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I. DESCRIBE IT. I find that the gladdest moments of my life were not to be mentioned in the same breath with the bliss of believing in Jesus Christ. Yet are they the best comparisons that I can offer you of the greater joy which I trust we have all experienced.

1. I compare it first to the finding of a long-lost treasure. Something like that, though infinitely beyond it, was the joy of finding God's salvation. Some of us searched long for it.

2. I compare this joy of salvation, next, to escape from a terrible predicament, and to deliverance from a threatened danger. Such, but infinitely more delightful, is the joy of God's salvation, when the storm of a troubled conscience is hushed to rest, when the thunders and lightnings of an outraged law cease to alarm.

3. I wonder if it has ever been your lot to know the joy that comes of the removal of the displeasure of some friend who has been grieved; in a word, the joy of reconciliation. When mistakes have been explained, or faults forgiven, the joy of the handclasp, as in the days of yore, and the heart warming as in the times that are gone — such is the joy of God's reconciled countenance, and of His smile and favour.

4. Entrance into a new and blissful state is an emblem, too, of the joy of God's salvation. You have been sick, sick almost unto death, and God has raised you up again. Can you forget how the pulse beat in your veins as it revealed to you the fact that you had turned the corner and were going to pull through? But oh, when you felt that the sickness of sin was at an end, when you knew that the healing touch had been given, when you felt the virtue come out of Jesus into you, what joy it was!

5. Further, there is the joy of finding a faithful friend. When loneliness is at an end, when love finds its affinity, when the hopes, perhaps of many years, are at last fulfilled, and the joy-bells ring, maybe in the marriage peal, what delight is in the heart. Such was your joy when you discovered that Jesus was your Fellow-friend, your Brother, your Lover, your Husband.

6. It is also like the joy of coming home after long absence.

II. THIS JOY CAN BE LOST.

1. Sin grieves God, and causes Him to hide His face; it produces an eclipse of the sun.

2. Sin may well cause us to question our standing in Christ Jesus.

3. Sin blinds our eyes to the promises and to the power of God. He may well be miserable who has found out His sinfulness, for he has sinned against light and knowledge, against grace and love.

4. Moreover, it makes the conscience smart and throb. The unhappiest man beneath God's sun is surely he who, having known the joy of salvation, is now a backslider, with hardened heart and tearless eye. How can he rejoice as once he did?

III. IT MAY BE RECOVERED. "Restore unto me the joy of Thy salvation."

1. God only can restore it. It came from Him at first, and He must revive and quicken it; it will be through His mercy and His mercy only. Thus the psalmist pleads in forma-pauperis, praying only for God's lovingkindness and tender mercy.

2. There can be no restoration of the joy of God's salvation apart from cleansing. Think not to regain thy gladness till thou hast made a full confession, and more than that, till thou hast heard that heavenly whisper saying, "Thy sins which are many, are all forgiven."

IV. THIS JOY OF SALVATION MAY BE RETAINED. "Uphold me with Thy free Spirit." You will retain the joy if the Holy Spirit maintains His hold of you, and if you retain your hold of Him. You will not cease to be happy unless you cease to be healthy, but so long as this prayer is in your lips you will not fail to be healthy. Forget not that upholding work is the work of the Holy Ghost. The best of us, the strongest, the most experienced, will fall unless the Spirit holds us up. "Uphold me with Thy free Spirit." I like that name for the Holy Ghost, the Spirit of liberty and truth, the Spirit which, like the wind, blows where it lists, and does its work mysteriously and mightily. The R.V. renders this, "Uphold me with a free spirit"; evidently under the impression that the reference is to the spirit or disposition which the upholding God produces in the heart of the man who is thus restored. He becomes possessed of a free spirit. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty," and the man who has fallen and has been thus restored, and is thus upheld, serves God with a willing mind. He has been in a hard school, but he has learned the lesson well, and now all he does is done from very love of Him who not only saved him as a sinner, but restored him as a back. slider.

(T. Spurgeon.)

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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.