Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: “Greetings” – James 1:1
Resurrection Sunday, April 20, 2014 | Pastor Dennis R. Tuuri

Sermon text today is James 1, verse 1. Please stand. “James, a bondservant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. To the 12 tribes which are scattered abroad. Greetings.” Let’s pray.

Almighty God, we thank you for this day. We thank you for the joy that you speak to us today and that we speak to one another. May it fill our hearts and inform our lives this week. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen. Please be seated.

So my sermon really is on the one word at the end of that first verse: greetings.

This is not the normal word used for greeting. There’s another word, for instance, that the Apostle Paul uses in the book of Romans, the last chapter, some 20 times. That’s a different word. This is not the normal word that we would see translated “greetings.” This is the word meaning “rejoice” or “joy.” And so this really is not a particularly useful translation from my perspective. It probably ought to be translated “rejoice.”

That is the message of Easter, right? In Matthew’s gospel, which was probably the only book that James had when he wrote his epistle, the resurrection account comes to its conclusion when on the first day of the week, some women go to the tomb and he’s not there. And an angel says, “Well, he’s not here.” And then they walk away to go do what the angel told them to do. And they see Jesus.

And the text tells us that Jesus said one thing to them at first. The first thing he says is “rejoice.” It’s the same word. So the message that James gives significantly to the 12 tribes who are dispersed—to the Christian church scattered because of persecution—the summation word that he gives them is to rejoice in whatever situation essentially by implication that they find themselves in. And of course he’ll move right on in the next verse to say, “Count it all joy when you encounter various troubles.” Same word—the noun form. “Count it joy” as a noun. And here the idea is, you know, in verse one it’s a statement, a verb—rejoice—but it’s the same word.

So in verse two, we can kind of dance around it a bit. Well, it doesn’t say to rejoice. It says to count it joy when you encounter various troubles. But the very first verse tells us that the content of this epistle is joy. It’s joy.

And so everything we’ve talked about so far in the epistle of James here and which we’ll talk about for the next few weeks really is the summation message. How do we rejoice? Easter is about joy. Easter joy. And so this word “greetings”—”rejoice”—is the word of God to us today. It is every Lord’s day, but particularly on Resurrection Sunday. God tells us, as Jesus told those first women leaving the tomb, as his first apostles, first messengers sent on a mission for him, he tells them, “Rejoice.” And every Lord’s day, the spirit of God tells us in the worship service, “Rejoice.”

And so that’s the message for today: rejoice.

Now, I want to talk a little bit about that joy and I want to talk about three specific things we can rejoice for. Of course, the whole of the Christian life, the whole of the Christian canon is an exposition of what we can rejoice for, right? So a topic way too broad to be covered even in a series of sermons, let alone one sermon. But I want to talk today about three particular things that the Lord has laid on my heart in terms of our joy and the reason why we should be rejoicing.

But first, as I said, remember the context. Now, this is not, as I said, the typical greeting of Paul, nor is it the typical salutation of Paul. Right? If you’re familiar with Paul’s epistles, you know that frequently at the beginning of his letters, he doesn’t say “greetings” or “joy.” He expands it, right? He says “grace and peace,” right? And this is a typical phrase found in Paul’s epistles. And remember that I’ve kind of looked at James as a packed archive, a zip file we can think of. And it’s very interesting to consider then that Paul, having that epistle, how it then informs him and he breaks things out in a lot different, in an expanded form.

He takes, for instance, the psychology of sin that James sketches out for us and builds on that in Romans 7 and 8 as an example. Well, we can connect up the voice of the spirit saying “rejoice” and then saying in a series of subsequent epistles, “grace and peace to you” as a salutation. Our joy, of course, is a joy in the grace of God—in his gracious act of forgiving us of our sins, Jesus dying on the cross for us, being raised up for us, and then being ascended to the right hand of the Father—grace. And we can rejoice because of that. We should rejoice because of that all of our lives and certainly on the Lord’s day.

And we can rejoice in peace, right? Grace and peace. Peace is the established state of shalom that we have because of the presence of God with us always. So our joy is in part based upon a joy for grace and it’s also a joy based upon peace. And again, you know, in whatever setting we find ourselves, this joy—according to James, in the very difficult circumstances of a scattered, persecuted, oppressed church—right, those people were fearful. They were running for their lives essentially. They would run into areas where they were not the dominant people at all, where they would be the lowest rung of the social scale. They’d be exiles. They’d be strangers in different lands, right? In many of the lands, they may not really know the language, at least the dominant language. Maybe they would, but it would be difficult for them.

They were fearful that the Jews would come after them, as they did, of course, as Paul himself did, and try to kill them or imprison them. They were fearful of the imprisonment of their wives or their husbands, their children, their friends. And no doubt some of them knew martyrs for the faith of Jesus Christ, both who are being martyred at the hands of the Jews but also eventually at the hands of the Romans that control the empire. So these people are in a difficult state. I’d venture to say much more difficult than whatever it was you went through this last week in some concrete ways. And James tells them: rejoice.

This message of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the message of resurrection from the dead, is so grand that James can tell us, rejoice. Paul will say the same thing, and we’ll look a little bit at Philippians in a few minutes. But remember, this is, you know, Philippians is sort of the epistle of joy, right? “Rejoice. Again, I say rejoice.” And Paul, of course, when he wrote that epistle, is in prison awaiting who knows what, right? What’s going to happen to him? He really doesn’t know. And Paul can tell the Philippians—and we’ll look at this in a couple of minutes—”Rejoice in everything. In everything, rejoice.”

And we say, “Paul, please come on. Do you know the difficulties we go through? Do you know the family troubles? Do you know the deaths, the suicides that our lives are in contact with at any particular time in our lives? Do you know the persecution we’re going through, Paul? Do you know the martyrdom that we’re going to be called to face? You’re telling us to rejoice in everything, Paul?”

Well, you know, that’s very unChristian. That is not nice of you. That is not sympathetic of you. But when we think about it just for a couple of minutes, who was Paul? He was a man who went through the same sufferings as our Savior went through, right? More than us, again. Beaten, flogged, arrested, imprisoned, put on trial, hated by his own people. And these exiles—it’s one of the most important things to remember—is they represented themselves, the 12 tribes of Israel, as the true heritage of God’s people of the Old Testament Israel. But the power establishment, of course, were claiming that name for themselves and were persecuting the true remnant.

And so even within the context of what we might say is the Christian church, there’s persecution going on—with the Jews persecuting the true believers of Christ. And we see the same thing in various parts of the globe today. So Paul says, “In everything,” and he meant it. He went through it. He did it. And even as he writes that to the Philippians, he’s rejoicing in prison awaiting who knows what, including potentially his martyrdom.

So this is significant, and it’s a message that James also tells his people. He doesn’t condition it in verse one. In verse two it’s a mental understanding of things they are. But in verse one, it’s the message from God to you: that in spite of whatever circumstances you find yourself in today as you gather together to worship God, God’s message to you right now at this very moment is: rejoice.

Now, I want to talk about three specific things we can rejoice for. And there are a lot more than these, but I just want to talk about three. The first is vindication. And this is directly tied to the resurrection of Jesus that we celebrate today. We’ll talk about vindication based on Romans 1, and then we’ll talk about deliverance from Sheol. And you know, Sheol is not a popular topic for sermons. We’ll throw in a brief subject study of what Sheol is in the Bible, and we’ll see that Psalm 16, a frequent Easter psalm that’s used, which talks about the resurrection of Christ, talks about the deliverance from Sheol that the resurrection means for Christ and for us.

So we’ll talk about that as a way to process whatever difficulties we have and to try to get to the point of rejoicing in the midst of them in spite of our external circumstances. And then finally, we’ll turn to that Philippians passage where Paul says to rejoice in everything. And we’ll see that rejoicing is in the presence of Christ, the actual ongoing presence of Jesus. He is at hand.

So first we’ll talk about vindication and joy because of the vindication of Christ in us. Secondly, we’ll talk about joy for our deliverance from Sheol, whatever that might mean. And then third, we’ll talk about joy because of the ongoing presence of Christ with us.

## Vindication

Okay. First, vindication. These will be short topics. Romans 1:3-5: “Concerning the Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh and declared to be the Son of God with power according to the Spirit of holiness by the resurrection from the dead, through him we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for his name.”

So the missionary work that we just sang about—”all ends of earth will come to him”—is on the premise of what he says the verse before, which is the resurrection from the dead of Christ. And what does it mean? It means he’s declared to be the Son of God with power by that resurrection. What does this mean?

What it means is Jesus Christ was justified, vindicated, legally declared to be the victor by his resurrection from the dead. So, think about it, you know, it’s kind of like a Supreme Court case, right? And so Jesus has been found guilty by the Romans, guilty by the Jews, and he’s put to death with that guilty verdict wrapped around his neck, so to speak, right? And so what does God do? God raises him from the dead.

What is he doing? What is God saying? He’s saying, “I have heard the appeal, and I find in favor of Jesus. In the case of Jesus versus Rome, I find in the place of Jesus. In Jesus versus the Jews, Israel, I declare Jesus to be the Son of God without fault in any way, shape, or form. I declare Jesus to be faithful in everything that he has done to the will of the Father. I declare him to be holy, righteous, altogether good, and I vindicate him, and I do this by raising him from the dead.”

So what do we celebrate today? We celebrate the Supreme Court verdict of God—that this is the Son of God, this is the holy one of Israel. That’s the final verdict. And Jesus is vindicated from his enemies. He’s raised back up from the dead and he is declared to be the Son of God by the power of the Holy Spirit in that resurrection. Okay, this is what the Scriptures teach us.

Now, Romans 4:25 says this: “Jesus was delivered up because of our offenses and was raised for our justification.”

So not only is Jesus justified, right—he’s forensically declared the victor in this lawsuit, the innocent one, the altogether holy one. Not only is Jesus vindicated by the resurrection, the announcement is made to the whole world when God raises him up. Not only is he declared the victor and justified, the righteous one, the innocent one—we are as well. The resurrection was for our justification, our vindication.

Okay? And when you look at yourself, or when I look at you, or when the world looks at you, or when whoever looks at you, instead of your sins, what we see is your union with the Lord Jesus Christ. We see Christ, and we see his legal declaration that he is the holy one of God and declared innocent, victorious—overturn the judgment of death against him and the judgment of death against you, which is due to you for your sins and due to me for my sins. This has been overturned by the resurrection of Jesus Christ because according to Romans 4, he was raised for that very purpose. Not only to show his vindication, but to vindicate us as well and declare us innocent and no longer guilty.

Now, you know, we could say, “Well, but how does that work? Because we’re not innocent.” Well, it’s because we’re united to Christ. And in that, he is our covenantal head. And God gives us the status, the declaration of who Jesus is as the resurrected Son of God and innocent. And he applies that to us. And so Jesus is raised for our vindication. Us—who because of our sins, we’re the ones who nailed him to the cross. And yet because of our faith in Jesus Christ, we are vindicated. We are declared to be in union with the one who is vindicated.

And therefore we, having just been, and going on in the text of Romans 4, having been justified by faith, by faithfulness, by the faithfulness of Christ, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. So grace and peace are found together in that text from Romans 4: that our vindication, because of our union with Jesus Christ, is the joy of grace and peace to us.

So first of all, we are justified. We are vindicated. By the resurrection of Jesus Christ, he’s declared innocent and his innocency, his altogether righteousness, is given to us as well. And that is a matter of great joy, right? So we rejoice before God because Jesus was vindicated and we rejoice before God because we are vindicated as well.

So Jesus and then us. God has passed the verdict on Jesus and God passes the verdict on us, and as a result of that, we are declared to be in union with Christ. Now, this is a matter of our belief in Christ, right? This is what God declares. Let’s put it this way: these three things I’m going to say today—this is what God declares. Your only choice today is to say either yes, you agree with God, or not to believe him. And one is the path of faith and the other is the path of unbelief.

Now God declares you to be vindicated through the vindication of Jesus Christ. Do you believe it? If you believe it, you’ll rejoice, and you’ll rejoice in all circumstances because ultimately, just like Christ’s resurrection is eternal, so also our vindication is eternal before God. And no matter what happens, this is who we are. We are those who have been delivered from hell. And this is the beginning of our joy before God.

Now the apostles in this first matter here are a good picture of us in this case, right? Who are the apostles at this point? After the death and resurrection of Christ. Who are they? They’re traitors. Well, they’re at least betrayers. They’re at least those who are cowardly and have not stuck with the Savior. They’ve left him to die by himself, right? Oh, we think of Judas as the betrayer, but none of the rest of them really lifted a finger. In fact, they denied him, as Peter, the one of the heads of them, did.

All of them, you know, they’re like the sheep. The shepherd is stricken, smitten, hit, and the sheep scatter. They scatter. That’s who the apostles are. They’re ultimately, you know, the ones who did nothing, but rather because of their absence, their omission of action for Jesus. And in fact, their commission when Peter says, “I don’t know the guy”—that’s the apostles. They’re those who at the point of the crucifixion of Jesus are like everybody else. They betrayed him.

And Jesus, what does he do with his resurrection? He immediately starts ministering to them. The apostles, before they preach grace and peace, before they preach “rejoice,” are preached to, as it were, by Jesus Christ, and they’re told that they have been vindicated in him. Their sins have been forgiven, and they are ministered to by the Holy Spirit to the end that they might then minister to others. That’s what’s happening today. God calls us together and he preaches to us so that we can go forward with that message of joy to those who believe in Christ and call men and women to that joy, to that belief.

And before we can do that, God preaches to us that we are vindicated through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus is vindicated. We’re vindicated. And in a very real sense, the whole of creation also is raised back up with Jesus.

You know, in the Old Testament, if you have marital relations, you’re unclean. Uncleanness is a picture of the result of death and the fall. If, you know, you have a baby, you’re unclean. If you go to your dad’s funeral like Chris W. did and you’re in the room with that corpse—unclean. Why? Because the world is dying. Death rules in the context of the world. But when Jesus is declared by God to be the Son of God and the holy one by his resurrection, all of the world, which is his, comes out of death into life as well. We do. Jesus does. We do in him, and the world does as a result of their Lord being put to death and raised up as well.

And what do we see when Jesus comes? We see when people touch him, life flows out of him, right? The woman who touches the hem of his garment—in Christ, life now flows into the world. No longer does death have sway and move out, but life now moves out and has sway. So you can, you know, have marital relations last night or this morning and no problem coming to church. You can have a baby. Even if you’re up to it the way some women are, you can come to church. There’s no implication of death left because Jesus has rolled that back, right?

And Chris W. can come back from, you know, burying his dad, and, you know, we don’t have to fear being in the room with a corpse or even, you know, holding the hand of our dearly beloved who have died, thinking that death somehow is going to spring forth. No, because the world has been definitively moved forward and vindicated as well. We give joy to God for the vindication of Jesus Christ, the implications for us, and the implications for the world.

## Deliverance from Sheol

Secondly, we have joy because of our deliverance from death and Sheol. You know, I was at this political meeting last week, and concerns were being shared. It wasn’t a political meeting, actually. It was a leading of some people involved in political action, some people who are leaders in the city transformation movement in Portland and actually around the country. And the discussion was, you know, do we appreciate each other, basically? And the statement has been made in print by various people the last few years: you know, we’re not like the Christians were before. We don’t want to be known by what we’re against. We want to be known by what we’re in favor of.

Now on the face of it, that’s ridiculous, right? I mean, if we’re in favor of feeding people, that means we’re against poverty, right? But in any event, we were talking to this leader about that quote of his in a recent publication, and he said, “Well, you know, I was trying to tell him the same thing that, you know, I heard my dad say 20 years ago: that we’re not just people who want to be known by only what we’re against, but also by what we’re in favor of.”

Well, and of course, one of us—me—pointed out, “Well, but ‘only’ isn’t in that quote. You didn’t say ‘only.’ So, you know, Christians want to be known by what we’re in favor of in addition to what we’re against.”

And of course, that’s a real biblical theme, right? We preach against sinfulness, including our sinfulness. We warn people of the damnation that comes that way. And then we tell them what the positive news is as well. And in addition to preaching and proclaiming and calling people to repentance, we feed them and we clothe them. We try to help them. Of course. Of course. But the problem is that there’s this mindset now that’s developed, and the language has slipped so that all that we want to talk about is what we’re in favor of and not what we’re against.

Well, you know, if you don’t know what you’re against, if you don’t know in this case what you’re delivered from, your joy is not as great, right? You know the old Winston Churchill quote: “Nothing so exhilarating as being shot at to no effect.” Now, if you don’t know that bullet whizzed by your ear, you’re not all that joyous, right?

At this meeting, Georgin Rice was there. And she said, “I don’t get this distinction you’re making between one of these leaders between political action and evangelism. When I got involved in the same-sex marriage fight 10 years ago, God called me in the middle of the night, and I obeyed, and I didn’t want to do it, and I knew I’d get death threats and blah blah.” But let me tell you one of many stories that happened to me.

She said she went to an event, I think in Eugene, and this woman came up and said, “I’m a bulldyke lesbian. I hate you and what you’re saying.” Ripped her up one side and down the other. She wasn’t sure she’d be able to get out to her car safely. Well, I don’t know how long later—a year or two later—she’s shopping at Fred Meyer. And this woman approaches her. “Are you Georgin?” “Yes, I am, ma’am.” “You know, well, let me tell you something. I got real mad when you talked the way you did about same-sex marriage, but I thought about it afterwards and I started reading my Bible again. I’d read it when I was a kid, and I’ve rededicated my life to Jesus Christ and I’ve broken off my lesbian relationships. Thank you so much for having the courage to speak truth in that situation.”

Now you see, that’s what happens when we don’t get caught up in some kind of strange “we’re only for the positive stuff” sort of message. It doesn’t help some poor guy who is idolatrously sinning in a way that’s going to bring God’s judgment against him not to warn him. When you go out there and tell your kids “don’t play in the street,” you’re against something, right? But you’re doing it because you love the boy and you don’t want him to be killed.

Well, we need to know what we’ve been saved from. And we’ve kind of talked about it a little bit with vindication, but Sheol is this picture in the Old Testament of what we’re saved from in the New Testament. And as I said, Psalm 16 is a typical psalm read for Resurrection Sunday. Let me read a couple of verses from it.

David says, “I have set the Lord always before me, because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore, my heart is glad and my glory rejoices. My flesh also will rest in hope. For you will not leave my soul in Sheol, nor will you allow your holy one to see corruption. You will show me the path of life. In your presence is fullness of joy, and at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.”

So David says, speaking of Christ, that in Jesus being raised up from the dead, Jesus’s body will not rot. It won’t see corruption. And in relationship to that, he says, “You’re going to deliver me.” Jesus was delivered from Sheol, whatever that means. Now, we normally think—or some people have different views of Sheol—but a lot of people think that Sheol is just the place of the dead in the Old Testament. But, you know, that isn’t necessarily true.

For instance, in Genesis 25:8, when Abraham dies, it doesn’t say he went to Sheol. Let me tell you what it says. It says, “Then Abraham breathed his last and died in a good old age, an old man and full of years, and was gathered to his people.” Now, that’s a common phrase for the faithful who die in their faithfulness. They’re gathered to their people. It doesn’t say they go to Sheol.

Okay? Sheol seems to be a place of darkness and dread and being overwhelmed and being isolated and alienated. You don’t know people there. There’s no praise of God going on. It doesn’t seem like that’s what’s going on with Abraham. He’s gathered to his people. Beautiful phrase, isn’t it? I just love that phrase. And you find it a number of times in the Old Testament. “So and so dies and he’s gathered to his people.” “So and so dies, he’s gathered to his people.”

So Sheol can be a synonym for death, in a sense. In Korah’s rebellion, the earth opens up its mouth and swallows him. Right? Now he’s dying down there. But it also describes that in terms of Sheol opening its mouth and eating him. Okay. So Sheol can be a reference to certain kinds of death—bad death, right? Difficult death, judgment death—but it doesn’t necessarily mean death.

Let me read you a few other verses about Sheol. Psalm 31:17: “Do not let me be ashamed, O Lord, for I have called upon you. Let the wicked be ashamed. Let them be silent in the grave.”

Okay, so it seems like the wicked that are being described in Psalm 31 in Sheol are those who are ashamed, okay? And silent. So that doesn’t mean everybody. It’s talking about the wicked. Isaiah 14—let’s see. I think this is talking about the king of Babylon in Isaiah 14. Listen: “Hell from beneath is excited about you to meet you at your coming. It stirs up the dead for you, all the chief ones of the earth. It has raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. They all shall speak against you and say, ‘Have you also become as weak as we? Have you become like us? Your pomp is brought down to Sheol, and the sound of your stringed instruments.’ And your sound of the stringed instruments is also brought down to Sheol.” In other words, it’s going to stop.

Then he goes on to say, “The maggot is spread under you and worms cover you.” So Sheol is a place of maggots, worms eating on you, and a consciousness of some sort. So it’s kind of like hell there.

So you know, if you look at various verses in terms of Sheol, it isn’t synonymous necessarily with death. It is talked about in terms of some sorts of death, such as Korah, but not other death. And it describes death really essentially in terms of the judgment of God upon people who have mistreated others and don’t believe in God. And so those people—death for them is like maggots eating on them.

Psalm 55:15-16: “Let death seize them. Let them go down alive into Sheol. For wickedness is in their dwellings and among them. As for me, I will call upon God and the Lord will save me.”

Okay, so Sheol can be death and it can be the judgments of what we would call hell. But listen to this. This is Jonah speaking in chapter 2 of Jonah. He said, “I cried out to the Lord because of my affliction, and he answered me out of the belly of Sheol I cried, and you heard my voice. For you cast me into the deep, into the heart of the seas, and the flood surrounded me, and your billows and your waves passed over me. And then I said, ‘I have been cast out of your sight. Yet I will look again toward your holy temple. The waters surrounded me even to my soul. The deep closed around me.’”

And he goes on to talk about weeds and bars capturing him in. And from this Sheol that he describes, he cries out to God and God delivers him through the whale, right? Now, Jonah didn’t die, but he—so Sheol—you can experience Sheol while living. That’s the point here. You can experience Sheol while living. And there are other verses that talk about the same thing as well.

In Psalm 88, for instance, the psalmist seems to give these descriptions of Sheol that he is experiencing, and yet by the end of it he’s delivered by God. So Sheol is untimely death. It can be the death of somebody prior to living a nice old age and being taken to their fathers. It’s a violent death. It’s a death that is in relationship to people executing you or killing you, right? So it’s that kind of death. And you can suffer Sheol by the sort of life experiences that you have going on—waters overflowing you, isolation from friends, okay, various things that you might experience in life. The psalmist describes as Sheol, and other places in the Old Testament, such as Jonah, do as well.

So Sheol that we’re delivered from—we’re all—this is based upon understanding that in Jesus’s resurrection he’s delivered from Sheol. Well, in what sense? Well, if you look at Jesus, he was like Jonah, and he was like the death passages as well. Here you got a guy—a young man who is cut off in his youth, right? He dies prematurely. And only does he die prematurely, he dies after having been flogged and scourged and spat upon and convicted by both the Romans and by the Jews of capital crimes, right? Crown of thorns pressed onto him, mocked.

I mean, this is Sheol sort of stuff, okay. Not only is his death premature, it’s a death of a violent—a violent death rather—for supposed crimes that he commits, right? And he’s nailed on a cross. That’s Sheol death, okay? So Jesus is suffering Sheol death.

And in fact, Jesus is also suffering the sorts of things that the psalmist describes and the thing that Jonah describes. Even while alive, he’s abandoned by his friends. He becomes friendless. He becomes the betrayed one. Yes, by Judas, but ultimately the rest of the disciples leave him alone to die as well. So he suffers betrayal, which the Scriptures equate with Sheol.

Jesus is delivered from that. When Jesus is raised back up, what God, in his vindication of Jesus, is also doing is rescuing Jesus from Sheol. And now we understand that his death, that looked like Sheol death—bad, no good end to it—is actually a seed falling into the ground that will produce life. It’s a good death. It’s a great death. It’s the best death ever in terms of its fruitfulness. And his isolation and suffering—all the things that we suffer—friendlessness at the end, a man of sorrows throughout his life. We don’t quite know what that means, but he wasn’t the popular kid on the block, okay. He had some guys following him, but you know, he wasn’t the popular guy. He was somewhat—at the end, particularly, he’s friendless and abandoned and betrayed. He’s got afflictions through his whole life. He’s called the man of sorrows, okay.

So Jesus looks like he has Sheol going on—not just in his death but in his life as well—and certainly leading up to his death. And God, in raising him up, says, “Hey, all that stuff I’m reversing.” And the effects of your life will now blossom out to change the face of all creation, to change the face of the whole world. Everything changes in the created order because of what looked like Sheol for you, both in your death and in your friendless, afflicted life.

So God reverses all of that for Jesus. Now, just like the vindication, we’re in Christ. And this means not that we won’t die prematurely—some of us will—and not that we won’t be friendless or betrayed or have really bad physical illnesses. All that stuff will still happen to us. But what it tells us, if we care to believe, if we dare to believe, is that none of that Sheol for us—that our premature death will somehow redound to the glory of God and the effectiveness of the kingdom, and that whatever sufferings we go through, just like the sufferings of Jesus went through—we’re united to him. He’s been delivered from Sheol and death and struggles in life in those same ways that—whatever we can hardly bear up with in our lives—God says we’re delivered from Sheol. We can live in hope because Jesus has been raised from the dead. He’s vindicated. Jesus has been delivered from Sheol, and so are we.

Okay, that means that everything in your life God is bringing about for his purposes in his kingdom. You remember Toy Story? Remember Andy, right? We got a name written—or we’re Woody, rather. We got Andy, our owner’s name written on us. We’re Christians. Jesus is on the bottom of our foot. You looked down—or later, kids, you’ll see it right on the bottom of your shoe. You’ll see Jesus. Well, you won’t see that, but you remember your baptism, the name that was called out over you.

And when God does that, when you remember who you are, you remember that Andy is—our owner is controlling everything in our lives for his purposes and for our well-being. And when Woody gets abandoned or tossed in a bin or this or that or the other thing, God has a purpose for that in our lives. He’s delivering us from Sheol. Even while it feels like we’re experiencing it, God says we’re really not. That’s not Sheol for us because Jesus was raised up from the dead. His body didn’t see corruption. Jesus was delivered from Sheol, and we are too, in him.

Now, you know, you’re having doubts. Those of you that suffer right now, I know you’re having doubts about that. But are you going to believe God’s word or are you not? Are you in Christ or are you not? Are you united to him or not? And the Scriptures tell us he’s been delivered from Sheol. So if you rejoice—rejoice no matter what happens to you in your life or in your death. God says you’re delivered from Sheol, that he somehow is using every bit of that for his kingdom purposes, for his glory, and for the well-being of the people that surround you.

We rejoice because we’ve been delivered from something horrible—maggots, isolation, betrayal by everyone. We’ve been delivered from something horrible through the deliverance of Christ from Sheol. Praise God. We have joy over that, right? We praise God. We have joy because of what we’re delivered from. We’re delivered from Sheol.

## Joy in the Presence of Christ

And then let’s turn briefly to Philippians 4:4-6. And this will be our final thing we’re going to be thankful about. This is when Paul tells us that incredible statement: “Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say rejoice.”

Paul says to us to rejoice in everything—always, in all things. Our job is not our job. Our delight is to rejoice. Do you mean it, Paul? Yeah, I mean it. He says, and he goes on to tell us why he means it. He says, “Let your gentleness be known to all men.” Well, there’s one reason to rejoice in everything. It’s the same reason that James told us: “Count it all joy because whatever you’re going through is producing eternal jewels of character for God, right? You’re becoming forbearing. You’re becoming patient. Your character is to be developed into its end. You’ll become perfect, mature, reaching its goal or end through the very sufferings that we don’t want to deal with.”

In the same way, see, Jesus’s resurrection—glorious day on Sunday—but he gets there through death and through suffering. And that death and suffering is what produces the joy of the resurrection and his ascension. So first of all, we can rejoice in everything because everything is being used to make us mature Christians, to give us the character qualities that God desires, right? That’s one thing he says.

But look at the second thing he says. He says, “Rejoice. Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand.”

The Lord is at hand. The presence of God with us. Verse after verse in the Old Testament says that where God is, there’s joy—because God is joyful. And when we’re in the presence of God, when the Lord is with us, we rejoice, okay? That’s one thing that’s being said here.

But secondly, and maybe more importantly for Paul’s purposes, he doesn’t just say the Lord is with us. Or maybe I should say he says a little more than that. He says the Lord is at hand. He’s nearby timewise as well as spatially. He’s coming to us in our particular situation to deliver us. I think is the implication of what Paul is saying.

Your life is one in which the various difficulties you go through can be rejoiced in the context of them. You can give joy to God because Jesus is at hand. He’s present with you. But more than that, he’s present to deliver you. He is your present deliverer from the difficulties and trials and tribulations. They will end. They will end. And when they end, you’ll have seen the development of character in your life or the blessings to other people of them watching your life and your faithfulness to Jesus Christ in the midst of your troubles.

Jesus is present with us. He is at hand. He is the one in whom we rejoice because of his victory over sin and death, because of his vindication, because he delivers us from Sheol and all of its implications and ramifications. And we rejoice because Jesus is at hand. He is coming to sustain us and deliver us in good time. Jesus is always coming to us. He is always at hand. He is always moving to bring us deliverance from the difficulties and trials and tribulations that we live in.

You know, it’s interesting in the life of Jacob—Jacob, this story of Sheol and deliverance, right? So Jacob, it says when his sons brought him the bloody garments of what he thought was Joseph and say, “Joseph is dead,” Jacob describes his state as being in Sheol. Another indication, by the way, of how Sheol doesn’t just mean when you’re dead. He’s in the context of Sheol because he’s grieving, years and years and years. He’s grieving. He’s grieving. He’s in Sheol.

But then, of course, what happens is he finds out that Joseph actually isn’t dead. He’s alive. And then the text tells us that when Jacob dies—after having been made aware of the life of Joseph and seeing Joseph again and all that stuff, the joyful reunion—it says that when Jacob dies, then he breathes his last and he’s gathered to his people, like Abraham, right? It’s a good death. It’s a good death. Because Sheol has been reversed. Why? Because ultimately the greater Joseph moves us from Sheol to having blessed lives. He delivers us.

He’s always at hand, coming to us to bring us deliverance. And it may take a significant amount of time as it did in the life of Jacob. But in the midst of all of that, we can know for a certainty that resurrection life is coming to us and is the message of Easter Sunday. And we can rejoice in that—in that vindication of who we are in spite of our betrayals of Christ, in the deliverance from Sheol both untimely deaths and difficult life circumstances, and we can rejoice because Jesus is near us.

His presence is with us. We rejoice in that. But more than that, we can rejoice because he is at hand. He is always coming to us to bring us deliverance from the trials and the troubles that afflict us. Hebrews says that “Jesus, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross.” For the joy that was set before him. We can endure all things through Christ who strengthens us. And the clear implication is he strengthens us by the joy that we have, knowing his plan for us, knowing that united to Christ we also, for the joy that’s set before us, can endure all things.

Let’s rejoice.

Father, we do give you praise and thanksgiving. We rejoice, Father, for our deliverance from Sheol. We rejoice, Father, for our vindication. We rejoice, Father, in the presence of the one who comes to deliver us and surely accomplishes that very thing. And we pray that we can as a result of all these things receive from you the message today: “Greetings, rejoice.” And be dispensers of that message one to the other. Greetings, rejoice. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.