Hebrews 6:13-20 - The sure promises of God

Earlier this year Stephanie and I celebrated our forty-eighth wedding anniversary. Forty-eight years ago we made promises to one another about how we were going to spend the rest of our lives with one another.

Promises that included faithfulness.
Promises that we would stay together and would stay true to each other through all of the good and bad times of life.
Promises that we would share our lives and our possessions with one another.
And we concluded our statement of promises with the phrase, "til death do us part".

But when we made these promises to one another, how long were these promises valid for? Did these promises have an "expiry date"? A date on which you could toss them out? Of course not.

The promises that we made to one another when we got married are valid, they apply to our entire lives. There is never a time, nor a situation, in which the promises that we made to one another when we get married, no longer apply.

Now we, as human beings, we make promises all the time. When we get married, of course, we make a promise to our spouses that we will remain faithful to them, until "death do us part". Parents make promises to their children about things they will do (read them a story, play a game, go for a bike ride, take them to Adventure World), while children make promises to their parents, which are usually along the lines of:

I will clean up my room.

I will lie down, be quiet, and go to sleep.

And that really important one:

I will do my homework.

Now normally, when we make a promise, we have every intention of keeping it. We have every intention of doing exactly what we say we would, but sometimes people make promises without any desire, without any intention whatsoever, of keeping them. Or they make a promise, but then when things get tough, or the pressure builds, or the situation changes, or something else comes along that seems "better", or they just get too tired to follow through, we find that we as human beings break the promises that we have made.

Our character, our trustworthiness, is not determined by the promises that we make. Our character, our trustworthiness, is determined by the promises that we keep.

We are not disappointed and let down when our political leaders make a promise. No! We are disappointed and let down when our political leaders do not keep the promises that they have made.

That is why one of the major themes of the book of Hebrews is that of "promise".[1] Fourteen times in this letter the "promises of God" are mentioned. In the letter of Hebrews we are said to "have" the promises of God,[2] and we enter into these promises.[3]

Three times we are said to inherit,[4] or to be fellow heirs of the promises.[5] While seven times the writer of Hebrews talks about us "receiving the promises",[6] and he means here not simply having something promised to us, but having that promise fulfilled. And then another four times in Hebrews we read how God "made a promise" to someone.[7]

However, making a promise means absolutely nothing. What is important is our willingness and our ability to keep the promises that we have made. What counts is our willingness and our ability to be faithful to the promises that we have made. This is why the writer of Hebrews says in Hebrews 10:23:

Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised.

that is, “God”:

he who has promised is faithful.

And in Hebrews 11:11:

By faith [Abraham] received power of procreation, even though he was too old—and Sarah herself was barren—because he considered him faithful who had promised.

Whether it be Abraham in the past, or the people who first read this letter in the first century, or us in the twenty-first century, the question is not whether or not God has promised us something. The important question is whether or not God has either the willingness, or the power, to be "faithful" to the promises that he has made. Will God, can God, "keep" his promises.

And that is what this passage from Hebrews 6 is all about. But in order to properly understand what our author is talking about here in Hebrews 6, we need to go back to the Old Testament and look at the two passages of Scripture from which the writer of Hebrews gains his understanding.

The first is in Genesis 22, when God commanded Abraham to sacrifice the son that had been promised and for whom he had waited so many years.

We read in Genesis 22 that, upon receiving the command of God, Abraham gathered all that was required, took his son Isaac to the mountain, bound him, placed him on the altar, raised his knife and was about to kill his own son as an offering to God. But right at that moment, the voice of God stopped him, and the life of Isaac was spared. We then read in Genesis 22:15-18:

The angel of the LORD called to Abraham a second time from heaven, ¹⁶ and said, “By myself I have sworn, says the LORD: Because you have done this, and have not withheld your son, your only son, ¹⁷ I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore. And your offspring shall possess the gate of their enemies, ¹⁸ and by your offspring shall all the nations of the earth gain blessing for themselves, because you have obeyed my voice.”

And the first thing that we notice is in Genesis 22:16 where God says, "by myself I have sworn", which is taken up in Hebrews 6:13 when he says that "the Lord swore by himself".

And the second thing that we notice is found in Genesis 22:17 where God promises:

I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven.

a statement that is repeated in Hebrews 6:14 where God says,

I will surely bless you and multiply you.

And what we notice here is that God made an oath when he says, "I swear by myself", and then God makes a promise, "I will surely bless you", and Hebrews 6:18 says that the oath and the promise are "two unchangeable things".

And in making the promise, God tells Abraham about what he will do. Not what he "might" do. Nor about what he "could" do. Or even about what he "should" do. Instead, when God made his promise to Abraham it was about what he "will" do for Abraham.

When the writer of Hebrews refers back to this incident, he is reminding the people that God's promises are certain, true, and reliable. That God has both the power, and the desire, to do what he says.

But how can we tell? How could the people living back then, tell? In the middle of all of the trials, struggles, problems, and worries of life, what could God's promise in Genesis 22 say to them about the reliability of the promises of God in their own day?

That is simple. They could look at themselves, the people of Israel in the first century, and they could realise that their very existence is the proof that God keeps his promises. The ongoing existence of the Jewish people was the assurance to them that God keeps his promises.

Even though, at the time of writing, the Jews were besieged in Judea, the number of Jews in Egypt was estimated to be about one million, while in Syria lived another one million Jews. Even in the midst of conflict, there were some seven hundred thousand Jews in Palestine, while in the rest of the Roman Empire lived another million and a half Jews. And even today, there are nearly sixteen million Jews, descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, spread across nearly ninety countries, although most live in either Israel or the United States.

To the people then, and to us today, the ongoing existence of the Jewish race is confirmation that God keeps his promises, because God said to Abraham in Genesis 22:17:

I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore.

In the Bible we see that Abraham started out without children, but eventually he had a son Isaac. Isaac had Jacob and Esau. Jacob then became the father of twelve brothers, and by the time they went down into Egypt, Jacob's family had grown to seventy people. Then, when Israel came up out of Egypt, they were a multitude, and when they came up out of Egypt as a multitude, it was clear that God had kept his promises to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. It was shown that God is reliable and trustworthy because he did what he said he would do, and because God has been shown to be reliable, we can trust him today when he promises us:

everyone who believes in [Jesus] may not perish but may have eternal life.[8]

For it isn't only God's promises to Abraham that are important and require proof of God's trustworthiness, but also his promises to us about the Messiah. For if God were not reliable, if God could not be trusted to do what he said; could we, should we, put our faith in him when he promises a coming saviour? But what does the Bible show us in Isaiah 7:14:

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the virgin[9] is with child and shall bear a son and shall name him Immanuel.

Or Micah 5:2:

But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.

Psalm 78:2:

I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from of old.

Isaiah 53:4:

Surely, he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted.

Psalm 22:16:

Dogs surround me, a pack of villains encircles me; they pierce my hands and my feet.[10]

Psalm 22:18:

they divide my clothes among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots.

Isaiah 53:12b:

he poured himself out to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

Isaiah 53:9:

They made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.

Psalm 16:9-10:

Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices; my body also rests secure. ¹⁰ For you do not give me up to Sheol or let your faithful one see the Pit.

Each of these passages from the Old Testament, each of these promises of God about who the Messiah would be, and what the Messiah would do, if they were not fulfilled, if they were not kept, none of them would mean anything, for if they were not kept, then God would be shown to be unreliable.

But what do we see in the life of Jesus?

We see him being born of a virgin. Born in Bethlehem. Performing miracles of healing. Teaching us in parables. Crucified, that is, having his hands and feet pierced. They gambled for his clothes. He died, bearing the sin of many. He was buried in a rich man's tomb, and he rose from the dead.

Each of the things that God had promised us in the Old Testament, God has fulfilled in the life and ministry of Jesus, and because God always keeps his promises, and because we have seen that God has kept his promises to us, we can rest assured that when God promises in Joel 2:32 that:

Everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.

And when God promises in Acts 2:21:

Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

And when he promises us again in Romans 10:13 that:

Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

We can rest assured, because God always keeps his promises, that if we call on the name of the Lord for salvation, we will be saved. For we read in Numbers 23:19:

God is not a human being, that he should lie, or a mortal, that he should change his mind. Has he promised, and will he not do it? Has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?

As Paul also mentioned in Titus 1:2 when he said that we have faith and knowledge:

in the hope of eternal life that God, who never lies, promised before the ages began.

The promises of God are certain. The promises of God are reliable. The promises of God are trustworthy. What he says, he will do. We can depend totally, and completely, upon him.

However, in Genesis 22, God didn't just make a promise that something was going to happen, he also made "an oath", as Genesis 22:16 says:

By myself I have sworn, says the LORD.

And just like promises are a regular part of our lives, so also oaths are a regular, ongoing, part of our lives.

Fifty-three years ago, when I enlisted in the Navy, I said:

I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Although that oath only applied during my term of military service.

Nearly forty years ago when I became an Australian citizen, I swore:

Due allegiance to her majesty Queen Elizabeth II and her heirs and successors according to law.

Ten or so years ago, when I was appointed to jury duty, I had to make an oath that I would fulfill the responsibilities that jury duty brought.

With human beings, an oath makes a promise solemn. Sure. Reliable. Or, as Hebrews 6:16 says,

an oath given as confirmation puts an end to all disputes.

And so, in a sense to "confirm the promise to Abraham", God swore an oath, as Hebrews 6:17 says:

In the same way, when God desired to show even more clearly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it by an oath.

He confirmed his unchangeable promise with an unchangeable oath! And in such things, God is incapable of lying, and because God is incapable of lying, the oath by itself, or the promise by itself, would have been enough. But the oath “and” the promise together doubly assure us of God's plan and purposes. The oath “and” the promise, means that God's plans and purposes are secure.

And it is this certainty of God's promises on the basis of God's oath, two things in which it is impossible for God to lie, that brings us to the second Old Testament passage that explains what is going on in Hebrews 6.

In Psalm 110:1 we read:

The LORD says to my lord, “Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies your footstool.”

From the New Testament we know that Jesus, Paul, Peter, and Hebrews all show that this Psalm refers to the coming Messiah, that is, Jesus.

But we then go on to read in Psalm 110:4:

The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind, “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”

Here in Psalm 110, we find God again making that "solemn oath". God making an oath which confirms his promise to the Messiah and to us. God promises that he is doing something, and then he gives his assurances that he "will not change his mind". God establishing a new priesthood. A new covenant, and giving us an assurance of the forgiveness of sins, cleansing from sin, which was unavailable under the old covenant, as Hebrews 7:22 says:

accordingly Jesus has also become the guarantee of a better covenant.

Jesus is the "guarantee". The absolute. Rock solid. No exceptions. No fine print. No wriggle room to escape, guarantee of the salvation that we have been offered through faith in Jesus Christ. And because Jesus is the rock solid, absolute, no exceptions guarantee of all of God's promises, we read in Hebrews 6:19-20:

We have this hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters the inner shrine behind the curtain, ²⁰ where Jesus, a forerunner on our behalf, has entered, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.

And his use of the term "anchor" is deliberate, because in Hebrews 2:1 he had warned them:

Therefore we must pay greater attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it.

The primary task of an "anchor" is to keep a ship from "drifting". And this anchor. This security. This certainty that keeps us from drifting, lies totally and completely in the work that Jesus has done for us when he died on the cross and rose again from the dead, for:

We have this hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters the inner shrine behind the curtain, where Jesus, a forerunner on our behalf, has entered, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.[11]

And this anchor is "secure, safe, certain, firm". It is secure in the presence of God, behind the curtain and it is secure through the ministry of Jesus. A ministry that is "on our behalf".

Our security, our eternal security, is grounded rock solid in the promises of God through the work of Christ, which was the fulfilment of all of those things that Leviticus mentioned on the Day of Atonement: cleansing, purification, restoration, reconciliation, propitiation, the forgiveness of sins.

All of these things are to be found in the promises of God, and those promises have been fulfilled for us and are now ours in and through Jesus Christ. These promises have not only been made, but they have been confirmed with an oath when God said in Psalm 110:4:

The LORD has sworn and will not change his mind, “You are a priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.”

Hebrews 6:17 says that God has made his promise “and” God made his oath in order to:

show even more clearly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose.

Do you realise that God's purposes for you are unchanging? God's longing for you to know Christ as saviour and to follow him as Lord is unchanging. And because God's purposes are unchanging, we, as Hebrews 6:18 says, we the recipients of the promise, we, like Abraham, can flee to God.

Remember, this was a group who were about to turn from the Gospel back to faith in sacrifices and temple. But because the promises of God are unchanging, we can grasp hold of God’s promises.

Remember as well that this was a group that was in danger of "letting go" of their hope in Christ, which is why he encouraged them in Hebrews 4:14:

Since, then, we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast to our confession.

Because of the promises of God we can find hope and encouragement in a world which so often offers us no hope, and no encouragement.

But this foundation. This security. This hope. This assurance and encouragement, does not come from us by our own efforts. Instead, it comes from the promises of God which have found their fulfilment in Jesus Christ, the son of God and saviour of the World. Like Abraham, our response to the promises of God is one of faith, as Hebrews 6:12 says:

so that you may not become sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

Faith in the promises of God. Patience until we see their reality.

Abraham didn't see the reality of the promises. By the time he died, there was only Isaac, Jacob, and Esau. But faith does not depend upon what our eyes can see. Instead faith depends totally upon what God has said, and it is the response of faith that brings about patience, and patience, as we wait upon God, brings about the reality of what God has assured us, as he says in Hebrews 6:15:

And thus Abraham, having patiently endured, obtained the promise.

Who are we trusting in? The promises of people who can, and do, change their minds, or lie, or lose their courage, or simply lack the ability to do what they said?

Or are we trusting the promises of God who does not lie, and who has promised us with an oath, and who has fulfilled his promises in the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ?

Who are we trusting?

[1] evpaggelia

[2] Hebrews 7:6

[3] Hebrews 4:1

[4] Hebrews 6:12, 17

[5] Hebrews 11:9

[6] Hebrews 6:15; 9:15; 10:36; 11:13, 17, 33, 39

[7] Hebrews 6:13; 10:23; 11:11; 12:26

[8] John 3:16

[9] NRSV – “young woman”

[10] NIV. NRSV reads, “My hands and feet have been shriveled”.

[11] Hebrews 6:19-20

Hebrews 6:13-20 - The sure promises of God

Earlier this year Stephanie and I celebrated our forty-eighth wedding anniversary. Forty-eight years ago we made promises to one another about how we were going to spend the rest of our lives with one another.

Promises that included faithfulness.

Promises that we would stay together and would stay true to each other through all of the good and bad times of life.

Promises that we would share our lives and our possessions with one another.

And we concluded our statement of promises with the phrase, "til death do us part".

But when we made these promises to one another, how long were these promises valid for? Did these promises have an "expiry date"? A date on which you could toss them out? Of course not.

The promises that we made to one another when we got married are valid, they apply to our entire lives. There is never a time, nor a situation, in which the promises that we made to one another when we get married, no longer apply.

I will clean up my room.

I will lie down, be quiet, and go to sleep.

And that really important one:

I will do my homework.

Our character, our trustworthiness, is not determined by the promises that we make. Our character, our trustworthiness, is determined by the promises that we keep.

We are not disappointed and let down when our political leaders make a promise. No! We are disappointed and let down when our political leaders do not keep the promises that they have made.

That is why one of the major themes of the book of Hebrews is that of "promise".[1] Fourteen times in this letter the "promises of God" are mentioned. In the letter of Hebrews we are said to "have" the promises of God,[2] and we enter into these promises.[3]

However, making a promise means absolutely nothing. What is important is our willingness and our ability to keep the promises that we have made. What counts is our willingness and our ability to be faithful to the promises that we have made. This is why the writer of Hebrews says in Hebrews 10:23:

Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised.

that is, “God”:

he who has promised is faithful.

And in Hebrews 11:11:

By faith [Abraham] received power of procreation, even though he was too old—and Sarah herself was barren—because he considered him faithful who had promised.

And that is what this passage from Hebrews 6 is all about. But in order to properly understand what our author is talking about here in Hebrews 6, we need to go back to the Old Testament and look at the two passages of Scripture from which the writer of Hebrews gains his understanding.

The first is in Genesis 22, when God commanded Abraham to sacrifice the son that had been promised and for whom he had waited so many years.

And the first thing that we notice is in Genesis 22:16 where God says, "by myself I have sworn", which is taken up in Hebrews 6:13 when he says that "the Lord swore by himself".

And the second thing that we notice is found in Genesis 22:17 where God promises:

I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven.

a statement that is repeated in Hebrews 6:14 where God says,

I will surely bless you and multiply you.

And what we notice here is that God made an oath when he says, "I swear by myself", and then God makes a promise, "I will surely bless you", and Hebrews 6:18 says that the oath and the promise are "two unchangeable things".

And in making the promise, God tells Abraham about what he will do. Not what he "might" do. Nor about what he "could" do. Or even about what he "should" do. Instead, when God made his promise to Abraham it was about what he "will" do for Abraham.

When the writer of Hebrews refers back to this incident, he is reminding the people that God's promises are certain, true, and reliable. That God has both the power, and the desire, to do what he says.

But how can we tell? How could the people living back then, tell? In the middle of all of the trials, struggles, problems, and worries of life, what could God's promise in Genesis 22 say to them about the reliability of the promises of God in their own day?

That is simple. They could look at themselves, the people of Israel in the first century, and they could realise that their very existence is the proof that God keeps his promises. The ongoing existence of the Jewish people was the assurance to them that God keeps his promises.

To the people then, and to us today, the ongoing existence of the Jewish race is confirmation that God keeps his promises, because God said to Abraham in Genesis 22:17:

I will indeed bless you, and I will make your offspring as numerous as the stars of heaven and as the sand that is on the seashore.

everyone who believes in [Jesus] may not perish but may have eternal life.[8]

Therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the virgin[9] is with child and shall bear a son and shall name him Immanuel.

Or Micah 5:2:

But you, O Bethlehem of Ephrathah, who are one of the little clans of Judah, from you shall come forth for me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from of old, from ancient days.

Psalm 78:2:

I will open my mouth in a parable; I will utter dark sayings from of old.

Isaiah 53:4:

Surely, he has borne our infirmities and carried our diseases; yet we accounted him stricken, struck down by God, and afflicted.

Psalm 22:16:

Dogs surround me, a pack of villains encircles me; they pierce my hands and my feet.[10]

Psalm 22:18:

they divide my clothes among themselves, and for my clothing they cast lots.

Isaiah 53:12b:

he poured himself out to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors.

Isaiah 53:9:

They made his grave with the wicked and his tomb with the rich, although he had done no violence, and there was no deceit in his mouth.

Psalm 16:9-10:

Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices; my body also rests secure. 10 For you do not give me up to Sheol or let your faithful one see the Pit.

Each of these passages from the Old Testament, each of these promises of God about who the Messiah would be, and what the Messiah would do, if they were not fulfilled, if they were not kept, none of them would mean anything, for if they were not kept, then God would be shown to be unreliable.

But what do we see in the life of Jesus?

We see him being born of a virgin. Born in Bethlehem. Performing miracles of healing. Teaching us in parables. Crucified, that is, having his hands and feet pierced. They gambled for his clothes. He died, bearing the sin of many. He was buried in a rich man's tomb, and he rose from the dead.

Each of the things that God had promised us in the Old Testament, God has fulfilled in the life and ministry of Jesus, and because God always keeps his promises, and because we have seen that God has kept his promises to us, we can rest assured that when God promises in Joel 2:32 that:

Everyone who calls on the name of the LORD shall be saved.

And when God promises in Acts 2:21:

Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

And when he promises us again in Romans 10:13 that:

Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

We can rest assured, because God always keeps his promises, that if we call on the name of the Lord for salvation, we will be saved. For we read in Numbers 23:19:

God is not a human being, that he should lie, or a mortal, that he should change his mind. Has he promised, and will he not do it? Has he spoken, and will he not fulfill it?

As Paul also mentioned in Titus 1:2 when he said that we have faith and knowledge:

in the hope of eternal life that God, who never lies, promised before the ages began.

The promises of God are certain. The promises of God are reliable. The promises of God are trustworthy. What he says, he will do. We can depend totally, and completely, upon him.

However, in Genesis 22, God didn't just make a promise that something was going to happen, he also made "an oath", as Genesis 22:16 says:

By myself I have sworn, says the LORD.

And just like promises are a regular part of our lives, so also oaths are a regular, ongoing, part of our lives.

Fifty-three years ago, when I enlisted in the Navy, I said:

I do solemnly swear that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

Although that oath only applied during my term of military service.

Nearly forty years ago when I became an Australian citizen, I swore:

Due allegiance to her majesty Queen Elizabeth II and her heirs and successors according to law.

Ten or so years ago, when I was appointed to jury duty, I had to make an oath that I would fulfill the responsibilities that jury duty brought.

With human beings, an oath makes a promise solemn. Sure. Reliable. Or, as Hebrews 6:16 says,

an oath given as confirmation puts an end to all disputes.

And so, in a sense to "confirm the promise to Abraham", God swore an oath, as Hebrews 6:17 says:

In the same way, when God desired to show even more clearly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it by an oath.

Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices; my body also rests secure. ¹⁰ For you do not give me up to Sheol or let your faithful one see the Pit.

We have this hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul, a hope that enters the inner shrine behind the curtain, ²⁰ where Jesus, a forerunner on our behalf, has entered, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek.