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The following message is preached by Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler Thielman. His sermon is entitled "The Joy Star. The Path, The Presence, The Pleasure." Let us continue in worship as we give attention to the reading of God's Word as it is recorded in Psalm 16. I begin at the verse numbered 1. "Preserve me, O God, for

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in thee I take refuge. I say to the Lord, 'Thou art my Lord. I have no good apart from thee.' As for the saints in the land, they are the noble in whom is all my delight. Those who choose another god multiply their sorrows. Their libations of blood I will not pour out or take their names upon my lips. The Lord is my

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chosen portion and my cup. Thou holdest my lot. The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places. Yea, I have a goodly heritage. I bless the Lord who gives me counsel. In the night also my heart instructs me. I keep the Lord always before me. Because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved. Therefore my heart

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is glad and my soul rejoices. My body also dwells secure. For thou dost not give me up to Sheol or let thy godly one see the pit. Thou dost show me the path of life. In thy presence there is fullness of joy. In thy right hand are pleasures forevermore. And may God bless to us and to our understanding this

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reading from his word. Pray with me. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. Of all the books in all the religious traditions in all the world, there is no book that speaks as much of joy as this book. The psalmist sings, "Make a joyful

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noise unto the Lord, all ye lands." The prophet says, "Let us hear the voice of joy and of gladness, for God is good." Nehemiah the builder says, "The joy of the Lord shall be your strength." The angels caroled at Bethlehem, "We bring you good news of great joy." Jesus says, "These things have I said unto you that my joy

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might be in you and your joy might be full." The author of Hebrew penned these words, "Jesus, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross." And then there is that great benediction in the letter of Jude, "Now to him who is able to present you before the presence of his glory with great joy." This is the book

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which leads people to sing joy to the world. Joyless people find joy on the pages of these Testaments. And it is to joyless people that I would like to speak in this Advent season. My every effort, my thought, and my prayer is dedicated to bringing people without joy to that fullness of joy which is to

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belong to the children of God. Christmas is coming, good tidings of great joy, and my hope and prayer is that none of you will miss Christmas. Now in the Bible, the word "joy" has both a secular and a sacred meaning. The secular meaning refers to such things as the joy of a good harvest or the joy of a sweet wine.

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But the sacred use of the word "joy" is far more profound. It refers to the disposition or to the attitude or to the spirit of a whole person who is in a right relationship to God. The Scriptures teach that when the Spirit is in line with the Spirit of God, there is joy and it spills over into every area of life.

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The joyful person, in biblical terms, is the person who has personally experienced the saving and loving acts of God in her own life. You know, one of the little words, tiny prepositions in the Bible which has a great deal of meaning, is the word "in." I-N. When people are spoken of in terms of wrong living, the word "in" is

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used. They walk in the counsel of the wicked or they stand in the way of sinners. On the other hand, when people are in a right relationship with God, the word "in" is used again. Paul says that Christians are those who are in Christ or, again, Jesus prays that his disciples will be kept in God's name. The Bible

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divides people into two groups, those who are in God and those who are not in God. Or we might phrase it in another way, the Bible divides people into two groups, those in whom God is and those in whom God is not. And joy is that relationship between an individual and God when that person is truly in God and has God in

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him. Now, we're going to be noting the implications of this across the next five times that we are together, and I've chosen to think of joy in terms of a five-pointed star. But this first point that we're looking at this morning, this is the key point of them all, this point encompassed in that little word "in."

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The basic element in the joyous child of God experience is to be in God and to have God in you, the presence of God in one's life. That presence gives light for one's path and pleasure to one's soul. Listen to our text for this morning. The psalmist writes, "Thou dost show me the path of life; in thy presence is fullness

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of joy, and in thy right hand are pleasures forevermore." Notice the first phrase, "In thy presence is fullness of joy." It is possible for us to know the presence of God in our lives. Now, I realize that there are some people who cannot imagine that, and many times those people do not experience the presence of

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God in their lives precisely because they cannot imagine it. That is, because they cannot conceive of God being in them, they are unable to receive God into themselves. Because they don't believe it can happen, they won't let it happen. I am not married, but it has always seemed to me that the highest and the holiest

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and the happiest marriages are the marriages in which both the woman and the man are absolutely astonished that anyone as wonderful as their partner could really love them. I really think that the most satisfying marriages it's my privilege to look upon are those in which he says, "You know, I'm amazed that

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she'll have anything to do with a guy like me." And where she says, "You know, it just absolutely amazes me that he loves me." In both of these, you see, there is an inability to understand why the love is, but that does not prevent the people from entering into it. Now, that's analogous to the experience of the

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presence of Christ in one's life. You can't grasp it, you can't define it or explain it or precisely articulate it, but that does not mean that it cannot be true. In fact, that makes the truth of it all the more wonderful. And my heart aches when I encounter those people who have no joy in their lives because God is not

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in their lives and God is not in their lives simply because they can't imagine that the great God would be willing to take up residence in their tiny hearts. A group of college students pulled a joke in Yellowstone National Park a few years ago. You know about the Old Faithful geyser there, which doesn't go off at

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precisely the same interval each time, but close to the same. Well, this group of college students came in with a big valve with two pipes attached to it, and they went over and they drove it down into the ground a certain number of yards from Old Faithful. And of course a crowd was gathering to see that geyser

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erupt, and at just the time when it was to erupt, these students began turning this valve. And sure enough as they did, the water began to rise up out of the ground. Of course, they knew about how long that took, and so when it reached its climax, then they very furiously began to turn the valve in the other way

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and the water went down again. And it was a good joke and everybody who saw it laughed. But my friends, there is no joke in this. You can't turn joy on or off in your life. It doesn't operate on that kind of valve. It's very much like Old Faithful. Joy which arises out of the experience of God is absolutely

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dependable, just as Old Faithful is. But it's also very mysterious, just as Old Faithful is. No one fully understands the plumbing of Old Faithful. No one understands, can explain, can define, can rationalize, can figure why God in his infinite purity should want to take up residence in those who are fundamentally

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impure. But he does, and that's absolutely dependable even though it's mysterious. And so our struggle should be not to try to understand it, but rather simply to make ourselves available to enjoying it. A minister acquaintance of mine asked a noted surgeon in New York City what was the most memorable surgical procedure in

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which he'd ever been involved. He expected some medical breakthrough or something of that kind. The surgeon said, "Well, I'll tell you what it was." He said, "It was a good number of years ago now. I was to operate on an eight-year-old girl. She was very, very ill, very frail. I remember when I walked into the

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operating room, she was on the table and there was a sheet over her and she was so thin and frail that it almost looked as if the sheet was flat on the top of the table. And she was as pale, as white, as the sheets itself. I went over to her and I greeted her and she looked up at me and she said, 'Doctor, always before I go

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to sleep, I say my prayers. Can I say my prayers now?' And I said to her, 'Why of course. And when you are praying, say a prayer for me too.' And the little girl closed her eyes and she prayed, 'Dearest Jesus, look upon us with thy love. Touch us now, for we are little lambs who need thee.'" The surgeon went on to explain to

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the minister that the little girl survived the surgery and became well and that he became a Christian at that moment. When she prayed her prayer, his eyes filled with tears because he had deep problems in his own life, and he turned away from the operating table so that the others gathered there would not

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see. And as he busied himself apparently with something, he prayed his own prayer, "Oh God, that's what I am, a little lamb. Help me." And then he turned back to his desk. He said he'd prayed for God to enter into his life many times before, and I suppose he had, and probably prayed out of his brilliance and his skill and

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his sophistication. But in this instance, he prayed like an eight-year-old child. He said, "Receive me, a little lamb." And the presence of God entered into his life. Nothing he could argue about or define but nonetheless real. The presence of God in Christ in a life is the beginning of joy. If you want joy, then

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you have to want him. You don't have to be able to conceive that just to believe it. And when you start believing, then you're following the joy star. Now the second thing that our text says is that when God enters into your life, the path of your life becomes a path of victory and not defeat. You know there is a place

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in the Congressional Record where it is recorded, and this was many decades ago, that the chaplain who was to open the particular session with prayer was not present. And so the Speaker of the House called the House to order with these words which are written upon the minutes. "The clerk will read the journal. We will

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proceed to new business without divine guidance." And what's interesting is no one objected to the fact that they didn't begin with prayer. You know there are many people who lack guidance in their lives, yet they never object to that fact because they don't expect guidance to be there. They don't realize

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that God loves them and that he is ready to guide them as any loving father is ready to minister to his children. Listen to what the passage says, "In thy presence is fullness of joy, thou dost show me the path of life." Now how does God in Christ lead us? Well he leads us first by Christ's earthly example. We can

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look back on the life that Jesus led in Scripture. Now if Jesus is our Lord, we are going to seek to imitate him, to model our lives after his. And of course the great goal of his life was to do his father's will. You remember when he was 12 years old he said to his parents, "Did you not know that I must be about my

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father's business?" And you recall what he said to the disciples later, "My meat is to do the will of him who sent me." Or again later he says to his disciples, "I must work the works of him who sent me." No matter where you look at Jesus living, whether it's in his home, in his hometown, out in the world of nature, in the

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synagogue, in an act of service and ministry to someone else, in a time of humor, in a time of trial, in a time of devotion, no matter where you see Jesus' life being lived, you see his desire to do his father's will. That serves as a model for us so that we, no matter where we are in life, at work or play or prayer,

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whatever it may be, we can look back at Jesus and see how we ought to be living the course of our days. In other words, we have a set of footprints to follow, the earthly example of Jesus. But more wonderful than that, we also have the heavenly example of Jesus. And by that I mean we not only have footprints which

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are a record of what transpired in the past, but we have footsteps, the actual sound of the presence of Christ moving in our lives. This example that Jesus gives us is not only out of yesterday, it is present in the believer's heart now. Just think of it. We have a guide who is sitting at the right hand of God the

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Father and who knows us. He knows our strengths, he knows our weaknesses, he knows the things we can do, he knows the things we cannot do, he knows where we are gifted and he knows where we are ungifted. That's one of the marks of a good guide. He knows the nature of those who follow. Not only that, but Jesus knows

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God's will for us. He knows who we are and where we are, but also who God wants us to be and where God wants us to go. And that's the mark of a good guide too. He knows the goal and Jesus knows the goal. And the other mark of a good guide is that he stays with the ones that he's leading. Jesus doesn't just give us that

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record of footprints, not just a book, not just a collection of directions, but rather, like a good guide, he takes us by the hand and leads us in the course of our days. There's a story which comes out of Swiss Alpine lore which to me models the whole point. There was a guide who was taking a group of novice climbers on

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what was really a rather elementary climbing expedition. But as they were traveling, not too high, they came to a place where some rocks had rolled out over a path. Now they had gone a long way and it was impossible for them to turn around and go back once they had come because it was getting dark, it was

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getting cold, and there was also a storm coming, and the guide understood all of this. They couldn't go back. Their destination was just a short way ahead where they would be safe. But in order to get to that, they had to get around these rocks which had rolled out onto the path, and the only way to get around these

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rocks was to repel around them. That is, to have a rope fastened at the top and then for each climber to hold the rope and bounce, as it were, around the outside of this big rock. But the guide knew that these were novice climbers. They didn't know how to repel. They didn't have that skill, and he also knew that it was his

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task to bring those people to safety. So what did he do? He didn't just stand there and say, "Now this is what I want you to do. Put your one foot here and then leap out around there and trust rope." He didn't do all that. He didn't hand them a book of directions on repelling. Instead of that, he himself

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repelled around the rock. Then he got down flat on his belly on the path and reached around the rock with his hand and he said, "I want each one of you to step onto my hand, then step onto my back, and then step onto the path." In other words, he was making himself the path. They wouldn't have to swing out. They

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could step onto his hand. Well, of course, they held back from this. They hesitated. And he looked up and he said, "Don't worry. This hand has never lost a climber yet." So one by one, they stepped onto his hand and he held it like an iron bar, and then onto his back, and then to safety. Now that, you see, is a good guide. He knows

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where you are. He knows what you can do. He knows where you're going, and he himself makes it possible for you to go there. And that's the kind of guide that God in Christ is. When he is present in us, he opens to us as a good guide the path of life, which is the path of joy. And our text concludes with these words,

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"Thou to show me the path of life in thy presence is fullness of joy. In thy right hand are pleasures forevermore." Now in the Bible, the word "pleasure" means harmony, smoothness, oneness. When a person is moving in a pleasant way with God, they're moving gracefully. They're moving in confidence. The person who has God in

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him and he is dwelling in God, that person discovers that this eventually becomes so natural that she or he doesn't think about it anymore. C.S. Lewis has a place in which he says that the best shoe is the shoe you never think about. The best book is the book that makes time disappear when you're

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reading it. The best worship service is the service that is so perfect that you never think about the service. You think about the God to whom the service is directed. He says when you're dancing, if you're thinking about how many steps you take in each direction and how long the steps should be and what time you should

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be keeping, he said you're not dancing then, you're learning to dance. Well, the experience of having God in you and your being in God should become so natural that you don't have to think one, two, three, four. One, two. It becomes instead a smooth flowing, a harmonious, a pleasant thing. It pleasures, the psalmist says, the

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soul. There is a story told by Anthony Bloom in his little book Living Prayer about a doll made of salt. And this doll made of salt came one day to the edge of the sea and she had never seen the sea before. And she said, "Who are you?" And the sea replied, "I am the sea." "What are you?" she said. And the sea replied, "I am the sea."

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She said, "I do not understand you. I have never seen anything like you. I cannot begin to wrap my mind around you." And the sea said, "Touch me." So she held out her leg and put her toes into the water. And when she pulled back her leg, her toes were gone. The salt had of course been dissolved and absorbed by the water.

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"What have you done with my toes?" she replied. And the sea said, "You have given something in order to understand me. And it is as you give more of yourself that you will more understand me." And so she, bit by bit, in a desire to know the sea and the fullness of the sea, moved more and more out into the water, saying all

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the time, "Who are you? What are you? Who are you? What are you?" Being more and more absorbed until finally one little wavelet lapped up over her and she was gone. But at that moment, when she disappeared into the vastness of the sea, she said, "I now understand the sea, for I am the sea." That's what it means to be

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in God. It means when you enter into God, not that you will ever contain Him, but that He will contain all of us. Unity with God, to move in harmony and gracefulness with God, is to be swallowed up by the vastness of God. And that's what God's dream for each of us is, that we might be melted and

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absorbed into Him. Not that we will ever understand this, but that we can experience it. Not that we can conceive of it, but that we can receive it. You see, the presence of God is the fullness of joy. God's guidance is the peace of joy. And harmony with God, pleasure for the soul, is the ultimate mystery of joy.

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So this is where joy begins. This is the first point in the joy star. There are other points which we will be noting, but this is the first of them. To be in God, to know His presence, to know His path, and to know His pleasure. And this point is the most important of the joy stars.

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[silence] Oh God, grant that in our earnestness we do not make it harder than it is. Right now, make any who have not yet been bold enough, strong and courageous and brave enough, humble enough, to stick out a toe into the sea of thy greatness and of thy

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love. To begin to let life become more than mere biological experience, but to become the experience of the ineffably divine. Grant that we might, in this Advent season, open ourselves more and more to thee, so that thy vastness eventually contains us, and we discover in that peace and power and pleasure, all

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of which are joy. We pray our prayer in thy Son's name. Amen. and become part of theNo More Stooges family,