Psalms 104:31

The Lord shall rejoice in His works.

God’s joy in His works

With the spirit in which the psalmist penned these words, it may be, we have too infrequent and imperfect familiarity. Compelled to frequent acquaintance with grief, we may find the avenues of joy not sufficiently opened up to us.

I. Consider then these “works of the Lord” which rejoice Him. Some of them rejoice us, when we see their use, their beauty, their perfectness. There is a treasure of satisfaction in some of the commonest works of God: they need little interpreting, they speak their own and their Maker’s praise. How they transcend in perfectness all the exactness of art; how orderly are all their encircling movements, rebuking the waywardness of our fickle endeavours; how unselfish is their aim; how lavish their bounty. Nothing purposeless, however incomprehensible to us; nothing without some special mission to accomplish; all depending upon the one loving Will by which they were called into being.

II. But nature’s glory and meaning need interpreting. It may be said that this is the poet’s office. Not quite so, although we justly celebrate our Hebrew bards. Theirs was a real inspiration. The creations of the poet differ in character from the visions of the spiritual seer. And it is not alone to the gifted that this insight comes. Not as the songs written out of the soul of the age do I regard the various rhapsodies of inspired penmen. There must be some deep underlying basis of authority for the pledges their words give us. We are charged by them to believe that the works of God are all tending to some grand issues; that God has given to man to be nature’s lord, so that we must take into our thought what God is doing for him, to read rightly the purpose of all creation. And, to know the secret of nature, we must know the mystery of human life and its apparent failures. The groans of creation await the glory to be revealed in the sons of God. As the ages revolve, they bring all created life nearer to its goal. The throes of the past and the present need to be read in conjunction with the final development and harmony, when the many “works” shall be as one grand work of the Divine Artificer. Faith is not only a struggle against appearances; faith is also a broad generalization, which looks to the ultimate end of all things, and can sing in sympathy with the spirit of the psalmist: “The Lord shall rejoice in His works.” Must we not look to manhood if we would understand infancy?

III. What about the glory and the joy of God in relation to those works and ways which it is the special function of the Christian teacher to unfold and illustrate? Before His presence shall stand dove-like peace, gentle charity, chaste innocence, meek faith, and patient hope, in all the lovely forms they have assumed; here, in maiden modesty and sweetness; there, in martyred truth and righteousness; here, in youthful consecration caught up with its dews flesh upon it; there, in mature devoutness sprinkled over with the snows of venerable age; here, childlike lives, mere buds of moral loveliness taken to blossom amid winterless scenes; there, lives of quiet beauty, readily passed by amid the loud cry for sensational piety. All these form but part of His manifold works, over which, as treasures safely gathered, He will breathe the eternal spirit of unutterable peace; and in which, discerning His reflected image, He will rejoice. Fruits these of His redeeming grace, trophies of His all-conquering mercy, for eternal rejoicing. (G. J. Proctor.)