Amelia Church of Christ - Christian Church in Amelia, OH near Cincinnati in Clermont County

This is the last week of our series called Game Time. This series has been about upping our game. Taking things to the next level in our lives.

The premise of this series is simple. Far too many people who claim the name of Christ don’t live in the victory of Christ. Through His death and His resurrection, Jesus won our victory. He won it for all eternity, but He expects us to start living it now. It’s time to trade in the defeated life for a life of victory. It’s game time, and we’re in this thing to win it.

We kicked off the series by talking about preparing to win. If you want to win today, you’ve got to forget about the losses of yesterday. If you want to win today, you’ve got to let go of the guilt of yesterday’s failures.

Then we talked about what happens when you do step between the lines. When you get on the field, you’ve got to play to win. You persevere. You keep going. You prepare to win. And then you play to win.

Then last week, we talked about our expectations. We expect to win. Teams that expect to win often win. The same holds true in our lives. We expect to win because we believe in God’s greatness and God’s goodness. We expect that God will come through. We expect that He will deliver. We expect to win.

Now today as we wrap up this series, we’re going to do something that has almost become a lost art in the church today. We’re going to celebrate.

If you prepare to win, you play to win, and through it all you expect to win, what do you do? You celebrate the win.

This series has all been centered around a couple of verses in Philippians 3. But today, I want to go back and look at one verse in the very beginning of the chapter.

Philippians 3:1 says, “Further, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord! It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it is a safeguard for you.” (Philippians 3:1, NIV)

The Apostle Paul tells us to rejoice in the Lord. But it’s not written as a suggestion. It’s not written as an option. It’s written as a command. He commands us to rejoice in the Lord. To rejoice means to be glad. To celebrate.

And in a lot of ways, I can’t think of a command that the modern day church ignores more than this one. When I look at the state of the church today, especially the church in America, here’s what I see. We mourn well. But we don’t celebrate well.

A lot of the church’s energy is focused on the negative. Churches picket and protest. Churches criticize and condemn. It’s all negative. People in America know what churches are against, but here’s a question. Do they know what we’re for?

Criticism and condemnation do not win people to Jesus. In Romans 2, the Bible says, “Or do you show contempt for the riches of his kindness, forbearance and patience, not realizing that God’s kindness is intended to lead you to repentance?” (Romans 2:4, NIV)

The kindness of God leads us to repentance. Not His condemnation. His kindness. And as the people of God, we’re called to imitate Him.

The church should be so laser-focused on doing good that people are drawn like a magnet. We should be living out the kindness of God in such a tangible way that people simply cannot stay away.

In other words, instead of harping on the negative, the church needs to shift it’s message and it’s method to the positive. Now, that doesn’t mean that we softball sin. It doesn’t mean that we dismiss the very hard, negative teachings in Scripture. If you have had any contact with our church at all, you know that we don’t shy away from hard truth and tough topics. We take them head on with no fear.

But at the same time, our church is all about changing the tide. Our God is good. Our Savior is alive. And we’re all about celebrating it.

Have you ever been to a church service that felt a lot more like a funeral service? I’ll bet you haven’t felt that way today, have you? We come with energy and excitement every week because we have something to celebrate. That means that when we come to worship, we also come to party.

I’ve had people tell me, “I don’t like that music you guys play. That’s of the devil.”

The interesting thing is that when I ask them to show me a Scripture, they say, “Uh, uh, uh…”

Instead, let me give you a Scripture. It’s from Luke 19.

“When [Jesus] came near the place where the road goes down the Mount of Olives, the whole crowd of disciples began joyfully to praise God in loud voices for all the miracles they had seen:

“Blessed is the king who comes in the name of the Lord!”

“Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

Some of the Pharisees in the crowd said to Jesus, “Teacher, rebuke your disciples!”

“I tell you,” he replied, “if they keep quiet, the stones will cry out.” (Luke 19:37-40, NIV)

When the people came into contact with Jesus, the couldn’t help but celebrate. They couldn’t keep quiet. A party started breaking out. And the Pharisees couldn’t stand it.

The Pharisees were the most religious people in that culture. But they completely rejected Jesus. And they hated this celebration. It was too wild. It was too loud. It wasn’t dignified and restrained.

And Jesus shut them down completely. Jesus was fine with the party. In fact, He loved it. He loved the noise. He loved the dancing. He loved the celebration.

Here’s the takeaway from that. Religious people don’t like celebrations. But Jesus does. And here at ACC, we’re going to side with Jesus.

That’s why we structure our services the way we do. That’s why we put such an emphasis on fun and joy with kids and students. Because we have a God that is worth celebrating!

But this isn’t just how we do church. This is how we live our lives.

This series has been about a different way of seeing things. It’s about a different way of living. Living in victory instead of defeat. Even during the tough times. Even during the times when life is radically unfair. Even in those times, we prepare to win. We play to win. We expect to win. And yes, we celebrate the win.

Go back and look at our verse from Philippians 3 again. “Further, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord! It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it is a safeguard for you.” (Philippians 3:1, NIV)

Paul commands us to rejoice in the Lord. To live joyfully. To celebrate. And then he says something interesting. He says it is a safeguard for us.

Celebration is a safeguard. It is a protection for us. There are multiple ways that this plays out in our lives.

First of all, celebration protects you from a limited perspective.

I’ve been saying all month that this series is about raising and realigning our perspective. It’s crucial because your perspective is the determining factor for what you will do with your life. And there is no better way to limit your life than to limit your perspective.

For some of you, all you can see is the bad. And I’m not saying that life is a bed of roses. It’s anything but that. This world is so sin-stained, it is such a screwed up mess, that things can go really, really bad in our lives.

But it’s under that backdrop that we read these words from 1 Thessalonians 5. “Rejoice always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, NIV)

Rejoice ALWAYS. Pray CONTINUALLY. Give thanks in ALL circumstances. These are perspective-altering words.

Some of you are in a season where it seems impossible to rejoice. You can’t celebrate because you don’t have anything worth celebrating. You can’t give thanks because you don’t have anything to be thankful for.

Really? Tell that to someone who lives in Joplin, Missouri. Tell that to woman who lost everything she owned in the tsunami in Japan. Tell that to the man who lost his entire family in the earthquake in Haiti.

That’s a different perspective, isn’t it? I don’t say that to make you feel guilty. I say that to remind us all of this truth. When everything seems to be going bad, you’ve got to stop and look for the good. And when you find the good, you have to celebrate it.

Celebration realigns your perspective. We’ve been exploring Paul’s command for us to rejoice in the book of Philippians. Do you know where Paul was when he wrote these words? In prison.

Paul was in prison, not because he had done anything wrong. He was in prison because of his faith in Christ. It was a completely unfair, unjust situation that he did not deserve. And he still found a way to celebrate.

Whatever your situation, you can find something to celebrate. There is evidence of God’s blessing and goodness in your life. You simply have to look for it. And for the vast majority of us, we don’t have to look very far. We’re drowning in God’s grace and kindness.

Yet we focus on insignificant things that aren’t going our way. And when we do, our perspective gets completely out of whack. And when your perspective is a mess, your life is a mess.

You have something to celebrate. In fact, you have a lot of things to celebrate. It’s time to throw a party. Not a pity party. A party. We are overwhelmed by God’s goodness and grace. And if you can’t celebrate that, something is really wrong with you. The problem isn’t your circumstances. The problem is inside of you.

Make a conscious decision to celebrate God’s goodness and blessing in your life. And if you don’t feel it, do it anyway. I know, a forced celebration feels fake. It feels really, really lame. Do it anyway.

Celebration really begins as a discipline. It is something that we force ourselves to do even when we don’t feel like it. But if you commit to living of lifestyle of celebration, your feelings will eventually catch up. Your heart always lags behind your mind. Decide in your mind to celebrate. And in time, your heart will eventually catch up.

When you decide to celebrate the good things, it keeps you from aligning your perspective around all the bad things. The Apostle Paul wrote four books of the Bible while he was in prison. He didn’t allow his prison to become his perspective.

What is your prison? What are the difficulties and hardships that are dominating your life right now? Regardless of what is happening in your life, you get to choose your perspective. Your prison doesn’t become your perspective without your permission.

Instead, choose an alternate route. Choose to celebrate in the midst of the junk that is happening. Choose to rejoice in the middle of the mess. When you realign your perspective, you realign your entire life.

Celebration protects you from a limited perspective. It also protects you from a hopeless life.

If you know anything about the life of Jesus, you know that He performed some crazy awesome miracles. A couple of them involved feeding a huge number of people with just a little bit of food. Two different times, he fed thousands of people with just a few loaves of bread and a few fish. Incredible stuff.

In Matthew 16, Jesus asks His disciples a cutting question. He said, “Don’t you remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many basketfuls you gathered? Or the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many basketfuls you gathered?” (Matthew 16:9-10, NIV)

Here’s the thing about this question. The miracle had just happened! In fact, it happened one chapter earlier. Jesus fed the group of 4,000 people in Matthew 15. And in Matthew 16, he asks His disciples, “Don’t you remember that? Have you already forgotten what I did?”

Mark Batterson said, “We have a tendency to remember what we should forget and forget what we should remember.”

Some of us feel like we have absolutely no hope for the future because we’ve forgotten our past. Earlier in this series, we talked about how to prepare to win today. You prepare to win today by forgetting about all the losses of yesterday. And it’s absolutely true. You can’t hang on to the sins and failures of your past. But that doesn’t meant that you forget about your past entirely.

There is something that you absolutely have to remember about your past. It’s not your failures. It’s God’s faithfulness. Hope for the future is really just a byproduct of remembering God’s faithfulness in the past.

That’s why we celebrate. We celebrate what God has done in our lives because it keeps us focused on this truth: He did it before. He’ll do it again.

Go back and look at our verse from Philippians 3 again. “Further, my brothers and sisters, rejoice in the Lord! It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it is a safeguard for you.” (Philippians 3:1, NIV)

Paul said, “It is not trouble for me to write the same things to you again.” In other words, “You’ve heard this before, but you need to hear it again. And again. And again. You need to be reminded to celebrate God’s faithfulness in the past because it gives you hope for the future.”

C.S. Lewis said, “We need to be reminded more than instructed.” It’s true. God’s past performance is the best indicator of His future faithfulness. God doesn’t change. And so if He did it before, He’ll do it again.

Celebration reminds us of this truth. And it’s especially important in the dark times of life. When things look bad, celebrate what is good. Even if it’s all seemingly in the past. Celebrate it anyway, because if God did it before, He’ll do it again.

Remember the classic Chris Farley skits on Saturday Night Live when He would interview famous people? He would never ask them questions. Instead, he would always lead with, “Remember that time?” And then he would talk about whatever the celebrity had done. And he would always end the “interview” the same way. He would say, “That was awesome.”

That’s a great description of the life that we live as Christ-followers. “Remember when God really came through? Remember that crazy, amazing thing that God did? Remember how good God has been to us? That was awesome. And if He did it before, He’ll do it again.”

That’s what we see in this verse from Habakkuk 3. “LORD, I have heard of your fame; I stand in awe of your deeds, LORD. Repeat them in our day, in our time make them known…” (Habakkuk 3:2, NIV)

The prophet, Habakkuk, wrote this in a very dark time for him and his people. But he had hope because he remembered what God had done in the past. He celebrated God’s past faithfulness, which gave him the courage to have hope for the future.

Last week talked about how the people of God should expect to win. We should expect that God will come through. We should expect to see His power come alive in our lives and in our situation. You can only live with that expectation for the future if you remember what God has done in the past. If He did it before, He’ll do it again.

In the book of James, the Bible says, “Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows.” (James 1:17, NIV)

A couple of things to pull out of this verse. First of all, every good gift that you have is from God.

Second, God doesn’t change like shifting shadows. You may in a crazy or dark time in your life, but your God hasn’t changed.

So combine those two truths. Everything good that you have has been given to you by God. And God doesn’t change, even when your circumstances do. So if He gave you good gifts before, He’ll do it again.

Today, we’re going to do what God expects His church to do. We’re going to celebrate. We’re going to celebrate God’s goodness and love and kindness to us.

Some of you are in a season of blessing right now. Celebrate it. Thank God for it.

Some of you are in a season of challenge right now. Celebrate God’s past blessing, because it will give you great hope for the future.

Wherever you are…whatever your situation…these words from Philippians 4 are for you. “Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” (Philippians 4:4, NIV)

It was so important that Paul had to say it twice. Rejoice! Rejoice! Celebrate! Be joyful! It’s party time!

That’s how we do church. That’s how we live our lives. Because ultimately, celebrate is the only thing we can do. We have a God who gave up His own Son for us.

Jesus died on a cross to pay the price for all our sin. And then three days later, He rose to life to seal our victory. God laid it all on the line for us. He gave us all He had so we could be completely forgiven. Our sins are forgiven and forgotten. We are completely free through the blood of Jesus Christ. That’s worth celebrating.

And it’s why every week here at ACC, we give you a chance to respond. For some of us, this isn’t just party time…it’s also decision time. For some of us, it’s time to decide to cross that line and give your life to Christ. It’s time to claim Him as your Savior and Lord. It’s time to find the forgiveness and freedom that comes through His death and His resurrection. It’s time to find the new life that He has planned for you.

Earlier we saw the people that were celebrating all around Jesus. They simply couldn’t keep quiet. They had met Jesus and they had to celebrate.

Nothing has changed. When we meet Jesus, we have to celebrate. Our God throws great parties. He is worth celebrating. And we invite you to come to Him today.

Mike Edmisten

Tags: celebration, Game Time, Luke 19, Philippians 3