THE returned captives in Neh. 8 being assembled at Jerusalem on the first day of the seventh month desired to have the law publicly read to them. This was done by Ezra and others for two consecutive days, and when its requirements were heard and their great sins and transgressions were thereby exposed and condemned, they mourned and wept: and quite right they should have done so. But Nehemiah and the Levites stopped them from weeping by telling them that the day was holy to the Lord, a day of solemn gladness, and not of mourning.
It was the first day of the seventh month, the festal month of the year, and on the first day of it every seven years, it was ordained by the law, that the Scriptures should be publicly read to them. But the day being the first day of the feast of trumpets, the first day of the seventh ecclesiastical year, and the new year's day of the civil year, it was on that account held as " a great day."
It was the feast of trumpets which pointed onward to a fresh action on the part of God, and a new work of recalling His people to their own land in the future day which was symbolized by the feast of trumpets. The Lord, in symbol, coming in afresh to work a work of recalling which would bring back His people from all the lands whither they had been scattered, they were enjoined to be in keeping with the festal and joyous character of the day, and with the joy of heart of God who had made it; for it would be with joy of heart on God's part and with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads, they would return when the day of divine recovery, to which the feast of trumpets pointed, had come; and they must be in keeping in their hearts and conduct with the charater of the day.
" This day is holy unto the Lord your God; mourn not nor weep... Go your way, eat the fat and drink the sweet, and send portions unto them for whom nothing is prepared, for this day is holy unto the Lord, neither be ye sorry, for the joy of the Lord is your strength. Hold your peace, for the day is holy; neither be ye grieved. And all the people went their way to eat and to drink, and to send portions, and to make great mirth, because they had understood the words that were declared unto them: " doubtless, about the day being holy to the Lord, which they were to keep as worshippers, and they were not to appear before Him as mourners. (None of His priests, who represented them, was allowed to put on the garments of mourning in His presence). The day, and not the law, was to form their hearts and minds, and control their doings.
And on the second day of this feast of trumpets, as the reading went on, they found that the feast of tabernacles was to be kept on the fifteenth day of the seventh month, and they made all due preparation for it, and kept it. This feast looked onward to the promised day of glory, when, with His returned people as a center and His Shepherd among them, He shall make a time of festal joy for the whole earth, during the period of a thousand years. When they had found the meaning of the feast of trumpets, they discovered also the feast of tabernacles that pointed onward to the period of predicted glory, and set about preparing for it; “and there was very great gladness." The few thousands of the returned exiles enjoying their feasts in the ancient capital of their kingdom gave presage of the coming glory when they shall be called the priests of the Lord, a center for the blessing and joy of the whole world. A recalled people under a fresh action of God look on to glory. There weeping was true and right; for unless they had mourned and wept over their sins as the law exposed them, there had been no basis in a convicted conscience and an exercised heart for their being formed by the grace of the day and finding the joy of the Lord to be their strength. This is ever the way of God, to produce a truthful, moral condition of soul, and then answer to it in His grace.
Though there was no sin in Christ, in Psa. 22, yet in His experience when standing before the judgment of God for sin, the gloom came before the gladness, and the sorrow went before the joy. And this Psalm tells of the sure mercies of David, made good in resurrection and an assembling around God, acting in riches of grace in Christ, and circles of praise and blessing formed around Him and His redeemed people to the ends of the earth. The concluding portion of this Psalm refers to the time when the three feasts of the seventh month shall have their full realization.
On the day of Pentecost when, by the coming of the Holy Ghost, a fresh work of God was inaugurated and begun, the grief went before the gladness. Peter told of a rejected and crucified Christ whom they had slain, but whom God had raised from the dead, and exalted, to His own right hand in the heavens; and they were pricked to the heart, and said to Peter and the rest of the apostles, " Men and brethren, what shall we do? " The provisions of the day that God had made, in that He had seated His Son in the delighted joy of His heart with Himself in heaven, were more than enough to stop the weeping, and to fill the penitents with joy; for through a Christ seated in glory repentance and forgiveness were preached, and by Him the Holy Ghost was given, and three thousand believers witnessed to the power of God's joy in His glorified Son to tranquillize their consciences and fill them with divine joy and gladness. This was a fresh action and work of God, a recalling from moral captivity, and a setting of them in a new place around Himself in fullness of joy, for the day is holy to the Lord, and we read of the assembling of the saved ones around Himself. And this was as it always is for blessing and joy: so "they did eat their meat with gladness, aid singleness of heart, praising God." They were “filled with joy and with the Holy Ghost." This was in principle the action of the first day of the seventh month, the calling out, the commencement, forming and filling of the church of God, according to the riches of God's grace in Christ, and the joy of the Lord so possessing them that it was their strength.
And now that the fair fabric of the church as a public body on earth has been for long ages broken to pieces and marred, and the saints have been carried into a worse captivity than that of the Jews in Babylon, what has been taking place for many years has been a fresh action of God's Spirit, bringing the thought of the day of a glorified Christ and a present Spirit upon their souls. True, they have been passed, and rightly so, under deep exercise of conscience and heart, previous to their seeing by the divinely-anointed eye of faith God's resource for giving the strength of His own joy in His risen and exalted Son to the feeblest of His saints, who have sought to be right with God in mind and heart about His Christ, and to keep the unity of the Spirit, and walk worthy of the vocation, wherewith they are called.
Those saints who have thus departed from iniquity under the force of the word and Spirit of God have found themselves associated with God in His own delighted joy in Christ, as the heavenly center of worship and gathering. " Truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ," and our joy is full. TE e Lord's own word is—" For where two or three are gathered together to my name, there am I in the midst of them." And where is there joy like that of being consciously in the enjoyment of Him "whose presence gladdens heaven?”
Even with regard to the gospel and oar salvation we have an example of the action on the conscience in conviction going before the joy in such Scriptures as Luke 14 and 15. In chapter 14. the Lord passed through scene after scene and by His varied swords and actions judged everything that came from man. The feast, the guests, the conversation in the Pharisee's house were all distasteful to Him, for they all savored of man in his selfishness: and on leaving the house when the great multitude were giving Him an ovation in the way, He spoke this testing word to them-" If any man come to me and shall not hate his own father and mother, and wife and children, and brothers and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple, and whosoever does not carry his cross and come after me he cannot be my disciple... Thus then any one of you who forsakes not all that is his own cannot be my disciple. Salt, then, is good but if the salt also has become savorless wherewith shall it be seasoned. It is proper neither for land nor for dung; it is cast out. He that hath ears to hear let him hear."
When tested by the Son of man expressing and dispensing the grace of God, and laying the necessary condition of one who could be His disciple upon their consciences man is seen to be mere savorless salt—good for nothing but to be cast out! But His words were not without effect, for the publicans and sinner drew near to hear Him, for they knew that they at least were " savorless salt" and good for nothing. Then it was, when they were hearing-not giving, as the people were in the different scenes in chapter xiv., that the Lord " spake to them this parable" of Luke 15 for it is one parable in a threefold aspect, giving the joy of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in saving and receiving the lost but returning sinner, who under God's own gracious action was summoned from the far country to the Father's house, to hear Him say, "Let us eat and be merry, for this my son was dead and is alive again and was lost and is found; and they began to be merry." " This parable " tells of Jesus as the Good Shepherd giving His life for the sheep and the joy with which He does it; the quickening and saving of those dead in trespasses and sins by the action of the word and Spirit of God, and the joy with which the Spirit does this gracious work; the Father's receiving of those whom the Son has redeemed and the Spirit quickened, and how the saved one is placed at the table as a son with the Father made meet for the Father's presence by that which was found in the house and not what he brought with him, or felt within him, and he is satiated with the joy of that festive scene; for the joy of the Lord is his strength.
And now for us, too, there is the strength and gladness of this divine joy, the joy of God in Christ; and there is no limit to what we may enjoy of the springs of divine refreshing in the Father and the Son, if we live in conscious enjoyment of the fellowship of the Father in His delight in His glorified Son, who, when on earth, maintained and retrieved His glory, who has entered His glory and joy in His presence in heaven, and who will, by-and-bye, make good His glory before the whole world; and that will be the day when the whole creation shall participate in the joy of God in His glorified Son.