The Joy of the Lord'.

"This day is sacred to the Lord your God. Do not mourn or weep. Go and celebrate with a feast of choice foods and sweet drinks, and share gifts of food with people who have nothing prepared. This is a sacred day before our Lord. Do not be dejected and sad, for the joy of the Lord is your strength!" Nehemiah 8:9-10

"Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice!" Philippians 4:4

FOREWORD
Far more earnestly than we know, does God want us to be happy. It grieves a true human father to see his children unhappy. Our heavenly Father is pained and disappointed when his children on the earth are discontented and anxious, or when they do not rejoice. This little book is a call to joy, to Christian joy, and to joy that will make joy in others!

JOY is the highest attainment of life. It comes from godly living—and is marred by sin. It is music without a note of discord. It ismotion without a trace of friction. It is health without the slightest sickness. It is pleasure unalloyed.

Says one, "Joy is the greatest paradox of life. It can grow in any soil, and live under any conditions. It defies environment. It comes from within; it is the revelation of the depths of the inner life—as light and heat proclaim the sun from which they radiate. Joy consists not of having—but of being; not of possessing—but of enjoying. It is the warm glow of a heart, at peace with itself."

Joy is deeper than happiness. Happiness is the fruit of prosperous conditions. It is the outcome of fortuitous happenings, of favorable circumstances. Joy is independent of circumstances. It dwells in the heart—as a never-failing fountain. Happiness laughs when the sun shines—but grows sad when clouds gather. Joy sings on in all weathers and in all experiences.

Joy is the ideal of Christian life. God is joyful; we cannot conceive of him as unhappy. As he is love—so he is also joy, and his joy, like all his attributes, is infinite and eternal.

Only once in the Bible is God said to sing, and then it is in his love for his own people. "He will rejoice over you with joy; he will rest in his love; he will joy over you with singing." The thought is exquisite in its meaning. God's joy never fails. He is never dismayed or disturbed by calamities. It was said of Christ, "He will not fail nor be discouraged." Life's mysteries break our joy, for we cannot understand their meaning. But there are no mysteries with God, and therefore his joy is never dimmed.

To grow toward God's likeness and become more and more filled with his life—is to grow in joy. It would seem that few of those who are followers of Christ reach the life of joy, to which the Master calls them. How many even of godly people, are ever cast down! Our Christian faith claims that we never should be discouraged, never should lose our gladness. But how many of us live up to this profession? Yet should we not do so? Is God not able to help us to rejoice always? If it is our privilege and our duty to attain a joy which shall never lose its song, is God not able to help us to reach this height? We say he never requires of us an impossibility. Everything God asks us to do—we can do through his help. Surely it is not too hard for God to enable us to live a life of joy.

This is not a New Testament lesson only; it is taught also in the Old Testament. The ancient festivals were full of song and gladness. On the most joyous of them all, the feast of tabernacles, they made the coverings of branches so thin, so open, that the stars could be seen through them, suggesting that nothing should ever hide the stars from our eyes. It was in a great festival of Old Testament times, that this lesson of joy received one of its most impressive enforcements. It was after the return of the captives and the rebuilding of Jerusalem. The law had been read, and the reading produced weeping. "All the people wept, when they heard the words of the law!" God's word is not intended to make people sad. Just why it produced this effect that day we are not told. Perhaps the people had not heard the law read for a long time—and it proved painful reading because it reminded them of their sins. The law showed them the holiness of God, with its impeccable purity—and as they looked into the mirror they saw their own faults and imperfections and the vision alarmed them. This grieved them, made them ashamed, and they wept.

But the weeping was not pleasing to Nehemiah. Sadness was not the effect he wished to see in the people. It was not in harmony with the day. "This day is holy unto Jehovah your God; mourn not, nor weep." The day belonged to God, and he does not want any day of his stained with tears. Sorrow is always sacred to God. He looks upon it with compassion. He enters into it with sympathy. Pain and trouble in his children, appeal to the heart of God with wondrous directness. We know that he is never indifferent to any sadness.

But the weeping of the people in this case was because of their sins. Is it not right to grieve over wrong things we have done? We know that penitence is always pleasing to God. "You do not delight in sacrifice, or I would bring it; you do not take pleasure in burnt offerings. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." There is no more precious thing on earth—than a tear shed in sorrow for sin. God loves such weeping, because it tells of a heart returning to him.

Yet the grief of the people that day was not approved by their teachers. It was not beautiful, they said. It was not in keeping with the spirit of the day. A great festival was in progress, and only joy was appropriate. "This day is holy unto Jehovah your God; mourn not, nor weep." There seems to have been something in their sorrow which was defiling. We remember that when the sons of Aaron had offered the strange fire and died before the Lord, Moses forbade any exhibition of grief over their tragic death. "Do not mourn by letting your hair hang loose or by tearing your clothes." Any expression of grief in the terrible circumstances, would have appeared to be a complaint against what God had done. They were not, by word, act, or look—to show anything but the most perfect submission to the divine judgment. These men had disobeyed God and had been stricken down because of their sin. There must be reverent and complete acquiescence even in the crushing grief. Besides, the priests were engaged in acts of divine worship which must not be interrupted even by the most bitter experiences of sorrow. Their service in the tabernacle was holy unto the Lord, and anything that would break into it would be sin. Duty must go on in the midst of deepest grief.

Nehemiah this day stilled the noise of the people's weeping and called them to enter into the joy of the occasion. "This day is sacred to the LORD your God. Do not mourn or weep! Go and enjoy choice food and sweet drinks, and send some to those who have nothing prepared. This day is sacred to our Lord. Do not grieve, for the joy of the LORD is your strength!"

A day devoted to the Lord should be a glad day. It is a day full of the presence of God, and the presence of God should not make us sad. It should not inspire dread and terror. There is nothing in God to make us fear or to cause us to grieve. God is love. He is not our enemy; he is our friend. He does not cherish thoughts of anger toward us—but thoughts of peace. It does not distress us to meet a human friend who has in his heart peace and good will toward us. A day with such a one, would never sadden us. We would not spend it weeping. It would seem strange indeed if when we enter our friend's presence, we should break out into wailing. The presence of God is sunshine; it is brightness. It hides no dangers. Its every influence is joy. It should inspire joy.

Some people are indeed afraid of God, but it is because they have wrong thoughts of him. A woman said "I am afraid of God—but I love Jesus Christ, and have no fear of him." This was because she misunderstood God. God was terror to her because she thought of him only as anger, justice, fury. She thought of God only as an avenger. She thought of Jesus as mercy and love. She supposed he had come to take us out of the hands of a wrathful God. She hated God—but loved Jesus Christ. Yet this is not the truth about God. It was God who loved the world and gave his Son to be its Savior. God and Christ are one. Christ is God revealed in human life. Christ is the mercy of God. God is our Father, having in him all tenderness, all compassion, all goodness. It is only when we misunderstand God, that we can be afraid of him. We cannot weep when we are in the presence of God, if we have the true thought of his gracious love to his people. Our sorrow will be swallowed up in the joy that the divine presence inspires in us.

We need to think of this when we are in grief. Perhaps the fact that we are Christians, does not always mean as much to us as it should in such experiences. Do we bear pain and trial differently from the way in which unbelievers do? When we have a great sorrow—do we stop to think of our relation to Christ and ask how we ought to bear ourselves as his friends? Does it ever occur to us that our excessive grief may not please God, that it may mar the beauty of our fellowship with him, that we may sin by indulging it overmuch? "This day is sacred to the LORD your God. Do not mourn or weep!"

We know that sorrow is sacred with God. "Blessed are those who mourn," runs the beatitude. "Comfort, comfort my people," is God's word to the messengers of his love, whom he sends out to the sad and suffering ones of earth. To those who are in sorrow, he gives the assurance, "As one whom his mother comforts—so will I comfort you."

The Bible is full of divine sympathy with human grief. When we lay our head upon God's Word, we feel the beating of a heart of infinite love and compassion. God hears our songs of joy—but He hears also the dropping of our tears, and the throbbing of our hearts when we suffer. He hears the cries and groans of His child—every pang of distress. It is a measureless comfort to us—to know that our Savior is able to sympathize with our weaknesses.

The gentle sympathy of God with our human weakness and pain—is one of the most marvelous qualities of the divine character, and is infinite in its comfort. To know that God sympathizes with us in our every pang, that He cares when we are in distress, brings Him very near to us and makes our pain very sacred.

We must not think that God is angry with our tears, or forbids us to grieve. Jesus Himself wept when His friend had died and when He sat with the sorrowing ones and saw their anguish. He sympathizes with us all in our pain. It is not grief which He condemns or forbids—but excessive grief, grief that is unsubmissive to His holy and sovereign will. Even the grace of God does not make our hearts less tender. It does not dull our feelings so that pain hurts us less. We do not suffer less in our sorrow—because we love Christ.

One way God helps us—is by making us strong to bear pain and to endure suffering. He also brings the great truths and facts of Scripture before us, in such a way that we see how blessing and good will come to us out of pain and loss, and receive the strength that divine grace imparts.

Comfort is a reality—not a mere sentiment. Sorrow is not actually taken away—it is turned into joy. Our trouble is not removed from us, and our senses are not dulled and made incapable of pain. We weep still—but our tears are struck through now with the light of heaven. "I will give them comfort and joy, instead of sorrow." Jeremiah 31:13. "You shall be sorrowful—but your sorrow shall be turned into joy." John 16:20

"He comforts us in all our affliction!" 2 Corinthians 1:4. We sin, therefore, in our sorrow—if we refuse to be comforted. We are God's children and our Father's love includes all the affairs of our lives. He watches over us with infinite affection. When He ordains us to suffer—He will not let the suffering hurt us, however painful the experience may be. In all times of danger—He hides us away in the secret of His love where no evil can touch us. His purpose always is to use pain to make us better, to purify and enrich our lives, to mature our graces. He wants us to submit ourselves in confidence and trust, to His holy will and to accept our sufferings with cheerful spirit. "Mourn not, nor weep," is ever the message of divine love. Sadness should never be the mood of God's children, however painful their experiences. Refusing to be comforted, is never Christlike.

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