The Securities of God's Promise
Hebrews 6:13-20
There used to be a television program entitled Who Do You Trust?, and that's a very profound question. In our age, we're well on the way to trusting nobody, and we've developed a kind of a psychosis of distrust in our world that is commonly known as the credibility gap. Young people are being taught to trust nobody, as well as learning it by experience. Promises are given. Word is said, and it means little or nothing; and the problem can be simply stated theologically. The whole world is full of liars. That's the basic problem. In fact, the Bible says that the whole world lies in the arms of the wicked one, and it says, in John 8, that that wicked one is the father of lies.
In the middle of this, people are looking for something they can trust, something they can bank their life on and win. Some turn to religion. They put their trust in religion. They spend their life, for example, in a particular religious system, and they never find peace, and they never find meaning, and it never quite makes it. In another religious system, they spend their life, for example, praying to a particular saint, only to be told after years of such prayer that that saint wasn't really a saint. Somebody made a mistake a long time ago. Or like the mother who took her child to the healer to straighten his crippled legs. The braces were dropped away. The mother was told never to put them on again. A few weeks of pain, later emergency surgery was done to same the two legs from having to be amputated.
Elmer Gantry style evangelists have always been around to take peoples' hearts and peoples' money. Not too many years ago in Los Angeles, one particular minister conducted on television a Bible-athon, in which he had people sending in money, ostensibly for missionary work. He took the money and left town. People go to churches which talk about Jesus Christ, and then they get there, and they don't know anything about Jesus Christ, and false teachers, wolves, wind up devouring the people. Teachers, so-called, with all the academic credentials teach lying philosophies that don't work. Who do you trust?
Whom can you really believe in? Who can you bet your life on? Jeremiah said, "Trust not in lying words." The Bible says, "Trust in the Lord with all your heart," and that's the answer. Proverbs 29:25 says, "Whoso putteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe." Safe. David gives such wonderful testimony, for example, in Psalm 31. He says, in verse 6, his own testimony, "I have hated those who regard lying vanities, but I trust in the Lord." And then in Psalm 37, he makes that wonderful statement, "Delight thyself in the Lord. He shall give thee the desires of thine heart. Commit thy way unto the Lord. Trust also in Him, and He shall bring it to pass."
The Bible says that you can trust God. Incidentally, the Bible also says you can always tell people who really trust God, because it says in Proverbs 28:25, "He that trusteth the Lord shall be made fat." So it's very easy to tell those who really trust the Lord. The testimony, for example, of the New Testament is given to us in 1 Timothy 4:10. It says this. "For therefore we both labor and suffer reproach because we trust in the living God."
Can you trust God? Can God really keep that which you commit to Him? Can you give your life to Jesus Christ? Can you place your hands, your life in the hands of God and be secure that God will hold onto that? Perhaps the best example of a man trusting God, especially for these Hebrews to whom this epistle is written, is the example of the father of trust, the father of faith, none other than Abraham himself.
Now, as we have been studying in the Book of Hebrews, the writer of Hebrews has been urging the Jews to completely abandon everything from the old covenant. Everything from Judaism is to be dropped away, and they're to commit themselves entirely to the new covenant and to Jesus Christ. To the Jewish Christian, he is saying, "You don't need any of the old things. You can forget the temple. You can forget the priesthood. You can forget the holy days. You can forget all of the feasts. You can forget all of these things in...in the terms of their meaningfulness. You can come all the way to Jesus Christ and drop it all; but then as we saw in chapter 5 and 6, he says to that Jew who's not yet saved, but who's intellectually convinced about the Gospel, he says, "You...you need to come all the way to Jesus Christ. You need to let go of all that you're holding onto. You can trust God. You can throw your life on this Messiah, on this new covenant and find out that God is worthy of your trust.
We've seen how, through chapter 6, he urges them to come to Christ before they fall away into apostasy and be lost forever. The only way to God is through Jesus Christ and, since chapter 5 verse 11, he's been urging this to his unsaved readers who know the truth and believe it up to a point, but who have never come fully to salvation commitment. Now, he capped off this appeal, as we saw last time, in chapter 6 verse 11 and 12, when he said, "We desire that every one of you show the same diligence or speed or haste, to the full assurance of hope unto the end. Don't be slothful or sluggish or dull of hearing, but followers of them... watch it...who through faith and patience inherit the promises." He says, "Don't stand on the edge and fall away. You follow those who have come all the way to faith in God, who have banked their destiny on God, who bank their life on the Lord Jesus Christ. You come all the way to full trust in God. Follow those who've done that.
And then he reaches back into Hebrew history and pulls out the No. 1 man who did that, Abraham, and he says, "If you want an example, if it's not enough to look at the Christians in your own local congregation there, then look back at a man from your own history, the man Abraham, and see how that man trusted God." And their biggest problem, you see, is if they come all the way to Jesus Christ, they're gonna get shot down by persecution. They're really gonna get it from the Jewish community; and this is the thing that holds them; and Abraham a perfect illustration of a man of faith who went all the way with God, totally trusted God for everything in the midst of unbelievable kind of adversity, even to the point where he lifted a knife to slay his only son, and, therefore, kill every dream and every hope God had ever given him. That's how far he trusted God.
And so he says, "Follow those who, through faith, have gone all the way to inherit the promises, such as your own Abraham," and Abraham then becomes the theme of verses 13 to 20. This is a great illustration of the man of faith. He had said, "Mimic those who have come to God in faith, and let Abraham be your example." Now, Abraham is a classic illustration of trusting God. He trusted God against all odds.
Now, look for a moment with me at Romans chapter 4, and we'll look at several verses there that Paul writes to tell us about the same truth. Romans chapter 4 is an illustration of faith and, again, Abraham is a classic illustration; and make a mental note that whenever the New Testament writers spoke to Jews, they invariably used Abraham as the basis of faith, because so very often the Jewish mind assumed that salvation was by keeping the law. And so constantly the New Testament message is it's by faith. It's by faith. It's by faith, and what better way to illustrate it than to pull out the great character of the Old Testament to show that even he lived by faith.
So Paul does the same thing in Romans chapter 4 verse 3. "For what saith the Scripture? 'Abraham believed God.'" Now that's faith. "And it was counted unto him for righteousness." It was not his works. It was that he believed God. Look at verse 9. "Cometh this blessedness then upon the Circumcision only?" Do you get blessed by God just because you happen to be a Jew, circumcised? "Or upon the Uncircumcision also? For we say that faith was reckoned to Abraham for righteousness." It doesn't matter whether you're Jew or Gentile. The issue is faith, not race. "How was it then reckoned?...verse 10...Was he when he was in circumcision or in uncircumcision? Not in circumcision, but in uncircumcision."
You say, "What does all that is all that saying? That's saying that Abraham wasn't circumcised when he believed God. Abraham began the Jewish race only in the sense that God called him, but he was already a fairly old man when God called him, 75 years old. He hadn't experienced circumcision. The Jew always put his stock in the fact that he was a Jew and circumcised the eighth day. Abraham wasn't. Abraham was righteous because he believed God. He believed God, and then it says in the middle of verse 11, "That he might be the father of all them that believe, through they be not circumcised, that righteousness might be imputed unto them also."
Verse 12, "And the father of circumcision to them who are not of the Circumcision only, but who also walk in the steps of that faith of our father Abraham which he had, being yet uncircumcised." See, the Jew always put his stock in the fact that he was a Jew and went through all the Jewish formalities, and Paul is shooting this down. He's saying, "Your only way to God and to righteousness is by faith," Abraham being the classic illustration, and verse 13 sums it up. "For the promise that he should be the heir of the world was not to Abraham or his seed through the law, but through the righteousness of faith." Faith is the whole issue.
Look at verse 20. Now God said to Abraham, "Abraham, you're going to have a son." Now you know that story. Abraham said, "God, could you get over that again? Do you understand how old I am? Do you know that my wife is 90? We're going to have a son." Of course, Sarah was off in a corner laughing according to Book of Genesis; but verse 20 says, "He staggered not at the promise of God." And it was a staggering promise. "Through unbelief, but was strong in faith, giving glory to God, and being fully persuaded that what He had promised, He was able also to perform. Therefore, it was imputed to him for righteousness." Righteousness comes as far back as Abraham from believing God. Salvation in the Old Testament was by law; it was simply and only by faith. No other thing.
In James 2:23, it says, "And the Scripture was fulfilled which saith, 'Abraham believed God, and it was imputed unto him for righteousness.'" James, again, calls on Abraham as the classic illustration. So Abraham was, indeed, a man of great trust. He believed God to the point of going as far as you could humanly go. He trusted God, and it worked.
Can you trust God? Who can you trust? Abraham trusted God and it paid off. Let's consider Abraham for a moment. Abraham was a pagan. Abraham lived in a city known as Ur with his father Terah. Terah was a descendent of Shem, one of the sons of Noah; and Abraham's father was a pagan, worshipping false gods. He settled in a place called Ur, which is between the Tigris and the Euphrates in that area called Mesopotamia, one of the ancient cities of the Chaldeans; and God, all of a sudden, came to him in Genesis chapter 12 and said, "All right, Abraham, pack up. You're leaving. Get everything you've got and get out. I'm gonna take you to a place where I want you to go."
Now, that's a fairly big issue. Packing up his whole tribe, of which he was chieftain, and moving 'em all out, all the way over to a place called Canaan. He finally did and settled in a place called Haran. When he got to Haran, he received another promise. The reiteration of the promise that God would bless him and multiply his seed and give him a great nation and so forth and so on. That through his seed all of the families of the earth would be blessed. This is repeated to him in Genesis 12, Genesis 13, Genesis 15, Genesis 17, Genesis 18, Genesis 22. Over and over and over and over and over, over. God says to him, "Here's My promise. Here's My promise. Here's My promise." And Abraham believed it. He really believed God.
In Hebrews 11 verse 8, it says this. "By faith...in the great faith chapter...By faith, Abraham, when he was called to go out in to a place which he should after receive for an inheritance...told to go to Canaan...obeyed; and he went out, not knowing where he went." He just took off. That, friends, is faith. That's faith. It's the evidence of things not...what?... seen. Same chapter. Verse 9, "By faith he sojourned in the land of promise as in a foreign country, dwelling in tents with Isaac and Jacob, the heirs with him of the same promise." In other words, clear as far on down the line as Isaac and Jacob they're still dwelling in tents in a land that really wasn't their own. Just kinda temporary, but he believed God, and he took off, and he went the way that God told him to go.
You say, "Well, good night, what evidence did he have? What evidence? I mean what kind of a guarantee that he...that he's not gonna get out there and die in the wilderness. So that he's gonna get in that land and...and hostile tribes are gonna come over and wipe him out? What kind of a guarantee does he have? Well, how can he trust God like that?"...The answer as to how he trusts God is in these verses, because we are given here the basic securities upon which a man can base his trust in God, and they're no different today than they were then. They're even expanded, as we shall see.
Abraham had some guilt-edged securities. He could trust God for some very obvious and powerful reasons, and we'll see what they are. When the Lord promises, you see, He puts His integrity on the line. It's a matter of His character, and every promise of God is secured by His character; and this is the issue of these verses. The real overriding, general security in these verses is the person of God or the character of God. If God says, "You're safe with Me," then you better be safe with Him or His Word is worth nothing. If His Word is worth nothing, then He's worth nothing. So the character of God is at stake in the question of security.
Can you give your life to God? Take Him at His Word? Can He keep you from falling? Can He finish the work He begins in your life? Will He lose you at some point along the line? Is there real security with God? Abraham believed there was. The Bible says there is, and I'll show you what the reasons are, and there are four of 'em. No. 1, His person. No. 2, His purpose. No. 3, His pledge, and No. 4, His priest. These are the four guarantees that we find in this passage.
No. 1, our security with God is guaranteed by His person. Now, keep in context what we're talking about. He is urging people to come all the way to Christ, throw themselves on Christ. Completely abandon everything. Remember back in chapter 6 verses 1 and 2, "Leave everything, abandon it, and let's go on, and let's come to Jesus Christ." We've studied all of that; and He's saying, "Come on. You can trust God. Come all the way. You can believe Him. Abraham did against unbelievable odds, and so can you. You're looking for somebody to trust in this world, here's somebody to trust. Trust God. First of all," He says, "You can trust Him because of His person."
Look at verse 1