First of all, I’m happy to be back. I know some people even missed me, because they came and told me. Well, I feel very much part of you. Tom Robertson was telling me I’m coming to look more like a Richmond knight. I’ve got a blue blazer and charcoal-gray slacks. Oh, I’m feeling more at home.
Let’s read a few Scriptures here.
John, the Gospel of John, chapter 15 and verse 11. John 15:11. Jesus is speaking:
These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.
Then, in John 16:20, Jesus is also speaking to the disciples. This is before His passion, and He is talking to them. They are worried about things; they are not understanding Him. He is saying that He is going to go somewhere where they cannot come, and they are not understanding this. So He says to them:
Verily, verily, I say unto you, that ye shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice:
Ye shall be sorrowful, but your sorrow shall be turned into joy.
A woman when she is in travail hath sorrow, because her hour is come:
But when she is delivered of the child, she remembereth no more the anguish, for the joy that a man is born into the world.
Therefore ye now have sorrow:
But I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no one taketh away from you.
Then Psalm 13:5:
But I have trusted in Thy lovingkindness;
My heart shall rejoice in Thy salvation.
I will sing unto the Lord,
Because He hath dealt bountifully with me.
And then, in Psalm 14:7, just one little phrase: “Let Jacob rejoice.”
Heavenly Father, I am so grateful that I do not have to worry about myself, that You have taken care of all that, and that I have been hidden in You. I thank You, Lord, that those of us who have called on Your name, You have redeemed. We stand here holy and blameless.
Now, Father, I come to You because I am asking that You will take Your Word and make it life and reality to us. Lord, that the words that are in the letters that we read will have Your breath upon them, and in them will have the life of God that will be able to encourage us and sustain us, Lord, for the days ahead. In Jesus’ name.
I am not going to talk out of the Gospel of John, nor out of the Psalms. I want to speak the next few times, if the Lord will let me, out of the book of Philippians.
When summer ended and Jerry asked me, “Will you be ready after the conference?” I started thinking, “Lord, what would You have me look at?” And He brought me to the book of Philippians.
Philippians is a wonderful book. I am not going to give a verse-by-verse exposition, because I am not that gifted. But I do want to share with you some of the things the Lord has been showing me out of this book, and the lessons He has for saints, for believers, out of the book of Philippians.
I am not going to give you an introduction that tells you how the church of Philippi was started and things like that. But I just want to give a couple of things in preface to looking into the book of Philippians.
First of all, it is a very unusual letter in the sense that it does not have a real teaching form, because it was written out of affection. A lot of commentators say it is a love letter. So it does not follow a business-letter form.
For example, if you look in the epistles of Romans and Galatians, where Paul has a treatise to teach the people, he goes about it in a certain way—a very logical way of doing things. Philippians is not written that way. That is not to say there are not things in it that are deeply spiritual, but it is just not written in the way of, “I am trying to teach you this.” It comes out of his affection for these people.
Another thing about this letter to the Philippians is that there is really no correction in it. He is not correcting anybody.
And, in the same spirit, I do not want you to think that things I might say, things the Lord has shown me in looking at it, are intended to correct you. I have no desire to do that, nor do I think it is my place. I am simply saying, “This is what the Lord was giving to these people.” If it has a place for us, then let us find it and let us take it in.
With that, I want to read a few verses from Philippians 1.
Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus that are at Philippi, with the bishops and deacons:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I thank my God upon all my remembrance of you,
Always in every supplication of mine on behalf of you all making my supplication with joy,
For your fellowship in furtherance of the gospel from the first day until now;
Being confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ:
Even as it is right for me to be thus minded on behalf of you all, because I have you in my heart, inasmuch as, both in my bonds and in the defence and confirmation of the gospel, ye all are partakers with me of grace.
For God is my witness, how I long after you all in the tender mercies of Christ Jesus.
Then verse 12:
Now I would have you know, brethren, that the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the progress of the gospel;
So that my bonds became manifest in Christ throughout the whole praetorian guard, and to all the rest;
And that most of the brethren in the Lord, being confident through my bonds, are more abundantly bold to speak the Word of God without fear.
The whole tenor of the book of Philippians has a few themes running through it. The theme that I want to concentrate on today is this theme of rejoicing, or joy.
Paul uses the word rejoice, or rejoicing, at least ten times. If you add joy into it, it is used even more times. It is used more in this book than, I believe, in any of the other epistles he wrote.
What we want to see is that it is God’s will for us to rejoice. I am not talking about being giddy little people. What I am talking about is that we are to be ones who exhibit joy.
Joy is not just happiness, not just a feeling that we are glad. Joy is a deep sense of satisfaction and contentment. That is what we are to exhibit.
When we are born again, I think one of the first things we experience is joy. I remember, and I am sure you remember, when you first got saved—the joy of the Lord, how it made everything different, how it made the way you looked at things different.
We come into this relationship with God in joy. That is part of it. You might have anguish getting there, but once born, there is joy.
The door of this joy is right here in Philippians 1:2, where it says, “Grace to you, and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” This is the door to our joy.
Sometimes, when you look at people—especially little kids—you can see joy. But as we go on as Christians, and we go through battles and things like that, we kind of lose joy. The Lord is saying, “I want you to have My joy.”
Part of it comes right here. The door to it is just standing in the grace and the peace that come from God the Father and Jesus Christ His Son.
If we look at grace, it is the unmerited favor of the Lord. It is things that we do not deserve. But grace also has in it a beauty, and a joy that comes from relationship—the joy of knowing God as Father.
Peace actually has in it the idea that it comes from being reconciled. So, to start off, if you want the joy of the Lord in your life, you have to start off at the door and realize that you have been reconciled.
I mean, we know this and things like that, but to stand in it and believe it—that is the door to joy.
One of the things that I have found really tough in my life, something I look at and say, “This is not right,” is the way I approach the Lord’s table.
The Lord’s table is to be a time of joy. It is not to be a place to do laundry. You know what I mean?
I think sometimes, if you are like me, you do this: you get busy in the week, and when it comes to preparing for the Lord’s table, you wait until you come and sit down here. Then you start looking back and going, “How can I worship?”
But when Moses led the people to Mount Sinai, and he was going to present them to the Lord, the Lord gave him some instructions. In Exodus 19:10-11, I think, the Lord says, “Have these people, before they come and meet Me, sanctify themselves. Have them go out and wash their clothes, so that on the third day they can come out to Me.”
The best times I have had at the Lord’s table are when I have prepared for it—when I have washed my clothes. The time to wash clothes is not that day.
Mothers of large families—oh, Lord. I came from a family of six. Last night was Saturday night. You know why? Because the next day was church. What wisdom!
If my mom had waited until Sunday morning to say, “Okay, let’s get in the bathtub,” no way. No way. She would have had her hands full. She could not have enjoyed the service at all.
That is sometimes how it is with us. We cannot enjoy the service because we have come to the door with our laundry. Actually, we should not be there with our laundry. The laundry should be at home. The laundry should already be taken care of.
So we come to this door, and we enter in. It is there that we find the beginnings of joy, because we realize that all that has been dirty for us has been taken care of.
When we come here on Sunday mornings, it is not to say, “Oh, I’m such a wretch.” It is to say, “Oh, Lord, You are so wonderful. I can come and step into Your presence now, and I do not even have to worry about what You think of me, because I know what You think of me already.”
I have been in Your presence, and I am coming here to rejoice in Who You are and what You have done—not to grovel at Your feet. Not to say, “Oh, I’m such a wretch. You should not have anything to do with me,” but just to thank You.
That should be the beginning of every day, because we are to be people of joy. People are supposed to see joy in us.
What person wants to have a god who makes his people grovel? I would not want to be like that. I do not think so.
But you know what people like most? When they see rest and peace in people. When they see joy in people. That is what turns people on.
I remember when I was in college. I would just be walking back to my dorm, and I had this Muslim guy come up to me. It led into sharing the Lord. But he said, “Why are you always so peaceful? I’ve been watching you walk for days. What is with it?”
He would not have said that if I had been groveling. He would have said, “What are you groveling for? What is the matter with you?” But instead, it was, “What have you got? I want some of that.”
The Lord says, “Rejoice. I want you to rejoice because you have been reconciled. You have reason to rejoice. You have every reason to rejoice, because I have let you into My presence, and I find nothing against you because of what My Son has done.”
So first, the door to rejoicing is grace and peace.
Secondly, I want to look at another verse. We have another reason to rejoice besides being reconciled. Let us look at Philippians 1:6. Paul says:
Being confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ.
I know we all have that as a little promise, and we keep that tucked away, but let us look at this. This is a reason to rejoice.
A lot of times we look for reasons not to rejoice. “Well, I cannot rejoice because of this.” We look at this verse, and instead of saying, “The Lord is going to finish,” we say, “Man, Lord, I do not see how You are going to do this.”
We start looking at the materials He has to work with. Then you start picking, picking, and the enemy comes in. He likes to help you pick. “Yeah, look at that. Yeah, look at that. You’ve got knots in you. You’ve got splinters and things like that.”
But the thing is, you have your eyes in the wrong place. It says, “He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.”
He began a work in us when He redeemed us. He has begun something, and the end of that is stated in 1 John 3:2:
Beloved, now are we children of God, and it is not yet made manifest what we shall be.
We know that, if He shall be manifested, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him even as He is.
The end of it is that we are going to be like Jesus. This does not mean that we are going to have long hair and beards, okay? It means that we are going to be conformed into the image of the glory of His humanity.
Not the humanity that He had on earth, but the humanity with which He sits on the throne before God right now. We are going to be transformed into that. We are to look to that finished work.
When we talk about the finished work of Christ, we think it means that He died, bore our sins, and was raised from the dead; therefore, our sins are taken care of. Brothers and sisters, you have left something out.
The finished work of Christ is that we have all been glorified. That is the finished work. We can look to the finished work that redeemed us, but the finish of that whole redemptive process is that we are like Him.
When we look at that, we can say, “Well, who can do this?” Well, that puts you on good ground. Let us look at Acts 20 for a moment.
Paul has just been saying to the Ephesian elders, “It is going to be rough now. There are wolves coming in, and all these things are going to happen. You are not going to see me again.” It seems like he is abandoning ship. You might think he should say, “Well, I’m going to come to you as soon as I can.” But he does not say that.
Look at Acts 20:32. After saying all these things that are going to happen, he says:
And now I commend you to God, and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up, and to give you the inheritance among all them that are sanctified.
Instead of saying, “I am going to be back to build you up, and I am going to preach more,” he says, “I commend you to God. I am giving you to God.”
For some of us, that might leave us asking, “What do I do?” Well, you look to God. He puts us in the hands of the Almighty—the One who is able to do all these things. He who began the work, being God, will perfect it. He is the One who is going to perfect it. I cannot help you be perfected. He is going to do it.
And it does not matter what material you bring to Him. Moses brought to God a stammering tongue and a dead piece of wood, and yet he was the deliverer of Israel. It is an amazing thing.
The Philippians, as a group of people, were not the elite or the rich. They were poor. When Paul talks about giving in 2 Corinthians, he talks about people from Macedonia giving out of their poverty. So these were poor people.
As far as the material God was working with, it was poor. He did not have the most intelligent. He did not have those who were rich and mighty. He had poor people. He had the lumber that everybody throws away.
Yet Paul says, “I commend you to God.” He takes you and gives you to God. Then God does something:
I commend you to God, and to the word of His grace, which is able to build you up and give you an inheritance among all those who are sanctified.
Let us look at this word of grace. We talked about grace as unmerited love, but it is also enablement.
When the Lord told Paul, “My grace is sufficient for thee,” He was not just saying, “My unmerited favor is sufficient for you.” Paul was saying, “Lord, I have got this thorn in the flesh. What are You going to do?” And the Lord said, “I am going to enable you.”
“But take it away.” “No, no, no. I am going to enable you.” That is why Paul said His grace is sufficient. He is able to enable me.
How is He able to enable us? Let us look at 2 Peter 1, starting with verse 2:
Grace to you and peace be multiplied in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord;
Seeing that His divine power hath granted unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of Him that called us by His own glory and virtue;
Whereby He hath granted unto us His precious and exceeding great promises; that through these ye may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped from the corruption that is in the world by lust.
Whoa. In this Word that He has for us, we have exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these we may be partakers of the divine nature. Is that not the end—that we have the glorified humanity of Christ? We have these promises that we might be partakers.
In 1 Thessalonians 2:13, it says:
And for this cause we also thank God without ceasing, that, when ye received from us the word of the message, even the word of God, ye accepted it not as the word of men, but, as it is in truth, the word of God, which also worketh in you that believe.
Then, back in Philippians 2:13:
For it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for His good pleasure.
We have reason to rejoice because He is working in us.
Now, do not think that this means, “He is working—oh, relax.” It is not like the old time-release pill commercials. You take the pill, and little things go down, and one is working now; when your headache starts coming back, another one pops up and works. All you have to do is take the pill, and it is done.
That is not the way God works. God does not just let us slide into things because it says He is working in you. If He is working in us, we also have to be cooperating with Him. So there is a cooperation factor.
It is a matter of faith. This becoming made into His likeness is a matter of faith.
What I mean by faith is this: faith is a positive response to God’s Word to you. It may be a word you get from the Scriptures as you are reading. It may be something you hear in a message, and you say, “That’s for me.” Or somebody may be sharing something with you, and the Lord speaks to you and says, “That’s for me.”
Now you have to respond. It is not just a response; it is a positive response that says, “I am taking that, and I am going with it.”
It is not just mental assent—saying, “Oh yeah, that’s true. Oh yeah, I believe that.” That is not what faith is. James says about the devils, “Yeah, they believe in God. They tremble.”
For us, it is to take what God tells us and say, “Okay, I am going to step on it. I am going to see where this is going,” because we have to cooperate with Him.
It says the Word works effectively. If you do not cooperate, it can effectively work, but it is just going to sit there. When you are cooperating, it works. You have to cooperate. You have to be with Him.
That is not to say that God is going to say, “Well, you did not cooperate this time. I am not going to do it.” God is always after us. God is always trying to say, “If you do this, if you will believe Me in this situation…”
Another thing about faith: God never discourages faith. Look in the Bible at places where people had to exercise faith, and you see that God never discourages it.
I think one of the most amazing things about that is when Peter walked on water. When Peter says, “If that is You, command me to come unto Thee,” he was not saying, “Perform a trick, Jesus.” He was saying, “I have seen something in You. If You are this One that You say You are, then You have the power to do this, and I will stake my life on it.”
Jesus did not say, “Peter, come on. Look at the physics of these things. You weigh more than water, and you are going to sink.” He said, “Come on out.” Is that not an amazing thing?
It is the same with us. We look at ourselves and say, “Oh, this is just poor material.” He says, “Come on. Come on. Let Me show you what I am able to do.”
It says He will perfect you until the day of Christ Jesus. So the question is, how long is He going to put up with you? How long is He going to try to build you? Until the day of Christ Jesus. So He never gives up.
There are little projects you guys do in your garage—or you ladies may have a room or something you are doing. You have a room of unfinished ones. You have things that, when you look at them, you say, “I’m just throwing this away.”
I do not anymore, because I threw them away. But God does not throw them away. He says, “Okay, I have to wait a little while,” and He comes back and starts to fiddle with them again, because He is a master builder.
He is able to take these things. He is able to do things with them that we cannot do. We cannot do it ourselves. He will continue doing it until the day of Christ Jesus.
Look at Jacob. You can see God working in Jacob’s life all the way up to the end. You can see how Jacob is a blow-it. He does things, runs off on his own, and God brings him back. He runs off, God brings him back, and he runs off again.
Finally, the one who wanted the blessing—the one who strove so hard and connived to get the blessing—turns out to be the one God wants, blessing others instead of trying to grab someone else’s blessing. God continued with him.
Another example, from more recent times: most of you saw John Engles if you went to the conference. He went to a fellowship that later became the fellowship I was in in California.
One of the fellows there—this guy is in his seventies now, and I am not going to give his name because, if he ever hears this, I do not want him to get puffed up—felt that he was going to be a teacher of the Word. It never panned out.
I remember, as a young Christian there, he got disgruntled and left. People did not think much about him, because he was just a disgruntled guy. But about eight years ago, he came back.
He had come back a couple of other times, but this time he came back to stay. There was such a change in this man—an accepting of his place, an encouragement that came out of him that was just wonderful.
That is just to say that God did not throw the guy away and say, “This is just a disgruntled man.” God said, “No, no, no. I have got things to do.” He brought him back and let us see. It was like Him saying, “You see what I can do, even when you are old.”
He is able to complete the work He has begun. We should be rejoicing in that. Even though we do not see it happening in us, He is working. He is working.
I also want to say that this is corporately speaking. The Lord is making a corporate expression of Himself and the Spirit in each fellowship that is around, even for us. He is conforming us into that image—that spiritual image He wants the world to see.
As a corporate people, we also know that He will not leave His work. He has begun a good work. He has begun it. He will complete it. He is not going to leave it.
A third thing about rejoicing: if we look at Philippians 1:8, it says:
For God is my witness, how I long after you all in the tender mercies of Christ Jesus.
A lot of times we do not rejoice because we do not understand the love of Jesus Christ for us. It says here that it is affection.
It is not a cold love that just picks you up and says, “I love you; therefore, I will put up with you.” It is an affection.
You know what affection is? Affection is wanting to be with a person, wanting to touch them. It is having feelings for that person.
Whether it is a young child—you all know, if you have young children or older children, how you have affection for them—it is not simply, “Well, I love you; that is why I discipline you.”
I think that is sometimes how we look at the love of God. But the love of God is like Jesus when He said, “With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you.” It is, “I just want to be with you, because I love you.”
The Greek word is bowels. Of course, that does not sound too good, does it? All your insides. But that is what it means: the seat of my emotion.
The seat of My emotion is, “I love you with that. You register to Me. I will let you lean on My breast because I have affection for you. I will tell you when you are wrong because I have affection for you. I will pick you up when you are down because I have affection for you.”
He has affection for us. And it really was not Paul’s nature. This was not Paul merely saying, “Hey, you Philippian guys, I just really love you guys.” In Paul’s natural nature, he could not love these Philippians, because for the most part they were Gentiles, and he was a Pharisee.
A Pharisee looked at Gentiles as dogs—unclean. Further than that, the people in Philippi were a Roman colony. Most of these people were Roman citizens, and Rome was their enemy. So this was not a natural affection.
Neither is Jesus’ affection for us a natural affection. It is a supernatural affection. It is agape. Love is not deserved, but it is lavished on us.
This affection is what moved Him, while we were yet sinners, while we were yet enemies, to die for us. It is an amazing thing.
He wants us to be loved by Him in that way. We should rejoice that He loves us in that way, and pray that the love He has for us would so possess us and transform us that it would be able to go through us to others, whether they be saints or sinners.
We should rejoice in that. Rejoice in His love.
Finally, in Philippians 1:12-14, Paul says:
Now I would have you know, brethren, that the things which happened unto me have fallen out rather unto the progress of the gospel;
So that my bonds became manifest in Christ throughout the whole praetorian guard, and to all the rest;
And that most of the brethren in the Lord, being confident through my bonds, are more abundantly bold to speak the Word of God without fear.
We are to rejoice that God knows what He is doing in fulfilling His purpose. The reason we do not rejoice is because we look at our bonds. We focus on our bonds.
But that is not the case for Paul. He says, “I have got these bonds on, but God is working.”
I would be pretty frustrated if the Lord told me, “I am going to put you before people. You are going to share this,” and then He locked me up in prison. “How can I go on like that?” But the Lord had Paul in such a way that, for his first few years of imprisonment, he was free enough that people came to him.
Bonds are things that impede your progress, or they are a disability. We are not to rejoice in our bonds. Let me read a couple of verses and give you the right slant on them.
James 1:2-4:
Count it all joy, my brethren, when ye fall into manifold temptations;
Knowing that the proving of your faith worketh patience.
And let patience have its perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, lacking in nothing.
And 1 Peter 1:6:
Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, ye have been put to grief in manifold trials.
The object of rejoicing here is not the trial. Those of us who rejoice in trials—there is really something wrong with us, okay? None of us really like trials. They hurt. They strain us. We want to be free from them.
But the rejoicing is in what the trials are going to do. It is the hope, the expectation, that God is taking me through this, that He is doing something in me or for others.
Our circumstances are not just for us only, or for the others who are in the circumstance around us or with us.
In James, what are you rejoicing in? “Count it all joy” about trials, knowing that I am being tested and that the test is going to work out in patience, and patience is going to have its perfect work. I am going to be conformed to the image of Christ.
Or, in 1 Peter, what do you rejoice in? You have to read verses 3 through 5, where it talks about our being begotten again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled, that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by His power through faith.
That is what you are rejoicing in. If I have to go through these trials, I rejoice because of the reality that is going to be brought through them. “For the joy that was set before Him endured.” Those are the same.
Some things work out to the furtherance of the gospel. Look at Paul and Silas. The first time they were in bonds at Philippi, they had cast out a demon. In Acts 16, they are beaten for freeing a girl from demon possession, and they are thrown in jail. Their feet are fastened in stocks.
What do you find them doing? Singing hymns. That is an amazing thing, is it not?
Why? Because they know that this is not the thing that is against them, but something greater is for them. They know that the ministry of God is going to come out of this, because the jailer becomes converted, and these people become the hub of the church in Philippi.
Another person: let us look at Luke 7:17-23. You do not have to turn there. I am just going to read it to you. It is John the Baptist.
And this report concerning Him went forth in the whole of Judaea, and all the region round about.
And the disciples of John told him of all these things.
And John calling unto him two of his disciples sent them to the Lord, saying, Art Thou He that cometh, or look we for another?
And when the men were come unto Him, they said, John the Baptist hath sent us unto Thee, saying, Art Thou He that cometh, or look we for another?
In that hour He cured many of diseases and plagues and evil spirits; and on many that were blind He bestowed sight.
And He answered and said unto them, Go and tell John the things which ye have seen and heard; the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the poor have good tidings preached to them.
And blessed is he, whosoever shall find no occasion of stumbling in Me.
Now, where is John at this time? He is in prison.
John the Baptist had a wonderful revelation. If you read John 3, after the story of Nicodemus, John’s disciples come to him and say, “Jesus is baptizing, and more people are going to Him.” John says, “He is the bridegroom.” Then he says, “He must increase, but I must decrease.”
He had this revelation, and then he gets thrown into prison. I really do think John was disillusioned. A lot of people say, “No, he was just trying to get his disciples to go after Jesus.” No, I think John was disillusioned.
I think he thought, “If this is the One, why is He leaving me in prison? I should be out there preaching the gospel for Him.”
Jesus was saying, “John, I have you there because I am the greater light. The gospel is still being preached. These things are still happening. But you are right: I have to increase, and you have to decrease.”
Sometimes our circumstances are for that. But they further the gospel.
Let me share one of my experiences. I taught at a private school for my first eight years. Then I had to go to public school because we had had our first child and were expecting another. I had to get a job without a teaching credential, so I got an emergency credential.
The school I got was an alternative education school. It was where all the kids who were behavior problems, who were kicked out of the classroom, were given to me for three hours. I had sixteen of them. The girls were the worst. I am sorry, ladies are the worst.
Another Christian brother had the first class. He had sixteen others in the morning from nine to twelve, and I had another group of kids from twelve to three.
I remember he and I would cry. Actually, here I am, thirty years old, and we are crying. You are laughing, but we were crying. “This job stinks, Lord. Why am I here? This just really stinks.”
This brother said, “You know, I wonder if the Lord has something for us in this.” I said, “Nah, I don’t think so. Look at these kids.” But we started praying, “Lord, I really want to get out of here, but if You have got something in this, do something.”
There were a couple of things the Lord did, but I just want to share one. The kids would ask me questions about morality and things, and I would always say, “Well, you know, in the Bible it says…” Pretty soon it became a joke: “Oh yeah, he’ll tell us about it.”
One day, I just had the boys there. There were about eight boys, and I think we were doing math. We were doing fractions, and for some of these kids, fractions were rocket science.
They got tired of it and said, “You know, Mr. B, why don’t you tell us about God?” Right out of the blue. “Yeah, we’re tired of this. You can always talk. Tell us about God.”
I looked up and said, “Well, it’s wonderful.” Then, a couple of days later, we had this one guy, Caesar Reyes. I pray—I hope he is not dead by now. He was a gangbanger.
He was always acting tough. He was a problem. One day I called his mom in, and she came in and said, “I don’t know what to do.” I said, “You know, I don’t either. You want to pray?” She said, “Yeah.”
So we prayed. Then Caesar came in, and Caesar was saying, “Don’t be doing that. No, don’t be doing that.” But we just went on and prayed. Some of his attitude—his whole attitude—changed. Isn’t that weird?
But that is the thing. We might look at the circumstances, but it is for the furtherance. We should be rejoicing. God is able to take what is out before us and use it.
These bonds, which we might see as impediments or disabilities, might be able to be transformed into a yoke.
A bond is something that keeps you from moving around. Do you know what a yoke is? A yoke is something that joins you. It joins you together, and you begin to serve as a couple, co-working.
When Jesus says, “Take My yoke upon you,” He says, “Come alongside Me.” It brings about a sharing of that burden, for He is taking the brunt of that burden, and you can sense that.
The other thing is that it also speaks of submission. You have to submit to that. You have to say, “Okay, Lord, these are the circumstances You have for me. I will bow the knee. But in bowing the knee, I will give You the breath.”
That is wonderful. If these things are going to be turned into a yoke, you cannot be offended. If you are offended, your bonds will be just that—bonds. But if you are not offended, it can become a yoke.
I will end with this. The last verse that I read out of Psalms was, “Let Jacob rejoice.”
Jacob is an unfinished product. Jacob was supposed to be Israel, right? The Lord says, “You are no longer Jacob, but Israel,” but he always slips back into Jacob. Jacob is an unfinished product.
But God says, “Let Jacob rejoice.” Israel can be glad, because Israel is the finished product, right? He can be glad: “Lord, the work is done. This is wonderful.” But it says, “Let Jacob rejoice.”
What that means is just that this unfinished work, this one that has so much lacking, that has so many problems—let him rejoice.
Let him rejoice because he sees the finished work. He sees what God is going to do, and he believes in it.
He says, “I believe not just that God is able, but that even at this minute God is working to perfect me.”
So, brothers and sisters, we might have all sorts of reasons not to rejoice, but God gives us all these reasons that we can rejoice because we are looking to Him.
People who have joy—you can see it in their faces. It is something that radiates. There is a verse in Psalm 34:5:
They looked unto Him, and were radiant;
And their faces shall never be confounded.
Brothers and sisters, that is the whole key. You want to rejoice. I know you do. You have to look to Him. You have to believe that He is working in you, and then you have to cooperate with Him. But look to Him and be radiant.
Heavenly Father, we just stand before You today as unfinished work. Lord, as for me, I cannot do anything about this unfinished work. I mean, that is what I am. I am unfinished, and I see so many problems.
But I want to thank You this morning that, even though You see unfinished work, You have a plan and You have a purpose, and You are working toward those things.
I pray for all of us, O Father, that You would show us the finished work, that You would show us complete in Christ. Show that to us. Make it win our hearts. Blow our minds with it, Lord.
Let us see it so that we also can have hope in that, and that we also can be ones who say, “I believe.” Let us be like Jacob, and let us rejoice even though we are unfinished, because we look for the time when we will be finished.
Lord, give us grace, I pray, to cooperate with You in the things that You are doing in our lives. To Your glory we pray, in Jesus’ name. Amen.