Hebrews chapter 6. And I'm going to begin reading in verse 13. For when God made promise to
Abraham, I read that again this morning, and I thought about
the life and experiences of Abraham, and how you could have looked
so many times at his life, and in his experiences, and in his
failures, and asked the question, will Abraham make it? Will Abraham make it? I ask that
question of myself sometimes. For 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." And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. For men verily swear by the greater,
and an oath for condemnation is to them an end of all strife."
Or that is, an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife. Wherein God, willing more abundantly
to show unto the heirs of promise The immutability of his counsel
confirmed it by an oath, that by two immutable things in which
it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation
who 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, whither
the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made an high priest
forever after the order of Melchizedek." There are several things in these
verses that are used to describe the
Lord Jesus Christ in what He is to all them that
believe. You know, it says, unto them
that believe, He is precious. And He is very much like a multifaceted
jewel. As He is turned and as He is
looked at and studied and observed from all the various angles that
we find in Scripture, We find in Him and see in Him a new brilliance. He's precious. And one of the things that are
used by the Spirit of God here in His condescending grace to
show us more of Christ is this picture of Christ as an anchor. I can remember when I was a young
boy, and that was a long time ago, that my daddy would take
us and we would go down to Sneeds Ferry and rent one of those old
boats, I think it was for about a dollar, more a barge maybe
than a boat, but we'd go out and try to go fishing sometimes
and We want to get kind of close to the channel. Not in it, but
close to it. And so we would take an anchor
or what was supposedly an anchor and amounted most of the time
to a concrete block tied to a rope and we would throw it overboard
and Call that our anchor, and we'd try to fish over into the
channel maybe. And we'd be all involved in our
fishing, and we'd be all interested in what we might be catching,
and then all of a sudden, We would notice that we were too
close to the bridge, or too close to a sandbar, or too close to
running aground, and the reason was that our anchor had not held. Our anchor had simply, along
with the boat in the current, just been drifting along. And though we had a sense of
security in the fact that we thought we were anchored and
secure, we realized that what we had was not really an anchor
at all. And it is a sad thing that many
men and women, with regard to their eternal souls, they have
not this anchor." Because if you notice here, here our Lord
is likened to this anchor. That, according to the dictionary,
being a nautical term, is described in this way. a heavy object attached
to a vessel by a cable or rope and cast overboard to keep the
vessel in place by either its weight or by its flukes which
grip the bottom. Now, the only way that an anchor
is of any value is if it first be cast into the sea. And if you remember, as we find
that man Jonah, who is himself a picture and type of the Lord
Jesus Christ, when that fierce storm and wind arose against
the ship that he was sailing on, Though they tried every way
to rid themselves of the cargo and everything else, and those
mariners became very much afraid, there was only one way for them
to be saved from that wind, and that was to cast Jonah overboard. So what we find concerning the
Lord Jesus Christ is that first of all, He had to be cast into
the sea of God's wrath. The only way of salvation, the
only way of our being delivered, the only way of our being secured
before God Almighty is by Christ and Him crucified. That's why Paul said, I determined
not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And what we have in this anchor
is a symbol. It is not simply my illustration
or my picture that I've come up with. This is a symbol that
God has given him, and it is a symbol of safety, and it is
a symbol of security, and a symbol of stability. Because if you
notice here, the Lord Jesus Christ is set forth here as the one
anchor. He is the anchor. There are not many anchors of
the soul. There is just one anchor. And everyone who is not secured
before God by this one anchor is just simply drifting along
in the current of time, resting in a false hope and a false security
most likely, and drifting on into an eternity without the
Lord God and His grace. You see, he is described here
in this 19th verse, being our hope, as the anchor of the soul. Now there are not too many people
in our day interested in any way in the soul. Everything is about the body. get my body healthy, get my body
wealthy, do everything I can to preserve and beautify my body. But the truth is, rather than
be a body, the Bible says that we are a soul. It says that God, out of the
dust of the earth, created this body, and He breathed into this
body the breath of life, and man became a living soul. In other words, we are living
souls. We're not a body that has a soul,
we are living souls that have a body. And the greatest need
that we have is the need that we have with regard to our souls. If our body fails, and it will
in time, whatever happens to us bodily, it is never to be
compared or measured in any way to that which would happen to
us in our soul. We are living forever as eternal
souls. When we die, it will not be the
end. And we have a generation of young
people, I'm afraid, that have been fed this diet of annihilation
so that we live for the moment because soon we die and nothing
else matters, that's the end of it all, but we nonetheless
are living souls. And there's just one anchor of
the soul. The first thing that I want us
to notice in this picture of the Lord Jesus Christ as the
anchor of the soul is to remember that the anchor is never cast
into the ship itself. Now here's somebody floating
along in a boat and they're getting a current, they want to stop,
they want to be secure. And they say, we're okay because
we've got an anchor in our boat. No, that's never the case. You never cast the anchor into
the boat as a form of security and stability. It has to be cast
into the sea. And that's what this book is
telling us again and again and again. In other words, here are all
of the people in this world, most of whom have some knowledge
about an anchor, and they would never be so stupid, never to
be so blind as to think that they would be stabilized or secure
by the fact that they had put an anchor in the boat. That's
not the case. Turn over to Ephesians. and the second chapter. Now we've
read this so many times, but I want you to look here in Ephesians
chapter 2, beginning in verse 4, after Paul has described our
awful condition as sinners in ourselves, helpless and hopeless. And he turns and he says in verse
4, he says, "...but God, who is rich in mercy for His great
love wherein He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath
quickened us together with Christ, by grace ye are saved." By grace you are saved. And then he says, "...and hath
raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places
in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come He might show the
exceeding riches of His grace in His kindness toward us through
Christ Jesus. For by grace are ye saved through
faith, and that not of yourselves." You see that? Grace means that
it is not of yourselves. Not even the faith by which we
are enabled to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, that is not
of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of
works, lest any man should boast. The anchor is not cast into the
ship. The anchor is outside of the
ship. And God, how many times in this
New Testament especially, has shown us again and again that
salvation is holy and totally by His grace in Jesus Christ. And yet, that is so contrary
to our natural thinking and our natural desires that men look
at this Word in blindness and trust in themselves. They trust in the fact that they've
given something. They trust in the fact that they've
felt something. They trust in the fact that they
have desired to do something. But the anchor is never cast
in any way in the ship, but into the sea. Listen to what he says. Paul writing to Titus in the
clearest, most distinct thing that anything could be. He says
in chapter 3 and verse 5, "...not by works of righteousness which
we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us." Now,
how could you ever? read such a statement of Scripture,
and follow that with something like I hear all the time, well,
that's right, we're saved by grace, we're saved by this anchor,
but if you're not holding on to that line real tight, you're
going to perish. If you're not living right and
doing right, and Paul addresses these good works in the following
verse, but he never makes that a part of the basis of our salvation. He said it's not by works of
righteousness which we've done. But he says it's according to
His mercy. You know what mercy is? In other
words, if you're saved by God's mercy and by God's grace, if
you acknowledge that before God, that automatically puts you in
a category that no sinner by nature wants to be in. You say,
what category is that? Somebody who has to have mercy.
You see, mercy is the kind treatment of one who has showed themselves
as enemies to God. Here are all these people who
think they love God. They've always loved God. No,
they've loved the God of their own imagination that we read
about such as in Psalm 115, but not the God of the Bible. If
we say that we are saved by God's grace, grace is God giving us
that which we do not deserve. You mean we don't deserve anything?
Just hell. Just judgment. Just wrath. And so if we are saved by grace,
if we are saved by the Lord Jesus Christ. Paul writes to Timothy,
and he speaks of God in this way in chapter 1 and verse 9
of 2 Timothy. He says, "...who hath saved us, and called us with an holy calling,
not according to our works." Isn't that something? That's not to say we're not to
treat each other well, love one another, help one another. That's not to say we're not to
abstain from ungodliness and immorality and all these other
kinds of things. But when it comes down to the
basis upon which we stand accepted or rejected by God, the basis
upon which we are righteous or unrighteous before God, that
basis is in Jesus Christ alone. His salvation is by His grace. The anchor is never cast into
the ship. We never have hope based on anything
in ourselves, or anything done by ourselves, or anything abstained
from by ourselves, not according to our works, but according to
His own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus
before the world began. There's no possibility that any
of God's elect will ever be lost. They've been tied to this anchor
since before the world began. And then here's the second thing
about this anchor, this picture of Christ as an anchor, and that
is that an anchor, when it is doing what it is supposed to
be doing, is unseen. It's unseen. It's an invisible thing. It sinks
beneath the waters. And though we cannot see it,
though we cannot fathom exactly what it may be doing at any given
moment, it grips the solid ground beneath. I can remember sitting on the
bow of those boats. That was kind of my job. I was
the older son and my job was to sit up there and try to wrestle
that old big concrete block with a rope tied to it off the bow
of that boat and throw it in and you could just feel that
line as it fed off and you could feel it when it hit the bottom
and all of a sudden it'd be bouncing. You can sense that it was just
bouncing along on the bottom. But when it finally grabbed,
There was that unmistakable, solid pull and feeling. You couldn't see it, but you
knew that it had held and was securing the boat. You see, salvation Not only is
it not in ourselves, it is not in what we see or feel, but it
is in Christ and what Paul calls the righteousness of faith. Everybody's got faith these days,
you know, you hear them talking. They got a lot of faith, oh I
got a lot of faith, or you know, I have faith. I believe that there's a God.
I've got faith. I believe there's a God. James
said the devils believe that and tremble. But God-given faith, and that's
the only true faith that there is, that faith He gives us again. God-given faith only rests in,
only relies upon, and only trusts in Christ as He's revealed in
the Scripture. Not as He is in my mind, though
I do pray that He is in my mind as He is in this Scripture because
of what He's taught me. But this anchor, you look out,
you see the sea, you don't see the anchor. And Christ is not
seen. Christ is that One who is the
object of faith. And Paul says in Hebrews 11 that
faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things
not seen. Oh, if I see a miracle, I believe.
No, you won't. If you read this book, And notice
how many times men and women, virtually from Genesis to Revelation,
saw supernatural, miraculous things done by God they didn't
believe. Why? Because they didn't have
faith. And faith is that God-given evidence
of things Not seen. You're sitting in your boat,
you look outside and you look in that water. Can't see anchor. You got any reason to believe
that your anchor is holding and secure? Only if there is some
basis, some ground of true assurance that you really have one, and
that it's really holding, and the only ground and basis for
believing that you have this anchor, and that it is secure
in Him, is the same anchor that Abraham
has. He had a promise from God. Will Abraham make it? Amen, he
will make it. Not because of him, but because
of him who promised. He's going to make it. It's like
Spurgeon said one time concerning that person on a steamer that
was sailing from London to New York. And he said they were there
on that steamship, that big ship, and it had to go through that
area where the icebergs were and all this stuff, and they
were trembling and nervous and doing all these things, afraid. He said, will that passenger
make it? He said, if the ship makes it,
he will. That's why the Lord's people
are going to make it. Because the Lord Jesus Christ has already
made it. Peter, he speaks of our Lord
and he says, whom having not seen, you love. How can you love something
you haven't seen? By faith. by God-given faith. I've never seen the Lord Jesus
Christ. This would just probably disappoint
a lot of you and a lot of people. I've never had a vision. My son
woke up this morning, he came out and he said, did you hit
me during the night? I said, no, I didn't. He said,
I dreamed it. I dreamed that you came in there
and just bumped me. I said, what did you have for supper last
night? That's about the only kind of visions I have is if
I eat chocolate late at night. I've never had this vision. I've
never, as one fellow told me one time, I've never seen Jesus. He said he saw Him in a black
robe. How can you have any confidence? How can you have any hope? Because
the eyes of faith Behold the Christ that God declares and
reveals in this book. And He is awesome. Whom having not seen, ye love,
though now you see Him not, yet believe Him. Yet believe Him. You say, why do you believe this
gospel? You know I don't know. I only know this, I can't believe
anything else. God came to me through this gospel
at a time in my life over 30 years ago when I thought I knew
God, when I thought I was preaching about God, when I thought I had
some understanding of the Bible, and He convinced me that He is
the God of sovereign free grace in Christ. And I'll tell you,
I'll just be honest with you, there have been times when the
believing this truth caused consequences in my life and situations that
I'd almost try to not believe it. Not a chance. I can't help but believe it.
I'm so convinced in my mind and heart that it is the truth that this is how God is, this
is how He saves, that this is the desperate state that we're
in, and our only hope is the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm so convinced
of that in my heart, I can't believe anything else. Not that
I want to, but I can't. He said, though now you see Him
not yet believing, you rejoice with joy unspeakable, full of
glory, receiving the end or the goal of your faith, what's that? Even the salvation of your souls. What's the goal of God-given
faith? the full, eternal, free salvation
of our souls through Christ and Him crucified." And he said,
you'll receive it. We're going to receive it. We
enjoy it now, but we're going to finally receive it, the full
salvation of our souls. Because God-given faith is that
secure line that secures us, and we're made to know of God's
faithfulness. Faithful is He that hath promised. That makes us to know of our
security and our safety and stability, because He has put us in that
everlasting covenant. That's what that talk in Hebrews
6 is all about. God's oath, God's covenant, God's
promise. All of God's promises. Because
He has secured us in Christ in a predetermined purpose. Because He has bound us to His
everlasting love. He said, I've loved you. with
an everlasting love. Therefore, with these cords of
grace and mercy, I've drawn you." I'm going to keep you, draw you. And then the safety and the security
and the stability of this anchor, and Christ as the anchor, shows
us that all these things are outside of ourselves. Oh, happy day it is when God
Almighty brings a sinner to know that all of this acceptance with
God, all this salvation, all this righteousness is in one
outside of ourselves. Our righteousness is on the throne
of heaven. all our salvation." Somebody
said, well, you sure got all your eggs in one basket. No,
I've got them all in one person and what He's accomplished. You see, though what Christ has
done for us does surely bring a work in us, we are saved by
Him outside of ourselves. As a matter of fact, before the
world began, before our birth, even before
our believing, we're said to be in Christ Jesus. Now, I'll let people debate what
we got, when, all they want to. But I know this, the Lord Jesus
Christ who is the Lord our righteousness, the Lord Jesus Christ is the
one in whom God has given us all spiritual blessings. It says
that all His people were in Him before the world began. Suppose here's a man who falls
into a deep pit. Here's modern day religion salvation. Here's a man who falls down in
the bottom of a pit, breaks every bone in his body, dies of his
wounds, and here's a man who comes to the edge of the mouth
of that pit and lowers a rope down to him and says, now if
you'll get hold of this rope and climb out, You'll be okay. You see, the remedy or the means
by which we're saved has to depend on the condition we're in. And
the Bible says we're dead in trespasses and sin. We're blind
spiritually. We're helpless, hopeless, lame,
leprous. We are so rendered in our spiritual
condition before God as to be totally unable to save ourselves. So the only way that one could
save us or rescue us is to come down into that pit himself and
pick us up and raise us to life and take us out. And that's what
the Lord Jesus Christ did when He came into this world. It is His love, it is His power,
it is His faithfulness that's demonstrated in this. It's all
outside of ourselves. And if you notice in His description
here, He says in verse 19 of Hebrews 6, "...which hope we
have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast." I'm not a gambler. I'm not a
gambler. I like a sure thing. I don't
like wondering. I don't like risking. I like
a sure thing. And Christ, as the anchor of
His people, is described as both sure and steadfast. This secure salvation is sustained
by the anchor. Now, I'll tell you what, souls, even saved souls, just
like ships can get in some Bad water. They can run through some
bad times and some storms and they can show how totally unfit
and unworthy and such as a multitude of things that they can fall
themselves into and show themselves that they, if left to themselves,
they're going all the way to the bottom. If you're one of the Lord's believing
people, you might as well get out of your mind that somehow
you're going to improve. I pray we grow in the grace and
knowledge of Christ. But if you see any improvement
in your flesh, you better beware. Because it's like that mirage
out there on the desert. It ain't real. The salvation that's sure and
steadfast is always in the anchor. And no matter the state of the
ship, no matter how bad or how many the storms, the ship's safety
is always in the anchor. Peter says, we are kept by the
power of God through faith unto salvation, ready to be revealed
in the last time. You say, preacher, don't you
believe in the perseverance of the saints? I absolutely do. I believe in the perseverance
of the saints because of the preserving power of the Savior.
I don't believe that we're the ones who keep Him, I believe
He's the one that keeps us. He said, I give unto them eternal
life, and they shall never perish. All who perish never worship
the Lord. I give to my sheep eternal life. They'll never perish. Fall, yes,
but they'll never perish. stumble in this world, yes, but
they'll never perish. Have fits of unbelief, yes, but
they'll never perish. Fail in so many ways, morally,
whatever it is, yes, but they'll never perish. I give unto them
eternal life, and they'll never perish, neither shall any man
pluck them out of My hand. For, O David, There's come a time when he's
laying there on his deathbed. He's committed adultery. He's
had a man murdered. He's sinned in numbering the
Lord's people. He's lied about this. He's just
failed. You see, the Lord paints the
picture of His saints, as Cromwell said, warts and all. So he's
going out into eternity. He knows he's going to die. The
Lord had told him how a king and a ruler and a man was supposed
to be over his house. He knew he hadn't been any of
that. But he lays there on that deathbed. He says, although my house be
not so with God, yet He hath made with me. an everlasting covenant, ordered
in all things, and sure." You see, the only sure salvation
is this covenant salvation. And that is the covenant within
the Godhead wherein there is an agreement to fulfill within
the Godhead, and by the persons of the Godhead, everything necessary
to ratify that covenant. Everything. The Father will choose,
ordain. The Son will die and bleed and
pay the price. The Spirit will apply every benefit. Did David say, well, it don't
matter what I do? Did David say, as some say, well,
if I believe what you believe, well, I just do whatever I want
to. My problem is I do what I don't want to. You see, this is the
covenant Christ He's talking about. Ordered in all things
and sure, for this is all my salvation and all my desire,
although He make it not to grow. If He didn't save any of my children,
I cannot help but to praise Him for saving me. I didn't deserve
it. You don't deserve it. He says in Romans 4, Paul does,
"...therefore it is of faith that it might be by grace to
the end that the promise might be sure to all the seed." It
was in works just a little bit. Couldn't be sure. But if it's
in Christ, if it's through this God-given faith that it's received,
then a sinner has nothing to boast in and can only praise
God. Why is this anchor secure? Because
of who He is. He's the God-man. He's the King
of kings. He's the Lord. He's the Master. He's that Immutable One. been talked about in verses 17
and 18. God's immutable or unchangeable,
He's the same yesterday, today, and forever. And therefore He
could say, I am the Lord, I change not. Therefore, You sons of Jacob
are not consumed. You change every second. Sinners are as fickle as anything
can be, but God never changes. He says, that's why you're not
consumed. I purpose to save you, I didn't change my mind. I've
given my son for you, I'm not taking it back. Isaiah said, He shall not fail
nor be discouraged till He has set judgment in the earth, and
the isles shall wait for His law." Wait for the good news. This anchor is secure because
of what He accomplished for us in His life and death. He finished
the work. He brought in that everlasting
righteousness. He satisfied all that divine
justice required, being made sin for us that we might be made
the righteousness of God in Him. He bore our sins away on that
tree and redeemed us from the curse of the law. He saved us. And His is a sure work because
it's a just work. Now, if you have a debt or I
have a debt and somebody says, well, your debt's paid, don't
worry about it. You owed $50 million and 49 million of it's
been paid, everything's all right. No, it's not. Because in my case, I could as
quickly come up with 49 million as I could a million. If there's one jot or tittle
owed, we're in trouble. But He has
paid it all before a just God and a Savior. The Lord has laid
on Him, imputed to Him, all the sins of His people. And He has
also at the same time imputed to them the very righteousness
of God in Christ. All the promises of God are in
Him, yea, and amen, unto the glory of God by us. Will those who trust Christ alone
be safe? Will they be sure to enter into
eternal glory in Him? if the anchor holds, they will. And I love what that old hymn
writer wrote, because this is the confidence of all who trust
Christ alone. We have an anchor that keeps
the soul steadfast and sure while the billows roll. fastened to
the rock which cannot move, grounded firm and deep in the Savior's
love." I pray that Christ is your anchor. Every other is just a drifting
piece of worthless block. Father, this day we give You
thanks and praise and glory for Your dear Son and our Savior. Lord, we're thankful that He is both sure and steadfast, that all in Him are safe and
secure and stable, come what may. We thank you that you have done
these things in such a way as to get glory to yourself. And we praise you, ask you to
help us. Ask You, as the song said, to
bind our wandering hearts to Thee. For we pray and ask it all in
Christ's name. Amen.