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
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.