Joy
Nehemiah 8:10, “Then he said to them, “Go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet, and send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared; for this day is holy to our LORD. Do not sorrow, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.”
The “joy of the Lord”….wow…much more than being “happy”…One fellow asked recently, “Does the Lord actually experience “joy”?” HA! Are you kidding? It was HIS idea! i think a better question is “Do YOU experience joy?” i wonder…how many of us can even relate to the idea of “joy”? These days, we say, “i am happy”, or “i am glad”, but no one hardly ever says “i am joyful”, and if they do, most of us look at them thinking, “What an odd thing to say”.
Nevertheless, joy is a fruit of the Spirit, therefore it is one of the Lord’s details, one of His attributes, an aspect of His character, and one of the three fountains of God’s Heart. The last nine words of the opening scripture from Nehemiah are popular and easy to say, “for the joy of the LORD is your strength”….we’ve all heard it a lot. But, i must say i’ve thought of the “joy of the Lord is your strength” as something God gives, which is true, of course, but in the last several years i’ve realized it is more than that. It is something He not only gives but something He possesses and also experiences. He gives us joy because He is joyful, and is the source of joy. It’s not only a description of what He gives… but who He is.
This evening’s topic is the fruit of the Spirit: Joy…i hope the following program will be a reflection of God’s joy and a source of true joy for each of us.
Joy is associated with gladness, which can be a wonderful habit-forming inclination of the heart…it’s just downright contagious. How many of us see the Lord as a grouchy, unspoken, judgmental, person who seems to thrill at taunting us with silence and faintness? C’mon, be honest, you know who you are that thinks that stuff, i know i sure have. i think it’s a great question. How many of us see Him as a demanding taskmaster rather than a jubilant master whose joy we can step into? The service He requires of us even now is to be accomplished joyfully rather than sullenly. i mean, we know the Lord is always going to square things up, so what’s the point in being all foot-dragging and begrudging, walking around long-faced, and bitter acting? If you don’t have to, well…then don’t?
One day when my son was young, he asked me “Dad, are you having fun?” Now, you’ve gotta understand, it’s not like i’d ever pondered such a question, so when the Lord started giving me answers, it was like someone opened full a fire hydrant. At the prompting of his question, immediately into my mind flooded images of all the things i liked to do….and like lightning i found myself measuring how i felt in those times, questioning whether or not i was having “fun”… or not. After a few seconds, i had come to the realization there was a difference between “fun” and “joy”. i thought about mowing the lawn and how much i really dislike mowing the lawn…. but also how much i so enjoy sitting on the porch in the evening, watching the sun go down and smelling the fresh cut grass. i thought about a myriad of things that i did not consider “fun” but how much i enjoyed their benefits. For example, i do not find digging a ditch fun, but i do enjoy the work of my hands. In that moment, i had an epiphany about myself…i don’t necessarily have “fun” per se, but i do enjoy almost everything i do. It seems to me “fun” rises and falls…like a rollercoaster… in fact, i would say that “having fun” has become such a national preoccupation, it supersedes the pursuit of happiness.
Many people think that if they aren’t having as much fun today as they had yesterday, then they aren’t having fun. Today’s fun is often based on the measure of yesterday’s fun…the idea of “fun” seems orgasmic, it is here and gone again until next time. Fun is amusing and entertaining and is a very subjective term. My “fun” is not necessarily your “fun”, and my “fun” today may not be my “fun” tomorrow.
Joy isn’t like that….it is not the same as fun…from God’s perspective, it doesn’t have sharp rises and falls, like a sine wave, but it is always on the slow steady rise, and it persists.
Webster’s Dictionary defines joy as a feeling of great pleasure and happiness, as in “tears of joy”, or great delight. Once again, i find God’s idea of joy is much, much larger than that. Worldly definitions seem to reflect a world-limited view… as a result, God’s eternity isn’t part of anything this fallen world defines…the world has a knack for leaving God out of the picture. To have joy means to have jubilation, bliss, and most importantly, rejoicing. From the Lord’s view of things, joy is connected to illumination, and how do we come to possess such brightness? James 1:17, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning.”
Joy, as a fruit of the Spirit, is the melody of an illuminated heart, a brilliant gladness in our fundamental makeup. Did you get that? i like it so much, i want to say it again. Joy, as a fruit of the Spirit, is the melody of an illuminated heart, a brilliant gladness in our fundamental makeup.
The Lord is our light, perpetual, not dimming or ever fading. Psalm 27:1, “The LORD is my light and my salvation; Whom shall I fear? The LORD is the strength of my life; Of whom shall I be afraid.” Incidentally, the word “salvation” there is part of the noun for Yeshua, except not as a liberator, but literally as the personification of our liberty, meaning our Savior is not only the One who sets us free, but He, Himself is our liberty. In other words, we can’t be free unless we acquire Christ as Savior. We can’t work our way to liberty and joy, buy our way to liberty and joy, nor manipulate our way to liberty and joy. Liberty and joy are a person, not a thing.
In Esther 8:16, the Lord connects light, gladness, joy, and honor in one sentence, which says to me that with God’s gladness and joy, also comes light and honor…even King Solomon came to the conclusion in Eccl2:26 that the Lord is the one who gives joy. Not only is Jesus Himself our joy, but He also brings about a state of joyfulness in us.
With joy, comes light, and the root Hebrew word for “light”, as used in Esther 8:16 is “to be illuminated” which is made up of three letters, aleph, vav, and reish….aleph – in this case, how you lean in your heart towards God….or intent; vav- the nail and connection; and reish is about a man’s head and choice. The picture is one of head and heart being connected by our purposeful choice, which to me means choosing Jesus…..Oh man! When that happens, there comes spontaneous combustion, and illumination, making us to be bright. Rejoicing is the root word of joy…can you see the relationships the Lord has built into it all, and at the center is Himself?
Those with joy have an illuminated heart, God-light at their center.
Joy is tied to gladness in Esther 8:16, although they are similar in many ways, the two are different words. i think it’s safe to say there is a shout in joy, rejoicing, and gladness.
Psalm 5:11, “But let all those rejoice who put their trust in You; Let them ever shout for joy, because You defend them; Let those also who love Your name be joyful in You.” Rejoicing in the Lord inspires gladness which inspires joy, with continual joy making our foundations to sing. Ephesians 5:19, “…speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord…” Rejoicing is the object which causes joy in Ps48:2 as gladness is the substance that motivates joy in Ps45:7. i say that where there is rejoicing, joy, and gladness, there also comes a melody, rising from our heart. Joy is gladness with a shout in the middle!
The name of the Lord is revealed in God-caused gladness and comes with grace and kindness in its wake. A thankful heart is a glad and kind heart reflecting as a perfect mirror, God’s fruit of the Spirit – joy… as an overall disposition in association with our heart. Psalm 19:8, “The statutes of the LORD are right, rejoicing the heart: the commandment of the LORD is pure, enlightening the eyes.” i love that phrase, “Enlightening the eyes”, eyes wide open in amazement to see the Lord in the world around us…like the Lord waking us up into awareness, giving us brightness of the eyes.
The fruits of the Spirit aren’t attributes we go and get somewhere, they aren’t book learned, won as a prize, or some sort of mental ascension. They are all works of the Lord, attributes of Himself that He shares with us. Without the Lord, our spirit is in submission to our mind. With the Lord, the soul and spirit are connected, and the soul comes into right relationship with our spirit, submitting to the authority who is living in our heart. All that to say, when our Savior is on the throne of our heart, what is in our heart makes us more than a conqueror by the blood of Jesus…. like the persistence of leaven in dough. As a result, His qualities of righteousness become qualities of ourselves to shine in the dark world around us, offering salvation to those who are chained in darkness… imprisoned in chaos.
Isaiah 49:9, “That You may say to the prisoners, ‘Go forth,’ To those who are in darkness, ‘Show yourselves.’”
Thankfulness is key to gladness and joy, after all, a morbidly thankful heart is not one of joy. …it is impossible to have joy in our lives when we are morbidly thankful. Do you know what i mean when i say, “morbidly thankful”? It is a picture of a little kid who has to go wash his hands and he begrudgingly walks slowly to the bathroom, dragging his feet all the way, not realizing the blessing of having hot and cold running water or even a bathroom to wash up in. Can’t you see it? A snurl on his lips when his mother says to go wash his hands, “right now”, and he’s got a heart full of “don’t want to” …with a downcast demeanor, he obeys anyway, but he just oozes with the attitude that if he didn’t absolutely HAVE to, he wouldn’t. The boy may say he’s thankful to even have a bathroom, but he’s so occupied with how much he doesn’t want to wash his hands, he misses the good things in his life. THAT is morbidly thankful. There is no joy in that heart posture. i’m not saying that when our lives have unfortunate circumstances in them we must dance and sing and pretend to be glad when all along we’ve got some dread going on. Friends, please be honest about your life and simply call things what they are. Nobody gladly enrolls in the school of affliction, but there is gladness and rejoicing in our hearts not because we’re going through a hard time, but because the Lord is with us, He won’t allow us to suffer more than we can bear, that His yoke is light, and that we will come out bigger and better than ever walking through a storm with Jesus.
The Lord and His salvation are cited more than any other reason for joy and gladness. i believe the Lord our God to be a happy person, consistently filled with joy, gladness, and a constant melody. i think many people aren’t full of joy about their salvation, largely because they have a very poor concept of what they are saved from and have a petty view of the Heart of the Lord. Oh sure, they’ll say all the right words, but the actions of their lives speak long and loud of an abiding cognitive dissonance, which means there are opposing ideologies consciously at work in them and they are at war with each other. On one hand, people say with a smile, God is good, God is love, and “Oh, how He loves us so.” On the other hand, they do things in the dark not believing God can see or hear them.
Friends, here this: Anyone who has no shame in the light, has likely been handled too much in the dark. Church, we need a better understanding of the Heart of the Lord and His details.
The Lord Himself is the source and fountain of our joy….joy being the second of three fountains in the Heart of the Father. John 15:11, “These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.” It is obvious that the disciples would have great joy, but what is not too obvious is that the joy and gladness they would experience were first and foremost, and it was something they would enter into. We step into the melody of God’s heart and His melody becomes our melody, His gladness becomes our gladness, His rejoicing becomes our rejoicing.
In Matt25, three servants were given money to invest while the master was away, and the ones who did well were invited to… “enter into the joy of their Lord”.
At some point, joy is a choice, and maybe it’s one of those choices we, wholeheartedly, make when we’ve come to the end of ourselves in living a life with no joy, no gladness and we can’t stand it anymore. Maybe it’s only then that we actually chase after Jesus to change our hearts. Joyce Meyer says we can either be pitiful or powerful but we can’t be pitifully powerful….as with joy, there is a choice in that. In the Matt25 account of the Lord and three servants, the third servant stated that the master was, my paraphrase, unkind, cruel, heavy-handed, and unfair, which were all gross misperceptions.
God is not a brutal taskmaster, who expects us to gain a profit where He has given us no supply or resources. He deals with us in grace and gives us the means to do that which He expects and requires. Where His appointment is, therein is His provision, and His joy and rejoicing are hidden in both the appointment and the provision. The idea of His provision is for us to advance the Kingdom of God, not advance ourselves. What’s more, we can only accomplish what He asks of us by His grace. The entire salvation system-ology is lubricated with love and grace.
i believe the Lord our God is a blissfully happy person, kind, longsuffering, always at perfect peace, and has done everything possible for us that we would enter into His joy. The reward of the servants of Matt 25 was to enter into the Joy of the Lord….and i believe the last servant represented someone who was beggarly in heart and had no grasp, whatsoever, of God’s joy at all.
i wonder, how many of us have the same distorted view of God as the last servant in the parable did? …harsh, and unkind…. hard to get along with? Nothing could be further from the truth.
Joy doesn’t come to us because we “got it right” or were SOO obedient we deserve God’s glad melody of rejoicing…..joy, like righteousness, occurs by abiding IN the vine, not working FOR the vine, trusting the vine to work and flow through us.
Joy, the melody of an illuminated heart is from being in Christ and living by faith in his power, grace, and wisdom.
Joy is always running out and returning to us, always dancing and singing with grace, close relatives with honor and blessing. As fear does not discriminate and affects everyone in the battle around us, so joy is equally contagious and has an outrageous knack of overcoming fear, if for no other reason than sheer attrition.
The persistent singing and gladness of God’s heart simply wears fear down, not because it is so powerful necessarily, but because joy is better than fear, grinding fear to dust through the sustained pressure of rejoicing.
Gladness and joy, apart from God, eventually fades back to grief…. which is the default setting of the world. Proverbs 14:12-13, “There is a path before each person that seems right, but it ends in death. Laughter can conceal a heavy heart, but when the laughter ends, the grief remains.” Laughter and pleasure often hide grief and sorrow. On a side note, rarely in the Bible, cover to cover, is God’s laughter used in the sense of being mirthful, or rejoicing…almost every time, it is used in the sense of being associated with derision… “scorn”, or “scoffing”. i reckon the Hebrews just didn’t see laughter as something done when we’re happy which was called joy, mirth, gladness, and rejoicing. Think about this: If you were brutally honest, what is the foundation of things which make you laugh most of the time? Remember…i didn’t say laughing was bad, i’m only asking us to consider what is underneath it. i think most of the things we laugh about are usually at someone else’s expense, one way or another.
In Genesis 17, when Abraham laughed, it is a word which leans toward scoffing or making sport of. In Genesis 18 Sarah laughed, and the angel said, “Why did you laugh?” … she said, “Did not”, and the angel said, “Did too!” The implication of her laughter was like a “scoffing snicker”, not one of joyful rejoicing…. the angels’ reply basically said, this is serious business, don’t make sport of the word of the Lord.
The root word of Joy means “to be bright and cheerful” which lifts us above the gravity barrier of worldly preoccupation. It is a man’s strength and upholds us when we wait upon the Lord. What i find most astounding is the visual i get when i read Isaiah51:11, “So the redeemed of the LORD shall return, And come to Zion with singing and a shout of gladness, with everlasting joy and the revealed glory and grace of God on their heads. They shall obtain gladness and joy; Sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” There is a shout in gladness…not just being happy but more exhilarating brightness and the dancing fire of rejoicing. Joy, as a fruit of the Spirit, is the melody of an illuminated heart, a brilliant gladness in our fundamental makeup. The total opposite of hard breathing conflict, sighing grief, struggle, and trouble. Wow! Not that is a vision to never lose sight of!
Now that we have actually received this amazing friendship with God, we are no longer content to simply say it in droll, plodding prose. We sing and shout our praises to God through Jesus! (Romans 5:11), and even though we’ve never seen Him, yet we love Him, trusting in Him… rejoicing, with gladness unspeakable, with joy inexpressible, full of glory. (1 Peter 1:8) Think about it, and amen.
With wind and fire, we have joy and gladness in the Holy Spirit, who comes to us with a melody in His glad heart, making us passionate to rejoice, regardless of our circumstances…even when the sky is dark, those in the fellowship of the saints have a naturally occurring brightness and singing which always finds a way to rise in their heart. Our illumination is The Lord who is our perpetual light, who is at no time dimming, never fading…He is a blissfully joyful person, kind, longsuffering, always at perfect peace, and has done everything possible for us that we would enter into His joy.
The name of the Lord is revealed in God-caused gladness and comes with grace and kindness in its wake. A thankful heart is a glad and kind heart, reflecting the Lord like a perfect mirror. God’s fruit of the Spirit – joy, is an overall disposition, how we lean in our heart towards the Lord.
Our hope is not to be just inspirational in topic but to inspire a deeper conversation amongst ourselves concerning God’s details and the landscape of Heaven. If we are in a relationship with the Lord, we need to know His details better than we know our own.
This evening was brought to you by Living In His Name Ministries, the Mebane Freedom League with Perry, Tommy, and Kevin. the Saluda Rotary Club, Analoe Phillips out on the end of Long Branch, Charles, and Melissa Fox, my most beloved brother Mark Fox, and Area 22 guitars. Another amazing blessing in our lives is Trinity Bakers, the bright spot on main street where there’s always something good in the oven.
It is closing time, so i’ve got to say some closing sort of things. After much consideration, the fruit of the Spirit – joy, is a fire of gladness in our heart which has Ha’Shem the Name in the middle, making us a mirror of His kindness. Our God and King eternally has rejoicing in His great heart…He is happy and loves to sing goodness over His people. Joy is a choice we can either step into or allow ourselves to be dragged back to earth with our worldly preoccupation. …it is the blessing of the Almighty, rather than the direct object of our pursuit…it is the theme and refrain of a brilliant benevolence, bearing the blessing of an honorable and singing heart, in Jesus name.
Drive carefully this week, enjoy the life God has given you, take your time, and consider carefully when you pray for your neighbor. Read your Bible, and be strong and courageous. Amen.