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Be
Joyful Always |
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A Pocket Paper Robert J.
Morgan Rejoice always, Pray without
ceasing, In everything
give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 My
sister, Ann, claims that anxious nerves and panic attacks run on our
mother’s side of the family; and she also claims that our maternal
grandmother’s genetic line has left us with a deficiency of serotonin,
which makes us subject to higher than average levels of apprehension. Well, I don’t know much about
that—I’ve never studied about serotonin; but I am among the
millions of people who sometimes battle anxious nerves. But I
believe God made each of us in a unique way; and I’m sometimes grateful
for my own make-up because it drives me back to the Scriptures. God has placed so many verses in the
Bible relating to worry and anxiety and discouragement and anger and all
aspects of our attitudes, and He takes our concerns as seriously as a
researcher who studies a new strain of disease. He wants to help you and me with our
attitudes. He wants us to live
the High Life. So I have to
continually draw strength from the Word of God; and as the Lord comforts me
with His Word, I’ve been able to pass along some of those wonderful
verses to others in sermons, lessons, books, and counseling. That’s
what I’d like to do during this short, summertime series of three
sermons entitled The High Life, based
on three of the shortest verses in the Bible. These verses are small and easy to
memorize, but sometimes great truths come in small verses. A polished slab of granite may be
beautiful to look; but it can’t compare with the sparkling luster of a
diamond. These three verses are
diamonds, and the more you gaze at them the more they sparkle. To
change the figure, they are small pills or tablets, which, when dissolved
slowly in the mind, can almost instantly change any attitude from bad to
good, or from good to better. It
doesn’t matter if you’re angry, sad, depressed, discouraged,
anxious, or angry—these verses are mental-health transformers. They are the secrets of the sunny
soul. And so today I’d like
to begin a short series of three messages based on these three verses, found
in 1 Thessalonians 5, verses 16-18 (NKJV): Rejoice always, Pray without
ceasing, In everything
give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. The New International Version translates them like this: Be joyful
always, Pray
continually, Give thanks in all
circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus. I
don’t need to say a lot about the context or the background; but there
is one very vital contextual observation to mention. The epistle of 1 Thessalonians
represents one of our earliest Christian documents. It may have been the first of Well,
during his second tour, There
you have the important contextual matter. This passage is written to people who
had already made a personal, life-changing decision to follow Jesus Christ as
their Lord and Savior. This
passage is for Christians and for Christians only. If you haven’t yet met Jesus
Christ as your Lord and Savior, you have no basis to rejoice always, to pray
without ceasing, or to give thanks in all things. You must first give him your life and
your heart. The
High Life is not just a matter of a positive attitude or possibility
thinking. You’ve got to
have a spiritual foundation, and that foundation is Christ alone. So as we go through these three verses,
remember that these are instructions—not for the unsaved, telling them
how to be happier without Christ—but for the Christian who wants to
grow happier with Christ. Now,
near the end of this book of 1 Thessalonians, beginning with chapter 5, verse
12, Today
let’s look at the first verse, which says, “Be joyful
always.” This is the
shortest verse in the New Testament as it was written in the original
Greek. In our English
translations, the shortest verse in the Bible is John 11:35: “Jesus wept.” So we can say in a sense, we have two “shortest verses in the
Bible.” In the Greek Bible,
it is “Be joyful always,” and in our English Bibles, it is
“Jesus wept.” Quite a
contrast, isn’t it—weeping and rejoicing? But that shows us the range of
emotions that God has built into us.
Well, 1 Thessalonians Let’s
begin by defining joy. What is
it? The Greek word Yes,
there are certainly moments in life in which sadness and sorrow befall us;
but by-and-large, our default attitude, our baseline attitude, our normal
state should be one of uplifting, outgoing joy, cheerfulness, and gladness. I
rediscovered something about that some little time ago when I was pretty
down-and-out. I was coming home
from a trip, and I wasn’t really looking forward to getting back to my
regular work. It was an overseas trip,
and I was tired and weary from the journey. I wasn’t sure my trip had
accomplished its objectives; and I knew that there were certain pressures and
problems awaiting me. The flight
was long, I couldn’t rest, I was bored and weary and worried. But I
pulled out my Bible and suddenly, in rapid fire order, the Lord gave me fifteen verses about joy, one after
another, in quick succession. It
was almost as if the Lord were saying to me, “Here! Here! Here!” I jotted down those verses, and I
understood what He was telling me.
He was saying, “I do not intend for you to go back to My work
with a weary, worried attitude of care and drudgery. The church will suffer for it. My people will gain their enthusiasm
and morale and joy from you, and what good will you be for Me if you go back
with your present attitude? I
want you to go back to I
don’t have time to go through all fifteen verses, but what I’d
like to do this morning and evening is give you a short list of
“Joy” verses in the Bible with a suggestion that you take at
least one of these verse and make it your own. I’ll not spend much time on any of
them, but I think that at least one or two of them might have your name on
them. Hebrews 1:8-9 Joy Instantly
Improves Our Personalities But about the
Son He (God the Father) says, “Your
throne, O God, will last forever and ever, and righteousness will be the
scepter of your kingdom. You have
loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has set
you above your companions by anointing you with the oil of joy.” Here
we have two verses about the Lord Jesus Christ, and I specifically remember
when I discovered the first one, Hebrews 1:8: Thy
throne, O God, is forever and ever.
I was a student at But
we didn’t go on to verse 9, and it was only as I’ve been studying
this subject of “joy” over the past several weeks that I saw the
significance of verse 9: You have loved righteousness and hated
wickedness; therefore God, your God has set you above your companions by
anointing you with the oil of joy. This
is a Messianic passage, a quotation from the Old Testament (Psalm 45:6-7),
that says God the Father has anointed Jesus with the oil of joy more than His
companions, referring to His brothers, His fellow human beings. God the Father has anointed Jesus
Christ with more joy than anyone else on earth. When
you read and study the Bible, there are times when you encounter wonderful
figures of speech and symbols and metaphors. These have to be correctly
interpreted; so when we read this phrase, “the oil of joy,” we
have to ask ourselves, “What was in the author’s mind? How are oil and joy alike? What is the point of
comparison?” I could come
up with a list of five or six ways in which oil was like joy and joy was like
oil; but which one would be the true interpretation that was in the
author’s mind as he wrote this? Well,
the passage in Hebrews 1 is really a quotation from Psalm 45, a Messianic
Psalm, and let me read that passage to you from the New Living Translation: 6 Your throne, O God, endures
forever and ever. Your
royal power is expressed in justice. 7 You love what is right and
hate what is wrong. Therefore
God, your God, has anointed you, pouring
out the oil of joy on you more than on anyone else. 8 Your robes are perfumed
with myrrh, aloes, and cassia. In
palaces decorated with ivory, You are
entertained by the music of harps. In
biblical times, oil was the base substance for fine, rare, and expensive
perfumes. It was a cosmetic. They didn’t have hand lotions
and skin moisturizers like we do, but they had olive oil, which is
history’s original body lotion and skin lubricant. And they learned how to add precious
fragrances to make it aromatic.
There are many references in the Old Testament to richly spiced or
perfumed oil. The oil of joy is the name of the perfume
that God dispenses in His spiritual spa.
It’s the soul moisturizer that makes us warm and tender
people. It’s the fragrance
that makes us pleasant to be around and winsome. It’s to exude from our
personalities the way a lovely fragrances exudes from someone who has
anointed themselves with a pleasant perfume or cologne. And
this passage says, in effect, that Jesus Christ was anointed with the oil of
gladness—the perfume of joy—more than anyone else in all of
history. I’m quite sure
that we have underestimated how joyful Jesus was when He was here on earth. No one could have drawn such
multitudes to Himself based on a somber, dour spirit. Jesus must have had a magnetic smile,
a flash of cheer in His eyes, and an enthusiastic attitude about
life—more than anyone else on earth. He was upbeat and positive and
excited. He was anointed with the
oil of gladness. He has gallons
of it, metric tons of it, rivers and lakes and oceans of the oil of joy; and
not only does He enjoy it Himself, He wants to pour it out on you and me. How
do I know? Because this
phrase, the “oil of joy,” is found one other time in the Bible,
making three references in all.
We’ve seen it in Psalm 45 and Hebrews 1 as referring to Christ;
but now look at Isaiah 61, which is also a Messianic passage, a prophecy by
the prophet Isaiah about the coming Messiah: The Spirit of
the Lord God is upon Me, Because the Lord
has anointed Me To preach good
tidings to the poor. He has sent Me
to heal his brokenhearted. To proclaim
liberty to the captives, And the opening
of the prison to those who are bound; To proclaim the
acceptable year of the Lord, And the day of
vengeance of our God; To comfort those
who mourn, To console those
who mourn in To give them
beauty for ashes, The oil of
joy for mourning, The garment of
praise for the spirit of heaviness; That they may be
called trees of righteousness, The planting of
the Lord, that He may be glorified. God
the Father anointed God the Son with the perfume of cheerfulness more than
anyone else on earth; but God the Son wants to do exactly the same with
you. He wants you to wear the
cosmetics of inner joy all the time—and to do so instantly improves
your personality and mine. I
once read of a man who smelled good wherever he was and whatever he was
doing. His skin and clothing and
very being seemed to exude a pleasant fragrance; and the reason was that he
worked in a perfume factory and he breathed the aromas every day. They filtered into his clothing,
penetrated his skin, and even filled his lungs. He became a walking perfumery. That’s
what should be happening to those who call themselves Christians. We all have different personalities;
we know that. No two people have
the same personalities; God makes us unique both in body and in spirit; and
sometimes I’ve wished that I had a better personality. But no matter what your personality is
like, you can improve it instantly with the spray dispenser of God’s
perfume of joy. Biblical joy
instantly improves and enhances any personality. Joy puts a smile on your face, a
sparkle in your eye, a bounce in your step, a warmth in your voice, a
confidence in your heart, a composure in your demeanor. On that airplane, when I found those
fifteen verses about joy and it was as though I walked into a perfume
factory. I was instantly a more
gracious and happy person, and the very look on my face was transformed. Joy instantly improves our
personalities. But
there’s a second benefit to joy… Nehemiah 8:10 Joy
Dramatically Increases Our Energy Do not grieve,
for the joy of the Lord is your strength (NIV). In
Nehemiah 8, the prophet Ezra called together the remnant of exiles who had
returned and rebuilt the temple, and he built a platform on which he stood so
that everyone could see him, and from there he read from the Scriptures. Verse 8 says that he read from the book
of the law distinctly, gave the sense, and caused the people to understand
the reading. When the people
heard the words of the law, they wept and they were grieved. But Ezra told them to stop their
grieving. He said, “Go
enjoy yourselves. Eat and drink
and observe this as a happy, holy day; for the joy of the Lord is your
strength.” It
reminds me of something Francis Schaffer once said, that God intends for
Christianity to be fun! Do not
grieve, for the joy of the Lord is our strength. Joy is the power plant of the
Christian life. It produces
energy. It generates a constant
stream of strength. When you have
the joy of the Lord in you, you can keep on going; you’re a much
stronger person. You’re
stronger emotionally.
You’re stronger spiritually. You’re even stronger physically
and mentally. The joy of the Lord
infuses you with strength. Psalm 100 Joy Completely
Transforms our Worship But
not only does it improve our relationships and increase our strength; it
completely transforms our worship.
Look at Psalm 100:1: Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye
lands (KJV). When we worship
with enthusiasm and sing with vigor and even clap our hands and have a sense
of gladness to our worship—well, don’t you think that what you
think it means to make a joyful noise unto the Lord? The
next sentence says: Serve the Lord with gladness—joy! If we make FAITH visits, it
should be with joy. If we watch
children in the nursery or minister to preschoolers, it should be with joy. If we sing in the choir, we should
have a joyful expression on our face.
If we wash the dishes at home or vacuum the living room, we should do
it with joy, for even the simplest acts of life are done as unto the
Lord. Joy is to our daily
Christian duties what blossoms are to a rose bush or what a flag is to a
flagpole. We’re
to serve the Lord all right; but we aren’t just to serve Him with any
old attitude we happen to feel.
We aren’t to serve Him with weariness or drudgery or worry or
anger—we’re to serve Him with joy. Do
you know that this same truth—which is stated here in the
positive—is stated in the negative in Deuteronomy 28:47: Because
you did not serve the Lord your God with joy and gladness of heart for the
abundance of everything, therefore you shall serve your enemies, whom the
Lord will send against you…. How
terrible to serve the Lord with any other attitude that a continual source
and supply of joy! Not only that,
but joy bears us through tough times. James 1:2 Joy Bears Us
Through Tough Times My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various
trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience. Joy
doesn’t leave the room when trouble enters. In fact, that’s just when joy
digs in his heels and takes a stand. In
this verse, the word “count” here is a financial term that means
to “evaluate.” One of
the disciplined habits of faith is that of choosing to look at life’s
trials in a different sort of way.
James begins his book, his epistle, by telling us that if we’re
encountering various trials, the Lord wants to use those in our lives to
develop toughness and faith and perseverance and character and quality. He’s going to lead us out of our
troubles, but leave behind a deeper reservoir of faith and character—and
so by faith we can be cheerful even in trials and count it all joy even when
circumstances are not as we would wish. One
of the men I most admire reading about was a leader in the Salvation Army
many years ago whose name was Samuel Logan Brengle, and whose writings on
holiness are still to this day considered classics on the subject. Late in his life, Brengle’s
health began to fail. He had
always be strong and vigorous, but now he faced a multitude of problems,
including failing eyesight and hearing and a weakened heart. But do you know what his attitude
was? Writing to a friend, he
said: My old eyes get
dimmer. The specialist says the light will fade altogether. So I
gird myself for darkness, quote James 1:2-4, shout Hallelujah and go on! That’s
what Christians do; and that’s what it means to count it all joy. We quote James 1:2-4, shout
Hallelujah, and go on. I know
that many of you are struggle with very deep problems. I know because you tell me; and
I’m so thankful that you confide in me. I know about your husband or wife who
has left you with the children, about the loss you’ve suffered, about
your financial pressures, about this family crisis you’re going
through, about your grief and loneliness. Those
are tough realities, but they are not a reason to lose your joy; they are the very reason you should choose joy. You need the strength that joy
provides. You need the inner
resources of the Holy Spirit. You
need the radiance that comes from Christ Himself. You need to remember to make a joyful
noise before the Lord and to serve the Lord with gladness. You need to remember that in His
presence is fulfilling joy, and that you can even count it all joy when you
fall into diverse trials, for the joy of the Lord is your strength, and the
fruit of the Spirit is joy. So
choose joy. It improves our
personalities, increases our energy, transforms our worship, and bears us
through difficulties. It is joy
unspeakable and full of glory.
It’s the willingness to say: Joyful, joyful
we adore Thee, God of glory, Lord
of love; Hearts unfold
like flowers before Thee, Opening to the
sun above. Melt the clouds
of sin and sadness, Drive the dark
of doubt away. Giver of
immortal gladness, Fill us with the
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