Address—Don Rule
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We'll begin this afternoon by singing together number 93.
From the palace of his glory.
From the home of joy and love.
Came the Lord Himself to seek us. He would have us.
There above.
And in past and distant ages, in those courts so bright and fair ere we were.
Was he rejoicing all he won with us? To share number 93 will need a starter.
3, 10-4 10-4 09, three 03.
Spray.
Turn with me for a verse in Second Corinthians Chapter 9.
2nd Corinthians Chapter 9 and verse 15.
Thanks.
Be unto God for His unspeakable gift.
Thanksgiving Day, I had the privilege with my wife of being with part of our family and spending the day together.
And as we have done at other times, we enjoy after the meal.
Going around.
From the littlest ones to the oldest ones and letting each person share something.
That they have to give thanks to God for.
And I find it interesting and fascinating and encouraging to my own heart to see.
Sometimes what?
Eight 1012 year old have to thank God for as well as quite a bit older ones too.
After we did that.
We turned it around in this way. It didn't go to everybody, but particularly for the younger ones, they were asked can you name something?
That God is thankful for.
I was very touched with two of the answers, or not answers really, but two of the things that were said.
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One of my grandsons said.
God is thankful when we put our trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior.
Nice, isn't it?
We have in Luke 15 that expression that when one of us puts our trust in the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior.
There's joy.
In heaven, in the presence of the angels of God. It doesn't say the angels are joyful, but I'm sure they are.
But it says in the presence of the angels of God, because the Father.
The Son and the Holy Spirit are thankful and as a result, joyful when each one of us put our trust in the Lord Jesus and became part of God's family.
I was more touched.
By another answer.
God is thankful.
For his son.
Can't beat it. I don't believe, brethren.
God is thankful for His Son.
So desire of my heart this afternoon that.
And I trust it's the desire of God's heart to.
That as a result of being together in this little time, that is that where when the meeting comes to its end.
That you would like to link your hand with God.
And with God say we are thankful.
For the sun.
Thanks be unto God for His unspeakable gift.
Turn with me for a verse in Second Timothy, chapter one.
Second Timothy. Chapter One.
Since we were reading about suffering, I'm going to read a little more context here without comment, but it relates to our morning.
Time together in the Bible reading.
Verse 8. Be not therefore, ashamed of the testimony of our Lord.
Nor of me, his prisoner.
But be thou partaker of the afflictions of the gospel according to the power of God.
Who has saved us and called us with an holy calling?
Not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace.
Which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began.
But is now made manifest by the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ.
Who hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel?
You can hold your finger here if you want. Before we comment, turn over to Ephesians chapter one.
And verse 3.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings.
In heavenly places, in Christ, according as He hath chosen us, in Him before the foundation of the world.
That we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of his will.
We have in these two passages.
Something that took place before the world ever was made.
Before people were ever created.
The counsels of God in past eternity.
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It's amazing, really, that the creator of the universe.
Would choose to tell us about such things, but he has.
He was thinking about you.
And he was thinking about me.
And he determined certain purposes within himself.
For you and for me, I speak to you as a believer. If you're not a believer, then what I say doesn't apply to you.
Unless you believe.
God is thankful for the Son.
Like to try to present to you as it is enjoyed in my own soul that thought.
In past eternity.
There's God, God the Father, God the Son.
And God the Holy Spirit.
And in the heart of God is love. He is love.
And I can only express it as a creature.
But maybe you can only understand it as a creature too, so it's all right.
God says.
I'd like.
To create some creatures.
And I want those creatures that I create.
To enjoy what I enjoy.
To share with me what is of enjoyment to my own heart.
Of the Lord Jesus is wisdom, it says. I was daily his delight.
The Father loved the Son from all eternity.
And found his pleasure, his joy in his son.
And he determined that he would have.
Creatures.
That could enjoy with him.
What was number one in his own soul or heart?
His son.
And so he created man in his own image and after his own likeness.
And he placed him on the earth.
We know the story.
We also know what happened.
It's not a very pretty site.
I don't know about you.
But I must be honest, or will be honest with you this afternoon and say I often find reading the Old Testament depressing on my spirit.
I'll give you an example of it.
Turn with me to Genesis.
Chapter, I think it's seven or 8/6.
Chapter 5.
Genesis chapter 5.
Verse one.
This is the book of the generations of Adam.
In the day that God created man in the likeness of God made he him.
Male and female created he them and blessed them and called their name Adam in the day when they were created.
And Adam lived in 130 years and begat his son in his own likeness.
After his image and called his name Seth.
In the days of Adam after he had begotten Seth were 800 years, and he begat sons and daughters, and all the days that Adam lived were 930 years.
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And he died.
And Seth lived for six.
Verse 11.
He in and he died.
Verse 12 Cain lived.
Verse 17.
Well, I miss.
Umm verse 17 and he died.
Our first fourteen, it says. And he died.
And then his son Mahalahil lived, and he died, and so on.
That's sad, isn't it?
It's the cycle.
Of the whole earth.
And he lived.
And he died, and he lived and he died.
And if you leave out the purposes of God, you can look at this room and I can look at you and I can say, and you lived and you died.
And you lived, and you died.
Not very encouraging to my soul, nor yours either.
Not really the intent or purpose of God either.
To have a creature that he would have to look upon and say and he lived.
And he died, and she lived, and she died.
Is that all that your life is?
I say to you as a little word of warning, if you're in this room this afternoon and you don't know the Lord Jesus.
That's going to be your life.
You live, you die.
And of course, we know there's more than that. After that comes the judgment.
But God had a purpose.
Concerning.
Us as it relates to his son.
We don't want to take the time to trace all that history in the Old Testament. I want to go to the New Testament, you might say, pick up the story of man as seen in John's Gospel, chapter 5.
John's Gospel, chapter 5 and verse 24.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth my word.
And believeth on him that sent me hath everlasting life.
And shall not come into really judgment.
But is passed from death.
Into life.
Verily, verily, I say unto you, the hour is coming, and now is.
When the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and they that hear.
Shall live.
For as the Father hath life in himself, so hath he given to the Son.
To have life in himself.
Man's history as he's born, he lives, he dies, and Adam all die.
The cycle of the world, it's inescapable.
It's not a very joyful fact, but it's true nonetheless.
But God in his love and in his purposes.
Had something else for his creature.
When Adam sinned, he died.
We know he died physically.
But he also died morally. As far as his relationship with God, he was dead. Godward. He was dead in trespasses and sins.
And when the Lord Jesus came into this world, he came into a world full of dead people.
Morally speaking.
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Thankfully there were some that had life when he came, but looked at in a general way, it was a world full of dead people.
But God's not limited by that, and so in the person of the Lord Jesus.
He said I'm going to speak to the dead.
And they that here shall live, Some heard, some lived.
In fact, the history of man lead to judgment.
And that wonderful verse in John 5 and 24 for those who hear.
He says.
Shall not come into judgment.
That is, for them there is no judgment ahead. There is nothing to be faced.
And we're not here this afternoon to go in, particularly to the gospel itself, but.
Here was a world of dead people facing judgment, and he says, I'm going to go into it.
I'm going to present.
A message they who hear.
Will not face judgment, but will be taken from death.
They lived, they died, will be taken from that place of moral death into a place of life.
Into a place of life.
It's tremendous, tremendous thing.
To be brought into out of death.
Into life.
Turn with me to.
John's first epistle.
John one verse one.
That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen.
Which our eyes have looked upon and our hands have handled. Of the word of life.
For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life which was with the Father, and has been manifested unto us, that which we have seen and heard. Declare we unto you, that ye also.
May have fellowship with us. That's the apostles.
Fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father.
And with his Son Jesus Christ, and these things right we unto you that your joy.
May be full.
What's happened here?
What are we reading about?
God in a past eternity.
I'm gonna represent this way God.
Chose to create a creature named Man.
And had the purpose that that creature man would be so brought into association and fellowship with himself that they together might enjoy what he enjoyed, which is the sun.
God's thankful for the sun.
But how could it happen?
What had to take place in order for that purpose to be realized?
It is a work. It is something that only God could ever have imagined or dreamed or thought up, would never have entered into the heart of the creature to even think about it or desire it or even know the blessedness of it.
Or how it would be accomplished?
Here's God dwelling in eternal light, in love and life.
And now, as we've looked at a little bit, here's man.
In a state of death.
And corruption. And violence. And sin.
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What's to bridge the gap?
The Sun.
Son.
Here's God in all his essential beings and deity, and here's man, the creature.
In all his loneliness, really, he didn't realize it, but his, I'm going to say his puniness, his tininess, his littleness.
It's the sun that bridges the gap.
It's the sun that brings the Father and ourselves together.
It's the sun that makes us to be able to have the right to be brought into God's family and be his children.
It is by Christ Jesus that God accomplishes the purposes of His own heart.
God the Son.
Comes down to where man is.
And takes humanity.
Into union with his deity.
It's an absolutely incredible thought.
That God bridging that gap.
That the sun would leave that place of honor and glory and majesty and light and power.
And come all the way down.
In his person.
To become a man.
To become as a man mortal.
To become as man, having a body of flesh and blood and all the limitations that go along with that.
The need to eat and sleep.
Get tired and so on.
The Sun.
Comes down all the way.
To accomplish the purpose of God.
The disciples witnessed it.
They saw him.
They watched him, they handled him, the word of life, that eternal life which he had within himself that we read of in John five. He still had it as a man, for he was still the Son.
And so there he is among men.
To display yes, to manifest yes all the God is.
And as they watched him, and as they observed him, he was full of grace and truth.
But if I can say it properly.
God was still God.
And man was still mad.
Man couldn't be brought.
Into the presence of God as he was.
Man, by his very nature as he was, could not understand or comprehend or know God properly.
He was dead.
In his trespasses and in his sins.
He was without God, He was without hope.
He was to live and die.
The next generation live, die, and so on.
He came unto his own, His own received him not.
Worse.
He was hated.
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We have time to get farther into this epistle. We'll see why.
He was hated.
He was rejected.
He was crucified. We will not have this man.
But in the worst act of man, and the worst effort of Satan against God, he God being God.
You accomplish is a tremendous.
Work.
So that man could be brought into a new place with God.
He dies, he rises again, and as we know this afternoon.
He's living forever.
And he's living this afternoon as he watches us here in this room.
At this moment, with his heart upon us, with his love toward us.
With his desire that we respond.
To that love.
At God's right hand.
But what takes place?
We read in the Old Testament they didn't know really what life and death was all about.
But the message of the gospel is to bring life.
And immortality to light.
Among other things.
The purpose of God is now out to be told, to be realized, to be enjoyed.
For God to have a creature that can enjoy his Son as he enjoys him.
He has to be like God.
He has to have.
Something of deity.
In his being.
Try to introduce the thought this way.
When I was a boy, our family had a dog, I.
Forget how old I was, maybe 5-6, seven years old, and Bell, our dog, arrived as a baby pup.
And they spent the next 15 years in the family circle.
As a loved dog.
We love Val Val loved us.
We played with Bell, Bell played with us.
But in some ways, she never understood us.
Never did learn to understand why sometimes she was outside and we were inside.
And she had to live in a little house called a dog house.
And why, when she wagged her tail and looked at us with, you know, the kind of look, won't you bring me in the house? She still had to stay outside sometimes.
I'm sure she never did understand.
And we couldn't make her understand either.
Why not?
Because she was a dog and we were human beings. She did not have a life. She did not have a nature capable of understanding us fully. Yes, there were some things she knew and enjoyed, and so did we. And I suppose in one sense, we never fully understood her.
But we loved her.
The point is.
If we are to know God.
As God in the way that he wants us to.
We have to share in the same kind of life and nature.
God wants us to feel as he feels, think as he thinks.
Love as he loves, and so on.
We couldn't do that in Adam.
But we can in Christ.
So how does God do it?
He does it through the sun.
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He puts in us.
The life of Christ.
To share it with Christ.
That last comment is important to share it with him.
Said this before, but it's important to understand it. Everybody in this room has their own individual life. I have mine and you have yours.
And you can die, or I can die and you can live.
My death and your death aren't tied together. My life and your life are not in that way, tied together.
Yours is separate from mine.
But when God brings us into the place that.
He has brought us into as our destiny.
He imparts eternal life into us to share.
With the sun. And so it says in Colossians. Christ, who is our life.
It's important.
Because I can't die unless he can.
My life is as secure, that is, the eternal life that I have is as secure as his life is.
It's also the fact that.
He is deity and He has life in himself.
Independent of anything or anyone.
But God bringing me into relationship, and you into a relationship with himself is such that.
Will always be dependent. Will never have a life that's independent.
Will always be the creature.
And so that's, I believe why we participate in the life. It's our life, but it's Christ who is our life.
So what does that bring us into?
Life has a nature connected with it and so we won't take the time to turn to it. But we read in first, second Peter is it.
Where Bob was reading yesterday afternoon.
Partakers of the divine nature.
Partakers of the divine nature.
God has given us a life that is divine, that has a divine nature.
Scripture uses that expression so that unlike Bell who could never understand me.
Properly or fully as I might have wanted.
We received that which causes us to enjoy.
What he enjoys.
To have the same thoughts as he has and so on.
Says here that your choice has brought us into fellowship. That's commonness of thought and interest and feeling. And so we've been brought into this wonderful fellowship with God concerning his Son.
Let's look at it a little more though.
Notice verse five. This then is the message which we have heard of him. And declare unto you that God is light.
And in Him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie.
Then do not the truth.
But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another in the blood of Jesus Christ his Son.
Cleanseth us from all sin.
God is light.
Everything is holy and pure and perfect and out in His presence.
And the only possible way that you and I can ever have fellowship with God is on those terms.
That everything is holy and pure and out in His presence.
No darkness in it.
It's amazing, brother.
That we can literally have a fellowship with God.
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In holiness and light and purity.
There's no other way.
Simple illustration but I use it sometimes it with some kids in a detention center and I say to them when I leave the detention center I don't plan to go rob the 711.
Because I seek to walk in fellowship with the Lord Jesus. And if I plan to leave here and go rob the 711.
He wouldn't go with me.
Our fellowship would be separated and broken.
So it is.
But it's the purpose of God that it be so.
That is that we have fellowship with him on immensely high ground.
Romans 3 All have sinned and come short.
Of the glory of God Romans 5 We live in in the hope of the glory of God. Why? Because when God's done His work, we will live up to that measure of the glory of God.
And so he has it here.
But John introduces what's true of us and we don't have time to go into it but.
What's true of us is sins there, isn't it? Yes, it is still. It won't be eventually, but at the moment it is. And so he says to us, the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin. That is that blessed man, that Son of God has done in his work, that which removes every barrier, everything that would separate us.
From being suited to having fellowship with God.
And so if sin comes into the equation.
You can cleanse it and remove it so it's no longer there.
Verse nine, he says, and I just want to make comment about verse nine and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
You know, when you sin, it tends to bring unrighteousness into your life. What do I mean by that? I'll give an illustration. When I was a boy, the next door neighbor boy and I were good buddies and we like to do things and we'd like to build forks and have different places that my younger brothers couldn't find that were our secret hideouts and all that. And we were building one, one time and I needed a spring.
And so our basement had a a door in it that led upstairs out on the outside of the house, and I took the spring off the door.
We needed it.
Couple of days later I intended to replace it after I got one but I forgot and a few days later we were sitting at the dinner table and my father said I'm sure there was a spring on that door that went up to the basement. I can't understand what happened to it.
I thought at the time, thankfully you didn't ask me and I said nothing.
That was unrighteous.
That was unrighteous.
Righteousness is acting consistently with a relationship.
And my relationship to my father was such that if I were to be righteous about it, when he expressed what happened to that spring, righteousness would have told me, you say.
But that's the characteristic of man. He's not only disobedient directly, but after his disobedience he will tend to act in an unrighteous way.
To cover it up or not expose it.
Wonderful that it says here God requires the exposure we have to confess, but God will deal with us and work with us to cleanse us.
From all unrighteousness.
Our time is running its course.
Wanna just look at a few things here? And John, let's go to chapter 2 and verse 7.
Brethren, I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which he had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which he had heard from the beginning.
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Again, a new commandment I write unto you, Which thing is true in him?
And in you, because the darkness is past, and the true light now shines.
Just want to pick up a thought out of this verse. And that is when the Lord Jesus was in the world.
He was the perfect expression of God, of light and love.
And they saw him. They looked at him.
But it says in this verse which thing is true in him?
And in you.
That is what was true in him as to light and love God purpose so that we could have fellowship with him. That it be true in us too.
And so he imparts that life to us, that it can be true in US.
He makes it good in us by giving the Spirit of God.
To direct it, to animate it, to energize it.
So that we can walk in it.
The Spirit is Romans 8, says the spirit of life in Christ Jesus. That's the spirit of our lives now in Christ Jesus.
Lives to be directed, controlled, animated, given power by the working of the Spirit of God which dwells in us, so that in a practical sense, even now, what we're talking about can be lived out and enjoyed in our lives.
Let's go to verse 13.
I write unto you, fathers, because ye have known him, that is from the beginning. You can't go beyond that.
He repeats it in a few verses later.
Yesterday we were talking about the inheritance together.
Came before my own heart in this way.
Suppose you told me that my inheritance was to be a jewel.
That was to be my inheritance.
Wonderful Jewel.
The Lord Jesus Christ.
Is that jewel?
And that that's what I'm to have for the enjoyment of my soul for eternity.
That jewel himself.
You can't go beyond that.
Ye have known him that was from the beginning, to know the Lord Jesus as he was on earth, as He is in heaven.
Is a jewel that satisfies? Does it satisfy God?
Is God satisfied? Is he looking for something more, something beyond the sun? I say not.
I say not.
He is totally, eternally satisfied in his delight.
In his son.
And he says, I'm thankful for my son and the father has entered into that similar type of object and enjoyment and you can't go beyond that.
That's as far as you can grow spiritually.
In your life and your eternity to enjoy the sun with the Father as He is.
I have written unto you, young men, because you are strong.
And the word of God abideth in you, and you have overcome the wicked one.
Let's go down where he expands on that. We'll make some comments about it for the young.
Uh, those of us that I'll say want to be young men.
Verse.
14 Our verse umm verse 15 Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
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For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world, and the world passeth away, and the lust thereof. But he that doeth the will of God abideth forever.
John takes things down to their essence and shows them to us. He doesn't bring out all of the conflict that's in us because sin and the flesh are still there and that causes certain problems in us that are have to be dealt with as we have another epistles. But in taking it down to his essence we see in John that.
There's certain things that are fundamentally opposed to each other.
One is Jesus Christ.
And Satan.
They are at the very essence.
Opposed to one another in all that they stand for and all that they are.
And Satan wants to have the place that Christ has.
And he opposes all that he is.
Two other things that are set in contrast to each other is in opposition to each other is the Father and the world.
We talked about the father this afternoon and his desire that you and I enjoy the sun as he enjoys him.
What is it that will rob you?
Of that enjoyment.
The world. The world.
In any measure.
The Father sent the Son into the world. The world says to the father, we don't want him.
God's purposes as Father concerned the Son. And so here's a world in which we live. Who is.
Opposed to everything that the Father is for.
Satan is behind it using the sinful nature of man.
To present to his lust.
The things of the flesh.
The pride of life and so on. And in doing so he keeps man from the father and from the son.
The last exhortation of this epistle is, Children keep yourselves from idols. Is there a single thing in your life that the world has got a hold of you that is separating you from fellowship with the Father?
I hope God wants me to say this.
I found it an immense blessing in my life.
In my fellowship with my father and his son.
When I stopped.
Reading the newspaper, listening to the radio.
And going on Google Internet to see the news.
The Lord Jesus is a jewel.
That you will not find in this world.
And everything that tends to draw your heart away, whether it's not bad in itself, but if it takes a claim on your time and your energy and it's unnecessary, I urge you.
You'll be happier.
And you will find a fellowship with a father that you cannot have in association with this world.
One more point.
Chapter 4.
Verse 11.
Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought to love one another.
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No man has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God dwelleth in US and His love is perfected in US.
Hereby we know that we dwell in him, and He and us, because he hath given us of his Spirit.
And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world.
John says that the.
One of the marks of having this life that we've been talking about this afternoon is.
Love.
We all love our families, I assume. We love people that are lovable.
But this is the love of God that loves the Sinner.
Loves the man who is in rebellion against himself.
And it's marked here by.
It it strikes me strongly and solemnly that he would choose to express it to us as love your brother.
Yes.
Good illustration of it this morning.
Just walking down the hall.
Dave Jennings was coming the other way with Billy.
We came together and he.
Put his Walker to one side and he embraced me.
And he said I love you.
Next words.
Were the good ones. I can't help it.
I can't help it. I can't help but love you.
That's the love we're talking about here.
I went in and got a cup of coffee or something, wasn't there. But at 2 minutes or less and I came back out the door and I'm walking down the hall and Dave and Billy hadn't made it to the room yet and.
Edgar, as I was passing him in the hall, he had his arm around Billy.
And he said.
I love her.
And I can't remember exactly, but this was the thought anyway.
And I think that's the exact word. That's the love we're talking about.
In Spite of. And anyway, it's that love that loves because it's its nature to love, and that's God, and he loves in that way.
Why does Dave love that way?
Why does Edgar love that way?
The last point I want to try to explain what it says here when it says the love of God is perfected in.
Love, all divine love, has as its source God.
Its source is not in man and never will be, just like the life that we have.
Is in Christ.
So the love, the divine love, is in God.
And what happens is when we receive the life of Christ.
We have the receptability for that love, and that love flows into us from God, its source.
And when it is there from God, it is free then to flow out to others.
But it's not in US, independently of God.
Dave and Edgar.
Love that way because the love of God, like a stream, flows into them.
And out of them.
And if they don't abide in His love?
If they allow things to come into their lives, it will stop up that flow.
The source will still be there, but in a practical, flowing sense it will not be.
Flowing out.
And so it is when sin comes into the life, and that's the love of God perfected in US.
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It's a perfect love and it works in US. And why is it that way? Why is it all work the way we've talked? Because if it was in US, independently of God, we would be so proud we couldn't even talk to each other. And that's not love. It keeps us humble for eternity in our right place as the creature. And the more we understand it, the more humble we will be.
For we will recognize that all of it comes from the heart of God. Our life, our love, and everything else is the result of His grace toward us, and it makes us a Worshipful, dependent, even obedient creature for eternity.