The sovereignty of God is the surpassing doctrine for Christians to understand.
It is the overarching, encompassing reality that keeps everything in perspective. God is in control of all of it. If you don't understand that, you're going to struggle with your joy. In a moment, John MacArthur will help you apply biblical principles that can make you a more joyful person. Or put another way, he'll show you the rules to follow to let joy rule your life.
The title of his study, Joy Rules. So what sort of things tend to upset you, or depress you, or make you bitter? What does it take to lose your joy? Stay here and see if your list makes John's list of joy killers, and learn how to develop a joyful attitude that trumps any circumstance.
If you have a Bible, turn to Philippians chapter 1, and here's John. I thought it might be good to just share with you a few principles, things that cause you to lose your joy, okay? These are the things we need to be on guard against as we see what God produces in us by the Spirit in the name of joy. What is it that can steal our joy? What causes the absence of joy?
Number one, false salvation...false salvation. That is to say, seeking joy without the Holy Spirit. There are some people who seek joy.
It is elusive. They become immensely frustrated. Their lives are not happy, and maybe they're in the church, and involved in some way or another in the church, and active in some way or another. And maybe they think they're pursuing righteous activities, and they're trying desperately to be religious and experience joy, and it never comes because it is the work of the Spirit, and they have not the Spirit because they are not Christ's. There will be no true joy. And when there is no true capacity for joy because Christ is not there, the Spirit is not there, the process becomes very frustrating.
And I personally believe the churches are filled with people who are not genuinely saved. They, therefore, do not possess the Holy Spirit, and joy, therefore, is elusive, absent. Many of those people spend some time in the church, never able to discover and affect joy in their life.
They leave frustrated and lost. So if you have an absence of joy in your life, if it seems consistently elusive to you, go back to the beginning somewhere. And as Paul said in 2 Corinthians 13, 5, Examine yourself to see if you're in the faith. You may be seeking something you will never find because you do not possess God's Holy Spirit at all. In other words, be sure you're saved. Be sure you're saved. Secondly, Satan and demons may do all they can to steal your joy.
After all, 1 Peter 5 says that the devil is a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. And there may be efforts made on the part of the hosts of hell to rob you of joy in a myriad of ways. We need to be aware and alerted to the fact that definitely is Satan's ploy and effort to take away the joy of believers. That could come in many, many forms.
We have to understand the source of that. Thirdly, one of the things that has a tendency to steal joy is an inadequate understanding of God's sovereignty, an inadequate understanding of God's sovereignty. In other words, fretting as if God was not in control. Worrying, anxiety-ridden, feeling the threat of others controlling your life or of your own inability to control it, and ignoring the reality that God is sovereign, that no matter what is going on or what is happening, God is in control. That all things, in the classic terms of Romans 8.28, are working together according to His purpose for your benefit. The sovereignty of God is the surpassing doctrine for Christians to understand.
It is the overarching, encompassing reality that keeps everything in perspective. God is in control of all of it. If you don't understand that, you're going to struggle with your joy. An inadequate understanding of God's sovereignty will take your joy. Fourthly, another thing that steals joy is prayerlessness, prayerlessness. That is failing to commit things to the Lord. Leaving them to yourself to fret and worry and fume, trying to orchestrate all of life's elements yourself and never going to the place of prayer breeds frustration rather than dependence. Boy, I really believe this is such a vital thing and so missing in the church today.
It literally is replaced today by what we call counseling. Instead of going to God with your needs, you go to somebody who sits across a desk and supposedly tells you things that are neither sovereign nor supernatural in many cases, in most cases. And the best of human insight is a far cry from divine assistance. No wonder James said when you reach a place of impotence in your life, when you reach a place of total weakness, when you no longer can tap the divine resource for yourself, go to the elders of the church and let them pray over you. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man has tremendous effect. Commit your way unto the Lord, Proverbs says, trust also in Him. Take it to Him. Get the divine resource involved. Trust in the Lord with all your heart. All your ways acknowledge Him.
Focus on Him. And then he says in chapter 4 of this very letter, doesn't he, in verse 6, be anxious for nothing but in everything by prayer and supplication. Let your requests be made known to God. Go to God. Go to the Lord. And if you don't have the strength and you feel like you're in such shambles spiritually you can't do that, then get some godly people to go. Prayerlessness will steal your joy because you'll scramble all over this world trying to find solutions to the dilemmas that only God can solve. Don't you try to orchestrate life? Don't you try to find some guru behind a desk who can orchestrate life? Go to God. Now those are some sort of theological things that steal your joy, theological perspectives on things that steal your joy.
Let me give you some real practical ones, okay? Continuing our list, number five. One of the things that tends to steal joy is a low after a spiritual high.
Have you noticed that? Monday after Sunday. You're here and it's glorious and you're enriched and blessed and encouraged and you walk in that place you work and it's humdrum or you get up in the morning and mother's got dirty clothes and the weekend blitzed the kitchen and blitzed the laundry room and all the cars are filthy again and it's all there. And you go from the spiritual high to the humdrum low of life to say nothing of going from some great spiritual experience to a severe trial. Classic, of course, is Elijah who goes on Mount Carmel and withstands the priests of Baal, takes out a sword and massacres the priests, defeats 450 priests of Baal on a mountain and God sends fire from heaven, burns up a sacrifice, the wood, the stones, licks up the water in an incredible supernatural event. And Elijah has just seen the great God, the Almighty God act in his behalf in response to his prayer in a monumental way.
Spiritual high on Mount Carmel has few equals in the history of the prophets. And he goes right from there to wanting to commit suicide. He wants God to kill him.
He runs like a maniac down a path and sits down in the sun and says, kill me, kill me, kill me. I can't stand it. There's a woman after me.
That's hard to understand. 450 men gave him no problem. One woman scares the living daylights out of him. Kill me, Lord. He went from the height of spiritual victory to the depths of spiritual depression, even to the point of true depression where he wanted to die. Sometimes severe trials, Jezebel did have some power to throw around. Severe trial following immediately upon the heels of some great spiritual experience causes us to lose our joy by contrast. If we just sort of go along in life, maybe we don't sense it that way, but when you go from the very high to the very low, it can take your joy.
So be aware of that. Sixthly, another thing that I believe steals joy is a circumstance orientation. There are some people in this life as Christians who will know very little joy because they take all their signals from the material world. In other words, their emotion is controlled by the shallowness of the world.
It is a substitute for the true joy. If their husband treats them the way they like him to treat them, they have joy. If he doesn't, they don't. If their kids do what they want them to do, they have joy. If they don't, they lose it. If they can own what they want to own, they have joy.
If they can't, they don't. In other words, they get all of the signals for response from the material world. Materialism is what it is. It's a lack of focus on God. It's a lack of contentment with God.
They don't see God at work. Every response is controlled by the things of time and space. Most people live like that. They're joyous because it's a big event. Their joy rises and falls on whether they get something new, whether they have some special event, whether they're going on a trip or not.
All of that controls their responses because they are totally linked to a circumstance orientation and taking all their cues from the material world. That will rob you of joy and put you on a roller coaster that's unrelated to true spiritual joy. Seventh, another thing that I believe steals joy is ingratitude. In gratitude. In fact, there are few things in human life uglier than ingratitude.
Few things. If I were a parent all over again raising the children I've already raised, I would spank them oftener and longer and harder for ingratitude than I think almost anything I can think of. Certainly that would be worthy of a spanking far more than if they spilled the milk or dumped the paint or whatever other things we spank them for out of anger so often. Do you train your children to be grateful? How sharper than a serpent's tooth is a thankless child.
In gratitude. Failure to be thankful. Instead of focusing on things which you have received from the Lord and in everything giving thanks, whatever the circumstances, whether they seem positive or negative, some people are never thankful because they are never satisfied. They don't see life's trials as blessings from God conforming them to Christ. They're never satisfied.
They never say thanks. It has to do with pride, unquestionably, in gratitude. Another one is forgetfulness. I think forgetfulness will steal your joy.
You say, what do you mean by that? Well, failure to keep the memory of what you were saved from. Why is it that new Christians always seem full of joy and you get to the people who have been saved 40 years or so and they begin, many of them, to look really sour? You notice that?
Why is that? I never knew a church split led by new Christians. Never. Never heard of a major church problem created by new babes in Christ. Never heard of it. Never heard of conflict in a church between a group of brand new Christians.
Never heard of it. Never heard of a group of miserable, griping, murmuring, complaining people in a church, all of whom were just saved. Ridiculous thought. You've got to be a long time Christian to be like that. Why? Because somehow we forget what we were saved from.
We lost the freshness. When new Christians seem to have that joy of the psalmist in Psalm 103, too, it says, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget none of His benefits. Cultivate a memory of good things, will you? Don't be a joyless, cranky, sour, dour person.
What kind of an advertisement is that? You're going to have the young Christians saying, Lord, you know, take me home soon. Don't let that happen. Number nine in my list. Another thing that steals your joy is dissatisfaction with your earthly condition. Dissatisfaction with your earthly condition.
Some people lose their joy because they don't like the way they look. They don't like where they live. They don't like the gifts or lack of gifts that they have. They don't like the particular place in life they have been given.
They're always living as if they were the recipient of something less than they deserved. Paul said, I have learned in whatever state I am, therewith to be what? Content, Philippians 4.12. I know how to be abased and how to abound. It's the same to me. I don't care. I can have it or not have it. But some people lose their joy because they're basically dissatisfied. We all have disabilities.
We all have handicaps. Some people lose their joy because they're in a wheelchair. Some people lose their joy because they can't get a job they think lifts them to the level of their ability. Some people don't have joy because they feel that they ought to be more appreciated.
They don't like where they fit in the church structure. They wish they could be doing something more significant. They wish they were prettier or more handsome or more capable athletically or mathematically or academically or whatever it is. And it goes into the dimension of whether they have or have not material things as well. Number 10.
Here's another thing that will steal your joy. Fear of the future. Fear of the future.
Why do some people always imagine that the worst possible thing is going to happen in everything? They just go around in fear all the time. Fear of failure. Fear they will lose what they have. Fear they might lose their power.
They might lose their reputation. Fear of illness. Fear of death. Fear.
Constant fear of the future. Jesus says, Take no thought for what you shall eat and drink, what you shall wear. I'll take care of that. Matthew 6.
Jesus said, I'm going away, but whatever you ask in My name, I'll send it to you. Don't let your heart be what? Troubled? Neither let it be afraid. What are you afraid of? Some people live in fear. Fear of all kinds of things that aren't happening.
Have you noticed that? Fear of things that aren't happening. It's the what if syndrome. Number 11 in my list that will steal your joy is to live by uncontrolled feelings. To live by uncontrolled feelings. Let me give you the definition of a weak person. A weak person doesn't talk to himself enough.
So what do you mean by that? You've got to get yourself under control. If you live by your uncontrolled feelings, you'll be a victim.
That's living by the flesh. I think Martin Lloyd-Jones said it best in his book, Spiritual Depression. Listen to this. I suggest that the main trouble in this whole matter of spiritual depression is this. That we allow ourself to talk to us instead of talking to ourself.
It's good. Have you realized, he writes, that most of your unhappiness in life is due to the fact that you are listening to yourself rather than talking to yourself? And the art of spiritual living is to know how to handle yourself. Psalm 42. He moans and groans and then he says, Why are you disquieted, O my soul? Quiet, soul.
Hope thou in God. Why are you doing that? Soliloquy talks to himself. Some people just listen to themselves, whatever their emotions say they are victim of. Don't do that. Talk to yourself. Control. Live not by uncontrolled feelings, but by controlling those feelings in the power of the Spirit of God. Bring yourself into submission.
Twelve. Another thing that I really believe will steal your joy is morbid self-analysis. Morbid self-analysis. That's why I have such an aversion to psychology. In the first place, it seems to me utterly unnecessary since the Scriptures give us all we need for life and godliness. But secondly, because it tends to make a person concentrate on his own navel to the degree where he becomes morbidly and self-centeredly, if there is such a word, analytical, worrying about his failures, worrying about the possibility of negative attitudes, negative results, negative actions, worrying about the fact that somewhere deep down inside there's something that needs to be uncovered, poking around and scrambling around in a pile of whatever's going on in the past, trying to uncover some secret to spring him loose.
And what he winds up with is a whole ton of morbidly self-analytical baggage that doesn't help him at all. Hey, we're inadequate. That's generic enough to satisfy me. I'm not going to poke around in it forever. I mess up. I know that. I'm not going to dwell on that.
I'm not going to poke around in it. Oh, you did this. Oh my, there you did that. Here's your problem. You've got to pull off all the stuff and find the... you know, and somewhere down the line you've got abused and somebody didn't treat you well and now you can blame all of it on that. That isn't going to make you happy. Morbid self-analysis will take your joy, forgetting the things that are behind, looking not on your own things but the things of others.
Move ahead. Thirteen sort of pulls together a lot of them. Self-centeredness. Self-centered people are always unhappy because they're always unsatisfied.
That is a dead end. Show me a self-centered person and I'll show you a miserable person. Self-centered people can't be satisfied.
They can't be. Unselfish people are satisfied all along because they don't ask you for anything. And then finally, another thing that will steal your joy is guilt. The unwillingness to accept forgiveness. The unwillingness to accept forgiveness. You just won't accept forgiveness.
For many people, see, it goes like this. I just can't forgive myself. And you remind them, but God forgave you. I know, I know, but God does not understand my standards. You have a God complex, my friend.
You have just crawled up one ahead of the Trinity. You can't forgive you for what God has long ago forgiven you for. That is a massive ego problem. And for many people, it's that one sin. They've got one sin somewhere in their life, or one little period of sin, and they can't forgive themselves for that, so they literally limp through life, always going back to that one thing, which is a non-issue with God, which is a joy thief in their life.
What a waste of energy. What a waste of needless guilt. That's why I don't see any virtue in poking around to discover sin. I don't need to poke around to discover stuff that the Lord has already, what, forgiven?
I want to waste my energy doing that. It'll steal your joy. Let me close by reading you a prayer of one of my favorite mothers in the Bible, Hannah. 1 Samuel 2, 1, Hannah prayed and said, My heart exalts in the Lord.
My horn is exalted in the Lord. My mouth speaks boldly against my enemies because I rejoice in Thy salvation. That's the attitude, isn't it?
That's the attitude. There is no one holy like the Lord. There is no one besides Thee. There is no rock like our God. She rejoiced.
She rejoiced. And that's the attitude we need to have. It's an attitude of joy that spills out in our relationships and allows us to see people the way Paul saw these dear Philippians. The reality is, it's not easy to stay joyful all day, every day. You have to resist a lot of temptations, starting with the 14 John looked at today. And John, this year in particular has been extremely difficult for a lot of people with all the inconveniences we've endured. What encouragement would you have for those who are fighting to keep their joy in hard circumstances?
Well, that's always where you have to fight, in hard circumstances. And I think we're always, to a greater degree in this society, we're always in hard circumstances. And that's because we're exposed to so much media. Everything might be going along fine in my life, and for the most part it is, and I enjoy the blessing of the Lord, but imported into my mind are all the troubles of the entire globe, constantly pounding on me. And in one form or another, you're just literally overwhelmed with the disastrous realities going on across the planet, the horrors of unbelief, the terrible, tragic lives of godless people, and you see them dying all over the place. It's horrific that you're exposed to all of this. So just sheer exposure can steal your joy, and you can become anxious about things that don't even touch your own life.
But as a Christian, you feel the pain of these realities. It's almost as if you have a level of omniscience that steals joy. You might think you would like to be omniscient. God is omniscient. And I'm content to let him be the omniscient one, because I already know too much. And I'm not omniscient, but I would like to know a whole lot less than I now know, because it's hard to control the joy in my life. Somebody says to me very frequently, I heard some of your old messages, you're not as funny as you used to be.
And I said, well, to be honest with you, life isn't as funny as it used to be, because of what we know. But we want to help you with that, and there is help coming from the word of God. I want to remind you about the book Anxious for Nothing. It's an antidote to worry. It's an antidote to fear.
It's a pathway to joy. The book title, Anxious for Nothing, and we'll send it free to anyone contacting us for the first time. This is one of the most popular books we've ever given away.
We've been doing it for a couple of decades now. 220 pages, I think, has a section, Psalms for the Anxious. All you have to do is ask for it, and if you haven't contacted us before, ask for a free copy of Anxious for Nothing. Yes, friend, if you are feeling overwhelmed or worried, make sure you get this book. Again, we'll send you Anxious for Nothing for free if you've never contacted us before. Get in touch today. Call us now at 800-55-GRACE or go to gty.org to request the book titled Anxious for Nothing.
Whether you're facing the challenges of a global health crisis or difficulties that are all your own, Anxious for Nothing will help you take hold of the wisdom and the strength and, yes, even the peace and joy that God provides. Again, Anxious for Nothing is yours free if you've never contacted us before. Call now 800-55-GRACE or go to gty.org. And while you're online, go ahead and download any of John's messages from this current series titled Joy Rules. In fact, all of John's sermons, more than 3,500 of them total, from 51 years of pulpit ministry, all of them are free in either audio or transcript format at the website gty.org. You can search by date preached, by the book of the Bible, or by sermon title. Again, find those sermons at gty.org. And now for John MacArthur and the entire Grace To You staff, I'm Phil Johnson encouraging you to be here tomorrow when John looks at how your prayer life can directly affect your joy. Don't miss the next half hour of Unleashing God's Truth, one verse at a time, on Grace To You.
