Go with me, if you would, to
Hebrews 13 again. Hebrews 13. Let me give you the
title of this message and then we'll read the verses that lead
up to where the title's taken from. The title is, The end of
our conversation. The end of our conversation.
The goal of our conversation. The object of our conversation. The prize of our conversation. Now let's begin reading in verse
one. Let brotherly love continue. Be not forgetful to entertain
strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares. Remember them that are in bonds
as bound with them, and them which suffer adversity as being
yourselves also in the body. Marriage is honorable in all,
and the bed undefiled, but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.
Let your conversation be without covetousness, and be content
with such things as you have, for he hath said, I will never
leave thee, nor forsake thee, so that we may boldly say, The
Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto
me. 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. And the word there is in italics. Considering the end of conversation. Considering the end of our conversation. Considering the goal. Considering
the object. Considering the prize. And what
is it? What is the glory and the joy
of our conversation? Verse 8 says, Jesus Christ, the
same yesterday and today and forever. That's the joy of our conversation. That's the end. That's the object. That's the goal of our conversation. Now, I want to just talk to you. I
don't know if this is going to be a normal message or not a
normal message. I don't know. But I just want
to talk to you. That's all I want to do. I want
to be candid with you. Um, from my own heart, I want to,
I just want to honestly, very sincerely tell you what's in
my heart. And I know when I say these things
to you, I wrote it all down. because I'm not one to remember,
but I have something that I want to say to you, and I know when
I do, you will feel the same way. If you belong to Christ,
you'll feel the same way. But I'll just tell you this from
the sincerity of my own heart. I want to be with the Lord Jesus
Christ. I really do. I want to be with
him. I very, very sincerely want to
be with Him. The more that I see of Him in
His Word, the longer we go, we see Him in this place, we
see Him in that place, we see Him in this light, we see Him
in that light. The more that I see of Him in
His Word, the more real He becomes to me. And some of these things that
I'm going to say, it's hard. It's going to be hard for a young
person to enter into it because, um, for me, it has come with
time, but the more that I see of him, the more real he becomes
to me. And the more real his kingdom
becomes to me. It's becoming very real to me,
a real place with real people who I really love. And the more real an existence
with Him becomes to me, I start to imagine and think about what
an existence with Him is going to be like. A true life, a true
conversation A true existence with Him. Seeing more of Him
in His Word makes everything concerning eternity more real
to me. When that moment comes and we
cross over into eternity, it's becoming more real to me. And
the more real it becomes to me, the more ready I am to go. I believe, I believe, I feel
in my heart. Now, if somebody said you're
about to go, I'm sure fear would, would jump in there and I'd be
afraid and I'd be torn all to pieces. I'm not saying I wouldn't
be, but in this moment right now, I believe I'm more ready
to go than I was five, 10 years ago. I'm getting more excited. I'll
never forget that when my mother, not long at all, just weeks before
the Lord took her, she was reading the scripture, sitting in our
living room. I was on the couch. She was in her chair and she
started laughing. And I said, what? She said, nothing. I said, really, what? She said,
don't worry about it. I said, tell me, what is it?
She said, I'm getting excited. I'm getting excited. It's becoming
real. Everything is becoming real.
The more real it becomes to me, the more ready I am to go. I want to exist with the Lord Jesus
Christ. That's what I want. Now, I fully
enter into what the Apostle Paul said in Philippians 1. He said,
I'm in a straight between the two. I'm torn between the two. That's
what he said. He said, I have a desire to depart
and to be with Christ, which is far better. That's what's
becoming real to me. It's far better. But Paul said, to abide in the
flesh is more needful for you. And I feel that. I understand
what he's saying. All we need is Christ. All I
need is Christ. All you need is Christ. All my
children need is Christ. All this world needs is Christ.
I'm nobody, I'm nothing. But if I can just speak in my
humanity to you, just the thoughts that go on in my mind, I have
a family that needs me. Now, you know, you understand
what I'm saying. I have a family that needs me.
I want to believe that I have a congregation who needs me. I have friends who need me. Most importantly, most importantly
of all that, I believe God has sheep out there. I believe that's
why he raised up the gospel in Kingsport. I believe it's because
God has sheep out there who have never heard the call of love
from His gospel before. And I pray that we'll have the
ability to send that gospel call for as long as the Lord will
allow us to send it. I don't, I understand that the
gospel moves. It doesn't stay in one place
forever. And I don't know how long He'll keep it here. But
as long as He will, I pray He'll let us have the joy and the blessing
of sending that message out. I was so encouraged a couple
of weeks ago. You know, a lot of times I'll
get a voicemail. We start our Bible study at nine
o'clock and our service is, we start at 10 o'clock and our service
is at 1045. Well, the TV broadcast goes out
at 1030. And a lot of times after I'm done, I'll have a voicemail.
A couple of weeks ago, I got one and it just, it blessed my
heart so much. A man called and he said, I've
got to have that message. I've got to have a copy of that
message. That was so encouraging to me. Brother Obi makes our
CDs and sends them out. And I called him today. I texted
him today and said, a fella called, he wants a CD. That's encouraging
to me. It's such a joy and such a blessing.
And as long as He will allow us to stay here and do that,
I want to stay here and do that. I wanna go be with Him. But as
long as He'll let us send that gospel out, I wanna stay here
and do that. Now, I know that He is not going
to lose and He's not gonna leave behind one soul that he purposed
to save, whether I'm here or not, or whether any man is here
or not. He's not going to lose one. And
he's not going to leave behind one. But I also know that he
has purposed to call every single soul to salvation through the
means of a man preaching the gospel. And I believe he's given us a
heart to preach that gospel. I really do. I believe he has
given us a heart to preach the gospel. And so for that reason,
I'm happy to stay and I'm excited to stay. I'm excited to see what
he'll do. But while I and while you stay
here and do these things that are necessary to stay here and
do, Our conversation, the tenor of our life, the direction that
we lean toward in everything is Jesus Christ, our Lord. He is everything to us. We are looking to Him. We are
looking for Him. I have it in my mind. I just
have it in my mind, humanly speaking, that the Lord will take me before
He returns. But He may not. I mean, He may
return before He takes us. And we need to be looking for
Him every day. We need to be looking for Him,
and we are. We're waiting for Him. We are talking about Him. We're anticipating being with
Him. And the longer that we go in
these things, the more that we look into these things, and the
more that we see of Him, the more we're falling in love with
Him. That's what is happening here. If you want to know how can a
person sit under that same message week after week, year after year,
decade after decade, here's how. We're falling in love with Him.
That's what's happening. That's what's keeping us. You
don't have to keep any of God's people because they've fallen
in love with Him. And we are falling in love with
Him. We are falling in love with His
character. That's what's happening. The
more that we hear Him say the things that He said and the more
that we We're falling in love with who He is. We're falling
in love with His mind concerning things, what He thinks about
things, and we're falling in love with His heart concerning
things. We're falling in love with the
fact that He loves us. The more that we see of His love
for us, as soon as somebody hears that
somebody else likes them, It makes you like that person. As
soon as somebody hears that somebody loves them, it makes you love
that person. And the more that we hear of His love for us, we're
falling in love with that. We're falling in love with His
care for us. I realize more and more as I
go, I'm really not providing for my family. He is. He's providing for my family.
And He's taking care of all these things. We're falling in love with His
pity for us. He has pity on us. We most definitely have fallen
in love with everything that He's done for us and given for
us, not just to us, but for us in Himself, the sacrifice of
Himself. He has sacrificed Himself to
us. The sacrifice of His death, how
can you... I mean, how can you enter into
the love we have for everything that He did in that? In His death,
we're falling in love with His power and His authority in it. We're all afraid of death. We're
all afraid of death. The reason we're excited for
eternity is because it's life, not death. I don't want to have
anything to do with death. I want to pass on to life. And
we're falling in love with His power and authority over every
bit of it. We're falling in love with His
power to save us and His power to lay down His own life and
His power to take His life again. We love His authority over everything
concerning What's to come? He said, I hold the keys of hell
and death. It's all in his hands. We love his victory over all
things concerning us. We love the certainty. Don't
you love the matter of factness, the certainty and the safety
that we have in him. We love that every promise from
him is yay and amen. every promise. There are no ifs,
ands, or buts with Him. Don't you love that? None. We
love the fact that He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. That is the end of our conversation
here on this earth. It's Him. He is the conversation
of our life, and we love that that's the case. We love it. We love by faith, seeing him
as he was in the beginning, what his delights were. We love by
faith through his word, seeing him as he is right now. And we
love through the promise of the scripture, seeing him as he will
be in the future. And you know what we love about
him, about all that? It's the same. It is the same. What we saw in him in the days
of Moses and in the days of Noah, we saw a holy God of judgment
for sin. He's still that same holy God
today, and he'll be that same holy God forever. Well, we saw him to be in the
days of Joshua and David. We went through the story of
Joshua and all that, everything he conquered. David defeat all
of his enemies. We love the defeating of all
of his foes, the victory in all of his battles. He is still that
same glorious in power, victorious God today, and He will be that
victorious God forever. What we saw Him to be in the
days of His incarnation on this earth, the Son of Man. That's what we saw when He, for
33 1�2 years, we saw the Son of Man. We saw a man who was
humble and self-proclaimed to be meek. lowly he called himself. Substitute for sinners, the one
who touched himself with the feeling of our infirmities, the
one who understands, the one who intercedes. What we saw is
our mediator between God and man, our advocate with the Father. He is still that same glorious
friend of sinners. He's still the same glorious
friend of sinners today, and He will be that friend of sinners
forever. Proof of that is in what we saw
of Him hanging on the cross as our Lamb slain for sin. He was our Lamb slain before
the foundation of the world. He will be our Lamb slain in
the midst of the throne forever. The glory in our conversation
concerning Him is in the fact that He does not change. He does not change. That's the
beauty of His character. He does not change. He is the
same yesterday, today, and forever. To me, one of the greatest character
traits that a person can have is being the same, just being
the same. You know, whenever you have to
try to figure out how a person's going to be today, oh, how are
you today? How do I need to handle you today? That's... I just like
it when people are the same. If you're going to be mean to
me, just be mean always. I'll know what to... No, don't.
Please don't. You know what I mean, though.
It's a wonderful character trait, just the same. I love seeing
that in our Lord. That's our security. That's our
eternal security. Turn with me over to Malachi
chapter three. Malachi chapter three, verse
six. He said, for I am the Lord, I
change not, therefore you sons of Jacob are not consumed. I'm
the Lord. I change not. I've heard many people say, well,
God changes all the time. He changes his mind. I've heard
many people say that. I would dread the thought to
think that God changed all the time. And I know he said that,
but you can't count on that anymore. I would dread the thought. I
change not. He said, that's why you sinful
sons of Jacob are not concerned. It's because I change not. James said, there is no variableness
or shadow of turning in him. I love that. Lamentations 3 says, it is of
the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed because his compassions
fail not. They do not change. They are
new every morning. That means exactly like they
were yesterday. That means they start over in
the same place they did yesterday. Great is thy faithfulness. That's
so beautiful. That's just beautiful. Great
is thy faithfulness. There's nothing more beautiful.
I tell you, a glorious character trait is faithfulness. Just faithfulness. Turn with me to Hebrews 6. Every
time we turn to Hebrews 6, I believe I'm gonna tell you that I love
this verse of scripture. I adore this verse of scripture. Hebrews 6 verse 13, it says,
for when God made promise to Abraham, God made a promise to
Abraham. And it says when God made promise
to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he swear
by himself. And, and I'll say this every
time, but I'm gonna say it again. No one, no one, no one needs
to ever say, I swear to God. Don't ever say that, never. But the only one who could said,
I swear to God. That is just, that's just awesome
to me. That is so holy. Because he could
swear by no greater, he swore, he said, I swear. Verse 14 saying, surely blessing
I will bless thee and multiplying I will multiply thee. If I said
I'll do it, I'll do it. Verse 15 and so after he had
patiently endured, Abraham obtained the promise. God did it. Verse
16, for men verily swear by the greater and an oath for confirmation
is to them an end of all strife, wherein God willing more abundantly
to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel. That means the unchangeability,
if that's even a word. God willing to show that He does
not change. willing more abundantly to show
unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel confirmed
it by an oath that by two immutable things, two unchangeable things,
his oath and his covenant. in which it was impossible for
God to lie, we might have a strong consolation who have fled for
refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us, which hope we
have as an anchor of the soul." This hope, this unchangeable
promise is an anchor for our soul. both sure and steadfast,
and which entereth in to that within the veil, whither the
forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus made an high priest
forever after the order of Melchizedek." That means he made a promise
of redemption to his people, a promise of atonement, a promise
of salvation. He made a promise to make a payment
of blood for them. And he'll never go back on his
promise. Never. He is unchangeable in word, in
deed, in character, in everything that he is as God and man. So go back to our text, Hebrews
13. Hebrews 13 verse one says, let
brotherly love continue. His love is the same. That everlasting love that he
had for us before he formed us in the belly, he still has that
love for us. I've tried to ruin it. You know,
I can ruin another human being's love for me, but not him. He has the same love. He'll always be there. It will
not change. Verse two says, be not forgetful
to entertain strangers for thereby some have entertained angels
unaware. His hospitality is the same.
He said, come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden,
I'll give you rest. It will not change. He said,
him that cometh to me, I will in no wise cast out. I think
all the time about the fact that because he said that in my heart,
I can go to him. Lord, I'm coming. Based on what
you said, that I will not be cast out. I'm coming, I'm begging
for mercy. He said, I will in no wise cast
out. Not now, not ever. Verse three says, remember them
that are in bonds as bound with them and them which suffer adversity
as being yourselves also in the body. His compassion, his suffering
pity that tied him to our bonds, it's still exactly the same.
He knows how to comfort us. He knows how to console us. because
He suffered the same sufferings we did. He took our sufferings
upon Himself. Verse 4 says, Marriage is honorable
in all, in the bed undefiled, but whoremongers and adulterers
God will judge. His union with us is still exactly
the same. In the beginning it says, Our
husband was our maker. In the end, we'll be the lamb's
wife. That union is still the same.
Verse five says, let your conversation be without covetousness and be
content with such things as you have. For he hath said, I will
never leave thee nor forsake thee. His faithfulness is still
exactly the same. Great is his faithfulness. God
is faithful. God is faithful. Verse six says,
so that we may boldly say the Lord is my helper and I will
not fear what man shall do unto me. His help is exactly the same. The way he helped our brethren,
he will help us. We saw some, we have seen some
miraculous help in here. And the way He helped them, He
will help us. His help is exactly the same.
He is still a very present help in trouble. Verse seven says,
remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken
unto you the word of God. His word will forever be the
same. Not one word will fail, not one
word will be broken. It goes on to say, whose faith
follow, considering the end of their conversation, considering
the end of our conversation, the goal, the prize. Verse eight, here it is. Jesus Christ, the same yesterday
and today and forever. What this word says, He was and
He is and He will be. He was, He is, and He will be. Thank God He's the same. He's
the same. We can count on Him. For the
rest of this time, however long it may be, we can count on Him. And when that time comes, whether
He takes us before He returns or He returns before He takes
us, we can count on Him in that moment. And then for all eternity, we're
gonna be able to count on Him. He is the same. He's the same. Now, I'm going to go ahead and
close. I was going to close with Acts
chapter 1, and we're not going to read it just because I've
been long enough, but this is what it says. It says that the
Lord, right before He ascended back to His Father, He spoke
to the disciples, and He told them some things, and they were
asking Him some questions, and He blessed them. And he departed
up into heaven and they all stood there with their faces looking
up toward heaven, watching him as he arose. And while they were
standing there looking up to heaven, two men appeared in white
shining garments and they said, you men of Israel, why stand
you here gazing into heaven? This same Jesus who you have watched go into
heaven. He's gonna come back down just
like He went up. I have fallen in love with the
Jesus Christ of Scripture. It's the only one I know. This
is the man I've fallen in love with. The man from the Old Testament,
the man from the New Testament, the man from 2,000 years ago,
this is the man I've fallen in love with. This same Jesus. is coming back in light manner
as we saw him go up. And after they realized that,
all the disciples went back into an upper room and it listed all
of the names of the apostles and it said they were there with
the rest of the disciples and with the women, they were there
with Mary and all of them. And what do you suppose, while
they were all sitting there in that upper room, what do you
suppose their conversation was? Jesus Christ, the same, yesterday,
today, forever. Their conversation, that's our
conversation. Conversation of all God's people.
All right, let's all stand together.