The Apostle Paul's instructions for worship seem simple enough. Be joyful always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, and yet it can be challenging to try to consistently apply these directives to our daily lives. Today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg focuses on the source and expression of genuine Christian joy. Paul writes, Be joyful always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus. Do not put out the Spirit's fire. Do not treat prophecies with contempt.
Test everything, hold on to the good, avoid every kind of evil. May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul, and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.
The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it. Thanks be to God for his Word. And so, our gracious God, we come with expectant hearts, believing that you will speak to us through your Word, not simply to increase our knowledge but to change our lives. And we do pray that you will find in our hearts those who are quick and ready to respond, whose hearts will be open to your truth and whose feet will be ready to run in the pathway of obedience. For we pray in Jesus' name.
Amen. Since verse 12 of this fifth chapter of 1 Thessalonians, we've been dealing with Paul's closing instructions to the church, and he has been providing for them various practical pointers in relation to significant elements of what it means for God's people to live together. And in verse 12 and following, he deals with the whole issue of respect for leadership. And then, in verse 14 and following, he deals with the matter of what it means to live in fellowship. And now, in verse 16 and following, he is providing instruction as to the nature of what worship amongst the people of God is to be all about. Those of you who were present last time may recall that we said, if our worship is to be in the manner in which God intends, then three things need to be true for each of us.
Number one, we need to be spiritually alive. It is impossible for dead people to sing. And it is impossible for those who are spiritually dead, who have never been awakened to their need of a Savior by the Spirit of God and the truth of God's Word, to be quickened and enabled to sing God's praise from their hearts. And that is why it is so important that we understand what it means to be in Christ, a new creation, where the old things are gone and the new things have come. And the reason why some people find worship to be such a difficulty, while they find themselves to be observers rather than participants, why they cannot fully appreciate what may be going on around them, may be traced to the fact that in certain cases the reason is quite simply, albeit quite painfully, the fact that the individual is spiritually dead.
And no amount of manufacturing, no amount of manipulation, no amount of encouragement or cajoling will be able to get genuine praise out from dead bodies. Secondly, we said that it was imperative that those who know Christ would need, then, to be spiritually assisted. And we dealt with the fact that the Word of God is to dwell in us richly, and the Spirit of God is to dwell in us richly. We saw in Colossians Paul using the Word of God—indwelling Word—resulting in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, and in Ephesians 5 him referring to the Spirit of God in essentially the same way. And we need to note that, as has been said before, where you have all word and no spirit, the people tend to dry up.
Where you have all spirit and no word, the people tend to blow up. And where you have both the Spirit and the Word, then people tend to grow up. And it is to this issue of growth in our understanding of worship that we were trying to give attention—spiritually assisted. And then, thirdly, we said that it was imperative that God's people were spiritually active, making the most of every opportunity, determining that we will seize the chance which has now been afforded us to contribute to the experience of corporate praise. Now, once you take those principles and apply them within the framework of God's people, it has to mean something, and it has to have a point of focus. And it is to this that we now turn in these straightforward phrases here that begin in verse 16. One is immediately and quite forcibly struck by the ordinary nature of them. Be joyful, be prayerful, be thankful.
Is that it? Well, it's not all of it, but it is a significant part of it. And it is to this issue of joy and prayer and genuine thankfulness that we now give our attention.
May I just say as well, in going into this issue of joy, that we are not here talking about some kind of mode of worship being equal to joy and another one being equal to gloominess. It may be possible for one to miscommunicate or for one to misinterpret what's being said in referencing something like this. There are some people for whom spontaneity is everything, and spontaneity rules supreme over the essential biblical principle of doing everything decently and in order. There are others who are so concerned to do everything decently and in order that they have got it as orderly as a graveyard. And most nice graveyards are very orderly and very quiet, and there is little prospect of life or animation emerging from them. And so you tend to, in talking with the people of God, find that they are, on the one hand, consumed with the notion of a kind of carnival atmosphere, or, at the other end of the pendulum swing, a kind of crematorium experience.
And those who are into what I might refer to as sort of crematorium worship are very wary of the carnival crowd, and the carnival people can't understand what in the world happened to these folks in the crematorium. And furthermore, what they tend to do is they tend to say that the freedom over here is directly opposed to the form over here, and that freedom and form are mutually exclusive. Well, freedom and form are not mutually exclusive. I mean, there's tremendous freedom in a golf swing, but it's directly related to form. There is freedom within the form.
The form actually provides freedom. So the issue is not a false antithesis between structure and no structure. Nor is it right to say that the Holy Spirit is the friend of freedom and the enemy of form, or, depending on where you're coming from, that he is the friend of form and the enemy of freedom. Those are false antithesis. But the issue is that whatever the structure and whatever the level of freedom, there is to be joy always, dependent prayer, and a genuine experience of thankfulness.
So let's look at these in turn, then. First of all, be joyful always. That may just hit you like a two-by-four in the front of the head because of the way your Sunday has already begun. The people around you are already giving you gentle nudges, because as they think about the early hours of the day spent in your presence, the first word that came to mind was not J-O-Y.
It may have been another word, but it was not joy. And already you're feeling somewhat put upon by this opening phrase. Well, I want to remind you always, I didn't write this book. I just tell you what's in it.
Right? You're not dealing with me. I'm being dealt with by it. We are being dealt with by it. So, the Word says we're going to be joyful always.
What does that mean? Well, probably the best place to cross-reference it is in the Old Testament, in the book of Psalms. Because the psalmist makes it very clear that joy is to be the overflow of the people of God. And I'd like just to reference one or two Psalms with you this morning for our edification. Psalm 5 and verse 9, speaking of the wicked, not a word from their mouth can be trusted, their heart is full of destruction. And then in verse 11, speaking of the righteous, Psalm 5 11, But let all who take refuge in you be glad, let them ever sing for joy. Spread your protection over them, that those who love your name may rejoice in you.
So in the space of just a few words, you have a joy, a rejoice, and a glad. You don't have to be too brilliant to recognize the fact that the protection and the provision of the Lord for his people, says the psalmist, has as one of its key dimensions of expression a genuine, heartfelt, truth-informed, Spirit-inspired joyfulness—something that wells up from within the heart of the child of God. Now, in Psalm 95 and verse 1, which those of you who come from an Episcopalian or an Anglican background will recognize as the venite, you have what is used in the liturgical form of worship there regularly Sunday by Sunday, and it's very helpfully done. Psalm 95 1, Come, let us sing for joy to the LORD. Let us shout aloud to the rock of our salvation.
Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and with song. Now, you notice, as we go through this, that this is not a call to happiness, some superficial external thing. As if somehow or another, happiness for the Christian was a faucet that you could turn on or turn off. Don't worry, be happy, okay? Let's get it off the worry side and turn it on to the happy side. There's an Australian that I met in the last few days, and Australians have got these great phrases, you know. As I was walking away from the guy, he said to me, he said, Now worries might.
No worries might. As if somehow or another saying, Now worries might, meant that you had no worries. What he's really saying is, I hope that you are not living with worry. Which is a nice greeting, you know, because we don't want to be living in worry. But it's not sufficient just to say, Now worries might be joyful. And then as a result of that, we turn off the worry section, turn on the joy section. It doesn't work like that in my life.
I don't know if it works like that in yours. This is not a call to superficial happiness. This is not something that emerges from circumstances that then, because the externals are so wonderful, we say, Oh, well, it is a nice day. Now, what a day for a daydreaming. What a day for a daydreaming boy. And I've been lost in a sweet dream, dreaming about my bundle of joy. And you say, Oh, well, this is really nice. You know, radio on, playing, music, something to look forward to, no school tomorrow.
Fantastic! This is joy! No, that's external things that can make you happy. Because the fact of the matter is, all those things can go away, and suddenly, if all we're dealing with is the faucet of happiness, we have nothing left.
That's why we've got to go looking for another thing, another filler, another something to pick us up. That's not Christian joy. That is not what the Bible is referring to here. Psalm 100—you turn over one page.
Psalm 100, verse 1. Shout for joy to the Lord. Why does it say shout? Well, because you're supposed to shout.
I guarantee you, the first person that shouts in here, somebody's gonna come up to him and go, Hey, cut that out, would you? There's no shouting in here. We don't shout in here.
Why not? Well, I don't know why not, but we don't shout in here. Well, this time it says shout, but we don't shout.
Okay, fine. Shout for joy to the Lord all the earth. Worship the Lord with gladness. Come before him with joyful songs. Now, you see, it is essential that our worship is marked by reverence, that it is marked by awe, that it is marked by humility, that it is marked by an understanding of the fact that it all begins with God and his glory and not me and my relationships and myself and my needs and my preoccupations. But I mustn't use sort of awe and reverence and humble silence as a cover-up for creating something that is just unforgivably gloomy and tediously boring. And it is possible for us to so approach the issues of corporate worship that if you think about it, the adjectives that come to mind to describe the event that is taking place or has just taken place, you know, are not necessarily adjectives of joy, gladness, light, splendor, extolling—you know, those kind of things. Robert Louis Stevenson, who wrote a number of novels, you may remember, wrote in his diary in Edinburgh on one occasion and made the entry in the evening of a Sunday, "'I have been to church today, and I am not depressed!' It was so notable for him, because he had so assumed that his experience of corporate worship would be such a downer for him, that that was the general standard of things, that when he went one day, and he came out, and he said, hey, that was pretty good. So he wrote it in his diary.
You can go find it. "'I have been to church today, and I am not depressed!' Exclamation mark."
Why? Because he entered into some kind of experience of joy. Psalm 34 1, "'I will bless the LORD at all times. His praise will always be on my lips.'" Where do you think Paul got this little phrase, be joyful always? He was brought up in a good Jewish home. He was brought up with all the psalms and the songs.
He was brought up with synagogue worship. He knew what it was for the leader of the worship to call the people of God to extol the Lord, and now as he's found the reality of God in the person of Jesus Christ, he takes the same framework, the same phraseology, and he says, Come on now, be joyful always. Now, if you turn forward into the New Testament, into Galatians 5, let me remind you that joy is not something that we hang on from the outside like a Christmas ornament.
But joy is something that is produced from the inside as a result of the ministry of the Spirit of God. Galatians 5 and verse 22, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Now, every so often I meet people who say, Yeah, well, I know the fruit of the Spirit is all those things, but I thought that it was like you selected three that you liked. And, you know, I have selected three of these that I'm working on, and the rest someone else is gonna have to pick up.
No. These are like the leafs of an orange. When you peel an orange and all the leafs fall open, there's love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, gentleness, and so on, and the Spirit of God is in the business of making us full-orbed Christians, producing all the leaves. Now, all the leaves will not necessarily be there to the same degree and at the same level of intensity at all times in our lives, and sometimes we need a little bit of encouragement in one than in the other—and not least of all, it would seem, in the area of Christian joy. Now, there's great liberation in this, because the Spirit of God is calling us to expressions, to activities of joyfulness—not that we then produce as a result of trying to muster ourselves up to it, but as a result of the Spirit of God within our lives. So, we're able to say, Lord Jesus, I thank you that you have given me your Spirit to dwell within my life. And although, frankly, I feel pretty disappointed as a result of the way that business has gone this week, although that I am dreadfully discouraged over the relationships that are personally in my life, either in the absence of a good one because I'm single or in the presence of a bad one because my marriage is less than it should be, or that I am frustrated by this or I'm frustrated by that, I thank you, Lord Jesus, that you have given the Spirit of God to live within my life so that, irrespective of the externals, I can know solid joy and lasting treasure.
That's what Newton was writing about. Fading is the worldling's pleasure, all his boasted pomp and show. You see these tremendous Hollywood sets that they create, you know, for the Grammys or the Oscars or whatever else it is—tremendous amount of money spent on them, fantastic with all the lights and the creation of the event. Behind it, it looks like nothing on earth. And when all the house lights are turned back on, and they finally begin to dismantle it all, there's just this dreadful feeling of emptiness and letdown moments before the limousines were there, moments before the people who were successful were there, the desirable people were there. Now they've all gone where?
Well, they've all gone to another fix in another place. Fading is the worldling's pleasure, but solid joys and lasting treasure, none but Zion's children know. This comes again in the Old Testament in a wonderful prophetic passage in Isaiah 35. We used to sing it as a song in the late sixties, early seventies.
You may remember it. Speaking of the joy of the redeemed, it says at the end of Isaiah 35, only the redeemed will be on this path, and the ransomed of the LORD will return, they will enter Zion with singing. Everlasting joy will crown their heads, gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away.
This is a picture of the redeemed. They remember the song like, Therefore the redeemed of the LORD shall return and come with singing unto Zion, and everlasting joy will be upon their heads. They will obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and mourning will flee away. Therefore the redeemed of the LORD will return and come with singing unto Zion, and everlasting joy will be upon their heads, because of the essential truths of the gospel. Praise my soul, the king of heaven, to his feet thy tribute bring, ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven. Who like thee his praise should sing? The hymn writer is speaking to his soul.
He's saying, Come on, soul! I know you're disappointed by this. I know the circumstances are not the way you intended. I know there is frustration here.
I know there is heartache there. But listen, you've been ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven. Don't you think you should be singing God's praise? Don't you think there should at least be the half of a smile on the corners of your mouth for goodness sake? Well, you see, when I use those words for the non-Christian, for the unbeliever, for the agnostic, for the person who's walked in here this morning and says, You know, I think I'll give religion a little try.
I think I'll go in and see if I can get into it, see if I can get something from it. Then I say to you, You know, who like you should sing his praise? Ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven?
You say, Hey, time out! I don't know what one of those words means. I'm glad you're honest enough to admit it, and in our prayer room at the end of the service, we'd like to meet with you and explain to you what every one of those words means. And if you come to understand what they mean and why they are so important, I can introduce you to the most joyful experience you ever had in your life. I'll introduce you to solid joy and lasting treasure. I'll provide for you from the Word of God something that cannot be quenched and can never be taken away. There is no success you will ever achieve, no place you will ever go, nothing you will ever buy, anything you will ever own that will be able to take the place of the dimension of solid joy in the reality of the person of Jesus Christ.
That's an important reminder about the incomparable joy of our salvation. You're listening to Truth for Life with Alistair Begg. Here at Truth for Life, our mission is to give you a deeper understanding of God's Word. Along with the daily teaching you hear on this program, we carefully select books to recommend to you to help you grow in your faith, and I hope you take advantage of these recommendations. As you request these books each month, you can build a terrific library and over a year's time you will have added 24 biblically sound books. We purposefully choose books that cover a wide variety of topics. We include devotionals or topical books, classics from historical authors, children books, some how-to books. It's a great selection for personal growth or to give away these books as meaningful gifts. Now one great way to collect the books we recommend throughout the year is by becoming a truth partner. A truth partner is someone who commits to giving an amount of their choosing each month, and one of the ways we say thank you for supporting this ministry is by inviting you to request the recommended books. When you sign up to give $20 or more each month, you can request not just one but both of the books we recommend each month.
You don't need to give an extra gift. Just go online or call and ask for your books to be sent to you. Along with the monthly books, when you sign up to become a truth partner, you'll also receive a hardcover copy of the Truth for Life daily devotional, and you'll have access to a special message from Alistair each month, something that's not featured on our website. You can sign up to become a truth partner quickly and easily online at truthforlife.org slash truth partner, or you can call us at 888-588-7884. And be sure to request the book we're recommending currently, which is titled Gather, Loving Your Church As You Celebrate Christ Together. I'm Bob Lapine. Thanks for joining us to study the Bible today. Tomorrow, we'll consider the necessity of prayer and find out why the devil works so hard to distract us from it. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life, where the Learning is for Living.
