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Advent | Joy · Bayside Davis Podcast

• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Baside Davis Podcast.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: You're listening to our current teaching series, Ephesians.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: What brings people joy?
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_00: There's been all kinds of psychological and long-term studies around what brings people happiness or joy in life.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_00: And the number one predictor of happiness and joy, according to many studies, is relationships.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Relationships.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: And it's not just any sort of relationship, it's the quality of relationships you have with your family, with your friends, with your coworkers, with your partner, with the people that make up your social relational circle.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Another factor in what brings people joy, according to many, many studies, is living a healthy lifestyle.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Your sleep that helps your joy.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Exercise, being outdoors, going on walks, feeling healthy, all of sunlight, all of that is an indicator of your joy or lack of joy.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Another aspect that you can find in these studies is gratitude, not grumpiness.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: How many of you are grumpy sometimes?
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: All of us.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_00: Grumpiness is not gonna help your joy meter.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_00: You going around being like these people are driving so slow and everybody's out in town, and why can't you leave me alone in the house?
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: That's not gonna help your joy meter.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_00: Gratitude will help your joy meter.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: Being thankful for the simple things of life and the big things in life and the unexpected things in life and the people in your life, that will help your joy.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Another thing that you find out in these studies around joy is not just relationships or living a healthy lifestyle or gratitude, not grumpiness, is finding meaning and personal growth.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: When we are engaged in meaningful life and purpose, we find joy in that.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: When we are void of meaningful life and purpose, we are void of the joy that comes with that.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: And then some of us we are very hesitant to grow in life, and therefore we're not very happy.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: All healthy things grow.
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: So if we think to ourselves, you know, the greatest excuse people use in our culture around growth is this is just the way I am, which is a way of saying, I am too prideful to admit that I need to grow.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, I'm hindering the joy that comes through personal development and growth, especially as a follower of Jesus.
• 3:10
  SPEAKER_00: These are all major categories around the psychological studies around what brings people joy.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_00: But what brings you joy?
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: What brings me joy?
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_00: I made a list.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_00: I was trying to think about this for myself.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: Here's some things that bring me joy in my life.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_00: In-season organic blueberries.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Incredible.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_00: Going to my favorite restaurant in the world in Los Angeles called Gracias Madre.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: The best vegan restaurant in the United States of America.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: It is amazing.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_00: Anybody ever been to Gracias Madre?
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, two people.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: You guys are my friends.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: An early morning green smoothie.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: You can tell what brings me joy.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_00: A hard workout.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: They say doing hard things actually benefits us long term.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: It changes our brain, it rewires our brain.
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_00: So a hard workout, I love it, brings me so much joy.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Danish design and art brings me so much joy.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Beautiful environments bring me so much joy.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Researching anything to do with theology, the Bible, mental health, human suffering, and then teaching and writing on those brings me so much joy.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_00: Helping people grow spiritually, encouraging people, that brings me joy.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_00: But one of the things I thought about that I continually think about in this season every year was remembering my grandma.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_00: My grandma was born and raised in Copenhagen, Denmark, and during World War II, she had to come to the United States because uh the Nazis uh, she actually tells a story, the Nazis uh invaded Denmark, and she was in Copenhagen, and she was on the school bus going to school, and the Nazis were shooting through her school bus that day.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: And so her and her family had to get on a boat and they had to uh come to America, to New York.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: And my grandma was one of the most amazing humans I've ever met in my entire life.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_00: The most positive, encouraging person I've ever been around.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: My mom is very similar because we were around her and she influenced our life.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that brings me so much joy in the Christmas season, remembering my grandmother, is that every year she would, she had this massive car.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: She would come with two carloads of gifts for each kid in the family.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: So she would come, an entire carload, I mean, every seat, the trunk packed to the ceiling, and we would unload one carload, then she would go back home and she would reload it, and we would unload another carload, and every single one of us had like 50 gifts.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: And we were stoked.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: That is a current surfer vernacular for joy.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: We were so excited to open all of these gifts, and we probably didn't use them all, but it was so exciting.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: My grandma was so generous, and she had the greatest joy in the room giving away those gifts to us.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_00: As you know in your own human experience, joy is something we all long for.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: Everybody wants to feel joy and be happy, but how do we experience joy as followers of Jesus?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: John, the Apostle John, at the end of his life in verses 3 and 4, gives us some incredible insight and wisdom into how experience, how we can experience joy as followers of Jesus.
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_00: Many of you may have not read this book recently, but this book was written at the end of the apostle John's life.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: Before John came to believe and follow Jesus and be transformed by him, Jesus called him a son of thunder.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: He was angry and fiery.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: And then John became the apostle whom Jesus loved.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_00: A soft, a gentle, a kind, a loving human being.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus radically transformed his heart.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: And at the end of his life, he pens this book, 1 John, and he gives us some incredible insight into how to be a people of joy.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it starts in verse 3.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: If you're a note taker, write this down.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, here's kind of the thread of themes leading up to joy.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_00: It starts in verse 3, fellowship with Jesus.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: Fellowship with Jesus.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: He says here in verse 3, we proclaim to you what we have seen and heard.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: So that you may also have fellowship with us, and our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_00: We proclaim to you what we have seen.
• 8:38
  SPEAKER_00: This was an apostle of Jesus.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_00: He has seen Jesus, literally the embodied incarnation of the Son of God in the flesh.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: He has heard Jesus, all of his teachings, the upper room discourse, the Olivet discourse, the Sermon on the Mount, all of the great teachings of Jesus.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: John had heard personally.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: Now, why would John start out his book saying, We write to you what we have seen and heard?
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: Here's why.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Because there were a group of people, later known as the Gnostics, from the Greek term gnosis, which means knowledge, who were coming on the scene.
• 9:29
  SPEAKER_00: This was kind of pre-Gnosticism, this was the beginning of Gnosticism.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: They were coming on the scene and they were teaching all kinds of confusing doctrines to the Christian community in the first century.
• 9:41
  SPEAKER_00: For example, they were teaching that matter was evil and the spirit was good.
• 9:46
  SPEAKER_00: And because matter was evil, they denied Christ humanity because Christ can't take on flesh and blood if matter is evil, so they denied his humanity.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_00: And then some of the Gnostics, the pre-Gnostic ideas, they also taught that Jesus' body was not a real physical body, but only supernaturally appeared to be so.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because matter is evil.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: And others, in this pre-Gnostic idea that later became a full-blown ideology, others taught that Christ's spirit descended on Jesus at his baptism, but left him before the crucifixion.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, the crucifixion was void of any power if that were to be true.
• 10:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then the Gnostics split up into two camps.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_00: Some of them taught asceticism, harsh treatment of the body to demonstrate that the flesh was evil, so they did all kinds of religious things to like beat up their body.
• 10:48
  SPEAKER_00: Don't do that.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: That's just weird.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the way of Jesus.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: God created your body to steward it.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then others taught moral license.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: So some were teaching asceticism, like be beat up your body and do all kinds of religious things to like deny your body's value, and others taught moral license since the body is evil.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_00: Do whatever you want to do.
• 11:13
  SPEAKER_00: Go party, go get drunk, go have sex outside of God's design.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Do anything you want to do because the body is evil, and whatever you do, it doesn't matter because matter is evil.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: So John comes on the scene and he knows that this doctrine is invading the church of Ephesus, whom he is writing to, and he wants to say, Listen, I have seen and heard Jesus in the flesh.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: The Son of God came to this earth and lived life in a human body.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: And this was a direct contradiction to Gnostic ideas.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: What he writes here.
• 11:58
  SPEAKER_00: He is combating false teaching and heresy in the early church.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_00: And these people believe that they were the only ones with this deeper, esoteric, secret knowledge from God revealed through deep revelations that only they received and nobody else received.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: But here's the reality: God reveals Himself to everyone, not just a secret group.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: You know you're in a cult, by the way.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: When they're like, we have secrets nobody else has.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_00: You know you're in some weird Christian stuff.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: When people begin to talk about that, no, God has revealed Himself through creation and the coming of Jesus to everyone.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_00: As Peter says, God desires for all to come to repentance.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: Not just some secret people out there that are like, oh, we have this mystical knowledge.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's also, by the way, with this current movement amongst young Christians around Christian mysticism, this is also the danger of Christian mysticism.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: To think that you have secrets that God shares with you that nobody else has, that you are more spiritual because of your Christian mysticism than everybody else.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: I want to warn you that that can be dangerous if it's taken to an unhealthy degree.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_00: So John is contradicting these things here.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: And in 1 John chapter 2, verse 21, he says, No one who denies the Son has the Father.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: No one who denies the incarnation of the Son of God, no one who denies the death and resurrection of the Son of God, both his person and his work on the cross has the Father.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_00: But whoever acknowledges the Son has the Father also.
• 14:02
  SPEAKER_00: He says, We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that, here's the purpose, you may have fellowship with us.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: You may have fellowship with us.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: What is fellowship?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: Koinonia is the term, it means partnership or close relationships.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's a term in the ancient world that talked about mutual interest and sharing and community and relationships.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's a relationship that is characterized by both uh common fellowship and common participation in something.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: There's an ownership, there's a participation, and I think that's a beautiful term because it's used of the church.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: Some of us think of church as like this is my thing, where I, you know, kind of get filled up spiritually.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: No, church is more than just an individualist thing, it's a community of God's people sharing in the reality of Christ.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a community of God's people participating in many ways through the advancement of the gospel and the discipleship of people and their transformation of life through the teachings of the Bible.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's we're partnering, we're partnering in this mission to share the gospel, we're partnering in giving so we can advance the work of Jesus, we're partnering in serving so that we can serve the people that come into the community.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: It's not just relationships that sit around and eat food, and that's part of it, right?
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: Like rooted in all the beauty that's built into that, but it's also partnership.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: We're in this mission together.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: And you guys live that so beautifully.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to encourage you.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_00: You're such an example of that.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_00: There's many New Testament examples of fellowship, different types of and facets of fellowship in the New Testament.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: There is fellowship with God.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_00: By whom you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: There's fellowship with the church.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: Galatians chapter 2, verse 9, when James and Cephas and John, who seem to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: They gave me the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, we now were seen and affirmed as included into the family of Jesus through faith in the gospel.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: But there's also fellowship with demons.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's something just by the way, you don't want in your life.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: 1 Corinthians 10, 20 and 21.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_00: No, I imply that the pagan, that what pagans sacrifice, they offer to demons and not to God.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: I do not want you to be participants or fellowship with demons.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: You cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: So some people are having fellowship with God, and some people are having fellowship with the church as well, and some people are partners with evil and the demonic realm.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: This is real, but not you.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: You are in fellowship with God.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe you're not today, but by the end of the service, we pray that you would be in fellowship with your creator God.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: So John says, We're proclaiming the gospel, the true reality of Jesus, so that you may also have fellowship with us.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: And our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Fellowship according to 1 John chapter 1, verse 3, is this two things.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, write this down, fellowship with God is the first and foremost reality of fellowship in the community of God's people.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_00: It's that each one of us individually and all of us communally are in a relationship with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.
• 18:09
  SPEAKER_00: What is the story of Luke chapter 2?
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's this God desires a relationship with you.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what background you have or how you came in today or what you're carrying, the guilt, the shame, the failure, uh, the disconnect from your creator God, but I want you to know this morning that you came in this place this morning because God wants to communicate today.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: I want a relationship with you.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: No matter your background, no matter your context, no matter your failures, no matter your shame, no matter your guilt, no matter what you've done or where you've been, God desires a relationship with you.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: And there's a chasm.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_00: There's a chasm that had to be bridged because our sin, our waywardness, our lifestyle in denial of our creator and his design for our flourishing and our life, we have lived lives contrary to our creator God.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: Contrary to his nature, who he is, contrary to his design, how he designed for us to live and thrive with him, not apart from him.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, there's a chasm, and it's called what the Bible or the ancients call sin.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: Living life in contradiction to our Creator God.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: But fellowship with God is restored through Jesus Christ, through his death on the cross, through his resurrection from the dead, through the reality that God became flesh and blood, and he lived among us and he died as the Son of God, not disconnecting as the pre-naught the pre-Gnostic idea says, he died as the Son of God, fully embodied in human form, but yet fully God at the same time.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, his death on the cross was potent and powerful enough to forgive human sin.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: And the thought here, according to 1 John and John's mind, is that union with God is the foundation of joy.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: God is faithful.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians chapter 1, verse 9, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: God is calling you to be in a relationship with him, to have fellowship with the Son of God, Jesus Christ our Lord, as the foundation of joy.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing that he mentions here in verse 3, and by the way, we're still in verse 3.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing that you were supposed to laugh, but that's okay.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: The second thing that he mentions here about fellowship is fellowship number two with God's people.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: First, we get fellowship with God.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_00: Our life is restored through Jesus Christ with to a right relationship with God, but then fellowship with God's people.
• 21:21
  SPEAKER_00: God wants us to have healthy spiritual relationships with one another.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_00: You know, when we come to Christ, we come with our old self.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: Not the self that is going to be transformed, but the self who lived possibly selfishly in relationships, unhealthily in relationships, didn't understand God's design and all the facets of God's design for the thriving of deep, meaningful, healthy relationships.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: But when you come to God through Jesus, God transforms you so that in every relationship you can bring health into that relationship.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_00: God creates transformation in us so that we can have healthy relationships around us.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: And not only at the cross and with the reality of the person and life and death and resurrection of Jesus is fellowship with God restored, but fellowship with God's people is restored through Jesus Christ.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: We enter into a right relationship with God and we also enter into a right relationship with one another.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: When we're living life apart from God, we don't understand relational flourishing.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: But when we come to God, he transforms us so that we can bring relational flourishing to whatever relationships we have.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_00: And it's both supernatural transformation in our heart and also an intentionality to live out the teachings of Jesus.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because relationships, as all the psychological studies teach us, are such a huge part of the pie chart, the percentage of the pie chart that brings human beings joy.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: And in the family of God, we both have relationships as a family, and we have partnership in the mission, and this is a part of our relationships together as the family of God, is that we treat each other as family and we treat each other as a people on mission to change our world for Jesus.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: We're in this together.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's why he says next, look at verse four.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_00: He says, This is so key.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: Check out verse four.
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_00: We write this to make our joy complete.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_00: We write this so that we, this is an inclusive we.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: John is saying, me and all the people in the church of Ephesus, or he might be thinking, all the people of God for human history.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_00: We write this so that your, our joy may be complete.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it's always important to make a distinction between joy in our modern culture versus joy in the biblical essence.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: What is joy?
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: Joy in the Old Testament comes from a Hebrew word sasan.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's a cool word, right?
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_00: It's the emotion of happiness and pleasure in the Old Testament, this abounding delight that has all kinds of bedrock and subfacets underneath the surface.
• 25:14
  SPEAKER_00: Joy in the New Testament comes from a Greek term kara.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: And it's this feeling of internal gladness or happiness inside of a human being.
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_00: It's very similar in nature to the Old Testament idea of joy.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to end with this this morning.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_00: I want you to understand that joy in the Bible is not just happiness that comes into our life, that intersects into our heart when things are going good, but it's it's a reality that has much depth and can invade your life and your emotions at any point in your life in a relationship with God.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_00: So write these things down.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: Six aspects of joy in the Bible.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: Six aspects of joy in the Bible.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, joy is associated with Jesus.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: If you read through the gospel story, like we read in chapter two, there were multiple parts of that story in Jesus' birth that brought joy to humanity.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you go to the end of the Gospel, Luke, chapter 24, at the end of his life, when Jesus rose again from the grave at his birth and in his resurrection, you see the pervasive emotion and reality of joy influencing humanity around the person of Jesus.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_00: In Luke chapter 1, verse 14, he will be a joy and a delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: In Luke chapter 2, verse 10, but the angel said, Do not be afraid, I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all people.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_00: In Luke chapter 24, verse 41, and while they still did not believe it, it it because of joy and amazement after Jesus rose from the grave and he was there present with them, or they heard about Jesus' resurrection, there was joy and amazement, almost disbelief.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_00: Is like, is this really true?
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: And if it is, we are so full of joy.
• 27:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, in the Christian community, there's a time for lament, but there's also a time for joy.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: People come to Bayside.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_00: You go to a Bayside conference, our Thrive Conference, our Bible conference coming up in January, and Christian leaders from all of their nation come to our conferences.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I think we have the third largest Christian leadership conference in the U.S., and that's in May, the beginning of May every year.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: Come to it, you'll have such a blast.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: But people, all these leaders come to a Bayside conference, and they always say, This is the funnest group of Christians we've ever been around.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_00: Like, we shouldn't be a bunch of sour, unhappy Christians all the time.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: There's a time for lament, and there's a time for joy.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes there's a time for both.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like, church shouldn't be like, oh, you know, like let's stand and let's sit and let's not show any emotion.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: You know, there's this idea that that all of these young people are going to like really liturgical churches, and like evangelical churches are losing all kinds of young people to very liturgical religious churches.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_00: And that's just one part of the story.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_00: For every one person, and I'm I'm not saying anything negative about liturgical churches here.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: For every one person that is leaving an evangelical Protestant church for a more liturgical church, there's eight people leaving a liturgical church for a Protestant evangelical church.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_00: So people are coming to me and they're like, oh my goodness, you know, people are leaving churches all over America.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, you haven't actually read all the studies because you're missing out.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: Part of the studies.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what I would say is that there are some really formal churches that lack happiness and joy.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: And there are also some evangelical churches, Protestant churches, that are lacking happiness and joy.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: Happiness and joy is a sign of what Jesus is doing in this world.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: We can cry together and we can laugh together.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: You are not more religious being a emotional.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: You can feel all of these emotions as part of your worship and relationship with God.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_00: Are you with me?
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: So whether it's a liturgical church or a dour, sour evangelical church, we are to be a people of joy.
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: So you can come in here and have fun.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: You can come in here and smile and laugh and rejoice in the Lord because this is the way of Jesus.
• 30:32
  SPEAKER_00: And all of our churches, whether we are liturgical, listen, everything's liturgy, by the way.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: Some people are like, liturgy is only this.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: Everything's liturgy.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: What we're doing right now is liturgy.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: Or whether you're a part of more of a Bayside S non-denominational, well, we are a part of a denomination, by the way, but if you're a part of a non-denominational church or what have you, we it doesn't matter how you do your practices.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_00: We should follow the practices of the Bible.
• 31:04
  SPEAKER_00: But what does matter is that the spirit and life of Jesus is at work in our hearts and in our communities.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.
• 31:13
  SPEAKER_00: Joy is associated with Jesus.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: Come on, pick up the pace, Wesley.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: Number two, joy is connected to our relationship with God.
• 31:22
  SPEAKER_00: The reason that we can find joy in any moment of life is because God is the object of our joy.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_00: I just want to encourage you this morning, if you've been really down or discouraged or depressed, or you feel like there's an emotional darkness that has seeped into your life, can I encourage you to pursue God?
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_00: A relationship with God that brings joy is not based on works.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's not based on I've got to do all these things and obey all these commands and live a perfect life and you know follow all these aspects of obedience or what the church tells me to do.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's not based on works, it's based on grace.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: And where there's grace, there is joy.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: Where religion says you have to do all these things to get to God, grace says God came to you and freely loves you and forgives you, and it's not about your performance.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_00: First time I heard that message in a church that I was going to and they were teaching the Bible.
• 32:37
  SPEAKER_00: The first time I heard that message, my mind was blown because I knew all my failures and all the rebellion and all the stuff that I did that was wrong, and I was recognizing for the first time that I didn't have to come to church feeling bad about myself, feeling like I don't deserve to be in this place.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: I got to come to church thinking God loves me despite all of that, and I'm always welcome in the church of Jesus Christ.
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's based on grace, not works, and He changes our heart by grace so that we can live out and do good works.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: Romans chapter 14, verse 17 for the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: Pursue God.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: James 1, 2 through 4, consider pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.
• 33:43
  SPEAKER_00: Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: In other words, we have joy even in the hard moments because God is in our life.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_00: Pursue God.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: Number three, joy is the fruit of the Holy Spirit.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_00: Galatians 5, 22 and 23 says, But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: You receive the Spirit of God when you believe in Jesus and enter into a relationship with God.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: And the Spirit of God comes in you and produces joy in your heart.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: It's supernatural.
• 34:28
  SPEAKER_00: God wants to come in your heart and supernaturally produce joy in you in a way that you've never experienced it before.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_00: This is life in the Spirit of God.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_00: Every person who believes in Jesus Christ, the Bible says the Spirit of God indwells in you.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's what one current writer called the familiar stranger.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_00: That we all know about the Spirit of God, but somehow he's a stranger in Christianity in modern times.
• 35:05
  SPEAKER_00: But the Spirit of God should not be a familiar stranger.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: The Spirit of God should be God the Holy Spirit who indwells our heart, and he is a part of our relationship with the triune God.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: We should be able to be aware of his presence in us and the work that he is doing in and through our lives.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_00: The Spirit of God is so important in our relationship with God.
• 35:34
  SPEAKER_00: Number four, joy is not the absence of pain.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: 2 Corinthians 6 verse 10, sorrowful yet always rejoicing.
• 35:45
  SPEAKER_00: 2 Corinthians 7, 4 through 7, take great pride in you.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: I'm greatly encouraged.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_00: In all of our troubles, my joy knows no bounds.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_00: For when we came into Macedonia, we had no rest, but we were harassed at every turn.
• 36:01
  SPEAKER_00: Conflicts on the outside, fears on the inside.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_00: But God, who comforts the downcast, comforted us by the coming of Titus, and not only by his coming, but also by the comfort you have given him.
• 36:17
  SPEAKER_00: He told us about your longing for me, your deep sorrow, your ardent concern for me, so that my joy was greater than ever before.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: Joy is not the absence of pain.
• 36:31
  SPEAKER_00: Joy and pain do not cancel each other.
• 36:34
  SPEAKER_00: Joy can be present in the midst of human pain.
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: Some people think that the internal human experiences compartmentalize as though we can only experience one primary human emotion or experience at a time.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_00: The problem with that mindset is that the human experience is never one-sided or bifurcated.
• 36:57
  SPEAKER_00: We can feel a variety of experiences and emotions in any specific context of life.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_00: And according to God, we can have joy and sorrow, joy and pain at the same time, because God lives in us.
• 37:18
  SPEAKER_00: Number five, joy transcends our circumstances.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_00: This is the major distinction, this is the major differentiation between our modern definitions of happiness and joy versus God's elaboration of happiness and joy.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_00: God brings to the surface, He shines light, he elucidates this reality of joy that is so important for Christians to understand that joy transcends our circumstances with God.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: God can give you joy in the hardest moments of your life.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: This is why Philippians chapter 4, verse 4 says, Rejoice in the Lord always.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_00: Again I will say, rejoice.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't say rejoice in the Lord when things are going good.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: He doesn't say rejoice in the Lord when things are going bad.
• 38:09
  SPEAKER_00: He says, Rejoice in the Lord always.
• 38:13
  SPEAKER_00: And again I will say, rejoice.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_00: There's a proverb that I always find to be so fascinating, Proverbs 14, verse 13.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_00: Even in laughter the heart may ache.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: Think about that.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_00: Even in your laughter the heart may ache, and the end of joy may be grief.
• 38:35
  SPEAKER_00: You can be laughing and aching.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: You can have joy and grief at the same time because joy transcends our circumstances with God.
• 38:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then finally, number six, joy is connected to our hope in Jesus.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: Romans chapter 12, verse 12 says, Be joyful in hope.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: Psalm 30, verse 5 says, weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_00: Hebrews chapter 12, when Jesus was dying on the cross, says, For the joy set before him.
• 39:11
  SPEAKER_00: He's on the cross, he's dying, the most horrific death in human history.
• 39:17
  SPEAKER_00: The Son of God took on the sins of human history, the sins of humanity, and it says, For the joy set before him, he endured the cross.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_00: Joy, crucifixion, joy, pain, joy, the death of the Son of God.
• 39:39
  SPEAKER_00: At the same time as he was dying, he was rejoicing at the great hope set before him and us.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: Hope gives us opportunity for joy during the moments that are hard, that are crucifying.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what you're going through.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_00: You might be going through an amazing moment and you have joy.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: You might be going through a challenging human moment, and I want you to understand that through Christ and with God, you have the opportunity to experience joy in light of your hope.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_00: Hope allows us to be present in every moment, and it also allows joy to be present in every moment.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: Because we know that because of Jesus we have eternal hope.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_00: As he was sitting on that cross for hours and hours and hours, he understood hope was before him.
• 41:24
  SPEAKER_00: So he endured the cross with joy.
• 41:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the Bible says here in chapter 4, we write this to make our joy complete, to become filled with joy.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_00: Previous to this, John 15, verse 11, Jesus taught one of his greatest teachings, and he said, These things I have spoken to you that your, that my joy may be in you.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: My joy.
• 41:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that your joy may be full.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_00: In Psalm 16, verse 11, it says, You make known to me the path of life.
• 42:05
  SPEAKER_00: In your presence, God, there is fullness of joy.
• 42:13
  SPEAKER_00: What are we filling our hearts with?
• 42:16
  SPEAKER_00: Are we filling our hearts with the reality of the presence of God that can bring us joy in any circumstance or context of life as human beings?
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_00: Or are we filling our hearts with other things that cancel out the reality of God's joy in our life?
• 42:33
  SPEAKER_00: Can I encourage myself and you this morning to be in the presence of God and to receive the supernatural reality of the fullness of joy he can bring into your life in this Christmas season?
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: I love what Yarbrough wrote as he was commentating on this exact verse.
• 42:57
  SPEAKER_00: He said, This is a description of joy, a profound, heartening, and infectious sense of how great the message of the cross is, and what a privilege, a privilege it is to share in the gospel benefits, in the ministry, and even in the challenges of ministry.
• 43:17
  SPEAKER_00: Further, hard to quantify and difficult to speak of, but no less real is the joy of the presence of Christ Himself through His Spirit within believers' religious awareness, the joy found in prayer and in worship, whether private or corporate, the joy of conviction of God's goodness and love through his gift of eternal life in his Son.