Going? Nice to see you guys. Glad you guys made it. I know there's a lot of places you could be on a Sunday, and I'm sure glad that you made it with us. You know, as we talk about as a church, we're just grateful that you made it here.
Of course, if you have, a lot of you guys for, I mean, honestly, you came here, you're like, I'm not sure about Jesus, but I know there's a cute kid that I'm somehow connected to that was on stage. And I just want to let you know, have total confidence. Whoever your kid was, whoever you're connected to, that was the cutest one. I just want to let you know, we all know that, and we admit it, and yours is the winner. You know, it's a contest.
My name is Jeff. I'm one of the pastors here. It's great to be with you guys, like I said already. But if you're new with us, I just want to tell you, and we say this just about every week, this is not a place if you're new with us where you're going to find people who have everything all put together. This is a work in progress, folks. This is what we are.
And the best thing we got going in our church, whether you're online or out in the tent or you're in here with us, I just want to tell you, the best thing we got going in our church is the people. In fact, that actually is the definition of the church, is the people. And what we do on the stage is great, and we have the world's greatest band, and we have all that kind of stuff. There's great things that happen from the stage, but the best of our church is you guys. It really is the people that are here.
And it's in living rooms, and it's in family rooms, it's on walks, it's at the beach. It's people being together and actually kind of helping each other to aim their lives at Jesus because that's what we believe we were made for—a life with Jesus—and that everything else is sort of pointing us to that. Anything is just pointing our need to that. And so we need each other to do it because none of us does it perfect, and every single one of us, like I said, is a work in progress.
So we trip over ourselves, and we need each other to help each other up and, again, re-aim us back at Jesus. So if you're looking for a place where people have got it all already figured out, that's not us. We are just, like I said, we're aiming at Jesus together.
So I want to let you know, too, as many of you got our letter, our end-of-the-year letter. If you didn't get one and want to see it, it's kind of a thank you to you. It's a summary of all the kind of some highlights of the past year that have sort of happened in our church. And if you didn't get one, you want to get one of these letters, you can, of course, stop by the starting point in the lobby, and someone would love to hook you up with one of those, and you can kind of look at what's been going on.
Also, for those of you, this is your home church. If you're new, by the way, side note. You can hear this, but it's not really pertaining to you. You can care, but you don't have to care about this. But this is your home church. I mentioned a couple, like probably end of October or so, I was like, I told you guys where we were looking at where we should be budget-wise. I told you where we were, and we were about 15% behind, and I told you guys that.
And someone had told me, a wise sort of mentor of my own, just kind of said, "Hey, look, you know what? One of the things when you face a budget situation like this is you just tell the people where you are and let them respond and see what God does." And so I was like, "Okay, I'm doing that." And so I just told you, here's where we are.
And, you know, as a church community, we don't believe in coercion or guilt or obligation to generosity. We just give you the opportunity and allow you to step in wherever God might lead you. And I told you we were 15% behind, and you guys started to respond. And then I was like, a couple weeks later, I was like, "You know what the upside of being 8% behind budget is? We used to be 15%, and it was like trying to, you know, like here we go." And you can see we're moving in this direction.
And as we, you know, like Jeff Pree's already mentioned that December is, it used to be 25%. And now it's way closer to 30% of our budget comes in December. But we were going into December at a deficit. And then I get to kind of tell you, as we close out November, we were actually about $1,000 over where we expected to be. So there you go. So it's like, it's really cool.
So, again, thank you guys for kind of stepping up and being a part of what God's doing here. We believe there is so much more that God intends to do. And I'm grateful to our church community who said we care about this and want to respond. And, you know, I'm grateful to you, really. So thank you. Again, check out a letter and see what that looks like for you. Thank you.
Stories that you might not know about what's going on in our church. All right, let's get to it. If you ask anybody, you know, anywhere kind of in the world about what are some elements that are kind of happening at Christmas, you can kind of figure out something, whether or not they're a church person or not. Eventually, people would get to an answer where they're talking about Christmas.
And someone would say, "I think there's something, again, whether or not it's a Jesus kind of scenario. But someone would say, I think this has something to do with, like, joy. Isn't there joy kind of part of it?" Everybody would kind of agree, "Yeah, yeah, there's joy is part of Christmas."
And, you know, after that, after you get to that question, inevitably, you'd start wondering, like, "Okay, well, let's debate what that is and how do we get it and all that sort of thing." Of course, all of you guys all know, it's like, not surprising. And it's kind of wise. All the ad agencies and all the companies in the world are trying to figure out how do we capitalize, quite literally, on the idea of joy at Christmas.
And so there's a lot of different ways. I'm going to show you a couple of these. Some of you might recognize, some of you might not. But this is a screenshot a couple years ago from Amazon of a commercial they had called "Joy is Made." And what it was, if you remember this video, it was a guy—a single dad. It's a great story. Super emotional. A single dad with his daughter, only child.
And he watches his daughter playing with a snow globe. And then he makes an actual snow globe for his daughter to live in in their greenhouse. And I'm like, who hasn't done that for their kid? Everybody's done that. It's like, come on, step it up. Do something. You know what I mean? What a lazy dad. Anyway, so "Joy is Made." That's Amazon.
Some of you might have seen this a couple years ago. This is "Joy was born for the left lane" at BMW. Yeah. The rest of us dorks are over there in the right lane just kind of figuring out how to, like, get by. But Joy. It's for the left lane.
Here's an ad. This is an ad. "Share the Joy." That's their tagline. This is for Crocs shoes. Crocs. You can almost see the Crocs on the ad. Speaking of dorks. Anyway. Next. Frito. Frito-Lay celebrates Joy. And you get all these different sort of chips that are there.
And I just want to say, if you think that, like, Cheetos gives you a kind of lasting joy that never could go away, I just want to say, you're right. It never goes away. That dust. That dust is everywhere and on everything. We used to make my kid, my daughter wasn't allowed to eat Cheetos as long as she had, like, her clothes on.
So I remember we were eating it. So it was when she was really little. We were at somewhere. I was a youth pastor and she was, like, three. And she was like, "I want Cheetos." And she took off her dress. I was eating Cheetos. Kind of parenting we got going on here.
Then, lastly, this one. Actually, a true statement. "Joy will take you further," says Johnny Walker. You're like, "Ah, Joy may take me further. Do I need Johnny Walker?" Don't answer that question.
But whatever Joy is, whatever that looks like, however we talk about it, it seems to culminate at Christmas. However, again, at the Christmas tree, I should say, probably more specifically, it's a puppy, you know, by the fireplace. And it's a Lexus in the driveway with a bow on it. And there's a part, is that Joy? And some of us are like, "What model Lexus?"
Anyway, but the whole point is, there's little disagreement among us. And in a moment of clarity, however joyful this year's sort of joy under the Christmas tree is, at some point, it's going to vanish. At some point, it will just go away.
When I was six years old, my grandfather, much to my mother's horror, bought me an Atari 2600. Anybody? Yeah, cool people. Mm-hmm, really cool, right? And I had this thing. This is the greatest thing I've ever had and seen in my life. This is so unbelievable. And then three years later, the Nintendo came out.
And I looked at my mom like, "I'm getting that too, right?" And she went, "Not a chance." And so, all of a sudden, the joy I had about the Atari 2600 vanished when the Nintendo came out. And we spend so much energy and so much effort to try to figure out how to bring it to our own homes around Christmas. And then it's just over. It just vanishes.
And then we're trying to figure out how to bring it to our own homes around Christmas. And whatever this thing we're chasing, we're calling it joy. But is it really joy if it's a byproduct of unboxing a bunch of stuff? Well, unboxing is really cool. Maybe it points us to something. But really, is it joy at all? It's something else, maybe.
Now, this season, which we call Advent. Advent is, many of you know about this because you get a calendar. And a lot of us are like, "Oh, Advent. I know that's the calendar. It's chocolate in there." Yeah, okay, that's also, yes, that's true. But Advent is a word that means arrival.
So, it's the anticipation of something happening because of the arrival of someone, someone specifically. God's people in the first century are waiting for God to arrive in a particularly unique way. God's, you know, everywhere present. But God's up-close presence was supposed to be near his own people.
More specifically, people are waiting for someone called the Messiah, or as you might know it in the Greek as the Christ, to show up. The chosen person is what that is. To show up, to bring in this kingdom of God kind of life that people were anticipating.
And so, when God and this Messiah who's leading that sort of inaugurating that stuff arrives, what people knew in the first century was that God's presence always meant God's rescue. So, God's showing up in a unique way and being present to everybody, to being present to these people meant that he was rescuing.
So, there's a lot of anticipation about the arrival of this person, this Messiah person. Now, part of the rescue that everybody kind of connected with it, which the Bible reiterates, is that there's like supposed to be hope and peace and love and one other thing, joy as part of it.
Roughly 700 years before Jesus, the prophet Isaiah is writing. And as he writes, he's writing, you know, to a people that are in exile, and he's promising them about a future that's supposed to happen one day off in the distance. And here's what he writes. Isaiah 35, verse 10. "Those the Lord has rescued," remember these are the exiles, "will return. They'll enter Zion with singing. Everlasting joy will crown their heads, and gladness and joy will overtake them, and sorrow and sighing will flee away."
So great will the joy be that it actually overtakes; they cannot escape it. That's how good it will be. And the question we face, at this point in, you know, kind of our world, is how is this joy being described right here in the Bible?
And whether or not you're a Jesus-y person or not, like I'm not sure about the Bible or Jesus or a church or whatever, however you might encounter this, the question you have to be asking all of us to do is, how is the joy that's described by the Bible any different than the joy that's described by the world, or prescribed by the world, I should say? How's it any different?
Because people use joy in all kinds of different contexts. In fact, maybe it's lost its meaning to a large extent. We don't really know how to define it anymore. I mean, in our heart of hearts, if we had a moment of clarity, in our heart of hearts, we know it's not something we can buy.
So what is it, this joy? I mean, is it just a general feeling of happiness? I'm just joyful, I feel just joyful, just sort of happy. Is that what it is? Is it a low tolerance for negativity? Some of us know those people who are like, "I just don't do negative. I don't do, we don't do negative around here." It's like, "Well, that's a bad thing that just happened."
"I know, but just keep it over there." Okay, maybe that's it. That's a joy; that doesn't feel like a joyful person. Maybe for some of us, it's kind of the idea that nothing, it's a determination that nothing's gonna ever get me down. Nothing gets me down, man. I'm just, I'm always, nothing can get me, which is really kind of, really a sort of a version of a Greek philosophy called stoicism. It's just, I'm gonna try to protect myself, insulate myself from ever really getting down. Is that joy?
Maybe it's always finding a smile, no matter the circumstance. Is that, I just always find the smile. No matter what I'm up against, no matter what's happening, I just, it's just great. Every, I'm just smiling all the time and it feels so unbelievable. You know, people like this, it just feels so fake, like you're pretending because some things, it's not always worth smiling about.
Is that joy, just pretending? For a lot of us, maybe the picture of joy that we have is that it's kind of the magic eraser of sorrow. Wherever there's sorrow in our lives, we get joy to eliminate it, kind of, because we know those two things can't really be, so it's like as soon as joy kind of comes in, sorrow is out the door and if sorrow's present, joy left and so they just can't occupy the same space. Maybe that's it.
But if joy shows up, it can just negate sorrow. Joy seems like it's under very little control or influence by us at all. A lot of us kind of think about it, but it's like really, it's just really something that happens to us. It's something that's, it's sort of an if-then proposition. If this happens, then I could have joy, sort of joy if.
Joy if I get promoted. Joy if all of a sudden, I can show all of my friends and my tyrant of a boss that I'm actually a worthy employee and they want to give me this new promotion and I can show everybody else that I've arrived at the same level as them. Maybe that's when I find the joy I've been looking for.
Or maybe it's joy if I find my person, if I could finally, finally find that one person I've been looking for and we could get together and together in our small town, we could actually save the town. We could, you know, the bake sale can save everything. That's right, the Hallmark plot. Sorry, I just got mistaken. But if I could find my person, then I'd have the joy.
If I can make that amount of money and have the freedom and security that I believe the money will give to me, then I'll have joy. If I can lose that weight, I'll have the joy. If I can finally have the body that everybody else wants me to have, then that'll be the moment when all of a sudden there'll be joy because I'll know and everybody will know I've arrived there.
If I could get that GPA, some of you guys high school students are like, if I could get that GPA, if I could get there and then everybody will know and then I could get into that school or I could get a scholarship to that school or people will know about it. If I could get there, then once I get to that place, then there'll be joy.
Or if I could have that one thing, that toy that everybody else has that I gotta have, whatever that toy is for you, whatever that thing is, if I could get that, I've been researching it, thinking about it, I want it, whatever it is, I know everything about it. I know all the different versions and I want that one, if I could get it, then I'd have joy. Joy if.
Jesus says at one point regarding joy, these words. He says, "I've told you this so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete." He says, "I've told you this so that your joy might be in you or my joy might be in you and your joy might be made complete," which means there are other kinds of joy. There's other joys out there, but they're just incomplete.
There is, he's not denying the existence of other kinds of joy; Jesus is just simply saying, if you, the joy I'm offering to you is one that is something that is complete and all other joys are incomplete. So his version of some kind of true joy is different than this other kind of joy that's just not quite as complete.
To read it again. "I've told you this, that my joy might be in you and your joy might be made complete." Now to look at this, just think about this for a moment. What Jesus is saying, whatever he said before this one verse is culminating, he's like, "Here's the reason why I told you this, so that you could have this kind of joy I'm talking about."
So the question then is, what did Jesus say before this to which he says, "Oh, this is, I told you all this so that you could have this kind of joy." So he's ended his discussion here with this line. "I've told you all of this, whatever this is, so that you could have complete joy." So what is that joy that he's talking about?
So let's back up a little bit. In fact, let's back up a little further than just his conversation. Let's go way back into the Bible. Now, the story of the Bible revolves around a particular family of people. And those people can trace their own sort of lineage back to a person named Abraham and his descendants, okay? A guy named Abraham and his descendants. Those descendants are called the Israelites, right? The people of Israel.
And the job of that family that God gives to those people is to bless the whole world. So it's like, "Hey, you guys have a particular unique call. You're gonna be my people to bless the entire world, these descendants of Abraham." Now, several images that the Bible gives depicting Israel. One of them is as a bride. Like God will say, "I'm the husband and Israel's my bride."
God will refer to Israel as his, the Israelites as his son, as his only son, which is interesting. And then there's one other thing that I want to point out here. One other way he refers to the people of Israel a lot of different ways, but here's one more. Psalm 80. "You, God, transplanted a vine from Egypt." A vine.
Now, some of you are familiar with the story of God's people who are held captive in Egypt for 400 years. They're held captive in Egypt. Then they get rescued out and they're taken out into the desert. This is the Moses story. Takes them into the promised land. But the way the Bible describes these people who are in Egypt is as a vine.
And it's God who transplants this vine from Egypt to another place, this promised land. "You drove out the nations and planted it. You cleared the ground for it and you took it, and it took root and it filled the land." God is tending to this particular vine so that it is able to thrive in another place.
Keep on reading. "The mountains were covered with its shade, the mighty cedars with its branches, and its branches reached as far as the sea. It shoots as far as the river." All this is saying is because God has done a thing, he has tended to the vine. It has thrived. You with me? This other image is of a vine.
Now back up to Jesus' words at the beginning of John chapter 15. He says, "I am the true vine." Which means what Jesus is saying is all of the promises and responsibilities given to that people called Israel, he's taking upon himself. "I'm here to bless the entire world."
Though everything that God intended for these people, I'm taking it on as my personal mission. Are you with me? Now he's taking on all these folks to sort of bless the whole world. Keep on reading. "I'm the true vine and my father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch that bears no fruit. While every branch that does bear fruit, he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful. And you are already clean."
You can just use the word prune there as well. "You're already clean because of the word I've spoken to you." Now, what I want you to capture is this. The purpose of a vine is to bear fruit and the person who's tending the vine, he does that because he wants to. He does the delicate work of pruning away things.
What I also want to point out is this. Every single branch gets pruned. Every single one. Those that produce fruit and those that don't. Every single sort of branch that's part of this thing is going to be cut or trimmed. It is the intimate work of the vine dresser, is the sort of old school term to describe this, the gardener, to take care of the things, to be up close and deciding which things need to be trimmed so that there can be even more fruit.
By the way, for people in the first century, this idea of like all of the kind of picture of a vine, they would have understood all of the analogy and the picture of what's happening here. For us, unless you're like really kind of, you know, gardener kind of person, you wouldn't really understand as much, but you get the idea.
Anyway, verse four, "Remain in me as I also remain in you." He continues, so he takes the analogy, now he starts stretching it to kind of connect it to himself and he says, "Remain in me as I remain in you." In other words, I'm already remaining in you, but my invitation is to remain in me.
The word remain, some of you might have a different translation to describe this word. The word remain has a couple of different translations, I'll give them to you. Here's one, a couple of them, stay in me or abide in me is probably one of the most familiar for a lot of you. Abide in me, which means to make your home in or to dwell in, or in this case, to live in.
One paraphrase of the Bible says it this way, "Get your life from me," which I actually like that paraphrase. So the Bible says, John 15 tells us, Jesus says these words, "Remain in me as I remain, as I also remain in you." Then he continues, "No branch can bear fruit by itself. It must remain in the vine, neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me."
You get the term here, this repeated over and over again, this idea of remain, you're gonna see it a bunch. Get your life in me or remain in me, live in me, stay in me, and no branch can remain, sorry, no branch can bear fruit by itself, so remain in me again.
Now, then he says, he says, it's opposite. The opposite is also true. By the way, I should also point this out. Jesus is saying this as if it is in fact fact. He's not saying it as like it's up for debate. He's saying that the life that I'm intending to give to you can only be had through me.
And if you're like, "But that seems kind of like, really not, we don't do that anymore. We don't say things like that." And I get that. He's just saying, if you want the life that I give, you gotta be connected to me. If you don't want the life that I give, that makes sense. But he's just saying, you can't have the life I give not being connected to me.
With me so far? Okay, here we go. He continues. "I'm the vine, you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you'll bear much fruit. And apart from me, you can do a whole lot of really wonderful things, but not quite the same." Nothing, he says the word nothing. "Apart from me, you can do nothing," which again feels really harsh.
Like, are we allowed, is he allowed to say that? Are we, can we say those kinds of things? Now, remember, as we get to this, which is gonna get even more harsh in a second, and I just want you to stay in the analogy. So just stay with the picture of branches and the vine and all that kind of stuff. Some of you are gonna jump to a conclusion that this isn't necessarily intending. Are you with me? I'm gonna show you next.
Some of you are gonna freak out and go, "I know what this actually means." And it's like, just stay with the analogy. Can we all do that? Okay, everybody brace yourselves. Here we go. "Apart from me, you can do nothing. If you do not remain in me, you're like a branch that's thrown away and withers. Such branches are picked up and thrown into the fire and burned."
Okay, take a breath. Just hold on. Here's a Bible commentary on this exact passage. The picture is realistic. In other words, intending to show you a realistic picture. The parable depicts what happens on the farm and is not applied to any other judgment. Right?
So you're like, "I think, is he talking about hell? Can we say hell in church?" Okay, he's not necessarily talking, he's just talking about real practical example stuff. Rather, it vividly portrays the uselessness of such as do not remain in the vine. All that it's trying to do is to illustrate the idea of what happens to branches that are detached from anything.
If you take a branch off of anything, eventually it can't produce anything else. That's all that it's saying. Now, our purpose, then, is to bear fruit, the Bible will say, skipping down. "This is to my Father's glory, that you bear much fruit. Showing yourselves to be my disciples."
The evidence that you're a person who walks with Jesus is that you bear this kind of fruit. You actually have this show up in your life. In other words, well, I'll keep on reading. He says this, "The Father has loved me, so I've loved you. Now remain in my love."
So the whole transaction, everything that's happening here has everything to do with a loving relationship that Jesus has for his followers and that the Father has for Jesus. It's just all based on this kind of picture of love. Then he says, "If you keep my commands, you'll remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commands and remain in his love."
So once again, the purpose is to bear fruit, whatever that is, to be attached to Jesus. There's some outcomes in our life that we can identify as being, because they're being connected to Jesus. And then it has this idea of obedience, keeping commands.
Now, before we freak out about that, let me just give you something to think about. Remember, the whole setup to that is, because of this love that I have for you and my Father has for me, then there is some sort of outcomes, which we could call fruit.
In other words, obedience is not a prerequisite to be loved by Jesus. Let me say that again. Obedience is not a prerequisite to be loved by Jesus. And when we decide to do things that are not according to his commands, it isn't that we are unloved by Jesus. Just make sure we're clear about that.
So many of us have the impression that what Jesus is saying is, once you get your act together, you can be part of this little group, community, whatever, connected to me. But just put it the other way. Obedience is not a prerequisite to love. It's a response to love. It's a response to being loved.
Probably a more practical way to say it is just simply this. At a minimum, a person who says that they follow Jesus, that they're a follower, that Jesus, I know I should say it this way, a minimum that Jesus' followers life ought to look like Jesus is actually doing some leading in it. Does that make sense?
So again, it's not asking for perfection. It's just simply saying this. At a minimum, Jesus' followers life ought to look as though Jesus is leading it. There have to be some sort of evidence of that kind of thing.
Then we get back to where we started. Jesus says, "I told you all this so that my joy might be in you and your joy may be in me. Your joy may be complete." I've told you this, that my joy might be in you and your joy may be complete, but let me show you just one more dimension of this, which is so important to think about.
It's that it's his joy might be in you. I just wanna make sure we're clear about that. Jesus isn't offering a disembodied kind of joy out there, like, "Look, this is a wonderful thing. You guys now have it. This is now joy." He's saying, "I'm giving you what I have."
He calls himself the true vine. We can, by extension, call it true joy. Jesus is saying, "I'm giving to you, my intention is to give you a kind of joy. I have it, and I'm giving it to you. I'm not intending to withhold it. I want it to be yours."
To say it differently, Jesus has what we can call true joy, and he intends to give it. He intends to give it. Now, there's a lot we could talk about. One of the things, and I wish, we had a discussion earlier this week among our staff, and it was about the idea of what exactly, what does true joy look like?
And I spent probably 40 minutes going down a road that I just don't have time. It's like, it could be a whole series, and I just obviously don't have time to do it today. Suffice it to say, true joy, one of the truest tests of true joy is if it is present in sorrow.
All other, if it vanishes in the presence of sorrow, and I don't mean like we're fake putting on the smile and all that kind of stuff. I mean, one of the true tests of joy is if it is present in the deepest sorrow.
This week, I visited, and it's not my story to tell, so I can't give you too many specifics, but I visited a young family and I got to their house, and they have encountered the most awful tragedy in their life. And so I went to their house and I meet my friend, the husband, in the driveway, and I hugged him, and we just started crying in the driveway.
We're all kind of a mess and, you know, there's only toilet paper there because they have run through all the Kleenex in their house. And he says to me at some point, again, we just hug him again and we cry, and I hug his wife and we cry, and we hug together. And, you know, we're just, we're in this moment, we're in this moment.
And it's so unbelievably, it just feels so bleak. And he says, "So I don't know either." And to watch the community of people who have responded to them, who know them and love them, again, the best of our church.
He, in fact, he apologizes for not having any more Kleenex and someone from the other room who's from our church goes, "I just ordered it on DoorDash, more Kleenex is showing up in a few minutes." And in no way does the joy of this Jesus take away from the sorrow.
It doesn't try to minimize it or make it small, like it's not a big deal. It's just simply that somehow these two things coexist. As one writer said once, joy and sorrow are sisters and they live in the same house.
The true test of the true joy, at least one of the true tests is, can it be present in sorrow? And there are, according to Jesus, no substitutions. There are no good imitations. There are no generic brands that are just as good as the real thing. There's only imposters and pretenders.
At best, they can just sort of aim us at something else. You see, to kind of give a definition that we look at from Jesus's own words, the best way to sort of describe it would be this. It's the natural outcome of a life that's connected to Jesus and this is why that the whole, everything that we're doing from a church community, that for those of you who are like moved on from just sort of attending on the weekend and being sort of anonymous, that you move into the place where you're being connected to Jesus, all of everything that we're trying to do is to help you be, to sort of be more connected to Jesus because that's where the truest form of joy and life and wholeness comes from, everything that we're doing.
But what do we do with that? If joy is a natural outcome of a life connected to Jesus, what do we do with that? Let me just give you a couple things to think about and there's probably a lot of ways to consider this, but let me just give you at least one angle for today as we step into this sort of, again, the final sort of on-ramp till we get to Christmas, but first is this, and this will bristle some of you a little bit, so brace yourselves a little bit, but I just want you to consider it.
I'm gonna put it on the screen, you think about it, but here's what I want us to wrestle with. The amount of joy we will experience, the sum total of the amount of joy that we'll experience in any particular situation in our lives is always dependent on the object we depend on to give it.
The amount of joy we will experience always depends on the object we depend on to give it. By that, I mean sometimes, we are relying on stuff to give us more joy than that thing is capable of giving. All joy, it's always a function of reliance or dependence, and we sometimes rely on things to give us more joy than they're capable of giving.
In other words, we create an expectation that it, whatever it is, cannot really live up to, which in that case, we're actually kind of unreasonable. We're expecting things to give us a joy that they can never do. Let me just give you an example. If you caught all the stuff you ever would have wanted, all the stuff that you want, can it really give you the joy that you're hoping it can give you that's lasting and won't vanish?
Is it perfect in every way to give you the kind of joy that you need? If you got that job, the one that really identifies and validates you as a human being, that really puts you in the light, you're the person we needed, would that give you everything that you hoped it would give you, the complete kind of fullness of life?
If you had enough money, a little bit more money, because whatever we need, it's always a little bit more money. If we had a little bit more, and you had the kind of stability that you wanted and the discretionary money to buy whatever you wanted and even to bless other people, whatever you thought about in terms of giving out that money, whatever it is, would that give you the kind of joy that you needed?
Are we asking too much of money? Are we asking too much of our job or of our stuff? Are we asking too much in the simplest sense, in the most basic sense, all the usual suspects we use, all the distractions, whether it's an addiction or whatever else, sometimes we're asking those things to give us more than they're capable of giving.
And there's one other thing, too. Sometimes we're asking another person to give to us all of the joy, the fullness of our life that we were anticipating to have, and it's really not on any of those other things. We're the ones being unreasonable.
At some point, there's a part of you that has the imagination about finding that other person, that soulmate kind of person, and those of you who are planning on being married at some point in your life are like, "I wanna be married," and you're looking for your person, you're gonna find that other person, and you're gonna think, "I think we fit together perfectly, this is us."
And then, those of us who have been married for a while, you'll marry that person, and you'll look at them and like, "I did not realize what a disgusting human being you are," and they'll look at you like, "You have the most bizarre habits in the world. How in the world did we find each other? This is not, where's the magic? How come this isn't happening anymore?"
Speaking of toilet paper, what kind of insane person would let it roll underneath the bottom of a toilet? It should go over the top like a sane human being. All the things, where you put your laundry, and all this other, this is all crazy stuff, and pretty soon, we realize that person cannot give what we expected it to give to us.
We've asked more of that other person to be for us what they cannot be. At issue for us, at least according to C.S. Lewis, looks like this. Our desires are not too strong, but too weak. We are, as he says, half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink, and sex, and ambition, when infinite joy is offered us.
Like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum, because he cannot imagine what's meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea, he says to clarify, we are far too easily pleased. Which means, then, our problem isn't that we want too much. Our problem isn't wanting too much. Our problem is settling for too little.
We just look at stuff and go, "This thing should give me everything my soul requires," and we're just, our bar is just too low. Our problem isn't wanting too much; it's just settling for too little.
So the question we have, again, whether you're a person who's convinced about Jesus, you're curious about Jesus, you're not sure about the community of people we call this church at Harbor Point, whatever, every single one of us gets to wrestle with this question today. It's this one.
What things am I expecting to give me a kind of true joy that are incapable of giving it? Maybe there's some things we're attempting to get life from that simply cannot give it to us.
This is true even in the world. You can see even at the most secular sort of Christmassy, bland, thin sort of Christmas story movies that are out there right now that make all their rounds. Eventually, you get to a place where there's some kind of subtext that says all this stuff we can buy or hoard or own, all of that stuff.
And this is, again, the most, in the most secular context. At some point someone will go, "It's really not about that. It's about something else." And they'll call some vague terms. And they'll call some vague terms. And they'll call some vague terms. Like Christmas spirit or whatever else it is. That's, you know, they'll have some other idea about it.
But the point is that all of this stuff that we're hoping to give us true joy sometimes just simply cannot deliver on it. It just can't. Some of you remember the great sort of philosopher Whitney Houston of the 80s.
By the way, I'm going to ask you a trivia question, so bear with me as I get to this. Because she gets it, she actually, she actually perfectly encapsulates this in one of her songs. And it's embarrassing that I remember. It's a terrible example. But everybody just bear with me, okay?
Now, can any of you, if you could imagine the third, her third most successful song. Anybody know this? Want to take a guess at it? "Greatest Love of All." That's so embarrassing that you know that. That's so, I'm so sorry. Yeah, that's really, it's too bad. We all heard you say it.
No, anyway. It is actually another "Greatest Love of All." And I'm imagining you were here last service. Because how in the world would you know that? Anyway, you cheated and that's God's thought.
Anyway, for those of you guys who are wondering, the number one song is "I Will Always Love You" from The Bodyguard, right? You know, I'm going to go ahead and sing that for you now. No. The second one was, I want, the number two is "I Want to Dance with Somebody," which I think probably because of all the remixes recently.
Anyway, now, the greatest, the greatest love of all. Now, this is a song for those of you guys who are wondering what that song is. "I believe the children are our future. Teach them well and..." Yeah, no, I wasn't looking for applause. I was looking for the fill in the blank, right? Teach the fill in.
Yeah, how embarrassing for all of you. Anyway, that's just that you knew that. Now, the culminating moment of that song is really where she gets to the place where she says, "Look, I never found anybody. I was searching for a hero. I never found anybody who fulfills my need."
And the point is, "The greatest love, I found the greatest love of all inside of me." The only thing I've got, if there's nothing else out there and nothing else will do it for me, and there is no other answer for this, then the only thing I've got is me.
I have, the only thing I've got is me. That's the only answer that the secular world has for this. And if the point is, are we attempting to get life from something that can't give it? The world's asking the same question. The only place it can turn is inside.
If you're not sure where it is that you're expecting things to give you true joy that are incapable of giving it, just start with what disappoints you. The degree of disappointment that you have is always connected to the degree of disappointment that you have.
And if you're not sure where it is that you're expecting things to give you true joy that you have, just start with what the degree of expected joy that you thought it would give to you. The degree of disappointment is always connected to the degree of disappointment, or just the degree of expected joy.
As I get older, my oldest kids are in college. And my youngest son's in high school. And it's so interesting as I get a little older. I went to go visit my college kids, and my dad lives not too far from them. And I haven't talked to my dad in a really long time.
So I just, I just was like, you know what, I can't keep talking about all this stuff sometimes and not actually, you know, kind of reach out to him a little bit, so I reached out to him, and I wasn't sure he'd respond, and of course, I sent him a text message, and he has a phone from 1991, you know, it's like as big as a suitcase, and he's like, he can't really, he doesn't, he's like, "I don't know how to text," and I'm like, "Okay," so I call him on the phone, we talk, which is like, I forget how to talk to people, you know, so I talked to him for a little bit, and I hadn't seen him in two years, so we, I get together, and he wanted to see where the kids go to school, so I picked him up, and we talked, and he has a lot of things he likes to talk about, it's kind of similar kind of themes, and we had lunch together, I forgot how much my dad likes ketchup, really loves ketchup, he eats his french fries with a fork, which I'm like, "Oh yeah, I forgot that he does that," you know, and there we are, and it was, and it was really good, and the reason why it was good, I think part of it is, as I was driving down to meet with him, a couple things dawned on me that have come more to, and to try to summarize them, and it's not perfect, and I don't want to give you a sense that this is all, like, kind of, you know, it's not perfect, it's not perfect, it's not perfect, it's not perfect, perfectly dialed in, I just want to give you a sense, I realized that my dad, the expectation I might have had on my dad, or anybody else in that, for that matter, my dad, it, first of all, I cannot get any years back, there's no getting those years back that, where we had sort of difficulty in our own, in our own story, but I also realized, I may have put some things on my own father, that I expected him, if he had been there, in a way that I needed him to be there, that he would answer all of the deepest needs in my own life, he would give to me a kind of joy, and the truth is, he's only capable of giving me what he can give me, and in that sense, he gave me what he could give me, when we were together, and that was it, and I wasn't bitter at him, of course, there's still hurt, and for me, and regret, with my own past, but that's all he could give, and I realized, as a dad myself, I realized, even in my own kids, I think I actually began, and like I said, my kids are a little bit older now, and as I was raising them, I think I actually believed, I could be everything they needed, I could give them the fullest sense of joy, that they needed for their life, and the truth is, as now, as they're getting older, and they're like going, "Hey, you know, there's some things that weren't so awesome about it," and I was like, "Oh yeah, you're right."
The best thing, the best of even the greatest stuff that we get, the greatest stuff that we might have, the best it can do, the best the joy of a thing can ever do for us, is point us to true joy, it can point us to Jesus, because what happens for us, for a lot of the time, we look to another thing to give to us a kind of joy that it's capable of giving, and then we get disappointed, we wonder what happened, and the truth is, what happens, to say it this way, is that no gift is ever intended to replace the gift giver.
All of the good things that we have are really good, and we can celebrate those things, but they all simply point us to somewhere else, to someone else, no gift is ever intended to replace the giver, we're asking too much of those things to give us a joy that they cannot give to us.
So, now, one expression of joy that people have when they experience it, one of the ways that you can experience it together in a community is in a song, and in so doing, that actually points us to a certain extent to Jesus as well. You heard, you saw the kids earlier here, if you were here, you got here on time, I know it was kind of a traffic jam, but as you got here earlier, you saw the kids, and if you didn't think that was cute, find another church.
Yeah, just, it's all right, I mean, there's great churches around here, but that was awesome. Anyway, at Thanksgiving, we had all these Marines in here, and a couple of them just said, "Hey, can we sing a song?" We were like, "Okay, how's this going to go?"
And so they, they come up on here, and some of you saw this, and they got up, there's like four or five of them, and they're all holding hands, and kind of, I'm like, "What's this going to do? What are they, what?" And is it going to be appropriate? Is it going to, I don't know what's going to happen, are we, what's going to happen in here?
And not all these folks that are here are people who are excited about Jesus, but there's something about what they did in the singing of a song that pointed people to a joy, and I want to show you what that looked like, here's a minute of that song, me, I'm on the stage, just from my phone, here's what it looked like right here, check this.
Many of us are facing deep sorrow, and might you, Father, meet us in our sorrow, with a joy that does not end, would you hear us now as we respond to you, the outflow, the longing, perhaps even, for joy, and might our collective prayer, as we said it to music, be in...
Some of you are marines so you sound exactly like marines but as we conclude would you just hold out your hands and would you let these words be a blessing to you the bible says to us these words you turned my wailing into dancing and you removed my sackcloth and you clothed me with joy that my heart my heart may sing your praises and not be silent lord my god i will praise you forever wherever there is deep sorrow and that you might know the true joy he intends to give to us and may the love of the father and the grace of the son and the fellowship and coming of the father and the grace of the son and the comfort of the holy spirit be among you all in jesus name amen amen great to be with you if you have needs for prayer people love to pray with you see you guys later god bless you.
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on Dec 10, 2024
