SOUNDS OF JOY AND GLADNESS

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In Christ, Mark

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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.

“This is what the Lord says: ‘You say about this place, “It is a desolate waste, without people or animals.” Yet in the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem that are deserted, inhabited by neither people nor animals, there will be heard once more the sounds of joy and gladness, the voices of bride and bridegroom, and the voices of those who bring thank offerings to the house of the Lord, saying,

“Give thanks to the Lord Almighty, for the Lord is good; His love endures forever.”

For I will restore the fortunes of the land as they were before,’ says the Lord.’”

Jeremiah 33:10-11

This ends today’s reading from God's holy word. Thanks be to God.

Life’s circumstances can overwhelm us at times, leaving us feeling isolated and desolate.

Maybe you can relate. I know I can.

I don’t make it a regular point to go back and recall my past, particularly when it was a bad experience, but there are times when it is necessary because you can sometimes take a negative and turn it into a positive.

This is one of those times.

As for the toughest time in my life, it was some 26 years ago when I found out my wife had been unfaithful to me. I won’t go into how I found out because it only added to the devastation of the matter and is really irrelevant to the overall discussion but the bottom line was that a relationship of nearly ten years that bore two beautiful children was over. I found out about the infidelity two days before I was set to go on a deployment (I was in the United States Navy at the time) and the ship refused to leave me behind. By the time I returned, my wife (we were still married) and my two children were living with the person she was seeing, my next door neighbor.

I can’t tell you how maddening and humiliating that was and I knew I had to get away from it. I separated from the Navy and moved nearly four hours way, far enough to be away from the situation but not so far that I couldn’t travel to see my kids. Life as I had known it as a family man, husband, and father was over and my life at that point felt like a wasteland.

Interestingly enough, as we begin to look at the scripture passage for today from Jeremiah 33, we find another wasteland scene painted, this time by the Lord Himself. Look at His words again here:

“This is what the Lord says: ‘You say about this place, “It is a desolate waste, without people or animals.” Yet in the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem that are deserted, inhabited by neither people nor animals...’”

When God brought judgment on His people, punishing them for their worshiping of false gods and idols, the aftermath of that judgment was horrific. Once a thriving kingdom which hosted the most holy city known to man, Judah found itself left in absolute ruin after the attack of the Babylonians under the leadership of King Nebuchadnezzar. Ditto for Jerusalem.

To make matters worse, nothing was left to inhabit the land, not that there was much left to inhabit anyways. The people and animals were all gone, leaving the cities and towns deserted and void of life.

Did I mention it was a wasteland?

Not exactly what you would picture would happen when the Israelites first entered into the Promised Land to settle within it and reap the rewards of a land filled with milk and honey (Exodus 3:17).

This would be a pretty sad devotion if the story ended here but it didn’t. For the Lord had good news to share, news that would predict new life breathed into the wasteland left by the Babylonian invasion. Here are His words:

“There will be heard once more the sounds of joy and gladness, the voices of bride and bridegroom, and the voices of those who bring thank offerings to the house of the Lord, saying,

“Give thanks to the Lord Almighty, for the Lord is good; His love endures forever.”

For I will restore the fortunes of the land as they were before,’ says the Lord.’”

What a drastic turn around! A day was coming when there would once again be sounds of joy and gladness heard in Judah and Jerusalem, sounds of rejoicing and glorifying God once again ringing through the air which would:

1. Give thanks to the Lord.

Before they would get to return to their homeland and rebuild the wasteland left by the Babylonians, the people of Israel would first have to finish seventy years of exile, seventy years away from home abiding in a foreign land, seventy years of experiencing a severed relationship with the God they so blatantly disregarded and disrespected. They had turned their backs on God, abandoning Him, and in return, God showed them just how bad life could be apart from Him.

Why do we need to rehash this?

Because it can show you why the people were so thankful as they lifted up their sounds of joy and gladness. Apart from God for so long, they had been restored to a place of favor in His sight. Once again, He was their God and they were His people.

2. Declare the Lord’s goodness.

If God weren’t good, He would never have made the way clear for His people to return from their captivity. He could have left them in Babylon to perish but that wasn’t God’s style. Instead, He showed His people what He had shown them through the ages. For although He was a God of judgment, He was also a God of deep mercy, grace, compassion, and forgiveness, all of which the Israelites would experience in full measure upon return to Judah and Jerusalem.

No wonder they proclaimed His goodness as they lifted up their sounds of joy and gladness.

3. Proclaim the Lord’s everlasting love.

If you were to define the greatest quality found in our Lord, you would have to say it’s His love.

It’s a love that led Him to return His people home so they could rebuild their relationship with Him.

It’s a love that led Him to send His only Son Jesus to earth to live, die, and then be resurrected so that all mankind could have a chance to live with Him, their Father, forever through the sin-atoning, salvation-providing sacrifice of His Son.

It’s a love that is available for any of His people to grasp if they allow Him to love through them.

Back to my earlier testimony because I have to tell you that the Lord brought hope into my desolate wasteland of a life just as He did the Israelites, a hope that brought me to a place where I raised sounds of joy and gladness.

For you see, God had another very special person in mind for me, a godly woman who not only showed me how to love again but, more importantly, showed me the way back to a relationship with the Lord.

And I have never turned back since.

As I returned to love in a relationship, my life wasteland turned into a life where sounds of joy and gladness dominated.

I gave thanks to God for bringing Grace, my wife’s name, into my life. I gave thanks that He received me back with open arms, even though I had walked away from Him for so long. And I gave thanks that He showed me I had a purpose that was far beyond myself, a purpose intended to serve Him and others to His glory. Every day, I try to make good on fulfilling that purpose.

I also declared God’s goodness in bringing me into a Christ-centered marriage. I have said through the 23 years we have been together that “Grace” was really my wife’s middle name because He first name is “Amazing”. People think I am joking ( they always do) but if they knew my story, they would know that I am only partially kidding because if it weren’t for her, I would have continued to be counted among the lost, those living separate from the Lord, like those Israelites who walked that road to God’s judgment in Jeremiah’s day. Through His goodness, God gave me a second chance and a fresh start in Him. For that I will ever be eternally grateful.

Finally, because I have been so committed to the Lord and His ministry work through these years with Grace, I have had so many opportunities to not only speak about the goodness of God but also His everlasting love as I share the good news of the Gospel and the salvation that comes through Jesus, the only One who can bring us to the God the Father. Just writing these words buoys my spirit inside with feelings of overflowing praise that leads me to sounds of joy and gladness.

Friends, the bottom line here is that the Lord is a Lord who takes the driest, ravaged wastelands of life and breathes new life into them, raining down His living water upon them and rejuvenating His people to where they return to a sense of thanksgiving, once again seeing His goodness and love on full display.

Won’t you join me in rejoicing in this truth today by raising up sounds of joy and gladness to Him, now and forever?

Amen.

In Christ,

Mark
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