25. Christ’s Joy
25
Christ’s Joy1
…who for the joy that was set before him…
—Hebrews 12:2
1. The joy before Him was the contentment He would have in His new bride—the joy that He had won through hell and gotten by His errand. His heart would have been sad and heavy to have missed us. He was glad of the hire2 His Father had promised Him. It is natural for a man to rejoice when he gets the fruit of his labors, and there is thanksgiving and joy in heaven for the conversion of sinners. And He gives thanks far more when they are redeemed fully. In the midst of the congregation, He sings praise to God His Father for the children He had given Him, but He will do so even more when He has ended all and got the goods in His hand that He bought so dearly (Heb. 2:12). He will then sing for joy, and when Christ sings for your redemption and gives thanks, you have far more cause to sing than He.
2. The joy set before Him was the glory to be manifested in Him, for which He prays (John 17:5), which “He had with [the Father] before the world was”—that joy that His Father will welcome Him with and (to speak with reverence) clap3 His head for His pains. As He rejoiced from all eternity with His Father (Prov. 8:31) and was His Father’s delight, so now He shall rejoice with His Father, He and He together in redeemed mankind. And the manhood4 with all His members and the angels (for they rejoice at the conversion of sinners) shall rejoice with Him to see His body fulfilled and to have them all under His wings.
Consider the sadness Jesus had and the tears He shed in the days of His flesh; but His Father dried and wiped the blood and sweat off His face and set Him in a place where He would no longer shed tears and die. So do as Jesus did. And why? Because there was never a man who endured his longsome5 race but the one who had a sight of heaven. See wherefore Abraham dwelt in tents, and Moses (Heb. 11) “[chose] rather to suffer affliction with the people of God, than to enjoy the pleasures of sin” (Heb. 11:25). He saw a sight that not everyone can see. You know that a man who has been seven years away from his wife and children comes home again, and, as he sees the smoke of his own house, his heart rises a foot higher than it was before. Would you run? Get a sight of the city. Get Christ’s prospect6 to see the joy set before you. Get the earnest7 of the inheritance, and you will never rue8 the bargain. Whoever has a mind for heaven runs a while in blind zeal until he sweats and then grows lame, like a horse that is badly taken care of after hard riding; so are those who never saw heaven afar off by faith. But a sight of the gold makes the runner spring and run. Oh what wrought this joy that was set before Him! It made Him endure the cross; His Father laid the cross on His back, and He carried it thirty-three years and never gave it a shake to put it off. Oh, what crosses! Never man was handled as He was; for some are under some crosses and free of others. When Satan and men struck Job, the Lord blessed him and upheld him. But on Jesus, all at once fell God, man, devils, law, justice, sin, and the curse! You cannot tell me what comfort Christ had when He cried, “My God, my God!” That was a sore thraw9 for His back. Oh the fire was hot then! But when Christ was in His prison, in this dark night, there was a hole to let Him see day. He had His eye by faith upon the hope of the joy of the fair day before Him. He got a foul black day, all clouds of darkness about Him, but He said within Himself, “I will get my fair day when all this ill weather is away.”
1. Communion Sermons, 107–108.
2. hire: payment, reward
3. clap: pat fondly
4. manhood: human nature
5. longsome: tiresomely long
6. prospect: view
7. earnest: token of what is to come
8. rue: regret
9. thraw: a twist or wrench of a part of the body