Jesus promises His disciples that their sorrow will turn to unshakable joy—not mere happiness, but a deep current that remains despite circumstances. This joy flows from three realities outlined in John 17: being sanctified by God’s Word, being kept by Christ, and being sent into the world. When we truly grasp that we are His and He is ours, we experience the fullness of His joy. This joy becomes most evident when we witness to others about Christ, not seeking spiritual experiences for their own sake, but focusing on Christ Himself. God’s love stretched to its limits produces in us a joy that no one can take away.

Automatically Generated Transcript

[00:00:00] Well thank you for your very warm welcome of me. It’s been an honor and a privilege to be sharing with you over these last four weeks. I’m sorry if I do appear to have my back to you but that’s your fault. You chose to sit there. I will try and acknowledge you by turning every now and then if that’s okay. But when you are as nasally gifted as I am, swinging your head like that can be a problem. So you’ll understand. What a crazy week. I’m surprised it’s even Sunday today and I’m hoping that today will reset us back to some level of normality. Last week was mad. I don’t know what it was like here but where I live at Redcliffe it was crazy windy on Saturday night and I think it’s true to say I was a little bit scared. The whole of my house was just shaking

[00:01:01] in the gusts of wind and there are lots of trees down down where we lived and it was just I think it was the Lord’s doing that we just happened to live in it. It was quite a small area that didn’t lose power so we could stream and bring the messages last Sunday for you when ordinarily normally you’d expect that we couldn’t. But it’s great to be back here today and it is exciting to be leading up to Easter again. I’m excited. I’m not sensing the same level of excitement here in the room. Still everyone’s a bit oh no. Look at this it’s 20 past 10 and the sermon hasn’t even started yet and so what’s going to happen well can I can I say as a guest as a visitor one of the highlights of this church is the after church fellowship and I know it’s partly the air conditioning that’s why you’re

[00:02:07] just want to stay here but having a cup of coffee it’s not about how good the coffee is although it is good. Hanging around and having a chat after church is something that’s fantastic about this church and there’s a sense of fellowship there’s a sense that we’re all in together in what God is doing and it doesn’t matter how long the sermon goes that’s still on at the end so just look forward to that. I am going to conclude this four-part series on Love on the Stretch today and hopefully it’s a bit of a big ask really to talk about the teaching in the upper room the night before the crucifixion to bring all of that down into four four sermons is really a bit of a joke but we you’re gonna get it anyway so it does mean that we will be here for a long time now

[00:03:05] I’m just joking it’s gonna be all condensed and we’ll be going fast but you should be okay if I sense it on your faces that oh man we just are not digesting any of this I’ll pretend to ignore you let me pray first and then we’ll get underway thank you Lord for the wonder of your word thank you that you have given it to us plus you’ve given us your spirit to interpret to enliven and to bring to bear the truth of your word in our lives and I pray that he would be here today bringing the truths of Christ to each of our hearts Lord we thank you and pray in Jesus name amen well we are in the Bible app I don’t know if you’re used to this or not probably not it’s only four weeks they say it does take a month to develop a habit and perhaps it was a big

[00:04:24] ass to get you into the Bible app in just these four weeks but there you go if you want to get the PowerPoint you can and you can follow along on your device Jesus has displayed his love for you it is a love that is absolute he’s done everything that love could dictate for you and for me and he displays that love on the stretch or the absolute extent of his love and John talks about it in verse 1 of chapter 13. It’s just an editorial comment as he leads into the upper room discussions. And there it says, before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. And so what we have in the teaching that follows in this upper room discourse is

[00:05:28] teaching that shows the divine love on the stretch. We’ve noticed that the teaching hinges on two fulcrums early on in chapter 14. The first is in the very familiar passages in John chapter 14 and verse 2, where Jesus says, let not your heart be troubled, believe in God, believe also in me. In my father’s house are many rooms. And if it weren’t so, what I’ve told you, that I got to prepare a place for you and if I’ve got to prepare a place for you, I’ll come again and take you to be with myself, that where I am you may be also. So we understood that Jesus is preparing a place for us in the Father’s house. It is a place of rest. belonging to God’s family is to share in that rest. All of life’s anxieties, all of life’s tensions find their release in God and I wonder if you have learnt the

[00:06:35] art of rest or are you like so many these days who find it difficult to be still. In your mind there are little neurons firing, always working over time and the result is tension, the result is worry, the result is lack of health and maybe even sin. Many of us have to argue with ourselves and tell ourselves to have a rest. Now I don’t particularly have that problem, I have the opposite problem where it’s hard to get me going. I can sit and rest and I’m an expert at that and if you were to talk to my wife who is the opposite, she is someone who is constantly on the go, constantly doing something, I actually finally get her to sit next to me on the couch and I’m thinking whoa ho ho, here’s an opportunity for some real rest and she’ll pull out some crocheting and start

[00:07:53] doing that. So she’s busy busy busy, I’m someone who’s happy to spend time thinking and resting but some of us do need to actually make our minds, make our spirits follow our bodies and it is good I think to actually make yourself go to a place, have a special place like a chair somewhere where you can go and you can sit and maybe you have to say to yourself God maybe make it please so that my heart and my mind reflect my physical rest at the moment and actually convince yourself to have a rest. I don’t know which you are like me or my wife, most people are probably in between. One thing about the Oddy family is we pride ourselves at not being average. We’re either, yeah if you know what I mean. I don’t want you to misunderstand that rest means doing

[00:09:19] nothing. You can be busy working but still be at rest. Jesus has made significant promises to us and what he’s achieved has opened up a vast realm of wonder and in that realm of promise our trust in him is expressed in our lack of striving, worry and fear. We understand all that he has done and all that he has promised and when I trust him and what he’s achieved, what he’s promised, I don’t have to worry about it. I don’t have to strive to achieve it. I don’t have to struggle. Are you understanding me? That is rest. I can remember the first time I drove in the Sydney Harbour Tunnel. Perhaps I’m showing my age here but I wasn’t that old when they put a tunnel under the Sydney Harbour. Remember that? We’ve got a clem now, we could do it here in Brisbane but it’s the same thing. When

[00:11:01] you go into those tunnels, I don’t know why it is but somehow I get shocked by the fact that they go down. You just go down and down and down and it just keeps going down and you wonder. The Sydney Harbour Tunnel is really bad. It keeps going down and you get down to the bottom and you think what is above me? what is and you think it’s the Sydney Harbor, oh my goodness, it’s only the Brisbane River here, that’s not much, you sit down in the bottom of the tunnel and you think oh boy we’ve been coming down for a long time going down, down, down and you start to wonder man is this safe under here and I start to look for little leaks of water in the sides, I don’t know. No I’m not normal, I’m not not average. Normal, average, same thing. And then one day it dawned on me, the fact

[00:11:57] that there’s a tunnel there means that somebody has gone before. Somebody’s been down there, it’s probably some Italian-made worm tunneling machine that slowly digs and everyone’s been, somebody’s gone before and built the tunnel. Well, Jesus has gone before you and me. He is with us and there’s nothing in life that He hasn’t gone before us in. And so it doesn’t matter if you’re in the middle at the bottom of the tunnel, it doesn’t matter what circumstance you are in, you can trust Him, you can still be at rest. How glorious it is that Christ should give us rest by introducing us to the Father. But even more glorious is the second fulcrum in chapter 14 and that is the fact that God finds rest in us. Jesus said, if anyone loves me He’ll keep my

[00:13:11] Word and my Father will love Him and we, that’s Jesus and the Father, will come to Him and make our home with Him. The most marvelous thing is that as we find rest in God, He finds rest in us and God is a person whose love is expressed by His resting in us. The Apostle Paul says this, of God one too many, he prays that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith that you being rooted and grounded in love. It goes on, it’s a great prayer to read but that word dwell is a loaded word. It doesn’t just mean that He’s there, it means that He’s building a home. It’s a home in our hearts. The word dwell means to make yourself at home and what a huge thought it is that Christ makes Himself at home in our hearts. Now home for me is a place to sit and put the slippers on and kick back. Home for

[00:14:23] my wife is a place to knit, sew, clean up, tidy up and so on. You get the difference there. So the point is Jesus has a home and that’s us. You know you might have a different idea about home like my view or my wife’s view but I wonder do you know those families where you go and it’s just like a constant tension in the house? I don’t know whether it’s if there’s relationship problems or whether people just aren’t at ease. I don’t know what it is but sometimes you go into a home and you just you feel at the opposite of rest. You feel tension, there’s no ease, there’s just trouble there. Well I wonder what Jesus thinks about your life. What’s the sense of home that He gets from you? An interesting thought isn’t it? So they’re the two fulcrums, us

[00:15:39] resting in God and He in us and all the rest of the upper room teaching revolves around that. Once you’ve got that picture that Jesus is going to prepare a place, this is the first Easter, He’s going to make a resting place for us in the Father’s house which is all together in fellowship with God and then He is going to find rest in us. All of that is what it’s all about and so when you read the whole thing you can get the picture. Chapter 15 is all about abiding and it’s simply the fact that the outworking of God’s resting in us comes to bear. As we abide in Him, He lives out His life through us. His life becomes ours and then there’s all this teaching about the Spirit, the Comforter and He the same brings all that God is to us. At the end of chapter 15 and chapter 16 there’s the

[00:16:47] work of the Spirit in relation to the world. We looked at this, was this last week? I can’t remember because I wasn’t here. When the Helper comes, whom I’ll send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He’ll bear witness about me. And then chapter 16, nevertheless I tell you the truth, it is to your advantage that I go away for if I don’t go away the Helper or the Comforter will not come to you but if I go I’ll send him to you and when he comes he’ll convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment concerning sin because they do not believe in me, concerning righteousness because I go to the Father and you’ll see me no longer concerning judgment because the ruler of the world is judged.

[00:17:45] Notice verse 26 of chapter 15 and the verses in chapter 16 from 7 and on, the Spirit is to witness to Christ. He’s witnessing that belief in Jesus is the antidote for our sin, that from the right hand of the Father Jesus is to be the source of our righteous living and that Jesus has conquered the devil. That was last week. The Spirit convinces us of the content of what we are to proclaim in the Gospel. We are not witnessing to our own experiences, we are witnessing to Christ. Many of us make the mistake of seeking experiences. We’re wanting our lives to be thus and so to have this experience or that experience. You read in books and you say, you know what? I’d love to have the same experiences, Hudson Taylor. I’d love to have the same experience of God as Kari 10 Boom. You

[00:18:59] might even start to think about, oh no, there’s something wrong with me. God doesn’t seem to work in my life the same as he worked in Hudson Taylor, Curry Temboom or Pastor Jim or look what God’s doing in those younger people in the church and he doesn’t seem to be doing any of that for me. And so we start to chase experiences and we start to think that we need more of that. The danger is that as soon as you start to seek those experiences you’re not seeking the source of them. Who is God? And I think it’s something the devil does to us. He gets us chasing experiences instead of chasing God. When He is the one to whom the Spirit wants to point us towards. He is the one who wants to bear witness to Jesus. He’s wanting to take us to Him. He’s the answer, not some experience

[00:20:15] that He might give. Do you see the difference? Yes, I’m hoping so. You know this story, don’t you? When Jesus comes to visit, Martha, Martha, you’re anxious. Martha, Martha is busy, busy, busy. Jesus has come home. How exciting is it that Jesus is visiting? Quick, this is what my wife would be like. Fill the sugar bowl, bake some croissants, make sure the cross stitch is finished, make sure that everything’s clean and tidy. Lots of people are Martha’s, busy, busy, busy. But Jesus says, Martha, Martha, you’re anxious and troubled about many things but one thing is necessary. Mary there is sitting at Jesus’s feet. Mary has chosen the good portion which will not be taken away from her. A lot of people misunderstand I think that this is teaching about the benefit of being like me and the

[00:21:22] problem of being like my wife. No, it’s not like that at all. What this is talking about is about where the spotlight is. Is the spotlight on the experience or is the spotlight on Jesus? It’s the spotlight on Jesus that is what we should be seeking. Not the, whoa, whoa, whoa, let’s make this into a great experience of Jesus coming to the house. No, let’s focus on Him. Our peace, our blessings, all that we have comes from Him. Don’t seek the fruit, seek the fruit giver. Don’t we get this wrong when we pray and we’re asking God to summarize it down? Bless me, bless me, bless me, bless me, bless me, bless us. Not completely selfish. Bless me, bless me, bless me, bless me, and bless us. We’re seeking, we’re seeking an experience when we should be looking straight at Him.

[00:22:57] You know, the Spirit’s witness is to Christ and so should our witness be to Christ. If you ever get an opportunity to give your testimony, don’t talk about what Jesus has given you. I’m sure you mention it. Make sure you speak about the giver. It’s Jesus. And I’ll tell you, if you talk about Him, that’s when the Spirit will move in the hearers because they, the hearers, will see Him and not just what He’s done for you. Can you see the difference? We come then to the end of chapter 16, chapter 17, where the outworking of God in us is described in terms of joy.

[00:23:59] In chapter 17, there’s the prayer of Jesus and it too is characterized by joy. There’s something about Jesus and it’s a bit of a mystery why everybody seemed to like Him so much. Well, He could feed them, He could heal their sick and so on. I get that side of it. But there’s another side of Him where He had no place to lay His head. He wasn’t rich. He was poor. He had nowhere to live. If you know what I mean, it wasn’t a woohoo kind of life that Jesus lived and He ended up being killed. So you go, I wonder why it is that so many people followed Him.

[00:24:40] There must have been something about Jesus. And I think He was a bit of a man’s man. He would have been somebody who was a carpenter, who was strong. But I think there was something about Him that drew people. And I think what it is was His joy. He had joy. It says in John 6, I’ve come down from heaven not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me. And this is the will of Him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that He’s given me, but raise it up on the last day.

[00:25:15] This is the will of my father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in Him should have eternal life. And I raise Him up on the last day. You see, Jesus said that His food was to do the will of Him who sent me. He suffered. He had no home. Nowhere to lay His head. There was the burden of the crowds. he had to actually take action to get away by himself, then there’s the bearing of the cross, there’s the taking of all of our sins,

[00:25:46] but there must have been something, there must have been joy that would bring people to attract to him. It was his sheer delight to do his father’s will. His father’s will. It might involve the cross and agony and so on, but I think John chapter 16 in our reading explains it for us. Truly, truly, I say to you, you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice.

[00:26:24] You’ll be sorrowful, but your sorrow will turn into joy. Now I can remember when my first daughter was born, I think most parents will understand this, the wonder of the birth is overwhelming, the sense of joy at the new life is incredible. When my first daughter was born, just the other day, she came, she was I think two weeks late and she had, I don’t know if I can talk like this, she’d done a poo before she came out and so it’s all, she wasn’t well as a consequence

[00:27:10] and so when she came out, the doctors took her away and had to suck her lungs out to get everything out because of the gaint that was in the fluid that was all in, you get all of this? Anyway me and my wife and I, I was just sitting there, resting as is my custom and she was busy working, working, working, giving birth to this baby. The baby comes out joyo joy and then the doctors wisked her away

[00:27:40] and we’re doing whatever to her and away she went and my wife and I, we were so overcome by joy that we were weeping. We were weeping. And the doctor came back to tell us that the baby was gonna be fine, that there was really just a precautionary thing. Everything was good and all the rest. And she was most sorry for having to take her away

[00:28:10] because we missed out on that moment where the dad is supposed to cut the cord and you put the baby on the mother’s chest and just rest there. And you know, you see it in the movies and none of that could happen. And so the doctor was cheesed off. Well, she was worried that we were cheesed off and she’s come to apologize. And there we are crying.

[00:28:34] She totally misread our tears, that we were upset at what had happened with the baby and what she’d done. But we were just overcome by joy. So she’s making this huge apologetic speech. She must have done so well at med school, just in her speech-making. She’s going on explaining all the medical reasons why she had to take her away, explaining all this stuff and oh, I’m so sorry.

[00:29:03] And eventually we interrupted her and went, doctor, stop it. We’re crying because of joy. And she went, oh, whoops. Whoops, and we became good friends with her. We actually bought her a cake just to prove that we weren’t upset. But Jesus used the illustration. When a woman’s giving birth, I think it’s hard work.

[00:29:37] So they say. And the sorrow, because her hour has come. And when Jesus said this, there would have been a fair few. Let’s talk Turkey. There would have been a fair few deaths. Babies die, mothers die. There would have been a few. And so there’s this whole, my hour has come but when she’s delivered the baby,

[00:30:04] all the anguish disappears. I know there’s floods of hormones that help, and the truth is though, there’s such a joy that a human being’s been born into the world. What a joy. And Jesus used that as an illustration about His leaving, about the first Easter, there’s pain and there’s sorrow, but let me tell you that there is going to be joy. I’m going to see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one, no one or no thing will take your joy from you. How fantastic is that? I’m coming to you and these things I speak in the world that they may have, Jesus is

[00:31:07] praying Chapter 17, I don’t like to call it the high priestly prayer but the books do, He’s praying, I’m coming to you, these things I speak in the world that they may have, my joy, oh just a sample of it? No, no, no, it’s fulfilled in us. We are supposed to have the joy of the Lord and that doesn’t mean we’re just happy all the time. Some people are just happy all the time, I tend to be like that but that’s not the joy of the Lord. The joy of the Lord is an undercurrent in our lives that remains despite what the circumstances are. Christians should have been having joy last week. Now I wasn’t having particular joy on Saturday night when my windows are gone and the whole house is shaking. I was watching them, the picture on my wall in the reflection of the window and I’m seeing the picture and it’s going, it was just moving and I thought the wind is making the pictures move on the wall. I looked around, the picture was still, I couldn’t

[00:32:18] believe it. I was trying to find a spot where the wind was coming in, there was none. Then I realised oh no, the reflection, the windows were moving, going and bowing and bending in the wind. I said, oh my goodness this is terrible and then I started to think of well, it’s only, what is it, a tropical low, this is an ex-cyclone now, I’d hate to be in a real one. Irrespective of our circumstances, we should always know that we belong to Jesus and it’s not just that He is mine but it’s also that I am His. So we say I’ve got a wonderful Savior but my wonderful Savior has also got me and to know that is to have joy. Chapter 17 is about this joy, the joy of the Lord comes and manifests in our lives and it has, I think, three words that, if you like, carry that joy along and they are the words for today. The first word is the word, word.

[00:33:46] Sanctify them in the truth, your word is the truth, God’s word sets us apart. You know Jesus never just says, just called, trust me. He always gives a promise and then asks us to trust Him in that and it’s in the truth of these promises as we walk in them that we find joy. Jesus promises, I will never leave you and we argue, I know I have arguments about it with people, we can argue about the doctrine of the perseverance of the saints or once saved always saved we call it but the Bible doesn’t talk in those terms. I think the truth may be expressed in those words but the Bible talks about Jesus sending another comforter who will be with you forever. He says I will be with you forever and yet don’t we often pray and ask the Lord Jesus to be with me, Lord be with me. I prayed like this even in the car as I was driving here. I don’t want to stand up in front of all of you and have you all looking at

[00:35:21] me and so I’m saying Jesus be with me and then He brings to mind this very point, what are you talking about? I am with you. What’s wrong with you not realising that I’m there? I pray it for missionaries, Lord be with them, be with them and keep them safe and all we we don’t really digest the truth of His promises. His promises present to us a huge world of wonder. We need to lean into Him. We express our faith in Him by accepting the truth of His promises, walking in it. His Spirit brings those promises to bear in our lives, bids us to trust Him in them. His Word sets us apart. You getting that? You guys are great. The next word is kept. Can I just say I don’t know what you think but it’s such a privilege to be a preacher here

[00:37:07] in this pulpit because you guys hear the Word and I don’t just mean the particular doctrines or the content of the Bible, I don’t just mean that, you hear that in the power of the Spirit often and so as a preacher when you come here to Salisbury it’s a great place because you are all willing ears and so it’s a privilege. Look after Jim. Kept. While I was with them I kept them in your name which you’ve given me. I’ve guarded them and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction. You know we remember Judas, that didn’t mention his name then but the Scripture might be fulfilled. Remember what Judas after Jesus had washed his feet and served him communion, remember, that and then it says he left and it was night, this is after that. He might be fulfilled but now I’m coming to you and these things I speak in the world that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. Look at that joy

[00:38:23] again. I’ve given them your Word and the world has hated them because they’re not of the world just as I’m not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world but that’s you, what, keep them from the evil one. Christ keeps us. No one can be lost and He looks after us. The good news, if you’re sitting in a cyclone and your windows are wobbling, if you’re being buffeted by your circumstances, if there’s a whole lot of people getting on your goat, Christ keeps us and keeps us from the evil one. I got absolutely hammered this week. It was Tuesday, I think. It was. I talked about having God’s righteousness bear fruit in our lives by looking, you know, the Spirit pointing us to Christ at the Father’s right hand and righteousness coming out of us and used the example of having to love the unlovely and talked

[00:39:32] about there being crazy people in my life. Well, it was as if all the crazy people all got together on Tuesday and said, well, today we’re gonna put that to the test. I went for a ride on my bike. When I was at home recovering, my phone started to ring. And I tell you, I did not get a minute’s peace from having to deal with crazy people until dinner time. And at the end of it all, I’m sitting there going, well, this is a grand lesson. A number of times along the way, I had had enough. And I’m wanting to tell people, just buzz off. Leave me alone. I’ve got the speeches ready. I have boundaries for yourself, French. Set a boundary. These people are going to take you down and all you have all the arguments. But no, no, no. The Spirit points you to Jesus who’s at the right

[00:40:46] hand of the Father. And all that he has comes to bear in your life. I don’t love these people. I’m wanting to be him. But he does. And I can’t say that I am his and he is mine if I don’t allow his love for them to come through me. But how easy is it for us to blame somebody other than ourselves? We can blame the devil. We can blame our flesh, our old nature. Or we can blame the other people, the crazy people. Sometimes it’s your own family that are taking your life away from God. There’s circumstances that happen. There’s all these forces out there, militating against me and my walk with God. It’s this. It’s that. We complain. We point our fingers at everything except do we accept the real truth. The truth is often that it’s just our plain human crankiness. It’s our plain sin that

[00:42:08] is the problem and we just don’t want to admit it. When the troubles hit, sometimes we should say, thank you Lord for showing me my need, meet me in it. Listen, Christ will keep you. He’s promised. Look to Him. Don’t start blaming everyone else. Final word. It’s only 11 o’clock. That’s when we’re supposed to stop, isn’t it? Just joking. Sent. Better hurry up. As you send me into the world, so I’ve sent them into the world and for their sake I consecrate myself that they also may be sanctified in the truth. So, so far we’ve been looking at the things that are for us or in us, the benefits of God’s resting in us. But you can’t dodge the fact that at the same time we are also sent. 44 times in John, Jesus is called the sent one and He said as I’ve been sent, so send I you. We are one with Him. We are His sent ones. If our love for Him

[00:43:40] means anything, then we are to see ourselves as being sent. I don’t know. Do you guys door knock? You know, when I door knock, there’s two lots of knocking. There’s these knocking and I’ll tell you, usually it’s these that are louder than this. That’s how it is. I don’t like doing things like that. It’s terrible. But the power of the gospel, the fact that we’re sent is not in, it’s not in me. It’s in the message about the one to whom we give witness. We don’t have to have the Lord take away our knocking knees. We need to have the Lord take our witness of Him so that He works in the people. My knocking knees have nothing to do with it and yet we sit at home and go, my knocking knees are the excuse for me to not go. I’m not really sent because I’m too embarrassed. The joy, the great joy of being used by God despite the knocking knees when we are used by God

[00:45:28] is incredible. I can remember when I was a new Christian and I used to want to hang around with Jim. I can’t explain why but I did. I think it was because we used to drink coke together, coca-cola. We call it Christian beer and Jim used to hang around with him a lot. I didn’t understand. I was just, what was I, 20? I can’t remember how old I was. But Jim, after church, I never really realised why he was wanting to go out. He was excited. He had a touch of joy in his heart and we would go out. We’re after church. All we want to do is sit down and have a cup of coffee in the chat. Jim’s wanting to go out. He’s fully energised and I realise now what it is is he’s excited. He’s overcome by the sense of joy of being sent by God and being used by God. And when you have spoken about Christ and seen Him work in somebody’s life, I’ll tell you, you will come away with joy. I don’t know if you’ve ever had the joy of leading somebody to Christ.

[00:46:45] It is the greatest joy that you will ever know. And that’s part of the deal that we’re all supposed to know. We’re sent. He’s gonna use His Word. We’re gonna live in the realm of His promise and He’s gonna keep us irrespective of what’s happening and He’s gonna flood us with joy as we minister on His behalf. Now we’re not gonna all be door knockers. Some of us don’t even, it’s not our thing, but all of us are sent and we can be used to witness. We can write letters. We’ve got neighbours. We’ve got friends. Whatever it is, you’ve got to understand whoever we’ve got in our world that God has placed there, we should be about the business of being sent by Jesus to them. Understand it is the work of the Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, to bring you into the world, to bring as you testify to Christ His blessings to us all. The Spirit witnesses to Christ as we testify about Him. So Jesus wants us to have His joy

[00:48:18] and it’ll be real in your life as three things happen. One, the Word of God is manifest in your life so trust Him in His Word. Two, you’re kept by Christ so rest secure in Him. Trust Him at the point of need, not just ask Him to take your needs away. And three, understand that you are sent. You have been Him, Him, Him. Witness to Him. My friends, do you know the joy of the Lord? This Easter, as it comes in about a month, I pray that you will know His joy in your life. Let’s pray. Lord, thank You. Thank You for the wonder of today. Thank You for the joy that Easter brings and may we all walk in it, being sanctified by Your Word, the truth, being kept by You and being sent. Lord, on those grand words, Your joy sits. And so, Lord, may we, each of us, walk in it.