6-8-08 How’s Your Joy?

If somebody were to ask you, “What’s your favorite command in the Bible?” What would you say? A lot of times we think of commands as obligations or burdens or things that I have to do. When I asked myself that question initially, there was a part of me that sort or rebelled inside of me. I don’t naturally like commands that tell me to do something.

But, of course, from God’s perspective all his commands are connected with who he is and who we were created to be and all his commands are to direct us toward up there coming down here, to direct us toward us experiencing more heaven on earth, more heaven in our relationships, more heaven in our lives. God’s commands are to help us live life to the fullest, to help us fulfill all our potential and become the people that God created us to be, but when I ask you what your favorite command in the Bible might be, I don’t know about you, but I kind of repel against commands. I tend to think about a command as being an obligation or a burden. But this may change your mind. It did mine.

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. (Psalm 100:1)

I love the phrase “joyful noise,” because I make a lot of noises. I make whiny noises and angry noises. I make selfish noises, complaining noises, anxious noises, but God loves joyful noises. How hard is it to make a joyful noise? It’s not really all that difficult.

I came across one this last week that I thought I would like to share it with you. In the next 30 seconds you are going to see my favorite part of the sermon. If you want to leave after the next 30 seconds, you’ve got the best part of it. Take a look. Here is Joyful Noises 101.

Video Clip of four laughing babies

Isn’t that just good for your soul? If every human being were required to experience that every morning the world would be a better place? That’s delight. When you look at those you see  little children just in the grip of delight. And then you’ve got to ask the question:

Who thought that up? Who thought up children that’s shaped like that, that looks like that? Who thought up the sound of laughter? Who thought up joy? What kind of being, what kind of person would think up something like that?

What has those children done to deserve such joy? Not much as all. They haven’t earned it, haven’t gotten good grades, never cleaned their room, haven’t contributed to their father’s 401K and yet this is the will of the father for his children. Make a joyful noise. Do it again kids. Do it again. Make another joyful noise. So here’s the question:

How are you doing at making a joyful noise? How is that going for you?

I sometimes think that if the followers of Jesus got nothing else right, if all we got right was that we were known as people who make a joyful noise, that the Gospel would be largely unstoppable because in this sorry, fallen, dark world, people are starved to death for a joyful noise.

In this talk, I want to make a case for joyful noise, why it’s a good thing to be joyful noisemakers. I’d like for you to keep the picture of the sound of that little child in mind and God’s invitation-make a joyful noise, all the lands.

I want to talk about why it’s a good thing to be a worshiper. You may not connect the command to be joyful with worship, but I want to make a case for that. This text is connecting worship with joyful noises.  I want to look at a number of reasons why worship is so good.

Lots of good things go on when I worship. One of them is that when I worship, it gets my attention off me. This is how the Psalm starts, Psalm 100:

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth.

You see how comprehensive this is. This wasn’t something that God said to one person. This wasn’t something just for one person. This was for everybody-you and me, this community, this nation, and this world. It’s a command for all human beings.

Worship the Lord with gladness; Come before the Lord with joyful songs. Know for sure that the Lord, he is God. It is he who has made us and not we ourselves. (Psalm 100:1-3)

What’s so striking in these words to me is the very last line. In worship what I do is, I think a lot of deep, hard thoughts, good thoughts about God and if I’m thinking about God, who am I not thinking about? I’m not thinking about me. And it turns out that thinking too much about me is not a real healthy thing for human beings to do.

What’s the opposite of joy? Depression. Since the end of the Second World War, how much do you think the percentage of depression occurrences has changed? Do you think it’s stayed about the same, gone up 10%, down 20%? If you don’t mind, turn to the person next to you and just take a guess at this. How much do you think the incidence of depression has changed since the end of the Second World War? Go ahead and take a guess.

There’s been a lot of research on depression, as you all know, in our day. The best estimates are that since World War II depression has gone up about 1,000%. It is ten times more prevalent in our day than it was even a lifetime ago. This is a huge epidemic in our day and, of course, it’s led to lots and lots of folks asking the question:

Why has depression become so much more widely diagnosed, and so much more prominent?

Deeply connected to this epidemic of depression is the idea that most psychologist and sociologist agree upon, is that the US also has another epidemic, in which we are the most individualistic Nation in the world, and maybe of all time. We are independent. We have high ego’s, We focus primarily on me and what will help me and my cause. Even love in our nation, the way that I see it, is mostly about what I can get out of it for me.

Depression comes predominantly from a culture where we say, you take focus on you and I’ll focus on me, and we’ll all be good. It’s a lie. When we focus on the self, our insides shrink and our joy diminishes because the self is just too small a package to carry the weight of human hunger for meaning and significance.

When I worship, my mind is on something besides me, because my mind was not made to dwell primarily on my own self. That’s why boredom has become so pervasive in our day. When I am thinking about me and my own little life and my own little agenda and how I am doing, my little world, it’s crushing. It can be quite boring. We were made to think about something better, something bigger, something richer than ourselves.

One of the most common side effects of depression is fatigue. Sometimes I wonder if we watch so much TV and play so many video games and sit in front of the computer for so many hours is because we’re depressed. It takes less energy to sit and watch the TV or to sit and play a video game, then it does so many other things in life. We get depressed, we get fatigued, we get bored because life is so small when we are self centered. Worship connects us to God, Worship connects us to something so much bigger. Worship connects us to joy. I no longer focus on my self when I worship. Life gets much bigger, because I focus on God.

How do I do this? How do I get myself to love a God that is lovely? We actually have an expression, a real kind of common, ordinary practice. People sometimes say:

You have to stop and smell the roses.

Rose for a prop. The idea is that a rose is a lovely thing, but to enjoy it I must focus on it and so I bring the rose before my senses. I look at it, I get close to it. Have you ever smelled a rose? When I do that, I delight in it. It’s the nature of the rose. I bring my mind before it. I stop and smell the rose. I look at it and notice it. I stand in awe the closer that I get, the more that I take the time to look, and smell, and wonder.

I often hear guys who hunt say, I don’t go to church because I worship God out in the woods, out in nature – I feel closest to God when I’m there. My response is always the same. Of course you do, but it’s not just because you’re in the woods that you worship God. It’s because you stopped and quieted yourself and truly looked and truly listened and truly observed for long periods of time what God had done. When you’re in the woods, you stop and smell the roses.

Worship focuses on God and not on me. Worship focuses on God’s glory, on God’s beauty and when I stop and smell the roses, I find that I have to worship God.

This is just the way the mind works when there is something lovely and I bring it before my mind and I linger there. It produces delight. It produces joy. This is what worship involves. It is possible to grow in love with God. It won’t just happen to you. I must be systematic about it. It’s not burdensome any more than it’s burdensome to love a rose or a great baseball game or a sunset. I just bring my mind into the presence of the reality of God in all of His glory and wonder and goodness. And I get to do anything that will help me in this and you do too.

The Scriptures speak a lot about people who use creation to worship God. The heavens are declaring the glory of God. I just connect the dots. I look at the ocean, I watch a sunset, I see the trees blossom, I smell a rose, I listen to the laughter of a child, and then I just stop and think, who thought that up? Why should there be such goodness and beauty in the world? Because of the love of beauty of the One Who created it all. What a good God God must be and I find myself actually, even me, coming to love God more.

I read and I study and I think about this man Jesus and how good Jesus was and how He would embrace children, how anybody could come to Him. I read His teachings and I marvel at how wise He is and that He will illumine my life. I read again about how He went to a cross out of His love for you and me. When I read the scriptures, I see God at work there and it gets my mind off myself. I want to celebrate who God is even more. I want to laugh, because it’s too good to be true.

When I worship there’s another dynamic at work:

When I worship it produces a spirit of gratitude in me. Because I have a complaining heart in me sometimes, but when I worship something else happens in my mind.

The Psalmist in Psalm 100 puts it like this. Again, it’s just good to think through these words:

Enter his gates (Gathering in worship like we are now.) with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him and praise his name. (Psalm 100:4)

I’ll tell you how I do that. Here’s what can happen to me. Sometimes just in default I can start my day as if I begin in neutral. It’s like if good things happen to me, then I’ll feel lucky and I’ll feel happy, but if some bad things happen, then I’ll feel unfortunate and be unhappy. But when I worship, I’ll stop and remember all the ways that God has been good to me. This is very, very important. Wherever you are, whatever your circumstances are that you spend time reflecting on how good God has been to you. I’ll actually write this down sometimes.

Then I read those words and I think God, I’m just such an idiot sometimes that I think my day is starting in neutral. It’s not starting in neutral. I have been given so much I can’t even name it.

You can make your own list. Put it in your Bible or at your desk, some place where you’ll see it. When you come to worship next week, come a little early and enter into His gates with thanksgiving. Gratitude happens when we worship. Gratitude is a really good reason for worship, not the best reason, not the best.

Another dynamic, another benefit of worship:

When I worship my problems and my difficulties, my struggles lose their power to make me despair; they lose their power to suck life out of me.

I want us to read one of the great, great passages in Scripture. If you have your Bible, turn it to Habakkuk 3 verse 17

Though the fig tree does not bud and there are no grapes on the vines, though the olive crop fails and the fields produce no food…

These were agricultural people so this is real serious business.

Though there are no sheep in the pen and no cattle in the stalls…

Then these fabulous words…

Nevertheless I will rejoice in the Lord. I will be joyful in God my savior. (Habakkuk 3:17-18)

That’s a Vision of a kind of life. That’s a Vision of the presence, the reality of God and how that changes everything. I will face things in this world where circumstances do not turn out the way that I want them to turn out and sometimes they are really, really difficult.

Sometimes in life I will face circumstances that I do not like, that I cannot control and if all I face them with, is my own inadequacy, I’ll spend a huge chunk of my life in discouragement and frustration.

I was at work this week; I was working on this message. I was at this point right here and my computer would not work the way that it’s supposed to work. Do you ever have that problem? It was like under some kind of spiritual attack or something, and I got so frustrated-no kidding. It was like being a 7-year old child. It was ridiculous. And then I stopped and I literally walked over to a window and I looked outside and I thought…

God, You made the earth. You are my hope. You made these trees, You made this grass, You made this sky, You made the sun, You made the air I breathe. You are way bigger than my frustrations. I am frustrated. Nevertheless, I will praise You. You are a good God. You are way bigger than all of my life. I praise You right now.

And no kidding, physically I could feel the frustration just leaving my body. It was kind of interesting. My mind just got freed because I’m small, my problems are small. God, you are so big.

When I worship something happens to the way that I look at my life and my problems. This week you can do this. When the fig tree doesn’t bud, when the olive crop fails, when there are no sheep in the pen, when the car doesn’t start, when gas prices go up again, when the checkbook doesn’t balance, when the sun doesn’t shine, when your boss doesn’t smile, when the hoped-for phone call does not come, when you are frustrated, when you are sad, when you are discouraged, when you are stuck, just stop and worship.

You can do this. Look out a window. Look at creation. Open up the Scriptures and read again some words from this person Jesus. Sing a song that goes way down deep inside you. Remember Habakkuk. Nevertheless, God, I remember Your greatness and Your goodness and I will praise You right now.

The Greatest commandment in all the Bible is to love God with all of our heart, with all of our mind, with all of our soul, and with all of our strength. We are commanded to love God because when we focus on him, when we worship him, we have to rejoice. When we worship we are reminded of who God is and who we are in him.  When we worship we begin to live into the reality of what heaven will be like. In heaven, God will be at the center of everything that happens. There won’t be a son, because God’s glory will light all of heaven.

Make a joyful noise to the Lord, all the earth. (Psalm 100:1)

Make a joyful noise like the little children that we saw at the beginning. Celebrate who God is and allow it to change your life. Allow your worship to change you. You become what you worship. What are you worshipping? God calls us to worship him, because we were created in his image. We were created in his goodness and when we worship him, we are filled with a joy that is unspeakable.