The Bible is very honest about suffering in this world. It declares over and over that pain, sorrow and weeping will be a part of life. However, the good news is that it is passing and not permanent. The negatives pass away, but the positives will come to stay. The ultimate goal of God for His people is a life of endless joy and rejoicing. God desires that we be joyful now even in this fallen world, but our fallen nature often fails to achieve His will. Like a father He has to be angry at His children who disobey him. What child has not experienced the anger of his or her father? Some of us have even been spanked in anger because of our folly. It is a part of growing up. God is our heavenly Father and He loves us too much to let us live in disobedience without penalty. However, He is merciful like any normal father, and He wants us to learn by His angry discipline so that He can in grace reward us with joy. His goal is always joy, but sometimes weeping is necessary to get to that goal. So, what this verse is saying to us is this, always be a positive thinker, for the goal of God for you is always joy. In any down time of suffering and sorrow do not let your weeping rob you of the promise that joy is coming. Every story in God's book has a happy ending. It may be in the next morning, but it will certainly be so in the resurrection morning. Joy is to be the final state for all of God's children.
This is the comforting message we see all through the Bible. Here is what Paul says in 2 Corinthians 4:17 "For our light and momentary affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory that is far beyond comparison." In Psalm 126:5 we read, "Those who sow in tears will reap with shouts of joy." Isaiah 54:7 "For a brief moment I forsook you, but with great compassion I will bring you back." Isaiah 54:7,8 "For a small moment have I forsaken thee; but with great mercies will I gather thee…" The good news is always permanent as we see in Psalm 16:11 "Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore." Bad times are like a bad night, and we all have nights like this from time to time, but the good news is that bad night's end with morning, and in God's plan the morning is always joyful. Psalm 59:16 "But I will sing of thy power; yea, I will sing aloud of thy mercy in the morning: for thou hast been my defense and refuge in the day of my trouble." Psalm 143:8 "Cause me to hear thy lovingkindness in the morning; for in thee do I trust: cause me to know the way wherein I should walk; for I lift up my soul unto thee."
Oh, deem not they are blest alone!
Whose lives a peaceful tenor keep.
The Power who pities man, hath shown
A blessing for the eyes that weep.
The light of smiles shall fill again
The lids that overflow with tears;
And weary hours of woe and pain
Are promises of happier years.
There is a day of sunny rest
For every dark and troubled night:
And grief may hide an evening guest,
But joy shall come with early light.2
W. C. Bryant
Notice that life is divided into the night and the morning, or darkness and the light. Life is night or day, and night is sorrow, suffering and weeping, and day is joy delight and pleasure. All that is negative is the night, and all that is positive is the day or the morning. Night is a part of life in this world, but joy comes in the morning as the beginning of an eternal day. Our focus in any nighttime experience is to be on that morning that God promises us an eternal day of rejoicing. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. Alexander Maclaren has an excellent paragraph on this text. He wrote, "There is an obvious antithesis in the first part of this verse, between "His anger" and "His favor." Probably there is a similar antithesis between "a moment" and "life." For, although the word rendered "life" does not usually mean a lifetime, it may have that signification, and the evident intention of contrast seems to require it here. So, then, the meaning of the first part of my text is, "the anger lasts for a moment; the favor lasts for a lifetime." The perpetuity of the one, and the brevity of the other, are the psalmist's thought. Then, if we pass to the second part of the text, you will observe that there is there also a double antithesis. "Weeping" is set over against "joy"; the "night" against the "morning." And the first of these two contrasts is the more striking if we observe that the word "joy" means, literally, "a joyful shout," so that the voice which was lifted in weeping is conceived of as now being heard in exultant praise. Then, still further, the expression "may endure" literally means "come to lodge." So that Weeping and Joy are personified. Two guests come; one, dark-robed and approaching at the fitting season for such, "the night." The other bright, coming with all things fresh and sunny, in the dewy morn. The guest of the night is Weeping; the guest that takes its place in the morning is Gladness. The two clauses, then, of my text suggest substantially the same thought, and that is the persistence of joy and the transitoriness of sorrow. The whole is a loaf out of the psalmist's own experience."
David had to suffer the anger of God in his life, for he sinned like all of us, and in some cases worse than most of us. However, he did come to realize that God's anger is really another form of love. A father who loves his child cannot just ignore them when they defy him and do what he forbids. He must give them a time of weeping in punishment, or they will never correct their ways. Our very weeping in a part of love at work. I like that way pastor R. B. Brindley put it-"Another thing suggested by this passage is, that not only is His Divine anger consistent with Divine love, but given the fact that this love of God is love to free beings, to beings who are sinning continually, we may say that anger is absolutely essential to righteous love. God is the eternal righteousness as well as the eternal love. Calvary is the transcendent revelation to the world of the Divine love, but it is also the transcendent revelation of Divine righteousness. Because God is righteous God is angry. He is angry with the wicked, with corruption, impurity, cruelty, selfishness, falsehood, injustice, oppression, envy, hatred, murder, strife. What parent that truly loves his child will let that child flagrantly and persistently sin and not punish him? The rod is often a fitter emblem of love than a kiss." The point is, night or day, weeping or rejoicing, we are still under the love of God. So, with deep insight we can even be rejoicing in our time of weeping, because we are weeping because God loves us enough to not let us get by with persistent folly. In anger He sets us on a better path for our sake and His glory. It may be hard to grasp, but this is true positive thinking, for everything God does is for our good, even if it involves a night of weeping. Mom or day may scold you in anger and even take a slap on your bottom to give you pain, but the bottom line is they do it in love to teach you to do what is right. If you see from their viewpoint the night of weeping is yours because they love you. If you see this, you can wake up in the morning and face the new day in a spirit of joy that you are so loved. Thank God for the anger that causes you weeping, for that is love in action for your good. We may be down in the night, but we rise with the dawn and rejoice in the morning because we awake with a deeper understanding of why love can often hurt us. Anyone who loves you will hurt you to prevent you from folly that will damage you.
Look at the context of this verse in psalm 30,
1 I will exalt you, Lord,
for you lifted me out of the depths
and did not let my enemies gloat over me.
2 Lord my God, I called to you for help,
and you healed me.
3 You, Lord, brought me up from the realm of the dead;
you spared me from going down to the pit.
4 Sing the praises of the Lord, you his faithful people;
praise his holy name.
5 For his anger lasts only a moment,
but his favor lasts a lifetime;
weeping may stay for the night,
but rejoicing comes in the morning.
David has been to hell and back. He was in the depths of sorrow, and he needed help and healing. God came to his rescue and lifted him up sparing his fall into the pit of depression. He could now sing and praise the Lord, for his morning had come and he was on top of the world with joy and rejoicing. He did not escape all of the negatives of life, but he survived them by God's grace and made it through the dark night to the morning of rejoicing. That is what biblical positive thinking is all about. It is about trusting God in the worst of times knowing that His goal is always joy in the morning no matter how dark the night of weeping. All through his Psalms David tells of both sorrow and joy in his life, but in the end, he always chooses to sing of joy that comes in the morning. Biblical positive thinking does not deny the reality of the negative, but instead, chooses the reality of the end God has chosen for His own. As Jesus told His disciples in John 16:33, “In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.” Always take heart, for the end of all God's stories end with joy. The poet urges us to make a choice of either the night of weeping or the day of joy.
I pray you, Sadness, leave me soon,
In sweet invention thou art poor!
Thy sister, Joy can make ten songs
While thou art making four.
One hour with thee is sweet enough;
But when we find the whole day gone
And no created thing is left --
We mourn the evil done.
Thou art too slow to shape thy thoughts
In stone, on canvas, or in song;
But Joy, being full of active heat,
Must do some deed ere long.
Thy sighs are gentle, sweet thy tears;
But if thou canst not help a man
To prove in substance what he feels --
Then give me Joy, who can.
Therefore, sweet Sadness, leave me soon,
Let thy bright sister, Joy, come more;
For she can make ten lovely songs
While thou art making four.
William Henry Davies
The whole point of the cross and the empty tomb are to illustrate that joy overcomes all sorrow. Jesus went through hell for us on the cross, but He did it to deliver us from hell. Sin would lead us to the darkest night of eternal absence of God, but Jesus paid the price for our hell deserving sins, and rose from the dead bringing eternal light into prominence. Joy came in the morning when Jesus rose and conquered sin and death. Paul made much of this Easter morning joy. "When the perishable has been clothed with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: “Death has been swallowed up in victory.” “Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O death, is your sting?” The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters, stand firm. Let nothing move you. Always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain."(1 Corinthians 15:54-58). Christians get discouraged all the time in ministry, and that is why they need constant reminding that we need a reason to never give up and have hope. That is the point of all that the Bible is constantly teaching. Never give up because rejoicing will be coming in the morning. Everything will work out for good and victory, and we will come rejoicing bringing in the sheeves. Victory and joy is a promise and we need to trust this promise as we face the many nights of weeping that life can bring to us.
The Hebrew word for joy and rejoicing is Rinnah, and it is sometimes translated "a ringing cry of proclamation." It is a joy of celebration and a time of strong emotion that motivates people to shout out their praise to God. Here are a few examples-
Job 33:26 NIV "then that person can pray to God and find favor with him, they will see God’s face and shout for joy; he will restore them to full well-being."
Psalm 20:5 NIV "May we shout for joy over your victory and lift up our banners in the name of our God."
Psalm 33:3 NIV 3 "Sing to him a new song; play skillfully, and shout for joy."
Psalm 35:27 NIV 27"May those who delight in my vindication shout for joy and gladness; may they always say, “The LORD be exalted, who delights in the well-being of his servant.”
Psalm 47:1 NIV 1 "Clap your hands, all you nations; shout to God with cries of joy."
Psalm 71:23 NIV 23 'My lips will shout for joy when I sing praise to you— I whom you have delivered."
There are many more such texts of shouting for joy, and you will notice that they often come because the shouter has been delivered, vindicated, and restored. They had to go through a tough situation and be delivered before they could shout for joy. The shout comes after the doubt and the pout during the time of suffering. It is the victory over the enemy or some affliction that leads to this shout of victory and praise. The night was not here to stay, but as God promised it has passed away, and now we rise with a new day and shout with joy. This is one of the key pictures that God's Word gives us over and over to encourage us to never give up to the negatives of life, but press on in hope of that new morning that will motivate us to shout out the praise of God with a heart filled with joy. Peter sums it up like this-"Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that can never perish, spoil or fade. This inheritance is kept in heaven for you, who through faith are shielded by God’s power until the coming of the salvation that is ready to be revealed in the last time. In all this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials" (1 Peter 1:3-6).Weeping, sorrow and suffering are real words, but the last word in God's Word is joy and rejoicing. In God's plan your final word will be a shout of joy.
From the sunshine of Thy dwelling
Thou hast sent me this new day,
Laden with Thy love excelling,
Tidings of Thy glory telling
To refresh my way.
Good and perfect gifts are lying
Wrapt within its folds of light,
Pledges of a faith undying,
That earth’s sorrow and its sighing
Will but last a night.
G. Matheson
