'That your joy may be fulfilled.' Again we have a recurrence of a
promise that has appeared in another connection in an earlier part of
this discourse; but the connection here is worthy of notice. The
promise is of joy that comes from the satisfaction of meek desires in
unison with Christ's will. Is it possible then, that, amidst all the
ups and downs, the changes and the sorrows of this fluctuating,
tempest-tossed life of ours we may have a deep and stable joy? 'That
your joy may be full,' says my text, or 'fulfilled,' like some
jewelled, golden cup charged to the very brim with rich and quickening
wine, so that there is no room for a drop more. Can it be that ever, in
this world, men shall be happy up to the very limits of their capacity?
Was anybody ever so blessed that he could not be more so? Was your cup
ever so full that there was no room for another drop in it? Jesus
Christ says that it may be so, and He tells us how it may be so. Bring
your desires into harmony with God's, and you will have none
unsatisfied amongst them; and so you will be blessed to the full; and
though sorrow comes, as of course it will come, still you may be
blessed. There is no contradiction between the presence of this deep,
central joy and a surface and circumference of sorrow. Rather we need
the surrounding sorrow, to concentrate, and so to intensify, the
central joy in God. There are some flowers which only blow in the
night; and white blossoms are visible with startling plainness in the
twilight, when all the flaunting purples and reds are hid. We do not
know the depth, the preciousness, the power of the 'joy of the Lord,'
until we have felt it shining in our hearts in the midst of the thick
darkness of earthly sorrow, and bringing life into the very death of
our human delights. It may be ours on the conditions that my text
describes.
My dear friends! there are only two courses before us. Either we must
have a life with superficial, transitory, incomplete gladness, and an
aching centre of vacuity and pain, or we may have a life which, in its
outward aspects and superficial appearance, has much about it that is
sad and trying, but down in the heart of it is calm and joyful. Which
of the two do you deem best, a superficial gladness and a rooted
sorrow, or a superficial sorrow and a central joy? 'Even in laughter
the heart is sorrowful, and the end of that mirth is heaviness.' But,
on the other hand, the 'ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to
Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads. They shall obtain
joy and gladness; and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.'