What Is ‘Glorified Joy’ and Can I Get It?
00:00:00.000 | [music]
00:00:05.000 | Well, we close out the Pastors Conference today, Wednesday, downtown at the Minneapolis Convention Center.
00:00:10.000 | And this conference has proven to be a valuable platform for us to gather and to talk about and think about
00:00:15.000 | what it means to live and minister in a post-Christian culture that seems to grow more and more openly hostile
00:00:22.000 | to the Gospel and more and more intolerant of Christian views.
00:00:26.000 | On this final day, we will hear from missionary Tim Kazee.
00:00:30.000 | I'm grateful for his dispatches from the front DVDs.
00:00:34.000 | I know many of you have seen those. If you haven't, you should check them out.
00:00:37.000 | And I cannot wait for his message this morning.
00:00:40.000 | And then the conference ends with a speaker panel with John Piper, Jason Meyer, Leont Krump, and Kazee.
00:00:47.000 | Be sure to follow the Wednesday morning schedule and watch the live stream at DesiringGod.org/live.
00:00:54.000 | Today on the podcast, we look at a dynamic of sin that's very important.
00:00:59.000 | Sin is kinetic. It is emotional. It moves and changes us in fundamental ways, as we will see.
00:01:07.000 | But more importantly, we must understand that joy, glorified joy that is unspeakably great, is also kinetic.
00:01:14.000 | It also changes us.
00:01:16.000 | So where do we get such a joy, and how is that joy contrasted with the sorrows of this world?
00:01:22.000 | Here's a clip from a recent John Piper sermon to explain.
00:01:26.000 | The question is simply, so how does that connect to glory?
00:01:32.000 | Because you're saying there's a connection between joy that is glory-fed and sorrow or grief that is gloom-fed.
00:01:43.000 | So where are you seeing that in 1 Peter?
00:01:46.000 | And that comes now as we drop down to verse 8.
00:01:50.000 | "Though you have not seen Him," Jesus.
00:01:54.000 | Isn't it interesting? This is written in the first century to people in Asia, Cappadocia, Bithynia,
00:02:01.000 | who've never ever seen Jesus just like you.
00:02:05.000 | So it was already in the first century. He's gone back to heaven, and now the challenge is faced.
00:02:10.000 | People are getting converted to a person they cannot see.
00:02:16.000 | "Though you have not seen Him, you love Him.
00:02:20.000 | Though you do not now see Him, you believe in Him and rejoice," here it comes,
00:02:27.000 | "rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory."
00:02:37.000 | What does that mean?
00:02:39.000 | The literal translation would be, "You rejoice in Him with inexpressible."
00:02:48.000 | You can't put it into words.
00:02:50.000 | We feel that so often with genuine, authentic, deep emotions.
00:02:55.000 | Emotion and language are not of the same thing.
00:02:59.000 | So to translate one to the other, stuff gets lost.
00:03:04.000 | You feel profound love for somebody, and you're trying to say it,
00:03:09.000 | and just, "That's totally inadequate, what I just said."
00:03:13.000 | Or you feel a grief, and somebody says, "What's wrong?"
00:03:16.000 | And you can't, there's no words. Words won't work.
00:03:19.000 | That's what it means when it says, "inexpressible."
00:03:23.000 | This is a joy that is inexpressible, and then comes the key phrase,
00:03:28.000 | literally, "glorified."
00:03:32.000 | What does it mean to call Christian joy in Jesus glorified?
00:03:41.000 | Glorified joy.
00:03:43.000 | Now, I mean, maybe you've heard other portions of the New Testament
00:03:49.000 | that say, "If we suffer with Him, we shall be glorified with Him,"
00:03:54.000 | Romans 8, 17.
00:03:56.000 | So someday, Christ is coming back, and we're going to be so caught up
00:04:00.000 | into His glorious person that we get changed.
00:04:03.000 | All our sins go away, we get a new body, we're going to shine like the sun
00:04:07.000 | in the kingdom of our Father. I get that. I get glorified that way.
00:04:13.000 | But what's this? This is like right now, in a not-yet-saved world,
00:04:21.000 | while I'm being grieved by various trials, verse 6,
00:04:26.000 | I rejoice in Him with glorified, inexpressible joy? What's that?
00:04:33.000 | And I think you know what that is by analogy.
00:04:41.000 | When you are thrilled with something or someone,
00:04:48.000 | that thing shapes the joy, shapes the person having the joy,
00:04:56.000 | which is why having joy in sin is so awful, because it makes you like it.
00:05:03.000 | It makes you like it.
00:05:06.000 | So if you are totally given over to raunchy pornography,
00:05:10.000 | you will become a raunchy person, and your joy will be so defiled
00:05:16.000 | and so contaminated, you can hardly look on anything beautiful anymore
00:05:21.000 | and feel a pure joy, a glorified joy.
00:05:25.000 | But if you are taken up with beautiful things, this is just analogy,
00:05:29.000 | just pick what makes you happy in this world right now for the analogy.
00:05:33.000 | The most beautiful thing you can think of, the most righteous and good
00:05:37.000 | and holy thing that makes you happy, if you dwell on that and you linger on that
00:05:42.000 | and you rejoice in it, you become like that. You do.
00:05:45.000 | You become a sweeter, kinder, more holy, more beautiful, more wonderful person
00:05:50.000 | because all of your heart is going into that beautiful thing,
00:05:54.000 | and it's coming into you, and it's shaping your joy.
00:05:58.000 | So my understanding of what that means when it says glorified joy now
00:06:03.000 | is that as you focus on the glory of Christ, the beauty of Christ,
00:06:07.000 | the wonder of Christ, and all that He's done in the gospel,
00:06:12.000 | your joy becomes like that. It's a glorified joy.
00:06:18.000 | It participates in, it gets shaped by that.
00:06:22.000 | And one of the reasons I feel confirmed in that understanding
00:06:26.000 | is because of what Jesus said about His own joy.
00:06:30.000 | This is John 15, 11.
00:06:33.000 | "These things I have spoken to you, that my joy,"
00:06:39.000 | this is Jesus talking, "that my joy may be in you,
00:06:46.000 | and your joy may be full."
00:06:49.000 | Now, is that a different joy than 1 Peter 1.8? I doubt it.
00:06:54.000 | 1 Peter 1.8, it's called a glorified joy, and Jesus says,
00:07:00.000 | "I'm going to give you my joy."
00:07:05.000 | And Jesus' joy is primarily in the Father, and in the glory of the Father.
00:07:11.000 | His bread is to do the will of the Father, and therefore,
00:07:15.000 | as we rejoice in Jesus, Jesus' joy becomes our joy.
00:07:21.000 | His joy shapes our joy.
00:07:24.000 | You may be sitting there right now feeling like,
00:07:26.000 | "This emotional talk about joy is just so far different
00:07:30.000 | from anything I've experienced.
00:07:32.000 | I doubt that I'll ever be able to get in there."
00:07:35.000 | Don't believe that.
00:07:37.000 | That's not God talking in your head.
00:07:41.000 | That's Satan talking.
00:07:43.000 | You can't have that.
00:07:45.000 | You've been too low, too dirty.
00:07:47.000 | My joys are just grungy joys, and so I won't ever be able to go there
00:07:53.000 | where he's talking about.
00:07:55.000 | That's not true, and the reason it's not true is because Jesus does the miracle.
00:07:59.000 | You start focusing on Jesus and the gospel, something happens in here.
00:08:03.000 | You don't have any control over it.
00:08:05.000 | You don't.
00:08:06.000 | He's taken over.
00:08:07.000 | He's going to make you able to be happy in things a year ago
00:08:13.000 | you never thought you could ever be happy with.
00:08:17.000 | Yes, he will.
00:08:19.000 | So my first answer to the question, "How in the world can sorrowful
00:08:26.000 | yet always rejoicing be, how can this joy be so durable that it survives
00:08:31.000 | all the sorrow?" is that it is a joy that is in the glory of Christ
00:08:38.000 | or the glory of God, and is being shaped by that glory, made by that glory,
00:08:44.000 | and participating in that glory, and is therefore unshakable
00:08:48.000 | because the glory of God is the most glorious, powerful, durable,
00:08:54.000 | beautiful, lasting reality in the universe.
00:08:58.000 | Amen. Yes, treasure that truth and memorize 1 Peter 1.8
00:09:04.000 | and tattoo it to your forearm if you need to.
00:09:07.000 | This clip was from John Piper's sermon on December 29, 2015,
00:09:11.000 | titled "One Passion," and delivered at the Campus Outreach 2015
00:09:15.000 | New Year's Conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
00:09:17.000 | You can find the full message, of course, on our site.
00:09:20.000 | And for more information about the podcast or to go to our most recent
00:09:24.000 | or our most popular episodes, go to our online home
00:09:27.000 | at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.
00:09:31.000 | Well, if we have the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives in Christ,
00:09:36.000 | which we do, do we really need Bible teachers and preachers
00:09:39.000 | to help us understand the Bible itself?
00:09:42.000 | This is a perennial question we get all the time, and it's a question
00:09:46.000 | I will serve up to John Piper tomorrow when he returns to join us.
00:09:49.000 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.
00:09:53.000 | We'll see you tomorrow.
00:09:55.000 | [Silence]
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