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‘We are helpers of your joy.’
2Co_1:24
There is great force in joy and gladness. Foreigners can never understand why our soldiers are not taught to sing on the march—the Germans and Russians do. Christianity is not the ‘worship of sorrow.’ It does not worship sorrow, it transforms it. It teaches that it is a blessing and not a curse to every believer in Christ. Christianity conquered at first on account of the love and joy and hope it brought, for certainly there were never brighter, gladder souls than those early Christians. They sung their way through sorrow and death.
Let me tell you three simple things about this joy.
I. It is found in Christ.—He is the One in Whom alone ‘true joys are to be found.’ For example, Goethe the German philosopher possessed splendid health and a sufficiency of this world’s goods, in fact, he was the most cultured man in Europe, and yet he wrote in 1824: ‘I can affirm that during the whole of my seventy-five years I have not had four weeks of genuine well-being.’ When he was dying the great philosopher cried, ‘More light! More light!’
II. This joy is independent of earthly things.—‘And it came to pass after a while, that the brook dried up’ (1Ki_17:7). So reads the history of all earthly things. The happy home is invaded by the angel with the veiled face for Lazarus sleeps.
III. This joy reaches beyond the gates of time.—As to the future, without Christ there is no hope, with Christ there need be no fear.
IV. Never forget where joy begins.—It is born at the Cross.
If we would be useful to others we must be happy ourselves. If we are sour and inconsistent and malicious, men will say, like Donovan, ‘If this is Christianity, I’ll have none of it.’ Remember how David prayed: ‘Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation; and uphold me with Thy free Spirit.’ What then? ‘Then will I teach transgressors Thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto Thee.’
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Rev. F. Harper.
Illustrations(1) ‘When the Revised New Testament was being published, there lay a girl at the point of death who had solaced her heart with the text, “To be with Christ, which is far better.” They told her that there would be many changes in the new translation, and a great fear came upon her that her text would disappear. When they brought her the New Testament, she found, as she had expected, that it was altered, but, as she did not expect, it was made even more empathic by the change: it now read, “To be with Christ, which is very far better,” and straightway she fell to praising the Lord.’
(2) ‘John Bunyan tells how, when Christian came in sight of the Cross, his burden fell into the deep grave at its foot, and “three shining ones came to him, and saluted him with ‘Peace be to thee.’ So the first said to him, ‘Thy sins be forgiven thee,’ the second stripped him of his rags, and clothed him with change of raiment, the third also set a mark on his forehead, and gave him a roll with a seal upon it.… Then Christian gave three leaps for joy, and went on his way singing.” That picture is true to spiritual fact.’