Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 498
Delivered on Sunday Morning, March 8th, 1863, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
“Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness: therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows. All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad.”—Psalm 45:7, 8.
DURING THE LAST FEW SABBATH-DAYS we have been considering the sufferings of our Lord Jesus Christ. We followed him through the agony of the garden, the sorrows of the betrayal, the weariness and slander of his various trials, the shame and mockery of the soldiery, and the sorrows of his cross-bearing progress along the streets of the city. It seems fit this morning to make a pause that we may take breath awhile in this our pilgrimage of sorrow, and be comforted by a view of the glory-land to which the thorny pathway leads. A festive occasion like the present may have unfitted your minds for deep contemplations upon the Passion, and it may be more congenial with our present mood of gladness to meditate upon the glory which followed the shame. The same person will be before our eye, but we shall view him in a brighter light, we shall see the silver lining of the black cloud of anguish, the rich pearls hidden in the stormy deep of his sufferings, and the days of heaven which were conceived in the womb of the black night of his agony. The Man of Sorrows is the fountain of all joy to others, and is the possessor of all the joys of heaven and earth, by virtue of his triumphs. He has experienced joys in proportion to his sorrows; as he once waded through deep waters of grief he has now climbed to the highest mountains of happiness. For the joy that was set before him he endured the cross despising the shame, and now having sat down at his Father’s right-hand he enjoys pleasures for evermore. We have seen our David crossing the brook Kedron weeping as he went; shall we not gaze upon him as he dances before the ark for joy? We saw him crowned with thorns, shall we not go forth to meet him and behold him with the crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals, and in the day of the gladness of his heart? Oh that while we muse upon these things our heavenly Father may hear the prayer of our great Advocate who once cried on our behalf—“And now come I to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.”
Our text describes the joy poured forth upon our glorious King in a twofold manner. Our Lord is first made joyous by his Father—“Thou lovest righteousness, and hatest wickedness: therefore God, thy God, hath anointed thee with the oil of gladness above thy fellows.” But there is another joy, which he getteth not from one person, but from many. Read the next verse—“All thy garments smell of myrrh, and aloes, and cassia, out of the ivory palaces, whereby they have made thee glad.” Here both saints and angels unite to swell the ever-deepening, and widening river of the Savior’s gladness. When we shall have walked by these still waters and trodden these green pastures, perhaps we shall be prepared to say with the apostle, “And not only so, but we also joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement,” and we shall be qualified to sing with the spouse, “We will rejoice and be glad in thee; Ye will remember thy love more than wine; the upright love thee.”
I. Come, my brethren, let us ponder that part of OUR SAVIOR’S JOY WHICH IS GIVEN HIM BY HIS FATHER.
To a degree the Redeemer possessed this joy even while he was here on earth. We are not sure that the early life of the Savior was full of sorrow. As he grrew in wisdom and in stature, he also grew in favor both with God and man; and favor with God and man would probably give the youthful Jesus an unusual degree of holy happiness. When he entered upon his public ministry, sorrows in troops beset him, so that the countenance once fairer than the children of men, became more marred than that of any man, and at the age of thirty-two or thirty-three he was taken to be near fifty, from the effect of labor, hardship and woe. Yet, even in the days of his affliction, the Great Mourner was not utterly wretched, even amid the wormwood and the gall there were drops of joy. When, in his baptism, the heavens were opened, and the Spirit descended, did that divine Dove bring no peace, no comfort upon his wings? When the Father bare witness, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,” did those approving words from the opening heavens afford no satisfaction to the mind of the obedient Son? Brethren, the perfect nature of our Redeemer could not but rejoice exceedingly in the smile of the Father and the descent of the Holy Ghost. When in the wilderness, after the forty days of fasting and of temptation, the angels ministered unto him, did they bring him no celestial joys, no consolations of God? Did he know no secret joys upon the mountain-tops, where he communed with God at midnight? Was it no delight to him to utter sweet invitations and loving words of mercy? Surely those lips were blessed which poured forth benedictions, and there must have been some comfort in the hands which bound up the broken-hearted and opened the prisons of the captives. We read that Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, “Father, I thank thee, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes; even so, Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight.” The doctrine of electing love stirred the deeps of his great soul, and made the floods clap their hands. “The King shall joy in thy strength, O Lord; and in thy salvation how greatly shall he rejoice.”