GS214 · 2018 · Christ King

…When I'm Feeling Joyful

Bible: Psalm 97
Preached at: St Paul's
Kind: Full script · Adults
Themes: emotions, joy

Psalm 97

…when I’m feeling joyful

Today is the last Sunday in the church year. Next Sunday is Advent Sunday, which marks the beginning of a new church year.

Today is also the last sermon in our series on the Psalms. For the past five weeks we’ve been praying the psalms while feeling lost, dry, lonely, in trouble, and downcast.

And today our theme is, “Praying the psalms when I’m feeling joyful”.

So let us pray…

What do we mean by joy?

Definitions in the dictionary include:

The emotion of great delight [POWERPOINT 1]; or,

Happiness [POWERPOINT 2]caused by something exceptionally good or satisfying; or,

A source or cause of keen pleasure [POWERPOINT 3]; or,

The expression or display of glad feeling [POWERPOINT 4].

The word ‘joy’ is a noun, and the related verb is ‘to rejoice’

…which means to be full of joy.

But there’s a problem with definitions like this.

(Pause)

In his letter to the church in Philippi, the apostle Paul exhorted people to:

“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: rejoice!”

But how many of us can honestly say that we always feel great delight? ...always feel happiness? …always have a glad feeling …or a keen pleasure?

I sometimes feel these emotions, but I don’t always feel like that.

(Pause)

In my head, there is a logic that implies that I ought to be happy all the time…

Expand on this

But the reality is that I don’t always feel great delight, happiness, keen pleasure or glad feelings.

So does that make me an inferior Christian? …or does the Bible mean something different to the word joy?

(Pause)

Unfortunately, the Bible doesn’t give a clear definition of the word ‘joy’ …and the internet wasn’t much help either.

Googling the word ‘joy’ just brings up the definitions that I have already mentioned …so I searched for the phrase “Christian Joy”,

I discovered that it’s the name of a famous American costume designer [POWERPOINT 5].

So to discover what the bible means by joy, we first need to understand the context in which it uses the word.

Let’s start in the Old Testament and consider Nehemiah.

Expand on context.

And within that context, Nehemiah says:

[POWERPOINT 6]

“the joy of the Lord is your strength”.

(Neh. 8:10)

…and so, the “joy of the Lord” is something solid, that gives us strength in difficult situations.

(Pause)

Now let’s go to the New Testament, and consider Jesus.

Expand on context.

And within that context, Jesus says to his disciples:

[POWERPOINT 7]

“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Now remain in my love.

If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love.

I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”

(John 15:9-11)

Notice that the disciple’s joy is not yet complete, …but Jesus has a deep assurance that their joy will grow and develop and it will become complete.

(Pause)

Now, let’s turn to the New Testament writer to the Hebrews.

Expand on context.

And within that context, the writer to the Hebrews says:

[POWERPOINT 8]

“Let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.

For the joy that was set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

Hebrews 11:1-2

Here again, we find a quiet confidence that God is in control, and that all will be well.

(Pause)

There are over 200 references to ‘joy’ in the Bible, and we could spend the next six hours looking up each of them.

Fortunately we can take a short cut.

I recently came across an article by Kay Warren, who co-founded Saddleback Church in America with her husband, Rick Warren.

In it she said:

“Finding joy is a challenge for me. I’m not naturally an upbeat person; I’m more of a melancholy. When I talk about joy, I’m not doing so from the perspective of a generally peppy person who never has a bad day.

In fact, it’s because of my own inability to live with joy that led me to explore why my experiences didn’t line up with Scripture.

My problem was my definition of joy. I thought joy meant feeling good all the time. That’s impossible! Even for those who are naturally upbeat and optimistic, that’s impossible.

We have to start somewhere more realistic — and close to Scripture.

So here’s the definition I’ve come up with from studying Scripture:

[POWERPOINT 9]

Joy is the settled assurance that God is in control of all the details of my life, the quiet confidence that ultimately everything is going to be alright, and the determined choice to praise God in every situation.

You’ll find nothing in that definition about happy feelings, because, as we all know, happiness is fleeting and temporary.”

I think that’s a really good definition of what the bible means by joy …and it certainly fits with the passages that we have already looked at.

Let’s read it again…

[Leave on screen until the end of the sermon]

(Pause)

So, as we now turn to Psalm 97, let’s keep this definition in mind.

The psalm begins with a call to the whole earth “to rejoice” …or to be full of joy:

The Lord reigns, let the earth be glad;

let the distant shores rejoice.

And the next few verses explain why the nations ought to rejoice …because God is righteous …and just …and powerful.

The conclusion is that the whole earth should worship God alone.

Verse 7:

All who worship images are put to shame,

those who boast in idols –

worship him, all you gods!

The focus of the psalm then changes.

Having called the whole earth to rejoice and to worship God, the psalm then zooms in to worship of God in his temple.

Zion was the name of the hill in Jerusalem on which the temple was built, and Judah is the surrounding countryside.

And in verse 8 we read:

Zion hears and rejoices

and the villages of Judah are glad

And the next few verses explain God’s people are full of joy …because God is just …and he is King of all the earth …and he looks after those who are faithful to him.

And the psalm finishes with the call for God’s people to be joyful.

Verse 12:

Rejoice in the Lord, you who are righteous,

and praise his holy name.

(Pause)

And so, as you can see, the understanding of ‘joy’ and ‘rejoicing’ in Psalm 97 fits very well into the definition on the screen.

(Pause)

However, being joyful is often easier said than done.

It’s easier when everything is going well in our lives, but for most of us, times like that are few and far between.

And that’s why it can be so helpful to pray the Psalms.

As we have seen during this sermon series, the Psalms capture all aspects of live …good and bad.

Psalm 97 is quite unusually in that it is an entirely positive psalm. But most of them are not.

The more familiar Psalm 23 is far more typical.

It begins with images of peace and tranquillity:

The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing.

He makes me lie down in green pastures,

he leads me beside quiet waters,

he refreshes my soul.

He guides me along the right paths

for his name’s sake.

But then it talks about the valley of the shadow of death, and the writer refers to the enemies that are all about him.

Most of the psalms are a blend of:

things going well and things going badly;

times of happiness and times of sadness;

frustration that God hasn’t answered prayer and gratitude that he has;

sorrow and joy.

And most of our lives are a mixture of these things too.

I remember the day that one of our children got their A level results.

The day began with quite a lot of anxiety. She need good grades if she was to go to the university that she had set her heart on. Would her grades be good enough? She was nervous and Jan and I were nervous.

The day continued with much happiness. She’d got the grades she needed, and more …four ‘A’ grades. We had much to celebrate and to give thanks to God for.

The day ended with much sorrow. A phone call from my brother to say that his wife had just been diagnosed with cancer and had been given just a few months to live.

Fortunately, I haven’t had many days when I have faced conflicting emotions that were so strong and intense.

However, most days do have a mixture of happiness and sadness to some extent.

And so do the psalms.

Some psalms are full of joy and praise …but there is still a hint of pain.

Some psalms are full of grief, anger and frustration …but there are signs of hope and trust.

(Pause)

I mentioned earlier an article by Kay Warren, and I found another part of her article to be particularly helpful.

She said:

“We tend to think that life comes in hills and valleys.

In reality, it’s much more like train tracks. Every day of your life, wonderful, good things happen that bring pleasure and contentment and beauty to you.

At the exact same time, painful things happen to you or those you love that disappoint you, hurt you, and fill you with sorrow. These two tracks — both joy and sorrow — run parallel to each other every single moment of your life.

That’s why, when you’re in the midst of an amazing experience, you have a nagging realization that it’s not perfect. And while you’re experiencing something painful, there’s the glorious realization that there is still beauty and loveliness to be found. They’re inseparable.”

I think that’s quite profound.

“After applying for a job that I didn’t get, several people asked me how I was feeling about it.

At first it wasn’t an easy question to answer, because it felt that I was being bombarded by such a large number of conflicting emotions and I found it hard to identify them all.

But after a day, I was able to name the two strongest emotions. I was feeling a mixture of disappointment and contentment.

Disappointment, because the application process and interview preparation had forced me to live with the idea of this job for several weeks, and I felt it was something that I would be good at.

Contentment, because I had been praying that I would only get the job if it was what God wanted, and I believed that God had answered that prayer.

Looking back to that experience, I can see that those two feelings of disappointment and contentment were like two train tracks running in parallel.

During the first two weeks, the feeling of disappointment was significantly stronger than the feeling of contentment. But as time passed, the feeling of contentment became the dominant one.

(Pause)

In that example, the two feelings related to the same situation.

At other times of my life (as on the day of my daughter’s A-level results), the train tracks of sorrow and joy have related to two completely different situations.

Sometimes it’s the sorrow track that I’m most aware of.

Sometimes it’s the joyful track that I’m most aware of.

And if we pray the psalms, we are continually reminded of both tracks.

And just as Paul exhorted the church in Philippi, so I say to each of us here (including myself).

“Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: rejoice!”