Sermon Tone Analysis

Introduction

In 2019, I am calling for us at Iron City Baptist Church to launch an unapologetic, unwavering, relentless pursuit of joy.

That is, I am calling for us to reject the reflexes that we have to numb ourselves to reality with alcohol, drugs, television, relationships, and approval and instead pursue something far beyond being numb and deadened to what’s around us.

I’m calling for us to aggressively go after real, abiding joy.

For some of us, we have been conditioned in a particular way to hear that and then wonder if that is a selfish pursuit.

You might find yourself asking: Isn’t it selfish of me to pursue my having joy?

Am I not to pursue something more noble, more self-effacing, more costly than joy?

Should we not be focused on God’s pleasure rather than our own?

Should we not be focused on holiness rather than happiness?

But, what we began to see last week is that there is not a choice to be made between pleasing God and pursuing joy, prioritizing holiness and possessing happiness.

No! It’s a both/and.

The Christian life affords us both the pleasure of God and durable joy, Spirit-wrought holiness and authentic happiness.

In fact, even beyond simply being a both/and, it’s an interwoven, unbreakable relationship.

God takes pleasure in us when we find our pleasure in him.

God is filled with joy from us when find our full joy in him.

There is not real holiness without happiness because holiness is finding happiness in God.

And so, this morning, I want us to press into this realization deeper and unpack even more this unbreakable relationship between our pleasure and God’s pleasure.

God’s Word

Read

Joy is Virtuous

“These things I have spoken to you....that your joy may be full.”

Any question that we had about the virtue of a pursuit of joy is blown out of the water by what Jesus says in verse 11.

He says that he’s saying these things to his disciples SO THAT their ‘joy might be full.’

In fact, in , John records Jesus’ High Priestly prayer, and in that prayer Jesus reveals to his Father in heaven that his motive for praying for his disciples is ‘that they might have joy fulfilled in themselves.’

This made such an impact on John that when he wrote his first letter to the churches he began it by saying that his reason for writing that letter was ‘so that our joy may be complete’ and he closed his second letter to the churches by saying, ‘I hope to come to you and talk face to face so that our joy may be complete.’

So, we can dismiss outright any notion that it is un-virtuous or improper for us to pursue our joy.

Misaimed Joy

“By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit and so prove to be my disciples.”

The problem isn’t our pursuit of joy; rather, our problem is that we take the good and proper pursuit of joy and we misaim it.

We pursue the right ends but by the wrong means.

We pursue innately and instinctively our joy, but we pursue it by achieving and buying and winning.

We aim to find joy by what others think of us and how high we’re able to raise our standing in the world and on how much convenience and leisure we can obtain.

And, when that doesn’t work we end the pursuit of joy and settle for simply numbing ourselves.

“If I can’t feel happy, I’ll settle for feeling nothing at all.”

And so, we find ourselves numbing our brains with hours of television and web-surfing, and numbing our bodies with drugs and alcohol, and numbing our rejection with pornography and adultery.

But, the issue is not our pursuit of joy.

That’s the right ends.

The issue is that we aren’t taking our pursuit of joy seriously enough, and we’ve attempted to find shortcuts found in the world that have short-circuited our whole system.

The Ends of Abiding

That’s what’s at issue in our passage.

We see that there is one mean to two different ends/gains.

Jesus tells us there are two ends, two gains at which all that he’s saying is aimed.

We see the first in verse 8 when he says, “By this my Father is glorified.”

That is, abiding in Christ and bearing the fruit of Christ and proving yourself as a disciple of Christ brings pleasure and glory to God the Father.

We see the second in verse 11 when he says, “These things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.”

That is, abiding in Christ and bearing the fruit of Christ and keeping the commandments of Christ is aimed not only at the Father’s pleasure and joy but also at your own pleasure and joy.

And here, Jesus is telling us how that takes place when we stop looking for shortcuts and stop short-circuiting our own joy.

He’s telling us how we can live for both the Father’s pleasure and our own.

The True Vine

“I am the true vine” And to that end, Jesus says, “I am the true vine.”

This is the final of seven ‘I am’ statements in the gospel of John, and in each of those statements, Jesus is harkening us back to when God came to Moses, and said his name was: “I Am Who I Am.” So, here we are not merely reading a description of who Jesus is, but even more than that, we are reading a declaration by Jesus of his identity as God.

As common as vineyards were in Jesus’ day, this is a metaphor of mere chance.

In , God calls Israel his vineyard planted in good soil that had failed to produce good fruit, and in the Psalmist prays for God to restore the vine He had cut down by the Son of Man.

So, in the Old Covenant, the vine of God is Israel who was always producing bad fruit, ‘wild grapes’ as they’re called in Isaiah.

But, here is Jesus, and He is the fulfillment of Israel.

He is the new and greater Israel, and the ‘true’ Vine who is obedient where Israel was disobedient, faithful where Israel was unfaithful, and spreading the glory of God to all nations where Israel was adopting the false gods of the others nations herself.

Jesus is the true Vine, and He will produce the fruit that Israel never could, and He will fulfill Israel’s role in the Kingdom of God and replace them as a righteous Vine.

“I am the vine; you are the branches.”

In verse 5, Jesus clarifies our role as the church.

He tells us that He is the vine, and we are the branches of that vine.

That is, everyone who comes to Christ is grafted onto him as the Vine so that they might produce his fruit.

After all, that’s the relationship between a vine and its branches, isn’t it?

A vine isn’t ornamental or decorative.

A vine is utilitarian.

It exists for the purpose of producing fruit.

And so, the vine gives all of the nutrients and all of the strength it has to its branches so that they are able to produce fruit.

The vine assigns purpose to the branches by demanding from them fruit, but the vine also provides all of the substance, all of the lifeblood that is needed so that the branches can produce fruit.

The branches are merely the expression of the vine.

And, this is who the church is in relation to Christ!

Christ attaches us to himself.

Christ gives us his lifeblood, his strength, his nourishment.

Christ gives us purpose by calling for fruit, but Christ supplies all of the strength and all of grace and all of the power so that his fruit can be produced through us.

Christ gives us our purpose and Christ gives us our ability to fulfill that purpose.

This is the difference in the Old Covenant and the New Covenant.

This is the difference between the vine of Israel that was and that Vine of Christ that is!

In the Old Covenant, Israel was the vine responsible for its own fruit, its own righteousness, its own obedience to the Law.

And, they were not able.

But, in the New Covenant, Christ is the vine, and we are the branches.

We aren’t responsible for creating fruit by our strength and our ability and our capacity; rather, we produce the fruit of the Vine by the power of the Vine and the strength of the Vine and the capacity of the Vine.

Abiding in the Vine

“Abide in me, and I in you…for apart from me you can do nothing.”

And so, 10 times Jesus says that we who are the branches must ‘abide’ or remain or stay or dwell in him.

And, we are to remain in him because our lives are designed with a purpose in mind.

Our lives are designed for the purpose of bearing the fruit of Christ to the glory of God.

That is, we are designed to make manifest in us the love of God and peace of God and kindness of God and joy of God and goodness of God so that the world might be drawn to God and glorify God.

And, we are powerless to achieve any of those things on our own.

Separated and isolated from Christ, we whither and die.

We are powerless and ineffective as a branch that has been cut away from its vine.

We are worth nothing more than firewood.

“Apart from (him) we can do nothing.”

Losing Our Purpose

APPLICATION: And so, If we aim at joy and peace and kindness and goodness apart from Christ, and we are working against the very purpose for which we were made.

We try to muster up the strength and the nutrients that we need to have what we most want.

We try to muster up joy.

We try to muster up goodness.

We try to muster up kindness and peace.

And, we’re left dry because we’re a branch detached from its vine, and apart from our vine we can do nothing.

And, we’re left in misery and worry and purposelessness and ultimately despair because we can be who we are designed to be.

We are left without our purpose and without any ability to fulfill it.

So, we have the search for joy, but not ability to carry it out.