“If you regard the gospel merely as a plan and scheme of life, whether social or personal; if you regard it merely as something that calls you to the high and the heroic and to a certain order of morality; you will never know the joy and the happiness which it offers. Regard the Christian life as being something primarily that you have to do and far from making you happy it will make you miserable, for you will be constantly aware of your own failure. But the glory of the gospel is that it is based upon something that God has done once and for all in Christ. What has He done?...God has acted. He has sent His only begotten Son into the world to live and die and rise again for us and for our salvation. ‘How can I feast and rejoice?’ Look unto Jesus Christ on the cross and see your guilt borne by Him and wiped out by Him. ‘How can I be happy’, you say, ‘when I am so filled with a sense of shame because of what I have been?’ To which the gospel answers:
The past shall be forgotten,
A present job be given.
In Christ there is a new beginning and you are no longer the slave of sin. And, in like manner, it tells you that your whole status and your situation are also changed. In Christ you become a child of God and are regarded as such by Him. You have been an enemy and an alien but now you are a son. Do not look to your own feelings, or your own record. Look to God and the record of what He has done in Jesus Christ. Rejoice, sing, cry aloud, be glad, Christ has cleansed away your sin and restored you to the favour of God which you had lost. Yes, the rejoicing is based purely upon what God has done.”
- D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Old Testament Evangelistic Sermons,
No Feasting: No Christianity
http://www.monergismbooks.com/Old-Testament-Evangelistic-Sermons-p-18605.html
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