Joel chapter 1. This morning the sermon is going to come from verses 14 through 20, and so I will read in your hearing verses 1 through 13 at this point. But before I read these 13 verses, I want to remind us just briefly about the book of Joel. The date at which this book was written is uncertain, but it's likely that this book was written during the period of Amos, during the period of Jeroboam II, when he was reigning in the north. But apparently the audience that this prophecy is written to is not the northern kingdom, but the southern kingdom, because there's no mention of the tribe of Ephraim. There's no mention of the capital of Samaria. In fact, the priests are routinely addressed as a problem, and so we know that This is likely written to the southern kingdom. We also see the house of God, the temple being referred to in verse 16 of this chapter. And so, we believe it's written to the southern kingdom very early on, and yet it's dealing with a certain catastrophe that's occurred. There's been a pestilence amongst the people of God. God is reproving them for their sin, and yet they're insensitive to it. They don't quickly respond to God's chastening hand. And so we see Joel telling them that God's chastened you and you're not responding properly. So, God then, through Joel, threatens them with greater judgment. He says, God's going to chasten you even more severely until you get it. But then God, through Joel, exhorts the people to repent of their sins and promises that He will bless them upon repentance. And in speaking of those blessings that will come to the people of God, then they repent. God, through the prophet Joel, then also prophesies of greater blessings that will yet come when Messiah comes and brings in the Kingdom of God. Now here, let us just look at verses 1-13 of chapter 1. In verse 1, we have the inscription. We're told about the authority of the prophet. He's going to speak the Word of the Lord. We're told about his person. He is the son of Bethuel. But then after the inscription or the introduction in verse 1, we have the situation in which the people of God find them in verses 2-13. We see the present judgment of God upon the people. We find that the judgment is a judgment without precedent. God says in verses 1-17, He says this judgment is great in verses 2 and 3. He says in verse 2, because it's so great, it should be acknowledged as such. You should recognize it as such. And you should even, in verse 3, not forget this judgment. You should pass this judgment on to your children. Let them know about what took place in this day because it is a very severe judgment. Having spoken of the greatness of the judgment in verses 2 and 3, God, through Joel, speaks of the nature of the judgment in verses 4 and 6 and 7. He lets us know that it's a pestilence. It's an agricultural judgment that obviously then affects the economy. in an agricultural society. Having spoken of the fact that this judgment is without precedent, he also tells us that this judgment is without repentance. That the God's people have not responded yet to this judgment with repentance. He calls the priests to mourn in verses 9 and 13. And he also calls the workers, the majority of the congregation who would have been farmers, he calls them to mourn in verses 10, Let us read Joel 1, 1-13. hath the locust eaten, and that which the locust hath left hath the canker-worm eaten, and that which the canker-worm hath left hath the caterpillar eaten. Awake, ye drunkards, and weep, and howl, all ye drinkers of wine, because of the new wine, for it is cut off from your mouth. For a nation is come up upon my land, strong and without number, whose teeth are the teeth of a lion. And he hath the cheek teeth of a great lion. He hath laid my vine waste, and barked my fig tree. He hath made it clean bare, and cast it away. The branches thereof are made white. Lament like a virgin girded with sackcloth for the husband of her youth. The meat offering and the drink offering is cut off from the house of the Lord. The priests, the Lord's ministers, mourn. The field is wasted. The land, mourn it. For the corn is wasted, and the new wine is dried up, the oil languishes. Be ye ashamed, O ye husbandmen, howl, O ye vine dressers, for the wheat and for the barley, because the harvest of the field is perished. The vine is dried up, and the fig tree languishes, the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, and the apple tree, even all the trees of the field are withered. because joy is withered away from the sons of men. Gird yourselves and lament, ye priests, how ye ministers of the altar. Come, lie all night in sackcloth, ye ministers of my God, for the meat offering and the drink offering is withholden from the house of your God." That ends the reading of God's holy and inspired Word. I'll read from verse 14 through the end of the chapter. Let us hear God's Word. Sanctify ye a fast. Call a solemn assembly. Gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land into the house of the Lord your God, and cry unto the Lord. Alas for the day! For the day of the Lord is at hand, and as of destruction from the Almighty shall it come. Is not the meat cut off before our eyes? Yea, joy and gladness from the house of our God. The seed is rotten under their cloths. The garners are laid desolate. The barns are broken down, for the corn is withered. How do the beasts groan? The herds of cattle are perplexed, because they have no pasture. Yea, the flocks of sheep are made desolate. O Lord, to Thee will I cry. For the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness, and the flame hath burned all the trees of the field. The beasts of the field cry also unto thee, for the rivers of waters are dried up, and the fire hath devoured the pastures of the wilderness." Thus ends the reading of God's holy and inspired word. On this Lord's Day, I thought that it might be appropriate for us to consider a passage of Scripture that might encourage us regarding preparation for coming to the Lord's Supper. We find the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians chapter 11 encouraging us, calling us, exhorting us to preparation before the Lord's Supper. Now, there have been churches in the Presbyterian tradition, generally in Scotland, Scottish churches have generally thought it necessary then to have a preparatory service to assist the people of God in that preparation, though 1 Corinthians chapter 11 never calls the church necessarily to a particular service of preparation. And so I think it's helpful occasionally for us though to have a service, not necessarily every quarter because then we would tend to think that the service was our preparation rather than our actual preparation. But nonetheless, a service can assist us in our preparation. And so I thought it might be appropriate for this quarter for us to actually have a service in which we're encouraged to prepare ourselves for the blessings that come in the celebration of the Lord's Supper. So having chosen to have a preparatory service, I thought this text might be a good text for us to look at. I have preached through this text before when we looked at the book of Joel a little over a year, year and a half ago. When we considered this portion, we looked at the exhortation here in verses 14 and 20 as a call to conduct a public fast in verse 14, and then the rationale for calling a public fast in verses 15 and 20. And clearly, that is what is going on here. A call to a public fast and a rationale for calling that public fast. But in the very midst of this passage, I want us to focus on what I think is even at the heart of this passage, more than the outward public fast it's called to. And that is the exhortation to cry unto the Lord. To, in desperation, pray unto the Lord for relief. That's what God is telling the people of God that they need to do. Now, He's telling them that they ought to do that with the externals of a corporate fast day. But at the core, He's calling them to recognize their condition of desperation and then out of that desperation, cry unto God for deliverance. And so that is our focus this morning. As I read verses 1-13, in the Scripture reading, I hope you've seen the situation. The situation that the people of God found themselves in then. They were presently, at that time, under a great judgment of God. Now, as we read that, some of you might have recognized some similarities with today. Last summer, we underwent a pretty severe drought in the northeast, northwest, east, or excuse me, southeast. And certainly, the crops were affected. And the agricultural economy was affected. And over the last year, we've seen gasoline prices rise nearly double. And we've felt the economic crunch of that. And so there are some similarities. And as I thought about those similarities this week, though, I also thought it would be appropriate for us to recognize these things aren't exactly similar. I mean, let's not think. As severe as the judgment and chastening hand of God is upon us at this moment, let us not make it bigger than it is. I think the judgment that the prophet Joel was speaking of is even greater than what we're facing. I think the economic situation that's being dealt with here is much, much greater than ours. And it would be wrong for us to minimize the economic chastisement that we as a nation are feeling and that's affecting the godly in our nation as well. But at the same time, let's be thankful for the economic prosperity that we still do sustain even in this downturn. Even in this great downturn, I see none of you coming here with signs of starvation." So, we have much to be thankful for. And so do the people of God in this time have much to be thankful for because God was chastening them and He was also sending His prophets to speak to them that they might repent. God was looking favorably upon them in His spanking and in sending them the prophets to tell them why they're getting the spanking and why they should respond with repentance. And so, God's Word is still relevant to us today. And so these words that are written nearly 3,000 years ago still are as relevant today to us, the people of God, as they were then. So let's first consider in this exhortation of verses 14-20, first the cry unto the Lord. He calls us to cry unto the Lord. He tells them, sanctify you. Sanctify you. Sanctify ye. He's saying you need to prepare yourselves. You need to separate yourselves. He's calling them to a particular observation, an external fast day. But He's saying that's going to require some internal preparation. Sanctify ye a fast. Prepare for it. Now, no details are given as to what this fast would encompass. But we do learn in Jonah 3.7, we learn there of a complete fast which actually not only included not drinking and not eating, but also it included even refraining from lawful pleasures. Things that you might enjoy doing. Certain recreations that you might refrain from doing for a day or two while you humble yourselves as the people of God. But he says, not only must you prepare for this, day of humiliation, this time of humiliation, of calling upon the Lord, but you also must call it. Saying a particular day must be appointed and then it must be communicated by those in authority to those amongst the people of God. And he says you must call a solemn assembly. Literally, these words, a solemn assembly in the Hebrew mean a time of restraint. They're saying call a time where You're just not as giddy and you're just a little bit more sober and serious in evaluating where you are at, where the church is at, where your nation's at. Take stock of what's going on. He's calling the people to public humiliation. George Hutchison said, private humiliation is not enough under public calamities. In other words, when the calamity is so great corporately, then the humiliation ought to be corporate. He calls the people of God to gather the elders and all the inhabitants of the land. In other words, there's a distinction being made between the rulers and the ruled here. I think the reason is, is because the ringleaders in the sin need to be the ringleaders in repentance. In other words, The elders have a greater responsibility for the condition of the people. And so they need to be there humbled before God, crying unto the Lord with the people. They are part of the people and with their greater responsibility, they ought to demonstrate a greater repentance. Here they're told to do this in the house of your God. A reference to the temple at Jerusalem. That's why I believe The prophecy is to the southern kingdom, though we don't find it explicitly told us that. But then the reason is given in verse 14. The reason is spelled out. Why you should separate yourselves unto this special day and call everybody there is to cry unto the Lord. Now here, this word cry does mean pray. But it is a certain type of prayer. It's a shriek because of danger. It's a desperate prayer that's being called for. Quite often, we fail to realize how desperate we are. We put much, much too much confidence in our own devices. And because we do, we fail to see how desperate we are apart from God. and His grace and His deliverance. So He calls them to do all this so that they might cry. That they prepare themselves, set themselves apart, minimize their recreations and pleasures for a time so they might take stock of what's going on. So they might humble themselves. Do you remember Solomon's prayer at the dedication of the temple that God is calling them to meet in. We find it in 1 Kings 8. I'll just read a portion of it there. A very interesting prayer of Solomon at the dedication of the temple. In verse 37 and following, we read these words. We pick up in the middle of that prayer. If there be in the land famine, if there be pestilence, blasting, vildew, locust, or if there be caterpillar, if their enemy besiege them in the land of their cities, whatsoever plague, whatsoever sickness there be, what prayer and supplication so ever be made by any man, or by all thy people Israel, which shall know every man the plague of his own heart, and spread forth his hands toward this house, then hear in heaven thy dwelling place, and forgive." and do and give to every man according to his ways whose heart thou knowest. For thou, even thou only, knowest the hearts of all the children of men, that they may fear thee all the days that they live in the land which thou gavest unto their father." Here Solomon, in his prayer at the dedication of the temple, says, to always hear your people. Be pleased when things are bad. When you're chastening them for their sin, be pleased to then hear their prayers of desperation and deliver them. And he also tells us the end. He asks God to deliver His people out of their chastisements to the end that they would fear or reverence God. Not that they would take God or take advantage of God, or think that they've twisted God's arm to give Him a break, but that they would, out of calling upon God and having been delivered by God, then fear God all the more. And that's exactly what we see here. God has placed a plague upon them, a pestilence. But as of yet, that chastisement in the external realm has not registered in the internal realm. Solomon prayed that when the people of God experienced a plague, that eventually that would, by God's grace and through the word by the prophets, lead them to recognize the plague in their own heart. And from a knowledge of the plague of their own heart, then plead for forgiveness. and having found forgiveness, then to fear or to reverence. And so really, this message that God is bringing through Joel is akin, it's parallel, isn't it, to Solomon's prayer at the very dedication of the temple. The great desire for Joel is that through his word and through the power of the Spirit, God's people as a corporate body would recognize the plague of their own hearts, would recognize that it was the plague of their own hearts that is led to the plague in their vineyards. And that's what they have yet to see at this point. So, God, through Joel, calls them to cry unto the Lord. Cry unto Yahweh. Cry unto the self-existent, all-knowing, all-powerful One. Why would you call on anybody else to get you out of a mess? When we have free access to the One who knows everything and has all power to deliver us. Why would you ever call on someone that knows in part and only has some limited power or strength or might? Why not go to the best? The supreme best. The Lord God Himself for deliverance. And yet so often we go to our own devices, don't we? So he tells us to cry unto the Lord. And then he tells us why we should cry unto the Lord in verses 15 and following. First, he tells us in verse 15, there's a great judgment coming. Alas for the day, for the day of the Lord is at hand, and as a destruction from the Almighty shall it come. He says the day of the Lord is just around the corner. Now, what he's not speaking of is the last day. Quite often, we get very hung up and many Christians get hung up when they see the day of the Lord in the Bible and they assume that every time the day of the Lord is spoken of, it means the very last day. The last day of the Lord. Now, the way that this term, the day of the Lord, is used throughout Old Testament prophecy is it's referring to a visitation of God. Maybe a visitation in mercy. Quite often, a visitation in judgment. or chastisement. But it doesn't always refer to the last dead. What we're told here is a greater judgment is coming. You think you've been hit hard? If you don't respond, God is telling you through Joel, you're going to get another hit. It's going to be harder than this first one. As bad as it's been. You've had these four armies of animals come and ravage your crop. One after another. One gets done. Then another comes in and finishes off a little bit more, and then another a little bit more, and another a little bit more. It seems to suggest that this might have been, and some commentators believe this may have been a four-year famine. That these swarms of animals, or which kind of animals devoured the crop one year, and then the next year, and then the next year, and then the next year. Things are getting tight through this great judgment. And he says, it's going to come. And eventually, it's going to come upon a whole nation in the Babylonian captivity when they're taken away for 70 years. This is a great judgment coming. He says in verses 16 through 18, a judgment's already come. You need to call upon the Lord because something is coming that's going to be tough. But he's saying there's also something that's already come. Recognize that as the hand of the Lord. He says of this judgment that's already come, He says, first, your worship is languishing. He says, is not the meat cut off before your eyes? Yea, joy and gladness from the house of our God. He says you don't have any need anymore. And so you can't offer your meat offerings like you once could. The economic downturn is affecting the corporate worship. If you don't have as much, you can't give as much. And the tendency, let's face it, is when things get tight, where's the easiest place to cut? So the proceeds aren't coming in through the church, so the ministers aren't being able to carry out the sacrificial system as they were called to do. So, meat's been cut off, which is referring to the worship. Also, joy and gladness from the house of our God. Now, which one came first? Was it because there was less meat that the joy and gladness was cut off? Or was it there's less meat because joy and gladness were cut off? I don't think in verse 16 you can tell by the grammatical context. You can't tell from the grammar. But if you go up in the context, look at verse 12. The vine is dried up, the fig tree languishes, the pomegranate tree, the palm tree also, the apple trees, and all the trees of the field are withered because... This is a good translation of the Hebrew. Because... You want to know why there's no fruit on all these types of trees? because joy is withered from the sons of men." Here God pinpoints the reason. He's saying this all started when you just started incrementally, Lord's Day by Lord's Day, just going through the motions in your worship. When you just showed up because you've shown up so many Lord's Days in a row, and you just, it's a habit, and you just do it. But little by little by little, the joy and gladness of being in God's presence and worshipping the true and living God is dwindled. He says that is the cause for no fruit on your trees. That's why all your trees have been eaten up. Because you've lost the joy of worshipping the Lord. This was prophesied in Deuteronomy 28. God had told His people through Moses in this chapter on the blessings and curses that this would befall them if they didn't continue to worship God with joy and with gladness. Deuteronomy 28, 47-49. Because thou servest not the Lord thy God with joyfulness and with gladness of heart for the abundance of all things, Therefore shalt thou serve thine enemies which the Lord shall send against thee, in hunger, and in thirst, and in nakedness, and in want of all things, and he shall put a yoke of iron upon thy neck until he hath destroyed thee. The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from afar, from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle flyeth, a nation whose tongue thou shalt not understand." He's saying ultimately this is going to lead to the Babylonian captivity. You're going to be destroyed. He's not saying that every true Jew is going to die. He's not saying that the people of God is going to be destroyed. What he's saying is your nation as Judah is going to be destroyed. You're going to cease from being a civic nation anymore. And it's all going to be due because you stop serving the Lord with joyfulness and gladness. for the abundance of these things. You've had all this abundance, and you started incrementally beginning to think that it was of your own strength and power. You stopped thanking God as you once did, and you stopped worshipping with joy and gladness. So, he says, the judgment's already come, and this is the reason why it's come upon you. And he says, not only is worship languishing, the crop's languishing. The seed or literally the grain is rotten under your claws. The garners are laid desolate, the barns are broken down. It's been so long since you've had an extra storehouse that you're not even keeping your barns up because there's nothing to put in them. These years of pestilence have eventually dwindled all your extra storehouses. You've gotten to the point where you're not even maintaining your storehouses because you don't expect to be able to fill them. The corn or the crop is withered. The crop is not. It's nil. He says this is affecting the animals in verse 18. They're languishing as well. How do the beasts groan? The herds of the cattle are perplexed. Kind of personifying animals, isn't it? As though the herds are wondering, what in the world is going on here? This is tough. He goes on to say, "...because they have no pasture, yea, the flocks of sheep are made desolate." They have no place to feed. So he says, this is the reason why you should call upon the name of the Lord. Because a great judgment is coming, a great judgment already has come. This judgment has affected you economically, but at heart it's related to worship. It's related to your attitude and disposition in corporate worship. And he gives us a third reason in verses 19 and 20. God, through Joel, tells us that the people of God ought to be motivated to cry unto God because Joel is crying unto the Lord. Because the prophets pray. I think we see that the prophets' role was to pray for the people of God just as the elders' job is to pray for the people of God. Remember in Acts 6-4, And it is clear that God in His providence is calling for the establishment of the office of deacons in the Jerusalem church. It's then when, by providence and the Word of God, the apostles finally realize, hey, we'd do a lot better if we restricted our tasks to prayer and the ministry of the Word. And we assigned the temporal tasks to another group of men who were filled with the Spirit that they might oversee, that they might rule in that area of temporal needs of the people of God. So, the prophet's carrying out that principle here. He's praying. He's resolving himself to cry unto the Lord. He resolves first, O Lord, to Thee will I cry. He's called the people of God to, but he doesn't say, I'll wait until they start crying and then I'll cry. No, he says, Cry unto the Lord, people, and God, I'm resolved to do it. And God was pleased in this prophecy to let us know that. To let them know that. It wasn't that Joel was trying to impress them. This is God's work. God thought it was profitable for them to know that Joel the prophet wasn't just coming to slam them, but he came with a message that was very tough. He came, he was the vehicle of a message that was stepping on the toes of the people of God. But he's also the vehicle for God to tell them that this man that I've chosen to say this message to you, I've also called to be a man who's crying to the Lord for you. He's a preacher, but he's a prayer. And that's why you ought to cry unto God, because he's crying unto God. He lets us know the reason for his prayer in verse 19, 20. Indeed, for the fire hath devoured the pastures or habitations of the wilderness. He's really just repeating what he's already said with different words concerning the languishing of the crops and of the animals. The flame hath burnt all the trees of the field. The beasts of the field cry or pant unto thee. It sounds like there's potentially not only have these animals destroyed the crop, but there's been An inadequate supply of water. The fields have been browned. They've been ripe for wildfires. And it sounds like wildfires have spread. So they don't have their fruit. They don't have the common green in their pastures for their animals to feed upon. For the rivers of waters are dried up. Here it sounds like they have a drought. They're in a drought condition. The fire has devoured the pastures. of the wilderness. Things aren't well with his people. You see why I told you that we ought to take heart at the chastisement that we are under as a nation. But we ought not in that to think our chastisement is equivalent to this. This is a pretty severe, pestilence, drought condition. What's the conclusion? What's the application? How does this speak to us today? First, I think it speaks at the heart when we consider the loss of joy. God, through Joel, pinpoints the reason for this chastisement upon the people of God as a church, but as a nation. They're a church nation at this point. And he says it's because you're not worshipping me with the joy that you once did. That joy and gladness has departed. And yet, consider the message that God gives His people through Joel. He doesn't just say, well, just be giddy. Just get joyful. Since you're not joyful, just get joyful. Get with it. And He actually calls them to mourning first, that their joy might be renewed. He doesn't call them directly to be joyful. He calls them to be joyful through mourning, through pride. You see, the joy of the Lord is our strength as Nehemiah tells us in Nehemiah 8.10. It is a great commodity. The joy of the Lord is our strength. Do you recognize the difference between walking through this life with the joy of the Lord and the lack of the joy of the Lord? Just think about that for a moment. Do you know of times where you've been more joyful of the Lord? Doesn't it change your whole outlook? Things aren't any different when you go out into the world on Monday morning. But hasn't your perspective been radically different when you're walking in the joy of the Lord. But to recover that joy of the Lord, we have to confess that it was our fault for ever losing it. We can't blame our sovereign God for our lack of joy in the great salvation that's ours in Christ. It's our fault and we need to face up to it. We need to cry unto Him. We need to recognize this chastening hand. It could be a lot worse. We need to recognize it and we need to respond to it. We need to hear the rod before the frequency and the force of the rod is increased. So we need to cry unto the Lord. Verse 14, cry unto the Lord is the prophet's exhortation. But then the prophet also sets an example for us. O Lord, to Thee will I I'm going to encourage all the people of God to cry unto the Lord in this situation, but in the meantime, I'm resolved to do it myself. I'm not going to wait for everybody else to join in with me. I'm going to get started in crying, in pleading because I'm desperate, because we're desperate as God's people and we need God's grace to be upon us. And to do this, we must turn to God through Jesus Christ. But if you've never turned to God through Jesus Christ, you must turn to God through Jesus Christ for the first time. Remember Jesus' words, except ye repent, ye shall perish. If you don't turn from your evil ways, if you continue to go on thinking that you're adequate in yourselves to be right with God, then you will perish. You may not think you will, but Jesus God Himself, God of truth, has said you will. And so, you will, except you repent. Except you turn from your own ways and turn unto Christ, you will be destroyed, and that eternally. But how about for many of us who have turned to Christ for the first time? We need to turn to God through Christ for the millionth time, for the thousandth time, whatever it is. That grace that God has given us of repentance and faith is to be exercised afresh. Think of John 6, 34. Jesus says there, Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. Now here, Jesus certainly isn't teaching the doctrine of transubstantiation. that somehow the bread and the wine are turned into His flesh and blood at the Lord's Supper. When you partake of the bread of the Lord's Supper, does it taste like flesh? When you drink that wine, does it taste like blood? Of course not, because it's not. But what's interesting is that Jesus isn't even talking about the Lord's Supper in John 6. He's talking about principles that underlie the Lord's Supper, but he's dealing with something that's deeper than the Lord's Supper. The Lord's Supper is the external, which is the picture of this internally. Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood is a picture of our adherence to Jesus Christ and His work. It's a picture of what faith that embraces Christ as the second person of the Godhead and embraces His work as sufficient for me and the satisfaction of the Father's just wrath against sin. That's what it is. See, I'm so into Jesus, so to speak, that I eat His flesh and I drink His blood. I'm adhered to Him. I'm not letting go. And praise be to God that it's God's grace that keeps us from being let go. And in fact, Jesus says it's not that we have Him in our hand, it's that He has us in His hand. And the only reason our hands are together is because His hand won't let us go. So it's adherence to Christ and His work that we all must return to. For the first time, for the second time, for the hundredth time, thousandth time, 10,000, 100,000, million times, we must ever return to Christ. If we do, those that do adhere to Christ, that eat His flesh, that drink His blood, He, the Lord of Truth says, hath eternal life. He doesn't say we'll get eternal life. He says, hath eternal life. In other words, they're already in a sphere of living that's radically different than they were ever in before. They were, by nature, children of wrath. But those that have embraced Christ and adhere to Him, they're in a whole new realm of living. They're already in eternal life. Because eternal life is more than length of time. Remember, because those that die in their sins in the sense that they exist forever. So, eternal life is more than eternal existence. It's a radical different way of life. And we're in it now. We're in the Kingdom of God now. The Kingdom of God has another phase to go. It has more than one phase to go. And that last phase, we will be present there in glory, in body and soul. But we're still in God's Kingdom now. And there's this mystical connection between us and those of our forefathers that are in glory in their spirits and even a couple of them in their bodies today in heaven. We have eternal life. What a blessing it is. If we know that, how could we allow our joy and gladness to incrementally, little by little, dwindle. Because we're not carrying out the command of the Lord to keep ourselves in the love of God. God says that's going to take a little bit of work to keep reminding ourselves of what's ours. So that joy and gladness that we have might incrementally be increasing. We might be continuing to draw encouragement from the Word of God as we drink afresh from the wells of salvation. We don't do that one time when we come to Christ, but we should be continuing to drink from those wells and be satisfied and be encouraged. Those that have eternal life, He says, I will raise up or will raise Him up at the last day. In other words, those that are in the Kingdom of God now, they will be part of that eternal last phase of the Kingdom of God in glory that will come at the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why He's given us the Lord's Supper. Remember, He inaugurates the Lord's Supper. He tells us that this is a remembrance of what's going to take place just a few days later. It's a remembrance that the first time you participate in this after my death is going to be a remembrance of my death. But He also says this is the last time I'll partake of the fruit of the vine until I partake it with you in glory." So, the Lord's Supper is a remembrance of the work of Christ on the cross, but it's also a beautiful picture of the ultimate that awaits the people of God because of Christ's great work of salvation for us. Let us pray. We rise for prayer.