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There is no duty more reasonable, more becoming, and agreeable; and yet there is none more generally misunderstood, less inquired into, and worse regulated, than that of rejoicing. Joy seems to be the peculiar privilege of innocent and happy creatures; when, therefore, we consider ourselves as sinners, as poor, and naked, and miserable; polluted with the stain, and loaded with the guilt, of our iniquities; clothed with infirmities, beset with enemies, born to trouble, exposed to danger, always liable, and sometimes obliged, to grief and sorrow; we may be apt upon this melancholy view to think that joy is not made for man, and least of all for Christians; and be tempted to understand our Saviour in the most strict and rigorous sense, when He tells His disciples that they shall weep and lament, but the world shall rejoice. The methods which men usually take to express their joy, seem, at first view, to give the good Christian still farther objections against it; and when he observes that levity of mind, and vanity of thoughts; that excess, intemperance, and licentiousness, which it too often occasions; he thinks he may well be justified, if, with Solomon, he says of laughter that it is mad; and of mirth, what doth it? But these seeming objections against this duty of rejoicing will easily be removed; the nature of it will be fully opened; the benefits we may hope to reap from it will clearly be discerned; and we shall soon be satisfied that joy and gladness is as suitable to our nature and religion, as it is agreeable to our desires and inclinations; if we consider carefully the exhortation in the text.

I. WHAT IT IS TO REJOICE IN THE LORD. It implies our making God the chief, the supreme, and adequate object of our joy. The true nature of joy consists in that agreeable serenity and satisfaction of mind, which we feel upon the presence and fruition of some good. Good, therefore, is the proper object of our joy; good, not in itself alone, but good to us; such as repairs, preserves, advances, exalts, perfects our nature. The good we are to rejoice in must be full, sufficient, and satisfactory; proportionable to the desires, the wants, the necessities; and suitable to the inclinations, the condition, and circumstances of those who are to be delighted with it. It must be an effectual, prevalent, and sovereign good; able to remove from us, not only the present pressure, but the danger, the possibility, or at least the fear of evil. It must be a substantial, lasting, durable good; immortal, like the soul, that is to be satisfied; ever yielding fresh delight, and yet never to be exhausted: in a word, it must be our own proper good; a good, which we may be able to attain, and sure to hold fast; a good always present with us, and never to be taken from us. Now, on all these accounts God alone is the proper and adequate object of our joy. It is He only whom we can truly look upon as a pure, perfect, suitable, sovereign, eternal, and, what is still more, our own, proper, peculiar God. Our joy must be fixed on Him, as our universal, chief, and ultimate good; and upon other things as occasional, subordinate, and instrumental to that.

II. WE LAWFULLY MAY, AND ARE IN DUTY BOUND, SO TO REJOICE. True joy, when it is founded upon a right principle, directed to its proper object, kept within its due compass, and not suffered to exceed either in its measure, or in its duration, is not only lawful, but commendable; not only what we may, without sin, allow ourselves in, but what we cannot, without folly, abridge ourselves of. Pleasure and good, pain and evil, are but different expressions for one and the same thing. No action is ever forbidden us, but what, upon the whole, brings more pain than pleasure; none is commanded us, but what, all things considered, yields greater degrees of pleasure than it does of pain. And it can never, therefore, be an objection against anything we undertake, that it will cause joy; nor a commendation of any action, that it will produce sorrow. True it is, the great duty of repentance does in the very nature of it include sorrow; but then the end of this sorrow is, that we may be put into a condition of rejoicing the more abundantly. The sense of our sins must make us weep and lament; but then our sorrow will be soon turned into joy. Though our conversion hath its pangs, yet we shall no more remember the anguish, for joy that a new man is born into the world. Whatever reasons we may have for our grief and sorrow, they are mightily overbalanced by those motives that recommend joy and gladness. If the sense of our manifold infirmities, our heinous sins, our grievous sufferings, our violent temptations; if the prosperity of our and God's enemies; if the calamities of our brethren, and His faithful servants lie hard upon us, and may seem to justify and require a more than ordinary degree of grief; yet in the Lord we have still sufficient matter of rejoicing; of rejoicing in God, who is our Creator, our Preserver, our Father, our Friend; of rejoicing in Christ, in His person, in His office, in the graces He vouchsafes us, in the light of His countenance, in the hopes of His glory, in the greatness of His love, in the exceeding riches of His pardoning mercy, in the fidelity of His promises, in the efficacy of His intercession, in His readiness to assist, in His power to support us in time of need.

(Bishop Smalridge.)

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KJV: Rejoice in the LORD, ye righteous; and give thanks at the remembrance of his holiness.

WEB: Be glad in Yahweh, you righteous people! Give thanks to his holy Name. A Psalm.