This hour will be in the book
of Hebrews, if you would like to turn there. Hebrews chapter
11. Nothing, Hebrews chapter 11. And we're gonna be looking at
eight through 10. But first I wanna tell us nothing
about our God ever changes, ever. He's the same yesterday, He's
the same today, and He's forever the same. Therefore his word
remains constant. His covenant is everlasting. It never had a beginning. It
never has an end. Every attribute, every characteristic, every quality
of his is everlasting. Can't change. It cannot change. His promises therefore are sure
and steadfast. His promises never change. Aren't
you glad for that? There's been times in my life
when I've I promised something to my children and didn't exactly
get around to doing it. Maybe I broke a promise or two
here along the way. I don't know. Not intentional,
I hope. He cannot break his promise. He cannot lie. He cannot break
his word. His promises are sure and steadfast. And this morning, I hope to look
at what promise he's given to all God's people. I've titled
this message, the same promise, the same promise. Let's read
Hebrews chapter 11, verse eight through 10. By faith, Abraham,
when he was called to go out into a place which he should
after receive for an inheritance, obeyed. He went out not knowing
whether he went. By faith, he sojourned in the
land of promise and in a strange country, dwelling in a tabernacle. with Isaac and Jacob. The heirs
with him of the same promise. For he looked for a city which
hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God. Although God
deals with his people through different means, different walks
of life, different times, whether they're rich Whether they're
poor, whether you're young, whether they're old, whether they're
attractive, whether they're not so attractive, doesn't matter. He deals with his people his
way. He still deals with them the
same way. Each of them receive the same
promise in the end. His people receive the same promise.
Well, what is that promise? I will save you and you will
be saved. I will redeem you and you will
be redeemed. I have loved you with an everlasting
love. I am the Lord, I change not. Therefore, you sons of Jacob,
you're not consumed. I am God, and besides me, there
is none other. These are the promises that the
Lord's people received. He still, regardless of how,
by what means, he chooses To bring us to the knowledge of
the truth, whether rich or poor, young or old, he still delivers
the same promise that he delivered all the way back in the garden
to Adam, all the way to Abel, all the way to Enoch, all the
way to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, all of them, all the way to us. It's the same promise. Christ
is all in salvation. Christ is all in salvation. The
promise is this, you have sinned and you are going to die. And
you say, I have sinned and I am going to die. And the promise
is this, fear not. The Lord hath put away your sin.
You shall not die. You shall not die. Promise is I will make a covenant
with you. Back in Genesis chapter six,
we looked at the first hour, we see that Noah found grace
in the eyes of the Lord. I didn't read this part before,
but he goes on, the Lord said to him, I will make a covenant
with you, Noah. And what was that covenant? It's
a covenant of grace. It's a covenant of grace. It's a promise that
God does everything in salvation, that God saved his people from
their sins, that the work is finished. Christ accomplished
salvation for his people. That's the promise. That's the
promise received. We're all kept by the power of
God. The promise is the same today
as it always has been. It's not the promise if you will,
then I will. It's not the promises if you'll
do your best, I'll do the rest. It's not the promise if you'll
take the first step, I'll take the rest of the steps. The promise
is I will save you 100%. and you'll be saved, all by my
grace, all by my power, all by my purpose, all by my might.
That's what the Lord says. By grace are you saved through
faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of
works, lest any man should boast. Did you know if it was of works,
we would boast about it, wouldn't we? We would brag on ourself. Yeah, I know you did that work,
but I did this work. And that's what men do today,
isn't it, different churches? Different religions, they're
working, they're bragging upon what they're doing. Not the Lord's
people, we have one to brag on, that's it. The Lord Jesus Christ,
he's the only one we have any interest in bragging on. He's
the only one worthy to be bragged on, only one that deserves to
be bragged on, isn't that true? The promise is the same, I will
and you shall. The promise is not if you let
me, I'll do something. No, that's not a promise. That's
contingent upon you and I. If you let me, I'll do this,
no? We can say that to the Lord, but he certainly is not gonna
say that to us. He's God, he's sovereign, he's all powerful. We have no power, he's all holy.
He's truth and justice. He said, I will, not if you will. And he said, I'm going to. He
didn't say if you let me. He didn't say, I would like to
become Lord of your life if you would let me. He said, I am the
Lord, I change not. Therefore, you sons of Jacob
are not consumed. The promise is God saying, I
am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the
last, the one who completed salvation, the one who accomplished salvation
and successfully redeemed my people. I have done that, that's
a promise. That's the promise received. I am the one that completed
the work. I am the successful redeemer.
I'm the omega, that means I'm the end of it. And I'm everything
in between it. Everything in between, that's
who he is. This is the promise of the Lord. One of the greatest
promises of our Lord is the good news, it is finished. That's
a promise from the cross. That wasn't just a declaration,
that's a promise. It is finished. That's a promise. It's the same
promise given to all God's people and it never changes. Now, when
I say all God's people, understand God only reveals this promise
to his people. Now, somebody that doesn't know
who the Lord is may hear this promise that God is all in salvation,
but they can't believe it unless the Lord enables them to believe
it. Therefore, they haven't received it. God only reveals Christ is
all in all to his people. Well, notice how the promise
is received in verse eight. How is it received? By faith. By faith, that's how it's received.
Well, whose faith is it? Well, it's the Lord's faith.
Where does it come from? It comes from him alone. Who
gets all the glory for it? He does. He gets all the glory
for it, it's his faith. And the promise is, I'm going
to give you faith and you're going to believe. That gives
me hope. I'm going to give you, not that
if you exercise your faith, then maybe you can come to an understanding
and belief, but I'm going to give you the faith to believe
and you're going to believe. You know why? Because the faith that
I'm going to give you, the faith that I'm going to give you, believes
God. Believes God. In other places it says, Abraham
believed God and it was accounted unto him for righteousness. And
you know what that word accounted means? I've said this before.
It means reckoned. Reckoned. And the word reckoned means established
by accounting or calculation. To calculate. Understand what
he's saying here. Abraham believed God because God looked on Christ
and reckoned faith to him because of righteousness. Now he didn't
give Abraham faith in order for Abraham to become righteous.
He gave Abraham faith because the righteous one bore Abraham's
sin on the cross of Calvary. Evidence of that is Abraham was
given faith. That's how that works. That's
how that works. Abraham believed God because
God looked on Christ and he reckoned faith to him because of Christ's
righteousness. This is how the promise is received
by faith and without faith it is impossible to please God.
Without the Lord's faith, it's impossible to please Him. Therefore,
we have good news. This promise, and every bit of
it, is not dependent upon us in any way. Because if it's impossible
to please God without faith and I can't produce it, it's got
to come from Him. It's got to come from Him. And every one
of these men and these women, these patriarchs or matriarchs,
if you will, they call them the elders. In the second verse,
they obtained this good report that God was pleased with them
for one reason. God said, live and gave them faith to believe.
And that's exactly what he does to all of his people, even now,
even now. The promise remains. I will save you and give you
faith to believe. And you will know that I am God.
You will know that I am. Moses said, what's your name?
Whenever the children of Israel asked me who sent you, they ain't
gonna believe that God sent me. What is your name? He said, I
am that I am. You tell them that. And do you
know every single person that heard that, that was given faith
to believe, they knew exactly what that meant. And we don't,
how do you even express what that means? Well, we could say,
I am the bread of life. I am the fountain of living water.
I am the door to the sheep. He is all, that's the point is
that I am, I have all, I am that I am. That's what he was saying.
That's what he was saying. You'll know that I'm God when
you have this faith. That's the promise. The one who
has done all the electing in salvation. I chose to save you. Jacob, you worm. You worm, I
chose to save you. I chose to become the worm you
are in order to redeem you. And then after I did that, after
I saved you from your sins and you were finally born in time,
I'm gonna tell you what I did. I'm gonna call you. And when
I call you, it's also gonna come with a promise. I'm gonna keep
you. I'm not gonna leave you to yourself so that when you
pass through the fire, you're not gonna get burned. You won't even have
the smell of smoke on you. When you pass through the waters,
they won't overtake you. You can't drown because I'm with you. I
will never leave you. I will never forsake you. You'll
never see death because I suffered your death on the cross. That's
the promise. The same promise that was given to Abraham, that's
what's given to the Lord's people now. Oh, the promise is I have
loved you with an everlasting love and you're gonna love me
because I have first loved you. You're going to love me because
I first loved you. And is it not true of the Lord's people? We
love him because he loves us. Scripture says you have he quickened
who were dead and trespasses and sins. He hath made us accepted
in the below. That's a promise. That's a promise. I've made you alive. I'm going
to come to where you are. Abraham, you've got to understand
who Abraham was. He wasn't some great guy. He
was an idolater. He didn't have a clue who God
was. He was just happy and content living life. And all of a sudden,
God appears unto him. And he says, get thee up out
of this country. I'm going to send you to another place. And
what would your response be to that? Same thing with Noah. Noah,
go build an ark. It's going to rain. It's going
to do what? It's going to rain. It's never rained before. Abraham,
I'm going to send you to another country, a place that you know
not, and I'm going to make a great nation out of you of the stars
of the heavens and the sands of the sea." Abraham said, okay,
let's pack it up, let's go. Noah said, where's my hammer?
Isn't that how it went? What would possess a man to do
that? Faith. Faith, if faith possesses you and I, if the Lord
gives us faith and it grabs hold of us We have a new man on the
inside that just believes God. Believes God over what we see.
Believes God over what we smell. Believes God over what we touch
and hear and taste. No, my senses are doing me no
good in the realm of spiritual things. Doesn't matter whether
I believe it here. Has the Lord made it real? Has
he given me a new heart of faith to believe it? Because if he
hasn't done that, I don't believe, Lord. So we say with the man,
Lord, I believe. Help thou mine unbelief. Help
thou mine unbelief. Abraham journeyed to a place
that he knew not. Journeyed to a place that he
knew not. How, how is it that this promise is
received? It's received by faith. Now notice
what goes along with faith. That's important too, verse eight.
By faith Abraham, when he was what? Called. When he was called. Who did the saving? God did.
Who did the calling? God did. We heard the first hour
when the Lord went into the ark in Genesis chapter seven, verse
one, the Lord didn't look unto Noah and say, hey, go into the
ark. No, he said, come into the ark. He was in the ark with the
Lord. He was the same as he was reconciling over in second Corinthians.
It was, he said the first hour he was reconciling the world
unto himself. He was, God was in Christ. That's what he says.
No man come to the father, but the father, which sent me draw
him common to the ark. It's the calling, come. And what
did Paul say? To whom coming. You and I never stop coming to
Christ. If we do, we're not his. It's
that simple. Coming to Christ is not a one time event. It's
not one time, okay, well I came to Christ, I got, that's not
language you hear a believer talk, no. We don't come to Christ
once and check that box off. Coming to Christ, I would say,
It's every moment, isn't it? It's every moment we're coming
to Christ. Every moment that he reminds us to, every moment
that he enables us to, I would love to come to Christ every
single second of every single day. And the new man does, that's
the good news. We get so caught up with the world and the things
around us, but when the Lord says, seek you my face, we say
with David, oh Lord, if you had not said, seek you my face, I
would never have sought your face. I've never sought it, but
the Lord says, come. coming to the ark. If you wanna
be saved, come into the ark. But Lord, my legs are broken.
Lord, I can't see. Lord, I can't hear. Lord, I'm
a dead man. The Lord says, live, receive
thy sight. Here's your hearing. He's doing
all of it, isn't he? And then he says, come, and gives
faith, and we come to Christ. The calling goes along with faith.
Now understand something, the calling, faith, and repentance,
those all go hand in hand. This is one simultaneous act.
Just as a baby is born and then breathes, is the baby born and
then breathes to become alive, or does the baby breathe because
it is alive? It's evidence of life, isn't it? Faith is the
evidence of life in Christ. It's not the cause. But without
it, there is no life in Christ, that's the evidence. Now do we
look to our faith? No, what does faith do? Faith
looks to Christ, and that's so many make it a work. We don't
ever look to faith, because faith looks to Christ. Faith is the
breath, and who are we breathing? The precious lamb of God. We're
breathing him, he's our sustenance. In him we live, we move, we have
our being. I've already said this, but faith
is the evidence of life in Christ, the evidence of being called,
and what does faith do? It looks to Christ, and who gets
all the glory for it? Christ does. Why? Because where
it comes from. He's the author and finisher
of faith. It comes from Him. This is what
the same promise reveals. It's received by faith. It's received by faith and it
is accompanied with the calling and repentance. Look at the next
part of the promise received, verse eight. What is the response
of faith in being called? By faith, Abraham, when he was
called to go out into a place which he should after receive
for an inheritance, obeyed. Obeyed. Faith is believing God
and obeying God. And what is it to obey God? Well,
what is the command? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and thou shalt be saved. That's the command. Believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved. You mean the
command is that I should do this and do this? Did the Lord tell
Noah, go into the ark and go do this and go do this? He said,
come into the ark. Come where I am. If you're gonna
have life, it's gonna be through and by me alone. They wouldn't
buy me a loan. This man didn't even know where
he was going, did he? Abraham. He didn't even know where he
was going. Do you think about that? And this was miles and miles.
They didn't have trains back then. They didn't have airplanes.
They didn't have cars. They had camels. Big old stinky
camels. They had to ride for a long time.
That's what they had. That's all they had. And they
got on those camels. He got on those camels out of
faith. He said, yes, Lord, I'm gonna ride this camel into the
desert because you're telling me to go that way. Now, that
doesn't make any sense to my brain. Does that make sense to
your brain? No, of course not. But he did it. Why did he do it?
God said, do it. And God gave him faith to believe.
You know, the difference between a believer and a non-believer,
so many people would say, well, the non-believer does this, and
the believer does this, and non-believer lives this way, and a believer
lives, you know what the difference is? A believer believes Christ
is all. That's it. A believer believes. The Lord didn't change this sinful
nature. He gave us a new nature, which the old nature is serving
the new nature. Thanks be to God, we're constrained
by love, we're restrained by love by the Lord Jesus Christ
himself. He doesn't leave us to ourself, he keeps us. But
the only difference really, when you water it, boil it all the
way down to nothing, the only difference is a believer believes
God and a non-believer doesn't. Man didn't know where he was
going, but he just believed God. Why? He couldn't help it. He
couldn't help it. And is it not true that you couldn't
help it? Whenever you heard the gospel's
call for the first time, the true gospel, when you heard it,
and the Lord had stripped you of nothing, made you completely
naked, made you completely naked before him, was it not true that
you needed a covering? that you needed a righteousness,
that you saw the wrath of God was your impending doom based
upon what you are, not just what you do. Is it not true that at
that moment you needed a substitute and you couldn't help but come
to Christ? You couldn't help, why? Because he's irresistible.
Because he is irresistible. Think about this. Didn't know
where he was going, but he couldn't help it, he just believed God.
If the Lord said jump, he said how high? Isn't that right? If
the Lord would have said jump, he'd have said how high? He obeyed
God, he trusted him over logic, he trusted him over family, he
trusted him over friends, he trusted him over elements, he
trusted him over everything that he had ever learned in his life
about survival. He trusted God, not himself anymore. And is it not true with every
believer, I do not trust myself? I do not have confidence in myself.
That's what Paul said. I have no confidence in this
flesh, none, no confidence in this flesh. No, we don't look
at other people and say, okay, well, I feel better about myself
because I'm not as you are. I'm not as you are, or I don't
do what you do. No, we are the chief centers
all the time, looking at others in compassion and in love, wanting
the Lord, desiring for the Lord to save them, praying for them
and trying to help them understand, but only the Lord can do that.
Only the Lord can do that. Does that excuse us from ever
saying anything about him? No. We like to talk about him,
don't we? We like to talk about his goodness.
We like to talk about his mercy. We like to talk about his love.
I would imagine Abraham, as he's going along, he's telling people.
He's telling people about the Lord. I believe he did. I know
he told his family. You know he did. You know he
had to tell. Isaac found out about it pretty quickly, didn't
he? Took him up on the mountain to sacrifice. Isaac got firsthand
experience, didn't he? And what do you think Isaac passed
along? He passed along the same experience to his sons. And Jacob
believed, but Esau didn't believe. Esau discredited the birthright,
which was the promise of the Savior. The promise of the Savior. That's why it was so blasphemous
for him to sell the birthright. He didn't care. I don't need
your religion. I don't need your God. I'm good.
I'm a good hunter. It was a slap in the face, so
to speak, to the birthright. Not Jacob. Jacob said, I got
to have that birthright. Or I'm going to die. I'm going
to die a sinner. I know I'm a trickster. I know
I'm a supplanter. I know I'm a liar. I know I'm a thief. But
I'm going to die if God doesn't save me. I have to have the birthright. And the Lord ended up causing
Isaac's eyes to dim in old age, and he got the birthright, didn't
he? No, Abraham was telling people about him. Abraham was going
around telling people about him as he journeyed. no doubt his
servants and his wife. His wife had firsthand experience
with Isaac. She already knew who God was, but he trusted God
over everything. You can relate to that, can't
you? Can you honestly say, I trust God over everything I see, over
everything I know, over everything I think, everything that I am.
I trust God. I believe him. But what about our obedience? If we're given faith to receive
the promise and we're called and that's part of it, the promise,
and then the obedience is part of the promise, what is our obedience? It's believing. The Lord said,
believe. The Lord said, come unto me,
all you that are labored and are heavy laden, I will give
you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn of me, for I am meek
and lowly apart. My yoke is easy and my burden is light. You shall
find rest to your soul. Why is his yoke so easy and his
burden so light? Because there's no work to be
done if you're yoked with Christ. There's no work to be done. He did it all. He did it all. The commandment of God is whosoever
will, let him come, take of the water of life freely. Are you
a whosoever will? Come, take of the water of life freely.
Don't move a muscle. Are you thirsty? If you are,
it's because he gave you a thirst, a need. There is a stipulation
to come taking of the water of life freely. You have to come
without money and without price. Come by bread, come by honey. Why? Because it's already been
paid for by the blood of the lamb. There's nothing you can
bring that would do anything to guarantee it more than it's
already guaranteed to the ones that the Lord's purposed it for.
We come without bearing anything. Now all of God's elect can expect
the same thing that happened to Abraham to happen to us. Exact
same thing. Look at verse nine. By faith,
he sojourned in a land of promise as in a strange country, dwelling
in tabernacles with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of
the same promise. Now, do we understand what a
tabernacle is? A tabernacle is a dwelling place,
it's just a tent. So I know a lot of us here go
camping. So we actually have upgraded from tents, most of
us have campers. But that would be the same thing. It's a dwelling
place that's movable. It's a movable dwelling place.
And as they were journeying, they would pop up the tents,
they would be able to rest. I don't know how long they would
rest exactly before they would take everything down, load everything
up and keep going, but that's how they had to travel back then.
They were moving in the direction that the Lord told them to move.
But the point is, they did not have a home. They did not have
a home. Those tabernacles, those tents,
were not their home, was it? It was their place of refuge
from the storm at the time it needed. It was everything that
they needed in order to stay warm at night, in order to have
a bed to sleep on, in order to have comfort. But it was not
their home, was it? A home, or a house by definition,
is not something that typically moves around, is it? It's something
that has a foundation. It's something that has a foundation,
and that is exactly what the next verse says. He looked for
a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God.
When the Lord gives us faith to receive this promise, we obey
God, believing on the Lord Jesus Christ, but what befalls us next
after believing is we become pilgrims and strangers in a strange
land. And everything around us loses
its luster. Everything around us starts losing
its attractiveness to us. Now I understand there's things
in the flesh that we enjoy still, and there's nothing wrong with
that. The scripture actually tells us to eat of the fruits
of your labor, enjoy the things that you've earned, that you've
worked for. Do that. But is it not true that to the
believer, when we are most satisfied, it is whenever we are sitting
at the master's feet. When we're sitting, hearing the
good news that Christ saved his people from their sin, hearing
that our sin has been put away, that this old wretched man that
I am cannot condemn me any longer because Christ hath taken my
sin and bore it upon the cross and put it away. That's when
we rest. That's when we find our most
content moment, our only peace in this life. There's moments
of happiness in life, but happiness comes and goes. But in the Lord,
there's joy, unspeakable and full of glory. We stop looking, stop searching
the world for peace and rest and realize we're not gonna find
it here. Because it's not our home. This world's not our home. This world's gonna burn up with
a fervent heat. It's not forever, not eternal. We have a home. We have a home in the heavens
built by the Lord Jesus Christ himself. He said, I go to prepare
a place for you. And if I go to prepare a place
for you, I will come again and receive you into myself that
where I am, there you may be also. Even though we do get tangled
up in the cares of this world and do enjoy some things in this
world, this world is not our home. It's not our home. We're
pilgrims and we're strangers. Can you relate to this or can
you testify to this? We start out, and I know I often
use the term young and old and you're like, you have no idea,
but I do know this. The older I get, the more I realize I started
out as like a young Thundercat. I was a pioneer, man. I was going
to blaze trails. I was going to do this. I was
going to do that. I'm just a survivor at this point, OK? I'm just a
pilgrim at this point. I'm just trying to get through.
Because what good is it if I What should a man give if he gains
the whole world and loses his own soul? What shall he give
in exchange for his soul? No, I'm a pilgrim clinging unto the
Lord just as Abraham. He's clinging to the promise
of God. The Lord didn't appear unto Abraham every day to strengthen
him. No, the scripture isn't clear on that at all. It doesn't
say that he ever appeared unto him except for the times it gives
us. Abraham had to remember the promise of God just as we're
remembering the promise of God right now by declaration by the
gospel. That's what gets us through.
That's that manna. See, we're in the same wilderness as the children
of Israel, and the manna falls at the Lord's purpose for this
hour for you and I to be sustained a little bit longer, and then
a little bit longer, and a little bit longer. And one day, after
all those little bit longers are over, we're gonna awaken
His likeness. We won't need that manna anymore.
We'll have the bread of life right in front of us. We'll have
Him face to face, and we'll be made like Him. We'll be made
just like Him. World is feeling less and less
like home, so much sorrow and sadness. We are sojourners in
a strange country. We've been made to realize that
we are dying men and women working and living our lives around dead
men and women. Around dying men and women. I'm
a dying man preaching to dying men and women right now. There's
a lot of different movies about dead men walking, and it's true
when you think about it. Some, okay, no, some of you understand
the concept I'm giving you. We're dying men and women. Every
breath is one breath closer. It's one breath closer. Abraham
says, this is not my home. I want to get home. I'm looking
for a city that has foundations. Everywhere I look around me,
nothing has foundation. Is there a foundation in the
government? Is our foundation in policy? Is it in politics? Is it in religion? Is our foundation
is religion? Is our foundation in what we
do or what we don't do? No, our foundation is what the
Lord Jesus Christ has done. There's the foundation. He's
the chief cornerstone. I told Peter, he said, upon this
rock, the confession that I am Christ, the son of the living
God. He said, upon that rock, that
is the foundation. I'm gonna build my church and
the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. That's what we're
trying to get to, isn't it? The kingdom of God, trying to
get to the Lord Jesus Christ, all because he said, come unto
me. We no longer seek our own, but
we seek him, his city built by him, his kingdom. Now in the
gospels, we see something interesting about our Lord. that goes with
this, the Jews, they wanted a Messiah. And the Messiah was promised
back in the Old Testament, as we well know, in Isaiah in multiple
places, down to where he was gonna be born in Bethlehem. I mean, they knew a lot about
the Messiah, but when he came, they rejected him. Why? Because
their home was here on earth. They were of this world, worldly. They had no need for spiritual
matters. They were looking for a kingdom to be established here
on the earth. They desired for a David, almost like a David
reincarnation to come forth and to rule and to reign and take
away the Roman rule and authority that was over them. They had
the, they had the Roman, uh, The Roman Empire, the tyranny
of the Roman Empire, they were treated poorly by the Romans.
So whenever Christ came, they were ready for the Messiah, but
they were not ready for the Messiah. You see the difference? They
were ready for the Messiah they had made up in their mind that
he was gonna be like, but not the true Messiah. And that's
how men and women are today. They want a savior, but they
don't want the savior. They want Jesus. but they don't
want the Lord Jesus Christ. They want God, but they don't
want God who is, which was, which is, and which is to come, the
Alpha and Omega. Only faith can cause us to desire these things. The Lord tells them, my kingdom
is not of this world. Matter of fact, our Lord told
us that the foxes have holes, the birds of the air have nests,
but the Son of Man has no place to lay His head. He didn't even
have a bed to lay His head. He didn't even have a tabernacle.
He slept where He could. He had one purpose, didn't He,
coming here? To honor the Father, even unto death, to redeem His
people, to save His people from their sin. Turn with me to John
chapter 18. Hold your place here in Hebrews. We're gonna come
back here in just a second. John chapter 18. Peter had just denied the Lord,
the Lord's beginning to be arraigned before Pilate. And it says, John
chapter 18, verse 33, through the end of the chapter, then
Pilate entered into the judgment hall again. Can you imagine judging
the Lord Jesus Christ? He didn't have a clue what he
was doing, did he? Then Pilate entered to the judgment hall
again and called Jesus and said unto him, art thou the king of
the Jews? Jesus answered him, sayest thou
this thing of thyself or did the others tell it thee of me? Pilate answered, am I a Jew?
Thine own nation and the chief priests have declared thee unto
me. What hast thou done? Jesus answered, My kingdom is
not of this world. If my kingdom were of this world,
then would my servants fight, that I should not be delivered
to the Jews. But now is my kingdom not from
hence. Pilate therefore said unto him,
Art thou a king then? Jesus answered, thou sayest that
I am a king. To this end was I born, and for
this cause came I into the world that I should bear witness unto
thee the truth. Everyone that is of the truth
heareth my voice. Everyone, now understand what
he's saying here. Everyone that is of the truth heareth my voice. Now listen to what Pilate says
here. Pilate said unto him, what? is truth? Well, if we can find
the answer to that question, it's because the Lord revealed
it. It's because the Lord revealed it. What is truth? He's talking
to the truth. Jesus Christ is the way, the
truth, and the life. He's talking to him. What is
truth? I am. But he didn't say that, did he?
Read on. What is truth? And when he had
said this, he went out again unto the Jews and said to them,
I find in him no fault at all, but ye have a custom that I should
release unto you one at the Passover. Were you therefore that I release
unto you the king of the Jews? Then cried they all again saying,
not this man, but Barabbas. Now Barabbas was a robber. Barabbas was a robber. If left
to ourselves, we would choose anything but Christ, anything
but Christ. Even the one who committed insurrection,
which insurrection, if you don't know, is violent rebellion against
the government. That's what it said in another
passage. He committed violent rebellion
against the government. He was a murderer also, and he
was a thief. All the Gospels give us full
account that he was all of these things. They said, no, we would
rather have Barabbas, the murderer, the thief, And the one that committed
insurrection, then we would have the Lord Jesus Christ reign over
us. Now, you know, the truth of it
is this, that's us. Barabbas is us. And the only
way for you and I to be set free is for the Lord to die in our
place. We are the murderers. We would dethrone God. We would
say, away with this man, let his blood be upon us and on our
children if we were left to ourself. We often would try to rob God
of all of his glory, as men do, by saying that he loves everybody
and that he wants to save you. That's robbing him of his glory.
We would, in and of ourself, in and of our flesh. And we,
are we not rebels against him, born rebels, born in sin? That's
us. Barabbas is us. And the only
way that you and I can be set free is if the Lord causes us
to hear and receive the same exact promise that Abraham received. The same exact promise. God's people, because of this
promise, are made to desire his kingdom, not ours, not ours. See, the Barabbas, the old man
that we have, desires his own kingdom, desires his own praise,
his own glory. But the new man desires the kingdom
of the Lord. Go back to our text, Hebrews
chapter 11 and closing. Look at verse eight. By faith,
Abraham, when he was called to go out into a place which he
should after receive for an inheritance, obeyed, and he went out, not
knowing whether he went. By faith, he sojourned in a land
of promise, as in a strange country, dwelling in tabernacles with
Isaac and Jacob, theirs with him of the same promise. For
he looked for a city which hath foundations, whose builder and
maker is God. God's chosen people receive this
promise because they're given faith. And then they're called. And when they're called, the
Lord says, come unto me, they obey. The Lord says, believe
on me, they believe. The Lord says, come unto the
ark, they come unto the ark. They obey his voice. The Lord
said in John chapter 10, verse 28, my sheep hear my voice and
I know them and they follow me. And you know that word follow
is the same word as obey. And I give unto them eternal
life and they shall never perish. Neither shall any man pluck them
from my hand. My Father which gave them me is greater than
all, and no man is able to pluck them from my Father's hand. I
and my Father are one. We receive the same promise by
being given faith, then we're called and made to obey. And
as soon as that happens, we immediately become pilgrims and strangers
in a strange land, seeking a new city. Not seeking a kingdom of
this earth, but seeking a kingdom that we can't even see, that
we have not ever seen. We don't have a clue about how
beautiful it is. We don't have a clue about how
glorious it is, but we know one thing, we know who's in that
city. We know who's seated on the throne of that city, and
we've got to get to him. It's the Ark. It's the one that
redeemed his people from their sin. Lord, scripture says, though
he slay me, yet will I trust him. I've got to have him. I've
got to have him. We're made to desire that be
robed in the righteousness of Christ. We see our righteousness
as filthy rags. Scripture says, seek ye first
the kingdom of God and his righteousness. And you know, that's what the
Lord's people do. That's exactly what they do. And all the other
things, he says, will be added unto you. All those other things,
that's what they become. When you're seeking first the kingdom
of God, they just become things. We can take it or leave it. Sometimes
we really need things, but for the most part, when you're seeking
first the kingdom of God, when you're looking to Christ through
the eyes of faith, those little things, they don't seem as big,
do they? They don't seem as worrisome,
do they? We long to be made like him. Think God, he didn't send Abraham
by himself, did he? Abraham had his son that believed.
Abraham had his wife that believed. Abraham had his grandsons. And
you know who we have? First of all, we have Christ,
and that's enough. But he's given us each other. And he's given
us this oasis in this wilderness that we're in, this desert place,
death all around us, to come and sit at his feet, and to be
washed, to be made clean, and to drink of the fountain, and
to have our spirit renewed, have our strength renewed. And then
we get up, and we leave, and we go back out into the world,
and we get dirty again in this wilderness, and we get beat down
again in this wilderness. and we start getting kicked around
again in this wilderness, and we get frustrated of everything
around us again, and we come back here, and the Lord washes
us again, and cleans us back up, and he feeds us again, and
then we get back up, we're ready to go again, and we go back out,
and then we get dirty again, and we get knocked back down
again, and you know how we're gonna keep doing that until one day, either
the trumpet's gonna sound, or we're gonna draw our last breath,
and we're gonna see him face to face. That's called life. Aren't you glad he's given us
each other to encourage one another? To look to Christ. Don't look to me. No, I'm a sinner
just like Noah and Abraham. Don't look to me. Don't look
at my faith. Look at Christ. Look at his faith. Beg for him. Beg for him. We get to feast
on the lamb. And be reminded of his promise.
What's his promise? I'll never leave you. You're
not alone out there in that wilderness. No, I'm gonna be the light by
night that guides you and the sun by day that you see. I'm
gonna be everything that you need. I'm gonna cause the light
to shine in darkness in your life that you might see my face.
You'll never be alone. You know, sometimes it seems
like our lights go out and we can't see him. We're like a little
child. Most of y'all have had children. You know what it's
like to have a baby in the room with the lights out and they're screaming
and they're screaming? What do they want? They want
mama, they want daddy, are you not? Suffer the little children
to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom
of heaven. We come to him like little children, don't we? Come
to him like little children. Lord, it's me again, I need you
to save me again. Save me again. He said, I'll go with you all
the way, even unto death, so we can cry with Paul. O death,
where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?
We have received the exact same promise as every single believer
on this page by faith. The Lord's given us his faith.
We received them all by faith. Rest knowing that God finished
the work for his people. He put away the sin of his people.
We shall not die. We shall not die. Thank God.
That his promises cannot change, and he gave us the exact same
promise, the exact same promise. Let's pray. Father, we thank
you for your promises that they're sheer and steadfast, calls us
to rest, calls us to believe, bless us to our understanding
and for your glory in Christ's name. Amen.