Episode 200 - Joy In Jesus

0:00Warning, the following Zippercruder radio spot you are about to hear is going to be filled with F words. When you're hiring, we at Zippercruder know you can feel frustrated. For Lauren even, like your efforts are futile, and you can spend a fortune trying to find fabulous people, only to get flooded with candidates who are just... fine. Fortunately, Zippercruder figured out how to fix all that. And right now, you can try Zippercruder for free at zippercruder.com slash zip. With Zippercruder, you can forget your frustrations, because we find the right people for your roles fast, which is our absolute favorite F word. In fact, four out of five employers who post on Zippercruder get a quality candidate within the first day. Fantastic! So, whether you need to hire four, 40, or 400 people, get ready to meet first rate talent. Just go to zippercruder.com slash zip to try Zippercruder for free. Don't forget that zippercruder.com slash zip. Finally, that zippercruder.com slash zip.

1:01Finding great candidates to hire can be like, well, trying to find a needle in a haystack. Sure, you can post your job to some job board, but then all you can do is hope the right person comes along, which is why you should try Zippercruder for free at zippercruder.com slash zip. Zippercruder doesn't depend on candidates finding you. It finds them for you. It's powerful technology identifies people with the right experience, and actively invites them to apply to your job. You get qualified candidates fast, so while other companies might deliver a lot of, hey, Zippercruder, find you what you're looking for. The needle in the haystack. See why four out of five employers who post a job on Zippercruder get a quality candidate within the first day. Zippercruder, the smartest way to hire, and right now you can try Zippercruder for free. That's right, free at zippercruder.com slash zip. That zippercruder.com slash zip zippercruder.com slash zip. Great is the Lord, and he is indeed greatly to be praised. We welcome you once again to this

2:19another edition of End Time Revival Ministries USA Podcast. I am your host, Pastor Al Zachary, and we are grateful, as always, to the Lord for the multitude of his mercies, new every morning. Thank you, Lord, for your great faithfulness, even when we are unfaithful, certainly unworthy. Amen. It is of the mercies of the Lord that we have not been consumed because his compassion failed. Not the Bible tells us they are new every morning. We thank our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Certainly we shall, and we should never forget, a man, his great sacrifice on our behalf coming down from glory, making himself of no reputation, taking on the form of a servant, being found in likeness as a man. The Bible says he humbled himself and became obedient unto death,

3:21even the death of the cross. And he did it for you and I so that we would have life, as he said, and have it more abundantly. Thank God for his grace and mercy and love and kindness, long suffering and peace and hope that we have a man granted unto us through the sacrifice, through the Atonement, by the blood of Jesus Christ. Amen. But we are saved by grace through faith. The Bible tells us it is not of ourselves, it is not of works, less any man should boast, all have sin and come short and come short of the glory of God. But God, who is rich and mercy, for the great love and with the great love that he loved us, he saved us and he called us to this great hope and salvation that we have in Christ Jesus. So again, we are grateful to be called

4:23a man to be participants, willing participants in this, a man great gospel, in this calling, in this a man work of the Lord, a man to a man preach the word to be instant in season out of season, a man and to testify to the a man magnificent goodness and grace of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen. And of course, as always, we thank God for each and every one of you who pray for and support the work of this ministry. And we certainly pray that the word of the Lord will have free course and that we, a man will continue to, as long as God gives us the power and the strength, preach the word of the living God. Speak the word with boldness, with clarity, with plainness of speech. Amen. And we certainly would implore you, a man, to please, by all means, share this

5:28podcast with someone else. Amen. And again, we thank you for your prayers and your support. All right. Today we continue. It's all about Jesus. And we're going to focus on joy in Jesus. There is a joy to be found. There's a joy to be enjoyed. There's a joy to lift you up above all else that can ever happen to you in this world that it again is to be found in Jesus. Before we begin, we'll be in the gospel of John chapter 15. Let's take a moment to invoke the presence of the Lord. Father again, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, 10,000 tongues will be insufficient to thank you. So we just want to, with the fruit of our lips, Lord, in earnest, the end in sincerity. Thank you, thank you, thank you for all of your benefits, all of your blessings,

6:28all of your mercies. Oh God, thank you for saving us, calling us to this great hope. Amen. To this great kingdom of Jesus Christ, our Lord, and to save you. Bless now your word, Lord. Let it be penetrating and working and sustaining in the hearts of many women everywhere. So that you get the glory, you get the honor, you get the praise, you get the worship and the adoration and all that we say and do. In Jesus' name, we're praying if thanks, amen, amen. All right, joy in Jesus, in Christ Jesus, our Lord, we have been granted an intangible, valuable, and eternal gift that is far more precious and priceless than anything else beyond our most vivid of imaginations. What we have been granted,

7:36what we have been given is an incomparable joy in Jesus. Every true child of God is to possess this joy in Jesus. Every true child of God is to live this joy in Jesus and to cherish it forever. This incomprehensible joy in Jesus, I would dare say, is one of God's unspeakable gifts. So we take you down to the Gospel of John, chapter 15, where Jesus is just before. He is to be betrayed into the hands of sinners and crucified. He is continuing to prepare His disciples for His departure out of this world. And He has been with them on this last and final evening

8:41that we refer to as the Lord's supper on the night, the very night, again, before He would be betrayed and put on trial. And on the next day, lifted up on the cross, He's preparing His disciples. This is so important. Preparation, amen, for what lies ahead. He's preparing them for the joy, amen, that they would experience even though at that time their hearts were saddened. He's already told them, let not your heart be troubled. John, chapter 14, amen. If you believe in God, believe you all, believe also in me and my father's house and many mansions, if it were not so, I told you, I go to prepare a place for you that where I am, there you may be also. But now He continues in this preparation and at the conclusion of these words that I'm going to read to you today, we're going to discover this joy in Jesus is again, I believe, one of God's most incredible,

9:50unimaginable, incomprehensible, and unspeakable gifts that we the children of God have within us. These words we get in at verse number five, I am the vine, ye other branches, he that abided in me and I in him the same bringeth forth much fruit, for without me, you 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 ye abide in me and my words abide in you, you shall ask what you will and it shall be done unto you. Herein is my father glorified that you bear

10:55much fruit, so shall you be my disciples. As the father had loved me, so have I loved you, continued you in my love. If you love me, Jesus says you will keep my commandments. Verse 10, if you keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love, even as I have kept my father's commandments and abide in his love. Verse 11, these things have I spoken unto you that my joy might remain in you and that your joy might be full. Who, what a word, what a word, what a promise, what a preparation that Jesus did, amen, for his apostles as well as all of us who have now

12:02a man believed their report, the gospel, the preaching of the Word, a man, and have come to know Jesus as Lord and Savior and soon coming King might I add. The teaching and instruction that Jesus gave to his apostles, again it was designed to prepare them for the work of Kingdom ministry without his bodily presence being there with them. Of course you know they had been with him, they had been following him as disciples for three and a half years and Jesus made a promise to them of course that he would be in them by the indwelling of the Holy Ghost who would be sent from above to them and again to all believers who come to faith and trust in Jesus as the Savior, the Redeemer,

13:08the hope of glory. Amen. One Lord, one faith, one baptism, Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life. Everyone who comes to Jesus in faith is baptized by him. Amen. John, as he said, the Baptist I'm referring to, he said, I baptize you with water unto repentance, but there's one coming after me. He will baptize you with the Holy Ghost and fire. No one is saved without the baptism of the Holy Ghost which comes exclusively by Jesus Christ alone. So the clear instruction to the apostles was about abiding in Jesus because it is the exclusive way for them and of course for us to be fruitful in what we have been chosen to do. Those who do not abide in Jesus, of course,

14:10Jesus said, for ma'am and abiding not in He is cast forth as a branch. You are cast forth as a severed branch cut off, if you will, from the vine, cut off from the tree. Again, Jesus says, I am the vine and you are the branches and if you are cut off from the tree, if you cut off from the vine, you cannot possibly bear fruit. You cannot possibly be productive. Amen. All that you do, anything that you engage in will come to know what the prophet of man, Jesus says, if he gains the whole world and loses his soul, what can a man give an exchange for his soul? Fruitfulness, true fruitfulness is righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Ghost. Amen. That is what a man fruitfulness is all about, a man fruit of the spirit. We talked about this in our prior session. Amen. Love, joy, peace, a man goodness, temperance, patience, meekness, all of those attributes of the fruit of the spirit

15:13are to be in every child of God. Amen. And Jesus again makes it clear that abiding in him and his word abiding in us is inseparable. It's inseparable. You cannot say that you are a disciple of Jesus, a believer in Jesus, a follower of Jesus, a Christian when the word of God is not in you and working in you. Amen. Why call ye me Lord, Lord Jesus says and do not the things that I say. So the one who is in Jesus is the one who is in the Word and the Word is in them. The house and the life of the true believer is built upon the teachings of Jesus. All other houses are built on syncing sand. All of the preparation that Jesus is pouring into the apostles again as he is preparing them,

16:19a man for his exit out of this world as it were. He certainly did not neglect to let them know that they would be hated, just as he was hated, they would be rejected, just as he was rejected, they would be persecuted and ridiculed and beaten and even executed some of them for his namesake and for the gospel of the kingdom of heaven. What I really find to be very interesting, however, and intriguing is the fact that even though the apostles and all of the saints of God would be and will forever be subjected to being led as sheep to the slaughter. And by the way, that's what the Bible teaches. All we like sheep, first of all, we are gone astray, but he calls us to come into his sheep fold, but the Bible tells us we are killed all the day long. Amen. In other words, the old man, we already did. Paul recognized it. He understood it. He didn't count his life

17:20as being valuable to himself. He said, I am crucified with Christ in the life that I now live. I live by the faith. In other words, I live by believing my life is now going forward, based upon what Jesus has spoken. I live my faith. I live my life, brother, by the faith of the Son of God who loved me and saved me. He's the one who called me to this great hope and salvation. And so what we're going to see here and what we're going to explore here is that the words that were recorded. Amen. In his verse 11, the final verse that we read in chapter 15 here of this passage, it has proven over and over again to be resolute within the hearts of untold numbers of martyrs, millions. By the way, all of us are martyrs because again, we all die in Christ Jesus.

18:21We give up. We surrender our lives, our cells, our ambitions, our wheels. Amen. To his will. We are dead. Amen. We are dead. We're dead to the old man and we live to him. So all of us, in essence, are martyrs. Amen. And those, of course, who actually spilled their blood. Amen. They had an unyielding and inexplicable joy within them for their Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Now the word again, I'd remind you that Jesus said, this, these things have I spoken unto you that my joy might remain in you. These things have I spoken unto you that your joy might be full.

19:22There is no joy, ladies and gentlemen, that is comparable to the joy in Jesus that we have been given. I believe that Jesus spoke these words to them and to us for the express purpose of possessing and and I was called this an astonishing to the world joy that could never be taken from the true disciple of Jesus even in the face of an imminent death for his name. Again, the aforementioned apostle Paul, a man when he was a man going to Jerusalem and he had already been under severe attack, his life from the very moment that he was transformed. Amen. From the very

20:23moment that he began preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, a man, the Jews sought to slay him and they hounded him everywhere he went. But I want you to hear what the apostle Paul said in reference to his life. He said, I do not count my life dear unto myself that I might finish. He said, I want to finish what I've been called to. There is a joy. And Paul had it. He had it. He said, I am not afraid to die. I'm not afraid to go to Jerusalem. I'm not afraid to face what is already ahead because first of all, again, just as Jesus had prepared the 11 apostles for what they would face, Paul the apostle also was told up front at the time of his conversion. He said, I'm going to show you and I'm telling you in advance, Saul was his name at the time.

21:32How great things you're going to suffer for my name sake. I love it. I love it. I love it. That is not hidden from us. And by the way, Jesus who went before us, the Bible says, he for the joy that was set before him and do it the cross, despise the shame. Amen. In other words, Jesus was joyfully looking forward to what lied ahead. I want you to hear these words. These things have I spoken unto you. In other words, not just the preceding words of I am the vine, you are the branches body. All of what Jesus particularly in context began to speak to them at that last supper about sending the Holy Ghost. Again, all of this was in preparation for what would lie ahead. And again, this is what Jesus has in store for all of us, you know, joy, joy, joy, joy. His joy,

22:40is two joys here. Okay. The first joy is his joy. And the second joy is our joy. First joy, he says, my joy might remain in you. Now, how can we have the joy of the Lord? We can only have it if he gives it to us is he is. So he has to grant us that joy. But then we will have our own joy. Now, where does our own joy come from? I believe our joy comes from believing the word of God, trusting God, no matter what we may go through, no matter what we will face in this life. Amen. And that gives us a joy. When we know the promises of God that the word of God is true, and we can have that same unshakable faith of many of those who have gone on before us, we can have true, real, sustaining joy in our hearts. Amen. I believe that. Amen. Listen

23:44to these words, by the way, let me read one more passage from the Gospel of John. This is in chapter 14. I want to go back to just one chapter. I want to catch these three verses, 25 through 27. This is what Jesus says. All of this again. When Jesus said these words, these things have I spoken unto you that your joy may be full and that my joy will remain in you. All of these things. And what allowed you to hear what Jesus says, verse 25, he says, these things I have spoken to you while being present with you. In other words, before I'm crucified, before I'm laid in the grave, before I rise again on the third day, I'm speaking these things to you. There's a reason, there's a purpose. And again, that reason and purpose is joy, joy, joy. You know why? Because the disciples are saddened. They're in distress. They're in confusion. They're in complexity because Jesus is telling them he has already been preparing them for the fact that he

24:47was going to be leaving. But now after three and a half years, we've invested all of our time and you know, attention and being a true follower of you. And now you're going to leave us. You're going to forsake us. You're going to go away. I felt the king. I thought you were the king. I thought you were the conqueror. I thought you were the I thought you were the one who was bringing in ushering in the kingdom and restoring Israel. What do you mean? You're going to die. What do you mean? You're going to leave. What is this? So they didn't fully grasp it. So again, Jesus is preparing. That's why he said the Holy Spirit. I'm going to send the Holy Spirit to you. And when he comes, which happened on the day of Pentecost, 50 days after Jesus ascended up to glory, of course, when the Holy Spirit came on the day of Pentecost, it brought to their remembrance.

25:48He brought to their remembrance. Let me rephrase that. He, because the Holy Spirit is a he, not an it. He brought to their remembrance all things that Jesus had spoken to them. Now listen what Jesus says. Verse 26, but the helper, the Holy Spirit whom the Father will send in my name, he will teach you all things and bring to your remembrance all things that I said to you. Peace, I leave with you. My peace, I give to you. Not as the world gives. Do I give to you? Let not your heart be troubled. Neither let it be afraid. Ladies and gentlemen,

26:54powerful, powerful, all powerful peace of God, the joy of the Lord. There is nothing in this world that is comparable to the peace of God. The Apostle Paul referred to this peace as surpassing all understanding. It is this incomparable and incomprehensible peace that, again, the Apostle Paul says, will guard your hearts and your minds and it will give to us a joy in Jesus that endures and perseveres in tribulations, in trials, in distress, in persecution, in this present world. And we're going to have in the battle again. Jesus told us, I love it, I love it, I love it. The fact that the Bible does not hide from us what we're going to face as true believers as the people of God in this world. He said, in this world,

28:04you will have tribulation. But what did he say after that? Be of good cheer. I have overcome the world. And you know what else he did? He made us overcomers. That's exactly what he did. Amen. We are to be of good cheer. Just as Jesus said to the Apostles, I have overcome, I've made you overcomers. Amen. And for the joy that was sent before him again, Jesus endured the cross, despised the shame, and he gives to every one of his children. Amen. Call by his name, who call upon his name. He gives to every one of us the same joy for any and all future distress, disappointment, or even death by martyrdom that we are all subjected to. Joy in Jesus is all we need to persevere in our present world. And this joy in

29:14Jesus will be with us forever. If we abide in him and his word in us, you can't have it without the word. You can't have it without the presence of Holy Spirit. Because in the word of the Lord, it is written, we are not too sorrow for the joy of the Lord is our strength. And we pray even now. Father, we pray even now that every listening ear and every obedient heart will have the joy in Jesus that only you can give by the power of your resurrected, a man glorious gospel. Amen. That is a man salvation to all that believe. You came to seek to say that which is lost. So Lord, we pray now and enter seed now for those who are lost that they may come to know the fullness of the joy that is in Jesus, the joy of the Lord that will give them strength to

30:14persevere through difficulty, through heartache, through trials, and tribulation, and distress, disappointment, and even death. So Lord, we love you. We praise you. We thank you. We bless you. We honor you in Jesus name. We bring your thanks. Amen and amen. Warning. The following Zippercruder radio spot you are about to hear is going to be filled with F words. When you're hiring, we at Zippercruder know you can feel frustrated for Lord even. Like your efforts are futile and you can spend a fortune trying to find fabulous people only to get flooded with candidates who are just fine. Fortunately, Zippercruder figured out how to fix all that. And right now, you can try Zippercruder for free at zippercruder.com slash zip. With Zippercruder, you can forget your frustrations because we find the right people for your roles fast, which is our absolute favorite F word.

31:16In fact, four out of five employers who post on Zippercruder get a quality candidate within the first day. Fantastic. So whether you need to hire four, 40 or 400 people, get ready to meet first rate talent. Just go to zippercruder.com slash zip to try Zippercruder for free. Don't forget that zippercruder.com slash zip. Finally, that zippercruder.com slash zip. Warning, the following Zippercruder radio spot you are about to hear is going to be filled with F words. When you're hiring, we at Zippercruder know you can feel frustrated for Lord even. Like your efforts are futile and you can spend a fortune trying to find fabulous people only to get flooded with candidates who are just fine. Fortunately, Zippercruder figured out how to fix all that. And right now, you can try Zippercruder for free at zippercruder.com slash zip. With Zippercruder, you can forget your frustrations because we find the right people for your roles fast, which is our absolute favorite F word.

32:16In fact, four out of five employers who post on Zippercruder get a quality candidate within the first day. Fantastic. So whether you need to hire four, 40 or 400 people, get ready to meet a first-rate talent. Just go to zippercruder.com slash zip to try Zippercruder for free. Don't forget that zippercruder.com slash zip. Finally, that zippercruder.com slash zip.