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Preacher: Pastor David Ball
Scripture: John 15:10-17
In this sermon, we examine the fruit of the Spirit, with a particular focus on joy as a vital aspect of our Christian witness, as outlined in Galatians 5. Joy is not optional but a command from God, rooted in the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit, not in fleeting circumstances. Jesus is the sole source of true, unshakable joy, as seen in scriptures like Psalm 16:11 and John 15:11, where joy flows from abiding in God’s grace. This joy, produced in us when we are deeply rooted in Christ rather than the world’s lies, becomes a powerful testimony to others, shining as a reflection of God’s grace even amidst suffering. As Charles Spurgeon noted, a Christian’s life is their best sermon. If struggling with joy, we are called to repent and replant our roots in the rich soil of God’s grace through Jesus, the living water, to experience His fullness of joy.
Transcript
Well it’s so good to to be with you guys uh this morning as I was uh away last week i I missed uh being with you as uh as Chuck kicked off our our summer series and that is the fruit of summer uh as we celebrated the day of Pentecost a few weeks ago uh and the the baptism of the Holy Spirit coming upon the church uh for witness and for testimony to Jesus uh and continuing Jesus’s mission in the world so we today uh as we are in Christ are baptized in the name of the father son and holy spirit we are baptized with the holy spirit of Jesus and so we’re looking in this season and our witness at the fruit of the spirit’s work in each of our lives uh the the fruit that that Paul uh proclaimed and pointed out to us in Galatians uh chapter 5 it’s not an exhaustive list uh there are more places of scripture that more fruit uh is mentioned but it’s a pretty concise list that covers a lot of the ground of what the spirit is doing in us uh in order to equip us to be witnesses for Jesus uh in the world dl Moody I I mentioned this this quote that kind of sparked in many ways a lot of what I was thinking about this uh about this series dl Moody said “Out of 100 men one will read the Bible the other 99 will read the Christian.” It really is a powerful word that most people before they even come to understand the truth of God’s word they’re reading us they’re reading us as witnesses for Christ and so it’s important for us to be looking at this fruit of the spirit as the spirit is working in us uh transforming us more and more into the likeness uh of Jesus and in Galatians 5 Paul gives us the list as I mentioned before uh love which we mentioned uh which Paul Chuck preached on last week joy peace patience kindness goodness faithfulness gentleness and self-control and today we’re we’re turning our attention to joy uh but one of the points that that Chuck began with last week which is important when we’re looking at the fruit of the spirit is that good fruit is only born by a tree that’s planted in good soil i think any any uh farmers out there we’ve got at least backyard farmers uh you you know this to be true right uh we have uh and we inherited it when we bought our house there were some front window boxes uh across the front windows of the house uh and and these things have become my passion and the bane of my existence um you know we we inherited them and so we’re excited about planting nice you know plants in to really enhance the beauty of the house and so we planted some Vinka vine that was beautiful and kind of cascaded down uh but inevitably uh it would they would start to turn black um and get really sticky and ugly and I’d look at them and there were all these hard little things all over them and so I did my my research and found out that they were covered in scale i don’t know if you know what scale is they’re little insects and they just kind of eat the you know the uh the sap that’s coming through the uh the plants and then as they and then there’s ants that come that herd the scale uh and they they herd the scale and they just make them increase and then this the ants eat all of what’s spilling out of them and everything’s sticky and then the mold grows and they just turn black and ugly um and so I the first time I began to see this and it was getting out of control i sprayed it numerous times with stuff couldn’t do anything so finally I just pulled all of the soil out of it uh and then replaced new soil and started over again i even washed it down with Clorox i thought this will do it uh and put new stuff in there well guess what happened next year same thing uh the scale came back they turned black they were sticky and nasty i couldn’t get rid of it well finally uh you know there was the ones that were there when we bought the house were wooden and they rotted with all this wonderful work I was doing with them uh and so pulled them down i built uh built some new ones out of uh that kind of PVC board so they’ll never go bad and probably scale can’t get in those things uh and so got it all put together and put up and planted new Vinka and they started growing and guess what happened the scale came back so I’m just giving up the the the and it makes it turns it all bad well the scale come up through the through they live in the soil and they come up through the soil and they ruin the plant it doesn’t die it doesn’t die the plant will live but it sure looks ugly uh it is not sightly uh in front of your house well in the same sense the fruit of the spirit uh it’s only the fruit that is born by the spirit in us is only as strong and as good as the soil is rich that’s what causes good fruit to be born in our lives and so as we look at joy this morning the second fruit of the spirit there’s three points that uh that I want to focus our attention on uh as we look at joy and number one is this joy is not an option but rather it’s a command secondly Jesus is the only source of true and unshakable joy in this world and number three it is joy that is our witness in this world and so I want to unpack each of these just a little bit together this morning and that point number one is that joy is not an option but rather it’s a command of God now that’s kind of tough it’s tough when we really take that seriously that it really is a command of God uh because not only is joy a fruit of the spirit who’s working in us uh but joy is the direct commandment of God paul proclaimed in Philippians 4:4 “Rejoice in the Lord always.” And again I say rejoice in 1 Thessalonians 5:16 Paul said it this way again rejoice always not sometimes rejoice all the time always psalm 101 says “Shout to the the Lord shout for joy to the Lord nehemiah 8:10 “Do not grieve.” Nehemiah tells the people for the joy of the Lord is your strength now he wasn’t telling them that grief is wrong and that we don’t have we don’t grieve as human beings it’s part of uh loss is difficult and it’s part of what it means to be human beings but what he was talking about for them is they were grieving their own sin they were feeling sorry for themselves they were in a moment of uh woe is me and he said “No no no do not grieve but take your joy in the Lord is your strength.” In Psalm 32:11 “Rejoice in the Lord and be glad.” And then in James 1:2 it says “Cons,” he said “Consider it pure joy my brothers and sisters whenever you face trials of many times of many kinds.” So even in the face of struggles even the face of strug struggling and and suffering and grief we’re still called to a life of joy and that’s difficult
it’s not just a good idea it’s not just the power of positive thinking it’s not just the way that we can lower our stress and be happier people in this world it’s a command of God you know I’m I’m guessing because I know this is true for me but in our time of confession that we Anglicans love and we do every single week because we we believe that’s important part of coming into worship and we’re coming to the Lord’s table uh is being honest with the Lord about what’s really true about us how many of us confess our lack of joy
i’m sure we don’t even think about it that way right because we don’t even tend to think of joy as a command uh it’s just a nice experience of happiness that we get every now and then when everything in our lives is going the way that we want it to go that’s the way we tend to think of joy but God’s word says rejoice always which means all the time that’s what that word always means it’s two Greek words meaning all and when when all the time this is why Jesus or why why CS Lewis said joy is the serious business of heaven joy is the serious business of heaven and this is hard because most the time uh we struggle with it we struggle with it especially the older we get you know as I reflect back I’m getting old enough to be able to reflect back on being a young a younger man uh and when I was young you know with not much responsibility uh it came much easier joy came a lot more easier it was even I kind of felt like it was kind of natural i’m just kind of jovial person i was happy most of the time but the older I get the more problems that I face and the troubles that I’m dealing with and the stress and the worry and the responsibility that comes with that I’ve realized joy doesn’t come naturally at all
it actually seems ever fleeting can you relate to to that struggle that struggle to really experience joy the way God has commanded us to you know the fickle nature of joy
you know it seems to be dependent on everything in our lives going well or at least going the way that we want them to it seems ever fleeting it’s here one day it’s gone the next right we never know it just doesn’t come natural or it just doesn’t tend to abide in our lives naturally which brings us to the the the second point joy doesn’t actually come naturally to us it doesn’t because joy is something that’s supernatural that’s what we’re learning and that that it’s a fruit of the spirit joy as CS Lewis recognized it is the serious business of heaven because joy uh in this world is the supernatural breaking through heaven and coming into earth it’s the result of the divine work of an immortal God who’s breaking in to the mere mortality of men true joy unshakable joy joy that isn’t fleeting joy that isn’t uh ever fading away psalm 16:11 says “In your presence O Lord is the fullness of joy.” I shared that at the beginning in Psalm 43:4 it says “Then I will go to the altar of God to my to God of my exceeding joy.” Isaiah 12:3 that we read earlier says “With joy you will draw water from the well of salvation.” And in Zephaniah 3:17 “The Lord your God is in your midst a mighty one who will save he will rejoice over you with gladness.” And what th those verses tell us two things about joy that God is the source of true joy that true joy unshakable joy is only found in him because it’s who he is and secondly that our experience of true and exceeding joy only comes when we are in relationship and connected with the God of joy himself abiding in him living in his presence you understanding this verses this verse or these Old Testament verses I think really opens us up to be able to understand what the gospel was talking about what was Jesus talking about in John 15:11 when he said “These things I have spoken to you that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be full.” Notice how Jesus referred to joy my joy my joy not just joy you know he just didn’t he didn’t say these things I have spoken to you that joy may be in you and that your joy may be filled he said that my joy may be in you again pointing us to the only source of truly unshakable joy in this world it’s not naturally in us it is however naturally in Jesus because Jesus is God he is the source of all joy he’s the fullness of all joy and what he’s telling us is that when we are in him and when he is in us his true and unshakable unshakable joy abides with us and how does Jesus come to be in us and we in him it’s by the grace of God ephesians 2:es 8 to9 for by grace you have been saved through faith and this is not of your own doing it is the gift of God not as a result of works so that no one may boast you know the Greek words for joy and for grace are cognates which means that they share the same root which means they are intimately connected to one another and they’re actually dependent upon one another or at least one on the other joy in Greek is cara uh and it means it means received grace it means received grace true unshakable joy the joy of Jesus is the product of receiving God’s grace in our lives every day every minute every moment the joy of Jesus is produced in us when we abide in him and in God’s unmmerited favor towards us that was the you remember the illustration of the tree from last week a tree that bears the fruit of joy is the tree that’s deeply rooted in the grace of God that is soaking up that well of living water that God promised that’s feeding off it constantly the knowledge that our salvation our life and God is not the result of our own works as Ephesians told us but rather it’s the result of God’s free gift in our lives when we receive and when we trust in that free gift it produces the fruit of joy through the working of the Holy Spirit in us you know what this means is when we’re struggling to find joy in our lives the reason isn’t because we aren’t trying hard enough the reason isn’t because that we just have to work harder the reason is always because we have rooted our lives in the wrong things when you’re failing to experience joy when you’re really struggling that the time then is to step back is to step back and and look and examine where have I rooted my life where is it rooted right now because what is telling us if we’re not experiencing joy is that we’ve rooted our lives in the lies of this world perpetuated by the father of lies himself the thief whose goal alone is to steal our joy to steal all of the joy out of our lives and the lies that we root our lives in are are things like this the idea that our success in life is wholly dependent upon our achievements or that our happiness comes from the comforts that this world has to offer or that God only really likes us when we perfectly please him in every way when we root our lives and those lies that the devil just continually perpetuates in our hearts and in our minds they sound good to us they sound good to us because they put us in the place of God they put us in the place of power they put us in the place of control the joy the problem is then joy is ever fickle and fleeting in our lives in fact what we experience isn’t really joy at all when it’s rooted in ourselves and our own abilities but rather it’s a momentary experience or even an illusion of happiness because true joy cannot be found in anyone or in anything other than the source of joy himself friends joy is the serious business of heaven because it’s the result of God’s free gift of grace for you through Jesus Christ when you root your life in his grace the fruit that is produced by the Holy Spirit is the joy of Jesus it’s supernatural joy that’s true that’s truly unshakable because it’s a joy that abides even in the midst of our grief it’s a joy that abides even in the midst of our suffering it’s a joy that abides even in the midst of our success it’s a joy that abides in the midst of heartache and loss it doesn’t mean that we don’t grieve it doesn’t mean that we don’t suffer it doesn’t mean that we don’t experience loss in a real and a deep way it only means that even in the midst of it all we know will be well because of the grace of God for us in his son Jesus Christ
you all may not turn out the way that we wanted it to turn out and rarely does it but all we know in the end will be good because God’s glory is our good and the King Jesus the King of all joy he is in control of our lives and that brings us to the third point of joy that I want to talk about this morning and that is that joy is our witness of Jesus in this world it’s not our only witness but it’s a strong and a powerful witness charles Spurgeon said “A Christian’s life is his best sermon.” True unshakable joy that we experienced even in the midst of the darkness of sin in this world and the way that we’re affected in a fallen world it’s a reflection of the king of joy to a world and to people who are still walking in darkness when the world sees us grieve and suffer and experience heartache and loss but all of it still with a sense of hope of the joy that we have in Christ that joy shines like rays of heaven into the darkness of this fallen world because ultimately there is only one explanation that we could possibly have joy in the midst of everything going wrong in the midst of everything going bad and that explanation is that our lives have been rooted in the deeper and the richer soil than anything in this world could ever possibly offer our lives have been rooted in the free gift of God’s grace through his son Jesus Christ you know the first person uh that I ever experienced the joy of seeing come to a personal faith uh in Jesus Christ was when I was in high school uh and I was a very young Christian myself i’d only uh been walking with the Lord uh intimately and personally for you know a year or so uh and so I knew very little although I thought I knew a lot uh and when that friend came to Christ uh he shared with me something that that really stuck with me about this he said it was uh he talked to me about what it was that helped bring him to that decision to follow Christ um and he told me above all it wasn’t because of what I said although you know the right things need to be said the truth of the gospel um but he said it wasn’t what I what I said it was because he looked at me and he saw that there was something different uh about my life that got him thinking that that that got him kind of all messed up in his head about what was really going on and what this God was all about uh it wasn’t what I had to say but what he said was that you had this sense of joy even when things weren’t going well even when things weren’t going okay you still had a sense of joy and contentment in your life friends joy the joy of Jesus that is in us the fruit of the spirit who is pointing us back to our righteousness in Christ that’s one of the the works of the spirit he convinces us of righteousness or convicts us of righteousness meaning he convinces us that our righteousness is in the finished work of Christ for us as the free gift of God’s grace that work of the fruit of the spirit of joy is our witness in this world and it speaks often much louder than any words that we could offer if you’re struggling to find joy in your life right now the answer isn’t to work harder to get it to go home and try harder spend longer in prayer do do more uh you know whatever you need to do to to be more pious the answer is to stop take stock of where you’re sinking your roots where are your roots right now where are you where are you pulling life from are you firmly planted in the rich soil of God’s grace and his love for you through the finished work of Christ or have you sh sunk your roots into the dead nutrientstripped scalefilled soil of this world the good news for all of us is that it’s not too late it’s not too late pull up your roots we’re all called to a life of repentance repent of them and replant them next to the stream of Jesus’s living water that he is welcoming you to come and drink from and know the fullness of his true and his unshakable joy for you amen
