The Promise of God

Introduction

How many of you all have forgotten something important before? Perhaps you’ve forgotten a specific date such as an anniversary, birthday or holiday. Maybe it was an event like a party or an appointment. For some of you maybe you’ve forgotten a specific item somewhere like your car keys, cell phone or grocery list. We are people who forget things and as we age it seems like we grow to become more and more forgetful! One thing that is extremely interesting to look at is the things that we remember and the things we forget. An example, I can ask Lindsey what I was wearing on our first date nearly 6 years ago and she can tell me in detail everything that I was wearing and how I smelled. She doesn’t forget things like that! However, when it comes to where her car keys are, sometimes we can be out of luck and in trouble.

Even though the car keys are far more important to our daily lives than my fashion (or lack of fashion) choices from 6 years ago, sometimes that’s just how our brains work, is it not? Sometimes our brains are forgetful and there are times where that is extremely inconvenient because we forget something important!

Last week we dove into a tough text of Scripture in Hebrews 6:1-8. In these opening 8 verses we looked at how we are supposed to mature and not fall away/reject Jesus Christ. One of the points we looked at was that there are some Christians who hold to the idea that you can lose your salvation and that you have to keep it on your own. To quote John MacArthur, “If you could lose your salvation, you would.” Thankfully, the New Testament is filled with passages that talk about something called Eternal Security. We are secure in our salvation not based on what we have done, but based upon who our faith is in - the covenant keeping God who cannot forget His promises. Because of this, our text this morning in Hebrews 6:9-20 helps us gain a better understanding of the first 8 verses of this chapter as we initially see some things that we are expected to do as Christians and we conclude with a wonderful promise of assurance because God is faithful. Our main idea is that, Believers in Jesus Christ have an anchor for our souls and we have unshakeable confidence in the promises of God!

Hebrews 6:9–20 NASB95

9 But, beloved, we are convinced of better things concerning you, and things that accompany salvation, though we are speaking in this way. 10 For God is not unjust so as to forget your work and the love which you have shown toward His name, in having ministered and in still ministering to the saints. 11 And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope until the end, 12 so that you will not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises. 13 For when God made the promise to Abraham, since He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself, 14 saying, “I will surely bless you and I will surely multiply you.” 15 And so, having patiently waited, he obtained the promise. 16 For men swear by one greater than themselves, and with them an oath given as confirmation is an end of every dispute. 17 In the same way God, desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, interposed with an oath, 18 so that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us. 19 This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil, 20 where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.

Christian Duty (9-12)

Serve, be Patient and have Faith

The preacher of Hebrews left us off in verses 7-8 with an illustration of a field receiving rain and bearing vegetation. We looked at how this is similar to the parable Jesus used in Matthew 13 of the different types of soil. We know that people react differently to the Gospel message of Jesus Christ. Some people hear and want nothing to do with it. Others hear and initially reject it but eventually are more receptive. Others immediately receive this good news. In churches around the world, as we looked at last week, there are many people who hear the good news but are not born again. They are being choked to death by thorns and thistles and they have rejected Jesus as Lord. To these people there is danger in their future because they are in danger of being cursed. However, in verse 9 the preacher says that “we are convinced of better things concerning you.” What are these better things? First off that they are not deceived like these other people who appear to be believers but are just playing the game. The preacher is confident that these believers are genuine and will persevere until the end. How will they persevere? With service, patience and faith.

He is talking about things that accompany salvation, not salvation itself. Your good works will not save you, only faith in Jesus Christ will do that! Once you are justified and saved, though, you begin to work and live differently. The preacher is confident that these believers are genuine in their faith and that they are going to fulfill their Christian duty.

We talk about duty a lot in our country. It is your civic duty to be a respectful person and vote. It is your duty to respect our country. These are truthful and good things that we do as citizens in our nation and we celebrate some of these things today as we celebrate our independence. However, as Christians where is our primary allegiance and ultimate home? Heaven. There was a study that LifeWay published earlier this week that polled 1000 pastors in the US and 53% of them felt like their congregation loves America more than they love God. Certainly we thank God for the many ways that He has blessed ourselves and our nation, but Church we are first and foremost citizens of heaven rather than merely citizens of America! Whenever we give an account for our lives what will matter more, the amount of times we shared the Gospel or the amount of times we voted in an election? The way that we mature in our faith and relationship with God or the words we say about our opposing political party?

Hebrews 6 tells us that God will not forget our work and we are called to minister to others. If you look at the history of the early church, one of the things that you find in the book of Acts and beyond is that the local church served others. In many places the poor and neglected did not have a government assistance program to provide food for them, who did that in the ancient world? The church! Acts 6 tells us that the early Christians helped serve food to the widows - even to non-Christian widows. Do you see where this is going? Serving others is a part of being a Christian. Does being a Christian mean that we only serve other Christians or people that we like? No. It means serving people who are poor, of different skin color and of different backgrounds than we are. Why on earth would this be our calling? Because Jesus commanded us to be salt and light and to let our light shine. So why do we fail to do this sometimes? Because we can be tempted to pick and choose who is worthy. This person is the wrong political party - I’m not going to help them out.

One of the things that they tell you whenever you train for a mission trip is that many people are closed off to spiritual things until their material needs are met. We might not exactly understand this, but sometimes you have to meet a physical need in someone’s life before you can meet a spiritual one. The early church helped meet these needs and we have missionaries around the world today doing exactly this - yet for some of us in the Bible-Belt, this idea doesn’t exactly make sense. Friends, people are struggling and in need of help in our world and in our community. We have a Christian obligation to help and serve those with spiritual and physical needs. We as Baptists focus a lot on Orthodoxy - Biblical beliefs and rightly so because we want to focus on what the Bible says and get that right. But we cannot let that be the end of the discussion, how we live and apply the Bible matters too! You cannot just have Orthodoxy or Orthopraxy, you must have both as a child of God - right beliefs and Biblical living. As Adam Greenway put it, Orthodoxy must lead to Orthopraxy, we must faithfully live out what the Bible says. Check out what the Bible says in Philippians 2

Philippians 2:3–4 NASB95

3 Do nothing from selfishness or empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves; 4 do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.

This is not opinion, this is Bible! The Bible says that we must be humble and regard others as more important than ourselves. We look out for others! Are you living out what the Bible says in how you serve others today?

Verses 11-12 talk about how we are to serve others with diligence. As we do this, we experience hope. Have you ever served someone who had literally nothing to give you in return? Think of the story of the Good Samaritan, have you ever experienced or heard of something like that where someone had nothing at all and someone else stepped in and assisted them in their time of need? There is a program out there called “Make a Wish” where children with serious illnesses meet someone famous, sometimes a celebrity or an athlete or even an entire sports team. These stories bring tears to your eyes as you see how moving it is for someone in a life/death situation to have the support of someone they really admire and look up to. Some of these stories air on ESPN and you see young, successful and wealth athletes spending time with a child they’ve never met before and who walks away from that conversation changed for the rest of their life? Both people! Church, as rich and successful as some people are, we have something even greater to offer people who are suffering - everlasting hope! As we share this hope with others, we are accomplishing our purpose as Christians - to know Christ and to make Him known to others!

Can you remember how you longed to shout the name of Jesus as loud as you could whenever you first became a Christian? You were passionate about this and wanted others to experience what it means to be a Christian. This is where many of us are at initially but we can quickly be tempted to become sluggish or lazy in this regard. It’s easier to come to church and sit in a pew than it is to get outside our comfort zone and share what the Bible says with someone who thinks differently than we do. Yet, the preacher of Hebrews gives us a call to action: imitate those who inherited God’s promise with faith and patience. Hebrews 11 is called the Hall of Faith and we see several heroes of the Old Testament in this long chapter. Here in chapter 6 the preacher is setting all of this up by saying that we should imitate them because they inherited the promises. The saints of old persevered in times of difficulty and we should learn from their testimony and do the same! Whenever hard times come our way, we continue to have faith in God just as these people did thousands of years ago!

Do you have faith in the midst of the storm today? We have hope as Christians, not in ourselves but in our God. Because of this hope, we are called to serve others and be people of faith. This is our Christian Duty.

Spiritual Security (13-20)

God’s Promise (13-15), God’s Word (16-18), God’s Son (19-20)

The preacher of Hebrews doesn’t just stop with giving his audience some instructions to live out daily, but he also encourages them. Verses 4-6 were tough to understand and swallow last week, but in verses 13-20 we see that there is assurance because the God of the Bible is the covenant-keeping God who does not go back on His promises.

Have you ever had a broken promise? In school sometimes we would have a group project and there would be 3-4 students involved in each group and everyone had specific tasks to do. In these types of group projects there was always the overachiever who wanted to do literally everything and there was always at least 1 student who was going to sign his or her name and that would be the extent of their involvement! Maybe they would promise to get something done, but whenever it came time to present they would be empty handed and the rest of the group would suffer because of the mistake of one person. Maybe you’ve been hurt in a relationship with a family member because they have broken a promise to you and few things hurt worse than this. Friends, if you’ve ever been burned by someone else breaking a promise, take heart today because God is true to His Word!

The Bible shares with us that God swore by Himself with Abraham. Have you ever heard the expression, “Your word is your bond”? This expression is a little dated but it essentially means that you will do what you said you would do and keep your promise. In Genesis 22 we find a covenant between God and Abraham. Abraham had been obedient to follow God’s commands and because of this, God tells Abraham in verses 16 and 17 that,

Genesis 22:16–17 NASB95

16 and said, “By Myself I have sworn, declares the Lord, because you have done this thing and have not withheld your son, your only son, 17 indeed I will greatly bless you, and I will greatly multiply your seed as the stars of the heavens and as the sand which is on the seashore; and your seed shall possess the gate of their enemies.

How does God make this promise? He promises it on Himself. God cannot lie and He comes through on His promises. His promise to Abraham was to bless him and his future generations because they were God’s chosen people and this blessing can serve as a type of the promise that God gives to us as His chosen people who have been adopted into His family through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross! Look at Hebrews 2

Hebrews 2:16 NASB95

16 For assuredly He does not give help to angels, but He gives help to the descendant of Abraham.

We are heirs of the promise of salvation - God has promised to always have a remnant of people who will be His chosen people. Hebrews 3:6 reminds us of this fact and says that we are to hold fast our confidence and boast of our hope until the end! So are you confident in God’s promise this morning? Our world is confusing and chaotic, but God is faithful and just as Abraham and his descendants experienced His promise, we can experience the promise of salvation today!

Not only is there security in God’s promise, but there is also security in God’s Word (16-18). Verse 17 says that God’s purpose and word are unchangeable. God cannot go back on His promises! Think for a moment about the history of Israel, were things always rainbows and butterflies? No! This was a group of people who rebelled against God time and time again and they suffered the consequence for it. They went into exile, they experienced persecution and death time after time. Yet even when Israel was faithless, God was faithful. The people of Israel went their own way and followed false gods. We know that our world is not much different! We talk a lot about our nation and how far we have fallen and how things have been bad and perhaps the worse they have ever been. Friends, things have always been bad, we just see all the bad stuff now because of technology and the news! Even though humanity is sinful and many continue to reject God, we have hope in God’s word that He is faithful, He has a purpose and He will never go back on His promises. Verse 18 tells us that it is impossible for God to lie and because of this we can rest soundly on the fact that our salvation is secured not in our own works or deeds but rather in the finished work of Jesus Christ. This gives us hope!

The final place we have security in this section is in God’s Son - Jesus Christ. The preacher concludes in verses 19-20 by saying that we have an anchor for our soul in the one who enters within the veil - Jesus Christ. Clement of Alexandria, an early church leader, noted that an anchor was a popular Christian sign because it helps to symbolize our security and our hope. Obviously technology has evolved a lot since the 1st and 2nd century, but we know that anchors have always been very important for sailors as they assist in commerce and in safety. Whenever a severe storm is about to hit, the anchor can help keep the boat from smashing into a rock formation that would kill the sailors on board. The anchor can help keep the crew from being swept out into the deep parts of the sea. The anchor helps keep the boat in place and friends, Jesus Christ is our anchor and hope in times of chaos and crisis. Whenever things go differently than how you expected, what will you do? Will you allow yourself to be swept out to sea and into the waves of depression, anxiety and loneliness or will you hold firm to your anchor in Christ?

Not only is Jesus our anchor in difficult times, but He is also the forerunner for us as our great high priest! The word for forerunner in the Greek is “prodromos” and this was used of a small group of soldiers who were sent out in front of the main army to explore the land. Jesus is our prodromos in that He has gone ahead of us and He is preparing our way to eternal life as Hebrews 2:10 reminds us

Hebrews 2:10 NASB95

10 For it was fitting for Him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to perfect the author of their salvation through sufferings.

He is our great high priest who paid it all on the cross. Because of this, we have security because in the midst of the storms of this life we have an anchor for our souls who will hold us in place while the rest of the world gets tossed by the waves. We also have assurance because Jesus is not just helping us out here but He is also our great high priest who is interceding on our behalf before the Father right now and He credits your account with His righteousness!

There is eternal security in God’s promise, God’s word and in God’s Son! We don’t need to sweat wondering if our works will make it so that we will be good enough one day in the future! Don’t live with that mentality. We must be people who grow, who are responsible to fulfill our Christian duty of sharing the Gospel with others and we rest comfortably in Christ’s sacrifice once and for all!

Conclusion

As the song Lindsey and I sang this morning declared, “Christ is our hope in life and death.” He is our hope in life because He lived a perfect life and died for sinners like you and me. He is also our hope in death because the grave could not keep Him from rising again and that same resurrection power lives inside of you and I as followers of Jesus Christ! If you are in Christ there is no condemnation! There is hope in Jesus and God does not go back on His promises. He is our anchor each and every day and He provides each step of the way. Therefore what must we do?

We must be patient and faithful.

We must encourage others.

We must serve others.

We must have joy.

Are you faithful today? Do you imitate the saints who have gone before you? As Paul said, imitate me as I imitate Christ! This should be how we live our daily lives. We don’t get to take the easy way out as Christians, our life is difficult because we are commanded to watch out for others and this requires patience and grace. Ask yourself, how can I do a better job of extending grace to people today?

With all the division in our world over things as little as wearing a mask in public, church let us not get divided over sharing Christ’s love with others! Let’s not call one another sheep for looking out for others. Instead, let’s encourage one another in our walk as we serve others, including people who we disagree with and those who look and think differently than us. In all we do, let us have joy because of our hope in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary where He declared, “It is finished!”

Trust in the promise of God today!