Our joy is not to be restricted to our own circumstances or to our own achievements. but that we are to be able to find an occasion of joy for other people. For their achievements, for their successes, and for their bounty. The Apostle Paul commands us to rejoice with those who rejoice. Yet often, we only rejoice when we rejoice, when something good has happened to us.
That is not the Christian way. This is Renewing Your Mind. I'm your host, Nathan W. Bingham. Cultivating joy in the midst of hardship or in the midst of others who might be prospering while you're not.
Isn't easy. But that is what we as Christians are called to pursue.
So that's why in addition to featuring messages earlier this week on anger, We'll be spending two days considering joy. You can go deeper on this topic when you respond today at renewingyourmind.org with a donation. And to thank you for your support, you'll receive access to that series on anger and this series on joy. Plus, we'll place two books in the mail for you. Is anger always a sin?
And can I have joy in my life? But respond now as this offer ends tomorrow.
Well, here's Dr. Sproul to ask a simple question that has a profound answer. How do you spell joy? I think all of us can think back in our lives to. Particular moments or occasions or episodes in which we experienced an extraordinary measure.
of elation or of joy. Not only individually. but also in terms of our communities or even our nations. I can think of a couple of episodes that I think I'll never forget as long as I live. One of them took place when I was.
Six years old. And I was in the street in Chicago. and I was playing stick ball. I'll never forget it, because home plate was a sewer cover, uh a anhole cover, right in the middle of the street, and in the center of that metal cover was a little hole just uh about an inch and a half in diameter and I remember that because my dad had purchased me a real skinny, slender little bat that we used to play stick ball in the streets, and one day when it was my turn to bat, I dropped my bat and It just went right down that hole, and I lost it forever. And that was not the occasion of my joy, but I had another bat, and this one day.
We were playing stickball in the street. And right in the middle of the game, right when I was at bat. It just seemed like all heaven broke loose around me. Because people started running out of their apartments and out of the buildings around the street, and they were beating on dishpans, and they had spoons, and they were screaming, and yelling, and acting in a crazy manner. I didn't know what had happened.
And they were screaming all over the place: it's over! It's over. Mas V E Day. After the long and and arduous national Struggle with World War Two. The war finally ended.
And there was this Hent up. Anxiety and pain. that suddenly gave way to unspeakable joy, and people acted crazy the way they were celebrating. And I had very little understanding of what that was all about, but I could certainly tell that a lot of people were very happy even though they were interrupting my game. A similar episode, not quite as dramatic, took place When I was a little older, in fact, I th I think I was twenty one years old.
The year was nineteen sixty. I grew up in the city of Pittsburgh. And the city of Pittsburgh. Boasted a couple of major league sporting teams. The Pittsburgh Pirates.
and the Pittsburgh Steelers. And from the time the Steelers opened. as a major league national football league team. They went 40 years. Not before they won a world championship, But before they even won a conference championship, they went.
40 years. They were the perennial losers. Of the National Football League. But their record was not as dismal as that of the Pittsburgh Pirates. I followed every Pirate game in the 1940s and 1950s.
I practically lived at Forrest Field. And when I wasn't at the game, I was listening to the radios, even back in the days of the ticker tape way in which the baseball games were being broadcast.
Okay. And I would live and die with the Pittsburgh Pirates, and more often I died than I lived. In the 50s, for example, It was a great achievement for the Pirates to finish in seventh place rather than eighth place. They were the perennial cellar dwellers. We used to say of the Pirates that the Pittsburgh Pirates were in first place if you turned the newspaper upside down.
So we went through a lot of years of frustration. Until nineteen sixty. I'll never forget nineteen sixty when the Pittsburgh Pirates. actually won the National League pennant. And the city went crazy.
Then, of course, we had to go to the World Series, and that was sort of anticlimactic because nobody expected the Pirates to win the World Series. We were going up against the mighty New York Yankees. In fact, in the nineteen sixty World Series, some of you will remember, the New York Yankees set the all time record for the most runs scored in a seven game World Series. But most people don't remember that. What they do remember was, even though they set the record for scoring the most runs.
They lost the 1960 World Series in one of the most dramatic moments in baseball history. the seventh game of the World Series. The game is tied. In the last of the ninth. And the pirates are up, and I am there at Fordsfield.
sitting along the third baseline. Bill Mazarowski, number nine, not that great of a power hitter or even a great average hitter, stands to the plate and hits a home run right over the 410 mark in left center field over the head of a dejected Yogi Berra. And when that happened, pandemonium broke loose. in Pittsburgh. I jumped up when I saw that ball go over the left center field of wall.
I jumped up and I knocked a little 75-year-old lady right on the ground, right in front of me. And I stooped over and said, Oh ma'am, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you. She looked at me and she had a grin from ear to ear and she's on the ground. And she says, I don't care, Sonny.
She said, You can throw me all over the place. The Pirates have won the World Series. And I'll never forget driving home from Forbesfield that day, that it was unceasing. honking of car horns all over the city. Great, great joy.
Because of a baseball game. The other side, if in our national psyche we want to communicate. The misery of sorrow We go to one of the most famous folklore items in our history. A little ballad. Called Casey At the bat.
Remember the story of Casey at the bat? Strike One? Strike two and everybody's waiting for Casey. to hit the home run. He's the Bay Bruce of mythology.
But what happens? You know what happens. Casey The mighty Casey. Goes down swinging And so what is the refrain? What is the conclusion of the story?
There is no joy in Mudville. For mighty Casey. has struck Out. I've often wondered about how A game. can make people so happy.
Or make people so sad. When the Pittsburgh Steelers finally began to win Super Bowls and all of that, I remember living and dying then. And when the Steelers of the 70s would lose a football game, I would go into depression. I would feel it for a week, and I would have to struggle with my conscience and say, well, it's just a game. But it was more than a game.
These sports teams that we root for and identify with.
somehow have some kind of vicarious representation for us. They Represent Not just our city. or our nation They represent us. They represent us in conflict. in competition, in striving for achievement, And isn't it interesting that when our team wins, we say We won.
And when they lose. They lose. We love to identify with a winner, but we are not happy to identify with a loser. But so much of the aspirations And the hopes of human beings, are directed to things like that. which are only really representations.
of the human struggle. And when it comes to rejoicing in adversity, I always found it difficult. to rejoice when my team lost. When I was in high school, I played baseball myself, and two years in a row, we were brought to the place where we were playing for the city championship. And one year we won the championship.
And we won it in the last inning of the last game of the playoffs. And I will never forget that. I mean, my feet were. Up in the air, I was on Cloud9 and I was so thrilled. The next year, We made it to the last, very last game again.
Only that time. We lost. And it was a terrible, terrible feeling. And you watch what happens now when you watch a basketball game or a football game or a baseball game and a championship is on the line. And you see what happens when one team prevails and they experience victory, how the enthusiasm, people kiss them and hug them and all the rest, and then the camera will shift to the loser's side.
And you will see tears. and dejection. and disappointment and frustration and a sense of failure. I have to say to you. that has taken a long time in my life.
And I'm certainly not all the way there yet. But I have discovered that it's possible For my Spirit To be able to rejoice. When my team loses. How can that happen? What I've done is, you know, what used to just drive me crazy when I would see the winning team when it was the other team.
Gordy through all their celebrations after the victory. and I would be miserable. Until I began to see, wait a minute. Wait a minute. Those people are thrilled because they've achieved something they have worked so hard to accomplish, and this is an occasion of great joy.
That they're experiencing. It's not like this is a national disaster where everybody loses. There is somebody who's happy, and why can't we? Rejoice with those who rejoice. And weep with those who weep.
You see, that's one of the principles. of joy that is taught us in the Scripture. That our joy is not to be restricted to our own circumstances or to our own achievements. But that we are to be able to find an occasion of joy For other people. for their achievements, for their successes, and for their bounty.
That's a liberating thing, isn't it? We have a saying in the game of golf that every shot in golf Make somebody happy. Because if you hit it and it's a good shot, it makes you happy, but it makes your opponent unhappy. And if your opponent hits a bad shot, it makes him unhappy, but it makes you happy. But what does it say about us?
It says that so often our joy and our happiness. Is so? Self-centered.
So restricted to our own circumstances, that unless things go the way we want them to go, the way in which they will directly benefit us, We can't be happy about it. And so what a strange ethic it is that the New Testament speaks of the virtue of being able to rejoice. with those who are rejoicing. It doesn't say, rejoice with those who are rejoicing. Except when they are rejoicing because they have beaten you.
The point is that we. Should not be jealous? That we should not be covetous. that we should not be envious but that we should be able to enter into other people's joy. And by the same token We are supposed to be able to enter into other people's sorrow.
This is what we call Empathy. which is a little bit stronger than the word sympathy. When we s use the word sympathy, though, Originally the word meant Very much like the word empathy means to us today, to be empathetic is to be able to feel what somebody else feels. And the concept of sympathy. The prefix sim comes from the Greek word sun, which means with, together with.
And the pasi comes from the concept of pathos. or of feeling from which we get the English word passion. And to have sympathy means that the majority of the sky To feel With Other people. How else can we explain?
some of the actions of Jesus himself. How else can we explain the shortest verse in the Bible in the Gospel of John? Jesus wept. Here is the one who is the resurrection, who is the life, who comes to the funeral of Lazarus. He knows very well he's going to raise Lazarus from the dead.
And yet everybody there is mourning. And Jesus comes. And he weeps. He participates. In the sorrow.
Of his friends. He weeps with those who weep. And he rejoices with those who rejoice.
Now that takes grace. It really does take grace. to be able to find joy in our own hearts. When people are experiencing joy in theirs, at a gain they have received, which means in some way our loss. It doesn't just involve baseball games.
It involves job promotions. It involves business contracts. It involves so many of those things that touch us in our daily lives. And as Christians, we are to be able to look at things not just From our own selfish perspective, I remember the first year I was a Christian. I learned this simple childlike acrostic with respect to the word joy, and I'm sure you've all heard it.
How do you spell joy? J. O Y. And what does Joy stand for? It's this little children's lesson.
J stands for. Jesus O stands for Others And Y stands for yourself. And this and the little lesson that we got as children. was That the secret to joy is to put Jesus first. Others second.
And yourself? Third.
Now obviously that's a very easy idea, so simple that you can take an acrostic like this and teach it to five year old kids. But to learn it. And to get it in the bloodstream. is a Herculean task. but there really is a profound truth contained in this simple, childlike illustration.
that part of our loss of joy or the elusiveness of joy, is because we spell it yodge. Where the why comes first. and others come second, And Jesus comes third. And when that happens, there's a long way and a big difference between Joy and Yaj. Yaj will not produce joy.
Unless you rearrange. the priorities. and rearrange. the focus of your attention. Jesus was called a man of sorrows.
And yes, he was acquainted with grief. But he acquainted himself with our sorrows. And with our Grief. And Jesus is the only person in history Who spelled the word joy? Without the letter J.
Bang at the front. Jesus put himself last. In order to make it possible for us to participate in joy. And yet Jesus, though he is a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, I believe. was the most joyful human being.
Whoever lived. Why? Because he knew the father. Better than any human being. He understood the goodness of God better than any human being.
He was more in tune with the will of God than any human being. And he was utterly obedient. And obedience brings the fruit. of joy To the soul I believe that Jesus Christ was the happiest man. that ever lived.
And that even the sorrows and griefs and the pain and the torment that he had to endure. None of those things were able. to rob him of the blessedness and of the felicity that characterized the very heart of his life. as a man of joy. But his priorities were right.
He cared about other people. To such a degree That He was able to maintain. this kind of virtue. And so I conclude this segment by saying to us, If you want to be happy, if you want to be joyful. then we need to learn how.
to rejoice with those who rejoice? and to weep with those who weep. And we cannot do that. Unless we somehow Are able to escape from a life where all we care about. is ourself.
A few weeks ago, I had an opportunity to have a somewhat lengthy conversation with a woman I know. who has cancer. And she has been through all kinds of difficult treatments and surgeries and all the rest. Frankly, the outcome of these things are still in doubt. And yet this woman displays such a remarkable radiance.
and every time I see her She seems happy. She seems joyous. And I had this long conversation with her, and I started the conversation by asking her, How are you doing? How are things going? Because I was genuinely concerned about her and I asked about her.
And in about 15 seconds she gave me a summary about how she was doing, and then she said to me, Well, Arcee, how are you doing? And I went on and answered the question. And then, after the conversation was over, which took about a half an hour, and I was going home, it struck me. I said, I can't believe this. I went up to that woman to ask her how she was doing and to manifest my concern for her well being, and that conversation took thirty minutes, fifteen seconds of which was devoted to her situation.
And the whole rest of the time She was talking to me about my troubles. and about my worries and about my anxieties, and she was comforting me. And I couldn't believe it. And I thought, what a tremendous woman. No wonder she can maintain her joy.
Because she's not so wrapped up. in herself. A convicting message today. May the Lord help each of us to count others more significant than ourselves. I'm Nathan W.
Bingham, and this is the Wednesday edition of Renewing Your Mind. Thanks for being with us. Do you know a Christian who is struggling to have joy? Perhaps respond today with a donation in support of Renewing Your Mind so that you can give them R. C.
Sproll's book, Can I Have Joy in My Life? You can call us at 800-435-4343 or give your gift at renewingyourmind.org. And when you do, we'll also unlock lifetime digital access to this series on Joy. Dr. Sproll's series on anger, and send you his book, Is Anger Always a Sin?
Respond today at renewingyourmind.org or by using the link in the podcast show notes. There is also a digital edition of this extensive resource package for our global listening audience at renewingyourmind.org/slash global. Thank you. Do you rejoice that you're saved, that your name is written in heaven? That'll be Dr.
Sproll's focus tomorrow. Kia, on Renewing Your Mind.
