In this sermon titled 'Abide in My Love' by Scott Brown, the speaker focuses on the importance of abiding in Jesus and keeping God's commandments. He explains that by remaining in Jesus and obeying His commandments, believers can experience fruitfulness and joy. Brown emphasizes that the Word of God plays a central role in abiding and highlights the significance of having one's desires shaped by the Word. He also emphasizes the love of God and how it is demonstrated through obedience. The sermon concludes with the idea that God's objective is for His joy to remain in believers and for their joy to be made full.

So please find John 15 and verse 4. We've covered some of this already. We'll pick up in verse 4. Abide in me and I in you, As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me. I am the vine, you are the branches.

He Who abides in Me bears much fruit, for without Me you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered, and they gather them and throw them into the fire and they are burned. If you abide in Me and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire and it shall be done for you. By this My Father is glorified that you bear much fruit, so you will prove to be my disciples. As the Father loved me, I also have loved you.

Abide in my love. 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. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may remain in you and That your joy may be full. Oh Lord, we pray that your great Objective in these words would become our reality that your joy would be in us and that our joy would be made full. Lord, we pray for such a happy church, a joyful gathering of people today, especially to rejoice in all of your goodness.

Pray that you take these words and teach us the ways in which we should go. Amen. Amen. Please be seated. Well, of course, the word abide is the central matter here.

It appears over and over again, speaking of what it means to be a Christian and the closeness, the dependence, the belonging, and the fruitfulness that God has designed for His people. And He's explaining to his disciples how he's going to work in their lives and what he hopes to accomplish as a result of it. He's defining for them how they're going to get by after he departs. He's just announced that he's leaving. And what will they do after he leaves until the time that he returns again?

And he's been explaining to them how he alone is sufficient for them during that time. And of course you have the various characters in this imagery. The Father who's the keeper of the vineyard, Jesus is the vine, and Jesus' disciples are the branches, and there are two kinds of branches. And Jesus uses these beautiful images of His kingdom and here we have the one of the vineyard. You know I was just in Southern California a few weeks ago in the Central Valley and driving through the Central Valley and seeing vineyard after vineyard, beautiful vineyards.

They're building them like crazy. They're growing grapevines all over the Central Valley. But Jesus uses these beautiful images, and then as he continues in the upper room discourse the disciples will depart from where they are in 18 verse 1 we see that they that they depart and They since it's near the Passover there. They're going outside and it's probably a full moon and Jesus and his 11 disciples are going to walk in the moonlight and They'll walk by the vineyards. They'll drop into the valley and around the walls of Jerusalem they'll most likely see that large vine that was carved at the top of the gate of the city, and they'll go through the Kidron Valley, perhaps see the fires of the burning of the dead branches, rising into the Garden of Gethsemane, into the Mount of Olives.

So Jesus is speaking these words, graphic words, to help them understand who He is and who they are, and He uses this imagery of the vine. Let me do a quick review. Verse 1, I am, this is the seventh I am statement, speaking of just the joy of His singular majesty, then I am the true vine, the exclusive, only true source of nourishment in life. And my Father is the vinedresser. In other words, This is the joy of the Father's care.

If you're in the vine, you have somebody taking care of you every day. Praise God for that. And then every branch in me that does not bear fruit, He takes away. That means that there'll be people associated with Christianity, associated with them, with the church, but they're not really connected to the vine. And it's really a forewarning that there will be defectors.

There will be people among you who will be taken away, and they will fall away. But every branch in me that bears fruit, he prunes that it may bear more fruit. So he's pruning the ones who are connected and, well, these are believers. We're not perfect. We need pruning.

Our pride, our self-sufficiency needs to be dealt with and so God brings various things into our lives for that purpose and we find The reality that the deepest waters always plunge us into the deepest solitude and connection with God. The deepest, the hottest fires, you know, end up burning away the greatest impurities. And so we're being pruned. We're people who are being pruned. We should expect that and not despise it.

And then he says, you are already clean because of the word I have spoken to you. He has cleansed them. He's justified them. There's therefore now no condemnation for them. And so this is the beginning of it.

And so he's telling them many things about who they are, who God is, what it means to be connected to Him. You'll find in this section actually the centrality of the Word of God in this matter of abiding and how critical it is to keep the commandments. And one of my objectives today, particularly as we consider this matter of the keeping of the commandments is that you wouldn't be robbed of your joy of the commandments that you keep because here the Lord Jesus speaks of this matter of keeping the commandments. Now you have an outline in front of you. I'm going to try to cover the following points that we're hopeless without Him.

That's verses 4 and 5. Secondly, we are hopeless apart from Him, verse 6, and then we are helped by Him to bear fruit, verses 7 and 8. We are loved by Him in verses 9 and 10, and we are made happy through Him." In verse 11. So I think that covers what I'd like to focus in. Well, They are helpless without Him.

Abide in Me, this is verse 5, verse 4. Abide in Me and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine you are the branches he who abides in me and I in him bears much fruit for without me you can do nothing. To abide is to remain in dependence upon him, learning from him, closeness to him, being filled with his word as your chief guidance system, desiring Him. What Jesus is saying is stick with me, walk with me, stay close to me, abide in me and you'll bear fruit.

It's really a very simple kind of message. We're always being dressed by some kind of vine dresser, and here we find the greatest nurturing vine dresser. You know, there's a long grapevine near me, near my house, that I've observed really for almost two decades. And I've watched it, and this vine has had two owners. The first owner took very good care of the vine and it bore fruit.

And he would always let us go up there and pick hundreds and hundreds of grapes there. But the property was sold and there's a new owner and the new owner doesn't take care of the vine and The the the fruit has declined and there's barely anything of value there now because it has a new owner. And this is the value of Jesus Christ as your vine dresser. And the most important question you ever can ask is who is my vine dresser? Who's the one that gives me life?

Who's the one that's nourishing me? Who's the one that's teaching me? Whose word is in me and whose word is guiding my life? Well, that's the whole matter here. And the unbeliever is under the influence of a very different kind of vinedresser, a selfish vinedresser.

He's under the rule of Pharaoh who doesn't really care for the vine, but there is a good shepherd, there is a vinedresser, and that is God Himself. Jesus is the vine and his father is the vine dresser so all this to say we are helpless without him we are helpless without him secondly we are hopeless apart from him If anyone does not abide in Me, verse 6, He is cast out as a branch and is withered, and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned. This is a picture of the destruction of the unfruitful branch. God will do the work. He is the one who will cast them out.

And these are known by their non-fruit bearing. They are associated with him but they are not attached to him and they will be cut off. And this is a picture of how the church exists as a mixed multitude. The wheat and the tares grow together. You should expect that.

And there will be an Esau in the church and Jesus is forecasting that there will be defectors among us and then they will be removed. They may be removed in this world, but they will absolutely finally be removed at the final judgment. And so he's speaking of this matter of the vine, the quality of the vine. And the Old Testament speaks about this. The Lord Jesus is really fulfilling Old Testament prophecy and imagery.

In Jeremiah two, Israel is a degenerate and an alien vine. In Ezekiel chapter 15, he is his special vine, but by the time you get to chapter 17, it's a useless and an empty vine. In Isaiah five, you have this picture of God being so careful to pour all of his resources into the vineyard, but then all he gets is sour grapes. In Psalm 80, the psalmist refers to Israel, who's been rescued by Pharaoh and brought into a good land, and the vine grew and it prospered and it was beautiful and Productive but then they turned away from the Lord. So this imagery of Taking away is consistent with the Old Testament testimony About the vine and all this to say we are hopeless apart from him.

We will be taken away and burned. We are hopeless without him for all eternity. And Then we are helped by him to bear fruit This is the third point in your outline verse verses seven and eight if you abide in me and my words abide in you You will ask what you desire and it shall be done for you. By this my Father is glorified that you bear much fruit, so you will be my disciples." Now this is astounding. What a remarkable promise.

If my words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, And it shall be done for you What in the world? Well the main point is the connection between the saturation of the Word of God in your heart and your fruitfulness in prayer. And God energizes his people by his Word. He mediates his love through his word and he produces fruit by the power of his word. That's the main point.

You understand that? Isn't that amazing? The quality and the quantity of the Word of God resting in your hearts is the primary determining factor of your fruitfulness and your productivity. This is why our home should be filled with the word of God. It should be the greatest priority.

But his word abiding in you and in me is the driving force in prayer. If you want to pray more, be more saturated in the Word. And our prayers arise out of a certain context. They arise out of our desires. So what our prayers are either constrained or inflamed by our desires.

Our desires are very important for everything in our lives, but our desires are shaped by the Word of God. And when our desires are shaped by the Word of God, we will ask what pleases the Father. I know what you're thinking. That's the same thing as praying in Jesus' name. That's what it is.

If you pray in Jesus' name, you're praying according to His will. You're praying the things that are consistent with His will. And so our desires need to be shaped and they're shaped by the Word of God and As they're shaped by the Word of God we have prayers we have prayers that are just like God's desires So our prayers aren't just wind Now notice some details in the verse. First there's a consecrated life here. If you abide in me, if you abide in me, if you have the life of Jesus Christ, if you're a new creature, if you've been given a new heart if you've been born again if you abide in me It's contingent upon that If you have the Holy Spirit and the power of the Word of God.

Remember, Jesus, he will say later, my words are spirit and our life. The Holy Spirit is the spirit of truth. So if you have the spirit of truth saturated by the Word of God, then your desires will be created as a result of that connection. Now Almost everyone prays. It might be too much to say that everyone prays, but almost everyone prays.

Atheists pray, by the way. They cry out for things. And the unconverted pray. But to say that you pray doesn't really mean much if you're not connected to the vine If you're not connected to the vine your prayers don't mean anything Except perhaps the prayer have mercy on me a sinner saved my soul What matters is that you abide in Jesus Christ and His words abide in you. Second, be informed by the words of Christ in your hearts." This statement, if and my words abide in you, identifies one of the greatest problems in prayer.

Our prayers are weak because the strength of the word of God is not in them. Our desires are messed up because they're not cleansed by the Word of God. And why don't people pray? There are probably different reasons. One reason people don't pray is that they don't have the word saturating their hearts.

And as a result their desires are for other things and they just don't desire the things of God that much and so they don't pray. So the key to dynamic prayer is saturation by the Word of God. You know, we want to be a praying church. I'm grateful for the prayers in this church. One of the joys of being in this church is when we open things up for prayer, you don't have to wait very long before somebody starts praying.

What a blessing that is. And so often people pray the Word of God. I'm so thankful for that. And it's very helpful to all of us when we do that. But what Jesus is saying is that your desires are shaped by the word of God, and so you desire what God desires.

That's the blessed life, is when your desires line up with God's. God is constantly delivering us from our own desires, our own passions, our own idols, and He's replacing them with His own. And that's how we ask according to His will. And that's how we can say with all of our hearts and sing that song. Now this is the confidence that we have in Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.

And if we know that He hears us, Whatever we ask, we know that we have the petitions we have asked of him. Praise God for that. So prayers are reflections of our desires. And for us as Christians, the most important thing is to have our desires shaped by the word of God. That is such a blessing.

It helps every conversation. It helps every problem at work. It helps every marriage. It helps every kid. It helps everybody everywhere When your desires are shaped by the Word of God what a blessing that is and how easy it is to get off course Isn't it from that?

And But these God shaping our desires is all part of God's desire to glorify Himself through us. Verse 8, by this my Father is glorified. By what? By praying according to God's desires shaped by the Word of God. By This is my Father glorified that you bear much fruit.

So so you will be my disciples So God's work in our lives, you know includes this radical work of sanctification and transformation of our desires and we become like him and People can see it and that's why he said so you will be my disciples. That's what it means to be a disciple A disciple is a person that has the mind of Christ and does the works of Jesus Christ in the world. So you will be my disciples. You know, it's so easy to be discouraged about our fruitfulness. And you know, I've been reading a biography, actually the journal of Andrew Bonar, who is a very well-known, very effective Scottish preacher and evangelist, preached to thousands, thousands were converted under his ministry.

He's writing in his journal, and when he gets into his 70s and into his 80s, he talks about just how unfruitful his life was. And I thought, well, I often feel that way. But then I thought, is that really appropriate to feel that way? By God's grace, He was who He was. And by the grace of God, we are who we are.

And it's easy to just spend our lives lamenting our failures and our weaknesses. But one of the most effective, holy men of Scotland gets to the end of his life and says, I'm so unfruitful. Jesus says that we will bear fruit, and their fruit will remain and we will bear much fruit notice the sequence fruit more fruit much fruit in John 15 what a blessing that is you know our vision even of our own lives is often so blurry we see through a glass darkly, and we let things weigh us down that we shouldn't. And we are loved by Him. This is the next, verses 9 and 10.

What a blessing it is to be helped by Him, to bear fruit, but now to be loved by Him. As the Father loved me, I also have loved you. Abide in my love. 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. As the Father loved me, I also have loved you.

Abide in my love." Well, this is the secret of God's love and how it's experienced and how it's manifested in the world. Now, notice the logic. It's very simple. The Son is loved by His Father. The Son loves His disciples.

But the kind of love the son received from his father is the same kind of love that Jesus gives to his disciples. So that's the logic. The father's love is mediated through the son So if you if you think about the love of Jesus and the love of the father, they're one in the same And of course, this is the basis of the love that God designs to exist with us in this church. We love because He first loved us. And So our love extends to one another But love always has a source.

It doesn't come from us Now don't miss the largeness of this truth of being loved by Jesus who is loved by his Father, and we who are loved in the same way. Well, God never started loving his Son, and so it is with us. The Bible teaches so much about the Father's love We could talk about the eternity of the Father's love we could talk about the infinite scope of the Father's Love the height the depth the length the width of his love in Ephesians 3 18 the omnipotent power of the Father's love the unchanging consistency of the Father's love the perseverance of his love the purity of his love the reliability of his love the infinite wisdom of his love And that's why the Apostle Paul prayed that the church would be filled up with a sense of the love of God. He says in Ephesians 3 17 that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith that you being rooted and grounded in love may be able to comprehend With all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height? To know the love of Christ which passes knowledge that you may be filled with the fullness of God, to be filled with the fullness of the love of God.

It's so good to have a church where people feel the love of God and if they don't feel it at least they know it and they live in the understanding of it which will end up affecting their feelings by the way And how did the Father love the Son? Now, just before I speak about this, I want us to be very clear. The Father's relationship with the Son is like our relationship with the Father, but not exactly like it. Like for example, the Son doesn't abide in the vine. The father is not the vine dresser with the son the same way that he is with us.

So there are, if you force the imagery too far, it breaks down. But We should understand how the Father loved the Son. In Isaiah 42, the Father loved the Son by upholding Him. In Isaiah, the prophet says that the Father loved the Son by holding His hand, and He holds your hand. He loves his son by finding pleasure in him he He bruises him he gives him all things he shows him he glorifies the Sun he raises the Sun He will not allow the Sun to see corruption He gives his son gifts of words just like he gives gifts to men He gave the son the nations he gifts the Son with the people as His inheritance.

But the Father loves the Son, and the Son loves His children the way that his father has loved him. Love, love passes down and that's how God has designed it. Now one important distinction, the Son being the perfect son of God deserved the Father's love. The Son deserved the Father's love. You know where I'm going with this.

But we did not deserve His love. We as His sons did not deserve it. The Father's love for the Son included His love for His innocence, His purity, His delight, His moral perfection, and we're wavering in all those, but God loves us in spite of that. So that's an important distinction. We were degraded and sinful and disgusting and mentally challenged and morally flawed and condemned.

And Christ is the spotless Lamb of God who stands in our place. So our salvation is dependent upon Christ's love and obedience to his Father. That's why John says in his epistle, Behold what manner of love the Father has given unto us, that we should be called the children of God. Well the most blessed thing that a church can possess is to be kept in the love of God. That's why in Jude 121 there's this command, keep yourselves in the love of God Looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life Paul prayed for the Thessalonians Church Now may the Lord direct your hearts into the love of God and into the patience of Christ Paul concludes his letter to the Corinthian church urging them that that that may the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all." So what does it mean to abide in His love?

What does that really mean? Is it a feeling? What is it? Verse 10 helps us to understand the answer to that question. How do you abide in His love?

If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love." Well, we're encountering various phrases here in the gospel John in the last chapter we encountered my peace Now we encounter my commandments now we encounter my love Now at the end of this section will encounter my joy So there are things that are so superior that come from God. Now, we live in a time where the idea of keeping the commandments of God is a displeasing idea for many different reasons. I recently heard a preacher say that you can't please God by keeping his commandments. You can't please God by keeping his commandments. Well, I just want to submit that that's only half true.

There is a sense in how that's true, but that's not the full thing. John, I think, fills it out and clarifies this because it does please God when you keep His commandments. 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 so we all ought to desire to keep his commandments now John is Jesus is speaking of the manifestation of your love being obedience. He's not saying the moment you disobey me, bye-bye. That's not what he's saying.

We don't earn God's love by keeping His commandments, but we abide in His love as we are keeping His commandments. And there's a big difference. In keeping the...if you're keeping the commandments to give yourself a good reputation, if you're keeping your commandments just to stay out of trouble, if you're keeping the commandments out of sinful pride, well, that's a different kind of way of keeping the commandments. The Apostle Paul in Romans 14 3 says whatever is not of faith is sin. You can even keep the commandments pridefully.

You can keep the commandments and be sinning at the same time. And Jesus says, if you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love. Now, there are many commandments. You know, Jesus' commandments are found from Genesis to Revelation. Jesus wrote every word of the Bible.

So every command of God is a commandment of Jesus, and He's speaking of His commandments. Jesus kept His Father's commandments, just as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. So Jesus loved God's commandments and he kept them. He's like David I Delight to do your will oh How I love thy law That John has already quoted Jesus in the previous chapter in 1421. He who has my commandments and keeps them, it is he who loves me.

And he who loves me will be loved by my father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him. So Jesus is repeating this in this upper room discourse he's using almost the same language but adding certain things and then Judas not Ascariot said Lord how is it that you'll manifest yourself to us and not to the world and Jesus answered and said to him if anyone loves me He will keep my word and my father will love him and we will come to him and make our home With him he who does not love me does not keep my words and the word which you hear is not mine but my father's who sent me so and then he's and then Jesus says that he's going to send the helper to help you obey So it's good to keep his commandments. It's very difficult to bring all of what scripture says about keeping the commandments, But here we're in one of those places where Jesus speaks of the importance of keeping commandments and we should learn from Him. Let me just give you some examples of how important it is to keep His commandments.

In Revelation 3, keeping His commandments keeps you from destruction. He says, because you have kept my command to persevere, I also will keep you from the hour of trial which will come upon the whole world. So Don't be robbed of the value of the joy of your obedience to the commandments When you think of God's commandments, don't just think what a worm am I now? It's appropriate to think that but don't be over. Don't let that be your only thought.

In Daniel nine, we learn that God keeps His covenant with those who keep His covenant, keep His commandments. In Proverbs 28 seven, guard regards you as a discerning son if you keep his commandments whoever keeps the law is a discerning son So don't don't be robbed of the value of the joy of your obedience. God ignores your prayers if you don't obey him. In Proverbs 28, 9, one who turns away his ear from hearing the law, even his prayer is an abomination. If you don't love the law, your prayers are an abomination to God.

In 1 John 5 verse 2, keeping the commandments proves that you are children of God. So don't be robbed of the joy of keeping his commandments. His commandments are good and they're not burdensome and they're beautiful and they're helpful and they're good. In 1st John 2, 3 keeping his commandments proves that you know him. In John 14, 15, keeping his commandments also, again, says it proves that you love him.

In 1 John 3, 24, keeping his commandments keeps you abiding in him. In John 15, 10, keeping his commandments keeps you abiding in his love which was the verse we're in now in first Corinthians 7 19 keeping his commandments matters more than rituals of worship In Revelation 12 17 the devil wages war against those who keep his commandments. In Revelation 14 1 keeping the commandments proves faith and patience. In Revelation 22 verse 14 Keeping the commandments gives you the right to the tree of life. So the commandments of God should be carefully studied appreciated and loved Abiding and Christ here is not defined by a mystical connection with Jesus.

It's not a feeling, it's not a sensation, it's not a tingling of your spine, it is the keeping of His commandments. That's what it means to abide in Him. Now we know this, that our relationship with the commandments of God is all under the grace of God because we have we have been we have been delivered from the curse of the law we are not under the curse of the law by a breaking of the commandments because of the work of Jesus so first it's a state of grace in which we stand, our relationship with the commandments. Secondly, it's a pursuit of holiness. The keeping of the commandments is designed to help us to pursue holiness.

It defines what sin is, and it helps us to love His commandments. You keep His commandments, you fill yourself up with the knowledge of His will, you seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, you behold the face of Jesus, and you say, oh how I love your law. And the Bible actually makes it clear that it pleases God when we walk in his commandments. In Psalm 147 10 we learn that the Lord takes pleasure in those who fear Him. In Romans 8, 8, keeping the commandments explicitly pleases God, and walking in the flesh does not please God.

In Ephesians 5, 10, the Christian life includes finding out what pleases the Lord. In Hebrews 11-6, God is pleased by your faith, and he rewards you. But without faith, it is impossible to please him. Now this is key. Without faith it's impossible to please him.

Without faith your commandment keeping does not please God. In 2 Corinthians 5, 9, we read this, Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, To be well pleasing to him, for we will all appear Before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body that has to do with commandments according to what he has done whether good or bad in Philippians 4 18 the obedience of the Philippian church who gave gifts pleased God. In 1 Thessalonians 4.1, Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy Pleased the Lord so that the Thessalonians would also be pleasing to God Just as you received from us how you ought to walk to please God For you know the commandments we gave you through the Lord Jesus First John 322 says that it pleases the Lord to believe and obey, that pleasing the Lord is equivalent to keeping His commandments. So don't be robbed of your joy in keeping the commandments now I know when I say that what you're thinking oh there I just I'm such a poor Christian you know any Any person who's a true Christian grieves for how poor a Christian they are.

But don't be robbed of your joy of keeping the commandments because it does please God. When you keep the commandments of God, it's pleasing. It's a pleasing aroma to Him. And God knows that nobody keeps his commandments perfectly. There's always a little bit of sin mixed in in everything we do.

And that's why Jesus Christ, God sent His Son to be the one who perfectly obeyed the commandments. God's pleasure in Jesus Christ is His pleasure in you if you're under the blood of Jesus Christ That's why Zechariah says he'll rejoice over you a singing He'll delight in His love and He'll be singing over you with happiness. All this to say, we are loved by Him and our love is demonstrated out of our obedience. Out of our obedience. So, in Chapter 14, we saw the legacy of peace in the heart of the believer.

And we've just seen the legacy of his love in us. And now we turn to the legacy of his joy. Verse 11, look at verse 11. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may remain in you, and that your joy may be full." The whole reason Jesus is teaching his disciples these things is so that after he leaves until the time that he comes again that his joy will remain in them. This is God's great objective in your life.

Now we've said many times around here holiness is happiness. That's true. The Bible really teaches that. And God's design for your life is to fill you with joy in his presence This is his great motive. This is what he wants to do to you, you know often people they're so reluctant to come to Christ but they don't know what they're missing.

They don't realize how freeing it is to be set free from the law of sin and death, and how helpful it is to have a way to live, a way to think about everything, a way to think about your emotions, a way to think about the universe, and everything in between. And God is so kind to do that. And He writes so that your joy might be made full. In the midst of your trials, the disciples are going to face trials. In just a few minutes here, after he says this, a small army is going to show up with clubs and knives and spears, and they're going to face a trial, And they're going to continue to have trials.

But Jesus is looking for people to have joy in their trials. Even joy in their disappointment with themselves when they see what a poor Christian they are. So he says that that my joy may remain in you. My joy may remain. That means that it's something that it just keeps on rolling that he continues by his word to shape your desires by his word so that you keep his commandments and you're fruitful and That throughout all of whatever you experienced his joy will remain now.

I Don't know when his joy began in your life But it's designed to remain Now, maybe you've lost touch with it. Sin usually gets in the way of our joy. So just ask yourself, is His joy remaining? Now, remember how David prayed, Restore unto me the joy of my salvation Well, that's that's that's what I pray that maybe we can do today That your joy may remain And then secondly, that your joy may be full. This Things are either full, half full, a quarter full, or not full at all.

So, is your joy full today? Like today, right now. It's a really important question to ask. And if it's not, then why not? Obedience brings joy, but it's much deeper than that.

The joy, in the joy of the Lord, how God works in his joy is that we no longer enjoy our own joy. We enjoy what he enjoys. That's what it means to have his joy. God is constantly working to replace our piddly, unconforming, unhelpful joys with his eternal joy. We find joy in all the wrong things and that's usually the problem.

That's often why our joy cup isn't very full. We've been finding joy in all the wrong places. But he says these things that I have spoken to you that my joy May remain in you in other words the things that I am joyful in and As a result that your joy May be full So you no longer enjoy your own joy you enjoy what he enjoys The Bible says that God loves a cheerful giver He also loves a cheerful father and a cheerful mother and a cheerful child and a cheerful worker and a cheerful church member and God also loves a cheerful preacher as well. And we all know that we all struggle with that, don't we? Well, Jesus Christ is the source and the flow of life.

You have a father who is a vinedresser who takes care of you. He promises to cut off the dead and the unprofitable. Is that you? Maybe it's you, and you don't know him. And he's going to cut you off unless you repent and believe in the gospel and turn to the only source of joy But if you're his he's digging around your roots he's removing Unnecessary leaves and he's he's caring for you What a blessing it is to have God as a Father.

And this is why David said, in your presence is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. You know, we're a church, so we should never forget the first question in the Westminster Catechism what is the chief end of man the chief end of man is to glorify God and Enjoy him forever And we've just seen the secret of how that works by the word of God Will you pray with me Lord Your word is amazing. It's beautiful it's so helpful to penetrate into the deepest parts of our souls. Lord, we pray that you would make such a happy church here As a result of the implanted word, the word of Christ dwelling richly within us are being fed by and longing for your holy word.

And I pray, Lord, that not only this house, this household of faith, this church, but also every household would be saturated with your word so that their joy might be made full. Amen.