Gooding, David: 4 - Disconcertingly Joyful!

On this fourth occasion, most welcome, ladies and gentlemen. It is a matter of simple observation that many people find religion an unadulterated and an irrelevant bore. Even those perhaps who consider religion as necessary in some sense, very frequently look upon it as, uh, they do upon a visit to the dentist, as a something that is rather painful, but has to be done in the interest of health, about which therefore we act very sensibly and on times discipline ourselves to make the minimum number of attendances. There are those, of course, more sophisticated in their criticisms of religion, and in particular the Christian religion. If we must have religion at all, they would prefer, for instance, the ancient and pagan religions, such as the Greek religions, with their gorgeously sensual mythology, with religion harnessed to the arts and the, uh, lovely dramas of the ancient world, and with their not too stringent moral codes. It was, after all, was it not, a severe criticism of Christianity that was leveled in the verse, thou hast conquered, thou pale Galilean. For that line is followed by its explanation, the world has grown pale at thy breath. An indictment that the Christian religion has taken the color and the zest out of life and left us with purica- puritanical standards and a very gray world. But perhaps in this modern day, there are a growing number of people for whom religion of whatever kind is frankly irrelevant and bore. Now, this has always been so. Our Lord himself, uh, uh, recognized the fact, did he not, in the parables he told of the men that were invited to the grand banquet in the kingdom of God, and each one of them made his particular excuse why he should not turn up. An excuse made, frankly, because the man who made it considered that the banquet of Christian religion, uh, was not to his taste. He would prefer maybe his business, maybe his social life, but for him religion was anything but enjoyable. Now, while this is so, I submit we should not allow this to hide from our eyes, the fact that in the ancient records, our Lord stands out, uh, somewhat differently. In fact, to the, uh, critics of Christianity, he appeared as disturbingly joyful, altogether too joyful to be truly religious. They caricatured him, you may remember, i- in the phrase that he was a glutton and a wine bibber, and of course their slander was exaggerated. But behind their exaggerated slander, we can perceive, perhaps even at this length in history, a character that must have been exceedingly gay and happy, natural and sociable, and far removed from the image of an ascetic religious man, such as his contemporaries held to be true religion. In particular, and what is perhaps most interesting of all, this figure of someone who was disturbingly joyful was connected in the Pharisee's mind, at any rate, with the very heart of our Lord's religion. It was not that he personally was a gay spirit, it was that his religious activities were accompanied with a joyful spirit and not a little ferment, almost bordering upon excitement. This man, they said in dismay, receiveth sinners and eateth with them. Behold, a wine bibber and a glutton. And our Lord did nothing, I must admit, to dispel the thing that, uh, seemed to grieve them so much. This joy, this gladness that centered around his evangelical activities, he illustrated from time to time and pressed home on the dismayed Pharisees with such parables as the prodigal son, for instance. He described, did he not, the return of the prodigal home to the father's house. Not indeed to be accompanied by hymn singing and praying, but rather by singing and dancing, the whole band and orchestra, and a banquet. This was adding, of course, fuel to the fire. This wasn't the way the Pharisee was accustomed to take his religion. Dancing and singing and orchestra and banquet. Our Lord deliberately used the terms. For undeniably, our Lord found a tremendous enjoyment in his evangelical activity. And seemed surprised at the Pharisees that they should not, um, perceive what it was that gave him such a great enah. And gentlemen, he said, supposing one of you, being a farmer, lost a sheep, you wouldn't sit down, would you, content with the ninety and nine sheep? But you would hide yourself over the mountains after this, uh, one lost sheep, and when you found it and had brought it home, you would make a tremendous fuss. You would gather the neighbors, you would, uh, hold a celebration and say, rejoice with me, my sheep which was lost is found. And what woman, said he, if she lost a valuable piece of silver from the middle of her tiara, uh, wouldn't, uh, make a tremendous fuss, lighting a light and sweeping the house until she found the piece, and her face would be aglow with joy and gladness at her success in finding this lost bit of silver. And you gentlemen, he said, you would do it if it were your business, if you would do it if it were your cash, if it were your sheep. You women would do it if it were a question of your personal adornment. How is it that your joy doesn't carry over into the sphere of religion. How is it that you count it strange when I find a man long since lost to God and bring him back to God? How is it that you count it strange that I find it a joyful thing to sit by the side of a prostitute, maybe, or a fifth columnist like a tax collector for the Romans, and little by little bring that man back to God and see the glad sunrise of spiritual life begin to rise in that man's experience, and watch the joy of his spirit as he becomes reconciled to God. How is it that you count it strange? Yet they did count it strange. For if truth were told, there was very little room in the religion of the Pharisees for that kind of joy. They were accustomed to the art of proselytizing. Indeed, some of them would have compassed land and sea to make one proselyt- proselyte. But that was merely a matter of sort of changing from one form of religion to another form of religion, being a Greek and becoming a Jew. But to the joy of sitting by a man's side and leading that man personally to God, watching the man experience that revolution which the New Testament calls salvation. To that joy, Pharisees on the whole were strangers. In consequence, they missed what our Lord affirmed was one of the chief delights of religion, indeed one of the chief delights of heaven. There is more joy, said he, among the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth than over those ninety and nine very formal religious people that have no need of repentance. He wasn't saying that formal deliberate religion is bad, but he was readjusting our sense of proportion and saying that the chiefest joy is and must remain over that personal experience of a man coming back to God and being saved. But not only did these, uh, Pharisees, uh, find this a strange thing, they were not used to the experience of leading their fellow men back to God. They themselves, likewise, fail to understand the joy that began in the hearts of those who were thus converted. You'll remember that occasion, for instance, will you, when they came, and along with the Pharisees, some very orthodox disciples of John the Baptist, with their thinly veiled criticisms of our Lord's evangelical mission. Their query was this, they said, why, why, uh, Jesus of Nazareth, why, uh, don't your disciples fast? The Pharisees' disciples fast, John's disciples fast, your disciples don't fast. Now come, how is this? We may perceive under their questioning what was going through their mind. To their idea, religion was a discipline. It had its joyful moments. They enjoyed the aesthetics of the temple service. They enjoyed the beautiful singing in the choir. They enjoyed the magnificent language of the Old Testament, and particularly the Pentateuch and prophets. But when it came to personal religion, then personal religion in their mind was a discipline. On certain days you fasted. The more often you fasted, the more religious you were. On set feasts and holidays, you made it your business to get up early in the morning and attend divine service in the temple. It was a discipline. The only particular joy that came from it was, uh, perhaps a joy of, uh, attainment, a joy of achievement, when by dint of your discipline you had reason to feel that you had, uh, become better than some other people. Now they looked on Christ's converts, and the leading marks of religion seemed to be absent. They didn't fast. There were no rigorous rules. Instead, there was a heaving and a ferment of joy. What indeed they may have thought, uh, well thought was excitement and spurious emotion. Why don't your disciples fast? Was their question. Now, our Lord was very far from saying that discipline in religion is not necessary. He said quite plainly that the days will come when my disciples will fast. And certainly those days did come. When their experience matured, and when they found out what a tr- a struggle true spiritual experience is. But, said our Lord, though they will presently fast when the need arises, you cannot expect men recently converted, men recently in the first flush of the joy of salvation, you can't expect them to fast. Would you fast, he said, at a wedding breakfast? While the bridegroom is still present? It would be ludicrous. A wedding is an occasion of joy while the bridegroom is present. Nobody would dream of fasting. Even so is it with these men, he said. The bridegroom is still with them, and so long as the bridegroom is with them, you'll not get these men to fast. You notice the terms and figures he used. This experience that these men had gone through, who recently had become his disciples, was, so to speak, as of a woman when she meets her bridegroom. This was a day of joy, a day of gladness, a day when people felt they wanted the joy to be unconfined. Now, said our Lord, I admit to you that their emotion, their joy may seem to be undisciplined, but gentlemen, he said, you wouldn't put new wine into old skins, would you? You must allow this new wine to ferment, to work, to move. You'll not tie down new wine to old, hard, rigid skins that have no room for moving. These men later on, by reason of the opposition they will find when I leave them and ascend to heaven, when the world turns to persecute them, these men will be driven to the sternest of religious disciplines, but for the moment, you must allow their newfound joy to express itself. We do well to listen in. They are sad churches, even in our present day, whose rules are so rigid that they make no allowance for the new joy of a man who, for the first time, has discovered salvation. And they are indeed a sad kind of Christian who have never had that thrilling experience of bringing a fellow man into that joy of personal salvation. And they are pathetic figures indeed, who, while they are exceedingly religious, have never felt within their own breast the true ferment of joy that comes through experiencing true salvation. I suppose it takes somebody who has experienced this to know exactly what our Lord was referring to. But even at this length in time, can we not catch something of the excitement of the first converts to Christianity? Philip, for instance, and Andrew. We hear their excited phrases as they go each on his way to find their nearest relatives with the startling news, we have found the Messiah. These men had suddenly discovered the secret of the ages. They had discovered the Christ who makes sense of history. They had discovered a savior who will make sense of the future. They are to be excused, their excitement may be, as they run off in, in great joy to tell their fellows to come and see. We have found Messiah, they say. Why, if the great and famous scientist was allowed to run out of his bath shouting eureka at having discovered some little detail o- o- of scientific knowledge, may they not be permitted a little excitement? And positive joy and thrills? Who have suddenly discovered the Christ of the ages and found the meaning of life and its purpose. There was Peter, was there not? A man who had suddenly become conscious of his personal sin. Not through some long diatribe at an evangelical meeting. The Savior of men had stepped into his boat, and coming alongside of Christ and measuring himself up with him, Peter had come to this grim experience of conviction of sin, and had been led through that to discover the sheer wine and joy of Christian salvation and the forgiveness of sins. You couldn't blame, could you, the joy that naturally followed that emotional release. There was that woman from Samaria, for instance, who all her life long had dis- had found religion somewhat of a bore, a dry as dust matter of reading ancient books and reciting ancient liturgies. Who discovered what Christ meant when he talked about this gift of God inside one that wells up as a well of fresh and bubbling water that doesn't have to be worked up with discipline, but springs up naturally. You would excuse that woman her excitement, wouldn't you, as she ran off to the village, and caring not so much now what they would say about her and her murky past, turned evangelist and tried to drag the menfolk of the village to come and meet this savior that had satisfied her heart and longings. I suppose it was because the Pharisees had not had any such personal experience in religion at all. That made it so easy for them to criticize Christ's converts. We perhaps today should draw the lesson in our own churches. We shall find that this element of joy, spontaneous joy, is indeed a true element in religion. Way back in the Old Testament, we find King David, do we not, composing and reciting some of his most magnificent psalms as an outburst of joy, and in particular the joy of personal salvation, the experience of forgiveness of sins. Did he not take his harp and strum it in the palace to the, to the words, oh, the blessedness of the man whose sins are forgiven, whose iniquity is covered. And in our own Christian era, not only does the New Testament record that converts found this joy, but down the centuries we've had our hymn writers who have recorded the same. Only to cite Philip Doddridge's delightful expression of personal experience. Oh, happy day that fixed my choice on thee, my savior and my God. Well may my glowing heart rejoice and tell its raptures all abroad. It is a sad man and a sad church, I submit to you, that has so far failed of this experience that Christ came to bring, that he would regard Doddridge's hymn as questionable jargon and doggerel. Now, perhaps the secret of this Christian joy is nowhere more put forward than in our Lord's first and notable miracle. It is a thing to be noticed that, um, when our Lord began his public ministry, he began it not in church, nor even in the synagogue. He did not even begin with a sermon, but we are told he began his public ministry and his first miracle at a wedding feast in a little village called Cana of Galilee. On that occasion, halfway through the wedding feast, the wine ran out, and pedantic s- historians have labored long to find reasons why the wine should run out. They've hazarded the guests that our Lord arrived, uh, uh, bringing a whole host of disciples unexpectedly, and the parents of the bride hadn't made provision enough to this inrush of gatecrashers. Uh, we shall not trouble with their pedantic research. For this, uh, story of a miracle, while it is certainly a miracle, was evidently meant to be a parable. For the wine, not only of weddings, but the wine of a good many other experiences in life does run out. And human relationships that were meant to yield us their pleasant joys do on times break up and sometimes break up altogether. And so often in life men find that the goal they were so enthusiastically chasing, when at last it is almost within their grasp and they have reached it, somehow or other loses its charm. The joy, the wine runs out. Our Lord, so we are told through this miracle and through this parable, restored that joy. It seems to me that this was a deliberately chosen occasion that our Lord should thereby characterize what his whole mission was going to be. His mission would concern itself with this, with human lives that were broken, from which the joy had run out, and his concern would be to bring back that joy and to bring it back in even greater measure than it had been before. This was his mission. Interesting, therefore, is his way of accomplishing this. For as with all the signs recorded by the fourth evangelist, this sign is an enacted parable. In the process of turning that water to wine, we read he took the water pots that were standing there on the perimeter of the room, water pots that had previously been used in the religious service of the Jews. They were there for religious cleansing. It was these water pots he took and ordered them to be filled with water, and then turned that water into wine. His gesture is exceedingly significant. What, at the minimum, he is doing is saying this, that the secret of true joy in life, in its relationships, is that one will put religion, if you will allow me to borrow the term, central. It is from true religion that a man's chiefest joy should spring. It was those religious water pots he took that he might turn water into wine. Now this is, uh, for many people, a startling thing. We commonly don't regard religion as life's chiefest joy. We may regard it, as I have said earlier, as a necessary discipline if we're going to be decent and keep society within bounds. We don't commonly regard it as the source of our chiefest joy. In fact, on times we find religion positively embarrassing. These people had been through the religious ceremonies connected with marriage. They had solemnized, you note the word, they had solemnized the marriage with its religious observances. Now the time for religion was over. They were at the bun feast, the wedding breakfast. Now was the joy. Now bring on the wine. Now let joy be unconfined at the marriage breakfast. They'd done the religious part. Now for the games and the fun and the joy. And it does seem to me that Christ is putting his finger on that very attitude. It ought to be not that religion is the solemn part, and thereafter comes the fun and games and the joy. It ought to be that the religious part is the fountain of the chiefest joy. And then we noticed that those religious pots were there after the manner of the Jews for purifying. They had their ceremonies too, designed to remind us all that we are unclean men and women, that our characters and our consciences are smudged, and that we do need cleansing. Oh, they had their ceremonies that symbolically admitted that fact, but it was all very chill stuff. It wasn't the sort of thing to remind your guests at the wedding breakfast that they needed, uh, cleansing and that they needed personally to get right with God. Was not that very cold water to throw at a banquet? It was precisely that thing, the water pots that were there for cleansing, that our Lord took and turned them to the source of the party's greatest joy. Come, let us put it in modern terms. How would we feel? How would any hostess feel at a wedding breakfast if after the church service were over, one of the guests were to rise to his feet in the middle of the speeches and start to give his personal testimony as to how he had found Christ, how Christ had saved him, how he had found forgiveness of sins, and how this had brought color and joy into his life. Wouldn't, uh, many a hostess be fearfully embarrassed? I think it was Alfred Owen, was it not, that great, uh, uh, business magnate in England, who was converted, uh, as an undergraduate in Cambridge, uh, and has lived long since to demonstrate the reality of that conversion. And, uh, when it came to his twenty first day, uh, first birthday party, went home to his rather palatial home, and presently a suitable occasion presenting itself amongst the festivities, rose to his feet and related to his guests his personal and recent experience, how he had met up with Christ, how he had been converted, and the difference it meant to him, and the joy that it had brought him. And the guests... very soon donned their overcoats and departed. I would like to inquire why it is that we find this personal experience of salvation so positively embarrassing. Perhaps it is in the first place that, uh, naturally we don't like to wear our hearts on our coat sleeves. And then in the second, because to many of us, this business of religion, this business of being saved, if you will, always appears as an achievement, as a religious attainment. We, unbeknown to anybody else, without making a fuss of it, are of course trying to be good and worthy citizens, but we don't boast about our attainments. And when one of our friends come along, comes along and merrily and obscenely begins to talk about his joy of being saved, we take it hard. We feel the fellow is showing off. He's boasting of being superior to us lesser mortals. And of course, we, we don't like, uh, the thing that he implies that he's better than we are. But then, if that is the reason, we thereby show, do we not, that we have got altogether the wrong hang of Christianity. Of course, if salvation is an achievement to which I attain by my strenuous religious discipline, then I could well take it hard that the other man says he's arrived when I haven't arrived. But then Christianity says the very opposite. Christianity says that salvation is not something that we arrive at by a stern discipline. It is a gift. It is a life that is given to us. By grace are we saved, says the Bible, and that by faith, and not of works, lest any man should boast. The claim to have received salvation in this sense is not a boast. It is the very opposite. It is the admission of personal inadequacy and bankruptcy, if you like. But it is a claim to has discovered that Jesus Christ came among men to give men something. Would you take it hard if your brother runs downstairs on Christmas morning, shouting at the top of his voice with glee at the Christmas present that he's just unwrapped and parading it all around and saying, you know, that's just what I wanted, what a lucky fellow I am. I have it. Of course not. It is a gift, isn't it? He's not boasting that he's better than you, merely giving vent to his feelings of gratitude that such a remarkable gift has been given him. But then, of course, there are deeper reasons. We do find, commonly find this matter of cleansing in religion, this matter of the need of being cleansed and forgiven. We do find it chilly stuff, cold, chilly water. And so often we find religion likewise from beginning to end, for the very clear reason. How will a man whose conscience is not at rest, how will a man who is not certain where he stands with his God, how will that man find God enjoyable? He may respect him. He may pay his spiritual rates and taxes. But a man who is not certain that God has accepted him, a man who lives with a conscience that fears one of these days God may ultimately reject him, and reject him permanently, how can that man find religion a joy of heart and a gladness of spirit? Spirit. Indeed, the opposite. Very often he finds that the very mention of religion, and particularly of personal religion, merely probes that already uneasy conscience and casts a gray cloud over an otherwise sunny day. I submit to you, therefore, that our Lord has put his finger right upon the spot. We do not find religion enjoyable because somewhere or other we have not understood this matter of personal cleansing. And is it not likewise true that our joys in life run out because of the quirks of our character? Our little envyings, our little spites, our little revenges, our hidden neuroses maybe that we inflict upon our friends until our relationships are strained. Thus it is that the joy of many a marriage runs out, and many another relationship. If, therefore, we are to find religion enjoyable, I submit we must face this matter of personal cleansing and what Christ has to say, and discover how personal salvation be- can begin to affect one's personal relationships. Christ turns this matter of cleansing, the water of cleansing, into the wine of enjoyment. First of all, in this respect, that he tells us that he has not come to criticize us, he has not come to judge us. He has not come to find fault with us, and in the first place, he hasn't particularly come in order to preach us some moral sermons. He has come, he informs us, to die for us, that through his sacrifice he might offer men God's complete forgiveness. And to offer them that forgiveness here and now in this life, unreserved, so that they might discover that God has accepted them as they are and never will reject them. He comes, in a word, to offer men forgiveness. It was this that sent the early Christian missionaries trotting around the Roman Empire, wasn't it? This was the burden of their theme. They very often didn't stop to preach long diatribes against sin to their fellow men, for most of their fellow men knew that they were sinners. What they did preach was this, we have found God's Christ, he has died for us, has risen again, and God has commanded us to tell the people that in his name they may receive absolute forgiveness of sins. It was the message that God loves us while we are yet sinners, and that God can receive us as we are, and before we improve, and apart from our spiritual disciplines, just as we are, that God can receive us just like that, as we are, and because and on the ground of Christ's sacrifice, grant us his acceptance, unconditional and unreserved. And independent of our subsequent strivings. When a man grasps that, it begins to set loose the wells of joy within him. To know that I am accepted with God. That I am personally forgiven. To know it. To be assured from the Savior himself that because of his sacrifice, I shall never come into judgment. To know that Christ's sacrifice has cleansed my guilt, and that God can receive me in all realism, though I am still a sinner. And to be sure that God so loves me, and Christ has in that sense so died for me, that I shall never be rejected. To know, therefore, that God's love of me does not even depend on my spiritual progress, but I am accepted with God and will ever remain accepted. This it is that when men first discover it, sets their hearts aflame with joy. Oh, the blessedness, says Paul the Apostle, as he re-echoes the discovery that King David made. Oh, the blessedness of the man to whom God never will impute his sin, the man that has found forgiveness. And this is important. For so many people hold out to your sinner that God will eventually accept him if he comes up to a certain percentage of good behavior. The man having made his best effort to come up to that certain percentage and have- having continually failed, of course, is not likely to find religion particularly enjoyable. It is but a constant reminder of his failure. The man who has discovered God's love in Christ has discovered a love that is bigger than all his failure. A love that has underwritten all his mistakes. A love that is prepared to receive him now and guarantee it will never reject him. And yet, at the same time, it is a love that, uh, will not rest content until that man's character has been perfected. And hence our Lord's choosing of this happy day of a wedding, it seems to me, was not by mistake. For a New Testament comment subsequently made by Paul runs like this, that Christ too loved his church like a man loves his wife, and gave himself for her that he might cleanse her by the washing of water through the word, that he might eventually present his church to himself, an all glorious thing, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing. But when a man finds Christ like this and finds God's love surrounding him and knows he is received by God and will never be cast out, he begins to set that man free in God's presence. It begins to give him the courage to turn around and face himself. Now, whatever he discovers in his character, now whatever emerges from the dark depths of his past, now whatever perversities and whatever twists he finds, now however strong are his perverse habits, he's no longer afraid to face them. For he knows that God's love does not depend on them or on overcoming them. God has loved him in Christ, and knowing all about them has loved him still, and knowing all about them has forgiven him still, and has forgiven him freely and for nothing. Moreover, it is not merely a forgiveness that, um, does away with the gloom of the past, that removes skeletons from the cupboard. It is a, a forgiveness that casts its joyous beams on towards the future. Let me remind you of that other occasion that the historians record as being an occasion of particular joy, and a thing over which Christ bade his disciples that they were to rejoice. I refer to the occasion recorded by Luke the historian, when the disciples had come back from their first mission. With busy zeal, they had gone out and, um, evangelized the district for Christ. They had cast out their demons, they had performed their miracles, they had preached their sermons, and they came back with great, uh, enthusiasm, telling the Lord of all that they had done. And our Lord naturally understood their joy and their gladness in his service. But presently he said, gentlemen, now in this rejoice not so much, that the demons are subject to you, that you've had some su- some success in your mission. In this rejoice supremely and above all, that your names are written in heaven. The phrase is interesting. Your names are enrolled, we might, uh, paraphrase it, in the citizen lists of heaven. In this rejoice. For it's spelled out in the first place that there is a future. That God has his program. That God has a citizen body of redeemed people with which he is to people the age to come. And these men were bidden to rejoice because that here on earth, they had discovered this future, and they were utterly certain of participation in the glorious schemes that lay ahead. Your names are written in heaven. Our joy in this life may be to the full, but let a man have no certainty with regard to the life to come. Then some of the lustre eventually dies away from his joy. And the more he has enjoyed this life, the more will he feel it. I know it is all right to talk with the ancient pagans that when we have had our fill of life, we ought gracefully to retire from the banquets and let other generations come to the table. It sounds good in theory, doesn't it? But retiring from life is one thing, being eaten to death by cancer is another. And how many people are there that have had so much as their fill of this life anyway? Life has an unhappy way of introducing us early to its pains and its sufferings and its frustrations. And when we see with what life could be, if only... if only it were not for human pig-headedness and stupidity, if only it were not for disease, if only it were not for sin, if only it were not for my own twisted character, when I see what life could be, then the idea that this majestic thing must end solely in worms and the grave, this is a depressing thought. This surely would be supreme among the joys of life. If a man could be sure that there was a life to come. If he could be sure that there was some scheme worthy of all his powers and ambitions in the life to come. If there were indeed a divine program that would make this life meaningful, whether joy or gay, as a stepping stone, as a preparatory school, as the lessons that should qualify us for the subsequent enjoyment. In this rejoice, said our Lord, in that you know there is such a future, and that you know that your part therein is guaranteed, that your names are written in heaven. Again, we catch the certainty of our Lord's phrase. It's a phrase that you will find echoed and echoed again throughout the epistles and the later books of the New Testament. It did turn out to be one of the early Christians' chiefest joys. Paul, writing, uh, from prison to some of his converts in the church at Philippi, mentions it in en passant, so to speak, as one of those lovely things that all Christians do enjoy. Talking of some of his fellow workers, he says, their names are written in heaven. The Christian church, in the midst of its persecutions under Nero and subsequently, comforted them themselves with this consideration that their names were written in the Lamb's book of life. And it will not escape us that these early Christians knew their names were so written. The future not only held out joy, it held out no or ultimate terror. They looked with calmness at the prospect of the final great assize. For they were taught that at that final assize, the thing that shall determine a man's destiny is simply this: whether or not his name is written in the Lamb's Book of Life. And they had been told that they could know it here on earth, that their names were so written in that Lamb's Book of Life. And the certainty went back to our Lord. It was our Lord himself who told us that a man could be utterly certain in this life that his name is in that Lamb's Book of Life. Therefore, the future held no terror for them, but rather joy. And it was a certainty and a joy that gave meaning not only to the joys of this life, but gave meaning to its sorrows too. For if there be an eternity of glorious achievement and adventure with God, if there be, um, a destiny worthy of God for redeemed humanity, then even life's pains were worth enduring en route. And if, in the good hand of God, those pains could be turned to the teaching us valuable lessons and the to the development of our characters, then might we not even find cause for thankful rejoicing in our pains. But it follows, of course, that if a man lacks this certainty, if a man's religion amounts to little more than that he is trying to discipline himself but has no certainty of the ultimate outcome, how would you expect that man to find religion positively joyful? We might ask ourselves then, in closing, why it was that our Lord's contemporaries missed, and seemingly some of them deliberately missed this joyful side of the religion that Christ brought them. I would like to, uh, answer the question by referring to one other occasion in which our Lord described his ministry as a thing of joy. You will remember his conversation with the Pharisees, for instance, when he likened himself to, uh, to the, when he likened them to children sitting in the marketplace, crying to their fellows and saying to them, we piped unto you, and ye have not danced. We mourned unto you, and you have not wept. He said, John came unto you preaching his stern gospel of repentance and hellfire, and you didn't like that. I came a- a- along with my delightful message of God's love and forgiveness, and you didn't like that either. How strange it was. Christ was liking him, likening himself, therefore, to the piping and the dancing. A lovely description of our Lord's ministry. He came with a message of forgiveness so full, so frank, so free. It was like the pipings of children for sheer joie de vivre. Their fun and games in the marketplace, children upon whose shoulders the cares of life have not yet begun to descend. That's what Christ's gospel was like, a sheer thing of joy. And I came piping you this glad message of God's forgiveness and the gift of eternal life and the certainty of God's acceptance and the glory and majesty of the destiny of the redeemed. You didn't want it? Why didn't you want it? The question is relevant even now. Why is it that so much religion still will not have it that a man can be certain that his sins are forgiven? Will not have it that a man can be certain that he is right with God. Will not have it that a man can be certain of God's heaven. Why is it that so much religion still denies that basic fountain of Christian joy? Perhaps the answer is now as it was then. These Pharisees could not altogether see that they had any need of such salvation. Had they not as infants been along to the temple? Hadn't they been circumcised at eight days old? Hadn't they been dedicated and their lives dedicated to God according to their Jewish religion? Hadn't they since then been moderately decent? They rejected, of course, the implications of John's preaching that they too, along with the prostitute, needed to repent and be saved. They would have admitted to you an odd peccadillo here or there, but surely nothing serious enough to warrant God's wrath. And therefore not granting the first thing. They saw no need for the second. For the gift of personal salvation and eternal life. And saying no need for it, they missed its joy, they missed its gladness, and were content with the round of religious discipline. In Christ's estimation, for all their excellent self-discipline, they had but the shell of true religion without its life. They had its external form. They had missed the fountain of its true joy.