Let’s begin this evening by testing your general knowledge of the Bible:
Who can tell me to whom the Epistle to the Philippians was written?
We don’t know specifically who were members of the church when Paul wrote the Book of Philippians,
Lydia with her household and the keeper of this prison with his household?
What type of sentence are Philippians 3:1 and Philippians 4:4? (Exhortations.)
And finally, why do you think that Paul felt it necessary to make those exhortations?
Don’t you find it a little curious …
That when we are first introduced to the church in Philippi many of its members where characterized by joy, but sometime later they were apparently characterized by a lack of that joy?
How do you suppose that they moved from enjoying joy to the need of joy?
Perhaps a more pertinent question might be: why do SO MANY of the people of God lack Christian joy?
Why are so many Christians unhappy, unfriendly, and unproductive in the service of God?
Yet perhaps if we thought about it for a while, we might be able to spot some common threads.
And he took them the same hour of the night, and washed their stripes; and was baptized, he and all his, straightway.
And when he had brought them into his house, he set meat before them, and rejoiced, believing in God with all his house.”
To rejoice is to acknowledge and to delight in something which we consider to be particularly good.
There are at least two areas of this delight:
There is BODILY delight, and there is SPIRITUAL delight.
There is tactile, or touchable delight, and there is delight which touches the spiritual and the unseen.
A short time before verse 34, this man had felt that he was on the brink of death.
Not only was the ground violently shaking under his feet, but there was a sword pointing at his heart.
And perhaps for the first time in his life there was a strange new fear brought about by the conviction of the Holy Spirit.
But by the time of this verse, the Lord had given him a new heart and a new perspective on life and eternity.
Not only was he a new creature in Christ, but the people he cared about were Christians as well.
He was filled with joy, because for the first time in his life there was a peace in his heart.
There had been an inexplicable burden holding him down, but now that burden had been lifted.
He not only had no fear of death, but he had new reason to live.
He had committed his heart and life to Christ, and what the world had to say to that didn’t concern him.
The man might soon loose his well-paying government job, but he wasn’t thinking about that.
He might have to face the same kind of persecution that Paul and Silas were facing,
But the glory of the Lord and the blessings of salvation superceded that.
It would be foolish to say that the keeper of the Philippian jail hadn’t often been happy before this day.
The dangerous life of the soldier was passed with relatively superficial wounds.
He had a good job and some degree of respect in his community.
He probably knew the pleasure of good food, a little free time, a beautiful sunset and a happy family.
But to these things, some wonderful new things had been thrown in – spiritual things.
This man had a special kind of joy: he was rejoicing in the Lord.
Yet when Paul later wrote his epistle back to Lydia, the jailor and the rest of the church,
These spiritual joys had somehow been eclipsed.
And this is all too common among the saints of God in every age and every culture.
WHAT IS IT to rejoice – in the Lord?
It is to delight in Christ Jesus as our Saviour and King.
To that point in this man’s life, he had no king but Caesar, but now there was a new Lord and King.
He was sincerely glad to have a Saviour; that his sins were forgiven and that he possessed eternal life.
Are you?
Are you really, really delighted that you are a child of the King?
This man was well aware that Kings bring laws and rules;
He had been basically obedient to the rules of man all of his life; that is the way that soldiers survive.
But now he was finding that there were new rules,
And yet the yoke of Christ is easy and His burdens are light in comparison to those of man and Satan.
Of course, to rejoice in the Lord is to take pleasure in the reality of salvation.
But it’s so much more.
It is to enjoy the Lord’s creation, and all of the wonderful “common” things that the Lord does for us,
But more importantly, to rejoice in the Lord is to enjoy His Word, and His assembly, AND children.
I John 3:14 gives us a test of our spirituality; a test which a lot of Christians might fail to pass:
“We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren.
He that loveth not his brother abideth in death.”
Rejoicing in Christ is reflected in rejoicing in the people of Christ.
To rejoice in the Lord is seen in our love to pray and to meditate on the things of the Lord.
Joy is one of the most infallible signs of the presence of God.
Joy is one of the fruit of the Spirit.
Joy is not gush, and it’s not revelry.
Joy is perfect acquiescence to God’s will, because that soul delights itself in God Himself.
Can you see why it was necessary that Paul exhort us?
We get so caught up in rejoicing IN THINGS that we forget to rejoice IN THE LORD.
Or, conversely, we can get so miserable in the world that we forget what we possess in Christ.
Rejoicing in the Lord is not very easy to maintain in a world that is 100% pointed in the opposite direction.
It is essential that we be constantly exhorted to rejoice in the Lord,
Because it’s more reasonable to assume that Christians are NOT as joyful as they ought to be than to assume that they are.
But WHY should we rejoice in the Lord.
Because there is so much in Christ in which to enjoy.
Doesn’t it fill your heart to know that the God that we worship is omnipotent?
Do you rejoice in the Lord’s omniscience, or do you tremble because you know that the Lord knows?
Do you rejoice in the Lord’s mercy and His grace?
Do you remember our study in John 17 a couple of years ago.
That chapter is an example of our Saviour’s intercessory prayer for us.
He was praying for His disciples then, and He is interceding in much the same way for us all right now.
In John 17:13 he prayed, “And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.”
When Paul urged us to rejoice, it was that we might have Jesus’ joy fulfilled in us.
Christ is our example in everything – including our rejoicing.
It’s not that Jesus experienced salvation the way that we do;
But in Christ we experience the joy of our salvation.
“Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus.”
Psalm 32:11 – “Be glad in the Lord, and rejoice, ye righteous; and shout for joy, all ye that are upright in heart.”
Psalm 5:11 – “Let all those that put their trust in thee rejoice: Let them ever shout for joy, because thou defendest them: let them also that love thy name be joyful in thee.”
Jesus said, “Rejoice because your names are written in heaven.” “Rejoice evermore.”
Paul even considered the joy of his converts as a part of the verification of his ministry.
Paul told the Corinthians that he considered himself a helper in their joy.
If this jailor had not shown such joy, Paul might have been forced to doubt that the Spirit of God was really working in his heart.
There is a book in my library called “The Case of Christianity.”
It is called an apologetic – a defense of Bible Christianity.
And the author uses the subject of joy as a defense of our Faith.
He wrote about an Ugandan pastor named Festo Kivengere,
Who was “invited” to the execution of three men from his village
He said that the entire village was ordered to come to stadium to watch the execution, and about 3,000 very quiet, subdued and somber people filed into the soccer stadium.
Then he said that he was given permission to speak to the condemned before they died.
“The three men were unloaded from a truck and I walked toward them as they faced the other way.
They were handcuffed, and their feet were chained. The firing squad was at attention facing them.
I was wondering what to say to men who only had a few minutes to live.
When they heard me coming they turned around, and what I saw surprised me.
Their faces were all alight with an unmistakable glow and radiance.
Before I could say anything one of them burst out: ‘Pastor thank you for coming!
I wanted to tell you that the day I was arrested, your words came back to me.
I have been saved from my many sins; Jesus has forgiven me and Heaven is now open before me.
There is nothing between me and my God.
Please tell my wife and children that I am going to be with Jesus.
Please urge them to accept Christ as I have done.’
The other men told me similar stories, excitedly raising their hands which rattled their handcuffs.
I felt that I needed to talk to the soldiers, so I translated what the three had said.
The soldiers looked bewildered and dumbfounded; they even forgot to put hoods over the men’s faces.
The three faced the firing squad standing close together.
They look toward the people and began to wave, handcuffs and all, as if they were going on a journey.
The people waved back and then the shots were fired, and the three men were with their Saviour.
The next Sunday I was preaching to the largest crowd in my life.
The service began as if there was a shroud of death covering the entire congregation.
But after I gave them the testimony of the condemned men and described their joy, that mournful service became one of the best that I have ever seen.
Many of the townspeople turned to the Lord that day, because of the joy of three condemned men.
Christians SHOULD rejoice in the Lord.
Christians are EXPECTED to rejoice in the Lord; it is natural.
We have the EXHORTATION of God to rejoice, and we have the POWER to rejoice.
We have REASON to rejoice and we will rejoice throughout eternity.
But the world needs to know that we rejoice today.
So why was it that Paul HAD TO EXHORT this once joyful jailor to rejoice?
Isn’t it because when we first come to Christ, we can see little else but His lovely face?
Isn’t it because coming fresh out of sin, we can really feel what was like to bear the weight of those sins?
Isn’t there a sense in which the brand-new Christian can still smell the brimstone and feel the heat of hell?
In some ways that new Christian knows experientially what it is to be a Christian.
He has a lot to learn theologically, but experientially his salvation is fresh and powerful – emotional.
But then as we go on in our Christian life, we loose the feeling of that difference before salvation.
We learn from the Bible more of the theoretical aspects of our salvation.
We look into the face of the Lord Jesus so often that his beauty doesn’t catch our eye as it once did.
Like so many, many marriages the joy and the luster wears off.
It’s not that the love is gone, but the excitement flies away.
Also over time we tend to slip back in to the things of world, with their own peculiar secular joys and their problems.
Over time we often revert to the pleasures that we had before our salvation.
And then come the inevitable problems of life, which sap our strength, our ardor and our attention away from the Lord.
Life is like an icy highway:
If we aren’t slowing progressing up the hill toward Christlikeness and the joy of the Lord;
If all we are trying to do is stay still, the ice and gravity will draw us back toward our old wicked lives.
Not only do we need to progress in our Christlikeness, and all the fruit of the spirit,
But if we are not actively, positively serving the Lord, we’ll loose our joy.
The Lord has given to each of us certain gifts and talents.
Those talents are like muscles; if we use them they will grow and get stronger,
But if we neglect them, they we grow weak,
Not only will they get weak, they’ll even get painful and miserable, when they are stretched just a bit.
Those who are not serving the Lord will not have the joy that once did.
So why are so many Christians not as joyful as they ought to be, or as this jailor was?
Because they aren’t serving the Lord.
Because they are so far removed from their first love – Christ.
And because they aren’t progressing in their spiritual lives towards the Lord.