If you will turn in your copy of God's Word to Hebrews chapter 6, we're going to wrap up this chapter today. We're going to look at verses 13 through 20, just eight verses. pregnant verses full of information, full of truth, full of doctrine, full of theology, full of promises, full of information about the character of God. So if you will, and it's also in your bulletin, let's give attention to the Word of God. And can you hear me back there, Kyle? Okay. For when God made a promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no one greater, he swore by himself, saying, Surely, blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply you. And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. For men indeed swear by the greater, and an oath for confirmation is for them an end of all dispute. Thus God, determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath that by two immutable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us. This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the presence behind the veil, where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus, having become High Priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek. May God add His blessing to the reading and the hearing of His perfect Word. We had a man in our church in Maryland. His first name was Barry. And he was one of these guys that if he told you something, you could absolutely depend on it. You can't be honest to a fault, but he was honest to the nth degree. When he said something, you could take it to the bank. And one of the things I used to think about Barry, and I used to use him as a sermon illustration even there, as one that when he said to you, I intend to do this, it was more than just an intention to do it. It was like a guarantee that he was going to do what he said he would do. And when I think about that and knowing his character, he's the kind of guy that I would, Well, I bought insurance from the guy, so I believe that he was trustworthy to keep his word. Now, knowing the character of a person guides us in whether to trust or not trust his claims. And knowing the character behind the promises of God guides us as to whether or not to trust his claims. And knowing his character moves us in faith and obedience to him. And that's one of those oddities of life is we can all sit here and right now if I were to say, raise your hands, I'm not going to ask you, but raise your hands if you absolutely trust the Word of God. And I bet every one of you would raise your hands. And if I said, how many of you believe that God is going to do everything that he said in the Bible? I believe you would all raise your hands. And yet, do we live as though he really keeps his promises and is going to do everything that he promises in the Bible? But knowing His character gives us a sense of the substance that undergirds His promises. And I hope that as we think about these things, that today we're going to take on more and more commitment to acting according to what we say we believe about His promises. And because of who and what God is, the more we know Him, the more reason we have to trust in what He says. So as we approach this text today, there's only eight verses here. I want to first look at what our text says about God Himself and what makes His promises and His guarantees here in this case to Abraham, but also to us as we read this passage, what His promises mean to us and what it tells us about Him. So if you will look at your Bibles, I want you to notice in verse 13, for when God made a promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no one greater, he swore by himself. Think about that. God is telling us there that there is no one greater, no one. In the whole universe, there is none greater than God himself. And therefore, he makes promises to Abraham that Abraham should believe. And then in verse 14, He says, surely blessing I will bless you and multiplying I will multiply you. God is a God who promises to bless us. He promises to do things for us. He promises not to divide us, but to multiply us out, to multiply us. And then in verse 15, and so after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. Here we see that Abraham, Endured, believing God, patiently, but he obtained exactly what God had said He was going to give him. And then in verse 16 we read again, For men indeed swear by the greater, there it is, there's none greater, and an oath for confirmation is for them an end of all dispute. You see, when God makes a promise, He is the one who can conclude the matter. He can put it to rest. He is the last authoritative and indispensable Word. And then we look at verse 17, Thus God, determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath. Wow, what a passage. Here we have the immutability of God, the sovereignty of God. We have the surety of His will, the surety of His counsel. He's going to carry out His purpose and He's going to show His purpose in His world. So this one verse says, He's going to show that to Abraham, our text, and He's going to show it to you. That's why it's in Hebrews, because it's being passed on from God to Abraham to now you. And then in verse 18, that by two immutable things, immutable, unchangeable attributes of God, repeated from verse 17, that by two immutable things in which it is impossible for God to lie. You see, there are things that God can't do. God cannot lie. He cannot die. He cannot deny himself. He cannot create another God. There are things that God cannot do. So godness does not mean you can do anything because God cannot do evil. That by two immutable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation. who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us." That lay hold of, come to possess. God has multiplied. He's given this to you so that you can possess this hope, which is elpis. Remember what elpis means? Hope, that confident assurance that God will fulfill his word because he's even greater than Barry Winstead in the Maryland church. He's even greater than than any of us. And then in verse 19, as we continue in our systematic theology here, oh, back to 18, the word consolation, that's the same word that is used for God, the Holy Spirit, the consoler, the paraclete. So he is the consoler. He is our strength, our unchangeable strength, our consoler, our encourager, The paraclete. And then verse 19. Amazing. Here. We again are assured that we're going to possess this anchor for our souls. And this sure and steadfast means that it cannot be changed and it cannot be defeated. He cannot be defeated in your lives from your lives. And not only that, but it says he has he's entered the presence behind the veil. You see, Jesus has gone into the presence of the Father and the Spirit behind the veil as members of the Trinity. So as our forerunner, he went ahead of us and he entered God's presence. for us, verse 20, and he took on flesh like us and for us, verse 20, as the highest representative on our behalf as the high priest, verse 20, where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus having become high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. So, you know, I read these things and I think, wow. What a God we have. What a wonderful God we have to reveal Himself in all of these ways so that we can put our trust in Him and have Him as the anchor of our soul. And would you think that a person, would you think that this person is competent and trustworthy when He speaks? It's kind of prima facie, isn't it? He has said this. And you know, when you think, well, if this God is this God and these attributes are true about him, then would I trust a person like this with my door key? Would I trust him with my checkbook? Would I trust him with my wife? Would I trust him with my children? Would I trust him about my health? Would I trust him with my reputation? Would I give him the passwords to my computer? Would I trust him with my job? Would I trust him with my life decisions? And yet, I bet some of you are thinking, well, of course I would trust him. As long as what he wants to do agrees with what I want to do. Isn't that the rub? We trust Him as far as we agree with Him, and we stop trusting Him, and we think we're wiser when we want to do something different. What a travesty the heart of man is. When Calvin said that we are totally depraved, There's a lot of empirical for the total depravity of man. We can give lip service to this God and we can praise this God and we can say, I believe this God. And we do until this God wants me to do something different than I want to do. So no wonder we worry and no wonder we fret, no wonder we fear. And we should fear because we should be afraid of this God who has a different opinion about life than we do. We should fear this God, but there's a better thing. There's something we can do to assuage that fear. We can learn who this God is, and we can follow the Word of this God, and we can obey this God, He works in our lives to where we see with His eyes that what He is doing, even when it's uncomfortable for us, is really what should be done. We can trust Him, we should trust Him, and we should trust His oaths and His promises. But as we go on in this passage, I want to go back to it, and I want us to look at four guarantees that God makes here in Hebrews 6. And the first guarantee you find in verses 13 and 14, God, this God that we just talked about, with all of these attributes, with all of this sovereignty, with all of this power, with all of this greatness, none greater, He has made a promise. And a promise is the issuing of a notice, a statement of intent with the pertinent details. So verse 13 and 14, for when God made a promise, issued a notice to Abraham because he could swear by no one greater, he swore by himself saying, surely blessing I will bless you and multiplying I will multiply you. Now, what was the promise that Abraham was faced with? Well, he was 75 years old. He did not have a child. He did not have an heir from his own body. And God comes to him and says, Abraham, yes, I know you haven't had a child, but you're going to have a child. I know that Sarah hasn't had a child and her womb is dead, but she's going to have a child and this is going to happen in your future. And then again, when Abraham is 99 years old, he's still childless. So we're 24 years later and he's still childless and he's still heirless. And he remembers that God has promised to make him the father of many nations, Genesis 17, five. And Abraham's thinking, wait a minute, this would be absolutely ridiculous. except that it's God who said this. I know that 99 is a little late to be starting a family. And even if Sarah's body were still fully functional and my body still fully functional, it's still late. And Abraham's wife, according to the scripture, Genesis 18, 11, was old and well past the age of childbearing. She not only, when she was of the age, she didn't bear a child, but now she's past the age, so she's got the double negative there. So what a far out thing it is for God to come and promise Abraham and Sarah that they would ever have a child and start a nation. This promise is clearly impossible. This promise is nothing but wishful thinking by an old man. except that with God, all things are possible. All things are possible. And Abraham waited another year, 25 years, and he believed God, says Genesis 15, 6. He believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. And the scripture says that he is Av-Bnei Amunah. He is the father of the sons of faith. If you have faith, he is your father in the faith. He's the great father in the faith. Jesus is the giver, but he's the father. And Abraham was in fact, he was very famous for this 25-year episode that he was talking about. People were hearing about it. They knew this. And it's even written again about his faith in Romans 4. And if you'll turn to Romans 4 in your Bible, I want to go through some verses here to point this out. In Romans 4, Starting in verse 17, Abraham, this is where Abraham, Abraham has already been mentioned over 278 times in the scripture. And it says about him, as it is written, I have made you, Abraham, a father of many nations. In the presence of him whom he believed, God who gives life to the dead and calls those things which do not exist as though they did. So God created the world from nothing. He can do that. Ex nihilo, from nothing. He can certainly open a womb when there's even a dead womb. Verse 18, who contrary to hope, contrary, when he's looking to himself and he's looking to the situation that he is in, I am an old man. My wife is an old woman. She's never had a child. Her womb is dead. I have never had a child. It's impossible. So contrary to hope, Then God comes and says, You don't have to hope. I'm making a promise. In hope, he believed that he became the father of many nations according to what was spoken. So shall your descendants be. Verse 19, and not being weak in faith. What a great statement. He did not consider his own body already dead since he was about a hundred years old. And the deadness of Sarah's womb, he staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief. but was strong in faith, giving glory to God, being fully persuaded that what God had promised, He was able also to perform." Now, I think if I were a hundred years old and God came to me and said, you're going to have a child probably at 75, I'd say, huh? You got to be kidding. See, I'm Abraham's age now almost when that promise was given. And I think too late for me, You know, who knows what could happen if God wants it. In fact, if God wants it, it will happen. He staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief. We should not be staggering. We should not be even, we should not even waffle a little bit. when God makes a promise. And God made the promise when Abraham was 75 and he held back from fulfilling it until Abraham was 100. That means that he had to wait a quarter of a century to see God fulfill his promise, but he never staggered in faith. He was able to wait. That is a solid faith. Now, during that 25 years between age 75 and 100, Can you imagine the mealtime conversation between Abraham and Sarah? They're sitting in their kitchen and Sarah goes over to the oven and she takes out her casserole and they sit down at the table and Sarah says, Abraham, this promise is just not going to happen. This promise is actually laughable. In fact, I've already laughed about it. Abraham, are you sure you heard correctly? I mean, isn't there another interpretation of this passage somehow or this promise somehow? Abraham, you need to move on with your life and you need to get off of this idea, this obsession that you're going to have a child. We're not going to have a child. And Abraham says, Sarah, we will have a child. We will have not only a child, but we will have a son and that son will produce sons and daughters and we will be the ancestors of nations. and this child will be my own flesh and blood. Sarah, please, believe with me that this is going to happen. Participate with me that this is going to happen and that God is going to keep His Word. And I just have to think about, you know what happens in between? Probably Abraham was such a nagger about this situation of not having a son. And he was so desperate to have a son that his wife probably looked at him with pity. In fact, there's almost no doubt about this. She looked at him as weak. She looked at him as one who really didn't have much gumption. And so we've got to fix this. I'm going to, I'm going to be God, I Sarah, I'm going to be God in Abraham's life. And here's how I'm going to do it. I'm going to give Hagar, my, who is my servant, to my husband so that he can have a child. What kind of torment must that woman, Sarah, have gone through to how much she must have endured to finally in her heart be able to give her husband intimately to another woman? Girls, would you like to do that? No, we wouldn't do that. This was a hard thing. So we're not talking about a little issue here. We're talking about something that consumed Abraham. And he was completely filled with faith that it was going to happen, but the people around him were not. 25 years went past, he had Isaac and we know the rest. In verse 15 in our text, it says, and so after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. So finally, not only do we have Ishmael, but now we have Isaac. And so God has kept His promise. But then we have the second guarantee in our text. And here it's based on the guarantee of an oath. An oath is a promise backed by something or someone that seems trustworthy and is willing to put himself... putting himself at risk and in jeopardy as the guarantee or confirmation for certainty. God says, I'm making an oath. I'm going to remove all doubt, all dispute. This is it. This is the way it's going to be. Verse 16 and 17, 18. For men indeed swear by the greater and an oath for confirmation is for them an end of all dispute. Thus God determining, meaning that he put into motion, to show, which means to display more abundantly to the heirs of promise, Abraham, Sarah, and so forth, the immutability of his counsel, his will, confirmed it by an oath that by two immutable, unchangeable, unalterable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation. There's the Holy Spirit, the paraclete, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us. Now, we all, understand how oaths work. We've all participated in oaths probably. If you're married, you've had a, you've taken a wedding vow. A wedding vow says, I, you know, I choose you from among All the women of the world, I choose you alone as mine and we're a pair. And an oath, a wedding vow exposes you to a state's jurisdiction also. Some of us have taken the military oath, a commitment to the government, to their rules and their commands. And some of us have been in courtrooms, at least one of us have been in courtroom and probably heard a lot of oaths where you take an oath to tell the truth and it makes you liable for punishment if you perjure yourself. So oaths are administered to solicit a personal commitment. And here, God Himself gives an oath, not to solicit a personal commitment, but to declare His personal commitment and to ensure that if He doesn't keep His Word, He will censure Himself. And I want to take you back to Genesis 15 for just a second. In Genesis 15, God has come to Abram. And he has made this promise to him. The whole chapter 15 is about this. And in 15.6, it says where God, Abraham believed God and it was counted to him as righteousness. So you have God coming to make a covenant, God coming to make a promise, God coming to declare an oath. Abraham, you're going to have a child. And if you don't, and so you've got this, in this covenant, you've got the parties involved, God and Abraham. You've got the terms and the stipulations of the promise. You've got, I'm going to give you this child. And then, when it comes to the declaration of the penalties for failure, God says, We're going to cut these animals in half. We're going to lay them out. Nightfall is going to come, and there's going to be a firepot march up and down between these animals. And if I don't keep my... This is a metaphor. If I don't keep my word, I'll do to me what you did to these animals. In essence, God's taking an oath of malediction. I will destroy myself if I don't keep my word. Of course, you see the, not just irony of that, the impossibility of that. A while ago I said that God can't create another God. God also cannot not exist. He cannot not live. He cannot lay aside life itself. He cannot destroy himself. So God takes an oath. He cannot lie. He cannot fail. But why does he do this? Well, he takes this oath because he wants to hammer home his promise to Abraham and to us in such a way that it lives on in Abraham's memory and these promises live on in our memories as expected. When you're talking to somebody and the conversation is going along and somebody says, and I swear to you, and they finish the sentence, it makes an impression on you, doesn't it? And if they're people of integrity, it makes a strong impression on you. If they're not, they're probably hiding behind something. But when they say those words, I swear to you, I take an oath to you, it's something that you're going to remember. It marks it in your head. It emblazons it on your mind. And with an oath added, God memorialized this promise for us that He made to Abraham and the promises that He makes to us. His oath, not because it should make us more certain of Him or Him more accountable to us, but He adds this oath because it burns it into our minds and makes it memorable. Then we have the third guarantee of the four. God's promise and oath give us an anchor. Hebrews 6, 18 and 19. That by two immutable things in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope, that's the earnest expectation, set before us, promise to us, This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the presence behind the veil. Everyone needs an anchor. Everyone has an anchor. And the only question is, how well does it hold? You see, if our anchor, if we're anchored to our money, what's going to happen when our money runs out? If our soul is anchored to our spouse, what's going to happen when we lose our spouse? Our spouse is taken from us. If our soul is anchored to our career, What's going to happen when that fails? If our soul is anchored to our happiness, what's going to happen? What's going to become of us when that day we wake up and we're not happy. We're just sad. depressed. You see, everyone has an anchor. And if you put your anchor in the sand, it's never going to hold. But you need a place for your anchor to rest so that it cannot be moved. And nothing in this world and nothing of this world will ever be strong enough to hold you steady when your life falls apart. We need an anchor that cannot be moved no matter what happens. No matter what needs come around, no matter what the forces of the world inflict on it, the wind, the waves, the currents, this anchor is a metaphor that God is our stable anchor and we can depend on Him. And that's what we have in God and in His Word and in His promise. We have a sure anchor that is bigger and that is better and stronger than anything and everything else in this world. Most of us think that an anchor goes down to the bottom of the ocean and catches hold down there. But our anchor, this anchor that we're talking about, is the anchor that goes up to heaven. Our anchor rests in the Holy of Holies in heaven. It rests behind the curtain in the very presence of God Himself. And I want you to notice that there's somebody there behind that veil, behind that curtain. And according to our text, that somebody there is none other than the Lord Jesus Christ. Our anchor has come to rest in heaven behind the veil in the presence of God and Jesus Christ himself, the forerunner, is already there to prepare things for us. And that's why the hope, this confident assurance in verse 19 doesn't refer to our subjective feelings. No matter how you feel, He doesn't change. No matter how you feel, the situation does not change. A feeling is just a human wish. And this hope is not like, I wish it wouldn't rain today so I could play outside or be outside. It's not wishful thinking. This hope is a certainty. And our hope in Him is a certainty that what Jesus has promised is guaranteed. That's why this type of hope in our text is called firm. The word firm there means never failing, never changing. Now, I wonder what that word firm would mean in the Greek. Have you ever thought about that? It means never failing, never changing. It's exactly what it means. Our anchor will never fail. Our anchor will never slip. Our anchor will never give away. Our anchor will never be detached from us. It can't be. Our anchor holds because it rests on the triune God in heaven. And then our fourth guarantee. is that God provided the greatest of all priests in Jesus Christ. Remember what a priest is? A priest is the Jesus once offered himself as the sacrifice that we needed to wash away our sins. Jesus is the one who satisfied divine justice on our behalf. Jesus is the one who reconciled us to God, made us right with God. If He's your anchor, Jesus has made you right with God. And Jesus is the one who is interceding, praying for us right now. He is praying for us at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty. In chapter 6, verse 20, where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus, having become high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek. You see, we need this priest. We need that priest, this priest Jesus, and no other priest. And in verse 18, we have that the writer describes Christians who have fled to Him for refuge. There's no refuge anywhere else either. That is, we who believe to the end in Him, we have an absolute certain refuge from the wrath of God, from any external influences, really. And that's what it means to believe. That's how you become a Christian. That's the key to Christian living is to learn to not stagger at the promises of God, to learn to not stagger at the commands of God, to learn to not stagger at the laws of God, to learn to not stagger at the way that God calls us to live. And yet we think about, we examine our own lives and we think, what has God called me to do? And you have some things in your mind and you think, and you know, maybe next year I'll get around to that. One day I'm going to, when things are better the way, when I've got my life together the way I want it together, then that's when I will go and I'll start obeying God the way I'm supposed to obey Him. But that's not faith. Faith is believing God at His Word and obeying Him. You're playing games with him until you say, Lord, I understand who you are. Lord, I understand what you are. Lord, I understand how sovereign you are. Lord, I understand how infallible you are. Lord, I understand how wise you are. I understand how much greater than me and greater than anything else you are. I understand how important you are. And therefore, since I believe those things, My life will be lived according to those truths, not according to my weaknesses, my foolishness, my smallness, my changeability. You see how these things, when we understand the firmness of God, the perfection of God, that we can live that way and it will change your life. I promise you, it would change my life and my life needs improvement and so does yours. Amen? Amen.