“The joy of the LORD is your strength” (Nehemiah 8:10). Many of us probably remember the camp song that repeated over and over, “The joy of the Lord is my strength,” and perhaps unfortunately, this colors the way we hear this text. Suppose, however, that the “joy of the LORD” does not refer to happiness that we create in ourselves by singing around a campfire, but instead refers to the great joy that God has because he loves us. Remember Zephaniah 3:17: “God…will rejoice over you with singing.” Our strength lies in the reality that God loves and rejoices over us. Our strength and hope only secondarily lie in the joy that we feel in response to God’s joy, love and presence.
I think this fits with other aspects of our relationship with God that we are sometimes quick to forget. “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Why do we love God? How is it even possible that we could love God? It is only because God has loved us so much first. “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). It is the same with faith. Our faith is rooted in Christ’s faithfulness: “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me, and the life that I now live I live because of the faith of the Son of God who loved me and gave himself for me (Galatians 2:20). God is always faithful to us, and this enables us to be faithful to God. “Here is a trustworthy saying: If we died with him, we will also live with him; if we endure, we will also reign with him. If we disown him, he will also disown us; if we are faithless, he will remain faithful, for he cannot disown himself” (2 Timothy 2:11-13). God’s action is always primary and enables us to respond to God in ways that are life-giving. God is faithful, so we are able to trust God. God loves us, so we are able to love God. God rejoices in us, so we are able to rejoice in God.
Nehemiah sees a “holy day” as a day not of weeping and crying because of our sin, but rejoicing and celebration because of God’s forgiveness, love and redemption. “Nehemiah said, ‘Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.’ The Levites calmed all the people, saying, ‘Be still, for this is a sacred day. Do not grieve.’ Then all the people went away to eat and drink, to send portions of food and to celebrate with great joy, because they now understood the words that had been made known to them” (Nehemiah 8:10-12). Sometimes we think that if something is “sacred” or “holy,” it must be somber or even scary. Nehemiah rejects this idea. When God’s word is read to the people, when they are reminded of who God is, the appropriate response is celebration. The people are encouraged to realize that God is good. The proper response to God’s presence is not fear and trembling and feelings of guilt and unworthiness but joy and celebration and feelings of relief and happiness.
Perhaps you’re thinking, “But it’s not always that way. What about Isaiah 6, when God shows up in the Temple and Isaiah is terrified?” Can it be true that sometimes the proper response to God showing up is “woe to me . . . I am a man of unclean lips among a people of unclean lips” (Isaiah 6:5)? I think that response has more to do with Isaiah’s sense of guilt and shame than what God desires from Isaiah. After all, God does not respond by recounting Isaiah’s sins or demanding that he repent. Instead, God sends an angel to take a coal from the altar to touch Isaiah’s lips and cleanse them. “With it he touched my mouth and said, ‘See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your sin atoned for’ (Isaiah 6:7). God’s response to Isaiah’s lament about his sinful condition is not to emphasize his guilt. God’s response is to take away the guilt. Perhaps this means that God really isn’t impressed by our efforts at self flagellation any more than a parent is impressed when a five-year-old, when he realizes mom and dad are mad at him, decides to hit his head against the wall to “punish” himself. We can get the impression, even from our liturgy (let’s start with the confession and remind God and everyone else what sinners we are before we can worship together), that we must somehow cleanse ourselves and be sad about our sins before we can enter God’s presence. But didn’t Jesus once and for all make us clean? Aren’t the water jars for purification now filled with wine? (See John 2 – the story of the wedding at Cana.) When God shows up, the proper response is joy. It is appropriate to feel sorry for our sins. Feeling guilty is the correct response when we grieve God and hurt other people because of our selfishness or brokenness. But when God breaks into our lives, it is to announce the forgiveness of sins and His great love for us. Feelings of guilt are often our experience, but God’s forgiveness washes the guilt away. Grief over our foolishness may weigh us down for a while, but God’s joy takes our grief away. “The joy of the LORD is your strength.”