Pursuing Joy

Sermon Notes from Charles Spurgeon:

Romans 6:11-12 — “So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions.”

How intimately the believer’s duties are interwoven with his privileges! Because he is alive to God, he is to renounce sin, since that corrupt thing belongs to his estate of death.

Sin Wants To Reign Over You

“Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions.”

1. Sin has great power. It is in you and will strive to reign.
   • Sin remains as an outlaw, hiding away in your nature.
   • Sin remains as a plotter, planning your overthrow.
   • Sin remains as an enemy, warring against the law of your mind.
   • Sin remains as a tyrant, worrying and oppressing the true life.
2. Sin’s field of battle is the body.
   • Its wants—hunger, thirst, cold, etc.—may become occasions of sin, by leading to murmuring, envy, covetousness, robbery.
   • Its appetites may crave excessive indulgence and, unless continually curbed, will easily lead to evil.
   • Its pains and infirmities, through engendering impatience and other faults, may produce sin.
   • Its pleasures, also, can readily become incitements to sin.
   • Its influence upon the mind and spirit may drag our noble nature down to the groveling materialism of earth.
3. The body is mortal, and we shall be completely delivered from sin when set free from our present material frame, if indeed grace reigns within. Till then we shall find sin lurking in one member or another of “this vile body.”
4. Meanwhile we must not let it reign.
   • If it reigned over us, it would be our god. It would prove us to be under death and not alive to God.
   • It would cause us unbounded pain and injury if it ruled only for a moment.

Sin is within us, aiming at dominion. This knowledge, together with the fact that we are nevertheless alive to God, should:

• Help our peace, for we perceive that men may be truly the Lord’s, even though sin struggles within them.
• Aid our caution, for our divine life is well worth preserving and needs to be guarded with constant care.
• Draw us to use the means of grace, since in these the Lord meets with us and refreshes our new life.

(HT: The Resurgence)

“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God,

and the Word was God.”

John 1:1

“The Gospel of John, indeed the whole Christian faith, stands or falls with John’s opening sentence. Christ as deity, God as Trinity, man’s salvation – all depend on John’s first words.”

~ Sinclair Ferguson, In Christ Alone, 24

The Brazil Team has been working through AW Tozer’s life vows for our evening devotions the past five evenings. I’ve included the Scriptures that we studied as a team.  God has shown us so much about our hearts and our idols! Pray for us as we take a look at vow #5 tonight… Never Accept Any Glory, because God gets it all!! Personally, I hope this is one we all learn more about and implement more and more every day!

#1 – Deal Thoroughly With Sin [Romans 8.5-13, Ezekiel 18.4, 20, Joshua 7]

#2 – Never Own Anything [1 Chronicles 29.10-13, Psalm 24, Matthew 19.16-30]

#3 – Never Defend Yourself [2 Samuel 16.5-14]

#4 – Never Pass On Anything About Anyone Else That Will Hurt Them [James 3.8-13, Proverbs 20.19, Galatians 5.22-26]

#5 – Never Accept Any Glory [1 Corinthians 10.31, Isaiah 43.6-7, 1 Peter 2.9-12]

“Affliction can sometimes prove a blessing to a person’s soul… There is nothing that shows our ignorance more than impatience under troubles. We forget that every cross is a message from God and intended to do us good in the end. Trials are intended to make us think, to wean us from the world, to send us to the Bible, to drive us to our knees. Health is a good thing, but sickness is far better if it drives us to God. Anything, anything is better than living in carelessness and dying in sin.”

~ JC Ryle

Our mission trip in Brasil is quickly coming to a close. We have two days left of our VBS at the Igreja Batista De Castro Alves here in south Sao Paulo. The words above are from our morning team devotions. God is doing great things in our team and many students are seeing Him “wean us from the world”! We pray that God changes our hearts. Without Him doing the work only He can do, we will come back unchanged. Pray with us and for us during these last few days that our eyes will see and our ears would hear, God would grant repentance and we would have hearts and affections that are truly changed.

Hebrews 12:28 “Therefore let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship with reverence and awe.”

Greetings from Brazil!  First and foremost I would like to thank everyone back home and at Five Points who is praying for us.  Your prayers have been such a blessing and even though this is only the third day of the trip, God is showing the team (and hopefully you guys back home) that prayer is powerful.  Specifically, I can think of many things that need prayer on this trip:

• Pray that God would be glorified through the Brazil team in our words, actions, and thoughts
• Pray for Dave and Jan Santos, that they would be healed of their physical ailments and that God would restore their strength
• Pray that God would use this cold/rainy weather to further his kingdom and that while we don’t understand it, we would have faith that it is His will
• Pray for Mazinia and her family as they are all new believes and are going through financial trouble
• Pray for Crispy that he would give up his alcoholic ways and return to the church and to Jesus Christ
• Pray for Juan and Christiani that God would continue to strengthen their marriage and their faith in Him
• Pray for the “Ingreja Btista De Castro Alves” Church where Dave and Jan are currently working

Praise God that he is doing so many wonderful things in Brazil!  Every day, we encounter new people and new circumstances which test our own faith and cause us to lean on Jesus more and more.  People here are so gracious, kind, and thankful even though they own so little.  Specifically, Mazinia’s testimony was such an encouragement because very early in her Christian life, God taught her that life does not instantly become easy because you commit yourself to Christ.  She still has financial trouble.  However, her faith in God is all she needs, she says.  It has been such a blessing to come to Brazil and we’ll be home sooner than you know it!

Your brother in Christ,

Adam Ilenich

–THIS IS A GUEST POST BY LUKE HARDING, AN INTERN AT FIVE POINTS COMMUNITY CHURCH–

Veritas (college/singles ministry) has engaged the first Epistle of John for their study this summer. God has used this short book to enliven our hearts for true fellowship in the gospel. As young adult Christians, our tendency is to find unity in the gospel… plus something else. It might be the gospel plus sports, or the gospel plus indie music, or the gospel plus trendy clothes. Yet the Scriptures tell us that we find our truest and most joyful fellowship when our fellowship is centered in Christ alone through the gospel alone (1 John 1:7). Our fellowship in the church can either look exactly like the Elks club down the street, or it can cause the world around us to scratch their heads, because we have unity than can only be explained through the gospel. C.S. Lewis aids our understanding of fellowship in a living Body as opposed to fellowship in the world:

“The very word membership is of Christian origin, but it has been taken over by the world and emptied of all meaning. It must be most emphatically stated that items included in a homogeneous class are almost the reverse of what St. Paul meant. By members he meant that what we should call organs, things, essentially different from, and complementary to, one another. When we describe a man as ‘a member of the Church’ we usually mean nothing Pauline: we mean only that he is a unit—that he is one more specimen of some kind of things as X and Y.

The society into which the Christian is called at baptism is not a collective but a Body. If anyone came to it with the misconception that membership of the Church was membership in a debased modern sense—a massing together of persons as if they were pennies—he would be corrected at the threshold by the discovery that the head of this Body is so unlike the inferior members that they share no predicate with him save by analogy. We are summoned from the outset to combine as creatures with out Creator, as mortals with immortal, as redeemed sinners with sinless Redeemer. His presence, the interaction between him and us, must always be the overwhelmingly dominant factor in the life we are to lead within the Body; and any conception of Christian fellowship which does not mean primarily fellowship with him is out of court. We are all constantly teaching and learning, forgiving and being forgiven, representing Christ to man, and man to Christ. The sacrifice of selfish privacy which is daily demanded of us is daily repaid a hundredfold in the true growth of personality which the life of the Body encourages. Those who are members of one another become as diverse as the hand and the ear. That is why the worldlings are so monotonously alike compared with the almost fantastic variety of the saints. Obedience is the road to freedom, humility the road to pleasure, unity the road to personality.”

~ Membership, CS Lewis

Joel Zumaya, a hard-throwing pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, fractured his elbow pitching on Monday night against the Minnesota Twins.  This article on the Detroit Free Press talks about his injury and his thoughts after learning that though it is a season-ending injury, he will be able to pitch again.  After reading the piece, I thought of three things I would say to Joel if I had the opportunity.

First, the article’s title is “Joel Zumaya hopes to return next spring”.  To that, I say, “Joel, hope in Christ alone.”  All things in this world fade away.  There will come a spring that you will not spend in Lakeland, Florida getting ready for a season of playing baseball.  A life worth living is a life lived to display the greatness of the glory of the grace of God in Jesus Christ, which is the ultimate purpose for the existence of everything. Living to that end will be the path of finding true joy, whether God allows you more seasons or not.

Second, if baseball is taken away from you, God means for it to be a way of pointing to the only thing that will truly satisfy your heart’s desires.  All the idols of this world are worthless and those who love them become like them… deaf, blind, empty and dead.  But sometimes we don’t know what we are idolizing and it takes God removing what we’ve put in His rightful place to realize how backwards we are living.  Suffering exists as a means of giving us more of God while weaning us off the idols of our hearts.  All we need in life is God.  We were made to see and enjoy and proclaim the glory of God.  Anything else we live for will always leave us empty.

Third, Joel said, “I felt like I had no one on my side.”  To that, I say, “When Jesus was taking the final steps of His path towards the cross, he was all alone.  The crowds were against him, the religious leaders were against him, his best friends had deserted him and one of them even denied knowing him.  In fact, even God The Father forsook His own Son at the cross.  Jesus knows what it is like to be utterly alone.”  1 Peter 3.18 says, “For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God”.  Through Christ’s suffering, God’s enemies were made His sons.  Christ’s suffering enabled us to regain fellowship with God.   So, Joel, whether you are experiencing the joy of playing baseball or the pain of having it taken away, anyone who believes in Christ alone and pursues their joy in God alone are rich beyond comprehension and have so much to live for.

So, Joel, believe that Jesus Christ, the Righteous Son of God, died for all our sins and conquered death by rising eternally triumphant over all his enemies and that there is now no condemnation for those who believe, but only everlasting joy in the fellowship with the One True God, both in this life and one to come.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(HT: Ray Ortlund)

Father, we know it is good to give thanks to you, to sing praises to your name, to declare your steadfast love in the morning and your faithfulness throughout our days, for you, O Lord, have us glad by your works and at the work of your hands we sing for joy!  How great are your works, O Lord! Your thoughts are unsearchable and your ways inscrutable!  We are exceedingly glad that you reign and that your throne is established from of old and you are everlasting.  We declare to the nations this day your glories unending!  For you are great and greatly to be praised!  You alone are God!  All the gods and idols of this world are worthless.  Merciful Father, help us to see that they have mouths, but do not speak; they have eyes, but do not see; they have ears, but do not hear. God we are here, asking for you to shower us with your grace to see that the things of this world are worthless, the work of human hands.  Help us to see that those who trust in them become like them.  Lord God of our salvation, it is NOT to these that we have come, but to you for you have been our dwelling place in all generations.  Before the mountains were brought forth or you had formed the earth, from everlasting to everlasting you are God.  So teach us this morning from the depths of your Word.  We need your Spirit to help us this day.  We cannot understand in and of ourselves, so upon you we wait… You tell us that those who wait upon you will not be put to shame, so make us to know your ways and teach us your paths.  Lead us in your Truth and teach us for you are the God of our salvation and upon you we will wait all the day long.

Remember your mercy, O Lord, and your steadfast love, for they have been from of old.  Remember not the countless sins of our youth, nor our daily transgressions; according to your steadfast love remember your people and for Your Name’s Sake, pardon our guilt for it is great!!  We pray that you would turn to us and be gracious to us.  Guard our souls this day and keep our minds from wandering.  Let us see Christ in ways we never dreamt possible.  Let us hear His voice in ways we never have experienced.  Let those who are unrepentant hear you beckon, “Come, you poor and needy, weak and wounded, Come to the Everlasting Rest!”  Open all our hearts with the Sword of Your Truth.  Break the pride that dwells deep inside with the weight of your glory and your beauty.  Stamp out the false humilities, vanities and love of self by the power of your Spirit through Christ’s precious blood!  We thank you for Christ and his work on our behalf on the cross.  Unstop our ears and unharden our hearts that we may hear him, follow him, cling to him and satisfy ourselves in Him alone.  O Merciful Shepherd, blind your flock this morning with your glory!  Unveil your glory to your people this hour.  Come to us in power and in truth!  We pray all this and even more than we can imagine asking in Jesus’ precious and glorious name. Amen.