Joy: Responding to God’s Goodness

Speaker 1 Hey, Tim. Hello, John.
Hi. We are working through the Advent words.

Speaker 1 I've really been enjoying going through these words. I'm learning a lot.
It's been really fun. So we went through hope

Speaker 1 and then we looked at peace.

Speaker 1 Those are the first two. First two.
And now we're going to look at joy in this conversation. And then we'll look at love.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 love. Yes, hope, peace, joy, and love.
So, again, going back

Speaker 1 over a millennia and a half, even earlier, different Christian church traditions have been using the four weeks leading up to Christmas or this period of waiting for the advent of the Messiah.

Speaker 1 It's a ritual recreation

Speaker 1 of the period of waiting for God to send the Messiah and the coming of Messiah is what the word advent means, coming.

Speaker 1 It's the same dynamic as what Passover became in Jewish tradition.

Speaker 1 It's a way to recreate for your own family and friends the experience of going out of slavery in Egypt and making it your own experience, making that story and making it your own.

Speaker 1 That's what we're doing here.

Speaker 1 Taking the arrival of the king,

Speaker 1 of the new human,

Speaker 1 making that not just something that happened in the past, but reliving it in our own way. Yeah, yeah, taking

Speaker 1 the posture of like Simeon or Anna, you know, just faithful, devout Israelites who just nerd out on the Hebrew scriptures, waiting for the redemption of God's people and the coming of the Messiah.

Speaker 1 And they waited their whole lives. you know, and Simeon got the grace of, as he says, now I can die in peace.
Because Because I've seen. Yeah, because I've seen the Lord's anointed one.

Speaker 1 So that period of waiting is what this is all about.

Speaker 1 And doing it every year then is about cultivating the virtue, patience, trusting in God's slow work in history and in our lives, and cultivating hope, which is about waiting, as we discovered, cultivating peace, which is also about making something full.

Speaker 1 Not just the absence of conflict, but about the fulfillment of a purpose of a person or a thing. Yeah.
Yeah. There you go.
Yeah. So the tension of waiting,

Speaker 1 the anticipation of something being filled full. Yeah, yeah.
Yes. And then this third conversation is about the word joy that, as we're going to see, is also very much about anticipation.

Speaker 1 Joy, yeah. Let's talk about joy.
Let's talk about joy.

Speaker 1 First of all, I just want to acknowledge that joy is an English word that I use pretty much only when I am talking to the couple of people I know in my life named joy.

Speaker 1 I know two joys. Yeah, it's a good name.
Uh-huh. I don't use the word joy.

Speaker 1 If I am going to say that idea describing myself, I would just say I'm happy. Yeah.
Okay, but if you're like having a day where you feel

Speaker 1 especially happy, exuberantly happy, you want to like ramp it up. What would you say about that day? Or about yourself, the inner feelings? I'd say I just felt so good.

Speaker 1 I just felt happy. I felt grateful.

Speaker 1 I wouldn't use the word joy. I wouldn't say I was just so full of joy.
Yeah. That sounds religious to me.
Yeah. Especially the verb rejoice.
To me, that's full-on Bible speak.

Speaker 1 I've never told someone to rejoice. Yeah,

Speaker 1 we would use the word celebrate. Yeah.
Like, here, it's my birthday. I'm having a birthday party.
Come rejoice with me. You'd never say that.

Speaker 1 But you would say, come celebrate with me. Yeah, I'm going to celebrate the fact that I'm this many years old.
Come on. Come on.
Let's have a party. Party, celebrate, happy.
These are normal words.

Speaker 1 In the Hebrew Bible, it's actually like half a dozen words to describe, well, we're going to find out. Four words that get used the most.

Speaker 1 And then there's some other kind of rare four main Hebrew words that get translated joy. Wholly different roots.
Yes. And each one of them gets translated.

Speaker 1 In fact, I'm just going to show you a bunch of examples about how they're used in all these different passages. And it's hard to tell them apart.
So here's the four words, and there won't be a quiz.

Speaker 1 But there are little nuances of difference here. So the first one is from the root sameach,

Speaker 1 and then there's a noun simcha.

Speaker 1 And it's probably the most general word. It's the most common one.
It's used like over 100 times, like just to be happy or to express your happiness.

Speaker 1 So you can make it a causative verb, you can make someone happy or you can just be in the state of samayach

Speaker 1 and then if you want to say it as a noun you would say simcha. Simcha was the name of the woman that I rented our apartment from in Jerusalem? When the year I went to school in Jerusalem.
Simcha.

Speaker 1 Her name just means happiness. Yeah, joy.
Yeah, happy. Happy.
Yeah, totally. Okay.
Yeah, it's the Hebrew equivalent of someone naming their daughter joy.

Speaker 1 Okay, so that's that one. Then there's gil.

Speaker 1 Gil.

Speaker 1 And if you turn it into a noun, there's gila. Okay.
And as we're going to see, it's usually just translated also rejoice or joy.

Speaker 1 Sameach is often used to describe someone's feeling or their experience.

Speaker 1 We might say emotion.

Speaker 1 Gil

Speaker 1 is like a bit more of an outward demonstration of it. Okay.
it's more about the action of it. Yeah, totally.
So it might be like, you know, the, I don't know, jazz hands

Speaker 1 kind of thing. Like,

Speaker 2 you're demonstrating.

Speaker 1 You demonstrate your joy.

Speaker 1 No, never. Never.
That's a good point. How do you show that you're happy?

Speaker 1 I think there's more movement in your body. Yeah.
Carefreeness, maybe. Maybe in how you talk, what you talk, the tone of your voice.
Yeah. Make it kind of loud and kind of

Speaker 1 excitable. There you go.
That seems to be, we'll look at examples, but that seems to be the vibe of Giel.

Speaker 1 There's a specific word to just describe expressing your joy by being loud. Oh, that's runen.
Ranen. Ranen is the verb and then reina or rina, which just means shout of joy.
Okay. Joyful shout.

Speaker 1 Cheering. Cheering.
Yeah. Like, yay.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Hooray.

Speaker 1 What's hooray? What is that? Hooray. Hip hip.
Hoo ray.

Speaker 1 Yeah. But that's a word.
Hooray. So that's run in.
So we've got the feeling of joy, a visible demonstration of joy, then a shout of joy. Okay.

Speaker 1 And then there's even a fourth word that's used like about 20 times in the Hebrew Bible, sus

Speaker 1 or Sason.

Speaker 1 And I don't know. We'll look at examples.
It seems to just mean,

Speaker 1 I can't pin Sason down. And the dictionaries, they just say like joy or rejoice.

Speaker 1 So there's four words that are used a lot in the Hebrew Bible. And if you look them up in the dictionary, all of them will just say joy, rejoice.

Speaker 1 And then the one word, Ranen, will be like shout for joy, a shout of joy. Okay.
So there you go. That's a pretty rich vocabulary.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Four words to talk about being joyful. Yeah.
So let's look at examples.

Speaker 1 Let's start at the classic, classic moment of communal joy, which is a wedding. The joy of a wedding.
Jeremiah, after the Babylonian destruction of Jerusalem, was just so tragic and horrific.

Speaker 1 He trusts that God's going to bring about a restoration of Jerusalem.

Speaker 1 And when he wants to describe that restoration, he says, once again, there will be heard in this place, that is Jerusalem, Jerusalem of which you are now saying, oh, it's just a waste.

Speaker 1 No people, not even animals around.

Speaker 1 The towns of Judah, Judah, the streets of Jerusalem are desolate without people. But again, there will be heard in this place the voice of Sason

Speaker 1 and the voice of Simcha. So those are two words, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride.

Speaker 1 The voices of those who say, praise Yahweh. of hosts for Yahweh is good.
His loyal love is forever. The voices of those who are bringing their thank you offerings to the house of Yahweh.

Speaker 1 I'll restore the fortunes of the land as in the beginning.

Speaker 1 So thank you offerings in the temple. Yeah, you don't think of the temple sacrifice moments of being joyful like a wedding.

Speaker 1 Think of those being very somber

Speaker 1 experiences. Okay.
Well, I hope to change that impression. We're going to look at...
a lot more examples. Okay.
No, it was a party time. Really?

Speaker 1 Because especially a thank you offering, which was the majority of offerings that Israelites brought, you take home a bunch of what you offered.

Speaker 1 Some of what you offer is burnt up or given to the priests, but you get back most of it, and then you have a huge feast,

Speaker 1 big party. It's party time.
Yeah, offering a sacrifice was party time

Speaker 1 for the majority of the offerings.

Speaker 1 So praising Yahweh in the temple, we think of that as like worship.

Speaker 1 And then there's the sound of people bringing their thank you offerings to God. And there's the sound of a wedding.

Speaker 1 And all three of those are set on analogy to each other. Isn't that cool? And it's called sason and simcha.
So let's let the definitions build.

Speaker 1 Here's a rad little proverb about the joy that parents experience in their children. Sometimes.

Speaker 1 Proverbs 23, 22. It's from father to a son.
Listen to your father, the one who gave you life. And don't despise your mother when she's old.
Buy truth. Like, get truth.
And don't sell it.

Speaker 1 Wisdom and instruction and understanding. So it's a common motif in Proverbs.
Your mom and your dad are God's gift of wisdom to you as a child.

Speaker 1 And from them, you can buy truth that you should never sell. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And the father of the righteous one, so the father of a son who goes on to do right by God.

Speaker 1 Yeah. He will surely giel

Speaker 1 be happy, rejoice. The one who births a wise person

Speaker 1 will be happy with him. That is the one who was born.
That's samayach.

Speaker 1 May your father and mother be glad. Oh, glad? That's a word we haven't used yet.
Samerach. Oh, glad.
That's a good point. That's another English word.
I would just say, I'm happy. I feel happy today.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 And may the one who bore you rejoice. So it's our two words in a cool little symmetry.
You've got gil, samayach, samayach, and gil in a row here. Okay.
So gil, it's usually about action.

Speaker 1 Samayach is the most general.

Speaker 1 And this is all around a kid

Speaker 1 who has learned wisdom from their parents. And then the parents are stoked.
They're stoked. When they launch a kid into the world who goes on to do right by other people and be really wise.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's a cool feeling. It's a cool feeling.
Sameach.

Speaker 1 Sameach and giel.

Speaker 1 Okay. Okay.

Speaker 1 Proverbs 27, 9. Perfume and incense that bring samayach to a heart, so also the sweetness of a friend from their heartfelt advice.

Speaker 1 Isn't that a great proverb? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Hmm. I have gone into a room where they were burning like a really good incense.
It just kind of makes the room feel special. Yeah.
Relaxes your body a little bit.

Speaker 1 So that feeling that you experienced is described here as samayach it's samayach to your heart isn't that interesting and then that's set on analogy to a friend giving you some real honest but important advice

Speaker 1 and the bond yeah be like whoa you care about me and you shared that there's a sweetness there

Speaker 1 and those two things are set on analogy to each other. I love that.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 last one here, just again, trying to get a sense of the vocabulary. Psalm 32, verse 10.
Many are the pains or the troubles of the wicked.

Speaker 1 You know, you do wrong by God and neighbor, you bring a heap of trouble on yourself. But for the one who trusts Yahweh, loyal love surrounds him.
Be glad, Samayach, in Yahweh.

Speaker 1 And Gil, rejoice, you righteous ones. And Ranan, shout for joy, all you upright of heart.
So we got three words all right here. Yeah.
Sameach, in Yahweh.

Speaker 1 So Samech is something you feel because of your trust in somebody, like the emotion.

Speaker 1 But then there's a call to gil,

Speaker 1 which much more of an action. With that outward demonstration.

Speaker 1 And then Ranein is like the ultimate outward demonstration. You just like...
To the exuberance of it. Yes.
Woo!

Speaker 1 You talked about going to a soccer game with your family for the first time recently? Yeah, yeah. And just how like rowdy and exuberant the crowd gets.
So into it. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Portland soccer is a really big deal. It was so rowdy.
People were so into it. Yeah.
That's it. That's Renane.
Renane.

Speaker 1 So actually, I'm just noticing right here in Psalm 32, the contrast is like, basically, if you don't do right by God and neighbor, your life's likely going to be more full of trouble than not, and probably a lot of it self-caused.

Speaker 1 But if you trust in Yahweh and do right by God and neighbor, then man, Yahweh will bring some of that goodness back around your way.

Speaker 1 And when you feel that, when you have the experience of a season of life well lived, there's a feeling of happiness in Yahweh, but then a demonstration of that, and then a full-on, just like you kind of lose self-control for a moment.

Speaker 1 You just shout. It's all you can think to do.
So these are our words.

Speaker 1 Okay,

Speaker 1 here's what's so interesting: the highest concentration of these words is found in the book of Psalms. And most consistently, it's a response to what God has done.

Speaker 1 And in lots of these little scenes, you can put together how ancient Israelites celebrate.

Speaker 1 Something awesome would happen in their lives. And if they lived in proximity to the temple, they would bring a thank-you offering to God.

Speaker 1 And as they're offering it, they would turn around and just start storytelling and thanking God right there in the temple courts. And it's very often that these words come up.

Speaker 1 So let's look at some examples.

Speaker 1 Psalm 42,

Speaker 1 which is a lament, actually. It begins by saying, like, where are you, God? My soul is downcast within me.

Speaker 1 But he remembers something from the past that's really special to him. He says, I remember.
and I pour out my soul within me about the times when I would go along with the multitude.

Speaker 1 In fact, I would lead a group in procession to the house of God with a voice of Rin Nana, this rejoicing, shouting for joy, and thanksgiving, that's about giving a Thanksgiving offering, and a crowd celebrating a festival.

Speaker 1 So there'd be these times of these offerings. It was so communal.
that there'd be crowds of people going.

Speaker 1 And you would even have someone kind of leading that group. Like, we're going to the temple.
We're doing the thing. Yeah.
And you're singing on the way. Yeah.
Singing on the way. Shouting.
Okay. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So we don't know if this is describing Passover or Pentecost or tabernacles, but think of when Jesus comes into the city

Speaker 1 on Palm Sunday in the Gospels and there's all that crew. Now they're celebrating him, right? As the hoped for Messiah.

Speaker 1 But you get the idea of a group of people that's traveled to the city and they're singing songs as they go through the gates on their way up to the temple. Yeah, that's cool.

Speaker 1 By Jesus' time, that's already an ancient tradition that this guy is remembering right here in Psalm 42.

Speaker 1 There were times when I got to do this, and it seems like the lament poem is like, those times are no more. And I long for them.
Yeah. But he has a sweet memory.

Speaker 1 I have thought before how cool it would be.

Speaker 1 to have lived in a setting where even if it was just once a year, it's you and your crew and your friends, and we're backpacking, we've got all our food, we got tents, we've got people along the way, they're going to host us, but like we're going to caravan

Speaker 1 to Jerusalem, and then we're going to party.

Speaker 1 It would be hard,

Speaker 1 but the memories. Oh, think of that.
And then when you get there and you're celebrating. Yeah, yeah.
It would shape you in a bit. It would shape you.
It would be the annual highlight.

Speaker 1 It would be the favorite thing that you do out there. This is Passover.
Yeah. This is Passover in ancient Israel.
Yeah. Yeah, man.
It's really really remarkable.

Speaker 1 Like, we don't actually have very many, if at all, equivalents to this.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yes.
Okay. So here's just two other examples.
Isaiah chapter 30 remembers a moment like this, and he remembers the party going into the nighttime.

Speaker 1 He says it'll be like a song in the night, you know, like when the holy festivals are kept.

Speaker 1 So Passover, Pentecost, and gladness of heart, there's simcha, like somebody going along with the flute, going up to the mountain of Yahweh.

Speaker 1 So now we've got flute leaders. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, imagine the scene. Psalm 107.
Here's a group of people that called out to God for help.

Speaker 1 God saved them. He sent his word and healed them.
He delivered them from pits.

Speaker 1 Why are you laughing at?

Speaker 1 Just the Bible.

Speaker 1 Well, pits, like, pits come up in the Bible a lot. They did.
Were they a problem back then? Well,

Speaker 1 there's a lot of pits. They're also, yes, but also, I think it becomes a symbol of like the trap on the road.
Yeah. The point is, it's in a very general kind of symbolic sense.
They were in trouble.

Speaker 1 Yahweh rescued them. What are they going to do? They're going to go give thanks to Yahweh.
And they are going to tell of his wonderful deeds for the children of Adam.

Speaker 1 They're going to offer sacrifices of thanksgiving and tell of his works with rinana, shouts of joy. So you get the vibe.
Yeah. This was a big part of Israelite life.

Speaker 1 You had a central city

Speaker 1 with the temple and annual pilgrimages and then personal pilgrimages.

Speaker 1 Like if you have the annual thing going with a group, then when you have major milestone events in your life, it will just occur to you, like, I'm just going to do my own pilgrimage and go down there this weekend.

Speaker 1 And who wants to come with me? Well, I had this great crop of wheat this year after two years of like drought. And I just, let's party, man.
Let's go to Jerusalem.

Speaker 1 I'm going to offer a sacrifice and then we'll eat it. And it'll be a great night.
Yeah. Who's going to bring the flute? Like, that's the vibe.
That's awesome. Isn't that a rad way to live?

Speaker 1 Okay, here's what's cool. Think of a culture steeped in this way of life.
And then

Speaker 1 when the biblical authors...

Speaker 1 retold stories from early in Israel's history, you can see certain stories modeled on this pattern. Hold on, say the pattern one more more time.
The pattern is,

Speaker 1 Yahweh does something for you. Yeah.
Something rad in your life happens. It's a good thing.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 you go to the temple, give a thank you offering, and then you break out in song and shout, and you tell the story of what God did for you.

Speaker 1 That's just the lived experience on a communal level with annual pilgrimages and then on an individual level. So the first story that's modeled on this pattern is actually the Exodus story.

Speaker 1 It's really cool. So there's the night of Passover, and the Israelites leave Egypt, and then they pass through the waters of the sea, right, the perishing of Pharaoh's army.

Speaker 1 And then the narrative just stops. And we're told in Exodus 15, then Moses and the Israelites just broke out in song, and they sing what's called the song of the sea.

Speaker 1 And it begins, I'm going to sing to the Lord, for he is highly exalted. horse and driver, he's hurled into the sea.

Speaker 1 The Lord's my strength, my defense, my salvation he's my god i'll praise him my father's god i'll exalt him

Speaker 1 so there's no rejoicing vocabulary here but lots of singing and praising and

Speaker 1 but then once the poem ends what you're told is miriam this is in exodus 15 20 miriam the prophet aaron's sister but also Moses's sister's sister yeah she got a tambourine or a little timbrel

Speaker 1 and she got a whole group of women to follow her they also had little tambourines and they're dancing. And then Miriam led them in singing.

Speaker 1 And then it's the same verbatim from the opening lines of the song that Moses and the Israelites sang. I'll sing to the Lord.
He's highly exalted. Horse and rider, he's hurled into the sea.

Speaker 1 So it's got this like back and forth.

Speaker 1 There's like the guys sing apart and then the ladies sing apart. It's like a full-on worship procession.

Speaker 1 And this part of the song is about how you're going to bring us into the land you promised and take us to your holy mountain where we'll worship you. Yeah, they're still hoping for something more.

Speaker 1 Yeah. The song itself is like in anticipation of us going to some holy space to meet you and we'll sing the song ahead of time.
Yeah. That's the twist.
Okay.

Speaker 1 The song is anticipating the going to God's holy space.

Speaker 1 We're going to sing the song while we're still on the way. Yeah.
To the holy mountain. We're going to still go through the wilderness.
Yeah. And get to the mountain.

Speaker 1 But God has done a cool thing already.

Speaker 1 And we anticipate he will continue to. And so we'll sing on the way.

Speaker 1 So it's almost like a preemptive joy or an anticipatory joy, joy on the way. Yeah.
And this brings us to the Advent season then, which is about anticipation. Exactly.
Totally.

Speaker 1 Why would the word joy be used when we're anticipating something? Yes. Usually you think of angst

Speaker 1 when you're anticipating something that you want to come. Yeah, totally.
So this is what's so interesting is that anticipatory joy. It's like celebrating ahead of time.

Speaker 1 And that's kind of what the song of the sea does. God's already done something, but

Speaker 1 he's going to do something bigger. And we trust that he'll do that bigger thing based on what he's already done.

Speaker 1 And we'll sing in the moment to just celebrate the whole story as if it's already happened. Yeah.
So it's just this very portrait of joy that you find in the joy vocabulary of the New Testament.

Speaker 1 And it just saturates the New New Testament.

Speaker 1 So there's two main words in the Greek New Testament for joy, And one is Cairo, and the other is Agalia'o.

Speaker 1 And the Cairo root is used like 120 times in the New Testament. Then the Agalia'o root is used just a little over a dozen times.
So the Cairo root, it's the main one.

Speaker 1 And again, it's hard to tell them apart. Rejoice, be happy.
But there's only two words instead of four in the Hebrew Bible.

Speaker 1 The gospel account that uses joy vocabulary the most of the four gospels is Luke.

Speaker 1 People are just stoked in Luke. It's just happiness.
And these are famous passages here.

Speaker 1 When the angel comes to John the Baptist's dad to say, like, hey, your wife's going to be pregnant, give birth to a son named John.

Speaker 1 He says, you're going to experience joy, chara, from the chairo root, and celebration

Speaker 1 from the Agalia root.

Speaker 1 And many other people are going going to Cairo at his birth. So you're going to have joy, and you're going to celebrate,

Speaker 1 and other people will celebrate at this kid.

Speaker 1 When Mary sings her famous song, when she finds out that she's going to give birth to the Messiah, the Son of God, the first thing she says is, My soul exalts in the Lord, and my spirit, Agaliaos, rejoices in God, my Savior.

Speaker 1 And these songs, especially her song, it sounds like it just came right out of Isaiah and the Psalms.

Speaker 1 The famous moment when the angels come to the shepherds, you know, to announce the birth of Jesus.

Speaker 1 I bring you good tidings of great joy, you know. So this is the vibe in Luke.
It's just joy everywhere.

Speaker 1 When Jesus sends out 72 of his followers to go do what he's been doing, announcing the good news of the kingdom, when they come back and they're like, whoa, we got to heal some people and like drive away evil forces.

Speaker 1 We're told that they return with joy. And then we're told that Jesus himself rejoiced in the Holy Spirit.
He was like so full of the presence of God that he has this moment of rejoicing.

Speaker 1 What's cool about this is that think of how, as I was showing you in the Psalms, moments of joy are marked moments of either celebrating God's presence and activity in your life or actually straight up going to the temple.

Speaker 1 There's this connection of joy and God's presence.

Speaker 1 And that's what we're seeing here. God's acting in this way.
He's going to send the forerunner, John the Baptist, Mary celebrating God creating a body for the Messiah in her womb.

Speaker 1 And now here's Jesus rejoicing in the spirit, which is like the presence. of the Father with him.

Speaker 1 Lots of joy. Lots of joy.
Luke uses the vocabulary of sadness turning to joy in the resurrection stories.

Speaker 1 When Jesus meets the two walking on the road to Emmaus and they're talking about how their friend and leader got killed and they're really sad about it in Luke 24, 17,

Speaker 1 he asks, what are you guys talking about?

Speaker 1 You walk along because they don't know it's Jesus.

Speaker 1 Luke says, and they stood still, looking very sad.

Speaker 1 And then they say, well, we had this friend and leader and then he got killed. And so they're sad.

Speaker 1 And then after he has a meal with them and a Bible study and shows them his hands and his feet, what we hear is that those two along with a group, this is in Luke 24, 41, they were

Speaker 1 still not fully believing what was going on because of joy. And they were just stunned.

Speaker 1 They were in disbelief because of joy. Yeah, isn't that interesting line? They were disbelieving still because of joy and they were just marveling, meaning they were so shocked

Speaker 1 that Jesus is right there.

Speaker 1 So that's an interesting line. It goes from sadness to joy.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So sudden. Yeah.
Or your mind hasn't embraced it. You're like, is this for real? Yeah.
Can I really

Speaker 1 trust this is actually happening? This is really good. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So in context, the moment Jesus is just all of a sudden in the, in the middle of the room, it says they were startled and afraid because they thought they were seeing a ghost.

Speaker 1 And then he says, why are you guys freaked out? Why are you doubting? Here I am. It's me.

Speaker 1 And then when they're still disbelieving because of joy, he says, ugh, do you guys have anything to eat?

Speaker 1 And then he sits and eats with them.

Speaker 1 So there's something about the shock. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So Luke has a rich vocabulary of joy to talk about the arrival of Jesus Messiah, the experience of Jesus Messiah himself, and then the transition from sorrow to joy on Easter weekend.

Speaker 1 As you continue on in Luke's work in the book of Acts, joy vocabulary continues. And what you find especially is the language of joy in moments of terrible, terrible, tragic events.

Speaker 1 And the followers of Jesus choose joy. Yeah.
So here's just a couple examples. This is in Acts chapter five when Peter and company were teaching about Jesus in the temple and they get arrested.

Speaker 1 They get put in prison, but then the Sanhedrin aren't sure what to do with these guys. So instead, they just have their backs whipped and humiliated.

Speaker 1 And then they command them, like, stop talking about Jesus. And they let them go free.
Yeah. It's a bad day.
It's a bad day. Like, dude.
Yeah. Think of that.
You get arrested. Public humiliation.

Speaker 1 Publicly humiliated. Literally.
And beat. And like beaten.
Like your back's bloody. You're going to have scars for that the rest of your life.

Speaker 1 You walk out. They let you go.
Yeah. You're walking out the door.
This is Acts 5, verse 41.

Speaker 1 They, this Peter and company, went out from the presence of the Sanhedrin rejoicing because they had been considered worthy. to be dishonored for the sake of the name.
That is the name of Jesus.

Speaker 1 And every day in the temple courts, house to house, they did not stop teaching and announcing the good news that Jesus was the Messiah. And this is a pattern that continues.

Speaker 1 There's this moment similar to that in Acts chapter 13, where Paul and Barnabas have gone to a Jewish synagogue in the city called Pisidian Antioch.

Speaker 1 And a bunch of the Jewish community leaders are not stoked. And so they get a mob together to get Paul and Barnabas kicked out of their city.
And so they like beat them and like reject them.

Speaker 1 And so Paul and Barnabas shake the dust off their feet. Which is a turn of phrase? Mm-hmm.
Like, we're leaving you guys behind. Even the dust of your town

Speaker 1 that's on the bottom of our feet, we shake it off. We're moving on.
And they went on to the next city. And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.
Hmm.

Speaker 1 Filled with joy and filled with

Speaker 1 the Spirit of God. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 So this theme of joy, you can trace it right on through the letters. Paul, Peter, we'll talk about rejoicing, being glad,

Speaker 1 especially when something terrible happens to you because you follow Jesus. Yeah, I mean, that's the model and scripture from the Song of the Sea, even.
We got a taste. of what God can do.

Speaker 1 And now we're going to not only rejoice in that, we're going to rejoice in like how the story is going to end.

Speaker 1 And then you get into these situations where you're dealing with suffering like you're in the wilderness

Speaker 1 and you can still rejoice yes yeah so i think that's the twist is

Speaker 1 from that pattern we saw in the psalms you go celebrate with joy when god has done the thing yeah the exodus provides a tweak on that where god has done part of the thing a foundational part of the thing, like the climax with Passover.

Speaker 1 But then there's a whole journey on into the promised land that God has yet to do, but we are going to sing as if we're at the end of the story. That's what the song of the sea represents.

Speaker 1 And then here in the New Testament, that's the vibe. Like the Messiah has come on Passover weekend.
He died and was raised. And the promised land, new creation is ahead.
We're going to sing.

Speaker 1 and rejoice in the present as if the story has already reached its completion.

Speaker 1 And that's fully the picture of this rejoicing and suffering that then you see. And that's the portrait of joy called up for followers of Jesus every year if you celebrate Advent.

Speaker 1 It's that picture of joy.

Speaker 1 And joy is often connected with the presence of the Spirit in the New Testament.

Speaker 1 Jesus rejoiced in the Spirit. The disciples at Pisity and Antioch are filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.

Speaker 1 Paul will say in Romans, the kingdom of God isn't, you know, eating or drinking or celebrating on certain days that different groups dispute which day is like the sacred day.

Speaker 1 He says it's righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Speaker 1 What verse is that? Yeah, it's in Romans 14.

Speaker 1 The kingdom of God is not about eating or drinking, but it's about doing right by God and neighbor. It's about peace, and then it's about joy in the Holy Spirit.
That's the kingdom of God right there.

Speaker 1 Which you can celebrate by eating and drinking, but eating and drinking was like being disputed on what days should you celebrate, you know, certain holy days. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And different Christians had different opinions. And he's like, remember.
Remember the point. Remember the point.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Doing right by God and neighbor, bringing about the shalom fulfillment, and then anticipating

Speaker 1 and celebrating as if the new creation has already got started. And to do that, you're doing that in

Speaker 1 the Holy Spirit.

Speaker 1 Spirit of God.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Joy, preemptive joy.
Yeah. Yeah.
There you go. And it's also joy for what God has done.
Mm-hmm. From our vantage point, not only has the Messiah been born, he lived and died and was raised.

Speaker 1 And the Spirit's been given to his people. So that for us is like our Exodus event.

Speaker 1 And now we are waiting for the full realization of new creation.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 our own songs of the sea, so to speak, are our way of going out with joy, like in the language of Psalm 105, being brought out with shouts of joy. And so,

Speaker 1 you know, you end up in prison like Paul or Peter, or you just end up, we're outside Eden and our bodies are crumbling and it's hard to get along with each other.

Speaker 1 Families are all complicated and dysfunctional. There's lots to grieve there, but that grief also needs to be balanced by, I guess, a bigger perspective, and that's Christian joy.

Speaker 1 Choosing to not let my present circumstances tell the whole story about what I believe is true about my life or the world. When I have that bigger story, then it's a choice of joy.

Speaker 2 Hey, this is Tyler, and during this Advent series, we're going to end each episode with a little meditation talking with some of our own team members here at Bible Project to hear their thoughts on each of these words associated with Advent.

Speaker 2 And so today with me, I have someone very special. Would you like to introduce yourself?

Speaker 3 Sure, yeah. My name is Alina Maria, and I am an art director here at Bible Project.

Speaker 2 So Alina, what comes to mind when you hear about this idea that joy is a response to God's goodness in our lives?

Speaker 3 I think for me, when I think about joy, I always think of this idea that no matter how stressful or how hard things are, God is always going to be there to provide.

Speaker 3 And so don't dwell in the hardship and the sadness because there is something to always be joyful about during work or during the holiday season when things are busy and it's easy to get really stressed about those types of things.

Speaker 3 But for me, I know at the end of all of that, there's going to be something beautiful coming, you know?

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 So in a way, the Advent season is an example of what all of life is about, which is a deep anticipation of what God's going to do.

Speaker 2 I'm curious, Alina, what role does joy play in your life when it seems like needs aren't being met?

Speaker 3 I think it's about that faith and knowing, like, even if it's not a physical kind of thing that's being provided, there's so many other beautiful things and little joys along the way that, you know, you're you're going to get.

Speaker 2 Could you maybe share some of those things?

Speaker 3 Yes. It's saying good morning to my parents when I wake up.
It's coming home to my abuelos and just walking down the street with my sister after she gets off of work.

Speaker 3 My mom's cosido when she makes that and helping her prepare things. And it's those little everyday moments, you know, to be with my family and the time that's spent together.

Speaker 2 I love how these words kind of feed into each other because the thing that you're finding hope in is the joy of the love you have for your family.

Speaker 1 So it's like, yeah, it's super cool.

Speaker 2 And knowing that in all of that, we love because Jesus has shown us the ultimate example of love in a life laid down.

Speaker 3 Exactly. Love brings you joy.
It all ties together.

Speaker 1 That's great.

Speaker 2 Thanks for joining me, Alina. And as you can tell, there's a large team of us here at the Bible Project that help make the podcast happen for a full list of everyone involved.

Speaker 2 Check out the show credits at the end of any podcast episode wherever you stream the podcast on our website and on our app.

Speaker 1 Bye.

Speaker 2 Bible Project is a crowdfunded nonprofit and we exist to help people experience the Bible as a unified story that leads to Jesus.

Speaker 2 And everything we make is free because of the generous support of thousands of people just like you. Thank you so much for being a part of this with us.

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