Pastor Tim Patoka Joy Marches Victorious Over Circumstance
May 22, 2022
Our Unending Joy Acts 14:8-22 1) Our Joy Comes From God’s Promises 2) Our Joy Continues Through Every Trouble What is it that brings you joy? Is it a few of your favorite things like raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens? Or is it when you complete that big project like cleaning your house or finishing a semester at school? Or is it as simple as answering the question “How was your day?” with “Good, in fact, it was great!”? Many times, we base our joy on our surrounding circumstances. If life is good, then joy is found! But if life isn’t, then neither is our joy. When we talk about being joyful, it’s helpful to remember that it’s not the same as being happy. Happy is an emotion that is great while it lasts! But joy is something deeper that can be true even when you’re not happy. And the joy we have as Christians is even a bit more unique. For our unending joy isn’t based on our surrounding circumstances, rather it’s drawn from God’s promises. As such, this joy remains with us in every circumstance we go through whether good or bad! And as we consider Paul and Barnabas’ mission trip to Lystra, we’ll see how they had unending joy despite the circumstances they endured and we’ll listen in on their words of encouragement to learn how this unending joy continues to be ours in every trouble. Our Joy Comes From God’s Promises It’s easy to be joyful when things are going good. That’s how Paul and Barnabas’ mission trip began when they came to the city of Lystra located in central, modernday Turkey. As Paul was preaching the good news of sins forgiven through faith in Jesus Christ, he came upon a man whose weak feet had never walked a day in his life. After Paul healed him, that changed. The crippled man immediately jumped up and began to walk around, his heart certainly filled with joy. Paul and Barnabas too were joyful to be God’s instruments of miraculous love and to celebrate with this healed man. But things would soon change; that joy would be difficult to maintain. When the Lystrans saw this miraculous healing, they concluded that the Greek gods Zeus and Hermes were in their midst! They thought this because of a local legend describing how an elderly couple were handsomely rewarded for showing generous hospitality to these false gods in disguise. The Lystrans were not going to let this 1
Pastor Tim Patoka Joy Marches Victorious Over Circumstance
May 22, 2022
opportunity pass by them. Once Paul and Barnabas understood what the townspeople and priest of Zeus’ temple were doing, they put a drastic stop to the red carpet treatment they were about to receive. If that wasn’t enough, then came some disgruntled Jews from Antioch and Iconium, cities where Paul and Barnabas had recently visited and been chased out once the Jewish people had heard enough of Jesus Christ. These disgruntled Jews came and persuaded the Lystran crowds to stone Paul, drag him outside the city, and leave him for dead. What a disastrous end to Paul and Barnabas’ mission trip to Lystra! If you had been treated in this way, would you have continued on your way sharing Jesus with people who need to believe him? Would you still have joy in your heart to be marked as a child of God? I pray that we never face such treatment as Paul did that day in Lystra. But we are often tempted to give up our joy as Christians in the same way that Paul was. And when we draw our joy from our surrounding circumstances, we can easily fall into temptation and lose our joy. I’m sure you’ve all met a fair-weather sports fan before. That person who cheers for the team when things are going good. But once they get on a losing streak or a star player get injured, their cheers are quiet or directed for the newest winning team. The same can happen with the joy we have as Christians. When the church is full and the singing is loud or our Facebook page has pictures of us serving our neighbor, then we joyfully call ourselves Christians. When the pastor is preaching on our heart’s passion or the Bible confirms what we already think, then we joyfully listen to our Savior’s voice. But when things don’t look as good because the church isn’t as full as it was or we face public shame for faith we profess, it can be difficult to be called a Christian. When the pastor’s words touch too close to home or the Bible corrects what we wrongly thought, we may not joyfully listen to our Savior’s voice. When Satan, the world, and our sinful flesh have their way with us, we may want nothing to do with God. We become a fair-weather Christian whose joy is drawn from our surrounding circumstances. But that’s not where our Christian joy comes from. Rather, it comes from God’s promises. We have the promise of God’s providence for all people, even the Lystrans who in past generations went their own ways and turned aside to worthless things. We have the promise of Jesus’ Easter victory that assures our forgiveness and salvation, filling us with joy like the disciples had when they saw Jesus again after his death. We have the promise of future glory when we pass through those pearly gate to our heavenly home to be with our Lord and Savior and all those whose names are written in the Lamb’s Book of Life for all time. These are the promises that you and I have, promises that fill us with joy without equal. 2
Pastor Tim Patoka Joy Marches Victorious Over Circumstance
May 22, 2022
Remember where your joy comes from – not from your surrounding circumstances, but from God’s promises. God’s promises don’t depend on what’s happening in our world, they depend on him and who he is. And you know that he is never going to change or fail to do what he has promised! That is what makes our joy as Christians unique. For it’s a joy that is unending just as God and his promises are unending. It’s a joy that is ours even if we were to be mistaken for Greek gods, stoned, and left for dead. Our Joy Continues Through Every Trouble Speaking of those things, we pick things up with Paul after the Lystran crowds left him for dead. Though he seemed dead, he was not quite dead. In fact, he stood back up when the other Christians gathered around him and spent the night in Lystra. The next day, he was well enough to set out for Derbe, the next city on their mission trip, along with Barnabas. The Lord greatly blessed their ministry in Derbe with safety and converts. After some time, they returned home and retraced their steps through Lystra, Iconium, and Antioch strengthening and encouraging the Christians by saying, “We must go through many troubles on our way to the kingdom of God.” (Acts 14:22 EHV) That may not sound all that encouraging to you. But in fact, it is! We should expect troubles to come across us as we journey to our home in heaven. And we can remain joyful through them because of God’s promises, confident that he can use our hardships to bring us closer to him. But is that the advice you hear when a person is going through troubling circumstances? Something I’ve often heard enough is the advice, “Just stay positive.” That’s not necessarily bad advice. It’s generally a good thing to focus on the positive so that the negative doesn’t overwhelm you or suck you into a dysfunctional spiral. But that advice can only get you so far because it puts the burden on you to keep yourself positive. And how do you do that if you cut God out of the loop? By relying on your surrounding circumstances which, as we covered, won’t give you unending joy. Rather, we remain joyful through our troubles because of God’s promises – his promise to provide for our physical well-being, to forgive our sins, to welcome us to our homes in heaven. It’s because of these and every other promise that Paul and Barnabas remained joyful when they left Lystra. It wasn’t because they were superheroes or a higher class of Christians. As Paul and Barnabas told the Lystrans, they were regular people like anyone else who simply came to share God’s Word. In that Word, they learned of and rested on God’s promises that kept them joyful in every troubling circumstance. 3
Pastor Tim Patoka Joy Marches Victorious Over Circumstance
May 22, 2022
You and I have the same promises as Paul and Barnabas. You and I also live in the present reality of Jesus’ Easter victory that assures us of our forgiveness and salvation because of his death and resurrection. You and I also have the future reality of a home in heaven. And as we make our way to the kingdom of God, we must go through many troubles. They say that, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” That isn’t always true. Some things hurt us and leave us permanently damaged on this side of heaven. When it comes to these troubles, the Bible doesn’t promise that we’ll surmount each one and level up. Sometimes, it’s enough to just survive. Yet even in in those circumstances when we cannot bring ourselves to put on a false smile, we have unending joy. And that’s because our joy comes from God’s promises, not from this world. And you know what is yours and what will be yours as the Lord has said to you in his word. Promises and joy that is ours through every trouble we face. Concluding Encouragements As you look to your expected years and decades until you reach your home in heaven, don’t be surprised by the many troubles you will have along the way. Perhaps you know what some of them will be! But no matter what the trouble is, look to God’s unchanging promises rather than your surrounding circumstances so that you may have unending joy in your heart. Your God will provide for your every need. Your Savior has taken your every sin away. Your Father will welcome you to your eternal home. These promises cannot be stripped from us nor will God take them back. But also remind yourself where you are going when you’re in the muck and mire of your troubling circumstances. It’s heaven you’re traveling to. The other day in Youth Catechism class, one of my students made the astute observation that our lives here on earth are nothing more than a blip in time when you include the eternity that follows. Yes, there are current troubles that honestly hurt and grieve us. But these current times will be a distant memory once we get to the blessed eternity of heaven. With that in mind, we see this temporary time of hardships for what it is – sandwiched between the present reality of Jesus’ Easter victory and the future reality of heaven’s blessings with unending joy throughout it all. Amen.
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