Galatians 5:22
Reading from Galatians 5 verse
16, it says, But I say, this is the Apostle Paul, I say, walk
by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
For the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit. And the
desires of the Spirit are against the flesh. And these are opposed
to each other to keep you from doing what you want to do. But if you are led by the Spirit,
you are not under the law. And then skip down to verse 22,
the fruit of the Spirit is joy. Let’s pray together. Our God,
we pray that this little study of your word tonight, of this
little word called joy that is such a big expression in our
lives would show us who we ought to be and how we ought to live
in Christ Jesus. We pray for your spirit’s help
and blessing in Christ’s name. Amen. We have this little experience
in our family when we have to leave town and can’t take the
dog with us. He goes to the doggy camp, the puppy camp, and he’s
miserable. He hates it. He’s depressed.
He doesn’t eat. They call us and want to give
him a little medicine to help him feel better and all that.
So we got to pick him up. And we stand there and wait for
him to come around the corner. And when he comes around that
corner, you hear his little paws tapping on the tile floor. And
he’s twirling in circles, his tail going this way and that
way. And when he comes out, It’s all you can do to contain the
joy that is in it. And that’s an interesting little
picture, isn’t it? From an animal, just a simple animal, to see
how bound up in his little life, in his little body, is the joy
of seeing the ones that love him. As we look at the fruit
of the Spirit as joy tonight, I want us to understand that
there ought to be something in us as the Holy Spirit works that
makes us so full of joy that it is visibly noticeable in our
countenance and in our behavior. Now, by the end of this little
talk tonight, I don’t want y’all to all be charismatics and, you
know, hand-waving and, you know, disrupting our little Presbyterian
way of life. We don’t wanna do that. But we don’t wanna be spiritual
ewers either, right? So, what’s that? Spiritual ewers, that’s right.
One of the things we have to understand is that fruit grows
out of life. You find a fruit tree and how
does the fruit grow? It naturally comes from the flower
and the blossom. The life-giving juices from the
tree help produce the fruit. And so fruit grows out of life.
Fruit in the Christian life cannot be manufactured. Just in the
same way, a tree does not manufacture fruit. The fruit that comes from
the Christian living out of grace is a work of the Holy Spirit.
It is not something you can do. Remember the Apostle Paul, here
in Galatians, is telling the Galatians, your works are dead. Your good works produce nothing. Well, actually he says they produce
a lot of strife. Fruit comes from God being at
work in us. Remember, Jesus says, I am the
vine, you are the branches. Apart from me, you can do nothing. And so fruit comes from spirit-wrought
work in us. Last week we looked at the fruit
of the spirit is love. And we looked at the specific
word for love, agape, which is I love you 100%. I’ll give you
100% and expect nothing in return. That’s Christian love, that’s
brotherly love. It’s not love in return for something, it’s
not love for common kinship or friendship or benefit, fishing
buddies, golf buddies, whatever. It’s love 100% for nothing. And remember we said that love
is the chief blessing that God gives to Christians, and out
of love will flow the other fruit. And so where do you think joy
comes from? Joy comes from our love. It comes from our love
for one another. It comes from our love that comes
from God. It comes from God’s love for us. But what we need
to understand this evening as we’re considering joy is that
it is in the sphere of love that joy is produced. You ever look
at someone who’s unloved? You ever look at someone who’s
neglected? You ever see somebody who is cast out, who’s cast off. An unloved person has no joy. But Christians have the benefit
of living under the umbrella of God’s love. And we have the
benefit of living in the community of saints. And so we live in
the sphere of love, and that produces an atmosphere of joy.
Now, if you look at some of the products of the flesh in Galatians
chapter five, you’ll see words like, immorality, idolatry. But then it says some words like
enmity and strife and jealousy and fits of anger, rivalries,
dissensions, divisions, and envy. These are products not from love,
but really from what? From hatred. And so when we see
evidence of these things in the church, we see that there’s not
love, but hatred. And so joy comes from an atmosphere
of love. Now, before we dive into what
is joy, let’s answer this question. Is joy a result of circumstances? Or is joy a result of the peace
of Christ in us? Do you remember where the Apostle
Paul was when he wrote Philippians? He was in jail. But what’s one
of the great words he says over and over in Philippians, it’s
joy. I don’t, think much of my circumstances,
because I find joy in serving God. I find joy in serving Christ.
What men have meant for evil, God has meant for my good and
for the good of my ministry. And so something we have to remember
is that circumstances will not provide joy. How often do we
live and say, if and when, if and when? If and when I get the
money, I’ll get that car. And that car will somehow provide
me joy. Or if and when we get the money, we’ll get a bigger
house. And if everybody has a bedroom, then we’ll have joy. No, you’ll
just have peace because you’re not in the same space. Or we
say, if and when I get that job, I’ll have satisfaction. But very
often God calls us to live in very, in hard circumstances,
sometimes dire circumstances, and he still expects us to have
joy in them. What does James say? Count it
all joy when you face sufferings of many kinds. Those trials and
difficulties produce fruit. But he starts out, count it all
what? Joy when you face trials. That’s
counterintuitive. That’s oxymoronic, we might say. That’s not the way a person should
think. But that’s the way the Christian
should think. And so understand very well that the circumstances
you are in will not produce joy. Actually, they’ll produce strife.
No, it’s the work of God in you that will produce joy. He’ll
give you inner peace and a feeling and knowledge of sufficiency. Okay, so what is joy? What is
Christian joy? We could define it by the world.
Joy of having Ed McMahon knock on your door and all those magazines
you bought. All those lottery tickets you
purchased at the gas pump. Of course, if gas keeps going
up like it does, we may have to buy lottery tickets to offset
the cost of gas. But joy is not winning the lottery.
Joy is not some human achievement. Those things do bring joy, but
they’re fleeting. They’re not lasting. Joy is not
my dog turning in circles and chasing his tail, although that
is a very fun thing to watch. Joy is not your favorite ball
team winning a victory. Joy is not side-splitting laughter
over something that’s really funny. I mean, those are forms
of human joy. What is joy in the scriptures? Well, if you walk through the
Old Testament, you’ll see that joy has a couple different connotations. There’s about four different
words in the Old Testament for joy. One is like a twinkle in
your eye. You know, you see somebody and
you just tell them they have a twinkle in their eye because something
is bright and shining and happy. Do you remember in the New Testament,
I failed to mention this the other Sunday in Hebrews, because
this would have been a good thing to bring up. Do you remember
the old man in the Gospels? And God revealed to him that
the consolation of Israel would be born as Jesus in his time. And God said, I will not let
you die until you see Jesus. You remember that old man, what
was his name? Simeon. Yeah, remember Simeon? He got
to hold the Christ child. And you can imagine the twinkle
in his eye, probably not much twinkled in a man his age. But
you can imagine the twinkle, the shining in his eye, because
he knew that at some point before he died, he would see the Christ
child. And so there’s something in the
Old Testament language about joy being something bright and
shining, something that makes our eyes sparkle with joy. Joy in the Bible is also leaping.
Do you remember what happened when Peter and James healed the
man right after Pentecost? We even sing a little song about
it. He was running and jumping and leaping and whatever for
joy. Praising God, because he was happy that he had been healed.
There’s also a sense of shouting or exuberance. What does Psalm
100 say? Come, or that’s Psalm 95, shout
for joy to the Lord, all the earth. Worship the Lord with
gladness. Come before his presence with
thanksgiving. But we’re to shout for joy. We’re to be overflowing
with joy that we shout, we raise our voices. I think Jay was mentioning
it the other day. When you go to Presbytery, and
you’re in a room with 100, 150 men singing hymns, they literally
blow the roof off. And I’ve always gone away from
Presbyterian thinking, I sure wish my church would sing like
that. And there’s no reason why we shouldn’t, right? There’s
no reason why the roof just shouldn’t go lifting off the house of God
because we sing for joy. Now 150 men strong, that’s a
pretty good bunch of voices. But there’s something about shouting
for joy. And then there’s this fourth
idea of joy in the Old Testament. It’s kind of the joy that my
dog expresses when he sees us after we’ve been gone. It’s kind
of a running in crazy circles joy. Do you remember what David
did before the ark? When it was being brought back
to Jerusalem? He just ran around and jumped up and whooped and
hollered. whatever else he did. I remember his wife who looked
out from the window and saw him and she said he’s an idiot. But he was pretty excited. So there’s something about a
twinkle in our eyes, about boisterous, exclamatory joy, even joy that
leads us to do irrational things such as run around in circles
like my dog does when he gets picked up from the kennel. Now
when did the people of God express this joy? They did it at festivals,
They did it at celebrations and they did it at Sabbath worship
when God commanded the people to come before him. Now how about
the New Testament? In the New Testament, joy is
expressed a little bit differently. It’s expressed in a word that
is very closely connected to the word for grace. The two words
in the Greek language are very close, just a letter or two off,
but joy and grace go together. Now why do you think that is?
We don’t have joy unless we have grace. Without grace, there is
no joy. And so salvation makes joy possible. Saved people are joyful people. And that’s why joyful people
sing. And that’s why our roof should go flying off every Sunday
when we sing praise to Almighty God. We are people full of delight. What else about joy? Sometimes
we name our little girls Joy, don’t we? It’s a name that parents
must just love to give to a little one who has brought joy into
their home, joy into their life. It’s a song we sing, I’ve got
the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart. That’s right, I’ve
got the joy in my heart. But what’s the opposite of joy for
the Christian? It’s that good old poo character, Eeyore. Despair,
yeah, what does Eeyore say? I’d look on the bright side if
I could find it. Isn’t that what he says? Or,
don’t worry about me, go enjoy yourself, I’ll stay here and
be miserable. And if you read the Pooh books, any of y’all
read a good bit of Pooh over the years? You know, it says,
in a little conversation, said Pooh, said Christopher Robin,
it always says, said Eeyore gloomily. Okay? Have you ever noticed that? Eeyore also says it could be
worse. Not sure how, but it could be. But that leads us to understand
that when we don’t live joyfully as Christians, we need to see
that as sin. We need to see that not wearing
the joy and the expression that God has put in us can be sinful. Now, is there godly sorrow? Yes,
there is. Is there godly weeping and mourning? For sure there is. But should
our demeanor be one consistently that lacks joy? And the answer
for sure is no. The Bible gives us some opposites
of joy. These would be works of the flesh,
backbiting. In the Old Testament, they called
it murmuring. Griping is what my mom would
have called it growing up. And do you remember what happened
when Israel murmured in the wilderness? Think about murmuring, you know,
onomatopoeia is, right? Words that sound like what it
is. And you just think of murmur, murmur, murmur, murmur. You know,
your kids are in the backseat grumping because they’re hot
and tired in the car, been on the road too long, and there’s
all that murmur, murmur, murmur. It’s kind of onomatopoeic, isn’t
it? What does God do to the Israelites who grumble in the wilderness?
He says, fine, stay in the wilderness and die in the wilderness. And
so God treats our grumpiness, our eorishness. He treats our
sorrow, our hopelessness, our frustration, our rebellion, our
self-pity. He treats it as it really is
a sin. For what is the reality behind
it? Well, it’s this, we’re minimizing our blessings. You know, eor,
I’d look on the bright side if I could find it. But there’s
always a bright side to Christianity, isn’t there? There’s always a
bright side. Think about the Apostle Paul if we had some melancholy
letters. Dear Philippians, I’m in jail. And it stinks in here real bad,
literally. And it’s no fun. The food’s terrible. The guards are pagan Romans.
And you go on and on, you see. What benefit would we have here
2,000 years later if the book of Philippians was a book of
Eorisms, Saint Eor. What if that was the case? No,
that’s not what it is. Now it’s hard, right? It’s hard
to see the bright side. Some of us by nature are half
glass, empty people. And so it can be difficult. Do
you remember Elijah? Elijah fought the Baals and the
prophets of Baal, called down fire from heaven, the altar was
soaked in water, the sacrifice, all the water around and what
did the fire do? It licked up the water and it consumed the
sacrifice. But what about the bells? They were crying and whooping
and hollering and nothing happening from their gods. And then comes
Jezebel who wants Elijah’s head on a platter. And so what does
God do? He sends Elijah out in the wilderness. So he’s had this
great spiritual high. He’s had this great spiritual
joy of serving God and God blessing his ministry. And he thinks that
there’s gonna be great Holy Spirit revival in Israel, but what does
God do? He sends him out in the desert to live, being fed by
birds, and then by a widow, whose son he ends up raising from the
dead, but she feeds him from her little meager cabinet of
wool and flour that never runs out. Finally, Elijah comes to
a little place of despair, and what does he say? A little paraphrase
here. My ministry was big. There were
people getting saved. And you brought me out here.
So just take my life, kill me, put me to death. And what does
God do to Elijah? He says, you got it all wrong.
You’ve got it all wrong. And Elijah, God comes to Elijah,
not in the wind, not in the cyclone, not in all the forces of nature,
but he comes in a still, small voice. And he puts Elijah in
his place. And so we need to be very careful,
very careful how we, I’ll put it in modern language, how we
whine against God. Because God is good to us. He’s
gracious to us. We live so well and have so many
heaven wrought blessings. And so what of joy? Well, joy
is something that comes from heaven to us. We’re to have joy
in temptation. We’re to have joy in trials.
We’re to have joy when other people attack us. We’re to have
joy when people come to faith in the Lord Jesus. We’re to have
joy when someone in the church is growing in grace and doing
well. We’re to have joy in all circumstances, Paul says in Philippians. Now this is not pious joy, you
know, we smile because we have to put on airs. This isn’t stoicism
where we put on a front where all things are bad and we’re
still gonna somehow smile and squeeze some joy out anyway.
No, it’s something that God puts in us because He changes our
hearts and He shows us. Now often in the Christian life,
there’s great pain before great joy. You mothers know this well. Before the cute little cherubic
baby comes, there’s much pain. And so there’s pain and then
joy. Or how about with Jesus on the cross? What did our passage
in Hebrews say today? For the joy, set before Him. Christ endured the cross. He
despised the shame that was on Him. One other negative aspect
of not being joyful, in Deuteronomy chapter 28, God warns Israel,
and He warns them by saying, if you don’t serve Me joyfully,
I’ll put you in the promised land, you’ll live in houses you
didn’t build, with cisterns you did not dig, with vineyards you
did not plant, and you’ll enjoy the fruit of the land that you
did not have to develop. I’m gonna run your enemies out,
and you’re gonna take over this land. But if you don’t serve
me joyfully, guess what? I’ll send you out of the land.
God was promising. God was prophesying that there
would be exile if the people did not serve him joyfully. And
so it’s a scathing, it’s a hard, it’s a hard line God takes when
he says, you did not serve me, you did not serve Yahweh with
joyfulness. And his punishment is I remove
my blessing from you. You lose my presence and you
leave the land. There was a little ceremony in
the history of God’s people, it’s called the Feast of Booths.
You know what the Feast of Booths was? It’s kind of like camping
out. And they would camp out and live
in little booths. They would live in these little huts for
a little period of time. And it was a period of time to
think on God’s goodness and to thank God for His goodness. Now,
what do we do every Thanksgiving? Well, we eat turkey. We watch
football. But what’s Thanksgiving for now? It’s for shopping. Right? Isn’t
that very odd? Of all things, the day of Thanksgiving
is the day we have to go buy a laptop for $69 and stand in
line for four hours to get it because it’s the deal of the
century. And so we abandon family. We’ve
abandoned Thanksgiving for Now I’ll admit I stood in line at
Target a couple of years ago because I got an iPad real cheap.
And then you got your ID stolen. Yeah, and then my credit card
got frauded that night too. But you know, was that payback
or something? No. But isn’t it interesting,
isn’t it, what’s that one? Isn’t it interesting though how
we’ve literally removed all quiet time to stop and give thanks.
And one simple way to alleviate that is to Say the blessing before
the meal. Pause and give thanks. Pause
and give thanks to God for His goodness. Otherwise, we’ll become
practical atheists. There’s another little Old Testament
Reminder, do you remember Nehemiah was cast down because Israel
was in ruins? The city of God was destroyed
and he wanted it rebuilt. And so the king said, why are
you downcast to his cupbearer? And he told him, and he said,
here’s the money and here’s my permission, go and rebuild the
city. So they’re rebuilding the city, rebuilding the city, rebuilding
the city. And do you remember right in
the middle of Nehemiah’s ministry, Ezra reads the law and the people
are weeping. at the hearing of the law because
they recognized all the goodness that God has provided for his
people. And this is after the exile.
After the exile, God promised if they were, did not serve him
joyfully. So here they are back, they’re
rebuilding, and they’re weeping. And Nehemiah says to them, Ezra
says to them, stop crying, for the joy of the Lord is your strength.
And so there’s a time for godly sorrow. We do weep for our sins.
But there is always time for joy, for God has lifted our hearts. He’s lifted us up out of the
miry clay and he’s set our feet on firm ground. So what are some
reasons for joy? One is that you’re justified.
You’re saved. You’ve been declared righteous
by Almighty God. You no longer are condemned.
What does the Apostle Paul say in Romans 8? Therefore, there
is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. You
do not stand accused before the Holy God of Israel any longer.
And that ought to be a source of great joy. Another reason
is that you have the hope of glory. You know, I imagine tomorrow
morning we’ll wake up and we’ll wonder, how’s my, funding for
life. You know, if I got enough money
in the checkbook for groceries, what’s my retirement account
doing? Probably a big reality for many of us. How am I going
to make it these next X number of years? And that’s something
to worry about. We ask God for daily bread. But
our ultimate destiny, we have that fixed, don’t we? We have
assurance of where we will be forever, and that’s with God
and glory. And so we’re justified. We have the hope of glory. There’s
a third thing. There’s a third thing that we should consider
is that in our sufferings, our sufferings will ultimately result
in joy. You’re going through a hard time.
You’re watching your children or your grandchildren or some
of your loved ones go through a hard time. In due time, if
God is gracious, it will bring joy. It will bring joy unspeakable. What does the Apostle Paul say
in Philippians 4? He says, rejoice in the Lord
always. And again, as if we didn’t get
it the first time, I say rejoice. Psalm 16, something we considered
several weeks back, says, the lines have fallen for me in pleasant
places. God is my lot, he’s my portion,
he’s my cup. And then he goes on to say, in
your presence is joy forevermore. And so God gives us blessings
in this life that bring joy, but in his future presence, the
place of his love, there will be joy forevermore. Let me end
by reminding you of a little obscure passage in Zephaniah
3. It says, the Lord your God is in your midst. He is the mighty
one who can save. And it goes on to speak about
you being in the presence of God in heaven. And it says, he
will rejoice over you. He will rejoice over you with
shouts of joy. We think of getting to heaven.
and us shouting for joy at God and his presence. And we’ll do
that for sure. But guess what? He is going to shout for joy
over you in eternity. Let’s pray together. Our great
God, we thank you for your love for us, your kindness to us.
We do thank you that you provide the source of all joy in our
lives, and that’s being saved in Christ Jesus and the fruit
of living for you. Help us to see it. We pray, Father,
that you’d forgive us when we are joyless Christians. Make
us joyful Christians. Help us, we pray, in the name
of Jesus, our Savior. Amen.