We'll commence with verse 17 and read through verse 20 for our scripture text for this morning. I'm sure many of you are aware that the New Testament book, which is named Hebrews, is simply a letter written by someone to Jewish Christians, Hebrew believers. And the content of the letter primarily was to dispel any of the inroads that the Judaizers, those who attempted to make an admixture of Judaism and Christianity as the ongoing religion of the day. The writer to the Hebrew believers simply put that all to rest and said, Judaism doesn't exist in terms of having any validity in standing before God, because Jesus Christ is the fulfillment of all that the Hebrew culture and the Hebrew priesthood and the Hebrew religion portray. that Christ is the lamb, the sacrifice that was offered by the Hebrew priests. And Christ is the high priest, which was foretold by the Hebrew priests. And Christ is the sacrifice. He is both the offered and the offerer. And he is superior, infinitely superior, to anything that the old system advanced. And therefore, the old way is done, and a new and superior way has replaced it. Now, that's the tenor of the Hebrew writings. A very important aspect of the Hebrew writings, in fact, of biblical doctrinal truth, which is touched upon in our text, and that is, of course, the immutability of God. Let me first of all point out to you that there isn't a promise in the Bible that has any guarantee that's worth anything at all unless God is unchangeable. Also, there isn't a promise in the Bible that is worth anything at all unless God has the ability to perform it. And so, two things are very important here to understand about God. One is that God is omnipotent, meaning that he can do anything he wishes to do, and he does it. and that any promise he makes is guaranteed to come to pass. If God is not, doesn't have the strength to do what he promises, or the ability that his character never changes so that he doesn't change his mind, then none of the promises that God makes in the scriptures have any guarantee at all. And it's important that we understand that because of the matter that we shall discuss this morning. Having said all of those things, let's look at the 17th verse of Hebrews chapter 6 and read down through the end of the chapter. Wherein God, willing more abundantly to show unto the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel, confirmed it by an oath, that by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us, which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, which entereth into that within the veil, where the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made in high priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek. Now let's pray. Father, we thank you for bringing us here. for this assembly, your church. We thank you, Father, for the one who is the head of this church, Jesus Christ. We thank you that he loved his people and gave himself for them, and that he ever lives sitting in your presence now, interceding on their behalf. I pray, Holy Father, that you would make each one in this room cognizant of your presence and aware that without Jesus Christ, there is no victory. And without his saving power in and upon the life of each person, there is no hope. So such things that are needful for us to remember, I ask you would remind us and convince us give to us a tent of ears and open hearts to receive that which your word has to build us up and to encourage us and to carry us as pilgrims passing through this world until finally we shall stand in your presence and see you and worship you face to face. These things I pray in the name of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. Incidentally, the two immutable things that are referred to in the 18th verse are the promise of God and the oath of God. It's not that God had to swear an oath in order for him to be reminded that he needed to keep his promise, but God did swear an oath upon himself in order to convince men and to indelibly impress upon the mind of man that God indeed does keep his word. It's sort of like a knee-jerk reaction that people ask sometimes of another when they say, will you promise so-and-so? Yes, I do. Well, will you swear that you'll do it? Yes, I will. Well, really that's really what God is saying here. He's saying he made a promise and he swore to it. Those two things, the promise and the oath, are unchangeable. Nothing can ever change them. And God has promised us that we should have a strong consolation because we have fled for refuge to Jesus Christ, and we have the hope set before us that he and he alone guarantees. I want to talk to you this morning about consolation, if I may. The reason I'd like to talk to you about it is because it may be true that there are none of us here this morning who are facing great and dire and disastrous consequences in our lives at the moment. But if there is one thing that is absolutely certain and guaranteed by life itself, never mind by the word of God, is our mortality. We are very mortal beings. And as mortals, we are subject to the vagaries that life seems to bring upon we mortals. Disappointment comes to us. The results of our own sinful actions often shower down upon us. Very often we find that we face the disaster of a loss of someone whom we love dearly. And then there are material disasters such as job loss and financial reversals, such vagaries as illness, the things that surround us such as moral deprivation. All those things may not have touched you or at the moment are touching you, but the fact is that we need to know and need to be armed, need to be equipped so that we can and should have a strong consolation when we need a strong consoler. You remember when the Lord Jesus Christ was with his apostles and he told them, this is back in the Gospel of John, the 14th chapter, He was explaining to them that he was going to leave them. And you remember how there was a great outcry from his apostles against him, saying, no, no, you're not going to leave us. He says, yes, I am. I'm going to prepare a place for you. And he went on to tell them that if it wasn't the truth, he wouldn't be telling them that. And then later on, at the very same time, in the context of the whole series of events that occurred then, He said, and also when I go, my father will send someone in my place to take my place. He won't be me, but he will be as I am. He will be alongside you. He will console you. He will be in you. He will comfort you. And I will not go unless he comes. And when I go, he will come. And therefore, dear ones, I submit to you that we have at our disposal at our sides, living within us, the great and holy comfort of the Holy Spirit of God, who has been sent by the Father to take the place of the Son until we go to be with the Son and become as He is. That's a wonderful promise, but it means nothing at all until one finds himself facing the circumstances which require him to rely upon the consolation and comfort of this one who walks alongside, who lives within, who reflects the will of the Father, who is the God of all comfort. I have two other passages of scripture that I want for us to use this morning. Frankly, I was in a quandary as to which one that we should use first, but since I've already turned to it, I suppose we shall use a passage from the book of 2 Corinthians, the first chapter. And I'd like to start in the third verse, if you will indulge me, and read six verses down through verse nine. I'm sure that many of you are aware that the writer, the human writer of this portion of the Bible is Paul, the great apostle to the Gentiles. And probably many of you are aware of the kind of life that he led before he was converted to Jesus Christ and then the kind of life he led after his conversion. Before his conversion, he was zealous for God. After his conversion, he was zealous for God. Prior to his conversion, he was zealous for God, but in ignorance, because his heart had not been opened, his mind had not been enlightened, and he did not know Jesus Christ. He was not aware that when he persecuted Christ's people, he was persecuting God's people. But he was made aware. And when he was, through the miraculous means of his conversion, as he was traveling along to another place to advance further the persecution of believers, He was converted, but his zeal for God was enhanced. The Apostle Paul committed his entire life, the very frame of his being, in the service, the sacrificial service, for his Lord and his Savior, Jesus Christ. And in the doing, he lived a very difficult life. and this portion of scripture touches upon, just in a small way, the difficulty of his life, but more importantly touches upon how it was that he was able to live it and to serve out his life in the adverse circumstances, the adversity of this life that he faced every day. Starting with verse 3, blessed be the God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort, who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them who are in any trouble by the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted of God. For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ. And whether we be afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation, which is effectual in the enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer. Or whether we be comforted, it is for your consolation and salvation. And our hope of you is steadfast, knowing that as ye are partakers of the sufferings, so shall ye be also of the consolation. For we would not rather have you ignorant of our trouble, which came to us in Asia, that we were pressed out of measure, beyond strength, in as much that we despaired even of life. But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God, who raiseth the dead." Now, I don't know if you get a sense of what it was that Paul was experiencing or had experienced. But he saw his life ebbing away from him, He, he says, was pressed out of measure. The Greek literally means that he was pulled and pushed so that his life had become nearly distorted, that you could hardly recognize him as he had been. So difficult had it been upon him, such great stress had he endured, stress of hungerings and of scourgings, of thirst and of wanderings. stress of rejection, stress of treachery, and betrayal. The Apostle Paul knew what it was to suffer, but he also knew what it was to be consoled. And it was because of his suffering that he was able to write words of consolation. And I want you to know that your mortality, our mortality, will inexorably bring us to the place where we will need to be consoled. We will need someone to console us. And it becomes vitally important that we recognize that the great consolation for our souls emanates from heaven. It may come through a person who has likewise suffered and is able to give consolation, but nevertheless, we shall receive it as heaven sent. It is important that we understand that all the persuasiveness of the academic world and of the scientific community and the neo-scientific community cannot give soul consolation. Jesus Christ gives consolation of the soul through the working of the Holy Spirit of God. We can easily despair. Now I want to speak to you for a moment about, while it may be that we are relatively comfortable not facing any great crisis in our lives, some may be, and I guess some are. And by the way, one person's major crisis or one person's minor crisis may be someone else's major crisis. What may not be large to you may be large to someone else. And it's important that we understand that. What you may have the strength to deal with relatively easily, someone else may not. And therefore, they need the strong consolation of heaven that comes through the Holy Spirit of God. As we all need his strength, so need we his consolation. I looked up consolation in Webster's 1828. I was telling Jerry on the way in this morning I have an inquiring mind. I turn to the preface of the dictionary that Noah Webster compiled in 1828, and I mentioned this to you before, but almost every time that he has an opportunity to use, almost every time that he needs to make an illustration of his point, or to make a demonstration of his point, he uses scripture. He uses often, and so I turn to the preface of this dictionary, And he has a number of pages there on English grammar. Very interesting what grammar was like then compared to what grammar is like now. There are some things that just don't even resemble what is taught as proper grammar today. And I'm not saying that he was right and we are wrong. I'll settle for proper grammar. today's proper grammar or the proper grammar 150 years ago, just so it's proper, I'll settle for it. But anyway, the point is that even there, every time he had an opportunity to demonstrate a prepositional phrase or splitting an infinitive or whatever it was that he wanted to do, he used scripture. He used a little verse of scripture, a little couplet from scripture to make the point. And he didn't do anything really different here. He said, consolation. comfort, alleviation of misery or distress of mind, refreshment of mind or spirits, a comparative degree of happiness in distress or misfortune springing up from any circumstance that abates the evil or supports and strengthens the mind. Things such as joy and hope and courage and the like And then he quoted a sentence from Philemon, the seventh verse. He says, we have great joy and consolation in thy love. The point being that anything that ameliorates misery and distress is to be construed as consolation. Do you realize what a reserve God's people have? of tools and embellishments available to them to alleviate the distress and console those who need to be consoled. We, of all people in the world, have the tools to console. And the more that we may have experienced in our own lives the deprivations of being afflicted and of being distressed, and having recovered from them by the power of the Holy Spirit of God, then do we have even better opportunity and better equipment to console others, to offer others consolation. And now, my last reference for you, if you would so indulge me, turn to the 40th chapter of the book of Isaiah. I ask you to turn here for two reasons. One reason is that the 28th verse is very rhetorical in its questioning. By that I mean it asks a series of questions in such a way as to encourage the reader. And the second reason why I want us to turn here is because I want us to go to the verse of scripture that we learned several weeks ago about renewing one's strength and mounting up on wings like eagles. Which incidentally reminds me, we had a verse for this week, didn't we? Don't worry, we'll do it. How do I get it out here? Since we didn't do it last week, it will be the one we were supposed to last week, we'll do this week, which is Philippians 1.9. But we'll get to that in a moment. I would like for you to, those of you who will visit someone who is ill, or go to speak to someone who is discouraged, I would like you to always pull out the 28th verse here, because it reads so well. It absolutely so fits into our jargon for the day. It says, don't you know, haven't you heard? Isn't that great? That the everlasting God, the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth, doesn't faint and doesn't grow weary. Haven't you heard that? Don't you know that? Well, you've heard it now. Please know it. Verse 28, hast thou not known, this is Isaiah chapter 40, hast thou not heard that the everlasting God, the Lord, the creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary, and there is no searching of his understanding, which simply translated means there's anything he doesn't know. If there's anything he doesn't know about you, There isn't anything he doesn't know about what you need. There isn't anything he doesn't know about how to fix you. Because he does. He can. And he will. He giveth power to the faint, and to those who have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall, but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength. They shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, and they shall walk and not faint. Sermon that some some itinerant Baptist pre-bat eagles had taken the time to study them to a large degree and certainly not going to convey the information that he did, but I want you to know a few things about eagles because the analogy of eagles is used here in this particular verse. It says, they shall renew their strength and mount up with wings like eagles. I looked at a National Geographic publication this morning very quickly because there were a few things that I didn't remember and I wanted to convey to you about eagles, at least in the North American continent. There are two kinds of eagles that live that are native to the United States. One is the bald eagle, which is our national symbol. And the other is the golden eagle. The golden eagle is the larger of the two. And the golden eagle is the more isolated of the two. The bald eagle will live closer to human population. The golden eagle will almost always attempt to move away from human population. Therefore, golden eagles are found more in mountains and in more isolated areas. That's not what's so important, however. What's important is the wings of eagles, because that's what's mentioned here. They shall mount up with wings like eagles. Wingspan of the average adult male golden eagle is seven feet. They have very powerful muscles in their chest to operate the wings, obviously. They need to, and here's the reason why. An eagle can climb to an altitude of thousands and thousands of feet. Eagles have routinely been seen flying at 12,000 or 13,000 feet. And not only do they fly at those altitudes, but they have very sharp vision so that they can see the ground at 13,000 feet. But not only can they see the ground, they can see the most minute moving objects upon the ground. And when they target an object, which they are going to make their lunch from. They go into a power dive. When we were driving back in the car yesterday, David and I were talking about certain airplanes and flying because we both love to fly. And we were talking about this one particular model of airplane that was grounded because several of them broke up in flight. We talked about the reasons why they broke up. And the conclusion that the FAA came to was that a pilot's lost control of the plane by spatial disorientation and the plane began to fall and would go into a inverted position and finally nose down going toward the ground and the speed would increase naturally as one is in a dive and the pilot would in his distress pull up very quickly and the wings would fall off. because it couldn't stand the g-forces of the pressure of pulling out of the dive. These eagles dive at speeds of 80 miles an hour and pull up just before they land on their prey. It takes a considerable amount of strength of their muscles, especially in their chest, in order to overcome the g-forces of that dive. When one stops to consider, their relatively small size of body compared to the size of their wings. It's quite a miraculous bird, the eagle, but I find it interesting that the scripture uses the eagle to speak of God and to speak of saints. In both cases, speaking of a very noble creature who overcomes great odds in order to succeed to get through his life. And I'm going to talk to you just a moment or two about that. The nests of eagles, at least of golden eagles, are seven to eight feet wide. They're made of sticks, small branches. And they're as thick as six feet thick. The writer that I read yesterday, or today, this morning on the subject said, they took apart one golden eagle's nest, which had been abandoned, and it took two wagon loads to carry the debris away. That's how much was in the nest. The nests are used year after year by the same couple, eagles made for life, and they raise their young consistently in the same nest. Sometimes they will build their nests in the rocks, high up, but mostly they will build them, particularly as true of bald eagles, they will build them in the top of a tree. and their nests will span across a number of branches of the tree and be very well stabilized. Eagles also do not do as other birds do. They do not raise their young in their nest and then expect them to fly away from the nest. And if they can't fly, they fall to the ground and they die. Eagles teach their young how to fly by taking them out. Eagles bear their young upon their wings. They carry them on their backs and they take them out. They take them up to high altitudes. They turn over, go into a dive, so that the young are forced off their backs, and they begin to flutter in an attempt to fly. Oftentimes, they are not ready to fly. And the mother or the father eagle will then swoop down under them and catch them on their backs again and bear them away safely back to their nest. Pretty miraculous, don't you think? That's why the Word of God calls saints eagles, and why the Word of God calls God eagle. The Lord Jesus Christ is referred to as an eagle, because if there is one thing that is absolutely certain from the Word of God, the Lord Jesus Christ, the God in human flesh, has promised to bear us all the way through this veil of tears, this life, and carry us into the very presence of the Father. Now, that's a guarantee in scripture given by a promise and an oath, two immutable things, two unchangeable things, because we have a strong consolation in that. There are other things about the eagles that I would like to just point out to you. Eagles live to be 80-plus years old. Some have been known to live well past the age of 100 and are virile and active their entire lifetime. Eagles, all of them without exception, have places of seclusion. They have a crag in the rock high up somewhere where they go to preen their feathers and sharpen their talons and hone their beaks in order to make them able to catch their prey. Eagles consistently and routinely bring down for their dinner creatures up to 10 times larger than themselves in body weight and carry them off. Folklore says that eagles have carried off infant babies, human beings. And the denial, of course, by the eagle lovers is that that has never happened. But it has happened. Eagles do that and will do it at the proper opportunity if they're hunting. They will do that. The point is, and it's an important point, that eagles are equipped to give through this life by their maker. God's people are equipped to give through this life by their Savior and by their Lord. And he calls them eagles. This passage of scripture says, they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength and they shall mount up with wings like eagles. One last thing about eagles that I'd like to point out to you. Not unlike so many human creatures, Eagles go through what I guess I'll call a midlife crisis. Eagles, without exception, find places when they are well along, maybe 40 years old, and they will land on the ground and they won't eat. Their feathers will begin to molt. They have no energy and don't really care about living. Those who do not come out of that crisis die. on the ground, but those who do live for a long, long time thereafter. Now, why do I tell you this? I tell you that because, well, maybe we are not prone to the vagaries of midlife crisis. I hope not. We shouldn't be, because that's a worldly invention. But the fact is, we do go through periods of time, sometimes extended periods of time, where we find that life has become difficult, hard to bear, and it appears as though there is no relief in sight. But you remember that our text tells us that Jesus Christ is our hope. He is our strong consolation, and we flee to him who is our anchor, who is our refuge, and who gives us hope. The worst thing that can happen, the absolutely worst thing that can happen to the human mind and to the human soul is to rob it of hope. The worst thing that can be done is to always have hope. And no matter what happens, in Christ Jesus, we do have hope. Why am I telling you all this? I'm telling you all this because I do believe, truly believe in my heart of hearts. I never thought it would be happening the way it is, but it is happening, and it's happening, I think, so clearly that we at least ought to pay heed to it. The United States of America, which used to be considered a Christian nation, and certainly when the textbooks in public schools and in private institutions of learning, higher institutions of learning as well, were generously peppered with biblical thought, biblical verses, and Christian ethics, it may well have been accurately stated that the United States is a Christian nation. Well, the United States not only is not a Christian nation today, but there is an overt effort to de-Christianize almost every aspect of public life that at one time was Christianized. It's happening not in schools only, it's happening everywhere. But certainly it is happening in public schools. believe that it's a I believe it's a forerunner of an onslaught that is going to make Christianity very unpopular and when it becomes unpopular enough there will be moves made against it there already are in the name of the Constitution particularly of the First Amendment in order to deny Christians maybe even the right to assemble get ready folks In your lifetime, probably, you're going to need the strong consolation of Jesus Christ. Just for matters of that, never mind the personal vagaries that will come into your life. But you remember, that they that wait upon the Lord, if they wait, if you wait, if you... Waiting here doesn't mean wait and do nothing. Waiting here means waiting like serving. Waiting on a table, for example. or waiting on someone in a store who needs to serve them. That's what it means here. Those who serve Christ will renew their strength, and they shall be lifted up and mount up on wings like eagles. Be an eagle saint, folks. If you're in Christ Jesus, remember, you are His. And He will protect you as an eagle protects her young. And He will strengthen you to grow into the strength of an eagle. And you shall rise up. and shall not fall, and you shall fly and shall not cease, and you shall finally, finally, at the end of life, instantly come into his presence, there forever, to experience the joy of having flown through this life as an eagle triumphs into the presence of Jesus Christ.