THE JOY OF KNOWING THE LORD JESUS
R. Gardiner
Luke 15: 1–7; Hebrews 12: 2; Psalm 51: 7–12; Luke 15: 11–32
I want to say something, dear friends, about joy. We started the morning meeting today with that on our lips and in our hearts. The joy of knowing the Lord Jesus. The joy of having been recipients of His love. There is not much joy in the world. I think any sensible person, or even insensible person, would realise that there is not much joy in the world. There may be a little fleeting happiness which disappears. It is like your life. It says in the scripture, “what is your life? It is even a vapour, appearing for a little while, and then disappearing”, James 4: 14. And the little bit of happiness that you may find in the world here and there, is like that. It appears for a little and then it disappears. But the joy that comes through believing in the Lord Jesus is lasting. It is eternal. It carries you above all the sorrows, the disappointments, the disasters that exist in life, and it carries you up into a realm where there are joys for evermore; life everlasting and joy for evermore.
Now this poor sheep that we read of in Luke 15 had a good shepherd. The shepherd here is the Lord Jesus in this section. When the Lord Jesus came into the world, “He came to his own, and his own received him not”, John 1: 11. He came in to have joy from His own. That was, you might say, His expectation, that when He came to Israel, chosen people of God, He was expecting to have joy. But it says, “He came to his own, and his own received him not”. What did He find? He found that they were just like every other man, woman and child in the world, “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God”, Romans 3: 23. He would say to you, if you asked Him, ‘They are all like sheep that have gone astray. Every one has turned his own way’. He found no pleasure in these persons. Man, affected by sin and sins, away from God, no interest in God. Trying to pursue his own life only to fall into ignominy and shame. The Shepherd came and He found not one righteous person, “not even one”, Romans 3: 10. All were guilty. All were sinners. You say to me, ‘Prove it!’ I will prove it to you. It says, “by one man sin entered into the world, and by sin death; and thus death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned”, Romans 5: 12. And it does not matter what town or city that you go into, you will pass graveyards where there are hundreds and thousands of sinners, some who were believing sinners and some who were unbelieving sinners, but ‘death has passed upon all men, for that all have sinned’. The testimony that you are a sinner and that I am a sinner is that death is waiting to claim us. The penalty of sin is death.
This sheep started to wander away, fell into trouble, fell into difficulties. It says, “having lost one of them, does not leave the ninety and nine” and then it says, “and go after that which is lost, until he find it? And having found it, he lays it upon his own shoulders, rejoicing”. The Lord Jesus came into the world to find lost sheep. And if you are a sinner, and if you do not know the Lord Jesus as your Saviour, He is passing by today, in this room, the Lord Jesus is passing by so that you might find a Saviour in Him, and the joy that is eternal. I will tell you a true story. The young people may not have heard it and the older ones will pardon me. There was a man in Ireland, a real gospel preacher, and he was told that there was a young boy, seventeen, and he was lying dying in a lonely district; dying of consumption as it was called in these days. We would call it rampant tuberculosis in our day. Lying dying. Well, this preacher had come a long journey on foot, up hill and down dale until he came to this cotter house, a poor cotter house. And there was this boy, who was a shepherd’s boy, lying there, on the floor, on a blanket, and he was dying. He had had no education. He did not know how to read. And the preacher looked at him and he said to him, ‘I fear you suffer a great deal’. He answered, ‘Yes, I have a bad cold, the cough hurts me greatly’. The preacher wondered, ‘How am I going to speak to this boy about the Lord Jesus, because he obviously needs a Saviour?’ And then he thought, he is a shepherd boy. He said, ‘How did you catch the cold?’ ‘Oh’, he said, ‘one of my father’s sheep went astray and my father asked me to go and find the sheep, and it was cold, windy, wet and it was a long way I had to go, but I did not mind it much, as I was so anxious to find father’s sheep. Eventually I found the sheep, and I brought it back home on my shoulders to be with the rest of the flock, and my father rejoiced, but that is when I caught this cold. Mother says I will never get better now. God knows best’. The preacher said to himself, the Lord has shown me what to preach about to this boy’. He read Luke 15, where we have read tonight. The boy understood it all. He accepted the Lord Jesus as his Saviour. He found joy and happiness in his weak, dying condition, and he found eternal salvation. What rejoicing in the Father’s house above there must have been.
I appeal to anybody here, if you are still in your sins, the Lord Jesus is the One who can meet your need, who can find you where you are. He can appeal as no other person can appeal because He loves you. He does not love your sins but He loves you, the sinner. How can He do this? How can He offer you joy through salvation, through the cleansing of your sins? “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool”, Isaiah 1: 18. The work and worth of the Lord Jesus is enough, if you put your confiding trust in Him and tell Him you are a sinner and you need a Saviour, and He is the One you are accepting into your heart as your own personal Saviour. But how could He accomplish this? How can you be so sure?
That is why I read in Hebrews. It says, “looking stedfastly on Jesus the leader and completer of faith—who, in view of the joy lying before him, endured the cross, having despised the shame”. “Who, in view of the joy lying before him”. That can be applied in many different ways. “The joy lying before him” would be a company of saints that had come to know Him as their Saviour, and who form the assembly for His eternal pleasure. “The joy lying before him” would be those same saints who would come into the glory and greatness of what it is to be sons of God the Father, entering into His presence and enjoying the liberty of His house. Well, how did He accomplish it? It says, “who, in view of the joy lying before him, endured the cross”. Jesus, the Great Shepherd, the Chief Shepherd, the Good Shepherd. When He was here He brought to all who needed Him the blessings that were required. If they were blind, they got sight; deaf, they got hearing; lame, they were able to walk straight; mentally disturbed, they were able to be mentally able to sit clothed and sensible. He met every kind of need as He traversed this scene—from Jerusalem up to Capernaum down through Samaria. He went for those three and one-half years between the ages of thirty and thirty-three and one-half years. And then at the end of that thirty-three and one-half years men said, “Take him away, take him away, crucify him”, John 19: 15.
They wanted to have nothing to do with this Man. That is men in their original state as sinners. They do not want the Lord Jesus. And they did not want Him at that time. So great was their distaste that they wanted to “destroy” Him. What a word that is. Not only to kill Him, but it says in Matthew’s gospel that they wanted to “destroy” Him (Matthew 27: 20). What a word! The Saviour of sinners. They took Him and they put Him on a cross at Calvary. They put Him between two malefactors, two robbers, two men of the most despicable character. Hanged Him, “the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God”, 1 Peter 3: 18. And then He died. You think of the prolonged suffering of Jesus, under that scorching sun, laying down His life, saying, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do”, Luke 23: 34. And then when He died a soldier took a sword and pierced His side. And it says, “immediately there came out blood and water”, John 19: 34. Never known before, never known since, that you could distinguish between the blood and the water. You could distinguish it in the case of Jesus. The blood that cleanses the guilty inwardly. The water that washes outwardly. Well, beloved friends, that blood,
‘Precious, precious blood of Jesus, Shed on Calvary!
Shed for rebels, shed for sinners,
Shed for me.’ (Hymn 167)
is available for you tonight. Would to God that every person from the oldest to the youngest, would say in their hearts with conviction, ‘He died for me’. The appeal is coming to you. Coming to you in, I believe, the power of the Spirit, that you might pay heed to the person of the Lord Jesus who is no longer in the grave. He was three days and three nights in the grave, but then He was raised by the glory of the Father. And today He is sitting at God’s right hand, a Prince and a Saviour. What a Saviour! The Man who was rejected by men at large is the One whom also God highly exalted, it says, “and granted him a name, that which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow”, Philippians 2: 9. What about your knee bowing? If it has not bowed before why not let this be the first time that you bow your knees to the Lord Jesus Christ, the One who has died and given Himself a ransom for all. That you might, as accepting Him as your Saviour be able to say, ‘He bore my sins in His body on the tree’. Well, that is the appeal of the gospel to you.
I read in the psalm because here is a man that had been blessed of God. He knew Him but he had sinned. What a state he was in. And the word from God, through the prophet, came to him and the word had such an effect upon him that he repented of his wayward way. He accepted that he had sinned. He accepted that he needed to have his links renewed with the God that had been so gracious to him, in the years before. And now this psalm is the product of his exercise. The product of the greatness of the salvation that he now knew as a result of returning to his God. And so he says, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean; wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Make me to hear gladness and joy; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice”. Here is a wayward believer who had been pursuing his own lust. He says, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean”. The other rendering of this is, ‘purge from sin’ (footnote ‘b’). And then he says, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me”. He wants to be set up in the joy that he had before. “Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not the spirit of thy holiness from me. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and let a willing spirit sustain me”. He was not only wanting the joy of his own salvation to be in his heart, he wanted to know something of the joy of God’s salvation. He wanted to know something of the greatness and wonder of all that God had in His mind, so that every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies might become his. So he says, “Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation”.
When the Lord Jesus died, He was the great Redeemer. He was buying back what was His own. But He was not just redeeming persons from their sins, He was redeeming them to God. The greatest salvation, God’s salvation, is to have known living links with the righteous God and to have joy in His salvation. Then it says, “and let a willing spirit sustain me”. What is a willing spirit? A willing spirit is the Holy Spirit coming and indwelling our bodies. The Spirit of God, sent down from heaven where Christ is in glory, and that Spirit being given as a willing Spirit. He says, “and let a willing spirit sustain me”, or ‘uphold me with a willing spirit’ (footnote ‘d’). Here he is, the believer that had again sinned and found himself at a distance from his God. He found the salvation that comes through Jesus once more, and he finds what it is to have God’s salvation restored to him. And then what he desires is that the Spirit of God Himself might be within him to sustain him. So that he might be sustained in the pathway down here. No longer to fulfil fleshly lusts, but to walk here in newness of life and praise in newness of spirit. Well, beloved friends, this is what is available in the gospel. The first part of Luke 15 is for the man that does not know the Saviour. He is still a sinner. But he can know the Saviour. The Saviour is out to look for the lost sheep, and He is looking for you now. Drawing near to you where you are in your condition if you are such a sinner. But if, it may be, you are a believer and you have thought ‘I am going to have a little while in the world. I am going to do this and I am going to do that. I am going to please myself for a while’, and in doing so have lost the joy of God’s salvation, you can tonight be brought back, my friend, through grace.
And now in the second part of Luke 15, here is a young man, brought up in a godly household and he gets tired of being in a believers’ house. He says, “give to me the share of the property that falls to me”. He goes out into the world, dissipated his property and lives in debauchery. He comes to the point when he is a real ‘down and out’. He that had known the Father’s house and here he is, “he longed to fill his belly with the husks which the swine were eating; and no one gave to him”. And then it says, “coming to himself”. That is like the man in Psalm 51—he came to himself. “Purge me with hyssop ... wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow”. He came to himself. He recognised that the Father’s house was still standing open—ready to welcome returning sons who are repenting. And so he comes to himself and says, ‘I will go back. I am a sinner. I have gone the way that I should not have gone. I will say “I have sinned against heaven and before thee”; I will just be a humble servant in your house’. He comes back. His father having seen him a long way off ran with compassion, fell on his neck and kissed him. But he is not yet in the joy of God’s salvation. He is not yet in the joy of the father’s house and all the blessing that it brings. No, but the father covers him with kisses, embraces him. The father recognises that this is his son that was wayward, that went astray. How glad He was to see him back. He says to his bondman, “Bring out the best robe”. He wants to clothe this poor prodigal son, a returning son, with the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. He says, ‘I want my son back into my house. I want him to be as one that is suited to the surroundings of the house’, so he clothed him. There is a best robe waiting for you, my friend. If you have wandered, if you have sought to find some satisfaction in the world, I can tell you, you must be one of the most miserable of all the men that are walking the streets of Aberdeen. There are miserable men that have never known the Saviour. There are miserable men who have known Him and in their wayward path have rejected the Father’s house and the enjoyment of the merriment and the dancing. “Bring out the best robe”. He dresses him suited to the occasion and he goes in and enjoys the life and liberty and joy of heaven.
Then there is the elder brother. When he heard the music and the dancing “he became angry and would not go in”. Oh, is there any person here who says, ‘I will not go in’? That will not avail yourself of the provision of God in Christ, presented to you in the gospel? It has been said, ‘the younger son was so hungry he could not stay out; the elder son was so angry he would not go in’. Do not be like him. Allow yourself, at this moment, to recognise how starved you are. There is only one answer and it is in Christ. But when you are clothed in Christ then you are fit for the company of the Father and all that is in the Father’s house. You are fit to enjoy the music and the dancing. There is joy now. It is a joy that will never fade and it will never end, and it is available to you even now. May you put your confiding trust in Jesus. Find a willing spirit in the Holy Spirit dwelling within you in your renewed condition as in Christ, before a holy righteous God and live in the power of that Spirit, and enter into the house where the enjoyment that the Father has provided, and is providing, and will provide for all eternity, can be yours. May you come into it for His name’s sake. Amen.
Preaching at Aberdeen, Scotland
28 November 2011