And come this Lord's Day to the fifth and probably the final sermon in our little series on God's comfort for us while in tribulation and trouble and loss. Now, last Lord's Day, we spoke of how God has chosen His people into salvation and into everlasting life. This truth should provide us great encouragement when we are in trouble distressed and suffering tribulation in this world. The Lord Jesus provides us with words of comfort Himself. In Matthew 11, Jesus excoriates the wicked unbelievers in the cities that would not believe on Him, even though He had worked great miracles in their midst. But astoundingly, Jesus then gives thanksgiving to His Father that He has hid the gospel truth from those cities and those unbelievers and revealed it unto babes. The unbelievers from which the gospel truth was hidden are described as the wise and the prudent, yet they could not receive or understand Jesus' miracles and gospel preaching. But the simple, unsophisticated, helpless, and unpretentious babes, God did choose to reveal it to them. The world, and sadly many believers, think this is unfair of God. So it is not by our ability or intelligence or wisdom or good judgment that we come to trust in Jesus, but rather according to whether the Father savingly reveals gospel truth to us. Faith to believe God is not naturally in us. The faith is given to us only as the Father determines. No amount of education or wisdom or prudence can make up the difference. But why did God proceed along these lines when they are so totally contrary to the way we think things work? Jesus tells us the answer. God did what He wanted, what pleased Him to do. This is an astounding revelation. It pleased God to hide gospel truth from the wise and prudent and to reveal it to babes. God picks and chooses who will believe the gospel based upon His pleasure and not in conformity with our silly ideas about fairness and equality. It ought to be a great comfort to the Lord's people that all our salvation is not of us at all, but rather of God's decision and pleasure. If it were of us, we could fail. We would surely fail. But God cannot fail. What He pleases, He surely accomplishes. Next, Jesus reminds His disciples that His Father has revealed to Him all these truths, and that only the Son knows the Father, and only the Son discloses the Father to His people. Jesus is underscoring this truth, that we can know that God operates according to His good pleasure to choose His people for salvation because Jesus has told us so. Our salvation does not rest in our obedience or the strength of our faith or knowledge. Rather, it rests in God's divine choice of His people whom He will save. Then comes that blessed comforting truth. Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Men naturally believe that their fates are upon their own shoulders, and we labor to save ourselves. to improve ourselves to please God by our own good works. All false religions are based on this scheme of works righteousness. It seems so reasonable, wise, and prudent to us that there must be some path of obedience that can set us right with Almighty God. But the truth is we can never achieve what we must have, perfect obedience to God's commandments. We're always burdened by our failures, by our sins that we carry along with us. But when we come to Christ and trust in Him to relieve us and to save us, He takes away those burdens. He bears them away in His own body on the tree, Peter told us. He is judged in our place as our substitute in the offering He made to God to satisfy the divine justice we had broken Jesus replaces our labor with His own heavy labor and suffering and death in our place. As for all our other cares and labors, when we trust in Jesus, we come to understand that our happiness and rest and peace in the end won't be what we accomplish ourselves. Rather, our joy and rest and reward come from the promises of Jesus to us. Our labor and heaviness are replaced by the joy of Christ working for us and in us. We no longer labor for our own righteousness and salvation because Christ has finished all that labor in our place. It is only in Christ that we find rest for our souls. And Jesus is no slave driver of His people whom He loves. He is not an unreasonable master to us because He is meek and lowly of heart. It is joyous to know because the very One who is meek and lowly of heart to us is the Almighty Creator of heaven and earth. To us, Jesus is and always will be our Lamb of God. To all our foes, Jesus is the Lion of the tribe of Judah. There is comfort indeed for believers in tribulation because God has chosen to reveal the gospel to babes. There is comfort in Christ's salvation and in submitting ourselves to His protection and rule. As Christ's sheep, we can find rest and peace when we obey the gentle commands of our Good Shepherd and trust only in Him for our deliverance from all the troubles that we face. And now we come to that topic of comfort unto glory." The Lord Jesus had other statements of comfort to his people. We can't cover them all in this sort of a short series reviewing the comfort that he provides for us in tribulation and trouble. But as he prepared to go to the cross and then to ascend into heaven, Naturally, that meant that he would leave the presence of his disciples. That is in bodily form, for Christ is always with his people. Whether in body or in spirit makes no difference because he's God of all gods and he knows all things and he can act just as effectively in spirit as he can in physical presence, can he not? And so as he prepared to go to the cross and to ascend to his father, his disciples are sad because He will no longer be there with them physically. But Jesus promised us this in John 14 at verse 1, "'Let not your hearts be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am, there ye may be also." Now, first of all, we notice that Christ commands His people to not let their hearts be troubled. And then He goes on to provide substantial reasons why we ought to obey His commandment. Christ is God and is to be trusted as God. Now that to us may seem like a simple thing, but it's really not so simple because the incarnation in no wise takes away from his deity and all mighty power. This is something that no doubt his disciples and the world, the unbelieving Jews, and even sadly all believers from time to time, we fail to grasp the mighty power of our Lord Jesus because we assume that being in bodily form, being incarnate, he must suffer under the same limitations as all of us do. And surely he did suffer from restrictions on his glory, on his beauty. He didn't suffer in any restriction on his power, although he restrained the use of his power in so many places, and yet in so many other places he did not. He healed from morning to night in some of these locations that he went to, to the extent that he grew tired and needed rest, needed a vacation. They went apart for a while, you remember, at one point in his ministry. And yet what he's exhorting us here is to trust him just like we trust God, whom we have not seen. It seems to be harder to trust a person whom we've seen than whom we've not seen. And yet, this is the sad irony of our sort of broken down thoughts, the fall that has beset us. The Lord Jesus would have us trust in Him as the God He is rather than limit Him as the man that we perceive Him to be. It was said of the Lord Jesus, His name is Emmanuel, that being interpreted, God with us. This is an astounding truth. And yet it didn't appear before most of the people that laid eyes on Him. And it did appear to the disciples at the Mount of Transfiguration. And it appeared to the Apostle John in that great vision in Revelation chapter 1. He saw that glory and he fell down on his face in fear. But you remember the Lord Jesus touched him and said, fear not, fear not. And so it is that perhaps we would do well to have a little more fear of the Lord Jesus and His mighty power. not so as to drive us away from Him, but rather to drive us towards Him, that we might lay hold upon Him as God, a very God, manifest in the flesh." You remember the Apostle John wrote at the beginning of his book that the Word, that is the Lord Jesus, was made flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His glory. the glory as of the only begotten of God, full of grace and truth. So we are to trust in and rely upon and believe Jesus because He is God. And if there is any way in which we trust in God, we are also to trust in the Lord Jesus on that account. And so it goes against our carnal thinking that so meek and lowly a man as the Lord Jesus is God of very God, and yet Christ assures us we can trust Him because He is the very God. But notice that He says, in my Father's house are many mansions, places of heavenly abode for His people. You see now where He is transitioning His people seek the fulfillment of the kingdom primarily in glory in His Father's house. We may not have mansions in this world, but one day we shall have mansions in His Father's house. And these mansions have already been established. You know, the Jews argued over how many mansions a righteous man would have. Some rabbi said seven. and others said, it depends on what you've done in this world and so forth. But there are many mansions, the Lord Jesus says. And then in that curious phrase that he added, if it had not been so, I would have told you. There's a sense in which Jesus is saying that what you've heard is true. And if it weren't so, I would have disabused you of that hope. But you see, this is the very time in which Christ needs to establish that hope in His people because they will soon recognize at the cross that the Lord Jesus is not going to set up that earthly kingdom they had trusted that He would set up at this time. And therefore, their big plans and their schemes to be sitting on thrones with the Lord Jesus are going to have to be put off for quite a while, aren't they? But Christ is introducing and substituting the better for the lesser here. The hope in the promise of Christ here is far better. Far better that we should be in the presence of God, in glory, in the mansions, than that we should skitter around in some lesser habitations in this world. And you see on TV, you see all those rich condominiums and mansions in New York City on the 37th floor. You know, they rent you a whole floor for $25 million a year or whatever. You look out over the vistas and so forth. That ain't got nothing on the mansions of glory which the Lord Jesus has promised us. He confirms these true beliefs of the Lord's people. If it were not so, I would have told you. Not in this life, but in that glorious life which the Lord Jesus has yet to bring us into. And then he says that He is preparing a place for us. Christ is preparing a place for us. Now, we don't know exactly what the Lord Jesus is doing to prepare us a place. I'm sure the angels have been set to whatever great purposes God has to reveal to us in these places of glory that he will give to us, to his people, when he brings us home to be with him. But two things I bring to your attention as Christ preparing a place for us. For one thing, at the cross, he went to make us fit and pure to live in these places of glory. that He has perfected His people by His dying on the tree for our sins. And as the writer of Hebrews said, which we studied so carefully several months ago, that we have boldness by the blood of Jesus to enter into the veil, into the holiest of places, into the very presence of God. And Christ's work of making Preparing places for us cannot exclude the great work of salvation that He wrought for us and the great change that He has worked for us and on us and in us that we might be brought into the presence of God. And in heaven, the Lord Jesus prepares glories for His people. He prepares glories for His people, untold glories, which I have not seen nor ear heard, but which the Spirit has shown to His people." Do you remember what Brother Gill said about this text? That Christ has already taken possession of our place in glory for us. He's there as the advance party, as it were. to, as it were, check it out and reserve it for us and make it sure and prepare it for us for when He brings us into His presence. And then He says that He's coming to take us to be there with Him. If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto Myself that where I am there ye may be also. It is to be in the presence of Christ that is our greatest comfort. Not so much where we will be in the presence of Christ, but that we are in the presence of Christ. That's the thing of most value to the Lord's people. And people talk about dying, and they talk about the streets of gold, and they talk about all meeting up with all their dead friends. But really, more important, more glorious, and more to be longed for than that is to be in the presence of the Lord Jesus. Some songwriter put it this way, that where Jesus is, that's heaven for me. Where Jesus is, that's heaven for me. But He's coming to take us there, and the final end is that we may be with Him. You remember in 1 Thessalonians 4, Paul sums up the resurrection and the coming of Christ with this, and so shall we ever be. with the Lord. When we meet the Lord Jesus, the next time we meet Him, from then on we shall ever be with the Lord. And we're to comfort one another with these words, especially in times of tribulation and sorrow and sickness and even death. So shall we ever be with the Lord. This is the promise of the Lord Jesus as He leaves us here for now, that one day we shall ever be with the Lord." Why? Because He's going to come to fetch us to be with Him. And this is an exceeding great comfort for us in our distresses, in our tribulation. Christ made these promises to us so that our hearts would not be troubled. When we think of all the troubles that we face in this life, what we're supposed to think of is these promises of Jesus. So our hearts will not be troubled. The promise that he made that he would come back and take us to be with him so that we would ever be with him in glory. These are his words of comfort to his people. Now, when the Lord Jesus prepared the disciples for His impending death and His resurrection and His ascension away from them unto His Father. He acknowledged that they would be filled with sorrow. More than that, He acknowledged they would be confronted with great tribulation. We read this text this morning, John chapter 16. At the beginning of that chapter, He talks about how they'd be kicked out of the synagogues and even put to death by people who thought when they murdered the Lord's people, they were doing God a great service. You remember the Apostle Paul was one such person. And even unto this very hour, there is violent tribulation being rang down upon the Lord's people somewhere or other. Some places less and some places more. But Jesus told us that would happen. I don't think that Joel Osteen has ever preached on that text. It doesn't fit into his false gospel and false encouragement that he preaches every Lord's Day at his gigantic church. But that's what Jesus told them. He told them there would be great tribulation. He acknowledged that when he died, they would be filled with sorrow. but then he would see them again, and no man could ever take that joy away from them again." And of course, this promise by Christ has a twofold fulfillment for the Lord's people. There was a sorrow that Christ had been put to death, and the joy came at His resurrection, didn't it? And then prophetically, There is a sorrow at Christ's ascending and leaving us here without his physical presence, and that is cured at our resurrection. So you see, the sorrow that is felt by the Lord's people for one thing or the other is fulfilled, is comforted, is wiped away, if you will, by the resurrection of Christ and by the resurrection of the Lord's people unto Christ. But then, after the Lord Jesus lays all those predicates, He says this at verse 33 of chapter 16, "...these things have I spoken unto you, that in me you might have peace. In the world you shall have tribulation, but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world." That we might have peace, the Lord Jesus has told us these things, that we might have comfort, You see, we only have comfort in Jesus. We only have peace in Jesus. We don't have peace in the world or with the world. In the world, you should have tribulation. But in Christ shall we have peace. In the words of Christ, in the promises of Christ made to us, we shall have peace. Notice how the Lord Jesus doesn't preach like false teachers of prosperity preach in these times. He is straight up with His people about what will happen. He doesn't sugarcoat what it means to be a Christian. He says we should take up our cross and follow Him, or else we can't be His disciples. He says that in the world you shall have tribulation. He says that you will be cast out and ostracized and hated of all men for the gospel's sake. You know, He's just not a good salesperson, is He? You think about the used car salesman who lies about all the virtues of his rattle trap that he's trying to pawn off on you. But not so the Lord Jesus. He's straight up with us. He tells us the truth about what we're in for, both good and bad, doesn't he? And the point is that if Christ's promise of tribulations is true, you see, then so are all the other promises of salvation and everlasting life that He made. The promises of eternal glory in His presence someday. So when we experience tribulation, we can check off that from the list of things that Christ promised to His people, and we can know that we are proceeding down Christ's list to the promised glorious end. but be of good cheer. I have overcome the world." The Lord Jesus concludes. Our God rules. Our Prince reigns. Jesus overcame sin and death and hell for us on the cross. He's overcome the world. So that instrument by which we receive tribulation is subject unto the power, rule, and authority of our Lord Jesus. And now you see we are waiting to see His enemies. His enemies and ours be made His footstool. Now this is a well-known symbol or metaphor for absolute subjugation of evil under the feet of Christ. There is something in the Middle Eastern Semitic history and tradition about the feet of the victor oppressing the head and the neck of the wicked enemy. And this is what Christ is referring to. You see, we see it now by the eye of faith, but one day we shall see it with our own eyes. We take comfort, the solemn promise of Christ, that he has overcome the world and therefore we should have peace. We should be of good cheer. You remember in Romans 16 at verse 20 that the apostle Paul appropriates what is true in Christ as soon to be true in Christ's people. The God of peace shall crush Satan under your feet shortly, he predicted. The God of peace. Now, some people in this modern world will complain that it's just not very peaceful and loving. Talk about victory over the foe like that. Y'all need to stop gloating and looking forward to that sort of thing. It's not United Nations talk, is it? But it is the talk of God, of the Lord Jesus and of His Apostle. The God of peace shall crush Satan under your feet shortly. Why? Because Satan is the enemy of peace, isn't he? He's the enemy of the Prince of Peace. But one day soon, under our feet also, God shall crush the enemy of our peace, just as Christ has already crushed the enemy of our peace. And in all of this, our only comfort flows through the grief of Christ at Calvary. It only flows to us on account of the grief and sorrow of Christ at Calvary. It is appropriate that He should have, as it were, substituted Himself for us in the greatest tribulation that He might overcome our tribulation, our sorrow, and our judgment. There is an Old Testament exhortation to trust in the Lord in dark times. It's based upon the Lord Jesus' suffering and vindication at the cross. And we read that passage earlier, Isaiah chapter 50, and we read at verse 1, "...Behold, for your iniquities have you sold yourselves, and for your transgressions has your mother put away. Wherefore, when I came, was there no man? When I called, was there none to answer? Is my hand shortened at all that it cannot redeem? Or have I no power to deliver?" God is talking here about the sin of His people and how they have sold themselves into bondage because of their disobedience. They're subject to wrath, subject to justice, subject to destruction for their crimes. And there's no man, is there, that can redeem us? None but Jesus, that is. So when God looks around to survey for a Redeemer, He only finds Himself. He only finds the dear Son incarnate in human flesh. He sends Himself made in the image of man to redeem his people because there is no other redeemer to be located. We can't save ourselves. We don't have a champion other than Christ to save us from ourselves. But then he talks in the next few verses about his great power. Behold, at my rebuke, I drive up to sea. I make the rivers a wilderness. Their fish stinketh because there is no water and dieth for thirst. I clothe the heavens with blackness. I make sackcloth their covering. This is meant to remind the Jewish readers of the means by which God redeemed His people from slavery in Egypt. He's just reciting a few of the acts of judgment that He wrought against their enslavers. And so also He will work such salvation with mighty power against the enslavers of His poor people bound by sin, won't He? He will satisfy on the cross the justice that our sins have put upon us and rescue us from it and destroy him with the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver those who fear of death for all their lifetime, subject to bondage. So he has all this power to rescue his people. He showed it to us in Egypt in case we had forgotten. He has all that power for the saving of his people. And then at verse 4, "...the Lord God hath given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary. He waketh morning by morning, he waketh mine ear to hear. As the learned, the Lord God hath opened mine ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned back." Now we're speaking of God in the humanity of the Lord Jesus, the second person coming to this world in obedience to do the will of God. He has accomplished this promise by exhorting and by promising us all of this rescue which we've been studying all these past Lord's Days. Christ was obedient and willing to make an offering for our sin. In Hebrews 10, this poetic idiomatic text is translated, a body that has prepared for me. That is that the opening of the ear, the obedience of Christ described in Isaiah 50 is in fact His obedience to the incarnation and to make the sacrifice in His body in the place of His people. And then look at verse 5. The Lord God hath opened mine ear, I was not rebellious, neither turned back. I gave my back to the smiters and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair. I hid not my face from shame and spitting, for the Lord God will help me. Therefore shall I not be confounded. Therefore have I set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be ashamed. Here is Christ's work on the cross, and notice His confidence that His work will succeed. He will accomplish what was set out for Him to accomplish by being made in the form of human flesh, by being incarnate to be the Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world. He'll not be ashamed. He'll be vindicated. He'll not be ashamed of any failure. There was no doubt in Christ's mind that if He completed the work His Father sent Him to perform on the cross, that He would make a substitution for His people. He would redeem His people whom He loves. He would rescue us by His dying for us on the cross. It wasn't an iffy thing. It wasn't like the way we look at trials and troubles and we wonder and we don't know the outcome and we don't know whether what we're doing will succeed. We don't know whether if we go into battle to save our country, whether we will fail or whether we will be victorious. There is that always in everything we do, that ache of concern that what we're doing will turn out to be of no use whatsoever, but not so the Lord Jesus." That's why He could go with confidence and obedience and set His face like flint to go to the cross because He knew He would not be ashamed. He would not come up short in the end. He wouldn't have any reason to hide His face from His people in humiliation or from His Father that He had tried and failed to save His people. No, He obtained the victory and saved all of His sheep whom His Father had given to Him. In verses 8 and 9, He is near that justifies me. Who will contend with me? Let us stand together. Who is my adversary? Let him come near to me. Behold, the Lord God will help me. Who is He that shall condemn me? Lo, they all shall wax old as a garment. The moth shall eat them up. Now this text of Scripture is very revealing because it describes people who would accuse Christ. Who would accuse Christ? Probably the devil, first of all, principally. Who would accuse Christ? Who would contend with him? Who would argue that his work of redemption was not sufficient? Who would be an adversary? Come on, let's duke it out, almost as if to say. Because you're going to lose. I've already won, the Lord Jesus says. The Lord God will help me. Who's he that shall condemn me? Lo, they shall all wax old as a garment. A moth shall eat them up. But not so the Lord Jesus. He rose again into everlasting life after he obtained the victory. But notice that Paul recites or paraphrases these two verses in Romans 8 and applies them not to Christ's vindication, but to our own vindication by Christ. He makes it clear, Paul does, that Christ's vindication in Isaiah 50 is for us. It's for our vindication, not because we suffered, in the place of Christ, but because Christ suffered in the place of us. You see, we are justified and uncondemned in Christ. Remember what Paul said, who shall lay any charge against God's elect, it is God that justifies. You see here where Christ refers to being justified, He says He is near that justifies. That is, His Father is who justifies Christ. Christ is vindicated and justified for all of His suffering and affliction on our account. He is vindicated. And we in Him, you see Paul is saying, we're vindicated in Christ. The same one that vindicated and justified Christ when He rose from the grave is the very one that is God of very God who justified us and therefore no one can lay any charge against us because God has justified us. And then he says, who is he that shall condemn me? Who can condemn Christ? Nobody. Nobody can condemn Christ, and Paul tells us that nobody can condemn us either. Because Christ was already condemned for us on the cross, and better than that, He's raised again. Better than that, He's seated at God's right hand. Better than that, He's making intercession for us. So you see that all of our comfort lies in Christ's sad yet victorious work at the cross. And His vindication, His justification, His uncondemnability is laid upon everyone, laid upon everyone who puts their trust in Him. And finally, there's verse 10, "...who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of the servant, that walketh in darkness and hath no light. Let him trust in the name of the Lord and stay upon his God." Here is an exhortation to the people who trust in that man, that great glorious God-man whose victory has been described in the very verses just preceding verse 10 of Isaiah 50. What about the Lord's people who've trusted in the Lord's servant and yet they see nothing but blackness and darkness in this life? What does the writer Isaiah tell them? there to take comfort in darkness, there to rest and rely upon the name of our God. This is a description of how, like Christ, faced bravely and with confidence and knew he would not be humiliated by the work he did on the cross to save his people. So too, you see, we are to put our trust in that same person and in his same work And we are to also adopt the confidence of the Lord Jesus. We shall not be condemned. We shall not be unjustified. But we shall be saved by the obedience of the Lord's servant, the Lord Jesus, who suffered and died for us. And therefore, you see, no matter what blackness and darkness we find ourselves in, we lay hold on Christ as our comfort, as our hope, as our peace. Of course, we now, unlike the Old Testament saints, we now have the fulfillment and the explanation of the mechanism God uses to save us by the dying of His Son, by the substitution of Jesus, by the sacrifice of the Lamb of God that takes away our sin. We're in a better position than the people who first read verse 10 of Isaiah 50. It's not so dark for us as it was for them, is it? It's not so night as it was for them. Because for us, we see the daybreak approaching. The Lord Jesus has accomplished what in Isaiah 50 was yet a prophecy of accomplishment. And sure enough, the Lord Jesus, the suffering servant, was not ashamed, is not ashamed, and will never be ashamed. And so we take hope in that in our trials, in our tribulations. We are so blessed that Jesus has perfected our redemption already by His obedience. We are so much blessed, more than Old Testament saints. As the hymn writer put it, we now look back to see. the burdened out its air when hanging on the accursed tree for all our guilt was there." We love the words of that hymn by an unknown writer. Behold, a spotless victim dies. My surety on the tree, the Lamb of God, the sacrifice. He gave Himself for me. Whatever curse was mine, He bore. The wormwood and the gall, There in that lone mysterious hour, my cup, he drained it all. Lord Jesus, thou, and none beside, its bitterness could know, nor other tell thy joy's full tide, that from that cup should flow. Thine is the joy, but yet is mine, is ours as one with thee. My joy flows from that grief of thine, Thy death brings life to me." You see, there was great grief for Christ when He drank that cup of judgment we should have drunk. But the hymn writer is making the point that in the first place, the only one who can tell the joy of the Lord Jesus in the saving of His people is the Lord Jesus, and it flows from that bitter cup. But yet, even as Christ is in joy over saving us, It's also our joy too, isn't it? It's ours because we're one with Christ. Our joy flows from that grief of thine. And so it is in this world, in this life, our joy, our hope, our comfort flows from the grief of Christ on the cross. And yet He has entered into His comfort, into His joy. Final exhortation, Hebrews chapter 12, Seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that doth so easily beset us. Let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy set before Him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the majesty of God. For consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds." Our Lord Jesus is our example in suffering. He's our example in tribulation. He is our pattern. We are to endure tribulation and suffering like He did for us all the time He was anticipating the joy that was about to be revealed. the joy that He was fulfilling and bringing about, the saving of His people, the defeat of death and hell and sin. And you see, Paul in Romans 8 said these words, For I reckon that the suffering of this present world is not to be compared with the glories which shall be revealed in us. Here is the conclusion of the matter. That in the suffering, we look forward to the joy. In the sadness and heartache, we look forward to the glory. Just like Jesus did, just like Jesus has entered into His glory, into His joy, so too we are to enter into our glory and joy and sorrow and sadness because of what Jesus did for us. You remember the writer D.W. Whittle in those beautiful words, our pain shall then be over. We'll sin and sigh no more. Behind us all of sorrow and naught but joy before. A joy in our Redeemer as we to Him are nigh in the crowning day that's coming by and by. So let's partake of the Lord's table and rejoice. in the joy of Christ and rejoice in the joy that flows from Christ's sorrows at Calvary for us and think upon Christ's suffering and His looking forward to the joy when we are in tribulation and trouble and sorrow that we should also look forward to the joy that is set before us that Jesus promised us that we might have peace that our hearts might not be troubled. I'd like to ask Brother Whitten if he'd give thanks for the bread that pictures the body of Christ broken for us. The Lord Jesus, the night He was betrayed, took the bread and He blessed it and He broke it and He said, take and eat, this is My body which is broken for you, do this in remembrance of Me. Let's give thanks for the cup that pictures the blood of the Lord Jesus shed to make atonement for our sins. Oh God, our Father, we rejoice in your dear son, whom you sent to be your lamb to be slain in the place of your people. We thank you that the Lord Jesus shed his own blood for us on the cross to take away our sin, that he as our great high priest might have a suitable and perfect offering to bring into your presence for the atonement. for the propitiation of our crimes, that You might be satisfied by the offering of Your Son. Lord, we thank You that He was faithful. We thank You that He knew He would be vindicated. He'd be justified. He could not be condemned for what He did. He knew He would be successful in the saving of Your people. We thank You that we can rest in hope upon that sacrifice Jesus made and the blood that He shed to redeem us, that you are satisfied with it, and that Christ has entered into the joy of the redeeming of His people. And so we too take joy in the fact that we have been redeemed. Help us not to think anything can trump that joy and that glory, the glory even that has yet to be revealed in us. Help us to long for that day Help the knowledge of that to comfort your people and bring us peace, that our hearts will not be troubled no matter what we face in this world, we pray. Thank you for this cup that pictures the blood that Jesus shed for us. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen. The Scriptures tell us after they had supped and he took the cup and he blessed it, and he said, drink ye all of it, this cup is the new covenant in my blood for the remission of sin. Do it as often as ye do it in remembrance of me. And the Scriptures tell us that as often as we eat this bread and drink this cup, we preach the Lord's death until He comes. Let's stand and sing number 123 in the Black Book. The holiest we enter in perfect peace with God, through whom we found our center in Jesus and His blood. Though great may be our dullness in thought and word and deed, we glory in the fullness of Him that meets our need. Number 123.