LIFE ON THE ALTAR

This article is from Issue 6, Called to Praise

By A. B. Simpson

“The JOY of THE LORD is your strength.”
(Nehemiah 8:10)

The joy of the Lord is our strength for daily living

Quaint old John Bunyan puts it happily when he tells us how he wrote the Pilgrim’s Progress in his old Bedford dungeon. “So I was from home to prison,” he goes on to say, “and I sat me down and wrote and wrote, because joy did make me write.” The old dungeon with its stinted rays of light, its clumsy table, its wooden stool, its pallet of straw, was heaven to him because the joy of the pilgrim and the pilgrim’s home and the pilgrim’s story were bursting in his happy heart.

Oh, how we need this joy amid the plod and routine in the factory, in the shop, over the counter, in the kitchen, at the desk, on the street, on the farm, and amidst the great heartless noisy world! But, thank God! Circumstances will make little difference where the everlasting springs are bursting from the deep well of His joy in the heart.

Beloved, Let us rejoice in the light evermore and go through the pathways of common life so filled with the Spirit that like men intoxicated with the wine of heaven, we shall be heard “speaking to ourselves in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing with grace in our hearts to the Lord,” and then it shall be true, “Whatsoever we do in word or deed,” we shall “do all in the name of the Lord Jesus giving thanks unto God by Him.”

The joy of the Lord is our strength for trials of life.

There are two ways of bearing a trial; the one is the spirit of stoical endurance, and the other through the counteracting forces of a holy and victorious joy. It was thus that Christ endured the cross for the joy that was set before Him, and then He could despise the shame.

We read in the first chapter of Colossians the prayer of the apostle for a company of saints that they should be “strengthened according to His glorious power unto all patience and longsuffering with joyfulness.” “Patience” to endure the trials that come from the hand of God, and “longsuffering” to endure those which come from men, and both to be endured with real joyfulness. In fact, there is nothing to endure when the heart is full of joy; It lifts us wholly above the trial.

Sir Isaac Newton once lost all the calculations of twenty-five years by the burning of a lot of papers through the carelessness of a little dog, and the world remembers him with more admiration than for all his discoveries because he simply answered, “Poor thing! You little know the mischief you have done.”

The joy of the Lord always counts on something better than we lose, and remembers that there is one above who is the great Recompenser and Restorer.

The joy of the Lord is our strength for temptation.

“Count it all joy,” James says, “when ye fall into divers temptations.” One reason for this is because it is the best way to meet them. The devil always gets the best of a melancholy and despondent soul.

Amalek got hold of the hindmost of Israel’s camp, the discouraged ones who were dragging behind and fretting about the hot weather and the hard road they had to travel. Such people always find the way harder before they get through. The fiery serpents, which were the devil’s scouts, stung the murmuring multitudes, and it was an upward look to the brazen serpent that healed them.

 Jehoshaphat’s armies marched to battle and victory with shouts of faith and songs of praise, and so still the joy of the Lord is the best equipment for the great conflict.

But the apostle also means, no doubt, that temptation is no cause for despondency, but rather a great opportunity of spiritual progress. It is the proving of our armour and an evident token that the devil sees something in us worth trying to steal. “The trying of our faith worketh patience, and let patience have her perfect work.” Let us go through all the discipline and learn all that it has to teach us, and “when we are tried we shall receive the crown of life which the Lord has promised to them that love Him.”

Let us then go forth into the conflicts which await us without a fear or cloud, and when we cannot feel the joy, but “are in heaviness through manifold temptations,” let us “count it all joy,” and say, “I will rejoice in the Lord, and I will be joyful in my God.”

The joy of the Lord is our strength for the body.

“A merry heart doeth good like a medicine.” This is the divine prescription for a weak body. And so on the other hand, despondency and depression of spirits are the cause of nervousness, head-ache, heart-break, and low physical vitality. A word of cheer and an impulse of hope and gladness will often break the power of disease.

I remember a dying man whom I visited in the earliest years of my ministry, who was given up by his physicians and pronounced in a dying condition, so that they gave up the case and expected his death during the night. But as I visited him and tenderly led him to the Saviour, he accepted the gospel and became filled with the peace of God and the joy of salvation.

There came upon him such a baptism of glory and such an inspiration of the very rapture of heaven, that he kept us for hours beside his bed as he shouted and sung, what we all believed to be the beginning of the songs of heaven, and we bade him farewell long after midnight, fully expecting that our next meeting would be above.

But so mighty was the uplift in that soul that his body, unconsciously to himself, threw off the power of disease, and the next morning he was convalescent, to the amazement of his physicians, and in a few days entirely well. I knew nothing, at that time, of Divine Healing, but simply witnessed with astonishment and delight, the Divine joy to heal disease.

Many a time since have I seen the healing and the gladness of Jesus come together to the soul and body, and the night of weeping turned into a morning of joy.

Many a time have I seen the darkly-clouded and diseased brain lighted up with the joy of the Lord, and saved from insanity by a baptism of holy gladness.

It is true there is a diviner power than the mere natural influence of joy. Incurable disease can only yield to the actual touch of Divine omnipotence, but joy is the channel through which the healing waters flow.

If you would live above your physical conditions, if you would renew your strength continually and “mount up on wings as eagles, and run and not be weary, and walk and not faint,” if you would carry in your veins the exhilaration and zest of unwearied youth and freshness, if you would know, even here, in all its fullness, the foretaste of the resurrection life in your body, then beloved, “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, Rejoice.”

The joy of the Lord is our strength for service and testimony.

It gives a perpetual spring in the hardest fields of Christian service, giving it a divine effectiveness and power. It illuminates the face, and melts the heart with accents of tenderness and love. It gives our words a weight and winning power which men cannot gainsay. They know that we possess a secret to which they are strangers, and our gladness awakens their longing to share our joy. A shining face and radiant spirit are worth a ton of logic, rhetoric and elocution.

A scholarly minister once gave a course of lectures on the “Evidences of Christianity,” for the special purpose of convincing and converting a wealthy and influential sceptic in his congregation. The gentleman attended his lectures and was converted, and a few days after the minister ventured to ask him which of the lectures it was that impressed him. “The lectures?” answered the gentleman, “my dear sir, I don’t even remember the subjects of your lectures, and I cannot say that they had any decisive influence upon my mind. I was converted by the testimony of a dear old woman at those services, who, as she hobbled up the steps close to me, with her glad face as bright as heaven, used to say, ‘My blessed Jesus! My blessed Jesus!’ and turning to me would ask, ‘Do you love my blessed Jesus?’ and that, sir, was my evidence of Christianity.”

Bless the Lord! We can all shine like that. The world is looking for happiness, and if it find the secret in a genuine form, will try to get it. Beloved, the Lord send us out to work for Him with shining faces, victorious accents and hearts overflowing with contagious joy. Then, like Stephen, we will be able to look into the faces of our enemies and confound them by our very countenances, and force the world to “take knowledge of us that we have been with Jesus.”

FROM WHERE SPRINGS THIS JOY?

It springs from the assurance of salvation.

It is the joy of salvation.

Its happy song is,

“Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine,
Oh, what a rapture of glory Divine!
Heir of salvation, purchased of God,
Born of His Spirit, washed in His blood.
This is my story, this is my song,
Praising my Saviour all the day long.”

If you would know it you must accept His promise with full assurance of faith, and rest upon His word without a wavering or a doubt.

It is the joy of the Holy Spirit.

“The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy.” It is not indigenous to earthly soil; it is a plant of heavenly birth. It belongs to the kingdom of God, which is “righteousness, and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.” To know it we must receive the baptism of the Pentecostal Spirit in full surrender and simple faith. It is the characteristic of all who receive this baptism that they know the joy of the Lord, and until we do receive this eternal fountain in our heart, all our attempts at joy are but surface wells; they are waters often defiled and their bottom often dry. This is the great “well of water” Jesus gives “springing up unto everlasting life.”

It is the joy of faith.

“Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing.” There is indeed a deep delight when God has answered prayer, but there is a more thrilling joy when the heart first commits itself to His naked promise, and standing on His word in the face of natural improbability, or even seeming impossibility, declares, “though the fig-tree shall not blossom nor fruit be in the vines, yet will I rejoice in the Lord and joy in the God of my salvation.”

If you are doubting God you need not wonder that your joy is intermittent. The witness of the Spirit always follows the act of trust. “Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee, because he trusteth in Thee,” but it is just as true, “Surely, if ye will not believe, ye shall not be established.”

The joy of His Word and promises.

“I rejoice in Thy Word,” exclaims the Psalmist, “as one that findeth great spoil.” Oh, the rich delight of beholding in the light of the Holy Spirit, the heavenly landscape of truth open before the spiritual vision, like some land of promise shining in the glory of the sunlight. We have found great spoil, and it is all our own. “We have received the Spirit that we may know the things that are freely given us of God,” and we can truly say like the same Psalmist again, “Thy testimonies are the joy and rejoicing of my heart.”

Dear friends, do you know the joy that lies hidden in these neglected pages, the honey that you might drink from this garden of the Lord, these blossoms of truth and promise? Oh, take your Bibles as the living love-letters of His heart to you, and ask Him to speak it to you in joy and faith and spiritual illumination, as the sweet manna of your spirit’s life and the honey out of the Rock of Ages!

It is the joy of prayer.

Its element is the closet, and its source the Mercy-seat. No prayerless life can be a happy one. “They that wait upon the Lord shall mount up on wings as eagles.” “Ask and ye shall receive, that your joy may be full.

It is the joy of meekness and love.

“For the meek shall increase their joy in the Lord,” and the loving spirit ever finds that “it is more blessed to give than to receive.” Selfishness is misery, love is life and joy. The gentle, lowly, chastened spirit shall find all the flowers in bloom and the waters flowing in the valleys of humility.

The unselfish heart shall never fail to prove the promise true, “If thou draw out thy soul to the hungry, and satisfy the afflicted soul, the Lord shall satisfy thy soul in drought, and thou shalt be like a watered garden and a spring of water whose waters fail not.”

Beloved, do you know the gladness which comes from yielding to the will of God, or bearing patiently the wrong, from being silent under the word of reproach, from returning good for evil, from the word that comforts the sorrowing heart, from the cup of cold water to another given, from the sacrifice of your own indulgence that the saving may be given to Him? Oh, then it is that the bells of joy are heard softly ringing, and the Master whispers to the heart, “ye did it unto me.”

It is the joy of service and winning souls.

All true work is a natural delight, but work for God in the true spirit and in the power of the Holy Spirit, is the very partnership of His joy, whose meat and drink it was to do the will of Him that sent Him and to finish His work. If you would have a life lifted above a thousand temptations and petty cares be busy for your Master.

There is no joy more exquisite than the joy of leading a soul to Christ. It is like the mother’s strange, instinctive rapture over her newborn babe. Beloved, you may know this joy, and every Christian ought to know it a hundred-fold. It is the joy of angels, setting all the harps of heaven ringing, and surely it were strange if it were not the higher joy of ransomed saints.

It is the joy of the faithful servant.

There is a sense even here, in which as often as we are true to God and faithful to the call of duty and opportunity, His Spirit gives us a present reward and a baptism of joy, and whispers to the faithful heart, “Well done, good and faithful servant! Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.”

It is the joy of hope.

“We rejoice in hope of the glory of God.” It is the reflected light of the coming Sunrise and the Millennial Day. Except the death and resurrection of Jesus and the baptism of the Holy Spirit, there is nothing that sheds within the heart a diviner gladness, and on the brow a holier light, than the blessed hope of the Lord’s Coming. It is, indeed, “a light in the dark place,” the very Morning Star that presages the Rising Sun. Then let us in this blessed hope “lift up our heads, for our redemption draweth nigh.”

It is the joy of Christ In us.

These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you and that your joy might be full.” This is the deepest secret of spiritual joy; it is the indwelling Christ Himself rejoicing in the heart as He rejoiced on earth even in the darkest hour of His life, and as now, in heaven, He realises the fulfilment of His own Messianic words in the sixteenth psalm:

“Therefore my heart is glad and my glory rejoiceth; my flesh also shall rest in hope. For Thou wilt not leave my soul among the dead, nor suffer Thy Holy One to see corruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life; in Thy presence there is fullness of joy, and at Thy right hand are pleasures for evermore.” In the fullness of joy He is reigning now, and its tides are swelling and rising to the same level in every heart in which He dwells.

The life that is hid with Christ in God is in constant contact with the fountain of life, and though the world may not always see the overflow, yet the heart’s depths are ever filling, and we only need to make room, and lo! the empty void, whether great or small, is full to the measure of the fullness of God.

Taken from Life on the Altar Publication
Issue 6 Autumn 2022

Called To Praise