JOY IS BOTH VERTICAL AND HORIZONTAL

: Good morning everyone! Hope you’ve had a good week and even if you haven’t, we’re still glad you’re here. This is a place for the happy and the hurting, the thriving and the struggling and everything in between. If you’re a new with us today, my name is Nic Cook. As we get ready to jump back into week 2 of our SERIES: Choosing Joy. Last week we talked about how joy in our hearts starts with our minds. Change your thoughts, change your emotions, change your behavior. And today we’re talking about how experiencing joy is not just vertical with focusing our thoughts on God. It’s also horizontal. This morning we’re going to see how the…[2]

Bible ties our joy to relationships with others. If we hope to experience joy, we will have to look for it in community. So, I’d like to encourage you to open up your bibles to [3][Philippians chapter 1:3-11] For the rest of this series I’m not going to be putting up the scriptures on the screen because we want to be a church that opens our bibles. We want to be comfortable using this tool together so that when we’re apart, we are capable of opening it and hearing from God throughout the week as well. Let’s pray and then we’ll dig into God’s word to see what he has to say about joy and community. Let’s pray!

I’m gonna start out with an incredibly cheesy acronym. However, I know that it works because it’s been stuck in my head. You know how you have joy? [4]It comes from putting JESUS first, then OTHERS, then YOURSELF. See? I told you it was cheesy, but it’s helpful. I think that too often we lack joy in our lives because we focus on ourselves, our dreams, our desires first. Like we said last week, we have to take our focus off ourselves and put it on Jesus, on his love for us and who he says we are, and on his plans instead of our own. Changing our thoughts from self to Jesus was the first step. But step two is to focus on others. Paul sets the example for us in his own thoughts. He starts with prayer  to God, focusing on God, and then in his thoughts he turns towards others and the church. He says in verses 3-5 [5]“³ Every time I think of you, I give thanks to my God.⁴ Whenever I pray, I make my requests for all of you with joy,⁵ for you have been my partners in spreading the Good News about Christ from the time you first heard it until now.” Paul calls the Christians in Philippi “partners in spreading the good news about Christ”. That word partners in the original language is “Koinonia.” It’s sometimes translated as fellowship. The best meaning of it is “sharing of lives, resources, and purpose.” It means sharing who we are, good and bad, with people who love and accept us anyway. It means sharing what I have with those who need it. It means sharing suffering and joy together. [6]

FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING: You guys know I’m a huge Lord of the rings fan. I love it like I love chipotle. So, in the book there is something called the fellowship of the ring. It’s a group of people who are brought together from every kind of background. Furry footed gentle hobbits, a gruff axe-weilding dwarf, a bow wielding elf with hair that I’m jealous of, a wizard, and a couple of men, one of which is a king. They decide to band together for the purpose of saving the world. They go through hardships, they fight together, and they end up with a deep and abiding love for one another. This is a perfect example of fellowship. They are brought together, they commit to each other and their purpose, and they end up loving and being willing to sacrifice for each other. You see this a lot also in military movies like Band of Brothers. [7]Every great movie is an echo of this theme because it’s God’s intention for humanity to find their place in his family and for them to do life together and live together as part of his mission. Fellowship, Partnership, sharing of lives, resources, and purpose. Paul says, I have joy because you have shared your lives with me! We’re sharing in suffering together. We’re part of God’s mission to save the world together! Here’s my main point this morning.. [8]

• JOY IS CONNECTED TO CHRIST AND HIS COMMUNITY! When Paul thinks about the Church, he thinks about all they went through together. He thinks about meeting the women praying and how they responded to the life changing news that Jesus is God and Savior. He remembers baptizing them. He thinks about the young girl whose life was so tragic, who was tormented by demons, who was exploited by men, and how she was set free. How her life was such a powerful example of how God loves and sets us free from the things that destroy and enslave us. He thinks about how even though he ended up in jail for helping that girl, that God used that experience to save the jailer and his family. As he baptized the jailer and his family he got to see them set free from the prison of death. Paul sacrificed so much for Jesus because Jesus sacrificed so much for him. Because of Jesus sending Paul, these people were changed. Paul’s life and theirs were bound together by Jesus. We find out that these people in turn sacrificed for Paul because of the sacrifice of Jesus. Most of them weren’t financially well off, they were fairly poor. Yet we hear this in [9-10][Phil. 4:14-18] Paul says you have been financially supporting me so that I can devote my time to telling people about Jesus. You’re worshipping Jesus with your wallets! You’re building the Kingdom through your coins, Making Jesus known with money! You get the point. There are Christian brothers and sisters you’ve never met because you gave so generously. Remember, Paul is in prison. He doesn’t have a job or a savings account. Jail then isn’t like it is now. You get fed no matter what. In ancient prisons, you got fed if you could pay for it. So, the church sent Paul a man named Epaphroditus who again brought a financial gift. Can you now see why Paul is so thankful when he prays and remembers these people? Whether they have been with him, the whole time, the gospel has linked their lives together. They’re thinking about Paul continually and Paul is thinking about them continually. They’re doing gospel work together, even though they are separated. This is what the church is all about. Loved by Jesus, Loving each other like Jesus, and showing the love of Jesus to the world. [11]
  • If joy is connected to Christ and his community, then how do we have that kind of experience here and now?How do we know the kind of joy that comes from being in that kind of deep committed community together? Let’s be honest here. Christian community is a mixed bag of good and hard. The letter that Paul writes to the church in Philippians is full of joy and love and it’s obvious there is a lot of affection for each other. Then you have the letters to the Church and Christians in Corinth, called the book of Corinthians, and it’s completely different. That Church is full of pride and fighting. There is division and moral issues galore. If our greatest stories show the longing of the human heart for community, and if quarantine has taught us anything is that we need it more than we thought we did, then how do we become part of a community that brings such joy to us and each other? Paul gives us some practical instruction here…

THE GOSPEL & JESUS CHRIST: [12]In chapter 1 alone, Paul mentions the gospel 6 times. He mentions Jesus or Jesus Christ 13 times. That means out of 30 verses, every 5 sentences he says good news, and almost every other verse he says Jesus Christ. Paul is obsessed with getting the church to focus on the news of who Jesus is and what he came to do. We never get past the good news! No matter how long you have followed Jesus, you never get past the basics. Each day we have to wake up and remind ourselves of the Gospel. God created and designed this beautiful world and made it good and perfect and gave it to us as a gift. We are loved and bear his image. He created us to be his friends and companions and fellow workers to make this world even more abundant. He gave us a choice to choose him, trust him, and love him in return. We chose to rebel. We want to be our own God’s; we want to be in control. We want him to serve us instead of the other way around. That’s why this world is as it is today. That’s why my next-door neighbor who works for homeland security had to go to Portland to deal with rioting. That’s why the news is full of rioting. Because sinful broken human beings are fighting for power and control. We can’t fix this world on our own power or create joyful loving human community on our own. That’s why we need Jesus. Our hearts are bent towards evil and we deserved punishment. Instead, Jesus took our punishment on the cross. So, when we give our lives to Jesus we allow him to kill the old selfish us and give us new hearts that want to follow instead of lead. We are given hearts that are able to learn to serve instead of being served. [13]If we want Joyful Christian Community, we have to start with joy in the Christ who saves us even though we didn’t deserve it. Then we can focus on loving others the way that Christ has loved us. But love isn’t easy, it has to be PRACTICED. We see from both Paul and the Philippian Christians that we need to…[14]

• FOCUS ON OTHERS MENTALLY: Out of sight didn’t mean out of mind. The Christians in Philippi had heard that Paul was in prison and they were thinking about how they could help him. They knew he would need money to make sure that his needs were met so they collected money to make sure he had enough to eat as well as to buy things he needed to continue to do the ministry God had called him to. The did this even though they themselves did not have much money. They knew he would need to hear from friends. So, they sent the money with a man named Epaphroditus who could come and encourage Paul personally. They wanted someone there with him in his struggle. I saw a post from someone a couple months back that said we need help relearning…
  • HOW TO PRACTICALLY SHOW PEOPLE WE’RE THINKING ABOUT THEM: They said when someone has a death in the family, often times we don’t know what to do. So we send a text saying “I’m praying for you, let me know if you need anything.” No one ever responds back by saying, You know I could use… They’re usually overwhelmed and unsure of what they need. This person said we need to relearn simply going over to people’s houses and sitting with them, bringing them food, mowing their yard, or asking to take their kids for a few hours, without them asking. Those are the things that show we’re giving thought to the situation that people are in. How would we want people to respond to us if we were in that same situation, and then doing it. Man, I was so convicted by that! Good thoughts and support over text is a good start, but really focusing mentally on what can show people will love them is so much more powerful! We can focus mentally on the needs of other, but Paul says he is focused on his brothers and sisters emotionally as well. [15]
• FOCUS ON OTHERS EMOTIONALLY: In [16-17][Phil. 1:7-8] Paul talks about how his holds them all in his heart and yearns to be with them with the affection of Christ. I noticed something for the first time in this passage this week. Paul says it’s right for me to feel this way about “you all”. In fact he uses the phrase “you all” nine times in this letter. So Paul has deep affection for Who? “All” of them! Let me ask, when you think about your Christian brothers and sisters, do you love them “all”? Or are there Christian brothers and sisters that you simply tolerate? Love often starts with a decision to love someone, and then grows into an emotion. You can’t fake love for someone. It has to be genuine. But you can choose to love someone first and think about how to meet their needs. What ends up happening is that by consciously choosing to love someone, then choosing to serve them, we often end up loving them with our emotions. Who is the person that God is calling you to consciously choose to love, then to serve?
  • Often it is hard to love someone who has hurt you, especially in the church. Yet we are called to forgive others as we have been forgiven by Christ. Paul told the church in Corinth “love keeps no record of wrongs.” Is there someone who you have mentally kept a tally of the times that they have hurt you? Maybe it’s time to take a look at the times we have hurt God, see that he took that list and nailed it to the cross, and then hand God our list and let him nail it to the cross as well. Again, this takes supernatural power to make happen. We are not naturally inclined to think about others, or to love others, especially when we’ve been hurt. To do any of these things well we need to…
• FOCUS ON OTHERS PRAYERFULLY: [18]This entire section of scripture is Paul talking about how he prays for them all the time. Paul is doing something called intercession, he is personally taking the lives and needs of others to God. In the old testament the high priest would wear something called an ephod, it was a gold chest plate with twelve stones, each stone representing a group of God’s people. These people were literally on the priests heart as he prayed to God. A pastor named Warren Weirsbe said it beautifully when he wrote “perhaps the deepest Christian fellowship and joy we can experience in this life is at the throne of grace, praying with and for one another.” If we ever have any hope of being full of joy, or experiencing the joy of Christian community, we have to be a people who pray for people! Who are you praying for? How often are you praying for them? So, as we end, let’s get real practical. [19]

FIRST STEPS: First of all, if you’re exploring Christianity, you need to know that the joy you are looking for is hardwired inside you. God wants you to seek joy! But he has made this world so that true joy is only found by being in a relationship with him. It’s the joy of knowing you are loved. It’s the joy of knowing you are forgiven no matter how far you’ve run or how broken you feel. It’s the joy of knowing that God will be with you in the hardest of circumstances. It’s the joy of knowing that God will complete what he has started and that he’s coming back to make this world right again. If you’d like to know more about how to give your life to Jesus we’d love to talk to you more…

NEXT STEPS: For those who have given their lives to Jesus, let me encourage you to take Christian community seriously this year. If you want 2021 to be a year of Joy, God has designed us so that we need to be connected to Christian brothers and sisters to do that. I know that this is difficult because of the pandemic. I think that what we’ve seen today gives us insight though. Even when we’re separated physically, we don’t have to be separated completely. We can be thinking about each other, looking for needs and meeting them, and praying for each other, not just for physical needs, but that our brothers and sisters would be growing in Christ like maturity in this season. That they would experience the love of Jesus. That as we cultivate these habits in the middle of a pandemic, then when we get actually get to be with each other more freely and physically, that bond of love is even stronger and our joy will be even more deeply experienced.