Hebrews 6:13-20, Dean Delfosse

Yeah, sorry, it's a weird morning.

We've got to pack a lot into a very short amount of time.

I know, right?

We'll see.

So we've been working our way through the book of Hebrews, and we've come to this wonderful section that begins in verse 13.

And even just as we're about to read it together, one question springs to mind that's not original with me, but uh it just sticks every time I come back to this passage.

When does God swear?

When does God swear?

Does God swear?

And why would he do that?

And my hope in prayer this morning is that we would align ourselves with the passage in front in seeing and understanding when God swears, on what occasion and why our confidence in him will grow and mature and deepen and endure through the hardships that come our way.

So this morning I'm going to begin reading at verse 13 and ask you to follow along.

It may be on the screen, but as I always say, it'll mean more to you if you can follow along in your own copy of the Bible.

And feel free to look at the table of contents or Google it if you're using an app or whatever.

Hebrews chapter 6.

Hebrews 6 · chapter mention

At the end of a scary, sober warning comes this wonderful word to deepen our assurance.

Verse thirteen.

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

And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise.

For because for people swear by something greater than themselves, and in all their disputes an oath is final for confirmation.

So when God, desiring to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.

And we have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner places behind the curtain where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek.

This is a word of the Lord.

So, Lord, once again we ask for mercy and we thank you for it, and we trust you for it, that in this time over the text, um, our hearts and minds will be sobered, um, our love for you will increase, that you would um watch over our thinking and give us attentiveness beyond our usual uh levels and filter all of my words so that they would be reflective of your truth, to your glory, and a help to your people.

And we ask these things in Christ's name.

Amen.

Again, I I wish and would want to spend a lot more time in this passage than we have today.

But I just want to whet your appetite for what's here and bring you another block of scripture that if you have a favorite, or if you have a section of favorite Bible passages, may this one be added to that number.

May this be a paragraph that you return to time and time again in times of trouble, struggle, and especially doubt.

Doubt creeps in amongst us when we least expect it.

Doubt can come over you late at night, it can come over you in the midst of turmoil, it can come over you when things are going well, and you are prone to forget the Lord.

Doubt can set in.

Doubt is particularly heinous for the church because it runs right against God's word.

God has made promises.

Consider the promises that God has made to his people, to us in his word.

He's promised to meet all of our needs in Christ Jesus, Luke chapter 12.

Luke 12 · chapter mention

He has promised to hear our prayers, Matthew chapter 7.

Matthew 7 · chapter mention

He has promised to never forsake you or leave you, Hebrews 13, 5, one of my absolute favorites.

He has promised to forgive you of all your sins if you trust in Christ Jesus, Ephesians chapter 1, verse 7.

Ephesians 1:7

He has promised to strengthen you and dwell within you by his Holy Spirit, Ephesians chapter 3, verse 16.

Ephesians 3:16

And he has promised to bring you one day into his eternal glory.

Colossians chapter 3, verse 4.

Colossians 3:4

God is not stingy with his promises.

He's not reluctant to make promises.

God knows the weight of his words, and because he is almighty, all-knowing, and present everywhere, calling the end from the beginning, he can make promises because he doesn't change his mind.

He's never freaked out or surprised by anything that comes our way.

So when he makes promises, we can rest assured that he will follow through.

In his own time, in his own way, and ultimately, when all is said and done, we will see and understand that he did what was right and best all along.

And yet doubts come in.

Doubts can take over.

It can trickle into the way we think when we least expect it.

And so this morning, the writer of Hebrews, wanting to undergird the sure and steady anchor that is Christ Jesus, the rock of salvation, our one and only genuine and firm hope for all his readers, takes our attention backwards in the text to the first book of the Bible, the book of Genesis.

And the promise God made to Abraham.

To Abraham, which is significant because the writer has already said in chapter two that God works for the salvation of the offspring of Abraham.

So even we who are ethnically not Jewish get folded into the wider effects of the promises God made.

So when the writer scripture speaks of somebody in the Old Testament like Abraham, you should not, I'm encouraging you, don't zone out and go, well, it's not for me.

Christ Jesus, the book of Romans, teaches us, is the offspring of Abraham.

And because we are folded into him, all the blessings that he has inherited and one are ours in him.

And in this passage, the writer of Hebrews zeroes in on a particular event in the life of Abraham, a trying event.

I cannot imagine what Abraham went through, let alone what Isaac went through, in Genesis chapter 22.

Genesis 22 · chapter mention

So in Genesis chapter 22, God reaffirms to Abraham a promise to bless him, to make his descendants a great nation, that they would possess this land, that royalty would come after him, that through him all the families of the earth would be blessed.

Genesis 22 · chapter mention

It's like the second or third time God has reaffirmed this promise.

He did it in Genesis 12, when he took him from being a moon worshiper, Ur of the Chaldees, revealed himself as a one true God to him, and called him by name, and said, You will have descendants like the stars in the sky or the grains of sand on the beaches.

And in the course of the conversations that God has with Abraham and his wife Sarah, there is some laughing going on because they're chronologically advanced.

They're old.

And every effort that Abraham and Sarah make to help God along in keeping his promises makes things so much worse.

God waits until there's no human way that they can have a child, and then brings about the son Isaac, the son of promise.

And when Isaac has advanced some in age, God tells Abraham, I want you to take your son, your one and only son, the son of promise, and I want you to sacrifice him.

Now, before you throw up any objections about that's cruel and unusual, and what kind of God would act, like before you go there, just know that Genesis 22 starts out very clearly, God is putting Abraham to the test.

God stays his hand, and God provides a ram for the sacrifice instead of the son.

God, who knows and has planned the sacrifice of his own son, of which there will be no substitute because he is the substitute, foretells the great gospel event in calling Abraham to sacrifice his son.

And when God stays Abraham's swinging arm and provides the ram in the thicket as a substitute sacrifice, God says to Abraham, now I know.

What a great way for God to talk.

As if he learned something new.

He didn't learn anything new.

He knew.

And now Abraham knows too.

Now I know that you will withhold nothing from me.

So I'm going to make you this promise of this son, this son of promise that I promised you already.

I will bless and make great.

And God, Genesis chapter twenty two, verses seventeen and eighteen, God goes a bit further.

Because in earlier interactions with Abraham, God makes a promise.

In this interaction with Abraham, God makes a promise, and Isaac is listening.

Isaac, the heir of the promise, is listening in.

And God goes one step further than just saying, I promise.

God says, I swear.

And God does something that nobody else can do.

The wording in Genesis twenty-two is, I swear by my own name.

And the writer of Hebrew, such a careful reader of the Old Testament, picks up in that and goes, whoa, whoa, whoa.

That's unusual.

God swears by his own name.

And he thinks.

The writer of Hebrews thinks and ponders and thinks and mulls us over and realizes that when people want to make an oath, people who want you to be sure of their word, they make an oath.

And they swear by something greater than themselves.

I swear on my mother's grave.

And God's stuck being God.

There's nothing greater that he can swear on.

He's stuck being awesome.

And so God having nothing greater to swear by, swears by himself.

Now this is huge because, again, back in earlier chapters of Genesis, God did this thing with a firepot, a vision of a firepot and a flaming torch passing through the sacrificial remains of certain animals.

God did this thing with Abraham, making this covenant promise with him.

And the crazy symbolism is that almost always when a greater party is making a covenant or promise with a lesser party, the lesser party takes on the penalty for the broken promise or the broken covenant.

Okay, if this doesn't happen, if you don't do these things for me, lesser vassal person, see these split open animals here?

This is what's gonna, this is what I'm gonna do to you.

And God does something weird for Abraham.

God himself, as it were, in this vision, passes through those pieces, himself taking on the punishment, the blame, the penalty if this covenant promise is broken.

When he says, I swear by my name, there's nothing greater I can swear by, he's putting his name on the line.

He's putting his godhood on the line.

And so with that background, hear again these first verses of Hebrews thirteen and following.

He says, When God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, saying, Surely I will bless you and multiply you.

And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise.

For people swear by something greater than themselves, and in all their disputes, an oath is final for confirmation.

If I was going to give you three strands to grasp onto, to know that this anchor spoken about later in our text, this trust in Christ Jesus is firmly fixed, it would be number one, God's oath.

The fact that God didn't have to, but did make an oath.

Verses thirteen through sixteen.

He swore by himself.

God made a promise and he swore it by an oath.

More than God's oath, God's character.

God's character, verses seventeen and eighteen.

Promises don't mean much if the person who makes a promise is untrustworthy, always going back on their word.

But verse seventeen and eighteen highlight God's character.

Verse 17, so when God, desiring to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise, the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.

Do you see the display of God's character in these verses?

He has this number one, a desire to show more convincingly.

A desire to show even more convincingly.

So I started by asking when does God swear?

God swears when he wants the recipients of his oath to be that much more sure.

God swears so that you can sleep at night.

God swears so that you will have double reason to rest in his word.

It wasn't just to Abraham.

Notice how the writer of Hebrews said, the heirs of the promise, Isaac listening in, Christ Jesus reading, and now you and I.

He desires that there would be surety, confidence, more convincingly, or the unchangeable character of his purpose.

I purpose to do this for you, to be your God, to redeem you for myself in Christ Jesus, to glut you for all eternity on the joys of being mine.

Two unchangeable things.

A promise and an oath said by a God for whom it is impossible for him to lie.

That's just come back to that over and over and over and over again and preach to your brain, God cannot lie.

Preach to yourself it is impossible for God to lie.

Tattoo that on your sunglasses or your contacts.

God would stop being God if he was a liar.

The threat in the garden, that God made to our first parents was, you will not eat from this tree.

If you do, you will surely die.

Surely.

And the words of the serpent chipping away at God's word, did God say you would surely die?

You will not surely die.

Surely, surely, surely, it is impossible for God to lie.

And because of that, and because you and I, as people who are trusting in the finished work of Jesus Christ, have strong encouragement.

Verse 18, to cling, hold fast, latch on to, hug the hope that is set before you.

So if his oath wasn't enough, if his character wasn't enough, then we trust his son.

Look at the last two verses.

We trust his son, verses nineteen and twenty.

We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner places behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

I don't have time anymore to unpack those verses for you.

There's so much precious words there.

Songs for thousands of years have been written on verses nineteen and twenty alone.

Jesus Christ, the anchor of the soul, has passed into the inner sanctum, the holy of holies in heaven itself, and is there on our behalf.

The anchor has fastened itself around the mercy seat.

Explain all of this another time.

In the center of God's temple in heaven, and it's the anchor for your soul.

And immediately the weakness comes to my mind.

That's awesome.

It's fixed on that end.

How about my end?

My crazy doubting mind always goes to my weakness.

I'm supposed to hold fast to this.

What if it starts slipping?

Christ is firmly fixed up there.

What about me holding on down here?

And I'll just tell you so you can tell yourself don't do that.

Don't double talk God's word.

The strong encouragement is what you were meant to have.

So all you have to do is take God at His Word.

And to help you take God at His Word, He calls it an anchor of the soul.

The imagery is fixed.

We trust God's oath.

We trust His character, we trust His Son.

He will be there for us when the bottom drops out.

He will be there for us to meet us.

We cross from this life into eternity.

He is the anchor for our souls.

Would you stand and let me pray for you?

With a minute to reflect, would you think again about the God who dares to make promises to us?

And we who dare to trust and take him at his word.

Such a God is a God of mercy, and so would you ask for forgiveness for your seasons of doubt?

Would you ask for help to hold on to his precious promises?

We once again lay ourselves at your feet.

And thank you for being a God who speaks and redeems and is concerned about our confidence in you.

Help us, we ask.

And we trust you for it.

In Jesus' name.

Amen.

Let's seal these things in song before we go.