Hebrews 6:13-20

Hebrews chapter 6, verse 13 is where we're going to be at.

Hebrews 6:13

So if you aren't there already, Hebrews is meant to be encouraging for discouraged Christians.

It's meant to be encouraging for discouraged Christians.

It's like a coach.

And there are parts of this, you know, the role of a coach.

Sometimes it's like I'm going to just kick you in the pants.

Other times it's I'm going to give you a vision and inspire you of what you have in store and kind of energize the team.

We go through these different parts of Hebrews and we see just this pastor who's been meditating on Psalms trying to encourage discouraged Christians.

Last week we looked at verses 9 through 12.

And what we saw was that in chapter 6 that there is this crazy similarity between the late lostness and the early salvation that where it's like, I don't know, is a person born again or not?

Well, God knows the spiritual condition, whether that person's a Christian or not.

But we saw that it's not good enough to just have like goosebumps or taste that God's good.

No, what we see the pastor here saying is look, you want to prove and evidence that you're in God's family, then you need to work and labor in love.

Like the fruit of your life should be this overflowing love that's just coming from your life.

You're not working to earn your salvation, but the work of love in your life is evidencing that you look, things that pertain to salvation pertain to you.

At the end of last week, we looked at verse 12 and he began to talk about those who inherit the promises, inherit the promises, and that's where we're going to pick up this morning.

But let's look first at verses 13 through 20, so that's fresh in our mind, and then we'll go back to verse 12.

For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater to swear by, he swore by himself, I will indeed bless you, and I will greatly multiply you.

And so, after waiting patiently, Abraham obtained the promise.

For people swear by something greater than themselves, and for them a confirming oath ends every dispute, because God wanted to show his unchangeable purpose even more clearly to the heirs of the promise, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that through two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have a strong encouragement to seize the hope set before us.

We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.

It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain.

Jesus has entered there on our behalf as a forerunner, because he has become a high priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.

Again, God, we ask that you would just teach us through your word.

We want to hear what your spirit has to say to us.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

Now you may have this in a different version in the Bible in front of you, and there may be some variations, and I will try to point that out as we're going along.

The language here is so beautiful.

In fact, I probably will forget this later on in the sermon, but this is like the New Testament verse that is kind of like our church verse.

This whole idea of that we have this anchor for the soul.

The harbor out here, just the water two blocks away, the water is deeper here than it is where, like downtown.

And so ships preferred to anchor here rather than downtown because of the depth of water.

It was a more secure refuge or haven for ships.

That imagery is what this pastor wants his readers to have come to mind about your soul, that you have an anchored soul because of the truths that are here.

Before we get there, though, let's look at verse 12.

This is where we ended last week.

We didn't elaborate on it too much, and so we'll look at it this morning.

He says, so that you won't become lazy, but will become imitators.

You will be imitators of those who inherit the promises through faith and perseverance.

When he says the word lazy, he's contrasting a word that's found in verse 11, which is the word diligence.

Diligence versus laziness.

Diligence versus laziness.

He's calling for you and I to have a diligence about our faith.

What does it mean for you to be diligent?

Now, when you think about diligence in other aspects of your life, what are where how does that manifest itself?

Does it mean that you're making sure that you're bathing on a regular basis, hopefully?

Maybe it means you clean up your room.

Maybe it means that you're diligent with your bills.

You're making sure that your bills are getting paid.

Maybe you're going to school and you're diligent with your schoolwork, you're on top of it.

But what does it mean for you to be diligent about your faith?

Not being lazy, but diligent as a Christian.

We oftentimes think, I mean, um, I know that for me, diligence oftentimes, I'm motivated to be diligent because I want to avoid pain in my life, right?

I want to do my homework because I don't want to fail my class, right?

I want to make sure that I respond to emails that are coming in so that I don't violate a relationship or hurt somebody that may trust me.

There's a diligence associated with impending consequences.

But do we think about our faith in terms of a diligence?

That we are supposed to be Christians who keep a diligence about our practice.

And what does that look like?

Well, here he says that you we do not, we don't want to become lazy, but we want to be imitators of those who are inheriting promises, the promises, through faith and perseverance.

Now, what does your version say here?

Is it faith and perseverance or faith and patience?

Yeah, same idea.

Through faith and patience.

So the pastor here is encouraging these Christians, as a spiritual coach, as it were, to be diligent in their faith, imitating others who are inheriting the promises.

So, inheriting promises.

What's going on there?

We have done a series before we went into Hebrews, six or seven weeks, all about being promised believers.

The idea of God's promises are kind of, there's there's multiple aspects of it.

One of the things that we talked about is that the promises of God that are being inherited is it's like the riches of heaven communicated in advance to humans.

That God has a plan, but also resources for the world.

Not just for us to do life, but for the people that we love, that we care about, for those who are suffering, going through trials.

The promises of God is just this God revealing and communicating the wealth of heaven and trusting in those promises is taking a hold of those heavenly promises and resourcing our lives and the world with them.

Another thing that we talked about in our series is that God is the only one who can make good promises.

We'll elaborate more on that this morning.

We can make promises, but there's a fallibility, there's an unknown future aspect to our lives, whereas God's future is promise and his word is unchanging.

He knows the future, he has the power to accomplish what he says.

And then, three, God's promises are footholds for our faith and land claims that we use as we pray.

As we're going along, if you've ever climbed up a steep embankment, you're looking for those places.

Where can I put my foot?

What can I stick my foot in to get up to the next level?

And these promises are that in our own spiritual journey.

They're also the land claims.

If you make a claim on a land, it's like this is I have a right to this land.

If there's a question about ownership, the promises of God are kind of like a legal document where it's like, this is your right as a child of God.

This is what you have access to.

And so the pastor of Hebrews is saying, listen, Christian, listen, discouraged Christian, from where you're at.

You need to have a diligence about your faith that's similar to these other saints who are inheriting the promises through faith and through patience.

Okay, well, that's a bit theoretical.

Could you just give us a working example?

And he says, sure, I'll give you the story of Abraham.

So from verses 3 through 15, we see this idea through the life of Abraham, a saint who through faith and patience inherited the promises of God.

When God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater to swear by, he swore by himself.

And then he's going to quote Genesis 22, verse 7.

Genesis 22:7

I will indeed bless you, and I will greatly multiply you.

And so after waiting patiently, Abraham obtained the promise.

Now, if you're new to the Bible, Abraham is a character that we encounter in the first book of the Bible, Genesis chapter 12.

Genesis 12 · chapter mention

By the time we get to Abraham, there's the flood has already happened, where humanity is already rebelled against God in total, and God has wiped out the earth and restarted through Noah and his family.

And then we pick up with some genealogy, and we get to a guy named Abram.

And God tells Abram to leave his homeland and go to a new land that he's promised.

And not only is God going to give him a new land, but he says, I'm going to raise up from your family a royal line, a new nation that's going to bring a blessing upon the whole world.

But we're told early on that Abraham and his wife could have no children.

They were barren.

And so the promise that God made to Abraham was not so obvious.

The God of the Bible is a God who seems to delight in the impossible.

He seems to even set the stage, as it were, impossible, so that he can make promises into that setting.

It's not a cruelty, but it is a desire to bring glory to his name, to make it evident and clear that he alone is the one who has the power over the world and is the one that deserves to be worshipped, to be trusted.

If you go back to Genesis 12, and you read from 12 to 25, you'll get the story of Abraham.

But the pastor here, who's writing Hebrews, is quoting from late in Abraham's life, Genesis 22.

The story of Isaac, and if you are not familiar with the story of Abraham, he does end up having a miraculous child who is named Isaac, but then God tells him, offer your son as a sacrifice, which is another crazy story that you need to go and read if you're not familiar with it.

And so Abraham's obedient.

He's ready to offer his son as a sacrifice, and then God provides a replacement sacrifice, a ram caught in the bushes.

And so Isaac is not sacrificed, and Abraham sees God provide and deliver, and again prove out his promises.

And then we come to Genesis chapter 22, and this quote.

Genesis 22 · chapter mention

So it's important for us as the readers to be familiar with verse 16.

I have sworn, this is the Lord's declaration, because you have done this thing, and it goes on.

So keeping this in mind, there are two things that are going on in Hebrews chapter 6.

Hebrews 6 · chapter mention

We have the inspiring narrative of Abraham responding to the promises of God with faith and patience.

And the second thing is the veracity and the trustworthiness of God's promises.

Both of these things are playing out in Hebrews chapter 6.

Hebrews 6 · chapter mention

And so the pastor here is holding up the example of Abraham, and he is saying, listen, saints, I want this guy, Abraham, to be your working example, somebody that you can look at and understand what we're talking about when we say, be diligent in your faith, to be patient, to walk by faith, and inherit the promises of God.

And again, he's using the language of family, which you know, inheritance is something that usually belongs within a family theme.

And so the language here is again the language of family life.

So in verse 15, the end of the story, or what the pastor wants us to see is that after Abraham waited patiently, he obtained the promise.

Now it's likely that the promise here is Jacob.

Jacob was born to Isaac.

Abraham witnessed not just his own son Isaac being born, but he was around to see Jacob being born as well.

It's very likely that that is the fulfillment.

And Abraham is able to see God's word now being fulfilled through these generations.

He's inheriting God's promises.

One of the things we talked about in the Promise Believers series is that God's not looking for us to be a people that make promises to Him.

There have been times within the church, and there's this kind of this religious instinct as our fervor grows towards the Lord that we're going to make promises.

God, I won't do this anymore.

God, if you do this for me, then I promise you I'll do this or I'll do that.

But the Bible, when it talks about promises, it doesn't ask of us promises.

What it asks of us is to believe God's promises, that we would be a people that are living by the promises of God.

And one of the things that we talked about heavily is like to live off of the promises of God means that we're reading the Bible and we are able to regularly recognize God's making a promise.

And the communication that is contained here in my Bible reading, this is different.

This is different from anything other communication that's going to happen to me today.

This is not what's on a podcast.

This is not what's in a book.

This is not what my friends are going to tell me or people at work are going to tell me.

What God's saying when he talks, it's sure, it's steadfast, and it's within the, it's it's having this ability to know the future.

So the first thing that we have here in verses 13 through 15 is the example of Abraham held up to inspire you and I to walk by faith and patience.

In fact, this text is, this text, sorry, let's see here.

This text is a substantiation.

It starts with for when God made a promise to Abraham.

What that means is like, hey, here's this example of people.

I'm gonna add this story in here to to um buttress or support the point that I want you to get.

Do you hear it?

Do you hear it, Christians?

Do you get the because we're gonna go to the next point.

It's important you get his first point, right?

He wants you to take from Abraham that this is not some lofty idea that's detached.

This is what it means to be a diligent Christian, that you're walking, holding on by faith and patience to the promises of God.

Okay.

I feel like I've beat that one like a dead horse.

So let's move to the next one, okay?

Which is gonna be verse 16 through 18.

For people swear by something greater than themselves, and for them a confirming oath ends every dispute.

Because God wanted to show his unchangeable purpose even more clearly to the heirs of the promise, he guaranteed it with an oath.

So that through the two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have a strong encouragement to seize the hope set before us.

So he's gonna go back to theory for a second.

And he's gonna say, This is how guaranteed human communication works.

Here's how strong communication works for people.

You make a promise, right?

You make a promise, and there is an oath.

So you see here, there's two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie.

What are the two impossible the two um unchangeable things?

The promise and the oath.

The promise and the oath.

That's why it's important to understand in Genesis 22, 16, where he says, Here's what I here's what I swear I will do for you.

The way that this argument is structured, and he's again talking about guaranteed communication, he's saying when humans, um, when humans act, they make oaths.

And they will swear by something greater than themselves.

Um when you and I sign a legal document, right?

Sometimes we need to go and get it notarized.

It just means it gives it authenticity because somebody else will.

Witnessed us.

They looked at our driver's license, proved our who we are, and then we signed it, right?

It just gives it a little bit more proof.

Sometimes an oath is taken, and the oath, the person taking the oath places their hand on a Bible or on some other sacred document just to give the moment a little bit more gravity.

The idea there is that we really want to go from normal communication into sacred communication or special communication so that there is this sense of this is immovable, unshakable, this is really solid.

You're not going to get out of it.

Sometimes we have events where there's witnesses.

So when we have a wedding, we invite all these people, not just because it's going to be a party, but because these people that are attending the wedding, they're witnessing this sacred exchanging of vows and the giving of rings.

It is done in a way where it's like this is a there's a permanency to this sacred moment.

And yet the way that the pastor says is like, if this is how it works with humans, God can't swear by anything greater, so he swears by himself.

It's this lesser to greater argument.

And the reason for that is so that there can be this sense of how strong and how fixed God's word is.

God wanted to show his unchangeable purpose even more clearly to the heirs of promise.

He guaranteed it with an oath.

Two unchangeable things.

It's impossible for God to lie.

So he lays out theory, but then what does he say?

He says it's we have this.

He goes right from theoretical, here's how human language and oath taking works, into a personalized application.

We who have fled for refuge, we have a strong encouragement to seize the hope set before us.

We who have fled.

This is what we've done.

When we gave our life to Christ, when we were dead in our trespasses and sins, and God allowed us to encounter the truth of the gospel, like it says in 2 Corinthians 4, the light went on, and we realized this is who Jesus is, and we fled for refuge.

We have this strong encouragement to seize.

We have a strong encouragement to seize the hope that's set before us.

He literally says here that we have both encouragement and we have hope.

Do you see verse 19?

We have this hope as an anchor for our soul, firm and secure.

It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain, so he begins to get into this priestly language.

Let's wait just a second.

I just want to camp out here just for one minute.

We have discouraged Christians that are listening to this pastor.

He's meditating on the Psalms.

He's realizing that Jesus is the Messiah of Psalms.

He knows Jesus, but he sees all of this language, like the language we read this morning, Psalm 110, that talks about the Messiah being this royal reigning character that has this kingdom authority that's extending his scepter over the whole earth, that that king is the one that he's trying to bring, this pastor's trying to bring these discouraged Christians in close proximity to.

And he says, You and I have this encouragement and we have this hope that we're holding on to because of God's language.

Do you remember in chapter four?

That was the last time we talked about promises.

In chapter four, the promises were the promised rest.

And over and over again in chapter four, the pastor is saying, Listen, God communicates, God talks, God warns, God's just communicating a lot.

And then he goes into this famous verse, verse 412, which says, God's word is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword.

He wants these readers, he wants you and I to encounter God's word as if it were alive.

And now he again comes back and we have an encounter with God's Word.

Here he's not emphasizing the living nature of God's word as much as he's emphasizing how it is fixed and how it is something that we can anchor our hope to.

That it is secure.

So imagine the boat that it gets unmoored, I think is the term for it, right?

It get it loses its place.

Its anchor is no longer fixed.

My friend the the Manzanos, they have a boat, and they have um when they anchor at night, they have a GPS that's just monitoring their position.

And that GPS program on their of this computer knows that they will circle in a particular spot because of where they're anchored.

And it knows the perimeter.

As the wind blows, they can circle their fixed point of being anchored.

But if they go outside of that circle, all of a sudden an alarm will go off in the middle of the night because the anchor is no longer holding on to its position.

They've lost that anchored spot.

And this writer here is saying, listen, as a Christian, it's possible to not have this anchor, to be, to not access this hope or this encouragement.

And so if you're in a place where you're feeling like I need encouragement, I'm feeling despairing, I'm feeling like that boat that is tossed, you may want to ask yourself, how am I doing with trusting God's word?

How am I doing with relying and leaning in to what God has promised?

How am I doing with seeing the promises fulfilled through Jesus Christ?

Am I connected to the anchor?

So he goes through and he finishes up with this language.

He finishes up with this language about our high priest.

Jesus has entered there.

This is behind the veil.

He's entered there on our behalf as a forerunner because he has become a high priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.

I know when you read that, you're like, wait, we've heard that before.

When are we going to look at Melchizedek?

This is the third time the high priesthood of Jesus has been brought up, and we haven't gotten it flushed out a whole lot.

We did a little bit in chapter five, but here again, we have the order of Melchizedek.

It's coming.

Next week, chapter seven, we're going to look extensively at who of why this pastor thinks it's critical for these Christians to know by Jesus as a priest after the order of Melchizedek.

It is completely obscure.

But yet, as this pastor, who loves Jesus and loves the people he's pastoring and knows the Psalms, as he knows this stuff, he for some reason thinks that Melchizedek, and this is inspired by the Holy Spirit, that understanding this idea of Jesus being after the order of Melchizedek, that this is critical to being a disciple and being encouraged.

Remember, he laugh he stopped explaining this last time because he's like, you're not mature enough, you're lazy in your understanding.

So he spent a chapter going through this other material.

Now he's going to bring it up again, but he's going to get to it.

It's going to be fun.

Okay.

Let me just finish up with this.

In for some reason, my verse 12 doesn't come up here, but in Hebrews 4.12, it says that God's word is living and effective, sharper than any double-edged sword, penetrating as far as the separation of soul and spirit, joints and marrow.

It's able to judge the thoughts and the intentions of the heart.

Here we see that his word is sure and steadfast.

Jesus, as our high priest, has a full-time job of making it possible for you and I to live in, to have this living and active relationship with God's Word.

To not just be separated and have our Bibles sit on our shelves, but for it to be our food, our light, our nourishment, what can correct us and direct us in our lives.

It is how God wants to work in our life.

For some of you, you may not yet feel like you may understand that Jesus is this anchor for our soul, that the promises of God are this anchor, but you're the boat and your boat's not connected to the anchor.

And it's not anchor's no good.

It's there, it's a good anchor, but your life's not connected to Jesus.

And as we were looking at in Bible class, the first step, if you want to be connected to that anchor, is this repent and believe.

You need to repent and believe.

So maybe that's your first step.

If you have never been at a place in your life where you've said, Jesus, I want to make you the Lord of my life, then that's your step this morning.

That's what you need to do.

For the rest of us, we need to hear the pastor who's meditating on Psalm 110, who's thinking and just has these inspired thoughts about the high priesthood of Jesus.

We need to allow Jesus' job to be effective in our life and draw us close to the Lord and close to his word and understand that his word is sure and steadfast.

He does not want our lives, and we go through storms, right?

Jesus gives that parable.

Storms are very real, but he does not want us unhitched from the anchor.

He wants us to have a sure and steadfast hope and encouragement for our souls.

Lord, we thank you for your word.

We thank you that we can trust in you and be anchored to you and wait for your promises to be fulfilled in our life.

Lord, I ask that you would work in our lives this week and that you would do just a transforming work in us, that you would help us more and more to move towards you as the anchor of our soul.

Lord, as we open up our Bibles this week, each time, whether we get to read a lot or a little, whether we're listening to it on the Dwell app, or we open, turn on our phones, and we we get just one verse.

God, we ask that you would speak to us through your word and that we would be a people who are diligent, holding on through faith and patience, waiting for to inherit what your word is talking about.

Lord, you know our own stories and where we're at.

I pray for each person here that you would answer the questions that they have.

Where there is a need for resurrection power in their life, I pray that you do that.

That you would just make yourself known in a powerful way.

Lord, I pray for those that are struggling with depression and discouragement that are not here this morning, that you would touch their hearts, and that you would encourage them, that you lift them up from despair, and that they would have a sense of encouragement this morning.

Bless them.

Lord, we thank you for our time together as we take um communion together.

Lord, we would you just give us a sense of your nearness.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.