Hebrews Lesson 78
NKJ
Isaiah 40:31 But those
who wait on the LORD Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up
with wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and
not faint.
We are in Hebrews 6 and we are nearing the end of this particular
section in Hebrews which started off leading to a discussion on the
Melchizedekean priesthood, the priesthood according to the order of Melchizedek
which is distinct from the Jewish Levitical priesthood. As the writer is about to embark on an in
depth discussion of Christ’s priesthood, he stops. He abruptly changes subjects and shifts to a
spiritual challenge – almost a rebuke.
The tone gets pretty sharp in a few places at the end of chapter 5
leading to one of the most debated warning passages in the New Testament in
chapters 6:4-8 where some people say that it indicates that if you commit
certain sins or if you are not faithful then you will lose your salvation.
We went through that in detail and showed that it isn’t true. The tone of the writer as he challenges
them. Because they have become dull of
hearing according to verse 11, because they have come to need milk and not
solid food in verse 12, and because they are unskilled in the word of
righteousness, he rebukes them. It seems rather harshly, and then he changes
his tone in verse 9 and comes back and 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.
That is a word (salvation) that is loaded with phase 3 sense rather than
phase 1.
NKJ
Hebrews 6:10 For God is
not unjust to forget your work and labor of love which you have shown
toward His name, in that you have ministered to the saints, and do
minister.
That is spiritual advance – the divine good that you already have and
your labor of love. The way you have
ministered to others in the body of Christ
NKJ Hebrews
He wants them to show the same diligence that Old Testament saints who
have pushed through to spiritual maturity.
So he is thinking in terms of Old Testament examples. This leads him to verse 12 where he says…
NKJ
Hebrews
Then he is going to give an illustration. There is one illustration that he uses
beginning in verse 13 where he talks about God making the promise to Abraham.
Throughout this section we have this emphasis on promise – promise in verse 12,
promise in verse 13, promise in verse 15, and promise in verse 17. What under girds and what are the hidden
girders, as it were, the strength of this whole argument is that it is based on
the character of God. That is His overt
purpose - to challenge them to press forward because of what is in front of
them. It is based upon God’s
immutability and His veracity.
We start off being reminded of the character of God. There are two aspects of the character of God
that are brought out in this passage.
The first is God’s immutability which means His unchangeableness. It is
related to the doctrine of God’s faithfulness.
When we look at the Old Testament Hebrew words for faithfulness, one of
the word groups that is used is translated faithfulness is the word group based
on Hebrew three letter word group IMN.
It comes across in some forms as amen or aman and in some
forms it is amuna which indicates faithfulness and in other passages it
indicates truth. One of the passages
where this word is used in a different context gives us a different sense of
its meaning. It refers in a passage in
Chronicles to the foundation stones under the door posts of the temple. These would be those bedrock stones that were
used to support the foundation of the entry way to the temple.
Now when we were over in Israel last summer, we saw some of the
foundation stones from the Second Temple period. Some of those may have been from the First
Temple period which would have been this period. They were estimated to weigh as much as 530
tons. If you are familiar with the Great
Pyramid at Giza, people tend to taught that as being a great architectural wonder
and the largest stone in the Great Pyramid at Giza is 30 tones. Let’s see – 30 tons – 530 tons – 30 tones –
530 tones. These are impressive. You just don’t move them very easily. We can say they are immovable. That is the idea of God’s faithfulness. It is immoveable, unshakable. It is unchangeable. We can always count on
and depend upon God’s faithfulness.
Because God is faithful He is also truth. His Word is dependable. This leads to the other direction that the
word group takes. That is truthfulness
or veracity. So both ideas -faithfulness on the one hand and veracity on the
other hand - come out of this same basic word group. When we talk these two aspects of God’s
character the attributes, His immutability and His veracity - they are interdependent
upon one another. They connect to one
another. They are not independent
autonomous concepts. We have an emphasis
on those two attributes in this passage.
The other thing that lies in the background here is the creator-creature
distinction that God is completely different from us. He is distinct as the creator and we are the
creatures. Nothing within the creaturely
frame of reference is dependable as God is dependable. Nothing in human experience is truth in the
sense that God is truth. We can talk
about things that are true with a small “t”, but God is TRUTH. He is the source of TRUTH. He isn’t true because God in His character
somehow fits an abstract external standard of what truth is. That would be a Greek concept that somehow truth
or these abstract principles – that the material universe is based on and
exemplified. In Greek thought there is
no person behind the impersonal physical universe. You just have matter out there – an eternal
matter. But what we have in Scripture is that God is a person and He is
completely distinct from anything within the creation. Therefore you can’t have
truth in God or righteousness in God or any moral judgment in God being moral,
right or true because it fits a standard external to God. God is His own standard. He is the ultimate reference point for
everything in creation. That is part of
the importance of the creator-creature distinction. Therefore you have passages that talk about
God’s thought being higher than our thoughts and God’s ways being different
from our ways. He is totally
different.
So our understanding of God is something that theologians will say is
analogical. Analogical simply means we
understand God by way of analogy. We
don’t understand Him or know Him exhaustively or completely or even
directly. We understand Him
indirectly. The Bible uses numerous
comparisons and metaphors and figures of speech like anthropopathisms and
anthropomorphisms to communicate to us within our limited, finite frame of
reference. We can know God truly, but we
can’t know God exhaustively. It is on the basis of His character that we can
learn to relax no matter what the problems are.
So a place where one doctrine that the writer of Hebrews is headed toward
here is that it is the truth of God and it is Jesus Christ who provides this
anchor for the soul. This is verse
19. That is something that holds us
stable.
Obviously he is dealing with a group of believers who because of
persecution, who because they have left the priesthood (They are Jewish Christians. ) they have left their
families. They are going through
rejection. They are going through
persecution. They are going through a
number of different things of that nature.
They are unstable at this point because of their uncertainty with
doctrine. This goes back to phrases used
earlier that they have come to need milk and not solid food. They have become dull of hearing. As a result of that he is challenging them to
return to the only point of stability that exists in the universe.
So what under girds the section that we are studying this evening from
verse 16 down to 20 is the immutability and veracity of God. This is what gives us stability in life. It is not from anything in creation. It is not from your circumstances, emotions,
feelings, how people respond to you, how people treat you, your job. Nothing gives us certainty or stability other
than God.
So let us review where the passage is going. In verse 13 the writer is reviewing or giving
a reason why they should imitate Old Testament saints through faith and
patience. The example comes from
Abraham. So he explains.
NKJ
Hebrews
Verse 13 brings in this idea of swearing
by an oath. Verse 16 will come back
and develop this idea as will verse 17 ending up with the phrase “confirmed by
an oath”. That comes directly out of
Genesis 22 as we studied it last time.
God tested Abraham by telling him to take Isaac up to
NKJ Genesis
Literal translation: I will
certainly bless you and I will certainly multiply your descendents.
The focal point here is on the seed which was the issue of the test –
whether or not Abraham was willing to trust God with the life of Isaac. Hebrews
NKJ
Hebrews
Now when we look at
verse 15, we read….
NKJ Hebrews
I pointed out last time that the concept of patience here isn’t talking
about his patience from the first time God gave him the promise of the seed,
when he was 75 years old until the seed was finally realized when he was
100. He didn’t. He had to learn to trust God. When that final test came, he was patient and
had a relaxed mental attitude about it because he knew God could resurrect
Isaac even if he had to sacrifice him.
God would bring him back from the dead.
So he had a relaxed mental attitude.
He trusted God and had patience – faith and patience – throughout that
test. He obtained the promise, that is
the security of that particular quote.
What is interesting is Hebrews tends to reverse the emphasis of these
verses a little bit from Genesis 22.
Genesis
Why is it important that God swore and oath?
So we come to verse 16. Verse 16
reads…
NKJ
Hebrews
The explanation that the writer gives here is based first on human
experience. Rather than starting with
God which is what we would expect, he is explaining why God used an oath. God doesn’t need to give an oath because God
is truth. He is truth. His word is
truth. He doesn’t need to swear an
oath. He just needs to say it. It is as true and sure as if He had sworn an
oath. But God swears the oath in order
to reinforce the certainty of the promise for the sake of the frailty of human
beings. So verse 16 is simply a statement
that confirms normal human practice.
The word translated “men” is the word anthropos which can mean
human beings as a whole. In this
passage, even though it can mean human beings as a whole and it doesn’t
necessarily mean males as opposed to males and females, it is probably talking
about men because the context of oath swearing is based on the Mosaic Law. In the Hebrew Old Testament you don’t have
any examples of women swearing of an oath.
Swearing of an oath was a legal and a covenant issue so the restrictions
are such that it applied to men as opposed to women. So it is talking about the Jewish
practice. Men indeed swear by the
greater. It is typical of men to come
along and swear an oath in the name of a deity.
The word there in the Greek for an oath is the word omnuo which
means to affirm the veracity or the truthfulness of a statement by invoking a
transcendent entity. Frequently it is
associated with an implied invitation of punishment if one is untruthful. In other words, if my words don’t come true
then cut off my arm or take my life or something of that nature. So that is the idea of an oath. So they make an oath of confirmation. In Exodus
NKJ
Exodus 22:11 "then
an oath of the LORD shall be between them both, that he has not put his
hand into his neighbor's goods; and the owner of it shall accept that, and
he shall not make it good.
The issue here has to do with a case law in the Mosaic Law where there
is concern that one person has stolen from another. The one who has been accused of thievery is
supposed to take an oath of the Lord.
This is a very serious matter. It
would take place at the tabernacle or the temple. It involved the sacrifice of an animal and
swearing before God that this act had not taken place.
Verse 16 goes on to say that this oath is for confirmation. That word for confirmation is a word bebaiosis
which means to establish or to ratify a treaty or to confirm a covenant. Now we are going to go to Galatians 3:15f in
a few minutes. You have a different
word for ratify there. But, these are
synonyms. Bebaiosis means to
establish or to ratify a treaty or to confirm a treaty. Now if you look down a little bit ahead in
Hebrews 6 to verse 19, you will see the
word steadfast. It is translated
steadfast in the English. This is a
cognate of this same word. I think that
is why the writer of Hebrews uses this.
It establishes a confirming of a covenant. It has certainty. That is steadfast. So he is using this similar vocabulary
because it reinforces what under girds this whole passage which is the absolute
certainty of God’s word and that it can be depended upon despite what our
feelings might be or what the circumstances may indicate. So in the human realm men are involved in a
disagreement or a dispute would swear an oath.
This would bring an end to the dispute which is the Greek word antilogia
meaning a controversy, some sort of question of law or dispute or where there
is an antagonism. So we have this idea
of antilogia or a substitute word which comes to mean a dispute. So we have a simple illustration in verse 16
to explain the significance of an oath.
It is that men come and swear by a deity. They invoke the name of a god or goddess or
whatever.
It is something greater than them.
To whom is God going to appeal as greater than He? There is no one. That is the point. This has a lot of applications one of which
is one you get into in apologetics. How
are you going to prove the Bible? What standard are you going to use? If the Bible is what it claims to be which is
the very word of God, how are you going to prove it by appealing to a greater
standard? There is not a greater
standard. Now this leads to what a lot
of non-Christians will say is a circular argument.
“Why do you believe the Bible?”
“Because it is the Word of God.”
“How do you know it is the word of God?”
“Because it says so.”
“How do you know it is true?”
“Because it is the Word of God.”.
It sounds like a circular argument, but in fact it can be presented that
way. A lot of people do. It is not
circular. What we are arguing is that we
know it is the Word of God because there are confirming evidences that it is
true. In other words if there are claims
that the Bible is true, then you look at various things that document or
support that.
For example you can look at archeology today and how archeology has
confirmed things historically that the Bible said happened. You can look at prophecies that were made in
the Old Testament. You can go to prophecies made about the destruction of
You do the same thing with claims on the deity of Christ.
“How do you know that Jesus is God?”
“The Bible says so.”
“How do you know the Bible is true?”
“Because Jesus said it was true.”
“Well, how do you know that Jesus is telling the truth?”
You get into what appears to be a circular argument. But the problem that you have in some kinds
of apologetics is that they treat truth and history as if they are autonomously
absolute and you can’t do that. Let me
give you an example of that. You can
prove Jesus is God because of the resurrection.
There are unbelievers, non-Christian skeptics who say, “Great. Jesus
rose from the dead. There are all kinds
of things that happened in history that I can’t explain. That doesn’t prove that He is God.”
What has happened in that apologetic approach is that there is an
assumption that we can all agree if something happened in history it means
something. So history is treated as if
proves as opposed to confirming the Bible.
So these may seem like some nice little fine tuned things that you
shouldn’t be concerned with. But if you
talk to somebody that has any snap between their ears, they come back with
these kinds of things. So it is
important to recognize that if you are explaining, giving an answer for the
hope that is in you - you don’t make the
mistake of setting up either abstract concepts of truth, right or wrong,
history or any of these other things as autonomous absolutes that God is then
answerable to as if it is a truth..
Sometimes you will hear someone say, “God wouldn’t do that because God
is fair.”
I just heard something that I didn’t like. That is that a lot of people have their own
idea of what fair is. Then God conforms
to it. See God by definition determines
from His character what fairness is, what righteousness is, and what justice
is. There is not this abstract
autonomous concept. He defines what
everything is. So you can’t slip around
this. That is what the writer is
pointing out. When men swear by
something it is greater than them. But God is going to swear y something, but
what is greater than God? We come to our
next verse.
In the New King James it begins, “Thus God” which is a way to try to
smooth out the Greek. It literally says,
“In which.”
NKJ
Hebrews
Literal translation: In this act of
swearing an oath.
God is the subject. Then you have
a participle.
That’s the point. In the practice
of swearing an oath, God confirmed what He was going to do with Abraham. So why did He do it this way? He did it in order to give us a greater
sense. He is condescending to us. He is lowering Himself to our level of frame
of reference so that we can understand what He is doing. So He gives us confirmation through this oath
ceremony. So He is going to show us something.
The word epidediknumi means to show, to exhibit, to show
something off before something or to demonstrate something before an
audience. That is what the writer is
saying here. This is exhibit A for God’s
faithfulness. God swore an oath by
Himself. So He does this as a testimony,
as a witness for all generations to come back and see this thing that God did
in space, time and history with Abraham.
He does it to demonstrate something before an audience. The audience is defined here as the heirs of
promise. That would apply to believers.
He does so more abundantly. The
word translated “more abundantly” brings up the concept of going beyond what is
expected. It is from the Greek word perisoteros
which is a comparative word indicating that it goes far beyond any other
expectation. It is an exceeding
manner. It is more than abundant. It is super abundant. God wants to do more than anyone could ever
ask or hope for or think. So He is going
to go far beyond what might be simply acceptable in order to make this
demonstration to the heirs of promise that His word is immutable.
The word for immutability is the word ametathetos which means it
is unalterable, it is unchangeable or impossible. We get this word a couple of times. We get it in verse 17 and we are going to get
it again in verse 18. The New King James
translates it immutable in both places. It can be immutable, unchangeable. Metathithemi refers to something that
is changeable. The alpha (the a at the
beginning) is like our prefix un. It
negates the word so it literally means unchangeable or immutable.
What is immutable is His counsel.
This is the Greek word bulomai.
As soon as some people hear the word counsel, they immediately jump to
the doctrine of divine decrees. This
passage doesn’t have anything to do with the doctrine of divine decrees. You
don’t see anything like that. The word bulomai
simply expresses His wish, His desire or His plan for something.
If we are in the middle of an illustration, a biblical illustration, of
God’s promise to Abraham, what is the plan that we are talking about? God’s plan for Israel – God’s plan to bring
in a Savior through the descendents of Abraham in relationship to His promise
in the covenant - that God is going to
give Abraham descendents and a piece of real estate (the land). He is going to
give him specific descendents under the category of seed. Through them all nations are going to be
blessed. If you go back to verse 14
where you have the quote from Genesis 22:17, the focus of that quote in Genesis
God is not someone who is going to come along and say, “You Jews, you
failed to accept the Messiah so therefore I am going to cut you out.”
That is called replacement theology.
You have a lot of people today who think replacement theology is
great. In fact, there is a scholarly
paper that was published on the website for John Knox Seminary. John Knox Seminary is associated with James
Kennedy’s Presbyterian Church in
Surprise, surprise! If you are a
pre-millennial dispensationalist, you reject replacement theology. You believe that God still has a future plan
for
It is amazing that we have a President who supports
So the focus here is on the fact God’s counsel (His will, His plan for
The word there translated confirm is the Greek word mesiteuo doesn’t
really mean confirm. We have that in
some other words. Bebaiaoo has
that idea in some passages. This is a
different word. It means to act as a
guarantor, to mediate a struggle, to act as a guarantor of something. In other words God steps into the middle of
this situation and He is going to guarantee the promise Himself by means of His
own oath. So that is how it should be
translated.
Literal translation: In which (in this practice of oath swearing) God
determining to show through His abundant grace to the heirs of the promise
(that is to
Now let’s hold our place here and turn over to Galatians 3. Galatians 3 uses the same kind of vocabulary
to talk about this same promise. So hold
your place and turn to Galatians 3.
In Galatians 2-6 the focus is on sanctification – that it is not by
means of the law; it is by means of the Holy Spirit. Before he gets to talking about the role of
the Holy Spirit in Galatians 5:16, Paul builds a case showing why the law (and
what God did through the Jews) was not only temporary; but it cannot be the
basis of the spiritual life. So chapter
3 fits in the middle of that discussion where he is reinforcing the fact that
we have been redeemed by Christ, not by the law.
Then verse 14 gives us the purpose for that redemption that the blessing
of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ Jesus. That is part of the Genesis 22:17 promise
that God would bless all the nations through Abraham.
NKJ
Galatians
Now see he is connecting. With
the purpose, clause he is connecting Christ Jesus, the redemption, the
justification that was the sub issue in Galatians 1 and 2 with the coming of
the Holy Spirit as a basis for the blessings of the Church Age believer.
Now verse 15.
NKJ
Galatians
Isn’t that what the writer of Hebrews did? He starts off in verse 16. He is talking about human practices.
NKJ
Galatians
Paul does the same thing in Galatians 3:15.
I am not making a case for Pauline authorship of Hebrews. Don’t worry.
They use different vocabulary and different styles; but they are saying
the same thing. These two passages sort
of reinforce each other.
When you go out and buy a house and sign a real estate contract with a
realtor or you get a mortgage and you sign a contract for the mortgages or you
get a credit card and you sign that contract - any time in life you sign a
contract, you sign a covenant. It is a
human covenant. Even though you have a
human covenant, it is confirmed.
Once it is confirmed, it is
ratified. This is the Greek word kuroo. It is not a form of bebaioo like we
had in Hebrews. It is kuroo which
refers to authority or confirmation to establish something as valid. Once it is confirmed, once you sign the
document and it gets notarized, you don’t come back and add to it. You can’t change it.
You don’t wake up the next morning and go, “Well, the market dropped
yesterday. Interest rates are now 5% and
not 5 ¼ so I am just going to start paying 5% interest on my loan.”
You can’t change it. Once it is
established, it is set. That is the
point.
Now we get into verse 16. Verse
16 says...
NKJ
Galatians
This is a great promise. Paul is
going to take this one passage and he is going to digress. He is going to take the short rabbit trail
here in order to make a very important point.
This is the Abrahamic Covenant.
He did not say “and to seed”.
Paul’s point isn’t that it goes to all the Jews.
The blessing goes through one person.
That is the Lord Jesus Christ. So
Paul builds his whole point here on the fact that you have a noun in the
singular and not in the plural. This is what lies behind our emphasis on the
doctrine of inspiration and word-by-word exegesis. It is the words of Scripture that are
inspired not the idea. It is important
to look at the grammar. It is said this
way instead of that way for a purpose. It
is not simply just for literary variation.
One of the things that happens when you are writing is that a general
rule of writing is don’t use the same word again and again in a paragraph or
over two or three paragraphs. There
should be variation of style and variation of vocabulary. But sometimes if you are making a point about
something, you’ll repeat the same word.
I pointed out in Hebrews 6 that Paul uses the word promise 3 or 4
times. Four times I think. You have that
kind of thing happen in other parts of Scripture where Paul will use the same
word 5 or 6 times in three verses and you will have four or five different
English words used to translate the same Greek word. What happens there is you just changed the emphasis
of the Scripture. God the Holy Spirit
inspired the writer through inspiration to use that same word 5 times for
emphasis - in order to pull attention to that one word in that one concept. God the Holy Spirit didn’t think that you
needed various styles in order to keep people from falling asleep or to think
He was a bad writer. He was making a
point that way. That is how it was done
in ancient literature. So when a
translator comes along and uses three of four different English words to
translate one Greek word that is used four or five times in those same verses,
it changes the emphasis of the passage ever so subtly. But it changes the thrust of the
passage. The English reader can’t catch
on to the thread that the Holy Spirit set up there by repeating the same word
5 pr 6 times throughout the
passage.
Just to give you a little review on the doctrine of inspiration. Our word inspiration is not the best
word. The word that is the English
translation of the Greek word theopneustos literally means
God-breathed. God the Holy Spirit so
supernaturally directed the human writers of Scripture in such a way that they
are breathing out Scripture. It is not
that they somehow have some sort of a lofty idea all of a sudden. We talk about Shakespeare being inspired or
some artist being inspired or some sudden new ideas or something being such an
inspiration or somebody being motivated or motivating us by their
behavior. That is not what we mean. It
means to – outspire is what it should be.
God breathed out through these human writers of Scripture so that
without waiving their human intelligence, vocabulary, individuality, literary
style, personality, their personal
feelings, or any other human factor, His complete and coherent message to
mankind was recorded with perfect accuracy in the original languages of
Scripture- the very words bearing the authority of the divine authorship.
That is what we refer to as verbal inspiration. The words are inspired. That is very important.
Plenary is another word that has been introduced. That means that the totality of Scripture is
equally inspired so that the genealogies of I Chronicles 1-9 are just as
inspired as the Sermon on the Mount.
They are just as much the words of Christ because the whole Bible is the
mind of Christ. They are just as much
the words of Christ as those red-letter sections in your red-letter Bible.
I always get a kick out of this.
Dr. Ryrie would drill that into us when I had him for Bibliology in my
first year of seminary. The whole Bible
is the Word of God – not just what Jesus said.
It is all what Jesus said. At
home I have a copy of the red letter edition of the Ryrie Study Bible. I know that he must have had battles with
Moody Press over that. Maybe he didn’t have any editorial control. That is a problem with these Christian
publishing houses. They are so tied to
the market place that they are going to produce what they perceive the market
wants and not what is right.
Anyhow that is our emphasis. That
is the application of this in verse 16.
Whether it is singular or plural, present tense or aorist tense - these
are important because God said it that way.
That is our digression.
Now we get to verse 17.
NKJ
Galatians 3:17 And this I
say, that the law, which was four hundred and thirty years later, cannot
annul the covenant that was confirmed before by God in Christ, that it should
make the promise of no effect.
That is 430 years after Abraham.
That’s the Abrahamic Covenant.
Paul is arguing the same thing.
The Abrahamic Covenant is still in effect. It was a permanent contract as opposed to the
temporary nature of the Mosaic Covenant.
NKJ
Galatians
See how that ties right in. We
are talking about inheritance. It is no
longer a promise. It is the same word
that we have in Hebrews.
It is God’s promise that we can count on. He is not going to go back on His word
So He established it by a promise.
He swore by Himself because there was none greater. So that brings us to verse 18 in Hebrews
6. So turn back with me to Hebrews 6. Now here the writer says…
NKJ
Hebrews
What are the two immutable things?
The first immutable thing is Himself – His character. The second immutable thing is the oath. So remember under the Mosaic Law in order for
something to be confirmed there had to be two witnesses. So you have two witnesses, His own character
and His unchangeable oath. So there are
two unchangeable things, two immutable things in which it is impossible for God
to lie. We have two other passages that
reiterate this same principle – Number 23:19.
NKJ
Numbers
And then Titus 1:2.
NKJ
Titus 1:2 in hope of
eternal life which God, who cannot lie, promised before time began,
Lying is impossible for God because He is perfectly righteous. It violates His character. It doesn’t violate some external standard. He can’t do it ontologically. It is impossible for Him in terms of His
basic being for that to ever happen. It
just can’t happen anymore than water can run uphill. It is not in its nature.
Here is where he is making an application that in order that we can have
strong consolation. That is that we can
be strengthened, that we can be encouraged not on the basis of experience but
on the basis of God and the historical record.
We may come from different backgrounds.
You may come from a Jewish background.
You may be involved with persecution or hostility from the Jewish
segment. You may come out of a Greek or
Gentile background, a Roman background whatever it may be. There is always pressure in Satan’s world to
do it Satan’s way – to follow your sin nature.
But we have a refuge where we flee to lay hold of the hope that is set
before us.
The word for hope is our confident expectation. It is before us. That means that it is set out there ahead of
us. This is something we look toward, we look to. It is the future that God has promised
us. It is certain. It is not something that we might lose.
Don’t misinterpret Hebrews 6:4-6 as the possibility of losing your
salvation. Our salvation is guaranteed
by the promise of God that no matter what happens we still are saved. We can’t lose our justification. We can’t lose the destiny that God has for
us. There is an inheritance set out
there and so it is the reality of that inheritance that hope that is set out
there that gives us strength for today.
It gives us stability because it isn’t based on who and what we are, but
who and what God is.
Then we come to verse 19. He uses
the illustration or the metaphor of an anchor of the soul in order to
communicate that sense of stability – something that can’t be moved, something
that can’t have its anchor cut and go off course.
He has already talked about the hope.
It is supplied by most translations for the ease of reading.
It is this confident expectation – what is going to happen in the future
– the promise that God has made. Here
he has made a transition from the promise that God made to the Jews in the Old
Testament to the promise of the future destiny for the Church Age believer. It is this hope, this promise of what is to
come that serves as a basis of stability in our lives today. No matter how things look around you, no
matter what may be going on, no matter what pressures what adversities are
taking place in your life, no matter how uncertain the circumstances may
appear; our certainty, our stability is not based on day-to-day
circumstances. They are based on the
certainty of God’s Word.
We may lose everything that we have in this life. We may end up – those of us in this room may
see a time when this country is defeated militarily. With what is going on with the fact that most
sane people (or what we thought were sane people in this country) are
insane. They don’t understand the
difference between illegal immigration and legal immigration. Nobody ever wants to talk about it. It is amazing how anybody who has any public
platform runs from the truth. As soon as
they get in a position that they can talk about it, they refuse to talk about
it.
We are being attacked subtly through our borders. There are untold number of illegal Arab
immigrants (illegal Muslim immigrants) who have come across the border who seek
to do us harm. Who knows how many
sleeper cells are here. From what I have
heard talking to people in law enforcement in a position to know, Houston is as
radicalized a city as far as the Islamic faction is concerned as any place in
the country. It could happen here. It could happen anywhere. In the next 20-30 years (many of us are going
to live 20, 30, 40 more years) we could see unbelievable disasters take place
in our lives.
We could see the economy completely collapse. The
So the one thing that we have in life that will never change – the one
thing that we can count on, the one thing that is sure - is Jesus Christ. The
one thing that is certain is the Word of God and the promise of God. No matter what the winds of adversity may
blow our way, God is always true to His word and His word is always true. We may have to go through all kinds of
things, but God will always be faithful.
So we have one place to run for stability. That is the imagery here. We have one place to run to lay hold of the
hope set before us - this anchor of the soul, the one thing that gives
stability to your soul both sure and steadfast.
The first word is asphales which means firm, sure, steady,
immoveable, safe, and certain. It is a
word that is often used in context related to truth.
The second word is steadfast – bebaios. That is related to the word used earlier for
the confirmation of a covenant. It is a
cognate word.
So we have asphales for a firm, sure, immovable word and
steadfast. It is steadfast. It is unshakable. This anchor of the soul enters the presence
behind the veil.
Now he makes a shift here. What
he has been talking about here is the hope that we have. He connects the hope to Jesus Christ. He ties it into the tabernacle. He says that he enters the presence behind
the veil. That was the high priest in
the tabernacle.
In the tabernacle you had the outer courtyard and one entryway
indicating that there is only one way to enter into God’s presence. The Word of God has this exclusivity down
throughout all the books of the Bible one way to go in – you have the outer
courtyard where the priests would come.
You have various worshippers who would go as far as the altar of burnt
offering where they would bring a sacrifice to God.. The priest would wash his hands and feet at
the laver and then enter into the holy place.
Now the holy place was dividing in two sections. The back third there is a veil on the
interior. It separates the inner Holy of
Holies from the outer holy place. That
is what is being talked about. It is
that inner Holy of Holies where the Ark of the Covenant rested, where the High
Priest would go on the Day of Atonement.
That is the place where God dwelt between the cherubs as the psalmist
would say frequently.
NKJ
Hebrews
This hope is what enters the Presence behind the veil.
That is the one who runs ahead, prodromos, the one who is the precursor. It is another word that is used that is
similar to the one who is used back in Hebrews
So we are right back to where we left off before we entered into this
digression back in verse 10 of chapter 5.
We focus on Jesus Christ’s royal priesthood as being based on the order
of Melchizedek.
NKJ
Hebrews
The focus here is that this is the only certainty that we have. It is related to Jesus in hypostatic union
who has opened the veil for us so that we can enter into the presence of
God. It is that orientation to God and
His immutability and veracity that is the only basis for hope and certainty in
our lives.
So next time we will come back and get into chapter 7 where we start
getting into a development of the Melchizedekean priesthood in 7:1. This will be the fourth section of Hebrews.