JOY
Perhaps one of the richest fruits of the recreated spirit is joy. Joy is the evangel (the Christian gospel) to a selfish world.
Joyful Christians have always been a challenge to a broken hearted world.
Selfishness never gives joy, it gives only limited happiness. Happiness is the product of our surroundings. It is the satisfying of our five-senses. The material things that bring a man happiness may be taken from him in a moment and he is left desolate.
Joy belongs to the spiritual realm just as happiness belongs to the sense realm.
In John 15:11 Jesus Christ said, "These things have I spoken unto you that my joy may be in you and your joy may be made full."
Jesus Christ could have had but little happiness. His joy in people must have all been by faith.
He believed that He could meet the claims of Justice and conquer Satan. He believed that He could make the New Creation a possibility and that He could restore this lost, broken man to the heart of the Father. Thus He could say,"that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full."
I linger over that sentence. I wondered what it would mean if a man could have his joy made full. It would be necessary that he become Jesus like, so that he could say, "For I do always the things that are pleasing to Him."
He could say as the Master said, "My meat is to do the will of Him who sent me."
Joy would be in knowing the Father's will and doing it.
John 16:22 and 24, "And ye therefore now have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no one taketh away from you." That was a promise and a prophecy.
The disciples had no joy. They could not have it until their spirits were recreated.
In the 24th verse He says, "Hitherto have ve asked nothing in my name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be made full."
This is the secret, then. He speaks of a fulness of joy. The first was that it might be made full. The means to make it full had not yet come into being. Here again He uses the strange expression, "that your joy may be made full."
He has given you the right to use His Name. It is really the Power of Attorney . We are to receive things from the Father.
He is going to do things for us as sons because we are using the Name of Jesus Christ.
In the 23rd verse (marginal rendering) we read, "In that day ye shall ask me nothing, Verily, verily, I say unto you, if ye shall ask anything of the Father he will give it you in my name."
It practically forbids you to pray to Him, but we are to address our prayers to the Father in His Name, then our joys will be made full. How? By the answers that the Father gives.
John 17:13 "But now I come to thee; and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy made full in themselves."
Once more He uses this strange term of our having a fulness of joy. This time He is asking the Father that it might become a reality in us, and we know that His prayer was heard. We have a right to expect joy. It is something that the world cannot take from us.
Neither persecution nor torture could rob the disciples of their joy. Every martyr that we know anything about met death with a joy filled heart.
1 Peter 1:8 "Whom not having seen ye love; on whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing ye rejoice greatly with joy unspeakable and full of glory."
This must ever remain as the masterpiece of descriptive truth of the New Creation who has "joy unspeakable and full of glory." It is a joy that is beyond words.
This joy belonged to those early Saints. It was because of this joy, so apparent in the lives of the Christians, that the Prince of Madagascar accepted Christ. His mother, the Queen, had ordered all those confessing Christ to be flung to their death off a high precipice. The Crown Prince stepped forward, bowed low, and made his confession of faith in Christ. It was the unmistakable joy of the Christians that had touched the heart of the young Prince. He could not resist it. He accepted Christ and offered himself as a martyr.
Nehemiah 8:10 "... for the joy of Jehovah is your strength."
Isaiah 35:10 is another picture of joy. "And the ransomed of Jehovah shall return, and come with singing into Zion; and everlasting joy shall be upon their heads; they shall obtain gladness and joy, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away."
Psalms 16:11 is a picture of the Master Himself after His Resurrection."Thou wilt show me the path of life: In thy presence is fulness of joy; In thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore."
This is a photograph of the Master on that first Easter morning.
When a Believer is not joyful it is either because of broken fellowship or a lack of knowledge of what he is in Christ and what Christ is in him. He does not know what he is to the Father and what the Father can be to him. He has nerer entered into his inheritance in Christ.
It is vastly important that we know about our inheritance. That is, our present tense inheritance.
It is this unspeakable joy which makes you triumphant over the petty trials of life, and a victor over the trials that may come up.
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