The Power of Joy Part 2
Scripture: Psalm 32:1-5; Second Corinthians 2:7-11; 6:10; 12:9; Matthew 6:12, 14-15
Good morning New Light. This is the day that the Lord has made and let each of us rejoice and be glad in it. The reason we can REJOICE is because we already have “the joy of the Lord.” Amen? This morning is the second part of the message “The Power of Joy.” In the first part, we looked at, in some detail, the source of joy and the source of happiness. We talked about joy as being something we receive when we are born again, when we become a child of God. We saw that joy is unrelated to the situations and circumstances we face because it has nothing to do with our emotions. Think of it this way: joy is the reason we can have peace in unpleasant situations when there is nothing that we can see that says peace is available. New Light, I can’t emphasize this enough – having joy is not about what we see. Having joy is about WHO we know. It’s about WHO we have put our faith and trust in. Having joy is about knowing, that as we go through the situation, WE mean the world to Him. I am sure that each one of you have been in situations that had declared war on your emotions and left you feeling helpless and then, for some reason, you calmed down and a sense of peace took the place of the agitation. You couldn’t explain it. It seemed to just happen. New Light, do remember what God told Paul when he was being attacked by the messenger of Satan? In Second Corinthians 12, we’re going to read the first part of verse 9. “And He said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for My strength is made perfect in weakness.” When we were in the place of feeling helpless, which describes the word “weakness” in this verse, God’s grace brought His joy to the situation where we felt helpless and where we didn’t have the answer. We also spent some time looking at happiness, which is an emotional response to situations. Happiness happens when something occurs that makes us feel happy. That is not joy. The “joy of the Lord” is independent of all our situations and circumstances, whether they are good or bad.
This morning my message will focus solely on joy as it relates to forgiveness. Yes, you heard me right; unforgiveness will directly impact the joy that we are supposed to have in our lives. This includes the unforgiveness that exists in our lives because of unrepentant (unconfessed) sins; and the unforgiveness that exists in our lives because we choose to not forgive others – which is also a sin. Since our joy is tied to who we are in Christ, if we have unconfessed sin, God’s forgiveness is not made available to us – you will see this when we take a look at what David said in Psalm 32. Also, if someone has hurt us and we have refused to forgive them, this also impacts God ability to forgive us which impacts His joy reigning within us. In our society today, there are many Christians dealing with unforgiveness with the results being a state of anger, frustration, depression and a total lack of joy. It’s like a bad memory that creeps to the forefront of your mind in the most inopportune moment. You can be enjoying a day out and all of a sudden you see someone who hurt you and the memory of that hurt floods your mind and now your day is ruined because you saw that person. In reality, your day was ruined because you have not forgiven that person.
I read an article from the Mayo Clinic titled “Forgiveness: Letting go of grudges and bitterness.” The article gave examples of how people experience hurtful situations throughout life and how those wounds can leave us with lasting feelings of anger, bitterness and even thoughts of vengeance. It stated that if we don’t practice forgiveness, we might actually be the ones who pay the price – something Christians should know from reading the Bible. The article was not just talking about the emotional and physical price we pay for unforgiveness, but also the impact on our spiritual well-being. The article acknowledged that while forgiveness means different things to different people, in general it involves our decision to let go of resentment and thoughts of revenge. The act that hurt or offended us might always be with us, but forgiveness can lessen its grip on us and help free us from the control of the person who harmed us. It states that forgiveness doesn’t mean forgetting or excusing the harm done to us or making up with the person who caused the harm, but that it brings a kind of peace that helps us to go on with life. Forgiveness can lead to healthier relationships, improved mental health, less anxiety, lower blood pressure, fewer symptoms of depression, a stronger immune system, improved heart health and improved self-esteem. When we allow the negative feelings of unforgiveness to crowd out our positive feelings, we might just find ourselves swallowed up by our own bitterness or sense of injustice. Where there reign feelings of unforgiveness and bitterness joy dissipates. So this morning we are going to examine forgiveness from two perspectives as it relates to joy. The joy we receive when God forgives us (and thus teaches us to do the same with others) and the joy we receive when we forgive others. Let’s start with what David wrote in Psalm 32.
David was one of the greatest saints and kings described in Scripture. He served as king over Israel, was the writer of numerous psalms and he was an ancestor of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. At the time that David wrote Psalm 32, he was one of the greatest sinners portrayed anywhere in the Bible. He sinned with cunning schemes – committing adultery and then had the husband killed to cover up his sin. You know the story. It’s the one about Bathsheba and her husband Uriah the Hittite, one of David’s 30 most trusted soldiers, in First Samuel 11. Psalm 32 is a joyful testimony from the hand of David thanking God for His gift of forgiveness. We are going to focus on the first five verses. Psalm 32:1-5 says, “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. 2Blessed is the man unto whom the LORD imputes not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile. 3When I kept silence, my bones grew old through my groaning all the day long. 4For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me: my strength is turned into the drought of summer. Selah. 5I acknowledged my sin unto You, and my iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the LORD; and You forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah.” (Psalm 32:1-5)
In verses one and two David said, “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. 2Blessed is the man unto whom the LORD imputes not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile.” The word translated as blessed in these verses is the Hebrew word esher which means happy. Now please understand what I am about to say. The way David used this word in these two verses basically implies the state of prosperity and happiness that comes when a “superior” bestows his favor on someone. In this case, it was God bestowing His favor on David. This word also implies “joy” when you read it in Job 5:17. It says, “Behold, happy is the man whom God corrects: therefore despise not the chastening of the Almighty.” (Job 5:17) How can someone be “happy” when they are being corrected by God? Because of the joy that resides in the knowledge of being a child of God and He cares for us. Blessedness describes a condition of inner peace, contentment, an untouchable joy that comes from knowing Christ and walking with Him. This is what David was referring to. He had sinned against God and had received forgiveness. When he received the forgiveness his joy returned. New Light, I don’t want you to miss this. If we are not willing to allow God to correct us when we sin, when we are wrong, He will not be able to give us His joy. Being humble before the Lord is a critical key to experiencing “the joy of the Lord.” Verse two states that God does not charge us with guilt after we confess and repent – that is pure joy! God forgives and does not hold our sins over our heads. Now let’s see what he was experiencing prior to his repenting and receiving forgiveness.
Verses 3 and 4 says, “3When I kept silence, my bones grew old through my groaning all the day long. 4For day and night Your hand was heavy upon me: my strength is turned into the drought of summer. Selah.” David said when he kept silent it was like he was physically sick – and he could have been. He said, “my bones grew old through my groaning.” His soul was sick and his body was responding to it physically. For the better part of a year David stayed quiet about his sin, never confessing or repenting from the acts. David knew that he had sinned against God and the guilt was a heavy burden pressing down on him. He was literally haunted by a guilty conscience. Imagine losing your appetite when you are burdened down by something. Imagine how David felt after everything God had done for him and through him. Finally, it got too heavy and David had to confess. Let’s see what he said in verse five.
“5I acknowledged my sin unto You, and my iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the LORD; and You forgave the iniquity of my sin. Selah.” David finally takes his heavy burden to the Lord and repents. He confesses and receives forgiveness. David was delivered from his miserable state. When we confess, we come into agreement with God, acknowledging that what God says about our sin is true. A true confession is not just saying something with the mouth, it is done with a broken heart and a surrendered will. Confession is the foundation for receiving forgiveness and the return of joy. When we have unconfessed sin in our lives, we are as David was, walking in a state of unforgiveness. It’s not that we have not forgiven someone, but we have not received forgiveness from God because of unconfessed sin. So to walk in God’s joy, we must make sure that we have been forgiven and that leads me to the second area of forgiveness – our forgiving others.
In Matthew 6 Jesus introduces us to what an underlying issue, which we will discuss in a moment, produces in our lives by commanding us to follow His Father’s example. Remember in part one that we read that Ephesians 5:1 says we are “to be imitators of God as dear children.” In other words, what we see our Heavenly Father do, that is what we should do, especially as it relates to forgiving others as He forgives us. We are going to see how Jesus instructed the disciples, and us, to pray when it comes to forgiving. Verse 12 says, “And forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” I am going to read this verse from the Amplified Bible. “And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven (left, remitted, and let go of the debts, and have given up resentment against) our debtors.” I don’t want you to miss this New Light. Jesus says that we are to ask our Father to forgive our debts, our transgressions against Him, AS we forgive our debtors of their transgressions against us. During the Sermon on the Mount, I believe God thought that one of the most important things that Jesus could teach in His very first teaching recorded in the Bible was about the relationship between God forgiving us and us forgiving others. And the thing that caused me to think to myself “Thank You Lord,” was when the Amplified Bible said “and have given up resentment against….” Do you realize what God is saying? New Light, our Heavenly Father says, because He has forgiven us our transgressions against Him, He no longer holds resentment towards us. As I read this, I thought about what the Lord said in Psalm 103:12 – “As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us.” Who removed the transgression? God removed it. When God sees us, He doesn’t see us and our transgressions. He only sees us! That’s a reason to give Him praise New Light.
You remember what I said at the beginning about how unforgiveness can be like a bad memory that creeps to the forefront of your mind in the most inopportune moment? How you can be enjoying a day out and all of a sudden you see someone who hurt you and the memory of that hurt floods your mind and now your day is ruined because you saw that person? I told you that in this example your day was ruined not because you saw the person but because you had not forgiven that person. This is what resentment looks like. Now let me ask you a question: Can a person have the joy that comes from the Lord and harbor resentment against someone at the same time? Think of it this way: Can you be in a room that’s full of light and also in a room that’s in complete darkness at the same time? The answer is “No” because one cancels out the other! That is an analogy of what is being described in this verse. The “joy of the Lord” is the room full of light and resentment is the room that is completely dark. To drive the point home about how unforgiveness can affect the joy of the Lord that’s available to us, look at what Jesus says in verses 14 and 15. “For if you forgive men their trespasses, your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” When we refuse to let go of the feelings of hurt that are associated with something that has been done to us, when we continue to hold unforgiveness, or resentment, against the person who caused the hurt, it separates us from our fellowship with God to the point that He cannot give us His joy. I believe this describes the opposite of what we read in Psalm 91:1 – “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.” When we are in unforgiveness, we are not in God’s secret place and we are not under the shadow of His protection.
As I thought about what Jesus says in Matthew, I looked at passages that talked about the absence of joy. There’s one verse in particular that I want to share with you this morning because it captures the relationship between joy and unforgiveness in an unexpected way. The verse is Proverbs 12:20. “Deceit is in the heart of those who devise evil, but counselors of peace have joy.” We’re going to look at four words – deceit, heart, devise and evil. The word “deceit” means “sense of deceiving, fraud, false, feigned.” Each word in this description presents an image of a person; I’m going to say it this way, whose face is hiding what is really in their hearts. When a person is holding unforgiveness against someone, they become adept at hiding their true thoughts and feelings about the person. The word “heart” refers to our minds and emotions. The word “devise” means “to engrave or fabricate.” In these first three words, we understand that in our minds, we have decided to deceive the person who has wronged us by acting as if everything is okay between us while at the same time, we are engraving the wrong in our thoughts and building a wall of unforgiveness and resentment. Now the word “evil” brings all of this to this conclusion: It means “bad” in every sense of the word. Now, how does this apply to unforgiveness and the affect it has on joy? When a person who has been wronged consciously builds a mental picture of the person who wronged them to the point that they would not feel any guilt or remorse if something bad happened to them, this is what the first part of this verse is describing. Think about that New Light. The person has convinced themselves that it’s okay to live a lie and then form thoughts about the person based on that lie and then believe that whatever happens to the person, the person deserved it. Can you see how far removed unforgiveness is from joy? Now the second part of the verse says “But the counselors of peace have joy.” The word “counselors” is interesting. It’s talking about a person who “determines, devises, guides or purposes” something intentionally. So the phrase “counselors of peace have joy” is saying that the person makes a deliberate decision to be a person who walks in peace instead of deceit because what they are truly after is joy. In other words, instead of holding unforgiveness, the person releases the one who wronged them and then sees them in the same light that God sees us – when we see them we don’t see the wrong that they did. In other words New Light, that person once again has a clean slate with us. When that happens, we will once again have “the joy of the Lord.”
Now let’s wrap this up. Turn with me to Second Corinthians chapter two. There was a person in the Church of Corinth who had committed a transgression that caused the people to hold unforgiveness toward him. Paul encouraged them to forgive the person “lest perhaps such a one be swallowed up with too much sorrow” (verse 7). In other words, Paul wanted the person, and the Church, to know that what he had done was not unforgivable. So Paul tells the Corinthians in verse 8 “Therefore I urge you to reaffirm your love to him.” Now I want you to pay attention to what Paul says in verse 10 and in verse 11. “Now whom you forgive anything, I also forgive. For if indeed I have forgiven anything, I have forgiven that one for your sakes in the presence of Christ” (verse 10). I want to make sure you understand what Paul is saying. “You Corinthians, you need to forgive this person and you need to understand that just like I could have held unforgiveness against you but didn’t don’t you dare hold unforgiveness towards him. I have forgiven you when I’ve been in prayer in the presence of Jesus. You need to do the same thing.” And we see this reference of him forgiving them in the first part of verse 3. “And I wrote this very thing to you, lest, when I came, I should have sorrow over those from whom I ought to have joy.” Just like all of us New Light, Paul had to decide if holding unforgiveness was worth not having joy in his life. As we see here, joy was infinitely more important to him that surrendering to the emotion of unforgiveness.
Now, in verse 11 we are going to see the underlying issue or cause for unforgiveness. This is the reason Paul says we must live a life that freely forgives the wrongs that are done against us. He said, “lest Satan should take advantage of us; for we are not ignorant of his devices.” In Matthew 6 Jesus commands us to forgive like our Father forgives us. Here in Second Corinthians we see that the spiritual being that loves unforgiveness is Satan and why does he love unforgiveness? The Bible says it opens the door for him to take advantage of us. Based on what we’ve read here in Chapter 2, what were the Christians doing that gave Satan an advantage? What they were doing New Light is what we see way too often in the Church today. A church member was being “swallowed up with too much sorrow” – becoming more and more depressed because of his transgressions – and the church members responded with repulsive harshness rather than with love and the joy that comes from the Lord so that they could comfort the person. When you have time, go back and read the first chapter of Second Corinthians. You will see that the focus of the epistle is to help us understand how we are to comfort one another just like God has comforted us. And when it comes to unforgiveness, we’ve already seen how God freely forgives us. How many times have we seen Christians so distraught over a transgression toward someone and the person refused to demonstrate God’s love to them? Paul says that when we do that, Satan gains an advantage over us because of our unwillingness to forgive. And don’t forget what Jesus said in Matthew about Christians who refuse to forgive – “But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses” (Matthew 6:15).
New Light, as I close this message this morning, I am asking, no pleading with each of you, to make a deliberate, unwavering, no going back decision to always forgive any wrong done to you. Don’t ever give Satan an advantage over you and the people you love because unforgiveness has built a wall in your life that the “joy of the Lord” cannot climb. Remember, God says those who hold unforgiveness, have a barrier that He cannot cross with His love and with His joy. You have joy that is available to you, but your steadfast joy will be interrupted if you refuse to walk in forgiveness. In this message you have heard how unforgiveness, both when we have not received forgiveness from God and when we refuse to forgive others, impacts our ability to have joy. As I shared at the beginning, unforgiveness impacts our emotional, physical and spiritual well-being. It impacts our joy – the joy that God gives us, the joy that is supposed to be our strength. Just as you cannot stand in a room that’s full of light while also standing in a room that’s in complete darkness, the joy of the Lord cannot be your strength at the same time you are walking in unforgiveness. So I leave you with this question: Is the joy of the Lord your strength or is it being hindered by unforgiveness in your life? If you have unforgiveness, please get that straightened out so that you can fully experience the joy of the Lord.
Until next time, “The Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up His countenance on you and give you peace.” (Numbers 6:24-26)
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