Enjoying Life on Purpose

I am so excited this week to be starting a new series called “I AM going to enjoy my life”. We all want to enjoy our lives don’t we? You never meet anyone and say “do you want to enjoy your life?” And they say “oh well no, not really, I don’t really want to enjoy my life”. We all want to enjoy our lives, problem is, a lot of people don’t enjoy their lives. A lot of people go through life grumbling and unhappy and this and that and the other, and you get to the end of it and you say “did you enjoy it?”, and they go “ah no, not really”.

I have this radical, radical idea for you, I believe that God wants you and me to enjoy our lives, so this week and the next 3 weeks, we’re going to be working through a teaching series called “I AM going to enjoy my life”. You may notice that I talk a lot about the advertising industry, I actually think the advertising industry has a lot to put its hand up for, but one of the things that happens interestingly in our reactions to the advertising we see on television and radio and internet and in the press, is that it sort of sets up this image of who we should be to try and get us to buy whatever they’re selling and they’re always selling something, so it sets up this image of who we should be and somehow we never quite make it to reaching that image. The strong theme around advertising is you only have value if you are wealthy or attractive and preferably both, and really you only have value if you purchase whatever it is that they happen to be selling. The world says perform and deliver, the world says “have”, “do”, “appear” but what about who we are, what we experience on the inside, what about the life that we’ve been given by God to lead, that I believe that we’re meant to enjoy?

Is enjoying life, living up to the image that the advertising industry gives us of who we should be? Is enjoying life, living up to the image of what we think we should be? Is enjoying life living up to what other people think that we should be? Today’s message is called “Ditching that Worm Theology”. I believe a lot of people have worm theology…”I’m only a worm, I’m nothing much”. So today we’re going to set about doing some radical surgery and try to ditch that worm theology. You look around and some people don’t seem to have much worth; people in nursing homes, old people, people with dementia, refugees, boat people, people in prison, people who are poor, people who have mental health problems, let me ask you something – do they have worth, or not? In God’s eyes, do they have worth, or not? In God’s eyes are they meant to enjoy their lives? In God’s eyes are you meant to enjoy your life?

So we end up with this distorted pattern of value that’s given to us by the world. Some people end up over-inflated in their estimation of who they are and what they should be, and what they should achieve. You see them on the television all the time, you see people strutting around in the media, full of their own self importance, and think…well one day buddy that bubble is going to burst, and the other side of that coin is that a lot of other people, in fact most other people, they’re not over-inflated, they’re emotionally anorexic!. They have a view of themselves that says “I’m not much at all”. What’s my view of myself? What’s your view of yourself? Do you have that view? Do you like yourself? Are you content with who you are? Or are you trying to fit into an advertising industry mould of what constitutes value? Because I’ll tell you something, if we try and fit into the mould that the world tells us we should be, if we try and fit into the shape and the behaviour, and the looks, and the patterns, and the thoughts of what the world tells us we should be, we are not going to enjoy our lives.

If you have a bible, I’ll ask you to open it at Romans, Chapter 12:1. Romans is the sixth book in the New Testament, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, now the book of Romans, it’s about half way through. Beginning Chapter 12 the apostle Paul writes this. “I appeal to you therefore brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God which is your spiritual worship. Don’t be conformed to the world but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God, what is the good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God.”

Romans is a really interesting book and these two verses at the beginning of Chapter 12 are like the fulcrum of the turning point of the whole of the book of Romans. Chapters 1 through 11 are all about what God has done, Chapters 1 through 11 are all about God’s mercy in view of our sin. “Therefore”, writes Paul in this very first verse of Chapter 12, therefore in view of everything else I’ve written before this in the first 11 chapters, therefore in view of God’s mercy, in view of God’s forgiveness, in view of what God has done by sending Jesus Christ to die for you and me, therefore, respond in this way. “Therefore”, that one little very important word, turns the whole equation back on us, and what does he say? “Therefore, present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God which is your spiritual worship”. “Therefore, don’t be conformed to this world but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Therefore don’t conform any longer to the pattern of this world.

Don’t conform; don’t be squeezed into the world’s mould. Have you ever put on some clothes that just don’t fit? You know, you put on a jacket and the arms are too short, and the chest is too tight, and you kind of put it on and go out because you think it looks good but it’s not particularly comfortable? That’s what Paul is talking about here; don’t be squeezed into the mould of the world’s standards. In fact he says, get some new standards, get a new approach, get a new sense of value, look at others differently, look at ourselves differently, why? Because then you’ll be able to test the things, and figure out the things that are God’s will, good, pleasing, perfect. If we try and see ourselves through the worlds eyes, if we try and see ourselves through the advertising industry mould; good looking, tall, terrific (now I know I am, fortunately I’m on radio), I know I am but come on, if we try and put ourselves into that mould, Paul’s saying, that’s not what God’s grace is about, don’t live your life like that; look at what God has done for you in Jesus.

If you wanna enjoy your life, read the first 11 Chapters of Romans and read about God’s love, God’s grace, God’s mercy for you and for me. Paul says, because of that I appeal to you, by the mercy of God present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God which is your spiritual worship. A living sacrifice bit of a bizarre term isn’t it? In other words you have to die to live. You have to die to this world and its standards, and ideas, in order to live a life of joy. It sounds radical and it is radical. Does it mean we have to live like hermit crabs? No, it doesn’t. Does it mean we have to live in poverty? No, it doesn’t. Does it mean we have to give up everything we value in life? No, it does not. It simply says; stop looking at ourselves, you at yourself, me at myself, through the world’s eyes. Stop trying to be like what they say you should be, because if you do that you’re not going to enjoy it, if I do that, I’m not going to enjoy it. See our self through God’s eyes, by His standards, not by the world’s standards.

The way we think is important. The mind goes ahead of our lives. Joyce Meyer, a preacher that I enormously admire, puts it this way, she says; where the mind goes, the man follows. If we think miserably, we’ll have a miserable life. If we think an over-inflated view of who we are, we’ll be ugly. Paul says no, ditch all that, look for the good, and pleasing, and perfect will of God. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind.

Who am I anyway?

Ok, Paul is saying here, in view of God’s mercy, be transformed. A whole eleven chapters on mercy, start off the book of Romans. Now Paul calls us to respond. Well what’s the very first thing he asks us to do? Have a look at Romans, Chapter 12:3. “For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you not to think yourselves more highly than you should think, but to think in sober judgment each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned”. In other words, if you really want to enjoy your life, stop fitting into the world’s advertising parade and figure out exactly who you are. Don’t think too highly of yourself, and the flip side of that coin, which we’ll talk about in a minute, is…don’t think too lowly of yourself, but instead, with sober judgment, figure out who you are.

Now I think the whole problem of thinking too lowly about ourselves, is the more common problem in our society, 2000 years on. In Paul’s time they didn’t have the advertising and consumer machinery that we have now. And so Paul wasn’t dealing with a situation where people watch television, they see a glossy ad of someone driving a fancy car, and they aspire to that image and then they go out and put themselves in debt to buy the car. That’s not what Paul was dealing with, Paul was dealing with a society where people were perhaps promoting themselves too highly, but what we do in our society (and this is what psychologists and social researchers say), is that we have this nagging sense of inadequacy and so we behave highly, we behave boisterously, we behave offensively, we behave with superiority to hide that inner emptiness, that inner insecurity.

Paul is saying here very clearly, “No, by the grace given to me, I say to everyone among you (not just some, everyone among you) don’t think of yourselves more highly than you ought to think (don’t think of yourself more lowly than you ought to think) but with sober judgment (with a realistic assessment, look at who you are).” Look at who you are in view of the grace that I’ve just talked about in the last eleven chapters. Look at who you are in view of what Jesus has done for you. Look at who you are in view of the Son of God dying on the cross for you and God saying through that, I love you. With sober judgment look at who you are.

Do you believe in Jesus? You are a child of the living God, and if children then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Jesus Christ, Romans Chapter 8:17. “Oh no, I’m a worm, I’m not much” No! In all things you are more than a conqueror, through him who loves you, Romans, Chapter 8:37. We need to start seeing ourselves the way God sees us. We need to be transformed by the renewing of our minds, and stop thinking of ourselves through the inadequacies that we’ve developed by interacting with this world.

The big mistake that we make is to compare ourselves with other people. Oh boy, so-and-so is so clever, so-and-so is so smart, so-and-so is so good looking. Read verse 3 again, “For by the grace given to me I say to everyone among you, not to think of yourselves more highly than you should, but to think with sober judgment each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.” Does he say compare yourself with other people? Does he say look at other people and try and see where you fit given who they are? That’s not what he’s saying at all. He’s saying No, think of yourself with sober judgment because of what Jesus has done for you, in the context of that grace, figure out who you are. Why? Let’s pick it up in verse 4 “For as one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we who are many are one body in Jesus and individually we are members of one another.

We’ve got different gifts according to the grace that God gave to us. Prophecy in proportion to faith, ministry in the ministering, the teacher in teaching, the exhorter in exhortation, the giver in generosity, the leader in diligence, the compassionate in cheerfulness. He’s saying exactly the opposite, he’s saying don’t, don’t compare yourself with the next guy, you’re different to the next guy, we’ve all got different gifts, we might be the member of one body, one church, one family, but each one of us is different, individually he says we’re different. Together we are members of the one body. When we compare, what happens is, we are prone to aspire to something that we really aren’t. We need to stop comparing and focus who God has made us to be.

A few years ago, I used to run a consulting firm that ended up working internationally, had about fifty consultants in it, myself and another gentleman effectively ran it. He was the managing director, the chief executive, and I was his second in charge, and over the 16 years that we ran this firm, we had a pact, effectively I would take over from him when he retired because he was 20 years my senior. I was the logical choice. You know something, then I came to faith in Jesus Christ. Then I focused on who I am in view of his grace and then I realised I no longer have to conform to the worlds value system, I came to the sober judgment, I wasn’t cut out to run that firm. That’s not who I am, that’s not what I wanted to do with my life and so sadly people do things, and they take jobs, and they marry people, and become part of clubs, not because it’s them, not because it works for them, not because they really fit but because other people have expectations of them. Other people force them into the world’s mould. We have to say no, we have to say no, that’s not who I am.

If I want to enjoy my life, if you want to enjoy your life, we cannot allow ourselves to be squeezed into a mould in which we do not belong, in which we do not fit. So many people do things that God hasn’t gifted them to do. Why is it that 80% of people just aren’t satisfied in their jobs? Probably because they’re doing things other than what God made them to do. Contentment comes not from being squeezed into the world’s mould but when we’re doing what our Creator made us to do. So what did God make me to do? What did God make you to do? Well Paul puts a list in here, he says we have different gifts, some have the gift of prophecy, that is speaking God’s will, some have the gift of ministry – helping people, some have the gift of teaching of exhorting of encouraging people, the gift of generosity to give, some have a gift of leadership, not all – some. And some have a gift of compassion. Who am I? Who are you?

Sometimes we think “I haven’t got anything that’s useful”. We are one body, we are many members, we have many functions, we belong to one another. My gifts, the things that God has made me good at, they’re gifts to you! And the things that God has made you good at, they’re gifts to me and other people, it doesn’t matter how zealous and how enthusiastic we might be, a body without arms and legs is useless. And if you go to a church where people aren’t living in their giftings, people aren’t doing the things they’re good at; it’s going to be like a body without arms and legs.

God has put you in the body of Christ, if you believe in Jesus, God has put you in the body of Christ and it’s a picture. Are you an arm? Or a leg? Or an eye? Or a foot? Or an ear? I don’t know but you probably are a different one to me, and together we can do all the stuff Jesus did. Together we are the body of Christ. He had it all. We collectively have it all because we are bound together as one by his presence and his spirit. We together can do all that Jesus did, and Jesus said in fact you’ll do much more than I ever did. Separately we’re all different, together we’re complementary, together, we’re the body of Christ. I’m gonna come back in a minute and finish up by looking at how we handle some of those differences.

Many Parts, One Body

We’ve been talking about the fact that each one of us is different. Sometimes the world wants to squeeze us into this mould, or that. Sometimes friends or family have this expectation, or that expectation about us. But God tells us here through what Paul is writing in the book of Romans Chapter 12, we are all different, we have different gifts according to the grace given to us, he says in Romans chapter 12:6. How many beetles are there on the planet? 360,000 different species of beetles. Your clothes, your hair, your fingerprints, your voice patterns, your emotions are unique to you; you and I are not the same. In fact you go into a room of 5000 people and unless there are identical twins in the room, and even they aren’t the same, you won’t see two people who look the same. And that’s just on the outside, that’s just the things we can see. The differences and the variety on the inside are so much greater!

Have you noticed God loves variety? Variety was his idea, making you and me unique, that was His idea. And instead of comparing ourselves to other people, can I get you excited about this? The fact that you are unique, made in the image of God is such an exciting thing. When we stop comparing ourselves, when we accept with joy God’s choices, in the gifts that he has and hasn’t given us, then and only then will be content with who we are. Then and only then will we enjoy our lives. And you can argue with God, I can argue with God, I can say to God…”God I don’t like what you’ve made me, I don’t like the gifts that you’ve given me, I wish you’d given me other gifts”. You can argue ‘til you’re blue in the face, God is God. God chose to make me just the way I am, God chose to make you just the way you are. So we can argue with him, or we can be excited with who and what He has made us. Think with sober judgment, knowing who it is that I am, and knowing who it is that I ‘‘aint. And that prepares me to be a part of the body of Jesus Christ.

The Psalmist in Psalm 139 writes so beautifully, with excitement he stands completely in awe of the fact that God had handcrafted him. Look at verse 14 of Psalm 139, “I praise you God because I am fearfully and wonderfully made, wonderful are your works, I know that very well. I wasn’t hidden from you when I was being made in secret, intricately being woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance, in your book were written all the days that you had formed for me when none of them yet existed. Oh God, how wonderful are your thoughts to me”. It is time we ditched our worm theology, God made us the way we are and when he looks at you, and when he looks at me, his heart just fills with love.

You and I are God’s creation, we are His choices, He delights in us, He wants us to delight in ourselves too. Think soberly; think realistically, what gifts has God given you? Maybe it’s the gift of speaking out – prophecy, maybe it’s the gift of serving, maybe it’s the gift of teaching, maybe you’re an encourager, maybe you’re a giver, maybe you’re a leader, or an administrator, maybe you’re really good at showing mercy. What are your core motivations? The things that really make you tick?

My wife Jacqui, you know when we were running a home group from our church at our house, I was always concerned about bible study, I was always concerned about having really good discussions and good teaching, cause that’s who I am. She on the other hand, was concerned about the coffee being just so and having the right biscuits there, and this, that, and the other. She has a gift of serving! Can I tell you something? I hate serving. She ran a coffee shop in our church for a while and made muffins and coffee, and she loved doing that. I would die if I had to do that everyday, but it turns out we’re a good match. It turns out we’re a good partnership, we’re different, we’re complementary and we’re partners in God’s ministry that he’s called us to.

The world’s standards are about appearance and wealth, and delivery, and performance, and Paul says, you’re not going to enjoy your life anymore if you try and fit into the world’s mould, instead, in view of all that Jesus has done for you, he died to set you free from your weaknesses, from your failures from your sin, he rose again to be the first born, to give you hope of eternal life, to give you victory over all the rotten things that are gonna happen in your life. Because of that, be transformed let your mind be renewed by God’s Word. See yourself the way that God sees you, you think miserably of yourself, you are gonna be miserable for the rest of your life. You think you have an over-inflated view of yourself, you’re gonna be ugly, people aren’t gonna like you. You have a worm theology, you’re gonna have a miserable life, see yourself as God created you, with strengths that he chose sovereignly out of His love and His heart with weaknesses and limitations that He chose so that you would need the next person. I have weaknesses that my wife covers for; my wife has weaknesses that I cover for. Together we are a great team. Come on, you’ve been handcrafted by God, he likes you, no, He loves you He adores you and if you ever doubt that look at what he did for you, look at what he did for me on the cross through Jesus Christ. That is the platform for us enjoying our lives, accepting who God chose us to be is how we will enjoy our lives. Ditch that worm theology, for Christ’s sake.

You look at life and it’s pretty easy to listen to the devil and hear him say, “You haven’t really reached the Promised Land. Jesus hasn’t really made a difference in your life. Do you really have victory? Come on!”

I am so Small

We are in the middle of a series that I have called “I AM Going to Enjoy My Life.” The sad thing is, a lot of people, in fact, everybody, wants to enjoy their life, but a lot of people don’t enjoy their lives. Last week we looked at the subject of “ditching our worm theology”. Ditching this notion that – I’m nothing much, all these other people are much more interesting and intelligent and better looking than I am, God can’t possibly be interested in me. No! God has a plan for our lives. God loves us. God wants us to look at His grace and love in Jesus Christ and change the way we think about ourselves, so that we look at who we are through God’s eyes, instead of through the world’s eyes.

One of the things that we do have to come to grips with in this world, that is so focused on celebrities and superstars, is that you and I are small people, we’re little people. Have you ever been out, away from the smog and the lights of the city and looked up at the stars at night time? It’s a sea of white. The Milky Way is justthe mostamazing thing. There are so many stars there, and the very closest star, other than the sun, is a star called Alpha Centori, which is two thousand light years away. That’s a distance measure; it means it takes ‘light’ two thousand years to travel from that star to us. So it may well not be there anymore, and that’s the closest star. Remember, light travels how fast? At one hundred and eighty six thousand miles a second. If it takes light two thousand years to get here, at that speed, the scientific term for that is… “that’s a blinkin’ long way!” You know, that is a really long way away!

We live in a huge universe. A guy that I really love, called Nicky Gumble, wrote this once. He said, “On the 20th of August 1977, Voyager II, the interplanetary probe, launched to observe and transmit to earth, data about the outer planetary system, set off from the earth, traveling faster than a speed of a speeding bullet, 90 thousand miles an hour. Remember, light goes at one hundred and eighty six thousand miles a second, right? So this was only going 90 thousand miles an hour. On the 28th August 1979, so just two years later, it reached the planet Neptune, two thousand, seven hundred million miles from the earth. Voyager II then left the Solar System and it will not come within one light year of any star for nine hundred and fifty eight thousand years. In our galaxy, the Milky Way, there are one hundred million stars like our sun, and our galaxy is one of one hundred million galaxies, and in a throw away line in Genesis, the writer tells us, ‘God also made the stars.’ Ain’t that an understatement!

So here we are in this universe that is so big, in fact our solar system is so big that a vessel traveling from earth at nine thousand miles an hour, took two years, TWO YEARS to reach Neptune. That’s just our solar system, let alone our galaxy, let alone the universe, that we can see, trillions of stars. It is incomprehensively vast and here we are the third rock from the sun, one of trillions of stars. Life; well, you and I will probable live less that one hundred years, and another twenty or thirty years after we die, probably no one will remember who we were. In the scheme of things, you and I are pretty insignificant, have you noticed? Even when we are alive, we are one of several billion on the globe. There are so many more people than us. There are so many more people with talents and gifts and money, and brains and society tells you, you only have value if you deliver or achieve or produce, if you have money, if you look attractive. All these stereotypes that we have to live up to that we can’t. Images of success and significance that you and I will never meet, and when it comes right down to it, you and I are little people, who live in little places and on top of that, along come the problems of life.

Life for most people is pretty good, most of the time. But sometimes, bad things happen. People get divorced, marriages break down, families tear apart, kids end up on drugs, people feel alone, they feel like they are failures, they feel like they are hopeless, they feel like they are lost and hurt. You’ve been through some of that. I have been through some of that. It’s stuff we all have to go through, it’s reality, and life can get pretty grim. So not only are we small, but life can be tough. And then you turn to Psalm 113, the first few verses, and some joker writes this. He says, “Praise the Lord, Praise O servants of the Lord, Praise the name of the Lord. Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time and for ever more, from the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the Lord our God is to be praised. The Lord is high above all the nations and His glory above all the heavens.” Come on, really?

Living as little people in this massive world, in this massive galaxy, in this massive universe, with bad things happening to us sometimes, is His name really to be praised above all the nations, as you and I scratch out an existence? I was talking to a dear friend of mine, the other day, in Africa, who lived the first 14 years of his life as a refugee, running from wars. With our insecurities and temptations, our discouragement and our failures, is He really to be praised above all the heavens and above all the nations? Come on! You know, you look at life and it’s pretty easy to listen to the devil and hear him say, “You haven’t really reached the Promised Land, Jesus hasn’t really made a difference in your life, have you really entered God’s rest, do you really have victory? Come on!

Flick your Bible, if you have one, towards the end of the New Testament, to the Book of James Chapter 1:14-16. We so often have to deal with temptation and failure in life. This is what James says, He says, “One is tempted by ones own desire, being lured and enticed by it, and then when that desire is conceived, it brings birth to sin and that sin when it is fully grown, gives birth to death. Don’t be deceived, my beloved, don’t be deceived.” The devil wants you to think that you are small and insignificant in the scheme of things. The devil wants you to think you are on a downward slide; he wants you to think that God doesn’t make any difference; he wants you to think that there is no hope. But that’s a deception!

The Enemy’s Deception

I was saying that the devil, the enemy, wants to deceive us. He wants us to think that because things are tough, you and I aren’t living a victorious life. He wants us to think, that because things are tough sometimes, Jesus is not making a difference in your life. He wants us to think that when we are tempted, we’ve failed. But listen to what else God says here in James, Chapter 1:12. He says, “Blessed is anyone who endures temptation, because a person like that has stood the test and will receive the crown of life that the Lord has promised to those who love Him.” Don’t be deceived!

Israel, when it was a slave nation in Egypt, and they were being oppressed and they were struggling, they saw God do ten amazing miracles, against Egypt and Pharaoh. He parted the Red Sea; they spent forty years in the desert on their way to the Promised Land, a trip that was an eleven day walk. Why? Well, we won’t go there right now, but Exodus Chapter 13:17,18 tell us because they weren’t ready, they weren’t strong enough. God kept them in the desert to prepare them, to purify them, to get them ready to go into the Promised Land. And what happened when they got to the Jordan, what happened when they got to the Promised Land? Well, it was full of Hittites, Perisites, Jebusites, Canaanites, Amorites, Hivites, Vegemites! There were thirty one kings, seven great nations, walled cities and giants in that place that they had to go and fight. That was the reality.

The Promised Land was given to them but they also had to ’take’ the Promised Land. In fact, battles and trials are evidence that you have arrived at the Promised Land. Opposition from the devil is evidence of God’s grace. The Promised Land is given but it also needs to be taken. God gives us eternal life; He gives us a new life. That’s grace! But He then gives us the dignity to work through the issues in our lives and go through the trials and struggles that are planned for our lives and in the middle of all that, listen to what He says, listen to what God says in James Chapter 1:2. “My brothers and my sisters, whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy, because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance, and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and lacking in nothing. If any of you is lacking in wisdom, ask God and He will give to you generously. For the one who doubts is like a wave of the sea, driven and tossed by the wind. The doubter, being double-minded and unstable in everything, must not expect to receive anything from the Lord”. Isn’t it a great passage?

With all those trials you’re having, be strong, be courageous, enjoy – enjoy what is going on because God has a plan for you and God wants you to have faith in Him, that He will take you through the trials. What did He say to Joshua, in Joshua 1:6? “Be strong, be courageous.” In Psalm 112, the Psalmist writes, “The righteous will never be moved; their hearts are firm, secure with the Lord.” We can only do – we can only do that if we have our eyes set firmly on God and who He is. Look again at this second verse of the letter of James. “Whenever you face trials of any kind, consider it nothing but joy.” In other words, enjoy you life, no matter what’s going on around you. No matter how hard it gets, no matter how disappointing it gets, no matter how much of a failure you and I think we are some days – and, come on, we do!

God doesn’t change. He doesn’t change from day to day, from week to week, from month to month, from millennium to millennium, God is the same. He loves you, He loves you so much and when you are going through trials, He loves you still. And that’s the time, that’s the time to really enjoy your life. You may not enjoy the things going on around you, but you can enjoy Jesus, you can enjoy God, you can enjoy that rock solid ground beneath your feet, which is Jesus Christ. You can enjoy that rock solid ground beneath your feet, which is the unending faithfulness of God.

Let’s go back to Psalm 113. “Praise the Lord. Praise O servants of the Lord. Praise the name of the Lord, blessed is the name of the Lord our God, from this time and for ever more, because, from the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the Lord is to be praised. The Lord is high above all the nations and His glory is above the heavens.” God is above all this stuff, for you and for me. God stands above the wars of the world. God stands above the trials of our lives. He is above all the nations and all the heavens and He is so sovereign! Our puny circumstances don’t phase Him one little bit. He loves us and He is in the middle of that with us, and right through all history, you read right through the Bible, He has always loved His people.

When Israel was taken out of Jerusalem, when it was destroyed by the Babylonians, when they were exiled, when they were afraid, when they were wondering if their God had failed them, or left them or whether He wasn’t strong enough to beat King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, when all that stuff was going on and they were in exile, this is what He said – the Lord our God, to His people Israel, through the Prophet Isaiah, in Chapter 40:18. He said, “To whom will you liken God; to what likeness will you compare Him, to an idol? A workman casts it and a goldsmith overlays it with gold, and casts silver for its chains. As a gift they choose mulberry wood, wood that won’t rot, and then they seek out a skilled artisan, to set up an image that will not topple. Haven’t you known, haven’t you heard, hasn’t it been told to you from the beginning, haven’t you understood from the foundations of the earth? It’s God who sits above the circle of the earth, its inhabitants are like grasshoppers. It’s God who stretches out the heavens like a curtain and spreads them like a tent to live in. Who brings princes to naught and makes rulers of the earth nothing? Scarcely are they planted, scarcely are they sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when He blows on them, they wither, and a
tempest carries them off as stubble.”

“To whom then will you liken Me, who is My equal?” says God. Lift up your eyes, look, see. Who created these, who brings out their host and numbers them, calling them all by name, because He is great in strength, mighty in power, not one is missing. See, God’s talking about the stars, you know, the stars we were talking about before, that massive universe out there, trillions of stars. So big, so far apart that the nearest star to earth, other than the sun, the light takes two thousand years to get here. He says, look up at all those stars. Those stars, by the way, the Babylonians worshipped. They worshipped them as gods and God said, “The Babylonians are the most powerful thing that you can imagine,” – look up at the stars that they worship. I made those stars! I put them there! It was My idea to make the universe this big, I hold it together. I know every star in the heavens, and every night they come out there because I put them there.” That’s how big God is. God is above all things.

And we can enjoy our lives because of that. The question is how?

The Plans He has for Us

How do we enjoy our lives? By knowing that God is above the heavens, God is above the earth. The answer is in the second part of Psalm 113: 7. It says this, “God raises up the poor from the dust, He lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes and the princes of His people. He gives the barren woman a home, making her the joyous mother of a child”. Praise the Lord! The devil’s plan is to pull us down. The devil’s plan is to deceive us, to talk us into the fact that life really isn’t that good, and God is not that good and Jesus really isn’t making a difference in our lives. God’s plan is to lift us up. God’s plan is to raise us up with princes. Not only to restore the former things, but way beyond anything we can ever hope for or imagine, spiritually and in life’s circumstances. For God, there are no little people and there are no little places. But what He says in the book of Jeremiah, Chapter 29, “I know the plans I have for you, says the Lord, plans for your welfare and not for your harm, to give you a future with hope.” And this is to people, His chosen people, the nation of Israel, that was taken into slavery and captivity by the Babylonians. “I know what plans I have for you,” says the Lord. In the face of all the adversity, He says the plans I have for you, I have for your welfare, not your harm. To give you a future, with hope. We need to get this thing – I do – into my thick skull.

God wants to bless us. You and me. When things are going bad, when we’re feeling down, when families are falling apart, when people are being retrenched, when we’re going through sickness, when we’re going through divorce, when we are going through trouble with our kids, God wants us to hear this thing. He raises the poor from the dust; He lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes. He gives the barren woman a home, making her the joyous mother of a child. Praise the Lord! Praise lifts us up into the reality of God’s will. Praise lifts us up into the reality of God’s good and perfect plan for our lives. See how different the reality is from the devil’s deception? There are no little people, there are no little places. The very least, the barren woman, the beggars in the gutter, the divorcee, the lonely widow, the woman whose husband has forgotten how to love her, He wants to raise them up, us up, with princes, above their stations. No wonder He ends the Psalm with “praise”. Praise just lifts our vision, it lifts our view. When we bow down and praise God, something amazing happens. We discover, all of a sudden, what it means to enjoy our lives. We discover, all of a sudden, that God does have a plan for blessing. God does have a plan for good. In adversity we can make a statement of faith. In adversity we can say,”I believe what God says. I will radically accept Him and trust Him, and walk with Him.”

What will you do? Do you want to enjoy your life? Do you want to spend every day in the most amazing knowledge that Jesus Christ is with you? Do you want to walk outside and look at the world with a different set of eyes, with a heart that is filled with the knowledge of Jesus love for you? Praise the Lord! Praise O servants of the Lord. Praise the name of the Lord. Blessed be His name, from this time on and forever more, from the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the Lord our God is to be praised. The Lord is high above all the nations and His glory is above the heavens. Who is like the Lord our God, who is seated on high and looks far down on the heavens and the earth? He raises the poor from the dust; He lifts the needy from the ash heap to make them sit with princes, the princes of His people. He gives the barren woman a home, making her the joyous mother of children. Praise God!

It seems like such a crazy thing to do, when life if tough, doesn’t it? What we want to do is, we want to grumble and feel sorry for ourselves, but here’s the bottom line – here’s the rub – God wants you to enjoy your life. He really, really does! Sometimes that means enjoying the things that are going on around us. Sometimes that means the ability to enjoy the things we have and God’s given us, and sometimes God seem to take all those things away and that’s an opportunity for us to enjoy Him. To still enjoy our lives. To enjoy our lives even more, in a new way, in a fresh way. In a way that we could never have imagined. He wants us to enjoy our lives.

Praise says, “ I am a child of the living God,” Praise says, “He Hasn’t given me a spirit of fear, but a spirit of adoption, so that I can cry, “Abba, Father, Dad.” Praise says, “My God is faithful, my God is above all the nations, all the heavens, all my circumstances, all my adversity, all my enemy. And my God will bless me; He will raise me up to sit with princes. Praise, praise says that for me, there are no little places and I am not a little person, because the Spirit of the living God dwells in me. As James writes in chapter one, and verse 2, when we go through trials and sufferings, count it as pure joy because God is giving us endurance, God is giving us character, God is giving us hope.

The most important thing I ever learnt about enjoying my life is that it shouldn’t depend on the things that are going on around me. Enjoying my life, enjoying my life, is all about knowing that it’s what happens on the inside, its my relationship with God, and on the days that I feel low, on the days that I feel challenged, on the days that I am struggling – you know something, I have some of those days, not that often, but I do – on those days, I begin my time of prayer with God each morning in praise. I give God the glory, God the honour. God the praise, because those things are due to Him.

I’m going to pray for you right now, “Father I pray for each person here who is struggling to enjoy their lives. I pray, Father God that you would take the words that were spoken today and by Your Spirit, write them on our hearts. Lord, by Your Spirit, write on our hearts, “I love you,” Lord by Your Spirit, write on our hearts, “I want you to enjoy your life.” By Your Spirit, Father, write on our hearts “Your God is faithful”. By Your Spirit, Lord God, write on our hearts, Your words of hope, Your words of truth, Your words of grace. Your words of love, that our lives may never, never be the same again. Father, we ask those things of You in the mighty name of Jesus Christ our Lord. AMEN.”

These gifts that you have are manifestations of God’s Spirit in you. They are supernatural; they are for the common good.

Living as One Body

It’s just great to be with you again this week, and we’re working our way through a short series that I’ve called, “I AM Going to Enjoy My Life!” This is the third program in four programs, looking at that very subject. If we are going to enjoy our lives, I believe that we have to make a conscious decision to do exactly that, and a huge part of enjoying our lives is coming to grips with who we ‘are’ and who we ‘aren’t‘. So over the last couple of weeks – the first week we looked at a message called, “Ditching that ‘worm’ theology,” and last week it was, “No little people, no little places,” because I truly believe that we have to come to grips with who we are. If you’ve missed either of those programs you can always listen to them on our website. We’ll let you know how to do that a little bit later.

This week we are going to build on those two. It’s not just about who we are as individuals, but it’s who we are in relationship to other people around us. Who other people are and what they can do and what they can’t do. Who we are and what we can do and what we can’t do. Last week we really looked at this passage in Romans Chapter 12. If you have a Bible, please grab it and we will have a look in Romans Chapter 12. It said, “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Don’t think of yourselves more highly than you should, but rather think of yourselves with sober judgment.” Think about who and what it is that God has made you to be and to do. We have different giftings, you and I. Different motivations, different abilities, different skills, different things that we really enjoy doing.

A few months ago, just before Christmas, we were sending out our Christmas calendars from the ministry. Now, you could order them, they are beautiful calendars, with photos of places in the Bible for each month in 2006, and there was so many phone calls coming in, and people ringing and credit cards and my wife Jacqui, handles all those things in our ministry. Now I have to tell you the truth. If I was handling those things in our ministry, nobody would have got any of their calendars or their CDs or anything they were ordering for Christmas, because I’m just not good at those sorts of things. She, on the other hand, loves doing those things, but you’d never catch her behind a microphone with me. The world says, “Listen people, you can be whatever you want to be.” Well, in part, I guess, we can aspire to do things, and we can achieve things and we can strive, but ultimately, God through His sovereign choice, has made us who we are. With the gifts and motivations that we have, and I truly believe that we need to be comfortable not only with what we can do but with the things that we can’t do. And I see so often, people who are striving and struggling, to try to be something, to be someone, that they just aren’t.

I’m all of five foot ten, not even that, I think I am kidding myself. I could never be a great basket-baller. It doesn’t matter how much I wanted to play basketball, I could never be a great basket-baller, I’m just too short. I’m the wrong shape, I have to tell you. God is a God of variety and we just have to stop comparing ourselves with other people and start getting really comfortable with who we are. This week we are going to start building on that and we’re going to open up at I Corinthians, Chapter 12. Please, if you’ve got a Bible, grab it. We’ll be reading bits out of it, but it’s always much better to have God’s Word there with you. And Paul is building on this notion of us as a group of people, being like a body.

It’s one thing to say, “Well, you’ve got some skills that I don’t have and I’ve got some skills that you don’t have and lets work together, but exactly how do we do that? Exactly how do we live together as one body, because that’s the picture God has of people who are Christians and even people who are not Christians? We still have to get on with one another. I truly believe that God has to be in the middle of that, otherwise we are going to struggle to do that. So it’s all well and good to say, “We should live together and collaborate, but exactly how? It’s hard! The moment you get a group of people together, trying to do something, with our different strengths and our weaknesses, we will rub each other up the wrong way. We’ll have problems and differences of opinion and debates. How do we do that?

That’s the subject of this passage, so I’m going to pick it up here, in I Corinthians, Chapter 12, beginning at verse 12. “For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit, we were baptised into one body, Jews or Greeks, slaves or free, and we were all made to drink of the one Spirit. Indeed, the body doesn’t consist of one member, but of many members.”

I Corinthians, that I’m reading from here, is a letter in response to a letter that the Corinthian Church, the Church in Corinth, wrote to Paul. And if you read through this letter, this is the sort of letter that you never want to receive from someone. It is a sharp rebuke. Paul was involved in planting the Church in Corinth, and he’s been away for a time and he’s heard that there are some bad things going on. There is division in the Church. Does that sound familiar? We seem to hear that in the news all the time – the Church is divided. Well right back here, in the first century, AD; there was division in the Church. People were sleeping around, there was sexual immorality, they were suing one another, there were lawsuits between believers. There are directions on marriage, because, obviously they were having problems in their marriages. They were offering food to idols, so Paul talks to them about that. There’s a severe warning for them to look at themselves and ask, “Are you really, really living a life for Christ?”

This letter deals with some deep theological and practical schisms or divisions in the Church in Corinth. People with different views, people with different strengths and weaknesses. People with different spiritual gifts, and Paul talks about those gifts just before that passage I read, and he says, “Look these gifts that you have are manifestations of God’s Spirit in you. They are supernatural; they are for the common good.” Look at I Corinthians, 12:7. “To each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” All of these gifts that he lists “are activated by one and the same Spirit, who allots to each one individually, just as the Holy Spirit chooses.” Now this passage is not so much about those different gifts, it’s about the fact that we have ‘different’ gifts. There are different abilities, different gifts, and yet God calls us to unity. God calls us to be one body, but how do we do that?

Well, let’s read on in I Corinthians, Chapter 12:14. “Indeed the body doesn’t consist of one member but of many. If the foot would say, “Well, I’m not a hand, so I don’t belong to the body,” that wouldn’t make it any less a part of the body, and if the ear would say, “Because I am not an eye, well I don’t belong to the body either,” that wouldn’t make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be, but as it is, God arranged the members of the body each one of them, as He chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many members, yet one body.”

I was sharing this with a group of people recently and to illustrate the fact, I took my wedding ring off my finger and tipped my head back and placed it on my eye and said, “Well, look, what if my eye decided it wanted to wear a ring? I mean, how would that go? What if one of my fingers, other that my ring finger, decided it wanted to wear my wedding ring? Well, I have to tell you, it just doesn’t fit. I can try it here, but it just doesn’t fit! It doesn’t matter how much the eye might say, “I want to be an ear,” or the mouth might want to say, “I’m a nose,” or the foot, might want to be a hand. It doesn’t matter! A hand is a hand, an eye is an eye, a foot is a foot, an ear is an ear. There are many members of the body but they’re all necessary for the body to function together.

Last week in that passage in Romans, Chapter 12, we looked at how Paul said, “Look at yourself with sober judgment, don’t think of yourself more highly that you should,” and my hunch is, if he were writing that today, he would put in brackets, (and don’t think of yourself more lowly that you should!). It doesn’t matter what we aspire to being, let’s be honest, about exactly who we are. Let’s be secure, let’s be content because that contentment is the foundation for collaboration. If we aren’t content with who we are, how could we possibly feel comfortable working with other people who have different skills and different gifts? It’s easy to point out there and say, “The grass is greener, I want to be like that person.” But an eye is an eye, an ear is an ear, a nose is a nose.

Accepting Others

We are talking today about working together as a team. I believe that God wants us, you and me, to enjoy our life. The first part of that, as we looked, just over the last couple of weeks, is coming to grips with who we are and who we aren’t. Our strengths and our limitations. I have become comfortable with what I am not. That is not to say that in certain areas I don’t have to come up higher. One of the things I don’t enjoy doing is administration, and yet, as the head of a ministry, if I don’t look after the cash flow, if I don‘t make sure that things are happening that we need to do, that the returns are going into the government, that people are being managed and cared for and looked after. If I don’t do those things, the ministry falls apart, but I have other people, who are gifted in those areas, working with me, around me, collaborating with me, doing those things so well, that I can’t do so well.

But what happens when different people with different gifts get together and start to look at each other, and start to get uncomfortable with the weaknesses that each other have? At the moment we are in the middle of I Corinthians, Chapter 12 and I’d like to pick it up at verse 21. Paul, the Apostle, has been writing about the fact that eyes and ears and hands and feet, they’re all necessary to the body. They’re all different but they’re all necessary. Now look what he says when the different members of the body look at each other, kind of cockeyed. Verse 21, Chapter 12 of I Corinthians. “The eye can‘t say to the hand, “I don’t need you,” nor again, the head to the feet, “I have no need for you.” On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think are less honourable, we clothe with greater honour and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect. “

The head looks like a more honourable part of the body, doesn’t it? Have you looked at your feet lately? Pull your socks off and look at your feet. They’re pretty ugly aren’t they? Feet are never beautiful; they’re not the sort of part of your body you would want people to see first off. Maybe that’s why they are down on the ground. But try to move the head around without some feet. Try and blow your nose without some hands. And if one part of the body looks at another part of the body and says, “Well you’re different so I don’t want you,” it doesn’t make sense.

My hunch is, we are all a bit like that. There is some subliminal desire to make other people like us. We’re comfortable when other people are like us. If you’re someone that’s always on time, chances are your want to be surrounded by people who are always on time. If you’re someone who loves lingering over a cup of coffee, and talking and spending time with people, you probably want to hang around people like that. Someone who’s always on time will probably end up driving you nuts. If only so and so could see things differently, if only they could be like me and see things like me.

We all have different gifts and actually Paul talks about some of those gifts in Romans, Chapter 12. He talks about the gift of perception or prophesy, the gift of ministry or serving, the gift of teaching, the gift of exhortation or encouragement, the gift of giving, the gift of leadership and administration, the gift of compassion or mercy and it’s really interesting, how those different areas of gifting have different strengths but different weaknesses.

For instance, someone who has a gift of serving easily recognises people’s practical needs and they are quick to meet them. They especially enjoy manual projects, jobs and functions. They keep everything in meticulous order. They are a detailed person with a good memory, but at the other end of the scale, they have some common weaknesses too. They can be critical of others who don’t help with obvious needs. They might neglect their own family’s needs by being too busy to help other people. They might become pushy or interfering, in they’re eagerness to help. Isn’t it interesting! Two sides of a coin, strengths and weaknesses. Somebody with the gift of prophesy or perception quickly and accurately identifies good and evil and hates evil, and they see everything as either black or white. They easily perceive the character of individual or groups and yet they can become judgmental and blunt. They can forget to praise partial progress, because they are ‘goal’ conscience. Someone with a gift of compassion or mercy has a tremendous capacity to show love, they always look for the good in people. They sense the spiritual and emotional atmosphere of a group or an individual. They are attracted to people who are hurting or distressed. Now, we need people like this around. We need people with that sort of motivation and gifting but the down side is that those sorts of people are often indecisive; they are often not a good manager of time or resources. They’re easily hurt by others. Sometimes they empathise too much with the suffering of others.

So each area of gifting seems to have different strengths and different weaknesses. The eye is good at one thing when the ear is good at another. The ear will not be particularly good at seeing things, the eye will not be good at hearing things, and we can become quite anti someone because of their particular weaknesses that irritate us. Last week’s insight was that we need to be pleased with what God has made us and what He hasn’t made us. This week’s insight is to accept exactly the same in other people. We seem to cut ourselves a lot more slack than we cut other people, don’t we? We seem to be a lot more comfortable in saying, “Well, you know, I just couldn’t do that. I couldn’t be bothered,” but when someone else can’t do it, when someone else can’t be bothered, how much mercy and compassion do we show them then? How much do we accept them then? Or are we a bit like the head and the feet in this story that Paul writes here? “The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you,” nor again, the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” On the contrary, we need both!

People with certain giftings are prone to certain limitations. You think, if you were someone with a gifting for mercy and compassion and yet you were someone that was always on time, would you have the ability to just sit and linger when someone needs you just to sit and linger? People are prone to limitations and it’s compounded by the fact – God forbid! – That they’re different to us! One of the songs that we sometimes sing at the Church that I go to, says, “Brother Sister, let me serve you, let me be as Christ to you.” The question now becomes, how? How can I, through my gifts, compensate for another persons weakness? How can I grow by sacrificing and helping them? How can I help others to grow?

There’s a beautiful passage in Ecclesiastes, in the Old Testament, Chapter 4:7-12. We won’t go there but essentially it says that a rope of three strands is better than a rope of one strand. And when you think about it, if you have a rope with one strand, and you cut it, it is broken. If you have a rope with two strands and you cut one of the strands – in fact you can cut one of the strands in a few different places – the whole thing still supports its weight. But now have a rope with three strands, sort of plaited together, you can cut different strands in multiple places and not only will it still hold, but it won’t unravel. I think that’s a picture, God is saying to us, “We are one body.” That picture of the rope is, “I’m tying you together.” We can have two friends and still not get on, but when God is in that, when God is the third strand in that relationship, God binds us together. We together, are Gods temple.

If we believe in Jesus, if we say,”I am a Christ follower,” then together we are God’s temple. Let’s just follow it through again in this Chapter 12 of I Corinthians, verse 4. “Now there are a variety of gifts but the same Spirit.”. Verse 11, “All of these gifts are activated by one and the same Spirit who allots to each one individually, just as he chooses.” Verse 13, “For in the one Spirit we were baptised into one body.” Verse 18, “But as it is, God arranged the members of the body, each of them, as He chose.” God has a plan. God has a plan for us to live together as a body and to get on.

Baptism of the Spirit

As we try and work together and collaborate, and be a team and be a family and be a body as believers in Jesus Christ, I’m fairly certain that I don’t have what it takes to love you and to love other people with all of your strengths and all of your weaknesses. My hunch is, you don’t either. We need a hand, we need someone to help. Yes, we have gifts, each one of us, but not what it takes for us to hold together. I was talking about that passage in Ecclesiastes, Chapter 4, that talks about the fact that a rope of three strands holds together so much better than a rope of two strands. That two strand model is vastly inferior to the three strand model. When the two of us try to get on, you and me, sometimes we are going to rub each other the wrong way, Sometimes I’m going to fail you and sometimes you are going to fail me. That’s akin to the rope breaking. My strand breaking. And what happens when a rope is under tension and one of the strands breaks is that it quickly unravels, but when you have three strands to a rope, that third strand, that ‘God’ strand, that ‘Holy Spirit’ strand, keeps the other two pieces hanging together.

I love that! I love that picture that God wants to help you and me to be a team. We may know what to do. You know, we need to learn, we need to think soberly, we need to be comfortable with ourselves, we need to have the right attitude, we need to be prepared to help each other, but actually doing it is hard. God is here to help us to do that, to be filled with the Holy Spirit and go on being filled with the Holy Spirit. Spiritual gifts are wonderful! Experiencing God is wonderful! But you and me working together, you and me collaborating, you and me getting on, even when it’s hard, even when it’s tough, even when we are tired and grumpy, that is the business end of discipleship. That is the business end of following Jesus Christ and God wants to help us to do that by giving us His Holy Spirit.

If you go to Luke Chapter 3:16. I’m not going to go there right now because of time. It talks about Jesus baptising us in the Holy Spirit. That word baptising, means to be immersed, to be drenched, to be dripping. It’s like taking out a dry cloth and ‘baptising’ it in water and it becomes a soft cloth, it becomes a wet cloth. A lot of people kind of don’t understand what that’s all about. There’s even dissention in the Church about when God does that and how God does that. What I have seen is God treats each of us differently and does things differently, just at the right time for us. But His command is to be filled with the Holy Spirit, because it’s when we have God’s Spirit happening inside of us, it’s when we’re enjoying God and having a relationship with God, that all of a sudden, we read this thing about Paul, here in I Corinthians Chapter 12, beginning at verse 12, he talks about us being one body and he talks about the different members of the body looking at each other and being disparaging and not wanting each other, when we have got God’s Spirit inside of us. We read that and God says to us, “I’m in you.”

When we read that, we think, “Yes, I might be the eye and she might be the ear but we both need to work here. He might be the head and I might be the foot but we both need to be working together. The head needs the foot as much as the foot needs the head. The ear needs the eye as much as the eye needs the ear. Does it matter that the eye can’t do what the ear does? Does it matter that she’s different to me, or he’s different to me, when we have the Spirit of God happening inside of us? Love is the fruit. Love is a fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control.

We need more than to know, we need to do, we need to experience, we need help in the doing, and the message from God for you today, is that, if you want to enjoy your life, and you are struggling with other people, read this passage in First Corinthians 12, beginning at verse 12 again and let the Spirit soak God’s wonderful love and wisdom into you and the next time that person, who’s so different to you, rubs you the wrong way, you can say, “Praise God, because that person can do stuff that I can’t do and I can do things that that person can’t do, and together we are the body of Christ. Together we can bring the love of Jesus into this world.” I Corinthians Chapter 13 talks about love and the very first thing it says is that, “love never ends.” In fact, the King James translation says, “Love suffers long.” The very first thing that love does is to suffer for a long time. It’s not about denying each other’s weaknesses and limitations. On the contrary, think soberly, acknowledge but then bear and accept and serve and enjoy your life.

Do we think of God as someone who wants to party? Do we think of God as someone who wants to rejoice? Do we think of God as someone who wants to throw a barbecue and say, “Come as you are? Come, and party with me?”

Do You Enjoy Your Life?

Over these last few weeks, on Christianityworks, we have been working our way through a series called, “I AM Going to Enjoy My Life.” I truly believe that if we are going to enjoy our lives, we need to make a decision that we are going to enjoy our lives. There are so many things on this planet that want to rob us of the joy and the peace that Jesus Christ died to give us. So here we are at the last week and this message is called, “I Am Determined to Enjoy My Life.”

Here in Australia, where I live, every five years we have a census of the population. The Government sends out a questionnaire to every household, and they count how many people slept in that house and ask you all sorts of different questions. It’s kind of a ‘day in the life’ snapshot. A huge sample size to figure out what the population is and all sorts of things, age, all sorts of wonderful things. One of the questions that they ask on the Census Form is ‘religion.’ It’s kind of a hodgepodge of things. They list everything that they can – Baptist, Buddhist, Brethren, you know, it’s all on the list, and you are supposed to tick the box and a lot of people, as I am, are post denominationalist Christians. We don’t really care what the brand is, so I just write, ’Christian’. You know, I don’t write a particular denomination. I wonder if there is another question that they could slip in under that for me. I’d really like them to add a question to the Census. I’d like them to add this question, “How much did you enjoy your life today?” On a scale of zero to ten – zero is yuk! – Ten is absolutely, stunningly fantastic!

How much did you enjoy your life today? – And then I would like to see a correlation of the response to that question against ‘religion.’ Because I’d like to know whether Christians enjoy their lives more than the average punter. If what they believe is true, shouldn‘t they enjoy their lives more? I think it’s a good question, yet, the divorce rate amongst Christians is about the same as for non-Christians. The use of pornography amongst Christians is about the same as for non-Christians. I wonder whether Christians were to have a discernibly different level of joy. OK, maybe there is a few statistical problems with the qualitative dimension of that, but you get the point though! Do these Christians have something discernibly different? Do they display a life worth living? Are they the light and the salt that Jesus called them to be?

Last year you may have heard me talk about a movie, called. “Chocolate”. “Chocolate” is a wonderful movie set in a little village in France, post world war two, but it’s not a nice little green, ‘hobbity’ kind of village, it’s a grey, lifeless village and right in the middle of the square, which is grey stone, with a half dead tree in it, there’s this big church and they are all oppressed by ‘religion’ these people. They talk about tranquility and tranquility means sweeping everything under the carpet. They are not allowed to live, religion oppresses them and in sweeps this stunningly, beautiful, sensual, totally pagan woman, dressed in red and colour, and she sets the place alight. You know, sets up a chocolate shop, which is why it’s called “Chocolate”. She sets up a chocolate shop during Lent, which is the time that they’re supposed to not eat chocolate and things like that. What she manages to do, even though she worships idols and she’s totally pagan, she seems to tap in to touch people, to bring people together. They have this wonderful lunch in the back yard, under the grape vines, with beautiful food, and this woman just seems to know how to enjoy life, how to touch people, how to do meaningful things for people.

Well, how about you? If someone said to you on the Census form today, “Are you a Christian?” You go, “Yep!” Well the next question is, on a scale of zero to ten, “How much did you enjoy your life today and yesterday and the day before? Because the question is, “Do our lives scream out in vibrant, primary colours, an unspeakable joy, or do we spend days and years being personally miserable? Do our lives kind of shout out “Hallelujah! Jesus is alive!” Or do we look more like that grey, lifeless Church, in that grey lifeless, little French village, in “Chocolate?”

Let’s not over spiritualise here either, as sometimes we do. We separate the spiritual and the profane. We do it more in the West than people do in the East. In Asia people seem to have their lives and their spirituality quite close together in their hearts. We tend not to do that. We tend to separate them, and often Christians, go – well, ok – Church and praying and singing and that stuff’s all spiritual. Washing the car and playing football and bringing up the kids and going to work, that stuff’s all profane, and we separate the two, but you won’t find that in the Bible. You won’t find that in the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus knew how to party; Jesus knew how to get out there and enjoy His life and be with the people. Are you enjoying your life?

Now my dear wife, Jacqui, she loves shoes. I know this is a ‘girl’ thing. She loves shoes. Berni just buys shoes when he has to. On the other hand, I love being up at four o’clock in the morning, five o’clock in the morning, just praying and spending time – I just love doing that. Now Jacqui is not a morning person, Jacqui doesn’t ‘do’ mornings. So we are different in those respects. It doesn’t mean we have to be the same. Does Jacqui enjoy her life being who she is, doing what she does? And does Berni enjoy his life, being who he is, doing what he does? Do you enjoy your life, being who you are and doing what it is that you do?

Today we are going to talk about making a conscious decision to enjoy our lives and we’re going to go to the Old Testament Book of Nehemiah. If you have a Bible, grab it. Nehemiah is just a wonderful book. We are going to Chapter 8, but before we dive into Chapter 8 of the Book of Nehemiah, I’ll just bring us up to date where Israel is in its journey, when we get to Chapter 8 of the Book of Nehemiah.

Israel, as you remember, is twelve tribes, they are descendant from Abraham. Abraham had a son called Isaac. Isaac had a son called Jacob. Jacob had twelve sons, one of whom was called Joseph who became the Prime Minister of Egypt, and these twelve sons became the heads of the twelve tribes of Israel. They became captive in Egypt, ultimately God heard their cry. He sent Moses and said, “Moses, go and tell Pharaoh, “Let My people go.” You may remember the ten plagues that God sent on Pharaoh and Egypt and ultimately, God took them out of there, through the Red Sea, and then they wandered in the desert, in the Sinai Desert, for forty years. Remembering, this is an eleven day journey from Egypt through to Israel is an eleven days walk. They wandered in the desert for forty years, because they weren’t ready. They weren’t ready to go into the Promised Land and to cross the Jordan to fight all of the tribes that they had to fight to take the land that God had promised to them.

They finally get into the Promised Land, Moses is dead. Joshua leads them into the Promised Land. They have some time where they’re under a series of Judges because the system of government is “Theocracy’. Then they decide they want a King. Their first King is Saul, he’s a disaster. Their second King is David. David is a wonderful King, even though he makes some mistakes. He has a son called Solomon. Solomon is a good King, but after Solomon, the Kingdom splits. There are two sons of Solomon, Jeroboam and Rehoboam, they can’t get on, so Rehoboam becomes the King of the South and that’s then known as Judah, two tribes, Judah and Benjamin, and then Jeroboam becomes the King of the North, ten tribes, and that’s referred to as Israel.

Time goes on and in 587 BC; these people just aren’t honouring their God any more. There was a covenant between God and them. They’re not honouring God. They get deported to Babylon, they come back. They return as exiles. Forty two thousand, three hundred of them. They were almost at this point here in the Book of Nehemiah. The first thing they do is they build the foundation of the Temple. They restore their worship, then they build their own houses and through the Prophet Haggai, if you read that Book – Haggai comes to them and says, “People, you have built your own houses but you haven’t built God’s House. Go and build God’s house.” They experience a whole bunch of resistance from people around them – you read about that in Ezra, Chapter 4 – to the building of the Temple. They complete and they dedicate the Temple and Ezra arrives and Ezra has a job, to bring God’s Word to them. They have been doing all these physical things, but they haven’t engaged with God’s Word, with who God is. They’re marrying foreign wives and doing all sorts of stuff.

So they have built their homes, they’ve built their Temple; they’re into the Word of God. What are they missing? Well, they are missing walls! Why are walls important? Because in those days armies came and took the city and if they didn’t have a wall around the city, then the army could just march straight in. That was the call on Nehemiah’s life, he wanders around, he inspects the work, he decides they are going to build the wall. As you look at this story of Israel, that brings us to this point, in the Book of Nehemiah, there is such enormously strong parallels between their story and our story.

Israel’s Story – Our Story!

We are looking today at this whole question of ‘enjoying our lives’. As I said at the beginning of the program, I truly believe that if we want to enjoy our lives, we need to make a conscious decision to ‘enjoy our lives.’ Just in the last few minutes we were looking at the story of Israel. Here were God’s chosen people, they were redeemed out of slavery, and when they finally came back from Babylon, the first thing they did was restore worship. They built the foundation for the Temple, the place where they meet God. Question – “Where do you meet God?” Then they built the Temple against some resistance then Ezra the Prophet came and he gave them God’s Word to make them strong and Nehemiah built the wall to repel the enemies. It was a hard slog, there was resistance, it was a grind.

But they did it! They started worshipping God, they built their solid foundations. They built they’re homes, they built God’s House, and the Temple, they let the Word of God come into their lives. They built the wall around, as defenses. These are all precursors to something. This passage of Scripture here in the Book of Nehemiah, that we are about to go to. Where there was guilt, God brought grace and brought them back to Jerusalem, and He said, “You know, when you rebuild this thing, it’s going to be better than the first time. Haggai says it in Chapter 2 and verse 9. He says, “The latter splendour shall be greater than the former.”

So everything is done, everything is built, and they decide to have a party with a difference. They decide to get together. These people had been redeemed from slavery, they’ve done the hard work, God has blessed them, against all the odds, Jerusalem is rebuilt, and on the first day of the seventh month – that’s significant, because the seventh month was the month of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. The day where they were forgiven. These forty two thousand, three hundred of them, gathered in a huge celebration. What did they want? What is the cornerstone of their celebration? Let’s have a read.

In Nehemiah Chapter 8, beginning at verse 1. They told the scribe, so they’re gathered in this square, right? Forty two thousand, three hundred of them. They tell the scribe, Ezra, “Bring the Book of the Law of Moses which the Lord had given to Israel. Accordingly, Ezra brought the Book of the Law before the assembly, both men and women and all who could hear with understanding. This was on the first day of the seventh month. He read from it, facing the square before the water gate, from the early morning until midday, in the presence of the men and women, those who could understand and the ears of all the people were attentive to the Book of the Law.” They wanted to hear God speak!

They had been through the most amazing experience where Jerusalem had been destroyed. Nebuchadnezzar’s army comes and takes God’s chosen people into captivity, seventy years as their slaves and then God brings them back as a remnant, this rump of forty two thousand, three hundred people. Against all the odds they rebuilt Jerusalem. What did they want in their celebration – they wanted to hear the Word of God and it says in there, from the early morning until midday. I’ve heard people complain with a twenty five minute sermon! From the early morning until the middle of the day, their heart was to hear God speak.

You know, when I’ve been at work, and it’s been a tough day and I come home and I see my wife, and I give her a kiss, you know what my heart is? I want to hear her speak, you know, I want to hear about her day, “What’s been going on in your day?” I love her, she loves me, we want to hear each other speak. These people were honouring their God in the same way. They loved their God and they wanted God to speak, and they had enormous respect. Pick it up in verse 4. “The scribe, Ezra, stood on a wooden platform that had been made for this purpose” and beside him stood a whole bunch of people whose names I can’t pronounce – “and Ezra opened the Book in the sight of all the people, for he was standing above all the people, and when he opened it all the people stood up, then Ezra blessed the Lord and the great God and all the people answered, “Amen, Amen!”, lifting their hands. Then they bowed their heads and they worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground.”

These people were honouring God first. They had been through stuff, it was hard, and Ezra read and they understood, it says. So far so good, but have a look at their reaction in verse 9. “And Nehemiah, who was the governor, and Ezra, the priest and the scribe, and the Levites who taught the people, said to all the people, “This day is holy to the Lord, do not weep or mourn, for all the people wept when they heard the words of the Lord.“ They wept! Why did they weep? Why did forty two thousand, three hundred people weep? Because God’s Word came to the heart. Because they had been in captivity and experienced Gods grace. Because they had struggled through the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and they experienced God‘s providence. They had a lack of direction so God sent them Nehemiah and Ezra, leaders and prophets. They had their own sinfulness, and the prophets came to call them home again, to give them God’s Word.

Finally, God’s people were exactly where He wanted them. Isaiah Chapter 66, verse 2, says this, “All these things my hand has made, and so all these things are mine, says the Lord, but this is the one to whom I will look, to the humble, to the contrite in spirit, the one who trembles at My Word.” This was a stiff-necked, unrepentant nation, whom God allowed to be plundered by the Babylonians. Through this whole journey – ever had some bad times in life? Through this whole journey, God wants to bring them to this place, by His grace. God wants to bring them as humble, contrite people, who want to hear His Word, who want to hear Him. And God was prepared to take them through all that so that just forty two thousand, three hundred of them, a remnant, could come back and be in this place of grace.

What a great story! What comes next? Well let’s continue reading, Nehemiah, Chapter 8, beginning at verse 10. So the Word has been read for half a day, they’ve wept, because it’s really cut them to the quick, and then, this is what Ezra says to them. “Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared. For this day is holy to the Lord, and do not be grieved because the joy of the Lord is your strength.” So the Levites stilled all the people, saying, “Be quiet, because this day holy, don’t be grieved and all the people went on their way to eat and drink and to send portions and make great rejoicing because they had understood the words that were declared to them.” This is God’s day! God brought you here! This is God’s plan, His grace, His power!

Go and experience the joy of the Lord, don’t cry, don’t be grieved, don’t weep. You are not a slave any more, you’re forgiven. Go and do what? Eat and drink, eat the fat. Eat fat? You know, I love bacon and I’m not tall, dark and handsome, so I have to be careful what I eat. And so we eat low fat bacon – all the fats been chopped off and that’s nice, but, man, there’s nothing like bacon with the fat and the skin left on, is there? That’s where the flavour is. Eat the best, is what God is saying, go and drink the wine. We are not talking non-alcoholic grape juice here, you know, this is wine – go and drink it, eat the fat of the lamb. What’s God got in mind, what’s going on here? Why is God partying?

The Joy of the Lord

Today on Christianityworks we are looking at the whole subject of enjoying our lives. We saw how God brought Israel to a point of grace, to a point where He had taken them through a tough journey, just to bless them, just to bring them back. Why? Well, we often think of God as a judge, as a magistrate. He’s holy, He’s perfect, He’s just and any system of justice demands justice, so we think of God in that way, and that’s fair enough, that’s right, we should do that. And we think of God as a Father, as a loving, forgiving God. I believe that we need to hold those two things together.

I have a dear friend who’s the head of the Theology department of a Bible College. He did his PHD on the whole subject of God as a God of joy. He said, “You know we think of God as a magistrate, we think of God as a Father. Do we think of God as someone who wants to party? Do we think of God as someone who wants to rejoice? Do we think of God as someone who wants to throw a barbecue and say, “Berni, come as you are, just the way you are. Come! – and party with me.” Because that’s what God is doing here. God is not just blessing His people by making them stand in the sun and listen to a half day sermon. God says to them, “Go drink the wine, go eat the best meat, go rejoice because I brought you back here.”

Jesus is the Saviour who went to the wedding in Canaan and turned the water into wine. He’s the one who told the story about God of the Prodigal Son, where he runs out and grabs his son and brings him back and has a party. What if God actually wants us to enjoy our lives? What if God wants Jacqui to enjoy wandering around the shoe shops, because He knows she likes it? What if God wants us to eat of the fat of the land and drink the sweet wine? Not in the world’s way, not as pagans, not as selfish people, not getting our worth from it but in His way, by getting our foundations in place, by getting our worship in place, by getting our home in place. By getting the Word of God into us, by letting Him build the walls of protection around our lives. Right enjoyment! This is what Jesus said, He said, “Don’t rejoice because the demons are subject to you, rejoice because your name is written in the Book of Heaven.” The devil on the other hand, wants to steal our joy. The thief comes only to steal, kill and destroy, but, “I have come,” said Jesus, “that you may have life and have it abundantly.”

When the devil steals our joy, he steals our strength. Remember what it said in that passage we were reading in Nehemiah, “Do not be grieved for the joy of the Lord is your strength.” When we are living in the joy of the Lord, no matter what is going on around us, no matter what people are doing, no matter how bad it gets, when we have the kind of relationship with Jesus, where there’s this thing of joy bubbling along inside us, the devil can’t touch us. He wants to take our joy away.

Last night, next door, there were people having a party. It was loud, it was noisy. I knew I had to get up really early this morning to work on this, to prepare. I’m lying in bed, I’m about to prepare a message, just in a few hours time, on the devil stealing your joy and what happens – there’s a party next door. And God just said to me, “Laugh, because you’ll get the rest you need and you’ll be in the right place to do what I need you to do tomorrow.” People, we need to decide that if we are going to enjoy the life that God has given us, just look at the word ‘enjoy’. En-joy! What does ‘en’ mean? En means ‘enter into’ enter into the joy that God has given us. This is the day that the Lord has made and I will rejoice and be glad in it!

There are so many reasons not to enjoy life. In Mark, Chapter 4 verse 26, Jesus talks about the fact that life and the Kingdom of God is a bit like a farmer. You know, the farmer goes out, throws the seeds into the garden and he goes to bed and he gets up and he weeds it and he goes to bed and he gets up……life is like that. We sleep and rise, we sleep and rise, we get up and we go to bed, day after day after day. We pluck the weeds up, we get up, we go to bed. We do not always live on the mountain tops. Life has a mundane grind to it. It’s not exciting all the time. We live ordinary everyday lives, anointed by a God to live ordinary, everyday lives with extraordinary joy. Who’s joy? His joy! The joy of the Lord is your strength. We need to get over thinking that we are going to a “Woo” time all the time.

Don’t be determined not to have any trouble. Be determined to rejoice in the midst of it. Sometimes people, who are near and dear to me, have a ‘bad hair’ day. Sometimes stuff happens. I am determined to live in His joy today. Jesus, praying just before He was betrayed, said this, “Father, I speak these things in the world, so that they may have my joy made complete in them.” Who’s joy? Jesus joy – not a dribble – complete abundant joy! Rivers of living water. Joy! How different is someone who believes in Jesus from someone who doesn’t? Maybe there is some areas in your life, the foundation, the worship, your home, getting God’s Word into you, building God’s wall of protection. Maybe you need some or all of those things, and you think, “I feel guilty, I feel condemnation, coming on. Remember Haggai’s words “the latter splendour shall be greater than the former.” I AM determined – I AM determined to enjoy my life!