Sorrowful, Yet Always Rejoicing

In today’s text Paul explains some of what he has gone through as God’s servant. Part of his list includes some pairs that follow the pattern, ‘on the one hand this but then on the other hand that’. One of those pairs stood out to me recently. I found it a helpful point of view on living well, and I thought that it might be helpful for you also. There is still so much for us to learn about living well. It is my hope that today’s sermon will be used by the Spirit so that we all will make some more progress.

Our text is 2 Corinthians 6.3-10. Though I will be focusing on one small phrase, I think that it will be good to read the larger context. Please listen as I read.

The part of the text that I want to look at this morning is this dynamic of Paul’s life: ‘as sorrowful and yet always rejoicing’. First, we’re going to look at sorrow and joy separately. Then, I have some thoughts on how to follow Paul’s example.

If you were limited to the list that Paul wrote here to the Corinthians you would have no problem understanding his sorrow. Here are just a few of the items in his list: beatings, dishonor, imprisonments, slander, sleepless nights. Maybe you’ve experienced some of these or maybe not. But all of you have felt sorrow. You have felt the sadness that comes as you face some of the difficult aspects of life. I’m thinking that if you could see more clearly what this sorrow is about and why it is, then maybe you could respond to it better.

Let’s start with this. There are times when you see and feel the power of sin as it does its ugly work in the lives of others. Consider Jesus at Lazarus’ tomb. One day Lazarus gets sick. And quickly enough, he dies. When Jesus arrives, He finds Lazarus’ sisters, Mary and Martha, in deep mourning. Their brother is dead. It’s not as if he had done some high-handed sin, and this was his punishment. He just got sick and died. This is so wrong. Sin has, once again, produced the fruit of death. I recently read something that fits here. A pregnant woman and her husband show up for a pre‑natal check up. It’s a regular check up, so they figure that they’ll be on their way quickly enough. But the sonogram doesn’t look right. In fact, something is desperately wrong. An emergency c-section followed. And little Haddon was born, six weeks early and very sick. Two days later he died. Sorrow. Deep sorrow. And it’s this kind of situation that often produces lots of questions. What did this little boy do to deserve such a fate? Was it the fault of his parents? Had they, somehow, broken one of the rules? What happened? But, of course, knowing why would not change the sorrow. Jesus wept at Lazarus tomb. Would He have acted differently at baby Haddon’s grave?

Consider another event in Jesus’ life. He enters into Jerusalem for the last time. As He looks over the city, He feels deep sorrow for the people who live there. He cries for them. He cries because He knows that punishment is coming upon these rebellious people. God has decided that Jerusalem is to be destroyed and its inhabitants killed. Jesus does not disagree with this sentence of death. It is just, and He knows that. But that doesn’t mean that He is happy. Sometimes sorrow comes as we see the justice of God being applied to others. There are times when I’m at Giant Eagle or some other store, I will take a look at a person and wonder. ‘Who are you? Where do you live? Is it a happy home?’ Sometimes I see a wedding band on a woman’s finger, and I wonder, ‘Does your husband cherish you? Do you feel loved? I hope you do.’ Or if I see a child, I sometimes think, ‘What will you be like when you grow up? How hard will it be for you to grow up?’ Most of the people I see are not doing well. How could they be? Most of them are sinners in rebellion against the God who made them. Life cannot work well for someone like that. If it could, then why should anyone bother with following Jesus? Instead of enjoying real life, they are suffering some of the consequences of their disobedient choices. There are those who sense that something is wrong, and they try to make adjustments, but it still isn’t working. And then, I consider that, unless something changes, unless they bow before Jesus, they will find themselves in hell. As I mull this over, I can’t say that I shed tears like Jesus did, but, at times, I feel so sad. I do not blame God for this. It isn’t His fault that we are rebels. It’s just sad that we are and that many of us will face the justice we all deserve.

One more example. This one is about Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane right before He was arrested. This is how it is described in the book of Hebrews. ‘In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death…’ It’s the ‘loud cries and tears’ that stands out to me. And why was Jesus doing this? The Father called Him to go to the Cross. Jesus is going to be rejected by the Father, even hated by the Father, because of our sin. Jesus knows this and feels it. Sorrow. Sometimes sorrow comes not because of what we see the Father doing in the lives of others. Sometimes sorrow comes because of what the Father is doing in our own lives. Jesus is called by the Father to go to the Cross in order to be damned. None of us have ever been called to anything close to that. But we have been called to other situations that we find difficult and painful. There are the things that are common enough: a job that demands too much, persistent health problems, a difficult relationship. But then there are those things that are in a different category. The death of a child, the death of a spouse, the death of a dream. And these are things that don’t just happen. Just as the Father called Jesus to the Cross, He calls us to these painful situations. And we also offer up loud cries and tears. We feel the sorrow.

Life in this world is hard. There is much sin to deal with. And even though we are among those whom Jesus has rescued, sin is not dead and gone. It still brings its pain and its sorrow. The right response is not to try to hide from this sorrow or to try to ignore it. The right response begins with acknowledging it. ‘This is sin. It brings sorrow. I feel that sorrow. I hurt.’ This is life in a world poisoned by sin. This is what Paul is talking about in his letter to the Corinthians. In this he follows his Master. Jesus knows about sorrow and tears. He has felt the pain caused by sin.

This is where the second half of Paul’s phrase comes in: ‘yet always rejoicing’. We need to explore this. There is hope here. But I want to be clear. The goal here is not to somehow remove sorrow from our lives. That will never happen, not in this life. But we can respond well to it. In fact, our sorrow can be redeemed, made useful for the spread of Jesus’ fame. We can live well, sorrow and all. That’s what this half of Paul’s phrase is about.

First, it’s important to understand this rejoicing, this joy, that the Bible speaks of so often. Joy is delight in what Jesus is doing. There are plenty of times when this joy, this delight, is expressed with some very ‘up’ emotions. The Psalms are filled with examples of that. Here’s just one example: ‘This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us be glad and rejoice in it.’ This is ‘up’, and that is so good. But this ‘up’ feeling is not a necessary part of joy. There are times when you rejoice with tears. Delight is about the affections, the attitudes of our hearts, more than it is about the emotions. So, joy is a delight of the heart because of what Jesus is doing.

And what is Jesus doing? He is in the process of fixing all of this. He is working to restore all of creation to its original, spotless beauty. That’s what the Bible is about. Jesus makes a promise to fix it all in Genesis 3. And the rest of the Bible is the story of Him, slowly but surely, keeping that promise until the process is completed. Jesus is in the process of fixing His broken creation. And that is something worthy of our rejoicing.

It’s important to understand why He is doing that. The first and most important reason is for His own fame. Jesus’ highest priority is to make Himself look good. He is, after all, really that good. So, His work of restoring all of this is another opportunity to reveal His goodness to us, His creatures. So, His highest priority and our highest priority are the same: to make Him look as good as He really is. And we greatly benefit when we understand that.

Our commitment to rejoice, to delight in what Jesus is doing, is put to the test at different points of our lives. And often the test comes down to this: Do you so delight in what Jesus is doing that you willing to suffer for it? Are you willing to feel the pain of sorrow so that Jesus’ restoration of all of this can reach its goal? Do you really want Him to look good even if it costs you? Paul’s answer is a clear, ‘Yes’. And that’s why he writes, ‘yet always rejoicing’. No matter how great the sorrow, Paul was rejoicing, always rejoicing. The letter to the Philippian church is filled with rejoicing. Where was Paul when he wrote it? In prison. He saw his sorrow as a part of the big picture of what Jesus was doing and he rejoiced. And that is how your sorrow can also be redeemed.

It has helped me to know that my sorrow is not something that just happens to me. It’s not some random evil that comes out of the blue. It has helped me to know that my sorrows come to me from my loving Savior, and that they come to me in order to make Him look good. The reason that Paul’s phrase stood out to me was that I could see myself in his example, even though I have not experienced what he did. It helps me understand myself. I feel the sorrow. It comes at me in different forms. And yet, I do rejoice. My kind of rejoicing is not usually the ecstatic, emotional kind. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just not my style. But I do delight in what Jesus is doing. I am willing to feel sorrow, if it makes Him look as good as He really is. There are some of you who understand this quite well. And some of you who really don’t. But we all can grow in this. And, God willing, we will.

The big question is, of course, how? How can someone be sorrowful and yet always rejoice? I have some thoughts on how to answer that. But before I get into that let me make clear that nothing that I am about to say should be understood to mean that somehow, if you work things just right, the sorrow will be less or you won’t feel it so much or anything like that. Paul didn’t write, ‘rejoicing so I don’t feel the sorrow’. You will taste sorrow as long as you live here. On the other hand, you can respond to the sorrow in such a way that you will live well. Or to put that differently, your delight in what Jesus is doing can have the taste of happiness, the happiness of eternity.

This is what you’ll need in order to follow Paul’s example of willing to endure sorrow for the sake of Jesus: faith, hope and love. First, faith. None of this makes any sense without your being able to trust Jesus. As you experience sorrow, however it shows up in your life, the first battle is your ability to say, ‘Lord Jesus, I trust You. Even though I have no idea what you are doing or even how this will help to restore things, I still trust You. I know that You know what you are doing with my life.’ The lack of trust does not mean that there will be an empty slot. It will not mean that there will be a vacuum. The place for trust, the place where there should be faith, will be filled with something. If there is no trust, there will be anger or bitterness or despair or something like that. So, the battle is not just for Jesus’ honor. It’s also for the sake of your own soul. So, the first battle is about faith.

Next is hope. Paul also wrote this. ‘For this light, momentary affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison…’ Paul is reflecting on Jesus’ promise. If, for His sake, you endure the sorrow of this life – what Paul also calls ‘this light, momentary affliction’ – then Jesus promises ‘glory beyond all comparison’. Yes, glory is a church word. But all you need to know is that it’s really good. Jesus promises that to you. In fact, the sorrow that you endure is tied to the glory that you will experience. The experience of the sorrow ‘is producing’ the experience of the glory. More sorrow, faithfully endured, yields more glory. Jesus makes a promise. The question is whether you will hope for the reward that He promises. He wants you to hope for it so that you will be encouraged to endure sorrow with joy. The promise of reward is intended to help us. As we hope for the reward, we can endure the sorrow.

The last is love. Obedience done out of mere duty is the act of a slave. And a slave will only do as little as he must. But one who loves cares nothing about how much must be done. His focus is on the one who is loved. Love says, ‘Making Jesus look good is worth the pain’. You will endure sorrow more gladly as you understand better that in so doing you are expressing your love for Jesus.

I think that of these three qualities, love is the most important because it affects the other two. Faith without love is the trust of someone without options. His trust is the act of desperation. He thinks, ‘I’m forced to trust You. What other choice do I have?’ This isn’t the kind of trust that the Bible calls for. And the hope of reward without love is the hope of a mercenary who thinks, ‘I’m in this for what I can get out of it. The payoff is all I care about.’ Nothing works well without love.

Faith. Hope. Love. But, let’s face it, our embracing these three, especially when we are in the midst of some deep sorrow, is beyond our ability. To think otherwise is just foolishness. But our embracing these three is not beyond the grace of Jesus. Along with the call, there is always more than enough grace so that we can obey that call. So, you need to pray. And you need to begin to pray before the sorrow begins. ‘Teach me, Lord, how to endure sorrow with joy.’ The common way that the Spirit teaches us is by starting us with the little things. In this case that means the little sorrows of daily life. That’s where some of you need to begin. Think about these daily sorrows and pray that the Spirit will give you the ability to rejoice in them. As you do that, you will be better prepared for the times when the sorrow is big. Remember that the point is not to somehow reduce the sorrow. The point is to redeem the sorrow for Jesus’ sake.