Joy of the Lord 1976

Verses to start from Philippians 4.4. Verses that probably we all ought to memorize and say to ourselves at least ten times a day until they soak in. Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say rejoice. Let all men know your forbearance.

The Lord is at hand. Have no anxiety about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Now there are many ways in which we can express the joy of the Lord.

It doesn't necessarily mean that we have to walk around with a grin from ear to ear all the time or make ourselves say praise the Lord every five minutes but if that joy is in our hearts it makes all the difference in the world, in our outlook, our attitude toward people, our habits and even in our physical and mental health. The farmer who enjoys his farming is going to go at his work in a very different way from the farmer who hates it and the woman who enjoys her husband and her children is going to be a lot more pleasant to live with than the one who detests her situation and feels sorry for herself. When the Messiah was born he was born to bring us joy.

Behold I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all people and when he began to proclaim his message he called it a gospel which means good news and it was understood that anybody who would reach out and grab hold of that good news would have joy. The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field which a man found and covered up and then in his joy he goes and sells all that he has and buys the field. People who begin to follow Jesus will always always find that they are not only given a cross to carry which they are but they are also given unseekable joy that my joy says Jesus may be in you and that your joy may be full.

I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice and your joy no man will take from you and this joy is meant to be universal. Not that two or three lucky people out of every hundred believers are going to have joy and the rest have to suffer. It's to be the normal state of the believer in the midst of all the hassles of life.

If you have Jesus in your heart you have joy. If you don't have joy something's wrong and yet if we're going to be honest with ourselves we're going to admit that in spite of the fact that we we really try and we want to live faithfully and we truly pray so much of the time our hearts are so burdened down with heaviness so heavy that that we begin to feel even a sour taste in our mouths. It gets so bad sometimes that our friends in the world whom we should be comforting come by to cheer us up.

Look man I don't understand your faith but does it have to make you so depressed all the time? Bless their hearts. So we know something's missing. We know we ought to have that joy so we walk down the road in pursuit of it and we are met by a man who seems to be able to read our mind.

Good morning friend I can see that you're looking for joy. The lack of it is written all over your face. Well come with me.

I have just what you need. Come with me and believe my gospel of prosperity. Prosperity? Did Jesus preach a gospel of prosperity you say? Look friend he says the reason you're so down in the dumps all the time is because you're not prospering.

Circumstances are against you. Look at all the things you lack life. You can't even afford to travel by Greyhound bus.

Now if you will believe my gospel circumstances will begin to smile on you and you won't travel by Greyhound anymore you'll be going by jet first class and those rags you've torn will be replaced with purple and fine linen and you'll just have joy in your heart. Just then you look through the door of this man's house and you see lo and behold sure enough all the things he promises. People in there well-dressed, eating wonderfully, the temperature just right, there's no danger, everything seems to be beautiful except as you look in their eyes you see that from those eyes there is no joy.

They're vacant and in your heart you can hear a voice which says in the world you will have tribulation but be of good cheer I have overcome the world. And so you hurry on. Hold it, hold it says a large woman standing beneath a beautiful golden arch.

You're looking for joy I can see it on your face you've come to the right place. What do you have to offer me man you say? I offer you the celebrity gospel she says. Celebrity gospel did Jesus preach such a thing you say? Listen here if you will believe my gospel she says you will be known and admired and liked by many people and isn't that what you've always wanted? But did Jesus offer that Christ? That what the joy is that Jesus offers us you say? And she pays no attention she says.

Oh friend you have a bad image of yourself. Now we have to build that up and we have to make you a celebrity and that's exactly what we're going to do. Come on.

Just then you look through her beautiful golden arch and in there you see people dressed up in the most amazing costumes standing on golden pedestals and everyone has a frozen smile in his or her mouth. But their eyes are void of joy and you hear a voice which says he that exalteth himself shall be evased but he that humbleth himself shall be exalted and so you hurry on down the road. You've hardly gone a hundred yards before you hear a voice that says over here baby and there stands a man in front of the doorway of a building that looks like a Super Vic panties.

Wow. Says hurry up get in here don't you know those streets are dangerous? You can't handle it out there why you're too weak. No wonder you don't have any joy.

I offer you the gospel of power and if you will believe my gospel you will bend destiny to your will. You will make things happen and nobody will push you around anymore and you will have joy. You look through the doorway of his building and you see there they are the spiritual power seekers in their spiritual Vic panties learning their spiritual Kung Fu and on their faces determination their jaws are set but their eyes again reveal no joy and you hurry away with great relief you sigh when you realize how close you came to falling right into the trap that promises that if you have the power to push other people around you'll be happy.

Suddenly the road comes to an abrupt end at a stone wall. There's a small door in the wall and beside the door stands a man who greets you by name and says welcome we've been looking for you. The only one in all the world who can give you the joy that you're looking for is on the other side of that door and you are most welcome to go through but let me make clear to you he will not offer you prosperity.

He does not promise to make you a celebrity nor does he promise you power to dominate other people's lives. He offers you however that if you will come with him you will have joy and the joy he offers is never doctored with the allurements of this world power popularity prosperity but it's the pure joy of simply knowing Jesus. You think it over and you decide to walk through the door and the minute you step through that door you begin to learn four lessons.

First that the joy our hearts crave is the joy of believing in Jesus. In this you rejoice though now for a little while you may have 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.

All the things that the false prophets offer in addition to Jesus are as nothing compared with the joy of knowing him. Do we not find that as we look at our own experience the most magnificent thrills and pleasures which we can conjure up with our mind and imagination and memories are as refuse compared with surpassing worth the unspeakable joy of knowing Jesus and being found in him. Now those people who think they have to spice up the gospel of Jesus Christ by adding to it the allurements of this world are thereby giving way and revealing to you the fact that they themselves have not yet come to know the joy that is found in sheer belief in Jesus or they wouldn't dare presume to add something to him and in his name I promise anybody in this room no matter what you may be going through if you today will in faith put your life at the feet of him and surrender it into his hands you will have not next year but right now before you walk out of this building today.

Secondly the joy our hearts crave is the joy of fellowship with the cross of Jesus which often begins with sorrow and pain but always ends with gladness of heart. Ye now therefore have sorrow but I will see you again and your hearts will rejoice and your joy no one will take from you. As sorrowful yet always rejoicing.

Blessed are they that mourn for they shall be comforted. Beloved think it not strange concerning this fiery trial which has come to try you as if something strange were happening to you but rejoice in so far as you are thereby made partakers of Christ's suffering. What does this mean? This means that most of us perhaps all of us in some way are right now experiencing pain.

Pain concerning your loved one, pain over one of your children, pain over your own failures. Our message is not stop having pain cheer up what's the matter with you but our message rather is let that pain that very pain bring you into fellowship with Jesus on his cross and your sorrow be changed into joy. So many people today are being sucked in by a gospel which tells them to run from the pain.

Run from the unpleasant and thereby they are being cheated of the very thing that will bring them joy and make their lives fruitful. Don't run from your pain. Oh I'm not saying you know if you have a headache you're not supposed to take an aspirin or beat yourself over the head.

You understand I'm sure what I mean but let that pain be the means by which you come into fellowship with Jesus and there your sorrow will be turned into joy. Third, the joy our hearts crave is the joy of laboring in the master's vineyard. The joy of labor my meat and my drink is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his works as Jesus and when he calls it his meat and drink what is that but his joy.

When the laborers in the vineyard are finally hired from that idleness in the marketplace how happy they are. You can just see how happy they are and one of the reasons many of us are so discontented and so unsettled and so cynical and sour is because we are idle. Now maybe we have enough to pay our bills maybe we have enough to buy groceries and things we want but if we're idle we'll never have joy.

Now there are many among us right now who are retired from their formal work and they're living on their pension or their social security yet they get up every morning and fill the day with meaningful work. They're doing something and yet there are so many who are so young and relatively able-bodied although they make all kinds of excuses for their aches and pains- who aren't doing anything. They're not working, they're not laboring, they're not applying themselves, they're not putting anything into it and they wonder why their lives are so empty.

Pick up something to do. If you can't find a formal job make sure that at least you're working looking for a job doing something but find something and do it you'll never have joy never until you're working in some way and this also applies to our ministry. Don't just sit around and listen to the gospel and go to bible studies.

Take the truth that the Lord has given you and do something with it. Plant those seeds, go out into that harvest, pick some of those grapes, go out there and do something or it will rot in your own heart. Write a letter, make a phone call, you know, do something.

Finally the joy our hearts crave is the joy of knowing that our Lord has prepared a place for us that the Father's house is waiting. Rejoice not that spirits are subject to you but that your names are written in heaven. What a relief it comes as when we begin to see that this life is not all there is.

If in this life only we have hope we are of all men most miserable. But now we begin to see beyond this life and we begin to fix our hearts there. Grant we be ceased, he says, the ancient collect that is read in the liturgy, one of the most beautiful arrangements of words I've ever heard, that our hearts may there be fixed where true joys are to be found.

That thou being our ruler and guide we may so pass through things temporal that we lose not the things eternal. Now there's no reason why every single one of us in this place today can't take hold of joy. There's no reason why our hearts should be lacking in this.

All we have to do is reach out and get it. But remember what it is. It's the joy of believing in Jesus, the joy of having fellowship with him in his suffering and his cross, the joy of sheer work, labor with him, and the joy of knowing that because of him the Father's house is waiting for us.

God help us in the midst of a world so full of twisted gospels to settle for nothing less than the real thing, the joy that is found unless and only in Jesus himself. Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice. Let your forbearance be made known unto all men.

The Lord is at hand. Have no anxiety about anything but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving. Let your requests be made known to God and the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.

Let's pray. Father God we're asking that you will confirm the truth of whatever that has just been said that is truly of you and that the hearts among us that are discouraged or confused or in any way misled or in any way going off the track or unsatisfied and unfulfilled may today in Jesus find more than they could dare to ask or think and that every heart in this place that opens itself to you now Lord may by the power of your Holy Spirit be filled to overflowing that our cups may run over and that we may be this day examples of sons and daughters of heaven that have their eyes fixed on the one place that can never be taken from us we ask it in Jesus name amen