Address—Don Rule
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White Forest and sing again.
To the fact that.
In parts of this hymn you are going to be speaking.
Directly to the Lord Jesus.
The first hymn that we sang in in the reading meeting had exactly the same character as we sang it. There were times in it when we were speaking in song directly to the Lord Jesus and making requests of Him.
We said or sang.
Guide us, keep us calm, and so on.
I want and desire that we would give conscious emphasis that we're not just singing to Him or a spiritual song, but we are actually hopefully directly addressing the Lord Jesus.
With a desire, a thought.
That is true of us and we're saying it to him.
Someone started please.
Nsnoise.
By way of introduction, please turn with me to umm, Second Samuel, Chapter One.
Second Chance Samuel, chapter one and verse 26.
I am distressed for thee, my brother Jonathan. Very pleasant hast thou been to me?
Thy love to me was wonderful.
Passing the love of women.
Psalm 23.
And verse one.
The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.
Elite us, me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul.
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his namesake.
Yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death.
I will fear no evil.
For thou art with me.
Thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies.
Thou anointest my head with oil, my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.
And I will dwell in the House of the Lord.
Forever.
So my heart this afternoon.
Seek to encourage you and myself.
Into a more intimate.
And personal daily relationship with.
Our Lord, our Savior, our Friend, our lover.
Our Lord Jesus Christ.
When I was 15 years old.
I my eye was attracted to a.
Sister and the Lord, a young person about my own age.
And for the next five years or so, my eye was honor whenever we were together, which wasn't very often at a conference or Gordon Hayhoe's cottage at Otter Lake or up in the Maritimes in the tent work in the summer.
But when I was about 20 years of age.
At a Toronto conference, just before leaving, I went up to her and I asked her. I said Grace.
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Umm, if I correspond, if I write you a letter, would you be willing to write back?
And I would like and told her with serious intention that we might know each other better with the very possibility that the end of that might end up in a in a marriage.
She said yes, she would write.
It wasn't the day of cell phones. They hadn't been invented. It wasn't today when those of us who had any money, who, like me, who had no money, could make telephone calls.
But we could write and it started a correspondence and it changed the pattern of my life at that point in time because I was still in school, but as soon as I got home from school during the day.
The first stop I made I went to school on a bicycle and I stopped by the.
The uh, post box or in front of our house and I opened up the post box to see if there was a letter.
And if it could, if it was empty then the first one. As soon as I went into the house I asked my mom is there a letter today And I after not very many days I didn't have to ask her I just walk in the house and she could say yes or no knowing what the question was.
If there was a letter, the first item of business was to read it.
And usually that day, the last item of business, if you will, before going to bed was to read it again.
And it was always read before answering at least a third time.
No one had to say to me, Don, you got a letter, you better read it.
There was no must do whatever connected with those letters.
But I read them and I reread them and I read them again and.
I still have some of them in a box.
Those letters.
Were important to me because I wanted to know the person who was writing those letters and had rare opportunity to see her face to face. And yet those letters were my opportunity to get to know her.
Not just the words, as important as they were, or the information that was contained in those letters.
But it was the person who wrote them.
That interested me in my heart.
And so I read them and so on.
I have in my hand a a letter if you will.
Written by somebody whose love for me exceeds my telling or my understanding.
And I want, and I want for you to have the same desire to pick up this letter and read it and re read it as often as possible.
Why that you and I might get to know better, more completely and fully the person?
Who has given it to us that our hearts might be so taken up with himself?
That as we are occupied. You know when I it wasn't the 1St letter.
But you can be sure that I recognized without any difficulty when the letter arrived one day, and in fact when I wrote a letter and I signed it in the end, I love you.
The first letter didn't say that.
But in the course of time my letters went out and that's what they said, and the letters that came back said the same.
And in fact, over a period of time, the expressions in the letters changed and you started to find my beloved or words like that that appeared.
David.
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In the Samuel.
Murray Reed had a.
Relationship with Jonathan.
And.
We know David's love exceeded Jonathan's love for him, but there was a law of relationship between the two of them.
And what does David say?
Thy love to me.
It's wonderful.
This afternoon, the emphasis that we're going to give in this little time together is his love and His desire toward us.
And when we read words like that, the Spirit of God wants us to apply them. The Lord Jesus wants us to apply them to ourselves, individually and personally.
That when David said to Jonathan, thy love to me is wonderful.
This afternoon the Lord Jesus by the Spirit would say to you, your love to me.
Is wonderful.
The Lord Jesus.
Is deeply, personally, individually.
Wanting you to know and me to know.
That his love or can I say any response in our heart.
To his love is wonderful to him.
He appreciates it. He seeks it.
He values it.
When you open the word of God, His letter to you, and there is that individual personal expressions from Himself to your heart, I love you. Yes, He says that, but He also wants you and I to recognize that He sees, He desires, He appreciates.
Your love, however feeble it may be, don't worry about it. Don't measure it, don't be even occupied with it, but appreciate.
That he values it.
That he wants it. He wants to see it.
We're not gonna study Psalm 23.
I just read it primarily for one purpose.
And it is a pattern that is found in different places in the Word of God, and it's seen here in David and his relationship with the Lord.
Then it's what I would desire for my soul and yours and our relationship with the Lord.
This song begins with David.
Speaking about his shepherd, the Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want, and so on. But there is a distinct and important change in the Psalm in the middle.
In verse.
For he says, yeah, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.
Or thou art with me.
He changes from speaking about the Lord.
To speaking to the Lord.
There are times when Paul is writing a letter to some brethren and he's speaking for the Lord to the brethren, but as he as he has the Lord before him and his occupation, we find him stopping to praise the Lord.
As the word has its proper effect on its own soul.
When Job is having to deal with the Lord in his life and the Lord has his hand on Job through Satan and through the circumstances of his life.
Job starts out and he's, I'm going to use the word arguing with his friends.
Back and forth, back and forth. But when it comes to Elihu and Elihu speaks.
For the Lord to job.
It's very interesting how the word is written. Allahu is speaking and then at some point the Lord is speaking with no transition. It's just a lie. Who's speaking and, and, and the next thing, if you will, you know the Lord is speaking to Joe.
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In almost every instance, when Job starts to answer his friends, he starts to answer his friends, but halfway through his answer, he stops talking to his friends and he starts talking to the Lord.
And why is the Lord doing this and that?
Oh to God that our lives were more like that.
That when we have the word of God or when we have someone else who may be speaking to us. Someone asked me, I forget just the words, but before this meeting was I going to be speaking? And I said, I hope that the Lord is going to be speaking through me.
We need a direct, individual communication between ourselves and the Lord.
In the circumstances of our life.
I have occasion to go each week with others in this room to a detention center and quite often I use this illustration when trying to encourage them to have an individual relationship.
And a consciousness of that relationship with the Lord and things that they're going to do or not do in their life. I say suppose.
I left this room this evening and as I leave and I go, I go down to the 711 with the intention of robbing it.
Am I going to ask the Lord Jesus to go with me?
We want to have that kind of relationship with the Lord Jesus that we enter consciously into with him into our thoughts.
And our actions.
With the real realization in our souls that He is with us.
Lo, I am with you, he says.
I will never leave thee or forsake thee.
He would desire that each one of us, as we go through this day and as we sit in these meetings and as we have our supper and whatever fellowship we have together, a sense in our souls and the enjoyment in our souls that the Lord Jesus.
Is with us.
And part of all that is taking place.
It's not that I desire that you learn anything this afternoon or anything specifically, but I'd like to turn for a little bit to some of the expressions in the Word that express His desire concerning us, if you will. It's not your side of it. It's not my side of it. Let's think this afternoon and enjoy in our hearts His.
Side of the relationship.
Turn with me to Luke's Gospel for an illustration of this in chapter 22.
Luke, chapter 22.
And verse 15.
He said unto them with desire.
I have desired.
To eat this Passover with you.
Before I suffer.
First Corinthians, chapter 15.
First Corinthians chapter 15, the middle of verse 23.
Well, the whole of verse 23 First Corinthians 1523 For I have desired of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you.
That the Lord Jesus, the same night in which he was betrayed, took bread, and when He had given thanks, he break it and said, take, eat. This is my body which is given for you. This do in remembrance of me. After the same manner also He took the cup when he had stopped saying this cup.
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Is the New Testament in my blood. This do ye as OFT as ye drink it in remembrance of me. There are many wonderful things connected with what we have just read, but I want to emphasize just one of them, particularly this afternoon.
His desire concerning you.
His desire, not yours, not mine, his.
The night before he is to die.
There was something he wanted to do.
And he didn't want to do it alone.
He was a man. He felt as a man.
And.
He said with desire I have desired.
To eat this Passover with you.
Before I suffer.
The emphasis in First Corinthians 11 and verse 23.
The Lord Jesus.
Personally communicated with Paul.
Something he wanted to pass on to us.
I have received of the Lord.
That which also I delivered unto you.
That the Lord Jesus the same night in which he was betrayed.
May we enter something into his feelings, his emotions.
At that moment in his life.
He was troubled that Judas would betray him.
He felt the rejection of man.
He felt it in his soul.
It was on the very night in which Judas goes out with the intent purpose of betraying him.
When the next day he is going to face the absolute and complete and full rejection of the world he had come to speak to?
And he says.
That's the time.
When he expresses the desire of his heart.
When he had given thanks.
Imagine.
We we've we're used to somebody standing up and giving thanks for loaf and cup on a large day morning.
But the way it's presented to us here is very much connected and individually with his own self and his own desire when he had given thanks.
How could he give thanks?
When it spoke of his own death.
When it represented as far as the world was concerned, is rejection.
That was the circumstances in which it was done. That is the the evening.
Was at a time when the soul would naturally give thanks.
Did.
It could.
But then having given thanks.
Try to picture it from his side.
Is it where he takes that, that loaf that and he, he says take he?
He personally himself is presented to us here as the one that says holds out his hands, holds out the loaf, and he says take, eat.
This is my body.
And then the cup.
This is my blood.
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May we?
Respond to his heart, his desire.
I thank God, at least by the work of his grace and my own soul, that.
Out of 168 hours of a week, there's one hour that's more important to me than any other.
What is it for you?
What's important?
What has precedence over other things?
Think of him.
And what it means to him.
And to his heart.
And how he appreciates it.
We don't have very much in the Word of God that specifically expresses the desire of the Lord Jesus.
Because he didn't come into this world to express his own desires.
He came here.
To live perfectly for somebody else.
The whole purpose and object of his life.
Was to do his father's will.
To present his father to us.
To give his Father's words, his God to us, and consequently for himself. He had no will of his own to express most of his life. So we can't look here, there and everywhere, for we see him as a perfect man and a perfect servant of God living.
Someone else?
But thankfully God has given to us the Lord Jesus as He was leaving the world. In His prayer in John 17 that I'd like to turn to, He does express.
Some of the desires of his own heart.
We aren't gonna try to go into detail, but like to notice a little bit of it.
As it relates to him.
In his thoughts and his feelings at this time.
Start in verse.
Verse eight I have given unto them.
The words which thou gavest me, and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed.
That thou did send me.
I pray for them.
I pray not for the world, but for them which thou hast given me.
For they are thine.
And all mine are thine and thine are mine, and I am glorified in them.
Stop there for a moment.
He's going to pray here, and he does.
Particularly in these verses for the disciples.
Or before his soul.
And he had.
To bring the Father to them.
The Father's words to make God known to them.
What a wonderful, blessed thing that God wants me to know him.
And he has sent his son so that I might know him.
That I might know his heart I might know is if I can use the expression, his character, who he is and all that he is.
And what his thoughts are. And so here he says, I have given unto them thy words which thou gavest me. And there's a joy for him. He says they received them.
We trust by God's grace that this afternoon you sit in your seat as one that that the Father's words have come to you and it can be said you have received them.
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That you recognize the source of those words, not an opinion of men, but the words that have come to you from God himself.
Now.
It's wonderful. Don't really want to enter in, particularly to the the side of getting off the focus of the Lord's desire, but just as a side point perhaps.
It's wonderful that the basis on which he makes his request.
Is the father.
Father's.
Interest in them for whom he prays.
And the Father's desire.
Toward the sun.
Are you going to pray for somebody? You can't have two better reasons to present to God in the request that you make than those.
Father.
You love.
It's not father I love.
But you lost.
Are you going to pray for a child or a mother? A father? A friend?
Is your basis of asking something of God going to be your love, your desire?
Or do you have a better reason?
You bring them before one who loves them infinitely more than you can and cares for them.
The Lord Jesus said also I am glorified in them.
That is that which you do. They are connected with me and.
When you respond to this, you're going to be doing something concerning me.
So we can come and make requests knowing those things that the Lord Jesus would be honored in them.
For His glory.
Martha had a little sense of it. Mary, Lord, he whom thou lovest.
Sick. They didn't understand that God was going to glorify Him.
Through allowing Lazarus to die.
But God had a better purpose because not only was there bringing before him one that that He loved, but God also acts for his own glory and what He does. And so there was the added reason that the Lord Jesus had to wait so that the second purpose could be realized in the resurrection of Lazarus.
Verse 11 And now I am no more in the world, but these are in the world. And I come to the Holy Father, Keep through thine own name those whom thou hast given me, that they may be one as we are. While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name. Those thou gave us me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the Son of Perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.
He had come to bring them, the disciples, into the same relationship with the Father that was His.
And they had done so.
They were to be the sons of God. They were to be the objects of the Father's love.
They were to be brought into a commonness with the Father and the Son of their thoughts, their heart, their object, their purpose in all things.
It's a pretty big desire of God and the Lord Jesus that is being realized in you.
God's purpose.
Is that you might, with the Sun and with himself, have perfectly common interests, object, desire.
You're a creature, what more could you want?
Than to be brought into such a relationship.
That you and I.
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Could this afternoon address the God of the universe and say Father?
Father.
Not a a God. That's a way out there somewhere.
Father.
And that your father and his son.
Would by the power of the Spirit of God.
And this is the Lord's desire. It isn't bringing in our responsibility that comes in its place or our power or exhortations to us this afternoon. My heart is concerning his desire for you and what he has expressed. And can I say, you know, I've had a lot of prayers in my life and they probably and not probably.
They were not at all in keeping with the oneness of the purposes and counsels of God. But this one I absolutely can say, and you can too. And no, this prayer is perfectly answered yes, in every detail. There is no maybe or no or I'll have to teach you better. But I have a relationship and you do too, with someone who is said.
On our behalf or for himself really, this is what I desire. That they might be in the same relationship, one with us. That we might be one.
Verse 13 Now I come to thee, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy.
Fulfilled in themselves. What a desire.
He wants your joy. I'm sorry. He wants his joy.
Fulfilled in you.
He wants you to experience.
His joy.
He lived on this earth, he said. My delight is to do thy will, Oh my God.
And he found perfect pleasure in it.
He has imparted to you. God is imparted to you by the power of the Spirit of God, a life.
A life which says thy delight.
Is my delight is to do thy will.
That's what the new life is.
And in the measure, practically in which you live that life, you experience a joy that can't be known any other way.
And in the reality of heaven.
Your joy will be perfect.
But he wants you to experience it each day.
To go through that day with his joy.
In the end of John's gospel, when he was about ready to leave the world, he said, My peace I give with you, I leave with you.
His desire is that you experience in your daily life the same piece that he experienced in his life.
He didn't say keep from sorrow, keep from trouble, keep from anxiety or the things that come upon us in the circumstances of life. No, I didn't say that He didn't ask for that.
But he said to the disciples, My peace I give unto you, May you go forward.
It's been pointed out that.
The disciples, Peter, but they also said the rest said it. Lord, we'll go with you to death.
They didn't have the capacity to do that.
For more than one reason.
For one reason, the Lord Jesus at that point was going into death to stand before God about the matter of sin.
He was going to give himself an offering to God.
To be the sin bearer, could they go with him into that death?
No, they couldn't follow him, but once he had accomplished that, then they could pass through death.
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In fellowship with his interests.
As belonging to him.
But here he says.
Verse 14. I have given them Thy word, and the world hath hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. I pray not that Thou should just take them out of the world, but that Thou should just keep them from the evil. They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. Sanctify them through Thy truth. Thy word is truth. As Thou hast sent me into the world, Even so I also send them into the world, and for their sakes I thank to My sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth.
He's not gonna be with him.
When he prays this prayer because he's going to leave them and go back to the Father, and he's here entrusting them to the Father's care in his absence among them. And as such, he says, I, I don't ask that you take them out of the world, but Father, they're not of the world.
They have been taken out of the world and brought into relationship with us so that their relationship with respect to the world is the same as ours.
They're not worldlings anymore.
Their hopes, their objects, their purpose has no longer anything to say to this. What what they the world they once were in, they're in it. But in motive and purpose and character, they're not of it. They're no longer part of the darkness. They're part of the light. And he says, keep them, keep them from that evil that whatever work to draw them back into.
The ways and will and thoughts of the world.
Sanctify them through Thy truth. Set them apart by the words that I have given to them from yourself.
And more than that, the Lord Jesus said I'm I'm going up into the glory, as you know now I'm going to be separated up there and they're going to be able to see my place.
Of honor and glory and acceptance.
And there I have sanctified myself for their sake, so that as they go through the world, they can view me, they can see me, and they can have their hearts attached to me.
And I'm doing it for them. It's his desire for us. He says I have set and that's his present today place for us. He said I set myself apart here. And you can see I yes, I know in the world I was rejected and so are you. And you're passing through that rejection. But here you are with myself. See, this is the end of the road. Keep your eye on me. Keep your eye on me and don't be drawn into the the mud.
Of the world.
Verse 20 I neither pray aye for these alone, but for them also, which shall believe on me through their word, that they may be one, as thou Father art in me, and I in them, that they also may be one in us, that the world may believe that thou hast sent me.
The first versus verse 11, the what he was praying was particularly for the disciples, but here he says now I pray not just for them but also for those.
Who shall believe? And you have the fulfillment of this in in picture form in John's epistle, when John goes out as one of these witnesses for the Lord that he had sent into the world, and he he says to those about him.
Here, this is the one that we have seen and handled and seen, and we declare him unto you, that your fellowship may be with us.
With himself.
Oh, he said. I we want you to be brought into the same oneness with us, and that's our place.
We have too heard that word from John.
Through or another servant of the Lord, and been brought into that same place in fellowship with them, that we may say, we have fellowship with the Father and with the Son.
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And the Lord Jesus, he wants us to have it.
With himself every day.
And in every circumstance of every day, it's his desire. It's his prayer.
For you personally and for me.
Verse 23 I and them, thou and me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know that thou was sent me, and hast loved them as thou hast loved me. I believe this part of his prayer is still future and it's fulfillment. In the previous verse he said that the world may know.
But here or the world may believe. I'm sorry, he said. That the world may believe. But here he says that the world may know, and the world is going to know.
In the millennial glory, when the whole earth shall see our relationship with Him and his place, and our place with Him, and they'll know.
Everyone will see.
That what?
That the Father has loved us as he has loved the Son.
The Father loves the Son and for many reasons He has a right and a place in the glory that exceeds ours. But here in the prayer of the Lord Jesus, he said, Father, I want the world to know.
That you love them.
As you loved me.
Isn't that wonderful, that the expressions of the heart of the Lord Jesus?
He said. I want him to be with me, Father. I want them to. I want the whole world to know.
That you love them just like you love me.
Verse 24 Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given may be with me where I am, that they may behold my glory which thou has given me, for thou lovest may before the foundation of the world.
My heart's.
Touched by this verse.
There's a portion for us that the world will never see.
The glory of our place, the glory of the Lord in His place and our place with Him. There's that aspect of it which the world will see and it will show that we've been loved. But I believe what we have in this verse is is just for us.
And it's based on his.
Soul Sense.
That we love him and we want to see that glory.
He's saying, as it were, Lord, Father, not Lord, but Father they, they saw my rejection.
They saw what I went through in this world.
And he said, I want him to be now with me where I am, that they may behold my glory here.
That they may see the place that you have given me, and that belongs to me.
And you might say he just assumes your affection.
That you would desire that. That you would want that.
Since you, as it were, in a sense of seeing his rejection in the world, that you might be there and see him in his glory.
Time is almost up. I want to turn to one more place, the end of the Word of God, Revelation chapter 22.
Revelation chapter 22 we had this morning and the reading The Lord's coming.
Uh, the rapture side of it. That is the the Lord Himself.
Coming, the Father says, as it were, Son, the time has come and I can just in my heart see the Lord Jesus rise up from that seat.
And say wonderful, I'm not going to send an Angel, I'm going myself. I love him too much and I want to see him too much face to face. And he he comes and he gives the shout and he calls us up to himself and he personally escorts his home.
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To the Father's house.
Umm, that's what I hope.
That's what we hope for this afternoon.
But whenever it's an assurance for us. And now the word that you might say the love letter is coming to its very end. And he in this 20th verse, he says he that testify at these things sayeth surely I come quickly. Amen.
His last words.
And all that he has to say to us in this love letter, his last his, his very last words are Shirley. I come quickly.
But isn't it something to think, as it were? He doesn't say. I'll have to have the last word.
He values, he appreciates, he cares. What kind of response does that produce in you?
When he says to you, surely I come quickly.
What does the affection of your heart, What does the appreciation of your soul respond?
He gives you the last word.
The Spirit of God in you, with you. How do you respond?
Even so, come Lord Jesus, what grace, what love.
What confidence?
In him concerning you and me.
That he would put this before us as his last little personal message to us. Surely I come quickly.
He stops.
And then he lets you and I we're have the last word. Even so calm.
Oh Jesus, let's pray.
Our God and Father, we do pray.
For the sake of ISON.
That the desires of his heart might be practically realized.
In each of our daily lives.
That there might be our God by the workings of thy grace.
A daily increased appreciation of himself as we view him.
As we occupy with him.
And our Father, we count upon thee to produce a result in US.
Which would satisfy.
His soul.
We're thankful, Lord Jesus, that in the end result of it all, that when we're all around thyself, I was already told us that thou shalt see.
As thou just looked upon us the fruit of the travail of thy soul.
And shall be satisfied.
We're thankful, Lord Jesus, that it is so.
And we give thanks, our God, for sharing.
Thy son with us.
Now in For eternity.
And would desire that as thou would glorify thy Son, so to our lives would be to His glory.
We ask this our God in his name, the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen.