Joy

Good morning, church.

Man, it is great to see everybody this morning.

Great to have everybody here in Walnut Grove.

Great to everybody watching with us online.

I know some of you that were at Shot With a Heroes said you were going to be watching online this morning.

So welcome to all of you.

We kind of begin a new series.

We kind of merged uh two series together last week as we finished the uh the series on the 23rd Psalm, The Goodness of God.

We we lit what we call the Advent Candle of Hope as we ended the service last week.

And so we we enter into the series called Good News, and it's really a series uh that we refer to as an Advent series.

And so we we actually uh made some changes.

This has been a year of change, right?

And so um I'm I'll be honest with you, um I I don't have a liturgical bone in my body, and so uh we're we're not necessarily uh a traditional liturgical church, but we felt like, man, what a great year, what a great season for us to lean into this Advent tradition where we talk about uh hope and joy and love and peace and the person of Jesus that is at the center of all of that.

And so each week we will light an Advent candle representing uh the theme for that week.

And and so last week it was hope as we enter into the Advent season.

Today it's gonna be it's gonna be joy, but but many of you might ask, what is Advent?

What does that mean?

What does that word mean?

What is it what is the significance of that?

That word it literally means anticipation.

It's the celebration of something that is going to arrive.

It can be a notable person, it can be a thing, it can be an event, it can be something in history.

And so every every year, millions of people around the world celebrate the Advent season, the coming and the anticipation of Christ.

And here's here's what you need to know is there's there's really two advents, two perspectives when it comes to Advent that are all, that are both separated by the crucifixion and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

So there's the Advent leading up to the coming of Christ, his birth, and then we are in this period of history of Advent where we anticipate the return of Jesus as our King.

And so the Advent is that anticipation, it's the arrival.

For me, um I wasn't raised in a Christian home, and so for me, I celebrated Advent by expecting Sunday morning to come where I could open up my gifts.

My parents used to tell stories about how they could not get me to go to sleep on Christmas Eve.

They could hear me pacing in circles in my bedroom with anticipation of knowing that when I woke up that I would have gifts.

And so that that's that was my experience of Advent.

I want to teach you something a little bit more uh biblical and a little more uh truthful as we enter into this Advent season.

But but for the follower of Jesus, man, this is a significant time of year that we celebrate the birth of Jesus, the birth of our Savior, the one who has come, the one who has come to bring us hope that we talked about last week, and joy that we talk about today.

We look at these four candles and we we lit the candle of hope last week.

We're gonna light the candle of joy, and then next week will be the candle of love, and then the following week will be the candle of peace, and then we'll light the candle of Jesus to conclude our season as we celebrate on Christmas Eve.

And so it's this idea of joy.

And see, many of us, we love this Christmas season.

We love it, we love the lights, we love all the festivities.

We we just love everything about it.

And some people, some people I think kind of go overboard.

I got a pastor friend, I mean, he starts listening to Christmas music in July.

I mean, he he he and listen, I wouldn't, I'm not, I wouldn't mention his name publicly.

Ken Sermons, please don't tell.

Oh, did I did I say that?

He he he is crazy.

He start, he has, he wears Christmas socks all year long.

He's he just goes bananas over Christmas stuff.

And he he has more than one Christmas tree in his house.

How crazy is that?

Some of y'all do that now, don't you?

That's this new generational thing.

People have more than one Christmas tree in a house, right?

And so some people, some people are just naturally drawn to the joy and all the things that come with it, right?

The Grinch and Ebenezer, Scrooge, and Buddy the Elf, and all of those things, that all those things that represent the joyous time of the year.

But I want to talk to you about a deeper joy than Buddy the Elf this morning.

I really do.

I want to get let's go deep.

Let's talk about what joy really is.

And and really joy is indescribable.

Joy is undefinable.

When I when we talk about it in the sense that we're talking about it this morning, it is hard for us as followers of Jesus to really just put joy into a few words or a definition.

It's just, but but here's what I want to tell you that I think joy, uh this is just to scratch the surface.

Joy is strength that comes from God to withstand anything, any season, and any difficult event in your life.

Joy is recognition that you are blessed despite your circumstances, or despite the hurts, or despite the brokenness that we have in this world.

As a matter of fact, you've got to ask the question: how can we have joy in a year like this year?

How can we have joy in a broken world?

We live in a broken world.

We live in a world with where we can see every day the impact of sin and death and brokenness.

And so joy is recognition, you're blessed despite the circumstances.

Joy is is less stress.

Listen, it's not about what you have, but it's about what can't be taken away from you.

And that's just can we just take a deep breath together?

Man, joy comes from the Lord, it comes from Jesus.

It's anticipation.

The Apostle Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 5, verses 15 through 18.

1 Thessalonians 5:15–18

I'm reading out of the New Living Translation.

He says, always be joyful.

Always, always be joyful.

Never stop praying.

Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you, who belong to Christ Jesus.

And I know this may be difficult for a message like this to be fully understood for someone who is outside the faith.

And so that's why we invite you inside the faith.

We invite you to Christ.

We invite you to come and to believe and to trust what He's provided in His life and His death and His resurrection.

And so we're commanded to live with joy.

We're commanded to have joy.

Be joyful always.

Not just when things are good.

Be joyful always.

And so, and here's kind of the big idea.

I always try to give you one thing I want you to take home with you.

And then if you don't hear anything else in the sermon, it's this this morning that joy is not conditional.

It's positional.

It's not conditional.

It's not based on the circumstances that you are in.

It's not based on the events around you.

It is based on your position in Christ, your relationship to your heavenly Father.

You are a child of God if you put your faith in Jesus.

And so you've been adopted, you've been chosen, you're in the family, and nothing of none of that can be taken away from you despite the circumstances in your life.

And so that's the good news of the Advent season.

Jesus has come.

And so here's what we're going to do with the rest of our time is just take a jump back in history to the first Christmas.

And let's look at what this individual, Mary, a little bit of what she had to deal with, and how she had to, in the midst of her circumstances, choose joy.

So Mary, we know Mary.

Mary is the she's the father of Jesus.

She gave birth to Jesus.

She was the betrothed to be the wife of Joseph.

And she would have been a good observant Jew because she grew up in that culture in Israel.

And so she would have been aware of all of the promises and all of the prophecies that had been spoken about the future Messiah that would come to bring freedom and to bring hope and to bring joy.

And so she is a good observant Jew.

She would have been familiar, and I'm not going to read all of these prophecies.

I mean, you could go on and on.

There's 300 and over 300 prophecies about the coming of Jesus in the Old Testament.

As early as Genesis chapter 3, it's mentioned, verse 15.

Genesis 3 · chapter mention

It's not on the screen, but you can make a note of it if you want to.

He says, I will put enmity between you and the woman, between your offspring and hers.

He will crush your head and you will strike his heel.

And this is a prophetic statement in Genesis about the one who will come to defeat the enemy, who is who brought brokenness, who tempted Adam and Eve in the middle of the garden.

There will be one who will give birth to the one who will crush the head of the enemy.

Isaiah, um we sing about it, we sang about it this morning, we sing about it during the Christmas season.

Isaiah 9, 6 says, For us, uh to for to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulders, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

And so, not to go further, that's just a couple of scriptures that Mary would have been fully aware of and familiar with.

She would have known.

She would have understood that these prophecies 700 years earlier would have been coming.

There would have been some type of fulfillment.

There will be one coming.

But she had no clue how she would be a part of the story.

The Messiah will come.

Of course, many people believe that he would be a political ruler.

We still have struggle, I think, thinking that we're going to find some political answers in our culture today.

It's just kind of the way that we're wired.

But God keeps telling us we need to come back to him.

And so they thought that the Messiah was going to be a political leader and he would come, you know, and to lead an army.

But here's the thing about Mary: it's one thing to hear about the story.

It's a completely different thing to find yourself in the middle of the story.

And can I just take a second and say that God has a story that He has revealed to us?

But He's placed not just Mary, but He's placed every one of you in the middle of the story.

Your life, your circumstances, the good and the bad, and everything in between.

And so Mary finds herself in the middle of the story where an angel comes to her.

Luke 1, 26 says, In the sixth month of the angel, in the sixth month, the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city of Galilee named Nazareth to a virgin betrothed to a man whose name was Joseph of the house of David.

And the virgin's name was Mary.

And he came to her and he said, Greetings, O favored one, the Lord is with you.

So when you go from hearing about a story to finding yourself in the story, it's important to listen to the voice of the story writer to come to you and say, Greetings.

You are my favored one.

The Lord is with you.

And so Mary is chosen by God to carry the Messiah.

But you've got to think about what that meant.

She is betrothed.

She is yet to be married to Joseph.

She is an Israelite.

She's a young woman of faith, a young Jewish girl, and now she finds herself expectant a mother to be.

And it's not, they're not throwing showers for her, they're whispering and pointing at her.

That's what she knows is coming.

In verse 29, it says, She was greatly troubled at the saying, and tried to discern what sort of greeting this might be.

Here's how the New Living Translation says it.

It says, confused and disturbed, Mary tried to think what the angel could mean.

Let me say it this way.

In other words, Mary's first response was not joy.

She's disturbed.

She's worried.

She's confused.

It's not good news right now for Mary.

It's shocking.

She had dreams and plans.

She had the wedding day.

I mean, it you know, she's looking forward to all of the proper steps that she would take as a young Jewish bride, and God turns everything upside down and blows her perfect plans up.

But in the middle of blowing up her perfect plans, he carries out his perfect plan.

And see, that's important for us because I think that whatever your circumstances are and whatever we're dealing with in this world, we're constantly dealing with everything that's changing and being blown up, and that in the middle of everything being changed and blown up, God is carrying out a perfect plan for every one of us.

And so what is it that's been blown up in your life?

What is it?

What is it that that what is it that you're troubled by, that you're disturbed by, that you're confused by?

What is it that's broken?

Is it the empty chair that's going to be there for this holiday season?

Is it the love affair that you had when you first got married and now you're living with the consequences of maybe a divorce?

Or is there something else in your life that you have dreamed about but haven't realized yet?

What is it?

What is it that you could have imagined that hasn't happened?

Is there brokenness in your family?

Is there what is it?

We all have these stories in our life that are part of the story, and in the midst of that story, God wants us to find ourselves in his perfect plan for us.

I didn't plan for a pandemic in 2020.

And a lot of let me let me say this.

I mean, it's almost sometimes we 2020 probably gets a big bum deal more than it should.

I mean, we just keep talking about it over and over.

Yeah, it's been a bad year.

But we've had bad years before.

It's not the first pandemic.

It probably in the last.

I hope it's my only one that I have to live through.

And we just we live in a messed up world and we all have stories.

Matter of fact, it this is this is a reality.

Joy is a journey.

Joy is a journey, it is a process that we is we journey through life.

I love what the psalmist writes in Psalm 35, for his anger is but for a moment and his favor is for a lifetime.

Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.

Oh, thank God for the morning.

Jesus said, Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice.

You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy.

Can I just tell you sometimes that sometimes you have to cry your way to joy?

There's things that you have to walk through in your life to get to the joy that God has for you.

And the perfect plan that He has for you.

Joy is rooted in God's truth.

Joy is rooted in the person of Jesus.

Joy is rooted in something deeper that can be produced at the human level.

And so joy is found in the Lord.

James writes about it.

James 1, 2 through 4.

He says, Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.

Or maybe your translation might be say patience.

And let steadfastness have its full effect that you may be perfect and complete, lacking in nothing.

Here's the truth: joy comes from above.

Joy comes from the Lord.

Let's read on the end of the story with Mary.

It says, Then the angel said to her, Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favor with God, and behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus.

He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High.

And the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and his kingdom, and of his kingdom there will be no end.

And Mary said to the angel, How will this be, since I am a virgin?

And the angel answered her, Listen to this.

The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you.

Therefore, the child to be born will be called holy, the Son of God.

And of course, it says there, and behold, your relative Elizabeth in her old age has also conceived a son, and this is the sixth month with her, who was was called barren, for nothing will be impossible with God.

And Mary said, Behold, I am the servant of the Lord, let it be to me according to your word.

And the angel departed from her.

But I want to go back to verse 35 where it says, The Holy Spirit will come upon you.

Can we just stop for a second and talk about the Holy Spirit?

And see, all the badness get afraid when I say that.

You're terrified.

Because it's it's it's it's the Holy Spirit that is the source of the joy.

And so it's the Holy Spirit that we need to tap into.

The Spirit of the Lord, the Most High God.

It is the Spirit that makes the difference.

It is the Spirit of God that produces the joy that I'm talking.

About that goes deeper.

It's that we should not be afraid of the Holy Spirit.

We should lean into the Holy Spirit.

We should ask for the fullness of the Spirit.

Let me teach you a little bit of my doctrine of the Holy Spirit.

And this is where all the Baptists get kind of scared.

What's he going to say?

Let me tell you that there's a point in your life where you realize that Jesus is who he says he is, that he is the Son of God.

He came, he lived, he died, and he rose again.

And that's the point that you put your faith in Christ, and it is your salvation moment.

It is a place where you step out of, Paul says, you step out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light.

And at that point, you experience what we would call the baptism of the Holy Spirit.

Let me tell you, when God makes himself available to you, he doesn't hold anything back.

He makes all of himself available to you.

And you are baptized in the Holy Spirit.

But there are times in our life, there are moments in our life where we experience other fillings, other times where the fullness of the Holy Spirit becomes real in our life.

And I don't know if you've ever experienced it, but you can be empty.

You can be spent.

Your tank can be less than full.

And you need to say, God, I need more of you in me.

I need the fullness of your Holy Spirit.

And some of you know what I'm talking about.

And you, when I say that, you've experienced, you've experienced the realization that the Holy Spirit is tangible.

He can do things that are supernatural.

I believe it.

I don't believe that the manifestation of the Holy Spirit ended with the apostles.

I believe that they still are real today.

God can heal, God can work, God can move, miracles can happen.

And so it says the Holy Spirit will come upon you.

And so we need the power of the Holy Spirit in our life.

Joy comes from above.

Joy is not found in the things of this world.

And so lean into the Holy Spirit.

Ask God for you to be filled and to walk in the fullness.

Part of that is how you daily spend your time and how you daily ask Him to fill you.

See, joy is not found at the bottom of a Christmas box or gift.

As a matter of fact, when you get caught up with the stuff, joy can be stolen so quickly.

Theodore Roosevelt said comparison is the thief of joy.

And so the joy that Mary encountered, and that the joy that we are invited to engage with is a joy that cannot be produced at a human level.

It is supernatural.

Now, part of it, joy is a choice.

It's a choice.

At the end of the angel's visit, Mary chooses joy.

Listen to what it says, verse 46.

And Mary said, My soul magnifies the Lord.

And my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.

For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed, for he who is mighty has done great things for me.

And holy is his name, and his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.

He has shown strength with his arm.

He has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

He has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate.

He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent away empty.

He has helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy.

As he spoke our fathers to Abraham and to his offspring forever.

Mary chooses joy.

She chooses joy.

And so last week we lit the candle of hope.

As we concluded our series on the 23rd Psalm, this week I want to ask for the Calhoun family to come and light the candle of hope.

And as they come, light this candle.

I want you to listen to the words of the writer of Hebrews.

He says, Therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely.

And let us run with endurance the race that is set before us.

Listen, listen.

Looking to Jesus, the founder and the perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.

Thank you, guys.

Joy.

The joy that was set before him allowed him to endure what he endured so we would be able to experience joy.

That's why we call it the good news.

It's the gospel, it's the hope, and it's the joy that we find through Jesus Christ.

Hopefully, a personal relationship.

That's why we say joy is not conditional.

Joy is positional.

When you put your faith in Christ, you are now a part of his family.

You are a child.

You are chosen.

You've been adopted.

It can't be reversed.

You're included, you're not excluded.

And so joy is a focus before it's a feeling.

So how do we get there?

How do we get to joy?

Sometimes it's taking the next step that God puts right in front of you.

And so it's not ignoring the obedience that God has called us to.

Now you don't you don't find joy by following rules.

But if you want to go deeper in the joy that God has provided, you are to understand what he calls us to, and through the power of the Holy Spirit, he gives you the ability to obey.

And it comes supernaturally.

Henry now and Dr.

Henry Dowin says joy does not simply happen to us.

We have to choose joy and we keep choosing it every day.

So sometimes you might need to walk away from something, you might need to walk away from somebody, you might need to remove something from your life and then replace it with something else to continue to choose joy every day.

Would you pray with me?

Let's pray together.

Father, thank you.

Thank you for providing for our position with you as our Heavenly Father through Jesus Christ.

Lord, I pray for those that are with us in the room, and I pray for those that might be watching online that have yet to take that step and to put their faith in Jesus Christ.

The Bible says it's as simple as simply admitting that you need salvation, that you need that you need the gift of salvation, and admit that you have fallen short and failed, that you're a sinner, and then simply believe and trust in what God's provided through his son Jesus Christ.

And the Bible says you believe.

You believe, you confess Jesus as your Savior, as your Lord, and you are saved.

And then for some of you that have that have already trusted the Lord, it's maybe a simple step of obedience.

Maybe it's baptism, maybe it's sharing your testimony with somebody else.

Maybe it's responding with generosity.

God's calling you, he's speaking to you, and and and it is something that only you know about, and he's calling you to come out with it and to go public with it.

So, Father, would you work in us?

God, fill us with joy.

May we be a people that choose joy.

We love you.

God, thank you for how you provide and how you lead.

It's in Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

Would you stand with me as we sing and close this time with a beautiful song about the joy of Jesus?