June 20

He will rejoice over thee with joy. - Zephaniah 3:17.

HERE is the love of complacency and delight. Why, can a person rejoice then without joy? No, but the language of Scripture is peculiar; it is full of significancy, and often of pleonasms. “I will rejoice over thee with joy;” a joy which deserves the name. The meaning is immediately, that he will rejoice over them even while he is saving them. This may seem incredible, but nothing is more true. The salvation of the people of God is expressly called “the pleasure of the Lord,” which is to “prosper” in the Redeemer’s hands. Our Saviour has in one chapter set forth three parables on purpose to display this,- to show that God not only saves, but that he delights to do it. The parable of the lost sheep. The shepherd seeks after that which was lost in the wilderness until he finds it, and when he finds it he lays it on his shoulder, not complainingly, but rejoicingly; and when he comes home he calls his friends and his neighbours, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the sheep which was lost.” The parable of the lost piece of silver which the woman searched for all through the house until she found it, and when she had found it she called her friends and neighbours, saying, “Rejoice with me, for I have found the piece which I had lost.” And the parable of the prodigal son, in which we are told that the father not only received him upon his return, but said, “Bring forth the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and be merry; for this my son was dead and is alive again, he was lost and is found: and they began to be merry.”

Oh that we could more fully and implicitly believe this!-that he not only recovers us, but delights in our recovery; that he takes pleasure in the prosperity of his people; that he takes “pleasure in them that fear him, in them that hope in his mercy;” that he takes pleasure in their graces, and views in them the fruits of his own Spirit, his own workmanship, the reflection of his own image: that he takes pleasure in their actions and duties; that the prayer of the upright is his delight; that their alms are the odour of a sweet smell; that if they speak often to one another he hearkens and hears, and records it in the book of his remembrance. He rejoices in their persons; they are his children and his friends. “Thou shalt no more therefore,” says he, “be termed forsaken, neither shall thy land any more be termed desolate; but thou shalt be called Hephzibah, [that is, my delight is in thee,] and thy land Beulah, [that is, married;] and as the bridegroom rejoiceth over the bride, so shall thy God rejoice over thee.”