Hebrews 6:13-20

“For when God made a promise to Abraham, because He could swear by no one greater, He swore by Himself, ¹⁴ saying, ‘Surely blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply you.’ ¹⁵ And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. ¹⁶ For men indeed swear by the greater, and an oath for confirmation is for them an end of all dispute. ¹⁷ Thus God, determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath, ¹⁸ that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set before us.

¹⁹ This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters the Presence behind the veil, ²⁰ where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus, having become High Priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”

Right now, I am reading in the Torah once again, Genesis to Deuteronomy, and these verses are coming to life right before my eyes as I am teaching through the book of Hebrews. It is important to see the Old Testament as relevant to us in the New Testament era. There has been a push of late among even prominent church leaders to treat the Old Testament as not necessary in the New Testament era. Nothing could be further from the truth. The faith we have in the New Testament is a faith rooted and built on the promises that God gave to the Patriarchs; Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

There are two stages to the covenant: a physical one in that, through Abraham, God would build a literal nation called Israel. The second is a spiritual one for all who believe in God by faith. Abraham, one man and his wife, they being 75 and 65 respectively, would have children as numerous as the stars of heaven or the sand of the seashore. They had one son, Isaac, at the age of 100 and 90 respectively, and he, Isaac, had just 2 sons. But today, in spite of persecution and centuries of hatred that still persist to this day, there are approximately 9,200,000 people living in Israel (and in the vicinity) of the 14,800,000 Jews living in the world today. God’s promise to multiply the children of Abraham is being fulfilled and played out right before us, and there is nothing anyone or any nation can do to stop it.

The nation of Israel continues to be a blessing to the world in technology, medical discoveries, and financial prowess. There are communities of Jews everywhere; even my little Barbados has one of the oldest synagogues in the Western Hemisphere, established in 1654. About 300 Jews settled in Barbados in the 1600s, many of them skilled in the sugar industry. Today, it is a museum in Bridgetown, Barbados. The prosperity of the Jews and their seeming ability to survive any and all attacks and not just to survive but thrive is all a part of the promises that God made to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. You need to know these promises as a child of God. The faithfulness of God to the Jews, even in the midst of sin and rebellion, is a comfort to us and provides a sure footing for our growth in Christ.

Please, please remember that Jesus is a Jew. Our salvation was brought by a Jewish Rabbi named Jesus, God and Man in one, who died on the cross. The whole reason for God’s promises to Abraham was to pave the way for the Jewish God-Man, Jesus, to be our salvation.

• God Made a Covenant with Himself, 16-18

God swore an oath that He could perform all that He had promised to Abraham. There is the Abrahamic covenant recorded for us in Genesis 12: 1-3 (NKJV), but this covenant was further secured via an ancient ceremony that was often performed between two warring kings. We find the record of this in Genesis 15. In this ceremony, the two kings would cut an animal in half, then walk between the two halves in the blood. This action secured peace or secured whatever covenant they made until one of the kings died, and then it was back to war or whatever was before. In Genesis 15, if you read verse 12, Abraham falls asleep, and God does the ceremony with Himself. And since He cannot die, the covenant will never expire. The covenant is recorded in verses 1-6:

“After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision, saying, ‘Do not be afraid, Abram. I am your shield, your exceedingly great reward.’ But Abram said, ‘Lord God, what will You give me, seeing I go childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?’ Then Abram said, ‘Look, You have given me no offspring; indeed one born in my house is my heir!’ And behold, the word of the Lord came to him, saying, ‘This one shall not be your heir, but one who will come from your own body shall be your heir.’ Then He brought him outside and said, ‘Look now toward heaven, and count the stars if you are able to number them.’ And He said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.’ And he believed in the Lord, and He accounted it to him for righteousness” (NKJV).

Our promises in God, through Jesus, are as secure as this covenant, which has not nor will ever go out of existence, because the promises are to Jesus as well, as a descendant of Abraham.

• The Anchor of our Souls, verse 19

This is the hope we have in Jesus; this is the hope we have in God’s promises and the hope we have that transcends the trials and storms of life. It even transcends our failures, our sinfulness, and our faithlessness. In all of our shortcomings, God is faithful, and He will NEVER renege on His promises to Abraham since they are also promises to His Son, Jesus. We are secure in Jesus, not because we are good but because God is good. We can trust in His salvation when He calls us His children (1 John 3:1). Thus, we have an anchor for our souls, and we have a security that is guarded by God himself. He will never die, so the covenant is secure, and He cannot lie, so he will not go back on His word.

But, you say, the covenant was with Abraham; what has that to do with us? Genesis 15:6 (NKJV) is repeated for us in Romans 4: 3, 22. We see that Abraham believed in God, and it was accounted to him for ‘righteousness’; therefore, when you and I believe in God by faith, just like Abraham, we are declared righteous as well. By the way, it was not until Genesis 17, when Abraham was 99 years old, that God made him get circumcised. So, Abraham’s righteousness was accrued to him before circumcision, so not by the law but by faith.

There are still so many who want to be saved by keeping the Law, but this is impossible. Abraham was saved by faith. He simply believed in God, he took God at His word, and he, Abraham, was declared righteous. This is still how we are saved today, ‘whosoever believes in Him will be saved.’ Our hope, our security, and your future and mine are in God’s hands, the most secure hands ever, the Anchor of our soul.

Who anchors your soul?

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church

How to Connect with Us

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MississaugaMissionaryBaptistChurch
Online: https://www.mississaugamissionarybaptistchurch.com/ (under construction)
Email: missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca

Hebrews 6: 9-12

⁹ “But, beloved, we are confident of better things concerning you, yes, things that accompany salvation, though we speak in this manner. 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. ¹¹ And we desire that each one of you show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope until the end, ¹² that you do not become sluggish, but imitate those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.”

You and I are secure in Jesus. I am currently reading through the Torah, Genesis-Deuteronomy, and I see our spiritual patriarchs that are dealing with the flesh, multiple marriages, cheating, lying, and loving one son more than the other, as is the case with Isaac, and on we can go. Yet, they are secure in their relationship with God, not because they are good, but because God is good, and it is He who secures them. This foundation gives us a sure footing upon which to build our lives in the Lord. One of the most crippling things that we can face as children of God is doubts; we all have them. They can often come even after great victories in our lives as we walk with the Lord. Let me give you a few examples.

We often pick on Thomas for doubting the resurrection of Jesus, but in John 11:16, it was he who threw caution to the wind when he understood that going to help Lazarus could see them killed; nevertheless, he was ready to go and die with Jesus.

“Then Thomas (also known as Didymus) said to the rest of the disciples, ‘Let us also go, that we may die with him'” (NIV).

In the same way, we see Elijah have a great victory over the priests of Baal and lead a great revival in Israel, only to be running scared from Jezebel in the next chapter and asking God to kill him. We can get caught up in our own little worlds and forget that God loves us and is on our side. Paul, the writer of Hebrews (in my understanding), encourages us to be diligent; he calls us to stop being sluggish and reminds us that God is watching.

• Salvation is just the beginning, verse 9

There are things that accompany the salvation that we have in Jesus. These are referred to as ‘fruit’ in the scriptures. We can find these ‘fruit’ in Galatians 5: 22-23 (NKJV),

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Against such there is no law.”

These are tangible areas of life that we can use to gauge our progress in the Lord.

My wife and I have a beautiful granddaughter who is about to turn one. We can see the normal progress that she should have, and it comforts us. There are some one-year-old babies that are already walking, but she is holding on and walking. She can stand for short periods by herself, and she can even feed herself small things. She is not walking, but we can see the progression. All babies develop at different times, but they develop, and if they don’t, we can see that there is something wrong. In much the same way, we can gauge our growth in the Lord by the above verses. These all happen simultaneously and complement each other.

We need to be growing in the Lord. Now, like human babies, we will all develop at different speeds, and one aspect may grow more or faster than the other, but we should see progress. Even if we cannot see progress, the desire to be more like Jesus should be in us from the leading of the Holy Spirit. Do you even want to be more like Jesus? Do you have this desire? If yes, then this is a great place to start; that desire is from God.

• God See your actions, verses 10-11

I was wondering just the other night, does God only see when I fail, or does He see when I get it right as well? We think of God more like a traffic cop; He only gets you when you are in the wrong. Wouldn’t it be cool if you got pulled over and the officer praised you for being a good driver? I have never had that happen, and we can begin to see God as only seeing when we fail.

Paul reminds us that God sees all of our good works as well and that He remembers them. This is a stark contrast to the fact that He forgets our sins, Hebrews 8:12 (NKJV),

“For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their iniquities will I remember no more.”

God forgives and forgets our sins, but He remembers our good works. He washes us clean, and we are declared righteous long before we are permanently perfected in Jesus. Paul writes to the church at Galatia and says this in 6:9 (NKJV),

“And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.”

Don’t stop doing what is right. In our text here in Hebrews, Paul encourages us to be diligent right to the end; don’t lose hope. Whether we live for Jesus till the rapture or die and meet Him there in the Kingdom, live for Him diligently and consistently. He sees, and He knows all that we are doing. He forgets our sins and remembers our good works. One day, we will inherit the promises that God has for us. We will get new bodies, a new home, and a new perfect life; we will see the face of Jesus one day, and we will meet men like Abraham, Daniel, Elijah, and David and women like Esther, Ruth, and Rahab. We will have the answers to all the questions and see things only God’s people get to see.

One day, God will ask you and me to give an account of the life we lived once we were saved. And there, He will judge our faithfulness, our diligence, and our obedience. Are you and I ready to meet Jesus there at the judgment? This is what Paul warns us about in 2 Corinthians 5:9-11 (NKJV),

“Therefore we make it our aim, whether present or absent, to be well pleasing to Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad. Knowing, therefore, the terror of the Lord, we persuade men; but we are well known to God, and I also trust are well known in your consciences.”

God bless you,

Dr. Sean Gooding
Pastor of Mississauga Missionary Baptist Church
How to Connect with Us

On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MississaugaMissionaryBaptistChurch
Online: https://www.mississaugamissionarybaptistchurch.com/ (under construction)
Email: missionarybaptistchurch76@yahoo.ca