Last week I will described one aspect of joy:
Joy is a key component of conversion
Now this week:
“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.” (Luke 6:23, Read also Romans 5:3; James 1:2).
When God demands that we rejoice, He has not forgotten the kind of world that we live in. It is a world full of suffering. Pain and grief are nominative in the Christian life and He promises that some kind of suffering will fall on those who cherish and love Him (Matthew 10:25; Luke 21; 12, 16-17; John 15:20).
The demands of joy that God demands are not shallow, glib, or contrived. Joy is not superficial or marked with levity. It is not working up feelings of joy when you are sad. It is not pretending that you aren’t suffering or sad. This is a mistake of too many people and too many churches. They think that joy is telling jokes or weaving slapstick or upbeat music into church life and that joy is some euphoric emotion that can be manipulated and has no deep rooted ground.
No wonder why so many Christians don’t understand nor experience joy when they suffer. When they hear of joy there is a tremendous disconnectedness between what they hear and feel and believe and pursue. For them joy comes in relief from the suffering. So they are joyful when things are good, sorrowful when things are bad. When they are in trials they are not thinking on how to glorify God in the trial, but to how to escape the trial, get relief from the suffering, so that happiness can come back. In short, they don’t want God, they want relief. That is their joy, relief! That is why I look for worshippers in adversity more than I do in prosperity. There are people who want heaven but don’t want the God of heaven; who want the gifts and blessings of God, but don’t want God himself. Oh how easily pleased we can be!
For God, the demand of joy is a supernatural way He graces us to live with joy in suffering and to outlast suffering. The whole point of joy is the ability to suffer. It is God’s last word on our trials, pain, and brokenness. Therefore, you might say that joy is a serious joy. It sings happy songs with tears. It can be sorrowful based upon what we see going on in our lives while being at the same time joyful because of the God we see in, above, around, and through these afflictions. It is a joy that is out of reach of our troubles and circumstances. The suffering, persecuted Paul put his experience this way: “sorrowful, but always rejoicing” (2 Corinthians 6:10).
In Hebrews 10:32-34 we read,
“But recall the former days when, after you were enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to reproach and affliction, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion on those in prison, and you joyfully accepted the plundering of your property…”
Notice that the Hebrew Christians are severely suffering, yet we read of a profound experience of joy in loss which produced the love going to the prison and acceptance of extreme loss.
Get the picture; some of the saints have been thrown into jail. You are not one of them. But if you go visit them you show that you are one of them. So what are you going to do? Are you going to say, “Well Lord, I’ve got kids? I’ve got a nice house. I’ve seen what they do to the houses of people in jail. All the windows are broken and they burn them down. I don’t think I should visit them. I think I should pray for them. I should go underground.” That’s not what they do is it? They had compassion for those in prison and they visited them and they did burn their house down and yet they sang and worshipped with joy all the way to the prison. That’s what the verse says clear as day.
Now here comes the way we can do what they did,
“Since you knew that you yourselves had a better possession and an abiding one.”
They were seeking a city which is to come, not comfort and paradise on earth. What’s the possession? God; Jesus; Heaven with God. JOY! “You knew as you watched them torch your house. I have a better possession and you sang and rejoiced” You can do the hard thing in your life because you have a better and lasting possession. (Hebrews 11:24-26; Hebrews 12:2)
Another example is in 2 Corinthians 8:1-2,
“We want you to know, brothers, about the grace of God that has been given among the churches of Macedonia, for in a severe test of affliction, their abundance of joy and their extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity on their part.”
Do you see this dear reader? Please observe carefully what is going on here:
• First, Grace came down. Sovereign mighty, Christ displaying, generously lavished, abundant, Holy Spirit empowered grace came down.
• Second, poverty remained and affliction increased.
• Third, joy abounded. This is radical!!!!Do you hear this? Poverty stayed, affliction went up, and joy abounded!
• Fourth, overflowing generosity increased out of poverty and affliction.
So not only did the grace of God bring more afflictions, but it did not remove poverty. Instead it made poor people radically generous people. Joy turned Christians into crazy, radical people who when they did not have anything and afflictions were increasing, they earnestly desired for another offering to be taken because they had tasted the grace of God and their joy was abounding. .
True joy causes us to live a new radical counter-cultural, grace lavished, God glorifying, cross bearing, love caring, need directed, and joy spreading way of life shown by moving us away from comfort and moving us towards others need.
The main battle of your life is joy in God. John Paton, great missionary to the cannibals in the South Pacific in the late 19th century wrote,
“Oh that the pleasure-seeking men and women of the world could only taste and feel the real joy of those who know and love the true God – a heritage which the world . . . cannot give to them, but which the poorest and humblest followers of Jesus inherit and enjoy.”
Have you tasted and felt that real joy or are we in bondage to the pleasures of this world so that, for all our talk about the glory of God, we love television and food and sleep and sex and money and human praise just like everybody else? If so, let us repent and fix our faces like flint toward the Word of God in prayer:
O Lord, open my eyes to see the sovereign sight that in your presence is fullness of joy and at your right hand are pleasures for evermore (Psalm 16:11).
The great Westminster Catechism says “Man's chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever” or as John Piper adds “by enjoying him forever.”
Jonathan Edwards reminds us ,
“The enjoyment of God is the only happiness with which our souls can be satisfied. To go to heaven, fully to enjoy God, is infinitely better than the most pleasant accommodations here. Fathers and mothers, husbands, wives, or children, or the company of earthly friends, are but shadows; but God is the substance. These are but scattered beams, but God is the sun. These are but streams. But God is the ocean.”
Looking for joy in all the right places,
Pastor Bill
1 comment:
I haven't met someone with this kind of joy, have you?
There is more than one way to suffer, according to Paul: suffering for righteousness sake, and suffering for wrongdoing. See 1Thessalonians4:6 “that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you.” God avenges wrongdoing. God punishes and disciplines his children, and this suffering doesn’t bring me joy, but pain!
People can be under God’s correction, and have no joy. In the end, the discipline brings godliness.
I think God wants us to be honest about our suffering, whether suffering for the cause of Christ, or suffering for wrongdoing.
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