Address—Dean Rule
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Maybe we could just read one more verse to before we go to the.
Verses were perhaps we spend most of the time.
In the next 40 minutes or so. And that's in the book of Amos.
Amos chapter 3 and verse 3.
Can two walk together except?
They be agreed.
Well, today the Lord's help, what I'd like to look at together some verses that talk about communion or fellowship. And as we go along, perhaps we'll sort of try to define those words or the word. But I'd like to read now in first John chapter one, we're going to read the 1St 3 verses 1St and stop there and then go on.
Perhaps later.
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we've looked upon and our hands have handled of the word of life.
For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness and show unto you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested unto us, that which we have seen. And I'm going to add something in there because I don't know anything about Greek, but I've heard it said that if you took that word that says seen, it has a meaning that goes beyond just one word. And so if you allow me, I'm going to read this in for seen and heard.
What they say, it really, really means in the original that which we have seen and the vision doesn't go away.
That which we have seen in the vision doesn't go away and that which we have heard and it keeps ringing in our ears.
Declare we unto you.
That ye also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship.
Is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.
You wouldn't be very happy tonight if I had a super strong flashlight.
And a very good bulb and and I came up to you when you were outside and I took that flashlight and held it right in your eyes.
Because if I did that, a real strong flashlight would sort of you would even continue to see it after a while. If we went out to the baseball diamond and you were standing there watching on the side at the end of the game or during the game and I was there and all of a sudden we decided we were going to look up and start to stare at the sun. Not a recommended thing at all because it'll do damage to your retina and stuff. But, but if we were going to go back out and do that, you would continue.
See it for a while after.
You could stop looking at it.
Yesterday together we looked some at the.
At some of the things about the life of the Lord Jesus, we talked together about the importance of having a vision about seeing the Lord Jesus as the one who lived a perfect life in this earth at the end of his time, the one who was crucified, who rose from the grave, who was glorified and went back to heaven.
And the person who wrote these verses that we just read about the apostle John.
He had a privilege that I've never enjoyed in a physical way, and that's to be that close to the Lord Jesus Christ. But it seems like at different times through his life, he was so close to the Lord Jesus Christ that it says that he put his head on his bosom. Perhaps they were they were resting from walking or whatever. But to me, it would be an amazing thing to be so close to the Lord Jesus Christ that you could even hear his heartbeat.
But today, the desire that I have for my heart.
Because it's not very true of me very often. And the desire I have for you is that we have the privilege of looking so closely to the life of the Lord Jesus being so completely filled our vision, our eyes, so that that vision doesn't go away. So it's something that stays burned on our hearts and our minds.
We're living in a world that.
Has different kinds of vision, different things that are important, but the thing that must be important to us, the thing that really matters is to start enjoying right now fellowship with the Lord Jesus and then start enjoying it now and enjoy it forever. You know, sometimes people have said that that's fellows in the same ship, but it goes a long way beyond that. That sometimes the the comment that people have used for that I could be in a ship. I've been on a ship a few times.
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Crossing, for instance, from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland and there were a lot of other fellows on the ship, but I don't have any ideas who they were. But I've had people that I've been on the ship or the boat going across and I've enjoyed the time. It's six or seven hours, enjoyed the time talking, visiting. We were enjoying fellowship. We were sharing thoughts. My question to you today and my question to myself is, are we enjoying fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ?
That's the great basis of fellowship that we have here.
You know, if it wasn't the fact that the vast majority of us here know the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior, we would never be here together now.
That's the thing that draws us together, that's the binder, that's the glue. That's the thing that makes it so that our hearts are one. That's the thing that makes it so that we can sit down and talk to someone we've never met before, that lives in a different part of the country and it has a different age, it has different interests and everything else. And we immediately share something in common. We share the Lord Jesus Christ. Well, the apostle John.
He said I've been so close to him that I could touch him.
I've seen them with my eyes. What else does it say? It says.
We've heard him. He heard his words and everything else he said that had such an effect on me that what I saw with my eyes, it's like it burned its way into my retina and it keeps sending messages to my brain. It keeps sending messages through the optic nerve to my brain because it's a vision that won't go away. It's going to have its effect on me all the way through my life. He said what I've heard from the Lord Jesus Christ is something that had such an effect on me that He didn't have a tape recorder.
If there had been tape recorders when the Lord Jesus was around, you can imagine that there would have been someone the whole time walking along with a tape recorder and a microphone and it would all been would have all been recorded. It wasn't that the apostle John heard those words and they were recorded in his brain and they got their way into his heart and he said, I keep hearing it today. I keep hearing it today and you can imagine if you had been following the Lord Jesus Christ.
Then perhaps been there when he had.
Given the Sermon on the Mount or when the Mount of Transfiguration or when he had been going along and through some of these chapters in the later part of John by a vineyard or something. Well, now the Lord Jesus was gone. John couldn't look at him. He couldn't see him anymore with his eyes. He couldn't hear him anymore with his ears. He said it's still with me. He said the vision I saw is something that's burned onto my eyes. It burned into my ears and he said I'm never going to forget it.
Now.
I want you to hold your finger there.
And let's go to a verse in Hebrews in contrast with this.
Hebrews Chapter 11 and verse 25.
Choosing rather to suffer affliction with the people of God.
Than to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season. This is nothing new that's being said, but it's a very true statement. Don't ever forget it. Sin has pleasure. Sin provides pleasure. If anyone says to you that it doesn't, they're wrong, because the Bible itself says that sin provides pleasure.
But it has a clause at the end and it says its first season says that after there's a problem.
But one of the objectives this week, I'm sure of the different ones of us all being invited here.
Is something different than if we were all invited to a party.
If someone is invited to a party, then let's take it out of any culture that any of us live in. But let's go to something that we've seen. We've all seen pictures of a tribal dance in Africa, I'm sure. And at a tribal dance in Africa, you would see pictures of people going around in a circle. I've never seen one, never been there. But you'd see people going around in a circle and there would be people through the whole time beating on the drums.
And as time would go on, people would probably be drinking some sort of alcohol and get drunk and finally fall down.
And wake up the next day.
Well, you know, we could get together as a group of Christians and we could have something that would be our own version of a drum beat, our own version of that sort of a thing. But then what happens on Monday? What happens when the drum beats are all gone? What happens when that's all left behind and we're back, all of us each facing our own individual circumstances, our own problems, if you ask. And you could interview someone in Africa and say, well, what about when the Fiesta is over? What about when the party's over?
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What about when you go back to the normal thing? They'd say, well, it was a lot of fun when it happened, but you know, I had a horrible headache the next day and, and now I've got to go back and it still hasn't rained and I've got this problem and that problem.
When the drum beats are over, where's your heart and where's my heart? Has it been so captivated by the Lord Jesus Christ? Has it been so attracted by Him?
That the vision is still burned onto our eyes and into our hearts. The words we've heard, we don't hear them directly in a way that we hear them from his own mouth, but we can hear the words of the Lord Jesus Christ every time we open his word. Is it so strong that it still comes in and it filters into us through every moment of every day? Not that you sit there when you have to be doing school work or in your work or something and, and your thoughts are.
Directly on the Lord Jesus Christ. No, we're not made to be that way. We have responsibilities.
But the fact of that communion that we need to enjoy with the Lord Jesus should be so strong.
That it should influence every decision we make, every way we respond to everything in this life. And so perhaps we could go back to first John. We have something that lasts. And so how does it start? It says our fellowship is with the father. I'm going to give you just a story that you may have read, and I can't tell it very well, but it's a true story that happened back in.
Perhaps 50 years ago.
And to me, and it's the end of the chapter that shows something about fellowship with the father.
It's about a couple, John and Betty Stam, who were living in Africa. Excuse me, they were living in China, and John and Betty Stam were in a tight spot because the Communist army.
Back in the early days, in the sense of Mao Zedong, when he and his the Red Army and things were advancing across China, John and Betty Stam were sitting in their house where they had lived for a little while. Not very long.
And the word came that there were 2000 soldiers that were on their way. John and Betty Sam knew that when they were on their way that it was time to get moving. Because when the soldiers came, at that point in time, there was no strong resistance to them. They could go across that part of China basically at will. And so the mother, Betty, packed up things for their baby that was between one and two months old, Helen.
She got things ready. She got some diapers together. John went off to try to arrange some sort of transportation. They were going to try to make it to the next town they lived in something called Singte or something like that, and they were going to Meow Shell or Sheo or something on that order. I can't pronounce them or remember it, but The thing is, they were going to go from one town to another.
Before they ever got any transportation arranged, the soldiers came to the door, knocked on the door, came in, took the father away.
Now Betty never knew at that point in time whether she was going to see John again. She never knew whether she was going to see John again. Well, there's a verse that that can give real comfort. It says thy Maker shall be thy husband.
Shin thought that at that point in time she might be left behind, but there was the promise. Thy Maker shall be thy husband. Well, she could only wait. John did come back. They took both of them. They took both of them, and they they allowed them to take the baby and they were pretty well done taking what they had wanted to take. They plundered their house, took it, and they all started out on the trek toward the next town where they were going.
These three were walking the the father and the mother and the baby and not very far out of town, the soldier said.
What are we going to do with the baby? And lonely bug us all the way. That was the terminology, but that's what we'd use now. Just get rid of them. Just kill them. And some man who had heard the gospel from them came out and said don't kill the baby. Why are you going to kill an innocent baby?
I said to the man, it's your life for the babies, he said. OK, boom, head rolling off on the ground, body topples over and they go on.
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That man hadn't heard very long before about the gospel, but it was enough to reach into his heart and say, OK, I'll give my life, I'm not afraid. He was walking in communion with the Father. But they went on a little farther. They got to the town, and first they pulled.
John out in front of the crowd, made him kneel over, took a sword, one cut head on the ground, the mother standing there. The baby was off. They had had to leave the baby in a room. The baby was off in a room. Not much they could. There wasn't anything they could do. There was no way they could escape or go do anything about the baby. But here's an old man dead along the road, willing to give his life. Here's a father willing to give his life.
And so the mother is there now she's standing there. You think about it for a minute. If you had a baby and your husband was dead, you didn't know anyone around the baby sitting there back in the room, and you can't go back to it.
And you know that you're a minute away from being dead. What would you do?
She had communion with the father she'd already gotten to know. God is her father. She'd already come to understand that God would take care of them even if her husband was dead beside her on the ground. She knew that God was taking care of them now. Does that make sense to you? Doesn't make sense to any of us naturally. Just like something Steve said that this book doesn't make sense naturally. It doesn't.
But she had an understanding of something. She understood that if God had taken care of him to that far, she knew that her husband, with his head on the ground and his body lying next to it, was already.
The Lord Jesus Christ. She had communion with her Father. She wasn't afraid, and she knew that if she was gone, there wasn't anyone around that she could know at that point in time. It would take care of that baby wasn't anyone around, but she had a sense that she had a father.
Who would take care of that baby? How about your communion and my communion with the Father? Is he someone that's so far off, distant in heaven that we don't understand that He's the Father to us?
Or she was there in peace. All she did. If she got down, she put her own knee down. She said there's nothing more I can do. In an instant, she was an eternity. She was an eternity. That baby was there. The soldiers could care less about that baby. But 30 hours later, 30 hours later, a man named Low came and took that baby. And he and his wife, with great danger of their own lives, took that baby across.
The mountains and got it to people.
And by the time that baby was three months old, that baby was cradled in the arms of Betty's parents.
And they said, John's gone, Betty's gone. But we have a proof in our arms of a God who loves this, of a God will take care of us all the way. She has an understanding of a father. How about God as a father to us? Do we have fellowship with him in that way? It's God, someone you and I can talk to when you wake up at night, when you're on your way to school, when you're on your way to work, when you're in the middle of a problem, when you're in a happy time and you want to share it with someone. And.
Around to share it with is he a father you can share it with? Is he a father I can share it with it. It amazes me that that mother could have peace about it, but she had peace about it. And then just two weeks ago, hardened stories and the digression. But sometimes there's examples of things that speak to our hearts. I was in a basically a straw mat house, nothing more.
And north of Lima, Peru, and and talking with a man, Alejandro Maravilli.
And he spent a lot of time lived in the mountains of Peru, all through the Shining Path gorillas. And he talked about it. I started asking questions, didn't volunteer, but I started asking questions about some of the things that had happened. And he talked about a time a few years ago where someone had stood with a gun in his stomach.
Someone had stood with a gun in his stomach. And how did you feel? Feel afraid. What could he take away from me?
He didn't have much of A house. If any of us lived in that sort of house, we'd be pretty struck by it. We think, well, this is really the problem.
But it was basically saying, what can he take away from me? He said my home is in heaven. That's where my Father is. What about you and what about me? Are we enjoying fellowship with the Father? And then it goes on to the next part. And with his Son, Jesus Christ, the Lord Jesus understands it all. He understands completely because he's been through it. He's been through it all the way.
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Bearing my sins on Him.
Is he real to you? Is he real to me, Those of us who know the Lord Jesus as our Savior?
We can skip back up. It says you may have you also may have fellowship with us and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. If you can imagine, I don't have one here, but if I had a bicycle wheel right here and you wanted to enjoy.
Fellowship with someone and let's use the thing that we reach out sort of on our own spoke. OK, now the only way and a very simple thing, but just maybe to have a thought of it in our mind. The only way that we can be drawn together, the only way that we can be drawn together, the only place of meeting. And that whole bicycle wheel is right at the center. It's right at the center.
And the only way your heart and my heart can be drawn together is by both.
Drawn to the Lord Jesus Christ. If we enjoy fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ individually, we'll enjoy it together.
But if we're running away from the Lord Jesus, we're going out on our own spokes in our own direction, we won't enjoy fellowship together. And you know, there's a lot of reasons we can give for walking out on our own spoke heading our own direction. You know, sometimes some of the reasons that that there are.
I'll give you one.
I've heard the reason that the time is too short, and I'm going to say the next phrase in a way that wasn't said. This way, the time is too short and I'm too valuable.
If any of us ever begin to think that we're too valuable, that we have to choose our own path instead of seeking fellowship with the Lord Jesus or enjoying fellowship together, we've got it all mixed up.
The Lord Jesus doesn't need me. He doesn't need you. He wants us. He wants to have fellowship with us, but he doesn't need to use us. He does want and need and sense fellowship with us, but he doesn't need to use us. He's capable, as it says, of taking the stones and making them cry out. Praise to it. But the Lord Jesus wants to use you and he wants to use me, but he doesn't need to use us. The time is not too short for us to take shortcuts.
To choose their own way, to find their own ways to try to serve him, to say, well, I'm going to change, as it were, the rules of the game because I find these rules are sort of these things and it becomes rules instead of an attraction to the Lord Jesus. But I'm finding they're not the way I'd like to do it. And I think the Lord Jesus could use me more in another way. Forget it, forget it. He doesn't need us to accomplish his work. He doesn't need any of us, but he wants to use us.
But the thing he most wants more than anything else is fellowship with us. He wants us to have a two way communication and let's apply this. Let's look at a couple more verses and just two very quick applications and we can try to finish up a few minutes early. Try to do that.
Verse #6.
If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth.
Very interesting.
You very seldom.
See a lie connected with do not we would if we were writing it put tell the truth.
But it doesn't say that. It says do not the truth. Our lives can be a lie sometimes.
Our lives can be a lie. My life so often is like a lie.
It's one thing in front of the eyes of those who see me. It's another thing what's running around inside my head and perhaps what I do or think or whatever when others are not looking.
Your life, Is it the truth or is it a lie? If your life is a complete lie, it only means that you're a professor, not real.
Here's a test whether someone is just a professor or whether they're real.
And it says in verse 7, but if we walk in the light as he is in the light.
We have fellowship, one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son.
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Cleanseth us from all sin.
We have fellowship one with another, and how are we going to have fellowship? How are we going to enjoy things together if if some of us and don't don't ever think you get beyond the point where it's not a danger, there's a danger of every one of us walking away completely choosing our own path, leaving completely the path of following the Lord Jesus until he calls us home, either by death or by his coming.
We'll never get beyond that. We never arrive until we're in heaven.
Never, not a single person you look at the person you say knows the most closest to the Lord. The minute that person begins to depend upon themselves and instead of upon the Lord Jesus Christ, they're headed away from the Lord Jesus. And so the concept, the key thing is to get into the light. Jesus said I am the light. It's getting in under the light of the Lord Jesus. It's having an eye that single so that the whole body.
Is full of light. That's the key. That's the key to fellowship, it says we have fellowship one with another.
OK, I'd like to talk.
For five to seven minutes about and then try to finish up early.
But I'd like to talk very, very briefly about a kind of fellowship that young people, and with good reason, are interested in, and that's the fellowship between a young man and a young woman. And in the light of what we've talked about here, I'd like to go just to.
Corinthians.
2nd Corinthians, chapter 6.
Verse 14 Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers.
For what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness?
And what Communion hath light?
Darkness.
And what concord hath Christ with Belial, And what part hath he that believeth?
Was an infidel.
There is no natural relationship on this earth that requires.
For joy in it, greater communion, greater fellowship, greater sharing of thoughts.
Than to be a man and a woman united in marriage.
This world is absolutely full of disasters in that.
Because many people think and people who don't know the Lord Jesus don't have the opportunity for fellowship, but even on a natural basis, people say, ah, look at her good looking. She looks at him and she says, oh, nice guy, nice personality, I like him. And they start a friendship and it it goes on for a while.
And there's an attraction.
Well, the attraction starts at the body level.
Upside down, if I can put it that way, from where God would want to start things. But it starts at the body level. There's a physical attraction.
And then it advances to the soul level and the soul level of this earth. But.
There's maybe a matching of personalities and things, but it's it's in a sense an inverted relationship from the way that God would have it.
Well, if you meet someone.
When you perhaps you've come this week and hey, you're not the first person to have these thoughts and you sure won't be the last to say. It would be nice to meet someone this week that might be the person that I would share my life together with.
And perhaps you're going to go home this week and say, oops, not this time. Nothing happened, didn't meet the person. And that's happened to all of us at one time or another. We come and we come with that hope and things. And then next Wednesday morning at wherever you're going to be or next Monday or someone, someone comes up to you and and they show you kindness.
They're they're very friendly, nice person. You enjoy talking to them and everything else.
Temptation. Yeah, it's a temptation.
What level can you share things with them? If they don't know the Lord Jesus Christ as their savior, there's no sense of physical attraction.
There can be an attraction on the person to person, the sole basis in that way, and that's all the farther it can go, you've taken out.
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Key place to start.
God doesn't say those things to make us unhappy. He doesn't say those things because He wants us to be dissatisfied. He doesn't say those things because He doesn't want us to have the love and understanding another person. He says it because He knows that if you're really enjoying fellowship with the Father and with the Son, that that can also carry over into a relationship and marriage even being a natural relationship.
But if you leave.
That part out.
Leave that completely to one side, then you've got a problem. It may take a week or a month or a year or ten years, but it will show up. One of the saddest stories and that I've ever heard is about a woman who met a young man, and in this case he faked it. He was a great faker. He came. He said, oh, I'm saved. I want to be baptized. I want to remember the Lord in his death.
And everything else. And this all happened because they already sort of had the friendship, the relationship developed instead of her letting it happen and seeing if it was real. They went to their honeymoon. They got home from their honeymoon 7:00 at night or something like that, with a meeting at 7:30. The question came, well dear, it's time to get ready. No response 715 seven, time to go out the door.
And this was a number of years ago when they had street cars, before buses and before everyone had cars.
Said you don't run after the streetcar once you've caught it.
Never again did he show a bit of interest in the Lord Jesus of the Lord's name. Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. It'll destroy your communion with the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we're going to look at one very positive example in the two minutes or three minutes before we close. That's back in Genesis, very, very well known verses, but I just want you to look at two things.
If you look at Genesis chapter 23.
Genesis chapter 23 and verse 19. And after this, Abraham buried Sarah's wife in The Cave of the field of Machpelah before Mamrie, the same as Hebron in the land of Canaan. Kay, just remember that so we can find it on a map and then we go over to the next chapter.
In OK, let's see, it says.
Verse 10.
The end of verse 10 he arose.
And went to Mesopotamia under the city of Nahor. If you could just hold your fingers there and go to the maps in the back of your Bible.
I was going to try to point it out here so it saves a little bit of time, but if you look right here, right around Vertex Samaria, that was about where they were. From what I understand, Abraham was around there and if you want to look at her, look at all the way across here above the Persian Gulf about where Iraq is now.
Little little distance measured out sometime and if you could go in a straight line at 7 or 800 miles.
7 or 800 miles by jumping on a Southwest Airlines flight, being there in an hour and a half, or getting in a car and driving for a day. No 7 or 800 miles across the desert with Camel.
Wasn't there anyone closer? Couldn't there have been someone for Abraham's son that was a little closer that that he would have been attracted to and that they might have shared life together?
God's direction with someone who was all the way across the desert.
And even more frustrating than that, how would you like to have been Isaac sitting there and saying, I wonder what the servants going to come back with?
I wonder what the servant is going to come back with. Is there going to be someone just to look at her? It's just going to turn my stomach. Someone I don't want to be with. Someone who's going to make me unhappy for my whole life.
I, if I had been Isaac sitting there, sorry, I'm saying it that way, but I think I would have gone through some of those things because those are some of the feelings I had. Those are some of the feelings. But what was Isaac doing in that time? What can you be doing waiting for the time of the Lord, if it's his will will bring the right person into your life? Let's go back to Genesis chapter 24.
And verse 6316 hundred mile trip in the desert.
Rebecca turned around, and if you figure out the time, if you go back and read those verses carefully, it appears like she turned around in one night. He got there, the servant one afternoon. She didn't have a whole long time to get everything ready. The next morning she was on her way back across the desert. Not very long. When the Lord's time comes, it can be something that can be very quick. It makes it very clear so often. But here, here was Isaac.
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Isaac went out to wonder what was going to happen.
No to meditate in the field that the even tide.
And he lifted up his eyes, and behold, the camels were coming.
He was out meditating. He wasn't worrying, he wasn't fretting. He wasn't saying, oh, I hope God doesn't make a mistake. I hope the servant doesn't make a mistake in this. He was out enjoying communion.
With God and God took care of things. He was out enjoying communion. And so let me give you just one little reminder in the time that you're waiting for different things to happen in your life. Don't say I'm going to enjoy communion after God has made it all clear. Enjoy communion now. And God will go answering each thing as the time comes along and He answers it far better, far better, far more wonderfully than we could ever.
Answer it ourselves.
Just to finish it.
In verse 67, and Isaac brought her into his mother Rebecca's tent and took Rebecca, and she became his wife and he loved her. God wants us to be happy. He wants to fill our hearts with something at last and joy and even earthly joy. Some of us have made mistakes in this. I was within three weeks of getting married to the wrong person.
Invitations were sent out. Honeymoon was planned, apartment was picked out.
Everything else and I had made a mistake. I was wrong, and God and His infinite love had someone infinitely better than my wife. We didn't know each other at the time. Years later, we make mistakes, but God overrules so often in our mistakes. He wants the very best for us. But meanwhile, if we're still waiting for things to work out down here, let's enjoy communion with Him and with His beloved Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, who we pray.