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Welcome to Faith of Our Fathers. Today we feature John stott. Born in 1921, he was well known throughout the world for his writings and godly influence in the global church. He founded Langham Partnership in response to the growing needs he heard from churches and pastors in the majority world. Stott passed away July 27th in 2011. He leaves behind a legacy that continues to expand through the power of God's Word. Today, John Stott presents a sermon on the tension between joy and sorrow.
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The general theme of this series of talks is tensions in Christian experience. We've been considering that the Christian life is not the smooth passage across a sea of tranquility which it has sometimes been depicted as being. No, there are various tensions in our experience. We began with that between submission to the authority of Christ on the one hand, and the freedom with which he sets us free on the other. We continued with the double call of the Christian to holiness and to worldliness. And now we come to a third tension, which I'm going to call that between joy and sorrow. I want to address myself to the question, should a Christian ever be unhappy? There have certainly been periods in church history in which it would have seemed absurd to ask such a question, for Christians have cultivated a grave solemnity and earned for themselves a reputation for being glum and lugubrious. At other times, however, and I think I would include our own day and generation, the opposite has been the case. Evangelism today is not infrequently debased into a message like Come to Jesus and be happy. The signature tune of the church has sometimes appeared to be I'm H A P P Y Christians appear happy, hearty, ebullient, boisterous and rather glib. The brand image of Christians is sometimes not dissimilar to that of a Cheshire cat. I receive some Christian glossy magazines which reach my desk, in which every Christian who appears in the magazine, and there are very many of them, appears with a broad grin on his face, as if Christians can do nothing but laugh and smile and grin. And some Christians would defend themselves by saying, doesn't the Bible tell us to rejoice always? Well, then, what is the true Bible image of a Christian? Is he glum or is he glib? And the answer is neither, nor both. Although joy and sorrow are part and parcel of a true Christian life, as the preacher said way back in the book of Ecclesiastes, there is a time to laugh and there is a time to weep, are Christians not followers of one who went about saying on the One hand, be of good cheer, go in peace, and on the other was called a man of sorrows. Or if you would like a text for what I'm going to talk about today. There is that great paradox of the APostle Paul's in 2 Corinthians chapter 6 and verse 10, when he describes himself and all Christian people as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. Joy and sorrow together. Firstly, then, the Christian life is a life of joy. So of course is human life, for God has given us all things richly to enjoy. So obvious is this, or ought it to be so much emphasized? Is it that I think I hardly need to elaborate it very much now. But of course the gospel is glad tidings of great joy. Of course, in God's presence is fullness of joy, and at his right hand there are pleasures forevermore. Psalm 16:11. And Jesus said he wanted his disciples joy to be full. You'll find the refrain in John 15:11, John 16, verse 24, John 17, verse 13. He repeated this in the upper room that your joy may be full again. Of course, the apostle Paul said that joy and peace are the fruit of the Spirit. And he prayed that God would fill Christian people with all joy and peace in believing. You can see that in Romans 14:17, Romans 15:13. Now, please remember this. I don't deny any of this. On the contrary, I believe it, I rejoice in it. I see it in others. I've experienced it to some extent myself. There is joy in the Christian life. True, deep and lasting joy in the knowledge of forgiveness. Joy in the experience of fellowship with God and with one another. There is joy in hearing and receiving the Word of God, so that we can receive the Word with much joy. There's joy in seeing sinners repent, even one sinner who repents. There's joy on earth as there's joy in heaven. And there's joy in God himself, who satisfies the longing soul and fills the hungry soul with goodness. I say again, the Christian life is a life of joy. I remember reading some years ago that when a certain doctor Farmer was organised but Harrow, he found he had to plead with the salvationist drummer not to hit the drum so hard. And the beaming bandsman replied, lord, bless you, sir. Since I been converted, I'm so happy I could bust the bloomin drum. And I tell you, that's an authentic Christian experience. The Christian life is a life of joy. But secondly, the Christian life is a life of sorrow also. Indeed, if we want to redress the balance today, if we want to discover a truly biblical balance, I think we shall find ourselves wishing that there were fewer grins and more tears, that there were less laughter and more weeping in the Christian church. For if on the one hand we can sing in the jubilate that we serve the Lord with gladness, we can also say with the Apostle Paul that we serve the Lord with all humility and with many tears. Let me talk to you now for some time about Christian tears. Why and when should Christians weep? A There are tears of nature, that is to say, of natural sorrow. I define these tears thus as tears of nature because they're not specifically Christian tears. They're simply human tears. They are tears that we shed are due to our common nature, which we share with all humanity, and they are not due to any special grace that Christian people have received. For example, there is the sorrow of parting when friends or relatives part and have to say goodbye. Such as the sorrow that Timothy felt when Paul was arrested for the second time and dragged away and we read 2 Timothy 1:9, he couldn't restrain his tears. Or when the Ephesian elders to whom Paul was saying goodbye and said to them that they were going to see his face for the last time, we read, they wept. Acts 20, verse 37. These are natural tears of parting. Then there are the tears of bereavement, as when Jesus himself cried at the graveside of Lazarus, John 11:35. Jesus wept. Or there is the sorrow of our own mortality when we sense the frailty and the fragility of our human body, and know what it is to groan in it. The Apostle Paul writes of this in both Romans 8:8, 22, 23, and in 2 Corinthians 5, verse 2. In this body he says, we groan. Or there is the general sorrow of the trials and testings and adversities with which we face life, which the Apostle Peter describes when he speaks of being in heaviness through manifold temptation, interpretations or testings. This, I think, is what the psalmist was referring to when he prayed to God, put my tears in your bottle, Psalm 56:8. That is, he wept copious tears, and he wanted God to count his tears, to measure them as it were in his bottle. May I illustrate this from my own experience? I have many times been on a railway platform when missionaries are being seen off, either for the first time to the mission field or after their furlough. And even more often I've been at the funeral of a Christian being buried. And on these occasions I have sensed what I can only describe as a certain Christian Inhibition in which Christians have forced themselves to suppress their feelings of natural sorrow and and if even turned away lest their Christian friends should see tears in their eyes. Is it wrong then for a Christian to weep? Now, of course, there is such a thing as selfish and unrestrained weeping. And we are forbidden as Christians to sorrow over our Christian dead, like those who have no hope. There is a kind of sorrow that is wrong for a Christian. But we're not forbidden to sorrow. We're not forbidden to weep. Indeed, I would be so bold as to say it would be thoroughly unnatural not to. To regard natural sorrow as unmanly is more stoic than Christian. The gospel does not rob us of our humanity. The gospel does not make humans inhuman. It makes us more human, not less so. You know what I mean, don't you, when I speak of the tears of nature? Don't suppress them. It's natural to feel this kind of sorrow. But the other tears I'm going to speak to you about, I might describe as tears of grace rather than of nature, because they are in fact specifically Christian forms of sorrow. There are tears which Christians do not share, or largely not with non Christian people. They are tears which, if we shed them at all, it is God himself who has caused us to weep them. So I turn b to tears of penitence. Tears of penitence. I suppose we all know the story of the woman who stood behind Jesus when he was reclining at a meal in a friend's house and stood there weeping and began to wet his feet with her tears. These were tears of penitence for her sin and of gratitude for for her forgiveness. But, says some impatient Christian objector, she was a fallen woman. These were tears at her conversion. Certainly our Christian objector goes on, I'm glad when eyes are moist at the Gospel invitation and when the penitent bench is wet with tears. This is holy water indeed. But surely Christians don't weep over their sins, do they? Don't they? I would to God they did. Have the people of God no sins to mourn, no sins to confess. Was Ezra wrong to pray and make confession? Weeping and casting himself down before the house of God? Were God's covenant people wrong to weep bitterly over their sins? Ezra, chapter 10, verse 1. Did Jesus not mean what he said in the Sermon on the Mount when he said blessed are those who mourn? Which in the context appears to mean those who mourn over their sins? And was Paul wrong as a Christian to cry in Romans 7:24 O wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from the body of this death? No. No. Such a cry as the Apostle Paul's is emitted only by a mature Christian, certainly not by an unbeliever, nor even, I think, by an immature Christian, but to a Christian of some maturity who sees the continuing corruption of his fallen nature, who mourns over it and longs for the final deliverance which death and resurrection alone will bring. This is the godly sorrow of true penitence. Should I give you a modern example you've heard, I think of David Brainerd, who was one of the most saintly of all Christian missionaries, who died as a missionary working amongst the Indians of America when he was still a very young man. Listen to what David Brainerd wrote in his diary on the 18th of October, 1740. In my morning devotions, my soul was exceedingly melted and bitterly mourned over my exceeding sinfulness and vileness. I never before had felt so pungent and deep a sense of the odious nature of sin as at this time. But then my soul was unusually carried forth in love to God and had a lively sense of God's love for me. Now, I believe that David Brainerd was a balanced Christian. I don't believe that he was morbid. You need to read the whole of his journal to see that he was a good and a godly man, a most unusually godly man. But there were times when he had this deep penitence that made him weep over his continued inner corruption. So, A tears of nature, B tears of penitence, C tears of compassion. These are the tears which the apostle Paul intended when he said in Romans 12:15, Rejoice with those who do. Rejoice and weep. Weep with those who weep. These are tears of compassion. Now I have to confess that there are many non Christian humanists who weep tears of compassion, sometimes more bitter and more copious than some of us Christians have ever wept. There are non Christian humanists who weep in sorrow over the horrors and the cruelties of the Vietnam War, over starvation in Biafra, over poverty, unemployment, oppression and racial discrimination, and who feel these things more deeply than Christian people do. Are they more sensitive than we? Are we so insulated from the sufferings of the world that we do not feel these things, things we should do? And there are specifically Christian tears of compassion as well. These are tears that are shared over the unbelieving and impenitent, over those who, whether through blindness or willfulness, reject the good news of Jesus Christ. There is such a thing as Christian tears wept over their self destructive folly and their grave danger. Is this not what Jeremiah experienced when he cried, O that my head were waters and my eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people? That is, he knew they were going to fall under the judgment of God for their impenitence. And because he'd identified himself with his own people, he wept over their danger. You can read this for yourself. In Jeremiah, chapter 9, verse 1, chapter 13, verse 17, chapter 14, verse 17, and so on. Well, what about the Lord Jesus Christ himself? He wept over the city of Jerusalem because it did not know the time of its visitation, and for that reason was to bring upon itself the judgment of God. Luke 19:41. And if Jeremiah and Jesus Christ could weep tears of compassion, so could the APostle Paul. For three years in Ephesus he says he didn't cease night and day to admonish everyone with tears. Acts 20:31. And he wrote in his letter to the Romans, chapter nine, verse two, that he had great sorrow and unceasing anguish in his heart over his fellow countrymen because of their impenitence and blindness. But let's leave biblical days and come to more modern days. Bishop Ryle wrote of George Whitfield, the great preacher of the 18th century. They could not hate the man who wept so much over their souls. Or take Andrew Bonar, the Scottish minister in the 19th century, on his 49th birthday, he wrote in his journal, felt in the evening most bitter grief over the apathy of the district. They are perishing, they are perishing and yet they will not consider it. I lay awake thinking over it and crying to the Lord in broken groans. Why? Give you one more example from D.L. moody, the great 20th century American evangelist, Dr. Dale of Birmingham, was at first inclined to look with great disfavor on Mr. Moody. He went to hear him, however, and his opinion was immediately altered. He regarded Moody ever after with profound respect. Why? Well, he wrote this, he considered that Moody had a right to preach the gospel because he could never speak of a lost soul without tears in his eyes. These then are the tears of compassion, tears of nature, tears of penitence, tears of compassion, and d the tears of jealousy, that is of divine jealousy. And this divine jealousy in the Bible is a strong, intolerant, jealous zeal for the name of God and the honor of God and the glory of God. And when God is said to be a jealous God, it means that he is intolerant of rivals, that he is the Lord. And there is none else, and he will not give his glory to another. And whenever we pray that the name of God may be honored, or that the honor of God may be promoted, or that the kingdom of God may be extended, we are feeling the jealousy of God. And it is this that caused the psalmist to say, my eyes shed streams of tears because men do not keep thy Law. Psalm 119. 136. Well, this is what Paul meant when in writing to the Philippians, chapter three, verse 18, he could write of many, of whom I tell you, even with tears, that they are enemies of the cross of Christ. Here you see, were men in both Old and New Testament days so concerned about the law of God on the one hand, and about the cross of Christ on the other, that they could not bear to see them trampled underfoot. And those who made themselves enemies of God's law by violating it, or enemies of Christ's cross by preaching another gospel, brought tears to the eyes of godly people who cared. I tell you, no purer tears are ever shared than these. They contain no admixture of selfishness or vanity. They are the sorrows of a human being who loves God more than anything else in the world, who cannot bear to see God's love rebuffed or his truth rejected and not cry. One asks, can anyone walk the streets of London today and restrain his tears? Now, in the light of all this biblical evidence about the tears of nature and the tears of grace, would you not agree with me that we should probably laugh a little less and cry a little more, and that if we were more Christian, we would probably be more sorrowful? I think so. I'm sure that we must repudiate that Christian teaching which represents the Christian life as all smiles and no tears. Let me give you again a modern example. Professor James Atkinson of Sheffield University was speaking a year or two ago to the Church of England Evangelical Council. I was present when he was speaking, and he was describing some of the pathetically untheological condition of the Church of England today. He described it in such a way as to make some of us laugh. And Professor Atkinson immediately turned on us and said with great feeling. The difference between you and me, he said, is that you laugh and I cry. Erasmus called for more Flemish wine with no water added. Luther cried all night. Now, the fundamental error which underlies this idea that the Christian life is all smiles and no tears is a misunderstanding of God's plan of salvation. It's a false assumption that God's saving work is finished, that its benefits may be enjoyed completely today, and that there is no need for any more sickness or suffering or sin. Sin, the causes of sorrow. Because these things have passed away or may pass away. And I want to say to you, with all the conviction I possess, this is just not true. God's saving work is not yet done. There is no Christian who is more than half saved. Oh, it's perfectly true, wonderfully true, that Christ cried on the cross. It is finished. And. And that by his death and resurrection he completed the work of redemption he came to do. That's true. But the fruits of this salvation have not yet been fully garnered, nor will they be, nor can they be until the end when Christ comes again in power and great glory. The ravages of the fall of man have not yet been eradicated, either in the world or even in Christian people. For we Christian people still have a fallen nature with its ingrained corruption over which we need to weep. And we still live in a fallen world that is full of sorrow because it is full of suffering and full of sin. Can we not see these things, that we do not weep over them? Surely the only eyes which do not weep are blind eyes. Eyes that are closed to the facts of sin and suffering in ourselves and in the rest of humanity. But to close our eyes thus is to withdraw from the world of reality. It's to live in cloud cuckoo land. It's to pretend that the final victory has been won when it hasn't. It's to anticipate the end. It is to imagine that we can experience the end before it has happened. Thank God that the day is coming when there will be no more crying and no more tears. The day is coming when sorrow and sighing will flee away and God will wipe away all tears from our eyes, as is written in Revelation 7:19 21, verse 4. Because then the kingdom of God will have been consummated. Then there will be a new heaven and a new earth in which only righteousness dwells. God's people will then have been totally redeemed. They will have been invested with new bodies, and there will be no more sin and no more death. But that day is not yet, hence the continuance of our sorrow. So let me conclude. How can we resolve this tension between joy and sorrow? I bring you these three simple lessons. 1. Let us rejoice in that measure of victory which Christ has already gained and in which we can ourselves already revel. Because we can experience it ourselves, such as the forgiveness of sins and fellowship with one another and with God and the enjoyment of the indwelling Spirit, and so on. Let us rejoice in that measure of victory that is already ours. Secondly, let us rejoice also in hope of the glory of God, Romans 5:2, that is, in expectation of the final victory of Christ, knowing that those who sow in tears will reap in joy. But thirdly, let us remember that we are living in the interim period between the beginning and the end of the salvation of God, between the inauguration and the consummation of victory, between D day and V day. And this period between D day and V day was a period in which much blood was spilt and many tears were still shed. And we are living in this time lag. And during this time lag between D day and V day. It is now that sin and suffering and sorrow continue, and Christian people are caught up in this tension between what is, is and what shall be, so that we rejoice in the final victory of God. Although we are still in heaviness through manifold temptations, we are sorrowful and yet always rejoicing.
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You've been listening to John Stott. Listen to Faith of Our Fathers each Saturday and Sunday to hear more great 20th century preachers.