Oil Of Joy

But tonight I wanted to encourage you on the subject of having the oil of joy, or oil of joy is our subject tonight, and so God showed me a few things about that, and I need to hear it too.

So let's learn about it together and receive not just head knowledge, but let's have experience Amen, with the oil of joy.

And so I'm going to start reading in Isaiah 61.

And I'm going to remind you, even though this is in the Old Testament, that Jesus, our Savior and our example in all things, he quoted this very passage of Scripture as he began his ministry on the earth.

And so it says this the spirit of the Lord, god, is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me Everybody say he's anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor.

He sent me to heal the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, the opening of the prison to those who are bound, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord and the day of the vengeance of our God.

And that's where Jesus, in Luke 4, he stops quoting it there.

He didn't get all the way through his message, but Isaiah continues the anointing is also upon us and on Jesus, and on us his body, to console those who mourn in Zion.

How many of you know there's some mourning in Zion and we're just speak peace to the people of Israel right now.

But beyond that, it says to give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garments of praise for the spirit of heaviness, that they may be called the trees of righteousness.

So I'm going to cherry pick out of that right there where it says the oil of joy, and that's what our subject is tonight the oil of joy, so rich.

You know, whenever we see oil in the Old Testament and really in the New Testament, it is a symbol of the working of the Holy Spirit and and of course, joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit.

If you look up in Galatians 5, what are the fruits of the Spirit?

How can we know that someone is truly filled with the Holy Spirit and controlled by the Holy Spirit, where they're going to have love, joy and peace and some other stuff.

But joy is listed right behind love.

It's very important, it is a key feature of a believer, and someone who is vibrant and filled with the Holy Spirit is going to have their anointed with joy.

And even Jesus in Psalm 24, it says that he was anointed with the oil of gladness, above his fellows, so of all the people who were excited and glad, and the Lord Jesus was even above them and he was anointed with that.

And why did he have to be anointed with such joy?

Why do we need to care about having joy and maintaining our joy?

Well, I mean, think about the call of God on Jesus's life.

The entire, our entire future of redemption rested upon him and whether or not he was going to obey the call of God on his life.

And and Neyham says that the joy of the Lord is our strength.

So he had.

He needed some strength, amen.

And we need strength, we need joy in our lives, working so that we can accomplish the high call of God on our lives.

You know, god calls us to do things that are big, bigger than we can imagine, bigger than we can accomplish on our own, and so joy makes like it is an anesthesia for so many things in this world.

In this world, we, how tribulation, be of good cheer.

Jesus said so joy is our and anesthesia against those things.

So it's a symbol of the Holy Spirit.

Oil is a symbol of the Holy Spirit.

Joy is a fruit of the Spirit and in Psalm 104, it says God gives you oil to make your face shine.

Oil of joy will make our face shine and we wanna shine as lights in this dark world.

So actually, if we study the book of Exodus and we're not gonna study tonight, I'm just encouraging y'all but I'm gonna give you some references.

If you wanna study it, you can go back in and dig in deep.

But Exodus 27 is talking about the workings of the Tabernacle.

The Tabernacle was the tent that they picked, that the children of Israel, god's people, would carry along with them as they wandered in the wilderness toward the Promised Land that God had promised them.

And they were wandering in the wilderness but they needed a place of worship.

So they had the Tabernacle.

It was a tent that they would set up where they had the presence of God, all cordoned off behind a veil.

And then they had an outer court where they were able to worship together, in unity with each other.

And in that outer court there was a lamp stand made of gold.

And it says in Exodus 27, 20, you shall command the children of Israel.

This is God talking to Moses.

He said you will command the children of Israel that they bring you pure oil, say pure oil of pressed olives for the light to cause the lamp to burn continually.

In the Tabernacle of meeting, outside the veil, which is before the testimony, aaron and his son shall tend it from evening until morning, before the Lord.

So, in other words, somebody's job was to be there all the time and make sure that that lamp never, never went out.

Whatever was happening, whether it was bright outside, whether it was dark, whether it was sunny, whether it was raining or shining, whether Israel was having a skirmish outside with the people of the land, or whether they were at peace, whether they were hungry or whether they were full, there was a lamp burning in the presence of God.

There was a lamp for the people of God to worship.

There was light for them.

And so you hear a lot about today, you hear a lot of people just really worried about burnout.

Oh, I'm just and they'll say that I'm so burnt out.

I just feel burnt out, and so that's why I've wanted to focus on the oil of joy today, because I don't want you to feel burnt out.

God doesn't want you to feel burnout.

He wants you to burn brightly for him and for your oil to never run out.

And how can we have that?

But well, because the oil of joy has to be renewed in us all the time.

We've got to have pure oil of pressed olives all the time, and so in a minute we're going to talk about how to get that.

So they had to have it for their worship, but we also need it just in our daily lives.

In Proverbs 31, how many of you know that?

That is the great chapter of the Bible that women of all ages have looked to as an example of godly womanhood, the Proverbs 31 woman.

And in verse 18, I'll go back to 17.

It says she girds herself with strength and strengthens her arms.

She perceives that her merchandise is good and her lamp does not go out by night.

Her lamp doesn't go out, her lamp doesn't go out.

She's got an oil of joy burning brightly in her and she's not going to be extinguished by any external circumstance.

And so that's what I want to.

And you know, proverbs 31, yes, it's an example of fine womanhood and everything, but I believe it's also an allegory for the end days church, the church of the living God.

Right now on the earth.

We are the bride of Christ, so we are supposed to exemplify all of us, whether you're a man or woman, we've got to exemplify Proverbs 31.

I preached a message on that not long ago.

But our lamp cannot go out, no matter how dark it is out there.

We've got to have the church.

The church has to, and each one of us, the members of the church, have to have that bright, burning fire of the Holy Ghost on the inside of us.

That is that lamp to this dark world, and so I just wanted to encourage you about that tonight.

And there, of course, is a great example In Matthew 25, we'll go there.

This is the fearsome example of the people who lacked the oil when they needed it most, and so we're going to read that out of Matthew 25.

This is going to sound familiar to many of you, but there's something we can learn here.

It is, of course, the parable of the five wise and the five foolish virgins, and it starts in verse one.

Then the kingdom of heaven shall be likened to 10 virgins, so chaste women who were about to come to a wedding feast, and so they were friends of the bride.

They were probably friends with the groom and they were excited, and so they took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom.

Now five of them were wise and five were foolish.

So there was about 50, 50.

The fact that it says they were virgins makes me think that they were members of the family of God.

They were members of the church today.

And now five of them were wise, five were foolish.

Those who were foolish took their lamps and took no oil with them.

But the wise took oil in their vessels with their lamps.

But while the bridegroom was delayed, they all slumbered and slept.

And at midnight a cry was heard "'Behold, the bridegroom is coming to go out.

"'let's go out and meet him'.

And then all those virgins arose and trimmed their lamps.

And the foolish said to the wise "'Give us some of your oil, for our lamps are going out'".

But the wise answered saying "'No, lest we should not have enough for you and us.

"'so rather, go to those who sell and buy for yourselves'.

"'and while they went to buy, the bridegroom came, "'and those who were ready went in with him to the wedding.

"'and the door was shut'.

And afterwards the other virgins also came, saying "'Lord, lord, open to us'".

But he either said to them "'Surely, I say to you, I don't even know you'".

Probably couldn't recognize them for the darkness Watch, therefore, for you know neither the day nor the hour in which the Son of man is coming.

So I'm gonna paint a quick picture for you of this scene.

Of course, in Old Testament Jewish weddings, there was a two event process.

To marry someone, you would get betrothed.

First, you would become engaged, and there would be a covenant that would be written down between the two families of the bride and the groom.

And so they would decide.

They would come up under a wedding canopy together and decide on the bride price that was gonna be paid by the groom's family to the bride's family.

You see, because the bride was gonna be leaving her family and coming to move in with the groom's family, and the bride's family was gonna lose a big asset of all the work she could do around there, and so the groom would rightfully give the bride's price.

And that happened.

And then it would, and then, but meanwhile they weren't married yet, they just agreed to get married.

And now they were betrothed and it was like they were married by now.

They needed a divorce to separate, but they had not yet consummated the union, because the bride was still living with her parents and the groom was making ready a room in his father's house where the bride would come and join him.

Does that sound like the end days church?

We are betrothed to King Jesus and he is coming for us, and we don't know when that wedding party is gonna come and knock at the door.

And not even Jesus knows, because the groom wouldn't know.

The groom would be making a place, preparing a room, maybe on the backside of his daddy's house, and the dad, the father of the groom, had to approve or disapprove that wedding space.

He had to say, yes, son, you've done a good job.

I like this room.

You're now ready to go get your bride.

And so the groom didn't know whenever his dad would finally be satisfied with the room.

But when it all happened, finally the father would say go get your bride.

And then the wedding party would come to the bride's house and they would knock on the door.

And you didn't know the day or the hour, you didn't know when it was gonna be.

And so here were these virgins.

They were set apart, they were holy and pure, but they weren't prepared.

They did not have any oil in their lamp, and you see how hard they tried to get some and they begged to borrow it from other people.

And why didn't they have any?

How mean was it?

Of the other virgins?

No, they.

You know what oil is something.

Oil is something that Jesus freely gives you, but you have to get it for yourself from him.

You can't borrow it from anybody else.

You have to have a one-on-one revelation of the Holy Spirit working in your life.

You have to spend time with God.

You get to, because that's the way the oil is gonna come into your life.

And so I just noticed that you know we all have this job to do.

We're all trying to celebrate this wedding.

We don't know when it's gonna happen.

We don't know when Jesus is gonna call us up to the Father's house and there's gonna be a seven-day wedding feast and we're gonna live forever and rule and reign with him.

We don't know.

And until we trim our lamps and like at that time, I just noticed there's about half of them, about half of them.

They all have the same lamp, they all look the same.

You can't tell which one is prepared and which one isn't until midnight, boom.

And then you can see who's burning and who's not.

And I'm telling you, we are approaching midnight and we better be having our lamps ready.

We better have our oil and our lamps burning bright.

And the reason why is because they had a journey.

They were gonna have to travel in the darkness.

They were gonna have to light up their path to be able to see in the dark all the way to the groom's house, from the bride's house to the groom's house in the middle of the night.

They needed a lamp.

We need a lamp in this dark time and it occurred to me today when I was reading this.

You know we always say the scripture is wonderful.

Psalm 119, 20 says the thy word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path, and it is.

God leads us by His holy word.

It is awesome when we read it, but without the Holy Spirit to illuminate, to bring the fire on it, then it's just an empty lamp.

The word of God, while it is good, it is not going to light your path unless you have the fire of the Holy Ghost burning on the inside of it and in your life, working in your life actively all the time.

Don't let your oil run out.

So I hope I have shown you today how essential it is and now you're begging me clear.

How do I get the oil, though?

But how do I get the oil?

And so I just have four things.

How do we get that oil so that our lamp is burning in the last time in these last days?

And I would say number one is to just fully submit to the will of God, give it all to God, fully submit to Him.

And where do I get that?

Tie in scripture, and for that you're gonna have to go to Luke 22.

And you're gonna see that Jesus, on the Mount of Olives, of Olives, and in the Garden of Gethsemane.

Jesus prayed that prayer.

What did he pray?

It was the night before he was crucified, and he is in on the Mount where they're growing olives, and he is in Gethsemane, which means, literally, olive press, in other words, the oil, the olive oil that we're talking about tonight, pure, pressed oil.

Remember, it had to be pure, and pressed Oil was called the blood of the olives.

It was literally called the blood of the olive.

It was made by taking pure olives and crushing them, and here, in the site of where that all process took place, that is where Jesus, the olive of the fig tree, israel, is there praying in that garden, about to pay for our redemption with his blood.

And this is the down payment right here, because listen to what happened in verse 41.

He was withdrawn from them about a stone throw.

That was his disciples.

He had asked them hey, y'all stand over here, y'all pray for me.

I'm gonna go over here, I'm gonna pray.

And as he knelt down and prayed, saying Father, if it is your will, take this cup away from me.

Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done, not my will but yours be done.

The prayer of consecration.

It's an important prayer.

And then an angel appeared to him from heaven to strengthen him and, being in agony, he prayed more earnestly and then his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

So Jesus was pressed, he was stressed to the ultimate maximum of human understanding, human ability, knowing that his not only the pain and suffering that he was about to endure physically, but he knew that his father would have to turn away from him for that time when he bore the sin of mankind, and he was bearing the weight of that, it was beginning to come upon him.

The weight of my sin and your sin was beginning to come upon him and it caused him to sweat great drops of blood.

It was a down payment for our redemption.

And so for Jesus to pray that prayer, he had to submit to a will of God.

That was cruel.

It was the cruel, straight up justice of God that he had to submit to.

But when we submit to the will of God, when we submit to the will of God because Jesus already took the suffering angle of it, he took that away from us.

It was redemptive.

His agony, his tears in serving the will of God, those were redemptive so that we would not have that.

And in fact it's the opposite.

When we really submit to the will of God, god's will for us is good.

All his promises are yes and amen.

I know the thoughts I had and plans I have for you, says the Lord plans for good and not for evil.

To give you a future and a hope Jeremiah 33.3,.

To give you a future and a hope.

You have hope, you have entrance into the kingdom of God.

Jesus knew that his disciples were about to forsake him.

He knew that his friend Judas was about to kiss him kiss of death and betray him to the elders and chief priests.

He knew that he was about to be delivered up to the bulls of Baytian in Psalm 22.

It says he knew he was about to suffer.

But we know that we are accepted in the kingdom of God.

And so, by submitting to the will of God, that is where our joy truly comes from, where we are no longer fighting with God whose will is good for us and we say, oh no, god, we know better than that.

No, I want this, I want that, I want, I want, I want.

What does God want?

He knows his thoughts are higher than our thoughts, and so the beauty of it is, once we are just fully submitted, he'll show you, he will bring you, he will affect your whole understanding of his will if you'll pray, if you'll just trust him.

But go ahead and submit, give up that little grist that you've been holding against God.

Give it up.

It's worthless to you and it's holding up your oil of joy.

It's stopping up your oil.

Just go ahead and let and just crush your own olives, crush your own will and desires and let that oil flow out.

Is life a little bit hard right now?

Do you have a trial or temptation you're going for through?

Guess what?

You're just making more oil.

Your light's just gonna shine brighter for longer.

The devil tried to crush you, but it's just making pure pressed oil.

It's just gonna light your lamp and the devil has nothing on you.

Amen.

And so Jesus, even Jesus, for this process.

In Hebrews 12, it says we consider him.

We haven't yet strived to bloodshed, fighting against sin.

Hebrews 12 says because Jesus, for the joy that was set before him, he endured this.

He endured the cross.

For why?

For joy, for the joy that was set before him.

So if he could endure.

Even that joy makes us endure.

It gives us strength and endurance to get through any battle, and so we've got to have it as so important.

So how do we get it?

How do we get it?

How do we get it?

How do we get it?

Okay, well, we got number one we're submitting to the will of God.

It's just submitting, giving it up.

Number two this is important spend time in his presence, and that can be in your house.

Just praise and putting on praise music in your car, driving to work, it can be any of those things, but it can't be without coming into assembly with his people.

It has somehow in your schedule church, live church, if you can possibly get to a live church service.

I'm telling you the presence of God is here in church as among us, and so it's time.

But whether you're in a body of believers or by yourself, you can enter in the presence of God, and someone some 1611, says in your presence is fullness of joy and at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

So you are going to get to learn how and come here long enough you will get to learn how to have joy in church, how to have joy in the presence of God.

Is everybody perfect all around you and everything, no, no, but man.

When the presence of God is moving and we're all worshiping him together, it's joyful and it'll light up your face, oil to make your face shine.

And so you got to access this.

I'm going to quickly, I'm going to quote Miss Trina Hankins, because she has an entire revelation on this, and I'm going to give it to you in a nutshell.

In 1 Chronicles 1512, it is.

It tells you the story of when King David brought back the presence of God.

Now, the presence of God.

In that time, in Old Testament time, it lived in the Ark of the Covenant, in a wooden box covered with gold.

That's where the presence of God lived.

And in wartime, king Saul of Israel disobeyed God and the presence of God left him and he was at war with the Philistines, and the Philistines stole the presence of God from Israel.

They stole the Ark of the Covenant, and so Israel had no presence of God.

They had the symbol of all of that and the presence of God was stolen from them and so it was David's.

When he, when he conquered the Philistines and he realized we've got control of the Ark of the Covenant Again, we're going to bring it back to Jerusalem, where it belongs, so we can worship there again, in the temple that I built that, and we're going to have proper worship again.

And so it tells the story of that and you can read in 1 Chronicles 15.

I will not read the whole thing, but when he tried to bring back the Ark the first time, he did it wrong.

There was a certain protocol that David did not follow and it cost Uriah the Hittite, cost him his life.

So in verse 13, it says for because you did not do it right the first time, the Lord, your God, broke out against us.

Oh, this is the priest saying the God broke out against us because we did not consult him about the proper order.

So there's a proper order in getting the presence of God together as an in church and in our lives.

There's a proper order.

And what is the proper order?

Verse 26,.

So it was when God helped the Levites who bore the Ark of the Covenant.

So, first of all, it had to be borne by the priests and they offered seven bulls and seven rod.

It cost them something, they had to offer an offering and David was clothed with the robe of fine linen.

So they were wearing their bed.

They had respect, and as were all the Levites and priests who bore the Ark when they were bearing the presence of God.

They had respect.

And we don't have a dress code in this church, I'm not trying to say that, but they had respect.

Take it for what it says.

And and then they had Chen and Naya, the music master, with the singers.

So there was great.

There was skillful singing and playing of instruments and David wore the linen e-fod and all.

Thus all Israel brought up the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord with shouting.

That's part of the protocol to bring joy in the Lord and the house of the Lord.

Shouting and the sound of the horn.

We need John Dyer on the trumpet.

Where is he?

Sound of the horn, trumpets and symbols making music, and string with string instruments and harps, so all manner of skilled musicians coming in, people shouting, people singing.

And it happened that as the Ark of the Covenant of the Lord came to the city of David, that Michael Saul's daughter.

So David had a wife at that time and she looked through a window and what did she see?

King David was whirling and playing music and she despised him in her, in her, in her heart.

But there was whirling around.

I want you to know, do not judge me if I dance a little bit in church, if I get my Pentecostal hop on, if Brother Bloss runs around the church, do not, do not judge him.

There is a protocol.

There was sacrifice.

They'd walk a few feet, they'd sacrifice and then they dance and they'd walk a few more feet, they'd sacrifice and they'd sing and dance and rejoice and clap and and and.

Man, they were excited, they were joyful, they were not ambivalent.

Oh well, the presence of God has come back to Israel.

I'm glad, I'm glad that's over, I'm glad we beat those Philistines.

No, it was exciting, it was, it was electric.

And that's the way our praise needs to be.

And if you can't get there, if you can't get there All at once, maybe you're going through a dark time.

I mean, the devil is unleashed.

Some stuff I'm people right now.

Find something you can praise God about.

Start small Even.

You know.

We talked about the widow and her jar of oil.

She poured out.

So I have nothing but a pot of oil.

She said what do you have in the house?

I have nothing.

I have no joy.

I just have a little bit of joy.

Well, start to pour it out, start to stir it up, start to rejoice about something.

Are you saved, as your name written in the Lamb's Book of Life?

That's something to rejoice about.

Jesus said rejoice when you're persecuted, for my name's sake, when they drag you before the courts, be excited, be of good cheer.

Jesus said we could do that.

So he wouldn't have commanded it if it weren't possible.

So I just want you to lift up your head today.

Find something to rejoice about.

Rejoicing and joy is contagious.

That is the thing about it.

It is contagious and we can stir it up.

So is depression, so is misery and woe, and I don't, I don't want to be a spreader of that, do you?

I don't want.

I'm going to stir up joy.

I'm going to stir up just the presence of God with my praises for him.

So we got submit to the will of God, spend time in his presence, love good and hate evil.

Psalm 457 says it is.

This is a Messianic Psalm.

This is about the talk about the marriage supper of the Lamb.

This Psalm 45 puts us in that setting of a Jewish wedding and I'm going to go ahead and turn there because the whole thing is good, but I'll just pick.

I'll cherry pick verse seven first you love.

You love righteousness and hate wickedness.

Therefore, god, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness more than your companions.

I thought that was interesting.

Why?

Because he, because Jesus this is a Messianic Psalm is talking about the Lord Jesus.

You love righteousness and you hate wickedness.

How is hating wickedness contributing to joy?

I don't know, but it just says it right here.

It says it if I love righteousness, I love what is right and I hate what is wrong, that God would anoint me.

God would anoint me with oil of gladness.

Above my companions, friends, friends who work in civic matters here in this church, we need the oil of gladness.

We need the oil of gladness above our peers.

We need the oil.

We love righteousness and we hate wickedness.

And so now we God says we could have the oil of gladness, and I believe I received the oil of gladness that God said I could have.

It's a Messianic truth.

I am part of the body of Christ.

I represent Jesus on this earth and I will have joy and gladness.

I will have it above my fellows.

It will be a marker of my character that when people see me, they'll say oh, claire is a joyful person.

How you know my?

My name means light.

Yes, it does.

Claire is a word for light in French.

I'm not French, but I'm going to.

I have decided, I'm going to make that a mark of my character, and you can decide.

No matter what your name is, you can decide to make that a mark of your character.

It is a mark of everybody who's been.

We live in the kingdom of light, and in the Bible times they didn't have light without oil or something else to burn some fuel, and so, praise God, we got fuel in our fire and, and so we love good and hate evil.

That's number three and number four, and the last one is look forward to the wedding.

Look forward, we are about to be.

We are being transported from the bride's little house to the place that Jesus the King made for us in his father's house, and we are on our way.

There we are.

He is about to come for us at an hour we do not know.

Only the father knows.

But the Trump of God is going to sound and we're going to be caught up with him.

And so we can choose to rejoice, no matter what we're going through here.

If Jesus said you know, if he, for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, we can endure life in this world and we can still have joy.

Joy is an eternal condition.

Happiness is a conditional, temporary experience based on our external circumstances.

Happiness will not get you very far.

Happiness does not last very long.

It is.

Did I get the new shoes today?

Did everybody smile at me or did they say something mean?

Did my paycheck go through the bank today?

Did this or that?

Happiness is not where it's at Joy.

Joy is an eternal condition.

It is an eternal truth and it is a fruit of the spirit, and we can have it all the time when we're looking forward to the wedding, and so the King of Kings and Lord of Lords is our.

We are the bride of Christ and he is about to receive us.

And God loves surprises.

He loves.

We don't know when he's going to come and knock on our door, but it's going to be soon.

We can see all the signs.

So let's be joyful, let's have something to rejoice about and act like we're about to get married to the King of Kings.

Amen, we're not going to a funeral.

God is not dead.

He's not dying.

His people are not losing or going down under.

We are rising up.

In this time.

The bride is making herself ready.

We are adoring.

We will have oil to make our face shine and we will be the radiant bride of Christ that he is coming back for.

Amen, amen.

So we will have the oil of joy.

I hope that blessed you tonight.