Finding Confidence in God's Promises

Good morning, good to see you all again. Yeah, I was just re-meeting a few of you. We were here probably about three months ago, I think. Just right before we moved to Billings. So, we are in Billings now.

And we're members at Valley Bible Church now. And it's great to see you all and be able to serve you. Yeah, we just look forward to what the Lord has in his word. If you don't mind, I'd love to pray for us this morning before that.

Father, thank you for gathering us this morning. Lord, thank you for teaching us. More like that last song we were hearing and singing. Lord, we pray that you would speak to us through your word. Lord, we know that anything a human person says is not that important unless it is from your word.

Lord, would you help us. Lord, would you help each one of us. Lord, would you help me to be clear in bringing your word to these people. Lord, please help each one of us to be receptive to what you would have to say.

Lord, for your sake. Lord, we know that only you can change our hearts. Lord, and only you make us into the likeness of Christ. So we do pray that. Lord, in your name. Amen. We live in a world that is inundated with lies.

Now, that's true of us personally too, isn't it? We are guilty of speaking lies. And we're surrounded by a world that has lies everywhere. If you could believe everything that you heard, your life would be actually pretty simple, wouldn't it?

If you could believe everything your neighbor told you, everything that every preacher told you, or everything that every politician told you, life would be pretty simple. You wouldn't have to sort through what's true and what's false.

But that's not the case, is it? We have the difficult task every day of sorting out what is true and what is untrue. And that shouldn't be a surprise to us because Satan, our adversary, is the father of lies.

That's one of the most defining characteristics of him, is that he speaks lies. When he speaks from himself, he speaks what is not true. If you think about it, the first sin was actually a result of a lie.

Satan's lie. You will be like God. You will not surely die. That was the first lie, and it's continued to this day. And the reason for that is because Satan knows that the truth is so very important. The truth is so very important for our lives and how we live.

We must know the truth. We serve the God of truth. Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life. And when he came, the Apostle John described him as full of grace and full of truth. If you are known for something, as a church, it should be loving and knowing and upholding the truth.

And some of, I mean, God's word has truth in a variety of different ways. You have truths that are principles that we learn and we apply to our lives, but some of the most precious portions of truth are the promises of God.

When we read a promise of God, we don't actually have to go around and figure out, does this apply to me? Is this something I should do? Is this going to actually come true? Because we know when God promised something, he's going to bring it to pass.

God's promises, they are some of the most precious parts of God's word, aren't they? We don't have to wonder if this is going to happen. We just need to believe it. And sometimes that's the hardest part.

It's actually believing, Lord, you promised such great things. Help me to believe. Help me to believe. These are so important, God's promises, because in the world, it's like they act somewhat like an anchor.

Something that you know is true in the waves of the world's opinions that are moving back and forth. This I know is true. God has promised this. If you would think of yourself as being swept down a river and you held out for a branch for dear life, you could think of the promises of God like that.

Something that you're holding on to when everything else is falling apart. And this morning, I want us to study, I want us to just look at a few verses this morning. We're going to look at one of God's promises, maybe one of God's greatest promises to us.

And that's in the book of Hebrews. Would you turn with me to Hebrews chapter 13? Hebrews chapter 13 starting in verse 5 says this, Make sure that your character is free from the love of money and be content with what you have for he himself has said, I will never desert you nor will I ever forsake you so that we can confidently say the Lord is my helper.

I will not be afraid. What will man do to me? Really, I want us to grasp this promise at the end of verse 5. I will never desert you nor will I ever forsake you. This promise is so simple, but it's so profound.

You can see it on the surface, but it's almost like a deep well. You can see a little bit, but when you dive in, it just keeps going. It's so deep. You've probably memorized this verse before. You've probably thought about this verse before.

Maybe you've counseled yourself with this verse before because you know how precious it is. Maybe you've forgotten this verse. But let me ask you a question this morning. This morning, do you believe this verse?

Do you believe this promise? It's humbling to study a passage like this because I find myself often asking that question. Do I believe this promise? Do I believe this? And does my life reflect that? That's my prayer for us this morning that we'd come to grasp this verse better and that we would embrace it and that we would really believe that God will never leave us and He will never forsake us.

Now, when we come to a promise or a single verse in Scripture, one of the dangers that we encounter is the temptation to take it out of context and to just rip it out and say, this is for me. We want to make sure we never do that with God's Word.

So that's one of the first things we need to do is we need to understand why is this verse here? Why is it here? And does it actually apply to us? Can we actually cling to this promise when life gets difficult?

So to start to unpack that, I want us to see first the need for this promise. Look with me at the beginning of verse 5. Make sure that your character is free from the love of money, being content with what you have.

Now, this is the need for the promise. And I don't know if you're like me, but the first time I read this verse, it was difficult for me to see how money, how being content and not loving money was related to this promise that God would never leave us or forsake us.

What does gold have to do with God's presence? How do those two items relate? The passage we're jumping into here is at the end of the book of Hebrews. It's one of the final sections of this long book.

And after the writer of Hebrews has explained how Christ is a better priest, He's a better sacrifice, He brought a better covenant than the old covenant, this author ends the book with really a list of practical commands.

This is what he saw that this church needed to focus on if they were going to live a life that was pleasing to God. And this is one of those exhortations. Contentment was one of the ways that this church needed to grow.

Now, if I would ask you, do you love money? You would probably say no, right? Most Christians know better than to say that I love money. I'm a lover of money. But think about this for a second. This verse says that our character or our way of living, literally verse 5, should be free from the love of money.

This should be a habit. This should characterize our life. There should be nothing in our lives that's characterized by greed or covetousness or a love of money. Now, just think about this with me. Have you ever visited a wealthy person's house?

Maybe you were there as a friend of a friend. Maybe you were there for an event. Maybe you worked on this house as part of your job. Have you found yourself maybe in your mind criticizing how they spend their money?

How dare they just waste their money like this? How dare they buy this and this and this? And you find yourself describing this house maybe to someone that you know in such detail. And you get so focused on it.

You get so fixated on it. Have you ever done that? I've met many people, many Christians that have done that. They've described to me something that they saw and you can tell that they are fixated on this thing.

They're so focused on it. You ever wonder if maybe that's just jealousy? Maybe you're just jealous of what someone else has. Could that be the case? Greed. You could say greed is this strong desire for anything that God has not given to us.

It's a desire for anything that God has not given to us. That's greed. That's the heart of a love of money is greed. And that's what this author is dealing with here. So if you think about it, verse 5 as we look back at it, there's two commands.

Keep your character free from the love of money and be content. Really those are saying the same thing. Just on opposite sides. To be free from the love of money is to be content with what you have. If you love money, you are discontent with what God has given you.

It's two sides of the same coin. Ask yourself this. Do you complain about what God has put in your life? Let me ask you that just personally. Have you found yourself complaining about the situation that God has put you in in life?

That's a very easy thing to do. Our sinful human hearts think that there's something that we can have that God has not given us that's going to solve our problem of discontentment. But as most of the very wealthy people in the world will tell you, there's always something more.

There's always something you don't have. There's always something you could be discontent about because someone else has something different than you. I think seeing that heart attitude really helps explain why God takes this so seriously.

Why it shows up in passages like this. Because at its heart, the love of money is a lack of trust in God's provision. That's a lack of trust in God's provision. One writer said it this way. Greed amounts to accusing God of incompetence as provider of one's basic needs.

It's thinking that we know better than what God has given us. That we deserve better than what God has given us. It's believing the lie that God doesn't have our best in mind. Now I hope maybe the connection between money and this promise is becoming a little bit clearer.

Those who are discontent, those who love money and seek money, need to be reminded of the promise in this verse. They need to be reminded that God will be always with them and will never forsake them.

That what they have in God is much better and is much greater than what they seek in this world. That's the need of this promise. The need of the promise. Now we're going to look at the nature of the promise.

Look back at verse 5 with me. 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.

God will never leave us or forsake us. And how could God leave someone? Just think about that. We know that God is omnipresent. God is here and there's nowhere we can go that God is not. So how could God leave someone?

How could God forsake someone? Remember what David said in Psalm 139. Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, you are there.

If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest parts of the sea, even there your hand will lead me and your right hand will lay hold of me. No matter where you go, God is there. So in a sense, we need to understand that God leaving someone, God forsaking someone, is not about physical distance, is it?

It's not that he's saying, I'm going to go to this part of the universe and you're on your own. It's not about physical distance. So what is the nature of this promise? I think that's the question we need to ask.

If God can't leave us as far as location, how could he leave us? What is this promise saying? When you look throughout scripture, kind of the flip side of God leaving someone is him being with someone.

If he's with someone, then he hasn't forsaken them. And if you wanted to say it as generally as you could, it would be that God, his attention is on these people. His favor is on people he is with. As Isaiah 57 says, Thus says the high and exalted one who lives forever, whose name is holy, I dwell on a high and a holy place, but also with the contrite and lowly of spirit.

But this still leaves a question. What does that mean? I think this is still hard for us to grasp our minds around. If we cannot see God, we know he's always here. We can't go anywhere where he's not.

What specifically does he mean when he says, I will never leave you? One of the ways I think we can answer this question or start to understand it is just noticing the end of verse 5. Notice it's either in italics in your Bible, maybe it will have quotation marks.

That means that the writer of Hebrews here is quoting the Old Testament. That means he's drawing on truth that was already in the Old Testament and he is applying it to these people. And if you look for this specific verse, you can't really find it in the Old Testament.

It's kind of a mix of different verses that he's put together. But I think, I want us to spend a little bit of time thinking about some of the ways that God says he's with people. Because I think that will help us to understand what does this mean?

What does this mean? So there's several ways that God can be with people. Here's one of them. God can be with someone in that he's going to empower them for a specific task. He's going to empower them for a specific task.

And he's not going to leave them on their own. So when God was speaking to Moses in Exodus 3, Moses said, Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and that I should bring the sons of Israel out of Egypt? And God said, Certainly I will be with you.

I will be with you. Moses was fearful of his inadequacy. So God made this promise to him. And we know that God fulfilled that promise, didn't he? He was with Moses. He empowered him to lead the people out of Israel.

He empowered Moses to give the law to the people, act as a judge for these people, and many other things. God worked to empower this man. And note this for yourself. If there's any task that God has given you, he will not leave you without resources.

He will be with you. Whether that's a job, whether that's a ministry that you're involved in, and someone you have a discipleship relationship, whether that's parenting, whatever it may be, God will never leave you.

He will never leave you on your own. Here's another way that God is said to be with his people. He can be with someone in that he's going to be faithful to them. In Genesis 28, God promised Jacob, he said, Behold, I am with you.

I will keep you wherever you go and bring you back to this land, for I will not leave you until I have done all that I promised you. God had promised Jacob, this man, and his forefathers that they would live in the land of Canaan.

But in this specific situation, Jacob actually had to leave that land for fear of his life. And so God gave him this promise. He may have wondered, is God going to be faithful to his promise? Is he going to be with me?

God said, I will be with you. I will be with you. Here's another way God can be with someone. He can be with someone in that he shows his favor to them. In Genesis 39, verses 2 through 3, Joseph was sold into Egypt, remember?

But this is what it says, that the Lord was with Joseph. The Lord was with him and caused all that he did to prosper. God was with Joseph to help him to do well, in this case materially. Even though it seemed like Joseph was alone and he needed help, God was always showing favor to his people for his good.

And he does that today too, doesn't he? He causes all things to work together for the good of those who love him. He shows favor to his people. He will never leave them or forsake them. Here's another way that God can be with his people.

He can be with his people in that he will protect them from harm. In Joshua 1 .9, the Lord said, And when God gave this promise to Joshua, they were about to go into the promised land. They were about to fight with nations that were larger and mightier than they were.

So Joshua was clearly fearful of what was coming ahead of him. So God made this promise. He said, Note this for yourself. Nothing can happen to a believer unless it first comes through God's sovereign hand.

For their good and not for their harm. He will never leave you. He will never leave you. Finally, we have this. God can be with someone in that he will provide for their needs. When Isaac was thinking about moving away, there was a famine.

He was thinking about moving away. God said this to him in Genesis 26. And we later read in that same chapter that God provided for Isaac's needs just as he promised. Note this for yourself. God is aware of every need you have.

You know that? God knows every need you have. And just like he provided for Isaac, he will provide for you. Unless he wants you in heaven. Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness and these things will be added to you.

Now, can we step back from those? I want to be clear that many of those verses were not written to us, were they? But God said, I will be with you and do this. I will be with you. They were actually written to specific people in the Old Testament.

Specific people that God was dealing with and helping and giving a promise to. And he said, I will be with you. I will not forsake you. But what this does do is it helps us understand what that looks like.

When we say that God will never leave us or forsake us, we can at least say this. He will empower his people. He will be faithful to his people. He will show favor to his people. He will protect his people.

And he will provide for his people. And get this, the best part of this is that Hebrews 13, 5 applies this to you. You realize that? God has promised this to you. Every believer, every believer in Jesus Christ, if you know him today, every member of his church, he says, I will never leave you.

I will never forsake you. He said, I am with you always in Matthew 28. I will never leave you. I will never forsake you. It's easy to believe that, I guess, when times are easy. And things are going well.

And we just feel like God is with us. But what's really notable about most of these Old Testament references, when God gave that promise, he gave it to them because they were doubting it. And that's when we need this promise most too, isn't it?

When things are not going well. When we don't feel like God is with us. God has written it down in his word. He says, I will never leave you. You understand that? If you are in difficulty right now, if you feel like God is far from you, stop listening to your own thoughts.

Listen to the word of God. I will never leave you. And I will never forsake you. Where is God in your difficulty? He is with you. Where is God when you lose a job? He is with you. Where is God when people mistreat you?

He is with you. Where is God when you fail? When you failed him, when you feel like you can never do enough? He's with you. Wherever you are this morning, whatever circumstances you're in, know that God will never leave you or forsake you.

He's committed to you. Isn't that a wonderful truth? And in some ways, we've just been kind of dancing around the promise, and now we're finally to it. We saw the need of the promise and the nature of the promise.

Now here's, let's actually look at the statement of the promise. The end of verse 5, I will never desert you, nor will I ever forsake you. And I want to just draw your attention to a few things about this promise that just are so, that make this even more encouraging in times of difficulty.

And here's the first one. This promise is actually made to individual believers. Now why is that significant? Unfortunately, if we read the Bible in English, we can easily miss this, that most of the time you see the word you in the New Testament, that's actually talking about you, as a group, as the church.

It's saying, you, I will do this for you, or you do this. The majority of the times that the New Testament speaks to believers, it's talking about the group. And even in the same chapter, Hebrews chapter 13, when he's giving commands, he's giving them to the group, the church as a whole.

We're to live together in such a way that pleases God, and we cannot do that alone. God never intended for us to live alone. But this verse is actually unique. It's actually different than most of the verses in this chapter, because it's actually written to you and I, singular.

So it's, this verse essentially is saying, you could put it this way, God will never leave me, and he will never forsake me. We know he'll never leave his church, right? He bought his church, he loves his church, he died for the church.

But I want you to understand this morning, you individually, he will never leave you. You may feel like you're the oddball out. Well, God won't leave the church as a whole, but he sure is forsaking me right now.

I want you to understand that this is actually written for you, as an individual believer. Here's another thing about this promise that I want you to see. God himself has said this. God himself has said this.

Verse 5 makes clear, it says, he himself has said. That's emphatic, making the point that God himself, not just anyone made this promise. Not just your friend, not just someone on the news, God himself, the God who sent his son to pay for your sins, made this promise.

The God who never lies, the God who created this universe, the God who is above and through every nation, every kingdom of men has said this. He will never leave you. And finally, I think maybe even most importantly, this promise is made as strongly as possible.

And again, when we read it in English, we kind of don't get the full force of it, but I think a good way you could translate this would be, God will never, ever leave you. He will never, ever leave you.

And he will never, ever forsake you. Even the idea, the way that this is written, even the idea of God forsaking his people should be out of bounds. Even thinking that should be absurd. It should be completely impossible.

God will never do that. He would never do that. It shouldn't even cross your mind. And if you are tempted to think that, hear this, do not let yourself think that. Listen to what God says. And he doesn't just say it once, let's just say he says it twice.

I mean, could God be even more emphatic? He says, I will never desert you and I will never forsake you. The word leaving or deserting, that first word, it means to loosen or to untie. And this was often used for a sailor who would untie their sails and let them go.

And so in a similar way, when someone leaves or forsakes someone, they are letting go or releasing their relationship with someone else. They're letting go of that. God said he will never do that. The second word, will not forsake you, it means to leave something in place and actively move away from it.

The apostle Paul would later say, Demas, in love with this present world, has forsaken me. This man Demas used to be in ministry with Paul. And Paul said, he has left me. He's left me behind. He's forsaken me and gone.

And I want you to know too, that this is actually the same word that Jesus used on the cross. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Jesus was forsaken by his father so that we would never be forsaken.

Isn't that wonderful? Jesus was forsaken by his father so that we would never be forsaken. God will never loosen his attachment to his people and he will never leave them alone by themselves. Now, how could we ever thank God enough for a promise like this?

In some ways, this is so great that we just almost don't have words to thank the Lord for how gracious he is. He said, I will never ever leave you. We forsake other people. We at times are unfaithful to God and we run from God.

Thank God for this promise that nothing will separate us from him. And the only real logical response to this truth is found in verse 6. We have the result of the promise. So, we've seen what the promise is.

Now, what should this produce in God's people? It says, so that we can confidently say, the Lord is my helper. I will not be afraid. What will man do to me? So, in other words, the response of God's people, the response of every single one of us should be to trust him completely.

No matter what. We can trust him completely because we've read that he is always with us. And this actually comes full circle with where we started. Remember, we were talking about the greed and the love of money.

And remember in verse 5, we saw that the promise of God's presence, that God would be with his people, that's the antidote to greed. Because we know we have him. But here we see that God's presence is also the antidote to our fear.

And these things all relate together. Catch this. If you don't believe that God is with you, if you don't believe that God will care for you, chances are you're going to seek security in something else.

You're going to possibly seek security in material goods and you're going to live in fear that maybe this is going to be taken away. What if this is gone? What will happen with me then? And that is exactly what these believers were dealing with.

I believe that's exactly why this verse is here. Because these people, remember, they were facing persecution for their faith. And they were fearful of what people could take away from them. And ironically, this actually is because these believers actually faced this at an earlier point.

Let me just read these words from earlier in the book of Hebrews. Remember the former days when, after being enlightened, you endured a great conflict of sufferings, partly by being made a public spectacle through reproaches and tribulations, and partly by becoming sharers with those who were so treated.

For you showed sympathy to the prisoners and accepted joyfully the seizure of your property, knowing that you have for yourselves a better possession and a lasting one. It's kind of ironic because the writer of Hebrews is saying, remember when you responded so well to being mistreated, and people even took things away from you, and you said, I don't care.

I don't care. The Lord will take care of me. But now, these same people were seeking security in their possessions. And the difference really was one of focus. You can focus on what people might do to you, or you can focus what is certain and what God has said and promised.

You can focus on a possibility. What if this happens? What if they take my things away from me? Or you could focus on what is certain. Because if God is on your side, think about it, fear is totally irrational.

It totally does not make sense. Even though we fall into it so often, when you fear something other than God, that fear is totally irrational. I mean, people can take things from you, right? They could take your things from you.

They could mistreat you. You could lose your credibility. You could lose a relationship with them. But, what did we just read? God is with you. He will never leave you or forsake you. Nothing that a person does to you has not already passed through God's sovereign and loving hand.

And He will protect and empower you in the midst of any hardship that comes your way. He is with you and He will never forsake you. Or as Romans 8 .31 says, If God is for us, who could be against us? If God is for us, who could be against us?

Lord, help us to believe this promise. What more could God possibly say? This is so simple, but isn't this so profound? If this was the only verse we had in the Bible, I think we would have reason for assurance and reason for joy in any circumstance.

If we had this one verse, Hebrews 13 .5, Lord, help us to believe you. I want to end with the words of a hymn that I think were strongly influenced by these verses. It says it so much better than I could say it.

How firm a foundation, ye saints of the Lord, is laid for your faith in His excellent word. What more can He say than to you He hath said, to you who for refuge to Jesus have fled? Fear not, I am with thee.

Oh, be not dismayed, for I am thy God and will still give thee aid. I'll strengthen thee, help thee, and cause thee to stand, upheld by my righteous, omnipotent hand. When through fiery trials thy pathway shall lie, my grace all-sufficient shall be thy supply.

The flame shall not hurt thee, I only design thy dross to consume and thy gold to refine. A soul then on Jesus hath leaned for repose, I will not, I will not, desert to His foes. That soul, though all hell, should endeavor to shake, I'll never, no never, no never forsake.

Would you pray with me? Lord, thank you so much. Lord, we have only skimmed the surface of promises like this, and it's so inadequate to fully comprehend it. But Lord, we are grateful that we could spend a little time pondering this promise.

And Lord, if we're honest, the hardest part for us is to believe this. When we don't feel like you are with us. When it seems like things are going awry. Lord, thank you for putting this in your word.

Lord, we don't have to wonder if this is true. We don't have to question whether or not this will come to pass. This is always true. Lord, help each of us, each of us to embrace that. Lord, help us to constantly remember this, that you will never leave us, and you will never forsake us.

I pray this in your name.