I. Jesus Christ is the Joy-bringer to men because He is the Redeemer of
men.
Remember that in the original application of my text to the deliverance
from captivity, this gift of joy and change of sorrow into gladness was
no independent and second bestowment, but was simply the issue of the
one that preceded it, viz., the gift of liberty to the captives, and
the opening of the prison to them that were bound. The gladness was a
gladness that welled up in the heart of the captives set free, and
coming out from the gloom of the Babylonian dungeon into the sunshine
of God's favour, with their faces set towards Zion 'with songs and
everlasting joy upon their heads.'
Now you have only to keep firm hold of this connection between these
two thoughts to come to the crown and centre-point of this great
prophecy, as far as it applies to us, and that is that it is Christ as
the Emancipator, Christ as the Deliverer, Christ as He who brings us
out of the prison of bondage of the tyranny of sin, who is the great
Joy-Giver. For there is no real, deep, fundamental and impregnable
gladness possible to a man until his relations to God have been
rectified, and until, with these rectified relations, with the
consciousness of forgiveness and the divine love nestling warm at his
heart, he has turned himself away from his dread and his sin, and has
recognised in his Father God 'the gladness of his joy.'
Of course, there are many of us who feel that life is sufficiently
comfortable and moderately happy, or at least quite tolerable, without
any kind of reference to God at all. And in this day of growing
materialism, and growing consequent indifference to the deepest needs
of the spirit and the claims of religion, more and more men are
finding, or fancying that they find, that they can rub along somehow,
and have a fair share of gladness and satisfaction, without any need
for a redeeming gospel and a forgiving Christ. But about all that kind
of surface-joy the old words are true, 'even in laughter the heart is
sorrowful,' and hosts of us are satisfied with joys which Jesus has no
part in bringing, simply because our truest self has never once
awakened. When it does-and perhaps it will do so with some of you, like
the sleeping giant that is fabled to lie beneath the volcano whose
sunny slopes are smiling with flowers--then you will find out that no
one can bring real joy who does not take away guilt and sin.
Jesus Christ is the Joy-bringer, because Jesus Christ is the
Emancipator. And true gladness is the gladness that springs from the
conscious possession of liberty from the captivity which holds men
slaves to evil and to their worst selves. Brethren, let us not fancy
that these surface-joys are the joys adequate to a human spirit. They
are ignoble, and they are infinitely foolish, because a touch of an
awakened conscience, a stirring of one's deeper self, can scatter them
all to pieces. So then, that is my first thought.