Joy Comes in the Morning

July 21, 2013                              These Notes are not Edited

Joy Comes in the Morning

Psalm 30, esp. verse 5

SIS—We should never surrender our joy to tough circumstances or any other “joy strealer.”

This week, the kids in VBS enjoyed activities based upon the theme of an amusement park.  They have learned how to trust God as they zip along through the twists and turns of life. 

Most people live a life much like a roller coaster, that is some mixture of fun and frustration, highs and lows, ups and downs, delight and despair. If you ask most people, “are you happy,” many would answer, “yes,” in spite of the mixed circumstances of life. That is what “happiness” is all about: some good times, some bad times, a few ups, a few downs. Happiness is based upon circumstances and pursuing happiness will likely leave you as exhausted as spending a day riding rollercoasters at an amusement park. The thrill quickly becomes exhaustion. The thrill just doesn’t last, and a person is left to seek even a greater thrill in the elusive quest for happiness. Happiness is like a wave in the ocean:  it comes and goes.  “Joy,” on the other hand, is a gift from God that gives us a deep sense of well-being, regardless of our circumstances. If you have lost your joy, or you never really had it, then it’s time to connect with Jesus, the One Who gives us “joy unspeakable” (1Pet. 1:8)

READING:  Psalm 30

1.  Joy is Part of Our Inheritance (v 1, 5, 7)

“Joy” is a tough concept to understand in the O.T.  In English, joy refers to “feeling of great pleasure and happiness.” The Hebrew captures this same idea but uses about 21 different words all related to the idea of “pleasure, mirth, singing, a battle cry, and rejoicing” to name a few.  It is often associated with a sound, like singing or a battle cry.  Joy is a deep sense of gladness and well-being that is demonstrated in some outward way.

The key issue in regard to joy rests upon the “source” of the feeling of gladness, mirth, or good-will.  Look at verse 5a:

⁵ For His anger lasts only a moment, but His favor, a lifetime.

Joy flows up from a fountain of grace deep within one’s soul, much like a geyser at Yellowstone Park.  Joy is the fruit of grace, which is God’s favor upon men.  We see this in Galatians 5:22:

²² But the fruit of the Spirit  is . . . joy.

The word “joy” is built upon the same root as the word, “grace, or favor.”  Take a quick look at verse 7 to see the importance of making sure our lives are deeply rooted in God’s favor.

⁷ Lord, when You showed Your favor,

You made me stand like a strong mountain;

Happiness comes and goes because it lacks roots.  It’s like a tumbleweed that has shallow roots and is easily blown away when a wind sweeps the prairie.  Joy is more like an acorn attached to a mighty oak.  The roots of the oak go deep into the soil and an oak tree stands even in the face of fierce winds.  Joy is our inheritance as Christians because of God’s favor that rests upon our lives.  Joy remains regardless of how circumstances change.

For over 100 years, mineral rights from my great-grandfather have been in the possession of my family. My Mom inherited them from her Mom who inherited them and when my Mom and Dad died, I inherited my share of them, as did my siblings. I'm a "Beverly Hillbilly" of sorts. I'm a hillbilly that lives right up the road about an hour from Beverly Hills. Well, I said "of sorts." The point is that all the years and all the circumstances and all the changes in culture over a century, did not keep me from getting my share of an inheritance. Every month or so I get a check from people I don't know because of a forefather I'd never met. Our text talks about an "eternal inheritance." "Joy" is part of the inheritance that is mine because I am a child of God because I've accepted the free gift of salvation that Jesus provides for us through His death on the cross. Joy is a fruit that grows on the tree of salvation planted by grace in my life when I accepted Him as my Lord.  Jesus died, and now the inheritance is mine, and part of that inheritance is "joy."

2.  Trials and Tribulations Do Not Extinguish Our Joy (5, 1-3)

Verse 5 is the heart of the Psalm:  Weeping may spend the night,

but there is joy in the morning.  No roller coaster, including life, goes up forever—sooner or later, as the old saying goes, “what goes up must come down.

It takes both “ups and downs” to create a roller coaster.  You can bet that life will bring you ups and downs, twists and turns, moments of great exhilaration and moments of deep despair.  Do not let trials and tribulations steal your joy.  This Psalmist in our text understood this.  Life will have periods of darkness.  Happiness becomes despair.  Luck changes.  Difficult times are not a matter of “if,” but when.  Yet, when life’s difficulties come, you joy does not have to go.

Someone counted and the word “joy” is used over three hundred (300) times in the Bible.  Some people like counting these things.  The word for “happiness” is found a little over thirty (30) times.  The point, irrespective of the particular numbers, is that the Bible places much more emphasis on “joy,” than happiness.

The reason is pretty easy to establish as we have already seen.  “Joy” is not dependent upon circumstances and “happiness” is dependent upon circumstances.  The word happiness actually comes from the Old English (about 14^th century) word, “hap,” meaning “luck, fortune, or chance.”  In other words, happiness is just a matter of the “luck of the draw” as they say in poker.

The Psalmist in our text is well-acquainted with grief and struggle.  This experience of grief and struggle has been referred to in literature as a “dark night of the soul” (St. John of the Cross).  In darkness, we cannot see anything, even though everything is still there.  This is true of spiritual darkness.  We cannot see God, but He is still there.

Modern man does not cope well with “darkness.” We cope with it best by “sleeping through it.”  I’m sure many of you have had the uncomfortable experience of waking up in the middle of the night. For some, this is almost a time of panic. 

Modern man has come to believe that the best thing to do with “darkness” is to “sleep through it until dawn.”  We consider a “broken night of sleep” to be something unnatural, and something to be avoided.  Not so our ancient, pre light bulb forebears.  A broken night of sleep was common.  In fact, they even had a name for it.  They called it “first sleep and second sleep.”  It was not uncommon for our forefathers and foremothers to awake in the middle of the night to stoke the fire, have a smoke, read a book, and often pray.  There was no sense of panic in the night. Waking in the middle of the night was simply a part of the cycle of life.  Darkness was embraced as a time to reflect upon life.

Scientists are learning that this ancient pattern of first and second sleep, with a period of sacred wakefulness in between, is actually a more natural human rhythm of rest than the eight continuous hours of sleep that doctors routinely recommend. A study in the 1990s plunged subjects into 14 hours of darkness every night for a month and the subjects eventually adopted a pattern of four hours of sleep, waking for one or two hours, then resuming with four more hours of sleep. Researchers are beginning to realize that this is really a more natural human sleep pattern that has been disrupted by the advent of artificial light and the post-industrial desire for maximum efficiency that causes us to fall into bed exhausted too late for our own good. When we wake in the middle of the night, we panic. What's really happening, according to researchers, is that our bodies are trying to recapture their normal sleep pattern.

Metaphorically speaking, the psalmist is addressing a “panic in the night in this Psalm.”  Verses 1-3 address the darkness of grief and struggle that circumstances bring upon our lives:

I will exalt You, Lord, because You have lifted me up and have not allowed my enemies to triumph over me. ² Lord my God, I cried to You for help, and You healed me. ³ Lord, You brought me up from Sheol; You spared me from among those going down to the Pit.

These verses describe a “spiritual first sleep.”  The Psalmist finds himself in a period of darkness.  Verse 5 gives us the solution to avoiding panic and losing our joy during times of darkness.

⁵ For His anger lasts only a moment, but His favor, a lifetime.

Weeping may spend the night, but there is joy in the morning.

Notice that in the first part of this verse the darkness in the circumstances of the Psalmist is the result of “God’s anger.”  The Jews attributed everything to God as the Supreme Sovereign of the Universe—both good and bad were under His complete control.  God uses difficult circumstances to correct us and to complete our training in righteousness.

The Psalmist awakes spiritually to find that there is darkness all around him, but he does not panic because he knows—as we all need to know—that Yahweh is the God of the valley as well as the God of the mountain.  This brings us a sense of great “joy.”

Now, this brings us to an important application of this Psalm as it relates to living a joyful life.  What if we lose our joy?

3.  If we have lost it, we can get it back  (1b, 2; 6-12).

We can live victorious lives characterized by an enduring sense of joy.  We can get our joy back by understanding how we lose it.

We can lose our joy.  It can happen for a number of reasons.  Verse 1 shows us that one way we can lose our joy is by focusing on our circumstances instead of focusing on Our Lord.  We have already seen that circumstances can cause us to lose our joy by causing us to lose our focus on God.  In the last half of verse 1 David mentions “his enemies,” a common theme in the Psalms:

¹ I will exalt You, Lord, because You have lifted me up and have not allowed my enemies to triumph over me.

Certainly, as we go through life we will have to deal with many people who distract us in life, from the person that cuts us off on the freeway to co-workers or bosses that make our life difficult at work.  We sometimes have to deal with neighbors who may be difficult for one reason or another.  And . . . of course, we all have to deal sooner or later with the DMV which certainly taxes our patience and resolve.

We will lose our joy if we allow challenging circumstances or difficult people to become our focus, instead of the Lord Who Saved Us.  In this verse the Psalmist uses the very special title for God, Yahweh.  This is referred to as the “covenant name” of God.  It is not the general term for God, but the very name God disclosed to Moses when He called Moses to deliver His people from bondage to the heavy-handed, oppressive Egyptians.

Joy demands we stay focused upon Yahweh, Our Deliverer.

Another culprit that may cause us to lose our joy is the decline in our health.  David experienced this in his life (he mentions it in other places such as Psalm 51).  David declares here in our text (v2):

² Lord my God, I cried to You for help, and You healed me.

Verse 3 points out the seriousness of David’s situation:

³ Lord, You brought me up from Sheol;
You spared me from among those going down  to the Pit.

“Sheol” and “the Pit” here refer to the depths to which the Psalmist’s illness has come.  Sheol and the Pit refer to “death and the grave.”  Many equate Sheol with the Christian idea of final punishment in hell, but it need not refer to anything more than being, “sick and near death.”

Sickness, and even death, can cause us to focus on the here and now and our joy will diminish. It’s hard NOT to focus on our bodies when they are racked with sickness or injury.   Health issues are a key “joy stealer” if we allow it.  All of us will have to deal with declining health sooner or later.  You need to establish the resolve NOW that you will stay focused on the Savior and not on the sickness.  Paul suffered from several health issues, particularly with his eyes.  Here is some solid advice in how to avoid letting sickness steal our joy:

^{2Cor. 4   16} Therefore we do not give up.  Even though our outer person is being destroyed, our inner person  is being renewed day by day. ¹⁷ For our momentary light affliction  ^d is producing for us an absolutely incomparable eternal weight of glory.  ¹⁸ So we do not focus on what is seen,  but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Focus on the eternal—always.  This world is “weeping and darkness” but eternity is “joy and dawning.” 

So, difficult circumstances including difficult people can be a “joy stealer.”  Sickness, and our approaching death, can be a “joy stealer.” 

In this Psalm, David focuses on a “joy stealer” that many of us overlook:  “pride.”  In verses 6-7 David confesses:

⁶ When I was secure, I said, “I will never be shaken.” ⁷ Lord, when You showed Your favor, You made me stand like a strong mountain; when You hid Your face, I was terrified.

David had become a phenomenal success rising from a lowly shepherd to the King of Israel.  He had it all: fame, fortune, and women.  The Hebrew title for this Psalm tell us it was a

“a psalm for the dedication for the house.”  This is probably a reference to the dedication of the threshing floor of Araunah (2Sam. 24:18ff) which would become the glorious temple built and named in David’s honor.  David was a rich, powerful, and prideful man.

Like many people who rise to prominence, they begin believing their own press and act as if “they did it all on their own.”  Many cannot handle success.  Many take pride in saying, “I am a self-made man.”  In reality, if one is a self-made man, one has been built by a questionable architect upon a flimsy foundation.

David forgot that his prominence was, according to his own words in verse 7, the result of “God’s favor” (v7).  Pride gets us to focus on our selves instead of the Lord, and joy begins to evaporate.

Pride causes us to trust in our own devices and believe in our own power.  The Bible says that “pride goes before a fall” (Prv. 16:18). When we trust in our own devices, designs and decrees as a source for joy, our joy quickly evaporates.  Sooner or later a “house of cards” build by the hand of flesh will come crashing down.

One scholar commenting on this psalm pointed out that “[David] had become intoxicated with his own success.”  Like many a drunk, David stumbled into destruction and despair.  When we are intoxicated with pride we cannot focus on the Lord and we lose our joy.

Tough circumstances can steal your joy.  Difficult people can steal your joy.  Declining health can steal your joy.  Pride will steal your joy.  If you have lost your joy, you can get it back just like David.

Verse 8 is the key to getting your joy back—or getting it in the first place if you have never had it:

⁸ Lord, I called to You; I sought favor from my Lord:

David cried out to God to get his joy back.  If you want joy in your life, you need to cry out to God and seek His favor, or grace.  Paul echoed David’s plan to find joy unspeakable.  Paul declared:

^{Rom 10:13}  Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.

And, when you are saved and become a child of the King, joy is part of your inheritance.  It is your inheritance to keep, or your inheritance to get back if you lose it, but joy should be a permanent fixture in the life of every believer.  If it isn’t, something is wrong.  Something else besides the Lord God, Yahweh, has become your focus.

Life is like a roller coaster full of ups and downs, twists and turns.  It will wear you down if you let it—but you don’t have to let life wear you out.  Happiness may come and go like night and day, but joy can remain constant.  Never forget what this Psalmist declares:

⁵ weeping may endure for a night,
but joy cometh in the morning (KJV).

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