“Christmas – the Process of Pleasure”
December 7, 2008
Luke 1:67-75
“..Zechariah was filled with the Holy Spirit and prophesied:
"Praise be to the Lord, the God of Israel, because he has come and has redeemed his people. He has raised up a horn of salvation for us in the house of his servant David (as he said through his holy prophets of long ago), salvation from our enemies and from the hand of all who hate us— to show mercy to our fathers and to remember his holy covenant, the oath he swore to our father Abraham: to rescue us from the hand of our enemies, and to enable us to serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.”
TEXT: “…to enable us to serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.”
This morning we officially enter the Christmas season – at least at our church. This year I heard Christmas music at some stores before Halloween. I remember when it was startling to hear it before Thanksgiving. In our recession, there is fear that you won’t have enough money to spend a lot around Christmas – so the plan is to getting you shopping over a longer period of time – that way the load is dispersed over a longer period of time – and they can still separate you from you money - all in the spirit of Christmas, of course.
Some churches started advent last Sunday. This is actually the second Sunday of advent – so we have to catch up a little. I don’t know about you – but Christmas kind of snuck up on me this year. It’s been kind of an unusual year with the election and the economy and all the emotion and angst of it. But if you think THIS Christmas is a little tough – imagine what it must have been like that first Christmas. The country was under a foreign powers rule. People, whether they had the money or not, whether they had the time or not, whether they had problems or not – had to pack up and travel to their home town to register with the government for a census.
Can you imagine the difficulty? Poor Mary, full term pregnancy and she still had to travel – or be in violation of the law. It was a dark time in history for God’s people, physically, emotionally, economically and spiritually. But at this dark and dangerous time, at this least likely of times, God was sending Light and Salvation and Hope and Freedom from sin. A baby was to be born in Bethlehem who was to save His people from their sin. Our Scripture says He was to rescue us from our enemies and “…to enable us to serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.”
Do you understand that – that is God’s will for you today? He wants to enable you to serve Him without fear, in holiness and righteousness, all your days. I think every Christian ought to realize that God’s will is for us to serve Him – without fear. We are to serve Him in love. Understand this: Your life is not your own to do with as you wish. You belong to God. Listen to the Bible:
“Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies.” 1 Corinthians 6:19 -20
He created you physically, David says, “You knew me in my mother’s womb”, but more importantly, He created you spiritually. You were born again – and as Rick Warren says in the first line of the first page of his book, “It’s not about you!” It’s all about God. We were created to bring Him pleasure. Paul puts it this way:
“For it is God which works in you both to will and to do of his good pleasure. Phil 2:13
God works on our will so that we do “His pleasure”. Now, some people will have a problem with that. They may say, “Well, I want to do what pleases ME! I’m all about MY pleasure – not God’s or anyone else’s pleasure.
They forget (or don’t realize) that God made us. He created us in a certain way. We were created to please Him. We were designed to please Him – and we can not please ourselves any other way. Have you ever known any really happy selfish people? Any self-centered, egotistical people you know that are really happy? I don’t know any. Sometimes we may see movie stars or rock stars that are totally self-centered and users of others, who appear to have it all. But then they turn to drugs and/or alcohol to fill the void – or even end up killing themselves, and they reveal that their way is not the way to happiness. We were created for God’s pleasure – and it is a pleasure, a joy, a delight, to serve Him. The end result is an eternity of unimaginable delight.
We must absolutely realize that the way to joy is by serving the Lord and bringing Him pleasure. But to the sinful, self-centered heart – that is a concept that is totally foreign. True joy and true service can only be achieved with a holy heart. I remember when God first called me into His service – I rebelled against it. I said, “I can’t! I’m not able! I won’t!” I didn’t understand that “God doesn’t call the equipped – He equips the called!”
I surrendered to His will – but all through college and even into my first church – I thought God was making a mistake. I served because I had to. But a day came when I realized “This is FUN! This is what I was created for! It’s a privilege to give my life in service to the King!”
The heart has to be right to get the best pleasure out of service. But even if your heart isn’t totally into service – do it anyway. Serve by faith, believing that God will bring the blessings eventually.
Let me share the process of pleasure with you. 1. We come to Jesus. We come to Jesus full of sin and so self-centered. And ‘just as we are’ He forgives us of all our sins. All those horrible things you and I did under the influence of alcohol or drugs, or when we were living in out and out rebellion, and our spirits were so hard and mean – all those sins are instantly and forever gone. They are gone – “as far as the east is from the west”. God casts them into the ‘sea of forgetfulness”, my mom used to say. And, Oh, what a feeling of joy and cleanness and freedom.
But we have a problem. We have asked forgiveness of our sins - but we haven’t done anything about our will. Our will is still self-centered. And we come in conflict with the Holy Spirit. He reveals God’s will is --- and we don’t want to do it. We read the Bible and discover God wants us to do such and such – and we don’t want to. Our wills are in conflict with God’s will – and we become ‘sinning Christians’. And when we are still in control and refusing to allow the Holy Spirit control – we have little power, little purpose, little fruit. It is only when we surrender our wills to the Holy Spirit that He can fill us and empower us and lead us.
Do you understand that? I’m not saying you aren’t saved. I’m not saying you aren’t serving the Lord. But you and I know that when YOU are in control – the Holy Spirit isn’t. When you are shutting the Holy Spirit out – you are robbing yourself of power to serve Him. When your will is on the throne of your life – Jesus isn’t.
The remedy is brokenness. The remedy is surrender. The remedy is total radical obedience. So the second step in the process of pleasure is to have a broken will. Our will must be broken – so His will can be done. I’m not saying you will become a zombie with no will. God doesn’t hypnotize you and you mindlessly serve Him. You still have a will. And often times it will be in opposition to God – but you surrender your will to do His will. Jesus is our great example of that in the garden. He prayed, “Not MY will – but Yours be done”. Paul knew what I’m talking about. He said,
“So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the sinful nature. For the sinful nature desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the sinful nature. They are in conflict with each other…” Galatians 5:16-17
For real spiritual victory, your will must be broken. We are like that horse my son got when he first got out of the army. Ben got a wild mustang that wasn’t must good for anything. You couldn’t ride him. You couldn’t use him to pull a buggy. It was even risky to be around him. He might bite you or kick you. But Ben broke his will without breaking his spirit. Through gentle, but firm, commands – with a little painful discipline and much reward for correct choices, he tamed that horse and it became useful and productive.
We are like that mustang. Some of you were dangerous in your wild days. You weren’t much good for anything either. But God began his process of taming you. He used some pain in your life and a lot of ‘attaboys’. And He is still in the process. You won’t be much good to Him or to yourself until you submit to His will.
The second thing God must do in our lives is to break our will. Then the third part starts. Remember – He wants us to serve Him in holiness. So the third part is to purify us. And that can be painful. He needs to purify us from wrong attitudes and habits and thinking. The Bible says,
“In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.” 1 Peter 1:6-7
“Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.” 1 Peter 4: 12-13
Notice in the first chapter Peter writes that trials come to help us and result in glory, honor and praise. In the fourth chapter he says that our suffering will result in our being ‘overjoyed”! God is purifying us. He is making us holy. He is making us better. He is making us more and more like Jesus.
Someone may say, “I thought we were made holy by Jesus’ death on the cross. We can’t do anything to earn our salvation!” Of course that is true. But there is a holiness of heart and a holiness of life that God obviously wants us to strive for. As long as you are privileged to live on this planet – God wants you to become more and more like Jesus. He wants to continue to purify your heart and your life. And it is only as we allow Him to purify us and purge us of any unclean thing that we can be ‘filled’ with the Holy Spirit. That isn’t to say that the Holy Spirit can’t work in our life – because even as sinners He convicts us of sin and leads us to Christ – but for spiritual victory and power, we must yield Him total control of body and soul. Paul said,
“May God himself, the God of peace, sanctify you through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.” ! Thessalonians 5:23
God wants to sanctify you through and through –body, mind, and spirit. He wants your whole spirit, soul and body to be blameless –given over to doing His will. When you are totally surrendered to Him and you demonstrate if by allowing Him to purge and purify you – then the fourth step in the process of pleasure takes place. The Holy Spirit can fill you completely. And some neat stuff happens then. First, you will realize a new power for service. Jesus said,
“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth." Acts 1:8
Ever tried to witness or serve Jesus before you received power? It’s frustrating and discouraging. Apart from His power we can do nothing. We need power to be effective.
Another thing that happens when the Holy Spirit fills you is that you produce a new kind of fruit. Jesus said,
"I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” John 15:5
Paul told us what kind of fruit the Holy Spirit produces in us.
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control...” Galatians 5:22 -23
I remember, many years ago, talking to an old Christian friend. One thing you had to say about Arthur was that he was zealous for the Lord. He would often rant and rave about those ‘other churches’. His favorite target was the “Calvinist”. But this particular time he was raving about the Charismatic church and the ‘false’ teaching on the evidence of the Holy Spirit. “They say speaking in tongues is the evidence of being filled with the Holy Spirit!” He yelled at me.
In my calm, soothing voice, I asked, “Well, what IS the evidence of being filled with the Holy Spirit?” Arthur says, “Why, it’s the fruit of the Holy Spirit!”
I said, “Let me ask you a question, Arthur. Are you known as a loving man? Are you known as being joyful and peaceful? Are you known as being kind and gentle and self-controlled?”
It stopped him in his tracks. He didn’t know what to say.
But I could ask the same of you. Is the Holy Spirit producing His fruit in you? If so – you will be known by that fruit. And when you are producing that fruit – it will result in effective and productive service. Whatever the Lord calls you to do – you will be faithful and fruitful. Some will produce a harvest of 10 talents. Some will produce a harvest of 5 talents. Some of us may only be one talent people. But it will be blessed and productive and joyful.
The Holy Spirit, through John the Baptist’ father said when Jesus came He would:
“…enable us to serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all our days.”
That is what Christmas is all about this year. God, provided through Jesus, a way we could serve him, without fear, in holiness and righteousness –all our days.
This Christmas season, why not start with giving Jesus a gift of yourself. Give Him the gift of your will. When your will is surrendered, He will purify us and fill us and enable us to serve Him as we were created for. The result is a wonderful rewarding life now – and eternal life later.
