It seems that joy can be somewhat elusive. While we sojourn in this world, we are very familiar with tears and sorrow. The Prophet Isaiah said that our Lord Jesus was a man of sorrows and familiar with suffering (See Isaiah 53). There is this modern image of Jesus as a kind of spiritual hippie, smiling and laughing all the time. The interesting thing is that the Bible never says Jesus laughed, but it does make a point of the fact that He wept. He wept at the tomb of Lazarus. And He wept over Jerusalem. Jesus was affected by sin, death, and human depravity and unbelief.
It would be impossible for the followers of Jesus to also be unaffected by the world around them. Like our Master we weep for the things we see in our world. The idea that Christians ought to always be happy – which is just a shallow emotional response to what’s happening around us – is not realistic. Sometimes the thing that makes us sad is our own sin! We groan and long to be rid of these bodies of death. We hang our harps on the willow trees, like Israel in Babylon, because sometimes it is hard to sing a happy song in a foreign land (See Psalm 137). It is unfortunate that the modern Church has lost the tradition of the lament. The Jews were very familiar with expressing laments. We see it in the Psalms and especially in Jeremiah's book of Lamentations for Jerusalem's destruction.
It is important for believers to take their sorrows and their weeping to the Lord. Sorrow is not the end of faith, it is actually the times when our faith rises to the top and keeps us from sinking into despair. Without faith there is no hope that our weeping will turn to joy someday. Faith enables us to weather the storms of life in a fallen world. Jesus prepared his disciples for sorrow and persecution in the world. Those who teach the Prosperity Gospel – that God’s people ought always to be happy, healthy, wealthy, and free from trouble – have to explain passages like this:
Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. When a woman is giving birth, she has sorrow because her hour has come, but when she has delivered the baby, she no longer remembers the anguish, for joy that a human being has been born into the world. So also you have sorrow now, but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you (John 16:20-22).
Believers must pass through sorrow in this world. This world is a prelude to eternal glory for the believer. The world may have their laughs now, but the world is in a state of decay and will one day pass away forever, leaving those who loved the world utterly desolate. Those who have all their happiness in this world are destined to lose everything. Those who are sorrowful now, being strangers and aliens in the world, will rejoice later. “Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.” Believers should have familiarity with delayed satisfaction. We are not going to get everything we want in this world because we were made for another world.
The world attempts to manufacture joy. We live in a joyless, hopeless generation. Many seek joy in a bottle of alcohol or a drug-induced high. Our entertainment industry is designed to provide us with some joy, at least until Monday morning comes and we have to go back to work. The world's joy is shallow and fleeting. Part of our national heritage is the freedom to pursue happiness, wherever we might find it. The trouble is that happiness often depends on our circumstances, and nothing more. If life is going our way, and we have the things we want, then we are happy. But these times are few and far between. Happiness can disappear almost instantly with a bad report from the doctor, a financial recession, or corporate downsizing!
Most people go through life desperately seeking to hang onto some moment in time when they were happy by recreating it or finding the next big thing. Our entire advertising industry is built on trying to push things to buy that will also buy us some happiness. Products are not sold according to what the product itself can do, but some kind of feeling or experience it can provide. Materialism is really the vain search for joy. But even those experiences that bring us a moment of happiness can deceive us and break our hearts if these are pursued for their own sake. C.S. Lewis said “I sometimes wonder whether all pleasures are not substitutes for joy.” All good things must come to an end in this world.
There is a deeper and lasting joy. There is an eternal joy that comes from God. Our joy is fleeting when we do not seek it from God Himself. But He is the source of all good things and we have nothing apart from Him that is either good or lasting. If we seek Him we will find Him, and with Him we find joy. Joy is never to be sought as an end of itself. Joy is actually the result of another pursuit. We are to seek after God. We seek God while carrying our own burdens, troubles, and grief. We take our troubles to the Lord in prayer.
But have you ever noticed that it is impossible to celebrate something good privately? When we are really happy we have to get together because there is an even greater joy when good things are shared. The joy of the Lord is OUR strength. Joy is a shared resource for the people of God. We are here to be helpers of each other's joy, until the Night is over and the Morning has come.
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