Hebrews 6:13-20 - Jesus’ Pinky Promise To You

Today, we are concluding Hebrews chapter 6, and we're getting into some of what the author called the Meet, and some of the deep things that the Bible has for us to learn about Jesus, and who He is, and what He accomplished for us on the cross.

This book is written to a group of Jewish people. Many of them were genuine believers in Jesus.

Some of them, after undergoing persecution from either fellow Jews, or from the Romans, or different groups around them, they had abandoned Jesus, and they had gone back to Judaism.

And some of those that were still remaining with the church, with the believers, they were wondering if they should follow those others into the relative safety of Judaism and abandon Jesus.

And the writer has been saying, no, no, no, no, no, Jesus is the point of it all. And I want to read from right about verse nine or so, and jump into our passage for today.

I'm going to read verses nine through 20, and then we'll look at, in particular today, verses 13 through 20, and see what God has for us.

Even though we are speaking this way, warning about abandoning Jesus, and how there is no redemption found outside of Jesus, even though we are speaking this way, dearly loved friends, in your case, we are confident of things that are better, and

that pertain to salvation. For God is not unjust. He will not forget your work, and the love you demonstrated for His name by serving the saints, and by continuing to serve them. I didn't mention this last episode, but I do want to mention it now.

The way that we demonstrate our love for God is by loving people. You can't say, man, I really love God, and then hate those that are made in the image of God.

The way that we know that we have a love for God is by our love for one another, a love for those that can't do anything for us. When we love like our Father, we know that we truly love our Father.

But 1st John chapter 3 really deals with a bunch of that in detail. Verse number 11.

Now, we desire each of you to demonstrate the same diligence for the full assurance of your hope until the end so that you won't become lazy, but will become imitators of those who inherit the promises through faith and perseverance.

For when God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater to swear by, he swore by himself, I will indeed bless you and I will greatly multiply you. And so, after waiting patiently, Abraham obtained the promise.

For people swear by something greater than themselves, and for them, a confirming oath ends every dispute.

Because God wanted to show his unchangeable purpose even more clearly to the heirs of the promise, he guaranteed it with an oath, so that through two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might

have strong encouragement to seize the hope set before us. We have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure. It enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain.

Jesus has entered there on our behalf as a forerunner, because he has become a high priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek.

Okay, I'm certain that as I did when I read through this passage for the first time, you might be scratching your head a little bit. So let's see what God has for us.

Starting off in verses 13 through 15, the author reminds these people where he's encouraging them to continue to be faithful to their walk with God, to continue following Jesus, to continue loving and persevering in the faith, even through

difficulties. He's saying, remember Abraham. Abraham went through difficulties.

He went through a time when he wasn't sure if he was going to see the promise, where it could have been easy for him to doubt God, to turn away from God, but he believed what God had said.

And the author highlights for us, he believed what God had said because of the way that God communicated it. So that's verse 11. When God made a promise to Abraham, since he had no one greater to swear by, he swore by himself.

I've entitled, I think if I remember correctly, this episode, Jesus' pinky promise to you.

When you're a kid and someone tells you something, and you know, you don't really know if you like believe them, or believe that they really will come through with this, or that they really will come to play with you at whatever time, you might tell

them, pinky promise? Like, I don't believe you, but if we do a pinky promise, then I will believe what you're saying. You know, there's the old, cross my heart and hope to die.

Back in these times, it would be, you know, you promise, you know, on the life of my mother, or on the life of my family, that someone would swear an oath by. They would say, this thing will be forfeit if I'm not good for what I said.

And here, God, there's no one greater, there's nothing greater that he could possibly swear by.

So God says, in essence, I swear by me that verse 14, where the author is quoting from Genesis 22 and verse 17, verse 14, I will indeed bless you and I will greatly multiply you.

Any other person would have done like, I will indeed bless you and, you know, may my children suffer illness and die if I do not greatly multiply you. But God just says, I will bless you and I will greatly multiply you.

So there is this wonderful promise that God says, my reputation is staked on my word.

And here is Jesus is being presented to us again and again as God's final revelation, his final word to us, that we can believe in Jesus because God has staked all of his reputation on Jesus.

He has placed his honor, his righteousness on what Christ has accomplished for us. And so we can have complete certainty in following Jesus because he is the word of God. Verse number 15.

And so after waiting patiently, Abraham or obtained the promise. And this is the encouragement to these believers. You can go through the persecution from your family.

You can go through the persecution from Rome because God's blessings, God's rewards comes to those who wait patiently on him.

So you wait patiently, persevere through the trials and stick with Jesus because there is a great reward coming that God has promised to you. Verse number 16. People swear by something greater than themselves.

And for them, a confirming oath ends every dispute. If someone pinky promises, then you can really believe them. Verse number 17.

Because God wanted to show his unchangeable purpose even more clearly to the heirs of the promise, he guaranteed it with an oath. He says, I don't change, and I want to prove to you guys how serious I am about this. I'm making a promise to you.

Verse number 18. So that through two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to seize the hope set before us.

He says, when God says something, that is an unchangeable thing. God doesn't change his mind. He doesn't say, yeah, I'm going to save mankind.

You know, never mind, I'm not going to save them. He's not doing any take backs on his redemption. He doesn't do take backs on his character.

He doesn't do take backs on even judgment. All of his judgments are certain and secure.

And even in ancient Israel and Judah and with King Ahab and Nineveh with the Book of Jonah, in those times when people did repent, God postponed judgment till another time. But all that God does, he is faithful to do.

If he said he will do it, then he will absolutely do it. So number one, it's impossible for God to lie. So whatever he says is an unchanging truth.

And whatever God promises to us, man, that is an unchanging truth.

And so because of our certainty of the fact that God has promised eternal life to us, he has promised the hope of that everlasting Sabbath rest, of that relationship and walk and life with him eternally, because we have both been told that by God and

promised that by God, because we've fled to him for refuge. We haven't fled to our own good works. We haven't fled to religion.

We haven't fled to the best that this world has to offer, but we who have fled to Jesus for refuge, we can have strong encouragement to seize the hope that is set before us.

Today, God has hope for your life, that he wants you to seize, that he wants you to grab hold of, to capture, and he wants you to understand how he views you, the certainty that there is of your everlasting joy and the unending greatness of your life

that you will have with Jesus and with his family forever. There is that hope ahead of you. Satan wants you to forget about it. Satan wants you to let go of it.

Satan wants you to focus on your troubles, on your sicknesses, on your sins and your temptations and the bad things that happen in your life. That's what he wants you to focus on. God wants you to seize the hope of eternal life.

It's not something that you earned. That's not the kind of seizing that's being talked about. This is a little kid this morning.

My daughter was thirsty and I had gotten them... Listen, all of you crunchy individuals out there, don't get mad at me for this. I got them some chocolate milk as a special treat the other day.

And so she pointed to the chocolate milk and I poured that out for her. And as soon as I reached that out to Evelyn, Evelyn grabbed it and was like, thank you, Dada. And it was adorable.

She reached out and she seized it. She didn't get it from the fridge. She didn't buy it from the store.

She didn't pour it into her cup. She wasn't the one that got it down from the counter. I prepared everything for her and I handed it to her and she seized it.

And that's what God right now wants to do with your life, that you would experience His love, His joy, His peace, His patience, His long-suffering, His kindness, everything good that He has to offer, the hope of heaven, the knowledge that you have a

spiritual family, the knowledge that right now, today, you have purpose and mission to love other people like God has loved you. And you've got a mission to tell other people about Jesus, whoever God sends your way.

And so because all of these things are being extended to us by our gracious Heavenly Father, we got to grab that gift. We got to seize that hope. Verse number 19, we have this hope as an anchor for the soul, firm and secure.

This anchor of our soul, just as with a ship, that when there might be turbulent times or when the currents would want to take away the ship, the anchor would keep it grounded. The anchor would mean that it's not moving from that spot.

And for these people undergoing persecution and wondering if the loss of their friends or family was really worth it, the hope of Jesus was the anchor that would keep them steady with the Lord, that no current would take them away.

They wouldn't abandon Christ Church. Instead, they would remain faithful, firm and secure because of the hope that God brought into their life.

Notice here, it doesn't put like the onus on, you got to make sure that you are doing enough good works to remain in God's will, or you got to make sure that this and this and this is done. No, no, no. How do you remain a Christian?

How do you not let like this world and circumstances blow you away? It is through having the anchor of the hope of Jesus and what he has accomplished and that God has made you his child and that he's never going back on that.

Verse, the end of verse number 19, it enters, this hope enters the inner sanctuary behind the curtain. They're talking back Leviticus number 16, Leviticus chapter 16 in verse number kind of like one through five deals with it.

The high priest, he could not enter into the Holy of Holies, where that Ark of the Covenant was, where the kind of the glory cloud of the Lord was hovering over that mercy seat.

He could only enter there about once a year or so, only after he had made sacrifice for himself and then the sacrifice for the sins of the people. And so there was not unlimited access to the presence of God.

But here what the author is saying is the hope of Jesus is an anchor that's thrown into the Holy of Holies. So, if you will, no one's getting that anchor out of there. Our anchor is in the very presence of God in his throne room where he is.

And Jesus, verse number 20, has entered there on our behalf as a forerunner. He's the first one into that presence of God. Obviously, he's eternal God of Gods, all of that stuff is certainly true.

But as the first human forerunner into the presence of God himself, he is our forerunner and he's inviting us to come into the presence of God, to go to heaven and to see what no eye has ever seen or no ear has ever heard, that we would follow Jesus

into the arms of the Father. And it says, because he's become a high priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek. And we'll get into that over the next two or three episodes. We'll all detail that.

But here what's being said is Jesus made the way, not just so that our sins can be forgiven, but that we can go into the very presence of God. What a wonderful, rejoicing, encouraging, motivating truth. It blows me away.

That our holy God, though we did not earn our place with him, though we, in all of our righteousness, we were just filthy racks. We've got nothing to bring him, but he loves us and he created us in his image.

And he did not want us to ever experience life alienated from him. He did not want us to experience death in hell. And so he came in the person of Jesus.

He died for our sin on our behalf. He rose from the dead. He conquered the grave.

He ripped the power from those spiritual beings. He went and ascended into heaven after 40 days on earth. He sits there at the right hand of the Father, and he invites us to come in.

He lets us know about the hope that there is with him of the Holy spirit that will indwell us when we become a Christian of the fact that we are then forever his, sealed by the Holy spirit until the day that Jesus brings us home.

And because of that hope and realizing that Jesus is the anchor into the Holy of Holies, and he's bringing us to himself, he's the forerunner, he's the first one through the curtain, through that heavenly curtain into the heavenly Holy of Holies, and

he's inviting us in that we can see our Father, that the grand scheme of all human history has been that God would redeem his people and bring them back to himself. And one day we will experience that.

So today, I know you're going through difficulties. I know people are saying things about you. I know that your sickness has been around so long that it feels like it's just dragging you away.

And it feels like it's dragging you away from the felt presence of God. Maybe you have felt like sin is too powerful, and it just overwhelms you, and you can't get back to the Lord.

Can I tell you, there is an anchor for your soul, and his name is Jesus Christ. His shed blood, his righteousness, his power will keep you until the day you are reunited with him.

If the worst of this world happens to you, and you were to die today, you would find yourself in the Holy of Holies with your Heavenly Father, not because of your works, not because of your greatness, but because of the work of Jesus Christ.

Rejoice in him today. Love him. Tell other people about him.

Make him the point of your existence. Thanks for tuning in today. My blesser's blessed, and I love thinking about what Jesus has done for us and what comfort it brings that he is our everything.

He is our sacrifice. He is our God. And we ought always to love and appreciate and serve him however we can, because he is worthy of it all.

Thanks for tuning in, and see you next episode.