Pastor Jeff on the Radio

Pastor Jeff Schwarzentraub: Many things enter into the joy of your master.

Guest (Male): You're listening to Pastor Jeff Schwarzentraub, senior pastor at Brave Church. Brave exists to equip believers with rock-solid biblical truth, not to make you comfortable, but to make you courageous so you can live faithfully for Jesus Christ wherever he's placed you. Visit brave.org to watch sermons and find resources to strengthen your walk. Now, here's Pastor Jeff with today's message.

Pastor Jeff Schwarzentraub: There are so many different ways that we can rejoice. And when it comes to the joy of our salvation, it happens oftentimes at very natural moments. If you would have seen me on my wedding day, one way you would have known I was joyful is because I smiled the whole day. God smiled, and I was smiling in the videos and all the pictures. I was smiling at the altar. There were moments of tears, but I was happy the whole day.

When each of our three kids were born, I just wept at the glory of God, that God would give me such a beautiful being. Somebody I'd never met before, didn't know as I held them in my arms. When my firstborn was born, I just started to weep. It wasn't like somebody pulled me aside and said, "Hey, if you really want to show your wife that you love your daughter, just make sure you show some praise, too." It was genuine. It was real.

At Super Bowl 50, when we knew the Broncos were going to win, I was high-fiving all sorts of people all over the place that I'd never met before. Nobody told me to do that. It was just part of rejoicing. Rejoicing is something that happens naturally when our heart is fixed on that which fills us. What Peter is going to tell us today that should be filling our heart at all times is the joy that we find in our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

If we find that joy in the Lord Jesus Christ, we're to rejoice presently. We're to rejoice now, regardless of anything else that's going on. When I was at Super Bowl 50, I knew out of the 75,000 people or so that were there that day, there were people that had challenges and problems and lots of things going on. But because of the moment and their heart being so filled in the moment, they were able to rejoice.

When it comes to the Lord Jesus Christ and our relationship with him, regardless of circumstances, God wants us to rejoice. He wants us to rejoice, and he wants us to rejoice now. We're going to take a look this morning at three reasons that we should be rejoicing presently, not just in the future. Like on my wedding day, it wasn't like I looked back 10 years after we were married and said, "Let me just smile about that. That was a nice day." It was in the moment.

God wants us to be in the moment of our salvation and in the moment of who our Lord is, so that we can rejoice in present circumstances. With that in mind, I invite you to open up to the book of 1 Peter chapter 1. We're going to be in verses 6 through 12. Let me read those verses and then we will look at them together, looking for the three reasons that we should be rejoicing presently.

Right after Peter finishes this understanding of the gospel, he says this, "In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials, so that the proof of your faith, being more precious than gold which is perishable, even though tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ."

"And though you have not seen Him, you love Him, and though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls. As to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace that would come to you made careful searches and inquiries, seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as He predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow."

"It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves, but you, in these things which have now been announced to you through those who preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven—things into which angels long to look." Here Peter is telling out for those that he's writing to, they're going through trials. Trials and challenges in our life, much like we see today, are calling them to rejoice.

Notice how he starts this section. In this you greatly rejoice. In what? In our salvation that was shown before the foundation of the world, that God through Jesus Christ's resurrection from the dead has given us an inheritance which is undefiled, it is reserved in heaven, and it is kept for you. If you have called upon the name of the Lord Jesus as your personal Lord and Savior, everything is secure for you. In this right now, regardless of any circumstance that you're in, you're called to rejoice.

It's not something you should be forced to do or told to do, but when you realize what God has actually done in your life, you will rejoice. Let me just be clear on this. Not all of you can rejoice because not all of you have a relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. God so loved the world that he sent his son, Jesus. Here's the message of everything God wants you to know. He sent his son, Jesus, because you're dead in your sin, and there was no way for you to get to God.

God the Father sent his son, who died in your place, who rose from the dead, and through him by repentance and in him alone, you can be forgiven. You can be completely forgiven. You can have all that sin and guilt washed away, and you can be a part of not only heaven but of salvation now. In this, you can greatly rejoice. I know there's many of you that had difficult weeks. I know some of you have dealt with depression this week. I know some of you have lost a loved one this week.

I know some of you are struggling in marriages this week. I know some of you have kids that are wayward this week. I know some of you are wondering how you're going to find money for your job to pay all your bills. Some of you are looking for employment. I understand that. There are a myriad of challenges this week. But if you belong to Jesus, in the midst of all of that, you can rejoice. That's the point. Rejoice now because trials show your faith.

Trials demonstrate your faith in the gospel. Notice what he says. In this you greatly rejoice, even though now for a little while, if necessary, you have been distressed by various trials. Distressed means the emotional anguish that comes out of trials. It means that you're sad, that you're frustrated, that you're angry or confused or hurt or upset. You don't understand why this is going on. That's distress. Peter says to rejoice now because distance will strengthen your fellowship with Christ.

And though you have not seen Him, you love Him. And though you do not see Him now, but believe in Him, you greatly rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, obtaining as the outcome of your faith the salvation of your souls. You love him and trust him even though you don't see him. I haven't seen a resurrected Christ in all of his glory, but I love him and I trust him. Remember after Jesus rose from the dead and he met all his disciples in the upper room and all were there except for Thomas?

And the disciples said to Thomas, "Hey, we've seen the Lord." Remember what Thomas said? "Unless I can put my hands in his hands, put my hands in his side and feel the scars, I will not believe." A week later, Jesus shows up in the same room. Now Thomas is there. Jesus says, "Peace be with you." He says, "Thomas, reach out your hands. Put your hand here. Put your hand in my side. Stop doubting and believe." Then he went on to say, "You believe because you've seen. Blessed or happy are those who have not seen and yet believe."

We haven't seen. It would make for a very crowded church service if Jesus in all of his glory would show up on a Sunday. We could call other people and say, "You want to be at Brave Church because Jesus is here." If we could see him, it would change things. But if we could see him, we don't have faith. We have faith because we can't see him. There's distance. He's seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty, and yet we trust him. We believe that he is who he is.

2 Corinthians chapter 5 says, "Therefore being always of good courage and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord." As long as we're in our body, we're absent from the Lord. The Lord is seated at the right hand of God the Father Almighty. For what do we do then? For we walk by faith and not by sight. For those of you who are single, if you're dating someone and you move to a different location and you really didn't like them, this proverb may hold true for you: out of sight, out of mind.

We thought we were close, but now we're not seeing each other, I don't really miss them. But if you are dating somebody and you really have affection for them and you move away, this proverb may be more appropriate: absence makes the heart grow fonder. Distance grows your love for one another. That's what he's saying. When I met my wife, I was living in Dallas, she was living in Chicago. By God's providence over the course of two years, we ended up back in the same area unbeknownst to each other.

But before we could do that, we had the telephone. We talked on the phone all the time, almost every night. I would call her at 7:00 at night and talk until midnight. Why? Because I wanted every second of my distance to count. I was yearning to be together with my wife. I wanted her to be around. I wanted her to be part of everything that was going on in my life, and I wanted to be part of hers. Here's the truth. If you really love Jesus, there is a yearning in your heart looking forward to the day that you can be face-to-face with Jesus.

That you no longer need to yearn, you no longer need to say, "How long, O Lord?" But there's that yearning to say there's coming a day when I will be with him and I will be with him for all eternity. No matter how long you're going to live on this planet, let's say you're going to live 150 years, in light of eternity, your life is very short. What you get to do for eternity is spend all of that time in the glory of God with Jesus Christ. Distance is actually a good thing because you're preparing for meeting your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

This time is preparation. This is like dress rehearsal for the final deal. This is what it's all about. We're to love God. Wouldn't you agree that it's not just in marriage but it's in any relationship that distance stirs your heart, that distance makes you want to be close to people? When we were at the Senior Pastor Wives' Retreat this week, one of the pastors who's going to be planting for us in Colorado Springs told the story that when he was a pastor out in Nevada, seven firstborn children of pastors in that small town had been killed tragically.

One day he's traveling with his firstborn, who was nine years old at the time, going 60 miles an hour through an intersection, and a student driver didn't see the stop sign and ran into them. He told the story how he was thrown through the front windshield, how he punctured a lung, how he couldn't even breathe, how he was almost ready to pass out. He climbed back to get to his son in the car who was hanging upside down and was turning gray. He's calling all his pastor friends and texting them saying, "Please come to the scene. I need prayer. My son needs prayer."

They got there and started praying over his son before he passed out and his son's color started coming back. Then he was laying on the gurney and had them get him up because he couldn't breathe on his back. They airlifted both of these guys and told his wife, "Your husband and son probably aren't going to live." By God's grace, his son and him both miraculously survived. So he's telling this story. My wife is bawling listening to the story. I'm getting choked up at the story.

All I want to do is talk to my son. It was 9:00 at night, so I text my son, "Hey, buddy, I just want you to know how much I love you. Can't wait to be back with you. I just want to give you a hug." I get a text back, "Dad, it's 9:00. I'm in bed. Quit texting." Trials reset our focus on Christ. If you are truly walking with the Lord when trials come, guess what they do? They take your energy from what you were focused on, your daily routine and all your challenges, and they reset your focus on Christ.

When we call out to Jesus like that, he never says he's too busy. He never says, "Why are you yearning for me?" He gets it. He created us for that. God wants us to yearn for that relationship with him. God sends us through trials and different things we go through so that we can know that the one supreme being and the one source of joy in our life that we can bank on no matter what is our relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ.

If he's the center of that, if he's the center of our joy, this will actually strengthen our fellowship and our relationship. Amen. When you're looking for employment and you don't have a job but the bills continue to come, as a Christian, what do you do? You begin to call on the name of the Lord more because you know that he's the only one that can provide. When you go through challenges in your marriage, it causes the rest of your life to need to stop.

Lord, trials are good because it's God's way of saying, "Hey, remember me? I'm the one who can do everything. Hey, remember me? All things are possible for me." That's what trials are good for. They reset our focus on Christ. And wouldn't we all agree that resetting our focus on Christ is a good thing? If we saw the fullness of the Lord Jesus Christ in glory, we wouldn't be able to talk. We don't know what it's going to be like.

Some of us will be dancing, some of us will be on our face, some of us will just be weeping, some of us will just be hugging. We don't know, but it will be inexpressible joy. And here's what Peter is saying: don't wait for the day that you meet Jesus, just know that that day is coming and look forward to it and be rejoicing every day presently because someday that day will be the day. The day is coming sooner than you think. At some point in time, we're going to meet the Lord Jesus Christ.

The question is, have you been developing that relationship and are you ready so that if he came today, you'd be like, "Yes! He's here!"? Because that's what Peter's saying. We have the ability to rejoice now. Finally, he says this. Not only can we rejoice because of our trials and rejoice in our distance, he says also rejoice now because God's wisdom will surprise your fervency in worship. The more you learn about God's plan of salvation and what he's been planning from eternity past to eternity future, you'd be blown away and you will rejoice.

Notice what he says. "As to this salvation, the prophets who prophesied of the grace of God that would come to you made careful searches and inquiries, seeking to know what person or time the Spirit of Christ within them was indicating as he predicted the sufferings of Christ and the glories to follow. It was revealed to them that they were not serving themselves, but you, in these things which have now been announced to you through those who preached the gospel to you by the Holy Spirit sent from heaven—things into which angels long to look."

Even the prophets that were called of God, men who spoke the words the Holy Spirit put in their hearts, who prophesied the coming of Christ, they still didn't understand exactly what God was going to do. Even the ones speaking on God's behalf didn't understand the fullness of it. Moses was writing in Genesis 3:15 about the fact that there was going to be enmity between God's seed and the Satan's seed, and that one day Jesus would crush his head but he would bruise his heel.

That was prophesied all the way back in Genesis 3:15. What we see is that Jesus was going to be born in Bethlehem in Micah 5:2. We see that Jesus was going to be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver. We see all the things in the Old Testament that the prophets were prophesying, and yet the prophets themselves were making careful inquiry, saying, "When's it going to happen?" God is so wise and so mysterious in the way in which he revealed it. The more you study the plan of salvation from eternity past, the more you want to say, "Glory to God!"

That he would love us enough to do that. Even the prophets talk about the fact Jesus would suffer and then he would triumph and he would rule and he would save. And even though they were the ones predicting it, they didn't know what it was going to look like. Then we see the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit of God always wants to reveal the resurrected Christ. That's his job. I remember when I was being called to ministry and there was no doubt in my mind that God had put a call on my life to do ministry.

I kept asking the question, "God, why me?" And the reason I wanted to know why me is because in my understanding of what a pastor needed to be, I was none of those things. I was not like the perfect guy that lived the perfect life. I had too much sin in my past. I didn't feel like I fit. "Why me? Why would you want me? I'm not your guy. You got it wrong. My friends are better speakers. My friends are better leaders. My friends have lived more moral lives. Why me?"

Jesus, we give you all the praise, glory, and honor. Lord, and in this place, there are some who are here that have never claimed you to be their personal Lord and Savior. If that's you here today, here's how you can pray: Lord, I know today I'm a sinner, but I believe you died on the cross for my sin and rose from the dead. Right now, I accept you as my personal Lord and Savior. For those of us who have done that, just remind us of all our sin forgiven in you. Lord, let us reflect on your goodness to us. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Guest (Male): Thanks for listening to today's message from Pastor Jeff Schwarzentraub. If you're in the Denver area, we'd love for you to join us at Brave Church, a church for people who are done watching from the sidelines. We meet on Sundays at our Englewood and Westminster locations at 8:30 and 10:30 a.m. Learn more about Brave Church and the ministries we offer for the whole family at brave.org. Once again, that's brave.org. We'll see you soon.