The Road to Gladness is Sadness (Ecclesiastes 7:3)

This sermon was preached on 20/4/2014

I suppose that if there is one verse that highlights the contrast between the Bible’s view of life and what the opinion of the world is about how to live it is this verse. No one in the world would ever regard sadness as the road to gladness. If they had the ability, they would try and avoid sadness altogether and attempt to live a life in which sorrow was absent. But it is worth asking ourselves if we would like that kind of experience, a life without sadness and sorrow.

Of course, Solomon here is commenting on the only kind of life we can have on this earth, or under the sun as he calls it. He is not asking us to want another form of life that is impossible for us to experience here on earth – the word for such an outlook is escapism. I would say the two options open to us here on earth are to have a life with sadness that does not include gladness or to have a life with sadness that does include gladness. The fact is, all of us are going to experience much in life that will make us sad. The challenge is, do we know how to take gladness into the experience?

Moreover, Solomon here is speaking about a deep sense of gladness rather than a shallow one. It is quite easy to have a short-lived experience of pleasure. We are familiar with the notion that going on a drinking spree will drown our sorrows. Or we can go to a party and attempt to forget our woes by having what is described as a good time. But these responses are not on the road to gladness. If anything, they are only laybys beside the sad experiences rather that the delight we can know if we walk along the road of sadness.

What authority does Solomon have to lecture us on the topic? The authority he has can be gauged at different levels. At a basic level, there is the authority he possessed because of personal experience. He could look back on life and see the many times he had gone down this road of sadness and tried to alleviate his disappointments with activities, with romances, with achievements, and he can testify that they did not help him find gladness of heart.

At a higher level for us, Solomon has the authority of the Holy Spirit behind him. As we know, the Holy Spirit guided all the authors of the Bible, including Solomon. Why did the Holy Spirit guide Solomon to record the words of our text? One answer is that he wanted us to experience the truth that Solomon is describing. And given that the Holy Spirit has his explanations scattered throughout his Word it is possible for us to think about situations of sadness that were turned into circumstances of gladness.

The sadness of the captivity

The first one we can consider is a situation of extreme sadness and it is described in the mournful words of Psalm 137, a lament composed by the exiled Jews in Babylon. They had been sent there because of their persistent disregard of God’s requirements. The captivity was a crushing blow to their spirits and they could not even sing Psalm 23 or any of the other songs of Zion. We find it hard to imagine the depths of sorrow to which they had plummeted. Yet although they were in such a sad situation, a situation in which everything seemed dark and foreboding, they were on actually on the road from sadness to gladness.

We don’t know how far into the captivity this lament was composed. The captivity lasted for about seventy years, and the lament could have been written near the beginning or near the middle or near the end. But since they were on the right road it would take them to the destination of gladness, and we find that destination described in Psalm 126. Who or what had made the difference? The answer is that the Lord had fulfilled his promises and restored them. How great was their joy – they were like people who dreamed of a great deliverance and now it had happened. Indeed, such was their joy that the psalm reveals they now expected God to continue doing great things for them, things that would saturate them with joy similar to the overflowing flash floods that appeared in the southern deserts when the rains came from above.

This has an obvious application for us because at the moment, as we look round our society, we can see that the church is like the captives in Babylon. We might not have descended as far as them and stopped singing, but our problem is that if things keep going downhill we will run out of singers. What we need is an experience of divine restoration, and when that happens we will know how to sing with joy. In the psalm, the other nations observed the joy of the restored captives and noted where it came from. This is what we should be longing for, such a display of the almighty power of the gracious God that will make us realise we have travelled from sadness to gladness, such a change that others will notice it.

The sadness of the confessor

Psalm 51 is a psalm that believers have found very helpful as they face up to their frequent falls into wrong behaviour. They probably will not have committed the exact same sins as did David, the author of the psalm, but they find his words of repentance to be very useful for framing their own confession.

We are familiar with the background to the psalm. David, the man after God’s own heart, committed two horrible sins, that of adultery and murder. We are not told if Bathsheba was a willing partner in the sexual sin, so it is possible that David’s sin with her was actually worse than adultery. What is also disturbing about his behaviour is that the opportunities can be traced back to laziness and self-centredness. His laziness was seen in his failure to be with his troops defending his people and his self-centredness was seen in his determination to do what he wanted with Bathsheba and then with her loyal husband Uriah. David’s fall is a challenge to all of us not to imagine we cannot fall.

Yet Psalm 51 is about more than David’s fall. It is also a map that describes the road from sadness to gladness. We may find it astonishing that someone guilty of such behaviour could ever escape from misery. Indeed we might want him to feel miserable because of the nature of his sins. Nevertheless David tells us that there was a way to joy on this road. From the depths he cries to God and pleads, ‘Restore to me the joy of your salvation, and uphold me with a willing spirit’ (Ps. 51:12). James Boice reminds us in his comments on this verse that ‘It is important to note that David is not praying that God would restore his salvation, as if he had lost it and needed to get it back again. It is not the salvation he had lost, but the joy of it. As long as he was living in sin he had no joy. His fellowship with God was broken. Now that he has repented of his sin, found cleansing, and is seeking a renewed spirit, he wants to have that joy again.’

How can David make this prayer? Is he not being unrealistic about God’s response and indifferent about his own actions?  The answer, of course, is that he was realistic about both aspects. He knew that God remained the one who forgives the penitent and he knew that as a sinner he needed pardon. His request is not a sign that he took his sin lightly. Instead he was marked by sorrowful repentance and such travels very fast on the road from sadness to gladness. Indeed there is something wrong with a repentance that does not bring spiritual joy. When it is missing, perhaps we are looking at the penitent and not at the pardoner.

Millions have travelled this road and discovered that reaches its destination. And it is a road that we can travel frequently, many times a day. It is a road built by God and when we meet his requirements we find that it reaches its terminus.

The sadness of a church

The church in Corinth had many reasons for being sad although initially they had not realised where they were and what was wrong with their tolerating outlook. One only has to read through 1 Corinthians and see what they were doing. One sad feature of their outlook then was their toleration of a member who was living with his mother-in-law. They were proud of what they imagined was appropriate behaviour but which Paul knew was highly offensive to God. So Paul wrote the letter to bring them to their senses. Did his rebuke work?

Chapter 2 of 2 Corinthians reveals the apprehension felt by the apostle as he sent the letter and waited for news of their response: ‘For I wrote to you out of much affliction and anguish of heart and with many tears, not to cause you pain but to let you know the abundant love that I have for you’ (2 Cor. 2:4) When Titus returned with news that they had mourned and repented over their behaviour, Paul rejoiced and was comforted. So here we have a sad apostle discovering the road to gladness in the lives of a church that he had planted. He was sad at their sin, and he discovered joy from their response – he writes that he is ‘overflowing with joy’ (2 Cor. 7:4). Similarly they were saddened by his rebuke but encouraged by his message of recovery for them if they repented.

Even the man who had been disciplined was not allowed to wander of the road to gladness. Concerning him Paul says in 2 Corinthians 2:6-8, ‘For such a one, this punishment by the majority is enough, so you should rather turn to forgive and comfort him, or he may be overwhelmed by excessive sorrow. So I beg you to reaffirm your love for him.’ It is wonderful to imagine those moments on the road to gladness as the church rejoiced together.

The sadness of Jesus Christ

The prophet Isaiah in his wonderful description of the Messiah in Isaiah 53 mentions that he would be the man of sorrows. No doubt, there were many reasons why this would be the case. I am sure that every time Jesus saw or heard a sin he experienced sorrow about what was happening to the offending sinner and about continual failures by such people to live for his Father’s glory. The Gospels tell us that he wept at a funeral as he saw the grief of the mourners and that he wept over the city of Jerusalem because it refused to recognise him and his message. We suspect that there was a look of sadness in his eyes as he turned and looked at Peter as he denied his Master – love as well, of course.

Yet although he was on the road of sorrow and suffering, Jesus also knew that it was the road to gladness. The writer of Hebrews tells us that Jesus travelled along the road of sorrow because of the joy that was set before him (Heb. 12:1-2). We read about the joy he had as he died because he knew that his soul would not be left in the grave (Psalm 16, and quoted by Peter in his sermon on Pentecost). There was the joy he experienced on his resurrection day as he arose in triumph from the tomb, and the joy he would have experienced as he met once more with his disciples. And there was the joy of his ascension as he was anointed with the oil of gladness above his companions.

Since then, Jesus has known innumerable joys in the presence of the Father. What joy he has had as he governs the processes whereby a sinner comes to embrace him through the gospel. This type of joy will be his as long as the period between his two comings will last. Obviously there will be joy in his experience when his people reach home one by one. At the Day of Judgement they will be invited to enter into the joy of their Lord. It will be true for Jesus that he also travelled on the road to gladness from sadness.

There are many other ways by which those who travel this spiritual journey experience the change from sadness to gladness. We have thought of four – the sadness of the captivity for Israel, the sadness of confession for a fallen sinner, the sadness of a church that tolerated sin, and the sadness of a Saviour who had to live in a sinful environment. The captives discovered the gladness of liberty, the confessor discovered the gladness of pardon, the church discovered the gladness of harmony and brotherly love, and the Saviour is always enjoying the gladness of glory. I suspect even Solomon, with all his wisdom, did not fully realise the depth of his insightful principle that ‘sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of face the heart is made glad.’