"More Certain Than a Promise" Hebrews 6:13-18 Sunday Evening Worship Service

Hebrews chapter 6.

Hebrews 6 · chapter mention

The word of God is describing a promise that God gave Abraham.

And then it says this down in verse 17.

It's page 1004, probably in your pew Bibles.

So when God desired 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 hopes set before us.

Do you ever make promises?

Do you ever promise something to maybe your sisters or your parents?

Or do you ever promise something to your kids?

Do you ever promise anything to people?

And the answer is probably yes.

People make promises all the time, but now I want to ask you a more specific question.

Why do you make promises?

Like what's going on in the circumstance around where you are that drives you to make a promise?

Now I can't speak for every one of you.

I'm sure promises take place in different contexts and different scenarios, but I can speak with some authority on why children often make promises to each other.

Sometimes they'll make a promise to somebody because they don't want to disappoint them.

Sometimes they'll make a promise to somebody because they want to encourage them.

Sometimes they'll make a promise to somebody because they're trying to get out of trouble, for example.

Like I promise it will never happen again.

I saw this is a high school.

I saw two high school kids that were having a dispute over the last granola bar on the team bus.

And one said, I'll take it this time and I'll give you mine next time.

It was like the one now for two later kind of Popeye approach.

And the other kid said, Yeah, but how do I know you'll give me one next time?

And the the first kid said, Because I promise I will.

It's like, oh, well, that settles it.

Why do people make promises to each other?

Sometimes I said to get out of trouble.

There was a story in the news recently from Yakima, Washington, where a state patrol officer saw a car that was driving and swerving, and the officer thought that the guy driving was probably drunk, and so he turned on his lights to pull him over, and the guy sped away.

And the officer followed him at a distance.

The guy turned into a neighborhood real quick and then turned into a driveway and got out of the car and sat down on the front porch.

So when the officer drives up to the house, the officer gets out, and the guy pretends that he's been sitting on his front porch all day long.

He told the officer, this is captured in the ring video, he told the officer, I promise you, this is my house, and I've been here for hours.

The only problem with this, and perhaps some of you saw the same story, is that the guy drove away and by coincidence turned into the driveway of the state patrol officer's house.

I promise I've been here all day.

So sometimes those promises are invalid because the person saying it is lying.

Sometimes you might give a promise to make somebody feel better about something.

If you have a friend moving, you might say, I promise I'll write to you every week.

I promise I'll talk on the phone with you every Saturday.

And you might really mean that promise.

You're not lying like the guy earlier in Washington.

You're you're actually telling the truth.

You you make that promise.

But the problem with that is that you don't know the future and you're not in control of your own life.

And so you tell your friend, I promise I'll write to you every week, but then you grow up and your friend grows up and you have your own lives, and maybe you go on vacation one week and you don't have time to write, or you for you forget.

Maybe something bad is happening in your life, and you're going to a funeral somewhere, something like that, and you just don't remember.

And so you promised, and the promise really doesn't mean anything.

Ten years ago, I I don't think my oldest daughter will even remember this, but ten years ago when we moved out to Virginia, I took her to Disneyland, and we stood in line for the the princesses, and we told the princesses that we were moving to Virginia, and the princess told Madison that she would always remember her.

Madison likely made a similar promise back.

I don't remember exactly, but now I mean I don't even remember which princess it was.

And the promise is from a fictional character at that point.

The problem with this is that you don't know what kind of person is making the promise.

So in Hebrews 6, the verse that we just read, verse 17, God desires to show more convincingly to us that he's going to actually save us.

There's a long period of time between when you hear the gospel and you believe the gospel and when you arrive in heaven.

So you first hear the gospel at a young age.

If you're a child growing up in the church, you hear the gospel hopefully from as little as you can remember.

But even if you came to faith older in life, at let's say age 20, there's still decades of time between when you hear the gospel and when you actually see face-to-face the Lord Jesus, and faith becomes sight.

So there's a long time we're dealing with here, a long gap between when you hear the gospel and when you see the reality of it for yourself.

In that time period, Hebrews 6 is saying, God wants to give you something to convince you of the truth of the gospel.

So this is the kind of scenario where at a human level you might make a promise to somebody.

What is God going to do to convince you that the gospel is real?

And the key part is in the next verse, verse 18.

He does two unchangeable things.

Two unchangeable things.

Now, this is a fascinating thing for the author to say because as you go through the verse, it doesn't list the two unchangeable things.

So you're reading this, you're like, great, God does two unchangeable things.

That's exciting.

Where's the list?

I'd like a little number one, number two.

And so you gotta zoom out a little bit, and it's not that hard to figure it out.

It's just one paragraph here, and there's the two things that are in the paragraph, but he does two unchangeable things.

But before we look at those two unchangeable things, notice, first of all, that God is anchoring both of them in who he is.

That God only tells the truth.

This is what it means in the next phrase up there on the screen, in which it is impossible for God to lie.

The devil lies all the time.

In fact, the devil is the father of lies.

The devil invented lies, the devil ushers lies into the world, the devil believed a lie, the devil told a lie, the devil tells other angels that they can rebel against God and they can have dominion over the earth.

The devil's lie that he believed is that he should have dominion over the earth.

That was the lie the devil invented himself, and he believed it, and he spread it, and a third of the angels believed the lie, and they rebel against God, and then the devil comes to earth, and the devil lies to Adam and Eve and says that God doesn't want you to eat the fruit because then you'll, you know, you'll become like gods, and the the opposite of it is true.

They ate the fruit and they will die.

So the devil is the father of lies.

Lies come from him.

God cannot lie because everything God says comes true.

God's words have creative power.

So when God says something, it brings that thing into reality.

This is why the Bible begins with God creating the world, not with a tool shed, not out in the yard, not with a factory line.

God creates the world with his words.

He says, light, and there's light.

And he says, oceans, and there's oceans and skies and skies and cow and moo.

And he just says it and it happens.

So God can't lie.

I mean, if what you say comes true immediately, you recognize you you don't have the capacity to lie.

You'd be told to lie, it would be true.

That's where God is.

It is impossible for him to lie.

And so what is he going to do to prove the truth of the gospel to us so that we have the phrase here in verse 18 is strong encouragement of Hebrews chapter 6.

Hebrews 6 · chapter mention

So what do you do that we have strong encouragement?

Well, there's two things that God does here.

The first is that he promises to Abraham.

This is the pattern.

When you go back to Genesis, God calls Abraham and tells Abraham He's going to make a nation out of him, and he gives Abraham a promise and says, I promise to you, Abraham, that this will happen.

And then remember, there was a long period of time between God's promise to Abraham and when Abraham had a son.

When Abraham realized that God's promise was true.

God's promise to Abraham is that you will have a son.

The son will end up being the Savior many generations later.

So Abraham would have a son, Isaac, Isaac would have a son, Jacob, and so forth, all the way down to Christ.

So that's the promise.

But there's a long period of time between the promise comes to Abraham and when he actually has the son.

Even longer if you go from the promise to Abraham and when he dies and sees the Lord.

And so what does God do to convince Abraham that it's true?

Well, God promises, makes a covenant with Abraham.

You remember a covenant is normally something that two people would make, a handshake deal, so to speak, and both parties would agree.

You would agree, like the granola bar analogy on the shuttle.

I agree that I'll give you mine next time, and you agree you give me one this time, and we both promise it takes both people to do that.

So that's what happened initially with Abraham.

But then God intervenes in Abraham's life and puts Abraham to sleep, and God does the covenant by himself.

In Genesis chapter 22, verse 16, Yahweh says, By myself I have sworn.

Genesis 22:16

So God now swears by himself.

People swear by all kinds of crazy things.

You know, I swear on my own life, though what I'm telling you is the truth.

Most people swear by God because we can't imagine anything greater.

And so when you go to court, you know, you put your hand in the Bible and you, you know, you put your hand on the Bible because there's nothing greater.

There's no greater books.

That's the idea.

Even non-Christians will often put their hands on the Bible.

No, a lot of courts have gotten away from that now, but some of them still do it.

Because you can't think of anything greater to swear by.

When I was in school, people would swear on their mother's grave.

I remember getting an argument with someone, and I said, you know, this is true, and I promise, and they're like, swear on your mother's grave.

And I'm like, my mom's alive.

That doesn't even make any sense to me.

So what does God swear by?

What does God promise by?

Or what does God make a covenant by?

And the answer in Genesis 22 is he swears by himself.

He swears by himself.

There's no conditions to this.

There's no part of this promise that we have to keep up.

Let me give you a an illustration of this.

Pretend you're 16 years old and you can drive.

Can you drive at 16 in Virginia?

Yes, okay.

I got some head shakes from parents of teenagers.

That's why I knew where to look and got it.

You're 16 years old and you can drive, and your parents tell you, you know, I want you to know that I I love you.

And nothing you do will ever change that.

I I promise I love you because I swear by who I am that I love you.

Also, I promise that I love you and I'm gonna give you a car to drive.

But if your grades are down and you get a speeding ticket, you're gonna lose the car.

Okay, so if you aren't doing well in school or if you're misbehaving in the car, I'm taking the car back.

And so when you're 17, you drive too fast, and you get a ticket, and you get a C and algebra or whatever, and your parents say, Shh, car back.

That doesn't mean your parents don't love you anymore.

You just didn't keep up your part of the bargain with the car.

In fact, it's a sign of your parents' love for you that they would take the car from you.

Rather than saying, oh, you know, it doesn't matter, just drive as fast as you want.

No, they actually do love you, say take the car back from you because their love for you isn't rooted in your insurance.

Your love for you isn't rooted in the car itself.

Their love for you is something greater than that.

It's in their own heart.

So they can, you have no role to play in that except existing.

That's your role to play, and your parents' love for you.

You exist, they love you.

So, this is the first of the two things God does to convince you of the truth of the gospel.

He promises to you that it's true.

He makes a promise.

It's a promise that you don't really have a part in.

It's a promise that God makes with himself.

God shakes his own hand with this promise.

Our response to it is to believe it.

That's why this promise is communicated to us, so that we would believe it.

But we don't have any role to play in fulfilling it.

We believe it.

That's the promise.

And because of this promise, it can't be changed.

It's unchangeable.

Verse 18, I'll go back to show you on the screen.

Verse 18, it's an unchangeable thing.

That word unchangeable is it's a legal term.

It's against the law for it to be changed.

It's like a will that is written and signed and notarized and everything.

Somebody else can't roll in later and change it.

It cannot be changed.

God's promise is like that.

His promise cannot be changed.

1 Samuel 15, 29.

If you remember the story of Saul in the Old Testament wrestling with Samuel, really, he rips Samuel's jacket off and tears a piece of it off.

I mean, they're actually, you need to grab somebody's shoulder, you don't rip their jacket.

I mean, Samuel and Saul are fighting.

Because Samuel told Saul, the Lord regrets that he made you king.

And Saul grabs him and his coat rips, and Samuel says, You know what?

The Lord is not a man that he would ever change his mind about anything.

You're king, Saul, because God's going to punish Israel through your incompetence.

God doesn't change his mind.

God doesn't waver.

God certainly can't lie.

You can't fight his prophet and get him to change his mind.

That's the unchangeable thing.

That God's promise cannot be altered.

The second unchangeable thing, not God's promise to Abraham, that he tells Abraham that he loves him, but an oath, a promise that is even older than Abraham.

You see this if you have your Bible open, you look back up in verse 13.

God made the promise to Abraham.

That's the first thing.

Since he had no one greater to swear by, he swore by himself.

Verse 15, Abraham patiently waited for that promise.

Verse 16, people swear by something greater than themselves, and all their disputes and oath is final for confirmation.

There's nothing more you can do.

You can take a lie detector test.

That's it.

Verse 17.

So the heirs of the promise of the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath.

In other words, to show you that his promises are true, he guarantees his promise with an oath.

So the oath happens before, logically, before the promise, even though you encounter it differently, you run into the promise.

God promises Abraham, I'm going to rescue you.

But before that promise, before that exchange, well before that, God had made an oath to himself.

Titus chapter 1 says it this way: God promised to himself.

Titus 1 · chapter mention

So when God tells Abraham, I promise that you will have a son.

God's not making that up as it goes.

It's not like he sees Abraham and invents the plan.

He already had it in his mind.

He already knew where he wanted this to go.

He made an oath to himself long before Abraham.

I want you to think of it this way.

God exists before the world exists.

Right?

God made the world.

He doesn't exist inside the world.

He made the world.

So when God put something in the world, like a promise, you understand that that promise had to exist outside of the world in God.

For God to tell Abraham, I promise I'm going to do this, that promise is rooted or anchored or tethered or tied to something before he says that to Abraham.

It's tied to his own plan.

It's tied to his own covenant.

It's tied to his own purpose.

Psalm 89 says that God's promise to his children is as confident as God's promise to himself.

This is why it's encouraging.

You have a long wait, like Abraham did.

You have a long wait between when you hear the gospel and when you finally see the Lord.

And in that long wait, you remember that God promised He would save people who put their faith in Jesus.

He promised that.

What's your role to play in that promise?

You believe it.

You can't do anything to earn it.

You just believe it.

And how do we know that promise is real?

How do we know that God's not going to change his minds?

How do we know that God's not going to forget?

How do we know that God is going to actually keep his word?

Well, because the promise he made is even older than when he made it.

It goes right to the very heart of God himself.

It's a covenant between the Father and the Son and the Spirit.

Where the three persons of God that the children sang about so wonderfully earlier, those three persons of God have covenanted to actually save their people.

They're not going to forget.

This is what they're doing.

They're in the world to seek and to save.

They promised this, they planned this before time.

And so when you think about these two truths, the God promised to Abraham a long time ago and did it, did give Abraham a son, and God promised to himself, you recognize that we have something more certain than a promise.

More certain than Jesus saying, I promise I'll write every week.

More certain than a pinky promise.

More certain than somebody you trusts putting their hand on the Bible.

More certain than any of that kind of stuff.

You have an actual, eternal promise from the very heart of God that he will save people who put their trust in Jesus.

And there's nothing greater.

If you can't get encouragement from that, there's nothing else to offer.

There's no greater way to give you assurance.

That God doubly promises.

He promises, puts Abraham to sleep, and gives a promise to Abraham that he himself will do.

And then he roots that promise in an oath that happens before the foundation of time.

It's impossible for God to change his mind.

And when you look back at the verse in verse 18, it says, Because you have those truths, you have an encouragement to hold fast to the hopes set before us.

You can flee.

To God as a refuge, it says.

When you do something wrong, you might run home for help.

I remember getting in a fight with a neighbor kid when I was probably, I don't know, 10 years old.

We were throwing mud balls at each other, and we started putting rocks in the mud balls and threw them at each other.

And, you know, one hit his fence, and his dad came out and got mad at me for throwing a mud ball against his fence, and his dad started yelling at me, and I'm like, oh no, grown-ups are involved.

I'm in trouble now.

So I knew my dad would be upset with me for throwing mud balls at the neighbor's house.

I knew that.

But I thought, you know what?

I'm gonna take my chances with my dad instead of the neighbor kid's dad.

So I ran home to my dad.

Like, shelter me, father.

You have confidence to run to God, the verse says, for refuge, knowing that he will receive you because he promised with two unchangeable promises.

I read another news story recently about the Pinellas County down in Florida sheriff's office that spent a lot of money on a fancy rug for like a fancy mat that would take up the whole like entryway.

It's one of those big government buildings, like a rotunda kind of thing with the big fancy carpet in the middle, and they had it engraved with the American emblem and the county emblem, and around it it was supposed to say, In God We Trust.

And they spent big dollars on this.

However, the Chinese manufacturer superimposed the letters and the rug in the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office does indeed say, In dog we trust.

The funniest part of the story, which is in the Florida Sentinel newspaper, is that it took several months before somebody noticed.

And I want to know who was for like the guy who got arrested for DUI being brought in, like, hey, the rug.

When you put your trust in God, it's not a typo.

It's not putting your trust in a princess, it's not putting your trust in a guy trying to get into trouble.

When you put your trust in God, you're putting your trust in someone who cannot lie and is promised from before time to save you.

Lord, I'm grateful for these children and their families.

I do pray that their hearts would be rooted, their hearts would be secure in trusting you and your word.

We know that as people grow, doubts come knocking on the door of their life, doubts come knocking in their mind.

I pray that whenever they doubt, they would remember your promise.

Your promise to Abraham.

But more than that, I pray that they would remember your promise to yourself.

We know you can't lie, you're a God of truth.

And so when you say that you will save us, we know that you will actually save us.

We find our confidence there.

Lord, we are not going to wait as long as Abraham waited.

We may wait a long time.

Until we see you face to face, Lord, we pray that you would sustain us, encourage us, keep us, guard us, guide us, protect us, give us faith to wait, and give us faith to believe your gospel.

We ask this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

And now for a parting word for Pastor Jesse Johnson.

Thanks for joining us.

If you're in the Washington, D.C.

area, I would love to see you at Emmanuel Bible Church.

For more information on our church or our current service times, go to IBC.church.

For more information about the Master Seminary and their Washington, D.C.

location, go to TMS.edu.

I hope this resource has been a blessing to you and it helps you seek the Lord daily, serve others around you, and share the gospel with boldness.