Live This Day #8 - With Joy (Dr. Kurt Bjorklund)

Senior Pastor Dr. Kurt Bjorklund completes the message series entitled "Live This Day" looking at the book of 1 Thessalonians. God's plan is for Christians to live joyfully with one another.

Message Transcript - https://www.orchardhillchurch.com/blog-post/2024/10/28/live-this-day-8-with-joy

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Transcript

We often say here at Orchard Hill, the story will be told in the changed lives of people. And you just got a chance to hear a little snippet of how God is at work around and through the ministry of Orchard Hill. We often here at Orchard Hill pray in different venues and ways. We have groups that pray. We have a gathering that takes place between services at our Wexford campus on Sunday morning every week where people pray for the church. Our staff prays for all of the needs that people submit, as well as a whole prayer team. Sometimes we'll have gatherings after this gathering on weekends to pray for specific seasons. And then often on a weekend, you'll hear me just simply pray and pray something along the lines of God, for those of us who are gathered, would you speak? And all of that.

And what we don't often do is what has been done in traditional church is called the pastoral prayer. And the pastoral prayer is where the pastor prays about something going on in culture and just asks for God to intervene. And we have a variety of reasons for that approach, in part not wanting to be pigeonholed into always having to comment via prayer on culture. And that's often what that is. But at the same time, there are times when it seems appropriate for us just to pause and pray.

And so today I want to pray for our nation in this season leading up to the election, and I want to ask you just to pray with me. And you may or may not agree with all of the things that I pray. And so if you disagree, I just encourage you to pray how you would pray. But I think it's good for us just to have a moment to say, God, would you work? So would you join me in prayer?

God, we thank you for our nation. We thank you for the absence of war domestically, for our lifetimes. We thank you for the freedoms that we do enjoy. Not just religious freedom, but freedom of choice, freedom of living where we want to live and doing what we want to do.

We thank you for the justice system that, although imperfect, strives to bring justice impartially to people. We thank you for the economic prosperity that we've had as a nation. And although we haven't, as a nation, done all of these things perfectly or even well at times, we thank you for the way you've worked in it. And today we ask that as a nation, we would turn towards you, and specifically that the people of faith would turn towards you. As 2nd Chronicles 7:14 says, if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and turn toward me, Then I'll heal their land. And so we ask that that would happen. We ask that there would be fairness and participation across all levels of society in the election. 

Father, we ask that as people of faith go to the polls that they would vote in a way that helps to further and lead to what you value, that it would be elevated. God, we do pray that the future of our nation would continue to have an absence of war and that we would elect people who would be able to navigate all of the issues on the global stage to bring peace. 

Father, we pray that there would be increasing religious freedom and that there would be a continuance of the freedoms that we do have. We pray for economic well being as we know that is positive for all people in a society. And Father, we pray for justice, justice for all, for the marginalized. We pray for those who are in advanced years who need some of the social structures and safety nets to live well the end of their days. Father, we pray that those in the womb would come to have a life that they could live. And we pray for those who have been in systems that have contributed to hardship, that there would be justice.

Lord, we ask for laws that would be furthered, that would be for the good of all. And Father, we do understand that at times in the Bible we learned about how you used and even appointed people to lead nations who did not hold what you valued. And you did it as a way to correct the course of a people. And so even as we pray these things, we pray them with open hands, acknowledging that you know best. And we ask you to work in our land. And we pray it in Jesus name. Amen. 

Today we're concluding our series on 1 Thessalonians. 1 Thessalonians is a book in the New Testament that is a letter that the Apostle Paul wrote to the church in Thessalonica. And what we've said throughout the series is that his letter was really about living this day in light of that day. And that day, the day that we're talking about is the day that the Lord returns. And in the book of 1 Thessalonians, it's in a Greek word, parrhesia, and it shows up in our English translations as coming or presence. And so in four of the five chapters, he talks directly about this, but in many ways it's the subject of the whole book. And again, it's in this section in verse 23, where he talks about the God who sanctifies, that he may keep you blameless until the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.

And so he's talking about how to live today in light of that day, how that day informs how we live here and now. And when we come to chapter 5, especially this section of chapter 5, we get these commands or exhortations that come in rapid succession. So verse 16 basically says, rejoice always. Then it's pray about everything, or pray always, and then give thanks in every circumstance. This is the will of God.

Don't quench the Spirit. And then at the end, he comes back with some more exhortations. And I don't know how, if you read through your Bible, at times when you come to a list like this, how you read them. For me, a lot of times I'll do one of two things: I'll either kind of get to this point and say, well, I've got the gist of the letter, and I'll zip through it like, okay, a bunch of exhortations, things I should do better at. Okay, just keeping it real. That's sometimes how I'll read that. And other times I will stop and I'll say, what would it really mean for me to rejoice always? Am I doing that? How could I actually do that? And I'll take an inventory with each of these kinds of commands. And today, rather than simply either zipping through these or trying to drill way down into each of them, what I'd like to do is I'd like to just conclude our looking at this book by saying that I believe Paul was telling people to live with joy this day in light of that day. And he does it by encouraging them to welcome certain things into their lives while at the same time rejecting some things in their lives. And I think you'll see this as we work through it. 

So the first thing, if we want to live joyfully is we need to welcome all of life as it comes. This we see in verse 16, verse 18, it says, 

“Rejoice always...” verse 18, “...give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.”  - 1 Thessalonians 5:16 & 18

And so the idea very simply is he says, whatever you're going through, rejoice. So I say, that's a way to welcome life as it comes. To say, whatever it is that happens in my life, I can live with a sense of joy or expectation. Now, some people are naturally joyful. You know how this works. Some people where you just are around them and they're always like, I'm a happy person.

Some people can be happy in circumstances because circumstances are going their way in such a way that they say, I'm really content, I'm happy. Sometimes we can have superficial joy, and superficial joy is when we say, I'm doing great, and down deep we're not. And sometimes that's appropriate because somebody will ask you that you don't want to go into it with, you're like, super, even if it's not true. But the joy that I believe is being talked about here is a chosen joy, because it's a command. He's saying, rejoice always, give thanks in every circumstance. 

And so this is a choice that people make, people of faith make to say, I choose to see that the way that I'm going to interact with the world is not through an attitude of entitlement, not through an attitude that says I have to have everything my way, but I will rejoice in the goodness of God in the situations in which I find myself. Now, to welcome that into our lives isn't always easy because what we typically want is what we don't have. Let me illustrate this from something very mundane. 

So it's beautiful here in October in Pittsburgh, right? But here's what I know about Pittsburgh and Pittsburghers. What comes after October is November and then December, January, February, March. And there will be a lot of complaining about the weather. Okay, now, okay, but let me just show you some data about the weather just so we understand how bad it really is. 

So here's a chart. And this chart has the average temperatures for Pittsburgh in a decade, 2010 through 2019. Which by the way, it was cooler in Pittsburgh 2010 through 2019 than it was 2000 through 2009. Average temperature, bottom of the chart, high temperature, 62, 43 for a low. So that is your average. If you take every day and say, what is it? So, you know, a day like today, slightly below average. Okay, not too bad. Next chart. So here is the number of days above 70, above 80 and above 90 in a 10 year period. Average, what do we get? 153 days, almost 5 months above 70 degrees. As your high temperature. You have 32 days above 80 and 10 above 90. Now I know this last summer we had more than 10 and there was some complaining, okay? But in a typical year, there's only 10 days above 90 degrees and there's 150 above 70. And then here's the one that really speaks to where we are. And this is days below 10, below 20 and below 30. So this is where the low temperature dips below 12 days, only below 10 degrees. Average in Pittsburgh, there are 39 below 20 and only 114 below 30. Now, why do I show you that?

Because when you start into the whoa, the weather, you're not receiving life as it comes. You are saying, I want life to be different. And sometimes just understanding that, you know what? There's only about 10 days below 10 and only about 10 days above 90. And the rest of it's pretty good. Isn't all bad. So when your friends from Florida call you in March and say, what are you doing? I'm outside enjoying the weather, say, it's okay, I'm going to call you back in August.

Now, I realize to equate this idea of rejoicing in everything with the weather can feel trite, especially if you are walking through something hard right now. And I don't mean to make light of this, but what I'm pointing to is a mindset that says what I believe Paul says when he says, rejoice always or in everything. Give thanks in everything. What he's doing is he's saying, choose to live on the positive side rather than on the negative side. Because it's so easy to always choose the negative. And here's the corollary, or the thing to reject. And that is welcome all of life as it comes, but reject fatalism. And the reason I say this is because right in the middle, he says in verse 16, I want you to rejoice. And he says, I want you to rejoice always. And then in verse 16, he says, give thanks in all circumstances.

But what does he say right in the middle, verse 17, pray continually. Why would you pray if you're just going to take life as it comes? Because you're not fatalistic. You believe that there's a good God who cares and knows what's going on and will sometimes act differently as we pray. Now, when I say act differently, I don't mean that God hasn't sovereignly fixed things. But what I mean is he says, pray about it. Because as you pray about it, this is the way that I work. In fact, in the Old Testament, in the book of Nehemiah, there's a place where the city was being attacked. And Nehemiah says, I want you to pray and I want you to post a guard. A lot of times what people want to do is they want to post a guard, say it's all up to me, or they want to pray and say, it's all up to God. It's neither. But in the Bible, there's this idea that says, live as if you're making real choices, but have a sense of God's good hand that says, even when I've made my best choices or worst choices, God is superintending results. And when that is how you live, you can live joyfully, even when you're sad about things that aren't going the way you want them to go. So joy, welcome life as it comes, but don't be fatalistic. 

Secondly, we need to welcome the spirit's fire. Verse 19: 
 
“Do not quench the Spirit.” - 1 Thessalonians 5:19
 
 To quench was to put out a fire. And the idea here is that the Spirit, Spirit of God. God exists. Father, Son, Holy Spirit. That the Spirit is part of God in such a way, or is God in such a way that it's possible for us to say, I don't want all of whatever the Spirit is. Now, what is the Spirit? If you read through Acts, you read through John, what you find is that the Spirit of God empowers His people to do what they can't do by themselves. He guides people in truth and he convicts people of sin.

And so those are things that we are to welcome into our life, to welcome the convicting work of the Spirit of God when we are not in line with God, to welcome him guiding us in truth, and to welcome His empowering presence in our lives. 

But what happens sometimes is we get into a space where we say, my faith is more academic. I believe a certain list of things, and because I believe them, I have certain results. And we don't experience the presence of God, the fire of God through the Spirit of God that leads us, that guides us, that empowers us. When you have conversations that are difficult and you don't know the outcome, to say, I am trusting God, the Spirit of God, to give me words, to give me insights in this moment, to bring about a better result. Now you're living in an interaction with the living God, not simply affirming a set of beliefs. 

And so there's a warning here to say, don't quench the Spirit. But we could say, welcome the Spirit's fire, but here's the corollary. Welcome the Spirit's fire, but reject subjectivism. And I say this because these next verses, I think, are some verses that are often misunderstood and misapplied in the New Testament. Here are what they say,this is verse 20, 21, 22:

“Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is goo, reject every kind of evil.” - 1 Thessalonians 5:20-22

Now, the reason I say that these are often misunderstood, misapplied is because there's a kind of thinking in the church, and this is predominantly in charismatic Pentecostal churches, that says there used to be prophecy that was definitive words from God that were spoken by God through human voices that were authoritative. Now we have a second kind of prophecy, this kind of prophecy, which isn't authoritative. It's subjective. And so you get a word from God and then people decide, is it good or is it not good? And say, I'm taking this one, or I'm not taking that one. And the problem with this is twofold.

One, very practical and two, very theological. Practically speaking, what that means is that there's a group of Christians who think they can prophesy in God's name and it can be wrong, and then they just change or amend their prophecy. And the reason that this is a problem is when somebody has this mindset, it brings a little bit of disrepute on the name of Christ. Just as an example, a few years ago, there was a president who lost after this election. And I'm not trying to make a political statement here, this is about the application of theology.

And then there were a group of Christians who said, well, he's going to be restored to office by a certain day. And they prophesied this. And do you know what happened in the country? People read this and they saw this and they said, what a bunch of kooks. Because this is Christianity prophesying that the president's going to return to office by this day. And when the day comes and goes, they say, that's not of God. And they're right. And what happens is people go, well, okay, they're a true prophet, but they just got that one wrong, or they got the date wrong. You know, four years later, it'll come to be, kind of a thing. But that's not prophecy. That's not prophecy in the Bible. And this is the theological issue.

In the Bible, what prophecy was, it was when somebody spoke authoritatively for God. And so when they gave a prophecy in the Old Testament, it was either of God or what happened to them if they were wrong? They were stoned. That's how seriously they took false prophets. And in the New Testament, prophecy before Scripture was completed was people speaking authoritatively for God. So here, when Paul says, do not treat prophecies with contempt, the New Testament hasn't been completed, he is talking about prophecy as it has always been understood in the Bible, not this newfangled idea that's on the other side of the New Testament, that there's like some prophecies that you say are true, and some that aren't. But he was saying, take what is good. In other words, understand that, but anything else, cast it out as evil and not just say, I'm discerning between is this really from God or not from God. But you're saying this is so in the category of false prophecy that it is evil. Now, again, you may say, well, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are you saying here about the modern prophet thing? I'm saying that it is suspect at best. 

Now, I'm not suggesting that God doesn't prompt or lead. In fact, I believe God does those things. And I think that the best way to talk about this is to say, I sense maybe God might be doing this because now you're not saying this is an authoritative word. I think it's better not to use the word prophecy today. And we'll have another podcast this week that will come out. It's a rerelease of one we did on this whole idea of prophecy, if you want to take a deeper dive into it, but I've gotten to the point where if somebody tells me that they have a word for the Lord from me or a prophecy, that I pretty much assume that it isn't from God. And it's not that I'm trying to discount that God could speak to me through people. But if somebody has that much of a misunderstanding of how God speaks, I've learned that it isn't really something to take seriously.

Now, you may say you're treating prophecies with contempt. I get that. But I think what I'm trying to do is understand what prophecy was and saying, get subjectivism out of it. Let me put it like this. Let's say that your mom, your dad, your spouse, somebody sends you to the grocery store and they give you a list and say, go get these items. We need them for the meal we're going to make. What's the most honoring thing you can do in that moment? 

Well, the most honoring thing you can do is go to the store, get everything on the list, and bring it home so that they can cook it. Okay, whoever's asked for it. So what happens when you go to the store and they don't have the item or you can't find the item? I hear some people go to the store and they can't always find the items that are on the list. Some people.

What is it that you do to honor them? Well, in our day and age, you can text, you can call, maybe. But if you can't get through to them, what do you do? You say, I understand what they want enough, who they are enough, what this list is enough that I can make a decision and substitute something that's going to fulfill the same purpose. Like, I get how to think and apply the list to the real world situation that I find myself in. Do you know what's not honoring? To walk around the grocery store going, what do you think they want? Well, get this. That is not honoring.

And when it comes to Scripture, here's the idea. God has revealed His word to you, to me in Scripture, so know what the Scripture says, then you'll know how God thinks. So when you don't have a direct answer to something, you can say, I understand, I discern how God thinks about things. And this idea of subjective revelation coming from people where they're going to tell you what God says is not really helpful to understanding how God thinks. 

So, for example, the Bible, if you were to say, you know, I want to get married, well, the Bible doesn't tell you who to marry. And what I mean by that is it may tell you some things about marriage, some principles that you should follow. Marry a believer, you know, some things like that. But if you're saying, should I marry Bill or Fred or Wanda or Wendy, you know, who should I marry? It doesn't say Wendy. And so you have to apply it. But what's not helpful is having somebody say, God told me you should do this. That's manipulative and it's not helpful. 

One author in writing about this, who had been part of kind of the charismatic Pentecostal churches, put it this way. He said,

“I noticed that the vast majority of prophecies made by these prophets were very similar to each other, and that they always vaguely predicted great blessings and future opportunities of fortune and success. So of course, when another positive prophecy came, it was seen as confirmation of an earlier one, and someday it would come to pass. Sometimes prophecy would be accompanied by some information about the person's past or present, such as, there's someone in your family battling alcohol or drugs, or there's someone in your family who loves music. And then he says, wow, what are the odds?”

In other words, what happens when sometimes people use this language of prophecy, what they're doing is they're doing a Christian version of fortune telling. And it doesn't help us live with joy. What helps us live with joy is knowing the word of God and letting the Spirit of God speak to us through the Word of God. That is where we'll find joy.

So what is it that we see? Joy is found in welcoming life as it comes. It's found in welcoming the Spirit's fire, but rejecting fatalism, rejecting subjectivism. And then we see this, and that is there's joy in welcoming the Father's redirection. And I say this because verse 23 says, 

“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.” 
- 1 Thessalonians 5:23

So here we have this word, sanctify. If you've been around for this series, you've heard us talk about this. This is a word that means set apart, to be made holy. And so this is the Father's redirection. It says, may he set you apart, make you holy through and through. May it reform the very way that you live. 

Now, I'm guessing that some of us hear this and we say, do I really want to be redirected, reformed? I kind of like how I'm doing it myself. But the idea here is this is like a coach who's been there knows how to do it, saying, here is the way to live your life, but here's the corollary. And this is a corollary that basically says, welcome the Father's redirection, but reject, and I'm going to make up a word here, performance-ism. And the reason I say this is the very next verse says this, 

“The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do it.” - 1 Thessalonians 5:24

So who is the one achieving your sanctification? It's God himself. And here's why this is so joy giving. Because you welcome the Father's redirection because He has your best interest at heart, but you do it with the confidence of saying, it is God who is going to present me blameless. It is God who's at work in my life.

You see, the message of the New Testament, of the Gospel, the good news of Jesus Christ, is not obey so that God will accept you. It's you are accepted on the basis of Jesus. Now you can choose to obey. It's not you need to live in fear and insecurity that you won't measure up. But it's saying, I can live with joy and gratefulness because Jesus has measured up on my behalf. It isn't my circumstances are bad. Therefore, either God let me down or I let myself down. It’s my circumstances may not be what I want, but I trust that there's a good and loving God at work. And our view of self doesn't have to go up and down with every mistake or every good deed in our lives. Instead, it's rooted entirely in who Jesus Christ is and in what He's done.

And if that is where you live, then you can live with joy and yet still welcome the Father's redirection. In fact, when are you most receptive to coaching? I would say when your status is secure. So in other words, if you're trying out for a team, and as you try out for a team, there's a coach who's always correcting you, you don't feel secure. If you have a part in a musical or a play and you don't have the part yet and you're auditioning, everything feels like criticism and it feels threatening. But when you know that you are going to be on stage the next night, no matter how poorly you perform, there's a sense of status that comes with that. And you say, go ahead and correct me, help me, because now I can receive what you have.And so welcoming the Father's redirection from a place of status is actually where you'll find joy and you'll find God working in your life to redirect you in ways that are for your good. 

Okay, so joy, welcoming life as it comes, without fatalism, welcoming the spirit's fire without subjectivism, welcoming the Father's redirection without performance-ism, Not a word, but that's okay. And I would say, finally, it's welcoming people broadly.

Verse 26 is this little phrase,

“Greet all God's people with a holy kiss.” - 1 Thessalonians 5:26

This is one of the best examples in the New Testament of something that is cultural and how you handle cultural idioms in the New Testament. Because you understand intuitively that a holy kiss was cultural. So if you try to go up to somebody in the lobby of a church and say, I just want to kiss you with a holy kiss, that you're weird.

But there's a principle, and the principle doesn't go away because the culture is different. And the principle is welcome people, greet people, make people feel completely wanted within the church. Welcome people into your life. That's the principle. And here's the corollary, in a sense, and that is welcome people broadly, but reject relativism. And I say this because it says, greet God's people with a holy kiss. And in verse 22, it talks about putting aside what is evil. In other words, there's a kind of criticism that you can live with that says, I'm critical of people and I'm exclusive to people. And it's saying, no, no, no, welcome everybody with a holy kiss. But it's not saying, be so welcoming that there's no principles in your fellowship. That there's no sense of what is right and Biblical when you come together.

I was trying to think about how to talk about this a little bit, and if you're a dog owner, you've been around dogs, you'll get this. We have two dogs. I should have brought a picture, but that's too much like, proud dog owner thing. So we have a big dog, rescue dog. He's a boxer lab mix. And we have a little dog, another rescue dog, who's a beagle lab mix. And the big dog is like all dogs, a little goofy. But when people come, you don't really know if he likes you or not. And if somebody comes to our door that he doesn't know, he loves to do the mean dog bark, like, stay away. This is our house. I'm in charge. The beagle, when I come through the door a lot of days, not every day, but most days, gets really excited. She howls. It's kind of fun, you know, you come home, it doesn't matter what the day has been, who said what, how hard anything's been. There's a dog who's like, you're home. I'm so excited, I'm howling for you. 

Okay? Now, the problem with the beagle is that sometimes a stranger will come into our house who she doesn't know, and she'll howl. What you actually want with your dog is what we get from both of our dogs. You get the warm greeting, the you're the best welcome, who also has a little sense of, but you don't belong here. In fact, we're not going to have that here. That is, I think, the ideal in Christian community. Not necessarily emphasizing saying what doesn't belong, but saying there is a time should be very rare. When you say, this can't be, but the general demeanor is, I'm so glad you're here, welcome, and let's do life together.

And why would that produce joy? Because so many people lose joy in their Christian experience. Because what they do is they sit and they want to critique everybody else, and they want to be exclusionary and say, God likes my kind better than he likes any other kind. Rather than saying, if you are affirming Jesus Christ, then you're part of this house and I greet you like a howling beagle.

Now, that may be a goofy example, but you know, I think there would be more joy if the idea of the holy kiss was seen as a warm, excited, welcoming greeting all the time. And that brings joy. So joy is found when we welcome life as it comes, when we welcome the Spirit and the Father's work in our lives, and when we welcome others. And when we learn to reject some of the things that keep us from this. And that is where we will find joy. And that's how we live this day, in light of that day. Because this day may not have enough reason for joy, but there's coming a day when Jesus will return and make everything right. And that's why we can rejoice in everything. That's why we can rejoice even when God's redirecting hand is in our lives or the Spirit's fire is prompting something new and challenging. And it's why we can welcome people. Because it's not our job to be the arbiter ultimately, but we can be the welcomer to say, God, thank you for bringing your people together.

Now, as you hear this today, my guess is you can easily just say kind of what I said at the beginning. These are a bunch of staccato commands, exhortations. I guess I should try harder. What I hope you're hearing is not try harder to do these things, but to embrace who Jesus is and what he's done in such a way that you're able to live with confidence, whatever's coming at you, to take the correction of God without being tied to performance, because Jesus has performed for you. And to not feel the weight of having to judge people, but instead to be welcoming. And I believe that that is where we will find at least some more joy in this journey. 

Let's pray together. God, I ask today that you would help us to be joyful in our journey, that this day would be filled with joy for that day. And God, I ask that as we're gathered this weekend at Orchard Hill, that you would help each of us to live in such a way that our joy is evident. God, for any of us who are gathered here today thinking that our way forward with you has been through our effort instead of Jesus effort, I pray even in this moment, it would be perfectly clear that it is all about what Jesus has done, not about what we do. And we pray this now in his name. Amen.

This transcript was automatically generated. Please excuse errors.