Rightly Ordered Affections

*The sermon manuscript below was generated from the recording by AI, take it with a grain of salt…

Maybe you’ve heard someone say or seen on a video, “You can’t tell me how to feel. You can’t tell me how to feel,” or something like, “My feelings are real whether you acknowledge it or not.” Or maybe one a little bit more common would be, “I feel wronged by you, so whether you wronged me or not doesn’t matter, you have to apologize.” Suffered through that tyranny before.

You might call it the immutability of feelings. It’s very prevalent in our culture, isn’t it? You can’t tell me how to feel. You can’t tell me how to think. If it’s real for me, it’s real.

And it’s easy for us to look and sort of scoff and mock these things, yet I, I wonder if we can be tempted to slowly actually imbibe this same doctrine, but in a way we don’t immediately recognize.

I can maybe put it this way. Let me ask you this question. Does God’s will, does God’s will apply to your feelings? Does God’s will apply to your feelings, and your affections, and your emotions?

Maybe you’ve heard Christians, I’ve heard this quite a lot, uh, when God says, “Don’t be anxious,” He doesn’t mean don’t be anxious, because you can’t make I can’t decide not to be anxious, I’m just an anxious person.

Does God, does God command us to feel a certain way?

Our passage addresses this. Nehemiah 8, verse 9 to 12 addresses this in, in quite a helpful way, I think.

And it all begins with commanded affections, commanded affections.

To understand, of course, we have to put ourselves back into the story. We remember, don’t we, that this is sort of like a revival experience breaking out in Israel at the time of Nehemiah. They’ve done the wall building. They’ve, they’ve secured the, the s- the state of Israel, Jerusalem. They’re feeling safe, and then they bring out the law, and they have a day of law reading. And Ezra comes forth, and he brings the law, and he reads it, and the people gather as one, one person, as one man, in order to hear the public reading of God’s word and to have it explained to them.

Hmm, we talked about last week, didn’t we? Or the week before, I guess. The power of God’s word in that moment as the word applied to the heart had power with it, but not just the preaching of it or the reading of it, but the receiving of it, the hearing of it, and the putting it into application in their lives. We saw this wonderful moment of word.

And in our passage here, we see what ends up coming from that. As the law is read for 6 hours, people begin to be cut to the quick, as they used to say, cut to the heart. It’s like that moment in Acts. You remember on the day of Pentecost, J- Peter is preaching about Jesus. He’s pre-preaching the death and the resurrection of Christ as the Savior of the world. And what happens? Well, everyone goes home and has a merry day, right? No. They’re cut to the heart, we’re told, and they cry out, “What must we do to be saved?” They’re cut to the heart, and they’re brought into a state of what you might call contrition or reflection

And that’s what we see here in our passage. It’s not abnormal. It’s seen throughout many times of history. If you read of the Scottish revivals, I’ve mentioned before that I love reading of revivals. If you read of the Scottish revivals, it’s very common. You see these moments where God moves in power, and the Word brings heavy contrition. People are bowed down under the weight of their sin. People are unable to even stand up because they feel the immensity of the burden of their sin.

And that’s kind of what we see here. We’re told that they mourned and they wept over their sin because of the reading of the law.

You’ve gotta remember their story. Where have they come from? They’ve come from Babylon, right? come from Babylon. And why were they in Babylon? Because they rebelled against Yahweh. They rebelled against their God. And now they’re hearing all of the laws that them and their forebears broke. They’re hearing all of the laws that their fathers and their grandfathers broke. They’re thinking of the idolatry and the sin in their own hearts, and the wickedness and the corruption of their flesh, and they’re hearing law after law after law which heaps sin upon them, and they’re overwhelmed by it all, and they break down and they afflict themselves and they weep and they grieve to the heart.

No wonder what would you do in that moment? If you, if you were the priest, if you were presiding over the situation. There’s a common piece of advice, and I’ve heard it many times repeated by, by people that love Puritans. They say, “Well, it’s good for them to feel the conviction of their sin. Leave them to feel the conviction of Leave them until they find Christ.”

And there’s some good advice in there. Well, what would you do? Say, “Let’s give them some time.” You know, we can’t, we can’t change how a person feels. They feel the weight of their sin, and so we should leave them to weep, leave them to mourn.

Is that what Nehemiah does? Well, we’re told in our s- in our text that Nehemiah and Ezra and the scribe and all the Levites, do you remember the ones who were out among the people teaching them, right? Explaining the Word of God. What do they do? They say, “This day is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep.”

What do they say? “Stop it. Stop crying.”

And I think, “Well, that’s not very nice.” But, but that’s what they do. They issue a command. They tell the people how they are to feel. As spokesmen of God, they declare that it is not God’s will for you to weep today. It is not God’s will for you to mourn today.

Well, what is God’s will for them? Well, God’s will is for them to rejoice and to share with one another as a covenantal community and to rest, because today is holy.

And you’ve gotta ask yourself, don’t you, why do they do that? Why do they stop the people weeping? Which we would probably see as a good thing, It’s a good thing when someone weeps under their sin. Why do they stop them doing so?

Well, firstly, because God had given a day for contrition. God had given a day for the people of God to afflict themselves and feel the weight of their sin. It was a very important y- day. It happened once a year. In the Hebrew, it’s called Yom Kippur. It’s the Day of Atonement, and on the Day of Atonement, it was the, the highlight of the sacrificial calendar, the, the sort of centerpiece of everything that happened. And on that day, the high priest would go into the Holy of Holies, and he would sprinkle blood, and the people would place their hands through elders. They would place their hands upon the heads of beasts to transfer their sin to the beast, and the people would afflict themselves and con- constrict themselves, and they would make themselves low, and they would weep in their sin. And then the goats would be taken out of the camp, and the bulls would be sacrificed.

But then the people of God were to move on the next day in the freedom that the sacrifice had brought. That God had provided a day for contrition, a day for affliction, but it’s not this day. It’s not this day. This is not the time for this action. It’s not that it’s an improper action, but according to God’s law and God’s will, it’s not the right time for the action, because today is the Feast of Trumpets.

It’s the Feast of Trumpets. Tu-turn with me to Nehem– Numbers. Turn with me to the, the law of God in Numbers, chapter 29.

Chapter 29, verse one. On the first day of the 7th month, you shall have a holy convocation. You shall not do any ordinary work. It is a day for you to blow the trumpets, and you shall offer a burnt offering for a pleasing aroma to the Lord. One bull from the herd, one ram, 7 male lambs a year old without blemish. Also their grain offering of fine flour mixed with oil, tre– 310ths of an ephah for the bull, 210ths for the ram, and one10th for s- each of the 7 lambs, each with one ma– or sorry, with one male goat for a sin offering to make atonement for you. Besides the burnt offerings of the new moon, and its grain offering, and the regular burnt offering, and its grain offering, and their drink offering according to the rule for them, a pleasing aroma, a food offering to the Lord.

Now, it’s important. It’s not primarily a sin offering. There’s always sin offering included, so there’s a goat there, but the primary purpose of the Feast of the Trumpets was a pleasing aroma to the Lord. It was a day of celebration, a day of rejoicing.

The same passage, if you turn to the book of Leviticus. If you turn to Leviticus, you get the same thing stated a f- a bit differently in chapter 23 of Leviticus, where it says these words in verse 23: The Lord spoke to Moses saying, “Speak to the people of Israel saying, ‘In the 7th month on the first day of the month, you shall observe a s- day of solemn rest, a memorial proclaimed with blasts of a trumpet, a holy convocation. You shall not do any ordinary work, and you shall present a food offering to the Lord.’”

You see, if you look back at Nehemiah chapter 8, you’ll notice that it is in the 7th month that these things are taking place, on the first day in verse 2. It’s in the Feast of Trumpets that this thing takes place.

Now why is that important? Because the Feast of Trumpets was not to be a time of contrition. It was to be a time of rejoicing.

And to understand this, and I mentioned it this morning, you have to understand what’s going on with trumpets here. You know, so we, we just hear trumpets. You got to understand the significance of trumpets.

When were the first time– When was the first time that Israel heard trumpets in relation to their covenant? It was at Mount Sinai. God turned up on Mount Sinai, and He sent forth a trumpet, Exodus nineteen and twenty. He sent forth a trumpet to the people so that they knew God was coming to covenant with them. God was coming to meet with them.

And then, as the law unraveled, what you begin to see is this trumpet reminder starts to show up. Now, what, what are we being reminded of? Well, what, what did God say in Exodus? What were the– what was the very first word He said? “I saved you out of Egypt. Now live like this.”

So what was the reminder? What’s the reminder gonna be? “I have saved you. I’ve already completed it. I’ve already done the work. Now rejoice and serve me.”

And you see this beginning to play out in Numbers 10. God commands that, that 7 silver trumpets be made. And the silver trumpets are to be used for different purposes. There’s one type of blast for calling the camp together for a meeting. There’s another type of blast for just the elders. There’s another type of blast for when you’re going to war. And the last type of blast is to put in remembrance that the Lord is your God, which is covenantal code language for the Lord is mighty. The Lord saves. He has saved you. Remember.

And we see this captured really beautifully in Psalm 81. Have a look at Psalm 81.

In Psalm 81, we read these words from verse one: Sing aloud to God our strength. Shout the joy to the God of Jacob. Raise a song, sound the tambourine, the sweet lyre with the harp, blow the trumpet at the new moon, at the full moon, on our feast day. It is a statute for Israel, a rule for the God of Jacob. He made it a decree in Joseph when he went out over the land of Egypt. I hear a language I had not known. I relieved your shoulder of the burden. What’s he talking about? Setting the people free from slavery, right? Your hands were freed from the basket. In distress, you called, and I delivered you. I answered you in the secret place of thunder. That’s Sinai. Missed a verse. I tested you at the waters of Meribah. Hear, O my people, while I admonish you. O Israel, if you would but listen to me, there shall be no strange god among you. Sounds like the Ten Commandments, doesn’t it? You shall not bow down to a foreign god. I am the Lord your God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt. Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it. But my people did not listen to my voice. Israel would not submit to me. So I gave them over to their stubborn hearts to follow their own counsels. O that my people would listen to me, that Israel would walk in my ways. I would soon subdue their enemies and turn my hand against their foes. Those who hate the Lord would cringe toward me, and their fate would last forever. But he would feed you with the finest of the wheat, and with honey from the rock I would satisfy you.

Could you not imagine them singing those words on the Feast of Trumpet Day? As the feast is sounded and the people take up the song, we blow the trumpet. For you saved us. You redeemed us. You purchased us out of Egypt, and you set us free.

So what’s happening here? Well, it was a special season set apart by God for the people of God to remember the God who saves and rejoice in him.

And this is why it was so unfitting for the people to mourn and weep. Why? Because when a person mourns and weeps under their sin, what they’re saying is, I’m still under the burden of sin. I haven’t been saved yet. That’s what happens, right? When you feel conviction of sin, you feel a burden that you’ve broken the law of God, and so you run to God for salvation, right?

But what they’re meant to be doing is rejoicing in what God’s already accomplished. He’s already brought them back from Babylon.

You see, there was a prophecy in the Old Testament in the book of Jeremiah where God said through Jeremiah, A day is coming when you will no longer say the God who brought us out of Egypt, that you will say the God who brought us out of Babylon.

And so here they are. God’s done it. He set them free again. And now the trumpet’s been blown. The law’s been read. And what should the people do? Enter into the joy of their master. Rejoice in the God who saves. Remember that Yahweh is mighty to save.

But they weren’t doing it. They were instead afflicting themselves.

Now, you need to understand, this doesn’t mean it’s wrong to be sad. We’re not talking about whether it’s right for you to weep with those who weep. I sat here this morning as I preached, and my wife was in the back running around like crazy after children. And I looked there multiple times, worried, because I love her. And she had tears running down her cheek. Was she in sin? No. She was exhausted and stressed out of her eyeballs.

When your loved ones die, the most appropriate thing you can do is weep. It’s not about whether it’s right or wrong to be sad or weep with others, nor to lament over your sin. God gave a day of atonement for that. He’s given provision for that. He gave you tear ducts so that you can weep with those who weep and mourn and afflict yourself over your sin.

But at the same time, He gave us causes to joy. And God, God’s will, God’s will is for you and for I to rightly order our affections, the expression of our heart, our emotions, the emotional seat.

We don’t have the right, like the world today, to say, “My feelings are always right. If I feel it, it must be true.” No. Do you know why? Because we’re fallen, and because our emotions are fallen. Our emotional seat, that which produces them, our affections, they’re broken, they’re out of order, they’re disorderly, and we need to order them. We need to order them according to God’s commands and God’s will.

And I think this encourages us. It encourages us to seek God’s will for our hearts, not just our minds, that we would weep when it’s right to weep, and we would rejoice when it’s right to rejoice.

Uh, that’s a skill that’s a lot harder to learn than obeying the Sabbath. I mean, keeping the Sabbath, it might be difficult to do, but it’s pretty straightforward, right? Not stealing, it’s pretty straightforward in a lot of senses. But what we’re talking about is, is the gospel and the law of God penetrating deep into the very fiber of our being so that every outflow of our being would be in accordance with God’s will, and it would glorify Him. That’s a challenge.

How are we, how are we gonna do that? I mean, sometimes, I don’t know about you, but sometimes I feel like a child, child putting my shoes on the wrong foot, and you bumble your way through Christian life, don’t you? And you get it wrong all over again.

Oh, the wonderful thing is in our passage, we see also that, that affections are motivated.

We see that they’re commanded firstly. The second thing we see is that, that affections are motivated as well.

You know, it’s, it’s easy, it’s easy to lay commandments down, right? It’s easy to tell people what to do. I can tell people what to do all day. It’s pretty easy to do.

To motivate someone to do them is a lot harder. I remember experiencing this. I, I used to work as a Some of you know this. I used to work as a door-to-door salesman selling vacuum cleaners. I was one of those marvelous people that knocked on your doors and said, “Can I do a presentation for you?” And you would say, “No, I’m not interested.” And sometimes you’d say yes. And I would go, and I would knock on doors, and I worked my way up through the company. I ended up becoming a sales manager, and I trained all of the, all of the sales staff.

And every day we would have a team meeting with all of the sales staff, and it was my job to motivate them to go out and do what they had to do. And I tell you, it’s not very fun knocking on doors. You might not imagine this. I mean, some of you imagined it maybe after giving out flyers when we went door-knocking in Karaka. But when you’re the vacuum cleaner guy who knocks on people’s doors, you get some pretty filthy responses, and people get very upset And people don’t like door-to-door salespeople.

Now, how do you motivate your staff to get out there? Well, I came up with all sorts of creative things, and we’d cheer them on, and we’d give them prizes, and we’d do But it was far harder to get them passionate to do it than it was to tell them what they needed to do. I could provide them with a script.

And you know, obedience to the Lord is very similar, isn’t it? We can take up the book very quickly and easily and see what God wants us to But what’s the motivation to rightly order our affections?

What was it for them? Well, firstly, in verse 10, have a look. They say, “Go e- go your way, eat the fat and drink sweet wine, and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready, for this day is holy to the Lord.”

What’s the first motivation? This day is holy. Nehemiah roots the command in the word and the person of God. It’s really, really important that you understand this. The– One of the chief motives is the character and nature of God Himself. For all obedience, it is the holiness of God that truly motivates obedience.

And I think we can illustrate this really well using Isaiah chapter 6. Let me ask you a question. Why does Isaiah weep when he’s in the temple? Remember the vision in Isaiah 6? He sees the, sees God, holy, holy, holy, and he breaks down, and he says, “Woe is me, for I am undone.”

Why does he say that? Is it because God is terrifying? I used to think that. I assumed it was ’cause, you know, God’s wrathful, and we hear about judgment and terror, and the place is shaking. No, I don’t believe it is.

What makes him say, “Woe is me, I am a man of unclean lips,” because no one sees anything wrong? What is it that he sees in God that makes him break down? It is the holiness of God, right? He sees a thrice holy God, a perfect God, a good God, a perfectly loving God, the most gracious, kind God. He sees the full attributes and the glory of God consummated in holiness.

You see, because holiness is ultimately the, the sum of what God is. All that God is is expressed in holiness and glory, and he sees it, and he’s undone. Why? Because that’s what we were created to be. Not in like manner, but as image-bearers, right? We were created to reflect the holiness and the glory of God into this world, and we look at ourselves and we realize, “This is not me.”

And what does that do? Well, when we’re under sin, it causes us to weep, but when we’re reflecting on salvation received, what does it do? It makes me yearn to be more like my Father in heaven,

And so firstly, we see it’s this holy day, the reality of the person of God. It’s the same reason when the trumpets were blown in Numbers 10, verse 10. Remember they made the trumpets? I told you about the passage before. When the trumpet was blown, they were to remember that the Lord is God. Not to remember all the words I’ve said to you, but to remember that the Lord is God.

And the second thing, and this might be a bit strange to you, the second motivation is joy. The second motivation is joy.

He says to them, “Go your way. Do these things.” But have a look, if we read through from verse 9: “This day is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep.” For all the people wept as they heard the words of the Lord. Then he said to them, “Go your way, eat the fat, and drink strong wine, and send portions to anyone who has nothing ready. For this day is holy to our God, and do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

Now, it’s striking because it’s not that they don’t have a reason to be grieved, right? They’ve got a very good reason to be grieved. But they said, “Don’t be grieved,” because the joy of God will actually strengthen you to walk through your grief with rejoicing. It is the joy of God that will enable them to do what God’s calling them to do, and the same is true for you and I.

Well, maybe you don’t believe me. Maybe you think, “Logan, there are times when joy is just impossible.” Can you imagine joy while nailed to a cross with the weight of the sin of every elect child of God upon you? With the unmitigated wrath of God heaped out upon you, could you imagine being joyful? I mean, that’s a challenge, right? Having been tortured, rejected, hated, scorned by all, spat upon, beaten, thorns upon your brow, and yet Hebrews 12, verse 3 says, “For the joy set before Him, He despised the shame and endured the cross.”

What enabled Christ to walk through the, what we might call the darkest day? Remember that in the hymn? “Oh, to see the dawn of the darkest day, Christ on the road to Calvary.” What enabled Christ to walk through that? It was joy. Joy in His God. Why? Because he knew that the outcome of his suffering would ultimately be greater joy and delight than if he forsook it and abandoned God’s will.

And this is the exact motivation we need because the world cries out to us. Doesn’t– Isn’t this true? The world cries out to us, “You’re ruining all your fun. I have a far more enjoyable way for you. Why do you, why do you burden yourself like this?”

Isn’t it captured so beautifully in Pilgrim’s Progress? He’s walking along with the burden, and someone walks up to him. Is it Mr. Legalism or something? He walks up, and he says to him, “Why do you go along hunched over with this burden on your back? Just take it off. I can show you how to get rid of it. Go, go to Moral. Go to Mount Moral. It’s just over there. You can go up there, and you can be free of your burden.”

And the world does this. It says, “Why, why are you so bent carrying your cross, dear Christian? Why would you do that? I can show you a way of peace. I can show you a way of joy. I can give you happiness. Just follow me.” It’s in sexual adultery. It’s in idolatry. It’s in greed. It’s in unabandoned lust. “Look, come with me, and I will show you the delights of your heart, and you will truly be satisfied.”

Now, what’s gonna s– what’s gonna enable you to say no to That’s recognizing God has something better, right? That’s recognizing that all of the filth in this world is just filth, and that the, the joy of the Lord outstrips it all like the sun. That God’s will for your life and for your heart and the expression of your emotions is far more enjoyable than satiating yourself on filth.

Now, C.S. Lewis was right. Our, our problem, brothers and sisters, is not that we don’t love enough, that we don’t seek joy enough. Our problem is we seek joy in the wrong We’re far too easily pleased because we accept tokens and trinkets from the devil, assuming they will give us joy, and yet they always leave us what? Broken, guilty, and under a shadow of shame.

But when we set our joy to be satisfied in God alone, we find everything we could ever delight in. And you know what? Then we walk through crosses and afflictions. We walk through pain and difficulty, and we do it joyfully.

And so we can say with the Apostle Paul, “Rejoice always.” Now, that’s, that’s not a chipper attitude, is it? And so be happy all the time. And this is the guy that’s shipwrecked, beaten, whipped, stoned, ha- left half dead, and yet he says, “Rejoice always.” “I have learnt how to be content in every situation,” he says. “It’s through Christ who strengthens me.”

That’s what we’re being shown here.

And I think this, this encourages us and calls us to press on beyond mere duty, brothers and sisters. One of the risks we can fall into in Christian life is treating everything as mere duty. Now, there’s a time for duty and discipline, and duty and discipline are a part of Christian life, but we don’t want to rest there.

Inasmuch as you don’t want your husband or wife to li- love you purely because it’s a job, purely because he made a promise. Don’t you want him to delight in you because he delights in you?

And so it is with the Lord. We are to obey Him and love Him because we delight to.

I think it calls us to press deeper into an emotional, affected relationship with the Lord rather than a purely exterior religiosity, which many of us are familiar with or are tempted to fall into.

But there’s one more thing here, more briefly. When we see these affections are commanded, we see that these affections are motivated, but then lastly, we see these affections are obeyed.

It’s wonderful. Verse 12: All the people went their way to eat and drink, and to send portions, and to make great rejoicing, because they had understood the words that were declared to them.

It’s a lovely thing to see people walking in obedience. As, uh, parents, don’t you just delight when your children just make the decision to obey you? It’s just, it’s lovely, isn’t it? You, you, when you don’t feel like you have to drive them to do things, and they just go out of their own way and do that which they know they should be doing. It’s just great. You look at it and you go, “Praise the Lord.” They’re just leaving the house, and Gisela just said to me, “We have amazing children.” ‘Cause what were they doing? They were just in there in the muck dealing with these 2 kids, just serving.

And when you see those things, you delight in And the same is true when it comes to Christianity. It’s a delight for the leaders of the church. It’s a delight for brothers and sisters. And I have no doubt but that it’s a delight for the Lord when He sees His children walking in faithfulness.

And that’s what we see here. What do they do? They get out their hankies, they blow their noses, they wipe their tears away, they take a deep breath, and they say, “Let us rejoice. Let us be glad, for this is the day that the Lord has made. Let the trumpets resound, and let’s do what God’s commanded us to do.”

And isn’t it a beautiful picture? It’s this covenantal picture. It was exactly what was, what was bound and written into the very codec of the law. Covenantal and community joy as God’s people live out life together.

You imagine it. The wealthy goes home to his joy. It’s very easy. His vat overflows. He can easily live a good life, but what does he do? He goes home, and he gets what he has, and he calls his neighbor, and he says to him, “Come and be joyful with me. It’s the Feast of Trumpets. Come and join me.” And, “Hey, honey, don’t forget Mr. and Mrs. Bob Jones down the road. They don’t have much, and they’ve got 5 children. Let’s send the fat portions,” not the bad portions, the fat portions. “The fat portions? But that’s your favorite.” “Exactly. Wrap them up. Send Johnny down there.”

And Johnny goes running down the road to the neighbor’s place with a beautiful piece of lamb roast. Dad’s favorite piece. Why? Because you yourself were slaves in Egypt once, so do not forget the poor. You yourselves were oppressed and forsaken, and yet I redeemed you. So do not forget the widow, do not forget the orphan, do not forget the lowly, but make sure they can rejoice too. Make sure they can enter into the joy of their master.

It’s a superlative obedience. Isn’t it wonderful? I, I love this. They don’t just go and make rejoicing. They go make great rejoicing. Not just a little bit. “Go and check the box.” No, no, it’s superlative rejoicing. It’s full heart passion.

You see, because God’s will is not just for mere obedience, it’s for joyful obedience. It’s for loving the law, like we’ve been seeing in Psalm a hundred and nineteen, right? Over and over and over again. “I rejoice at Your law one who finds rich spoil.” It’s one of my favorite verses in Psalm a hundred “I rejoice at Your law like one who finds rich spoil.”

Can you imagine? You imagine children, the teenagers, well, all of you, you imagine you c- you walk around the corner, and there sitting on the ground’s a box. Then you look around the place, there’s no one there. There’s a box, and you open it up, and it’s filled with gold. Now, of course, because you’re an honest person, what do you do? You take it in somewhere. That’s right. That’s what my mother always made me do. It never came back, by the way. So I would take it in, and you take the box in, and you take it into the police station, and you say, “I found this box.” And they say, “Please put your name and details down here in case no one claims And 6 months later, you get a phone call. “Hi, it’s Manurewa Police Station. No one claimed it. It’s yours. Come and take

How much would you r– I mean, “Sorry, boss, I’m not coming to work today. I’ve got to make a really important errand.” You’re in the car, and you’re driving it. Why? There’s this treasure there. You’re gonna rejoice in it. Your heart would be filled with joy and rejoicing and wonder.

Well, this is what we’re to do when we find God’s law, God’s will for our lives, because we realize we’ve found something greater than any treasure this world can offer, and also because this is what Jesus came to establish.

Now, what was lost in the Fall? Oh, I know, many things. But did we not lose the joy of our Master? I mean, we, we don’t know what it’s like to, to walk in this world without sin, but there are Adam and Eve walking sinlessly with God face to face, far richer than Moses, who talked to God face to face like a friend. They just dwelt in the garden perpetually in the presence of God with the joy of the Lord upon them at all times, and then they were cast out from the garden. What was taken away? The joy.

And instead, they had to work with what? Sorrow and tears and heartache in a world that is filled with curse, so that as we saw in Revelation a couple of weeks ago, so that we enter into heaven with tear-stained cheeks, don’t we?

And yet, what, what is God doing? What’s God’s ultimate purpose? first John tells us that Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil, and in John 17, Jesus says, “I came so that they might have my joy fulfilled in them.”

Jesus came to destroy the works of the devil who seeks to sow sorrow in your heart, and Jesus sows joy instead.

So a fruit tree of joy springs up in its place. And the day is coming, the day is coming when every tear will be wiped away, right? Where you will live joyfully forever, and nothing will ever take your joy away again.

There’s much more that could be said, which we’ll just have to pass over.

But I guess the question remains, if, if this is what we’re destined for in Christ Jesus, elected and chosen in love and set aside from before the foundation of the world with the Spirit of the living God inside of us, what sort of lives should we live? I mean, if the Old Testament believers could walk away that day with affected hearts and change their lives, how much more we on this side of the cross, right?

Let us be people of joy. But r- more so, let us be people of rightly ordered affections.

One of my, one of my big concerns when I entered into pastoral ministry was that I, I did, I didn’t know how to express emotion. That might surprise you, I didn’t know how to express emotion. As a, as a young person, I basically got I was quite an emotional boy, and it kind of got beaten out of me by friends and, and siblings because it’s not manly to be emotional.

And so I was worried that, you know, I didn’t already even know how to cry. I didn’t really have tear ducts. I think they just disappeared at some point in my life. And I thought to myself, “What am I gonna do when I’m sitting with someone that’s grieving? I’m not gonna be able to cry. I’m just gonna be sitting there with a stony-looking face. That’s gonna be a bit sad.”

And then I remember we had a dear saint in our church, and her husband had a brain aneurysm and died overnight. And I went in and sat with her. And there was her husband lying on the bed before me, and I just wept with her. I wept with her. And then about 5 minutes later, I cracked a joke, and she erupted in laughter with all of the rest of the family. Just we all burst out into laughter because it was so fitting for her husband. The nurses thought we were insane, and that’s okay.

But what is it? It’s rightly ordered emotion, right? A heart in lockstep with the will of God.

May God grant it

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