Sermon Tone Analysis

Nehemiah 8

Nehemiah 8:8

This vast congregation felt the full emotional force of Scripture.

They felt the Sword of the Spirit open up there hearts, tearing, cutting, and killing.

This Sword was not wielded in a wild manner unconcerned about the damage it would inflict.

It was wielded in a manner consistent with that of a skillful surgeon.

Each cut precisely measured for maximum effectiveness.

Each cut, though pain, restorative.

This vast congregation felt the full emotional force of Scripture.

They felt the Sword of the Spirit open up there hearts, tearing, cutting, and killing.

This Sword was not wielded in a wild manner unconcerned about the damage it would inflict.

It was wielded in a manner consistent with that of a skillful surgeon.

Each cut precisely measured for maximum effectiveness.

Each cut, though pain, restorative.

This vast congregation felt the full emotional force of Scripture.

They felt the Sword of the Spirit open up there hearts, tearing, cutting, and killing.

This Sword was not wielded in a wild manner unconcerned about the damage it would inflict.

It was wielded in a manner consistent with that of a skillful surgeon.

Each cut precisely measured for maximum effectiveness.

Each cut, though painful, was yet restorative.

Repentance preceeds praise.

The pathway that leads to delight and joy are soften with the tears of repentance.

Repentance leads to praise.

The pathway that leads to delight and joy are soften with the tears of repentance.

Repentance leads to praise.

The pathway that leads to delight and joy are soften with the tears of repentance.

Our text provides for us an elementary and yet profound understanding of joy.

The Origin of Joy

“The joy of the Lord.”

Since man fell in the garden he has sought for his enjoyment in the same place the serpent finds his

Joys bound by the constraint of time cannot satisfy an undying nature.

Man who is eternal can find no lasting enjoyment in worldly enjoyments because what we sees, touches, feels, and tastes are temporal.

He has given us appetites that worldly pleasures cannot satisfy and He has provided suitable satisfaction for those appetites.

Let us dig in this morning and analyze this peculiar pleasure called “the joy of the Lord”.

It genesis is from God and has God for its objective.

The believer who is in a spiritually healthy state rejoices mainly in God Himself; they are happy because there is a God, and because God dwells in them.

The believer who is in a spiritually healthy state rejoices mainly in God Himself; he is happy because there is a God, and because God is in His person and character what He is.

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Since man fell in the garden, he has too often sought for his enjoyments where the serpent finds his; it is written, “upon your belly shall you go, and so shall you eat dust all the days of your life”; this was the serpent’s doom, and man, with infatuated ambition, has tried to find his delight in his sensual appetites, and to content his soul with earth’s poor dust.

But the joys of time cannot satisfy an undying nature, and when a soul is once quickened by the eternal Spirit, it can no more fill itself with worldly mirth, or even with the common enjoyments of life, than can a man snuff up wind and feed on it; but, beloved, we are not left to search for joy, it is brought to our doors by the love of God our Father; joy refined and satisfying, befitting immortal spirits.

God has not left us to wander among those unsatisfactory things which mock the chase which they invite; He has given us appetites which carnal things cannot content, and He has provided suitable satisfaction for those appetites; he has stored up at His right hand pleasures forevermore, which even now He reveals by His Spirit to those chosen ones whom He has taught to long for them.

Let us endeavor to analyze that special and peculiar pleasure which is here called “The joy of the Lord.”

It springs from God, and has God for its objective.

The believer who is in a spiritually healthy state rejoices mainly in God Himself; he is happy because there is a God, and because God is in His person and character what He is.

All the attributes of God become well-springs of joy to the thoughtful, contemplative believer, for such a man says within his soul, “All these attributes of my God are mine; His power is my protection; His wisdom is my guidance; His faithfulness, is my foundation; His grace is my salvation.”

He is a God who cannot die, faithful and true to His promise.

He is all love, and at the same time infinitely just, supremely holy.

Why, the contemplation of God to one who knows that this God is His God forever and ever is enough to make the eyes overflow with tears because of the deep, mysterious, unutterable bliss which fills the heart!

There was nothing in the character of Jupiter, or any of the pretended gods of the heathen, to make anyone glad; but there is everything in the character of Jehovah both to purify the heart, and to make it thrill with delight.

How sweet is it to think over all the Lord has done—how He has revealed Himself of old, and especially how He has displayed His glory in the covenant of grace, and in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ!

How charming is the thought that He has revealed Himself to me personally, and made me to see in Him my Father, my friend, my helper, my God! Oh, if there is one word out of heaven that cannot be excelled, even by the brightness of heaven itself, it is this word, “My God, my Father,” and that sweet promise, “I will be to them a God, and they shall be to Me a people.”

There is no richer consolation to be found; even the Spirit of God can bring nothing home to the heart of the Christian more fraught with delight than that blessed consideration!

When the child of God, after admiring the character and wondering at the acts of God, can all the while feel, “He is my God; I have taken Him to be mine; He has taken me to be His; He has grasped me with the hand of His powerful love, having loved me with an everlasting love, with the bands of lovingkindness has He drawn me to Himself’ my beloved is mine, and I am His”—why, then, his soul would gladly dance like David before the ark of the Lord, rejoicing in the Lord with all its might!

A further source of joy is found by the Christian who is living near to God in a deep sense of reconciliation to God, of acceptance with God, and yet, beyond that, of adoption and close relationship to God.

Does it not make a man glad to know that though once his sins had provoked the Lord, they are all blotted out, and not one of them remains; though once he was estranged from God, and far off from Him by wicked works, yet he is made near by the blood of Christ?

The Lord is no longer an angry Judge pursuing us with a drawn sword, but a loving Father into whose bosom we pour our sorrows, and find ease for every pang of heart.

Oh, to know, beloved, that God actually loves us!

I have often told you I cannot preach upon that theme, for it is a subject to muse upon in silence—a matter to sit by the hour together and meditate upon.

The infinite to love an insignificant creature, a shadow that declines!

Is not this a marvel?

For God to pity me I can understand; for God to condescend to have mercy upon me I can comprehend; but for Him to love me?

For the pure to love a sinner; for the infinitely great to love a worm— is matchless, a miracle of miracles!

Such thoughts must comfort the soul; and then, add to this that the divine love has brought us believers into actual relationship with God, so that we are His sons and Sermon #1027 The Joy of the Lord, the Strength of His People Volume 17 Tell someone today how much you love Jesus Christ.

3 3 daughters; this, again, is a river of sacred pleasure!

“Unto which of the angels said He at any time, you are My son”?

No minister of flame, though perfect in obedience, has received the honor of adoption!

To us, even to us frail creatures of the dust, is given a benefit denied to Gabriel, for through Jesus Christ the first-born, we are members of the family of God! Oh, the abyss of joy which lies in sonship with God, and joint heirship with Christ!

Words are vain here.

Moreover, the joy springing from the spirit of adoption is another portion of the believer’s bliss.

He cannot be an unhappy man who can cry, “Abba, Father.”

The spirit of adoption is always attended by love, joy, and peace, which are fruits of the Spirit, for we have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but we have received the spirit of liberty and joy in Christ Jesus.

“My God, my Father.”

Oh how sweet the sound!

But all men of God do not enjoy this, you say.

Alas, we grant it, but we also add that it is their own fault.

It is the right and portion of every believer to live in the assurance that he is reconciled to God, that God loves him, and that he is God’s child; and if he does not so live, he has himself to blame; if there are any starving at God’s table, it is because the guest stints himself, for the feast is superabundant.

If however, a man comes, and I pray you all may, to live habitually under a sense of pardon through the sprinkling of the precious blood, and in a delightful sense of perfect reconciliation with the great God, he is the possessor of an unspeakable joy and full of glory!

But, beloved this is not all.

The joy of the Lord in the spirit springs also from an assurance that all the future, whatever it may be, is guaranteed by divine goodness.

Being children of God, the love of God towards us is not of a mutable character, but abides and remains unchangeable.

The believer feels an entire satisfaction in leaving himself in the hands of eternal and Immutable love.

However happy I may be today, if I am in doubt concerning tomorrow, there is a worm at the root of my peace.

Although the past may now be sweet in retrospect, and the present fair in enjoyment, yet if the future is grim with fear, my joy is but shallow.

If my salvation is still a matter of hazard and jeopardy, unmingled joy is not mine, and deep peace is still out of my reach; but when I know that He whom I have rested in has power and grace enough to complete that which He has begun in me, and for me; when I see the work of Christ to be no half-redemption, but a complete and eternal salvation; when I perceive that the promises are established upon an unchangeable basis, and are yes and amen in Christ Jesus, ratified by oath and sealed by blood, then my soul has perfect contentment!

It is true, that looking forward there may be seen long avenues of tribulation, but the glory is at the end of them.

Battles may be foreseen, and woe unto the man who does not expect them, but the eye of faith perceives the crown of victory.

Deep waters are mapped upon our journey, but faith can see Jehovah fording these rivers with us, and she anticipates the day when we shall ascend the banks of the shore, and enter into Jehovah’s rest; when we have received these priceless truths of God into our souls, we are satisfied with favor and full of the goodness of the Lord.

There is a theology which denies to believers this consolation; we will not enter into controversy with it, but sorrowfully hint that a heavy chastisement for the errors of that system of doctrine lies in the loss of the comfort which the truth would have brought into the soul.

For my part, I value the gospel not only for what it has done for me in the past, but for the guarantees which it affords me of eternal salvation.

“I give unto My sheep eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck then out of My hand.”

Now, beloved, I have not yet taken you into the great deeps of joy, though these streams are certainly, by no means, shallow; there is an abyss of delight for every Christian when he comes into actual fellowship with God.

I spoke of the truth that God loved us and the fact that we are related to Him by ties most near and dear; but, oh, when these doctrines become experiences, then are we, indeed, anointed with the oil of gladness!

Then we enter into the love of God, and it enters into us; when we walk with God habitually, then our joy is like Jordan at harvest time, when it overflows all its banks.

Do you know what it means to walk with God—Enoch’s joy; to sit at Jesus’ feet—Mary’s joy; to lean your head upon Jesus’ bosom—John’s familiar joy?

Oh yes, communion with the Lord is no mere talk with some of us; we have known it in the chamber of affliction; we have known it in the solitude of many a night of broken rest; we have known it beneath discouragements, and under sorrows and defamations, and all sorts of ills; and we reckon that one dram of fellowship with Christ is enough to sweeten an ocean full of tribulation!

Only to know that He is near us, and to see the gleaming of His dear eyes, would transform even hell, itself, into heaven, if it were possible for us to enjoy His presence there!

Alas, you do not and cannot know this bliss, you who drink your foaming bowls.

Listening to the sound of stringed instruments, The Joy of the Lord, the Strength of His People Sermon #1027 Tell someone today how much you love Jesus Christ.

Volume 17 4 4 you do not know what this bliss means; you have not dreamed of it, nor could you understand it though a man should show it to you.

As the beast in the meadow knows not the far-reaching thoughts of him who reads the stars, and threads the spheres, so neither can the carnal man make so much as a guess of what are the joys which God has prepared for those who love Him, which any day and everyday, when our hearts seek it, He reveals to us by His Spirit!

This is “The joy of the Lord”—fellowship with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ.