Anchored

Introduction

What is up guys? This is the first lesson in d-now, and I am super excited to see you guys!

If you have not seen all of the flyers of payed much attention the theme of d-now is being anchored.

We are going to be talking about being anchored in many things.

Anchored in prayer.

Anchored in God’s Word.

Anchored in Community.

But tonight, we are going to talk about being anchored in Christ.

We have to get Christ right before we get to the Spiritual disciplines.

I wanted to start off by asking you guys the question, what is the biggest promise you have ever made? Or can you even think of one?

If can you think of any promise that you have made?

And maybe we don’t think of the langue as promise but maybe commitment?

You commit to playing a sport.

You commit to playing an instrument.

When you sign up for something… I don’t know, like d-now, you commit your time to it. You commit your weekend to it.

We all do this, but so many times we can break our promises.

You tell your parents you’ll take out the trash, but you were playing COD and you didn’t.

You tell your friend that you are going to hang out with them, but when the time comes you do not feel like it so you don’t.

Have you guys ever had someone back out on you?

I have… I had 2 speakers back out on me for this weekend. I filled one of them, but now I am going to speak on prayer tomorrow as well.

because life is not going to go your way all the time.

But God does not break his promises.

Anchored In God’s Promises

Hebrews 6:13–15 CSB

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.

We see here that God made a promise to Abraham.

We all know this guys right.

Father Abraham had many sons, many sons had Father Abraham.

When I was in the 6th grade so right before I got to youth, there was a youth Pastor that was never “my youth Pastor” and he loved to say it was gangster Abraham.

And instead of many sons he would say many guns.

ANNNYYY ways.

Abraham is known as the father of the Faith.

So God goes and makes a promise to him, what is this promise?

That he would have a son.

He was 75 years old when this promise was made.

If you know anything about human anatomy, unless his wife is 30 years younger than him it probably ain’t going to happen.

But God promised.

But you know what God also did, he did not put a time line on his promise.

He didn’t say in the next year, in the next five years, the next ten years, he didn’t even say in the next 20 years.

Because God waited 25 years when both him and his wife were 100 years old. 100.

But Braden the human body doesn’t…

that’s not…

how can that be…

Because God said so.

God always keeps his promises.

So then we see this promise in Hebrews that he was going to make a great nation out of him.

And when does God make this second promise to him?

Well if you know anything about Abraham and his son Isaac you know that he was going to sacrifice him.

That he was going to lay him on the alter because God told him to.

And when he raised the knife to kill Isaac, God said stop.

And because you are faithful I will make a great nation out of you.

And that promise came true as well.

Because we all know the song, Father Abraham.

Even when we think God is not moving, he still is.

It would have been easy for him to give up.

to say God you broke your promise, you sinned, I am done with you.

But he was patient.

For 25 years he waited.

Sometimes God says yes, sometimes God says no, but sometimes God says wait.

We know in the waiting though that God does not change.

Anchored in God’s Unchanging Character

Hebrews 6:16–18 CSB

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 strong encouragement to seize the hope set before us.

I want to talk about oaths in Biblical times.

They are slightly different than a promise, because you can just say “I promise,” but an oath was more serious.

They were a big deal.

A lot of time they did not make contracts, or make deals in paper because they had so much importance in words. They would put in on an oath instead.

If you said that you were going to do something you do it.

So an oath is swearing to something…

And we see that God swears by himself, huh… thats weird.

Usually for a big deal, we see this as well.

People say “I swear to God”

When a president is sworn in he puts his hand on the Bible.

Then sometimes we say things like “on my mamma”

It is all to show that we mean it.

It is like putting money down on something. When it is serious, when you think that you are right, we say things like I’ll put my life savings on it.

But when you are not confident and they say, “you wanna bet?” you are like ummm I’ll do a quarter.

There is nothing else higher than God that we can swear by.

because of this God swears by himself.

He isn’t going to say I swear to the president, because he is greater.

This allows us to know that God is unchangeable.

The text is saying God’s purpose and God’s words are unchangeable.

God cannot lie.

God is so holy that he cannot speak falsely.

God is the same yesterday, today and tomorrow (Hebrews 13:8)

There are some things that he has set in place because he is consistant and does not change his mind.

Like crops, if you plant an apple seed, and apple tree will grow.

A pear tree is going to grow pears.

Because God made up his mind, and has settled the laws of nature.

But he has promised us so much more than the fruits on changing on trees.

God has given us this giant book and it is full of promises.

We have forgiveness.

The Holy Spirit is with us.

We can have peace and strength.

We can have wisdom if we ask for it.

But most importantly… we can have eternal life.

God has given his followers gifts that he promises to not take away.

So how confident in God’s promises are you?

Because today we can find this confidence because we are to be…

Anchored in Christ

Hebrews 6:19–20 CSB

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.

We have this hope.

All of the things that we just talked about.

How God gives us all these things.

That we can have salvation in him.

and this hope is important.

Christian hope is different than worldly hope.

When we think of hope it is generally a feeling.

Or meaning like we really want something, but we are not sure if it is going to happen.

In the Bible the word literally translates “to wait”

It is described as pulling on a rope, and as the tensions rise, the rope finally snaps, but that tension is the hope.

So it is to wait or for an intense expectations.

When we say that we have this hope in God it does not mean that we “want these things to happen” we know that they are going to happen.

That God has kept his promises to us.

The anchor has been set and no one is moving it.

We see that the hope we have is anchored to the “inner sanctuary” which is an old testament reference.

It was the holy of holies, it was the place in the temple where God was present.

Only the priest could go in there and they only would go in once a year because it was so holy.

Guys! This is saying that we are secure to God himself.

He is saying, “hey, anchor on to me and I won’t let go”

So when life tries to drag you away God says no I’ve got you.

When you offered that drink, you stay anchored to your faith.

When you are offered drugs, they say it will be fun, that your faith is too strict, you are anchored to God.

When the things of the world are right there God says, I’ve got you.

When we are anchored to God, the waves of this world won’t take us down.

The storm in this world is coming.

The waves are coming, but the anchor holds us in place.

If you’ve ever been on a boat you know that you still feel the waves, you still go up and down with the water, but you do not move.

Guys because if you get tonight wrong, the rest of the weekend doesn’t matter.

I wanted to start off with this message tonight because I feel like this is one place where the church can lead people astray if we are not careful.

You have to have the Holy Spirit

you have to have your faith in God.

You must be anchored in him!

Because if you do not have the Spirit of God, the rest of this week will feel like a religious set of rule books.

The rest of the week is about being anchored in Christ and how to make our anchor sink deeper.

By Praying.

By reading our bibles.

by standing together in community.

Without the Spirit, you will think the things of God are foolish.

You tell your non-church friend about praying, and Bible reading, and confessing sin and they go WHAT?

Why would you do those things?

That’s so weird.

Well guys, you cannot expect people without the Holy Spirit to act like Christians.

because they are not.

Look at 1 Corinthians 2:14

1 Corinthians 2:14 CSB

But the person without the Spirit does not receive what comes from God’s Spirit, because it is foolishness to him; he is not able to understand it since it is evaluated spiritually.

They think it is foolish, and they cannot understand it.

So we see that the anchor is in the Holy Place, but then we see it says that Christ is our forerunner.

What does that mean?

Is it like this?

Picture

No, so this word is actually a military term.

Some people say spies, but the word is for a small group of soliders that would go scope out the main land before the whole army would come in.

And this is what Jesus does, he came to this Earth.

Now we do not have to sacrafice animals, because his bloodshed was enough.

Now we have his Spirit.

Now we have a personal relationship with God.

Christ was the mediator, be bridged the gap between humanity and God.

We see that this says “according to Melkizadek”

This is a priest that “randomly appeared” in the OT, but it really isn’t important until chapter 7, all we need to know is that he is known as the man who allows for Jesus not to be questioned when they call him a priest because he is not from the tribe of Levi, but neither was Melkizadek

Christ lead the way so we can have assurance in our salvation.

But maybe you do not have assurance…

I want all of us to ask ourselves these questions on a scale from 1-10, 1 being unsure and 10 being 100% for sure, how confident are you that you are going to heaven.

Then if God were to ask you (look you eye to eye) and say why should I let you in to heaven, what would you say?

Guys these are called the Kennedy questions, this is my number one strategy to sharing the gospel and seeing where people are at.

Because the answer so often is I did this, I did that, I am a good person.

But if our answer is without God, I can’t do it, so the only reason you should let me in is because I am anchored in Christ. He paid it all, so I didn’t have to.

And if you beleive that, then you can have assurance today.

Pray with me.