The Promise of Joy
Notes
Transcript
3 Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
4 and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you,
5 who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time.
6 In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials.
7 These have come so that the proven genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.
8 Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy,
How in the world could we even begin to talk about being joyful? Look at all the things happening.
Racism, killings, Covid, economic crisis, riots, and then to start this year with people storming the capitol. How in the world?...
Joy - a feeling of great pleasure and happiness
Bible def - expressing God's goodness and is more a state of being than an emotion; a result of choice.
Joy is a state of being, not a sense of feeling.
David returned from killing Goliath, he was met with Joy and dancing. The people that met him chose to have Joy. When the disciples return from casting out demons, they expressed joy that the evil spirits listened to them when they used Jesus’ name.
We can expect God’s joy to be different than any other joy, or feeling of happiness, or gladness. We get it mixed up with the joy of “stuff”.
Are we filled with God’s inexpressible and glorious joy?
11 When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner.
12 ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’
Don’t let circumstance dictate your joy!
Pay Day
10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.
11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.
Don’t depend on your own joy!
Only God’s joy
5 Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;
6 in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.
Take your instruction from God!
No one knows your path
So here is what I believe, I believe that Joy is a gift from God and we can either receive it, keep it, store it in our hearts and be happy. Nurture it, use it and make it stronger, and bless someone else with it.
Or, we may chose to not keep it, don’t store it and leave it out there on our sleeve for the world to beat it up, damage it, or even steal it from us.