I asked you this morning to turn
to the book of Hebrews chapter 13. Hebrews chapter 13. There's a phrase that has been
on my mind for several days that I just simply could not get away
from that I want to talk to you about this morning in connection
with the fifth and the sixth verse. Let me read verse five
and six of Hebrews chapter 13. It says, let your conversation
be without covetousness and be content with such things as you
have. And then these next words, these
four words, for he hath said. 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. For he hath said. There's a great
deal of power that resides in thus saith the Lord. He hath
said. In the distresses of life, And
even when we come down to old age and experience the pains
of death, the corruptions that are within our hearts as we live
out our days in this world, and the temptations that we experience
and run into without all of these trials that we have, the trials
that are from above, and the temptations that are from beneath,
All are but light afflictions when we can hide ourselves behind
a he hath said. Whenever we can read the scriptures
and find a he hath said, it will lighten our journey and enable
us to face the difficulties of our lives a great deal more.
Whatever be our circumstances in this world, this must be our
daily resort, for he have said. We must learn the value of searching
the Word of God and find out from the Scriptures what He has
said. It's kind of like a fellow that
was in prison and he was locked up in jail and somebody came
along and threw a bag of keys into the cell. What do you suppose
that fellow would do with that bag of keys? Well, he'd begin
to search through those keys and try to find one that would
fit the lock on the door, isn't that right? Well, beloved, that's
exactly what we're to do in our searching of the Word of God,
to find a thus sayeth the Lord, a for he hath said. And whenever you're able to do
that, it'll unlock the prison, it'll unlock the door, it'll
unlock the gate, it'll unlock a lot of the mysteries of life
and enable you to be able to go forward. I think the scriptures
should be the classics of a believer or the classics of a Christian. And we're to store our memories
with the promises of God. We're to treasure the statements
uh... of the word of god and to treasure
them up david said by a word have i heard in my heart by a
word of a here at the end of the way in my heart i've traded
it up in my heart and so we need to do that as the people of god
if we would solve the difficulties and overthrow the doubts that
are in our minds we must know his work we must know that's
a of the lord we must know or he has said. Now don't take this
lightly. This is so very important. You're
in a wilderness and you don't have any road map. You have no
way to get through this wilderness but the word of God and you need
to hear what God says and you need to be reminded and if you
have these truths of God, these statements of Holy Scripture
stored away, in your heart and your mind, when you come to times
of difficulty, then those scriptures will be at hand, and you'll be
able to rely on them and count them. He hath said is the foundation
of all comfort, it's the foundation of all peace, it's the foundation
of all faith in this troubled world. He hath said. Now, I want to look at this a
little bit. The verse of scripture is very interesting. He said,
let your conversation be without covetousness. That means that
we're to let our behavior, we're to live so that in this world,
to indicate to others around us that we're trusting God and
that we're not covetous. That we're not covetous, meaning
that we're not always looking and always hoping for and always
thinking about something that we don't have. that we're always
wanting something besides what we do have at the present. And
you know what covetousness is? The Bible says that covetousness
is idolatry. It is as idolatry. It's like
having another God. Now if you have a God that is
faithful to you, a God that loves you, a God that is absolutely,
absolutely impeachable, When it comes to veracity, I mean,
this God of ours, He's never spoken a word that was not fulfilled,
that didn't come to pass. He can be trusted absolutely. Therefore, my friend, we must
not go around acting as if Our God was a false God, but we must
be absolutely faithful to Him and attempt as we walk in this
world to live without letting our behavior suggest to everybody
around us that our God is not up to par, our God is not faithful.
and we're just miserable because the Lord has not undertaken.
How many times have I sinned in that way? How many times have
you sinned in that way? Wanting and desiring and wanting
things to be different to the point where that we suggest to
those around us that something is inferior with our God. Something's
wrong with Him. And we don't want to do that.
We must not do that. And so he goes on to say, and
be content with such things as you have. We'll have a little
more to say about that at the end of the service. but he said
you be content with such things as you have be satisfied with
what god has given you in his providence and submit yourself
to him until he is willing and able until he is willing and
uh... you know god is able to do anything
until he is willing to change your circumstances that don't
mean you shouldn't be praying against your present situation
it doesn't mean that you shouldn't have desires and you shouldn't
have hopes But it does mean that you must rest it with him, and
be content with such things as you have. For he hath said, I
will never leave thee, whatever be your circumstances, whatever
be your situation, I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. The soul that on Jesus hath leaned
for repose I will not, I will not desert to his foes, that
so though all hell should endeavor to shake, I'll never, no never,
no never forsake. Now beloved, the one thing that
I want in this world, and all I need, all I need, is to have
that for he has said, I'll never leave thee, nor forsake thee.
And if God never leaves me, if God never forsakes me, all year
if the lord continues at the work that he's begun in me and
if god never never abandons the case my case if god never says
i give up if god never says i'm go let it go if god never says
i'm just going to abandon you let you go on your own way if
god never does that my friend things are well off with me things
are well off with me i i i've got plenty of praise god for
and to be thankful for and to rejoice in if the Lord is not
going to give up on me. Now, I want to talk a little
bit this morning about a couple things that are suggested to
me here in this verse. Now, the Lord said, I'll never
leave thee, nor forsake thee. Now, let's think a little bit
about being forsaken of God and what an awful condition this
is, to be forsaken of God. What would it mean if God was
to forsake you, if you were to be left and abandoned? Now, there's some things that
have taken on new meaning to me recently, and this is one
of them. that has taken on great meaning
to me in the last month or so and this forsaking if it were
to actually happen which we praise God it won't happen to believers
and to those that are in Christ it will never happen but forsaking
implies that we would be it implies an utter loneliness such as a
person in a vast howling wilderness where there was not a trace of
another human person could be found. What loneliness, what
utter loneliness there is when one is all off to himself, left
to himself, and there's no one else around. What utter loneliness. Now you would cry for help And
the echoes would in some way be your only reply. Nobody to
help. Nobody at hand. Nobody to come
to your rescue. Utter loneliness. Nobody. Loneliness is a feeling which
none of us delight in. I'm sure of that. To be utterly
alone, we have often said, is the ultimate in poverty. To be all alone. To have no one,
to have no one at all is ultimate in poverty. To be alone without
God is such loneliness that even the lips of the dam cannot express
the horror and the anguish that must be concentrated in it. Beloved, this loneliness, those
that are in hell, although there are many, many lost, ruined,
souls that are perishing for all eternity, even these, my
friends, still experience this terrible loneliness, forsaken
of God, abandoned by God in that awful place of hell. Well, how
would it be to be forsaken of God if God would leave us? And
I would picture to you this morning, Ben, the best state of those
that are forsaken of God. It is uncertainty, it is, let
me say it this way, it is certain destitution and doom if God forsakes
a soul. certain destitution and doom. One writer said, I would rather
be an Adam which has God with it predestinating its track and
forcing it onward according to his own will than I would be
an archangel left to my own choice to do as I would and to act as
I please without the control of God. He would soon miss his
way and fall to hell. So we are thankful this morning
that God has indeed taken up our case, and that he's directing
our steps, and it doesn't bother us what people say, well, you're
God, you teach that you're God. controls all the events of your
life. I've heard you say, preacher, that even the dust, the speck
of dust blowing by the March wind is under the sovereign control
of your God where it settles. And, beloved, we believe that.
We believe that our lives are in God's hand. and that he does
indeed direct us. Well, we want it that way. We
don't want to be abandoned by God. We don't want to be left.
We don't want to be forsaken. Because to be forsaken by God,
even if we were an archangel, we're bound to fall to hell because
there's no way that we could escape that doom. I believe free
will is the delight of wicked men. That's what I believe. I
believe that free will is the idol and it is the God, it is
the delight of wicked men, but that God's will is the glory
of true believers. God's will is the glory of true
believers. There is nothing a true saint
desires to get rid of more than his own will and to be absorbed
into the will and purpose of God. Did you hear what I said? Let me say it to you one more
time. There is nothing that a true saint of God desires to get rid
of more than his own will and to be absorbed into the will
and the purpose of God. To do according to the will of
him who is most good, most true, most wise, most mighty seems
like heaven on earth to me and I would not have it to be any
other way. Let others choose their independence. I want the glory of being wholly
dead in Christ and only alive in Him. That's what I want. Now listen to me, my friend.
If God forsakes us, our lives would end in nothingness. Now I'm going to make a statement
right here that I believe is absolutely of great importance,
and I want you to listen to it and get it. Only the will of
God can give dignity to a sinner's life. Now just mark it down. Only the will of God can give
dignity to a sinner's life. What would you be apart from
the will of God? If you were not caught up in
the purpose and the scheme and the holy purpose of God Almighty
in Christ, what would you be? My friend, I would have, regardless
of what my neighbors thought about me, regardless of what
my relatives thought about me, I would have no true dignity
in this world if God Almighty had not, when I was 16 years
old, got me in His embrace and said, I'm going to see you through
to the end, I'll begin the work in you, and I'll finish the work
in you, and my purpose will be your dignity. My will will be
your dignity. But we fight it. We fight it. We fight it, don't we, in the
flesh? We fight the sovereign will and purpose of God many,
many times, but that's the only dignity that this poor sinner's
got, is what God has done and what He purposed to do and what
He is doing in my life. That is our dignity. And my friend,
just settle down. Settle down. The Lord's gonna
see you through. He will give you the desires
of your heart as you delight yourself in Him. The Lord will
bless you. The Lord will not leave you.
The Lord will be faithful to you. And you trust Him. You rely
upon Him. And all ever think about the
will of God. And the desire of your heart
should be to be wholly dead in Christ and only alive in Him. Only alive for His purpose. Only
alive to do according to the Master's dictates. Only alive
to accomplish that which God wants. Only to be a slave to
Him and to His purpose. Only to be given over to Him.
entirely and fully. A man cannot give himself entirely
to his wife. A wife cannot give herself entirely
to her husband. A man cannot give himself entirely
to a church. He cannot, even though he's the
pastor. He's a slave to God in Christ. He's a slave to Christ. Every
man is a slave, he's a servant of the Most High God. He gives
himself to God first, and he loves God supremely and entirely. All together, with all of his
heart, he loves God. And then, that's looked upon
in the way the Scripture indicates, that if a man does not hate his
father and his mother, and his relatives. He doesn't hate his
family to the point where that he would say yes to God first. That man isn't worth his salt.
He is no believer. He is no genuine child of God
until he says I'm a servant of the Most High God and I will
serve Him. I will serve Him. I'll be faithful
to the God that I love and the God that I serve. Now, beloved,
listen. If God forsakes The best saint
alive, that man would immediately sense and feel ruin. He would feel ruin. He'd just
feel it. It's just overwhelming. Ruin!
He'd feel it. If God was to immediately forsake
him, take the grace of God away from him, he would be immediately
one that would be fit for nothing other than the guttering to be
cast out of men. He would go from bad to worse
in this world. Our unbelief sometimes lets us
get a glimpse of what this would be. But it is, thank God, only
a glimpse. And let us thank God for that.
It's only a glimpse. And sometimes our unbelief, did
you ever think God had forsaken you? Did you ever feel like God
had forsaken you? Did you ever feel like He ought
to have forsaken you? Did you ever feel like He was
curtains for you? And that you'd never come back?
That there was no way back from where you'd been? Listen to me.
Sometimes our unbelief tells us that. And we get a glimpse
of what it means to be utterly forsaken of God. But beloved,
he hath said, you see the importance of that? For he hath said, I
will never leave thee nor forsake us. Now the Lord Jesus tread
the winepress of God's wrath alone. And he said, you shall
leave me alone. And yet he said, I'm not alone
because the Father is with me. Now, there's no agony in that
statement, is there? Jesus said, you're going to all
leave me alone. But he said, the Father is not
going to leave me. The Father will not leave me.
And there was no agony in that statement, because God was with
him. But now on the cross, Jesus said, my God, my God, why hast
thou forsaken me? Beloved, the people of God will
never experience. Jesus was forsaken on the cross
by God the Father because he was made to be sin for us. And
because Jesus was going to hell in our place. And you see, in
order to experience what the sinner would have to experience
all throughout eternity, Jesus had to experience that on the
cross and he did. He suffered that on the cross.
And that's why he said, my God, my God, why have you abandoned
me and forsaken me? It was because he was made sin
for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in him
as we stood in him. So I think that it would mean,
first of all, to be forsaken of God would be utter loneliness
and desperate loneliness like the Lord Jesus experienced when
he was on the cross. And then, to be forsaken, it
would mean a sense of helplessness. You know, the Bible says power
belongs to God. And you withdraw the Lord and
make no difference how strong a man was, he must fail. The Bible says in him we live
and move and have our being. And without God, it's dust we
are and to dust we return. if the Lord was to abandon us
and leave us to ourselves. Now Christ knew what this was
when he said, I'm a worm and no man. He was so utterly broken,
so emptied of all power, he cried, my strength is dried up like
a potsherd. My strength is dried up. like a potsherd, our state would
be as deplorably destitute as his if God was to ever abandon
us and forsake us. It's kind of like Ezekiel's infant,
spoken of in Ezekiel, I think it's chapter 16, how that infant
was cast out into the open field with none to swaddle, none to
care for it, left to utterly perish and die and uh... the lord took up the case and
uh... this he was deserted uh... the
infant uh... left out in the open and none
to care for it and that's the way a man would be forsaken of
god and then uh... friendless too i thought about
that friend how it would mean to be like you wouldn't have
a friend but let god be thanked this morning a thousand times
Let God be thanked a thousand times that I have never been
friendless. I've always had a friend in this
world. There's been one that's stuck
closer than a brother, but I've had some and do have some true,
true, true friends, and I praise God for friends. But if God forsakes
a man, it'd be like he would be absolutely and totally friendless. Now, let me hurry on here. Thank God
this shall never be the lot of the children of God, that will
be friendless, hopeless, helpless, lonely. Because he has said,
the black shadow of this hopelessness went over Christ when he said,
my soul is exceeding sorrowful unto death. and he sweat his
word great drops of blood falling down to the ground our elder
brother the lord jesus christ our savior the anointed savior
he experienced all of that in our place he was forsaken of
god now this promise let's talk about this promise a little bit
what is positively guaranteed here i will never leave thee
well it means that all the attributes of god are engaged on our behalf,
that they're all for us, all God's attributes. And you can
go through the attributes of God in your mind this morning,
that they're all engaged for the believer. And I'm absolutely
overwhelmed, I'm amazed at how often times we see the attributes
of God in our daily lives being engaged on our behalf. I just
point this out, the other morning, Friday morning, we were coming
in town and we were just off of the interstate on 10th Avenue
South, was in a Volkswagen, had a little rabbit. And there was
a school bus from Vaughan, a lady driving it. She was in the inside
lane, I was in the outside lane, next to the guardrail coming
east. And all at once, she just came
over. And there was a place there where
the guardrail was set way back off, and then it comes out to
an angle like this, and I had just enough room there where
I could get over in that area, the bus went right on by, and
I came right out behind the bus. It just amazed me that there
was a place that the Lord had in His providence fixed for me
to run over in that little car. If I'd have had the bigger car,
she'd have just took the side right off of it. But the Lord
fixed me a little hole there just to go over. And it's amazing
how the Lord in His merciful providence, and I was talking
last Sunday, you remember, about very seldom I ever had any close
calls on the highway. But that was a close one, but
the Lord fixed me a hole. And I was able to get right in
it. And was preserved from having a bad situation. Well, is the
Lord strong? Is he strong? Well, he'll show
himself strong on our behalf. And all those who trust him,
the Lord will show himself strong. Is he a God of love? Then with
everlasting loving kindness, will he have mercy on us from
day to day in our trials, in our difficulties in this life?
Well, there are many examples of that in the scriptures. And
I thought about old Jacob. And Jacob was a man of trials.
And sometimes, I believe that old Jacob's trials were even
greater than Abraham's, and maybe even greater, and I'm sure they
were greater than Isaac's trials. He was really, indeed, the son
of tribulation. He fled from his father's house,
leaving his mother. He was abhorred by his brother,
and his brother sought his blood, sought to kill him. But God says
to him in all of his trials, he says, I will never leave thee.
I will never leave thee, old Jacob. I ought to leave you.
You're a worm, Jacob, and I ought to leave you. You're a conniving
worm, and I ought to just abandon you and forsake you, and I ought
to do what you would do to a worm if you found it laying in the
path. You just step on it and mash
it, and I ought to do that to you. But he said, I'll never
leave you. And he goes down, you remember,
at Paderama, and Laban cheats him, and then when he takes off
with what he thinks is rightfully his, Laban pursues him, and then
Esau comes against him, and God intervenes there, kisses him
instead of killing him. and uh... then his sons they
go out and they slay those shechemites and all the nations round about
they're out for refuge or they're out there for revenge i should
say and then uh... all these things that came upon
concerning his children and over in egypt and uh... joseph being
sold to the egyptians and and then uh... uh... his son's going
over into egypt by brain all the circumstances connected with
that and but god never let go he never let go of jacob back
years uh... old jacob uh... he said all these
things are against me but they weren't against because he lived
to see joseph and they have to go down into egypt there and
have all the blessings of of uh... that good life in Egypt
so God is at work in his life and God protects and preserves
him and good old Jacob proves that in six troubles God is with
these people and in seven he does not forsake them. Isn't
that an abundant blessing that in six troubles God's with these
people and in seven he won't forsake them. And you Jacobs
here this morning that are full of affliction, you're tried,
you're troubled, and you're an heir of heaven, and you believe
him, and I want you to believe him this morning when he says,
I will never, I'll never, whatever comes across your path, and however
difficult your situation gets, and whether you're to blame or
whether you're not to blame, whatever your situation is, I'll
never leave you. I'll never forsake you. For he
has said, I'll never leave you. Well, let me say that the Lord will
not and cannot leave his people because of his relationship to
them. I think this is confirming this
promise. He's your father. Will your father
leave you? Well, your earthly father, he
may. He may. but not your Heavenly
Father. He may forget you, but your Heavenly
Father will not forget you. He says, yet I will not forget
thee. I won't forget you. And we know
all the time men are abandoning their children in this world,
but God doesn't abandon His children. He doesn't. He said, I'll not
forsake you. He said, when your father and
mother forsake you, I'll take you up. He said, I'll just take
you up. I'll take care of it. I'll look
after it. and he's your husband you're part of his body part
of his body and you may just be a fingernail in his body but
he'll not lose even that you know he proved that when he delivered
the children of Israel out of Egypt scripture says there was
not even a hook left behind he brought them out and brought
their animals out and not even a hook was left behind so the
Lord's gonna see all of his people through His honor binds him to
never leave or forsake us. When we see a house that's half
built and abandoned, we know that somebody started something
they couldn't finish. But thank God that's not the
way it is with these people. Not God. Not God. He doesn't
start something he can't finish. He says, I give unto my sheep
eternal life, they shall never perish. If any of the sheep perish,
There would be diabolical laughter in hell against the character
of God, against the defeated Christ, against the God who undertook
what he could not finish. Never. No, never. Such will never
be the case. You say, well, I think old so-and-so's
saved. Well, I praise God that he is.
You say, well, I think he'll make it. I think he'll make it. I'm not sure whether he will
or not. Well, if he's saved, he'll make it. And you say, well,
I don't know, he kind of bothers me a little or we're kind of,
you know, we're kind of put out with him here and there and so
on and so forth. Well, let me tell you what the
poet said. He said, his honor, that means
God's honor, is engaged to save the meanest of his sheep. All
that his heavenly father gave his hands will surely keep. So regardless of how mean The
meanest, that means the lowest, that means the most unlikely
to make it. He's engaged to save the meanest
of his sheep, and I'm glad he is, because if there was one
that could get so low that he wouldn't save them, that he wouldn't
see them through, I'd be the one to get down there. I'd be
the one to be found down there solo. I'd just come in under
where the scale come across. I'd just be the one under. Just
one name under that and that'd be me. That'd be me. But he's
engaged to save the means of his sheep. Now my past experience
and your past experience proves that he'll not leave us. If he
was going to leave us, he would have before now. He would have
before now. And I know that he hadn't left
me before this morning. I know he hadn't. But if he was
going to, it would have been before today. He said, I will
still give the aid. He told me that. He told me that.
I'll still give the aid. I'll still do it. Now, if he
was going to leave us, he would have that before now. I've been
in deep waters like you have, like Jonah, down to the roots
of the mountains with the weeds wrapped around my head. had he
not brought me up, I'd have been a goner, never would have come
up again, never would have got another breath of air, but the
Lord brought me up. Now if you found him unworthy
of your confidence, then you disown him. If you found the
Lord unworthy of your confidence, you stand up right now and disown
the Lord, and disown him. But I tell you what, I can't
do that. The past with a thousand tongues tells me that he'll not
leave me, nor forsake me. Ask the saints of God that have
gone on before. Did any perish, ever perish,
trusting Christ? Some preachers, they prostitute
themselves to falsehood and say that there have been some the
Lord has forsaken, that some have been lost. Some have been
lost that thought they were saved, but I tell you that such was
never the case. Such was never the case. None
has ever been lost. Psalm 3728 says, The Lord loveth
judgment, forsaketh not his saints. They are preserved forever. but
the seed of the wicked shall be cut off. Jonah cries, the
earth with her bars was about me forever, and yet in a short
time he says, salvation is of the Lord. The glorified ones
above, through much tribulation, have inherited the kingdom, and
they now wear their white robes and say to us, doubt not the
Lord, neither distrust him, he has not forsaken his people,
nor cast off his chosen. Well, let me say that there's
no reason why he should cast me off. There's no reason. Do
you suggest? Well, there is one, preacher.
There is one reason why. It's your sin. It's your sin. God ought to cast you off because
of your sin. Well, now, if I laugh, it would
be a holy laugh. I would not laugh as a hypocrite
would laugh. I would laugh from the standpoint
of the fact that that can never be a cause with God to cast off
one of His children. Their sin can never be a cause
with God because we're full of sin. We were full of sin when
He first laid hold of us. Were you not a sinner when God
saved you? How could He have saved somebody
that wasn't a sinner? Would He have touched you If
you were not a sinner, the mercy of God is for the guilty. You
can't get mercy unless you're guilty. And you were full of
sin when God laid hold of you. Now, when He espoused our cause,
when He laid hold of us, when He gave us hope, well, that is
evidence of the fact that He took care of our sin. He dealt
with our sin. He put away our sin. That might
never have been a cause why He should not have loved us. But
having loved them when they were dead in trespasses and sin, their
sin can never be a reason for God leaving us. If God loved
us when we were dead in sin, then our sin can never be a reason
why God should abandon us. There is no fear that a true
child of God will ever misuse this truth. Now the hypocrite,
as we mentioned earlier, may. He may say, I'll sin because
God will not cast me away. But the hypocrite is not in the
fold. You see, the hypocrite is a lost
man. But the true believer, he will
never mind this truth about his heart and say, now will I love
him who have loved his own. Love them unto the end. Glory
to God. Amidst all my sin and care and woe, his spirit will
not let me go. Will not let me go. So you see,
we can We can have a holy laugh here, couldn't we? We could just
laugh out loud, and I'm not too much for all this business that
they've got going now about this holy laughter business, but there
are times when we can laugh. Now, there are some conclusions
that can be drawn from this doctrine, and let me just quickly give
them to you. I know the time's got away from us. First of all,
I said earlier that I'd mention contentment. Well, now you know
there's a struggle to remain content to have any degree of
contentment in this world. Anybody that would stand up and
say, well, I'm just content all the time. There ain't nothing
that I want any different. Well, you're dead. That's what's
the matter with you. You don't have a bit of life
in you. You say, I just go through this
world, and I'm just as happy as I can be. Well, you're probably
not in your right mind. let me say this to you that there's
a struggle of faith to be content in a spiritual way a struggle
of faith and you know what I'm talking about you gotta believe
that he has said and he said you be content with such things
as you have because I've said and he's gonna bring you right
down to where maybe you don't won't have anything left except
that promise right there and he'll make you content with that
and then he'll turn around and give you what you want. He'll
give you everything you need, everything you want. He'll bless
you, but he'll bring you to the place where you've got to say
in your own heart, Lord, I'm content with just you. And the
fact that you're faithful and you've never made a mistake and
you're going to be with me in spite of what I am, you're going
to bless me. It's kind of like the fellow
that had a bottle of water and oh boy, he thought that was something. He had a bottle of water on a
hot day. And he was bragging up. I got this bottle of water.
I got this bottle of water. And there's a fella come along
and said, well, you know, you got a bottle of water. I don't
have one. But he said, I live by a well. I don't need a bottle
of water. I live right by a well. All I
got to do if I want a bottle, if I want a drink, I just go
out there every day and I just get me a drink out of the well. And you know, there's a lot of
things that we don't have no stock on hand. But then, if we
live by the well, if God's faithful, we may not have nothing on the
shelf, and we may not have no money in the bank, but if you
live by the well, that's worth a lot, isn't it? If the Lord
said, I'm not going to leave you, I'm not going to forsake
you, then that's living by the well, that's what that is. And
so you don't have to worry about these people running around bragging
about their bottle of water. You don't have to worry about
it in the least. Now, I think this will give us a little courage. We can boldly say, God is my
helper. We can boldly say. The Lord said,
I'll never leave you forsaken. You can have some courage. The
Lord's my helper. God's my helper. Who's going
to help you, preacher? Well, the Lord said he was He
was going to help me. The Lord said he'd help me. Said
he would. And he has. And he will. So you can be, somebody said,
better become more timid. You ought to be, you ought to
be not so forceful. You ought to kind of back up
a little bit and kind of act like you was more whipped out.
You know, and of course we act that way enough the way it is.
I tell you, we ought to be more bold to say the Lord is my helper. The Lord is my helper, and I
don't need to fear what man will do unto me. A child of God afraid? God afraid? Well, I've seen a
few of them afraid, and I think I've been afraid a few times
myself. Take a song and praise God, and
leave your trouble with the Lord. And then this text, as we said,
is a ground for faith. Let us lean upon our God with
all of our weight. We must cast ourselves upon His
faithfulness and bring all our weariness to Him, to His rest. Bring your weariness and your
tiredness to His rest. And you say, well, I'll just
go out of here today and relax and talk to the Lord. I'm just going to rest in the
Lord. I'll bend up one side and down the other, just troubled
and tried and tested. I've had so much grief and problems
and I just can't tell whether I'm foot or horseback and I'm
just going to go out and just trust the Lord. Just trust the
Lord. I'm going to lean on Him. Living
or dying, in time or in eternity, He will never forsake you. He
will never leave you. Well, I wish this promise belonged
to all of us here this morning, but there's some of you here
maybe that better not touch it. You better not touch it because
it's not yours. And if you take this promise
to yourself and you're not a believer, you're not a Christian, you're
not one that's trusting wholly in Christ, if you've not died
with Him and been raised by faith in Him to spiritual life, if
you're not a believer, then, my friend, you're opening somebody
else's mail. This don't belong to you. This
belongs to a believer. It is the exclusive property
of the soul who leans and trusts on the Lord. He will bring you
home to eternal glory. Trust Him. Believe this promise,
for He has said, for He has said. You think about that, the great
God. And you know, somebody said a long time ago, and I got it
a long time ago, straight, that the God of the Bible is a talking
God. He's a talking God. And He has
said, what He said was, He said, I'll never leave you nor forsake
you. Do you trust me? Do you trust me? Father, in the
name of Jesus, we give thanks to you today and we praise you
and we take a song and we take a word in our hearts and we praise
you for your faithfulness. I praise you that you have never
abandoned me or left me. I take you at your word and I
know in my experience you've not left me. You've been with
me. You've come to me when I thought that surely you'd forsaken me.
But you never have. You've always come to me. And I thank you and I praise
you from my heart this morning for your merciful goodness and
kindness to this poor, unworthy sinner. Bless this congregation
this morning. Save some trembling, helpless,
poor soul who doesn't want to go out into eternity. forsaken
of God, forsaken of the holy angels, forsaken of all believers,
going out into eternal wrath and hell. Save them this morning
as they look toward Christ, as they look toward Christ and look
away from themselves. May you save them now, in Jesus'
name, amen.