God’s Promises Are Certain

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Introduction

Main Text

Hebrews 6:13–20 ESV

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.

Context - I want to first give you the context of where we are in this book, because it can be easy to lose sight of the forest for all of these trees. This book starts with a central theme, which we have adapted as the title of this sermon series, which is Jesus Is Better.

The author first starts by telling us Jesus is Better than the angels and Moses. He has a better name than the angels (which is son of God). He brought a better message than they did. He is greater than Moses because is faithful over God’s house as a son and we are his house.

The author then tells us drawing on an underlying idea that Moses offered rest for his people by giving them the law and commanding a Sabbath rest among, Jesus is better because he offers us an eternal sabbath, a rest we have not entered yet. And we can enter it if we don’t harden our hearts through the deceitfulness of sin and we obey his voice when we hear him today.

This promised rest is a big theme into chapter 4, where he compares Jesus to Joshua. Joshua brought the Israelites into the promised land, where they found a type of rest, but Jesus is leading us through the veil into the holy place, the throne of grace, where we can find true rest, which is mercy and grace.

In Chapter five, the author continues encouraging us to see Jesus as better by comparing him as High Priest to all the other high priests and specifically to the first priest mentioned in all of Scripture named Melchizedek.

As He starts to tell us about Melchizedek, he stops and issues a warning. He warns that some of the people receiving this letter may have become spiritually dull or stagnant (so they will be unable to receive this) and they need milk, but he wants to give them meat. He warns that if those who have been enlightened decide that Jesus isn’t enough and they return back to the Old Covenant sacrificial system, there’s no hope for them. He’s convinced though that the people he is writing to are not going to turn back. So he encourages them that God is not overlooking them (not in how they have served him and loved others in his name) and here’s the key idea…He says that he desires that they would endure with hope until the end, so that they will inherit the promises of God.

We pick up here with our passage as he gives an example of someone who patiently endured and received the promises - Abraham.

Father Abraham Had Many Sons - Many of us have heard the story of Abraham, but for those that haven’t let me just set this up briefly. Abraham is known as the father of the faith. He was promised a blessing by God. He was told to leave his home and settle in the land of Canaan (modern day Israel). He was promised by God that if he obeyed the voice of the Lord, he would have descendants that outnumbered the stars of the sky and the sand of the sea.

Now, as he walked out his life with the Lord, there were many trials that Abraham went through, including waiting until he was an old man before his first son was born to his wife Sarah. Abraham was also called to offer his son up as a sacrifice to the Lord. After Abraham proved his faith in the Lord, by not even withholding his promised son, God blessed him.

Genesis 22:17–18 ESV

I will surely bless you, and I will surely multiply your offspring as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of his enemies, and in your offspring shall all the nations of the earth be blessed, because you have obeyed my voice.”

Obedience To The Voice Brought Blessings To The Nations - Because Abraham was obedient to God’s voice, it was through his lineage, his seed, that God brought forth the Messiah - Jesus - The ultimate fulfillment of this promise. Abraham didn’t live to see the day of Jesus, but he believed that it would come, why because God made a promise to bless all the nations of the world through his seed. Abraham believed it. God did it. And we are the recipients of that promise today. We are blessed because of Abraham’s obedience.

So with all of this in mind, I believe our passage today reminds us of three important characteristics of God’s promises.

1. God’s Promises Are True

God Makes An Oath - The first idea presented here is the idea that God both promised something to Abraham and made an oath to fulfill that promise. Now, let’s be clear from the start, God doesn’t need to take an oath. His yes is yes and his no is no, just as Jesus encourages us to be like in the sermon on the mount. God doesn’t need to take an oath for his promises to be true.

God makes an oath for our benefit. As humans, we tend to think of oaths are more important than regular speech. Even without an oath, have you ever been in conversation with someone and had them, in the middle of a story, stop and say something like “Honestly, I was appalled.” So, were you not honest with me before that point in the story? When we want to reiterate something as true, we add words like “honestly” or “truthfully”.

We Swear To Tell The Truth - If any of you have ever had to testify in court, you know you must put your hand on the Bible and you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, correct? Placing our hand on the Bible means were are swearing by a higher power.

Here in Hebrews, the author makes the point that when God made an oath, he didn’t have anything more superior than him to swear on. He is the ultimate authority, so he swears by himself. He’s basically saying, on my own honor, on my life, on my own name, I am swearing to do this. In other words, he’s saying, my promise is true, because I said it.

I believe the promises of God enough to venture an eternity on them. - Isaac Watts

Obtaining His Promises Requires Patience. We see in the example of Abraham that God’s promises to us don’t typically come quickly. We will need to patiently wait for his promises.

In fact, Abraham learns this the hard way several times and with much cost. At one point during his life, before Isaac, the promised child is born, him and Sarah get together and devise a plan for him to have a son through a slave woman. Hagar is her name and she does get pregnant and Ishmael is born. All types of wrongs are done in and through that situation, that truthfully has impact today. Most of the issues in the Middle East today can be tied to the sons of Isaac and the sons of Ishmael, fighting over the land.

If God has promised something to you, wait on it. Don’t try to bring it to pass yourself. Just wait. When we fail to wait, we bring more problems into our lives. Wait. Slow down. Let God move. If he promised it, He will do it. He is true to His Word.

The Promise And The Oath - Let’s define what these are. He’s only using Abraham as an example, but his promise does feed into the ultimate promise. What promise is he referring to? It’s the gospel promise. It’s the promise that if we put our faith in Jesus, our sins will be forgiven and we will have eternal life.

John 5:24 ESV

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life. He does not come into judgment, but has passed from death to life.

The Promise Is Eternal Life - Or as he puts it in Chapter 4 - A future Sabbath Rest for the people of God. He encourages us to strive to enter into that rest.

What then is the oath? Jesus Is A Priest Forever (therefore we can have eternal life thanks to his constant intercession for us). This oath is found in Psalm 110:4

Psalm 110:4 ESV

The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, “You are a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.”

This is quoted in Hebrews 5:6 and again in Hebrews 7:17 and again in verse 21. So this verse, this idea presented in the Psalms is a huge part of what the author is going to be talking about in the next couple of chapters. It’s the basis for his thesis and this is his thesis - Jesus is a priest, not after the order of Aaron, but after the order of Melchizedek and because of that, we can rest assured that what he has promised us in this new covenant is truthful and steadfast and worthy of giving our lives up for.

This promise is true because God made it and we can trust Him. He sent his son to die for your sins, he has done all the work, you simply need to put your faith in Him. That’s the point.

The second characteristic of God’s promises is this…

2. God’s Promises Are Unchanging

Years ago, when my kids were little, I planned some games with them. Now, they love to play games, it doesn’t matter if it’s board games or card games, they just love games. Many days when they eat their lunch, they will break out a game and play it. Now, they love games so much that over the years, they have created their own games. Any of you have kids that did that? Well, they created their own games when they were little two and a few times, I tried to play those games with them. The problem was, they kept changing the rules of the game. As soon as I got close to winning, they would change the rules. If you’ve ever played a game where the rules change, you can imagine how frustrating that can be!

God Doesn’t Change The Rules Midstream - One of the ideas I want you to grab here is that when God promises something, he doesn’t altar the rules later so you can’t receive it. He’s not a God who puts his promises out on a string like a carrot and pull it away from you as soon as you get close to grabbing it. He’s not like that.

Hebrews 6:17–18 ESV

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.

The Doctrine Presented Here Is That God Is Immutable. This means he does not change. He is always the same. Now, this is presented in this section of Hebrews, but it’s also clearly stated later in the book.

Hebrews 13:8 ESV

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.

God Doesn’t Change. He doesn’t change his mind. He doesn’t altar the agreement. He’s not a shady car salesman who hides his true intentions under layers of paperwork. He is always the same. He is always trustworthy. He is always good.

Why is this important? Because if God changed, we would never have a safe harbor. There would be no refuge to be found in Him. He might be good today, but tomorrow, he might finally get fed up with me and zap, I’m gone. That’s not who God is.

In fact, the author encourages us in verse 18 that those who have fled for refuge in God should hold fast to the hope that is set before us. Because God doesn’t change, we can do this.

Gods Promises Are True Because He Cannot Lie. God doesn’t lie. He is truth. Jesus would say, I am the way, the TRUTH and the life. We also learn from John that the law came by Moses, but Grace and TRUTH came by Jesus Christ. God doesn’t lie. He is the truth.

Every other god or supposed spiritual authority of this world lies. And the Father of Lies is Satan himself. This should provoke a strong contrast for us.

Truth Doesn’t Change - If God is truth and he doesn’t change, that means Truth doesn’t change. It is constant. True truth, deep truth, is something you can depend on. It is timeless and changeless. But Tozer offers us this warning about truth…

Each generation of Christians must look to its beliefs. While truth itself is unchanging, the minds of men are porous vessels out of which truth can leak and into which error may seep to dilute the truth they contain. The human heart is heretical by nature and runs to error as naturally as a garden to weeds. All a man, a church or a denomination needs to guarantee deterioration of doctrine is to take everything for granted and do nothing. The unattended garden will soon be overrun with weeds; the heart that fails to cultivate truth and root out error will shortly be a theological wilderness; the church or denomination that grows careless on the highway of truth will before long find itself astray, bogged down in some mud flat from which there is no escape. - A. W. Tozer

While Truth Doesn’t Change, We Need To Fight For It. We do that by preaching and teaching the Word of God. It’s sad that most churches have stopped doing this. According to a Barna survey only about 13% of teaching pastors hold to a fully biblical worldview. We must teach the truth to the next generation or it will be lost.

3. God’s Promises Are Unwavering

Hebrews 6:19–20 “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.”

The other day I came across a short reel about the life of a sailor and it was one of those funny videos showing men on boats getting thrown around by waves like a ragdoll. One guy was laying in his bed in what looked to be like a regular stateroom and all of a sudden he was flung out of his bed and into the ceiling. Needless to say, I was reminded as to why I didn’t join the navy.

God’s Promises Are An Anchor For The Soul - The idea here is that anchors offer us a steady place in the midst of the sea of life. The waves of life can hit you hard. People often get thrown around by life, but regardless of where you are today, God’s promises are like an anchor, as long as we are tied to Him, we will make it threw the storms of life.

God’s Promises Bring Hope - in the midst of the storms of life, one of the most powerful tools we have is hope.

Towards the end of the book of Acts, we get a story about a ship in the midst of a storm. The Apostle Paul is on the boat heading towards Rome, but they encouter this massive storm. They are doing everything they can to weather this storm, but things aren’t looking good. In one of the worst parts of the storm, an angel of the Lord visits Paul and tells him to not be afraid, that he and everyone else on the boat would survive. In the end, this hope, this faith in God is what got them all through the storm. If you can find some sort of hope in your storm, God will use that hope to pull you through, just hold fast to Him!

This Hope Enters The Holy Place - Remember the point in all of this, God’s promise for rest, it’s the promise of eternal life, it’s the promise of presence. WE get to be with God. This sure, steadfast anchor hope that we have, a hope not built on ourselves, but on the unwavering promises of God allows us to enter into the very presence of God. We can get back to Eden. We can achieve paradise because of what Christ has done for us.

The Holy Spirit has assured us that we have an Anchor, steadfast and sure, that keeps the soul. Jesus—Savior, Redeemer and our great High Priest—is that Anchor. He is the One who has gone before us. He has already entered into the calm and quiet harbor, the inner sanctuary behind the curtain. Where Jesus is now, there we will be—forever. - A. W. Tozer

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