Well, we close out the Pastors Conference today, Wednesday, downtown at the Minneapolis Convention Center. And this conference has proven to be a valuable platform for us to gather and to talk about and think about what it means to live and minister in a post-Christian culture that seems to grow more and more openly hostile to the Gospel and more and more intolerant of Christian views.

On this final day, we will hear from missionary Tim Kazee. I'm grateful for his dispatches from the front DVDs. I know many of you have seen those. If you haven't, you should check them out. And I cannot wait for his message this morning. And then the conference ends with a speaker panel with John Piper, Jason Meyer, Leont Krump, and Kazee.

Be sure to follow the Wednesday morning schedule and watch the live stream at DesiringGod.org/live. Today on the podcast, we look at a dynamic of sin that's very important. Sin is kinetic. It is emotional. It moves and changes us in fundamental ways, as we will see. But more importantly, we must understand that joy, glorified joy that is unspeakably great, is also kinetic.

It also changes us. So where do we get such a joy, and how is that joy contrasted with the sorrows of this world? Here's a clip from a recent John Piper sermon to explain. The question is simply, so how does that connect to glory? Because you're saying there's a connection between joy that is glory-fed and sorrow or grief that is gloom-fed.

So where are you seeing that in 1 Peter? And that comes now as we drop down to verse 8. "Though you have not seen Him," Jesus. Isn't it interesting? This is written in the first century to people in Asia, Cappadocia, Bithynia, who've never ever seen Jesus just like you.

So it was already in the first century. He's gone back to heaven, and now the challenge is faced. People are getting converted to a person they cannot see. "Though you have not seen Him, you love Him. Though you do not now see Him, you believe in Him and rejoice," here it comes, "rejoice with joy that is inexpressible and filled with glory." What does that mean?

The literal translation would be, "You rejoice in Him with inexpressible." You can't put it into words. We feel that so often with genuine, authentic, deep emotions. Emotion and language are not of the same thing. So to translate one to the other, stuff gets lost. You feel profound love for somebody, and you're trying to say it, and just, "That's totally inadequate, what I just said." Or you feel a grief, and somebody says, "What's wrong?" And you can't, there's no words.

Words won't work. That's what it means when it says, "inexpressible." This is a joy that is inexpressible, and then comes the key phrase, literally, "glorified." What does it mean to call Christian joy in Jesus glorified? Glorified joy. Now, I mean, maybe you've heard other portions of the New Testament that say, "If we suffer with Him, we shall be glorified with Him," Romans 8, 17.

So someday, Christ is coming back, and we're going to be so caught up into His glorious person that we get changed. All our sins go away, we get a new body, we're going to shine like the sun in the kingdom of our Father. I get that. I get glorified that way.

But what's this? This is like right now, in a not-yet-saved world, while I'm being grieved by various trials, verse 6, I rejoice in Him with glorified, inexpressible joy? What's that? And I think you know what that is by analogy. When you are thrilled with something or someone, that thing shapes the joy, shapes the person having the joy, which is why having joy in sin is so awful, because it makes you like it.

It makes you like it. So if you are totally given over to raunchy pornography, you will become a raunchy person, and your joy will be so defiled and so contaminated, you can hardly look on anything beautiful anymore and feel a pure joy, a glorified joy. But if you are taken up with beautiful things, this is just analogy, just pick what makes you happy in this world right now for the analogy.

The most beautiful thing you can think of, the most righteous and good and holy thing that makes you happy, if you dwell on that and you linger on that and you rejoice in it, you become like that. You do. You become a sweeter, kinder, more holy, more beautiful, more wonderful person because all of your heart is going into that beautiful thing, and it's coming into you, and it's shaping your joy.

So my understanding of what that means when it says glorified joy now is that as you focus on the glory of Christ, the beauty of Christ, the wonder of Christ, and all that He's done in the gospel, your joy becomes like that. It's a glorified joy. It participates in, it gets shaped by that.

And one of the reasons I feel confirmed in that understanding is because of what Jesus said about His own joy. This is John 15, 11. "These things I have spoken to you, that my joy," this is Jesus talking, "that my joy may be in you, and your joy may be full." Now, is that a different joy than 1 Peter 1.8?

I doubt it. 1 Peter 1.8, it's called a glorified joy, and Jesus says, "I'm going to give you my joy." And Jesus' joy is primarily in the Father, and in the glory of the Father. His bread is to do the will of the Father, and therefore, as we rejoice in Jesus, Jesus' joy becomes our joy.

His joy shapes our joy. You may be sitting there right now feeling like, "This emotional talk about joy is just so far different from anything I've experienced. I doubt that I'll ever be able to get in there." Don't believe that. That's not God talking in your head. That's Satan talking.

You can't have that. You've been too low, too dirty. My joys are just grungy joys, and so I won't ever be able to go there where he's talking about. That's not true, and the reason it's not true is because Jesus does the miracle. You start focusing on Jesus and the gospel, something happens in here.

You don't have any control over it. You don't. He's taken over. He's going to make you able to be happy in things a year ago you never thought you could ever be happy with. Yes, he will. So my first answer to the question, "How in the world can sorrowful yet always rejoicing be, how can this joy be so durable that it survives all the sorrow?" is that it is a joy that is in the glory of Christ or the glory of God, and is being shaped by that glory, made by that glory, and participating in that glory, and is therefore unshakable because the glory of God is the most glorious, powerful, durable, beautiful, lasting reality in the universe.

Amen. Yes, treasure that truth and memorize 1 Peter 1.8 and tattoo it to your forearm if you need to. This clip was from John Piper's sermon on December 29, 2015, titled "One Passion," and delivered at the Campus Outreach 2015 New Year's Conference in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. You can find the full message, of course, on our site.

And for more information about the podcast or to go to our most recent or our most popular episodes, go to our online home at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. Well, if we have the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives in Christ, which we do, do we really need Bible teachers and preachers to help us understand the Bible itself?

This is a perennial question we get all the time, and it's a question I will serve up to John Piper tomorrow when he returns to join us. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast. We'll see you tomorrow.