Address—D. Rule
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Afternoon by singing together #52 Lord, we are thine thy claims we own ourselves, to thee we'd wholly give.
Reign Thou within our hearts alone and let us to Thy glory live #52 Someone started for us, please.
Once the forego.
Slaves of sin.
Got the hiding?
Let us get God.
And make thy spirit.
Wow man.
400 and four we realized.
I cry and cry.
I my this way.
And all my great love.
Straight away.
Would you turn with me to Proverbs chapter 4?
We're going to speak this afternoon about the heart.
I've heard it said that the Word of God teaches us two things.
It teaches us God's heart and it teaches us our own hearts. And while in one sense in my own soul it would be a joy, perhaps greater joy to speak about the heart of God, I believe it perhaps is the mind of the Spirit this afternoon that we consider more our own hearts.
Proverbs chapter 4 and verse 23 we read Keep thy heart.
With all diligence.
For out of it are the issues of life.
Your life and mine. The central issue of our life really, and how we live concerns our hearts. It's been said that what controls your heart controls your life, and whatever it is this afternoon that is in control of your heart, it's really that which is in control and the guiding factor.
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Of your life and the word of God brings before us the fact that.
There are all kinds of hearts, and I suppose it's true in this way that.
You and I as creatures are composed of a body.
A soul and a spirit, and the spirit that we have is that part of us which makes us conscious of our God and able to communicate with Him and receive from Him.
We're not like a dog or a cat which has no spirit and has no consciousness in it of a God and no relationship directly with God.
But we also have these bodies of ours, which are the vessel.
The temple, if you will, in which our souls and our spirits live in this life.
What we associate our souls most directly with, As it's been said, it's the.
It's the place where our emotions, our feelings, our desires reside.
And we know that when we talk about the heart, we're not talking of in scriptures generally about this physical organ that we have in our chest. But, and I think it's of God and the world recognize it as such. Whenever people talk about the heart, they're talking about their affections, their feelings.
And it's in that sense I believe that we would speak about it this afternoon.
Each one of us has in our part of our being, perhaps is an expression of our souls, a heart.
In which we're able to feel and sense things. Even God himself talks about his own heart, in which God gives expression to that which is within himself, his own feelings about things. And so here it says, keep thy heart. You know, that implies the responsibility.
Sometimes people say, well, I I just can't help it. That's the way I feel.
I want to suggest to you this afternoon you can help how you feel. In fact, you do have a responsibility as to your feelings and especially the affections that you have in your heart. Here it says keep thy heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life. Man gives his heart to certain things and man restrains or withholds.
The giving of himself and his heart to certain things. So it's an important subject for us to consider and we're going to look at a number of individuals in the Word of God and see how God examines things and looks at their heart.
And lest we think the whole subject is found in Jeremiah.
Where it says the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. I'd just like to comment that.
That's not the whole picture as God presents it to us. God talks about lowly hearts. God presents to us devoted hearts.
Evil hearts, hearts of unbelief and so on to make us understand that perhaps what we have in Jeremiah, I think it's chapter 17 where it says the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. It is to remind us and bring before us the fact that when man's sins.
He spoiled everything about himself.
When man sinned his very nature.
Was spoiled, it was corrupted, and that which flows from the natural man.
Comes from a spoiled nature.
And that affects the affections of his heart as well. And so even they can be spoiled and they can't be trusted either. Sometimes a person will trust, we say, their feelings. You can't trust your feelings in that way. You have to go to something that is superior to them, that is uncorruptible, the living Word of God.
And allow God by the Spirit to work at the same time, while the natural heart of man is spoiled by sin.
When you go to the New Testament in the book of Galatians where it talks about what the spirit does in the Newman it says.
The fruit of the Spirit.
Is love.
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And so we have hearts.
That come from, can I say, the nature which we have received through the Lord Jesus Christ, that the Spirit works in that work, right?
That the spirit produces their love as it should be, in its perfection and in its purity.
But let's turn over for the first consideration of hearts to Second Timothy.
We don't want to spend all our time looking at the negative side of the subject, but turn over to Second Timothy.
Chapter 3.
This is the day in which we're living in 1997.
That God is describing to us and he tells us a little bit about the character of the heart that's to be found in 199897 as well. Chapter 3 and verse one. It says this know also that in the last days perilous times shall come for men.
Shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters proud, and so on.
Verse 3. Without natural affection.
Chapter or verse 4 Traitors, heavy, heady, high minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof from such turn away.
Now here I believe we have something that would help us to describe the character.
Of the heart that is to be found.
In a very general way in this world, and these people that were being written to here, some of them were professors too in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so we need to be not just kind of say it's those people out there, but we need to, as it were, take this to ourselves and make application of it this afternoon to ourselves. He starts out by saying men shall be lovers of their own selves.
That is, the heart today is taken up with itself.
Man is self-centered and he puts himself 1St and he puts the desires of his own heart first. He sometimes says.
And I've heard people that have done evil things saying, well, I have to look after my own well-being 1St and if I'm not happy, no one around me can be happy. And so I'm going to do this thing in order to make myself happy and then I'll be able to have proper relationships with other people. That's not a wisdom from God.
As the human heart speaking to itself and saying me first. And so man is a lover of his own self.
Three without natural affection.
It's a sad thing.
To me, particularly sad when a father or even more a mother.
Doesn't bear natural affection for their children.
That allows something else in this life to gain the ascendancy for them, that it has a greater claim on their hearts than the God-given affection that should be there for the ones that God has given to them to raise for himself in this world.
But that's the modern heart, if you will. And then it says.
On lovers of pleasure More.
Then lovers of God.
That's the heart of the United States.
We live in a country that is pleasure mad.
Perhaps the most one, if not one of the most important industries in the United States today is the entertainment industry.
In this country is totally given in many respects to entertainment.
Something that will give pleasure to the natural man, his heart, and if it has to be as you will, a choice made between.
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God and pleasure.
So, sadly, pleasure often takes first place.
And that's the natural modern heart pleasure. Not always something that's bad or evil in its nature and in itself. But here the choice is.
Pleasure first, God second, and it's coupled with having a form of godliness.
But denying the power of it, that is, it can be mixed with our Christian life that we will have an outward form of being godly, of being orderly in our lives, and people can see us and we go to meeting and we don't do certain things that others would look upon and we ourselves would look upon as evil or wrong.
But when it comes to that which really has a grip on our heart.
And can I say to you as a little test?
Perhaps the greatest point at which the test comes is when you have what we call free time. We're not talking about the duties of life, but we're talking now about can I say when you have choice of your time and how you're going to use it? Is it for something that will give personal pleasure, or is it first for God? It isn't that God won't give joy and pleasure in that which we do, but.
What comes first for us?
Let's turn over to the first example of an actual person in First Kings chapter 3.
This is Solomon.
And I suppose if we were to ask ourselves this afternoon, you think about it for a minute. If someone were to ask you and say to you, what was it that Solomon asked for?
What would you tell him?
What was it Solomon asked for? Did he ask for wisdom? No, we didn't.
Here's what he asked for.
First Kings chapter 3.
And verse 9 Give therefore thy servant.
An understanding heart to judge thy people, that I may discern between good and evil, for good and bad. For who is able to judge this thy so great a people. And the speech pleased the Lord that Solomon.
Had asked this thing.
And verse 13.
And I have also given the.
Verse 12. Excuse me, Behold, I have done according to thy words, Lo, I have given thee a wise and an understanding heart, so that there was none likened to thee. Neither after thee shall any arise like unto thee.
The point I want to make is that wisdom, knowledge, understanding of things is not enough to walk properly before God.
You cannot separate many things from your heart, and here we find that.
Solomon asked for an understanding heart. You and I are moral creatures. We are made that way. We're not just flesh and blood. We're not animals who have no moral component to their nature. We are moral beings, and all that we are and ever will be is associated with our being moral.
Creatures.
And God part of that.
Is our affections our hearts and what we are in our hearts.
Before God is of importance to him. And when Solomon asked that he might be able to judge the people, he wasn't asking to be a judge.
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In a courtroom with lots of wisdom to make determinations between two sets of facts.
And decide which set was correct. But he asked.
For an understanding heart, we see an outstanding example of it when the two harlots are brought before him and.
They have the one living child, they're both claiming the child, and they come to him for a pronouncement in the matter.
And Solomon given of God, an understanding heart opens up.
In a remarkable way what was in their hearts. And so judges the matter.
He shows that one of them had a hardened heart and was willing to divide the child.
But the true mother could never do that, and so she was willing to give up her own child in order to save its life.
And so it exposes what was there in the heart, and Solomon makes.
The correct moral judgment in the matter.
And our lives are lived with constant daily choices requiring a moral judgment before God. And the only possible way that it can be rightly made on a daily basis is if our hearts are right before God.
Now you might say, well, I'm saved. My heart's right. That isn't the point. It requires a constant.
Dependence in the presence of the Lord, because a little later here in the 8th chapter.
In fact, let's turn over to learn a further lesson from Solomon. I think it's chapter 8 in chapter 8, Solomon.
Is speaking to the people at the occasion of the dedication of the temple. And he finished his prayer and now he's blessing the people at the very end of this dedication ceremony. And he has lifted up his heart to thank God for his goodness to the people and the bringing of the Lord into their midst and so on. And he says at the very end of his blessing of the people in First Kings chapter 8 in the last verse or no verse 61.
He says to them, Let your heart therefore be perfect.
With the Lord our God to walk in his statutes and to keep His commandments.
As of this day, that was a gracious thing of Solomon to say, and it was an important exhortation to them. He said let your hearts be perfect. And may Solomon's words speak to us this afternoon as well, the absolute importance in our our lives that we walk before God with a perfect heart. And So what happens to Solomon himself?
Verse Chapter 11.
It says.
In verse one. But King Solomon loved many strange women.
And verse 411 Four. For it came to pass that when Solomon was old.
That his wives turned away his heart.
After other gods.
And his heart was not perfect with the Lord his God, as was the heart of David his father.
Solemn, isn't it, brethren? We're all ages here this afternoon. Some very young, perhaps young enough that what I'm saying doesn't mean much. It's over their heads.
And the practical value of what said this afternoon rests with the parents of those children to live with proper heart before them, that they receive the benefit, but those of us that are of understanding age.
Here was a man that God gave an understanding heart to.
But something came in later in his life, says when he was old. Perhaps he had lived many years properly with a right heart before God, and was able to properly judge the people and keep them in a straight course. But something came in to draw away his heart, the many strange wives. And I would say also even more seriously than that.
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And it greatly burdens my soul even to speak of it.
But those that which took away his heart also brought him into idolatry.
So that there came something before his soul instead of his God.
And really, in his failure, his people followed and failed.
And it led to the division among the people of God that took place.
In Second Kings.
So we too need to remember whether we're old or whether we're young.
The importance of that which governs our heart and if we allow, as older ones, other things to come into our heart.
It can be that which draws away our souls from the Lord and later on.
That which?
May bring dishonor and sorrow.
To all the people of God who follow us.
Let's turn over or backwards can we will to First Samuel, chapter 13.
And consider for a moment.
David.
Here's the occasion when the prophet Samuel is speaking to David.
Or I should say to Saul.
And Saul is at this time.
The desired king of the people.
And yet Saul Samuel the prophet says to Saul in first Kings chapter 13 and verse 13. And Samuel said to Saul, Thou hast done foolishly, thou hast not kept the commandment of the Lord thy God, which he commanded thee. For now with the Lord have established thy Kingdom upon Israel forever. But now thy Kingdom shall not continue. The Lord has saw him a man.
After his own heart.
And the Lord hath commanded him to be captain over his people.
Because thou has not kept that which the Lord commanded, they the Lord has sought him a man after his own heart.
I just put it before you, brothers and sisters, May this be the desire this afternoon of your heart and mind.
That when God is seeking a man.
Woman after his own heart.
That he'll stop at your door.
May it just be the prayer of our souls. Here was a man that when the Lord wanted somebody to represent his Son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
For him before the people.
He found such a man and the person of David and.
He passes by all David's brothers, other people that were greater, perhaps in responsibility at that time in the land, among the people.
Because God was looking for something in the heart, not education.
Not leadership abilities. God can give those as needed for such a work that he may have for one or another.
But what God really looks for is a submissive, responsive.
Heart Saul, outwardly was a choice man.
If you had gone down the street.
Of Israel at that time and you were looking for a goodly looking person that stood out among the people and was admired by them. You would have stopped at Saul's door.
He was, by the description that God gives us an amazingly He was stood above all others in height and stature. In ways of valor. He showed himself to have a measure of it as well.
And he had the desire to rule the people and so on, and he was willing to work diligently for it. Everything outwardly was admirable.
But God. But God was looking for a man after his own heart.
And we thank God in a perfect way of what David speaks of. God found such a man in absolute perfection in his son, the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Let's turn over for a verse or two in the New Testament and.
John's Gospel, chapter 15.
John's Gospel chapter 15 and verse nine. It says, as the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you.
You, ye and my love, if ye keep my commandments, you shall abide in my love.
Even as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His love.
We might look at the 10 commandments and think of them as particularly outward.
Responsibilities that man had toward God and toward his fellow man and in fact, concerning those outward things, when we read about the apostle Paul, he no one could have found fault in how he kept them. He knew in himself only one of them that smote his conscience is coming short. And that was the matter of being covetous. But God presents the law to us in such a way that the whole law could be summed up in in two statements.
I think the 1St 5 commandments of the law could be summed up in the words Thou shalt love the Lord thy God.
With all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. And the 2nd commandment that would summarize the second five of the 10 was Thou shalt love thy neighbor.
Thyself.
That is, you cannot separate pleasing God.
From what's in the heart?
And the true.
Heart that satisfies God is the heart that is as it says, thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.
Because of our fallen Adam natures, as children of Adam's race, we're not capable of doing that. But here we have the Lord Jesus speaking to his disciples, and he's bringing before them that which the Christian today does have the capacity to do.
And that is to love God and keep his commandments.
It's the obedient heart. And really, that's a true mark of a Christian.
Is one who has an obedient, submissive part.
The unbelievers heart is in a state of rebellion.
The contrast sometimes people, they know somebody wants something.
And they automatically want the opposite.
That's the state of the heart, a rebellious heart.
Every parent in this room understands that in its simplicity. When you say to a little child, no.
There's something in that little child that almost automatically responds yes.
That is, there is a natural rebellion.
To authority.
And beyond just commands a submission of heart to them, to the one that expresses their desire. And so here we have put before us the example, the importance of having obedient and submissive hearts. It's a Christian responsibility, and it will flow from a new nature in which the Spirit of God is.
At liberty to work and delight our hearts in God. And so the Lord Jesus could say, I delight, I delight to do thy will, Oh my God. And so he found in him a delight to do the will of God.
Now turn over with me to Hebrews chapter 3.
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Hebrews chapter 3 and verse 12 it says.
Take heed, brethren.
Lest there be in any of you.
An evil heart of unbelief.
In departing from the living God.
Just read this verse particularly because it shows how involved our hearts are in every aspect of our lives, including our faith.
An evil heart of unbelief.
Now each one of us, by God's grace, he says He's talking to the people he addresses here, isn't he? This isn't a gospel meeting being addressed in these verses.
But he says, Take heed, brethren, that is those who were professedly on the same position as he who was writing. He says, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief.
In departing from the living God.
It's a solemn thing to turn away from God in unbelief because it affects the heart.
Among other things of the one who does it.
You know, if you go over to Exodus, which we won't take the time to turn to, but there we have the example of Pharaoh, and we have Pharaoh's heart on display for us as an example, as an object lesson to us. And God says to Moses, the Lord says to Moses, Moses, I want my people to leave the land, and I'm going to have you guide them out of the land of Egypt. And so you go to the Pharaoh who's in charge, and you tell them to let my people go.
And so he goes, and he speaks to Pharaoh, and he tells him to let his people go.
The Lord had given Moses a number of signs that he could do to show Pharaoh that the Lord meant business and that it was the Lord really who was speaking to him to let the people go and not just simply Moses idea of the matter. And so he goes to Pharaoh and we see as the story progresses, if you follow it carefully, that there's a process of rejection and unbelief taking place in Pharaoh.
And as the process continues, he hardens his heart. Pharaoh hardens his heart against the word of the Lord. It was an evil heart of unbelief. And the process continued until finally we learn in the New Testament, not in the account in the old, but we learn from the New Testament that finally God in himself judicially put his hand on Pharaoh and sealed what was happening and hardened his heart.
He said, as it were, Pharaoh, you've gone too far, you've hardened your heart too long. I've given you every opportunity and you've said no. And so God steps in judicially and pardons. Pharaoh's heart seals that hardening and there's no change in the man. I hope there's no one here. That's that these meetings and listening to the word of God.
And not allowing it to have a place in you, in your heart.
Because if you do, the tendency in your soul will be to harden it.
And next time you come to the next set of such meetings if there isn't a response with you.
You can turn it off. You can tune it out a little more easily.
Until that process continued and you can listen with no conviction in you.
But what is being said to you is from God himself, you can end up in the end, like Pharaoh.
When the Lord puts his hand down and says that's enough.
And then there's no further response. God speaketh once, yeah, twice, and man perceiveth it not.
Now I'd like to consider.
The most delightful heart of all to me.
But before I do, in order for us to understand it a little better, we're going to look at Mary of Magdala's Heart. But before we look at it, let's turn back to Psalms 55.
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The 55th sum.
The Lord Jesus this afternoon wants to have a very personal.
Individual.
Relationship with each one of us.
Continuously.
The Lord values our friendship, our fellowship.
The response of our hearts to himself. He feels it.
Personally, this afternoon, the condition of heart of everyone of us.
And its nearness to Him. He loves us with an unchanging and an everlasting love.
But at the same time, the Lord Jesus feels.
In a very personal way, in a very individual way, the state of your heart with himself at this moment.
And here is a man, I think, whose heart is given to us.
Or at least the response to a man's heart is given to us and how he felt it. And that is how the Lord Jesus felt the treatment.
That he got from the hand of Judah.
In his hour of need.
Here it says in the 55th Psalm, verse 12. For it was not an enemy that reproached me, then would I have borne it?
Neither was it he that hated me.
That did magnify himself against me.
Then I would have hit myself from him.
But it was thou.
A man mine equal. My guide, my acquaintance.
We took sweet counsel together and walked unto the House of God.
In company.
Didn't that solemn? There were two people, and as it were, it weren't enemies. There weren't swords out, but there were two souls walking together.
They go to the House of God together.
They have, as it were, companionship together. They eat at the same table. They speak about the same things.
But in this one man.
He felt it, he said. If he'd hated me then I would have hid myself from him.
Old brethren, may the Lord stir in our hearts not a lukewarm. I wouldn't suggest these words apply to anybody in this room in this way, but they ought to speak to us in a way that would want us to have a nearness.
Of fellowship.
With the Lord Jesus and I want to turn from them to an account of a woman.
That, to me, shines above every other at the time of the Lord's greatest need.
She outshines Peter, she outshines John, she outshines everyone.
Not in any public display. The account is rather can I say has to be looked at very carefully even to notice it.
But it's the account of devotedness in the heart of one person for the person of the Lord Jesus. And your life and mine may not be noticed, and it's not important that it be noticed. But oh, may we for God's glory, give him something of the pleasure and the joy that must have felt in his own heart at this time. And he responds to it too.
In his.
Responses to this woman.
Just to follow the little history of it, let's go over to the New Testament, to the 8th chapter of Luke's Gospel.
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Luke's Gospel, Chapter 8.
And verse one. And it came to pass afterwards that he went through every city and village, preaching and showing the glad tidings of the Kingdom of God.
And the 12 were with him, and certain women which had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities, Mary called Magdalene, out of whom went seven devils, and Joanna the wife of Chuza, Harrod, Stewart, and Susanna, and many others which ministered unto him of their substance.
This woman was of a little village on the Lake of Galilee, the Sea of Galilee.
A little to the South of where the Lord Jesus.
Was much of the time when he the events recorded of him in the gospels?
The apostles Peter and John and James and Andrew, those that were fishermen.
Lived on up the same coast a little farther north of where she lived.
And here was a woman whose heart had been under the control of Seven.
Devils. But when the Lord steps into her life and sets her free, her heart.
Affections are changed and she becomes one of a company of people.
That traveled with the Lord Jesus as he went from place to place, and particularly as a sister.
It was her place.
To minister of her substance, to meet his daily needs. And so she travels with him, and she keeps his company in a very quiet way, obviously. But her heart was won. Now these women and the apostles traveled together up to Jerusalem, and there the Lord Jesus is taken before Pilate and condemned.
And he's taken out to be crucified.
Mary is there along with these others who stand at first, according to the record given to us in a couple of the gospels. There's Calvary's Hill, there's the three crosses, there's the Lord on one of them, and it says the woman beheld him afar off, and so on. No doubt the soldiers were close by the cross, those in authority, and the people were sitting around watching him there.
And these women and others stand, perhaps at the back of the crowd, and they are watching the events that take place.
But then from the record that's given to us in John, I think it's Chapter 19 or 20. We'll look at it, John, Chapter 19.
Sometime during this period.
On several of those who were standing afar off separate themselves from the others, and they walk up to the cross.
To come close to the presence of the Lord Jesus there.
And this is what's recorded verse 25 of chapter 19 of John.
Now there stood by the cross of Jesus, his mother, and his mother's sister.
Mary, the wife of Cleopas and Mary Magdalene.
When Jesus therefore saw his mother and the other disciples standing by whom he loved, he saith unto his mother, Woman, behold thy Son. Here were a few that came up close enough that the Lord Jesus, from as he hung on that cross, could speak to them.
And he entrusts his mother's care unto John.
And we just have recorded one who was there in the devotion of her heart, Mary Magdalene. I'll turn over to Matthew's Gospel to follow the little bits and pieces of that story.
27.
Chapter.
In the 27th chapter of Matthew's Gospel.
We read verse 59.
Joseph. When Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a linen, clean linen cloth, and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out of the rock. And he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre and departed, and there was Mary Magdalene.
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And the other Mary sitting over against the sepulcher. Doesn't it touch your heart, brethren?
Hear the Lord Jesus is taken down from the cross, and Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus.
Come, and if we look at all the accounts, we see that the others as well, they follow as a procession together to the sepulchre, to the garden, and there the Lord Jesus is placed in the tomb. The door is rolled, or the stone is rolled to the door.
And they go home, They depart. But the Spirit of God is pleased to tell us about two sisters who don't leave.
The last we see of them on that day is seated.
There was Mary Magdalene and the other Mary sitting over against the sepulchre.
Dusk is coming on. The darkness is falling on that day, the end of the preparation day before the Sabbath. And here's these two women. Everyone else is gone. The darkness falls, but the devotion of heart is such that they're seated there.
Now.
The next day is the Sabbath day, and it says tells us that these sisters prepared spices and rested, waiting for the liberty of the next day in order to go back to the sepulchre and anoint the body of the Lord Jesus.
The Jews are more active on the Sabbath. They should have been quiet, but they're busy going to.
Pilate and asking for more soldiers or soldiers to be assigned to the tomb so that nobody can steal the body.
But I'm going to read chapter.
28 Here in Matthew, in the first verse and Mr. Darby's translation, it says Now late on Sabbath, as it was the dusk of the next day. After Sabbath came Mary of Magdala and the other Mary to look at the sepulchre.
Here we find this devoted sister again on the Sabbath day.
In the evening.
The day closed at 6:00 PM and the next day started it at six and went through the night as a Jewish days ran.
And here she is late in the afternoon, and the other Mary, and they've come back.
And there they are again, alone, undoubtedly, at least as far as the record given to us.
And waiting and watching. That's the motion of heart to the Lord Jesus.
I'll turn over to John's Gospel.
John's Gospel chapter 20 in the first verse.
The first day of the week cometh Mary Magdalene early, when it was yet dark.
Under the sepulchre.
If you read the other accounts, you'll find that it says of some of the others that came to anoint the body of the Lord Jesus, the sun having risen.
But here we find this one soul whose heart is so attached to the Lord Jesus that she doesn't wait for Daybreak. But the Spirit of God is pleased to tell us that she gets up when it's still dark, and she goes to the tomb.
And she finds the stone rolled away. She finds that the Lord is not there.
And she runs to tell Peter.
And the other disciple we know, who is John, that in her understanding of her mind.
He's been carried off and she doesn't know where, so she runs in her haste to tell him and in her desire, I think, to get back, to be as close as possible. She returns to the sepulchre and she remains there because that's the last place where she had seen him, and she has nowhere else that she wants to be. When we read of Peter and John, they come running as well, and they look, they go in, they examine things.
And it tells us of John. He believed it's the first instance of anyone who.
Is recorded of having believed in the truth of the resurrection. It's John. He was one who lay on the bosom of the Lord Jesus and was close to him in his heart and affections.
And he shines in that. But nothing else, nothing else will satisfy this sister's heart that she just sits there. She wants himself.
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And she doesn't know where he is. And then we have which we won't take time to look at. Our time is really gone, but the Lord Jesus responds to that heart.
And he comes to her, and he enlightens it.
And he satisfies the affection. She had a truly understanding heart. She had a devoted heart. She had a heart that in practice, nothing else would satisfy but this one person. And brethren, she has the joy that she did. She did. She satisfied his heart. It be true with us. Let's pray.