Oxygen session 8
(rough notes)
Show Christ
My enjoyment of Him is the means in which I most glorify Him.
God has given us a mind to find the right views of Him through a book.
There isn’t anything better than fullness of Joy forever.
A worker with you for your Joy.
Who cares about the world? That is a horrible inference from the talks given.
How does embracing the truth not produce indifference with the world but rather an evangelistic zeal?
2 Corinthians 8:1-4, 8
We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God granted to the churches of Macedonia: 2 During a severe testing by affliction, their abundance of joy and their deep poverty overflowed into the wealth of their generosity. 3 I testify that, on their own, according to their ability and beyond their ability, 4 they begged us insistently for the privilege of sharing in the ministry to the saints, 8 I am not saying this as a command. Rather, by means of the diligence of others, I am testing the genuineness of your love.
Thesis: you can’t pursue your maximum pleasure unless you share the gospel.
Be motivated to go in the direction of earnest and cheerful giving because it is an expression of your love.
This is an amazing picture of how love occurs in the Church. It is such an astounding and compelling love.
Grace came down and people got saved in Philipi. Jailor, slave girl,
Affliction came about. Through their affliction, their joy became abundant. Their joy wasn’t in circumstances.
Joy abounding. Rooted in grace. Rooted in God.
Christians must be happy regardless of circumstances.
Living in a prosperous land such as Australia or America is dangerous as our joy can be closely tied to our prosperity.
Their extreme poverty has overflowed in an abundance of generosity. The poor people under affliction pleaded that they be able to provide for the saints.
Two definitions of love from the text 1. Love is the overflow of the joy in God that meets the needs of others.
The word overflow can sound a little too automatic and a little too passive. When a glass gets full it spills. Love involves more than passive spilling. It requires effort and can end up killing.
- love is the effort of joy to expand by including others in it flowing from joy in God.
If grace is missing then what comes out isn’t love.
2 Corinthians 9:7
Each person should do as he has decided in his heart—not reluctantly or out of necessity, for God loves a cheerful giver.
If you are teaching your people to be indifferent in their giving you are teaching them to sin.
God wants one kind of giver. That is a cheerful giver.
Romans 12:8
if exhorting, in exhortation; giving, with generosity; leading, with diligence; showing mercy, with cheerfulness.
The bible is indiscriminate in its use of happiness language.
Get Bible meaning into the words used.
Joy is not superficial or incompatible with pain.
Romans 12:15
Romans 9:2
that I have intense sorrow and continual anguish in my heart.
2 Corinthians 1:6
If we are afflicted, it is for your comfort and salvation. If we are comforted, it is for your comfort, which is experienced in your endurance of the same sufferings that we suffer.
2 Corinthians 1:8
2 Corinthians 11:8
Acts 20:35-38
In every way I’ve shown you that by laboring like this, it is necessary to help the weak and to keep in mind the words of the Lord Jesus, for He said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ 36 After he said this, he knelt down and prayed with all of them. 37 There was a great deal of weeping by everyone. They embraced Paul and kissed him, 38 grieving most of all over his statement that they would never see his face again. Then they escorted him to the ship.
Do not burden others.
How is it love if by taking a meal to a sick person so that you may get joy? Because we desire to include the other people in our happiness. We want to see them in heaven with us.
God loves a cheerful pastoral visit. We can’t love people if we aren’t happy in God.
Hebrews 10,11,12,13 Four chapters that show that you love people and it is powered by your persuit of God in Jesus.
Hebrews 10:32-34
Remember the earlier days when, after you had been enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings. 33 Sometimes you were publicly exposed to taunts and afflictions, and at other times you were companions of those who were treated that way. 34 For you sympathized with the prisoners and accepted with joy the confiscation of your possessions, knowing that you yourselves have a better and enduring possession.
We have a better and abiding possession, which is Jesus, than those possessions than we have now.
Psalm 16:11
You reveal the path of life to me; in Your presence is abundant joy; in Your right hand are eternal pleasures.
All that they lost, they counted as gain because they chose to pursue Jesus.
Hebrews 11:24-26
By faith Moses, when he had grown up, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter 25 and chose to suffer with the people of God rather than to enjoy the short-lived pleasure of sin. 26 For he considered the reproach because of the Messiah to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, since his attention was on the reward.
Jesus is a greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt. He was looking to the greater reward to come.
Hebrews 12:1-2
Therefore, since we also have such a large cloud of witnesses a surrounding us, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily ensnares us. Let us run with endurance the race that lies before us, 2 keeping our eyes on Jesus, the source and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that lay before Him endured a cross and despised the shame and has sat down at the right hand of God’s throne.
Jesus himself had his eyes on the reward.
Love flows over from joy in all that God has done for us in Jesus!
Hebrews 13:12-14
Therefore Jesus also suffered outside the gate, so that He might sanctify the people by His own blood. 13 Let us then go to Him outside the camp, bearing His disgrace. 14 For we do not have an enduring city here; instead, we seek the one to come.
