This past Sunday, I preached on Joy, and someone asked afterward - what if my loved one dies? Am I to be joyful? You can add what happens if you lose your job or come to financial ruin; how can you be joyful in that context? We should not depend on pleasant circumstances to give us joy. Our joy is in the Lord, what he has done for us on the cross, and the new life we have received from him by his Spirit. We find joy not by changing our circumstances but by worshiping the Lord. As George Mueller stated, our daily goal is to, "have my soul happy in the Lord."
Yet, it is not possible for us to be constantly filled with exuberant joy. Life is not like that. But what is your baseline? Where do you end up going when you are not under significant stress? Do you rejoice? If this is your home base, you can still have joy amid sorrow. It is a command, "Rejoice in the Lord always; again, I will say, rejoice" (Philippians 4:4).
Paul states in Romans that, “We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, 4 and endurance produces character, and character produces hope,5 and hope does not put us to shame, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us. We rejoice in our sufferings because the result is God's love poured out into our hearts” (Romans 5:3-5). Our suffering and trials result in God's love poured into our hearts. This love is a good reason to rejoice in our suffering.
But this kind of joy is always mixed with sorrow. There is sin in the world, and horrible things happen. Just read the news daily and take in what is happening to people worldwide. If you have any compassion, you will have sorrow. We will always have some sorrow while we live on this earth.
In "The Lord of the Rings," Sam Gamgee realizes that Gandalf is not dead but alive. Sam cries, “I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself! Is everything sad going to come untrue?” Tim Keller comments that yes everything bad is going to come untrue and quotes Fyodor Dostoevsky in The Brothers Karamazov, “All the humiliating absurdity of human contradictions will vanish like a pitiful mirage...at the moment of eternal harmony, something so precious will come to pass that it will suffice for all hearts, for the comforting of all resentments, for the atonement of all the crimes of humanity, for all the blood that they've shed; that it will make it not only possible to forgive but to justify all that has happened.”
Jesus rejoiced in the Holy Spirit that his Father, revealed who he is not to the wise and understanding but to little children (Luke 10:21). And Jesus was also prophesied as a man of sorrows in Isaiah 53:3. Jesus wept at the tomb of Lazarus not because Lazarus is dead (he knows that he will raise him from the dead) but because the grip death has over humanity. Jesus groans that they also do not see him as the one who can defeat death. He was filled with joy but also known as a man of sorrows. One day, Jesus will wipe away every tear from our eyes, and we will be with him for an eternity filled with joy. This hope is the reason why the baseline of our emotions can be joy.
