“Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever.” —Hebrews 13:8
The verse which precedes our text reads: “Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation.” Then comes this sentence: “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and forever.” He is the end of all their conversation.
This word “conversation” takes in two great principles, the idea of talking and the thought of what folks are. This is the consummation of the living of those who have preached the Gospel; this is …
“For that day shall not come, except there come a falling away first.” —2 Thessalonians 2:3
There are also four or five verses in the eighth chapter of Jeremiah that I want to use as a backbone of the things I wish to say to you. I want to show how we “lose out”; how we “fall away.”
I want to talk very tenderly—as tenderly as I know how, by the power of the Holy Spirit, about the grave danger that is surrounding your life—the danger in the day in which we live of your losing the rich things of …
“All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”—Isaiah 53:6
Notice how we went astray: “We have turned every one to his own way.” That is sin. Your way is not God’s way. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Those are God’s words. Your way is sin, and that is the reason He tells you that you went astray; “All we like sheep have …
“Blessed are the undefiled in the way.”—Psalm 119:1
This 119th Psalm starts out with the word “blessed.” This word in the Word of God is worthy of our study. In a worldly sense, we associate it with the thought of a man whom we describe as “A lucky fellow,” “A fortunate man.” Some men seem to succeed in whatever they undertake, they have the ability to do things better than other men and the world calls them lucky. The Scripture, however, never speaks of a lucky man or a fortunate one, but it says much about a blessed man.
When Israel was leaving the wilderness with its sad defeats to enter upon the winning battles of the Promised Land, Joshua was ordered to make two monuments to signalize the crossing of the borderline at the Jordan.
The one monument was to be buried in the river, and the other conspicuously put up on the other side, so that, in days to come, when the children asked the fathers, “What mean ye by these stones?” (Joshua 4:6–7), they could say in reply, “The waters of Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord.”