Pursuing Joy

“‘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)

For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus.

1 Timothy 2:5

Jonathan Edwards says this about our great mediator:

The redeemed are dependent on God for all. All that we have–wisdom, the pardon of sin, deliverance, acceptance in God’s favor, grace, holiness, true comfort and happiness, eternal life and glory–we have from God by a Mediator; and this Mediator is God. God not only gives us the Mediator, and accepts His mediation, and of His power and grace bestows the things purchased by the Mediator, but He is the Mediator. Our blessings are what we have by purchase; and the purchase is made of God; the blessings are purchased of Him; and not only so, but God is the purchaser. Yes, God is both the purchaser and the price; for Christ, who is God, purchased these blessings by offering Himself as the price of our salvation.

(HT: Tim Challies)

Do you remember when life first entered your dead heart, when the chains of sin were broken, when the dungeon of your sin-dead life flamed with light?  In those first days, weeks, months, Andrew Murray in Abide in Christ says, “you experienced that His word was truth; all His promises fulfilled; He made you partakers of the blessings and the joy of His love.  Was not His welcome most hearty, His pardon full and free, His love most sweet and precious?”

Yet many lose the blessings they once enjoyed and the love and joy of their first days with their Savior becomes “faint and feeble”.  Listen to Murray explain why:

“Often you have wondered what the reason could be, that with such a Savior, so mighty and so loving, your experience of salvation should not have been a fuller one. The answer is very simple. You wandered from Him.”

If your affections for our Savior are faint and feeble, if your joy in His saving love has waned, put off everything you are abiding in and abide in Christ.  The power of sin has been broken, so take hold of the everything spiritual blessing God has gracious given His people in Christ.  The gospel is not only the door to life with Christ, but also the power to abide in Him every day.  We cannot do this in our own strength… all “this Jesus Christ himself alone must do by His Holy Spirit. But what I would fain by the grace of God be permitted to do is, to repeat day by day the Master’s blessed command, ‘Abide in me’”.

Let us abide in our great and glorious Savior today through the power of the gospel and with the help of the Spirit.

“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.

“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

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

“Oh! Rejoice in the richness of our salvation! When the Lord pardoned our sins, he did not pardon half of them, and leave some of them on the book— but with one stroke of the pen he gave a full receipt for all our debts.

When we went down into the fountain filled with blood, and washed, we did not come up half-clean, but there was no spot nor wrinkle upon us—we were white as snow.”

~ Charles Spurgeon, “The Joy of Salvation”

“The whole life of Christ was a continuall Passion; others die Martyrs, but Christ was born a Martyr… His birth and his death were but one continuall act, and his Christmas-day and his Good Friday, are but the evening and morning of one and the same day.”

—John Donne, Christmas sermon (Dec 25, 1626)

(HT: Tony Reinke)

O come, O come, Emmanuel,
and ransom captive Israel,
that mourns in lonely exile here
until the Son of God appear.

O come, thou Rod of Jesse, free
thine own from Satan’s tyranny;
from depths of hell thy people save,
and give them victory over the grave.

O come, thou Dayspring, come and cheer
our spirits by thine advent here;
disperse the gloomy clouds of night,
and death’s dark shadows put to flight.

Rejoice! Rejoice!
Emmanuel shall come to thee, O Israel.