Hebrews Lesson 77
NKJ John
We are in Hebrews 6 moving on
to the next paragraph which is really an explanation of what concludes the
previous paragraph that is in verses 11 and 12.
So we need to pick up the context.
The end of the last section focused on the encouragement from the writer
to these stumbling, slow, questioning believers that have been on the verge of
giving up their Christianity and going back into Judaism. Here he concludes and says…
NKJ Hebrews
NKJ Hebrews
Here the idea of patience is
not the word for endurance, but the word for patience as used in James 5 a couple
of times. It is used almost synonymously
with endurance, but it has a slightly different meaning. We studied this and we
were finishing up talking about inheriting the promises. We covered this last time because this is the
foundation for understanding the explanation that comes up in the next
paragraph. Now the next paragraph runs
from verse 13 down through verse 20. The
function of this paragraph aside from the fact that significant doctrinal
references in it is to orient the reader’s thinking to this concept of promise
which is used in verse 12 and then is repeated again in verse 13, verse 15, and
verse 17. So we have an emphasis on promise which is not yet fulfilled focusing
again on the future. The function of the
section from 13 to 20 is to transition
back from this reprimand that the writer has given his readers because they
have according to
NKJ Hebrews
Now he broke off his
discussion of Melchizedek. He was
building to a discussion of the importance of the priesthood of Jesus Christ as
priesthood after the order of the royal Gentile priesthood of Melchizedek. He broke off suddenly in verse 11.
Then there is this
exhortation and warning from
NKJ Hebrews
So when he picks up in
chapter 7 he picks up where he left off in chapter 5, verse 10. So we get into this concept of inheritance which
is the verb form used here in this passage where it is an articular participle
– those who are inheriting the promises - indicating those Old Testament saints
that inherit the promises. Of course the
premiere example is going to come from Abraham.
So we have 3 forms of this word that appear in Hebrews.
The forms of the word
include…
Our second point is that inherit
has the core semantic meaning of possession, property, or ownership. This is particularly important when we come
to those difficult passages in I Corinthians 6 and Galatians 5:19-21 which you
have this list of sins. It concludes by
saying that...
NKJ Galatians 5:21 envy, murders, drunkenness,
revelries, and the like; of which I tell you beforehand, just as I also told you
in time past, that those who practice such things will not inherit the kingdom
of God.
At first blush too many
people go to those passages and think that inheriting the kingdom is synonymous
with entering the kingdom or gaining eternal life or being saved. But it
is a different concept. It relates to
rewards. We have gone through detailed studies of that in the past. The core idea to remember is that inheritance
means possession, property, or ownership.
We have this mentioned in Hebrews 11:8 and 1:2.
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.
There we learned that it
doesn’t have the idea that somebody has to die before you get the inheritance.
That is typical in our culture and in many other cultures. So to inherit, somebody has to die. But that is not the concept in the New
Testament. Maybe there is a secondary
idea depending on the context, but the primary idea is just possession.
Abraham in 11:8 has the land
as an inheritance. Nobody died and left
it to him. In Hebrews 1:2 Christ is
appointed heir of all things. Nobody dies
and leaves it to Christ. It is
emphasizing ownership and possession.
Our third point of summary on
inheritance is that inheritance in relationship to Abraham can be related to either
the land promise or the seed promise in the New Testament. It is always related to the idea of the
divine promise. Inheritance in relation
to Abraham is based on grace. It was God’s
freely given covenant to Abraham that is the foundation of his ownership of the
land. Galatians
Then our fourth point was
that inheritance is also related to rewards for what is earned for service whereas
salvation is a free gift,
NKJ Colossians
So this gives us a summary of
the concept of inheritance. This under
girds the passage. Hebrews
NKJ Hebrews
They became possessors of the
promise. Now the particular promise that
he has in mind isn’t the land promise.
It is the seed promise. In verse
13 we have the explanation.
NKJ Hebrews
“For” is the Greek word gar
which always introduces an explanation.
It gives a reason for something. So we have just had a principle laid down in
terms of encouragement that to Church Age believers in
Now where is that going to
happen again? See this is how the writer
of Hebrews introduces the concept. He builds
on it later on and builds on it even more.
We have had Abraham mentioned once.
He is mentioned a little more here.
Then we are going to have a whole chapter in chapter 11 where the writer
of Hebrews is going to go through all of these Old Testament saints and how
they served as (according to Hebrews 12:1) a great cloud of witnesses for
us. So they served as examples in terms
of their orientation to the Lord Jesus Christ.
Their orientation of course was future, but the exhortation in Hebrews
12:2 is to keep our focus on the author and completer of our faith, the pioneer
of our faith who is the Lord Jesus Christ.
So this is where we first begin to see the idea introduced that we can
go back to Old Testament examples to form a pattern for our lives. Now this is not in the sense of following the
law, but in the sense that they were using the same basic principles for
spiritual growth and spiritual maturity that we are. So we see this connection that even though
there are differences between the age of Israel in the Old Testament and the
Church Age in the New Testament differences between the basic administrative mandate
in the Old Testament which was the law and the New Covenant that supplants the Old
Covenant which is what we will get into as we get into chapter 9 and chapter
10. We start getting into the
differences between the New Covenant and the Old Covenant. There is still something that is the same in
both dispensations. So that gives us the
pattern where we can go back and look at these Old Testament examples. It is so important.
I try to emphasize this again
and again that the Old Testament takes the abstract doctrines that we have in
the New Testament and it puts them into shoe leather. It puts them into flesh
and blood examples of people’s lives.
That is really important especially if you are teaching your kids or
your grandkids or you are teaching in prep school. You need to think in terms of these Old
Testament images for teaching New Testament doctrines. For example, we have just seen what I have
done that with confession on Tuesday night.
We go back and the premiere example of confession is in the Old
Testament is what happened on the Day of Atonement when you have the two
goats. One is for the sin offering; one
goat is for the scapegoat offering. Then
also on the Day of Atonement you have the High Priest bringing the blood into
the Holy of Holies and putting it on the Mercy Seat as a picture of
propitiation. So it is these pictures
that we have that serve as visual aids that help us capture the significance of
these important doctrines that we have in the New Testament. We are
going to see another one of those tonight in the background for verse 14. So verse 13 is going to explain how by giving
one example of how one Old Testament believer had faith and patience to inherit
the promise. That’s what the next
section is all about. So we come to 13
and we read…
NKJ Hebrews
What we have here is the
beginning of this verse. “When God made
a promise” actually translates an aorist middle participle in the Greek epaggello.
Epaggello means to make a promise, give a
promise or make a declaration. As an
aorist participle it precedes the action of the main verb. The main verb is given down at the last
phrase – He swore by Himself. Now when you
have a participle like this at the beginning, you have to determine what its relationship
is to the main verb. So as an adverbial
participle it should be translated with the idea of “when”.
Now when did this
happen? This happens in Geneses 22 and
that is where the quote comes from in verse 14.
The other thing to note that we get out of the original and you don’t
pick up in the English is that the name for God has an article with it in the
Greek. The article in the Greek
functions very differently from the article in English. It doesn’t mean that it should be translated
“the God”, but it is a use of the
article that is defined as the par excellence use of the article where the
article is used to point to the noun that it is associated with to indicate
that the noun is in a class by itself. So
you don’t translate it “the God”. It
emphasizes that the noun is a distinct entity, different from anything else. It
is in a class by itself. So the emphasis
is going to be on this uniqueness of God.
We see this brought out by the grammar. Look at how the verse reads.
There is nothing greater than
God.
So, God couldn’t say, “Here
is how I am going to swear this oath so that you will know that I am going to
do it.”
There was nothing superior to
God that He could use as a pattern or as an ultimate criterion. So He swore by Himself. So the main phrase here that God swore by
Himself indicates that uniqueness of God.
He is completely distinct from His creation. He is the creator. Everything else is the creation. Even the grammar by using this definite
article with a noun reinforces that uniqueness and distinctiveness of God. So the focus is on the fact that God’s word
is enough. In order to reinforce the
certainty of the promise, He swears this oath on the basis of His own character. The oath that He expresses is actually a
little bit larger than the quote in verse 14.
But we see that in verse 14.
NKJ Genesis
The Hebrew quotes it and quotes it directly out of the
Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament.
NKJ Hebrews
So it is quoted “surely”
which is a better translation. I would
challenge both translations.
“Blessing I will bless you”
is a literal translation of the Greek; but in the Hebrew you don’t have what we
would call a participle or a gerund (blessing and multiplying). What you have in the original is the same
kind of construction that you have back in Genesis 2:17 which was wrongly
translated “dying you will die.” What you have is an infinitive absolute in the
Hebrew that duplicates the main verb.
The main verb is usually an imperfect tense of the verb. This is a Hebrew idiom that expresses the
certainty of the action. It is not
“blessing I will bless you.” Blessing
is a gerund or it is a participle. It is
like a long term action like running or shopping or eating. This is something that takes place over a
long period of time. How do you say
eating I will eat? What does that really
mean if you parse it out? It doesn’t
mean anything. By putting the participle
there in front of a finite verb in the English, it doesn’t say that there are
two different blessing that happened there or two different kinds of
multiplying. In Hebrew idiom it is
simply a way of expressing the absolute certainty of the idea. In the past I have gone through every use –
there are about 25 of these in the book of Genesis. They just don’t make sense in this kind of
construction in English. It should have
been translated as the English tried to do by introducing the word surely...
Literal translation: Surely (or
certainly) I will bless you and multiply your descendents.
That is the force. It is God.
It is the strongest possible way God can put this to say that you have
absolute unconditional certainty that this is going to happen.
In Genesis 22 it expands this
by saying…
NKJ Genesis
This is an idiom indicating
conquest because the gate of these cities was like city hall. That is where all of the transactions took
place. That is where judicial decisions
were made. That is often where any sort
of land transaction was recorded. To
possess the gate of their enemies means to conquer the cities of their enemies
and take over complete control. Now this
goes back to the Abrahamic Covenant in Genesis 12:2c-3 where the Lord said to
Abraham...
NKJ Genesis 12:2 I will make you a great nation; I
will bless you And make your name great; And you shall be a blessing.
NKJ Genesis 12:3 I will bless those who bless you,
And I will curse him who curses you; And in you all the families of the earth
shall be blessed."
“Families of the earth”
refers to the gentile nations.
At the foundation of the
Abrahamic Covenant (you knew this was coming) you have land, seed and blessing
- the three elements of that promise. God
promised Abraham a specific piece of real estate, that he would have a seed of
descendents and that through them He would bless all of the nations. So we have the Abrahamic Covenant and the
blessing component that is laid out in Genesis 12 is then restated several
times in Genesis 15, 18, and then finally it is reconfirmed. The final statement of it for Abraham is
given in chapter 22 which is where this quote comes from. Hebrews
If you remember when we went
through Genesis, I talked about the fact that the New Testament goes to Abraham
for various different ideas and various different doctrines. He goes to Abraham as an illustration of
justification by faith at the beginning of the believer’s new life. It goes to Abraham for illustrations of
spiritual growth. This is what we see in
Hebrews 12. He goes to Abraham as an
example of the mature Christian who has passed those various tests leading up
to spiritual maturity and vindicates his faith by that maturity test that he
passes. This is how Abraham is referred
to in James 2. Abraham is also the
father of missions and several other things that we covered there. What we have here is the focus on Abraham in
terms of his spiritual growth and spiritual maturity because the quote comes
out of Genesis 22 which is the thirteenth and last test that Abraham went
through in his spiritual growth process.
There are no more tests for Abraham recorded in Genesis after Genesis
22. When we come to Hebrews 6:15 we
read…
NKJ Hebrews
There are a couple of things that
we ought to note here in terms of the Greek structure. The words “and so”
translate a little Greek word houtos. This is the same word that begins John
3:16. Most of you know John 3:16.
NKJ John
That really doesn’t
communicate what the Greek says. When
you have this word at the beginning of a sentence it often means “in this
manner” or “in the way” or “in the way that I am about to tell you” or “in the
manner I am about to tell you something happened.” So John
Literal translation: For in this
manner God love the world; He gave His Son.
That is how God loved the
World. It is an adverb in the Greek indicating
what follows in the text. So here we
have the same text. It is the same thing
that we have in this text.
I am going to give you an
illustration of how Abraham had faith and patience and patiently endured and
obtained the promise.
The second thing we note is
that we have the same kind of construction that we have in verse 13. We have an aorist participle preceding an
aorist verb which indicates that the action of the participle to endure which
is the word makrothumeo again which should be
translated patience. That precedes the
action of the main verb which is to obtain the promise. So it should be translated “after having been
patient he received something or he obtained it.” That word for obtain doesn’t mean
purchase. We just got through talking
about kleronomeo and those cognates meaning
possession. You would think that if you
read in the English “obtain” that it has to do with something like purchasing
the possession. But don’t get that idea
at all. Obtain is a bad word to use in
the English because for us it has this purchase concept. The Greek word is epitugchano
which means to be successful in achieving or gaining your goals or your
ends. So here it has the idea of finally
reaching that goal of realizing the promise.
The promise that is mentioned
here is the promise related to the seed.
Let’s think a minute about Abraham. Let’s go back and kind of review it
a little bit in our minds. God comes
along and He gives a promise to Abraham related to the fact that he is going to
have children.
“You are going to have a promised
son.”
Abraham is getting pretty
old. Fifteen years go by and there is no
seed.
Sarah comes along and says,
“I have got an idea. We can make this
happen. I can’t have children, but why
don’t you try Hagar? We are going to use
a little substitute here and try to work this out on our own energy and in our
own effort.”
So Abraham has a child with
Hagar which is Ishmael. That is not the
child of the promise. I skipped
one. We have Eleazar. The first thing he tried to do is use his
servant as the seed.
God said, “No.”
He reiterated the promise to
him and established the covenant with him.
Then we have the attempt with Hagar.
Then God says, “No. It is not Ishmael. Ishmael is not the seed. You will have a son from you and Sarah.”
So then finally, after ten
years when Abraham is 100 and Sara is 90, Sarah got pregnant and had Isaac. So then Isaac is growing up and this is
finally the seed that God has promised. There
have been all of these various tests that came along in the mean time.
You get to chapter 22 and God
says, “Okay. Now you are going to have the
son that I promised you and you will go sacrifice him.”
That is his final test. That test is what he passes in chapter 22. This
is when God reaffirms for the last time the covenant promise with Abraham which
is the quote that we have in verse 14. So that tells us where we are headed.
Now there are a couple of
other things that we ought to note here to pick up the significance of verse
15.
So after he had patiently
endured.
The patience, the endurance
is first; and then you realize the promise.
After this test in Genesis 22 there is no longer a test for Abraham related
to the seed. He now can rest in
confidence. He knows that Isaac is going
to live. He can relax. The next thing he is concerned about is making
sure that Isaac has a wife.
Now when we look at this word
macrothumeo, there are two ways we can
understand this. The first time I read
this and after I read it for a couple of times, I was wrestling with this
because I thought about “after he patiently endured”. I am thinking in terms of the totality of
Abraham’s life. Was he patient when he
tried to make Eleazar his heir? Was he being patient when he tried to make
Hagar the mother of the promised seed? That doesn’t fit the idea of patience. It turns out that macrothumeo
can have one of two ideas. One is to
wait patiently over the period from the beginning of the promise. That doesn’t apply. But the other idea is to patiently endure
during that particular test. That is
what we see exemplified with Abraham in that final Genesis 22 test. He has
a relaxed mental attitude. Up to that
point we don’t see Abraham relaxing in the grace provision and promise of
God.
He always seems to be saying,
“Okay God. You promised me a son. Let me figure out how I can make that happen.”
But finally when he gets
there, God says, “Sacrifice him.”
Abraham doesn’t say anything
but, “Yes, sir.”
He is very relaxed and puts
everything together and heads to
So let’s turn in our Bibles
and go back and review what happens in Genesis 22.
This has always been one of
my favorite episodes in the Old Testament because it is such a perfect picture
of the whole concept of substitutionary salvation.
NKJ Genesis 22:1 Now it came to pass after these
things that God tested Abraham, and said to him, "Abraham!" And he
said, "Here I am."
So some time has passed between
the birth of Isaac and this time. Now he
is a young man. He is anywhere from 15
to 30 years of age I think.
It makes a point out of the
fact that this is a test. Almost any
decision you make in life is a test in one sense. You have to decide whether or not you are
going to apply or if you are going to do it out of your own energy and your own
ability. In that sense almost any
decision that we make as we plan our day, as we conduct our business, as we
respond to whatever things happen during the day whatever people do, that’s a
test. It is an opportunity to apply the Word
or not apply the Word. There are
specific tests that God brings into our lives that are designed to move us to
the next stage of spiritual growth. We
have identified 13 of those in the life of Abraham.
So God brings this final test
to Abraham. He decides to test Abraham
and he calls to him. The word here for
test is the Hebrew word nasa. It means to test, try, or approve. It’s similar to the New Testament word dokimadzo which means to prove the value of
something. It’s not there to show where
you are going to fail, but how you are going to succeed. The quality of you spiritual growth is
evaluated. So God tests Abraham. Abraham responds.
He says, “I am here. I am ready.”
NKJ Genesis 22:2 Then He said, "Take now your
son, your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the
In the Hebrew it is unusual.
God doesn’t just give him a mandate. He
starts off and the best way to translate is “Abraham, would you please take
your son.” It is a very polite
expression. I think it indicates that
God recognizes how serious this is. This
is not a trivial request. This is going
to be a tough situation for a father to take his son and offer him as a human
sacrifice.
So He says, “Abraham, would
you please take your son.”
He repeats it with emphasis –
your only son, Isaac - your only Isaac.
Why? Because He is emphasizing
that this is the seed.
“This is the one that I
promised that we went through (25 years of spiritual growth development) before
you were finally ready for Me to give you what I had promised you 25 years
earlier.”
Now what I am going to ask
you is to take him (the product of all these years of development) to the
The command there to go to
the
God is saying. “Go slit his
throat, kill him and burn him and completely destroy everything.”
Now the Old Testament doesn’t
really tell you what is going on with Abraham’s attitude other than it shows
this immediate compliance of Abraham where he gets Isaac. They get a servant to go with them part of
the way. But Hebrews 11:17-19 gives us
Abraham’s thought processes. By faith
Abraham does this. Now remember what
verse 11 said in Hebrews 6. “By faith
and endurance he inherited the promise.”
Now the focus in 13 and 14 is
on the patience – by faith and patience. Here in
NKJ Hebrews 11:17 By faith Abraham, when he was
tested, offered up Isaac, and he who had received the promises offered up his
only begotten son,
NKJ Hebrews
NKJ Hebrews
So what Hebrews 11 is showing
us is that Abraham is relaxed because he has figured it out. God said that his seed is going to come
through Isaac and there is nothing that is going to prevent that. Even if he slits Isaac’s throat and has to
burn the body to fulfill the command to offer up an olah
to God, God is going to bring him back from the dead. That is the only way that God can fulfill His
promise and God always keeps His word.
So he has tremendous confidence.
With that confidence in God, he has a relaxed mental attitude about the
whole thing. He can move through the
whole situation with a tremendous degree of calm.
NKJ Genesis 22:3 So Abraham rose early in the morning
and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his
son; and he split the wood for the burnt offering, and arose and went to the place
of which God had told him.
Again we have a burnt
offering. Six times this word is
restated in the text to make sure we understand that it is a burnt
offering.
Every time I see this word I
am reminded about the story over in Judges 11 that deals with Jephthah. Jephthah made the vow that he is going to
offer his daughter as a burnt offering.
Every mamby-
pamby evangelical comes along and says, “You know, he
is a great hero of the faith. He isn’t
going to offer his daughter as a sacrifice.
He did something else.”
But this word never indicates
it means anything else. They miss the
purpose of many of those Judges stories- to show that on the one hand these
guys trust God at key moments; but then at other times because the everyone is
doing what is right in their own eyes, they completely blow it. Sound familiar?
So burnt offering means burnt
offering.
NKJ Genesis 22:4 Then on the third day Abraham lifted
his eyes and saw the place afar off.
Now this shows how God ties
everything together.
NKJ Genesis 22:5 And Abraham said to his young men,
"Stay here with the donkey; the lad and I will go yonder and worship, and
we will come back to you."
On Sunday mornings we are
going to be studying this whole concept of worship. This is one reason I wanted to go back
through this. It connects several of our studies
together. The word for worship here is
the word hishtafel imperfect of saha. In the hishtafel it means to prostrate oneself,
to bow down. It is the position of the
lowest slave to the highest superior.
The concept is expressed in Persian customs where an equal would kiss
the cheek of an individual. Someone who is a notch or two below would kiss the
higher officials hand and then the lowest slave (the one down at the bottom of
the food chain) almost grovels. That is
the core word that is used for worship in both Old Testament and New Testament.
There is something in the mentality of an
American because of our emphasis on the value of the individual and the
equality of all people and democracy. We
haven’t grown up in a monarchy where you have all of this protocol where people
virtually grovel before the monarch. We
lose this concept in our understanding of worship. Yet this is the core biblical idea. We are just a lowly creature before the great
creator God of heaven. The core idea of worship is submitting everything in our
thinking to the authority of God. That
is the ultimate idea of worship. That is
what he is saying. We are going to worship. We are going to do exactly what God says to
do and completely submit everything that we do to the authority of God, even if
that demands the sacrifice of Isaac. So
we will worship.
Notice what Abraham says then.
“We will return to you.”
It is a third person plural
of both verbs.
So he has great confidence
that they are going to go up there.
“I am going to offer Isaac as
a burnt offering and God is going to raise him up from the dead and we are
coming back.”
So he has tremendous
confidence and relaxation in this test. But Isaac kind of catches on to this
and he says in verse 7…
NKJ Genesis 22:7 But Isaac spoke to Abraham his
father and said, "My father!" And he said, "Here I am, my
son." Then he said, "Look, the fire and the wood, but where is the
lamb for a burnt offering?"
He said, “Wait a minute. We have got everything for this burnt
offering, but where is the sacrifice?”
NKJ Genesis 22:8 And Abraham said, "My son, God
will provide for Himself the lamb for a burnt offering." So the two of
them went together.
This guy is as calm and
relaxed as he can be. He has figured it
out. As I pointed out in the last couple of lessons, what makes the difference
between these great heroes of the faith and many of us is that they finally
figure that it is all about God and it is not about us. It is not an issue
anymore. Abraham figures that out and so
he knows that God is going to be faithful to His word no matter what He asks
him to do. So he is just going to do
what God wants him to do and let God take care of the situation.
NKJ Genesis 22:9 Then they came to the place of
which God had told him. And Abraham built an altar there and placed the wood in
order; and he bound Isaac his son and laid him on the altar, upon the wood.
I have often wondered what
happens here. The Holy Spirit glosses
over this.
Abraham says, “Okay son. You are the sacrifice and we have to put you
on the altar. So just to make sure that
you don’t panic at the last minute, come over here and turn around and let me
tie your hands behind your back and let me put you on the altar on the
wood.”
This has to also say something
about Isaac’s authority orientation to his father and to God and his own
spiritual maturity at this point that he is going to do this.
I wonder if Abraham had to
say, “Okay. We are going to have a
little teaching moment here. Remember that you are the child of
promise. God said that it would all come
through you. God has always fulfilled
His word so that no matter what happens, we know that we are both going to walk
out of here because God is going to be true to His word.”
Great teaching moment!
NKJ Genesis
The word there for slay
indicates the kind of violent action necessary in a sacrifice. This is the typical word used in sacrificial
narrative.
Then verse 12. At the last minute God stops him and says…
NKJ Genesis 22:12 And He said, "Do not lay your
hand on the lad, or do anything to him; for now I know that you fear God, since
you have not withheld your son, your only son, from Me."
You see, Abraham believed
God. It is not the belief of God that
was accounted to him as righteousness in Genesis 15:7. This is the James 2:24 passage where now he
is believing God as a vindication of the whole spiritual growth process
revealing his spiritual maturity.
Of course we have to remember
that fear of God isn’t merely respect. This shows how much our culture influences how
we think about these things. We don’t
want to think about fearing God; but if you were ever dragged to the
principle’s office when you were in about the fourth or fifth grade, you
understand what fearing God is about to some degree. You know that there is accountability. That is what the concept of fearing God
is. It is a respect for who He is as the
creator. There is this sense of dread
because we are accountable to Him. It is
the fear of God (that sense of awe and accountability) that is the beginning of
wisdom that the writer of Proverbs talks about several times.
NKJ Genesis
This is the picture in the Old
Testament for substitutionary atonement.
The ram is offered as the burnt offering instead of Isaac. I remember when I was a young kid at
NKJ Genesis
NKJ Genesis
This is where we get the
quote that is used in Hebrews 6.
NKJ Genesis
This is what Hebrews
That is the third time we
have that phrase.
NKJ Genesis
The promise that is referred
to here is not the land promise but the promise related to blessing and
seed. The blessing would come through
his seed.
Literal translation: I will certainly bless you and certainly multiply
your descendents as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which is on the
seashore.
NKJ Genesis
By faith (trusting God) and
by patience and by the way he has such a relaxed mental attitude – from the
time God called him to take his only son to sacrifice him on Mt.
Now let’s go back to our
passage in Hebrews 6.
NKJ Hebrews
NKJ Hebrews
NKJ Hebrews
Now we are going to have
another explanation that develops in verse 16.
We have a principle introduced at the beginning of verse 16.
NKJ Hebrews
So now the focus is going to
be on what God does in His action of swearing by Himself. So this shifts the focus from the concept of
inheriting the promise to the God who is behind the promise. We will see that emphasis on God in the next
5 verses, from 16 down to 20. That will set us up for understanding the high
priesthood of Christ. So we will come
back to verse 16 next week.