Joy to the World - Using Our Joy
Notes
Transcript
XP
XP
We have been talking with Howie Sullins about the Executive Pastor position and on Friday we offered him the position and he accepted. We are still working on a start date but it should be around the first of the year.
He will be commuting back and forth from the DFW area for a few months while his son finishes up high school. He will be here Sunday - Tuesday.
We have been praying over this and seeking the wisdom and will of God. I am personally very excited for this and for everyone to meet Howie and his family.
Budget
Budget
We had our super fun budget meeting this week. Boy howdy that is a good time. Long story short things are good but could be better.
Instead of adding lines to the budget for certain events we will try to raise money when that event is coming up. Things like our glow for Jesus or Trunk or Treat. Events that bring the community out.
The staff has been great about only spending when needed but we have a shortfall of about $60k. If you would like to give a year end gift to help with that we would love that. You can do that in person, online, or in the app.
I have not had time to help with getting a staff wish list together but there are things each department needs. We also would like to get a new sign, wrap the church van, get Howie the tools he will need and so on.
kids does have an Amazon wishlist.
Using Our Joy
Using Our Joy
But as for me, I will sing about your power. Each morning I will sing with joy about your unfailing love. For you have been my refuge, a place of safety when I am in distress.
Last Sunday we looked at how to define joy. We saw how joy is available to all people like common grace. It is something we all have access to and something God desires for us to have.
I defined joy as,
Joy is an emotion of the soul and spirit that gives contentment and rest.
Today I want us to focus more on the spiritual joy we receive as followers of Jesus and what we do with it.
The spiritual joy that comes to the disciple of Jesus is
A supernatural emotion of the soul and spirit, given and produced, that gives contentment and rest that is unshakable.
It is like regular joy on steroids.
We are talking about joy because of the coming on Christ. We are talking about joy because we have joy in the Lord.
Hope delayed makes the heart sick, but desire fulfilled is a tree of life.
For Thousands of years the Jewish people were waiting for the Messiah to come. We are talking about hope and rejoicing in hope because He has come!
No one can steal your joy.
No one can steal your joy.
Because it is an emotion of the soul it is kept there. I have heard like you probably have that we should not let someone steal our joy.
This is not something someone can take from you. Jesus says.
So you also have sorrow now. But I will see you again. Your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy from you.
Because the tomb was and is empty we have joy.
No one can steal our joy. Someone can take your money, the bank can take our house or your farm, someone can steal your car, but no one can steal your joy.
That being said we can give it put it away and not access it.
Some people have depleted joy stores and they want to see others have depleted joy stores. They have rejoiced in the wrong things, or for whatever reasons they lack joy.
Some people for some reason have little joy and find a weird pleasure in seeing others give up their joy. This is why some people tear things down.
We have seen people like this. They have so little joy they feel the need to attack other people’s joy. TikTok and Instagram are filled with videos of these people.
They can only seem to find enjoyment in tearing down. Maybe they were hurt, maybe they have been disappointed, maybe they had a dream that never came to be, whatever the case they do not have it so they attack it.
I have pity for these people. It makes me sad.
We have to be careful because we can after a while become like them. We can let them start to affect the way we think and act.
We cannot let people like that diminish our joy. We cannot let them make us feel like the joy we have is bad. Instead we attempt to infect them with our joy.
We can and should love people like this but the Bible says,
Reject a divisive person after a first and second warning.
If someone keeps coming to you and trying to dampen your flame you need to avoid that person or that thing. If all you watch is things that cause you frustration, aggravation or anger then reject it and avoid it.
If not we can start reassign our joy. We had joy and we start to deny it.
I never really liked that anyway.
It’s all going to fall apart anyway.
Nothing ever works out for me anyway.
I was never really into that anyway.
Jesus was just a fad anyway.
God doesn’t love me anyway.
This is what happens when we allow joyless people or things to infect our joy instead of infecting them.
We have to make a stand. We have to hold on to it. We have to come back to it and rest in the joy we had.
Restore the joy of your salvation to me, and sustain me by giving me a willing spirit.
If you have Jesus you have to go back to your salvation all the time. This is because while your salvation is a historical fact the outworking, the implications of that are still being produced. He saved you and He is saving you. We have to go back to that all the time.
Therefore, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, so now, not only in my presence but even more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.
When people, the enemy, our even yourself try and diminish your joy, stop you from remembering, or tell you to not use it, we have to return to it. We say, no I am in Christ. We will talk more about this next year, but this is part of what baptism is.
What it comes down to is this;
We can infect with joy or be infected with joylessness.
I want to add that joy and mental health whether it is anxiety, depression, OCD, or anything else are not mutually exclusive. We can have both on this side of eternity. We live in a broken world. God can heal and restore but if He doesn’t then we can still have joy and struggle. That is part of what the joy of the Lord is. It is His rest and contentment in hardship, difficulty, or pain.
You can be bipolar and on medication and still have joy.
It is an unrealistic concept of spirituality to think that joy and heaviness cannot go together. Indeed, it is unbiblical.
Charles C. Ryrie
Jesus joy is true joy because it can exist in the midst of pain. It can and does survive in our struggle.
Jesus joy is just as incarnate as Jesus Himself.
The joy of the Lord is our strength
The joy of the Lord is our strength
Because of this, the Joy of the Lord is our strength.
Then he said to them, “Go and eat what is rich, drink what is sweet, and send portions to those who have nothing prepared, since today is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, because the joy of the Lord is your strength.”
What does it mean for the Joy of the Lord to be our strength?
The joy of the Lord is our strength because He is the guarantor of it.
When I was younger I could not get a car loan. I did not have the credit myself so I could not buy the car I needed. I asked the bank and they said no, you cannot sustain this payment. I needed someone to co-sign. I needed someone to say they would share the burden with me.
We sometimes think of it like God is co-signing on my joy with me. That is not the case. He is not co-signing with you, He is not saying you take a little responsibility and I will be there to catch you. He is the guarantor. He is the only one who is sustaining it. He is the one making the payment, we just drive the vehicle of joy.
The joy of the Lord is our strength because He is the guarantor of it.
It is just like salvation, He sustains it. He holds it. He makes sure it is good.
So when times are tough or hard or anything else we can go back to Him and be reminded that we have His Joy as our strength. It is based and finds it source in God.
If we back up in Nehemiah 8 we see that before Nehemiah said the Joy of the Lord is your strength the people had the Law or the Words of God read to them.
They read out of the book of the law of God, translating and giving the meaning so that the people could understand what was read.
If we do not read or know the words of God how can we expect to have His joy? We have to pick up the book and read it for ourselves. When we know who God is, we know who we are. We see Him clearly and then we see ourselves clearly.
If we do not pray, how can we expect to have His joy?
If we do not worship how can we learn to rejoice in all situations?
If we are not in some way seeking Him and pressing into Him, how can we have His joy?
We become what we behold.
Last week I mentioned that joy is available to all people but like I said this week we are looking at the joy the Lord gives and this is a little different.
Because it comes from Him, because it is His, because He sustains it to receive it we have to submit to Him. We have to have Jesus to have His joy.
This means taking His ways and making them our ways.
There is a way that seems right to a person, but its end is the way to death.
If we want His joy which is so much more than just happiness or just the general joy we all have access to then we need to understand Him and His ways.
God the Holy Spirit is producing it in you but He often does it in a way that seems counter productive.
Give and it will be given to you.
What does a person benefit if you gain the world but lose your soul.
Anyone who wants to save his life will lose it but whoever loses their life for me (Jesus) will find it.
The entire sermon on the mount is about how Jesus’ Kingdom is upside down.
This is what the Bible says. To have the Joy of the Lord as your strength means we have to do things His way.
Sometimes, often times, it feels like foolishness. It feels backwards and that is because it is.
In the Kingdom of God we get by giving. But we only know this and know what He wants us to do by reading His Word and spending time with Him.
I cannot tell you how many times I have sat with people who are struggling in some area only to see that the solution was the problem.
They are fearful around finances. So they start to give or better loosen the tight grip they hold on money.
They are worried about time so they start to invest their time into others.
They are feeling unforgiven so they start to forgive others.
They worried so they start rejoicing in the midst of the problem.
This is how the joy of the Lord is our strength. We do things His way.
Shouts of Joy
Shouts of Joy
Finally we need to let the Joy Out.
Joy, biblically speaking, is supposed to be let out. This is like all other spiritual gifts and spiritual fruit. They are meant to be let out.
So often the reason our joy is weak is because our mouth is weak.
What is in you is what comes out.
A good person produces good out of the good stored up in his heart. An evil person produces evil out of the evil stored up in his heart, for his mouth speaks from the overflow of the heart.
If you have joy from the Lord in you, then you are supposed to let it out.
So many of the references to joy in the OT are associated with shouting. With some action of the mouth.
The word in Hebrew is rawnan and it means to be overcome, let out a ringing, to cause to shout. When we have God’s joy we are overcome and the only thing we can do is open our mouths and let the joy out.
Spiritual joy is an emotion but it is also like a muscle and we need to flex.
The world will know we have the joy of the Lord when we start flexing.
When hard times come and we rely on the joy of the Lord to be our strength is not just the internal contentment and rest it now moves to the mouth and we speak it.
Death and life are in the power of the tongue, and those who love it will eat its fruit.
BAND
We sing
I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart
Where?
Down in my heart!
Where?
Down in my heart!
I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart
Down in my heart to stay
It is down in our hearts to stay but it also needs to be on our lips.
Then the trees of the forest will shout for joy before the Lord, for he is coming to judge the earth.
Nature shouts for joy.
while the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
The angles shout for joy.
Let us shout for joy at your victory and lift the banner in the name of our God. May the Lord fulfill all your requests.
We should shout for joy!
If there is joy from the Lord in you, then you need to let it out somehow.
We do not just say something about joy for other people we need to hear it ourselves.
“Most children start talking to themselves around 2 or 3. After age 5, self-talk usually becomes more internal but never completely disappears.” - https://www.verywellhealth.com/is-talking-to-yourself-normal-5272241
We start talking to ourselves as soon as we learn to talk and we generally never stop. So how often are we telling ourselves about the joy of the Lord.
Why, my soul, are you so dejected? Why are you in such turmoil? Put your hope in God, for I will still praise him, my Savior and my God.
We have to speak the joy we have if we want it to have an affect. We need to speak it to ourselves if nothing else.
But the angel said to them, “Don’t be afraid, for look, I proclaim to you good news of great joy that will be for all the people:
Today in the city of David a Savior was born for you, who is the Messiah, the Lord.
This will be the sign for you: You will find a baby wrapped tightly in cloth and lying in a manger.”
The angle proclaimed to the shepherds good news of great joy. I proclaim to the same thing.
Do you proclaim it to others?
Do you proclaim it to yourself?
Do you know this joy yourself? Have you received the greatest gift ever? Let this Christmas season be the time you accept Christ as Lord and Savior.
