A cheerful heart is good medicine,
but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.
but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.
How many Christians do you know that are caught
up in being negative? So many who claim
victory in Jesus live as if nothing good ever happened to them.
How many times is the word joy or rejoice
used in the Bible? The answer is about
180, depending upon the version.
It is mentioned twice as much in the Old
Testament as in the New.
What about love? Would you believe over 500 times, and get
this—most of those are in the Old Testament if you go by the NIV or NRSV.
Remember that joy and love are not the
original words, so the frequency of translation will vary.
Grace shows up about 150 times, and yes most
of those are in the New Testament in all translations.
Sin shows up just over 400 times in most
translations with a 3 to 1 preference for the Old Testament.
But if the blood of Jesus took away our sin,
why do we dwell on it so much? Yes, that
question is most rhetorical for the blood of Jesus did take away our sin!
So why do so many Christians dwell on the
negative—their own faults, the mistakes of others, what is wrong with the
world?
We are told to have joy in the Lord. Rejoice in the Lord! We just finished a series with Paul’s letter
to the church in Philippi and he used the words joy and rejoice 16 times in
this very short letter.
God is serious about our joy and he has been
telling us this for a long time. But
let’s consider the proverb.
It is less of a command than it is a
self-fulfilling prophecy.
What does it
say?
A cheerful heart is good medicine,
but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.
but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.
Remember that the Hebrew people loved
parallelism in their writing. That is,
both phrases essentially say the same thing with just a little different twist.
This little quip of wisdom says a whole
bunch about our free will. We can choose
to take our medicine or we can choose to suffer in our illness.
We can choose this joy, this happiness, this
cheerful spirit or we can choose bitterness, despair, and hopelessness.
It is a choice.
One is good medicine and the other empowers
the illness.
My countenance surely
influences my health.
But there are days that just hurt too much
to be cheerful. There are times when I
cannot muster joy. I have gone through
things that just hurt too much.
I just can’t seem to honestly choose joy.
Then take counsel from the psalmists and be
still and know that your situation goes beyond your understanding. Just be in his presence—in the presence of
God, knowing that he is God. Accept his
peace and take the promise that sorrow may last for the night, but joy comes in
the morning.
Maybe we can’t always exude that cheerful spirit,
but we must know that it is the correct medicine.
Our struggles and trials and pains are real,
but joy—I am talking about joy in the Lord—is real medicine.
Joy treats the worst of the human conditions
that we may know—sorrow and depression and just living without hope.
Joy, real joy, is available to all through
Christ. The world that lives without
Christ only knows a little joy—that which comes from daily events and
circumstances.
Some eastern religious look at the purpose
of life as an effort to reduce suffering, a noble goal, but it falls far short
of knowing the joy of the Lord.
If we would go back to some of our Presbyterian roots in the Westminster Catechism, we would find that the purpose of humankind—the chief end
of man if you will—is to bring glory to God and to enjoy him forever.
We are to bring glory to God and enjoy him
very much. How can you enjoy God?
By taking our joy directly from our
relationship with him. Our joy is in the
Lord!
But, but…
The world is a messy place. People lose jobs, take pay cuts, get
transferred, lose loved ones, lose all of their worldly possessions in a house
fire, face illness and disease, fail tests and courses, get cut from teams,
sometimes just have bad hair days.
Life is messy.
But for those who know God, especially those
who know God through Christ Jesus, there is medicine for our messy lives that
we live in this messy world.
It is a cheerful heart. It is joy.
It is to rejoice in the Lord.
It is a choice.
We take our medicine every day or we
subsidize the illness.
Sometimes it isn’t easy to take our
medicine. Sometimes it takes a little
effort to choose joy. Sometimes like the
medicine that we get from the pharmacy, it sort of tastes bad or funny at
first.
Sometimes it is tough to live in the words
of Jesus when he told us that we would have trouble in the world but then said, “Take heart—be of good cheer—for I have overcome the
world.”
We need to be people of joy and good
cheer. We need to live with cheerful
hearts. For some that comes easier than
others; but for all, it is still good medicine.
We need to take our medicine.
A cheerful heart is good medicine,
but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.
but a crushed spirit dries up the bones.
Let’s take
our medicine.
It’s good
medicine.
Amen.
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