I. THAT GREAT SACRIFICES ALWAYS PRECEDE GREAT JOY. God's best gifts never increase by saving, but by scattering. The sea is in a constant state of evaporation. The mist rises, there are clouds above the hills, there are streams running into the valleys, there is life and greenness everywhere. There are some men who do not believe in evaporation. They believe in getting all they can and keeping all they get. But they are never joyful There is no joy in selfishness. It is against the great law of God, the law of sacrifice by His own Son. What is the meaning of these sacrifices mentioned in the text?

1. The sin-offering. This shadowed the great sacrifice. Morality alone will not save any man, and if you will only admit sin, you admit half the Bible, and the rest has to do with God's way of getting rid of it.

2. The burnt-offering. This means that we give ourselves up to God entirely; and the happiest men I have met in my life have been men who have handed the keys of every room in their soul up to Christ, without keeping one closed to hide a loved sin.

3. The peace-offering. This was a peculiar offering in Israel. It was a free-will offering. When a man brought the peace-offering, God gave him a feast there and then in his house. A part of the offering was given back to the offerer. This peace-offering is very much like your contributions to-day. You can keep your offerings, but if you do God will keep the feast from you. We in Wales have two sermons in one service very often, and the collection comes before the second sermon. I have watched a man drop the smallest coin into the plate from a richly gloved hand. I have seen a poor old woman unwrapping a two-shilling piece from a paper, from another paper, from a third paper, in which she had wrapped it in order to keep it for the collection. And I have watched them through the second sermon. The tears of joy are coursing down the wrinkled face of the poor Christian woman, but the man who dropped his miserly coin is as dry as Gilboa. It is a remarkable fact that the Almighty never accepted a wild animal as an offering in the olden time. A man was always obliged to offer something he had taken trouble with: the fruit of his own garden, the fruit of his own farm, or from his own flock. I have heard a man say sometimes, "If I succeed in this speculation now, I will give to the cause of Christ." Ah! that is a wild hare.

II. GREAT WORK FOR GOD BRINGS GREAT JOY FROM GOD. Charles Kingsley has said that every man ought to thank God every morning because he has something to do that must be done that day. Work is the greatest blessing. I was once struck down with complete nervous prostration, and a medical man told me that I must do nothing for a twelvemonth, and that was the hardest work I ever did in my life — to do nothing. I see gentlemen come up along the Menai Straits in their yachts fighting the tempest. On they come like sailors on the ocean-wave, because it is easier to do that than to do nothing. You may see the room in which Louis XVI. worked as a common blacksmith, because it was easier to do that than to do nothing. Prisoners have come to the gaoler many a time, when confined in a room to do nothing, asking him for permission to pick oakum, or anything rather than do nothing. It is possible to do the most common work to God, to Christ, and when every one will do his work to Christ, that is the time when this world will be full of happiness and song. There is joy in serving Christ. Just think, for instance, of the erection of a place of worship: what an investment it is to contribute towards that.

III. THIS RELIGION OF GREAT SACRIFICE AND GREAT JOY WILL TELL ON OUR FAMILIES. "The wives also and the children rejoiced." Joyful religion repeats itself to others. Parents should let their children see that they value religion.

1. By making sacrifices for it.

2. By letting them see that they are most anxious for them to become decided Christians.

IV. THAT THE RELIGION OF GREAT SACRIFICES AND GREAT JOY WILL BE HEARD OF AFAR OFF. "Then joy was heard afar off." It is the names of self-sacrificers that live — Abraham — Abraham Lincoln — Florence Nightingale — Jesus, the Redeemer of the world.

(E. Herber Evans, D. D.)

(S. S. Chronicle.)

     1060   God, greatness of
     1070   God, joy of
     5302   education
     5667   children, responsibilities to God
     8287   joy, experience

The Girdle of the City. Nehemiah 3
The beginning of the circumference was from 'the sheep-gate.' That, we suppose, was seated on the south part, yet but little removed from that corner, which looks south-east. Within was the pool of Bethesda, famous for healings. Going forward, on the south part, was the tower Meah: and beyond that, "the tower of Hananeel": in the Chaldee paraphrast it is, 'The tower Piccus,' Zechariah 14:10; Piccus, Jeremiah 31:38.--I should suspect that to be, the Hippic tower, were not that placed on the north …
John Lightfoot—From the Talmud and Hebraica

Ezra-Nehemiah
Some of the most complicated problems in Hebrew history as well as in the literary criticism of the Old Testament gather about the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. Apart from these books, all that we know of the origin and early history of Judaism is inferential. They are our only historical sources for that period; and if in them we have, as we seem to have, authentic memoirs, fragmentary though they be, written by the two men who, more than any other, gave permanent shape and direction to Judaism, then …
John Edgar McFadyen—Introduction to the Old Testament