So Help Me, Me

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†CALL TO WORSHIP Based on Psalm 138

Austin Prince, Pastor

Minister: All the kings of the earth shall give you thanks, O Lord, for they have heard the words of your mouth,

Congregation: they shall sing of the ways of the Lord, for great is the glory of the Lord. For though the Lord is high, he regards the lowly.

Minister: You have exalted above all things your name and your word. On the day I called, you answered me; my strength of soul you increased.

Congregation: We bow down and give thanks to your name for your steadfast love and your faithfulness.

†PRAYER OF ADORATION AND INVOCATION

Almighty God, you built your church upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Jesus Christ himself as the cornerstone. Come, Holy Spirit, join us together by Christ’s faithful work and the saints faithful witness. May we too be a holy temple in which you dwell to the glory of our triune god.

†OPENING PSALM OF PRAISE #105C

“O Praise the Lord, His Deeds Make Known”

†CONFESSION OF SIN AND ASSURANCE OF PARDON

based on Psalm 138

Minister: Though the Lord is high, he regards the lowly, but the haughty he knows from afar.

Congregation: O Lord, we ask you to forgive all of the ways we are haughty. We consider ourselves better than others. We put our needs first. We insist upon our own way. We are slow to forgive when we have been wronged, and we are quick to demand forgiveness when we are in the wrong.

Heal our selfish hearts. Fill us with your love, that we may love. From the joy of forgiveness, rekindle in us the joy of obedience. Amen.

Minister: The Lord will fulfill his purposes for you. His steadfast love endures forever. He will not forsake the work of his hands. In Christ, we are forgiven.

Congregation: Thanks be to God! Amen.

CONTINUAL READING OF SCRIPTURE Numbers 21:21-35

Paul Mulner, Elder

THE OFFERING OF TITHES AND OUR GIFTS

CONGREGATIONAL PRAYERS

THE LORD’S PRAYER

Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

†HYMN OF PREPARATION #172

“Speak, O Lord”

SERMON Hebrews 6:13-20 // So Help Me, Me

PRAYER OF ILLUMINATION

Teach us, O Lord, the way of thy statutes, and we shall observe it to the end. Give us understanding, that we may observe thy law and keep it with all our hearts. Amen.

Text:

“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 people swear by something greater than themselves, and in all their disputes an oath is final for confirmation. 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 hope set before us. We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” (Hebrews 6:13–20, ESV)

AFTER SCRIPTURE

The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart.

Introduction: Everything Is Moving

In the chaos of the sea, those in a boat are at the mercy of the wind and the waves. The air stirs, the water churns, the boat rocks, and even the people inside sway—everything is in motion. It can create a sickening and dizzying detachment from stability. And the only hope for relief is to find something solid to keep you fixed. So you take the anchor and hoist it overboard, down to where there is solid ground—something that, finally, doesn’t move.

Our lives are very much like being in that boat in that everything moves. Time moves, situations move, health moves, people come and go, and our strength is fickle and frail. The only way to gain stability in the movement of life is to attach ourselves to something immovable.

And this is exactly the kind of instability the author of Hebrews addresses—not to condemn us, but to comfort us with a deeper anchor, Jesus The Great High Priest.

At this point, the author wants to deeply encourage us. Yes, we've just heard some severe warnings, but those warnings aren't meant to push us toward fear or insecurity. Rather, they're designed to show us exactly where our anchor truly lies, so we can find meaningful and real hope.

The warnings we've received are against spiritual sluggishness and failing to hear God's voice. In the language of our metaphor, the author doesn't want us going through life grasping desperately at anything floating by. Instead, when difficult seasons come, when movement comes—and it will—we have to look beyond ourselves, to the true anchor that holds firm.

In a world that refuses to stand still, this passage anchors us with divine wisdom on how to wait—and wait well.

Later in Hebrews, faith is defined as “the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1). Faith, it seems, often has as its chief characteristic, as its chief vehicle of operation, waiting. That’s where our faith is played out. It’s played out in the medium of time.

Words that often accompany faith in scripture are patience, endurance, and hope.

But waiting is hard. And we carry a lot heavy burdens in our waiting—waiting for a spouse, for a child, for restoration in relationships, for graduation. Waiting is often faith’s most difficult action.

How then do we wait well? How do we maintain confidence as we wait? To wait patiently, optimistically, and with deep conviction? How does our High Priest help us remain anchored as we persevere in a world in flux?

This passage shows us that because Jesus is our Great High Priest, we can anchor our hope in Him and wait with confidence—even when life won’t stand still.

Hebrews 6:13–20 answers these questions clearly, giving us three foundational truths about our anchor:

The Promise of Our Hope

The Purpose of Our Hope

The Power of Our Hope

The Promise of Our Hope (vv. 13–15)

“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.” (Hebrews 6:13–15, ESV)

As we wait, we should take great hope and confidence in the promises of God. I know that it can fall flat in our hearing when we think of promises because we so easily break ours or see others break theirs, but not God. The text would have us see that.

Hebrews is taking us down memory lane, all the way back to the very foundation — to Abraham, the father of the faithful, the one who received the promise.

God told him, “Surely I will bless you and multiply you.”

The encouragement is that when God makes a promise, He will keep it. The very Hebrew congregation that was receiving this message are the fruits of that promise. And Abraham had many sons — I am one of them and so are you. It’s a promise alive to us right now. The promise of blessing through Abraham’s line, the promise of hope, the promise that foretold the coming of Christ, has been a promise that has never failed. It’s a promise that we can see through time — altering the course of history and bearing fruit today.

But again, we can often feel that mere promises that are made are weak. Hebrews would have us not only look at the longevity and obvious fulfillment of the promise of God, but to take another look at the way that God did the promising.

God swore by himself.

When we go to take a vow or an oath in our culture, we bind it by swearing upon something bigger than ourselves. We may put our hand on a Bible when we take an oath or we say, “so help me God”. But, the text says, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself,”

God says, “so help Me, Me”.

In other words, there is nothing backing up this promise in case of failure. There is nothing motivating God to fulfill His oath by threat or retribution. He is fully in on this promise and backs Himself on it.

You can see an illustration of this with Abraham and the initial covenant from Gen. 15. God causes a deep sleep to come upon Abraham, He takes the sacrifice and splits it in two — God walks through the pieces by Himself, saying, in effect, that I made this promise and I will carry it out, and may it be done unto me as this sacrifice if I do not.

When the waiting is hard, one thing we have to hold onto is the promise of our hope. God will not abandon you. God’s word is backed by God’s name. He has more to lose by breaking His promises than you do — He would lose His holiness and truthfulness, and He can never do that. As we wait, we must know who it is who has promised to hold us and bless us and save us and keep us. We see the firmness of the promise by knowing the quality of the one who promised.

“And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.” (Philippians 1:6, ESV)

“Let us hold fast the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who promised is faithful.” (Hebrews 10:23, ESV)

Application: Waiting

One encouragement mentioned here is Abraham’s faith. He waited patiently and obtained the promise.

That’s the commendation of his faith - how he held on to that promise in time. Sometimes patiently, sometimes not. There were moments of faith and moments of failure. But Scripture commends him not for perfect performance, but for persevering belief. That’s at the heart of this reminder to the Hebrews. God will sometimes frustrate your plans, like He did Abraham’s. The lesson was time. The lesson was faith. The testing ground was decades long. His promises don’t mean our desires are fulfilled in an instant but that His purposes are fulfilled resolutely over the course of our days, our lives, and eternity.

“The Lord is good to those who wait for him, to the soul who seeks him. It is good that one should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.” (Lamentations 3:25–26, ESV)

The Purpose of Our Hope

“For people swear by something greater than themselves, and in all their disputes an oath is final for confirmation. 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 hope set before us.” (Hebrews 6:16–18, ESV)

You might think that God’s promise is remarkable and wonderful. And yet, you still might be plagued by thinking about it in terms of all the promises that you know about. They can feel weak and distant.

But the text says that God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise (to us) the unchangeable character of His purpose. So He put an oath on top of His promise.

So now, the text says, there are two unchangeable things: God’s word (promise), and God’s oath (His character/name).

But why two unchangeable things? God can’t lie. His promise is enough. Two unchangeable things makes it redundant and superfluous. So why? Why more than a promise? Why an oath in His name?

He did it for us. It’s His way of stooping low to steady our shaking hearts. He goes the 1000th mile for us. So that we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.

This is to help us wait well. It is impossible for us to be abandoned or neglected or ditched by God.

How might we hold fast to the hope before us?

Applications

One of the ways that we can wait well is to mark and memorialize God’s faithfulness. We raise an ebenezer — a memorial stone. This passage is doing that very thing. It’s call ing back to Abraham and telling us to take a look at how God was faithful.

It’s amazing how we can wait for things with such great interest and expectation, and then when it finally arrives, we move on and don’t think much about it anymore. Great seasons of loneliness or pain or anxiety can end and we sort of just move beyond them.

But don’t forget those times when the anchor held you. Raise those Ebenezers and tell those stories. Put them on the doorposts of your house and when you walk by the way. Journal, write, think, pray, tell that testimony, sit and reflect. Pass them on like a family heirloom of faith. Have you told your children where the anchor held? Have you written down the moments when God pulled you back from despair?

Hold on to those moments and see over time how, when it felt like that boat is untethered, that the chain anchored to the Lord held you fast again and again, keeping you from the rocks and being broken by the shore.

The Power of Our Hope

“We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain, where Jesus has gone as a forerunner on our behalf, having become a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.” (Hebrews 6:19–20, ESV)

The passage culminates with that striking image: “We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters into the inner place behind the curtain.”

When everything moves, we need that solid and fixed point.

But in Christ, our hope isn’t anchored here on earth. The stability is here, but our anchor holds in heaven. Our anchor is beyond our circumstances and beyond the fluctuation of our time. It holds, pulling us toward heaven.

And like an anchor, the benefit comes when you can’t see it. It’s nice to have it in the boat, but it’s most useful when it is in the depths holding you fast.

In the same way, even as the disciples were tying to cling to Jesus for him to stay, he told them that it was for their benefit that he departed. Why? Because He is our Great High Priest. He is before the throne, behind the veil, making good on His promises. Making all things right for you before your Creator.

The text says that He is there on our behalf. He is attached to us and keeps us fixed and firm through the waiting.

And a new word is entered here. As we wait, we wait with hope. A hope that has entered in behind the curtain. A hope, not like wishful thinking — not like I hope for rain — the text says a sure and steadfast anchor to the soul. Buoyancy in the fluctuation. Endurance through time. Orientation through the movement of life.

We can wait well because of who it is who promised, the unfailing purpose, and the power of the anchor. We wait with hope.

Living with hope: What would it look like to live with hope? What kinds of things would change if we lived with optimistic hope?

I know the one thing that would change would be the way that I pray.

Instead of waiting with nervousness or waiting in sheepishness, we can wait in great anticipation of God’s blessing. Waiting in hope turns prayers that are vague and general… “God we think you for being you and we are glad to you for this day”, prayers that don’t ask too much of him for specific blessings in light of His promises.

No, we pray with a great hope. We pray backed by the promises of God. We can pray knowing God will fulfill His purpose. And so we ask with great anticipation of His work and we can call upon those purposes and promises with specificity.

We have a great and rich hope, so let’s ask for great help — He who promised is faithful.

Conclusion

Don’t you see how this text connects to our previous passages in Hebrews? God will not lie - He will bless us - He will keep his promises — He will give you that rest. Keep walking with him. Don’t grow hard to hear or slow to obey. The priest is an anchor to you behind the veil

His word is sure, His character unchanging, and His Son—our High Priest—has already gone before us. He has not left us drifting. He has anchored our hope in heaven.

So don’t let go. When all the world drifts and reels, cling to Christ who holds behind the veil.

But don’t just hold on theoretically—live, in time, in the waiting, like you’re tethered to something solid. Let that hope shape your prayers, define your endurance, and strengthen your confidence.

This is what it means to wait well—not to grit your teeth, but to lift your eyes. Not to float aimlessly, but to trust the pull of the chain. To know that the same Jesus who walked ahead of us is pulling us home.

The anchor is not just theological—it’s personal. It’s Jesus. And because of Him, your waiting is not in vain. Your faith is not in vain. Your hope will not disappoint.

See the Priest!

†HYMN OF RESPONSE #245

“Great is Thy Faithfulness”

THE MINISTRY OF THE LORD’S SUPPER

Minister: Lift up your hearts!

Congregation: We lift them up to the Lord.

Minister: Let us give thanks to the Lord our God.

Congregation: It is right for us to give thanks and praise!

THE WORDS OF INSTITUTION Mark 14:22-25

And as they were eating, he took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, and they all drank of it. And he said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many. Truly, I say to you, I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God.”

CONFESSION OF FAITH Belgic Confession, Article 35

Minister: This is a table for people of faith. Without faith, we cannot receive Christ here. Let’s confess what we believe about this meal.

Congregation: We believe and confess that our Savior Jesus Christ has ordained and instituted the sacrament of the Holy Supper to nourish and sustain those who are already born again and ingrafted into his family: His church.

This banquet is a spiritual table at which Christ communicates himself to us with all his benefits. At that table he makes us enjoy himself as much as the merits of his suffering and death, as he nourishes, strengthens, and comforts our poor, desolate souls by the eating of his flesh, and relieves and renews them by the drinking of his blood.

With humility and reverence, we receive the holy sacrament in the gathering of God's people, as we engage together, with thanksgiving, in a holy remembrance of the death of Christ our Savior, and as we thus confess our faith and Christian religion. By the use of this holy sacrament we are moved to a fervent love of God and our neighbors.

DISTRIBUTION OF THE ELEMENTS

HYMN Amazing Grace! # 433

SHARING OF THE LORD’S SUPPER

PRAYER

†OUR RESPONSE #234

Tune: The God of Abraham Praise

The whole triumphant host gives thanks to God on high;

“Hail, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!” they ever cry.

Hail, Abraham’s God and mine! I join the heav’nly lays;

all might and majesty are thine, and endless praise.

†BENEDICTION: GOD’S BLESSING FOR HIS PEOPLE

“May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope.” (Romans 15:13, ESV)

Grace Notes Reflection

Hebrews 6:13-20 offers such a rich assurance for the Christian as we wait. As our faith is played out in the medium of time, and as all things in our life shift, move, and fluctuate, the Christian’s hope must be anchored outside of the movement and outside of time. It is to this reality that we are presented again with Jesus the Great High Priest, steadfast Anchor of our souls.

The promise of God to bless those who believe has always stood, from the time it was given to Abraham to all who believe today. As a promise, God’s word will never fail. He who began a good work in you will see it through to the end (Philippians 1:6).

— Does it ever look like His hand has stopped working? Does it ever seem like the boat is adrift and heading for the rocks? We can wait well because of God’s promise.

And to go even farther in maximizing our assurance, God sealed His unbreakable word with an oath–a double, ironclad guarantee of His steadfastness. This redundant oath is for our comfort, not for God’s credibility. He who promised is faithful (Hebrews 10:23).

— When promises feel weak or distant, we can wait well by knowing who it is that promised. God’s ways and timing are not ours, but He definitely won’t let you down or break the oath in His name.

This text fixes our gaze on the work of Christ as the Priest. He is the anchor that has taken a fixed hold behind the veil. Like any anchor, it does its work when it is not seen, when it is holding onto you from a fixed point. Christ holds us through the movement of life to the throne of grace.

— We can wait well when we look a the strength of the One who holds us and where He is holding us from.

God will not break His promises, will not break His character, and will not break His hold on us.

Application:

How can you wait well? There are so many opportunities to take stock of God’s promises in our lives. We see Him save us when dead, sanctify us when rogue, strengthen us when weak, encourage us in doubt, build up love when indifferent, and a host of others, we should take the time to build up Ebenezers (memorial stones) to evidence of His promise kept. Where can you testify and memorialize His faithfulness more frequently? A private journal, the writing of a song, at a family meal? Put these marks upon the map and help your family to see how God is with you all along the way.

How does living with hope change things?

One area that might change is the way you approach the throne in prayer. Instead of timidity of vagueness, we can see that God’s promises will never fail. We can rest assured that He will hold to us. So how might we ask Him more boldly to be faithful to His promises in our plans, worries, doubts, and ambitions? Instead of worrying on our knees, what does prayer look like when it is filled with hope?