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He asks that God would clear away his sorrows as well as his sins, make once again a happy man of him; so that he may not only rise up from the ground on which he has fallen and go on his heavenly way, but, like the Ethiopian convert in the desert, go "on his way rejoicing." "Make me to hear joy and gladness," he says in verse 8, and here he prays, "Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation." "Pardon," we should have said to David at this time, "is all that you must now dare to ask, pardon and renewed sanctification." "No," says David, "there is healing in my God for sinners such as I am, as well as pardon; there is comfort in Him for even men like me. I see them in Him, and I will ask them of Him. Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation."

I. THE JOY OF GOD'S SALVATION. "I do not care how I am made happy," a man of the world would say, "so that I am happy." He has no definite idea of happiness. "Who will show me any good?" is his language; "any good" — he cares not what, "But I can be made happy only in one way," the really Christian man says; "I must be happy in my God, and I can be happy in him only as God my Saviour, the God of my salvation." And if anything can make a sinful creature happy, it is this joy of which we speak. It is the "joy unspeakable and full of glory," the only joy that can be truly called Christian joy, or that can meet the desires of the regenerated soul.

II. THE POSSESSION OR EXPERIENCE OF THIS JOY. Though now without it, David once partook of it. "Do all the people of God, then," you may ask, "experience this joy?" You might as well inquire whether all who dwell on the face of the earth behold the sun's light. That sun always exists and is always pouring forth its beams, but men may be shut up within walls, or be turned on the revolving earth away from the sun, or have their organs of vision impaired or closed, and thus have the sun as to them shining in vain. So with the salvation or gospel of God — joy and gladness it is ever capable of giving, and is ever actually giving to multitudes of happy souls who understand and believe it, but not at all times to all who understand and believe it, for the spiritual perceptions of some of them are weak. But let this pass. The point I am now aiming to establish is this — that as there is a spiritual sorrow in the Christian's inward experience, begotten in him by the Gospel of God, so there is commonly a joy in his experience, begotten in him also by the salvation of God.

III. THE LOSS OF THIS JOY. This is a mournful loss. There are varied causes for the instability and changeableness of our minds, but the grand destroyer of our spiritual happiness, the one great extinguisher and demolisher of our joy, is sin — sin indulged; not sin struggled with and kept at bay, but sin yielded to, mentally if not practically committed; sin let into our imaginations and hearts, if not into our houses and lives, and fostered and cherished and fed on there. In David's case it was heinous, enormous, complicated sin which laid his joy low; but common, decent sins will do the work as effectually though not as suddenly.

IV. THE RESTORATION OF SPIRITUAL JOY, its recovery when lost. This the text describes as both desirable and attainable.

1. Desirable it was to David's soul, or he would not have repeatedly and so earnestly prayed for it. And of this we may be sure, that a man who has once tasted of this joy, who has really felt within his own soul its power and sweetness, will never be content to live long without it.

2. But is this desirable thing attainable? We may safely infer from this text that it is. David is not praying here for an impossibility. He is evidently praying under the Spirit's teaching. Such a recovery, however, is not in any case, to say nothing of a case like David's, that easy thing which some of us think it. We imagine that when our souls, through some long-continued worldly-mindedness or some sinful indulgence, are comfortless, it is only to hear some cheering sermon, or turn again to God a little more earnestly than usual, and our former peace will revive; but not so. It is not easy to get indulged worldly-mindedness or indulged sin of any kind subdued in the soul and cast out of it; it is still less easy to get rid of the withering and depressing effects of worldliness and sin. The Lord does not hastily heal the wounds that sin makes in the souls of His people, for He wishes them for their good to feel the smart of those wounds; but He has in His covenant health and a cure for them. But the Lord works by means. There is no restoration of joy through those things which the Lord has ordained shall precede joy and, by His Spirit, produce it. And these things are deep humiliation and sorrow on account of sin, and a turning again to God through Christ precisely as we came to Him years ago, to he washed, cleansed, comforted, saved entirely by Him, by His Spirit, righteousness and blood. I know of no other way to the recovery of spiritual peace than this, nor do you. If sin has overtaken and ensnared you, and is at this moment holding you captive, robbing you of every spiritual consolation you once enjoyed, and filling your souls with gloom and wretchedness, be thankful for that gloom and wretchedness while it lasts. God works it in you or causes sin to work it in you, to lead you to a real repentance and so to a real salvation.

(C. Bradley, M. A.)

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KJV: Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.

WEB: Restore to me the joy of your salvation. Uphold me with a willing spirit.