Trinity Baptist Church

The Book of Hebrews

The Securities of God's Promise

Hebrews 6:13-20

 

The farther we move from Jesus Christ in time, the more difficult it seems to be for people to trust Him. For many, they wonder why they should trust someone who lived 2,000 years ago.

 

That is an age-old question?  Whom can you really believe in? Who can you bet your life on? The Bible says that you can trust God. Incidentally, the Bible also says you can always tell people who really trust God.  In the Old KJV, Proverbs 28:25 says, "He that putteth his trust in the Lord shall be made fat." So it's very easy to tell those who really trust the Lord. And on a more serious note, that is certainly true.  You can tell those who are trusting in the Lord and those who don’t.

 

Now obviously we can trust God. And the more we trust Him, the more we discover we can trust Him.  And that’s what the writer of Hebrews wants his hearers to understand.  Ultimately he wants them to come to have faith in God by trusting Jesus. He is urging them to abandon everything else and trust Jesus. 

 

So to help them do that, he reaches back into Hebrew history and pulls out the No. 1 man who did that, Abraham, and he says, "If you want an example and it's not enough to look at the Christians in your own local congregation there, then look back at a man from your own history, the man Abraham, and see how that man trusted God."

 

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 of lifting a knife to slay his only son, and, therefore, kill every dream and every hope God had ever given him. That's how far he trusted God.

 

Now remember, in 6:12 he encourages them to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.  Then beginning in verse 13 through 20 he gives the example of Abraham.

 

Could they trust God?  Abraham trusted God and it paid off. Can you trust God? Is there real security with God? Abraham believed there was. The Bible says there is, and to prove it, the author gives four guarantees in this passage.

 

First, our security with God is guaranteed by

 

 

Now, keep in context what we're talking about. He is urging people to come all the way to Christ, throw themselves on Christ. Completely abandon everything. We saw that back in chapter 6, verses 1 and 2.

 

"Leave everything else go on to Jesus Christ." You can believe Him. Abraham did against unbelievable odds, and so can you. Trust God, first of all because of His person.

 

verse 13

 

That verse says there's nobody greater in the universe than God. Now, that means that whoever He is, He makes the rules; and the reason that God cannot lie is that God invented truth; and whatever He says is truth; and by the very nature of His person, He cannot lie.

 

Look at verse 18

 

In other words, the person of God, His attributes and His nature make it impossible for Him to lie. He can't do it. It is not possible. He has no ability to contradict Himself. Whatever He does is right, and whatever He says is truth. He cannot lie. He has no capacity.

 

Now to those Hebrew readers who were unsaved, but who believed it and who had listened to it and heard the whole thing and seen some of the miracles, and they were afraid to let go of Judaism, they were afraid to cast themselves on the Messiah for fear it might not work, to them, the Holy Spirit says, "Come on, you can trust God. God can't lie."

 

Think about Abraham.  What was His promise to Abraham?

 

6:14

 

That was His promise to Abraham. Did He keep it? There are Jews all over the world, something like 13.3 million Jews worldwide, all the seed of Abraham still roaming the world. You better believe he kept it. Not only that, there are multiplied millions of around the world who are Abraham's seed by faith. God kept His promise to Abraham.

But God said, "You're going to have a whole great nation as numbers the sand of the sea and the stars of the heaven." And Abraham looked at Sarah and said, "Well, you’ve got to start with one.  Let’s get busy!”   And it didn't look real good, but He believed God. He even tried to help God a little bit. Got over there with Hagar and produced Ishmael and we’re still dealing with that mess.  But he believed God.

 

It was tough for a while, didn't look too good, and it wasn't easy.

 

verse 15

 

But he hung in there. He believed God. He threw his whole life on God and God caught him and gave him the prize.

 

And Abraham learned he was secure because of the person of God. He can't lie. He can't back out of His promises. You can trust God, and God will never fail, because He has no capacity for failure in His nature.

 

Not only are you secure because of God's person, but you're secure because of

 

 

I want you to really plug into this one. This is really good.

 

Watch:  God made a promise to Abraham, right? Yanked him up out of Ur and started the journey.  Now I’m sure Abraham was a wonderful guy, but he didn't come to God one day and said, “I’d really like to start my own people and land.  Would you see to it that happens?”

God initiated it.  It was God’s plan and God’s doing.  God established the covenant with Abraham.   He didn't say, "If you do this, Abraham, I'll do this." He said, "Get up and get out, Abraham, I'm doing this." There wasn't any condition on Abraham's part. Abraham wasn't even involved. He was really a spectator, and I'll show you how I know that in a minute; but God said, "Get up and get out," because God had a plan.

 

And the plan actually pre-dates Abraham by a long time.  In fact, it is first unveiled in the Garden of Eden.  Man sins and God is waiting with a plan of redemption.  We don’t know it yet but that plan will involve a people called the Jews.

 

In fact, Jesus said in John chapter 4, "Salvation is of the Jews," and what He meant is not that the Jews were the only ones that can be saved, but the source from which salvation would come.  And all of their history dates back to Abraham.  

 

And because of that, Abraham was secure because of the purpose of God. God had planned to use him, and God doesn't let His plans get messed up. I wish we had time to revisit the Abrahamic covenant and how God put Abraham to sleep and made a covenant with Himself.  I encourage you to study that for yourself.  And when you finish you will see that Abraham was really just a spectator.

 

Why did God choose Abraham?  Well He had to choose somebody!  If He had chosen someone else, we’d ask why God chose them.  But what I want us to see is that it was the purpose of God.

 

 

We can ask why Abraham or why the Jews, but I think the better question is what was the purpose of God in choosing them? What were they supposed to do?

 

No. 1, they were to proclaim the true God. Their job, in the midst of idolatry and multi-gods and idols was to proclaim the true God.

 

Secondly, they were to reveal Messiah, the Savior of the world. He was to come through them.

 

Thirdly, they were to be God's priest nation. This one kind of combines the first two.  They are to represent God to the world, and provide a way for the world to get to God.  you see.

 

Fourth, they were to preserve and transmit Scripture. They were God's agency to proclaim His Word. Deuteronomy 6 says they were write it all over the place. They were to hang it between their foreheads. They were to write it on the door posts of their house. They were to talk about it standing up, sitting down, lying down, and doing anything else. They were to transmit Scripture all the time.

 

Fifthly, they were to show the faithfulness of God. They were to be a living illustration that God was faithful.  Over and over and over, He showed His faithfulness to Israel.

 

Sixth, they were to show the blessedness of serving God. You know that wonderful statement, is it Psalm 144:15, "Happy is the people whose God is the Lord." They were to show that, when you were plugged into God, you were blessed. You were happy.

Seventh, they were to show God's grace in dealing with sin. Their whole sacrificial system was a portrayal of how God graciously dealt with sin.

 

So God had very strategic purpose in developing a people called His people in the world, and because Abraham was chosen to be the originator of that people, he was secure in the purpose of God.

 

And by the way, that purpose is still being carried out and doesn’t come to complete fulfillment until the Millennial Reign of Christ on the earth.

 

And by the way, in Christ, you are secure in the purpose of God as well.  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 secure in the eternal purpose of God. That's our security. Then he gives a third security, and we'll look at this just briefly.

 

His third security is

 

 

Look at the end of verse 13

 

In other words, He made an oath on Himself.

 

Look at verse 16

 

Here we have an explanation of this idea of an oath. If you're going to make an oath, you swear by somebody greater than yourself.

 

People still do that, although most of the time it is done very carelessly and without thought of what’s is being done.

 

But when a man would swear by somebody higher than himself, he was offering a confirmation.  That's what verse 16 means.

 

Then notice verse 17.

 

In other words, God accepted the human pattern. Now, God didn't need to make an oath. God's Word is good without it; but to accommodate the weak faith of men, God said, "Okay, I'll also pledge that what I mean is for real. I lie not." Now, when men swear an oath, in order to underline their promise, they're pledging themselves. So God said, "If that's the human custom, I'll do it."

 

Many times in the Old Testament, here's what men would say. "As the Lord lives, so..." and then they'd give their thing. They always appealed to somebody higher, but you know what you read in the Old Testament all over the place when God makes an oath? He says this, "As I live, so shall I do this." Why? Because He couldn't swear by anybody greater. There wasn't anybody greater, so He swore by Himself.

 

The bare Word of God is guarantee enough, but God gave an oath just to show that He really meant business and do it in the most extreme way that men required, by His pledge.

 

 

 

Think about that in salvation terms.  God says to me, “Come to Jesus, and I'll hold onto your life.” What's His security? What's His oath to me?" I believe it's the presence of the Holy Spirit. I believe God's oath is the presence of the Spirit who is the first fruits or the guarantee of our future inheritance.

 

The Spirit is called the earnest or pledge.  It’s God’s engagement ring to us.  Therefore, because God has given me this pledge, this guarantee, I have no doubts about someday being married to Jesus Christ. God guarantees my marriage by giving me an engagement ring, who is the Holy Spirit. God is pledged to me. God has shown me His oath.

 

And I love the phrasing there in verse 17.

 

It wasn’t just for Abraham, but for the “heirs of promise”. That means it’s also for all those of faith though all the ages. Abraham and God's oath to Abraham stand as a testimony of God's faithfulness for all time. God's design and swearing 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 Word.

 

Now before we leave this verse,, I want you to notice the little statement, "the immutability of His counsel"? That's interesting. It means His will can't change. His purpose can never, ever, ever change. It cannot be switched. It can't be transposed. It can't be turned around. It cannot be altered. When God says it, it is so. So the counsel of God says, "I will keep My promise. You don't ever need to doubt it." God will give His oath that He will keep His Word.

 

Then in verse 18, he says, "It is guaranteed by two immutable things." What were they?

 

His promise and His pledge. His promise and His oath. He stated it, and then He swore by it; and they are also unchangeable. Two immutable, unchangeable things in which it was impossible for God to lie.

 

"You're secure," He says, "come onto Christ. There is nothing to fear. I'll hold you. If He gives you salvation in Jesus Christ, He will never change it. That would foul up His eternal purpose.

 

And then He says, and this is the wrap-up on it, verse 18, "It was impossible for God to lie; and so we might have a strong consolation." What does that mean? That means a strong encouragement or a strong confidence, "who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us."

 

There are a lot of people who question whether God can hang on. There are a lot of people who are afraid to come all the way to Jesus and throw their life on Him.  And the truth of the matter is, you'll never know until you do.

 

You'll never know until you flee to Him for refuge. The picture there is of someone who killed his neighbor by accident and fled to the cities of refuge. You can read about that in Numbers 35 and Deuteronomy 19 and Joshua 20.

 

These cities of refuge were high up in the plateaus and there this person would be safe and secure.

 

And he's saying, "You'll never know whether God can hold you until, in desperation, you run to Him for refuge. Come on," he says, "trust Him and see if He can't hang onto you." If you never flee to Him for refuge, you'll never be able to know if He's faithful or not; and so he says, "We, who have fled for refuge and laid hold on this hope, we have a strong confidence."

 

You can trust God, and the only way you'll ever know if is if you flee to Him and embrace Jesus Christ. God gave Abraham the security of His person and His purpose and His pledge, and He gives it to you. One other thing and that is there is security because of

 

 

verse 19

 

When we trust God, we've got an anchor for our souls. That means when you come to God, your soul isn’t drifting anymore. And notice, it's anchored “inside the veil."

 

What does that mean?" In the temple, the most sacred place was called the Holy of Holies.  And in the Holy of Holies was the Ark of the Covenant.  And there, once a year on Day of Atonement, the high priest could go in there and sprinkle blood for sins. He had to get in and get out fast. He couldn't linger there. That was the place where God dwelt.

 

Now watch it:  only the high priest could go in there. No man could go in there. That was the stay-away thing. Nobody went near that.

 

But when Jesus died, our great High Priest Jesus Christ performed the perfect sacrifice, He entered into the heavenly Holy of Holies, and when He went in there, He didn't just stand around and leave. The Bible says He went and sat down.

 

Jesus finished the job. The veil was ripped open, and He left, as the writer of Hebrews says, "a new and living way into the presence of God."  Jesus opened the way, and when I put my faith in Him, I throw my anchor, and it goes clear to heaven, and it anchors to Him within the veil of the Holy of Holies. Now that's security.  I am eternally tied to Jesus within the veil and nothing can ever violate that.

 

Now according to verse 20, Jesus was a different kind of priest.  He is like Melchizedek, and we'll get into that next time.  But for tonight, just rest in this:  He went in there and stayed in there, and when I put my faith in Him, I threw my anchor, it went in the veil, and He holds it in His hand, and He'll never let go and I'm anchored to Jesus Christ.

 

And how long are we anchored there?  Verse 20 tells us.  I’m anchored as long as Jesus is High Priest, and Jesus has been made a High Priest forever.  That means I'm anchored to God forever.

 

Listen:  our security is in the person, the purpose, the pledge, and the priest of God, the Lord Jesus Christ. Can you trust God?  You’d better believe it!

 

Let’s pray.