Christ's Joy in Us - John 15 — Phil Whittall

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Each week, we share a message that's rooted in the faithful teaching of God's

Word and open to the vibrant work of the Holy Spirit among His people.

Here's this week's message.

Good afternoon, everyone. We're going to...

Look at John chapter 15, God's joy in us, and my friend James is going to read

John 15 · chapter mention

God's word to us. Thank you, James.

Good afternoon, everybody. So we're in John chapter 15, and we'll read verses 1 to 17.

John 15 · chapter mention

Jesus says, I am the true vine, and my Father is the God of me.

He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that

does bear fruit, he prunes so that it will be all fruitful.

You are already clean because of the word I am spoken to you.

Remain in me as I also remain in you. No branch will bear fruit by itself.

It must remain in the vine.

Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.

I am the vine. You are the branches.

If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit. Apart from me, you can do nothing.

If you do not remain in me, you are like a branch that is thrown away with us.

Such branches are picked up, thrown into the fire, and burned.

If you remain in me, and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish,

and it will be done for you.

This is to my Father's glory that you bear much fruit, showing yourselves to be my disciples.

As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you, and remain in my love.

If you keep my command, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father's

commands and remained in his love.

I have told you this, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

My command is this, love each other as I have loved you.

Greater love has no one than this, and to lay down one's life for one's friends.

You are my friend if you do what I command. I no longer call you servers,

because a servant does not know his master's business.

Instead, I have called you friends.

Everything that I learned from my Father, I have made known to you.

You did not choose me, but I chose you, and I appointed you,

so that you might go and bear fruit through the world's land,

and so that whatever you ask in my name, the Father will be for you.

This is my cloud. Love each other.

Thanks James. Let's just pray.

Heavenly Father, thank you for your word to us. I thank you for these words

of Jesus, words of encouragement, of fruitfulness, of love, of calling,

the way that you have revealed to yourself through these words.

We just pray that as we look into them together, that you will strengthen our

hearts, you'll speak to us, you'll reveal yourself to us, and through them that

your body will be built up to be all that you intend and call us to be.

For your name and for your glory we pray. Amen.

As a young child visiting my grandparents' church, the start of the service

was always something of a curiosity to me.

This particular building, wasn't a very big building, had a room that they called

a vestry, which was where the pastor and the elders would pray before the start of the service.

In my parents' church, my father's church, this room was at the front of the

building. In my grandparents' church, it was at the back of the building.

And at the appointed time, five elderly men in dark suits would walk down the

aisle from the back of the church.

And the pastor would stop at a lectern that was like this one, except much grander.

It was carved like an eagle on which the church Bible sat.

So it was a really impressive lectern at the front.

And there would be a little platform, a little one like this,

and the four elders would pass the pastor and go sit on four very high-backed

chairs facing the congregation.

They were almost like thrones. And so not very far away, just behind me,

there would be four kind of elderly suited men looking out at you.

And these serious, somber, suited gentlemen would sit and the service would begin.

And in the summer, it was always a question of which one of these gentlemen

would fall asleep first.

But it was as if the Joy Police were there to make sure that no one got carried

away. to make sure that the worship of God was conducted with proper decorum and seriousness.

The worship of God is a serious business.

We were impressed upon us by the way the church was set up.

God, it seemed, did not want anybody to be obviously enjoying themselves when they came to church.

And so much of my Christian upbringing was in a church context where it seemed

they only believed in joy because the Bible said they had to.

There was this apparent determination that if they really had to believe in

joy, it did not mean they actually had to show it.

Joy is deeper, much, much, much deeper.

And deep, deep down is where joy should stay.

That's the place for joy.

In John 15, verse 11, right in the heart of the verses we read,

John 15:11

Jesus says to his disciples,

these things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you,

and that your joy may be full.

In fact, Jesus repeats in this section of John's gospel that they will soon

have a coming sorrow. Jesus is going to die.

But the sorrow will be temporary and joy will replace their sorrow and their joy will again be full.

So what right now would you say is the current levels of your joy?

Joy in life? Joy in service?

Joy in family, in work? Joy in your relationship with God? What's the current levels of your joy?

Maybe you're here today carrying significant sorrows, undergoing severe trines.

Perhaps you're a glass half empty kind of person. Maybe you struggle with depression.

Or you were made in a world where every silver lining has a cloud.

Sometimes because of personality, culture, or circumstances,

we can find the whole idea of being joyful a very difficult one.

Yet the writers of the New Testament repeatedly put forward two truths that

they insisted could be true at the same time.

You can be going through severe trial and count it a joy.

You can experience great affliction or persecution and joy can sustain you.

The promise of future joy can even help you endure something as testing as crucifixion.

For the joy set before him, Jesus endured the cross.

So joy in this sense is deeper. It's underneath the sorrows,

trials, and pains we feel.

And therefore the joy we have in God can hold us up when we are grievously tested.

It will stop us from sinking below the waves. because underneath everything

is something more permanent, more lasting, more solid, more secure.

So if you're in a season of discouragement or sorrow,

if your thoughts are marked by the scars and battles that you're going through,

then right now let's consider the ministry of Jesus, the joy giver.

That Jesus is someone who gives joy.

And Christians, many reasons to be joyful. We are forgiven.

We are no longer under law, but grace. We were lost, but now we're found.

We were dead. Now we're alive.

We've been adopted by the Father. We've been given access to his throne of grace.

The Spirit has been given to us as a counselor and a help.

We're being transformed from one degree of glory to another.

We're not without hope. We are loved by God We are friends with God I no longer call you servants,

but friends We are included in his church and his mission You know the Father's

business It has been revealed to you.

He hears us when we pray. He forgives us when we sin.

He will complete his good work in us.

He's seated us in heavenly places with Christ.

He'll raise us up and clothe us with immortality. Sin, death,

the devil, all being defeated.

Nothing can separate us from his love in Christ.

All of those truths are true no matter your circumstances.

Even if right now you feel weighed down, even if you feel little joy,

or feel as Paul once did, so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.

That's the Apostle Paul writing, even if you feel like that,

despairing of life, the truths that I've just listed haven't changed.

They are always true.

So despite.

This, despite our many reasons to have joy in God, we've got lots of reasons

to be joy in God because God has done something amazing and he's allowed us

to share in this amazing new life in Christ.

Yet this is not what Jesus is saying here.

He did not say, these things I've spoken to you, that your joy may be in me,

and that your joy may be full.

He said, my joy may be in you.

The joy of Jesus Christ, the joyful one.

The end of Zephaniah in the Old Testament, the prophet is urging the people

of Israel to sing, to shout,

to rejoice, to exult because of the salvation of God.

Our joy, our singing and rejoicing in his salvation. And that's often what we do.

We sing about God and the amazing things that God has done. It's our joy in him.

But then there's this really remarkable verse, I think one of the more remarkable

verses in the Old Testament.

He says this, The Lord your God is in your midst, a mighty one who will save.

He will rejoice over you with gladness.

He will quiet you by his love. he will exalt over you with loud singing.

It's a picture of a God who rejoices in his people.

He loves like a father, like a father loves his children, and this joy that

God has in his people results in God doing loud and raucous singing.

We might sing, oh, how he loves me, but God himself sings over us, oh, how I love them.

God himself sings over his children.

Is that the picture you've had of God, of a God who sings over you with joy?

If you are his child, the image of God we should have, one of the images of

the God we should have, is of a father singing over the children he loves.

That's how God tells us he feels about his people.

So can you imagine anything more joyful than a God who can burst into song because

the object of his love is safe in his arms?

A God who loves to sing over his people.

Is that the kind of image of God that you've been given?

That the church has taught you to think of like God?

That right now you can believe, no matter what your circumstances is,

no matter even in your sin and in the things you're messing up and getting wrong,

that God, because he loves you in Christ, is singing over you.

Song of love and of salvation.

We shouldn't be surprised by this because God really does love us. He really does.

And because of the great love with which he has loved us, all fear is gone.

Perfect love casts out all fear. So if fear is gone and love has come, what is left?

We're left with the opportunity to rejoice, It's eternal rejoicing.

Yet, there's even more to God's joy than this, because the Father loves the

Son, always has, always will.

Every gospel records this moment where a voice from heaven declares,

this is my Son, whom I love.

With him, I'm well pleased.

And Matthew says, in this moment, Jesus fulfilled a prophecy from Isaiah,

which begins, here's my servant, my chosen one, the one I love, in whom I delight.

So God delights over his son, Jesus, and declares it so that everyone knows this is my son.

And when we are baptized into Christ, God speaks over us.

This is my son, this is my daughter, with whom I'm well pleased,

in whom is my delight, because we're in Jesus, because we're in him.

And God did not just one day start delighting in the son. God's always delighted in the son.

Michael Reeves, an author, says, Jesus has satisfied the mind and heart of the

infinite God for eternity.

Jesus has satisfied the mind and heart of the infinite God for eternity.

Our boredom is simple blindness.

If the Father can be infinitely and eternally satisfied in him,

then he must be overwhelmingly all-sufficient for us.

In every situation, for eternity.

Jesus is enough for us. Jesus is enough for me. in every moment,

in every situation, no matter what.

And because God places us in the bride, the church is the bride of Christ,

the church becomes an object of the Father's great love and joy.

This is the bride of his son.

The bride shares in the joy of the Father.

It's inseparable. These two are becoming one. The son and the bride,

the bridegroom and the bride are becoming one.

And so the way that God loves the one is the way that God loves the other.

What God has joined together, let no one tear asunder.

That's why marriage, Paul says, is a picture of Christ and the church.

We're living out in family life a picture of God's great drama,

the way that he's supposed to love us.

And this is part of the joy of Jesus, because Jesus knows what it is to be loved unconditionally.

Jesus knows what it is to have the Father's delight, and he shares that with

us, his disciples. He shares the Father's love with us.

As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you.

It's the same love. And love is the greatest reason to have joy.

Yet there's even more to this depths of joy that we can go into.

Because God from eternity past and into eternity future has always been a joyful God.

He hasn't been dwelling in kind of serious, boring silence for vast ages.

That's not the picture that we get of what heaven is like. In heaven,

there's the sound of like a thousand rivers as all these crazy beings declare, wow, God is amazing.

And so that's what it's been like. God has been enjoying the fellowship of the

Father and the Spirit always and delighting in it.

This is not some, you again.

Getting a bit bored of you, Jesus. Holy Spirit.

That's not how God is. That's not how God is.

God is eternally satisfied because there's no one better than God.

Augustine said, God is happy. Ever think about that? That God is happy?

God is happy. Not by something added to himself. God doesn't need anything else to be happy.

We probably need a bunch of things. A good night's sleep, a cup of coffee,

several cups of coffee, quietness, peace, kids to be doing what they're told.

I don't know. Food. We need food.

We need all sorts of things to be happy. We need external things to please us.

But God doesn't need anything else. He's not dependent on anything. He is his own happiness.

God is, and he's probably the only person who can say this, he's very self-satisfied,

and that's not being a bad thing.

In England, if someone was very self-satisfied, we'd think they were a bit smug

and that would mean that we would try to bring them down a peg or two.

We would like them to understand that they're not all that and we would find

some way of communicating, yeah, you might think you are, but actually you're not.

So we would try and bring them down.

Yet God knows this to be true. No one is this good except for him.

He really is good in every possible way.

He's as holy as he can be. He's as good as he can be. You can't get any gooder than God.

You can't get any more loving than God.

God is love. You can't get any more righteous than God. and you can't get any more joyful than God.

You can't get any more hopeful than God. He's all of these things all the time

and has always been that way.

And so he's very happy in himself, very secure in who he is as God.

And this is called, the theologians call this, the doctrine of the blessedness of God.

God is always blessed.

And why is this good news for us? It's crucial because my joy comes and goes.

I don't know about you, but my joy is not constant.

My joy can be extinguished. My joy in Christ can be affected by how tired I

am, by a conversation I have,

by where my levels of encouragement or discouragement.

My joy can go up and down in the space of an hour, let alone a day.

My joy can go up and down like this.

Subject to chemical levels in my body, relationships with other people,

how I feel about the world around me, whether remembering anything about the

gospel or not, my joy can go up and down.

But what if you could turn to someone who is never downcast?

There's a psalmist writes, why downcast, O my soul? Why is your soul down?

What if you could turn to a soul, to a being that was never down,

that was never downcast?

One for whom circumstances are irrelevant to the joy that they have.

What circumstances could change the joy of God and the love of God? Nothing.

So if I could turn to the one for whom, despite my circumstances,

I can turn to him and know there's always love, joy, grace, hope, a kindness to be found.

As Steve read from, this is who God has declared himself to be.

The Lord is gracious and compassionate. This is who he is.

So if God's joy is eternal, inexhaustible, and unchanging, then sin,

rebellion, cannot dent it.

And God's purpose is to bring all of creation into this state of unending joy.

He wants to liberate creation.

How he says through the experience of the joy of the sons and daughters of God.

We have a joy that is to be shared with all of creation and so that creation

itself would be liberated and brought into the freedom that God intends for it.

Mind blown.

Jesus knows that to be truly blessed is to know God, and what greater gift could

God give than to give you himself?

For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes

in him would not perish, but have everlasting life.

God gave himself. Jesus said, this is eternal life, that they know you,

the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.

And this is our great hope. This is our great calling, and this is our great

joy to go into the world rejoicing,

offering the hope of this kind of knowledge and this kind of life that you two

out there, hey, you could also know everlasting joy and love and peace and forgiveness

and security and safety.

You could know all of that if you know Jesus. It all could be yours.

Jesus said this, so that the world might know that God sent Jesus.

We have all this so that the world would know that God sent Jesus and loved

them, us, even as you love me.

So through the cross, a new and living way has been opened. There is forgiveness in his name.

Through the cross, we become placed in Christ, in his death and in his life, in his eternal life.

His risen life. We've been seated with Him.

This means that our place and our position is the same as Jesus Christ's.

What have I done to deserve that? Nothing. It's a gift. It's grace.

But I get caught up in Jesus.

So listen to the words of Peter.

In 1 Peter 1, verses 3 to 9, Peter writes this, Blessed be the Lord and God

1 Peter 1:3–9

and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

According to his great mercy, he's caused us to be born again.

He caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus

Christ from the dead, to an inheritance, imperishable, undefiled,

and unfading, kept in heaven for you,

who by God's power, so God now by his power, are guarding you through faith

for a salvation to be revealed in the last time.

And then this, in this, in this great salvation, you rejoice.

Though now for a little while, if necessary, you've been grieved by various triumphs.

Isn't that life sometimes for us, we get grieved by triumphs. This is hard.

This thing that I'm going through is difficult. But in this,

I can still rejoice because my faith, it will be tested.

And shown to be more precious than gold that perishes when tested by fire.

And this may be found to result in the praise and glory and honor of the revelation of Jesus Christ.

And then here's the key bit. Though you have not seen him, Jesus, you love him.

And though you do not now see him, which we don't, you believe in him,

which we do, and rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory,

obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

You rejoice with joy that's inexpressible.

It used to be, probably still is to be honest, that every photo that's been

taken of me while I've been running is a picture of suffering and grimace.

I do not look like I'm enjoying myself.

I look like I'm barely struggling to be, barely managing to stay alive.

I look like a man, A man who is dying on his feet.

I've only myself to blame. I choose to do it.

But someone told me that running gets easier. In fact, it's true.

I put it to the test. It is easier if you remember to smile.

If you remember to smile. Oh, I'm supposed to be enjoying this, so smile.

And it's actually true. It is funny. People who smile run quicker than those who don't.

I could run the exact same race twice and I'll be faster in the one that I smile in.

Because as we relax, we become more naturally efficient, we waste this energy,

and it's supposed to be more fun.

Now, if the application of my message all about God's joy was as basic as you

should all smile a bit more often,

you miserable lot please just smile more that would be a little shallow and

it won't help you when you go through a grievous trial.

But when the battle is on, when the day of testing and trial does come your way,

and you remember that in Christ you can count even this as a joy,

that even now, even here, even in this pain, even in this darkness,

Christ holds me, God sings over me,

Christ intercedes for me, that even now his joy can be in me,

even now, my joy can be full because I have everything I need in Christ.

Even in the midst of the most awful things, Christ loves me and holds me.

Even then, I can smile and say, yes, Jesus loves me.

Yes, Jesus loves me.

See, that's the kind of joy that's deeper than any sorrow. It's the joy that will hold you up.

So joy is a state of being but we're called to live out from joy because the cause of our joy,

is not rooted in or affected by circumstances that's being happy I'm happy that

things are going well I'm happy that the sun is shining I'm happy about all

sorts of things but joy is rooted in love.

I'm loved, and that causes me joy.

I'm safe in God's hands. That causes me joy. But there's a verb associated with

joy, and I mentioned it a few times. It's rejoicing.

Friends, let's try and encourage and build a church which rejoices.

Now, rejoicing can look different depending mostly, I think,

on which hemisphere you were born in.

Culture finds a way of sort of changing joy.

So I remember really well, I might have told this story to some of you before,

but not long after he'd sort of found us, our friend Gilbert,

who leads our Swahili-speaking congregation that's meeting right now on the

downstairs, one floor down.

He came and I said, how are you finding it? Got any questions about church?

He's from Congo, middle of Africa. and he says this.

He said, why are all your songs funeral songs?

And I was like, funeral songs? When do we sing funeral songs?

And he just meant all our songs, like all of them were like funeral songs to

him because that's not how they worship the Lord in the middle of Africa.

There was no dancing. We were very stuck to the place that we were standing in.

We were not moving, clapping, shouting.

We weren't rejoicing in the way that he recognized rejoicing.

For him, rejoicing looked different, and he thought that we were just all a

bit miserable when it comes to worshiping God.

But in some cultures, in some places, rejoicing is, someone is extraordinarily

happy if you can just get a vague, you know, a slight smile on their face.

Some cultures rejoice differently, celebrate a little differently, and that's okay.

But we would love the rejoicing that we have in God so that if someone came

in from outside, they would go, oh, these guys are rejoicing.

They're genuinely happy.

Why so? because we know that we've got so many reasons to rejoice in a God who is joyful.

So there is a little bit of context. There's a little bit of differences and that's okay.

But let's make our rejoicing genuinely a genuine celebration.

Because Peter goes on to say this. He says, you're a chosen people.

You're a royal priesthood. It's who the Christians are.

The church is God's special possession. Do you have a special possession?

Maybe you did as a child, something that would go with you everywhere,

something that, you know, this is the thing you would rush in to get if your

house was on fire, this is your special possession, the thing that you treasure most.

The church is God's special possession.

And because we're a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation,

and God's special possession,

it's so that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness

into his wonderful light.

God holds open to us and to you right now the possibility, the potential of

a life lived in joy with him.

Now and forever.

In blessed union with a joyful God who as we sing to him sings over us.

His joy in us and our joy full.

So just in a moment, we're going to take communion and then we'll rejoice because

it's through what this symbolizes that the joy that God offers us is made possible.

It's through the narrow way it's through the door of Christ this is how we access

it this is how we come to it we come to it through Jesus,

Jesus died for us taking our sins and our sorrows and our shame upon himself

and brings to us his life We hope that this sermon has encouraged you.

If you'd like to learn more about us, visit us online at gracechurch.se.

Thanks for listening.