Well, you can't possibly be any
more glad to see me than I am to be with you. Rebecca and I
give thanks that you've received us and embraced us as you have.
It's a tremendous blessing to us. Turn this evening to the
book of Numbers. Numbers, Chapter 10. We're going to read one verse
of Scripture in Numbers 10, and that's verse 29. And Moses said unto Hobab, the
son of Ragul the Midianite, Moses' father-in-law, he said, We're
journeying unto the place of which the Lord said, I will give
it you. Come thou with us, and we will
do thee good. for the Lord has spoken good
concerning Israel." Now, the simple message of this scripture
is so very obvious to the believer. You come with us, we'll do you
good. It can't be any simpler than
that, can it? You come with us and we'll do
you good. And every believer, upon conversion,
finds out quickly that this is true. And the longer a believer
is with Christ and is joined to a body of believers, the sweeter,
the better, and the more wonderful it becomes. All of God's children
both believe and rejoice in this simple truth. Going with Christ
and his people will do you good. Now, to all others And to you
children tonight, I want to tell you something tonight, you children,
you listen to me. There's a lot of things you can
do in your life in the years ahead. You're probably looking
forward, some of you, to junior high and to high school and some
to college and getting out on your own and doing a lot of things.
But one day maybe you remember that your old buddy Bob said
this to you. The most important thing in the
whole world, the most important thing in your whole life is simply
this. No matter where you go in Lexington
or what you do, you come with us. You come with the people
of God, because we'll do you good. You're going to find a
lot of people who will do you harm, but God's people will only
do you good. Let's look a little closer at
all this verse says, and perhaps God's Spirit will persuade someone
tonight to come go with us. Come go with us. We'll look again
at this verse, verse 29, the number 10. Who is Chobab? Well, he's the father-in-law
of Moses, which means Moses was married to his daughter. And
he was a Midianite. Now, a Midianite, if you look
up Midian, what it means is strife. somebody who makes strife. And
the Midianites were always a snare and a bunch of trouble to the
people of God, to Israel. And by nature, Hobab here is
a picture of every lost man. He, by nature, is just what we
are by nature. He's a troublemaker. He causes
strife. He's selfish. He's interested
in his own way, in his own good. And that's us. You see, by nature,
we're blind to the truth and to goodness, to holiness, the
true and living way. And that's what's pictured here.
You and I are by nature just like Hobab. When you see his
name, that's you, Matthew. That's you, Kelly. That's us.
We're Hobabs. Just Hobabs. Now, what did Moses
say to Hobab? You see here, he said to him,
We are journeying. We are journeying. Notice he
didn't say, Well, we're thinking about journeying, or we're planning
a journey, or we hope to journey, or we might journey. What do
you say to him? We are journeying. Moses was already committed to
the journey. You know what a journey is? It's
to leave one place and go somewhere else, isn't it? But you know
what most of us do? You may go on vacation or something.
Your home is here in Lexington. You may go on a journey, but
you know what you do every time? You go out somewhere and you
come right back, don't you? You go there and you come back.
And you see, by nature, that's us. We have this little circle. It's called the world. We live
on it. And you may journey someplace,
anywhere in this world, but you're never leaving that world. These
fellows who go out to outer space, what do they do, Zach? They come
right back, don't they? Because they can't live out there. They
cannot go there. And I'll tell you what, this journey we're talking about
is not of this world. This journey is to leave this
place and start for someplace else and to go there forever. Forever. When God revealed the
promised land to Israel, true Israel never desired to go back
to Egypt. You see, they didn't look back. They chose to stay
on the journey. Lot was not told to get out of
Sodom until the firestorm stopped, did he? That's not what he said. No, God said, you get out and
don't go back. Don't look back. Lot's wife did. And we see what happened there.
So this is a one way journey for every true believer. And
let me show you in Mark, chapter six, what you need for this journey. There's only two things that
we need to have on this journey. Mark, chapter six. It may surprise you. the two
things we need. In Mark 6, verse 7, the Lord
called unto him the twelve, his disciples, and began to send
them forth by two and two, and gave them power over unclean
spirits. And he commanded them that they
should take nothing for their journey except two things. Take a staff. Take a shepherd's
crook only. Don't take script. Don't take
bread. Don't take money in your purse.
Those things will just burden you down. But he said, now take
shoes. He said, be shod with sandals
and not put on. You don't need two coats. Just
take just take one. And he said to them, in what
place, wherever you enter into a house, there abide till you
depart from that place. And whosoever shall not receive
you nor hear you when you depart, then shake off the dust under
your feet for a testimony against them. Verily, I say unto you,
it will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah on the day
of judgment from than that city. And they went out and preached
that men should repent. The two things they needed, one
was a staff, and that represents the Word of God. We need the
Word of God to survive on this journey. The second thing they
needed was shoes. And that's the grace of God to
protect us on the path through this world. We're leaving this
world. And you need shoes, you need
grace, and you need the Word of God on this journey. But notice
what the disciples, the message they had, which is repent. You
know what repent means in its simplest form? It means turn. Turn around. You see, the journey
we're on now just goes like this, doesn't it? We need to turn around
to depart. It's a turning. Change directions. Turn from where you're headed
and come with us to the promised land. Now back to Numbers chapter
10. And look where was Moses journeying
to. He said, we are journeying unto
the place of which the Lord said, I'll give it to you. I'll give
it to you. It doesn't say that they're journeying
to a place or to some place. It's to the place. The place. When a person leaves this earth,
this world, You know, don't believe all this foolishness about another
place. There's no such thing as reincarnation.
There's no place called Nirvana. There's not a place that's filled
with Vestal Virgins, like the Muslims say. There's not some
big baseball field in the sky. There's no purgatory. There's none of those places.
There's only two places mentioned in all the Scripture. When men
depart this world, all men by nature are headed to a place
that's an awful place. It's a place of death and torment.
But God's people are journeying. They're not just going any place.
They're going to the place. The place. And let me tell you
about the place. The place of which the Lord said, I'll give
it to you. Notice you don't earn it. You cannot earn a ticket
to this place. It's free. It's a gift. You can't
pay for it because it's priceless. Yet you can't just sit around
your whole life and live however you want to and one day a bright
light comes on and you just radiate up off the operating table. That's
not how it works. That's not how the journey works. It must be given to you. It must
be given to you. And notice Moses said to Hobab,
come with us. Now, like Hobab, you and I can
choose not to come. Now, listen to me here. This
is maybe one of the saddest verses in all of Scripture. Moses said
to Hobab, Come with us. Come with us, we'll do you good.
And look what Hobab's answer was in verse 30. Hobab said to
Moses, I will not go. You children, I understand that
by nature you will not go. You say, how do you know that,
Bob? Because I wouldn't go. If God left it up to me, I wouldn't
go on this journey. Neither would your parents. Just
wouldn't go. You see, Hoban says, I'll depart
to my own land in my own kindred. I'm going to stay right where
I am. Do we all realize that if left alone, we'd make the
same choice as Hoban? We would not go. We don't look
down on Hobab because except for the grace of God, we'd all
do the same thing. We'd say what he did. I won't
go. We need someone to turn us, to turn us, to cause us to seek
repentance. Well, what makes the place so
special? I hope I can illustrate this
well. My daughter and her husband, Adam, brought the two grandchildren
down over Labor Day and We ate, we played, we ate, we played,
we ate, played. We had the one room of the house
was just covered with those interlocking blocks and just cars and stuff
with the tricycle. The red wagon went down the driveway
slope a million times. And y'all got, any grandpa in
here got a problem with fudgesicles at 10 a.m.? Not me. Works for
me. Got no problem with it. And when
the weekend was over that Monday afternoon, they drove him home,
and little Sam at bedtime was exhausted from playing and eating
and playing and eating. And his mother was trying to
get him to go to bed, and he said, I want to go back to Lexington. I want to go back to Lexington. I want to go there. Well, what
makes Lexington so special? I can tell you it's Papa and
Nana that make it special. And hear me on this, the place
we're journeying to, what makes it so special? It's not what,
it's a who that makes it special. The place we're journeying to
is special because that's where the Lord Jesus Christ is. That's
why you need to come and go with us. We're heading to Him and
the place. The place where Moses and Israel
are journeying, what makes it so special is Christ. The surroundings,
the provisions, you can read about them in Revelation if you
want, but all that gold is not worth as much as concrete is
in this world because they paved the streets with it. It's not
the stuff that's there, it's the person that's there. Those things are nothing without
Christ. That place is the place because of Christ. Come thou
with us. Come thou with us. What's that
mean? Us? Well, it does mean the people
of God. And I would tell you children
this. There are no better traveling companions in this world than
the people of God. They'll do you good. But the
us here doesn't mean come go with us, just the people of God.
It means come go with us. That means Christ and his people. The us there, it does mean It
means Don and Paul and Paul, and it means Josh and Joe. It means us. But the important
thing is that it means Christ and us. We're one with Christ.
We'll do the good. The we is not just the people
of God. We'll try to do good for one
another, won't we? We love one another. But it's
Christ who's going to do the eternal good here. When we say
we, we mean us and Him. We mean Him and us. Outside of
Christ, we're nothing but sin. We in Christ, with Christ, one
with Christ, we'll do you good. We'll do the earthly good and
eternal good. And as believers, we ought always to seek to do
good, especially to one another, but just how good is You know,
there's says us and there's we, you know, the other big personal
pronoun, don't you? It's I. What about I? And you can ask, you can put
yourself in the I word here. Turn to Romans 7 and look what
the Apostle Paul said about I. By nature, I don't know all I
am, but I know a little bit about what I am. I know I'm weak. I
am frail. I'm thoughtless. I'm wicked.
I'm a sinner. What's wrong with me? And is it just me? No. It's
you too. It's you too. Romans 7, verse 14, the Apostle
Paul said, For we know, you know who the we is there? God's people.
God's taught us this. By His Spirit. We know that the
law is spiritual, but I, oh, he shows us about I too. I'm
carnal. I'm soul under sin. In verse
19 he says, For the good that I would, I do not. But the evil which I would not,
that's what I do. Verse 24, O wretched man that
I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death? You see, by grace, we, us, God's
people, will do you good. God's people are better traveling
companions than anybody else on earth. But we, us, our Lord,
will do you good on this journey to the place, the place where
he's seated. Our Lord, He can be... This may be hard for you
young people to understand, and I realize that. Did you know
our Lord can be in more than one place at one time? He can
be. He absolutely can be. He can
be in Crossville tonight. He can be in Ashland with Todd
tonight. He can be in Mexico tonight with Walter Gruber. He
can be meeting with us here. all at the same time. And the
reason for that is because He's God. He's God. He's the God-man. He's omniscient,
omnipresent, all-wise. He's love, grace, wisdom, joy,
peace. He alone can do you good eternally. Us, or we, we get to be there
with Him one day in the place. We're journeying to the place
where Christ is, and we're going to be there actually with Him
one day. We are. In the meantime, you
know what? He's here with us. We have Him
here. How wonderful is that? We get to have Him with us on
our journey to the place. God's people are one with Christ.
So why do men not come to Christ when the Word of God so clearly
commands that men should? Scripture says, Come to me, all
you that labor, and I'll give you rest. Turn to Matthew 22
for a minute. Come on to me that you might
have life. In Matthew 22, there was a wedding
feast that a king gave. And men wouldn't come. Matthew
22, verse 3, it said, And the king sent forth his servants
to call them that were bidden to the wedding. And what's it
say? They would not come. They wouldn't come. Again, he
sent forth other servants saying, Tell them which are bidden. Behold,
I prepared my dinner. My oxen and my batlings are tilled,
and all things are ready. Come unto the marriage. But they
made light of it and went their ways, one to his farm, another
to his merchandise. Turn a few pages over to Luke
14 and be warned, be warned, most excuses for not coming have
to do with stuff, have to do with material things. In Luke
14, we have an account here of a man who prepared a feast and
invited those to come. In Luke 14, verse 17, we read,
And he sent his servant at supper time to say unto them that were
bidding, Come, for all things are now ready. And they all with
one consent began to make excuse. The first said, I bought a piece
of ground. I've got to go see about it. Excuse me. Another
said, I bought five yoke of oxen. I've got to go prove them. Excuse
me. And another said, I've married
a wife. Therefore, I cannot come. I'll tell you, there'll be all
kind of excuses in the mind of man. as to why they will not
go on this journey. All kinds of excuses until God
touches the heart of a man and turns him, causes him to repent. John 5, just a few pages further
over in John chapter 5. The bottom line is, by nature
we love ourselves and our stuff and don't love God. John chapter
5 verse 40. And you will not come to me that
you might have life. I receive not honor from men,
but I know you that you have not the love of God in you. It
is not our nature to love God and to follow Him, to come to
Him. So what's it take? Is there no hope? It's just no
way. Is that how it is? By nature,
we won't come. By nature, we say, I won't come.
Hobab says, I'm not going there, Moses. I won't do it. And that's
what we do, because we're hovads. Turn to Acts chapter 2, and I'll
show you what it takes. You see, we must come to Christ,
yet by nature we will not come to Christ. Well, when God calls, when God
calls, men come. Men come. They're unable to come,
but only then. I hope this is a good illustration.
Recently, a few months ago, I was in Florida, and I had some time
one afternoon, and I went out to the beach and was fishing
a little bit. Loved to fish. And in a little while, a little
boy came out there, and I guess he's about nine, would be my
guess. And he swaggered up to me, and he said, how you doing? I said, fine. He said, you catching
any fish? I said, not yet. He said, well,
you need to be fishing down there by that boat dock. He said, that's
where the big ones are. And he said, I got you a few here, you
know, but he said, you need to be down there. Well, he promptly
said, here's two little poles and box down and start fishing
right there with me. And in a minute, I hooked a fish
about like this. And he said, wow, cool. He said, what you using? I said,
shrimp. He said, can I have some? I said, sure. Fixed him up, and
he's fishing. And in a few minutes, a little
girl walks down to the beach. And it turns out his sister,
she's about seven. And she's watching, and in a minute, I
catch another fish and bring it in. And she says, wow, she
says, you, these were her words. She said, you're so cool. She
said, you caught a fish that he never catches nothing. You know, we're just all liars,
aren't we? We're just braggarts and boasters
and think we're such hot stuff moving in our little circle,
don't we? Bless his heart. But here's the illustration.
In a minute, his mother called from the balcony and said, Come
in! Come on! Come on! It was as if he was
a mute. He was deaf. Nothing. Just kept
fishing. She said, Come on! Come on! Come
on! Just went on and on. Finally, she walked down there
and said, Now, come on! You've got to go here. He just ignores
her completely. And she finally says, Cass, again. Just two more times. Just two
more times. Maybe three. And he just keeps on ignoring
her. So finally, she turns and starts
away and says, Come on! Come on! I'm going to leave you
here! Like that was going to bother
him. Come on! Come on! He just acted like he
didn't even hear her. She went all the way back up
there. And finally, after a minute, I turned to him and I said, Now
son, gather up your stuff. And obey your mother and you
go on to the house. Yes, sir. He gathered it up. He said, you're going to be here
tomorrow. I said, maybe if I am, you come on down. I'll have shrimp.
And off he went. You see. By nature. We came here, we choose not to,
and we can't because we're dead. It was as if that little boy
was dead to his mother. But when spoken to with authority,
he heard and he obeyed. If God ever speaks to you in
authority, you'll turn. You'll be interested in leaving
this world and getting on this journey to the place. That's
what happened here in Acts chapter 2. You see, in verse 1, And when
the day of Pentecost was fully come, They were all with one
accord in one place. Every believer is going to come
to this one place before you go to the place. And suddenly
there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind,
and it filled all the house where they were sitting. Oh, that God
would send that rushing mighty wind through here tonight. Wouldn't
that be a joy? Turn to verse 21. And here's what the Apostle preached.
He said, Ye men of Israel, hear these words. Jesus of Nazareth,
a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs,
which God did by him in the midst of you as you yourselves also
know. Him being delivered by the determinant
counsel and the foreknowledge of God. You have taken, and by
wicked hands have crucified and slain. Whom God hath raised up,
having loosed the pains of death, because it was not possible that
he should be holding of it. For David speaketh concerning
him, I foresaw the Lord always before my face. For he is on
my right hand, that I should not be moved. Therefore did my
heart rejoice, and my tongue was glad. Moreover, also my flesh
shall rest in hope. because thou wilt not leave my
soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thine holy one to see
corruption. Thou hast made known to me the
ways of life. Thou shalt make me full of joy
with thy countenance. Men and brethren, let me freely
speak unto you of the patriarch David, that he is both dead and
buried, and his sepulchre is with us unto this day. Therefore,
being a prophet, and knowing that God hath sworn with an oath
to him, that of the fruit of his loins, according to the flesh,
he should raise up Christ to sit on his throne. He, seeing
this before, spake of the resurrection of Christ, that his soul was
not left in hell, neither his flesh did see corruption. This
Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses. Therefore,
being by the right hand of God exalted, and having received
to the Father the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath shed
forth this which ye now see and hear. For David is not ascended
into the heavens, but he saith himself, The Lord said unto my
Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thy foes thy footstool. Therefore let all the house of
Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus whom
you crucified, both Lord and Christ." Now, now. When they heard this, they were
pricked in their heart." Now, make a special mental note here,
it's heart singular. In a minute, I'll make good on
that. And he said to Preet, they were pricked in their heart and
said unto Peter and to the rest of the apostles, men and brethren,
what shall we do? We've crucified the Lord. Then
Peter said unto them, here's what you do. Repent, turn, and
be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for
the remissions of sin, and you shall receive the gift of the
Holy Ghost. For the promise is unto you, and remember this phrase,
I'll come back to it, for the promise is unto you and to your
children, and to all that are far off, even as many as the
Lord our God shall call. And with many other words did
he testify and exhort, saying, Save yourselves from this untoward
generation." Repent. Repent is the message. Turn. Give up your journey toward death
and come go with us. Come go with us. Christ will
do you good. It doesn't say, we could do you
good, or we might do you good, or we hope to do you good. It
says, we will do you good. Ask anybody in there who has
walked with Christ for any time if he's done them good. They'll
tell you. The Lord Jesus Christ is good
to His people. Do they, do we deserve the goodness
of God? No. We're shaping an iniquity
and sin that our mothers conceived us. We're all together filthy. There's none that doeth good,
no not one. How ungood are we? Can I use that word? How ungood
are we? We crucified a man at Calvary
that we knew to be innocent. Turn over to Luke chapter 24. We all do realize, don't we,
that had we been there, we too would have cried, crucify him. Us good? No, not one. There's not a good heart among
us by nature. Not a one. By nature, your heart's
no good. Mine's no good by nature. It's
just not good. There's not one in the whole
world. But look here in Luke 24, verse 31. And this was when
our Lord appeared. He'd been crucified, buried,
risen from the grave. He was walking to Emmaus. There
were two disciples walking to Emmaus and He appeared to them.
And he supped with them. In verse 30 it says, And it came
to pass, as he sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed
it, and break, and gave it to them. And their eyes were opened,
and they knew Christ. And he vanished out of their
sight. Now look at what they said. They said one to another, Did
not our heart burn within us? While he talked with us by the
way, and while he opened to us the Scriptures, And they rose
up the same hour, returned to Jerusalem, found the eleven,
gathered together, and them that were with them, saying, The Lord's
risen indeed." Do you see in verse 32, it said that our heart,
singular, burned within us. You say, now that's not right.
It should say hearts. No, this is no error, no mistake.
There's no S left off this. You say, but there were two men
in the Lord. There were three men there. Each
one of them had a heart. Why didn't it say our hearts
burned within us? You know why? When we're turned, when we depart
on this journey to the place, we get a new heart. And it's
not Kelly's got a heart, Nick's got a heart, you've got a heart,
you've got a heart. No, we get the heart of the Lord
Jesus Christ. We've got one heart. We're so
one with Him. We don't have a bunch of new
hearts. We've got a new heart. It's one heart. You say, well,
we still do some bad things. Well, we've got that old heart.
It's not gone. It's still in there. That old
nature's there, but we've got a new heart. And when we see
Christ, it burns within us. We want to get on the way. I
want to tell somebody about it. This journey is to the place
where the old man's dead and the new man's perfected. When
we get to the place, we'll have not just a new heart, but a new
body, a new mind. We'll be just like Christ, complete
in Him. Come go with us. Come go with
us. We'll do you good. One more scripture, Exodus 34. The last line of our text says,
it reads, come go with us, we'll do you good. The Lord has spoken
good concerning Israel, concerning his people. And he's spoken it
and he'll do it. And I thought, how in the world,
just how good is our Lord and how can I illustrate that? How
can I make good on that? Well, eternity is not going to
be long enough for us to find out how good Christ is, how good
God is to us. I thought, well, I'll just take
one shot at it. I'll just try to give you one example of how
good he is. You see here in Exodus 34, verse
6, we read, And the Lord passed before Moses and proclaimed, The Lord, the
Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in
goodness and keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity
and transgression and sin. Now, we know about that, don't
we? We know God sent his son to die at Calvary for the sin
of his people. And we know he's merciful and
good. I mean, that first part, you think that verifies how good
he is. But look at the rest of this
verse. And that will by no means clear the guilty. He will visit
the iniquity of the fathers upon the children. and upon the children's
children unto the third and to the fourth generation." Now,
wait a minute. I can't tell you how many times
I've read that Scripture, because it's repeated over and over in
the Scriptures, and thought, man, it's one thing for some
guy to decide he won't come to Christ, because he's going to
suffer. He's going to a terrible place.
This says he's going to visit that iniquity on his children?
and his grandchildren and his great-grandchildren. And I'm
going, whew! Man, how would you feel if you
thought something you did? Paul, how would you feel if you
thought something was going to happen to Seth because of something
I did? That would be awful, wouldn't it? And yet, that's what this
says, isn't it? And there's a truth to it in
the sense that we give our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren
our nature, our evil. Oh, we just pass sin right on
down to him. Let me ask you how good God is. You know how good
he is? He doesn't give that to his children. There's a fellow in Crossville,
Tennessee. His name's Darryl. You know how
good God is to Darryl? God gave his son that Darryl's
son can live. He actually let his son be killed
so Daryl's son could live. Daryl's son's name is Brad. You
know how good God is to Brad? God's so good to Brad that he
gave his son to die for Brad's son. You know who Brad's son
is? Ryan. I heard just a little while,
a few months ago, Brother Ryan Hardman. You know what he did? He said, I'm going to go with
you. I'm going with you. God's going to do me good. And
he was baptized. He repented and was baptized,
wasn't he? Huh? That's how good God is. And listen,
ladies, it's not just the men. I speak firsthand about this.
There's a lady named Doris Mahan. She had a daughter named Becky.
God so loved Doris that he gave his son to die for her daughter. Becky had a daughter named Carrie.
God so loved Becky that he gave his son to die for Carrie. And
I hope he'll do it for Lucy, because that would be the fourth
generation. How good is God? He doesn't give us what we deserve,
which is right here, but he turns it all upside down. He's good
to us and our children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And
he lays all that on the Lord Jesus Christ in our place at
Calvary. That's what he was doing there.
He was dying in our place. Now, you can go there if you
want to. You can go there if you want
to. But wouldn't you like to come with us? Wouldn't you rather
come with us? Well, the promise is unto you
and your children. When Moses heard that, You know
what he did? Look at verse 8. Moses made haste
and bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped God. Folks, that's good news. It's
good news. If you would like to come with
us, ask God. Beg God. Do what Moses did. Fall
down and worship before him. Plead for mercy. Ask for a new
heart, a heart of Christ. Repent. Turn. I promise on the
authority of God's Word, our Lord is good. He'll enable you
to come. He'll enable you to do what you
can't do by nature. Come with us. Come on. Come with us. We'll do you good. We'll do you good. May the Lord
bless this Word. Let's bow together in prayer.