Join in the Joy
Through the years, I have frequently preached about joy. It is more than an emotion (although it includes emotion); rather, it is a settled attitude, a stable and sturdy approach to life that focuses us on the things that matter now and forever. Joy is much greater and much more powerful than happiness, which is event or circumstance driven. There is nothing wrong with happiness. It is certainly better than unhappiness. Also, we have different personalities. For example, my wife is happy-go-lucky. Of course, she has every reason to be, being married to me. However, not everyone can be married to me. We need something more substantial than happiness; that something is joy. (I will be using this opening paragraph for each of the brief messages in this series. The following material will change daily.)
Perhaps you are familiar with Isaiah 51:11; the musical chorus based on this verse is quite well-known (and, for those of you in our little church, a favorite of our beloved Pauline). So important is its imagery that it is also employed in Isaiah 35:10 and, in part, in Isaiah 61:7. (For those interested in literary analysis, these usages provide a definitive example – one of many – of the unity of this grand book.) “Everlasting joy” was presented to the people of Israel as something real, as something really and readily available if they would only choose to possess it. That Isaiah would speak so fervently of this eternal joy is striking, for he was a prophet to whom, it seems, no one listened. He was persecuted for decades and likely martyred by evil King Manasseh, who, almost unbelievably, repented at the end of his fifty-five-year reign. Isaiah was driven by joy and is now undoubtedly enjoying God’s everlasting joy. Remarkably, so is Manasseh, for II Corinthians 7:10a states, “
Godly sorrow worketh repentance not to be repeated of.” I think of Isaiah and Manasseh in heaven together with Jesus. Is there a more evocative picture of the power of God’s everlasting joy? Like Isaiah, may we let this joy be a motivating force in our lives, one that lifts us to the mountaintop of “Zion.”