We tend to think of joy and sorrow as being two emotions at opposite ends of the spectrum.  But joy – real joy it turns out is like an antidote for the bitterness of sorrow.  It always has been.

When it comes to experiencing joy in our lives, for most of us, well we think that joy and sorrow are mutually exclusive. You can't know joy when you're under pressure or you've just lost someone you loved or when you've just lost your job. Now those two things are mutually exclusive; joy is when you're happy not when you're travelling through sadness or pain. It's a pretty common human understanding of joy, we rely on our human experience, that’s reasonable but well, what if that's not the case.

What if there's a joy that we can experience when we're under duress just as we can when things are travelling along okay? Well if that were the case then surely, surely we'd all want to know about it wouldn't we? That's what we're going to check out on the program today; is there a form of joy that persists through our pain and suffering? Because if there is, it can make the world of difference.

Yesterday we looked at what Jesus said to His disciples about joy in those dangerous, fearful days leading up to His crucifixion. We often focus on Jesus in that time but imagine, imagine how it must have felt for His disciples. They'd been following him for three and a half years; everybody knew that they were His disciples, what would happen to them if He was crucified? Would they follow the same fate? It was a scary, scary time for them and Jesus comes along and says to them, in John chapter 15, verse 11:

I have said all these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.

See, He wanted His joy to fill them and make their joy complete and again in a beautiful prayer to His Father in heaven, just before He was handed over to the authorities, He prays this:

I am coming to You now Father but I pray these things while I'm still in the world so that they may have the full measure of my joy within them.

The 'they' being His disciples and He was also praying quite specifically for you and for me. Now either Jesus is a lunatic or He's onto something. Either He's a complete madman or He's experienced the joy of God which is something that's meant to strengthen these men during those fearful days and weeks and months ahead. Which was it? Years later the writer of the Book of Hebrews explains it to us, have a read. It's in the Bible, Hebrews chapter 12, verse 2. He writes this:

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and the perfector of our faith who, for the joy set before Him, endured the cross scorning at shame and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.

Now that's really interesting, what it tells us is that it was the joy that Jesus knew was coming, His glory in heaven, that sustained Him through that indescribable experience of being nailed to a cross. You see it was joy that caused Jesus to endure the cross. We saw He was filled with great joy before His crucifixion, He knew there was great joy to come after the crucifixion and so that's what caused Him to be able to do what He did, for you and me, to suffer and to die to pay for our failures and our rejection of God. Joy had a powerful role in His pain and His suffering.

In the Old Testament, the Book of Nehemiah, chapter 8 verse 10 if you want to check it out, you see how Israel was grieved and wanted to weep when Ezra, the priest and the scribe, showed them how they'd strayed away from God. They were convicted in their hearts of their sin but look at what Ezra said to them. They knew they'd strayed and they knew they'd got it wrong, have a listen to what happened:

Then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and scribe and the Levites who were instructing the people said to them all, "This day is sacred to the Lord your God. Don't mourn or weep." For all the people had been weeping as they listened to the words of the Law. Nehemiah said, "Go and enjoy the choice food and the sweet drinks and send some to those who have nothing prepared for them. This day is sacred to our Lord, don't grieve for the joy of the Lord is your strength.

God's joy, the joy of the Lord is our strength, it's joy that sustained those people through their grief, it's joy that sustained Jesus on the cross, it's joy that makes us strong to endure because joy is the antidote to the venomous sadness and suffering and pain and loss:

Do not grieve for the joy of the Lord is your strength.

And like any antidote it doesn't come from within, it's not something we produce, it comes from God, its the joy of the Lord.

Can I tell you, my experiences of suffering? I'm like anyone in this world, we all suffer don't we? It's not, we never want to suffer but we do, we go through times in life where we go through terrible suffering and I have one particular time in my life that I look back on and it was a really, really difficult time of suffering.

We have all these things going on around us that hurt us and crush us and destroy us and tear us down but when I was suffering, I'd just come to faith in Jesus Christ and there was this joy. I don't think I would have used that word then but there was this special thing happening and even though I was going through extraordinary pain and hurt and loss at the time there was an incredible joy in my heart.

Now this is not fun, these are not things we'd wish upon anybody but as I sit in the chair in my study where I pray early in the morning and share those things with God and read His word and just sit still in His presence, there's a joy that I can't put into words that fills my heart. And when I look back on those really painful times I look back at them with a sense I would never wish those times on my worst enemy but you know something; I wouldn't swap them either. I wouldn't change anything, because in those difficult painful times I experienced the sweetness of the joy of the Lord. Listen to how the apostle Paul puts it, he said:

We are pressed on every side but not crushed, perplexed but not in despair, persecuted but not abandoned, struck down but not destroyed.

And again when he's on death row in a Roman prison he writes, in Philippians chapter 4:

Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice. Let your gentleness be evident to all. God is near, don't be anxious about anything but in everything by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your request to God and the peace of God that passes all understanding will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Rejoice in the Lord always.

This guy knew, he was on death row, he was in a prison in chains and those chains couldn't hold him because he knew that the joy of the Lord was his strength. And he was, he was saying to others, "Rejoice, it is the joy of the Lord which is our strength."

God fills us with His joy and then when the trials come, when the suffering comes, when the temptations come, we have the strengths to endure them with joy. Not with a stinking attitude, not with a complaining attitude, with joy, with thanksgiving and praise and a great attitude. See, this is God’s plan that we should have His joy amidst our suffering.