“But The Fruit Of The Spirit Is Joy” Psalm 30 May
19, 2006
SI: This summer studying the fruit of the Spirit in
Galatians 5.
“Fruit
of the Spirit is love, joy, peace . . .”
This
morning let’s consider the fruit of joy.
INTRO: My motorcycle battery went dead this winter—wouldn’t
keep a charge.
Several times this spring I wanted to ride,
but couldn’t.
So
last Saturday Will and I went to the Honda shop—bought a new battery.
And it cranked right up—he got on the back,
rode down
Turned
south on 31. Beautiful day—sun was
shining, sky was blue,
hills of Blount Co.
in distance.
Gunned
it—and we both said, Yee-haw.
Sometimes
there are cold seasons in the life of a believer.
Seasons of grief and loss.
Seasons of discouragement
and depression.
Seasons of failure and
regret.
Seasons of sorrow and
weeping.
During
those times, it seems like you will never be joyful again.
Wonder if you will ever take pleasure in
life again.
May even seem that God has
removed his favor from your life.
But
true joy never goes away forever.
It’s still there, everything you need. Holy Spirit adds the spark—
suddenly you are
riding again—feeling the sunshine of God’s favor.
Remember
how David expresses it in Psalm 30.
“Weeping may remain for a night, but
rejoicing comes in the morning.”
“You turned my wailing into dancing, you
removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy.”
Remember
how Jesus expressed it to disciples
“I tell you the truth,
you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices.
You will grieve, but your grief will turn to
joy.”
What
is joy?
Joy
is the deep delight and lively pleasure that comes from believing
the Good News of
Jesus Christ.
Joy
begins with the Gospel, begins with believing the Good News.
Remember
at the first Christmas, the angel appeared to the shepherds:
“Behold, I bring you good news of great joy,
which shall be to all people.
For unto you is
born this day in the city of
The
Good News about Jesus Christ as Savior has two parts.
I am more wicked and sinful than I ever dared
to admit.
I need a Savior. Someone has to die.
I am more loved and accepted than I ever
dared to hope.
God has provided that Savior by giving his
Son.
When you believe the Gospel. When the
Good News sinks into your life,
then joy springs up
and that joy is irrepressible.
Because
no matter what happens, no matter how strong the grief,
this truth comes
home—but I’m right with God through Jesus Christ.
Yes,
I’m grieving for this loss but God loves me.”
Yes,
I’m wailing over mess I’ve made of things, but God forgives, accepts me.
Yes,
things are hard now but God has a great future for me.
Yes,
I’m weeping on my pillow but God has said, I will wipe
away every tear.
Joy
is a deep delight and a lively pleasure in these truths.
It’s deep—not shallow emotion. It’s lively—grows, irrepressible.
It’s
part of the essence of being a Christian.
Christians are joyful because God is.
Holy Spirit is joyful, has planted the seed
of joy in you.
What
about you? Do you have this joy? Is this fruit flourishing in your life?
If it isn’t, why not?
Let’s
look at Psalm 30, see what it says about joy.
Four
headings:
1.
The experience of joy.
2. The counterfeit of joy.
3.
The opposite of joy.
4.
The cultivation of joy.
MP#1 The experience of joy.
What
is it like to experience this joy? Two
things need to know.
1. Joy is experienced as an assurance of God’s
favor.
Look
at the way David expresses this in his psalm.
David
wrote this psalm to give praise to God for a time in which he went
through a very
difficult trial.
Don’t
know what happened to David but there are some clues:
vs. 1 “You lifted me out of the depths.”
vs. 2 “You healed me.”
vs. 3 “You brought me up from the grave,
You spared me from going down into
the pit.”
Was
this a life-threatening illness?
Was
this a plot against his life? Trouble in his kingdom?
We don’t know, but whatever it was, David
had sunk very low.
vs. 7, seemed like God had hidden his
face—no longer looked with favor.
Because he did not sense God’s favor, he
lost his joy.
David
began to pray—at first his prayers are the bargaining prayers.
vs. 9 What good is there in my
destruction? Will the dust praise you?
Ever prayed those kinds of
prayers?
Then David’s tone changes:
vs. 10 “Hear O Lord and be merciful to me, be
my help.”
And
God answered—not just in delivering David from this threat, but restoring joy.
David experienced this joy as an assurance of
God’s favor.
vs. 5 “His anger lasts only a moment, but
his favor lasts a lifetime.
Weeping may remain for a night, but
rejoicing comes in the morning.”
Connects
God’s anger (brief) with weeping,
God’s favor with
rejoicing.
When he became assured of God’s favor he was
joyful.
Joy
is not being jolly and hilarious. Those
can come and go.
It
is a deep and settled assurance that you are favored by God
because of what
Jesus Christ has done on your behalf.
Knowing
that God listens to your prayers, with you, cares for you,
Has great things planned for you.
2. Your experience of joy in this life
will be mingled with sorrow.
Said “in this life”
because in heaven, all tears wiped away.
But in this life, you experience joy mingled with
sorrow but joy is so great
it doesn’t just co-exist with sorrow, it transforms it.
“Mourning turned to dancing.” “Grief turned to joy.”
This was the experience of Jesus Christ—the most
joyful man who ever lived.
Yet wasn’t
his life filled with sorrow? Man of
sorrows.
But his sorrows never overwhelmed his joy, joy gave him perspective on sorrows.
“Let us fix
our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our
faith, who for the joy set before
him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at
the right hand of the throne of
God.”
See what the writer is saying. Jesus faced the painful and shameful death of
cross.
But he had
a greater joy set before him that sustained him and transformed sorrow
When Jesus talking to
disciples he used another vivid image.
Woman giving birth is in pain. When child born, pain doesn’t go away,
But the joy
of a new child overwhelms the pain. Joy bigger than pain.
Apostle Paul, “Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.”
Listen
to the way a famous Baptist preacher minister put it:
“These two states of mind (joy and sorrow),
both of them the natural operations of any deep
faith, may co-exist
and blend into one another, so as that the gladness is sobered, and
chastened, and made
manly and noble; and that the sorrow is like some thundercloud, all
streaked with bars
of sunshine that pierce into its deepest depths.”
Joy
of the Lord is realistic. Looks squarely
at the brokenness of life and grieves.
Still joyful. Joy transforms sorrow because in sorrow
assured of God’s favor.
Christian—we
grieve, but pierced with sunshine. Grief temporary, joy eternal.
Know we are right with God, He cares for us
now, has great things planned.
Are you assured of God’s forgiveness, love, and
acceptance?
If you are, then you know joy. Know exactly what I am talking about.
Know how it
transforms the sorrows of life.
If you don’t, why not?
Has the
knowledge that you are reconciled to God really sunk in?
Possible to experience something that you think is
joy but not—call counterfeit.
MP#2 The counterfeit of
joy.
Counterfeit joy is the high you get when the things
you think you have to have
in order to make your life worthwhile are coming your way.
Counterfeit joy is finding happiness only in the
gifts and not in the Giver.
It doesn’t
rest on the favor of God in Christ,
but on things like wealth, success, relationships, standard
of living.
Possible to even have
counterfeit joy in the Gospel.
Some people
come to Gospel, not because believe sinner
needing to be forgiven and accepted into God’s favor.
But because they are
suffering and want some relief.
Think, if I
give myself to God, He’s going to end my suffering. No more pain.
Going to save my marriage, get rid of my emotional pain, whatever.
Counterfeit joy can’t take the heat.
Remember Jesus parable of the seed in shallow
soil—sprang up quickly—
wilted when sun came out, because it had not root.
Wow, it’s God good—because enjoying a time of
material blessing, success—
but when trouble comes—have no joy, because not in God
himself.
Even solid believers can (for a time) confuse real
joy and counterfeit joy.
Say, “For a
time” because God in his love always corrects it.
That is
what happened to David.
Verses 1-5 He praises God for this great answer to
prayer, for God’s love and favor.
Verse 6 He goes back and describes this experience
from the beginning.
“When I felt secure, I said, ‘I will never
be shaken.’”
David was in a very secure position—healthy,
kingdom strong, army strong.
But he was
putting his confidence in those things. Finding his joy in them.
So what happened when they were jerked out from
under him? He fell hard.
Counterfeit
joy can’t take the heat.
“O Lord, when you favored me, you made my
mountain stand firm;
but when you hid
your face, I was dismayed.”
Did what believers almost always do initially when
counterfeit joy is destroyed,
Said, “This
must mean God doesn’t love me. He has
turned away from me.”
Then, as we have already
seen, after falling low.
Joy was
restored, this time his joy was in the right thing, in the Lord’s favor.
So when God
graciously restored his health, things were in the right place.
Do you have counterfeit joy? You can find out the hard way or the easy
way.
The hard way is to continue to find your joy in your
gifts instead of Giver
and when they are jerked away from you, you crash.
You’ll have a crisis just like David had. Life won’t seem worth living.
Because the
things you are counting on to hold you up are gone.
You’ll feel like the Lord has abandoned you. Of course He hasn’t.
He’s really
restoring your joy in the right thing. In relationship with Him.
The easy way is to begin right now to rid your heart
of counterfeit joy.
Replace it
with joy in the Lord.
Years ago heard a sermon by Tim Keller—said
something never forgotten—
shared it with you a number of times.
Two tests Christians ought to take—solitude test,
nightmare test.
Solitude test—in quiet moments, life is hushed,
where does heart go?
What are
your dreams? expectations? what are you hopes?
Is your
dream to know Christ? glorify
him? build his
kingdom?
Is your
dream greater wealth, more romantic marriage, early retirement?
Nightmare test—what do you dread losing more than
anything else?
admiration of certain people, standard of living, looks?
closeness with God, dishonoring Christ in some way, straying
from faith?
Those tests reveal what you are really looking
toward for you joy.
If it is not the Lord.
His favor—then it is something else.
If you don’t deal with this counterfeit joy,
when you crash, when you lose it—may experience the opposite
of joy.
MP#3 The opposite of joy.
The
opposite of joy is not sorrow—we’ve already seen that.
The
opposite of joy is hopelessness.
Collapsing during times of sorrow and
refusing to be comforted by Lord.
There’s
a touch of this in David.
vs.
9, when he is at the depths of woe over this thing in his life.
“What gain is there in my destruction, in my
going down into the pit?
Will the dust praise you? Will it proclaim your faithfulness?”
David
almost loses his sense of perspective. Forgets Lord bigger than his life.
Even in his death, should the Lord choose to
take him, God is faithful.
If someone had come to David at that point,
“David, joy in Lord, faithful.”
But you don’t understand how bad this thing
is I’m going through.
This is it.
This is the end. A note of hopelessness.
An old Dutch pastor put it this way:
“If one gives in to such mourning, he can
progress so far that he finds no delight in anything except in mourning and in
consuming his own heart. He is then not
fit for anything—not for prayer, believing, and overcoming sin, the practice of
virtue, nor for being beneficial to other people—and makes himself unfit to be
restored by the common means, since he refuses to be comforted. ‘A wounded spirit who can
bear?’ (Prov. 18:14).
Do
you have a tendency toward hopelessness?
Don’t forget that your temperament colors
your spiritual experience.
When
you become a Christian, your personality doesn’t change.
Christians aren’t all alike—some are
cheerful, some gloomy, introverts, extra
Experience
of the joy of the Lord is different.
If you tend to be skeptical, melancholy,
negative,
your experience of
the joy of the Lord different from Christian who
is naturally
extroverted and cheerful.
But
remember, Christ claims your personality and He is sanctifying it.
Gives you the power to
bring even your temperament into subjection to Him.
Never an excuse to say, I’m just a gloomy
person, I don’t have joy.
If
you start to feed off of your hopelessness and refuse to be comforted,
then your life is
making a lie of the Gospel you claim believe.
You
are refusing to be cheered by the Good News.
Recognize
your tendencies.
Same Dutch pastor went on to say:
Therefore
conduct yourself valiantly, for it is as easy to yield to a mournful frame, as
it is to collapse for a person who is fainting.
However, the harmful consequences are too dangerous. Therefore, lift up your head and endeavor to
break out of this.”
So
what does this mean in practice?
Does it mean that when in a very sorrowful time, put a grin on your face?
Of course not.
Apostle Paul put it best 1 Thessalonians
4:13
“Brothers, we do not want you to be ignorant
about those who fall asleep,
or to grieve like
the rest of men who have no hope.”
Grieve
when you need to grieve. It’s inhuman
not to grieve.
It’s creepy when Christians don’t grieve
when they should grieve.
Jesus himself wept at Lazarus’ grave even
though knew going to raise him.
David
grieves in many of the psalms—over sickness, disaster, failures.
But don’t grieve like the rest of men who
have no hope.
You grieve with hope. You grieve with joy. Because know right with God.
How
on earth do you do that? Brings us to last point—cultivation of joy.
MP#4 The cultivation of joy.
How do you cultivate joy? It is a fruit. Image one of cultivation.
Fruit tree
in your yard—things you can do to make it more productive.
Scripture tells us that joy is a gift from God.
Not
something you create or work up in your emotions.
vs. 11 “You clothed me with joy.”
Joy comes
from God. Fruit of the
Holy Spirit. He implants it in
you.
Does this imply that you just sit around and wait
passively for joy.
It’s
fruit. Intentional image in Scripture is
one of cultivation.
If you have
a fruit tree in your yard—you don’t create life or fruit—
but there are lots of things you can do to make it more
productive.
Over and over again—believers
given this command—“Rejoice.”
Philippians 4 “Rejoice in the Lord always, I will
say it again: Rejoice.”
But what does it mean to “rejoice in the Lord”? Let me share two thoughts.
First, think about how your rejoice in other things.
Let’s take
two examples—rejoicing in the birth of a child, in winning big game
How do you
rejoice in those things?
1. You talk
about them. Especially with people who
care about them.
You want
them to share your joy.
You call
your relatives and friends and say—guess what, had a baby girl.
Guess
what—we’re state champs. We won the big
game.
2. You
re-live it. Brings such joy you go over
it again and again.
Allison and
I were talking about this. She said,
baby born, it’s one hour old.
Relative
takes come pictures, rushes out to a one hour photo
place,
Brings pictures back to the hospital.
Mother
holding 3 hour old baby, looking at picture of it one hour old—awww!
You re-live the game. Go over play by play in mind, with friend.
Now, let’s apply this to rejoicing in the Lord.
Don’t have to be commanded to rejoice when a baby is
born, win big game.
Have to be
commanded to rejoice in the Lord.
Means we
are spiritually cold. When get to
heaven, won’t have to be told.
Rejoicing in the Lord—you talk about Him, what he
has done. What He’s like.
Especially
with other Christians you say, He’s good, He’s faithful.
You re-live the things He’s taught you, times He’s walked with you.
This is
exactly what David did in writing Psalm 30.
Tells about this great answer to prayer, how joy
restored.
Walks us through all of his ups and downs, and God’s faithfulness.
In short—as
your mind is on the Lord’s faithfulness, your joy restored.
Second thought is this.
If you experience joy as an assurance of God’s
favor.
Then you
rejoice by doing all you can to grow in your assurance of God’s favor.
Means
you have to fix your attention on, meditate on the truths
that are going to
make you joyful and strong.
Have
to stop fixing your attention on and meditating on the half-truths
that will make you
hopeless and weak.
I’ve
sinned and failed and messed things up. True—but half truth.
Full truth is and you are forgiven and
eternally loved by God.
If
you meditate and mull over yourself all the time,
your sad
circumstances, the wrongs done to you, your failures, your faults,
even if those
things are true, you are going to be weak and hopeless.
But, if you meditate on Jesus Christ and His great love for you.
And how, through Him, you are fully accepted
by God the Father.
Even though your sin and rebellion was so
heinous, Jesus Christ had to die,
God
has accepted you as righteous in His sight.
Looks at you and sees the perfection of
Jesus Christ.
That He has adopted you as His son, has a place for you.
Find
some verses of Scripture that encourage.
If you think on these
great things. They will color
your spiritual life.
Are you cultivating joy?
Rejoicing in the Lord, soaking in the assurances of
his favor?
CONC: