Double Edge 1986

From Psalm 126, verses 5 and 6. They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious sin, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. You meet a fair number of believers these days who say, I just can't seem to find the joy.

I'm looking for the joy of the Lord and nobody seems to be able to give it to me. I'm depressed. I'm down a lot more than I know I should be.

And sometimes they read books that tell us about how to get this joy and then they get really encouraged and say, I believe I have it. Great stuff. Until the first rainy day comes along.

And so they've been really depressed the last few weeks. Or they go to conferences and seminars that concentrate on the joy of the Lord. Hallelujah, I got it now.

Until things go bad at work or they get the sniffles or their husband or their wife gets roused. And it seems to evaporate again. And to think for just a few minutes today about how you get this.

I mean, if we're really seeking the joy of the Lord and not just some kind of superficial thought, but something that comes from Him. The thing we have to see is that the Word of God is a two-edged sword. And in order to be quickened by the joy of the Lord, we have to touch both edges.

We have to allow the sword to cut through into our hearts and we have to allow both edges of that sword to touch us and affect us. We have to listen to both sides of what it says. And so we read in Hebrews chapter 4, verse 12.

Well, the Word of God is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And before Him, no creature is hidden, but all are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. The Lord has two edges.

The one is called grace. The other is called judgment. And our tendency is to go for the grace and ignore the judgment, which is the same as to, you know, want forgiveness from God without repentance.

It's the same as to pray, our Father who art in heaven, but to forget to pray, hallowed be thy name. Supposing your best friend kidnapped your child and drove it off to the Rocky Mountains and locked it in a cabin and then called you up and said, I want you to know that I've kidnapped your child and I'm really, really sorry. Will you forgive me? First thing you would say is, bring my child back.

You would know that there's no genuine sorrow for what they did until they do something about it, until that child comes back unharmed. And yet somehow we seem to think that God should be pouring out this joy on us and this peace and this wonderful, you know, serenity when we really haven't taken seriously His call to repentance. We want to be forgiven.

We want to have joy and peace. And God desires to give that to us and He indeed will. That's why Jesus came in the first place and died on that cross in order that we might be filled with the peace of God and the joy of God.

See, but in order for us to receive the effects of that, we have to see that what took place on that cross was not only mercy, but judgment on sin. And the sins that are in us that were judged on that cross will only be washed away from our lives. Thus, when we genuinely repent of them, they that sow in tears shall reap in joy.

What does it mean to sow in tears? It means to repent. He that goeth forth and weepeth bearing precious seed shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. And to sow in tears, to go forth weeping, bearing this precious seed means that I carry a spirit of repentance before God.

Those who receive holy joy are those who first of all learn holy fear. And our tendency is to see injustice all over the place. We see injustice in the world around us and we get really exercised about it.

We pass judgment on that. But that's absolutely, you know, nothing is accomplished until we first of all begin to deal with the injustice that's also in here. The sin is in here.

You know, until I have an awe for God, a respect for His holiness that brings me to the place of repentance, nothing happens. Repentance. When Jesus comes into our life, bringing salvation, with that salvation He also brings the danger of damnation.

The two always go together. You can't separate one from the other. Jesus is not only the doorway to heaven.

He's also the doorway to hell. When He comes and He declares our sins forgiven, and He speaks life to us, and He raises us up, and He breaks the chains that bind us, and He sets us free, and He gives us life, from that point on, the life that we live is either lived under grace or under judgment, one or the other. Reading from Luke chapter 10, verse 1. After this, the Lord appointed 70 others and sent them on ahead of Him, two by two, into every town and place where He Himself was about to come.

And He said to them, The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Pray, therefore, the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest. Go your way.

Behold, I send you out as lambs in the midst of wolves. Whenever you enter a town and they receive you, eat what is set before you. Heal the sick in it and say to them, The kingdom of God has come near to you.

When they receive you, when there's a tenderness, when there's a spirit of repentance, you receive their hospitality. Eat what they give you. Heal the sick.

And say, The kingdom of God has come near. But what if they don't receive you? What if there is no repentance? This is something very often we just don't want to deal with in ourselves or in our ministries. If they won't receive us, Jesus goes on to say, Whenever you enter a town and they do not receive you, go into its streets and say, Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off against you.

Nevertheless, know this. The kingdom of God has come near. I tell you, it shall be more tolerable on that day for Sodom than for that town.

It's a two-edged sword. Judgment, grace. Both together.

Now, Jesus never separates the two edges of that sword. He always holds them together. You never have one without the other.

And the tendency among modern evangelical Christians is to drive a knife down between the two and neither emphasize the grace or the judgment. They belong together. For instance, he says, You are the salt of the earth.

That's grace. But if the salt has lost its taste, it is no longer for anything but to be thrown out and trodden underfoot by men. That's judgment.

If we want the joy of the Lord, the real thing that abides, that survives all the storms, we have to touch both edges of the sword. We have to listen to both sides of that word. The apostolic believers, as we see them described and as they express themselves in the New Testament, were filled with unspeakable joy, contagious joy, absolutely hilarious joy, joy that gave them the boldness and the freedom to pull off their masks and draw near to each other, made it easier for them to take off those rubber gloves and go out there and touch those lepers and reach those lost sheep.

They didn't have little clubs for nice people. They were open and they were seeking the lost sheep all the time without fear because they were infected with this marvelous joy. They were alive with it.

And it was a joy that brought praises to their lips. It didn't have to be engineered. And it was a joy that went forth with them when they left church and went home to their homes, to their jobs and their relationships with people day after day after day.

It was there and it was this joy that people could see that caused people to notice and to be joy. But the joy that was obvious in the apostolic church among those believers was there because these people also touched the other side of the sword. They had a healthy dose of awe, a holy fear of God's glory, a respect for Him.

These people knew how to take off their shoes. These people knew how to to sow in tears, to weep, to repent, to come clean, to deal with what was there. They weren't all the time talking about God judging the world out there.

It was God's judgment on me. Not my brother or my sister. It's me, O Lord.

Judgment begins at the house of God. I'm the one. So I repent and I humble myself and I take off my mask and I remove my shoes and I surrender myself to you.

I come clean when I do this. Up comes joy, peace, power, grace, life from God. Now the desire of the spirit of the living God for us in this place, in this assembly is to have about a thousand times more joy than we now have.

Not just when we come together on Sunday mornings or Wednesday nights or in our small group Bible studies or our fellowship meetings, but all the time on our jobs, in our homes, in our neighborhoods, wherever we are. Contagious, hilarious joy so that we can boldly pull off our masks and really get close to each other and take off those rubber gloves and reach out and draw those lost sheep into the banquet hall of God. But to do that, we have to learn to sow in tears, to touch the other side of the sword, to submit to the judgment of God first on our own lives.

Don't be worrying about that speck in the other person's life until you get that log out, Jesus says to us. We have to learn to submit in repentance. See, repentance is not just something for the person who's a new believer just coming in and out of the world.

Sure, it's for them, but it's also for us. It's a thing that needs to be all the time. Julia was saying, you know, so she won't always have to be asking God to forgive.

And what she was talking about are things in her life that she doesn't want to be there anymore. And that's good. But Julia and you and I will continue to walk in repentance if we're going to have the life of God.

And there are three basic areas where people who are already followers of Jesus need to live in repentance and where you and I especially need to learn to walk in repentance. First, our casual, almost careless attitude toward God himself. Secondly, we need to learn to repent of our impatient attitude toward each other.

And thirdly, we have to learn to repent, genuinely repent, so that we do something about it for our indifference, indifference toward those lost sheep out there. Today, we come to the rail. And when we come to this rail, we come to eat the body and blood of the Lamb.

It's as if the Spirit of God wipes away the centuries and we're right there at Calvary and the Lord touches us personally, speaks to us individually even, as well as corporately, to tell us that our sins are forgiven, to give us a new start, to wipe away the past, to set us free from our bondages again. But for that to happen, we have to come, on our side, bringing repentance. Repentance.

We've got a soul in tears. So as we come today to the altar, to commune with Jesus, let's first of all bring repentance for our casual, almost careless attitude to God Himself. To really worship Him.

You know, we read the Old Testament, we see how these Israelites were, you know, they see all the glory of God, all the marvelous things God does, and they're still walking around complaining, you know, and Moses is hardly going up on the mountain before they're making a golden calf. But what we see in them is in us. You know, that's our problem.

You know, there's a need for us to also say, Hallowed be Thy Name. O God, may Your Name be made holy. And I repent before You today, Lord God, of my dullness, my heaviness, I feel like it.

Today, Lord God, I want to present my body again as a living sacrifice. I want to discipline my mind to truly worship You. I want to offer back to You all that I have.

I want to worship You, not just with my mouth, but with my love, with my body, my mind, my time, everything I have. Lord God, when we come to the altar today to commune, to receive forgiveness, life, miracles really, healing, let's bring on our side repentance for our impatience with each other. We eat of one loaf.

We drink of one cup. We are all one body, even if we drink of this one cup and eat of this one loaf. And that body is Christ.

But we can't really make that real and actual in our midst until the walls come down and the masks come off. Until we get it. Lord God, I repent of my attitude toward my brothers and sisters.

How often I say, Lord, you're not meeting my needs. You're not being met by them. But Lord, you didn't come to have your needs met.

You didn't come to be served. You came to serve and give your life as a ransom for many. How often we get really bothered and troubled because they're not giving us enough attention.

They walked right by me and didn't say hello. I was sick for three days and the phone didn't ring once. Constantly measuring how much is coming my way.

You know, I'm not getting enough. Only three spoonfuls of love when I was giving you five. I'm going to give you two.

See how you like it. And very soon that results. Exactly this is what happens in the body of Christ as well.

You know, it's repentance. Lord God, I repent of my measuring what they're doing for me. Doesn't matter what they're doing for you.

What are you doing for them? Lord God, today, before you, I repent of this attitude and like you, I want to just come and watch people. I want to serve them. I want to love them.

I want to come close to them. I want to do for them. Help me, Lord God.

I repent. Finally, when we come to the altar today, high point of the week for us, really glorious. We're in touch with Calvary and we're in touch with the marriage supper of the Lamb all at once.

Let's bring repentance also for our indifference to Lazarus who sits in our gate. Our indifference to the lost sheep who are out there with no shepherd to guide them. We were lost sheep.

And Lord, you came to us and you laid down your life for us. Now, before you, we want to before your throne, we want to repent of our indifference to the other, the shepherdly sheep out there that nobody seems to be paying any attention to. And we say that is useless.

They're lazy. They're dirty. They're snobs.

They're hypocrites. Whatever we think they are. Lord God, forgive.

And before your throne, we commit ourselves, Lord, to search for them and seek them out and feed them on the mountains of Israel and bring back the stray and bind up the cripple and strengthen the weak. By your grace, we're going to do it. They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.

He that goeth forth and is weeping bearing precious seed shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. If we sow in tears today before God, we're going to reap in joy. And if we go forth from this place today carrying with us a spirit of genuine repentance into our daily life that goes on from this moment, from this time together, we're going to... If we repent, first of all, for our casualness toward God, Lord, I'm going to draw near to you.

I'm going to take off my shoes and worship you. And if we draw near to each other, we're determined that we're going to be right by our brothers and sisters. We're going to wash their feet.

We're going to serve them, never mind what they do. We're going to serve them. And if we make up our minds, they're walking around in the neighborhoods where we live, this neighborhood where we are now, on our jobs, they're everywhere, that we're going to go out there and we're going to find them and we're going to bring them home to Him.

Neither goeth forth and weepeth bearing precious seeds. Shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him. And we'll be bringing his sheaves and we will see results and we will have unspeakable joy that no circumstance and no devil can take from us.

Let's just wait upon God now in silence for just a few minutes.