-Transcript-
Thank you for joining me today. Good to be here. What a great day to talk about. Joy and Bliss. Amen. Those are two great feelings to have feelings of joy and bliss. And you know where they come from, true Joy, true Bliss. It comes from one place that’s following Christ. It’s trusting Christ. It comes from Christ, Amen. And today, we’re going to talk about the three keys to Joy and Bliss in your life and guess what? They all come from Jesus. Amen. And this is the beautiful thing about Jesus is we don’t have to be rich, we don’t have to be somebody in society. We don’t have to have a whole lot of anything other than just a mustard seed of Faith, other than just a belief in Jesus Christ, as Lord and Saviour, if we’ve got that, if we’ve made Him, Lord of our life, Then we can have joy and Bliss every single day, no matter what. Now you are, probably hearing that and saying, well brother Clark, you don’t know my lot. Well, I don’t know, you’re a lot, I know my lot and I know that we all have problems. We all have as the Bible would call them snares and temptations. We have issues and we have struggles and we have strife and sometimes it seems like the Christian has got just as much as the Lost person if not more and God’s ordered it that way and there’s many reasons why, Amen. Uh, but one reason is to draw close to the Lord, I believe through our struggles and also for the Lord, to show His power and to get glory as we go through hard times and have unspeakable, joy and say, well, that’s got to be Jesus because that’s supernatural. Amen. And so just quickly today three keys to joy and Bliss in Jesus. Number one, understand the root of joy. It only comes from Jesus, the idea, the root of joy. It only comes from Jesus Christ. God made us to be close to Him. God made us to serve Him and be obedient to Him. God made us to live separate from a sinful world. God made us to draw near to Him. So he could draw near to us. He made us vessels. He is the Potter. We are the clay, Amen. And that maker that engineer is the one that provides true Joy. How can we have joy from any other source if we don’t have it from our Maker? Psalm 119:111,” thy testimonies have I taken as inheritage forever for they are the rejoicing of my heart” here the psalmist says, the testimonies they’ve taken as a heritage forever for they are the rejoicing of my heart. So, our heart should rejoice at the testimonies we can relish and rejoice regardless of our state of affairs because of who He is, and what He is promised us, His testimonies. We can also rejoice in what’s to come and you say, well, who is He or what’s, you know, what is it about, Jesus, that’s going to be worth rejoicing. Let’s start at the gospel.1 Corinthians 15 1:4, “Moreover, Brethren, I declare unto you the gospel, which I preached unto you, which also you have received and where in ye stand by which also you’re saved. If you keep it memory, what I preached unto you unless you’ve believed in vain for I delivered unto you first of all, that which I also received how that Christ died for our sin according to the scriptures and that He was buried and that He rose again the third day, according to the scriptures.” So, this is the clearest place that I understand. We can find the gospel here in the Bible. Of course, the whole Bible is about Jesus. The whole Bible is a love story, that’s all true. But here in 1 Corinthians 15:1-4, we see the gospel and the gospel is something that we can rejoice over the gospel, should make our heart leap for joy. Because Jesus did what we couldn’t do. He went to the cross and died for our sins, He became the propitiation or replacement for our sins that payment for our sins so that we didn’t have to die and go to a devil’s hell, but we could go to heaven and be with Him forever for eternity, literally, Jesus, calls us the bride. We are the bride of Christ. We are His when He praising, there’s a time, he prays to the father in the Bible and says, please father, let me receive all that our mind. Amen. Well, how do we become His? We became hHs when he died on the cross for us and when we accept that free gift of Salvation, so message literally means the good news and the good news is worth rejoicing over. Have you ever gotten good news? Oh amen. I got some good news about some friends yesterday who were going through a battle and a really bad battle in our church have been praying for Him. And I heard this good news about fell over. It was great news and they had been really blessed by some wonderful things happening in their life, seems like out of nowhere. And it blessed me the whole day. I was happy to get that. Good news for my friends, and that was just, I was happy for them. Can you imagine how happy they are? They’re the ones that are kind of receiving the gift there. Uh, and and here’s what I’ll say about that there’s nothing like good news and the worldly, good news, it comes and goes and we know that they’re temporal things. But in eternity, there is only one, uh, good news message that matters and that is the gospel. And the reason why it’s the only one that matters is without it. You can’t get into heaven. Amen. You need it to get into heaven. You need to be saved. And once saved, always save. That’s what we believe here at KJV Cafe, Eternal security. And, uh, that’s what the Bible teaches clearly. And the gospel is so good and we can rejoice in that and we can preach this back to the devil when the devil temps us and we can we can recite this at night. And we can think on this and meditate on this, that Christ died for our sins as was prophesied from the beginning. In the Bible, uh, many years earlier It was mentioned, I was been studying the book of Isaiah and Jesus mentioned in there and uh was doing some artwork in Isaiah. The chapter i believe is 53, Amen. Verse 5, I believe it is. And it’s just so powerful to see what God is doing through the gospel in people’s lives when they accept Him as Saviour. There’s a whole change. Amen. There’s a whole change. Then we see this is related to the cross as well. Then we see the testimony of His love for us at the cross Romans 5:8. But God commendeth his love toward us in that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us. So we can rejoice at the gospel message altogether, we can rejoice in having that free gift of salvation, we can rejoice and have the Bible, says, return us to us the joy of our salvation. We can rejoice in being saved. And now, we also can rejoice in this idea that God knew our lowly estate. God knew our situation. God here, in Romans 5:8, through the writings of Paul says, while you were sinning Christ, died for you Christ died, being you know, God in the flesh, He died for your sins and my sins, and by that atoning death on the cross and that supernatural, Resurrection, Amen. Oh, that’s exciting. That supernatural resurrection, that gives us access to the father that gives us that that wonderful peace of celebrating of spending time with God, you know, the Bible says, we can approach the throne boldly. Amen. And that the veil that was in front of the the holy of holies and the uh, Old Testament. It was written into. Amen. It was, it was torn into because it symbolic of Jesus Christ giving us access to the father by what He did on the cross, because He paid our sin debt and we accept that free gift of Salvation. Now, we have access to God. That should make you shout. That should make you say glory, Hallelujah. Because now, we can go to God directly and God will look upon us and not see us as sinners, even though we are, but he’ll see us as forgiven. He’ll, we’re washed by the blood that blood of the Sinless Spotless Lamb if we’ve been saved. Amen. And so, this all makes us rejoice. This is true Joy. And anyone that tells you it’s not is lying to you. This is Hoy understanding that God Almighty has given us access to him through sending His own son to die on the cross. We’re studying. Uh, in Genesis, in our church, we’re studying athe passage there where Abraham is instructed to uh sacrifice Isaac. And of course he didn’t have to that Ram was caught in the thicket. That’s a symbol of Jesus as well. And uh, man, how hard it would be to have to do something to get God’s approval, to have to sacrifice our son Molak, that Pagan God. That’s what He required. Amen, but our God said, no, all go God. Our God said, no, I’m gonna do it. I’ll show you through Abraham, almost sacrificing Isaac, what? That would be like. But no, in fact, I’ll provide in fact, Mount Moriah there is called, God will provide. And what that means is God provided that sinless spotless Lamb, and that should bring joy to our heart that He rescued us. He saved us. We’re like someone drowning needing a life vest or like someone in a plane that needs a parachute because the plane is going down. He rescued us. There’s nothing we can do on our own or righteousness like filthy rags, but Jesus Christ. He rescued us. Amen. That’s exciting. We also can rejoice in this testimony of his steadfast closeness with us. Jesus Christ is close to those that are His Hebrews 13:5, let your conversation or your behaviour be without covetousness and be content with such things that as He have for He had said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee here we see in Hebrews 13:5 when my favourite verses in the Bible that no matter our lot, no matter where we’re at, no matter what we have, or what we’re going through, we can rejoice, we can be content because Jesus Christ will never leave us nor forsake us. So number one, he’s not going to leave us hanging. He’s not going to go away when we need a most and He’s not going to forsake us. He’s not going to cast us off to someone else. He will see us through, you know, the Holy Spirit in the Bible is called the comforter right well, why the comforter because the comforter the Holy Spirit living within us and dwelling in us, is there to help us through these hard times? God knows what we’re going through. He’s sovereign, He allows these things to come our way and He’s saying, look, I know that you’re going to go through some hard times, but I’m going to be there right by your side. I really believe that. It’s like, God is living within us and at the same time you can imagine Him just kind of linked up arm and arm say. Okay you’ve got you got a virus. We’re going to go through it together. You you have a money problem or to go through it together. Uh you got an accident in the car we’re going to go through it together. You lost your job. Okay, I’m right here, we’re going to go through it together. Is that your relationship with Jesus Christ? It should be Amen. And it can be, you know, and you say, brother, Clark how can it can be? Well, get in His word, study His word, spend time with Him in prayer. The Bible says to pray without ceasing and make sure that you uh, are repentant before Him that you confessed all your sins. The Bible says He’s faithful and just Give you of those sins. So, we have closeness with Christ. We see here. It’s a wonderful thing to have this this connection with Him that He loved us. And then He’s with us and that that He’s not going to leave us. He shines through the struggles, the deeper we are in the valleys the more. We can see Jesus working through us helping us along the way. Uh he that go with fourth, a weepeth bearing, precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing bringing His sheep` is with him. That’s Psalm 126. The idea of sheep is like a bundle of crop. If we rye oats or barley, and what it’s saying is look, you’re going through a hard time and you’re bearing precious seat, you’re doing the Lord’s work, you’re living for Him. You’re taking up your cross and oh, it’s a battle. And it’s a struggle and God’s saying, just hold on now, you hold on, because I’m right here with you, and I’m going to get you through it and we’re going to have a time in just a little bit. Well, we’re going to rejoice and we’re going to have a harvest and it’s going to be great. And guess what? It’s going to be an eternity. Amen. It’s not going to end. So we have a joy in Jesus for what He’s done. That’s the cross and we have joy in Jesus for what He’s doing. That’s that steadfast closeness with us and what He will do for us and that’s a Heavenly reward and fellowship for an eternity. So firstly here rejoice in His testimonies. Secondly, here take note. True Bliss is found an experiencing His love every day. We have to experience His love and testify and share with others. And for time’s sake. The third point, ignorance depending on God, that kind of ignorance worldly ignorance, I guess you could call. It is Bliss. Don’t be a no at all Proverbs 3:5-6, “trust the Lord, with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding, and all, thy ways acknowledge Him, and he shall direct thy paths“. So, we have here, this wonderful prescription for life on how we are to live. And how are we to live? We’re to live for the Lord. Amen. We’re to live for the Lord, we’re to trust the Lord wisdom is not the key factor. Trust is the key factor since we don’t know what He’s going to do all the time. So, our wisdom, our Biblical wisdom should be okay with trusting instead of knowing that is faith. Be happy more often and have a deeper sense of oy. When you trust the Lord, save yourself a lot of heartache by trusting God, and choosing to have bliss in what He’s done for us. And does that make sense here today i hope it does and stay motivated to help others do the same before it’s eternally, too late to testify, I could share verses on testifying to others and how that’s biblical. We need to share the good news and share the gospel and that will bring us joy and that is the prescription for joy and bliss in your life. Love the Lord live for the Lord, don’t lean on your own understanding, trust the Lord and He will give you Bliss and happiness. What a wonderful. I mean you can see here. I could take a lot longer but what a wonderful message and so take it with you. And thank you so much and take care and God bless. Amen.