Pursuing Joy

“Praise the LORD! For it is good to sing praises to our God; for it is pleasant, and a song of praise is fitting.”
Psalms 147:1 ESV

During this past Lord’s Day morning worship, we sang “O Great God” by Bob Kauflin, Director of Worship Development for Sovereign Grace Ministries.  The past few days, verse two has rung out in my ears.  What amazing grace God has poured out on His children.  So amazing that we would still be lost without it, groping in the darkness for any glimmer of hope or peace in the things of this world and shunning heaven’s joys.  O Great God indeed!!  He has given us life in Jesus through the Spirit!

I was blinded by my sin
Had no ears to hear Your voice
Did not know Your love within
Had no taste for heaven’s joys
Then Your Spirit gave me life
Opened up Your Word to me
Through the gospel of Your Son
Gave me endless hope and peace

You can find the song, which was recorded on The Valley of Vision album, here.

“‘Come unto me,’ he says, ‘and I will give you.’  You say, ‘Lord, I cannot give you anything.’  He does not want anything.  Come to Jesus, and he says, ‘I will give you.’  Not what you give to God, but what he gives to you, will be your salvation.  ‘I will give you‘ — that is the gospel in four words.

Will you come and have it?  It lies open before you.”

~ C. H. Spurgeon, The Treasury of the New Testament, I:175.  Italics original

(HT: Ray Ortlund)

“God is the ultimate focus of Christ’s death on the cross.  Yes, Jesus died for sins and for the unrighteous, but ultimately Jesus died for God and his glory.  For when Christ brings us to God, he brings us into a right relationship with God.  It’s as if the universe is set back where it should be – a relationship in which he is the center and we orbit around him in a safe proximity and nearness, a relationship in which his glory is the point and we find our joy and meaning in being a display of his worth rather than our own.”

~ Michael Lawrence, It Is Well, 215

When we find our joy and meaning in living as “a display of his worth rather than our own”, we do what we were created to do.  We find ultimate joy when we decrease and He increases because He is the ultimate focus of everything.  Though everything around us and everything within us tells us to put ourselves on display for all to see, Christ died so we could live for Our Father and His glory.  When He is the center, everything is as it should be… even when thinking about the ultimate purpose of the cross.

“God creates everything for his glory… All of life and history is about glorifying God. My very reason for drawing breath today is to glorify God.”

~ Michael Lawrence, Biblical Theology in the Life of the Church, 124-125

Why are you breathing today?

“Jesus’ body bore our sins on the tree, and it was a horrible, bloody, fatal, and physical reality.  The New Testament tells us this to underscore the extent of the servant’s service on our behalf (cf. Phil. 2:5-11).  Not only did he take the form of a man and humble himself to wear the garb of a servant, but he also became obedient.  He even became obedient unto the ghastly death of the cross for our sakes.  We see that the whole point was to emphasize how full, complete, and extensive was the servant’s obedience to the Father on our behalf.  Even when his body is marred beyond human semblance, he bows himself down and says, “For the sake of the salvation of sinners, my Father, let your will be done.”

~ Sinclair Ferguson; Christ, the Sin-Bearer, in Atonement, 113-114

“But may all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you; may those who love your salvation say continually, ‘Great is the Lord!’”

Psalm 40:16

Seeking God is one of the main priorities of the church.  “One thing have I asked of the Lord, that will I seek after: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord and to inquire in his temple” (Psalm 27:4).  John Piper, in a sermon on Psalm 40, says, “We seek to behold his beauty, to be with him, to meditate on him. This is our central business in the church—to see the beauty of God. To get our heads into the heavens. To know him for who he is. He is the main reality—not buildings, not Christians, not missions, not heaven. God himself is what we seek.”

But this seeking isn’t complete, it seems, until we proclaim His greatness.  In verses 9-10, David tells how he did not hide or conceal what God has done for him.  He told the people about God’s faithfulness, steadfast love and salvation.  In verse 16, the seeking in the first half is concluded in the second half with proclamation, namely continually saying, “Great is the Lord!”  Piper says, “He is supreme and his supremacy is your passion.”  Part of having a passion for His supremacy is proclaiming it!

So the church’s mission to our neighbors and the nations in which we tell them who God is, what He has done and that salvation is found in Him alone through Jesus Christ flows out of the church’s pursuing God.  A passion for evangelism does not simply flow out of a burden for the lost.  It flows out of a heart that seeks God, a heart that rejoices and is glad in God (Psalm 40:16a).  When we go hard after God and pursue our joy in Christ alone, God is glorified.  When God grants joy and gladness in Him through our seeking, we find that our seeking and loving and worshiping of God is not separate from our proclamation of Him.  Piper says:

“Our passion for God is our persuasion for the nations… our joy in God is both our worship and our evangelism.”

Bono, the frontman of U2, wrote an introduction to a book containing a selection of Psalms.  It isn’t extraordinarily eye-opening, nor extraordinarily helpful either.  However, there is one section that brought me to worship.  In speaking of a song U2 wrote called “40″, he says:

“Psalm 40 is interesting in that it suggests a time when… love will replace the very strict law of Moses (i.e. fulfill them). I love that thought. David, who committed some of the most selfish as well as selfless acts, was depending on it. That the Scriptures are brim full of hustlers, murderers, cowards, adulterers and mercenaries used to shock me; now it is a great source of comfort.”

Now, this isn’t the time to begin debating whether Bono is saved or not.  Only God, and maybe Bono, know that.  We need to hear that last line.  We need to see what gets a person to that point.  From shock to awestruck wonder. From incredulity to joy.  From elder brother to the younger.  It comes from a true experience of grace.  You know how he can go from shock to comfort if you have come to taste and see God’s grace.  I don’t know about you, but I am praising God this morning for Jesus Christ.  He fulfilled so that huslters, murderers, cowards, adulterers and mercenaries just like me can be adopted as God’s children rather than bear just and holy wrath as His enemies.  I get forgiveness because Christ bore the penalty for my sin in his body.  He paid it all, once for all, and I get grace and mercy and love.  He is not known to me only as God, the Most High, He is also God, my Father, because of Jesus.  Easter 2010 has passed, but the joy and comfort that God has justified sinners in Christ alone, not based on anything they have done or ever will do, is simply amazing.  The fact that the Bible is full of filthy sinners is not a shock.  That God killed his only Son for their sin instead of them is.

“Knowledge about God that doesn’t translate into exalting him in our words, thoughts, and actions will soon become self-exaltation.”

~ Josh Harris, Dug Down Deep, 224

Today is the one year anniversary of Pastor Dan Cummings’ death.  Death is a reality of life because of sin (Romans 6:23) and it is appointed for man to die once (Hebrews 9:27). But the good news of the gospel is that though sin entered the world and death through sin, there is an abundance of grace and a free gift of righteousness through Jesus Christ.  It is through Jesus Christ’s perfect life and death on the cross that sinners find justification by His blood and reconciliation with God.  And it is this truth that leads Paul to say in Romans 5:21, “so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.”  For the person who puts their faith alone by grace alone in Christ alone for the forgiveness of sins, death is not eternal.  As John Owen wrote, “the Father and his Son intended by the death of Christ to redeem, purge, sanctify, purify, deliver from death”… in Jesus, the death of death has come.  [The Death of Death in the Death of Christ (Book II, Chapter III)]

This reminds me of a song from the album Come Weary Saints (which is on sale this month at Sovereign Grace).  The lyrics are below:

It Is Not Death To Die

It is not death to die
To leave this weary road
And join the saints who dwell on high
Who’ve found their home with God
It is not death to close
The eyes long dimmed by tears
And wake in joy before Your throne
Delivered from our fears

CHORUS:
O Jesus, conquering the grave
Your precious blood has power to save
Those who trust in You
Will in Your mercy find
That it is not death to die

It is not death to fling
Aside this earthly dust
And rise with strong and noble wing
To live among the just
It is not death to hear
The key unlock the door
That sets us free from mortal years
To praise You evermore