475: Celebrate! | Harrison Dinsbeer

All right, good morning, you guys. I'm so happy to be with you guys today. My name is Harrison and I lead the youth group here at Church of the Holy Spirit, working with the seventh through twelfth graders. But this week, it was my pleasure to be the speaker at VBS. Every morning we would get together, we would dance, we would have fun, and I would take seven minutes and talk to the kids about Jesus. Specifically, we were sharing tools to help these kids be Christians as kids—tools for a walk with Jesus. We framed it with our science theme as basic elements. We talked about basic elements of a walk with Christ.

So I'm going to do with you what I did with folks at VBS. I'll say the word and I'll have you repeat it. On day one, our word was believe. Can you say believe? Yes. Excellent. Our word was believe because if we believe in Jesus and get to know him, he makes us come alive. That was the foundation and the starting point of what we were talking about. You need to believe in Jesus if you want to get to know him and become like him and believe in what he's done for us. That's where we started, and the rest of these letters that we worked through were tools to help us in a walk with Jesus. They're important, but they do not make us come alive. It is believing in Jesus that makes us come alive, but these matter.

On day two, our word was ask. Can you say ask? Yes. Because if we ask God for what we need, he will take care of us. We talked about prayer and one of Jesus's promises about prayer:

Ask and it will be given to you — Matthew 7:7

That was day two. On day three, our word was serve. Can you say serve? Yes, good. Because Jesus served us so we should serve others.

There are more stars in our universe than there are grains of sand on all the beaches of all the earth. And Isaiah 40 says that God knows them all by name. He calls them all by name. And when that God came to earth in a man, he came as a servant. He spent his life going from town to town, solving people's problems, teaching them, healing them, spending time with lonely people. He washed his disciples' stinky feet. He was a servant. So if that God who made the stars and knows them by name came as a servant to serve us—not just in his life, but in his sacrificial death—how much more should we serve others?

All of those stars that God made and calls by name, God made us and knows us by name. Just as all these stars are in different galaxies and different places of the universe and moving at different speeds, it's the same way with us. God has put us in a place and given us gifts for a reason so that we can use them to serve others.

On day four, our word was impact. Can you say impact? Yes. Because God wants to make his impact on the world through us. We talked about the idea that Jesus sent out his students, the disciples, to be witnesses to what they had seen in him in their city and in their region and around the world. And they did it. They told people what they had seen in Jesus in their city and the region around the world. And those people who they told told other people, and they told people who told people who told people who told people who told people who told me, who told my mom, who told me, who told the kids at VBS, and hopefully they will tell others too. This idea that we tell people what we've seen in Jesus—when they believe the story about Jesus, they will come alive too. That's the hope that I shared with kids for day four.

VBS was four days long and basic is five letters long, so we have a problem. So today our word is celebrate. Can you say celebrate? Yeah, celebrate because we have ample cause to celebrate in Jesus.

Celebrating in Life

What I want you to do: take a moment to think about the last big occasion in your family or big reason you had to celebrate. There's a lot of graduations going on. But last big occasion that you remember celebrating, remember the time, remember how you felt. I'm going to tell you about a few occasions from my life this year.

So my brother just graduated from college. He's in the orange tie there, his name is Aiden, and my family is so proud of him. KJ and I went to Nashville and had dinner, and we were there for hours because we were so excited. It was easy to be happy. We were stoked for him. It was awesome. It was a great time.

A few weeks later, KJ and I got married. It was so fun. It was great, thank you. And look at people blowing bubbles—you can't blow bubbles and be upset. It was great.

dancing, there's this guy on the right, like look at that guy dancing, like his name is Jacob, he doesn't live here but nobody had to tell him to be happy, like obviously, right, nobody had to tell that guy to do that dance move because he was having a great time, it just tumbled out of him, the joy tumbles out of us at occasions like that, right?

And what I want you to do now is compare the joy that you felt at that occasion that you really enjoyed with the way you normally feel on average on a Sunday morning or your typical prayer time, okay? There's some kind of gap, right, like there is something different, there's something missing, right? Because we on these occasions have no problem getting excited but when we go to celebrate the fact that the God who made the universe loves us and has won us to himself and wants to be with us forever, somehow like that's not good enough for our mood to improve sometimes, what is going on with that?

Using Esther to Understand Celebration

So what we're going to do today is we are going to use the book of Esther to diagnose our issue with celebration and to teach us how to celebrate. Esther is going to expose how we might celebrate and what's missing, okay?

But first we need to talk about the celebration that happened in Esther which was in our first reading. So the Jewish people were in exile in the Persian Empire and a long story but a Jewish woman named Esther became queen and the king didn't know that she was Jewish and her older cousin Mordecai had raised her because her parents had died.

Mordecai was very devout it seems and he refused to bow to this nobleman named Haman. Haman was like the second in command and the king actually made a law insisting that everyone pay homage to Haman when he walked by and Mordecai refused to kneel. There's theories about why not going to get into it but Mordecai and Haman hate each other—it's mutual—and it seems to be the case that Haman doesn't just hate Mordecai but he hates Jews in general and he extra extra extra hates Mordecai because not only does this one guy not bow to him but he's also a Jew.

So Haman is full of himself and therefore is full of hatred when someone does not give him the respect he thinks he deserves and so Haman tricks the king basically into giving him permission to destroy every Jew in the Persian Empire and eventually Queen Esther reveals to the king that she is a Jew that Haman had been plotting to destroy her people and Haman is executed and a counter-edict is issued meaning that on the day that the Jews were going to be destroyed—because it was actually not immediate, it was at the end of the year—anybody in the Persian Empire they're going to take to the streets and eliminate the Jewish people and so the counter-edict was no, on that day the Jews can defend themselves and it worked and they defended themselves and they got rest from their enemies and they were safe and that brings us to the celebration that they had and that they instituted.

The Institution of the Holiday

So let's look at chapter 9 of Esther verse 20 to 22. Mordecai sent out a letter instituting this holiday permanently to celebrate their victory and rest from their enemies.

Mordecai recorded these things and sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus both near and far obliging them to keep the 14th day of the month of Adar and also the 15th day of the same month year by year as the days on which Jews got relief from their enemies and as the month that had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday that they should make them days of feasting and gladness days of sending gifts of food to one another and gifts to the poor. — Esther 9:20-22

What they decided to do it was easy for them to celebrate when they got rest from their enemies but they were like okay we don't want to forget this so next year when this comes around we're going to feast and we're going to be happy and we're going to give gifts of food to each other and we're going to give to the poor and what I think we're seeing here is something that we all know how to do when it comes to a birthday or an anniversary like on your birthday you eat cake right what they are doing is they are leveraging creation to help reignite the joy and God that they had the first time around.

They know if we pull out the standing rib roaster whatever it is it's going to be fun so they institute a feast and they're leveraging creation and leveraging generosity to kindle, rekindle and spread the joy and gratitude that they had in God the first time that they were rescued.

There's another feature of the celebration that I want to look at:

Therefore, because of all that was written in this letter—the letter that Mordecai sent about the holiday and of what they had faced in this matter and of what happened to them—the Jews firmly obligated themselves and their offspring and all who joined them that without fail they would keep these two days according to what was written and at the time appointed every year that these days should be remembered and kept throughout every generation in every clan province and city. — Esther 9

They firmly obligated themselves—we're going to come back to that phrase.

these days of Purim should never fall into disuse among the Jews. So they decided every Jew, every year, everywhere will celebrate our rescue—and it worked. They firmly obligated themselves, and to this day, 2,500 years later, the Jewish people celebrate. They even give gifts, actually. Purim is a holiday that exists to this day, and the memory, the commemoration, has not fallen into disuse. It is still celebrated to this day because Mordecai knew that if the celebration was not planned, it was not happening.

They had to make a decision to celebrate. Because here's what Mordecai knew: celebration is spontaneous once. When they got relief from their enemies, of course they were thrilled. They went into the back, opened up the wine, slaughtered the calf, or whatever, right? It was easy to celebrate because their relief tumbled out of them. But it would not be the case 2,500 years later. And if that letter hadn't been sent, people would not be celebrating Purim today.

Mordecai knew that celebration is spontaneous once, and unless there is a decision to celebrate, even the greatest victories will be forgotten in time. And I found this to be true in my faith. We as people who believe in Jesus have every reason to be thrilled, right? We have the world. We have everything. The God who made the universe has chosen to love us. That's a big deal. And yet I spend a lot of my life spiritually bummed out, and you might too.

Our Reasons to Celebrate

So what we're going to do is we're going to look at our reason to celebrate and we're going to look at our struggle to celebrate. We're going to use Esther to expose the gospel to us and our reasons to celebrate as compared with their reasons. And then we're going to talk about why maybe it's hard for us to feel that joy.

Okay, we're going to look at a scene from Esther, and this I need to commend to you: Tim Keller's sermon series on Esther. Look it up. It's fantastic. It is so good.

I want to talk to you about this scene. This is in the middle of the story, chapter four. Esther is in a hard place because Mordecai has found out that there's this edict out and all the Jews are going to be destroyed. She is really the only one who can do anything. But he tells her, "Hey, you got to go to the king. You've got to plead for our lives."

Here's why she hesitates. Here's her response to him:

All the king's servants and the people of the king's provinces know that if any man or woman goes to the king inside the inner court without being called, there is but one law—to be put to death—except the one to whom the king holds out the golden scepter, so that he may live. But as for me, I have not been called to come into the king these 30 days.

So it was illegal to go speak to the king unless you were invited. Doesn't matter if you're his wife—if you are not invited, you are risking your life to go speak with him. So she's like, "I don't want to go stick up for God's people. I'm gonna die. No thanks."

She hesitates. She knows that she's being asked to forfeit her life to go plead with the king on behalf of God's people for their lives. And this might be starting to sound familiar to some of us, because there was a night—the night before Jesus's crucifixion—where he hesitated. His commitment to God didn't waver, but he did not want to die. So he asked for another way. But in the end he said, "Not my will, but your will be done."

Look at this. Look at how Mordecai persuades Esther. Here's Mordecai speaking to Esther, and here's the end of his argument:

Who knows whether you have not come to the kingdom for such a time as this?

Maybe it's God's will for you to be here and to make this decision. Persuaded by the will of God, she does it. She speaks to the king.

Doesn't that sound like Jesus? "Not my will, your will be done." And he did it. He forfeited his life to go before God and plead for his people to be spared.

But here's the difference, though. You see, with Esther, it was a calculated move. I left out a lot of Mordecai's argument where Mordecai basically says, "Look, if you go speak to the king uninvited, yes, you might die. But if you don't go, you will definitely die, because all of the Jews are going to be destroyed. And if you don't say something now, you're going to be found out." So she makes a calculated decision and says, "Okay, I'll do it. If I die, I die."

But for Jesus, it was not "If I die, I die." He said, "When I die, I die," and he did it. That is courage.

In Esther's case, you see, all those Jews in the Persian Empire—it was successful. The Jews were rescued. They got to live. You know that. But they got to live out the rest of their natural lives and then they died. They didn't get anything eternal. Esther just bought them time. And that is not the case with Jesus, right? When Jesus went before God, we got way more than that. When Jesus went before God, we didn't just get permission to keep living. We got the King himself.

Let's look at this next verse. This is Romans 5. Here's what we got when Jesus died for us and went and spoke to God on our behalf:

Through Jesus we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand — Romans 5

When Jesus died and pleaded for our lives before God, we didn't just get permission to keep living. We got the acceptance and approval of God. That is a reason to celebrate, right? God accepts me. That's awesome. That is a reason to celebrate.

The Story of Haman's End

All right, we have one more scene from Esther we're going to look at. Esther's plea is successful. She tells the king what's going on—that Haman was plotting to kill her people, the Jews. The king is angry at Haman, and they decide to put him to death. One of the king's attendants says, "Well, you see, the last time Mordecai refused to bow to Haman, Haman set up a pole—a huge pole—for Mordecai to be disgraced on and to be killed. There's this giant pole standing in Haman's backyard. Maybe he should go on that."

Agreed, so they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the wrath of the king abated on that day. King Ahasuerus gave to Queen Esther the house of Haman, the enemy of the Jews. And Mordecai came before the king, for Esther had told what he was to her. And the king took off his signet ring, which he had taken from Haman, and gave it to Mordecai. And Esther set Mordecai over the house of Haman. Then Mordecai went out from the presence of the king in royal robes of blue and white with a great golden crown and a robe of fine linen and purple. And the city of Susa shouted and rejoiced. — Esther 9

Now, the word "gallows" might give the wrong impression. The Hebrew word is just "tree," but when you hear gallows, you might be thinking like Pirates of the Caribbean. Probably not that. It's just a tree, but whatever is happening to attach the body to the tree or the pole, the technical term for it is crucifixion.

So there's this crucifixion of the nobleman Haman—he's a bad nobleman, but a nobleman nonetheless. He's crucified on the tree that was meant for another. And on that day, the wrath of the king abated. The death that belonged to the ordinary man became the ordinary man Mordecai, who became the nobleman. The honor and the wealth of the nobleman Haman became Mordecai's. The death sentence that hung over the people of God was no longer final. All of that happened on that day when Haman was crucified.

And this, too, might start to sound familiar. The death that belonged to us, the cross that belonged to us, became Jesus's. When he was crucified for us, the honor that was his—that God in some way bestows on us. We are like Mordecai, wearing those robes of blue and white. We have God's approval and acceptance and love because of what Jesus deserved. That is amazing.

You might say, "Did you just compare Jesus to the bad guy being crucified?" Yeah, I did. Because yes, sure, in the gospel it's the good guy who gets crucified, right? And in Esther it's the bad guy who gets crucified. But in the gospel, Jesus became the bad guy, right?

This is like the end of The Dark Knight. You know The Dark Knight? At the end of the movie, the city's beloved district attorney was their only hope to fight crime and defeat the Joker. But he became a villain in the end and killed people, and he ends up dying. Batman knows that the city's hope of overcoming crime rests on their faith not being crushed because they trusted this hero, quote unquote. Batman knows that for the city to persist in doing good and fighting crime, he must become guilty. He says—I'm not going to do the voice—but he says, "I'm Batman. I'm here. If he thinks I'm Batman, sometimes he's not a hero. So I can do those things. I killed those people." And he hands the cop the radio and he goes, "Call it in, meaning chase me around and hunt me down, because I am now guilty. I didn't do it, but I need to be guilty so that he can be innocent."

God made Jesus, who had no sin, to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. — 2 Corinthians 5:21

Jesus became Haman for us so that we can become the righteousness and honor that Jesus already had, that Jesus already deserved, right? So again, we—as people whose cross has been taken, as people who walk around in royal robes that are totally undeserved but freely given—we have reason to celebrate.

And again, there's—we know that it doesn't always feel like that, but it is nevertheless true. So what can we do about it? What can we do to cultivate the celebration that befits our status as people who are loved and chosen by God?

I'll tell you a little bit about what this has been like for me. The summer after I graduated college, I did an internship, and we read this book called The Return of—

The summer after I graduated college I did an internship and we read this book, The Return of the Prodigal Son by Henry Nouwen. It is so good. It persuaded me that the scriptures teach grace—that God is pleased with sinners who trust him, that he actually makes him smile. And it's not only on their good days but on their bad days, because it's not because of what they have done that God loves them and is fond of them, but because of how awesome Jesus is. All of the awesomeness of Jesus is credited to them. And so he has a real genuine smile and approval of people who do not deserve it.

That was a really sweet discovery. I thought my life was going to change. I remember saying, "Oh my gosh, if I could just believe that my father is pleased with me, I'll be happy all the time." And then I did discover it—he is pleased with me. And I am not happy all the time. Right? I thought my life was going to change radically, and it didn't.

Why Celebration Must Be Deliberate

Why didn't it change? Because celebration is spontaneous. Once I was happy when I discovered that God was pleased with me, and then I forgot. I didn't know just how much I needed to drill in the truths of the gospel and the assuring promises of God and his love. I didn't know that I needed to drill those things into my heart. So I missed out.

Today I'm learning what it looks like to be like the Jews in Esther 9—to firmly obligate myself to remembering and celebrating and discovering things that were true and good in the gospel.

Finding Your Path to Celebration

Maybe you are like me and you are not necessarily inclined to accept grace right away. It's a struggle, even though it's good news. Or maybe there's another part of this gospel that is difficult for you to accept—something that everybody else is like, "Oh yeah, that's great, I love that," but it's not quite sitting with you yet.

To that I would say: firmly obligate yourself to go deeper in it, to discover it, and to drill it into your heart.

First of all, recognize what Mordecai knew—the human tendency to forget even the best news. Accordingly, find tools to get the truth into your heart. Maybe what it is is you find a verse that really touches on that thing. For me, it might be in Isaiah 43:

You are precious in my eyes and honored, and I love you.

For me, that would be meditating on that verse, learning it, saying it to myself, believing it, praying it to God, talking to God about it. And not over-nuancing it with all the stuff that I need to do better—there is time to think about those things, but you are allowed to just think about the love of God for a second.

Or maybe if you're struggling with guilt that's holding you back from celebrating, write down everything that you can think of that's holding you down with guilt. And after, write something like:

Jesus became sin for me, and I am the righteousness of God.

Or maybe it's resentment. You write down things other people did. You can write the verse that applies. It's in Romans 5:

Where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.

Whether it's my sin, somebody else's sin—where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.

Or maybe your issue is not with your own enjoyment of the gospel. Maybe you need to be like the Jews in Esther 9 by widening the circle to include others. Remember, their holiday celebration included generosity—gifts not just to their buddies, but also to the poor. Maybe you can invite someone else into the joy that you have on a holiday. You can invite somebody to church to celebrate with you. You can invite someone over for Christmas Eve. You can befriend someone who is lonely.

Celebrating While Grieving

Now some of us have trouble celebrating because we are just grieving. There is actually something wrong, and it is hard to be happy right now. To that I would say: that's okay. Be sad. Grieve and grieve and grieve until you're healed.

But there is a type of celebration that befits your situation. You see, there's two celebrations in Esther. They didn't just celebrate when they were set free—they celebrated months earlier when they found out they were going to be set free. And you are in that situation.

Maybe you have not been fully liberated from what is going on in your life that is wrong, but either in your life or when Jesus comes back, you will be if you trust him. So there is cause to celebrate. It might be a Romans 8 kind of celebration, where Paul is like:

Our circumstance is not going to keep us from knowing your love, Jesus. We're like sheep to be slaughtered, we're being killed all the day long, because no—and all these things we are more than conquerors through whom her love does, basically, because there isn't anything that can separate us from Jesus' love.

So there is a kind of celebration that can sit and grieve.

Conclusion

Alright, so we got to wrap up. We are about to obey this verse because you guys—many of you have firmly obligated yourself to celebrate because you come to church on Sunday. That's what we're doing here. We are celebrating what Jesus has done for us. And I think that there's...

Maybe there's another step we can take. I've experienced an issue before where I go to communion to remember what Jesus has done for me. The scriptures say examine yourself before you go to the table, so I examine myself and I find a lot of bad things. I spend so much time examining myself that I forget to be grateful that Jesus died for me.

He said:

Do this in remembrance of me

Not in remembrance of all the bad things that you've done. He said do this in remembrance of me.

So as we go to celebrate communion later in the service, let's yes—obey, examine ourselves, be honest, and repent. And then just don't forget to be grateful that Jesus has died and risen for us.

Prayer

Lord, thank you for the opportunity to celebrate together. We thank you for the goodness of what you've done for us. Please provide us with the tools and the discipline that we need to get those truths to sink deeply into our hearts. Amen. Thank you.