Rejoice in the Lord Always
Over the last couple weeks, I’ve asked myself what exhortation to bring on this first Sunday as an installed pastor of Cities Church. I love this church. My wife loves this church. And we will gladly spend and be spent for your souls, for as long as the Lord wills. But what’s our heart for you? As I look out over the months, years, Lord willing, decades ahead of us, God put a particular charge, a particular verse, on my heart for you, Philippians 4:4:
“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.”
We were here in Philippians this spring as a church. The apostle Paul is writing to encourage his friends in Philippi, and he’s writing from prison. And it’s the happiest book in the Bible — from prison. That’s where he wrote a verse like this. Four things I want to highlight in these ten words.
First, rejoice. He doesn’t just say believe or endure or obey, because faith and endurance and obedience without joy isn’t true Christianity. Don’t settle for a religion that doesn’t promise to make you happy — and not just in the future, in heaven, but right now, even while you’re in prison.
Second, Rejoice, in the Lord. This joy isn’t just any kind of joy. A hundred things make you happy — people make you happy, food makes you happy, work might make you happy, sports makes you happy. A hundred things make you happy, but none will make you as happy as he will — in the Lord. In Jesus. Your pastors don’t just want you to be happy, we want you to be as happy as humanly possible — and that will only happen if Jesus is not only your Lord and Savior, but also your greatest Treasure.
Third, always. Rejoice in the Lord always. So not just when life goes well, but always. And he writes that, remember, from a place of suffering. As if to say: If I have joy even here, wrongly imprisoned and not knowing if I’ll ever be freed, then you can have joy through whatever you’re going through too. This God is a spring, a river even in the deserts of life. We’ve been praying for the fires in Los Angeles. We watched a video of a pastor whose house had burned down, and he was walking in to lead worship, tears in his eyes and full of hope. Joy won’t always look bright and sunny — it won’t — but there was joy in this man. Writing Philippians 4:4 from prison would be a little like writing from the ashes of your home. Rejoice in the Lord always.
Lastly, again. “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice.” Why say it again? Because it’s that important, and because we all, we all, need to hear this more than once. We forget. We doubt. We lose heart. And so we need to hear this again and again and again from one another.
So my exhortation, church, is this: Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say rejoice.