Take Hold of Hope

Some years ago a hydroelectric dam was to be built across a valley in New England. The people in a small town in the valley were to be relocated because the town itself would be submerged when the dam was finished.

During the time between the decision to build the dam and its completion, the buildings in the town, which previously were kept up nicely, fell into disrepair. Instead of being a pretty little town, it became an eyesore.

Why did this happen? The answer is simple. As one resident said, “Where there is no hope in the future, there is no work in the present.”

There was no hope for the future of their town, so they stopped doing anything to keep it up.

Let that sink in for a moment..Where there is no hope in the future, there is no work in the present…

Could it be that God’s people aren’t growing, aren’t as active as they should be because they have lost sight of hope?

Last week we looked at a difficult text that was hard in both interpretation and message…

There was much for us to digest last week so let me highlight a few things to provide the context for us this morning.

We made reference to Jesus’ parable in Matthew 13 about the seed being sown on different types of soil.

By using this parable, Jesus showed his disciples how many ways the human heart can respond to the truth of the gospel.

His intention was not to plant doubt in the hearts of his disciples.

The writer of Hebrews did something very similar in Hebrews 6:1-8.

He is showing his congregation the way that many unbelievers, even those who are in the church, ultimately reject the gospel.

He is exhorting the believers in this church to a more faithful obedience and maturity in Christ.

His exhortation began in Hebrews 5:11 when he made a proclamation that there was more he wanted to say about the high priestly ministry of Jesus, but he could not because they were not mature enough to understand it.

So he challenges them to make progress in their faith, to mature in Christ…that is the message of this entire section of Hebrews 5:11-6:20.

He wanted to snap them out of their spiritual doldrums to press on to maturity (5:11-14).

He warned those who made profession of Christ but didn’t really possess Him about rejecting him and returning to Judaism (6:1-8).

Remember there were many who were struggling to decide if following Christ was worth it.

By abandoning the truth, you crucify him all over again and put him to open shame.

Meaning, those who choose this path are guilty of saying Jesus deserved to die the way he did!

If we place ourselves in the shoes of the original readers, perhaps many in this Hebrew congregation heard the warning and began to question the reality of their faith…they were losing their hope and began to drift.

In Hebrews 6:9-20, the writer knows what he said has been hard for them to hear…but he also knows it needed to be said…so with a pastor’s heart he does not want them to be left discouraged.

This text is both an encouragement to them and a transition into continuing his point about Melchizedek.

But first first he wants to conclude his exhortation for them to mature with an encouragement…

Main Point: Press On to Maturity By Taking Hold of Hope!

In this text, the writer displays his confidence in them to endure until the end…to inherit the promises that belong to them.

How can they endure until the end?

By taking hold of hope…what does that look like?

Find Encouragement in the Character of God (9-10).

Hebrews 6:9 “But, beloved, we are convinced of better things concerning you, and things that accompany salvation, though we are speaking in this way.”

v. 9 — “But beloved” introduces a contrast in both message and tone...

His warning of apostasy was very harsh, but needed to be said.

This is the only time the writer addresses his audience in this way...

The writer is deeply concerned about their spiritual welfare and wants them to grow…but he doesn’t want them to think they are lost cause.

How can we find encouragement in the character of God?

Be Convinced Better Things Are Possible

Convinced is written in the perfect tense meaning the writer has not only been convinced before but he remains convinced…it is a settled conclusion!

I’m reminded of Philippians 1:6 “For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Christ Jesus.”

He is certain the good soil of their hearts will produce a good crop of spiritual fruit.

He doesn’t believe the congregation as a whole are apostates…

Better is a favorite word of the writer…setting up a contrast of what he just wrote in vv 4-8.

He wants to assure them that because they are saved, they are receiving and will receive better things.

This is a contrast to the things that await the apostates!

He insists here that he had every expectation they would persevere to the end, even though some there needed to hear the warnings.

What did he know that enabled him to be so confident?

Find confidence in God’s righteous character and your labors of love.

Hebrews 6:10 “For God is not unjust so as to forget your work and the love which you have shown toward His name, in having ministered and in still ministering to the saints.”

First, he mentions the justice of God.

In the opening eight verses, he has made it clear that God is just in all of his dealings.

because God is just in all of his dealings, man’s spiritual rebellion cannot go unpunished.

And now, by the same token, he declares that man’s devoted service will not go unrewarded.

And the reason that both things are true is because of the fact of the character of God.

It is that his justice will be served, which means that sin must be punished, and because he is just, he recognizes those who are making progress.

Remember their struggle was formulated by trying to decide if following Christ is worth it...

The writer is telling them that God sees what they are doing and that He will reward faithfulness.

Next he mentioned their labors of love...

He says they had labored in Jesus’ name…both in the past and in the present.

Although he doesn’t mention them here, he does in Hebrews 10:32-36…turn there with me...

Highlight Hebrews 10:35–36 “Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised.”

It is easy to lose heart and grow weary in doing good especially when others forget what we have done…but the writer wants them to know that God doesn’t forget that which was done for His glory.

talk about Dad’s not giving up serving their families…Dad’s find encouragement that God sees how you serve your family in His name.

These believers were showing their love for God by serving fellow brothers and sisters in practical ways…that solidified the writer’s confidence of the genuineness of their faith.

Implications

One of the most important catalysts of spiritual confidence is spiritual fruitfulness…the more faithful we are to serve Christ by ministering to the body, the more assurance we receive.

This does not mean that we are saved by our works, but that our salvation is proved genuine by our works...

Good works are the normal fruit which we should expect from believers.

We would expect that God would look with favor upon the evidence.

The point he makes here is not that their good works earn God’s favor, but that God is well aware of the evidence that points to spiritual genuineness.

Be Diligent, Avoid Laziness, Show Patience (11-12).

Having commended them for their love and good deeds, he now describes what he wants them to continue to do and not do.

Be diligent to make your hope sure.

Hebrews 6:11 “And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end,”

Full assurance...It appears at the moment, they are lacking assurance perhaps because the persecution they faced was stealing it!

Continuance is the test of reality.

The ground of our salvation is in the atoning work of Christ upon the cross, and the evidence of our salvation is that we continue along the journey of faith.

This is an appeal to everyone within the church…each one of you…why?

The spiritual health of the whole is dependent upon the spiritual health of the individual.

Avoid Laziness

Hebrews 6:12 “so that you will not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.”

Sluggish = Don’t be lazy,”

same word he used in 5:11…dull of hearing...

Don’t be lazy about your Bible. Don’t be lazy about hearing the Word of God.

Because if you become lazy and careless in hearing the Word of God, you will turn to something else as your source of truth, and it will diminish the sense of hope that you have.

Why should we not be lazy in the Scriptures?

Romans 15:4 (NASB95)

For whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance and the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

There is a direct link between your hope and your knowledge and application of the Scripture.

The more we know and understand the God of the Bible, the more we know about the truths of our Savior and the changes brought into our lives through Salvation, the stronger our hope grows.

The more we allow the Scripture to frame our worldview, the less we will be shaken by world events and attitudes.

This morning we sang Blessed Assurance…written by Fanny Crosby…despite being blind from infancy due to an eye infection and medical ignorance, Fanny’s spirit remained resilient.

Her blindness did not hinder her creativity or her deep faith in God.

She could have easily become lazy in her faith and let her blindness negatively impact her to blame God and become bitter…yet she wrote over 8,000 hymns and gospel songs…another of which is To God Be the Glory…blind from birth but yet never lost her hope!

Show patience

Patience is the word makrothymia means ‘long-suffering’…the state of remaining tranquil while awaiting the outcome.

occurs in Hebrews only here, but several times in Paul and a few times elsewhere.

It is often viewed as a god-like quality (cf. Rom. 9:22) which is not natural in man, but becomes characteristic of the followers of Jesus.

They needed to demonstrate a faith in God’s provision to them and a patience which refused to quit under pressure.

In Galatians 5:22 Paul listed both of these traits as fruits of the Spirit.

He encourages them to be imitators of those who through faith and perseverance inherit the promises.

Throughout the book of Hebrews, the writer encourages believers to imitate saints from the Old Testament.

He is going to identify them more specifically in Hebrews 11.

The writer charges his readers to face their difficulties with faith and perseverance, just as those saints who came before them faced theirs.

Only earnestness in the faith until the end guarantees the reception of God’s promises.

Trust God will Do What He Says (13-18).

The writer now turns to the example of God’s relationship to Abraham as an illustration of God’s faithfulness to His people.

Abraham is an example of patiently waiting.

Hebrews 6:13–15 “For when God made the promise to Abraham, since He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself, saying, “I will surely bless you and I will surely multiply you.” And so, having patiently waited, he obtained the promise.”

V. 13 points us to Genesis 22:16 after Abraham was told to offer Issac and we see that God made a promise and supported it with his own personal oath.

God found no one greater than himself to whom he could appeal in an oath.

God’s Word itself was a foundation strong enough for Abraham’s trust and confidence.

Abraham believed the promise because God was the promisor.

v 14-15 point us to Genesis 12:2–3 and again in Genesis 17:6–8 where God had promised Abraham that his blessing would come on the patriarch and his descendants.

Since Isaac was the child of promise, Abraham surely was startled at God’s command to offer Isaac in sacrifice.

The promise to Abraham involved the multiplication of his offspring and the blessing of the nations of the world through his offspring.

It would take 25 years after the initial promise of God to Abraham…but he did see the beginning of the multiplication of his offspring.

The blessing of the world was accomplished in the redemptive work of Christ on the cross

It was after Abraham responded with obedience to the command that God reinforced the earlier promise with an oath.

Abraham endured the challenges of the trial concerning Isaac.

He became an outstanding example of someone who obtained his inheritance by faith and patience (see 6:12).

Abraham himself provided a pattern which the readers of Hebrews could profitably imitate.

God added the oath to His promise to make it more certain.

Hebrews 6:16–18 “For men swear by one greater than themselves, and with them an oath given as confirmation is an end of every dispute. In the same way God, desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, interposed with an oath, so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us.”

Oaths taken in ancient Israel were much different from oaths taken today.

Oaths in ancient Israel’s day were not contractual as they are now. They were not sealed with a signature.

Ancient Israelites sealed their oaths by their personal word.

God is an oath-giving God who seals his oaths with his own word and by his own name.

When God added an oath to his Word, the addition made the promise even more certain.

By swearing by his own name, God guaranteed the fulfillment of his promise, so Abraham waited patiently and obtained what was promised.

God swore by his own name to declare publicly for all creation that he was making this pledge to Abraham and that he would keep it.

The first “heirs” of God’s promise were Abraham and his descendants.

But what does this have to do with the author’s audience?

For them, the heirs of the promise are those who have been adopted by faith in Christ as sons and daughters of God.

As we have already seen in Hebrews 2:5–18, Jesus’s brothers and sisters share in Abraham’s promise.

God’s Promises and His Oath Are Irrevocable

The writer mentions two unchangeable things in verse 18 referring to the irrevocable nature of God’s purpose and word, and the oath that he declared publicly.

Because it is impossible for God to lie, God never deviates from the truth in these two unchangeable things.

God would cease to be God if he could lie.

The author reinforces God’s unchangeableness in order to encourage the church to once again hold firmly.

The church is the refugee who must flee to God for rescue and who needs strong encouragement to seize the hope set before her.

Because God’s Word is true and it is impossible for him to lie, we have all the confidence in the world to take heart and trust God’s promises just as Abraham did.

The faithfulness of God and the certainty of his promises are not theoretical propositions.

They are unchangeable realities.

Like Abraham, we can stake our lives on God’s promises because God is the One who has promised them. Our God is a promise-keeping God..

God does not lie, and if he has declared something on oath, we may be even more certain he will keep his word

Rest Knowing You’re Anchored in God’s Presence (19-20).

Hebrews 6:19–20 “This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil, where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”

v. 19 — The writer reminds his people of their need for “an anchor for the soul.”

The troubles and temptations of this world create many storms in our life.

So what we need is something or someone to be anchored to…to have a sure and steadfast anchor that stabilizes our souls when the waves are crashing in on us...

The promises of God are firm and secure enough to hold us steady in a storm.

God’s promise and oath anchor the hope that “enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain,” that is, the most holy place.

v 20 — Once a year, on the Day of Atonement, the high priest went into the most holy place and offered the blood of an animal in order to turn God’s wrath away from Israel.

Jesus, as our high priest, entered the inner place behind the curtain and offered his own blood on our behalf.

Forerunner — this is one of the ways in which Jesus’ priestly ministry is far better than that of Aaron…Explain…

we are invited to follow him into the presence of God and that is where Jesus anchors us…what safer place can we be anchored than in the very presence of God.

As our great high priest, Jesus has purchased our salvation and assured us of the promises of God.

Not only are we anchored in God’s presence, we are anchored Forever because Jesus is a priest forever!

Lesson for Life: Trust God Will Keep You Secure to the End!

God’s done everything He can to provide for your growth..Do not linger on elementary issues of the Christian life.

Resist all temptations to push Jesus back to a secondary place in your life.

Trust God’s Word…learn God’s Word…use God’s Word…remember there is a direct link between your assurance and your knowledge and application of the Word

Be that example of faithfulness for others to imitate.

Don’t let the events of this world or your life steal your hope…you are anchored forever in the presence of God because our source of hope is Jesus who is already there inviting us to follow.