Companionship: A Verity to Cherish (Hebrews 13:5-6) | Worship Service

Good morning, and we welcome you to Kootenai Church. Would you please stand? As we begin our worship service this morning with our call to worship from Psalms 118, just kidding, Jim, from Psalm 118, verses 19 to 21.

It says, open to me the gates of righteousness. I shall enter through them, I shall give thanks to Yah. This is the gate of Yahweh, the righteous will enter through it. I shall give thanks to you for you have answered me and you have become my salvation.

Let's sing together this psalm. We sang it last Sunday. The glorious gates of righteousness, Psalm 118.

The glorious gates of righteousness, throw open. And I will enter them with praise, oh Lord, enter them. God, this is thy temple gate, oh Lord, the just shall enter there. My Savior, I will give thee thanks, oh my Savior, thanks.

Oh, the stone re-breaks the dark, the wretched soul quenching thirst in every land. Jesus died.

So we're gonna sing a new song today. It's a bit different than the new songs we've sung before. Many of you know the song, Is He Worthy? And it's sung in a call and response format. So that being said, men sing the lines that are written in yellow and women sing the lines that are written in pink and everyone together sing the lines in our standard white, okay?

So let's sing together, Is He Worthy?

Do you feel the world is broken? Do you feel the shadows deepen? But do you know that all the dark won't stop the light from getting through? Do you wish that you could see it all made new?

We do.

Is all creation groaning? Is a new creation coming? Is the glory of the Lord to be the light within our midst? Is it good that we remind ourselves of Him? Is it the seal and the Lion of Judah?

Is He worth? Is He worth?

Does the Father truly love us? Does the Spirit move among us? Jesus, our Messiah, oh, is He loved? Does our God intend to dwell again with us?

Is He worth?

Well, I wish I didn't have to get up.

And read and preach or pray after that. Will you please turn to Psalm 118 for a scripture reading? This is the one that Josh began our service with, but he didn't read the verse that I wanted to have read out of that, so I'm gonna read the entire psalm.

You would think that we could coordinate better, but we haven't. Psalm 118 is quoted in the passage that we're gonna be looking at in the book of Hebrews, the verse specifically here that is quoted in the book of Hebrews.

Psalm 118. Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His lovingkindness is everlasting. Oh, let Israel say, His lovingkindness is everlasting. Oh, let the house of Aaron say, His lovingkindness is everlasting.

Oh, let those who fear the Lord say, His lovingkindness is everlasting. From my distress, I called upon the Lord. The Lord answered me and set me in a large place. The Lord is for me. I will not fear.

What can man do to me? The Lord is for me among those who help me. Therefore, I will look with satisfaction on those who hate me. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in princes.

All nations surrounded me. In the name of the Lord, I will surely cut them off. They surrounded me, yes, they surrounded me. In the name of the Lord, I will surely cut them off. They surrounded me like bees.

They were extinguished as a fire of thorns. In the name of the Lord, I will surely cut them off. You pushed me violently so that I was falling, but the Lord helped me. The Lord is my strength and song.

He has become my salvation. The sound of joyful shouting and salvation is in the tents of the righteous. The right hand of the Lord does valiantly. The right hand of the Lord is exalted. The right hand of the Lord does valiantly.

I will not die, but live and tell of the works of the Lord. The Lord has disciplined me severely, but He has not given me over to death. Open to me the gates of righteousness. I shall enter through them.

I shall give thanks to the Lord. This is the gate of the Lord. The righteous will enter through it. I shall give thanks to you, for you have answered me and you have become my salvation. The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.

This is the Lord's doing. It is marvelous in our eyes. This is the day which the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Oh Lord, do save, we beseech you. Oh Lord, we beseech you, do send prosperity.

Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord. We have blessed you from the house of the Lord. The Lord is God and He has given us light. Bind to the festival sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar.

You are my God and I give thanks to you. You are my God, I extol you. Give thanks to the Lord for He is good, for His loving kindness is everlasting. You'll notice several verses in there are directly quoted in the New Testament as applying to Jesus Christ.

Verse 22, the stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone. That's quoted in Acts and in 1 Peter. And then verse 26, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. That, of course, was proclaimed when He rode into Jerusalem.

And then verse 27, the Lord is God and He has given us light. Bind the festival sacrifice with cords to the horns of the altar. And that, of course, is exactly what Jesus did when He rode into Jerusalem.

He went to that place of the altar, that place of the sacrifice, and gave Himself for us. Let's bow our heads in prayer. Our Father, we are your people called by your name, called and gathered here by your grace and by your Spirit to worship and serve and to honor our King, the Lord Jesus Christ.

We thank you that you have determined to bless us, your people, through Him, our King, and that all the merits of His sacrifice and His life and His death and His resurrection are imputed to us, credited to us on the basis of faith.

We thank you that one who is worthy of all worship and honor and glory and dominion and power has died in our place so that all of those attributes may be used for the sake of those who find their refuge in this King.

We thank you for your grace of calling us here. We thank you for the sacrifice which was made for us in Christ and that that sacrifice is sufficient to atone for our sin, to take it away, to cleanse the conscience, to make us whole, and to redeem us an unworthy people entirely by grace.

We ask that you would strengthen our hearts and our voices, our minds and our souls together today as we fellowship with one another, worship with one another, and as we sing praise to your great name.

May the meditation upon your word delight us and encourage our hearts together and sanctify us by your truth. We pray that you would accomplish this in the power of your spirit through your word today amongst us, your people.

For the glory of Christ our King, in whose name we pray. Amen.

Would you please stand?

Words are wonderful A total spring at the rock We trust your promise and we go Else can we go. The world to shine. Give us ears to hear and eyes to see Help us in belief Give us ears to raise to see Help us in us to go

In Romans chapter five, verses six to nine, it says, for while we were still weak, at the right time, Christ died for the ungodly. For one will hardly die for a righteous man, though perhaps for the good man, someone would dare even to die.

But God demonstrates his own love toward us, and that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more than having now been justified by his blood, we shall be saved from the wrath of God through him.

We're gonna end our music service this morning and sing together, O Fount of Love.

O fount of love divine that flows From my Savior's bleeding side Where sinners trade their filthy rags For his righteousness applied Mercy cleansing every stain Now rushing o 'er us like a flood There the rich and vilest ones Stand adopted through his blood O mount of grace to thee we cling From the law and set us free Love and justice shall agree Praise the Lord, the price is paid The cursed defeated were slaves by birth Son and daughter, whole well of joy His mighty dream, her death victorious Forevermore the ancient floor

The Promise of God's Presence and the Call to Contentment

And now we turn to the 13th chapter of the book of Hebrews. 13th chapter of the book of Hebrews. We'll be looking today at verses five and six. All right, and let's pray before we begin. Our Father, it is a great mercy to us that you give us your word.

In it is all that we need for life and for godliness. Every precious promise, every hope, every gift of grace is given to us in Christ and communicated to us and assured to us by your word. And so we pray that our hearts and our minds may be today shaped and molded by the truth of your word and that your spirit would work in our hearts and in our minds to conform us to the image of Christ and to fix our hope, our thinking, and our expectation upon the promises that are yet to come.

We pray that you would be glorified through our time, our meditation upon the truth as you conform us to the image of Christ. Sanctify us, your people, by your truth, we pray in his name, amen. Well, scripture says that we have been granted precious and magnificent promises.

2 Peter 1, verses three to four says that his divine power has granted to us everything that pertains to life and godliness through the true knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and excellence.

For by these, that is by his glory and his excellence, he has granted to us his precious and magnificent promises. So that by them, that is by the promises, you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.

It would take us the rest of our time here and probably the rest of the day to simply recite the promises that God has made to those who are his. But let me give you some categories in which some of those promises might fall.

God has promised us things concerning our sin and whether or not we will ever face judgment or punishment for that sin, his wrath. He has made promises regarding our holiness and our progress in holiness, promises about our security and the state of our soul, about our future, about the kingdom that is to come, about the resurrection of the body, the just and the unjust, about his provision for us daily, about our vindication ultimately.

He has made promises about our death and about comfort for us. He has made promises regarding our service, his love for us, our love for one another. He has made promises concerning the nations and things that will happen to and in the nations, promises about the judgment that is to come, the destruction on the wicked and the punishment of God's wrath upon those who are impenitent.

Now, faith, which is a major theme of the book of Hebrews, lays hold of these promises as if they were substance, even though there are many of them just in promise form and not yet fully realized by the people of God.

Faith regards the word of God concerning an issue as if it were substantive and something that we could lay hold of. And faith is mind's eye that grabs hold of that thing and treats it as if it is already delivered and already paid upon.

And Hebrews calls us to treat the promises of God as if they have been already secured and delivered to us. Even though many of these promises concerning the future have not yet been realized by us. We are to treat God's promises as legitimate, as secured, as delivered, as certain.

And if we fail to do so, it is to question his integrity because that is to call God a liar. It is to suggest that he cannot be trusted. It is to suggest, at least in our minds and in our hearts and in our soul, as if he might fail to deliver because of some lack or want in him, as if he were lacking power or knowledge or wisdom or benevolence or kindness or goodness.

The only way that God could fail to deliver on any of his promises if he lacked one of those qualities and God lacks none of them. And therefore our response to God's promises is telling. It reveals what we in the moment think about God and his word.

So when we doubt, when we waver in unbelief, when we refuse to bank our lives upon that promise and to treat it as substantive, we are in that moment setting ourselves up as judges and we are looking down upon God and his commandments and his promises and his plan.

And we are rendering in that moment a judgment upon his validity, the validity of his word, his integrity. When we doubt the promise of God, we are saying something about our view of him and we are rendering a judgment upon him.

And we are saying that I deem you as unable or unwilling to fulfill these promises. And that is a scary thing because there is no promise of God that is too magnificent for him to keep. And what is then the perfect promise for a persecuted people?

A lot of Ps in that sentence, but what is the perfect promise for a persecuted people who are discouraged and distraught and tempted and afflicted and suffering and shaken? It is the promise that we find in Hebrews chapter 13, verse five and verse six.

Let's read that passage together. Verse five, Hebrews 13. "'Make sure that your character "'is free from the love of money, "'being content with what you have, "'for he himself has said, "'I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you, "'so that we may confidently say, "'The Lord is my helper, I will not be afraid.

"'What will man do to me?''. And we have already looked at the beginning of verse five over two consecutive Sundays and looked at the vice of covetousness, which is described there as the love of money and what's one of the expressions of covetousness.

And that is a vice that we are to cast off. Then we looked at the virtue of contentment last week and the fullness of what we are given there in contentment. This is a virtue that we are to cultivate.

And today we are looking at this companionship that God has promised us in verse five. And that is something that we are to cherish. Now I wanna offer a clarification from something I said last week, because immediately a couple of people came up and started asking questions about the application of some of those things.

And I realized that there was something that I should have said that I left unsaid, and this might be very confusing. So maybe some of you were not confused at all, but once I bring this issue up, you'll be like, oh yeah, I wish I had been thoughtful enough to be confused by that.

I should have been, but I wasn't. And here was the confusion or the question that was asked. Last week I mentioned covetousness and contentment and that contentment is us bringing our desires or expectations down to the level of our provision so that we can then be contentment.

It's not adding to what we have, it's subtracting from our desires. So I mentioned that last week and then somebody asked this question, does that mean that we should have no desires then? That's a thoughtful question.

That's not a stupid question. If the secret to contentment is to bring my desires down into conformity with what God has provided so that I may regard what God has provided as sufficient, does that mean then that we should have no desires at all?

And that's not what that means. What I mean by that is that covetousness is a disordered desire. See, desires are not sinful in and of themselves. This is something we have to remember. I desire to sleep in a warm bed, in a dry, warm bed.

So if my window is broken and my roof is leaking, it is not sinful for me to desire to be warm and dry. It is not sinful for me to desire to be fed and to drink water if I'm thirsty. It is not a sinful desire to desire a spouse if you don't have one, or to desire children if God has not given you children.

Those are not sinful desires. So the issue is not whether we have desires, the issue is what we do with the desires. The issue is, does my desire then become an idol and am I obsessed by this desire? And does this desire then make me discontent?

Does this desire become an idol that I am willing to sin to serve that idol? So when the desire, the legitimate desire, whatever it is, then takes center stage, it becomes an idol, and then the question is, am I willing to sin to get that, to fulfill that desire?

Or am I willing to do something foolish in order to have that desire served? So you might have a desire for a better job or to improve your station in life or to have certain things. Those are not sinful desires, but when those sinful desires become central, they become disordered desires, and it is the difference between the legitimate desire when it is elevated to a position of being an idol, that legitimate desire, the difference between that and the idol is where discontentment comes in, and that's where bitterness and anxiety and restlessness and frustration and worry, all of that breeds inside of that zone of discontent.

So the answer is to bring the desires, though they may be legitimate, down into conformity with what God has given to me, and we can be honest and say, I have a desire to this, but God has not given me that fulfillment for that desire, and then we can be content with that.

But when the desire becomes disordered, then it becomes an idol, and that's when it becomes sinful and discontentment comes in. Now, verses five and six, enough for the clarification, contains for us a truth that we are to cherish.

He will never leave us, and he will never forsake us. That's in verse five. Verse six is one of the applications of that truth. The author obviously intends for us to apply that principle to the subject of contentment, since it is in the very sentence that he raises that issue of God's presence with us.

So it applies to the issue of contentment and covetousness, but there is another application given in verse six, and that is that we will not fear what man shall do to us. And that's contentment, as you will see, to a whole new level.

Now let's look in verse five at the first quotation. You'll notice in your translation that they're set aside in some way, either italics or all caps. It indicates to you that this is a quotation or intended to be a quotation from the Old Testament.

We have one quotation in verse five and one in verse six, and we will handle them separately, though I promise you, be encouraged, do not lose heart. We will get through both of these quotations today.

The first quotation in verse five, it's a little uncertain where the author is pulling that from, since it's not a direct quotation of any one specific promise like that in the Old Testament. So there are five different places where the author could have had in mind when he quoted this, when he cited this.

And here are the five places. The first two, which I think is what the author had in mind, is Genesis 28, this is the first one, verse 15. Behold, I am with you, and I will keep you wherever you go and bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.

Then Deuteronomy, the second place, is Deuteronomy 31, verses six and eight, where we read, be strong and courageous, do not be afraid or tremble at them, for the Lord your God is the one who goes with you.

He will not fail you or forsake you. You notice that language is a little more in keeping with what we read in Hebrews 13 than the previous one. And then Deuteronomy 31, verse eight, the Lord is the one who goes ahead of you.

He will be with you.

He will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed. The third possibility is Joshua 1, verse five. No man will be able to stand before you all the days of your life. Just as I have been with Moses, I will be with you.

I will not fail you or forsake you. That one's really close. And then 1 Chronicles 28, verse 20, is David's statement to his son Solomon. 1 Chronicles 28, verse 20, David said to his son Solomon, be strong and courageous and act.

Do not fear or be dismayed, for the Lord your God, my God, is with you. He will not fail you nor forsake you until all the work of the service of the house of the Lord is finished. And then the fifth place is Isaiah 41, verse 10.

Do not fear, for I am with you. Do not be anxious. Do not anxiously look about you, for I am your God. I will strengthen you. Surely, I will help you. Surely, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand.

Now, those are five different passages from the Old Testament. Two of them are very similar, Deuteronomy and Joshua. And then you have Isaiah and David to Solomon, and yeah, David to Solomon, and then God to Jacob.

Those are the five places. Now, here's the thing. There's not just one of those passages, which is actually just a word-for-word quotation that the author is citing there. So the author may have in mind any two or all five of those passages, and he may be, by quoting the Old Testament, giving us the summation and the summary of those promises all the way through the Old Covenant.

And the author may not be just quoting one of those, but he may be trying to sort of sum up, here's what the Old Testament says, and be quoting this promise of God's presence and His promise to never forsake us.

Now, I think that the author probably has in mind, and this is my speculation since I'm not able to ask him, I think that the author probably has in mind the first two that I mentioned, Genesis 28 and Deuteronomy 31.

Now, here's the context for both of those, and I'll show you the similarity between that Old Testament context and our modern, or even what was back then, their modern context. Genesis 28, verse 15, "'Behold, I am with you, "'and I will keep you wherever you go, "'and will bring you back to this land, "'for I will not leave you "'until I have done what I have promised you.'".

Now, here's the context of that promise. That's God speaking to Jacob. This was after Jacob had secured the blessing from Esau through his trickery and his deception. Esau had a lust for blood, and Esau had said, "'I am going to kill my brother Jacob "'as soon as my father dies.'".

And so Isaac's wife, Rebekah, sent Jacob away from the land of promise to her own homeland, and this meant that Jacob was leaving the land that had been promised to his father and to his grandfather. Jacob was leaving the land that had been promised to him by virtue of not only the birthright, but also the blessing that was given to him.

So he had secured that in word only, and he has to apprehend this or receive this by faith, but he has not yet received those promises. And now he is leaving the land that God has promised to him, and so the question in the back of his mind, as his brother hates him, he's leaving his family, and he's walking away from the land that God has promised to him, the question then would be, is God going to keep these promises to me?

I've secured it in the blessing, I have secured it in the birthright, but here I am leaving the land. So then God appears to him in Genesis 28, verses 13 to 15, and behold, the Lord stood above it and said, "'I am the Lord, your God, of your father Abraham "'and the God of Isaac, the land on which you lie.

"'I will give it to you and to your descendants. "'Your descendants will also be like the dust of the earth, "'and you will spread out to the west and to the east "'and to the north and to the south, "'and in you and in your descendants, "'all the families of the earth will be blessed.'".

That is a reiteration of everything God promised to Abraham and then to Isaac, and now God is giving it to Jacob, as Jacob is wandering away and leaving the land that he was promised. Spurgeon said this, he was now flying away from his father's house, leaving the over-fondness of a mother's attachment, abhorred by his eldest brother who sought his blood, he lies down to sleep with a stone for a pillow, with the hedges for his curtains, and the earth for his bed, and the heaven for his canopy, and as he sleeps, thus friendless, solitary, and alone, God says to him, I will never, never leave thee.

So verse 15 says, behold, I am with you and I will keep you wherever you go and will bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised to you. So there is God pledging to Jacob to fulfill the word that he gave to Abraham and then to Isaac, and pledging to him, even though you're leaving the land, I will bring you back here, I will multiply your descendants, and they will be a blessing to all the families of the earth.

God's presence with Jacob was the fulfillment, partial fulfillment, let's just say it this way, God's presence with Jacob was the guarantee of God's fulfillment of those promises. God gives him all those promises and then says, yeah, the promises are still there, you are still a recipient of these promises.

Here's the guarantee that you will receive those promises, I will never leave you and I will never forsake you until I do everything that I have pledged that I will do for you. That is a pledge to never leave him.

God would not leave him, God would be with him, and therefore God would bring to pass all the promises regarding Jacob. The second place that I think the author has in mind is Deuteronomy 31, verse six, and the context is similar, because now when we get to Deuteronomy 31, we got to rewind history a little bit and get back to when Jacob left the land again, but this time to go down to Egypt, not to go north, back to the land of his fathers, but to go to Egypt, south and west, and he went into Egypt to be with Joseph and there spent a couple of centuries, and now they've come out of that slavery in Egypt through the Exodus and the Passover, parted through the Red Sea, wandered around the wilderness for 40 years while God provided for them and gave them everything that they need and protected them from their enemies and their adversaries, and now he's brought them all the way to the threshold of the land of Canaan and about ready to give them the land that he promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the children of Israel are there, and now the question is, with all of these enemies in front of us, all the fortified cities and the stone walls and the gates and the armed nations that we have to go in and to conquer, are we going to go into this land and be all by ourselves?

Will we be forsaken? Or, now the question is, will God fulfill his promise to us and to our fathers? And that is where God says in Deuteronomy 31, verse six, be strong and courageous and do not be afraid or tremble at them, that is your enemies, for the Lord your God is the one who goes with you.

He will not fail you or forsake you. Deuteronomy 31, verse eight, describes the same thing. The Lord is the one who goes ahead of you.

He will be with you.

He will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear or be dismayed. Now that's Moses' last counsel to the nation of Israel before they go into the land. He's going to hand off the reigns of that nation to Joshua, and then Moses is going to die and they're going to go into the land without this leader who has been with them for the last 40 years.

Now, the context of the nation of Israel and Jacob and the original writers or the original readers of this letter is very similar. Just as Yahweh had pledged his presence to those who would enter his land, so he has pledged his presence to those to whom he has given a kingdom.

Remember chapter 12, verse 28, 29? Therefore, since we have received a kingdom which cannot be shaken, therefore, since they had received a land that God had promised to their forefathers, God is bringing them into it, you can trust me, I will never leave you nor forsake you.

What about those who have received a spiritual kingdom we have not grabbed hold of yet? We're not standing on the threshold in the sense that we're on this side of a river and we have to pass through this and then go conquer the land.

We're not on the threshold of a physical promise like that. But what about the spiritual promise that we have received a kingdom? Will we actually see that? Will we actually be able to enter in? Will we survive the hostility and the animosity of our enemies and our adversaries?

Because they are many, they're around us, they surround the righteous all day long. Are we gonna be able to endure that? Yes, the promise of God is that he would be with us just as he is with the children of Israel to fulfill the promise that he made to them.

So he will be with us and will fulfill the promise that he has made to us. Just as Israel faced enemies coming into the land, so we face enemies before we will walk into the promised land and receive that kingdom and step across the threshold as it were into God's glory.

But the promise is the same. He will be with us and he will never ever forsake us. Just as Yahweh's promise to Israel was secured by his presence, so his promise to us is secured by his everlasting and unfailing presence.

Now notice in the passage what is not promised so that we're careful not to confuse what it is that we are being promised here. As we don't want to understand God's promises in a way that is not intended because then we will start to think that maybe he has not kept his promise to us.

But notice what is not promised. We are not promised that nothing difficult will happen. We are not promised that no trial will afflict us. In fact, the previous chapter promises the opposite, doesn't it?

God loves those whom he disciplined and he disciplines all his sons. That's affliction, that is suffering, that is difficulties, trials and tribulations. Those things are promised to us. So this is not a promise that we will not endure anything difficult or not endure any trial, that we will live a suffering-free life.

We are not promised that we will not be persecuted or hated or mocked. We're not promised an easy life. We're not promised everything we want, everything we desire, everything we crave. We're not promised a life that is free from disappointment or discouragement.

But instead, we are promised that he will never leave us through all of those things. We're not promised to bridge over troubled waters, but we are promised that he will pull us through the waters if we can stand the toe.

That's what we're promised. He will be with us through that and he will never leave us. You may look forsaken to your enemies. You may look forsaken to everyone around you. You may feel forsaken, lonely, alone, in solitude, abandoned and forgotten.

You may feel that, but that is not true because we don't live by our feelings. What you feel in the moment is irrelevant to what is true. What is true is that he will never leave us and that we are not forsaken.

Though we may feel forsaken, though we may look forsaken, though our lives may give evidence to everyone who observes it that we are forsaken, he will never forsake us. Jesus said to his disciples that they were to go into all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that he commanded them.

And then he said to them, I am with you always, even to the end of the age. That's our age. That's where we're at. That's his promise to us. I'm with you always. Wherever you go, in every endeavor, Jesus is Emmanuel.

He is God with us. He has pledged himself to us. All authority is his and he has pledged his presence with us and he cannot fail. I want you to think for a moment. I realize for a moment, that is the best promise that you could be given, his presence.

What if he were to promise you everything you want in this life? Would that be a better or a lesser promise? That's a lesser promise because this life's gonna come to an end. What if he promised you a whole bunch of stuff?

How long does that stuff last? As long as stuff lasts. And then it's all burned up and it all goes away and they drop you in a pine box and put you in the ground and less than a generation or two, you're forgotten.

Eventually, even your kids will forget about you. This is your encouragement for the week. But he has promised us that the worst thing that could happen to us will not happen to us. That's what this promise is.