All right, brethren, let's turn
to Hebrews chapter six. I want to just take a verse,
a few verses here, and I want to look at something particularly
said in these verses. It's talking about the promise
that God had made to Abraham And then in verse 18, Hebrews
6, 18, in the middle part there, he says, every born again, regenerated
believer that's given faith, we have fled for refuge to lay
hold upon the hope set before us, which hope we have as an
anchor of the soul. both sure and steadfast, and
which entereth into that within the veil, whether the forerunner
is for us entered, even Jesus made a high priest forever after
the order of Melchizedek. Let's go to the Lord. Our gracious
Lord, we pray you'd be with us now and help us to see and understand
What your word is saying, help us to see Christ in it. And Lord,
settle our hearts. Give us this good hope. Lord, we thank you for your mercies.
In Christ's name we pray, amen. So the subject here is hope.
Hope. There is a hope that men have
in the world that is just wishful thinking, looking forward to
something that you have planned and you hope it comes to pass.
And even just on a carnal level, when somebody loses hope, they
become depressed and mentally it's bad mentally and it's also
detrimental to physical health. They've actually studied this
and that's true. But now spiritually, this hope
is something far better. It's of God. It's a gift of God.
It's maintained, sustained by God. And it's a sure hope. It's something that we look forward
to that is a sure thing. This is the fruit of the Holy
Spirit that gives this hope and sustains it. God is the author
of it. Christ is the object of it. Hope
is a sure expectation of something to come. And it's a powerful
thing. It makes you look forward with
intent and expectation to that which you You hope to come to
pass. You believe and you hope, because
you're sure. You know this is gonna happen.
That's what God-given hope is. It's a patient, enduring, makes
you patiently endure, because it's a well-grounded hope. You expect it, and it's something
God's promised to his people. Now, the Lord is our hope. That's clear from the scripture.
Psalm 75 5 said, Thou art my hope, O Lord God. He's our hope. Thou art my trust from my youth.
Jeremiah 17.7 said, Blessed is the man that trusteth in the
Lord and whose hope the Lord is. So the Lord's our hope. Now
hope is described here as an anchor of the soul, an anchor. We know what an anchor is. So
the soul here is described as a ship. So we got a sea analogy
here with the anchor of our soul being hope. Let's read it again.
We fled for refuge, lay hold upon the hope set before us.
Now watch this, which hope we have as an anchor of the soul,
both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that within
the veil. Whether the forerunner is for
us entered, even Jesus made a high priest forever after the order
of Melchizedek. Now in the day that this was
written, they would have gotten this analogy very easily. And you and I will too, but we're
going to have to think of it in the way they did things then.
Now, there's a play on words here, and I'll show you what
it is. But when you had a big wooden ship, when you would come
near to the harbor, if the tide was low or the winds were fierce,
they couldn't enter, or else they run the risk of running
aground or running on the rocks, so they couldn't go in. Their
ship ran too deep, so they couldn't. So a smaller ship, a smaller
ship, one that ran more shallow, would take the anchor of the
big ship and it would be the forerunner. It would go ahead
of them and go into the harbor and drop the anchor in the harbor
so that they're anchored there, they're not going anywhere, but
when the water got up, It came back up the way they got in there.
They didn't have power like we have, so the way they got into
the harbor was they pulled the chain in and it pulled the ship
into the harbor. You get the point there? So there's
a play on words here. If you just heard the writer
say veil, well, as far as the ship's concerned, it's a V-A-L-E,
because that's what a harbor is. If you could see a harbor
without any water in it, you'd have two pieces of land that
come out on each side that are higher, and then there's a veil,
there's a valley. That's what the harbor is. And
so the ship's trying to enter into the veil. So there's a play
on words here, but he says here, Christ, our forerunner, is entered
into the V-E-I-L. He's transitioning here from
talking about a ship analogy to talking about Christ being
our high priest and entered into that holiest of holies where
God our Father sits. And so you get the wordplay here,
it's a picture. Now, the only one that could
go into the Holy of Holies was the high priest under the old
covenant. And he had to go in with blood, he had to do it once
a year. But he had to do it every year, because those high priests
died, they had to be replaced, and that sacrifice never made
atonement. So they'd have to go under that
curtain once a year, every year. But Hebrews 9.12 tells us, It wasn't by the blood of goats
and calves, but by his own blood, Christ entered in once into the
holy place, having obtained eternal redemption for us. So he's our
forerunner who's gone in for us into the holiest of holies
where God sits, where God sits. And so as the ship would sit
out there and wait patiently and endure the wind and the rain
or whatever till the tide came back up and the anchor This chain
pulled him in to where the anchor was. So we have to patiently
endure. We have to wait in this sea,
and we're going through life, and we have to endure whatever
storms come, but we have an anchor, both sure and steadfast. And
so look back up at Hebrews 6, verse 15. It talks about Abraham
having these promises from God, and it said, so after he had
patiently endured, He obtained a promise. You see that? We're
waiting. That's what hope does. It patiently
endures, and our anchor's within the veil. Christ, our forerunner,
has entered in, and we're waiting. We're waiting. But we have a
sure expectation. Now, as believers, if we look
at ourselves as a ship going through life, there's days when
the wind's not blowing. They had to have wind to move
anywhere. There's days the wind's not blowing. just don't seem
to be able to move spiritually. There's days of storms come and
the winds blow fiercely. Waves mount up. Then there's
low tide where you can't move without running the risk of dangerous
rocks or running aground. These are all analogies that
apply to us. We saw not too long ago in Psalm
107, talked about those that go into deep waters and the analogy
of a believer being like a ship So our hope is Christ, and our
anchor, he's our anchor. Our hope is in Christ, and he's
the one who has the forerunner for us and entered in, and so
our hope is in that holiest of holies set on him. Set on him,
that's why it's sure and steadfast. So I wanna use this analogy of
hope being an anchor of the soul, and let's compare a few ways
that hope is similar to an anchor. All right, here's the first thing. needs a chain, it needs a cable
to connect the anchor with the boat. If you just threw an anchor
over and it didn't have a chain connecting it to the boat, it
wouldn't do any good. Just gonna lose an anchor. Well,
hope has to have a chain connecting us with that holy place, connecting
us with Christ. And that chain is faith. It's
faith. Faith is It goes right along
with hope. Wherever you find faith, you're
gonna find hope, and you won't have hope without faith. The
graces that are given of God, that they work together. Faith
sees the promises afar off. Faith sees Christ afar off, and
sees what he's accomplished, and sees the promise, and so
hope expects to enter in to what he's promised. Faith sees. Faith makes it come and be a
present reality to us, because we believe God. Remember we saw
not long ago faith is the substance of things hoped for. It's the
evidence of things not seen. Faith sees is the sight of the
believer and hope is what we're hoping for that which we believe
God has promised. Faith and hope have one object.
It's Christ our great high priest. What's making this a sure promise
to us? What makes it sure? What makes
this anchor sure and steadfast? It's the promise of God, it's
the eternal counsel of God. Go back now and read verse 13.
When God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no
greater, he swore by himself, saying, surely blessing I will
bless thee, and multiplying I will multiply thee. That's how to
God, that's what God says to you. That's what he says to you,
that's what this gospel promises to you. God is saying to those
that trust him, blessing I will bless you, multiplying, I will
multiply you. And so after he patiently endured,
he obtained a promise. Now, why did he make this oath?
Why did he swear? Because men verily swear by the
greater, and an oath for confirmation is the end of all strife. When
somebody swears and promises on something greater than they
are, that settles the matter between men. It's confirmed.
Well, God, verse 17, willing more abundantly to show unto
the heirs of promise the immutability of his counsel. Now see, he had
made his counsel, and it's immutable. He made his counsel in eternity.
That's his electing grace and his predestinating grace and
his adopting grace, choosing whom he will and choosing his
son to do the saving and choosing the hour when he would send the
gospel to you and give you faith to believe him. sending forth
the spirit to keep you, and determining the end from the beginning. This
is what God did in his eternal counsel. Wouldn't that have been
enough for God to just tell us his eternal counsel? Sure it
would have. He can't lie. He entered covenant,
God entered covenant with God to fulfill this, but God went
beyond that and he entered it with an oath and promised his
child that he'll have these promises that he's given. So he confirmed
it by an oath, so that by two unchangeable things, two immutable
things in which it's impossible for God to lie, his eternal decree
and his oath, two things we have, that we might have a strong consolation,
strong comfort here and strength, who have fled for refuge to lay
hold upon the hope set before us. We believe, don't we? We believe God's decree. We believe
God's purpose, his eternal covenant, and we believe that he's made
this oath to us. He's made this oath to us in
his son. Christ said, this testament, this New Testament, the blood,
the wine he gave us to picture his blood, he said, this is my
blood, the New Testament in my blood. He's written it in his
blood. That's our guarantee. It makes it sure and steadfast.
And so we fled for refuge by faith. We fled. Fled means you
got away from something real quick. And we fled to Christ
the refuge. The manslayer was after us. He
gonna kill us, the justice of God. We saw if we don't have
Christ, we're not in the refuge. Everything else is a false refuge.
Everything. So we fled into the refuge, into
Christ. And we laid hold upon the hope
set before us. That's Christ. We heard, we believed
the promise. And so now we have this hope,
it's entered in to the veil. And now we're waiting, just like
Abraham patiently endured, we're waiting. And this is what scripture
says, Galatians 4, 5. We, through the Spirit, wait
for the hope of righteousness by faith. We've been made righteous,
and there's coming a day that Christ shall return and we shall
be with him in glory, perfectly righteous within and without.
And that's what we're waiting for. That's what our hope is.
Eternal life, the hope of eternal life is gone. And so this promise
is sure and steadfast because all the promises of God, Paul
said in 2 Corinthians 1.20, all the promises of God in Christ
are yes and amen to the glory of God. Now, the question is,
if somebody doesn't have hope, here's the reason is, They haven't
fled to the refuge. Until we have faith, trust in
Christ, believe in Christ only, we can't have this good hope
because the hope is sure and steadfast because of Christ and
what he's done and he is doing for us. So have we believed on
Christ? This is the first thing. Believe
on the Lord Jesus. How do you do that? You cast
every bit of your care on him. You don't have to move a toe.
You don't have to do a thing. It's stopping from trusting everything
else and from doing to try to be accepted and believing on
the Lord Jesus. And through faith, we have this
good hope. The faith is the chain that connects us to the anchor
that's in the veil. All right, secondly, an anchor
must be cast out of the ship. An anchor's got to be cast out
of the ship. So our hope's not in something about us, our faith
is not In us, it's in Christ. So our hope is in Christ. Hope's
not in our merit. There's some that believe God
chose them because he foresaw good in them. That's salvation
by works is all that is. That's saying God merited salvation. God, that's not grace. That's
not grace. Grace is unmerited. Unmerited. Nothing we've done made us accepted
with God and nothing we've done merits God's favor in the least
bit. We've sinned against God. We
don't deserve the least temporal mercy from God. We certainly
don't deserve the least spiritual mercy from God. That's grace
to give it to us freely. And so hope, just like faith,
like all other blessings, are the free gift of God through
Christ Jesus. They're the gift of his grace.
Faith and hope and love, They're the gift of His grace. True faith
and true hope are in Christ. They lay hold of Christ. They
trust Christ only, not in self, not in self. You've heard this,
and to you, I hope it doesn't get old to you. I want this to
continue to be fresh to you. Because there's people in this
world, and it's easy for us to start looking to something in
us and thinking that we're We merit something. Very easy. And there's people in this world
that really do believe that. Everybody that doesn't believe
Christ believes that. Faith and hope's not in any righteousness
of our own. The hope of the moralist, man
who's moral, there's a lot of people in the world who are very,
very moral. They never believed on Christ,
never even heard the truth of God. They're very moral. Sometimes
they're more moral than God's people are. The legalist is the same way. They think they've kept the precepts
of the law, or at least done a pretty good job, and God will
be pleased with them. They're like Paul once said.
He said, it's touching the righteousness of the law blameless. And here's
what that leads to. When you start looking to your
works, you're going to start noticing the sins of others. To be trusting in your own righteousness,
this is what is always involved with it. This is why I don't
preach, put the focus on works when I'm preaching to you, and
it's why we must not, we must put the focus on Christ. We want
to do good works, but we don't want any room to trust in those
works at all. And here's why, because when
you start trusting your own righteousness and your own works, and it's
so very subtle, you will look for sin in others. because you
don't have a good hope. Every time you see yourself mess
up, your hope's diminished. It's not a real hope. And so
you've got to increase your hope yourself. And so what do you
need to do? You need to find somebody that's
worse than you so you can blame them, so you can stand like the
Pharisees stood in a temple and said, oh, God, I thank you. I'm not like other people are.
That's not even thanking God, is it? I thank you, I'm not like
other people are. I'm not an extortioner, I'm not
unjust, I'm not an adulterer, I'm not even like this publican
that Christ saves. I fast twice in a week, I give
tithes of everything I possess. And that's their righteousness,
I mean, and their hope. Their righteousness is their
hope, and you don't want to ever, and God won't let you. God will not let his child find
confidence in any good work we've done. Our hope's not even in
our profession. This is a big one now. Our hope's
not even in our profession. Our hope's not in our faith.
This hope is out of the ship. This faith is out of the ship.
It's Christ. It was trusting Christ. It's
connected to us through faith. It is. You're gonna feel it.
You're gonna know it. But it's not faith in our faith. And it's
not hope in our hope. There's a lot of people who trust
their baptism. We're not Church of Christ. You
see the sign that says Church of Christ? We're the true Church
of Christ. Those people that have that on
their sign, they trust that they were regenerated by being baptized. That was their regeneration.
That's how they washed away their sins. baptismal regeneration. We're not trusting our baptism.
That didn't wash away your sins. Christ did. We're baptized to
confess what Christ did, that we died with him and were buried
with him and rose again with him. It's not in our attendance
here. This is not our hope. There'll
be people, I'm sure, that sat where the gospel was preached
all their days and never really believed, putting confidence
in the fact they showed up. That's not our hope. It's not
in preaching. I don't have any hope in anything
I'm doing. Preaching is not something I'm
trusting in. I can't trust in any good work
that I've done, and you can't trust in any good work you've
done. An anchor has to be cast out of the ship, and faith goes
outside, hope goes outside of us to Christ. He's the only righteousness
of His people. True faith lays hold of him,
trusting he has fulfilled the law. He's our hope of righteousness,
that he's coming again to make us completely righteous in him.
And so we have a good hope. We have a good hope. Now, thirdly,
an anchor must be fastened on a rock or something very sturdy. It can't just be on sand. It's
gotta be on a rock. And so our hope is fastened on
Christ Jesus, our rock. By God's grace, our hope is an
anchor because it's in Christ at God's right hand. Now, why
is Christ there? Why is he there? Why is he at
God's right hand? Christ laid down his life in
the room instead of his people. That's why he came, to satisfy
justice, to bring in an everlasting righteousness for his people,
to completely, thoroughly put away the sin of his people. And
that's what he did. He entered in because he had
obtained redemption for his people. He purchased us from the law. The law had us, the law had taken
us for ransom, and the law said, you cannot have these children
back till you pay me a ransom. What's the ransom? Your life
for their life. That's what the law demanded,
and Christ paid that ransom so that his people have to be set
free. That veil in the temple, it says here, he's the forerunner
that entered the veil. Now look at the temple, and you
remember the temple, and it had that veil, thick veil that made
up the holiest of holies, and when Christ cried, it's finished,
that veil split from top to bottom. You believe that? It really did. That veil, it didn't split from
the bottom up, because then they might have said, well, it wore
out from us lifting it and going in. No, it split from the top
down. Because it's from the top down that God saved his people.
It's from God down to you. And he split it because he fulfilled
all righteousness. This is what faith's trusting.
Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone
that believes. By faith, we behold Christ risen.
We behold him entered into glory for us. We behold him seated
on the throne as our great high priest. The forerunner has entered
the veil. You realize what that means?
Before God, you've entered. Before God, you're seated there
by God. Before God, the way he's seated,
that's how it is. He's always viewed his people in Christ.
He's not viewing you in you. He's not looking at you to make
yourself righteous and holy. He's looking at his son who has
made us righteous and holy. What he's working in you and
me is turning us and keeping us from our sins and correcting
us from our sin to keep looking to Christ and trusting Christ
only. And that's what he's gonna keep
you doing because he's the only righteousness and holiness of
his people. the redemption of his people. Look at Hebrews 7,
look at verse 8. I'm sorry, Hebrews 7, verse 18.
It says, for there is verily a disannulling of the commandment
going before, for the weakness and unprofitableness thereof.
That means he fulfilled the law. For the law made nothing perfect,
but the bringing in of a better hope did, by the which we draw
nigh to God. That's Christ, that's Christ. Look at Hebrews 9 and verse 24. For Christ has not entered into
the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the
true. They were just types and pictures. But into heaven itself
now to appear in the presence of God for us. Nor yet that he
should offer himself often as the high priest entereth into
the holy place every year with the blood of others. For then
he must have suffered since the foundation of the world. But
now once in the end of the world hath he appeared to put away
sin by the sacrifice of himself. He did it one time because it's
appointed unto men once to die. And after this, there's just
one judgment. So he died one time and settled that one judgment
for his people. So Christ was once offered to
bear the sins of many and unto them that look for him shall
he appear the second time without sin unto salvation. That's what
faith believes and that's our hope. We're looking for him,
he's coming back, he's gonna carry us there. He's gonna carry us there. I
want you to see something here. I want you to see something here
in Hebrews 7 verse 9. Look at this. He said, he's talking about Abraham
coming and bowing down to Melchizedek and paying tithes. And he said,
and I may say so, Levi also, who receiveth tithes, paid tithes
in Abraham, for he was yet in the loins of his father when
Melchizedek met him. This is what faith believes.
Faith believes this, this is why Christ is our hope. You see, Levi was in Abraham.
He was born, Abraham begat Isaac, Isaac begat Jacob, Jacob all
the way down to Levi. So Levi was in Abraham's loins
when Abraham paid tithes to Melchizedek, so Levi paid tithes to Melchizedek. That's our gospel. We were in
Christ. Because God chose us in Christ.
We were in Christ. We're born of Christ. Everything
we have comes from Christ, the incorruptible seed. We were in
Christ. So when Christ walked this earth
and did all the things he did, we were in him doing everything
he did. We paid everything that he paid
in him. And when he arose, we arose in
him, and we sat down in him. Just like Levi paid tithes in
Abraham all those years before, we did in Christ. That's our
hope. That's our hope. Now, how does
this apply to us? Well, lastly, an anchor is sure
and steadfast to hold the ship. An anchor is sure and steadfast.
It'll hold the ship. It won't break. It's going to
hold the ship. It could break, but not this
anchor. This anchor won't break. Hope
won't break. The true faith and true hope is kept by God, and
it's not going to break. It's going to keep you sure and
steadfast. Sometimes a ship, now you picture a ship sitting
out there with this long chain stretched out and the anchor's
up in the harbor up in there, up in the veil, the V-A-L-E.
And so it drifts a bit with the breeze the ship does. And sometimes
it'll get slack in the chain. It'll get some slack in the chain. Sometimes we begin to drift,
don't we? We still got this old said nature
in us. We begin to look at ourselves. We begin to look at things we've
done. Begin to look at the world. Begin to find confidence in the
ship. We start looking here, inside. And left to ourselves,
if God didn't keep us, we left to ourselves, we would drift
out to sea. If that chain was ever broke
and that hope ever ceased to be anchored in that harbor, we'd
just drift right on out to sea. That's some of us. Or either
we'd crash on the rocks and sink, or we'd run aground and sink. But God, look at the ship now. It's out there. But when the
wind blows, the ship drifts back just enough, and that chain gets
tight, and you can feel that anchor. You know it's not going
anywhere. There's an anchor holding it.
And that chain's holding it. It's tight now. It's not going
anywhere. You know God sends the winds to us on purpose. When
we start drifting and the chain gets slack in it, and we go,
God sends the wind to make that faith stronger, like that chain
tightening up, and make you, your hope be in Christ and make
you know that's, He's your hope. He's your hope. Paul said, lest
I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the
revelations that was given to me a thorn in the flesh. Everybody
wants to debate about what it was. Let's know what Paul says
it was. The messenger of Satan to buffet me, to beat me black
and blue, lest I should be exalted above measure. Paul said, God
gave me that. God gave me that to keep me from
being puffed up, to keep the chain from breaking, to keep
me from my anger giving way, keep me from drifting out to
sea. God gave that. That's mercy. When trouble comes,
since our faith is weak and our hope is weak, when it first comes
and there's slack in the chain, we can't feel the anchor at first.
What do we always do when the trouble comes? We're like Job.
We're like Heman. Some others, they spoke of their
hope being gone and they said they're perished from the Lord.
We start thinking like that. With that strong wind, God's
going to tighten that chain. He's going to make your faith
rest in Christ only. And He's going to make your hope
enter into the veil where Christ is. And then we start talking
to ourselves. We start saying, why are you
cast down, O my soul? Why art thou disquieted within
me? Hope thou in God. for I shall
yet praise him for the help of his countenance. And we wouldn't
have that. We would never come to ourselves
and say, stop hoping in these things, stop believing these
things, and hope thou in God. We'd never come to ourselves
and say that if it wasn't for God sending the strong wind and
keeping us going. You can't anchor yourself. He's
got to anchor you, and he's gonna keep you anchored, and that's
what God's doing. We need hope, and God's pleased
to grow it through strong winds and low tides We need it. Through all the trials, he's
gonna keep it going. Look at Romans 5, I'll end with
this. This is what he's gonna keep doing right here. See, it's
not just, you get people preaching about how once you're saved,
you don't ever have any troubles with sin anymore, you don't have
any doubts, you don't have any fears, you don't, you know, it's
just green pasture from then on. That ain't so. Because it's
necessary that it be not so. Let me show you why. Romans 5.1,
being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our
Lord Jesus Christ. By Christ also we have access
by faith into this grace wherein we stand and we rejoice in hope
of the glory of God. Our hope is one day we're gonna
be in glory with God and we're gonna behold his glory. And not
only do we rejoice in that, here's what we rejoice into. We glory
in tribulations also and trials Knowing that tribulation works
patience. We got a long time to wait for
Christ to come back. And so he gonna make us patiently
wait. That's what hope's doing. Hope's making you patiently endure.
So he sent you trial to work patience in you. And patience
works experience. He sends the trial and you start
praying and asking God and God doesn't come right away. And
you gotta wait till he comes and tightens the chain and makes
you see your anchor. So you learn to be patient and
wait on God. But you experience, He did come
to me. He did come and restore me and
make me believe and keep trusting Him. So that experience is given
to you and that experience works hope. That increases your hope
to know God's gonna do what He promised. And that hope will
never make you ashamed because in all of this, because the love
of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which
is given to us. What's He reminding us of? Look
at the next verse. When we were yet without strength,
in due time Christ died for the ungodly. And we're gonna be saved
by his life at God's right hand. He's reminding you, if I saved
you by my blood when you didn't have any strength in you, well,
you don't have any in you now. You're still gonna be saved by
my life interceding for you at God's right hand, keeping you.
And that's what he has to keep showing us over and over. We
start trying to pull up the anchor and think, well, we can make
it into the harbor ourselves. And he's gonna make you see,
no, you can't. He's the only one that's gonna get the glory
for bringing you in there. So here's what we sing. I'm just
gonna sing, I'm gonna give you the verses and then I'll give
you the chorus. My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood
and righteousness. I dare not trust the sweetest
frame not my own and not another, but wholly lean on Jesus' name. When darkness veils his lovely
face, there comes the trial. I rest in his unchanging grace. He'd given me two immutable things
in which it's impossible for God to lie, his decree and his
oath. I'm resting in that, even when I can't see his face, even
when the trial's dark. In every high and stormy gale,
my anchor holds within the veil. when he shall come with trumpet
sound, that's my hope. Oh, may I then in him be found,
dressed in his righteousness alone, faultless to stand before
the throne. Now here's the chorus. On Christ
the solid rock I stand. All of the ground is sinking
sand. I pray God will bless that. Father, thank you for this word.
Pray, Lord, you keep us looking to Christ only. Pray, Lord, you
keep us doing that which pleases you above all else, believing
on your son, casting all our care on your son. Help us, Lord,
to do the work you'd have us to do. And all the while, keep
us knowing Christ is our only hope, our only righteousness.
Lord, we thank you that you keep saving us from our pretty sins
and from our ugly sins from our immorality and from our self-righteousness. And Lord, we pray you continue
to do so. Keep us looking only to Christ. It's in his precious
name. Amen.