"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"
Good Morning My Beloved,
Welcome to worship this Lord's Day!
We are so thankful for our beloved brothers and sisters in Christ from
around the world, we are glad that you are all with us today. I do not believe it was coincidence or mistake. I
believe that Almighty God Himself, has brought you here.
There are many, including many Christians, who confuse optimism and biblical hope. While, biblical hope is
indeed optimistic, it differs greatly from worldly optimism. Biblical hope is an optimism based on the certainty of God's promises and His truth, not
upon a cheery disposition that looks on the bright side of things. If hope rests
on mere speculation or fantasy, it is worthless. To be valid, hope must be based on
truth and certainty. Since our God is the God of hope,
we who represent Him to this hopeless world must be people of hope, not
mere optimists, but rather people filled with hope because of the certainty of
God’s promises in Christ.
In the world in which we live today, we’re well on the way to trusting nobody. And we’ve
developed a kind of a psychosis of distrust in our world that is
commonly known as the credibility gap. Young people are being taught to
trust nobody, as well as learning it by experience. Promises are given,
words are said, and a persons word means little or nothing. Yet, people are desperately searching, looking for something they can believe in, something they can trust, something they can bank their life on and win. Many people put their trust in a false religious system, and they are never able to find peace. People go to churches which talk about Jesus Christ, yet they never really know who Jesus Christ is. They follow teachers with all the academic credentials, who teach lying philosophies that just don't work. Never really knowing Christ.
Jeremiah said in chapter 7, "Do not trust in deceptive words, saying, ‘This is the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord."
Proverbs 3:5-7 says "Trust in the Lord with all your heart And do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, And He will make your paths straight. Do not be wise in your own eyes; Fear the Lord and turn away from evil."
The Apostle Paul said in I Timothy 4:10, "For it is for this we labor and strive, because we have fixed our hope on the living God, who is the Savior of all men, especially of believers.
Scripture teaches that you can always trust God, incidentally, you can always tell people who truly trust God.Perhaps the greatest example of a man trusting God, is the father of trust, the father of faith, none other than Abraham himself.
The New Testament hope is a confident certainty. Hope is related to the concept of assurance. Hebrews 6:11
says, "And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence to
the full assurance of hope until the end." There are several
descriptions of hope given in the Bible. It is called "a good hope,"
"the blessed hope," "a living hope," and "a better hope." In our text today, it
is a hope that is both sure and steadfast.
Let us bow our heads in prayer.
Heavenly Father,
Father, we thank You as always for Your Word, for the great truths revealed to everything we study You Word. It is such a wonderful joy and privilege for us to be together to pray and listen to Your Word. Lord, we want to be so consumed with worshiping You and loving You that we
would eagerly keep Your commandments. Thank You for revealing so much about
Yourself, to us, that we are able to grow deeper in our relationship with You.
We ask that You would help us to live in awareness of Your holiness, Your glory and Your majesty, that we love
You supremely, that we would do so with all our heart, soul, mind, and
strength. May we do all that we do in word or deed , with love and gratitude, all in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, our anchor of hope.
In His name we pray
Amen
Today's Message: Anchor Of Hope
As we have been studying in the book of Hebrews, the writer of Hebrews
has been urging the Jews to completely abandon everything from the old
covenant. Come all the way to Jesus Christ and drop it all.
In chapters 5 and 6, He says to that Jew who is not yet saved, but who’s intellectually convinced about the Gospel, "You can trust God. You need to come all the way to Jesus Christ, and let go of all that you’re holding onto."
Now, in chapter 6, He urges them to come to Christ before they fall away into apostasy lest you be lost forever. The only way to God is through Jesus Christ. And since chapter 5, verse 11, He’s been urging this to His unsaved
readers who know the truth, who believe it up to a point, but who have
never come fully to salvation commitment. In chapter 6, verse 11 and 12, when He said, "We desire that every one of you show the same diligence, to the full assurance of hope until the end."
Then He reaches back into Hebrew history and pulls out the number one man who did that, Abraham. If you want an example of someone other than those in your own congregation, if it's not enough to look at those Christians, look at a man from your own history, look at Abraham. Abraham is a perfect illustration of a man of faith, who went all the
way with God, totally trusted God for everything in the midst of
unbelievable kind of adversity. Even to the point where he lifted a knife to kill his only son,
therefore killing every dream and every hope that God had ever given him. That’s
how far he trusted God. Abraham is a great illustration of the man of faith.
Paul says in Romans chapter 4, "What then shall we say that Abraham, our forefather according to the flesh, has found? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”
And so, Abraham then becomes the theme of verses 13 to 20. Open your Bibles with me to Hebrews chapter 6 verses 13 through 20. Abraham began the Jewish race only in the sense that God called him, but
he was already a fairly old man when God called him , at 75 years old. The Jew always put his stock in the fact that he was a Jew and
circumcised the eighth day. Abraham hadn't experienced circumcision, Abraham was righteous
because he believed God. He believed God.
I invite you to follow along with me as I read to set our text in our minds as we prepare our hearts for a Word from our Lord. Hebrews 6:13-20.
"For when God made the promise to Abraham, since He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself, saying, “I will surely bless you and I will surely multiply you.” And so, having patiently waited, he obtained the promise. For men swear by one greater than themselves, and with them an oath given as confirmation is an end of every dispute. 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, 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. This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and one which enters within the veil, where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek"
Paul, then in Romans 4, goes on to say in the middle of verse 11 and 12, "he had while uncircumcised, so that he might be the father of all who believe without being circumcised, that righteousness might be credited to them, and
the father of circumcision to those who not only are of the
circumcision, but who also follow in the steps of the faith of our
father Abraham which he had while uncircumcised."
Here, Paul is shooting this down. He’s saying, "The only way to God and to
righteousness is by faith, Abraham is the classic illustration." He then sums it all up in verse 13, "For the promise to Abraham or to his descendants that he would be heir of the world was not through the Law, but through the righteousness of faith."
In Romans4:18-21, Paul says " In hope against hope he believed, so that he might become a father of many nations according to that which had been spoken, “So shall your descendants be.” Without becoming weak in faith he contemplated his own body, now as good as dead since he was about a hundred years old, and the deadness of Sarah’s womb; yet, with respect to the promise of God, he did not waver in unbelief but grew strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what God had promised, He was able also to perform."
In other words, salvation in the Old Testament was not by law; it was simply and only by faith. Salvation is by faith. Abraham was indeed a man of great trust. He believed God to the point of
going as far as you could humanly go. He trusted God, and it worked.
Abraham trusted God and it paid
off. Therefore, you can trust God.
Abraham was a pagan. Abraham lived in a city known as Ur, with his
father Terah. Terah was a descendant of Shem, one of the sons of Noah.
And Abraham’s father was a pagan, worshiping false God’s. He settled in
a place called Ur, which is between the Tigris and the Euphrates in
that area called Mesopotamia, one of the ancient cities of the
Chaldeans. And in Genesis chapter 12, God came to Abraham and said "Pack up everything you own, you're leaving. I'm going to take you to a place where I want you to go, all the way over to a place called Canaan."
Abraham finally settled in a place called Haran. When he got to Haran, he received
another promise. The reiteration of the promise that God would bless him
and multiply his seed and give him a great nation and that through his seed all of the families of the earth would be
blessed. And God repeated the promise to him, over and over again, in Genesis 12, Genesis 13, Genesis 15, Genesis 17, Genesis 18, Genesis 22.
In Hebrews chapter 11, He says "By faith Abraham, when he was called, obeyed by going out to a place which he was to receive for an inheritance; and he went out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he lived as an alien in the land of promise, as in a foreign land, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, fellow heirs of the same promise; for he was looking for the city which has foundations, whose architect and builder is God." In other words, Abraham trusted God, he believed God, and he went the way that God told him to go.
The point is,when the Lord God promises you something,, He puts His integrity on the line. It’s
a matter of His character, and every promise of God is secured by His
character. And this is the issue of these verses. The overriding security in these verses is the person of God or the character
of God. So, if God says, “You’re safe with me,” then you better be safe with Him, or His word is worth nothing. The very character of God is at stake. Is there security with God? The Bible says there is!
Reason number one, His person. Number two, His purpose. Number three, His
pledge. And number four, His Priest. These are the four guarantees that
we find in this passage.
The first reason is, our security with God is guaranteed by His person. Let's keep in context with what the writer of Hebrews is saying, He’s saying, "Come on, you can trust God. Come all the way; you can
believe Him. Abraham did against unbelievable odds, and so you can too." There is no one greater in the universe than God, by the very nature of His person, He cannot lie. So you can trust God.
In Hebrews 6:18, He says "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."
In other words, God by the very nature of His person has no ability to contradict Himself. He cannot lie. Scripture says, "But as many as received Jesus Christ, to them gave He
the right to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His
name," and that’s true. God cannot lie.
The second reason is because of God’s purpose. God made a promise to Abraham. The Abrahamic covenant was a non-conditional or unconditional covenant. God had a predetermined purpose, and Abraham was a key in that purpose.
In verses 13 and 14, " For when God made the promise to Abraham, since He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself,saying, “I will surely bless you and I will surely multiply you."
And, according to the Central Bureau of Statistics, Israel's population now numbers nearly 9.3 million. Did God keep His promise? You better believe that He kept it. Not only that, there are multiplied millions around the world who are Abraham’s seed by faith. And, the Abrahamic covenant wasn’t even made with Abraham; it was made between God and Himself. God will never fail because He has no capacity for failure in His nature.
You will remember, in the beginning, God created Adam, and then He created Eve, and put them together in the
garden, and things were going well in the garden until Eve
decided that maybe she ought to try the thing that God said not to try.
And they fell; Genesis chapter 3. Everything at that point went crazy, the curse hit the earth, and everything was messed up. Our first parents were exiled from Eden. In the first family there was fratricide; the
murder of one brother against another. City life was instituted, but it
was wholly apart from God. Polygamy corrupted the line of Cain.
Corruption and violence broke out everywhere, and God reacted in wrath,
by the time He got to Genesis 6, by drowning the whole world except for eight people. That’s how debauched it became that fast.
And in the generations after the flood, man continued to depart from the Lord, man continued to reject God’s rule, and it became very evident that God had to do something. The sinfulness of men had reached a climax. Idolatry, devil worship, God knew He had to take drastic steps, so God scattered them all over the world. It became imperative to God that He had to recover man. So, Jesus came through the line of Judah through the Jews. Abraham really was only a spectator to the plan of God. God set His love upon Abraham. In Deuteronomy, God said "I didn’t choose you because you were more in number; I chose you because I wanted to choose you.
God had given this promise to Abraham, then in Genesis 15, verse 1 "After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, "Do not fear, Abram, I am a shield to you; Your reward shall be very great." Abram said, "O Lord God, what will You give me, since I am childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?" And Abram said, "Since You have given no offspring to me, one born in my house is my heir."
In verses 5-6, "And He took him outside and said, “Now look toward the heavens, and count the stars, if you are able to count them.” And He said to him, “So shall your descendants be.” Then he believed in the Lord; and He reckoned it to him as righteousness." That’s believing; that’s hoping against hope!
Yet Abraham wanted sign, "And He said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you out of Ur of the Chaldeans, to give you this land to possess it.” He said, “O Lord God, how may I know that I will possess it?"
Now look at verses 9 and 10, "So He said to him, "Bring Me a three year old heifer, and a three year old female goat, and a three year old ram, and a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” Then he ]brought all these to Him and cut them in two, and laid each half opposite the other; but he did not cut the birds." In Abraham’s day which continued some time after Abraham. Whenever two people made a covenant, they sealed it with blood.
It is amazing to me, that even when we claim to believe God we don’t believe Him. Lord, help our unbelief!
Romans 8:28, "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love
God, to them who are called according to His purpose." God has it all purposed. You’re secure in His purpose. Now, look at verse 29, this is so powerful, "For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren."
That means that hat everybody that comes to salvation also becomes conformed to Jesus Christ. That is why Jesus could say, "All that the Father has given Me have come to Me." That means everyone who ever comes to Christ would then come to conformity to Christ, be like Him. That is the purpose of God. Whoever He foreordained will be like Christ, will be glorified. There’s nobody who is lost. God’s promises never fail. There is no higher authority than God! So, "if God is for us, who can be against us?"
God has purposed to love us and purposed to conform us to Christ, and
nothing can violate that. And once you come into a relationship with
Jesus Christ, you are as secure as the eternal purpose of God. That’s
our security.
The third security is His pledge. Look at Hebrews 6, verse 13, " For when God made the promise to Abraham, since He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself." I love that! God did not have to do that but He did, He made an oath on Himself.
In verses 16-19, "For men swear by one greater than themselves, and with them an oath given as confirmation is an end of every dispute. 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, 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."
In other words, if you’re going to make an oath, you swear by somebody greater than yourself. God couldn’t swear by anybody greater; there isn't anybody greater. So, He swore by Himself. God swore by Himself was not only that Abraham might be fully persuaded, but that
all the heirs of Abraham’s promise, all the faithful of all the ages
might know that God keeps His will.
God is saying there is nothing to fear. I’ll hold you. I’ll never let go of you. Today, there are a lot of people who are afraid to come all the way to Jesus and throw their life on Him. Let me tell you something, you will never know if you can trust God until you do.
I could spend months just talking about this. Look at verse 19, "we who have taken refuge would have strong encouragement to take hold of the hope set before us." That's the anchor of hope! That's the fourth reason, security. When you come to Christ, your soul is tied to the anchor which is sure and steadfast. You're not just drifting anymore; you're anchored in Jesus Christ.
How long are you anchored there for? Let's look at verse 20, "where Jesus has entered as a forerunner for us, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek." Forever!
Our security is in the person of God, the purpose of God, the pledge of
God, and the Priest of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. He loses none of His
own.
Don't take my word for it, pick up the Bible and read it yourself...
In Closing..
It's no secret that we are living in difficult days. The storms of this life can
take any one us under, and smash us to pieces on the rocky shore. In times like these you need a Savior, in times like this, we need an anchor! That anchor is Jesus Christ!
May it be so..
And now may the Lord bless you and keep you;
the Lord make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.
Now and forever, in Jesus' name
Amen
the Lord make His face shine upon you,
And be gracious to you;
The Lord lift up His countenance upon you,
And give you peace.
Now and forever, in Jesus' name
Amen
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