A Round of Delights

worlddic.com

Romans 15:13

Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, that you may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy Ghost.

1. The apostle desired for the Romans the most delightful state of mind. See the value of prayer, for if Paul longs to see his friends attain the highest possible condition, he prays for them.

2. Paul's making this state a subject of prayer implies that it is possible for it to be attained. There is no reason why we should hang our heads and live in perpetual doubt. We may not only be somewhat comforted, but we may be full of joy, etc.

3. The fact that the happy condition described is sought by prayer is a plain evidence that the blessing comes from a Divine source. Notice concerning this state: —

I. WHENCE. IT COMES. From "the God of hope." The connection is instructive.

1. To know joy and peace through believing we must begin by knowing what is to be believed from Holy Scripture (ver. 4). Where He is revealed as the God of hope. Unless God had revealed Himself we could have guessed at hope, but the Scriptures are windows of hope to us, and reveal the God of hope to inspire us with hope. Faith deals with the Scriptures and with the God of hope as therein revealed, and out of these it draws its fulness of joy and peace. At least three of the apostle's quotations call us to joy (vers. 10-12).

2. The apostle leads us through the Scriptures to God Himself, who is personally to fill us with joy and peace; i.e., He is to become the great object of our joy. Our God is a blessed God, so that to believe in Him is to find happiness and rest. When you think of God, the just One, apart from Christ, you might well tremble, but when you see Him in Jesus, His very justice becomes precious to you. The holiness of God which aforetime awed you becomes supremely attractive when you see it revealed in the person of Jesus. How charming is "the glory of God in the face of Christ." His power, which was once so terrible, now becomes delightful.

3. God is, moreover, called the God of hope because He worketh hope and joy in us. Peace without God is stupefaction, joy madness, and hope presumption. This blessed name of "God of hope" belongs to the New Testament, and is a truly gospel title. The Romans had a god of hope, but the temple was struck by lightning, and afterwards burned to the ground. Exceedingly typical this of whatever of hope can come to nations which worship gods of their own making. The hope which God excites is a hope worthy of Him. It is a Godlike hope — a hope which helps us to purify ourselves. He who graspeth this hope hath a soul-satisfying portion. It is a hope which only God would have contrived for man, and a hope which God alone can inspire in men.

II. WHAT IT IS.

1. It is a state of mind —

(1) Most pleasant, for to be filled with joy is a rare delight, reminding one of heaven.

(2) Safe, for the man who has a joy which God gives him may be quite easy in the enjoyment of it.

(3) Abiding. We may drink our full of it without surfeit.

(4) Most profitable, for the more a man has of this joy the better man he will be. The more happy we can be in our God the more thoroughly will the will of Christ be fulfilled in us, for He desired that our joy might be full.

(5) Which has varieties in it. It is joy and peace; and it may be either. Peace is joy resting, and joy is peace dancing. Joy cries hosanna before the Well-beloved, but peace leans her head on His bosom. We work with joy and rest with peace.

(6) Which is also a compound, for we are bidden at one and the same time to receive both wine and milk — wine exhilarating with joy, and milk satisfying with peace. "Ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace." You shall lie down in the green pastures of delight, and be led by the still waters of quietness.

2. The joy and peace here spoken of are through believing. You come to know the God of hope through the Scriptures, which reveal Him; by this you are led to believe in Him, and it is through that believing that you become filled with joy and peace. It is not by working nor by feeling.

3. This joy and peace are of a superlative character, "Fill you with all joy." He means with the best and highest degree of joy, with as much of it as you can hold.

4. Notice the comprehensiveness of his prayer.

(1) "All joy"; that is joy in the Father's love, the Son's redeeming blood, the Holy Ghost's indwelling; joy in the covenant of grace, in the promises, in the doctrines, in the precepts, in everything which cometh from God.

(2) All peace — with God, of conscience, with one another, even with the outside world, as far as peace may be.

5. Observe the degree of joy and peace which he wishes for them — "that ye may be filled." God alone knows our capacity and where the vacuum lies which most needs filling. As the sun fills the world with light, even so the God of hope by His presence lights up every part of our nature with the golden light of joyous peace.

III. WHAT IT LEADS TO. "Lead to? What more is wanted?" When a man brings you into a chamber vaulted with diamonds, walled with gold, and floored with silver, we should be astonished if he said, "This is a passage to something richer still." Yet the apostle directs us to this fulness of joy and peace that we may by its means reach to something else — "that you may abound in hope," etc. How often do great things in the Bible, like the perpetual cycles of nature, begin where they end and end where they begin. If we begin with the God of hope, we are wound up into holy joy and peace, that we may come back to hope again, and to abounding in it by the power of the Holy Ghost.

1. The hope here mentioned, arises, not out of believing, but out of the joy created in us by our having believed. This hope drinks its life at the fountain of personal experience.

2. The text speaks of an abounding hope. Much hope must arise to a Christian out of his spiritual joy. Grace enjoyed is a pledge of glory. Acceptance with God to-day creates a blessed hope of acceptance for ever.

3. "By the power of the Holy Ghost," is partially mentioned by way of caution, because we must discriminate between the fallacious hope of nature and the certain hope of grace.

worlddic.com