HEBREWS 6:13-20 - Soul Anchor

Bethel Baptist Church

Christ And His Rivals • Sermon • Submitted 2 months ago • Presented 2 months ago • 45:46

Hebrews 6:13–18

Assurance

0 ratings

· 9 views

Files

Notes

Transcript

Introduction

A couple of years back we took a mini vacation to the New York side of Niagara Falls (didn’t want to go through all the headaches of trying to enter Canada!) One afternoon we were exploring the Three Sisters Islands (off the southern edge of Goat Island on the American side). The southernmost of those islands is about 800 yards from the brink of the Horseshoe Falls, and its an exhilarating place to stand. At that spot the Niagara River is rushing by in a furious torrent of rapids, and the roar of 750 thousand gallons of water a second going over the falls just a half mile to the right is a constant wall of sound in the background.

As we stood there taking it all in, we noticed a large bolder just back from the shoreline that had a thick iron eye-bolt embedded in the middle of it with a large metal ring attached. We were a bit puzzled over what it was, and so we got in touch with our friend Peter who had taken us on a tour of the falls earlier that day. He told us that bolts like that were to be found all around that section of the river; they were anchor points for rescue crews to tether their lifelines to if they had to go out into the rapids to save someone. I have to admit—no matter how strong and secure that bolt looked in the middle of that rock, I still don’t know if I would trust it if I had to go out in that water!

Take that image—an anchor point in the middle of violent, life-threatening turbulence—and look at what the author of Hebrews is saying here in the passage we just read. Hebrews 6 is well-known for its strong warnings about falling away from Christ at the beginning of the chapter, but it ends with even stronger encouragements of security in Christ!

And the original recipients of this letter needed that encouragement—we learn from later passages that these believers had begun to be knocked around by the currents and waves of the hostile culture that surrounded them:

Hebrews 10:32–36 (LSB)

But remember the former days, when, after being enlightened, you endured a great conflict of sufferings, partly by being made a public spectacle through reproaches and afflictions, and partly by becoming sharers with those who were so treated. For you also showed sympathy to the prisoners and accepted with joy the seizure of your possessions, knowing that you have for yourselves a better and lasting possession. Therefore, do not throw away that confidence of yours, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive the promise.

Some of them were losing their livelihoods (had their possessions seized), some were being imprisoned for their faith, and some of them were being publically humiliated because they were willing to stand up and identify with their fellow Christians.

Sound familiar? We are battered and beaten by many of those same waves today, aren’t we? The swift currents of a culture that is dead-set against God and His Law and His people can wear you out; they can make you wonder whether it might be true that Christianity is dying out in America, that we are the last of a dying breed. Faith in Christ seems so quaint, so remote, so irrelevant in our society. And it is easy to get so exhausted by that constant stream of ridicule and reproach.

And sometimes those currents rage even closer to home—it’s not just the talking heads on late night TV that ridicule your Christianity; all too often the sharpest jabs come from your own family. You are alone in your convictions; your holding fast to Christ has left you isolated from your own kindred. You order your life around knowing and loving and serving Jesus and His people to such an extent that it has made you a freak to others—and not in the cool DC Talk way, but in an awkward, lonely way that leaves you tired of always being the odd one out, and wondering that maybe you are a little too fanatical, and you might not be so alone if you just “loosened up” a little in your convictions.

But worst of all are the currents and waves that rage in your own heart. The remaining corruption that still survives in you is all too often a torrent that threatens to sweep you away and over the brink into all your old habits and sins. your prayer life seems so weak, your spiritual disciplines so insignificant; temper flares, anxiety descends, lust whispers, slothfulness and gluttony beckon; and sometimes you feel it would be so easy to just give in; let go, let those currents sweep you wherever they will, because you’re just so worn out by the constant battering of your old sin nature.

So for you who are weary of being battered by the currents of a nation that hates your Savior, who are worn out by a family that you love desperately that doesn’t love Jesus, who are weakened by the constant undertow of your old sin nature that wars against you every day—see here the great and glorious hope you have in Christ:

Hebrews 6:19–20 (LSB)

This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and confirmed and one which enters within the veil, where a forerunner has entered for us—Jesus, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.

Here is the exhortation that comes to you from God’s inspired Word this morning—hear what the Spirit says to His Church through the Scriptures today:

Anchor your PATIENT HOPE in the UNCHANGEABLE PURPOSE of God to save you

Verse 12 of Hebrews 6 exhorts us not to become “dull”—remember we saw a couple weeks ago the word means lazy or sluggish—instead, become “imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.” The writer of Hebrews calls his readers to imitate examples of patient faith—and then in verse 13 he gives us an example:

Hebrews 6:13 (LSB)

For when God made the promise to Abraham, since He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself,

Abraham was patient because he anchored his hope in God’s promise. “When God made His promise to Abraham...” Right here is the first reason you have such a sure anchor for your hope—you can be patient because

I. God has given His WORD to save you (Hebrews 6:13-15)

Look again with me at verses 13-15:

Hebrews 6:13–15 (LSB)

For when God made the promise to Abraham, since He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself, saying, “I WILL GREATLY BLESS YOU AND I WILL GREATLY MULTIPLY YOU.” And so, having patiently waited, he obtained the promise.

Once again, we are reminded that being thoroughly acquainted with the Old Testament is crucial to understanding what the writer of Hebrews is teaching. When we track down this quotation we find that it is taken from the passage we read earlier in our worship, Genesis 22, right after Abraham had taken Isaac up on the mountain to be sacrificed. YHWH says

Genesis 22:16–17 (LSB)

“By Myself I have sworn, declares Yahweh, because you have done this thing and have not spared your son, your only one, 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 his enemies.

The writer of Hebrews points out first of all that God made a promise to Abraham. And one thing that we know from both the Old and New Testaments is that God never breaks His promises. Numbers 23:19 says

Numbers 23:19 (LSB)

“God is not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent; Has He said, and will He not do it? Or has He spoken, and will He not establish it?

This is the “strong encouragement” that the writer of Hebrews offers to his weak and weary readers—they can have patient hope in God because

He cannot break the NINTH COMMANDMENT (Ex. 20:16; Num. 23:19; Titus 1:2)

How can the God Who commanded His people,

Exodus 20:16 (LSB)

“You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.

then go on and bear false witness against Himself by saying He would save you and then failing to do so? The Apostle Paul anchors his hope of salvation in exactly the same place that the writer of Hebrews does. In Titus 1:2, Paul writes of

Titus 1:2 (LSB)

...the hope of eternal life, which the God who cannot lie promised from all eternity,

And our author in Hebrews says

Hebrews 6:18 (LSB)

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.

God has promised eternal life to all who take refuge for their salvation in Jesus Christ by faith, and He cannot lie! God has given His Word to save you—and

It will OUTLAST all OPPOSITION (Isa. 40:7-8)

You and I give our “word” all the time—sometimes we keep our word, and sometimes we break it. But God never breaks His Word to save you, and His Word is an eternal word! As Isaiah writes:

Isaiah 40:7–8 (LSB)

The grass withers, the flower fades, When the breath of Yahweh blows upon it; Surely the people are grass. The grass withers, the flower fades, But the word of our God stands forever.

Consider—when God promised Abraham that He would greatly bless him and greatly multiply him, he was a dispossessed wanderer with only one child! And the very next event in Abraham’s life was the death of his wife Sarah and his negotiating a burial plot for her. Abraham had next to nothing when God made this promise to him, but Abraham lived in patient hope that God’s promise would outlast all opposition! In spite of his old age, in spite of his lack of ownership of the land he was promised, in spite of all the nations that opposed him, in spite of all of the false gods they worshipped, in spite of the wickedness of the cities of the plain—Abraham knew that God’s Word could not fail!

Christian, imitate the patient hope of your father Abraham, who anchored his hope in the unchanging purposes of God. You can be patient in the midst of the raging storms of our society and the incessant buffeting of your soul by your remaining inward sin! There is nothing the fading grass of this world’s people can do to thwart God’s Word! As Christopher Dawson has put it, “The Christian church lives in light of eternity, and can afford to be patient!” Anchor your soul’s hope in the unchanging promise of God—no matter what the winds of this world’s opposition do to you, no matter how buffeted you are by the accusations of Satan and temptations to sin, there is nothing that can tear your anchor out of the bedrock of God’s promise!

Anchor your patient hope in the unchangeable purpose of God to save you—God has given His word to save you, and

II. God has made an OATH to save you (Hebrews 6:16-18)

Look with me at verses 16-18 of our text:

Hebrews 6:16–18 (LSB)

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, guaranteed it 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.

The author gives an example of two men in a dispute with each other, and so they swear an oath (by God) that they are telling the truth and not lying— “…an oath given as confirmation is an end of every dispute” (v. 16). Think of the way an oath is used in our day and age—for example, a defendant in a murder trial who is desperate to prove his innocence. Think of how earnestly he wants to prove he is telling the truth—his life is at stake! And then read here in verse 17 that

Hebrews 6:17 (LSB)

In the same way God, desiring even more to show to the heirs of the promise the unchangeableness of His purpose, guaranteed it with an oath,

God desires to prove His unchangeable promise to save you more than a murder defendant wants to escape death row! And so even though it was enough that His promise was unbreakable, He went further and took an oath in His own Name! And so here is another strong encouragement to patiently hope in His promise to save you, Christian—just as He cannot break the ninth commandment by lying,

He cannot break the THIRD COMMANDMENT (Ex. 20:7, cp Lev 19:12)

by profaning His oath in His Name!

When God delivered the Ten Commandments to Moses, He declared

Exodus 20:7 (LSB)

“You shall not take the name of Yahweh your God in vain, for Yahweh will not leave him unpunished who takes His name in vain.

We commonly associate this commandment with not using God’s Name as a curse word—and that is true—but the primary warning in this commandment is that you must not swear by the Name of YHWH and then fail to carry out your oath. God says again in Leviticus 19:12:

Leviticus 19:12 (LSB)

‘And you shall not swear falsely by My name, so as to profane the name of your God; I am Yahweh.

Do you see the strong encouragement you have for hope in God’s promise to save you, Christian? He cannot fail to save you, because doing so would profane His own Name! We often hear that we are to place our hope in the belief that God loves us “more than anything else in the world”—that God will save you because you are uppermost in His affections. (The popular worship song “Above All”, while it does an admirable job of exalting the glory of God above all things, falls completely into blasphemy in the chorus: “Crucified, laid behind a stone / You lived to die, rejected and alone / Like a rose, trampled on the ground / You took the fall / And thought of me above all” (Lenny LeBlanc, Paul Joseph Baloche, BMG Rights Management, Capitol CMG Publishing, Integrity Music, Warner Chappell Music, Inc.)

But can’t you see that if that were true, God would be an idolater? If it is a sin for us have anything higher in our affections than God, then it would be a sin for God to have anything higher in His affections than Himself. It is no comfort to believe that God loves us above all other things; it is the greatest of all comforts to know that He will never profane His own Name; He will never allow His glory to be diminished. Christian, your great and steadfast and unbreakable hope for salvation from God can only be because

He loves His own GLORY more than He loves YOU (cp. Isa 48:9-11)

This is exactly what YHWH says to rebellious Israel through Isaiah:

Isaiah 48:9–11 (LSB)

“For the sake of My name I delay My anger, And for My praise I restrain it for you, In order not to cut you off. “Behold, I have refined you, but not as silver; I have tested you in the furnace of affliction. “For My own sake, for My own sake, I will act; For how can My name be profaned? And My glory I will not give to another.

Why does YHWH delay His anger? Because He loves rebellious Israel? No—because He loves His own glory! Why will He act to save His people? Because He thinks of them “above all”? No—it is because He loves His own glory above all! Can you see what an enormous assurance that provides for you, Christian? God has tied His reputation to keeping you out of Hell and bringing you to Himself in glory! He cannot fail to keep His promise to do so! The strong encouragement you have to take hold of is that God loves His own glory more than He loves you!

Christian, you can anchor your patient hope in the unchangeable purpose of God to save you—He has given His word which cannot be broken; He has made an oath in His Name that He will jealously protect with all of His omnipotent power and sovereign authority, and in verses 19-20 of our text we see the third great assurance we have been given:

III. He has sent His SON to save you (Hebrews 6:19-20)

Look at verses 19-20:

Hebrews 6:19–20 (LSB)

Look at what the inspired author of Hebrews says about the hope we have been given in Jesus Christ— He is

God’s final WORD of MERCY (v. 19)

Notice what this hope of ours does—it “enters within the veil”. This is a reference to the veil that separated the high priest from the Holy of Holies, where the Ark of the Covenant dwelt in the Old Testament tabernacle. Once a year the High Priest was permitted to enter within that veil for a few moments, to sprinkle the blood of the atoning sacrifice on the “Mercy Seat” at the top of the Ark:

Leviticus 16:14 (LSB)

“Moreover, he shall take some of the blood of the bull and sprinkle it with his finger on the mercy seat on the east side; also in front of the mercy seat he shall sprinkle some of the blood with his finger seven times.

Aaron and his descendents could only spend a few moments behind that veil one day a year—but Jesus Christ has anchored your hope within that veil for all time! Christian, your hope of salvation does not come from one or two moments in clouds of incense and thick darkness before the fearsome presence of God’s holiness: Your hope is anchored for all time in the never-ending mercy of God in Christ! You are permanently anchored to the mercy of God in Christ! God’s final word concerning your sin is not judgment; His Final Word regarding your rebellion is not damnation—when you cling to the promises of God to save you through the work of Jesus Christ, the Final Word of God concerning you is “Mercy!”

Anchor your patient hope in God’s unchangeable purpose to save you—His Son is His final word of mercy toward you, and Verse 20 reminds you that He is

God’s final OFFERING of BLOOD (v. 20)

Your hope is anchored within that veil of the Most Holy Place

Hebrews 6:20 (LSB)

where a forerunner has entered for us—Jesus, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.

The author of Hebrews is preparing in the next chapter to open a magnificent pageant of the excellencies of Jesus Christ our Great High Priest in Chapter 7. But for now, see here that Jesus is that Great High Priest who enters the Most Holy Presence of God to offer the blood of the atoning sacrifice—not the blood of bulls or goats, but His own blood shed on the Cross! Christian, the blood that pleads mercy for you before the throne of God is the most precious blood of all! Christ doesn’t plead for you one day a year; He is pleading for you every moment. And He does not appeal to an animal sacrifice that (as we will see in the next chapter) could never do anything more than temporarily cover your sin—His blood takes away your sin!

Christian, do you see the depth of the strong encouragement you have in this hope? Christ shed His very own blood to save you—He will surely not allow that blood to go to waste! He will have everything He purchased by His blood; He will accomplish everything He has set out to do in you to bring Him to Himself—He cannot lose His grip on you; your hope is eternally anchored in the perfections of His work on the Cross!

You can be patient, Christian, in the midst of a culture that hates you and hates your Jesus, because you know that He has given His word to save you and there is nothing that can break His promise! All of the nations that rage against Him, all of His rivals are nothing but grass that withers and fades when His breath blows on them, but His word will stand forever! You have been promised salvation by the One whose promises will outlive the galaxies! You don’t have to defeat those enemies of your Savior, all you have to do is out-wait them! They will fade, they will crumble, they will wither and die away, but the promise of God to save you will last forever—you have strong hope to be patient in the face of their opposition! The peace to bless when you are cursed, the love to respond with gentleness to hatred, the strength to stand firmly on the truth of God’s Word in the midst of currents that slam against you all come from anchoring your patient hope in God’s unchangeable promise to save you.

Christian, you can be patient in your battles with the sin that still entangle you knowing that God has sworn to bring you to Himself. The sin that so easily besets you will not overcome you. The undertow of temptation that threatens to pull you under, the ice-cold water of your sinful passions and desires that freeze your prayer life and chill your Bible reading and deaden your worship will not overwhelm a child of God whose hope is anchored on the shore of God’s mercy! His final word to you is not damnation for your struggles with sin; His final word toward you in the midst of your temptations and weaknesses and trials is mercy!

So do not hide from Him your weaknesses and struggles—do not “excuse” your sins to Him or cover them up or generalize or shy away from them—confess them before a God whose last word is “Mercy”! This is what Martin Luther meant when he so infamously said “Sin boldly. But believe even more boldly in Christ, and rejoice!” Boldly acknowledge your sin before God—call it what He calls it: It’s not “spinning the truth”; it’s lying. It’s not “an infatuation”, it’s adultery. It’s not “borrowing from work”, it’s stealing. It’s not “self-care”, it’s slothfulness. It’s not “anxiety disorder”, it’s unbelief. So boldly declare what God declares about your sin, and rejoice that you are anchored to a Savior Who has atoned for all of it!

The only way to be secure in the midst of the raging currents of opposition in our world; the only way to patiently endure the battering waves of temptation and weakness; the only way to live moment by moment in the strong encouragement of the steadfast love and mercy of God toward you is to anchor all your hope in what Jesus has done for you! There is no place else to find this kind of patience, this kind of steadfastness, this kind of peace.

And if you are in the position of trying to swim across the Niagara River rapids on your own; if you have been trying to navigate the turbulence of a world gone mad and the churning of a heart full of guilt and shame before God, and you know you are sinking and you know it is a matter of time before the darkness sweeps you over the precipice—hear the Word of God this morning that calls you to anchor your soul in the unchanging purposes of God to save you. There is nowhere else that you can turn; there is no other remedy for your guilt and sin; there is no way for you to reach the safety of shore unless you cling with everything you have to the lifeline offered you by crying out for the eternal mercy purchased by the final blood sacrifice of the Last High Priest, Jesus Christ!

BENEDICTION:

Hebrews 13:20–21 (LSB)

Now the God of peace, who brought up from the dead the great Shepherd of the sheep through the blood of the eternal covenant, our Lord Jesus, equip you in every good thing to do His will, by doing in us what is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.

FOR FURTHER REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

Write down something you learned from this morning’s message that is new to you, or an insight that you had for the first time about the text? Write down a question that you have about the passage that you want to study further or ask for help with: Write down something that you need to do in your life this week in response to what God has shown you from His Word today:

Related Media

Related Sermons