Sermon Tone Analysis

Help Phillip out with rent tomorrow

Announcements- Small groups- Rent for Phillip- Worship team

INTRODUCTION

Good morning church I pray that everyone had a wonderful Christmas celebrating the Gift that God gave us.

This morning we are going to be taking a look at the year to come.

But I am not Vision casting for the Year.

I want to speak on something that is deeper than vision.

In fact the topic that I want to speak to you about this morning is a vital precursor to vision, and without this element in your life it doesn’t matter how much vision you have if you lack this element in your life ill not have the strength to accomplish or obtain the vision.

What am I speaking of?

The topic this morning is joy!

Why do I say that without joy you will not fulfill your vision.

Because Joy is the believers strength.

The nature of the Fruit should bear the nature of the tree.

To be fruitful means that we asre having more of his character, we are bearing the iamge of the tree that we are apart of.

Nehemiah said

for the joy of the LORD is your strength

In fact when you look at the early church it was a church that was being persecuted, believers were being imprisoned, others were being killed, but the had a contagious joy about them.

When the Lord led me to the passage, I almost did not preach from this topic, because if I would be honest with you I have not had this type of joy in a while.

over the last few years we have really weathered some storms.

My heart has been wrenched more than I care to admit and I have wrestled with God more than I could have remembered.

But the Lord brought this key piece to my understanding, that my joy is not contingent on my circumstances, it is not contingent on other peoples expectations of me.

The joy that is available on the days when everything is going good or when everything is going wrong.

It is not contingent on the storms of life, rather they be normal storms that come from life, or the fierce demonic storms when the devil is working overtime to destroy you.

Really all your joy depends on is your proximity to Jesus, and because it is based in Him we know that it is always available.

You can have joy when the kids are sick, the bills are due and there is not enough money to go around.

You can have joy working a crappy job, and you can lack joy working at an awesome job.

You can have joy when your marriage is on the rocks, or you can lack joy when it is smooth sailing.

YOU HAVE A CHOICE THIS MORNING YOU CAN HAVE JOY OR YOU CAN HAVE MISERY.

jOHN 15:1-11

THE SOURCE OF THIS JOY

Now understand this, Jesus is speaking about joy not in the context of drawing large church attendance, not only the heals of being anointed King, but he is speaking about joy heading to a cross.

But jesus wanted to tell them on how to have more of Him..

There is more!!

Not only do you probably wantmore, but today I want to tell you how to get more.

How to get more of Christ

Think about this for a second, did you know that when Jesus was being beatenby the Roman Scourge, while he was carrying his cross, while they nailed him to the cross and crucified him to die a slow torturous death, he had joy.

He had his eyes focused on the bigger picture.

And that was he despied its shame, because He had his eyes focused on the prize.

So if the Lord can have joy bearing a cross, you and I can have joy in the midst of our circustances, the key is to remember the bigger picture.,

But what is the source of this joy.

Is it a feeling?

Lord I hope not, because I lack that feeling.

I am by nature a half empty guy.

The source of our joy in not a feeling, it is a person.

Look again at verse 1 of ch 15

John 15

and then at

This joy is not just a silly smile.

It is not happiness that comes from everything going right.

It comes from a person.

It is a supernatural joy, one that the Lord said is his joy, and his joy will be in you.

Nehemiah said the joy of the Lord is your strength.

It is a supernatural inner gladness that the Lord supplies even in the midst of the worst storms.

Now notice in verse 1 Jesus said I am the True Vine.

Now to understand this imagery correctly you need to understand the image of the grapevine throughout of scripture.

In the Old Testament there were times when God described the his chosen people the Jewish nation as his choice vineyard.

And the point, Everybody say whats the point?

The point was that in all of pagan, lost, worshipping false Gods and idols sea of humanity, God chose a particular people: the Jews to reveal himself, his purposes and His ways.

And the Jews were to be a light to the nations, a bright light in humanity’s hopeless darkness.

While the world wallared about in spiritual filth, much like an uncultivated piece of land that is overran with weeds, briars and Bullnettles, God’s people were cultivated like a well ran vineyard.

Planeted with choice seed, God himself planted and cultivated, took care of them.

But time after time they failed to live up to the Covenant.

In Isaiah 5

They failed to bear fruit, the fruits of God.

The world was supposed to see the power, the majesty, the Love of God in the way that His people flourished.

But they failed.

So Jesus is now applying this parable, this imagery to himself.

Where Israel failed, He would succed, and they would be removed and now the new covenant people, God’s vineyard is the church.

And now the source of life is now found in creeds and laws it is found in a person.

Jesus is the True Vine… That is where the source of our Joy comes from.

The joy of the Lord is our strength.

So why is it that so many Christians lack joy.... Well because like the Old Country song goes, looking for love in all the wrong places.

Ladies have you ever lost your keys?

Only to find out that they were in your purse the whole time?

You search all over the house, pulled the couch cushions out, looked in every crevasse, you dumped out the dirty laundry not once but twice and maybe even a third time.

Now why did you not find your keys in those places?

Because that is not where you left them.

As Christians we can do the same thing.

We can start looking for joy in all the wrong places.

We can look for them in our family and kids, but what happens if they are taken?

We can look for joy in our vacations, but what if you can’t afford one.

You can look for it in your job, you can look for it in doing ministry.

But joy, this type of joy is not found in any

What you and I need is to hard a burning, simple pure love for the Lord Jesus Christ.

You say well I just cannot do this?

This sounds hard.

Staying connected to Jesus.

Following Him day by day.

Well we will get to your responcibility in just a second.

But lets look at the help.

Yukon.

Ha, they were out, and they, they found an incredible load of gold.

And they came back into town to get supplies and to get the materials that they would need to go out and claim the gold, to stake a claim, and to claim the gold.

And they covenanted it among themselves, “We will not tell anybody what we have found, because if we do, they’ll all follow us out there and we’ll have to share what we found.”

And so, they made a solemn pact.

They went into town and bought the supplies.

And on their way back a horde of people was following.

The reason was this: That what they’d seen showed all over their faces!

They could not hide the excitement that was there, even though they had determined not to tell it.

It had to show!