Restoration of Joy — Bill McLeod

You know, the saints of God are very special people. I don't know if you feel that way, but they are. Even sometimes when they're cranky and crusty, they're God's children, they're special people. Many years ago, I heard Dr. Shields preach just once, the only time I ever did hear him, and he was telling us about a man he had in his church who was creating problems.

Every time they had a business meeting, this fellow was on his feet objecting, no matter what the item of business was, I object, I object, I object. Well, they talked with him, had meetings with him, and he would promise he wouldn't do it again and last about two months, and then he'd be in a business meeting and do it again.

And finally, they got him to hold off for about three months, and then one night in the business meeting, he got to his feet and he was opposing everything, I object, I object, I object. Well, Dr. Shields got ahold of him after the meeting and said, I'd like to have some words with you in the office.

So they got in the office, and he said, Dr. Shields, you must think I'm a terrible person. He said, I'm not really. He said, it's just, he said, I don't know even why I did it tonight. He said, something just took a hold of me, and I knew I shouldn't, but I did it.

He said, Dr. Shields, he said, you know, I'm really, I'm really pure gold at heart. Well, he said, you might be, but you're the roughest nugget I ever knew. But God's children are special people, and sometimes we make the mistake, well, I could illustrate this by another story that you may have heard, apparently a true story.

Praying for Revival Instead of Criticizing Christians

A Christian worker was preaching in a church, and he was invited to a certain home for dinner, and the pastor sort of warned him. He said, now, these people you're going to have dinner with, they're Christians, but they're very, very critical people, so be very careful what you say.

And so, sure enough, he's at the dinner table, and somebody begins to criticize some Christian worker, and somebody criticizes someone else, and someone criticizes someone else, and he just kept on eating, paid no attention.

And they were trying to bait him, to trap him, so finally, somebody said something about a certain Christian worker, and turned to this man, and said, and what do you think about it? Well, he said, I'll tell you what I think about it, I read in the Bible that the devil is the accuser of the brethren, and I don't like doing his dirty work.

So the temperature went down to about 30 degrees below, and I guess he wasn't invited to that home again. You know, praying high, this was an insight God gave me when I was a very young Christian through a book, by praying high, and he was telling how one of the missionaries in their area had become backslidden, very cold, and was a reproach among the unbelievers, and he was praying about this man one day, and he was praying, God, strike him down, God, do this, God, do that.

The Bible says we're to lift up holy hands when we pray without wrath and doubting. And he said, the Lord came to him and said, touch him not, he's the apple of my eye. And he actually opened his eyes to look around to see who said that, because it was so real.

Well he went to praying again, and heard the same voice, touch him not, he's the apple of my eye. So then, Hyde said, I got the message from God, and I began to pray for God to revive the heart of that Christian.

And that Christian, that backslidden missionary experienced a profound revival, and was mightily used of God. You know something, if we would pray for God's people as much as we criticize them, we'd have a revival all over the place.

Demonism Among Evangelicals and Occult Practices

Well, just a few thoughts, they're not even by way of introduction. Neil asked me to say a little bit about the book, Demonism Among Evangelicals, and the Way to Victory. It's a little book I wrote some years ago, and I can't sell books the way that these other brethren sell them, you know, they throw them around, and they seem to float through the air to the right person, and all that sort of thing.

You maybe weren't here to see that, but it's quite a thing. I'm a conservative sketchman, I don't know how they do it, but anyway. I didn't even know these books were coming, but they did come apparently today, and they're two dollars a copy if you're interested in having one.

You might feel it's kind of a small book for two dollars, well what we did, we used a very readable print, but it's not as large as the print in some books, and I saw a book one time almost double the size of this book, it had 36 ,000 words, this one has 53 ,000 words, so you get your money's worth as far as that's concerned, but if you're interested at all, it's not dealing with the spectacular elements, and certainly nothing far out, but I was shocked after I'd gone into revival work to discover how often Christian people were involved in occult practices, sometimes without even knowing it.

I was in Minneapolis and preached there, and after the regular meeting we had a, I brought a lecture in the occult, about 400 people in the meeting, I gave an invitation for anybody who was involved in the occult to come forward, and about 40 people responded, all of them professing Christians.

Well I thought that's Minneapolis, they call it the Witchcraft Center of America, there's 150 witches coven, 13 witches in a coven in Minneapolis, well I can expect that, but the same thing exactly happened in Sault Ste. Marie in Canada, about 300 people stayed for the lecture in the occult, 35 or 40 came forward for counseling, all of them Christians, what do you do in a case like that?

What do you do? And I've talked with Christian people, I mean people who gave every evidence of being born again that were involved in as many as 22 separate areas of the occult. So it's a problem, a serious problem, and it's one of the reasons why I wrote the book, well it's a complete glossary of biblical terms, plus some, we try to get a sort of a cross-section of cases we've come up against, and you might find some insights here.

A couple of people have asked if I'll be talking on this while I'm here, and if God so leads, I'll be very happy to do it, and you might pray that God would lead each of us as we speak, that we might be clear in our minds as to what God would have us to say.

You know, there's sermons, and there's sermons, but we want to be like Haggai, who was called the Lord's messenger in the Lord's message. So we want to be that, the Lord's messenger in the Lord's message to our brethren.

Psalm 51 and the Restoration of Joy

Psalm 51, if you want to turn there, I'm sure that most of us will remember that this is David's prayer of repentance after he had backslidden. We're going to read the first 13 verses of the chapter. Have mercy upon me, O God, according to your lovingkindness, according unto the multitude of your tender mercies.

Blot out my transgressions, wash me throughly from my iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, and my sin is ever before me. Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight, that you might be justified when you speak, and be clear when you judge.

Behold, I was shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me. Behold, you desire truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean.

Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear joy and gladness, that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice. Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all my iniquities. Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from your presence, and take not your Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and uphold me with thy free spirit. Then will I teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners shall be converted unto thee.

If I were to take a text, I would take the twelfth verse, restore unto me the joy of thy salvation. Perhaps call the message the restoration of joy. There's a book out of print now. It's called Bringing in the Sheaves by a famous American evangelist called J .B. Earl.

I wish the book was in print today. It's not too long ago that I read it, and in that book there was a sermon called The Restoration of Joy. Now I'm not preaching that sermon today at all, but I did gain some helpful insights from it.

Mr. Earl tells how that he'd been an evangelist for some years, and there had been a measure of blessing in his work, and then the blessing seemed to be drying up, and he didn't know why. He was going to a certain place to preach, so he said, I've prepared five of the hardest, harshest sermons I could conceive, barbed wire and cactus and everything, and he preached one and nothing happened.

He preached two, nothing happened. Preached three, nothing happened. Preached four, nothing happened. He only had one left. So he said, I took that fifth sermon, and I reworked it, and I pounded those people, I beat them, I did everything, and nothing happened.

So that night, he got alone with God. He asked God why he wasn't blessing. The Lord said, it's because of you, because of me. It's the people. No, it's not the people. It's you. Well, God, how can it be me?

I'm the evangelist. It's you. Well, Lord, it can't be me, he said. Kept on like this. He was trying to persuade the Lord it wasn't him, it was the people, so he said, well, Lord, you know that I cry sometimes when I preach.

The Lord said, yes, but that's just water off an iceberg. Water off an iceberg. And then he saw it, and he was on his face before God till two o 'clock in the morning, and he said, at two o 'clock in the morning, God restored the love of Christ in his soul.

You know, here's something he said. He said, if I started with 17 people, and he did one time, and I was in a building seating 2 ,000, and I wanted to fill that building, I would work until those 17 people had the fullness of Christ's joy in their life, and then the building would fill.

And he saw it happen. He saw it happen time and time again. God's people filled with the love of God, the joy of God, and the sinners can't resist this. And he gives many wonderful examples of people whose homes were transformed, of churches that were transformed as a result of the restoration of the joy of God, lost to sin.

So the prayer is, restore unto me. It's a personal prayer, isn't it? He's not praying for his family, or a church, or something, or the nation. He's praying for himself. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation.

Joy Versus Happiness

Now I think there's a difference, a discernible difference between joy and happiness. At least I make a difference. And I would say that happiness is something that's linked to happenings, whereas joy is linked to God and my relationship to him.

I may not always be happy, but I can always be joyful. Maybe the difference I'm making is not valid. I'm not really sure. But I think there is this kind of a difference. For example, if you get a raisin pear, a bonus or something, you go to a tearing home, you tell your wife, you tell your husband, whatever, look, I got $300 of bonus I wasn't expecting at all.

And boy, ever happy. But you know, a week later, it's old stuff. You spent it by then, probably. Or a new car, new fridge, new this, new that. Or you get a good doctor's report where you're expecting a bad doctor's report, and boy, you're just flying.

It's fantastic. You're so happy about that. But you know, a week later, it's pretty hard to be happy about it then, because it's sort of, it's got dim. Or maybe you get a letter, a phone call of good friends coming to stay for a weekend, and you're just so happy to think you haven't seen them for three years, you're going to have a great time.

But you know, after they're gone, you don't have that same joy in your heart, that same happiness. And so I say that happiness is dependent to a large extent on happenings, but joy depends on something else.

It depends on my personal relationship with the Lord. Now George Mueller was one of the greatest men of faith in the history of the Christian Church, so I'm going to embarrass you. I'm going to ask you this question.

How many of you people have read his life story? Would you raise your hand? At the most, not quite ten, I guess. And that's sad. I asked that of a seminary class a few months ago, and out of 45 in the class, were there six that had read the story of George Mueller?

I asked that in a Bible school where 75 kids, two kids had read the story of George Mueller. People listen. It's one of the most thrilling, challenging stories in the history of the Church of God. George Mueller.

The Joy of the Lord as Christian Strength

And here's something he said. One of the things he said that's very helpful. He said, what is a Christian's chief duty every day? Now I want you to answer that in your own heart. What is the Christian's chief duty every day?

What do you think? Do you know what he said? Be prepared for a shock. He said the Christian's chief duty every day is to be joyful in his God. Why? Because the joy of the Lord is your strength. That's your power.

And there isn't one book in a hundred written on this matter of the power of the Holy Spirit that deals with this. The joy of the Lord is my strength. That's my power. And sometimes I'm seeking for power in the wrong way.

Nehemiah 8 .10. All right, let's start there. The joy of the Lord is your strength. And you and I can't be strong to resist temptation and sin, nor can we be strong to share Jesus Christ with other people if we don't have the joy of God in our soul.

And David knew that. He lost the ability to win sinners to God. He said, then will I teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners shall be converted unto thee. He knew that when he had that joy back in his soul, then God could use him.

He would have power. He would have strength. But it was gone. Oh, it was gone. And you can't understand Psalm 51 unless you understand Psalm 32. Because in Psalm 32 he tells us what happened. When I kept silence, he wouldn't confess his sin.

This went on for possibly a year because a child was born. We don't know how old it was. Maybe some weeks, possibly some months, or maybe even longer. We don't really know. But he kept silence over his sin.

All this time somehow he managed to. But day and night he said, God's hand was heavy on me. And my moisture was turning me into the drought of summer. He was having a horrible time. And sometimes we Christian people have a horrible time.

We don't have the joy of God in our heart. We can be happy about this and happy about that. But really deep down inside, the joy of God is gone. And we need to think in terms of praying this prayer. Restore unto me.

But you know something? Before David prayed that prayer, other things had to happen. We're going to come to that in a little while. Right now. Why seek for joy? Why is it this important? We've already indicated because it's our strength.

It's our power. Then secondly, because without it, we've hinted at this, without this joy, we can't be successful in persuading other people to receive the Lord Jesus Christ. You may have read or heard of Billy Bray, the famous Cornish miner, mightily used of God, why sometimes even royalty came to hear him preach.

Very eccentric, but very mightily used of God. A very happy person. When he met people, sometimes he'd grab them and pick them up in his arms and dance around the room and he'd say to them, Be converted!

And if they weren't, they better get converted. And if they were, they got a bigger hug than ever. Well, someone said to him one time because they thought it was sort of put on. They said, Billy, haven't you had any trials?

Oh, yes. He said, I've had trials. He said, but you know what? The Lord's given me the vinegar with a teaspoon and the honey with a ladle. And so he had the joy of God in his soul. And someone writing about Billy Bray said he attracted, he attracted sinners just like honey attracts flies.

They just came from all quarters because he was so full of the joy of God. And ought to have that joy of God because without it, we cannot persuade transgressors. We cannot see sinners converted. Here's another reason.

Joy in Reading Scripture and Giving

Because you can't read the Bible with real profit. A lot of Christians, they read the Bible as if it was the newspaper. I mean, they come to it with about just as much enthusiasm as if it was a newspaper and sometimes with less.

I rejoice at thy word as one that finds great spoil. Now, he's not saying that the word of God made him happy. It couldn't have done. He wasn't saying that, though. He's already happy when it comes to the word of God.

And you can just see him leaping to get his hands on the word of God so he can study it and read it. I rejoice at thy word as one that finds great spoil. I was in a little prayer meeting recently. It was a blessed prayer meeting.

Just about eight of us there, eight men. And a man of God, a godly person, he said, Brethren, I get almost nothing out of studying the word of God. I want you to pray for me. All right, something was wrong.

And he wasn't rejoicing at the word of God as a person who would find great spoil. Do you come to the word of God this way? You can hardly wait to get your hands on it, expose your heart to it, hear what God is saying.

Because after all, the word of God is God's love letter to you today. God has something to say to you, to me today from his word. And we must come to the word of God in this way. So we need the joy of God in our heart to read the Bible rightly.

And do you know something else? You can't give acceptably to God unless you have the joy of God in your soul because the Lord loves a cheerful giver. And the Greek word there is the word from which we get the English word hilarious.

The Lord loves a hilarious giver. I had an Irishman in one of my churches. He was both a deacon and a treasurer of the church. We were starting a church and we were small, so one guy might have six jobs, this kind of thing.

But he was the best treasurer you could ever have because, boy, when he had an extra $10 to give to God, he'd leap about six feet in the air and click his heels together four times and just praise the Lord.

One time he got a bonus of $70. And he wasn't bragging to me. I knew him too well for that. So it wasn't that, but he was just so happy at $70 he could give to God. He was just so joyful over it. The Lord loves a cheerful giver.

That's in 2 Corinthians 8. And in the same chapter, we read this about certain Christian people. Paul said, the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality.

They were very, very poor, but they were very, very joyful. And you mix those two things together and they were giving and giving and giving again. I heard the testimony of a Christian worker who was invited to go to Korea to preach a series of messages on the deeper Christian life and so on.

When he got there, he asked some of the brethren, he said, would it be alright if I preached about tithing? And they looked at him and said, well, we'd rather you didn't. Oh, he said, don't they believe in tithing here?

Well, he said, it's not that. They're so far beyond the tithe, we wouldn't want them to go back to giving the tithe. And that brother said he actually saw people take off an article of clothing and put it in the offering basket, take off their shoes and put it in the offering basket, take off their shirt, put it in the offering basket.

He actually saw one man take the offering basket, put it on the floor and he stood in the basket. He never had anything to give. The Lord loves a cheerful giver. And so sometimes like Billy Sunday used to say, we put a nickel on the collection plate and sing, God be with you till we meet again.

Lots of Christians give that. Well, why in the world did I give that $20? Man, I could have used it here. I remember a Christian one time confessing to me how God had led him to sell a house to a certain person and he sold it at a price $10 ,000 less than he could have got on the market.

God told him to do it, so he did it. But then as the months went by, the devil got on his back and told him what a fool he was for giving this $10 ,000. So to settle the thing, he went to the person and confessed the sin to the person to whom he'd sold the house.

And then the joy of God returned to his soul. All right, the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality. And Paul called this in 2 Corinthians 8, proving the sincerity of your love.

Joy in Trials and Christian Endurance

Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation. Then a Christian person can't go through trials and tribulations properly unless he has the joy of God in his heart. When Paul and Silas were cast into jail at midnight, what were they doing?

You know, feeling sad and sorry. You know, here we are knocking ourselves out for a gun and here we wind up in jail. What kind of a deal is this? No, it says they were singing praises and they were praying and the prisoners heard them and they were having the time of their life.

You know what a bit is? They put it in a horse's mouth. You know, in the dark ages, they made bits for Christians. They didn't call them that, but they were made out of wood. And they stuck them in Christians' mouths and tied them behind their heads.

Do you know why? Because when they were dying at the stake, they were singing the praise of God and preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ and sinners were getting converted. And so the wicked had to figure out some system to keep these people quiet when they were dying.

If I have the joy of God in my soul, torture or tribulation is not going to cause it to dissipate and run out because that joy is dependent on the Lord. And it's God's way. Alright, Romans chapter 5, it says, We glory in tribulations also.

James chapter 1 says, My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into divers temptations. Do we do this? Do I have enough joy in my soul so when a trial or tribulation comes along, I still rejoice? It's easy to sing, dear people, and be joyful and happy when the sun is shining, but it's difficult, it's different when things aren't right.

One of the happiest Christians I ever knew was an old Russian woman called Mrs. Wonky. She was a member of one of my churches and a godly woman. I used to go to fellowship with her just to get warmed up spiritually sometimes.

I never ever saw her when she was sad. She was always rejoicing and praising the Lord. But let me tell you something about her. She'd had six children and all her children were dead but one and her husband was dead and her five children and her husband had all died in accidents.

I think a couple of them had drowned. One of them had been killed in an explosion. The other's in car accidents. She'd lost them all. And the daughter she had living lived somewhere in the States and she very seldom saw him.

Mrs. Wonky lived in Bozes, Germanitoba. Now she had ulcers on her legs. She was usually very sick, seldom could come out to church. So one day I said to her, Sister Wonky, have you ever felt that God's given you a bad deal?

And she looked at me with a pained look on her face. Then she went into a rhapsody of delight and told me how wonderful Jesus had been to her. Let me tell you something. I had her funeral. The funeral was held in the town hall in Bozes.

The place was packed to the doors and in my 37 years of preaching, it's the only time I had a meeting where the sinners were saying amen. I would say Mrs. Wonky was a real Christian and the sinners said amen, preacher.

That's right. They all knew she had a mighty, a powerful testimony in that area. Because she had the joy of God in her soul. My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into different temptations. Alright?

Joy as the Experience of the Early Church

The joy of God. And there's another reason. Here's another reason. Because it was the experience of the early Christians. You know, we're talking a lot nowadays, lots of books written about the book of Acts and how we ought to be living the way they lived then.

So let's do that. Acts 13 .52 it says, And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Ghost. Now it doesn't say some of the Christians were filled with joy some of the time. It says, And the disciples were filled with joy and with the Holy Spirit.

In other words, that was the normal experience of the average Christian back in those times. Filled with the Holy Spirit and filled with the joy of God. So why shouldn't we seek for this? You know, sometimes, not often, but occasionally someone has come to me and said, well now preacher, you know the Christian life is not that way.

You know there's all kinds of trials and troubles. You know there's a lot of sorrow and crying in the Christian life. You're not being honest. You're telling the people they're supposed to have the joy of God in their soul.

I say, I'm telling you what the Word of God says. The Bible doesn't say I'm not gonna have trials. The Bible even says in 1 Peter 1, Though now for a season, if need be, you are in heaviness through manifold temptations.

In heaviness through manifold temptations, but in the same context, whom having not seen you love, in whom though now you see him not yet believing, you rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.

That's in the same context in 1 Peter 1. Heavy, perhaps, yes, and yet deep down underneath, joy unspeakable and full of glory. Well here are some good reasons why we need to have the joy of God in our heart.

Here's another reason. And if you get rained on, just move. If you're getting blessed, stay where you are. This is the kingdom of God. This is the kingdom of God. It says so in Romans 14, 17, 18. It's two verses in the Bible I get so excited about.

You'll pardon me if I get excited again this morning. You know, the kingdom of God, the Bible says, doesn't come with outward show because the kingdom of God is within you or among you. It's a spiritual thing.

It doesn't come with outward show. The kingdom of God is not in word, but in power. Now the Old Testament, there are three and a half times as many words, 3 .5 times as many words in the Old Testament as in the New.

And so the Old Testament is filled with do this, do this, do this, don't do that, don't do that, don't do that. But there was no power there to enable the people to live the way they ought to live. So the New Testament is not in word, but in power.

There is power to live the Christian life. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. It's totally different now than it used to be. And so in Romans 14, 17, 18, the word of God says this, the kingdom of God is not meat and drink.

Now the Old Testament kingdom was the kingdom of meat and drink. It says this in the book of Hebrews. There was a time when carnal ordinances, he says, it stood only in meat and drinks and different washings and carnal ordinances imposed on the people until the time of Reformation.

And the next words are, but Christ being come. Christ has come. And that's all done away. You know when David became king, what did he do? He dealt to every person in Israel a flagon of wine, a piece of flesh and a piece of bread.

It was a kingdom of meat and drink in another sense. But the kingdom of God today is not meat and drink. It's righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. For he that in these things serves Christ is acceptable to God and approved of men.

May I ask you this question? Do you have it? The kingdom of God? Colossians chapter 1 says, we have been translated out of Satan's kingdom, delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of God's dear Son.

And there's a distinct and a very definite and a strong, powerful sense in which the kingdom of God is already here. The kingdom of God, I repeat, is not meat and drink, but righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit.

Notice the order. Righteousness first of all, then comes peace, and then comes joy. That's the kingdom of God. Now the kingdom of God will be manifested in a more complete way at the return of the Lord Jesus.

But in Matthew chapter 13, when Jesus Christ talked about that, He said that when He came back, He was going to send His angel with a great sound of a trumpet, and they were going to gather. Listen carefully to the next words.

They were going to gather out of His kingdom. His kingdom was already there. But Satan had superseded, put his kingdom on top of the kingdom of God. And there was much garbage and much sin, much evil.

And so the angels of God are going to gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, all those things that cause sin. What a day! When the angels go flying around the world, hundreds of millions of angels smashing and breaking and destroying everything that causes sin in the world.

And they'll gather out of the kingdom of God. Those who commit iniquity, they'll be cast into a furnace of fire. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. That's the teaching of the Word of God. And then what?

And then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Christians don't make... I mean, as far as the world is concerned, Christians don't count today. That's not what the newspapers are all about.

That's not what most people are writing books about. But in the coming kingdom, when it's manifested in power and glory, the righteous will shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. And the righteous will delight themselves, the meek will delight themselves in the abundance of peace.

And then, in fact, His dominion also shall be from sea to sea and from the river to the end of the earth. For the earth shall be filled or full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.

They won't hurt or destroy all My holy kingdom, God said. Alright, it's the kingdom of God. It's righteousness, peace, joy in the Holy Spirit. Now remember, that's Romans 14, 17, 18. Then look at Romans 15, 13.

It's almost like a prayer in there. Where Paul says, Let 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. Are these just words?