If you want joy! What a ridiculous premise! Of course you want joy. Of course we want to be happy. Of course all of us want to feel deep satisfaction with life. We want joy. That's just self-evident.
The trouble is, we don't know how to get that joy. We don't understand where joy comes from, how to have joy, how to keep joy.
A couple of years ago there was a pop song making the rounds. The lyric was, "Don't worry, be happy." Don't worry, be happy, as if you could just create it by wanting it. Just do it. Well, I don't think I need to waste time this morning debunking that notion. You can't be happy just by announcing that you want it! You can't get joy just by dreaming it up! That would be like my announcing that I am an athlete. I can say that all I want, but not much is going to happen! Just announcing that I'm an athlete doesn't cure me of having two left feet or put me in a one-on-one game with Michael. You know, Michael. As in Jordan; or Sampson. Jackson I might handle!
No, you don't get to be an athlete just by announcing it, and you don't get joy just by asserting that you want it.
There are a lot of wrong places to look for joy. Places most of us try to find joy, but which don't produce. One day Jesus got some seventy folks together and starting getting them ready to do something very special. They were supposed to go out, two by two, into the nearby towns and cities, to announce the good news of the kingdom. They were to announce joy, if you like. But Jesus knew that just announcing good news doesn't necessarily produce good news. And just proclaiming joy doesn't always bring joy. And he knew also that there were a lot of blind alleys people follow when they are looking for joy.
For example, He told the seventy that they wouldn't have many creature comforts. They wouldn't be taking with them all the usual badges of comfort: no money, no fine clothes, no luxury hotel reservations. I mean, just listen to this text: "See, I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals." Let me read that in a modern translation, a very modern translation. "Carry no Guccis, no Louis Vuitton luggage, and no Reeboks". Why, they were practically naked, weren't they? But, no, you don't get joy out of creature comforts or status symbols. Jesus knew that was a blind alley.
And also, Jesus told the seventy that they wouldn't get joy out of approval from others. If they were looking for approval, they could forget it. "Whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, 'Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you.'" In other words, if you have a need to be needed, you are going to be disappointed. If your only source of joy comes in being applauded by your friends, that's not going to happen. If you think joy comes from approval ratings, forget it. You will never achieve it. That too is a blind alley.
And then he gets to us Washington types, when he insists that joy doesn't even come from being successful. You don't derive joy from accomplishing your job or being rewarded accordingly. You don't get your joy from working for the pay raise or the step grade increase. "Remain in the same house, eating and drinking whatever they provide ... whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, 'The kingdom of God has come near to you.'" Don't I get to become a GS 10 or 15 or 99 or whatever? Where is the pension plan? How about the 401-K? And no expense account?! If you imagine you will get joy from being successful, you can forget that too. Professional success will not make you happy. Educational attainments will not make you happy. Promotions will not bring you joy. Being chosen for more responsibility will give you an ulcer, but it will not give you joy. Blind alleys, all of them.
But if you do want joy, there is a way. If you do want joy, wonderful joy, real joy, there is a path to get there. It doesn't involve going through creature comforts or approval ratings or success in your profession. It involves something a whole lot simpler than that, and yet more profound. Something you don't even have to work for, and yet which all too few have found.
Do you want joy?
I
If you want joy, then look, with me, at the first mention of joy in this passage of Scripture. It comes down in the 17th verse, after the seventy have returned from their mission. It says, "The seventy returned with joy, saying, 'Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us.'" The first mention of joy comes when the seventy return from their mission. Return from their mission.
I suspect they were not all that excited about doing this thing when it first came up. I'll wager they didn't really want to traipse around all these dusty villages. But once they did it, then they felt the joy! Once they obeyed the Lord's command, they experienced fulfillment! Once they just did what they were asked to do, then they found the joy. Joy, you see, is the product of obedience! You don't get joy first and then follow. You follow and then get the joy.
But now watch the way their joy was framed, look at how they described their joy. Did they come back saying, "Lord, we had a great time, everybody was so nice to us? We ate and drank and they all told us what good folks we were?" No, not at all.
Their kind of joy: "The seventy returned with joy, saying, 'Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!'" Look at that! "Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!" Their kind of joy was spiritual authority. It was personal security. The spiritual authority that comes from just taking the risk and doing God's will. The personal security that derives from carrying out what Christ has asked. Even the demons submit! Even the things we are so afraid of yield, when we just take the risk and do what is right, do what Christ commands.
You see, the problem with so many of us is that we want to go around obedience to Christ. We are afraid of being out on display, and so we shy away from doing anything that's risky. That's our demon. We're afraid of failing, and so we play it safe, we take no risks, try nothing new, attempt nothing bold. That's our demon. We postpone real discipleship. We put off doing what we know we are called to do. Those are our demons, our weaknesses. And those demons have control of us. That's where we forfeit our joy. It means we have surrendered our opportunity for joy. If we do not just plunge in and do what Christ wants us to do, setting aside our anxieties, then we yield to our demons and we surrender our joy.
This week I got a call from one of my old students. This student was in our Baptist program at the University of Maryland, more than twenty years ago. Of course I wouldn't betray her confidence by giving you the details, but she wanted counsel about with her relationship with another one of the students in that group back then. It focused on a disagreement they had had about eighteen years ago. The first student had recently been trying to send a signal to the other person that she had been offended by something that happened. Now my caller, about eighteen years ago, had written a letter of reference for the other student, so that she could enter graduate school. The other student had indeed gone to graduate school, had gotten her degree, had been a commissioned Navy officer, had moved on with her life, as you would expect. But student number one, my caller, was now considering writing the graduate school to ask that they return her letter of reference, give it back, after its sitting in their files for eighteen years.
Why? This was intended as a signal: I'm unhappy with you. I've changed my mind about you. I will not be ignored. I will not be passed by. She wanted to know what I thought of that strategy.
I told her to forget the letter writing, forget the indirect stuff, just pick up the phone and talk it out with that other person. I told her that the only way she was really going to get satisfaction was to face the demon of her shyness ... and you would have to know this person as I do to know that she is one of the most withdrawn, totally introverted people you will ever find ... she was to face the demon of her shyness and talk out the offense with her sister. Just take the risk of facing this other person, just talk it out, right now ... she'd already lost eighteen years of joy, and sending indirect messages was going to cost her even more joy.
Just take the risk to get the joy! The seventy Jesus sent out came back with joy, because they faced down their demons and found out that when you just take the risk, and you do what Christ asks you to do, right now, without waiting, there is enormous personal satisfaction. If you want joy, wonderful joy, real joy, then take the risk of doing what Christ asks. You will find those personal demons will submit. And you will find your joy.
II
But now watch what Jesus does. Watch how He responds to this rush of enthusiasm. You see, Jesus wants us to have more than just the joy of the moment. He wants us to have lasting joy. So Jesus' word to the seventy is very instructive.
"Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us!" And Jesus said, "Yes, I know that. I watched it happen. I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning. See, I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice at this, that the spirits submit to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven."
Now isn't this fascinating? The seventy come back all hopped up and happy. "Oh, praise the Lord, hallelujah, and amen brother, we sure did whip the devil. We beat up on old Satan. We stuck it to him good. How about that, Jesus?"
And Jesus answered. "Uh huh. Sure. That's nice. I know all about that. I know about it because I did it for you. But now I want you to learn that joy, wonderful joy, real joy, doesn't take up residence in big deals. It lives in everyday relationships." Joy does not reside in big deals but in an everyday, go the long haul, hang in there, relationship.
"Do not rejoice ... that the spirits submit to you". That's OK. "But rejoice that your names are written in heaven."
The problem with success is that it's addictive. The more you have, the more you want. And if your joy, your inner happiness, comes from big deal accomplishments, you will never be satisfied, because you will always be trying to top the last thing you did. But if your joy comes in a long-term relationship, a long-haul walk, with Christ, then you can weather anything. And you can have joy even when you're not into big deals.
Let me try to illustrate this from personal experience. A week ago yesterday Margaret and I celebrated 35 years of marriage. Well, the thing about this is not that we pull off big deals for one another; it is not that we give each other expensive gifts or put on huge parties or indulge in a lot of entertainment. We don't. We're not wired like that. But when I think of all the things she has done over these years to support my calling ... and she will quickly tell you that when we first started dating I was an engineering student, not a theologue ... when I think of the partnership in the gospel we have shared, whether it was cooking for retreats or counseling with students or teaching a Sunday School class or, lately, painting my office ... I know that joy comes out of a secure relationship. Joy comes out of knowing that I don't have to put on a big deal to earn her love or to make me feel good. It comes just out of knowing that there is a certain, unshakable, ongoing, weatherproof relationship.
Now, if we can accomplish that in marriage, how much more are we going to have that joy in a relationship with Christ. How much more are we going to find we don't have to pump up joy? We don't have to do something spectacular. It's just knowing that our names are written in heaven. It's just knowing that He who has begun a good work within us will bring it to completion. It's just knowing that nothing, neither life nor death, neither angels, nor principalities nor powers, nothing in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of Christ. It's just knowing that we are his and he is ours, forever.
Oh, I think about how we worship. We think we need to come to church and sing and shout and push to see if we can make joy happen. But that's not the way it works. We expect the choir and the preacher and the organist and, I don't know, the ushers and acolyte to put joy in us. But that's all backwards. That's all turned around.
Nobody can put you in us. It has to come from knowing Christ every day. We don't come to church to ask somebody else to whoop us up to create some kind of artificial excitement; no, we come to give voice and expression to the power of a longstanding relationship. We come to church to thank the Christ who is with us, in good times and bad, in fair weather and in foul, until and past the day of our death. And when we serve him, we do it not to get the joy, but because the joy is already in us. Jesus says that if you want joy, don't rejoice just that the demons submit. Rejoice in something much more basic: rejoice that your names are written in heaven, secure in a relationship to Christ.
III
When the experiment was over; when the seventy had gone out and come back and had reported to Jesus; and when He had instructed them about that deeper joy, then notice that the text turns away from their joy to His joy. The text turns away from the joy of the seventy to the joy of the savior.
"At that same hour Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit and said, 'I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and the intelligent and have revealed them to infants.'"
Bottom line, the question is not our joy, but Christ's joy. The question is not so much, "What do I do to be happy?" as it is, "How may I make Christ happy?" The issue is not so much, "Where do I get my joy?" as it is, "How do I give Christ joy?"
Let not anything I have said this morning reduce the Christian faith to a self-help technique. Let not anything hint of using God as an escape mechanism. Let not anything suggest to you that God exists to cater to our wants and wishes, as one of my pastors used to say, like a celestial bellhop, jumping to our beck and call. No, bottom line, we don't focus on our own joy. We focus on giving Christ joy.
Give yourself first to Christ's commands; then let Him reassure you that you are his, safe and secure; and I believe that you will be, as the title of C. S. Lewis' book has it, "surprised by joy". And that's good. But it is even better to bring joy to the heart of the Savior.
If you want joy, then, live for Jesus a life that is true; striving to please him in all that we do; yielding allegiance, glad-hearted and free. This is the pathway of blessing for me.
If you want joy ... just let it happen. If you want joy ... don't work for joy. Work for Christ. "If you want joy, wonderful joy, real joy, let Jesus come into your heart."
