Constant Joy

I'd like to read some selected verses from John chapter 15, 16, and 17, and if you want to find them, read through 15, 16, and 17. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will be turned into joy. When a woman is in travail, she has sorrow, because her hour has come.

But when she is delivered of the child, she no longer remembers the anguish for joy that a child is born into the world. So you now, therefore, have sorrow. But I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you.

Now I am coming to thee, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves, along the lines of what Milton was teaching this morning in Sunday school to start out. Our Lord not only promises that we will have tribulation, and that we will be persecuted, and that the world will hate us. He also promises unspeakable joy, and just as surely as we cannot survive as God's sons and daughters without love, he that loveth not his brother abideth in death.

And just as surely as we cannot survive without God's peace dwelling in our hearts, neither can we survive without God's joy. Without this joy dwelling in us, the gospel of Jesus Christ is nothing other than pie in the sky, by and by, and that's what it is for a lot of people. You know, it's wishing, it's guessing, but never knowing.

Joy, see, is God's reality dwelling in us, God's Spirit living in us, Jesus walking with us. When we get to the place where we really have that joy in us, see, then we're satisfied, and we're fulfilled, and we don't feel the need to be sniffing at every sidewalk when we're not all the time taking down this sidetrack and that sidetrack, because we're satisfied in here so we don't have to be snooping around, seeing if there's something better on another track. When we have this joy in us, God's joy, you know, keeps us going across those desert journeys that we have to make, and preserves us in the midst of our temptations, and carries us through our tribulations, and keeps our minds alert and clear, even when the flames lick our bodies.

But I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you. Now surely this is what marked the lives of our brothers and sisters in apostolic days. They went through things you and I haven't even dreamed of yet.

Their families were torn apart, their bodies were tortured, many of them died violent deaths. But all you have to do is go through the pages of the New Testament, and you can still feel the warmth of the joy these people had through all that trouble. And this is what kept them going.

In this you rejoice, though now for a little while you have to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold, which though perishable is tested by fire, may redound to praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ. Without having seen him, you love him, and though you do not now see him, you believe in him and rejoice with unutterable and exalted joy. Now Peter was going through it when he wrote those words, and the people to whom he wrote those words were going through it.

See but they had this divine thing dwelling in them that kept them going. Now the problem with many of us is that we pretend to have this joy when we really don't. You know, we hear a teaching on it, or we read something about it in scriptures, or we get ahold of a new book about rejoicing, you know, and praising your way out of this trouble and that trouble, and we think that's great, amen, and then we pretend we have it.

See but the restlessness of our lives and the, you know, the obvious emptiness of our lives and the unsettledness of the way we're going, the instability of the way we're living, indicate to anybody with a pair of eyes that we really don't have that joy in us. And I can remember one time I was at a meeting on a certain university campus and there was a group of believers gathered in a student union or whatever it was, in a room overlooking the campus, and here was this group of believers, or professing believers, huddled together like little mice, all scared really, you know, and now we're praying because we don't have to face all that, and one of the brothers is praying, dear Lord, enable us to share our joy with all those people out on the campus who don't know you. You know, and he almost felt like crying, because, you know, anybody out there on the campus would have said immediately, if he had tried to share his so-called joy, he would have said, look, you know, you call that joy? That timid, frightened, ingrown, self-righteous attitude and spirit you have, joy? Keep it, friend.

This man was deceiving himself, and he was pretending to have something that he really didn't have. In fact, in that room was not only a lack of joy, but there was a presence that would have destroyed and killed the enthusiasm of the simplest child. The most happy child would have come into that room and immediately felt dampened.

And this is exactly what happens with us. You know, we so often ask God to enable us to share a joy we don't really have. How in the world can we share joy with the city of Detroit and all its troubles that we don't have ourselves? Better that we should begin by admitting that we don't have it.

Oh, Lord, you promised joy, but it keeps getting away from us. We taste it and then it evaporates. Every once in a while in our worship, we touch it and then it's gone.

Did you only make this promise to the twelve, I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice and no one will take your joy from you? Help us to get hold of it, Lord. Show us the way to this. Notice how simple the promise really is.

I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice. It doesn't say you're going to have gifts and your hearts will rejoice. You're going to see visions and your hearts will rejoice.

You're going to have goose pimples and your hearts will rejoice. I will see you and I will be your joy. My presence with you will be all that you need.

And when we get to that place where we really know Jesus, have met him, then he becomes our joy. He himself satisfies. Walking with him, just knowing him, that is our joy.

This is why the kingdom of God is called righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit, because the Holy Spirit conveys to us the presence of Jesus. And that's all we need. The day is coming when everything else that we have is going to be taken from us.

Our loved ones, even our bodies are going to be stripped away. Jesus will be loved and our joy will be undiminished because he is with us. But, for that joy to well up in our hearts and spill out over our lives and in fact color and influence and bless everything we do, there is one thing that we have to do.

We have to rejoice in the Lord. You know, when you got married to the girl, you were joyful. See, but then the years passed and the joy faded.

And you say it's her fault. You say she changed. Maybe.

Much more likely, you simply stopped rejoicing in her. You quit delighting in her. She didn't kill your joy.

You did. And how much more is this true of our relationship with Jesus? You know, he is our joy, just knowing him. See, but we have to delight in him.

We have to rejoice in him. We have to open our hearts and praise him and thank him. Rejoice in the Lord always.

And again I say, says Paul, rejoice. Rejoice in him so much that it influences your relationship with all people. So much that it lifts your prayers, delivers you from anxiety, fills you with hope.

When we get to the place where we in fact are rejoicing in the Lord always, what a difference this makes in the way we live, in the way we treat each other, in the way we worship, the way we sing, play the guitar, play the organ, or play the piano, whatever we're doing. The way we think when we go through that liturgy. What a difference it makes when we're in our hearts truly rejoicing in the Lord.

And what a difference it makes in our home life. And what a difference it makes in the quality of our work. When somebody says, well, that's the problem.

You know, I try to rejoice in the Lord, but I just don't seem to be able to do it. It seems bony. I can't make myself rejoice in the Lord.

Well, there are some things that get in the way. For instance, consider this. We can't rejoice in the Lord when we're all taken up with ourselves.

When I'm going to rejoice in the Lord, my mind and my attitude, my heart, are going to be off me and on Jesus. Now, here's a brother who it would seem is very, very serious about the things of God. But in truth, he's very, very serious about himself.

He knows scriptures. He's all the time quoting scriptures. Seems to have a profound grasp of the truth.

But all the while, he's standing outside of himself, watching himself do those good deeds. And terribly upset when he blows it. Not because he blew it, but because he looks stupid.

Watching his ministry unfold, watching himself pray, and then he wonders why he can't rejoice in the Lord. Who of us can rejoice in the Lord when we're looking at ourselves? Looking at ourselves, what can we be but sick? What a relief it is to come down off our pedestal and get the spotlight off us and look to Him. Look unto Him and be saved, all the ends of the earth.

We can't rejoice in the Lord when we're critical. Oh, we can go through the motions. We can say, praise the Lord.

But a critical spirit and a spirit of joy cannot inhabit the same person at the same time. When I'm rejoicing, my heart is fixed on the thing I'm rejoicing in. And when I'm critical, my mind is fixed on the thing I'm critical of.

And when I've given myself over to a spirit of criticism, when I've given myself over to such a spirit that does nothing but find fault with everything except its own admirers, how in the world can I rejoice in the Lord? It's not worth it. Get rid of it. Get rid of that spirit of criticism.

And just start rejoicing in the Lord, and you'll find that you'll not only have joy, but you'll have all the wisdom you need to beware of false prophets and to discover a spirit of hypocrisy and to be able to discern any kind of demon that comes down the pike dressed up like an angel. No problem. We can't rejoice in the Lord when our minds are cluttered.

When the money changers get into the temple, worship in the temple stops. Maybe the motions of worship continue, but the worship is gone. And when the cares and the riches and the pleasures of this life get into the temple of our hearts, we can no longer see the glory of God.

When we're so taken up with the details of living that we now have lost sight of the purpose of our lives, we can't possibly be rejoicing in God. We can't. Even our hopes shrivel down to nothing but covetousness.

Get this and get that. What many of us need to do is see what we've done to ourselves by cluttering our minds with all these things. People say, well, I'm furnishing my house.

You're not furnishing your house. You're cluttering it. You know, you furnished it a long time ago when you just had a few chairs in the living room.

Now you can't even walk through the living room. It's all full of new furniture. Piled high up to the ceiling and you can't even get through it.

That's what our lives look like. First thing we have to do is start getting rid of some of the clutter. Start almost anywhere.

Just push it aside until you have at least a clearing where you can begin to worship and rejoice in God. And when you do this, then your mind will begin to get clearer and you'll know what furniture to get rid of and get your room down to size. A few chairs that you can sit around.

We can't rejoice in the Lord when we're holding back part of the offering. Now this isn't a commercial. Ananias and Sapphira were not told that they had to go and sell that land and give the proceeds to the apostles.

Nor were they told that they had to lay all the money they made from the land at the feet of the apostles. See, but when they pretended they were giving it all, when in fact they were holding back some of it for themselves, they put themselves under judgment. And when you and I pretend before each other that we're sold out to the Lord, when in fact we're not, when we're busy trying to create the impression before the eyes of certain brothers and sisters that we're radically and absolutely surrendered to Jesus when our home life or our thought life or the way we do our jobs five days a week are anything but surrendered to the Lord, who are we deceiving? How can we possibly rejoice in the Lord? And what a relief it is when we begin, once again, to bring our living in line with our professing and when we let go of those things we've been hanging on to for ourselves, that reserve, that secret reserve, abandon it to the Lord.

We can't rejoice in the Lord when our prayer life has become dead, when we're prayerless. And it happens so subtly, you know, it's just a little less time and a little less time in our prayers and then a little more daydreaming until finally our prayers are right down to a flat, dead routine. We're not praying to God now, we're just saying our prayers.

We're not communing with the living Lord, and we know it. And there can't possibly be any joy in that until we come back to life and start to pray, which we can do at any time we choose to do so. We can.

The Spirit will help us, He will. And finally, we cannot rejoice in the Lord when we're uncommitted. When the rich ruler came near to Jesus, he was full of hope, a hope that almost bordered on joy.

He was so glad, hoping that this would do it, this would cap off his need in his life. See, but when Jesus tells him what to do, get rid of your riches and follow me, and he will not do that. And he turns and walks away.

How does he walk away? We are told he walks away very sorrowful. And much of our sorrow is the sorrow of a spirit that is walking away from commitment. It's the sorrow of a soul that won't be tied down.

Many of our marriages lack joy because they lack that kind of commitment to each other. The man and the woman have really not committed themselves to each other. Now, you can have all kinds of thrills in a marriage, but you can't have joy until that man and that woman have got down to business and really made a commitment and are keeping that commitment alive day after day, day after day.

You know, many of our fellowships lack joy because the brothers and sisters aren't really committed to each other. They're committed to this clique or to that little group or to these people who get along with me or these ones I agree with, but not to everybody. And there can't be joy in a fellowship until the commitment goes all the way across and touches all the people who are involved, even the ones who disagree with me or dislike me.

If you're having trouble rejoicing in the Lord, ask yourself whether, in fact, at this moment, you are truly committed to Him and to the work He gave you to do and to the brothers and sisters He's placed you among and to the lost He's sent you out there to find. I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and nobody will take your joy from you. The joy is in knowing, trusting, obeying, walking with Jesus.

He is our joy. May God help us to clear out those things that have divided our hearts and cluttered our minds and darkened our spirits. Whatever it is in us, my friends, that is hindering us from rejoicing in the Lord isn't worth clinging to.

Get rid of it, push it aside, turn away from it, and rejoice in the Lord who is with us now and will be with us forever if we but walk in His light. Let's pray. Lord, You promised it to us, and we know that You keep Your promises, and in all honesty, we have to admit that this joy really is lacking in so many areas of our lives and in so much of our worship and so much of what we do together.

And we're asking, Lord, that You would put Your finger on those things in each of us, and surely there's none of us here excepted, that are hindering the overflowing of our cups, and grant that even before we leave today we may have a taste of what You'd have us be living in all the time, that our cups indeed may run over as You anoint our heads with oil, and set us free from those things that we have with our own wills clung to. We ask it for Your mercy's sake. Amen.