The joy of faith.
"Let all those … rejoice," etc. People who look on Bible religion as gloomy and joyless would do well to study the Book of Psalms. It is worth note that in this one book of Scripture the words "joy," "joyful," "glad," "gladness," "rejoice," occur more than ninety times. Truly the "river that maketh glad the city of God" is a full, pure, deep-flowing stream. Idle mirth, empty-headed and hollow-hearted gaiety (Ecclesiastes 7:6), you do not, indeed, find characterizing the psalmists or prophets. But for full-hearted, clear-voiced joy—the joy that sings on its pilgrim-way because it sees the rainbow in the cloud, and hears the Saviour's voice in the storm—there is no joy like that which the text speaks of—the joy of faith.
I. IT IS A GREAT JOY TO TRUST GOD. Trust is an indispensable element of a happy life. A suspicious, distrustful soul is like one walking in a fog, chilling, perplexing, distorting. One of a trustful nature who has no one to trust is like a lonely traveller, bunny and homeless. Mutual confidence is essential to love or friendship worthy the name. But the most faithful, loving friend may disappoint trust through weakness, ignorance, calamity, forgetfulness. Only the all-wise, all-loving, almighty, unchangeably faithful God is worthy of absolute trust—the perfect rest of the soul (Isaiah 26:3).
II. TRUST IN GOD IS FULL OF JOYFUL EXPECTATION. It lights up the future (else dim and dark) with the sunshine of certain hope. "We know," etc. (Romans 8:28). Care is the heaviest burden of life; to-morrow weighs heavier to most men than to-day; and this burden faith rolls off on to God (1 Peter 5:7; Isaiah 43:2).
III. TRUST IN GOD IS FULL OF JOYFUL EXPERIENCE. If it is joy to trust God, it is double joy to find by experience that he accepts the trust he invites; rewards the faith that lays hold on his promise.' Joshua's experience is the. experience,, of faith in all ages (Joshua 24:14). St. Paul could say at the end of his course, I know whom I have believed," etc. (2 Timothy 1:12; 2 Timothy 4:7, 2 Timothy 4:8).
IV. THE GOSPEL HAS OPENED A NEW AND FULLER FOUNTAIN OF JOY, by supplying a firmer foundation of faith, and clearer knowledge of God, in the Person of Jesus Christ (1 Peter 1:8).
CONCLUSION. If you have no joy in God, it must be because you do not know him; and this is because you do not believe him as speaking to you in his Son. Yet let no Christian despond if his joy in God be not what he desires, what he hears or reads of, what it reasonably should be. If we have not sunshine, let us be thankful for daylight. If even daylight, for a while, fail, let us remember Isaiah 50:10, and "watch for the morning" (Psalms 130:6).
HOMILIES BY C. CLEMANCE