A Joyful People

SERMON: 2009-12-13--ac0937--a-joyful-people SOURCE DURATION: 00:39:44.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 0.95 APPROVED: false REASON: Candidate 7 is the last segment of spoken sermon material before a clear transition into music/singing (starting with candidate 8). Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:21:32.760-00:21:37.900, 00:30:13.380-00:30:22.180, 00:35:54.500-00:39:41.760 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- The Christmas season is a season where we often talk about joy, and if ever there was a joyful community, it was that early church. And the joyfulness of the early church was one of four characteristics of there being a transformed community. You will recall they were first of all a people filled with awe. That is to say, a people who were filled with respect in the knowing of the presence of God. No cussing there, no taking the Lord's name in vain, no ignoring of the Lord God, no, they knew they were loved by Him and they loved Him in return. Second characteristic of a transformed community that we've been looking at is that they were a people among whom the resurrected Jesus moved with authority and power. They were filled with signs and wonders, lives were changed. And because lives were changed, the third characteristic of a transformed community that we have been looking at is that they were a people who truly loved each other. Not just in word but in deed, that is to say they were a people. They were a people who shared their goods freely with each other because they had been touched by God's love. As I've said many times now, you know people are transformed. You know the kingdom has come when they begin sharing their goods with each other because wallets and bank accounts are usually the last to be baptized into the kingdom. It takes the grace of God. That brings us this morning then to a fourth characteristic of a transformed community and a very fitting topic for the Advent season. These people were not only filled with awe, these people were not only filled with signs and wonders, they were not only filled with love but they were together an incredibly joyful community. Because listen again to the words of our text. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. They praised God with glad and sincere hearts. Now the word glad there literally means in Greek exceeding great joy. Sort of like eubelante, the new name our senior choir has chosen. Exceeding great joy. And the word sincere comes from two Latin words meaning literally without wax. And it goes back to a custom exercised by unscrupulous merchants in ancient days where they would try to hide the cracks of pottery by filling them with wax. And so the word without wax has come to mean authentic, without any deceit, without any duplicity, our word sincere, without wax. So here we have this community of people. They're connected to God. They're experiencing the presence and the power of the resurrected Jesus. They are in loving relationships one with another and now as a result their hearts overflow with gladness and with joy. They are a joyful people. So let's talk about that a little bit this morning as we prepare for the celebration of Communion. What makes for joy? How do you get a joyful people? How do you become a joyful person? And one of the best ways I think to address that is to begin by the negative. Why do people lose their joy? Why are there so many people who go around with a downcast countenance? Why in a world where there is in so many ways so much prosperity is there so much unhappiness and so much depression? Did you know that in the developed world depression is the number one contributing cause to disability? Those disabilities cost the North American economy, would you believe, $51 billion every year. And that's not counting medical costs or pharmaceuticals. That has just lost productivity to industry. It is estimated that by the year 2020 depression in all its varied forms will be the second leading cause of death, second only to heart disease. Interesting isn't it? One out of five women and one out of ten men can expect to go through serious bouts of depression in the course of a lifetime. At any given moment between eight to ten percent of the population is sufficiently depressed that they really should have treatment. Twenty percent of those will not be receiving treatment. And here's a very interesting statistic. What segment of the population do you think has the fastest growing rate and market for antidepressants? Would you believe it is preschoolers? Thirty-three percent increase year over year of preschoolers who are sufficiently depressed to be prescribed antidepressants. That's an awesome figure. And interestingly enough it's a figure that applies particularly to the Western and developed world. Many of you know that my brother Hank for many years was a medical missionary in Nigeria and he tells me and he writes in one of his books that in all the years that he practiced medicine in Nigeria didn't encounter any fibromyalgia, none of the anxiety or panic disorders that are so common here, and none of the depression that we face in our world. So you ask yourself the question, why have so many people in the Western world lost their soul? Why is there so much depression? And you say well you know it's got to be the stress and the pace of life and that's true to one degree or another but you know just as well as I do that the same stress that wears somebody else out becomes a motivating and an empowering factor in somebody else's life. So why this downcast countenance? Well you know I would never want to give simplistic solutions to the complexity of the thing that we call depression but if you look at all the reasons and all the things that are presented as to causing depression they can all really be reduced to this little formula and it reads like this, "When the demands of life exceed the resources that you bring to the table over an extended period of time then depression will almost inevitably follow." If the demands of life exceed the resources that you bring to the table over an extended period of time you end up burning the wick instead of the wax and depression will result. As you see we've been created in the image of God and we've been created in the image of God to have a relationship with God and out of that relationship God has so designed us that we have the resources, we have the gifts and the capabilities of stepping into that which it is that he has for us. And in a perfect world joy as we'll see in a few moments comes from operating and living in your sweet spot and all of us have had those experiences. You look back with me over your life for a moment, think back to times when you felt most satisfied, think back to times when life was fun instead of a drudgery and I can almost guarantee you that it will be a place where you're gifting, intersected with your calling, you were operating out of your true self, you felt the wind of the Holy Spirit under you and you were flying, isn't that true? And none of us may live there all the time but I suspect all of us or most of us will have had moments when we lived there, moments when we put up our feet and moments when we said you know life is good and that doesn't mean we weren't working, in fact we might have worked very hard but because the work was coming out of the core where we are most alive, work in those places when you operate out of your sweet spot, when you operate out of the intersection of your gifting and your calling and you know the favor of God in your life, work is energizing and other people might look at you and they say you're just a bloomin' workaholic and maybe you are but there's joy in living out of the places where we are intended to live, is that not true? I mean I look back in my college years and my college years in many ways were as up and down as they are for most people but I look back at the year and a half that my friends and I spent running our college radio station and I still look back with nostalgia at those years because while there have been great seasons of happiness as well as great seasons of challenge in my life, I look back on those years and it was just incredibly fun. I mean we had a staff of 40, all kinds of kids with all kinds of opinions and musical tastes, we were able to expand our budget significantly, we managed to go to 24 hour a day around the clock broadcasting, we managed for next to nothing to hook up with the NBC radio network if you can believe it, we had a UPI teletype for our newscasts and we worked our buns off but it was fun and I had a radio show from 7 to 9 in the morning that was being piped to a captive audience in all the dining halls, it was called the morning after the night before show with Mike Stevens was my radio name and it was just a riot. You've had those kinds of experiences too I'm sure and it's great fun sometimes to sit around and swap those kinds of stories. But you've also had the opposite as I have haven't you? Because the reality is we live in a fallen world and in a fallen world we are by nature cut off from God and because we are cut off from God there are two problems that we face that none of us ever fully escape. One is our resources are limited not only but they are compromised. That is to say our resources internally are not only finite in nature but there's enough wounding in all of our lives that many of us cannot reach our full potential because the injuries of the past come and haunt us I mean think of the child who is born into an alcoholic mom or a drug addict or think of the child who has significant learning disabilities who comes into life wounded and broken no matter what it is that you present that child with in the course of life that child is at a disadvantage. And think of all the trauma that many people have experienced that has wounded them for life. Think of the young teenage girl who opens up her heart to the charming promises of her boyfriend who promises to love her forever. She gives her heart and her soul and her body to him only to discover that a month later he's taken off with her best friend and the wounding that happens in that girl's heart. We see our resources are compromised by the bitterness of life. Think of it in terms of a laptop computer instead of being plugged into the electric grid it runs on battery and even with the best of batteries what three four five maybe six if you have the right kind most of us a lot less but more than that the battery is compromised and so some of the cells are broken down it doesn't really hold its charge and and just before you get around to saving that major piece of work your computer dies on you and you are reminded of the adage that there are two kinds of computer users those that have lost data and those that are going to lose data and you discover you belong to both categories. Not only are our resources compromised but we live in a hostile and a wicked world. We have a world out there and an enemy out there who hates to see us live who hates to see us fly who hates to see us operate in our sweet spot and who will do everything that he can to come against us and to rob us of life and so think of the many boys or girls who who come home all excited because you know they have drawn a wonderful drawing or they have been accepted into a team and and they're surrounded by people and friends who instead of cheering them on cut them down and who misinterpret their hearts as just being ego driven and we live in a world where there are so many people who can stand to see other people live and who need to put them down in order to feel good about themselves to go back to the analogy of the computer not only does that thing have a poor battery but it lives in a very hostile world that has a cup of coffee spilled over it been dropped numerous times the screen has become unhinged been left out into the cold and into the heat and just when you need it most it flakes out on you you see when the demands of life exceed the resources that you bring to the table you extend that over a period of time and you begin running out of steam and when you run out of steam a weariness a discouragement a hopelessness a depression sets in that's why there are so many people today who are addicted to drugs addicted to relationships addicted to pornography addicted to any number of things that's why there are so many people filled with anxiety attacks panic attacks that's why there are so many people who have lost their soul if you're no longer living out of who God has made you to be and you have to deny your true self in order to please whoever is around you when your resources are not sufficient for the demands that are being made on you and you're burning the wick instead of the wax I can guarantee you you're going to wipe out and I'll tell you something else it won't matter whether you're a Christian or whether you're a non-Christian sometimes in Christian circles depression is written off as a lack of faith and Lord knows whatever else well I'll tell you something the laws of the universe are pretty uniform and if you live for an extended period of time where the demands on life exceed the resources that you can bring to the table then Christian or non-Christian you're going to get discouraged you're going to be filled with hopelessness you're going to be filled with despair and at the end of the day you're going to have lost your soul now I belabor that because unless you understand the negative you can't understand how the gospel restores our soul because you see when by faith in Jesus we are restored to fellowship with God a whole lot of fascinating things begin to happen first of all the computer of your life is now plugged back into the power grid you are now drawing from an infinite source of life and that infinite source of life pours God's love into your heart and that life flowing into you number one recharges your dead and dying battery number two and this is the amazing thing it begins to heal the broken places of your battery it begins to restore the places where you have become deaf and dumb and lame and blind and then as the Lord God is restoring you and as you learn to live for him and for him alone he finds the place in your heart where you are truly yourself where he has truly created you and truly uniquely gifted you to be able to fly and he invites you to come out of hiding how many of us know how many people hide from the rest of the world their deepest places in their hearts because it is not safe to live there because you get killed and so part of our defense mechanism is that we learn to build walls so that nobody gets at me in the place where I do my real living and for a lot of people the real living only happens late at night when nobody is watching or it comes out in their dreams God with his infinite love and his infinite mercy and his infinite grace he steps into those places and he says you know this is who I made you to be don't deny who I have created you to be these are your passions these are your longings don't let anybody shame you don't let anybody else be your God I am your God let me call you forth and then as we hear his voice and we step out into it with fear and trembling absolutely sure we are going to get killed again and again and again God meets us there and as we begin to practice those muscles if you will those faculties that have so died on us that amazingly God starts to bring them to life and we become stronger and we can now start holding our own in the world and then you know what else God does he places us in Christian community and if Christian community is functioning the way that it ought to be functioning if it's a place where God is present if it's a place where God's grace abound and if it's a place where people truly love each other and rejoice with each other's successes instead of secretly being gleeful about each other's failures then people can come alongside me just like a parent with a child and they can speak into my life and they can encourage me and they can tell me you can do this and they can celebrate my victories with me and I can be encouraged to find out what God has really placed in my heart and then when I catch the wind of the Holy Spirit I begin to fly folks that's what the church is when it's working right did you know that a place where we can celebrate each other for the glory of God let's step into those kind of places because that's what God is inviting us to be so here's the early church why are they a joyful people why are they able to praise God with gladness and with sincerity no pretense I'll tell you why they stood in awe of the living God they knew that by faith in Jesus they were reconnected with him and God's love and God's power was flowing into their lives and they knew they belonged and that nothing could ever separate them from the love of God not only that but the early church was a place of joy and gladness and sincerity because the risen Jesus was walking among them and it didn't matter what they faced or what the experience they were constantly reminded that God's grace would either remove the obstacles in their lives to full living or he would give them grace to overcome recognizing that the total restoration would not happen until the age to come why were they a glad and joyful people praising God because they were part of community where their miserable rotten selfish hearts were restored by the grace of God where they were so secure in their walking in their relationship with God that out of that came a love towards each other where out of that love they knew they were covering each other's backs they knew they could be authentic they could cry with those who cried they could laugh with those who laugh and in that kind of community where people learn to forbear one another where people covered each other where people could speak the truth in love to each other that was the kind of community where they were free to allow their gifts to live where they were free to attempt new things and fail because nobody would be looking at the miscanthus and saying you idiot I told you you couldn't do it no no this is the place where like a parent with a child you come along and you say okay so this didn't work this time let's figure out another way let's flourish in the kingdom of God you see that's when people become joyful because they are rejoicing in the power of God who is restoring their song now to put flesh on those bones and to make this more than just academic learning I've asked Hans De Vries to come up this morning and just briefly share his journey in this regard Hans and Maria as you know are caretakers of our building they together with Margrethe and a whole team of volunteers look after this building week after week we all owe them a huge debt of gratitude they do I think a terrific job but here's the story when we first moved into this building our good brother Hans here was conspicuously absent from staff meetings and I thought it was because he was busy accommodating all the demands of the new building and yes he was busy but it wasn't until much later that I found out there was much more to the story and that's the story I've asked him to share seems like only yesterday I was up here but I guess it was Thanksgiving day when I spoke to you from this pulpit I used to look at public speaking as a huge mountain that I couldn't get over so I would either go around it or I would run like I did by missing out on staff for pretty near a whole year it seemed like just a few weeks later was my turn for devotions already again and I thought boy I just did this but anyway I had another story to tell and this story was about on a hike that we went on with our daughter Angela and our granddaughter Jessica they invited us to go geocaching with them on a Sunday afternoon geocaching is going on a treasure hunt with a GPS it's kind of fun and so we went along with them and the destination for that day was the Murray Marsh well we lived in the Murray Hills Murray Township and Murray Street but we had no idea where the Murray Marsh was but the GPS was going to get us there and that was cool so we headed out and because of all the back roads the GPS got us a little bit off track eventually we did find the right road to take and headed into the trail that we were to go on but anyway a little ways on that trail there were three vehicles blocking our path we thought oh we can't get through without these guys moving so I talked to one of the drivers and they said you're not going to go any further the road ahead is badly flooded and we're turning around and going back well we thought we need to check this out for ourselves so we went on ahead and just over this next little knoll there was a big puddle across the road and I thought well I don't think I should go through that might be quite deep and dirty but it looked like you could go around it and sure enough we went around it without a whole lot of trouble and we thought what stopped them guys from coming through maybe there's a worse puddle further ahead but it wasn't too long after that and we were in the parking lot and we were having kind of fun jabbing at these other drivers letting a little mud puddle stop them from coming further joking around a little bit about that and even one guy had a four before and he said boy he could have just bailed right through and made it in and look at all the fun he's missing by not coming through it's so easy to blow things out of proportion which I had been doing all my life public speaking has always been like a huge obstacle in my life stopped me I think in many ways from being who God made me to be and in that struggle I just held back and I even convinced myself that that's how God made me and that was okay but really it wasn't it affected a lot of things in my life and how I treated people and how I behaved to my family even or in relationships it just hurt a lot of people because in that brokenness I could easily flare up and and get angry in my own frustrations and didn't know how to deal with those places so oftentimes I lashed out unexpectedly even to myself it would just come and as a result of not dealing with my broken place there and I know that if I'm not willing to deal with that place it's not only affecting me here and now but at the end of when it's all said and done I want to hear the words well done good and faithful you know just that little scenario of the mud puddle we would have missed out on a great day of fun together as a family and that's so easily can happen you know when we don't push through those little tough spots we miss out what God has for us Maria was just in her glory that day because in that area where we were there was acres and acres of blown apart milkweeds that she enjoyed taking photographs of and the sun was shining on him it was a really just a great day for all of us and on the morning of this Murray Marsh devotion I'm laying in bed contemplating about my devotion and what I want to say and in laying there I was suddenly very overwhelmed with this incredible loss in my life loss of opportunities and loss of chances that I had and even I think I quit school after grade 10 just because I just couldn't handle it anymore but in that place where I was just grieving for my loss the very next stop was how much Jesus had already done for me and he saved me from eternal damnation really is what he done because I was in a place where things were just not going on the right road I was on a wide road but not the narrow road and I am forever grateful to Jesus for what he has done for me so I'm laying there marveling at that and all of a sudden I'm singing to Jesus I've never had a song come to me ever this was something brand new I don't think the song is I'm not going to sing it to you I don't think of my voice ain't that sweet but it is sweet to Jesus when he hears me sing or even talk even if I do mess up and even if I don't do it perfectly I'm sure that Jesus is pleased and the song that we're [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:30:13.380; remove through 00:39:44.000] going [CUT] to sing is I love you Lord unless you've been in the kind of spot where Hans has been most of his life you cannot begin to appreciate the miracle of his standing up here taking the risk of sharing with you verbally his heart I don't know if you caught it but the reason he skipped staff meetings for a year was because every eight weeks or so we take turns doing devotions and doing devotions was so traumatic for Hans that he just skipped our sweet fellowship in order not to be embarrassed and we keep saying to Hans you're an incredible storyteller because every time he comes to us with one of his homespun stories he's got us rolling on the floor laughing because of the wisdom that comes to expression and as he said this goes back to his younger years in school where he would stay home from school so that he wouldn't have to verbalize or speak up so when you're filled with awe about God when you discover the resurrected Jesus walking in your midst restoring you and you're part of community that can encourage and help you on and that's why I wanted him to share the story because what happens then your song comes back I'm gonna ask the praise team to get up and to get ready to lead us into a medley of I love you Lord and I lift my voice to worship you and while they're coming up here's the challenge that I want to lay before each of us as we now turn to communion we live in times of stress the Bible says in the last days there will be times of stress I don't think it's going to get any less just so you know because the more sin piles up and the more we experience the fruit of rebellion against God the more the social networks begin to strain I was thinking about that the other day the world that we have known has fundamentally changed and frankly I don't think it's ever coming back we are moving into a new season and when that happens the temptation and the tendency is to curl into a ball and to limit our world because it is stress that increases the demands that are made on us and it reveals the flaws in us you will have noticed that have you not not hard to love everybody when life is going good and you got enough of everything but boy when life is tough you know Hans talks about being irritable when he is confronted by challenges that he knows he cannot step into we've all got that we all become cranky but what an opportunity for us to grow in the grace and in the knowledge of the Lord Jesus what an opportunity when the world is getting more hostile more cranky more bitter what a time for you and me to try to abide in Christ so that living with the life of Jesus instead of retreating into ourselves we can overflow with the goodness of God that's what the early church did and as we'll see later on they grew by leaps and bounds not because they were such wonderful people and had it all together but because they were filled with all because they knew God loved them they knew the resurrected Jesus was walking in their midst and he would resource everything they would need and they knew they were part of community where they were covering each other's backs as a result they were filled with gladness and with sincerity in praising God and as in a few moments we turn to communion here's what I want you to think about what are the places in my life where I have shut down because life was too hard where are the places in my life where I sense the Holy Spirit nudging me encouraging me to step out trust you better take the risk that I need to take wisely who is the person he wants me to talk to what is the activity that he wants me to engage in what is the part of my heart that I have hidden in the deep basement that I need to bring out into the open so that my gifts are not lost for God and for his people and then when we turn to communion when the bread is broken and the juices pour down then believe that Jesus died for all our failures all the places where we have messed up and they've been many he was raised to give us new life he is with us by his Holy Spirit cheering us on believing in us calling us forth equipping us and taking our hand so that we can step into those places and then worship him with all your heart because we love because he first loved us that's the message of Christmas just for the record Christ coming into the world so that we could sing I knew so long And I lift my voice to worship you, O my soul, rejoice. Take joy, my King, in what you hear, may it be a sweet, sweet sound in your ear. I love you, Lord, and I lift my voice to worship you, O my soul, rejoice. Take joy, my King, in what you hear, may it be a sweet, sweet sound. May it be a sweet, sweet sound, may it be a sweet, sweet sound in your ear. I love you, Lord, and I lift my voice to worship you, O my soul, rejoice. Take joy, my King, in what you hear, may it be a sweet, sweet sound. May it be a sweet, sweet sound, may it be a sweet, sweet sound in your ear. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:39:44.000; resume after this marked segment]