How can you believe in God without sensing joy?
Tonight we see God writ large, God to the dimensions of God and not to ours, showing his grandeur as taking human form he breaks through death and reveals eternal life to us and for us.
On the third day he rose again in accordance with the scriptures.
We gain joy as we gain God and that’s in the present moment. This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Psalm 118:24
What the resurrection effects is twofold. It delivers us from the prison of our mental constructs of past and future.
To know Christ is risen is to know God’s unalterable newness, the same yesterday, today and tomorrow – to know it and live in it is joy. This is eternal life, to know God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent. John 17:3
In the knowledge of what God in Christ has done we gain two benefits.
First we’re freed by forgiving both wrongs we’ve suffered from others and by welcoming forgiveness for the wrongs we ourselves have done.
Second we’re freed of fear for the future. Tomorrow also is God’s and his love is stronger than the worst power we’ll ever encounter including death. You will be with me always, he says, nothing can separate us, enter my joy, as the Psalmist writes: You show me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Psalm 16:11
Absence of joy links to self-sufficiency and pride, imprisonment in past regrets, future anxiety - all of which cut us off from the living God.
Tonight we affirm God for who he is, and his opening to our intuition of death’s diminishment.
The only meaningful thing in life is what conquers death, not what but who, Jesus Christ, true God and true Man.
Since April 33AD, or maybe 27AD with a six year slippage, humanity has the full picture of God in his grandeur and humans in their immense potential as those in his image destined for the glorious liberty of the children of God (Romans 8:21).
The hope of this glory is further cause of our joy.
Our intellects balk at death and wrestle with its reality 20 centuries on from Easter. There’s no knockdown argument for the resurrection but many pointers to its truth. I commend my 40 pointers to Christ’s Resurrection blog.
We are joyful in spirit tonight knowing deep down God is God and he always will be God and we’ve got friendship with him that’ll never end.
Joy isn’t just a component of Christianity it’s the key. We can’t believe in God as he truly is without sensing joy and tonight we see him as he really is, God writ large, God to the dimensions of God, showing his grandeur, taking human form, breaking through death, revealing eternal life to us and for us.
This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. May the unalterable newness of Jesus be our joy today, tomorrow, to the last syllable of recorded time, and beyond that to eternal ages! Alleluia!
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