What strengthens me in the midst of difficulty and trial is the joy I find in the rock of the Bible. I want to draw you to 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 and verse 16.
This is one of those verses that are very rare in the Bible containing only two words. Rejoice always, it is a command. Rejoice always. As I think about why, and I just jotted these things down because they're personal to me, but I think they're universal for Christians. What makes me obey this command, to rejoice always? What is it that motivates me to do that? And here's the way that has to go.
You go back to where you started. I am motivated to do that. To rejoice always as an immediate response to the character of God...to the character of God. What do I mean by that? Well it's like Nehemiah 8, 10 says, the joy of the Lord is your strength. What strengthens me in the midst of difficulty and trial is the joy I find in the rock of my God.
It is my theology proper to be technical. It is my knowledge of who God is as Creator and Sustainer of the universe, as sovereign over everything, as the lover of my soul, the Redeemer of my life, as the gracious God, as the wise God. It is my understanding of the character and nature of God that anchors my joy. God is too wise to ever make a mistake. God is too loving to be unkind to His children. God overrules all circumstances and I belong to that God. He's my God. Scripture is filled with these confidences.
You can read them for yourself through the Psalms and through the Prophets and elsewhere. There are many people who are Christians who struggle with joy because they don't understand God the way He's revealed in Scripture. That's tragic. We'll talk about that in a few minutes. And in a few minutes. And we'll talk about that in a few minutes. We'll talk about that in a few minutes. We'll talk about that in a few minutes. We'll talk about that in a few minutes. We'll talk about that in a few minutes. We'll talk about that in a few minutes. We'll talk about that in a few minutes. We'll talk about that in a few minutes.
You're struggling because you've got to pick up three kids in three locations, get the groceries, make dinner for your husband, and you're overwhelmed. And God has the almost infinite number of independent contingencies which He perfectly orchestrates to accomplish exactly what He intended from before time began. It's absolutely inconceivable to the human mind. That is to say, I don't have to control everything in my life. I don't have to manipulate everything in my life.
I can let life bring what it brings and move through life knowing that whatever happens, God providentially orders it to work together for good to those that love Him and are called according to His purpose, Romans 8. It's just a staggering reality. It's a lot easier from a human perspective if God just did a miracle, if He just invaded all these contingencies, says, I'm moving these aside, I'm going to make the ax head out, I'm going to make the sea part, I'm going to raise the dead, I'm going to heal the sick, give sight to the blind, I'm going to walk on water. That's miraculous. That is understandable to me. I can understand that I can manage that information better than I can manage the information of providence.
It's just too staggering. But because God is a God of absolute sovereign providence, I rejoice because nothing is outside His plan. I also rejoice always as an act of reasonable response to answered prayer. John 16, 24, ask and you shall receive that your joy may be full. I rejoice that God answers prayer.
That in itself is enough to keep the joy flowing. I rejoice as an act of reasonable response to the truth of Scripture. In 1 John 1, 4, these things that are written that your joy may be full. Jeremiah 15, 16, Thy words were found and I did eat them, Thy word was the joy and rejoicing of my heart. Psalm 119 closes in toward the end of that lengthy psalm in verse, I think it's 162, I rejoice at Thy word as one who finds great spoil. And this was the attitude of the psalmist.
There's several more like that in that psalm. But I find in the word cause for joy, incessant, unending joy. And when the Word of Christ dwells in me richly, Colossians 3.16, I wind up speaking in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, making melody and rejoicing in my heart because of the truth. What else can I do as a Christian when I know my God, when I know my Christ, when I know my Holy Spirit and I understand all the spiritual blessings, all of the working of divine providence and all of answered prayer and everything in the Word of God is working together in my life to produce the purposes of God for my eternal blessing, what can I do but rejoice? I even think, and here's another one, joy is a reasonable response to Christian fellowship.
I don't mind being around unconverted people, but I prefer to be with believers because there is a level of joy that I don't experience with non-believers. 1 Thessalonians chapter 3, Paul says this is what he experienced, verse 9, what thanks can we render to God for you in return for all the joy with which we rejoice before our God because of you. You bring me so much joy, he says. I can't even count it.
I can't even sum up enough thanks for it. The wonderful privilege and pleasure, the overwhelming joy that comes from Christian fellowship. Paul said in 2 Timothy 1, 4, he wanted to come and see Timothy so he could be filled with joy. He found such consummate joy in the experience of Christian fellowship.
Paul writes to Philemon, verse 7, I've come to have much joy in your love, much joy in your love. No matter how you look at the Christian life, you look at all the blessings that are poured out to us, divine providence orchestrating everything, you look at answered prayer, you look at the Scripture, you look at Christian fellowship, and then you could even include the promise of future glory, the promise that is yet to be unfolded for us in the glory which is to come, that certainly is cause for joy. So there are plenty of motivations, aren't there?
Let me close with just some hindrances. If you're not rejoicing, there are maybe some reasons. One, you're not a Christian, you just think you are. You're going through a trial, you're cursing God, you're mad at God, or you just generally don't have any joy. Some of you are living with a spouse like that, or you're living with a child like that, or some of you young people living with a parent like that who maybe claims to be a Christian, but you just don't see any joy. Pretty good evidence that that person's not a Christian because this is a gift from God through Christ planted in the heart. There's a well of joy in the believer.
If you don't see it, start at that point questioning whether that person's really saved. There may have been momentary joy in the past, you know, like the seed that went into the rocky soil and it was received with joy and sprung up for a while and as soon as trouble came, remember? As soon as trouble came and tested that faith, it perished because it wasn't the real thing. That's why trials are so helpful because when you pass the test, you know your faith is the real thing. I think ignorance can steal your joy. Ignorance can devastate joy.
I mean, for example, if I believed in this modern openness theology that says that God is not sovereign, God doesn't know the future, God doesn't determine the future because He doesn't know it, God is just up there in heaven watching things happen like a film or a movie He's never seen. And as it moves along, He watches and says, wow, oh, hmm, never expected that. That's a surprise.
Wow, that was a tricky ending on that deal. And God doesn't know any more about it than you do watching a film you've never seen or reading a book you've never read. If I believed that that was true of God, I wouldn't have any joy.
If I believed God had to react to the millions and millions of actions and events that go on in the world and try to sort out some way to make sense out of it all, I would have plenty of reason to fear and my joy would be gone. Some families who came to our church from another church expressed to me that what brought them to this church was one message that I preached when they came and visited. I preached a message on the sovereignty of God and they said it was absolutely transforming. Some people might think that the message on the sovereignty of God is a little thick, a little technical, a little theological.
The truth of the matter is they expressed to me with real zeal and passion. We lived our whole lives under the sovereignty of Satan. Our whole theological experience in our church was that Satan wants to kill you. Satan wants to make your baby sick. Satan wants to break your marriage up. Satan wants to get in your house and put his demons in your bedrooms. You've got to plead the blood and you've got to get Satan out of this and that. Satan wants to steal your job. He wants to give you cancer. And here they were always under the sovereignty of Satan and busy, busy, busy, busy talking to the demons and talking to the devil to try to pronounce formulas on them to get them out of their lives. And it created palpitations of the heart, panic attacks, etc.
Who wants to live like that? Listen, Satan is not sovereign. Satan is a servant of God who can't move in one direction, one spiritual millimeter unless God allows it. And he's already been crushed under your feet, Romans says, and greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world, meaning Satan.
You have nothing to fear from him at all because God is sovereign. If you have an aberrant theology, no wonder you don't have any joy if you believe Satan is running your life. Bad theology steals joy. If you believe you can lose your salvation, that's a bummer. That will make you unhappy.
False expectations will steal your joy. The idea somehow, wait a minute, I came to Jesus and you know, isn't Jesus the one that always helps you win the championship? Isn't Jesus the one that helped you throw the touchdown pass or make the basket at the buzzer? Isn't Jesus the one that, you know, made your company really big and you really rich? I came to Jesus and I lost my job and I got cut from the team.
What happened? Isn't Jesus supposed to make life happy? Am I not supposed to have healing at my disposal? Isn't He supposed to answer all my prayers and shouldn't my life be sort of filled with a healthy dose of miracles? I remember one person who was raised in that theology came to our church and I said, why did you leave and come?
He said, because they wouldn't let me be poor or sick. Well false expectations, that's a deadly setup. I don't know what you expect the Lord to deliver you, but I'll tell you what He promised. John 16, 33, in this world you'll have trouble.
I promise you that. But I have overcome the world. So it's not fatal.
It's just part of your perfection. Count it all joy because it's perfecting your faith. It's proving the reality of your faith, strengthening it into enduring faith. Forgetfulness will steal your joy.
It will put a lid on the well so you can't draw the joy. What do you mean by forgetfulness? Psalm 103, 2, bless the Lord O my soul and forget none of His benefits. You know, it's really good to just remember and remember and remember and remember the history of God's goodness throughout redemptive history as well as throughout your life because it helps you draw the well of joy. Self-absorption will steal your joy. We start worrying about all the little things in your life that aren't the way you want them, sort of narcissistic naval watching, sort of self-centeredness, self-analysis, analytical baggage, getting all caught up in trying to interpret every little thing in your life.
That will steal it. And there's one other thing, that's a big one, feelings...feelings. I just don't feel joyful. Well what you've just admitted is you don't have the mental discipline to control your emotions. Sometimes I'm sure people think that I'm not very emotional. I'm very emotional.
Well you know I'm emotional when I preach, but sometimes people think maybe I'm not emotional on the compassionate side or whatever. I feel things very deeply, I think the way everybody, anybody does. I feel emotional joys and emotional sorrows.
I feel highs and lows like everybody does. I understand disappointment and grief as well as exhilarating happiness and experiencing not only in my own personal life and the life of my family, but in the lives of the people who are a part of my life and your lives as well. But as you grow in the Lord, your life is not controlled by those feelings. Those feelings are controlled by the truth so that the emotions serve your understanding. It's not acceptable to say to God, I'm sorry, God, I would like to rejoice, but I can't control my feeling.
That's a problem. That's a spiritual problem because it says, one, you don't know enough about your God to rejoice in spite of the circumstance, or there's some sin in your life that's stealing that joy, or you don't trust God to be who He's revealed Himself to be. I think what might appear as a lack of emotion or compassion is really a confident joy. You don't want to be ruled by your emotions. You want to express them, they're wonderful gifts from God.
But feelings as a control device will steal your joy. Summing up, the ground of our rejoicing is the work of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. It is the commitment of the triune God to us in promises that govern the past, the present, and the future. The ground of our rejoicing is that everything we need in life is available to us and provided for us, and that God controls everything to His glory and our good. So when we're commanded to rejoice always, that's a reasonable command. When we're told again to rejoice in the Lord always, and again I will say rejoice, when it's reiterated, we bow at the knee again and say, that's exactly right, and we have the resource to do that. And the key, of course, is to look away from the changing circumstance to the unchangeable God Christ the Holy Spirit, the unchangeable benefits and blessings of our salvation and the unchangeable promise of eternal heaven so that the joyful Christian thinks more of his Lord than his personal difficulties, more of his spiritual riches in Christ than his poverty on earth, and more of his glorious fulfillment in heaven than his present pain.
Therein lies our joy. You're listening to Grace to You with John MacArthur, Chancellor of the Masters University and Seminary. The title of John's message today, Rejoice Always. Well, John, on this day after Thanksgiving, we know that a lot of people are already turning their attention to Christmas and even to Christmas gift giving. This is a good time to start thinking about giving friends and family gifts that have lasting value.
And I know you have a few suggestions for our listeners. Yeah, my first suggestion is don't go to any store on the day after Thanksgiving. That's where they call it Black Friday or something.
It's a fight. But there are some resources that you can acquire that will be the best, most precious gifts you could give and you don't have to leave home. And that would be to get on the website of Grace to You and order some of the following that I would just suggest to you. First of all, the MacArthur Study Bible. That would be the flagship product of this ministry. Every passage in the Bible explain 25,000 footnotes. You can get it in the New American Standard, the New King James, the ESV.
And for this Christmas season, the first time ever, the new Legacy Standard Version. You can get the MacArthur Study Bible in hardcover, leather soft, genuine leather, premium goat skin, all of them the best options for Christmas giving. And we always like to suggest as a companion the MacArthur Daily Bible. Its daily reading plan includes a portion of the Old Testament New Testament Psalms and Proverbs for every day. Great resource for devotional reading.
In a year you read through the entire Bible. It features the New American Standard text of Scripture with helpful study notes providing important insights. Another great gift for your Christian loved ones and folks you've even been evangelizing and want to expose them to more of the Word of God. And then I would just add the MacArthur New Testament Commentary Series. If somebody's got a great appetite for the Word of God, you can get the entire New Testament Commentary Series, 33 volumes, including a helpful index volume covering every phrase, every word of the entire New Testament explained. Great for lesson preparation, personal study, and even devotional reading. So whether it's the MacArthur Study Bible, the MacArthur Daily Bible, or the MacArthur New Testament Commentary Series, make a choice that's going to transform lives. You can probably expect a slowdown in shipping as we get closer to Christmas. So good advice is to place your order now.
And if you're ordering from the United States, as always, shipping is free. Thank you, John. And friend, these resources will help you and those you love grow in your understanding of God's Word long past Christmas Day, and it will stimulate your worship in the New Year. To order the MacArthur Study Bible, the MacArthur Daily Bible, and one or all of John's New Testament Commentaries, contact us today.
You can call us at 855-GRACE or go to our website, gty.org. And remember, you can now get the MacArthur Study Bible in the Legacy Standard Bible Text, helping you understand the meaning of God's Word like never before. Order the MacArthur Study Bible, the MacArthur Daily Bible, or a few volumes from the MacArthur New Testament Commentary Series when you call us at 855-GRACE or when you visit gty.org.
Well friend, on what may be a very busy Friday for you, thanks for spending time with us. And in these days between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I encourage you to take advantage of the Gospel conversations that are likely to come up this time of year. If you're not sure what to say, John has sermons that can help, messages on effective evangelism, the key elements of the Gospel, and important but overlooked details about Christmas. Just go to our website and search for the term evangelism to find encouraging resources. Our website again, gty.org. Now for John MacArthur, I'm Phil Johnson. Watch Grace to You Television Sunday on DirecTV Channel 378 and then be back here Monday as John continues unleashing God's truth one verse at a time on Grace to You.
