We are to fight for Joy. It's a command.
We are commanded here in the midst of our dependence.
In the midst of the Babylonians, coming to fight to rejoice.
We're going out to play in a church.
This is how you can help us in service Frontier.
I've told you this every week. So here it is again.
Pray for us. We need your prayer.
We need the holy spirit's help. We are not capable of doing
everything that God has called us to do.
And when you plant a church, you feel that especially We're doing
the impossible bringing Heaven to Earth which is we need your
prayer. So pray for us we have many
needs, we need Financial Resources, will pray and ask the
Lord would lay upon your heart to give to us.
We do we got a bank account this week.
Boom, it's done. We'll be having our own stuff
set up on our website soon. But right now, on the Frontier
website, there is a byline for a mace.
You can, you can give their if the Lord would so lead.
And then also, you could come and serve us.
Some of you have already been serving us and are committed to
serve Us in various ways. Not necessarily come along with
us to commit to the church plant, but to come and serve us
as in the various ways that we need help.
So, ask the Lord, if he would call you to do that, or if you
would call, you just come and join us.
We'd love to have you as part of that team that you saw up here.
So yeah, ask the Lord to do that in you and see see how he would
lead you. So with that said, Zephaniah
chapter. 37 diet. Chapter 3.
The second best animated movie ever made is Finding Nemo, if
you didn't know Finding Nemo, is a great movie.
I loved the movie. And, you know, it's a movie
about a father looking for his son.
And there's this scene in that movie that I think of, when I
come to this text in the book of Zephaniah, Marlin the father and
Dory. The forgetful friend are out
looking for Nemo and they come upon a school of fish.
Ash and the fish tell the forgetful Dory.
When you see the trench go through it, but go through it.
Don't go over it. And what happens when they get
to the trench, it's dark, it's scary.
It looks like death and there and Marlins, like I'm not going
through there up above, it is blue, skies or blue water.
It looks free and safe and open. I can see things.
Things. But down that trench down.
Will that trench looks scary. He says, are you kidding me?
It's got death written all over it.
And what he does. Convinces Dori to go up with him
over it, and instead of finding safety above him, he finds a
field of jellyfish and nearly dies.
As we come to our text today, we find that much like Marlon our
instincts don't serve us. Well our instincts, don't
service while Marlins instincts told him that dark trench is
dangerous and has death on it, but his instincts were wrong,
his instincts were dead wrong and for us, I believe our
instincts, when we come to, this text would not serve us.
Well, through the book of Zephaniah, we have seen in
chapters 1 & 2 You just this raining down of God's Wrath
judgment anger, God's Wrath being poured out on Jews
Jerusalem and on the nation's around it and it's scary, it's
dark. And then in chapter 3 last week
we saw at the beginning of chapter 3 that when God's
judgment comes, it doesn't just destroy.
But it transforms people into the kind of people that God is
pleased with, which is weird, right?
We saw the miracle. Oil of God's transformation last
week and what he transforms them into is peculiar what he
transforms people into our people, that are on one hand
self-sufficient, and he's displeased with them.
And he transforms them into dependent humble people.
He trains that forms them into people who are deeply and
profoundly dependent and humble and low to the ground before
God. And when I think about that,
When I see that, I see a dark trench in front of me.
When I think about God, make wanting me to be humble and
lowly. When I think about God wanting
me to be dependent. It sounds like I got someone
with their foot, on my back, just pushing my face into the
dirt. It sounds like a dark deep
horrible Trench. When someone wants you to be
lonely, when someone wants to lower you, it does not sound
like a happy experience. It sounds more.
Like that's got death written all over it.
That's the way it feels, but I have good news for you this
morning. I've good news for you, the life
of humble dependants in this text is not what your instincts
will tell you who it is. Just like Marlon looked at that
trench, it was scared of it. That was actually the place of
safety and life and flourishing. And this morning, what I want to
show you from this text, is that the life of humble, dependence
is actually the pathway to Joy. It is actually the pathway to
life. It's actually the pathway to
flourishing down in the dark Trench.
A humble, dependence is life and joy and all that God is for us
in Jesus. And so I hope to show you that
this morning. So stand with me, we're going to
read Zephaniah chapter 3 and we're going to be reading verses
14 down to verse 20. Starting in verse 14.
Sing aloud o Daughter of Zion shout o Israel.
Rejoice and exalt with all your heart o daughter of Jerusalem.
The Lord has taken away the judgments against you.
He's cleared away. Your enemies.
The king of Israel. The Lord is in your midst.
You shall never again, fear evil on that day.
It shall be said to Jerusalem. Fear.
Not o Zion. Let not your hands grow, weak.
The Lord, your God is in your midst of mighty.
One who will save He will rejoice over you with gladness.
He will quiet you by his love, he will exalt over you with loud
singing. I will gather those of you who
mourn for the festival, so that you will no longer suffer
reproach. Behold, at that time, I will
deal with all your oppressors and I will save the lame and
gather the outcast, and I will change their shame into praise.
And renowned in all the Earth. At that time, I will bring you
in at the time when I gather you together for I will make you
renowned and praised among all the peoples of the earth.
When I restore your fortunes before, your eyes says the Lord,
this is God's word. You can be seated Let's pray.
Lord, I Thank you for your word and man as I stand before it
this morning, my voice is not capable of doing this text
Justice. My notes do not have in them,
the wisdom necessary nor the nor the arguments necessary or the
depth of knowledge and emotion necessary to do, what this text
is aim to do through your spirit.
And Lord, I feel this morning in a position of great, dependence
and lowliness before this tax East.
And so I just pray that your spirit would be pleased to use
the week. Mumblings out of my mouth, to
excite the hearts of your people on to proper, worship of you,
and we pray and ask this in Jesus name.
Amen. So this morning, as we come to
this text some Scholars call this text, the John 3:16 of the
Old Testament, this is like the greatest text.
It's like it's like the mountain peak of the Old Testament.
It is an unbelievable taxed. It's so what I want to do is I
want us to think through this morning, why we need this text,
why? This text is so necessary for us
and how it answers for us and fixes in us, the wrong Instinct
about humble dependence. And so to do that, we're going
to see two things in this text. We're going to see that Joy is
commanded and we're going to see that Joy is grounded.
That Joy has commanded. Enjoy is grounded in light of
everything that God has already said through this text.
So first Joy is commanded. He says there in verse 14, sing
aloud, o, Daughter of Zion, shout rejoice and exalt so
rejoice as humbly dependent people that should cause our
foreheads to wrinkle what. We don't sing and shout over.
Lame broken. Shame filled, people that
doesn't make any sense. It shouldn't make any sense.
If you read this and you go. Oh yeah, that makes sense.
You're not reading, you're not thinking this is crazy.
Why would God tell people that he's intentionally going to
bring his Justice upon and then make them lowly and humble?
Hey, rejoice. That doesn't make.
It doesn't make any sense and it shouldn't.
It shouldn't make sense. To get this.
We have to understand God's working through the scripture
joy in the Bible is experienced from beginning to end through
humble dependence, not through strong Independence.
Joy through the scriptures is not experienced through strong
Independence. Through overcoming it is
experienced through humble dependants.
There's no training montage. Like In Rocky Cole, it's
happening. I'm coming after Rocky this
morning funding, you hear? That Emmaus is funding is on the
line now, In Rocky, you got the training montage, he's building
up his strength, you got that song in the background.
The beats are going right you got the eye of the tiger playing
and he's climbing the steps to the Capitol and Philadelphia and
he's who there is, none of that before God that does not lead.
In fact in this text that leads to death.
The road to Humble dependants is Rocky sitting at home, broken
with holes, in his wall, crying alone, that is the path to life
in the scriptures, which is mind-blowing.
It doesn't make any sense. It's through, utter dependence.
If you if you look through the scripture, you know, it's
through the waters of judgment in the flood that brought Noah
and his family walking out into New Creation, they went through
the Judgment of God and stepped out into new create.
It was through humility and being humbled and hearing death
all around them. There's bloody sacrifice blood
being sprinkled everywhere. In the Old Testament, gross
disgusting scenes of blood being sprinkled in sacrifices showing
us that it's through death and humility and lowliness.
That Joy comes that life comes. When you get to the Book of
Daniel, it's through Daniel receiving the death penalty and
being thrown into a lion's den that he experiences new creation
and is cuddling with the lions that Joy comes through the death
sentence or just a chapter or two later with rad Shack and
Benny I've got too much Veggie Tales in my history.
It's a problem can never remember their real names rad
Shack and Benny are they defy the king don't worship him?
They get thrown into the fiery furnace and they're partying
with Jesus in the middle of a fire.
It is through death. It is through humility.
It is through gross dependence. That joy and life comes.
And we see this all throughout the New Testament to.
It's everywhere. It's everywhere through the
scriptures, the Beatitudes. It says the meek are going to
inherit the earth, not the strong, not the independent.
In Luke 14, 11, Jesus says whoever exalts himself will be
humbled. So the strong are going to be
brought down but whoever humbles himself.
Off whoever is low and broken, they're going to be lifted up.
Mark 35, my 935 if any would be first he must be.
What? Last.
Luke 9:23, if anyone would come after me, Jesus says, you have
to deny himself take up his cross daily, which is in our
day, like saying, put a gun to your head daily Do away with
yourself and your pleasure. In the world.
And follow me for whoever would save his life has to lose it,
but whoever loses his life will save it.
It is through pain suffering, humility, dependence that God
brings Joy, which is crazy. That's crazy in all of these
verses and all these things from the Bible, what we see is that
the pathway to life, the pathway to flourishing, the Pathway, to
exaltation is a very narrow dark trench.
The trench of humble dependence Upon Jesus.
And we see this most acutely in most clearly in Psalm 23.
We read it in all. It's one of the most famous
chapters in The Bible, right? We read it at funerals, we have
it printed on our walls and this is the message of Psalm 23.
Yay though. I walk through the valley of the
shadow of death death. I'm not going to fear any evil
God's going to put a table before me in the presence of my
enemies who want to kill me. I'm going to lie down and party,
and green grass in the middle. In the middle of Horror.
There's life and flourishing, they're eating in the middle of
death and enemies and it's there where life it's there.
Where the real party is which our minds.
Just don't know how to put that together.
We just we don't know how to do that.
And cold this morning. He read chapter and verse out of
st. John Piper's book Desiring.
God, that's a joke for those who know it.
That put this that I think really cap encapsulate this
Piper says that there are capacities for joy that you can
scarcely imagine. And that's the problem.
That's our problem is that we have capacities for joy that we
think are only accessible in strength in strategy, and how we
can exalt ourselves, and how we can figure out our way through
the The world. And what we don't realize is
that it's actually in the moments of greatest weakness and
lowliness that the greatest and most powerful capacities for Joy
exist in your life, it doesn't seem like it, it looks like a
trench that's going to kill you but in reality it's in the
darkness where the greatest party of your life would ever
be. Which is backwards but it's
true. We have a hard time.
Seeing that God knows. We have a hard time seeing that
and that's why right here. In verse 14, He commands us to
fight for that Joy, He commands us to have that Joy.
He commands us to enter into that party.
This, this verse here, feels like a whiplash from what we've
experienced last three weeks. If you've been here, the last
three weeks, this feels really weird to read this passage
because it's just been so dark. And then all of a sudden
Rejoice, sing, everything's going to be great.
It feels like whiplash. Judgment though.
In this text is leading to death and yet humble dependence is
going to lead us into rejoicing. We find in Zephaniah, is what we
find for the rest of the Bible. It is through the judgement and
through the lowliness and through death, that we find that
we find life and we find the capacity here to enjoy God.
And it's not because the circumstances have improved the
circumstances for jute. The Jewish people here, the
circumstance for the nation, they haven't gotten any better.
The Babylonians are still coming.
In 586 BC, not long after this text is written the Babylonians
come in and do everything. This text tells us, Jerusalem is
destroyed the nations are destroyed this.
The circumstances aren't getting any better life is still going
to be hard and so God. Graciously reminds them.
There's joy in your lowliness and in your dependents.
There's joy in the midst. There's a capacity for Joy.
You have not yet realized you have to experience in your life.
Humble dependants does not seem like a good strategy.
It just doesn't look like a good strategy to us.
When we know the Babylonians are coming.
We know death is coming what we want to.
What we want is a rocky Montage. We want to climb those Ups.
And what this says is put your face in the dirt below.
Lee be humble, be dependent and it's through that.
That got that there's joy and life and flourishing, our
instincts don't serve us here. Our instincts, don't serve us
and instead we are commanded. That's why we have this lovely
phrase painted on the back of our wall.
Here, we are to fight for Joy. It's a command.
We are commanded here in the Midst of our dependence, in the
midst of the Babylonians, coming to fight to Rejoice to fight for
Joy. Jesus himself had to fight for
joy and humble suffering, Romans 12:2 cells.
It tells us that while he was suffering, Jesus chose to look
ahead to the joy that was set before him and endured the
cross. That is our calling in life to
join Jesus in fighting for the joy and Delight.
Delights of all that God has for us, in through in and through
the Cross of Christ Jesus, endured the cross in tears.
And through the Cross of Christ comes life through the, the
crucifixion and the death penalty being exact Adan.
Jesus, there is life. There is flourishing, there is
joy and there is hope. Not only do these, people remind
need to be reminded of the joy. It's also a way to push them and
US deeper into dependence upon God.
You see, I can't just turn Joy on and off like a water spigot
in my soul. I can't just walk in here this
morning and be like, yeah, life sucks right now and boy, I'm
happy that doesn't work. And so it puts us even in a
further and deeper place of dependence upon God because we
need help. If we're going to do that, And
God demands it from us. And God demands all kinds of
things from us that we can't give him.
I mean, Jesus tells us to be perfect like the heaven.
Our heavenly father is perfect. We can't do that yet.
God demands it from us. And here, he demands from you.
That you have joy in your heart, in the midst of the difficulties
in your life. And he tells us how to fight for
that Joy. Here, he doesn't just leave us.
Leave us groundless. He tells us how to fight for
that Joy. He says, Sing aloud.
Shout Rejoice with all your heart singing and shouting in
worship or the tools that God has given us to fight for joy.
That's why we sing in church. We don't just sing in church
because God deserves our worship.
We sing because we need help in our souls to feel the joy that
he demands from us. And it is a feeling, it's not
just a propositional truth about the glory of God.
It is a feeling. This is why he says to rejoice
and not just to think good thoughts.
This is why he tells us to do it with all of our hearts and not
just all of our minds. He wants us deeply, mmm.
Emotionally invested in and it's white, what singing is, there's
a reason you, sing you don't sing except for things that are
so emotionally compelling that talking is no longer sufficient.
The reason you sing is because saying something just isn't
enough. This is why I love songs are
written because telling your wife that you love her is not
enough. You need more, you need Chris
stapleton's. Tennessee, whiskey.
That's what you need to tell your wife, you love her, right?
You need it Strawberry Wine, even gettin high, right?
It's the thing. That's the thing that we need to
tell our wives and our spouses that we love them because
talking, Thinking good thoughts is not enough.
It must explode out of us, in song.
It it's necessary. We need it.
You don't yell, except if you are overcoming overpowered by
your emotions. Such that talking is not
sufficient. This is why we're called to
shout Because just merely telling someone that you love
them is not enough. You want to shout it to them
your joy overflows in shouting. God demands of you that you
experienced overwhelming experiences of joy.
Not a part from but as an attribute of your humble
dependence upon him. In the midst of your dependents,
you have the capacity a capacity as Piper says that is so far
beyond your imagination to experience joy unspeakable in
the face of death itself. And we are called to, we are
commanded and God demands of us that we experience that with
him. I'm going to step on some toes.
Ready. Here we go.
Frontier church is a great church because I hear a lot of a
lot of loud singing but there's some of us in here that are
mealy-mouthed than are singing. There's some of us That are more
concerned about the style of music, or lunch, or whatever
else. And we're just unimpressed with
Jesus and we want to temper our emotion because we don't
understand that God created us to have strong emotions to be
expressed with shouting and singing.
And that worship is the most appropriate context for that.
And what ends up happening, what ends up happening is we just
Mumble through music either because we're trying to manage
your reputation. Ation or we're trying to, I
don't know what we're doing, or where we use the excuse that
we're introverted or quiet. And we don't understand that we
were literally created for the, your lungs exist for the purpose
of shouting and singing the praise of God.
That's what they're there for. That's what they're there for.
And you know that you can sometimes measure a person's
health by watching them watch football and then watching them
worship. If they Shout at football, it
can be a measure that their lack of shouting in preaching or in
print and well preaching to. But in singing, if there's not
shouting there, it's an evidence that there's a greater
excitement in sport and a greater joy in sport than there
is in the Lord and it can be a measure.
That's one of many measures but it's one of many measures of how
it is that our souls are warped. We just And we don't we've not
access that capacity for joy. As we've been commanded to, we
are to fight for that. We are that's why we say let's
fight for Joy. We're calling you to access the
capacities that God has given you that you do not have on your
own that you have not been able to access.
Its why you were created. When we yell at spouses or when
we yell at our kids, which I guilty of my kids are here.
They know this, they know I'm capable of this and they're
like, yeah, he's capable of it. In the scriptures in the
scriptures shouting is talked about as as something to be done
in war, and it's something to be done in worship and preaching.
Those are like the categories that shouting happen though.
The most extreme expressions of human emotion in war because you
want to kill somebody or in worship because of the highest
the highest good in all of your life.
And when our wives hear us shouting at them, but not
shouting, and worshipping Jesus. Well, first of all, it sends a
mixed message. But it shows just a level of
unhealth in our souls, that is unhelpful.
And so this morning, here's what.
Here's my challenge. Here's my challenge to us.
Shout and worship. Open up your mouth and get loud.
It's what God's called you to do.
And what's funny is the more you shout and worship?
The more we shout and worship the more we express our lungs in
the way that God's created them. The more capacity we have to
deal with our emotions and other areas more effectively.
Our worship of God should be loud.
It should wear out our throats each week.
It's not a suggestion. It's a demand God demands that
you have profound emotional. Intensity expressed in shouting
and Loud singing for the praise of Jesus.
I got a whole thing here. I'm not going to go into on the
regulative principle and however, the people that are
most excited about it, ignore all this for some weird reason.
But I'm gonna I'm gonna save that for discussions afterward,
so a life of humble dependence. Is not fearing that your face is
going to be pushed further into the ground by God.
It's a loud party. It's a loud party.
It looks like a dark trench from the outside.
It looks like the place where death would lurk.
But it's a place of joy and flourishing God tells us in this
text that we must fight to see that joy in the dark trench of
humble dependants. So now, what is the ground for
this? Because when we look at this, we
think okay, well, that's good. God tells us to do that, okay?
We're going to try to do that. But how like, why, like what
what's, what's the purpose behind all this?
So Quick things that we can see in verses 15 to 20.
That that point. This out the for the four quick
things. First verse, 15 shows us that
there's no judgement for us verse 15.
The Lord has taken away the judgments against you.
We've heard over the last three weeks that God is going to
destroy judge and condemn people for their sin in the most strong
language possible. We've heard about God's
greatness his Justice and we're left wondering if I humble
myself Myself before that. God that's going to do that.
That just sounds like an opportunity for him to crush me.
Am I not just asking to be crushed if I do that?
And here's what we find, here's what we find when God comes to
those who are humble independent, when he sees those
who have renounced their own strength and are not
self-reliant, he takes the judgments away from them.
He takes her judgment wins away from them.
And here, in verse 15, he removes their enemies.
He puts them into safety, he protects the humble from the
fire of judgment in our world. When we see people that are
humble and lowly, we see people with feet on their back with.
This was the story of Jim Crow in the 1960s.
African Americans in our country, had the foot of the
American government on their back, pushing them into the
ground. What God does is, he comes and
he brings a place of safety. He takes away the judgments.
He take, he lifts up the face of that person and he and he
lovingly loves them. It's the image of Superman
flying with Louis in his arms right?
Superman. Great power.
Amazing capacity to destroy everything in the world.
And what does he do? He takes an innocent fragile
woman and carries her through the sky.
Why that is the image that we have here.
It's the Avengers fighting to save little planet Earth.
Full of dependent week people and we pay lots of money to go
and see that because it's so compelling to us and in the far,
more glorious manner. God has done this for us in
Christ. He's used his power, his
strength, his Justice to send Jesus to weaken undeserving
Sinners and to take God's wrath upon himself.
To protect us rather than put it upon us.
So that there's no judgments over us.
He used his power to defeat gods and oppressors of other nations
and drive out their influence and power.
He's protected us. He's exalted us and lifted us up
out of our judgments and notice in verse 15.
He's presence here, drives out fear.
You shall never again fear evil. He says there, R.
In chapter 1 and verse 17. His presence is bringing death
and by some amazing Miracle here, it is driving out fear.
This is the first of many reasons to rejoice and there's a
lot of the Earth, but they're this itself is a reason to shout
and to sing. You have no more judgments over
you. In Christ, that is the most
exciting thing, whether you know it or not, that you are that
That Could Be Imagined. The god of the universe has used
his power to preserve you from judgment.
It's unbelievable. You are safe to be humble and
lowly before him. He's not going to exploit you,
but also in verses 16 and 17, the second thing we see is the
makes the weak and the humble, strong, and verses 16, and the
beginning of 70s. And on that day, it shall be
said to Jerusalem fear. Not o Zion.
Let not your hands grow. Weak.
The Lord, your God is in your midst.
One of the reasons we don't like being humbly dependent is that
we know that if we make ourselves vulnerable in that
way, a stronger person or a person higher position might use
that vulnerability to cut us down further to just push our
face deeper into the dirt and look how God handles the humbly
dependent when they're vulnerable.
He takes weak hands and he makes them strong.
He gives strength to the week. When we are afraid we grow weak
and God acts to steal up our spine and strengthen us, he
doesn't work to push us down further, but to lift us up.
This is why Matthew chapter 23? And verse 12 says it, like this.
Jesus speaking, he says, whoever exalts himself is going to be
humbled and whoever him humbles himself as what exalted, he is
going to give strength and lift up.
Those who are down, God uses his strength to strengthen the
weaker to up. Lift the lowly and to bind up
the broken, he is not looking to exploit our weakness, but to
heal it and Jesus knew that God was like this Jesus knew.
And this is why he was playing. He's pleased to take the road of
humility and to suffer death on a cross.
It's white, Jesus was willing to be spat upon, it's why he was
willing to be beaten. It's why Jesus was willing to
experience human weakness, because he knew that as he laid
in a tomb, on the other side of death, That God would raise him
up from the dead and give him strength and give him life.
And God is pleased. We should know.
God is pleased. He is happy to bring strength to
the week. If you're not self-reliant this
morning, if you are humbly dependent upon God, and Jesus
know this, he's using here or humility to show himself, strong
in you. This is the reason, this is
reason for you to worship. You don't have to pretend to be
strong. You don't have to figure out
somehow how to overcome, you don't have to find a strategy to
figure out and to be flourishing in life, in verse 17, God is
coming. He's coming into your midst.
He's coming into your life to bring you his strength.
He is strong for you. He is the one who will save you
and this is how the Apostle Paul in second Corinthians
experienced. It should be up here on the
screen. Yes, listen to Listen to Paul
described this in his life. God said to him, my grace is
sufficient for you for my power is made perfect in weakness.
And he goes on to say for the sake of Christ, then I am
content with weakness, insults, hardships persecutions and
calamities for. When I am weak, then I am
strong. God uses his strength not to
push us down, but to make us strong, he is strong in our
weakness. This is why this is why God
calls us to shout in worship and not in war.
Anymore. God is strong for us.
He goes before us we don't have to strategize to figure out a
way to be effective in life. Humility sounds like a horrible
strategy for Effectiveness in life lowliness and Brokenness
seem like a horrible strategy for Effectiveness in life.
And yet with God it is the pathway to strength and is the
pathway to life and flourishing and no this no this you do not
I'd have to be strong. When Jesus rose from the dead
and ascended into heaven, he sent the Holy Spirit to do what
verse 17 says to be in your midst, he is giving you the holy
spirit for this purpose to make a home inside of you.
So that his power would be made perfect in you to uplift you and
to give you the strength that he demands from you and what more
would you want need than God being in?
You giving you his strength? What more do you need?
What more Um, do you need to worship to get loud and shout
and worship. Third, reciprocal.
Rejoicing verse 17 means is this verse 17.
Goodnight, this is too much. He will rejoice over you with
gladness. He's going to quiet you with his
love. He's going to exalt over you
with loud singing. That means we're not singing to
a wall. God's not in heaven, sitting
there thinking to himself. These annoying people won't shut
up. He's not sitting there thinking
these irritating. People need to chill.
He's singing back and your joy in him is reciprocated by his
joy in you. There's a great Seinfeld episode
George Costanza. I feel like him most days of my
life. He takes the risk to tell a girl
that he loves her on a second date, I think.
And she says, thank you. What a nightmare, right?
I love you. Thank you.
Horrible nightmare situation. And sometimes we feel like that
with our relationship with God, right?
He's like, I've been having I guess.
Thank you. Look at what he says he's doing.
He's going to Rejoice over. Your joy, is reciprocated by
him. You're singing, you're shouting
is reciprocated by him. This is, I mean, good night.
This is amazing. This is God showing us that he
is, as he is more interested and more in love with you than you
will ever be with him. This is why John 3:16 is the
verse that we all look to the decentral.
Verse that most people not even Christians have been said.
Football games. People know this verse that God,
so loved the world that he sent his only son.
And he's proven it to us. He's proven his love.
He doesn't just say it here. He's proven it to us in sending
his son, Jesus to die for us. And to be our propitiation for
sin. He did it, he sent his son, he
sent Jesus as an expression of his love for us before we were
ever born. Before we ever did anything good
or bad, he chose to love you despite everything he knew you
would be. He loves you period.
And his love is expressed not in some mealy-mouthed.
I mean, imagine this if you saw God singing to you the way
sometimes, you sing to God, you'd be scared for your
eternity, right? I would be sometimes, right?
God is shouting. His lungs out over you because
he loves you and he loves you, deeply and profoundly.
God doesn't have to fight to love for you.
He does it out of who he is. And he loves you deeply.
And, and so if there's any danger of a lack of
reciprocation, it's God's saying I love you and you looking up at
him and saying, thank you. Right?
And sometimes that's what we do with our singing, but we should
understand, we should understand.
God loves us and that should lead us to Great worship.
With our joy is reciprocated. By him.
Or we are to reciprocate the joy that he has over us their last
then last then we see that God's work for the humbly dependent
should give should be a ground for our joy.
With it comes Restoration in verses 18 to 20, those three
last three verses that come down to this.
God is going to restore his people.
He's not going to leave us in the dirt.
He's not going to leave us on the ground.
Our eternity is not to be spent forever in the dirt, but he is
going to exalt us, he is going to lift us up out of the dirt
and he is going to To exalt us. I will gather those of you who
mourn for the festival, so you will no longer suffer reproach.
I'm going to deal with all your oppressors oppressors.
I'm going to save the lane, the lame are no longer going to be
laying the outcast. Their shame is going to be
turned into praise. I'm going to bring you in and
when I gather you together, everyone's going to look at you
and they're going to be like whoa.
The way we look at people who are independent self assured and
stand with their back straighten the world, while we're in our
face, in the dirt, they're the ones that are going.
Jesus says, and what we find here are going to be the ones
suffering reproach. And while we will be lifted up
by God through his strength and his grace, and exalted, that is
what Matthew 23:12 means. But the humble will be exalted,
that God is not going to leave us in.
We are going to be forever dependent upon God, but we
aren't going to be left in the dust before.
God. Now, Prosperity preachers, the
preachers on TV, that you see, they like to take this and twist
this and use it as a means to get money from you.
And by Jets, But note this the reason why God tells you this is
not too, so you give a bunch of money to the church.
The Reason God tells you this because he wants you to be
excited about your future with him and that Future Would
motivate you and fill your heart with joy.
So that you would sing loud, praises to Him.
If I were to tell you that everyone in this room, when you
walk out of here, is going to be handed a check for a million
dollars. All of you would be like, we're
singing. Right.
Well, in Christ you're getting you're guaranteed much more than
that. God has a future for you that
you can't begin to imagine. and because of that, Because that
reality is there, it transcends all of the pain and suffering
and difficulty of being lowly and dependent?
Upon God, God has given you the capacity to see with Clarity the
joy that is set before you because of what Jesus has done
for you so that you can enter into lowly dependents.
With unbelievable joy and in the midst of it party, knowing, but
on the other side, well, Jeff Bezos.
Ain't got nothing on it. Know this, if you want to
flourish as a parent, in your home with your spouse and kids,
humble dependence upon God and quiet weakness with shouts of
loud. Praise to God, is the pathway to
flourishing. The most difficult moment as a
mother, when your kids are crying and waking you up at 4:00
in the morning and you're angry, God has given you the capacity
to worship a loud. Shouts of Praise in that moment.
And that is the pathway to flourishing in your home.
If you want to flourish as a single person know that humble
dependence upon God and quiet weakness with shouts of Praise
is the pathway to flourishing in your life.
Is the pathway to flourishing when you feel lonely and
isolated? It's to feel that loneliness and
in it to receive the ground of your hope in Jesus, and be
filled with joy and singing. That is the pathway to
flourishing, not to improve your circumstances.
But in the midst of the circumstances that suck, To
enter into Joy. It's crazy.
It's amazing. You want to flourish it work?
Humble dependence upon God and quiet weakness in the face of a
really crappy boss. With sounds of loud.
Praise and your heart to God is the pathway to Joy and
flourishing in your work. And the good news is that our
humble dependence upon God is for is for our joy is reason for
us to stand up and shout and exalt and sing praises to God,
there is more than sufficient reason to find joy, in the face
of death. Then you would ever dream.
And so I'm I'm one of my, one of the great things about preaching
this sermon as my last sermon, here is one of your pastures.
Is I get to say that that fight for Joy thing.
On the back of your wall, it means something for you.
And my hope is that every time you walk out of this church
going into the future that you remember this and that you see
that phrase across the back as the call to you in the midst of
the most hot harrowing circumstances.
Um stances of your life that there's hope there's hope that
in the middle of that pain. There is joy unspeakable.
That is sufficient for you to stand up and worship.
No matter the circumstance. And I hope that that would
motivate you and that would do, as it's done for me.
Challenge me to use my lungs. The way God created them to be
used to worship and blow my throat out in the process of
doing. So let's pray and ask him for
help to do that. Lord, we thank you for your word
and God, I admit that. When I look at humble
dependence, it seems unimpressive. and I admit that
when I think about a life of joy in the midst of pain, my heart
is just so easily convinced that that's just Not only weird but
like impossible. So I just ask that your spirit
would now. Help us to see things that are
weak, lowly unwise and silly Minds.
Just don't have the capacity to grasp speak to our hearts.
Lord, not just help us solve this in our minds, but I pray
that our hearts would be convinced that your power is
made perfect through our weakness and that, that would
shape our life, and it would cause our worship.
To become ridiculously loud. We pray and ask this in Jesus
name, amen. To become ridiculously loud.
We pray and ask this in Jesus name, amen.