Celebration and Contemplation [Part 1]

Pastor, author, and Bible teacher, Alan Wright.

The bookends of the whole book of Psalms is meditation on one side and celebration on the other side, because we need both. That's Pastor Alan Wright. Welcome to another message of good news that will help you see your life in a whole new light. I'm Daniel Britt, excited for you to hear the teaching today in the series Word and Spirit, The Beauty of Balance, as presented at Reynolda Church in North Carolina. Now, if you're not able to stay with us throughout the entire program, I want to make sure you know how to get our special resource right now. It can be yours for your donation this month to Alan Wright Ministries. So as you listen to today's message, go deeper as we send you this resource, today's special offer. Contact us at PastorAlan.org. That's PastorAlan.org. Or call 877-544-4860.

That's 877-544-4860. More on this later in the program. But now, let's get started with today's teaching.

Here is Alan Wright. 6-year-old Sophia was sitting in church next to her 4-year-old brother Joel, who was giggling and singing and chirping and making noise. And so she turned to him and said, you're not supposed to make any noise in church. And he said, well, if I do, who's going to stop me? And so she said, turn around and look. And she said, you see those two men standing back at the back of the church? He said, yeah.

She said, well, they're the hushers. Are you ready for some good news? You don't have to hush all the time in church.

Sometimes you can shout. Because the Christian life is a celebration of a great victory. But there also is in the Christian life a place for deep contemplation. As soon as you celebrate a victory, there's something in the soul that wants to meditate upon it and think about what this victory means and all of its implications and what it means to us to be the people of God. There is in the Christian life both celebration and contemplation. We're talking about balance.

We're not talking about this safe little middle place where there's not too much of either. We're talking about where we can have great celebration and deepest meditation. And how much of a difference this will make in our lives. I want to turn you today as our primary text to Psalm 145. It's not so much a message where I'm going to go through line by line and do a whole lot of exegesis of this particular Psalm. But I come here because it opens up a theme for us in scripture. And I'm going to be showing you a number of scriptures today. But in Psalm 145, you'll see that both the spirit of celebration and meditation is coupled right here in this one Psalm. Psalm 145 verse 1, I will extol you my God and King and bless your name forever and ever.

So you hear the celebration. And every day I'll bless you and praise your name forever and ever. Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised.

And it almost pivots right here. And His greatness is unsearchable. Just to say something's unsearchable means it's an invitation to start searching it. It's beyond, you could keep thinking about this the rest of your life.

You'll never be able to search out all of its depths. One generation, verse four, shall commend your works to another and shall declare your mighty acts on the glorious splendor of your majesty and on your wondrous works. Okay, so the celebration of who He is, He says, I will meditate.

I'll meditate. They shall speak of the might of your awesome deeds and I'll declare your greatness. They shall pour forth the fame of your abundant goodness and shall sing aloud of your righteousness. The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding and steadfast love. The Lord is good to all and His mercy is over all that He's made.

All the works of your all the work shall give thanks to you, O Lord, and all your saints shall bless you. It's like a rhythm of celebration and contemplation. And it is the answer for the preoccupation of our lives. Ever had this happen where you're like headed to the kitchen to do something and on the way you walk through the family room and there are two or three things that you see that need to be done on the way to the kitchen and then you start dealing with those things and then you never make it to the kitchen or you get to the kitchen, you go, why am I here? You know where this happens to me is just like with a smartphone and I'll go, oh, I need to call or text so and so.

I'll reach in my pocket, pull out the phone and when I do, there are two messages that are there popping up at me and I'll start dealing with those really quickly and then forget, why did I have this phone out in the first place? What that is is preoccupation, right? It's like I want my mind to be on something else but it's being put over on something else.

I'm preoccupied. And I think that one of the words that we have for today in the invitation to our lives is that a life of celebration and contemplation is the opposite of preoccupation. This is what becomes the heart focus of the believer and it's rooted in understanding the life of the Christian is both celebration and contemplation.

It's not one or the other. I'm sure it would be confusing to somebody that doesn't know anything about Christianity if you were just to look at the invitations to the different kinds of Christian conferences that take place. I saw two different brochures this week for Christian conferences. The first one was called Storm Revival Fire International Conference 2016. The theme is divine intervention and it's presented by Holy Fire Harvest International led by a prophet named Yeshua.

And then I saw another brochure. It says at the top, Silent Retreat. It was put on by the conventional Franciscan Friars of Our Lady of Consolation.

And the theme was to come away and rest for a while. The four-day retreat, the brochure says, quote, due to the nature of this retreat, we ask retreatants to refrain from talking to anyone except their spiritual director. Well, if you didn't know anything about Christianity, you'd have to go, well, which one is it? How do you grow as a Christian?

What kind of conference do we need? Holy Spirit Fire Storm Revival or come away and rest for a while under some spiritual direction? I would suggest that we need some of both. We really need to have those times of childlike victory celebration of what God has done for us in Christ. And we need to have space in our hearts to think deeply about what all of this means and to ponder it and treasure it in our hearts. It's not just here in Psalm 145 where you see the language of celebration.

I'll extol the Lord and praise the Lord, and also I will meditate. But it's interesting that you would see this really all throughout the Psalms, which is the worship book of Israel. In fact, if you still got your Bible open in the Psalm, just flip back to Psalm 1. There are 150 Psalms. And I just want to show you Psalm 1 in contrast to Psalm 150, the two bookends of this, the Psalter of Israel. Chapter 1 of the book of Psalms begins this way. Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers. But his delight is in the law of the Lord, and on his law he meditates day and night.

He's like a tree planted by streams of water. It's all about meditation, the whole song. There's no mention of celebration. And if you checked at the end of the book of Psalms, you came to Psalm 150, the last of the Psalms. Praise the Lord. Praise God in his sanctuary. Praise him in his mighty heavens. Praise him for his mighty deeds. Praise him according to his excellent greatness. Praise him with trumpet sound. Praise him with lute, heart, tambourine, dance, strings, pipe, sounding cymbals, loud, clashing cymbals.

Let everything has breath. Praise the Lord. All celebration. So the bookends of the whole book of Psalms is meditation on one side and celebration on the other side because we need both. Oh, let me just before moving on from that, just one other really excellent example of this is in the Christmas story with Mary, mother of Jesus. You might want to look there in Luke chapter one, Luke chapter one. Mary, having conceived of the Holy Spirit, has a visit with her relative Elizabeth. And Elizabeth, verse 41 of Luke one, when Elizabeth heard the greeting of Mary, the baby leaped in her womb. Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit and she exclaimed with a loud cry, blessed are you among women and bless is the fruit of your womb. So Elizabeth has a prophetic word that is confirming that this thing that has happened to Mary is a great blessing from God. And there's something about just having this witness of agreement that God's done this miraculous thing that causes a song of celebration to come up out of Mary's spirit. And Mary said, my soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God, my savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant for behold, now all generation will call me blessed. And she begins to sing out a song of celebration we call the Magnificat. So here's Mary in all out celebration.

But then it's so interesting. One of the beautiful lines of scripture in the next chapter, the shepherds have an angelic visitation and they rush over to Bethlehem to see this Messiah baby that has been born. And Luke two, verse 17 says, when they saw it, they made known the saying that had been told them concerning the child and all who heard it wondered at what the shepherds told them. So the shepherds are jubilant.

They're running around telling everybody. And at verse 19, the same Mary, who just a previous chapter, we saw her celebrating with all her heart. Now we see in verse 19, but Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart. And the image here is this idea of pondering is an image that is like turning something or tossing it over and over. That's what the word means.

It's almost the image someone has suggested of like a treasure chest of jewels and coins that if you found it and you could take your hands and just run it through it and just watch the light hit the different jewels and the facets of diamonds and the coins are often just a treasure. You're letting it, you're feeling it, you're watching it turn over. And this is what she was doing with this gospel message that was in her heart. So that's what life with God is. It's like you're celebrating and you're contemplating and the celebration leads to contemplation and the contemplation leads to celebration.

That's the way it works. Impoverishment comes if there's contemplation with no celebration. If something dries up on the inside, if all we ever did was contemplate, but we had no celebration. Sometimes you got to wonder about some people, the Christians, just the look on their face. A homiletics preaching professor was teaching his students about how important it is that your facial expressions match what you're speaking about because so much of communication is non-verbal and so he's telling them, so when you're speaking of heaven it should show on your face. You should smile.

It should be radiant. When you're speaking of heaven, let it show and radiate from your face. And one of the students said, what should we do when we're speaking of hell?

And he said, your ordinary face will do. But actually the scripture shows that there's kind of a deep death-like drying up that happens in the soul where there's no celebration. There's a very interesting story in 2 Samuel chapter 6 that tells of David who is the young king after having been persecuted for years by the jealous king Saul and David escapes with his life number of times and finally, finally, finally after all these years, David is coming to take the throne in Jerusalem and he's bringing the Ark of the Covenant, that ancient symbol of the presence of God in and David is celebrating.

This is what the text says, 2 Samuel 6 14. David danced before the Lord with all his might. Just pure celebration like a little child and David was wearing a linen ephod which is the light in her garment of a priest. So David and all the house of Israel brought up the Ark of the Lord was shouting and the sound of the horn. It's just a festivity.

It's just a celebration, outright celebration. As the Ark of the Lord came into the city of David, Michal, the daughter of Saul, the wife of David, looked out of the window and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord and she despised him in her heart. She hated, she hated the celebration and she hated him for his celebration.

Isn't that odd? And David returned to bless his household, it says in verse 20, but Michal, the daughter of Saul, came out to meet David and said, how the king of Israel honored himself today, uncovering himself today before the eyes of his servants, female servants, as one of the vulgar fellows shamelessly uncovers himself. And David said to Michal, it was before the Lord who chose me above your father and above all this house to appoint me as prince over Israel, the people of the Lord, and I will celebrate before the Lord. I'll make myself yet more contemptible than this and I will be abased in your eyes, but by the female servants of whom you've spoken by them, I shall be held in honor and then the text adds this very interesting line. It says, and Michal, the daughter of Saul, had no child to the day of her death. And it's not a commentary about the medical problem of infertility, which a number of people in this room, I'm sure, have struggled with that.

It's not a commentary on that or statement about that. It is instead as a symbolic thing that it is saying that she had no fruitfulness in her life after this. There's a relationship between the vibrancy of what's happening within us and our capacity to celebrate. And those who despise the celebration and can't ever go into the celebration like the older brother who wouldn't celebrate the prodigal's return are missing not only on a joy, but there's a strength and a life that accompanies that. The New Testament counterpart to Michal is the Pharisees. When Jesus was making his so-called triumphal entry into Jerusalem, the text of Luke 19, 36 says, and as he rode along, they spread their cloaks on the road. And as he was drawing near already on the way down the Mount of Olives, the whole multitude of his disciples began to rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works they'd seen saying, blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord, peace and heaven, glory in the highest. And some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to him, teacher, rebuke your disciples. They couldn't stand the celebration.

They hated it. And he answered, I tell you, if these are silent, the very stones would cry out because God made his world to be a celebration of God. And we can join in it. And in so doing, we're doing what we're created to do, or we can avoid it. And there'll be some kind of death on the inside. Jesus told of the Pharisees, he said, they're like whitewashed tombs.

They look pretty on the outside, but there's absolutely no life on the inside. On the other hand, if we have only celebration and no contemplation, then there's also a kind of impoverishment to our souls. You ever had a time in your life, you're just, you've over celebrated. I don't know why I was thinking of the old Andy Griffith show, one of my favorite episodes. Andy ends up eating three spaghetti dinners on one night.

You know that one? I think it goes like this, where Andy is so glad. Aunt B is gone out of town. Opie's gone on a camping trip. He's got a night by himself at home.

He's going to eat whatever he wants and just kick his shoes off and relax. And Goober shows up feeling sorry for Andy. He goes in the kitchen and fixes Andy a spaghetti dinner. And somewhere, I think in the midst of it, Goober remembers, oh, wait a minute. Somebody else invited you over tonight.

Who was it? Oh, he thinks it was Howard. So he goes over to Howard house.

Well, it wasn't really Howard, but Howard wanting to be hospitable. He feels he'd better fix Andy some dinner if Aunt B's out of town and everything. So he goes and he gets him a spaghetti dinner. Andy eats his second spaghetti dinner.

And in the middle of it, Goober remembers, oh, it wasn't Howard. It was Helen, your girlfriend. She had invited you over. I was supposed to tell you, it goes over to Helen's and she's fixed a wonderful dinner, spaghetti. So he eats his third spaghetti dinner. It's just, have you ever, ever had a night, you know, a time like that where you're just, you've over celebrated.

It wasn't too long ago. And I had a week where I had wonderful things, but I was out seven nights in a row. I was just feasted seven nights in a row.

And, you know, after you feast seven nights in a row, you could bring filet mignon, lobster tail, and just dangle it in front of my nose. And I'd say, I don't care. I don't care.

I just want, I just want to go home, read a book and eat some cereal. You know, I mean, at some point, right. And so there's, there's something that can happen also.

It's just where there's a life that it becomes the pursuit of celebration, just for the celebration, not because of the substance of it. The scripture speaks to this. Amos has a word of warning. And Amos 6, he says, woe to those who are at ease in Zion.

Listen to the description. Woe to those who lie on beds of ivory and stretch themselves out on their couches and eat lambs from the flock and calves from the midst of the stall, who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp. And like David invent for themselves instruments of music who drink wine and bowls and anoint themselves with the finest oils, but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph. Therefore they shall now be the first amongst those who go into exile. And the revelry of those who stretch themselves out shall pass away. What's he talking about here? He's talking about that there, there are real issues going on in the people of God.

There's the real issues that need deep thought and consideration. And instead, the people are just, they're just celebrating for the sake of celebrating, but there's actually nothing to celebrate. And so all they're doing is just being gluttonous and drunken. It's interesting, Paul, to the Corinthians, it's a very fascinating study of the Corinthian church, because the Corinthian church is a place where the Holy Spirit was really poured out. And they just, they really embraced the gifts of the spirit. And there's so much of the power of God that was at work in the Corinthian church.

And yet they really got offline. And one of the things that they did and one of the places where Paul addresses this as first Corinthians 11, he says, when you come together, it is not the Lord's supper that you eat for in eating, each one goes ahead with his own meal. One goes hungry, another gets drunk.

What's he talking about here? I promise you, you can't get drunk on a little, one of those little communion cups. They were coming in and they were having a love feast, which was a wonderful thing in the early church. People would come together, not just for communion, they'd come together and share a meal. But what had happened in the Corinthian church was they were beginning to celebrate these meals like the Romans did.

The Romans had a version of this in which they'd come together for one of these Roman parties and they were just gluttonous and almost pride of themselves on how much they drink and everything that would go on with it. Well, somehow there was a confusion that got into the Corinthians and they thought, oh, all our freedom in Christ and all this, we're so alive and we know how to celebrate. And their times of coming together and fellowship started looking like that. Paul's like, what's going on here? Alan Wright and more with Paul's response and really what's going on here in our next broadcast, Celebration and Contemplation Part 2 is on the way.

You're listening to The Beauty of Balance and Alan Wright will be back here in the studio with us in a moment with additional insight on this for your life and a final word. If you've ever thought that being filled with the Holy Spirit meant shutting off your mind, you're in for a wonderful surprise. God's word and God's spirit were never meant to be separated. Word and spirit always belong together.

The key to abundant life in Christ isn't knowing your Bible. The secret isn't being filled with the spirit. The answer is both word and spirit. Though some traditions emphasize studying scripture and some traditions emphasize the spirit, the path to real Christian growth is the fullness of both word and spirit. As someone once said, all word, no spirit, you dry up. All spirit, no word, you blow up. Both word and spirit, you grow up. When you make a gift of support this month, we'll send you Alan Wright's newest audio album on CD or digital download titled Word and Spirit.

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It's free and just a click away at PastorAlan.org. Alan, our series is continuing in the beauty of balance today, the celebration, the contemplation. Are we saying that you can have the balance, you can have both at the same time?

Absolutely. In the Christian life, there must be both celebration and contemplation. And what we're going to be making the case is that really one without the other impoverishes the other. And so we'll discuss, you know, what is celebration really about and what is the role of celebration? The kingdom of God is compared to a great wedding party, the greatest of celebrations in the Mideast. And yet the role of meditation and contemplation where there is deep, deep thought is so important. So we're going to learn the difference between what Eastern meditation is, which is dangerous, and what Christian meditation really is. And in the end, it is an invitation to have both a life of celebration and contemplation. And I think it's so, so important and it's available to every believer in Jesus Christ. Thanks for listening today. Visit us online at pastorallen.org or call 877-544-4860.

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