Go ahead and turn with me again
this morning to Hebrews chapter 13, if you would, please. We'll begin in verse five this
morning, Hebrews 13, verse five. In verse five, the apostle writes,
let your conversation, that word means character, Let your character,
let your way of life be without covetousness, without greediness,
without love of money and possessions. And be content, peaceful, happy,
satisfied, pleased, and fulfilled with such things as you have. For he, meaning Christ, hath
said, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. You know, it's
a very natural thing for us to covet. Comes very natural to
us. It's very natural and common
to be greedy for lucre, for money and possessions. And I've been
with and I've been without, and I'd rather be with than without.
And even though many times it's best to be without than with. Sure causes us to lean a little
more on the Lord, I think. And it's not easy for a man or
a woman or a sinner to keep their heart clear of covetousness.
While we are in this body of flesh, we might say pertinent
or impossible. The words to be without covetousness
here in the revised version reads, be free from the love of money
or let your mind be turned from the love of money. After all,
it's not money that's the root of all evil, it's the love of
money that's the root of all evil. And in the same verse,
Paul went on to tell Timothy, he said, which some have coveted
after, speaking of money, and they have erred from the faith
and pierced themselves through with many sorrows. It's easy
to make possessions and things your God. Now the lesson here
is this, it's impossible to covet what you already possess And
in order to covet, there must be someone whose possession you
covet. It's got to be something that
you covet or that you want that you don't have. And covetousness
is centered in the principle of envy. It's to believe that
a person ought not to have what they have and that you ought
to have it. And it's also comprised of the principle of jealousy,
which holds that a person should rightly possess what someone
has. Both have to do with a personal
sense of entitlement. Discontent is nothing but anger
against God's sovereignty and providence. All that we have
is given to us by God, and if God has given someone more than
he's given us, that's God's business. He said, be content with what
you have. Covetousness is the absence of contentment, and contentment
is the absence of covetousness. Content. Be content with such
things as you have. After all, it's God who gave
them to you. And contentment is not if we
had a little more, we'd be satisfied. If I just had a little more,
I'd be happy. I've used that a lot with my
wife. If I could just get this, that'd be all I'd ever need,
and only to want something more later. Contentment is not if
we had a little more, is it? It's being content with what
we've got right now. When I was younger, I can remember
thinking on more than one occasion, if I just had a million dollars,
I could and I would be satisfied. Well, you might think so, but
I see now that that's impossible because I realize that someone
has one million dollars is unable to see any reason why they shouldn't
have two or 10. And that's just the natural tendency
of mankind in their fallen status. And how many times has Providence
proven that the rich man is never satisfied and is usually the
most miserable. You see the rock stars, the country
music stars, the movie stars, the rich businessmen that have
everything that you could possibly have. And yet they're the ones
that are the most miserable and commit suicide and get into drugs
and alcohol and all that. What a precious pearl we find
here in the treasury of God's word. There's no room to be covetous,
no excuse for being, for Christ said, I will never leave thee
nor forsake thee. That's what he says right here.
I'll never leave you or forsake you. What else could you want? If we have God's presence, if
we have God's help, if we have God's covenant favor, if we have
God's gracious providence, and we do, then everything is working
together for our good. What more could we want? We gripe
and we complain about the most ridiculous things. Yep, we do. But He will never leave us nor
forsake us. What more could we want? Covetousness
is rebellion against God. And the reason that a believer
is to let his way of life to be without covetousness is simple. It's to be content with what
he or she has. Content. Boy, that's a precious
word. I wish I was more content. Help
me, Lord, to be more content. While we have the Lord, the believer
does, we have his promises. In Christ, all things are ours. Nothing has been withheld from
us. Every good and perfect gift comes from above. What can be
added to all? Christ is all and in all. If we have him, we have everything.
And none of these earthly things are we gonna take with us. And
if we did, what good would they do us? The fountain and source
of contentment is that the Lord has promised that he'll never
leave us. He'll never forsake us. What more could we ask? He
lives to make intercession for us. He is our advocate with the
Father. He is the one mediator between
God and man. He's pleading our cause and our
case before God. He's our wisdom, He's our righteousness,
He's our sanctification, and He's our redemption. Now look
at verse six. It says, so that we may boldly
say, boldly say, the Lord is my helper and I will not fear
what man shall do unto me. And here we see the result of
contentment, which is a clear denouncing of covetousness. To
be malcontent is to be a complainer, a murmurer, one who gripes constantly
about their lot in life. And if we're not careful, that's
what we'll do, about the littlest and most ridiculous things that
we have no control over. And such a life speaks ill of
God, and it denies the goodness of His grace. One who is free
doesn't walk as if he's still in shackles and in bondage. We
walk around like our feet are shackled together, you know,
and our heads are down. When we're free, free from the
bondage of the law, free from the law, oh, happy condition,
Jesus has bled and there is remission, remission of sin. They boldly
say, the Lord is my helper. To speak any other way is to
mock God's sovereignty and providence. That word helper means to call. I thought that was interesting.
It doesn't mean that we have any power to help ourselves or
that God just kind of helps us along as we plug along on our
own. No, that's not what it means.
It means that we constantly call on him to help us. And that's
what a child of God does. Sometimes I find myself almost
unconsciously saying, Lord, help me. Lord, help me. I need help. The Lord's my helper. I don't
fear what men can do unto me. The Lord's not going to allow
anything to happen to me that He hasn't ordained to happen
to me. In the same sense of the word,
He's working all things together for my good. So why fear? It's going to be for my good
and my glory. And even if it's the thing that
does me in, that's a promotion and I'll be with Him. And as
we see here in verse six, the only way that a man or woman
can boldly say that the Lord is their helper, the only way
they won't fear what men can or may do unto them is to say
it from a place of contentment. To murmur and to complain is
to deny that the Lord is our helper, for he cannot fail. I know we're gonna doubt ourselves,
I doubt me all the time, but we should never doubt him. Yet
in our malcontent we're declaring that he's unable to provide for
us as he's promised. May the Lord give us the grace
to see what we've received from his good and gracious hand. If we really know that Christ
is with us, then we can boldly say the Lord's my helper and
we will not fear at all because he is with us always and he will
never He'll never leave us and never forsake us. If we truly
know who Christ is, if we truly know that He is with us, what
is there for us to fear? Now, it's imperative that we
read the next two verses together, verses seven and eight, and I
think you will see why in a moment. Let me read the verses first,
verse seven. 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. That's
speaking about the goal and objective of their ministry. It says, which
is, verse eight, Jesus Christ, the same yesterday and today
and forever. Now, no doubt that verse 8 is
probably one of the best-known verses in all the Bible, and
we're so guilty about carelessly lifting verses out of context. We do. Matter of fact, many religions
have been built upon the foundation of doing just that. They take
a verse here and a verse there, and you can about make the Bible
say anything you want if you do that. But we need to read
the scriptures in context, and especially these epistles, because
they're letters. Linda, if you write me a letter,
I don't start in the middle of it. I don't read the end and
then the middle and then the beginning. No, we start at the
beginning, dear David, and we read to the end. And we could
take things out of context very easily if we didn't read it in
the context it was written. Brother Mahan used to call that,
he called it a sickness called versitis. Taking a verse here and a verse
there and proving pretty much anything we want. But verses
seven and eight here go together and they need to be considered
together. And the first thing mentioned in verse seven, that
the believer is to love, is the preacher of the gospel. And I'm
not saying that because I want you or need you to love me, even
though it means a great deal to me if you do. But the word
rule here might be easily twisted and abused by someone, especially
a vain preacher. Now, you know, it says right
here that I've got the rule over you. That's not what it means
at all. That word rule actually means leader or guide. We know
that the Spirit of God is our guide unto all truth, but God
has chosen that by the foolishness of preaching to save them that
believe. And how shall they preach? How
shall they hear without a preacher? That's God's ordained means.
He raises up men to preach his gospel, to lead his people, to
guide his people unto the truth. And we know the Spirit of God
is our guide, but the child of God is admonished to remember
those who God has sent to them, who have spoken the word of God
to them. And it's here that every preacher
and pastor sees the true matter of the ministry. You know, seminaries
today have initiated courses for the duties of pastors. which
cover everything from being a community organizer to being a visiting
counselor. Men and women today, they feel
as though they pay the preacher to visit the sick and they themselves
don't visit them at all. The preacher of the gospel is
to do just that, preach the gospel. Our Lord makes it crystal clear
that the pulpit and the ministry of the word, the gospel should
be the preacher's dominant concern. You don't support a preacher
so he can just stay home and not do anything. You support
a preacher so that he can study and seek God for a message. And
any preacher that doesn't do that is in disobedience to God
and his calling. The true preacher's and pastor's
concern is to glorify Christ through the preaching of the
word of God. The believers admonished and strongly urged to follow
their guidance and lead the saints to grow in the grace and in the
knowledge of the Lord. That's what we're doing here
this morning. We're opening God's word and we're pointing men and
women to Christ. And we're saying that in Christ
is the only way we can grow in the knowledge of him. That's
how we grow. That's how we're being conformed
to his image. We're to believe the truth that
this holy book proclaims through the God called man who proclaims
it. And we live in a day where hirelings,
those who preach believing they're preaching to be a job or an occupation
instead of a calling, that's what a hireling is. One who's
hired. They've changed the message of
God. And that's why the apostle here
talks very candidly about the end and the goal of our ministry. They're one in the same. The
message is the same. The message is still Jesus Christ
and Him crucified. It's never changed. The message
of the gospel is what God's done for us, not what we're doing
for God. It hadn't changed. The message is still Jesus Christ,
the same yesterday, today, and forever. It's never, ever changed. And the Pharisees, they told
the Lord, they said, we have Moses. And he said, you got to
go back further than that. You got to go back further than
Moses. And they said, well, you're not even 50 years old. And the
Lord said, if you'd believe Moses, you'd believe me, what Moses
wrote of me. If you had believed Moses, and
if you believe Moses, you would believe me, because Moses wrote
of me. What Moses wrote is about Christ. I think we've seen that very
well in the study of three of the five books Moses wrote. The
only hope Moses had of eternal redemption was in the Lord Jesus
Christ, the same as you. He's a sinner just like you.
God used him mightily, yes, but he's a sinner nonetheless, and
he's gotta be saved the same way you and I are. Moses saw
Christ in picture and type. Moses wrote of the Lord Jesus.
You know, there was another time that the religionists of that
day, they said, well, we have Abraham to be our father. And
the Lord said, if you were the sons of Abraham, you'd love me.
Because even Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he sought
and he was glad. He said, before Abraham was,
I am. He's before everyone. He's the great I am. Always has
been, is, was, and always will be. The Lord Jesus said, what
think ye of Christ, whose son is he? And they said, well, he's
the son of David. And the Lord asked them, he said,
why did David call him Lord if he's his son? If Christ is the
son of David, why did David call him Lord when he said, the Lord
said unto my Lord, sit thou on my right hand until I make thine
enemies thy footstool. He's the son of David and he's
the Lord of David. Jesus of Nazareth is David's
Christ and Moses' gospel and Abraham's redeemer. And nothing
new about the gospel. Verse eight, Jesus Christ is
the same yesterday, today, and forever. Known unto God are all
his works from the beginning, the scripture says. He declares
the end from the beginning and from ancient times, the things
that are not even done yet, saying, my counsel shall stand. God doesn't
change. If a preacher says, I've got
a new message. If a preacher says, I got a new
revelation from God. Let me tell you something. He's
a liar. And you're a fool if you listen to it. Why? Because
God didn't change. God didn't change. I don't know
why men try to look for new revelation when we don't have believed the
ones that God has revealed. When the Holy Spirit finished
the writing of the Word of God, He said, if any man adds to this
book, I'll add to him the plagues of this book. And He said, if
any man takes away from this book, I'll take his name out
of the book of life. Why? Because God never changes. And because Jesus Christ is the
same yesterday, today, and forever. And that's where I find great
comfort and peace. I change like the weather, but
not Him. One day I'm up and believe and
got strong faith and the next day I'm down in the dumps and
I'm walking like that shackled man with my head down. But he
doesn't change. He's the same yesterday, today
and forever. His message never changes. The
gospel never changes. True preachers all preach the
same message. We was talking about that Friday
night. It doesn't matter who preaches it. whether it's Moses,
Abraham, David, Isaiah, or Gene Harmon. It doesn't make a bit
of difference. The message is always the same. Jesus Christ and Him crucified. Sin is still the same. And Adam
all died. All have sinned and come short
of the glory of God. Sin hadn't changed since Adam
sinned. People say all the time, well,
the world's getting worse. No, it's no worse than it was
when Adam fell. Sin is sin. Now, it may be more
in your face. That's what you said Friday. It may be more in your face,
and you may see it like you never saw it before, but sin, the world
ain't getting worse. There's nothing new under the
sun. Things were pretty bad in the days of Sodom and Gomorrah,
and things are pretty bad today. But they hadn't changed. Man's
heart hadn't changed. Rebellion is rebellion. Darkness
is darkness. Sin is sin. And men and women
and their sin has not changed a bit. Men are no different and
sin is no different. Death is the same. Folks are
still dying. It's appointed unto men once
to die. Do you know anyone that's lived
that did not die? Now, I know in the olden times,
men lived 900 and some years, but there are many that have
not died yet, but they will. No matter how old they are, they'll
die. Growing up, I had many aunts and uncles. My mother had I think
there was five or six in her family, and they all had spouses.
I had many aunts and uncles. And as of the first of this year,
2022, I had one aunt left. And January 12th, 12 days after
the first of the year, at the age of 92, she died, and I officiated
her funeral service. You see, we're not gonna get
out of this life alive. We're not. Not unless the Lord
returns before we die. But death hasn't changed. Judgment
hasn't changed. Judgment's the same. God said,
I'm gonna judge the world in righteousness by that man, Jesus
Christ, whom I have ordained. Judgment hasn't changed. It's appointed unto men once
to die, and after that, the judgment. We'll all stand before the judgment
seat of Christ. All of us. We're gonna be judged
in the light of our relationship with Jesus Christ. That's true
of all of us. Abraham, Moses, Isaac, Jacob,
David, Peter, John, even Judas, Paul. Me and you. We're gonna stand before the
judgment seat of Christ and gonna be judged according to the things
that we've done in this body. And the only hope that any of
us have is that if Christ is our advocate and our mediator
stands on that day of judgment and says, Father, I died for
that sinner. That's the only hope that any
of us have. Faith is the same. Is it not? Faith hasn't changed.
When God defined faith, he went all the way back to Abraham,
and he said, Abraham believed God, and it was counted unto
him for righteousness. And this was not written for
his sake alone, but it was counted to him for righteousness, but
it was written for our sakes also. To whom it shall be imputed
as righteousness if we believe like Abraham believed. You mean
I gotta have the faith of Abraham? You gotta believe God. Not just
believe there is a God, not believe that God is God. You just gotta
believe God. You gotta believe what he says
in this word. You cannot worship him unless you worship him in
spirit and in truth, according to this word. What about the
blood atonement? It's the same. You can go back
to Leviticus chapter 17, verse 11, where God says, I have given
you the blood upon the altar to make an atonement for your
soul. It's the blood that maketh atonement for the soul. The blood
of God. And that was at least 4,000 years
ago, and it's the blood that maketh atonement still. Paul
came along 1,600 years later, and he said, without the shedding
of blood, there's no remission of sin. You see, it's the same
message. It's the blood, the blood of
God that makes atonement for the soul. Mercy, mercy's the
same. Mercy hasn't changed. Way back
in Exodus chapter 33, a long, long, long time ago, God said
to Moses, I'll be merciful to whom I'll be merciful. I'll be
gracious to whom I'll be gracious. And then years and years and
years later, Paul wrote a letter to the Romans and he said the
same thing. Because it was the same spirit
in Abraham's day and Moses' day as it is in Paul's day and Peter's
day and in our day. He's the same yesterday, today
and forever. We don't have any new Bible.
We've got new translations and many of them aren't worth reading.
They attempt to change the meaning of the scriptures, but Jesus
Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. We have
no new messages, no new revelation. We have the unchanging gospel
of the unchanging God. Well, what happened in the Garden
of Eden? God created man in his own image. God made man upright and holy.
God breathed into man the breath of life. Man became a living
soul. Man walked with God and God walked
with man. They were in fellowship one with
another. They were in communion with one with another. And God
gave man authority over all the animals. The man named them.
He gave him authority over the fish, everything. But God was
still God. God was still in control. Everything
that man had, God gave to him. God gave man one commandment,
obey me and live. Don't obey me and die. And it
was a covenant of works and man disobeyed God and man died spiritually,
though he lived 900 plus years. And Adam, all die. We died with
Adam. What causes all death on this
earth? What causes the tears? What causes the heartache? What
causes the sickness? What causes disease? What causes
war and rumors of war? The answer is sin. Sin. Sin's left its mark on everything.
Man wasn't just slightly wounded when he fell in the garden. No,
man died. What happened in the Garden of
Eden? That's what happened. What happened at the cross at
Calvary? Well, in the garden, man fell. On the cross, God's
chosen people were restored. And Adam all died. In Christ,
we were made alive. The first Adam of the earth is
earthly. The second Adam, the Lord Jesus,
is from heaven. Through the first Adam's disobedience,
we were made sinners. Through the second Adam's obedience,
we were made righteous. That hasn't changed. Why? Because
Jesus Christ is the same. Same yesterday, today, and forever.
And what happens when God in mercy and grace saves a sinner?
They believe God. They believe in Christ. They
believe that Christ put their sin away. I have great confidence
this morning that my sin is put away because I know who put it
away. And I know he cannot fail. I
have doubts about a lot of things concerning myself, but I don't
have any doubt at all about what he's done. He cannot fail. He that believes on the Son has
life, and he that believes not the Son hath not life. What happens
when a man believes they become new creatures? They're born again.
God quickens them and gives them life. If any man be in Christ,
he's a new creature. Old things have passed away.
Behold, all things have become new. They have eternal life.
They really do. Life eternal, life everlasting.
This is the record. God hath given us eternal life. This life is in His Son. He that
hath the Son hath life. They love God, they love God's
Word, and they love God's people. Everyone that loveth is born
of God. They are not born of God because
they love. They love because they're born
of God. And they're not born of God because they believe.
They believe because they're born of God. That's where a lot
of folks go wrong. These things will never change.
This is the message. This is the gospel. This is the
Christ. He is the way. He is the truth. He is the life. Jesus Christ
is the same yesterday and today and forever. And every one of
God's people gonna say, amen, so be it. That's so.