REJOICING IN CHRIST
A Sermon By
Dr. Walter A. Maier
Rejoice in the
Lord
alway; and again I say, Rejoice. — Phil. 4, 4.
A FEW weeks ago a new religious sect was organized
in Hungary. Its chief tenet was this, that salvation could be gained by
laughter. But when a group of those who professed this creed of
boisterous happiness put their doctrine into practice, they laughed so
uproariously that they were committed to court as public nuisances.
Their conception of Christianity as an ecstatic
religion of unbridled hilarity is, of course, a defiant contradiction
of Biblical truth, and it is symptomatic of that fitful, jerking,
convulsive degradation of worship, too frequent in our own country,
that has brought reproach upon the fair name of the Church. Yet it is
not as harmful and destructive as the wide-spread delusion, promoted
by atheists and milder opponents of Christianity, which pictures the
religion of Jesus Christ as a joy-killing, pleasure-stifling creed,
built up on dark and dismal denials, with no room for happiness and
laughter. Indeed, within the Church there have also been those who have
insisted that the ideal Christian life is the life that isolates itself
from happiness and that the perfect pattern of holiness is to be found
in severing all possible connection with the world and in retreating
to the severe solitude of a hermit’s hut or within the high walls of a
cloister. And so we read of terrible caricatures of Christianity, of
misguided fanatics who lash their backs until they stream with blood,
who have solemnly pledged themselves to perpetual silence, who deny
themselves the bare necessities of life, eking out an existence hardly
better than a living death, and who do all this in the name of that
religion of love and happiness that Jesus gave to the world!
Now, this deplorable misrepresentation of the true
character of Christianity has its peculiarly disastrous effects in the
lives of young people for whom the quest of happiness is a natural and
necessary part of their existence. As a result, too many young men and
young women today regard the Church merely as a negative,
crêpe-hanging institution, which continually demands, “Thou
shalt not do this, and thou shalt not do that,” a creed that
everlastingly opposes every desire and impulse in which the throbbing,
surging life of youth may express itself.
WHY THE CHRISTIAN REJOICES.
But tonight the Word of God calls out to us in the
message of happiness, “Rejoice in the Lord alway,” and as though it
would emphasize to all heavy-hearted and low-spirited men that here at
last is the end of their search for happiness, the apostle repeats,
“And again I say, Rejoice.” On the basis of these words I hope to show
you tonight that a Christian can be the happiest of all human beings
and that in particular the springtime of youth, which separates
carefree childhood from the furrowed struggles of adult
responsibilities, these years of overflowing energy and vitality, must
be the happy years in every normal Christian life.
How can it be otherwise? When people today
acknowledge Jesus Christ as their own loving, merciful, all-sufficient
Savior, they have the real basis for all true happiness, “the joy of
salvation,” in their hearts. We can understand why a deluded Hindu,
living on in unrelieved torture, can drive all happiness out of his
life by lying on a bed of spikes or by imbedding into his quivering
flesh great hooks by which he is swung high into the air. He wants to
have the inner assurance that he can acquire merit to balance the sins
that abound in his life. But his is a religion of unrelieved doom and
unmitigated terror. We can comprehend, too, why people in our
remarkable age who do not know God and do not know the Bible can be the
unhappiest of all creatures, even with all the beauties of nature
surrounding them and with all the attractions of modem life at their
disposal. Their Christless, godless, hopeless creed destroys every bit
of that inner happiness without which there can be no permanent joy in
life. But we cannot explain why there can be a perpetual gloom and
protracted pessimism in the life of a Christian. For here, in the
Father’s invitation of divine grace, which tells us that, awhile we
were yet sinners, Christ died for us,” is the power that first touches
at the root of all unhappiness because it touches at sin, the
responsible cause for sorrow in all of its many forms, and then offers
the only power in all the world that is strong enough to remove sin,
the saving, cleansing, redemptive power of Christ’s blood.
We know, of course, that people claim to find
happiness serenely by disregarding “the Lamb of God that taketh away
the sin of the world,” in money, in human associations, in the
acquiring of distinction and honor. But when they are confronted with
the real issues of life and death, this shallow happiness vanishes,
dissipated into nothingness. Why is it that people who apparently seem
to enjoy life to its fullest often end in the terror of despair? Why is
it that, whenever a sudden catastrophe overwhelms people, when a
crowded public building is destroyed by fire, when a ship founders on
the high seas, or when a tornado cuts its devastating swath through a
community, people who have enjoyed the most complacent,
self-satisfying, and undisturbed life cringe in abject fear and horror
before the thought of the final reckoning? Why is it that men who
during their lifetime boasted that earth held no terrors for them have
breathed their last as the most wretched and unhappy of all men? Why
all this if not because the fundamental rule of life which has been
expressed on every page of human history is this, that without the
peace of conscience, without the assurance of forgiven sins, there can
be no real and lasting happiness?
See how Jesus emphasized this connection of
happiness and forgiven sin. They brought to Him a young man sick with
the palsy; and in performing the miracle of healing, Jesus said, “Son,
be of good cheer, thy sins be forgiven thee.” And the rule of human
experience demonstrates that, as there can be no real and permanent
happiness when the claims of a violated conscience are unanswered,
so, when Jesus pronounces His benediction of peace and forgiveness upon
a sin-sick soul, then, and then alone, you, every one of you, can be
sure of a satisfying, soul-changing happiness.
With the joy of this radiant faith, Christianity
offers the joy of happy freedom. Contrary to every other religion, it
offers release from sins free, by the purest grace, without penances or
pilgrimages, without the sacrifices of animals, without the payment of
money, without the imposing of physical hardships or the suffering of
bodily torture. Contrary to other religious systems, it prescribes no
particular mode of dress; it has no diet rules to tell people what they
must eat or what they must drink; it enacts no laws that demand the
unmarried state of its followers as a particularly holy and
God-pleasing condition. Contrary to a thousand different infringements
on the liberties of the individual which tell people what they should
do and what they must not do with their time and their money; contrary
to the spirit of the blue-laws of which we read and hear so much when
teachers in the outward Christian Church insist upon the Old Testament
spirit and legislation, the glory of Christ’s Gospel is expressed in
the Savior’s promise, “The truth shall make you free,” — free from the
terror of sin, hell, and death; free from the stifling letter of
man-made laws, which kill off the deeper spiritual truths; free to lead
and regulate a life in definite harmony with Christ’s highest ideals,
the only permanently happy life of which men have ever known.
That is why the greatest Christians have been the
happiest Christians. They tell us that Jesus did not laugh; and I do
not know whether He did, for the Scriptures contain no reference to His
laughter. What with the sins of all humanity of all lands and ages
weighing down so heavily upon His soul, it would be surprising indeed
if the thought of that agony left Him a moment for laughter. No wonder
that long before He went the way of the cross, anticipating the
grueling agony of Gethsemane and the crushing cruelty of Calvary, He
shuddered at this ordeal and cried out, “I have a baptism to be
baptized with; and how shall I be straitened until it be accomplished!”
Yet we do read that the soul of Jesus rejoiced; and we cannot picture
our Savior, in those intimate moments when He took the little children
into His arms, without a smile on His divine countenance that reflected
the laughter of those little ones; we cannot see Him at Cana’s festive
marriage board sitting apart in stiff aloofness from the spirit of that
happy occasion; we cannot picture Him at Bethany with Lazarus and his
sisters without being thoroughly happy in the quiet hours of that
friendly circle.
That happiness of soul has radiated itself into the
lives of His followers. Think of Martin Luther, with all the crushing
cares of his titanic task, singing happily in the midst of his family
circle, while his embittered foes vainly sought to destroy him. Think
of Charles Spurgeon, the great London preacher, walking through an
English meadow, kneeling down in the grass to thank God for the gift of
laughter and happiness. Think of all the great heroes of faith of whom
posterity has preserved a detailed record, and you will find them
enjoying the happiness of friendship, enriched by the pleasures of
music and literature, happy, exuberantly happy, in the hours of
recreation amid the beauties of nature or surrounded by congenial
associates. And as their Christian faith led them to that abundant
and happy life promised by the Savior, so, as our heavenly Father would
lift up our hearts from care and sorrow, His messenger calls out to
every one of us tonight, “Rejoice; . . . and again I say, Rejoice.”
HOW THE CHRISTIAN REJOICES
But we must not overlook the essential fact that the
apostle says, “Rejoice in the Lord.” There are, of course, many young
people today who actually believe that they can find the thrill of
happiness along forbidden paths, in the fringe of hazy, shady sins that
begin just beyond the limits of morality. In the presentday
sophistication of sin a good time often involves a fracture of the
moral code, and pleasure is just another word for indulgence in “lusts
of the flesh, lusts of the eye, and the pride of life.” Young people
frequently think that a full, happy life must embrace the plucking of
forbidden fruit, the overriding of conventions, the casting aside of
what they like to call old- fashioned morals. And so we see blind,
misguided young men and young women, unmindful of the pleas and the
warnings of their parents, rush on in the mad pursuit of the kind of
pleasure that pulls down the Scriptural ideals of purity, honesty, and
truth and paves the road to ruin.
For sin, no matter how carefully it may be
disguised, no matter how attractively it may be decorated, is always
ugly, brutal, and degrading; and inevitably it proves itself to be a
relentless and tyrannical taskmaster that “can destroy both body and
soul in hell.” Think of the characters that have been ruined and the
virtues that have been violated in this mad chasing after the frivolity
of sin; think of the terrible consequences this poisoned pleasure
strews in its path; wrecked bodies, stunted mental growth, loathsome
diseases, the utter bankruptcy of selfrespect, — these and a hundred
other curses that leave a stain too indelible to be removed by long and
frantic regret, a lurking shadow too black to be dispelled during an
entire life. And if tonight there should be within the reach of my
voice any young man who thinks he can defy God’s order of purity and
decency and find happiness in secret sin and secret relations, or if
there is any young woman who, unbeknown to her parents, is planning on
some step that will take her away from the path of purity and truth
that she has been taught to follow in her Church and in her home, let
me plead with them tonight to stop in their sinful course, to learn a
fundamental rule of all human experience, that sin never makes any one
happy, that it always drags its victims down to disgrace and despair,
and that the oniy true happiness comes when you get right with God and
follow the appeal of the apostle, “Rejoice in the Lord,” that is,
rejoice in the Lord Jesus as your Savior, your Friend of friends, your
never-failing Companion, your never-ending Source of strength, purity,
and power.
WHEN THE
CHRISTIAN
REJOICES.
Rejoicing stimulated with that divine impulse will
shine through the darkest clouds of sorrow and adversity and
tribulation. It is easy enough to be happy when things come our way,
when we have plenty of money, when we enjoy good health, and when the
how of life runs on in a smooth and even course. But here is a power
that leads us to “rejoice in the Lord ALWAY” and enables us to find
happiness in sorrow and rejoicing even in affliction. That glorious
faith animated the first Church when the hunted and despised apostles
could rejoice “that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His
name”; when St. Peter could write to the scattered and persecuted
believers, “Ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory”; when
the humble and antagonized Christians in Rome could join St. Paul in
declaring, “We glory in tribulation.” That victorious faith holds out
the same promise for us today. Are you depressed by the thought of the
weaknesses and impurities that abound in your life? Come to Christ,
ask Him for a clean heart and a right spirit, and He will give you the
joy that comes with a twice-born, Christ-centered life. Are you
distressed by worry and anxiety? Are you concerned about conditions in
your home, your resources, your work, your health, your personal
problems? Here is the promise, penned by inspiration for you, “Cast
all your care upon Him, for He careth for you.” Here is His sacred
pledge, “God shall supply all your needs according to His riches in
glory by Jesus Christ.” Here is Christ, just before the ordeal of
Gethsemane, asking His Father for His disciples and for you that His
joy might be fulfilled in you. That joy of Christ, that rejoicing “in
the Lord al way,” which God offers to you tonight is earth’s highest
happiness, and the faith in Christ makes this life, as disappointing
and as disillusioning as sometimes it may be to many of you, so
eminently worth living and so blessedly worth dying.
Then up, my heart, rejoice and
sing,
A cheerful trust maintain;
For God, the Source of everything,
Thy Savior will remain.
Amen.
The preceding Lutheran Hour sermon first aired in 1931