The Fruit of the Spirit
Part 3 – joy
Rev. Bruce A. Shields
First Baptist Church Tawas City Michigan
www.TawasBaptist.org
SCRIPTURE READING
John 15:11 – Jesus Speaking
“These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.”
INTRODUCTION
This morning we’re going to take a look into the Spiritual Fruit called “joy” as we continue in our series based on the Fruits of the Spirit as found in Galatians 5:22-23.
It’s safe to say that joy is one of the most elusive fruits for us as believers.
It’s not a very popular fruit and doesn’t get near enough use today.
Part of the problem is that joy is often misunderstood.
We tend to equate “happiness” with joy, but they are two totally different ideas because they each spring from a different source.
One comes from the world around us.
The other originates directly from the Spirit of the Living God.
Happiness is conditioned by and often dependent upon what is “happening” to us. If people treat us well, if things are going well in our lives, then we’re happy.
If our circumstances aren’t favorable, then we’re unhappy.
Joy, on the other hand, we see throughout Scripture as a profound, compelling quality of life that transcends the events and disasters which may attack God’s people.
Joy is a divine dimension of living that is not shackled by circumstances.
The Hebrew word means, “to leap or spin around with pleasure.”
In the New Testament the word refers to “gladness, bliss and celebration.”
To have the fruit of joy ripen in our lives is to recognize the journey involved in getting there. It takes time, diligence, patience, and hard work to make a grapevine produce grapes.
Fruit is not instantaneous because it has to overcome weather, bugs, weeds, poor soil and neglect.
Likewise, in our journey to joy we’re faced with the waves of indifference, the currents of negativity, the deluge of doubt and the pitfalls of despair.
There is no way we can manufacture this fruit on our own.
If we want to see this fruit ripen in our lives, we desperately need the Holy Spirit to prune away whatever it is that hinders our joy and then empower us to make some choices that move us closer to a lifestyle of rejoicing.
We need to guard ourselves against common Joy Busters.
These joy busters are like weeds, or bugs which attack and can keep our fruit from producing and ripening.
Joy Busters
Before Paul wrote to the church at Galatia about the Fruit of the Spirit, he asked a very important question in Galatians 4:15: “What has happened to all your joy…”
That question needs to be asked in the church today. What has happened to all my joy? What has happened to all your joy?
William Barclay, a popular Scottish theologian who died in 1978, has said that “a gloomy Christian is a contradiction in terms, and nothing in all religious history has done Christianity more harm than its connection with black clothing and long faces.”
Let’s look at a few common joy stealers that often give us long faces.
1. (Joy Stealer) Unsatisfied expectations.
Do you ever feel like you’re just going through some joyless routines in life?
If the truth were known, some of us are discontent with the way our lives are progressing.
It could be that your expectations for your marriage have not been met. Or, maybe your kids aren’t living like they should.
Perhaps you don’t have everything you want – a bigger house, a nicer car, and a better job.
I’m convinced that a spirit of discontentment can rob many of us of joy.
Listen to how Paul discovered the secret of being content with what God had given him in Philippians 4:12: “I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want.”
I find it interesting to note that Paul calls contentment a “secret.”
There’s a mystery about it. He also had to “learn” how to live with unsatisfied expectations. Likewise, we must learn to live with plenty or with little.
Contentment doesn’t come when we have everything we want but when we are satisfied with everything we have.
2. (Joy Stealer) Unresolved conflict.
Our joy evaporates when we allow conflict between ourselves and another person to go on. When offenses between us occupy our mental and emotional attention, we have little left over for the Lord.
Anger clouds the eyes of our heart and obscures our view of God, draining away our joy.
Hebrews 12:14-15 challenges us to not allow relational ruptures to fester because bitterness can set in: “Make every effort to live in peace with all men and to be holy; without holiness no one will see the Lord. See to it that no one misses the grace of God and that no bitter root grows up to cause trouble and defile many.”
We addressed this last week when we spoke on love, and we know from 1 Corinthians 13 that love keeps no record of wrongs.
If you’re still itemizing people’s mess-ups and offenses, the fruit of joy will be squashed in your life.
Paul recognizes the link between joy and unity in Philippians 2:2: “Then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose.”
3. (Joy Stealer) Unconfessed sin.
This third joy buster is perhaps responsible for chasing more joy out of lives than any other. Guilt can gut your joy faster than anything I know. Sin can send joy far away.
David understood this very well when he attempted to ignore the promptings of the Holy Spirit when he was convicted of his sin.
Look at Psalm 32:1-5:
“Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man whose sin the LORD does not count against him and in whose spirit is no deceit. When I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer. Then I acknowledged my sin to you and did not cover up my iniquity. I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD’ -- and you forgave the guilt of my sin.”
I love how this Psalm ends. After David owns his sin, his joy returns. Notice verse 11: “Rejoice in the LORD and be glad, you righteous; sing, all you who are upright in heart!”
Did you catch that? He was not able to rejoice and experience the joy of the Lord until he confessed his sins!
That’s very similar to what David wrote in Psalm 51:7-8: “Cleanse me with hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow. Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones you have crushed rejoice.”
Is the weight of the Lord heavy upon you because like David, you are not answering the Holy Spirits conviction in your life?
Confess your sins, repent and you will be forgiven, and you too will once again feel the Fruit of joy in your life.
Before we move on to some positive joy builders, I want to give the Holy Spirit an opportunity right now to do some pruning in your life.
Let’s take a couple minutes as I walk through these joy busters.
Allow God’s Spirit to prompt you to acknowledge, confess, and repent.
• Do you have some unsatisfied expectations that have led to a spirit of discontentment? If so, determine to do whatever it takes to learn the secret of wanting everything you have and not necessarily having everything you want. When you do, you’ll begin to experience joy in even the small things of life. Confess your discontentment to Him right now.
• Are you involved in some conflict with someone? If so, confess it to God and make plans to meet with that person face-to-face so that you can be reconciled and get back on your journey to joy.
• Is God’s hand heavy upon you right now because of some sin that you’ve not confessed and repented of? Don’t keep silent any longer – it will only chew you up on the inside. Acknowledge your transgression and taste the joy that was once yours. Then you’ll be truly glad and rejoice in the Lord again.
I have some great news this morning.
Lost joy can be restored.
As a result of some discontentment, some conflict, and some open sin, David had flattened out spiritually.
His joy was a long-lost memory. And yet, he boldly prays in Psalm 51:12, “Restore to me the joy of your salvation…”
God honored his prayer, and He will honor yours.
Joy Builders
God not only wants to restore our lost joy, He also wants us to cultivate those things that will build lasting joy into our lives so that we don’t miss out on this very important Spiritual Fruit.
Remember, Spiritual Fruits are nothing you can produce, but the Holy Spirit produces, but you can quench the Holy Spirit and prevent Spiritual Fruits from ever manifesting in your life as a Christian.
The Bible gives us a few ways to experience and encourage the growth of this Spiritual Fruit of joy.
1. Recognize that God is joyful.
We can be helped greatly in our journey towards joy if we learn to see the Almighty not as a taskmaster, but as the God of the Universe with a joy in His heart.
When I first discovered Zephaniah 3:17 I had to read it several times because it was such a new thought for me.
Listen to how God feels about you: “The LORD your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.”
God delights in you and breaks out into song when He thinks about you! That’s hard to believe, isn’t it?
Psalm 104:31 says, “May the glory of the LORD endure forever; may the LORD rejoice in his works.”
Genesis 1:31: “And God saw every thing that He had made, and, behold, it was very good…”
Isaiah 65:18-19: “But be glad and rejoice forever in what I will create, for I will create Jerusalem to be a delight and its people a joy. I will rejoice over Jerusalem and take delight in my people…”
If we have little or no joy in our lives, it could very well be because we don’t know God well enough, because joy is one of His character qualities.
When we recognize God as joyful we will be even more drawn to Him.
He is not a distant judge just waiting for us to mess up so He can unleash His fury. He has created us to be His delight. He finds great joy in you! He rejoices over you in happy song.
As we view God this way, we will discover that He takes great pleasure in us. He is the Good Gardener who toils over us with constant care.
He waits patiently for His fruit to ripen and with great joy He longs to gather in the harvest.
Since there is enthusiasm in everything He undertakes and sweet satisfaction in all He does, His joy can be transmitted directly to us by His Holy Spirit who lives within us.
That’s exactly what Nehemiah discovered in Nehemiah 8:10: “…The joy of the LORD is your strength.”
I pray that we’ll experience the Lord’s joy as well.
2. (Joy Builder) Rehearse God’s attributes in worship.
God delights in us and finds great joy in His creation – then when we celebrate His attributes in worship we allow our joy to flow back to Him.
Psalm 66:1-4: “Shout with joy to God, all the earth! Sing the glory of his name; make his praise glorious! Say to God, ‘How awesome are your deeds! So great is your power that your enemies cringe before you. All the earth bows down to you; they sing praise to you, they sing praise to your name.’”
Our collective worship of God on Sundays should be the culmination of our individual and private worship during the week.
We make room in our lives for God’s joy through the traditional disciplines of prayer, Bible reading, Scripture memory, meditation, fasting and singing.
Then, whatever service you come to on Sunday, it’s our prayer that you come ready to revere God and ready to rejoice.
Our worship team is committed to plan services that focus on the holiness and awesomeness of God and provide elements that lead us into joyful excitement.
As we rehearse who God is by celebrating His attributes in worship, the fruit of joy will begin to blossom in our lives.
When David focused on God’s character in Psalm 28, he couldn’t help but break out into joy. Listen to verse 7: “The Lord is my strength and shield; my heart trusts in Him, and I am helped. My heart leaps for joy and I will give thanks to Him in song.”
3. (Joy Builder) Reaffirm your commitment to others.
The first two joy builders are vertical and have to do with how we view God and how He views us.
If we’re serious about drinking deeply out of the rivers of joy, we must also make sure that we are doing OK on the horizontal dimension by living in biblical community with others.
We can’t do it alone.
Romans 12:15 challenges us to “rejoice with those who rejoice…”
We’re not able to do this unless we’re connected to others. If you’re not in fellowship with believers, your joy will dissipate.
When contemplating whether or not it would be better to die and spend eternity with His Lord, the Apostle Paul concludes that it would benefit the church greatly if he hung around for a while.
Look at Philippians 1:25-26: “Convinced of this, I know that I will remain, and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith, so that through my being with you again your joy in Christ Jesus will overflow on account of me.”
Here’s the point. As I connect with you and you connect with me, our joy will overflow. We need each other. If we’re not attending church on a regular basis, or coming and not interacting with others, we could be jeopardizing the joy of other people.
When we live in loving relationships with our brothers and sisters in Christ, we’ll be more joyful and we’ll be helping others lift up their joy.
The best way I know for this to happen is for everyone to be involved in a small group.
I’m convinced that if we want to get larger we must first get smaller.
As we gather with other believers for accountability, growth, prayer, and study, God will use each of us to raise the joy around the First Baptist Church.
Men, I challenge you as the Spiritual Head of your house, the one who will be held responsible for the Spiritual growth and leadership of your family, to consider joining with a small group.
We have different small groups that meet on various nights of the week.
Let me encourage you to join with others on your journey towards joy. They need you, and you need them.
Growth begins in the leaders, and then is reflected in the body.
4. (Joy Builder) Reignite your passion for evangelism.
One of the best ways to build joy into your life is by talking to other’s about Jesus. Philemon 6: “I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ.”
Luke 15 records for us how much rejoicing takes place when the lost are found. When the lost sheep is recovered, verse 5 says that the owner “joyfully puts it on his shoulders” and then goes home and calls his friends and neighbors together and declares in verse 6, “Rejoice with me; I have found my lost sheep. I tell you in the same way there will be more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner who repents…”
Jesus reminds us in John 4:36 that we can be filled with glad joy when we participate in the process of evangelism: “Even now the reaper draws his wages, even now he harvests for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together.”
We are to rejoice with those who have reaped the benefits of Christ through our sowing of the Gospel!
Each week I make my sermons available online, and put the video on our church website.
A few months ago I received a letter from a Pastor in India who wrote me to thank me for making my Sermons available for free to anyone in the world.
He wanted to let me know that He preached one of my sermons in India before 5000 people, and that close to 2000 accepted Christ that night!
I rejoice knowing that when I get to heaven, I will meet these people who God so graciously allowed me to be part of their joy.
Praise God.
Not only do we appreciate God’s gift of grace in our lives when we tell others about Jesus, sometimes we also get to see the inexpressible joy of those who experience the new live.
Think of the most enjoyable thing you’ve done, and then compare it to someone who is telling you about how they just accepted the Lord Jesus Christ. Their joy is all over their face!
As you know, there are opportunities for you to prayer walk the neighborhoods and pray for the hearts to be opened to the message of Christ.
You too can be part of another person’s joy in accepting the Lord.
If you can’t walk, there are prayer lists available for you to pray.
There is always something you can be doing to fulfill the one thing Jesus told us to do, and that’s preach the Gospel to all the world.
5. (Joy Builder) Release your problems to the Lord.
One of the hallmarks of Christian joy is that it can be experienced in the midst of intense sorrow and loss.
Often we define happiness as the absence of something undesirable, such as pain, suffering, or disappointment.
But Christian joy is the proper response to the presence of something desirable: God Himself.
In Acts 16, the authorities beat Paul and Silas. After they were severely flogged, they were thrown into prison. In order to make sure they didn’t escape, they were put in the inner cell and had their feet fastened in stocks.
If that were me, I’d be scared! Verse 25 says that Paul and Silas “were praying and singing hymns to God…”
This word for praying is not the same Greek word used for making requests, but rather the Greek word used for praise, or worship.
Instead of asking God to get them out, they turned this tough situation into an opportunity for rejoicing.
The only way to have an attitude like this is to release our problems to the Lord. Because He’s in charge we can have joy – no matter what happens.
Paul put it this way in 2 Corinthians 7:4: “…in all our troubles my joy knows no bounds.” James 1:2 challenges us to “consider it pure joy…whenever you face trials of many kinds.”
This takes a conscious decision. We’re commanded to work at it.
While we can’t manufacture joy we can give our problems to the Lord by leaning on Him with everything we’ve got.
6. (Joy Builder) Remain close to Jesus.
As we established last week, the only way to experience the fruit of the spirit is to be obedient to Christ and submit to the Spirit on a daily basis.
To discover joy we must abandon the search for it and go looking instead for the one who is Himself joy.
John 15:10-11 puts it this way: “If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love. I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”
If we want the kind of joy that is complete, lacking nothing, then we must remain close to Jesus. Apart from Him we can bear no fruit.
Jesus said it clearly in John 15:4: “Remain in me, and I will remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.”
Conclusion
The only way to have real joy is to nurture your relationship with Jesus and keep in step with the Spirit on a daily basis.
1. Guard yourself against those joy busters that crash into your life like a tidal wave. Be on your guard. Ask someone to hold you accountable so that you learn the secret of contentment, so that you keep short accounts with people, and to help you get into the habit of regular confession of your sins.
2. Identify one joy builder that you need to work on. Pick one that is weak for you.
• Recognize God as joyful
• Rehearse God’s attributes in worship
• Reaffirm your commitment to others
• Reignite your passion for evangelism
• Release your problems to the Lord
• Remain close to Jesus
3. Read through the Book of Philippians every day for a week.
The word “joy” or “rejoice” is used 19 different times in this short book. As you read it, ask God to ripen the fruit of joy in your life.
In closing, let’s allow Romans 14:17 to penetrate our lives: “For the kingdom of God is not a matter of eating and drinking, but of righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.”
