So we're in a series titled The Fruit of the Spirit, and Eric
kicked us off about two weeks ago and his message was titled
Walk in the Spirit. And then Hillary took us last
week through the Fruit of the Spirit.
That was love. So let me just remind us out of
Scripture what these fruits are. So in Galatians 522 to 25 it
says, but the fruit of the Spirit is Lovejoy, peace,
forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and
self-control. Against such things there is no
law. Those who belong to Christ Jesus
have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.
Since we live by the Spirit, let us keep in step with the Spirit.
Let us not become conceited, provoking and envying each
other. So today we're going to be
focusing on one of those, namely joy.
And our main scripture, if you have your Bibles here, will be
out of Philippians. So Philippians 4 verse 4 to 7 is
what we will be reading. Philippians 4 verse 47 says
rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again, rejoice.
Let your gentleness be evident to all.
The Lord is near. Do not be anxious about
anything, but in every situation, by prayer and
petition, with Thanksgiving, present your requests to God.
And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding,
will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
Lord Jesus, thank you for your word.
Thank you that we can gather you this morning.
Thank you that we can come, expectant Lord, to to hear from
you. Lord, I thank you that you use
imperfect people. And I pray, Lord, that you would
use me this morning to preach your word faithfully.
I pray that through Holy Spirit, Lord, that our hearts would be
open, our ears would be open to hear.
Yeah, we Lord, we know that our flesh is against you.
So we pray, Lord, that that you would open our ears, you would
soften our hearts. And may we hear you this morning
in Jesus name, Amen. So maybe just a little bit of
context, Paul is writing to the church in Philippi and he is
imprisoned. So that's just a short, I think
relevant point. If you consider he's what he's
saying to these people, rejoice or other translations may say be
glad. And you might think like, well,
Paul is in prison and his message to these people is
rejoice, be glad. And I just think it, it shows
something of Paul's confidence. It shows something of Paul's
way. He actually puts his trust and
his faith that he can sit in prison and send a message out
and say be glad, rejoice. But what does it mean?
What does it mean when we say rejoice?
Or what does joy actually mean? Joy, as we may know, is not
something that I can put on a plate for you and something that
we can touch. It's not something tangible in
the physical sense. Joy is what we would refer to as
an emotional trait or emotional characteristic.
It's not something physical, for example.
Tried my best to come up with an example here, but a physical
trait might be breathing. It's something that I am
physically doing. When I'm breathing, you can see
that I'm breathing in and breathing out.
You can see my chest moving. If you're really close to me,
you can even feel me breathing, and you might even smell my
breath, and evidence of me breathing would be that I'm
still standing here and I'm alive.
But joy is not a physical thing like that, and it's not easy to
explain something like a emotional characteristic or
trait because none of us really know what the other person is
experiencing emotionally. We are all very good with
putting up appearances. We may physically portray a
positive appearance even though emotionally that's not how we
feel. You also may have heard that in
Christian circles people say that joy is not something that
the non believer can experience. Joy is only something that a
Christ follower can experience. People that don't know Jesus,
rather we say that they don't experience joy.
We say they experience happiness or pleasure.
And in one sense I agree that true, deep meaningful joy really
only comes with Christ. But in another sense, I do think
that there is a joy that is experienced by all people.
For example, I think that the believer and the non believer
alike experiences a sense of joy in their children, the birth of
their children, the dedication year, in the growing up of their
children. I think that people alike
experience joy in friendship and in relationships, in marriage
and in creation. And I do think that believers
mustn't think that we can't use the word happiness, that that's
like a dirty word for Christ. For no, we're too good for
happiness. We're too good for pleasure,
because the Bible speaks about happiness and the Bible speaks
about pleasures. So those are not inherently bad
things. For example, I might be happy
when my sports team wins. I might be be happy to to go for
a run. Well, I don't.
I'm not often happy when I go for a run, but some people may
be happy going for a run. My point is that sometimes we
make these emotions exclusive either way, and I just don't
think it's as simple as that. So what then is the difference
between joy that is experienced by anyone and joy that is a
fruit of the Spirit? Is there even a difference?
I would argue that there is a difference and that Christian
joy is very closely linked, if not inseparable from Christian
hope or the believers hope. Much of the below that I'm going
to go through now is informed by some of the writings of John
Piper. I say writings.
I think it was actually a sermon that I just read.
The message was titled the fruit of Hope Joy, and you can find
that if you would like to go and read it on the Desiring God
website. So let's start by saying what
joy is not Christian joy is not something that we can do.
And when I say that we can't do it is we can't will Christian
joy. It's not based on my willpower
or my decision. OK, now I'm going to experience
this joy and I'm going to decide to experience it now and then
I'm going to stop experiencing it.
Now remember I used the example of breathing, which may not be
the perfect example, but the point is if I choose to, at
least for a time. I can stop breathing and I can
decide to start breathing again. Yes, there may be a point where
I'm forced to start breathing, but I have a sense of control
over my breath. I cannot in the same way, decide
to start having this joy and then stop having this joy.
It is a spontaneous emotional reaction that comes from our
heart and many of us here may have experienced it.
I think for me, I've probably experienced it most singing a
song which I've sung 1000 times before and the words just seem
to have a new meaning one day and it just fills me with joy
seeing that truth which I've seen many times.
Secondly, and importantly, Christian joy is not based on
circumstances. Paul says to rejoice in the Lord
always. So before we go on, we know that
Paul says this while imprisoned, but he says rejoice in the Lord
always, which first tells us that the object of our joy is
not where we are or what we have.
The object of our joy is the Lord and always tells us that
there's no specific good or bad time to be rejoicing in the
Lord. This joy that Paul speaks of
transcends or goes beyond our circumstances.
This is where Christian joy differs from other joy.
The Bible teaches that that joy is present in spite of our
circumstances. In fact, in the worst of
circumstances the believer should rejoice.
Couple of scriptures that will not be on the screen, but this
just speak to this point. The first one is Romans 5.
Verse three to five says, not only that, but we rejoice in our
sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance and
endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and
hope does not put us to shame because God's love has been
poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been
given to us. James One.
Verse 2 to 4 says, Count it all Joy, my brothers, when you meet
trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your
faith produces steadfastness, and let steadfastness have its
full effect, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in
nothing and one. Peter 4, verse 13 says, But
rejoice in so far as you share Christ's sufferings, that you
may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.
Thirdly and finally, Christian joy is not natural, it is
spiritual. What makes something spiritual?
Spiritual it that is that it comes from the Spirit of God and
has the character of the Spirit of God.
So when we say that Christian joy is spiritual, not natural,
we mean that it is produced by the Spirit of God and it is the
kind of joy that God has and wants to see in US.
Romans 14 verse 17 says the Kingdom of God is righteousness
and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
The Kingdom of God is righteousness and peace and joy
in the Holy Spirit. So the next natural question
that arises from this then is how can Paul and others in the
Bible then command us to rejoice?
How can they tell us, be joyful, be glad, rejoice, if it is not
based on my circumstances, it is not something that I necessarily
have control over, and it is not natural.
It is spiritual meaning from God.
How can he ask me then to rejoice?
The answer is hope. We can see from Paul's other
writings that his joy is firmly rooted in hope.
The joy that wells up in him comes from his hope.
So let's consider Romans 5, verse two to five.
It's Paul again. He says, therefore, since we
have been justified through faith, we have peace with God
through the Lord Jesus Christ. Through Him we have obtained
access to His grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in our
hope of sharing the glory of God.
More than that, we rejoice in suffering, knowing that
suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces
character, and character produces hope.
And hope does not disappoint us because God's love has been
poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit which has been
given to us. So the Scripture in Romans
really spells it out for us. It says to rejoice in hope
because of the grace in which we stand.
What grace and what hope the grace lost.
My spot here refers to what Jesus has done for us, and I
never want to take it for granted that we know what he has
done for us. So what did he do for us?
Jesus? And this actually comes in in
the the scriptures before Jesus was delivered over to death for
our sins. Jesus died for our sins.
We may have heard it many, many times, and maybe we've heard it
in a general term where it says Jesus died for everyone since
no, Jesus died for my sin and Jesus died for your sin.
But he was also raised to life. He was also raised to life for
our justification so that we can stand before God righteous.
We stand in this grace by having faith, believing that God did in
fact do what he said he was going to do and what the Bible
said that Jesus did and what he accomplished.
We believe that we have faith that Jesus did die for our sins.
We have faith that He was raised from the dead and we believe
that that did achieve what He said it would achieve, which is
forgiveness of sins and a reconciliation between US and
God. Before this we were far from
God. The Bible even says we were not
only far from him, we were enemies.
We are his enemies. But because of what Jesus has
done, we can now be called children of God, Enemies to
children. The hope.
The hope refers to the hope of sharing in the glory or in the
glory of God because we have put our faith in Him, the hope that
we have because of what He has achieved.
Our hope is in God that He would return as He said He would.
That we who put our faith in Him will spend eternity with Him
where there will be no more tears, no more pain, no more
suffering. Put put whatever you want in
there. No more corruption, no more
lies. This hope is not the same kind
of hope that you would have when you say sheesh I hope my team
wins this weekend. That I would word as wishful
thinking rather than hope. This hope is based on faith in
God, a confidence in God, a confidence in His Word, in His
promises that He will do what He said He is going to do, and He
has done what we see in the Bible he said he has done.
Hebrews 11 verse one says this faith is confidence in what we
hope for and assurance about what we do not see.
And this is what the ancients were commended for.
Now before Hebrews 11, there's a a whole list of if you want to
go and read it of examples that Paul gives of people that lived
with this hope and lived with this faith and maybe just a word
on suffering. I think Paul, we, we saw in the
Scriptures that Paul often speaks about all the the other
writers as well about rejoicing in suffering.
But it's interesting to read in Romans that when Paul says that
we must rejoice in suffering, at the end of the day, what it
produces According to him is still hope.
So actually he's saying to rejoice in hope.
Matthew Henry wrote a commentary on Romans 15, says the
following. The joy and the peace of
believers arise chiefly from their hopes.
What is laid out upon them is but little compared with what is
laid up for them. Therefore, the more hope they
have, the more joy and peace they have.
So Christians should desire and labor after abundance of hope.
So true spiritual joy comes from hope.
Hope comes from God. What God has done for us, what
God has promised to do for us, it comes from God's love.
The scripture above speaks about about that.
God gave us a spirit through his love, and this love comes from
the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit is a gift.
And that gift is given to people who put their faith in Jesus,
who put their faith and their trust in Jesus and what he has
done and what he has accomplished, and who put their
faith and their trust in Jesus for what he will store,
accomplish, and what he will still do.
So considering what Jesus has done for us is a gift that the
Holy Spirit is a gift that the love of God is a gift which
produces in US hope in which we can rejoice.
It is clear that joy is not something that we can
manufacture. It's not something that we can
will out of our own. It is a result of God's gift to
us and his promises to us. Hope should be one of the most
defining characteristics of a Christ follower.
Our hope rests on what Jesus has done for us.
And I think of Paul in Corinthians and I might just
read the last bit of this. It's 1 Corinthians 15, verse 12
to 19, but he's speaking about the resurrection and he's saying
that if there is no resurrection, then Christ is
also not raised from the dead. And then from verse 17 it says,
and if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile.
You are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen
asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have
hope in Christ. We are of all people most to be
petite. So Paul saying like if, if, if
our hope in Jesus is only for this life.
Poor us, poor us. If, if our our hope in Jesus is
only for this life. Is there hope in Jesus for this
life? For sure, definitely there is.
But Paul saying, if it is only if, if Jesus has not been
raised, if there is no resurrection, then we are the
most to be pity. We believe Christ is raised from
the dead. So we have hope in Christ for
this life, but also for the next.
Our hope is in Christ and therefore we have reason to
rejoice. So how do we fight for joy?
If I can refer back to that quote from Matthew Henry, it
ended with this phrase that says Christian should desire and
labor. Labor meaning should work after
abundance of hope because he argues that the more hope we
have as Christ followers, the more peace and joy we will
experience. So we can fight for hope, which
essentially would be fighting for joy and fighting for peace.
So how do we do that? Number one, we must acknowledge
our very far shortcomings. We must acknowledge that we are
sinful people, and we will always be more inclined to
glorify ourselves than to glorify God.
But we come before God and we confess.
We confess our need, we confess our helplessness, we confess our
imperfection, and we confess our dependence on Him and on the
Holy Spirit. We pray that the Spirit of God
would pour His love into us, into our hearts so that out of
the love of God we may experience a abundance of joy
and peace. So we pray.
We pray for more of God, We pray for more of His Spirit.
We pray for more of God's love in our lives.
We set our eyes on the hope before us.
And if I had to say in my life and in many I believe believers
lives, this is probably the last thing on our minds.
What comes after eternity, Life with God?
Are we setting our minds on that?
Are we setting our minds on the things above?
Are we setting our minds on life with Jesus?
Eternity with Christ, where there's no need for a son
because he is the light of his people?
Is our minds and our hearts on eternity, Or like I often do,
we're just thinking about today. How can I get through this next
thing, this next deadline that I have to meet, this next thing
that I need to get? So let's set our eyes on the
hope before us. We get to look forward to
eternity with Christ. We get to look forward to
eternity without suffering, without pain, without tears,
without lies, without corruption.
Let's set our eyes on the hope before us, and let's familiarize
ourselves with the evidence in the Bible of God's love for us.
It's God's love that produces the joy in US.
It's what He has done for us. It's His promises is what He has
in store for us that produces the joy in US.
It's focusing on those things, it's meditating on those things,
it's reading those things, it's praying through those promises.
Never will I leave you, never will I forsake you.
And focusing on Christ's example, Hebrews 12 verse one to
three says, Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great
cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and
the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with
perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on
Jesus, the pioneer and perfector of our faith.
For the joy set before him, He endured the cross, scorning its
shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Consider Him who endured such opposition from sinners so that
you will not grow weary and lose heart.
So, because of His great love for us, Jesus endured the cross.
Because of the joy set before him, Jesus endured the cross.
And what was that joy? That joy seems to be sitting at
the right hand of God. It seems to be that making a way
for us to be reconciled to God was His joy.
We too should rejoice in the hope that because of what Jesus
has done, we do not have to spend eternity apart from him.
So in conclusion, Christian joy rests on Christian hope.
And we say that Christian hope is not wishful thinking.
It's not holding thumbs hoping for the best.
It is faith. It's assurance of those things
that we do not see. And this all comes from God's
love, God's promises, and the completed work of Jesus.
Although we cannot manufacture this joy, we can prepare the
ground for this joy by humbling ourselves before God, praying
for more of His love and spirit in our lives, and keeping our
eyes fixed on Jesus, the author and perfector of our faith.
We can labor after this hope, as Matthew Henry put it.
So finally, I want us to read the scripture again, and I'm
just going to add in a couple things.
So if you can go back to Philippians 4 verse 47, it says
rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again, rejoice.
We are rejoicing in what He has done for us, in what He is doing
for us, and in what He will still do for us, the hope of
sharing in His glory and eternity.
And when we put our focus there, this allows us to let our
gentleness be evident to all. And we do that.
We are gentle to all. Because the Lord is near, His
coming is near, His presence is near.
And because the Lord is near, we do not need to be anxious about
anything. But in every situation, by
prayer and petition, with Thanksgiving, we should present
our request to God. And the peace of God, which
transcends all understanding, will guard our hearts and our
minds in Christ Jesus. So what I want you to do now is
I want you to pray. I know that while I'm standing
here, I have anxious heart, and I know that many people here
have anxious heart as well. I know that I want to take hold
of these scriptures to not worry and to not be anxious, but I
also know that it's a work of the Spirit.
All that I can do is come before God and ask him.
I always think of the the section where where Jesus asked
the man, do you believe? And he says, yes, I believe but
help my unbelief. So let's pray together.
Pray that God would fill us with His hope that would result in a
godly joy. Pray that God would take this
anxiety of us and replace it with this peace that he speaks
about. Yes, peace that that surpasses
all understanding. The Scripture says to bring our
request to God. It says be gentle to people and
bring your request to God. Let's do that now, you in your
own language. If you want to pray out loud, if
you want to pray quietly, let's do that now, together.
Lord Jesus, as we read and learn about joy, just pray, Lord, that
you would help us. We see that this joy is not
something that we can manufacture by our sure sheer
willpower. So we bring our request to you,
Lord. Lord, we we say that we want to
rejoice. We want to rejoice in what you
have done. We want to sing praises and
shouts of joy for what you have done for us, that you have died
for our sins, that you have taken my sin upon yourself, that
you have taken everyone here years sin upon yourself.
We want to rejoice, Lord, that you say that you will not leave
us nor forsake us, that you are walking here with us, that you
are near. Lord.
Lord, we want to rejoice in what you have in store for us, Lord,
that you will come back, that you will come and do what you
said you were going to do, that there will be a time where there
does not need to be suffering anymore or tears or hurt, all
lies and deception. We pray Lord that you would help
us, Lord, to keep our eyes fixed on you, to keep our eyes fixed
on what lay ahead. And we pray for more of your
peace. We pray this in Jesus name,
Amen.