Alright, Hebrews chapter 13,
verse 7. Hebrews 13, verse 7. Remember them which have the
rule over you, who have spoken unto you the Word of God, whose
faith follow considering the end of their conversation. Jesus Christ, the same yesterday,
and today, and forever. Now, last time, when we got to
the end, I said that there was three words to look at in verse
7. The first one was remember. Remember. Last week, we looked at them
that have the rule over you, those who have spoken unto you
the Word of God. Who did we learn that that was? As pastors, right? That's those
that are sent to teach you what God's Word is through His Word. And then we come to this next
word, which is follow. It says, whose faith follow. Remember them which have the
rule over you, whose faith follow. Considering the end of their
conversation. We might have to look at that
phrase as well to understand this phrase, whose faith follow. The faith that's spoken of here
is the person's the object of their faith, who
is Christ, and their willingness to follow Him. That's their faith. It's their, what you hear us
sometimes say, their profession. Or you'd hear it said sometimes
of their belief. Or you might even hear it said
their example. Let me tell you a place to look
that might help you understand it. 1 Corinthians chapter 11. Hold your place there in Hebrews. 1 Corinthians 11 verse 1. Now listen to this. Paul the Apostle said to the
Corinthians, Be ye followers of me. And was he telling them
just to follow a man? Was he telling them to look to
a man? That's not what he was telling them. He was telling
them to consider the end of his conversation, the end of everything
he did, of what he said, what he thought, why he went where
he went, everything that he did. Consider the end of it. And he
said, Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ. There's the end of our conversation.
There's the end of what I think, what I say, what I do. There's
the object of my faith. What did verse 8 say back in
Hebrews? Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever. He's the end of our conversation,
of our deportment, of our thoughts, our words, our deeds. Do you
know what the end is? Where do you put the period in
a sentence? Anybody know that? You put it
at the end, don't you? That's the end. That means that's
the stopping point. That's the end of everything.
Well, when we're told here to follow a man's faith, what we're
told is to follow him considering who he's following. Considering
who he's following. So that's what I want us to look
at here. When Christ walked this earth as the faithful servant
of God, God the Father, Christ as a man. He's God, but He's
a man. He's man, but He's God. But as
He walked this earth as the faithful servant of God, He believed God
the Father. He trusted God the Father. He walked as one would walk,
just like a faithful believer believing his Father, trusting
his Father. And so Paul walked trusting Christ,
and who is God, even as Christ trusted his father. He said,
follow me. I trust Christ. Follow me, even
as I follow Christ. Christ trusted the father. Paul
said, I trust Christ. Follow me. Trust Christ, even
as I trust him. Trust the father, even as Christ
trusted the father. I believe God. You want to know
what the end of why I prepare and study and come here and talk
to you, why I'm standing here talking to you right now? You
know what the end is? I believe God. I believe exactly
what He says about Himself. I believe what He says about
me. You know, confessing Christ, you know what that word confession
means? It means agreeing with God. I agree with God. I agree with Him. that I can't
save myself, and I agree with Him that only Christ can save
me, and that God will only accept me in Christ by believing on
Him. I agree with God. I can't save
myself. I'm a sinner, and I trust Him,
and I follow Him. It's my prayer that one day God
will make you willing to follow me in believing Christ. Even as I believe Him and trust
Him and look to Him and try and put no confidence in His flesh,
that you do that by His grace, making you willing to follow
Him. Well, when Christ walked this earth as the faithful servant
of God, He was equal with God, but He humbled Himself and He
served God the Father. Who knows what it is to serve
somebody? You pretty much, sometimes, some of you have been to our
house before, and you will come over to eat. And whenever I ask
one of my children to set the table, well, that in a sense
is serving you. They're serving you. They're
setting the table for you. When I or Melinda cooks something
for you to eat and serve you, we're serving you. Well, Christ
came to serve, and this is what He said as He came to serve.
I came down from heaven. This will of God was for Him
to come down from heaven. So He came down from heaven.
And He said, not to do mine own will, but the will of Him that
sent me. God sent him so he came to do
God's will. And he says, and this is the
Father's will which hath sent me that all which he hath given
me. He's talking about people. You might be one that he's talking
about. You may be one that he's talking about, Anthony. You may
be one of those that God sent him down here for, Robert. He
said, He was sent for somebody. He was sent so that all those
that God had given Him would be raised up in the last day. Now, you hear people talk about,
have you ever heard anybody tell you I have a right to do this
or that or to say, well, it's your right to do so and so. And
this world's always talking about our rights. What's our right? What right do you have to talk
to me that way? What right do you have to not
give me what I want? What right do you have? It's
always about my right is what the world talks about. The world
teaches us to seek our own will. That's what the world's teaching
us, because that's the natural understanding, is to seek what
you want. Go after what you want. Go as
hard and fast as you can to get exactly what you want. That's
what the world teaches us. But you remember, you heard me
talk about Adam in the garden. Whenever Adam sinned against
God, God took Adam to the edge of the garden where Adam had
lived up to that point and put him out of the garden and wouldn't
allow him back in the garden. You know what that meant? That
meant Adam lost all his rights. He lost all right to come to
God. He lost all access to come to
God. And all his rights were forfeited
when he broke God's law. You know what will happen if
Jessie got her driver's license? She can go out and get in her
car. You got to have somebody with you. She'd go out and get
in her car and she has a license that gives her access to get
on the highway in a vehicle and drive. That's a right that she
has legally. But now if she goes out and runs
into somebody and drives recklessly and they take her license from
her, guess what? She loses her right. It's not
lawful anymore for her to get back out on that highway. We
lost our rights when we sinned in Adam. And when God took him
to the edge of the garden and cast him out, God hedged that
garden about to where he couldn't come back in because he didn't
have a right there anymore. He didn't have access there anymore.
Well, God's will was to be gracious and to give that right back to
many. That was grace. He didn't have
to do that. He didn't have to give that right to anybody. But
God decided, if you could say it that way, God chose to give
that right back to many. A multitude. We can't even number
the multitude that God chose to give that right back to. And He sent His Son to accomplish
everything that had to be accomplished to give us that right back. Now,
it's easier to do when we talk about serving and we talk about
doing the will of somebody else. That's what we're talking about.
If you're going to follow my faith and consider the end of
my conversation, it's going to involve doing the will of somebody
else and not your own will. Now, say say that I told Emma, Emma, it's
my will today for you to go and put Will's shoes in the closet.
Well, that's not too difficult. That's pretty easy. She could
do that. But suppose I told her, now go, Emma, And I want you
to clean up all his room. I want you to not only put his
clothes up, I want you to clean his room completely. I want you
to straighten up his closet. I want you to pick up all the
things that he has thrown through the house, any dishes that he's
messed up. And then I want you to get out
his homework, do all his homework for him. And then I want you
to get his backpack together and get everything ready. And
I want you to have his clothes laid out for him, ironed for
him so they're all nice and neat, a nice set of clothes picked
out for him, so that come Monday morning he can just walk right
out and have everything fully done for him to where he can
just walk right out and enjoy it. Now that would be kind of
hard for you, wouldn't it? That wouldn't be as easy. Will
over there is smiling and clapping his hands. But when God the Father told
his son to go into the earth and to accomplish this right,
this privilege, this freedom for those that he decided to
give this right back to, this access back to heaven. When he
did that, God the Father's will required that his son would go
from heaven to earth. From being in a perfect environment,
a place where there's no sorrow, no pain, no tears, to an environment
where that's all that existed, sin and rebellion and sorrow
and pain, difficulty. And it required him to become
a man just like those that he came to save, just like those
he came to purchase this right for. He had to become a man like
them. He had to even feel the hurt they feel. He had to feel
the tears that they cried. He had to experience what it
is to have his friends forsake him and leave him. Now that's
some hard things, isn't it? But he said, nevertheless, I
came not to do my will, but I came to do the will of my Father.
Well, what if your father told you to do something for a person
who treated you like you were an enemy? What if your father
asked you to do something that required you to do it for a person
who despised you, who hated you,
who rejected you? Not just verbally, but who stripped
all your clothes off of you in public and publicly humiliated
you. Or who spit in your face. Or who mocked you and made fun
of you before everybody. That's what God the Father called
on God the Son to do. And He, who is the same yesterday,
today, and forever, knew from the beginning what it was He
was called on to do. At one point He said, Father,
for this hour came I into this earth. I came here for this specific
hour to endure this particular thing right here. And yet he
said, I came to do my father's will. And he willingly did it.
Then what if your father told you to take the place of that
person who treated you so badly? To take their place and to bear
the punishment that was due to them because they had broken
the law. And that way they could go free.
They could be set free. Now you're coming to a place
that's going to treat you bad, and you're coming for a people
that's going to despise and reject you. And you're coming to a people
that's going to treat you so shamefully in public, in front
of everybody. And you're coming so that you
can step into their place and take their place. and bear the
eternal judgment of God, the wrath of God for them so they
can go free. And we talk about our rights.
We talk about our will and what we want and how we want. And
He said, He said, Father, if thou be willing, This was before
he was going to that crawl. He said, Father, if Thou be willing,
remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but
Thine be done. Well, about those rites. About
those rites. Because he's risen. Because he
fulfilled the work God gave him to do. He finished the work God
gave him to do. God also glorified Him. Everything He did was in glorifying
the Father. Philippians 2 tells us, wherefore
God also glorified Him and raised Him to His right hand to sit
on a throne in heaven. You know what that means? You
know what it means that He's sitting on a throne in heaven?
You know what that means? He's a King. It means that He
has, He said, all power is given to me in heaven and in earth.
What would you do if all power was given to you? You'd do what
you wanted to, wouldn't you? You'd do exactly what you wanted
to. The only thing that's stopping me and you from not doing what
we want to now is we don't have the power to do it. He does. He has the power to do it. And
the only thing He does is what's right. And the only thing He
does is for those for whom He bought rights, for whom He paid
their debts, who He made righteous, who He put away their sin, who
He purchased the right for them to enter back into the presence
of God. And so He sends forth His Gospel,
His messengers, those that have the rule over you, He sends them
forth. And He directs their path and He brings them to you to
declare to you That's who He is and that's what He's done.
And when He does that, He creates life in you so that you're able
then to actually approach God and actually come into His presence
and actually worship Him and believe Him and trust Him and
turn away from speaking about, what are my rights and my will?
And let me show you something. The person who's of this world,
the person who lives after this world can only talk about their
rights and what is their will, what they have a right to do.
That's all they talk about. But let me show you something.
Look down at Hebrews 13, verse 10. Look down at verse 10. Verse 10. tells the believer,
this is what we have, and it says what those who serve their
flesh and who serve their own will and only talk about their
rights, what they have no right to. Now look, verse 10, we have
an altar. That altar is Christ Jesus the
Lord. We have an altar. We have a Redeemer. This is what the believer has.
We have access to God. You know where you had to come
to if you were going to come to God in the Old Testament? You had to come to the altar.
We come to an altar. And He's in heaven. And He's
living. And He's the captain of our salvation. He's the high priest. He's the
sacrifice. And He's the altar on which you'd
sacrifice. and we have an altar, whereof
they have no right to eat which serve themselves." Serve their
flesh, go after their will and their right. They have no right
to eat of it. Now here's the lesson in all
this. Why then does the Hebrew writer tell us in our verse here,
Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken
unto you the word of God, whose faith follow, considering the
end of their conversation." Why are we told that? Why are we
told to follow them, to follow the same faith they walk in,
considering why they walk in that faith? Why are we told that?
The funny thing is this. When He gives you, a believer,
a sinner, when He gives a sinner all these rights, and I mean
it's rights like you just can't imagine. These are rights to
what belongs to God. These are rights to everything
that is God's, it becomes ours. joint heirs with Christ. That
means everything that God is going to give to His Son as an
inheritance, He gives to the believer. And when they brought
into this these true rights, this true freedom, this true
liberty where they have this amazing right this willingness
to access, to approach God, this willingness to follow Him, this
desire to truly walk after Him. You know what happens when he
truly gives Thee right? The person to whom he does this
becomes more concerned with his will being done than their own
will being done. Doesn't that seem odd? When we
didn't have any rights, all we thought about was, what are my
rights? What am I entitled to? But then when He comes and truly
reveals what He's done and how helpless we were in that He's
given us the rights to the very throne of God, to walk into His
presence and bow before Him in an inheritance that will never
fade away, eternal life. What happens then is We don't
desire our will to be done. We don't desire for our rights
to be had. We desire for His right. We want
to talk about Him. We want to talk about His will
and what He's done. And as you learn more of Him,
as you walk, as you consider the end of my conversation, and
you follow the faith that I'm following, if He gives you a
heart to do that, as you learn more and more of Christ, you
know what happens? He makes us more patient to deal with one
another and to handle the trials that come upon us, severe trials,
because He gives us a contentment that we didn't have before. Remember
how we looked at that the other day? Contentment. So now let's talk about, it says,
remember them that have the rule over you and follow their faith. So let's talk about Christ. He's the end of my conversation.
and I trust Him. So let's talk about Christ, and
let's talk about me, and let's talk about you. Alright? The Lord's will is for me to
be here, to hear His Word every time I have an opportunity to
be here. So you know what my will is?
I want to be here to hear His Gospel preached. Will you follow
me? Will you follow me? It's the
Lord's will that we hear Him speak through this Word right
here. So it's my will, because He's
made me willing, it's my will to hear what He says in this
Word and to go home and to read it and review it and look over
it and seek more of what He says in this Word. That's what He's
given me a heart to do. because the end of that is to
see Christ. So, will you follow me? It's the Lord's will that we
seek to know and believe on God's darling Son and have no confidence
whatsoever in this flesh, in the strength of our hand, in
our own will, in our own way, but in Him alone. And because
that's His will, He's given me a heart to see His Son, to fall
at His feet, to trust Him alone. If I die, and I come into God's
presence, and He casts me out of His presence, and He casts
me into hell, eternally separated from Him, it will be because
His Son didn't save me. Because I'm trusting Him. I'm
sold out to Him, lock, stock, and barrel, and I'm trusting
Him to do it all. So, will you follow me? It's His will that we turn from
this world and follow Him. That's who I'm following. being
led of the Spirit, being taught by Christ Jesus Himself, being
turned to the left when I need to be turned to the left, being
turned to the right when I need to be turned to the right, being
picked up when I'm down, being brought down when I'm exalted,
keeping me, correcting me, rebuking me, teaching me, providing for
me, clothing me, giving me everything that I need Taking away everything
from me that I don't need. Pointing my head up to Him. Directing
me from this world to Him. Continually. And therefore, I
want to turn from this world and follow Him. Can you? Can you follow me? Will you follow
me? The Lord said, this is the will
of Him that sent me, that everyone which seeth the Son and believeth
on Him may have... Listen now, listen. I want everybody
to listen. Everybody look at me. Listen now. Listen. Everyone which seeth the Son
and believeth on Him may have everlasting life. and I will raise Him up at the
last day." There's coming a last day. This
might be the day. Might be tomorrow. But this is
what those that trust Him, this is what they have. They see the
Son by His power, by His grace, by His Spirit working in them.
They see the Son. They see Christ the Lord, the
Son of God. And they believe on Him because He gives them
faith. And they have everlasting life. They'll never die. When
you see me, when they call you one day and they say, Brother
Clay closed his eyes today and he died. You can say, no he didn't. Not according to His testimony. Not according to the one He trusted.
According to His Word. According to Christ's Word. He
didn't die. He just started out. Today's His birthday. He didn't
die. Because He said, I'll raise Him
up at the last day. It's my prayer that He'll make
you willing to follow Him. Because this is the end of what
I'm doing. This is the end of what He sent
me to do. This is my joy. Same as John's
was. He said, I have no greater joy,
no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth. You know the only way you can
walk in truth? Is believing on Christ. There's no other way
to walk in truth.