Open—Bruce Conrad
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First Epistle of John.
1St chapter.
Verse 3.
That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you.
That you also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father.
And with his Son Jesus Christ, and these things rightly unto you, that your joy might be full.
And back in John's Gospel chapter 15 for a few verses as well.
John 15 and verse 8.
Herein is my Father glorified that ye bear much fruit, so shall ye be my disciples. As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you. Continue ye in my love.
If you keep my commandments, you shall abide in My love, even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and I abide and abide in His love. These things have I written unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.
Perhaps we have the tendency to think.
That joy is sort of.
Like if you buy a car you need.
You need a steering wheel, gas, you know, accelerator, pedal, brake, tire. You need basics, the core of it. Or you buy a computer, you have these are the basics. And we think, well, at least in the old days it used to be maybe I'll maybe I'll splurge, get power windows or on a computer. Maybe I'll get this bell or this whistle. And I think sometimes we look at joy that our joy that way.
After all, if I'm unhappy, what does it matter to you?
I think we see in those verses, and we could look at others, it matters a great deal.
To our Father and to the Lord Jesus himself, because John isn't going in a lot of different places when he writes that first epistle and right off the get go, I think it was verse three we read. He describes the present.
Unspeakable position we have as believers.
You know they're the young brother.
And he's starting to take public part, which is nice.
In worship and prayer. But you know, a lot of the times he'd have the Father dying on the cross.
And etc. And if you in a large assembly, we know. Or if you're a brother, you know how that works.
And so we eat together routinely and, and this was happening, you know, a lot. And so I took the salt shaker and another salt shaker, and I took a pepper shaker. And I said, here's you, you're the pepper shaker. And here's I made a triangle on the table and here's the father and here's the son. And you know what's amazing?
Is that here's you, but you have a divine person inside you. Think of what this triangle is.
The Father and the Son and you and me, men and women of mortal flesh. I said you can give thanks to the Father, you can pray to Him. You can give thanks to the Lord Jesus and pray to Him. You can switch back and forth. But I said it might be helpful just to think of that triangle.
And the amazing thing is that the Holy Spirit entwells the believer is the power.
For that new life that we have been given by grace.
00:05:00
Joy matters.
Joy really matters.
Our brother Tim spoke about service. It matters in service.
And Brother Don spoke about the essence of things that.
The Lord Jesus himself wants us and as we read in these verses to enter into his joy. Now I got probably wouldn't have gotten up here if he hadn't spoken on this, but I've been just ruminating on what we had in the readings. We didn't spend much time on it in Hebrews 12 in the passage that says for the joy that was set before him.
In Matthew 13, in one of the similitudes, the Kingdom of heaven is like.
A man who.
Let me turn to it. I'm getting the two of them mixed up in my my little brain here.
In the 40s, Matthew 13 and verse 44, the Kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in the field, which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof he goes and sells all that he has.
Again, the Kingdom of heaven is like unto a merchant man, seeking goodly pearls.
Finds 1 Pearl of great price, sells all that he has and bought it.
The Lord Jesus had joy before him.
Could say prophetically in the Psalms, in Psalm 16, in Thy presence His fullness of joy. And what a reception he received, when he was raised out by the glory of the Father from among all the rest of the dead. One man is now not only raised, but ascended. What joy seated righteously, rewarded righteously.
The right hand of the Majesty on high.
So there was joy before him in accomplishing the great work of redemption. He sold everything.
He sold everything.
Everything.
That a man's heart.
Only man's heart could want sold it.
To the Treasurer, that's you.
I know sometimes when you interact with Christians out here and there.
They look upon, well, I'm the merchant man and I know you didn't sell anything. You didn't have anything of value. You weren't, you weren't the man looking for a treasure.
You say, well, I found the Lord. No, you didn't. He found you.
But he was looking, and he found, and for joy thereof. So there is that future joy now present that the Lord has, and there are joys before him and joys before us. But there was a joy he had here.
As a perfect man, as what God delighted for a man to be.
Father could look down, and even as we know, broke the silence of heaven.
As if he just couldn't not say it.
Heaven's silence is broken, and it's opened.
This is my beloved son in whom I have found my delight.
And prophetically, it speaks of the Lord Jesus as man in the 40th Psalm.
I delight to do thy will. Oh my God, what an arrangement.
What an arrangement.
Father delighting in the son, and the Son delighting in doing always those things that pleased him.
And so I was kind of struck by the comments because we're used, at least I'm used to thinking of the Lord as the Man of Sorrows.
And acquainted with grief as a man here.
But here he speaks of my joy, and I think one of the brothers made a comment on it about the Lord's joy when he was here.
He rejoiced in spirit, and I think a brother read that he rejoiced in spirit.
Even at that time of great disappointment, because he came to do a work and it pertained to the privileged nation of Israel.
And it was now patently clear that it was going to be a rejection of him by them who he came to save.
And what does he do? Does he grumble? No.
00:10:02
Is he?
Since at that time, at that time Jesus rejoiced in spirit and said Even so far or so it seemed good in my sight, there were other glories at going to unfold. There were other aspects of his work that was soon to be unfolded, other glories that we'll see in that coming day.
We see perfect submission in that which would have been so close to his heart.
When he came later on to Jerusalem.
And stood looking over it. He wept.
The Lord's joy.
We've been reading, some of us in a reading meeting in Galatians.
And so it says there, let's open, there be a clock on that wall, but it's just here.
It says in Galatians five well known verse.
Gives you a long list. In case you didn't know, these are the works of the flesh.
You Galatians.
Is so infatuated with man, so infatuated with the flesh. Here's what the flesh is. Big long list of ugly things. But the fruit of the Spirit is and gives you nine things, 3 threes.
Lovejoy, Peace.
Your joy matters because as we sometimes say, and this is dating me or dating the construction business, but it's like the the Canary in the mine. I've never worked in mines, but I've worked in tunnels. I don't like working in tunnels.
Kind of spooky there underground before you work in a tunnel Nowadays they send in a.
Technician with a what we call a sniffer. It's probably got a more technical name.
But basically the guy goes in with this electronic device to measure the air quality, to make sure there's the right gases in there, so when the humans get in there, they can breathe and not tip over. So I guess in the old days they'd use a Canary or a bird in the mine and take the Canary in and the Canary died. You can get out of there. It's a test.
And so I, I have thought sometimes, well, oftentimes in my Christian life.
If I'm not enjoy, if I'm not experiencing or displaying joy and the Canary is gasping for air or the Canary is dead.
It's an indicator.
Years ago when my wife and I were in Halifax Conference decades ago.
There was a brother there.
Who some in this room know far better than I and I don't know how he got on this subject, but but he he.
He comes home from work.
And he wants to put some trash in the trash can in the kitchen. And a lot of people like my mom used to, the trash can is right under the kitchen sink and like open the little doors and this is where the trash is. So he opens the door and he goes to put the trash in and it's overflowing. And he has a little bit about it or something. I don't know what he did.
Had a little little.
A little fit about it.
And his wife, who was working in the kitchen, she turns to him and she has honey, What's really the matter?
Oh well, my wife, I've told that story a few times and so when I act like him.
And it's painful. My wife will say, honey, what's really the matter?
You can ask her.
The Canary is gasping for air.
Because the fruit of the Spirit is love.
Joy. Peace.
Tidying up around the house the other day and.
One of my boys bought this fancy new hose.
But they think just like the old UN fancy old hoses and I'm saying you know, you turn that it's not going to work. So you turn the water on, nothing comes out so.
As simple as it just came. It's so simple.
And Jan Kinkin and off you go.
00:15:02
And so it is. We learn. And the older brothers, when I was your guys's age-old brothers used to talk all the time about communion.
One brother used to call communion. He says it's like a spider's web.
He says it's so fragile it could be easily destroyed, but they can be built quickly to. I like that expression.
Communion with the Lord is with brother Don was speaking about partially is vital. That's Christianity.
That's an unknown holes.
That's the liberty of the Holy Spirit to reproduce Christ in our life, whether it's for service or for interaction with anybody or just sitting quietly by ourselves.
In communion with the Lord.
And what impedes it, we know we read in Ephesians. Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption. I learned at a very young age that though I could grieve the Spirit by my carelessness, I couldn't grieve him away. And that's a wonderful thing. But how beautiful it is when the Spirit has liberty in our lives.
That we might be able to walk along in joy.
Now some of us let's turn in closing to 2nd Corinthians.
I want to address some disclaimers.
2nd Corinthians 6.
When we speak about joy and and I brother on a reading the other night, he said joy and happiness are different.
But he said I don't have time to go into it now, but they're different. And I thought what a great subject to go into, study out. And if I had known I was going to be speaking about this, I would have studied it out. But there are different words in the original language, so they must be different. And I'm not qualified to even speak to that except to say that they are so related, different.
But I'm not speaking about Pat on the back and and.
You know what is it? Hail fellow well met just my dad used to call it. Some folks have a personality like that, though underneath they may be screaming and miserable because.
Says in Ecclesiastes, for the unbeliever, even in birth the heart is sorrowful.
But a believer has a joy that is not perhaps very noisy and not so much displayed.
And it can be quiet and it can exist, and only a believer can understand this. And that's why I turned to 2nd Corinthians 6, because there the apostle.
In a passage starting in verse 4, approving ourselves as the ministers of God.
And then he gives a list of aspects of that. And then in verse 10 as sorrowful.
Yet always rejoicing. I've had joy in my heart.
In some pretty sorrowful times and probably sold you.
Tears run down your face.
Are you sad? Yes. Are you happy? Yes. A believer understands that it's sorrowful. And yet always rejoice because you can say I get the I'm in the circumstance that you don't fully understand. And perhaps I don't. Probably I don't. The Lord does.
But our circumstances, as the old brothers used to say, do not determine our joy, our happiness, Our state of soul does.
That's a good thing. I remembered that a long time, I guess.
Our circumstances don't determine our joy, our state of soul. It's do we have an ungrieved spirit? Are we walking in the liberty of sons? And so sorrow and rejoicing can go hand in hand. They did with the Apostle Paul in the next chapter, chapter seven, I think there's a similar verse.
If I can spot it quickly verse 4.
Great is my boldness of speech to you, 2nd Corinthians 7 and four. Great is my boldness of speech toward you. Great is my glorying of you. I am filled with comfort. I am exceeding joyful in all our tribulation.
Tribulation and he had a lot of it. We have a partial list in the Word of God. He had a lot of it.
00:20:05
But it didn't hinder his joy. We were speaking the other night on a reading.
In Acts 16, where the apostle Paul and they've been, they were grabbed, they were stripped publicly and flogged, whipped, taken, put in the inner prison feet in the stalks about midnight. They prayed and sang and the set and the Spirit of God says the prisoners heard them. And I think the jailer heard them too, because when the earthquake came.
He went for them. They saved his life.
In chapter eight of Two Corinthians, there's another one here, verse two, how that in a great trial of affliction, the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality. So here we have poverty and joy.
Some in this room are probably fairly wealthy. We live in a wealthy country. Some of you may be you're poor.
We've been a little to both in our lives, my wife and me, and you notice about poor people when you live amongst the poor, as I did in Maine.
They're pretty generous. I think they just sympathize more with one another and they're they're generous people that have a problem sometimes with generosity or the wealthier people. It's kind of unusual.
But here, the trial of affliction, the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty, these are all circumstances we can find ourselves in. The Lord orders our circumstances as we've had before us in Hebrews 12. But it doesn't have to affect our joy. It can enhance it. It can display it like a black velvet behind it, behind a jewel. It can display that you have something that nobody can quite understand why you have it.
And it's joy.
Nobody came.
From such a high place as the Lord Jesus, I think Doug mentioned this morning in his worship of prayer. He came down from heaven and nobody went so low.
Down to the bottom of the sea, weeds wrapped about his head.
Fall. The joy, the writer writes, is fierce. The wrath.
Maybe it's the other way around.
And so nobody can speak about these things like he could.
When still here as a man about to walk out of an upper room.
Across the city, be taken all night and nailed.
To a tree the next day.
And he could speak of his joy.
What a savior.
In the book of Jude we read at the end of that little epistle.
I'll sit down. I didn't realize we were over the magic hour here.
Verse 24 Now unto him that is able to keep you from falling or stumbling, really.
And to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.
I believe his joy will exceed ours. His patience exceeds ours.
Is waiting for us, waiting for the marriage, for the marriage day.
He's waiting patiently. His joy surely is going to exceed ours. The psalmist could say in my presence his fullness of joy. But this is exceeding joy. Well may the Lord encourage us not to be careless about our own state of soul.
But that we might walk in His steps, and that we might answer to His desire now to have His joy fulfilled in ourselves.