Never, Never, Never, Never, Never // Dr. Steve Pettit

Well, as they are taking their seats, let me just say again, Brother Evans, thank you for the wonderful privilege to be here at Union Grove. Last time I was here, this auditorium was like in the Bible, the old man. And when I walked in this morning, it was a new man. And so it's a beautiful renovation. I know that you're very happy with it. And thank you, Pastor, for letting us come and being able to minister.

Just a brief word about Bob Jones University. We have a table out in the lobby. We'd love for you to stop by. If you're a teenager, 7th through 12th grade, would you do me a favor? I'll ask you to do me a favor. Stop by the table as soon as the service is over with. Fill out a card.

Put your information on it. It's the only way for us to get information about potential students to go to Bob Jones. We're not asking you to come to BJ. Just stop by.

Visit it. And to sweeten the deal, we're going to give away some free T-shirts and a drawing. And so the reason we travel, first and foremost, is to be able to minister and to preach and to sing. But secondly is to make people aware that there is a Christian university here in the United States, and we're not the only one.

We know that. But we believe that the Bible is God's Word, and we teach it and we preach it. We have 2,500 students that attend Bob Jones University from 50 states, 40 foreign countries, and they come there for three big reasons. Number one, because of the academic excellence of our programs. Secondly, because of our complete and thorough biblical worldview in all things. And thirdly, because we are in the process of developing the next generation of Christian leaders that are going to go out and serve in a chaotic world.

And we want them to go out strong with character and commitment and personal discipline, because if you're going to be a leader in the world, you have to understand what it means to lead, and you have to be able to lead. And so that's really what we're all about. And so please stop by and check it out. We'd love for you.

Or you can go online at bju.edu. Well, with that in mind, would you please take your Bibles and turn with me this morning to the book of Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 13 this morning. And I'd like us to read two verses of Scripture. And our primary focal point, we're going to zoom in on one element of these verses, but we will build the case around these verses itself. This is the last chapter in this great book of Hebrews, and this is the exhortational passage that is exhorting us as Christians to live a certain way. And he begins in verse 5 with these words.

Let your conversation, that's your lifestyle, be without covetousness, or if I could put it in another way, the love of money. And be content with such things as you have for He, that's God, hath said, I will never leave thee nor forsake thee. So he's talking about those of you that are in retirement. He's not going to leave you or forsake you. He's going to take care of you.

If you're a young adult, you're a young parent, you're raising kids, and you're going from hand to mouth, He's not going to leave you and He's not going to forsake you. So that, that is as a result of that, we may boldly say, confidently say, say with courage and enthusiasm, the Lord is my helper. I will not fear what man shall do unto me.

And may God add His blessing through the reading of His word and all God's people said, amen. The writer here of Hebrews is commanding the people of God not to be enslaved to the love of money. We're not to be materialistic people. We know that money is only a means to an end. It is not an end in itself. It's not what life is all about. Spiritual people have learned to be happy and they've learned to be content with what God has given them. Happiness is not getting what I want, it's wanting what I have and learning that. So why is this command so important? We can talk about all the problems we have if we love money or all the negative emotions that come out of a fear of not having enough money.

The scripture text speaks here about the concept of fear. But why is it so important that we don't love money? And the answer is because life is more than stuff. It's more than food and clothing. It's more than salaries. It's more than apartments. It's more than houses. It's more than cars. It's more than investments.

It's more than really nice vacations. Our lives are more, much more than these things because he tells us here in the very opening phrase of verse 5 that our life has a mission or a purpose. And that is our life is to communicate a message.

What does he say? Only let your conversation be. The word conversation, we obviously, this is from the King James Version, we often translate it lifestyle or the way that you live.

And I get that but we can do that and miss a point. Because when we think about conversation, what are we thinking about? We think about communication. We talk about talking back one to another. And everybody in this room understands that the way that we live speaks. In other words, you don't have to say anything but you're saying something by the way you live, by what you do, by the way you think, by the way you feel, by the way you react, what it is that you talk about. Our life speaks so loud that people can't always hear what we're saying. We are communicating through our life. And so the writer here in Hebrews is encouraging us in our life that we are to live our lives and by our lives we are to show that we don't love money, that we are content with what we have and the reason we can do that is because we have a God who takes care of his own people. God cares for his own. He will never leave us.

He will never forsake us. We can live confidently and we can live without fear. Now let me take that little phrase fear because I mean we understand it when we read it in the Bible but let me put it in a modern context. In a phrase that we use today all the time in secular society and we don't always come to the bottom line and that is the phrase mental health. How many of you have ever heard of mental health? All right, everybody here has heard of mental health?

Okay. Mental health, if you want to break it down, are people who live lives of loneliness, depression and anxiety. And as a result of that oftentimes it causes all kinds of problems in their life in multiple different ways but at the very heart, at the very core of mental health problems is the concept of fear. And so this is like the best mental health verse you can get because he's telling us instead of living in worry and fear and depression and anxiety and loneliness he is telling us a promise that is eternal for the people of God. He says I will never leave you and I will never forsake you. There is never a time in your life when you're alone. The Lord is always with his people.

And when it comes to finances he's going to step in, he's going to meet your needs, he's not going to forsake you. My first year as a student at Bob Jones University I grew up in the state of South Carolina. I finished high school and I went to a military school called the Citadel. I graduated from the Citadel and I went to Bob Jones University for seminary training because God had called me to preach. And my first year while I was a student there I had bought back in those days a car from a preacher.

Now that's not a bad thing, I'm just saying that's what I did. The fact is he was an evangelist. And he had, the car I bought was a Buick Electra 225. How many of you remember those boats, okay?

You don't have them today, they're not going down the road today. I mean this was a huge car. It was a perfect car for an evangelist I should say. And so I drove it to school and I lived off campus and that was my means of transportation and basically I had some car problems and I had some things that needed to be fixed. And I had a friend that did the repair work, he was a student at Bob Jones, he fixed the problem and so basically he didn't charge me for his labor, I just had to pay for the parts. And the parts were $56. Oh for the days of $56 car bills.

But $56 in 1980 for me, excuse me, yeah 1978 for me might as well have been $560 or $5600, I didn't have it. And I was walking back from class and I was on the backside of the campus of Bob Jones and I was griping. And I was praying and I was saying, God you sent me to this school, I didn't want to come here in the first place. You know we blame God for everything don't we?

And God you led me to buy this car and I got a car bill for $56 and I don't have any money and Lord I don't know how to pay for that. And I was complaining on the one hand but trusting on the other. And I came under conviction because I had been reading in my Bible that the children of Israel complained in the wilderness and God sent poisonous snakes to bite the people and people were dying.

Well in South Carolina we got a lot of poisonous snakes. And I asked the Lord to forgive me for my griping attitude. And by the way, we all should know ourselves well enough to know when we're sinking into the wrong pit of thinking. And I said, Lord please forgive me. And I said, God I need $56, would you meet that need?

And so I cast my care upon the Lord. And as I was walking off the campus I was crossing a road and a car comes by and the car stops and a guy rolls down his window and he calls out my name, my last name. He says, Pettit. He said, I've been looking all over for you. He said, do you remember, this is a friend of mine named Gerald Sooty. He said, Pettit, do you remember that I was going to go to the mission field this summer?

I said, yeah. He said, well I'm not going to go. He says, here's your money back. He hands me an envelope and he drives off. I'm standing in the middle of the road with this envelope that this guy had just given me. And this is a friend of mine that was going to the mission field. He was trying to raise money and I would give him money here and there.

A little, you know, a couple of dollars here, five dollars here, ten dollars here. I never kept a record of it. I just slipped it under his door. Well the amazing, two amazing things. Number one, he actually kept a record of it. And number two, when he decided not to go to the mission field he decided to give me the money back.

Usually you'll figure out how to use it for some other purpose. And as he was driving away I'm standing in the middle of the road and I open up the envelope and it's cash. And I pull it out and I count it out and this is the truth. It was fifty-six dollars. Now let me ask you a question. How many of you have at least one of those kind of experiences in your life? Raise your hand. Yeah. I've been milking that story for forty-four years.

Not because fifty-six dollars, because the money was irrelevant. It was the reality that what God says is so. He says, I will never leave you and I will never forsake you. Now here's what I'd like to do for the moments we have left. I'd like to take that promise from God right in the middle of the verse, I will never leave you nor forsake you, and I want to zoom in on it. You know what it means to zoom in?

You got a cell phone? If you don't ask your grandchildren and you zoom in. And I want us to look at the promise that God has given us. And I want us to see, understand number one, what is this saying?

And number two, what is this promising? And then number three, why is it that we can live confidently that this is true? So let's go back and look at our text and notice what it's saying. He says here in verse five, he says, let your conversation be without covetousness, be content with such things you have.

Why? For he has said, I will never leave thee, nor will I ever forsake thee. Now, what is the subject or who is the subject of this verse? When he says I, for he has said, I will never leave thee, the answer is God is the subject.

God is saying this to us. Number two, there are two verbs here or two things that God does. He says number one, I'm not going to leave you, and number two, I'm not going to forsake you. Then I want you to notice that in your English version, there are two negatives.

He says, I will never leave you, nor forsake you. But what I'd like to do is expand your understanding a little bit more and take it into the Greek language, because I think we all understand that there's a difference between Greek and English. And sometimes things could be lost, or maybe if I could say it this way, not so much the idea of it is lost, but there's certain things you miss or maybe an emphasis, and this is definitely true in this verse. Because before each verb, there are what we call in the Greek a double negative. So it reads actually this way when you look at it. It says, never, never will I leave you. And then he says, never, never will I forsake you.

And this is not unusual. If you know anything about Greek, you'll find it all throughout the New Testament. It's a double negative. It's an emphasis.

It's a point of dogmatism. Not, not will I leave you. It ain't going to happen. Let me put it that way. And not, not will I forsake you. Now, the two negatives are two different words, and they have two different ideas. The first negative, the first never I could say, is a statement of fact. It's a fact. And in this case, it is referring to who God is. That is, in God's character, who he is, and in God's promises, what he promises, he is saying, it is a fact. You can bank on it.

I will never leave you, and I will never forsake you. But then the second negative is actually more, not so much of a fact. It's not so much objective. It's more subjective. It's experiential. It's a reality. It's what God does. What he's saying is this. Not only is it a fact that I will never leave you or forsake you, it is a reality. You have never experienced it, and you never will. And then there's one other negative, the two before, not, not will I forsake you, not, not will I leave you. And then those two verbs are connected with another negative, and it's the two words combined together.

So it reads this way. Never, never will I leave you. Never, never, never will I forsake you. Now the famous Baptist preacher, you've probably heard him quoted before, Charles Haddon Spurgeon. You ever heard that name? You say, why does everybody quote Spurgeon? Read him and you'll understand. And so he had a sermon title for this text of scripture, and since he's been with the Lord now for over a hundred years, I'm going to plagiarize his title. Because his sermon from this text of scripture is this. Never, never, never, never, never.

You got it? Never, never, never, never, never will I leave you, and never, never, never, never, never will I forsake you. This is what it is saying to you and I. Now if that's what he's saying, then specifically then what is he promising through that?

And notice what he says. There are two verbs. He says, number one, I'm not going to leave you, and number two, I'm not going to forsake you. Now to leave you means essentially to let you go. To forsake you means to leave you behind.

The first one says, I will never leave you. It means I'm not going to let you go. It's like a boat that is tied to a dock with a rope, but it's not tied tight enough, and it loosens up in what happens to the boat. It's like when you're walking down a street and you're holding the hand of your children and they're wanting to pull away and what do you do?

You tighten the grip. My sheep hear my voice and I know them and I give unto them eternal life and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand. If you're a child of God, let me say, your eternal security is not dependent on your perpetual obedience because if that were the case, none of us would be secure.

We are secure because we are safe in the hands of God. I will never let you go. Number two, he says, I will never leave you behind. The motto of the U.S. Marines is, no man left behind. God is not going to leave you behind.

He's not going to, you're not going to find yourself drifting away as if somehow he's going to leave you. I traveled in the ministry of evangelism for almost 30 years. During that time, we had many, many young people who traveled on our team, our ministry team. And a number of years ago, we had actually spent the morning as a ministry in a church in London, Ontario, Canada. We finished the services there and we were driving to Detroit, Michigan for a service that evening. And the drive wasn't that far. It was maybe about a two or three hour drive, but you know, it's in the afternoon, Sunday afternoon, and of course, we were always in a hurry to try to get to the next destination.

The only one little hiccup we had is we had to go across the border from Canada into the U.S.A. But this was a long time ago and it really wasn't that big of a deal, but sometimes it gets backed up. And so we arrived at the border and back in those days, I lived in a fifth wheel trailer and truck and the team that traveled with us had an automobile that they traveled in and they were behind us. But this was in the day before cell phones. There actually was a time in human history where not everybody had a cell phone.

Abraham did not have a cell phone, okay? So there was no way to communicate and the only way we knew how to get from one point to the next point was this ancient form of travel called maps. You ever heard of maps? And so we had a Rand McNally map.

Do you remember those? And so my wife and I pulled up to the Canadian border and the team was behind us, but I couldn't see them. And I was really concerned because there was a couple of tricky moves to get out of what was called Port Huron, Michigan down to Detroit.

And so I was looking, I couldn't see them, I didn't, you know, you don't have a cell phone, there's no way to communicate. And I said to my wife, I said, sweetheart, would you just jump out and the car is going to come through and would you jump in with them and I'm going to go pull down on the interstate and wait for you guys and when you come and pull up behind me then we can go down to Detroit. And she said, sure. So she jumped out and I pulled through and went through the town of Port Huron, got on the interstate 69 or not 69, another interstate to get us down to Detroit and I pulled off the side of the road and I sat there for one hour and nobody showed up. And I had a service that night, I wouldn't have known where to go, so I drove down to the church, got there in the parking lot just not too long before the service started and when I got there, there was no car there. And just a few minutes later the car pulled in and everybody piled out and I said, where's my wife and they looked at me and they said, what do you mean, your wife?

Well, here's the short story. Yes, we're still married. My wife never saw the car and she was stuck at the Canadian border. And I didn't know where she was. And there was no cell phone so she didn't know who to call and I didn't know how to call her. And we finally found her the next day.

And she ended up at a hotel she walked to, she got a night there in the hotel and we finally ended up connecting with one another and of course I sheepishly drove back up to Port Huron to get her. And yes, we're on talking terms now a long time later. But she did feel abandoned a little bit. The fact is my father-in-law, how many of you ever heard of a guy named Archie Bunker? You remember Archie Bunker? Okay, that was my father-in-law. And so every time I called him or every time my wife would call him, this was up until the time he died, he would say, where did he leave you now? But she felt abandoned. Now, here's the reality. Everybody in this room at certain points in your life are going to feel abandoned by people.

I mean, you just are. It's going to happen. It could be a family issue, it could be a church matter, it could be a friendship issue, everybody can feel that. But the Lord says, I will never leave you, and I will never forsake you. When you are lonely, the Lord's not going to leave you or forsake you. When you are without hope, God is not going to leave you and God is not going to forsake you. When you are without friends, God is not going to leave you or forsake you. God is not going to forsake you because he is your Father. God is not going to forsake you because you are his bride. God is not going to forsake God is not going to forsake you because you are part of his body. God is not going to forsake you because he started a building and building your life and he's going to finish what he began.

This is a fact and this is a reality. The reality is nobody here could stand up and ever say God has forsaken you. Many of you have gone through deep waters, did you drown? Many of you have walked through fires in your life, were you burned? Many of you have faced troubles, not one, not two, but as the Bible says, six troubles.

But let me ask you a question. Do you think God is going to forsake you in the seventh trouble? If he has been faithful here, he's going to be faithful tomorrow. Nothing can separate you from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus. Nothing in your past, nothing in your present, and nothing in your future. No man can separate you, no angel can separate you, and no devil can separate you. This is the promise of God, I will never leave you nor forsake you. This is a promise out of the Old Testament and it doesn't come from just one verse in the Old Testament.

It comes from five different verses in the Old Testament and what the writer of Hebrews does is he basically takes them and he compacts them together. He presses them together and five times he says it this way, I will never never never never never leave you or forsake you. This is a promise to the child of God. So what should I do? I should take this promise and I should embrace it. I should believe it, I should pray it, I should depend upon it, I should say it, and I should testify it.

He will never leave you and he will never forsake you. And that leads me to my last point and that is how can I be so confident that this is true and worth our believing? Now it's one thing to say he's never going to leave you nor forsake you, it's another thing to be confident in it.

You understand that. There are many of us who believe God's promises but we live with lots of fear and it's just a fact, it's a reality. You're a believer, you trust the Bible, you believe the word of God but that doesn't mean that you're living with confidence because now we're dealing with more of an emotion. So how is it that I can be confident that this is true and worthy of our believing?

How can I know that he will never leave me nor forsake me? And there are two reasons. Number one, because actually there was one who was forsaken. For on the cross when Jesus was dying, he asked the question, he said, my God, my God, why has thou forsaken me? Do you know why you will never be forsaken? Because when Jesus died on the cross, he died for your sins, he died for your failures, he died for your death and on that cross he was forsaken by his own father so that you as his child will never be forsaken by him.

That is the reason why I know. The cross tells me that God will never forsake me because... By the way, we all deserve to be forsaken because of our sins, because of our failure, because of our shame, because of our mistakes, but you will never be forsaken and God will never abandon you because Christ was abandoned on the cross to bear that forsaking in his own body so that you will never be forsaken. But there's a second reason and that is when Jesus was placed in the tomb, he went to the grave knowing the Old Testament promise of Psalm 16 and verse 9 where David the writer is writing about the Messiah to come and he writes these words, for thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer thy holy one to see corruption. This was a specific promise of what God would do for his Messiah and that is he would never abandon him. It literally means he will never forsake him in the grave and he will never permit his Messiah to see bodily decomposition. So what it is this, it's the promise that Jesus had when he was dying on the cross that he knew that his Father would not forsake him in the grave but God would resurrect him from the dead. And the reason why folks that we know that God will never forsake us is number one, his Son was forsaken by his Father on the cross. And number two, the Son was not forsaken by the Father in the tomb. And the Father resurrected his own Son by the power of the Holy Spirit and he now ever lives to make intercession for us. And I'm telling you, the reason why you and I can be confident that God will never forsake us and God will never leave us is his own Son, Jesus, who died on the cross and rose from the dead and is alive now living forevermore and we can even walk to the very threshold of death.

And I'm saying that not having experienced it. But I can say this knowing of many saints and many friends of mine who have already gone to meet the Lord and when they faced the Lord, when they faced the river of death, they faced it with confidence knowing that he will never leave you and he will never forsake you. So how should we live? We should live confidently.

Now, I'll be honest with you, it's not always that easy because we have our own fears and we all are subject to our own peculiarities about our fears. But the Lord's promise is true. If you're a child of God, take this promise and embrace it.

If you've never come to Jesus Christ and you've never been saved, come to the one that was forsaken for you but was never forsaken in the tomb and resurrected from the dead and put your faith in him and trust him and receive him into your life for Jesus Christ died for you. Would you bow your head with me please as we pray? Lord, we thank you this morning for your wonderful word that you've given us. We thank you for your promises that are not changing and we thank you, Lord, that you will never leave us or forsake us. Lord, for every person here who is not saved, Lord, I pray for their salvation this morning. God save people that are away from you. Help them to know your love and grace and then for your own people. Many who are bearing in their own life multiple different trials where they're going through anxiety and they're going through fear and they're going through depression and they're going through loneliness, Lord, you have promised that you will never leave us and you will never forsake us. Lord, help us to embrace it. Help us to believe it and give us grace, we pray, and we ask this in Jesus' name, Pastor.