“Enter the joy of the Lord”
Imagine this: You are watching the Lakers play the Orlando Magic on Friday. It’s been a tight game all along and the Lakers are behind by two, but Orlando has the ball and there’s only 5 seconds to go in the game. This is where your imagination has to start. Suddenly Jameer Nelson trips, loses the ball, and Parker grabs it for the Lakers, runs to mid-court and arches in a 3-pointer, winning the game at the buzzer. The crowd goes wild. You jump to your feet and pump your fist in the air. You feel joy. The crowd feels joy. The Lakers feel joy.
But wait – is this the kind of joy that Paul talks about when he says that the fruit of the Spirit is joy?
Is this kind of joy that a Christian should have? Is it a spiritual joy, or is it a secular counterfeit?
Well, according to the book of Ecclesiasticus, chapter 17, verse 12, “The joy of the Lord comes after a long struggle, yea, even after a surprise at the end of a struggle.” That’s in the NIB version – that’s short for “Not in the Bible.”
Well, I would like to say today that joy IS in the Bible, and it does come from God, and even the joy of winning a basketball game is a spiritual joy. God created us to have joy, and he made us in such a way that we would experience joy from winning basketball games, or seeing a beautiful flower, or watching children laugh at a puppy, or reading a good book.
God is the author of joy, and even non-Christians, when they have joy, are experiencing something that God has given them – just like when they have love, they are experiencing something that God has given them. God created it, he designed, and he gave it to human beings who are made in his image.
Joy, like love and beauty, cannot be equated with biochemicals in the brain. You can’t put it in a test tube and measure it. It is not in the realm of matter – it is a spiritual reality, and God made it that way, and God wants us to have joy in our Christian lives.
Now, there are lots of things wrong in this world, and thousands of people die every day, but God does not want us to go around perpetually mourning, wringing our hands, never smiling, always looking like we ate too many pickles and we have indigestion. God wants us to have joy, even when we have trials and difficulties – and it would seem to me that God wants us to have joy even when we aren’t having trials.
OK, where’s the evidence – something that actually IS in the Bible?
Let’s look at Psalm 126, verses 1-6:
Psalm 126
A song of ascents.
Ps 126:1 When the LORD brought back the captives to Zion,
we were like men who dreamed.
Ps 126:2 Our mouths were filled with laughter,
our tongues with songs of joy.
This is Hebrew poetry about people who are rejoicing because God took them out of exile and brought them back to the promised land. They were captives in Babylon for 70 years, and they dreamed of their homeland, and eventually God let them return to Jerusalem, and they sang for joy. They were really glad to be back, and it was right for them to be glad, to sing songs of joy. God had blessed them.
Now, we as Christians rejoice in something far more important. What the Israelites did was a foreshadowing, only an advance picture, of the better blessing that we have in Christ. We were in captivity to sin, and the Lord has rescued us and placed us in his kingdom. As it says in Ephesians, we were once strangers and cut off from the promises of God, but now in Christ we have been brought near and given far more than we could have dreamed of. Now our mouths can be filled with laughter because of the salvation that Jesus gives us, and we can sing songs of joy.
Then it was said among the nations,
“The LORD has done great things for them.”
Ps 126:3 The LORD has done great things for us,
and we are filled with joy.
Yes, and the Lord has done great things for us, too, and we should be filled with joy, and other people should see our joy.
Starting in verse 4, the psalm turns around from a look at the past, to a request for the future.
Ps 126:4
Restore our fortunes, O LORD,
like streams
in the Negev [desert].
Here the people are saying, we have problems, Lord. We have a drought in the promised land, and we want you to restore our fortunes, just as you did for your people when they came back from exile.
The Negev desert is a pretty desolate place. The streams are barren. But when rain comes, as it occasionally does, it flows down the rocks and into the gullies and fills the river beds with gushing torrents of water. So the people are asking God to move them from poverty to abundance, just as he so quickly fills those streams in the desert.
Ps
126:5 Those who sow in tears
will reap
with songs of joy.
This is what the psalm is asking for. We have tears right now. We are sad right now, but we are looking to God to ask for a blessing that will allow us to celebrate with joy.
Ps 126:6 He who goes out weeping,
carrying seed to sow,
will return with songs of joy,
carrying sheaves with him.
And that ends the psalm. We rejoice at what God has done in the past; we ask him to do it again. We have tears right now, but we want to have songs of joy. We can celebrate at a spiritual harvest, we can celebrate at a physical harvest, we can celebrate and have songs of joy for matters both big and small. It’s OK to want joy; it’s OK to have joy even in the physical circumstances of life.
Now, I don’t think that this is a surprise to anyone here. Most people think that joy is a good thing. We like joy, we want to have joy. The NewLife congregation seems to be a joyful congregation. That’s good. It’s right, and it’s spiritual. Christian life cannot be separated into secular and spiritual – it’s all spiritual. Whether we are playing basketball, or playing scrabble, or playing the piano, it’s all spiritual.
When we go to work, when we go to school, when we eat and when we sleep, we do not go away from God to do our own thing. No – we invite him into our daily lives, and he is with us all the time. Being spiritual does not mean spending all of our time reading the Bible and praying. No, it means bringing the Bible and prayer into all the other activities we do.
When we are driving, when we are delivering the mail, when we are planning a spreadsheet, when we watch a movie, God is with us. When we are sad, God is with us, and when we are happy, God is with us. When we mourn, he mourns with us, and when we rejoice, he rejoices with us. When the Lakers win, he rejoices with all their fans. When Orlando wins, he rejoices with their fans, too.
When we do well at work and get a raise, God rejoices with us. When we do well at school, God rejoices with us. In marriage and family and all aspects of life, God rejoices with us. He is happy when we are happy, just as we parents are happy when our children do well. There is no “secular” compartment of our lives in which God is not involved. He made the physical world and he made us physical beings, and he became one of these physical beings. He knows what it’s like. He went to a wedding and turned water into wine so the people could rejoice. We do not have to be sad and colorless in order to be spiritual people.
And like I said, I don’t think we have a major problem with this. Perhaps I am the one who needs this reminder the most. It’s OK to be happy, it’s OK to enjoy life, even when our activities don’t seem to have any direct connection to God. God is in the little things, just as he is in the big things.
In ancient Israel, God told his people to rejoice at the festivals, to eat and drink, and to be happy for what he had given them.
Now, there are times to be sad, too. There is a time to mourn as well as a time to laugh. Life has its ups and downs, and God is with us in the sad times as well as the good. The Christian life does not require that we go around with a smile pasted on our faces while we are suffering on the inside. The Bible tells us to mourn with those who mourn – it does not tell the people who mourn to stop it and pretend like everything is OK when it’s not. No, when we mourn we should mourn, so that other people can mourn with us. And when we rejoice, we should rejoice, so that other people can rejoice with us.
The apostle Paul said that when he had troubles in Ephesus, he despaired even of life itself – it is OK to have negative emotions when negative things happen. That is simply part of our humanity, part of the way that God made us. When bad things happen, we feel bad.
But we can also rejoice in our trials because we know that these difficulties are temporary. This life is temporary, and this world is temporary, and we have been promised something far better and something that lasts a lot longer. We can always rejoice in the salvation that we’ve been given in Jesus Christ.
Joy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit. That’s because it is a characteristic of God himself. God has anger, yes, but that does not characterize who he is in himself. Before sin entered the universe, before there even was a universe, God was happy. He enjoyed life. He had joy in life, and that is what he wants to share with us. He offers us eternal joy, never-ending pleasures.
He is saying, Do you like life? I hope you do. I am offering you more life, better life. I hope you want it. I hope that your first experience with life is enjoyable enough that you want more. I want life to be enjoyable. That’s why I care about sin – it’s because sin messes up life and makes it less enjoyable. I want life to be good, and the good feelings that you have in this life are just a small precursor of the joy that you can have forever with God the Father, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit.
God wants us to have joy in small things so that we will look forward to having joy in the big things. He wants us to have joy in small things so we will look forward to having joy in big things.
Have you ever been to a party? God is inviting us to a party.
In Matthew 22:2, Jesus says, “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son.” Many of us were at a wedding banquet yesterday, to celebrate the wedding of John and Sunshine. We had a good time. But in the days of Jesus, wedding celebrations lasted seven days long. Jesus is saying that God’s kingdom is like that, only better. It’s not just an ordinary wedding – it is like the wedding financed by a king. That is a big party. If you like weddings, Jesus says, and I hope you do, then you will like the kingdom of God. Your weeping will be turned to joy; your poverty will be turned to phenomenal wealth. There’s going to be a celebration like you wouldn’t believe.
So he invites us to a party, to a banquet, to a time of rejoicing. He wants people to have a happy life in this age so that we will want even more of life in the next age. There will be laughter in the kingdom.
In another parable, in Matthew 25, verse 21, in the parable of the talents, Jesus says, The master replied, “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master’s happiness!” Or as it says in the King James Version, share in the joy of your Lord. The same Greek word can be translated joy or happiness.
God has joy, and he wants to share it with us – not just in the distant future, but also right now. Joy is part of the fruit of the Spirit, something that we can have right now – in the big things of life and the little things of life. Joy is part of the reward that God is offering us – and he expects us to find his offer attractive because we like joy, because we have experienced joy in the little things of life in this age. He says, I am offering you lots more of this, so I hope you like the sample I have given you in this life. I hope you enjoy what I have given.
We will have communion in a few minutes. It’s a memorial of Jesus’ death, but it also looks forward to his return. It’s a reminder that we will eat and drink with Jesus in the heavenly banquet, in the wedding banquet of the Son of God. Communion is not a memorial service like a funeral, but it’s a joyful time in which we are thankful for what Jesus has done to make it possible for us to join the heavenly celebration.
In the parable of the lost coin, Jesus said that heaven is a place of joy:
Luke 15:10: “There is rejoicing in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” In verse 23, in the parable of the prodigal son, Jesus describes the joy of the Father: “Bring the fattened calf and kill it. Let’s have a feast and celebrate!” All this pictures the joy that God has, and the joy that he invites us to share in.
In the parable, the father invited the older son in to rejoice with him. He invites us into the party, too, to rejoice with him even when we aren’t the guest of honor for whom the party is thrown. We are invited to rejoice with those who rejoice – to rejoice with God and the angels whenever anyone returns to the Lord. We have all been invited in. God wants all of us to rejoice with him.
God not only wants us to rejoice with those who rejoice, he wants us to give others a reason to celebrate. In the context of this parable, he wants us to repent so the angels can rejoice. He wants us to have good things in our life, so we will rejoice and others will rejoice with us.
There is an interesting verse in 1 Thessalonians that suggests a way we can give one another joy. 1 Thessalonians 2, verse 19: “For what is our hope, our joy, or the crown in which we will glory in the presence of our Lord Jesus when he comes? Is it not you? 20 Indeed, you are our glory and joy.” Paul is saying that the people in his congregations are his source of joy when Jesus returns. If they are successful, he will rejoice.
But our spiritual success is not the pastor’s responsibility alone – we can help one another in our spiritual success, and that means that we can rejoice together on the day of the Lord.
But we don’t have to wait until Christ comes back – we can be a source of joy for one another every day. As we love one another and encourage one another, as we are involved in spiritual success each day or each week, we help other people find joy in Jesus Christ. As we share the gospel with other people during the week, we are inviting them to a party. I hope that our example makes them want to come!
God wants us to have joy, and he wants us to help others have joy – as we share joy in the same way that he wants us to share his joy. We can invite others to share our joy. Maybe we should throw a party or something. Maybe we should celebrate the Lord’s Supper together. Maybe we should share lunch and enjoy one another’s fellowship.
It’s OK to have joy in secular things. God made physical things, and it’s OK for us to enjoy life in the world he has made for us. We should not take pleasure in sin, but we should take pleasure in what he has created. The physical world isn’t just a neutral thing, about which God doesn’t care at all. No, he made it, and it’s good, and we should have pleasure in ordinary things. That is one of the ways that we look forward to the extraordinary joy, the greatest celebration in history, the messianic banquet when Christ returns. God wants us to have joy in small things so that we will look forward to the eternal joy that he offers.