“Make a joyful noise to the Lord all the earth. Serve the Lord with gladness.”
I just sometimes — I just get so amazed: People will say, I don’t think you should
be talking about the pursuit of joy. I think you should be talking about
serving Jesus and obeying Jesus. This joy stuff is just . . .” What Bible do you read?
“Serve the Lord with gladness.” This is not rocket science; this is clear: “Serve the
Lord with gladness.” There is a kind of service he doesn't like:
murmuring service, bored service, glum service. “Serve the Lord with gladness.” This is biblical.
Are we a biblical people, or just get our truths for our emotions o
non emotions? Psalm 32:11: “Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, O righteous, and shout for joy,
all you upright in heart! Psalm 37:4: “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will
give you the desires of your heart.” That's a command, not a suggestion.
It’s not like: “If you don’t want to delight in me, that’s okay. Go ahead with your house
or whatever. It’s not. It’s not an option. It's a command. Philippians 4:4:
“Rejoice in the Lord always; and again I will say rejoice.” And he was writing from
prison, and I want to underline and make sure I underline — that you hear me say:
Paul, when he writes like that — ”Rejoice in the Lord always; and again I say rejoice” —
this man knew more suffering than all of you combined probably.
You read the list — I’ll read you one of the lists. Second Corinthians 6:
“As servants of God we commend ourselves in every way; by great endurance,
in afflictions, hardships, calamities beatings — if you were beaten for Jesus I
would like to know who you are. Come up here and tell me “I was beaten for
Jesus,” and I will bow down and give thanks for you and your faith — beatings
calamities, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger, through honor
and dishonor, through slander and praise. We are treated as imposters and yet
are true; we’re treated as unknown and yet well known; we’re treated as dying,
and behold, we live; as punished and yet not killed.” And here’s the key phrase for me:
“As sorrowful yet always rejoicing.” Isn’t that amazing?
Isn't that amazing? If that weren’t in the Bible, I couldn’t come to this
conference. After that list — and that's the short list; the long one is in chapter 11;
that's the short list of his pain — he said, ”Sorrowful, but always rejoicing.”
I say to the guys over and over again at Desiring God, and I say to the staff at
Bethlem Baptist Church: among the several ways that we can describe the ethos
of this ministry and this church, let this be near the top: sorrowful yet always
rejoicing. I want you to be able to taste that. I want suffering people to come
into this conference, and come into our church, and come in to the door Desiring
God ministries and feel like these are not chipper people who’ve never tasted
the dark night of the soul, never tasted the loss of a loved one, never tasted the
pain of a wayward child. These people are so naive about reality, they just jabber
about joy. I don’t want that.
The opposite of joy is not suffering;
it’s despair in suffering.