Introduction

Today I am going to speak about a topic that is related to two very opposite poles of human desire. On one hand, there is what people desire most and on the other hand is what people desire least. These poles are happiness and suffering or in the language of our text, joy and tribulation (Rom. 12:12ab).

The desire for happiness is very gripping and very human. And our passage speaks of it as a grace, a Christian virtue. It is to be that in the face of suffering. And our text does not restrict our thinking to one grace but combines it with patience. At one end is joy and at the other is suffering; patience is in the middle connecting the two. Thus, I want to speak today on "Joyful Patience in the Face of Suffering" (not simply "joy in the face of suffering"). We have two specific graces addressed as a distinct part of godliness that constitutes the Christian's inner strength. So I will combine them as I discuss three headings: the definition of joyful patience, the context of joyful patience, and the source (means) of joyful patience.

1A. The definition of joyful patience

Perhaps I want to do more explaining than defining but I would like to say some things about each virtue and then discuss how they relate to each other.

Let's begin with joy. What do you think about when you think about joy? You probably think about happiness, about being in a happy state of mind, having good feelings, but on a richer level. The word "joy" seems to carry more punch than happiness. This intuition about joy is supported in our text in two ways.

1) First, joy has a depth as seen in the fact that it derives from hope. Hope directs our thinking to the future. It means looking confidently and expectantly to the future with a sense of promise. By this perspective joy is given some deep roots making it stand tall and strong like an oak tree. The oak in my neighbor's yard stands tall day after day and waves its arms in joy before its Creator; it does so day after day because it is deep-rooted. To say that joy derives from hope is to say that hope furnishes the deep roots that hold joy in place giving it a resilience and stability.

A little perspective on things that bring joy will help us appreciate joy that is rooted in hope. Consider, for example, joy that is rooted in music (as if Paul had said, "be joyful in music"). We know that we are to make a joyful noise unto the Lord and to exhort one another in the word of God with psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. So Paul could have called for joy in music. But Paul goes deeper for a couple of reasons. On one hand, even though music lifts the emotions, its effect is temporary and limited. Saul, for example, was given emotional healing by the harp playing of David. But his good feelings were short lived and the bad feelings of fear, envy and hatred returned quickly. His joy had shallow roots in music without hope. Music is a resource of joy and happiness but it is not on the same level as the joy that is rooted in hope.

On the other hand, in the context of the gospel it seems that music is more the expression of joy than its cause (though causality cannot be totally ruled out). And it is to be expressed, joy is to be expressed in song, in a way that is subservient to the gospel (gathering together is not for emotional release or for entertainment; gathering has the primary focus of listening to the voice of God as worshipping disciples). Thus joy is looking to the future with a pleasant soul warmed by a pleasant sense of promise.

2) Second, it interfaces with afflictions. Joy must relate to affliction as patience must relate to hope. Oriented to severe trials and difficulties of life, joy is squarely realistic.

This is not giddy or flighty joy that is blind to the present as the context indicates: there are trials to endure. Thus it is a steady, sober, deep-rooted, thoughtful, and reflective inner joy that is being talked about here. In other words, it is a tranquility of spirit or a pleasantness of soul. This abides even in the whirlwinds when the winds whirl about us while dark clouds thunder above us. There may be a song in the dark of night that gives expression to this joy; the song is not its source. Song is more like the rustle of the leaves of the rejoicing oak. The joy that is rooted in hope eventually and inevitably breaks forth in song.

Now consider the related grace of patience. Patience is bearing all things, all suffering oriented things, not being easily provoked by them, and suffering long with them (1 Cor 13). This speaks of enduring or standing firm under tribulation, hard trials, and overwhelming struggles of life. It means to do so without complaint or rebellion (how else can it be coupled with joy?).

It involves waiting expectantly for the particular season to pass and waiting expectantly for the present time of our suffering to cease finally and forever when our trials shall come to one an then to no more.

There is mutuality between these graces. Joy gives strength and sets a tone for other graces like patience by lifting the spirit pulling one back from edginess. But trial can yield impatience and then dampen joy. They have mutuality as companions on the road in the picture of Christian graces. Christian Joy and Christian Patience are fellow travelers. Joy rooted in hope gives a lift to the spirit that surely sets a tone for endurance in trial.

They go together; we are to have joyful patience in the face of affliction. Joy and patience are companions. How is it patience when the mouth is full of complaints? The complaining spirit is not a cheerful spirit. A cheerful spirit is not a complaining spirit. We pave the way for joy by checking our negativism at the door. You want to be happy but happiness is not obtained by whining. And a deep-rooted cheerful spirit will lift the spirit and give you buoyancy to endure long (to suffer long) without being easily provoked as you bear all things.

2A. The context of joyful patience

It's on the road of the good piling up love with boiling fervency and passion. It is on this way of the good and honorable where we give warmth to others like the sun heats the earth that we face trials to endure; we suffer in the way of duty. (It is appointed, Phil. 1:29; through much tribulation we enter the kingdom, Acts 14:22; affliction should not surprise or seem strange, 1 Pet. 4:12).  Like the statement of the father after a snake bite: "people think that life is goin' to be fine and easy, well it is fine, but it ain't easy" (The Yearling, 1946) so the Christian life is fine but it "ain't easy.

This is just an application of Romans 12:1-2 that we give our bodies to Him knowing we are owned by Him and are not our own (willingly we acknowledge this). Therefore, it is a recognized and voluntary act that we give ourselves to be totally His. Therefore, the body that suffers is not my own. I that suffer am not my own. I belong to Christ body and soul; His will is supreme. If I must weep with thee, my Lord thy will be done.

Here is a depth in serving Christ. Many will put a first foot forward in the way of doing for Christ. But do they step backward at the thought of suffering for Christ? Do they only do that which costs little or nothing? Such doing is not worth its weight in salt. Edwards speaks of people that have a false faith that closes with Christ in order "to serve a turn for themselves" (253). This is religion from a selfish spirit. There is no cross (Matt. 16:24-25). Here we serve Him as long as it is convenient and "I don't have to change." The test of true faith comes when our temporal interests are upset, when what is needed is change in us.

3A. The source or means of joyful patience

The future is brought into perspective by hope. The road disappears ahead of us through canyons of unknown territory. What is up ahead? The usual answer is that we must face disappointment, battle wounds, aging, and ultimately death. But hope does not restrict its future look to the dark clouds.

The solution to the unknowns ahead, to the future viewed as a threat, is found in hope's object and expectation. Joy is on account of future good that is promised.

What is the Christian resource of patient, expectant, realistic joy? It is all fundamentally rooted in the nature and content of the believer's hope. If I ask the how question, "how do I obtain this clustered grace of patient joy?" I have to find my answer in the content of biblical hope. That is, I must meditate on the things hoped for and the certainty of their attainment. This is the objective side of hope. The subjective side is the feeling or sense of expectancy that a person has as he or she looks to the future. It is the objective content of the things expected that rivets attention and sparks anticipation. Joy is the happiness caused by reflection on happy expectations. Rejoicing is fruit of positive expectations; it abounds more and more in a way proportional to the anticipation of good things to come.

So for a "how to" of patient joy facing future trials (while on the good path piling up love) we need to reflect on the content of biblical hope, the promises of things to come.

1) It is rewarding to think as comprehensively as possible about the future by means of a biblical philosophy of history contained in the six and one pattern of work and rest. From the very beginning of the world, God promised His image bearer rest at the end of history. Just as each week ends in rest with God in His rest from the work of creating in six days, so all of history has the goal of rest with God. Now in the fall work is turned to a curse and tribulations abound as the effects of sin. By the redemptive work of Christ, the consummation goal is secure for all that trust in Him. By His death and resurrection, eternal Sabbath rest includes full restoration from all the effects of the fall, from sin, tribulations, trials, difficulties, tears, and death. Believers are now on the way in journey toward that final rest. Rest is now (rest of soul in the completed work of Christ) and rest is not yet (rest of the whole person). Each week we are schooled the final end of our hope. Sabbath keeping nurtures this hope as we focus on the risen Lord Jesus, our Sabbath Lord and Sovereign God.

In a word, we can say that we have hope, "miles and miles and miles of hope" generated by reflection on the promise in Genesis 1-2. We can obtain patient joy by absorbing this philosophy of history. We have the Lord as our delight in life on the way as a guarantee and foretaste of what is yet to come (Isa. 58; keeping and honoring is day is the way "you will find your joy in the Lord). As we "remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy" in its new wineskin form of Sunday worship, the joy of knowing Christ will burn within our hearts.

We hear the promise that work and toil and trial and tribulations will be brought to a final end in eternal Sabbath rest. This body that suffers on the way will be swallowed up in immortality. Resurrection day cultivates the hopeful expectation and anticipation of that day when we can say, "behold my hands and feet it is I myself in the flesh in glory!"

2) We have the promise of fulfilling the great and supreme end of the entire creation (Rom. 11:33-36; Col. 1:16). We are being transformed into the glory we behold. Our great hope is to be like Him for we shall see Him as He is: "O that will be glory for me, glory for me, glory for me, when by His grace I shall look on His face, that will be glory, be glory for me."

So as we look out to the future and face trials, we know that they are designed to this great end beyond all ends, to the glory and praise of God. Affliction is to be expected on the journey through a fallen world but it has promise attached to it. It has the highest conceivable purpose and meaning attached to it. What hope this instills and what joy thereby abounds!

This causes great joy and patient waiting because we experience this now on the good path, glorifying God by our good works. It causes patient joy to find ourselves, our true humanity and humanness in the creative design that we be God's image bearers. We experience all of this now in part and in foretaste of the full harvest yet to come.

3) We are encouraged to joyful waiting to patient joy by the prospects of God's providence for now and for eternity: all things are worked for good to them that love God and are called according to His purpose. There is good attached to every trial; every trial comes with a promise (cf. after the crops were wiped by rain and the husband stated that we haven't suffered like Job, the wife said, "There you go finding some good in it," The Yearling, 1946). We have the antidote par excellence for worry because we are under the Father's care. With a fortiori after a fortiori Jesus confirms the promise of life in the salvation of our entire existence body and soul now and forevermore (cf. Matt. 6:25-34).

Our trials should be seen in gospel hues.  It is not that the Lord is coming down on us again as we deserve; but the Lord is taking us, sinners that we know we are, on to glory with loving care.

4) We encouraged to patient joy by God's purposes in the trying of our faith. A precious gold emerges from the hottest furnace (1 Pet. 1:6-9). We are also enabled to comfort others who suffer by the comfort we have received (2 Cor. 1:3-7).

5) Finally, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of your faith (Heb. 12:1-2) is the greatest resource of anticipatory joy (expectant, patient joy). Run with patience fixing your eyes on Him and His saving grace. Then you will not grow weary. Then your joyful patience will stand tall and strong.

Consider how we look to Him in this way both in His example (in prayerful praise of the sovereignty of the Father) and by His teaching (about His sovereignty in revealing the Father) according to Luke 10:21-24. His joy in the Holy Spirit was rooted in the content of His praise: the sovereign blessing of children (v. 21). Following Jesus in this way, I know of no higher experience in the study of Scripture then the fruit of contemplation on the sovereign grace of the Father. This is a marvelous tasting and seeing that the Lord is good. The taste is pleasurable, joyful, joy filling in such fullness that gratitude and praise must flow from deep within. It is a foretaste of glory and thus this joy is anticipatory joy; it is hope as expectation tasting and desiring more in kind.

It is what He gives by His sovereign choice (v. 22). This means that for us to see Him in this capacity as sovereign Lord and promised redeemer is to see what kings and prophets of old wanted to see but did not see (and wanted to hear but did not hear). Therefore seeing Him in the fullness of His majesty means that our eyes have been blessed and our ears have been blessed. It is no wonder that of all men we are most blessed and that it can be said with power: "O the "happinesses" of those who meditate on the law day and night" (Ps. 1). And it can be further said, "O the "happinesses" of those who acknowledge their spiritual poverty and cling to Christ as their sovereign king and Lord of glory "(Matt. 5:1-12).

He is author and He is finisher of our faith journey so we look to the future with a joyful endurance waiting for the good He has already given to exponentially blossom when He completes the work He has now begun. Having regular samples in part now on the way and knowing that the half has not been told us of the glory that shall be ours in Christ (Isa. 64:4, to those who wait; 1 Cor 2:9) gives us strength to face extreme difficulties in the course of life as history moves toward its appointed goal.

Summary and conclusion

To refer to the collage again, we are on the good path. There we are to be industrious, fervent, and passionate hating evil and embracing the good. As we travel this path we are to pile up love, have a heap of love (kindly affectioned, family, brotherly, one anothering love) that will spill over in honoring, praying, giving and showing hospitality. And as we travel this road there are clouds above, some dark ones, but the sun continues to shine and we are warmed day by day. As the road bends its way into the distant future it disappears into the radiant light of glory.

Joy and patience are our traveling companions because we face the future as a promise of glory of which we now have a foretaste in the fellowship of the saints and the communion of the Holy Spirit. Jesus has put us on this road. He is the Master we serve in all our Christian busy-ness. Because of Him we know that the trials of the future have promises attached. Looking to Him, trusting His promises, we have the inner strength to "be joyful in hope, patient in affliction." Our commitment to Christ should therefore be like that of Ittai to David: wherever the king may be, whether it means life or death, there will your servant be" (2 Sam. 15:21). To Him be all thanks and glory forever.