Introduction: A Joyless World
As we continue listening to these songs for the road, we come to a song of joy. To begin I want to read a couple of quotes about joy. C.S. Lewis once said this: “We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition, when infinite joy is offered to us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in the slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.” We let ourselves sometimes be satisfied with all kinds of things that do not give us real, lasting joy.
Eugene Peterson says that “the enormous entertainment industry in our land is a sign of the depletion of joy in our culture. Society is a bored, gluttonous king employing a court jester to divert it after an overindulgent meal. But that kind of joy never penetrates our lives.” So much of the joy people seek in our world is a temporary escape from boredom on the one hand and suffering on the other.
Joy is not about circumstances
Look at our psalm. It is a psalm of joy, but when you consider the circumstances for the people of Israel at the time you wouldn’t think the people would be very joyful.. There is a good chance that Psalm 126 was written after the exile to Babylon and before the restoration of Jerusalem that we see in Nehemiah, when he led the effort to rebuild. I don’t know if you realize, but the Babylonian captivity of Israel was horrific: their nation was destroyed, their freedom lost, there was violence and rape in the streets, cannibalism, and a 600 mile forced-march across the desert to a foreign nation to be enslaved as captives. And finally when God delivers them from captivity, they return to Jerusalem only to find it in ruins.
So the people of Israel are surrounded by hard times. There’s captivity behind them and the need for restoration ahead of them. Behind them and before them are times of sorrow and trial. We can even see this in how the psalm is structured. The first three verses are in the past tense (Babylonian captivity) and the last three are in the future tense (now they pray for restoration upon return). But look at the middle of the psalm where we find the words, “and we are filled with joy.” These words are in the present tense. The joy they know, express, and pray for in this psalm is one that comes only from God, not circumstances. “The Lord has done great things for us,” it says in verse 3. But in the middle of it all, they rejoiced. In the middle of it all, despite what faced them, they were filled with joy.
This is true elsewhere in Scripture, too. Look at the apostle Paul and his letter to the Philippians. This letter is often called the “epistle of joy.” There are nearly 10 references to joy and rejoicing in this letter. Even when the specific terms aren’t used we can see that joy fills this letter. What do you think the circumstances are here? His joy is definitely not because of his immediate circumstances. When writing this letter Paul is in prison for preaching the gospel and false teachers are preying on churches that he founded; and there’s nothing he can do about it in person. He’s imprisoned and he can’t be with those whom he loves to help them. Yet Paul is joyful even if the circumstances instead provide plenty of reasons for despair.
For Paul and the people of Israel joy is not dependent on circumstances. In fact, let’s look at what Paul says elsewhere in Romans 5: 3: “We also rejoice in our sufferings.” In The Message, Eugene Peterson translates this verse this way: “We continue to shout our praise even when we’re hemmed in with troubles.” Charles Spurgeon once said that “there is a sweet joy which comes to us through sorrow.” Paul finds joy in suffering. Paul could say in hard times, along with the Israelites in our psalm, “we are filled with joy.” Can we say this, even when our circumstances don’t seem to justify it?
Joy comes from God
So now the question we may ask is this: how can we have this joy? Where does this joy come from? What is the source of this joy? We already know that many in our world, even some who are Christians, try and get joy from all kinds of places. But it doesn’t last. And the temporary joy we try to get for ourselves doesn’t last in difficult times. If money is your joy, for example, what happens when you lose you job? If your career ambition is your joy, what happens if you can no longer work? How can have a joy that outlasts circumstances and doesn’t depend on our situation? These questions bring us to our second point. Here is it is: true joy comes from God. It is not something we can get for ourselves.
We see this in our psalm. Look at verse 4 – 6. Here is a prayer that God will restore His people and that their weeping will turn to shouts of joy. Certainly we don’t pray for something we can get for ourselves, do we? They know that only God can give them joy. The writer of the psalm uses the image “watercourses in the Negeb” here, and it is an apt image for joy as a gift of God. “The Negeb, the south of Israel, is a vast desert. The watercourses of the Negeb are a network of ditches cut into the soil by wind and rain erosion. For most of the year they are baked dry by the sun, but a sudden rain makes the desert ablaze with blossoms.” And as Eugene Peterson says, “With such suddenness long years of barren waiting are interrupted by God’s invasion of grace into our lives.” Joy is a gift of God. When we experience joy as God’s people we are like those in the psalm where it says in verse 1 “we were like those who dream.” Joy from God is a like a dream come true.
Elsewhere in Scripture we see this same truth. In 1 Thessalonians 1: 6 Paul uses the phrase “joy inspired by the Holy Spirit.” The cause of the Thessalonians’ joy that Paul refers to here in this verse is not circumstances but God—the source of joy here is the Spirit. The Spirit generates this joy in the believers in Thessalonica because they have received the gospel of Jesus Christ. In other words, as Paul says elsewhere in Galatians 5: 22, joy is the “fruit of the Spirit.” It is a by-product of following Jesus. As C.S. Lewis says in his autobiography, Surprised by Joy, “Joy is never in our power.” Only God can give us joy.
Joy is Jesus-specific
If joy is a “fruit of the Spirit” and is something only God can give, what does this tell us about joy? This leads us to our third point: joy is Jesus-specific. What I mean here is that we’re not talking about any sort of joy. We’re talking about the joy of being in the kingdom of God. We’re talking about the joy of those who follow Jesus. We’re talking about the joy of Jesus being proclaimed. We’re talking about sharing the joy of fellowship with others who follow Jesus. Look at the reason for joy in our psalm—“The Lord has done great things for us.” Joy comes from God and our joy is God-centered.
Looking again at Philippians, how does Paul express his joy? Paul prays with joy for them (1: 4) because of their sharing in the gospel, he rejoices even when Christ is preached out of wrong motives (1: 17, 18), he wants to remain with them so that he can experience and share their joy in faith (1: 25), he asks them to make his joy complete by imitating Jesus Christ (2: 2), he rejoices even if it means sacrificing himself for their sake (2: 17, 18), he wants to send them his fellow worker, Epaphroditus, so that they can rejoice at his recovery from a grave illness and “welcome him in the Lord with all joy (2: 29),” he calls them his “joy and crown” (4: 1) as their father in the faith, exhorts them to live lives filled with rejoicing (4: 4), and rejoices that they have renewed their concern for him (4: 10).
If there’s one thing we can say about Paul’s joy, it is Jesus-specific. It is a joy that comes out of placing the kingdom of God higher than anything else. Theologian Jonathan Wilson, in his book God So Loved the World: A Christology for Disciples, says that there are three sources for Paul’s joy in Philippians. The first is his fellowship with the Philippians. His relationship with this church he founded is a huge source of joy. The second is the spread of the good news. Paul takes great joy when the good news of the kingdom of God takes hold in the lives of more and more people. The third source of joy for Paul is what Wilson calls “his participation in Christ.” What does this mean?
Well, Paul’s joy is Jesus himself. Paul’s joy is being able to give up his own life for Jesus. Paul knows that there is nothing greater than a relationship with Jesus Christ, with being united to Christ in faith. This is what he means when he says in Phil. 3: 8: “I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.” Paul’s greatest joy is knowing Jesus—all his other joy springs from this. And this is why Paul finds joy even in suffering when this suffering comes as a result of his relationship with Jesus—he knows that this is the road to glory. For Paul, to share even in Christ’s suffering is the route to life and joy. If joy is the fruit of the Spirit, then we experience joy as we “live by the Spirit.” True joy comes from a life surrendered to Jesus Christ.
Joy is something we practice
So our joy comes from God as we follow Jesus and make his kingdom our priority, when we willingly give up our lives so that Jesus can be our life. When we do this and give ourselves to Jesus, the Spirit forms his character in us. The fruit of the Spirit is a description of this character, of what a follower of Jesus looks like—the second in the list of the fruit is joy. So joy comes naturally the closer we are to Jesus. Joy is a by-product, as we said, of being Jesus’ disciples. But that doesn’t mean we can’t practice joy.
The people of Israel sang Psalm 126 on their journey to Jerusalem—these words were a part of their corporate worship. And if joy is not the result of circumstances, then we can probably be pretty sure they didn’t only sing this song when they felt joyful. Do we only praise God when we feel happy or when things are going well? Israel didn’t. Paul certainly didn’t. In fact, Paul exhorts the Philippians to rejoice. What does he say? In 4: 4 he says: “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.”
We are called to be a people of praise and a joyful people—and we can be because our praises and our joy depend not on circumstances but on God. Even if we find it hard to see how, as followers of Jesus there are always reasons to rejoice. We rejoice in worship as we sing songs of praise together to God—and remember, Scripture says make a joyful noise, not necessarily a beautiful one! We rejoice when we share praise reports together. And not only do we rejoice when we gather together—we are supposed to practice our rejoicing every day. We need to take our joyful faith out into the streets and into the rest of our lives. There are lots of reasons why this is important, but I’m going to mention one. And it is this.
Joy is a witness to the activity of God
Look at Psalm 126: 2. What does it say? “Our mouths were filled with laughter, our tongues with songs of joy. Then it was said among the nations, ‘The Lord has done great things for them.’” Then it was said among the nations. Other nations witnessed the joy of the people and recognized what God had done.
Look at the verse I mentioned earlier in 1 Thessalonians 1: 6, 7. Here Paul talks about the joy inspired by the Holy Spirit that these new Christians received when they came to Christ—and he also says that the Thessalonians became an example to other believers and that “in every place your faith in God has become known.” It seems to me that the joy of the Thessalonians played an important part in this witness so that others came to know of their faith in Christ.
In other words, our joy in Christ is a witness to non-believers. It is proof to them that there is something to this God we talk about. G.K. Chesterton once said that “joy is the gigantic secret of the Christian.” No wonder Billy Sunday once remarked, “If you have no joy, there’s a leak in your Christianity somewhere.” No doubt we all have leaks on occasion, but our prayer in such times should be, with David, “restore to me the joy of your salvation.” Joy is not only God’s gift to us in Jesus; our joy in Jesus can also be a gift to someone else.
Conclusion: The Secret to Joy
In John 20: 20 we read these words: “Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.” This is when Jesus appeared to them after he had been raised. But here, it seems, we have the secret to the joy of the Christian. It turns upon two words, “then” and “when.” As Vance Havner says, “It does not read, ‘Then were the disciples glad when they saw themselves . . .” or their circumstances.” If you look at the verse, it tells us that the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. The Lord not only is the source of our joy; he is our joy. And as Scripture says, “the joy of the Lord is your strength,” especially when circumstances remove all reasons to be joyful. Look at the word J-O-Y: J stand for Jesus and Y stands for you. If O stands for nothing, joy is when there is nothing between us and Jesus. Our joy increases the less there is between us and Jesus. Let’s pray that Christ would draw us ever closer to himself so that his Spirit can do his work in us, producing that a joy that fills our mouths with laughter and our tongues with shouts of joy so that others too may say “the Lord has done great things for them” and come to know that joy as well.
