Verse 10, the last sentence:
For the joy of the Lord is your strength.
Psalm 16, verse 11:
Thou wilt show me the path of life:
In Thy presence is fulness of joy;
At Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.
Hebrews 12:2:
Looking unto Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of faith, Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross, despising shame, and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
Philippians 2:1-2:
If there is therefore any exhortation in Christ, if any consolation of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any tender mercies and compassions, fulfil ye my joy, that ye be of the same mind, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind.
Philippians 4:4-5:
Rejoice in the Lord always: again I will say, Rejoice.
Let your forbearance be known unto all men.
What is joy? Why is joy so essential to life? Where can we find joy?
Here is what we commonly call happiness—joy. I believe we need to answer these questions lest we seek the wrong thing.
Pleasure gives us temporary enjoyment, delight, and satisfaction. Oh, but not joy. Joy is something that is sustained and lasting. It is something within us; it is in the spirit.
Joy is something that is not affected by outward circumstances, because joy is in God.
Do we really know joy? For the world, does it give us joy?
Now, brothers and sisters, we all know that we live in a very cruel world. Since the fall of man, thorns and thistles have grown on the earth. In a sense, this represents what life is. Life on this earth is full of thorns and thistles. Toil and pain are the norms of life.
Because of this, men try to find something to alleviate their pains and sorrows. They seek pleasure to compensate for the tragedy of life.
You may find it very interesting that it was the descendants of Cain who first practised polygamy—the pleasures of the flesh. They invented music—the pleasures of the ears. They were the inventors of tools of iron and brass—pleasures of comfort in life. They were the first who built cities and lived in tents for protection.
What we consider civilization, or culture, actually begins with the seeds of Cain, not the descendants of Abel. Why? Because they wanted to find something to compensate for this difficult, hard life. They tried to find pleasures in material and earthly things, in physical things, because that was all they knew.
But, brothers and sisters, did they find joy? They had pleasures—the pleasures of sin, the pleasures of the things of this world—but did they find joy? Did they really find strength in their life?
As a matter of fact, the more pleasures they derive from physical and material things, the weaker they become, and the more disturbed and confused they are. In other words, these things in which they try to find pleasures do not really give them joy.
They do not last. They are not the joy that the Bible talks about. Take away a little thing from their life, and you will find immediately that they become sad, disappointed, frustrated, and despairing. That is what you find in this world.
The Bible says, “The joy of the Lord is your strength.” Only the joy that comes from the Lord gives us real strength.
But what is the joy of the Lord? The Psalmist says:
Thou wilt show me the path of life.
What is the path of life? What is life? What is the way to life? How do we find life?
He says:
In Thy presence is fulness of joy.
Or, to put it another way: in Thy face is fulness of joy. This is to say, if we can see God, if we can see His face, if we live in His presence, then we will have joy, and we will be full of joy.
Conversely, if we do not see His face, if we do not live in His presence, then there is nothing that will give us joy.
At Thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.
Only when we see His hand do we have pleasures for evermore. It is not just a passing, transient, fading pleasure, but it will be an everlasting pleasure when we see the hand of God moving.
So, brothers and sisters, joy is not in things. Joy is not in circumstances. Joy is in God; it is in Christ. If we really abide in Him, if we see His face continuously, if we see His hands moving, then, no matter what happens around us, there is joy. And the joy of the Lord is our strength.
The prophet Habakkuk says:
For though the fig tree shall not blossom,
Neither shall fruit be in the vines;
The labour of the olive shall fail,
And the fields shall yield no food;
The flock shall be cut off from the fold,
And there shall be no herd in the stalls;
Now, he is describing a scene that would give everyone despair and disappointment. The fig tree shall not blossom. You know, in those days, they depended on the fig tree, the vine, and the olive tree for their food. They depended on the field and on the herds in their stalls. This was their very living.
And yet the prophet says:
Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,
I will joy in the God of my salvation.
The Lord, the Lord, is my strength.
So you can see very clearly: joy is not in things. Joy is in the Lord.
Once upon a time, there was a great king. His name was Solomon. Solomon wrote, in his old age, Ecclesiastes. He said:
I, the Preacher, was king over Israel in Jerusalem.
And I applied my heart to seek and search out by wisdom concerning all that is done under heaven:
It is a sore travail that God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised therewith.
I have seen all the works that are done under the sun; and, behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.
He said:
I said in my heart, Come now, I will prove thee with mirth; therefore enjoy pleasure: and, behold, this also was vanity.
I said of laughter, It is mad; and of mirth, What doeth it?
Solomon made great works. He built houses, planted vineyards, made gardens and parks, and planted trees in them of every kind of fruit. He made pools of water to water the forest where trees were reared. He acquired servants and maidens, and servants born in his house. He had great possessions of herds and flocks above all that had been in Jerusalem before him.
He gathered silver and gold, the peculiar treasure of kings and provinces. He acquired men singers and women singers, and the delights of the children of men—wives and concubines. He became great and increased more than all that had been before him in Jerusalem. Also, his wisdom remained with him.
Oftentimes, when you have these things, your wisdom is lost.
And whatsoever mine eyes desired I kept not from them;
I withheld not my heart from any joy;
For my heart rejoiced because of all my labour:
And this was my portion from all my labour.
Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do;
And, behold, all was vanity and a striving after wind,
And there was no profit under the sun.
Brothers and sisters, what a contrast. If we try to find joy in the things of this world, it may give us temporary pleasure, but then it will give us lasting regret. Joy cannot be found in things—not even in laughter.
Sometimes I think the people in this world know more how to enjoy themselves than Christians. Sometimes I even find that the people of this world seem to be very happy. They joke, they laugh, and they seem to be happy. But is that joy?
Once a man came to a medical doctor to be examined. The doctor found there was nothing wrong with the man, and yet he was depressed and unhappy, having no will to live.
Finally, the doctor suggested, “I think the best thing for you to do is go to the theatre and watch the clown, a famous clown. Then you will forget all your sorrows and be very happy.”
The man shook his head and said, “It will not work.”
“Why?”
“Because,” he said, “I am the clown. I make people laugh, but I cannot laugh.”
You cannot find joy in things, ignoring your circumstances. The only place where you can find joy is in God. The joy of the Lord is your strength.
Look at our Lord Jesus. When He came into this world, the angel told the shepherds:
Behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy which shall be to all the people:
For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Saviour, Who is Christ the Lord.
We often think that when Christ came, He brought peace into this world. Now, that is true: peace on earth, and good will toward men. But we forget that when our Lord Jesus came into this world, He not only brought peace into this world; He brought joy into this world.
He knows how unhappy men are, and that is the reason why He came: to bring joy to our hearts.
But look at the life of our Lord Jesus. So far as His earthly life was concerned, His life was hard and difficult. He was born in a manger. There was no place for Him, no home, not even an inn.
He was reared in Nazareth, an out-of-the-way place—a Nazarene, a Galilean.
He said:
The foxes have holes,
And the birds of the heaven have nests;
But the Son of man hath not where to lay His head.
What a hard life.
He was often misunderstood—more misunderstood than understood. He was misunderstood even by His brethren according to the flesh. He was misunderstood even by His own disciples. He was misunderstood, of course, by the people of that time. He was misunderstood by His enemies.
How He loved, and yet they repaid Him with hatred. They rejected Him. How He toiled and laboured, and yet they did not believe in Him.
Anyone who is in that kind of circumstance, deprived of all the earthly things that make up so-called pleasure, would be depressed beyond measure. But not our Lord.
In the depths of disappointment, in Luke 10, He lifted up His head. He rejoiced in spirit and said:
I thank Thee, Father.
I praise Thee, Father, because this is Thy will.
Thou didst reveal these things unto babes,
And not unto the wise and prudent.
At the depth of disappointment, He was filled with joy.
On the night of His betrayal, His disciples knew something was going to happen. They did not really understand, but they knew something was happening. The Master was leaving them. They were sorrowful and grieved.
Yet, if you read John 14 through John 16, you will find that our Lord Jesus, even at that moment, knew exactly what would happen to Him. He knew that one of His disciples would betray Him, one of His closest disciples would deny Him, all His disciples would be scattered, and He would be alone.
And yet, when He talked with His disciples, He said:
These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.
He had joy. Nothing could take away His joy. “My joy.” He had joy to spare—joy to impart and to distribute.
He told His disciples, “For the time being, you will be grieved. But I am coming, and when I come, your grief will turn to joy—a joy that no one can take away.”
A joy that no one can take away. Dear brothers and sisters, oftentimes what we consider joy can easily be taken away. Anybody can take it away.
Not only can your enemies take it away; your friends can take it away. Your husband can take it away. Your wife can take it away. Your children can take it away. A little something can take it away.
But the Lord said, “When I come again”—and remember, this does not refer to His second coming. This refers to His resurrection, when He would come to His people in the Holy Spirit and dwell in them, and they would see Him every moment. That is the reason no one can take that joy away.
He said, “In that day, whatsoever ye shall ask, it shall be done unto you, that your joy may be full.”
What is the joy of the Lord? Surely the joy of the Lord is not in things. The joy of the Lord is not in circumstances.
What is the joy of our Lord? Why is it that He has so much joy? It does not depend upon what happens. Why? Because our Lord Jesus took His Father as His joy.
The joy of the Lord is not in things; it is in a Person. It is in the Person of the heavenly Father. The joy of the Lord is in the countenance of the heavenly Father. When He sees the face of the Father, He is full of joy.
But at one time, the Father hid His face. While He was crucified on the cross, at noontime, suddenly the sun was covered with darkness. Our Lord Jesus cried:
My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?
He lost His Father’s face. But even so, He knew that He was fulfilling His Father’s will. As long as He fulfilled His Father’s will, His joy was full.
What is the joy of our Lord?
For the joy that was set before Him, He endured the cross, despising shame.
It is the joy of doing the Father’s will. That joy enabled Him to endure the cross and to despise the shame. Therefore, the joy of the Lord is His strength. That is the reason why He overcame.
He always set the Father before Him. Even when the Father’s face was hid from Him, He had the knowledge and assurance that He was doing the Father’s will. That is the joy of the Lord.
Dear brothers and sisters, what is our joy? Where can we find joy? The only place where we can really find joy is in Christ.
As our Lord Jesus takes the Father as His joy, so today we take the Lord Jesus as our joy. If we really take Him as our joy, if we really see His face, if we really will to do His will, and if we know that we are doing His will, then, dear brothers and sisters, nothing can take away our joy.
Christ is the same yesterday, today, and for ever. Because He is the same, if we take Him as our joy, our joy never changes. It is permanent; it is always the same.
Circumstances may change, and they always change. Things may come and go, and that is always the case. Sometimes you are in abundance; sometimes you are in lack. But thank God, if we really take Christ as our joy, if we really take the will of God as our joy, then nothing can take our joy away. Our joy is in Christ Jesus.
How can we find our joy full? You remember, in Romans 14:17:
For the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.
Joy is in the Holy Spirit. We who believe in the Lord Jesus have the Holy Spirit dwelling in us. The Holy Spirit in us is to give us joy, to make us joyful.
Joy is not just an emotional uplift or release. Joy is deeper than emotion. Joy is a character, a nature, a character of God.
The fruit of the Holy Spirit is love, joy, peace. So here you find joy is the fruit of the Holy Spirit. It represents the very nature and character of God. It does not depend upon outward circumstances; it is rooted in God Himself.
In the Holy Spirit, we have fulness of joy. You know, the Holy Spirit dwells in each one of us. He dwells in our very spirit. Our spirit is the sanctuary, the holy of holies, where the Holy Spirit dwells.
We can grieve Him, and how often we do. We grieve Him because we do not listen to Him. We grieve Him because we do not obey Him. We grieve Him because we do not do what He wants us to do, and we do what He does not want us to do.
When we grieve Him, do you think we will have joy? If we grieve the Holy Spirit, we are grieved. No matter what pleasures you are enjoying, you are grieved. You do not feel happy. You feel dead.
We may quench the Holy Spirit. When the Holy Spirit prompts us, constrains us, or restrains us, we may quench Him. But when we quench the Holy Spirit, are we full of joy? We are sad.
It is only when we listen to the Holy Spirit, when we obey the teaching of the anointing, that joy really fills our heart. Sometimes you may be crying, but through tears there is joy, deep down in your heart.
The joy of the Holy Spirit: the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking. In this world, people try to find their joy and happiness in eating and drinking, because this is the nature of the kingdom of this world.
If you do not enjoy yourself in eating and drinking, what more do you have?
I remember a sister whose husband was not a believer. The sister was so worried about her husband. One day she talked to a servant of the Lord and said, “What should I do? I pray for my husband, I press him, I push him, I pull him, I try to force him, but he will not believe. What can I do?”
The servant of the Lord said, “One thing you can do is cook the very best meal for him. Treat him like a king. Do everything you can to make him comfortable and happy.”
The sister listened to the advice and began to cook the food her husband liked to eat. She served him like a king. After a few days, the husband began to wonder why.
One day the husband asked, “Why do you treat me like this?”
The wife said, “You have only this world to enjoy. So I want you to have everything you can have, because after this you will have nothing.”
And, you know, that converted the husband.
Eating and drinking is the very nature of this world. This is the kingdom of this world: eating and drinking. But the kingdom of God is not eating and drinking. The kingdom of God is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.
When we really rejoice in the joy in the Holy Spirit, we are in the kingdom of God.
Where do we find joy and have our joy full? In Christian fellowship.
First John 1:3-4:
That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you also, that ye also may have fellowship with us:
Yea, and our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ:
And these things we write, that our joy may be made full.
Dear brothers and sisters, what gives us great joy on earth, aside from our Lord Jesus, is our brothers and sisters—fellowship, sharing what we have in common.
What do we have in common? There is one thing that we have in common. We may not have things in common as far as material things are concerned. Some people are richer; some people are poorer. Let not the rich be proud, nor the poor be envious. If the Lord wants you to be rich, thank God for it. If the Lord wants you to be poor, thank God for it.
We do not have in common our background, our education, our position in this world, or whatever it may be. But there is one thing that we all have in common: we have Christ. That is fellowship.
Fellowship gives us the greatest joy we have on earth. Brothers and sisters, it is much better than going to the theatre.
Sometimes people say, “Well, you people do not know how to enjoy yourselves. There are lots of places you do not go and things you do not do. You must be very sad people.”
But they do not know that in Christian fellowship we have the fulness of joy. Oh, how we enjoy one another because we enjoy Christ in one another. That is fellowship.
Fellowship is different from socialising. When you are socialising, what are you exchanging? You are exchanging what you are and what you have in the world. But fellowship is sharing Christ—sharing Christ.
The Christ that you know, you share with me to enrich me; and the Christ that I know, I share with you to enrich you. What riches it is! It is heaven upon earth.
Brothers and sisters, how we need to treasure Christian fellowship. We treasure our communion with God, and we treasure our fellowship with the saints. That makes our joy full.
What makes our joy full? The joy in serving God, doing His work, and being interested in His interests.
Psalm 126:5 says:
They that sow in tears shall reap in joy.
It is true that if you are really serving Him, if you are really interested in His interests, if you are really doing His work, you may have to sow in tears.
Sometimes we think, “What a joy it is to serve God.” Try it. There are lots of tears. But you will reap with rejoicing when you bring in the sheaves.
Paul said to the Philippian believers, “Ye are my joy and my crown, if ye stand fast in the Lord.”
For the joy that lay before Him, our Lord Jesus despised the shame and endured the cross. There is joy. There is joy in heaven when one sinner repents. There is joy in the family of God when one soul is restored. There is joy when there are fruits to be brought in and offered to God.
I cannot forget, by the grace of God, when one of my classmates came to the Lord. My joy was tremendous. The joy of the work of God is worth all the toil.
What makes us full of joy? When we suffer with Christ. The fellowship of His sufferings brings us joy.
You may think that suffering, of course, brings sorrow and pain. But in Colossians 1:24:
Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and fill up on my part in my flesh that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ for His body’s sake, which is the church.
Paul said, “I rejoice in my sufferings for you.”
And in 1 Peter 4:13:
But insomuch as ye are partakers of Christ’s sufferings, rejoice; that at the revelation of His glory also ye may rejoice with exceeding joy.
If we suffer because we have done something wrong, there is no joy in it. There is sorrow in it, and we need to repent.
But if we share in the sufferings of Christ—brothers and sisters, you know that the sufferings of Christ are a mystery. On the one hand, there are sufferings of Christ that we cannot share: the atoning sufferings of Christ. He had to bear the cross, the atoning sacrifice, alone. He shed His blood for the remission of our sins. We cannot share in those sufferings.
But there is another side of His sufferings to which He calls us: fellowship with His sufferings. If we suffer for His name’s sake, if we suffer as Christians, if we suffer for the sake of righteousness, if we suffer for conscience’ sake, if we suffer for the body’s sake—that is, for the building up of the body of Christ, just as Paul said—then we share in His sufferings.
It is true that suffering is painful. But rejoice. Even in pain, let us rejoice. Why? Because we know that at the revelation of Jesus Christ and of His glory, we shall rejoice with exultation.
If you read church history, you will find that during persecution, when the dear saints of God suffered immensely, beyond human endurance, yet when they were suffering for the name of Christ, deep down within their spirit they were full of joy.
You say, “How can it be?” This is what it is.
One brother asked a question: “How do we differentiate between joy and what the world thinks of happiness, or being hilarious? How do you distinguish?”
People may be very excited, very hilarious, and seem to be bubbling with joy. How do you know that this is real joy? How do you find out?
The answer was, “You will find out in suffering.” When you suffer and all these things are gone, you know that was just outward emotion. But when you suffer and deep within you there is joyousness, you know that is the real thing.
Where can you find fulness of joy? In discipline.
We may think that discipline is not joy. No child finds it a pleasure to be disciplined. No child comes to the parents and says, “Please, please apply the rod.”
Even in Hebrews 12, it is said that during the time of discipline, or chastening, it is painful. That is true. But it will produce the peaceful fruit of righteousness. It will bring in great joy afterwards.
A child who is not disciplined will bring great sorrow, not only to his parents but to himself. But one who is disciplined will bring great joy to his parents and also to himself.
You remember David. After he was disciplined, or while he was being disciplined, he wrote a psalm—Psalm 51. He said in verse 12:
Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation;
And uphold me with a willing spirit.
It is through discipline that the joy of the salvation of the Lord is restored. That is where the joy is restored. When a brother or sister, a believer, has gone off the track and the Lord disciplines him, this is the way to restore the joy of the Lord.
In another psalm, Psalm 30:5:
For His anger is but for a moment;
His favour is for a life:
Weeping may tarry for the night,
But joy cometh in the morning.
Finally, I would like to leave with this thought. We take our Lord Jesus as our joy. We make the will of God our joy. If we really look to His face and really fulfil His will, then we find that nothing on this earth, nothing external, can take away our joy. We will rejoice always in the Lord.
But let us remember that not only should we take the Lord as our joy; the Lord actually has taken us as His joy.
In Psalm 16, which we read in the beginning, verse 2—this is a psalm of David, a Messianic psalm; it prophesies of the Messiah, of our Lord:
Thou, O my soul, hast said unto the Lord, Thou art my Lord:
I have no good beyond Thee.
Here you find the Messiah expressing His thought towards God. He says, “Thou art my Lord. I have no good beyond Thee.” In other words, in Thee I find my delight. In other words, He makes God His joy. Our Lord Jesus always makes God His joy.
Then verse 3:
As for the saints that are in the earth,
They are the excellent in whom is all my delight.
Our Lord Jesus not only takes God the Father as His joy, but He takes His saints as His delight. He considers us as His joy.
In Proverbs 8, you find this spoken of our Lord as wisdom:
When He prepared the heavens, I was there:
When He set a circle upon the face of the deep,
When He made firm the skies above,
When the fountains of the deep became strong,
When He gave to the sea its bound,
That the waters should not transgress His commandment,
When He marked out the foundations of the earth;
Then I was by Him, as a master workman;
And I was daily His delight,
Rejoicing always before Him,
Rejoicing in His habitable earth;
And My delight was with the sons of men.
Here you find how our Lord Jesus, the Son, is the delight of the Father, and how He delights in the Father. Then, further than that, He rejoices in the habitable part of the earth—that is, His delight is with the sons of men.
So you find that our Lord Jesus takes us as His joy, as His delight. Because of this, no one can hurt Him more than we do. The angels cannot hurt Him more than we can hurt Him.
If our Lord Jesus really takes us as His joy—and He does—if we do not love Him, if we do not obey Him, if we go against Him, remember: there is nothing that can hurt our God, our Lord, more than human beings—we who are redeemed by the blood.
That is the reason why, in Philippians, Paul says, “Fulfil ye my joy.” In the church in Philippi, they had exhortation, fellowship, and compassion, and yet they were divided. Because they were divided, Paul’s joy was affected.
Paul cried out to them and said, “Fulfil my joy. Make my joy full. Yes, I rejoice in you because you are in the Lord. I rejoice with you because you preach the gospel. I rejoice with you because you have fellowship, because there is compassion among you. But I want you to be of one mind, of one thought. Think the same thing. Have the same love. Have the mind of Christ. Be one, and then my joy will be full.”
Now Paul here is representing the Head. It is as if Christ is crying out to His church: “I do rejoice in you all. I do see that there are lots of good things going on. But so long as you do not have one mind, think the same thing, have the same love, and are not joined in soul, My joy will never be full.”
How essential it is, therefore, for God’s people to be one, because this is the heart desire of our Lord. Even before His crucifixion, that was His prayer: that they may be one, as He and the Father are one.
So, dear brothers and sisters, as we are thinking of this matter of joy, remember: we take Christ as our joy. As Christ has taken us as His delight, we certainly want Him to rejoice in us as we rejoice in Him.
May the Lord bless us. Shall we pray?
O heavenly Father, we do praise and thank Thee because Thou hast given us a joy that nothing can take away.
We do praise and thank Thee that the joy of our heart is a Person; it is not a thing. We do praise and thank Thee that our joy does not rely upon outward circumstances, because our joy is rooted in Christ. Thou art our joy.
Oh, how we praise and thank Thee, because our joy never changes, and our joy increases as the days go by. So we do want to worship Thee.
We ask, O Lord, that Thou wilt enable us to fix our eyes upon Thee—not on things, not on ourselves. Lord, we ask that Thou wilt enable us to forget ourselves and just concentrate on Thee, that our joy may be full.
Lord, we pray that we may truly rejoice Thy heart, that we may be children of Thine in whom Thou canst say, “Thou art satisfied. Thou art delighted in us.”
We pray in the name of our Lord Jesus. Amen.