Known by our fruit: joy July 7&8, 2018 Carroll First UMC

Known by our fruit: joy

July 7&8, 2018

Carroll First UMC

                            

What was that?  Seriously, what was that reading?  The thrones, and jewels and crowns and … those creatures… the lion, the ox, the human face, and the eagle… all with eyes in front and behind and with 6 wings each!!!  What in the world was that?

That was a description of worship in heaven.  There is lots of symbolism there all of which seems very strange to us. 

But is it really any stranger than our Sunday worship habits would appear to someone outside the church? When you stop and think about it, it must look pretty absurd. It almost defies logical explanation. Why would we voluntarily get up early on a weekend to go to church?  We gather in the same place with the same people every week. Kind of like a movie theatre, but without the popcorn.

Once we are together, we sing… Out loud. Sometimes even on-key. Where else would we do that? Maybe the 7th inning stretch at a ballgame but that’s about it. Then we listen while someone reads from a book and then talks…and talks…and talks. Nothing explodes, no aliens or monsters appear. In this visual age driven by soundbytes and computer graphics, just sitting and listening to someone talk must seem at best antiquated, and at worst a waste of time. If that is not strange enough, we do all of this in the shadow of an instrument of execution the cross.  And to top it all off, some of us even give away our money while we’re here. Are we completely out of our minds?

Some might think so.

So I guess it is a good thing that in some ways worship is not what it seems to be.

Worship does not come from the mind… it comes from the heart… worship comes from the heart overflowing with Joy.

In spite of the fact that we build churches like theatres, you are not the audience.  Actually, we are all actors and we have an audience of one…  God.

And contrary to the values of our consumer-driven culture, we don’t worship for what we can get out of it.

So why do we worship?

Why do I spend all week, … actually, many weeks planning for these two hours on Saturday and Sunday?  Why do we worship?

You might come to see your friends, but you can do that at the coffee shop.

You might come to relax and have a quiet hour, but you could get that by going for a walk in the woods.

You might come to learn something, but you can do that by reading a book.

You might come to be filled, but you can do that a pizza ranch… maybe in a different way but I guarantee you can be filled there!

You might come here because that is what you have always done on Sunday morning. But even old dogs can learn new tricks.

None of those are why we come to worship. 

We worship for one reason and one reason only.  When we encounter God our hearts overflow with joy. When we come into the presence of God we are so filled with joy that we can't help but worship. When the spirit of God touches our spirit as we are filled with the fruit of the spirit called joy and the natural response is WOW.

WOW may be the most authentic expression of worship.

When we have an experience of the living God we are literally Awed to Joy

We overflow with Joy. We ooze joy. That joy is deeper than happiness.  It is wider than gladness. It is higher than pleasure. Joy is the fruit of the spirit that makes us want to sing, and dance, and raise our hands, and whoop and holler, and shout from the mountaintop about the greatness of God… and the church that bears the fruit of joy lives that out in its worship.

 This series is called “known by our fruit.” Because when people see us we want them to know who we are by what we do. The fruit of the spirit is not a discipline we practice or a goal for which we strive.  They are what we become BECAUSE we have encountered the living God and because of that, our lives have been transformed.

Last week we talked about the fruit of love. Because we personally encounter the loving God, we are filled with love and people to say “look how they love one another and others.”

 This week we talk about the fruit of the spirit that is Joy.  Joy is the delight, the jubilation, the  exultation, the glee, the exhilaration, the exuberance, the euphoria that bubbles up inside of us because we have encountered the living God.   It is the result of the holy spirit bearing witness with our spirit…the Holy spirit touching our spirit.  Maybe you get shivers up your spine. Maybe you want to sing. Maybe you want to dance.  Maybe you want to stand on a mountain and tell everyone what you have experienced. Whatever form it takes the natural response to joy is to whisper “WOW.” And that WOW is at the heart of worship.

Worship means different things in different places.  Have any of you been in a church where they play tambourines and dance up and down the aisle?  That’s Joy, but so is the unprogrammed friends worship where they sit in pregnant silence for an hour listening for a word of the lord. 

Have any of you been to a worship where they pray in tongues and are slain in the spirit? That is joy-filled worship, but so is the 3-hour orthodox worship service in a 1500-year-old cold stone cathedral where everyone has to wear coats and stand because there are no pews. 

Have any of you seen the Nigerian worshippers dancing down the aisle with their offerings?  That is Joy, but so is the offering in churches like ours where people give generously and joyfully while their hearts are filled with beautiful music.

All of these are worship and all of them grow out of the joy we experience in an encounter with God. They are each unique as is each of us. None is better than the other. Because in their own way, each is expressing a joy-filled “wow.”

The 100th Psalm speaks of the relationship between joy and worship.  And it gives us at least three reasons to joyfully worship God.

The 100th Psalm starts out calling us into worship… “Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come into his presence with singing.” See the Joyfulness, the gladness that leads us to worship?

 We are going to focus on three sources of Joy in verse three. It starts out “Know that the Lord is God.”  

The Lord is God… that word LORD is the word “Yahweh,” the great I am; the one who was, is, and will be; the almighty creator of heaven and earth; the humble suffering servant, and the spirit that equips calls and sends each of us to be servants of the king. To say that the Lord is God is to say that God is the one and only, eternal, all knowing, all powerful all loving and all judging Lord of all that has ever been and all that will be. What do we say when we stand in the presence of such a being besides “WOW.”

To back up a word or two, the psalmist says we should “Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come into his presence with singing.”  Because we KNOW that the Lord Is God.  He is not talking about knowing God up here, but something that happens down here….deep, deep inside in ways that we can’t explain or describe. My cell phone doesn’t’ know who made it, or who is operating it but we KNOW the Lord. How many created things have the privilege of knowing and being in a relationship with their creator. We should not take that for granted. God is God and we are mere creatures, God is not required to let us know the divine, yet we are honored with the unbelievable opportunity as mere finite creatures to enter into the presence of the Almighty Lord God. 

I remember when the kids were small watching them when we picked them up from daycare or the nursery, and they were OK as long as they didn’t know we were there.  As soon as they knew we were in the room they would either squeal with delight or burst out in tears.  I always told myself they were tears of joy. Both the squeal and the tears are responses to being emotionally overwhelmed.

Our natural response when we realize that God is here is to be overwhelmed. Sometimes that means we sing in delight, other times we cry for the joy of it, other times we want to dance or lift our hands and hearts in joyful worship of the Lord our God. All are joyful responses to KNOWING that the Lord is God. Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come into his presence with singing.” 

 The next line of verse 3 of Psalm 100 gives us a second reason why we worship. It says “it is he that made us and we are his.”  So the second reason we worship is because of what God does.  The Psalm refers to God creating us, but if we keep going the reasons to worship keep piling up.  God created us, called us through Abraham to be a great nation, lead us out of slavery in the land of Egypt, guided us through 40 years in the wilderness, and spoke to us through judges, prophets, and kings.  If that isn’t enough, God is just getting started.  God CAME to us, as one of us in Jesus Christ….that is way beyond what anyone ever expected god to do. He came us as one of us and lived and taught, and healed.  Then God sacrificed for us.  Sacrificed his own son.  Sacrificed his own life for us and for our salvation.  Then 3 days later he won victory over sin and death that we could be gifted with that same victory through him.   God saved us, called us, sustained us. Walked with us, and guided us every day of our lives.  What a God we have. 

As a child unwraps a birthday or Christmas gift and runs to hug the giver saying it is just what I wanted…  we come to worship to throw our arms around God to say “thank you, you are just we needed… just what we wanted” as we joyfully worship the Lord our God.

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come into his presence with singing.” 

 Finally, the psalm says in the next line of verse 3,  “we are the sheep of his pasture and we are his.” Did you hear that? Sometimes we hear things or read things and the significance does not really register.  We are the sheep of his pasture.  We are his.  We are God’s children. We belong to God.

Anyone can worship God because of what God is or what God does.  Not everyone can worship God because God has adopted them into his family.  To the folks to whom this Psalm was written, that meant they were Israel.  God’s Chosen people.  For us, it means that we have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, Jesus died for me, even me!! And we are his children. “The spirit bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God.”  “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son so that whoever believes in him (not everyone, but those who believe in him) will not perish.  We are God's chosen, loved, and saved people.

The child lost in the mall rejoices over the reappearance of the parent,  they run to them as soon as they realize that they have been found. God has found us, saved us and claimed us.  We belong to God. That should make us overflow with Joy that turns into worship.

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness; come into his presence with singing.” 

 How’s your heart?   Filled with joy?  I hope so.

I don’t preach this sermon to tell you that you need to do anything different, but to help you think about why you do what you do.

My experience of worship here, so far, is that it is an authentically joy-filled celebration of God and community and it is an offering of the best of ourselves to God as a holy and living sacrifice… Paul says “that is our spiritual worship.” Does It look like a charismatic congregation or a Nigerian congregation, NO, but that would not be authentic to who God has created us to be?

You have awesome worship here, and I am delighted to be part of that. But I just want you to step back for a moment and understand WHY we have awesome worship. We have awesome worship because each of you has the joy of encountering the living God in your daily life and we bring our joy here to share it in public worship. 

You know what I want people to say when they leave worship here?  I want them to say “WOW, look how they are filled with the joy of the lord.”

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, First United Methodist church. Worship the Lord with gladness; let us come into his presence with singing.”