Hebrews Lesson 76
NKJ John
We are about to wrap up this one paragraph in Hebrews 6 that we have
been studying for over a month time wise, but then I was gone to Kiev for three
weeks that we missed out on. We are in
Hebrews 6 and we are in that paragraph from 9-12 that the writer of Hebrews is
at the point where he is setting us up to go back to a discussion of
Melchizedek which is where the chapter ends getting ready to go into the next
section. So we are going to start
working on that transition before long.
Now just to review in chapter 6:9, the writer says that we can have
confidence that despite failure, no matter how much failure there has been
God’s grace always provides for recovery.
He says…
NKJ
Hebrews 6:9 But,
beloved, we are confident of better things concerning you, yes, things that
accompany salvation, though we speak in this manner.
As I pointed out, that has a future orientation. Now I almost feel like
a broken record saying this every time we start, but we have to keep coming
back to this content. The focus here is
on the future. We talked about
salvation, soterion, as phase 3 glorification. We have this emphasis on hope in the passage
which again is a confident expectation, future orientation and then the
emphasis on inheritance when we get to verse 12. The whole focus here is to get the readers to
think not in terms of just the day-to-day struggle of living the Christian life
or just living life, but to focus on the fact that we have a future destiny and
that we are in that training period that God is preparing us for that future
destiny and not to give up, become weary (this is a major theme all the way through
the book of Hebrews) fall by the wayside, fall short of grace or various other
terms that the writer of Hebrews uses.
So in the second statement in this paragraph the writer reminds the
readers that God’s justice doesn’t forget or overlook that which has already
been accomplished in the power of God the Holy Spirit, but not to just rest on
their laurels or not to think that we did some good so now let’s go and not
focus on spiritual growth.
Then in verses 11-12 he encourages them to press on with continued diligence.
NKJ
Hebrews
NKJ
Hebrews
The believer he says is to persevere in light of that future expectation, that full assurance of
hope until the end of this life Don’t
fall by the wayside, not because you will lose your salvation as the Arminians
teach, or not because it will show that you are not a true believer as the
lordship salvation people believe, but because there is a threat of a loss of
reward – not that which has already been accomplished in the Holy Spirit but
that which is yet to be accomplished by means of the Holy Spirit. We are to persevere in light of that future
expectation to persevere in faith and patience.
It is a key word here because patience is going to be picked up again
when we get down into verse 15. We will
have the verb form and that will be picked up again to realize as full
inheritance. The idea of inheritance is
again picked up in relationship to the word “promise” because in verse 12 we
are reminded that we are to persevere and imitate those who went before who
through faith and patience inherit the promises.
Now I want you to notice something.
In your Bibles, look at verse 12. The last word probably is
“promises.” If you look at verse 13, we
read…
NKJ
Hebrews
So, you can connect the dots there.
Then if you look at verse 15, we read…
NKJ Hebrews
So connect the dots again.
Then in verse 17, we read…
NKJ
Hebrews
So four times in about 6 verses we have a reference to the word
promise. Now, where do you get a
promise? You get a promise because
somebody makes a declaration, a verbal declaration of what they are going to do
and they are going to be faithful. That
is a sub theme in this whole section – the faithfulness of God to fulfill His
promise. I don’t want to get off on that
right now. I just want you to think
about the concept of a promise. A
promise is a verbal declaration. Think
with me. We go all the way back to the
first two verses of Hebrews. What do the
first two verses of Hebrews say?
NKJ
Hebrews 1:1 God, who at
various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the
prophets,
NKJ
Hebrews 1:2 has in these
last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all
things, through whom also He made the worlds;
It is this idea of God speaking which entails an obligation on the part
of the hearer to respond positively to that revelation.
God’s speaking is not just some academic articulation that we can sit
there and study and say, “Oh isn’t that interesting. Let’s try to understand all of the nuances
and all the innuendos of what God has said.”
But it entails an expectation of obedience and application. I pointed this out all through Hebrews. You constantly have these references in one
way or another to God making a verbal statement. This again is a major theme throughout the
book of Hebrews that God speaks in some way and this entails a certain
response, necessitates a certain response on the part of the hearer. So we come to verse 12 and the emphasis here
is on imitation. This is where we
stopped the last two or three times.
I have been covering the five things that made these Old Testament
heroes (and in addition we can say now the New Testament apostles) such great,
mature believers. It is not because they
had something you and I don’t have. It
is not because they were made of different flesh. It is not because somehow God gave them
something that he didn’t give you and me.
He has given them the same assets that you and I have. The difference is
that what they do with their volition is different from what you and I do with
our volition. So in verse 12 the writer
says…
NKJ
Hebrews
Now the reason you are to imitate these leaders is not in their
flesh. Okay it is not in their humanity,
in their failures; but in their walk with the Lord. They are set up throughout all of the rest of
Hebrews. We get to Hebrews 11 and there
is this entire listing of Old Testament saints who by faith accomplish certain
things and are praised by God for what they did in those verses. Now this word imitate is the Greek word mimetes
which means to mimic, to imitate, to follow in the pattern of someone. Ultimately they are all imitating the Lord
Jesus Christ. This is what Paul says in
I Corinthians 4:16 when you put it together with I Corinthians 11:1. He says …
NKJ
1 Corinthians
NKJ
1 Corinthians 11:1 Imitate me,
just as I also imitate Christ.
That is the focal point. Don’t
imitate Paul in his failures, but imitate Paul in that which made him the great
apostle, the great believer that he was.
In I Thessalonians 1:6 he praises the Thessalonians because they “became
imitators of us - Timothy, Titus and the growing and advancing believers that
were in the apostle’s entourage.
NKJ
1 Thessalonians 1:6 And you
became followers of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much
affliction, with joy of the Holy Spirit,
NKJ
1 Thessalonians
So he is picking out those positive attributes of other believers and
other churches where they are applying the Word and saying, “Imitate
those. Follow in their footsteps. Follow their example.”
He says that…
NKJ Hebrews
The key word makrothumia which is a compound word in the Greek (macros
meaning long like macro (that is where we get our word macro in contrast to the
word micro), large and thumia meaning anger) means longsuffering, to be
forbearing to have self restraint, not to be impatient but to wait on the
Lord.
James
So we ask the question, “What made them different?”
Why were they different? What
ways did they exercise their volition that you and I can imitate?
The first point that I made was that in their faith they had the will,
the gumption, and the guts to believe God and to take up the challenge to walk
by faith and not by sight. II
Corinthians 5:7. This is the problem
with too many believers today. They are
so distracted by the details of life, by the every day pressures of life, by
the materialism that is driven as part of our culture, by all of the different
pressures that are brought to bear in the career, in the family, in friends,
all the different things. We lose sight
of the real focus and purpose of why God called us to serve the Lord Jesus
Christ. It doesn’t matter whether you
are in professional Christian service or whether you are every day Joe Six Pack
- anybody can serve the Lord Jesus Christ in whatever area you find yourself –
whether you are working for a large corporation as an executive or whether you
are working for the city in some sort of basic government job. Whatever it may be, wherever you are that is
your missionary responsibility where you can serve the Lord. You can also serve the Lord in relationship
to the local church. You can serve the
Lord in relationship to praying for and financially helping missionaries. There are an untold number of ways that every
one of us can be involved in different areas of Christian service. It is going differ from person to person
simply because you have different spiritual gifts. Every person has different spiritual gifts. They may have one or more spiritual
gifts. How they are given to you
according to the grace of God and whatever measure they are given to you is
going to be different from someone else.
Whatever your natural abilities and talents are, they are going to be
different from somebody else.
But the bottom line is we have to be willing to take up that challenge
to walk by faith and not by sight, where the Word of God is more real to us
than circumstances, than people’s opinions, than the pressures of day-to-day
life, than the various details of life that surround us.
As a result of their walking by faith and not by sight, they had a
biblical view of reality. This radically
transformed their norms and standards.
They were living in this world as if they were from somewhere else. They recognized that their citizenship was in
heaven. It wasn’t here on earth. They had a genuine grasp of how transitory
life was – right now in this physical plane.
This is a drop in the bucket compared to eternity. So this revolutionized their core
values. Rather than having the values of
the culture around them, they had a focus on the eternal virtues.
I pointed out last time the difference between values and virtue. Values come out of the culture or what the
Bible calls the world system. Values are
transitory. Values are relative. Values are personal preferences. But virtues are eternal absolutes that are
grounded in the Word of God. Values are
something that everybody has. Virtues
are something that we are to strive for.
They are perfections that we are to grow in the direction of. The three cardinal virtues biblically are
faith, hope and love each of which is mentioned in this particular
passage. We talk about their work and
labor of love in verse 10, the full assurance of hope in verse 11, and that
they are to imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the
promises. So faith, hope and love are
each mentioned in this passage. So they
were willing to be radically submitted to the plan of God and to be servants of
God and servants of Christ. We went
through these various passages last week.
NKJ
Deuteronomy
We are called to
serve God.
NKJ
Romans 12:1 I beseech
you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a
living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable
service.
The word that is used here, latreia, is a word that is sometimes
translated worship. We are going to
study this in our study on worship on Sunday morning as we are going through
Revelation 4. This doesn’t have to do
with corporate worship. It has to do with personal worship - how our life
becomes a personal sacrifice to God as we serve Him rather than serving our own
desires, our own goals, and our own objectives.
We put God’s plan first. This is
one of the most difficult things for anyone to apply – we are to be radically
oriented to the plan of God, not to our own desires, our own agenda. Most people spend most of their lives trying
to figure out which master they are going to serve which is what Jesus
emphasizes in several passages in the gospels.
NKJ
Matthew 20:28 "just
as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life
a ransom for many."
NKJ Matthew
NKJ Luke
This is what James talks about in James 1 – the two-souled or double
minded individual who can’t decide where his priorities are. This is where most Christians fail in the
spiritual life. They just can’t crack
the priority issue in making the Word of God the central issue in their
life. Nothing else matters except
knowing the Word of God and applying it. It is not just knowing the Word of God
academically; it is know the Word of God as the way to have a rich relationship
with the Lord Jesus Christ because we think as He thinks.
In Acts
NKJ
Acts
Notice how he can use himself as an example. We know from the very beginning where
NKJ
Acts
That is our priority – to serve the Lord. We are not serving other people. This is the same mentality that Paul talks
about in Colossians 3:18f when he talks about when you are working you are
doing your job as unto the Lord and not the human master. You are actually serving the Lord in that
position.
Over in II Corinthians he details this whole litany of things he had to
go through in ministry. He was
shipwrecked. He was hungry. He was thrown in jail and he was beaten and
all these different things that he put up with.
Many people would say, “If I had to put up with all of that, I would go
find something else to do. I would take
that as a sign that God wanted me to do something else. That must not be God’s will for me to be
involved in ministry if I am going to be thrown in jail and beaten and
shipwrecked and go through all of that.”
So he talks about this is part of humility which is authority
orientation to God.
NKJ
Acts
He was completely
oriented. Everything in his life focused
on that one mission which was to communicate the gospel and to teach believers
how to live.
NKJ
Acts
These two verses
explain what he means in verse 19 by serving the Lord with all humility. It is fulfilling his mission as an apostle in
relation to his spiritual gift and in relationship to God’s plan for his
life.
Now in I
Corinthians 4:1 he give us another illustration of what it means to be a
servant. What it means to be a servant
is not that you go out and that like some of these people that we see on
television or whatever where it is all about them and their ministry and what
God is doing for them; but, it is all about them. It is all about the institution that they are
developing. Paul says…
NKJ
1 Corinthians 4:1 Let a man so
consider us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God.
It wasn’t about Paul. It wasn’t
about Timothy. It wasn’t about
Barnabas. It wasn’t about Luke of
Matthew. It was always only about the
Lord Jesus Christ. He said that we are
to be considered as servants of Christ.
Stewards are those who are responsible for the communication of the
mysteries of God. That is the mystery
doctrine that hadn’t been revealed yet.
Now this word for servant is one of those picturesque words that is
picked up in Koine Greek and used several times in Scripture to describe the
disciples and those who are involved in any kind of ministry.
Many times Paul went places and he was supported by his own hand by tent
making. I don’t think that Paul actually
sat down too much with a canvas across his legs sewing. He had a business. He was tent making in
But this word for servant is the Greek word huperetes. It literally means an under rower. That is its etymological derivation. In was used by the Koine period to describe
someone who was a subordinate, a servant, an attendant, a general assistant or
someone who is an aide de camp to a general perhaps. They were never to be seen – like that old
saying about kids that they are never to be seen or heard. They weren’t supposed to be seen or heard. No one was supposed to pay attention to
them. But, they were working, doing most
of the hard work and difficult work. It
was all about the person who was in charge and the person who was in
authority. All of the attention, honor
and glory went to the person they worked for and not to this person. This person is the one who does all of the
work behind the scenes and nobody even knows that they are there.
I was talking about the etymological derivation of this. It comes from the use with the trireme. The trireme was they think developed by the
Phoenicians and of course the Phoenicians had a certain relationship to the
Greeks. The Greeks really developed it
as an ancient weapon. It was designed to
ram. If you want to ram another ship in
naval warfare, the best thing that you can have going for you is momentum. So rather than having all of the rowers on
the same level, they had three decks of rowers.
Of course the guy who is down on the lowest level is the huperetes. That was the term that was used to describe
that guy down in the very pits. If you
saw the movie Ben Hur, if you watched that, (if you are too young to remember
that you need to watch it. It was a good
movie), that is the galley slave. That
is the term that Paul is using to describe himself. He is somebody who is in the divine viewpoint
approach is basically inconsequential.
It is all about the Lord Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ said that if He wanted to He could make the stones cry out
to praise Him. God doesn’t need pastors. He doesn’t need for any of us to do
anything. It is a tremendous privilege
that we have to serve Him and to participate in that ministry. It is not about me. It is not about any other pastor. The focus is always on the Lord Jesus Christ
and what He has done for us.
So Paul views himself with a complete lack of pride. He is not in this for personal
recognition. He is not in this for
anything other than just serving the Lord and being willing to hear that praise
at the end of life – “well done good and faithful servant”.
Incidentally we are no better than Paul.
Paul was beaten. Paul was imprisoned. Paul did everything right, but he was beaten
and imprisoned. He had to go through a
lot of suffering because that is the process that God uses to teach us. As long
as we are in this cosmic system we are always going to have a target on our
backsides in the angelic conflict. None
of us are going to be able to escape that.
The only way we can keep the focus in the midst of all of this hostility
around us is to be completely and radically oriented to the plan of God and
recognize that our sole purpose is to serve Him.
Now the third characteristic that we find of Old Testament prophets and
the New Testament apostles was that they had a passion for giving the gospel to
unbelievers. It was a desire to give the
gospel to anyone, any time, anywhere.
What do I mean by passion? I
don’t mean it was some sort of emotional kick.
It wasn’t emotion-driven although passion has that as a primary meeting. What I mean by passion is that they had a
driving desire or devotion, an all encompassing interest to energetically
pursue a particular cause. They were
completely sold out to achieving that goal and nothing was going to distract
them from that goal. This meant that
they had an understanding of the realities of heaven and hell that are often
lost today.
It is sad but in the last 25 years it seems like the teaching about
eternal condemnation and the reality of the
NKJ
2 Corinthians
This is a
recognition that if I don’t tell those people, then they may not hear. Now obviously if they are positive God will
bring somebody else along but guess what.
Then you miss out on being part of that blessing to give them the gospel. So Paul says…
NKJ
2 Corinthians
There is a passion in that term “as if God were pleading through
us”. It isn’t as if some academic
exercise, but a pleading with unbelievers, giving them the gospel. So Paul concludes by expressing it this way.
He says…
NKJ
1 Corinthians
In other words, he was willing to do whatever it took in terms of
adjusting in the unimportant particulars so that he could present the gospel
clearly to those who needed it.
He says…
NKJ
2 Timothy 2:9 for which I
suffer trouble as an evildoer, even to the point of chains; but the word
of God is not chained.
That doesn’t mean he was an evil doer, but he was suffering trouble just
as if he were a criminal.
In Romans
NKJ
Romans
The fourth characteristic is that they were totally submissive to the
will of God. They put aside all
self-interest and personal desire for God’s plan. They exchanged their
priorities for God’s priorities.
NKJ Acts 20:24 "But
none of these things move me; nor do I count my life dear to myself, so that I
may finish my race with joy, and the ministry which I received from the Lord
Jesus, to testify to the gospel of the grace of God.
The fifth point is that knowing doctrine was the means to know Christ
and serve Him. That was the focal
point. What we are going to study when
we get into worship on Sunday mornings is that what drives everything in the
Christian life is knowledge of doctrine.
It doesn’t end there though. That
is the starting point.
In Philippians 3:8 as Paul has reflected on what he was as a Jew – that
he was a Pharisee of the Pharisees, he was of the tribe of Benjamin and all of
the positive things that he had from a religious viewpoint; he concludes by
saying….
NKJ
Philippians 3:8 Yet indeed I
also count all things loss for the excellence of the knowledge of Christ Jesus
my Lord, for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them as
rubbish, that I may gain Christ
He suffered the loss of his reputation and everything that he had
achieved as he went through rabbinical training, all of the recognition that he
had. Paul was probably the greatest
student that Gamaliel ever had. Yet he
gave it up. He could have been the
greatest rabbi of all time and he gave all of that up and counted it as rubbish. That is such a pusillanimous translation of
the Greek. The Greek word is skuballah which is dung to put it politely. He counts all of it to be as worthless as
anything that could possibly be.
This is not just a knowledge about Christ, but gain Christ.
Verses 8 and 9 are talking about his salvation.
NKJ
Philippians 3:9 and be found
in Him, not having my own righteousness, which is from the law, but that
which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by
faith;
This is
understanding the doctrine of imputation.
I cannot become righteous on my own.
I can only get it through imputation from Christ. It is a righteousness that is from God by
means of faith.
Getting saved isn’t
the end. Paul said in Ephesians 2:10…
NKJ
Ephesians
There was a purpose – three things.
That I may know Him. The only way
that we can know Christ is through the Word.
Number two is the power of His resurrection. That is the power of the Holy Spirit in the
life of the believer.
NKJ
Philippians
That takes us back to a passage that we have covered a few times here
when we talked about inheritance.
NKJ
Romans
Paul talks about being an heir of God and then a joint heir of
Christ.
So his focus here when he talks about the fellowship of His suffering is talking about
that second category of inheritance where we go through suffering as part of
our spiritual growth and that qualifies us for joint heirship with Christ.
Then he concludes in Philippians 3:11…
NKJ Philippians
Verse 11 begins with an idiomatic statement in the Greek which some
translations translate with an “if” as if it is “but I might” as if he is
uncertain. But he is certain. It is a certain kind of construction that
indicates a certainty.
He is focused on the future. He
knows that he will attain to the resurrection.
It is the Greek word exanastasis which is really a focus on the
rapture. Now some of you may have heard
it said that when it is translated as if Paul was thinking that he would be
part of the rapture and maybe he won’t.
Now whether you are dead or alive you will be part of the rapture. Right?
I Thessalonians 4.
NKJ 1
Thessalonians
We are all going up in the rapture.
So he is not questioning whether or not he will be a part of the rapture
or that he might be part of the rapture generation. He is saying that since he
will be part of the resurrection of the dead which leads to the Judgment Seat
of Christ and evaluation, he wants to make sure that his priorities are focused
on knowing Him, the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His
suffering so that he will be ready for the Judgment Seat of Christ because he
is going to be part of the resurrection of the dead. That would be the first resurrection.
So these are the 5 areas that distinguish these great Old Testament
saints and the New Testament believers.
Now let’s go back to our passage in Hebrews 6:12. It says…
NKJ
Hebrews
So let’s stop and review for a minute this concept of inheritance.
He is looking at these Old Testament saints and he says, “Imitate them. They are the ones who are going to inherit
the promises.”
There was one illustration and that is going to be Abraham. He has talked about Abraham briefly
earlier. He is going to talk about
Abraham even more and expand this when we get into Hebrews 11. But here he is talking about inheriting the
promises. Inheritance always throws our
attention to the Judgment Seat of Christ which is where we will receive rewards
for gold, silver and precious stones that is produced under the filling of the
Spirit or wood, hay and straw in which case our works are burned up.
So let’s review four things about inheritance. Three forms of this word appear in
Hebrews. The root that is found here in
Hebrews 6:12 is the verb kleronomeo.
Now here it is an articular participle.
Now the difference between whether it has the article or not has to do
whether it is used as a noun or an adverb.
If it is articular, it is used like a noun. Here it should be handled as a relative
clause. As it is translated in the New
King James here, it is a present tense.
It almost has a future sense -
those who will inherit. There is a
future nuance at times to the present tense, so it may be a futuristic present
here. Through faith and patience they
will inherit the promises. It is yet
future.
So we have the verb as it is used here, used 18 times in the New
Testament. Four times the verb is used
in the book of Hebrews.
In Hebrews 1:4 it is used in relationship to Jesus Christ as the one who
inherited a better name than the angels.
NKJ
Hebrews 1:4 having
become so much better than the angels, as He has by inheritance obtained a more
excellent name than they.
It is used in
NKJ
Hebrews
NKJ
Hebrews
It is used in
NKJ Hebrews
The noun form of this verb is kleronomia. It is the noun form indicating that which is
inherited, the inheritance or the property itself, the possession. Kleronomia is a word that is used 14
times in the New Testament. It is used
two times in Hebrews. It is used in
Hebrews 9:15 to refer to the promise of our eternal inheritance. It is used in Hebrews 11:8 in relationship to
Abraham. There it refers to the land he
would receive as an inheritance.
The promise here that we find in Hebrews 6:12 is not related to the land
promise, but the seed promise. So we
have to make that distinction. In
Hebrews 11: 8 it is reference to the promise of the land.
The third form is the noun indicated the designated recipient, that is
the heir. That is the form kleronomos. Kleronmos is used 15 times in the New
Testament and three times in Hebrews. In
1:2 it is used of Christ.
NKJ
Hebrews 1:2 has in
these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of
all things, through whom also He made the worlds;
NKJ
Hebrews
In
NKJ
Hebrews 11:7 By faith
Noah, being divinely warned of things not yet seen, moved with godly fear,
prepared an ark for the saving of his household, by which he condemned the
world and became heir of the righteousness which is according to faith.
In Hebrews 11:7 it refers to Noah as an heir of righteousness because of
his obedience to God. So that would be
experiential righteousness. So what we
find here is that inheritance is (used in one form or another) used nine times
in the book of Hebrews. Whenever you
have a word of this significance that is used more than one or two times in a
book that tells you that it is an important theme in that book. Even though you don’t always have inheritance
mentioned, you have others words associated with that so that this is a major
focus in the book of Hebrews. They are
to be ready to receive their inheritance.
Now what exactly is an inheritance?
We have gone through some of this before. A lot of people think that the word “inherit”
has the idea (especially when it is used of inheriting the kingdom) that it is
gaining entrance into heaven, gaining eternal life. But it doesn’t mean that. Inheritance is as we will see in a second is
a reward for works. Salvation is a free
gift. The core semantic meaning of
inherit is the idea of possession, the idea of property, the idea of
ownership. When we think about
inheritance we often think of it in our culture as something related to what
happens when someone dies. There are a
number of passages where that is true.
The idea of gaining something on the death of another is a secondary
idea. It is not the core semantic
meaning. It is a secondary idea in Greek
culture. You could be the heir of
something without anyone having died. We
find that usage in the Scripture. For
example in Hebrews 11:8 which I referred to a minute ago we read…
NKJ
Hebrews 11:8 By faith
Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the place which he would receive
as an inheritance. And he went out, not knowing where he was going.
Now was Abraham supposed to receive it as an inheritance when somebody
died? No. It is simply the idea of possession which he
would receive as his possession, as his property.
In Hebrews 1:2 we read…
NKJ
Hebrews 1:2 has in
these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of
all things, through whom also He made the worlds;
Now does somebody have to die for Jesus Christ to gain the property?
No. We aren’t talking about the death of
Christ. We are talking about somebody
dying to bequeath all things to Jesus.
No. The Father doesn’t have to
die so that Jesus can inherit. It is simply
a word for ownership of property. So
Jesus is appointed the heir, the owner of all things. So the core value of inherit is the idea of
possession, property, or ownership.
Now the third idea of inheritance is in relationship to Abraham. In relationship to Abraham it can be related
to either the land promise as we just saw in Hebrews 11:8 or it can be related
to the seed promise. But, it is always related to the idea of the divine
promise that God has obligated Himself to bring something about for
Abraham. A couple of important passages
related to this are found in Galatians
Galatians
NKJ
Galatians
That is the conclusion of his argument.
Since God gave it to Abraham by promise then we achieve the promise, the
blessing by grace and not by law. The
only point that I am making here is that the concept of inheritance here is
related to the divine promise. It is
that way in Romans
NKJ
Romans
It was based on grace – righteousness by means of faith, not works. So the promise to Abraham in the Abrahamic
Covenant was grace not based on a condition.
It was an unconditional covenant.
NKJ Romans
The point that I am making here is simply this. Inheritance in relationship to Abraham is
always related to the idea of promise.
That is exactly what we are going to see in verses 13-15. I had you circle those words for promise in
these verses. In verse 12 we have
promise. In verse 13 we have promise. In
verse 15 we have promise. In verse 17 we
have promise. The whole focus here is on
the promise of God – that God stands behind the promise. It is His character. It is His integrity that
guarantees that promise. So the third
point related to inheritance is simply that in relationship to Abraham, it is
related to promise – either the land promise or the promise of the seed.
Fourth, inheritance is related to rewards for what is earned for service
whereas salvation is free gift. Paul
makes this statement in Colossians 3:24.
Now Colossians
NKJ
Colossians
Now that gives you a whole new doctrine of work. Going to work tomorrow morning you know that
you are there (no matter who your boss is, no matter how curmudgeonly he is, no matter how awkward it is, no
matter what the circumstances are) not to serve them, but to serve the
Lord. You will receive the reward of
the inheritance from the Lord for you serve the Lord Christ in your job. You don’t have to be a missionary or a pastor
or a seminary professor or in some sort of professional Christian work. This is everybody that is included in this
category. Everybody is serving the Lord
at your job whatever it is – no matter how menial it may be, no matter how
extensive the responsibilities - you are actually serving the Lord.
We are almost done and I don’t want to get into the next verse and have
to stop in four minutes so we will stop a few minutes early. Let’s close with a word of prayer.