What does the Bible say about joy?
The Daily Article
The Denison Forum
4.9 • 576 Ratings
🗓️ 30 November 2020
⏱️ 8 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In the midst of a pandemic, it's difficult to seek joy. When discouragement, depression, and anxiety rise with each passing day, it's challenging to see the light at the end of a long tunnel. And it's OK for us to ask God, "Why?" It's OK to ask, "Where is joy to be found?" In fact, does God promise his people that they will always be happy, no matter their circumstances? And if we're not promised happiness, why should we follow Jesus?
Dr. Jim Denison answers these questions as he describes what the Bible says about joy.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to a bonus episode of the Daily Article podcast. |
| 0:05.0 | Over the next five to ten minutes, you'll hear Dr. Denison discuss what the Bible says about a particular topic. |
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| 0:17.0 | YouTube.com forward slash Denison Forum. |
| 0:27.2 | Hello, I'm Chris Elkins with Denison Forum, and today Dr. Jim Venison is with us to address a question ultimately about joy, but let's start first. We hear so much today about the deaths |
| 0:34.3 | of despair and academic of discouragement, there's suicide and opioid |
| 0:39.2 | addictions and so many things like this going on in our culture. Why do we have such problems? |
| 0:45.5 | Yeah, you really can't talk about joy unless you first. I guess start talking about the need for |
| 0:49.3 | joy, the reason why we need joy in our culture, right? Thinking about this in a theological perspective, |
| 0:59.5 | I would take us back to the division between soul and spirit. They're really in body and soul that really unfortunately characterizes our culture and cuts us off from the God who is the source of joy, |
| 1:04.9 | the God who is the source of life, the only God that really is the source of that which our hearts |
| 1:09.3 | most need. So six centuries before Plato, there was this philosopher named Orpheus and he had this idea that your soul existed in a pre-incarned state and it sinned, we would say, and it was punished by being put in your body. And the whole point of life is to live in such a way that when you die, your soul can go back where it came from. Well, that influenced |
| 1:28.0 | Pythagoras, that influenced Plato, who influenced the whole Western world. So people in the West |
| 1:32.6 | have this idea that there's the spiritual and the secular and there's religion in the real world |
| 1:37.0 | and Sunday and Monday. So we've segregated God into a part of our lives. The Romans had this |
| 1:43.0 | transaction of religion where you sacrifice to the |
| 1:46.0 | gods or they'll bless your crops or keep you safe at war or whatever it is you wanted. So you had this |
| 1:50.4 | kind of standoffish relationship with God, where God's just a part of your life rather than the |
| 1:55.8 | Lord of your life. Well, by making that decision, we cut ourselves off from the God who gives life and gives eternal life, |
| 2:02.6 | from the God who is the source of joy, from the God who is the source of that which we most need. |
| 2:08.6 | Augustine said, our hearts are restless until they rest in him. |
| 2:12.2 | And we're made that way. |
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