Flickers of Joy (Pastor Vann Trapp)

Morning.

All right.

So question.

We need to start out with this morning.

Is Jesus worthy of our praise?

When we always say Amen, Amen.

We join on Sunday mornings

because we come to celebrate the one who has saved us

and the one who has given his life for us, and the one who is worthy.

Whether he would have done anything for us or not.

The one who's worthy of our praise.

Amen.

So we come together to, to join in worship.

We come together to give him our attention

and to see what he would have to say to us.

To make us more like his son, Jesus.

Amen.

Amen.

Hey, let's stand together, if you would.

We're going to begin by looking at a piece of the Christmas story.

Many of you guys know this part of the Christmas story.

We're we've been talking about stars.

This story has a star in it.

It also has three wise men in it, and, they travel

hundreds of miles to find this king who God had told them about in the stars.

And so this is, the birth story of Jesus.

Is it part of that story found in Matthew two verses one through 11?

This is the word of God.

Now, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days of Herod

the king, magi from the east arrived in Jerusalem, saying,

where is he who has been born the King of the Jews?

For we store his star in the East, and we have come to worship him.

Now when Herod the king heard this, he was troubled,

and all of Jerusalem with him, and gathered together all the chief

priests, all the chief priests and scribes of the people.

And he inquired of them where the Messiah was to be born.

And they said to him, In Bethlehem of Judea, for this is what has been written

by the prophet.

And you,

Bethlehem, land of Judah, are by no means the least among the leaders of Judah.

For out of you will come a ruler, and he will shepherd my people Israel.

Then Herod secretly called the Magi to determine

from them the exact time that the star had appeared.

And he sent them to Bethlehem and said, go and search carefully for the child.

And when you have found him, report to me, so that I too may come and worship him.

After hearing the king, they went on their way,

and the star which they had seen in the east, went on before

them, till it came and stood over the place where the child was.

And when they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy.

After coming to the house, they saw the child with Mary, his mother,

and they fell to the ground and worshiped him.

And they opened the treasures and presented to him good gifts, gold,

frankincense, and myrrh.

You know, we know this is the story of the Three Kings,

and many of you know the story.

Many of you guys have seen the characters of the story.

Because if you've ever seen a just an advent kind of, the creche that's set up.

Nativity scene.

Around Christmas time, you seen the Three Kings standing there,

and this is their story,

and we're going to we're not going to dive deep into the story.

We've done that in the past.

And many of you guys have been here over the years.

We've looked at it. It's an amazing story.

But I want to zero in on on this one line where it says, when they

saw the star, they rejoiced

with exceedingly great joy.

Today is the third Sunday of Advent, is the third Sunday

that has the theme of joy.

And, joy is a part of the Christmas season.

You know, you think about Christmas, right?

And, and we go out and we have hope.

And we've talked about peace and but you don't you know, the closest

we come to like hope is we say, well I hope you have a good Christmas.

Right. That's usually where we go with that.

You don't hear anybody come up and say, hey, have a peaceful Christmas

because that's not going to happen, right?

So we know that.

But you do hear a lot about joy, don't.

Right. I mean, joy kind of eclipses the rest.

When we say Merry Christmas, we say let's celebrate.

We say, you know, joy to the world.

And and so Joy kind of takes this, this

really, kind of fills what Christmas means to many of us.

So joy is a big deal.

So this morning we want to find out what is God

talking about in his story when he talks about joy.

What is he talking about?

Because this is a really important part of the story of God,

especially the story of God coming to earth in the person of Jesus.

Amen.

Let's pray.

Father, always, always, always, always.

You are worthy.

You are worthy.

Jesus. You are worthy.

You are worthy of our worship and our praise.

Our adoration, our attention. Our devotion.

The commitment of our lives.

You are worthy.

You alone.

You alone are the.

Are the God of the universe.

You alone are the Lord.

And whether you would do God, it would have been enough.

It would have been enough.

Just that you created us.

And that if we would have.

And in our fall that it would have been enough.

If you would have just created us and then judged us,

and that would have been the end, that would have been enough.

You would have still been worthy.

But instead, you sought to pursue us

and make us your own.

So, God, we are here to give you our worship

and our praise and or thanksgiving for what you have done for us.

And father, to give you our attention,

so that by Your Holy Spirit you would speak your word.

So you would make things known to us that only you can,

so that we would hear from you.

That we would be shaped to be more like our Savior.

So, Lord, give us eyes to see, ears to hear, hearts to hear and understand,

so that in seeing and hearing and understanding we would turn towards you

and find your salvation.

Find your life, find that gift that you've offered us

in Christ.

So, Lord, take this space.

Holy spirit, come and fill this space.

Make it yours.

Set it apart as holy because we are here to hear from you.

We pray these things in the name of Jesus.

Father, for your glory, by the power of your spirit.

Amen.

Amen.

Have a seat.

So it's funny about the, story of the wise Men.

Is that in Matthew? I mean, that's a pretty big deal, right?

You have all these guys that this entourage

that comes to find comes into the land of Judah.

You would think that more would have made a bigger deal out of it.

But the only place that we find it is in Matthew.

Mark doesn't even have a birth story.

That's in his gospel.

John starts out with that kind of esoteric thing.

You know, in the beginning was the word, and the word was God, and he became flesh.

And, you know, that whole thing, this cosmic level kind of introduction.

And then Luke, Luke tells us, you know, he starts out with the shepherds

out in the field taking care of their sheep.

And instead of a star

showing up there, so there's an angel that shows up and lights up the sky.

But listen to the message that the angel brings.

He says, don't be afraid, for behold, I bring you

great tidings of great joy, right?

Which will be to all the people.

So again, you find this theme of joy that goes through this announcement

of Jesus, because joy is a big deal in God's story. So.

So what is joy?

Well, you know, we've talked about this before.

Joy, I can tell you start out I need to tell you what joy isn't.

Joy isn't happiness right?

The word happiness, if you dig into that English

word of where we got that, it comes from this Old Norse word hap.

And literally what hap means, it means, luck or chance or fortune.

What just kind of comes along. Fate.

And so happiness.

Happiness is about circumstances.

Happiness is is it's an emotion that's based on a thing.

It's based on how things are going.

And so we're happy when things are going well.

We're not happy when they're not going well

because of that.

A lot of times we we confuse those two of joy and happiness.

Right?

And we try and we try and make things go

well in our lives, thinking that that's going to bring us joy.

We try to, make our situation to our liking.

So we try to use either we try and get wealth

so that we can buy the things that will make us.

We think joyful, but that will make us happy.

We try to leverage our power to make ourselves happy.

We try to sometimes manipulate situations so that they'll change

our circumstances into our favor so that that we can be happy.

But God says, you know, joy is not happiness.

Joy is different.

Joy is not in the motion that's based on what's going on around us.

Joy is something different.

So what is what is joy?

Well, let's look in the Bible.

Let's see what the Bible says.

That joy is all about.

So we look at Psalm one 1824.

It says,

this is the day that the Lord has made, so I will rejoice and be glad in it.

And we read in the at

some of the other parts of that Psalm, it says it talks about dancing

with joy and about shouting about these victories that God has won.

And so we, we, we,

we say, well, that sounds like, you know, things are going pretty well, right?

That sounds like happiness.

But it also in that Psalm talks

about having gone through this time of being surrounded by your enemies.

Right?

It talks about having gone through this time

where, your calling out to the Lord in your distress talks about this, this,

this cornerstone that God, God had chosen,

but that it was a stone that was rejected by the builders.

And so when we read in in this about about joy,

in fact, the line that immediately follows this,

we sang in one of the songs, we sang that word Hosanna.

And a lot of people, they don't know what Hosanna means, but

Hosanna is this word that comes out of so many. 18

and literally what it means is God

save us comes from a phrase that Hosanna,

God save us now

because we're in distress, we're in trouble,

he says.

But this is the day that the Lord has made.

And so we see that there's this joy, and it seems to come after

you've gone through this struggle in Psalm 118 is tied to this,

you know, after the struggle,

and you rejoice in the salvation, the rescue that God has provided.

Then in Psalm 126 five it says, you know those who sow the seeds with tears,

they will reap the harvest with joyful shouting.

But this too, it's it's found in this Psalm was talking about

how God had rescued his people out of decades of captivity.

I mean, a generation of captivity

that all they had known as being under the thumb of Babylon.

And so but we see again, we see that this is this joy that comes

as at the end of this struggle, when they see rescue.

But then we get to the New Testament, and this is where things get

crazy and hard, because James, the brother of Jesus, he

you imagine growing up as Jesus is brother,

how man?

I mean, some of us had, you know,

the sibling that the parent compared us to or something, right?

But can you imagine?

Why can't you be like your brother?

But here's James, right?

And, he brings joy forward, right?

Instead of saying, wait till after

you're out of the struggle, he brings it forward.

So in James one two he says, consider it all joy

when you encounter trouble.

When you meet it, it's like, well, how?

What? That's not happiness anymore.

Right now you're not talking about your setting at all because you're just

you're you're coming right into it and you and he says, count it all joy there.

Jesus.

So James, James's brother, his more well known brother.

Jesus.

In Matthew 511 and 12, he he goes even further with it.

Now, you guys went through the Beatitudes this summer and all through

the Beatitudes up to this point, Jesus is saying, blessed are those who

write, those who do this or that thing, those who have this or that attitude.

Blessed are those who.

But then in 11 and 12 he turns it in to the disciples.

He makes it really personal.

He says, blessed are you when.

And it

is kind of like this promise this is going to happen.

This is going to happen.

So blessed are you when blessed are you when listen to this

people insult you and persecute you

and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.

Rejoice and be glad,

for your reward in heaven is great.

For in the same way they persecuted the prophets who came before you.

If you're going to be someone that God sends out, if you're going to be

someone who God speaks through, he says, you know what?

Struggle and opposition are going to come.

So get ready.

Get ready for what?

For struggle now. For the joy.

That's what he's saying, right?

Get ready for the joy.

Because joy,

according to Scripture, joy comes

when struggle comes and doesn't just come.

It's it's there.

It's there.

In fact, when joy shines, the brightest is in the midst

of the place where people say, you shouldn't be that happy.

Oh, well, I'm not happy.

This isn't about happiness.

This is about joy.

So joy comes when things are not good, when things are not right,

when things seem to be falling apart, when joy is even comes.

When when things aren't,

when people are acting poorly or things are going badly, or

your circumstances are going off the rails, that's when joy is found.

So this means that joy, joy is tied to something

that goes way beyond just our circumstances.

Joy goes beyond just having a happy kind of a end to the story.

So what is joy?

Well, in Hebrews 12 two it says,

it tells us, it says, you know, we will run this race.

Well, we'll walk through this life.

Well, if we will fix our eyes on Jesus, who's the author and perfecter

of our faith, who for the joy

set before him endured the cross,

despising the shame,

and then went and sat at the right hand of the throne of God.

Jesus, who endured the cross,

despising the shame.

There's nothing wrong with despising the shame,

despising the circumstances.

There's nothing wrong with that, despising the pain.

Those things were not meant for us, and so we shouldn't

fall in love with them.

But he went through it.

For the joy that was set before him.

So what was that joy that he saw?

Was that joy sitting at the right hand of God the Father?

Now he had that before he came.

That's not what he was aiming at.

He had it was the joy, the name above every name and all the honor and glory.

No, he had that.

That's not what he was aiming at.

What was the joy?

The joy was Jesus.

For Jesus was seeing death defeated.

The joy for Jesus was seeing creation

released from the corruption and the decay.

Joy was seeing men and women like you and me

free to enter a relationship with him

in a life that he intended

for us from before time began.

That was his joy.

And because of that joy,

that promise, that expectation of what would happen

as a result of walking through this struggle,

that's what it says,

gave him the strength to endure

even the brutality of what he went through,

and also the shame

of what he had to endure on the cross, in the grave,

the promise that you and I

and everything would be, would be set right.

You guys, that's where Joy is found,

is that we are held by.

We are in the midst of God changing the world.

That's where the joy is found.

You know, in Galatians five it gives this list.

It says the you know that, it says when we enter a relationship

with Jesus, when we are reconciled with the father

and when we're filled with His Holy Spirit, the presence of the Holy Spirit,

one of the results or what it says, the fruit of the Holy Spirit,

one of them is joy is the second one. It mentions.

And a lot of times we take that to mean

that somehow the Holy Spirit he produces, you know, joy in us.

Somehow he makes us more loving or he makes us more,

peaceful, or he makes us more patient.

But I'm not sure that's what it's talking about.

You know, in second Corinthians one, in Ephesians one it says that

the Holy Spirit is given to us.

Yeah.

He's given to us to empower us to live, like Christ,

who to be doing the work of transformation in our life.

He, he, he's given to us

that the presence of God might we might know that God is with us always.

He's given to us so that we would know that we're authorized

to do the very work of the kingdom of heaven.

But it says in second Corinthians and in Ephesians

it says he is given as a guarantee,

a foretaste of what is to come.

He's given is like a glimpse of

the world that is to be.

And what is that?

Well, it's this world where there's freedom, this new heaven,

this new earth, where there's no more sorrow, there's no more pain.

There's no more tears. There's no more.

There's no more death.

There's no more, struggle.

There's this new resurrected body.

So we're not constantly fighting with this, you know, spirit versus the flesh.

And struggling. Trying.

There's no more of that where Jesus sits on the throne

and we're constantly in his presence, and he makes all things new.

And on the one hand, we see that is our hope, right?

That's what it will be.

It will be celebrated.

But it's not just going to be celebrated.

At the end

is celebrated all the way till we get there.

And that's joy,

because we know where we're headed,

we know it's coming and we know the rest just doesn't

really matter.

One of the things that God's been kind of showing me,

and this has been for months now, it's just been like the last six, eight months.

But he's been showing me, you know, we look so hard at the circumstances

and trying to make them our life so that we almost like

that's going to be our salvation.

That's going to me, what makes us gives us peace, what gives us

joy is to get our situation right.

And God says, now he says, you know, your circumstances,

your circumstances are like the they're just the context in

which God is shaping you to be like Jesus.

And if it wasn't these, it would be these ones,

because we need something to pound on these hard hearts

sometimes so that we find out what Jesus has called us to be.

And so he

says, don't look at the circumstances.

Instead, look at the joy.

Look at the promise.

It like the angel Jesus says to us, don't be afraid.

I bring you glad tidings of great joy

because he is overcome.

Right says, in this world you're going to have the tribulation,

you're going to have the struggle. You're going to have.

You're going to have that.

But don't don't be afraid.

Don't worry, because I have overcome the world.

So when the wisemen rejoice at the star, why?

Why did they rejoice in the star when they saw it?

Well, because they had been carrying that extra station with them.

They had been carrying that joy.

They had been carrying that joy when the sun was beating down on them,

you know, and on the desert road, they were carrying

that joy when the rain was just pouring down.

You guys have been have you ever been out camping?

You're trying to set up a tent.

It starts to rain.

So anybody who can't have had that at least once, right?

And they were carrying the joy during that time.

They were carrying the joy.

When they scan the horizon, they see this group out on the horizon.

They're going, man, that's bandits.

We're in trouble. Right?

They were carrying that joy when they went in.

They talked to this crazy king,

I mean murderously crazy king.

And they had to navigate that conversation.

And so when they saw the star

and it was where they expected that it would be

if they were on the right track,

that all that they had hoped in and all the joy that they had carried up

to that point when they saw the star, the star,

it says they rejoiced with an exceeding joy.

Not because all sin it popped up on them, but because they had been carrying.

That joy is not bound to the beginning,

to the middle, to the end, to the circumstances

that we find ourselves joyous, bound to the promise that God has given us.

That not

just will we be his, but we already are his.

We walk with him

and he will make us like Jesus if we will let him.

That's why Romans 1212 says, that's why we rejoice in hope, right?

First Peter one three through six.

First Peter one.

It's amazing if you want to talk about, but it says, blessed be the God

and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has,

according to his great mercy, caused us to be born again

to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.

And in this you greatly rejoice,

even though now for a little while, if necessary,

you have been distressed by various troubles

right?

Joy comes in the midst of it.

It comes in spite of it.

Joy is found like something that's outside of it completely.

That is ours in Christ.

So how do we live these kind of lights that shine like the stars

in the night sky?

How do we live our lives of joy?

Well, first, the first joy is found in a in a confidence that we can have

now. Joy is what it is.

Joy is, is a freedom

to worship God no matter what's going on around you.

Joy is a a a thanksgiving that we have for God,

no matter what the circumstances are, we are in joy is a positive outlook,

not because we're trying to be Pollyanna and overly optimistic,

but because we know we know

what God has promised.

So joy first is seen in a confidence is built in a confidence, not in yourself.

Right?

Not in your circumstances, not in, this world

and that this world is going to work out all the time.

But confidence that no matter what is happening around you.

And I want you to hear this, and no matter what is happening,

what is changing in your doesn't seem to be changing in you.

Isn't that where we sometimes lose our joy?

We're like, I'm just not able to do the things

that I think I should be able to, you know, God should be doing something.

I shouldn't think this way. And

but joy isn't based on those things.

Joy is based on the fact that we have a treasure

and a promise in the Holy Spirit who has been given to us and in us.

You guys, the Holy Spirit is not a feeling that we get.

The Holy Spirit is a gift that we have been given when we come to Christ.

Whether you feel him or not, whether you think

he's there or not, he promises that he is in you.

And if you will take time to listen, that he will constantly be telling you

you are a child of God and he has you.

And that brings a confidence.

That you can live a life of joy.

He will not lose you or let you go.

He will bring you safely home

to his new creation.

We are citizens of heaven.

We may be in this world, but we're not of it.

Confidence.

Joy is based on kind of.

Joy is based on constancy, right?

We see joy when we see constant.

When people see you constant

in a in this attitude of thanksgiving,

in the midst of hard times, when you see you constant that you're the same in

in good times and bad in in plenty

and in want in this constancy.

Now, constancy isn't perfection, right?

Right. It does.

Anybody else have have a hard time at times holding their joy

anyway? Come on, you guys, you're lying.

If you don't have your hands up.

Constancy is not perfection.

I want you to hear this is not about perfection is about direction.

Okay?

We walk, we fall.

We get back up, we walk, we trip, we stumble, we fall.

We get back up.

We walk right and we walk towards Jesus.

We walk towards this life in this car.

We walk with him.

We walk because he empowers us to do it.

But we keep walking.

There's a constancy to it.

There's a continuation to it now, to perfection.

But a direction.

And so when people see that, they go,

joy, joy,

something that comes outside of this place.

Joy is seemingly something that comes outside

of that person, right?

The third thing is this joy comes.

So I've given you two keys right?

Give you a third one.

It comes from concentration.

What do we concentrate on? What we focus on.

Philippians says, keep your minds,

keep your hearts, keep your eyes set on the things that are above.

Why? Because that's where you're from.

Why would you get so tied up with the stuff down here?

Set your eyes on things above.

Set your eyes on not the ones who say that they control your life.

Set your eyes on the one who holds your life.

Jesus said, you know, don't, don't,

don't be so excited that the demons are subject to you.

And be excited that your name is written in the book of life.

Jesus says, don't.

Don't weep for me because of what's going on.

He's on his way to the cross. He says.

He says, you know, be careful that you're

make sure that your your name, that your eternity set

the rest, the rest,

the rest washes by,

the rest washes by. Joy.

When we live like

these, things are part of our lives, right?

That's when we found. We find that we.

We bring light into this world like Jesus did.

Not the same magnitude.

We're not the the sun in the sky, but we can be the stars.

Ephesians says we're supposed to be shining like the stars in the sky,

the stars that they come together at points

and they make these signs, these, these recognizable arrangements

that people realize what season they're in, they recognize where they're at.

They can get their oriented, their their bearings based on what they see.

Signs that point to this, this other world signs.

It points sometimes to a king who's been born

a king that that God

has sent, where a God who's taken on human form

and who's brought

us life, who's brought us joy.

So joy is not based on our situation.

It's about our standing with Jesus.

I want to leave you with some words from Isaiah, Isaiah 55, 12 and 13.

It's a promise that

that God gave to his people when he's leading them out of captivity.

They hadn't gone into it yet.

He says, this is going to be a promise, and this will be

you can count on it.

So this can sustain you.

But it's also a promise for us, because the captivity

was kind of like an illustration, a metaphor of what we live in.

This world is like this captive place

where we're we're out of we're out of our element.

We're out of our world. We're not home yet.

So this is for us as well.

But he says in verse 12 and 13 of Isaiah

55, it says, you will be led forth with joy.

You will be led forth.

You'll go out with joy.

You will be led forth with peace.

The mountains and the hills will break forth into shouts of joy before you.

And all the trees of the field will clap their hands.

Instead of the thorn bush, a cypress will come up.

Now if you know what a thorn thorn bush is, this dry sticky thing.

Cypress. You go.

Why do you see a cypress? Because it's an evergreen.

It stays green.

Doesn't matter what the season says.

Instead of the nettle again, the myrtle again,

this evergreen will spring up and it will be a memorial to the Lord

for an everlasting sign that won't be cut off.

Amen. And

the joy,

the joy of the Lord.

This is a day that the Lord has made.

We're going to rejoice.

We're going to be glad in it.

The joy of the Lord will be.

Our strength is our only strength.

We have nothing else.

He's worthy.

He is worthy.

Amen.