(upbeat music) Ask and you will receive me. Why? So that your joy may be full. He's saying, try me. I will bring you the fullness of joy that will be unmatched by anything else. He's saying you can daily celebrate the fact that the true joy in Christ is irrevocable and absolutely continual. If you grew up in the 80s, you're familiar with a toy called the Kooch ball. My name's Josh Weiben, pastor of Grace Chapel, and you're listening to Gospel Daily. Do you remember the Kooch ball? It was this weird ball that kind of had all these stringy things that were sticking out of it. What was all the rage somewhere in the 80s? I don't remember exactly where, but I knew as a kid I had to have one. I remember sitting on the coffee table in our family room and begging my parents that night, please take me to get a Kooch ball. I have to have this. Everyone else at school has one. That's the exact problem. I wanted something just because everyone else had it. I remember watching my parents looking back and forth at each other as they tried to evaluate who was gonna give in first or should they give in or what was right or should they teach me some lesson by not allowing me to get what I so badly wanted in the moment all over our little $5 Kooch ball. You know, I think our life, even as adults, is full of Kooch ball moments. These moments where we want something so bad because we see somebody else has it. This may not just be possessions. It could be relational things or maybe promotional things or power things, things that happen in our culture of our workplace or in the neighborhoods that we live in. We want something so bad because someone else has it. We have this fear of missing out that if we don't have it too, then wow, we are not gonna have the full experience of life. But is that really the joy that Jesus talked about? The joy that Jesus talked about was something far more than temporary circumstances. It was far more than relational status. It was far more than possessions that we have in this life. The joy that he promised us is something that's long lasting. So how do we have that? And what does it look like for us to have joy that goes beyond what I possess or what I currently have in my relationships? Well, today we're gonna go after that answer exactly. We're gonna be listening in on a message entitled The Promise of Perpetual Joy. We're gonna be looking at John chapter 16 verses 16 through 24. And we're gonna try to understand a little bit more about what Jesus was saying in some of his last words to the disciples. About clinging on to things that are far more important than what this world has to offer. So let's listen into this message and apply this truth to our life. Let me ask you a question. How many of you are on social media of some kind? How many of you are on social media of some kind? Just raise up, this is a non-embarrassing thing. It's okay, right, yeah. How many of you? I wanna see, is this an important poll? Okay, cool. So I did some reading this week. And I read that about 81% of Americans, so that the eight out of every 10 people in this room are on social media. It looks to be about right, about 80% of this room on social media of some kind, via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, you name it. We've got it, and we engage in that. Come to find out, as I read and study further, that most of us spend quite a bit of time on that. And there's no judgment in that. I spend quite a bit of time in social media as well. I believe it's an incredibly powerful source of connecting with other people and proclaiming the gospel. In fact, I see my phone as kind of my modern day pulpit, one of the main ways that I administer the gospel to people around the world is through my phone. Billy Graham used the TV, and I use social media, so it's very, very powerful. But I come to find out that we spend up to 215 minutes a week on social media, just on our phones. We spend about 61 minutes a week on our PCs, on social media, and if we have a tablet, we'll spend up to 47 minutes a week on our tablets through social media. You add that all together, that's over five and a half hours of time that we spend on social media every single week. Anyway, I'd be sitting here going, wow, and there's no way I spend five hours a week on social media and others of you are going, I spend way more than an hour a day on social media, but that's the average, five and a half hours a week on social media. It's not a bad thing, but I want to point something out to you. By engaging in social media, the way that we do, and by the advances in technology and advances in medicine, I think what's happening is that we are becoming very occupied, or should I say preoccupied, with the present things in front of us, and we so quickly forget the power of our future hope, which is found only in Jesus Christ. Think about it, we spend time in Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, looking at things that are about the present, or maybe about the past, and we can get so consumed with what I would call our shallow or disposable things that by the flick of a thumb, we can move them on their way, and yet we are not as occupied or preoccupied as we should be with the hope of Jesus Christ, our present hope, but also our future hope. About 18 years ago, in the year 2000, there was a bunch of theologians that got together, two of them that were there were guys by the last name of Balf and Kockerberg, and these guys got together and talked about what's happening to Christian hope, specifically, this is 18 years ago. And 18 years ago, they decided that our Christian hope is fading, it's disintegrating because of the spread of electronic media. They put out a statement that said because of the spread of electronic media, the advances of medicine, technology, all those things I listed are actually causing us to see death as a regretful end, rather than a passageway to our future hope. We are so consumed with the here and now that we aren't thinking about death or the passing of this life as the promise to enter a better future. And I would agree with them that social media has a way of keeping our eyes fixed on the present, of not thinking about four, five and a half hours a week, what is to come in our future hope, as Paul talks about, or Christ talked about so often in the Bible. And Balf and Kockerberg, they wrote a book that came out of their gathering of theologians called The Future of Hope. And they explained that there are two types of hope that exist in our culture. First, there is a type of hope or memory, we could say, that they call hot culture memory. Hot culture memory is something that's tied to something that is important, hot, firm, that shapes culture. Thoughts like God loves us or that were created in his image and life, human life is to be valued. These are things that shape our culture. They said what's happening to the Christian hope specifically is that we are getting consumed with what they call cool culture memories. We are wrapped up in our social media in our present moments and the things that are happening in front of us. And they're playing on this word cool. They're saying you're wrapped up with what is cool and we're therefore losing what is hot or important. We're finding social media as a way to fill moments but not to shape our minds or to shape our culture. Cool culture memories are shallow, disposable, instant gratification, not long-term transformation. As they continue to write their book, which I would recommend to you, I found this quote that I think is powerful. They said we as Christians must rejuvenate a living hope rooted in the hot memory of God's engagement with the world through Christ's life, his death, and his resurrection. They're not saying that we have to get rid of social media. It's not saying that we can't engage in what our cool culture memories, but we must be people who are continually renewing our minds with the truth of who Jesus Christ is, his life, his death, and his resurrection. We must never engage in cool culture moments and things that consume our time at the expense of remembering where our hope actually lives. You see, I think that's part of the problem. I think what's happening in Christian church today or in Christian culture is that we forget where our hope lies. We forget that we have this eternal savior who has bought everything for us and has promised us that one day this world will go away. We will be with him for all of eternity. We have some sense of hope and most Christians would talk about some vague ghostly after life as a thing that they're striving for. But I'm afraid that too many people in our culture, don't understand Christian culture, don't understand the real implications of what it means to have a biblical hope that's resting upon Jesus Christ. And therefore, if we do not have our hope firmly fixed on him, if we aren't constantly driving our minds towards him, then we will lack joy and we will lack peace in this life. How many times have you spoken with another Christian who says to you, man, life is just rough? And then they go on and life is rough but they go on to explain why life is rough and nowhere in their vernacular is anything about the hope of Jesus Christ pulling them through. There's no Bible verse quoted, there's no Christ mentioned. And I don't know, it's pointing fingers. I think I've been there many times. Where I allow my cool culture memory to overtake the hot memory of the truth of Jesus Christ that should transform me every single day. I must remember where my hope lies if I'm gonna have joy and peace. So for the next two weeks, I wanna talk about joy and peace. Specifically, I wanna talk about worry and anxiety and how we overcome those things by the joy and peace that we're offered in Jesus Christ. I've entitled my message today, "The Promise of Perpetual Hope." Because I believe that Jesus came, died, rose again and in his earthly ministry before dying and raising again, he told us that we can have a hope, a hope that transforms, transforms our culture, transforms our life and that helps us overcome the worry and anxiety that we find gripping us every single day. So today, I'm gonna talk about the Gospel of John. We're gonna continue our study on these last few words of Christ and his farewell discourse. And you're gonna see that in these last words of Christ, they are thought through and they are weighted. Just like when we go to say goodbye to someone who we've been with for some time. We usually think through what are the last things I'm gonna say, you know that feeling. You're pulling up to the terminal at DIA. You're about to drop them off. You're thinking, what's the last sentence, the last word? The last thing I'll say when I hug them, we think about those things and in the same way, so has our Savior thought about his final words whose disciples, that he spoke to them in the first century, but still has power for us in the 21st century. If you have your Bibles, I want you to look at these words with me. We're gonna look at John 16, verses 16 through 24. It's found on page 902 in the ESV Bibles that are in front of you. Listen, Grace Chapel is a look at your Bible kind of church. All right, we like to actually look at our Bibles here at Grace Chapel. So turn your Bible on or open up your Bible and find your eyes meeting the passage because I don't want you to just take my word for the hope of Jesus Christ. I want you to see what he said himself. You can follow along in the Grace Chapel app as always, and you can text me any questions that you have throughout the message. That number is also located in the right hand side of the back of your bulletin. I've put some fill in the blanks there so you can take some notes and apply what God it gives you this morning. Let's encounter God through his word. I'm gonna kind of rewind a little bit. Let's go back to verse 14, okay? And then we'll jump up to where we're at in verse 16. Daniel last week talked about the Holy Spirit and the great gift of Christ that was given to us by the Holy Spirit. Christ is giving his farewell message. He said, I'm gonna give you a gift. I'm gonna give you the Holy Spirit. That's the gift. And then he goes on to explain what the Holy Spirit does. In verse 14, he reminds them of what he does. He says, he will glorify me, for he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. Therefore, I said that he will take whatever is mine and declare it to you. This is a fantastic passage that I don't want you to miss. He will glorify me. He will take what is mine and declare it to you. He's telling us exactly what the Holy Spirit does. He reminds us of the things that Christ has done. He's obviously saying that to the disciples who has spent every waking moment and sleeping moment with Christ for three years. They say, I'm leaving you, but I'm leaving with the greatest gift I can give you. I'm giving you the Holy Spirit, which is gonna remind you of what I have said. But in verses 14 and 15, we see this beautiful picture of the Trinity. The doctrine of the Trinity is one of the core beliefs that we have that God exists in three persons, totally complete, totally equal. And he never uses the word Trinity, but we see it at work here. He's saying, the Holy Spirit will glorify me. And he will tell you everything that is mine. And oh, by the way, everything that's mine is the Father's. Do you see how that's working? The Holy Spirit is the very one who ushers to us the reality of God's character. All that God is and all that is realized for us in Christ will be made known to us through the presence of the Holy Spirit. He's revealing to us the deep things of God. Paul says that many times in his letters. Isaiah 64 talks about this idea of God revealing to us himself. The things that we cannot know if it is not for his spirit present in our life. But notice what the focus of the Holy Spirit is. The focus of the Holy Spirit is Christ and he has one agenda. And that is to make Christ our focus. He's all about glorifying me, Christ said. He's all about me. He's all about taking my words and bringing them to you. So my one agenda in giving you the Holy Spirit is so that you also will be all about me because the more we are about Christ, the more joy and peace we will be able to have in this life. He's saying, he will remind you, he will preach to you. He will make it his goal to make everything about me known to you every single day. I love that. So in a world that's lacking peace and a world that's full of evil and a world that's full of suffering, we should be looking to Christ as our main sense of hope and peace and joy. But if I were to ask you, and maybe you guys are just good Christians and Bible students, if I ask you this question, where is your hope in a world full of evil and suffering? What would you say? Anyway, what would you say? Where's your hope? What should the answer be at least? Jesus, right? I mean, that's what we should be saying. But he is my hope in the midst of evil and suffering and hard things. Jesus is my hope, but let's be honest, right? Most people in the world, Christian or non-Christian, will answer at times when my hope is in my vacation that's coming or my hope is in my 401(k) or my hope is in the bank account that I've been saving my whole life or my hope is in my kids and in my family or my hope is in my skills or in my health. So often we find our hope in something other than Christ. But I want you to notice something. Whenever we talk about our hope, we talk about our hope in something, right? It has an object that we are pointing our hope to. I wrote this down, in order for hope to be real, it must have an object. We're gonna have a verifiable hope and it's gonna point to something. Now for the world or for Christians, that might be things in the present or even things in the future. These are things we hold to and this is my hope. It has an object. But if you wrote that statement down, you need to write down the next statement, which is the truth for Christians. Christians should have the person of Christ as their hope. Christ followers don't have our kids or our jobs or our retirement accounts as the thing that we're holding out hope in. Rather we have the person of Christ as the very one who brings us hope. Now don't miss the difference here. Worldly hope will cling to something that is present or most likely in the future. Something that is a desire or an illusion or a wish, but Christian hope, the line is different. It's slight, but it's different. Christian hope isn't about something that is just in the future. Christian hope is fixed on a person who has been in the past and who is in the present and also will be in the future. Our hope is fixed on him and in his person, we find something that is substantial and viable. It's not something that we're waiting for it to happen, but he has happened. He came and he walked with us and he died for us and he rose again. Our hope is fixed on something that is absolutely secure. So we can have incredible confidence when we talk about a hope in Jesus Christ, knowing that it can't be taken from us. It's already been fulfilled. It's already been fully realized. Yes, there is an already and not yet. Yes, there is a day where we will be with him and we are not yet there, but there is a true sense of the already that he came, that he died, that he rose again and that he joins his life with us and the spirit reminds us of that every single day. Our hope is different than a world's hope because it has the person of Christ as its object. So in a farewell moment to his disciples, Jesus says, verse 16, a little while and you will see me no longer. And again, a little while and you will see me. Now, I think in this moment, Jesus is stooping to their anguish because they are distraught over the fact that he says he's going to leave. He's been saying that for a few chapters now. My hour has now come. So they're walking across the Kidron Valley, they're showing up in the Garden of the Yosemite, they know Jesus is acting a little bit off. Something's up, a little bit they know hours later, he's going to be crucified. And so Jesus meets them where they're at in their emotional moment. He says, a little while and I'm with you. And then again, a little while and you will see me. A little while, I'm not going to be here. And then a little while later, you're going to see me again. It sounds like something that I'd say to my daughter before napa, right? I'm putting her down for a nap, she's two. Okay, a little while, you're not going to see me. And then a little while, you're going to see me, and it's going to be great, right? It sounds almost childish that he's saying this thing. And truly, they are perplexed by his thing, which we'll come back to in a moment. But here's what I think he's getting that, just in verse 16. I think what he's saying is, you'll see me now, and then you won't see me. And then you're going to see me again. And whether you see me or you don't see me, your hope should be fixed on me. That if your hope is fixed on me, your joy and your peace will remain no matter what you face. Fill in this blank. Embrace joy by grounding your hope in Christ. You need joy in your life? You're going through a trial that you thought you'd never go through? Then I challenge you to embrace joy by grounding your hope in Christ. If your hope is grounded in anything other than the person of Christ, you're missing the joy and peace that is yours for the taking. What Christ has said to them before in chapter 13, around verses 31, 32, 33, he'd said something like, I'm going to have to go away from you. I have to go to the Father and where I'm going, you cannot come. And remember Peter's like, what's happening? Why can't I go with you? He said, listen, I have to leave you. And what he's getting at is, I have to leave you. You're not going to see me for a little while because I have to go do something that only I can do. I'm going to go take care of the cross and the resurrection that was ordained before the beginning of time for me to take care of, for you to redeem you to the Father. I'm going to go take care of that. You can't come with me. You're not going to see me for a little while. But guess what? If I'm your hope, I've been with you, you won't see me and I should still be your hope. And in the future when you see me again, I'm still your hope. Keep your hope fixed on me, not the situation you'll face, but me as your savior. It's as if he's saying to them, your circumstances don't define you. It's not about your circumstance, but it's the presence of the overcoming Christ that should define your past, your present and your future. It's as if he's saying that to the disciples, but he's also saying to us, listen, I am the overcoming Messiah. I am the one who is victorious. I will overcome death. You won't see me for a while, but then I'm going to be back and all this is going to make sense to you later, but I am victorious. And your circumstances don't define whether I'm victorious or not. But merely by the fact that I'm living out the sovereign will of my father, that I am the overcoming Christ, that should define your past and your present and your future. Friends, how many times do we let our circumstances define us? We claim Christ and we say that he is our hope, but our circumstances define us. We let the drudgery of life define us. We're defined by our busyness. We're defined by our grief. We're defined by our shame. We're defined by our despair. And this is if he's saying, listen, don't let the things in your life define you rather let your relationship with me, the overcoming victorious, let me be the one that defines you. Over and over in the gospels, we see Jesus giving this invitation to come into a relationship with him. We see it several times in John. I think about passages like John seven where he talks about the water, and he says, if you thirst, then come, come. And I will give you water of life. I think about Luke. He talks about the kingdom of God coming to us and us being invited to be a part of that. Think about Matthew chapter 11, verse 28. This says, if you're weary, burdened, heavy-laden, then come. He invites us to continue to come to him, to find our rest in him, to find our hope in him, to find our joy in him, not to let our circumstances be the things that define us, but rather to let him and the relationship that we have with him, let that define us. I mean, the Old Testament as well is full of invitations for a righteous God inviting unholy people to come and to be with him in a right relationship by his grace, not by our own merit. So I think the application for us is that we need to stop looking for joy in temporary circumstances and find it in the timeless Savior of Jesus Christ. I don't look to my temporary circumstances to be the thing that bring me everlasting joy. Listen, I got some really cool circumstances in my life. I got four little kids that look up at me and call me Daddy. On Friday night, I went out with a really beautiful woman, my wife, and we had wonderful burgers together, the best burgers in all of Denver, and that was an amazing, amazing time. I have good circumstances, and even on the best days where my circumstances are amazing, I shouldn't let my circumstances determine whether life is good or not. I let the overcoming Christ determine my life, my joy, my peace. We've been listening to a message entitled The Promise of Perpetual Joy. That's true, we can't let circumstances dictate our joy and our happiness. My name is Josh Wyman, pastor of Grace Chapel, and I've been following Christ for a long time, but I'm constantly struggling with that reality that my circumstances aren't the thing that bring me the greatest joy. It's Jesus Christ. The reason I struggle with it is because my circumstances can be so sweet. As I mentioned, I have great kids who call me Dad. I have a beautiful wife. I have a great home that I live in, a great area of town that I'm in, great food to fill my belly. Yet all of those things at times can serve as a distraction of the greater joy that Christ offers me. It's not that any of them are bad, but the greatest thing Christ ever gave me was himself. I hope that this day you will embrace fully the truth that Jesus Christ loves you and gave his life for you. If you'd like more resources that help you in your walk with Jesus Christ, will you stop by our website? gospeldaily.org. That's G-O-S-P-E-L-D-A-I-L-Y.org. And come on, let's go take this truth of the joy of Christ and apply it to our daily life. [MUSIC PLAYING]
