I need to take us a little bit deeper today, getting more into practical discipleship. It is the idea that we, as the disciples were to Jesus 2000 years ago, we now become to Jesus. I believe it starts with Joy!
I want to be honest: Today’s teaching is not intended to lead to an altar call but rather to be chewed on, digested, and used to lead you to your personal altar.
Christians should live a joy-filled life! I’m not foolish enough to believe we won’t face struggles, trials, temptations, and battles everywhere. If you are reading your Bible, you will see everywhere how so many Godly people walk through struggles with families and friends, finances and job situations, health and so much more so will we, but we have a hope and an anticipation that God is going to turn it all for our good….it is learning to get us out of the way and choosing to trust Him.
Let’s take a look today!
John 15:11
I have told you these things so that you will be filled with my joy. Yes, your joy will overflow!
It is God’s plan that we live a life of joy however, just like a child in a candy store, there are parameters and disciplines that the Lord sets in place to guarantee our joy will be full….a child left to their own devices would eat candy nonstop until they made themselves ill when the intent of a parent taking their child to the candy store would be to bless them, not allow them to come to a place of making themselves sick.
Jesus told his disciples that part of the parameter to be joyful to its fullest was remaining in him and obeying his commandments these are not exclusionary but instead inclusive…in other words, if you are not obeying His commandments, you are not remaining in Him and if you are remaining in him, you will naturally want to obey his commandments.
So many are truly unhappy, missing God’s plan for their lives because they have dismissed this simple parameter. However, some are truly living in Him and being obedient to Him but are in a war. For those who have either learned or are in the process of learning, God is faithful and can be trusted, their joy will be full.
God created us to fulfill our destiny. He designed us to change the world around us and fulfill our joy in the process. But because we either don’t know or don’t understand, we miss our destiny.
Part of the key we need to understand about the cost of joy Paul gave us Romans 6:19-23
19 Because of the weakness of your human nature, I am using the illustration of slavery to help you understand all this. Previously, you let yourselves be slaves to impurity and lawlessness, which led ever deeper into sin. Now you must give yourselves to be slaves to righteous living so that you will become holy.
20 When you were slaves to sin, you were free from the obligation to do right. 21 And what was the result? You are now ashamed of the things you used to do, things that end in eternal doom. 22 But now you are free from the power of sin and have become slaves of God. Now you do those things that lead to holiness and result in eternal life. 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus our Lord.
Galatians 5:17,18
The sinful nature wants to do evil, which is just the opposite of what the Spirit wants. And the Spirit gives us desires that are the opposite of what the sinful nature desires. These two forces are constantly fighting each other, so you are not free to carry out your good intentions. 18 But when you are directed by the Spirit, you are not under obligation to the law of Moses.
In a moment, we are going to see what Jesus said that was the basis of Paul’s thoughts, but I need us to come to an agreement with a basic premise.
The premise is this….The Bible is God’s word! It is written by 40+ different authors over 1000’s of years. Job (first book written) to the Revelation of Jesus Christ (the last book written). It is God speaking to us directly every time we read it. It is not man’s words, and it is not up for negotiation; there are ways to interpret it differently, but the truth of God’s word does not wane or change.
One of the ways we prove the veracity of the Bible is the Manuscript evidence
First, there are 5,366 copies of assorted manuscripts of our New Testament. Dating from as early as the 2ndcentury all the way until the 5th century, of which there is a 99.5% accurate to the original. Those inaccuracies are nothing that would affect the original intent (mainly things like misspellings of names and places and word order i.e. Jesus Christ is the savior of the whole world, Christ Jesus is the savior of the whole world, Jesus Christ the savior of the whole world)
That is more manuscript evidence than there is for any other ancient document.
This includes even things like the writings of Plato (7 manuscripts), Homer’s Iliad (643 manuscripts), the stories of Caesar (10 manuscripts), and Alexander the Great. It is also more manuscript evidence than we have for the Declaration of Independence.
In addition, if we took the writings of just 7 of the early church fathers
Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Eusebius.
These men were alive between 150 and 200 AD. 86,000 exact verse quotations from the New Testament were in their writings. (there are only roughly 8000 verses in the New Testament)
In fact even if we did not have all of the manuscript evidence we could reconstruct the New Testament with all but 11 verses just based on the information from these early church Fathers.
We could go on to show the number of fulfilled prophecies as proof, the writing of non-Christian and Jewish writers. As well as archeological evidence that proves the accuracy of the Bible.
But we must grasp it fully by faith believing it is God-word, breathed into us!
So let’s get back to Paul’s writing and what Jesus said…
Jesus said, which I believe Paul was basing much of this writing on Luke 9:23,24
23 Then he said to the crowd, “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross daily, and follow me. 24 If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it. 25 And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but are yourself lost or destroyed?
Jesus is saying if you truly want to follow me, it is a Christ-like life that is going to bring you true life, freedom, hope, and joy.
Paul was saying this world will enslave you, trap you into a world of repetitive highs then deep dark rejection and guilt. You become a slave to the world’s passions, which leave you empty and hopeless. Sin enslaves and causes death in you.
Christ’s designed you for a life of hope, love, peace, and joy, but the world system is designed for selfishness and hopelessness. When we choose to die to that way of life, believing God does have the greatest plan for our lives then we truly begin to live.
Further, in Galatians chapter 5 Paul contrasts a life in the flesh versus a life in the spirit. A life surrendered and enslaved to the flesh misses God’s mark. We settle for lying rather than truth, we settle for stealing valuables, reputations, and other things rather than trusting God to supply. We don’t trust God’s word and his promises rather we trust in ourselves, what we think is best. It always fails us.
Quick example.. When we trust God’s Word “God will supply all of your needs according to his riches in glory” in our flesh we get frustrated that God hasn’t supplied, he has failed us. We become angry, resentful, jealous, envious, miserable….
but choosing instead to die and take up our cross and follow Him our attitude changes
….if God promises to supply my every need and my needs are not being met perhaps I need to reevaluate what is an actual need in my life
….If God promises to supply my every need and my needs are not being met I will stand on His promises despite my circumstances and KNOW that God will supply all my needs because He is faithful and true and I can trust His word
God wants your joy to be fulfilled in all things
It is a surrendering and mindset battle….Do you believe God wants the best for you? Do you believe you are the one He loves the most?
You must recognize Christ wants that type of life for you but he calls you to… “Come and die!”
Your human nature and life will always make excuses for your sin, you can always justify your sin, your lack of trust in God but what he is calling you to is a joy-filled life based on relationship with Him. Our sin, “missing the mark” is just that fleshly shortcuts that bring us to failure, heartache, anger, and frustration rather than the joy we were designed to have.
Even trying to be obedient to the law will only lead you to more sin showing you how far away you are from the Lord.
We can’t even keep our eyes on the law, but they must be on Jesus!
Paul said there is a war between what is good and what is evil, and that war ends for us when we follow Jesus and “Come and die.” The battle is won when we kill off our flesh daily and begin to recognize that surrendering to Christ fulfills our designed purpose. As a result, the battle for what is right is won.
You have paid the price to gain your joy by surrendering completely to Christ. Your joy is more than a feeling it becomes a part of your character because there is a trust that Christ is truly alive in you and accomplish all the work he has promised to do through you, from the beginning of time Remember before time, he knew you, the good, bad, and ugly and chose you
Ephesians 1:4,5
Even before he made the world, God loved us and chose us in Christ to be holy and without fault in his eyes. 5 God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.
He wants to bring you great pleasure by calling you, “Come and die.” Don’t be who the world and your own flesh want you to be but be who you were destined to be in greatness free of guilt, shame, sin, and failure but full of love, light, and hope the way you were designed to be