Advent - Luke 2:1-20 - Coleton Segars

Well, welcome.

My name is Colton.

I get the privilege to lead this church and really grateful to be here and celebrate Advent with all of you.

If it's your first time here, we're thrilled that you came to see the kids sing and just be a part of our service.

Some of you have been asking.

We are doing a normal service next week on the 24th, and so yes, Christmas Eve, we'd love for you to be back.

But Christmas Eve morning, normal time, not Christmas Eve, the Eve, the evening.

If you show up here in the evening, the school might be happening, but church won't.

So but we'd love for you to be here next week in the morning for normal service service.

We are in a series on Advent because we're in the season of Advent.

And the first week we talked about hope and that Jesus is our hope.

And then the second week, my wife preached, and it was so good.

And the Lord is just kind to his church that he gifts people to speak into the church, but she preached on peace and just a caveat.

We're thankful to be at this church because this is the first church where my wife has been able to express and use her teaching gift.

And so for us, last week was a 17-year journey to uh that we get to see come to fruition.

And so we're really grateful for that.

Yeah, it was really awesome.

Thank you.

We're just grateful for y'all.

Um and honestly, like y'all are the first church uh at every other church we've been at, uh they always think that I'm the best preacher in the family.

And y'all are the first church to actually hear her and realize that is not true.

Uh she's the better preacher of the family.

And uh anyway, so she's gonna do that regularly.

Um and uh she actually I want her to do it more than she wants to do it.

Um so, anyways, we're just we're thrilled.

But she preached on peace last week and it was wonderful.

And this week I get the opportunity to preach on joy.

Um, and then we got to see the kids sing, which was really, really beautiful.

But the teaching text was actually read during the uh space with the kids, and so I'm only gonna read a portion of it uh just so that we're not reiterating the entire thing.

But the teaching text comes from Luke 2, uh, chapter, uh excuse me, Luke 2, verses 1 through 15.

Luke 2:1–15

But I'm gonna read verses 8 through 12.

And it says, And there were shepherds living out in the fields, nearby, keeping watch over the flocks at night.

An angel of the Lord appeared to them, and the glory of the Lord shone around them, and they were terrified.

But the angel said to them, Do not be afraid, I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all people.

Today in the town of David, a Savior has been born to you.

He is the Messiah, he is the Lord.

This will be assigned to you, you will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.

This is the word of the Lord.

Joy.

I want to do a quick experiment, and it's a get to, not a have to, no one's gonna force you, there's no pass-fail, nothing like that.

Um, but if you could, just to close your eyes just for a second, I promise it'll be just for a second, and just picture Jesus in your mind.

Picture Jesus in your mind and just hold that image in your mind for a few seconds.

Okay, no, you can open your eyes.

Again, no pass fail, no grade, no one wins and loses.

But just by show of hands, if Jesus was smiling or laughing in your image, would you just lift your hand?

One, two.

Okay, yeah, maybe half.

Okay, great.

Um, that's really good.

When I was a kid, one of the first songs I learned in church was Jesus Loves the Little Children.

Um, but this was the image that I had of Jesus in the church.

In this this Presbyterian church that we went to, and they were like, Jesus loves the little children, and I was like, Does he?

I don't he looks like one of those cowboys from tombstone that's like, I'm your Huckleberry.

Um I mean it it it really it really is like uh like somebody that would want to have a stern content talking to, like I want to talk to you.

I'm I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed.

Uh and you're like Thanks, man.

Um but for me, the Jesus that was presented to me as a child, and the God that was presented to me as a child was not a Jesus or a God that you would go to for joy.

Like, go and go and He's the one that's filled with it, go to Him for those things.

That's not what was presented to me.

And yet, I think if you read the scriptures, I think it testifies to the fact that God is a God of joy, that joy begins in Him, it ends from Him, it comes from Him, and everything that we experience as joy and goodness is actually something that just flows freely from Him.

I think you see this in creation.

God created everything that exists, um, and He does that in joy, and then He actually celebrates each thing that He creates and says, it is good, it is good, and then the crown of creation, creating us.

He says, It's very good.

And so He's actively doing that.

In Job, it talks about what the angels were doing when He was creating, and it says they were shouting with crazy joy while it was happening.

Like they were just like, This is amazing, God.

I have no idea what you're just so much joy that was uh extending from that moment.

Zephaniah 3.17 says that God rejoices over us with singing.

And so, like somebody singing over you, that's there's something to that that's like super sweet and very intimate.

And I don't know when the last time you had somebody sing over you, but I mean that's that's what the Lord is doing, singing over you and rejoicing over you with singing.

Nehemiah says that the joy of the Lord should be the thing that gives us strength, that his joy, that the thing that he feels towards us and about us, that's the thing that should lead us to actually move and motivate, not his stern consternation or anger towards us.

That shouldn't be our strength.

That shouldn't be the thing that motivates us, but it's his joy.

Jesus, one of my favorite verses in the Bible is that the Pharisees thought that he was a glutton and a drunkard.

And uh, I just love that because he was criticized for how much he drank and how much he ate, and our Southern Baptist friends may hate that, but it's okay to be wrong.

Um but he was criticized for how often he partied and what he did and the the people he hung out with and how much he did those things.

He was always asking for seconds and doubling down.

He was always doing those things, he was filled with joy.

James says that every good and perfect gift that we receive comes from the Father.

Every good and perfect, anything that in your life, where you would say, That was a good thing, I had a good day, this brought me joy.

The only reason that exists in your life that you could point to and point to a thing is because he has chosen to give you that thing.

And it comes from him.

And so any joy that you experience is just a piece of his heart towards you and for you.

The author of Hebrews says that it was for the joy set before Jesus that he endured the cross.

Like it was joy that led him to that.

It's the joy of spending the eternity with you and experiencing freedom for you, that he wants to give you, and it's like, I with joy I head towards the cross.

Dallas Willard, uh one of my favorite authors, but um one of his my favorite quotes of his is he says that we will never fully understand God.

Never fully understand God until we believe that he is the happiest being in the universe.

Never fully understand him until we believe that he's the happiest being in the universe.

It has to be the starting point for us where it's like, why joy?

Why is joy a part of the Christmas season?

Why is it a part of Advent?

Because joy is breaking into the world.

One day, some 2,000 years ago, joy has come in, and he has this for us.

And we'll never fully understand him unless we believe that.

He wants to bring us joy.

And so, what I want to do today, very simply, is look at the message that the angels bring to the shepherds.

Because what they say is like, We have I have great news for you, great news, and the news is meant to bring you great joy, and then the news itself is it here's what's gonna bring you great joy.

Um a Savior has come, who is the Messiah, and he is actually God Himself.

God Himself has come to you, and these things should bring you great joy.

And so, what I want to look at is those three names and the ways in which God wants to bring us joy individually in those three names that the angels give, because that's the message of joy that was given to them to give to us.

And so, the first way that he wants to give you and I joy is the fact that he's a savior.

He wants to save you from sin.

He wants to save you from sin.

Years ago, when a newspaper posed the question in the paper, uh, what's wrong with the world, uh the Catholic thinker G.K.

Chesterton responded with a letter to the uh to the newspaper uh just to explain to the newspaper what's wrong with the world.

And this is what the letter said.

Dear sirs, I am sincerely yours, G.K.

Chesterton.

And for him, he just had this really strong understanding, like, what's wrong with the world?

Man, it's me.

It lives in me and it lives in you, but I don't need to focus on you until I look at me first.

Rainey talked last week about uh the difficulty of confessing our sin, and I believe that one of the reasons we find it so difficult to confess our sin is because we don't really believe that sin is our problem.

We believe it's something that's bad, something that needs to be forgiven, but we don't really see it as something that's actually our issue, the thing standing in the way of our joy.

And I think if I were to ask a group of people or just go down the street and like, what's standing in the way of your joy?

What is it in your life that like what is keeping you from where you want to be and the joy that you want to experience, what's keeping you from that?

I think many people would say it's like, it's my spouse, it's the government, it's my boss, it's the government, it's lack of money, it's the government, like just on and on, just just just constantly pointing to somewhere else.

Like, what's the thing standing in the way?

And it's like, oh, it's this, it's that, it's this, it's that.

And I think very few people would actually look at themselves and go, oh, it's my sin.

The thing standing in the way of my joy is my sin.

It's the stuff that I have living internally in me.

That's the thing that's standing in the way of our joy.

And I do, again, I believe that we think that sin is wrong.

Most of us would agree sin is wrong, but I don't think that we actually believe that sin is stealing our joy.

I love, uh, it's a harsh quote, but uh John Piper, the pastor John Piper, says that sin is the suicidal abandonment of joy.

It's harsh language, but sin is the suicidal abandonment of joy.

And the idea is when you choose to hold your grudge instead of forgiving that person that hurt you, what you're doing is single-handedly, suicidally abandoning your own joy.

And it's easy to say, like, no, no, no, they hurt me.

The reason I don't have any joy is because they did something to me.

And it's like, actually, you're, it's that's not the reason you're not experiencing joy.

The reason you're not experiencing joy is because you're refusing to forgive them.

Your sin is the cause of your joy being stolen from you.

When we vent our anger, and we could say, like, well, I was only angry, I only did that, I only said that, and I only, you know, because they made me angry, and it's like, that's fine.

But it's not them that's stealing your joy, it's you giving life to that dead thing and putting that into your life.

It's venting our anger.

When we wallow in self-pity, when we blame someone else for our problems, when we gossip, when we slander, when we lie, even just a little bit, when we compare ourselves to others, when you're selfish, when you're arrogant, when you're entitled, when you think that you're better than other people, all of these things are the suicidal abandonment of our joy.

These are the things that are stealing from us and stealing our joy.

When we allow our worries and anxieties to live in our brain rather than taking them captive and putting them in their proper place, when we allow lust to develop and thrive in our minds and in our hearts rather than actually putting that thing to death, those are the things.

That's the stuff that's stealing the joy that we actually are supposed to be invited into.

Our sin is a suicidal abandonment of joy.

And I think you see this, I mean, in the Gospels, um, and maybe you've experienced it in your own life, but you see it in the gospels with the rich young ruler.

If you aren't familiar with the story, there's a man who's rich and he's young and he rules something.

Um, but he goes to Jesus and um he basically is like, I got everything.

I'm lacking nothing, killing it.

Um, but there's something that is like missing in my heart.

Like I don't know what it is, but there's something in me that I just can't, I don't know.

I just can't figure it out.

Jesus, what is it?

And Jesus is like, oh, it's super simple.

Uh it's your greed.

Your greed is stealing from you.

You got a bunch of money and you're just you're hoarding it, and it's stealing from you.

And the man is basically like, yeah, yeah, uh, no, that's not it.

Um but that's good.

Let's just, let's just, you know, just throw out some more ideas, we'll just see, we'll just call that plan B, and then maybe we can come up with something else.

And he's just like, no, it's definitely not that.

Um, and Jesus is like, Yeah, man, it's it's your greed.

And he just either refuses to believe it, um, or he doesn't believe it's actually true.

Either one is just as deadly.

Because what he ends up doing is he walks away sad from Jesus, going, like, Jesus didn't help me at all.

And it's like, man, he told you.

Your sin is standing in the way of your joy.

Your sin is the thing that's stealing from you, and you just you just refuse to believe it, or you didn't believe that it was true.

And so what he does is he ends up walking away sad.

And I think this is the thing that we struggle with.

We look at our sin as something that needs to be forgiven, but not something we need to be saved from.

Many Christians, if you ask them, Bible fearing, been in church their entire lives, what did Jesus come to save you?

Yes, Jesus came to save you.

What did he come to save you from?

They would say hell, not sin.

And that's not right.

The scriptures testify to the fact that he came to save us from sin.

Matthew 1.21 says this.

He says, Call him Jesus, for he will save his people, not from hell.

He will save their people from their sin.

Now you can go into it, well, sin leads to this and so on and so forth.

That's fine.

But notice the wording, he came to save you from your sin.

Sin is our problem, sin is what steals our joy.

And the reason this is important for us to grasp, because it sounds like semantics, isn't hell and sin, aren't they just the sounds like that, but it's not.

If you think that hell is what you need to be saved from and sin is something you just need to be forgiven from, what you will, what people, what I've seen people do, what they end up doing is like, so I will just go on sinning.

Jesus has saved me from hell, so I'll just go on sinning because I know that Jesus will forgive me for my sin, and so I can just continue to press into sin and just ask for forgiveness.

And so what they don't realize is that the sin itself is a thing that's the suicidal abandonment of joy.

It's the thing that's stealing their joy.

And so what these people experience is when they die, they will experience eternal life, probably, but on earth, because they never chose to put their sin to death, because they chose to never do that, on earth they live in hell on earth, experiencing hell on earth.

And it's like, yeah, eternal peace and life is yours after death, but you're living in hell on earth right now.

Because you don't see that this is something that Jesus came to save you from.

It's not that he came to save you from hell and he'll just forgive your sin.

He will save, he will forgive your sin, but he came to save you from your sin because it's the thing that's actually stealing from you.

So Jesus wants to, he knows this and he wants to save you from this.

And so, what he does with your sin, what he wants to do at least, is that he wants to cleanse you of your sin.

He wants to break sin's power over you.

He wants to empower you by his spirit.

And by putting the spirit in you, it's the thing that convicts you of sin, which feels like it's bad, but it's actually him being kind to you and saying, Hey, this thing that you're pressing into, this is wrong.

This is going to steal your joy.

And so it convicts you of sin.

And then he empowers you by his spirit to say no and to turn away from sin.

And then beyond that, he's like, I also will provide a way out for you any time that you're tempted to sin, so that you're never tempted beyond what you can bear.

I will always provide a way out.

And it's not so that, like, do this and then I'll love you more.

I want you to not sin and then I'll love you.

It's not that.

It's like sin will kill your joy.

It will steal the thing that I came here to give you, and I don't want you to lose your joy.

I want I came to bring joy.

The message is joy.

And so I want to save you from these things that are stealing your joy.

Jesus' plan is a fail-proof plan to bring joy into your life.

There's only one hiccup, only one thing that can stand in the way of his plan to do that, and it's if we don't think our sin needs to be saved from.

If we don't think it's a problem, then we're never gonna go to him to actually have it removed from us, and we're never gonna think it's bad enough to actually choose to stay away from it in the way that he calls us to.

And so we'll continue to press into it, going, well, he'll just forgive me.

And it's like, yeah, but man, it's stealing life from you in a way that you don't even see or understand.

Aaron Ralston was this adventure hiker, climber guy, you may know his story.

Um, but in 2003, he was rock climbing and he slipped on a rock and fell down this canyon.

And as he fell, the rock fell with him, and uh it trapped him in this space where the rock landed on his right arm and it like trapped him in there.

Um, they made a movie about it called 127 Hours.

Um but in his in his book that's brilliantly titled Between a Rock and a Hard Place, which I thought was just incredible and very funny for a really tragic situation that he was in.

But he talks about his experience.

And so when he fell in there, he says within the first 45 minutes, he knew what he needed to do to get free.

He's like, I know I'm gonna have to cut my arm off.

First 45 minutes.

But um he reasoned that, like, I like my arm, I'd like to keep it if I can.

And so what he did is he's like, I'm not gonna cut my arm off.

He thought it was like, it might kill me if I cut my arm off because it might just be a slow suicide if I bleed out and stuff like that.

So he decides not to do that.

So that's a terrible plan, I'm not gonna do that.

And so what he does is he takes his knife and he tries to chop away at the rock, and then he takes a rock and he tries to beat away at the rock and do all these things, and he takes like his pulley system of his bag and all this stuff and creates this thing where he can create his weight on the pulley system and wrap it around the rock to try and lift the rock.

It was really creative.

He was really creative to try and set himself free from this thing.

But none of it worked.

Wasn't a single thing, it actually locked him in harder.

The rock did move, it just was worse and took up more of his arm.

I know, me too.

It's a scary story.

But a few days in, three or four days in, he uh just decides, he's like, just made his peace with it.

He's like, I'm gonna die here.

This is where I die.

This is the way I'm just gonna this is it.

And he's still committed, I'm not cutting my arm off.

This is how I'm gonna die.

And that night, the night he thought would be his last, that he thought, like, I'm dehydrated, I've lost weight, I have no food, no water, no nothing, I'm gonna die.

That night he has this vision, and this is what he says about the vision that he has.

He says, a blonde three-year-old boy in a red polo shirt comes running across the floor, and what I somehow know is my future home.

By the same intuitive perception, I know that this boy is my own.

I bend to scoop him into my left arm using my handless right arm to balance him.

We laugh together as I swing him up on my shoulder.

The boy happily perches on my right shoulder, holding my arms in his little hands, while I steady him with my left and my right stump.

Smiling, I prance about the room, tiptoeing in and out as he giggles gleefully as we twirl together.

Then with a shock, the vision blinks out, and I'm back in the canyon.

Echoes of that little boy's joyful sounds resonating in my mind.

He says, Despite having already come to accept that I will die where I stand now, that belief, that boy, that changes everything for me.

And after that, like with that joyful vision in his mind, the next day he breaks his arm, um, and then he goes to cut it off, and he cuts it off and he does what needs to be done.

And then in 2009, six years after he was trapped, he has this blonde-headed little baby boy that he becomes a father to, and he gets to experience this joyful thing.

And what he says, he's like, I realized that my hand was already dead, and I was trying to preserve a dead thing that was gonna steal this joy from me.

And I think for us, we have to see our sin that way.

Like you're gonna keep this dead thing, and it's gonna steal all of the joy that Jesus wants to bring into your life, and all these, we have to see it as this thing that's like, just cut it off.

Jesus actually says that.

He's like, whatever it takes, man, cut it off, pluck it out, whatever you have to do.

Not literally, but do whatever it takes to get past this thing.

I came to bring you joy, and if you allow these things to live and have freedom in your lives, and you you make your peace with sin and go, well, I'm just gonna, it's not gonna kill me, but you know, I you know, whatever.

I'll try other ways to find joy, I'll try other ways to make life good for myself.

It's like, there's no other way.

Cut it off.

And this is what Jesus has called us to do.

He's like, and I want to help you do that.

I want to be the person that actually does those things for you.

Sin is a suicidal abandonment of joy, and Jesus wants to save you from it.

Don't make your peace with the thing that he's trying to save you from.

That's number one.

He wants to bring you joy by saving you from your sin.

The second way he wants to give us joy is that the king of joy, by the king of joy, Jesus, by the king of joy, telling us how to experience joy.

So there's a lot here that I want to unpack, but Jesus is the king of joy.

The angels call him the Messiah.

Um, the word in Greek is Christos, that's where we get Christ, Jesus Christ.

Christ isn't his last name, it is his role.

He is Jesus the Christ.

Um, and Isaiah prophesies about what the Messiah, about what the Christ would do, and what what his rule and reign, this king that would come, and what what life would be like in his kingdom and following him and what he would do for his people.

Isaiah prophesies a number of times about it.

But in Isaiah 61, he says this about the Messiah, the Christ.

He says, Uh, I've the Spirit of the Lord is upon me.

He has sent me to preach good news to the poor, heal the brokenhearted, announce freedom to all captives, pardon all sinners.

God sent me to announce the year of his grace, a celebration of God's destruction for our enemies, to comfort all who mourn, to care for all the needs of those who mourn, to give them bouquets of roses instead of ashes.

Of joy instead of news of doom, a praising heart instead of a languid spirit, and their joy will go on forever.

And Jesus says in the gospel, he's like, this has been fulfilled in me.

This prophecy has been fulfilled in me.

I am the coming king of joy.

I'm the one who gives joy to people unending.

I'm the one that has ushered in this new kingdom of joy that I'm inviting people to experience and inviting people to live in.

And this is why we're called Christians.

The idea is those who follow you, you are a Christian, you are a follower of the king of joy.

And so if you are a Christian, the idea is joy will be your experience because you're following this king of joy.

And if you choose to follow him in the way that he tells you to walk and to follow him, your experience will be joy.

Peter actually says in his letter, he says, those who follow Jesus, you are doing this and you are experiencing joy inexpressible.

He's like, the joy that comes from following Jesus and allowing him to lead you, there aren't words to describe how joyful you feel.

Like there's just nothing there that you can actually put in words of like, here's how much joy you actually have.

And I think for many Christians that I meet who are just cynical and angry, and they're like, I've been a Christian a long time, and I'm like, have you?

I just don't like don't tell anyone that.

Like, because like maybe say you're an atheist, an agnostic, I don't know.

I just, you're the most, the least joyful person I've ever met.

And I just don't want people thinking that's who we are.

Because it's so anti of what Jesus was supposed to do.

If we're if we are actually Christians, we're supposed to be experiencing inexpressible joy as we seek to follow him.

And the way that we do that is by him telling us, hey, here's the way that you should live.

You don't live this way so that I love you more.

You live this way so that you're led by the king of joy into the kingdom of joy so that joy is your experience.

This is why he's doing those things.

This is why we are called Christians.

This is what it means.

We're actually supposed to follow him in that way.

And for me, the struggle that I see with most people is they don't want to fall under the authority and the leadership of the King of joy.

They want to look at his commands and go, I love these.

Love your neighbor, really strong.

Love your enemy, not so much.

Like I love some of these commands, but I really, really I that's maybe for other people to follow at different times.

And so they pick and choose what commands of Jesus they want to follow.

And then because they're walking not behind the king of joy, but in disobedience to the king of joy, they're not experiencing the joy, and they're going, This doesn't work.

Christianity doesn't work, Jesus doesn't work, this is fake.

And it's like, but you're not following behind the person with the king of joy.

Like you're not, he's trying to lead you and you're going, Yeah, I'm coming, but you're not doing those things.

And so it makes sense that you're not experiencing joy because you have chosen to decide, I will be my own king.

I will decide what I want to do with my own life, but then I also want your joy.

And he's like, I'm so sorry.

I can't give you joy apart from myself.

It comes from me, and I lead you into it, and it doesn't exist outside of me.

And so he's trying to constantly lead us into joy.

He says this, Jesus says this in John about his commands.

He says, These things, these commands that I've spoken to you, I've spoken them to you so that my joy may be in you, and so that your joy may be full.

And Jesus is saying, Look, look, my commands aren't a burden to you.

These things I'm asking you to do, the stuff that I've I've I've preached to you and commanded you and taught you, these it is so that you will do those things, and my joy may be in you, and your joy may be full.

I want joy for you, and so I've given you commands so that you experience my joy.

And if we see them as the thing that's gonna steal our joy, we'll constantly miss out on joy because we won't actually do those things.

Teddy and I um are just men, you know.

And we built this we built this Avengers Gauntlet.

Go to the next slide.

It's glorious.

Yes.

So good.

Um that's it.

Next slide.

I'm kidding.

Um no, um, but we built this thing, and if you're familiar with Marvel or whatever, if you're not, you know, I'll pray for you.

But um we built this thing, and it's awesome.

It looks awesome.

It was it's awesome.

Um and we still have it.

We it normally sits on our mantle.

It's just Christmas, it's not there right now, but it's normally like right there.

Uh first thing you see when you walk in.

We don't idolize it or worship it, but it is really cool.

But if I'm honest, I had no idea what I was getting into when I said that we were gonna build this thing.

Um my fear elevated um when I opened the box, and there were 10 different bags of 10 different Legos that could never be crossed over, and the instruction was, or you'll never get it complete.

And I was like, wow, that's really strong language.

And it was like, okay, so open this one at this time, open this one at this time, and do this and do that.

And what I I'm telling you, the instruction manual for this thing was as big as my Bible.

It had 170 commands.

All in it is like, do this, do this.

If you do this one before this one, you're an idiot.

Like, don't do that.

And it was like very specific.

Legoland is not playing around.

But what I thought genuinely, we got it for Christmas last year.

What I thought would take 30 minutes after dinner took two to three weeks in a part of my soul.

It was it was rough.

But thank you.

But during that whole time uh that we were building this thing, we never looked at the instruction manual as something that was trying to steal our joy.

Like to us, the instruction manual was invaluable.

Like the the way, the commands to build the thing, it was like, I'm not gonna read my Bible and I'm just gonna read that this morning.

Like, I need to get this thing done.

We saw it as life.

It was like, we have to do it this way, otherwise, we'll never experience the thing we're longing for, and I'll never be free of this.

Like, I I'm like having dreams about the instruction manual, and when they're cleaning up around the house, it's like, oh God, did Rainy throw it away?

I hope she didn't throw it away.

Because I'm like, we gotta get this thing done.

But we loved the instruction manual, and like Teddy is so methodical, and like as we like step one, he'd mark it out, so we knew that one was done, and then we'd step two and mark it out, and that one's done.

All these different things.

But every command that we followed led to us experiencing more of what we were hoping to experience consistently until we got to the very end of number 170, and I burned that instruction manual.

And then we got to see the thing and it's in its completion.

But the commands were not a space to steal from us.

The commands of the instruction manual were a way to actually get the thing that we've been longing for.

And we need to see the scriptures like that.

We need to see Jesus' commands like that.

They are not burdensome.

John says this, they're not burdensome to us because we know that when we follow them, they lead to life and they lead to joy.

And the king of joy is just trying to give you commands of joy to lead you into his kingdom of joy so that joy is your primary experience.

This is what he wants for you.

And I think for many of you, some of you experienced that this week.

You heard Rainey's message last week, and you're like, I need to confess my sin to somebody.

I need to like call somebody on the phone or go sit down with them and do this.

And I had a number of meetings last week where I sat down with people that were terrified to confess their sin.

They were like, There's no way this will lead to joy.

This is horrible.

Tears and crying, all this stuff, the fear.

And then by the end of it, when they did it, they left with tears of joy, joy filling their hearts, and hope filling their lives and going, This is the best thing.

I've never done this, it's the best thing I've ever done.

And it's like, you know why?

Because his command to do that is a command that leads to joy.

This is all he wants to do in your life.

And it might be difficult and it may feel like it might kill you, but it won't kill you.

It's actually the thing that he's seeking to lead you in order to experience more and more life, more and more joy.

And so he's spoken a number of things to you.

He has spoken that we should go to the next slide here.

He's spoken that you should love your neighbor instead of avoiding your neighbor because you're too busy.

You should love your enemy and pray for them instead of arguing with them online.

You should you should forgive others instead of harboring that grudge.

You should fast and pray and spend time with me instead of staring at our phones.

We should be generous instead of stingy with our money.

We should serve others with your gifts instead of just showing up to be served.

Should do your work as unto the Lord instead of doing the type of work that you believe your boss deserves, or doing the type of work you think the people that you're serving deserve.

Do it as unto the Lord.

Should practice gratitude instead of complaining.

Choose to be in community instead of isolating.

Get out of debt instead of buying more things you think will bring you joy.

Get out of debt.

Get wise counsel and listen to it instead of just trying to find people that tell you what you want to hear.

These are things that he says that are difficult and things that we struggle with, but like it's just, I've told you that it's just a handful of things.

And we can see this and look at all the stuff he tells us to do.

Look at all the rules.

And it's like they're not they're not rules to bind you into a space that steals from you.

They are commands to give you and lead you into a space of joy.

And the king of joy is just trying to do that for you.

And so, in my mind, figure out one of these things and do these things.

But follow the king of joy into joy.

That's the second.

The king of joy wants to tell you how to experience joy.

And the third, the third way he wants to bring you joy is by bringing you back into his presence.

Bringing you back into his presence.

There's this beautiful reversal that's happening in this text that you could just miss and not see.

But the angels are inviting people into the presence of God.

And if you remember what the angels were doing in Genesis 3, they were keeping people out of the presence of God, guarding Eden with swords of fire.

You cannot come into the presence.

And it has to be such a joy to them that God sent them, like, hey, go out there and invite them back.

Drop your swords, grab some trumpets, and actually invite them back.

Sound the alarm.

They can come back to me now.

And it was this really, really beautiful experience for the angels and for everybody.

It's like, I'm bringing you good news because you can come back in.

Eden is no longer guarded.

Eden has come to you.

The king himself, the king of joy, has come to you.

Come and sit in the presence of God.

It's a gift of Jesus.

And so the angels are just saying, like, hey, here's some joy.

The joy is you get to be in his presence.

And as David said in Psalm 16, in his presence is fullness of joy.

In his presence is fullness of joy, and at his right hand are pleasures forevermore.

Rick Howell, in his book on joy, which is just really beautiful, if you want the book, uh let me know and I'll send it to you.

But it's really good.

But he says this he says, if we take our cues from the Bible, we will see that all creature joy is grounded in the Creator's joy.

He is the wellspring of joy in all places and at all times.

He is the joy from which all joy in the universe flows.

Joy is always our heart's encounter with the joyful one.

Joy is the touch of God.

And his point is like, there's joy is not found anywhere else.

It begins in him, it's found from him, and it's given from him, and it's a grace that you experience.

And one of the hard things about prepping this message was like, how do you define joy?

And everybody has their own different definition of what joy is.

It's not happiness, it's something more.

And the truth is, it's just a grace that he gives us, it's something that flows from him.

It is the heart of God being experienced in real time in your life.

We were sitting the other day in our driveway on like these rinkety old chairs looking very redneck in our neighborhood.

And Teddy was uh running in the little circle cove or whatever that we have, and he had a stick from the tree that he had snapped off, and he had a 25 cent gumball that I'm pretty sure he stole from somewhere because I didn't buy it.

Um and and he was throwing it up and hitting it with a stick, and and it was like, and then he hit it in a bounce.

What is it?

And then you go grab it, and he's laughing, and we think it's hysterical, the dog's running after him, this whole stuff.

And I was just sitting there and I was like, a couple months ago, we spent five grand going to Disney World, and I didn't experience this much joy.

No one did.

You know who's not experiencing joy?

Anyone at Disney World.

It's the most magical place.

Like, yeah.

People show up and they disappear from their kids.

Um but that to me, like sitting out there, and there's just been these moments where I've sat with my family, I'm like, there's nothing here.

We this cost no money.

Actually, we probably stole something.

Um this cost no money, and yet the joy that I feel, and just sitting there with her and with him and our dog, and and and that, like, there was just something there.

It's a grace that God gives us, and it just comes from him.

It's something that every now and then in my 19 years of following the king of joy, that every now and then, man, he just presses in with something that's rich and full and beautiful.

And it's like, man, thank you, Father.

This is your heart on display, and I'm feeling it in myself.

I'm so thankful.

And I've done nothing to deserve this, other than I just genuinely love you, and I think that you have everything for me that I ever want and could ever possibly imagine or look for.

It's found in you.

And I think we need to look for him, look to him for the joy that we need.

Mark Sayers is his pastor in Melbourne, Australia.

And he talks about, he's really a sociologist too, and he kind of looks at the trends of the world and the culture and stuff.

And he talks about the difference in affluent countries like America or Australia in his space, and then third world countries, and just the discrepancy between we have much but little joy, they have nothing but a lot of joy.

And this is what he says.

He says people in America and other affluent countries have more options to look to in order to find happiness and joy than people do in third world countries.

He says the tragic truth, though, is it's the more affluent people who are riddled with anxiety and depression, while those in third world countries have joy.

He says this phenomenon is simply explained.

Because those living with less cannot look to earthly things for joy, they have been forced to look vertically.

We who have much have looked horizontally for our joy and have found only anxiety and depression.

Those looking vertically, because there was nowhere else to look, have found actual joy.

And I think there's something that's so simple and just so beautiful about that.

It's like, man, we can look to our jobs, our money, our relationships, just so many, our phones, just so many different things to try and find joy.

Another app, another restaurant, another thing to do, another diet plan, another gym, another, I mean, just tons and tons and tons and tons of things.

So much to look at horizontally, and what we have found is more anxiety and depression, more angst and not joy.

And yet those that are like, I can't really look left or right, I have to look to the Father, that they have found actual joy.

And the angel's message is don't look horizontally anymore.

Don't look out someplace else.

You can actually look up now, and actually, up has come down.

He has come to you.

Go look to him.

He's the space that you will find joy.

And so, for us, a couple of practices for you in this season that's something that I think we should take beyond Christmas season, um, but especially now.

One is um he wants to save you from your sin.

And so, if he's convicting you of sin in your life, if you think like, what is a sin that I've made my peace with?

What is sin that I've given like leisure to?

I'm like, you can have some space here in my life that you've just allowed to live.

If he's convicting you of that thing and sin and just pressing on that thing, and run to him with it, bring him to bring it to him, repent of it, turn from it, cut that thing off.

It is stealing from you.

He wants to save you from that thing.

He is not pressing on it and convicting you to hurt you.

He is trying to help you and lead you into life.

He's trying to lead you into joy.

The second thing is that let him lead you by his commands, let the king of joy lead you into joy.

Go to the next one here.

And so, if you're gonna let the king of joy lead you into joy, just pick a command and be obedient to it.

That's what it looks like.

And you can take one of these and just be like, I'm gonna do this this week.

I'm gonna love my enemies, and then maybe you got 30.

Jesus doesn't really care that you have them, he knows that you have them, he just wants you to love them.

And so just pick a command and do those things.

And better than using this list, read just read the Bible.

And if you see something that Jesus has asked of you and you see yourself out of step with it, allow the king of joy to realign your obedience and then just do that thing because what it's going to do is he's trying to not hurt you, but to but to lead you into a space where you're experiencing the joy that comes from him.

And he just has the instructions.

I don't like the phrase that the Bible is, you know, basic instructions before leaving earth.

I hate that.

I think Christians are so cheesy, anyways.

But I do think that there's something about Jesus that he's like, it's not basic instructions before leaving earth.

I'm telling you where life is.

I'm telling you where the joy that you're longing for is found.

Go find it here.

So pick a command and be obedient to it.

And then lastly, let him provide joy from you by simply being with him.

Spend time in his presence.

One of the things, there's tons of ways that you can do this.

You can read your Bible, you can um pray to him, you can fast, you can just practice the presence of God.

We're gonna talk about more of this stuff in the in the new year.

But one of the, just very quickly, one of the ways that I do this, uh, and just spending time with him, is every day, just beginning my day very quickly with asking for wonder.

Uh Abraham Heschel's rabbi, he said on his deathbed, he was like, I asked for success.

He goes, I didn't ask for success or wealth or riches or the defeat of my enemies or anything like that.

I asked for wonder and he gave it to me.

It's a quote we have on our calendar, and it's a it's if I don't do a lot of Instagram, but it's the thing that I have on my Instagram just to remind me, ask for wonder today.

And I just want to, I don't want to live this life boring.

I think there's something here that's actually really beautiful, and it's just gonna get better after death.

I I think that he has something for us here, and I want to experience wonder, but it's a very short thing, and he has led me into wonder.

He actually wants to give good gifts to his kids.

And so spend the next 40 days just asking for joy from the king of joy who runs a kingdom of joy and wants to lead you into joy.

Just very quickly, three words give me joy.

Just start with that and just see what he does.

And I think this is what he wants to do for you.

I think joy is supposed to be the common, standard, default experience of the Christian, because the Christian is the follower of a king who came to bring joy that's unending.

I think that's what he has for you.

And so if you don't know him like that, hear the good news.

That's what he's like, that's who he is.

If it's like if you've read his commands or been at churches that have browbeat you with the Bible or something like that, and you've been in the space, you're like, I'm not totally sure what I think about any of that's because Jesus is just mean, some stern westerner, you know, yelling at me or something like that.

He's not that.

He is the king of joy.

And he's longing to bring those things into your life.

So let him do that.

Let me pray.

Father, we'll never understand you unless we believe that you are the happiest being in the universe and that you long to pour that out into our lives.

I pray that you would help us to believe that today, to see you for who you actually are.

Lord, that you would give us the grace and the favor by your spirit to follow you as you command us, as you seek to lead us, that we would know that it's not so that you love us more, but so that but so that we experience more of your love, so that we experience more of your joy, that we experience more of your hope and peace, more of your life poured out and poured into our lives.

So God, you are full and you overflow into us.

I pray that we would believe that and pursue those things in you.

Would you do that and bless your people with joy?

Lord, for those that are committed to like I'm going to pray for joy for the next 40 days.

Um, God, I just join them in that and just ask that you would bring joy into their lives.

And to those that are struggling to believe that this is something that you actually can do and want to bring into their lives, God, I pray that you would help their unbelief.

And God, I pray that the the friend of sinners who came to save us from our sin would be this glorious vision that we have in our minds that this is who Jesus is.

He has come to save and to help and to guide and to lead us into the life that we're actually longing for and can't find horizontally.

And so you came here to give it to us, God.

I pray that we would rejoice in that.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

We're gonna take communion.

Um every week we do this by repeating the liturgy.

Uh, every now and then it's a little bit different here and there, but just a space to set our hearts right.

One of the things that's true, it says that he rejoices over us with singing.

I think it's just something we need to have in our hearts.

Like, what is he doing?

What is the Father doing in heaven, rejoicing over you with singing?

Um, for the joy that was set before Jesus, he endured the cross.

Greg Boyd has this great quote, we don't have it, but he says, It was for the joy of spending eternity with you that Jesus decided to endure a hellish death on earth.

But for the joy, a hellish death for the joy of spending eternity with you.

And so as we take the bread and drink the juice, my encouragement to be like, Why are we doing this?

Why is this something that he calls us to?

Why does he want us to remember this?

It's like, oh, for the joy set before him, Jesus endured the cross so that he could spend eternity with you, so that joy would be your experience here and now, and that unending joy would be your experience forever one day in a kingdom of joy that he has made available to everybody.

And so receive that from him.

Look to him for it.

And let's say this liturgy together.

The bread represents his body that was crushed for us.

Jesus was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities, and the punishment that brought us peace was on him.

And let's say this together.

By his wounds we are healed.

And the Jews represents his blood that was poured out.

And I love this.

What can wash away our sin?

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

What can make you whole again?

Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

He has poured out life into you and over you, and he wants you to experience that.

And so come take communion.

If you've helped us set it up, we'd love for you to come and stand up here with us and rainy now be on this side.

But come take the bread and be reminded of Jesus' love for you.

Come, drink the juice and remind that he wants to pour out his love over you.

He's done that before and he wants to do that again.

Come when you're ready.