Our Strongest Encouragement
Over the last couple Sundays I’ve said that Hebrews Chapter 6 contains one of the strongest, most uncomfortable warning passages in the Bible, and that’s true. We saw that last week. But also, I want you to know that Hebrews Chapter 6 is more importantly about the resurrection glory of Jesus — and that’s what I wanna show you this morning.
Father in heaven, thank you for Jesus! Thank you for his atoning death and eternal life. Thank you for all of your blessings to us in him. Speak to us now, we pray. Help us to receive your word, in Jesus’s name, amen.
Remembering the Context
The first thing we should do is back up and remember the context of this passage. What we’ve been looking at over the last two weeks in Chapter 6 has been a digression within the writer’s larger argument. There’s been a detour, beginning in Chapter 5 verse 11 through here in Chapter 6 verse 20. The writer had been going one direction — he was encouraging these readers to endure in faith, to hold fast their hope, to cling to Jesus — which we can do because of Jesus’s high priestly ministry. That was introduced at the end of Chapter 4, but in order to really explain how Jesus is our high priest it means the writer needs to talk about Melchizedek, but that’s where he hits the brakes in 5:11 and takes a turn into the spiritual condition of these readers.
Melchizedek is too hard to explain to them because they’ve become dull (or sluggish) in hearing. They’ve deliberately stayed spiritual infants. They just want to stick to the non-controversial milk-only! But the writer of Hebrews won’t have it. Like a good coach, he calls them up. He calls them to become who they are, to be carried on to maturity.
And one of the reasons he does this is because this perpetual spiritual infancy makes them especially vulnerable to apostasy.
The writer warns about apostasy beginning in verse 4 but I want to make sure you catch the connection between falling away (in verses 4–6) and the immature Christians mentioned right before it. The reason the writer commands these Christians to leave behind the milk-only and to be carried on to maturity (verse 1) is because their deliberate immaturity — their dullness (or sluggishness) in hearing — is truly a slippery slope. If they stay in this sluggishness it means they’re on the brink of abandoning Jesus.
And so the writer calls them up. He says in verse 9 that he’s convinced of better things for these readers. They’re not going to fall away. Their faith is genuine. Their salvation is real.
But now on what basis can he say that?
That question is where we’re at. We saw verse 9 last week. The writer is confident in the salvation of these Christians, but where is that confidence coming from?
Well today’s text gives us the answer in three parts. The writer of Hebrews is certain in the salvation of these Christians for three reasons:
God sees
God swore
Jesus is risen
We’re gonna focus on these three things. I want you to see first that God sees. That’s in verses 9 and 10.
1) God Sees (verses 9–12)
Verse 9 is where the writer is certain of these Christian’s salvation. Verse 10 grounds that certainty. Look at verse 10:
“For God is not unjust so as to overlook your work and the love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints, as you still do.”
In short, the writer says that God sees the evidence of their genuine faith. What is that evidence?
Well let’s read this verse carefully. We’re gonna start at the end and work backwards.
Look at the end of the verse where he says “serving the saints, as you still do.” That’s their work. That’s what they’re doing. They have been serving the saints, and they are still serving. It’s visible. It’s happening out here as an ongoing way of life and it shows something. See that word “shown” in verse 10? This is key. What does their serving show?
Look at verse 10, look at the words:
“The love that you have shown for his name in serving the saints”
Do you see that?
These Christians serving one another shows their love for God!
And it’s their love for God that manifests the genuineness of their faith. And this is a theological point I wanna highlight here in Hebrews Chapter 6. We saw last week that those who fall away are ultimately those who do not have faith. They don’t trust in Jesus. But to be clear again, they did have some knowledge of Jesus. Sometimes we can make the mistake of equating knowledge with faith. So we need to be careful here.
Those who fall away in verse 6 knew about Jesus, just like Judas knew about Jesus. The issue is that their hearts didn’t embrace him. Those who fall away do not love him. Genuine faith in Jesus is a faith that loves Jesus. That’s what makes a genuine Christian. That’s how Christians are different from demons — because demons probably ‘know’ more than we do.
Jonathan Edwards makes a really good point on this. He’s commenting on the story in Luke 8 when Jesus encountered a demon-possessed man. Luke 8:28,
“When he [the demon-possessed man] saw Jesus, he cried out, and fell down before him, and with a loud voice said, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me.”
Edwards says,
“Here is external worship. The demon is religious; he prays: he prays in a humble posture; he falls down before Christ, he lies prostrate; he prays earnestly, he cries with a loud voice; he uses humble expressions — ‘I beseech thee, torment me not’ — he uses respectful, honorable, adoring expressions — ‘Jesus, Son of the Most High God.’ Nothing was wanting but love.”
See, the demon’s knowledge about Jesus made him dread Jesus. And so we should ask: What does our knowledge about Jesus make us do?
If you’re a genuine Christian it makes you love him. Just like it did for these Christians here. They loved God, which was shown in their serving the saints, and God saw that. He’s not unjust. He doesn’t overlook reality. He’s just and he sees. He sees the genuineness of our faith.
And so the writer encourages these Christians to keep showing that genuineness.
Verse 11,
“Show the same earnestness to have the full assurance of hope until the end.”
And they should continue to manifest their faith for a purpose stated as a negative/positive. This is verse 12. Keep showing the genuineness of your faith — verse 12 — so that you not be sluggish. And the word here translated “sluggish” is the same word translated “dull” in Chapter 5, verse 11. That’s the whole reason we’ve been on this detour. The readers were sluggish in hearing, but now the writer says there’s a different way. He calls them out of their sluggishness.
”[Manifest the genuineness of your faith so that you are not sluggish, but instead] be imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.”
And before we get to verse 13, I just want you to notice that pair of words in verse 12, “faith and patience.” The relationship between those two words is really what this entire book is about. It’s enduring faith. It’s faith with patience. Faith that holds on even when you don’t get everything you believe all at once.
Like for example, say that God makes you a promise, and you believe that promise, but the promise is not fulfilled right away. What if the fulfillment is still a long ways out in the future?
Can you think of any Old Testament examples that fit this category?
Abraham.
And when these readers saw these words: faith, patience and promises — boom! Abraham comes to mind. The Old Testament doesn’t only have negative examples of unbelief (like we saw in the exodus generation), but there’s also positive examples of faith, and Abraham is at the top of that list. And this is the second reason the writer is certain about the salvation of these Christians. It's that God swore.
2) God Swore (verses 13–18)
Now growing up I was taught not to swear. I was blessed to be raised by parents and a church that took the Bible seriously. So Let your Yes be Yes and your No be No, which means I could never “swear on my momma’s grave” — no matter how cool it sounded — and I absolutely could not swear by God.
But, did you know, God swears by God. Look at verses 13-15,
“For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he swore by himself, saying, ‘Surely [that’s the ‘swear’] I will bless you and multiply you.’ And thus Abraham having patiently waited, obtained the promise.”
The writer is saying that the reason Abraham — who had faith and patience — obtained the promise is because God swore. That’s the point. So the writer has mentioned Abraham, but this is not really about Abraham. This is about God’s promise to Abraham, and he wants us to know that it’s important that God swore that promise. That’s a relevant detail. That’s why he includes the quote here in verse 14. Look at verse 14 and find the quote marks. This line, “Surely I will bless you and multiply you” comes from Genesis 22:17. God swears this to Abraham after Abraham shows that he was willing to sacrifice Issac. And you remember this story in Genesis. These first readers, because of their Jewish background, they definitely remembered this story. They knew it by heart.
God had already promised Abraham going back to Genesis 12 that through his offspring all the nations of the earth would be blessed, and Abraham had already believed God and was justified. But in Chapter 22, Abraham’s faith was made manifest. It was made visible by his willingness to obey God even when it didn’t make sense. Because everything about the promise was riding on Isaac! How could Abraham have descendants that outnumber the stars if he and Sarah’s only son was dead?
It didn’t matter. That’s how deeply Abraham believed God. He knew God would do what he said. And God saw this faith. And God doubled down on his promise. God repeated his promise to bless and multiply Abraham and this time he swore it by himself.
Why did God swear by himself? Well, why does anyone swear? Look at verse 16:
“For people swear by something greater than themselves, and in all their disputes an oath is final for confirmation.”
I like how the NIV translates that last part:
“and the oath confirms what is said and puts an end to all argument.”
In other words, swearing, or an oath, is a confirmation that’s meant to settle something. Because of the oath there’s no dispute or argument that the person will do what they said. The oath is a final confirmation — and the oath is always connected to a higher authority. When people swear by authorities higher than themselves they’re making themselves liable to that higher thing. They’re saying, if I don’t do what I’m saying, I must answer to this thing I’ve sworn by.
Here’s an (bad) example: So if I were to say to you, “I swear to God, tomorrow I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.” That means I’m not answering to you about the coffee, but I’m answering to God, and because I’m answering to God, it gives more confirmation that I’m going to come through on the coffee.
And the higher the authority we swear by, the more confirmation it is that we’re going to do what we say. And we get how this works. At a lesser degree, this happens all the time with our signed contracts and agreements. We have human ways to express that we really mean what we’re saying. We live in a world that operates this way — so now behold the kindness of God!
God doesn’t ever need any kind of oath to back up his words. Because God never lies. What he says is. But look at verse 17:
“God desired to show more convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose…”
The “heirs of the promise” is us. This is those who share the faith of Abraham. The writer is talking about Christians here, including the first readers of this letter and us today. God desires to show us with maximum certainty that he’s going to do what he says, so he accommodates us. He comes down to our level, in the terms of how we deal with one another, and he guarantees his promise with an oath. But because there is nothing greater than him by which he can swear, he swears by himself. God swears by God! Which means if God breaks this promise he would be in conflict with himself. Which is all impossible.
God has put his very being on the line — “so that by two unchangeable things” — it’s already impossible for God to lie, but now he swears by his unchangeable nature — by these two unchangeable things, verse 18,
“we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us.”
Get this: God swore his promise to Abraham so that we would be strongly encouraged to keep believing, to hold fast to our future hope. We need faith and patience now, like Abraham had, and God has given us the greatest possible reason to have faith and patience — and that actually comes in verses 19–20.
Remember the question is: Why is the writer of Hebrews so certain in the salvation of these Christians? It’s, first, because God sees. It’s second because God swore. And now it’s third because Jesus is risen.
3) Jesus Is Risen (verses 19–20)
Look at verse 19,
“We have this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul...”
Now the “this” in verse 19 is referring to “the two unchangeable things” in verse 18. It is God’s promise and God’s oath has been the focus starting in verse 13. That promise and oath is our “sure and steadfast anchor of the soul.”
And the writer uses a nautical metaphor here. We all know what anchors are. Ships use anchors so that they don’t drift. An anchor is what makes a ship stay put, or hold fast to where it is. Well, the certainty of God’s promise and oath is the anchor of our souls, of our faith. That’s why we can hold fast.
I think it’s important for us to see that the way the writer of Hebrews encourages our faith is by talking about the object of our faith. He turns our attention to God and his faithfulness.
Even in verse 15, when he mentions Abraham as an example for us to follow, the focus is not on Abraham himself, but it’s on the certainty of God’s promise to Abraham. We definitely should imitate Abraham’s faith, but the writer gets there not by saying “Be like Abraham.” But he’s saying: “Look how faithful God was to Abraham.”
And now in the second part of verse 19 and verse 20 he’s doing the same thing. He says that God’s promise and oath is a strong encouragement for us to hold fast, to keep believing — that is our sure and steadfast anchor of the soul — and now his next step is still not to get into the mechanics of how we hold fast. He is keeping our eyes off ourselves and they’re fixed on this assurance. And this assurance, this greatest certainty of our salvation, is seen in the ultimate display of God’s faithfulness.
The greatest certainty of our salvation is seen in the ultimate display of God’s faithfulness.
Q: What is the ultimate display of God’s faithfulness?
Well in this passage, the ultimate display of God’s faithfulness is that he has already fulfilled his promise and oath.
And this is where this passage becomes distinctively Christian. If you glance back to verse 13. These verses about Abraham and the two unchangeable things — pretty much every Jewish person in this day would hear that and say “Yep! That’s great. I agree.”
But now the writer of Hebrews takes the next step and says, not only is God’s promise and oath true and certain, but it’s fulfilled and active right now.
Q: How? How has God fulfilled his promise and oath?
Well, it has entered into the inner place behind the curtain. The word “hope” is added in verse 19 by English translators to help us out. It’s really just the word “it” which refers back to “anchor” which explains the “two unchangeable things,” God’s promise and oath.
In other words, God’s promise and oath is our anchor of the soul that has entered into the inner place behind the curtain. And that’s Levitical language. Entering behind the curtain is what the high priest does. This sends us back to the Book of Leviticus. And that phrase “the inner place behind the curtain” occurs only one time in Leviticus, in Leviticus 16. And remember Leviticus 16 is the very center of the Book of Leviticus. And what is it about? The Day of Atonement.
One day a year, the most holy day on Israel’s calendar, the high priest would enter the Most Holy Place, that inner place behind the curtain, and he would go there to make atonement. He would sprinkle the blood of a bull on the mercy seat and by that God forgave Israel’s sin.
And remember that the earthly tabernacle and Most Holy Place was only a copy of the heavenly one. The truer Most Holy Place in the heavenly dimension where God dwells, and that’s what the writer is talking about here.
So God’s promise and oath has entered that heavenly Most Holy Place as the high priest would do, and now we ask:
Q: What’s the connection between God’s promise and oath (“two unchangeable things”) and the high priest? How do they fit together? Well, where’s the other place in the Bible where God promises and swears? It’s Psalm 110:4,
“Yahweh has sworn
and will not change his mind,
‘You are a priest forever
after the order of Melchizedek.’”
Psalm 110 is an amazing psalm because it is God the Father speaking to God the Son, the Messiah. God promised and swore to the Messiah that he would be a priest forever like Melchizedek. Just like he did to Abraham with a promise and oath, God gave maximum certainty to the Messiah that this would happen. He would be high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. God swore this would happen. And it has. Because Jesus has gone there.
Jesus has entered into the Most Holy Place as the fulfillment of God’s promise and oath. Jesus has become what God promised and swore to him in Psalm 110.
Q: Now when? When did God fulfill this promise and oath to Jesus?
Easter.
On Friday, Jesus died for us as our sacrifice. He was dead and buried. Which is a problem if you were promised to be a high priest forever after the order of Melchizedek. You can’t be a high priest forever if you’re dead.
And so on Sunday, the third day, God raised Jesus from the dead, and he ascended into heaven and entered into this Most Holy Place to make atonement for us as our High Priest, after the order of Melchizedek. Which means, he is our High Priest forever. Forever means he will not die, he cannot die — because he has conquered death. He continues forever. He lives forever.
Which includes this moment, right now. Listen: the greatest certainty that we have for our salvation is that Jesus is real. That in this moment, in the heavenly Most Holy Place, he has made atonement for us and he lives for us. And where he is is where we belong. And where we will be in the future, world without end.
And now we come to this Table in celebration.
