you ever witnessed a time when everyone you knew was full of joy for seven full days? This has to make us wonder how God could expect such a response for that length of time.
There are two other interesting aspects of this command to rejoice by God. The first is that this list of who is to rejoice during these festivals is exactly the same group of people who the prophet Joel, tells us will have the Holy Spirit poured out in them. The Spirit will be given to the sons and daughters, the male and female servants, the old and the young, all will be given the holy presence of God and the implication seems to be that the Spirit will be found among those who are rejoicing. The second interesting connection is that when the people rejoice for seven days as God expects, then the people would be blest in their harvest, in all the works of their hands, and this is when their joy, we are told, will be complete. This same phrase, “your joy shall be complete”, is spoke by Jesus to his disciples. In the fifteenth chapter of John, Jesus tells his disciples, “ These things I have spoke to you that that my joy shall be in you, and that your joy shall be complete.” Jesus says, word for word, what God promises his people in the sixteenth chapter of Deuteronomy.
Hopefully, by now it is apparent that in this third part of our message series called, “The Taste of Blessing”, we are looking at the experience of joy which is a part of the fruit of the Spirit. Through the Holy Spirit we are blessed as we taste and see just how good our God really is. The fruit of the Spirit, then, is the experiences we have when we encounter for ourselves the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives. Last week we learned how we must come into our relationship with God knowing that there is nothing that we must bring to the table. We must, like Simon Peter, learn that we are indeed, desperate people who are, on our own, unable to do the good that God expects of us. The flesh is weak, so unable to do the good we want, that no matter how strong our spirit inside of us is, it still is not able to move us to do the good we desire to do. Yet, even so, as we come before God with empty hands he, in turn, lays in those same hands, the entirety of his kingdom. What wells up inside of us in that moment is love for this one who has everything desires to give us who have absolutely nothing, all of who he us.
Today, we are going to look at the experience we have with the Holy Spirit that is the source of our joy. What we have learned so far from the command God gave to his people in the sixteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, is that joy is the result of knowing that what stands between us and death is God. The people of Israel were to celebrate their harvest by acknowledging that God alone brought the increase. The harvest depends on this simple idea that life comes forth out of death through the work of God. Now, the fact that Israel gave their God the credit for the harvest was nothing special because all of the nations around them had similar harvest festivals. What made the harvest festivals of Israel so very different is that since God is acknowledged as the source of life then he demands that this life be given to all people. You see, what makes this list of people mentioned in these verses so interesting is that none of them are the actual people who harvested the crop. The children of Israel, nor their servants could be given credit for the harvest. And the Levite priest served in the Temple so they were far from the work of the field.The same could be said of the strangers passing through, the fatherless and the widows. The reason that all of these could be full of joy is that God stood between all of them and their fear of death. God gave such an abundant increase that everyone in the nation could partake on the harvest. This is the way that joy was experienced by everyone during this festival.
The importance of this strange command of God that all must rejoice is so very helpful in understanding this teaching of Jesus which says:”Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Now this teaching is often quoted to bring strength to those grieving the death of a loved one, and in these cases it does seem to be a fitting scripture. Yet, in the context of experiencing and tasting the goodness of God this teaching of Jesus has a rather different meaning. In this setting, the mourning spoken of here is not the death of a loved one but it is rather our own death that has brought us sorrow. This follows the realization of the first blessing that all of us are people who are poor of spirit, unable to do the good that we know we ought to do. Paul writes at the end of the seventh chapter of the book of Romans, that he was a captive of the law of sin. He realizes that sin controlled all of his actions and he exclaims, “…Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” I believe that the reality that we all have bodies which are dead is the source of mourning and lament that we find in the second blessing that Jesus teaches us about. I believe that Paul writes so vividly about this moment of becoming aware of his true nature because he was one who had a life and death moment with the living Christ and he lived to tell about it.
The story of Paul, once called Saul, encountering the risen Jesus on the road to Damascus is one that seems to be known by many people in and out of church circles. This story is recorded in the ninth chapter of Acts and is also mentioned two other times in this book. Now, for us to really grasp what happened with Saul, later called Paul, and the risen Jesus, we have to begin with a man named Stephen. Stephen was a follower of Jesus, a man who was chosen to serve the many widows who needed cared for in Jerusalem. Stephen though, not only served others but being full of grace and power, he also did great signs and wonders for all to see. The powerful men of Judaea could see that many were going to follow Jesus if Stephan kept on demonstrating a life that had such wisdom and power of the Holy Spirit. So they stirred up the crowds, saying Stephen was against the Temple because Jesus had said that the Temple was to be destroyed and rebuilt three days later. The end result was that the Council found Stephen guilty of blasphemy, a sentence requiring a death by stoning. Paul approved of this death of Stephen, and he was there when Stephen, kneeling on the ground, began to pray in the power of the Spirit. Stephen looked up, and he was able to gaze into the heavens and he exclaimed, “Behold, I see the heavens open up, and the Son of Man stands at the right hand of God”. What Stephen sees is the same vision that Daniel beheld as recorded in the ninth chapter of the book of Daniel. There, one like the Son of Man, a human figure, is presented before the Ancient of Days. We are then told that the Ancient of Days has given this Son of Man dominion, glory and a kingdom so that all should come and serve him. Now, the vision does not stop there because it also tells us that the holy ones of God shall also receive the kingdom and possess this kingdom as being their own. So this is an incredible promise that tells us that not only has the Son of Man been given dominion, and the kingdom from the Ancient of days but this kingdom is also to be shared with those called, “the holy ones”. Paul, as a Pharisee would have understood himself as being one of these holy ones because he lived his life according to the holiness requirements of the priests in the Temples.As he writes in the third chapter of Philippians, according to flesh his resume was quite impressive. He was born to the right family, went to the right school, followed all the rules. He could say that according to the righteous requirements of the Law, he stood as one who had to be holy. So if his holiness was without question then why was this Stephan, this follower of Jesus, being greeted into heaven, as if the Son of Man knew this Stephen to be one of his holy ones. I believe that the mind of Saul, or Paul as he was later known, was full of questions as he headed for Damascus to root out these followers of Jesus in order to bring them to Jerusalem to face the same fate as Stephen. As he approached the city of Damascus, Saul suddenly sees a bright light, and being struck blind, he falls to the ground. Then he hears these words, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” Saul scratches his head as he tries to figure out just whose voice this was. Saul asks this voice, “Who are you Lord?”, implying that he knew this voice came from heaven. This voice replied, “I am Jesus, who you are persecuting”. There is so much here to unpack in such a short moment. The bright light was surely a sign that the Son of Man had broken into our earthly realm. There could now be no doubt that this one who was prophesied by Daniel was indeed none other than Jesus. The question for Paul though was just how had he been persecuting this Jesus? The only answer was that this Jesus, the very Son of Man had united himself with those who followed him. This helped to explain this vision of Daniel because the Son of Man could only stand before the Ancient of Days if he was indeed holy. So this Jesus must be holy and so we’re those who followed him. By being united with him, they too now shared in the holiness of Jesus. So Stephen could behold Jesus, the Son of Man before the throne of God because he was indeed holy, united in someway with this one called Jesus. Yet, this was not all, for Paul also knew that in that moment, that if Jesus was indeed the Son of Man, then when Saul persecuted these followers of Jesus he was indeed persecuting the Son of Man. So there he stood, trembling before the Son of Man, knowing full well that he stood guilty of the judgment of death. Saul was a dead man if there ever was one. I mean what else could one expect when you violently oppose the king whose domain shall have no end.
What Paul experienced in such a dramatic fashion is the same experience all of us must have for as Jesus tells us, “Blessed are those who mourn and lament this death which seems to have such a great hold upon us.” The blessing of such a terrifying moment is that in this moment we discover that no matter how holy we might consider ourselves, these efforts can not overcome death and its power over us. And just like was found in every harvest festival celebrated by the people of Israel, what stands between our death and our life is God. This is why Jesus, the Son of Man, confronted Saul that day on the road to Damascus, so that he might come between Saul and this road of death that he traveled on. You see, even though it was abundantly clear that Saul was on the wrong side of things, Jesus the Son of Man, did not condemn Saul. How else could Paul write at the beginning of the eighth chapter of Romans, that now there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus and do so with such conviction. This life beyond his sure demise is what Paul had experienced in his encounter with Jesus there on the Damascus road. You see, Paul was not struck dead there in that moment. Instead, Jesus told Saul to go into the city and there at the hands of Ananias, one of the followers of Jesus, Saul was to be baptized. Before Paul was baptized though, Ananias, told Paul, “The Lord Jesus who appeared to you on the road by which you came has sent me to you so that you might regain your sight and be filled with the Holy Spirit.” Here is the blessing that Jesus promises to those who mourn, the giving to us of the one whose name is the Comforter. This is how Jesus brings life to those who lament their own body of death. Life is brought to us through the giving of the Spirit. This is what Paul says in our scripture for today, that we are to, “…work out our own salvation with fear and trembling for it is God who works within us both to will and to work for his good pleasure.” What good news this is for all of us, news that is to open up within us a fountain of joy which cannot be stopped. Here is God doing exactly what he did with the harvest festivals of old, being the very one who stands between us and the death that seeks to consume us. When we are united with Jesus Christ through the Spirit, then as Paul says in the third chapter of Philippians, “I count everything a total loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus Christ as my Lord.” All Paul wanted to do after meeting Jesus, this God who places his very life between us and the death that waits for all of us, is to know this Jesus more, to know of this power Jesus had to overcome death. Where happiness is found in all so many fleeting things which come and go, joy is found in knowing Jesus and is therefore, eternal. This is why Paul could say that even if he would be poured out as a drink offering, he was still glad and rejoicing with all the saints. So, in the same spirit as Paul, let us too be glad and rejoice with him. Amen!
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