The Advent of Joy

This morning we're looking at the advent of joy, and we're looking at it from the Gospel of Luke, where we're seeing Jesus presented in the temple, and Joseph and Mary are coming to make this sacrifice for this ceremonial cleansing and atonement of sin for Mary.

But as we look at this thing called joy, what I'm gonna hopefully uh try to help us understand is that we confuse joy for other counterfeits in life.

And joy is, if we were gonna try and, if I was gonna try and work to define what joy is, I would define it in this way: uh joy is longing fulfilled.

Joy is longing fulfilled.

You see, you and I, we all long for something.

It's a natural propensity of our human heart.

Uh made in the image of God and to reflect Him, uh, we are to, we kind of have this reality where, think of it this way, it's almost as if there are these fragments of Eden that exist within our memory.

Uh being born of Adam and Eve, our first parents, right?

And coming down the lineage of these.

There's almost as if there's something within us where these fragmented realities of what once was, how God intended things to be, exist within our very being.

And then what happens?

Our heart longs for something different.

You see, our hearts wouldn't long for anything better or different if we didn't have some sense within us that things shouldn't be the way that they are.

But the problem is we don't long for the right things.

We don't really understand in our sin and fallenness, living in this cursed world that we live in, uh, what we long for often even itself falls short of the fullness of all that God wants for us.

We actually don't long for Eden, we long for something even less than.

I love this quote by C.S.

Lewis.

He was uh best known for authoring the Chronicles of Narnia, but he wrote a book called Surprise by Joy.

Uh joy, it's kind of like a double uh meaning in that his wife's name was Joy, who he didn't ever intend to marry, but he did and loved her deeply.

But then also it's a reality of what joy does to our human hearts.

And he says this in the book.

He says, All joy reminds.

It's never a possession, it's always a desire for something longer ago or further away or still about to be.

Joy is the fulfillment of longing.

You see, often our hearts lead us to place our hope in the wrong things and long for the wrong things.

I want to kind of bring us to this realization of the synergy of these two realities.

Uh what we uh long for, we tend to, it tends to dictate what we put our hope in, right?

So what our souls and hearts long for will lead us to putting our hope in the very things we think will obtain that for us.

And you can see all the different ways in our life where we long for companionship, we long for prosperity, we long for health, we we long for a safer, more peaceful nation.

We long for, so then what happens?

Our hope gets put in the very things that we think will help us obtain that.

And then we think that when we obtain those things, we'll find joy.

But we sell ourselves and the work of God extravagantly short when we do that.

We see, this is the danger of longing for the wrong things.

We may actually obtain them.

The danger of longing for the wrong things is the danger that you might actually obtain it.

And most of the way that God uh uh curses us, most of the ways that God expresses his condemnation of us, is not to make our lives a living hell, but to make our lives a false heaven.

To give us the very things that we want, even though they're not him himself.

This is the story of Israel.

This is the story of the scriptures of God's people.

Constantly they rebelled against what he desired for his people, what he was handing out to them as blessing, and they said, No, God, we don't want that, we want this.

And God, in judgment, gave them that very thing.

You see, when we do obtain what we wrongfully long for, we experience joy's great impostor, happiness.

Joy's great counterfeit.

And we find it to be quickly fleeting from our grasp.

But in this story, in Luke, we're introduced to these two characters, Simeon and Anna.

And there's a reality about these characters in the Gospel of Luke that we have to try to work to understand.

They obtained joy.

Both Simeon and Anna were two people who longed for the Messiah, the one who would come, the one who would bring salvation to God's people, the one that was promised from long ago.

There was a longing in Simeon's heart, there was a longing in Anna's heart, and by God's grace and by the power of the Spirit, it was set upon the right thing, the salvation of Israel.

It says about Simeon that he longed for the consolation of Israel.

That word consolation means comfort.

And when Simeon and Anna gazed upon the face of the infant Jesus, longing was fulfilled, and joy was obtained.

You see, what they hoped in and what they longed for had finally come.

In the Christmas hymn, Come Thou Long Expected Jesus, there's a simple phrase in there, but it's talking about Jesus himself.

It says, He is the joy of every longing heart.

As we approach this text, we're gonna look at verses 22 through 35.

This is kind of Simeon's narrative where we're introduced to him.

And what we're gonna find in this passage is that joy is born of the Spirit and proclaims his praise.

Joy is born of the Spirit and it proclaims his praise.

If we're gonna set the scene here in this narrative gospel where Jesus is being brought to the temple, he's only about uh a little over a week old.

And it's custom according to the law that the first male who's born of the woman uh is to be consecrated, established as holy, and then the woman has to actually create this uh this ceremonial cleansing and atonement for sin by bringing to the temple this sacrifice.

So imagine Jesus is uh just over a week old.

Mary and Joseph herself born to uh are believed to be historically around 15 years old at this time.

Uh she's probably still recovering from the labor and birth that she had, and she's going up to the temple, and Joseph has these two birds in his hand.

Two turtle doves or two pigeons was what was necessary for this ceremony of cleansing and toning for sin.

But the reality is that was only supplemental to what God actually desired or demanded for this offering.

You see, in the Levitical law, what was actually offered or demanded for this offering was a lamb and a bird, a turtled or a pigeon.

But then it makes supplement or it makes a caveat for those who were too poor to be able to uh uh obtain for themselves a lamb.

Then they could actually bring two turtle doves or two pigeons to make this ceremonial sacrifice.

Uh so young, just gave birth, dirt poor, two birds in hand, trying to just be obedient to the law, and this man of age named Simeon comes out to greet them.

But look at how the Bible talks about Simeon.

Three different times it mentions the Spirit's work inside of Simeon's life.

It says that Simeon was a man uh who had received a promise by the Spirit.

It says that he was a man uh who the Holy Spirit was upon.

And then it said that when he had walked into the temple that day, he had walked into the temple in the Spirit.

Luke is mentioning this because the Spirit himself has inspired him to write this text, but there's a reason that they're using this language so frequently, describing Simeon in the way that he walked in his life, because joy is actually only born out of the spirit.

You see, that's God's grace gift to us by the Spirit that our hearts would be turned properly to longing for the right things.

You see, Simeon didn't long for the right things because he was a better person than the rest of Israel.

Simeon longed for the right things because the spirit had turned his heart to point in that direction.

Simeon was a man of the spirit.

Says he was righteous and devout.

And the spirit gave Simeon a promise.

It says this, that it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ.

And so Simeon was a man longing for this revelation of the Messiah, the comforting of God's people.

Even in the text, it says that Simeon longed for the consolation of Israel.

This is pointing back to a prophecy, a promise about the Messiah when he would come.

If we look at Isaiah 40, verse 1, speaking of the Christ who would come, it says, Comfort, comfort my people, says your God.

Isaiah 40:1

This is what Simeon was longing for: the Messiah who would come.

And when Simeon first met Jesus, the comfort of Israel, he was coming into the temple in the Spirit, and you can imagine the joy that he just must have known at that moment.

Imagine the joy.

Look at what he responds with.

I love it here in verse 29.

Lord, now you are letting your servant depart in peace.

He was of old age.

He knew that his time was come, but the spirit had promised, you're not going to die until you actually gaze upon the face of the Messiah.

And then as the Messiah comes forward, a man in the spirit, imagine Simeon without the Spirit, would not have recognized, would not have known, would not have been aware that this was the Messiah who was coming before him.

But a man in the spirit sees this newborn babe coming forward and he says, Now, now I can depart in peace because your promise has been fulfilled.

You see, the spirit is always a gift and a gift giver.

The spirit is always a gift and a gift giver.

The spirit was a gift into Simeon's life.

And he was a gift giver in that he gave promises to Simeon, and that he directed his heart to long for the right things, and that he established him in his uh righteousness and obedience.

Uh, the spirit was alive and working in the life of Simeon.

Joy is not something worked up through our own efforts, but it's given to us freely by the Spirit.

If we look at Galatians 5, 22 through 23, we see this reality.

It says this, but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control against such things.

There is no law.

Joy is a fruit.

Joy is a necessary implication of the spirit in you.

It's not a fleeting thing.

It's not something that comes and goes.

It is established on the branches of your life as the Spirit is doing work in you.

To be a person filled with the Spirit means that all of these things flow from it.

Gentleness, kindness, patience, love, faithfulness, but joy also.

You see, joy is not born out of our circumstances.

Joy is not born out of our haves.

It is not jeopardized by our have-nots.

It is born only by the Spirit.

And when joy is born in us, praise is proclaimed from us.

When joy is born in us, praise is proclaimed from us.

Simeon begins to proclaim praise after beholding the infant Jesus.

He says here in 30, for my eyes have seen your salvation.

That you have prepared in the presence of all peoples a light for revelation to the Gentiles and for glory to your people Israel.

He says, I have seen what?

Your salvation.

That's the longing of God's people's hearts.

The true longing of God's people's hearts is to know salvation, to know the salvation of the Lord.

And Simeon says, I've seen it with my own eyes.

It's been prepared in the presence of all people.

It's for all the nations, all the people of the earth to see and know that Christ is the Messiah.

He's a light for revelation to the Gentiles.

He's a glory to your people.

You see, what Simeon's helping us understand is that joy leads us into gratitude and gladness.

Joy leads us into gratitude and gladness.

When our lives are full of joy, out of the fountain of the heart flows gratitude and gladness.

But when our lives aren't filled with joy, and the fountain of our heart has this mucky water, this toxicity that flows out of it, what are we going to do?

We're going to complain and gripe.

We're not going to be grateful.

We're not going to be people who just lavish God with praise for all that he's done.

We're going to find an infinite amount of ways to complain and murmur and grumble, like the people of Israel wandering through the desert.

Has God just forsaken us?

Has he just left us here to die?

We should go back to Egypt.

It was better there.

At least we had homes, at least we had food, at least we had all these things.

You see, joy leads us into gratitude and gladness.

The absence of it will lead us into murmuring, grumbling, and complaining.

In verses 36 through 38, we're introduced to this prophetess named Anna.

And what we see in this text is that joy hopes in and longs for his promises.

Joy hopes in and longs for his promises.

This is uh uh Anna's this woman of old age.

Uh some historians would kind of place her somewhere actually in her hundreds if you kind of do the math on her life.

Uh, but uh nevertheless, however old she actually was, she was a woman of very old age, and she's in the temple uh praying and fasting, waiting for the Messiah to come.

And the beauty of when she sees Jesus is that she it says here in the last verse in 38, and coming at that very hour, she began to give thanks to God and to speak of him to all who were waiting for the redemption of Israel.

This longing that was in the hearts of people, this longing that was in the heart of Anna.

She was wanting to see the Messiah come.

And so, where did Anna put her hope?

She put her hope in the promises of God.

Being this devout person who is in the temple, fasting and praying, a prophetess of God's people.

She was putting her hope in the promises of God because her longing for was after the right thing, the salvation, the redemption of Jerusalem.

One thing that we have to understand about ourselves and our own temptations is that if our hope is in something that will fail us, we will inevitably lose our joy.

If our hope is in something that will fail us, we will inevitably lose our joy.

You see, this is a problem with our hearts longing after the wrong things.

When our hearts long after the wrong things, they are the ones leading the march toward these false hopes that will obtain that for us.

And any time that we put our hope in something that will fail us, give it any moment in time, inevitably it will cost you your joy.

You think that your hope is in your kids, right?

And then they just act like jerks, right?

You're just your joy is robbed, like this failed me.

I thought they were gonna be this unconditional love that would be given to me and that would always be reciprocated, and that would always be this aspect of my life.

No, no, no, they're not, right?

And then joy is taken from us.

Or in your spouse in companionship.

You thought, oh, if only I had a companion and I was able to uh be able to be in love and have fellowship and companionship with another human being.

Well, when they fail you, your joy is jeopardized, inevitably lost.

In that salary, in that job, in that house, in that neighborhood, in whatever it might be, in these things that our hearts long for wrongly causes us to place our hopes in wrong things, and then inevitably when they fail us, we lose our joy.

It is only actually in longing for the redemption of God's people through the salvation of Jesus, might our joy never be jeopardized.

Might our joy never be taken from us, because his promises are yes and amen, and the fulfilling work of Christ is finished forever.

You see, happiness in of itself, joy is great imposter and counterfeit.

It doesn't long for anything.

Happiness fundamentally is fabricated by instant experiences.

When we want something, we want it now, and that creates this shock of happiness, this moment of pleasure, right?

There's this cheapness in happiness.

We might long for short periods of time for something, but inevitably we obtain it, and it's this momentary experience, this instant gratification that happiness is born, and then it quickly loses its luster.

Everything that shined and sparkled about that, obtaining that thing to create happiness flees from our very presence so quickly.

We don't want happiness.

We want joy, but we trick ourselves into believing that one can replace the other.

And it is only joy that will sustain us for all eternity.

And joy alone breaks in by salvation through Jesus.

This is our main idea.

Joy breaks in by salvation through Jesus.

Jesus comes to bring salvation to his people.

That seems so simple, right?

When we kind of navigate that statement, that seems so simple.

But if we're honest with ourselves, our hearts are not satisfied in that simplistic statement.

We think we want more.

Jesus says, I gave you everything.

If we look at Simeon and Anna, what were they longing for?

It was the salvation of Israel, the redemption of God's people, only being able to be realized and fulfilled in the finished work of Jesus.

And so Jesus breaks in with the advent of joy.

How does he do that for us?

Because he fulfills every single promise of the Father by bringing full and total salvation to his people.

That is where the source and root of joy comes into play.

And we can only experience that reality by the Spirit of God filling us, being in In us, dwelling within us, to allow us to put our faith and hope in that very thing.

Jesus bringing salvation to his people.

Even in his very name, when the angels said to Mary and Joseph, this is what you call him.

You will call his name Jesus, Yeshua.

This means God who saves.

In his very name, he's trying to help us understand.

I'm going to bring joy to the nations, joy to the world.

And how does that come?

By salvation.

You see, it's in salvation that we're able to know and have joy, and in salvation alone.

1 Peter 1, 8 through 9 says this.

Peter the Apostle writing to the exiles, he's saying, says this, though you have not seen him, speaking of Jesus, you love him.

And even though you do not see him now, you believe in him.

And then look what Peter says.

And are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy.

For you are receiving the end result of your faith, what?

The salvation of your souls.

Joy does not come in what you have or what you don't have.

Joy does not come in the circumstances that you find yourself in life.

Joy is there because salvation has been received.

In the Christmas song, Joy has dawned upon the world.

It says, Joy has dawned upon the world, promised from creation.

God's salvation now unfurled, hope for every nation.

You see those aspects of joy, longing, and hope in that Christmas song?

Joy has dawned upon the world, promise from creation.

That's that longing peace.

In Genesis 3.15, we see the proto-evangelion.

Well, it's a theological term meaning the first proto-gospel evangelion.

The proto-evangelion of Genesis 3.15 is God Himself stepping into the experience of mankind and the fallenness of their sin.

And he says, Look, I'm going to fix this.

And the way that I'm going to fix this is that even though the serpent came and tempted you to bite from the fruit of the knowledge of the tree and good and evil, I'm going to send the seed out of this woman who will come and he will crush the very head of this deceiver serpent who has tempted you.

He, though you will bruise his heel, he will crush your head, devil.

Promise from creation.

God's salvation is now unfurled.

It's the hope for every nation.

We sing these Christmas songs, not just to feel good about traditions and little little things that we like to find warm, fuzzy feelings in at this time of year.

This is not just a Christmas song.

This is a reality of every man who has put their hope in Christ.

Joy is only known and seen through salvation in Jesus.

But our story is that we often mistake happiness for joy.

Some of us we mistake happiness for joy.

When you think about happiness, it's so simplistic.

Happiness is so singular.

It has no depth or weight to it.

It's so instantaneous and flees from us so fast.

It's one-sided.

I'm happy now and then I'm not.

I got what I wanted, and then I got happy, and then you're not even happy with that thing after like a X amount of time.

Look at children receiving toys at Christmas.

They're the worst, aren't they?

We've been doing this kind of like five-year study on our kids.

And uh it's grueling research.

But uh here's here's what we've understood.

Here's what we've understood.

If you, if just just six months later, potentially, or or maybe a little longer, you hold up a toy a child got from Christmas and you say, Hey, who got you this?

They are so uh troubled to answer that question right.

Uh uh Aunt uh Aunt So-and-so?

Uh no, nope, they didn't get it for you.

Oh, no, no, that was, you know, and they'll kind of go down the list.

They can't even remember who bought them the gift.

And oftentimes, how many times have you experienced like a little kid?

You get them the gift and then they end up playing with the box that came in?

Right?

Like, like I could have just done that.

I mean, that's kind of like an old saying, we all know that that's true, but it reflects the reality of what happiness actually is.

We think that this is gonna provide happiness for them, then they're not even happy in the very thing we thought was bringing them happiness, and then the thing that we spent so much time and money on getting for them to open and wrap, they can't even remember we gave it to them three to six months later.

But let me ask you this.

What was that thing you really wanted?

What was that thing you really longed for?

And now how are things you now that you've obtained it?

All of us in this room have had something we really wanted, something we really longed for.

Think back to that last thing.

And now, how is your demeanor, your disposition, your posture toward it now that you've obtained it?

I'm a dude who loves to buy stuff because I love new things.

There's like this weird dopamine dump when something arrives at my door because I ordered it and it's mine.

But then, like, I don't why you do you know why I like to order new things?

Because I'm not satisfied with the last thing that showed up at my doorstep.

The reason I thought that that was gonna make me happy, the reason that I thought that that was gonna do something for me, now has to be reinvigorated by something else because it lost its power that I thought it was gonna have.

And that might not just be with stuff, that might be with people, that might be with success, promotion, power, grades, accomplishment.

But see, joy, unlike happiness, it's not simplistic, it's complex.

Joy is dimensional.

And here's one of the things I love about joy it can coexist in the midst of other emotions.

Because joy in itself is not an emotion.

Joy is a fruit of the spirit.

Let's look at the person of Jesus, right, for a moment.

Would you say Jesus was a man full of the spirit?

If you say no, just walk out with your head down.

No.

We got some theological classes we're we're launching in just a couple weeks.

Uh, but uh no, Jesus was a man full of the spirit.

Jesus perfectly bore the fruit of the spirit in every aspect: love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, kindness, gentleness, self-control.

There wasn't any aspect of the fruit of the spirit that Jesus did not bear in full in his life.

But yet he wept.

He wept at the loss of his friend Lazarus.

He he he was agonized in the Garden of Gethsemane as he was pleading with the Father, if there's any other way, make it happen.

But nonetheless, not my will, but your will be done as drops of blood poured from his forehead, or uh uh like uh sweat poured from his forehead like drops of blood, the Bible says.

Jesus was frustrated.

He was really frustrated with his followers.

He was frustrated in the ways that they didn't get it.

They didn't understand what the kingdom was, they didn't understand the teachings that he was saying.

It wasn't clicking yet about who he was and what he had come to do.

Jesus was not just frustrated, he was angry when he fashioned a cord uh of ropes like a whip and turned over the money changer's tables in the temple because they had turned his father's house of prayer into a den of thieves.

Jesus was happy.

Jesus was happy a lot of the time.

But in the midst of all those different emotions, frustrated, mad, happy, sad, joy never left him.

And the problem is we mistake happiness for joy.

Happiness is just a counterfeit, it's just an imposter, it's a cheap substitute, and our hearts keep going after happiness instead of allowing ourselves to be rooted in joy by realizing the beauty that the longing of the salvation of us is known and realized fully in the finished work of Jesus.

That's how we can have joy in the midst of any circumstance that we face in life.

Whether God blesses you or he slays you, joy can be known.

Whether God gives you everything that you've ever desired, or he keeps it from you, is not because he loves you or doesn't love you.

And in the midst of that, we can still have joy because our joy will not be determined on this world.

Our joy will be determined on him.

Some of us, though, we also confuse the blessing of God.

We confuse the blessing of God.

The blessing of God is not in his stuff, it's in his salvation.

The blessing of God is not in his stuff, it's in his salvation.

There's a reality where God promises for his people no more sickness, no more death, no more tears, no more pain.

There's a reality of that, but we have to understand that we live in that already, not yet.

That has been fully accomplished by Jesus, but we don't realize its fullness until glory.

And by God's grace and mercy, you and I are gonna get tastes of morsels of that.

We're gonna allow, God's gonna allow us by his good grace to taste and see the goodness of his hand.

But it's not promised to us in full here and now.

The fullness of the work of the atoning, uh sacrifice of Christ, where sickness will be removed from us, where death will be removed from us, is in glory.

Or if the Lord lingers or tarries, what is that old King James word?

I haven't read that in a while.

If we get to see his second coming, then it will come then.

When he establishes the new heaven and the new earth, then the fullness of his atoning work will be realized in his people.

Here we may be graced to taste and see, but we won't have the fullness here and now.

But so many times what we do is we mistake the blessing of God for his stuff rather than his salvation.

And we get frustrated with God.

If we're honest, we get frustrated with him because he doesn't give us our stuff.

His stuff.

We treat him like some type of giant cosmic claw machine where we can pump in a few prayers and Bible study uh uh passages, and then we can move that claw to pick up the thing that we want to drop it to us.

And God says, No, it's me, it's not my stuff, it's me that I'm giving to you.

The fulfillment of all your longing and pleasure and desire, it's me, it's not in my stuff, and I give it to you through my son and the salvation of your soul.

Often our joy is lost because we confuse the stuff of God for the blessing of God.

No matter what he does in our life, he is good.

This is a promise we have, and it's an overstated statement, right?

We we we will hear it time and time again that God works all things for good for those who love him.

That's such a good verse because it summarizes the way in which God engages with his people.

If you love him, if you are his, he is never gonna do anything that's for your bad, for your detriment.

Uh there's a uh author, uh a Puritan author who wrote the book, The Bruised Reed.

And I'm gonna paraphrase this, but he was talking about the suffering and hardships of his life that he experienced.

He said, the way that I engage with this is to ask this question.

You see, he didn't look at the hardships of his life as something God was disciplining him with in a way that was like abusive or a way that was being a bully, a cosmic bully or mean.

He was seeing it as God's grace to say, no, look away from that and look to me.

That thing you think is gonna satisfy, that thing you think is gonna bring you joy, set your eyes off of it and set your eyes upon me, the fullness of the joy of my salvation.

It's understandable why so many of us walk around without joy because we're stumbling around in the dark looking for happiness.

What if we were a people with extreme joy, radical joy, that nothing could jeopardize, that nothing could take from us, that nothing could rob us of that fruit of the Spirit.

It's a labor on our end to constantly set our hearts toward longing for the right things, so that our hope can be in the right things, and so that our joy might be obtained.

Because all of that is in the salvation of God's people through the finished work of Jesus.

We walk around, though, as people of sorrow.

We walk around as people with our heads down and our brows dropped because it's hard.

Life is hard and difficult.

But the beauty of the gospel is that Jesus was pierced with that sorrow that we might be filled with joy.

Jesus was pierced with sorrow that we might be filled with joy.

This is good news for us.

Jesus in his flesh was pierced through with antagonizing sorrow.

Not even just in the physical reality of the nails going through his hand and hands and feet, or the spear which would pierce his side.

But he was, his very soul was pierced through with sorrow as he cried out from the cross, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

You see, joy comes in God giving us himself.

We can only have him through the finished work of Christ.

Through his substitutionary death on the cross, we can have him instead of having his curse, instead of having his condemnation, instead of having his judgment.

We can have his blessing, we can have his very salvation.

And Jesus went through that that our joy might be filled.

That's good news for us.

We don't have to be a people who walk around in such a depressed state.

I'm not talking about emotions.

You have the freedom to feel the emotions that you feel, but that should never jeopardize the reality of your joy.

Because joy can coexist in the midst of complex emotions that we face and feel in this life.

It doesn't have to be stolen from us, it doesn't have to be robbed from us.

But what we do is we set joy aside because we think that the emotion, the false substitute of happiness, is going to actually acquire something for us.

And then when we don't get it, you see our response.

You see the way that we engage, you see the way that our demeanor holds.

I mean, just look at our language in any given day.

How much is it based on false longings and false hopes?

I mean, genuinely, when we talk about, oh man, if I if if this supervisor would just, you know, move to a different department.

Oh, if I could just get this uh promotion within this company, oh, if I could just get uh better scores on my tests, oh, if I could just get that bonus that I was hoping for, oh, if I could, if I could, if I could.

What is that?

That's that's just the honesty of your heart.

Revealing to us that we long for the wrong things, so we put our hope in the wrong things.

And then we wonder why we don't have joy.

Who cares whether you get what you want?

Who cares whether we get the things that this world offers us?

Who cares if everything about your life comes burning to ashes like Job himself, though you slay me still while I praise your name?

Job had everything taken from him.

His wife mocked him, said, You might as well just curse God and die.

His children's lives were taken, his livelihood was taken from him, everything was brought to rubble, and he sat there in a pile of ashes and sackcloth.

But he looked at God and said, If you take everything from me, that doesn't matter.

I'm still gonna praise your name.

You see, that's a person full of joy.

That's a person who's seen the salvation of the Lord, who fears him and knows him.

Our hope this morning is that you see the reality of what Jesus has accomplished for you.

He hasn't come to give you cool stuff.

It's not that just when you believe in Jesus, you start living that blessed life where you get everything you ever wanted.

It's not that when you come to Jesus, life is just gonna be this easy road that you go on.

No, it's that when you come to Jesus, you'll be filled with the Spirit, you'll know the fullness of the salvation of God, and your joy is full.

Not lacking, not partial, not empty, not out of your reach.

Your joy is full.

And so, what do we need to do in response to this?

Number one, we need to be people, uh we need to be filled with the Spirit.

We need to be filled with the Spirit.

You want joy in your life?

Stop drinking from dirty fountains and broken cisterns.

Why do you keep going back to toxic waterways and expecting joy to be prominent in your life?

Drink of the fountain that is the Spirit.

You know what Anna was doing?

She was looking back at God's promises.

You know what that means?

It means reading God's word and understanding every single promise that he's ever made to his people.

To be feasting on the promises of God.

To be filled with the Spirit means to be in prayer and in fellowshipping with him and communing with him, uh, to be pursuing his gifts in your life, to have him prominent in every single aspect.

I I started uh working out, if you guys can't tell.

I wore a little bit baggier of a shirt today because I wasn't allowed to wear Christmas jammies, according to our elders.

It's another conversation.

But uh, but um I did this uh uh focused cool down.

I don't even know what the heck that means.

But you're supposed to like be mindful of your breathing.

And I said, you know what I'm gonna do in this five-minute weird hippie stuff?

I am going to just be thankful for God.

And so I just started thanking God for my wife.

I started thanking God for my children, I started thanking God for each and every single one of you, some by name.

I was thanking God for the gifts that he had given me.

And it was so an awesome time of just reflecting on God and what he's done for us.

I mean, how many times are we filled with gratitude and gladness for the things that God has given us?

I could have sat there in the middle of that.

I was in so much pain.

I haven't worked out half of those body parts in a decade, right?

I could have been there just like focusing on, oh Lord, this is horrible.

I don't ever want to do this again.

This is rough on me.

My back hurts.

My behind hurts.

My feet hurt.

Every single part of me hurts.

I was rowing.

That's why my hard seat.

Anyway.

But this isn't, hey, Justin's more spiritual than you.

It was in that moment, the Spirit just graced me to be filled with gratitude and gladness.

Thanking him.

But I want to confess this to you.

I've drunk from those dirty wells too many times.

This isn't something that I do every day, you know, just full of gratitude.

Like I complain a lot.

I grumble and murmur a lot.

And you know why that is?

Because I look at not the bee too much and all the crazy stories that they post on there.

Some weird news feed, if you haven't known what that is.

It's a news feed.

I look at that too much and I think this whole world's falling apart.

What's going on here in our society?

I look at things that are put out in our school systems, and I think, what's going on with our society?

I look at things that's happening in culture, and I think, what's going on?

What's wrong?

And I have often so much opportunity to murmur and grumble and complain.

You know what that doesn't feed me with?

Jesus is King.

His kingdom will never end.

He has conquered death, hell, and the grave.

There is nothing that can thwart his plans for you and I.

There is no enemy that can defeat us, yet we are the ones who press back the very gates of hell by the power of the Spirit in us.

There is nothing this world can do to me that can ever take what from me?

Joy.

When I drink from those broken cisterns, when I drink from those dirty wells, I'm not reminded of that truth.

Then I wonder why I'm just frustrated constantly or why I grumble and murmur constantly.

Why do I not be filled with gratitude and gladness?

Because I'm not drinking from the Spirit of God.

So, church, we have to be people who are filled with the Spirit.

Secondly, let's stir up hope in one another.

Let's stir up hope in one another.

This is something that we can do in community together.

When we're in community together, are we working to try and fix each other's gaze back on the hope of Christ that we should have?

Are we people who stir up hope in one another by proclaiming God's promises to each other, by praying for one another, by reading God's word to one another?

Are we just sitting there, yeah, man, that's horrible.

Yeah, that that's really bad.

Oh man, I can't believe it either.

What does this world come to?

Oh my goodness, you're so right.

I don't think that the I don't think the next 10 years is gonna look good.

What the mess.

Are we Christians?

Are we people whose Savior is no longer in the tomb, but ascended to the right hand of the Father, where the earth is his footstool?

Has he not proven to us yet that he is the fulfiller of all the promises that he makes to his people?

Do we stir up hope in one another?

Or do we just sympathize with sadness?

Do we firm each other that Jesus isn't in control, he's not on the throne, he's not gonna pull through with what he said he would pull through to do.

I mean, really, if we're honest with ourselves, that's kind of how we operate, don't we?

When we ponder on those things, when we harp on those things, when we don't allow our conversations to be stirred off of those things, we act as if people who don't believe God.

It's really as simple but as extremely difficult as that.

So we have to be a people committed to stirring up hope in one another.

Lastly, let your joy be proclaimed.

What you're most excited about, you'll talk about.

It's as simple as that.

Some of y'all love UFC, you talk about it every single time you come in these doors.

Some of you love really good coffee or good beer, you talk about it all the time when I'm hanging out with you.

Some of you love politics, you talk about it all the time when we're hanging out.

Some of you love uh uh whatever, right?

Insert smoking meats, then that's what we're gonna be talking about.

Different smoking meat methods that we can have.

What we find this sense of, this imposter of joy, happiness in, what we'll start to talk about.

Because we it's it's it's just inevitable for our reality.

Uh of what fills our hearts comes out.

The heart is the fountain of the individual.

Whatever it is filled up with comes out of your mouth in proclamation.

That is the truth of who we are as people.

We can't we we can't change that.

The only thing we can do is dictate what our hearts are filled with.

And it's and it's a reality where I just I've spent way more time figuring out what kind of um stinking dry rub to use on a pork butt than I have reading God's promises.

Putting memory to uh putting scripture to memory, praying.

You know how many times, you know how lost you can get on YouTube?

It is insanity.

Right?

And everybody's got their different techniques.

You use a mop for the sauce, you don't use any sauce, all these, right?

You just get lost in it.

And then that fills my heart, and then I'll start talking about it all the time.

Well, I can dictate that.

I can dictate what fills my heart so that it can be proclaimed.

And hopefully, what we will do is we will establish our hope in Christ who brings us what our hearts should truly long for, the salvation of our souls, that we might proclaim his praises.

It's almost like God gave us some divine formula.

You want joy?

Well, ask yourself, what are you longing for?

And then whatever you're longing for, that will dictate what you put your hope in.

And in the end, you'll either get joy or it's a cheap substitute.

Happiness.

Church, I want us to be a proclaiming church.

A church that proclaims the truth of the gospel to our city, our neighbors, our co-workers, our family and friends, be it people who are proclaimers of his praise, of his glorious goodness.

And I'm telling you right now, the only way that that's going to be true of us and who we are is if we start getting really committed to what we're filling our hearts with.

It's so easy to fill our hearts with the wrong things.

We have to be committed, disciplined.

There's another fruit of the Spirit, self-controlled, to fill our hearts with the good things of God that we might proclaim in gladness and gratitude the glories of his mercy and grace.

Amen.

Amen.

Let's pray.