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.
#100 and 66166.
Lord Dallas drawn us after.
Now let us run and never tire.
Thy presence shall our comfort be.
Myself, our hope, our soul desire 166.
To begin, please turn with me to.
Sums 145.
So I'm 143, not 5.
Some 143.
Verse 10.
Teach me.
To do thy will.
For thou art my God.
Most at one time or another, if not all of us in this room and I speak to you as believers.
Have asked or expressed the desire in us to know the will of the Lord.
00:05:04
As it relates to our lives, this afternoon we're going to take up that subject, the will of the Lord.
And.
We want, we say, we ask.
Lord, I want to know your will in my life.
I'd like to start right in the beginning and make the statement. That's not a very adequate desire.
It's a little bit incomplete. Notice the verse that you just heard.
It doesn't say Teach me to know thy will.
It says, Teach me to do thy will.
It's essential to us.
To begin with, the desire to do there are no promises that I know in the word of God.
Where the Lord is going to teach us to know his will, apart from the willingness to do it. John 717. A very commonly referred to verse is, If any man will to do his will, he shall know of the doctrine.
There are, if I may call it that, prerequisites to knowing the will of the Lord. There are certain things that are necessary.
Before the Lord is going to make his will known to us.
And one of them is the willingness to do it.
Also.
As we use the expression, teach me to do thy will and the way I'm using it, O Lord.
O Lord.
That assumes that there is a relationship between US and the one whose will we want to know, that we acknowledge and recognize him.
As Lord.
If he's not Lord.
Then knowing his will is not particularly perhaps important to him in that sense, or to us either.
I want to illustrate the point by making an application. I visit a detention center regularly.
And quite often when I visit the detention center, there are young people there who will come to me personally and say, well, you pray for me.
And four times out of five, I could tell them I could ask for them what they want me to pray about.
Most of the time they're going to say to me something like this, I have a court date on Tuesday. Please pray for me that I'll get out.
Well, I don't suppose anybody in the room has a court date on Tuesday.
So I don't suppose in that exact way it applies to you or to me.
But the point that I sometimes try to make to them is this.
It takes me a little while to make the point. I don't wanna spend the full time to do it, but I'll just put it this way. Sometimes we wanna draw on God when we have a need.
And, uh, we haven't been able to handle it ourselves.
And so we would like God and I speak reverently to be our servant and handle it for us.
But when things are going the way we kind of like them to go, then we'll manage and we'll take care of things for ourselves.
So we pray, Lord, let's get out on Tuesday and we get out on Tuesday and the Lord recedes into the background of our lives until the next time we get put in the detention center. And then we say, Lord, help me, I need your help. To know the will of the Lord in your life doesn't work that way. You're not. I'm not going to know the will of the Lord in the sense of using him.
To take care of certain things in my life that I would like him to for my benefit.
And so.
00:10:02
We have to start with the proper perspective, if you will, if we're going to know the will of the Lord. Turn with me now to Ephesians chapter one.
Ephesians chapter one and verse three. Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings and heavenly places in Christ, according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world. That we should be holy and without blame before us before Him in love, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself.
According to the good pleasure.
Of his will.
We all have wills.
I have a will, you have a will, God has a will, Satan has a will. There's lots of wills. In fact in scripture I looked up the word will and it's variations and it occurs almost 3000 times in the word of God and many many other instances where will is being expressed without the word being used. It's a big word. It's a common thing. It's sub Adam and Eve sinned because they exercise their will.
And so here we find, it says, according to the good pleasure of his God's will.
You wanna know the will of the Lord for your life?
It can be simply expressed in the fulfillment of the will of God.
Not your will, not my will, the will of God.
Take out your if you've got it, take out your Saint Louis invitation card for a minute. The brethren nicely expressed on their card the will of God for you, so you can remember what God's will is for you and for your life. What is it to the end? That He may establish your hearts unblameable in holiness before God.
You wish to know the will of God for your life. That's it. That's one variation, or at least expression of it.
It's God's will for you that He might establish you.
Unblameable in holiness before him.
Or as we read that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love.
It explains some of the things that are going to happen and are happening in your life and mine. Sometimes we like to go like this and God puts us in circumstances that go like this and the result is why? Because He's doing His will.
And His will is to accomplish an end result in us for His honor and glory for eternity.
I know when we say the will, we want to know for me to do.
But in truth, we have to look higher than that and say what is he doing, what is his will? And that's gonna triumph in the end.
Sometimes our lives are going to be taken outside of our control where we can't even exercise our will.
Because of his greater will.
Couple of days ago, I was talking to a friend of mine named Alan Yurki, who's in prison for life. And I said to Alan, I said, Alan, you know Steve Jobs, who just recently died.
And if you know anything about Steve Jobs, you'll know that he made no profession of knowing the Lord Jesus Christ as his Savior. He said 50% of the time he believed in God and 50% of the time he didn't.
Whose life has more power for eternity, Steve Jobs or Alan Yurke in prison for life?
00:15:03
Allen No comparison.
Allen is be because of activity, things that he has done in his life. The circumstances of his life are largely in some ways beyond his control, but not beyond God's control. To make use of him for bringing the eternal blessing of his word to souls that will last for eternity and his lifetime can count with eternal value for souls. In contrast to a man who had to say at the end of his life when someone asked him about all his money.
He says the amount of money you've got doesn't matter much in the cemetery.
Where if we want to know the will of God, the will of the Lord, we need to see it and appreciate it in its larger sense. When it says, teach me to know thy will, Oh my God, God's first, perhaps. Well, I want to say this.
God wants every single person in this world to know His will.
Without exception.
You sit there, I stand here before a God who wants you and me to know his will.
It's his pleasure, it's his delight to make himself known to us.
We see that throughout the Word of God. When He had a relationship with somebody, the Lord, he wanted them to know Him. He wanted them to know His mind. He wanted them to know His will.
If you're married or if you're a child in a family, do you think your father or mother wants you to know their will? Of course they do.
If you are in a relationship of marriage and it's proper and it's going on as it should, then both want to know the will of the other. It's natural, it's proper.
If you don't know the will of God or the will of the Lord in your life in the broad sense of it.
It's not because God's fault.
There's something missing on the receiving end, not the giving end.
And so it teach me to know thy will, Oh my God, and it's his delight.
To do it, He wants you to know it. He wants you to know it in your life.
But again, it brings in the Lord.
In Luke we won't turn to it, but in Luke chapter 5.
Peter gets saved, as we call it.
One day the Lord Jesus.
Asked to use his bow.
So Peter said. OK, master, we'll do it.
And the Lord used it.
You know the story. When they were done, the Lord was done.
Preaching.
He gave Peter some instructions, which he followed halfway.
Didn't follow him completely, but he he came halfway. He was told to launch out in the deep and it doesn't say he went out in the deep. He just launched the net one. He was told to launch more than one. He launched one, but he sort of did what he was told to do.
And the fish came up to break the net and so on.
And then it gets saved.
At that point in his life, he says, depart from me, for I am a sinful man.
Oh Lord, that was his conversion. I am a sinful man, O Lord, There's his repentance and there is acknowledging Jesus as Lord.
And he's a saved man.
The first sentence of salvation out of the mouth of Peter is to recognize the will of the person that saved him.
Oh Lord.
Paul was going along the road to Damascus, and as he's going down that road and the light from heaven.
Exposes itself to him.
00:20:00
He gets saved.
The first words out of his safe soul are Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?
Do you think he found out the will of the Lord for his life?
Sure did. Sure did.
To know the will of the Lord in your life.
You have to own him as Lord and mean it, not halfway, not part of the way, not some of the days, not some of the things of life.
It's not Get Me Out on Tuesday.
I need help on Tuesday but I'm OK on Wednesdays and Fridays it is.
What did the Lord say to Peter?
He got the will of the Lord essentially for his whole life immediately.
But what did he say? He said come follow me.
And I will make you fishers of men. Did he have the will of the Lord for his personal life? Yes, he did. What are almost the last words that are spoken to Peter by the Lord Jesus on earth before he goes to heaven?
What is that to the?
Come.
Follow.
Thou me, did it change? Did the will of the Lord change for Peter? No, He got it in the beginning. Come follow me at the end of his life. And we need to be reminded, like Peter frequently when he gets to the other end of the Lord's time here on earth. Not the end of Peter's life, the Lord says to him.
Follow follow down me.
You need the will of the Lord for your life. Follow the Lord.
All the Lord.
End.
He will say whatever he wants to say to you. I will make you a Fisher of men. I will make you a mother of children, whatever comes afterwards. But the first thing has to be established.
The following.
And the submission to his will.
OK, let's turn over to.
Psalm 25.
Psalm 25.
And verse one unto thee, O Lord, do I lift up my soul. O my God, I trust in thee. Let me not be ashamed. Let not mine enemies triumph over me. We're going to go through at least part of this Psalm. It's a, there's a number of principles here about knowing and doing the will of the Lord. And, uh, we can get them out of the Psalm, I think, Oh my God.
I trust.
In the.
Or I confide in thee.
You won't. I won't really know the will of the Lord apart from faith.
And I think if you as we go over this and what time we have to go over it.
I'll just make this general comment.
You can't know the will of the Lord in its personal application to you apart from Communion.
There are many, many, many people in the scriptures who followed and did the will of the Lord one day in their life in a a day later or a year later. We're totally missing the will of the Lord, because doing the will of the Lord and properly knowing it cannot be separated from your fellowship.
You can't say I know the will of the Lord now, and for the rest of my life I'm going to do it.
You need to have.
His will in his daily detail before you, and you will miss it, you will lose it if you get away from following the Lord and get away from obedience to his will as you know it. But here it's the first thing in this Psalm is, Oh my God, I trust in thee.
You know, if you submit yourself to someone as Lord employed in, that is the confidence that you have that when he says jump, you jump.
00:25:12
Or he says stay, you stay.
It isn't a counselor. You know when you to know the will of the Lord. Don't treat him as a counselor.
A counselor, someone says, I don't know what to do about this. And so they stop and they go ask somebody, what do you think? And they ask him for some instructions about it or opinion about it or his thoughts about it. And sometimes we do go to one another in an improper way and seek counsel.
But with the Lord, don't bring it down to that low level council.
With the Lord, it's absolute.
It is when he says it. That's it.
He says jump to jump.
Use present way of saying things.
When he says stop, you stop.
And to have that relationship, to know his will, will involve trust.
And so he says, I trust in thee.
We must to know to do His will. And again I say not sometimes we do know his will sometimes, and we don't do it because we don't trust.
We have a sense of His will.
In us at times, but it's teach me to do and we stop short of doing because we don't trust.
M.
Enough.
Verse three. Let none that wait on thee be ashamed.
And verse five, the end of the verse, on thee do I wait.
All the day.
Sometimes in practice, the knowing the will of the Lord to do it requires waiting.
We're not good at waiting. In this day in which we live, we are culturally conditioned to jump from one thing to the next to the next and not spend very long on anything. Not necessarily muse over it, that is. Meditate and think about it. It's.
The Internet is conditioning the mind of man even by secular people who say people are losing their capacity to think. They want instant something to satisfy a wish without having to think about it.
There's a book written to help you generate a website that's titled Please Don't Make Me Think.
And it's a serious book.
But often times to know the will of the Lord.
Requires waiting.
Turn over to Psalm 40 for a verse or two. Hold your place here if you want. We're coming back.
It's not this, not what I want. I think I want Isaiah chapter 50, the verse I want.
Isaiah chapter 50 and verse four, the Lord God hath given me this is the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him that is weary.
He wakeneth morning, by morning he waketh mine ear to hear as the learned.
The Lord God hath opened mine ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned thy back.
This is prophetically about the Lord Jesus, the perfect one in his life who followed the will of his God.
He says in John's Gospel chapter 6, when they were disputing with him, he said I came to do the will of my father.
With us which has sent me.
At times the father said go and he went at times and following the will of his father, he stopped. He didn't do anything.
00:30:06
You remember when Lazarus was sick, they expected him to go immediately and he didn't because he waited.
To the will of the Father.
King Saul was told.
By Samuel I'm going to come here on this day and you wait for me.
And so I'll waited until the 7th day and the day started to progress and he saw the people all drifting away and and he just, he says he forced himself.
And he acted against the will of the Lord.
Part of doing the will of the Lord and even knowing the will of the Lord is the willingness to wait and submit.
To his time.
If you have asked the Lord His will in a matter, He will tell you in His time.
And sometimes he will tell you what his will is, but he'll also show you what's not yet.
And you have to wait or you should wait. Don't force yourself.
While we're here in this 50th Psalm, I want to show you one other thing about the will of the Lord that's important. It says the Lord verse five. The Lord God hath opened mine ear, and I was not rebellious, neither turned I back.
OK, he was obedient.
To the will.
But look at the next verse and what he was obedient to. Look at the next verse.
I gave my back to the smiders and my cheeks to them that plucked off the hair. I hid not my face from shame and spitting. That's what he submitted to according to the will.
Of God.
Do I want to know the will of the Lord? Unless.
Unless their shame and spitting.
Or.
Something else is not pleasant.
Is knowing and doing the will of the Lord going to mean that life flows along like a little Millennium until we go to heaven?
You can almost say it's guaranteed a life in the will of the Lord is going to involve suffering.
It has to.
Because you live in a world of sin and everything is out of order because of sin.
And as a consequence, things don't go right until the Lord comes in the Millennium, and then they will be set in order. But if you're going to know and do the will of the Lord, you must recognize you are going to submit yourself to things that aren't pleasant, that aren't fun, that aren't wow.
I gave my back.
If it be possible, let this cup pass from me.
Not my will.
But thine be done.
Then he went out to the cross, came back to Psalm 25.
Verse 4 Show me thy ways, O Lord, teach me. Thy paths, lead me in thy truth, teach me.
For thou art the God of my salvation.
There can, and generally there is. I believe in our lives.
A general path that the Lord will lead us in.
Through life.
Your path will be different than mine in a specific way.
And the psalmist here said, lead me, show that way to me. Teach me your path.
You know, if you go outside this door here and you go down the hall to the end outside the children's room, there's two photographs on the wall that are both.
Uh, really of the same thing, but taken at a different time of day and perhaps time of year.
00:35:01
And they have a walkway that goes out over water and then it turns and turns and goes and whatever.
And if.
You wanted to get to the other end. You could get on that pathway and as long as you stayed on the path, you won't get a drink in the water, but you will get safely to the other end, I'm sure.
God has a path for your life and mind. That's His will for us that will take us all the way.
And it's just to walk in it.
It's not again the Lord Jesus, I came to do thy will. Oh my God. To put it another way, we missed the mind of the Lord, or we missed the level of the Lord because we want to do our own.
And we end up in the water sometimes.
The second thing about those two pictures is one of them is very cheerful.
Taken with flowers and so on around framing the picture at that time of year. The other one is rather somber, must be taken at dusk without the flowers showing, and so on. And sometimes the path of the Lord has that characteristic. Sometimes it's flowery, it's fun and we're happy to go in it. But sometimes it has the characteristic of being somber, and yet it's the same path.
It's the same time and if we get on and allow the Lord to teach us.
He will lead us down the path and protect us from getting off and jumping off in the water if we're submissive but.
To know the will of the Lord means to put aside your own will. Sometimes we don't know the will of the Lord because we've got our own agenda. We have our own will, and so we want to do our own thing. If you want to know and do the will of the Lord, that's it. It's the same words. Put your own will aside.
Put your own agenda aside and submit yourself to his.
Verse six. Remember, O Lord, thy tender mercies and thy loving kindness, for they have been ever of old. Remember not the sins of my youth, nor my transgressions, according to thy tender mercies. Remember thou me for thy goodness sake, O Lord.
Good and upright is the Lord, therefore he will teach sinners in the way.
Look at a verse in First Corinthian or First John chapter 3.
First John chapter 3 and verse 20. For if our heart condemn us, God is greater than our heart and knoweth all things.
Beloved, if our heart condemn us, then not then have we confidence toward God that whatsoever we ask, we receive of Him, because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight.
Doing the will of the Lord and requires obedience and if we.
Are disobedient and circumstances come as a consequence of it. One of the things that's very natural to us is we lose confidence.
In the will of the Lord.
As to knowing it for ourselves?
Because from the beginning there tends to be in our heart. The Lord will show me as well, as long as I'm a good boy.
But it depends on me to be a good boy, and if I'm a good boy, then he'll do the good thing. But if I'm a bad boy?
Then he's not gonna. It's too bad. Why do the young people, the detention center asked me to pray for him? Why don't they pray for themselves? Because they're at that moment look upon themselves as a bad boy and a bad girl, and they don't have confidence, so they ask somebody else to do something for them.
David, who didn't have the indwelling of the Spirit as we do, and that you. This is not our position or our relationship with the Lord as His was, but we still experience something like it at times in our lives. Remember, oh Lord, thy tender mercies. Oh Lord, Please remember what you are.
00:40:02
Because.
Don't remember this my sins.
God is greater than our hearts. We need to learn that.
We do fail and we do miss the mind of the Lord, and we do have consequences as a result of it, but the Lord would ever want us to turn back to Himself.
We don't say to Alan your key in prison, Alan, you missed the mind of Lord big time. You'll never know it. No.
It can, within the circumstances in which he is in the government of God, know and do the will of the Lord, and the Lord wants him to know and do His will. There is always, as long as we live the rest of our days.
And we always need to remember that sometimes, OK, I miss the mind of the Lord, and so now I'm where I am. And So what difference does it make? And we use that as an excuse to keep on doing our own will.
And finish our life by wasting it.
Don't be that way.
Always go back and say, Lord, Remember Me according to your loving kindness. And He does, and He will.
And that's a lesson we need to learn.
He says he will teach centers in the way sinners.
That's where we start out and that's where we sometimes get along, acting like sinners in the way. But He will teach us.
Not always easy to be taught. He'll teach centers in his way. Let's Makes reminds me of the 32nd Psalm. Let's turn to that for a moment.
Psalm 32 and verse 8.
I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go. I will guide thee with mine. The new translation is, I will guide thee with mine eye upon thee. You ever seen a little child when he is learning something new or doing something he hasn't done before? And Mother, father looks right there and watches him, whoops, whoops, and maybe puts their hand on his shoulder, or guides his hand to teach him to do it the way he wants him to do it.
The Lord so interested in you, knowing and doing his will, that he says I'll guide you with mine eye on you.
That is, I'll watch you, and as you need an adjustment, I'll give it to you.
So that you can do it better.
That's his interest, the level of interest he has in you and I doing as well, that He will guide us with His eye upon us.
Verse 9.
By contrast, be not as the horse or as the mule, which have no understanding, whose mouth must be held with a bitten bridle, lest they come near unto thee.
Sometimes the Lord is so interested in us having to do as well for our own good.
He'll put a bit and a bridle in her mouth.
And use us to do as well, like a horse.
Is that the fun way? No, it's not.
It's not a fun way.
But it is an expression of sometimes to get the end result of God's will in our lives if necessary. He loves us enough that He will literally, figuratively speaking, put a bed and bridle on us.
So that we can learn.
And if we learn a little bit, then it might be taken off if we don't need it.
Back to the 25th chapter.
All the verse 10, all the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth unto such as keep his covenant and his testimonies.
All the paths of the Lord are mercy and truth. That's the will that you want to walk in.
The path of mercy and the path of truth.
And so it says unto such as keep his covenant and his testimonies. Hold your finger here. Go to Psalm 40.
00:45:02
Sum 46 Sacrifice and offering. Thou didst not desire my nearest. Hast thou opened burnt offerings and sin offerings? Hast thou not required? Then said I, this is all about the Lord Jesus prophetically. Lo, I come in the volume of the book. It is written of me by delight to do Thy will, O my God. Yeah, Thy law is within my heart.
His law is his will.
This is expressed here.
Where do you need the will of the Lord to do it properly?
In your heart.
This gives you his will.
You need to feed on it.
So that it becomes a part of you.
You can't just use it as a thumb index. Oh, I need to know what I'm gonna do next week. I think I'll look here. Oh, yes, this is. You're not gonna find it that way.
And if you try, you'll probably miss the will of the Lord.
You know Satan, he used the Bible. If you go to the Word of God and your heart isn't submissive to his heart, if it's not following him and you want to have the verse to guide you for what you want to do, you'll probably find it.
To your own destruction because you'll misuse it.
And if you can't find it and you go the next step and you say, well, I'll pray about it. You'll probably pray with yourself.
And then you'll do what you wanna do, and so will I. We're not different.
The Lord had and if the will of God, and you know the will of God, and you do it because it's right.
But it's not according to what's in your heart. You'll give it up in time. You won't continue in it.
Something else will come along and steal your heart, and you'll follow it because you were doing it because it was right, rather than you were doing it in obedience of your heart to the your Lord.
So it's it's a serious matter to want to follow and do the will of the Lord. He wants you, He'll tell you what it is.
But learn to do it from the heart, like the Lord Jesus did.
Verse nine of our chapter 25.
The meek will he guide in judgment.
The meek will he teach his way.
Probably the easiest way to miss the will of the Lord in one's life is pride.
Right, the meek.
He teaches his way.
We missed the way of the Lord, perhaps as easily as in any way in our lives, when pride is allowed a place in US.
May the Lord, in His grace and mercy do that which makes us.
Make.
Joe was proud until the Lord finished his lesson with Job and and when he was done, Job said, I abhorred myself and repent and dust and ashes. And that's when he got to meekness. That's when he gave up his pride and that's when he truly understood the ways of the Lord in his life and got the blessing of them.
12.
What man is he that feareth the Lord Him? Will he teach in the way that he should choose? That he should choose is the way the Lord chooses.
That's what's meant here.
The man that fears the Lord, the Lord will teach in the way that he, the Lord will choose.
Verse 14 The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him.
And he will show them his covenant or his will.
The secret communications of the Lord.
That's what the secret's about here.
00:50:03
The personal, individual, private interchange between the soul and the Lord, in which His will is appreciated and acted upon.
Is for the man that fears him.
Fear here means to give him his full, honored place in the heart.
This is the man.
Really more than any other.
Walks in the will of the Lord and knows it. The Lord says if you will walk with me independence and obedience and humbleness, we will have communications together and I will guide you daily step by step.
In what you eat today, what you do today.
Where you go today as well as the bigger.
Activities and choices that are made in life. The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him. I hope you'll remember those words. To me, they're the highlight of this chapter.
The secret. If you see Mr. Darby's translation, the footnote of secret, it's the private, intimate communications between the Lord and his soul are found.
In the one that.
What Scripture calls fears him has that deep personal respect for his person.
Gonna look at that twice more. Go to uh.
I can think of where the place is Luke Chapter 11.
Luke Chapter 11, verse 34.
The light of the body is the eye. Therefore when thine eye is single, thy whole body is full of light. But when thine eye is evil, thy body is also full of darkness. Take heed, therefore, that the light which is in thee be not darkness. If thy whole body therefore be full of light, having no part dark, the whole shall be full of light, as when the bright shining of a candle doth give thee light. Here he is saying in a moral sense.
To know to have light, to see everything as it is, is with the simplicity of a single eye.
In the measure in which your mind, your eye of your heart, the eye of the will of your life, the eye of submission.
Is single, focused on the Lord Jesus Christ. In that measure, your body will be full of light to the knowledge of His will for you every day, every step of life.
He wants that.
It's his desire that you and he walk through life with a full understanding of an intimacy of will between you. But if there's part darkness, there'll be part darkness, as it says here. If there's a little bit in me, that's for me. My well, please.
Not I delight to do thy will, Oh my God, but a little bit for me.
Then there will be a little bit of darkness, and if there's a lot for me, there'll be a lot of darkness. And every one of us, I dare say, needs to be sure that we grow in the sense of having a single simple.
Motive that governs our life. I want to show it to you in closing in an incident in the life of the apostle Paul that I find.
Very instructive in Philippians chapter one.
It's actually this passage that.
If you will, the light bulb came on and my soul at the Montreal conference in a reading meeting.
That has led to these remarks today.
Here's a man.
Who knows the will of the Lord, and presents it to us in a very remarkable way, that is showing us what it means to have a single eye that gives us to know the will of the Lord.
00:55:03
In our lives, here's Paul, we're not going to read the whole, but verse 12 it says, and I'm going to read the new translation. But I would have you know, brethren, what the circumstances.
In which I am that the circumstances in which I am. So these remarks start with the circumstances of his life at that moment. What are they?
He's in prison. He's been in prison for years.
As we would say, naturally he doesn't know until he stands before Caesar, who, it would appear, has the control whose will is going to determine whether he lives or dies.
He might have just sat in prison each day and said, well, it's up to Nero whether I live or die. I it's out of my hands. I can't control it.
I'm a prisoner in prison. That's his circumstances.
So what does he say we will skip down to?
Verse 19.
I know not. I hope not. I think not. I wish, but I know.
I know that this shall turn to my salvation through your prayer.
And the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ.
Your prayer was an expression of dependence.
On the at the throne of God for Paul and the supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, Paul had that sense that the power of the Spirit of Jesus Christ working in him was going to result in his being set free, his salvation. Now we could look at it and say, well, he didn't know whether he was going to be set free by death or by life.
But what follows, I believe, shows us that he did know he was going to be set free in life.
Notice what it says.
According to my earnest expectation and my hope now he says, hope that in nothing I shall be ashamed. But in all boldness, so now also Christ shall be magnified in my body, whether by life or by death. He's saying, Well, I, I want in this circumstance in which I am, it's my desire that Christ be honored. He be magnified, His name be.
Defended before the king when I stand before him, whether it results in life or death, he says I want.
My desire, well then he goes on or time slipped away here he says for me to live is Christ and to die is gain. That's the key verse of this sequence and we'll come back to it. But if I live in the flesh, this is to the fruit of my labor. Yet I shall not choose. I want not, for I am in a straight between 2:00 to having a desire to part, to be with Christ, which is far better. Nevertheless, to abide in the flesh is needful, more needful for you.
He stops and says what are my choices? What would my will be?
Live or die? Well, if I had my choice, I'd like to go to heaven to be with the Lord.
But for your sake, there's a need there. You need me. And so it's a hard situation.
What do I do? What do I think? What do I want?
Verse 25 Having this confidence I know.
That I shall abide and continue with you all for your furtherance and joy of faith.
That your rejoicing may be more abundant in Jesus Christ.
Backing up to the 21St verse, what he's saying is to him the will of Christ was everything.
That was it.
To live was Christ perfectly in that sense simplicity with the whole body full of light. And he looks at the situation and as it were, his heart is formed by the mind of Christ and the mind of Christ. Is there something for Paul still to do on earth?
And so judging the matter without a will of his own for me, he wouldn't know. But allowing the Lord Jesus to have this supreme place in which he says for me to live is Christ. He can look at the situation. He can see it, if you will, through the eyes of the Lord and the Lord's fall. You're going to be here around for a while because I have something still for you to do.
01:00:10
And.
In that the will of the Lord manifests to Himself.
It didn't matter what Nero said.
It didn't matter that the most powerful man on the face of the earth, living at that moment had supposedly the power of life and death over him. No, he didn't.
I know I shall remain.
He knew the mind of the Lord.
And the hand of the king is secondary. It's in the hand of the Lord, the heart of the king. And so he would remain.
Brethren.
I don't think anyone of us would claim to be quite where Paul was in Philippians one in our present condition of soul.
But may the Lord help us to grow in that direction.
That he might have the pleasure.
Of having His will in that degree expressed in our lives.