Our sermon tonight is going to be from Philippians 4 again. Second time that we have a sermon from that chapter. Instead of reading that chapter again, we read it last week Sunday night, I'd like to read 1 Thessalonians 5. And then we'll turn back to Philippians 4 and read the text. But first let's read 1 Thessalonians 5, one of the passages that I'll refer to in the course of the sermon. A passage that has a very similar word to the word that we hear tonight, Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice. You'll notice that at the end of this chapter. So let's read together the Word of God in 1 Thessalonians 5. But of the times and the seasons, brethren, ye have no need that I write unto you. For yourselves know perfectly that the day of the Lord so cometh as a thief in the night. For when they shall say, Peace and safety, then sudden destruction cometh upon them, as travail upon a woman with child, and they shall not escape. But ye, brethren, are not in darkness, that that day should overtake you as a thief. Ye are the children of light, the children of the day. We are not of the night, nor of darkness. Therefore, let us not sleep as do others, but let us watch and be sober. For they that sleep sleep in the night, and they that be drunken are drunken in the night. But let us who are of the day be sober, putting on the breastplate of faith and love. In foreign helmet, the hope of salvation. For God hath not appointed us to wrath, but to obtain salvation by our Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us, that whether we wake or sleep, we should live together with Him. Wherefore, comfort yourselves together, and edify one another, even as also ye do. And we beseech you, brethren, to know them which labor among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you, and to esteem them very highly in love for their work's sake. and be at peace among yourselves. Now we exhort you, brethren, warn them that are unruly, comfort the feeble-minded, support the weak, be patient toward all men. See that none render evil for evil unto any man, but ever follow that which is good, both among yourselves and to all men. Rejoice evermore. Pray without ceasing. In everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you. Quench not the spirit. Despise not prophesying. Prove all things. Hold fast that which is good. Abstain from all appearance of evil. and the very God of peace sanctify you wholly. And I pray God, your whole spirit and soul and body be preserved blameless unto the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it. Brethren, pray for us. Greet all the brethren with an holy kiss. I charge you by the Lord that this epistle be read unto all the holy brethren. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you. Amen. So far we read the Word of God in 1 Thessalonians. The text for the sermon is Philippians 4. Verse 4, the very well-known Verse in which God says to us, Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, Rejoice. Beloved in the Lord Jesus Christ, there is much joy in our hearts this evening as we come together for worship and as we heard the confession of faith of Natalie. There's joy in my heart as a pastor, in the hearts of the elders, in all of our hearts as members of this congregation, any of the young people come for confession of faith and profess their love for the Lord Jesus Christ. There's a special joy tonight when we hear the confession of faith of Natalie. It's not fundamentally a different joy. It's the same joy. Joy when we see others, in their love for Jesus Christ, profess that to the church and the world. But it is, in a certain sense tonight, a special joy. A special joy as we reflect upon the providence of God, her into our midst so that we hear that confession tonight that she loves God, loves the truth as it is taught here in this church, is desirous to be a full member of this congregation and to walk with us in our journeys of faith in our life here on this earth. Joy in all confessions of faith. Special joy tonight as we witness this confession of faith. The passage is about joy that we consider tonight. But it's from a slightly different point of view. The passage of God's Word that we consider tonight is the exhortation that we are to rejoice in the Lord. It's a little bit different from what I said just a moment ago in the introduction. We have joy tonight as a congregation. We should have joy tonight as a congregation as we witness this confession, but more generally because we are able to come together for worship. The question is, what about tomorrow? when you wake up? What about tomorrow when you have to go to school? What about tomorrow when you have to go to work? What about a couple of weeks from now if in the providence of God you go to the doctor and receive a certain diagnosis? What about us every single day as we battle sin and deal with the power of sin and the consequences of sin and the guilt of sin? What about In 20 years, 30 years, 40 years, when we may experience real persecution as a church, what then? This is the calling that we have from the Word of God tonight. Always, in everything, at all times, God says to us, rejoice in the Lord. And the wonder of the Gospel, beloved, is that we are able to in all circumstances, at all times, we are able. And by the Spirit of God in us, we do rejoice in the Lord. That's the Word of God that we consider this evening. Last week in our previous Confession of Faith, we looked at verse 1 in which we learned about what it means to stand fast in the Lord. And now, tonight, we look at this fourth verse from Philippians 4 where we are exhorted to rejoice in the Lord. And we use that as our theme tonight, rejoice in the Lord. We notice in the first place what that means, in the second place how we are to do that, and then in the third place, let's consider why. Rejoice in the Lord. What? How? And then why? The Christian faith, beloved, affords us as believers true, genuine, everlasting joy. The Christian faith alone affords men and women, and young people and children, true, genuine, and everlasting joy. The Gospel of Jesus Christ is one that fills our hearts with gladness. Fills our hearts with gladness in such a way that no matter the circumstances of our lives, at all times, in our hearts, we can be joyful we can be at peace, we can have comfort, we can have hope. So that when we hear this exhortation, rejoice in the Lord always. It is a word that by the Spirit of God in us, we are able to perform. The Christian faith is unique in that it is the only thing in all of the world that will give us true, genuine, everlasting joy. That is because joy in the Lord is fundamentally a joy that arises out of knowing and experiencing the blessing of Christ's work on the cross and the salvation from sin that we have through His precious blood and through His resurrection from the grave. When we talk about joy, and in what we have our joy. Our minds must not first go to the things of this earth. We must not first think about joy as it relates to our families, as it relates to what we have and what we don't have, as it relates to what we do and what we are going to do in the future. That is not the essence of joy and where we get joy from as believers. The heart of our joy is, as the text says, in the Lord. The opposite of joy is sorrow and misery. When we talk about joy, and gladness, and happiness, and sorrow, and misery, and the two spectrums there, we need to focus first and foremost on those spiritual realities. Because beloved, just as the essence of our joy is found in Jesus Christ, and our salvation through His precious blood, the essence of misery, sorrow, is found in sin, and death, and guilt, and hell. Part of Natalie's confession of faith tonight, part of all of our confessions of faith when we made them, was a confession concerning ourselves. And that confession concerning ourselves is always that we know ourselves as sinners. Sinful in Adam by nature. Sinful in our everyday life because of our sinful flesh that clings to us. And we know what that sin deserves, which is death and punishment. True misery comes from knowing and experiencing those realities of sin and the consequence of that sin. And that is why true joy is never first and foremost the things of this earth. True joy is knowing that that death and that guilt and that hell that all should be mine because of my sin that I committed and am worthy of has been taken from us. And we do not have to experience that because of the work of Jesus Christ. True joy is always in the Lord Jesus Christ and His work to deliver us from our sin and guilt and to give us the hope of life with God now and forever. Joy is joy in the Lord. And now the word that comes in this particular passage is to rejoice in the Lord. That's what our joy is fundamentally. The life that we have with God. It's the confession of faith that Natalie made tonight. It's all of the faith that God has given to us. The fact that we are united to Jesus Christ. And we live our lives out of that confession. Every day, through faith in Jesus Christ, knowing that we have the deliverance from sin and hope of life with God. That is our joy. And the word that comes to us is we are to rejoice in the Lord. Every day. The calling that we have is to find joy in the Lord Jesus Christ. To find joy in those things that truly matter in our lives, which is the deliverance from sin, and guilt, and hell, and not the negative. We don't emphasize necessarily the negative, but right along with that, the positive of having life with God in Jesus Christ now and forever. Rejoicing in the Lord is consciously experiencing the joy of our salvation day after day after day. The text comes to us in the form of a command. It's not a suggestion. This is what you should do. But the Word is very sharp. Paul comes to the saints in Philippi and he says, this is what you must do. Rejoice in the Lord always. And again I say, rejoice. And it's significant that this Word comes to us in the form of an imperative. That's significant because we need to hear it as an imperative. And we need to hear it as an imperative because of the fact that in our lives, we know that we are prone by nature not to rejoice in the Lord as we are called to. That on the one hand, also, we are prone by nature to rejoice in everything but the Lord. Paul understands that there are so many things that are going to take away from our joy in the Lord and that we have natures that are clinging to those things that He comes to us inspired by the Spirit and says, this is what you must do. Hear it as an imperative. Rejoice in the Lord. A moment ago I just said that we need to hear it as a command because on the one hand, we're tempted simply not to take joy in the Lord as we are called to. And that's true for us in our lives, is it not? Where we're not necessarily explicitly finding joy in the things that are sinful in our lives, We'll get to that in a moment. But simply, we go through life in such a way that we're not living consciously out of the faith that we have in Jesus Christ, that we wake up in the morning and we go all the way to the end of the day and we don't even really think about Jesus Christ and my union to Jesus Christ and my life that I have in Jesus Christ. so that we may not be explicitly hardened in a particular sin and finding joy in that thing or in that activity, but it's simply a negligent activity of failing to think consciously and live day by day out of the life that we have in Jesus Christ. And that's very real to us in our lives, that we get caught up in everything. Many of the things that we do are well and good, and we have to do them, but we don't do them in a spiritual way, with our eyes and our hearts thinking upon the Lord. We're very much tempted to go through a day, to go through a week, without consciously finding joy in the relationship that we have to Jesus Christ. That usually goes hand in hand with the second point of why we need to hear it as a command. And we need to hear it as a command because the fact is, we often find joy in so many other things that take away from our joy in the Lord. Ask the questions to yourselves right now. In what do I find joy? What makes me happy in this life? What do I look forward to? What fills me with a sense of ecstaticness in my heart? What gives me a good mood in this day? And when you ask those questions, and when you examine yourself in light of those questions, you realize that the temptation that we have is to find joy in the circumstances of our lives. We do not, as Christians, find our joy in what we are going through here on this earth. So that if there's enough money in the bank account today, then I'm going to have an attitude of joy in my heart. I don't have to work today, then I will be joyful in my heart and it will be reflected in my life. So that really the only time that I am joyful is on Friday evening, and Saturday, and on Sunday, because that's when I don't have to work. Or, maybe it's the opposite, where the idol that you have is your work, so that you only find joy in your work. Or joy only when you go to school and you have a certain outfit on and you look a certain way. And therefore you know others perceive you in a certain way. And you can come up with a hundred, a thousand different circumstances that determine whether or not we are joyful in our hearts. So that really, the joy that we have as Christians is a roller coaster. We may have it one day when the circumstances are good, but then it goes down the next day because it fluctuates as the circumstances of our life fluctuate. That is not the Word here. Rejoice when things go well. Rejoice when it has your way in your life. That's not the Word of God. We're tempted to find our joy in circumstances of our lives. And then on top of that, we're tempted to find our joy in the things of this earth. The word tonight is not that we can't have joy in the things of this earth. There is a certain joy, a certain gladness that we have in our hearts from the things that we experience here on this earth. What we need to remember is that this right here, the joy in the Lord, is the source of our joy. It's the heart of our joy. It's the joy out of which flows all of the other joy that we have in this life. And that needs to be front and center, therefore, in our lives, in and through everything that we do. Obviously, we don't find joy in the ways of sin. Explicit sin that the devil tempts us with and says it's joy. But we can have joy, for example, in playing sports as we like to as young people. But it needs to be this, the essence of my joy is joy in the Lord. And therefore, I'm going to view this in light of that. I take joy in that because it's a time of rich fellowship with fellow believers. I take joy in that because it's a time that I'm able to witness to others in my attitude. when I win and when I lose. It's a time that I'm able to be a good steward of the physical body that God has given me. It flows out of The relationship that we have with the Lord Jesus Christ. We can take joy in our vacations, in our time together as family, but not from the point of view of, it allows me to escape from life. But from this point of view, it allows me to enjoy the covenant family that God has given me. It allows me to be refreshed. in order to take up my calling with a certain hardiness when I go back. It allows me to be spiritually rejuvenated in my life. We need to guard against finding joy in the things that are explicitly sinful. But also as we think about our life here and now, it needs to be this, rejoice in the Lord. Let that be the heart and center of our joy. The reality of our salvation in Jesus Christ and life with God. And out of that, and through that, we live our lives here on this earth. One of the distinguishing features of this text is the fact that it says, Rejoice in the Lord always. And again I say, rejoice. That joy that we have in Jesus Christ, in the life that we have with God through His death and resurrection, we are to take joy in that, the text says, always. And this is emphasized in three different ways in the passage. It's emphasized in the first place because the imperative rejoice is in the present tense. In the present tense, when an imperative is in the present tense, what that means is that it's a continuous action. And that's the way it is in this text. Always rejoice. Simply from the verb rejoice is the idea. The second thing that emphasizes this obviously is the word always. Rejoice in the Lord always. And that means exactly what it says. At all times, rejoice in the Lord. And then the third thing that emphasizes this is the fact that the Apostle was inspired by the Spirit to say it twice. It would have been good enough to say, rejoice in the Lord always, and then move on to verse 5. But to drive this point home, to make it even stronger, he says, rejoice in the Lord always. And again, I say, rejoice. When you look at this truth of rejoicing in Jesus Christ, in light of the truth of it being always, the New Testament Scriptures emphasize that this is a word, and this is something that we must do, even in the midst of the times when our circumstances are not, from an outward point of view, well. Because that always does lead to questions. Always? Really? When I'm lying on my deathbed? Rejoice in the Lord. When I'm lying in the hospital room, ravaged with pain and sickness? Rejoice in the Lord. When I have to go for my cancer treatments? Rejoice in the Lord. When I have to look at my bank account every day and realize that it's never quite high enough? Rejoice in the Lord. when my relationships are struggling, rejoice in the Lord? In all of the circumstances of life, we are to rejoice in the Lord? And beloved, the answer is yes. There is no qualification given in the text where He doesn't quite mean exactly what He says. Rejoice in the Lord always. And I say that to emphasize that most of the time we have to rejoice. That is not the idea. No qualifications. Always rejoice in the Lord. And again, I say that when you study this word and this idea of rejoicing from the New Testament, that is always the emphasis. Even in the midst of suffering, We can and we must rejoice in the Lord. Remember how Paul wrote this epistle. He was likely in prison at the time that he wrote these words. And he writes, rejoice in the Lord. But notice a couple of other passages from the Scriptures. We can look at, first of all, 1 Peter 4, verses 12-14. 1 Peter 4, verses 12-14. where we read these words, Beloved, think it not strange concerning the fiery trial which is to try you, as though some strange thing happened unto you. But rejoice, inasmuch as ye are partakers of Christ's sufferings. that when His glory shall be revealed, ye may be glad also with exceeding joy. If ye be reproached for the name of Christ, happy are ye, for the Spirit of glory and of God resteth upon you. On their part He is evil spoken of, but on your part He is glorified." Another passage is from the book of Acts. Acts 5, verse 41. And this gives us a concrete example of those who are suffering, but at the same time rejoicing. This is the history immediately after the pouring out of Pentecost. And when the apostles preached the Gospel in Jerusalem, they were persecuted for that. First rebuked, and then beaten, and then imprisoned. But yet, they obeyed the Word of God, and through that persecution, they said this in Acts 5.41, and they departed from the presence of the council rejoicing. that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for His name." Rejoice at all times, beloved. I don't need tonight to explain every circumstance in life and say, in that circumstance you are to rejoice. The Word of God is clear. No matter your circumstances, no matter your past, no matter the unknowns of the future, it doesn't matter. The Word of God is, rejoice in the Lord. Because the joy that we have in the Lord, as I said a moment ago, is not about what we have here and now in the circumstances of life. It's about this. That you are in the Lord. And that you have the hope of salvation and life with Jesus Christ. How are we to do that? How are we to go forth in our lives rejoicing in the Lord? What are the things that we can look at in our lives that give the tangible evidence that we are in fact carrying out this command and rejoicing in the Lord? And this is where it becomes practical. where we take the truth, which is, I have life in Jesus Christ and the hope of heaven, and now I translate that into my life in joy and in rejoicing in the Lord. And these are the things that we do in our lives so as to live our lives in the joy of our Lord Jesus Christ. Four points in this second point of the sermon. We rejoice in the Lord by being men and women and young people of prayer. In this passage, we have the word in v. 4, rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say rejoice. And immediately following that in verse 6, we read these words, "...be careful for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God." In chapter 5 of 1 Thessalonians, what we read together tonight, we see this connection of thoughts. In v. 16, it's a very similar word, rejoice evermore. In v. 17, the Apostle is inspired to say, pray without ceasing. In v. 18, that's followed with, in everything, give thanks. Not three disconnected ideas. Rejoice in the Lord and do it in this way. First of all, pray without ceasing. Our life of prayer is intimately connected with our life of rejoicing in Jesus Christ. If you're not rejoicing in Christ, You won't pray. And there's a reason, there's several reasons that these are so closely connected. Number one is the fact that in and through prayer, we are expressing our love for God and our thanks for what is the essence of our joy, and that is our life with God in Jesus Christ. The fact of praying, sitting down, folding our hands, closing our eyes, praying, and also all throughout the day in those prayers that we can offer in whatever we are doing. By virtue of doing that, we are expressing thanks for what God has done for us in Jesus Christ. It's the tangible evidence, day after day, that we are joyful in the Lord Jesus Christ. If you're not joyful in the Lord, if He's not on your mind, if He's not the power by which you go through your life, you're not going to be praying. It's going to be the farthest thing from your minds. And that is why the very activity of prayer is that which expresses very concretely our joy in Jesus Christ. But in the second place, we pray as the tangible evidence of our rejoicing in the Lord, because in and through prayer, we hear repeatedly the declaration of God's Spirit in our hearts that we are forgiven. And that we are righteous in Jesus Christ. That's why prayer is so important as well. Because in and through prayer, remember what the heart of our joy is. It's life with God. And the opposite of that, the misery, is sin and guilt and the punishment of sin. And when we pray, we're able to bring to the cross all of that sin and guilt. And right along with that, we hear and experience the declaration of God's Spirit. We are forgiven. And the prayer itself, after we reckon with the reality of sin and guilt, is that which fills our heart with our joy in Jesus Christ. Thus the importance of praying without ceasing. Thus the importance in light of our sin, daily to go to the cross. Because in daily going to the cross in prayer, we daily experience the heart of our joy, which is our life with God and the forgiveness of sin and guilt. And then more generally, in the third place, why prayer and our joy in Christ go together so closely is that prayer leads us to contemplate the spiritual and heavenly things of God. When we are men and women and young people of prayer, when we are lifted up into the very throne room of God, When we through prayer seek the things that are above and not the things that are below, when we're praying without ceasing from that point of view, it puts into perspective everything that we see, everything we experience, have experienced, will experience in our lives, and it helps us to go through life very loose to the things of this earth that affect sinfully our joy. And it helps us to go through life focused on the things that matter, which is our life with God and the glory to come. We rejoice in the Lord by praying. And we take to heart tonight that word, praying without ceasing. Rejoicing always is hand in hand with praying without ceasing. And that is being men and women of prayer. Developing day by day in our prayer lives with God. In the second place, we rejoice in the Lord in the way of being thankful. Being thankful. Both of those passages that I read a moment ago, Verse 6 in Philippians 4 and 1 Thessalonians 5, verses 16-18, connect joy, prayer, and thanksgiving. The thanksgiving being expressed through prayer, but now we broaden that out more generally. We rejoice in the Lord in the way of being thankful in our lives. And the word in 1 Thessalonians chapter 5 is very strong when it says that we are to be thankful in everything. And by that it shows very clearly that our rejoicing in everything in the Lord is directly connected with our being thankful in everything that we go through. Are we a thankful people? It's as simple as that. Every single day when we wake up, are we a thankful people? If we're not thankful, we are not going to have joy in the Lord. It's as simple as that. The two go hand in hand. The catechism teaches that. How do we have comfort of belonging to Jesus Christ? How do we experience that live and die happily? That is, have joy in our lives and in our death. And the third thing is always gratitude every single day. If you're not thankful every day, don't expect to have joy in your hearts. Joy in the Lord is in and through being thankful to God. And the thankfulness in the heart and center of it is for the life that we have in Jesus Christ. It's for the revelation of God's grace in Christ. It's for the hope that we have in Him. It's for the knowledge that God is my God and He will be with me to the very end. It's knowing that when I look back in my life, He was sovereign. And when I look forward in my life, it is according to His perfect plan. And in and through everything, to express thankfulness to our God. Beloved, we need to be a thankful people. And if we struggle with this, we need to make this very real in our lives. We need to be conscious so much of what we are thankful for. Repeatedly maybe pulling out our journals and writing things down and praying over those things that we write down as we strive to fill our hearts, our minds, with the things that we are thankful for, with the heart and center being the Lord Jesus Christ. So that it's not just, yes, I'm thankful in word, but then in reality when I live, it doesn't come through. No. This needs to be in the heart of who we are, a thankful people for everything, and for the hope that we have in Jesus Christ. And when we are thankful, then we are joyful in the Lord. And then in the third place, we express the joy that we have in the Lord through worship. Through worship. And here, we can go to the Psalms for example. how much of the Psalms express not only the idea of worship, but the idea of joy that we have in worship. We've sung from several numbers that talked about those very ideas, but just listen to a few of the references that you can find in the Psalms, and this is literally only a few of them. There's so many that tie these things together. Psalm 100, verses 1 and 2, make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands. Serve the Lord with gladness. Come before His presence with singing. Psalm 43, verse 4, Then will I go unto the altar of God, unto God my exceeding joy. Yea, upon the harp I will praise thee, O God my God. Psalm 81, verse 1, Sing aloud unto God our strength. Make a joyful noise. unto the God of Jacob. Psalm 95. The psalm I often use for the call to worship. The first three verses. O come, let us sing unto the Lord. Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving and make a joyful noise unto Him with psalms. For the Lord is a great God and a great King above all gods. We rejoice in the Lord. by living lives of worship. That's worship here on the Lord's Day when we come together with the people of God and commune with God and show forth our love for God in worship. But it's more than that. It's worshiping God in our everyday lives. Worshiping Him personally through prayer and through the Scriptures. Worshiping Him together as husbands and wives. Worshiping Him as families where regularly We sing, we pray, we hear the Word of God because we want to obey this command to rejoice in the Lord always. And what leads us to rejoice in the Lord always is a daily, regular, weekly worship of God's name. In the fourth place, we rejoice in the Lord through a life of obedience, A life of thankful obedience. We find our joy in the Lord. Not to live a life of obedience to gain our salvation. That's not the point. We heard that this morning. But we rejoice in the Lord and show that we are rejoicing in the Lord by living a life of thankful obedience in all that we do. Philippians 4. In verses 8 and following, speak about thinking on all of those things. And then verse 9, those things which ye have both heard, learned, and received, and heard, and seen, and may do, and the God of peace shall be with you. And when the God of peace is with us, we have joy in the Lord. To put this negatively, beloved, and this is the warning tonight, there is no joy in the Lord in the way of walking in sin. And this is the negative warning because this is one of the most powerful temptations of the devil. The most powerful temptation is that the sin that we are tempted with, and it doesn't matter what that sin is, is that which is going to give us joy. And we have to admit that at a certain level for a very brief time, there is a certain joy we think from the sin that we may be walking in. The Word of God says that is not joy. And in our experiences, we know that is not joy. In the end, it is only misery. And if we hold on to those sins, that we just don't want to let go. If we're hardened in them, there will not be joy in the Lord. And this goes back to the very main point of the sermon, that our joy is fundamentally our joy in our relationship to Christ, in the life we have in Christ. And when we're walking in those ways of sin, when we won't put them away, we're not living out of our confession of faith in Jesus Christ. Hear the warning that there will be no joy. There is never joy in sin. There is only joy in Christ. There is only joy in striving daily to take up our cross and follow Jesus Christ. There is only joy in finding our forgiveness daily in Christ, in striving day after day to walk in obedience in whatever way that is for us in our lives. so that we do make the point tonight that our joy in the Lord shows itself in our thankful life of obedience, which is another way of saying that our joy is found in living a life in which we cling to the cross by faith, confessing our sins, and finding strength to walk in thankfulness. Why do we rejoice in the Lord? Why do we rejoice in Him always? It's all of the things we've heard already. We summarize it in the conclusion. We rejoice in the Lord always because, beloved, we are in the Lord. And we have the hope of life in the Lord Jesus Christ. That's why, ultimately, we rejoice in Him always. Because our life is not here and now, but our life is in the life to come. And when we start with that, the heart of it all, it flows into so many other reasons. Because when we have Jesus Christ, we have everything. And so we rejoice in the Lord always, because we can know, always, our God is with us. Look at the Word of God in 2 Corinthians 9, v. 8. In studying the idea of always, that word in the text, we find that same word in this passage, 2 Corinthians 9, v. 8, and this gets to one of the reasons we always can be joyful in the Lord. And God is able to make all grace abound toward you that ye always having all sufficiency in all things may abound to every good work." Why do we rejoice in the Lord always? Because that same idea of always is found in God, in His love for you, in His promise to you that my grace, no matter your circumstances, will be sufficient. Why do we rejoice in the Lord always? We do so because we have the absolute confidence that in life and in death, we belong to Jesus Christ. That's your confession of faith tonight, Natalie. Your love for God, your love for Christ. This is the calling that comes to you. This is the calling that comes to all of us who love the Lord. This is the great blessing of the Christian faith. True, genuine, everlasting joy, not determined by the circumstances of this earth. A joy that we have now, tomorrow, into all eternity. Rejoice in the Lord always, beloved. And again I say, rejoice. Amen. Our Father which art in heaven, bless Thy Word as it was brought tonight. Help us truly to find our joy in Jesus Christ. And in and through Him, live our lives. Lives of prayer, thanks, worship, and thankful obedience. And in that way show that we are joyful in the Lord Jesus Christ. Father, we pray for forgiveness again, all that was said or heard in sin. And bless us in the remainder of this Sabbath day, for Jesus' sake. Amen.