Bayside Baptist Church

James: Hey Bayside, how are y'all doing today? Come on, y'all, it's a discipleship pastor preaching today. How are y'all doing today? That's what I'm talking about. Y'all are way more lively than the 8:30. Lots more coffee in you. It's great. It's great.

I'm excited to preach today and to teach you from God's word. I'm excited about what God's going to do in our service today because of what God has done in my life. We took a look at the sermon schedule and I knew I was going to be preaching this day and I started praying about what I would preach about and I had to preach on this topic. It's not something that I probably would have picked and said, "Hey, that's it."

But God, through several circumstances I'm going to share them with you today and through his word, said, "This is it." We're going to talk about joy today. We're going to talk about joy. As I began to work out this year in my Life Journal reading, something began to happen on a pretty consistent, periodic basis, and that was this topic of joy through my scripture reading throughout the year.

I even started to mark in my Life Journal like, "Oh, joy. There again, joy. There again, joy." I thought, "Lord, am I just not getting this? Am I just not smart enough? What's happening?" and he's like, "I want to teach you something. I want to show you something that has to do with my joy. I want you to understand this." So I started to pay attention to what was happening.

Well, back this spring, many of us have circumstances in our life where the enemy takes our joy, steals our joy, robs us of our joy. I lost my mom back this spring on my daughter's birthday. It was challenging. It was hard on a lot of fronts. When you lose a parent, it's tough. Now I know where my mom is, which did bring me joy. I knew my mom was with the Lord.

But that was tough. That was hard. And then there were several other things. It's like this nagging thing, one thing right after another, started to drain me of my joy. I didn't know that I was depleted. I didn't know that my life had been sucked out of me dry of my joy, but I feel like that's where a lot of us are today.

We allow anger and confusion and frustration and even bitterness to rob us of our joy. Well, back several months ago, a situation happened and God wanted to show me something that I didn't know was coming. Many of you know Mark Wesson, he's one of our small group leaders, and he's gone on to be with the Lord. But a week before he died, Jason and I had gotten the word that he wasn't doing well.

So we decided we need to head over there. We headed over to Mark's house and we began to talk with him and began to pray with him. Something happened in that moment. Jason said, "Hey, I just want to read a passage of scripture over you for comfort." I'm going to read part of that scripture today: Psalm 23. Many of you will know this passage of scripture.

"The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me. Your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me."

What's interesting is Jason stopped right there. He didn't finish quoting the rest of the chapter in that moment. He stopped and he looked at Mark, who was facing death in the face, and he said, "Mark, how does it feel to know that the next table that you will sit at will be with the Lord?" God did something in my life in that moment supernaturally.

When Mark looked up from that comment, there was an expression on his face that I had not seen in a while. And it was joy. Because in spite of his circumstances, in spite of what was going on, facing death in the face, he knew that he was about to meet his savior, and there was joy. Well, fast-forward a couple weeks later.

I was having coffee with a friend at a coffee shop, and I knew the topic of Jesus would come up. I began to talk with him about the Lord and began to share the gospel. We started having great dialogue about this and I knew this individual was right there. "Man, I know you're ready to make a decision for Jesus." I looked at him and I said, "Is there any reason why you would not give your life to Christ?"

He looked up from that coffee and I think I gasped in that moment because the same expression on his face was the same expression that I had seen with Mark. He replied, "No, there's no reason why I wouldn't do that." He bowed his head and he prayed to receive Christ, confessed the Lord of his sins, and asked him to save him. He looked up from that moment and I was awestruck.

God had brought me through these two experiences: one guy facing imminent eternity with the Lord, face of joy; another guy starting his life with Christ, face of joy. I thought to myself as I left from that coffee shop that morning, obviously in tears. You see somebody go from death to life, how can you not rejoice? In that moment, I left rejoicing with tears on my face, but also with this new thing that God had shown me.

"Look, James, you are not living from a place of joy. You're not living there." I thought, "Lord, how do I get that? How do I get more of that? How is this supposed to happen?" and it was like the Lord saying, "Dummy, I've been telling you that in your Life Journal reading all year." I opened my Life Journal and started flipping back through, and it was all of those I had underlined and circled, all the words of joy all across this year.

This is what God was trying to teach me, what God was trying to show me. I think a lot of us live in that place where we just get busy in routine and we don't live from a place of joy of what God has done for us. God has a lot to say to us about joy. The word joy, joyfulness, and joyous are written more than 200 times in the Bible.

Many situations and circumstances allude to the joy of the Lord, but what we've done is we've allowed the enemy at our table and said, "Hey, pull up a chair, have a seat," and we've allowed him to steal and take our joy. What I want to talk to us about today is how do I do that? How do I live from a place of joy? How does this work?

I've got four passages of scripture. We won't be here all afternoon. I've got four passages of scripture where the Lord just showed me, "Hey, this is something that you need to talk about." The first passage is Jeremiah 15:16, and this is what this verse says: "Your words were found and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O Lord, God of hosts."

If you've read Jeremiah, you know it's not the most inspiring of books in the Bible. Jeremiah is called the weeping prophet for a reason. It's really challenging sometimes to wade through and read. He went through a lot in his ministry that spanned over five decades. His life was threatened more than once. He was put in stocks, he fled for his life, he was publicly humiliated by a false prophet, and thrown into a pit.

At one point, because of his own attitude towards the Lord God, he almost forfeits his position as a prophet. Sounds like an awesome and fulfilling ministry, doesn't it? Super challenging. But here's something that I recognized in this passage. How could he talk about joy? It's because joy is not based on my circumstance. Joy is based on my purpose.

When I remember and recognize my purpose in Christ and live out that purpose, there is joy. It's not based on the circumstantial of any person. Jeremiah had a reason to say, "Well, what about this? What about this circumstance? This thing going on in my life." Here we see this in this passage. Another thing that I want to bring to our attention: "Your words were found and I ate them."

That's not a literal thing; I don't want y'all leaving here eating pages out of your Bible. But what happens in this word picture of "I ate them"? What is he talking about? What does food do for us? Food is nourishment. We need food to survive. We have to have nourishment. We need to eat to live. Some of us a little less, but we need to eat to live.

We need that nourishment. We don't need just one meal a day or one meal every other day. We need consistency several times throughout the day. We need to take in nourishment. "I found your words and I ate them." Additionally, what does the word do for us? It brings us enjoyment. We need God's word in our life consistently, just like we need actual physical food.

All throughout our day, talking with the Lord, walking with the Lord, remembering what God has said to us in our daily reading and walking through passages of scripture, we need to remember what God has done for us. He says this: "And your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart." When you elevate God's word in your life and you make God's word a priority, you will re-establish joy.

This is one thing that the enemy attacks us on. Every Christian in every walk of their life deals with this. I was a student pastor for two decades and now I'm dealing more with adults, and I see it's the same as a teenager. "I need to be in the word more. I missed a few days. I need to make sure." Why is that even a thing? Because the enemy wants to rob that time away from us.

If he could take that away from us, he can take our joy. I don't want him to take my joy. I want God to remind me of who I am. I want God to remind me of what he's done for me and who he is. I need God's word saturating in my life over and over and over again. I need to elevate his word consistently. Living from a place of joy requires us to be in the word as often as we can be.

You hear this from this place all the time, whether Jason says it or Kip or Michael or myself. We say this all the time because we know how the enemy attacks us. We know what happens, and that's why we say, "Look, we've given you a tool; it's called the Life Journal." Take it with you and be in the word as often as you can be. The enemy wants to steal that time away from us.

When I miss that time—yes, my pastor misses a day in his Life Journal, it happens—what happens? There is a sense of frustration sometimes. There's a void in my life and in my heart because I didn't spend time with the Lord. I need to get up and give that moment to the Lord first thing in the morning because I don't know what's going to happen throughout the day.

I don't know what's going to go on. That's where I found the best time to spend with the Lord and I hope you have that space. If you don't, please start today. There are Life Journals in both lobbies. Grab one and take it with you. If you can't find one, ask someone with a guest services lanyard and they will give it to you. We have plenty of them. We want you to be in the word.

It's so important. This is where our joy is reminded of and established. The next passage of scripture that God brought me to is found in the book of Nehemiah, chapter 8, specifically verse 10. This scripture says, "And do not be grieved, for the joy of the Lord is your strength." There's a little bit of background we need to know about what's happening here.

Nehemiah was called by God to help rebuild the walls of the city that had been torn down. Ezra was also ministering with Nehemiah at the time. They were doing ministry together. In Nehemiah chapter 8, we see the prophet Ezra and Nehemiah ministering together. It says, "And all the people gathered together—men, women, and children, all who could understand—and they asked Ezra to read the word."

This is a really cool side note verse: "And Ezra stood on a wooden platform set that all could hear the reading of the word." Short guys unite, I love that. They gave him a platform so he could share. When the word was read, they lifted up their hands and they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground.

Ezra was reading the word and what was the response of the people? They gathered together and their hands were lifted high. It was just this natural response to who God was and what he had done. Then their faces were to the ground in recognizing who the Lord was. They had just been through the Day of Atonement, which was this important feast to confess and lay all of their burdens.

Now they were going into another time period, another feast, called the Feast of Tabernacles where they celebrate. These sequences of events are important: first conviction, thanking the Lord for telling me where I've messed up, and then cleansing, which is that repentance and laying it all down, and then worship and celebration with their hands lifted high.

The word of God does that; it brings conviction, repentance, and celebration to us. As God's people, we carry all kinds of burdens and all kinds of heavy things. Something that's very near and dear to my heart as I pray for y'all every Sunday morning is I don't know what you're going to bring in through those doors. We just don't know when you come.

We don't know what's happened in your life. I pray that you would meet God, that you would meet the Lord every single week. For those of you who have been walking with the Lord for a long time, I don't want your relationship with Jesus to be stale. I want it to be alive and vibrant. I want when you walk through these doors and you hear the word of God preached and you hear us singing.

By the way, you sing beautifully. I want God to do something in that moment. He does something with me. It's supernatural when the people of God begin to praise and sing. Something unique and powerful happens. We see that in Nehemiah chapter 8. Their only response was to lift their hands to the Lord and then bow down in humility.

We have Nehemiah and Ezra and the Levites moving throughout the people like, "Hey, get up, let's go. Let's walk with the Lord. It's time to celebrate. Let's make this thing happen. Go tell someone about what you just experienced." You see this laid out in Nehemiah 8. I want for us every time we leave here on Sunday morning to be filled with joy. That's your response to say, "Amen."

There's no reason why the born-again Christian should not be so saturated with joy and living from a place of joy. That's why we do this whole thing. We come into this room to get strength, to get built up, to understand the word, the teaching and preaching of the word of God, but also as we worship together, to allow the Holy Spirit to move in a mighty way in our services.

I want joy to be at the center of that. Living from a place of joy will move us to worship. It will move us to worship not only to be in the word, but to worship a holy God. The enemy wants to steal that from you and from me. He wants to steal our worship. He wants to take it away from us because it's so powerful.

The next passage of scripture that the Lord had brought me to is Psalm 16:11: "You make known to me the path of life. In your presence there is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore." I was looking at this verse and I had a little challenge with that phrase "path of life." That could also be translated as "you make known to me the way of living."

Then how should we live? That verse tells us: in your presence. To be in the presence of God. The presence of God is often associated with the house of God. It's only natural for us to think this way. We need the presence of God and we see this in the Old Testament over and over and over again. But as I was reading again in my Life Journal reading this past year, Matthew 27:51 talks about the death of Christ.

It gets to this verse: "And behold, the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom, and the earth shook and the rocks were split." This is a beautiful picture of what happened when Jesus died. When Jesus died, that curtain that separated us from the Holy of Holies was torn, giving us free access to the presence of God.

I don't have to go through a priest. I can be in the presence of God at any place, at any time, and in any moment of my day. No matter the circumstances: I get the diagnosis, I can be in the presence of the Lord. I get that issue at work or that individual that I'm dealing with, I can be in the presence of the Lord. I'm challenged with a relationship or something that's happening in my family, I can be in the presence of the Lord.