Following Jesus #11 - In the Way of Joy

Episode Description

Dr. Kurt Bjorklund looks at the second half of John 16 and how Jesus shares with his disciples how joy should be a characteristic in the life of a Christian, but that because of times of trouble, that won't always be the case.

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Message Transcript

Well, welcome to Orchard Hill. Let's pray together. Father, thank you just for each person who's gathered this weekend at Orchard Hill. And father, I pray that as we spend a few moments looking at John 16 together that you would speak to each of us. Whether we're in the chapel, Butler County, the Strip District, the Wexford auditorium, Father, I pray that my words reflect your word in content and in tone and in emphasis. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.

So there is a man named C. S. Lewis, and perhaps you've heard of him or read one of his books. He was a professor and he found his faith later in life and then went on to write some of the books that have become known as probably some of the best Christian books over the last 100 years. Mere Christianity is probably the best known. He also married late in life. He was a bachelor until he was advanced in years and then he married a lady named Joy. And in the course of their early marriage, she was diagnosed with a terminal illness and she died shortly thereafter. From that he wrote a book called A Grief Observed, which has become another classic for many to process some of the pain of this life.

There was another book though written by a man named Sheldon Vanauken about C. S. Lewis and it recounts parts of his life. It's called A Severe Mercy and in it he makes this statement at one point. He says, "The best argument for Christianity is Christians, their joy, their certainty, their completeness. But the strongest argument against Christianity is also Christians; when they are somber and joyless, when they are self-righteous and smug in complacent consecration, when they are narrow and repressive, then Christianity dies a thousand deaths." I don't know if you agree with that statement, but it's an interesting thought to think that Christianity has its best arguments centered around the people who profess faith in Jesus Christ, especially if you tie it to this idea of joy. And it's also quite a stark thought to say that one of the best arguments against Christianity is Christians, especially when the way of their life isn't characterized by joy.

We've been working our way through this fall, John 14 through 17 it's known as the upper room discourse. John is the fourth of the Gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Gospel simply means good news. It's a good news according to John. In other words, the story of Jesus Christ, the good news of Jesus Christ according to John. And in John 14 through 17 he records what Jesus says in the hours right before his death. And so these are Jesus' words, knowing that his death is coming and that he is facing his crucifixion to his followers. And today we come to a section that is surrounded by the idea of persecution and difficulty, but in the midst of it, he says that his followers should walk in the way of joy. The joy should be a characteristic, a defining characteristic of Jesus followers.

I asked a few weeks ago if you thought that most people in the world would say that joy is a defining characteristic of people of faith, of Christian people. And I could almost hear an audible laugh because for most people, when they think about Christianity or Christians, the first thought is not those are joyful people. It's often something else. But it isn't just how Christians are perceived by people in the world. I wonder how many of us who gather here, especially those of us who would say I've been a follower of Jesus, not just for a year or two, but for decades in some cases, we'd be able to say, "My life is characterized by joy." My guess is many of us would say, "Well, there are seasons of joy. There are seasons of just mundane life that doesn't feel particularly joyful or not joyful. And then there are some seasons of sadness." But we probably on a whole would say, "My life is characterized by a deep, ongoing joy."

And so what I'd like to do is look at this passage, John 16:16-33 under three headings and help us think about joy.

Here's the first heading. And that is first of all, the desire for joy. And we see this because this word joy is repeated several times. Verse 20, "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in and through their message, that all of them may be one, just as the Father." That's John 17 that's not John 16. John 16 puts it this way. So what happens when you look at your... Okay, here's what he says, "Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, for your grief will turn to joy." He says you're going to have challenges, but joy will be part of your experience also. Verse 22 puts it this way. I'm going to read from John 16 this time. "So with you now is your time of grief, but I will see you again and you will rejoice and no one, no one will take away your joy." Verse 24, "Until now, you have not asked for anything in my name, ask and you will receive and your joy will be complete."

And so the theme that Jesus introduces here is he says, "If you're my follower, even in the face of grief, you will have joy. You will have joy that people can't take away. You'll be able to come to me and I will give you joy." Now, if you've been around church, maybe what you've heard is somebody talk about this and this is a common thing. I've heard this. And that is that joy and happiness are different things. And so people will say happiness is based on your circumstances. What you need to do is you need to encounter your life and your happenings and that'll have your happiness and lack of happiness go up and down, but you need a joy that transcends your happiness.

In fact, I had thought about that and so I took a little time this week just to look up all of the references in the Bible to joy or happiness. And here's what I found, and that is by and large, these words are used synonymously in the Bible. In other words, joy and happiness, that that distinction might not be a completely biblical category. And here's why this matters. Because not that the idea is wrong to say there's a kind of joy that goes up and down with circumstances, but the idea that that joy and happiness aren't one in the same may miss the point that I believe Jesus is making here. And that is he's saying, "If you're my follower, I want you to be able to live in such a way that you encounter a deep sense of happiness that's ongoing throughout your life." In fact, most of what we do in our life is tied to this pursuit if we're honest. Anne Frank put it this way years ago, she said, "We live with an objective of being happy. Our lives are all different and yet the same." They're different because we pursue it differently, but that's what drives so much of what we do.

Some of us, we will pursue a career with the hope that it will make us happy. Some of us will pursue a marriage or children with the pursuit that it will make us happy. Some of us will try to retire and get away from our career with the idea that it will make us happy. Some of us will try to get out of a marriage with the idea that it will make us happy. Some of us will look forward to the kids leaving with the idea that it will make us happy. In other words, so much of what you and I do is tied to this idea of what will bring me joy, what will make me happy.

There's an author tell Ben-Shahar, who was a lecturer at Harvard. He wrote a little book called Happier. And he says that happiness is the ultimate currency. And what he means is this is what we are seeking. And he says, this is why we work hard, this is why we do almost anything we do. And he says, money, fame, everything else are just secondary to the idea that they will bring us a sense of happiness or joy. And what Jesus says in John 16, is he says, "I'm the source of your joy. And if you're my follower, your life can be characterized by joy." So that's the first heading, the desire for joy.

Here's the second heading, and that is the pursuit of joy. What do we do to try to get joy? And I believe that we see some things here in these verses. In John 16:20-21, I think we see that sometimes what we do is we rely on our circumstances. In other words, what many of us will do is we'll say, "If I can get everything lined up just right in my life, if I can make everything the way that I want it, then I'll be happy." And what we'll do is we'll go through life with the illusion that if I can just get the next thing lined up, then I'll really be satisfied. Then I'll really be happy. And sometimes we'll get that thing and we'll realize that it didn't make us happy. So we'll have a new thing and it feels like an ever expanding target or a target that keeps getting moved down the road.

And so we spend so much of our lives... Here's where we see. It says this. Verse 20, "Very truly, I tell you, you will weep and mourn..." Now, verse 20, excuse me, "You will weep and mourn while the world rejoices. You will grieve, but your grief will turn to joy." And then he gives this analogy of a woman giving birth. 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 of her joy that a child is born into the world." If you've been a lady who has had a baby, you've been around a lady who's had a baby, you've experienced this moment where there's excruciating pain, and then all of a sudden there's this baby and there's joy on the other side. By the way, this is a total aside, but have you ever heard a guy say about he and his wife or partner, "We're pregnant." I was wanting to say, "You're not pregnant. She's carrying the child, doing all the hard work. You had a part in it, but you're not pregnant." Anyway, that's just an aside now.

Now, here's why relying on circumstances is one of our pursuits. Because it's the most natural thing to say, "If I can get everything lined up the way that I want it lined up, then I can really experience the world the way I want to, then I'll be happy." But the problem with this view is that our circumstances move against us almost as easily and as quickly as they move for us. And even when we get everything, history tells us that that doesn't always equal happiness. In the Bible, there's a man who had most of everything that any of us would ever think that we could want. His name was Solomon and he is or thought to be the author of the book of Ecclesiastes. Let me just read you some of what he says in Ecclesiastes 2. He says, "I said to myself, 'Come now, I will test you with pleasure to find out what is good.' But that also proved to be meaningless."

The way Ecclesiastes he starts is with Solomon saying, meaningless, meaningless, everything is meaningless. Solomon was the wealthiest man in the world at the time. Solomon now is saying, "I tried every pleasure and I found that it didn't satisfy me. That it was still meaningless." "Laughter, I said, is madness. And what does pleasure accomplish?" In other words, "I tried to amuse myself and it didn't lead to anything. I tried cheering myself with wine and embracing folly, my mind still guiding me with wisdom. I wanted to see what was good for people to do under the heavens during their few days of their lives." So in other words, I tried partying and I didn't find that that led me to be particularly happy. I undertook great projects. So what he says here is after I'd tried partying, I decided that I would be productive, that I would do things that were meaningful and I would try to build things.

And so he says, "I undertook, took great projects. I built houses for myself and I planted vineyards. I made gardens and parks and planted all kinds of fruit trees in them. I made reservoirs to water the groves of flourishing trees. I bought male and female slaves and had other slaves who were born in my house. I owned more herds and flocks than anyone in Jerusalem before me. So I had everything I that wanted from an economic standpoint. I amassed silver and gold for myself, and the treasure of kings and provinces, I acquired male and female singers, and a harem as well. All the delights of a man's heart." I'm not even going to touch that. I'm just going to read it. "I became greater by far than anyone in Jerusalem before me. In all this my wisdom stayed with me. I denied myself nothing my eyes desired. I refused my heart no pleasure. My heart took no delight in any of my labor, and this was the reward for my toil. When I surveyed all that my hands had done and what I had toiled to achieve, everything was meaningless. A chasing after the wind, nothing was gained under the sun."

So here's somebody who had all the circumstances moving the way he wanted them to move. And he says, "My conclusion, not a whole lot." And here's truth, and you know this is true. You don't need Ecclesiastes to tell you this, you know this. Because you know people who have gotten everything they thought they wanted, who aren't very happy. You see it. You see it in the news, you see it in celebrities, you see it with friends. You probably even see it in yourself. Because there was probably a time when the life that you have today, you may have said, "If I could just get this, that would be enough." And then you added something and that became the next thing that you said, "I need this in order to really be happy." And so what we tend to do is just say, "If I can get my circumstances lined up, then everything will move in a good direction." That's one approach.

Here's another, and I'm just going to say relying on now. Verse 22 back in John 16, "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." What he says is now you're experiencing grief, but there will be joy. And there's a couple of ways that that we could think about this and that is one, we could say that we load too much into this life and I think often that's true, but there's another way to think about this as well. And that is not just to simply say that we load too much into this life because sometimes that can actually contribute to a lack of happiness as well. If we say just live for the future and don't embrace now.

Again, Tal Ben-Shahar in his book, Happiness, talks about this and he says that there are two main mistakes. He actually has a few more, but for our purposes I'll just mention two. He says, one is trying to be happy entirely on the present moment. In words saying, I don't care about the future. I don't care what it has for me. I'm going to only embrace this moment and all that will bring me pleasure. And he refers to it as eating a junk food hamburger. He says, it's like you just say, "I'm going to have junk food hamburger every day because it makes me happy. Don't worry about what it does to my long term health."

And then he says that the other mistake that we can make is looking so much at the future and talking about future benefits that we never enjoy anything in the present. This is his analogy. So if you're a vegetarian, don't send me an email. He says is eating a veggie burger. And what he says, is you can eat healthy and choose something that isn't all that you want... And the reason I say, don't send me an email, because if you're a vegetarian, you have found the meatless Whopper, I'm sure to be wonderful. And he says that you can negate any present joy for a future benefit. And he says that most of us will fall into one of these two categories. He says that the person who is always looking for the future gets into what he calls kind of a rat race continuum, where they're constantly trying to say, "I just need to take care of everything today so that one day I can be happy." But the problem is that that future rarely comes.

Now when I say that we can rely too much on now, I think that both of those are actually relying on now. Because what we're doing is we're saying, "I either want my pleasure today or I want my pleasure in this life in the future, but whatever I'm doing is to get all of my pleasure here and now instead of seeing it as something more ultimate."

And then we have one more mistake here and that is relying on self. Verse 23 and 24 show us this because here he comes back and he talks about prayer. Now in this discourse, back in John 14, he's all ready talked about prayer. We had a whole week that we dealt with prayer and talked about it in this series. And so he comes back to it here and it seems almost out of place. He says, "In that day, you will no longer ask me anything. Very truly, I tell you, my Father will give you whatever you ask in my name. Until now you have not asked me for anything in my name, ask and you will receive and your joy will be complete." So he says, "I want you to come to me in prayer," but here's what many of us do. We say, "If I'm going to be happy, it's completely up to me." And so we go through our lives trying to figure out how we can arrange our circumstances, how we can get from our life enough happiness, enough joy to say, "Now my life will really make some sense to me." And what happens is we feel this incredible weight to say, "I have to find a way to make my life the perfect life."

There was an article in the Hedgehog Review B.D. McClay wrote and she talked about how so many people today want to be well thought of. She said, everything we do is to try to get a verdict about our lives. And she talks about giving money even to a homeless person. She says, when you give money to somebody who doesn't have have money or resource, she says, what you're doing a lot of times is caring for the person to a point, but you're also wanting to feel good about yourself. And she said, it isn't the person you give money to that you want the affirmation from. It's from other people. That you want somebody to notice and say you're the kind of person who cares. And then she goes on to say on social media, we tend to construct a narrative about the horrible things in this world sometimes and how we feel bad about people who don't have it as well as maybe some of us do. And her point is this what we're all doing all the time is trying to say, "Here is something that tells me that I'm okay."

But part of what I think Jesus is doing when he says, "Pray to me, I will make your joy complete." Is he's pointing to something greater and saying, "If you want to be seen as being okay, if you want to have the confidence to say, 'The way that I've lived my life is enough.' It isn't ultimately found in what you do, but it's in coming to me. And when you come to me, that's when you will know that I have in Jesus work done something on your behalf that you can't do for yourself." I was thinking about this and so I just looked up some articles about what our internet has to say about finding joy.

Here's one that I found. It was a website called peacefuldumpling.com. Here's how our culture says you should get joy. And this may have been written to a niche audience, but I thought it was interesting all the same. It said wear bright colors. As long as you feel good don't worry about the hue because it'll make you feel better. So wear bright colors if you want to be joyful." Number two, sparkling jewelry. Who doesn't feel better when they have light catching swag on? Number three, turn up the color on your lipstick because that's going to make you happy without a doubt. Number four, listen to your favorite music. Number five, spritz on some perfume. Number six, outsource drudgery in your life. Number seven, have round things in your house because psychology has proven that angular furniture will make you sad. I'm not making any of this up.

You see, what we can tend to do is say, "Let me put a Band-Aid on an ache of my soul to be enough so that I feel better." But all the time what we really need is something that's deeper and that leads us to our third heading, and that is the attainment of joy. I think that the attainment of joy is pointed to here in verse 31. Jesus asks the simple question, he says, "Do you believe? Do you believe?" He was having an interaction with his disciples about his future, about his deity. He says, "Do you believe?" And here's what I know, and that is, when I say that, that if you're like me, because this is my reaction even as I read it. Okay, so now the answer to joy is simply have more faith in Jesus and then you'll be joyful. But how many people have tried that and say, "You know what, I'm not a whole lot more joyful." And not only that, some of us have lived with some deep and difficult situations where we're not even sure that being joyful is possible.

Last year I had a chance, or I think it was earlier this year, to sit down with an old college friend of mine. A guy I had played basketball with when we were in college, we were on the team together but we didn't hang out beyond that a whole lot. So he wasn't a close friend, but he was somebody I spent a lot of time with. And we hadn't kept up after college other than social media. And I was spending some time in a town, just a town over from where he lives. And so I sent him a note and said, "Hey, let's catch up." I knew part of his story from social media, but I hadn't talked to him about it. His story is, he's a guy my age, that he got married shortly after college and his wife got pregnant and had a first son. His wife got pregnant and had a second son. And when his second son was born, in the course of the pregnancy, his wife was diagnosed with cancer. She spent the next 14 years dying slowly.

And when I sat down with him, his wife had been dead for about a year, his son was 14 years old, his youngest son, maybe 15. And we had our conversation, I was shrack by just the reality of his situation and saying, "How do you have any sense of joy when that's what you live through day after day?" And as we talked, what I heard from my friend, a person of faith was, "This has been hard, but I also have found peace in the midst of it." So how did he do that? Well, let me show you something here in this text. Verse 33, "I've told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble, but take heart. I have overcome the world."

Now, here's how this passage fits together. Chapter 15, "You're going to experience persecution." In the beginning of chapter 16, "I tell you these things so that you won't lose heart. You're going to have difficulty." Chapter 16 ends with Jesus saying, "In this world, you will have trouble." And the word trouble means you'll have difficulty, you'll be pressed in, you'll have all kinds of hardship. He says, "In this world, you will have trouble, but take heart, be the encouraged. It's imperative." He says, "I want you to take heart because I have overcome the world." What he's saying is, "I want you to know that things will not always go in a way in which you say, 'My circumstances will leave me happy.' But take heart, I want you to have peace. I've overcome the world." So how do we do that? How do we live in that reality? Let me show you a few things.

First of all, I think there's a possibility of perspective. And we see this at least in part because here there's idea of the woman going into childbirth and having pain and saying that she knows that there's joy coming.

And here's what perspective is. Perspective, even though it might be hard to see, it's realizing that you and I were not created just for this world. Because if my understanding of God, my theology, my worldview says that what I need is I need everything to go right, then anything that goes wrong, I'll end up with twice the pain. I'll have the pain of what went wrong and then I'll have the pain of saying that God has somehow let me down or that I've somehow failed God. But if I understand that that pain is part of the experience, the human experience, but that I wasn't just created for this world, then I'll be able to have at least some perspective. Now that doesn't make it easy. My friend whose wife spent years suffering had a note of sadness, but at the same time, there can be a joy saying, "I know that I wasn't just created for this world, and that as hard as things may be, that is just part of a bigger story."

Maybe you've heard an analogy like this before, but if you're a person of faith, meaning you've come to understand and embrace Jesus work on your behalf, what God has done for you through Jesus. Then this life is in many ways a very short amount of time compared to eternity. That way, regardless. But if you're a person of faith, that's good news. Because if you think about it, if there was a string from Pittsburgh that went all the way to California. Just as an example, a little dot, a little pinhead would be the life that we're living. Eternity would stretch that far and beyond. And what we tend to do is we tend to think I have to load everything into this life that I need, but what we need is the perspective to say that as hard as it might be, this is just a short season compared to everything else that can be.

I said this a few weeks ago, but if you're a person of faith, a person who's trusted Jesus Christ, then the hard things in this life for you are as close to hell as you will ever be. And if you're a person who doesn't believe in Jesus Christ, then the good things of this life are as close to heaven as you will ever be. But that perspective can help you in the midst of suffering to say, "This is hard, but there is coming a day when there is joy after the sorrow, when there's a birth after there's pain."

Here's the second thing and that is we have the possibility of having joy when we have anticipation. Again, this idea of child bearing allows us in the midst of what is difficult to say, that I am looking forward to something that I believe will be good. I love what he says here, "Nobody will take away your joy. Take heart. I've overcome the world." In other words, the world won't have the last say. The difficulties, the hardships, the things that right now in your life, in my life, are causing us to say there's no joy, there's no happiness, will not be the final word if you're in Jesus Christ. Jesus has overcome the world. And that means if you're in him, he says that, "There will come a day when I will take those sad things and I will make them untrue."

This summer I went hiking with one of my sons and we went on a what was to be a multi-day backpacking excursions. So we had all our stuff on our backs and we were hiking and we had done a very long hike. And we got to where we were planning to camp. It was right on this water, and when we got there, there was a sign, it was a campground. It said, "Campground closed." I'm not one who always thinks that those rules apply to everybody. And so my first inclination was to say, "Whoa, Whoa, we can go camp here." And evidently they'd close it cause there was some algae issue in the water or something. But then I read the sign more closely and it said $10,000 fine for violators. And all of a sudden I said, "I'm a rule follower."

Now here's what happened. We had hiked a good chunk of the day. We were exhausted. We had been looking forward to getting there. We had food in our backpack, we were envisioning a fire, a swim. We're envisioning sitting in this really pristine, beautiful space and we were disappointed because the rug had been pulled out from under us. Not only that, we had to hike about six, seven miles to get to where we could camp again. And at that point in the day, it just felt awful. Here's my point. Sometimes when we're walking through life, we feel like there's a posted sign that says no camping because we don't feel like we can ever get the relief. But here's the promise of this text, and that is God saying, "I've overcome the world. Your grief, your hardship will turn to joy. You will not be disappointed." And then I believe here that there's an assistance that we get from Jesus.

Again, back to verse 23-24 with this idea of prayer. Verse 24, "Until now, you have not asked for anything in my name, ask and you will receive and your joy will be completed." Do you know what he's talking about here? He's not saying, "Ask and I'll give you a change of your circumstances." He's saying, "Ask about joy and I'll give you joy." When's the last time you asked God to help you be joyful, to be filled with happiness, to reflect the reality of God's goodness in your life and the hope that's within you?

You see, Christianity promises ultimate benefit, not just current benefit or even future benefit, but ultimate benefit. And I love what's said later in Ecclesiastes. I read from Ecclesiastes about Solomon. It says that he came to the conclusion that there was nothing better in life than to eat and drink and enjoy your life, but know that for everything God will judge. What he was saying was live now, enjoy now, but don't forget that God is still going to hold you or me accountable for the choices that we make. And here's why that's ultimately joyful. You may say, "I don't like the idea of judgment" Here's why that's joyful, because what that's saying is enjoy what God has given you and because you have a hope that this is in it, it means when you have good moments, when you have great moments, you can know that that's just a taste of what's ahead. And when you have hard moments, difficult moments, things that you say, "I wouldn't wish this on anybody." You can say, "This is not the end of my story. So I can enjoy what's here and now and I know that God will bring everything around at the end."

If you don't have a relationship with Jesus Christ, what you have to do is you have to say, "I have to get out of everything in this life, my joy, my happiness." If you say, "I've trusted Jesus Christ." And you can say, "I can enjoy what I have without loading too much into it because I know it's not the end." You're in a marriage that you say, "This hasn't been all I thought it would be." You can enjoy the moments that are good and say, "This isn't my ultimate place." You're working and you feel like you're working well below your skill set or abilities or capacities. You can say, "I can enjoy the moments that are good because this isn't the ultimate place for me." You've wanted something for a long time and you think that that's the one thing that you need in order to be happy and it just doesn't seem to happen. You can say, "Even now, I can say this isn't the end of the story, that God hasn't written the end of the story." And that's where you and I can come to experience some kind of joy regardless of what's happening in our lives.

And Jesus says that this will be a hallmark, this will be a characteristic of my people. If you believe knowing that whatever is or isn't there is something greater than you can be joyful in the journey that you have. Now, some of us may be here and we may be saying, "Okay, I still don't know about this because how do I get joy in the midst of this thing that I'm going through, walking through?" Well, it really is about perspective, anticipation, and then coming to God and saying, "God, would you work? Help me to see beyond? And it doesn't mean that you'll be giddy happy, but it means that you'll be able to see more than what's right in front of you today.

I said earlier that this is if you are in Christ, in Jesus, if you've trusted Jesus. If you're here today and you haven't trusted Jesus, you haven't come to a point of saying, "I acknowledge Jesus as my savior." I'd encourage you just to consider what that really means. We have people in our Wexford campus, in our gathering place after the services. I'm sure Butler County in the Strip District, there's staff and teams of volunteers there who would love to talk with you about a relationship with Jesus. Because without it, everything in your life is loaded into what you can get here and now, and you can miss the deeper joy.

Father, we pray just for each person who's gathered that you would help us to not just try to fix our circumstances. Certainly we want to fix those as best we can, but God that we would be able to see beyond them and in that to experience a happiness, a joy that is more deeply rooted and something that can be taken away by simple changes to our circumstances. And Father, we pray this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.