Address—Don Rule
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
#35.
#35.
Data starter.
Turn with me, please, to Luke's Gospel Chapter 3.
I'm sorry, Chapter 4.
Luke chapter 4.
Luke's Gospel chapter 4 and verse one. And Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan and was led by the Spirit into the wilderness, and being 40 days tempted of the devil. And in those days he did eat nothing, and when they were ended, tea afterward hunger.
And the devil said unto him, If thou be the Son of God, command this stone, that it be made bread. And Jesus answered him, saying, It is written that man should not live by bread alone.
But by every word of God.
I often walk down a.
Street in the town where I live.
And somebody wrote in the sidewalk, on that sidewalk that I walked down when, uh, some repair work was being done and the cement was fresh, They wrote these words in the sidewalk.
00:05:01
God listens.
Just speak.
Well, we know that's prayer.
This afternoon I want to turn that statement around. God speaks.
Just listen.
And add to it.
Just listen.
And accept and do.
Particularly have you who are younger before me.
But I trust of the Lord, it's the desire of my heart that this afternoon there may be an increased or renewed or beginning, whatever it is diligence in you.
To listen to God.
Through his word.
We live in what we call a wired society.
Probably a significant percentage of the pockets and purses in this room.
Have an instrument to listen with.
And to speak to.
It's the age, it's the generation in which we live.
I would almost say I'm a little surprised and I'm getting hard of hearing, so maybe that's why I don't know that I haven't heard the Jingle during one of these meetings.
Of somebody.
Getting a message? Listen, I have something to say to you.
But I'm equally concerned.
That.
We live in a generation.
That is becoming increasingly less.
Ready to hear the Jingle?
Of the Lord.
I want to speak to you.
We have a million and one plus ways that people demand.
Promote, present themselves in one way or another to get our attention so that we listen to them.
Bookshelves are filled with books on the other side of people to teach you how to do it, so you can get somebody's attention, so that they will listen to you and so on.
Here in these verses the Lord Jesus says to Satan it is written.
It is written.
It was absolutely essential to the life of the Lord Jesus.
That he.
Know the Word from God.
And so when he was tempted of Satan, his response, his first words out of his mouth were it is written.
If it was essential to the life of the Lord Jesus, are you going to sit? Am I going to stand here in the presence of the eye of God and say it's not essential for me to know what's written?
Man shall not live by bread alone.
Your very life.
Depends.
On the word of God.
It's not an option. Your very life depends on it.
Man shall not live by bread alone.
But by every word which proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
If the Lord Jesus in this circumstance in his life.
Had not hearkened to the Word of God.
He would have sinned.
And if he had sinned, it would have been all over.
Yes, we know who he was. We know that there was nothing in him that.
Would so respond.
But he's presented here as a man.
He's presented here as one that said in response to temptation. It is written.
00:10:03
Is that how you? Is that how I respond to temptation? It is written.
And so he says, man shall not live by a word, bread alone, but by every word.
That proceedeth out of the mouth of God. This has been true since man was created.
The first words that God spoke to mankind, recorded for us in the Word of God, where be fruitful and multiply and so on.
And have dominion.
That was spoken before. We have the setting of the Garden of Eden, but God puts man in the garden.
And the second words that God speaks recorded about two men. As it says God commanded the man.
Thou of all the trees of the garden thou mayest eat, but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil thou shalt not eat.
Adam's life, Eve's life depended on obedience to the Word of God.
Your life and my life depends on obedience.
To the Word of God as far as our lives here on earth.
Our trust, our salvation, depends on a word from God concerning something He has done that His Son has done.
And when the gospel is preached, it's preached to us as a word from God to be accepted from God.
That's true, and if we accept it as true, we receive from God the consequent blessings of salvation and life.
An inheritance and many other things.
I would just put it this way.
To make it practical. And what's the burden is that?
I trust I can speak for God in this way. He rang you up this morning.
Did you answer?
Did you answer this morning to his ring?
Did you hear?
The Word of God this morning.
And if you didn't?
Why didn't you listen to the ring?
Why didn't you respond to it?
It's not an optional thing, really.
It's not. I'm too busy, I don't have time. I got up too late.
If you're a little older, I would further say.
Don't take the attitude I had my reading for today.
God rings up frequently.
Let's be ready to answer the phone from God.
Lord Jesus here is quoting some verses that teach us something on this matter. He's quoting from Deuteronomy chapter 8. Let's go back there and look at it.
And seek to learn from it.
Deuteronomy chapter 8 and verse one. All the commandments which I command thee this day shall thou observe and do.
That you may live.
Their life depended on it. You know, I thought the other day, if you really believe this, if you were an Israelite in those days.
I suppose one of the very first things you taught your children when they were old enough to hear.
Were the rules under which they lived the commandments of God?
If you really, truly believe God, that's one of the very first things you teach your children.
Is what God had to say.
And so he says all the commandments.
00:15:01
Not selective ones, not some of them, not pick and choose, but all of them.
Which I command thee this day shalt thou observe that ye may live.
And multiply, and go in, and possess the land which the Lord swear unto your Father's.
Now these words were actually spoken by Moses at the very end of his life, and they had finished.
He and others, the journey of 40 years through the wilderness and they're just getting ready to enter the land of Canaan. So he's speaking to them to look back over the previous period of their life for those that lived through it, the 40 years, and he's talking to them with respect to that. So he says in verse two, thou shall remember, remember these past 40 years.
The way in which the Lord thy God LED thee these 40 years in the wilderness.
What it was that experience for?
We're reading in First Peter about a journey, and it hasn't been emphasized particularly, but it is a wilderness if we understand it rightly.
And when we get to the end, when we get to our inheritance, we're gonna have a day like this one.
A review day.
We're gonna go back, or shall I say the Lord is going to go back with us over the journey of life.
And explain it to us if needed.
And we're gonna see something like these people got to see because we're less like them. We're really no different. And so the Lord will perhaps say to us why some of these experiences that are taking place today, tomorrow and last week in our lives, we're going through them because he says, Lord, thy God LED thee these 40 years in the wilderness.
To humble thee.
To prove thee to know what was in thy heart, whether thou wouldst keep his commandments or no.
We're gonna have our day of remembrance on this matter, too.
God weaves the journey of life for everyone of us.
And we look at it, good times, bad times, why this, whatever that, if you want to look ahead a little to look the anticipation of looking back over it all.
We will find that God did it.
First, he says, to humble us.
Because we're just naturally proud. That's just what we are naturally. We're all proud and we like to find things in our lives that give honor to us and make us important in some way.
And draw attention to us and our accomplishments. And our wired society gives everybody, you might say, equal opportunity. Now. It used to be that you had to sort of prove yourself at a point where somebody let you communicate.
Through a public means.
But now everyone can promote if they choose.
But here God's way in this matter is.
Tumbling. No one will be proud in heaven.
And God doesn't want us to arrive proud and then have to have the humbling. He's going to allow the path of life that is going to work in the direction of the necessary for His honor humbling.
To prove thee.
To test us as to what we profess in life, the position that we take in life.
And we all take some kind of position or another in our personal lives, in our family life, in assembly life, in work life and so on. We.
We were put to the test.
00:20:02
Were proved by God in his testing ground.
It's hard.
I think particularly of and I admire him, Joseph.
It says that he was all the time from the time he was 17 years old till the time he was 30 years old. He was tested by his own statement that his family would bow down.
Before him.
In fact, it was more than that, because he was closer to 40 before they actually saw it. But as to his own personal exaltation, from the time he was seventy, life was a terr, terrific test of faith to Joseph. Would he believe what he said?
Would he live by what he said was God had told him?
And so he was proved.
And he's a wonderful example of a young man that passed the test in that way.
Our lives are proved, we say. We profess that we're on our way to heaven and that that this world doesn't satisfy and that we have something better to enjoy. This is a profession we sang the other night at home. This world is a wilderness wide. We have nothing to seek nor to choose.
I don't know, I probably sung it 1000 times but maybe as I get older I sing it more as a prayer.
Oh Lord, may it be so.
That because it's easy.
To profess certain things, but God chooses to test them in.
Us to know what was in my heart.
God's ways with us get down so that the heart gets exposed.
We all have a certain natural tendency to have an outward exterior that presents ourselves to others in a certain way. And yet God is interested not in that, but he's interested in what's in the heart. And so God's ways are ways that expose. And we'll look at that by the Word in a few minutes.
To know what was in thy heart.
Whether what thou wouldst keep his commandments or no?
Will we?
Be obedient.
Or no.
God created us as dependent upon Him.
And He created us to be obedient to Him.
In coming eternity, we will be a dependent and, thankfully, perfectly obedient.
But Adam and Eve really only had one test of obedience.
God commanded them not to eat of one particular tree.
Not because it was in itself the fruit was bad or unhealthy or this or that. No, it was the test.
Keeping man in his place of obedience, the children of Israel had to live their life because God has never given up on His intent that His creature be obedient and He never will.
And so.
These for this particular set of people.
And so when the Lord Jesus was tested, he said it is written, He responded with what was written and he listened to it, He submitted to it, He was obedient.
So in verse three it says here he humbled thee and suffered thee to hunger.
Think about that.
God intentionally put this group of people into a place that caused them to hunger.
00:25:01
There was God that did it.
He suffered data hunger.
It was a test. God had promised to feed them.
But they found themselves at times in situations where there was number food, and God put them in situations where there was number food.
To prove it.
Would they obey him or not? Would they believe him or not?
Every one of us God puts in situations that will test. Do I believe him or don't I?
Says He fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not. The character of the food that was given to them was of a character that they'd never seen before and didn't know and didn't understand, and it was strange in that way to them.
It perfectly met every need, but they weren't used to it in that character, in that form.
And in a certain way.
The Word of God feeds us like manna.
In ways that we don't personally necessarily understand.
But it does feed the soul.
And it's important that we believe it and accept it.
So in verse three goes on to say, Neither did your father's know that he might make thee to know, that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord.
Doth man live?
We won't go any farther in this chapter. It's worthwhile for you personally, I think, to go ahead and in your own time, read the rest of this chapter 8 and look at the backward view of it. One of the things that God was doing and the way He did it was so that they wouldn't be able to say at the end.
I did it. It's by my power, it's by my strength, it's by my willingness that I've made this journey successfully and I've gotten to the other side. And he warns them even after they get into the land, that after they God bless them and brought them their blessings, they would start to get proud about it. And secondly, and most seriously, in the end of the chapter, he warns them against going and finding other gods.
And we live in a world full of gods. OK, let's turn now to the New Testament, to Hebrews chapter 3.
Hebrews, chapter 3.
Verse 7 Wherefore, as the Holy Ghost saith today.
If he will hear his voice, harden not your hearts as in the day of provocation.
Verse 15.
While it is said today, if you will hear his voice, pardon not your hearts as in the provocation.
Chapter 4 verse seven. And again he limiteth a certain day, saying in David today after so long a time, as it is said today, if you will hear his voice, harden not your hearts.
For if Jesus had given them rest, then would he not afterwards?
Have spoken of another day. There remaineth therefore rest to the people of God.
For he that is entered into his rest, he also has ceased from his own works, as God did from his. Let us labor, therefore, to enter into that rest, lest any man fall after the same example of unbelief. For the Word of God is quick and powerful, and sharper than any two edged sword, piercing even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.
00:30:09
Neither is there any creature that is not manifest in His sight, but all things are naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do.
Today, if you will hear his voice.
Harden.
Not your heart.
Three times.
Makes it by repetition particularly important, it said in this little passage. Three times today, if you will hear his voice, harden not your heart.
Let's take it to heart.
Let's take those verses for ourselves.
Today is today.
Today if we will hear his voice.
Harden not our hearts.
When God speaks.
We either accept it.
Were we rejected?
We either accept it because God says it and we trust Him. We accept it in faith.
Or when God speaks, we do not accept it.
And so in us there is an unbelief in what God has said.
And the consequence to us is a hardening of our heart.
Unbelief.
In receiving from God when He has spoken produces hardness.
In the heart.
God has been speaking to us.
The last two days.
And in US there is either a reception of what he has to say to us.
Or, sadly, if there's a rejection of something in it, some piece of it.
It will harden.
That's what happened to we all. Many of us at least, know the story of Pharaoh.
God spoke to Pharaoh through Moses.
And when Pharaoh didn't believe the message?
His heart got a little harder.
God spoke again.
And he refused to accept it. And that unbelief had a working of hardening.
Of his heart.
A tender heart toward God is the heart that.
From which you will find love and joy and peace. So on.
A hardened heart is a heart that has selfishness.
Self centeredness.
And the desires of the flesh unrestrained to be fulfilled.
And enjoy.
And it hardens the heart.
So he said to them.
What, what was the context in in which these words, Some of these words were spoken. It's the occasion when the children of Israel were in the wilderness and they ran out of water and they said to Moses, did God bring us out here to kill us?
Did God bring us out here to kill us?
And so it was called a temptation, but they were tempting God.
Through their unbelief.
The unbelief of man when the Lord Jesus was on the cross, looked up at the Lord Jesus and said, If you're the Son of God, come down and we will believe you.
That was tempting.
God through man's unbelief.
And so God speaks.
And He looks for us for a response of submission and obedience.
So that He might bless us. And if it isn't, then it can work toward a hardening of the heart. And we're warned against it.
I think it's interesting. I'll just comment along the way here.
00:35:07
God spoke.
And he brought a whole world into existence.
God created a man.
To be over it all for him, at least the earthly part of it.
And it says he blessed him.
You said be fruitful and multiply and so on.
And when he had done that, it said he rested.
He rested.
Sabbath that was later given was the Day of God. To remember God's rest, we usually turn it around to think about it as some rest for us, but in reality the purpose of it was for rest for God. It's the last of the 10 commandments.
And in a certain way, if man had been able to keep the first nine and kept the 10th one as well.
God would be able to rest.
And have his rest, because he can't rest in the presence of disobedience and unbelief.
You can't do it. God hasn't had a day of rest since Adam sinned, and he won't have a day of rest since Adam sinned because he has creatures who are before him in unbelief and in disobedience.
And so there still remains for God into the future arrest.
You won't rest. I won't rest in our natural lives.
As long as there is in US working.
Of unbelief and disobedience.
God speaks.
We are to listen.
And to submit and to do.
I know he can't rust fully, but.
And any measure in which your life.
I was in it submission and obedience in faith.
I'll put it this way, you give God a little rest.
Please him, give him a little rest.
Here it says the Word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any two edged sword. It's a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. I encourage you.
To go to the word of God.
Because it will expose to you your own heart.
God. The next verse says God. Everything is naked and open to God.
He sees it all.
He understands it all. Nothing is hidden from the eye of God. Everything is naked and open to God, but not to us, not to us. And the Word of God is an instrument that God uses to help us.
To see ourselves.
For our own good and our own blessing.
God's heart is easier to understand than our own.
It's easier to understand the heart of God than it is my heart.
Goddess Heart is holy and loving and pure and consistent.
Truthful. Perfectly so.
The Word of God exposes my heart to be deceitful.
And wicked.
Who can know it?
It says, who can know what's in my heart?
But the word of God is given of God.
To make us to understand and know our own hearts for our own blessing.
Don't hide from it.
Don't. I don't like this scripture and pass by it. I'd like to read something more encouraging and more cheerful and more happy and this and that.
00:40:04
It's all given for good, and some of it's painful and hard.
But it it penetrates, it exposes.
It illuminates to our minds and our souls and our hearts what we are.
That's why the law was given.
So that the very giving of what was right.
Man would see that he didn't want it.
You might not have thought about stealing or anything like that until God said don't steal and immediately.
It made him realize, or quickly made him realize he did want to steal.
And he felt restrained because God had said he couldn't do it. He did covet.
And the very fact that God said don't covet was that which illuminated for him the desires of his own heart.
Let's learn. Let's benefit from it.
Let's turn over to where we are in First Peter chapter one.
First Peter chapter one.
Verse 23 Being born again, not a corruptible seed, but of incorruptible by the word of God, which liveth and abideth forever. For all flesh is as grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of grass. The grass withereth, and the flower thereof falleth away, but the word of God endureth forever. And this is the word which by the gospel is preached unto you.
The Word of God is living.
Life giving.
You can't live without it for eternity.
Do we understand how it works? No. Probably none of us could say we did fully understand. We know a little.
We know that God takes that word, which is like a seed, and it plants it. The sower went forth to sow, and the seed was planted in the souls of men.
A perfect seed. An incorruptible seed that couldn't be spoiled.
And the Spirit of God takes that seed and works.
And God works. Let there be faith.
And.
It brings life.
Brings life.
Why is this world working today?
It says tells us.
That is sustained.
It's maintained by the word of the Lord.
That's why it's it's going.
You know man discovers laws, but he has no idea what made the laws the laws that they are. He discovers what they are, but he can't create them himself. He can't duplicate them himself. He can use them, but why do 2 objects attract or have what we call gravity according to their mass?
Because God says so, and because God has chosen to keep it going that way.
There is power.
Let there be light, and there was light.
God puts a word in you, and when that word has living power to bring life.
Everlasting life to the soul, and further than that, it will endure.
Hundreds of millions of dollars were spent in the last few months.
To promote the words of men.
Will they endure?
No.
The words of one of the men who lost.
He's already told by those some who helped him and funded the words to say please kind of disappear. You're no longer helping.
00:45:03
Man's words don't endure.
I remember it's a bit amusing, but, and I suppose it's made-up, but a king once told some of his subjects he wanted to build a monument and he wanted it riding on the monument that would last. He wanted some words that would last, and I suppose in his honor. So they came up with these words to put on his monument. This too shall pass.
That's man.
The flower of grass that doesn't endure.
What is going to last?
The word of God.
Every promise of God is a word from God. Every act of God is by His word. Endorse.
Forever.
Don't live without it, embrace it. Turn back to James chapter one.
Verse 21. Verse. Chapter one. Verse 21. Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and super flailty of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted or implanted word, which is able to save your souls. Be not hearers of the Word and start over. Be not doers of the Word and hearers only, deceiving your own selves.
For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass, For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was.
When I was the age of some of you in this room.
And went to conferences. It was a time in my life when I needed I guess, and and God gave me increased understanding of Bible, truth and so on.
As I've gotten older along the path of life.
Very often my prayer to the Lord is O Lord.
Please change me.
We.
We need to be doers.
We can all come to this conference, we can all go home with some nice things that we've enjoyed, as we say.
That we found nice, helpful, happy.
And then Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, our lives continued just the same.
Will there not be anything that God would say to us this weekend that would be intended to produce a change?
In our lives.
The doers.
The word not here is only to be a doer is produces change.
Otherwise we have to be like we go home and straightway forget.
Straightway forget. Just go on with life as it is.
It's not God's desire, God speaks.
Listen. Receive. Do.
It gets into our I remember a brother who used to say, get the truth. So it gets down into your bootstraps and you walk in it. It was from the Southwest. But it, it's that you have to get it down in the reality of life so that you act on it and you will if there's true faith.
In the receiving it, the fact that we don't act on it is often expression of.
We don't believe.
We don't see the importance of it.
OK, let's turn over to Psalm 119.
00:50:08
So it's just a convenient Psalm to.
Make a few added remarks about the word and its importance.
I suppose most know this Psalm is the long longest chapter in the Bible.
Umm, very interesting in the Hebrew how it's constructed. And that doesn't matter this afternoon, but almost I think all but two of the verses in the Psalm.
In one way or another, speak of God's word as a statute, as a commandment, as a saying, and so on. So he says, blessed are the undefiled who walk in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord will connect it with verse 9. Wherewithal shall a man cleanse his way by taking heed thereunto, according to thy word in the New Testament, in Ephesians chapter 5.
It speaks of sanctification and washing of the water.
By the word.
The Word of God received into the soul has a purifying and sanctifying effect upon the life.
Do you want that?
You want a purity of life.
Do you want to be set apart for God in this life as well As for eternity?
You need the word.
You need to be clean, made clean practically in daily life by the sanctifying and purifying effect of the Word.
The world is full of filth.
The internet's full of filth.
Yes, it has its place. Yes, it has its good things. Come see bibletruthpublishers.com and all that.
But it is.
Immediate access to fill.
And filth ruins lives.
We sometimes hear the statement and we'd like to think this is how we use such things.
Well, I only use it in a harmless way.
I suggest to you, if the Lord Jesus wouldn't sit beside you while you're using it in a harmless way, whatever that harmless way is.
That you've lost fellowship for that period of time with the Lord Jesus.
Don't judge it. You know, when we say there's no harm in that, we are really saying I am free to exercise my will in that thing. Very root of that thought there's no harm in it is an expression of I would like to do my own will, please and thank you. And there's nothing explicitly forbidden in the exercise of my will in this matter. And I suggest to you that the Lord Jesus never ever did it that way.
I delight to do thy will, O my God. The word from the Lord he lived by, and none other. Absolutely no other word did the Lord Jesus live by, but the word of God. If God didn't direct him, he says, I waken morning by morning to hear.
Every morning he got up to listen and to do according to the Word from God the Father for his life. Don't judge things by as harmless or just a little fun or is this or that?
It revolves the soul very often, as harmless as it seems, if it's not filthy filth, very often, the time, the energy, the thought processes that go into it rob a fellowship.
With the sun and with the Father, to the loss of the soul.
Blessed are they that keep his testimonies, verse two, and seek him with a whole heart.
00:55:03
Be wholehearted.
May we all be wholehearted. So easy to be half and half, 3 fourths, 1/4, whatever. Sure, this weekend we're wholehearted. We've come apart from the temptations in large measure, and we get to enjoy much of the Lord Jesus.
But are we wholehearted in the sense that our lives and the manner and character of our life is not going to change when we leave this building and this atmosphere come Lord's Day?
Are we gonna continue consistently with the way we are this weekend? Let's be wholehearted.
Verse 4. Thou hast commanded us to keep thy precepts diligently. It takes effort.
Takes effort to read. Takes effort to think.
Thinking is becoming more and more a lost art in the world in which we live. It's being replaced by entertain me. I don't wanna think, Don't make me think.
We have a VTP relative to the website. I think it is a a book. Very title of the book is Don't Make Me Think. Man doesn't want to have to work at anything. He wants to be entertained. He wants it to be simple. He wants instant answers to anything he wants to ask.
You're not gonna have fellowship with God on those terms. You are not.
If you want to live a life in fellowship with God according to His Word, there will be, there must be, diligence.
He says he's.
I will praise thee, verse 7.
When I have learned thy righteous judgments.
It's good, good desire, isn't it?
Let's listen to God.
And the result when he's responded to is we will praise him.
And I want to take that beyond just the first thing that might have come to your mind when I said those words. We'll praise Him for all His goodness and His blessings and His benefits.
We will also praise him for everything that he has acted in discipline.
In our lives, we will praise Him for every difficulty that we ever pass through in life.
When we see it as he saw it.
We will thank him for every disappointment that we experienced.
And in many of those things, we don't have to wait for heaven to learn to praise Him in them.
Comes to mind. I suppose Lord wants me to say it, but in closing, it's kind of a funny thing to close on to me, but.
Some years ago, not that many years ago, I was sick for a week.
And I threw up so many times I couldn't count them and I couldn't didn't have anything more to throw up and I still tried to throw up and I couldn't sleep in bed anymore and I was sitting in the living room chair and.
Started to dry heave and I went into the bathroom and did it and thankfully God said thank me.
At that point I did. That was the beginning.
Great benefit to my soul.
There was a needed discipline in my life that had to take me through that until I came to the point where I said thank you, Lord.
In the midst of throwing up.
We need it, and if we will listen, there's blessing.
We will praise Him.