Yeah, it is a weighty matter when the Lord invites us to His table. It is also joyful when we come in the midst of the brothers and sisters. I think we should have joy in our hearts. There is no question about it.
Let us pray first.
Lord, we thank You for Your calling earlier, Lord, to come to Your table. Oh, how, on one hand, we remember Your suffering; on the other hand, we also come to know what joy You have in Your heart regarding the church.
Lord, what You are after these days is the church making herself ready for Your return. So today, for this hour, we do pray, we do pray, Lord, for the anointing of the Holy Spirit in speaking and in hearing.
Lord, it is on this matter of joy—not only our joy, but the joy of the Lord. Lord, we ask You: come, Your presence with us, Lord, as we share in this hour. Grant us that knowing. Help us to peer into Your heart and come to know what that joy is, what You are after, and what we shall do.
Lord, be with us. Thank You, Lord. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
This topic came along maybe two or three months ago, when we gathered for the workdays and talked about the openings. So I asked the Lord, “What would that be?”
Well, we all know that the past two or three years have been very difficult for some of us, or maybe for most of us. You know, it is the pandemic, all the chaos in the world. In some way, we are affected one way or another.
We may have loved ones who passed away. We might have long-term illnesses, and we are still going through that. We might be laid off from work and worried, not knowing where the next meal would come from. These things all kind of drag us down.
But at that time, when we came together, the Lord seemed to be speaking to me: the word is joy—J-O-Y, joy.
Obviously, it does not fit into five minutes in the openings. We just cannot do that. So I thank the Lord for this hour, where we can share on this matter of His joy—not ours. I mean, we have to go with His joy first. Then He is going to call us into His joy, and that joy will be made full in our spirits. I think that is great.
Let us turn to some verses with which we are really familiar, and look at His words. Maybe we have not paid attention to this particular aspect before.
The verse that came to me at that time was Hebrews 12:2. We all know Hebrews 12:2, right? “Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of faith.” We might stop at that point and forget about the remainder of the verse.
But the second half says:
Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross,
despising shame,
and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
The joy set before Him. We have to know: what is that joy that was set before the Lord Himself, and because of which He endured the cross?
None of us will know the suffering on the cross because we have not experienced it. But the Lord Himself suffered so much, yet He endured. And it says that He despised the shame. What attacks, what mockery the people had for the Lord when He was on the cross. Yet the Lord despised the shame.
And where is He today? He is seated at the right hand of the throne of God, and He has that joy. I think that is what we are trying to share today: the joy in His heart, the joy set before Him.
Then we go to three verses from the Gospel of John. The first is John 16:24:
Until now have ye asked nothing in My name: ask, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be made full.
These are wonderful words when we have no joy. John 16 is the chapter on the coming of the Holy Spirit, so it has to do with the Holy Spirit. But let us not ignore this: there is something we can ask, something the disciples would ask. By receiving that, their joy would be made full—made complete.
Then John 15:11 says:
These things have I spoken unto you, that My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.
John 15 is the chapter on, “I am the true vine.” We are all familiar with it, right? But have we paid attention to these words in verse 11? “My joy may be in you.” It is not our joy; it is His joy in us. Then, because of that, our joy may be made full. There will be a completeness, a perfection, in it.
Then, in John 17—the high priestly prayer—the Lord speaks of the glory He has with His Father and of the oneness for which He prayed. In John 17:13, He says:
But now I come to Thee;
and these things I speak in the world,
that they may have My joy made full in themselves.
Again, we are talking about the fullness of joy. Today we want to share on this matter. These are Bible words with which we are all familiar, but let us take a different emphasis: His joy. He is highly satisfied, and then He calls us to enter into that joy. That joy in us will be made full.
We have to ask the question: what brings joy to the Lord’s heart? That is the key thing. We like to have joy. We enjoy our own joy sometimes, and a lot of times we ask, “Can I have my joy, my enjoyment?” Yet I think the Lord wants us to concentrate on Him. What brings joy to His heart?
In John’s Gospel, He says, “Ask in My name, and ye shall receive, that your joy may be made full.” What will we ask? That would be the question. Hopefully, we will have answers afterward.
The Lord also said, “These things have I spoken to you.” What are the things the Lord spoke to us? What are the things the Lord spoke to His disciples? Hopefully, by the end of this hour, the Lord will give us His words—not only words that are audible, but words spoken to our hearts—and give us that answer.
We are in difficult times. There is no question about it: difficulty in the world, difficulty in our lives, and difficulty in our circumstances.
The disciples themselves were in difficult times. When you look at John 13:30 through John 17, the Lord was speaking to His disciples only. Those words record that the Lord had much to say to them, but He had only a short time. He was going to pour His heart out to the disciples.
That is important, and it is also important to us these days. At that time, the Lord was departing from the world, and He wanted to give encouragement to His disciples. Now we are at a point when the Lord’s return is at hand. It is just as critical as the time of His departure.
The words that the Lord spoke to His disciples are also for us today, I believe. It is not only for the disciples; it is also for us. So I pray that we would have understanding and comprehension of His words, as well as obedience from the heart, because it is vital. It was so important for the disciples to get through to the end, and it is also so important for us today to get through to the end.
This matter of joy comes in Luke 15, where we are all familiar with the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son.
When the lost sheep was found, the shepherd carried the sheep on his shoulders, rejoicing. The shepherd was rejoicing. We have to remember that our joy has to come from His joy first.
Then the woman who lost the coin, when she found the coin, said:
Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin which I had lost.
Lastly, in the parable of the lost son, when the son repented and returned home, his father was so happy to see his youngest son home again. He brought the fatted calf, killed it, and celebrated. There was much happiness and much joy in his heart.
Even in these parables, we see the shepherd, the woman, and the father. There is much joy in their hearts. We really want to have that perspective. Whatever we do, even though we may say it is for our joy, it is for His joy. When He has His joy, that joy is in us too.
Luke 15 gives us these pictures, but it also speaks of heavenly joy. Luke 15:7 says:
There shall be joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth.
And the father says:
But it was meet to make merry and be glad:
for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again;
and was lost, and is found.
That is joy—not merely joy in people’s hearts, but heavenly joy. Even heaven rejoices. When we know that someone has repented and come to the Lord to be saved, we rejoice. Or when a Christian who has drifted away returns to the Father’s house, we rejoice. That joy is heavenly joy. There is joy in the Spirit.
There is also another aspect of joy in Matthew 25:14-30, the parable of the talents. The master went away and gave talents to his servants. One received five, another two, and another received one.
The servants who received five and two traded with them and gained double. But the one who received one buried it. When the master returned, the faithful servants had gained more, but the lazy servant had done nothing with what was given to him.
We often concentrate on the faithful servant or the lazy servant, and that is all right. But if you read into what the master says to the faithful servant, Matthew 25:21 says:
Well done, good and faithful servant.
Thou hast been faithful over a few things,
I will set thee over many things:
enter thou into the joy of thy lord.
The last phrase is very important: “Enter into the joy of your master.” Faithfulness brings joy into the master’s heart. There is something in the servant that corresponds to the nature of the master, and there is joy in the master’s heart.
A servant is not supposed to receive a reward; a servant simply works and belongs to the master. Yet the master gives something extra. He says, “Come on in. Enter into the joy of your master.”
On one hand, the master is joyful because his heart is satisfied. On the other hand, the master is so gracious that he says to the servant, “Come on in. You can share My joy.” Remember the words: “My joy may be in you, and that your joy may be made full.”
What brings joy to the Lord’s heart? When His heart is satisfied, that is joy. We find this in Luke 15, and we find it in Matthew 25. It is not something abstract. The Lord’s heart must be satisfied, and then there is joy in His heart. From that, He invites the servant to share His joy, and then our joy is made full.
Let me read Hebrews 12:2 again:
Looking unto Jesus, the Author and Perfecter of faith,
Who for the joy that was set before Him endured the cross,
despising shame,
and hath sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
As I mentioned earlier, the Lord suffered much. We will never understand how He suffered. Even before the cross, we know the account of Gethsemane. We know the effect: the Bible says that He sweat great drops of blood falling down upon the ground. That is suffering.
Of course, the Lord came through triumphantly. He said:
Not My will, but Thine, be done.
On the cross, we have to consider this matter of suffering. We read about it in Psalm 22 and Isaiah 53. There was much suffering in His body, but even more, there was suffering in His spirit.
The Lord Himself was sinless—sinless, perfect. Can you imagine that the sins of the whole world were placed upon Him? The Bible says He became sin for us. What suffering that is: the Lord Himself knew no sin, but He became sin for us.
Then He was hung on the cross. The Old Testament says:
Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree.
Shame. Curse. He was crushed. How much suffering there was. Then, in the last three hours, the Lord cried out to His Father:
My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken Me?
Suffering and shame. Yet the Lord went through all this. Hebrews 12:2 says that He endured because He looked for that joy set before Him.
The last word of our Lord Himself on the cross was:
It is finished.
That was a triumphant cry. His mission in coming to earth was accomplished.
It was a heavy price to pay, but what did the cross bring forth? Why the cross? What did the cross bring?
There are two verses in Luke 12:49-50 that are very striking:
I came to cast fire upon the earth;
and what do I desire, if it is already kindled?
But I have a baptism to be baptized with;
and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!
The context is that the Lord was speaking about servants being dressed, ready, keeping their lamps lit, and waiting for the return of the master. But in the middle of this, we have these words. The Lord wanted to speak something critical to His disciples.
His purpose in coming to earth was to cast fire upon the earth. What does He mean by casting fire? We need to take that in a spiritual sense, not merely in a physical sense. We know what fire does. We have seen wildfires on the West Coast. Fire consumes whatever it touches. It is unstoppable.
Then He said that He had a baptism to undergo. We take that baptism to mean the cross. He was going to bear the cross, but there was something after the cross: the release of that fire.
The cross is not the end of the story. In John 16, the Lord speaks of the coming of the Holy Spirit. In Acts 2, the one hundred and twenty gathered in the upper room, were filled with the Holy Spirit, and were baptized into one body.
Afterward, in a very short time—ten years, maybe twenty years—the testimony of Jesus reached the known world. It reached Spain. That is fire. That fire was released because the Lord Himself was willing to be crucified.
Then came the resurrection, the ascension, and the coming of the Holy Spirit. There was the setting free, the liberty, of Christ’s life among His believers. That fire can never be stopped: the fire of the Holy Spirit.
After the Lord was crucified, John bore witness in John 19:35:
And he that hath seen hath borne witness,
and his witness is true:
and he knoweth that he saith true,
that ye also may believe.
John was the only disciple by the cross, and he saw it. He saw the soldier pierce the side of the Lord Himself, and there came out blood and water.
The Holy Spirit uses this to show us that the church comes from His side. The church is bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh. That is how close it is. There you have the counterpart, because you have the church as the answer to the Lord’s heart.
Now there is this joy. That is the joy set before Him. The Lord is looking for that counterpart. May the Holy Spirit work something into us that answers His heart.
John 16 shows us that the Holy Spirit turns sorrow into joy. Before the coming of the Holy Spirit, the disciples had sorrow. There is no question about it.
The Lord Himself, in His physical appearance, was limited to one place at a time. He was limited by time. He had to finish His work and return to the Father. Before the coming of the Holy Spirit, it was impossible for people to know the depth of Christ fully. The disciples often misunderstood the Lord.
But everything changed after the coming of the Holy Spirit. In John 16:22, the Lord says:
Therefore ye now have sorrow:
but I will see you again,
and your heart shall rejoice,
and your joy no one taketh away from you.
Then John 16:24 says:
Until now have ye asked nothing in My name:
ask, and ye shall receive,
that your joy may be made full.
The Holy Spirit is a treasure in us. Everyone who believes in Him has Christ in them, the hope of glory. He is in us, He is everywhere, and He abides forever.
The Holy Spirit takes the finished work of Christ on the cross, and that becomes the basis and means of His work in us. Because the Holy Spirit dwells in us, we can become spiritual men and women. By His life in us, by the Holy Spirit, we can live out Christ’s life. That is amazing.
Do not ignore the Holy Spirit. He is a gift from above, and He is with us. He brings us into that spiritual reality—the joy in heaven of which the Bible speaks. He gives us the dimensions of knowing Christ. We can know Him, and we can satisfy His heart because we know His heart.
John 15 begins:
I am the true vine, and My Father is the husbandman.
In this chapter, you have the Father and the Son. The Son Himself is the true vine. The Lord says, “I am the vine, ye are the branches,” but He is referring to the whole plant. The branches are not apart from Him.
When you think about the church and what happens after the coming of the Holy Spirit, you see the whole thing. The Father is the gardener. He is the keeper, and He works on the plant and the branches so that they would bear much fruit.
The goal is that the Father would receive much glory. Glory means that God is satisfied. The Father is looking for fruit—not merely fruit, but quality and quantity. That fruit represents Christ’s life in us.
He wants that growth. He wants that fullness of life. That is why there is pruning: so that there will be much fruit for the Father. We have to see the Father’s heart. What brings Him glory? It is for the branches to bear much fruit.
Only Christ’s life will satisfy the Father’s heart. Then John 15:11 says:
These things have I spoken unto you,
that My joy may be in you,
and that your joy may be made full.
What is the goal? The Lord’s heart and the Father’s heart are satisfied. When He is satisfied, He calls us into that joy, and our joy is made full.
In John 17, the high priestly prayer, you find the word glory. The Lord says in John 17:10:
I am glorified in them.
He is glorified in the disciples. He finds in His disciples that which satisfies His heart. That is amazing to us.
Then the Lord prays that the disciples may be one, even as He and the Father are one. This oneness is like the oneness of the Father and the Son. There is no other oneness like this.
This oneness is based on the life of Jesus among us. God’s people receive eternal life, and that eternal life is the life of the Lord Himself. That is the basis for oneness.
We experience some of this even today. What a joy it is when we meet brothers and sisters who have Christ in them. There is often joy in our hearts.
But we meet on Christ alone. We need to close our eyes to anything else that distinguishes us—our skin color, where we come from, our background. That is all gone. There is oneness on the basis of His life.
That oneness is like the oneness between the Son and the Father. And that oneness brings joy into His heart. The Lord is after oneness. Ephesians speaks of diligently keeping the unity of the Spirit, and that brings joy to His heart.
Paul’s letter to the Philippians says, “Rejoice always.” Does that mean we do not grieve? No, it does not mean that.
Jesus wept in John 11. We are sharing on Nehemiah on Friday nights, every other Friday, and there is an example there of grief. When Nehemiah heard the report from Jerusalem, he had something in him that answered to God.
Nehemiah 1:4 says:
And it came to pass, when I heard these words,
that I sat down and wept,
and mourned certain days;
and I fasted and prayed before the God of heaven.
We need to grieve. Grief is not something negative, as long as we understand what it is. Joy to the Lord is when He gets something that answers to His heart. The Lord’s grief is when He does not find that which answers to His heart.
The Lord looked at the world and looked at Jerusalem. Even during His time on earth, He grieved over the people because Jesus was there, yet they did not recognize Him and did not know God. The Lord grieved.
Maybe we not only share His joy, but also share His grief. Our grief can lead to prayer, and prayer can lead to joy. It is a very strange principle, but it is true in the spiritual realm.
One more thing before we are done: we cannot talk about joy by itself. Otherwise, it loses its meaning.
The Lord started with this new commandment:
A new commandment I give unto you,
that ye love one another;
even as I have loved you,
that ye also love one another.
This matter of love should not surprise us. Galatians 5:22 speaks of the fruit of the Spirit:
Love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness.
The word fruit is singular. It is not seven separate things. The first thing is love. I would read it this way: the fruit of the Spirit is love, and it manifests in different ways. The first manifestation is joy.
Joy originates from love. When you are only after joy but have no love, you are not getting joy at all. But when you are after love, when you love one another as the Lord has loved you, then there is joy—not merely joy down in our hearts, but joy in His heart.
What we have shared today is the joy of the Lord—the joy set before Him. The joy is that the Lord gains the church, His bride corresponding to Himself.
We do not want to take that merely as something wonderful that the Lord gets what He is after. We have to ask: how are we involved? What is our portion in this?
Are we willing to endure? In the same way that the Lord Himself endured the cross and despised the shame, there is also a joy set before us. That joy is the soon return of the Bridegroom, the Lord Jesus, to receive His bride.
With that in our spirits, what do we do? Are we willing to endure suffering? Are we willing to despise shame because we see something much better ahead of us—the joy that the Lord Himself will have when He has His bride, the answer to Himself?
Sometimes we are so focused on earthly joy, which is only momentary. Is that what we are after, or are we after what the Lord is after? Do we set our goal and purpose in life to satisfy Him and bring Him joy?
Are we still wanting Christ merely for the purpose of meeting all our wants and needs on earth? Or will we allow the Holy Spirit to work in us, to bring in the reality of Christ’s life, so that He is our life?
In very practical terms, Christ is the true vine. Abide in Him, and He abides in us. He is our protection, our refuge, our strength—He is everything to us. But do we abide in Him, or do we tend to drift away? We often tend to drift away, I have to say.
If we do drift away, may the Lord grant us a repentant heart and bring us back to Him. But the best is: do not drift away. Just abide in Him. Allow the pruning work of the Father so that He will get much fruit for His own glory.
Let us enter more deeply into the oneness of the saints. Let us diligently keep the unity of the Spirit. Finally, let us love one another as the Lord loves us. Joy is love expressed.
Lord Jesus, we give thanks to You today. We sense that there is something in Your heart that You are after: Your counterpart, the bone of Your bone and the flesh of Your flesh—the church, the answer to Your heart.
So, Lord, we do want to pray: open our eyes. Grant us the far vision. Lord, bring us into the heavenly places as we sit with You, that we may see far and sense what is in the depth of Your heart.
Lord, may our purpose on earth be to satisfy Your heart, to be conformed and transformed into the likeness and image of the Son. Lord, we want to commit ourselves unto You. We want to bring everyone who hears this sharing unto You.
Lord, take what is Yours and speak deeply into our hearts. We are in the darkest hours. The time is short. Your return is soon at hand. Help us to set our minds on what is above and set our minds on Your heart, that we may please You in all things.
Grant us that love for one another. You gave a new commandment: that we love one another as You have loved us. Draw us to You, and help us to diligently keep the oneness in the Spirit.
Lord, You are after oneness—the oneness that You have between the Father and the Son. May that oneness be among Your people.
Lord, we thank You for the coming of the Holy Spirit. He dwells in us, reveals Your heart in us, and will do the work. We want to say that we are open to the work of the Holy Spirit, to that pruning work, so that there would be much fruit.
Lord, may there be much Christ in each one of us for the Father’s glory. Thank You, Lord. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.
Thank God.