I mean, what is happiness? What is joy? Why do we need it? Why do we even want it? And where can we find it? I mean, these questions, they ring in my head constantly. In every season of my life, I find myself reflecting on these things, looking to find the way to pursue such things. Even asking the question, is it necessary? Why would I even want to do it? And outside of that, then other things come to mind. I've got decades and decades of influence from the word of God. Love and just an amazing passion for the truth of the gospel. But that in itself sometimes doesn't seem like enough. And so there are other things in my life. I do believe that joy comes and happiness, true, lasting, absolute contentment. And if you've not been following along in this series, you know, go back and listen to a couple of those things. Listen to what I've been saying about what joy and contentment are, about what purpose is, about what meaning is. Because there's a lot of ways in which the world around us throughout all of the centuries has devised answers to those questions, but yet they all find nothing in the end. But I believe joy comes from being content, being loved, being secure, and being known. And I do believe that that is only found in the gospel of grace. But that's easy to say. It's not as easy to hold fast to. One of the songs that we sing that I absolutely love is He Will Hold Me Fast. He will hold me fast. Because some of the lyrics in that song speak to the very nature of who I am and what I've tried to accomplish. And I'm gonna be good enough, I'm gonna get this in gear, I'm gonna make some changes. I mean, haven't you done that? Especially New Year's. Most of us who have any type of peripheral Christian exposure, we always have a spiritual. We're gonna get in shape, gonna get some financial security, and we're gonna get spiritual. and a whole bunch of other things. And so we then pursue God for all of those things. And I'm gonna say, and as you already know, for those of you who follow my teaching and are part of this congregation, we know that doesn't work, and we can't go to God to get anything. We have to go to God for who He is, and then we get everything. But that's also easier said than done. And we've talked about hope, we've talked about satisfaction, we've talked about life, we've talked about purpose, we've talked about a lot of things from the text of 1 Peter 1. Matter of fact, the first nine verses, we hadn't even gotten to the rest of it. And I ask myself, how do I find meaning and purpose? How does this text show me these things? How does this text help me know who I am, and more importantly, why I'm here? Because in my search for these things, my search for joy, my search for happiness, I've tried a lot of stuff. I've tried a lot of stuff. And I've got a list of 12 things that I just truncated the list of probably 100 or so things that I've made in the last few months. I've tried love. I've tried family. I've tried pursuit of things. I've tried philosophy. Thinking. I mean, Descartes, I just won't even go there. I've tried stoicism. I've tried creativity, production. I've tried bodily health, bodily function, bodily strength, pursuit. I mean, I just can't enjoy doing something. I have to master it. I have to perfect it. I've tried faith. Just believing. Just resting. I've tried truth. I need to know more. I need to understand more. I need to find the intersectionality of where philosophy and psychology and medicine and science and the ethereal gob monster all intersects with the gospel. I need to find out how to embrace culture. How to make a difference. I've tried religion. Yes, Christianity. But I've tried it as a religion. It doesn't work. It doesn't work. I've tried discipline. And then I come back to the only thing that really gets me close is being stoic. Standing on my own two feet, on the ground that I cultivated, on the rock that I created, on the world that I made, in the cosmos that I threw into existence, thus becoming God. Because that's where it takes you. Nothing matters. And we think it's a safe place, but the yearning desire of how God made us to be is miserable. But if we're stoic enough, we don't even know it. But sometimes we're able to find some joy in some of those things. But sometimes we find joy in some of those things. Sometimes we find a small bit of joy or a small season of happiness or a little bit of identity. We go, okay, this is who I am. This is what I want. This is where I'm going. This is what I'm trying to pursue. Oh yes, this is it. And then we don't even realize that what we're doing is unconsciously, not subconsciously, we're aware, but we're not aware of what's happening. We're unconsciously walking in life, being validated by external things. And then we're being validated by our own ego, and there's a positive and negative side of ego. It's not always egotistical in the context. And then we find ourselves in finding identity in others, or identity in success, or identity in our spiritual lives, or we find our identity in what we think is Jesus Christ in the gospel, but ultimately we just find our identity in the church life that we live, or in the Bible study that we do, or in the knowledge that we have. Historical theology is a hobby of mine, as is physics, as is chess. I watched like four hours of chess games this week, and billiards. I put Abby to sleep Friday night watching billiards. It's a good match, hour and 13 minutes. I'm like, oh, that's amazing. Some of the best commentary you'll ever hear. If you're ever tired, just put it on. You'll stay awake. And even better than that is a chess match. I'll stop. It's very boring without the right eyes to see what you're looking at. And for some people, the faith is boring. To some people, theological studies is boring. To some people, art is boring. To some people, music is boring. And that's OK. Because you're not going to find it. You can feel things, but it's not going to be joy. It's not going to be happiness. And so we find a little bit of happiness in there, we find a little bit of happiness in ourselves, we find a little bit of happiness in our successes, or in our drive, or for me it's like vision and passion and purpose. But it's always temporary. It's fleeting. And then we become discontent. Then we become frustrated. Then we become bitter. Then we become angry. Then we become cynical. And then we suffer. Or, in the midst of that fleeting joy that we don't know is on the way out, suffering comes and then we're not happy anymore. And we fall back into wondering, what is wrong with life? Why was I given this life? Why am I feeling these things? Why am I having to experience this pain? And we hit a wall of suffering. and then we blame others. My parents had just been better. If my spouse was just nicer, if my kids were just a little cleaner, if I had a better job, if I had more money, if I had a nicer house, if I lived in a different place, it's all a joke. Motivational speakers can't make money saying the truth about what fleeting happiness is. Because they put it on us to be not just the arbiter, but the influencer and the creator of our own destiny. And as believers, we know that the Bible teaches that is not true. But at the same time, Christianity, Christendom, historical Christianity, especially in these United States, has developed a even, I believe, a sinister ends to ludicrous proportions to say that it is about not being anything. After all, Jesus says the first shall be last and the last shall be first. It is not my life, but I live my life by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me. Your life is not your own, you've been bought with a price. I mean, these are good arguments and true things and they're good reports, but we've taken it to a bad end on both sides. We take the Puritanism or we take, you know, like in Westward Expansion and where we are in this absolute non-religious world that we created in the Constitution. We have the right to not believe in anything and have that type of faith, that there is nothing. But the Puritans and the people that came over, they were so strangled by the crown, telling them what they would believe and how they would act, that they actually developed the evangelical movement, inadvertently, to create the same crown and the same boundaries and the same bondage. And we don't even know it. And when we see it and we're free of it, like I was in the last year or so, I wanted to be free of all of it. I'm like, so I've got to throw Jesus out with the bathwater. I've got to throw the Bible out with the bathwater. Have you ever been there? Have you ever felt comfortable enough going, I'm going to filter this stuff through a strainer and whatever's left, I might discard. And the Lord is faithful. His word does not return void. It cannot fail. So when I partner theology or loving or serving or helping people, these are okay things. Or persistence or drive and goals, when I partner these things and I say to myself, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna be this, I'm gonna get this, it works for a little while. for a little while, until the sun sets on a new season, and then all of a sudden, it's like, what in the world am I going to do now? And what typically stands in the way of that momentum is some bad event, bad idea, bodily pain, emotional pain, mental pain, economic pain, relational pain. Could I go on? So we all come back to suffering. We hit a wall. And then we realize that we cannot determine our own path. We cannot determine our own meaning. We cannot determine our own purpose. And that we've been made for something more. We've been made for something greater. We've been made for something hopeful. And I've already preached these things. Let's go to the Word of God in 1 Peter 1 and listen to the first nine verses. Remember, these people are suffering and have lost everything. Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to those who are elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, Bithynia. According to the foreknowledge of God the Father and the sanctification of the Spirit for obedience to Jesus Christ and for sprinkling with his blood, may grace and peace be multiplied to you. the doxology. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. According to His great mercy, He has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who by God's power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you have joy. Though now for a little while, if necessary, you've been grieved by various sufferings. So that the tested genuineness of your faith, which is more precious than gold, and gold perishes when it is tested by fire, that the tested genuineness of your faith may be found to result in praise and glory and honor at the seeing of Jesus Christ. Though you have not seen Him, listen to these words, you love Him. Though you do not now see Him, you rest in Him and you rejoice with a joy that is inexpressible, not expressible, and it is filled with glory, obtaining the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls. And you might ask, why in the world it's taken me several months to get here? Because there's so much to unpack in this. And it's not a scholarly unpacking. It's a slow, paceful, poetic invitation to rest in the teaching of this text. But we have a tendency to look for the joy in the application that's practical. Don't we? We want to get over here and put away all, okay, so I need to put away malice so I can be joyful. No. Malice will definitely interrupt your joy, but I think malice comes when the joy is incomplete. Put away all deceit, put away all hypocrisy and slander. Well, people run their mouth and talk trash because they're not content in Christ. It's not the answer. Putting away these things is not the answer. Putting away these things is the empowerment of the truth that we have a joy that is not found in this world. But yet we can have, like I said two weeks ago, joy in this life because of it. Now you might think, now I know that I don't know what I thought I knew about being happy. So what am I going to do with it? Well, that's the wrong question. Because as long as we're asking ourselves, what am I going to do with it? How am I going to change it? How am I going to be? We're never going to understand fully. Remember I said just a minute ago, or I should have said it if I didn't, I'll say it now. If we go to God to find happiness, we've missed it. We've missed it. If we say I want to rest, I want to love God so that I can be happy, we're not going to be happy. Because what we're wanting to do is have a connection with God, have an intimacy with God that'll give us something that we're wanting. In John chapter six, Jesus feeds the multitude, 5,000 men, women, children, miraculously from a small sack lunch. And then he disappears. He literally just vanishes before their eyes. And they hang out and they camp out and they're waiting. The disciples don't know where he is. And remember that night, they're all sitting there on the sea, and the storm comes, and from Capernaum, all the boats in the port of Capernaum get blown over to where Jesus was. And they're asked the next morning, where is this Jesus? And they're like, we don't know. Aren't you his disciple? We don't know where he is. He just does this, you know, he just sort of poof. We don't know where he's at. Floating somewhere in the sky, I don't know where he is. And so they all go, well, we're gonna get on these boats. Because the disciples got on some boats and they went to Capernaum. So they're three and a half miles out and all the people get in boats and they go over. And then the storm that was over there the night before is still causing some turmoil in the sea. You know the story. And then Jesus appears, touches the boat and teleports it three and a half miles to the shore, to Capernaum. And then all the other people get over there. And they start asking, hey, teacher, great master, oh Lord, oh. And they fawn to Him and try to placate to Him and give Him honor and glory, but they don't see Him for who He really is. Because they were extremely happy and joyful to have food. They were extremely happy about the experience that they just had watching this man do a miracle to feed this many people. They were extremely encouraged that they were part of something extremely exciting. Like this eclipse. By the way, this will be our last day on earth. I'll see y'all later. See y'all Tuesday. And so they say, Master, when did you get here? And Jesus looks at them and says, hey, you know what? You're looking at me and you're following after me, not because of me, but because of the fact I gave you something to eat and it satisfied your body. Then he says, do not labor for the food that perishes, but labor for the bread that endures to eternal life. And what do they say? The same thing the woman from Sychar said, give us this bread. That's a paraphrase, a lot of paraphrase. John six is very long. And then they put him to a test. Well, what sign do you bring? What must we be doing then to do the will of God? How can we find our happiness? You see the questions? It's the same questions you have. How am I going to overcome this? How can I get out of this? How can I come through this? How can I actually care anymore? And Jesus says, stop laboring for the bread that perishes. So when we go to Christ to get something to make us happy from Him, we are missing the point. And when we do that, we get nothing. We literally are left holding a bag. Not 12 baskets of leftovers, which is symbolic. Not new wine. Not a better husband. We're left with nothing. We're left with the same thing that we had before, which is self-sufficiency, self-hope, self-joy, self-reliance, self-foundation, stoicism, Buddhism, or whatever else you want to call it. We're just trying to escape, trying to find nirvana, trying to be snuffed out, to get away from this thing, trying to get it right so we don't come back as a grasshopper. Don't laugh at that. And it just doesn't work. Or just trying to get away. So we're just like, can we just get on with it? Can we just go to heaven? Heaven is not the destination. It's a waiting room. This is the destination. And it's new creation. And I'll talk about that in a minute. And Jesus answers them in John 6 and says, I am the bread that comes down from heaven. And prior to that, he says, this is the will of God, that you believe in the one whom he has sent. But they went to Jesus for happiness, and that's backwards. In John chapter five, you know the story there of the woman of Saqqara. I'm in there a lot. It's not like I want to go preach to John again. It would take us almost five years. And the disciples had gone to Sychar to buy food, and they come back, and they're like, what is this man? Why is he talking to her? This is bad. They dare not say anything because he's their teacher. And they brought him some food, and they asked the question, hey, master, did you want something to eat? And he says, no, I have food that you don't know about. I'm satisfied. And John, you know, in the 90s, on the Isle of Patmos, writing this gospel narrative, he tells the story and he says that basically that the disciples afterward, you know, they're sort of talking amongst each other when Jesus couldn't hear them. And, you know, I heard that, if y'all know that reference. And they're like, we didn't understand why he was doing this. No one said anything. We didn't understand what he meant when he said he had food. We were just baffled, like Nicodemus was baffled. What do you mean I gotta be born again? What? I gotta go back in my mom and say, hey, I'm born again. I mean, it just doesn't work that way. They could not fathom it. And Jesus says, I have food that you don't know about. And the question they said, who gave him something to eat? Did this woman give him something to eat? Did he go buy a McDonald's? What's going on? Who gave him something to eat? He says, my food is to do the will of the one who sent me. Jesus, in his human body and his human mind, was completely human. 100% human. He wasn't a superhero. He wasn't this divine-human hybrid. The divine was that this AI operating in the scene of his brains, he was completely human. And at the same time, Jesus Christ is the living God. And we don't know how or why or how to put our minds around that, except that the Bible teaches this is true. So we embrace the humanity of Jesus Christ. One of the articles I wrote this past week is on the compassion of Christ and the attitudes of Christ. If you read that, I know I wrote a lot, but I might not write again for April. But, you know, seven articles in a week, it's OK. Just read them or don't. I don't care. But Jesus is completely human, so everything that Jesus says, everything that he does, everything that he feels, everything that he explains, every interaction. is completely perfect and righteous in humanity. So if there's a model to understand and to embrace on understanding these theologies, it is to look at the person of Christ, to listen to the teaching of Christ, and to see the life of Christ that we may apply it to our lives in that way. Not to do as he did thinking we can earn perfection because we'll never get it. I will never love you correctly. I will never love my family correctly. I will never love God correctly, but he loves me perfectly. And so when Jesus says that the food that I have that you know not of is to do the will of the one who sent me, what he's saying there is that I'm not here to gain and earn my glory. It's mine. I am here because I love the father above everything. Because he loves me above everything. John 14. John 17. These are rich, deep, but simple truths. They're rich and deep because they never go away. They never stop. There's just like a bottomless, I don't want to say cavern because that seems negative, but it's a bottomless blessing. So we don't go to God for happiness. God is our happiness. But how do we cultivate that? See, there's a practicality here. There's something that's got to be done. I mean, look at it. Blessed be God and the Father, the Lord Jesus Christ. His mercy, His love, He's caused you to be born into His family. He's called you to be made new in the person of Christ through the resurrection of Christ from the dead. So not only do we see the adoption, we see the embracing. We're siblings with Christ. We will share in His glory. We're not going to be servants in the new earth. We're going to be saints. We're gonna have the fullness of all joy. But in this life, as necessary, when necessary, we're gonna suffer. Put a little blurb out on Instagram this week about my suffering and what God teaches me and how it works. And I made the distinction, some people have suffering that is completely, like, in comparison, it's like, you call that suffering? But then there are some people who have suffering that go, man, I don't even wanna hear it. I don't even want to fathom it. That is just too much. Oh, God. I've never suffered in comparison, you see. But it doesn't diminish our pain. But when we're trying to pursue this qualified idea that, you know, we've got to lessen some suffering, or we've got to increase some happiness, and we've got to find some stuff, we run a fool's errand to the end of the world, and then we fall off, and then we land right back in the same place we were, still running up a sand dune. Sorry, the imagery just if you've ever run up a sand dune, number one, you get in trouble and number two, it's very difficult. And you could also die. So we seek all sorts of things to fill the void that only Christ can give. You know, you've heard the old cliche, you've heard the what is it that we all have a God size hole in our heart needs to be filled with God. It's misplaced. We've been made to be loved by him. And by the way, that's Augustine who posited that. Epicurious, I don't know, okay. We'll do church history one day. It's fascinating. If you like it, that's okay. If you don't, watch Billiards, it's okay. Or watch paint dry. It's pretty neat. And so what we do is we seek joy, we seek meaning, we seek purpose outside of Scripture. And what we're doing is we're actually escaping the thing that we're looking for. We're escaping it. We seek love or whatever to fill that void. We try to love Him, but we can't. And when we do, we don't know how. We're taught then to be hard, I don't know about you, but we're taught to be hard, to push it down, to not feel it, as if that helps. It helps keep our mind off of it, but our subconscious mind still longs, our subconscious mind still yearns, our subconscious mind still longs and yearns and deeply feels what it doesn't want to feel, and it's a constant friction, and we have to distract ourselves. by either pursuit or, I don't know anything, something with a P that came to mind, or some other means of, I don't know, that's so easy, it just broke. Okay. Good object lesson. If I only had And then we start to blame each other. We start to blame ourselves. We start to blame the man. We start to blame the economy. We start to blame the government. We start to blame everything. We blame everything. And then it's just like... And then we blame God. You know what's beautiful about that? You have the freedom. This sound bite's gonna get me in trouble. Y'all can have it. All you knuckleheads out there. You have the right to put your finger in the face of your father and blame him. It's not right. It is sin. But you have the liberty, not the right, you have the freedom. And the sooner we get that as Christians, that we can't hide and God is not looking for our little, what is that called? Pony show. He's not looking, we can't trick him. So why not be honest? And he's not going to love us any less because we blame him. Did he love Adam and Eve any less? No, he didn't. And they both blamed him. With this snake you made, with this woman you gave me. I mean, the woman was him. Out of him. Just can't see it. It's just dumb. And when we get into chapter three, I'll unpack that nonsense. how we have really allowed that kind of lie to hurt half our population in the church. No, we blame God, and that's okay. Because even when we blame God, and when we don't love God, and we don't know how to love God, and we don't know how to trust God, and we believe God, and we don't believe God, it's okay. Don't let anybody tell you that it's not okay. Is it good for you? No. It's like eating doughnuts for supper. It's not good for you, but it's okay. There's consequences, but they're not justice. It's not wrath. The consequence is that God's love is faithful. He cannot not love you. If Christ died for your sins, it is finished and it is over and there is no wrath to be had. There is no punishment to pay. There is no debt to write a check for. It is over. And to say otherwise is to not understand the gift of God in mercy and love. Beloved, this is liberal theology. You know what the word means? Freedom. Somebody called me the other day and I'm like, thank you. We don't even put those labels on things. The gospel is liberating. If it's not, it's not a good news, it's not. This just in, great news, you're gonna die and you can't get out of the chair to save yourself. I hope you're having a nice evening. Tomorrow we'll watch comedy. Dante's. I mean, you know. For the literary nerds in the room. We don't need to want something from God. We need to find a way to want God. I mean, we do that in marriage, too, right? Remember when you're dating, you don't even know these people. You don't even know you don't even know each other. You just love each other so, so much. It's ego, and you don't even know it. In the science of your brain, everything that God has created for us to create bonds, we've got to learn those, but we've got to learn these things. We've got to grow into these things. I mean, Robin and I have been together 29 years, 28 years in May, married. That's a long time. But it's not long enough. We still don't know each other as much as we think we do. Why? Because we change. Things change. But I tell you what, I know what love is now more than I ever did. And you know what it isn't? Sparks and fire and visions of grandeur and dragons, roses and puppies. It's not any of that stuff. And it's not like that with God either. It's not like that. In John chapter 11, this is one of the reasons that I use the ESV. Turn over there. In John chapter 11, Jesus begins to talk. I mean, the scripture John begins to write about the engagement when Jesus got the news of Lazarus illness. Chapter 11, verse one, now a man named Lazarus was ill, living in Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. It was Mary who anointed the feet of Jesus. with oil, anointed Jesus with oil and wiped his feet. I just swiped up on my Bible page, y'all. You got problems. Whose brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent to him a message saying, Lord, whom you love is ill. Now I want you to pay close attention here. They sent a letter, a telegram, a text message, whatever it was. They sent Jesus a message that said, the man Lazarus, whom you love, is sick and dying. But, verse 4, when Jesus heard this news, he said, this illness does not lead to death. It is for us to see God as he is, the glory of God. so that the Son of God, me, may be seen as I am through it, glorified. Remember, think of seeing God's glory as being completely exposed and everything revealed. The nature, the character, the work, the love, the attitude. Verse five is important. Now Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus. So, that's the word that gets me. Other translations go but. So when Jesus heard that Lazarus was dying, he stayed two days longer where he was. It's important to understand the causation here. Jesus loved them. They loved Jesus. Jesus knew that Lazarus was dying. They sent to Jesus so that he would not die. How do we know? Because we've got the story over there. I read it this morning at the opening of the service. If you had just been here, if you would just come when we sent for you, why did you wait? What happened? And Jesus, the answer to that is Jesus waited on purpose because he loved Lazarus. So he waited. Why? So that the man would die in his flesh. Well, that doesn't sound very loving. Yes, it is. Wow. You'll see. After two days, he said, okay, let's go. Let's go over to Judea. Let's go to Bethany. I'm going to show you what it means to walk in the light, not stumble around the darkness. We've been stumbling around the darkness too long, guys, and I want you to see. I want you to wake up. I want you to pay attention. And I love Thomas at the end of that, verse 16. And they were upset that Jesus was going back to Judea because things were hostile. I mean, people were looking to arrest him. They wanted to kill him. I mean, it was rough. They were already plotting to have him put in prison, and they knew that he would probably die if he was arrested, if not by the hand of the magistrate, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, but by the hand of the mob. And so Thomas, the twin, said to the rest of the 12, the other 11, he said, come on guys, let's just go, let's just all die together. And that would be the guy that would be put in charge, because he'd be the leader with the right attitude. That's not the right attitude. Just like Peter said, you don't have to die. Thomas is like, let's just die together. And Jesus went. And Jesus went. And Mary, I won't read it all again, but Mary says, why weren't you here? And Jesus wept. There's a W. He went, he wept. I've got two more. They just came to me. It's not broken. Jesus is a man of sorrows. I love that song. And in his perfect, righteous humanity, he wept. In the English, translations, man, we're just sometimes too, we need some poets to translate the Bible for a change. To go, that word and that context needs to be a little stronger. Jesus wept, not a little tear in his eye because we watched Old Yeller, or Bambi, or The Gentle Giant, or whatever the heck that movie is about a robot dying. I cried, stop it. It's not that. He wept. The scripture there implies he was deeply moved. He was weeping. He was greatly troubled. Have you ever wept so ugly that if it made social media, you'd move? I have. Have you ever wept so deeply that you felt panic? That's what Jesus was doing. He wasn't walking around with a little tear like the litter commercial from the 70s. You know that one? Native American crying because of the trash on the highway. Jesus wept deeply. He was deeply grieved. The same language when He was in the Garden of Gethsemane and He's telling this inner three, James, John and Peter, pray, stand watch, I am grieved. And He went in and expressed that grief to the point that He cried and labored and bellowed out to God the Father to take the cup that He was about to drink. He could not stand it. He could not fathom it. He could not embrace it. to the point that his body burst the capillaries in his skin and he sweated blood. Which most people in fair health probably would have had a stroke or a heart attack. Not a lot of cholesterol issues in the first century. Not a lot of blood pressure problems. Jesus wept. Our God weeps. in His humanity. What's that got to do with my joy? You'll see. And then Jesus went to the tomb and He was angry. He was angry. He went to the tomb and He hated death. Have you ever cried in anger? Have you ever gotten angry in your tears? Not because you were wronged, because you just hated the pain. You hated the context. You hated the experience. You wish that it would not have happened. It's one of the occasions where I've put my finger up at God. Jesus wept that way. He hates the suffering of the people he loves. It made him angry. He's a wailing God, a weeping God, a weary God. Deeply moved again, verse 38, he commands Lazarus to come out. And then when he raises Lazarus from the dead, recomposes his body, takes off the grave clothes where this man, I guess, floated out of the tomb, these silly people said to themselves, we have got to kill this man who just raised the dead and the man who just came back from the dead because the whole world is going to suffer if they start following him and we're gonna lose control. Now that sounds like a really good sitcom plot. And maybe a revamp of the Three Stooges to be a part of it. That is one of the dumbest things that have ever come out of the mouth of a person, to witness resurrection and to say, let's kill the Resurrector, who has already said in public, I am the resurrection and the life. Why weren't you here? I'm the resurrection and the life. Though you die, you will live, and though you die, you have not died. Did y'all see the little YOLO cake for Easter on social media? Nah, just kidding, it was the little Jesus, you know. You don't only live once, but you do only live once, because even when you die, you're not dead, you're with Him. And you're awaiting the resurrection of your body, renewed, to be restored with everyone you love. Why? Because that's the love of God for you. To rest on the rock of hope, to rest on the rock of righteousness, to rest on the rock of life is to stand secure, even in inexpressible joy. What is that? Lamenting, wailing, weeping, anger, snarling, spitting, snotting, torment. Why? It's still joy when we're focused on the love of God for us. And in that joy, in that focus, listen to me, in that truth, we are made new. Each moment. And then we live in a way that our love is enough because we love God because of His love for us. We love Him even in our suffering because we know that He loves us because He's proven it. We see it in the Word of God throughout all of history. Name one faithful man or woman in the entire Bible that was fully faithful to God. They're not there. But God is faithful. God is faithful. So then when we are focused on that, we know the Lord. And more importantly, John 17, as Jesus would say, He knows us. And so then by the Spirit, there's a constant connection, a constant tether to loving God because of God's love for us. And you might think, well, isn't that the same thing? We're going to go to God to get Him to love us? No, it's not because that's not the case. We are going to God because He does love us, not so that He will love us. Well, how does God love me? He gave His Son. So then our love for one another is enough. Then our love when Christ talks about loving our children and loving our spouses and loving our siblings in Christ and loving our neighbor. It actually works because we're loving God alone and then we learn through that love that God gives us what love for others is. And it surely is not the way we feel about them. And no matter what we do, no matter how much we don't believe, no matter how angry we are, no matter how cynical we are, no matter how bitter we are, no matter how many hog pens we go run to try to find things to eat like the prodigal son, God's love for us is never failing. He's standing in the imagery of the Father in Luke 15 looking, waiting for us, His children, His sons, His daughters. to touch the horizon so that he may gird his loins and run with tears of joy to restore us to his name. And that everything we've lost in our suffering, listen to me, beloved. Everything we've ever lost in our suffering, whether it be ethereal, whether it be mental, emotional, physical, relational, financial, whatever it may be, everything we've ever lost in our suffering is given back to us tenfold. To an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading. Kept in heaven for you who are being guarded by God, You'll listen to the last two sermons before this. Being guarded by God. Peter's a long way in the back. So you rejoice. Not because you see Jesus, not because you get something from Jesus, because you don't see Jesus and you don't see Him now and you haven't seen Him. But you love Him. because of who He is and what He's done for you. I mean, isn't that the case? I mean, isn't it hard, like some really punk person in our life, and they're just like rude, but they're really nice to us, and they give us a whole lot of love and a lot of affection and a lot of stuff, and it's really hard for us to be mad at them, because they do so much good. Our God is so much greater. Because everything he does is for our good. James says that all good gifts come from the Father of Lights. So how do I summarize all this nonsense that I've said today? Our joy and our hope are gifts from God. And that joy has an eternal nature. that is in perishing and undefiled. And in that suffering, our faithless faith gets to grow. And that's what we're going to talk about a little bit next week as we move into verse 10. So we get stronger in our suffering. We get stronger. We start looking, we stop looking at all the misguided pursuits of happiness. Even though they may be good, they are not perfect. And we start putting them in the right order. And imagine you as a cup overflowing and it's full. We can't fill our own cup to overflowing. John chapter 5 says, I'll give you water that will overflow and well up and overflow into eternal life. She says, give me this water always. And He'll later say, I am the water, the living water. And we get to look at Jesus and His role in our suffering and His promise of being resurrected. Jesus died so that we could live. And all the pain that He endured, He did not deserve. And I don't even want to get into that. Not all suffering is deserved, beloved. There's unjust suffering in the world, but I can tell you the greatest unjust suffering was when Christ died. But He loved us. He does love us. So we embrace God's purpose beyond suffering to the hope of the resurrection, to the hope of this new life, and we live out this joy to be sober-minded, to be focused on this journey. And we need to do it together. We need to recognize and embrace the reality of what God has done in Christ Jesus for us. And that is my hope for you. And we take the table every week here at Grace Truth Church. We do the little Lord's Supper. And what this does is reminds us of the day when Christ was going to be arrested, where he said, as you take this bread, I want you to remember my body. It's going to be broken for you. And as you drink this wine, I want you to remember my blood's going to be shed for the forgiveness of your sins. And when you do this, do it together that you may understand that God's love for you is manifest in this way. For God loved the world in this way that He gave His only Son, the only one that He has. It's a literal translation of John 3.16. And so as we take the table, let us reflect on these truths. Let's remember the love of God for us. And in that, let's pursue this joy together as we grow. Let's pray. Father, I thank you for the opportunity to teach. Lord, for the opportunity to share. And Lord, I'm learning and I'm confessing my own journey. Help this church see that, that I am not the example. I'm just I'm as qualified as Balaam's ass to speak your truth. So let us look to Christ, the founder of our faith and the perfecter therein. Help us to see this joy. Help us to embrace the fact that all things will be given back to us. Everything we lose and more. because you love us. Help us to keep our eyes on that. As we take the table, Father, help us to remember these things in Christ. In his name we pray, amen.