What anchors your life? Hope in God

Open in prayer. Our Father, we draw near. We are humbled to think that we can come together in this way.

And even though we are scattered from one another, and unable to share time together as we usually do, we are grateful that you have graciously allowed and enabled this, and we are thankful for our brethren who have been diligent in providing this and working to ensure that it goes smoothly. Our Father, we realize that above all things we need the strength of your presence, and we need to be anchored in your love and in all that you are for us, and also anchored in the hope that you have granted to us. And so we just entrust our time together into your presence.

I pray that you might bless us together. In the name of our Lord Jesus, amen. Now the question that I've put for a heading is, what anchors your life? And I'm thinking of the passage in Hebrews, Hebrews chapter 6, and so we'll read a few verses together now, and of course there's reference to refuge in it.

Now Hebrews chapter 6 and verse 9 says, But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation, though we thus speak. For God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love, which you have showed toward his name, in that you have ministered to the saints and do minister. And we desire that every one of you do show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end, that you be or become not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

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 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, till they hold upon the hope set before us.

Which hope we have, as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters into that within the veil, where the forerunner is for us entered, even Jesus, made in high priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek. And so, this passage is a very challenging passage, and I didn't read the first eight verses, which is one of those warning passages of Hebrews that is very, very solemn, and there's warning of apostasy. And that is something that even those of us who are clearly taught the reality that our salvation is secure eternally, we need to take these warning passages very soberly and realize how serious a thing it is to be so privileged, to be so enlightened.

And there's a certain aspect in which part of this is unique to the first century, I would suggest, of those of that generation, first of all, who saw the Lord Jesus, who heard his teaching, who witnessed his miracles, and then the great calamity of the cross, and then the wonder of the story of the resurrection, and then the amazing thing that his apostles, in his absence, are doing the same miracles, performing the same signs, and teaching in his name. So, there's a tremendous divine revelation and intervention in the nation of Israel. And yet, as we come to Hebrews, in this point, we're possibly close to the end of that first generation, the beginning of the second generation, and there are those who have become very weary of the struggle, of the being torn between two, the old covenant and this new way, and some have actually turned back, and turned back and actually would be described as enemies of his name.

And so, that must have been a tremendously disheartening, dismaying thing to these believers. And so, I want to, in some ways, recognize the uniqueness of that setting, and the uniqueness of the passage, and its challenge, but at the same time to see that, in some ways, we have come into somewhat of a parallel condition, at least today, and maybe I'm going to be speaking mostly to myself today, but I would confess that I have struggled with discouragement, with almost a sense of hopelessness in the work, and seeing, like, most of what we do doesn't really amount to much, and we can't even maintain the numbers in the assembly, let alone see it flourish. And so, unfortunately, in my travels around, I've seen this over and over again, small, struggling assemblies, saints who are struggling to keep going, struggling to keep encouraged, and I think this passage does hold one of the keys to enabling us to overcome this challenge, and that is to get our sight again renewed upon the tremendous hope that we have.

Now, when I thought about this subject, just thinking of it naturally, we're thinking about the paradox of life and death and the future, because our future actually is beyond death. It's on the other side, and of course, we know the Lord could come before we die, but our true future is actually somewhere else. It's hidden from us, and so we naturally cling to life in the present, and we fear the loss that death will bring, and yet our true inheritance and our true future actually lies beyond that.

And so it's valid to ask this question, then, what is really your hope? What is really your anchor in life? What's your security? What's your refuge? Now, I remember, I'm just going to quote a sister that I heard speaking very appreciatively of her husband, and she made this statement. She says, my husband is my rock of Gibraltar. Now, she recognized that her husband was a tremendous source of stability and strength to her in their life.

Now, you could look at that and say, well, she needs to learn to trust in God more than her husband. Well, maybe she does, but I would like to just suggest, before we get into this passage, that there's a way of looking at this and appreciating the love and faithful care that we can be for each other in recognizing this. If we can learn to discern that the love and care of family, of fellow believers, is really God's care to us.

God is caring for me through my wife, through my family, through fellow saints. And I think we will see a little bit of this even in the promise to Abraham and the significance of it. So just in the context, then, of this section, there's the context of their experience.

They've become weary of the conflict, of the hardships that they've been enduring, and there are those who have been among them who are departing and going back to the safety of Judaism. I would like to just give you quickly also the context of the Hebrew epistle. The thesis of Hebrews is built upon two messianic psalms, Psalm 2 and Psalm 110.

Psalm 110 gives quotations, I think, 14 times at least, maybe more, in the book of Hebrews. It's the quoted psalm in the New Testament. And so just quickly, I want to just give you this little bit of an outline.

First of all, Christ is God's final message and messenger and the appointed heir of all things. And that comes from Psalm 2, where the declaration is, Thou art my son, this day have I begotten thee. Then again, yet have I set my king upon my holy hill of Zion.

And so, very obviously, the Son of God is and must be superior to the prophets. He's superior to the angels who brought God's revelation to mankind at Mount Sinai. He's superior even to Moses, that great architect of the old covenant.

And so he's superior to all those who have spoken for God in the past. He's God's final message. But he's also God's final high priest.

And the section that we're looking at here in Hebrews 6, it's in that section where priesthood is the emphasis, and the fact that he is superior to and supersedes the Aaronic priesthood. And again, that same Psalm, Psalm 110 that I referred to, verse 4 says, The Lord has sworn and will not repent. Thou art a priest forever after the order of Melchizedek.

And then the latter part of Hebrews, from possibly chapter 10 especially on, is really that Christ is God's final sacrifice. Sufficient sacrifice, the eternal sacrifice, superior to and superseding all the Old Testament sacrifice, and so on. So that's the, you might say, the context and the background of what we're going to be looking at.

So then in contrast to these who have witnessed all of this glory of Christ manifest among them, and all the works and the teaching and so on, all the proofs, and have turned back, he says, But, beloved, we are persuaded better things of you. So I want to just point out, first of all, the grounds of assurance that the writer expresses to these saints. And the very first one is God.

God is righteous. And he puts it in a very strong way, a double negative. God is not unrighteous.

And so if we think about this challenge of righteousness, you know, God not only wants to save us from judgment, he wants to reproduce in us his very character. And I find it very challenging to examine my own integrity. There's, I've thought of this in relation to God and us.

We're really in a dream relationship with God. And I'm sure most of us who have been in various human relationships, we would just love to be in a close, long-term relationship with somebody who always appreciated and remembered everything that you ever did for them, was always kind and caring to you, and would not remember any failure in your life. Now, we have these two things.

He will not forget our love, our service, but he will not remember our sins against us anymore. And so that's a very wonderful thing that Hebrews brings us. Hebrews is bringing us to this idea of perfection.

God is perfect in this integrity of being, this fullness in which he lives, in which he draws us into. And so God is not unrighteous to forget your work and labor of love. And then this is a challenge for me, because I tend to be a passive person.

I find it easier to passively accept hardship than to actively fulfill challenges at times. And so each of us has our own personality and how we respond to life, but God sees our works and he interprets it as our love or our lack of love. And so this is one of the challenges, and this is the first part of the challenge that we see in this passage.

He wants us to be diligent. He wants us to be zealous in serving and in manifesting Christian love and care. He doesn't want us to become slothful.

And so love toward his name, and I find this particularly interesting and challenging, especially in contrast to the first few verses of the chapter. These other people saw tremendous miracles and signs, and maybe even some of them participated in healing the sick, and yet they didn't have this inner life that is eternal. What's the true evidence of Christianity? It's not speaking in tongues.

It's not being able to do miracles, nor is it even experiencing these kind of miracles. It's love manifested in care towards others for his sake. So that's a very precious thing.

And I guess the challenge that I leave in this section and looking at the next couple of verses is just, how am I doing today in comparison with the past? Because this is what he's saying here. You have showed love toward his name. You have been ministering to the saints.

You have been caring for God's people, and you're still doing it. So he's confident in this, and he's assuring them that he's aware of it and that God is aware of it. But his challenge is, he says, we desire, that is, we long.

It's a very strong word that he uses for desire. We long that every one of you would show this same diligence right to the full assurance of hope to the end. And I would just again say that confident Christians are strong Christians.

Confident Christians are courageous Christians, and that's what he wants us to experience. Now when he says that you be not slothful, but followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises, he's putting diligence and slothfulness in opposition to each other. And interestingly, the word for diligence can be translated as haste or zeal or forwardness.

Now the word for slothful here is actually the same word translated in chapter 5 and verse 9, is it? 10? No, 11. 11. Seeing you are dull of hearing.

And so in chapter 5, he points out a condition that he sees, that he's concerned about, and that is that it's becoming difficult to teach them, to lead them any further in God's truth, because they become dull of hearing. And here he's warning about the danger of becoming sluggish and slow and slothful. And I would just suggest that what he's really saying is, I'm afraid that you're losing sight of your hope.

You're losing sight of what you have waiting for you. And so the way, the pathway is becoming harder and harder and more of a struggle. And so the danger of slothfulness is that when we become slothful, it becomes a chronic mentality.

And I would have to say, I know that slothfulness can be equated with laziness, and Proverbs uses in that sense primarily. But many Christians are not doing what they used to do, because they're discouraged. They don't see any point anymore.

And so when we lose our hope, and so I remember many years ago reading a book on counseling, and two key points that the counselor emphasized was that in every person that we try to help, we need to instill in that person a sense of hope and a sense of responsibility. And each one of us needs that sense of hope and a sense of responsibility. Now, so it says here that we not be slothful, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.

Now, a question that comes to my mind when I see that is, is there anybody that you know that's worth imitating? It's important that we have people that we can genuinely look to as examples that encourage us. And in this passage, he's looking back. In chapter 13, he refers to those who were their leaders.

Possibly some have died. He says, remember your guides. Imitate their faith.

Follow their example. And so the emphasis that he gives here is that we need not only faith, but we need patience. Now, interestingly, the word patience here in Hebrews chapter 6 is not the usual word for patience that we often say is patient endurance.

It's really the word long-suffering. There's not that much difference when you think about it enough, but there is this element, this is a reality of the Christian life. We need faith, but embedded in that faith, as an element of that faith, we need to be able to suffer.

Suffering hardship, suffering disappointment, suffering postponement of what we expect, as well as suffering from the opposition of those who disregard and do not accept the gospel. I found it interesting listening to Brother Clive Barber's message last week that he refers to the Lord in 2nd Peter chapter 3. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, but is long-suffering toward us. Not willing that any should perish, and so on.

And so God is manifesting this same long-suffering that he is asking us to manifest in our present pathway. And so he says here that those who inherit the promises. Now, again, I am going to try to be quick here, but to just mention briefly, because Hebrews is a very, very rich and inexhaustible book.

So what promises is he referring to? Well, as I mentioned, Hebrews focuses upon the finality and perfection of the accomplishment of God in Christ. The very first thing that's emphasized in Hebrews is Christ's accomplished sacrifice. He offered one sacrifice for sins forever, and he sat down.

And so he became the author of eternal salvation. He has obtained eternal redemption. He has enabled the promise of eternal inheritance.

So we see this word eternal coming up repeatedly in Hebrews. There's finality, there's completeness, there's perfection stamped upon it, based upon this once-for-all sacrifice. But now that Christ has ascended and he's enthroned at God's right hand, and there's some beautiful parallels that are drawn in the passage in through Hebrews, because not only has Christ gone home and is enthroned, you might say rewarded for his own service of God and fulfilling the will of God, but he is the anointed son.

We are now called sons in chapter 2. He is the appointed heir. We are called the heirs of salvation. He is the one who's crowned with glory and honor.

And again, in chapter 2, many sons being brought to glory. And so there's this parallel being constantly made. What he is now, we're going to share with him in the presence of God.

He has brought us into the inheritance. Today, he's a king in waiting, waiting for his enemies to be made his footstool. And then we find out that we are receiving a kingdom which cannot be shaken.

And so we're linked with him and carried by him in the very kingdom of God. And so the emphasis that we see here is that Christ now is our great high priest. He secures our way of access.

We can enter freely now. The way is made open. But as we get to the end of the chapter, hopefully, Christ is the forerunner, is the pledge that we also are going to get to be, to not just visit the presence of God, but to actually dwell in the very presence of God forever.

So these are thrilling promises for us to look at. So the next few verses, he's looking back now, and he's looking at the pattern of promise, the example of Abraham and God's oath. And there's really two things that I just want to draw attention to in this section.

God's willingness to bless, and then Abraham's patient endurance and its result. And so it says, when God made promise to Abraham, because he could swear by no greater, he swore by himself. And so we couldn't possibly read the history of the Bible and fail to see that God has always wanted to bless.

And it's based upon his greatness. God is supreme in greatness. Now, there's nobody greater than God.

And so when he makes a promise, he can fulfill it. There are some people that we know, I'm sure everybody here listening today knows people who have made a lot of promises. And you learn not to put an awful lot of stock or count too heavily upon their word, because they just don't come through.

But God is supreme in his goodness. He's supreme in his power, in his authority. He's supreme in his wisdom.

He's supreme in faithfulness. And he doesn't need to ask permission from anybody else. He doesn't need to ask for help from anybody else to carry out what he intends to do.

So you have his greatness mentioned, and then his oath. Now, that's going to be developed a little bit more in the few verses after this, so I won't say any more, except to say this, for God to make an oath is totally redundant. But it's very reassuring.

So looking then at the blessing that he makes in verse 14. And I really would like to try to get this across to you, hopefully, as clearly as possible. It's very important for us to not just think of this as something isolated, something just between God and Abraham.

When he says, surely blessing I will bless you, multiplying I will multiply you. I don't know if you see any echo of Genesis 1, but I do. And I'll try to make this clear just in a moment or two.

When God originally brought us into existence, he brought man into a place of headship over the creation. We were given the tremendous privilege of being the image bearers of God. We're representing God to the rest of the creation.

And so we have a special blessing from God. We are blessed, and we are part of God's blessing to the rest of the creation. So that gets back to what I said at the very beginning, a husband being a blessing to a wife, a wife to her husband, brother to brother, brothers and sisters in the assembly, and so on.

We are called to be a blessing. And so this promise to Abraham actually is the thread of God's plan of redemption for the whole world. And what is quoted here is quoted from Genesis chapter 22, when he had yielded up Isaac.

And of course, if you read through Genesis chapter 12, right through to Genesis 22, you will see that there are a series of promises made. And they are expanded and developed as you go through Genesis. And so linked with that is the promise in chapter 12, in you, all the families of the earth will be blessed.

That's a tremendous thing to say. Abraham, you're going to be a channel through which my will to bless the world is going to be fulfilled. And so just to comment briefly on this context of Abraham offering up Isaac, what I find thrilling about this is that if God saved the fullest expression of his promise to Abraham for that event, it brings to me this encouragement.

To me, it's very comforting to think that God gave to Abraham the fullest expression of his will to bless him in the midst of his greatest trial. I think that's important for us to appreciate. God is greater than our trials.

And there is no trial that we can ever go through that we cannot reach out to God and find in him that source of strength and comfort and to know that he is going to be there through it and to take us into what is everlasting. There's nothing that can overthrow this. Now, just to come back to Genesis 1 for a moment, and I just want you to think about this, the idea that, and I'm just going to put it this way, I want you to think of the panorama of the promise.

What I mean by that is this promise to Abraham actually starts at the very beginning, beginning of creation, and it stretches into eternity. Now, as I mentioned, God, in creating us in the first place, gave us this privileged place through which we were to be in special relationship with God and in relationship to the rest of the creation as his image bearers, representing his love, his care, his authority to the creation. And, of course, we know the history, Adam and Eve.

The consequence of that headship is that when they disobeyed God, when they did not believe him and turned away to another promise, they brought the whole creation under the curse instead. And instead of blessing being the dominant character of our existence, it's now hardship, struggle, and ultimately breakdown and death. And it ends in the flood.

And yet God, in his mercy, again has grace to Noah and a tiny remnant and begins again, and there's a new beginning. And again, there's a blessing pronounced. We know where that ended up, very quickly away from God into idolatry.

But there's a key difference. Genesis 10, 11, 12, when God sent them into the farthest corners of the earth through the confusion of language, he let them go into idolatry. He let them go in abandonment of the knowledge of God.

So the question could be raised, has God just given up on us? Has God just let us go and he's finished with us? No, he has let man go temporarily, but he chose a man named Abraham, brought him into his council, made to him this promise, I'm going to bless you. I'm going to make of you a great nation and so on. There were blessings that were personal to him and personal to the nation of Israel, you might say, because they were in this channel of blessing.

But ultimately, the blessing is for all of mankind. And I'm just going to remind you of a verse in Galatians chapter 3, where it says, verse 29, if you be Christ's, then are you Abraham's seed and heirs according to the promise. And so very literally, this promise is now secured in the Lord Jesus Christ, and it's going to stretch into eternity.

And ultimately, God will be, as the great blesser of humanity, he will have a creation in harmony with himself, who will love him and appreciate him and serve him. And we will know blessings, we have never experienced it yet. So then the response on Abraham's side is, so after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise.

And again, I've already mentioned that this word patiently endured is actually that word long-suffering again. And if you just think about Abraham's life, I don't have time to go back over the different details of his history. But just think of how often Abraham and Sarah must have pondered their childlessness.

And it even drove them to try to solve the problem with a Hagar, to their own grief and regret. And so we can see this promise then in Genesis 22 as being the climax of a series of promises that bring us up to the present in a sense. So looking then into the next section, verse 16 and 17 is really just the argument from the practice of making oaths.

This is just looking at common human experience. Men barely swear by a greater, and an oath for confirmation is to them an end of all strife. So what he's getting at here is, is, is this is, this is common among men, that they call upon someone who is considered an authority, or who has power, or who is greater than they are as a witness and as a judge.

And so it brings together two beautiful things. It brings together the idea of accountability. Whoever makes this promise is going to be held accountable to carry it out.

And it also is, at the same time, an adequate affirmation. In making an oath, you are affirming your honesty, your, your faithfulness to the promise. So there's these two things that are emphasized, accountability and assurance.

And so what does this have to do with God then? Well, it says, verse 17, wherein God, willing more abundantly to show to the heirs of promise, the immutability of his counsel confirmed it by an oath. It's all, all I'm going to say about that is that for God, it's not that he had to prove he's going to be honest. It's just he is multiplying assurance to us.

Now, when it says he confirmed it by an oath, interestingly, it's a different word for confirmed in verse 17 than the word in verse 16. In verse 16, it means to, to make firm or secure. But in verse 17, it's actually the idea of interposing oneself, to act as a mediator.

And so we have this amazing concept that God condescends to our level, you might say. And it's like he stands in between himself and us. And as he witnesses himself making this promise of blessing, he's, he's standing there as a mediator.

He's interposing himself. He's putting himself there. And so he says, by myself, I have sworn.

So you have that very strong affirmation. And now the word immutability, it's repeated again in verse 18. Immutability just means it cannot be changed.

It cannot be altered. We can be very changeable. But God in his essence and faithfulness is unchanging.

And he gives his word. And so we can take assurance then that his promises to us in the Lord Jesus are irrevocable, they're unchangeable, and they're according to eternal counsels. So we have this idea, the immutability of his counsel.

This was not just a whim, an afterthought. This really goes back to eternity, not just the foundation of the world, but before the world began. And I'm going to remind you of 2 Timothy chapter 1, verse 9, where it speaks about God has saved us.

And he has called us, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began. So his promise is greater than the universe itself. And so we come down to these, to the final three verses, and we have this wonderful idea that by these two immutable things, so first of all, what are the two immutable things? Well, very simply, it's his promise, his word given, and then his oath confirming the promise.

And so this is a double guarantee. It guarantees that it is impossible that God would fail to keep his word. If you remember Titus chapter 1, again, we would never know this, except that it's been revealed.

Paul speaks about the hope of eternal life, which God, who cannot lie, promised before the world began. And so if God has made a promise of eternal life, and then now he has confirmed these promises in this strong affirmation by taking oath, then we must not doubt him any longer. And the purpose of that is that we might have within ourselves a strong consolation.

The word consolation can have the sense of comfort, consoling, or it can also have the sense of encouragement. And I think we could see both aspects there. God wants us to be comforted, consoled in our stresses, but he also wants us to be stimulated, encouraged to go on in our Christian life to please him.

And then he's looking back. He's not saying, I want you to flee for refuge. He says, you have fled for refuge.

And so he's assuming that this has already taken place. Something has happened in their past, and what is it? There was a moment in life, and we could put it this way, when we stopped running from God and we ran to God. It's when we realize our spiritual danger, when we realize this is too big for me to cope with.

This isn't something I can take care of. And we ran for our lives. We ran for help.

We ran to God himself. Now, whenever I read this expression, and I can't be sure that this is what the writer has in mind, but the idea of fleeing for refuge takes my mind back to the Old Testament, where God in Israel appointed something that was quite unique to the nation of Israel in the Middle East. He appointed cities of refuge in Israel.

Now, it was fairly specific what it was for. It was for someone who accidentally killed somebody. It was not for a murderer.

If someone had intentionally murdered someone, there was no They were to be put to death. But if it was an accidental thing, that person was told to run for their life to one of these cities of refuge appointed, there was going to be an avenger chasing them. They would go there, they would present their case, and they were safe there until their case would be adjudicated.

There's one little detail given in one of the passages that I've always found intriguing, and it says there, till the death of the high priest. I always question in my mind, what did that mean, and what was the significance of it? So I was just looking at it again this past week, and what it seems to me, the significance of it is this. There is this concept in the Old Testament that the high priest bore the iniquities of the people.

And in some sense, he carried that burden of that wrong that had happened, that death that had happened in the land. And when he died, the case was closed. That man, the manslayer, the accidental manslayer could go back home, and nobody could threaten him anymore.

So when I think about this with the Lord Jesus, it might seem like that doesn't fit, because the Lord Jesus isn't going to die. He's already died. And so we have this wonderful reality.

Again, our sins and iniquities are covered. They are atoned for. We have found a place of refuge.

Our high priest has already died to close our case. So there's just that idea. And there's another story that I remember reading in a missionary book called Lords of the Earth by Don Richardson.

And this was in the region of the world that used to be called Papua New Guinea, just north of Australia in that territory. And there was a missionary and missionaries who went to the area. They were Stone Age cannibals.

This is just in the 1960s when they first had contact with him. And as they learned some of the culture, some of the things, there was this one fascinating little detail. These people were very superstitious.

They worshipped spirits. And they had a very rigid system of secrecy about the knowledge of their gods. And only initiated males could know these secrets or even know the names of their gods.

And they built these sacred enclosures where they were worshipped. And interestingly, they were also places of refuge. Someone who had done something could run to that sanctuary, assuming they had the right to enter.

And they would be safe no matter what they had done. Even if they killed somebody, nobody could attack them there. They were safe.

Anyway, there's a story of this man. His name was Salambo. And he led a raiding party to a neighboring village, enemies, and killed two women in the process.

And as he was trying to carry back some of his booty from the raid, he was being chased by the enemy coming after him. And he jumped over this little stone wall and tripped and fell and broke his leg. Well, he knew he was in trouble.

So he cried out. And two of his friends came back, tried to grab him and carry him. They carried him over another stone wall, just beyond.

And then he was struck in the back with an arrow. And his friends realized they couldn't save him. And they were going to be killed too.

So they left him to his fate and they fled. When his enemies surrounded him, one of them pointed back to those stone walls that he had just been dragged over and told him the horrifying truth that when he first fell, he landed in a sacred enclosure and he was safe. They wouldn't have killed him.

In fact, this enemy said, we would have carried you back home, kept you safe. But his friends dragged him out the other side to where he was again in danger. So it was quite a powerful story of the value of a place of refuge and the reality of missing it.

But here it says, and this is what I find very interesting, that we may have a strong consolation who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us. And so this is really emphasizing salvation in the future tense. I don't know if you've thought about this.

We've believed God. We've believed his promise of forgiveness. We believe the promise that we're justified.

We believe the promise that we have eternal life and we'll be with him forever. But for now, yes, we have some evidences within ourselves, but for now we basically just have his promise. So in a very real sense, God wants us to be anchored spiritually in the future, in the hope that he has presented for us.

And now you see how this, the imagery sort of merges here. It says, which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast. Now we're thinking about a ship in the storm and it's being battered around and so on, but it's anchored and it's anchored with something that secures it and keeps it safe, either from drifting off in the storm or going on the rocks.

And so the emphasis here is that this prospect, this hope that he has set before us, it's a very firm, fixed hope. It's enough to anchor us. Now, I want to think with you because I asked the question, what's anchoring your life? I find sometimes, even in my own heart, something of a dichotomy between what I believe relating to spiritual things and eternity and my day-to-day life.

If you notice in the New Testament, the word for soul and the word for life are used interchangeably many times. In fact, the word soul is translated as soul 58 times and translated life 40 times. So I just want you to think of it in this way.

God wants you to be anchored in your life just as he wants your soul anchored in salvation eternally. He wants that to be your anchor for your life as well. So what keeps you strong and stable as you go through life, experience hardship, disappointments, and losses? What keeps you anchored in your integrity in times of natural blessing and prosperity, achievement, and so on? It's recognizing that this present world is temporary and we're looking for something eternal.

Now, getting into the last little section here, it speaks not only as an anchor. You might say, in the storm, you can't see where your anchor is, but it's there. It's holding you secure, even though it's hidden from you.

But it also now says it enters into that within the veil, this place of the refuge. And just to point out that the emphasis we can see here is that the veil in Hebrews is a very significant idea in chapter 9, where it reminds us that as long as that veil was there, the presence of God was, there was a barrier between God and the worshipers. Now, the veil is still there.

It's still hidden, but it's no longer forbidden. We now, as believers, have free unfettered access to draw near, to come into the presence of God. But not only that, the emphasis here is, and this is where the verse 20 comes in, whether the forerunner is for us entered.

The reality is that the Lord Jesus has not only gone into that presence because He belongs there, but because He's going to lead us there. Not only is He as the high priest enthroned and at rest in the Father's presence, but He's going to bring us into the Father's house. And it's a thrilling thing to contemplate that when we, whether by death or the rapture, are transported to that place, we're going home.

It's going to be home to us. So just to draw attention to the significance of the forerunner, the word forerunner means a precursor or someone who has been sent in advance of others who are following. It's used of a scout going ahead of an army.

It's used of a pioneer cutting the pathway and opening up the territory for others to follow, to clear the land and to take over their property. But interestingly, in connection with the anchor, it's also used of a small boat carrying the anchor into the shallow water for a large ship. So maybe that's the connecting thought why it's used here.

And so the forerunner has gone ahead into the very eternal presence of God Himself. And so we not only have the right to come to God now, but we also have the prospect of being there forever. And so I call this not just a double guarantee, but actually a triple guarantee that the promise is secure for us.

So He's living there. And He's living there in the power of an endless life. But He's also going to bring us there.

Now, I think it's time for me to close off. So I trust that as we have thought a little bit about this and tried to remind ourselves of some of the great promises that we might just appreciate, even while we're still in our lives of difficulty and challenge, that we might take up the triumphant manifesto of faith. If we die, we shall live.

If we suffer, we shall reign. And in the meantime, that we would show the same diligence to the full assurance of hope at the end. Let's pray.

We are conscious that at times we we struggle to keep going with any sense of optimism, enthusiasm, and strength. Our zeal by focusing upon the great promises that you have made, and that we might even visualize what it's going to be like to be in your presence forever, to be with the Lord Jesus, and to be to be part of the kingdom that is never going to fade away, the kingdom that will endure forever, that place in the divine presence. Our Father, we give thanks and acknowledge that you are worthy to be trusted.

You are worthy to be believed and followed. And we ask for your blessing upon us in our Savior's precious name. Amen.