in recent days of the great flood of 93, bringing
its devastation to thousands of families and
millions of acres of cities and farmland. The
staggering cost of this natural disaster will
eventually affect the lives of all of us. The
power of water, can you believe it? We have witnessed
it again and again, levees broken, houses taken
off their foundations and carried down rivers,
huge trees hundreds of years old, uprooted like
they were matchsticks and carried away, whole
cities brought to a standstill. The water that
we drink, that we bathe in, that we play in,
can become an overwhelming force of destruction
and ruin. We have seen that with our own eyes.
As I think of the flood of water around us, nearly
overwhelming everything in its path, it becomes
a parable to me about the times in which we live.
Do you as a saint of God ever feel overwhelmed
by this age? with its flood of ungodliness, evil,
and perversion of values? Do you feel like the
cultural levees are breaking down, allowing the
devastating flood of secularism and antichristism
to obliterate the values which made our nations
free and great? Do you feel like the powers of
government are intended by God to punish evil
and promote good are frequently being abused
and perverted by unscrupulous people? Well, you
may have said yes somewhere along the line to
those questions. And that's why I want to talk
today about stability of soul in this series
of SOS messages. Stability of soul. It's easy
even for God's people. in circumstances like
ours to feel insecure and uncertain about the
future, sometimes even to abandon hope. It's
important to remember that steadiness of soul
does not depend upon the times, but rather upon
the eternal. We who know Jesus Christ have a
hope that withstands the flood of world decay
and the currents of personal doubt. We read about
that in our text today in Hebrews chapter 6,
where I'm going to read verses 19 and 20. I hope
if you have your Bible with you, and you should
by all means, you'll turn there with me to Hebrews
chapter 6. This hope we have as an anchor of
the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast, and
one which enters within the veil where Jesus
has entered as a forerunner for us, having become
a high priest forever according to the order
of Melchizedek. The hope of the saints serves
as an anchor for their souls. That hope is eternal
salvation. The salvation that God has promised
to His heirs, that is to those who are His children
through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. The hope
of the saints produces the steadiness of soul
that we need in times like these. But on what
does this hope rest? Well, in the broader paragraph
of Hebrews chapter 6, it seems to me there are
at least four pillars upon which our hope rests.
They are the pillars of God's person, God's purpose,
God's pledge, and God's priest. Those are the
four pillars upon which our hope is founded.
And because we have that foundation, our hope
produces for us stability of soul in turbulent
times. Think with me about the first pillar,
that of the person of God. Back up to verse 13
with me in this paragraph where it says, For
when God made the promise to Abraham, since he
could swear by no one greater, he swore by himself,
saying, I will surely bless you, and I will surely
multiply you. And thus having patiently waited,
he, Abraham, obtained the promise. Because of
God's very nature, Because of the person of God,
our hope is secure. No floods in this world can
possibly undermine this pillar, because this
pillar rests upon the very nature of the Eternal
One in whom we have placed our faith. This is
the pillar of God's person. In verse 18, The
writer says, it is impossible for God to lie.
Now why is that? It is because God is, by His
very nature, truth. And therefore everything
that God says is true and trustworthy. Not one
word has failed of all His good promises. He
is the God who cannot lie. Therefore, He not
only will keep His promises, He must. It's not
just that God will do what He said He will do,
He must do what He said He would. Because that
is His very nature to do so. The illustration
given to us in the text is that of Abraham. And
the writer quotes from a repetition of the covenant
that God made with Abraham. Verse 14 is a quotation
from Genesis chapter 22. Now in that chapter
we have the great test of Abraham's faith. When
God called upon him to sacrifice his son, his
only son, Isaac, the son of promise, And Abraham
demonstrated great faith to God in that he was
willing to do that and would have done it had
God not interrupted him and pointed to the ram
caught in the thicket who would serve as the
substitute for Isaac. God then restated to Abraham
his covenant with him. And among other things
he said, I vow that I will bless you. Literally,
that's what God said. I vow that I will bless
you. God gave to Abraham the promised seed in
Isaac after many years of waiting. And then God
said, sacrifice this promise. Abraham would have
done it in his heart. He did do it. God honored
such great faith and said, Abram, surely I will
perform for you what I have promised you. God
fulfilled for Abraham that promise and we see
it yet today. And that there's the family of
Ishmael still in the world. Ishmael being the
son of Hagar, Sarah's handmaid, and Abraham.
The descendants of Ishmael are seen in the Arab
peoples, the millions and millions of them. Furthermore,
we see the family of Isaac in the world, through
his son Jacob, in the tribes of Israel, now regathered
by God's sovereign hand to their own land, bearing
the name Israel. And beyond that, we see another
family of Abraham, his spiritual family, the
family of faith, those of us who believe in the
Lord Jesus Christ are said in the Word of God
to be the sons and daughters of Abraham. God
has fulfilled his promise to Abraham because
God said to him, I will make your descendants
like the sand on the seashore. And today that
has never been more clearly demonstrated than
the millions of people who are both the physical
and the spiritual descendants of Abraham. God
fulfilled his word to his friend Abraham. God
always keeps his promises. What is our hope founded
on? We who profess salvation by grace through
faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. Our hope is founded
upon the very person of God who promised us eternal
salvation. And that hope is a pillar for our
souls in the floods of a wicked world like we
live in. God is a God of integrity. He keeps
His Word. And by way of application, of course,
God calls us to be a people of integrity, people
who keep our word, people who do what we say
we're going to do, even if it is to our own harm
and hurt. God wants us to reflect His likeness
in this sense. He is the God of all truth. We
are to be a people who walk in the truth. The
first pillar of our hope is the pillar of God's
person. The second pillar is God's purpose. Again,
in verse 14, He says, I will surely bless you.
I will surely multiply you. Because God's purpose
is to save a people for Himself, our souls find
security. We can't really find security in ourselves
because we're like roller coasters and we go
up and down. Folks, God's purpose, like His person,
never changes. God has purpose to call out a
people for His name's sake. A people as a love
gift for His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. And
if you and I have trusted the Savior, we are
counted in that number. That's God's purpose
that all of those who trust in His Son one day
be with Him in glory. God created Adam and Eve
and placed them in a garden where their needs,
every one of them, were cared for. Tragically,
Adam and Eve chose to disobey God and to do the
one thing that God forbade of them and they sinned.
They were cast out of the garden, and it was
not long before Cain killed his brother Abel.
And then sin began to quickly multiply until
over the period of about 2 ,000 years, according
to a chronology that I would favor. Sin was so
prominent throughout the population of the world
that every intention of the heart of human beings
was to sin. That was the pattern, that was the
continuous thought and aim and desire and imagination
of man's heart to sin. Therefore, God purposed
to send a flood to destroy mankind from the earth.
So wicked had man become. But, God, in His grace,
looked down and found favor with a man named
Noah and saved him and his wife and his three
sons and their wives. And God, in His grace,
continued to cry out to the rest of mankind to
repent as Noah spent 120 years building that
ark. And then the flood came and carried all
of the rest away. Noah and his family only were
saved. And yet, after that great deluge, the
heart of man had not changed. And once again,
through Noah and his three sons, Ham, Shem, and
Japheth, we see sin again multiplying and creating
within the heart of Noah's descendants, rebellion
against God, culminating a few hundred years
after the flood, in the building of a ziggurat,
a tower, and a place that came to be called Babel.
And there, that plain of Shinar, modern day Iraq,
there was an attempt on the part of humanity
to build a tower up to God, and to throw him
out of heaven, that man might be autonomous and
independent of God." Again, God intervened. God
caused the language of those people. They had
all spoken the same language to this point. He
caused their languages to be confused. And He
drove them away from there. They scattered throughout
the earth. those language groups and cultures
to their own nations. And yet God did not give
up. Amidst all of that chaos, all of that idolatry,
and all of that wickedness, God looked down yet
again upon the earth. And just about the time
that Noah finally died, God said to a man named
Abram, who was living in Ur of the Chaldees,
get out to a country that I will show you. Now
what was there in Abram that caused God to look
with favor upon him? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
God is just carrying out His sovereign purpose.
It was His purpose since the garden to redeem
a remnant of Adam's race for Himself. to be restored
and to rule over His new creation. And God was
simply carrying out His purpose. You see, all
of the wickedness and all of the sin and all
of the idolatry of man cannot overcome the purpose
of God. And God said to Abram, you come out,
I'm going to bless you, and I'm going to make
your seed a blessing to all the nations of the
world. ultimately talking about the seed which
is Jesus Christ. God is going to fulfill His
purpose in redemption. What does our hope rest
upon? It rests upon God's purpose. That God has
already ordained that there will be a remnant
of humanity that will survive all of the wickedness
and be taken out from it. to belong to Him and
to reign over the new heavens and the new earth.
And dear friend of mine, if you are a child of
God, you are one of those that God has already
purposed will one day be glorified with Christ
and will enter into what God has promised in
the fullness of our redemption. We live in a
day like Noah's and not because of the rain.
I've heard some of those comparisons. But we
live in a day like Noah's because of the wickedness
of the heart of man. And yet God in the midst
of this day is calling out people for Himself
as He did with Noah. On what does our hope rest?
God's person. He is a God who cannot lie. And
God's purpose? He is determined that He will
save an elect group, a remnant. of Adam's race
for himself. The third pillar of our hope is
that of the pledge of God. It says in verse 13,
God swore by himself. You understand, of course,
this is not blasphemous swearing as we sometimes
use the word swear or swore. What it means here
is that God took an oath. And since there is
none that He could swear by greater than Himself,
He swore on the basis of who He is. Verse 16
says, Men swear by one greater than themselves,
and with them an oath given as confirmation is
an end of every dispute. In the same way God,
desiring even more to show to the heirs of the
promise the unchangeableness of his purpose,
interposed with an oath, in order that by two
unchangeable things, in which it is impossible
for God to lie, we may have strong encouragement,
we who have fled for refuge, in laying hold of
the hope set before us. Again, that hope is our
salvation. Because God has given His oath, His
pledge, we can be certain of our hope. It was
the custom in ancient days to declare an oath
to seal a transaction. In fact, there were times
when God commanded His people, according to Exodus,
to give an oath. so that there would be no further
argument or dispute. The deal was done when the
oath was made. Certainly no one made an oath
unless it was a commitment that he intended to
keep. It says here that God made an oath. He
swore by himself that he would keep his promise
to Abraham. and not only to Abraham, but to all
of those who are his children by faith and who
are heirs of the promise. God swore by himself.
God may be referring to that occasion when he
was speaking with Abram and after again restating
and elaborating on his covenant with Abram, he
put Abram to sleep. Excuse me, first of all,
Abram laid out some sacrifices. This is according
to one of the ways an oath was made. Certain
animals were cut in two, right down the middle,
and they were laid half on each side of a path.
Now normally, the two people who were making
an oath between each other would join hands,
walk arm in arm, down through that path between
the sacrifices. That was a way of establishing
a permanent agreement or covenant between them.
Well in this case, after Abraham had laid out
the sacrifices, God put Abraham to sleep. And
God Himself came and walked that pathway between
the sacrifices, signifying that the covenant
he was making with Abraham did not depend upon
Abraham at all, but solely upon God who was giving
his oath. The two unchangeable things that the
writer is talking about in this verse are God's
promise confirmed by God's oath. God gave his
word and then he provided an oath to signify
that he would keep his promise. God did not need
to make an oath. His word was enough. But to
reassure his heirs, he confirmed his promise
with a pledge. It is interesting, if not a bit
sad for me, to note that there are some who are
related to God, the God who makes pledges. who
themselves are afraid to make pledges and commitments
to God. Nowhere does it say in the Word of God
that we are not to do that. It does say that
it's serious when we do it. But God is a God
who Himself establishes things by an oath and
who swears by His own great name that He will
keep His Word. Let us not as the people of God
back away from keeping our commitments to Him
and being willing even to sign our names if need
be to something to signify that we will keep
our Word that is fully consistent with what God
says in His Word. Not only Do we have God's promise?
We have God's oath. That He will give eternal
salvation to those who trust Him. And so we have
the pillar of God's person, the pillar of God's
purpose, the pillar of God's pledge. And by the
way, that pledge for us today may be the Holy
Spirit. That may be what the writer has in mind.
Certainly the Spirit is called a pledge of our
inheritance. God has already given us the down
payment. He has signed on the line, as it were,
that we will be saved by giving us His Holy Spirit.
That is the pledge of our future redemption.
But the fourth pillar that I want to get to before
we close is the pillar of God's priest. Because
we have a high priest who has entered heaven
for us, we can be sure of our hope. In these
verses, Jesus is called the forerunner. The forerunner
is one who acts as a herald, who goes before
royalty, announcing royalty's arrival. Or a forerunner
was one who was a scout, who would be sent out
in advance of the rest of the party. in order
to make adequate preparation so that when the
party arrived, all would be cared for. Can you
see how that name applies to Him? In fact, in
my Bible, I've written the capital F on the word
forerunner because that's a name for Jesus. He
has gone before us as our great priest. He has
gone before us to make preparations for our eventual
arrival there. He has gone as a herald as it
were into the Father's presence to announce our
soon arrival. It says that He has gone within
the veil for us on our behalf. By the way, we
can follow Him wherever He goes. He's gone within
the veil. You say, what does that mean? Well,
if you're familiar with the figure of the Jewish
temple or tabernacle, you know that that tent,
that building as it came to be was divided into
two sections. The most inner part of it, the
holiest part, was behind the veil. And in the
Jewish days, only the high priest could enter
in behind the veil. That was where God indicated
His presence by the Shekinah glory. over the
mercy seat of the Ark of the Covenant. Now it
tells us here that Jesus has entered in behind
the veil and our hope is anchored to him. Notice
how he puts it, this hope we have as an anchor
of the soul both sure and steadfast and one which
enters within the veil. So he mixes the metaphors
here. There's the metaphor of the temple and
the Holy of Holies. And he mixes with that then
the metaphor of a ship setting anchor in the
harbor. The picture is that of a cable that stretches
from the ship to its anchor where it firmly rests
embedded upon the rock. In our case, He says
that the cable goes out from our souls as it
were and stretches all the way to heaven and
it disappears behind the veil and is anchored
into the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. This
anchor of our souls is just as secure as is our
priest. This anchor will keep us from drifting
away into condemnation with the rest of the world.
The fourth pillar for our souls is the priest
of God. How do I know that God will keep His
Word? What causes my hope to be steadfast when
we live in a world of floods that rush against
our souls? It is that we have a priest who stands
in the presence of God on our behalf. This morning
there may be perilous waters that are swirling
at your feet, threatening to undermine your life,
threatening your faith, making you anxious about
the promises of God. I want to encourage you
this morning, despite the rushing waters that
may be about your life, If you are a child of
God, your soul is secure. That hope that you
have rests upon pillars that can never be undermined
or eroded. If you are a saint of God, there is
a security for you that locks you safe to God
Himself. All the more reason then for us to abandon
our self -reliance and to cease our self -service
and to be diligent in our service to Jesus Christ.
There may be someone here today whose hope is
not resting on these pillars. Perhaps your hope
is resting upon your church membership or baptism
or some ritual you've been through. or the faith
that your grandmother had, or the home that you
were raised in. Let me tell you that the only
pillars that cause your hope to be secure are
the pillars we've talked about this morning.
And they can be yours if you will trust in Jesus
Christ as your own Lord and Savior. If you are
a child of God and you are frightened, because
of the mass of waters that have come into your
life this week or in recent weeks. And you are
anxious and you're worried about what's happening.
And you're beginning to doubt, is my hope going
to be secure? Am I going to be steadfast? I'd
love the opportunity to pray with you. When this
service is over I'm going to be up here shaking
hands for a few moments, but if you'll just wait
around a few minutes I would love to have a time
of personal prayer with you and others who may
come Who are today deeply burdened about the
floods? They're coursing their ways through your
life today Let's pray together Father, we thank
you that we have an anchor that holds in the
storms of life. When the doubts unfurl their
winds of strife, we have an anchor that holds.
I pray today for your children who, passing through
a flood, are anxious and threatened and worried.
I pray that you will come alongside of them this
very day to reassure them that you, their sovereign
God, are in charge, that the flood will not overtake
their faith, that their hope rests secure upon
your person, your purpose, your pledge, your
priest. In Jesus' name, amen.