Sermon Transcript
Hi, I’m Pastor Dave from Bridges Community Church, and it’s my honor today to talk about a subject that I’m pretty sure you can relate to. In fact, you may identify with this quote: I wish my feelings had a delete button. That was probably something that a person said because they were going through a hard time and they just wanted to get rid of some bad feelings. I like what Dallas Willard said about feelings. He said this: Feelings are a primary blessing and a primary problem for human life.
They live on the front row of our lives like unruly children clamoring for attention and are, with few exceptions, good servants, but they’re disastrous masters. That’s to say, when your feelings get control of you, they can be disastrous masters that can do a lot of things. But one is they can rob you of joy and they can leave behind sorrow, especially right now In the world where there is so much loss, think about the loss in our world right now. The loss of jobs, the loss of income, the loss of savings, health, the loss of loved ones, of friends, a canceled trip, the loss of graduation, the loss of a sport, the loss of freedom, or even the loss of just normal routines like, you know, dropping the kids off at school outside our homes. Or eating popcorn at a theater while watching a movie?
Sorrow. Sorrow is connected to a lot of things in our lives, but when sorrow escalates, it’s common for joy to decrease. Sorrow tends to just push joy out of our lives. Now, would you agree with that? I’ve experienced that, and it’s my guess that you may have too, maybe even right now.
Which is completely different than the experience of the Apostle Paul, which is why I’m pretty excited about what we’re going to talk about this morning as we’re going to look at Paul who learned how to live a joyful life in the midst of sorrow. Paul actually talked about that in the book of 2 Corinthians, in 2 Corinthians 6:10, where he’s speaking about his life to the church at Corinth and he describes it this way, as sorrowful yet always rejoicing. 5 words. And those 5 words speak of 2 conditions that come from 2 causes that can be visualized with 2 cups. That’s where we’re going today.
Now, what are the 2 conditions? Well, a sorrowful and a joyful life. 2 conditions. Paul experienced both of them. What’s amazing is he experienced them both at the same time.
Sometimes he was sorrowful. Paul was certainly that. If you look at the long list of challenges that he had in his life and the difficulties and the struggles that brought a lot of sorrow into his life. If you go back just to the previous verses before verse 10 here in 2 Corinthians 6, just go through the list of verses 4 to 9, and you’re going to see some of the things that he listed that were difficult for him: troubles, hardships, distress, beatings, imprisonments, riots, hard work. Sleepless nights, hunger.
He had— he was condemned as an imposter. He was almost killed. The list that Paul gives us at that point was long, but the longer he ministered, the longer— listen to this— the longer he did what God called him to do, the more sorrows accumulated in his life. Fact is, sorrows come out of the problems that we experience often in life. There was a recent interview on NPR, National Public Radio.
They did an interview with a guy named Joe Newman. Joe Newman right now is 107 years old. This is a picture of Joe and his fiancée. Joe’s 107, his fiancée is 100. And so, their combined age is 207.
Just imagine that. But anyway, in this interview, Joe talked about his memories of the flu pandemic that he lived through in 1918. Now, he’s talking about the coronavirus as just another problem over a long life of problems. He said in this interview, over 107 years, I faced other problems. Living is a problem.
You do what you need to do to handle the problem that’s in front of you at this moment. And this moment, it’s a virus. But you will always have some problem. And when they come, when these problems come, oftentimes they’re accompanied by sorrow. So, it would be understandable if when we have problems, we’re going to experience sorrow.
It would be understandable that it would drain us of joy. Now, that’s usually what happens, but it’s not what happened to Paul, who although he was sometimes sorrowful, Notice again in 2 Corinthians 6:10, he was always rejoicing. Now, what do you think of that when you hear that? You know, when I hear that, I think of immediately 2 words: no way. That just like doesn’t compute.
Who among us, when sorrow comes, rejoices always? You know, you say, well, yeah, I know a few who do. They’re the happy people, you know, those that are just happy all the time. And maybe that’s what Paul was. Maybe he was just one of those happy, happy people, those happy personality types, those people who laugh and smile their way through life, that no matter what comes their way, they’re just going to be good, that their glass is half full.
They’re the Mr. Rogers types. They’re the Blippi people who go around making everybody happy, especially kids. It’s just their thing. Well, if Paul was like that, You say, well, good for him. That’s just not me, you say.
Or maybe we say, well, Paul was probably one of those people that no matter what was going on in his life, he was just going to act like everything was okay, everything’s great, even though he could have been dying on the inside. I think of Miranda Lambert’s song that talks about a Southern mom’s instructions for her daughter for when her daughter is upset about something. Maybe you’ve heard the song. I’m not going to sing it. But this is the chorus of that song.
Go and fix your makeup, girl. It’s just a breakup. Run and hide your crazy and start acting like a lady because I raised you better. Got to keep it together even when you fall apart. And I think about the words of that song, it causes me some— in some ways to think about Christians who can fall into that kind of a mode where we think that we just got to act like we’ve got it all together.
So we say, well, maybe Paul was like that. Maybe that’s what was going on in his life. Maybe that’s what he meant. Well, before you go too far down that road, you know, and attribute what was going on in his area of rejoicing to a certain personality type or, you know, a coping mechanism to just keep up appearances, it would be good to go back into Paul’s ministry, even back to the second book that he wrote, 1 Thessalonians. In that book, he told a group of Christians who were hurting that they needed to be joyful always.
1 Thessalonians 5:18, to be joyful always is to rejoice always. The word rejoice actually calls for a return, R-E, re, return to joy. Now, what’s joy? Well, joy is a settled assurance or quiet confidence or delight that comes in knowing God is in control, that the Lord has got this. Now, some of us would say, I don’t think I’m going to ever be able to do that.
How in the world am I supposed to do that? Especially after I feel loss of any kind that causes sorrow in my life. I don’t think I’m capable of returning to joy, let alone, you know, getting to a place of always rejoicing. Now, if that’s how you feel, I want you to know that that’s typical, and that’s why Paul added the word in 2 Corinthians 6:10, yet. He said, sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.
The yet tells us Paul’s experience was an exception. It was an exception to the rule because typically when sorrows increase, what does joy do? Joy decreases. You know why? Because it’s often connected to 2 causes, 2 causes that were at work in Paul’s life.
One was a natural cause, the other was a supernatural cause. The natural was caused by Paul’s flesh, and that produced in Paul sorrow in the midst of his emotional or physical pain. So when I think about that kind of sorrow, I think about the Man of Sorrows, not the Apostle Paul, but Jesus, the promised Messiah, the one in Isaiah 53:3 who is said to be a man of sorrows. Well, Jesus experienced sorrow even though he is perfect. He experienced sorrow especially in the face of death.
When Jesus, hours before he was to die, spent some time in the Garden of Gethsemane, he took with him, as Matthew 26 tells us, Peter and the 2 sons of Zebedee. That would be James and John. And He went with them to pray and to ask God to deliver Him actually from the pain that was in front of Him. But we’re told that He began, while He was with Peter and the 2 sons of Zebedee in the Garden of Gethsemane, He began to be sorrowful and troubled. And then He said to them, My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow.
To the point of death, stay here and keep watch with me. Why was Jesus sorrowful? What caused his sorrow? Well, it was his humanness. It was his flesh.
It was that part of him that did not want to be crucified, that did not want to be beaten, that did not want to die. That part of him that pleaded with the Father while he was there in the garden. 3 times he pleaded with the Father to take the cup of suffering away. His sorrow, we could say, it was normal, it was human, it was understandable. Actually, it was a healthy response so that when something bad happens or is about to happen, a person will feel sorrow.
If you don’t feel sorrow, something’s wrong with you. You may be living in denial, you’re minimizing the gravity of the situation, maybe you’re emotionally removed from someone or something. You know, I really appreciate the truth behind this quote. The only way to take sorrow out of death is to take love out of life.
What’s that say? If you love someone and they die, sorrow is going to be the natural response. I mean, why did Jesus— we learned about this last message when Pastor Dan preached about Lazarus and his death and what happened around that death. And you remember, if you were with us in that study, that Jesus wept. He experienced with everybody else sorrow and grief, and he expressed that in tears.
And those tears were a genuine expression of his love, his love for Lazarus and Mary and Martha. He experienced sorrow in that moment. That’s normal. And really, for as long as we live in this flesh and this body, in this life, in this fallen world, we’re going to have sorrow. And actually having sorrow is a good thing because the alternative would be to just stuff the emotions down and pretend that everything’s okay like a good Southern girl.
Sorrow is an appropriate response. It can be an important part actually of physical and spiritual and emotional healing. And if the sorrow is what the Bible calls godly sorrow, that comes into our life because we’re living in sin and all of a sudden we come to the point of realization that we need to repent and turn back to God. When we have that kind of sorrow, that’s a wonderful thing. It’s not something to be minimized.
It’s not something to be denied. It’s something to be embraced. So what this is telling me is it’s okay to have sorrow and it’s okay to talk about our sorrow. Jesus talked about his sorrow. Paul talked about his sorrow.
Allow yourself to feel sorrow. It’s okay to feel sorrow. It’s okay to share your sorrow with others and to find hopefully in sharing that healing and hope. Sorrow is just a natural response and it can be really good. So Paul naturally experienced sorrow, but he also experienced joy, which was a sign of God’s supernatural work in the Apostle Paul.
It was why he was able— and don’t miss this— It was why he was able to rejoice always, even in times of sorrow. The cause of his joy was supernatural. It came from the Lord, from the Lord’s work in Paul through the Spirit who was in his life. You’ve probably heard this before. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy.
There it is. Joy is a sign that the Holy Spirit is working in us. And when God’s Spirit is working in us, that will cause us to rejoice in the Lord. It will motivate us. It will send us to the Lord for help in our time of need where we will be able to rejoice.
Paul had a lot to say about that. He had a lot to say about that in the book of Philippians, which is focused on the subject of joy. In fact, it comes up 16 times in that book. But Paul in Philippians 4:4 said this, Rejoice in the Lord always, I will say it again in case you missed it, rejoice! He is saying there’s more than just, you know, a nice little thought here.
This is something that we hang on to. In fact, you know, many of us have seen this verse framed and hung on a wall, and it’s so nice there. But do you know what was behind this statement on Paul’s part, this admonition? Do you know where Paul was when he wrote these words? He was sheltering in place.
He was in lockdown in Rome, and he wasn’t there by his own choosing. It was— he was there because of some injustice that had come his way that put him into a couple of different jails for around 5 years total. Think about that. We feel like it’s terrible having been sheltering in place for 50-plus days. That’s enough, we would say, to deplete our joy.
Well, Paul’s joy, even after 4 to 5 years of sheltering in place, in a place that was in lockdown for him, his joy wasn’t depleted. He was still living with joy, with the same joy that he wanted for others who were living in Philippi or in the Bay Area or wherever you live and whatever you are doing right now, whether you are sheltering in place or not. Paul was actually living out A life that was rejoicing in the Lord. He wasn’t just, you know, putting on a fake smile, and he wasn’t just trying to look really strong and spiritual. He had joy in the midst of a really hard and sorrowful time, but that joy was connected to God’s supernatural work in him.
You know, while I was working on this part of this message, I got an emergency alert on my phone. My guess is you probably got it too earlier in the week. It was from the— a public safety alert from the health officer of Santa Clara County. And that alert, it said, had extended the shelter-in-place order through May 31st, 2020. Now, why did they do that?
Well, because they want us to do our part to continue to mitigate the likelihood of the coronavirus spreading more than it already has. So we’re being told again that we need to continue to shelter in place for at least another 21 days. And if you got that message like I did, I wonder how you felt when you read it. Was there a little bit of sorrow? Maybe some anger?
How about this? Was there joy?
Did you experience sorrow and joy at the same time? Well, that would probably depend, wouldn’t it? Depend on whether or not we mitigated our sorrow by rejoicing in the Lord. Now think about that. Over the past couple of months, we’ve become very good at mitigating COVID-19.
In fact, this is a word, mitigate, that we didn’t really use much before all of this, but now we talk about it all the time. And so we’ve learned to mitigate COVID-19 by— and initially you saw these posters around— by doing the 5: by washing our hands often, by coughing into our elbows, by not touching our faces, by staying more than 3 feet apart from others, and I guess the 3 plus 3 meant 6, if we felt sick by staying at home. So all of that was something that we learned to do to mitigate against the coronavirus. Actually, since then they’ve added 2 more mitigation practices. We’re now told to shelter in place and to wear a mask.
Well, you know, when I got this notice, it just kind of dawned on me as I was working on this message that like we’ve gotten really good at mitigating the coronavirus through those kinds of practices, we just need to get really good at mitigating our sorrows by always rejoicing in the Lord. So that when an update comes, for instance, that causes sorrow because it doesn’t say, hey, you’re free to go back to school and take your vacations and go back to work and buffet your body at the gym and buffet your body at Cheesecake Factory. When it doesn’t say all of those things, we can still mitigate our sorrow by rejoicing in the Lord. Now, I thought about this this week by thinking of it as by doing the 7 Ps, the 7 Ps. By turning to the Lord in prayer, by remembering the Lord’s power, by trusting in God’s purposes, by believing in God’s providence, by counting on God’s provisions, by holding on to God’s promises, and by valuing God’s presence.
You know, if we do that, that’s indicative of somebody who’s rejoicing in the Lord, of one who is mitigating their sorrow that comes their way by looking upward and saying, okay, Lord, you know, I’m tired of this and I’d like to get on with my life, but I know that’s not going to happen, at least for 21 days and probably more. And so I’m going to keep on turning to you. I’m going to keep on praying, and even more than I wash my hands. And I’m going to remember your power. I’m going to remember that none of these government officials or even the virus itself are outside of your control, of your power.
And I’m going to trust in your purposes, that there’s a reason that you’re allowing all of this to happen. And I will believe in your providence, that your plan is being accomplished in our lives and it’s being accomplished in the world right now. And I want to count on your provisions. I want to hold on to your promises, and I want to value your presence. You know what that is?
You know what thinking like that is? That is descriptive of somebody who is rejoicing in the Lord. Now, does that involve laughter and dancing and celebrating and, you know, high fives? Probably not. Though maybe sometimes.
But when hardship comes our way, like we mitigate the coronavirus by doing the 5 or the 7, we can mitigate our sorrows by practicing the 7 Ps. Did Paul do that? Absolutely. You know how I know that? Because he was sorrowful yet always rejoicing.
Both the natural and the supernatural were at work in Paul’s life. So you have 2 conditions, sorrow and joy, that came from 2 causes, one natural and the other supernatural, that as you look in the scriptures can both be visualized with 2 cups. And these 2 cups are found in Matthew chapter 26, 2 cups that Jesus drank from in the last hours of his life. One is the cup of sorrow, the cup of sorrow. The other cup is a cup of joy.
Now this is how Matthew described in Matthew chapter 26, this is how Matthew described what Jesus experienced. And back again in this garden account where, remember, he had taken Peter and the 2 sons of Zebedee, James and John, and it tells us that he went a little farther than them. So evidently they stopped at one place and Jesus continued into the garden. And he got a little farther and he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, my Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me, yet not as I will, but as you will. He went away a second time and prayed, my Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.
Jesus didn’t want to drink from this cup. What was it? It was a cup of suffering. It was a cup of sorrow, from a cup that was filled with suffering and death. Now, would you or I have wanted to drink from that cup?
Absolutely not. The humanity of Jesus at this point, the flesh of Jesus at this point experienced what we would experience. He didn’t want to die on the cross. If there was a way out, he wanted to take the way out. Do you know what that tells me?
It tells me that it’s okay to want out of pain and suffering, to try to find a way out of the cup of sorrow if the cup of sorrow comes our way. I find comfort in knowing this— knowing that, don’t you? That whatever potentially is making us sorrowful right now, there’s nothing wrong with praying for relief. It’s okay to not want to go through the hardships that come into our life so that when we are handed a cup of suffering, we do what Jesus did. We go before God’s throne of grace and we ask for mercy and we ask for help in this time of need.
And there’s nothing wrong with asking God to take the cup away. To spare us the pain. And if our heart is telling us to plead with God once, twice, 3 times or more, then plead with him. Pour your heart out to God. Ask for his help.
It could be that God’s going to hear that prayer and maybe he’s been waiting for us to ask and then he’s going to answer it and remove the cup. But when we ask, we need to be willing to surrender our will to God’s will, to defer as Jesus did. God’s perfect plan because in Jesus’ case, God did not take the cup of sorrow away. He had a greater good plan. And if that’s the course that the Lord has for us, just knowing that we’ve prayed and we’ve placed our life in God’s hand will bring some relief.
It will bring comfort as we endure this time of sorrow. But thank God we don’t have to do it without the help of the Lord. Well, in addition to drinking the cup of sorrow, Jesus also drank from what I will call the cup of thanksgiving, or you might even call it the cup of rejoicing, because this cup brought Jesus joy. And this cup also came into focus in Matthew chapter 26. This one came into focus during that time when Jesus celebrated the Last Supper, experienced the Last Supper with the disciples.
And while they were around the table, it says, then he took the cup— and this is another cup than the cup of sorrow— and he gave thanks, and he offered it to them, saying, drink from it, all of you. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins. I tell you, I will not drink of this fruit of the vine from now on until that day when I drink it anew with you. In my Father’s kingdom. Can you imagine this?
Jesus, just hours before he knew he was going to die on the cross, picked up a cup with wine in it, and he gave thanks for what he was about to do. And what was that? He knew he was going to drink from the cup of sorrow by shedding his blood on the cross to pay for the penalty of our sins and to make it possible for us to be forgiven of our sins.
You know, as you think about that though, is that the kind of thing that you’d be giving thanks for? Jesus did. In fact, He gave thanks because He knew what the outcome would ultimately be. In fact, the writer of Hebrews spoke about Jesus’ mindset. Hebrews 12:2, it tells us that Jesus, for the joy set before Him, endured the cross.
There it is. Joy was a part of that Last Supper experience for Jesus. He rejoiced in the midst of a situation that was giving him sorrow, yet he found joy, and that joy was connected to what would come out of his death on the cross. When people would be forgiven of their sins and they would be adopted into God’s family and they would begin to experience intimacy with the Lord now and forever. And not only that, but he was also at this moment anticipating the joy that would come when those that he died to save would literally share a cup of wine with him in the kingdom of God at a great celebration feast.
That joyous occasion was on Jesus’ mind in the upper room when he invited his followers to drink with him from the cup of thanksgiving, and then he promised them that there would be a coming day when they would drink again in God’s kingdom, a cup, a cup of thanksgiving, a cup of joy. It was that joy, that heavenly joy that gave Jesus in this moment endurance, the endurance he needed to go through with dying on the cross. I can’t even begin to fathom what that moment must have been like for the Lord, or even to imagine what it’s going to ultimately be like when we’re with the Lord in the heaven and we’re experiencing full joy in his presence. You know, if you’ve been to a wedding reception dinner celebration where there are toasts, where you have a— I think at that point in that location or that time, you have a tiny glimpse of what it might be like where somebody, you know, we’ve seen at a wedding celebration, somebody raises a cup and they celebrate. They celebrate usually the couple, right?
The wedding of Frank and Carol. Such a joyous time. And so they’re a toast. And if you know the couple’s story, the hours and the days and the months and the years it took to get to that day, it’s not uncommon when people are talking about them and sharing some of that story, it’s not uncommon that they get choked up. They shed tears of joy because of all that it took for them to get where they are right now.
And to now as a couple going to spend life together married. It was a life up to that point for sure of a mixture of sorrow and joy.
You know, in a similar way, as you think about this moment that Jesus had with the disciples and the moment that he’s talking about that is yet to come, a moment that’s going to be greater and grander and more joyful that when we get to that celebration feast with Jesus, it’s going to be all worth it. All the redeemed, all the redeemed will know that it will have been worth it. That no matter what hardships, what loss we’ve experienced, what sorrows we faced along the way, though we wish that the cup of sorrow wasn’t a part of the journey, when it comes to that day and we begin in Jesus’ presence to experience the joy that will be ours for all eternity. We will have— we will celebrate the joy then, but that joy doesn’t have to wait till then. We can begin to experience it now as we rejoice in the Lord always.
And how might we do that? Well, by turning to God in prayer and remembering his power and trusting his promises and believing in his providence. And counting on his provisions and clinging to his promises. Did I say promises twice? Or did I say purposes?
You get the point. And spending time in his presence. Imagine the joy that comes from rejoicing in the Lord in that way, always. And that joy can lift our spirits and it can fill us with life. Again and again and again.
Well, let’s pray together. Father, thank you so much for the joy that is ours in a relationship with you through Jesus Christ. In this life where we experience sorrow, we so desperately need joy. And we’re grateful that we don’t have to produce the joy in and of ourselves, but that joy is a gift from you. It is a work of the Spirit.
It comes with a relationship with you. And my prayer would be today that if there’s anybody that’s listening to this broadcast, this service, that they would, if they don’t have relationship with you, they would begin a relationship with you right now through your Son Jesus Christ. And they would receive the gift of life. They would receive forgiveness of sins. They would be adopted into your family.
And if that’s the desire of your heart, tell God that. He’ll hear that prayer. Lord, save me. Forgive me. I want to be one of your children.
I’ve been living life apart from you. Forgive me, Lord. I want to follow you. I want to be one of your followers. And Lord, we thank you that when a person comes to faith in you, that we don’t have to do this alone.
That when we experience sorrow, we can even at that time experience joy as we mitigate our sorrow by rejoicing in you and by asking you to intervene, by focusing on you and who you are and what you’ve done. So we pray that you will help us take this message today and see it transform our lives, and not just us, but those that we can share this message with. May it be to your glory, and to the good of others. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
