The Unchangeable Anchor

Seize the only hope set before you!

INTRODUCTION —

July 26 was the last Sunday we gathered in this room.

The next Sunday, we walked in and there was water across the floor. And we sent everyone home.

And then came everything else. Where do we worship? Do we find a new building? Where does the money come from? The park. The pavilion. The pavilion we couldn't use. Smoke and fire out of Canada, so we couldn't even be outside. Guest preachers filling this pulpit week after week after week. A new job. A new baby. One thing after another after another.

Stop.

And through all of it, one thing held.

Church, this chapter opened by telling us to go on to maturity. And it ends with an anchor. I don't think that's an accident. I think the storm has been doing the very work this chapter describes.

Because this morning we are finally back in this room. And this building is not our hope. This building is a reminder that we are anchored in something far greater than anything we can see at this moment.

Hear the Word of God, Hebrews chapter 6, beginning at verse 17.

POINT 1 — THE UNCHANGEABLE OATH (v. 17)

Read the verse — Hebrews 6:17, CSB

"Because God wanted to show his unchangeable purpose even more clearly to the heirs of the promise, he guaranteed it with an oath."

The purpose was never in doubt

Notice the word: unchangeable. God's purpose was to redeem a people for himself. And that purpose did not begin at Abraham. It did not begin at Sinai. The Lamb was slain from the foundation of the world.

The promise in the garden — Genesis 3:15, CSB

The first time we hear it is in the garden, right after the fall. God turns to the serpent and says:

"I will put hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel."

That is the promise. A seed is coming who will crush the serpent's head.

The narrowing — walk it down

And then watch what God does with that promise.

It starts wide. The seed of the woman. All humanity in view.

Then it narrows. The promise comes to Abraham, and God swears by himself because there was no one greater to swear by.

And then it narrows all the way down to one.

Paul — Galatians 3:16, CSB

"He does not say 'and to seeds,' as though referring to many, but referring to one, and to your seed, who is Christ."

The widening back out

And here is the beauty of it. The promise narrows to One so that the heirs can multiply.

God told Abraham his descendants would outnumber the stars. And he gets them. He gets them through Christ. Because everyone who belongs to Christ is Abraham's seed, and heirs according to the promise.

That's you. That's why you're called an heir of the promise. Not because of your bloodline. Because you were adopted through Jesus Christ.

Land it

And God guaranteed it with an oath. Not because God needed convincing. Because we did. He swore an oath so that it would be clear to us.

POINT 2 — THE UNCHANGEABLE CHARACTER (v. 18)

Read the verse — Hebrews 6:18, CSB

"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."

Name the two things

Two unchangeable things.

The first is the oath. We just saw it. Eternal. Settled. Unbreakable.

The second is this: it is impossible for God to lie. That is not a rule God follows. That is who God is. His character cannot be compromised.

Moses — Numbers 23:19, CSB

"God is not a man, that he might lie, or a son of man, that he might change his mind."

Paul — Titus 1:2, CSB

"God, who cannot lie, promised before time began."

Apply it

He cannot act out of character. He will not.

RAISE THE OBJECTION

Now some of you are already asking the question. Because you've read your Bible. And you know that Scripture says God repented. God regretted. God relented.

So which is it?

Moses — Genesis 6:6, CSB

"the LORD regretted that he had made man on the earth, and he was deeply grieved."

Samuel — 1 Samuel 15:11, CSB

And look at 1 Samuel 15, because this is the remarkable one. In verse 11, God says:

"I regret that I made Saul king."

Samuel — 1 Samuel 15:29, CSB

And then eighteen verses later, in verse 29:

"the Eternal One of Israel does not lie or change his mind, for he is not man who changes his mind."

Close the loop

And then in verse 35, the regret language comes right back.

Same chapter. Same author. No contradiction. One of those tells you how it looks from inside the story. The other tells you what God is actually like underneath it.

The Sun

Think of the sun. The sun does not move. But in the morning it warms you, and at noon it burns you.

What changed? You did. Or where you were standing did. The sun stayed exactly where it was.

Nineveh

That's Nineveh. God said forty days and the city is overthrown. They repented. And God relented.

But God's rule never changed. He has always opposed the proud and spared the humble. Nineveh moved from one category to the other. God stayed put.

The father

It's like this. When your child does something wrong and you're angry, and then they come and say sorry, and you forgive them. Did you change?

No. You were always the kind of father who forgives a child who says sorry. Your feelings moved because they moved. Your character didn't budge an inch.

But he knew it would happen

Now the harder question. If God knew it was coming, how can he regret it?

Church, the flood was never Plan B. Redemption was planned before Adam ever sinned. God was not caught off guard.

The language of regret is not God learning something. It is God moving through time in a way that we can follow. Because we are the ones who live in sequence, not him.

Don't flatten the grief

But don't hear me say God is cold. "Deeply grieved" is real. He does not discover the wickedness. But he truly hates it.

So Genesis 6:6 is not God changing his mind about man. It is God, who eternally opposes sin, acting in history against it.

Ordains, permits, authors neither

And let me be careful here. God ordains whatsoever comes to pass. And God is not the author of sin.

Joseph — Genesis 50:20, CSB

"You planned evil against me; God planned it for good."

Apply it

One act. Two intentions. And the guilt stays entirely with the brothers. The Second London Baptist Confession of 1689, chapter 3, paragraph 1

God has decreed all things that come to pass, "yet so as thereby is God neither the author of sin nor hath fellowship with any therein; nor is violence offered to the will of the creature, nor yet is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established."

The Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 3, paragraph 1

God ordains whatsoever comes to pass, "yet so as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures."

Be honest that it's hard

And church, I'll tell you plainly, this is hard. Owen wrestled with it. Calvin wrestled with it. And both of them came to a place where they said, here we stop, and we worship.

That is not a dodge. That is a creature knowing his limit.

Bring it home to the text

But here is why it matters this morning. If God can grieve without changing, then his oath holds.

The anchor does not slip, because the seabed does not move.

Because there was no one greater to swear by, he swore by himself.

A brief word on oaths. Jesus warns us against flippant oaths. Let your yes mean yes and your no mean no. And yet Paul swears before God. And Jesus himself says, truly, truly I tell you, putting his own weight behind his own words.

Because there was no one greater to swear by, he swore by himself.

3. THE UNCHANGEABLE HOPE (vv. 19–20)

Read the verses — 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."

DEFINE HOPE — the dictionary first

Now I want to stop on that word. Hope.

Because we use that word all the time, and we have nearly emptied it out.

Merriam-Webster — "hope"

The dictionary defines hope as a desire accompanied by expectation, or to cherish a desire with anticipation and want something to happen or be true.

Apply the definition — the everyday sense

And that's how we use it, isn't it. I hope it doesn't rain. I hope the car makes it another year. I hope the test comes back clean.

Hear what's underneath every one of those. Uncertainty. When we say hope, we mean we want something, and we do not know if we will get it. Our hope is a wish with its fingers crossed.

Now the Bible's sense

But that is not what this verse means. Not even close.

The word here is the Greek word elpis. And in Scripture it does not mean a wish. It means a confident expectation of something God has promised, which has not yet arrived.

Draw the line clearly — slow down

So hear the difference.

Worldly hope says, I want this to be true, and I don't know.

Biblical hope says, this is true, and I am waiting for it.

One is uncertainty about the outcome. The other is certainty about the outcome and patience about the timing.

Tie it to the anchor

And now the anchor makes sense. You cannot anchor a ship to a wish. You cannot anchor your soul to maybe.

The writer says this hope is firm and secure. Firm, because it does not break. Secure, because it does not slip.

Why? Because of verses 17 and 18. Because of the oath, and because God cannot lie.

Your hope is only ever as strong as the one who promised it.

"We who have fled for refuge" — the cities of refuge

Go back to verse 18 for a moment. "We who have fled for refuge."

That's the language of the cities of refuge. A man kills someone accidentally, and he runs. And if he makes it inside that city, the avenger of blood cannot touch him.

The detail that preaches — Numbers 35:25, slow down here

But there's a detail in Numbers 35 that you might have missed.

The manslayer was safe in that city only until the death of the high priest. When the high priest died, the refuge ended.

The turn

Church, our High Priest never dies.

He is a high priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek. Which means the refuge never ends. You never have to leave the city.

You are not fleeing to a building. You are fleeing to Christ. He is our refuge and our strength. He is the strong encouragement. He is the hope set before us.

The anchor pulls up, not down

Now look at the anchor.

We do not have an anchor holding us down. We have an anchor pulling us up.

Charles Spurgeon, "The Anchor," Metropolitan Tabernacle, 1876

"Sailors throw their anchors downward; we throw ours upward. Their anchor goes within the veil of the waters into the deeps of the sea; ours goes within the veil of glory, into the heights of heaven, where Jesus sits at the right hand of God."

Leviticus 16 — tie back to the reading

We read Leviticus 16 this morning. Aaron went into the most holy place once a year, carrying blood. And then he came back out.

Jesus went in. And he stayed.

My only hope is that I shall be clothed with the righteousness of Jesus Christ.

David Martyn Lloyd-Jones (Welsh Preacher and Writer)

The writer of Hebrews — Hebrews 9:12, CSB

"he entered the most holy place once for all time, not by the blood of goats and calves, but by his own blood, having obtained eternal redemption."

The forerunner — the word

And then this word, forerunner. In the Greek it is prodromos. And this is the only place it appears in the entire New Testament.

It was a military word. The scouts sent ahead of the army. Alexander the Great had a corps of cavalry called prodromoi, and their job was to go first so the army behind them was safe.

William Barclay, The Letter to the Hebrews, Daily Study Bible

Barclay says the word carries three layers. One who rushes on ahead. A pioneer. And a scout who goes first to make sure it is safe for those who follow.

The nautical picture — take your time, this is the payoff

But it was also a word used at sea.

The harbor at Alexandria was notoriously difficult to enter. There was a sandbar across the mouth of it, and the great grain ships could not cross it until the tide came in.

So they sent a small boat first. And that little boat carried the ship's anchor. It went through the breakers, into the harbor, and it dropped that anchor inside.

Louis Talbot

Talbot describes it this way. The harbors were cut off from the sea by sandbars, which the larger ships dared not cross until the full tide came in. So a lighter vessel, a prodromos, a forerunner, took the anchor and dropped it in the harbor.

Finish the picture

And from that moment, the ship was safe. Still outside. Still in the weather. Still waiting for the tide. But safe. Because the anchor was already inside the harbor, and the cable was already fastened to the ship.

When the tide came in, the ship drew itself home.

Apply it directly

Church, that is exactly where you are this morning.

Your anchor is already inside. Christ carried it there himself. You are not home yet. You are waiting for the tide.

The only hope of someone that doesn't believe in Jesus is the he is not real. But you are safe. And you are being drawn in.

APPLICATION SEIZE THE ONLY HOPE SET BEFORE YOU

SEIZE

Look at verse 18 again. It does not say admire the hope.

It does not say appreciate the hope.

It says seize it.

The false anchors

So let me ask you where your anchor is this morning.

Don't put your hope in your job. It can be gone by Friday.

Don't put your hope in your spouse. She is a gift. She is not a foundation.

Don't put your hope in your children. They will grow up and they will go.

Don't put your hope in your health. Ask anyone in this room.

Don't put your hope in the next contract, or the next house, or the next season when things finally settle down.

Name what they all have in common

And hear what every one of those has in common. Every one of them is a wish. Every one of them might. Not one of them is firm. Not one of them is secure.

Bring the flood back

Church, we just watched this building fill with water.

Anything in this room can be taken. And the one thing that held was the one thing we could not see.

Charles Spurgeon, "The Anchor"

"Our anchor is like every other, when it is of any use it is out of sight. When a man sees the anchor it is doing nothing."

CLOSE — Spurgeon's own words

"What will those of you do who have no anchor? A storm is coming on! I see the lowering clouds and hear the distant hurricane! What will you do? May the Lord help you at once to flee for refuge to the hope set before you."

We are back in this room this morning. And we are not home yet.

But the anchor is already inside the veil. And Christ carried it there himself.