The Biblical Illustrator
Psalms 97:12
Rejoice in the Lord, ye righteous.
The nature of religious joy
I. What is meant by our rejoicing in the lord.
1. It signifies that cordial pleasure, which the serious and devout mind takes in the meditation of God’s existence, perfection, and providence.
2. It signifies our receiving a very great delight from the discoveries of His will to us in His Word.
3. It imports our rejoicing in the interests which He has been graciously pleased to give His people in Himself; and in those comfortable and honourable relations which we stand in to Him.
4. We rejoice in the Lord when we rejoice in His continual protection, guidance and influence.
5. Rejoicing in His gracious intercourses with us in the duties of Divine worship, is another thing intended.
6. The lively hope, to which all those are begotten who love God, of fulness of joy at His right hand, and of rivers of pleasure for evermore, makes them to rejoice in the Lord with joy unspeakable.
II. Rejoicing in the Lord signifies that our joy in God is superior to all our other joys; otherwise it is a joy unworthy of Him, and no way, or not savingly, profitable to us. We can build nothing on such a feeble joy; we have no ground to regard that joy as a grace and fruit of the Spirit, which is extinguished by the joys and pleasures of sense; or so suppressed and overpowered by them, as to have no considerable and lasting effect.
III. Whatever else we rejoice in, we are to rejoice in such a manner that we may be properly said to rejoice in the Lord, even when other things are the immediate occasions of our joy.
1. We rejoice in the Lord in the use and enjoyment of other things, by considering those things which yield us an innocent satisfaction, as the gifts of God, the effects of His unbounded munificence, and the marks of His creative and providential goodness.
2. Our joy in the Lord should be the chief spring of our joy in all the blessings and advantages with which His goodness hath supplied us.
3. The good man’s joy in the Lord regulates his joy and delight in other things; being at once an incentive to it as far as it is lawful, and a restraint upon it when it would pass beyond its proper bounds.
4. Then do we rejoice in the Lord, when other joys lift our hearts to Him, are considered and improved as motives to greater diligence and zeal in serving Him here, and increase our desires of enjoying Him hereafter.
IV. Our rejoicing in the Lord, to be worthy of Him, must be constant and permanent: it must not vary as our outward circumstances vary, but subsist the same in all the changes of life. It may be we are deprived of health, or perhaps have trouble in the world; however that be, we are still to rejoice in God.
V. Thus to rejoice in the Lord is both the privilege and the duty of the righteous or sincerely religious.
1. It is their privilege.
(1) It is a very great privilege and happiness to be able to rejoice in the Lord. The object of this joy is the most excellent in the whole compass of being; the joy itself resides in the highest region of the soul; and the effects of it are of all most extensive, beneficial, and lasting.
(2) This privilege is peculiar to the righteous, or sincerely religious; they only can rejoice in God, and they only have a right to do it.
2. To rejoice in the Lord is the duty of those whose distinguishing privilege it is that they can do it. Let me name some of those things which Christians should practise, in order to their being in an actual disposition or preparedness of mind to rejoice in the Lord.
(1) It is their duty to make their calling and election sure, and by an impartial inquiry into the state of their souls, to decide the great question upon which their peace so much depends, viz. Whose they are, and whom they serve; for if they are the children of God, and serve Him in sincerity, nothing else is necessary to their rejoicing in God, but their knowing it.
(2) It is their duty to remove out of the way whatever things they have found, or their reason tells them are hindrances to this holy joy; particularly these two, a multitude of worldly cares, and a too free indulgence to worldly joys and pleasures.
(3) It is the duty of Christians to call upon their souls to rejoice in the Lord. They are not to allow themselves in a heartless melancholy frame; they must not give way to it, as if it were a temper of mind acceptable to God, and creditable to religion; but must endeavour to chide themselves out of it, expostulating with their own souls as (Psalms 42:11).
(4) They must make this a frequent petition in their addresses to the throne of grace, that God would uphold them with His free Spirit, and enable them to rejoice in Him: they should entreat Him who is the Father of lights to dart some beams of heavenly light into their souls, that they may not sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death; but walk and rejoice in the light of life. (H. Bonar, D.D.)
The duty of rejoicing
Christians are ready enough to speak of the privilege of being joyful. They regard joy (and with perfect truth, for it is so reckoned by St. Paul) as one of the fruits of the Spirit; and they are too apt to consider as fruits what they may be permitted to taste, rather than what they may be bidden to do. But throughout Scripture joyfulness is just as much a commanded thing as a promised, even as temperance is a commanded thing, and justice and charitableness, though all the while these may be elsewhere exhibited as fruits of the Spirit, forasmuch as it is only through the operations of the Spirit that these qualities can be produced in such form or maintained in such strength, as a righteous God will approve. But being a commanded thing, and not merely a promised, the being joyful is as actually a duty--a duty to be attempted and laboured at by the Christian, as the being temperate or just or faithful or charitable. Yet how little is this thought of, even by those who are in the main jealous and zealous for the commandments of the Lord! God designed and God constructed religion for a cheerful, happy-making thing; and, as though He knew that had He made joyfulness matter only of privilege, numbers would have wanted it, and would have excused the want under the plea of unworthiness, He made it matter of precept, that all might be ready to strive for its attainment. We wish you, then, to consider whether, when rejoicing is thus presented to you under the aspect of a duty, you may not find ground for accusing yourselves of having neglected a duty. Have you not been far too well contented with a state of compunction and contrition and doubt, in place of striving to advance into the glorious liberty of the children of God, and the full and felt appropriation of those rich provisions of the Gospel, with which it is hard to see how any believer can be sad, and without which it is hard to see how any one who knows himself immortal can be cheerful? And has not this very much sprung from your overlooking joyfulness as a duty to be attempted, and fixing your thoughts on it as a privilege to be bestowed? You may have often said to yourselves, “Oh! that we had a greater measure of joy and peace in believing;” but have you laboured for this greater measure? Have you wrestled with sadness as with a sin? Have you argued with yourselves on the wrongness of being depressed? Have you made memory do its part in telling up God’s gracious acts? Have you made hope do its part in arraying God’s glorious promises? If you have not thus endeavoured to “rejoice in the Lord,” you are chargeable with having neglected a positive duty, just as much as if you had omitted to use the known means of grace, or to strive after conformity of life to God’s holy law; and the continued spiritual gloom which you find so distressing, may not be more an evidence of disobedience to a command, than the punishment with which God ordains that the disobedience should be followed. And do not for a moment think that you yourselves alone are the sufferers, if rejoicing be a duty and the duty be neglected. The believer has to give an exhibition--a representation of religion; it rests with him to furnish practical evidence of what religion is, and of what religion does. If he fall into sin, then he brings disgrace upon religion, and strengthens many in their persuasion of its having no reality, no worth, as a restraining, sanctifying system. If he be always dispirited and downcast, then he equally brings disgrace upon religion, and strengthens many in their persuasion of its having no reality and no worth as an elevating, happy-making system. Yet there may be a lingering suspicion that the “rejoicing in the Lord,” so distinctly commanded, is not always possible; that, like some other precepts, it rather marks out what we are bound to aim at than what we may hope to attain. And we may perhaps safely admit that, compassed with infirmities, exposed to trials, and harassed by enemies, the Christian must alternate, in a measure, between gladness and gloom; nay, that since it is more than we can hope, that he may never commit sin, it is more than we can wish that he should never feel sad. Yet is it to be strenuously held that there is such provision in the Gospel for the continued joyfulness of the believer in Christ, that if his joy be ever interrupted, it ought only to be as the sun’s brightness may be dimmed by the passing cloud, which quickly leaves the firmament as radiant as before? When betrayed into sin, but only then, has the real cause for sorrow; and if he have no heart for sin, and is a true Christian (sin being that which he abhors, although he may be betrayed into its commission), he will indeed grieve at the having failed in obedience, but quickly remembering the power of the Mediator’s intercession, his “heaviness may endure for a night, but joy should return to him in the morning.” And it would seem as if the latter clause in our text were intended to meet the objection that there are causes of sorrow which must prevent continued rejoicing. Not content with bidding the righteous “rejoice in the Lord,” he singles out one of the attributes, one of the distinguishing properties of God, and requires that it be made a subject of special thanksgiving--“Give thanks at the remembrance of His holiness.” We suppose that by adding to the general call for rejoicing, a call for thanksgiving at the remembrance of God’s holiness--that property at which the timid might feel as though it almost stood in their way--the psalmist wished to show that there was no sufficient reason in the circumstances of the true believer why he should not habitually exult in the Lord. There is nothing, it appears, in the attributes of God to prevent, nay, there is nothing but what must encourage, rejoicing. And is it not too self-evident a proposition, to require the being supported by argument, that if there be nothing in God in which we may not rejoice, there can be nothing in the universe at which we ought to be sad? We may conclude, therefore, that it is not asking too much from the believer,--a redeemed man, a baptized man, a justified man, a man for whose good “all things work together,” a man who may say that all things are his, “whether life or death, things present or things to come,”--it is not asking too much from him, to ask that his habitual mood be that of gladness, and that he present religion to the world as a peaceful, cheerful, happy-making thing. (H. Melvill, B.D.)
Rejoicing in God
There is no duty more reasonable, more becoming, and agreeable; and yet there is none more generally misunderstood, less inquired into, and worse regulated, than that of rejoicing. Joy seems to be the peculiar privilege of innocent and happy creatures; when, therefore, we consider ourselves as sinners, as poor, and naked, and miserable; polluted with the stain, and loaded with the guilt, of our iniquities; clothed with infirmities, beset with enemies, born to trouble, exposed to danger, always liable, and sometimes obliged, to grief and sorrow; we may be apt upon this melancholy view to think that joy is not made for man, and least of all for Christians; and be tempted to understand our Saviour in the most strict and rigorous sense, when He tells His disciples that they shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice. The methods which men usually take to express their joy, seem, at first view, to give the good Christian still farther objections against it; and when he observes that levity of mind, and vanity of thoughts; that excess, intemperance, and licentiousness, which it too often occasions; he thinks he may well be justified, if, with Solomon, he says of laughter that it is mad; and of mirth, what doth it? But these seeming objections against this duty of rejoicing will easily be removed; the nature of it will be fully opened; the benefits we may hope to reap from it will clearly be discerned; and we shall soon be satisfied that joy and gladness is as suitable to our nature and religion, as it is agreeable to our desires and inclinations; if we consider carefully the exhortation in the text.
I. What it is to rejoice in the Lord. It implies our making God the chief, the supreme, and adequate object of our joy. The true nature of joy consists in that agreeable serenity and satisfaction of mind, which we feel upon the presence and fruition of some good. Good, therefore, is the proper object of our joy; good, not in itself alone, but good to us; such as repairs, preserves, advances, exalts, perfects our nature. The good we are to rejoice in must be full, sufficient, and satisfactory; proportionable to the desires, the wants, the necessities; and suitable to the inclinations, the condition, and circumstances of those who are to be delighted with it. It must be an effectual, prevalent, and sovereign good; able to remove from us, not only the present pressure, but the danger, the possibility, or at least the fear of evil. It must be a substantial, lasting, durable good; immortal, like the soul, that is to be satisfied; ever yielding fresh delight, and yet never to be exhausted: in a word, it must be our own proper good; a good, which we may be able to attain, and sure to hold fast; a good always present with us, and never to be taken from us. Now, on all these accounts God alone is the proper and adequate object of our joy. It is He only whom we can truly look upon as a pure, perfect, suitable, sovereign, eternal, and, what is still more, our own, proper, peculiar God. Our joy must be fixed on Him, as our universal, chief, and ultimate good; and upon other things as occasional, subordinate, and instrumental to that.
II. We lawfully may, and are in duty bound, so to rejoice. True joy, when it is founded upon a right principle, directed to its proper object, kept within its due compass, and not suffered to exceed either in its measure, or in its duration, is not only lawful, but commendable; not only what we may, without sin, allow ourselves in, but what we cannot, without folly, abridge ourselves of. Pleasure and good, pain and evil, are but different expressions for one and the same thing. No action is ever forbidden us, but what, upon the whole, brings more pain than pleasure; none is commanded us, but what, all things considered, yields greater degrees of pleasure than it does of pain. And it can never, therefore, be an objection against anything we undertake, that it will cause joy; nor a commendation of any action, that it will produce sorrow. True it is, the great duty of repentance does in the very nature of it include sorrow; but then the end of this sorrow is, that we may be put into a condition of rejoicing the more abundantly. The sense of our sins must make us weep and lament; but then our sorrow will be soon turned into joy. Though our conversion hath its pangs, yet we shall no more remember the anguish, for joy that a new man is born into the world. Whatever reasons we may have for our grief and sorrow, they are mightily overbalanced by those motives that recommend joy and gladness. If the sense of our manifold infirmities, our heinous sins, our grievous sufferings, our violent temptations; if the prosperity of our and God’s enemies; if the calamities of our brethren, and His faithful servants lie hard upon us, and may seem to justify and require a more than ordinary degree of grief; yet in the Lord we have still sufficient matter of rejoicing; of rejoicing in God, who is our Creator, our Preserver, our Father, our Friend; of rejoicing in Christ, in His person, in His office, in the graces He vouchsafes us, in the light of His countenance, in the hopes of His glory, in the greatness of His love, in the exceeding riches of His pardoning mercy, in the fidelity of His promises, in the efficacy of His intercession, in His readiness to assist, in His power to support us in time of need. (Bishop Smalridge.)
Give thanks at the remembrance of His holiness.--
Giving thanks at the remembrance of God’s holiness
This command is addressed to the “righteous,” not because they only ought to obey it, but because they only can obey it, and because, indeed, only they can understand it. If one thing more than another can show the entire and radical change which the Spirit of God, in the hour of regeneration, works upon the hearts of sinners, it is, that after this change has passed upon them they are not merely reconciled to God’s holiness--cannot merely bear the thought of it, even when apprehended far more clearly and powerfully than before--but regard it with complacency and delight.
I. What is implied in this duty.
1. Our being in a state of reconciliation with God. Before we can delight in, and give thanks for the holiness of God, we must be at peace with Him,--we must believe that the flame of consuming wrath which His holiness kindled against us for sin has been quenched by the blood of His own Son poured forth on our behalf,--we must believe that His holiness, which was so awfully against us for sin, is now for us and on our side, because all its demands have been gloriously met by Him who was made “sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him”--in short, we must be persuaded that, pacified and propitiated towards us through the atonement of Jesus, God’s holy eye no longer rests on us with the unpitying fury of an avenging Judge, but beams on us with the purest kindness and love of a merciful Father.
2. That we have a new and holy nature; for otherwise we can neither understand nor appreciate the holiness of God. And such a new and holy nature has been wrought by God’s own Spirit in all who have been born again. They “have put on the new man which, after God,”--that is, in the likeness of God,--“is created in righteousness and true holiness.” They have been made “partakers of the Divine nature, having escaped the pollution that is in the world through lust.” Possessed of this Divine nature, they begin, in their own finite and imperfect measure, to hate sin as God hates it; they begin, in their own finite and imperfect measure, to love holiness as God loves it; and therefore they remember God with supreme complacency and delight, because they see in Him the perfection of that which their nature loves and approves--the perfection of an absolute and ineffable holiness.
3. The remembrance and contemplation of God’s holiness as this is exhibited in the person and cross of His Son. It is when we behold God subjecting Him who is the partner of His glory and throne, by whom also He made the worlds, to the awful humiliation of taking the nature and the place of His guilty creatures; it is when we survey the sufferings of the world’s Creator and Lord under His Father’s hand,--the sorrow unto death, the bloody sweat, the strong cryings and tears unto Him that was able to save Him from death, the slow death of shame and woe; and it is when we remember that such suffering on the part of the Divine Sufferer was all absolutely necessary ere God could pardon a single sin, or allow a single sinner to approach the footstool of His mercy:--that we learn how holy, holy, holy is the Lord of Hosts.
II. The grounds or reasons of this duty. Why may the righteous well give thanks at the remembrance of God’s holiness?
1. They may well praise God for it, as that which gives lustre and glory to all His other perfections. His holiness is the crown of all His perfections. It ensures, if we may so say, that they shall be exercised in a way worthy of Himself. Oh, when we think that our God is holy, that His wisdom is holy, that His power is holy, that His mercy is holy, that His providence is holy, that all His acts and manifestations of Himself in His government of the universe are, and ever must be, perfectly holy, and worthy of Himself,--well does it become us to join with every creature in heaven, and give thanks at the remembrance of His holiness.
2. The righteous may well give thanks at the remembrance of God’s holiness, because the display and vindication of it in the work of their redemption pacify their conscience, and secure their everlasting safety. If He were not absolutely holy, I might well tremble in perpetual terror, lest, after having punished sin in Christ, my Surety, He should refuse to pardon it to me; and lest, having received the price of my redemption from Christ, He should yet deny some of its blessings to me. But well may I give thanks at the remembrance of His holiness, when I think that His absolute holiness is my security,--a security strong and abiding as His own unchangeable nature,--that, having accepted the price of my redemption at the hands of my glorious Surety, He will assuredly bestow on me all its blessings, from the pardon of my sin, to my full investiture with all the riches of glory.
3. The righteous may well give thanks at the remembrance of God’s holiness, when they remember that, however mysterious and trying God’s dealings towards them may be, they are all holy, and designed to promote their holiness.
4. The righteous may well give thanks at the remembrance of God’s holiness, because it is the security and pattern of their own ultimate holiness. You hate sin, O Christian, and long to be delivered from it. Think, then, that the God of your salvation infinitely hates sin, and that His infinite abhorrence of sin is a pledge that He will destroy its power and its being in every soul whom He loves. What comfort, when you are using the means of holiness,--often, as you fear, vainly and with little success,--to think that this is the will of God, even your sanctification; and that, when your will is thus coinciding and co-working with the will of the Omnipotent God, it cannot fail to reach the summit of its highest endeavour! O then, give thanks at the remembrance of His holiness! It is the pledge of the progress and perfection of yours. And not only so, but,--most elevating and ennobling thought of all,--it is the pattern of yours. Your duty is always your privilege; and God commands what He will certainly give, when He says, “As He who hath called you is holy,” etc. Jesus Christ is the brightness of His Father’s glory. He is the living manifestation of the brightness of the Father’s holiness; and is it not said, “We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is”? (James Smellie.).