How do we see him? With the eye of faith. We see him in our mind’s eye, not by visualising him, but in his qualities and attributes, and his amazing lovingkindness and personal work. You see Christ in the Old Testament promises. Yes, but we have the New Testament; we have the record of his life on earth. What do we need the promises for? It is true that in the promises Christ is somewhat veiled; he is never fully revealed. But he is more revealed to those who read the Old Testament with New Testament understanding, than he was to the readers of Old Testament times. You won't see him as wonderfully as you might if you don't take trouble to see him even in the outmoded promises and types and shadows of the Old Testament. We see him in the theophanies. We love to read the pre-incarnate appearances of Christ. We read of him in the prophets – in the history of mankind there is no one who has ever been prophesied like Jesus Christ the Lord. We see him of course in the Gospels. We appreciate his love and his tirelessness for souls, and his personal dealings with his own, and his wonderful power and miracles. Then we see it in his sufferings and his death, and how far he would go in his great love for those whom he was determined to save. You think of the humility of Christ. Humility, in Almighty God? It doesn't seem to match the terms, and yet you see the everlasting eternal Son of God coming down, down, down into the world and entering into human flesh, where he could suffer, be insulted, know great humiliation, and his holy soul be exposed to all the ugliness and treachery of human nature. Then we think of his resurrection and ascension, and we love him for his mighty power. We see his care of the early church, and his revealing of himself and his miraculous power through the apostles. Then you see his love in his dealings with us in our personal salvation and the patience he showed. We were moved and we were drawn, and yet at first so proud were we, that we resisted and resisted. Why did not God just discard us, and judge us on the spot for our shallowness and foolishness unappreciativeness and terrible conceit and waywardness? But no, in great gentleness he continued to draw us. Since then we have had so many falls and yet he is ever with us and near us and at our hand. ‘Whom having not seen ye love.’
This joy is quite different from moments of great happiness in the normal way of things. They may pass. You may see something that fills you with awe, and amazement, and delight, and you have a tremendous wave of pleasure – call it joy. But as soon as that view has passed, then it speedily becomes just a monochrome memory. But there is nothing to be compared with the joy that is given to converted believers in Christ. It endures, even in times of deep trial, temptation and sadness, grief and loss, shock and fear. It is an in expressible joy. It defies normal understanding. And yet it must be maintained by us. There is something to be done. It must be so valued, so treasured, that we do not allow it to be eclipsed by something which momentarily becomes more important than Christ. Astonishing! Yet it does,
We cannot express the joy that we have because of its greatness which defeats our ability to describe. But although we cannot measure what God promises to give us, as we look towards the eternal future we realise that there is more there than we could ever ask for and that God has endless resources. What we have already tasted of the goodness of the Lord Jesus Christ is sufficient to convince us that much more exists in him and that we will never reach the point where we say, I have fully investigated all that he is and all that he has to give, and there is nothing new left that I have to discover. It will take eternity to uncover all – in other words we will be always finding wonderful new truths in him. Christ delights that we should go forward into this voyage of discovery with great enthusiasm and anticipation. His glory is given to his people that they may be one.
We are bombarded by difficulties through our daily lives and various temptations to be depressed, or to be cast down, and sometimes we pass through times of great grief. Well, they are disturbing and there are great disappointments and we are often pulled down but, nevertheless, there is also another part of us that is so glad and so assured and so grateful to God for his blessing towards us, and faith promotes this.
The Puritans had very profound views of Christian joy, and many of them particularly focused on the loss of joy in the Christian life. They divided the loss of joy, or if you like depression and sadness in the Christian into that which comes from illness, and those causes of depression or loss of joy which actually are our fault. They were pastoral realists in all their sympathy. Perhaps the greatest work on depression was a relatively brief work by Richard Baxter called ‘The causes of melancholy and overmuch sorrow and its cure by faith’. In puritan days when they spoke about the ‘cure’ of melancholy, they meant that word in the Latin sense of care: the care of depression and overmuch sorrow. It's a work which should be read by all pastors and workers with people giving comfort and help in times of depression. It's brilliant to this day, without exception. He starts with all the causes that are down to us. Something has eclipsed Christ. There is something we can't have. There is us source of grief which has become too big, too important to us. There’s something we are impatient for, something we want: some possession, or maybe with regard to relationships.