John 15:9-11

Amen.

Let’s just ask the Lord one more time for his help.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you for your precious Word to us. Help us now as we come to consider it. Lord, give me strength to teach it faithfully, and I pray that your Holy Spirit would be the one who speaks to us all.

Lord, strengthen us, draw us closer to yourself, teach us what Christ means to teach his disciples in this passage, and help us be more like him. We love you, Lord. We pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.

I should have mentioned — I forgot to mention it — I will be preaching from the New King James Version tonight. I don’t think it’s very different at all from the ESV, but just so you’re aware, my version is the New King James Version for this evening.

As we come to this passage in John chapter 15, you may be aware already, maybe you are, maybe you aren’t, of the context of what is going on at this point in the Book of John. We come right here in the middle, basically, of Jesus’ conversation with his disciples in the upper room on the night that he would go on to be betrayed. He’s had his supper with the disciples, and now he’s having this time where he wants to prepare his disciples for when he’s going to leave them. And if you think about it, this is really his last opportunity, his last real time where he gets to give them some real teaching, a real conversation that he can have with them. After this, he’s going to leave. They’re going to go to the Garden of Gethsemane. He’s going to pray, and eventually, soon, in just a few hours, he’s going to be arrested, betrayed by Judas.

So this calls to our attention how important these words are, these words of Jesus, the last words, you could say, of Jesus, this last real conversation he has with his disciples. He has just told them — if you look at chapter 13, this is where the conversation begins — he’s just told them that he’s going to leave them.

In verse 36:

Peter said to him, ‘Lord, where are you going?’ And Jesus answered him, ‘Where I am going, you cannot follow me now. But you shall follow me afterward.’

He’s told them he’s leaving, and he goes on to tell them that Peter is going to deny him, that all of the disciples, really, we see in the parallel gospel accounts, all of the disciples are going to fall. They’re going to be shaken by the trial that’s about to come upon them. They’re going to face a difficult period. Jesus is about to leave them. But notice what he says to them in chapter 14, at the very beginning of this discourse.

Chapter 14, verse 1, look how it starts. This is what Jesus says:

Let not your heart be troubled.

Let not your heart be troubled. For those who were present at the Thursday morning prayer meetings — when I was there for a while, we were going through the book of John, here in the Upper Room Discourse — I keep calling our attention to this verse at the beginning of chapter 14: “Let not your hearts be troubled.” Because what those words really do for us, they encapsulate what Jesus is saying in all that he says here in these chapters. This really characterises what he is doing. He is comforting his disciples. He wants their hearts to not be troubled. He knows he’s leaving them. He knows that they are troubled, and he wants to comfort them. He wants to prepare them for what’s ahead: his crucifixion, which is about to take place. Jesus knows that it’s only a matter of hours, like we said, before he’s arrested.

So this time is so valuable, so short, but so valuable. So let’s pay great attention to what Jesus has to say here. Notice also that he doesn’t go and say, hey guys, give me a few hours, because what’s going to happen is going to be really hard for me. Let me go and prepare myself. No, he cares for his disciples. He’s looking out for them. “Let your hearts not be troubled.”

We’ll consider this passage under 3 main points. Firstly, we’ll see the love of God. Secondly, we see abiding in the Son’s love. And thirdly, we’ll see true joy.

1 The love of God

As Jesus is teaching — we’re in the middle of his teaching here — he’s already comforting. But as he goes on to continue comforting and teaching his disciples, he says here in verse 9, as we read at the beginning:

As the Father loved me, I also have loved you.

Jesus reassures his disciples of his love for them. But not only does he reassure them, telling them that I love you, he tells them something of the way or the manner in which he loves them, how he loves them. He says, as the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. This is the way that Jesus has loved them. And what I’d like us to see here tonight is that this is not only the way that Jesus loved his disciples 2,000 years ago, but this is the way that Jesus loves all of his followers, all those who call upon his name, who are his people today, the bride of Christ, the church of Christ, all people who are born-again Christians. This is the love that Christ has for you and for me. As the Father has loved me, so also have I loved you.

So how is it that God the Father loves God the Son? Just like an earthly father loves his son, God the Father loves his Son. But unlike an earthly father who is imperfect — we as earthly parents fall short in so many ways, don’t we? We make mistakes. We don’t love our children perfectly. We sin against them even sometimes. Unlike us, God the Father loves the Son perfectly. God the Father loves the Son perfectly.

Charles Spurgeon sums this up very well, and I want to point us to what he says. He says that the love of the Father to the Son is without beginning, without end, without measure, and without change. Without beginning, without end, without measure and without change. This love of the Father to the Son is without beginning and it is without end.

After Jesus was baptised, you remember that the Father spoke from heaven. His voice was heard, and it said, Matthew 3:17:

This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.

This is my beloved Son. And brothers and sisters, this beloved Son of God has always been the beloved Son of God. He did not start being the beloved Son. He wasn’t previously just the Son of God that wasn’t loved. No, he’s always been the beloved Son of God. That is to say that the love between the Father and the Son is an eternal love. It has no beginning and it has no end. It is for all eternity. The Father and the Son have always been, and they will always be. The Father and the Son have always been the Father and the Son in this relationship, this perfect relationship of love. This love has always been there and it always will be. It is without beginning and it is without end.

Secondly, this love of the Father to the Son is without measure. That is to say that it’s not as if the Father has loved the Son eternally, but only a little bit. No. The Father has loved the Son eternally and he has loved the Son infinitely. John 3:35 says that the Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand. The Father loves the Son and gives him all things. He doesn’t spare anything. He’s loved the Son to the max. He gives the Son authority and sets him up as the one who will judge the living and the dead.

We see evidence of this great love of the Father to the Son in Jesus’ own earthly ministry. As the Son on earth completing his mission, the Father sustained him, led him, taught him. He gave him his Spirit without measure. He always heard the prayers of the Son and answered his prayers. And once the Son had died his sacrificial death, the Father does not abandon his soul to the grave, as we read from Acts chapter 2, but raised him from the dead. And not only raised him, but glorified him as the firstborn of all creation.

Philippians 2:9 says:

Therefore God also has highly exalted him and given him the name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of those in heaven, and of those on earth, and of those under the earth, and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.

This love of the Father to the Son is eternal. It is infinite, it is a full love, but it is also, take note, it is unchanging. There has never been a moment where this love of the Father to the Son has dipped. It has never changed, it has never grown colder even for a second, it has never diminished in any way. What amazing love this is. Eternal, infinite, unchanging love. There is no more glorious example of love that we can look at. There’s no greater example of love. Nothing that we can point to. And here I am trying to explain it. I can’t explain it. I’m only trying to begin to say something about it. It’s so glorious, isn’t it? So amazing. And brothers and sisters, this is the way that Jesus says he loves his followers: as the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Amazing. This is the love of the Father and the Son. It is a perfect love. That summarises it, doesn’t it? It is a perfect love.

To clarify before we move on, we shouldn’t distinguish between the love that God the Son has for his people and the love God the Father has for us. It’s not as if the Father loves the church any less than the Son does. No, for God so loved the world that he sent his only begotten Son. No, it’s not that at all. Rather, what we are supposed to see here is that this emphasises that Christ, the Son, is the mediator of God’s love to us. It is through him and his work that his love comes to you and me. And we see that he has loved his people without beginning, without end, without measure, and without change. He has loved us perfectly. Perfectly.

He has loved us without beginning. As believers, we have been chosen since before the foundation of the world to be adopted and brought into his family, as it says in Ephesians 1. He has loved us without measure, for he sent his only Son, like we said, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. What greater gift is there that God could give us than his own Son? This is love without measure. This is the greatest gift he could give to show his love. We have been loved with a love that is without measure, and we have been loved with a love that, praise the Lord, does not change. It does not change.

The love of the Lord to us is not based upon our own works. It’s not based upon our own merits. He does not love us more or less depending on our performance. We never earned his love, and so we can never lose his love. Unlike our own love for God, which so often fluctuates, doesn’t it? We grow cold, sometimes we grow passionate, it increases, it goes down. No, unlike us, the Lord loves us completely, perfectly, steadily, consistently, always. In our best moments and in our lowest moments. He has not loved you and me because we are lovely. No. He has set his love upon us because he is lovely. Because he is gracious. Because he is glorious and kind and good.

And this is all most gloriously seen, isn’t it, at the cross. God demonstrates his own love towards us, Romans 5:8, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. This is the love that God has for us. As the Father loves the Son, so has he loved us.

2 Abiding in the Son’s love

Jesus has told his disciples, as we’ve seen now, the kind of love with which he loves them. And then he goes on to give them an instruction. He tells them something that they are to do.

Look further into verse 9. At the end it says:

As the Father loved me, I also have loved you. Abide in my love.

This is an imperative. Abide. In my love. To abide means to continue in or to remain in a place or a thing. You can say you abide in a town, for example, because you live there and you continue living there. That’s where you abide. When you go on vacation, you don’t say you abide in whatever place you go to. You don’t go there and say you abide there, do you? No. Because you’re just going to visit and then you go back home. But you can say that you abide in your own house, can’t you? That’s where you stay. That’s where you continue to remain.

Jesus has used this word a few times already in this very chapter, from verses 1 to 8. He’s been saying, he said a few times, abide in me. So what does that mean? Obviously he’s not talking about a physical location that we are to stay in. Instead, he’s referring to being united to him by remaining in communion with him, spiritually abiding in him. It means to continue living by faith and to continue in the grace of God, to abide in him himself.

So as we come now to what he says here, abide in my love, what does that mean? What does it mean to abide in the love of Christ? To put it simply, I believe the best way to understand it is that to abide in the Son’s love is to continue being a recipient of his love. It is to treasure it, it is to enjoy it, to continue being someone who receives his love.

Think of the prodigal son in the parable. The father loved him, but he left. He didn’t abide in the love of the father, did he? He didn’t reciprocate the love. He didn’t do what he should have done to continue being in that love, did he? He ran off. He didn’t abide in the love of the father. Think about the love that a husband and a wife have for each other. They abide in each other’s love. They do what they must to remain in that love. They continue receiving each other’s love. They don’t go off. They stay together. They love each other. They receive love from one another. So Christ calls us to abide in his love, to continue in, to remain in his love.

And he goes on further in verse 10, and he says:

If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love.

Here we see how the disciples are to abide in the love of Christ. And notice again that Jesus uses another example. He uses the example of his relationship with the Father again. He says, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love, now you, if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love.

Christ as a man throughout his earthly ministry has perfectly obeyed the Father. He has kept all the law. He has walked in his ways. He has not sinned at all. He has done all that is pleasing to God. He has abided in the love of the Father. He has continued receiving that. He has kept him as first in his life. Not anything of the world, not raising anything of the world above him. He has abided in the love of the Father. He has valued his love above all things. This is what Christ teaches his disciples, that by keeping his commandments, they will continue in his love. Unlike the prodigal son, don’t leave God’s love. Be a faithful son. Stay in the Father’s house, obeying the Father, remaining in this relationship as a son receiving the Father’s love.

Now, perhaps at this point you may be wondering, is Jesus teaching a sort of works-based salvation here? Is Jesus saying that we have to earn the love of God in a way? If you keep my commandments, then you will abide. Is he teaching something like a works-based salvation? Well, if you were to isolate this verse from the rest of the Bible, you could come to that conclusion. But to remain in the love of Christ is really synonymous with being saved, isn’t it? It’s the same thing as being saved. That’s what it is to be saved, to be someone who abides in the love of Christ. And the Bible clearly teaches us that sinful man is not able to earn the love of God. He is not able to save himself. In 1 John 4:19, it says, we love him — why? Because he first loved us. We can’t switch that around. It’s not that we have shown love to the Father and now he has responded by loving us. No.

Ephesians 2:8 says:

For by grace you have been saved through faith, and not of yourselves; it is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast.

So if we were to say that by our keeping of the commandments we earn the love of the Father, that is a direct contradiction of this. Our love for God, our obedience to him, is not the root of our salvation. It’s not the cause of our salvation. It is the fruit of our salvation. It is the result of us being saved. It is the evidence of true faith that we abide in Christ and in his love, that we keep his commandments.

So why is it that Christ speaks in this way? Why does he say it like this? He makes it sound conditional, doesn’t he? If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love. Why does he make it sound conditional? Well, because it is. And you may say to me now, what, Robert? What are you talking about? You just said all this stuff about how we can’t earn it, and now you’re saying it’s conditional? You’re not making any sense. Well, I hope I can make some sense. What I mean is that while we’ve said that the obedience, keeping God’s commandments, abiding, is the fruit of our salvation, yes, we can never separate that fruit from the root of our salvation. We can never separate these things.

We are not saved by our obedience to God and keeping his commandments. But the true evidence that must be there and will be there if we are saved is that we do strive to keep God’s commandments. Yes, we are saved by grace alone. Yes, but our Lord tells us to do something. He tells us to abide. He tells us to keep his commandments. If we are saved by God, brothers and sisters, he will surely bring us home. And there are so many promises in Scripture that teach us this. But we have to remember the way that this is brought about. The way that God brings us to the finish line. It is him that brings us there, 100%. But how does he bring us there? It’s not by us sitting back doing nothing. It’s not by us going into autopilot mode, I can relax and chill now until I get to heaven. No, it is by us fighting as well. It is by us running the race that is before us. It is by us striving to abide in his love. But even obedience, even this striving, this fighting that we do, all that we do is not apart from the grace of God. Even these things, God is the one who gives the strength to do it.

I think this is a good example. In Philippians 2:12, we see this. It says:

Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my absence,

Listen to this, what Paul says:

work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.

Paul tells them to do something. You work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. And then what does he go on to say next? He says in verse 13:

for it is God who works in you to will and to do for his good pleasure.

You work out, and it is God who works. Here we see the beautiful harmonisation, even though it’s mysterious to us. Here we see how it is us who are called to work, and we must be working, but it is God who enables. It is God who ultimately works. And that is why all the glory goes to him. That is why he receives all our praise. But what we see here is that this rebukes any idea of being saved by grace and therefore living however we want. No, far be it from us. Shall we sin that grace may abound? What does Paul say? By no means. We are called to abide. We are called to work out our salvation. We are called to strive.

So let me ask you this. Are you abiding in the love of Christ? Are you keeping God’s commandments? I’m not asking if you are sinless. I’m not asking if you keep the commandments perfectly. I don’t need to ask you that. None of us is able to live up to a perfect standard. We all fall short, don’t we? But is your life marked by a striving to honour God? Do you strive? Do you wrestle? Do you struggle to keep God’s law? Does it stir within you? Do you feel conviction when you don’t? These things ought to be.

What sort of fruit are you producing in your life? If we say that we are abiding in Christ, if we say that we are Christians, there must be evidence of that. I’ve said this before, but I think it’s just such a helpful image. An apple tree must produce apples. If it produces oranges, it’s not an apple tree, is it? No one would believe you if you say it’s an apple tree, because it simply isn’t. The proof is in the pudding. “You will know them by their fruits.” We must be producing fruit. We see then in verse 10 that the true Christian life is marked by obedience. We don’t become passive once we are saved. No, we don’t sit back. We press on. We must fight. We must strive. We must run the race. And this is what it means to abide. This is what it means to abide in the love of Christ.

And in fact, it is in this striving, it is in this fight against the world, against the flesh, against the devil, these enemies of ours, it’s in this wrestling, in this fight, that we will grow into deeper and deeper communion with God. It is in this fight, as we go on striving, that we will actually, you could say, abide deeper and deeper in the love of God. We will know him better. We will see him keep his promises even more in our life. He will open our eyes to his beauty more and more as we continue on and on walking with him.

3 True joy

We have seen the sort of love with which the Son loves his followers, and we’ve seen what it means and what it looks like to abide in his love. We’ve seen a what — Christ’s love, what is it? We’ve seen a how — how do we abide? And now we’re going to see a why. Why is it that Christ teaches these things? Verse 11 tells us.

Look at verse 11. It says:

These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.

That my joy may remain in you and that your joy may be full. This is why Christ has told these things to his disciples. Remember the context of what’s going on here. Remember the situation that the disciples are in right now. Jesus has told them that he’s going to leave them shortly and that they’re going to face a very great trial. Try to imagine for a moment the anxiety of the disciples. They’ve left everything to follow this man. They’ve left everything and they’ve gone with him. And for the last few years, all they’ve known is Jesus. They’ve heard his teaching. They’ve been with him always. They believe he’s the Messiah. They’ve been trying to learn all they can. They’ve been struggling. And now he says, I’m leaving you. They don’t feel ready for him to leave yet.

If you look back in these chapters, if you look forward, there are so many questions that they have. Where are you going? Why are you going? Jesus says, you know the way to where I’m going. They say, I don’t know the way. There’s so much confusion, so much anxiety. Their hearts are not at rest. They don’t feel ready for this man. They’ve put all their eggs in one basket and now he’s going to leave them while they still don’t feel prepared for him to go. This is why Jesus says these things, that in the midst of their trial, in this time of confusion and discouragement that they face, he says that my joy may remain in you and that your joy may be full.

Notice what sort of joy Jesus wants his disciples to have. He says, my joy, that my joy may remain in you. It’s interesting, isn’t it? He could have just said, that joy would remain in you. That would have made sense too, right? But he says, my joy. So what is it that is specific about his joy? Why is it his? Why does he refer to it in this way? Calvin is helpful, I think, in the way he explains it. He says that it’s Christ’s joy because he is its author and he is its cause.

He is the author of this joy and he is the cause of this joy. He is its author in the sense that it is by his Holy Spirit working in our hearts that we experience this joy. He applies it to us that we would actually feel and have this joy within us. He is the one who works it within us. He is its author, but he is also its cause in that he is the one who has brought it about. He has accomplished it for us.

Isaiah 53:5 says:

He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities. The chastisement for our peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed.

He has accomplished this peace between God and man. He is its cause, but he is also the author, the one who applies it within us. Yes, the Spirit applies this in us, the Lord works it within us, but it is because he has achieved it first of all that he is able to apply it. If he didn’t achieve it, there would be nothing to apply. You can think of it in this way. It is as if Christ has prepared an amazing feast, but he has also brought us to the table. He has also put the plate in front of us that we may eat. He has not just prepared it far off so that we can come sometime. No, he has brought us there. He has applied it to us. He is the author and the cause.

Or you could think of it like this. He has caused the sun to rise. He has raised it up. But he has also opened your eyes to see it, that the light may enter. It’s not enough that he would have just raised the sun up if your eyes are closed, if you can’t see anything. It’s also not enough just to open your eyes if there’s no sun to rise. He has done both of these things. It is his joy because he has accomplished it. All of it comes through him. All of it comes from him. It is his joy.

But notice also, it’s called our joy.

Look at what it says:

These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full.

It’s called our joy. He refers to it as ours as well because he has given this joy to us. He has given us this joy that our joy may be full. And this joy, brothers and sisters, is the joy of salvation. Nothing in this world compares to this joy, to the joy of Christ. He has not given us a vague, abstract joy. He’s not given us the world’s joy. No, he’s given us his joy. Yes, the world has some joy to offer. It has pleasures. It has some distractions. It has entertainment. It has some things that it tries to give us. But none of those things will give you full joy. That’s the difference. The joys of this world are fleeting. They are but for a moment. They are just a little taste of joy. That’s all the non-believer gets. That’s all those apart from Christ get: a little taste of joy, snippets of joy that only last for a moment in the grand scheme of things. Only with Christ can they have full joy.

Don’t we all know that the joys the world offers just do not satisfy? I don’t think I have to do much to convince you of it. We have all seen this ourselves in our own lives. Every time you set your heart on something, you think, yeah, that will bring me joy, and you pursue it, you work hard for it, whatever it might be, you earn, you save up to buy it, whatever it is, you get it. Does it bring you joy? Do you never want anything else again because that has satisfied you? No. Maybe for a day, a week, a month, but even that passes, doesn’t it? Nothing in this world is able to give us a true fulfilment, to fulfil our joy completely. You are always left desiring something else, going on to the next thing.

Surely if material things in this world could give us a full joy, you’d be looking at the rich and the famous and you’d see a bunch of people full of joy, right? You’d say, whoa, that is a full joy. But what do we see so often? We see so many rich and famous, they turn to drugs, they turn to alcohol, they turn to all kinds of things chasing fulfilment because even they, with all that they have in this world, do not have full joy. And we see that all people, every single person in this world, is looking for joy. All people are looking for fulfilment because that is where true joy is. True joy is having full fulfilment. Only here is true joy. Only here is full joy — by abiding in Christ, by having his joy abide in us.

As I said, true joy is having true fulfilment, and true fulfilment comes from fulfilling the purpose that you and I were created for. Imagine — I used to have a dog that was very intelligent, very active, too active. I’d take him for a walk for like an hour, I’d bring him back thinking, okay, I did it, he should be happy now, and he’d go in the yard and just spin around in circles for ages or start digging holes and other things because he still had more energy he wanted to use. He wanted to do more and more. God made that dog for so much work and energy, but I wasn’t able to fulfil it.

But imagine if I took that dog and I locked it up in a closet, and I kept it there every day. I’d open the door once a day and give it water and food, and that’s it, and close the door. What do you think would happen to that dog? It’d be a very sad dog, wouldn’t it? My dog got sad in my backyard, which wasn’t even that small. Imagine if I closed it in a closet. That’s a faint illustration of this: the dog is not fulfilling what God made it to do. He made it to run. He made it to work, to shepherd sheep or whatever it might be. It’s like taking a bird and chopping off its wings for it to walk on the ground all its life. That’s a depressive bird. That’s not what God made it for. He made it to fly.

So what were you and I made for? Because only then, when we know that, can we know how to have true fulfilment. What is our purpose? Why did God make us? The Westminster Shorter Catechism says in the first question, “What is the chief end of man?” And the answer is, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” To glorify God and to enjoy him forever. This is what man was made for. This is what we were made for. This is what we see in the Garden of Eden at the very beginning of the Bible, before the fall, before things go bad. What did it look like when man and woman were in right relationship with God? What did it look like? They lived in communion with God. They glorified God and enjoyed him. They glorified him by doing what God had given them to do, to work the garden, to multiply and fill the earth. They had communion with God. It says that God would walk in the cool of the morning, right? And so we understand that that was a normal occurrence that the Lord would meet with them and commune with them, that they would know him. That’s where we were before the fall, fulfilling our purpose in God’s good design. But sin has marred that.

We were made to be satisfied in knowing the eternal God, brothers and sisters. And there’s nothing else in this world that can fill that void. There’s nothing in this world that can satisfy us. And even though we fell so grievously, we were shown such goodness in the garden, we rebelled against our good God. Even though all of that is true, through Christ we have been restored. He has made a way for us to fulfil our original purpose, to return to communion with God. And now that we are saved, one day you and I are going to see the Lord with our own eyes. How incredible. We’re going to see him face to face. You know what that means? That means communion, doesn’t it? When you see someone face to face. We’re going to be with him forever as we were supposed to be. The Lord Jesus restores us to what we lost.

But what I want us to see is that this isn’t just a hope of future joy that Jesus gives us. It’s not just the hope of a future joy that he gives his disciples. He doesn’t say, these things I say to you so that my joy may be in you one day. No, he wants us to experience this joy now. We can begin to experience this joy now. Why is that? Because we can begin to know God now. We can begin to glorify and enjoy him now. He has revealed himself to us, and so we can know him. We can commune with him because he communes with us through his Word. He has made himself known by his Son, by his Spirit dwelling within us, opening our eyes to these truths, raising the sun, but opening our eyes as well. We can commune with him. And now, right now, we can do that. Right now, you and I can taste eternity.

Yes, there’s much to look forward to. But there’s so much right now. As Christians, although we go through many trials — no one here is denying that, and we don’t gloss over trials. We don’t gloss over the fact that we are grieved in this life. This life is filled with trials. Yes, we struggle. We grow weary on our way to heaven. Yes, it’s true. But we also have a full joy. We have a full joy, a joy and a peace that is inexpressible in the midst of these trials.

1 Peter 1:8 says this. Listen to this.

“In this you greatly rejoice,” he says. That’s present.

You greatly rejoice, though now for a little while, if need be, you are grieved by various trials, that the genuineness of your faith, being much more precious than gold that perishes, though it is tested by fire, may be found to praise, honour, and glory at the revelation of Jesus Christ, whom, having not seen, you love. Though now you do not see him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory, receiving the end of your faith, the salvation of your souls.

This is right now. “Though you do not see him, yet believing, you rejoice with joy inexpressible and full of glory.” This is a glorious joy. This is something supernatural. It’s not found in this world. It only comes to us through Christ. This is something truly amazing, and by believing in the midst of our trials, we have it now.

So as I come to a close, allow me to ask you this: Do you have this joy? Can you say, I know this joy that is inexpressible? Is your joy full? This joy only comes to us from the great love of God. Are you abiding in his love? Because it is when we abide that we have our joy full. That is why Christ said these things.

So are you abiding in the love of God? Perhaps you’re a Christian and you don’t have this joy right now. You know something of it, yes, but you don’t have it right now. Is it perhaps because you’re not abiding in the love of the Son? Have you been communing with God? Have you been seeking him? Has he been first in your life? This will have real consequences. We shouldn’t be surprised when we go through trials and we don’t seek the Lord that we don’t have this joy. But this joy is there. Abide in his love and his joy will be in you and it will be full. Strive to walk with him, to honour him in your ways, to put him first in your life, and you will see him make your joy full.

Perhaps you’re not a Christian. Perhaps you have no idea of this joy. You’re still playing with the things of the world thinking, there I might find joy, there I might find fulfilment. Where is it? You keep looking in one place after the other and you don’t find it because you won’t find it there. Come to Christ. Come to him who is able to restore you to the purpose you were made for, the one who is able to give you full joy. He stands ready to receive both the sinner who has never come to him, who has never acknowledged him, as well as the backslidden Christian. He stands ready to receive you because his love is as the Father to the Son. Don’t look to this world. Don’t look to this world for joy and peace and love. No, only Christ can give these things in their fullness. Only Christ. And he is not only able to give it, he is also willing to give it.

And I’ll close by reading this. Isaiah chapter 55, verse 1, it says this:

Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters. And you who have no money, come, buy and eat. Yes, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend money for what is not bread and your wages for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me and eat what is good, and let your soul delight itself in abundance. Incline your ear to me and come to me. Hear, and your soul shall live.

May we all take this invitation. May we all come to him and live. May we all abide in the love of Christ and have his joy abide in us. Amen.

Let’s come to the Lord in prayer.

O Heavenly Father, what great love you have for the Son. What great love, without beginning, without end, without measure, and without change. And Lord, that we read that you have loved us with this love. O Lord, give us eyes to see this. Help us grasp this great truth, how great this is. This love is nothing like we can find in the world. This is something incredible, Lord. We thank you for Christ. We thank you for his great work in securing this love for us, securing this joy for us. And we thank you, Lord, for his work in applying it to our hearts. Thank you, Lord, for your Holy Spirit who brings us to life, who helps us to see these things, Lord. Lord, may we see them more and more and more as we walk in this world.

Help us to be striving to abide in your love, Lord. Help us. Forgive us for the times where we go astray looking for joy in this world. Help us, Lord, to not be satisfied with these things even for a minute. Help us, Lord, to strive to be satisfied in Christ only. Lord, it is there that we will have true joy, full joy. And I do pray that every person here would have that, would know that. Lord, I pray for those who are lost in their sins, who do not know you. Lord, help them to see this as well. We thank you for your amazing offer in the gospel, that you would save us, that you invite us to come and eat without price, to come and buy without money. What a gracious God you are, Lord. We praise you and we ask you to continue to remain with us. We pray these things in Jesus’ name. Amen.