Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2935
“These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.” John 15:11.
THERE is a sentence which has crept among our common proverbs so that it is repeated as if it were altogether true—“Man was made to mourn.” There is a truth in that sentence, but there is also a falsehood in it. Man was not originally made to mourn—he was made to rejoice. The Garden of Eden was his place of happy abode and, as long as he continued obedient to God, nothing grew in that garden which could cause him sorrow. For his delight the flowers breathed out their perfume. For his delight the landscapes were full of beauty and the rivers rippled over golden sands. God made human beings as He made His other creatures, to be happy. They are capable of happiness. They are in their right element when they are happy and now that Jesus Christ has come to restore the ruins of the Fall, He has to bring back to us the old joy—only it shall be even sweeter and deeper than it could have been if we had never lost it! A Christian has never fully realized what Christ came to make him until he has grasped the joy of the Lord. Christ wishes His people to be happy. When they are perfect, as He will make them in due time, they shall also be perfectly happy. As Heaven is the place of pure holiness, so is it the place of unalloyed happiness and, in proportion as we get ready for Heaven, we shall have some of the joy which belongs to Heaven. And it is our Savior’s will that oven now His joy should remain in us and that our joy should be full.
I. My first remark upon the text will be this—all THAT JESUS SPEAKS IS MEANT TO PRODUCE JOY IN HIS PEOPLE. “These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy might remain in you.”
If you will read through the Chapter from which our text is taken and also the Chapter which precedes it, you will see the nature of the words which Jesus Christ speaks to His people. Sometimes they are words of instruction. He talks to us that we may know the Truth of God and the meaning of the Truth. But His objective is that, knowing the Truth, we may have joy in it. I will not say that the more a Christian knows, the more joy he has, but I can truly say that ignorance often hides from us many wells of delight of which we might otherwise drink, and that all other things being equal, the best-instructed Christian will be the happiest man. He will know the Truth and the Truth will make him free. The Truth of God will kill a thousand fears which ignorance would have fostered within him. The knowledge of the love of God, the knowledge of the full Atonement made on Calvary, the knowledge of the Eternal Covenant, the knowledge of the immutable faithfulness of Jehovah—indeed, all knowledge which reveals God in His relationship to His people—will tend to create comfort in the hearts of the saints. Be not, therefore, careless about Scriptural Doctrine—study the Word of God and seek to understand the mind of the Spirit as revealed in it, for this blessed Book was written for your learning, that “through patience and comfort of the Scriptures you might have hope.” If you are diligent students of the Word, you will find that you have good reason to rejoice in the Lord under all circumstances.
But sometimes our Lord also spoke words of warning. In this Chapter, we find Him telling His disciples that they were branches of a vine and that branches which bore no fruit had to be cut off and cast into the fire. At first sight, it seems to us that there is nothing consoling in such words as those—they sound sharply in our ears and make us start and be afraid—and we ask ourselves, “Are we bearing fruit?” Well, Brothers and Sisters, but such heart-searching as that is eminently beneficial and tends to deepen true joy in us! Christ would not have us rejoice with the false joy of presumption, so He bares the sharp knife and cuts thatjoy away. Joy on a false basis would prevent us from having true joy and, therefore, the Master gives us the sharp and cutting word that we may be sound in the faith, that we may be
sound in the life of God and that so the joy we may get may be worth having—not the mere surf and foam of a wave that is driven with the wind and tossed, but the solid foundation of the Rock of Ages!
Our Lord also tells us that even the branches that bear fruit will have to be pruned that they may bring forth more fruit. “Unpleasant Truth that!” Somebody might say—“It will give me no joy to know that I shall have to endure the knife of correction and affliction.” Yes, dear Brother, but, “tribulation works patience, and patience, experience, and experience, hope, and hope makes one not ashamed because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit which is given unto us.” So, beginning rather high up in this pedigree, you finally get to joy and get to it by the only right method! To try to sail up to joy by the balloon of fancy is dangerous work, but to mount up to it by Jacob’s ladder, every round of which God has placed at the proper distance, is to climb to Heaven by the safe road which He has appointed! There is nothing which the Lord Jesus says to us, by way of warning, which does not guard us against sorrow, conduct us away from danger and point us to the path of safety. If we will but listen to these words of warning, they will thus guide us to the truest happiness that mortals can ever find either here or hereafter!