Permanent joy

(The following is a summary of the sermon that was preached by Michael Larsen on April 21, 2019.)

Text: John 16:20-22

We have something that makes us happy, but actually it is not good for us. When God takes it away because He loves us and wants to protect us, we get angry and sad. But God wants to give something much, much better in return—something that will give us true happiness forever.

The disciples thought they had lost Jesus that first Easter Friday, but on Sunday God gave them back Jesus in a much, much better way, even though it took them a while to realize it. Our loss, which feels so painful, is actually for our good, so that we can enjoy something much, much better from God. So here’s the principle, and this is very important: To find that true, permanent joy, we sometimes have to suffer the loss of our temporary pleasure in something that is bad for us.

So, Happy Easter! Why is it happy? Jesus died. That is a very sad thing. But he rose again from the dead.  After the most terrible, saddest thing ever, came the most wonderful. That’s how life is sometimes. First comes the sadness, then comes the joy. 

Christ gives believers permanent joy through His death and resurrection.

Jesus promises the disciples in John 16:22, “No one will take your joy away from you.” That’s the kind of joy we all want. That joy was the result of the disciples seeing the risen Lord, who transformed their understanding of the cross. To understand that process of how our grief is turned to joy, consider these four things:

1. Christ’s path to joy went through the awful agony of the cross.

2. Our path to eternal joy often first goes through sorrow.

There are several reasons for this:

1) Before we can find joy in Christ, we first must feel sorrow for our sins.

2) Sometimes sorrow over the loss of things that bring temporal joy is necessary to drive us to Christ for permanent joy.

3) In order to find permanent joy in Christ, we have to die to self, which isn’t immediately pleasant.

3. Christ promises to turn our sorrow into joy.

To illustrate, Christ uses the analogy of a woman giving birth. When she’s in labor, she’s in great pain. The cause of her pain is the baby that is moving through the birth canal. But a few minutes later, the very thing that was causing her excruciating pain is now the object of her intense joy, as she holds that beautiful child in her arms and gazes in wonder at his face.

The main point of this illustration is that the very thing that would cause the disciples overwhelming grief the next day—seeing the Lord who loved them suffer on the cross—would later be the source of their permanent joy. A secondary application of Christ turning the very thing that caused sorrow into joy is that He often uses our pain and suffering to show us our need for Him, where we find true joy. 

4. The source of permanent joy is that Christ is risen.

Your path to permanent joy begins the moment you trust in Christ’s death for your sins and His resurrection from the dead. Jesus wants you to be full of joy, and that permanent joy comes through believing in Him.