Address—Don Rule
DISCLAIMER: The following has been auto-transcribed. We hope it will help you to find the section of this audio file you are looking for.
We'll begin by singing together #152 The 1St 2 verses, 1St 2 verses of 152 Thy name.
We love Lord Jesus will need a starter.
Let's turn miss me for just one verse in Philippians chapter 3.
Philippians chapter 3 and just the first part of verse 10.
That I might or may know him.
And the power of his resurrection.
My responsibility.
This afternoon.
Is to address you.
On the behalf.
Of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And on the behalf of the Lord Jesus Christ, I want to say welcome.
Thank you.
For coming here this weekend.
To be with me, the Lord Jesus.
It's important.
You know, we all came.
Perhaps with different reasons before us as to why we're here that day, why we're here this weekend.
If we're young, maybe it's for fun or because we don't have a choice because mom and Dad brought us.
If we're a little older, we might have more mature reasons.
For coming here and spending this weekend.
But also, and most important, the Lord Jesus.
Has his reasons.
And.
One of them is that he values appreciates.
Once companionship.
And he is owned to be with himself. Father, I will that those whom thou hast given me be with me.
00:05:08
And that looks on where I am, as he now is in the glory.
But in another way, we have the wonderful privilege of spending this weekend with the Lord Jesus.
And as such, it is well for us that He have His place with us, not only when something is going on in this room.
But also in the hallway.
That he be part of our conversation.
And our activities, even at the dinner table, that the Lord Jesus, as it were in spirit have His place and His privilege of having us here with Himself.
All of us, at least that song it in truth said, sang thy name, we love Lord Jesus, there is put it by God in the heart of each one of us, a love for Him.
It might be so feeble that in comparison to his love for us.
We don't choose much to speak about it, but nonetheless given of God.
There is a.
Fact that we do love the Lord Jesus and everyone of us in this room that loves the Lord Jesus has within us the desire.
To know him better.
To know him better.
And as such.
It's the desire before my soul in this next little while that we look at a few things that are going to help us or hinder us to knowing better.
And to know him better.
Is certainly a worthwhile reason. In other words, when Monday or whenever for you comes and you leave.
He will appreciate and so will you if you leave this weekend and you know him better.
Then you knew him when you came.
With that as an introduction, turn with me to John chapter 15.
Very well known passage, but we're going to look at it with emphasis on things that are found here that will help us to know our Lord Jesus better.
As the Apostle Paul said that I might know him.
I meant everything to him and his life.
Every other thing in the life of the Apostle Paul was so secondary as to hardly count in comparison with his desire to have the Lord Jesus.
May we be more like him.
So here in John 15 and verse one, I am the true Vine. My father is the husbandman.
Here he speaks of my father. I think there are at least seven things in this chapter where he refers in that way as my something that he calls my.
And we'll look at some of them if I don't know if there's time to look at all of them, but we'll look at some of them. And as we look at them, we'll see in them that which will help us to know him better, or if we fail and to do it, that which will hinder us from knowing him.
My father.
If you want to know somebody, you're interested in that which is of interest to them.
When you meet someone and you talk to them for the first time, very often the exchange of conversation beyond the weather and where do you live and such things is to find out.
What's of interest to that person? What subject or what things they are interested in?
My father.
My father.
00:10:00
Here's a man.
If you want to be interested, if you want to know him.
You need to know, I need to know how important his father is to him.
Sometimes when you meet somebody, you feel like maybe you know them a little bit to start with because you know somebody else in their family.
And by that family relationship, it gives you at least a start in learning to know someone if you're interested.
Here our Lord Jesus says my Father.
It's not something we don't know.
But to make it beneficial to us this afternoon, let's make sure that we keep the mind in our thoughts.
Yes, there's a place for saying the father.
There's a place for saying the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.
But if we are going to know him better, we want to keep in our souls.
That very personal word, my father.
The Lord Jesus speaks with reverence, with dignity.
With honor, with delight.
On the subject so dear to his heart, my father.
If you want to know him better.
Be interested.
In what he feels, what he thinks, what he cares about his father.
Let it be something important to learn more about if you don't. We all, none of us know all that we would want to know, but we need to.
Want to know? And he tells us not just in this chapter, but as we go through His word, we get to see His interaction with his father.
And how he feels and acts in his life for his father.
He says I'm the true vine.
I'm the true Vine.
My father's the husbandman.
And then in verse two he talks about fruit.
His father, long before this, planted a vineyard in the earth.
His father is a husbandman.
And he took this earth, and he planted a vineyard in it.
To produce fruit. That's why your husbandman do you want fruit. And so his father planted a vineyard to have fruit.
He worked hard at it.
He eventually says what more could I have done in my vineyard that it had fruit?
That that vineyard, that vine was Israel.
And he had to eventually say no fruit.
No fruit.
The Lord Jesus came into the earth.
To live here as a tender plant, as a root out of dry ground.
That his father.
Might have a fruitful.
Result.
MMM, I'm the true Vine.
And you?
Are the branches.
You're the ranchers, I'm the vine, but you're the branches in my father's vineyard, and my father wants to produce fruit.
Do we know him?
That is the Lord Jesus the Vine.
Are we a branch that is going to be fruitful for him?
So he goes on the verses that follow, he says.
00:15:01
He purchased the branches.
We call it sometimes discipline in our lives.
Do we want to say to the Lord, Lord, it's OK?
I know that you want.
Your father to have fruit and so when it's necessary, pruning.
You'll know him better.
If you embrace it.
And if you fight it?
So he says.
As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except ye abide in the vine, no more can ye.
There will be no fruit in your life.
There'll be no satisfying the purpose and desire of God in your life or my life.
Without.
Our relationship with the Lord Jesus and abiding in him and He abiding in US. And so it's good for us if we want to know Him, to recognize that which he explains.
That enables Him to abide in US and for us to abide in Him.
Because, as it says in verse five, He abides in me bears fruit.
But without me you can do nothing.
We talk about common interests, and so here we if we're going to know the Lord Jesus better as we want to know him.
It's important for us to know that he is.
Very interested, he works very hard.
His father works very hard.
To produce fruit.
And your part and I'm part of that work.
Verse 7.
If you abide in me and my words abide in you.
Ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.
He said he wants to abide in.
And we in him in order that there might be fruit for his father.
And so the second of the seven, and I don't know that we'll look at all of them, but he says my words, my words.
If you leave this weekend with his words, more of his words.
Not just in your head or my head, but abiding in.
We'll know him better.
We'll know him better. We'll go home and say I know my Lord.
Better.
My words abide in you.
It isn't an intellectual thing that's being talked about here, but it's that his, what he says, what his thoughts are, have a place in my heart and your heart and in my conscience and in your conscience.
Do I value what he wants to say to me this weekend?
Do I let it sink in?
You shall ask what she will.
And it shall be done. We like those words, but what do they mean here?
If his words abide in US.
They form the desires of our hearts.
And God will grant that.
If you ask God for something that is not for your good.
There's no real promise of scripture. You're going to get it.
If God is simply pardon the use of it, there's a tract outside called God is Not a Vending Machine.
00:20:04
God is not somebody we go to and put a quarter prayer in.
And expect him to do something for us. That's not God, that's not the Father.
But if my words, the Lord Jesus says to us, if my words, brethren, abide in you, you ask what you will, and it will be done, because you will ask based on what those words are in you, and I'll be delighted.
To see my father do them.
And what comes from it? We said the Father wants fruit. Verse 8 Herein is my father glorified, that she bear much fruit.
When his words abide in US, the result will be fruit.
The result will be fruit.
Will the Lord Jesus be placed? He sure will, because He wants the Father glorified. He wants His Father honored. And if there's fruit from our lives, His Father receives honor and glory from it.
What hinders me from knowing him the other side?
I'm not real interested in his words.
They don't have a particular value. I came for fun. I came for social fellowship.
I came to meet my friends. We have other things to talk about. We don't get to see each other very often.
He wants us to see each other, He wants us to have good fellowship, but he wants to be part of it.
He wants to share in it.
He doesn't want us to sit in a formal sense like we are at the moment, and then have our own time and then we come back and we decide if we hear something that's gonna be of interest to our lives in some way. No, that's not my father, my words.
And so he says, my Father will be glorified, and they'll be much fruit if my words abide in you.
And then he says. And then this way you'll be another my my disciples, my followers.
Do you wanna know the Lord Jesus better?
Get up every morning and with a sense Lord, I'm your follower.
I'm your disciple.
Wherever you go, Lord.
That's where I want to be today.
When the Lord Jesus called this particular ones that he was addressing here in Mark's gospel, I think it is, He says to them that they might be with him and that he might send them forth.
They might be with him. They might be followers of him.
He said to Peter and John and so on, who were fishermen, Follow me, leave the Nets there and follow me. And they did.
And they had very fruitful lives too. And so one of the ways in which we.
Know him better.
Is worth for with him.
And we are habitually, or should be habitually with him as a a disciple.
The disciple was in the presence of the one he followed, and he observed what he did. In fact, he learned at times to do it for him, to go into the next village and speak on his behalf, and so on. But.
He was in his presence.
Verse 9 As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you. Continue, ye and my love.
I want to know him better.
I want to continue.
In his love.
00:25:03
Tremendous love, isn't it?
He tells us the kind of love he has for us. He says, as My father hath loved me, if you don't have interest in the father, you probably don't have interest in the love between the father and the son. But he started with that, my father, and now he's talking about my love. But my love is enjoyed.
Between myself and my father.
And I want you and I to have that same relationship.
You know how my father loves me, and I love my father.
I love you that way and I want you to love me that way.
Is that a good way to know somebody and love them, that I might know him?
Again, I'm just giving emphasis a lot on the word my.
My love for you.
Some things are better felt than said. I don't know how to express.
To express the importance of something that to me, each one of us individually has to embrace.
And say I want to continue.
In the love.
That he has for me.
It's personal to him. Does he feel it? Sure he does. You ever love somebody and not felt loved the way you wanted in return? Do you feel it? Does it matter? Sure it does.
Lord Jesus says as my Father loved me and you have some sense of what that is, he says I love you.
Can we have a relationship that's the same and similar?
That he doesn't say love me more than you do. He says continue in my love. If you rejoice, if you value his love to you, there will be a proper response in you. So it isn't to focus on trying to love him more, no, but it's to continue in his love. It's to continue in the enjoyment of that love. And may I say on the other side.
Let us not.
Do anything that would hinder.
The enjoyment of it.
Can you continue in it with certain activities of life that you can think of and I can think of no.
There is an awful lot of ways to spend time every day that hinders us from knowing him better.
They're wasted many times. They don't contribute anything.
To the continuing in his love.
And there are many ways that we can spend that do enable us to knowing better.
If you don't know somebody's heart, you don't know them.
You don't know.
I don't know anything about the heart of the person that made this lectern. I couldn't make a lectern like this, wouldn't come out this way with the scrolling work and so on. But it doesn't tell me anything about the person's heart, tells me about their skill, their power in that sense. But Lord Jesus, to know him, to know the Father is to know his heart.
And there that which helps us to know His heart better. And there are those things that hinder us from knowing His heart.
Verse 10.
One more my here if ye keep my commandments.
Ye shall abide in my love.
He said in the very beginning, abide in my love, and my love abide in you.
Now he's giving us some very practical, explicit instruction as to how to abide in his love, to how to continue in his love, and consequently how to know him better.
00:30:03
Keep my commandments.
You can't know the Lord Jesus, You can't know the Father, You can't know God the Father.
Unless you know their heart.
But you can't know their heart.
In the way they want you to unless you're in obedient.
Unless you keep His commandments, you can't grow the knowledge of God or the Lord Jesus without obedience.
It's essential to growth.
You can't abide in him.
Without obedience, keep my commandments.
He says elsewhere. My commandments aren't grievous. They're not hard. They're not difficult if you love me.
He kept his Father's commandments to the Lord Jesus find it difficult.
I delight to do my Father's will. I find my joy, my pleasure in doing my Father's will. I want you to know me by having the same attitude and spirit we share together. You share with me in that same way of thinking and that same heart, so that when you say.
I delight to do your will, Lord.
You shared something.
You know, you know people by shared experience very often, and so when you delight to do His will, you enter into what His heart delights in, and you know Him in that way.
But if you say no, I got my own ways, then you can't know him, you can't grow. You're hindered by not wanting enough to make action.
Of obedience.
Verse 11 we get another one. My joy.
My joy.
Did he have a choice?
Yes, he did.
Spoke about it a little bit. I delight to do thy will. O my God. Was a supreme joy of his life.
Do you know what? I want to know how he feels?
Do you wanna know him in that way? Find your joy in the same thing.
He says that's my joy.
I want your joy to be full, but how can my joy be full?
How can I have a full, happy, joyful life?
By having his joy and no other way.
There is absolutely no other way to have a happy, truly happy life the way he wants us to have it except the way he had a happy life.
Otherwise.
This world is full of lost people that spend a whole lifetime and never ever come to a fullness of joy. Pleasure, yes. Temporary, yes. Need more of it every month, every year to get the same level of satisfaction, yes.
But fullness of joy? No. No.
There's only one way.
And the Lord Jesus wants you, He loves you. He wants you to have a life that can be characterized as fullness of joy. And if you have it, you know him in it. You know him in it, you know him better because you're sharing in the same experience that enables you to know.
The apostle Paul in Philippians 3. When he wanted to know the Lord better, he went so far as to say.
If dying.
Enables me to go through the power of resurrection that he went through. If that means I get to know him better, it's OK. I don't mind dying.
00:35:00
Because the result of dying will be that I will be go through the same experience of resurrection that he went through, and the end result is all knowing better because of that shared experience. If that's what it takes for me to know him.
He was, he looked, he was happy. It was actually a wish if it would produce that result in his life.
Verse 12 This is my commandment, that she loved one another as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, than a man lay down his life for his friends.
You're my friends if you do whatever I command you.
Do you wanna know him better?
I need to and I need just as much as you.
To love as he loves.
I need the law of as he loves.
Is that easy?
I tend to think in a practical sense that's one of the most difficult.
Exhortations in the whole of the New Testament.
But it's the way to know him better.
Let's put it in practical terms.
If I can speak for the Lord Jesus.
If you want to love and know me in that way as I love others.
Then I want you to love the brother or sister in the assembly where you are as I love them.
You take the most difficult situation in your life in terms of feeling love towards some other person, and you say you have an opportunity to know the Lord better. You learn to love that person as Jesus loves you.
Is that hard? I think that's a heavy expectation to put in true practice.
Some are easy to love by natural characteristics, some are hard.
But the Lord Jesus loves everyone of us equally and perfectly, and he says to us.
I have one commandment for you.
Talked about keeping his commandments, being obedient to him and he names one commandment.
I want you to love your brother as I love you.
If that commandment was truly carried out throughout the history of the church, I suspect there would be maybe no division in it today.
Sadly, it's not the case.
So he says.
You're my friends.
A friend is somebody who shares what's on their heart with somebody else.
Lord Jesus calls you friend because He wants to share with you His thoughts and His heart. He wants to spend time with you this weekend and share with you.
But you can hinder it.
You can hinder it. I'm busy, I have some things to take care of. I have some people to talk to and we have some things we have to say that sorry Lord, but it's not perhaps of interest to you. And uh, so we can hinder the Lord.
In communication of his as a friend.
Let's not. Mm-hmm.
Verse 16.
The end of the verse. Our times getting along, it says.
Whatever whatsoever you ask the Father in my name, he will give it you. We're going to connect that.
If I can find the verse I want.
Verse 21 For all these things will they do unto you, for my name's sake.
Because they know not him that sent me.
Briefly.
Talks about hatred In the prayer meeting this morning we talked about some of our brethren her persecuted.
00:40:05
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Outwardly and very seriously, even to death. Why?
They're identified with his name.
It's his name.
And it's their identification with his name.
You live in a country, and I live in a country where it's generally not too difficult.
Dare I say it to deny his name?
By simply not standing for it.
At work.
In conversation.
But notice the two toys the name is used.
Ask the Father in my name.
We like that side of the name, don't we? We all, I hope, talk to the Father, at least today, more than once or so in His name.
In the end of our prayer, I hope it's not just words we say in the name of the Lord Jesus or something like that. Very most prayers.
And so we ask in his name.
He turns it around here too when it comes to hatred, and he is being hatred because of his name and because he was faithful to the Father.
And presenting the Father to the world.
Do you wanna know him?
In that way as well.
You know what it means to be identified with the persecution. They hated me without a 'cause, he said. Do I want to know? Do I truly want to know that side of him?
I can, I can, but I'll have to bear his name, to learn him in that way, to know him better.
I'll have to say, Lord help me.
To do all things in your name.
At school, at work, the grocery store.
In the assembly wherever, Lord help me to bear your name.
And if it brings some kind of reproach or rejection.
You'll know better what he felt when he said.
Reproach had broken my heart. You'll know his heart in a better way. It's worth it. We shy from it, many of us. But if we do it, we'll know him better. And we'll be forever grateful to God to encourage us to be that way.