Did you ever have a down day? You know, just didn't feel really great about anything and things weren't really going well for you and felt unmotivated, even demotivated? Did you ever have a day like that? Well, I guess that's part of the human frame. It happens. I had a day like that today. And in about the middle of it, I was thinking about... Well, you see here, if a Christian who wants to teach you to be a positive thinker would say, well, when you feel like that, you should count your blessings. That didn't help much. I counted them and they were there. OK, lots of them. The Lord brought to mind a a great truth about sovereign redemption. And that is that the one constant that God has designed to be placed in a believer, based upon his sovereign grace and his sovereign love, the one constant, in the face of adversity, in spite of our down days, sad times even, is joy. I didn't say happiness. It's the difference between happiness and joy, at least as it applies spiritually. But the one constant is joy. Joy in the midst of sorrow. Through the Spirit is joy. The Lord as a strength is our joy. Joy in all those things. Joy of the Lord is our strength. Those are there. They are there whether we're up or we're down, we still can hook into and should constantly claim and experience the joy of the Lord. It lifts up one's soul. It does not allow him to stay where he is so low for very long, but even more than that, while he is there, he still remembers and still knows that in Christ there's his joy. So I want to talk to you about that this evening. I chose a couple of passages to share with you. One is found, in fact we will open with one, in the book of Isaiah, the twelfth chapter. In order to set this scene, you have to remember that when Isaiah was writing, when he was being delivered God's words to him, had been delivered God's words to him, there wasn't a whole lot of reason in Israel for rejoicing. There wasn't any grounds for happiness there. Still, in spite of that, Isaiah wrote this about God's people. Now, I wish to make an application to the fact that those who are here in Christ Jesus tonight are God's people, and therefore could well be the objects of these writings, despite the fact that they were written primarily to the Hebrew people, to Israel in the time of her seriously bad times. Beginning with the first verse of chapter 12, And in that day thou shalt say, O Lord, I will praise thee. Though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortest me. Behold, God is my salvation. I will trust and not be afraid, for the Lord, even Jehovah, is my strength and my song. He also has become my salvation. Therefore, with joy shall you draw water out of the wells of salvation. And in that day shall you say, praise the Lord, call upon his name, declare his doings among the people, make mention that his name is exalted. Sing unto the Lord, for he hath done excellent things in all the earth. Cry and shout. Thou inhabitant of Zion, for great is the Holy One of Israel in the midst of thee. I'm going to refer you to a New Testament passage, which I think in a few words parallels this passage, but we'll pray first. Our Father, I ask your blessing upon this, the reading of your word, and pray that it would singularly be applied to each one of us, that we might be comforted, if not today, tomorrow, or whenever it is that we need to be comforted with your joy and draw upon your joy for our strength. I pray in Christ's name, amen. I started off by saying that the possessors of Christ's joy possess it because of God's sovereign love. You need to understand, and I'm sure many of you do understand, perhaps some do not, however, that when the scriptures tell us that God is love, It does not, by so stating, it does not define God as being a slave to the human race. The human race is defined as being enslaved, but not to anything but sin. But when the Bible says God is love, it speaks of his love as he designs to extend it. It's his love of choice. He makes the choice about whom he loves. It's not as the popular religious idea goes today that God is love and therefore he loves everyone equally and can do nothing about those whom he loves but who are dying and going to hell. It's a terrible error. It's an awful heresy. It's demeaning to God to even think such a thing. So when we read this passage of scripture, when it says, I will praise thee, though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is turned away, and thou comfortest me. Behold, God is my salvation. I thought that's me. He was angry with me. And through no good action on my part, he turned his anger away from me. And that's an exercise of God's sovereign love because it's an exercise of God's sovereign choice, not deserving, not even wanting. And yet he chose to love me. Would you turn to the book of Romans, the fifth chapter, because this is the parallel passage in the New Testament on this particular subject. The sixth verse of the fifth chapter of Romans reads this way, and we'll read down through verse 11. When we were yet without strength in due time, Christ died for the ungodly. That was me. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die yet for adventure, for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commended his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. much more than being now justified by his blood, we shall be saved from wrath through him. For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his son, much more being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life and notice. And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement. Reading this, knowing this, seeing how it is that God designed atonement for sinners who didn't love him and were his enemies before anything changed in them, before God changed anything in them, designed this atonement and then drew his saints to repentance to receive that atonement as the basis for joy. What we read in Isaiah was, therefore, with joy shall you draw water out of the wells of salvation. And I think if I were sitting in this room tonight and I read, had this read in my hearing and know these truths about the great love of God for His elect, for His people, and how His love is a sovereign love, and how it was His sovereign love that sent Jesus Christ into this world, and how His sovereign love designed the salvation that we who are in Christ enjoy. If I were here unsaved, but knew that and heard that, I would flee quickly to Him. I would encourage you who are not saved to not set aside this wonderful, wonderful knowledge that you have dripping into your ears, and the responsibility that is yours to act upon it. I would think you would want to know the joy of salvation, and thus the joy of the Lord, to know that even when your bad days come, and they will come, when your sad times come, and they will come, that there still is this well of the salvation of God from which we receive our joy. And we receive it at all times, under all circumstances, because the fruit of the Spirit is joy, and that can only be obtained by those who are in Christ. Finally, I'd like to take you to a real heady time. It was a time when there were reawakenings occurring There was excitement among the people. Events were happening that hadn't happened for over a hundred years. Let me take you back to the city of Jerusalem at the time that Ezra and Nehemiah, both together, had been dispatched by God to begin to rebuild the city. And I want you to know that when they were sent to rebuild the city, There was more than building up walls of brick and of stone and of mortar and gates of wood. There was a spiritual, there was a people that needed to be built as well. So would you turn now to the book of Nehemiah. It's in the Old Testament. It's right after Ezra, just before Esther. Esther's just before Job. You'll find it in there somewhere, just look for it. We're in the eighth chapter. God has never been without a remnant of his people upon the face of this earth, ever. At no time has he been without them. They have always been a loyal and faithful remnant to God. Always. Sometimes the numbers were small. There are times, points in human history about which we know nothing. But yet I am absolutely convinced God had his holy remnant. And even in these terrible times for the people of Judah, during their awful captivity and enslavement, their dispersal and destruction of their city, there was still a remnant. Though they were living in a pagan land, a foreign land, yet they were able to still have the joy of the Lord in them. They could still sing the Lord's song. They lost knowledge, they were away, they became less and less exposed to the Word of God because it wasn't available to them. what they had had at the beginning and what had been handed to them by their parents, they remembered some, enough so that they would respond when they were tweaked, touched by the Word of God. The Word of God being the powerful instrument that it has always been in the conviction of the soul for sin an enlivening one toward God. This is going to be used in this particular time as well. Here they were, these two men who had been sent back by Artaxerxes, the Persian king, to rebuild the city of Jerusalem. And there was a remnant of people who were there and some would come with him. And they were They were hungry, not just to build walls. They were hungry to build their lives in Jehovah once again. They had their appetites for him stirred up. And once one has an appetite for the joy of the salvation of the Lord, he will always remain stable because he will always be able to draw upon that well of strength of God's joy. So in the very first verse of the eighth chapter, as they had been going through the building process, and even though they were facing great resistance as they did it, and even though many of the people who were there, who had remained in the broken city of Jerusalem, had by this time taken unto themselves wives of of unbelieving wives, of pagan wives. They were now about to face a time of great cleansing, inner cleansing and revival, and all the people gathered themselves together as one man into the street that was before the water gate, and they spoke unto Ezra the scribe to bring the book of the law of Moses, which the Lord had commanded, to Israel. And Ezra the priest brought the law before the congregation, both of men and women, and all who could hear with understanding, on the first day of the seventh month, and he read from it. He faced the street that was before the water gate from morning until midday, before the men and the women and those who could understand, and the ears of all the people were attentive unto the book of the law. And Ezra the scribe stood upon a pulpit of wood which they had made for the purpose. Beside him, and then there's a list of names of those who had been faithful to God. And Ezra opened the book, verse five. in the sight of all the people, for he was above all the people when he opened it, and all the people stood up. And Ezra blessed the Lord, the great God, and all the people answered, Amen, Amen, lifting up their hands, and they bowed their heads and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. and others who are named here. And the Levites caused the people to understand the law and the people stood in their place. So they read in the book of the law of God distinctly and gave the sense and caused them to understand the reading. And Nehemiah, who is the shirshata, and Ezra, the priest, the scribe, and the Levites, who taught the people, said unto all the people, This day is holy unto the Lord your God. Mourn not, nor weep, for all the people wept when they heard the words of the law. Then he said unto them, Go your way, eat the fat, and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared. For this day is holy unto our Lord. Neither be ye sorry, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. I just love that. Just to have been there, can you imagine? Wouldn't you like to have just been a little bird on the wall watching all of this? Or wouldn't you love to have experienced with them the uplifting? I said they were heady times. They indeed were heady times. They were times when the disappointments of life and of the past and even of the present were beginning to fade away into insignificance compared to the great joy that they had in their God, in His salvation. They had experienced His redeeming salvation. We have experienced His reconciliation, His Atonement, when we were enemies, he reconciled himself to us by the blood of Christ so that we too draw at this great well of salvation, the great joy of Jesus Christ. Oh, what a marvelous and wonderful salvation we have in the great Jehovah God, the author and finisher of our salvation, the beginning and the end of our faith. Remember him. no matter what, and draw your joy from that well.