The FIVE PROPERTIES Of a Joyful Message Found In The Gospel 2/2

3. The gospel doth not tell us news we are little concerned in—not what God has done for angels, but for us.‘Unto you,’ saith the angel, ‘is born a Saviour, Christ the Lord.’  If charity made angels rejoice for our happiness, surely then, the benefit which is paid into our nature by it, gives a further pleasure to our joy at the hearing of it.  It were strange that the mes­senger who only brings the news of some great empire to be devolved on a person should sing, and the prince to whom it falls should not be glad.  And, as the gospel’s glad tidings belong to man's nature, not to angels; so in particular, to thee, poor soul, whoever thou art, that embracest Christ in the arms of thy faith.  A prince is a common good to all his kingdom —every subject, though never so mean, hath a part in him—and so is Christ to all believers.  The promises are so laid that, like a well‑drawn picture, they look on all that look on them by an eye of faith.  The gos­pel’s joy is thy joy, that hast but faith to receive it.
4. The glad tidings of the gospel were unheard of and unlooked for by the sons of men.  Such news it brings as never could have entered into the heart of man to conceive, till God unlocked the cabinet of his own good pleasure, and revealed the counsel of his will, wherein this mysterious price of love to fallen man lay hid far enough from the prying eye of the most quick-sighted angel in heaven, much more from man himself, who could read in his own guilty conscience within, and spell from the covenant without, now broken by him, nothing but his certain doom and damnation.  So that the first gospel-sermon preached by God himself to Adam, anticipated all thoughts of such a thing intended to him.  O who but one that hath really felt the terrors of an approaching hell in his despairing soul, can conceive how joyous the ti­dings of gospel mercy is to a poor soul, dwelling amidst the black thoughts of despair, and bordering on the very marches of the region of utter darkness! Story tells us of a nobleman of our nation, in King Henry VIII.’s reign, to whom a pardon was sent a few hours before he should have been beheaded, which, being not at all expected by him, did so transport him that he died for joy.  And if the vessel of our nature be so weakly hooped that the wine of such an inferior joy breaks it, how then could it possibly be able to bear the full joy of the gospel tidings, which doth as far exceed this as the mercy of God doth the mercy of a mortal man, and as the deliverance from an eternal death in hell doth a deliverance from a temporary death, which is gone before the pain can well be felt?
5. The glad tidings of the gospel are certainly true.It is no flying report, cried up today, and liked to be crossed tomorrow—not news that is in every one’s mouth, but none can tell whence it came, and who is the author of it; we have it from a good hand —God himself, to whom it is impossible to lie.  He from heaven voucheth it—‘This is my beloved Son: hear him,’ Luke 9:35.  What were all those miracles which Christ wrought but ratifications of the truth of the gospel?  Those wretches that denied the truth of Christ’s doctrine, were forced many times to acknowledge the divinity of his miracles, which is a pretty piece of nonsense, and declares the absurdity of their unbelief to all the world.  The miracles were to the gospel as seals are to a writing.  They could not deny God to be in the miracles, and yet they could not see him in the doctrine!  As if God would set his seal to an untruth!  Here, Christians, is that which fills up the joy of this good news the gospel brings—that we may lay our lives upon the truth of it.  It will never deceive any that lay the weight of their confidence on it.  ‘This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all accepta­tion, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,’ I Tim. 1:15.  This bridge which the gospel lays over the gulf of God's wrath, for poor sinners to pass from their sins into the favour of God here, and [into the] kingdom of God hereafter, is supported with no other arches than the wisdom, power, mercy, and faithfulness of God; so that the believing soul needs not fear, till it sees these bow or break.  It is called the ‘everlasting gospel,’ Rev. 14:6.  When heaven and earth go to wreck, not the least iota or tittle of any promise of the gospel shall be buried in their ruins.  ‘The word of the Lord endureth for ever; and this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you,’ I Peter 1:25.

The FIVE PROPERTIES Of a Joyful Message Found In The Gospel 1/2

Five ingredients are desirable in a message, yea, must all conspire to fill up the joyfulness thereof into a redundancy.

           First Property.  A message to be joyful must be good.  None rejoice to hear evil news.  Joy is the dila­tion of the heart, whereby it goes forth to meet and welcome in what it desires; and this must needs be some good.  Ill news is sure to find the heart shut against it, and to come before it is welcome.

           Second Property.  It must be some great good, or else it affects little.  Affections are stirred according to the degrees of good or evil in the object presented.  A thing we hear may be so inconsiderable, that it is no great odds how it goes, but if it be good, and that great also, of weighty importance, this causeth rejoicing proportionable.  The greater the bell, the more strength is required to raise it.  It must be a great good that raiseth great joy.

           Third Property.  This great good must intimately concern them that hear it.  My meaning is, they must have propriety in it.  For though we can rejoice to hear of some great good befallen another, yet it affects most when it is emptied into our own bosom.  A sick man doth not feel the joy of another’s recovery with the same advantage as he would do his own.

           Fourth Property.  It would much add to the joy­fulness of the news if this were inauditum or insper­atum—unheard of and unlooked for—when the tidings steal upon us by way of surprise.  The farther our own ignorance or despair has set us off all thoughts of so great enjoyment, the more joy it brings with it when we hear the news of it.  The joy of a poor swineherd’s son, who never dreamed of a crown, would be greater at the news of such a thing conferred on him, than he whose birth invited him to look for it, yea, promised it him as his inheritance.  Such a one’s heart would but stand level to the place, and therefore could not be so ravished with it, as another, who lay so far below such a preferment.

           Fifth Property.  To fill up the joy of all these, it is most necessary that the news be true and certain, else all the joy soon leaks out.  What great joy would it afford to hear of a kingdom befallen to a man, and the next day or month to hear all crossed again and prove false?  Now, in the glad tidings of the gospel, all these do most happily meet together, to wind up the joy of the believing soul to the highest pin that the strings of his affections can possibly bear.

1. The news which the gospel hath in its mouth to tell us poor sinners is good.It speaks promises, and they are significations of some good intended by God for poor sinners.  The law, that brings ill news to town.  Threatenings are the lingua vernacula legis —the native language of the law.  It can speak no other language to sinners but denunciations of evil to come upon them; but the gospel smiles on poor sinners, and plains the wrinkles that sit on the law’s brow, by proclaiming promises.
2. The news the gospel brings is as great as good.It was that the angel said, ‘I bring you good tidings of great joy,’ Luke 2:10.  Great joy it must needs be, be­cause it is all joy.  The Lord Christ brings such news in his gospel as that he left nothing for any after him to add to it.  If there be any good wanting in the ti­dings of the gospel, we find it elsewhere than in God, for in the covenant of the gospel he gives himself through Christ to the believing soul.  Surely the apos­tle’s argument will hold: ‘All things are yours and ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s,’ I Cor. 3:22, 23.  The gospel lays our pipes close to the fountain of goodness itself; and he, sure, must have all, that is united to him that hath that is all.  Can any good news come to the glorified saints which heaven doth not afford them?  In the gospel we have news of that glory. ‘Jesus Christ, hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel,’ II Tim. 1:10.  The sun in the firmament discovers only the lower world; absignat cælum dum revelat terram—O it hides heaven from us, while it shows the earth to us!  But the gospel en­lightens both at once—‘Godliness hath the promise of the life that is now, and of that which is to come,’ I Tim. 4:8.