March 15, 2015
Scripture:
Scripture:
Ministry:
Hymn 333 - Come to the Saviour, make no delay
Prayer
Last time, we saw that Nehemiah had finished the wall and the Children of Israel were reading the law. They had listened and obeyed, and this had brought great gladness.
Nehemiah 8:10
“The joy of the Lord is your strength.” The joy of the Lord is our spiritual strength. It’s what keeps us going on. Let’s look at several things that can bring the joy of the Lord.
Philippians 4:4
The Lord wants us to be joyful, to rejoice. Today, I want to look at some things that can bring the joy of the Lord into our lives.
Salvation is one of the reasons for joy. There is joy in knowing Christ as our Saviour, and knowing we are going to be in heaven with Him some day. The Ethiopian eunuch rejoiced in his salvation. It says, “He went on his way rejoicing.”
John 15:8 & 11
Last week, we read in John 15 about the True Vine. We are to be branches, but we must bear fruit. Doing things for the Lord is bearing fruit. Whether it’s chores around the house for your parents, giving out a gospel tract, or writing a letter to someone, all these things bear fruit when they are done for the Lord. There will be joy in our hearts when we bear fruit for God. He gives us the strength so we can bear fruit and this in turn brings joy to our hearts.
John 16:24
Now we have the joy of answered prayer. The Lord wants us to pray; He wants us to ask. Sometimes we are missing out on some things because we didn’t ask for them. He invites us to pray and ask for the little things as well as the big things. There was a missionary’s daughter who really wanted a special doll; but her father couldn’t buy her one. So they prayed and asked God to send the little girl that special doll. The next day a package arrived with several different items in it. One of them was that very special doll. For the doll to arrive that day, it would have had to be shipped even before the little girl prayed. The Lord wants to answer our prayer. He will answer our prayer, and we can rejoice in that.
John 17:11-13
This is part of a prayer that Jesus prayed. He is thanking God for keeping those of His in the world. We have the joy of being kept. The enemy seeks to hinder and destroy us, but God keeps us.
Having the joy of the Lord as our strength doesn’t mean there will never be any trials. But the Lord doesn’t change and our joy can remain in Him.
These are things we can rejoice in. We can rejoice and find our strength in the Lord—not from the things around us.
Acts 26:13-32
Paul’s conversion is an amazing story. As he went to Damascus to persecute Christians, he was struck down by a light from heaven. “Who are you, Lord?” he asked. “I am Jesus,” came the answer, but it didn’t stop there, “whom you persecute” it added. Paul admitted that he persecuted Christians. Now he learned that Jesus and those he persecuted were connected. He taught this in the epistles; telling of the one Body, and how Believers are connected to Christ through the Spirit of God.
The Lord then sent Paul on a mission: to be a minister (Darby: servant) and a witness of what he had seen and heard. That’s part of our job, also: to be servants and witnesses. Paul truly did have a purpose in his life as he traveled around. He was to be a witness of what he had seen: Jesus. He had never seen Him in the flesh, as was a requirement for the other apostles. His first glimpse of Jesus was in the glory.
We might think that it was Paul’s job to be a soul winner, but not really. He was to be a witness. A witness gives testimony; a winner tries to persuade his audience, like an evangelist. Paul had a powerful testimony because he had seen the Lord in glory. He was told to tell people what he had seen on the Damascus road, and other things that the Lord would reveal to him later. You can imagine, though, that he was giving this testimony in a way to persuade those who were listening!
The Lord told Paul that He would deliver him from “the people” (the Jews) and the Gentiles. Also, he would be neither Jew nor Gentile, but rather part of something new: the church of God.
Elsewhere, Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, asking for prayer. His desire was to present every man perfect in Christ, but also to be delivered from wicked and unreasonably men. He didn’t ask to be kept from these men, but to be delivered from them. He wanted to give them the gospel, and then get out safely and tell it to the next person. He knew that some people wouldn’t treat him well, but still wanted their salvation. In this world we will have tribulation.
Another purpose that the Lord gave to Paul was to turn people from darkness to light. We weren’t just in darkness as unbelievers, we WERE darkness. God is light, and that light exposes our sinful condition. Paul was to turn people from that darkness, which is what we call conversion.
We were also trapped in the power of Satan while in our sins. Satan can go about as a roaring lion, or whatever other guise suits the situation. It seems that the more things that man invents, the more things Satan can use to trap him. There is no neutral ground in this war, either. We can’t be indifferent to it. We need to be delivered from the power of Satan.
Not only do we need to be delivered from Satan’s power, we need to be forgiven of our sins. Christ provided forgiveness for us on the cross, but He did even more. Now we also have an inheritance waiting for us! An inheritance is valuable and free, and ours is reserved in heaven for us. And on top of it all, we’re being sanctified!
This is quite a passage, and there’s lots to meditate on. It was life instructions for Paul, but it’s also truths that we have been brought into. Paul obeyed those instructions, even though it brought him before kings and gave him hardships.
Hymn 215 – Happy they who trust in Jesus
Prayer