“Shout for joy, O daughter of Zion! Shout in triumph, O Israel! Rejoice and exult with all your heart, O daughter of Jerusalem! The LORD has taken away His judgments against you, He has cleared away your enemies. The King of Israel, the LORD, is in your midst; You will fear disaster no more.”
“The LORD your God is in your midst, A victorious warrior. He will exult over you with joy, He will be quiet in His love, He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.”
At, first, when I read verses like these in Zephaniah, verses that extol me to shout with joy, or to rejoice and exalt with all my heart, at first my heart rises with the possibility of such an astounding and consuming joy in God. Quickly following this spark, however, sadness often comes because my heart, in fact, is not like this. Such exuberance of joy and gladness displayed in such active expressions as shouting for joy are not typical of my emotional currents. Yet the occasion that calls for such joyful, glad celebration has been more completely delivered to me than it had been for those to whom these verses were originally written. They originally promised a physical deliverance from armies of oppressors. I have been given a greater deliverance; I have been delivered from sin. All God’s judgments have been thoroughly taken away from me. He has utterly defeated my enemies. Why shouldn’t my heart rejoice and shout joyfully since I have received, in full, these promises?
In truth, my heart may rejoice, and does rejoice by the grace of God, yet there are preventers that can keep my heart from the joy to which it has been called, or that mitigate and stifle the fullness of its joy. What are these evil, stubborn preventers; these robbers and mufflers of joy? In a word they are my sin, residing yet in my flesh, which daily and constantly battles against my faith to the end that I will fail to lay hold of the glorious victory God has already won through Christ’s overcoming on the cross. By the spirit I may have the spiritual eyes to see and the spiritual ears to hear the victory song of my risen Lord. But if the flesh wins its skirmishes my faith will be weakened so that the heavenly singing fades and my joy diminishes.
Oh to gain the victory, by the Spirit, over the flesh and kill my sin. Putting to death the flesh is necessary if my faith is to be strong. And when my faith is strong and I can hear more clearly the sounds of joy and my heart resonates with its chords.
The fight of faith includes daily battles, and while it has not been ordained for me to decisively win every battle, it has been ordained for me to fight a winning war, to gain ground, to push back the enemy, to grow in strength, and, praise God, to ultimately win. Therefore I will fight and engage in battle and wrestle against sin, and never give up.
Here is just one tactical maneuver I can use in my fighting. Look at verse 17 “He will exalt over you with joy, He will be quiet in his love, He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.” At moments when my heart might not be shouting for joy I need to remember that God, though I may not hear it, is singing over me with joy and rejoicing over me with shouts of joy. While my heart might grow faint, God’s never does. While my joy might ebb and flow His never does. Let the bigness, the sovereignty, the transcendence of God always assure me that He is in control, but remember that for as infinite as God is, He is also personal, present, and emotionally engaged, more deeply than I will ever know. His call to me to rejoice with shouts of joy is not a call to originate something out from myself. It is a call to respond to His shouts of joy. To command my rejoicing is not to frustrate me by requiring something that I cannot generate – it is a command that awakens faith to see and hear the exaltation of God’s joy and to be caught up in His victory song.
Therefore my soul, when you are fighting against the deadening attacks of the flesh, fight back with faith that believes that God’s music yet plays – His songs are being sung, He is shouting with joy. Let your heart arise and think about the music of heaven – make your shouts of joy an echoing of God’s shouts of joy. Meditate and contemplates on what it will sound like when the war is over and the final battle has been won, and your faith will turn to sight and the songs of heaven will ring forth, and your ears will hear them perfectly. Listen soul; listen to the joy of the Lord.
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