Address—Don Rule
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#212 called from above, and heavenly men by birth.
Who once were about the citizens of Earth?
As pilgrims here, we seek a heavenly home.
Our portion in the age is yet to come.
And my God will pray.
Close.
To the education, oh heavenly God, let me know why you're nervous at times. All sorts of you sleep the grass I've seen.
If we were conscious of what we were just doing, we were talking to the Lord.
In song form, but nonetheless directly speaking to the Lord.
Turn with me to the Gospel of John and the Lords Prayer.
Found in chapter 17.
John, Chapter 17.
And verse 13 to start.
And now I come to thee.
And these things I speak in the world.
That they might have my joy fulfilled in themselves.
There are a number of things in this prayer that the Lord Jesus speaks of as His own.
And some of these things in His prayer, He wants to share with us and pass on to us to have them with Himself. And this afternoon we're going to give emphasis to this one thing that was His, that He desires that you have it. It's His prayer. And I trust this afternoon that He will use what He asked of the Father.
To fulfill.
Some of what he has expressed in this prayer.
For you and for me here, he says in this verse 13.
He's praying, he says, that they may have my joy.
Fulfilled in themselves.
Think of that.
Words are easy to say, but think of the meaning of it for yourself personally.
Lord Jesus is here saying to his Father, Father, I want those.
Of my own children, of your children, those whom you have given me, who are gathered together in Mayfield, KY, on this Lord's Day to have my joy.
To have my joy fulfilled in themselves.
Lord Jesus himself had a joy.
He had a joy in this life when he was here living.
And he anticipated while he was here, a joy that he was going to have after this life was over.
And so as he expresses it here, as he's about to leave this world, the end of his life had come, as he could say, as the divine Son of God. Earlier I finished the work earlier in the chapter in the prayer, I finished the work which you have given me to do. And now he was returning to the Father.
Who had sent him into this world?
But while he was here, we may give emphasis at times, and rightly so, and we did this morning to the suffering side.
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In which He also wished His disciples, to the extent that they could, to be with Him and to enter into it that suffering. In anticipation of the Cross. He said that you might be with me, and that we might have this time together and anticipation.
This morning.
That there was number more anticipation for him.
That suffering had gone through. He had accomplished it.
But His soul still has it in my remembrance. And he wanted, he desired that you and I sit down with him this morning and remember what He passed through. So for us, it's in remembrance. For the disciples it was an anticipation, even though they didn't really enter into it very much, the very fact that He was with them.
Was a comfort to his heart at that time. But this morning?
His sufferings were fresh in his own soul.
And as he can, I say, remembered them.
My soul hath them still in remembrance, as the Prophet says in lamentations. He said as it were to us this morning, I want you to get sit down with me and let's remember together.
Well, here he's Speaking of a joy that he had, that his prayer was that that same joy that he experienced might be also fulfilled in your life.
And mine that you and I this afternoon might enter in.
To the same character of joy that was characteristic of his life. And so the question can quite naturally be asked, well, how? What is the joy? What is it that he experienced that he wants you to experience as he did?
And if you do, you will have the shared joy of having experienced the same as he did forever. And that's important.
To recognize as well that the things that you and I share in this life, if they are of Christ and not of the flesh, those things will be enjoyed together for eternity.
And the Lord Jesus wants us to experience things.
That he experienced so that we might have that shared.
Common memory for our blessing and benefit for ever. One of them here is joy, The other one. Another one. Not the only one. Another one is service.
Another one is sorrow.
Do you want to know the heart of the Lord?
You have to pass through sorrow, not the same measure that he did, but you have to experience it as something common to yourself and himself, that it might be shared together. And so the joy that he wants you and I to experience as we pass through life is that which.
Will go right on into eternity.
And be shared together forever.
In order.
To.
Share enjoy with himself as he expresses it in this prayer.
You have to and I have to enter in to the same relationship that he had.
The same character, at least a relationship that he had with his father as he passed through his life.
The very first.
Words of the Lord Jesus in resurrection.
Were the letting loose in his own heart that now he was going to be able to share and they were going to be able to share with him something that he had enjoyed in his whole life here that they hadn't enjoyed, but now they were going to be able to enjoy with him.
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And in entering into it with him, we're going to be able to have his joy fulfilled in themselves. And that is I ascend to my father.
And your Father, and to my God and your God. You can't have his joy if you don't have the same Father.
His joy was intimately connected with his own relationship to his father.
In daily life he had that constant fellowship and communion as sent by his father here into this world to do a work that he was doing, and he found his daily joy. I delight, he says, to do thy will.
Oh my God, and so is a man here on earth. He found his joy in doing the will of his Father.
And God.
If you're going to have his joy.
Fulfilled in yourself, you have to have the same relationship and you have to have the same walk as well.
I delight to do thy will, O my God. That was a relationship that could not be. We could not be brought into the disciples could not be brought into it until the work at the cross was finished, and then they could.
They could be brought into that relationship to know God his Father.
We're going to trace a little bit of how that is found. There are four places in John's Gospel where the Lord Jesus.
Speaks these words.
Where I am.
It's four different chapters, 5 different examples and we're going to look at them and the Lord Jesus in speaking those words that where I am.
There you may be also was expressing something in them that I believe has both present application and future as well.
Particularly future as to their fulfillment of it, but as to the walk, it has application now. So let's look at the first of them. And I trust through them our hearts will be led to.
Have a greater appreciation that His love might be fulfilled in US.
Turn to first one in John Chapter 7.
Notice how this chapter starts. It says after these things Jesus walked in Galilee, for he would not walk in jewelry because the Jews sought to kill him. That is, at this point in this gospel, he's a rejected man.
He has presented himself as scent of God to the people.
And he has come forth from the bosom of the Father.
The scent of the father and yet in his heart he dwelled always in the enjoyment of the affections of his father. And so it is to have his joy fulfilled in us. We too need to have the relationship.
And also the enjoyment in our souls that we too are loved as He is loved and have that place with the Father that He had. In that way, we're not uniquely the Son of God, but we are the sons of God. We are the children of God. And so he could say, as the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you.
And that the Father loves us as he loves the Son.
And so here in Chapter 7, he's a rejected man, the people.
Are asking a set of questions. We're not going to read too much, but just to get the thought.
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No, we'll just start verse 33. Then said Jesus unto them, Yet a little while I'm with you. Then I go unto him that sent me.
Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me. And here's the expression.
And where I am.
Thither you cannot come.
Then the Jews among themselves says, Whither will he go that will not be able to find him?
Will he go to the dispersed among the Gentiles and teach of the Gentiles, and so on?
What manner of saying is this, that he said, Ye shall seek me, and shall not find me, And whether I am that you cannot come?
If you don't have a living connection, a life that he's given, what we call eternal life, he goes where you can't go.
And I can't go.
No one by knowledge goes to heaven.
For he is.
He had come.
He had presented himself, he had been rejected, and if he's rejected by a soul, you can't be where he is.
You have no place where he is this afternoon.
At the in the Father's house.
But I want to notice something in connection with that that it says have my joy fulfilled in themselves. There is a criteria really identified in this chapter, but it takes some meditation, I think to see it. Notice the last verse they.
Think about the chapters. Here's people and they come and they talk to the Lord Jesus and they have this conversation. He's speaking to them and they're speaking to Him. And as the normally happens, conversations come to an end. You've had conversations at the dinner table and they've come to their end, and now you're not at the dinner table in the next room anymore.
You're back somewhere else, and so these conversations were taking place.
But it's significant how the Spirit of God ends the chapter.
The last verse of the chapter says, And every man went unto his.
Own house.
Every man went to his own house.
Now turn to John. We see the same expression again in this Gospel.
Right at the end, after the Lord's risen from the dead, go to the end of the Gospel in chapter 20.
And we'll see this same expression.
Chapter 20. Verse One. The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark under the sepulchre, and see if the stone taken away from the sepulchre. Then she runneth and cometh to Simon Peter, and to the other disciple whom Jesus loved, and saith unto them, They have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not.
Where they have laid him. Peter therefore went forth, and that other disciple, and came to the sepulchre. So they ran both together.
And the other disciple did outrun Peter, and came first to the sepulchre, And he stooping down and looking in, saw the linen clothes lying. Yet went he not in. Then cometh Simon Peter following him, and went into the sepulchre, and see if the linen claws lie, and the napkin that was about his head not lying with linen claws, but wrapped together in a place by itself. Then went in also that other disciple which came first to the sepulchre, and he saw and.
For as yet they knew not the Scriptures, that He must rise again from the dead. Now notice this verse, what they do.
After what we just read.
Then the disciples went away again unto their own home.
You're here at the conference. I'm here at the conference. We anticipate it's going for different ones of us to end at a different time, some to the last meeting, some will have to leave perhaps this afternoon and some tomorrow morning and so on. But where are we going to go when we leave here?
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In most cases, it could be these words could be said. We went to our own home.
That's where we anticipate going when we when we leave here. Perhaps most of us do anyways, and that's proper in its place.
But notice one person is different.
Verse 11.
But Mary.
She didn't go to her own home.
But Mary stood without at the sepulchre, weeping.
And as she wept, she stooped down and looked into the sepulchre. And seeth 2 angels and whites sitting.
The one at the head and the other at the feet were the body of Jesus had lain. And they say unto her, Woman, Why weepest thou? But she said to them, Because they have taken away my Lord, and I know not where they have laid him, but when she has thus when she had thus said, she turned herself back, and saw Jesus standing, and knew not that it was Jesus. And Jesus said unto her, Woman, Why weepest though?
Just a woman of joy at this moment.
Why weepest thou whom seek us Thou? She's supposing him to be the gardener, Saith unto him, Sir, if thou hast borne him hence, tell me where thou hast laid him, and I will take him away. Jesus saith unto her, Mary she turned herself, and saith unto him. Or a bone eye, which is to say, Master.
Jesus saith unto her, Touch me not.
For I have not yet ascended to my Father, but go to my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my father, and your father, and to my God and your God.
The Lord was pleased.
To communicate something very precious to his own heart.
To one who would be satisfied with nothing less than himself.
The Lord.
Delights to communicate to your heart.
And to my heart.
What's precious to him when he sees that it's would be precious to our own hearts?
The others, they all had a home.
They went there.
The disciples didn't yet understand the truth of resurrection, and yet John went beyond. Peter in the sense that's recorded here is when he saw what he saw, he believed. Perhaps he remembered what the Lord had said at that point, but nonetheless, what he saw he believed, even though he still went home.
I believe.
In the application of it to us this afternoon is.
To have the Lord's joy fulfilled fully perhaps measures in which it is, but His prayer is that each one of us might enjoy it.
And enter into it and have his joy fulfilled in.
Mary is brought into the relationship of joy with the Father that he had and that he communicated with her, and nothing less could satisfy. But there was a price, if you will, in that sense, to be paid in the chapter that we read in John 7.
At that point, he's hated. What did he have? Did he have a home on Earth? Then? No, he didn't.
He was a rejected man as far as the earth was at that point in his life. Earlier he had a home.
He at some point in his life. From Mark's gospel we know he lived a rather normal life.
Up until the age of 30, and by that point there was a house apparently in Capernaum, where he could go and live when he wasn't otherwise occupied. But when he went out into his service for God to fulfill the purpose for which he had come, and he presents himself, he's rejected. And as a rejected man, he then had.
Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man had nowhere to lay his head. He had no home.
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Morally speaking on Earth anymore he couldn't have done.
What the disciples, if you will, and these people did. And to Mary's heart He was everything. And she has the joy of being the 1St to have seen Him in resurrection. And He had the joy of being able to communicate something precious to His own heart with her. And so I present it to you, is to have the joy of the Lord fulfilled.
And for me to have it in myself, we have to identify with him.
In the place that he has in the earth today.
The amount of the rejected man.
You can have.
The knowledge of the Lord Jesus.
As Savior and the assurance that at the end of life you're going to be with Him in heaven.
But neither of those mean that you identify with Him as a rejected man in your daily life, that you take the place that He took. And if that if we don't, we will not have his prayer fully fulfilled at this time.
In glory, yes, it will be fulfilled for every one of us, but in its present now.
Form unless we are willing to follow him in that way. So let's look at the 2nd place where we have where I am.
It's found in the 12Th chapter.
There's a foolish man.
And we're just going to read the last words of Lord's comment on a foolish man in chapter 12 and verse 21.
He's Speaking of this fool, he says. So is he that layeth up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.
And then?
He speaks to his disciples about confidence and so on in himself, and then goes down to verse 34.
Saying where your treasure is, there will your heart be also and.
I'm sorry. Thank you. Appreciate the help.
There's a common moral point, but it won't say the same words as where I am.
And John chapter 12, he says.
In verse 23 Jesus answered them, saying, The hour has come that the Son of man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone.
But if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit. This is the connection with the Fool.
He that loveth his life shall lose it. He that hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal. If any man serve me, let him follow me.
And where I am.
There shall also my servant be.
If any man serve me, him will my father honor.
Now is my soul troubled? And what shall I say, Father, save me from this hour, But for this cause came on to this hour. Father, glorify thy name. Then came their voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.
Umm, down connect. It's also connected in verse 35 to what we had in the reading yesterday afternoon.
Jesus said unto them, Yet a little while is the light with you walk.
Well, you have the light less darkness come upon you, for he that walketh in darkness.
Knoweth not whither he goeth. While ye have the light, Believe in the light, that ye may be children of light. These things speak Jesus, and departed, and hid himself from them.
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If we are.
To have His joy fulfilled in US.
We have to have the right perspective as to this life.
This perspective was I have no home there.
I'm a rejected man there. My home is my Father's house, and it's in heaven.
And so I'm not going to love my life here on earth and get Max out of it, a pleasure and enjoyment and so on, but I am going to walk through it in fellowship with my father, doing his will and look forward and look on to home.
And where is He? Where I am? He's in the glory with his Father.
And so he would say to his own.
I have a purpose here.
I'm here to be light in a Dark World, and while I'm here, I'm the light of the world.
And it's a joy to present my father to the world.
And if you're my disciple, you have to be a light too.
You have to be a child of light and not a child of the darkness.
And.
If you are, then in I will my father may fulfill my joy in you to walk together and shout fellowship into that which we both are.
But there's a cost to it, isn't there?
And he recognized the cost as he faced it, he said, Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die.
That abideth alone.
If he had not died, if he had abided alone, he could never have prayed what he prayed in the 17th chapter, because there could be no one where I am.
In the Father's house with him? None.
Zero.
And so he would abide alone in that way, and have none with him, except he, the corn of wheat, fall into the ground and die.
And then there would be much fruit for God, and you and I this afternoon are part of the fruit.
That has been produced through his death. And yet.
He had to give his life, let it be so. The cost to him was life itself.
And much more in his suffering at the cross. Let's turn over to Chapter 14.
Let not your heart be troubled. You believe in God, believe also in me.
In my father's house are many mansions. If it were not so, I would have told you.
I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you unto myself that where I am.
There you may be also.
For him.
The Father's house was the House of Joy.
I'll use a little analogy to it. It's been precious to me many times.
But it connects a little bit with yesterday.
In the Gospel.
We had Luke 15.
And we had the son.
Who left the father's house willfully?
In rebellion against the Father, without the joy of the Father.
And he goes into the far country, and he ruins himself with his living.
And in the end of it we see him coming back to the father, and the joy of the father in welcoming the wayward son. And then they, the son is properly guard Raymond to sit at the father's table, just as an analogy to it.
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Taking parts that one wishes to to make the point.
Think of it as another.
Outline of a perfect sun.
Left the father's house to go into the far country.
That perfect sun in the far country.
Perfectly honored the Father.
And did all that the Father's heart could wish.
And.
In one sense, he spent all.
He gave life itself up.
His very body became.
A body in which on sin was placed.
And he?
Gave everything in the far country.
I can only imagine.
But and you can too.
But at least it cheers the heart, even if we really can't enter into it. But just try to imagine in your own heart.
That father.
Welcome in that Slough home.
When God the Father welcomed home.
And instead of I have sinned.
There is. Well done.
Absolute joy.
That will never.
Stop.
The Father's delight in the Son that accomplished his will in the far country.
Is a joy that has begun that will have no end.
The Lord Jesus had that choice.
And he wants that joy in its way, fulfilled in you.
He wants you to live your life.
As he lived his.
For the Father's will.
He will accomplish in your life whatever his purposes of that life are.
And he looks forward to having the father.
Receive you.
In the same way. Well done.
Good and faithful servant.
So he says here.
I will receive you unto myself. He wants you and I.
To share in his.
What he enjoys now.
And in the relationship in which he enjoys it as son.
Something that I found delightful, really, but after the Sunday school.
I was going over to the bathroom and there was a little boy.
Maybe a big He was standing there and he was concentrating, he was looking around.
He didn't look scared.
But he was looking for something, and it wasn't hard to recognize.
I recognized him, he's one of Han's kids and when he saw I pointed out his father and mother to him and oh, a big smile came across his face and he went running to them.
That's a little illustration of.
The Lord's joy.
With the father.
And I doubt not it a figuratively way that it wasn't only the father that came running.
To meet, but the sun as well came running to meet the father.
And that's a joy that the Lord wants for you and I.
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To make a few more remarks.
This chapter doesn't only include joy. We're not going to talk about it, but I will note it for your further if you're interested, meditation.
In this Lord not only wants to share, have His joy fulfilled in US, but he says, Father, I've given him the words that you gave me, and so He has passed on to us the words that were given to Him by the Father.
And John, he also says I have my peace.
I want you to have that piece too. I want you to have the same piece that I have, and that's something else. That is the desire of the heart of the Lord Jesus for us.
He gives the purpose, he says.
I pray that they also may be one in US that we may have the same.
Collective oneness.
Don't have time really, I think to develop that, but we'll make one point out of it.
That oneness of commonness that the Lord enjoyed with the Father is a oneness that He wants us to enjoy with Him, with the Father.
All of us together entered into a oneness, and in order to get Her into that oneness, there has to be two things that are true of the Father that have to be true of US1 Is light, that is holiness.
And the other is love, and to be joined together in that same bundle of love and light.
We have to have life.
And we have to be separated from all that's inconsistent with what God is. And so if we were to enjoy it now, we have to have what we had yesterday and those things that protect us. Because if you go back to the Garden of Eden.
And you see what happened.
You see that Satan's attack on man?
Was to introduce unbelief.
In God's heart.
And therefore we need faith.
And that faith has to be protected so that we not be separated.
From the heart of God through unbelief.
God's commandment, even though righteousness is a thought, hadn't come in yet. But there had to be obedience on Adam and Eve's part. There had to be dependence on Adam and Eve's part.
To walk and be defended.
Look at the life of the Lord Jesus.
Did he have a breastplate?
Did he walk?
With armor.
I present to you he did.
He had on the breastplate of faith and love.
And he was tested in it beyond anything that you or I will ever be tested.
That breastplate had to be on when he faced.
The abandonment of God for sin.
When he said, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me? What kept him?
From unbelief.
Breastplate.
There was number evidence that he was at that moment loved of God as a man.
You've been rejected by man. But he was absolutely, utterly alone in his own being.
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And he had the breastplate on.
Turn to We talk about the three things of faith and hope and love. What about hope?
Did he have on?
The helmet of salvation.
Turn to Hebrews chapter 12.
Recall Hebrews Chapter 11, the chapter of faith, and we have all these heroes of the past.
Who demonstrated faith, and they're given to us as the cloud of witnesses.
That we might also.
Have our helmet of salvation.
Our shield of faith.
To protect us. But after Chapter 11 is done, what happens? It turns to chapter 12, and almost, you might say, and you can put all aside Chapter 11 and focus on Chapter 7, as it says, verse 12, verse one. Wherefore we're compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses. Let us lay aside every weight and the sin that so easily doth beset us, and let us run with patience.
The race that's set before us, how's he going to run it?
Looking at Chapter 11, well it's an instructive and beneficial, but going forward, what's what do we need looking unto Jesus?
The author and finisher of Path of Faith, who for the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand.
Of God.
So we said Christianity is of faith and hope and joy.
Lord lived the matter of hope.
He had to live in hope and as a man. This isn't the work of atonement that's in view here. It's a path of faith. It's living as a man in this world and here he lives.
And he had hope. He had the hope.
As it describes it here of the glory and sitting down as he did at the end of his path of faith at the right hand of God. And yet in it that hope is connected with joy.
He wants that joy fulfilled in you.
He wants you and I to go through the same path of faith as He went through it.
Having the same armor that he used, and in doing so he was directly.
More directly than any of us. Or where tempted by Satan to to go out of that path to leave it.
To get everything that Satan could give him of the world, if he would only.
Submit.
An homage.
And yet hear the Lord Jesus.
Exhibits his faith.
Exhibits that with a hope set before him and.
It was a joy. It was a joy to his heart as he went through the path toward the end and could look forward to the joy at the end of the path.
May the Lord help us to if I could say.
If needs be, brethren, let's be willing to leave home.
That is to find that the true home, the only true home, Not that we don't live in houses and not that we don't have daily life, but it's, it's a character of heart. It's a it's a enjoyment of the soul. We easily sing as strangers and pilgrims. We do not seek a home. Word's coming. You see it out of our lips. Some of them have probably sung it 1000 times.
But in the actual practice of life.
We need to enter into what it was to the Lord Jesus and follow Him and have that attachment of heart to Himself that we.
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A little more could say, but Mary.
But John or Jim and so on, and apply it to ourselves so that we enter into it as the experience of our own hearts with himself, and then have the shared joy forever of what we both experienced himself and ourselves.