Joy in God
This is an exegetical sermon on Romans 5:11 titled, Joy in God and identifies how God is the source and culmination of all joy. This sermon was originally preached by Pastor Duane Smets on June 22, 2006 at The Resolved Church in San Diego, CA. Audio unavailable.
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:: The Resolved :: Sunday, June 22, 2006
Duane Matthew Smets (elder)
“Joy in God”
Romans 5:11
Introduction
Romans 5:11 More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.
God of all wonder and glory, you are that being from which all that is true and joyous comes from. We are half-hearted, hard-headed creatures, who stumble and swerve and blindly miss what we long for and search for because our imaginations and childlike awe and innocence have been lost. We have forgotten and have yet to discover and re-discover what the world can be like when we have You as the fountain which brings everything into life and color. My prayer this evening as a servant of your gospel is that you would open our eyes to see your glory. Would you take all of us together here tonight and give us a taste of eternity as you teach us from your book. May these words make sense and may they be keys which open up door after door of delight and satisfaction for us, your people. Amen.
On Thursday night after the fashion show, my wife and Justin and Heidi left San Diego at 10:30pm and drove straight through the night to get to Humboldt County for josh and Megan’s wedding. Despite one speeding ticket we made it to Justin’s house in Humboldt where he grew up at about 10:00 am. Justin’s dad made us some breakfast, we took showers and then all went to sleep. I woke up a few hours later and went downstairs and sat in this awesome, big brown leather chair, and just looked out the windows for almost an hour. Justin’s parents live in the countryside and they have this big yard filled with trees and bushes and grass that is about the brightest color of green you can imagine. Through the window to my right there was a hummingbird feeder and for about 10 minutes I just watched as 6 hummingbirds kept buzzing all about this tree and taking turns drinking the sugar water. Out the window in front of me I watched as a bright blue bird with a mohawk sailed in and landed on the branch and he just sort of kept turning about and twisting his head as if he was showing off to me or something. A little bit further off in the back of the yard there is this huge tree stump bigger than the span of my arms and then there is a little pond to the left with a few fish swimming around in it. And as my city boy eyes looked out at all this I began to think about God and his glory and the gospel and our joy and our struggles and our confusion and about Jesus and what he has to do with all of this.
Sometimes it seems like there is God and the Bible and those things and they are out there and then there is life, here, in our thoughts and experiences in our daily duties and interactions. And it is hard to see how life and God really have anything to do with each other. or the way that we do think they relate is in this never ending cycle where we feel bad or frustrated with life and so we run to God to appease our conscience and we work for him for awhile but then we get tired or bored and just move on with life until we realize how screwed up things are and run to God again. And here is the thing…I don’t think that is the way it is supposed to be. I don’t think that is what Paul is teaching here in Romans. I don’t think that is the gospel and I don’t think that is what it means to be a Christian. So let’s look at our text for this evening to try and see what Christianity looks like according to verse 11 of Romans chapter 5. “More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.”
Rejoicing in hope and in suffering
We begin with the three words “more than that” and the word “rejoice.” That phrase, “more than that” is a key phrase and that word “rejoice” is a key word. They are these flags that Paul gives us to try and make what he wants to say super clear. Romans is a highly structured book filled with high thoughts and intricate arguments and many literary devices all employed to try and make it as easy as possible for us to understand what God and Jesus and the cross is all about and why it has anything to do with us.
So let’s look at what we have in Romans 5 so far. The first two verses are about becoming a Christian. one changes from being one who has a problem with the whole God thing to one who is no longer at war with God and instead has peace and thus the end of verse two reads, “we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” Notice the word “rejoice” there at the end of verse two and then again in the beginning of verse three which reads, “More than that, we also rejoice.” Our verse tonight, verse eleven begins with exact same wording, “more than that, we also rejoice.” Paul, the author of Romans, is up to something here. The same word, the same phrase which shows us that Romans chapter five is structured around the word “rejoice” and the phrase “more than that.”
See if you see the structure here because if you can see it you will see what makes verse 11 significant. In verse two rejoicing is in hope. Hope is future, at the end of one’s life and what will happen. The Christian has a standing of peace with God, which means no judgment or wrath for him in the end because of Christ. Rather than the fierce side of God the Christian will experience all the full goodness of God in ever increasing glory and that is reason to have joy. So first we have rejoicing because of what is in store for us as Christians. Then verse 3. We rejoice in sufferings.
Paul warns us that the Christian life is not an easy one but rather a hard one filled with difficulties and trials and pain…suffering. And he says that the difference in being a Christian is the way that you suffer in this life. The difference is that the Christian knows why they are suffering and the Christian experiences something special of God in suffering.
The why we suffer being that God designs it to have the effect of making us strong and to give us assurance. Being strong is perseverance and is like metal going through a fire. In suffering God puts us through the fire in order to give us a strong unbreakable faith. Assurance is proven character where we discover through suffering that there really is substance to our faith, we find out that there really is substance to what we believe and we become less insecure and fleeting in who we are and how we live our lives. In suffering God proves to us our character and makes us confident assured people.
That is the why we suffer part, the experience of God in suffering part is that he pours out his spirit into our hearts. When we are broken and at our end in suffering there is a flooding in feeling where God makes us feel close to him so that we know we are loved. His holy spirit comforts and comes alongside and sits with us and identifies with our pain and sorrow and weakness. And the result is that we are filled with hope that gets us through our suffering because we know it will end and that God is with us while we are suffering.
So we rejoice in hope of the future for the glory that is ahead and we rejoice because we know why we suffer and because God ministers to us while we suffer.
Now we come to verse 11 where we read “more than that we rejoice in God”. We have learned that we rejoice in the future of what God has for us and that we rejoice in suffering and now we learn that we rejoice in God himself. what I want to do for the rest of our time is say some things about joy, this word “rejoice”, about what it means to rejoice in the very being of God, and then how the reconciliation we receive through Christ this spiritual taste of joy is opened up to us.
To rejoice
First, to rejoice. each time this word “rejoice” has come up Justin and I have both have sought to, in the best way we know how, to explain that experiencing pleasure and pursuing pleasure is in fact what it means to be a Christian. Let me say that again, experiencing pleasure and pursuing pleasure is in fact what it means to be a Christian. And the problem is that this idea that Christianity really is about the pursuit of happiness and pleasure goes against 90 percent of what churches and preachers that call themselves Christians will tell you today. they will tell you that Christianity is a religion about what is right and wrong, what is moral or immoral, that it is all about what about you do or don’t do, what you say or don’t say, what you smoke or don’t smoke, what you drink or don’t drink, what you wear or don’t wear, who you are friends with and who you are not, or what you look like or what you don’t. And we disagree, vehemently.
We at the resolved are convinced that we are beings as humans who are made for happiness. We cannot not want to be happy. You will never hear someone saying things are just going good right now I wish something bad would happen. No one would ever say I am so happy and filled with joy right now I wish I didn’t feel like this. Joy is where we are all trying to get. And not just one experience of joy, but joy and re joy and re joy. We want to rejoice. To rejoice is the greatest longing of our hearts and we cannot help but pursue it. Jonathan Edwards said that the pursuit of pleasure is the spring of all human activity. Whether it is eating or drinking or marrying or working or playing all is out of a motive within us that wants satisfaction. We want to be happy.
God is the source and the end of all joy
Now we have here this phrase “more than that we rejoice in God”. What does the more than that refer to? First the more than that refers to the things Paul had just said in verse 10, about how God befriends us, he reconciles us, who were and many times still are enemies with God. We fight him and fight him and fight him. And despite that he saves us through his son Jesus Christ. That is huge but by saying “more than that” Paul is saying that there is something even greater. Salvation is great but it is not the greatest. Salvation too is a mean to a greater thing. Joy in God. “More than that we rejoice in God.”
The second thing “more than that” refers to is the other references to this joy. The future and the sufferings we talked about…more than our rejoicing in our future and more than rejoicing in suffering, we rejoice in God. So here is the question, what is Paul trying to get at with this phrase “more than all these things we rejoice in God”? What does that mean?
Listen carefully, these three words “rejoice in God” reflect the over arching theme of the entire book of Romans and the entire theme of the whole bible. What theme? That everything is about the glory of God. Romans is a book about the glory of God. Every single book chapter and verse of the bible is about the glory of God. It is all about God. God is the greatest of all beings. He is the all satisfying treasure of the universe. Everything that is good, anything that makes the soul of a woman or man spring with delight comes from out of his very being. He is the heavenly fountain from which all creation shouts with wonder. That is who God is. That is what it means for him to be God. He is the beginning and ending of all things.
So when Paul says “more than that we rejoice in God” he is saying something very specific about the way the Christian sees the world. In 1 Corinthians 10:31 Paul said the same thing but in a different way. He said “in whatever you do whether you eat or drink do it all for the glory of God.” Everything is about God. He is the end of all things. CS Lewis said it this way in his book “God in the Dock”, he said that if you were standing inside of a tool shed, a barn or something and you could see sunlight creeping in the barn through the front of its closed door that is one way to see light, in how it falls on the ground. But he said it is a far different thing to get down on your hands and knees and look through the gap underneath the door and follow the beams of light across the hills and through the trees back to its source in brilliant brightness of the sun. There is a difference between seeing the effects of light and seeing the source of it.
So, to rejoice in God is to follow the beams of longing and desire in our hearts for happiness and to find at the end of that longing God himself. We get down on our hands and knees and find that God is the most satisfying thing one can ever discover. That is what it is to rejoice in God himself. That is what it is to do everything to the glory of God. It is to see life and to live life with the pursuit of joy that will always end in God himself.
Through our Lord Jesus Christ
But there is a problem. And the problem is that we don’t naturally do that. Rejoicing in God is not something that comes easy to us. And if we are honest with ourselves we are probably more confused and more pissed off at God than we are happy about him most of the time.
That is why we need Jesus. Look at our verse again “more than that we rejoice in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have received reconciliation.” Now I struggled at this point in my sermon to about what and how much to say about Jesus and how much to say about reconciliation.
This phrase “Lord Jesus Christ” is a title, acknowledging him as the supreme ruler. Lord meant emperor or Caesar in the first century when this book was written. And Paul has been talking all about Jesus and his Christ work. Christ means messiah or savior, it is not Jesus’ last name but a reference to the spiritual significance of what Jesus of Nazareth did in human history on a cross. And that is what we have been talking about and studying for months now and there is a ton that we could review. We could talk about justification, how God declares us right or not guilty in the courtroom of heaven because of what Jesus did and how he can do that. We could talk about all the effects of that, about how it stops the war between God and us and gives us peace or about how it saves us from wrath and what that means and why we deserve it. But I’m not going to do any of those things. If you are interested in them go online and download some of the past sermons, you will find a lot of there.
I want to do something different because this phrase “through our Lord Jesus Christ” strikes me funny. This last week I was asked something I haven’t been asked in a while. someone asked me if I was a born again Christian and I didn’t know how to respond and so I stumbled about a little bit and then the person asked me if I had received Jesus into my heart. But that didn’t really help me much either. So then kind of frustrated with me, the person said, is Jesus your personal Lord and savior? At the point I realized it was more conversation than I really wanted to get into at the time so I finally just broke down and said, yes.
But all those statements, “born again,” “received Jesus into your heart” and “knowing Jesus as my personal Lord and savior” really weird me out. What do they mean? I understand the metaphor Jesus was making in the gospel of John about being born again, but I don’t think he meant it as a title or an accomplishment of something we do. Nowhere in the bible does it say anything about receiving Jesus into our hearts and how would you do that anyway? If Jesus is a real person I can’t sort of miniaturize him and then take him and put him inside me. That is just weird. And as far as the whole “personal Lord and savior” thing, again that phrase is nowhere in the bible and right here in this very verse we are studying tonight, Paul says that Jesus is the Lord and savior whether we acknowledge him as that or not. It seems that that phrase so easily lends to magnifying our own status, “personal”, rather than exalting the status of Jesus.
So the question is what does it mean to do something through our Lord Jesus Christ? Here in verse 11 we are told that we are to rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ. The immediate answer is through faith or belief or trusting that Jesus work on the cross is sufficient for us. Like verse 2 said earlier, “through our Lord Jesus Christ we have [also] obtained access by faith.” But there is something more here because Jesus is a person. Jesus work on the cross is extremely significant and important but what makes it significant is the kind of person that Jesus was.
Justin and I have been talking lately about how we talk about Jesus a lot. He is here in Romans. We talk a lot about understanding what the cross did and what it means for us. But there is also a sense in which it seems like Jesus is missing. There is something about his person, his life and his ministry that we have passed over. So we are considering preaching a few sermons about the life of Jesus before we go into this next section which is all about comparing the person, Jesus, to the person, Adam in the bible.
This phrase “through our Lord Jesus Christ” raises an important question for us and the question is how we are supposed to relate to Jesus. And I think imagining him as some sort of invisible friend who I have a personal relationship with because I invite into my heart and become born again causes a major error in the way that we as Christians are supposed to relate to Son of God. So how are we to relate?
Receiving reconciliation
I believe the answer is two-fold. The first I mentioned already. We put our faith in his work. We believe that Jesus did die on the cross and did rise again and is alive today and seated on the throne in heaven. That is why we don’t see him now. because God is doing something with the course of history and right now is the time where Jesus sits on the throne and let’s the gospel be preached throughout the world until the time comes when all who are his are gathered and he returns and all the events of the end of our lives here in the world as we know it change. That is the first way we are to relate to Jesus, as the king who victoriously took care of our human wretchedness and lives today.
The second way is in getting to know and understand what kind of person this king Jesus is. And the only way to do that is by studying his life when he was here on earth. it is not by looking internally within yourself and speculating what he is like and coming up with all these nice fu fu qualities of what you and your relationship is like with the invisible person that lives inside of your heart. No, it is getting to know the real Jesus of the Bible. So you have to read it. There are four books about his life when he was here on earth: Matthew, mark, Luke, and john.
So the last thing I want to do tonight is to read a story about Jesus from one of the gospels. The final part of our verse says “through whom we have received reconciliation.” We rejoice in God. And we rejoice in God through Jesus. And the great thing about Jesus is that he reconciles us. As Nate said last week, this word “reconciliation” means to draw one near, to make one a friend, to make things better between two opposing parties. To reconcile is to make-up, like men have to do after being asses to their spouse. And then you get the benefits of making up.
Here is the thing, when you read about the life of Jesus in the gospels, Matthew, mark, Luke and john…Jesus is constantly reconciling people. Drawing them near and befriending those whom society, and religious leaders, said that he shouldn’t.
Listen to the story of Jesus and a whore in Luke 7 based on its re-telling by Simon Kistemaker in his book, “The Conversations of Jesus.”
there was a woman considered to be immoral by the people in her village and the leaders of the church because she was a prostitute. because of her conduct, she was excommunicated and barred from attending the worship services. she was called a sinner. yet this woman hated her debased life. she longed for relief from a guilty conscience, knowing that her life was in ruins. she longed for normalacy. she needed someon to love her and lead her to God to find forgiveness of sin and to cleanse her guilty soul. the pastors refused to do anything spiritual for her, they would not even allow her to come to them. the coming of a prostitute to a respected religious leader would be interpreted as a solicitation and that act would increase her guilt. one day this woman heard jesus preaching. she heard him calling people to repent of their sins and wicked ways and she heard him inviting them to confess their sins and shortcomings to God, and he assured them that God in tender love would graciously forgive them. he said that anyone who would come to God would never be cast out, for God would forgive and restore fallen human beings. these words of Jesus touched the woman deeply. she went home, fell to her knees and in prayer confessed her sinful life to God, who heard her plea for forgiveness and with his Spirit calmed her soul. heavenly peace entered her inner being and she became filled with a desire to thank Jesus for the words she had heart that morning. she wanted to give him something that was precious to her, an alabaster jar of perfume that cost a whole year’s worth of wages. she knew that a prominent pastor in town named simon had invited Jesus and other leading people in the community to come to his house for lunch in his outdoor courtyard. she walked into the courtyard and saw jesus reclining at the table on a low bench with his left arm on the table and his feet sticking out away from it. when the woman came up behind jesus, she could no longer control her emotions, and tears filled her eyes. she kneeled down, and her teardrops fell on his feet. unable to dry his feet with a towel, she used her loose-hanging hair. that action was taboo, for a woman who let her hair down in public was considered a prostitute who was making herself available. she proceeded to kiss Jesus’ feet and then she took the jar of perfume, broke off the tope and poured its contents on his feet. when simon observed these actions, he grumbled loud enough for those nearby to hear him: “if this preacher were a prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman touched him, for she is a sinful woman.” Jesus responded by giving simon some words of reproof and then he turned to the woman and said, “your sins are forgiven” and with a voice filled with love and comfort said, “your faith has saved you, go in peace.” and his words brought full restoration of her body and soul and whe went on to live her life in peace with God.
This is the Jesus of the bible. One who reconciles sinners? And that is who we are. We are either one of two people in this story. One who either receives reconciliation or who doesn’t. We are either the self-righteous pastor or we are the whore. we must make a decision of whether or not we are going to continue thinking we are better than everyone else and keep trying to climb up the moral ladder or whether we will admit that we are a mess and in deep need of God.
I was reading some excerpts from mike yaconelli’s work that Jeff Kline gave me this last week. Listen to what he says. “Our real self is full of sin; it is full of flaws and brokenness. Knowing ourselves is not a warm fuzzy, it is a frightening encounter with the tension of ourselves – who we are and who we are meant to be…the battle in church today is not abortion. It is not pornography. It is not homosexuality. It is reality. It is honesty. We are afraid to be ourselves, to let ourselves be known. To come out of hiding. What the world is longing to see in the church is not moral purity as much as moral reality. The world wants to see a church that is made up of people who are not afraid of their blemishes, because their blemishes only point to the unblemished character of Jesus. The power of the church is not a parade of flawless people, but of a flawless Christ who embraces our flaws. The church is not made up of whole people, but rather broken people who find wholeness in a Christ who was broken for us.”
Conclusion
Let’s conclude. “More than that we rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ through whom we have received reconciliation.” Jesus Christ makes himself available to us. Reconciliation is here to receive and it opens us a spiritual taste for the glory of God and we discover joy.
As we move to partake of elements of wine and bread, remember Jesus’ words when he took the bread, “this is my body, which is broken for you.” Think of the life of Jesus, God himself, the most loving man ever to walk the earth, laying down his body, and his life for you. Remember Jesus words when he took the wine and said, “This is the new covenant in my blood which is poured out for you.” Think of the death of Jesus and what that work on the cross does for you in making you right with God. As we give of our money, think of the whore, for that is what we are, and give with a joyful heart of love and adoration. Let’s pray.
