How Is The Joy of the Lord Our Strength?

In this episode, I’m diving into the often-quoted verse, “The joy of the Lord is your strength,” from Nehemiah 8:10. We’ll take a closer look at the context of this verse—what was happening with the Israelites after their return from exile, and what it actually means that the joy of the Lord is our strength.

Here’s what we’ll explore together:

- The story behind Nehemiah and the rebuilding of both walls and hearts
- What it really means to find joy in the Lord
- How that joy becomes a source of strength in our daily lives

I wrap up by reflecting on how joy helps us keep going, especially when things get hard. It reminds us that we’re not alone and that God’s joy is both our anchor and our fuel.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction
02:53 Context of Ezra-Nehemiah 
06:12 Understanding Strength
09:06 Understanding Joy
11:59 The Connection Between Joy and Strength
14:56 How The Joy of the Lord is Our Strength

Episode Tags: 

Joy of the Lord, Nehemiah, biblical joy, joy in suffering, God's faithfulness,  Christian encouragement, the joy of the lord is our strength, how is the joy of the lord our strength, book of nehemiah, ezra-nehemiah , studying nehemiah, nehemiah bible study

Transcript

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Welcome to Going Deeper. Welcome back to the Going Deeper podcast. In today's episode, this is going to be a mini episode, something I plan to do from time to time as I feel encouraged to share. These episodes, my goal are going to be no longer than 20 minutes long, but hopefully they'll be closer to that 10 minute mark, 15 minute mark, and we will see how that goes because I can be a windbag and I do love to talk. So I'm just really wanting these to be bite-sized pieces of encouragement that you can carry with you through your day or through your week in between the long episodes that I put out. So today we are answering the question, how is the joy of the Lord our strength? This question came out of my own personal questioning. I have heard that multiple times in the last month. The joy of the Lord is our strength. I'll be honest. I didn't even know where this came from. I frankly thought that this came from the New Testament. It does not. It actually comes from Nehemiah, the book of Nehemiah, and it's specifically in chapter 8, verses 10. So this is the verse that it comes from. He said, Now, Before we jump into, one, what does this even mean and break down the verse itself, we totally need to back up and give context because that is extremely helpful. One, and just unpacking any verse, but very specifically this verse, because the context is everything in this book. Because one, most of us don't even know what the book of Nehemiah is even about. I didn't know it before I studied it with a friend. Well, actually, me and my friend studied Ezra. We were going to go to Nehemiah, but we moved over to the new testament because it's heavy the the book of ezra nehemiah books together are heavy books there are a lot there's a lot of historical context and they can be tough so we did not make it to nehemiah but either way context is very helpful so ezra nehemiah those books typically are or were before the english version actually i think it might be the um The original Jewish Bible, in the Jewish Bible, Ezra and Nehemiah are one book together, but we have separated them. No big deal. So Ezra and Nehemiah. So Ezra tells the story of how God brings the Jewish people back to Jerusalem after exile in Babylon to rebuild their community, and then Nehemiah to rebuild their temple and their faith. So in the first book, Ezra, they return to build the temple. In Nehemiah, the focus shifts to rebuilding Jerusalem. the walls of Jerusalem, and then restoring the strength of the city and just their security. And then it pivots to renewing their covenant with God and sort of just this revival. A lot of times, the studies that you're going to see on the book of Ezra and Nehemiah focus on revival. So Nehemiah was a Jewish man, and he was serving the Persian king when he heard that the Jerusalem walls were in ruins. And he gets permission to go and help Rebuild them and lead the people in the work to rebuild the walls. But they continually faced opposition and challenges. There were people trying to thwart their goals. But with God's help, they were able to rebuild the walls in 52 days. So by chapter 8, which is where we find this verse, the physical restoration of the walls had been completed and the focus shifted to the spiritual renewal and renewing that covenant with God. And so... Nehemiah 8, verses 10. Again, it is, let me just read it. We're going to read it out of the ESV. It says, Okay, so let's back up in verse 8. So what we're going to do here is we are going to briefly go through Nehemiah 8. And then a little into Nehemiah 9 before we kind of wrap up. So in verse 1, it says, So on the first day of the seventh month, Ezra the priest brought the book of the law before the assembly, which included the men and women and all the children old enough to understand. He faced the square just inside the water gate from early morning until noon and read aloud to everyone who could understand. All the people listened closely to the book of the law. Ezra stood on the platform in full view of all the people. When they saw him open the book, they all rose to their feet. And then Ezra praised the Lord, the great God, and all the people chanted, Amen, Amen, as they lifted their heads. Then they bowed down and worshiped the Lord with their faces to the ground. The Levites instructed the people in the law while everyone remained in their places. They read from the book of the law of God and clearly explained the meaning of what was being read, helping the people understand each passage. Then Nehemiah the governor, Ezra the priest and scribe, and the Levites, who were interpreting for the people, said to them, And that brings us to verse 10 when it says, the joy of the Lord is our strength. But as we go on to verse 11, we're going to see that they are encouraging the people not to weep. And they're reminding them, this is a sacred day. You know, how far we've come. This is a sacred day. And encourage them to go away and to celebrate, essentially. And it says in verse 12, so the people went away to eat and drink at a festive meal, to share gifts of food, and... So that gives us briefly a glimpse into what it means for the joy of the Lord to be our strength. In the context right here, immediately after verse 10, when we look at verse 11, it says, So hold on to that thought. We're going to get back to that. So in verse 18, It says, and day by day, from the first day to the last day, he read from the book of the law of God. Now, this would have been the first five books of the Bible, the Torah, and he would have likely picked out certain passages of scripture that they were to read aloud. So then it continues into verse, to chapter nine. We're going to briefly cover that before we kind of go into the details of this verse. So Nehemiah 9 starts out by saying,"...on the twenty-fourth day of the same month, the Israelites gathered together, fasting, wearing sackcloth, putting dust on their heads. Those of Israelite descent had separated themselves from all foreigners. They stood in their places and confessed their sins and the sins of their ancestors. They stood where they were and read from the book of the law of the Lord their God for a quarter of the day and spent the other quarter in confession and in worshiping the Lord their God." So hold on a quarter of the day. If they're talking about a waking day, which would be 12 hours, that's about three to four hours of your day. Now, if it's a quarter of a 24 hour day, that's six hours of listening to scripture, confession and worship. When was the last time you spent that much time doing those things professionally? a conference maybe, but even have a conference, it's just not structured like that. You know, it's a lot of times it's a motivational speech or even just a really encouraging message, which is a great thing. But have we ever gone somewhere where all we're doing is listening to scripture, confessing in community and worshiping? I mean, I imagine a revival would break out. Of course. So through the reading of the book of the law, the Torah, different passages from there, the Israelites, what happened is why they were weeping, why they were mourning, they recognized the faithfulness and mercy of God. And that was how, and in reading the scripture, their eyes were open to how they were continually and had in their past and their ancestors continually turned away from God and continued to be disobedient, even though God would show up, right? He showed up through Abraham. He showed up through Moses. He brought them into the promised land, but every time they would turn away from him. And so, Through this reading, their eyes were opened to see that and they realized God's mercy on them and how disobedient they had been, how sinful they had been. So verse 33 in chapter 9, it says, In all that has happened to us, you have remained righteous. You have acted faithfully while we acted wickedly. Our kings, our leaders, our priests, and our ancestors did not follow your law. They did not pay attention to your commands or the statutes you warned them to keep, even while they were in their kingdom, enjoying your great goodness to them in the spacious and fertile land you gave them. They did not serve you or turn from their evil ways. So the Israelites hear the word of the Lord for hours and their response is confession, worship, a Because they are reminded of God's forgiveness and faithfulness and plan to restore them into a right relationship with him. But that joy didn't come until after they realized all that the Lord had done for them and how he would continually show up. So to answer the question, how is the joy of the Lord our strength? So here we're going to go through one. We're going to talk about the word joy. We're going to talk about the word strength. And then we're going to kind of conclude. So in context, now that we know the story of Ezra and Nehemiah, we understand the context of the chapter, we know what was going on and how their minds were thinking. First, let's talk about strength. So the Israelites in reading God's word were reminded of their fragility. They were reminded of their sin, of their weaknesses, of the ways that they had continually fallen short in the past. But they were also reminded of God's redemptive and restorative work despite their repeated disobedience. And this is what had caused them to weep and to mourn. I mean, we have all been there. Or, especially if you're a parent, you have seen where you discipline your kids and they know that you are disappointed and they feel, they weep. I know my son, my firstborn, he gets absolutely dejected when I discipline him and he knows that he has done wrong. And he weeps and he cries to me and he says he's sorry. He knows what he's done wrong. But we've also been there with God where we have just continually disobeyed, continually failed, continued to fall short. And we come to him and we just drop and we're like, I'm so sorry. Like, I'm so sorry for how far I've gone for the sin in my life. So we've been there. We felt weak. We felt sorry. fragile in comparison to God. You know, weak to be steadfast, weak to worship, weak to understand God's work, weak to walk in a manner worthy of our calling, weak to live holy lives. So strength, of course, is the antithesis of weakness. But if we look at the original Greek and Hebrew of this word strength, what does it mean? Because we don't often, on a typical day, attribute joy to strength. So if we look at the original Greek and Hebrew of the word strength, a lot of times it is more this fortitude, this stronghold, this refuge. But no matter how much research I did, the translators always decided on the word strength. So how is joy, an emotion for the most part, as we think of it, connected to our strength? Or is it that even what it's saying? Or does it refer to a spiritual strength? So biblically, the word strength, oftentimes, most oftentimes, it's going to refer to more than just a physical strength or a physical power. Strength involves having the inner resources to face challenges and overcome obstacles with courage and perseverance and resilience. Think about, this is the story that came to mind when I was trying to convey this idea. David and Goliath. So in the story, David and the Philistine giant, right? So in verse 45, it says, So in that story, would you say that David was strong? No. I mean, he was a young man, and he would have been between 15 and 17 years old. He was not, in our minds, somebody that would have been strong. But on that day, the Lord was his strength. We would say yes. We would say that through the Lord, David was strong enough to conquer Goliath. And one, he wasn't physically strong. His weapon also was not stronger than Goliath's weapons. But through the power of God— he was able to conquer Goliath. So this to me is the best way to think of the word strength or the strength of the Lord in the context of this verse. Now let's move on to joy. Joy. This is something that I've studied quite a bit in my life because it's such a fascinating thing to consider or to think about, especially because in our culture, we are really big on the pursuit of happiness and circumstantial pleasure and all of the things. Whereas biblical joy is this deep, abiding sense of contentment and peace and gladness that is completely and wholly rooted in God's character, His promises, His presence, and the work of Christ and the cross. So, a couple of key aspects of biblical joy that are contrasting of worldly happiness would be that joy is something that can be present in suffering because it's not based on our circumstances. It is completely based on God and the realities that we have in our salvation with Christ. It's also something that is produced in us through the work of the Holy Spirit. Of course, joy is a fruit. I've heard people say happiness is a feeling, whereas joy is a fruit. It is something that the Holy Spirit can literally produce in us when it gain and understand and recognize when we know how loved we are, when we recognize that we have been saved out of death. Death is no longer a reality for those of us who are in Christ. We will die, but we will rise again and we will live forever in the glory of the Lord. And we can also have joy knowing that we'll never be alone. I mean, frequently throughout scripture, God says, I'm with you. I'm with you. I'm with you. And so even in our darkest moments, we can have joy, this deep-rooted, soul-anchoring understanding that there is more to this life and that there is hope for even the worst days. And so I think that most often, joy is a choice. Joy is this choice to trust in God who plans to redeem and restore all things, no matter what our circumstances are. And It's this faith in the transcendent realities true of those who are in Christ. And it makes me think of John 15, 9 through 11. It says, So now that we kind of have a better understanding of joy, and strength. This is what I would say is a good synopsis or paraphrase of Nehemiah 8.10. Knowing and delighting in Christ gives me power to persevere, pursue holiness, and overcome the trials of life. So to conclude, we're going to end with a good old-fashioned John Piper quote, and it's in his book, The Pleasures of God. He put it beautifully. The greatest joy is joy in God. This is plain from Psalm 1611. Nothing is fuller than full, and nothing is longer than eternal. And this joy is owing to the presence of God, not the accomplishments of man. Therefore, if God wants to love us infinitely and delight us fully and eternally, He must preserve for us the one thing that will satisfy us totally and eternally, namely, the presence and worth of His own glory. He alone is a source of full and lasting pleasure. Therefore, His commitment to uphold and display His glory is not vain, but virtuous." God is the one being for whom self-exaltation is an infinitely loving act. Essentially, what he's saying is that the glory of God is where our joy resides, who he is, the character of who he is, all that he has done in the work of Christ, all that he has done in our individual personal lives. You know, who is man that you are mindful of him? And it is our understanding and knowing Christ. Knowing head knowledge, but also knowing heart knowledge, the intimacy that we have with God and in Christ, it's that knowledge of His glory and His majesty, His grace, His mercy, and all that is offered to us as believers that gives us an abundance of joy. We can have joy, I think, on our worst day, and it's just this smile that can come across your face because you're sitting there thinking to yourself, I've been saved. I have hope. We have eternal hope, but we also have the current hope that the Lord is going to work all things together for our good and his glory and that he is doing the work of conforming us into the image of a son and he is transforming us from the inside out. That can give us joy. And so think about a hard day and you're just not feeling it. You're just not feeling it. You don't have a lot of joy. You're frustrated. You're annoyed. You're angry. you're not typically very productive. You're typically mopey and you feel weak and you feel incapable of persevering and you just don't feel steadfast or strong. But what about the days when you wake up and you just feel this Overflowing joy. Whether that be in circumstances, in things that are going on in your life, but also what about the days when you just have this overflowing joy of who God is and what He's done in your life. Those days you feel like you can conquer the world. You feel like nothing can stop you. You feel this just overflowing draw to live a pure life, obedient to the Lord, walking in a manner worthy of your calling, and pursuing Christ and pursuing God. And that is what it means that the joy of the Lord is our strength. It gives us what we need to carry on. It gives us what we need to pursue holiness, and it gives us what we need to live this life well. So I hope that answered your question. I know we went over the 20 minute mark, but we tried to stay condensed. Let me know if you guys like this. If you like these more condensed episodes, I can definitely do more as I think of a topic or feel compelled to share, but I'll catch you guys in my next episode.