Joy – Overcoming Boredom
Have you ever wondered why the Apostle Paul calls love, patience, and kindness fruit of the Spirit instead of just character traits or attributes? Tim Keller contends that gradual growth is key to understanding the nature of how Christians change to become more Christ -like. Join us now as Dr. Keller teaches on the fruit of the Spirit. After you listen, we invite you to go online to gospelandlife .com and sign up for our email updates. When you sign up, you’ll receive our Life in the Gospel quarterly journal with article set feature how the Gospel is changing hearts, lives, and communities, as well as highlighting other Gospel -centered resources.
And I’m going to read from John chapter 16 verses 16 to 22. We’re talking about joy tonight. We’re looking at the fruit of the Spirit and the fruit of the Spirit, our love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, and we’re looking at joy tonight. Let me read John 16 verses 16 to 22. In a little while, you will see me no more, and then after a little while, you will see me. Now, some of his disciples said to one another, what does he mean by saying, in a little while, you will see me no more, and then after a little while, you will see me? And because I am going to the Father, they kept asking, what does he mean by a little while? We don’t understand what he is saying. Jesus saw that they wanted to ask him about this, so he said to them, are you asking one another what I meant when I said, in a little while, you will see me no more, and then after a little while, you will see me? I tell you the truth. You will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will be torn. turn to joy. A woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come. But when her baby is born, she forgets the anguish because of her joy that a child is born into the world. So with you, now is your time of grief, but I will see you again, and you will rejoice, and no one will take away your joy. This ends the reading of God’s word. Now is your time of grief, but you will see, I will see you again, and in that day, no one will take away your joy.
I’m remembering last year about this time. I think Kathy is too. Last year around February, March, and April, I had a terrible time because I was getting ready to come here and I was running around to the rest of the country trying to convince people to convince the churches to come here and to take away their joy. around to give the money and get me permission to come here and so on and I Was getting ready to come to David and I in Bolshe’s living room and have a Bible study And I had no idea if anybody would come and and I was in fact we had a time in which We there was one period of time that Kathy and I called hell month We looked at our calendars. We said I don’t believe I have done this, but I was out I was away three out every four days on the road or in airplanes. I was Just had this incredible schedule. I remember in the middle of that time I remember being on an airplane at one time in all of that feeling just worn out and and without Without hoping the world it seemed like and I read Psalm 30 verse 5 It says weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning And I listened to that verse for a while and I said now is this teaching that Every Christian no matter how unhappy they are at night will always wake up every morning with a smile on their face And I happen to know that if that was true I’d found an error in the Word of God because it wasn’t happening. I would get up and it wasn’t any better In fact, I still have a tendency to go to bed happy. I don’t know about you I would tend to go to bed happy and wake up tremendously anxious sweating And I can’t tell what it’s about It’s obvious that I went to sleep thinking about or during the time I was thinking about all the unmade calls You know all the calls I hadn’t answered and I don’t know what it is But I knew that I didn’t wake up in the morning.
I began to realize I didn’t wake up in the morning with a smile I began to realize what that verse was saying it was saying that a child of God will receive a joy of such intensity That no sorrow in the end can overwhelm it and Around that time I was rereading. I don’t know why it was I was rereading I think I just picked up one night when I was going to bed early that night about 2 a .m and had to get up at four to catch a plane or something. And sometimes you get too tired to go to sleep. You know how that is? You’re too tired to fall asleep. And I picked out one of old, one of, part of my favorite novel, JR Artolkin’s book, Lord of the Rings. And there’s a place there where Gandalf, great Gandalf, boy, could I use Gandalf on my staff right now. But Gandalf is this wizard. And he’s basically an old wizard. And all the world’s problems are on his shoulders. He’s really trying, basically, he’s basically trying to save the world from falling under the dominion of darkness and evil and terror. And he’s all on his shoulders. And at one point, somebody makes a statement, and he begins to laugh. And he laughs from the heart, deep down, and this friend of his looks at him. And in the novel, this friend looks at him and says, he suddenly realized that in spite of all this incredible pressure and strain and stress on this old man. that underneath it all there was a fountain of joy that was so deep, a gusher of joy, that was so deep that no matter how big a boulder there was put on the top, that gusher of joy could not be held back and that there was enough mirth down there to set a kingdom laughing.
I don’t know if any of you are fans of Lord of the Rings, but you might remember that passage. There’s this old bent man with the weight of the world literally on his shoulders and suddenly he laughed, a clear laugh from the heart. When I was reading that I said, that’s what a Christian is supposed to be, no matter what. When it says joy comes in the morning, it means there’s a joy of such intensity in the Christian life that nothing can put it out. And therefore sorrow is always a temporary condition for a Christian and joy is a permanent condition. Now to talk about the fruit of joy, we’re going to do what I’ve done, well what I did last week when I’m going to continue to do, we’ll take this one passage which is very helpful and do a bit of an exposition of it, then we’ll go and try to summarize what the Bible teaches about joy under the same four headings each week.
Number one, what’s the definition of joy? What’s the definition of this characteristic, of this quality that supernatural maturity has? Love, joy, peace, patience, the fruit of the spirit is the supernatural maturity qualities that you can have in Christ.
- What’s the definition of joy?
- What’s the opposite of joy?
- What’s the counterfeit of joy?
- And how do we cultivate it in our lives?
First the exposition and you’ll see at the top of the handout, let me just pull four important points out of this passage that we read. It’s an odd passage in some ways. It’s where Jesus is saying to his disciples, I’m about to leave you, I’m about to be crucified, I’m about to die, but I’ll be back. And right now you’ll be in grief, but when I come back and you see me, that you’ll receive a joy that is very great. And they don’t understand about his death, they don’t understand about his crucifixion and so forth. on that and they’re asking him questions. But in the process of Jesus talking about his death and his resurrection, though we can learn a lot from this passage about that, we’re not going to look at that for a moment. And we’re going to see what Jesus talks, what Jesus teaches here about joy, period. We’re going to be kind of rather selective in what we pull out of this passage. There’s plenty of other things in it, but let’s just see what Jesus talks about or says about joy.
And number one, we see that joy is of the essence of being a Christian. Verse 22, So with you, now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice. Not, he doesn’t say to these Christians, he says, some of you will be full of joy, some of you won’t. It’s just, it’s a fact. If you’re a Christian and you’ve met Jesus Christ, you will rejoice and it will be a joy that no one will take from you. Now, the reason that Christians must have joy. Right? Is that it must be a characteristic of God himself.
We talked the last two weeks about what it means to be a Christian. Essentially what it means to be a Christian is you come into a relationship with God, which is so intimate that you catch, you catch some of his attributes, some of his qualities. Remember we talked about that? We said the theologians talk about certain of his characteristics, which are called the communicable attributes of God, which are great, you know, a great big name, but it’s pretty clear too. If you have a good relationship with your spouse, whatever that spouse gets, if his spouse gets a communicable disease, you’ll probably get it unless you’re fighting a lot and you’re never near her or him enough to catch it. If you have an intimate relationship with God, you catch some of his attributes. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, meekness, self -control, and so on. These are simply communicable attributes of God.
That’s where you get them. Joy is an attribute of God. That’s the sort of thing you think about much, do you? You think of this big guy up there with the flowing white beard who’s touching Adam like this at the top of the Sistine Chapel. You know, you don’t think of joy as being one of his characteristics, but it is. There’s this remarkable passage in Proverbs 8 where it talks about wisdom, which was with God in the beginning and through whom all of creation was created. Proverbs 8 talks about wisdom through whom God created all things. And John chapter 1 tells us that that wisdom was Jesus. In the beginning was the Word or was wisdom and the Word was with God. And Jesus himself at some points points to that. And if you go back in Proverbs 8 and realize that Jesus is looking at himself as the divine wisdom in Proverbs 8 and you see what it says about divine wisdom in Proverbs 8, it’s amazing. In Proverbs 8, if you go there, you’ll see wisdom speaking in the first person and wisdom says, I was with him in the beginning and through him through me he created all things. And then it actually says, I was delighted in mankind and I was filled with delight every day. And there’s a Hebrew word used there, shakach, which is a very unusual word to be used of Jesus, or of God. It’s a word that means delight, yes, but it’s a word that actually means to frolic. It means to jump up and down and clap your hands. And here’s Jesus Christ using this of himself. He says, I didn’t just look at mankind and say, eh, not bad. He froliced, he rejoices. Zeff and I at 317 says, the Lord takes delight in you and he will rejoice over you with singing. And you think, well, something’s, wait a minute, this idea of Jesus frolicing, jumping around with joy over us, doesn’t seem very dignified. It doesn’t seem very majestic. Oh yes, it is. It’s a majestic joy. It’s a holy joy. It’s who God is. And nobody who really knows God can be dour, because God is not. And therefore, we see if you’re a Christian, you have to have received this joy. It’s essential. And not only is joy essential to God, but it’s also essential to the gospel. You’ve heard the word gospel, right? What’s gospel mean? Good tidings, good news you’ve heard. Well, that’s a pretty good translation. But the old King James has a better translation. How does it translate gospel? It calls it what kind of tidings? Glad tidings. See, that’s what it really means is the tidings that bring joy. The word gospel means the news, the facts that bring joy. And therefore, again, if you haven’t got joy, you haven’t got the gospel.
Go back to JR, our Tolkien for a minute. He wrote an article years ago, which is one of the most remarkable things I’ve ever read. And it’s called On Fairy Stories. And it’s about fiction and how his theology or his theory of fiction. And in it, he says, I think of just a tremendous thing. He says basically this, all good stories are based on the gospel story. He says the gospel story, the idea that here we are living in a world of darkness and sin, we’re on our way to doom. And a hero shows up. Somebody comes breaking into our world and takes on our doom and looks like at the very end he’s definitely lost. It looks like he’s been defeated. But lo and behold, he snatches victory out of the jaws of defeat and he exalts any triumphs and he puts down all evil and he’s bringing in his… It turns out he’s not this weakling that we thought, but he’s a great king and he’s leading us to triumph. He says that is the essence of every story that we’ve ever read. loved. He says look at every story. It’s always look at every story that people love and enjoy and get joy from. Every novel, every fairy tale, they’re about those those same kinds of situations, right? It looks like a dead end. It looks like it’s all over for our hero. But no! And a talking says in there is that the essence of every single good story we’ve ever ever had, if you look at it, they’re just imitations, the reflections of the gospel. He says the only difference between the gospel and all these other stories is the gospel is the myth that became fact. The gospel is the myth that became a fact. All the myths that we read and we love, all the poems, all the stories, all the novels, all the Indiana Jones movies, see even Indiana Jones is a modern myth. All the movies that everybody goes to see. But never get the critical acclaim because they’re not serious enough. The serious ones which are completely denuded of any kind of gospel plot, right? Where there is no heroism, there’s really no good and evil. There really isn’t anybody snatching victory out of the jaws of defeat at the end. There isn’t anybody dying for the good. Oh no, we’re going to be realistic. Those are the movies which very often are very, very well done. But you’re not going to get people flocking to them because, as Tolkien says, the essence of what gives people joy is the gospel. And he says in there, he says, if you don’t believe the gospel, in the end you will go to despair because every human being needs to believe that it’s true. It’s the only news. It’s the only story that can give you pure and utter and everlasting joy. And the reason that we love all these other kinds of stories, even though we say, it’s escapist fiction, right? Is because they remind us of the gospel. And the gospel is the one myth that became a fact. And that’s the reason why the gospel is glad tidings. It’s the tidings that brings joy. And I want you to realize what happens if you reject it. You are facing despair and you know it. Because if it’s not true, then really everything else is a dead end. There are no answers. There is no heroism. There is no real triumph in the end. There is no real victory out of, you know, snatching out of the jaws of defeat. There is no triumph of right. We need to believe the gospel. We’re built for it. Why? Because it’s true. And when everybody says, well, just because we need to believe it doesn’t mean it’s true. The question comes up.
Why do we need to believe it?
And as we’re going to see in a minute, as C .S. Lewis says, you know, little ducks want to swim. Lo and behold, there’s water. Human beings get hungry. Lo and behold, there’s such a thing as food. And if you find in yourself… a desire and a longing for a joy that nothing on earth can satisfy. Maybe you weren’t built just for earth. Maybe you were built for something bigger than earth. Maybe you were built for something bigger than this life. And you see until you find what that bigger is, and until you actually put your hope in heaven and your hope in Jesus Christ and your hope in the gospel, you’ll never be able to fill up that hole there in your heart and you’ll never know joy.
And therefore, joys of the essence of the Christian life. Secondly, be joy overlaps with sorrow. This is very clearly taught here and all the way through the Bible. The opposite of joy as we’re going to see is not sadness. Did you think it was? No way. I was just saying this morning the opposite of love is not anger. People say, well, if you love me, you won’t get angry at me. We try to explain. If you love somebody, you get angry with them all the time. Isn’t that right? Because if you love somebody you get angry at them all the time because you hate evil and you hate anything that’s destroying them And you hate the evil in them or the evil part of them.
So the opposite of love is not You know anger the opposite of love as we said is fear and is indifference Now the opposite of joy is not sadness and the reason we know that is because the Bible is constantly showing us that your joy is So great that it can coexist with sadness It can overlap with sorrow So for example down here now I happen to know this sort of second hand Down here in verse 21 a woman giving birth to a child has pain because her time has come But when her baby is born she forgets the anguish because of her joy that the child is born into the world now I admittedly this experience is something I only know second hand But as I as I love to remind myself and remember it because it’s three of the greatest Experiences I’ve ever had in my life. I’ve watched three kids being born only three nobody else And I do remember this that when it’s true that when the child is born the woman forgets her anguish Because of the joy that the child is born. However, the pain is not over From I know this too Just because the child is born just the child’s out there and just because the father’s holding the child does not mean suddenly Even though, you know, the wife is is just You know buoyant with joy over the child doesn’t mean the pain is gone I think Jesus is absolutely right. She forgets her pain, but it doesn’t mean the pain goes The joy overwhelms the pain the relief You know It doesn’t mean that the whole body is not aching like crazy and throbbing like crazy but there’s this there’s the joy and The joy overwhelms it and what Jesus is saying is that your pain and your sorrow in the world does not go away Many Christians have made a tremendous mistake.
In fact, a lot of people when they come into the The church and they begin to talk about and consider the gospel are clearly doing it not because they believe they’re sinners who need forgiveness, they don’t see themselves as rebels against God who need to lay down their arms. No, they look at themselves as sufferers who need a balm, need medicine. And so there’s very often a tendency for those people to come and to say, if I give myself to God, these pains and these sorrows in my life should go away. There’s never anywhere in here that there’s a promise like that.
As a matter of fact, don’t you want to be like Jesus Christ? Okay, you want to be like Jesus Christ? Fine, but Jesus Christ was a man of sorrows acquainted with grief. Now we’re told in Hebrews 12 that for the sake of the joy that was set before him, he ran the race. What does that mean? For the sake of the joy that was set before him, he ran the race when he was down here. He had a joy that overwhelmed his suffering. He had a joy that helped him keep on going. But it overlapped with his suffering. It overlapped with intense suffering in sorrow. He was always weeping. There’s one or two places. In fact, there’s only one place. Maybe somebody can show me another one. I only know of one place where it talks about Jesus laughing. It says he exalted in spirit. I’m not sure that means he was laughing. It did mean he rejoiced. And there’s other places where he says, I rejoice, but not, you know, they’re there. But it’s always talking about his sadness and sorrow and weeping. He had a joy, but it overlapped with sorrow.
And I should probably remind you of what I said about three weeks ago. When was it that we talked about trials? Remember that in 1 Peter? Let me just quickly encapsulize what we said that night. It’s the same as this. The Bible tells us that when you become a Christian, you become happier and sadder at the same time. A lot of people seem to think, well, when I become a Christian, I become a happier person. That’s true. You forget the fact that the Bible also says, I think, when you become a Christian, you become a sadder person too. You’ve actually become a much more extreme person. You get a joy that you never had before, but you actually do in many ways suffer more. Well, the Bible talks about… But it’s, it talks, some places the Bible talks about salvation as losing your heart of stone and getting a heart of flesh. Do you remember any of that? Some places in the Old Testament it says, God says, I will take away your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. When you’re far from God, you harden yourself. That’s the only way you can deal with the troubles of the world. You don’t have a joy that’s welling up inside you. You don’t have anything to, you don’t have an assurance of your salvation, a certainty that you’re going to rule and reign with Him forever. You don’t have that intimacy. What are you going to do with the troubles of life? The only possible answer is to harden yourself, make yourself tough, say, I’m not going to let it get to me. And so as time goes on, you become a harder person and I believe you experience less suffering. You become a Christian. You cross over the line into faith and what happens is God gives you a heart of flesh. He gives you a soft heart and you begin to see the sin in your own life like you didn’t before. Or you don’t rationalize your own sin anymore. You don’t say, well, if you had my spouse, you would, you know, you can’t do that anymore, right? Because you have to say, that’s my sin, that’s my fault, and you feel more sorrow over your own sin. But you also look around and see people dashing themselves on the rocks of their own selfishness and pride. And you see more spiritual insanity, people out of touch with reality. You know, when you get in touch with reality, when you get in touch with God, and you begin to see how things really are, you look around and you begin to realize there’s all these other people totally out of touch with reality, walking into doors and into walls and into rocks that they don’t even realize why they’re all bloody, they don’t even see them. And so you really find yourself becoming more sensitive and you become sadder in some ways, like Jesus. But you get a joy too, that overwhelms the sorrow. Real Christian joy is a joy that overwhelms the sorrow, as we said that night.
It’s really more like when the cold air comes on in, it kicks the furnace on, and the furnace overwhelms the cold. And so as the sorrow comes into the heart of a Christian, it kicks on more of the joy. It gets you closer to him, it helps you dig down deeper into him, and the joy kicks up, you might say, like your furnace and overwhelms the sorrow. That, that is a picture of a solid Christian. Not a sorrowless person who’s happy, happy, happy all the time because I’ve got Jesus in my heart. That’s not the picture. A picture of a real Christian is a person who’s got a furnace of joy in there that kicks up as the sorrow comes in and overwhelms, overwhelms the sorrow. But the sorrow is there, it is there.
Remember what happened to Job? Remember that? We talked about that three weeks ago. When all these problems came into Job’s heart, it says he ripped his clothes and he poured ashes on his head and he hit the dirt and cried out and the Bible says in all this, Job sinned not and a lot of us Christians would say that we saw anybody ripping their clothes up and and falling down on the ground and, you know, crying out because of their sorrow. We have a tendency to say, well, that person’s got no faith. What’s wrong with that person? That person’s really lost it. And yet the Bible says in all this, Joe sinned not, which means that deep sorrow and deep pain and deep anguish is not is is not incompatible with joy. They overlap.
Thirdly. Oh boy. Joy is permanent and deep in verse 22. It says so with you. Now is your time of grief, but you will see me again and you will rejoice and no one will take away your joy. The mark of real joy is that it is not subject to circumstances. The reason it says they’re literally no man can take your joy away. Some of you women I know need to see what it says literally. What it says literally in the Greek, it says, Jesus says, when you see me, you will rejoice and no man can take away your joy. You say, wait a minute. What it’s saying is if your joy is grounded in me, then circumstances are not the thing which really gives you your greatest security and greatest identity and greatest joy, right? You see, if your joy is really founded on me, I don’t change. I am the Lord God. I change not. He changes. She changes. The stock market changes. These things change. And if everything you’ve got is resting in that, of course, you think people are going to take away your joy all the time. But if you get joy from me, from seeing me, then what? The answer is nobody can take it away. It’s permanent and deep.
Now, what is joy produced by? Joy is really produced by Christ. And that means obey Christ, know Christ, pray to Christ. Joy is not an easy thing to develop. It really comes to the degree that you’re obeying and knowing Jesus Christ. Listen, if you’re obeying Christ, why does that bring joy? It brings it in stages. First of all, obedience brings a clear conscience and a big, big reason why a lot of us don’t receive the joy that we should have is because we do not have a clear conscience. And I don’t know what is troubling your conscience, but whatever it is, you’ve got to get it off because the essence of joy is a clear conscience. One of the reasons why Christians can be bolder and happier than anybody else is, as I was mentioned this morning and as Kathy Kelly mentioned again tonight, if you know that your sins are forgiven, if you’ve looked at yourself and seen yourself at your worst and you know that that’s completely forgiven and accepted, you have a clear conscience. You’re not afraid of anybody finding out the worst about you. You believe you’re accepted as you are and your sins are wiped away. That’s boldness. That’s where boldness comes from the shyness and the self -consciousness and and the lack of security and the insecurity and the lack of joy in our lives to a great degree comes from an impure conscience. There are things that are in your life because they’re bothering your conscience, they’re robbing your joy. In fact, it depends. You know, think of yourself as a bucket and think of the joy as the water in there. An unclear conscience is like a hole right down here. A hole one inch from the bottom and you wonder why all this joy is supposed to be coming in and is, you know, you’re a Christian, all this joy coming in. Why wonder why you can never get the bucket up more full than about an inch? It’s because you got a hole here and that hole is something that is robbing your well is something that is wounding your conscience. Obedience to Christ brings about that clear conscience. And that’s one of the reasons and also another reason why obedience to Christ brings joy is because Boy, Jesus is constantly talking about it. If you know my words and obey my words, you will have joy, like in John 15 and other places. Because it seems that when we obey Him, it gives the Spirit of God scriptural freedom to operate in our lives in the most powerful possible way. So obedience to Christ is one of the reasons, one of the ways we get joy.
And prayer to Christ, knowing Christ, talking to Him regularly. Obvious. He says, when you see me, you will rejoice. And of course, we’re not talking about physical singing, but the Bible talks a lot about the faith site we can have through prayer. If we go to Him, if we take the time to spend the time with Him. So it’s through prayer, it’s through obedience that joy comes. Let’s summarize and let me just show you these other quotations.
The definition of joy? Joy is the buoyancy that results from the enjoyment of the unchanging privileges we have in God. You know what buoyancy means? It’s the same word. You know what the word delight means? What’s delight mean? It means your light means you don’t sink. Boyancy, delight are the same thing. As we said, you may have a whole lot of junk in your life. Joy is not the opposite of sorrow and junk and goop and pain and suffering. Joy is the ability you’ve got to be to stay afloat on top of all those stormy waters. It’s to be lightened. And that’s why the Bible talks about, that’s why Paul says, even though I have all these problems in my life, he says these slight momentary afflictions are outweighed by an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.
What’s a weight of glory? The word glory is the word kaboad, which means weight. And what Paul’s saying is, the glory I experienced by obeying and knowing Jesus Christ is so much weightier than all my problems, they seem light by comparison. You know what the picture is, he’s got, he’s thinking about a scale. And something may seem pretty heavy until you put something 10 times heavier over here and then this thing seems quite light. And Paul says, there’s a weight of glory in my life that makes all these other little things look like fleabites. You know what little things Paul was talking about, don’t you? Almost starving and being shipwrecked and being flogged 39 times and stuff like that. Fleabites. It’s the sort of thing, the weight of glory in his life and in the lives of the Christians. It’s what enabled him to go to the lions, singing hymns. Why? Why? Oh, I’m about to be tortured and die. Well, you know, that’s a fleabite by comparison with the eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison.
And think of the things that we can’t overcome. You see? And it’s the same God. It’s the same thing available to us as to them. Joy is the buoyancy that results from the enjoyment of the unchangeable privileges of God. Look at this great quote from, hmm, must be Lewis. Yes, see us Lewis. Our Lord, our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. Look at this. We are half -hearted creatures. Fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us. Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he can’t imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are too easily pleased. Whenever somebody says to me, well, look, I think it would be a great idea to come to Christ, but I don’t want to do it now. I mean, I’m afraid it will limit me. There’s things I want to do. There’s people I might want to be with. There’s things I might want to… I don’t want to limit myself. Are you kidding? You are too easily pleased. You are a half -hearted creature. You have no idea what you’re messing around with. You’re making mud pies in a slum. And you’re saying, well, you know, I just… I’m afraid. I don’t want to limit myself. You see, you’re fooling around with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered. And look down here at the opposite. I’ve got to quit.
The opposite of joy is not sorrow. It’s hopelessness.
Did you hear me? It’s hopelessness. The opposite of joy is not sorrow. It’s hopelessness. 1 Peter 1 -6 and elsewhere, we talked about this. Christians can rejoice while they’re in pain and sorrow. A Christian is both sadder and happier than anything. Anyone else, and we talked about that. Look at Romans 5 -3. We rejoice in our sufferings because we know that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance, character, and character hope. And hope does not disappoint us because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit. That’s clearly saying the reason we can have joy during our suffering is because of our hope. What’s hope? It’s the ability to say, as nice as all these things are here on earth, I’ve got something better. As nice as all these things… As nice as it is to have this person, that person saying something to me, I’ve got a better verdict like we were talking about this morning. So the opposite of joy is not…despair. Well, it is despair. The opposite of joy is not sorrow, I mean, but it’s hopelessness and despair. That’s the reason, for example, 1 Thessalonians 4 .13 is terrific. It says, Christians do grieve, but I do not want you, Paul says, to grieve as those who have no hope. Isn’t that interesting? Some people think Christians shouldn’t grieve. That’s not what Paul says. He says Christians have a different kind of grief. They rub their hope, their hope of the future, their hope of their salvation. They rub it into their grief the way somebody rubs salt into meat to keep it from going bad. Or worse than that, a better illustration, frankly, it’s like rubbing salt into a wound, though it stings, it keeps it from going sour. And so Christians rub their hope into their grief so that it keeps it from going bad. When you’re in grief, you don’t say, I can’t have grief, I’m a Christian. That’s not it. That’s not what Paul says you should do. That’s extremely unhealthy. And that’s not what Jesus did either. You know, he wasn’t up there on the cross saying, well, you know, I’m not going to let this get to me. No. What did he do? That’s stoicism. That’s stoicism. That’s a pagan philosophy. It’s a Greek philosophy. It’s not Christianity. Never has been. He rubs his hope into his grief. The counterfeit of joy is the feeling that comes when we rest in our blessings, not the blesser. There’s an elation that comes whenever we get things that we really think will make our lives great. We talked about this much earlier in the fall, in this evening services. If you have an idol in your life, something you say, if I get that, then I will be great. Then my life will be OK. When you’re getting closer to that idol, your idol is operating like a little God’s, little G in your life, and it blesses you. See, if you’re ruled by the God of career and you get a promotion, the God of career will come and bless you and say, bless you, my child. You are my beloved child in whom I’m well pleased. And it works for a while. But if you don’t get another promotion next year, the idol will come and curse you. And it will say, you call yourself a human being. Look at all the people who’ve been promoted ahead of you. Look at all the people that came out of your college, came out of your class. Look where they are. You see, the little idol will come and start cursing you. So don’t be so happy when it’s blessing you now because it won’t be long. Because all gods are false gods except the true God, and only God can give you joy. And so the way you find out about false joy is it’s there temporarily. It’s based on blessings, but it doesn’t go beyond to the blessed, to God Himself and rejoicing God. And the cultivation? Listen. Basically, joy is the result of the assurance of our salvation. And the assurance of your salvation comes from knowing that you’re saved now. not by your good deeds, but by grace. If you have trouble with assurance of salvation, that’s a pretty complicated thing. But I want you to know that ultimately, your assurance of salvation is the basic engine for joy in the Christian life. Don’t have time to go into it now. We will definitely deal with it in these evening services.
But the most helpful thing, probably, to bring out is these two quotes, and then I’m finished. J .C. Ryle, Bishop of Liverpool in the 19th century, points out why assurance of salvation is the heart of joy. Look, assurance goes far to set a child of God free from a painful kind of bondage and administers mightily to his comfort. It enables him to feel that the great business of life is settled, the great debt is paid, the great diseases healed, the great work of finished work, and all other business, diseases, debts, and works are by comparison small. You see that?
And lastly, this is what C .S. Lewis says. to be able to grow in hope and joy, to enjoy God, and to be excited by the thoughts of ruling and reigning with God, which is the essence of joy. For a lot of us, we say, and listen, especially those of you who are new Christians, all the stuff I’ve been saying tonight can sound awfully scary because it seems so far away. You say, this isn’t concrete enough. I hear what you’re saying. I see that, I see it’s obviously possible. It must be possible. Historically, it is possible because Christians who had this joy could face the lions coming and eating them up and mauling them, and they could sing about it. So it must be true. But the problem is, how in the world do I look beyond my blessings to the blesser? How do I put my hopes so much on eternal things and unseen things and the glories of who God is and who I am in God? I mean, that’s great to rejoice like that, but it’s so, it’s just not very concrete. How do I do that? And C .S. Lewis is beautiful with his final quote. He says, the schoolboy, beginning to study the Greek grammar, cannot look forward to his adult enjoyment of Sophocles as a lover looks forward to marriage. He has to begin by working for Marx to escape punishment or to please his parents or at best in the hope of a future good he cannot presently imagine or even desire. He gets it gradually. Enjoyment creeps in upon the mare drudgery and nobody could point to a day or an hour when the one ceased and the other began. Those of you who musicians can know this real well. You remember, it might be hard. Can you remember way back when it was nothing but scales and you just had to do it? And now you get to the place where you can actually sit down and express yourself. You can sit down and sing or play and let it out. But it took years, in many cases, of drudgery to get to that place of freedom. And as Lewis says, nobody can point to a day or an hour in which the enjoyment finally overwhelmed the drudgery. The Christian in relation to heaven is as much in the same position as the schoolboy. Poetry replaces grammar. Gospel replaces duty. Longing transforms obedience as gradually as the tide lifts a grounded ship.
The cross comes before the crown tomorrow’s a Monday morning. A cleft is open in the pitiless walls of the world and we are invited to follow our great captain inside. It’s the following of him, which is the essential point. Follow him, go to him, and you’ll receive a joy. It’ll creep up on you. It’ll turn over from the drudgery eventually. If you follow him, that’s the essential point. Go to him and he’ll give you a joy that no one can take from you.
Let’s pray. Thanks for listening to today’s teaching. We trust you were encouraged by it and that it gives you new insight into how you can apply God’s word to your life. You can find more resources from Tim Keller by subscribing to our quarterly journal at gospelandlife .com.