Harbor Church - Mid City

Building a Great City (Through Rejoicing)

Neh. 12: 27-47 Mid-City Dec. 19 2010

What leads to a life filled with rejoicing?

1. Dedication (2) Grace

First, rejoicing comes from dedication. Now, let’s consider the text first, and then we’ll apply it in our lives. What you have going on here is a dedication of the city of Jerusalem. Read v27—“At the dedication of the wall of Jerusalem,” and then they bring in this massive onslaught of singers. This is like the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade here. They’re bringing in bands, choirs, singers, dancers—they have it all.

Why? B/c they have dedicated themselves to rebuilding the wall and the city of Jerusalem for 52 days at great risk and it happened. So of course they will rejoice.

Here is the principle: you will rejoice in whatever you dedicate yourself to. Conversely, whatever you dedicate your life to you will rejoice in. Let me show you. I remember living in the frat house my 2^nd year of college. The majority of my fraternity brothers dedicated themselves to 2 things: babes and beer. It was simple. The weekend started on Tuesday night for those who were really hard core and Thursday night for those who weren’t quite as dedicated. So, that meant Sunday and Monday were spent sleeping, doing some studying, and getting geared up for booze and babes.

And you talk about rejoicing. Rejoicing over hooking up and telling the story over and over again around the frat. And when the keg was on tap, those who had dedicated their lives to partying rejoiced. Very cave-man like, with some music.

Let me go to the other end of the spectrum. At the other end of the spectrum in college were those that came in knowing they wanted to be pre-med. They were dedicated. A very high percentage were Asian. And they never left the Chemistry Lab. Frat Daddies at 3 AM were pursuing their dedication and so were the pre-meds. And see there rejoicing came when test scores were posted. They would spike their chemistry book. Or get wasted until they had to study like crazy again.

We all do this. All of us. And it isn’t, necessarily, a bad thing. Parents who are dedicated to their kids rightfully rejoice in them. I went to Milly & Ford’s preschool program this week. Place was packed. Grandparents, uncles, cameras, cell phones. You would have thought Obama was taking stage. But then these little 2 & 3 & 4 year olds get up there and shriek Jingle Bells and all the families are poking each other, “Did you see how great Ricky was? He just nailed that hand motion for the sky.” You rejoice in what you have dedicated your life to.

Here is the question: Is that you have dedicated your life to, and therefore what you rejoice in, is it healthy or unhealthy? The Bible is really clear on this one. A healthy dedication to kids, work, whatever is a derivative dedication. What is that? Derived from something greater. Flows from. 1^st commandment: Ex. 20. No other gods before me. God says, “Dedicate your life to me. And all the other dedications flow out of your dedication to me. Kids, collegiate life, grades, work>

Let me give you an example of a healthy dedication. I had a fascinating conversation with Lear de Bessonet this week. I mentioned Lear last week. She is an artist who is a follower of Jesus. She started off as a starving artist like all the rest. No health insurance, working a bigillion jobs. Dedicated her life to it. She worked her way up and now directs plays and has her own production company.

Everyone around her rejoices when the critiques rejoice. When they get rave reviews. She rejoices for a far different reason. Fascinating. She said, “What causes me to really rejoice is that my work is holy.” She used the word holy. I smiled, because I knew in her I was talking to someone who understood what we talked about last week. The priesthood of all believers. That she is every bit as much of a pastor as I am. All of her life is set apart, dedicated, unto the Lord and her art is an offering.

But think with me. We aren’t just after a holy play. We’re after holy lives. All of us That leads to a holy city, a dedicated city, a city worth rejoicing in. It is when holy lives are lived wholly unto the Lord. Dedicated to Him. This is why you get baptized. This is why Jesus says in Mt. 6:21, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. The thing you delight in most fully, the thing you dedicate yourself to, that is where your heart, your rejoicing, will be. Jesus says, “That is to be me.”

Think about this. It means that when you are at the office, your goal is to create a holy spreadsheet in excel. How do you do that? How do you create a holy spreadsheet? By putting it on church letterhead? Sprinkling some holy water on it—wait, we’re Presbyterian, it can’t be that. You dedicate it. You offer it up. Just as when I sit down at my desk to develop a sermon, I offer it up. It is dedicated. I ask for Jesus to put in what he wants, to keep out what he wants kept out, to block me from saying the wrong things, to help me make connections that I otherwise wouldn’t make. Well, the same is true of your spreadsheet at the office. See if you dedicate your life to Jesus, that will lead to true rejoicing b/c things will start to make sense

Imagine if you dedicated your computer to the Lord. You are going to have a holy computer. Every time you sit down in front of your computer, your committing yourself to holiness. Holy emails, holy websites. Really, this is Col. 3:23, “Whatever you do—emails, burritos, parenting, spreadsheets—work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, for it is the Lord Jesus Christ you are serving.” Dedicate all these things unto the Lord. This is the first step towards a life of rejoicing because it brings Jesus into all that you do. See that is why the Bible says so often, “Rejoice in the Lord.” But if the Lord is only involved in what you do on Sunday for an hour & a half, then very little of your life will be spent rejoicing. So, dedication of every facet of your life is the first source of rejoicing.

(2) Grace

Look at v43 “And on that day they offered great sacrifices, rejoicing because God had given them great joy.” Rejoicing because God had given them great joy. So, God has downloaded joy to them. It is like a little flash drive. You plug it into one computer and then put it in the next and you now have something that you didn’t. He has given it to them as a gift.

Now, it would be easy to say? Well, yeah, I would rejoice too if God swooped down and did something for me like he did for them. That is just circumstancial joy that will fade. But don’t make that mistake--Biblical joy isn’t bound up in circumstances.

In Phil 4:4 Paul says, “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again (just in case you missed it): Rejoice!” He actually does say the same thing again to the Thessalonians in 1 Thess. 5:16ff “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances—for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” See Paul says rejoice always—always is a pretty broad word isn’t it. Rejoice always and he confidently says, “This is God’s will for your life.” Bold.

Some of you say, “Yeah, but, Paul, you don’t know my life. There is simply no way to rejoice in what I am going through right now.” Well, listen to what Paul says in Rms. 5: 3, “We also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”

So your like, “Well, Paul was a nutcase. You have now convinced me to never listen to anything he wrote.” Wait, James said the same thing. James 1:2, “Count it all joy when you fall into various tribulation.” Well, James is whacked too—I’ll put him right in their with Paul. Wait—b/c Jesus says almost the same thing in Mt. 5: 11-12, “Blessed are you when men persecute you. Rejoice…for great is your reward in heaven.”

So, what is the deal. Well, let me break it down for you as simply as I know how. Suffering, more than anything else, helps us know who to delight in. For those of you who are followers of Jesus, he wants you to know that He is the one thing, the one person in all the universe that we need, and suffering helps us realize this more than anything else. Let me show you how this works with escalating examples of suffering.

I’ll start with low, low-level suffering. Ford, as a 4 year old, suffered this week. He came home from playing and said, “Dad, they left me out and wouldn’t let me play?” We have talked through this scenario before because, when you are 4, this is your world. And it is never your fault—right. It is always the other kids. So I asked him, “Ford, did you remember what Dad told you to remember when other kids aren’t nice to you, “Yes, I remembered that Daddy is in my heart.”

See small suffering like this is preparing Ford, and all of us, for the big suffering that is coming. We’re all in training, and unless we go through basic training and learn to suffer well how do we ever hope to succeed when the real battle of suffering is thrust upon us with the tough stuff. You can’t answer a calculus problem if you never learned to add or subtract.

I smiled. That was half of what I told him to remember. He remembered that critical part. That the love of his daddy is always there for him and always in his heart. I want the love of his moma and daddy to be more controlling for him than the love of his 4 year old friends. And the other half—the other part of the message that he forgot—is that Jesus loves him and is with him in his heart. Those are the two loves—Jesus love and mom/dad’s love—that I want him to rejoice in, b/c I know that Jesus love can get him through whatever is coming. Suffering, feeling rejected by his friends, helped him get that this week.

I had a little basic training low level suffering this week. My wife was headed out for mom’s night out, I was with the kids, house was in disarray, and I was dreaming of a White Christmas but experiencing a Black Christmas in my heart at that moment. See I was wiped out and I had a picture of what I wanted my night to look like. Some Christmas music on and me by the tree with some hot chocolate reading a book in a tidy house. She got to do her thing with the girls—I would do mine. That dream, I could quickly tell, was like a marshmellow being roasted on an open fire at our house…torched. So, like a 4 year old, I blamed the mess of our house and the destruction of my night on my wife. I didn’t say this to her, but I was thinking it.

When she left, I stopped and thought, “What is wrong with you.” You have no idea why the house looks like it does b/c you weren’t here all day (well, I had a pretty good idea that Ford, Milly, & Virginia Grace had something to do with it). Moreover, it’s Christmas. I don’t want to feel like I do. And I am preaching on rejoicing Sunday. Where is your rejoicing now preacher boy? What is wrong with me.

So I stopped. I got on my knees and cried out, “Jesus, just as you broke into the womb of a virgin and caused an unwed teenager to become pregnant and to rejoice in what could lead to her death, I need you to break into my heart. B/c I feel rotten. I am a self-asborbed man who doesn’t want to put his wife and family’s interests above his own.. I don’t want to serve. Emmanuel, come be with me now and change my heart.” And it was miraculous. Emmanuel came and parted the clouds of my heart with the light of His presence. This isn’t always the way it works for me, but I could sense the change almost immediately. See grace came to me. It was downloaded joy. Jesus gifted His presence tome.

Ford and I put on a Christmas worship CD and we began to rejoice together. The girls were already asleep, and we began to tag team the dishes. He was a drying machine. What before was so burdensome was now actually joyful. We knocked out the dishes and began straightening the house. Now, this is admittedly low, low, low level suffering—having to put my wife and family above myself. But it is basic training. You begin to suffer on behalf of others, to trust Jesus in it, to rejoice in Him, in Emmanuel who can transform a pile of dishes and a cluttered house into a chance to bond with your son and a chance to love your wife.

Now, let me close with suffering at the graduate level. Mike just told me this story this week. He was recently in Afghanistan. It is against the law to become a Christian. You can be killed for converting and it is happening regularly. He was telling me about their announcements during church. Oh, man, it helped me realize what a suffering, persecuted church really looks like. First announcement was for the Ops Team. They said, “If you are on Ops, please make sure that you are at your post on the roof top before anyone arrives to church so that you can sound the alarm to evacuate if a raid is coming.” The second announcement was about what to do if you are kidnapped and how to survive a hostage situation. The third announcement was for them to shrug off cultural norms and wear their shoes in case they needed to sprint from a raid.

Then, and this is what really got me, was that he was worshipping next to a 70 year old woman who was a follower of Jesus. He was singing in Christ Alone, as was she. Her arms were lifted high, tears streaming from her eyes, rejoicing in Jesus. And then it hit Mike—this was the woman that just 2 weeeks prior had seen her husband be brutally gunned down and killed. And here she stands, in tears, singing, “In Christ alone, my hope is found. He is my light, my strength, my song.” In Christ alone, my hope is found, He is my light, my strength, my song. My delight.

That is graduate level. She had long since graduated from basic training and learned to delight in Jesus through it and so, now, when the big test came, she knew her true delight. In Christ Alone.

Friends, Rejoicing isn’t a feeling, or Paul never would have said rejoice always, especially in a situation like this. No, rejoicing always means to place your life in the hands of Jesus just as He placed His in the hands of the Fathers. See, Jesus is the model of rejoicing. He rejoiced always. But that must mean that Biblical rejoicing looks far different than what we think of as rejoicing. You see righteous anger when he flips over the tables in the temple, so rejoicing must include righteous anger.

We see Jesus weeping at the death of Lazarus, so rejoicing can also include tears. We see Jesus overwhelmned with anxiety and sorrow, even to the point of sweating blood in the garden, so rejoicing must include even these negative emotions.

In the end, we see Jesus Christ say, “Not my will, but thy will be done.” But in the end he isn’t just a model, he is the means, the power, we have to rejoice. Because He is alive and says in in John 15, “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy complete.” He can come to you and change your heart and enable you to rejoice, to dedicate your life to Him just as He did me this week, just as He did this woman in Afghanistan. Emmanuel.

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