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Holy Trinity Anglican Orthodox Church
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When God Rejoices |
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Luke
15:1-10 Third
Sunday after Trinity June
20, 2010 Last
Sunday we looked at the Great Feast to which God has invited us.
That feast consists in one sense of all the blessings that are ours
in Christ. It is the
forgiveness of sin, the fellowship of the Church, the Scriptures, the
sacraments, and public and private worship and prayer, to name but a few.
But in the ultimate sense the Feast of God is God Himself. God
wants to give us God. Today
our focus is the joy of God over those who come to the Feast.
God rejoices when we love and enjoy Him. We
know, of course, that "Feast" is a symbolic term.
We often have to use symbolic language when talking about God
because of the limited capacity of our minds and vocabularies.
We can agree with the Bible that God is everything we need, but
when we try to explain that, we resort to symbolism.
"Feast" is symbolism, for we never really "eat"
God. We never really eat Christ's flesh or drink His blood, just
like we never literally bathe in His blood.
These word pictures symbolise things that are beyond the power of
human vocabulary to fully express. So
when we talk about God as the Feast for our souls, we mean not that we
literally eat God, but that He is nourishment to our souls, and not just
nourishment, but great abundance, like a feast.
The Feast to which He invites us is Himself.
It is His love. It is
His fellowship, His forgiveness, His joy. Why
does God invite us to know and enjoy Him?
Simply because He wants to love us.
He created us to love us. He
created us to bless us. He
created us to give us Himself. God
did not create us just to give us the things of this world.
Houses and food and clothing are nice, but God created us for much
better things than that. God
created us so we could know and enjoy the most wonderful, most precious,
most majestic, most pure, most beautiful Thing that ever has, does, or
will exist, Himself. So
many people miss this. The
focus of most "evangelical" preaching today, when it even talks
about the sacrifice of Christ, is on being forgiven so you can go to
Heaven. Heaven, in the mind
of most of these people, is like a glorified earth, where we have mansions
instead of houses and feasts instead of meals and crowns instead of hats.
But mansions, feast, and crowns are only symbols.
What we really get in Heaven makes mansions and feasts and crowns
look like slums and crumbs and rags.
What we really get in Heaven is God.
I wish I had some way to express how much better God is than things
and feelings, and emotions, and all the things we think we desire.
But words fail me. I
wish I had some way to express to people that to focus on things and
experiences is to miss real communion with God because it keeps us so busy
thinking about ourselves we miss the wondrous beauty and glory of God.
We're like a person sitting in a house with the curtains drawn,
thinking how much he loves sunsets, but missing the real sunset right
outside the door. God
invites you to enjoy Him in all His greatness and splendor, and He
rejoices when you do. That is
the first major point of the Gospel Reading for today.
God seeks people to enjoy Him.
God is like the shepherd who searches the wilderness to find the
lost sheep. God is like the
woman who searches her house until she finds the coin.
God seeks people to share Himself with.
God seeks people to bless. He
searches for us. He does not
rest, nor is He satisfied until He finds people who will receive His
blessings. The
second point of the Gospel Reading is that God rejoices when He finds
people who are willing to receive what He offers.
The shepherd rejoices when he finds his sheep. The woman rejoices when she finds her coin.
God rejoices when He finds people who accept His invitation to come
into His love and enjoy Him forever.
Christ said there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over
one sinner that repenteth. We often hear that angels rejoice when a person becomes a
Christian. I am sure they do. But the point our Lord makes here is that
God rejoices in the presence of angels.
God rejoices over us when we turn from our sins and come to Him.
God rejoices when we come to His Feast.
God rejoices in our enjoyment of Him.
He receives sinners. He
eats with us. When we find God we find true joy. We rejoice, and God rejoices with us. To Him our enjoyment of Him is worth all the trouble we cause
Him, worth the cross, worth the grave, worth all the time and effort He
puts into inviting us to enjoy Him. There
is a verse I think expresses the heart of God well. "He shall see the travail of His soul, and shall be
satisfied" (Is. 53:11). The
verse pictures The Messiah looking over those who have come to Him by
faith and are gathered into His fold.
He has suffered and died to make their salvation possible, to bring
them to the Father, to bring them to the Feast.
And He looks at them enjoying Him, safe in Him, blessed in Him,
forgiven in Him, and restored to their real purpose, and He is satisfied
in His Spirit. He rejoices. Friday we had a family reunion of sorts. Those who live away came home, and those who live at home laid aside their work and interests, and we all came together to enjoy one another. Our quiet house rang with music and laughter. We ate together. We talked and laughed. We played with a remote control car. The "kids" stayed up talking until late in the night. I fell asleep to the sound of their laughter, and it made me feel good. I felt a satisfaction in my soul. I rejoiced. This is something like the way God feels when we come to Him and enjoy Him. His soul is satisfied. Our enjoyment of Him satisfies His being. Let
us pray. Holy
God, by Thy grace, lead us ever more deeply into the enjoyment of Thyself.
In Jesus' name. Amen.
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