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I. FROM THE BEGINNING THE WELFARE OF MAN ENGAGED THE COMPLACENT REGARD OF GOD OUR SAVIOUR.

1. He represents Himself here as deriving delight from the spectacle even of the material creation, because it was subservient to man. He looked on material objects as visible realisations of eternal types. On comparing them with the originals in His own infinite mind He beheld the perfect resemblance, and was satisfied. He beheld them in their prospective application, serving as indexes or intimations of His infinite greatness to myriads of minds which He purposed to create. He looked on these objects as the first in an endless series yet to come. In His first acts of creation the Great Architect was laying the foundation of an all-comprehending and eternal temple. And it was all present in His mind, and He rejoiced in the glorious prospect.

2. There was the happiness of prospectively beholding the activity, enlargement, and progress of the whole system of creation and providence. The prospect of this development of His great plan afforded Him profound satisfaction. This is evident because He has sought at times to throw His Church into an ecstasy of delight by affording them glimpses of its onward course; for the disclosures of prophecy are such glimpses.

3. There was the happiness of prospectively beholding the effects arising from His gratuitous interposition for human salvation.

4. Then there was the happiness derivable from knowing that, important as the recovery of man is, in attaining it He should be attaining an end greater still — attaining the greatest of all ends — the manifestation of the Divine glory.

II. ALL THE MEDIATOR'S COMMUNICATIONS AND INTERCOURSE WITH US ARE MADE TO HARMONISE WITH OUR WELFARE ALSO. Tell us the distinguishing wants of human nature, and we will tell you the distinguishing excellences of Divine revelation.

1. From their eager inquiries and their signs of reflection you infer that they are intelligent beings, and from other signs you infer that the subjects which most deeply interest them are those which refer to their origin, their character, and their relation to the invisible and the future. Man's solution of these problems is puerile, contradictory, and absurd. What is the Divine explanation of the mystery?

2. Man is manifestly a sufferer. Sorrow has but two places of refuge — the sanctuary and the grave.

3. Man is a personally sinful being. The Mediator has made special provision for the necessities thus arising. The vicarious sacrifice of Christ, while providing a complete satisfaction for human guilt, provides that which we equally require — means for the renovation of our sinful nature and motives to a constant progress in holiness. So wonderfully adapted to the susceptibilities, so exquisitely adjusted to all the springs of our nature is the Cross of Christ, that in the hand of the Spirit it relieves our apprehensions, while it quickens our sensibility — gives peace to the conscience while it increases its activity and power — inspires hope while it produces humility, by the very magnitude and splendour of the objects which inspire it — demands perfection, by presenting the affections with an object calculated to produce it.

4. But man is not only a rational, suffering, sinful being. He is groaning and travailing together in pain, casting anxious looks on the future, gazing on the distant darkness, invoking the dead. The burden of his great anxiety is this, "If a man die, shall he live again?" Answering that, Jesus is "the Resurrection and the Life." Such are parts of that great system of saving truth by which the Saviour seeks to realise those purposes of mercy toward us, the bare contemplation of which filled Him with delight.

III. THE SAVIOUR REJOICES IN SUCH PARTS OF THE EARTH AS ARE SET APART FOR THE DIFFUSION OF HIS TRUTH AND THE PROMOTION OF HIS DESIGNS. Man was to have moved over the face of the earth as amidst the types and symbolic services of a temple, where everything was adapted to remind Him of God. Sin has disturbed this adjustment and thrown it in confusion. If this is to be remedied, some counter-force must be employed.

IV. WHAT DOES CHRIST EXPECT FROM A PLACE THUS DISTINGUISHED?

1. He expects you to sympathise with Him in His regard for human happiness.

2. He expects you to aim at results and to look for them.

3. Not only expect the results, but anticipate the consequences of those results.

(J. Harris, D. D.)

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KJV: Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men.

WEB: Rejoicing in his whole world. My delight was with the sons of men.