I just want to say a brief word
of thanks to you all.
Quite a number of people have been thanked
publicly by Mr. Powell, and rightly so, and
our chairman has been thanked, and I've been
thanked, and just about the only people who
have not been thanked so far are the
congregation as a whole.
And I want to thank you for the
kind way in which you have welcomed me,
and the kind expressions of gratitude, and everything
else.
Most of all, I want to thank you
for your prayers on my behalf this week,
and many of you have said down through
the years that you have prayed for me
and the work that I have been associated
with.
And I want to thank you warmly and
heartily for all that you have meant to
me down through the years, and not least
this week.
Many of you have told me that you
felt for me on Tuesday morning particularly, and
indeed each morning as I was abandoned by
the chairman and the brethren who introduced the
meeting in a devotional period.
I think I knew something of the Elijah
feeling.
I only, I am left.
I would want to assure you, however, that
the chairman offered to remain on the platform,
although he did express his preference to be
down facing the preacher.
And in any case, no matter if I
had a whole array of men behind me
in the pulpit, the pulpit is a lonely
place.
It is a lonely place.
And no matter where you are or what
kind of a congregation you have, it is
a very lonely thing, humanly speaking, to be
standing before men and women to proclaim the
gospel of Christ.
And the real companion we have is the
Holy Spirit, the Paraclete.
He is the one who stands with us
and beside us, and that the Lord has
promised for us his people.
And that is why one is grateful for
the prayers of God's people when it comes
especially to the preaching of the gospel.
May I exhort you to pray for your
ministers, pray for your preachers of the gospel,
not only that they should pray faithfully, preach
faithfully the gospel of Christ, but that they
shall know something of the presence of the
Paraclete.
It is, I say, a lonely place, the
pulpit.
I know some ministers in our country who
are faithful and who preach the word, fearing
no one save God, that they are going
through the mill, as it were, at the
present time.
And those of you who know something about
that kind of situation, I would exhort you
to pray as you have never prayed before
for your ministers and uphold them and stand
with them.
Stand with them.
They are waging the warfare of faith and
they need the people of God to be
with them as they seek to wage that
warfare.
I commend them to you as I thank
you for remembering me this week.
Now, we have been trying to look at
that allegory in the 15th chapter of the
gospel of John.
I feel I should read it again.
They say that the art of teaching is
repetition, or at least a part of it,
and it won't harm anyone.
I'm sure that it will help us all
to come to the word of God again
and read it as we have read it
each morning.
The 15th chapter of the gospel of John,
and we read verses 1 to 11.
I am the true vine, and my Father
is the husbandman.
Every branch in me that beareth not fruit,
he taketh away.
And every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth
it, that it may bring forth more fruit.
Now ye are clean, ye are purged.
That is what it means.
The word is catharsis.
Now ye are purged, ye have been cleansed
through the word which I have spoken unto
you.
Abide in me, and I in you.
As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself
except it abide in the vine, no more
can he except he abide in me.
I am the vine, ye are the branches.
He that abideth in me and I in
him, the same bringeth forth much fruit, for
without me he can do nothing.
If a man abide not in me, he
is cast forth as a branch and is
withered.
And men gather them and cast them into
the fire, and they are burned.
If he abide in me, and my words
abide in you, he shall ask what he
will, and it shall be done unto you.
Herein is my Father glorified, that he bear
much fruit.
So shall he be my disciples.
As the Father hath loved me, so have
I loved you.
Continue ye in my love.
If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide
in my love.
Even as I have kept my Father's commandments,
and abide in his love.
These things have I spoken unto you, that
my joy might remain in you, and that
your joy might be full.
We looked briefly at some of the earlier
statements, beginning with the first verse, noting there
that we are told something about the person
of the Lord Jesus Christ in his relationship
with God, in his equality with God, my
Father, which means that he partakes of the
same nature and the attributes and the character
and the power and the majesty and the
glory of God himself.
He is God, my Father.
We reminded ourselves that this was the great
offense to those Jewish people who became his
enemies and were instrumental in bringing about his
crucifixion, that he had made himself equal with
God.
But we noted, and we cannot emphasize this
enough, particularly in our days, when the person
of Christ, as in other times, is under
attack from one direction or another.
People in high places, theologically and ministerially, are
denying that person of Christ, his divinity particularly,
and would turn him into the best man
that the world has ever known, but nothing
more than the best man.
We have to resist all that.
We have to reject it.
No matter where the attack comes from or
what it costs, we must stand and stand
uncompromisingly, because the moment we lose the divinity
of Christ, we have lost Christianity itself.
But we also noted that he speaks of
himself as the vine, the vine who has
been planted by his father, the husbandman, denoting
the relationship that our Lord had with his
father in this world, being made flesh, taking
our bone and our blood, and being made
flesh, found in a manger, having no place
to lay down his head, fastened to a
cross of shame and anguish, and suffering the
death of sinners.
The vine in the hand of the husbandman,
having given himself to obey the father.
Lo, I come in the volume of the
book it is written of me.
I come to do thy will, O God.
That is what the vine really means.
God had planted him in this world in
order that he should bring forth that fruit
that is in the purpose of God, that
a vast multitude, which no man can number,
out of every kindred and people and tribe
and tongue, should be gathered into the kingdom
of God.
That was his subordination, giving himself.
You remember how the last chapter that our
brother read to us, the preceding chapter finishes,
having been telling his disciples in the upper
room that what was awaiting him within the
next few hours or so, hereafter, he says,
I will not talk much with you, for
the prince of this world cometh and hath
nothing in me.
It wasn't because of him.
Ultimately, the Son of God was not going
to the cross because of the prince of
this world.
He was involved in it, but there was
something behind him.
But that the world may know that I
love the Father.
And as the Father gave me commandment in
eternity, before time was, the Lamb slain before
the foundation of the world, the Father gave
him this commandment in eternity and he came
willingly and gave himself because he loved the
Father.
And as the Father gave me commandment, even
so I do.
That is our Savior, he who was equal
with God, who divested himself of the glory
and the majesty of his deity to come
into this world as flesh.
He is now restored to his majesty and
his glory again with an added luster to
it, an added luster to it.
He is the first fruits.
He is there in heaven in the body
that he took with the prints of the
nails in his hands and the scar of
the wound in his side.
He is there in the glory and he
is the first fruits of the many multitudes
of redeemed sinners that will be brought to
everlasting glory in him and with him to
share in that glory.
That is our Savior.
I am the vine.
And then we noted briefly in verse 5
about the branches.
I am the vine, he are the branches.
And we tried to consider briefly how it
is that men and women who are wild
branches of trees in the desert bringing forth
the most poisonous, dreadful fruit imaginable, the works
of wickedness from hearts of corruption, that they
are taken by the Spirit of God and
they are grafted into him whose body was
broken and an opening made so that we,
by faith in him, should be grafted into
him and become branches of the vine.
And we noted that being branches of the
vine that we are required, we are exhorted
to cultivate that relationship with him.
We are to abide in him.
And he is to abide in us, his
words in us, his grace in us, his
strength in us, his enabling mercy day by
day.
We also noted briefly that there is such
a thing, alas, of men and women who
appear to be branches in the vine, the
outward manifestations are that they are branches like
others.
We reminded ourselves that Judas was like that,
but that he was not a true branch.
He had been in the company and he
had done the things that the others had
done and he had sat at the feet
of the Lord Jesus Christ and he had
carried the purse and to all intents and
purposes he was in the vine.
But when it came to this ministry in
the upper room and preceding the cross of
Calvary, he had to go.
The knife fell.
And he was cut away.
All of which is a warning to men
and women that they are required to make
their calling and election sure.
We are called in scripture not merely to
enjoy ourselves but to examine ourselves and see
whether we are in the faith indeed.
It isn't enough for us to be church
members.
It's not enough for us to be living
the best we can and seeking to keep
and recognize the Christian standards of morality and
ethics and all the rest of it.
We can be in a kind of a
superficial relationship with Jesus Christ the vine and
yet not being truly in him.
We addressed some of our remarks at that
point to some of the young people here.
I know some young people here concerning whom
we cannot but lament the fact that they
do not appear to be branches of the
vine.
The fruit is not evident as yet.
It is not for any of us to
pass judgment on any and in any case
the end is not yet but having said
that I do want to pay this compliment
to the young people in here.
I am grateful for the way in which
you have listened to me and indeed in
the evening meetings that I have attended I've
noted also that you have listened to the
word of God being preached and I commend
you for that and I'm grateful to you
but my friend, all that is a subsidiary
thing, a secondary matter.
What I would plead with you once again
this morning is to make sure, make sure
that you're in the vine.
Don't leave this conference to go on possibly
in the way you have been going on
before you came here.
Don't be content to be a hanger on
because you know you can settle in that
kind of thing and it will become harder
and harder for you to consider these things
and your life will be a sham and
a counterfeit down through the years to come.
And unless God invades your life and breaks
you down you will be found at the
last to be like a branch that is
cut away and is withered and men gather
them and cast them into the fire and
they are burned.
Now it is Christ who says that, not
I.
Yesterday we considered something of the fruit and
time must not be taken to enlarge on
that.
It is Christ likeness.
It is the vine that reproduces itself in
and on the branches.
It is Christ sending His life up into
the branches.
It is Christ sending His grace and His
strength into the branches so that in the
branches, in the lives of men and women
as they continue in Christ, as they abide
in Him as they seek Him daily, as
they pray as they read His words and
His words are not only in their minds
but in their hearts and as they pray
for the power of the Spirit to be
with them enabling them day by day in
everyday situations bringing forth the fruit.
This is one of the greatest concepts it
seems to me when we come to talk
about Christianity.
There are so many people who have been
everything that is vile.
We are all vile.
Is there anything more vile than self-righteousness?
Is there anything more vile than people who
believe that they are right because they are
doing this, that and the other?
There is nothing more vile than the pride
that we have secretly and the selfishness which
characterizes each and every one of us though
manifesting itself in different ways.
It is vile.
The love of self is the opposite of
loving God.
And it is of the very essence of
sin.
And I say to you that it is
an amazing thing that God can so work
in our hearts and the Spirit can so
apply the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ
to us and the work that he accomplished
for our redemption that we are changed.
What a wonderful change in my heart has
been wrought since Jesus came into my heart.
That is what happens when we begin to
love God instead of loving ourselves.
And we begin to think of pleasing Him
and obeying Him and begin to bring forth
the fruit the fruits of righteousness.
You remember how the Apostle Paul puts it
Having been made free from sin and become
slaves of God ye have your fruit unto
holiness.
Christ-likeness.
Unlike the world.
Unlike sinners going to hell.
Unlike society which is riddled with corruption of
every description.
Marked out because we are different.
That is what the fruit is.
And in and through it all having a
concern for lost men and women.
We come now to look at briefly at
some of the last verses.
Let me read verses 7 to 11 again
to you.
If ye keep my commandments ye shall abide
in my love even as I have kept
my Father's commandments and abide in His love.
These things have I spoken unto you that
my joy might remain in you and that
your joy might be full.
We have a very simple heading for each
one of the previous mornings.
The vine the first morning the branches the
second morning the fruit yesterday morning.
A title this morning is rather different rather
difficult and I have tried to think of
something that would embrace what we find in
these verses and the best I can come
up with is this.
The fruit of the fruit.
If that sounds a little bit difficult to
you well then you don't have to memorize
it.
It seems to me that this is what
we have.
In these verses.
That there is a fruit of the fruit.
It is of the very nature of fruit
of course to increase itself and to multiply
itself.
But there is here it seems to me
a fruit of the fruit that our Lord
has been talking about.
In other words that Christ likeness in you
and me produces something else.
It leads on to something else.
And that is what I want to consider
with you this morning this last session we
have together.
Look at verse 7.
If he abide in me and my words
abide in you he shall ask what he
will and it shall be done unto you.
In other words our Lord is saying that
effective praying is in fact something that
results from this fruit that we bring forth
in Christ likeness and godliness.
He makes this statement several times in this
private ministry as we have described him.
As we have described it.
He refers to it in the preceding chapter
he refers to it in the next chapter
about his people and for our purposes this
morning those who are branches of the vine
being able to come and to ask what
they will of the Father and he will
give it you he says.
And the same thing here.
He shall ask what he will and it
shall be done unto you.
Now really that appears to be a kind
of a blank check.
And in a sense it is.
But of course it is a blank check
on the bank of heaven.
Not on any old bank.
It is not in your bank or the
world's bank or any other bank.
It is the bank of heaven.
And the currency that you can draw out
with that check is the currency of heaven.
That is one way of looking at it.
There is another way of looking at it.
It is these people who bear fruit and
who bear fruit because they are abiding in
Christ.
And he and his words are abiding in
them.
It is they who are able to ask
what they will.
It is not any old Tom, Dick and
Harry who can do it.
I can remember passing a church in South
Wales many years ago.
I think it was in Britain Ferry.
In case you don't know where Britain Ferry
is.
The chairman comes from Neath.
And somebody else who comes from Aberavon did
you say?
Oh, Reverend Howard Jones comes from Aberavon.
And in between those two terrible places there
is a worse place.
It couldn't be otherwise with those two on
either side you see.
Britain Ferry.
And I passed a church there on one
occasion and I saw a wayside pulpit there.
Do you know what it said on the
wayside pulpit?
God shall supply all your needs.
That was all.
A total misrepresentation of that text to start
with.
Paul made that great statement having acknowledged that
the Philippians had sent once and again to
him.
There was no Concord those days.
No jet planes.
And yet when Paul was in Thessalonica having
left Philippi after being half the night in
jail there with his feet in the stocks
etc.
and 95 miles to the south he had
come to Thessalonica.
And while he was there preaching the gospel
the Philippians in Philippi spontaneously because the love
of God was in their hearts you see.
And they had a concern for the ministers
of the gospel and the propagation of the
gospel.
And they sent once and again to Paul
down in Thessalonica and having thanked them for
that he says, My God shall supply all
your needs according to his riches in glory
by Christ Jesus.
Ah my friend we do not have a
blank check on any old bank.
We have a blank check on the bank
of heaven as Spurgeon has put it.
That is what prayer is.
It's the checkbook of the bank of heaven.
And what our Lord is saying here and
elsewhere is that when we bring forth that
fruit we become pleasing to almighty God.
And I do not think that it is
going too far to say that we begin
to have influence with God.
Have you got influence with God?
We have that example specific example in James
chapter 5 where we are told that the
effectual righteous the effectual prayer of a righteous
man availeth much.
In other words, a man who is Christ
-like a man who is bringing forth a
fruit that is the man who has power
with God in prayer.
And we are given an example there.
We are given the example of Elijah.
He was not a superman.
He was a true and an ordinary man
as you and I are men and women
and have the same failings.
And you know he didn't pray.
He didn't go to the northern kingdom and
commanded the rain to fall because God had
appointed that.
No, no, no.
That is not how I understand it.
How I understand it is this, you see,
that he was sent of God to the
northern kingdom and his eyes were opened to
see what the plight of that kingdom was.
Jezebel was sharing the throne and Jezebel had
brought her pagan deities with her and the
whole land was corrupted with paganism and Elijah
was to bring the word of God to
them and this is how he began.
He asked God to intervene in punishment.
Stop the rain, he said.
Let's bring these people to their senses and
he had power with God.
He prayed and it did not rain and
he prayed again and it did rain.
It was a man who had the fruits
in him and so it is if he
asks anything in my name.
In my name.
If he asks anything, if he agrees together,
two of you agree together, it shall be
done.
And so on.
There are many statements.
The point is this, you see, that so
much of our praying, does it go beyond
the ceilings?
Oh, the abuse of prayer among us.
Even public prayer.
So many of us preach when we pray.
And oh, we go around this, that and
the other.
And it seems to me that we are
only wanting to be heard so often.
Our prayer, my friends, should be something which
is drawing upon heaven, not displaying ourselves and
our eloquence or whatever else we might have
upon our minds, even unwittingly and unconsciously.
It is drawing from heaven.
And those who have power in heaven, in
prayer, are those who bring forth the fruits.
He shall ask what he will and that
it shall be done unto you.
That is a fruit of the fruit.
Another thing that we have here is this.
Our Lord says in the next verse, Herein
is my Father glorified, that he bear much
fruit.
I was thinking about this as we sang
the last hymn.
I wonder if God was glorified and our
Lord Jesus Christ truly exalted.
As we sang that last hymn now, and
the one before during the offering, what an
amazing hymn it was.
Oh, the deep, deep love of Jesus, as
vast, unmeasured, boundless, foundless, free, extolling the love
of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love
of God in him, of course.
My friends, our praise is intended to glorify
God.
It is intended to glorify God.
But, you know, mere sound and mere words,
even tuneful words, sung by Welsh voices, does
not glorify God.
What glorifies God is the praise that comes
from those who are bringing forth the fruits
of righteousness so that there is no contradiction
between the praise that is upon their lips
and the fruit that is in their lives.
That is what it amounts to.
My friends, oh, they sing greatly, they sing
tremendously on Cardiff Arms Park, you know, when
they play with that right-shaped ball.
Oh, they sing wondrously.
And, you know, they talk about the singing
not only in England and Scotland, they talk
about it on the continent.
I have seen them watching the television when
there is a football match in Cardiff Arms
Park and they extol the singing, the great
singing.
But, my dear friends, thousands of those voices
that are raised in singing guide me, O
thou great Jehovah, they are under the influence
of drink.
Is that glorifying God?
It is not glorifying God.
It is mere entertainment that the BBC has
taken up and used as far as it
possibly can because the BBC is in the
entertainment business.
And that is why it is throwing it
out, broadcasting it into the whole wide world.
They want to entertain people.
They want to make them comfortable and they
want to make their ease for them as
they go on their way to a lost
eternity.
There is nothing glorifying to God in that.
This is what glorifies God.
A person who has been grafted into Christ
and bringing forth the fruits of righteousness and
Christ-likeness despite the temptations, despite his own
frailties, despite the wickedness.
Every believer, a branch of Christ, bringing forth
the fruit, an island in a desert, an
oasis where there is no water.
Glorifying God.
Oh, God is glorified, dear friend.
When you'll be in your office on Monday
and you'll be surrounded by men whose interest
will be what was on the telly last
night and will be cracking dirty jokes or
pursuing the ways that all men pursue and
you, godly, a godly man, a godly woman,
having brought forth and bringing forth in that
office, in that school, in that college, wherever
it is, bringing forth the fruits of righteousness.
Herein is my Father glorified, a candidate for
hell, a citizen of heaven, in the office
in Cardiff, in the college.
Herein is my Father glorified.
Why?
Oh, your salvation and mine and the fruit
that we are bearing, it is of His
design and it is of His decree and
it is of His activity and power.
He sent the Son into the world and
He commissioned the Son, gave Him the commandments
as to what He was to do in
this world.
It was He who appointed that His Son
should die in order to save sinners.
It is He, and therefore, when sinners are
saved and they bring forth the fruits of
salvation in their lives, that is glorifying God
more than anything else could ever do in
this world.
Herein is my Father glorified.
That is a blessed fruit, isn't it?
That is a sublime fruit that a candidate
for hell should be bringing glory to Almighty
God.
So shall He be my disciple.
I'm not going to stop with that.
Time does not allow.
We've been through much of that already, not
only this morning, but throughout the week.
Our Lord goes on to say something which
must be the culminating point of our time
together this week in this conference.
He says that there is something else.
By way of fruit of this fruit, as
the Father hath loved me, so have I
loved you.
Continue ye in my love.
If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide
in my love, even as I have kept
my Father's commandments and abide in His love.
These things have I spoken unto you, that
my joy might remain in you and that
your joy may be full.
In other words, summarizing it, He is saying
that there are two things that result from
the fruit, namely, love and joy.
Love and joy.
The love, He says, for you and me,
is the same as it was between Him
and His Father.
I suggested to you earlier this week that
there is a link running through these relationships
that we have here.
The Son with the Father, the Son with
His people, the branches, His people with one
another, and His people and the world in
general.
There is a link there.
We have not worked that out in detail.
We'll just have to accept it for this
morning.
And here is another link.
Namely, our Lord is saying that the Father
loved Him in such a way that He
loves us who are His branches bringing forth
the fruit.
That is one of the most difficult statements
in some senses for me at any rate
in this passage, and indeed in many passages,
as the Father hath loved me.
How did God the Father love the Son?
What is our Son talking about?
This affection that the Father had manifested towards
Him.
Well, you know, we talk about the love
of God.
We've sung about it this morning and throughout
the week we're always doing so.
And we're preaching it and talking about it
and rejoicing it.
The love of God in redemption.
Indeed, we say that this is the sublime
manifestation of the love of God in redemption
in Christ Jesus.
God commendeth His love towards us.
God makes an exhibition of it.
That is what is meant.
He displays His love towards us in that
while we were yet sinners Christ died for
us.
But you know, that could not be the
aspect of God's love that our Lord is
talking about.
The Father did not love the Son redemptively.
He was Himself the Redeemer.
He was the instrument, the servant of the
love of God in saving men and women.
How then did the Father love the Son?
And then, of course, we can talk about
the love of God in providence.
I'm sure that very few people, comparatively speaking,
are aware of the love of God in
providence.
You remember how our Lord puts it that
He sends the rain on the just as
well as the unjust, makes the sun to
shine upon the evil as well as the
good.
Oh, the long-suffering, the general love of
God towards humanity in its wickedness.
Why hasn't He swept humanity out of His
sight with its sin and dreadful state and
all the arrogance of wicked men?
How is He so forbearing?
Oh, there is a general aspect.
To the love of God, you see, in
providence, sends the rain and causes the sunshine
to bring forth of the goodness of the
earth to feed men and women who will
take what it produces and use it to
trample everything that is godly beneath their feet.
And still it goes on.
The love of God in providence.
But our Lord Jesus Christ is one with
God in providence.
He was the agent of creation and He
is one with God in everything that is
providential for us so that He cannot be
talking about that love.
Our Lord gives us a clear indication of
what He is talking about.
He said in that verse I have already
quoted to you at the end of chapter
14 that the world may know that I
love the Father and as the Father gave
me commandment even so I do.
And here again in verse 10 even as
I have kept my Father's commandments and abide
in His love.
In other words, it is the love of
the Father because of His delight in His
Son.
His Son having been sent into this world
to fulfill that work entrusted to Him and
the Son loving the Father and delighting only
to do His will despite the awful cost
involved keeping the Father's commandment and bringing pleasure
to His Father who was in heaven.
Can you see?
Can you see God the Father in heaven
looking down upon His Son here on earth
having sent Him into this world and His
Son committed to fulfilling His Father's will.
Do you remember what happened when He made
that public commitment to fulfilling the task His
Father had entrusted to Him at His baptism?
That is what His baptism means at least
in part, my friend.
He had been those silent years in Nazareth
and now He was entering into the public
ministry and taking up the path that was
going to lead Him eventually to the cross
of Calvary and He is baptized publicly and
the blessed Spirit of God comes down upon
Him and there is a voice from the
excellent glory that says, This is my beloved
Son in whom I am well pleased.
It was as the Son took up the
path that was to lead Him to the
cross because that is what the Lord of
glory had sent Him into this world to
do.
And the Father is delighted with His Son
that He has taken the steps towards Calvary.
And then, you know, later on we read
in Matthew 16 that there was a turning
point in the ministry of our Lord His
public ministry.
You remember that He asked His disciples, Whom
do men say that I am?
And they told Him, Some Elias and some
Jeremias or one of the prophets.
Who do you say I am?
Thou art the Christ, the Son of the
living God, says Peter.
And then we read, From that time forth
Jesus began to show unto His disciples how
that He must go to Jerusalem and suffer
many things at the hands of the priests
and to suffer and to die and be
raised again the third day.
Peter says, This shall not be unto thee,
Lord.
Be it far from thee, impossible, unthinkable that
the Son of God should be going to
die at the hands of men and women.
But that was the explicit statement of our
Lord of what He was going to do.
Very shortly, in the next chapter, and you
know there are no chapter divisions in the
original manuscripts.
Chapter 17 of Matthew says that He went
up to a high mountain with Peter and
John and Moses and Elias appeared to Him.
And you know what we are told?
We are told that they talked to Him
about His coming death.
That's what they did.
And then the voice comes from heaven again.
He having been transfigured so that He was
glistering white, something of the glory of heaven
descended upon Him.
And the voice came again, This is my
beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.
Make no mistake about it, my friends.
The Father delighted in His Son.
And the Son is saying that as He
brought forth the fruit required of Him that
you and I bring forth our fruit in
and through Him.
We bring pleasure to Him and to God
the Father.
And they love us not only redemptively I
am not talking about more than one love.
There is only one love but there are
different aspects of it.
Vast, unmeasured, boundless, free to His emotion, vast
of blessing.
We bring pleasure to Almighty God as we
bring forth that fruit.
And He pours out His affection upon us
to ravish our hearts.
I wish time were available for me to
refer to other things in this connection but
I must leave it there and finish with
this.
Joy.
His joy in us.
His joy.
That my joy might remain in you.
That was the great joy that He had.
What a joy it was to take those
early disciples and graft them into Himself and
to know that soon they would be bringing
forth that fruit, preaching in powerfully, suffering for
His name's sake, rejoicing that they were counted
worthy to suffer for Him.
He was seeing all that, you see.
He knew what was coming and His joy
was in them.
These things have I spoken, He says.
This fruit that He has been concerned about.
These things I have spoken that my joy
in you.
For the joy that was set before Him.
He endured the cross because it was going
to save people like you and me from
the fires of hell and bring us to
everlasting glory.
The joy that He finds He shall see
of the travel of His soul and be
satisfied.
Oh, my friend, do you know that the
Saviour finds joy in you and I?
Come to faith in Him and are saved
for time and for eternity.
And when we bring forth that fruit which
glorifies Him and glorifies God, oh, He finds
joy in you and me.
But not only does He speak about His
own joy, He speaks about our joy.
That your joy may be full, complete, fulfilled.
We have the joy of salvation.
We have the joy of the Lord in
our hearts and lives.
And we have a joy that is not
dependent upon outward circumstances.
They can be grievous, they can be terrible.
The devil can be after us, the storms
of life could break upon us.
But we have what Jonathan Edwards describes as
the calm tranquility of the soul.
That is what Christian joy is.
Not excitement, not something worked up with a
repetition of many choruses and ditties, but the
calm tranquility of the soul within.
Men and women bring in forth fruit for
the glory of God and His love being
shed abroad in our hearts by the blessed
Spirit.
And we find Him in knowing that joy
that even is with us when days of
sorrow have overtaken us.
I am told that in the Straits of
Gibraltar there are two currents.
There is a surface current and there is
a lower current in the sea.
One current flows from the Atlantic into the
Mediterranean and the lower current flows from the
Mediterranean into the Atlantic.
The surface current is cold.
The Atlantic waters are chilly.
And those waters flowing from the Atlantic into
the Mediterranean through those straits, they are cold
and chilling to the bone.
But that other current from the Mediterranean into
the Atlantic, oh, it is warm and balmy.
And, my friends, that is how it is
with men and women who are grafted into
Christ and who are bringing forth the fruit.
They are abiding in Him and He is
abiding in them.
And the joy of the Lord is their
strength, you know.
And although there are chilling waters in this
world and there are trials and tribulations and
you and I have to face the enemy
and contend with Him and battle for the
things of God in our world, and men
will say this, that and the other about
us, it matters not, my dear friend.
There is another current underneath me, all around
me, is the current of His love leading
onward, leading homeward to my glorious rest above.
Your joy may be full.