I mean, what is happiness? What
is joy? Why do we need it? Why do we
even want it? And where can we find it? I mean,
these questions, they ring in my head constantly. In every
season of my life, I find myself reflecting on these things, looking
to find the way to pursue such things. Even asking the question,
is it necessary? Why would I even want to do it?
And outside of that, then other things come to mind. I've got
decades and decades of influence from the word of God. Love and
just an amazing passion for the truth of the gospel. But that
in itself sometimes doesn't seem like enough. And so there are
other things in my life. I do believe that joy comes and
happiness, true, lasting, absolute contentment. And if you've not
been following along in this series, you know, go back and
listen to a couple of those things. Listen to what I've been saying
about what joy and contentment are, about what purpose is, about
what meaning is. Because there's a lot of ways
in which the world around us throughout all of the centuries
has devised answers to those questions, but yet they all find
nothing in the end. But I believe joy comes from
being content, being loved, being secure, and being known. And I do believe that that is
only found in the gospel of grace. But that's easy to say. It's
not as easy to hold fast to. One of the songs that we sing
that I absolutely love is He Will Hold Me Fast. He will hold
me fast. Because some of the lyrics in
that song speak to the very nature of who I am and what I've tried
to accomplish. And I'm gonna be good enough,
I'm gonna get this in gear, I'm gonna make some changes. I mean,
haven't you done that? Especially New Year's. Most of
us who have any type of peripheral Christian exposure, we always
have a spiritual. We're gonna get in shape, gonna
get some financial security, and we're gonna get spiritual.
and a whole bunch of other things. And so we then pursue God for
all of those things. And I'm gonna say, and as you
already know, for those of you who follow my teaching and are
part of this congregation, we know that doesn't work, and we
can't go to God to get anything. We have to go to God for who
He is, and then we get everything. But that's also easier said than
done. And we've talked about hope,
we've talked about satisfaction, we've talked about life, we've
talked about purpose, we've talked about a lot of things from the
text of 1 Peter 1. Matter of fact, the first nine
verses, we hadn't even gotten to the rest of it. And I ask myself, how do I find
meaning and purpose? How does this text show me these
things? How does this text help me know who I am, and more importantly,
why I'm here? Because in my search for these
things, my search for joy, my search for happiness, I've tried
a lot of stuff. I've tried a lot of stuff. And
I've got a list of 12 things that I just truncated the list
of probably 100 or so things that I've made in the last few
months. I've tried love. I've tried family. I've tried pursuit of things. I've tried philosophy. Thinking. I mean, Descartes,
I just won't even go there. I've tried stoicism. I've tried
creativity, production. I've tried bodily health, bodily
function, bodily strength, pursuit. I mean, I just can't enjoy doing
something. I have to master it. I have to
perfect it. I've tried faith. Just believing. Just resting. I've tried truth. I need to know more. I need to
understand more. I need to find the intersectionality
of where philosophy and psychology and medicine and science and
the ethereal gob monster all intersects with the gospel. I
need to find out how to embrace culture. How to make a difference. I've tried religion. Yes, Christianity. But I've tried it as a religion.
It doesn't work. It doesn't work. I've tried discipline. And then I come back to the only
thing that really gets me close is being stoic. Standing on my own two feet,
on the ground that I cultivated, on the rock that I created, on
the world that I made, in the cosmos that I threw into existence,
thus becoming God. Because that's where it takes
you. Nothing matters. And we think it's a safe place,
but the yearning desire of how God made us to be is miserable. But if we're stoic enough, we
don't even know it. But sometimes we're able to find
some joy in some of those things. But sometimes we find joy in
some of those things. Sometimes we find a small bit of joy or
a small season of happiness or a little bit of identity. We
go, okay, this is who I am. This is what I want. This is
where I'm going. This is what I'm trying to pursue. Oh yes, this is it. And then we don't even realize
that what we're doing is unconsciously, not subconsciously, we're aware,
but we're not aware of what's happening. We're unconsciously
walking in life, being validated by external things. And then
we're being validated by our own ego, and there's a positive
and negative side of ego. It's not always egotistical in
the context. And then we find ourselves in
finding identity in others, or identity in success, or identity
in our spiritual lives, or we find our identity in what we
think is Jesus Christ in the gospel, but ultimately we just
find our identity in the church life that we live, or in the
Bible study that we do, or in the knowledge that we have. Historical theology is a hobby
of mine, as is physics, as is chess. I watched like four hours
of chess games this week, and billiards. I put Abby to sleep Friday night
watching billiards. It's a good match, hour and 13
minutes. I'm like, oh, that's amazing. Some of the best commentary
you'll ever hear. If you're ever tired, just put
it on. You'll stay awake. And even better
than that is a chess match. I'll stop. It's very boring without
the right eyes to see what you're looking at. And for some people, the faith
is boring. To some people, theological studies
is boring. To some people, art is boring. To some people, music
is boring. And that's OK. Because you're not going to find
it. You can feel things, but it's
not going to be joy. It's not going to be happiness.
And so we find a little bit of happiness in there, we find a
little bit of happiness in ourselves, we find a little bit of happiness
in our successes, or in our drive, or for me it's like vision and
passion and purpose. But it's always temporary. It's fleeting. And then we become
discontent. Then we become frustrated. Then
we become bitter. Then we become angry. Then we
become cynical. And then we suffer. Or, in the
midst of that fleeting joy that we don't know is on the way out,
suffering comes and then we're not happy anymore. And we fall back into wondering,
what is wrong with life? Why was I given this life? Why
am I feeling these things? Why am I having to experience
this pain? And we hit a wall of suffering. and then we blame others. My parents had just been better.
If my spouse was just nicer, if my kids were just a little
cleaner, if I had a better job, if I had
more money, if I had a nicer house, if I lived in a different
place, it's all a joke. Motivational speakers can't make
money saying the truth about what fleeting happiness is. Because
they put it on us to be not just the arbiter, but the influencer
and the creator of our own destiny. And as believers, we know that
the Bible teaches that is not true. But at the same time, Christianity,
Christendom, historical Christianity, especially in these United States,
has developed a even, I believe, a sinister ends to ludicrous
proportions to say that it is about not being anything. After all, Jesus says the first
shall be last and the last shall be first. It is not my life,
but I live my life by faith in the Son of God who loved me and
gave himself for me. Your life is not your own, you've
been bought with a price. I mean, these are good arguments and true things
and they're good reports, but we've taken it to a bad end on
both sides. We take the Puritanism or we
take, you know, like in Westward Expansion and where we are in
this absolute non-religious world that we created in the Constitution.
We have the right to not believe in anything and have that type
of faith, that there is nothing. But the Puritans and the people
that came over, they were so strangled by the crown, telling
them what they would believe and how they would act, that
they actually developed the evangelical movement, inadvertently, to create
the same crown and the same boundaries and the
same bondage. And we don't even know it. And
when we see it and we're free of it, like I was in the last
year or so, I wanted to be free of all of it. I'm like, so I've
got to throw Jesus out with the bathwater. I've got to throw
the Bible out with the bathwater. Have you ever been there? Have you ever felt comfortable
enough going, I'm going to filter this stuff through a strainer
and whatever's left, I might discard. And the Lord is faithful. His word does not return void.
It cannot fail. So when I partner theology or
loving or serving or helping people, these are okay things.
Or persistence or drive and goals, when I partner these things and
I say to myself, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna be this, I'm
gonna get this, it works for a little while. for a little
while, until the sun sets on a new season, and then all of
a sudden, it's like, what in the world am I going to do now?
And what typically stands in the way of that momentum is some
bad event, bad idea, bodily pain, emotional pain, mental pain,
economic pain, relational pain. Could I go on? So we all come back to suffering.
We hit a wall. And then we realize that we cannot
determine our own path. We cannot determine our own meaning.
We cannot determine our own purpose. And that we've been made for
something more. We've been made for something greater. We've
been made for something hopeful. And I've already preached these
things. Let's go to the Word of God in 1 Peter 1 and listen
to the first nine verses. Remember, these people are suffering
and have lost everything. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ,
to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus,
Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia. According to the foreknowledge
of God the Father and the sanctification of the Spirit for obedience to
Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood, may grace and
peace be multiplied to you. the doxology. Blessed be the
God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to His great
mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through
the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance
that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven
for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for
a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you
have joy. Though now for a little while,
if necessary, you've been grieved by various sufferings. So that the tested genuineness
of your faith, which is more precious than gold, and gold
perishes when it is tested by fire, that the tested genuineness
of your faith may be found to result in praise and glory and
honor at the seeing of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen
Him, listen to these words, you love Him. Though you do not now see Him,
you rest in Him and you rejoice with a joy that is inexpressible,
not expressible, and it is filled with glory, obtaining the outcome
of your faith, the salvation of your souls. And you might
ask, why in the world it's taken me several months to get here?
Because there's so much to unpack in this. And it's not a scholarly
unpacking. It's a slow, paceful, poetic
invitation to rest in the teaching of this text. But we have a tendency
to look for the joy in the application that's practical. Don't we? We want to get over here and
put away all, okay, so I need to put away malice so I can be
joyful. No. Malice will definitely interrupt
your joy, but I think malice comes when the joy is incomplete.
Put away all deceit, put away all hypocrisy and slander. Well,
people run their mouth and talk trash because they're not content
in Christ. It's not the answer. Putting away these things is
not the answer. Putting away these things is the empowerment
of the truth that we have a joy that is not found in this world. But yet we can have, like I said
two weeks ago, joy in this life because of it. Now you might think, now I know that I don't know what I thought
I knew about being happy. So what am I going to do with
it? Well, that's the wrong question. Because as long as we're asking
ourselves, what am I going to do with it? How am I going to
change it? How am I going to be? We're never going to understand
fully. Remember I said just a minute
ago, or I should have said it if I didn't, I'll say it now.
If we go to God to find happiness, we've missed it. We've missed it. If we say I want to rest, I want
to love God so that I can be happy, we're not going to be
happy. Because what we're wanting to
do is have a connection with God, have an intimacy with God
that'll give us something that we're wanting. In John chapter six, Jesus feeds
the multitude, 5,000 men, women, children, miraculously from a
small sack lunch. And then he disappears. He literally
just vanishes before their eyes. And they hang out and they camp
out and they're waiting. The disciples don't know where
he is. And remember that night, they're all sitting there on
the sea, and the storm comes, and from Capernaum, all the boats
in the port of Capernaum get blown over to where Jesus was. And they're asked the next morning,
where is this Jesus? And they're like, we don't know.
Aren't you his disciple? We don't know where he is. He
just does this, you know, he just sort of poof. We don't know where
he's at. Floating somewhere in the sky,
I don't know where he is. And so they all go, well, we're gonna
get on these boats. Because the disciples got on some boats and
they went to Capernaum. So they're three and a half miles
out and all the people get in boats and they go over. And then
the storm that was over there the night before is still causing
some turmoil in the sea. You know the story. And then
Jesus appears, touches the boat and teleports it three and a
half miles to the shore, to Capernaum. And then all the other people
get over there. And they start asking, hey, teacher, great master,
oh Lord, oh. And they fawn to Him and try
to placate to Him and give Him honor and glory, but they don't
see Him for who He really is. Because they were extremely happy
and joyful to have food. They were extremely happy about
the experience that they just had watching this man do a miracle
to feed this many people. They were extremely encouraged
that they were part of something extremely exciting. Like this eclipse. By the way, this will be our
last day on earth. I'll see y'all later. See y'all Tuesday. And so they say, Master, when
did you get here? And Jesus looks at them and says,
hey, you know what? You're looking at me and you're following after
me, not because of me, but because of the fact I gave you something
to eat and it satisfied your body. Then he says, do not labor
for the food that perishes, but labor for the bread that endures
to eternal life. And what do they say? The same
thing the woman from Sychar said, give us this bread. That's a paraphrase, a lot of
paraphrase. John six is very long. And then they put him to a test.
Well, what sign do you bring? What must we be doing then to
do the will of God? How can we find our happiness?
You see the questions? It's the same questions you have.
How am I going to overcome this? How can I get out of this? How
can I come through this? How can I actually care anymore?
And Jesus says, stop laboring for the bread that perishes.
So when we go to Christ to get something to make us happy from
Him, we are missing the point. And when we do that, we get nothing.
We literally are left holding a bag. Not 12 baskets of leftovers,
which is symbolic. Not new wine. Not a better husband. We're left with nothing. We're
left with the same thing that we had before, which is self-sufficiency,
self-hope, self-joy, self-reliance, self-foundation, stoicism, Buddhism,
or whatever else you want to call it. We're just trying to
escape, trying to find nirvana, trying to be snuffed out, to
get away from this thing, trying to get it right so we don't come
back as a grasshopper. Don't laugh at that. And it just doesn't work. Or
just trying to get away. So we're just like, can we just
get on with it? Can we just go to heaven? Heaven is not the
destination. It's a waiting room. This is
the destination. And it's new creation. And I'll
talk about that in a minute. And Jesus answers them in John
6 and says, I am the bread that comes down from heaven. And prior
to that, he says, this is the will of God, that you believe
in the one whom he has sent. But they went to Jesus for happiness,
and that's backwards. In John chapter five, you know
the story there of the woman of Saqqara. I'm in there a lot.
It's not like I want to go preach to John again. It would take
us almost five years. And the disciples had gone to
Sychar to buy food, and they come back, and they're like,
what is this man? Why is he talking to her? This is bad. They dare
not say anything because he's their teacher. And they brought
him some food, and they asked the question, hey, master, did
you want something to eat? And he says, no, I have food
that you don't know about. I'm satisfied. And John, you know,
in the 90s, on the Isle of Patmos, writing this gospel narrative,
he tells the story and he says that basically that the disciples
afterward, you know, they're sort of talking amongst each
other when Jesus couldn't hear them. And, you know, I heard
that, if y'all know that reference. And they're like, we didn't understand
why he was doing this. No one said anything. We didn't
understand what he meant when he said he had food. We were just baffled,
like Nicodemus was baffled. What do you mean I gotta be born
again? What? I gotta go back in my mom and say, hey, I'm born
again. I mean, it just doesn't work that way. They could not
fathom it. And Jesus says, I have food that
you don't know about. And the question they said, who gave
him something to eat? Did this woman give him something to eat? Did
he go buy a McDonald's? What's going on? Who gave him
something to eat? He says, my food is to do the
will of the one who sent me. Jesus, in his human body and
his human mind, was completely human. 100% human. He wasn't a superhero. He wasn't this divine-human hybrid. The divine was that this AI operating
in the scene of his brains, he was completely human. And at
the same time, Jesus Christ is the living God. And we don't
know how or why or how to put our minds around that, except
that the Bible teaches this is true. So we embrace the humanity
of Jesus Christ. One of the articles I wrote this
past week is on the compassion of Christ and the attitudes of
Christ. If you read that, I know I wrote a lot, but I might not
write again for April. But, you know, seven articles in a week,
it's OK. Just read them or don't. I don't care. But Jesus is completely
human, so everything that Jesus says, everything that he does,
everything that he feels, everything that he explains, every interaction.
is completely perfect and righteous in humanity. So if there's a
model to understand and to embrace on understanding these theologies,
it is to look at the person of Christ, to listen to the teaching
of Christ, and to see the life of Christ that we may apply it
to our lives in that way. Not to do as he did thinking
we can earn perfection because we'll never get it. I will never
love you correctly. I will never love my family correctly.
I will never love God correctly, but he loves me perfectly. And so when Jesus says that the
food that I have that you know not of is to do the will of the
one who sent me, what he's saying there is that I'm not here to
gain and earn my glory. It's mine. I am here because
I love the father above everything. Because he loves me above everything. John 14. John 17. These are rich, deep, but simple
truths. They're rich and deep because
they never go away. They never stop. There's just
like a bottomless, I don't want to say cavern because that seems
negative, but it's a bottomless blessing. So we don't go to God for happiness.
God is our happiness. But how do we cultivate that?
See, there's a practicality here. There's something that's got
to be done. I mean, look at it. Blessed be God and the Father,
the Lord Jesus Christ. His mercy, His love, He's caused you to
be born into His family. He's called you to be made new
in the person of Christ through the resurrection of Christ from
the dead. So not only do we see the adoption, we see the embracing.
We're siblings with Christ. We will share in His glory. We're
not going to be servants in the new earth. We're going to be
saints. We're gonna have the fullness
of all joy. But in this life, as necessary,
when necessary, we're gonna suffer. Put a little blurb out on Instagram
this week about my suffering and what God teaches me and how
it works. And I made the distinction, some
people have suffering that is completely, like, in comparison,
it's like, you call that suffering? But then there are some people
who have suffering that go, man, I don't even wanna hear it. I don't even want
to fathom it. That is just too much. Oh, God. I've never suffered in comparison,
you see. But it doesn't diminish our pain. But when we're trying
to pursue this qualified idea that, you know, we've got to
lessen some suffering, or we've got to increase some happiness,
and we've got to find some stuff, we run a fool's errand to the
end of the world, and then we fall off, and then we land right
back in the same place we were, still running up a sand dune.
Sorry, the imagery just if you've ever run up a sand dune, number
one, you get in trouble and number two, it's very difficult. And
you could also die. So we seek all sorts of things
to fill the void that only Christ can give. You know, you've heard
the old cliche, you've heard the what is it that we all have
a God size hole in our heart needs to be filled with God.
It's misplaced. We've been made to be loved by
him. And by the way, that's Augustine
who posited that. Epicurious, I don't know, okay. We'll do church history one day.
It's fascinating. If you like it, that's okay.
If you don't, watch Billiards, it's okay. Or watch paint dry. It's pretty neat. And so what
we do is we seek joy, we seek meaning, we seek purpose outside
of Scripture. And what we're doing is we're
actually escaping the thing that we're looking for. We're escaping
it. We seek love or whatever to fill
that void. We try to love Him, but we can't.
And when we do, we don't know how. We're taught then to be hard,
I don't know about you, but we're taught to be hard, to push it
down, to not feel it, as if that helps. It helps keep our mind
off of it, but our subconscious mind still longs, our subconscious
mind still yearns, our subconscious mind still longs and yearns and
deeply feels what it doesn't want to feel, and it's a constant
friction, and we have to distract ourselves. by either pursuit
or, I don't know anything, something with a P that came to mind, or
some other means of, I don't know, that's so easy, it just
broke. Okay. Good object lesson. If I only had And then we start
to blame each other. We start to blame ourselves.
We start to blame the man. We start to blame the economy.
We start to blame the government. We start to blame everything.
We blame everything. And then it's just like... And
then we blame God. You know what's beautiful about
that? You have the freedom. This sound bite's gonna get me
in trouble. Y'all can have it. All you knuckleheads out there.
You have the right to put your finger in the face of your father and
blame him. It's not right. It is sin. But you have the liberty, not
the right, you have the freedom. And the sooner we get that as
Christians, that we can't hide and God is not looking for our
little, what is that called? Pony show. He's not looking,
we can't trick him. So why not be honest? And he's
not going to love us any less because we blame him. Did he
love Adam and Eve any less? No, he didn't. And they both
blamed him. With this snake you made, with this woman you gave
me. I mean, the woman was him. Out of him. Just can't see it. It's just
dumb. And when we get into chapter three, I'll unpack that nonsense. how we have really allowed that
kind of lie to hurt half our population in the church. No, we blame God, and that's
okay. Because even when we blame God, and when we don't love God,
and we don't know how to love God, and we don't know how to
trust God, and we believe God, and we don't believe God, it's
okay. Don't let anybody tell you that
it's not okay. Is it good for you? No. It's like eating doughnuts
for supper. It's not good for you, but it's
okay. There's consequences, but they're
not justice. It's not wrath. The consequence is that God's
love is faithful. He cannot not love you. If Christ died for your sins,
it is finished and it is over and there is no wrath to be had.
There is no punishment to pay. There is no debt to write a check
for. It is over. And to say otherwise is to not
understand the gift of God in mercy and love. Beloved, this
is liberal theology. You know what the word means?
Freedom. Somebody called me the other day and I'm like, thank
you. We don't even put those labels
on things. The gospel is liberating. If it's not, it's not a good
news, it's not. This just in, great news, you're
gonna die and you can't get out of the chair to save yourself.
I hope you're having a nice evening. Tomorrow we'll watch comedy. Dante's. I mean, you know. For the literary nerds in the
room. We don't need to want something
from God. We need to find a way to want
God. I mean, we do that in marriage, too, right? Remember when you're
dating, you don't even know these people. You don't even know you
don't even know each other. You just love each other so,
so much. It's ego, and you don't even
know it. In the science of your brain,
everything that God has created for us to create bonds, we've
got to learn those, but we've got to learn these things. We've
got to grow into these things. I mean, Robin and I have been
together 29 years, 28 years in May, married. That's a long time. But it's not long enough. We
still don't know each other as much as we think we do. Why? Because we change. Things change. But I tell you what, I know what
love is now more than I ever did. And you know what it isn't? Sparks and fire and visions of
grandeur and dragons, roses and puppies. It's not any of that
stuff. And it's not like that with God
either. It's not like that. In John chapter 11, this is one
of the reasons that I use the ESV. Turn over there. In John chapter 11, Jesus begins to talk. I mean, the scripture John begins
to write about the engagement when Jesus got the news of Lazarus
illness. Chapter 11, verse one, now a
man named Lazarus was ill, living in Bethany, the village of Mary
and her sister Martha. It was Mary who anointed the
feet of Jesus. with oil, anointed Jesus with
oil and wiped his feet. I just swiped up on my Bible
page, y'all. You got problems. Whose brother Lazarus was ill.
So the sisters sent to him a message saying, Lord, whom you love is
ill. Now I want you to pay close attention
here. They sent a letter, a telegram, a text message, whatever it was.
They sent Jesus a message that said, the man Lazarus, whom you
love, is sick and dying. But, verse 4, when Jesus heard
this news, he said, this illness does not lead to death. It is
for us to see God as he is, the glory of God. so that the Son of God, me, may
be seen as I am through it, glorified. Remember, think of seeing God's
glory as being completely exposed and everything revealed. The
nature, the character, the work, the love, the attitude. Verse
five is important. Now Jesus loved Martha and her
sister and Lazarus. So, that's the word that gets
me. Other translations go but. So
when Jesus heard that Lazarus was dying, he stayed two days
longer where he was. It's important to understand
the causation here. Jesus loved them. They loved
Jesus. Jesus knew that Lazarus was dying. They sent to Jesus so that he
would not die. How do we know? Because we've
got the story over there. I read it this morning at the opening of the
service. If you had just been here, if you would just come
when we sent for you, why did you wait? What happened? And Jesus, the answer to that
is Jesus waited on purpose because he loved Lazarus. So he waited. Why? So that the man would die
in his flesh. Well, that doesn't sound very
loving. Yes, it is. Wow. You'll see. After two days, he said, okay,
let's go. Let's go over to Judea. Let's go to Bethany. I'm going to show you what it
means to walk in the light, not stumble around the darkness.
We've been stumbling around the darkness too long, guys, and I want you to
see. I want you to wake up. I want
you to pay attention. And I love Thomas at the end
of that, verse 16. And they were upset that Jesus
was going back to Judea because things were hostile. I mean,
people were looking to arrest him. They wanted to kill him.
I mean, it was rough. They were already plotting to have him
put in prison, and they knew that he would probably die if
he was arrested, if not by the hand of the magistrate, the Pharisees
and the Sadducees, but by the hand of the mob. And so Thomas, the twin, said
to the rest of the 12, the other 11, he said, come on guys, let's
just go, let's just all die together. And that would be the guy that
would be put in charge, because he'd be the leader with the right
attitude. That's not the right attitude. Just like Peter said,
you don't have to die. Thomas is like, let's just die
together. And Jesus went. And Jesus went. And Mary, I won't read it all
again, but Mary says, why weren't you here? And Jesus wept. There's a W. He went, he wept. I've got two
more. They just came to me. It's not
broken. Jesus is a man of sorrows. I
love that song. And in his perfect, righteous
humanity, he wept. In the English, translations,
man, we're just sometimes too, we need some poets to translate
the Bible for a change. To go, that word and that context
needs to be a little stronger. Jesus wept, not a little tear
in his eye because we watched Old Yeller, or Bambi, or The
Gentle Giant, or whatever the heck that movie is about a robot
dying. I cried, stop it. It's not that. He wept. The scripture there implies he
was deeply moved. He was weeping. He was greatly
troubled. Have you ever wept so ugly that if it made social media,
you'd move? I have. Have you ever wept so
deeply that you felt panic? That's what Jesus was doing.
He wasn't walking around with a little tear like the litter
commercial from the 70s. You know that one? Native American
crying because of the trash on the highway. Jesus wept deeply. He was deeply
grieved. The same language when He was
in the Garden of Gethsemane and He's telling this inner three,
James, John and Peter, pray, stand watch, I am grieved. And
He went in and expressed that grief to the point that He cried
and labored and bellowed out to God the Father to take the
cup that He was about to drink. He could not stand it. He could
not fathom it. He could not embrace it. to the
point that his body burst the capillaries in his skin and he
sweated blood. Which most people in fair health
probably would have had a stroke or a heart attack. Not a lot
of cholesterol issues in the first century. Not a lot of blood pressure problems. Jesus wept. Our God weeps. in His humanity. What's that got to do with my
joy? You'll see. And then Jesus went to the tomb and He was angry. He was angry. He went to the tomb and He hated
death. Have you ever cried in anger?
Have you ever gotten angry in your tears? Not because you were
wronged, because you just hated the pain. You hated the context.
You hated the experience. You wish that it would not have
happened. It's one of the occasions where
I've put my finger up at God. Jesus wept that way. He hates the suffering of the
people he loves. It made him angry. He's a wailing God, a weeping
God, a weary God. Deeply moved again, verse 38,
he commands Lazarus to come out. And then when he raises Lazarus
from the dead, recomposes his body, takes off the grave clothes
where this man, I guess, floated out of the tomb, these silly
people said to themselves, we have got to kill this man who
just raised the dead and the man who just came back from the
dead because the whole world is going to suffer if they start
following him and we're gonna lose control. Now that sounds
like a really good sitcom plot. And maybe a revamp of the Three
Stooges to be a part of it. That is one of the dumbest things
that have ever come out of the mouth of a person, to witness
resurrection and to say, let's kill the Resurrector, who has
already said in public, I am the resurrection and the life. Why weren't you here? I'm the
resurrection and the life. Though you die, you will live,
and though you die, you have not died. Did y'all see the little YOLO cake
for Easter on social media? Nah, just kidding, it was the
little Jesus, you know. You don't only live once, but you do only
live once, because even when you die, you're not dead, you're
with Him. And you're awaiting the resurrection of your body,
renewed, to be restored with everyone you love. Why? Because that's the love of God
for you. To rest on the rock of hope,
to rest on the rock of righteousness, to rest on the rock of life is
to stand secure, even in inexpressible joy. What is that? Lamenting,
wailing, weeping, anger, snarling, spitting, snotting, torment. Why? It's still joy when we're
focused on the love of God for us. And in that joy, in that
focus, listen to me, in that truth, we are made new. Each moment. And then we live in a way that
our love is enough because we love God because of His love
for us. We love Him even in our suffering
because we know that He loves us because He's proven it. We
see it in the Word of God throughout all of history. Name one faithful
man or woman in the entire Bible that was fully faithful to God.
They're not there. But God is faithful. God is faithful. So then when
we are focused on that, we know the Lord. And more importantly,
John 17, as Jesus would say, He knows us. And so then by the Spirit, there's
a constant connection, a constant tether to loving God because
of God's love for us. And you might think, well, isn't
that the same thing? We're going to go to God to get
Him to love us? No, it's not because that's not the case.
We are going to God because He does love us, not so that He
will love us. Well, how does God love me? He
gave His Son. So then our love for one another
is enough. Then our love when Christ talks about loving our
children and loving our spouses and loving our siblings in Christ
and loving our neighbor. It actually works because we're
loving God alone and then we learn through that love that
God gives us what love for others is. And it surely is not the
way we feel about them. And no matter what we do, no
matter how much we don't believe, no matter how angry we are, no
matter how cynical we are, no matter how bitter we are, no
matter how many hog pens we go run to try to find things to
eat like the prodigal son, God's love for us is never failing.
He's standing in the imagery of the Father in Luke 15 looking,
waiting for us, His children, His sons, His daughters. to touch the horizon so that
he may gird his loins and run with tears of joy to restore
us to his name. And that everything we've lost
in our suffering, listen to me, beloved. Everything we've ever lost in
our suffering, whether it be ethereal, whether it be mental,
emotional, physical, relational, financial, whatever it may be,
everything we've ever lost in our suffering is given back to
us tenfold. To an inheritance that is imperishable,
undefiled and unfading. Kept in heaven for you who are
being guarded by God, You'll listen to the last two sermons
before this. Being guarded by God. Peter's
a long way in the back. So you rejoice. Not because you
see Jesus, not because you get something from Jesus, because
you don't see Jesus and you don't see Him now and you haven't seen
Him. But you love Him. because of who He is and what
He's done for you. I mean, isn't that the case? I mean, isn't
it hard, like some really punk person in our life, and they're
just like rude, but they're really nice to us, and they give us
a whole lot of love and a lot of affection and a lot of stuff,
and it's really hard for us to be mad at them, because they
do so much good. Our God is so much greater. Because
everything he does is for our good. James says that all good
gifts come from the Father of Lights. So how do I summarize all this
nonsense that I've said today? Our joy and our hope are gifts
from God. And that joy has an eternal nature. that is in perishing and undefiled.
And in that suffering, our faithless faith gets to grow. And that's what we're going to
talk about a little bit next week as we move into verse 10. So we get stronger in our suffering. We get stronger. We start looking,
we stop looking at all the misguided pursuits of happiness. Even though
they may be good, they are not perfect. And we start putting
them in the right order. And imagine you as a cup overflowing
and it's full. We can't fill our own cup to overflowing. John chapter
5 says, I'll give you water that will overflow and well up and
overflow into eternal life. She says, give me this water
always. And He'll later say, I am the
water, the living water. And we get to look at Jesus and
His role in our suffering and His promise of being resurrected. Jesus died so that we could live. And all the pain that He endured,
He did not deserve. And I don't even want to get
into that. Not all suffering is deserved, beloved. There's
unjust suffering in the world, but I can tell you the greatest
unjust suffering was when Christ died. But He loved us. He does love
us. So we embrace God's purpose beyond
suffering to the hope of the resurrection, to the hope of
this new life, and we live out this joy to be sober-minded,
to be focused on this journey. And we need to do it together.
We need to recognize and embrace the reality of what God has done
in Christ Jesus for us. And that is my hope for you.
And we take the table every week here at Grace Truth Church. We
do the little Lord's Supper. And what this does is reminds
us of the day when Christ was going to be arrested, where he
said, as you take this bread, I want you to remember my body.
It's going to be broken for you. And as you drink this wine, I
want you to remember my blood's going to be shed for the forgiveness
of your sins. And when you do this, do it together that you
may understand that God's love for you is manifest in this way. For God loved the world in this
way that He gave His only Son, the only one that He has. It's
a literal translation of John 3.16. And so as we take the table,
let us reflect on these truths. Let's remember the love of God
for us. And in that, let's pursue this joy together as we grow. Let's pray. Father, I thank you
for the opportunity to teach. Lord, for the opportunity to
share. And Lord, I'm learning and I'm confessing my own journey. Help this church see that, that
I am not the example. I'm just I'm as qualified as Balaam's
ass to speak your truth. So let us look to Christ, the founder of our faith and
the perfecter therein. Help us to see this joy. Help
us to embrace the fact that all things will be given back to
us. Everything we lose and more. because you love us. Help us
to keep our eyes on that. As we take the table, Father,
help us to remember these things in Christ. In his name we pray,
amen.