May 3

May 3, 2009

He Has Made Me Glad
a sermon on Isaiah 25.6-9
by David C. Mauldin
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Mobile, Alabama

When God created humankind, do you think the world was full of wonder? Were our first parents like little children, fascinated and excited by each new thing? Did they watch ants, or catch fireflies? Was every new experience the source of amazement? Did they give glory to God for the world he had made? Were they glad? I confess I don’t know enough about the beginning to answer those questions. But I am confident I know the last two. I think they did give glory to God, and I think they were glad. Why? Because I do and I am. Also I hear echoes of their gladness in the world around me.

I hear an echo of the gladness of creation in the laughter and smile of babies. When a baby sees someone familiar, especially Mom or Dad, her little face lights up with delight, as if this were the greatest thing in the world and she had been waiting forever for it to happen. I also hear an echo in the peace we find through nature. Why does the ocean calm our souls? It does. The beach, the mountains, rivers, not to mention animals. We love these things. They make us, if not glad, at least they comfort us a little.

Chalk up another one for the marvelous grace of God. That we can find joy and comfort in our natural surroundings is just one more sign of his love for us. Yes, this is a hard world. It is a broken world, and we are broken people. That’s why we suffer and why the world is a mess. Nevertheless, even our brokenness cannot obscure completely the gladness our Creator desires for us. It remains, even if it is just an echo, pointing us back toward him.

In the Bible, God does two really big things: he creates and he saves. He made us, and he rescues us. Both of these things have exactly the same goal or purpose. Really I should say they have the same two purposes—one about God and one about us. God creates and saves in order to show us his glory. That’s the one about God. He creates and saves also in order to make us glad. That’s the one about us. They go together, of course, but glory belongs to God; gladness belongs to us.

Have you ever read one single sentence in a book that made you stop, put down the book, and rethink half of what you know? That happened to me recently. The book was The Desire of the Nations: Rediscovering the Roots of Political Theology, by Oliver O’Donovan. O’Donovan is great for showing how the resurrection of Jesus touches every part of our lives. He wrote: “Gladness belongs essentially to the creature, as glory belongs to the creator” [p. 181]. You might not be impressed, but I was. Why? Because all my life I’ve been hearing about the glory of God. We sing about it every Sunday. Except during Lent and Easter when we’ve been using a different chorus, we sign the Gloria, “Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Ghost …” Glory belongs to God. I know that. But that gladness belongs to us in the same way? That was a new idea. I’d never thought about things in quite that way. Glory belongs essentially to God—in other words, by his essence, just because of who he is. Does gladness belong to us in the same way? Just because of who we are as creatures? Just because we have a loving Father who made us that way? I had never heard that.

And then I realized I had … in the Bible … and also in songs based on the Bible. “I will enter his courts with thanksgiving in my heart. I will enter his courts with praise. I will say this is the day that the Lord has made. I will rejoice for he has made me …” What? Glad! He has made me glad!

Then I dug into the Bible a bit. Do you know what I found? Gladness everywhere. I do not have time to run through a catalog of samples, but the theme of joy and gladness is a deep current running through scripture. God does wonderful things. The glory is his. But these things make his people, his creation, you and me … glad.

The one example I will give you is our scripture reading. Isaiah 25 is a prophecy about God saving his people and restoring their gladness. In the short run, it means the end of the Babylonian exile. You should know by now how the Babylonians conquered Judah, destroyed Jerusalem, and took many of its people away to captivity. As you might imagine, this was spiritually devastating for God’s people. If it had not been for the Word of the Lord given through the prophets, they would have lost hope, their faith, and their identity. They would have ceased to be God’s people.

But the prophets did speak God’s life-giving Word. I want you to notice two things about this passage. They are not unique to it. We find these two things in all the great promises of salvation. In fact, Jesus picked up these two things and built his mission around them.

The first one is: The promises overflow. They get wild and exaggerated. The end of exile is one thing. As impossible as it must have seemed at the time, God’s people returning to Jerusalem is a lot easier to imagine than, oh say, the end of death. “He will swallow up death forever.” That’s a bold statement. When we read something like that we have to decide: Was the prophet exaggerating? Is this just fancy rhetoric that doesn’t really mean anything? Or … does the prophecy overflow because God’s plan overflowed the circumstances of his people at the time? Is it telling us that the return from exile was merely the beginning because God had a much bigger plan to save the whole world? In other words, does it mean exactly what it says?

I would choose exaggeration, except for one little thing: Jesus. He acted as if he believed God meant us to take the promises seriously. And after his death and resurrection … well, those were the fulfillment of—or at least a big down payment on—these promises.

The other thing to notice is this: God’s plan is big enough for the whole world. It wasn’t just about the Jews. It started with them. But all along God had in his mind and in his heart the whole world.

The salvation God brings, then, will mean nothing less than setting creation right. It’s not limited to one time and place. It’s about more than one city or one people. It is about all people. It is about the end of death. It is about the end of pain and sorrow. It is about the return of God’s glory to the world and of gladness to God’s people.

At the very end of the passage, the result of God’s salvation is described: “It will be said on that day, Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us. This is the LORD for whom we have waited; let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.” When God acts, his people are glad.

The only question left is: When is “that day”? Was it the first Easter morning? Is it the day Christ returns? … Is it today? I say yes—to all three. Above all, it is today. It is today for Christ has risen, and he is alive. He has poured his Spirit into our hearts. We have heard the promise and embraced it with faith. Therefore the future God has promised and our place in it are secure. So today is the day. Today is the day we celebrate what God has done for us. He is our God. We waited for him. We looked to him to save us from our mess. He has done so. Now, let us be glad.

The resurrection of Jesus means that things have been put back the way they were supposed to be. Some of that remains to be done, but the part that remains we know will get done because God already started renewing all things by raising Jesus. That’s the thing to remember: Jesus’ resurrection means things become what they are supposed to be. Now here’s the fun part: You and I are supposed to be glad. That is our Creator’s desire for us. He made us that way, so gladness is essential to who we are, just as glory is essential to who God is. God without glory is nonsense. You and I without gladness is also nonsense. We had it. We lost it. God sent Jesus to give it back to us.

I know what you are thinking. You are thinking that everyone loves a positive sermon, but let’s be realistic. It is difficult to feel glad when you are broke and out of work. It is impossible to feel glad when you are sick or old enough that your body has begun to wear out. Constant pain or stress has a way of drowning out gladness. Jesus didn’t seem very glad, for example, in the Garden of Gethsemane or on the cross. If you are thinking that, I agree with you. I certainly don’t go around feeling good and happy all the time. And yet, God has made me glad, and I do believe gladness is essential to our nature. So where does that leave us?

I am sure you are familiar with the difference between happiness and joy. Happiness is a feeling, and like all feelings it comes and goes depending on the weather, how much sleep you got, or if your team won the big game. You can’t rely on feelings because they change so easily. Joy, on the other hand, has deep roots. It is a kind of contentment that lasts, and you can have joy even in the midst of bad circumstances.

I want to say that gladness is bigger than either happiness or joy. It encompasses both, but it is more. Gladness is a feeling, but it is more than a feeling. You can be glad, even if you don’t feel happy. And yet gladness does affect how we feel and our attitudes. Maybe gladness, being the result of salvation, is like salvation. Salvation is past, present, and future. If you are in Christ, you are already saved from condemnation. You are forgiven. That’s past. Right now, in the present, God is working in you. He’s making you holier, more like Christ, gladder. In the future, you will be raised to everlasting life, and you will see God fact to face. So salvation is past, present, and future. Maybe gladness is that way too.

We know what God has done for us in the cross and resurrection of Jesus. We know what he has done in our lives, not least in bringing us to faith and uniting us with Christ. Therefore, we rejoice and are glad. We know that he is working in us right now. We trust him, even if in our present circumstances we do not understand why he lets us suffer. So we rejoice and are glad. And we know that at the final resurrection, we will experience full gladness. We will become on that day our truest selves, and gladness is essential to our truest selves.

So my answer to your concern is: (1) If you are miserable right now, you can perhaps find joy and gladness in God’s promises. Christ died for you. He is alive. He lives in you. That’s a lot to be glad about, no matter how bad life gets. Also, do not focus on the bad things in your life and forget about the good. Be thankful. Peter Kreeft in his little book Before I Go guarantees you can be a wiser, happier, and better person in only seven minutes. How? He invites you to give thanks to God for one specific thing in the world, one thing in your life, one event in the world, one event in your life, one person in the world, one person in your life, and one attribute of God himself. Sometimes we make ourselves miserable because we obsess about the bad and forget to be thankful for the good. Even if, however, your circumstances are truly miserable—and in some cases they are—maybe Christ is enough to give you a measure of gladness.

(2) If you are miserable now, you at least have the comforting assurance that your suffering is temporary. God did not create you to suffer. He created you to be glad. A glorious future awaits you, if you are in Christ, and nothing in this world can take that away from you. If you cannot smile or laugh now, just know that someday you will. You heart will be light and free and joyful. Maybe you will feel glad in anticipation.

I am not always happy. I get discouraged. More often I just get tired. Yet I can say with the psalmist, “He has made me glad.” I love to come to worship to sing praises to God and celebrate. I hope he has made you glad too. If you do not feel glad, go ahead and praise him anyway. You may fin that celebrating his glory brings gladness to your heart. Amen.

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