Joy

That was fabulous! Thank you very much to all the musicians. Very much. Really adds to the feast. Well, it's a great pleasure to be here, keeping the feast of the Eternal. This isn't some quaint idea of some ancient tribe. It's the feast that God Himself designed, planned, scheduled, way in advance, and commanded us to attend. He has specific gifts, special things that are given, especially at the feast, having to do with it being an annual family reunion for the purpose of inspiring and encouraging and teaching His people. And so there is no better place than right here at this time that I would want to be, or it could be some other place, but I want to be keeping the feast of the Eternal, the feast tabernacles at this time. I'm so thankful. I'm sure you are as well. One of the big reasons for keeping God's feast is to learn to rejoice and be joyful.

There are a lot of other big reasons. The feast of booths, temporary dwellings, God's laws, the millennium, looking forward to the kingdom. Major, major reasons. One of them, however, one of the big ones, is joy, and it's bigger than we might think. There's not a lot of joy in the world, is there? I was thinking, you know, let's just take a second to just visualize how rotten the world is, and how little joy they have. Okay, that's enough. This is the feast! And I gave you more than one second. That's all we need. Everybody's convinced, so we can go on with studying what he wants us to. But there's not much out there. But the trouble is, a lot of times there's not a lot of joy in the church, in us either, as there should be. How about you? Would you like to have more joy in your life? Would you like to be happier, and just feeling great about things? I would, for one. You know, I worry too much. I fret. My wife tries to help me not to fret.

And there are a lot of hours that go by, and I'm not really joyous. I'm just kind of blah, just, you know, getting my work done. It's good. I'm glad about that. But I need to stop momentarily often, more often, and really get to the joy. That's what God was created us for. You know, at Thy right hand, our pleasures evermore. God really enjoys life. And it's important that we have joy. That, along with faith and various other aspects of the same thing, that is God's spiritual attitude, His Spirit, that carries us through. And that will give us, it has to do a lot with giving us the life that God lives, which we're in the process of learning. There's a whole lot in the Bible about God's joy that He wants us to have. There's an enormous amount. There are hundreds of scriptures. Sometimes the word joy is mentioned, otherwise it's other words like, for instance, I came so that I could have life, and so that I could have life more abundantly. There are many scriptures about it. God is serious. He wants happy people. He wants people to be happy like Himself. John 15, 11, thought we might read a couple of scriptures here. These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy, notice it's my joy, belongs to Christ, might remain in you, and that your joy should be full.

How full is your life of joy? Would you say 50%? I'm not sure I'm up to that level. Some days I think over. But I think I kind of drag. I've thought about this quite a bit in different ways. How about you? You need to be more joyful, I certainly do.

And that was 15, 11, 17, verse 13, just to take a couple. And now, come I to thee, and these things I speak in the world, so that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves. This is Christ praying to the Father and asking that we will have the same kind of joy He has. And that's really important. It's His joy. Come back to that.

Psalm 51, 12, after repenting, David says, please restore the joy of your salvation. It has to do with us being saved. And that produces joy. And David asks especially for it. You know, it's a pretty crummy day when you're just unhappy all day. A lot of people in this world live unhappy lives.

And it's very, very sad, which of course is a sin in them.

But we shouldn't. We should live happier lives than that. And I know many of us do, or I should put all of us do, but the question is, how much? And what God is saying is He wants us to be full of joy. I don't mean that you have to be dancing your happy dance, you know, every minute of the day. That's not what's being talked about. We'll get into that in just a minute. Galatians 5, we find that it's the fruit of the Holy Spirit. Wherever the Holy Spirit is, there's going to be joy. It'll be growing. It's a bundle. You have the Holy Spirit, and you get love and joy and peace when you add long suffering and all the rest of the fruits of the Spirit and the gifts of the Spirit. They come along as you grow. So where the Spirit is, joy is going to be growing as well. It's just really important for us to have joy, and the feast is part of our education in building the joy of God, as well as understanding the law of God and the prophecies of God and the millennia of God and so on. Joy is a big player. It's one of the big things. Okay, so how can we have more joy in our lives? How can we improve that? Become greater in that. Let us examine briefly how God intends for us to live truly joyful lives. We will see that the answer... this is what's interesting... the answer is directly related to the reason for the feast, the purpose, and how we keep the feast. I began studying into this. I kind of knew it before, but God just makes this point clear. This is one of the big things about the feast. So, since there are 165 scriptures on joy, plus all the others that don't mention the word, we'll skip a couple of them. Maybe read three more. I don't know. But let's note... we always refer to Deuteronomy 16, and I'll read part of verse 14. Thou shalt surely rejoice, you and your kids and the whole household. Verse 15. You shall surely rejoice. So that's the title, if you feel like a title. You shall surely rejoice. But what if you don't feel like it? You can't just make yourself happy, can you? Let's say you just lost your job before the feast. It really hit you. It hit you hard. You've got financial problems you don't know how to solve, but it's feast time, so you came. Good for you. What if you were driving to atonement services on the family motorcycle in the Philippines, and your wife fell off the motorcycle? She was riding behind you. And a short time later, in the hospital, she was declared dead. This happened to one of our members who was only baptized on the 5th of September. You may have seen that prayer request. That's going to be a pretty tough feast for him, but he still must have some joy out of it. And you can think of a lot of other things. I'll let you put in maybe five more examples of having something rotten happen before the feast. You lose a loved one or some big thing, but you still don't have any wiggle room here. God says you will surely rejoice.

Now, the first big thing to point out is that happiness is not joy. Just a quick explanation. Happiness is a result of happenings. Same roots. Something happens good. Your parents take you to the ice cream parlor, and you have a big ol' ice cream, and you're happy. But then they make you take out the trash when you want to go out and play later that same afternoon. You're unhappy. And those are some basic examples, but we live our whole lives this way. We react to good things and bad things that happen to us, and we're happy or we're not happy.

That's part of life. Plan for us. That's supposed to happen to us. It produces happiness or the opposite. It's related to things that happen in our human experience. But spiritual joy isn't so temporary. It comes from a deep satisfaction, and a contentment, and assurance, and confidence, and faith. All those things that all is well between you and God. You have a tranquil mind, even though there are some serious things happening that tend to upset you. You have that foundation of a tranquil mind.

You know things are right between you and God, and if they get out of whack, which they do all the time, you renew it day by day, every day, in your prayers and your study. You know you have God's attention, His guidance, His support, His encouragement. No matter what happens, you can always go and get help.

And in the end, we win. This is a basic confidence you just desperately need. It's so desperate that God makes sure that He gives it to us. We have that confidence and that faith. Spiritual joy simply comes from a relationship with God, and this basic foundation that you have for facing all the unhappy things that might come along. The Feast Tabernacle was designed by God to do many things for us, and one of them is to make us happy, because we have a lot of good things happening. Go out to eat, have a lot of food, along with your friends. If you had to go eat by yourself, that wouldn't be so great, but it's with your friends, and it's the Feast, and there's all kinds of good stuff, and you hear sermons, and you hear music, and you get to talk to people you want to.

It's a joyous thing to come to the Feast. That's part of the reason for it, to be happy. So good things happen to us at the Feast. Now, part of the Feast, part of the lesson is, you can't get this many people together, and there'll not be a little friction, and a little trouble, and a little schedule pressure at the very least. And so that's supposed to happen. It's supposed to be a reflection of living God's way of life, and we do have stress in our lives, so there are some things that come along, and that's part of the plan, too.

But there's travel, education, all kinds of fun and happiness that occurs with the Feast. And so God tells us, you shall surely rejoice, doesn't matter if your finances are in a mess, or whatever else is going on at home. It matters, but we come here, and we seek spiritual joy.

There is one problem with this, and that is that, and I guess more than one language, I'm pretty sure I saw that in Hebrew, in the Old Testament, but we use happiness and joy or joyfulness interchangeably sometimes. And sometimes we mean, and they overlap quite a bit. And so that leads to some little problem. That doesn't matter. The words, that's not a big deal. The important thing is you understand there are two things happening here. They do overlap, but happiness, or just the physical things that make you react happily, doesn't last. And if you don't have joy, you're going to have much less happiness.

So you can think about that in, you know, what you want to, wow. It's an interesting subject, but it is true. There are two things. One is spiritual, it's the basis. The other is physical or in the temporal world. So every year we ask the question, why are we here? And the answer gives us joy. So let's start out with Matthew 16 and verse 16. And Christ is talking to the disciples. Says, who do you think I am? Who do they say I am?

And he says, who do you think I am? Peter jumps in and he says, well, you are Christ, the son of the living God. And he was right. And Christ's answer is meaningful to each one of us. He said, Jesus answered and said unto him, blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood is not revealed unto you, but my Father, which is in heaven. That is, you didn't learn this from anywhere around here.

God gave you a blessing and gave you understanding so that you know this. Otherwise you couldn't recognize me like everybody else around here. And you have understanding of the Bible and what it says that you can't have without God's blessing. Now, this is a powerfully important principle in the Word. You have been touched, ordained, baptized, and laid hands on. And that has given you gifts that you just didn't have and couldn't have otherwise. Let's go to Philippians 3, verse 12 to explain this further. Paul writes, not that I have already attained or already perfected, but I press on, that I may, and this is the New King James, better translated, that I may lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has also laid hold of me.

Jesus Christ, we are called by the Father, and then Jesus Christ laid hold on you. And he won't let go, said in many scriptures. The only way you can get out of it is you just absolutely reject it and run the other way and refuse and so on. Christ won't let you go. I just find this extremely encouraging. If I'm ever down, I go back to this and other scriptures like this. God won't give up on me, even if I would be tempted to.

We've been given an invitation with authority, a convocation, it's a calling. It's, won't you please come over and dine with us? And by the way, I'm God, and you're not, and you have to be there. I want you here. You're invited. It's an invitation with authority. We use the word convocation. This is also described in the Bible as an election, or being elected or selected, being chosen.

Being drawn to the kingdom. So we have been tagged, as it were, drafted into service, given assignments, and a personal commission. And we are included in God's family and His work. So if you stop and think about just that, it begins to say, Whoa, I've got to get a whole different point of view and attitude right now.

I need to be joyful. I've been saved. I am among God's special people, which we'll read in just a minute here. We have a story of the lakeside breakfast in John 21, the last chapter, the add-on chapter.

And they've been fishing all night, and they come in. They see somebody on the shore, and he says, Put them out on the other side of the boat, and they catch 153 fish, symbolizing the lack of productivity if we try to do our work without God, and the great productivity if we take God's direction and do our work.

But they realize, this is Christ. He comes in, he feeds them a fish breakfast. And he says something to Peter that he was actually talking to all the disciples about, and speaking to all of them, and to us. And he says, Do you love me, Peter? And he says, Yes, yes. He says, Yes, I do.

And he said, Well then feed my sheep. Do you love me, Peter? I mean, he was bothered the first time, because he had just denied Christ three times a few days ago. I don't know what day this is. I don't know what day this is. So the second time, feed my lambs. Do you love me, Peter? And Peter says, You know everything.

And yes, you know I love you. Extreme embarrassment. Smarting from the fact that Christ is bringing out his three denials, and everybody else did it too. All the others did it too. And he said, Okay, feed my sheep. He restored them. He forgave them. He restored them to the work, and gave them specifically back their assignment. He renewed their assignment. Go feed the sheep. How many times has this happened to us?

You mess up really bad. You feel like an idiot, because you are. You have messed up again. You go, hang your head, and you say, Here I am again. I did it again. Would you please forgive me again?

And here's what he said. Yes, you're forgiven. Now go show that you love me, and do my work. Get busy with the work that I've given you. Every one of us has part of the work in our own lives, and we have different opportunities that come up throughout life, you know, other opportunities.

Then Christ told Peter, the way that he was going to glorify God by his death, and that was going to be crucifixion. Okay, go out there. I've just hired you to go do the work. And by the way, it's all going to end up. And you're going to be crucified a person without the Spirit, or without understanding that came from God, would be terrified, and would run the other way. You would think, anyway. They took it in stride. Day of Pentecost, the Holy Spirit came. The next day we see different people. Chapters 3 to 5 of Acts, you have empowered men preaching boldly without fear. They were beaten, the very last part of chapter 5, they were beaten.

And they went out of the chamber jumping for joy, rejoicing. Okay, we're talking about joy. They had joy. Beating causes unhappiness. Feels bad. And it hurts, but they had joy despite the physical pain. It's possible for us to endure pain and misery in this world and still be filled with joy. Three decades pass. Peter had a bad time of it, like all the others. Paul, especially, we have more of his story. He was persecuted. We don't know what kind of beatings or whatever he might have endured.

And now he's an old man, 35 years, plus or minus, later, three and a half decades or so. Beaten down by life and persecution. As close to the time of his torture and death, he talks about it in his last book, 2 Peter. He knows it's coming soon. He's depressed. He's dejected, discouraged, and terrified. He's about to die. Or is he? I know you were asking that. No, he wasn't. Quick answer. Let's drop in on Peter shortly before he died, knowing it's coming soon.

And just read a couple of things, 1 Peter 1. And check out his attitude and see if it was the same when he was jumping for joy, having been persecuted and beaten.

New King James Version 1 Peter 1. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to the pilgrims of the dispersion of different areas of Bithynia. Verse 2. First word of the message. Elect! He's reminding us that we have been elected and selected. According to the foreknowledge of God the Father, it wasn't by chance specifically chosen for this, the first fruits, and elected and selected. And then I'll skip to verse 3. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his abundant mercy, he's thinking about mercy, has begotten us again unto, which is extremely important, but we'll notice, unto a living hope, hope and joy come together.

There are two sides of the same coin. There are several gifts of the Spirit and fruits that are related and come in the same bundle. Verse 4. To an inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and does not fade away. Okay, here he is. He knows he's about to die. What's he thinking about? His inheritance. And it's so important because it's his job to tell us. Make sure we're thinking about it. Who are, verse 5, kept by the power of God?

Kept, a military word. It means you have a military guard around you, kept by the power of God, the Holy Spirit mainly, but also there are other angels around, serving, doing God's work in your life. In this you get discouraged or feel crummy and bummed out. There I go, reading the Scriptures wrong again, of course. Peter, that was Solomon. Solomon was the old man that was dejected and discouraged. He knew about the feast. He didn't know about the spiritual part of the feast. When the feast is over, the party stops, the happiness stops, and you have good memories because you have God's joy underlying that.

No, that was Solomon. Peter writes in verse 6, In this you greatly rejoice. Pardon, I'll try not to squeak. Though now for a little while, if need be, you have various trials that you grieved with. That the genuineness of your faith being much more precious than gold that parishes. Though it be tested by fire, may be found unto praise and honor and glory in the revelation of Jesus Christ at the resurrection. And whom having seen you love, though now you do not see Him, yet believing you rejoice with joy inexpressible, unspeakable, and full of glory. So Peter is still, after his long career of being persecuted, preaching the word, just full of joy.

He talks about you are a chosen generation and several other. If you just short two books, just read through that. The tone of both of his books is just filled with joy and hope. James' faith, Peter, writes about hope and joy, John about love. It's just a very hopeful book. I recommend it. I could recommend it when you're feeling down. The short books of 1 and 2 Peter, along with several others, but certainly those.

It's the same message. What is it that kept Peter going for his whole career, his whole life, so he's just filled with joy? His joy was full, not just half full, but filled with joy. Well, he tells us in several places here, he kept his mind on his goal, on the gospel of the good news, and he kept looking forward to the kingdom. And Paul does that same thing. He makes the same points.

Okay, enter the feast. Let's consider the feast for just a moment. In this context, the focus of our calling to the kingdom of God is what we do at the feast. We review a lot of things, but mainly we focus on the kingdom of God. Our calling and election, which he says, make sure, didn't read that, make your calling, election, sure. Our calling, our high calling, in our goal, the feast, that's what he kept foremost in mind.

Paul says the same thing. And so when we come to the feast, what we're doing is doing the very things that cause joy. A couple more things about this. You focus on what your goal is, and that has the reaction of giving you joy. In fact, Mr. Welch mentioned this too, about you're convinced of your faith, and that that automatically produces hope, which brings along joy. Probably a lot of other people have mentioned that. Not just Mr. Welch, he just did.

So we come to the feast, we think about booths, you know, the feast of booths, temporary dwellings, living this temporary life God's way. And we think about the millennium, which is our first assignment, after being changed and rewarded. So one of the great lessons of the feast is having Christ's joy in our lives as a result of the relationship we have with him and the Father. What we do is, when we come to the feast, is focus on those things. Okay, now one more thing to tie in, and that is, how do you focus on your calling? What do we do? What action do we do to produce more joy? We would need to know this to keep the feast properly, and we would know that we need to know this to live our lives properly.

The feast is a microcosm of our regular lives, just with special help, special circumstances, to develop joy, our understanding of God's law, and all those great lessons of the feast. Let's go to Romans 10, verse 17. We quote this a lot.

So then faith, Romans 17, where does faith come from? It comes from hearing, or being encouraged, and hearing by the Word of God. The source of faith is the Scriptures, either listening to them, hearing sermons, reading them, reading the Scriptures directly, or articles about the Scripture, for example, or fellowshipping about the Scriptures, the source of faith. This is important because faith is presented by James as the foundation of all God's other characteristics, virtue, and godliness, and long suffering, and so on.

So faith is—what this is saying is, faith and everything else comes from the Word of God. And I'm just going to skip over some explanation and go to joy. The source of joy is the Bible, the very Word of God, and reading it so that it comes—so you're thinking about it. The Bible is a special book. You read anywhere in the Bible. It's a living book. And what you need that day from God, God will teach you out of that Scripture, and it will lead you to go to other Scriptures. It's good to plan out your study, so you're planning all the Scriptures. But what I mean is, it's a living book when you read any part of the Bible. If you're in the right spirit and attitude close to God, then you're just going to grow. So if you're going to have joy—that is, Christ's joy and not just happiness— you're going to have to really dig into God's Word and study it, and not just say, well, I've got to get my Bible study in today. I think we'd probably do that when you start out to a great extent, but at a certain point it needs to change. Say, I can't wait. I've got to make sure if I cut something else— I've got to get back to Habakkuk or something you're studying that way, or 1 Corinthians or Psalms.

I've got to get that. That's my food. That's my joy. Now, there is a scripture that says that, Nehemiah 8, verses 7-10. There are two necessary things that you have to do to keep the feast God's way. They produce joy. They produce a lot of other things, too—all the other big lessons of the feast, but specifically, we're talking about joy. Nehemiah 8, verse 7. I'm reading from the middle of the verse, skipping several Hebrew names here. The Levites caused the people to understand the law. They're keeping the feast tabernacles, and the people stood in their place. So they read in the book of the Law of God distinctly and gave the sense and caused them to understand the reading. And skipping to verse 9, this day Ezra and Nehemiah both tell them, This day is holy to the Lord your God. Don't mourn or weep, even if you just lost your job, even if you just lost a loved one. Set it aside. This is about your relationship with God. Go to where I eat the fat, drink the sweet, and portions for them to whom nothing is prepared. For this day is holy unto our Lord. And don't be sorry. Set aside the sadness. We don't deny it exists, God says, but set it aside. And then he says an interesting statement. For the joy of the Lord, not somebody else's joy, but the joy of the Lord is your strength. When you're all discouraged and bummed out, what can you get done? Not much. Compared to when you're all fired up and filled with zeal and joy, because of your station in life being chosen by God, you can accomplish a lot. So they were doing two things. They were repenting and praying. That was a big part of what they did. That's in previous chapters, the whole thing. They were repenting as a group, even, and personally. And they were studying the Bible. They read it during the morning. The afternoon was free for rejoicing. Same thing we do, basically. Schedule is not that important, but those two things. Prayer and study. This answers how and why God commands us to rejoice, whether we feel like it or not. Because we're not after just happiness. That comes along. It comes and goes. Joy is steady, and it stays there. But your confidence and your faith, and what keeps you going, it just stays along with you. You know, when in Matthew 25, when it talks about being a good and faithful servant, he says, enter into the kingdom. He doesn't say enter into the kingdom of God. He could, of course, and describe this in a row. He says, enter into the joy of the Lord. God is happy through and through. So we learn at the feast, by having all this extra stuff, physical, and things that make us happy, which it should, we learn that physical happiness and fun fades to empty.

Unless you have God's spiritual joy underlying it. And then it does make you happy, and happiness and joy come together. And you have a great time. Everybody loves to have a great time. Because God loves to have a great time. But it shouldn't just be once in a while. It's supposed to be something that stays with us. We are happy and joyful, because life is good, even though we have problems.

I was looking for an outstanding example that would show that you don't have to be happy to have great joy. And I thought of all kinds of it, and I'm sure you can. But there's one example that's outstanding that makes this point, and that is Jesus Christ Himself, who was on the cross at the crucifixion. He was hanging there for six hours or so, about 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. We know that the demons were attacking Him. He could see Him, others couldn't. He was wracked with pain, and it says that even worse, that was the shame of people hating Him. He was absolutely innocent, and they hated Him. It talks about ignoring the shame and so on. But He suffered that, but He hung on all the way through, as we know. Let's notice Hebrews 12, verse 2. Looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross. You see why I say joy is really important. It's got to be there. He looked to the joy, same joy that we get to look forward to. Glory in the Kingdom of God, our high calling and being with God and being changed to be His children and be God on that level of what He calls glory. So think about the last hour, and then think about the last five minutes. We know He was praying constantly, and I'm sure there was a tape running behind. It was saying, my body can't last long. It's time for the afternoon sacrifice. My glory and all the glory of my whole plan! I'm five minutes from it. Or whatever. Whatever time it was. He was very unhappy. He was just grinding his teeth or what, just desperately, horribly sick and in pain.

No happiness there, as far as that kind of definition, but He had joy. He was within minutes of accomplishing the biggest thing in the whole plan of salvation. You don't have to be happy to have joy, but happiness will follow joy.

Well, there are other scriptures. I'll just notice Isaiah 29. It says, verse 19, They shall increase their joy in the Lord. If you don't have joy from the Lord, you don't have joy. That's the only place you get it. And so Christ wants to give us joy that we may have a full glass or a full tank. Not halfway, but full. That's one of the big things about the feast. So we come here to practice pursuing feasts, one of our songs says, quoting out of the Bible, out of the Psalms, We pursue peace, which is like saying, pursue joy. We pursue this peace and joy and happiness. Looking forward to the kingdom. And that's exactly what you have to do in order to fill your whole tank with joy and have full joy, as Christ said. So isn't that something? Kind of interesting. The way it works out that way. You keep the feast, you keep it like God wants you to, and you become more joyful.

Which is the purpose of the feast. Really interesting how that works out. God has a pretty good plan. And so I leave that with you. I, with deep meaning, wish you a happy and joyous feast.