Joy On A Tuesday | When Heaven Meets Tuesday | Pastor Derick Amsler

Morning. Welcome to everybody joining us online in the theater room. And a bunch of students are gathered today at Duke Divinity School, watching online. Come on, church. Can you help me say welcome to them?

We are in a series called When Heaven Meets Tuesday. Psychologists tell us that Tuesday is the most depressing day of the week. That's because Monday took it all out of us. And there's hardly anything left to give. What we want to look is the revelation that is imparted on Sunday.

It meets the normal routines. Mid elbow the person next to you and say, you need this today. Come on, let them know you need this today.

How many of you remember malls? You know, I'm talking about the day and age where we have this incredible place called the mall. If you're under 20, look it up in an encyclopedia. It's an amazing, amazing establishment. How many of you remember the place in the mall called Things Remembered?

Anybody remember that? Things Remembered. You could go there and you could have anything in your world. Engraved pins, plaques, plates. I'm not sure the reason behind all of that, but if you wanted your initial on all your belongings to make sure nobody take it, Things Remembered, they have since, I think, have gone out of business.

Now. We call it Things Forgotten, apparently, but, ha, ha, that's dumb. When I graduated high school, a family friend of ours bought me for my high school graduation gift something from Things Remembered. And the box was real shiny on the outside. I was real excited to open this up secretly, like your high school graduate.

I was secretly hoping for cash, but whatever it was, I was gonna be happy with it, you know, Opened this thing up, and there was something that I'd never seen before. It looked like a hockey puck with my initials on it, DA and then I pick it up, and it's silver. It's got weight to it. It's circular. The person who gave me the gift could immediately tell I had no idea what I was holding.

And so they said, derek, do you know what that is? And I said, I don't. And they said, that right there is a paperweight. I said, wow, What do I do with it? And they said, you put it on a stack of papers and your papers won't fly away.

And I thought, I don't even have a desk. But one day when I do, I hope it's indoors. You know, that'll come in handy if I got a desk outside.

And for years, it just sat in my closet until I went to college, and then it got tossed in the trash.

And if you're watching online. But I did Love it. I love it. For many of us, our faith and our joy can be like that paperweight. Our name's on it, our initials are on it.

It's got weight to it. There's substance about it, but what do we do with it? For many of us, faith is only good for the rescue mission of God. In other words, we don't say it out loud, but we almost compartmentalize our faith matter to be the rescue mission of God. My faith is that I believe that God has saved me from my sins.

So faith is for salvation, but joy is in partnership with the faith that we believe. That says, faith is not just for your salvation. It is for the preservation of celebration that we still have and we live with this good news that Jesus is still alive and well. He sits at the right hand of God. He's seated on the throne.

He's interceding for us. He sent us the Holy Spirit to live inside of us, to walk with us so that we can be renewed every day into the image and the likeness of his very own Son. And one day he's coming back for us, to take us to heaven. Am I the only one excited about it? Salvation, then, is not just for the or our faith is not just for the salvation of our sins.

It's also for the celebration that God has come to give us life and life more abundantly. The problem is that when you examine most lives of the believer, there is this dichotomy between what we profess we believe and then our behavior. There's a difference between what we say we believe and actually how we behave when it comes to salvation and celebration. For example, we say we believe my Savior is alive, my sins are forgiven, my future is secure, and my King is coming back. We say, my Savior's alive, my sins are forgiven, my future is secure, My King is coming back.

But when you examine the sleepless nights, the complaints in our conversations, the stress we're under, the tenor and the tone of our whining, the anxiety medicine that we're on, it almost feels as if our Savior is out of reach. Our sins are still our identity, our future still depends on us. And our King is nervous about the future. So we're going to heaven, but we're worried about it. We're excited that God forgave us of our sins, but we're almost mad about still being here on earth.

And so something is not quite adding up. If we actually believe what we say we believe, we have to confront this reality that people of the cross, people, people of Jesus, people who actually believe that God has forgiven us of our sins, our future is secure and our King is coming back to rescue us out of this earth and to take us to our eternal home in heaven to be with Jesus forever and ever. Sooner or later we have to confront this idea. People who believe that we should be the happiest people on the planet, we should be the happiest people on the planet, we should be the most joyful people on the planet. And I can already hear the pushback.

Pastor, you don't know my ex. Pastor, you don't know my kids. Pastor, you don't. Pastor, you've never worked at the Amazon Fulfillment center during Christmas. Pastor, you don't know what I'm talking about.

You never work at UPS during 2020 and everybody trying to buy CrossFit gear. Pastor, you don't know. And I would just say joy. The joy of Jesus is not denial of hardships, it's defiance that the hardships win. Joy of Jesus is the ability of the believer to look at a broken world in the face and still say, my Savior is alive, my sins are forgiven, my future is secure, and my King is coming back.

Which means in the end he wins. And if we're on the winning side, we get the victory. Which means cancer doesn't win, fear doesn't win, death doesn't win, depression doesn't win, hardships doesn't win. The battle doesn't win, war doesn't win, injustice doesn't win, racism doesn't end. It doesn't win because Jesus wins in the end.

And if he wins, why are his people so sad about it?

In Genesis chapter one, God creates the world with what we would call staggering precision and power. Right, like you can't read Genesis 1, the creation narrative. God is creating the universe. Sun, moon, land, water, stars, birds, animals. He's just on this ramp.

He's just creating all these grandiose. One would think that as the creation narrative unfolds, that it would reach its narrative climax, the pinnacle of the story, with some grandiose fact of amazement or observation. God is building, he's constructing, he's moving, he's establishing, he's on a six day winning streak. One would think the creation narrative would end with maybe a juxtaposition of the height of the mountains and the oceanic depth, or God sprinkling out, laying out billions of stars across galaxies. Maybe it would list 400,000 different plants, or maybe it would give us an observation of 7.7 million animal species flying and swimming and running.

Maybe it would have this climactic moment where a monkey comes out holding a baby cub.

I don't know. I don't know. But to our surprise, when we read the creation narrative, it doesn't end on this pinnacle display of nature. The climactic moment of the creation narrative takes place at a wedding. In Genesis, chapter one, God creates man, then he creates woman, and then he holds a marriage ceremony for them both.

Have you ever thought about this? Like, this is kind of stuff that keeps me up at night. Who officiated the wedding? God. Who is the father of the bride?

God. So God gives the woman away in marriage, steps back and says, who gives this woman away to be married to this man? All this stuff is fascinating. God officiates a wedding between Adam and Eve, between the bride and the groom. Remember now, marriage, earthly marriage is a prototype.

It's an example of a spiritual reality. God's marriage to us, his people. That his relationship with us will be marked by loyalty, love, honor, faithfulness. That he will never leave us, he will never forsake us for Sidebar. And what God has joined together, let no man separate.

And if the story ended there in the wedding, our life would be perfect. No fractured humanity, no pain in the relationships, no heaviness of heart. But you know what I know? The original wedding crasher showed up. Satan shows up wearing his WVU shirt and he crashes this wedding.

And sin enters the world. And a relationship that was marked by openness and honesty and transparency and love and respect now runs behind fig leaves and trees. They run and hide. The joy that was shared at the original wedding in humanity and with God is now marked by shame, embarrassment, resentment and flight. To our amazement, God does not abandon the wedding vow.

God doesn't run off and leave us alone to our own devices. He comes down and he confronts the original wedding crasher eye to eye. And he tells Satan one day she's going to have an offspring. You ruined my kids ceremony. You ain't seen nothing yet.

So one day her descendant is going to come down and he's going to take his foot and he's going to stomp your head so hard he's going to crush your head. And he's going to kick you in the face so hard you're going to bruise his heel. Talking about the cross, all of the Old Testament is God pursuing his bride, winning, pursuing, wooing his bride back. Guys, I know you think the only relationship is to hide behind fig leaves, to be good enough to try to earn it so you feel like you deserve it. So that you can come back in relationship with me.

But I'm telling you, there's coming a day where there will be no more separation, no more tears, no more heartache, no more sickness, no more death. Keep your eyes on the sky. Because one day her descendant will come and he will crush the serpent's head. But God still has a problem. There's still this thing called sin in our life.

God doesn't want to have a distant relationship with us. So he instituted this process of grace and mercy that we would call purification rituals. This was an avenue by which people could approach the presence of God, the throne of God, or the altar. And they would go through a process because sin just can't wander in to the presence of a holy being, right? And so God said, hey, I want to have a relationship with you.

Here's what it's going to look like. You're going to go to this basin jar. You're going to wash your hands. Symbolic that my hands have committed sin. God, I've done some things that need repentance.

You would wash your feet. God, my feet have taken me in places that I should not have gone. We'll wash our face. God, my eyes have seen, my ears have heard. And these are gateways to my thoughts and to my heart.

God, my life has been marked by the residue of wickedness and evil. Would you forgive me? It was simply an external symbol of this internal reality. To get into the presence of God, we have to be purified. We need to be cleansed.

We fast forward Scripture thousands of years, and Jesus is now on the scene. And the Bible says that he wants to begin his earthly ministry. And for the very first time, he's going to reveal something about himself the world has never seen, and that is his divinity. He already has his disciples. He's already had some Bible studies with him.

He's already cooked more than filet of fish on the beach. He's already in relationship with him. They believe what he's saying about God and about eternity. They've not yet fully believed in who he is. One would think that if Jesus is going to reveal his divinity, the fact that he is God to humanity for the very first time, the location matters.

You would think he would have done it inside a synagogue or a temple. After all, people there are eager to meet God, but they'll be more open to it. Or maybe he would do it at the height of a mountain. That way more people get to see it. Or maybe he would have done it at a Taylor Swift concert.

There's A lot of people watching, right? To our amazement, he reserves the, the, the premier expression, the revelation of his divinity at a wedding. John chapter two. On the third day there was a wedding in Cana in Galilee. And the mother of Jesus was there.

Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples. When the wine was gone, Jesus mother said to him, they have no more wine. He responds woman, which madam, ma', am just had to add that in there so nobody goes home. Woman, I'm just speaking like Jesus. No, no, it's not what he said.

He said ma', am, why do you involve me? Jesus replied, my hour. Everybody say my hour. My hour has not yet come. His mother said to the serpents, just do whatever Jesus tells you.

Just do whatever Jesus tells you. Something has gone wrong in this wedding. Just like something went wrong in the original wedding. In this case there is no more wine. Now this is not just an inconvenience where somebody needs to run to ABC or 7 11.

In this particular society, wine was symbolic of joy and celebration. In a Jewish culture, symbolism meant a very was a very big deal to their way of life and their belief system. At a wedding, wine was not just a symbol of joy. Wine was the symbol of the preservation of celebration in this particular society. The man plan the details for the wedding.

How many all believe that we should bring that back? Not me. I'm putting my hand down right there. I want nothing to do with it. And so for the fact that they're at a wedding and wine runs dry culturally he's either saying it's going to look like either he's not prepared to take care of his bride or he just wasn't that excited about the wedding to begin with.

Now how does in this society, by the way, wedding celebrations would last like a week or more and they're on day three. The Bible says how do you go from a week's worth of wine to running dry in three days? Apparently he had some friends from WVU like I'm like it's just there, it's all over the text right.

Now. There were six stone water jars there for Jewish rites. It's what we just talked about. The washing of the hands, the feet, the mind, the eyes. Now there were there six water jars used for purification.

Jesus said to his sir. Jesus said to his servants, fill the jars with water or in Greek, fill it to the top overflowing, make sure you get as much in there. And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, Jesus said now draw some out and Take it to the master of the feast. So they did.

When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine. There's the miracle. And did not know where it came from. But the Bible adds this part in there, though the servants who had drawn the water, they knew. The servants knew what they put in there, but they cannot deny what came out of there.

I just want to encourage somebody who's going through a tough season. God's about to fill you and replenish you with joy unspeakable and full of the glory of God and a peace and stability that your mind and your past experience knows not of. And people will see something different about you, and they will not know where that proverbial wine came from, but you will. That's why the Bible says, taste and see for yourself the goodness of God. The story keeps going.

And the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, everybody serves the good wine first. And when people have drunk freely, then they bring out the box stuff from Costco. But you. But you have kept the good wine until now. This is the first sign, or in Greek, a mark of authentication.

Jesus is using this story, this miracle, to authenticate something about his glory for the good of the disciples. Jesus did at Cana in Galilee and manifested his glory. And his disciples, then they believed in him.

The first public sign that the kingdom of God has come the earth. The first public sign that the kingdom of God has the power to eradicate sin and hopelessness and darkness is not a set of instructions. It's not more water in a basin. It was the preservation of a celebration. For centuries, people have been washing, trying to get clean.

For centuries, people have been good enough trying to get clean. For centuries, people have tried to eradicate the crimson stain marked by shame and depression and heartache and fig leaves and hiding. For centuries, people have moved from a joyful process of getting to know God to legalism. I have to. To earn his salvation.

And Jesus comes into a society that says, more water, more water. More water, more work, more accolades. And he says, let me pour new joy. Don't we live in a society that has the illusion of wine. We have the illusion of happiness, of success.

We have the illusion of stability. We have the illusion of unity in our marriages. We have the illusion that our cup overflows with good times. We have the illusion of wine.

But you and I both know that there are people in our life, and even our own, where we have looked beyond the surface of what we post and what we say that we're good. And when you look into the cup of our soul, there is no wine.

And more water will never fill an anxious soul. And Jesus says, my kingdom is not of this world. I have come to give you life and life to the fullest. Yes, I am living water, but I'm also pure wine. Joy, Peace, Celebration the first miracle on the planet by Jesus himself was not more rules.

It was the preservation of a celebration, which means following Jesus is not Jesus came to earth to take away your fun. He came to take away your pain and to give you life and life more abundantly. Tell the person next to you, that's my Jesus. That's my.

There's this beautiful verse in the Old Testament. I think it's Amos, Amos, chapter nine. Somewhere around there where the man of God, he's talking to the people of God and he's talking about all the hardships that they're under and the depression they're facing. And he says this. He says, even the mountains one day will drip with wine.

Jesus is called the El Shaddai, the Mountain one. When we stand on the mountain that is God, everything around us becomes a visual, tangible, spiritual reminder of this reality. Even in the face of hardships, I can defy the hardship, because in the end we win. Which then raises a very important question for us on this Heaven Meets Tuesday. If that's the inspiration on Sunday, how does that collide with my stress on Tuesday?

Why is it that if Jesus brings joy, his people sometimes feel the most joyless out of everybody we know? Or why is it that I can really believe in Jesus and yet still not be marked by the joy of Jesus? I can't bother this too much. It's not the main thesis of my. Of my message, but let me just bring it up for your consideration and awareness.

And let the Holy Spirit flick your heart for further investigation this week. There's several reasons that crowd out the joy of Jesus in our life. Some of it could be because your life has turned too inward. Too inward. And it's just everything about you.

Your mind, your heart, your desires, your priorities. They orbit around your problems, your performance and your preference. And as a result, you're in your own way. Sometimes it's because we've allowed fear to crowd out the joy. Sometimes, if we've been under stress or pressure for so long, our nervous system literally has learned to respond to everything by fighting or flight and not peace and trust.

Sometimes it's because of undealt with offenses or sin in our life. Sometimes it's because we simply forgot the mission of God and we're living life for ourselves. And what we can provide is just more water when wine is on the other side of. Of a following his mission.

We often spend a lot of time in the church circles talking about the nicknames of Jesus. El Shaddai, Jehovah, Jireh, the Rose, the door, the bread, so on. But what about the other nicknames of Jesus? You know that throughout the Gospels, people in his society called Jesus a glutton or a drunkard. Not because he was those things.

It was a criticism that he was enjoying life too much. Like, he's like the guy that was kind of drunk in the corner, just enjoying his life over there. The criticism of Jesus is that, hey, with all that's going on, he's just too carefree. Think about this. How does a guy whose life is marked by people seeking to betray him.

He's got a dysfunctional family, he's got dysfunctional disciples. Nobody's getting what he's throwing down. There's sickness all around him. Rome is trying to silence him. Herod is trying to kill him.

How does the guy with all that pressure still have a reputation for enjoying life a little too much? It's a question worth exploring. Let me give you three areas. Jesus, throughout the Gospel, draws the strength of God from giving him joy. If it's the joy of the Lord that is our strength, how do we exercise our joy the way Jesus did?

Number one, if you're taking notes, throughout the Bible we see this. Jesus lived from the Father's love. He didn't try to earn it. He wasn't working for it. He lived from it.

And when you recognize how much God loved you to the point that he would actually die for you, come back to life for you. Inhabit the Holy Spirit on the inside of you. Be faithful to redeem you a little, little, little, little, little more. But day by day by day, what love and patience is that for a God like that to love somebody like us? Jesus lived from the Father's love.

So rejection didn't define him, pressure didn't shrink him, and urgency didn't rush him. He's good. The second thing we see is that Jesus lived on the Father's mission. He lived from the Father's love. He lived on the Father's mission.

Which means that joy flows from participation in the mission of God. 45 times Jesus says to the disciples, I must do what the Father's will. I must do the Father's will. I must be about my Father's business like I gotta be about what God's about. It's almost as if Jesus is waking up every day.

I wonder what God is doing today. How can I be a part of it? There's something that gives you joy when you are participating with Jesus. Have you ever thought about, like, what do you give a person who already has everything? Is there somebody in your life that has a lot?

They at least have more than you. And. And like their birthday's coming up or they're having a. And you're like, I don't even know what to get them because they've already got it. They've already got it.

Like, have you ever thought about this? What makes Jesus excited? What makes Jesus excited? To the point where there is a physical demonstration of enthusiasm. The word enthusiasm comes from the word in Theos, God in.

So enthusiasm is joy in God. What makes Jesus enthusiastic? To the point where he has a physical response. Like if you're watching a sports and then your team hits the winning shot, what do you do? There's a, like, I've never seen anybody rooting for something.

Well done, boys. There's like, yeah, one time in scripture we get this physical response of Jesus where he's like, boom, these are my guys. The Bible says that he sent out 72 people to go extend this wedding invitation, if you will. That Jesus is on the scene and he wants to have a relationship with them. That he wants to forgive them of their sins and be reunited with him.

Watch this. The Bible says that when the 72 went out and they began to share the activity of the kingdom of God, Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit. The word Luke used in Greek is the physical expression. My guys, what makes Jesus excited? When he sees redeemed humanity participate in the invitation of celebration and salvation.

There is a man named Jesus who died on the cross for your sins. And he's coming back to take us from where we are to where he is. That we may dwell in the house of of the Lord forever. When we participate in that invitation, the heart of God not just is joyful, it is contagious, but it's experiential. What makes Jesus excited?

When you get excited about what he's excited about, Jesus lives from the Father's love. He loves me. I don't have to earn it. Jesus lived on the Father's mission. And number three, the Bible would say Jesus lived for the Father's future.

In other words, Jesus always had a horizon. He always has a horizon. He's always well aware what is happening. Now but he's also aware of what's happening there. And then Hebrews 12, it says, for the joy.

Everybody say joy. For the joy set before Jesus. He endured the agony of the cross.

What was set before him? What was set before him? We find out in Luke 15. There is more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than 99 people still busy washing without Jesus. Jesus, I'm just gonna get there.

I'm just gonna try a little more. If I can just get through this season, if I can just get through this discouragement, then I'll have peace. And if I have peace, I'll have joy. And Jesus says, there is no wine, but come to me, and I will fill your cup to overflowing. Watch this.

There's more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents. That means every time somebody meets Jesus, another chair gets pulled up at the marriage supper of the Lamb. And the angels throw a party. They accepted the invitation. They're coming.

They're coming. Have you ever wanted something so bad you would give your life for it? A son or daughter coming to Jesus? You would sell your house if it would change the diagnosis. You would mortgage everything you have if it would change your situation.

Have you been praying for a family member, a loved one in your life for years and years? And right now it feels like they're so far gone. Imagine your joy when you extend the invitation for Hagerstown or Easter or why wait next Sunday morning? And they said, I'll be there. I'll see you there.

Something in your heart goes, yeah, come on, do it, God, do it. Why? Because there's a chair that has been pulled up to the marriage supper of the Lamb. All of the Bible is this. It starts at a wedding.

Jesus launches his public ministry at a wedding. And in the end of our days, we will sit with Jesus at the marriage supper of the Lamb, a banquet in all in wonder he kept his promise. And I'm just saying what God has joined together. Let no hardship or. Or depression or pain separate.

For the joy of the Lord is still your strength.

Next week, we are going to Hagerstown. It's a city full of people who need another reminder or for some of them to know for the very first time what the love of God looks like. We got about a thousand people who come from Hagerstown here. But we. We all always want to be a church that doesn't say, come to us.

Come to us. We want to be a church that says, we'll go to you. We'll go to you. That's why we love our community. That's why we love our region.

That's why we love our local hospitals and our local schools and everything in between. We want to be a go and tell church, not a come show and tell church. And next week we're going to Hagerstown. You say, well, I don't know anybody from Hagerstown, but God does. Does.

And if you don't learn to exercise your faith in tangible ways of the greatest gift God could give, you will succumb to a paperweight. It's there, but what do I do with it? God wants to use the paperweight, a dormant faith, to become a catalyst to. To replenish your joy.

I believe the spirit of God is going to move in Hagerstown. And out of jealousy, I want you in the room. And out of jealousy for you, I want you to participate in his enthusiasm in Luke 10 and Luke 15.

That the watchful of. The watchful eye of God sees the participation in the invitation that will lead to their salvation and their celebration. Let us know you're coming. Log online. We would love to host you the best way we can.

Joy becomes useless, a useless paperweight if it just sits around. Joy becomes. Becomes felt and drinkable when it's exercised. Put your hand over your heart. Let me pray for you.

Lord, in this moment we ask that you would allow the bridegroom to start pouring joy back into dry vessels.

May the bridegroom begin to fill us to the brim. You said your cup overflows. And goodness and mercy shall follow us all the days of our life. And, Lord, while that is a reality that we believe there is still dirt from the valley of the shadow of death on the soles of our feet. So, Lord, we don't need to reconcile it.

We give both to you. And we believe that we can have joy in the face of hardships. And we can defy pain. Because greater is he that is in me. And what he is is pouring in me, than he that is in the world.

So, Lord, in this moment we trade in our water for your wine. We trade in dormant activity for a robust faith that says God. If it's you, call me out of the boat and I'll walk on water. Rekindle a passion within us to see you move like we've never seen you move before. Not just in our life, but.

But through our life. May it be said of us, we are they who turn the world upside down. Not by being a weighty paperweight in society, but by being a catalyst of righteousness, peace and joy, marked by the Holy Spirit. For our King, he is alive and it is well with our soul. In Jesus name and everybody said, come on.

Amen. God bless you. We'll see you next week.