Address—Stephen Rule
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You have an outline. I don't know whether or not we'll complete it or not, but I think I can share with you in the next minute or two the whole of what I have to share with you this evening and the rest of it will be detailed.
The burden on my heart, things been going through my own mind for a couple of months off and on. Something that I've been enjoying for myself is that.
In our Lord Jesus Christ, our great High Priest, it is impossible, impossible to separate his power from his love. The two are inextricably linked. They're tightly bound together, and you can't tear them apart.
Here's what I mean, why it's important, why that kind of a thing is more than just a set of words. Umm. I'll give you several examples, but first of all.
How many of you have ever been in a a car as a driver with a passenger beside you or behind you that was sort of a hint driver?
Kind of. I wonder what the speed limit is along this road.
Or oh, I wonder if they just put that stop sign in or you you've got a hint helper along the side.
Have you ever been a hint helper for the Lord in your life? Kind of a gentle suggestion that he may want to focus a little bit of attention over on this particular area. That's a little bit of a concern and seems to be.
Neglected. That's when we don't have a a sense of his power in our hearts. You know, we would never sit in the passenger. Well, very rarely when we sit in the passenger seat and reach over and grab the steering wheel and try to drive, unless you're a driver's instructor or something like that.
So you might kind of subtly reach over and give a little hint. And that's how I think most of us act with the Lord. But I want to encourage, turn our focus and our attention on the Lord tonight.
And see why his power and his love cannot.
Be separated. Let me give you one more example of one of these two things.
I'm going to be as deliberately vague as possible. Umm, but someone that.
Has sat in these seats since this camp was held in this facility, in this building, in this room that I'm standing in, I've had a conversation within this year.
And that conversation with them this year involved them expressing to me, but I'll characterize as having lost a sense that God had power. There's been a situation in their life, and in that situation, they did all the right things. They checked all the right boxes. They went to the right people for advice. They went to.
Umm, you're supposed to read your Bible. They read their Bible. You're supposed to pray. They prayed.
And they weren't getting deliverance in their circumstances.
And as they expressed it to me.
If I felt betrayed by the Lord, I went to Him for His power.
And they thought he didn't give it to them.
So they came to the point where they doubted his love.
And now as of the conversation I had with them.
That person, as I would call it, teetering on the drink brink of agnosticism.
Is there a God?
Well, I don't know.
Not quite there yet, but they're awfully close because they lost a sense in their heart that this person, the Lord Jesus Christ, had power and love for them that was in perfect union.
It couldn't be divided. I'm going to give you a figure of it. It's in the Old Testament. We won't spend a whole lot of time on the figure.
But.
The high priest had his garments of glory and beauty. There's a lot to them. It's a beautiful subject. I'm not going to take it up with you. There's just one part of it that I want to one little sinky piece of the hole. You can study the whole thing and it's beautiful. But that high priest had on his heart. It says on his heart, I still found his chest. The Scriptures use the word heart.
Start with the breastplate and it has in it those stones and they're connected to shoulder plates. And so just to get a little bit better figure of it, this is obviously not a very detailed rendition, but give the part I'd like to focus on this evening and add the 12 Stones. And this picture doesn't show it, but the names of each of the 12 tribes of Israel were.
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Written on them.
They're engraved on them.
They were carved in stone. You know, you grab a little gel pen like the one in my pocket, and you scribble a note and you set it down in the wrong spot. And if you do it too quickly, just smudge and smear the ink on something else. You engrave a name on a stone, it's not going to get rubbed off. Those names were engraved on the breastplate on the heart of the Lord Jesus. He's the figure of that great high priest, and then on the shoulder pads.
Six names, but six on each side were engraved and Onyx stones and set in pouches of gold. The shoulders represent power, and so in that power the the government should be on his shoulder. It says in Isaiah you have the shepherd and the Luke 15 carrying on his shoulders, plural, the sheep, the place of power. If you want to push a vehicle you may or push something you may get down and put your shoulder into it.
To place the power, the heart.
The place of love. This is what I want you to notice. We'll turn to the scripture to give the figure of it.
And umm, Exodus chapter 28.
The next is 28 and verse 22.
Just read fairly quickly down through and then I'll back up and just give you a couple, umm, keywords.
Verse 22 And thou shalt make upon the breastplate chains at the ends of reason work of pure gold. We'll stop right there. Those chains that connect the shoulder blades and the breastplate and the figure I have there aren't. I'm very glad for whoever created the graphic, but they're not precise to what we just read. Let me give you what we just read.
Apparently.
Those chains gold fairly soft.
And so if you have pure gold, it's relatively soft. It's easy to work for a metal. It's soft. And if you want to make it so that it's very strong, you know those steel cables like you'll have a suspension bridge and those steel cables will suspend that bridge. If you look in closely, you got a lot of fibers that are twisted together and then those cables themselves are woven together in some way. And I understand in the.
Original.
On the scholar, I read it in someone else's who is from I got it from someone else who is. And in that verse 22 at the end means that twisted at the word has the idea of twisted in it. So it's like the fibers of thin strands of gold were twisted together to make ropes and then those ropes were woven together to give a cable. Like those steel suspension cables that hold up a giant bridge that you run semi traffic across.
That's the connection between the shoulders and the heart. It's not coming undone. And it's made of gold, a symbol of divine righteousness.
God cannot act in power towards you without a heart of love in the motive and in the work that He's working out in you. And He can't have a heart of love toward you or to me or toward anyone else without the power to carry out.
What he needs to carry out, what he'll has planned in his council, the 2GO, absolutely together.
Spending our life where hint drivers in the life that God has us leading and we're hint drivers because we lose sight of him, we lose sight of his heart, we lose sight of his ability to do something. And I want to take a couple minutes to run through an analogy. This is just an analogy.
You could pick it apart. This is not the truth, but I want to give you an analogy just because the Lord said to uh, the Pharisees, I guess that they could discern the face of the sky. I want to show you that you have a certain kind of discernment that makes you ready should be with their faith to accept the fact that God is fully able to work in our lives.
So this is the analogy.
Suppose you lived in a dot verse.
This is a dot verse and we have our nice green person narrator off on the upper right who's narrating on behalf of the green dot. But the dot verse consists of one dimension, this line that's horizontal, and it has two separate red dots, one on either side. And imagine you're this person in the dot verse. Now you live beyond the dot verse, so you can think for the person in the dot verse, you're past that one dimension. You're looking at this one dimension and.
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Suppose you're a very intelligent green dot person.
And you go back and forth and you investigate in your world and you head over and you find on the right there's a red dot to the right. And you discover more searching past that red dot on the right. There's nothing past there. You go back in the other direction, you come to another red dot over off on the left, lie on that. There's nothing else. And you investigate carefully and you're quite confident.
My analogy for us as we walk about our daily life, as we examine things, as we think about them, without reference to God.
And form our own conclusions. Along comes somebody, that person comes along, and they join a thought verse with us.
As a blue person off on the left, like it's a little narrator up on the left and the blue person comes along and says to the green dot person and their dot verse. You know those two red dots, they're actually part of the same thing.
Well, that's ridiculous. Couldn't possibly be part of the same thing. I walked over to the right and I come across one of them. I walk over to the left, I come across the other one of them. They're distinct. They're distinct. They're different. They're not the same.
Now you outside the dot verse of one dimension, tell me how they could be part of the same thing.
Thank you, Adrian.
Could be a circle? Is it a circle?
That should be He said he has knowledge beyond this diverse, and he suggests a circle. OK, why aren't you confident, Adrian?
Can't see the rest. Anything else that could be?
Did I hear square? OK, I did. Umm, my hearing isn't completely gone yet. Yeah, could be a square, right? You got to have a square that could connect us. Anything else?
There's an infinite number of answers. You could have a weird squiggly drawing of just about any shape that could connect those two dots if you could see beyond the dot verse.
You don't know what's beyond that. Here's my point. You don't know what's beyond that unless I tell you.
There are a tremendous number of people on this earth tonight who are ready to tell God what his world is like.
It's far beyond us, the one who breathes in there with the stars, the one who spoke and it was, and who has spoken and given to you something that just about everyone of you holds tonight. His Word and His word is the perfect revelation of what is beyond.
What your experience will give to you.
And yet how many of us have recourse not to His word? I'm not talking in our speech with one another in a room like this. I'm talking about and the reaction of the heart when you are, umm, held up at work for an extra 15 minutes and have to work extra because the computer crashed.
And you have to reboot it.
I'm talking about the little things of life that are fully in the control of one who has power and love. This particular case?
I did draw a circle, so there was a circle outside, but my point is it could have been anything. The only way to know is to be told. The only way to know is to be shown in this book what the heart of the Lord is.
And so I would like to walk through with you 3 examples in the Word that show the great high priest combining his power and his love and action. And we'll pick up details as we go along. So the first of them is in Mark's Gospel.
Chapter UMM 5.
And we'll follow a thread in Mark, but I will mention.
Umm, some details from other gospels.
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So we have the full story. It's beautiful. I would suggest, I would strongly encourage you to, umm, take and put in parallel the different stories in the different gospels. Not to try to blend them all together to get one chronological account, but to see the beauty of each one. You get the whole picture. You see the beauty of the why the Lord brought out different details in the different gospels.
And, uh, you can gain from it in that way. So let's just read a few of the verses here in Mark, beginning with verse 24.
And Jesus went with him, that is, with gyros who had come to him, and much people followed him and thronged him. A certain woman which had an issue of blood, 12 years, and it suffered many things of many physicians, and it's been all that she had and was nothing better, rather guru worse.
When she had heard of Jesus, came in the press behind and paused there.
There's this woman.
Let's set the scene, including details from some of the other gospels, before we go on, just to see.
What it really must have been like for her. And I also want to show you a little bit, perhaps if there's time, how God can take a very complex situation and deal with all kinds of things.
At the same time. But first of all, here's this woman and she comes along and there's a big crowd, right?
This woman had an issue of blood. Does anyone remember what that made her in Israel?
They're unclean. You can look it up in #15 #15 there's, I don't know, five to 10 verses. It's numbers. Umm, I'm sorry, Leviticus 15 versus 19 to 27.
And it goes through her being unclean, and her uncleanness would have cut her off from Israel if she had made it known. I don't know whether she hid it or she didn't, but I do know this. And Matthew, it says she said in her heart. So I would suggest to you that she might have been hiding, but I'm confident.
She was cut off from others because of this issue.
There was a barrier there and you may be sitting in your seats and you're physically present with others. Maybe they've been physical barriers earlier in this year. Now you're physically present with others, but in your heart you're cut off because there's something there that you don't want there.
And it destroys that fellowship with others. And this is the situation she was casual about.
She'd gone to the doctors and tried a couple and then figured she wouldn't worry about it.
Uh-huh.
She spent how much?
I don't know the amount of money, but how much relative to her resources it was all that she had spent everything. This is a big deal. She's cut off in Israel from relationship and I would suggest from Matthew and her heart, she's cut off because she has the councils in her heart. She doesn't go take counsel with her friends.
She's cut off, and you may feel cut off by your problem from something that's good.
And you've gone to everybody looking for a solution that's fascinating. If you go through it in Luke's account of this, there I think, or at least maybe five, uh, statements that are exclusive to loop that don't appear in what we read in Mark and they all have to do with people.
Dealing with man in the heart. And you know, Luke was a doctor, right? So doctor Luke says.
He admits the doctors couldn't help and he says she couldn't be helped by anyone.
She couldn't be helped by anyone. You may be sitting here tonight and you may feel like 12 years is a really long time. And I've asked the Lord and I've asked the Lord and last Lord, in this case, you went to the positions. The next person had come to the Lord looking for an answer.
And it's not there, so the heart of love of God can't be there. That's not true.
It sure seems like it because in my experience, that's what I'm living. And you can't tell me what I'm living. No, I can't. But God knows exactly what's going on in your heart. And he has a purpose and love for you and for everybody around you. And so this woman comes and she comes behind and in the account she says I'll just touch his clothes.
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But you've sung the Sunday school him when he gets she gets there, she doesn't just touch his clothes, she touches.
What?
Probably thinking in your head. I just don't want to yell it out with a mask on. She only touched the hem of his garment. No, it was on the border of the godly Jews garment.
It was a reminder of the law. There's some tassels on the corners of that garment. They're woven in with blue. There was a reminder there of the law, in fact, due today, and their prayer shawl, the more Orthodox ones they have.
I think it's 613 knots because the way the rabbis have divvied up the Old Testament law, they have 613 commandments and regulations and so on. And so they have 613 knots so that when they look down, they're reminded of the law. You know, that woman came behind the Lord, hiding in a big crowd in the throng, but she came to the right person, and when she came to him, she reached down to what would have condemned her.
The reminder of what would have condemned her the law.
But met in the person of Christ to instantly heal.
Instantly heal.
Say, well, I I've checked the box, I'm afraid I've done this, I've done that, I've done the other and I haven't been instantly healed.
I want you to watch what comes next. It's really part of the whole process.
She touched the border of his garment.
And, umm.
Sorry I lost the verse here, I'll have it back in a second. Umm.
Says she had grown worse, came in the press behind and touched his garment. Verse 28 For she said, if I may touch, but it's close, I shall be whole and straight way. The fountain of her blood was dried up. She felt in her body that she was healed of the plague.
She touched his power.
She has healing.
Scriptures don't say specifically, but from our actions I have no doubt that she wanted to escape out of that crowd and go home healed.
So you want to just exit stage left and go back around the corner and vanish the way she had come?
Why didn't the Lord let her do that?
Maybe she was a private person, maybe she wanted to hide, but look what the Lord does. And if you bring in the account Luke, you get the full picture of what was happening here and again, it's beautiful. The details look as they have the the personal side, the people side, but I'll read it here first in Mark and Jesus verse 30 immediately knowing it himself. The virtue had gone out of them, turned him about in the press and said who touched.
My clothes.
Remember, it's a big crowd now here in Mark, it says umm.
The disciples said unto him, Thou seest the multitude thronging thee, and sayest thou who touched me for bringing in a couple details from Luke. It turns out that before the disciples spoke up, the crowd said, wasn't me, wasn't me, wasn't me. Remember there's a great throng and they all denied it. It didn't happen in 1.3 seconds.
There's that woman trying to hide. What's she hiding from? She'd experience this power, but she didn't know his heart. And God will not let you have His power without His heart. He wants you to have both. And so he calls her out to know. Why is he putting me through this uncomfortable circumstance? I don't like it because when he's done, you'll have so much more of him.
Than you'd have if you could sneak out with a chunk of his power.
Without his heart. So the disciples get a little uncomfortable and that's when they speak up here, the big crowd, remember, the disciples had already been out and about. They're connected with the Lord. And it's embarrassing because this big crowd, how could it be that he's asking this question?
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It's embarrassing and so they reprove him. Verse 32 and he looked around about to see her.
That had done this thing. Go straight to that woman.
And she knew. I don't think it's here.
I'm sorry I don't have the retentive memory to tell you which gospel that I have. If anyone wishes it, I have all kinds of notes that you're not going to get that you don't have in the outline. I'm happy to just copy paste into an e-mail that won't be beautifully formatted or anything, but if you want to spend more time on the subject, I'm happy to send them to you.
And you'll get a lot of the details from the other gospels there, but I believe it looks at that woman and in another one of the gospels that says she knew she couldn't be hit. She knew there was no other way. And so she comes. But the woman fearing and trembling, knowing what was done in in her came and fell down before him and told him all the truth. That's all out in the open. There's a big crowd there and there's the.
There, and there's the Lord there, and it's all out where it can be seen.
Now what does she hear? And Luke and I thinking in Matthew he says be of good courage. Here in Mark we have the rest of it. Daughter, Faith that made thee whole, go in peace and the whole of thy plague. What does she get? She gets encouragement. Be of good courage. She gets a relationship. She had not it for 12 years.
In the sense that she was unclean and if she hit it, she had a rotten relationship because he was a hide. She was hiding a lie, and if she didn't hide it, she was unclean from all those around her. Now in the presence of everybody, whether they knew or didn't know, they knew. Now she had a relationship, Son of God, the Lord Jesus.
He calls her daughter. It's a beautiful thing to know our relationship with him.
The Lord will not use His power in your life. I'm not trying to speak in a way that is limiting Him in the sequence of time that He uses with you, but I mean in the totality of His purposes with you. He's not going to give you His power without giving you His heart as He does with this woman found up as a high priest.
And that whole figure of who he is and what he is for you.
And so he says here to her daughter, Thy faith has made thee whole. She reached out and touched him with faith. She knew that the issue of blood was dried up.
So you know it wouldn't come back. He says, go in peace, behold a thy plague.
He didn't put her through pain because he wanted to see her suffer for something that she'd been hiding.
She had to come to the light so that she could know His heart, and then everybody would know this woman is clean and this woman belongs to me. It's a beautiful thing. God will not deal with us in our lives except He's doing it for our good. And again, if I go back to that analogy, we may not see it. We may not be able to sense.
What's going on outside of our view? But her face says by faith she come and touched the right person.
She came to the right person. She didn't know much when she came, but she came to the right person. And she leaves with assurance, with encouragement, with the relationship and with, umm, the issue, the assurance that her leg was truly gone, not just temporarily stopped. Let's turn over to the second one.
That was personal need. Let's turn to the next one.
That has to do with a loved one.
Again, we'll trace it in Mark's gospel again.
Again, the other Gospels give beautiful additional touches. We'll bring in some of them.
Mark's Gospel Chapter 9 and verse 9. The disciples are coming down from the mount of Transfiguration and.
Umm, I'll read.
From verse 9, but not comment too much on the beginning part. As they came down from the mountain, he charged them that they should tell no man what things they had seen until the Son of Man were risen from the dead. They kept that thing with themselves, questioning one with another what the rising from the dead should mean. And they asked him, saying why.
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Said the scribes that Elias must first come and he.
Answered and told them Elias verily cometh 1St and restoreth all things, and how it is written of the Son of man, that he must suffer many things, and he said it not.
In this next one I want to bring in two things. One, the loved ones need and some of the hindrances for us really seeing the Lord in our circumstance. So the first of the hindrances is here and.
Pick up maybe the bigger of them. They came down, the Lord spoke about her. When the Son of Man is raised from the dead, they just seen him glorified on the mountain. They knew he was going to rain. They believed in Him as the Messiah. They had done miracles. They'd already gone throughout the villages. They healed. They cast out demons. I take it that particularly the what we've read about so far was Peter, James, and John coming down from the mountain with the Lord.
And he said something that they don't understand.
So they have the confidence to ask him a question, they get a good answer. It's about.
Elias and very briefly, you can trace it out for yourself. I think if you take the notes that I have, you'll get the umm, get the references there, but.
Elias was coming, and that was in spirit. John the Baptist. John the Baptist spoke of himself as.
Quoting from Isaiah that he was the voice of one crying in the wilderness, and the Lord says I believe it's in Matthew 11, that if you would receive him. This is not Elias. I can't quote it properly, you'll have to look it up. So he says if you'll receive them, if your heart turns in repentance towards this coming one.
He's come.
Down the bathroom.
The scribes and Pharisees were making it hard on the disciples. They were saying, where's Elias? I don't see him.
They're making scriptural difficulties, and so the disciples raised it and the Lord gives them a quick answer here just as I've given you a quick answer. The other alliance is in Malachi, I believe. I think it's the third chapter where he's still coming in. In the future. There was a past and a future.
And they couldn't reconcile them, but there was another path in the future to pop points in their dot verse and they couldn't get them together in one person. And that was this business of suffering. So the Lord turns them to that. And I would suggest one of the first one, one reason.
Why we don't discern the Lord's power and His love in our life?
Or in the life of others is because we're trying to do with the disciples we're doing we're trying to steer a path that kind of takes the detour bypass around suffering.
Satan offered it to the Lord in the wilderness. In the wilderness he said that you could have all these kingdoms and the glory of them.
If you would just bow down to him if he was just skip across all of it now.
That's always been a lie.
And it's something I'll just suggest to you. You can meditate on for yourself, on it for yourself. It's something that gets in our way of seeing the Lord at work. So let's go on and let's go to verse 14. And when he came to his disciples, he saw a great multitude about them and the scribes questioning with them and straightway all the people when they beheld him.
We're greatly amazed, and running to him, saluted him. And he asked the scribes What question ye with them? And one of the multitude answered, and said, Master, I have brought unto thee my son, with half a dumb spirit, and wheresoever he taketh him, he teareth them. I think that means not that he had great wounds, but if you look at the word, it means He was convulsed.
As in like in a spasm. And so the word includes that thought and I believe that's.
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What it is you tear with him, or he convulses him, and he from us, and gnashes with his teeth find us away. I speak to thy disciples that they should cast him out, and they could not.
You feel what it is for this father.
You've got somebody you love. There are many of you in this room tonight and listening to somebody that you love.
And perhaps you have that personal relationship with the Lord.
They don't.
Maybe they know the Lord is their Savior, but they're not heading toward Christ. Maybe they don't even know the Lord as their Savior.
And you're passionate about them, you care about them, you love them. And in fact.
It says in verse 17, The man speaking, I have brought unto thee.
My son.
And then he goes on to the next verse and says, and I talk to your disciples. It's almost as though he were coming looking for the Lord, but the Lord and Peter, James and John were up on the mountain and he finds the 9 disciples that were there and he brings them. Well I'll take what I can get.
His heart was headed for the right person finds the disciples and.
What does he get?
Verse thir uh, verse 19 The answer is him. And saith, O faithless generation, how long shall he shall I be with you? How long shall I suffer you? Bring him unto me.
There's a lot of parents here, or maybe it's a brother or sister that you long for, or maybe it's your grandpa or whoever it is and you pray for them. You haven't seen that change. The Lord says, bring him unto me.
And you say that I've done that.
I've done that. I've been praying for five years, or 10 or 15. Bring them unto me now. Watch what happens. And they brought him unto him. And we saw him straight away, the spirit tear him so he compulsed again. He fell on the ground and wallowed, foaming.
You imagine your child. Some of you are sitting here with small children.
Your child, this moment on the floor in front of you or your niece or your nephew.
And they're foaming at the mouth and they're in pain. And from the other gospels we find that this has been happening and they've been throwing themselves in the water and into the fire.
Can you imagine what it would be? In fact, in the other gospels you'll see it. The Father says uses the word us at one point in the conversation. Can you imagine? I assume he's referring to He and the Mother. You imagine he and the Mother and there's this child.
You've got to, you've got to watch your children here with water or whatever, and you pay close attention. And if they're standing on top of the picnic table, you keep a little extra eye to make sure that there's somebody close enough to catch them if they thought they're close to the edge. Or if your husband doesn't do it and you notice that, you let him know that maybe it was a good thing he should have been doing.
Can you imagine having to watch your child because someone that you had no power of?
Was constantly trying to drown him or burn him to death.
It doesn't even compute in my head. And that's what this father and this mother had been going through. And they bring them to the Lord, They bring him to me to bring him to him. And the problem solved instantly. Like that woman coming from behind. No, it got worse.
The Lord doesn't always answer on our timetable.
But his heart of love and his power are never divided.
He could have, if it had been for the good of that father and that mother and those people standing nearby watching, he could have healed that child instantly and said he allowed that child to be on the ground convulsed and foaming and even there it says.
How long is it ago since this came on upon to him? And he said of a child, And often times that have cast him into the fire, there it is, and into the waters to destroy him.
But if thou canst do anything, have compassion on us and help us. He's got a shred of hope that there's power here if you can do anything.
Show a little heart of love.
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If you can do anything, show a little heart of love to my child. I can't imagine. I'm not condemning this father. If I had a child that had been going through that, I don't know how thin my face would have been. But what does the Lord say to him? He says to him.
Jesus said unto him, If thou canst believe, all things are possible to him. That believeth still hasn't healed the child. He's turned it back toward the Father, but now he's brought it to the heart of the matter. Have you brought that child to me to handle for you?
Are you willing to just commit it to me? Not committed to me. Take it back, Committed to me. Take it back committed to me. What can I do to make the child better? Commit it to me.
And the father says, and you can feel it straight with the father of the child, cried out and said with tears, Lord, I believe helped out my unbelief.
Didn't want he knew his face wasn't what it should be, but he says Lord, I believe.
That's the moment it's come from, his lips says When Jesus saw the people.
Came running together, he rebuked the foul spirit, saying unto them unto him, Thou dumb and deaf spirit, I charge thee. Come out of him, and enter no more into him.
Spirit cried and rent him soar and came out of him. It was this one dead in so much that many said he is dead. But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he rose.
I don't know all the reasons the Lord had him wait, don't know every reason why he had to pause and watch his son get torn and then torn again even after he brought him to the Lord.
There are a few.
You realize how many billions of times the story has been printed?
When missionaries translate into a new language, it's frequent. I'm sure it's not all the time, but it's frequent. That Mark is one of the first books, the beginning parts of Genesis.
And mark the shortest of the Gospels, and it gives, apparently it's relatively easier than some anyway, to translate. And so it's been translated. It's been, I should say, printed and shared billions of times.
Does the father care about it? At that moment, he didn't know a single thing about a printing press. He didn't know a single thing about the Internet. He didn't know a single thing about you. He loved that child, and he brought him to the Lord.
And how much blessing has the Lord brought from that moment? How many people have been encouraged and use that expression? Lord, I believe help now my unbelief. I don't want me to be standing in the way of the good of that child. And if you're a father or mother, you've brought your child to the Lord, and they're not where they should be.
Just be willing to say, Lord, don't let me be in the way.
If there's something I need to judge in my life that tendering my child, let me judge it. If I need to confess that it's always been this way with the child, and I'm part of the problem, let it be that way. But bring him to me, and the Lord and His power and His love will work far beyond our imagination. Not on our time frame, not on our scale, not instantly removing the pain, not allowing us to steer past the suffering.
But he will work according to his power.
And there's love now. There's several things after this, and I'll just give three of them quickly without reading the verses. They asked the Lord, why couldn't we cast them out? They had been around casting out demons. These disciples, they had been. They cast out demons already. They've been there and they've done that.
But the Lord tells them they had to act independent, and they may need to for a time be cut off even from natural joys to focus in.
On bringing him to me, if I can put it that way. And if there's that problem, you can't solve it.
But the Lord may tell you to depend on him, to bring it to him.
To set aside from those natural joys for a time, the fasting, the focus in on the matter. There's one other issue that came up after I'll just mention it. You can look into it and it was pride.
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Look what comes after. The disciples were busy trying to figure out who was going to be first. The Lord had more lessons to teach them. One thing that gets in the way when we have a loved one that we care for is pride. So we need to be dependent. We need to let the Lord act on His own time frame. There may be a time of fasting. Setting aside from natural joys, there also has to be the willingness to be.
Humbled if that's what's needed.
Let's turn last of all to John.
Gospel chapter 6.
Sending your outline, I called this.
Umm, compassion for others. For the need of others. There's compassion for the need of others.
We'll just go through a few highlights here of this story.
It's the feeding of the 5000, and most of you know it's the only miracle. I believe it's the only miracle that's in all four of the Gospels.
That's beautiful. I'm going to give you a little something I treasure to hunt for. It's a treasure hunt I guess, umm.
Who passed out the fish?
Who passed out the fish, and why is it in the gospel that it's in? Look for it. Let me give you another treasure.
It's in this gospel, it's in John's Gospel. It says in John's Gospel that there was much grass. Why is it in John's gospel that it says there was much grass? It's treasure. It's beautiful. It's well worth pausing and chewing on. And when you are, you'll come across a bunch more. And if I gave you the answers here and you had a fax to check off, you lose all that once more.
So there's the two things for you to look for.
Who passed out the fish and John the Gospel? You might get confused. You'll have to read that particular verse and and umm, Mr. Darby's translation and perhaps we'll have time for it. But who passed out the fish? And why is there much grass in this gospel? John 6 verse one. After these things, Jesus went over the Sea of Galilee, which is the sea of Tiberias. A great multitude followed him because they saw his miracles, which he did on them that were diseased.
Jesus went up into a mountain, and there he sat with his disciples in the Passover. A piece of the Jews was nigh. When Jesus then lifted up his eyes and saw a great company come unto him, he saith unto Philip, And shall we buy bread that these may eat, because it's beautiful? You look at the other gospels, and historically it looks like the disciples came to the Lord.
Look at the the sounds from the other gospels like they raised the issue.
But this is the Divine Son of God, and the Divine Son of God knew everything, the end from the beginning. And He's the one that looks out. Why did those disciples come to Him in the 1St place? I'll suggest to you that the Divine Son of God was at work as it worked in a package deal here. He's working in the crowd, He's working in the disciples, He's working in you and I tonight. When He works things out, He works them out in a way that we could never untangle.
On our own, but he also works with individuals. You'll notice in the Gospel of John that's much more, yes, it's different than Matthew, Mark and Luke. You get stories in John that you don't have in Matthew, Mark and Luke. It's not following along the same line. You also notice something. You get people named in the Gospel of John. You know, there's another thread that likes to say.
Thread of thought that likes to say.
God has power.
He doesn't love me.
God has power, but he doesn't love me. You know the gospel that presents the divine Son of God, the one with ultimate power, is the one that deals most with individuals. Where do you learn that it was Peter that picked up the sword? The other gospels don't tell you, but John does. Where do you learn in the feeding of the 5000 that Philip and Andrew had special roles? You don't find it in Matthew, Mark and Luke.
You find it in John and that's important because it means it says that the divine Son of God is interested in you, the individual. We think in a crowd like this, this message is for somebody else. This message is for someone who this, that and the other. No, the divine Son of God looks on a crowd of 5000 and he calls Phillip with a lesson for Phillip.
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And if we get a chance, we'll see other lessons for others.
You know Philip, Philip brought the message of the Messiah to Nathaniel in chapter one.
Philip brought that message. Philip recognized the Lord Jesus, that person, and he said I want to bring Nathaniel to him.
The Messiah. Let's read the verse. I think it's on your sheet and since I'm 132.
Umm Psalm 132 and verse.
15.
It says speaking, you take the whole chapter. The Lord has chosen Zion. Verse 13 and so on. Verse 15, I will abundantly bless her provision. I will satisfy her poor with bread.
Now the rabbis knew and had thought properly, that this was the Messiah. The coming Messiah would feed their people with bread. Philip knew that the Lord Jesus was the Messiah. He'd already told that.
It's a Nathaniel. So the Lord calls out of that crowd. He calls Philip and he comes and says, Philip, what are we going to do?
Philip, when shall we buy bread that sees me? Oh, Philip could say. But Lord, you're the Messiah. You satisfy your people with bread.
Phillip answered him.
200 penny worth of bread is not sufficient for them that every one of them may take a little.
The best he could do 200 penny wire. You work six days a week like a dude did. If 50 weeks in a year, that's 300 days. 200 penny worth is 2/3 of a year's wages. That's eight months worth of wages.
Phillips pretty practical, pragmatic type, scans the crowd, looks it over, does some rapid mental math.
And.
Eight months salary and everybody's going to have a smidgen besides that where you're going to get it.
The disciples we know from the other gospels, it said, send them in the villages to buy bread.
Andrew Andrew and Phillip are from both from.
Friends before they came to know the Lord.
He brings the chapter The Lad with his five barley loaves and two small fishes.
Bring them to the Lord.
Farley.
And Solomon signed barley is what the horses ate talking about the Messiah here, something that's far greater than Solomon's time. Solomon Ding, a figure of the Messiah the the coming millennial brain and.
Here's I barley loaves, 2 Small fishes carried by a little lad and bring it to the Lord. Oh, what's this among so many?
Jesus said make them in sit down. There was much grass in the place there it is why John so the men sat down in number about 5000. Jesus took the lows and when he had given thanks he distributed the disciples.
The disciples to them that were set down, and likewise are the fishes as much as they would.
I want to say to you, things are real. We have a living savior. The person that cares about you is ready to feed you. And I'm going to give you a very concrete example that spoke to my heart from this week. We're still Saturday. We're still in this week on Tuesday.
Thinking about a certain brother that Jim Highland and many here know new now with the Lord just to ship all kinds of stuff to this brother and umm, thinking about them on Tuesday because.
We couldn't having some real difficulties with shipping and Bible truth publishers where I work. And so I said to Renee at breakfast on Tuesday, meditating on some of these verses, you know.
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Where we're at right now, it's like we have 5 loaves and two fishes. My dad and he said, well, maybe 3 loaves, but whatever we've got, let's bring it to the Lord. And in prayer we did on Tuesday morning went into my dad's office to talk about the shipping difficulties and so on. This brother I've spoken to once in my life, but that in context, welcome to him once.
In my life, I stepped into my dad's office and we were talking over where to start with some of the shipping difficulties.
And.
We decided we needed to start with this brother.
I stepped out of his office and within. This is literal, not figurative. I'm not exaggerating. Inside of 60 seconds had someone run over and tap me on the shoulder and say that brother is on the phone for you.
And I found out that just the day before I got my chronology wrong. This happened on Wednesday, just the day before on Tuesday.
The Lord had opened up the door for him, had opened up the opportunity to bring the shipping through. The day I've been thinking about him was the day the Lord, the day the Lord brought him to my mind, the day the Lord was thinking about him. And the moment the words were out of my mouth, almost literally the moment the words were out of my mouth, it was on the phone. Because the divine Son of God is people defeat.
And he wants them to have his word. Bring him your 5 loaves and two fishes. Don't look at them and say oh that's nothing.
Bring them to Him because His power isn't limited by you or me or what we have or what our resources are, and as hard isn't either, you can turn to it. I want to read to Him before we close, and I don't want to go beyond the end. So I'll just say the disciples enter this scene with apparently no bread. They cross the sea on a little vacation. Mark's gospel shows it to us. They're going to go apart into a desert place and rest a while. They come there and they find the crowd.
But the crowd ran around and got there first, so I assume they had a fairly slow TV wedge. Kind of like my wife and I doing little back and forth to the weeds on the canoe this afternoon. Just kind of enjoying being out on the water. A little more of a restful trip. I assume they had a restful trip. The Lord didn't tell them to have rest a while without giving them that rest. But they arrived and they have work to do in their empty handed.
They didn't have food to give, the lad had a little.
Exit and exit with 12 hand baskets. You know how much a hand basket can hold. It's a kind of it's kind of like a mini backpack. You go out for a day hike. It's not one of these great big massive I'm carrying my tent on my back. But you go out for a day hike, you got this little mini backpack or one like mine on the floor there to carry a laptop computer, something like that with the capacity of.
2 gallons.
Every one of those disciples arrived empty handed.
Everyone of them exited the two gallons of food on their back. You're going to be exiting this place, many of you tomorrow and your exiting and you don't say wow that was a good meal and not gather up the fragments. The Lord told them, gather up those fragments and take them with you. The divine Son of God who could make bread in an instant. The divine Son of God who could have turned stones into bread if he wanted to.
Who can turn 5 barley loaves into enough to feed 5000 so they're absolutely full and then each disciple to walk away full?
He tells them to gather it up, gives to you in a place like this, and he gives to you richly to enjoy.
But he does say to you, gather them up, take them with you because it's food from him.
Going to just read quickly.
The stands are there multiple beautiful hymns that go along with.
The same on my heart tonight. Going to read quickly to you #326 and closing prayer.
326.
As debtors to mercy alone of heavenly mercy we sing, nor fear to draw near to the throne our person and offerings to bring. I'm going to go down to stanza 2, The work which his goodness began. There's his heart of love, the arm of his strength will complete. There's his power. Let's lay hold of it by faith.
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Not let these things that hinder get in the way.
Thank you, dear Lord Jesus, we do ask that we would lay hold more of thy heart, my heart toward us. I love to us and we do ask, Lord, that each of us in the different difficulties and circumstances that we're in, we bring them to the and be willing to wait by time for the answer. We just ask it thy name, oh Jesus, Amen.