Okay, we’re starting a new week, so here’s a new question for you to consider: on a scale of zero to ten, how much are you enjoying your life? No, really, I’m serious! How much are YOU enjoying, YOUR life on a scale from zero … to ten? 

It’s a bit of a landmark for me this week because I’ve just come back from a couple of weeks of vacation. As much as I love doing what I do, man it’s nice to get away and just rest and sleep and enjoy things with my wife. We travelled a bit to one of my favourite countries in the world, New Zealand.

Now as an Aussie I don’t like telling the Kiwi’s that too often but gee it’s a beautiful place. It was just so special to be able to relax, you know what I mean. I have to tell you though that getting back into the harness of work wasn’t easy for the first few days, my body was kind of objecting to this notion of having to get up early in the morning and stumping up to work.

No doubt you’ve been there too, those first few days back at work. No matter how much you happen to enjoy your job they’re not easy. It’s like a severe dose of Mondayitis. Its funny isn’t it how our feelings and our responses to our environment go up and down and how much we’re influenced by the externalities of what’s going on in our lives.

It’s pretty easy to enjoy life when you’re kicking back and taking a break but when the pressures of life come crowding back, well it gets harder and harder. We all have pressures, I do and you do. They come in all different shapes and sizes. Of course there’s always some amount of pressure associated with work, relationships are a big source of pressure.

I was just praying with a man on the phone the other day for healing in his relationships with his wife and with his daughter. Our own perceptions of things, the way we see things; that in itself can cause pressure, a sense of insecurity or inadequacy. Perhaps someone’s marriage isn’t going particularly well or they’re feeling as though no one needs them or people need them too much.

It’s a pretty long list and in the middle of all that many people end up feeling like battery hens, just churning it out, grinding it out, day after day without much of a sense of meaning or purpose or achievement. I’m not saying everyone’s life is like that but there’s something about the modern-day human condition, the pace of life; the demands of life, the pressure’s of life that drain the joy out of our lives.

And that, I think, is why so many people are living joyless lives. I wonder if I were able to get a show of hands from all the people from around the world who are listening to this message today, how many would consider their lives; their hearts to be full of joy, overflowing with joy. I wonder how many people would put their hands up in the air to that one. You know what I suspect; a few hands would go up, a few but not all that many.

The words ‘joy‘ and ‘rejoice‘ and all their various derivatives together appear around three hundred and seventy times in the Bible. Now that’s rather a lot, that makes it rather a big and important subject and as I read my Bible what I discover is that joy is something that God wants us to have. Let me say it more specifically, joy is something God wants you to have.

Not just in those happy times in life but during the difficult times of life as well. James chapter 1 verses 2 to 4:

My brothers and sisters whenever you face trials of any kind consider it nothing but pure joy because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance and let endurance have its full effect so that you may be mature and complete lacking in nothing.

Philippians chapter 4, verse 4 written by the Apostle Paul on death row in a Roman dungeon strapped to his guard:

Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I say rejoice.

If I were to give you a choice between a life that is full to overflowing with joy and one that isn’t its pretty obvious which one you would choose right? And so you have to ask yourself, given all that He’s put about the subject in His living Word the Bible; why is it that so many people, people who believe in Jesus with all their hearts even are living such joyless lives? Why is that?

Is it because God’s joy isn’t available to us? No, that’s not it because the Bible says, Romans chapter 14 verse 17:

The Kingdom of God isn’t a matter of food and drink but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

So it can’t be that. Clearly God wants us to experience His joy in an abundant measure when we enter into and live in the Kingdom of God. In fact one of the equal shortest verses in the whole Bible is 1 Thessalonians chapter 5, verse 16. It says this:

Rejoice always.

You know I travel a lot around the world in my role meeting with Church leaders, visiting Churches, speaking at Churches, participating in worship services, so as far as having a representative cross-section of Gods Kingdom, a statistically valid sample if you will, well I have a pretty good one.

And even taking into account the enormous cultural differences in the expressions of worship in different countries from say a Ghanaian service where they’re dancing in a conga line down the aisle of the Church to a more conservative service in a place say like India where in many Churches men sit on one side of the Church and women sit on the other, taking all that into account I am so struck by the absence of joy in so many places, in so many Churches, in so many of the Christians that I’ve met and with whom I’ve interacted.

I remember just recently being asked to speak at a rather large Church on an important occasion for that Church and sitting on the platform waiting to get up to speak, watching the leaders and the Bishops all dressed in their finery sitting across from me during the time of worship with this abject look of boredom on their faces. What’s the matter with us people? Why are we living such joyless lives? What’s going on in the Kingdom of God, hmm?

The title of this series that we’ve kicked off today with this program is that The Joy Of The Lord Is Your Strength. That’s a quote from the Old Testament Book of Nehemiah chapter 8 and we’re going to take a good close look at that story surrounding that quote a little later in this series but for the moment let’s just consider that Scripture at face value.

The ‘joy of the Lord is your strength’. So many people who love Jesus feel helpless and weak in situations of temptations in the middle of the pressures of life. You can feel like you’re being blown to and fro like a tiny little boat on an angry ocean, have you ever felt that and you wonder where am I going to get the strength to make it through this? Right?

The answer is that you get your strength from the joy of the Lord, from God’s very own joy because when you’re enjoying God, when you’re really, really enjoying your relationship with Jesus you know what happens? He fills you with such incredible strength, with such amazing power that you wonder, ‘Hang on, where did that come from?’

Clearly the Bible teaches that strength is a by-product of joy. Let me say that again. Clearly the Bible teaches that strength is a by-product of joy and if that’s true, if that’s really the case then having the joy of the Lord happening in you, it’s not some optional extra which is so nice to have, it’s not the icing on the cake. Not at all, it’s the very foundation of your whole life in the Kingdom of God.

So if maybe you’re not one of those people who is able to stick their hand in the air in response to the question, is the joy of the Lord filling you to overflowing? If you, right now, can’t answer a resounding ‘yes’ to that question then stick with me throughout this series The Joy Of The Lord Is Your Strength as we discover how to remove the road blocks to joy and how to be filled to overflowing with the joy of the Lord because I come back to it, right through the Bible it becomes very clear that God wants to fill you with His joy, the joy of the Lord.

When we think of joy, you and I, we think of happiness, of fun, of pleasure. We imagine that joy is something that happens when all the pressures, all the cares of this world are lifted off our shoulders. Then, finally, we can enjoy life. But what if I told you … that’s not it at all.

One of the things that I love doing is to watch advertisements on television and analyse what it is that they’re actually selling and what it is that they’re actually promising. One of the new big trends in holiday travel is cruising on big, opulent ocean liners. Nothing wrong with that but I’m interested in the advertisements that depict happy couples enjoying each other’s company on a beautiful ocean liner.

Cruise with this line and you’ll experience romance and intimacy or they show kids having fun while parents relax by the pool or go out for a sophisticated dining experience. It seems to me that what they’re promising is happiness, that’s the end product. The ship, the relaxation, the rest, the exotic experiences, the entertainment, they’re all stepping-stones to the final grand promise of happiness.

Smiling faces, fun, enjoyment. In fact that’s the case with most of the advertisements for most of the products that you see or hear, not all of them mind you but most of them. The end product, the commodity that they’re really pedalling isn’t the product or the service that they’re advertising. What they’re really actually trying to sell you, most of them, is happiness.

So I went to my dictionary to check out the meaning of these three words, happiness, fun and joy. This is what I found. The dictionary definition of happiness is this: The state of being happy.

Well okay, so what does it mean to be happy? It is apparently a feeling of pleasure or contentment. Well fair enough, what then is the definition of fun something that we associate with happiness? It’s enjoyment, amusement and light-hearted pleasure.

Well so far so good. Then I finally decided to check out my dictionary for the definition of joy. Joy, we’re told, is a feeling of great pleasure and happiness and you know that fits in pretty well with our understanding that happiness, fun and joy are all pretty much the same thing or if not exactly the same thing then very closely related. In fact in our language we often use the words ‘happy’ and ‘joy’ interchangeably, when something makes us happy we would say we ‘enjoyed’ it right?

That’s the common understanding, that’s the worlds understanding but what if I told you that that’s an understanding that is diametrically, one hundred and eighty degrees opposed to what God tells us about joy. Firstly the word ‘joy’ in its various derivatives appears around three hundred and seventy times in the Bible. On the other hand happy and its various derivatives appear only twenty-six times in the Bible. Big difference!

Empirically what that tells me is that God isn’t interested so much in my happiness, what He really wants for me is His joy. Interestingly in one verse these two words appear together, Esther chapter 8 verse 16:

For the Jews it was a time of happiness and joy, gladness and honour.

So clearly the two words have different meanings otherwise there’d be no need to put them both in the one sentence. Now you and I know what happiness is, sometimes we’re happy, sometimes we’re sad. When are we happy? Well when things go our way, when you have a good experience, when you’re being praised or promoted, when you’re involved in something that’s fun, when you have something good to look forward to like a holiday on one of those cruise ships.

Happiness by and large is a response to our circumstances and we’re sad when bad things happen, when we lose a loved one, when someone tramples on our emotions right? There’s happy and then there’s sad. Totally different but if that’s our understanding of joy, the joy that God promises us, the joy of the Lord that the Bible talks about then we’re completely missing the point.

If that’s our understanding of what joy is then this Scripture simply doesn’t make sense, James chapter 1 verses 2 to 4:

My brothers and sisters whenever you face trials of any kind consider it nothing but pure joy because you know that the testing of your faith produces endurance and let endurance have its full effect so that you may be mature and complete, lacking in nothing.

It doesn’t make sense because you can’t be happy whenever you’re facing a trial of any kind, right? When things are tough it’s impossible to be happy and yet God here is telling us to consider a trial as nothing but pure joy.

The New Testament Greek word that most often we tend to translate into the word ‘joy’, the one used here in this passage comes from the same root word as grace. That word is ‘chara’ from which we get the word charismatic for instance. In other words the concepts of grace and joy are fundamentally linked. Grace is a free gift from God and joy is one of the most powerful expressions, manifestations, results of God’s grace.

So in sharp contrast to our worldly understanding of joy being synonymous with happiness what God means when He promises us His joy is a free gift from Him.

So let’s get this straight, happiness is a reflection of and our response to what’s going on around us, happiness comes from the world. Joy on the other hand is a free gift from God and that’s why you can have joy even when your circumstances are against you.

The joy of the Lord and the happiness of this world are profoundly different things, God’s joy is born out of His love for us and as a Father who loves you His compassion for you when you’re hurting, when the pressures of this world are seemingly going to crush you is unbelievable. And that’s why right in those difficult times He will give you the gift of His joy, at the very time that the happiness of the world deserts you. That’s why the joy of the Lord truly is your strength.

It’s amazing actually how often in the Bible joy is spoken about in times of suffering. You see in our human understanding suffering and joy just don’t go together because after all we use joy and happiness interchangeably and it simply doesn’t make sense that you could possibly be happy while you’re suffering and you can’t but joy, well that’s a whole different thing.

Have a listen to these couple of Scriptures, firstly Romans chapter 12 verse 12:

Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer.

See joy and suffering are used in the one verse there. 1 Peter chapter 1 verses 3 to 7:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ for by his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled and unfading being kept in heaven for you who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.

In this you rejoice even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials so that the genuineness of your faith, being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire may be found to result in praise and glory and honour when Jesus Christ is revealed.

Did you get that? ‘In this you rejoice even if now you have to suffer‘. So joy and suffering again come together. Listen God’s joy is different from the world’s happiness, God’s joy is profoundly and infinitely better than the worlds happiness because it comes from Him and not from the world and so the joy of the Lord is reliable, it’s powerful, it’s freely available irrespective of the circumstances that we’re immersed in. That’s why the joy of the Lord really is your strength.

Joy is such a precious commodity – I’m not talking about the fleeting emotion of happiness, I’m talking about the abiding gift of God’s joy, to carry you through the tough times as well. And there is one place, more than any other, where you’ll find it. 

Well over the last couple of days on the program we’ve been taking a look at the joy of the Lord. Now the joy of the Lord isn’t an idea that I’ve come up with, it’s something that the Bible talks about and that phrase ‘the joy of the Lord‘ is a phrase that appears only once in the Bible. It’s in the Old Testament Book of Nehemiah in chapter 8. So we’re going to take a look at that today in a whole bunch more detail because it’s one thing to talk about it but it’s another thing all together to experience it day by day in our lives.

But before we go there let’s just recap on the important, the profound difference between happiness and joy because unless we get that difference the rest of our discussion about the joy of the Lord will, I suspect, miss the mark.

Remember happiness is our response to our circumstances. We’re happy when our circumstances please us, when things are going our way. We’re happy when we feel blessed, when we feel loved, when we feel valued, when we have enough to eat and enough to drink. Happiness is our emotional reflection of positive circumstances and so happiness is of this world.

It’s not a bad thing, don’t get me wrong but it’s a fleeting thing because our circumstances aren’t always in our favour, are they? So happiness deserts us when we need it most, when the going gets tough. Joy on the other hand is a gift from God. The Bible talks a lot about joy and remember the Greek words for ‘joy’ and for ‘grace’ are almost identical, they come from the same root word meaning that joy is the free gift of God.

And the reason that the Bible can so often talk about joy in the context of suffering is that joy doesn’t desert you when the going gets tough; to the contrary, the joy of the Lord is actually your strength. It’s an important difference and that brings me to chapter 8 of the Book of Nehemiah where we’re introduced to this concept of the joy of the Lord being our strength.

So here’s the situation, Israel has not long returned to Jerusalem following a seventy-year exile in Babylon as slaves. When they get back by Gods grace they discover, not surprisingly, that Jerusalem had been destroyed, it’s been seventy years after all. The most important thing in the beginning is to rebuild the wall that surrounds the city to protect them from attack.

That’s where Nehemiah comes in. God anointed him to lead that massive building effort and they’ve just finished. Now this wall was around four kilometres or two and a half miles long, not so bad you think but wait on for a bit, it was over ten metres or forty feet high and thick, thick enough not to be destroyed by enemies who would come against the city.

It had gates and watchtowers and battlements built into it. And for over three years they had been slaving away to build this wall by hand, moving massive stones, remember there were no cranes or trucks or power tools, these people had been slogging their guts out for God and for the city.

And the easiest thing in the world to do when you’re doing that is to lose your joy. So let’s pick up the story, Nehemiah chapter 8, verses 1 to 10:

All the people gathered together into the square before the Water Gate. They told the scribe Ezra to bring the book of the Law of Moses, which the Lord had given to Israel. Accordingly the priest Ezra brought the law before the assembly, both men and women, all who could hear with understanding. This was on the first day of the seventh month.

He read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early in the morning until midday in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law.

The scribe Ezra stood on a wooden platform that had been made for the purpose and beside him stood Mattithiah, Shema, Anaiah, Uriah, Hilkiah and Maaseiah on his right hand and Pedaiah, Mishael, Malchijah, Hashum, Hash-baddanah, Zechariah and Meshullum on his left hand.

And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people for he was standing above all the people and when he opened it all the people stood up. Then Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God and all the people answered ‘Amen, Amen’ lifting up their hands. Then they bowed their heads and worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground.

Also Jeshua, Bani, Sherebiah, Jamin, Akkub, Shabethai, Hodiah, Maaseiah, Kelita, Azariah, Jozabad, Hanan, Pelaiah, the Levites, helped the people to understand the law while the people remained in their places. So they read from the book, from the book of the law with interpretation. They gave the sense so that the people understood the reading.

Nehemiah who was the governor and Ezra the priest and the scribe and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, ‘this day is holy to the Lord your God, do not mourn, do not weep’ for all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. Then he said to them, ‘go your way, eat the fat, drink the sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing is prepared for this day is holy to our God and do not be grieved for the joy of the Lord is your strength.

Hey! That’s a pretty amazing story from a number of perspectives and it’s a story that we’re going to unpack today, and over the next couple of weeks, because there are some powerful truths in there about how to lay hold of the joy of the Lord. The first and most amazing thing is that the people stood there in the square for several hours to listen to the Word of God being read and preached. Man I know Churches these days where if the preacher goes over his allotted twenty-five minutes everyone starts getting twitchy.

Now, they got everyone together; the whole city and they listened to the Torah, the law of God being proclaimed and explained and it cut them so deeply to the heart they wept. It moved them so deeply that it cut them to the quick. I wonder how many of us have ever linked a real heart for God’s Word with the deep joy in our lives, I wonder.

Now as I said this is a story that we’re going to unpack some more over the next couple of days on the program. But now, let me ask you, how much of God’s joy do you experience on a day-to-day basis in your life? Would you describe yourself as someone who is overflowing with the joy of the Lord or at the other end of the scale as someone for whom the joy of the Lord seems to elude you? On a scale of zero to ten how much of the joy of the Lord do you actually experience for real in your life?

That’s the first question and the second one is this, how often do you read your Bible and engage in God’s Word? Think about it, pray about it, ponder it, and set about living it. Again on a scale of zero to ten, zero is almost never, ten is every day. Right so you’ve scored your level of joy and you’ve scored your Bible reading patterns and if I were a betting man which I’m not but if I were I’d be prepared to bet that there’s a very close correlation between the two, am I right?

And the reason for that is that God speaks to us primarily through His Word the Bible, the living Word of God. It’s not the only way by the way that He speaks to us. The Bible itself tells us that there are many other ways that God speaks to His people, but it is the main way, the most important way. And if the joy of the Lord comes from, well the Lord, from God Himself and you and I aren’t listening to Him speak, to His Word, then why are we at all surprised that we don’t experience His joy, hmm?

Joy is such a precious commodity – I’m not talking about the fleeting emotion of happiness, I’m talking about the abiding gift of God’s joy, to carry you through the tough times as well. And there is one place, more than any other, where you’ll find it. 

Yesterday on the program we joined the nation of Israel at a time in their history where joy was apparently in short supply and understandably too. The rejoicing that they’d experienced on returning to Jerusalem after seventy years in slavery in exile in Babylon, had probably worn off a little bit because they had spent several years building a massive, forty-foot high, thick defensive wall around the city.

Hard work, it was exhausting work as they laboured by hand day after day for years to build up their defences. So their leader in this venture, a man by the name of Nehemiah, called everyone together under the scribe Ezra and had them engage with God’s Word. Not just a little bit, but a lot. Let’s quickly recap on part of that story, Nehemiah chapter 8 verse 3:

He read from it facing the square before the Water Gate from early in the morning until midday in the presence of the men and the women and those who could understand and the ears of all the people were attentive to the book of the law.

Early in the morning, let’s be kind and say that was around 8.00 am although it was probably earlier even than that. So these people, men and women and teenagers, those who could understand stood there for at least four hours listening to God’s Word being read and proclaimed in their midst.

Now, in some parts of the world that’s hardly remarkable! I’ve been to plenty of five-hour Church services in India, for instance. But in other parts of the world, comfortable western countries in particular, that’s almost unbelievable! What was Nehemiah thinking, what was Ezra doing?

Well as a leader Nehemiah had the wisdom to know that the people had been slogging away day after day, hard labour, to build this massive structure. And when you’re working that hard for that long the joy and the peace of life drains out of you, you’ve been there right?

You’re doing good things but they’re draining you and you turn around only to discover that there’s no joy left inside you. And when you’re joyless you become weak. I mean it’s easy to keep on keeping on at something you really enjoy but something that you don’t enjoy it’s amazing how the strength, the resolve just drains out of you doesn’t it?

My wife recently decided for health reasons she started drinking dandelion tea. I’m not sure what it’s supposed to do for you and I’m not sure how much scientific evidence there is that it’s good for you, but here she goes, she decided to drink dandelion tea. Now have you ever tasted or smelled dandelion tea? Well I did just once; it is absolutely disgusting, really. Whenever she drinks it she screws up her whole face. I guarantee you one thing, it’s not going to last very long, you can’t keep on drinking something that tastes disgusting no matter how good it’s supposed to be for you.

And in the same way you can’t keep on doing something diligently over and over again if you don’t enjoy it. I, by and large, don’t naturally enjoy exercise. Some people do, I don’t. But, I’ve found a few forms of exercise that I really do enjoy. I love interval training on an exercise bike. I love getting out there walking and I enjoy weight training. So those are the forms of exercise that I do.

In the same way you can’t keep on honouring God unless you’re enjoying it! And that’s what Nehemiah understood, that’s why he brought Gods people back to God’s Word. That’s why he organised for Ezra and the other Levites to get out there and to teach and explain Gods Word to the people. Nehemiah chapter 8 verses 4 to 8:

The scribe Ezra stood on a wooden platform that had been made for the very purpose and beside him stood Mattithiah (and a whole bunch of guys with really hard to pronounce names) and Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people for he was standing above all the people and when he opened it all the people stood up and then Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God and all the people answered ‘Amen, Amen’ lifting up their hands then they bowed their heads and worshipped the Lord with their faces to the ground.

Also Jeshua (and a whole bunch of other guys with really hard to pronounce names) Levites helped the people understand the law while the people remained in their places. So they read from the book from the law of God with interpretation, they gave the sense so that the people understood the reading.

So this wasn’t just reading, it was understanding and the impact on the people was truly amazing, Nehemiah chapter 8 verse 9:

And Nehemiah who was the governor and Ezra the priest and scribe and the Levites who taught the people said to all the people, ‘this day is holy unto the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep’ for all the people wept when they heard the words of the law.

They wept, the Word of God cut them to the quick. God’s Word penetrated their hearts and that right there is the place where you begin to discover joy. That right there where your heart softens and you hear the amazing things that God has done for you and they reach you deep inside and your heart wants to burst, it brings tears to your eyes.

When I’m preaching and I start talking about Jesus on that cross, I almost always choke up because that’s what the amazing love and the amazing grace of God does for you. And when you get that love and that grace inside you, ‘BANG’ you get God inside you. And when you get God inside you His joy comes with Him. Verse 10 of Nehemiah chapter 8:

Then he said to them, ‘go your way, eat the fat and drink the sweet wine and send portions of them to those for whom nothing has been prepared for this day is holy unto our Lord and do not be grieved for the joy of the Lord is your strength.

And when you get the joy of the Lord into you, it becomes your strength. It becomes easier, much easier to honour God, to obey God, to follow His call on your life because you’re filled with His joy. Obedience is no longer like dandelion tea; it’s like sweet nectar that you’ve never tasted. That’s how it’s meant to work because the joy of the Lord is your strength.

Isn’t that a beautiful thing? For some reasons, Churches are filled with Christians who don’t take the Word of God seriously. Listen up, the Bible Engagement Centre in the United States did some really serious research but they wanted to know what, if anything, a Christian could do in order to experience victory in their lives, to win the day as it were.

They surveyed several tens of thousands of people and asked them all the things that they do as an expression of their faith. They pray and go to Church and sing worship songs and attend small groups on and on, all that stuff including reading the Bible.

Several dozen different things and here’s what they discovered, the one thing, THE ONE THING more than any other that gives people the victory that they’re looking for is engaging in God’s Word four times a week or more. Not three times, not two times, four times a week or more. The head researcher said this, ‘The statistical correlation between reading your Bible four times a week or more and living in victory is stronger than the statistical correlation between smoking and lung cancer.’

Nothing else even came close – go figure. And do you want to know why that is? Because in order to have victory you need to have strength. And where do you get the strength that you need to overcome temptation, to defeat satan, to persevere through trials, to love difficult people? Where do you actually get that? ‘The joy of the Lord is your strength.’

And the place where you get that is the living Word of the living God. Just like these people of God under the leadership of Nehemiah and the tutelage of Ezra. Are you getting this? Do you see why God’s Word is so important? Do you see why the joy of the Lord is absolutely vital in your Christian walk?

So what are you waiting for?

There’s not a one of us who doesn’t like a good party. And … as things turn out, God is rather partial to a party as well. So why is it that we don’t do more celebrating than we actually do in this life?