I recently attended a mega-conference for Christians in Media, and among the hundreds of booths included a huge display of costumes and props from a current TV show based on the life of Christ. It was quite fascinating. All the costumes and the props and the set pieces were scattered all throughout this open walk-through display.

It really pulled you into first-century Jerusalem, giving you a little tangible taste of what life was like in the time of Christ. After walking through it, it made me wonder, and I think it makes a lot of people wonder, wouldn't it have been better to have lived in a generation that could have seen Christ with our own eyes, to know him face-to-face?

I think this is one reason why we're attracted to television shows and movies about his life, because for us, we're stuck many years after his earthly ministry with just a written account of his life in the Gospels. So is that to our disadvantage? With a very definitive no. Pastor John explains why believers today are not at a disadvantage, and he does so by preaching from a great text on this very topic, 1 Peter 1, verses 8 and 9.

Here he is in 1993, first talking about the nature of joy. Here's Pastor John. You rejoice in this faith and love. You rejoice with a joy that is unable to be expressed, and which is literally, the word is glorified, translated "full of glory" here in NASB. Now, I think the way we have defined joy goes a long way to helping us understand why it's inexpressible and why it is glorified.

I'll ask this question to make the connection for you. Where does joy get its moral quality? Not just its intensity. We're talking about quality here. Inexpressible and glorified. Not just big, not just strong. There can be a lot of strong emotions without Jesus. We're talking here a joy that is not only very great, but it has a glory dimension to it.

It's got glory on it, in it, somehow. Where does joy, let's ask the general question, where does joy, your joy, get its moral dimension? And the answer to that question, I believe, is your joy gets its moral quality from what you are enjoying. So, if you enjoy dirty jokes, you've got dirty joy and a dirty heart.

If you enjoy bathroom language, that really makes you laugh. Or lewd pictures, that really makes you happy. You have a dirty heart and dirty joy. Joy gets its moral quality from what you enjoy. Or if you enjoy cruelty and arrogance and revenge, and there are a lot of movies and TV programs that cultivate that kind of joy to get you to be real happy in the revenge.

"Oh, that felt good!" That's dirty. That's the kind of heart, your heart will be shaped, you become what you crave. Where you get your joy, you get your moral dimension to joy. Or if you just love things, if you find your life, your joy increasingly happy in more and more material things, you know what happens inside?

You die. Your heart was made for God and love and faith and joy, and if you find this computer just so satisfies me, "I have tasted that. Wow! Computers are incredible! Dan Lane got me this new America Online thing, which connects you up with 10 million billboards and stuff.

It is absolutely addicting, at least for a week or two. It is. There is great danger from, I mean, you just name it, there are 10,000 material things in the world that can so enamor you and capture you, and you come to the end of the day off at the screen of this computer, and say, "I'm dead!

I'm dead! Deader than I was when I started this thing. I'm smaller, I'm drier. What have I done?" And some people have spent their whole lives like that, and they will say that on their deathbed, unless they're so dead they can't feel it. We're made for joy and Christ and relationship and love and the big unseen realities.

So my answer to the question, "Where does joy get its moral component?" It gets its moral component from the thing enjoyed. Now back to where we are. Christian joy, I would argue then, is inexpressible and glorified because the Christ who is precious to us is inexpressibly precious, and the Christ who is reliable to us is inexpressibly reliable, and even though we never attain to the maximum joy we will have someday in this life, nevertheless our joy is hooked in, it's tied in to an inexpressible treasure, Jesus.

He is inexpressibly glorious. He is inexpressibly beautiful and reliable and precious, and if your joy is in Him, that preciousness, that inexpressibility comes from the thing enjoyed into you, and your joy leaps up from time to time with inexpressibility. And the same thing now with glory. I think he is saying that in the process of loving and believing and rejoicing, the goal of that, namely salvation, is happening in part, in measure now, namely the glory of the one we love is precious and the one we trust is reliable is streaming back through our joy into our hearts, and our joy is in measure right now, glorious.

It partakes in glory because you always participate in what you enjoy. You become what you crave in large measure. Final question, how can all of this happen when we don't see Him? Twice he says that. Isn't that interesting? So you have not seen Him, you love Him, and now though you do not see Him, believing, you rejoice in Him.

Why does he stress that twice? Evidently some people were saying something like, "But we've never seen Him." You saw Him, Peter. Sure, you can have that kind of joy, but we've never seen Him. Some people, I mean obviously most weren't, because he's saying you are rejoicing without seeing Him.

Now how? Surely the answer is there is a seeing with the heart that is not a seeing with the eyes that I want to argue this morning in closing is more important than seeing with the eyes. More important than seeing with the eyes is seeing with the heart. I'll try to persuade you of that in these last few minutes.

Paul said that his mission to unreached peoples in Romans 15-20 was this. Listen to this. These are people now out there in the Roman Empire who like us have never seen Jesus. I aspire to preach the gospel not where Christ was already named, but as it is written, "They who had no news shall see Him, and they who have not heard shall understand." The preaching of the gospel is the means by which those who have never seen Christ see Christ in the gospel.

Here's another way of saying it that Paul has in 2 Corinthians 4-6. The God who said, "Light shall shine out of darkness," has shone into our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. In your heart, the light of God goes on and you see His glory in Christ's face.

That's the moral. There were hundreds and hundreds of people who saw Jesus during His lifetime on the earth who did not see Him. They didn't see Him. They were blanked out. They were totally confused. They were totally adrift. They didn't know who this Jewish carpenter rabbi was. He made no sense to them whatsoever, and they saw Him hour after hour after hour.

Is that valuable? That sends to hell. Don't exalt seeing with the eyes. Don't begrudge that you live in the 20th century with only a Bible. Now, listen carefully now. We're almost done, and this is really crucial. We were at a Michael Card concert on Friday night, and he sings this song about childlikeness that captures this paradox of seeing and not seeing.

"To hear with my heart, to see with my soul, to be guided by a hand I cannot hold, to trust in a way I cannot see." That's what faith must be. There is a seeing with soul, or the heart, that is not a seeing with the eyes. And it happens through the Word of God in the Gospel, and it happens through the reading of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

When you read those Gospels - and oh, I commend the Gospels to you - read the Gospels day in and day out. They are the living Christ to you. Read them with an openness to Christ, and you will see Him better than Nicodemus saw Him, better than the Syrophoenician woman saw Him, better than the centurion saw Him, better than the widow of Nain saw Him, better than the thief on the cross saw Him, better than the thronging crowds who got snatches and pieces saw Him.

Think about this in closing. Think. The Gospels are better than being there. The Gospels are better than being there. Why? In the Gospels, you are welcomed into the inner circle where you never could have gone with the apostles had you been there. In the Gospels, you can go with Him to Gethsemane where you couldn't have gone.

In the Gospels, you go to Him with the trial where you couldn't have gone. In the Gospels, you go all the way through the crucifixion. In the Gospels, you go in and out of the tomb with Him. In the Gospels, you are with Him with every meeting after the resurrection.

In the Gospels, you hear whole sermons, not just little snatches and pieces because you were way back there in the back of the crowd and there's a baby crying beside you and you couldn't figure out what was going on up there and you only heard, "Blessed are the blablabla." What was that?

And you couldn't hear it. You got the whole thing. And not only do you have the whole big sermons and big discourses, you've got them with God-inspired contexts to give them interpretations which those poor peasants didn't have a clue about. They didn't know what was going on. You see Him in His freedom from anxiety as He has no place to lay His head.

You see His courage in the face of opposition. You see His unanswerable wisdom when He's peppered with questions. You see Him honoring women and His tenderness with children and His compassion towards lepers and His meekness in suffering and His patience with Peter and His tears over Jerusalem and His blessing on those who cursed Him and His heart for the nations and His love for the glory of God and His simplicity and His devotion and His power to still storms and heal sicknesses and drive out demons.

They didn't have a clue compared to what you have. The Gospels are better than being there. If the Holy Spirit, who was needed just as much in that day as now, will simply open your eyes to see the glory on His face. Incredible clip. That is from John Piper's sermon on November 14, 1993, titled "True Christianity, Inexpressible Joy in the Invisible Christ." A sermon that articulates the beautiful promises of 1 Peter 1, verses 8 and 9.

It's great text. Thanks for listening to today's clip. Most of them are now crowdsourced. This is one of my favorites. I'm personally sharing this one with you, but if you have one, tell us what bits of Piper's sermons changed your life. And we will share that clip with the APJ audience.

If you've got one, email me. Give me your name, your hometown, the sermon title, the timestamp of where the clip happens in the audio, and tell me how it impacted you. Put the word "clip" in the subject line of an email and send it to me at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. That's an email address, askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.

Well, a lot of our emails come from Christians who are feeling extra pressure in life. And that's true. Next up, in an email from a young mom, "Are these new pressures of motherhood making her more holy or more unholy? And how can we tell which direction the pressures in life are pushing us, towards holiness or away from it?" This is a huge question that we all face.

I'm your host Tony Reinke. We are rejoined in studio with Pastor John for that on Friday. We'll see you then. John John Page 9 of 9 Page 9 of 9 Page 9 of 9 Page 9 of 9 Page 9 of 9 Page 9 of 9