Sometimes in our in our small
lives. The things that we understand,
the things that we see, the things that we believe, the things that
we hold dear, we oftentimes take and without knowing, we impart
everything that we think and believe and experience as if
it's the things that everybody experiences throughout the entirety
of the world. Let me give an example. If I were to I don't know. See the gas price
go up again. If I were to see gas before we
left today, we look over there at the Chevron and it was $4
a gallon or $5 a gallon. We'd be like, oh, oh my gosh.
And we'd be freaking out. And yet on the West Coast, it
would probably be six or seven if that had happened. But we
would think, oh, how horrible is it to be in with it? But the
cost of living over there is exorbitant compared to here.
So necessarily the wages being more doesn't necessarily mean
that it's easier to live. Whereas rent here will be $700
a month, rent there will be $2,700 a month. If gas is $4 here, it's
$7 there. And so we would just automatically
think it was just as bad everywhere else. Well, it could be. But
let's take it just across the borders of our country. Take
it to Mexico or to Canada or across the oceans. Do you think
that everywhere and every civilized nation and every civilized people
and every civilized culture that gas prices are increasing? Or
even if most people, I would say to you, don't care because
they haven't bought a tank of gas in their entire lives. And
the measure of the whole world. You don't see that. So just because
we experience that type of thing doesn't mean the world experiences
that type of thing. We often look into the mirror
every morning and We get ready contemplating what we're going
to do that day. But most importantly, we contemplate what we contemplate,
how we look to ourselves concerning how we think others may perceive
us. We see all that my hair looks horrid and we can sometimes leave
the house and our hair looks hard and our clothes look ragged
and we go and we're thinking about it for the first hour of
our day and we go into the office and we think what we just excuse
the way I look today and people start looking at us and they
go, I didn't even notice because they didn't notice. They didn't notice, but
we have this idea in our minds that everybody's concerned with
us and everybody's looking at us and everybody's thinking about
us and everybody's talking about us. And there's just this there's
just this weird egocentric idealism that just roots out of our soul. It's called depravity. If you
want to know what it is theologically, it's because we're sinners and
our culture dictates how that depravity actually exercises
itself. The root of it's all selfishness and pride. Narcissism,
ego, those things. But the same thing would be true
about happiness, joy. The same thing would be true
about almost anything, what we consider eating. You ever sat
down to, we had some meat last night, I did not like the taste
of it at all. Put it in my mouth, threw it in the trash, got another
piece, tried it again, threw it away. It wasn't because it was prepared,
it was just the cut of meat that I just did not care for. And
I thought about that as I sat there and ate, and I thought,
how pretentious is that of me that I don't like this meat?
Because it doesn't have the flavor that I enjoy. Where if I threw
it out to the dog, they would lap it up. Bone and all, it didn't
matter to them. And it wouldn't matter to the
man who was starving. If he found that piece of meat that I threw
away in the garbage, he'd eat it. Because there's a different way
of thinking based on our level of needs, based on our level
of ability, based on our level of understanding of what is normative. Milk's just about a day old.
Isn't it amazing how it only stinks after the day? We never
tested it any time before. But we smell it and we think,
oh, this is old. It doesn't. Have you tasted it?
It's not old. You know, when milk rotten, you
get a poor glass, it goes and it comes out in clumps. Milk
is not a solid substance. OK, so that's when you know it's
bad. But we throw it away. We would
throw it away. Plastics, paper, garbage. How many times a week do you
take out the garbage? We take it out. We could take
it out every day. We're pretty good. We can tie
it off because I have a 35 gallon or 40 gallon trash can in my
kitchen. And we fill that sucker up about
three days. And so we, that's a lot of trash. And what do we
do? We look in there and it's paper towels. When, you know, we could
just use a, we could just use a towel that we could wash once
a week or something. No, we don't. And it's not just
one paper towel. It's like, and we just, why? Because we spilled a little milk
because it was curdled, you know? And so we're cleaning up and
we've got this, we got, look at all this trash. Look at this
garbage. And we don't even think about it. We take that for granted.
What would happen if a disaster hit and we had garbage that could
not be picked up? You know what five bags of garbage
in your house would look like after one week? Imagine after
a month. Well, that can never happen.
It so certainly can. And matter of fact, when we lived in California,
the garbage union went on strike. I don't know if that's exactly
what it's called, but the union workers that did the sanitation went on strike
and they would not pick it up. And it was a citation to leave
it sitting out by the road. So what did you do? You put it
in your backyard. And what was it, three weeks, three weeks
of no garbage and three and a half million people. The mess. The mess. Thank God it never
rains, but that would have been even a bigger mess. It could
happen. And we take it for granted how repulsive. Well, how repulsive
is normality for some people in this world that they live
in the garbage, they sleep in the garbage, they eat out of
the garbage. And I'm not talking about homeless
people in America. I'm talking about people who when they get
up every day, they dump their trash out onto the streets of
their community. And then the poor people eat out of it. And
then the streams of sewage and streams of water that run into
the gutters is where they get their drinking water and they
try to filter it through some of the paper that they might have gotten
out of the trash. And we think there's no way. If we went to
a restaurant and got cold food, we'd go, I'm not paying for this.
We'll be able to pay $100 for a meal anyway. How crazy is that
when some people don't make that a month in the world? I'm just
trying to make us all feel guilty. That's just where we are in abundance
in America. And we have so thought in ourselves, well, that's just
not that. That's just not the way it is. We just can't live
that way. We could live that way if we had to. I want you
to see that. When we see things in our lives
that actually are diminished in the way we think are proper
from the from the standard in which we have as proper, we start
to lose our joy, don't we? We go out to eat and the hamburger
is a little bit pink and we lose our joy. We have this this look,
you know, we're laughing, having a good time. Oh, we got to get
that waitress. You know, our joy turns to bitterness
and most importantly, it turns to entitlement. And we get that
waitress. I'm paying six dollars for this hamburger and I expected
it to be correct. Like she cooked it, you know, like she sat back
there with a Bunsen burner and looked at it as it, as it, as
it brazen. And heaven to heck, if, if, if the cook actually
had, had lost his mother that day, but he couldn't take off
work because if he lives with the days of work, he misses one
day of work. He loses his house. There's a perspective. There's
a level of joy that we find comfortable and when anything attacks that
level of joy, we begin to lose it. Well, friends, let me tell
you something. The joy of this world is fleeting
and it is dead and it's rotted. The scripture teaches us in first
on that the world and everything in it is passing away, inclusive
of the things that we love and the world that we live in and
the materials that we have and the positions and the roles and
the authority, the power that we yield. I was able to attend
the funeral Friday of an 88 year old woman. We live nearly nine
decades in this world and have family related to me. I didn't
I'd never even met these people. And I heard this happened to
be her son in law was also a pastor. Do her eulogy. And he talked
about her primarily throughout the entire service. But there's
one thing that he did not mention at all about this woman. He did
not mention what she left behind as far as material possessions.
He didn't mention about the house that she had. He didn't mention
about the things that she did for a living, nor her hobbies
or interests or anything that was actually particularly what
we would call impressive. He did not mention a thing about
what she studied in school or that she even went to school.
Because none of that is important at all. And at the end of the
day, what was most vital to the family who lost her was not what
she had accomplished in life, but that she had touched their
lives and now they would miss her touch. What does it take
to have a touch? What does it take to to invest
in someone's life? It takes a willingness and a
heart to love them. And nobody cares about the degrees
you have or the job you have or the money that you make. No
one cares about the house that you live in, because when you're
gone, that goes away anyway. But when you're here, what you
leave is how you've invested in the lives of others. I would
say that if we had less wealth in our country. I believe we'd
have greater joy. What's a greater joy than knowing
Christ? What's a greater joy than living
Christ in our lives, living as though Christ had an effect in
our lives, investing in each other at the cost of ourselves
so that we actually could leave a legacy with eternal option,
with eternal consequences. With eternal value. Look at Galatians
chapter five. This is a rather odd text, but
I think it leads into everything that I feel like the Lord is
impressing upon my heart and prayerfully by his grace will
be into another letter soon. Galatians, chapter five, verse
twenty two through twenty four, says this. But you know how I
hate starting there, but the fruit of the spirit is love. Joy. Peace. Patience, kindness, faithfulness,
gentleness, self-control. Against such things there is
no law. And those who belong to Christ
Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. Now, there is so much here. I seriously would tell you that
expose that text, just verse 22 and 23, not to mention 24,
I would have to preach probably three sermons to get it accurately,
to get it accurately. But what I want to do today,
I want to sort of do like a like a scourge. Let's take a word
out of that. Let's take a phrase out of that.
And let's talk for three hours about that particular thing.
And I want to point to, I'm not going to talk for three minutes,
but I want to point to this very fruit. It is the fruit which
is inclusive of itself. It doesn't say the fruits of
the Spirit are. It says the fruit of the Spirit
is. And so, therefore, if the Spirit of God yields fruitfulness
in our lives as Christians, then these things in all, in entirety,
will be evident in our life as fruit. It is the fruit of the
Spirit of God in the child of God. So, we say, we can't say,
well, I'm a patient person, but I'm not very kind. Well, you
can't be kind, you can't be patient if you're not kind, because what's
the root of unkindness, impatience, selfishness? You can't say that
you're a loving person if you're not faithful. You can't say that
you have self-control if you're not good. So they're one or none,
and that's how it looks. But the specific thing I want
you to see today, in line with the series that we're doing,
entitled The Devil in the Pulpit, I believe that the enemy of God,
through people well-meaning, preached this error. That joy
is indicative of your doing that which God requires of you. Now, let me tell you why I think
that's wrong. I think it's wrong because it
puts emphasis on what we do. And it removes the glory from
the power, the work and the wonder and the essence of God through
Jesus Christ. Let me tell you why I think it's
right. I think it's right in that joy comes through Christ.
I'm giving away the sermon that we're going to unpack it. Joy
comes through Christ alone, and that because we are in Christ,
we are new creatures, new creations. We have a new heart, we have
a new mind, and we war within ourselves and the spirit within
us. But through the foundation of
God's faithfulness, we are measured to the utmost by the inequivocal,
inexpressible, inextinguishable joy that rests in us and flows
from us. So it is in some sense wrapped
up in how we respond. In our flesh, but how we respond
in our flesh is the work of God, some people would like to tell
you that the reason you don't have joy is because you don't
have faith. And people would say that in
response to the idea that, oh, you need a place to live, you
need a better house, you need a better job, you need more money,
you need a better car, you need this, you need help, you need
power. Then you need to have more faith that God wants to
give you these things. There's nowhere in the scripture that says God
wants to give us these things. Nowhere. Matter of fact, Paul tells Timothy,
anyone who desires to live a godly life will be persecuted. All
through the New Testament, every New Testament letter deals with
persecution and how it's an inevitable reality for those who desire
to follow Christ. If we stand for truth in our
job quietly, without a voice, we can be fired. If we are known
as someone who lives a quiet, humble, godly life. Investing
our lives in the betterment of others, we will be hated because
the world hates Christ, so therefore it hates his body. You don't
just hate someone's face. I guess you could, if they were
really, really ugly. But you hate them and you hate the whole
of them. So if people hate Christ, they hate the whole of Christ,
inclusive of his body, who is the church, who is you above
it. Joy does not come through the desires of the flesh. Joy
does not come through this world. Joy does not come through family,
through marriage. It can be found there, but it's
fleeting. And I would measure to say that it is not joy if
it is not eternal. But I want you to understand
that joy. It's also not the absence, the absence of sorrow. Joy is
not the absence of sorrow. Joy is not to say I'm never sad. Joy is not to say I'm never depressed. Joy is not to say, I'm never
having hard times. Joy is to say, when death is
at my door, I have joy. Joy is to say, joy is defined
as, or is seen in this way, is that when I have nothing else
in this life but Christ, I have joy when everything around me
is dark. Joy says, I am here when you
do not have the will to live. So how do we understand this?
This is the difficulty of such teaching. How do I take hundreds
of references to the joy of the Lord, hundreds of commands to
rejoice? You realize this? It's not an
option. Just as God says, Be holy, for I'm holy. The Bible
says, Rejoice in the Lord always. It's not a, Would you please?
It'd be good for you if you did. It is a command of God to rejoice
in Him forever and ever and ever, beginning now. So when we walk
around with a longing of our soul, we are in sin before a
holy God who saved us through the blood of Jesus. We stand and we say, you are
not sufficient, O Christ, for my joy is not wrapped up in the
satisfaction of your life and your death and your resurrection
to the Father, but my joy is temporal when I want you to be
my genie in a bottle. That's what we say. Guys, that's not something that
I have peeked into your lives and gone, yeah, I know about
you. I've got a little list down here. I say those things because
I have also experienced. And before the Lord takes me,
I'll experience them again. It is an inevitable issue of
life that we struggle with finding joy in Christ. But I want to
tell you today, it's the only place we'll find it. And it doesn't
mean there'll be no conflict, it doesn't mean there'll be no
sadness, it doesn't mean there'll be no death. How? Well, let's look at a few things
in Scripture. There's three things that I will
talk about today. First, is that joy is found in the essence of
God's worth. See right there? But the fruit
of the Spirit is joy. And those who belong to Christ
Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
So now we see something here. Sort of like what the psalmist
says in Psalm 97. Verse 12, Rejoice in the Lord, O you righteous,
and give thanks to his holy name. There's a binding of joy and
gratitude that cannot be separated. How is joy to be found in the
essence of God's Word? Because God is worthy of praise
and thanksgiving. So therefore, our joy is found
up in knowing what we have in who he is. and that we are in
Christ, now our flesh that takes us away from the fullness of
joy and fights against the Spirit of God within us to try to satisfy
itself through the lust of this world, we see that those desires
are dying and our desire becomes more and more just attached to
the person of Jesus as our joy, because it's from God. It's God's
work in us. It's not our work. We don't get
up in the morning and look in the mirror like, what is his
name? Hi, I'm James. I'm a joyful person. Well, that'll
go about as far as the toilet when you stub your toe on it.
I tried to have a good day and I stubbed my toe. Or I fell out
of the bed. Have you ever just decided you
were going to have a wonderful day? You just went up and, you
know, I feel good. I'm going to do good. I'm going
to stand up and just I'm going to walk this day. Enjoy. Lord,
I love you. God, I praise you. Have you ever
had a day like that where you just determined, you resolved
that everything in you, you were going to walk with joy and nothing
was going to shake you? You better understand, you understand,
but you better, no better got out of your house before something
happened, did you? Sunday mornings ought to be the
greatest time of joy for the believer, but it's the greatest
time of spiritual warfare that ever took place. Our children
get up with bells, do their own laundry, clean the kitchen and
cook breakfast every day of the week during the summer, but Sunday.
And I'm not talking about my own children today. It was a
good day. But I'll tell you, if we're ever going to have a
bad day, Sunday's going to be the one where somebody's going
to spill something, somebody's going to say something, somebody's
going to push somebody, hit somebody, slap somebody, talk ugly to somebody,
talk back to somebody. And something that happens on
Sunday, if it happened on Friday, wouldn't bother you at all. But
on Sunday, it's going to make you madder than fire. Because
you said, I'm going to worship the Lord today. I'm going to
have a great opportunity just to be joyful. And you know why
that doesn't work? Because when we say we're going
to do something in our own resolve, the temptation of the enemy comes
along and just shows us very clearly that we're not going
to find joy that day. And what the Lord, what others
meant for evil, the Lord uses for good. And when we see that
we can't find our joy, In the midst of suffering, we realize
that our joy is only established in the essence of God's Word.
Why do we even have to deal with the suffering of life? Well,
that's a whole nother sermon, but it's so that we can see that
our joy is complete in Christ, because Christ, who is the God
of all glory, came to this world. And how did he learn obedience?
The scripture says in Hebrews, he learned obedience through
suffering. How are we sanctified? Peter tells us and James tells
us that we're sanctified through suffering. And we rejoice and
we give thanks in our suffering because this suffering is how
God grows us to trust and know and love him more. And that's why Paul tells Timothy
to endure the suffering set before you. You know what that means?
You know what endearing suffering is? Enduring suffering. Is when Jesus didn't take the
medicine on the cross. And they tried to give him that
concoction that would help him. Numb the pain. And during suffering is looking
past the cost of the glory and with joy, knowing that there's
a resolve on the other side that through that suffering, many
would be set free from the bondage of sin and death. Suffering is
the martyrs that we read in church history who refused to stand
down and just with a lie from their lips to save their own
lives, they were burned alive at the stake because they would
not denounce their hope in Christ alone. Suffering. Enduring means standing firm
under suffering, not looking to be taken out of the pain,
but rejoicing in it. So joy is found in the essence
of God's word. Secondly, I want you to understand that joy is
found in the essence of God's work. First John chapter one,
we see these words, the first four verses, that which was from
the beginning, that which we have heard, which we have seen
with our eyes, which we looked upon and touch with our hands
concerning the word of life. The life was made manifest and
we have seen it and we testify to it and proclaim to you the
eternal life, which was with you, excuse me, which was with
the father and was made manifest to us that which we have seen
and heard. We proclaim also to you. Listen
to this so that you too may have fellowship with us. And indeed,
our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.
And we're writing these things so that our joy may be complete. You know what a complete joy
looks like? It can't be shaken. You have
a whole pie and you cook it and you sit it out to warm or to
cool and you go back and there's a piece missing. It's not a whole
pie. It's not complete. Somebody has swiped the piece.
And sometimes our joy is like that. We find all this is just
good. It's tasty. It's glorious. It
has good aroma. It's filled the house. There's
my joy. All of a sudden, somebody comes along and takes a piece.
But John's saying these things are written so that your joy
may be complete. How is that packed? God's worth,
it's God's doing, it's God's fruit, it's the joy of the Lord. Not the joy of my wife, not the
joy of my kids, not the joy of my money, not the joy of my health,
not the joy of my church, not the joy of my town, or my car,
or my stuff, or anything else, or my inner being, or my solace,
or my peace, or my attitude. It's the joy of the Lord. And
the work of God foundationally is given an experience for us,
the New Testament church today, through his word. We write these
things so that our joy may be complete. What is it that John
has written? What is it that he has outlined
in this first few verses, this one sentence, one sentence of
the first four verses of 1 John 1? He's written that they have
seen and touched and heard the glory of God, who is Jesus Christ,
the righteous, and they have seen Him because God has proclaimed
Him to them. and that their fellowship, because
of God's Word, is now with the Father and with the Son and with
the saints. And if you are a saint, your
fellowship is with them and with the Son and with the Father,
because you've been adopted by God. And because of that, your
joy is complete. The work of God is not working
in you without the Word of God. And I say this to many people
every week. Friends, you can pretend that
we're in the Bible and in the Scriptures, or we can really
eat it. I don't understand. It doesn't
matter. Did you know how the food you ate this morning was
prepared? Do you know all the ingredients? Can you do like
an executive chef or a sous chef and taste something and go, there's
seven different spices and I can write them down? Can you do that?
No. But you eat it anyway. And the same thing with the Word
of God. You go to the Word and you eat the Word of God. You read it. And if you can't
focus, you read it out loud. And if you can't do that, have
somebody read it to you. And if you can't get it in one
sentence and read the chapter over and over every day for 30
days, read it. and put it in your heart and
in your mind so that the fullness of the joy of God is forever
resonating with you. You cannot have the joy of Christ
apart from Christ, and you cannot be intimate with Christ except
through His Word. I can't fellowship with you and
give you the fullness of the joy of Christ, but just for the
few seconds that you hear me talk about it. You know why you
get it sometimes in certain fellowship? Because you feel, oh... You inadvertently
place that joy on that person. But if the fellowship you have
with the saints of God, if they're giving you the Word of God that's
already rested in you, there's a supernatural exponential explosion
of joy that stays and rests and battles and wars and comes out
with an inexpressible, overwhelming joy that cannot be quenched. We are adopted by God through
Jesus Christ. We are not of this world and
we have joy because of the worth of God, because it is God's joy. And we have joy because of the
work of God through his adoption. We have joy because of the work
of God through the second thing in this to to, if you will, to
be through election. Well, I don't like that word.
It doesn't matter. It's in the Bible. It's the only word in the Bible
that talks about God's salvation. It's the only word that means
salvation, the election of the saints. No matter what you think
about it, you don't have to fight that out in your mind right now.
Just hear what the Scripture says. Nevertheless, Luke 10, Jesus
says, Do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject
to you. But, and I didn't even mean to read that part, but rejoice
that your names are written in heaven. What's that mean? That
you've been saved. How? By faith. God's grace is given to you to
be received by faith. Do you believe the gospel? Do
you understand that Christ alone is the only way to eternal life?
Do you know what it means when Jesus says, I am the truth and
the way and the life? How many books and volumes and
speeches and movies and writings have been done about living the
good life? And yet, Scripture teaches us
that all of those things, all of those tools, all of those
nuances, all of those things that we are supposed to think
and how we speak and how we talk to ourselves, all of that's fleeting
and fruitless. Joy comes because we've been
adopted by God. We've been given His Spirit.
We've been called out of the world and transferred to the
domain of light from the domain of darkness. We've been saved
while we were dead. Enemies, dark, depraved, unable,
unwilling and uncertain of future. We have been transferred to life
because our names are written in the Lamb's Book of Life. And
Jesus says, rejoice that your names are written there. What
does that mean? That's what David understood that before there
was Christ to be fulfilled and revealed fully. David understood. He says, oh, God, return to me
the joy of my salvation. Psalm 51. How do we do that? We don't. God does. Because you've been saved through
Jesus Christ. Your name is written in the Lamb's
Book of Life. There's many other places I could
go to show you many different things, many different doctrines.
But thirdly, in this second point, I want you to see that joy is
found in the essence of God's work through adoption, through
election, and through redemption. Philippians 3, Paul writes this,
Finally, my brothers, a command, rejoice in the Lord. And he says to write the same
things to you is no trouble to me and it is safe for you. There's a sermon in that. Some
people say, well, that's such a repetitive text, it's purposeful. He says, look out for the dogs,
look out for the evildoers, look out for those who mutilate the
flesh. For we, verse three is the point, for we are the circumcision. Who worship by the Spirit of
God, and glory in Jesus Christ and put, listen, no confidence
in the flesh. What is he talking about? He's
talking about salvation. And those who are going around
teaching that you've got to do this, you've got to say this,
you've got to act this way, you've got to do circumcision, you've
got to have this. There are some who mutilate their
bodies because they feel like they're not worthy, and if they
don't suffer, then God's not going to show favor to them.
That's what he's talking about there. He's saying stop working
for salvation. Stop planting yourself in the
soil of works and fleshliness, because we are the circumcision. Do infants circumcise themselves? No. On the eighth day, they bring
young boys to the priest who would circumcise them. Why? Because
it was a covenant. It was an outward sign, like
a wedding band. Except you can take that off. And we who are the circumcision,
the Philippians weren't circumcised. But they're circumcised in Christ.
They have a circumcised heart. They're no longer dead, but alive
in the glorious fullness of Christ's joy. He says, look out for these
people. We are the circumcision and we
worship by the Spirit of God and glory in Christ Jesus, the
cause. And so we put no confidence in
the flesh. We don't look to ourselves for
our salvation and we do not look to ourselves for our joy. And I remind you in this, in
this third thing, it's almost redundant. Joy is found because
it's brought out by God. When we see it in our lives,
it's brought out by God. It's not just given by God because
it is God's joy. It's brought out by God. Paul
tells this very clearly in Romans 15. May the God of hope, listen
to this, may the God of hope fill you with all joy and all
peace in believing. Now, let's stop there for a second.
Because there's some practical understanding of how we respond
to our lives when we find no joy there. produces what? Thanksgiving. And Thanksgiving produces hope,
hope, reassurance, all of these different things, not necessarily
in that order, but all these things are bound up in together. Listen
to what Paul says. May the God of hope fill you
with all joy and peace in believing. What does that mean? That means we find ourselves
waning in joy. Where do we go? We go back to
Christ. We go back to the cross. We go
back to the gospel, which is good news, which we've been adopted
because of the goodness of God and his word, because Christ
has suffered for us. We now are alive in him. We have
fellowship with him. We've been redeemed. We've been
called. We've been chosen. We've been saved. We believe
that what God has done, he continues to do, for he who began a good
work is faithful to complete it in the day of righteousness,
in the day of completion, in the day of judgment. May the
God of hope fill you with all joy and fill you with all peace
and believing so that, here's the key, by the power of the
Holy Spirit, you may abound in hope. It seems too simple. How do we have hope? How do we
have joy? Well, I'm going to blow your
mind in a minute. First, we understand what this
text is teaching us, and that it's the fruit of the Spirit.
It's the Spirit of God giving joy, and God the Spirit, God
the Father, God the Son, this one God. Monotheism. One God. Three persons. Equally God. uniquely distinct. The God of hope, through His
Spirit, fills you with joy, all joy and all peace and faith, so that you may abound in hope. But my life is too bad. Things are too wrong. They're
not the way I want them to be. How do you want them to be? At
the end of our life, what do we want? When our kids are grown
and they're leaving the house, what do we want them to look
back and see? That they unwrapped something
under the tree at Christmas? That they got a car? That they
ate nice food? Do you remember what you wore
when you were seven? What you ate when you were ten? Even if you starved to death
and were naked, you remember who was there with you. Even
when you were unable to even come out of the mire and maybe
lived in the street, you knew who was there with you to walk
with you. That's what counts. Friends, you look at your own
life, look at the life of those who have already passed on before
you who were in Christ. Do you see their legacy? Is their
legacy a resolve to have joy in Christ alone? Or is their
legacy to continue to seek out the things of the world to try
to make everybody happy with temporal garbage that is best
to be left alone? How am I going to find joy? You
want me to tell you how you're going to find joy? You're only
going to find joy when you suffer trials and the joy that you have
in the things of the world is taken away. That's not the recipe we want
to hear, is it? How do we know it's not the rich
man? Let me just paraphrase to get
you the doctrine of what the scripture actually teaches. He
kneels down before Jesus in worship. He says, Oh, God of heaven on
earth. Would you get that? Oh, good
teacher. Jesus rebukes him. No one is
good, but God. And he says, oh, good teacher.
He confessed that Jesus was God. By worshiping him and kneeling
before him, what must I do to inherit eternal life? Remember
these words. Jesus, in a brief way, paraphrases
the holiness of God. You must be holy, follow the
laws. Which ones? You know, these, those. That
set of laws. He doesn't mean just those commandments. He means the Ten Commandments. He didn't want to get into the
others. And this young man says, I've
done all of this. I've kept them all from my youth. And Jesus
says, well, there's one thing that you lack. Go and take all
that you have and give it away to the poor. And you'll have
treasure in heaven to come. He commands him, come follow
me. And the man got up, left his
place of worship and walked away because he had much wealth. And
Jesus says these words, it is easier for a camel to go through
the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom
of heaven. And his apostles, his disciples asked this question,
then who can be saved? If that righteous man cannot
be saved, then who can be saved? He says, what is impossible with
men is possible with God. Friends, what is impossible for
you to do in your joy is possible with God. But you can't have
an inkling of joy in the things of this world, the people of
this earth. You cannot find your joy. I thought about this in
the middle of the night as well, about 4.30 this morning as I
woke up for some reason and ended up writing on the back of an
envelope four or five times as I was dreaming crazy stuff. I thought how horrible it must
be to lose a spouse. But even then. How full joy can be in the midst
of sorrow. And how I just for a small season
of my life and in my late teens, I did not want to get married,
have children because I considered the grief that comes through
loss. And what I didn't understand
is the joy that comes through loss. Because when everyone that we
know leaves this world in Christ, it's what they live for. Are we living to that end today? Paul says, I'm being poured out
like a drink offering. I've finished the race. What are we running for? What
are we hunting for? What are we seeking for? And
where do you say that we're not going to find joy except through
trial? 1 Peter 1. 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 rejoice, though now
for a little while, if necessary, you've been grieved by various
trials, so that..." You see that? If necessary, you've been grieved
by various trials. You rejoice in the fact that
you are now in Christ and you have a greater reward and a future
of glory bound up in the foundation of who God is and what He's done. You've been grieved by various
trials so that the outcome of grieving, so that the tested
genuineness of your faith. What's that mean? To test if
your faith is true. I tell young pastors all the
time, and old pastors, when we talk through the years, and they
ask the question sometimes, what's the centrality of your shepherding?
What's the focal point of how you measure the faithfulness
or the success of your shepherding? And I measure it in two ways.
I measure my success as a pastor by my faithfulness to hold to
the faithfulness of God through teaching, prayer, and ministry.
faithfulness to do that which God is faithful to do. Not my
faithfulness, but me being faithful to the faithfulness of God. There's
a whole other sermon, and I've written on it extensively if
you want to read it. It's online. But secondly, when we're measuring
the faithfulness or not necessarily the faithfulness, when we're
measuring the success of ministry and also looking at the sheep,
we see that there are problems in the planting of the gospel
in the hearts of those who have no joy. And so when we're doing life
together and joy is fleeting, we run in like 9-1-1. And we plant the gospel. We pray the gospel. We hope in
the gospel. We live in the gospel. We relish
the gospel. We have joy in the gospel. So that trials test the genuineness
of your faith. Because when trials test us,
our faith is revealed Not through the getting out of the trial,
but as our joy is in the trial. Now, let me say what that looks
like. Let me show you your faith is
more precious than gold that perishes, though is tested by
fire. Let me skip that parenthetical, verse 7, so that the tested genuineness
of your faith, which is extremely precious, may be found, what? The test may be found to result. Now, when you've lost joy, is
this how you feel? In praise and glory and honor
at the revelation of Jesus Christ. What's the revelation of Jesus
Christ? Well, two things. One, in that He's revealed to
us through Scripture. That's why I keep going back
to the Word of God. As Baptists and Protestants,
I don't understand churches. When I grew up in church my whole
life, and I never understood the foundations of our Protestant
Reformation. Sola Scriptura, I didn't even
know what it meant until 2004. Never heard it. And I've been
a pastor since 1997, 98. The Word of God alone. The Word
of God was a tool for me. It was a tool to get lost people
to see. But it wasn't written to lost people. It was written
to the church. So that our joy may be full. so that the gospel
may go out, so that we can be equipped to do the work of the
ministry, so that we can worship and praise to the glorious grace
of God, so that we can be a people that blows the minds of the world
as they look upon us and say, what commonality do you have?
What joy do you find? Everything's going to hell in
a handbasket, but you are worshiping together. Why? Because that is
the metaphor wisdom of God to take people who have no color
and culture and cash in unison, but he puts them together under
the banner of the blood of Jesus Christ. We are one body with
one heart, which is the gospel of God that pumps blood of life
through us that was shed on the cross of Calvary by Jesus. That
is the unity of the faith. That is the joy of God. That
is the purpose of salvation, to the praise of His glorious
mercy, love, grace, and favor toward us while we were dead
and sinners and lost and hopeless. We have an abundant hope. So
that when we look at this world and it fades away, there is nothing
but praise and glory and honor and thanksgiving at the revelation
of Jesus Christ. Secondly, it means That when
we look to the suffering, we look past it to the day where
he will call us to himself and we will be made like him and
all things will be put under his feet. That's what we look. And then Peter continues, he
says, though you have not seen him, you love him. And though
you do not see Him now, you believe in Him. See Romans 15? You believe in Him and you rejoice
with a joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining
the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. You
know what that means? That means that without joy, there's no
salvation. Without salvation, there's no hope. Without hope,
there's no life. The outcome of our faith. But
joy is not skipping down the road. Yay! Whee! The house is
on fire. I mean, that's just crazy. That's
lunacy. I mean, that's a messed up thing.
You ever met these groups of Christians and you know they're
having problems? You go up to them and you go,
oh man, I'm blessed. If I was so good, I'd be beside myself.
There'd be two of me. You know? And you're thinking, that's not
true. It's not true. Joy is not, I
got a good parking place at Walmart, or I got a check in the mail
that I didn't know was coming, or God got me a new job, or God
got me this, or God got me that. God's not in the business of
getting us cool stuff so we can take our worship away from Him.
He can, but He's not going to do it for that. God's in the
business of being our joy no matter what comes our way. And
when the good comes, we praise Him with a joy that is pretty
much expressible, isn't it? And when the bad comes, we praise
Him with a joy that is inexpressible. In other words, you probably
couldn't see it. We don't know how to express it. How do you
have joy? I don't know. I don't know. It's OK to say,
I don't know, but I'm OK. I'm OK because there is a joy
in me that can't. I'm not going to sing a song
about rainbows and puppies right now, but by God, I know that
I have a greater reward than this. And it's OK. And God will
give me an expressible joy in a minute. Read the martyrs' church. I'll tell you, if you're not
reading dead men's words, you are missing out. There's no poets anymore. There's
no theologians anymore, hardly. I mean, people who live the Word
of God to such a degree that they die like the apostles. 2
Corinthians chapter 4. We don't lose heart. We don't
lose heart. Though we're beaten, we're not
struck down. Though we're pressed, we're not
destroyed. Though all of these things have
happened, we don't lose hope. But the joy is inexpressible. And it's glorious. And it's baffling. It's baffling. It's baffling
to our neighbors. who see what's happening in our
lives, and they look and they go, they're so strong. I had someone tell me that last
week. You're so strong. In what? My neck's messed up, my head
hurts, my foot hurts, my hands hurt, my eyes are going blind,
going broke, going sideways, gray hair. And if the Lord tarries, who knows
what else will happen? You're so strong. I'm not strong,
God is strong. And if I have to be strong, then
God will not work. Because the scripture says that
in our weakness, he is our strength. Not in our strength. Some of
the most improper theologies ever been preached is if we just
come here, God will meet us halfway. God doesn't meet us halfway.
God meets us all the way and digs us out of the dirt of hell.
God digs us out of the grave. When our corpse has soured to
soiling, to decay, he says, Lazarus, come out. And this old grave-clothed Lazarus
in John chapter 11 waddles out, unable to speak or see and tied
up. And Jesus says some of the most prophetic words that cut
to the whole core of the joy of my soul. And he says, unbind
him and let him go. You know, that's what the gospel
does. It unbinds us and lets us go. Christ unbinds us. Unbinds us from what? Sin and
death and the flesh and depression and everything. And even when
we're in it, we have a joy. It unbinds us from hopelessness. And the world is going to persecute
us, and the world is going to hurt us, and the world is going
to press upon us, and our own flesh is going to press in us,
and we're going to be at war and at odds, and it's going to
be hard, and it's not going to be easy. And we'll look at our
neighbors who prosper and we'll say, oh, why? Why? They're not
even in church on Sunday. And look at their joy. They're
not having joy. They're living their best lives
now, their best life now, and it leads straight to hell. In closing, hear the words of
Christ who says, Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and
you will lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your
sorrow will turn into joy. And I love this metaphor. He
says when a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour
has come. But when she has delivered the
baby, she no longer remembers the anguish for joy that a human
being has been born into the world. So also you have sorrow
now, but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice
and no one will take your joy from you. In that day, you will
ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, Whatever
you ask of Me and of the Father in My name, He will give to you.
Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Asking you will see
that your joy may be full. I have said these things to you
in figures of speech. The hour is coming when I no
longer speak to you in figures of speech, what will tell you
plainly about the Father. The context here is Jesus is
telling His disciples He's about to leave. He's about to endure
the cross and then He's about to ascend to the heavens. He's
about to be with the Father. And so finally we see what that
tells us is that joy is eternal to the person of Jesus Christ. Joy is inexpressible now, but
there will be a day where it will be expressed forever. The joy of God is His. And beloved, if you have believed
by faith in Jesus Christ, you have that joy. It is a greater joy than the
joy of wealth. It is a greater joy than the
joy of the world. It is a greater joy than the
joy of family, or marriage, or health. It is a joy that surpasses
the fullness of all things, for it is measured and bound up in
the person of God, who is seen fully through Jesus Christ. Do
you believe that? Do you believe the gospel? Do you see the joy of Christ,
or are you still looking in this world? Let's pray. Father, we are grateful that
you are our joy and that there is no way that this world can
take it away and remove it from us, though it tries. And though
we are downtrodden, and though we are beaten, and though we
are internally not at peace, we remember the faith and the
faithfulness of your Son Jesus to save us, to bring us and to
prepare us into your presence. Help us to see our troubles as
preparation for an eternal joy. Help us to see these light, momentary
afflictions as preparation for an eternal weight of glory beyond
all comprehension and comparison. Help us to be people, to praise
your glorious grace. We love you, though we do not
see you, and we love you and are filled with a joy that is
inexpressible. That becomes the measure of the
outcome of our faith, which is the salvation of our soul. Lord,
plant this Word and this Gospel in the hearts of our children,
that when your Spirit moves in them, as they think about their
trials, they will see that their joy is only in Christ. And Lord,
to the youngest to the oldest of us, bring us closer to You
through Your Word, as we fellowship together, in Christ's name, Amen.