The Lord Jesus rejoiced in God. All nature spoke to Him of His Father. This wondrous world of which we, even today, know so little, was to Him not alien soil, but a mansion in the Father's house, and the Father Himself was at the back of all Nature's bounty and beauty. Jesus rejoiced in the Scriptures; they spoke to Him of His Father and revealed the character of One with Whom He was in constant communion. As a boy He eagerly awaited His reaching the age of twelve when He could get to Jerusalem and be in His Father's House. What a keen desire there must have been in the heart of the boy Jesus to enter those Temple precincts where He could ask those "sitting in Moses' seat", some of the many questions that crowded in upon His sinless yet undeveloped mind!

God's Word, throughout His whole life on earth, was the joy and rejoicing of the Master's heart. By that Word He repelled the Tempter at the commencement of His ministry and by it He caused the hearts of the disciples to burn within them immediately after His resurrection, at its close.

To the Lord Jesus, God was unimaginably good: in the joy of His knowledge of God's love He sketched for us the picture of the prodigal son and the love of an earthly father, saying in effect, "if you then, being evil, are like that, how much more is God!" He experienced constantly the joy of boundless hope in a God so wonderfully and unimaginably good. Satan was the god of this world and evil was rampant. Those who would do God's will must endure persecution. He was confronted by the thought of a cruel death but the Master's gaze was habitually directed beyond these things. He lived in constant view of those conditions that will prevail when God's will is done upon earth as now it is done in heaven.

The Lord Jesus continued in communion with the Father, not merely One to be enjoyed, but also One to be served, and this opportunity of loving devotion was in itself to Jesus another constant source of delight. The will of God was placed centrally in the Master's life, and to carry it out was His meat and drink. His natural love for His own home, for His mother, and for His family circle, was intense, and yet before all these He placed those who did the will of God. "Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother." (Matt. 12. 50). From this delight in doing the service of God there arose another source of joy, that of a constant sense of the Divine approval on His life. "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased" was the testimony given from heaven to John the Baptist on the banks of the River Jordan, a testimony that was repeated to the three disciples upon the Mount of Transfiguration and attested by numerous evidences of the Father's favour during our Lord's earthly ministry. Those declarations were made that "men might know . . .

Jesus Christ" whom God had sent, for Jesus Himself needed no such outward assurances. Within Himself, all the time, like sweetest music in His soul, vibrated the thought "I do always those things that please Him".

Perhaps greatest of all, our Master had the supreme joy associated with supreme self-sacrifice. Despised and rejected, scorned and spat upon, scourged and crucified, that wonderful love in the heart of Jesus inspired Him to exult with a deep and holy joy that in this way, through the valley of suffering and humiliation, He could bring the prodigal world back to God. All the evil that was inflicted upon the Master, all the mental and physical suffering which He bore so patiently, all the evidences of hardness of heart and lack of faith in those near to Him, only made him realise the more how vital was their need of Him. In prophetic vision he saw "of the travail of his soul and was satisfied".

How true is the Scripture which declares that "For the joy that was set before him he endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the majesty on high". It was because our Master so consistently found joy in all that His life held that He was able to say "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you . . . Let not your heart be troubled"; and the Apostle adds as a triumphant commentary and exhortation "Rejoice in the Lord always; and again I say, rejoice".

The joy of the Lord is our strength.

TH