It tells us that this day is sacred to our Lord, do not grieve, for the joy of the Lord is your

strength.

That is our theme today.

You've heard it develop this morning.

We look forward now to our final session.

I don't know whether to complain about the NIV publicly or not. You see when you

translate it this day is sacred to the Lord, instead of this way is holy,

this day is holy to the Lord.

It is harder to make plain to your people that the essence of holiness is joy, which is what that verse teaches.

This day is holy to the Lord, therefore do not grieve for the joy of the Lord is your strength.

You see the argument there? This is a holy day. Be happy.

Hardly anybody makes that connection between holiness and happiness.

Holiness is sad and happiness is something else.

But you miss it in the NIV.

That's my complaint.

I suppose you could make it with sacredness, perhaps,

but I don't use the NIV in my preaching and I've got a pretty sophisticated and developed reason for why I don't but that's you can ask about that in the question time if you want

since probably most of you do.

Let me pick up with some implications from the second hour and then jump into the third namely

the first one was God's passion for God the second hour was your passion for God and

in this hour we want to be your passion for others passion for God.

But I ran out of time and therefore I wasn't able to give you some practical implications of what I said and I have four of them written down,

...