Matt Chandler - Persevering in the Pursuit of Joy

If you have your Bibles, go ahead and grab them. Colossians chapter 3 is where we’ll camp out. I’m going to work us toward that, but that will be our text. This is week 11 of Recovering Redemption, and so we’re just about done here. This week, next week is Family Worship Weekend, and then we go straight into Advent. So that’s what we’ve got coming for us. But now I want us to turn our attention to the sustainability of what we’ve been discussing. We’ve talked about how God has reconciled us to Himself in Christ, and so the relationship that was fractured because of sin between us and God has been made right in Jesus Christ. He has forgiven us and adopted us as sons and daughters so that we are holy, but we are also beloved. We are forgiven, but we also enjoy His presence. The just Judge has said that the record of debt has been canceled, and the Heavenly Father has declared that He delights in us as sons and daughters. We’ve witnessed the restoration of that relationship. In the last two weeks, we’ve discussed the fact that since our vertical relationship has been restored, our horizontal relationships begin to be ironed out, although both are executed imperfectly. No one in this room, if you’ve been a Christian for 40 years, would dare have the integrity and guts to say, «Nope, I’m perfect.» If you did, that would be your act of imperfection. We are imperfectly carrying out God’s work in our hearts, and God graciously and mercifully covers our stumbles as we pursue complete obedience. We’ve talked about that, and now I want to turn our attention to the sustainability of the ongoing ethic of confession, repentance, and life together because our entire lives will be filled with confession, repentance, and life together. We’ve already spent ten weeks discussing the difficulty of those things: the fact that we’ll need to confess, we’ll need to repent, and we’ll need to do life with one another. Oh, all three of these are difficult. Most of us go in spurts. I’ll have a good spurt of repentance, and then all of a sudden, that spurt will be gone. I’ll have a spurt of doing community well with one another, and then all of a sudden, something will happen and we’ll go find another church. So how do we sustain this? How do we persevere in the long run with the ongoing ethic—not the silver bullet that changes our lives, but rather the ongoing ethic that’s required to grow in godliness? Well, the simple answer, one that I’m most passionate about and have tried to rigorously test for twenty years, is the simple motivation of joy. And here’s why: I think that if you were to distill the teachings of Jesus Christ in the Gospels and come up with a mission statement for Jesus’s life, I always say Jesus read «The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People» and decided He needed a mission statement that’s clear, concise, and drives the actions of His day. There are several that would work well, I believe. Luke 19:10 says, «For the Son of Man came to seek and save the lost.» That’s pretty concise! Why did Jesus come? What does it have to do with me? What’s going on in the person and work of Christ, the most famous man in history? What was He all about? Well, He came to seek and save the lost. So that will work. You’ll never sit in this room where that doesn’t get preached, regardless of the topic. I’m bringing us back to that point. I’m going to do it today. I’m doing it right now. Another one that I think works well is John 3:17. Oh, maybe you’re like, «Well, I know 3:16.» Okay, keep reading those great verses! There’s awesome stuff behind them. Sometimes, if you’re not careful, you might use a verse that sounds great out of context, and that’s why I love when people quote the prophets without reading them. You might want to read them, because that’s not what he’s talking about! You know, «I’m going to do something so amazing in your day that you wouldn’t believe it if you were told.» You have that on a coffee cup, but God is saying, «I’m going to destroy the people of Israel.» Meditate on that while sipping your coffee tomorrow! Gonna kill everyone, right? I mean, keep reading. So here’s 3:17: «For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.» So that works. We’re talking about the mission statement and the person and work of Jesus Christ. He has come into the world to seek and save the lost, and then another one is «I haven’t come to condemn the world, but rather to ransom the world.» That’s a great mission statement! We’re going to preach that everywhere; you can’t come to an event we do without hearing this. In fact, I will repeatedly bang the drum on this reality: Christ has not come to condemn you; He’s come to rescue you from the condemnation you are eagerly walking in. So Christ has come not to condemn. If you feel nervous around the idea of Jesus because you just feel so condemned, remember that’s not how He came. He actually came to rescue you from that feeling of condemnation. These are good mission statements; they are right there, beautiful. My heart’s always been drawn to another one, though, and it’s really because of some things.