Dennis Tuuri

And hopefully we come to recognize increasingly wonderful truth is that indeed all the nations shall come to praise our Lord and Savior King Jesus in the power of the spirit. The sermon scripture that gives us the assurance that this is what our future holds is found in Matthew 28:19-20.

Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

“Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen.”

Let us pray. Father, we thank you for these glorious words, words of command, words of joy. Help us, Lord God, to understand them now. We pray that your Holy Spirit may illuminate our hearts and open our eyes that are so often scaled over with sin and error and a failure of belief and a fear that results from that. Help us, Father, to see things from your word this day that would cause our hearts to rejoice in your presence on this day, the day of resurrection.

And help us, Lord God, to be built up through these words of yours to the end that we might indeed march with joy into all the world. In Jesus name we pray and for the sake of his kingdom. Amen.

This is a brief divergence from our series going through the book of Acts, but really it isn’t so much of a divergence as it is an explanation of how the Gospel does indeed march. We have seen the gospel march through Asia and into Europe and into all the world, and I want to talk today about the nature of the march of the gospel.

So really it can be seen as an amplification of one of the central themes of the book of Acts—the fulfilling by the apostles, by the church, ultimately by the Lord Jesus Christ through his people of these words, the command of the great commission that we’ve just read. And so it is kind of an amplification of the task we face as well in our day and age as we go into our Jerusalems and Judeas and Samarias and into the uttermost parts of the earth.

We have one of the members of our church who’ll be going to one of those uttermost parts of the earth this week. Chris W. will be leaving for India for evangelistic efforts there. And as we go, whether it’s here in Portland or in the greater state of Oregon, the nation, into the world, the implications of the great commission are real before us.

Now I’m going to talk about it though in a slightly different vein. My topic today is waltzing towards New Jerusalem.

Now Judge Bork is working on a new book. I don’t believe it’s out yet. I saw him on Larry King a month or two ago and the title of his book is going to be slouching toward Sodom. It might have been slouching toward Gomorrah. One of the two. The point is obvious. This is based upon another writer who talked about slouching toward Bethlehem. And it’s kind of along that same theme that I want to look at the role of the church—what we’re doing as waltzing towards New Jerusalem.

The great commission gives us that task to go into all the world, into the new heavens and earth created by our savior and into the new Jerusalem, ultimately causing all the world to usher out praise to Jehovah God.

Well, a couple of weeks ago, I began a series of dance lessons with my oldest daughter at our home school. This year, we’re having each child pick one particular thing they’d like to take on as a particular joy or task to them. And my oldest daughter wanted to learn ballroom dancing. And so we thought that would be good if she and I enrolled in a class at PCC. And so two weeks ago or three weeks ago or so, we started taking ballroom dancing lessons.

And the instructor, the first dance he’s teaching us is the waltz. And he instructed us that the waltz really is stylized marching. It is marching with joy, with style, and with embellishment.

In fact, the very first thing we did, practically the whole class, the very first hour and a half of the class was simply to march across the gymnasium, not even holding hands, just everybody singly marching across the gymnasium in a three-count march. One, two, three. One, two, three. Marching across the gymnasium across this wooden floor. It’s only as we learn to march that we can then add style steps. And toward the end of that lesson, we began doing a scoop step on the first beat.

And if you’ve ever walked or been taught the waltz, you’ll know that there’s this scoop step involved in this march. But really, the waltz is stylized marching. And as we were doing this and as I heard the instructor’s explanation that’s what this dance, the waltz, is all about—marching with joy—it came to me that this is really an explanation of our task as Christians in this world as well.

It’s the fall now. We’ve left summer behind. We’ve left family camp behind. And then the final celebration as we move into the fall—Oktoberfest for our church, at least. We’ve moved now into a period of fairly radical homeschooling involvement for most of our parents. Also, we move toward an election. This is the even year in which elections are held in the state of Oregon. Massive elections—governor, house of representatives, the Senate, etc., and Congressional elections at the federal level as well.

And all of us see the implications of the scriptures for the political order as well. And so many of us are getting very busy this last month or so before the elections. And we, and this church I think, have a good concept of the work that we do being equivalent to marching in a disciplined fashion in our political work as we move toward November and in our homeschooling endeavors as well as we move toward maturing our children’s understanding of all things based upon the word of God—the unction of the Holy Spirit who helps us to understand all things on the basis of God’s word.

In our political work and our homeschooling endeavors, particularly this time of the year, I think that this image of waltzing is the correct one to take. Disciplined marching, of course, toward the particular goals that God has established for us individually, corporately as a church, as the extended church of Jesus Christ as well. But that marching, I think, should be accompanied both in our home schools and our political endeavors at this time of year with a great deal of joy.

And I think that’s what makes us distinctive as Christians in this world—is that we can have this discipline, but we also have this great assurance of the knowledge of our salvation in the Lord Jesus Christ and his presence with us that brings great joy.

We are marching. We are moving in an orderly and very disciplined fashion to the beat of our Savior’s drum, to his cadence as he calls out to us.

Now in the scriptures we know that frequently we’re referred to as soldiers, soldiers who march. For instance, in 2 Timothy 2:3-4, we read that we are to endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ, that we may please him who has chosen us to be indeed soldiers. We’re told to put on the full armor of God, another military allusion, in the book of Ephesians.

We went through a series of sermons about Joshua, going through the book of Joshua. And just as Joshua and the Lord’s army was delivered from bondage and death in Egypt, so we’ve been delivered from the greater Egypt by the death of the greater Passover Lamb. The book of Acts has correlations to the book of Joshua. It is a picture of the march, the orderly process, the disciplined maneuvers and actions of the church as it moves into all the world with the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ.

Just as the redeemed of Joshua’s time and the people of that time marched into Canaan and then on to found Jerusalem as the city of God, so also we are commanded by our Lord to march into the whole world and toward the new Jerusalem, the greater Jerusalem.

Our Savior’s marching orders, which I just read from Matthew 28, should ever ring in our ears to call us to action, to call us to discipline, to call us to march forward. He tells us, “Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.”

Praise God that I speak in the context of a church that understands the implication of this text—that it’s not somehow restricted just to professional officers in the army, that it’s not somehow talking about a task that will not be accomplished in the history of mankind, but rather it’s a task that rings throughout the scriptures. God has created a people and then recreated us in the Lord Jesus Christ to take the message of the gospel of our savior as the dynamite of God by which the nations shall be converted and shall be taught to observe all things whatsoever he has commanded us.

There’s tremendous sentiment in the psalm that we read responsively: “God, be merciful to us. Bless us. Show us the light of thy countenance. Be merciful unto us. To what purpose? So that we can just sit in our homes and be happy and content without moving out? No. To the end the psalm tells us that thy way may be known upon earth. Thy saving health among all nations—not a few nations. Let the peoples praise thee, oh God. The peoples, the goyim, those outside of Israel—what’s being spoken of here. Yea, let all the peoples praise thee. All nations, all peoples, all the earth is the purpose by which we seek God’s blessing upon us, his light of his countenance to shine upon us.

Let the nations rejoice and be glad. Thou shalt judge the folk righteously and govern the nations upon earth. Let the people praise thee, oh God. Yea, let all the people, all the people praise thee. Then shall the earth bring forth her increase. And God, even our own God, shall give us the blessing. God shall bless us and all the ends of the earth shall fear him.

You see, our savior repeats these words. These words are found throughout scripture. It is a sad thing that so many Bible-believing Christians, dedicated Christian people today, and I have no joy in saying this—and I do not want to disparage them in any way—thank God that the dispensationalist churches have given us a scripture undefiled by the critics of higher criticism. They’ve given us a word of God that is inspired and infallible. They’ve passed that on to the church of today. But thank God as well that people are realizing that the pessimistic eschatology of that system is not really consistent with what the scriptures teach.

I thank God that we know that our task is indeed to obey the savior as he gives us the great commission—not to just think about it, but to actually do it. To go into all the world and teaching the nations, baptizing them and teaching them to observe all things that God has commanded us to do.

And I thank God that we live in the context I do—the context of a church that recognizes this doesn’t happen with some great spiritual endeavor as much as it does with the common, small acts of faithfulness on the part of God’s people: to instruct their children day after day, to analyze their vocational callings in light of God’s word, to take a witness of Christian character and the manifestation of God’s attributes into the workplace with them. And yes, even to look at the political arena and say even our political thoughts must be brought captive to the Lord Jesus Christ. Every thought captive is what the scriptures teach. Every thought in light of God’s word as his Holy Spirit instructs us. Our recreation as well.

And I thank God that we know these things. We know them well at this church. But clearly these marching orders in the great commission are not the end of the matter. The text doesn’t end by simply telling us to go, to march, and to go forward in an orderly and disciplined fashion. It’s my contention that we should not merely march towards the future and that this text doesn’t tell us to merely march toward the future, but rather that we should, if you don’t mind the dance analogy, we should waltz. This marching must be mixed with style, embellishment, joy most of all.

After all, ultimately we do not march forward to attain salvation. We march forward because Jesus has already granted salvation to us and in salvation all things for our well-being. Our goal, a new heavens and a new earth, a new Jerusalem, has already been secured by the Lord Jesus Christ in his work two thousand years ago. He has called us to march forward. But he doesn’t call us to attain blessing, but to maintain the blessing that he has ushered us into, in the context of the one who is faithful and true, has secured all things necessary for our salvation and the conversion of the nations.

So in other words, our marching is not harried. Our marching recognizes that ultimately it’s not our work that does anything in the context of the expansion of the visible manifestation of Christ’s kingdom. All things have been secured in the one work of Jesus Christ upon the cross, which we commemorate this day—his death for sinners and his resurrection for their justification and his ascension to the right hand of the Father, from which he now rules. And he rules through his people.

Jethro, told of that lesser Exodus and the news from Moses of what God had done in Egypt. He rejoiced. The text tells us in Exodus 18:9, “Jethro rejoiced for all the goodness which the Lord had done to Israel when he had delivered them out of the hands of the Egyptians.”

Joy is a necessary component of our lives. And of course that’s obvious. But I don’t think it’s obvious enough to us sometimes. And I think it’s necessary and good and providential today to speak about the joy of the Christian faith as well as we’ve talked about the need to march forward in a disciplined array as the troops of God.

I want to spend the next few minutes then talking about joy. I want to talk about joy’s relationship to the labors of our hands. The joy of God’s word and an understanding and application of it. I want to talk very briefly about the joy of salvation, just touched upon in Jethro’s comments. The joy that knowing that salvation is not somehow unrelated to the destruction of God’s enemies. The joy of victory.

I want to talk a little bit about concluding that all of this joy is centered upon the very person and presence of God himself. That is the cornerstone. That is the source of all joy in our lives. It is God’s presence with us. And of course to understand that then in relationship to the book of Acts—as the church marches forward in the power of the Holy Spirit.

First, the joy of the labors of our hands.

It’s interesting how many witnesses there are in the book of Ecclesiastes and other places that there is a proper sense of joy that we have in the labor of our hands and the good things that God gives us in this world. Ecclesiastes 2:24, “There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labor. This also I saw that it was from the hand of God.”

Eat, drink, be merry. I have a little cup that a member—a former member of this church who now goes to Greg Bahnsen’s church down in Southern California—gave me. Eat, drink, and be merry. Because, you know, we think of that usually in a negative sense. Those who eat, drink, and are merry without the presence of God and not in restraint to the Holy Spirit are cursed by God. But the other side of that is that God said it is a good thing to eat, to drink, to be merry, to enjoy the fruits of our labor.

This is, as the preacher tells us in Ecclesiastes, this is from the hand of God. Chapter 3: “And also that every man should eat and drink and enjoy the good of all his labor. It is the gift of God which comes from the hand of God.”

It is the gift of God. And when we have a meal today at the gymnasium, it is a model of all meals that we have. They should produce joy to us in the goodness of the gifts that God gives us, the labors of our hands.

Ecclesiastes 5:18, “Behold that which I have seen, it is good and comely for one to eat and to drink and to enjoy the good of all his labor that he taketh unto the son all the days of his life, which God giveth him, for it is his portion.”

A three-fold witness: God’s hand gives us these things. It is his gift, and it is our portion given to us by God that we enjoy the fruit of our labor.

Chapter 9, verse 7 of Ecclesiastes: “Go thy way, eat thy bread with joy, drink thy wine with a merry heart, for God now accepteth thy works.”

1 Timothy 6:17: “Charge them that are rich in this world, that they be not high-minded, nor trust in uncertain riches, but in the living God, who gives us richly all things to enjoy.”

We have a world created by God and filled with good things that we’re to enjoy. And what a sad thing that a portion of the church today thinks it’s sinful somehow to rejoice with good food, good drink, fine houses that people are to live in, etc. Now, these things are obtained through God and means it’s bad. And if we don’t share our goodness with those who are less fortunate, with the poor as Job himself did—of course as the model for us—then it also is bad for us. But there’s a proper sense in which we should rejoice in the goodness of the things that God gives us and let no man take that joy from you.

Babette’s Feast, a movie, was on PBS again this week. I just caught a snippet of it, but what a blessing again that movie is. If you haven’t seen it, please rent it. I think I’m going to purchase a copy for the church library as well. And the feast—Babette’s Feast—is really the climax of the movie.

And it’s at that phase where this cook takes all the money that could have brought her financial freedom and ability to now not be a servant or a cook anymore, but to have others wait on her. She takes all that money that she had received and uses it to feed a group of believers in Jesus Christ. And as a result of that sumptuous feast that she lays out, the delicious wines and the foods and the great taste and the banquet that they have there, the old wounds that have grown up through sin in their lives between one another, separating them, are all washed away in the rejoicing they feel over this tremendous meal.

Now, of course, it’s a symbol of the Lord’s Supper, and the joy we have ultimately finds its source in the Lord’s Supper. The Lord’s Supper is the meaning of all meals really. And in that Lord’s Supper, we come together as one in the Lord Jesus Christ. And the soldier, who is one of the figures in the movie, gets up and gives a speech about the grace of God that surely we’re recipients not of the fruit of our labors, ultimately, but of the grace of God.

And so it is with us. There’s a proper sense of joy in the things that God gives us, the fruit of our labors, all recognizing of course that these things are given to us graciously in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Secondly, we should have great joy in the word of God.

Psalm 119:111: “Thy testimonies have I taken as inheritage forever for they are the rejoicing of my heart.”

Verse 162 of that psalm: “I rejoice at thy word as one that findeth great spoil.”

Part of the reason for the absence of joy in Christian’s lives is a failure to engage themselves in the word of God and a failure to appropriate that great treasure that God gives us in the scriptures. It is a great sense of joy to us. Joy is found in our blessings of the fruit of our labor. Joy is found in a presentation of God’s word to our lives.

Joy, of course, is ultimately found in the gift of salvation.

Isaiah 61:10: “I will greatly rejoice in the Lord. My soul shall be joyful in my God. For he hath clothed me with the garments of salvation. He hath covered me with the robe of righteousness. As a bridegroom decketh himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorneth herself with jewels.”

We come forward today with the imputed righteousness of Jesus Christ. A brighter raiment than any man can make. We are clothed with the gift of salvation from our God. And that should cause our hearts to rejoice inside of us—to recognize that those sins that so easily beset us, that Satan is so quick to point out to us and accuse us of, our sinful lapses, a rebellion against God, that those things are forgiven through the work of our savior Jesus Christ.

This is the heart of our joy—the recognition that God has provided for our salvation and that we don’t need to fear the pains of hell and death. Our savior has suffered those things for us. And so we should come together today in the Lord’s day to rejoice in his presence for salvation.

Isaiah 12:2: “Behold, God is my salvation. I will trust and not be afraid. For the Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song. He also has become my salvation. Therefore, with joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.”

Isaiah 35:1-2: “The wilderness and the solitary places shall be glad for them. The desert shall rejoice and blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly and rejoice even with joy and singing. The glory of Lebanon shall be given unto it. The excellency of Carmel and Chiron. They shall see the glory of the Lord and the excellency of our God.”

God has brought us into relationship with himself. He has given us salvation from our sins and that is a source of great joy for us. But you remember that when Paul spoke in the synagogue earlier in the book of Acts, he fleshed out that understanding of salvation to include victory over God’s enemies and the enemies of God’s people as well.

And so in the Psalter, in Psalm 71:23: “My lips shall greatly rejoice when I sing unto thee in my soul which thou hast redeemed.”

And then in verse 24: “My tongue also shall talk of thy righteousness all the day long. For they, my enemies, they are confounded. They are brought into shame that seek my hurt.”

Salvation is related to the defeat and the bringing to shame of the enemy of God and the enemy of God’s people. And when we experience, as we have experienced in this church, God’s judgment upon our enemies at the civil state level, for instance, over the years, and the victory of God’s people and the putting to shame of those who would suppress Christian homeschooling in this state, our hearts should think of these things and rejoice. That salvation we speak of is not some kind of other-world salvation only. It has implications for the entire created order today. And as we march into the world, we march with joy knowing that Jesus has accomplished all things for our salvation and for the destruction of his enemies.

Again, in the book of Esther 9:22: “As the days when the Jews rested from their enemies. This is the celebration of Purim. They’re speaking of the month which was turned unto them from sorrow to joy, from mourning into a good day. That they should make them days of feasting and joy and of sending portions one to another and gifts to the poor.”

A rejoicing feast was established because of the defeat of the enemies of Israel in the book of Esther.

But you know, all these things I’ve mentioned so far—the joy of the production of our hand, the labor, the fruit of the labors of our hand, the joy of God’s word, and the joy of salvation—can all be misunderstood and can be seen idolatrously by us if we place our joy in those things ultimately. My point here is that ultimately the joy that God gives us is the joy of relationship to him.

It’s not our salvation, our personal peace and affluence. It’s not even the nice feeling we have knowing our sins are forgiven. That isn’t the end. The end of that, the source of all joy, is in our relationship that has been secured by Christ with the triune God of all creation. It is God’s presence, his countenance—in the words of the psalm that we just read—that is the source of all true joy.

And as we consider the labors of our hands, or the beauty of God’s word, the truth of it, or the beauty of salvation, the defeat of our enemies, these things only are joyous when seen as coming forth from and picturing to us the attributes of God himself. Fine food, fine drink is given as a picture of the goodness of scripture, but ultimately the goodness of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and doing the will of the Father.

It is God himself and relationship with him that is the source of all joy. And if you attempt to use any of these other things as ultimately the source of your joy, they turn into a vapid, joyless event in your life. People go after the pleasures of the world seeking to find in them happiness, and they are given to us by God to bring us happiness and joy, but only as they’re understood in relationship to him.

Greed is idolatry. Greed seeks the material things of this world apart from seeing their relationship as pictures of the goodness of the person of God himself. And greed leads to emptiness and of need for more and more and more. And this world is hell-bent on a course right now. This world system in America is toward grasping for more and more and more because it wants the things, but it doesn’t want what they’re a picture of—the goodness of the person of God himself.

It is God and his countenance that is, should be the source of our joy as we march forward in obedience to the great commission.

Psalm 149:2 says: “Let Israel rejoice in him that made him, not in the fact of his creation, but in the fact of the one who created Israel. Let the children of Zion be joyful in their king—in him, in the person of God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.”

Psalm 21:6: “Thou hast made him most blessed. For we’re speaking of the king here, ultimately the King Jesus. Thou hast made him exceeding glad with thy countenance, with thy countenance.”

And so there is the source of our joy—the countenance of God.

Spurgeon in his commentary on Psalm 21:6 and this particular phrase, “Thou hast made him exceeding glad with thy countenance,” says this: “He who is a blessing to others cannot but be glad himself. The unbounded good doing of Jesus ensures Jesus exceeding joy. This is the purest stream to drink of and Jesus chooses no other. His joy is full, its source is divine, its continuence eternal, its degree exceeding all bounds. The countenance of God makes the prince of heaven glad. How ought we to seek it? And how careful should we be, lest we should provoke him by our sins to hide his face from us? Our anticipations may cheerfully fly forward to the hour when the joy of our Lord shall be shed abroad on all the saints and the countenance of Jehovah shall shine upon all the blood-bought. So shall we enter into the joy of our Lord.”

The source of joy is the person of God himself, his countenance.

That psalm that we read responsively, that speaks of the greatness of the great commission even in the words of the psalm of the Old Testament, begins with, as I noted earlier, verse one: “God be merciful to us. Bless us. Show us the light of thy countenance. Be merciful unto us that thy way may be made known.”

The way is made known in joyous marching, in waltzing into this world based upon the fact that God’s countenance has shown upon us. Our joy is ultimately in knowing him, who he is, and all these other things—salvation, even the word of God, the fruit of our labor—all these things are pictures, ultimately, of the attributes of God himself. And so the joy that should fill our hearts as we go forward in obedience to the great commission is joy of the person of God.

The book of Acts is filled with such joy.

In Acts 12:14, the woman at the gate knew Peter’s voice. She opened up the gate for gladness, rejoicing over Peter’s deliverance from prison. A picture, of course, of our deliverance from sin and death. She was joyful.

Acts 13:52: “The disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Ghost.”

Acts 16:25: “At midnight, Paul and Silas prayed and sang praises unto God in the context of prison.”

Such was their joy in knowing the God of all creation.

Acts 16:34: “When he had brought them into his house, the jailer, he set meat before them and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house.”

Paul wrote in Acts 20:24, “But none of these things move me, neither count I my life dear unto myself so that I might finish my course with joy.”

Paul was a disciplined military man in pursuit of the advance of the kingdom of God, leading the army of God. But he finished his course not joylessly, and not simply with duty and discipline, but he finished his course with joy. Joy is the empowerment to the people of God as they move forward.

And as a result then we can have joy in our trials and tribulations. Romans 5:1. “Not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ by whom we have now received the atonement.”

You know, I had some trials and tribulations the last couple of weeks. Some of you may know some of them. You know, as I was meditating upon them, do I deserve this? Do I deserve this kind of treatment at the hands of other people? Yes, I do. I deserve far worse than that. And so do you. In and of yourself, in your flesh, you deserve hell and damnation. You deserve disgrace and shame and continual death and pain and suffering from God. That’s what you deserve in yourself.

And when we recognize that the atonement has purchased us to God’s purposes, the atonement has covered our sins and turned God’s curse toward us to blessing, then we can endure the trials and tribulations, the slings of abuse. We can endure what trials and tribulation God puts us through, knowing that these are nothing compared to what we really deserve for who we are.

God tells us that we’re to rejoice as we go forward, even in context of trials and tribulations because of our relationship to him through the Lord Jesus Christ. And this is only possible, of course, to have joy in the context of the Holy Spirit.

And as I said a couple of weeks ago, this is a very important doctrine—the presence of God in our lives on a day-by-day, minute-by-minute basis through the Holy Spirit. And a knowledge of that spirit to work with us is what gives us the ability to suffer long and to rejoice in the context of sufferings.

Indeed, 1 Peter 4:13 says: “But rejoice in as much as you are partakers of Christ’s sufferings, that when his glory shall be revealed, you may be glad also with exceeding joy.”

Joy should mark our march forward in obedience to the great commission. God tells us that our lives are not simply to be disciplined, but our lives should be discipline with joy. We don’t merely march. As much as we waltz, we march with joy, style, and embellishment.

And the great commission that commands us to go into all the world does not end with that command, but rather it ends with the strongest note of joy possible—the abiding presence of our savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.

“And lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen. So be it.”

Assuredly believe this thing of his presence with us.

Biblical joy is to reside in the presence, peace, and blessings of God. God told Abraham, “I am thy shield and exceeding great reward.” And if we seek a reward apart from the presence of God, if somehow that isn’t enough for us, we are fools. We don’t know what we reject when we reject the joy of knowing that God himself is our exceeding great reward. And he is our shield. He is the defense as we march forward.

If we experience or expect rather some reward greater than the presence of God, we are idolaters, and our joy, as I said earlier, is vapid and transitory. God has promised his presence as we march toward the new Jerusalem.

This balance then—marching in joy, going with a knowledge of the presence and the joyful knowledge of the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ—this balance is what the waltz is all about. And it’s what our lives as Christians should be all about as well.

The temptation is to fall from one side onto the other, to get rid of the balance and so as a result damage our effectiveness. There are some people where life is all duty and discipline. Politics, for instance, at this time of year, political action simply must be done because our children’s lives are threatened. Well, this is certainly partially true. There are enemies to Christian children in this state and I know it as well as any man. But we must remember that even Satan himself can only trouble Job with God’s express permission. While Satan intends things for evil, God purposes them for our good, for the maturation of us as believers in Jesus Christ.

C.S. Lewis is portrayed by Anthony Hopkins in the recent movie Shadowlands repeatedly—at least three or four times—talked about God wielding his chisel upon us for our completion, or for our maturation. And it’s true that the movie depicts Lewis’s struggle with God’s providence and the vanity of simplistic answers to the problem of pain in the world. And yet surely even the casual viewer of that movie notes that Lewis is transformed from aloofness in terms of personal relationships to joyful relationship through just such pain.

“All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” And this is true just because it is true. And this is no less true for the Christian. To believe the Christian life is simply march is to rob oneself of the joy of the Lord. And indeed, we are told in Nehemiah 8:10 that it is the joy of the Lord explicitly that is our strength.

And so if we attempt to live our Christian lives in the political arena, in the homeschooling arena, in our daily vocational tasks, in our role as church members and the discipline of the church—if we try to do that simply through discipline, we rob ourselves of joy. And it is the joy itself that is to be our strength for the march that God calls us to do.

Nehemiah 8:10, as I said, the joy of the Lord is your strength. Now this is told in the context of Nehemiah 8 of a rejoicing feast. We read in the rest of that verse: He says unto them, “Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, send portions unto them that for whom nothing is prepared for this day is holy unto our Lord. Neither be you sorry for the joy of the Lord is your strength.”

And it’s the same thing here at Reformation Covenant. If we come to the discipline of worship today and we don’t come experiencing the joy of the march, the joy of the waltz as we do a holy dance before God on the Lord’s day, then we’re not going to want to come here very often. We have a rejoicing feast every Lord’s day, an agape or love feast together.

And I know people that have kind of chafed against that. And until they experience the joy of fellowship and communion with God’s saints, until they experience that, they really will not have the strength to continue that march, that waltz on the Lord’s day that we have in the providence of God and obedience to his scriptures hopefully ordained for this day for the people of God at Reformation Covenant Church.

You know, perhaps people—maybe yourself—that for a period of time saw this as all discipline and no joy, didn’t see in everything that we do here the attempt to demonstrate the presence of God with his people, binding us together, making us one, causing us to have love toward each other. In those periods of time you lose strength for the march itself without that joy. And yet if we recognize the joy—the joy of the Lord is indeed our strength.

Matthew Henry commenting upon this text says that let it not be a casual sensual joy but rather a holy and spiritual joy—the joy of the Lord. Joy in the goodness of God under the direction and government of the grace of God. Joy arising from our interest in the love and favor of God and the tokens of his favor. This joy will be your strength, therefore encourage it. It will be your strength. First, he says, for the performance of the other duties of the feast. The more cheerful we are in our religious exercises, the more we shall abound in them.

Secondly, for all that which you have to do in conformity to the law of God, which has been read to you. Holy joy will be oil to the wheels of our obedience. It’s a nice phrase. Holy joy is oil to the wheels of our obedience.

Third, for the resisting of your enemies that are planning against you. The joy of the Lord will arm us against the assaults of our spiritual enemies and put our mouths out of taste for the pleasures with which the tempter baits his hook. The joy of the Lord is indeed our strength for the waltz, the march that God has called us to do.

Psalm 21:1 says: “The king shall joy in thy strength, O Lord.”

To see a couple on the dance floor simply marching back and forth, mechanically going through a three-step waltz count and yet not having embellishment, style, or joy—is to feel sadness for people that have not yet come to the place of knowing the joy of the march, or joy of the waltz rather, only the march of the waltz. And so it is with us as well.

We should recognize that God has called us to joy, so it is wrong to overbalance our lives in terms of marching and discipline and leave out joy. But you know, for every Christian I have known who is all work and no play, I have known many more who are all play and precious little work.

To stress joy apart from strength for ministry is to rob it of its context and purpose. Our feel-good culture bombards us on every side with the slogan, “If it feels good, do it.” And you remember that past hit of years gone by that Dr. B. spoke of at family camp sung by a Christian gal I’m sure who’s a nice person and all, but the refrain to that song was, “How can it be wrong if it feels so good?” And so is the mark of our culture. The obvious corollary to this is that if it feels bad or hard, don’t do it.

But indeed marching, movement, Christian progress is hard work, as every homeschooler or political activist or Christian laborer in the business field knows full well. I dare say few if any of us have seen these lockstepped would-be waltzers that I used as the illustration before. But how many of us—I mean I’ll bet there’s nobody in this room that haven’t seen the dances of our day that are all fun, supposedly, and no form—all joy with no discipline or structure.

Elder Mayhar spoke of the difference between the dances that are done today so frequently and line dancing, which has order to it and discipline as well as joy. And indeed, in the context of our world, we have too many people that are all joy and no discipline. I’m afraid that applies to the church as well.

Self-sacrifice is the hallmark of the Christian life. Homeschoolers are typically those who have given up great amounts of leisure time and leisure dollars for the sake of their children. These children are the maturing members of the corporate body, the Lord Jesus Christ. They are the next church of the Lord Jesus Christ, the next generation of believers who will need to take that great commission and to obey it and waltz into all the world with the message of our savior. And so self-sacrifice is important, discipline is important, marching is important, progress is important, and it is hard work.

The same is true of political freedom. I know many self-sacrificial Christian men and women in this congregation who have given self-sacrificially—as I said, who have indeed walked precincts, banned phone banks, addressed envelopes for Christian candidates for Christian initiatives. And God bless them for their labors. And may God cause those who have never done anything for their political freedom to rethink what discipline God would have them bring into their lives for a few weeks every other year.

And we’re in that time right now. We’re in the time right now where we need discipline on the part of the Christian population in Oregon to work toward the election of godly candidates and speak forth righteousness into the political process just as we do in every other field of endeavor.

And it is particularly important in the political process because that is much of where the attack of the enemy comes on the Christian family today—is through the civil state. We have pornography pouring into this state on an incredible scale. The facts will astonish you in terms of how many pornographic stores there are in this state, and it is growing because this is one of only two states that can do absolutely nothing to prevent child pornography in the context of this state because of the terrible constitution we have relative to pornography.

And yet we have an initiative on the ballot this month, next month in November, that we can vote on that will change the Oregon Constitution and put an end to child pornography in this state. The Oregon legislature passed unanimously a bill last session to get rid of child pornography, declared unconstitutional. We need to make a change to the Constitution and that will require Christian men and women to be active, to be disciplined, to add to their joy discipline and march over this next month in terms of the political process.

Half a million dollars—five hundred thousand dollars—is being spent by the pro-pornography forces. These men’s financial livelihood is at stake, and they’re going to kick up a lot of money and already have half a million dollars to fight this initiative. Seems like it should pass in a landslide. Don’t count on it because when those ads start appearing, you’re going to see them saying things like, “If you pass Measure 19, you’re going to have books like Where’s Waldo banned in the public libraries.” Ridiculous assertions.

And it takes good Christian men and women at the grass level to counter those efforts. So I’m making a plea to you today to march forward, to obey the great commission in terms of your education, terms of the worship of this church. We come together marching, discipline together, but we have joy in the context of it. We’re waltzing. We move toward the new Jerusalem. We move toward maturation of our children, maturation of the political process as it becomes more and more explicitly Christian in our state. We move toward the establishment of more and more explicitly Christian businesses and recreational places as well.

We march toward the new Jerusalem, but we waltz because we march with style and embellishment and joy.

And I’m going to give you a practical way to do this—to add this discipline side as well as having the joy side. This Thursday evening, we’re going to do a mailing for the parents education association. Four thousand five hundred pieces have to be stuffed, stamped, labeled, and sealed. We’re going to rent the gym again, over here where we have our Lord’s Day agape feast every Lord’s day. I’m going to be there at 6:30. You can get there by 6:30 or 7. Please come to help us put out a mailing. That mailing will include an insert on the pornography initiative that will help inform the Christian population.

So come out this Thursday night in terms of being disciplined in your walk—these last few weeks of the political year here—to move, to do something to help elect Christian candidates and pass Christian initiatives. But you know, if enough of us come out and enough of us are disciplined, and this Thursday we should get it done in an hour, maybe two hours max, and then we’ll have time to play a little ball in the gym, play some games with the kids, and to have joy.

You see, that’s what I’m trying to teach. There’s a perfect example: discipline with joy. We waltz toward New Jerusalem. We’re called to serve and to celebrate.

And think of this by way of application in terms of your home schools. Do everything you can. Yes, you have to be disciplined with your children. Yes, they have to be disciplined in their studies. But bring joy into your home schools. It is the joy of the Lord that is their strength as well for the task of Christian education that we have set before them. And it is the joy of the Lord that will be the strength of the mothers who carry on so much of the schooling in this congregation that will be their strength as well as they continue on their homeschooling in this new year.

Husbands, bring joy into the lives of your wives. Wives, bring joy into the context of the lives of your children. Not doing away with discipline, but waltzing instead of simply marching.

We are called to serve and to celebrate. We can rest in Christ’s finished work as we rouse ourselves for our daily tasks and labors. We should experience discipline and joy in our holy dance of what some see merely to be mundane and ordinary tasks. We march with style, embellishment, and joy toward the world coming in which indeed all the nations of the earth shall have attained to the observation of all things our Savior has commanded us.

We waltz towards New Jerusalem.

Let’s pray. Father, we rejoice in your presence and we rejoice, Lord God, in knowing who you are and in having relationship with you. Help us, Father, to take the implications of that joy into every facet of our lives and our labor…