Rejoice in the Lord means rejoice sincerely in the Lord, from the heart. Yet, in focusing on sincerity we can’t forget that it’s a command. You cannot not rejoice in the Lord. You must rejoice. Which means – that this Lord is extending his authority into your will, your emotions, your intellect. Wow!
But the command is legit. He’s a wise Lord – it’s smart to rejoice. It’d be ignorant not to rejoice. He’s a just Lord – it’s right to rejoice. It’d be wrong not to rejoice. He’s the Logos, the Word of God, the Everlasting Explanation of Reality, the Creator whose voice formed planets and uteruses and memory and moss, the Son of God in Eternal Fellowship with God the Father in the power of the Spirit. To rejoice in the Lord is to live in reality.
And how will you rejoice in the Lord, from the heart?
Well, doing it rightly will involve a negative move, Paul says in v. 2. You’ll have to look out. Look out for the dogs, look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the flesh.
Now, back in October I gave a sermon on this verse, so I’m not go deep at all into what Paul meant here. Simply to say again that here he’s calling out and warning against those Jewish Christians compelling Gentile Christians to be circumcised. (I’ll send out that sermon this week for you to review.)
Those who were pressing circumcision on new Gentile converts were telling a story of the world that wasn’t true… in that it failed to turn over the new page. The sign of circumcision was a sign of the Sinai Covenant between God and Israel. But in Jesus’ crucifixion a New Covenant had been cut, between God and the Christ who embodied Israel… and all those in Christ by faith. Baptism, and not circumcision, was the sign of that New Covenant. God had moved the plot forward, yet these pressuring circumcisions were stuck in Act 1.
Let me generalize the point: to rejoice in the Lord involves rejecting other stories about reality that don’t align with the gospel and thus don’t feature Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. The tricky thing is that sometimes those false stories aren’t completely or even mainly false; they might include some truth and verbiage about Jesus Christ and have something moral to say.
Does the story you’re living in lend itself to rejoicing in the Lord? Wait, wut? Story? Yes! Part of being made in the image of God is that we are meaning makers. Data doesn’t just come at us; events don’t just happen randomly: we find meaning by setting events into stories. We can’t live only in the present; we can’t help knitting together the present with scenes from the past and the possible future. When you go out on a first date, you’ll say something like “tell me your story.” You’d also like to get a sense of what kind of life she envisions.
So, yes, we’re all living according to some story or another; we can’t help it. The problem is the same one that Paul was combatting in this letter: often the stories we’re telling and think we’re living are more or less fictional.
How are they fictional? Well, they’re not telling the true story or the whole story, and not doing so in predictable ways. A common feature of modern narratives is that our view of the past is limited: the world began on October 3, 1975, the day Colin Landry was born. Nothing before that really mattered. What do I care about history? I wasn’t there!
And commonly in our stories our view of the future is also surprisingly… abbreviated: someone can be incredibly ambitious regarding his career, his acquisitions, achievements, experiences – but then all his projection suddenly stops short at his death. But why should our vision end there? Why not secure a future beyond the day of our death?
Besides short-sightedness, another big problem with many stories people think they’re living in is the characters who populate them. Sometimes, the only character who really matters is…ME.
Perhaps just as often, there’s someone or a certain group of people called society or familythat are holding too much sway in the story you’re living in. Your sense of self, your legitimacy, is entangled in how others think of you. There was a book that came out about 25 years ago: “When People are Big and God is Small.”
I can guarantee you won’t rejoice in the Lord when the Lord is buried beneath “more important” people!
The main problem with most stories people are living in: they’re almost always false because they almost never have Jesus dynamically at the center. And if that’s true of you, because Jesus isn’t the Living, Active, Commanding center of your story, your life isn’t in God. Jesus said, I am the Way [to God].
And Jesus said, I am… the Truth. If you’re telling a story set into this creation and yet you never refer to the Creator, that story is seriously compromised.
Yes, stories without Jesus at the center are ultimately absent of God and untrue. Also Jesus said, I am the Life. Which implies, stories without Jesus are either cruel or on their way to cruelty. And they’re sad currently or on their way to sadness. Aristotle said that a comedy is a story that begins with some sadness and yet ends happily. Whereas a tragedy is a story that either begins happily or moves toward happiness…but ends sadly. Every life without Jesus is a tragedy. This is true of personal stories without Jesus. Family stories. Peoples’ stories. National stories.
This is true: The story that centers Jesus is the only comedy in the world. I’ll try to back that up if you ask me about it later.
So, getting back to Paul: “Look out for the dogs.” To rejoice in the Lord, we’re to closely monitor our stories! What stories we tell ourselves we’re living in; also what stories we’re writing or reading or watching to shed light on the stories we’re living in; what stories that are affecting us. Look out for the dogs whose wickedness lies in the fact that they’re telling stories which don’t reckon with the living, active Lord! Listen to yourself as you talk about your life: job change, dating, setting up house: How frequently does the living, active Lord show up in those conversations?
Ok, you get it.
There are people who have the true Story that features Jesus Christ written at their core. And Paul says about them, they bear the true mark of being separated to God. He puts it this way in v.3: We are the circumcision. We’re not carrying around just a superficial marker on one bodily organ. No, we’ve been cut…marked…tattooed deep in ourselves, at our heart. The Gospel has altered us, fundamentally. To use another expression, these who have the gospel carved into their spirit are the genuine disciples or apprentices of Christ.
What does it look like to have been marked by God? To be a genuine Christ-follower? Paul supplies three descriptions; we’ll look at the first one this week. As we discuss this, I want you to examine yourself: are you a genuine man or woman of God? Do you bear His mark?
For we are the circumcision, who a) worship by the Spirit of God and b) glory in Christ Jesus and c) put no confidence in the flesh. These are three traits of those who have been tattooed by the Gospel; deep in their spirit they have Jesus at the center of the Story.
First, those who bear His mark in their heart worship by the Spirit of God.
A mark of those who have been truly marked by God is worship. I hope when you hear that word you don’t first, second, or third think of someone who regularly attends a worship service! Rather, truly, God has their attention 24/7. And their earnest admiration. They ascribe greatness to God. They make sacrifices to behold and then more sharply display the beauty of God.
But it’s not simply worship that marks the genuine Christian. Specifically, worship that is qualified as worship by the Spirit of God. So, not imagining a God of our invention, but responding to the real God whom the Spirit reveals. Not thinking and talking of God, responding to God, in whichever way we want. But directed by the Spirit.
Who is the God the Spirit reveals?
…
Well, in the true story, Jesus is God born into humanity who is given the task to be The Man who finally bears the image of God, expresses God. John 1:18: No one has ever seen God; the only God, who is at the Father’s side, he has made him known.
How is the Man able to truly make known who God is? John 3: 34: He whom God has sent utters the words of God, for he gives the Spirit [to this One] without measure.
God’s people worship Him. And they worship Him through knowing Jesus who was filled with God’s Spirit. This is a key point. Just because two people are both worshiping someone they’re both calling “God” doesn’t mean they’re worshiping the same God. “God” is simply a title. The question is always, which God? Look at 1 Peter 1: 20, 21:
[Jesus Christ] was foreknown before the foundation of the world but was made manifest in the last times for the sake of you who through him are believers in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.
Through Christ, Peter writes, you… are believers in God. “God” is a container word that comes to us empty until it’s filled with certain content. And now that He’s come on the scene, Jesus is the only sufficient content of “God.” Unless we know the Jesus whom the Spirit of God filled without measure, we do not know God.
But then, how do we know Jesus? There are lots of ideas or versions of Jesus running throughout the society. Vegetarian Jesus. Save the whales Jesus. White Jesus. Married Jesus. Muslims have their idea of Jesus. There’s the search for the historical Jesus Jesus. So which Jesus?
…
The Jesus presented to us by the Spirit of God.
And where do we find the Jesus presented to us by the Spirit of God?
…
In Scripture. That what Jesus said to His apostles the night before He died, as recorded in John 14: 25, 26: These things I have spoken to you while I am still with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you.
Paraphrase: You don’t understand me now, in retrospect you’ll remember me incorrectly…so I will send to you the Spirit, and he will guide you into the truth of me, he will give you perfect remembrance of what I said and did, the perfect perspective that will allow you to write and present me just as I should be presented to the effect that people living in Somers in the 21stcentury will be able to know me for who I really am.
What is a mark of genuine Christianity? Worship by the Spirit of God. Worshipping God through the Spirit- filled Jesus as the Spirit portrays Him in Scripture. So, worshiping God starts with Scripture.
The real circumcision: People marked unmistakably by God in that they are paying attention to God through the presentation of the Spirit filled Jesus in the Spirit-produced Bible.
Now, the dogs might want to tell you a story that includes God but it’s not the God Jesus reveals. They might set you into that story that includes Jesus, but it’s not the real Jesus. To combat these misleading and ultimately sad fake Jesus stories, the Spirit presents Jesus to us in the Scriptures, the real Spirit-filled Jesus through whom we encounter the living God, and then worship Him for His greatness and His mighty deeds. Worship God by the Spirit.
I want to be careful here. It’s possible to be a genuine Christian and yet you’re a Spiritual infant: you know hardly anything about the Bible. Also, even a more mature Christian goes through dry seasons where exposure to the Bible is frustrating, boring.
But an unmistakable mark of God’s ownership of a person is that he is interested in the Bible. You don’t have to convince him that in the Bible you come to know God, so he/she’s wanting to know the Bible, and not just for intellectual cred but because he wants to grow up into this God. When you approach him about the Bible, there’s already a curiosity, there’s an ability to make connections, there’s a respect. And, as I said, a desire. You didn’t create this desire, it’s already there, the seal of the Spirit who is the guarantee of a future fellowship that won’t be mediated by Scripture but face to face.
You cannot rejoice in the Spirit filled Lord who sets you before the Heavenly Father…apart from the direction of the Spirit inspired Scripture. Watch out for those who would substitute the Scripture for other Jesus presentations. Somers Baptist Church, examine yourself: do you worship by the Spirit of God? That is, do you have a growing appetite for knowing God through the Spirit filled Christ presented in the Spirit inspired Scripture? Do you have a “natural” – by which I mean uncoerced, simply present – interest in the Bible?
I fear for those who call themselves Christians but who have no exposure and/or no interest in exposure to the Word as it is. Let me say something a little controversial: when I drill down into the Roman Catholic Church’s doctrine, the differences between me and them shrink (although there remain differences). When I listen to /read some Roman Catholic teachers I often myself edified. Yet I see “on the ground” in the RCC a problem: there’s commonly a lack of exposure to the Bible. Sometimes even reading the Bible is discouraged. Leave that to the professionals, seems to be the unspoken idea. The Scriptures are read in the services but there’s little explanation. There’s little or no connection of a passage with the overarching redemption story.
But no! Listen to what Jesus says: My sheep hear my voice and I know them and they follow me. Encountering Christ in the Scripture and then following His voice is the mark of His sheep. This isn’t just a RCC problem; many Protestants who long ago cried “Sola Scriptura” no longer know and worship the God of Scripture, the God whom the Spirit presents!
Let me say something bluntly: Maybe you think you’re a Christian but you’re not. If you come here regularly you know that I’m not given to this kind of provocation. But I’d hate for you to go week after week, year after year, decade after decade, sitting next to Christianity but never having been taken by the Spirit of Christ to love the Christ of Scripture.
So let me ask you: Are you being shaped to come to the Bible with expectancy, with intelligence dialed in, with endurance for working through concepts that appear archaic or irrelevant or (gasp) untrendy, with a willingness to follow wherever the thoughts of God go as he presents them? Or are you living in a story of Christianity that has left the Bible behind, that minimizes the Bible, that cherry picks from the Bible, that is ultimately frustrated by the Bible, that is prepared to set aside unpopular or obscure parts? Are you dealing with contrived Jesus or the well-rounded Jesus whom the Spirit presents?
These are big, diagnostic questions. Slow down and answer truly.
Oh, friends! This isn’t simply about being a good boy and sitting quietly and reading a book! Think about those words: The Spirit of God. The Spirit of God. The One who lives in the deep places…of God. God = The Holy One where all of life is concentrated. The Eternally Present One. The God in whom we live and move and have our being. The God who is Paradise. In this age, the only Portal through which we’ll begin and continue to know that God is… Scripture.
Where else will we learn that God has slain Leviathan in order to create and maintain the world? That the world is a spoken world and lives on in God’s powerful voice? That behind the earthly decisions and policies of legislators and councils are the judgments of the heavenly Powers, many of whom are corrupt…but that God is the Head of the heavenly Council? That God is not only simple, but also complex: a Triunity? That God became Man in order to raise Man up, all the way up, all the way up, all the way up into the eternal fellowship of Father, Son, and Spirit? That in order for this to happen – a man’s blood must run out of his body? And not just a little, but lifeblood? And not just any Joe Schmo, but a Man who’d been given the ancient Spirit without measure? A Man filled with God’s Life in order to fully atone for sinners and break the might of the Heavenly Powers? Where else could we learn – in this globe of beauty and joy and injustice and decay and imminent catastrophe – that there’s a river from Heaven running throughout that makes glad this world? Creator God is here, and He’s not leaving but has invested…everything. And it’s through the Scriptures, as the river rushes over rocks and around bends, in its sounds we can discern one repeated sentence: Be still, and know that I am God.
AMEN
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