Joy & Grief
Matthew 22:35,
Jesus is asked a question by a lawyer, and it wasn't a sincere question, but an attempt to trap Him or stir up controversy, and Jesus fires back, you can note that very quickly, no hesitation. And He tells us that we are to love God with all our minds, with all our hearts and souls. But clearly, He wants us to make good use of our minds.
And that's something that you find stressed in the Bible. There's no religion like Christianity that puts such a stress upon doctrine and the use of the mind or the intellect like the Christian faith. And you'll find words as you go through, even look at the book of Proverbs, in words like wisdom, knowledge, think, understanding, ponder, meditate. Paul, just in the book of Romans alone uses that word ‘mind’ six times. So God wants us to make good use of our minds.
But God also wants us to make good use of our emotions. We are to love Him with our hearts and our souls. And again, if you read through your Bible, think of the Psalms, all kinds of emotions come to the fore: sorrow, love, delight, grief, joy, gladness, fear, etc. And I was just thinking, if you go back to the Lord's Day past, it struck me that all three messages dealt with some degree with respect to our emotions. Pastor Calvin Walden dealt with those three commands in 1 Thessalonians 5:16,17. What's the very first one? He started with, ‘Rejoice,’ that's an emotional word. Rejoice always, and then he made the point that this rejoicing is anchored in unchanging realities of salvation, it flows from our relationship with Christ, His work and His promises.
And as Christians, we could also put ourselves on the other end of the emotional spectrum. There's joy, but also sorrow, grief, and depression. And that was emphasized loud and clear by our brother Tim Kooy, in the Sunday school hour, as he opened up Psalm 42. Twice in that Psalm he reminded us that question is asked, “Why are you cast down, O my soul?” And again, some describe that as a time when he's in a state of spiritual depression. And why is he depressed? Well, it's not the ordinary kind of depression, he's separated from God's presence and also from the worship of God.
And then in the AM service, we dealt with Jesus from a John 11 perspective. And death overshadows, you could say, that whole chapter, the death of Lazarus, and Jesus puts his emotions on display. “He wept,” John 11:35, it's called the shortest verse in the Bible, “He wept.” And then He also expresses a high level of anger. That language there, “He was stirred or groaned within.” Again, different translations, but it could really be translated, “He was angry, intensely angry, ferociously angry.” So you see that emotion coming through with Jesus there as He stands in front of His friend's tomb. And again, you go back to the Psalms and you find all kinds of emotions in the Psalms, in the Gospels, and also the Epistles.
We come face-to-face with emotions on either side of the emotional spectrum, right? Christians can be weeping and rejoicing at one and the same time. The Apostle Paul, a great, profound thinker, but he also expressed deep feelings of sorrow and joy. Listen to what he says in 2 Corinthians 6:10, “Sorrowful, yet rejoicing.” Sorrowful, yet rejoicing. So he had deep sadness over the hardships and trials that he faced. There was a lot of broken relationships in his life, a lot of persecution, a lot of sorrow, it followed him almost everywhere; yet, he's always rejoicing.
A Christian — this might sound a little bit strange to your ears — but a Christian, I think we could argue, should be the happiest and most joyful person on planet Earth. Right? But we could also be the saddest and the most sorrowful people on planet Earth. Rejoicing always, celebrating the mercies of God, the blessings of God, the promises of God, the future hope of resurrection. But like Jesus and like the Apostle Paul and like everyone we know, we never escape the groanings of this present world. We never escape the sorrows of the graveyard or the coffin. And Jesus and the Apostle Paul also wept over lost sinners. And so our prayers should be mixed, right? If they're balanced prayers, they should be mixed with grief, sorrow, lament, you find a lot of those prayers in the Psalms, lament, but also joy and cheerfulness.
As we go to prayer, let's pray that God would help us to grieve over our own sin, to grieve over sin we see in other people; “Blessed are they that mourn;” but also rejoice in the great salvation we have in Christ. And again, let's go back over what we heard in the Sunday School hour, morning and evening worship. There's much to rejoice in and also grieve over in the suffering of loved ones, the loss of loved ones, unconverted friends and family members.
And one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question to test Him, “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” And He said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment.”
Jesus is asked a question by a lawyer, and it wasn't a sincere question, but an attempt to trap Him or stir up controversy, and Jesus fires back, you can note that very quickly, no hesitation. And He tells us that we are to love God with all our minds, with all our hearts and souls. But clearly, He wants us to make good use of our minds.
And that's something that you find stressed in the Bible. There's no religion like Christianity that puts such a stress upon doctrine and the use of the mind or the intellect like the Christian faith. And you'll find words as you go through, even look at the book of Proverbs, in words like wisdom, knowledge, think, understanding, ponder, meditate. Paul, just in the book of Romans alone uses that word ‘mind’ six times. So God wants us to make good use of our minds.
But God also wants us to make good use of our emotions. We are to love Him with our hearts and our souls. And again, if you read through your Bible, think of the Psalms, all kinds of emotions come to the fore: sorrow, love, delight, grief, joy, gladness, fear, etc. And I was just thinking, if you go back to the Lord's Day past, it struck me that all three messages dealt with some degree with respect to our emotions. Pastor Calvin Walden dealt with those three commands in 1 Thessalonians 5:16,17. What's the very first one? He started with, ‘Rejoice,’ that's an emotional word. Rejoice always, and then he made the point that this rejoicing is anchored in unchanging realities of salvation, it flows from our relationship with Christ, His work and His promises.
And as Christians, we could also put ourselves on the other end of the emotional spectrum. There's joy, but also sorrow, grief, and depression. And that was emphasized loud and clear by our brother Tim Kooy, in the Sunday school hour, as he opened up Psalm 42. Twice in that Psalm he reminded us that question is asked, “Why are you cast down, O my soul?” And again, some describe that as a time when he's in a state of spiritual depression. And why is he depressed? Well, it's not the ordinary kind of depression, he's separated from God's presence and also from the worship of God.
And then in the AM service, we dealt with Jesus from a John 11 perspective. And death overshadows, you could say, that whole chapter, the death of Lazarus, and Jesus puts his emotions on display. “He wept,” John 11:35, it's called the shortest verse in the Bible, “He wept.” And then He also expresses a high level of anger. That language there, “He was stirred or groaned within.” Again, different translations, but it could really be translated, “He was angry, intensely angry, ferociously angry.” So you see that emotion coming through with Jesus there as He stands in front of His friend's tomb. And again, you go back to the Psalms and you find all kinds of emotions in the Psalms, in the Gospels, and also the Epistles.
We come face-to-face with emotions on either side of the emotional spectrum, right? Christians can be weeping and rejoicing at one and the same time. The Apostle Paul, a great, profound thinker, but he also expressed deep feelings of sorrow and joy. Listen to what he says in 2 Corinthians 6:10, “Sorrowful, yet rejoicing.” Sorrowful, yet rejoicing. So he had deep sadness over the hardships and trials that he faced. There was a lot of broken relationships in his life, a lot of persecution, a lot of sorrow, it followed him almost everywhere; yet, he's always rejoicing.
A Christian — this might sound a little bit strange to your ears — but a Christian, I think we could argue, should be the happiest and most joyful person on planet Earth. Right? But we could also be the saddest and the most sorrowful people on planet Earth. Rejoicing always, celebrating the mercies of God, the blessings of God, the promises of God, the future hope of resurrection. But like Jesus and like the Apostle Paul and like everyone we know, we never escape the groanings of this present world. We never escape the sorrows of the graveyard or the coffin. And Jesus and the Apostle Paul also wept over lost sinners. And so our prayers should be mixed, right? If they're balanced prayers, they should be mixed with grief, sorrow, lament, you find a lot of those prayers in the Psalms, lament, but also joy and cheerfulness.
As we go to prayer, let's pray that God would help us to grieve over our own sin, to grieve over sin we see in other people; “Blessed are they that mourn;” but also rejoice in the great salvation we have in Christ. And again, let's go back over what we heard in the Sunday School hour, morning and evening worship. There's much to rejoice in and also grieve over in the suffering of loved ones, the loss of loved ones, unconverted friends and family members.
Posted in Pastor Devotional