Below is a listing of DOXOLOGY’s lectures and videos from our Insight in St. Louis, MO – September, 2016.
1. Always Rejoicing: Ecclesiastes and Beyond
John Kleinig opens his study on joy by distinguishing joy from happiness: happiness is a fleeting, self-focused mood that excludes sadness, while joy is a lasting state of the whole person, given from outside us by God and able to coexist with sorrow—as Paul is sorrowful yet always rejoicing. He announces a sweep from Ecclesiastes through the prophets to the New Testament, then grounds the Old Testament theology of joy in Deuteronomy, where God allots each Israelite land and makes the temple a place of rejoicing in His presence, with the festivals—especially Tabernacles—as occasions of God-given gladness. Turning to Ecclesiastes, he unpacks ‘breath of breaths’ as a picture of what is fleeting and beyond our grasp rather than meaningless, and reads the book’s counsels on enjoyment as pointing to daily meals and daily work as God’s hidden gifts. He argues that God gives joy in our work, not merely from it, and that this joy is the mark of the person who pleases God—available to every God-fearing person in the order of creation, not Christians only. Watch the lecture and read the transcript →
2. Always Rejoicing: Ecclesiastes and Beyond
Kleinig continues through Ecclesiastes’ observations on enjoyment, stressing that everything is beautiful in its time, so joy depends on right timing and on living in the present moment rather than chasing future possessions or freezing a good moment forever. He explains ‘eternity in their hearts’ as the God-given restlessness that keeps leading us from lesser joys to greater ones, each earthly joy a foretaste of heaven, and names the devil as the killjoy who pulls us out of the moment into stress and bitterness while the Holy Spirit is the giver of joy. Working through the key term ‘lot,’ he ties the passage to Luther’s teaching on vocation: God allots each person a lifespan, work, food, leisure, and spouse, together with the joy proper to that station and time, so contentment means receiving one’s lot with gladness. He adds that God gives three further capacities without which the gifts are useless—appetite, acceptance of one’s lot, and the power to rejoice—and, drawing on a visit to the aged, stroke-disabled Norman Nagel, shows joy hidden under its opposite and finally resting in the hope of the resurrection and the feast to come. Watch the lecture and read the transcript →
3. Always Rejoicing: Ecclesiastes and Beyond
Kleinig works through the closing counsel of Ecclesiastes, treating its call to eat, drink, and rejoice in one’s labor as God’s own recommendation rather than resignation. He unpacks the picture of wearing a wreath every day—living the whole of ordinary life under God’s approval—and the seven and eight instructions that follow: keep walking through life, enjoy food and wine with a good conscience, dress and work wholeheartedly, and share life with one’s spouse. Reading the charge to the young, he argues that God brings us into judgment not chiefly for wrongdoing but for failing to enjoy the gifts set before us. He frames all of this as first-article gifts God gives to every person—life’s days, food, work, marriage, and the capacity to receive joy—closing with Paul at Lystra and 1 Timothy on godliness with contentment and God richly providing everything to enjoy. Watch the lecture and read the transcript →
4. Always Rejoicing: Ecclesiastes and Beyond
Kleinig turns from earthly to heavenly joy, tracing exultation through Isaiah, the Psalms, and Zechariah. He reads Psalm 16’s fullness of joy in God’s presence as fulfilled in Christ, who passes through death to life at the Father’s right hand and shares those gifts with the church. Isaiah 25’s feast of rich food and aged wine on Mount Zion he preaches as the Lord’s Supper celebrating the swallowing up of death, and he handles Isaiah 51’s imagery of God’s victory over the powers of chaos as the way God brings his ransomed people home rejoicing. The striking reversal he presses is that in the age of redemption God himself rejoices over Zion as a bridegroom over his bride, so that a circuit of joy opens—God delighting in his people, his people delighting in him. Watch the lecture and read the transcript →
5. Always Rejoicing: Ecclesiastes and Beyond
Kleinig follows the theme of joy through the New Testament, noting the shift from a word meaning good mood to one naming the deeper gift Christ brings. He moves from the angels’ gospel of great joy and the doxology of Luke, through Mary, John the Baptist, the wise men, Zacchaeus, and the entry into Jerusalem, to the disciples’ Easter joy at the wounds and word of the risen Lord and their exultation at the ascension and Pentecost meals. Responding to a question, he defends instrumental and liturgical music as fitting expression of inexpressible joy. He then expounds John’s teaching on complete joy: Christ brings the Father’s love so that his joy is fulfilled in his disciples as they abide in his love, keep his commandments, ask in his name, and love one another. Watch the lecture and read the transcript →
6. Always Rejoicing: Ecclesiastes and Beyond
Kleinig treats the practical nature of Christian joy, beginning with Philippians 4 as invitation rather than command—communal, grounded in the Lord’s nearness, and joined to prayer and thanksgiving. He locates joy as a gift and fruit of the Holy Spirit received by faith, not self-generated feeling, and shows how it is meant to overflow through the church into the world. The hardest teaching he presses is that heavenly joy coexists with and is deepened by sorrow: Christians rejoice under persecution, in weakness, and in affliction because the greatest joy is hidden under the cross, citing Luther and a study of Luther’s care for the depressed. He warns against telling grieving people to move on, distinguishes godly sorrow, and closes with Augustine and Luther on joy as something God works in us—a joyful suffering we receive rather than manufacture. Watch the lecture and read the transcript →