It is quite evident that the sense which Christ had in His mission to this world before He came was one of pleasure. And unless you are to believe that every anticipation of Christ could be different from its reality, then you must rest in the conclusion that the preponderance of Christ's mission was delight. There are three stages which make a trial, and these three stages rise up to a climax. First, you go through it, but you go through it recoilingly; you go through it very hardly. Next, you sustain it; and, by God's grace, it is quite endurable. And after that you rise quite above it. Is not the last the truest and best offering to God? Now see it in Christ. From the cradle to the grave the grief-pangs were immeasurable. Nevertheless, above and beyond it, there was in its own pure level a joy, and that joy soared on in the immensity of its own unassailable repose, and the meeting of that agony and that joy was the peace, the delight of peace. It is not to the sorrow of Christ alone that we owe everything; but it is also to the spirit, the essential spirit, with which He bore it, the holy rapture of obedience which He exhibited, without which obedience is not obedience in God's sight. Notice: (1) The date of the delight. It was when the whole Mosaic ceremonial was passing away as altogether insufficient. Law was Christ's, for He lived to supply its deficiency and to fulfil its purpose. (2) From the Law the mind of Christ rose to the will. Law is generally negative; will is always positive. Law may be, and is, transient; will is eternal. His Father's will was His work, His delight, His ecstasy. (3) God's will and Christ's will it was that there should be a Church an ordered, sanctified body which should encircle Him for ever, to reflect His image and to set forth His praise. (4) The far end of Christ was the glory of the Father. If God was honoured, Christ was happy. The thing was wrapped up in His very nature. It had become a necessity.
J. Vaughan, Fifty Sermons,6th series, p. 146.
Reference: Psalms 40:8; Psalms 40:9. J. M. Neale, Sermons on Passages of the Psalms,p. 100.