Hebrews Lesson 78 February 15,
2007
NKJ Isaiah 40:31 But those who wait on the LORD Shall renew their strength; They shall mount up with
wings like eagles, They shall run and not be weary, They shall walk and not
faint.
We are in Hebrews 6 and we are
nearing the end of this particular section in Hebrews which started off leading
to a discussion on the Melchizedekean priesthood, the priesthood according to
the order of Melchizedek which is distinct from the Jewish Levitical
priesthood. As the writer is about to embark on an in depth discussion of
Christ’s priesthood, he stops. He abruptly changes subjects and shifts to a
spiritual challenge – almost a rebuke. The tone gets pretty sharp in a
few places at the end of chapter 5 leading to one of the most debated warning
passages in the New Testament in chapters 6:4-8 where some people say that it
indicates that if you commit certain sins or if you are not faithful then you
will lose your salvation.
We went through that in detail and
showed that it isn’t true. The tone of the writer as he challenges them.
Because they have become dull of hearing according to verse 11, because they
have come to need milk and not solid food in verse 12, and because they are
unskilled in the word of righteousness, he rebukes them. It seems rather harshly,
and then he changes his tone in verse 9 and comes back and says…
NKJ Hebrews 6:9 But, beloved, we are confident of better things concerning you, yes,
things that accompany salvation, though we speak in this manner.
That is a word (salvation) that is
loaded with phase 3 sense rather than phase 1.
NKJ Hebrews 6:10 For God is
not unjust to forget your work and labor of love which you have shown
toward His name, in
that you have ministered to the saints, and do minister.
That is spiritual advance –
the divine good that you already have and your labor of love. The way you have
ministered to others in the body of Christ
NKJ Hebrews 6:11 And we desire that each one of you show the same
diligence to the full assurance of hope until the end.
He wants them to show the same
diligence that Old Testament saints who have pushed through to spiritual
maturity. So he is thinking in
terms of Old Testament examples.
This leads him to verse 12 where he says…
NKJ Hebrews 6:12 that you do not become sluggish, but imitate those who through faith and
patience inherit the promises.
Then he is going to give an
illustration. There is one illustration that he uses beginning in verse 13
where he talks about God making the promise to Abraham. Throughout this section
we have this emphasis on promise – promise in verse 12, promise in verse
13, promise in verse 15, and promise in verse 17. What under girds and what are
the hidden girders, as it were, the strength of this whole argument is that it
is based on the character of God. That is His overt purpose - to challenge them
to press forward because of what is in front of them. It is based upon God’s
immutability and His veracity.
We start off being reminded of the
character of God. There are two aspects of the character of God that are
brought out in this passage. The first is God’s immutability which means His
unchangeableness. It is related to the doctrine of God’s faithfulness. When we
look at the Old Testament Hebrew words for faithfulness, one of the word groups
that is used is translated faithfulness is the word group based on Hebrew three
letter word group IMN. It comes across in some forms as amen or aman and in
some forms it is amuna
which indicates faithfulness and in other passages it indicates truth. One of the
passages where this word is used in a different context gives us a different
sense of its meaning. It refers in a passage in Chronicles to the foundation
stones under the door posts of the temple. These would be those bedrock stones
that were used to support the foundation of the entryway to the temple.
Now when we were over in Israel last
summer, we saw some of the foundation stones from the Second Temple period.
Some of those may have been from the First Temple period which would have been
this period. They were estimated to weigh as much as 530 tons. If you are
familiar with the Great Pyramid at Giza, people tend to taught that as being a
great architectural wonder and the largest stone in the Great Pyramid at Giza
is 30 tones. Let’s see – 30 tons – 530 tons – 30 tones
– 530 tones. These are impressive. You just don’t move them very easily.
We can say they are immovable. That is the idea of God’s faithfulness. It is
immoveable, unshakable. It is unchangeable. We can always count on and depend
upon God’s faithfulness.
Because God is faithful He is also
truth. His Word is dependable. This leads to the other direction that the word
group takes. That is truthfulness or veracity. So both ideas -faithfulness on
the one hand and veracity on the other hand - come out of this same basic word
group. When we talk these two aspects of God’s character the attributes, His
immutability and His veracity - they are interdependent upon one another. They
connect to one another. They are not independent autonomous concepts. We have
an emphasis on those two attributes in this passage.
The other thing that lies in the
background here is the creator-creature distinction that God is completely
different from us. He is distinct as the creator and we are the creatures.
Nothing within the creaturely frame of reference is dependable as God is
dependable. Nothing in human experience is truth in the sense that God is
truth. We can talk about things that are true with a small “t”, but God is TRUTH. He is
the source of TRUTH. He isn’t true because God in His character somehow fits an abstract
external standard of what truth is. That would be a Greek concept that somehow
truth or these abstract principles – that the material universe is based
on and exemplified. In Greek thought there is no person behind the impersonal
physical universe. You just have matter out there – an eternal matter.
But what we have in Scripture is that God is a person and He is completely
distinct from anything within the creation. Therefore you can’t have truth in
God or righteousness in God or any moral judgment in God being moral, right or
true because it fits a standard external to God. God is His own standard. He is
the ultimate reference point for everything in creation. That is part of the
importance of the creator-creature distinction. Therefore you have passages
that talk about God’s thought being higher than our thoughts and God’s ways
being different from our ways. He is totally different.
So our understanding of God is
something that theologians will say is analogical. Analogical simply means we
understand God by way of analogy. We don’t understand Him or know Him
exhaustively or completely or even directly. We understand Him indirectly. The
Bible uses numerous comparisons and metaphors and figures of speech like
anthropopathisms and anthropomorphisms to communicate to us within our limited,
finite frame of reference. We can know God truly, but we can’t know God
exhaustively. It is on the basis of His character that we can learn to relax no
matter what the problems are. So a place where one doctrine that the writer of
Hebrews is headed toward here is that it is the truth of God and it is Jesus
Christ who provides this anchor for the soul. This is verse 19. That is
something that holds us stable.
Obviously he is dealing with a group
of believers who because of persecution, who because they have left the
priesthood (They are Jewish Christians) they have left their families. They are
going through rejection. They are going through persecution. They are going
through a number of different things of that nature. They are unstable at this
point because of their uncertainty with doctrine. This goes back to phrases
used earlier that they have come to need milk and not solid food. They have
become dull of hearing. As a result of that he is challenging them to return to
the only point of stability that exists in the universe.
So what under girds the section that
we are studying this evening from verse 16 down to 20 is the immutability and
veracity of God. This is what gives us stability in life. It is not from
anything in creation. It is not from your circumstances, emotions, feelings,
how people respond to you, how people treat you, your job. Nothing gives us
certainty or stability other than God.
So let us review where the passage
is going. In verse 13 the writer is reviewing or giving a reason why they
should imitate Old Testament saints through faith and patience. The example
comes from Abraham. So he explains.
NKJ Hebrews 6:13 For when God made a promise to Abraham, because He could swear by no one
greater, He swore by Himself,
Verse 13 brings in this idea of swearing by an oath. Verse 16 will come
back and develop this idea as will verse 17 ending up with the phrase
“confirmed by an oath”. That comes directly out of Genesis 22 as we studied it
last time. God tested Abraham by telling him to take Isaac up to Mt. Moriah and
to sacrifice him as a burnt offering. This is a quote from Hebrews 6:14 that is
lifted directly out of Genesis 22:17. At the end of the test after Abraham has
passed the whole test, from the time God first ordered him to take Isaac to Mt.
Moriah to the time that he completes the test and God stays his hand and
provides the substitute ram, when this is all over with, God gives his last
confirmation, reiteration of the Abrahamic Covenant to Abraham. He says…
NKJ Genesis 22:17 "blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I
will multiply your descendants as the stars of the heaven and as the sand which
is on the
seashore; and your descendants shall possess the gate of their enemies.
Literal translation: I will certainly bless you
and I will certainly multiply your descendents.
The focal point here is on the seed
which was the issue of the test – whether or not Abraham was willing to
trust God with the life of Isaac. Hebrews 6:14 translates it simply as (lifts
out that first part)…
NKJ Hebrews 6:14 saying, "Surely blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will
multiply you."
Now when we look at verse 15, we read….
NKJ Hebrews 6:15 And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained
the promise.
I pointed out last time that the
concept of patience here isn’t talking about his patience from the first time
God gave him the promise of the seed, when he was 75 years old until the seed
was finally realized when he was 100. He didn’t. He had to learn to trust God.
When that final test came, he was patient and had a relaxed mental attitude
about it because he knew God could resurrect Isaac even if he had to sacrifice
him. God would bring him back from the dead. So he had a relaxed mental attitude. He trusted God and had patience
– faith and patience – throughout that test. He obtained the promise, that is the
security of that particular quote. What is interesting is Hebrews tends to
reverse the emphasis of these verses a little bit from Genesis 22. Genesis
22:16 talks about God’s swearing an oath to Abraham. Genesis 22:17 gives us the
content of the oath whereas in Hebrews, although it mentions the swearing in
verse 13, verse 14 quotes from Genesis 22:17. Then verses 16 and 17 come back
to further explain the significance of God swearing an oath.
Why is it important that God swore
and oath?
So we come to verse 16. Verse 16
reads…
NKJ Hebrews 6:16 For men indeed swear by the greater, and an oath for confirmation is for them
an end of all dispute.
The explanation that the writer
gives here is based first on human experience. Rather than starting with God,
which is what we would expect, he is explaining why God used an oath. God
doesn’t need to give an oath because God is truth. He is truth. His word is
truth. He doesn’t need to swear an oath. He just needs to say it. It is as true
and sure as if He had sworn an oath. But God swears the oath in order to
reinforce the certainty of the promise for the sake of the frailty of human
beings. So verse 16 is simply a statement that confirms normal human practice.
The word translated “men” is the word anthropos
which can mean human beings as a whole. In this passage, even though it can
mean human beings as a whole and it doesn’t necessarily mean males as opposed
to males and females, it is probably talking about men because the context of
oath swearing is based on the Mosaic Law. In the Hebrew Old Testament you don’t
have any examples of women swearing of an oath. Swearing of an oath was a legal
and a covenant issue so the restrictions are such that it applied to men as opposed
to women. So it is talking about the Jewish practice. Men indeed swear by the
greater. It is typical of men to come along and swear an oath in the name of a
deity.
The word there in the Greek for an
oath is the word omnuo
which means to affirm the veracity or the truthfulness of a statement by invoking
a transcendent entity. Frequently it is associated with an implied invitation
of punishment if one is untruthful. In other words, if my words don’t come true
then cut off my arm or take my life or something of that nature. So that is the
idea of an oath. So they make an oath of confirmation. In Exodus 22:11 gives us
one example of that in the Old Testament.
NKJ Exodus 22:11 "then
an oath of the LORD shall be between them both, that he has not put his
hand into his neighbor's goods; and the owner of it shall accept that, and he
shall not make it
good.
The issue here has to do with a case
law in the Mosaic Law where there is concern that one person has stolen from
another. The one who has been accused of thievery is supposed to take an oath
of the Lord. This is a very serious matter. It would take place at the
tabernacle or the temple. It involved the sacrifice of an animal and swearing
before God that this act had not taken place.
Verse 16 goes on to say that this
oath is for confirmation. That word for confirmation is the word bebaiosis
which means to establish or to ratify a treaty or to confirm a covenant. Now we
are going to go to Galatians 3:15ff in a few minutes. You have a different word
for ratify there. But, these are synonyms.
Bebaiosis means to establish or to ratify a treaty or to confirm a
treaty. Now if you look down a little bit ahead in Hebrews 6 to verse 19, you
will see the word steadfast. It is translated steadfast in the English. This is
a cognate of this same word. I think that is why the writer of Hebrews uses
this. It establishes a confirming of a covenant. It has certainty. That is
steadfast. So he is using this similar vocabulary because it reinforces what
under girds this whole passage which is the absolute certainty of God’s word
and that it can be depended upon despite what our feelings might be or what the
circumstances may indicate. So in the human realm men are involved in a
disagreement or a dispute would swear an oath.
This would bring an end to the
dispute which is the Greek word antilogia meaning a controversy, some sort of
question of law or dispute or where there is an antagonism. So we have this idea
of antilogia
or a substitute word which comes to mean a dispute. So we have a simple
illustration in verse 16 to explain the significance of an oath. It is that men
come and swear by a deity. They invoke the name of a god or goddess or
whatever. It is something greater than them.
To whom is God going to appeal as
greater than He? There is no one.
That is the point. This has a lot of applications one of which is one you get
into in apologetics. How are you going to prove the Bible? What standard are
you going to use? If the Bible is what it claims to be which is the very word
of God, how are you going to prove it by appealing to a greater standard? There
is not a greater standard. Now this leads to what a lot of non-Christians will
say is a circular argument.
“Why do you believe the Bible?”
“Because it is the Word of God.”
“How do you know it is the word of
God?”
“Because it says so.”
“How do you know it is true?”
“Because it is the Word of God.”.
It sounds like a circular argument,
but in fact it can be presented that way. A lot of people do. It is not
circular. What we are arguing is that we know it is the Word of God because
there are confirming evidences that it is true. In other words if there are
claims that the Bible is true, then you look at various things that document or
support that.
For example you can look at
archeology today and how archeology has confirmed things historically that the
Bible said happened. You can look at prophecies that were made in the Old
Testament. You can go to prophecies made about the destruction of Tyre. You can
go to prophecies like Daniel’s 70 weeks in Daniel 9. You can go to other
prophecies that were made from Isaiah’s time some 200 to 300 years before the
Babylonian captivity where Isaiah makes it clear that they are going to be
taken out and destroyed by the Babylonians. Not only that, but somebody named
Cyrus is going to be responsible for bringing everybody back. So you have the
specificity of numerous Old Testament prophecies that reinforce the veracity of
God’s word. So you look at these things as confirmations and evidences.
You do the same thing with claims on
the deity of Christ.
“How do you know that Jesus is
God?”
“The Bible says so.”
“How do you know the Bible is
true?”
“Because Jesus said it was
true.”
“Well, how do you know that Jesus is
telling the truth?”
You get into what appears to be a
circular argument. But the problem that you have in some kinds of apologetics
is that they treat truth and history as if they are autonomously absolute and
you can’t do that. Let me give you an example of that. You can prove Jesus is
God because of the resurrection.
There are unbelievers, non-Christian
skeptics who say, “Great. Jesus rose from the dead. There are all kinds of
things that happened in history that I can’t explain. That doesn’t prove that
He is God.”
What has happened in that apologetic
approach is that there is an assumption that we can all agree if something
happened in history it means something. So history is treated as if proves as
opposed to confirming the Bible. So these may seem like some nice little fine
tuned things that you shouldn’t be concerned with. But if you talk to somebody
that has any snap between their ears, they come back with these kinds of
things. So it is important to recognize that if you are explaining, giving an
answer for the hope that is in you - you don’t make the mistake of setting up
either abstract concepts of truth, right or wrong, history or any of these
other things as autonomous absolutes that God is then answerable to as if it is
a truth.
Sometimes you will hear someone say,
“God wouldn’t do that because God is fair.”
I just heard something that I didn’t
like. That is that a lot of people have their own idea of what fair is. Then
God conforms to it. See God by definition determines from His character what
fairness is, what righteousness is, and what justice is. There is not this
abstract autonomous concept. He defines what everything is. So you can’t slip
around this. That is what the writer is pointing out. When men swear by
something it is greater than them. But God is going to swear by something, but
what is greater than God? We come to our next verse.
In the New King James it begins,
“Thus God” which is a way to try to smooth out the Greek. It literally says, “In which.”
NKJ Hebrews 6:17 Thus God, determining to show more abundantly to the heirs of promise
the immutability of His counsel, confirmed it by an oath,
Literal translation: In this act of swearing an
oath.
God is the subject. Then you have a
participle.
That’s the point. In the practice of
swearing an oath, God confirmed what He was going to do with Abraham. So why
did He do it this way? He did it in order to give us a greater sense. He is
condescending to us. He is lowering Himself to our level of frame of reference
so that we can understand what He is doing. So He gives us confirmation through
this oath ceremony. So He is going to show us something.
The word epideiknumi means to show, to exhibit,
to show something off before something or to demonstrate something before an
audience. That is what the writer is saying here. This is exhibit A for God’s
faithfulness. God swore an oath by Himself. So He does this as a testimony, as
a witness for all generations to come back and see this thing that God did in
space-time and history with Abraham. He does it to demonstrate something before
an audience. The audience is defined here as the heirs of promise. That would
apply to believers.
He does so more abundantly. The word
translated “more abundantly” brings up the concept of going beyond what is
expected. It is from the Greek word perisoteros which is a comparative word
indicating that it goes far beyond any other expectation. It is an exceeding
manner. It is more than abundant. It is super abundant. God wants to do more
than anyone could ever ask or hope for or think. So He is going to go far
beyond what might be simply acceptable in order to make this demonstration to
the heirs of promise that His word is immutable.
The word for immutability is the
word ametathetos
which means it is unalterable, it is unchangeable or impossible. We get this
word a couple of times. We get it in verse 17 and we are going to get it again
in verse 18. The New King James translates it immutable in both places. It can
be immutable, unchangeable. Metatithemi refers to something that is changeable. The alpha (the a at the
beginning) is like our prefix un. It negates the word so it literally means unchangeable or
immutable.
What is immutable is His counsel.
This is the Greek word boulomai. As soon as some people hear the word counsel, they
immediately jump to the doctrine of divine decrees. This passage doesn’t have
anything to do with the doctrine of divine decrees. You don’t see anything like
that. The word boulomai
simply expresses His wish, His desire or His plan for something.
If we are in the middle of an
illustration, a biblical illustration, of God’s promise to Abraham, what is the
plan that we are talking about?
God’s plan for Israel – God’s plan to bring in a Savior through
the descendents of Abraham in relationship to His promise in the covenant -
that God is going to give Abraham descendents and a piece of real estate (the
land). He is going to give him specific descendents under the category of seed.
Through them all nations are going to be blessed. If you go back to verse 14
where you have the quote from Genesis 22:17, the focus of that quote in Genesis
22:17 is on the seed, on His blessing for all people. So God determines to show
more abundantly. This is His grace that goes beyond anything that we can
imagine to the heirs of promise (that is in context to the Jews), the
immutability to His counsel. That is that God is not going to go back on His
promise to Abraham.
God is not someone who is going to
come along and say, “You Jews, you failed to accept the Messiah so therefore I
am going to cut you out.”
That is called replacement theology.
You have a lot of people today who think replacement theology is great. In
fact, there is a scholarly paper that was published on the website for John
Knox Seminary. John Knox Seminary is associated with James Kennedy’s
Presbyterian Church in Coral Gables, California. You see James Kennedy on
television all the time. He is probably Lordship. He is very Calvinistic, very
reformed in his theology. The faculty there wrote a paper Why Evangelicals Don’t Need to Support
Israel. That is the gist of the title. That is because as far as they are
concerned Israel forfeited any special place in God’ plan in history because
they rejected the Messiah. That is replacement theology.
Surprise, surprise! If you are a pre-millennial
dispensationalist, you reject replacement theology. You believe that God still
has a future plan for Israel. We are in the minority. We are in a shrinking
minority because as you throw out literal interpretation of Scripture and you
throw a number of these other biblical distinctives, with the pressure that is
being put on Israel by the world and everybody in America is scared to death to
fight a war anymore - we have all turned yellow and chicken and nobody wants to
do what needs to be done to destroy radical Islam. What happens is people have
compromised for so long with the agenda of the Arabs that nobody has the
framework, the politics, or the backbone to stand up anymore. So let’s find
some justification in Scripture not to support Israel anymore.
It is amazing that we have a
President who supports Israel for the most part. His policies support Israel.
As long as we have men in the White House who continue to do that, then God is
going to (I think) continue to protect America. Once we start letting anybody
near the White House who has an agenda to mollify the radical Arab agenda to
destroy Israel, then we probably going to see things like 9/11 happen on a much
greater order.
So the focus here is on the fact
God’s counsel (His will, His plan for Israel) is immutable. He is not going to
go back on the Abrahamic Covenant. This is why he confirmed it by an oath.
The word there translated confirm is
the Greek word mesiteuo doesn’t
really mean confirm. We have that in some other words. Bebaiaoo has that idea in some passages.
This is a different word. It means to act as a guarantor, to mediate a
struggle, to act as a guarantor of something. In other words God steps into the
middle of this situation and He is going to guarantee the promise Himself by
means of His own oath. So that is how it should be translated.
Literal translation: In which (in this practice of oath swearing) God determining to show
through His abundant grace to the heirs of the promise (that is to Israel) the
immutability of His plan, confirmed it (or guaranteed it) by means of an oath.
Now let’s hold our place here and
turn over to Galatians 3. Galatians 3 uses the same kind of vocabulary to talk
about this same promise. So hold your place and turn to Galatians 3.
In Galatians 2-6 the focus is on
sanctification – that it is not by means of the law; it is by means of
the Holy Spirit. Before he gets to talking about the role of the Holy Spirit in
Galatians 5:16, Paul builds a case showing why the law (and what God did
through the Jews) was not only temporary; but it cannot be the basis of the
spiritual life. So chapter 3 fits in the middle of that discussion where he is
reinforcing the fact that we have been redeemed by Christ; not by the law.
Then verse 14 gives us the purpose
for that redemption that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles
in Christ Jesus. That is part of the Genesis 22:17 promise that God would bless
all the nations through Abraham.
NKJ Galatians 3:14 that the blessing of Abraham might come upon the Gentiles in Christ
Jesus, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit through faith.
With the purpose, clause he is
connecting Christ Jesus, the redemption, the justification that was the sub
issue in Galatians 1 and 2 with the coming of the Holy Spirit as a basis for
the blessings of the Church Age believer.
Now verse 15.
NKJ Galatians 3:15 Brethren, I speak in the manner of men: Though it is only a man's covenant, yet if it is confirmed,
no one annuls or adds to it.
Isn’t that what the writer of Hebrews
did? He starts off in verse 16. He is talking about human practices.
NKJ Galatians 3:16 Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say,
"And to seeds," as of many, but as of one, "And to your
Seed," who is Christ.
Paul does the same thing in
Galatians 3:15.
I am not making a case for Pauline
authorship of Hebrews. Don’t worry. They use different vocabulary and different
styles; but they are saying the same thing. These two passages sort of
reinforce each other.
When you go out and buy a house and
sign a real estate contract with a realtor or you get a mortgage and you sign a
contract for the mortgages or you get a credit card and you sign that contract
- any time in life you sign a contract, you sign a covenant. It is a human
covenant. Even though you have a human covenant, it is confirmed.
Once it is confirmed, it is ratified. This is the Greek word kuroo. It is
not a form of bebaioo
like we had in Hebrews. It is kuroo which refers to authority or confirmation to establish
something as valid. Once it is confirmed, once you sign the document and it
gets notarized, you don’t come back and add to it. You can’t change it.
You don’t wake up the next morning
and go, “Well, the market dropped yesterday. Interest rates are now 5% and not
5 ¼ so I am just going to start paying 5% interest on my loan.”
You can’t change it. Once it is
established, it is set. That is the point.
Now we get into verse 16. Verse 16 says...
NKJ Galatians 3:16 Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say,
"And to seeds," as of many, but as of one, "And to your
Seed," who is Christ.
This is a great promise. Paul is
going to take this one passage and he is going to digress. He is going to take
the short rabbit trail here in order to make a very important point.
This is the Abrahamic Covenant.
He did not say “and to seed”. Paul’s
point isn’t that it goes to all the Jews.
The blessing goes through one
person. That is the Lord Jesus Christ. So Paul builds his whole point here on
the fact that you have a noun in the singular and not in the plural. This is
what lies behind our emphasis on the doctrine of inspiration and word-by-word
exegesis. It is the words of Scripture that are inspired not the idea. It is
important to look at the grammar. It is said this way instead of that way for a
purpose. It is not simply just for literary variation.
One of the things that happens when
you are writing is that a general rule of writing is don’t use the same word
again and again in a paragraph or over two or three paragraphs. There should be
variation of style and variation of vocabulary. But sometimes if you are making
a point about something, you’ll repeat the same word. I pointed out in Hebrews
6 that Paul uses the word promise 3 or 4 times. Four times I think. You have
that kind of thing happen in other parts of Scripture where Paul will use the
same word 5 or 6 times in three verses and you will have four or five different
English words used to translate the same Greek word. What happens there is you
just changed the emphasis of the Scripture. God the Holy Spirit inspired the
writer through inspiration to use that same word 5 times for emphasis - in
order to pull attention to that one word in that one concept. God the Holy
Spirit didn’t think that you needed various styles in order to keep people from
falling asleep or to think He was a bad writer. He was making a point that way.
That is how it was done in ancient literature. So when a translator comes along
and uses three of four different English words to translate one Greek word that
is used four or five times in those same verses, it changes the emphasis of the
passage ever so subtly. But it changes the thrust of the passage. The English
reader can’t catch on to the thread that the Holy Spirit set up there by
repeating the same word 5 or 6 times throughout the passage.
Just to give you a little review on
the doctrine of inspiration. Our word inspiration is not the best word. The
word that is the English translation of the Greek word theopneustos literally means
God-breathed. God the Holy Spirit so supernaturally directed the human writers
of Scripture in such a way that they are breathing out Scripture. It is not
that they somehow have some sort of a lofty idea all of a sudden. We talk about
Shakespeare being inspired or some artist being inspired or some sudden new
ideas or something being such an inspiration or somebody being motivated or
motivating us by their behavior. That is not what we mean. It means to –
outspire is what it should be. God breathed out through these human writers of
Scripture so that without waiving their human intelligence, vocabulary,
individuality, literary style, personality, their personal feelings, or any other
human factor, His complete and coherent message to mankind was recorded with
perfect accuracy in the original languages of Scripture, the very words bearing
the authority of the divine authorship.
That is what we refer to as verbal
inspiration. The words are inspired. That is very important.
Plenary is another word that has
been introduced. That means that the totality of Scripture is equally inspired
so that the genealogies of I Chronicles 1-9 are just as inspired as the Sermon
on the Mount. They are just as much the words of Christ because the whole Bible
is the mind of Christ. They are just as much the words of Christ as those
red-letter sections in your red-letter Bible.
I always get a kick out of this. Dr.
Ryrie would drill that into us when I had him for Bibliology in my first year
of seminary. The whole Bible is the Word of God – not just what Jesus
said. It is all what Jesus said. At home I have a copy of the red-letter
edition of the Ryrie Study Bible. I know that he must have had battles with Moody
Press over that. Maybe he didn’t have any editorial control. That is a problem
with these Christian publishing houses. They are so tied to the market place
that they are going to produce what they perceive the market wants and not what
is right.
Anyhow that is our emphasis. That is
the application of this in verse 16. Whether it is singular or plural, present
tense or aorist tense - these are important because God said it that way. That
is our digression.
Now we get to verse 17.
NKJ Galatians 3:17 And this I say, that the law, which was four hundred and thirty years later, cannot
annul the covenant that was confirmed before by God in Christ, that it should
make the promise of no effect.
That is 430 years after
Abraham.
That’s the Abrahamic Covenant.
Paul is arguing the same thing. The
Abrahamic Covenant is still in effect. It was a permanent contract as opposed
to the temporary nature of the Mosaic Covenant.
NKJ Galatians 3:18 For if the inheritance is of the law, it is no longer of promise; but God gave it to Abraham by promise.
See how that ties right in. We are
talking about inheritance. It is no longer a promise. It is the same word that
we have in Hebrews.
It is God’s promise that we can
count on. He is not going to go back on His word
So He established it by a
promise. He swore by Himself
because there was none greater. So that brings us to verse 18 in Hebrews 6. So
turn back with me to Hebrews 6. Now here the writer says…
NKJ Hebrews 6:18 that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we might
have strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold of the hope set
before us.
What are the two immutable things?
The first immutable thing is Himself – His character. The second immutable
thing is the oath. So remember under the Mosaic Law in order for something to
be confirmed there had to be two witnesses. So you have two witnesses: His own
character and His unchangeable oath. So there are two unchangeable things, two
immutable things in which it is impossible for God to lie. We have two other
passages that reiterate this same principle – Number 23:19.
NKJ Numbers 23:19 "God is
not a man, that He should lie, Nor a son of man, that He should repent. Has
He said, and will He not do? Or has He spoken, and will He not make it good?
And then Titus 1:2.
NKJ Titus 1:2 in hope of eternal life which God, who cannot lie, promised before time
began,
Lying is impossible for God because
He is perfectly righteous. It violates His character. It doesn’t violate some
external standard. He can’t do it ontologically. It is impossible for Him in
terms of His basic being for that to ever happen. It just can’t happen anymore
than water can run uphill. It is not in its nature.
Here is where he is making an
application that in order that we can have strong consolation. That is, that we
can be strengthened, that we can be encouraged not on the basis of experience
but on the basis of God and the historical record.
We may come from different backgrounds.
You may come from a Jewish background. You may be involved with persecution or
hostility from the Jewish segment.
You may come out of a Greek or Gentile background, a Roman background
whatever it may be. There is always pressure in Satan’s world to do it Satan’s
way, to follow your sin nature. But we have a refuge where we flee to lay hold
of the hope that is set before us.
The word for hope is our confident
expectation. It is before us. That means that it is set out there ahead of us.
This is something we look toward; we look to. It is the future that God has promised us. It is certain. It
is not something that we might lose.
Don’t misinterpret Hebrews 6:4-6 as
the possibility of losing your salvation. Our salvation is guaranteed by the
promise of God that no matter what happens we still are saved. We can’t lose
our justification. We can’t lose the destiny that God has for us. There is an
inheritance set out there and so it is the reality of that inheritance that
hope that is set out there that gives us strength for today. It gives us
stability because it isn’t based on who and what we are, but who and what God
is.
Then we come to verse 19. He uses
the illustration or the metaphor of an anchor of the soul in order to
communicate that sense of stability – something that can’t be moved,
something that can’t have its anchor cut and go off course.
He has already talked about the
hope. It is supplied by most translations for the ease of reading.
It is this confident expectation
– what is going to happen in the future – the promise that God has
made. Here he has made a transition from the promise that God made to the Jews
in the Old Testament to the promise of the future destiny for the Church Age
believer. It is this hope, this promise of what is to come that serves as a
basis of stability in our lives today. No matter how things look around you, no
matter what may be going on, no matter what pressures what adversities are
taking place in your life, no matter how uncertain the circumstances may
appear; our certainty, our stability is not based on day-to-day circumstances.
They are based on the certainty of God’s Word.
We may lose everything that we have
in this life. We may end up – those of us in this room may see a time
when this country is defeated militarily. With what is going on with the fact
that most sane people (or what we thought were sane people in this country) are
insane. They don’t understand the difference between illegal immigration and
legal immigration. Nobody ever wants to talk about it. It is amazing how
anybody who has any public platform runs from the truth. As soon as they get in
a position that they can talk about it, they refuse to talk about it.
We are being attacked subtly through
our borders. There are untold number of illegal Arab immigrants (illegal Muslim
immigrants) who have come across the border who seek to do us harm. Who knows
how many sleeper cells are here. From what I have heard talking to people in
law enforcement in a position to know, Houston is as radicalized a city as far
as the Islamic faction is concerned as any place in the country. It could
happen here. It could happen anywhere. In the next 20-30 years (many of us are
going to live 20, 30, 40 more years) we could see unbelievable disasters take
place in our lives.
We could see the economy completely
collapse. The United States has so much extended debt it would boggle our minds
if we understood how frail the basis of our economy is. It is based on the good
word of the government. That is it. There is nothing else there. It is just
held up by empty faith. We could lose these things through natural disaster.
You could live in Florida for heaven sakes and have lost everything three or
four times in the last three or four years. Or you could live in New Orleans.
Many people who go through things like that physically, their life will never
be the same. They don’t have the opportunity to rebuild the kind of house they
had or have the job that they had or those circumstances.
So the one thing that we have in
life that will never change – the one thing that we can count on, the one
thing that is sure – is Jesus Christ. The one thing that is certain is
the Word of God and the promise of God. No matter what the winds of adversity
may blow our way, God is always true to His word and His word is always true. We
may have to go through all kinds of things, but God will always be faithful. So
we have one place to run for stability. That is the imagery here. We have one
place to run to lay hold of the hope set before us - this anchor of the soul,
the one thing that gives stability to your soul both sure and steadfast.
The first word is asphales
which means firm, sure, steady, immoveable, safe, and certain. It is a word
that is often used in context related to truth.
The second word is steadfast –
bebaios.
That is related to the word used earlier for the confirmation of a covenant. It
is a cognate word.
So we have asphales for a firm, sure, immovable
word and steadfast. It is steadfast. It is unshakable. This anchor of the soul
enters the presence behind the veil.
Now he makes a shift here. What he
has been talking about here is the hope that we have. He connects the hope to
Jesus Christ. He ties it into the tabernacle. He says that he enters the
presence behind the veil. That was the high priest in the tabernacle.
In the tabernacle you had the outer
courtyard and one entryway indicating that there is only one way to enter into God’s
presence. The Word of God has this exclusivity down throughout all the books of
the Bible. One way to go in – you have the outer courtyard where the
priests would come. You have various worshippers who would go as far as the
altar of burnt offering where they would bring a sacrifice to God. The priest
would wash his hands and feet at the laver and then enter into the holy
place.
Now the holy place was dividing in
two sections. The back third there is a veil on the interior. It separates the
inner Holy of Holies from the outer holy place. That is what is being talked
about. It is that inner Holy of Holies where the Ark of the Covenant rested,
where the High Priest would go on the Day of Atonement. That is the place where
God dwelt between the cherubs, as the psalmist would say frequently.
NKJ Hebrews 6:19 This hope
we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which enters
the Presence behind
the veil,
This hope is what enters the
Presence behind the veil.
That is the one who runs ahead, prodromos,
the one who is the precursor. It is another word that is used that is similar
to the one who is used back in Hebrews 2:10 where it talks about Jesus as the
captain, the pioneer, or the leader of our salvation, the author and completer
of our faith - Hebrews 12:2. This is another word related that way that He is
the one who leads the way for us.
So we are right back to where we
left off before we entered into this digression back in verse 10 of chapter 5.
We focus on Jesus Christ’s royal priesthood as being based on the order of
Melchizedek.
NKJ Hebrews 6:20 where the forerunner has entered for us, even Jesus, having become High Priest
forever according to the order of Melchizedek.
The focus here is that this is the
only certainty that we have. It is related to Jesus in hypostatic union who has
opened the veil for us so that we can enter into the presence of God. It is
that orientation to God and His immutability and veracity that is the only
basis for hope and certainty in our lives.
So next time we will come back and
get into chapter 7 where we start getting into a development of the
Melchizedekean priesthood in 7:1. This will be the fourth section of Hebrews.