Address—Don Rule
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We're going to begin our hour the.
By singing together.
#68.
But I want to make a comment before we start singing then somebody.
We'll need to start it.
It's in.
For our souls to recognize that we're not singing a song here.
We are speaking in musical form to the Lord Jesus.
Thy name we bless Lord Jesus and throughout the whole hymn, and it's an important thing when we are singing out of this particular songbook that when we come to something, we are addressing the Lord Jesus, that we are in our thoughts and in our hearts addressing the Lord Jesus, speaking to him.
So I trust.
That as we sing it, each one of us will individually be singing to or speaking to in musical form to the Lord Jesus. With that #68.
Children all my God.
Our sins were all the way.
God.
Has sinned through it was for us.
Outside Christmas and the Star, please see it Glory.
Right hand in hand.
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Continue to speak to the Lord.
Lord Jesus.
We desire that. What is in thy heart this afternoon?
What thou hast want us to receive from thyself.
We will.
That thou, Lord Jesus.
Might find the satisfaction that thy heart desires.
In relationship to each one of us.
We do desire our Father, that the Lord Jesus.
Might be glorified this afternoon in the heart of each one of us. And so we look to thee, our Father.
And for the namesake of thy beloved Son, Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Let's turn together.
To the 14th chapter of John. John 14.
Life's all about, or we all know about anyways.
Something we call possessions.
And very generally, when we talk about possessions, we often stop and say my quite properly, my, this, my, that or my, the other is something that belongs to us.
And I'm going to stop for 15 or 20 seconds and I request you to do a little prep work. I want you in the next 15 or 20 seconds to stop and think in your mind about some of the things that you call your own, that you can put the word my, this, my, that, or the other two.
So why don't you do that for the next 15 seconds or so?
That's also only as little contrast to you.
Because now we're going to talk about what the Lord Jesus calls his own.
Started to think about it a little bit ago and.
It didn't take about a minute or two to come up with a nice list.
Of what the Lord Jesus refers to as His.
I don't know how many of his things are on your list similar.
That you have, that he has, you'll find out. This is by number means an exhaustive list, just a suggestive list.
My love.
My peace, my joy, my father.
My friends.
My life, my death.
My brethren, my children.
My this is one that.
We don't get very well. A lot of the times there's only one person that can really say it's his.
Even though we sometimes talk in a different way, there's only one person that's ever lived that can properly say, in the scriptural sense of the word, my Church.
OK.
We're going to probably limit ourselves pretty much to John 14.
But the desire I trust at the heart of the Lord Jesus.
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To give you a sense of what the hope is that the end of the hour is that in some small way.
Or maybe a little larger way?
Your heart.
Will be attached more.
To the heart of the Lord Jesus.
For his sake first.
And then for yours that your heart.
Will become more attached to the heart of Lord Jesus as you may enter into.
What's important and precious to him?
Because when you really love somebody.
You can turn away from focus on yourself.
And enjoy what's important to that person.
And we'll see that expressed over and over again in the heart of the Lord Jesus, even in the one chapter, John 14 that we'll look at.
John 14.
Verse one. Let not your heart be troubled.
You believe in God.
Believe also in me.
In here's the first one.
In my father's house.
Are many mansions. If it were not so, I should have told you I go to prepare a place for you.
My father's house.
Most, if not everybody in the room lives somewhere.
Majority probably live in a house.
I'm gonna make a distinction. Your house is where you live. Your home.
Is where your heart is, and your house and your home can be together. But what truly makes a home a home isn't the physical building at all.
It's the people.
Dwell there.
And what makes a home a home concerns people.
And the Lord Jesus.
Had spent eternity with his Father in his father's house.
And it was his home.
He never really had on earth something that took its place.
Yes, he had a place. He was raised, and in this limited sense, perhaps.
Where he was raised with his mother.
With the father.
With brothers and so on, siblings in the family, he experienced something of what we experience, but not in the same fullness, at least of what he could speak of as my father's house. That was something that he could look at as he doesn't say my house.
But rather, he was in his father's house.
Did he appreciate it?
Well, let's put it this way.
What is the most frequent statement of the Lord Jesus in the whole of John's Gospel?
With respect to anything or everything.
What did he say more times than any other?
About what did he refer to?
Between I didn't count them carefully, doesn't matter.
But between 35 and 40 times in John's gospel, he says.
My father.
Sent me.
My father sent me.
He had lived. He had, from an eternity in his father's house, his home, and what made it his home was his relationship with his father.
A perfect.
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Shared love and fellowship and communion and interest and joy to the point where he could say I and my father are one.
Did he know his father's heart?
Perfectly.
Perfectly.
So what does he say here to his disciples? And this afternoon you're his disciples.
He says.
I go.
To prepare a place for you.
I know my father's heart.
And it's in my heart that you come and live with my father and I, and that our home become your home.
And so I go to prepare a place for you.
I know it's my father's desire. He loves you as I love you.
And please don't take what's being said as some if you want to get what I believe God wants you to get in this hour, listen to these words not as coming from my heart, but from His heart.
Listen to what his heart says to you this afternoon.
I want you.
With me in my father's house.
So that you can come to enjoy what I have enjoyed.
Because I love you.
And so I go to prepare a place for you.
There's.
Several aspects to that thought I prepare a place for you. The first is.
When you were born, were you fit for the Father's house? No, you were born in sin.
You were shaping an iniquity. You were not fit.
Have a place in the Father's house.
You didn't know the father is your father.
Lord Jesus went to the cross.
To make you fit.
For the father's house and he paid the price.
To make you clean.
To make you fit.
Because it was in the Father's heart.
The father sent the son.
To be the savior of the world.
To be your savior.
In a personal way.
The Father sent the Son to be your Savior.
And so in that way, that was part of the preparation.
Another aspect to the preparation was he was going to the Father's house.
In resurrection, in his own as a man, he was going to enter the Father's house.
In resurrection life.
And that's eternal life.
That's life over the power of death.
To go to the Father's house was to go where sin could not come, where death could never enter.
And so I go.
To repair a place for you.
He doesn't say it's my house.
But his union with his father was such.
That he could.
With perfect confidence.
Know what the Father's heart was to have you.
Share in his home.
Verse 7.
If ye had known me.
You should have known my my father.
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Henceforth ye know him.
And have seen him.
You ever love somebody?
In a way that you wanted others to know that person.
Sometimes you have to stop and think about a thought like that.
But sometimes there is someone of a character.
That we wish others to know them.
And enjoy them as we have come to know them and enjoy them.
Sometimes a little child.
Will be playing with the neighborhood child or somebody else they know and they want to bring them home.
To the home.
Where there's love and joy and those things that are precious to them as their little hearts take things in and and they want to bring someone else to be there.
The love that the Lord Jesus has for you this afternoon is.
He wants you.
To know his father as he knows him.
That's his desire.
His perfect, complete, eternal satisfaction and joy.
Is founded in his relationship with his father and he wants you to enter into it as well.
He wants to bring you into the same joy of fellowship and oneness that he enjoys with his father.
And so he emphasizes.
If you had known me, you should have known my father. Why could he say that? Because.
If they came to know him.
They would know his father, who was in this way perfectly like him.
The beginning of John, He comes forth from the Father.
And he can say he that has seen me have seen the father, because he was a perfect expression.
Of the Father.
Sometimes it's an imperfect illustration, but sometimes you'll see a little kid.
If you know the family wealth and you look at the child and you'll say he's just like his dad.
Or he's she's.
Just like her dad or she's just like her mom.
Because the child is showing characteristics that are seen in the parent.
The Lord Jesus was that perfect expression.
Of his father.
What's God's heart for you?
What's the Father's heart for you?
He wants you.
To be just like his son.
That's God's desire for you.
If I can speak for God, God could say I want you to be just like my son.
And to use a comment.
Of our brother in the previous meeting, he has the power.
To bring it about.
He has the power and the wisdom.
To make it happen.
Verse 13.
And whatsoever you shall ask in my name.
That I will do.
That the Father may be glorified.
In the sun.
My name.
My name.
Everyone in this room can claim that you can say my name. What's that mean?
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What's the significance? Is it just a word?
No students a lot more than just a word.
It's an identity.
When people hear your name, if they know you or know about you, it immediately brings certain or can, if they desire it, bring certain thoughts about who you are.
What you are?
In days gone by particularly, that's not so much that we see it in present day in our country anyways, this country.
I don't know if it's good to use the word our country, but in the sense of the word.
There was a days gone by when if someone came to a place.
And they?
Were from the government.
Representing the king, they might say to the people, open up in the in the name of the king.
They were saying that name, that King's name, represented authority.
And a name can represent authority. It does.
Represent that.
Why do you pray? Why do I pray very often?
It can be a habit.
That loses its meaning.
At the end of a prayer, when we say, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.
Is there a sense in which that name is being used?
If we are addressing God.
And we end a prayer within the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.
What are we saying to God?
We are bringing if it's a matter of requests or asking.
We're not asking in our own authority or name or what we are. We are coming.
To God.
In the name.
Of His Son or Jesus Christ.
Does God respond to that?
Does he want to do what's asked?
If it's in his sons name.
He says here.
Verse 14 again.
If ye shall ask anything in my name.
I will do it.
There's lots more that could be said. Why we certain things.
We get the answer No, that's not my point. Our purpose and what's before us at the moment.
It's rather.
The father and the son together.
Desire for us that which is for our blessing and our good.
And it is special to the Father's heart when someone comes to Him in his.
Son's name.
We know what it's like we who have had children or have children.
To have one of our children express a desire.
For someone else.
We want if we can, if we think it's good for them.
In our adult wisdom.
It's a delight. It's a joy to satisfy their heart.
By positive response.
To that which is asked.
Verse 15.
If you love me.
Keep my commandments.
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I'll go out on a limb in the 15 seconds you had.
I suspect there wasn't a single one that.
As your possession said my commandments.
I doubt that there was. Correct me if I'm wrong afterwards.
My commandments.
That's one of these things that he could call his own.
My commandments.
I had a father. I had a mother.
And my father and my mother both had some of what could be called.
They could say my commandments.
And they?
Sometimes insisted on them too.
And sometimes there were consequences.
When?
Their son Dawn or one of their other children.
Decided that they didn't want the commandment.
There's consequences.
But why are their commandments?
Because the one who has the power to say my commandments and the right to say my commandments has commandments that are for the good and blessing and benefit.
Of those to whom they give the commandment.
A commandment has the character of do it.
Whether or not you know why.
Or why not?
My father and our household sometimes to teach us that lesson.
When we.
Were boys.
Would give us a commandment and we're our response.
At least for a little while was we learned it didn't do any good to ask it anymore.
Our response? Sometimes our question was why?
Why?
And our father's response was because I said so.
Because I said so.
He was saying.
He was teaching us.
To submit.
And obey without the question of knowing why if he said something.
He was teaching us God, our Father's way.
And many things.
And I'm thankful for it.
Later on, if we have the time, we'll see where the Lord talks about my words.
And the difference between my commandments and my words.
Verse 16.
I will pray the Father.
And he shall give you.
Another comforter.
That he may abide with you forever.
Lord Jesus as a man, even though he was the Son of God at the same time.
Kept his place properly, perfectly as a man.
And so he wants something for you and I.
But he isn't going to do it on his own will.
He's going to do it by asking his father to do it.
I pray to the Father that He shall give you.
Another comforter that is the Holy Ghost, Holy Spirit, the.
To come and abide in you.
How did he answer that prayer? How is that prayer answered?
In me this afternoon is the Holy Spirit.
In you this afternoon is the Holy Spirit. I'm speaking to you as a child of God.
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Here's a person that prayed as a man.
Fully, perfectly, in fellowship with his father and his father's will, in such a way that there was no question in his heart.
Of what his father would do.
Why did he want that?
Multiple reasons.
But the Spirit in you.
Takes the word of God.
And makes it good.
In your soul.
It gives.
To you on understanding.
Of what God says and who God is.
I appreciate a Carmen that's connected with this.
I think it's Mr. Darby said it.
He said in spiritual things.
We learn the thing first and then the meaning of the words.
Becomes evident.
That may take a little thinking about, but in spiritual things.
We learn the thing first.
And then the meaning of the words becomes evident.
A child.
Gets to know father and mother.
And the relationship they have with father and mother.
Probably long before they know what the word father means or the word mother means in a dictionary.
They learn the thing and then later on the meaning of the words become evident to them.
The Spirit of God works in you and works in me to learn the truth, the reality of a thing, very often before we could put words to explain it or define it.
In a dictionary sense of the word.
Verse 19.
Yet a little while and the world seeth me no more.
But you see me?
Because I live.
Ye shall live also.
The Lord Jesus says, because I live.
He shall live also.
Why is that?
Because in resurrection.
Imparted to you was abundant life.
His life in resurrection, that is. In resurrection, it's past death. It's past the possibility of death. It's eternal now in its character.
He lives, he passed through death, he rose from the dead, and he rose in the power.
Of the results of the work at the cross.
No more.
Ever to have anything in his own person to do with dying or death.
And.
It's called my life.
But to you, he imparts that life. And I want to bring out a point that to me is wonderful. And it's true of a number of things that he calls my.
This morning.
Terrible at names, but I guess it's Jonathan.
Started the morning with some a bowl of.
Treasures.
He ended the morning without any of those treasures. You didn't have them anymore.
He had given them, but in the very process of giving them, they were no longer his.
They were, some children could say, look at my gold.
Dollar or whatever was proper. Look at my molds.
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It's mine.
If Jonathan had gone to try to retrieve it, if the child was a certain age, it would have said that's mine.
It's not Jonathan's anymore. It's mine.
That's true of physical things in their character. If you sell a car, you could, before you sell it, say it's my car. But after you sold it, it's not your car anymore, It belongs to somebody else.
But the wonderful thing in many of the things that belong to the Lord Jesus is He can share them with you and with me.
Without giving them up himself.
So Christ, as Colossians says, who is our life?
I have eternal life, the life of Christ.
In resurrection in abundance.
And I can still say it's my life.
But it's his life.
It's united together.
And when it comes to the father and the son, there are many things that.
You'll find that when they're referred to the Lord at times will say.
I'll give a wonderful example.
I say.
I'm a child of God.
Lord Jesus.
Well, it can say that's my my father gave that to me. It's my child.
They share together in one.
And so I'm a child of God.
By the Father.
I'm a child of God by the sun.
Verse 21.
Yet hath my commandments, and keepeth them.
Getting back to commandments, it is that loveth me, and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him and will manifest myself to him.
Perhaps the overwhelming point of this.
A number of chapters together, of which 14 is in the middle of them.
Is.
The Sun.
Came sent by the Father.
To bring you and I into a common relationship with them.
To share with them.
What they love, what they enjoy, what they purpose.
What satisfies?
Lord wants you.
To be perfectly satisfied as he is.
Are the same things.
Not only satisfy him, but that he and the Father enjoy.
Together in perfect unity.
And so.
He goes on in verse 23 to say, If any man love me, he will keep my words.
And my father will love him, and we will come unto him and make our abode with him.
Any man loved me, you will keep my words.
As I grew older.
In the household in which I was raised.
I didn't always need my father's commandments.
Because eventually I understood my father.
And his thoughts and his heart.
In a way that sometimes I could say no, I don't want to do that, My father wouldn't be pleased with that.
His words expressed his thoughts without a commandment in different matters that came through the conversation and the fellowship of the household, and there were times when it wasn't necessary.
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For my father to even say anything, or my mother, and often a longer time my mother than my father. We got to know what mother loved, what she didn't like, what made her happy, what made her sad, what made her unhappy and so on. And so the Lord Jesus is bringing us here.
Into a closer, more intimate.
Relationship that if he says something.
We start to take in what his heart means by that, so that we don't even need a commandment that may involve not even understanding or knowing.
Lord Jesus.
Could say as he's the only one that could perfectly say it.
But he always did the things that pleased his father.
Because he entered perfectly into his father's heart and thoughts and shared them.
And so he knew what he was doing was that which pleased his father.
I look forward.
When the Lord can say that of me, and he will.
Well, I'm in glory.
But I would desire, and you would too. You share with me the same desire that we enter more and more and grow.
In being able to hear his words.
And comprehend his heart and what pleases him and what doesn't.
Verse 24.
He that loveth me not keepeth my sayings, and the words which you hear is not mine, but the fathers which sent me.
As a man, the Lord Jesus always was giving expression to what was of His Father rather than Himself.
Is that not a good pattern?
Do you not desire to learn?
That what you desire is an expression of his desires.
That was seen in the Lord Jesus.
He lived in a way that was an expression of what was the will of his father.
And perfectly, that will.
I delight, he could say, to do thy will, Oh my God.
May the Lord help us to grow that that is more and more true statement of ourselves. I delight to do thy will, Oh my God.
Verse 23.
If any man loved me, he will keep my words.
And.
We've done that first 27 I want to go to.
Peace. I live with you, I live with you I live with you, my peace.
I give unto you.
Not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.
My peace.
My peace.
He wants you to have his peace. He won't lose his own by giving you his peace.
Again, like some of the other things that we've already talked about, there is that sense.
What peace did he have?
Did he ever wake up in the middle of the night wondering what was going to happen tomorrow?
Driving out here, it's on a freeway and.
Car broke down.
Would that have disturbed his peace?
No.
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No possibility of disturbing his peace.
His heart.
Was in perfect fellowship with his father.
And his Father's power and wisdom and will and love was perfect.
And as such, he could walk.
In that fellowship.
Do you want to enjoy that piece? Walk in fellowship with the Lord Jesus.
And you?
And you have it.
My peace I give unto you.
Verse 28.
Is well, we'll read it first. You have heard how I said unto you, I go away.
And I will come again to you if he loved me.
You would rejoice because I said.
I go to the father.
Imagine yourself to be one of the disciples that heard these words.
A disciple who had just spent 3 1/2 years on a daily.
Presence of the Fellowship and the Care of.
One who could say I my sheep?
My friends, my brethren, that's how he referred to them, and you, you can enjoy the same.
As he would say of you, my friend, my brethren.
My sheep.
And here the shepherd is saying to his shape.
To those he called his friends, to those he calls his brethren, he said.
I'm going away.
And then he tests, he tests it, he said.
In the saying it.
If you love me, you would rejoice.
If you love me.
You rejoice in what I just said to you.
If you had been a disciple there and heard those words that day, would it immediately have turned your heart to joy?
To test.
What he was, he was depending in the if you love me, that you love me. And if you love me, you will appreciate having learned my relationship with my father, that you'll rejoice. So I'm going to have the joy of being with my father.
And I'll add the little and you won't be thinking about yourself as first or what's in it for me.
Because of your love for me, you'll be thinking about what's in it for me, the Lord Jesus.
And the joy of anticipation that I have after being here for 33 1/2 years to get to go again to my father and his father's house.
You'll rejoice.
Rejoice.
Talking to a brother for this meeting.
About we have those that we love, that we are not with us anymore.
On this earth.
Can we honestly say, in view of the words, to depart to be with Christ is far better that we rejoice for that person?
But they now have the more enjoyable, the more full enjoyment of the Lord Jesus than we do.
If it's not a focus on our love, but it's a focus on what's for their good and blessing, there is that same spirit of.
We can rejoice.
OK, verse 31.
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Our times about up.
Verse 31 Jesus said, Do you now believe?
The hours coming and now is.
You shall be scattered, every man to his own, and every will. Leave me alone. I'm not alone.
Because my father is with me.
These things I have spoken unto you, that in me you might have peace.
In the world be of tribulation, but be of go cheer.
Because I overcome the world. And so he is again reinforcing that importance.
Of peace, he also says, My joy.
Not one in the list here in this chapter, but in this series of chapters my joy I given to you.
Do you? And are you enjoying his joy this afternoon?
Are you experiencing the joy that He wants to give? And how does give, if you accept it? My joy I give unto you.
If you have learned.
To value the same things that he values.
If you have learned to love what he loves.
And that's in perfect fellowship with what the Father loves and what the father cares about.
In fellowship with that.
You can say his joy is my joy.
His joy.
It's my joy.
I want to summarize.
This way.
When the shout comes.
And you're caught up.
What's the first thing?
You're looking forward to?
I'm looking forward.
To seeing the Lord Jesus.
Face to face.
To see the look of joy.
In his eyes as he looks at me.
And opens his arms to embrace me.
Let's pray.
We thank the Lord Jesus for the measure of dialogue. We thank thee, Father.
Well, that perfect common desire with thy son.
We thank you for giving us to thy son.
We thank Thee, Lord Jesus, for the work without its due. We thank thee for.
Accepting.
What we would have to call my sins.
Being placed upon thee by the Father.
Take what was ours and bear it for us.
We thank you for that tremendous love and work.
And.
This desire that.
Each day, more and more our hearts might reach out to Thee, Lord Jesus.
To get to know the better.
To get to enjoy my love and I peace and I fellowship and my interests and I will, and my word and all that thou hast given to us to share with thee.
Each day.
And in anticipation for eternity.
We love.
Because Thou did put that love in our hearts.
And we thank Thee for all things, our Father, that Thou has given us through thy Son.
And father and son, we bow before thee with.
Thankfulness.
Bless the Lord Jesus, blessed Father.
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Amen.