Soul-Anchoring Hope: Hebrew 6:13-20

1. Pray & Intro:
   1. [Heavenly Father, we praise you because you are the same yesterday and today and forever. But for us today feels a lot like any other day. It may be smooth sailing for some, or perilous waters for others, but either way we desperately need you today like every day. Apart from you, we are already drowning. But through Jesus you have extended to us refuge and hope. So today we turn again to your word, to learn more of you, bc you are our highest good and greatest joy. Teach us to trust you more and give us grace to apply this specifically to our pattern of thinking and practices in daily living. Through faith in Jesus we ask with confidence, Amen.]
   2. Despite the brevity of our lives, the world around is ever changing at horse-race pace. Add to that fluidity… the storms and trials we inevitably and sometimes frequently face,… and we find ourselves in desperate need of steadfast mooring. We are hit with wave after wave of change, some in regular rhythm, others stealing upon us in unexpected and ominous assaults.
      1. There are endless changes in technology & medicine, culture & governments – We change jobs, we get married, we have children, we move, we make new friends, we’re always growing older, we learn, we forget, we never stop changing.
      2. Things break and things wear out. Disasters strike. People we love move away, others pass away. We tend to hurt other people and hinder our own growth and progress.
   3. The constant change and turmoil means that we not only need endurance but we need something steadfast to which we can remain securely tethered. More appropriately, we need someONE steadfast IN whom we can rest secure even as we journey through always shifting and often rough waters.
   4. Our text from Hebrews today doesn’t simply tell us that we should cling to a nebulous idea of hope that is unfounded, but rather that there’s a perfectly sound reason that you can do so, in spite of (and even through) constant change and surging difficulties. – Here’s why God’s people should hold fast to hope: [Putting the author’s words and ideas here into my own logical arrangement and phrasing] Our hope is secure because God’s promise is guaranteed because God’s oath is certain & His purpose is unchanging because God’s character is steadfast.
   5. Here’s an outline of the author’s persuasive argument:
      1. Father Abe – an example of faith and patience to obtain the promise of God
      2. God’s Oath – in which He doubles down on his promise with an oath, both upheld by his character (‘it is impossible for God to lie’)
      3. Our Hope – which is steadfast and sure – Our hope is the certainty of God’s promise to His people through Jesus, our Great High Priest.
      4. So hold fast to that hope. – Hang on to the gospel like your depends on it, because it does!
   6. Read passage – The section is transitional, wrapping up and concluding the author’s exhortation while smoothly leading back into instruction about Christ’s Melchizedeken priesthood.
      1. What comes before to bring us up to where we are… (READ vv. 11-12)
         1. What follows then is an explanation that should give us full assurance of hope to the end. Through patient faith you will inherit God’s promises, which are based on His unchanging nature.
         2. So the author illustrates what our enduring faith should be like from the example of Abraham’s faith in God’s promise, emphasizing the double certainty of that which God says he will do. – This truth, then, in v.18b and following is applied to give us hope and security through the priesthood of Jesus Christ in a new and better covenant. Through faith in Jesus our anchor holds within the veil because our Great High Priest who grants access to God is none other than Christ himself, God the Son.
      2. What did Abraham have to wait through with patience to obtain the promise? – Talk about faith in God in a tough scenario!
         1. The situation quoted in v.14 comes from Gen. 22:15-18 when God confirmed his covenant with Abraham, right when Abe’s faith had just been tested to the limits. – God instructed him to sacrifice his son Isaac, and Abe followed through in faith. But after providing an alternative, God renews his promise to Abraham. [read 15-18]
         2. Now earlier Abraham had already waited 25 years for the birth of Isaac – but he did see the beginning of the promise fulfilled in His son, and he knew God to be faithful to his promise. That faith was credited to Abraham as righteousness (Gen. 15:6).
         3. That’s how v. 15 here in Heb. 6 supports the notion that he obtained the promise from remaining patient and keeping his faith in God. – “And so he, having patiently waited, obtained the promise.” Abe kept his hope secure because he had faith in God’s promise because he had faith in God’s character.
      3. God is bound by his word to his own nature (character).
         1. That’s what we see as the explanation of v. 13 unfolds—God had no one greater by whom to swear than by himself… obviously! – v. 16
            1. So in the oath-making process, there’s a statement (a promise that someone gives), followed by an oath, based on a greater or higher authority, which serves as legal confirmation of the statement’s truthfulness. – That would have been a normal process that these people understood.
            2. We’re familiar with people taking an oath when testifying in court “to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me God.” - And with lawyers taking an oath to uphold the law, and doctors and others in the medical field to do good and not harm to their patients, and Indigo Montoya swearing on his Father’s sword that he would let the man in the black mask reach the top of the cliff alive… before the cool sword-fighting scene. – (BTW, I can understand why Jesus is like, “Don’t be swearin’ by this or that all the time ‘bout everything. Just be truthful when you speak. Let your yes be yes and your no, no.”)
            3. What’s a little more difficult to relate to, but even more significant (more substantive and more important)… When God makes a promise and doubles down on it with an oath, it is so extraordinarily sure that the author couldn’t possibly invent any better explanation to support the certainty of our hope (that comes by faith in Jesus Christ).
         2. So when God desired to show more convincingly… the unchangeable character of his purpose… he guaranteed it with an oath on himself.
            1. I want to note here that God doubled down for our sake. (God doesn’t need convincing, but we do.) Thank you Lord for understanding our weakness and reassuring us!
            2. And the two unchangeable things seem to be his promise (guaranteed with an oath) and his purpose. God’s word and his will are unchanging. – Both are completely unbreakable because God can’t lie. And God can’t lie because it isn’t in his nature.
            3. This is a truth that I have come to dearly love. – God’s promise is based on his person. His covenant arises from his character. God’s purpose is as unchangeable as his person is steadfast. To swear an oath on top of that is to compound the certainty of it.
            4. When God makes a covenant with you, it’s SURE, it’s steadfast. (that’s important in v. 19 – another double whammy: true, safe, certain; and firm, secure, trustworthy, verified) The anchor for our soul is as secure as God’s immutable character.
         3. The bottom line for us is that “we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.” – To this unchangeable God we turn for refuge. Our hope is in Christ. Hold fast to hope because your soul is anchored in the immutable promise and unchanging nature of God. More specifically, your soul’s anchor is the certain hope that God has revealed himself in the person and work of Jesus Christ, received by faith. He is our safe harbor. Through Christ, our refuge is God himself. Our anchor holds to the work accomplished by Christ. He has become OUR Great High Priest… OUR Savior… OUR King… and OUR Mission.
            1. In Him we have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. – Hope is the secure belief in your confession of Christ. (Heb. 4:14 Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.) – Again, hope for the Christian is ultimately in the person and work of Jesus Christ. Because of who he is and what he has accomplished, becoming our great high priest, makes Jesus “the guarantor of a better covenant” (7:22).
            2. There’s an important thought here for us about where our confidence in all this really lies. – Even while we are commanded here to hold fast, our security is not based on our hold but on His. Your security in Christ does not ultimately depend our your grip, but on God’s. It is even the power of Christ at work in you that gives you the desire and enables you to hold fast. In him is your ability to hold fast to hope. – Never put confidence in yourself. Always place confidence in Christ.
            3. On the other side of this paradoxical coin of God’s sovereignty remains our responsibility. Your security in Christ misapplied would be an excuse for complacency. Even while faith is a gift (Eph. 2:8-9), it is an active participation that produces obedience.
         4. Our soul’s anchor holds within the veil, behind the curtain that separates the Most Holy Place from everything else outside of it (in the temple and beyond). But within the veil is close communion with God, a loving relationship in Christ. Our hope enters there because Jesus has already gone on as the forerunner on our behalf, acting as our high priest forever. – Notice that God does not offer us some cold, distant refuge. ‘Well, we have an anchor but we’re out here on our own.’ No, we are permitted to draw near to God himself bc of what our High Priest has accomplished. Heb. 10:19-23!!!

• Life-altering, paradigm-shifting truth is useless unless you appropriate it and apply it.
  1. Does your soul need anchoring? Absolutely. – I’m no seafaring expert, but I’ve been around a lot of boats and a lot of water.  I know rivers more than the ocean. – In dugout canoes, through rapids and hard rains, even portaging around rocks. I’ve been in big boats, small boats, good boats, and useless boats. (one that cracked wide open… not too useful) – My boating experiences are like life, even the Christian life. I’ve only lived 35 years, but I know a bit about weathering life’s storms and clinging to the truth of God’s word.
     1. We must flee to God for refuge. – One central point from earlier in ch. 6 is to not be the people who hear and don’t really listen and believe and obey. …who are so near as to taste the truth but haven’t given themselves wholly to it… to actually be brought near to God through Christ’s mediation. Don’t be that person. (Heb. 2:3a “how shall we escape if we neglect such great salvation?”) Pray desperately for yourself. Pray desperately for your friends who might be falling into that category. à Just because you think you’re not adrift at sea doesn’t make it so. (“I’m not lost.” – [but really] Not waiving, but drowning.)
     2. Storms can also make us drift (2:1), and feel despair, and live defeated. Storms come in the form of normal mistakes and failures, natural disasters, pressures of the world’s lies (Satan’s lies) cloaked in half-truths; even God allowing us to be tempted and tried. When the storms come, how can you not lose sight of God’s truth? Where does your anchor hold?
     3. We live and die on the gospel of God, both now and forever. – The gospel is that Jesus is God, He is Savior, He is Great High Priest, He is Lord (master, king). The reason that is good news (gospel) to us is that God has offered His Son in order that we might, by grace through faith, be reconciled in relationship to God, becoming sons and daughters, heirs of the promise. Our own sin irreparably damages our relationship to God in a way that we cannot possibly fix or overcome on our own. But God in human form, living a sinless life and becoming a perfect substitute, died so that we could have life. He rose from the dead to vindicate his power to forgive sin and restore us to God. When we receive him by faith, his righteousness replaces our sin and gives us his resurrection life, restoring us to God.
     4. Is your soul anchored in this gospel (his promise), firmly based on who God is? – John 6:37 “All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out.”
  2. Do we need to be told to hold fast? Apparently we do. – Did a lot of swimming in fast-moving water too, with no floatation of any kind, just my own scrawny appendages. – ex. of the rock my sister and I used to play on in the river
     1. (Unfortunately, in many ways) You are taught to trust your own intellect and to follow your heart. That’s a mistake of cosmological proportions… with eternal repercussions. Never trust your heart without testing it in the fires of God’s word. Never trust in your ability to sail out of this mess, to navigate the reef, to weather the tempest on your own, to paddle your way home. You must become and remain tethered to the goodness of God extended to you in the gospel of His Son. (Never trust your own goodness. Never trust your own ingenuity. – As if your plan and your way is gonna be so much better than God’s. ‘But God, there’s like calm water over there.’ “Daughter, I know… I made the water. I’m sovereign over this storm. I love you. I will see you through. Trust in me.”)
     2. Our biggest problem, though, next to self-centeredness, is forgetfulness. We seem to have short memories with spiritual realities. So take time to remember who God is. Stay close to those who keep you close to God. (the importance of church family and discipleship, Eph. 4:11-14) – It should no longer shock you that in your own strength, faith fades and you falter in your relationship to God. (But see 4:16) – Hold fast to hope in the gospel.
     3. A final challenge: To live a life of singular devotion to God. – Perhaps what you have before you is opportunity to enter in faith into the stormiest regions because your anchor holds within the veil. Now is the time to determine that your circumstances will never define your security. That your inability is no limit to God’s ability. Be ok with being feeble and frail in yourself, but don’t falter in faith. Trouble and trial are a given, but in the storm, hold fast to the hope of your ultimate salvation and growing relationship with God. Your soul’s anchor is your faith in Christ, and it is secure because God can always be trusted. So hold fast to hope in God.

Communion: Taking the Lord’s Table is not merely a ritual we perform but a firm reminder of our Hope, which is in Christ alone.