The Anchor of My Soul

Hebrews 6:13-20

13 For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, 14 saying, “Surely I will bless you and multiply you.” 15 And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the promise. 16 For people swear by something greater than themselves, and in all their disputes an oath is final for confirmation. 17 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, 18 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. 19 We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, 20 where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek

Pray

I was blessed to give testimony in court a few months ago. I don’t know if any of you have had the pleasure of doing that, but it is an interesting and kind of intimidating experience. You are called up, you walk up into the box next to the judge and he makes you raise your right hand and swear something like, “I swear to tell the truth, so help me God.”

I’m not one to lie, but right then you are really thinking about those answers that you give. I have a lot more sympathy for those people that say, “I don’t recall.” because I don’t want to break an oath to the Lord…. and I don’t want to be charged with perjury.

When we make the oath under God, we are pledging to something higher than ourselves to tell the truth. That is us saying, “I am not lying to you.”

This is what God tells His people throughout Scripture. There are certain promises God makes with people that are conditional, meaning, “If you do this, then I will do that.” An example of this would be God with Adam and Eve. It is not explicitly laid out, but God said that you will reign and rule over creation and enjoy a communion with me as long as you do not eat of the tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. Humans failed in that covenant with God and then sin was introduced into the world and that communion with God and man was broken.

Another example, which turns out to be numerous examples in the Old Testament, when God says that He will be the God of the Jews and protect them so long as they walk in His ways and obey Him, they fail at this multiple times and God punishes them.

There are other agreements, however, that God has with man that have nothing to do with us holding up our end of the bargain. God has made promises that He will fulfill FOR HIS OWN GLORY. If you read the bible, you will quickly notice that God is for God. He is for His own glory. He will make the things He wants to happen, happen. Today’s text is explaining one of these times.

13 For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, 14 saying, “Surely I will bless you and multiply you.”

God doesn’t have to put His hand on the bible and swear to something higher, He is the highest, so when He wanted to promise to do something on His own, not dependent on man’s reciprocation, He swears to Himself. He is the highest good, the highest truth. He tells Abraham that He will bless him. What can Abraham do to help God with this? Absolutely nothing and there is nothing that Abraham can do to thwart God’s plan.

If you don’t know the story of Abraham, you can read it all in Genesis, but Abraham is an old man and his wife, Sarah, was old as well, past the child bearing years. He was the son of a pagan and he didn’t have any offspring. One of the biggest mysteries/miracles of this story is that God calls Abraham out of nowhere. The story doesn’t say that Abraham was a mighty man, or a righteous man, or much of anything about him other than he was Terah’s son and they lived in the city of Ur in the land of the Chaldeans. Abraham had nothing to do with God’s choosing of him. God saw him and told him to leave his country and that God would bless him and Abraham went. He had faith that the God that called Him out of the nothingness would take care of him.

During this time of blessing that God bestows on Abraham, God tells Abraham that he will have a son in his old age. It was a promise from God. There was nothing that Abraham could do. There were times that he was skeptical that God would do it and he and his wife tried to manufacture a circumstance which did end in having a son, but he was not the son of the promise, so Abraham had to wait.

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

We could camp here and preach a full sermon just on this passage of Scripture. This is ultimately the entire message of the sermon. There are promises of God and we are, as we spoke of last week, running the race to receive the fulness of those promises. It was about 25 years before Abraham was able to see the first fruits of what was promised to him. The Lord promises us many things, but depending on our circumstances and His timing, it may be a while before we see them fulfilled, but He is enough in the meantime.

As Abraham waited for the Lord, he kept the promise on his mind that God would give him a nation through a son. One day for us there will be a day of no more tears, the wicked will be judged, the world will be made right and we will be with the Lord, worshipping Him, in perfection forever, but now we wait patiently for the promise to be fulfilled. We can be sure that God will fulfill His promises because He is not like men.

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

When we make promises or take an oath, we are trusted because usually people know us or have vetted our character. Before I became a witness in that trial, I was examined by the lawyer to make sure that my background was sound and that I was going to answer questions in a right and good way. When we are in court we can have the best character of all but we still must submit to swearing to a God that is higher than us. It is an objective standard that we must appeal to.

When I am speaking with atheist or agnostics and they say things like, “I am a good person.” I usually like to say, “Compared to what?” The reason I do this is we must have an objective standard of truth, something higher than ourselves, that we can appeal to. For instance, on the highway, you can’t drive however reckless or fast that you want to because we have an objective law that governs all of us equally. We are under the authority of that law. God IS the law. He IS the objective standard of truth.

17 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,

This is an important statement. God, being rich in mercy, wanted to show us, we are in there, that He was serious about this blessing. We are the “heirs of the promise.” If you are in Christ, you are of Abraham’s offspring. Galatians 3:29

And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to promise.

This is also in Romans 4:11-12 and 16-17. If you are in Christ, you are part of God’s promise to bless the nations. This is not about an ethnicity or a geographic location, but it is about who you have faith in. He, the God of the universe has made an oath to you, believers in Christ.

18 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

The two unchangeable things would be God’s oath, which can never be revoked or changed and God’s character. The text says that it is impossible for God to lie. This is why we have the safeguard of perjury in our legal system. If we lie under oath, we either have to pay a large fine or we could wind up in jail. There is a punishment for it. Since God is so much higher than we are, it is impossible for Him to do what often comes so easy for us. His character is flawless. This is unchangeable because that is who He is.

Because of His oath and character, we can hold fast to the hope that is set before us as we flee for refuge in Him. Just like in the Old Testament, when someone who commited manslaughter had a city he could flee to was only safe if the people of that city upheld the law. They were sinners that took a life. The penalty of that sin was death in the Hebrew law for murderers, but there was a caveat. If it was found that you murdered someone unintentionally you could flee to that city for refuge because of the promise of the law.

This promise of God for us, is like that. Because He is good and trustworthy, the promise of blessing in Christ is for us and can be counted on.

19 We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul,

Recently I had a wedding reception at my house. The couple’s family had hired a company to bring a big tent. When two man team that was set to put the tent up got there, they laid the tent out and they started hammering these stakes into the ground. I bet there were 20 stakes and they hammered for a solid 2 hours into the rock shelf that my house sits on. I live on a little bit of a hill and the north wind can really rock through there so the tent has to be secure. They used chains and hooks to attach the tent to the anchored stakes. That tent wasn’t going anywhere because of those anchors.

Because, through the Word, we can know the character of God and know His promises to us, we can anchor our life to Him. If you are doubting Christ, or church, or does this relationship actually have healing and changing powers, you can know that it does. It is a constant help to us and is the only way that gives us access to the Father.

a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain,

We have spoken of this before, but the temple where the Jews went to worship God had a place called the Holy of Holies and that is where the Spirit of God dwelt and only the High Priest could, after purifying themselves, go into that place. There was a wall of curtains that separated you from God. You had to entrust your sacrifice to a high priest which was a sinner like you, that also had to make sacrifices for himself, to intercede for you, but now this is ….

20 where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek

This Jesus was the one that was able to go behind the curtain as a perfect High Priest and tear the curtain down so that we could once again have access to the Father.

We can believe that God has perfect promises for us that we will partake in because He has sent Jesus! It is only through Him that the wrath of God is satisfied. It is only through Him that we are seen sinless and guiltless and can approach with confidence the throne of the Father.

All of these other ways do not lead to God. Up to this point in our time in Hebrews, it has been about not falling away to lesser things. Chapter 1 was about not following angels because Jesus is better. Chapter 2:1 says “Therefore we must pay much closer attention to what we have heard, lest we drift away from it.” We learned later in Chapter 3 that Jesus is better than Moses, not only that but He was before Moses. Then we read the Jesus is greater than the High Priest. Not only that but Jesus is a High Priest after the order of Melchizedek. That means Jesus was even before the Levitical priests that were the ones that could enter into the Holy of Holies. Jesus was better because He was a priest of God.

Then at the end of Chapter 5, the writer says, “since you know all of this and have partaken in this love from Jesus and this revelation, if you chose to walk away from this joy and love of God, you cannot be restored.” All of this book has been a letter to us saying, “DO NOT DRIFT AWAY. You have an anchor!”

When life is hard and the waves are tall and you don’t know how you are going to make it, you have an anchor. If you get sick or your family hates you or your husband/wife leaves you or you struggle with sin or if you struggle with depression or struggle financially, you have an anchor.

If you are flying high and blessed with money and health and family and all of these wonderful things, you have an anchor to keep you needing Him.

In all of life’s ups and downs, we need help. I once heard a pastor tell a story of an altercation He had with an atheist. The atheist said, “You just use God as a crutch.” The pastor responded, “Yes, because I have two broken legs.” We need the anchor of Christ.

The thing about anchors is you have to trust them. This God that we swear oaths to, do we trust Him? The reason this book of Hebrews was written is because there were a group of men that were not trusting the Lord and wanted to go back to works based Judaism.

Do we trust that He will hold us in the palm of His hand as He has said? Do we trust that His ways are best for our life? I can’t make you trust and I can’t even convince you that He is trustworthy, but the Lord says to “taste and see.” He says, “Try me.” If your life is a mess, try Jesus. Let the anchor down. What does that look like? It looks like getting on your knees and submitting your life to Him, laying aside all of the things that are causing sin in your life and trusting that He will work.

He loves making a way where there is no way to prove to you that He is real and that He loves you. He cares for His children. If you are on the fence about Jesus, try His ways in your life. Ask Him to help you stop living in sin, ask for His help to stop having sex outside of marriage, stop hating people, stop getting drunk, stop getting high, to stop judging people, to stop getting angry at the news. If you earnestly seek Him, He will come in the still small voice and work on your heart and mind. Be in the Word. Read it. When you get up and when you lie down, take in the Word. Pray to start the day, pray to end the day, pray when you think of someone else.

Love your brother and sister. If you have it, share it with someone. Find ways to bless people. You might say, “I don’t have any money” God provides those resources. Give time to someone. Visit someone that is lonely. This life that I am talking about is so much more bountiful than you can ever imagine.

This anchored life in Christ, this patient waiting and hoping is a blessing to all that pursue it. It has never once been something I have regretted.

I was able to go to a show with a friend of mine last weekend. He is a bass player in Nashville on the road for a pretty high level talent. He has been on all the late night shows, award shows, met all the people in the business. He is in the big time. I got to hang out with him all last Saturday. It was a fun time. A few turns left instead of right in my life and I could have been right there with him, but what I learned was that all that glitters is not gold. It is a hard life and my friend’s daughter had her 16th birthday last Sunday that he had to miss because he had a gig in Arkansas, he doesn’t have anything in common with the band and it is a tough living. The only reason I am not there and with you today is because of the hope that I learned to anchor my soul to.

Our plans are fine and good. It is good to plan, but when we submit to His and let Him guide us, we receive blessings that far surpass what we could plan in our life. I got to crawl into bed that night with my wife and little boy and thank the Lord for unanswered prayers.

Anchor your soul in the hope of Christ. He knows what is best and He wants to help.