Where's Your Joy?

Well, hey, I just want to reiterate, double click on something that Donnie said. There is so much going on right now. So we are super excited. No matter what age group you’re part of, no matter what interest you have or wherever you are in your walk with Jesus or even your relationship with the church, there’s a spot for you to plug in. From Sunday mornings, we have multiple different groups going on based off of where you are in life to Wednesday evenings, we have stuff going on, special activities.

Something that was just mentioned in the video announcements is Fall Fest coming up. So we’re going to put that slide back up here on the screen. Fall Fest is going to be a great time. That was, aside from getting to know the church on a couple of Sunday mornings last fall, Fall Fest was our family’s first real introduction to Sauldam Baptist Church. We drove down from Columbia to spend a couple of hours with you guys, got to meet many of you guys and man, a lot of community members as well from that.

So what I want to do is just spend a few minutes now praying for Fall Fest, praying that, I mean, obviously we want people to come. But the real hope is not just that we would have a really well attended party. The hope is that people would get connected, not just to our church, but get connected to Christ’s body, whether they don’t know Jesus yet or not. And that through something as simple as throwing a party that coincides with Halloween, that people would come into a deep relationship with Jesus. So that’s what I want to do. If you just grab a neighbor and let’s just pray that God would draw people to Fall Fest that don’t yet know Him, don’t yet have a church and that we could just be a little bridge to that. All right. Y’all take it away. Then I’ll bundle it up here in a moment.

Okay. Let’s pray. God, thank You so much. Thank You, Father, for today. We get to wake up on another Sunday and be with our church family. Lord, that we get to sing songs to You. Lord, give our financial gifts to You. We get to look at Your Word together. God, we get to greet each other. Father, may all these things be done for Your sake, that Your kingdom would grow. Lord, may Fall Fest be the same exact way. God, of course, I’m looking forward to just hanging out with my church family. God, I’m excited to meet people from the community that just want to bring their kids to something safe and fun. Father, I’m begging You that the money we spend on this, the time we’re investing in it. God, I’m begging that You would use Fall Fest truly, Lord, that somebody would come to saving faith in You. God, You say in Ephesians that You do immeasurably more than what we could ever ask or imagine. You do immeasurably more with what we offer You. God, we’re giving You Fall Fest. Lord, we believe that You have stewarded this community to our church. You’ve stewarded this property. You’ve stewarded the financial resources we have. You’ve stewarded our manpower. So, Lord, we want to give these things back to You and ask that You would do something with it, please.

Father, thank You for doing that type of work with the student retreat. Thank You for doing that type of work with the women’s retreat. Lord, would You do the same thing here in a couple weeks? Lord, would You do that this morning right now? God, You’ve given me time this week for me to study Your Word and try to apply it to my own heart and get ready to preach it. Father, would I be a good steward of the next few minutes that I would just boldly and clearly say what You have already said. Lord, would this congregation also be good stewards of the next few minutes that they would not just passively sit, but Father, they would hear and they would listen. Father, that all of us would change a little bit because of what You’ve said. Holy Spirit, please get a hold of me. Get a hold of us. Would something be different in our lives and our families in this community because of the same thing that we’ve done today. Lord, we love You and it’s in Your name that we pray. Amen.

Well, obviously Halloween is coming up. There’s another day that is coming up at the end of our month that I would imagine not everybody is super familiar with.

Anybody heard of Reformation Day? Got a couple folks. Okay, we’ll go ahead and put a guy’s face on the screen for you. Reformation Day started, I don’t know when we started celebrating it, but the beginnings of Reformation Day happened at about 1500 AD. You see, this gentleman was born in 1483 over in Germany. He grew up, I believe, the son of a copper miner or a coppersmith. Is that right? And he grew up with an extreme dread of God.

A few weeks ago, I talked about the fear of God and how that actually means you love Him. That’s not what he grew up with. He grew up with the dread of God. He was terrified by God. He knew that he was a sinner. He knew that he deserved wrath, but he didn’t know really the way out of it. And one day he is crossing a field and a thunderstorm comes up and he just tries to take cover from the thunderstorm. And he does what we have all done in a moment of crisis. God, if You save me, if You spare my life, I’ll be to Your service. I’ll give my life to You. He took it a step further. And he said, God, I’ll even go be a monk in the Catholic church for You. That’s what they knew of church at that time. The storm passes, God spares him, and this guy makes good on his promise. He becomes an Augustinian monk.

Unfortunately, though, with all of his studies, all of the prayer vigils, all of the fasting, all of the praying, his dread of God didn’t go away. He was still terribly afraid of God and now Jesus Christ as well because he was reaching a point where he could absolutely recognize, I can’t do anything to save myself. Something had happened in the life of the Catholic church, though. They started selling what’s called indulgences. Indulgences were these monetary items that someone could purchase. The indulgence was meant or it was said to communicate some grace from God for you. But the proceeds also were used to help build cathedrals.

This gentleman, his name is Martin Luther, if you haven’t figured that out yet. Martin Luther looked at this, he said, hold on, we’re charging people money to buy things that we say is going to save them? I’m sure that’s not how everybody interpreted it, but Martin Luther read Romans 1 verse 17 and he finally understood what God meant in Romans 1:17 where it says, the righteous shall live by faith. See, God saved Martin Luther through the reading of His word. All Martin Luther started doing then is just telling people, you need to start reading your Bibles for yourselves. You need to start reading the word for yourself. If you don’t know the rest of the story, unfortunately, Martin Luther would be excommunicated from the Catholic church and he would start a word-driven reformation that has led all the way until today. In fact, we are here in a Southern Baptist church in 2024 in the town of Ravenel because Martin Luther took a stand on what he believed was justification by faith alone.

Now, all this is just a little story to tell you what happens when people return to God’s word. If you will, go ahead and open up your copy of God’s word to Nehemiah chapter 7. That’s where we’re going to continue our series through the book of Nehemiah. You see what Martin Luther discovered was that God’s word has power and life when we let it speak for itself. That’s what happened for him in Germany. What started in Germany and in France under John Calvin and in England under John Wycliffe has blossomed into something that we all get to enjoy today. Today’s passage will also feature a revival where God’s people also return to God’s word and where it bears dramatic fruit in their lives, just like it did in the life of Martin Luther and in the lives of people all around the world.

So if you will read it with me, we’re actually gonna start at the very tail end of Nehemiah chapter 7, verse 73, the back end of it. Most likely your Bible has a section heading just above verse 1 of chapter 8. That’s where we’re starting. It says it this way. When the seventh month came and the Israelites had settled in their towns, all the people gathered together at the square in front of the water gate. They asked the scribe Ezra to bring the book of the law of Moses that the Lord had given Israel. On the first day of the seventh month, the priest Ezra Brought the law before the assembly of men, women, and all those who could listen with understanding. While he was facing the square in front of the water gate, Ezra read out of the law from daybreak until noon before the men, the women, and those who could understand. All the people listened attentively to the book of the law. The scribe Ezra stood on a high wooden platform made just for this purpose. Mattathiah, Shema, and Ananiah, or Ananiah, Uriah, Hilkiah, and Messiah stood before him on his right. To his left were Padaiah, Mishael, Malkijah, Hashem, Hashbadanah, Zechariah, and Meshulam. Ezra opened the book in full view of all the people since he was elevated above everyone. And as he opened it, all the people stood up. Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God. And with their hands uplifted, all the people said, “Amen, Amen.” Then they knelt low and they worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. Jeshua, Bani, Sherebiah, Jamin, Akub, Shabbatai, Padaiah, Messiah, Kalitha, Azariah, Josabed, Hanan, and Paliah, who were Levites, explains the law to the people as they stood in their places. Verse eight, they read out of the book of the law of God, translating and giving the meaning so that people could understand what was read.

Now, Nehemiah, the governor, Ezra, the priest, and scribe, and the Levites who were instructing the people said to everyone, “This day is holy to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep.” For all the people were weeping as they heard the words of the law. Then he said to them, “Go and eat what is rich, drink what is sweet, and send portions to those who have nothing prepared, since today is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve, because the joy of the Lord is your strength.” Then the Levites quieted all the people, saying, “Be still, since today is holy, don’t grieve.” Then all the people began to eat and drink, send portions, and have a great celebration, because they had understood the words that were explained to them.

Man, what a beautiful passage. What a beautiful moment where we see a group of people come back to God’s word and the dramatic fruit it bears for them. So there’s one major thing I want you to take away from today’s message. It is this: God forms and fills His people. I’ll explain a couple of the details that we’ll really get into that.

You see, in verse 1, or verse 73b, it says that all the people had gathered in the seventh month. You see, that was expected. The seventh month out of the year was a big deal for the people of Israel. The seventh month is when they would have celebrated two major festivals. The first one, they would have celebrated atonement. Now, atonement comes all the way from Passover, all right? Zoom back with me in your Bible story to the moment of Exodus, right, Mike? When the Exodus, the people of Israel are in Egypt. God saves them through the person of Moses, and He does that through the 10 plagues. The 10th plague is what, guys? Passover, okay? In Passover, the Spirit of God comes through the land of Egypt, and every home that doesn’t have the blood of a lamb over its doorpost, what happened there? The firstborn died. God saved the people through Passover. They took that moment, and they started celebrating what’s called atonement, where God makes people one with Himself. That happens during this moment of the Exodus.

What happens after the people are freed from Egypt? They are wandering around in the wilderness. They’re living in tents. The people of Israel, when they got to the promised land eventually, would remember that season of wandering with another festival called the Festival of Booths, all right? Think about a booth like you might see in Mount Pleasant on Highway 17, where they sell the fresh produce. It’s got a top. It’s got sides. It might even have a back to it. It’s like a big structured tent. That’s what they would have been living in. They remember these things in the seventh month of the year. So it’s normal. All the people of Israel would have been coming together in the seventh month, and they know just the guy to come to. They go to the guy named Ezra.

See, we’ve been preaching out of the book of Nehemiah. There’s another book in your Bible that goes right along with this. It’s called Ezra. See, Nehemiah and Ezra, they were contemporaries. They were coworkers in this project of revival and restoration for the people. Ezra is a scribe. He would have been like me. He would have been a preacher. He would have spent most of his time reading God’s word and interpreting it so that he could teach it to other folks. That’s what Ezra’s role was. So they tell Ezra, “Ezra, please, would you read from the book of the law of Moses for us?” All right. Let’s keep going. Some of these details. If you’re taking notes, keep with me, okay? The book of the law of Moses. Moses is credited as the author of the first five books of your Bible. Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers. You got one more in there. There we go. Moses is credited as the author of those. That is the book of Moses. Commonly, they are all wrapped up. You put your arms around all of them. You call it the Torah, okay? Torah. Torah translates for us as law, okay? All right, so they said, “Read from the book of the law of Moses. Read from the Bible for us. Would you preach God’s word to us, Ezra?” So he does that. However, the people have been living in exile in Babylon 70 years, 150 years, their entire lifetime. How many of them do you think would have understood Hebrew? Whenever you move to a new place, you start picking up some different customs. You pick up some different language. You have children there, and they start learning the dominant language there as their normal language. They have kids, and their language they speak is what’s spoken there, not what you came from. Most of the people that were gathered here did not speak the language of the Bible. They spoke Babylonian and Persian. If they were lucky, they would have studied some of Aramaic, but not biblical Hebrew. So as Ezra is teaching and reading from the law, you have this other group of guys down in verse seven and eight who are translating and giving meaning. So here’s what I want you to picture in your mind. We learned last week that there were 42,000 people that had been settled into the city of Jerusalem. Imagine a gathering, let’s call it 30,000. All the men, the women, and the young adults, and the kids, and the youth that could understand. 30,000 people packed into one huge city square. You got Ezra standing on a stand, and he’s got the law in his hands, and he’s reading. He starts, “I’m not too clever, so I’m just gonna start at Genesis 1:1.” Ezra starts. “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty. Darkness covered the surface of the watery depths, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.” And they’re like, “Man, this is good, but I’m not quite sure what he’s saying.” So you’ve got people throughout the crowd with their backs to him, and they are interpreting and translating on the fly. That’s what’s going on. 30,000 people consuming God’s word all at once. There’s just some details to get you oriented to this passage. So let me restate the main thing I want you to take away from today, because all that’s fun. I could send that stuff to you. We could talk about it over coffee. Here’s what you need to learn today, though. God forms and fills His people. That’s what God does. God forms and fills His people. Look at the forms of worship in this passage that we saw. I’ve already taught about the fact that they were already gathering for a festival and a celebration, the atonement and the feast of booths. They were told about that way back in the book of Leviticus. They already knew to come together for that. But the dominant voice in this passage is not Ezra’s voice. It’s not the translator’s voice. It is the voice of God. It’s the Bible being read. The public reading of God’s word was forming this group of people. And this group of people I think is highly interesting. It was a multi-generational crowd. I think it would have looked a lot like our church right now. You would have had men, you would have had women, some of them a little more seasoned than the others. You would have had some youth, you would have had some young adults, you would have had some kids. You probably would have had a couple of babies strapped to mommas as well. That’s the type of gathering that’s here. God was starting to form this people and He was forming their worship through His word. Man, it just makes me think that our patterns of worship here at Sauldam Baptist Church need to continually be formed by God’s word. Our patterns of worship need to be formed as well. A couple of months ago, Donnie and I are hanging out over lunch. We get together about once a month to talk about worship stuff and just to catch up. And we began a conversation where we said, “Hey, what’s the purpose of our Sunday morning worship service? What are we gathering to do?” And we came up with something. I’m wordy. So what I said was, “I think Sunday mornings is meant to encourage and equip people that follow Jesus. And it’s meant to evangelize people that don’t follow Jesus for God’s glory.” He said, “Yeah, that’s good. I think we should just say grow. That’s the purpose of Sunday morning service.” And I appreciate Donnie’s a little more succinct wording there. Grow.

Well, here’s what this means for us. Donnie and I are experimenting. Okay. Undoubtedly, you’ve sensed a change or two with our services or with our church. And I’m not lost to that. We’re experimenting, but our determination is to make sure that what we are doing in our worship services is helping all of us grow in our relationship with Jesus. From the call to worship, the congregational prayer to kids here in our service, all of this is intentional and it’s not flippant for us. You know, you think about the call to worship. I was just, it really pressed that our services ought to begin with God’s Word being read over us. You know, in this passage, the people worship God, but it’s after God has spoken to them. That’s how it always is. God speaks to us and we respond with our worship back to Him. That’s why we do this call to worship.

We do the congregational prayer because I want to give our body a time to do something where we can all be talking with Jesus together. I fully believe the Holy Spirit is here with us. And I want to give our church the best opportunities possible for us to hear His voice together. And if I’m the only one talking all the time, I’m not convinced that’s the best way. So we pray and, you know, you look at this congregation that we see in Nehemiah chapter 8. It was, there’s kids involved. There were students involved along with the adults. And that’s why we’ve brought in the third through fifth graders because we believe you guys can be part of this. We believe you’ve got something to offer to the body. That’s the whole purpose of this thing.

You should hear me say, Donnie and I are experimenting. So if there is something that we are trying out, then man, call me on a Monday and say, “Hey, why’d you do this?” Or, “Hey, you know, why not do this?” I’m not married to anything we’re doing in the service. I’m married to Becca. Now we have some convictions about what we are going to do and what we’re not going to do. But Donnie and I promise to not be offended whenever there’s something we try that you don’t love. And we promise to not be too beholden to your approval whenever we try something that you do love. You know, these changes, they’re not flippant. They’re not arbitrary. We pray over these things. We discuss. We consider these things. I run things by Al and by the deacons. I told you a couple weeks ago, you only ever hear a third of any of my ideas because they usually don’t pass the Becca test at 9 p.m. anyway.

So, like, the desire is here that we would all grow in our relationship with Jesus. You know, for us, everything we do must be formed by God’s Word. Everything we do as a church, but also everything we do in our personal lives, our lives need to be formed by God’s Word. You know, Carter is going through a series with the students right now called The Seven Commands of Christ. If you’re a note taker, this might be good for you. I actually think they’re also in the sermon notes. Christ commanded a lot of things. Here’s just some of them. In Mark 1, He said, “You must repent and follow Me.” In Matthew 28, He says, “You must be baptized and make disciples.” In Matthew 6, He says, “You must pray to the Father.” In Matthew 22, He says, “You must love God fully and others sacrificially.” In Luke 22, He says, “You must celebrate the Lord’s Supper.” In Mark 12, He says, “You must give financially to the church.” God’s Word must form our lives.

So let’s take it a step deeper. There’s another set of commands in the New Testament called the one another commands, okay? The one Another command is where God is ruling how we interact with one another. All right? There’s probably 60 of them. I’ve drawn three. Again, if you’re taking notes, write this down. Read this later. Romans 12, verse 16. We’re taught to live in harmony with one another, which means I don’t get to determine the type of relationships I have with y’all. God has already told me if they’re not harmonious, it’s not right before Him. Or in James 5:16, where it says, confess your sin to one another, which means I don’t get to choose whether or not I confess my sin to somebody else in this church. I’m told to confess my sin. Galatians 6, verse 2. We’re commanded to carry one another’s burdens, which means I don’t get to choose whether or not I help you. I’m told, come alongside those that are burdened.

You see, God’s Word must shape everything about our lives. If God is in charge, then His Word gets the final say. That makes it uncomfortable for us. But God is after something deeper than our comfort or our convenience. He is after His glory and the good of our community. And when God’s Word is shaping us, we grow to enjoy those things as well. The question then is, how is God forming you? How is God’s Word shaping and forming us? Not only does God’s Word form His people, also God fills His people. Return back to the passage with me and just see, these people’s worship was filled with life. This was a dynamic gathering. I’ll just read the verbs to you if you didn’t catch them the first time. All the people listened attentively to Ezra reading. As Ezra opened the law, all the people stood up. After Ezra blessed the Lord, all the people lifted their hands and said, Amen, amen. All the people were weeping as they heard the words of the law being read. Finally, the people were instructed, Hey, this is a holy day, not a sad day. This is a holy day. So eat, drink, send and celebrate. Man, we’re great at that last one, right? Man, every time we get together, we eat and we drink and we send and we celebrate, right? That’s God’s desire is that our worship would be dynamic. Our gatherings as a body would be filled with His life. Amen.

You know, that’s why Becca and I, it’s why we raise our hands in worship. That’s why even when it’s hard for my emotions to believe the words, I still sing them out loud as if I can believe them with full confidence. Even when I don’t feel like it, I still do it because I believe that what I do physically helps direct my heart. And I believe that God is trying to fill us. When the people heard God’s word, they started mourning. They wept. Why do you think they wept? Yeah, I’m hearing a rumble. Why do you think they wept? Their sin. They recognized they didn’t live up to the standard that the holy God of the universe was calling them to. Man, this week as I’m preparing this message, it’s like God just like got in the office with me and just put His finger on my chest. And said, Jeremy Simmons, when was the last time you wept over your sin? I ask you, how about for you? When was the last time? I know in my life, nothing of eternal significance has ever happened when I’m also holding on to things God doesn’t want. And that’s true for us as a body as well. I know that our church is one that wants to accomplish incredible things for God. And we won’t be able to do those things while also tolerating and enjoying things that God doesn’t like.

However, it’s not just that God wants us to focus on our issues and our shortcomings. No, I believe, and this passage says, God’s ultimate desire for His people is that they would be filled with His joy. Look at verse 10 again with me. He, Ezra, says to the people, go and eat what is rich, drink what is sweet, and send portions to those who have nothing prepared since today is holy to our Lord. Do not grieve because the joy of the Lord is your strength. Man, if you are like me, when you read today’s holy to the Lord and you wonder, how am I supposed to live into that holiness? How do I apply that holiness? I might think today’s holy to the Lord, therefore, read my Bible all day, right? Today is holy to the Lord, therefore, don’t watch TV later. Anyone? Anyone with me on this? Today is holy to the Lord, therefore, fast and don’t eat any good food. No. What God says is today is holy to the Lord. Don’t grieve because the joy of the Lord is your strength. Joy. How can the joy of the Lord be our strength? How can the joy of God be the best way for us to express the holiness of God? Thank you for asking. Let me try to explain it for you.

All right. God. You see, God is the most joyful person in the entire universe. Do you see Him that way? Thank you. Do you also struggle to believe that though? Yes. How many of us think when God looks at us, He just kind of does this number? Or it’s not Him, but or even worse. How many of us do you think when God looks at us, He just says, this is not true. God is the most joyful person in the universe.

You see, true joy can’t come from any created thing. When stuff is used up, goes out, breaks down, or just loses its luster, the happiness we get from it wanes. True joy can’t come from anything that we see. It can’t come from inside of us. It must come from something outside of us. But here’s the deal. God, who is perfect in Himself, doesn’t have to rely on anything to give Him joy. No. God is like a nuclear reactor of joy. He is ever creating joy within Himself. And it just bubbles over into the universe.

Why else do you think we have such a mosaic and a ridiculous array of animals and fish down at the aquarium? You think God needed to create thousands of different types of fish? You think God needed to create hundreds or thousands of species of wildflowers that you and I may never even discover? How about this entire universe, all the galaxies and the solar systems we as humans will never, ever come in contact with that God sees from His throne? You think God needed to create that? I don’t think so. I think God was excited and was joyful and just said, let there be stuff. And it was beautiful. And it was wild. And it was incredible because God is joyful. He’s perfectly, fully joyful.

And God is so joyful. He even finds joy in someone like me. This is Zephaniah chapter 3 verse 17. The Lord is among you, a warrior who saves. He will rejoice over you with gladness. He will be quiet in His love. He will delight in you with singing. God delights in you. He delights in you. He especially delights in you. God delights in us. He delights in you. He has joy in you.

I want to speak to everybody in the room. Teenagers, students. Yes. Your parents, your coaches, your club leaders, other boys, other girls will not satisfy your heart. They’ll fail you. I failed others. I’ve been failed. But there is a God that has joy in you. You never have to change for God to have joy in you. God created you special in your mother’s womb. And He said, you are perfectly the way I want you to be. Just accept my love for you.

To the women in the room, whether you have been loved well by a husband or not, whether your kids always crush it on Mother’s Day, or you’ve never gotten to celebrate Mother’s Day, there is a God who has infinite delight in you that you don’t have to prove yourself to. You don’t have to make the perfect meal for. You don’t have to have the perfect home for. God delights in you. All right?

To the kids in the room, mom and dad and your friends will not satisfy you the way you want them to. I’m a dad. I know it. I disappoint my kids all the time. But God is so deeply in love with you that when He thinks about you, His heart sinks.

For the men in the room, we like to be tough, or at least some of us like to pretend we’re tough. But I think deep down, all of us are also wondering, have I proven myself or not? Have I accomplished enough? Am I respected enough? Here’s the thing. When God looks at you, He’s not concerned with any of that. When God looks at you, He says, I am perfectly satisfied in you. So even when there’s a boss that can’t recognize your work, or when there’s strife with your loved ones, or when you don’t feel respected by your kids, if you’ve got kids, know that there is a God who runs the universe, who looks at You and says, “Yeah, He is mine. That’s my boy. God delights in you, and He wants that joy that He has to fill up your heart.” If you don’t believe me, just read it on the screen. This is the words of Jesus in John chapter 15. Jesus says, “Hey, I’m about to be betrayed. I’m about to be arrested. I’m about to die for you. But don’t worry, I’m going to rise again. But hey, before all those things happen, I’m going to speak a few words to you.” And He says, “I have told you these things so that my joy may be in you and your joy may be complete.”

The joy of God, this nuclear reactor of self-creating, bubbling-over joy, can live inside of you. God wants you to have full joy. And when you step into that joy, that’s when you have strength as a follower of Jesus. We don’t have strength in ourselves. We don’t have strength in our government. We don’t have strength in our military or our accomplishments or our family networks or our financial assets or in these bodies. All those things break down and go away. God, however, is eternal. And His love for you is unending. And it is perfect. And it gets placed inside of your heart so that you can have love and joy.

You see, you were created to live with God in a perfect relationship of joy. You were made to be loved by your heavenly Father and to love Him and to love other people perfectly. You were made perfectly, at least very good. But one day that song of joy was broken. The harmony was disrupted. The chorus fell out of tune. Because instead of enjoying the voice of God and His joy that He sings over us, we listened to a different song. A song that said, “You aren’t enough. God is lying to you. And you’ve got to do things in order to be happy and complete.”

Now, we all know who that other singer was, right? Who was that? It was Satan. The evil one. The tempter. The one that wants to steal all good things. The one that wants to destroy your life. Satan came in with a different song, if I’m going to use this metaphor, and we listened to it instead. Yet God, in His joy and His song of joy, still is singing over us. Yet this time, it’s a different stanza. The first time it was, “I have made you great. Follow me and we will be good.” This time, the song is, “You’ve messed up, but I love you instead. Be redeemed and be saved by me. If only you would trust in my Son who has come to sing alongside you.”

So God makes this offer to all of us that we could have joy. Here’s the thing, the stuff of this world, people, your accomplishments, none of that gives you the joy that you think it will. Religion, devotion to God, none of that gives you the joy that you are craving. If it could, then after thousands of years of humanity, we would have discovered it by now. But like Martin Luther, way back in the 1500s, like the people of Nehemiah thousands of years ago, we today need to return to the song of joy and give our lives to God.

In fact, in a few minutes, I’m going to be standing down front, and if you want to have that joy, if you want to give your life to Jesus Christ to be made whole and be made complete, please come down front and let’s begin that conversation. Let me pray for you.

But God’s song is not just, “I will save you and I will forgive you.” God’s song also is, “I will return you to myself because one day the stuff of this world will go away as a new heaven and a new earth takes their place and we get to dwell with God forever in an unbroken song of living worship and living sacrifice to the one that loves you and delights in you.” That is heaven.

One of the students on yesterday when we were doing what I called stump the chump, but what Carter called ask the pastor, that one of them asked me, “Hey, when we get to heaven, will we like do fun stuff like ride go-carts and go fishing or are we only going to sing?” I was asking the same question when I was their age. I was asking that same question last week. Here’s what I believe in God’s original design. Everything was good. Which means singing to Him always sounded good out here like It does when I’m riding in the car by myself, you know, and singing to God would be the most fun thing in the universe. But also because all things are good in a new heaven and a new earth, everything that God allows there is going to be perfect, which means we can ride go carts and we can go fishing, whatever that means in a place without death. And that will also be worship to the Lord. We are going to a place of infinite joy. That’s what God wants for you. That’s what God wants to place inside of you.

Joy then is the sure sign of Jesus in your heart. That’s the sign. So the question is, do you live with joy? Would people describe you as a joyful person? Honestly. Or would people say you’re grumpy, angry, complaining, you’re all a whole host of things. Are you joyful? You know, there’s a reason that one of the fruits of the spirit is joy. That’s because it doesn’t come from us. The fruit of the flesh is obvious. Whenever I do whatever in the world I want to do with no regard to God or His influence, that’s when I bear the fruit of the flesh. It’s clear. I’m angry when I’m living in the flesh. I’m resentful. I’m jealous. I’m a whole host of other things. But when I’m yielding to God and His spirit is in me in an active way, that’s when I bear this fruit. And one of them is joy. The Holy Spirit gets a hold of you and He places joy inside of you.

See, like the people of Nehemiah’s day, we need God to fill us with His joy. We need Him to form us. Now the good news is, since the very beginning, God has been forming and filling His creation. You take it back to the very first chapters of Genesis. Creation itself, formed by God’s word and then filled by God’s word. You take humans. We are put together by God and we are filled with His life. God’s covenant people of the Old Testament, they were formed by Him. We call them Israel and then they were filled by Him as well. Christians today of the new covenant, you and me, all who place our trust in Jesus, we are reformed by God and we are filled with His Holy Spirit. His church, it is formed by His word and it is filled by Him as well. And new creation, our ultimate destiny for all who place their faith in Jesus right now, right now, right now is being formed by God and one day will be finally and fully filled by God and His worshipers as well. The question is, are you embracing His forming and His filling today?

Jesus taught us that too. John 15, I go back there, it says this in verse 5, “I am the vine, you are the branches. The one who remains in me and I in him produces much fruit because you could do some things without me.” Oh, that’s not what it said, is it? Oh, okay, sorry. “Because you could do a lot of good things without me.” That wasn’t it either. “Because you could do nothing without me.” If we’re not abiding in Jesus, we are not being formed by Him. And we’re not being filled by Him. There’s a lot of great things that we’re going to tempt in our lives. Man, may it be out of an overflow of our relationship with Jesus. May it be because God has led us to it. We are filled and formed by God as we remain in Jesus. You see, the people of Nehemiah of his day, sorry, were formed and filled by Him. They got to live in the joy that God gives. And God wants the same thing for us today.

So I want to make you an offer, an invitation, if you will. If you want your life to be formed and filled by God, just raise your hand. Okay. I’m betting a thousand, all right? So here’s my invitation. We call it scripture before screens. I got this from somebody else much smarter and much more godly than me. The challenge I give myself, the invitation I give myself every day is that I would spend time in scripture before I look at any screen. Here’s my invitation. I give myself 15 minutes every day this week. Take your physical Bible and read this and ask God to open it up to you for 15 minutes. Do this before you check the news, before you check social media, before you watch whatever you watch. And behold, the living God form and Fill your life. I promise you. Lord, I hope I’ve been faithful to what You want from me. I hope I have said for this church what You want them to hear. Now, Holy Spirit, may Your life fill us, please. Holy Spirit, if there’s anybody here that doesn’t know You, God, I pray that You would press in on them during this final song and they would come forward and just begin a conversation with me about what it means to love You and be loved by You. God, may we be a church that is filled with Your pure joy, please. May we be formed by Your word and filled with Your life. God, may You bear eternal consequence in the low country because of what You are doing here through Your word. God, would You start a mini reformation here? God, like You catalyzed in Germany and France and England, would You do the same here that would bear fruit for the next 500 years like we’re riding on today? Please, God, I know You can. I know You want to. May we please be submitted to You. May we please be receptive to You. Again, Holy Spirit, I beg anybody here that doesn’t know You, would You please bring them to the front? Thank You. Amen, Lord.