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What is biblical joy and how does it differ from merely wanting to be happy? can you be happy as a Christian apart from obedience?
Welcome to No Compromise Radio, a ministry coming to you from Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. No Compromise Radio is a program dedicated to the ongoing proclamation of Jesus Christ, based on the theme in Galatians 2, verse 5, where the Apostle Paul said, "'But we did not yield in subjection to them "'for even an hour, so that the truth of the gospel "'would remain with you.'".
In short, if you like smooth, watered-down words to make you simply feel good, this show isn't for you. By purpose, we are first biblical, but we can also be controversial. Stay tuned for the next 25 minutes as we're called by the divine trumpet to summon the troops for the honor and glory of her King.
Here's our host, Pastor Mike Abendroth. Well, it's Wednesday. Welcome to No Compromise Radio.
No need to adjust your dial. This is not a mistake. It's not an error. This is just a little difference here in what you will hear. This is Steve Cooley subbing in for Pastor Mike, who is on vacation, well-deserved, as you well know if you listen often.
Well, today I want to address a topic that is popular. And you might go, well, how does he know what's popular? Well, I see how people spend their money. There is literally millions and billions of dollars spent every single year on this matter.
People really want to be happy. They want to be happy. People everywhere want to be happy, and we have songs about it. If it makes you happy, it can't be that bad. A lot of trite sayings thrown about.
If you want to encourage someone to maybe get a divorce or do something wrong like that, you say, well, you know what? You can't make someone else happy unless you're happy, and therefore, that's a reason to do what you want to do.
You need to follow your own heart. We have Christians who even say, you know what, I divorced my spouse because I know that God wants me to be happy. Well, that's true, but God doesn't want us to be happy by committing sin.
That would never be right. There are a number of wrong views, and it just so happens that I have collected a few of them. One of my favorite people to quote when they're wrong, which is frequent, Deepak Chopra, says this, the most important thing to happiness is to make other people happy.
There are other ways to happiness where you express creativity, when you have meaning and purpose in your life, when you see opportunity instead of problems, but the fastest way to being happy is to make other people happy.
Well, when we really examine that, what is that? That is a real focus on you and your universe and the activities and the feelings that would make you happy. That's how he sees things. A humanist chaplain at Harvard, and of course, I think that's kind of an inherent contradiction.
A humanist chaplain. A chaplain is supposed to be somebody who serves God, I thought, but I guess not. A humanist chaplain, Greg Epstein at Harvard University, says this, we know intuitively that perfect happiness does not exist.
It is a fantasy that leads to disappointment or depression if we insist on chasing it as if we are entitled to it. That's just a very depressing idea right there. Perfect happiness does not exist. Again, that's not Christian worldview.
He says that you can pursue happiness and here's how you do it. You chase after relationships, good works, connection to loved ones and to humanity. He says, these things, not belief in God, are why churches and temples work and they're why I believe in building humanist communities for the non-religious.
That's how you're happy. Engaging in relationships, good works, connection to loved ones and to humanity. Let's see, Rabbi Kushner, Harold Kushner says this, happiness is always a byproduct. You don't achieve happiness by striving to be happy.
You achieve happiness by striving to be a good person and happiness shows up when you weren't even watching. It's just kind of like, you know, you're doing your best and kind of trying to be good and all of a sudden happiness just shows up.
That's not a quote, but this is back to the quote. Happiness results from the fullest utilization of your talent and finally, happiness results from knowing when you had made someone else's life better.
Well, Rabbi, what about God? Joel Osteen, famous author, Christian TV personality says this, I think it is important to draw a distinction between happiness and joy. Happiness is determined by one's circumstances.
On the other hand, joy is a more permanent state of being. Well, I'd like that somewhat. Listen, he says, and is not determined by one's present circumstances. A person can keep their joy even when things are going badly.
When something temporarily makes them unhappy. I guess we call that grief. He goes on to say this, I believe joy comes from having meaning and purpose in our life. God has a purpose for each and every one of us.
And by putting our faith in God, we can live a more joy-filled life. You know, I guess I would agree with that, but it really doesn't go far enough, does it? I mean, is that it? Putting our faith in God, what does that mean?
And of course, if you read him, you know that he really doesn't ultimately define that. Finally, Pastor Jonathan Falwell from Thomas Road Baptist Church, the son of Jerry Falwell, says this, many people believe that happiness is a result of external situations in life.
Unfortunately, that kind of happiness is short-lived if it is not accompanied by happiness stirring within the soul. The happiness that springs forth from the heart and soul is the only path to true satisfaction in life.
And I believe that that kind of happiness is found through a personal relationship with God, accomplished through the sacrifice of his only son, Jesus Christ. He is the source of soul satisfaction. Again, I think that is really, really, I think it's good, I think it's better.
I just don't know if it goes quite all the way there. I'm gonna be quoting several people today, including Martin Lloyd-Jones, but just wanted to start off with a few ideas of what happiness would be.
You know, Christians do have some wrong views of what happiness is. For example, you know, some are so rigid in their kind of ideas of living life that they would say, you know, happiness is almost a sin.
It's wrong to have fun. You know, I mean, there's this caricature of Christians as being kind of, I don't know, just straight-faced, straight-laced, no fun, can't do anything, you know, kind of fundamentalist outlook on life.
It's as if it's almost sinful to even enjoy life or to have joy or happiness at all, that there's some kind of dourness that attaches itself to the Christian life, that, you know, the Puritans really had it right in this caricature, again, of what it meant to be a Puritan, that somehow they were just kind of suffering through this life, not enjoying it at all, and just looking forward to the life beyond.
Well, Martin Lloyd-Jones said such a view of life is, quote, tragically and pathetically wrong. We are to have joy and happiness in this life. But I'm gonna tell you right now, I'm gonna be up front on No Compromise Radio, and you can listen to us, of course, on www .nocompromiseradio .com, and we're on WVNE here locally in Worcester, that there is no happiness, there is no lasting happiness, no lasting joy apart from knowing Christ Jesus.
And today we're going to look at, or a few of the things we're going to look at first, we're gonna look at the joy to come, in other words, anticipating the joy that is set aside for believers, how we can have joy now, we're going to understand that all our joy is in Christ, not in circumstances, and we're going to see, finally, that joy is shown by obedience.
I mean, if you love the Lord Jesus Christ, if you truly know him and have the joy of Christ in you, you know, is your life marked by disobedience? Can disobedience to the Lord bring about happiness? Does it make us happier if we sin?
Those are some of the issues, and of course, a long time ago, Solomon in Ecclesiastes, when he was considering all the variety of life and all the things that he had done as he looked back on his life, and he said that apart from God, it wasn't wine, women, and song that made him happy.
It wasn't money that made him happy. It wasn't being powerful that made him happy. In fact, apart from God, he said that all life is vanity. All life is a vapor. All life is a waste of time apart from knowing God, and we see that over and over again in the Bible.
Now, I'd like to go to John chapter 17, and in Jesus' high priestly prayer, I'm gonna go through some of what Martin Lloyd-Jones, again, said about this prayer in his book on John 17, which completely skips my mind, and now I'm looking at Pastor Mike's bookshelf trying to find it.
But let me just give you, let me just go through a few things here. Jesus, in talking about this, in John 17, said, while I was with them, in verse 12, while I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me.
I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, speaking, of course, of Judas, that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, listen, that they, talking about the disciples, might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.
My joy, the joy of Christ, fulfilled in themselves. And I guess my question for you today listening on www .nocompromiseradio .com would be this. Do you have joy? And if not, why not? I want you to examine your life and see why it is that you don't have joy.
Is it because the things that you spend your time pursuing could never ultimately give you joy? Is that why you're struggling? Are you depressed? You're a Christian and you're depressed and you can't figure out why you have no joy in your life?
This is the perfect show for you then. I'm talking to you, I am angling this, I am aiming this at you. And I want you to consider why it is that you don't potentially have joy. Lloyd-Jones says that one of the ways in which we as Christians can glorify Christ in this life and world is by being filled with a spirit of joy and of rejoicing.
You know, when people ask you how you're doing, you just go, well, I guess I've been worse. Well, I'm not so good. Well, you know, this, that, and the other thing. You're always grumbling. You're always finding cause for not being happy.
Boy, if I was around Christians like that all the time, I'd go, who wants to be a Christian? I mean, I remember when I first started considering the fact that I didn't know God, but that I wanted to know God.
And I don't know if I've given my testimony, but let me just say briefly this, that I'd been very depressed and explored psychology, 12-step groups. And I was in a 12-step meeting one night and people were talking about turning their life over to their higher power.
And we went around the room and, you know, some of the answers seemed to me like they were very, what I would call normal answers. You know, some people were saying, well, you know, my higher power that I turn all my life over to is God.
And I thought, keep in mind, I was an unbeliever and I thought, you know what? That's fine, God, okay, got it. Next person would say, well, my higher power is Jesus Christ. Again, you know, kind of shrug my shoulders.
Well, okay, that's fine. Next person would say, my higher power is this group. And I'm looking around at the room and I'm going, boy, I wouldn't want this room for my higher power. I mean, let's aim a little higher, folks.
But this is a 12-step group and one of the unwritten rules or one of the written rules is, you know, you can't mock anyone and you can't really say anything about someone's answers, you can't correct them, you know, because we're all right in a 12-step group.
We're trying to be affirming, you know, we don't want to put anybody down. So then a woman says, my higher power is a part of my brain that I've set apart to be my higher power. And that was a time where I really had to bite my cheeks.
I mean, my teeth were pressing hard on my cheeks so that I wouldn't laugh. That was the most absurd thing I ever thought. And as I left that night, I just thought, you know what? I know there's a God.
I know there's a God because there has to be a God to have created everything and to really punish the bad people. I mean, in my mind, because I was a police officer, I was not a bad person. In fact, my job was to take bad people out of the world and make the world a safer place.
But I wanted to make sure that, you know, the child molesters and the husbands who beat their wives and all these kinds of folks, I wanted to make sure that they got what was coming to them. So I held out this idea of a God who would just kind of look at those people and judge them, certainly not me.
So I went to my friend at work who I thought, you know, this guy, he seems to know God. I mean, I make fun of him all the time. I make fun of him about everything, whether it's about abortion or the way he talks about his wife or the way he talks about the Bible, whatever, you know, but he seems to know God.
And maybe I'll just ask him if I can go to a Bible study with him. And so I did, and I'll just never forget. I don't want to name him because if he's listening, he'll be very embarrassed. But he looked at me when I said, you know, can I go to the Bible study where these police officers are learning, you know, the Bible and he looks at me and he goes, okay, well, what's the punchline?
He thought I was joking. He absolutely could not believe that I had any interest in God. And so I told him this whole story about the 12-step meeting. And I said, I just know that there's a God. I don't know who he is, but I'd like to learn about him.
And of course, at that point, he became very embarrassed. You know, looking at it now, I can understand why. And, you know, invited me and everybody there was very gracious, but it was still quite a while before the Lord saved me.
But just thinking about that and knowing that people are searching for happiness, people look in all sorts of places where there's 12-step groups or anything else, and they don't get it. They can't get it because they're not Christians.
And we have Christians who are struggling with depression, struggling with their lives, and they're not happy with them, and they can't get over things. You just go, maybe, or I think, well, maybe it's because they don't have their priorities right.
Maybe they're not looking at things rightly because I think the Bible, especially the New Testament, but even the Old Testament, talks a lot about joy and the things that ought to make believers happy.
So if you're a believer and you're not happy, maybe there's something wrong. In fact, listen to Lloyd-Jones as he continues. He said, Christians can glorify Christ in this life and world, and one of the ways is by being filled with the spirit of joy and rejoicing.
And he says, listen, this is a fruit of the Spirit which our Lord singles out in particular in this prayer, in this high priestly prayer, to the Father on behalf of his followers. And so we glorify him in a very special way by being partakers of this, his own joy.
Remember, we said that it was back in verse 13 that he said that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. Christ wants that. Jesus wants his followers, his disciples, you, if you name the name of Christ, to have his joy, to be filled with his joy.
That is an amazingly important thing and I think we need to wrap our heads around it. Lloyd-Jones goes on and he's talking about just how the New Testament's filled with this concept. He says, if you read the epistles, that is the letters in the New Testament, you will find the subject of joy there.
It is a great theme, for instance, in the epistle to the Philippians. Chapter four, verse four says, Rejoice in the Lord always. Again, I say rejoice. There are many passages. Let me just read a few Bible passages that talk about why we should rejoice.
Isaiah 52, verse seven. How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good news, who publishes peace, who brings good news of happiness, who publishes salvation, who says to Zion, Your God reigns.
Good news of happiness. Listen, when we hear the gospel, that is good news. It is news that ought to make us happy. That's repeated again in, I believe, Romans chapter 10. It is something that we ought to rejoice in.
Listen to Hebrews 12, verses one and two. The writer of Hebrews says this, Let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God.
For the joy that was set before him. Are you kidding? That was joy? Yes. Even as we would read in Isaiah chapter 53, he was satisfied with his work. He looks at it and he's fully satisfied. He had joy even in his suffering.
And yet we, his followers, struggle to have that joy. Why is that? And I think it's because we don't have the right view of things. Listen to 1 Peter chapter three. I'm sorry, verse, chapter one, verses, verses, chapter one, verses three to nine.
Blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
In this you, listen, rejoice. Though now for a little while, in other words, during this earthly life, if necessary, you have been grieved by various trials so that the tested genuineness of your faith, more precious than gold that perishes though it is tested by fire, may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the revelation of Jesus Christ.
Though you have not seen him, you love him. Though you do not now see him, you believe in him and listen, rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.
We are to rejoice, why? It's not because this life is going to be easy. It's because this life is momentary. It's a snap of the fingers. I remember asking a man once, if your life didn't change and his circumstances were not great, if his life did not change at all, did he think that if he got to heaven, if God was gracious to save him because I don't believe he was saved, did he think that after he'd been in heaven 10 ,000 years, 100 ,000 years, that he'd be looking back and going, boy, those 40 years, those 50 years, those 80 years that I had to suffer, they were really rough.
No, because those in heaven are in the presence of Christ. They rejoice always, forever, not because of the difficulties they had on earth, but because they forgotten all those things and they are focused entirely on Christ.
A few other verses, Galatians 5, verses 22 and 23, but the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, joy. The Holy Spirit produces joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, and against such things, there is no law.
Believers are to have peace and joy, not worry. Listen to Romans 5, 11. More than that, in this passage right here, the context is just all about salvation, listen to this, and reconciliation, and the fall, and all that Christ has done, and listen to this.
He says, more than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation. We rejoice in reconciliation through our Lord Jesus Christ. He has done so much for us.
When we think about the difficulties we have, and I know that life can be difficult. You know, some listening might be struggling to pay the rent, you might not have enough for food, you might be wondering how you're gonna get to work, maybe you don't have any work, you've got all these issues, but if you have eternal life, if you're right with Christ, then all these things are gonna pass, and you will have joy.
Listen to Philippians 4, verse 4, I read it a little bit earlier, rejoice in the Lord always, again, I will say rejoice, it's a command to rejoice. 1 Thessalonians 5, 16, again, rejoice always. Well, how often should I rejoice?
Always. When someone comes up to you, don't say, well, you know, I guess things could be worse. I'll tell you what you ought to say, what you ought to say is, compared to what I deserve, I'm doing great, I am blessed.
When I think of how my life was going before Christ, when I think of all that he has done on my behalf, when I think of all that he has promised me, all that he has set before me, all that he has told me, awaits for me, I can't do anything but rejoice.
This is www .nocompromiseradio .com, this is Steve Cooley sitting in for Pastor Mike Ebendroff. Tomorrow, I'm going to talk some more about joy and happiness, and we want you to be happy. We want you to know the joy of Christ.
We want you to rejoice in him always, not just when things are going your way, but to have your eyes so focused on him that you rejoice.
No Compromise Radio with Pastor Mike Ebendroff is a production of Bethlehem Bible Church in West Boylston. Bethlehem Bible Church is a Bible teaching church firmly committed to unleashing the life-transforming power of God's word through verse-by-verse exposition of the sacred text.
Please come and join us. Our service times are Sunday morning at 1015 and in the evening at six. We're right on route 110 in West Boylston. You can check us out online at bbchurch .org or by phone at 508 -835 -3400.
The thoughts and opinions expressed on No Compromise Radio do not necessarily reflect those of WVNE, its staff or management.