"Who for the JOY that was set before HIM, endured the cross, despising the shame." ~~Hebrews 12:2
When my oldest brother was about 8 years old he was playing with the other children on a large rock jutting into the river that ran along the edge of our farm. At this place the water ran in a narrow confine, deep and swift, and by chance my brother fell in and was carried away. The other children ran shouting in alarm up through the garden nearby, where my father heard them and immediatly took out at full speed down the river. Stumbling, sliding over the rocks and now and then into deep holes where he had to swim, he kept steadily on, caring not for wet clothes or bruises or danger of broken bones. His eyes were ever down stream where now and then he caught a glimpse of a suspender buckle's gleam as it would rise and then sink out of sight. At last diving into a deep hole he pulled up his boy and carried him to shore. After the boy had vomited up large amounts of water, and finally began to cry, and my father knew he was safe and alive, his JOY made wet clothes and bruises seem as nothing, for HE HAD SAVED HIS SON.
At breakfast one cold November morning on this same farm father, mother and the three older children were suprised to find that the house was on fire. All rushed out the back door - -all, that is, except mother. She remembered her two baby boys, one three and the other not yet a year old, asleep in bed up stairs, and she rushed for the stairway. Outside father quickly conected the hose to a faucet and put the oldest boy to spraying water on the house, then he returned to the back door, but when he opened the door a mass of flames struck him in the face. Running to the end of the house he called out to mother, telling her to come to the window and drop the children out.
With the two baby boys in her arms mother had found the stairway blocked by fire and knew what to do when she heard father's voice. Quickly she raised the window and as she did so, firey flames came through the upstairs and out the window all around her, burning her face and arms and hair including a celluloid comb. She was able to drop the boys into father's arms and then climb through the window, which dropped down onto her right arm. When father got a ladder up and mother climbed down, she was a pittiful sight and in a great deal of pain. But as we walked down the road to a neighbor's house about a mile away to which a doctor had been summoned, I'm sure that in spite of the pain and suffering that mother's heart was full of JOY, for SHE HAD SAVED HER TWO LITTLE BOYS.
Likewise the Lord Jesus "endured the cross, despising the shame," caring not for the burning of the whip lashes or the crown of thorns, the spitting in His face, the jeering mob, the parched lips, the bleeding of nail pierced hands and feet, because to Him in His great love they were nothing compared to the JOY of SAVING POOR SINNERS like you and me from an endless devil's hell. Oh, how it should make us love Him, when we realize that that was HIS JOY.
"But I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your JOY no man taketh from you." (John 16:22) These words of Jesus to His disciples on the night before His crucifiction. What a sad and dishearted group they were when they saw Him, the One they had loved and put so much confidence in, hanging dead on the cross. Then Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus took down His body and laid it away in a tomb. How dark those hours must have been for those disciples! But, Oh, what a change a few days later when Jesus stood ALIVE AGAIN in there very midst, and when Thomas was told to put his finger into the nail prints, and when Jesus met with them that morning on Galillee's shore as they were fishing, when Peter, shouting, "It is the Lord!" dived overboard and swam ashore to his Master's feet. How great was their JOY, for the One they loved, their Lord and Master, had risen never to die any more!
Paul said, "For if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that GOD HATH RAISED HIM FROM THE DEAD, THOU SHALT BE SAVED.' (Romans 10:9) HIS JOY is in our salvation. OUR JOY is in His resurrection. "Who was delivered for our offences and was RAISED AGAIN FOR OUR JUSTIFICATION.' (Romans 4:25)
Yes I once met a living Savior and trusted my soul to Him, and sence then I have JOY in my heart that no man can take away from me. If your heart is troubled or full of sadness, just turn to this living and everywhere present Savior, and let Him come in and drive all of your fears away.
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