Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Joy In Christ's Journey - Philippians Series
86 Plays2 years ago
Join us as Pastor Barron explores the eternal significance of Christ's sacrifice and how it calls us to love, serve, and find true joy in our own lives. Through stories, biblical passages, and personal reflections, we discover the transformative power of following Christ's example and the joy that awaits us in a relationship with Him. So grab your Bible, open your hearts, and let's dive into the incredible joy found in Christ's example.
Timestamps:
01:49 Grateful for yellow Tonka truck, ignored rest.
04:29 "Perfect recipe lost, seek joy in Jesus."
07:56 Jesus chose to submit and become like us, humbling himself to death on a cross. All will eventually acknowledge him. Work out your salvation with fear.
11:26 Unwrapping a gift leads to new behavior.
14:28 Blameless and pure in Christ, no guilt.
19:01 Churches must change to avoid decline. Stay focused on God, not personal gain.
22:40 Loneliness and isolation: leprosy and societal judgment.
24:39 "You are special, know this savior."
26:48 God understood, sent son, joy in obedience.
32:39 Chasing things is futile, focus on Jesus.
35:50 Seek hope, find conversation, return to God.
36:52 Pray for prodigals, exalt Christ, remove distractions.
Recommended
Transcript
The Fleeting Nature of Happiness
00:00:00
Speaker
All right Philippians chapter 2, you know a recent survey 2022 said that 81% of Americans are looking for happiness 81% of them and The problem with happiness is that it is fleeting. It is circumstantial It's based on events rather than on anything of substance. I mean, let's be honest Marriage is a great thing and we love being married, but how many of us are happy in our marriage every day any of you?
00:00:27
Speaker
Okay, you're either lying or you've only been married for like 24 hours, one of the two. Because you all know, and Lisa and I have this joke, there are times when I look at her and I'll go, I love you, I just don't like you right now, you know? We have those moments, those seasons that are up and down, and not just in our marriages. Think about your friendships. You go through dry moments and friendships with people that you've been friends with for 20 years.
00:00:52
Speaker
Your career, even though you may know you're right where God wants you to be and you're calling and responding to your calling, you have those seasons where you wake up and go, do I really want to go do this again today? So happiness is not something that you want to base your life on because it is indeed very much a fleeting thing. It's here one moment, it's gone the next just depending on what the circumstances are.
00:01:14
Speaker
When I was five, well, actually four years old leading up to my fifth birthday, I remember going to my mom and dad and saying, I only want one thing for my birthday. I want a giant yellow Tonka dump truck. That's all I wanted. And I'm not talking about these sissy plastic ones they'll have today. I'm talking about one of those real metal ones. You know, when you're pushing across the road, you fall and bust your face open and go, yes, this is great. You know, that's what I wanted.
00:01:40
Speaker
And so my birthday came and I had friends over and all these presents are there and my mom does what moms do. She starts handing me the graciously the presents here. Take this one, open it, tell them thank you. I got to the first one and opened it and it was okay. But when she turned and looked at the second one out, that's all I was really focused on because it was just the right size for a yellow Tonka truck. And sure enough, when I opened up that truck, man, I was like, this is awesome. I have my yellow Tonka truck.
00:02:07
Speaker
And the last part of the birthday party, I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that I did this. I was so enthralled by that Tonka truck that I really didn't even pay any attention to the rest of the gifts, the rest of my friends. In fact, I actually somewhere in my attic have a Polaroid picture from the day because I was sitting in the grass holding onto my Tonka truck and crying because my mom wanted me to get up and go play with everybody. And all I wanted to do was play with my Tonka truck. I'm like, send everybody else home, keep the cupcakes. I want the Tonka truck. That's all I wanted.
00:02:38
Speaker
Two weeks later, I couldn't even probably tell you where that Tonka truck was. Why? Because something else had replaced its place in my heart. Something else. And you know, as parents, you're thinking that very thing because right now your kids are going, I want this for Christmas. I want this. I'll do anything to have this for Christmas. And two days after Christmas is over with, it'll be shoved into a closet or underneath the bed and they'll be moving on to something else. And as adults, we're really no different.
00:03:05
Speaker
We're constantly moving from one thing to the next to the next, hoping that this is going to be the thing that brings us the happiness we're looking for.
Joy Through God's Unchanging Nature
00:03:14
Speaker
But sadly, happiness isn't really what we want. It's joy. Joy. Why? Because joy is not circumstantial. Joy is based on something that is solid and unchanging and endless, and that is the character of God himself.
00:03:29
Speaker
Because the Bible tells us that God is an unchanging God. He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. And because of that, you can wake up tomorrow with full confidence knowing, knowing that God is going to be there and that His essence, His character is never changing.
00:03:44
Speaker
One of my other favorite memories growing up was Thanksgiving week, because I always as a kid had the opportunity to drive two hours further south Georgia, deep south Georgia, where my grandmother lived. And I knew that on that day when I arrived, there were two things that I was going to get. Number one, a big old wet sloppy kiss on the forehead, which reminded me how deeply my grandmother loved me. And number two, that I was going to sit down to a table that had some of her cornbread dressing on it.
00:04:13
Speaker
Now we're getting spiritual, right? And the cool thing about it, even as a kid, I recognize this fact. It always tasted exactly right. Always. There was never a day where I came in and there were too many onions. There was never a day when it was too bready. I mean, it was just always perfect. But there did come a day when, as my grandmother got older, where she couldn't remember the recipe just right. And one day we walked in and I thought,
00:04:43
Speaker
This isn't my grandmother's dressing anymore. Why? Because that's a horizontal way of thinking of life. That we look for things and we look for relationships with people. We look for events to bring us happiness.
Paul's Teachings from Prison
00:04:57
Speaker
When in reality we are looking for the person of Jesus Christ who is the one source that we can find joy in. So Philippians chapter 2, we're going to read some today. It's a long passage but we're going to kind of dig at it piece by piece and look at some things.
00:05:13
Speaker
Remember Paul's writing from prison, doesn't know whether or not his life is going to go one day longer. So he's writing from some very unusual, very stressful circumstances. But he says this, if then there is any encouragement in Christ, if any consolation of love, any fellowship with the spirit, if any affection and mercy,
00:05:33
Speaker
Make my joy complete by thinking the same way, having the same love, united in spirit, intent on one purpose. Do nothing out of selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility, consider one another as more important than yourselves. Consider others as more important than yourselves. Think of other people in a way that you should
00:05:54
Speaker
as inspired by the person of Jesus Christ. And we're going to dig into that just a little bit more here in a second. He says, everyone should look not to his own interests, but rather to the interest of others. Now, be very careful how you read that. Paul's not saying you shouldn't look out for your interests. You obviously have to take care of yourself. He's simply saying that they shouldn't be the primary focus of your life. Your primary focus should be others. And the beauty of it is that when we think that way, the truth is that our interests get met in the process.
00:06:22
Speaker
And many of our interests fade away. You know, some of us, as we ponder our existence and determine what brings us joy or happiness in these seasons, we'll desire something. We'll think something's going to bring us some kind of happiness. And then we have an interaction with someone else who's really going through a difficult season, strong, strong physical challenges, financial weaknesses, whatever the case may be. And suddenly our interests pale in comparison because we realize, you know, it's really not that big a deal.
00:06:51
Speaker
And so what Christ is commanding us and then looking out for others also helps to take care of many of our own interests. And he goes on to say, adopt the same attitude as that of Christ Jesus. The same attitude as that of Christ Jesus. Now we're fixing to launch into what was one of the early hymns of the early church. It's a beautiful description of who Jesus Christ is. And it's going to set the tone for us today as we consider what it means to be joyful in Christ Jesus. It says,
00:07:20
Speaker
who, existing in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited. Guys, there are a lot of religions today, and I would say a pseudo-Christian kind of face out there, who would argue that Jesus was somehow subordinate to God in his existence, that he really wasn't part of what we call the triune God in the way that we think of it. This verse is one of the greatest arguments for the equality of Jesus with God.
00:07:50
Speaker
because it literally says it here. Jesus was God. He is God. He always will be God. But as we again unpack the rest of this hymn, what we're going to see is that Jesus, by a choice of his own doing, decided to submit himself to the authority of his Father and become like us for our benefit.
00:08:10
Speaker
He says, who existing in the form of God did not consider equality with God as something to be exploited. Instead, he emptied himself by assuming the form of a servant taking on the likeness of humanity. And when he had come as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even to death on a cross. For this reason, God highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name. So that the name of Jesus, every knee will bow in heaven and on earth
00:08:39
Speaker
and under the earth and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. Guys, if you look around us today in the world, you know that this is not the present reality of the world that we live in, but it is a future promise that someday every knee will bow, every tongue will confess, all will be forced to acknowledge that Jesus is and has always been what he professed to be.
Understanding Salvation
00:09:03
Speaker
The question is going to be, are you on his side now?
00:09:06
Speaker
When that time comes, are you forced in submission then because of the presence of Jesus? Verse 12, he says, therefore, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed, so now, not only in my presence, but even more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. Let's stop here for just a second. The truth is, so many of these, this is a lot of meat in these verses, and we can't cover everything, but this is something I really want to deal with
00:09:32
Speaker
before we get into the heart of our message today, and that is this verse. It has been misquoted and misused many times as to say that you are somehow working for your salvation. That is not what Paul is talking about. What Paul is talking about is the working out of our salvation. So let's break this down just a little bit. You've heard me say this before here in our church. The salvation experience is a past, present, and future thing. Past, present, and future.
00:10:01
Speaker
The past of our salvation is the day that we acknowledge that Jesus is indeed who He professed to be and that as sinners we need to confess our sins and submit ourselves to His Lordship in our lives. That is justification that happened in the past. It is a done thing. That part is taken care of.
00:10:18
Speaker
The present part of this, which is what he's referring to here, is what we call sanctification. It's everything from the moment we accept Christ as Savior and Lord to the day we step into heaven and stand before God. And that is the working out of our salvation where we indeed begin to develop the character and the qualities of Jesus Christ.
00:10:37
Speaker
Paul just encourages us to do this. He said, I want you to have the same attitude of Christ Jesus. So God is working in us to do this stuff, but he says here, he uses the phrase, working out, work out your own salvation. What he is referencing is our expression of what has already taken place in us.
00:10:57
Speaker
So in the past, we came to know Jesus as Savior and Lord. In the present, we are working out showing what Christ has done in us by a change of behavior. Let's say today that I got a present from a friend and that present was delivered by Amazon to my front porch. I went out and I picked up the box, brought it in and sat down. I could correctly say I had received a gift, right?
00:11:25
Speaker
All right. So let's say that exact comes over to my house and he walks into my house and he sees the box. He could say really you got a gift and I could say yes, but he didn't know what the gift was and I didn't know the gift was because what's the next step once I received that gift? I have to open it and show what it is. Right. And so let's say that it's my mother and she sent me a food processor from Ronco or whatever. Okay.
00:11:52
Speaker
And I take that food processor out and I set it on the counter and I begin to work on a recipe with this food processor. I am working out the gift that has been given to me and the expression of that is now that I am doing different behavior than I did before. Without the gift, I might be sitting on the couch. But with the gift, I'm now in the kitchen producing a wonderful recipe that I'm going to invite all of you to come and enjoy with me, right?
Fear and Reverence in Scripture
00:12:20
Speaker
No.
00:12:22
Speaker
I'm not sharing with you. But I will share with Zach, because he came to see me, right? So what am I doing? I'm working out the expression of the gift that's already there. What is the future tense of that? The future tense is what we call glorification. It's the day we stand before God the Father, and He completes the work and gives us our glorified bodies. The whole process is over with, and if you will, my job is complete now because the food is on the table. And we're sitting down to enjoy what was
00:12:50
Speaker
the result of the gift that was given to me. Now, that's not a perfect example, but hopefully you see how the differences are expressed. Salvation is a gift to us, given to us in the past, worked out in the present, fully satisfied in the future by the completion of that work in us and God. He uses the words fear and trembling here, and I want to be very careful to help you understand that twice there's two different meanings of fear in Scripture. One of them is fear like you're scared of something.
00:13:17
Speaker
The other one is a fear like awe, like you are in awe of God himself, you are in awe of his
Joy in Christ Versus Circumstances
00:13:23
Speaker
character, in awe of his nature. This is why over in Proverbs chapter 28 verse 12, Solomon could write that blessed is the man who fears. Blessed is the man who fears. Why? Because when you have a proper perspective of God, your life is rearranged in the right manner before him. When you really understand what God had to do to pay the price for your sin in Jesus Christ,
00:13:45
Speaker
Then you correct your behavior. You live in confession of your sins. And in all of the fact that Jesus Christ did what we just read about here humbled himself, took himself down to a place where he could put flesh around his character and lived his life here with us. So verse 13, for it is God who is working in you both to will and to work according to his good purpose. Do everything without grumbling and arguing. We are all in trouble right there.
00:14:15
Speaker
Right? Some of you argue because you don't like what's going on in the situations around you. Some of you grumble because you have to get up and go to work. Some of you grumble because your team didn't play as well as they should have against Georgia last night. I mean, just... You knew it had come just one time. He goes on, he says, so that you may be blameless and pure, children of God, who are faultless in a crooked and perverted generation. Are we blameless?
00:14:46
Speaker
Any of you here perfect? So why such language? Well, because in Christ Jesus we are put in a position of being blameless because when God looks at us, those of us who are in Christ, what he sees is the blood of Christ Jesus, not your sin.
00:15:01
Speaker
So the guilt has been removed from us and the stain has been washed away by the sacrifice that Christ paid. And finally, verse 16, he says, by holding firm to the word of life, then I can boast in the day of Christ that I didn't run or labor for nothing. But even if I am poured out as a drink offering on the sacrificial surface, there's that reference that Paul makes to the fact he doesn't know if he's going to be alive tomorrow or next week or what.
00:15:25
Speaker
He said, I'm being poured out as a drink offering on the sacrificial service of your faith. I am glad and rejoiced with all of you in the same way you should also be glad and rejoice with me. Sometimes joy seems unattainable. Even for those of us who have been in this thing, we call the Christian faith for a long, long time. It seems like so many of us are pursuing something that just can't be caught. And it seems like it's something we should pray and strive for, which it is.
00:15:56
Speaker
The Bible's very, very clear about that. But the question we have to ask is how do you find joy in a world that seems like it's going crazy around you? A world that seems to overwhelm you from time to time and put you under its pressure. It seems paradoxical to pursue something like joy in the world that we're in. But Paul, again, as I've told you before, uses this word joy 16 different times in this book as he's writing from a prison cell.
00:16:21
Speaker
So despite our circumstances, I believe Paul is saying to us, you absolutely can find joy. So where do we find it? First of all, we find joy in Christ. We find joy in Christ. If you go back and look at Philippians chapter 1, verse 1, it says, to all the saints who are what? In Christ Jesus. We are in Christ Jesus. Being in Christ is where joy begins. Before you know Christ, you can't know joy.
00:16:51
Speaker
You don't know what that feels like. You don't comprehend. You can know a lot of happiness and you can have a lot of happy moments. And if you were fortunate, your life goes well. You can have lots more happiness than other people, but you don't have the joy that we are talking about because there is no true joy outside of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Churches and Collective Joy
00:17:10
Speaker
He says, because you have encouragement in Christ, you have consolation of love, you have fellowship in the spirit, you've received affection and mercy, then live this way in response to the blessings that you receive from being in Christ Jesus. So what Paul is saying is that joy, real joy, is like the foundation of a house in a storm. It's like the foundation of a house in a storm. It allows us to endure the storms. The storms will come, right?
00:17:37
Speaker
What I tell you all the time in the Christian life and in real life, you're either in a storm coming out of a storm or hold on, you're about to go into one. That's the way real life works. But Paul says that when you have joy, you have this foundation that is steady, it's rock solid, it never changes, never fades away, never passes away. And so when storms come, it may hurt a little, but it does not move you because you are locked into the unchanging nature of a holy God.
00:18:08
Speaker
Life is full of changes. It's full of the unknown. It's full of uncertainty, and we don't like those things, do we? As human beings, we want to feel like we are in control. One of my favorite sayings is, change is easy. You go first. Right?
00:18:25
Speaker
I mean, because we don't like not knowing what's going to happen tomorrow. We don't like not knowing what the economy is going to do. We don't like not knowing what our boss has planned for our future at our work. We don't like not being able to speak certain things and know certain things about our lives. We want to know what's going on. We want to know when it's going to happen. We want to know how it's going to happen. We want to know why it's going to happen. So in certainty, joy is the foundation that keeps us from being moved off of our spot.
00:18:55
Speaker
The truth about your life is also the truth about this church. We're constantly in a state of change around here, right? Grove Hill Church is always going through some kind of change. And my prayer is that we always are. Because it's been my experience in 39 years of ministry now that churches that become comfortable start to die. When the conversation you have with your church and therefore with God becomes about what's in it for me, then we have started to sign our own death certificate.
Christ's Example of Humility and Service
00:19:26
Speaker
Because churches that focus on themselves, that focus on their comfort, that focus on what I'm going to get out of this, they suddenly have turned their eyes off of the one that's supposed to be the source of their joy and now are looking again back to circumstances. They're looking at events. They're looking at relationships, believing that those somehow will take the place of God and will satisfy on a level that only God can.
00:19:54
Speaker
As a church, we have to stay united. We have to stay intent on our purpose. We have to stay focused on the glory of God and believe that whatever is going on in this place, I hope we never get comfortable. Because if we start to get comfortable, I'm going to have to try to make you uncomfortable, which makes me uncomfortable. And then we're all uncomfortable together, right? If we keep our eyes on our hearts fixed on Jesus Christ, we can have joy no matter what the situation. We also find joy in Christ's example himself.
00:20:23
Speaker
Paul made it clear and I've emphasized this a couple of times already in the message. He says adopt the same attitude of that of Christ Jesus. So what was Christ's attitude? He humbled himself. He humbled himself. Anybody else get bothered by people who talk about how humbled they are? Right? I'm proudly telling you how humble I am. Let me tell you what a humble person I am. That just is kind of, again, paradoxical. It seems kind of weird.
00:20:52
Speaker
But in the life of Jesus Christ, we see what true humility looks like. Did Jesus have to do what he did? No. Would Jesus and God been okay carrying out their eternal existence in the community that was developed between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit? Absolutely. Was he compelled by anything other than his own love for us? No. No one twisted his arm. No one could have stood behind him and pushed him or shoved him. Instead,
00:21:23
Speaker
It was Christ who humbled himself, who said, I'm not going to consider equality with my father something that I'm going to hold on to. I'm going to give it up so that they may have a chance. Think about how amazing that fact is. Do you ever contemplate the reality that the eternal, always perfect, always holy, always blameless Jesus Christ came to earth for you and me?
00:21:54
Speaker
It takes me back to some of the familiar stories. Stories of lepers. If you don't know much about the skin disease they refer to as leprosy in the scriptures, it was something that was unfixable. There was no solution, no cure. And people who were lepers were treated much like this people group that we're praying about this morning. Nobody was allowed to get near them. In fact, they would ring bells and would scream unclean, unclean as they walked around so that people had the opportunity to get away from them.
00:22:24
Speaker
And so literally, if you were a leper in that day and age, depending on when the disease set in on you, you would go years, decades, your entire life without ever feeling the human touch. I don't know about you, but that would drive me crazy because you know how much I like to hug. Nobody is allowed to get near you. So imagine you're a middle aged man who has leprosy.
00:22:53
Speaker
who for 30, 40 years has walked around with not only knowing when touching you, but really nobody even wanting to speak to you. And then the first delicate touch on your skin is the fingertips of the Creator. What a thought! How about this?
00:23:18
Speaker
You've spent most of your adult life as an adulterous woman because you've got no other way to take care of yourself. Because in that culture, a single woman was pretty much written off. If you weren't married, you were used up goods. And so, literally, because you just want to stay alive, you're forced into a life of compromise. And everybody knows who you are. Everybody knows your secret.
00:23:48
Speaker
No matter where you walk, people look at you with disdain. And then one day you hear the story of a man named Jesus. And you hear he's going to be at a house in the town where you have lived all your life. And you show up and all you have to offer is a little bit of oil mixed with your own tears.
00:24:17
Speaker
And as you kneel at his feet. And begin to pour the oil over his feet and to cry tears of shame and guilt. He looks at you and says. You are special. You are special. And that moment she had to go, wait a minute, who are you talking about? Do you know who I am?
00:24:48
Speaker
And in that moment, she had to know. This is the savior. Maybe my favorite image. The one who created the heavens and the earth. Colossians says that in him, everything is held together. That he is all that. And yet this image of him on the night he is to die.
00:25:19
Speaker
on his feet with a towel washing the feet of his disciples. Men who literally would walk away from him in a matter of hours and say they didn't even know who he was. One of them, the ultimate betrayer. And yet he knelt and washed their feet.
00:25:49
Speaker
And Paul knows these stories and he looks at you and me across 2000 years and says, this is who you should be. This is what you should look like to the world around you. So what does that mean? It says you have no permission to look at anybody else's skin and judge them by their skin.
00:26:12
Speaker
You don't have permission to look at anybody else's past and tell them that their past makes them unqualified for a good future. You do not have any permission to look at those who turn their back on you, who betray you, who rebel against you and say, I do anything else but love you. That's a high mark for us. It's a high mark for us. And God forgive us that we don't even come close.
00:26:44
Speaker
We utter phrases like, well, God has to understand. You don't think God understood the day he watched his son die for you? You don't think that God didn't know before he ever sent Jesus that this would be the end result? That his son would give his life for you and me and we would treat him casually and treat him informally and somehow call him our buddy and our friend but never really give our lives to him?
00:27:15
Speaker
Paul says, be like Jesus. I don't know about you. I got a long way to go. A long way to go before I ever get into the shadow of who he was. We find joy in this example because he sets the bar high for us. And the funny thing is he did this all with joy.
00:27:44
Speaker
He did it all with joy. The writer of Hebrews tells us that Jesus did all he did in dying for us for the joy that was set before him. You know what that means? That means joy is given to the heart of the creator when you and I are obedient to him. He loves it when his children do well. We see Jesus consistently loving and serving others and he'd ask us to turn and do the same.
00:28:13
Speaker
Finally, we find joy in following Christ's example.
00:28:23
Speaker
Verse 12 says, therefore, my dear friends, just as you have always obeyed so now, not only in my presence, but even more in my absence, work out your salvation with fear and trembling. You see, just as Jesus emptied and humbled himself, we should empty ourselves to continue kingdom work. And let's be honest, being a servant is a hard thing, right?
00:28:45
Speaker
It requires humility, it requires surrender, it requires submission. It's doing work that no one else wants to do, where no one else wants to do it for people that no one else wants to serve. It's not for fame, it's not for glory, it's not for your own promotion. It is instead for the glorification of Christ Jesus that we do what we do as servants. But if we only serve those who deserve to be served, then we will never serve anybody.
00:29:13
Speaker
And if Jesus had only died for those who deserved it, you and I would not be here. But praise God, He set an example that was different. And you and I cannot possibly follow His example until we accept the attitude He set for us. Now, it's a contradiction to our culture. As I said earlier, the first thing we're taught to ask is, when am I going to get out of this? What's in it for me? But for Christians, it's not about us.
Eternal Joy Through Relationship with Christ
00:29:44
Speaker
It can't be about us because when it becomes about us, our eyes are taken off of the cross and placed instead on our own journey. Ephesians chapter 5, Paul also writes these words. He says, be imitators of God.
00:29:59
Speaker
He wasn't telling us to be God. We can't possibly fill that role, but he is saying do everything you can to mimic what God has demonstrated for you. Love people in a way that I have loved people. Serve people in the way that I serve people. Offer hope to people the way I offer hope to people. Quit trying to satisfy your own longings and pursue the longings I have for you, because there you will find joy. If you're going to follow the example of Christ Jesus, you're going to have to learn how to give your life away.
00:30:29
Speaker
So here's the takeaways this morning. I was taught in seminary, you're supposed to always have takeaways. So here's two takeaways for you. Number one, joy maintains an eternal focus.
00:30:42
Speaker
It maintains an eternal focus. That's why Paul sitting in a prison cell, knowing that his death might be imminent, had the power to say, even if I am poured out as a drink offering on the sacrificial service of your faith, I am glad and will rejoice with you. How many of you ever sat down, wrote a letter to a friend and said, even though I might be dead tomorrow, I'm excited that you're going to keep living? That's literally what Paul's writing here. He says, my life, my life is nothing to me.
00:31:10
Speaker
Why? Because I have taken on the mind of that of Christ. This doesn't make sense to us. It doesn't make sense to us unless we are truly followers of Christ Jesus. Paul David Tripp, great author, pastor, writer says this, Joy is not horizontal. Joy is vertical.
00:31:31
Speaker
Joy is not horizontal, joy is vertical. So if you're trying to find joy in the horizontal by looking around you, by looking for the latest gimmick, the latest material thing, the latest relationship, the latest pair of clothing, if you're looking for some hero to come along and be your joy, he is not going to be able to do it. The only way to find joy is to look at the cross. And let's be honest, guys, even as Christians,
00:31:56
Speaker
Even as Christians, even some of the deeply devoted Christians, we follow a whole lot of false imitators that we think will make us happy. Sometimes it's career-oriented, sometimes it's relationship-oriented, sometimes we get all whacked out, and we're like worshipping guys who play a kid's game and make millions of dollars a day doing it, and they're our heroes.
00:32:21
Speaker
or some scantily clad girl who gets up and sings about all her broken relationships and calls people Swifties. This is the world we live in. But guys, we throw our money and ourself and our times at all kinds of idols.
00:32:39
Speaker
Have you ever asked yourself, why do I spend so much time chasing these things? Because tomorrow they'll be gone, next week they'll be gone, next week my kid will be grown and he won't care about that anymore, next week my relationship with my husband will be different and we won't care about those things anymore. There's only one unchangeable, unending thing and it's the person of Jesus Christ. So secondly, your other takeaway, our joy gives a watching world hope. The Lord knows the world needs it right now.
00:33:09
Speaker
The world needs it right now. You know, it's been kind of an interesting thing for me to watch the last few weeks as Mike Johnson has become speaker of the house. For those of you who are unaware with what's going on in the world, we have a new speaker of the house. His name is Mike Johnson. He is from Louisiana and he is a very godly man from everything I've seen. And he has been ripped up one side and down the other because he's acting like a Christian. And the world is stunned by this.
00:33:37
Speaker
And they can't believe that a man would get on his knees in the house of the United States government and get on his knees with other believers and pray for our government. What a horrible thing to do! But we'll listen to pagans stand up and scream their stuff. We'll watch people who follow false religions do their stuff. We'll bow to the wishes of agendas and woke things and progressive liberal stuff. But heaven forbid that you and I stand up and act like Christians.
00:34:06
Speaker
But you want to know what the problem is? It's not that those people are doing what they're doing. It's that we haven't stood up and acted like Christians. Because if we stood up and acted like Christians like we were supposed to do, if we took on the attitude of Christ Jesus, the world would long for that. Because Jesus is the hope of the world. And if they saw you and me washing the feet of dirty people, then they might go, you know what? There's something to this.
00:34:34
Speaker
If we spent less time on Facebook bashing those who don't believe what we believe and instead spent more time talking to them about the hope that we have and living that hope daily for them to see as the world watches us, I think we'd be having more gospel conversations than we would debates. Joy is not found in the horizontal. It's found in the vertical.
00:35:02
Speaker
It's not going to be found in putting your confidence in people around you because people will let you down. It's found by putting your hope in the one who is eternal. The same yesterday, today, and forever. Will you pray with me? God, how we thank you for the image of Christ, the message of Christ, the sacrificial service of Christ,
00:35:33
Speaker
the attitude of Christ. Because of these, we have hope. Not just fleeting hope, not just temporary hope, but hope that really lasts and really changes things. This morning there may be some in this room, Father, who do not know this hope. Maybe they've heard about it, maybe somewhere along the way,
00:36:01
Speaker
brushed up against it, but they can't call it their own. But I pray that today's a day that that changes and that they're willing to just come have a conversation with someone who could talk to them about questions they have or next steps they might want to take. For most of the people in this room, because I know their stories, there's a lot of Christ followers in this room, at least they would call themselves such.
00:36:28
Speaker
And I believe they are, but even Christ followers sometimes can wander away just like prodigals can walk off the front porch and disappear. But praise God, we have someone who stands on the front porch and looks for us. In fact, I believe he pursues us from one end of the earth to the other to draw us home. We sing a lot of songs around here about running to the father and running to God. Lord, I pray that today is a day that some prodigals run home.
00:36:59
Speaker
And instead of exalting ourselves and lifting ourselves up, we choose to live a life that exalts the one who really matters. We get all these things out of our way, get all the distractions removed, and get back to just this idea of Christ and Him crucified as the hope that we have will be much better people, much more content with the peace that He brings.
00:37:30
Speaker
So Lord, the Psalter's open for those to come and pray for you, pray to you, to offer themselves to you to say, hey, I'm done trying this on my own. I'm done looking horizontal. I'm done chasing things. Instead, I want to build my foundation on the unchanging character of a holy God. Thank you for the privilege. Thank you for the grace and mercy that opens the door so we could do this.
00:38:24
Speaker
In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.