We went through chapter five,
the latter part of chapter five, a couple of weeks as it moves
into six. And you realize that these chapter headings have no
meaning in the content of the, in the intent of the author.
They're just there so that we can know where we're going with
1,300, 1,500 pages of tissue paper, so that we can know where
we're going and find these references. And because of that, these references
have become pretexts, and these pretexts have become doctrine.
This doctrine has become theology. This theology has become heresy.
So we just need to keep the context. That's why I'm taking some time
here in chapter 5 and 6 because it is a troubling section. It
is also an area that would be considered a warning passage
that is a pretext for many people to use against Christians. And
Paul is not speaking to Christians here. He is writing to them.
He's speaking about unbelievers. He's talking to Christians about
unbelievers. Those who have gone away from
the gospel of grace, back into works, back into personal righteousness,
back into the precepts of maturing and obedience and things of that
nature, which are good for us to do, but they were hoping in
that and their confidence was in that. So as we look, let's
start in chapter 6 verse 9 and read down to the end of the chapter
again and then we'll talk about it. Though we speak in this way,
yet in your case, beloved, we feel sure of better things, things
that belong to salvation. For God is not unjust so as to
overlook your work and the love that you've shown for his name
in serving the saints, as you still do. And we desire each
one of you to show the same earnestness and to have the full assurance
of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but
imitators of those who through faith and patient inherit the
promises. For when God made a promise to
Abraham, since he had no one greater by whom to swear, he
swore by himself, saying, Surely I will bless you and multiply
you. And thus Abraham, having patiently waited, obtained the
promise. For people swear by something
greater than themselves, and in all their disputes an oath
is final for confirmation. So when God desired to show more
convincingly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable
character of his purpose, he guaranteed it with an oath. so
that by two unchangeable things in which it is impossible for
God to lie, we who have fled for refuge might have strong
encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. We have
this as a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that
enters into the place behind the curtain where Jesus has gone
as a forerunner on your behalf, having become a high priest forever.
after the order of Melchizedek. So now, I hope that just hearing
that helps you see the continuity here. It's important that we
read this, and I would encourage you to read the letter. It doesn't
take that long. It really doesn't take, I don't
know how long it takes you, but it shouldn't take you more than
25 minutes to read Hebrews. If you could read it on midweek
before you come, or at least the days ahead, it would be very
beneficial to you. because it would begin to click.
It would begin to put you in a place where you're not sectioning
out this letter, but that you're seeing the one single argument
that Paul is making. And so when you look here, we
see that there are those who have fallen back into Judaism,
those who have found assurance and confidence in the flesh.
Paul has already said this can't be. Christ is the great high
priest. Christ is greater than all of
these examples, all of these illustrations, all of these temporary
things. And so that When we see people
falling away, they are rejecting the gospel. So the very act that
people find confidence in something other than grace, they've rejected
the gospel. And in doing so, they spurn the
Son of God. But Paul is not looking at these
believers and saying, we fear this is true of you. He's saying,
this is not true of you. We speak about better things.
things that are concerning and belong to salvation. We see how
you're working. We see how you're loving. We
see how you're living. But we want to see also that
you are learning very clearly the full effect of the full assurance
of the gospel of grace. And we want you to know that
that grace is free and that grace is sovereign. That grace is something
that is the work of God from beginning to end. That confidence,
that hope, that assurance, that encouragement, that solidity,
that you are indeed in Christ is something that God has finished
and that God will establish in you and keep in you. And so in
understanding these things, he says, I don't want you to be
sluggish. I want you to be imitators. I want you to be imitators. But
it's real easy for us to think about that. When I think of imitation,
we were talking about dressing up earlier, certain festivities,
and some people that dress up in certain things, costume parties,
or make believe, or Halloween, or trick or treat, or graduation. I dressed up as Batman in my
preschool graduation. My grandmother made me the Batman
outfit. I still got it, too. It was real
little, about that big. You know, we pretend to be something else.
We're imitating. That's not the imitation that
Paul is talking about. The imitation that Paul is talking
about is in two ways. We imitate those who have the
full assurance of hope until the end. So we imitate their
faith. In other words, we see how they rest and then we rest
likewise in the same gospel, in the same purity, in the same
idea that there is nothing outside of Jesus Christ by which we can
hold, on to which we can hold. There is no toehold, there is
no safety net, there is no strap, there is no harness that carries
us in Christ just in case. It is Christ alone or nothing.
And the second thing that we see is true about these people
who have full assurance of hope until the end. They have a desire
and an earnestness for this assurance in their love and their service
for one another. So Paul is saying, keep busy loving and serving
the Lord Jesus Christ through the love and the service that
you have for the saints who also have that full assurance of hope.
And don't be sluggish. And he identifies this imitation
as those, he identifies them whom we should imitate as those
who through faith, with patience, inherit the promises. Because
where is it that we often get enamored with the idea that we
must do more to feel confident in our salvation? When we see
sin in our lives. when we have sinful thoughts,
when we have temptation, when we act certain ways willfully,
when we act and speak and do certain things not willfully,
just, oh, why did I say that? Why did I think that? Why did
I do that? Sometimes that happens. And when we come to that place,
if we're not careful, man has been very creative and very consistent. That's the word I'm looking for.
Mankind has been very consistent in keeping with the idea that
if you see these things in your life, then you need to be very
scared because the purpose of Christ's coming is to remove
these things from your life. No. Freedom from sin is power
over sin. The wages of sin is death. Christ
has freed us from the wage of sin. Christ has freed us from
the power of sin and that he took the punishment of our sin. Yes, and by the spirit and through
the word, as the Lord wishes, he can help us grow and mature
and put off certain aspects of our flesh. We can grow to have
a clean mouth. We can grow to have pure thoughts.
We can grow to have eyes that look at things that are pure
and hands that touch things that are pure, et cetera. But when
we begin to think, I'm not touching the bad stuff, I'm looking at
the good stuff, I'm doing things correctly, and we mix that up
with the gospel, we've concluded That which is against the doctrine
of grace. The doctrines of grace. We've
concluded that we are sufficiently establishing some sense of security
in our salvation. That's the problem. Paul says
you can't do that. Don't imitate people who are
going back into the way of religion and self-righteousness and self-hope
and legalism. Don't imitate them just like
Paul says to the Romans. Don't imitate those who just
sin because they can. They need to be put out of the
church quickly, soon. You can't have either. You walk
in grace or you're in trouble. You cannot go those ways. You must go the way of Christ.
You must go the way of the promises of God. And so that's where he
goes now. So those who you imitate are the ones who, through faith,
that means they believe in the promise, and they do so with
patience, they wait. So they wait upon the Lord. Beloved,
we're gonna have to wait and be patient with the Lord. concerning
our glorification, concerning our sin, concerning our personal
growth and our personal maturity. We're going to have to be patient
as we wait by faith. And then as this promise of God
one day to tell us what? What has He promised us? That
we will have rest. We will have rest from our labor,
rest from our work, rest from our cares, rest from our worries,
rest from our flesh, rest from our sin, rest from temptation.
We will rest because Christ has promised us that rest, but we
are impatient, quick, soon, gotta have it now, wish it was yesterday
people. And we think that way in every
aspect of life. We wish we were grown, we were
15, wish we were 20, 20 wish we were 30, 30 wish we were 40, 40 wish we were 30.
50 wish we were 30, 60 wish we were
just 50. I mean, you know, and it goes
on and on and on. And so we wish our lives were
somewhere other than where they were, whether it be economical,
relational, spiritual, maturity, whatever it might be, academic,
we wish we were somewhere down the road. And in doing so, we
miss the very aspects of what it means to rest in the promises
of what God has made for us today, especially in the sense of the
gospel. So we're not gonna be sluggish, just sitting around
going, whoa, it's me, I'm never gonna make it, or sluggish in
the context of saying, well, I can't do anything, I'm just
so sinful, or I'm just so weak, or I've just got so much doubt
that I'll just do nothing. Paul deals with that with the
Thessalonians, who had thought that the Lord had returned. And he says, no, don't cater
to that. Don't cater to those people who
are well able to do something, but they've decided to give up,
because they just feel like the Lord just left them on the earth,
they're never gonna make it. Tell them they're not even going
to get a meal unless they get up off their butts. That's what
Paul says. Don't let them eat until they get up and work. Don't
let them eat. There's no handout. Be active.
Serve the church. Serve the brothers. Serve the
sisters. Do what you can do to be active
for today. for today, but most importantly,
imitate the faith of those who wait patiently for the promise.
So then, what does he say? He goes right into for, for when
God made a promise. So this is the practical application
of the theology of sovereign grace, the promises of God for
eternal life for his people through his son, Jesus Christ, whom he
put forward as propitiation to be received by faith, period. And now we're talking about the
promises of God. When I was growing up, there
was this little cliche, that phrase, that I'd rather be standing
on the, let's see, hold on, standing on the promises rather than sitting
in the premises. Talking about being in the church. And that sounded so cool when
I was in the middle school, you know, like, yeah, are you sitting
on the premises or are you standing on the promises? How about both?
How about both? How about we're in and active
in the local assembly as we stand on the promises of God? Why does
that have to be mutually exclusive? But I think it was just the point
in a false gospel of Americanized proportions. puts the onus on
the creature to continue in a way of resting. So that even our
resting is our doing. Even our faith is our doing.
See how wicked that is? See how selfish that is? See
how empowering that is to somebody who feels confident in their
flesh? And how defeating it is for those of us who don't. I
will never find confidence in flesh. I know me. I am a murderer
through and through, my toes to my eyelashes. I know me that
if the Lord would not restrain the depravity of my flesh, I
could hate people all the time. I could become cynical. I could
find fault with everything. I could whine and take a piece
of paper and make a list of every problem that's ever happened
in the world with a side note of if they just listened to what
I think about it, it would resolve. You see? And most of us feel
like that too, don't believe me? Drive. We feel the same way. I'm just honest about it. I'm
a better, honest person than you are. You like to lie, you
see? And if you would just be honest like me, your joy would
be a little bit fuller. I mean, we can always twist it
in certain ways to make ourselves feel better about who we are,
but if we're honest with ourselves, we know who we are, the difference
is do we know whose we are? And that sounds cliche as well.
But that's the argument. And how do we know we belong
to Christ? Because God's word promises us
that we do. But we want it now. We want confidence
now. We want maturity now. The Bible,
the vitamin box theology that I talk about throughout the years
of my testimony and ministry, where I had memorized hundreds
and hundreds and hundreds of thematic places of scripture,
knowing how to go in and answer it. You know what, your foot
hurts, I got the foot hurt verse right here. Your butt hurts,
I got that one over here. Your eyes hurt, I got that one
over here. And everywhere things are, I sort of knew where to
go. There's people that when they get started, they got the
tabs in their Bibles. They've had the tabs in their Bibles
for 40 years and they just don't think they could do without them.
They could do without them. I had a theological tab system
in my brain and I went through and I picked all this stuff out
and it made me feel confident. But ultimately, I knew a lot
of little things about a lot of little teachings, but I never
really saw the metanarrative of scripture in its fullness
until I got into my twenties. and I got out of that vitamin
box thinking, but that's the way we teach. All right, child,
memorize this verse, and the verse is a transitional statement
between two other sentences, and it has no application, it
has no meaning, it has no teaching. It's not wrong with memorizing
verses. I think you should do it, but understand where it is
and what it's talking about. Otherwise, a verse outside of
its context is up for what? It's up for your own personal
interpretation. You can do what you want to with it. Like I've
said, well, I won't say anything about that, but I had a discussion
this morning about, a parable of Jesus. And it was misinterpreted,
though the metaphor does apply. It's misinterpreted as the scripture
would say it. So we're resting on the promises of God. We hold
fast to the promises. So now, in like fashion, Paul
is going to talk with these Hebrew people, who are his elect brothers
and sisters in Christ, and he's going to reiterate the promises
of God. From antiquity, the father, Abraham,
and his child, Isaac, And his other child, what? We've already
talked about Ishmael. And Ishmael was not the son of
promise in Romans nine. We see that, right? He wasn't
the son of promise. We see that in Galatians, we
see other places. And it doesn't matter how many sons Abraham
had because not all of them are Abraham's children. It is the
ones who are in the promise, the ones who are the elect, the
ones for whom Christ died. But it still doesn't make it
any easier. So how do we rest in the promises of eternal life,
the promises of grace and mercy, when everything that seems to
be going on in our lives seems to contradict the very thing
that we are told to wait for from the world's point of view?
But God made a promise. He made a promise to Abraham,
verse 13. And since God had no greater
one by whom to swear, he swore by himself. Now think about that
for a second. You ever made a promise? Yeah,
if you've ever asserted anything that you would do, whether you
say I promise or not is a promise. Yes, I will take out the trash,
that's a promise. Yes, I will fill the car up with gas, that's
a promise. Yes, I will pick up my socks, that's a promise. And
then you don't do it, you're just a liar. See, we've been talking about
being liars all night. But then sometimes when we really wanna
make a promise feel like it's stronger, we swear, don't we? I promise, I swear, I will. And we even use the word I promise.
And growing up, you know, there were two things you could talk
about. I mean, there were several things, a bunch of things you
could talk about when you were upset with somebody else, but
there were two things you could not talk about when you were mad.
And that's, one is somebody's color, and the other is somebody's
mother. You can't say, you're mama, when
I was a kid. I don't know, was that where
y'all grew up? Was that ugly? When you say, you're mama? What
about my mama? You talk about my mama? I just
said, you're mama. And then you get into a fight. You're pulling
ears off. You're biting eyes out. It's just a terrible thing.
You didn't talk about someone's mother. But yet, in culture,
you see it in the movies. You see it in the books. You
see it in history. People will swear by their what? By their
mother. Because there's this endearing relationship that's
precious and special. You know, somebody talks about
your daddy, you go tell him, he beats them up. Somebody talks about
your mama, you beat them up. That's how it works. Don't you
talk about my mama. But if you really want to make the point
across this, and I swear to you, I'll bring you this. I swear
on my mother. But it's usually what? My mother's
grave. I don't want to dishonor her.
Her name is great. She birthed me into the world.
She beat me like a bad habit, but I love her still. I mean,
you know. And you don't, you swear on her. I swear by my children. I swear by this, I swear by that.
Well, who is greater than God except himself? By whom should
he swear to make an oath more valid or more powerful or have
more umption? And there's a lot of, listen,
there's a lot of Old Testament right here that we could spend
months, seriously months, talking about oaths, talking about God
swearing by himself, talking about God's promise. But the
point that Paul wants to get across is very clear to these Hebrews. It's very clear to them. And
ultimately, it's unpacked in the tiny little clean napkin
called Abraham. Abraham was promised a child
in his old age. His wife, at the time of the
promise, was already past childbearing age. And God comes to him, calls
him out of Ur, calls him into his own fold, declares him a
nation, and said, you'll be the father of many nations. He's
sort of like, really? I'm going to be the father of
many nations? You say how old I am, God? You need some glasses? You
need to go down to Walmart and get your eyes checked? Something's
wrong here. No, I am God and I've promised
it. So Abraham believed God, but what was Abraham doing? He
was walking from place to place looking. Are you pregnant yet?
Are you pregnant yet? Are you pregnant yet? Every day, every day, all
the time. Are you having a baby? No. So
after some period of time, what does he do? What does Sarah do? I tell you what you need to do.
You need to go and have some alone time with Hagar. That's
how God's gonna fulfill that promise. And out comes Ishmael. He is a physical, biological
progeny of Abraham, but he's not a son of promise. This is
not the child that God was talking about. How many years from the
day God told Abraham he'd give him a son to the day Isaac was
born was there? It was 25 years. 25 years. That took a lot of patience.
Now see, what is he gearing up? You know Hebrews already, right?
You know what's going on over here in chapter 11, right? By
faith. By faith. By faith. By faith. By faith. By faith. By faith they received what was
promised, but did not get it in truth. They did not get it
in reality. They did not get it in the real.
They got it in the promise. It is so certain that it is done. And that's where he's going here.
So we are to imitate the faith of those who have inherited the
promises. They got the promises. And then
you might think, well, who are they? Are they around us? Some
of us. Some of us in time have very
strong resolve to not worry and doubt. And God grants us those
things so that we might in some way rub off on one another and
have wisdom to instruct and correct and transform each other's thoughts
and minds when the rest of us are just going, I need to buy
a sandwich now. I mean, you know, this is fast
food. This is a joke. But he's going to be talking
about all who have been promised. And he's going to show with antiquity
just how far back the promise of God has been delayed. And
just how far these people had to wait, but they waited by faith
and they received by faith that which was promised to them, having
never seen it in this life. What was the swearing? What was
the promise that God swore by himself? Surely I will bless
you. Surely I will multiply you. And thus Abraham having, I love
this, listen to this, having patiently waited, obtained the
promise. Now I'm gonna bust out of here
in a minute and I'm gonna go to Genesis 22. And you know where
Genesis 22, or what the premise of that is, most likely, is when
God told Abraham to go and sacrifice Isaac to him. the very son of promise. It's
important because Paul deals with it over in chapter 11. We'll
go there a little bit quicker, I mean a little bit more in depth
in chapter 11. We're going to spend some time dealing with these
personalities here. But I will bless you and I will
multiply you. And thus Abraham, having patiently
waited, obtained the promise. Do you know much about the story
and the life of Abraham? He was not a patiently waiting
person. Abraham was one who felt like
he had to get things done for God. Abraham was always conflicted,
he was always twisted, he was always doing things a little
bit off, not telling the truth, trying to protect his wife, trying
to protect his name, calling him her sister and all this kind
of stuff. And God kept her and protected her over and over and
over again, right? Because God had promised. Abraham
was not doing a very good job at maintaining faith. But yet
it is ascribed to him. His faith was credited to him
as righteousness. So no matter how it looked, think
about this, beloved, no matter how his life looked, in his younger days, in his older
days, in his ancient days, no matter how his life looked, he
still waited patiently for the promise. He still endured to
the end. He still held fast to what Christ,
what God had promised him. And then he understood. And he
longed for the day of Christ. He realized that it wasn't about
Isaac at all, it was about Jesus. And then Paul goes on to explain,
people swear by something greater than themselves. Why? It's like
a cosigning. If I go to the bank and I don't
have the credit worthiness of the collateral to borrow money
that I need for whatever, and the bank looks at me and goes,
man, I trust you, I believe in you, but you just don't have
enough to settle this if something goes wrong. And I have to go
swear by another. Now let's just say I go to my
father and say, dad, would you give up your whole farm so I
can buy me a new truck? Would you put it on the line?
You'll never see me again. I'd be locked up in the jail
somewhere and never to be found. I don't know what happened to him. He
left. There'll be stories about me for a thousand years. That
crazy guy lived under the jail. But that would work. Of course
they'd loan me the money to buy a brand new truck if my dad gave
everything he owned for it as collateral. Wouldn't you? Because
no matter what happens, the collateral, the cosigning, the signatory,
the promise is backed by something valid, valuable, real, tangible. So people swear by something
greater than themselves in their oaths, why? And in all their
disputes, an oath is final for confirmation. Well, I just couldn't
pay it, your honor. I couldn't pay the debt. Well,
you said here that you gave, you gave an oath to give up your
children. If you couldn't pay the debt,
children, come on. It happens. Look at history.
Oh, somebody signed with you on that. Well, whatever they
have now is mine because you couldn't give me what was mine
and so on and so forth. But there is no greater one than
God. He doesn't need a secondary cosigner. He doesn't need other collateral. He, by his own standard, his
own existence, his own glory, his own name, said, I will multiply
you and bless you, Abraham. No matter what you do, I will
do it. the strength of this. That's
why Paul's writing this, because he's about to go into the shadows.
And I've got some brothers who disagree with me a little bit
about the imagery of Melchizedek. But it didn't matter because
in this picture, it's imagery in this letter. Historically,
Melchizedek is a nobody. Contextually, he's a shadow of
Christ. And even though Abraham did a
lot of cool stuff, perfection was not obtained through Melchizedek
and could not be. That's what Paul argues there.
So as God, as a final, as an oath, as a confirmation, when
God desired to show more convincingly to us, to Abraham, to generations
of the elect throughout all of history, to Adam and Eve in the
garden, He desired to show the promise,
the unchangeable character of his purpose. He guaranteed it
with an oath. And why is that important? Because God, verse 18, can not
lie. These two unchangeable things.
God cannot lie. And because of that, We who have
fled for refuge have strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set
before us. And we have this as a sure and
steadfast anchor of the soul. Now he's being repetitive here. This is not the first time we've
heard this. But what happens, beloved, is we want some type
of work. We want God to do a work where
we don't have to trust him. We want God to do a work with
something that we can see. We want to see a contract. We
want to see God's signature right there on the paper. We want to hold God accountable
to something that's a little bit more tangible than just a
promise in the air. That's what our flesh wants. And that's why
it goes to the precepts of legalism, of the law. That's why it goes
to the shadows of pragmatic righteousness. That's why it goes into the depths
of man's righteous ideas and then comes out the other side
thinking, look at me, I'm doing pretty good. I haven't lied in
years. But you have lied. You're already
guilty as a liar. You have coveted. You're already
guilty as an idol worshiper. That's what covetousness is.
That was Paul's self-confessed sinfulness. I'm an idol worshiper. What idol? His place, his stature,
his opinion, his power, his authority, his knowledge of the scripture,
his hatred of the gospel. These are good idols. So God
cannot lie. And so in this truth, we now
aren't able to go to the Father and say, God, you've got to give
us more because He's given us Himself. He's given us His word. So then it goes back to what
you believe about God. Then it goes back to what you
believe in the context of why Jesus is and must be God. And why Jesus could say in John
8, unless you believe that I am, you will die in your sins, to
the Pharisees. Because they knew full and well
that God cannot lie, so that if Jesus speaks for the Father,
He's God. And what He says must be true,
but what He said became an offense. It removed the power of What? And move the power of eternal
life from the creature and put it in the hand of God. God has no collateral, for he's
already given it through his son, Jesus Christ. He's already
promised it through his own mouth. And God cannot lie. See, faith,
even in the weakest of states, can believe that because that
is a work of God. Faith believes in the midst of
uncertainty. Faith trusts in the midst of
doubt. Faith hopes in the midst of darkness
and hopelessness. It sees when there's blindness
everywhere. It's not fullness. It's not overwhelming. Faith isn't like magic powers
of superheroes or great feats of military might. Faith is the small, subtle, tiny
mustard seed type stuff at the bottom of the deepest place in
the sea. Nowhere to be found. The one
grain of sand on the shores of the desert. That's what faith is. But that
faith, trusting in the mercy of God alone, is all that's necessary. And
it is a necessary condition. It's not the cause of your eternal
life. It's the knowledge of it. So our hope is in the promises
of God. Our hope is in the finished work of Christ. Our hope has
been set before us and the promise of God for life has been seen
throughout history. Moses, Abraham, Seth, Abel, Jacob,
list goes on and on. And we know that God has never
failed, even when we're faithless. What does Paul tell Timothy?
He remains faithful for he cannot deny himself. And so we hold fast to this promise
to whom we flee for refuge. And out of this fleeing, we have
strong encouragement to hold fast to the hope set before us. The hope set before us. And I
don't want to go any further. I'll finish up this next week.
But before we close, I want to go to Genesis 22. Because I want you to see what
was in the mind of these Hebrew people as they read this. In
Genesis 22. God tells Abraham. Abraham, here I am, he said,
take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you love and go to
the land of Moriah and offer him there as a burnt offering
on one of the mountains of which I shall tell you. So Abraham
rose early in the morning, saddled his donkey, took two of his young
men with him and his son Isaac, and he cut the wood for the offering
and arose and went to the place of which God had told him. On
the third day, Abraham lifted up his eyes and saw the place
from afar. Then Abraham said to the young men, stay here with
the donkey. I and the boy will go over and
worship and come to you again. And Abraham took the wood and
the burnt offering and laid it on his son Isaac, and he took
in his hand the fire of the knife So they went, both of them together.
And Isaac said to his father, My father, here I am, my son. Behold the fire and the wood,
but where is the lamb for the burnt offering? And Abraham said
this, God will provide for himself the lamb for a burnt offering,
my son. So they went, both of them together.
When they came to the place of which God had told them, Abraham
built the altar there and laid the wood in order and bound Isaac,
his son, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. Then
Abraham reached out his hand and took the knife to slaughter
his son. But the angel of the Lord called to him, Abraham,
Abraham, here I am. He said, do not lay your hand
on the boy or do anything to him for now. I know that you
fear God, seeing that you have not withheld your son, your son,
only son from me. And Abraham lifted up his eyes
and looked, and behold, behind him was a ram called in a thicket
by the horns. And Abraham went and took the
ram and offered it as a burnt offering instead of his son.
So Abraham called the name of that place, the Lord will provide,
as it is to this day on the mind of the Lord, it shall be provided." And over in chapter 11 of Hebrews, Paul explains very clearly what
was happening. He gives you the place here and
then he talks about Abraham's commitment and covenant with
Melchizedek. Abraham was tested, verse 17
of chapter 11. Offered up Isaac and he who had
received the promises was in the act of offering up his only
son of whom it was said through Isaac shall your offspring be
named. He considered that God was even able to raise him from
the dead. 25 years to receive the promise.
And then some years later told to kill it. And he went and did
it. Because he believed in the deepest
part of his soul by the purposes of God and the gifts of God.
That what God had said concerning Abraham's son Isaac was going
to happen. So if I kill my son today, what
difference is that? God will just raise him from
the dead and he'll be the father of many nations. See how nonchalant that is? But
yet, I'm sure in the heart of Abraham there was great turmoil.
But there was no hesitation. Because he'd been granted the
faith to believe the promises of God. Beloved, we cannot see
Christ. We do not see him now, but we
love him. And we hold fast to the promise that he's made, to
the work that he's done. because we have the narrative,
we have Abraham's story, we have Paul's story, we have John's
story. We know that there is a absolutely
ironclad promise and God has never lied and he is not gonna
start lying today, so our hope is in him. Let's pray. Father, this steadfast and sure
and certain anchor who is Jesus, our Lord and King, through whom
we have eternal life, through whom we know all of your promises
fulfilled. Father, I pray that this teaching
would just saturate our souls to the point of overwhelming
joy. That we may never lose sight
by your grace of that wonderful grace. Father, as we come to
prepare our hearts for new things this coming Sunday morning, as
we move to the epistle of John, Lord, I pray that you would prepare
us and that we would not lose sight of the promises that you've
made and the gospel that you've given us to slip away and back
into the law, back into trying to hold and see and touch and
taste and feel. something more tangible. We do
not need any other collateral than the son whom you have given
and the promise that you have made. Father, keep us in the
faith and let us encourage one another to not fall away from
your mercy. No matter how good it looks,
no matter how solid it may feel under our feet, it is just sand
to be washed away. When we think our obedience is
a foundation of hope, we are walking on sinking sand. Thank you for the rock of promise,
which is also to the unconverted and to the self-righteous, a
rock of offense. In Jesus' name, we pray these
things. Amen.