Sunday's Comin' 9/20/2014

Ever struggle with joy on the Lord's Day? Here are some encouraging words from John Murray. (This is excerpted from the Collected Writings of John Murray, vol. 1. "The relevance of the Sabbath.")

If the Sabbath is the Lord's day, it ought to be suffused with the joy derived from and correspondent with the resurrection joy of the Lord. We should never fail to appreciate our Lord's own resurrection joy. Jesus came trailing the clouds of humiliation. We think of Gethsemane with its agonizing confession, its prayer of holy revulsion, and its bloody sweat; of Calvary with its cry of abandonment. Here are the lowest depths of humiliation, of incomparable agony. But then there is the sequel of resurrection exultation. 'Who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross...and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God' (Heb. 12:2). 'Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory?' (Luke 24:26). It is a morning without clouds, the morning of triumph, and therefore of triumphant joy. In this joy ours is begotten (cf. 1Pet 1:3).

Jesus lives! Let us rejoice together with the people of God as we gather on his day tomorrow!