Joy In The New Creation
Joy in the New Creation
Excerpted from “God Rejoicing in the New Creation”
Sermon #2211, July 5, 1891
Emotions are not limited to our experience on Earth; in fact, we will feel things even more intensely in Heaven. The difference is that our feelings will be redeemed and no longer under the Curse. At last, our joy will be unbounded, our laughter unrestrained.
He set the earth on its foundations, so that it should never be moved. You covered it with the deep as with a garment; the waters stood above the mountains. At your rebuke they fled; at the sound of your thunder they took to flight. The mountains rose, the valleys sank down to the place that you appointed for them. You set a boundary that they may not pass, so that they might not again cover the earth. You make springs gush forth in the valleys; they flow between the hills; they give drink to every beast of the field; the wild donkeys quench their thirst. Beside them the birds of the heavens dwell; they sing among the branches. From your lofty abode you water the mountains; the earth is satisfied with the fruit of your work. You cause the grass to grow for the livestock and plants for man to cultivate, that he may bring forth food from the earth and wine to gladden the heart of man, oil to make his face shine and bread to strengthen man’s heart. Psalm 104:5-15
These bodies, given life by his Spirit who dwells in us and united to souls purified and refined, shall one day tread upon an Earth delivered from the Curse, and shall live beneath new heavens (Isaiah 65:17-19). Have they not new desires? They shall tread a New Earth, for they have new ways.
In this first creation of God we still live in, there is something pure and elevating in enjoying God as the Creator of ordinary things. Much more is there something bright and pure and spiritually exhilarating in rejoicing in God’s higher works, in his spiritual works, in his new creation. I believe that if a man feels within him a new heart and rejoices in his new birth; if he sees in others new and holier lives and rejoices in them; if he listens to the preaching of the gospel and discovers in it new and better principles such as the old, worn-out world never could have discovered—why, that man is a grace-filled man.
The heart that can rejoice in the new creation is a heart that is itself renewed, or else it would not comprehend spiritual things and could not rejoice in them. I invite you, therefore, dear friends—you who see and know and somewhat appreciate the new creation in its beginnings—to rejoice in it tonight.
It is a delightful thing that God should make a tree and bid it come forth in the springtide with all its budding beauty. It is a far better thing that God should take a poor, thorny heart like yours and mine and transform it till it becomes like the fir tree or the pine tree to his praise.
It is a charming sight when bulbs that have slept underground through the winter hold up their golden cups to be filled with the glory of the returning sun. But how much better that hearts that have lain dead in trespasses and sins should be moved by the secret touch of the Spirit of God to welcome the Sun of righteousness and to rejoice in him!
God’s new creation, even in its beginnings here and now, is something to delight one’s soul in. I pray you, delight yourselves therein. Behold, in the creation of a new heart, the manifest finger of God!
The attributes of God are to be seen in the visible creation, but they are to be seen in a brighter and superior light in the new creation. There is not one of the attributes of God which has no illustration under God’s revelation of his grace. You shall be happy in your whole being if you can fully rejoice in that which God creates.
There is one reason why you are called upon to rejoice in it: namely, that you are a part of it. When the angels saw God making this world, they sang together and shouted for joy. But they were not a part of this lower world. They had nothing to do with man’s estate, except as a matter of sympathy. But as for this new creation of our gracious God, you and I, beloved, who have believed in Jesus, are part of it.
That same grace, which has energized others into new life, has energized us. The same Spirit, who has given new principles and new desires to others, has given them to us also. The Father has regenerated us by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. We are the central beings of the new creation, and so let us rejoice in it with all our soul and mind and strength.
I know, when I lay sick and tormented in body, it seemed always to be such a joy to me that I myself—my inner self, my spirit—had been newly created. My nobler part could rise above the suffering and soar into the pure heavens of the spiritual realm. I said of this poor body, “You have not yet been newly created. The venom of the old serpent still taints you. But you shall yet be delivered. You shall rise again if you die and are buried, or you shall be changed if the Lord should suddenly come today. You, poor body, which drags me down to the dust in pain and sorrow, even you shall rise and be made remade in the redemption of the body. For the new creation has begun in me, with God’s down payment of his Spirit.”
Oh beloved, can’t you rejoice in this? I encourage you to do so. Rejoice in what God is doing in this new creation! Let your whole spirit be glad! Leap down, you waterfalls of joy! Overflow with gladness! Let loose the torrents of praise!
Spurgeon spoke this message only six months before he died. For large parts of the previous twenty-two years he had lived with great physical pain. He suffered from gout, rheumatism, and Bright’s disease (inflammation of the kidneys). He had even contracted smallpox. His first attack of gout came in 1869 at the age of thirty-five. His health became progressively worse so that nearly a third of his last twenty-two years were spent away from the pulpit, either suffering or convalescing. This physical hardship took a great emotional toll on him. At times he struggled with deep depression.
When he was twenty-two years old, Spurgeon preached for the first time in the Music Hall of the Royal Surrey Gardens because his own church wasn’t large enough. The ten-thousand-person seating capacity was far exceeded by the crowds pressing in. Someone shouted, “Fire!” and panic took over. The stampede that followed resulted in many injuries and the deaths of seven people. Years later, Spurgeon said this horrifying incident resulted in taking him “near the burning furnace of insanity.”
As no stranger to the suffering of body and mind, and with his own death looming, Spurgeon speaks here to the body, mind, and emotions about the promise of resurrection.
Many people have a hard time dealing with their emotions. In Heaven we’ll be free to feel intensely. God has emotions, real ones, but they are not subject to whims and dips and inconsistencies. He made us in his image, so we have emotions too. But ours are under the Curse and subject to sin. In Heaven our emotions will be fully redeemed. There they will always be assets, never liabilities. Won’t that be an incredible relief?
One writer says of our lives in Heaven: “We will live on a perpetual and exhilarating high akin to the feeling we have now when we shout ‘Yes!’ at a great victory.”a I’m not so sure. Living constantly at a fever pitch of exhilaration would mean there wouldn’t be special moments of greater joy. Certainly in Heaven we won’t experience sadness, but that doesn’t require each moment’s joy to be exactly equal to the rest. We currently experience an ebb and flow to our lives. That rhythm is not part of being sinful but part of being human and finite—and we’ll always be both of those, even when we’re no longer subject to sin.
We know that people in Heaven have a range of feelings—all good ones. We’re told of banquets, feasts, and singing. Remember, God assures those who mourn now, “You will laugh” (Luke 6:21, NIV). Laughter is an emotional response. Feasting, singing, and rejoicing involve feelings. Our present emotions are bent by sin, but they will be straightened forever when God removes the Curse.
Just two verses after Jesus promises, “You will laugh,” he tells us precisely when the promise will be fulfilled: “Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, because great is your reward in heaven” (Luke 6:23, NIV).
Jesus doesn’t say, “If you weep now, soon things on Earth will take a better turn, and then you’ll laugh.” Things won’t always take a better turn on Earth. Just as our reward will come in Heaven, laughter (itself one of our rewards) will come in Heaven, compensating for our present sorrow. Yet by God’s grace, we can laugh on Earth now, getting a head start on Heaven’s laughter.
God won’t only wipe away all our tears; he’ll also fill our hearts with joy and our mouths with laughter. And just as laughter itself will be redeemed, so our emotions will be free at last of all sin, ill will, and lack of perspective.
If you are experiencing hard times that leave you physically and emotionally frail or drained, take heart. Spurgeon once said, “Glory be to God for the furnace, the hammer and the file. Heaven shall be all the more full of happiness because we have been filled with anguish here below; and Earth shall be better tilled because of our training in the school of adversity.”
a Walton J. Brown, Home at Last (Washington, DC: Review and Herald, 1983), 192.
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