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Advent 2017: Joy - Philippians 4:4-7 · Providence Baptist Church - Sermons

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Something I want to say before we get started is I'm really, really, really thankful for the way we've talked about joy so far this morning.
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With Nathan, with what he read, and with the songs that Jordan and the band have led, I think it's really, really important for us to remember where we were at apart from Christ.
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Remember our worthlessness and our state in hopeless sin for us to understand the joy that Christ brings.
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And so I think that has been really encouraging to me this morning.
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I hope as we look through our text this morning that it will be the same right now.
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So Luke chapter 2 is not going to be our main text this morning, but I do want to start off with part of it in the typical Christmas story that we read.
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Just to talk about how the Lord really does bring great joy in his coming.
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And so let's look at verse 8 of chapter 2 here in Luke.
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It says,
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And suddenly there is with the angel a multitude of the heavenly hosts praising God and saying,
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Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace among those with whom he is pleased.
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Amen.
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So this is something that we typically read quite often at Christmas.
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And it's true that the idea of joy really floods the Christmas season.
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Unbelievers think they have joy in this season.
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They think they have it through spending time with their family or receiving a bunch of material gifts.
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But believers, we see this good news of great joy that is to be to all people.
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That salvation that the Lord is bringing.
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And so this morning, I want to help us get a glimpse of a few different aspects of that joy that Christ has brought to us.
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In his life, his death, his resurrection, even in his current reign,
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and in his coming for the second time that we're looking forward to.
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So I want to go to probably the biggest passage we look at for this, and that's Philippians 4.
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So turn with me to Philippians 4.
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This will be our main text this morning.
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I must say before I get going that preaching on a topic is much more difficult for me than being given a text to preach on.
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So be praying for me this morning, and if the Lord will use this for our upbuilding.
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Philippians 4, verses 4 through 7.
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Before we read it, I'd like to remind us, as Nathan does every Sunday, that this is God's word to us.
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It is written for his glory and for our good.
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And we will do well to it, to listen to it, in order to believe its promises and obey its commands.
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So just picking up in verse 4.
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It says,
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Rejoice in the Lord always.
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Again, I will say rejoice.
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Let your reasonableness be known to everyone.
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The Lord is at hand.
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Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving.
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Let your requests be made known to God.
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And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
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Amen.
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So this is one of those big go-to texts on joy.
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And I'd just like to walk through it a bit.
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And just to show a lot of the aspects of joy, because there are a lot of different things about it that are pretty incredible for us as believers.
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We won't stay here the whole time, but this is where we'll spend the majority of our time.
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So to be clear about how I'm going to structure this, I'd like to tell you kind of where we're going.
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So I have five different aspects of joy that I want us to look at.
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The first one being our true source of joy.
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The second being the means of our joy.
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The third being a thief of our joy.
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The fourth being the outflows of our joy.
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And fifth being the relentlessness of our joy.
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Don't worry, I'll say all those again for those that are taking notes.
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But starting off with, I think it would be a good idea to define joy before we get into it.
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Way back in the day when Noah Webster was making dictionaries, he used to cite scripture references for all of his definitions.
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And this is one that's way back in the day when that was the case.
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He defined joy as a delight of the mind from the consideration of the present or assured approaching possession of a good.
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It's a delight of the mind from the consideration of the present or assured approaching possession of a good.
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Piper defined it as the following.
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He said that Christian joy is a good feeling in the soul produced by the Holy Spirit as he causes us to see the beauty of Christ in the word and in the world.
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I'm going to read back over that one.
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A good feeling in the soul produced by the Holy Spirit as he causes us to see the beauty of Christ in the word and in the world.
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The word we see here in our text says rejoice.
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That's the most common way to translate the Greek word that is used here.
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In some other spots throughout scripture, it's translated as to be glad or simply translated as joy.
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We see this same word throughout the New Testament in the context of a lot of times when people are healed, people coming to faith.
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And even in those passages where we see believers rejoicing in that they were glad to suffer in the same way that our Savior did.
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That's a really common word often tied to those.
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And so looking at those three, the way it's used in scripture, the way Piper defines it, and the way that Webster defined it,
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we can clearly see that it is a good feeling that follows something we are considering.
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We're thinking about something.
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It's a good feeling that we have in the light of that.
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It can be something that's happening now or it can be something that is happening in the future.
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So let's talk through that and we'll see how it works in our text.
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So both of those definitions are very, very similar.
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Both of them are feelings.
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Feelings are something that we can't control.
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We can do a lot to try to influence our feelings, but ultimately there's a lot that is just out of our control.
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We can't snap our fingers and make ourselves feel a certain way.
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We can definitely do things to influence it, but we can't.
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We can't change it.
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So where does it come from?
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Where does that feeling come from if it's not something that we're directly causing?
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Where does it come from?
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So that gets us to our first point.
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First point is the true source of our joy.
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I think we all know what this is.
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It's pretty clear and obvious in the text.
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It says to rejoice in the Lord always, to rejoice in the Lord.
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What I want us to do is think about how we get to that and why that is true.
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So the true source of our joy is to rejoice in the Lord.
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Webster said that it comes from a consideration of the present or assured approaching possession of a good.
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So he's saying that it comes from looking around and considering what is going on,
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maybe what's going on now or maybe what we think is going to happen in the future,
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what we're assured of.
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If he used that word, Piper is super quick to emphasize that it is something that is produced by the Holy Spirit.
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And how it comes to us is by seeing the work of Christ, both in his word and in the world.
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So coming from those two perspectives, I think we can clearly see that, yes, it is a feeling.
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And it's a feeling that we get as we look to that hope that we have in Christ that we spoke about last week.
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And I think it's a really good thing to look to hope, to see joy.
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So I'd like to go back a little bit and think about what Nathan preached on, on hope last Sunday.
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And so I think it's really important with hope to remember our hopelessness without Christ.
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We all know it.
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We try to suppress it, to not think about it, to forget it, to ignore it.
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But we all know it.
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We know all of our natural tendencies apart from Christ.
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We know that apart from God, we always seek our own good and not the good of others.
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We know that we'll act out in lust.
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We know that we'll get angry quickly over really silly things.
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We know that we'll always try to build up our own pride and tear down others.
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We know that we'll be anxious about things that we don't need to be worrying about at all.
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And we know something else.
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We know that because of this, we deserve death and hell.
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We're completely hopeless without Christ.
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We know that we can do nothing to change that.
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We can't change our nature.
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We're stuck sinning and sinning and sinning, and we can't do anything about that on our own.
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We're always going to make the choice to sin.
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We don't have any ability to make the choice to not sin.
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But we do have hope.
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And so let's remember where that hope is coming from.
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Turn with me to Ephesians 2.
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Ephesians 2.
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So this is one of the texts that Nathan referenced last week in the hope sermon.
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I think it'll be really helpful to look at it a bit more to remind of that hope and see that joy.
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I'll look at verses 1 through 10 here.
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Picking up in verse 1, it says,
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And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked,
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following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air,
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the spirit that is now at work and the sons of disobedience,
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among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh,
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carrying out the desires of the body and the mind,
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and were by nature children of wrath like the rest of mankind.
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But God, being rich in mercy because of the great love with which he loved us,
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even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.
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By grace you have been saved, and raised us up with him,
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and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
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so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace
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in kindness towards us in Christ Jesus.
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For by grace you have been saved through faith,
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and this is not your own doing.
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It is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
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For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works,
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which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.
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This is one of my favorite texts.
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This is something that brings me joy.
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I bet a lot of us are feeling that right now.
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We're feeling a delight of the mind from considering this text.
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We're feeling a good feeling in the soul produced by the spirit
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as he caused us to see the beauty of Christ so clear in this text.
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So let's look at this text a little bit.
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Those first three verses, we're described as dead.
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Following the course of this world, following the devil,
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following the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.
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We're just carrying out the desires of the body, the desires of the mind.
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We're just aimlessly and thoughtlessly doing things.
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Just going about off our desires, not caring about whether they're good or bad,
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or right or wrong.
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We're just following others, not making good choices at all.
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We don't even have that ability.
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We even are told that by nature we are children of wrath.
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And then something I really like after that,
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Paul then reminds us that that's where everybody's at.
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We're all children of wrath without God.
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Before Christ, that's all of us.
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And then we get really excited.
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We get that good feeling down in our soul when we see those next two really precious words.
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It says, but God.
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But God.
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And suddenly we have hope.
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Suddenly we remember Christ.
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Suddenly we have that good feeling, that joy.
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The Lord reminds us that because of his great mercy,
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he has caused us to be born again.
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And this happened while we were still dead in our sin.
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Nothing we did earned us this favor,
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but just by his great mercy,
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he decides to give it to us.
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He gives us grace and undeserved kindness.
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How great is that?
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How precious is that grace?
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When we have done nothing good,
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the Lord just gives it to us.
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It's incredible.
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We could have done nothing to fix our situation,
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and we're worth nothing or by nature useless.
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But the Lord in his grace has shown us mercy,
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has made us his own.
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So what have we just done?
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What have we done in thinking through our Ephesians passage
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and just thinking through all that?
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We have done exactly what Philippians 4 commanded us to,
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to rejoice in the Lord,
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to look to his word and see how we can have joy in that.
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That's exactly what Philippians 4 is telling us to do,
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to rejoice in the Lord.
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So I think we can all say that the Lord is our true source of joy.
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The Lord is our true source of joy.
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So, notes are messed up.
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So, yes, we can all say that the Lord is our true source of joy.
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Next, let's look at the means of joy.
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So, second one is the means of joy.
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I think Piper's definition sums it up really well.
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We get joy by savoring Christ's work as we read it in his word
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and as we see his work in the world.
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We have joy by remembering things that the Lord has done,
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by remembering what he's currently doing,
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and by remembering what he has promised to do
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and that we are assured that he will do.
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So, I'm going to talk through this in those two ways.
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So, we'll start off with the word.
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How we see joy in the word.
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So, the Lord uses scripture so much in causing us to rejoice.
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For me, a super clear passage was that one we just looked at in Ephesians 2.
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We just see a super clear presentation of the gospel
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that makes it so clear of our hopeless state and then our redeemed state.
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So much joy in that.
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When we remember what our state was and what our state is now.
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In so many other passages, we see joy.
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When we see others coming to faith.
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Acts was beautiful to go through.
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I see so many people just coming to faith in the Lord.
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That should bring us so much joy.
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Or passages about the great holiness of God when we consider who God is.
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Or passages of cries to the Lord in distress in the Psalms
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where we realize that people have been in the same boat that we are in.
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Or passages about the great future that we see of enjoying the Lord forever
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in the life to come.
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So, no matter where we look in scripture,
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rightly understanding it will bring us joy.
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No matter what type of scripture it is,
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it should bring us joy when we rightly understand it.
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So, so much of our joy is affected by what we set our minds on.
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So, look in a few verses down in Philippians at verse 8.
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Look at verse 8.
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It says,
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Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just,
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whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable,
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if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise,
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now think about these things.
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So, as we set our minds to his word and these things that are in the world
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that are worthy of praise,
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the Lord will fill us up with joy.
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So, I'm moving to our second meaning of joy in the world.
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Seeing this, seeing this this morning with us singing songs together
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in praise of our Savior is a huge way we see Christ's work in the world.
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All of us being redeemed by his grace,
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all of us filthy, dead sinners,
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turned into new, precious nature with a restored image of God.
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That is something huge that we see Christ's work in the world at the present.
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I remember hearing stories at community groups so many different times
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of people sharing their faith with people,
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and those people coming to faith,
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and later learning about them as they've become a part of our fellowship.
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That's Christ's work in the world that is bringing us joy.
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Those same types of stories that we see in acts of people coming to faith,
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we see that now.
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We see that in the world around us,
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and how precious that is,
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and how much joy that should bring us.
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These are all the Lord's work in the world,
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and they should bring us great joy.
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Third point is a thief of joy.
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A thief of joy.
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So there are so, so, so, so, so many different thieves of joy,
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but I just want to focus on the one that's given in our text this morning.
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Look down in verse 6.
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We can see that that thief is anxiety.
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Anxiety.
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This is probably the thief that hurts me the most.
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This is something that I've had to continue to preach to myself constantly.
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Some of y'all that know me really, really well
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know that I really like to always have a plan.
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I'm a person who does well with structure.
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I like to know what I'm going to be doing six months from now, right now.
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I know when I'm doing something,
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how I'm going to do it,
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everything about it.
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Something that's been really hard for me,
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like, because of that,
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has been playing the Christmas Eve service.
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I've talked to, like, a lot of brothers and sisters about it.
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It's a new thing for me, Jordan, and Alex.
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There's a lot of unknowns.
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I don't like unknowns.
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That is something I don't do well with.
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Like I said, I want to know what is going on six months from now, right now.
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And so I've struggled and fretted and worried
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and I've been anxious about little details
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that in the end I know will work out
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and in the end really don't actually matter that much.
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Sure, my personality and nature
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makes me more likely to struggle with those things,
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but what is the root of that?
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The root is sin.
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The root is sin.
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It's anxiety.
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It's worry.
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I'm failing to trust the Lord
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that He will work out all the situations for our good
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and I'm putting way too much weight
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on little things
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that have no eternal significance
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rather than submitting them in trust to the Lord.
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I have to battle this sin constantly.
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I've had to repent and cast my cares upon the Lord.
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I even had to apologize to some people
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who I know were directly affected by my sin.
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Anxiety has been a big thief of my joy.
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It was making me forget the past
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of how God has brought us to this point,
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what He has done on the cross to redeem us.
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It was making me forget the present,
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how God is currently working out
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every situation for our good.
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It was making me forget the future,
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that we'll spend eternity with Him
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and all these circumstances will make sense
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that the only real thing that matters
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of our current circumstances
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are bringing glory to the Lord.
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Verse 6 says,
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Do not be anxious about anything,
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but in everything by prayer and supplication
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with thanksgiving,
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let your requests be made known to God.
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So Paul, by the Spirit,
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is reminding us here
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that anxiety is going to kill our joy.
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He's also reminding something
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really important for me to see
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is that part of being reasonable
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is not being anxious.
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Think about that for a minute.
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Part of being reasonable
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is not being anxious.
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When we remember that our Lord
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is Lord of the universe,
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all-knowing and all-powerful,
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that He's also our Father,
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He's loving,
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He's intimate,
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He's gracious,
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there is no room for us to be anxious.
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The Lord is on our side.
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Who can be against us?
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It is God who justifies,
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who is there to condemn.
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This life is so fleeting,
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so why do we value our circumstances so much?
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So fleeting,
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so why do we value our circumstances so much?
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It is completely unreasonable to be anxious.
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Paul is echoing the teaching of Jesus
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from the Sermon on the Mount here.
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So turn with me to Matthew 6.
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I preached on this text here about a year ago.
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And I think it'll be really helpful
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for us to look back at this
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because anxiety is such a big thief of joy.
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I just think it's really important,
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has been for me,
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to fight anxiety in order to gain joy.
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And so let's look at Matthew 6.
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We're going to look at verses 25 to 34.
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Here it says,
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Therefore I tell you,
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do not be anxious about your life,
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what you will eat or what you will drink,
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nor about your body,
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what you will put on.
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Is not life more than food
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and the body more than clothing?
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Look at the birds of the air.
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They neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns,
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and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.
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Are you not of more value than they?
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And which of you,
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by being anxious,
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can add a single hour to his span of life?
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And why are you anxious about clothing?
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Consider the lilies of the field,
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how they grow.
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They neither toil nor spend.
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Yet I tell you,
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even Solomon in all his glory
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was not arrayed like one of these.
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But if God so clothes the grass of the field,
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which today is alive
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and tomorrow is thrown into the oven,
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will he not much more clothe you,
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O you of little faith?
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Therefore do not be anxious,
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saying,
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what shall we eat,
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or what shall we drink,
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or what shall we wear?
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For the Gentiles seek after all these things,
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and your heavenly Father knows
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that you need them all.
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But seek first the kingdom of God
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and his righteousness,
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and all these things will be added to you.
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Therefore do not be anxious about tomorrow,
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for tomorrow will be anxious for itself.
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Sufficient for the day is its own trouble.
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So here in this text,
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Jesus lists off reason after reason after reason
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for us not to be anxious.
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So many different things.
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He shows us how pointless it is.
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He shows us how ridiculous it is
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for us to let that steal our joy.
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So when I preached this text a long time ago,
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I had seven reasons that Jesus gave
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to not be anxious and trust in him.
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I want to really briefly look through those
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because I think it's really important
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that we see the logic behind
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why anxiety is so bad.
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The first one was,
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life is much greater than food or clothing.
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The early part of this passage
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talks about worrying about food and clothing.
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That shows one of two things.
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It either shows that we are not trusting
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in the Lord to provide for our physical needs,
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or it shows that we are caring way too much
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about what people think of us.
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One of those two things.
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Other people's opinions should grow strangely dim
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when we think about our Savior.
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Cares of this world should look so small in light,
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in light of our eternal joy
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and what the Lord has done,
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is doing, and will do.
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Jesus' second reason that he gave us
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to not be anxious and trust in him
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was we can only do so much.
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So often we try to do everything.
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This is a bad tendency of mine
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that I've had to fight.
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I try to fix everything
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and realize that when I can't,
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I get really, really, really frustrated.
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We have to learn that God is in complete control
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and we're just not.
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We can't do everything.
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When we try to do everything
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and come to the end of ourselves,
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we're left worried and anxious
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and we're refusing to give things up to the Lord
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and to take joy in the fact that God is our Father
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and he is our God.
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We can only do so much.
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Third one was that worrying doesn't fix anything.
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As we often get so worried about situations going on in our lives,
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we lose our joy and hurt others with our sin.
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But the anxiety doesn't fix anything at all.
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Spurgeon said of anxiety,
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Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows,
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but only empties today of its strength.
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It doesn't fix anything.
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Another thing that's super clear here
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is that God values his people
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and therefore provides.
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God values his people and therefore provides.
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We can trust our Lord
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because he provides for birds and grass
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and remember who we are to him.
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We are his holy nation,
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his peculiar people that he has brought about
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so that we can proclaim his excellencies.
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Will he not much more provide for us?
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So there's no reason to be anxious about our needs.
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Then I said that anxiety characterizes unbelievers.
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Unbelieving people are constantly worried
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about what other people think of them
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or how they're going to be able to live out the American dream
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focused on material things.
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And they might even worry about some good things
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like how they can best provide for their family
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or how they can eat healthy.
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But they do this so often out of a heart of anxiety,
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a heart of worry.
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Anxiety characterizes unbelievers.
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And verse 34 says,
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Tomorrow will be anxious for itself.
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Tomorrow will be anxious for itself.
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Don't ruin today by worrying about tomorrow.
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Each day has enough trouble for its own.
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Trust in the Lord and do good.
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We can have joy in his completed work
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and its realities for the past,
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the present, and the future.
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And the last one that I really want to
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stick with a bit today
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is that anxiety is sin.
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Anxiety is sin.
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From this passage here in Philippians
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and this passage in Matthew,
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we have in one Jesus telling us not to be anxious.
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And then in Philippians,
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we have Paul reminding us of Jesus' teaching
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not to be anxious.
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So what are we doing when we're continuing in our anxiety?
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We're sinning.
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I can't count the number of times
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that I've heard something along the lines of,
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I know the Lord tells us not to be anxious,
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but...
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I've heard that out of my own mouth.
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By the way we've started that statement,
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we've admitted that we are breaking a command of our Lord.
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It's really dangerous.
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You may have also heard people say,
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I'm not anxious about this.
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I'm just really, really worried about it.
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What is anxiety?
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Right?
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What is anxiety?
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It just means to be really worried about something.
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That's all it means.
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Okay?
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It could easily be translated,
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don't be worried.
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Okay?
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So when we're overly worried about something,
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we are in sin.
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So I'd love to go on and on about the flaws of anxiety,
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but this is not a sermon primarily about anxiety.
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It is about joy.
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So in summary,
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many, many reasons are given by the Lord
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to not be anxious and to trust in Him.
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When we're anxious,
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our mind is not set on the joy we have in the Lord,
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and we're in active disobedience towards Him.
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So anxiety brings our focus from the Lord,
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in His providence,
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where we have our joy,
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and it puts it back on the cares of this world.
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So when we conquer this thief,
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we'll be able to see it.
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We'll be able to know it.
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We'll have that joy,
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and people will be able to see it.
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Because when we have joy,
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it's going to flow out from us.
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So that brings us to the fourth point,
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the outflows of joy.
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The outflows of joy.
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So I have just two outflows here.
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And the first one I'd like to talk about is peace.
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Verse 7, back in Philippians 4,
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says that,
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And the peace of God,
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which surpasses all understanding,
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will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.
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So what this verse is saying needs to happen before this peace comes,
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is to rejoice in the Lord,
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and replace our anxiety with prayer,
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and supplication with thanksgiving.
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As we do this,
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this peace that is not based on our circumstances,
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but based on an act of trust in the Lord,
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will come about.
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This will seem bizarre to unbelievers.
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That's why it says it surpasses all understanding.
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So though everything around us may be falling apart,
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the circumstances around us seem just impossible to go through,
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we can have peace because of this great joy we have
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in what the Lord has done for us.
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So we'll talk about that a little bit more later.
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But the second outflow of joy that I'd like to talk about is speech.
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Speech.
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When we love something and have great joy because of it,
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we are going to talk about it.
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As Matthew 12, 34 says,
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out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks.
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We're going to talk about the things we love.
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So thinking about my life over the past couple of days,
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I really like snow.
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Snow is something that I really enjoy.
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I like when it's falling.
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I like having snowball fights.
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I like building snowmen.
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I like watching weather predictions.
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I like making weather predictions.
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I like not going to school when it's snowing.
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I like driving my truck in the snow.
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I like walking in the snow.
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I really like that sound it makes when you step on it and it's crunching.
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I like everything about snow.
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So on Friday morning about 4 a.m.,
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I woke up and I knew that the snow might be to Cleveland.
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So I was really excited that it might be snowing outside right now.
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So I looked out the window and sure enough, it had not.
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So I was really sad.
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And so I grabbed my laptop and I went and I looked at all of the forecasts.
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And at that point, they were getting a little bit more accurate.
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A little bit, but some more accurate.
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I was so excited.
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They were upping all of the snow predictions.
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I was so excited.
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So I went and got back in bed and Margaret turned over and I like could not hold my excitement.
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I was like, Margaret, Margaret, they've upped all the predictions.
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And she's so frustrated with me.
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She's like, I'm sleeping and like grunted.
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And snow, I'm so excited right now.
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So the morning went on and we still had work.
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We're teachers in Forsyth County.
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And throughout the day, I think I was way more excited than my students were.
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Way more excited.
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They had a test that day.
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And so some of them were getting done with it.
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And I would have my phone out and go show them my phone with the weather predictions.
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And then like sometimes like point out the window, like there's so much snow out there right now.
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But I was so excited.
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So I wrote quite a bit of the sermon on Friday night while watching the snow falling.
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And Margaret got to the point where she was making fun of me because I was so distracted by it.
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I would look up every 30 seconds just to see if it was still snowing.
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All right.
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So all that being said, all that being said, I think y'all are probably seeing my point by now.
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How is my love for snow proven?
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I talked about it constantly.
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It was like something I was dwelling on quite a bit.
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Okay.
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I really, really like it.
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And so I talked about it.
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You might even say that I had a joy associated with the snow.
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So I talked about it.
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Wanted to learn more about it.
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I shared things about it with everyone I know.
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People got annoyed with the snow talk from me.
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So is this true of us with the Lord?
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Do we talk about the Lord constantly?
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Are we excited to learn more about him?
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Are we overwhelmed with joy when we hear more about his work?
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Grab your bulletin.
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You'll see the weekly Spurgeon quote.
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So it says,
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This should make us question a little bit.
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What do we rejoice in?
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What do we find the most pleasure in knowing?
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What do we talk about the most?
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Out of the overflow of our heart, our mouth will speak.
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What do we talk about?
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What do we dwell on?
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Where is our joy at?
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Because we're going to be speaking about it.
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Something really cool about rejoicing in the Lord is that the more we do it, the more joy we will find in it.
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Turn with me to 1 John 1.
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I want us to look at the first four verses here.
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It starts with,
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And with his son, Jesus Christ.
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And we're writing these things so that our joy may be complete.
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So looking at these first four.
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After explaining how they're preaching Christ to these people, they say why they are doing it.
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Look at verse four.
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It says,
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Some translations have your joy there.
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They both make a lot of sense.
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As we proclaim Jesus, we'll find more and more joy in Jesus.
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As people hear about Jesus, they will find that true joy that they've been longing for.
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So our joy will flow out from us in both a mindset of peace and through speaking his name.
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So my last point that I'd like to bring up about joy, I think is really, really important.
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It is the relentlessness of our joy.
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The relentlessness of our joy.
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So Wayne Grudem says of the Philippians 4 text,
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Always available.
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No matter what the circumstances are.
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Our joy is relentless.
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No matter what is going on around us, we can have joy in God.
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Paul gives us a great example of this through his own life.
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He wrote this letter to the Philippians while he was in jail.
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And this is what he says about his imprisonment.
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Look back to chapter one.
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Picking up in verse 12 of chapter one, it says,
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I want you to know, brothers, that what has happened to me has really served to advance the gospel,
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so that it has become known throughout the whole imperial guard and to all the rest that my imprisonment is for Christ.
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And most of the brothers, having become confident in the Lord by my imprisonment,
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are much more bold to speak the word without fear.
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Paul has not allowed his circumstances to destroy his joy,
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but he's instead looking at those and seeing how the Lord is going to use them to continue to proclaim the gospel.
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He's using those to advance his joy.
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He's excited about what the Lord is doing through those circumstances,
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that more people are hearing the gospel and are coming to faith.
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We can be joyous in any situation.
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Because R.C. Sproul can say it better than I can, I decided to quote him on this.
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He said,
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The command to rejoice can always be obeyed, even in the midst of conflict, adversity, and deprivation,
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because joy rests not on favorable circumstances, but in the Lord.
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One more place I'd like you to turn, and then we will close.
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Turn to the Old Testament book of Habakkuk.
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If you're not familiar with it, it is towards the end of the Old Testament,
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in between Nahum and Zephaniah.
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A little bit of context.
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So Habakkuk is an Old Testament prophet who complains to God about Judah's increasing wickedness.
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And Habakkuk eventually comes to terms with the fact that God is sovereign,
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and that his judgment is far beyond what he can see at the moment.
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Part of his response to what the Lord has said in chapter 3 is really powerful.
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I'd like for us to read it together, and then we will pray.
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So verses 17 through 19 of chapter 3.
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It says,
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Though the fig tree should not blossom, nor fruit be on the vines,
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the produce of the olive fail, and the fields yield no food.
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The flock be cut off from the fold, and there be no herd in the stalls.
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Yet I will rejoice in the Lord.
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I will take joy in the God of my salvation.
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God the Lord is my strength.
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He makes my feet like the deer's.
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He makes me tread on my high places.
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Let's pray.