Joy and Sorrow
Philippians 1:4b–5
Philippians Lesson #007
June 2, 2022
Dr. Robert L. Dean, Jr.
www.deanbibleministries.org
Opening Prayer
“Father, we are indeed grateful for Your grace, Your forgiveness, Your love for us, Your desire to work in our lives. To mature us, to make us Christ-like, to build and prepare us for that which we will be doing for the Millennial Kingdom, and on into eternity as we serve You.
“Father, as we study these things tonight, we pray You would encourage us. Help us to understand what Your Word teaches about Your sufficiency, and all that You have provided for us. That despite the problems we face in life, Your Word gives us the tools that we need to overcome that which we face from our own sin nature.
“Father, we pray these things in Christ’s name, Amen.”
Slide 2
We are in Philippians. This week we are looking at a word that comes up at the end of Philippians 1:4 as Paul is praying for the Philippians and reminding them, “always in every prayer of mine making requests for you all with joy.”
This is a key word in Philippians, and I want to talk a little bit more about it. We talked about it last time. Because we saw that in this opening section, there is a connection between thanksgiving and joy. There is a lot more that we can say beyond what I am going to say this evening on joy.
I think there is a lot of misunderstanding in the Christian community. I know 99.5% of Christians in America have not a clue what this is talking about, and they have not thought it through very much.
It is a difficult thing for us to get around because joy is not the normative human experience. It is a supernatural product of walking by the Holy Spirit. It has nothing to do with our emotions.
Slide 3
That is a difficult concept for people to get their mental fingers around because we live in a culture that increasingly emphasized emotion since the early 19th century. For 200 years, emotion has moved from backstage to center stage. Lives are determined, evaluated all on the basis of emotion. That is not the biblical way. That is not the Christian way of life at all.
What we have seen is, this first section is the introduction to this Epistle. It extends to Philippians 1:11. There are three sections to it.
We are still in that opening prayer in Philippians 1:3–8. Then Paul is going to expand an idea that comes up in Philippians 1:5, where he says, “for your fellowship—or your partnership—in the gospel from the first day until now.”
That introduces the idea that really opens up in Philippians 1:12–26. That is Paul’s joy for the expansion of the gospel, which is a product of their fellowship in the gospel.
Then the next section emphasizes that this worthy walk is characterized by standing firm in one spirit. That takes us to the end of Philippians 2, halfway through the Epistle.
Slide 4
Last time, as we looked at this, I pointed out that we have a structure that is important to pay attention to.
Slide 5
He starts off with his main clause in Philippians 1:3, “I thank my God.” Everything else in Philippians 1:1–7 relates to his gratitude to God for what is going on in the Philippian congregation and their spiritual growth.
Then he says two things that relate to this. The first two things are encapsulated within Philippians 1:4–5, which take us back to the idea of his gratitude, what he is grateful for.
Slide 6
They are highlighted in blue here. Ultimately, he is thankful because of their partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.
Then what he is going to do in Philippians 1:6–7 is to expand the reason for that, because of his confidence. He is confident of two things.
Slide 7
We looked at this the last time.
Slide 8
We looked at the idea of what is Paul thankful for. We looked at a variety of different passages in the different Epistles to understand what we should be thankful for, in terms of spiritual life and spiritual growth.
Slide 9
Also that it is continuous. He says he thanks God “at every remembrance of you.”
We all know that as we go through life, and as we go through the day, we think of certain people. As we have opportunity, we should pray for them, not bowing our heads, closing our eyes, taking a long time, but just giving thanks for them and praying for them.
Slide 10
Then when we get into Philippians 1:4, he says that this prayer is “accompanied with joy.” That is going to be what we talk about tonight.
Slide 11
Last time, just to remind you, we saw that at the end of this Epistle, he comes back to this theme of joy and gratitude, telling them to “rejoice in the Lord always,” and then reminding them to be “anxious for nothing.”
Joy here is a fruit of the Spirit, whereas being anxious, in this sense, is a sin. We are going to get into some other words. Words are so important. Words structure ideas. And ideas are important.
It is not the ideas of Scripture that are inspired. It is the words of Scripture that are inspired. So, using certain words is important.
This is a word that is emphasizing anxieties, worrying constantly about your life, always thinking, ‘This could happen, that could happen,’ and being apprehensive about everything in life.
Slide 12
This is the verb MERIMNÁŌ.
Slide 13
We also have the noun form MERIMNA, used by Peter in 1 Peter 5:7, which gives us an idea of how we are to be anxious for nothing.
Slide 12
Paul says we are to pray with thanksgiving, and let our requests be made known unto God.
I am amazed at how many immature Christians think, |”God is too busy to be bothered with all of my little stuff.” God wants to be bothered with your little stuff because He has infinite knowledge, and it does not bother Him one little bit.
Slide 13
1 Peter 5:7 tells us that it is by “casting all your care upon Him, for he cares for you.” He has concerns, deep concerns. He is deeply involved thinking about each one of our lives.
Slide 14
It is through “prayer and supplication,
Slide 15
with thanksgiving” that we approach God.
Slide 16
The result is that God gives us this peace. We have joy, which is a fruit of the Spirit, and peace, which is a fruit of the Spirit.
This is not something you can logically work your way to. That is why he says, this is the “peace of God which goes beyond all comprehension.” It is the result of our walk by the Spirit that we have this peace, this joy, this tranquility, contentment about life.
Slide 17
We are looking tonight at this end of Philippians 1:4, and I want to talk about some things related to joy. What is joy? What is not joy? There is a huge difference.
There is a lot to think through here. A lot of believers should be taking some time to think through and praying through a lot of these issues because they have been taught by the pagan culture of our world that if you are sad, if you are sorrowful, if you are grieving, that is not a good thing.
You have to be upbeat all the time. You have to be up. There is no room for sorrow and sadness, so that is wrong. So, you need to take a pill.
But that is not how it has been in the human race up until the last hundred years or less. That thinking flowed out of Freudianism, which was grounded in the devil’s own truth, if you know anything about Freud. The Bible talks about a God that is sufficient.
For the period of 4,000 or 5,000 years before Christ, up until about 1,900 years after Christ, if you add those together, you are looking at 5,000 or 6,000 years of the history of God’s people. Old Testament saints, Gentile saints before the flood, Old Testament saints between the flood and Abraham, Gentile saints and mostly Jewish Old Testament believers up until the time of Christ, Gentile and Jewish believers in the body of Christ throughout the 2,000 years of the Church Age have had to deal with problems, sadness, sorrow, difficulties, emotional turmoil in their lives with nothing other than the Word of God.
Modern man says, “That’s not right. You need drugs.”
That is not right. God is sufficient. I know there are people who listen to me teach on this, and they say, “I just can’t agree with that.”
You are doubting the Word of God again and again and again. The Word of God says God is sufficient. The issue here is, do you understand the faith-rest drill?
It is amazing that when push comes to shove, a lot of Christians would rather trust what they see, taste, hear, can reason through, rather than just trust the Word of God. But you are not going to go anywhere as a believer unless you are just trusting the Word of God.
That is why we are to cast all our care upon Him. And the footnote does not say, “Except for those things you can take care of with Zoloft or Prozac or some other drug.”
I am not saying that there aren’t people that need some of those things. But if you are on those things, I think you need to have a serious talk with a Christian doctor, and you need to work your way off of them, because they do change and alter the brain chemistry. There is a lot of studies on that.
Go do your own research. Don’t just take my word for it. I am not the authority. I am not a medical doctor.
But I have read a number of books. Every year, a decade, or so, there are new studies that come out on how the brain chemistry is altered when you start taking these psychotropic drugs. And that is dangerous. We do not know the consequences of that.
You have got to first answer the question, “How could people have the abundant Christian life with all of the fruit of the Spirit before they had pharmacology?” You can’t get the prescription until you can really answer that question. And that is an important question. You can’t just blow by it.
Slide 18
In Philippians 1:4, Paul says he prays with joy.
Slide 19
So, we have to ask the question, “What is joy?” because we think of this as an emotional, ephemeral happiness that our generation has been pursuing their whole life.
We have to recognize:
Galatians 5:22 says that it is the fruit of the Spirit, listed second, “love, joy, and then peace.” Joy and peace that are in the passage we studied last week are the product of God the Holy Spirit. If you do not walk by the Spirit, God the Holy Spirit is not going to be producing these things.
What we will see indicated in several verses tonight is, this does not happen overnight. You can’t walk the aisle. You can’t turn it over to Jesus.
You can’t just do all of these things that revivalistic Christianity in America has told people, that you can have this quick, easy solution. Just turn it over to Jesus.
That has caused a lot of Christians to think, ‘Oh, I feel sad. This isn’t right. I’m not walking. I don’t have a good relationship with the Lord.’ We are going to go through passages tonight to show that that is a fallacious concept.
Slide 20
First, we have to understand the very basics of the Christian life. That is described in Galatians 5:16–17, going all the way down through the end of the chapter. I am not going to do a detailed study of this, but I am just going to point out the connections for you.
In Galatians 1 and Galatians 2, Paul addresses the problem of legalism: to get justified, doing the works of the law. In Galatians 3 through Galatians 6, he addresses the problem that the Judaizers were teaching, that you may get saved by grace, but you are going to grow by works, and you have to go through ritual and follow the law in order to grow as a Christian.
So, in Galatians 3:2 Paul says, “This only I want to learn from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith?”
Today people would say, “He’s so black and white. It’s either one or the other.”
Well, that’s how God made it. And what Paul is saying is, you are going to try to achieve it out of the works of the law, which, he will show in Galatians 5, is the works of the flesh, which is the sin nature. Because “by the works of the law no one shall be justified.” He just got through saying that in Galatians 2:16. No man can be justified by the works of the law.
Then he said, “Are you so foolish?—to put that into the patois, ‘Are you such an idiot? You’re not thinking.’—Having begun in the Spirit, are you now—that is, after you are saved—are you now being made perfect—or to grow and mature—by the flesh?”
Notice how he went from the law to the flesh. Because by the works of the law, no one will be justified, because the works of the law are ultimately not through the Spirit, not the work of the Spirit. So, he is saying, “You began in the Spirit.”
I want you to notice the word “Spirit,” and then the English translation is “made perfect.” It is the Greek word TELEIOS. Then there is the word “flesh.”
We do not see those words again until we get to Galatians 5:16. Isn’t that interesting? You do not have those three together again. They all come together in Galatians 5:16.
I don’t think you see any of them again until you get to Galatians 5:16 because everything between Galatians 3 and Galatians 5:16 is to walk them back to the very basics of the Christian life, and what happens at salvation, and where God is taking them, to the point where he can now address why you can’t get matured by walking according to the law or according to the flesh.
Slide 20
Now he comes to this conclusion with this command, “Walk [by means of] the Spirit.” It is an instrumental dative. “Walk [by means of] the Spirit, and you shall not …” It is a double negative in the Greek.
In English, a double negative equals a positive. But in Greek, a double negative means it is impossible. It is impossible to bring to completion the lust of the flesh.
Why is it impossible? Because the Spirit wars against the flesh. That is what he goes on to talk about. This is an either-or scenario.
Before you can walk according to the flesh, you have to fall off the horse, as it were, of walking by the Holy Spirit. Mentally, you have chosen to stop walking by the Spirit. These are the two things that are opposed to one another.
Then he goes through several verses where he talks about that. He talks about the fact that there is the work of the flesh. You can look at your life and say, if all of these things are dominating, characterizing your life, then you have to stop and think, “I’m just run by my sin nature.” “The works of the flesh—the flesh being the sin nature—are evident—are manifest.”
We could say the works of the flesh are obvious. “Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lewdness, idolatry, sorcery …” That is PHARMAKEIA, which I think is related to the use and abuse of pharmaceuticals in order to make life work apart from God, not in order to get healed or have physical maladies taken care of.
That always brings up a question because there are some problems that people have. For example, schizophrenia and bipolar [disorder]. I researched and talked to people who had, about 12 years ago, that there were no physiological markers for either one of those. That is not saying there aren’t going to be. But as of 10 years ago, there were no physiological markers.
If you have the flu, they can do a lab test and say, “You have the flu.” If you have Omicron COVID, they can do lab tests and say, “You have Omicron. You don’t have the first one or the second one, you’ve got Omicron COVID.”
If you have polio, they can do lab tests, and they can determine that. If you have a cold, if you have any number of things, they can do a lab test and say, “This is what you have.”
But if you go to a psychiatrist or a psychotherapist and you say, “I have these symptoms”, they say, “Those symptoms mean you must be bipolar.”
“Can you do a test for that to determine it?”
“No, we don’t have any tests.”
“Isn’t there some kind of marker?”
“No, no marker.”
As of 10 years ago, that was true. Maybe something was discovered, if somebody knows that they have a hard and fast objective test. Other than that, it is just counseling and psychotherapy. That is how they understand it.
People have a lot of questions. I have a lot of questions about that. I’m going to be talking to the Lord about a lot of questions about that when I get there.
But I have to understand that the Bible makes no bones about the fact that it is saying, “It’s God’s way or the highway.” And the highway is the highway to hell.
I don’t mean that in the sense of eternal punishment. I mean that in the sense of a lifetime of greater misery because you can be destroying your spiritual life and not realizing it. The pagan world has to come up with solutions to these problems because they don’t have the Word of God to solve them.
I know it is challenging. I have talked to a lot of people, and I have seen people. And I’m not saying this in some theoretical basis.
I’m always amazed how many people think, when I say something, “you know, you really haven’t been out there and dealt with (it).”
I have been a pastor for 40 years. You have no idea what I have seen and worked through and talked with professionals about. I didn’t fall off the watermelon truck yesterday.
So, Galatians 5:16, “Walk [by] the Spirit—this is as strong a promise as any in the Scripture—and—it will be impossible for you to bring to completion—the lust of the flesh.”
Slide 21
What is the result of this? That is Galatians 5:22–23, the fruit of the Spirit. Fruit is the production. How long does it take for fruit to be produced by a plant?
You have all these agricultural metaphors. But we live in a world where most people are so divorced from agriculture, they think that it just somehow magically appears in the store, and that’s it. They don’t have any idea. It grew on a plant, and it took sometimes months, sometimes years before that plant could start producing. But that’s true.
If you just take a tomato plant, it takes anywhere from 70 to 90 to 100 days before it produces fruit, if it produces fruit. I have not been very successful the last couple of years, so I’m being very skeptical. The plant has to grow a lot.
You go to a nursery. You can try to use seeds and plant your own with a grow light inside. Or you can just buy a little seedling five or six inches high. And it is going to take a while before it even produces a bloom.
Then the fruit has to come from that bloom. It takes time. And when I talk about fruit inspectors in the Christian life, the lordship salvation people say, “I didn’t see any fruit in their life.”
Well, some plants don’t ever get beyond a seedling, but they have been born again, and they had life, because they were a seedling. And then it was choked out. It does not mean that they were not saved.
Salvation is the giving of that new life. But fruit comes as the plant reaches maturity. And that only comes from studying the Word and growing in the Lord and walking by the Spirit. This is what the Spirit produces. And it is not all at once.
Notice that the word “fruit” is a singular. It is not a plural. It is not the “fruits of the Spirit” any more than the last Book is called “the Revelations.” It is one revelation, and it is one fruit.
The fruit has many dimensions, or aspects, to it. They are all interrelated and interconnected. “Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.”
These things that are talked about here are not the normal characteristics of an unbelieving human being. They can approximate patience, and they can approximate love, and they can approximate calmness and tranquility, but they do not have what this is promising. They only have what the sin nature can produce.
But what we can have is what God the Holy Spirit produces in our life. And that is transformative. But we have to be walking by the Spirit.
Slide 22
The third thing I want to bring out in terms of this introduction is the promise of Jesus. John 15:11, Jesus said, “These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you—may abide in you.”
That is that critical word. I wish these translations would stick with the same word for the same Greek word all the way through, so you would understand what they are talking about. Because at the beginning of John 15, Jesus says that we have to abide in Him, and we will bear much fruit.
So, if the unconditional requirement for having fruit in Galatians 5 is “walking by the Spirit,” and in John 15 the necessary prerequisite for producing fruit is “abiding in Christ,” you have to realize that “abiding in Christ” and “walking by the Spirit” are tantamount to the same thing. They are walking in that intimate fellowship and partnership with God.
Jesus says, “that My joy …” It is His joy. It is a supernatural joy. It is the joy of God that becomes ours, that is shared with us as we walk by the Holy Spirit.
It is not something that is mystical. It is not that you confess your sin, and you are back in fellowship, and so now you are going to have the fruit of the Spirit. That is about as wrong on all the elementary basic levels as it can possibly be.
The sad thing is, coming out of the 19th century with Holiness theology and then Holiness Pentecostal theology, and then the superficiality of Revivalism, that these things were oversimplified and mistakenly and wrongly taught. I have heard Christians, probably Christians you know or could have known, who would say, “I just keep confessing my sin, and I don’t have any joy.”
Well, you don’t understand that the end result in a Christian life is not confessing sin. That is just putting you back inside the relationship with the Holy Spirit so that if you stay there and you walk by the Spirit, you can see this fruit produced.
But if all you are doing is on a revolving door to the household, as it were—inside the house is where the fellowship takes place—but if all you do is rotate on the revolving door on the outside, you are never going to be inside to grow. You are spending too much time in the revolving door.
So, Jesus is saying, “I am giving this to you, that My joy will abide in you,” a term related to fellowship.
And He says, “[for the purpose] that your joy may be full.” This word is PLĒROŌ, which is the same word that is used for the filling by the Spirit. And the filling by the Spirit is a process where He fills us with His Word and produces maturity as a result of that.
But we have to understand what this joy is, and we have to understand that this is a divine immutable joy that Jesus had, that He never lost in His Incarnation. Now, that is a profound statement. Jesus never had His eternal joy diminished by a microgram, or He would not have been God. He would not have been immutable.
Now, think about that. Jesus is giving us that kind of joy.
Slide 23
But let us see what Jesus did in the Garden of Gethsemane. I have talked about this a lot, but I am breaking it down a lot more tonight. What happens with Jesus in Gethsemane?
What we are going to see here is that there are six words. I have seven points. There are six different words to describe the emotional turmoil that Jesus went through in those hours in the Garden of Gethsemane as He was anticipating the Cross. Six different words. These are not fun concepts to experience.
First of all, Mark 14:33 says two things. He took Peter, James, and John with Him, and He began
We have to understand what these words mean.
Slide 24
The first word, which is translated “to be troubled” or “very troubled,” is this word EKTHAMBEŌ, which in some passages means “to be alarmed.” And in other passages it means “to be amazed.” Let us look at how it is used.
Slide 25
Three other times, this word is used in the New Testament. In Mark 9:15, “Immediately when they—that is the crowd—saw Him, all the people were greatly amazed …” That is the same word. They’re just, “Wow!” They are amazed at Jesus. So, the word is not necessarily a negative word. It depends on the context.
And in Mark 16:5. This is Mark’s word. It is used four times. It is all used in Mark. Mark likes this word. This is at the time of the Resurrection. “… entering the tomb—after the Resurrection—they saw a young man clothed in a long white robe sitting on the right side; and they were alarmed.”
Does the word indicate a sin in Mark 9:15 or a sin in Mark 16:5? No.
In Mark 16:6, “… he said to them, ‘Do not be alarmed.’ ” This is the angel speaking. “ ‘You seek Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He is risen! He is not here. See the place where they laid Him.’ ”
What we see in all these uses is, it is not a sin, but it is an emotional reality. Somebody is alarmed, they are stunned, they are amazed at something. But it is not a sin. But it is an emotional state.
Slide 26
The second thing we learn is that Jesus was not only alarmed as He anticipates what is going to happen. It is translated, He was “deeply distressed.” This is the Greek word ADĒMONEŌ, and it means “to be very heavy, be weighed down in anxiety, or to be distressed, or to be troubled.”
This word is the only one that is used twice in the different accounts describing Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane. He is not really troubled. That may be some of it. He is amazed. He knows what is coming, and He is alarmed at it.
And ADĒMONEŌ, the way they describe it is “heavy in anxiety,” but this word is not used anywhere in the passages that say “Be anxious for nothing” or indicate anxiety is a sinful thing. This is something different. And again, it is only used in three other passages.
Slide 27
It is used in Matthew 26:38. Jesus said, “My soul is exceedingly sorrowful.” That may be a good translation there. “Deeply distressed” is how it is translated in Mark 14:33.
See, there is another example where the translator has the same word, same context. In Matthew, he translates it “exceedingly sorrowful.” And in Mark 14:33, it is “deeply distressed.” It does show that Jesus is in a heightened emotional state as He is anticipating being made sin for us, taking the sin on Himself at the Cross.
Matthew 26:37, “And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and He began to be sorrowful and deeply distressed.” It is not a sin to be sorrowful. It is not a sin to be distressed. It is not a sin to be amazed, or astounded, or alarmed at what is going to happen or what might happen. That is not sin.
The sin is what you do with it. What you allow it, or what you choose to do in order to alleviate the sadness or the sorrow or the grief.
People turn to drugs. People turn to alcohol. People turn to pleasure. People turn to all kinds of things in order not to have those sad or sorrowful emotions, instead of doing what the Word of God says to do.
Mark 14:33, “And He took Peter, James, and John with Him, and He began to be troubled and—here it is translated—deeply distressed.” That is a passage we already looked at.
Philippians 2:26. This is a good passage because this is Paul talking about Epaphroditus, who is there with him, and he is longing for the Philippians. “He [longs to come back to you, and he] was distressed because you had heard that he was sick.”
So, is the fact that Epaphroditus was upset because the Philippians were distressed over him, is that a sin? No. But it is an unsettled emotional condition.
Slide 28
The third word that is used here is, Jesus was “exceedingly sorrowful” or “deeply grieved.” It is in the next verse, Mark 14:34. After He has been going through this with the previous two words, He uses a third word. “Then He said to them, ‘My soul is exceedingly sorrowful …’ ”
This is Jesus describing His situation. The Greek word is PERILUPOS. That word LUPOS or LUPEŌ is the root word for sadness or sorrow or grief. And you put PERI in front of it. PERI has to do with going around something. It intensifies the meaning of this sorrow. I think it is well translated, “exceedingly sorrowful—or profoundly grieved—even to death.”
And He says, “Stay here and watch.” Jesus is deeply emotionally in turmoil, anticipating the Cross.
Slide 29
This word is used a few more times than the other words even though it is a compound word. Usually, compound words are used less, but this one is used quite a bit.
In Matthew 26:38, “Then He said to them, ‘My soul is exceedingly sorrowful.’ ”
Mark 6:26, “the king was exceedingly sorry.”
There is a difference between being sorry and being sorrowful. There are a lot of people who are pretty sorry. There are a lot of people who may feel sorry about a lot of things they have done, but that has nothing to do with being sad or sorrowful. So, that is a bad translation in Mark 6:26.
Mark 14:34, “Then He said to them,—just the same as Matthew 26:38—‘My soul is exceedingly sorrowful.’ ”
Luke 18:23–24, “when he heard this,—this was the rich young ruler—he became very sorrowful. And when Jesus saw that he became very sorrowful, He said …” So, I repeated the word. Nowhere does this word indicate a sin. It just indicates somebody who is sad, who has a lot of sorrow over something.
Slide 30
The fourth word that is applied to Jesus is in Matthew 26:37. He is sorrowful. It is LUPEŌ. The last word was PERILUPEŌ. This is LUPEŌ. It is a present middle.
I don’t want to get into a lot of grammar. A middle voice in Greek is kind of weird. We do not have a middle voice in English. It is either passive or active. A middle voice, the subject does something or acts upon himself. So, it has that reflex [connotation].
Like, you would use a middle voice, you would say, “I comb my hair.” But sometimes the middle voice is just used for emphasis.
The difference is that if it is stated as an active voice, then He would be causing His sorrow. But the middle voice could just be … and it could even be a passive. The middle and the passive have the same form in the present, and that is why it is confusing.
If it is a passive, then He is acted upon by the sorrow. But because of the confusion over middle or passive, you can’t make any kind of dogmatic assertions on the basis of it being passive versus middle. It could be either one.
“Jesus began to be sorrowful …” This is LUPEŌ.
Slide 31
LUPEŌ is defined a couple of different ways, so I wanted to put these up on the screen for you. It means to grieve or to have severe mental or emotional distress.
You don’t have to answer this: What is our world’s response to somebody who has severe mental or emotional distress? See, that is human viewpoint, how they treat that. This is not how the Scripture treats it.
And it is not a sin to be that way. That is not bad, in other words. It is reality, but it is not necessarily bad.
Our culture says, “You have to be happy and upbeat all the time.” Sometimes people may be in a situation where they are grieving, or they are sad, or they are sorrowful for two or three years or more. And that does not mean they are doing anything wrong. It is the way they are.
But if they are dealing with it with Scripture as best they can and constantly working through that, that is one of those things that God allows in their life so that they will—it is like a thorn in the flesh to teach them to—trust God.
As I read biographies in church history, it is amazing how many church leaders down through the centuries suffered from depression and suffered from sadness and sorrow. And it forced them to be more dependent upon God. But when we become dependent on pharmaceuticals, it does not help our spiritual life.
Paul uses this word in 1 Thessalonians 4:13. He says, “But I do not want you to be ignorant, brethren, concerning those who have fallen asleep,—that is, believers who have died—lest you [grieve or] sorrow—translated either way—as others who have no hope.”
Paul is not saying it is wrong to grieve. He says, “But you do not grieve like those who have no hope.”
You and I have unbelieving friends. When their loved ones or their children die, they have no hope, and they grieve like we will never grieve. But let me tell you, if you have a deep friendship with somebody who is an unbeliever, and they always rebuff your presentation of the gospel, then you will grieve like those who have no hope, because there is no hope for them.
I have many friends who are unbelievers. and I dread the day the Lord lets them die because unless they turn to the Lord between now and then, I will be grieving like those who have no hope.
In 1 Peter 1:6 we read, “In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you have been grieved by various trials.” I wanted you to see the juxtaposition there. They are both rejoicing in their trial, in their testing, and they are grieved by them.
We think it has got to be either/or. How in the world can I rejoice and have sorrow at the same time? Because the sorrow is a human emotion that is ephemeral. That means it is transitory. It comes and goes.
And the joy of the Lord is not. That is why one is a mental attitude state based on a conviction of the truth. The other is just an emotional response to the issues of life.
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Fifth point, Jesus was deeply sorrowful and deeply distressed. This is the same word that is used in Mark 14:33. It is repeated in the Matthew 26:37 passage. So, I am not adding it as a fifth word.
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Then the sixth point in Luke 22:44, it says, Jesus “being in agony.” That is the Greek word AGŌNIA.
I really looked through a lot of lexicons on this one. The Abbott-Smith Lexicon, which a lot of conservative guys like for various reasons, it sort of has a panache to it. It is older, and people say, “That’s better.” There are aspects to Abbott-Smith that are good, so I always check it.
He focuses on this. It is a contest. It is a wrestling match or a conflict. Jesus is in a state of conflict over what He is perceiving. He has great anguish. It is an apprehensiveness of mind when faced with impending ills, distress, anguish.
It is only used one time, and it is not a sin. It is recognizing that Jesus was going into battle. There is an apprehension about that, and an apprehension about what He would go through.
The Liddell, Scott, Jones A Greek-English Lexicon says it is a contest or a struggle. And that is a good thing. Jesus is facing as great a temptation as what He went through in the desert, in the wilderness. Is He going to let His human emotions control Him or not?
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Luke 22:44, you have apprehension over a conflict. This is the same verse Luke 22:44, “And being in agony …—and the second part says—Then His sweat became like great drops of blood …”
The result of this conflict in His soul is so great, the stress is so great, that it is pushing the blood in the corpuscles around His sweat glands to push the blood into the sweat glands, and He is sweating drops of blood.
I think it is the writer of Hebrews 12:4 that says, “Have you sweated blood in your struggle against sin?” I don’t think any of us have quite done that yet. That is a tough question to deal with.
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Number eight, the conclusion. Of the six different terms that are used to describe Jesus’s emotions on the Cross, none are words which indicate a sin. It is not the emotion that is wrong. It is how you handle it, what you choose to let it push you to do, in order to make it go away.
In an American culture, we do not want to have negative emotions. We have been taught that that is not the normal state. My question is, in a fallen world where everything is controlled by the sin nature, why do you think we can have happiness?
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These are some things that Jesus says about joy in the Gospel of John. We have seen this already.
John 15:11, “These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you—it is connected to walking in fellowship, abiding with Christ—[so] that—the purpose of it is walking is so that—your joy may be [complete] full.” That takes time. It takes growth. It does not happen overnight.
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In John 16:20, He gives an illustration of a woman in labor. He says, “Most assuredly, I say to you that you will weep and lament,—He is not saying that is wrong or that it is sinful—but the world will rejoice.”
What He is talking about is His Crucifixion, that they will see him crucified, and they “will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice; and you will be sorrowful,—and He is not condemning them for that—but your sorrow will be turned into joy.”
Some of us would probably sit there and say, “Your sorrowfulness is all wrong because He has told you twenty times He is going to go to Jerusalem and be crucified and die, and you never believed him, so your sorrow is wrong.”
But Jesus never did that. Some people are just too sharp, too quick to judge.
He uses the illustration in John 16:21, “A woman, when she is in labor, has sorrow because her hour has come; but as soon as she has given birth to the child, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world.”
She is so thrilled to see that child, that all that memory of that pain just goes away. That does not mean she forgets it completely, but that the joy of the child replaces the sorrow and misery of the labor.
John 16:22, He says, “Therefore, you now have sorrow; but I will see you again—talking about His reappearance after the Resurrection—and your heart will rejoice, and your joy no one will take from you.” If joy is an emotion, then circumstances can take it away from us.
Let us imagine that you are in some situation. Maybe you are at the office, you are at work. Maybe with your family, maybe you are with some friends, out to eat. Somebody suddenly runs up to you and says, “You’ve got to come to the phone. It’s an emergency. Your loved one, husband, child, baby has just died.”
How do you feel? What are your emotions? Then you just go through whatever you go through, maybe a meltdown, maybe you just are stunned, and you are in shock.
Then 30 minutes later, somebody comes in and apologizes and says, “It was a case of mistaken identity, and your loved one is safe and sound, and it wasn’t them.” Now what is your emotion?
See, emotions respond to the stimulus of the circumstances around us. As long as we are not walking by the Spirit, then we are submitting our mental state to the vicissitudes of life.
And to somebody else, we are saying, “I’m going to let other people, other circumstances, I’m going to let politics, I’m going to let the President control me. I’m going to let the fact that there is a war in Ukraine control me. I’m going to let all these other things control me. I’m going to just be a double-minded person and be tossed to and fro by every wave.”
But what Scripture says is, when we focus on the Lord, then that does not happen.
John 16:24, Jesus says, “Until now you have asked nothing in My name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be [made complete, brought to completion, be made] full.”
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John 17:13, “But now I come to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have My joy fulfilled in themselves.” That idea of “fulfill” is so important.
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In 1 John 1:4, John writes, “And these things we write to you that your joy may be full.” It is a process of spiritual growth.
In 2 John 12, “Having many things to write to you, I did not wish to do so with paper and ink; but I hope to come to you and speak face to face, that our joy may be full.” It is a process.
3 John 4, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in the truth.” That is the source of joy. It always goes back to the Scripture.
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At Romans 15:13, in his benediction, Paul says, “Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing …”
Notice, God is
A. the God of hope.
B. He is the One who fills us with all joy and peace by believing.
“… [in order] that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.”
This is what we see in this odd juxtaposition of joy and sorrow. Because joy is a mental attitude focused on the eternal, unchangeable reality of God’s grace, and emotions are in flux because of what is around us.
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Next time, we are going to come back, and we will get into Philippians 1:5, understanding the fellowship of the gospel.
Closing Prayer
“Father, thank You for this time that we have had to get together. We and many others, many who listen, struggle with different emotional circumstances.
“Father, the hope of Scripture is, that through the walk by the Spirit, those things can be surmounted. It is clear. There is no other alternative because the issues are ultimately spiritual, living in a fallen body, in a fallen world that are always going to be prone to negatives.
“But the only way we can live through that is by focusing on our walk with You. We pray that You would challenge us with these things.
“In Christ’s name, Amen.”