God’S Promise Is Sure
GOD’S PROMISE IS SURE
HEBREWS 6:13-20
Are you in need of encouragement? Then take to heart the encouragement shown here: Abraham, God’s unchangeable promise and oath, and Jesus himself.
The thought of promise is continued. Believers are not seeking some paradise of their own creating. They are servants of a God who has made provision for their salvation and who holds out before them certain promises. It is important to realize that these promises are thoroughly reliable. If we put our trust in God, we are not following some will-o’-the-wisp. We have entered on a path that cannot but lead to the goal.
We see this in the case of Abraham, to whom God made a promise which he confirmed with an oath (6:13). In due course Abraham obtained what God had promised, though not without exercising patient endurance (6:15). God swore to Abraham and he performed his oath.
An oath in human terms is the ultimate way of confirming what we have to say (6:16). So when God wished to convey to humanity the unalterable character of his promise, his unswerving determination to do as he had said, he confirmed his promise with an oath. The oath in question appears to be the one already spoken of; that to Abraham. It is relevant to a wide circle, for it includes Abraham’s descendants, and indeed “all the families of the earth” (Genesis 22:17f.; Acts 3:25). It is not impossible that there is a side glance at the oath mentioned in Psalm 110:4 which concerns the priesthood of Christ and which the author quotes in 7:21, but the main thought here is that God’s faithfulness to Abraham is an encouragement to believers still. Now they have “two unchangeable things,” the promise and the oath, on which to rely.
This leads to the thought of the hope set before us (6:18), that hope which is “a sure and steadfast anchor of the soul” (6:19). Hope in the New Testament is not a vague optimism about the future. Rather, it refers to something certain, though as yet unrealized. The certainty is one which is reached by faith, and there can be no other way of reaching it, or otherwise hope would not be hope. Our hope is one which reaches right out into that holy place where Jesus now is. That is to say, it gives us assurance that we will one day be where he is. And this will be not through any merit of our own, but because of the high priestly work he has performed on our behalf (6:20).
Thought Hope, like an anchor, is fixed on the unseen God.