Perhaps the greatest hoax perpetrated by the devil is that the Christian life is only grief and sadness. The devil wants us in believe that there is no joy, no real glad­ness for Christians — especially for young Christians. To be a Christian means, the great Deceiver would have us think, to walk around with a long face; it’s no fun, it’s just a drag. To be a Christian is not to be able to do this or that; it’s negative, full of prohibition. While on the other hand; pleasure, happiness, and good times are to be found outside of the Christian faith and in the world, so the devil would have us think. Judging by worldly standards and considering by worldly definitions we might be inclined to agree. The life of a Christian is a battle, a fierce battle against sin and his own sinful nature. The path of the Christian is a narrow one which few find and which is found only by grace. The lot of the Christian is suffering and in his future (which is not far off) there is a great tribulation! Still more, the Lord’s Word even calls Christians to be sorrowful. They must have that Godly sorrow over sin. And, there are of course, the pleasures of sin. There are a good many activities in which the world rejoices and in which we as Christians may not indulge. To be a disciple of Jesus, according to His own Word, means: self-denial and cross bearing. The Scripture says: it is given unto us on the behalf of Christ not only to believe on His Name but also to suffer together with Him! Anyone, therefore, who thinks the Christian life is easy, that it contains no sorrow is simply deceiving himself.

But to say that there is no joy in the Christian life and that all happiness is to be found in the world is the lie of Satan! In fact, there is no happiness in the world outside of Jesus Christ. That is an absolute truth. The only joy there is, is in Christ and in His service. The reason for this is. SIN. Sin is the cause of nothing but grief because its wages is death and there is no joy in death. For the Christian sin’s guilt has been removed and its power has been broken by the Lord Jesus Christ. The result is that for the Christian death has no more sting and the grave has no victory. The child of God has joy which cannot be diminished by any circumstance of life much less destroyed. He has as we sometimes sing, joys which earth cannot afford. Yes, the Christian has his sorrows. But always these are overshadowed and overcome by the joy of salvation. As paradoxical as it may sound the Christ­ian’s joy begins in sorrow and in the measure that he is truly sorrowful the Christian experiences the everlasting joy of salvation. He sorrows over his sin and his sinful nature. This, the Bible calls, the Godly sorrow of repentance which ends in salvation never to be repented of, while the sorrow of the world works death.

All of this has been beautifully set forth by the two previous speakers. The question we are to answer now is: “How can we obtain this gladness? And how can we be nurtured in it?” We are to answer these questions from the point of view of the last part of verse 2 of Psalm 100: “come before his presence with singing.” The text literally reads: “enter or come in before His face with a shouting for joy.” It is true that we live all of life before the face of God. But we come before His face especially in worship. It is also true that only in the true worship of God do we obtain real gladness. I shall speak to you, therefore, on the subject “Coming Before His Presence”. I should like you to consider with me two things: 1. The idea of true worship, and 2. Worship as the power of joy in our lives.

Worship may be defined as follows. Worship is the child of God praising his Lord in the fellowship of the body of Christ, the Church. Now, there are several important elements involved in this idea of worship. We cannot be exhaustive either in our definition or in our discussion of the idea of worship. In the seminary an entire semester is spent on this subject in a course called Liturgies. We want to focus our attention on the essence or core of all true worship of the Lord and that essence is: praising God! This is certainly the Bible. Psalm 100 speaks of making a joyful noise unto the Lord and of serving the Lord with gladness and singing. The poet calls us to acknowledge God as Lord and our Creator not only, but also as our Savior which means we are to enter His gates with thanksgiving and His courts with praise. We are to bless His Name for He is good. His mercy is everlasting and His truth endures. Worship, therefore, is praising God according to this Psalm. We find this same emphasis repeatedly throughout the Psalms and in the Old Testament Scriptures generally. Israel was called to acknowledge Jehovah’s goodness and to praise Him for His mighty acts and His great salvation. Thus their whole life centered in the tabernacle and later the temple where God dwelt in covenant fellowship with His people. The same emphasis is found in the New Testament. Acts 2:46, 47, describes the worship and life of the saints as a joyful praising of God. Col. 3:16 exhorts us to let the Word of God dwell in us richly thus to praise God with Psalms and hymns, with singing and making melody in our hearts. The book of Revelation gives us the vision of the glory of the new creation in chapters 7, 21, and 22. The essence of that glory is that the saints perfectly praise God without the burden of sin forever and ever.

True worship therefore, is praising God. That true worship consists in an acknowledgement of our sinfulness and worthlessness before the Lord and, there­fore, our complete dependence upon Him. We sing of this too when we sing, “All that I am I owe to Thee, Thy wisdom Lord hath fashioned me, I give my Maker thankful praise, Whose wondrous works my soul amaze.” Worship is the extoling of God’s great goodness to us in Jesus Christ. We confess that He saved us from all our sin and death. We thank Him for blessing us with every spiritual blessing in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. This is what we are to do in worship: praise and thank the Lord. In worship we reflect God’s saving grace in us by manifesting His praises.

This fundamental truth determines the order of worship in our churches too. In this order of worship we acknowledge our dependence upon God by confessing that our help is in the Name of Jehovah and praying for the grace, mercy and peace of the Triune God of our salvation. We acknowledge our sin and seek to be guided in the way of thankfulness by giving attention to the law of our God. We confess our faith in the God of our salva­tion; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. We pray for the forgiveness of our sins and for guidance and strength in the battle of faith. Also in our order of worship we praise the Lord by the bringing of our thankful offerings, in prayer, and by singing and organ. And, we do all of this in the fellowship of the saints in Christ Jesus. But the chief element in worship is the preaching of the Word! By this means as supplemented by the administration of the sacraments we received the grace of salvation and are enabled to live sanctified lives of obedi­ence by which God is praised.

Therefore worship itself is a joyful experience! In worship, as the theme text of this Convention says: “We Come in Before His Presence or Before the Face of Jehovah With a Shouting for Joy”. In other words, in all of life but especially in worship we enjoy the fellowship of the God of our salvation. We commune with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, God talks with us and we talk with Him. He tells us of His great love toward us for Jesus’ sake, He comforts and teaches us. He encourages us in our pilgrimage. And we in turn respond in thanksgiving and praise to Him the God of our salvation.

This is the true joy of the Christian. This means that if worship for you is not a joyful experience something is very wrong in your life. Do you love to go to church? Do you look forward to the Lord’s Day with eager anticipation? Or do you go out of habit? Is it true that you really do not get too excited about it and wish that you could do other things on Sunday? Are the Sunday worship services the highlight of your week? And when you are in the house of God, do you experience the joy of God’s presence or are you left cold? Perhaps you find it difficult to concentrate on the preaching of God’s Word and the various elements of worship. Maybe you are just not turned on by it all and maybe too, the preaching turns you off! Is the result of all this that you do not find the worship of God to be a glad and joyful experience? I say again if all this be true of you something is very wrong. It is simple Bible truth that the joy of the Christian is to be in God’s fellowship. That’s going to be our eternal joy in glory. The only barrier to that joy is sin. If worship, therefore, is not a joyful experience for you the Word of God to you is, “Repent!” Worship is praising God and therefore a joyful experience. This brings us to our second point. Worship is the power of joy in our lives.

The question is, “How do we obtain this gladness?” The answer is first of all, by the faithful worship of Jehovah. This is not difficult to understand. We have seen that true joy comes in the fellowship of God and that there is no happiness outside of Jesus Christ because everything outside of Jesus Christ is sin and death. Therefore to be truly joyful in all of life we must live in obedience to the will of God which means we must make war against our sins and sinful natures and strive after the holiness of God. But this we cannot do of ourselves. We are saved by grace through faith and that not of ourselves it is the gift of God. The means which God has provided for the obtaining of this saving grace and its fruit, faith, is the preaching of the Word. As we said, this is the chief element of true worship. The Bible makes this unmistakably clear. I Corinthians 1 teaches that preaching is Christ crucified, both the power and wisdom of God. By the power of preaching God saves believers and by that same power He destroys and makes foolish the wisdom of this world. Romans 10 teaches us that we need to call upon the Name of the Lord to be saved. We need faith (to believe) in order to call upon the Name of the Lord. But we cannot believe in the Lord, Paul writes, unless we hear Him and we cannot hear Him without a preacher who is sent. The apostle concludes by saying, “Faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God.”

This is the only way to obtain this gladness. We must come under the preaching of the Word. Think of what a wonderful blessing that really is! Through a sinful, human preacher Christ is pleased to speak to us! We really hear His voice! In the church where the Word is preached, Jesus calls us laboring and heavy laden sinners to Himself where we find rest unto our souls. He teaches us to know God as the God of our salvation. He admonishes us on account of our sins. Jesus works repentance in us so that we turn from those sins and strive after holiness. He assures us of the cleaning power of His shed blood and of our victory in Him over death! Christ comforts us in every sorrow and leads us to everlasting life and glory where our joy shall be full! What a blessing! Very bluntly and simply, to be happy in the Lord and to experience His joy we’ve got to come to church! That is where God in Christ is and in His presence there is fullness of joy!

How can we be nurtured in this joy having attained it by means of the preaching of the Word in worship? The answer is, by prayer. Our Heidelberg Catechism teaches us that God gives His grace and Holy Spirit only to those who with sincere desire continually ask them of Him and are thankful for them. Prayer is our link to the Father in Heaven. Let me ask you, are you unhappy? Let me ask you another question, do you pray? As a pastor I cared for a good many unhappy Christians, young Christians too. Apart from the specific sin in which each was involved and which were the causes of the lack of joy in their lives, there was one general characteristic common to many, if not nearly all of these unhappy Christians. They weren’t praying! It is also true that when they began praying by God’s grace their problems began to be solved. Now, we ought to understand this. This doesn’t mean that if you have a problem and simply pray about it once or twice or even a few times somehow, all of a sudden, your problem is going to be solved and you will be joyful again. We are to live a life of prayer. How often do you pray? Do you pray with your family? Once, twice, perhaps three times per day? Do you pray with the congregation on Sunday? But what about your private praying? How often do you enter your closet alone with God? And how much time do you actually spend in prayer? Is it a few minutes per day, probably at best? Jesus found it necessary to pray all night on several occasions during His earthly ministry. If Jesus, the Son of God in our flesh, found that to be necessary, shouldn’t we? The Scripture says, “Pray without ceasing.” And the Bible also says we are to be careful for nothing (i.e. we must not worry about anything) but in everything by prayer and supplication make our request known to God. That is the way to be nurtured in the joy of salvation. Young people you must pray. Tell the Lord very frankly and very openly about your needs, cares, your problems and worries. Be assured, His ear is open to our cry.

Secondly, we nurture this joy in our lives by searching the Scriptures. Again, the idea is not that we read the Bible occasionally or even regularly in the rather formal occasions of family devo­tions and worship in church. The idea is that we live close to the Word of God. We ought to get on a regular schedule and follow a pattern of regular Bible reading. We ought to read a few chapters per day and take notes of what we read. God’s Word has the answer to every grief or cause for sadness imaginable in this life. The Bible speaks to every need and every circumstance of life. We can be so foolish sometimes. We can get ourselves so upset and bothered and be so terribly troubled and so unhappy and yet fail to use the means which God has provided. And sometimes Christians will go all over to find the answer. They will go to doctors and psychiatrists and mental hospitals and social workers and all the while never open their Bibles and never really pray about whatever may be troubling them.

This then is the way to be truly joyful. Joy is in God’s presence and service. Everything outside of God and Jesus Christ is only grief. In the fellowship of God we have the only true and lasting joy. Do not believe the devil’s lie. There is joy in God, the only joy there is. Use the means which God has provided and come before His presence in worship with a shouting for joy. Hear Christ through the preaching of His Word. Search the Scriptures and pray without ceasing. And remember, because the Lord wants you to be full of joy and does not want you to be sad. He says in His Word: “Rejoice in the Lord alway, and again I say unto you, rejoice!”